Outdoors
Ride Repair: 5 Best Bicycle Maintenance Books
Imagine a crisp fall day where the trails are hooking up so nicely it feels like you’re riding on rails. It’s so sweet you decide to skip the parking lot and continue on.
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OutdoorsComplete Guide to Buying Your First Bike
It’s a perfect day. You’re pedaling along between La Rochepot and Baubigny in France’s Côte de Beaune region, a wheel of epoisses and a baguette ancienne tucked in the front basket.
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OutdoorsThe Best of Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 2013
Every summer the outdoor industry gets together to show off their latest products and innovations for the next season — and every summer we drool over the best climbing, hiking, and outdoor gear money can buy. If you spend hours researching your next ultralight backpacking kit purchase, geek out over climbing shoe rubber, or spend late nights planning your next backcountry camping trip, the Outdoor Retailer show is a mecca.
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ArchiveThe Greatest Shark Movie You’ve Never Seen
The history of shark movies is littered with some good, some bad and some very ugly films.
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ArchivePerilous Waters: Five Best Places to Dive with Sharks
Despite the fact that that the world’s shark population is perilously shrinking, it is still possible to find places to dive with these magnificent creatures. And that may be just what they need most: seeing them at eye level cruising effortlessly against a strong current, always wary, always watchful, one learns to appreciate them for the miracles of evolution that they are, rather than as bloodthirsty killers.
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TechKit: Diving the Bahamas
While we love diving for its ability to transport us to an alien world, defy gravity and commune with nature, we also love it for the gear. Diving may be the most gear-intensive sport out there, with the possible exception of mountain climbing.
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OutdoorsTested: Adidas Springblade
You’ve got to hand it to Adidas: while the leading edge of innovation for most running companies is minimalist footwear with the occasional proprietary shank to keep things moving forward, in the Adidas Springblade ($180) the company has made a running shoe that artfully combines the looks and swiftness of a Ferrari with… I don’t know, a viperfish? Steven Seagal in Glimmer Man?
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ArchiveAlizée Dufraisse: Giving it All
We wish Alizée Dufraisse would talk about us the way she talks about a rock face. The French professional climber acknowledges the focus and discipline required on a difficult ascent, but she finds romance where her peers find only challenge and exhilaration.
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OutdoorsPhoto Essay: GoPro Mountain Games
Somewhere between my third (or possibly fourth) spill off my paddle board into Gore Creek and my first lung-busting lap up the mountain bike course, it finally sunk in that the GoPro Mountain Games in Vail, CO was so much more than just the suffering I was subjecting myself to. Featuring adventure and mountain sports like freestyle kayaking, bouldering (think rock climbing 25-foot walls with no rope), mountain biking, a dock dogs competition, and slacklining, the Games has a competition for just about everyone.
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OutdoorsTested: Goal Zero Solar
Even the most seasoned adventurer has had that terrible moment: miles from the car on an arduous hike back from the latest backcountry adventure, your headlamp sputters out on a moonless night. If you’d prefer to make it back to civilization in one piece — and have a little luxury — on your next mountain excursion, having back-up batteries and a solar charger goes a long way.
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OutdoorsTested: Boardworks Surf Badfish MCIT SUP Board
After spending my morning commute passing the Stand-up Paddling Yoga group (yes, it’s a thing) at the local pond, I got curious and found the perfect venue to explore this blossoming sport: the Vail Summer Mountain Games. The only disconnect between registering for the SUP river sprint at the Summer Mountain Games and actually racing?
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FitnessTested: Total Immersion Swimming
It made me angry that the obese woman could swim faster than me. In my bubble of intense training for my first triathlon I’d fashioned an idea of justice that allowed fit people to just naturally be better than other people at everything.
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ArchiveIn Deep: 10 Most Challenging Open Water Swims
Swimming as a sport received quite the boost in recent years thanks to Olympic performances by Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps, not to mention the accompanying stories about their insane workout routines and diets, respectively. Yet beyond sprints and relays there remains another side to the sport, popular mostly with triathletes, endurance junkies, and the occasional band of prisoners: open water swimming.
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OutdoorsPlanning (and Going Balls Out) is Everything: The Road to La Ruta, Part 2
This is the second part of an eight-part original GP series, The Road to La Ruta, in which contributor Dirk Shaw chronicles his training for the Fool’s Gold 100 and La Ruta de Los Conquistadores — one of the toughest mountain bike races in the world. Check back throughout the summer to watch the story unfold.
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OutdoorsClimbing the Volcano
Mount Rainier rises 14,410 feet above the landscape two hours to the southeast of Seattle. It towers above its surroundings, dwarfing the smaller peaks of the nearby Tatoosh Range and creating its own weather systems.
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BriefingsTaking on the World’s Toughest Bike Race: The Road to La Ruta Starts Now
Anyone who’s been in a race knows that the rush of crossing the finish line is followed almost immediately by the sinking question “What’s next?” The longer the training leading up to the race, the more acute the question. So it wasn’t long after last year’s Road to Ironman series that we were already planning something bigger, inspired by a friendly reader inquiry from Mr.
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OutdoorsKit: Climbing Ancient Art Tower
No other sport relies quite as heavily on gear during life-and-death situations as climbing. Your gear is the only lifeline (and sometimes when you’re a few hundred feet up a sheer wall, no amount of gear seems to be enough) holding you to the rock.
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OutdoorsThe Perfect Athlete
Even in the data-obsessed collective of Type A personalities that is the world of endurance sports, cyclists exist in a league of their own. For many reasons, they are increasingly regarded as finely tuned machines — defined in the aggregate by a collection of numbers that would baffle a non-athlete.
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OutdoorsRiding Reads: 10 Great Cycling Books
Cycling and writing have a funny relationship. Look up any pro or experienced cyclist these days and they’ll likely have a blog to vent about anything and everything.
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OutdoorsPhoto Essay: Red Hook Criterium
It’s 6pm on Saturday, June 8, and what’s been a very rainy spring has broken just in time for an event best described as a cross between a Formula 1 race and a playful reenactment of the The Breakfast Club: the Red Hook Criterium, Brooklyn Navy Yard edition.