Cyclist
In the Drops: Racy Pirelli tyres, sporty Sennheiser earbuds, SiS’s tasty protein bars and digging
The recent coincidence of Unbound and the Critérium du Dauphiné has meant cycling fans have been greeted with a deluge of new and still-unreleased tech this week. We did our best to cover everything we spotted on our tech leaks page early on Tuesday, and the tech content has kept on flowing from there.
We reviewed Argon 18’s racy Sum Pro and Fara’s handsome F/Gravel, delved into the ever-shifting world of rim widths and broke down Giant’s unilaterally excellent range of road bikes. Fulcrum jumped on the wavy rims bandwagon too with the release of its new Sharq all-road wheels. We published a news story on the wheels on Wednesday, so be sure to check it out to get all the details.
As the season’s pro racing continues apace, it felt right to review season two of Netflix’s ‘Tour de France: Unchained’, and we produced a race guide on the upcoming Tour de Suisse as well. Be sure to check back on site for similar race guide for this year’s Tour de France later on today.
Until then, what could be better than reading all about the latest gear to arrive with the Cyclist team? Enjoy!
Pirelli P-Zero Race TLR RS tyres
Making their debut on the bikes of Lidl-Trek on Stage 10 of the Giro d’Italia this year, Pirelli’s new P-Zero Race TLR RS tyres proved their worth almost immediately, with the team’s maglia ciclamino sprinter Jonathan Milan winning both Stage 11 and 13 using them.
If that wasn’t enough, Pirelli says they have actually been used on the down-low for a while already and have racked up 30 WorldTour wins with the team.
Pirelli credits an updated rubber compound – which has moved to ‘SmartEvo2’ from regular old ‘SmartEvo’ – as a contributing factor to the P-Zero Race TLR RS’s success. It hasn’t gone into detail about how the compound has been updated, but I don’t think I’d grasp it even if Pirelli had, so we’ll need to take that at face value.
Together with a revised casing structure and tread thickness (basically, both have been slimmed down a touch) versus the non-RS P-Zero Race TLR tyres, Pirelli says the RSs offer 16% lower rolling resistance.
Thanks to the continued presence of another catchily-labelled feature ‘Speedcore’ – or the tyre’s innermost layer, made from aramid-infused rubber – Pirelli says the RS should have the robustness to resist punctures on race day. I wouldn’t expect these tyres to stand up to many of the hard training miles in between though, so are probably best kept reserved for occasions when the need for speed is top priority.
Sennheiser Momentum Sport earbuds
While I wouldn’t generally recommend headphones of any sort while riding on the road, I make an exception for Sennheiser’s earbuds because of a nifty feature they tend to include called Transparency Mode, which is a setting that allows them to let in ambient sound, so users can remain aware of their environment.
This is balanced by a noise cancellation mode to block out things like noisy indoor trainers, combined with an ‘acoustic relief channel’ that minimises the sound of your own breathing (earbuds, filling the outer ear canal as they do, cause sounds like this to be magnified, which is called an occlusion effect), so pure, high-quality audio is achievable with the Momentum Sports too.
The earbuds’ audio trickery is just the tip of the iceberg in this case, though. Particularly appropriate to data-hungry cyclists is the Momentum Sport’s heart rate and core temperature sensing abilities. These clever pods use a photoplethysmography sensor (the same light emitter + photodetector most smart watches use – yes, those flashy green lights) to determine heart rate from the inner ear. This is apparently an excellent place to track physiological metrics, given the area remains stable during movement and experiences a low level of light pollution. Temperature monitoring benefits from the same conditions, so Sennheiser promises particularly accurate readings from the Momentum Sports.
The earbuds work with most common sport apps, such as Apple Health, Garmin Connect and Strava, but are primarily built to integrate with Polar’s biosensing and analytics ‘Flow’ app. The Momentum Sports are the first non-Polar product to do this, in fact, so the user should be able to unlock all sorts of tracking and assessment capabilities.
This biometric functionality doesn’t seem to come at the expense of battery life: thanks to the storage case’s ability to recharge the earbuds from its own battery, Sennheiser promises up to 24 hours run time for them, so the chances of losing audio and data tracking mid-workout should be slim-to-nil.
Science in Sport Protein20 bars
I could try to justify SiS’s Protein20 bars from a po-faced sports nutrition standpoint, and there would be some merit in that: protein is just as essential post-ride as carbs are mid-ride, and SiS’s Protein20 bars deliver 20 grams of the stuff. The protein the bars use is plant-derived too (as opposed to dairy-based, such as whey), so its production should be better for the environment.
However, we all know that the draw of a protein bar is getting to feel like you’re eating a treat, so this is where the SiS Protein20 bars really deliver. First off, they’re a good size, their two bite-size sticks similar in stature to a Mars Duo. There’s an initial crunch of chocolate-covered ‘protein crispies’, followed by gooey caramel and then the chewy denseness of the high-protein nougat centre.
They taste like genuine confectionary, except they are low sugar and excellent for supporting the growth and maintenance of muscle mass. They’re a little pricey, but that’s true of protein bars in general, so I can’t really mark them down in that regard either. If you’re on the hunt for a post-ride snack that is nutritious and delicious, these are worth checking out.
Ad feature
Get your kicks from ROUVY’s latest update pack
ROUVY, the indoor cycling app that lets you ride real routes around the world, presents a bundle of product and account updates to elevate both the riding and the platform experience, making it easier to ride when and however you want. The update pack includes:
- Pause Subscription in the new Loyalty Program
- Workout improvements
- Drafting modelling refined
- New routes including Oatman, Arizona on Route 66
- New and retro bikes added to the virtual garage
Ad feature ends
What we’re into this week: Digging
The weather improving (slightly) has seen me spend more time in the overgrown, over-landscaped garden of the house my wife and I bought at the end of last year.
The project initially felt overwhelming, but having worked on it most weeks for the last few months, I’m pleased with how far things have moved along. Digging has been my primary activity – moving earth, prising out tree stumps and exposing wall footings – and I’ve been reminded of what an excellent mode of exercise it is.
As a cyclist, there’s a temptation to devote all the time you have for training to time in the saddle, but it’s as important to work on supplementary components of fitness. Strange as it sounds, digging is ideal for that, as it asks a lot of your core, back and arms.
As a result, I feel stronger and in surprisingly good condition considering my mileage hasn’t been very high since the house move. So if you feel like you need to develop a more well-rounded fitness profile, but weights don’t take your fancy, invest in a spade instead of a gym membership and get out in the garden this summer.
The post In the Drops: Racy Pirelli tyres, sporty Sennheiser earbuds, SiS’s tasty protein bars and digging appeared first on Cyclist.