How to fix a squeaky Brooks Flyer

I bought a Brooks Flyer saddle a month ago, having convinced myself that it was the best saddle for ‘extended’ riding.  I ride to work everyday, each way lasting 45 minutes.  I found with the original saddle that comes on the Trek 7.4 FX hybrid bike, it was comfortable enough in the first 30 minutes, but started to feel uncomfortable after that.  Having read comments and reviews online, the consensus is that Brooks provides the comfort on long rides because the leather moulds to your bone structure.  

My commuter bike

I’ve been riding my new bike for about two months now.  I bought the Trek 7.4 FX 2014 version and it’s been a brilliant ride.  I’ve prepared a review of the features of the bike that you can read from the link below.

Continue reading →

Tires: How Wide is too Wide?

Wider tires just as fast, but safer and more comfortable!

Off The Beaten Path

How wide a tire is too wide for optimum performance? Our research shows that wider tires don’t give up anything on smooth roads, and gain a significant advantage on rough roads. This has been shown for tires up to 31 mm wide.

It’s now a well-established fact that wider tires roll faster than narrow ones. Professional racers now use 25 mm tires, which are 20% wider than the tires that most racers used just 20 years ago. Will this trend continue? Can we expect racers to be on 30 mm tires in the future? No matter what the pros do – they are influenced by many factors that have little to do with science – the real question is: Up to what point are wider tires faster?

It is obvious that the tires in the photo above will not roll very fast. Clearly, at some point, the performance benefits of…

View original post 830 more words

Trek 7.4 FX 2014

I bought the Trek 7.4 FX 2014 version in October 2014.  As it turned out, after July is a good time to buy a new bike as the manufacturers are starting to roll out next year’s models, so you can most likely get the current year’s bikes at a discount. After looking at a number of bikes, there were a couple of reasons I settled on the 7.4 FX: