Cycling The World: Pedal-powered Journeys – Ride Like King began in 2009 as a small event at Giant Group to celebrate company founder King Liu’s passion for cycling. In 2007, at the age of 73, King prepared for and completed a 15-day 927 km ride around Taiwan. That ride sparked a renewed interest in King’s own cycling lifestyle and the benefits cycling can have on health, fitness and the environment.
Now in its 16th year, Ride Like Kingbrings brings people together from around the world to participate in virtual group rides on Zwift and individual rides in their communities to support World Bicycle Relief. “RLK16” invites riders everywhere to help ride for a better world on May 17-19.
Cycling The World: Pedal-powered Journeys
In honor of 16 years of Ride Like King, the Giant Group is donating one Buffalo bicycle to World Bicycle Relief for every 500 km collectively ridden, with a goal of donating 600 Buffalo bicycles through World Bicycle Relief.
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In 2020, the event raised enough to provide 100 Buffalo bicycles. In 2021 and 2022, the community has stepped up in an even bigger way, providing more than 300 bicycles to needy individuals and reaching a new milestone by donating 500 bicycles in 2023.
These purpose-built bikes are designed for heavy loads, long distance travel and rough terrain. They are manufactured by Giant Group and assembled by World Bicycle Relief employees in local areas around the world.
Join us to ride like King 16! Please donate and help change lives through the power of bicycles. Registration
World Bicycle Relief, a global nonprofit committed to helping individuals overcome the barrier of distance, supports those in need with bicycles. Two wheels and a frame are nothing fancy – but when put in the hands of the right people, bicycles can be vehicles of change that can uplift a generation. You can help World Bicycle Solutions reach its goal of distributing 1 million bicycles to communities in need by 2025.
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The values shown represent actual needs and costs in the field. Your gift will be used to provide life-changing transportation through our programs. Your donation will help provide a bicycle to a student, healthcare worker or businessman who travels long distances on foot. As we train field mechanics and assemble bicycles locally, your donation helps build bicycle infrastructure in the areas we work in, benefiting generations to come. You can find out more about our funding and spending on our finance page. Aside from balance, the second most important part of learning how to ride a bike is pedaling. Making a simple circle with your foot may seem relatively easy, but when you start riding for longer hours and setting speed and distance goals, understanding the details of the pedal stroke can make a big difference in your performance.
For starters, a smooth, powerful pedal stroke starts with solid bike fit, especially saddle height and fore-aft position. Without it, you can’t pedal anywhere efficiently, says Todd Carver, head of human performance at Specialized Bike Components
. “If your saddle is too high, you won’t be able to drive your heel as effectively,” he says. “If it’s too low, you’ll have knee pain.”
In the correct saddle position – knee on the ball of your foot with the pedal at 3 o’clock and knee slightly bent with the pedal at 6 o’clock – you’ll maximize your power output and be able to adapt your ankle technique to different terrain, cadence and effort levels.
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After establishing the correct seat height, check your hip-knee-ankle alignment. When viewed from the front, your hips, knees, and feet should line up throughout the pedal stroke. “You don’t want the knee to shake,” says Carver. “Just think straight up and down pistons.” If you can’t correct this, or if you experience knee pain when you try to restrict lateral movement, you may need orthotics or another type of biomechanical adjustment. (It’s worth seeing a bike fit specialist to help you figure out the details.)
Once you’ve dialed in your bike fit and hip-knee-ankle alignment, you can focus on executing the perfect pedal stroke.
Carver says that with the right ankle brace for cycling, shown below, riders can put the same amount of energy into the heart rate as low as five beats per minute.
This pedal stroke is for threshold or time trial intensity flat terrain cycling. Carver divides it into four zones:
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The portion of the pedal stroke from 12 o’clock to about 5 o’clock, called the power phase, is the period of greatest muscle activity. “A lot of people think they only use the hamstrings on the upstroke,” Carver says, “but a good cyclist uses the hamstrings a lot on the downstroke, because it extends the hip.”
Carver says the key to accessing the big muscles in the back of your leg is dropping your heel as you get to the top of the stroke. “At 12 o’clock, your toes should be pointing down about 20 degrees, but as you come up, start dropping that heel so that it’s parallel to the floor or 10 degrees parallel by the time you get to 3 o’clock. ‘The clock.’
Using the same muscles as the power phase, but to a lesser degree, this pedaling phase acts as a transition to the backstroke.
“When you enter zone 2, think about firing the calf muscles to point your toe,” says Carver. As you come to the bottom of the stroke, the toe should be pointing down about 20 degrees. “This foot technique transfers some of the power developed in zone 1 from the big muscles to the crank,” says Carver.
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He uses advice popularized by Greg LeMond: “Act as if you were scraping dirt off the bottom of your shoe.”
Even though you feel like you’re pulling your foot off the back of the stroke, you’re not. “When you look at the best cyclists, they’re losing power on the upstroke,” says Carver. “The pedal is actually pushing your leg up, so the goal is to lose as little power as possible and keep that foot out of the way.”
A fun way to improve the efficiency of your upstroke: mountain biking. “The terrain keeps you honest,” says Carver. “If you’re only concentrating on the downstroke, you’ll lose traction and fall off your bike on steep sections.”
As for other exercises, Carver advises against single-leg pedal drills, in which you clip with only one foot and pedal the other. “For recreational level riders, they hurt more people than they help,” he says. He recommends hamstring- and glute-strengthening lifts, as well as squats, which he recommends “done correctly, how someone shows you on a squat rack.”
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As you enter the second half of the upstroke phase, think about starting your downstroke. “A lot of riders don’t start early enough,” says Carver, who sees riders wait until 3 a.m. — but they should start before 12 p.m.
As you start to come in at the top of the stroke, think about pushing your knee forward into the bar, but only your knee, says Carver: “Your hips should remain a stable platform, not sinking down and moving forward.”
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On this trip I learned that I could eat things that I would never have tried on other occasions. Eating enough seaweed to foul a propeller on a warship was not my favorite experience, which I endured. I hope to avoid eating cold smoked herring for breakfast for the rest of my days. Outside of a few menu options I really enjoyed the cuisines of Korea and Japan.
While they make ATVs in both countries, I have never seen them zip and never will