Summer 2024 Bicycle Quarterly
The Summer 2024 Bicycle Quarterly is at the printer. With every edition, we bring you a variety of fascinating articles by some of the best authors in cycling. Stories you won’t find anywhere else, with award-winning photos that come to life on the printed page in a way monitors simply cannot convey.
Sofiane Sehili. Josh Ibbett. Hailey Moore. Andrew Onermaa. This edition has stories by some of the world’s fastest bikepackers. You might expect them to talk about watts and heart rates, about training and pacing. But instead, Sofiane (above) tells us the secret for winning the world’s hardest bike race: “To push yourself to the absolute limit, you have to truly love the landscape you are riding through.”
Josh Ibbett takes us to the Japanese Odyssey. A challenging ride that is not a race, but a fast-paced adventure traversing the length of Japan. Josh experiences a new country and culture, and comes away deeply impressed. Josh, whose results include a win in the 2015 Transcontinental Race, confesses: “Half the reason I do these events is to see the country.”
Hailey Moore (on the cover) can keep up with just about anybody on a bike, yet her favorite rides are scouting adventures across the high passes of Colorado. The bikepacking routes she puts on the map allow everybody to experience the elation of exploring remote places by bike. She concludes: “Half of the retelling of a trip is about wanting to convey the experience, so maybe others will go out and feel it for themselves.”
We also bring you three stories from the Arkansas High Country Race—from the perspectives of the first three finishers on the beautiful and challenging South Loop. Jan returned to the race because the Ouachita Mountains continue to fascinate him—and because of the friends he made when he first came to Arkansas. Andrew Onermaa, the winner of the race, concurs: “Bikepacking is inherently a very individual sport, but the camaraderie in the community is palpable.”
Shoichi Hosoyama is sometimes called “the fastest framebuilder in Japan.” That refers both to his speed on the bike and in the workshop, where he makes his Quark and Futaba frames. We visit this fascinating builder and check out the dozens of bikes he has built for himself to race on. After we discuss bicycle tubing and geometry, Hosoyama-san shows us the secrets that allow him to offer hand-built custom frames for little more than mass-produced steel.
We continue to celebrate 85 years of Rene Herse Cycles with a beautiful 1964 Randonneuse. Examining this work of art, we find that it’s an international bike, with components from five countries. In the article, we detail how the ‘Magician of Levallois’ chose each component for its performance, regardless of where it was made.
Speaking of performance, we also tested the performance of TPU tubes on real roads. Do they perform as well in the real world as they do in the lab?
We also test innovative fenders, a superlight backpack that you can bring on your rides, shoes for touring and traveling, and a wax to protect matte paint finishes. Plus we bring you an update on the Wahoo Elemnt Roam GPS.
That’s the good news about the new Bicycle Quarterly. The bad news is that we have to raise the cover price. During the pandemic, paper shortages increased our printing costs by more than 25%. We’ve been waiting for the prices to go back down as supply shortages worked themselves out, but that hasn’t happened. (At least prices aren’t going up any longer.)
Once the Summer 2024 Bicycle Quarterly comes off the press, the price for individual editions and subscriptions goes up by roughly 10%. Until Monday, June 17, 2024, you can still subscribe and renew at the old price. That way, you can lock in the current price—and you’ll be the first to get this exciting edition, straight from the printer. On 108 pages, each Bicycle Quarterly will bring you many hours of enjoyment and inspiration.
Click here to subscribe or renew.
