This week’s round-up features your leg muscles, Tokyo’s cycling culture, a poll about flying with bikes, indoor cycling, outdoor cycling in Athens, and an impressive tale of adventure.
The top image is quite interesting – it shows which muscles in your legs are in use throughout each rotation of the pedal. It also shows the red raw glutes, which we’re all familiar with!
The circle in the image below shows the rotation of a pedal, with the colours representing activation of the muscles above.
Click here for the full image.
We Love Cycling have published a nice article looking at the increasingly popular shift to bike-friendly cities, which includes videos showcasing some of their favourites. It’s well worth a look – check out the video below for Tokyo, for instance:
The videos come with interesting insights onto cycling cultures in various countries. In Tokyo for example, cycling takes an impressive 14% share of journeys despite the fact that the city has only 10km of cycle lanes (shockingly small considering it is one of the most sprawling cities in the world). The expense of owning a vehicle combined with the cultural predisposition to hopping on your bike means that it remains popular there nonetheless.
It’s interesting because it reminds us that infrastructure isn’t the only thing to consider when trying to boost cycling: cultural perception plays a large part too.
Oops Mark have set up a poll about travelling with bicycles on planes with which they’re looking to establish information on airlines’ reliability when transporting bikes. We’ve filled it in – they’re looking for as many entries as possible so head over to the site and get answering!
Some of the questionsThis poll harks back nicely to our guide to flying with a bike, which you can see here. It can be tricky to know which airlines are better than others, so the more research that goes into this the better in our opinion.
Also harking back to something we’ve written is this piece from the Guardian which explores the phenomenon of indoor cycling, and adds to the debate about whether it’s a grim necessity of modern cycling or an optional form of torture that some inflict on themselves.
They recommend some good ways of staying motivated and explore increasingly popular virtual training software like Zwift. A great article if you’re looking to begin indoor training.
Last week Athenians had the chance to attend an event in their city promoting cycling and its benefits on a huge scale.
The event, organised by MBike magazine, attracted 15000 people who were given the chance to participate in activities, test bikes, learn about cycling, and much more. This is exactly the kind of event we like to see happening – one that enhances the appeal of cycling in a comfortable and familiar setting.
This week’s top story is a fantastic write-up of two lads’ journey to the COP21 talks in Paris last November.
Dan left from Brisbane and cycled through south-east Asia, Bangladesh, China, Mongolia, Russia and Europe. Erlend ran from Tromso in the northern reaches of Norway.
The write-up details their respective journeys and the actions they took on route to spread the word about climate change. It’s really impressive stuff – check it out here.
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