Hi and wel­come to the Cyc­ling Maven site.

What this is about

Cyc­ling Maven is a place to get tips, advice, motiv­a­tion, and sup­port for your cyc­ling adventures.

If you’re new to cyc­ling, look­ing to improve or a crusty old has been — hang out here to share some great ideas and bad jokes.

Take a break from your busy sched­ule, even for a brief few minutes, and escape to an activ­ity you love.

The reason for this

“An indi­vidual has not star­ted liv­ing until he can rise above the nar­row con­fines of his indi­vidu­al­istic con­cerns to the broader con­cerns of all humanity”

Mar­tin Luther King 1929 — 1968

There are two standout reas­ons for start­ing this site.

• It occurred to me recently, that giv­ing is much more reward­ing than tak­ing. This site is my con­tri­bu­tion to a sport that I have gained so much from over the years.

• This is a leg­acy pro­ject. A chron­icle of my thoughts and expres­sions on a topic I’m pas­sion­ate about. It’s some­thing I intend to proudly reflect on and leave behind when I’m gone.

Cyc­ling Maven was cre­ated to help you increase your skills and know­ledge of the sport.

Basic­ally, I aim to intro­duce more recre­ational cyc­lists to the awe­some­ness of bike racing, whether that be, road, track, cri­teri­ums, cyc­lo­cross, MTB whatevs…

If you’ve been curi­ous to test your­self in the racing scene, you’ve come to the right place. Here, I aim to help remove your fear of mak­ing the trans­ition and give to the con­fid­ence to start.

Who am I?

For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve been involved in cycling.

I’m pas­sion­ate about Cri­terium racing spe­cific­ally and love talk­ing about it, so please ask me your questions.

If you ask me some­thing I’m unsure about, I’ll find out the answer, pla­gi­ar­ise it and regur­git­ate as if it were from my own. Kidding.

Serving you

I will write a new post at least every Tues­day and Fri­day on a con­sist­ent basis.

Please do me a huge favor by shar­ing any know­ledge or tips of your own. Send them to me via email, Face­book, Twit­ter or just make com­ments on the posts — don’t be shy!

I would love for you to email me. Even just to say hello. Respond­ing to emails is def­in­itely a legit­im­ate reason to avoid hill repeats and sprint training.

Send mail to mark [AT] cyc­ling­maven [DOT] com (damn those spam­mers for mak­ing my email address look bad)

If you are on Twit­ter or Face­book, it would be great to chat there also.

Import­ant final word

I don’t claim to know everything about cyc­ling. I’m not a cer­ti­fied cyc­ling coach or a dieti­tian. The advice I share here is based on my own exper­i­ence and if in doubt, please con­sult your doc­tor — or other smart per­son. I share what I know, and this site is designed to be a forum for con­ver­sa­tion. Please con­trib­ute your thoughts, and join the discussion.

Mark Fer­guson