Cycling magazines

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For a reason unknown my mother visited yesterday and gave me a copy of the latest 'Cycling Active' - I knew it would be bad, but I wasn't prepared for just how bad -

24, yes 24 pages devoted to just 2 sportives - this took up the bulk of the issue, something in midlands and then the Box Hill Classic, or similar - it had a page talking about the 'key climbs' - the longest climb is sub 10 minutes, how can you spin an entire page out about this?

Bike reviews for bikes between £2100 and £2500 which took up 10 pages, then another review session for bikes with another £400 price span - odd, anyway I had a little read and the usual crap was present "not stiff enough" this written by a 3rd cat who has not scored a single point all season - so when I said on here that bike reviewers are often no better than people on this forum, I should have said they actually sometimes a lot worse too! One thing that erked me was marking down one of the bikes for not having a 105 crankset, this was a major thing for this review, it had a Praxis chainset, which anyone with half a brain would know is going to be at least on par with the low end shimano stuff.

Then there was wheels, £1-2k wheels, this probably wound me up the most "at 1600g they won't be your companion on hilly rides" - its just soundbites like this that confuse people and lead them to have alls orts of stupid opinions and place so much importance on the weight of things. The same chap then went on to say he could feel flex in a pair of 60mm zipps, the same guy who got can't finish a race, let alone sprint to contest the finish. Then the powertap pedals review, "these only weigh more than the top end shimano DA pedals, when you're riding you barely notice the 36g" of course you don't you fking square, nobody on earth would notice 36g on anything.

Its fair to say it drove me mad and is the culprit for so much of the stuff posted on this forum in what xxx threads, I now know why. She also dropped off a couple of cycling weekly mags, no surprises, half the content was just recycled from the other mag. I get that they're not appealing to me, but what winds me up is that they're just pushing absolute crap, dud info - this just goes further to prove what I always think, pick a price point, if you want the best VFM buy a Canyon, if you don't then just pick the nicest colour scheme from trek,spec, giant etc.

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CW is referred to as that I think as its weekly rather than its humorously bad content

It had a spate of going back to grass roots earlier in the year, hell they even stuck a picture of me in it, but I see its back to being pretty st again now.

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Wouldn't mind but get someone who knows their arse from elbow to review the bloody kit at least!

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Pachydermus said:

except for scubadude obviously.

You've lost me?

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Pachydermus said:

he won't use a bike computer as they weigh too much.

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thiscocks said:

So you have to be a 2nd cat rider or above to be able to review a bike? Just because you arnt the next peter sagan doesn't mean you don't have an ability to review or write about how a bike rides or handles. In fact writing skills would be far more important than how many points you've scored in recent races.

You don't expect every car journo to have won certain car racing titles, but do expect them to have a wealth of experience driving road cars and very good writing skills.

I don't expect someone who looks like he weighs ten stone wet through who can't finish a race to have any opinion of note on the stiffness of £1500 wheels, no.

The writing isn't bad, but its hardly difficult to write a paragraph about a product (providing the content isn't guff). The standard of the rider was not such an issue, but rather the content and what they were marking things down for, laughable.

And actually, if you're going to review high end race kit, I would expect you to be able to ride at a half decent level to be fair.