Chickleta - My SBRing and other Adventures

My article about Sock Mania was published at the end of November in BikePanel . As like my other articles, but with a slight delay due to busy year end at work, I am translating it to English (with some changes and add-ons). Sock Mania #sockdoping (Photo: Angela Parrotta) Cycling socks ... maybe the last garment we think of while getting dressed for a ride, well at least this was the case for me. Throughout the years my sock drawer got filled with random socks that I added to my shopping cart to get to the minimum for free shipping, that were on sale or that I got as gifts or at different cycling events. Beyond this, I never paid much attention to which socks I would wear on a particular ride, other than trying to color coordinate, of course. In most cases I tried to chose socks that are as short as possible in order to avoid more (unnecessary) tanning lines. As you will see, this lack of sock interest has changed 180 degrees in the past year. Showing off our new #so

For Part I of this post click here . Over dinner we were told that we had two options for tomorrow's ride. The first would be to ride the course of the Long Samarthon which is about 100 km (62 miles) or the Medium Samarathon which is "only" 75 km (about 47 miles) and skips the first climb. Ignoring the growing pain in my thigh, the result of a close encounter with a rock and the ground, I committed to ride the former (after making sure that some of the guys were planning on an easy ride and not racing it).  We would have an early wake up to be followed by an early start and we was time to get some sleep. The new BikePanel kit in it's virgin ride Friday Luckily when I got up my leg was just a little sore and very black and blue, but I was able to ride. We started riding north in a big group on a wide flatish gravel road. A nice warm-up for the long day ahead of us.   Flatish warm up start (Photo: Guy Halamish) After about 10 km (6 miles) we entered into

It's been over 2 weeks since my magical weekend of mountain biking in the Israeli desert. It was basically one of the best weekend that I had in a long time, here is why. Desert View How it all started  I was invited to celebrate with the rest of  BikePanel  magazine staff for the 4 year anniversary of the magazine in a most appropriate way - a weekend of mountain biking. When Guy the editor emailed me with the invite and dates I have to admit I hesitated. It's a long trip from Chicago to Israel and the timing wasn't 100% right for me. It was however a very short debate and very quickly I came to my senses. Thinking to myself, what is wrong with you Sharon - it's a mountain biking weekend in one of the best places to do that with a group of amazing riders. About 2 second later I bought my plane ticket scheduled to arrived 1 day before the ride. The Set Up Samar Sunrize The Rooms The plan for the weekend was to ride the course of the Samarat