Category Archives: Mountain Biking

Meg Fisher: Montana’s Paralympic-winning, 6-time World Champion


Photo from the Montanan.

Meg Fisher has six on and off-road triathlon World Championship titles, a slew of U.S. National Championship wins, and, as of a few weeks ago, a gold and silver medal in cycling from the 2012 Paralympics in London. In short, she’s a bad ass athlete. Given her palmarés, you might assume she’s been cycling since birth. But, Meg didn’t start her cycling career until several years after a tragic accident in 2002 that required doctors to amputate her left foot and claimed the life of her best friend. I spoke to Meg on her brief post-Paralympics stopover in Seattle (where she’s a physical therapy PhD candidate). We discussed her accident, her new found passion and talent for cycling and triathlon, the London Paralympics, balancing school and cycling, and more.

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My First Bike: Todd Ingermanson

My First Bike explores the life and work of professional frame builders by going back to the start and looking at the first bike they ever built. Today’s My First Bike features Todd Ingermanson of Black Cat Bicycles. 

Give me the short rundown of your first frame: when was it built, where, materials, any special details about it, etc.

This isn’t my very first frame. It is the second or third. I don’t remember exactly. The first one was an attempt at an exact copy of a custom bike that I already owned to see if I could even pull off what I wanted without the variables of my own “design” thrown in. This one is the first bike that I ever designed. It was 10 years ago, right as the 29er thing was getting going and I really wanted one.

There weren’t many folks building them and those who were, were pretty tight lipped about geometry and angles. This one, like the others before it, was just an experiment. This one was to see what geometry I wanted before I built the bike I wanted.  An experienced frame builder friend, John Cutter, had given me a curved seat tube from Schwinn Paramount tandem stock and I didn’t want to blow it.

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Barry Wicks: Cyclocross, Mountain Bikes, and the Adventures They’ve Brought, Part 2


Barry at Starcrossed 2010. Photo via flickr user MFGcyclocross.

Barry Wicks is a professional mountain biker, cyclocross racer, and, as of last year, Kona’s race team manager. He cut his teeth racing in Oregon as a junior and rose to the highest levels of World Cup cross and mountain bike racing. His palmarés prove he’s a serious racer, but he remains laid back and affable through it all–a fact that’s made him one of the fan favorites in racing. I spoke to Barry while he took a break from his team manager duties, supporting his riders at Crankworx in Whistler, British Columbia. Part one of this two-part interview covered Barry’s introduction to racing as a junior, growth to his professional career, endurance mountain biking, and more. Part two picks up with Barry’s experiences racing in Mongolia, Europe, and Japan; the United State’s first cyclocross World Championship; the future of U.S. cross; and his own plans for the remainder of his racing career.

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Barry Wicks: Cyclocross, Mountain Bikes, and the Adventures They’ve Brought, Part 1


Tall guys require tall photos. Photo via thebonebell.com

Barry Wicks is a professional mountain biker, cyclocross racer, and, as of last year, Kona’s race team manager. He cut his teeth racing in Oregon as a junior and rose to the highest levels of World Cup cross and mountain bike racing. His palmarés prove he’s a serious racer, but he remains laid back and affable through it all–a fact that’s made him one of the fan favorites in racing. I spoke to Barry while he took a break from his team manager duties, supporting his riders at Crankworx in Whistler, British Columbia. Part one of this two-part interview covers Barry’s introduction to racing as a junior, Erik Tonkin’s mentorship, his recent experiment with endurance mountain bike racing, his Chicago slump, and more.

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Steve Garro: Arizona’s Mountain Biking, Trouble Making, Frame Building Legend


Photo via mimbresman.blogspot.com

Steve Garro has been somewhat of a mountain bike legend for longer than many people have even been riding. In the late 80s and early 90s, his crew of racing and riding friends, The Mutants, were known as the wild men of the Southwest racing scene. They were as famous for jumping fires and riding gnarly slick rock as they were for racing hard against the biggest names in mountain biking. Steve later began building his own mountain bikes, launching his company, Coconino Cycles. A collision with a car in 2005 nearly took his life, but he recovered and returned to work building custom bikes of all kinds in his Flagstaff, AZ workshop. I got the chance to ask Steve questions via email about his early use of bikes to get out into the wild, his racing days with The Mutants, his frame building, and much more.

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