What We’re Loving: Percussive Massagers, Road Bikes, and Bike Storage

Every week we share some of the things we’re testing, trying, using, and loving in our regular triathlon lives. This week, we’re trying new bikes, figuring out how to organize  them, and finding new tools to soothe those quarantine-induced niggles.

Hyperice HyperVolt Plus

With the continued closure of gyms, I have been without my weekly yoga class. Yes, there are YouTube tutorials. Admittedly, I was incapable of figuring out how to lift my head up enough in order to watch my TV while simultaneously performing downward dog, so I balked on the whole thing entirely. The absence of stretching, increase in Zwifting, and increase in sitting (work and plopped in front of the news) had created the perfect storm for gains in stiffness and soreness. I have found using my HyperVolt percussion massager to be invaluable. It’s so quiet I can use it while watching the news (that’s a problem for a different time) and really helps loosen up my muscles and tendons at the end of the day.  It’s so effective that I have found myself grabbing it to use as a warm up before exercise as well. I know it’s pricey, but we could all use a little extra TLC during these crazy times.

– Casey Maguire, contributor

EnviLiv Adv Pro Disc Road Bike

We’ve been testing a bunch of road bikes lately for the magazine—shameless plug: you can see them all when the July/August issue comes out—and my favorite hands-down has been this Liv. I went in thinking ‘ugh, women’s bikes, is that even a thing anymore’ and I’ve come out loving this high-end perfectly-fit-for-me road bike. I now find myself reaching for this bike first out of my stupidly large arsenal. With no races on the horizon, extra time on the road bike came at a perfect time. And this bike has just been super comfortable for a small (but powerful, I promise) rider. I’ve done multiple six-hour rides on it; I’ve crashed on it. I haven’t tested dirt on it, but that’s just because it looks so pretty. Granted, I hadn’t ridden a new road bike in 12 years, but now I think maybe I was stupid for waiting that long.

– Kelly O’Mara, editor-in-chief

SteadyRack

My husband and I are a little late to the “let’s declutter all of the things during quarantine” trend, but over the last few weeks we’ve made big progress on finally getting all of that triathlon gear in our garage organized. A huge step in that has been these SteadyRack bike racks. We installed a classic rack and a mountain bike rack and will be ordering more for our other bikes because we love them so much and they take up less space than we anticipated. They are fairly easy to install (my tip: if you’re not installing into a stud, go to your hardware store and get some easier-to-install anchors). Overall, we’re super happy with how they look and function. Just getting two of our bikes up on the wall has opened up so much space and taken our bikes out of the danger zone of car doors and kids. We’ve also added locks to help decrease the stress of accidentally leaving the garage door open.

– Liz Hichens, senior digital editor