It’s that time of year again when we at Escape Collective sit down to compile a list of our favourite things from the past 12 months.
It’s a process I look forward to, albeit one that often sees me spending far too much time scrolling through photos from the last year and repeatedly exclaiming: “that’s a year ago already?” It doubles as a personal mini-review of the year, and even though there’s still a full month to go – and thus the chance a new favourite thing from 2024 comes along just before we see out the year – that’s the very point and the beauty of these features.
Not a shopping list
You see, our Favourite Things list isn’t just the latest releases, fanciest kit, or products on sale that typically make up these list-style gear stories; it’s about the items we’ve genuinely found useful and have reached for time and time again. It’s a reflection of what has made an impact on our cycling lives this year, both in terms of performance and joy. These lists are often also a glimpse into each Escapee’s own personality, our own riding styles and goals. As such, it’s not always even the stuff on the list that matters, but the thinking behind them and uses we find for them.
Long story short, if something appears on our Favourite Things series, you know it’s not just a fancy new product that’s just come across my desk in time to influence your holiday spending spree.
This matters because it means our Favourite Things lists are ours and ours alone. No brand can pay a product’s way onto any of our lists or pay to play anywhere on our site. Our choices are not affiliate-link clickbait designed to entice you into purchases you may or may not need disguised as gift guides, or Black Friday top tips just so we can make a few cents. My list is stuff that’s helped me, I’ve enjoyed, made a difference to my riding this year, and the stuff I’d recommend to a friend, rather than the things advertisers want you to buy.
Who cares you might be thinking, perhaps you are right. Perhaps we here at Escape Collective overthink this advertising stuff. FWIW, I don’t think we do.
Here’s the key: it really does not matter to Escape Collective nor me if you buy everything or nothing from this list. There are no means by which Escape or I profit from you deciding to purchase anything any of the Escape crew’s lists of our favourite things. As such there is zero conflict of interest or reason for me to influence you one way or another other than purely what I think is a good product which might work for you too.
It’s thanks to you, our Escape Collective members, that I have the freedom to compile my list free from outside influence or misaligned incentives. The only hope I have is that is that my list can be of use to you.
3D-printed bike fit tools
I’m going to start with the new cycling thing I used most this year: Escape Collective member Chris Heerschap’s 3D-printed take on what many now refer to as the “80 mm tool.”
I ride a lot of bikes and I am quite fussy about my fit on them, but with each saddle being slightly (sometimes a lot) different, replicating fit can be a challenge. An 80 mm tool is an 80 mm-wide open rectangle designed to sit over the saddle, quickly and easily finding the 80 mm wide point on any saddle. Every saddle is different and with so many lengths, widths, and design concepts, this 80 mm wide point is, in my opinion, the only truly transferable reference point from each saddle. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best starting point I’ve found in replicating the saddle position across different bikes. It’s not a new tool or concept; PRO even supplies something similar with their saddles, but it was new to Chris when I posted my homemade take on the 80 mm tool on Instagram nearly a year ago.
Chris runs an Etsy-based 3D printing store and in return for providing the inspiration for his 80 mm tool he was kind enough to ship me his 3D-printed take and various other bottom bracket-centering measuring tape anchors.
Simplicity at its finest, the 80 mm tool has been with me everywhere this year – from Down Under to Texas, and from Belgium to Abu Dhabi.
Why? It’s simple: I ride a wide range of bikes and saddles, sometimes several in a single week. Though each saddle is unique, the 80 mm tool consistently helps me find a usable reference point across all of them. From there, I can quickly adjust to a much more precise starting point for saddle height, setback, and handlebar reach (depending on front end adjustability).
The combination of Chris’s tape measure anchors and the clear, repeatable position to measure from on the saddle eliminates much of the guesswork and potential for human error. This, coupled with my more relaxed approach to perfectly replicating position as much as possible, has made setup on this wide variety of bikes a little easier for me this year.
Price: US$5 / £4.96 + shipping
Wove Mags saddle
Sticking with saddles, but unfortunately coming in at a price point 100x higher than those 3D-printed tools, is the Wove Mags saddle. That said, this saddle makes my list as much for the fit philosophy it promotes as it does for the actual saddle itself, something applicable to many other lower priced options and free to anyone to try.
Can a philosophy be a favourite product? Probably not, but bear with me here. While the Mags is a lightweight, comfortable, one-piece carbon fibre saddle, I include it here as much for how it helped me rethink saddle position and the saddle’s role in bike fitting and performance rather than solely for the saddle itself.
I’ve done both a deep dive review and podcast on the Wove Mags saddle and this fit philosophy earlier this year. Designed to facilitate forward rotation of the pelvis and a more open hip angle to aid power delivery and biomechanical efficiency, Wove’s design combines a wider rear section designed to provide support in upright positions, a curved profile to promote hip rotation, and a dual-nose front structure that supports the pubis while also allowing for a full-length, uninterrupted, central channel designed to relieve soft-tissue pressure – features that I found make it particularly effective in facilitating a more aggressive aero position during high-intensity efforts. They’re features I didn’t fully appreciate until reverting back to similarly short or open-channel saddles that don’t quite allow for the same pressure relief. I’m continually reminded when reverting to other saddles how much of a difference Wove makes by simply extending the central channel opening through the nose.
The price, though, is steep at US$499 (this is a drop; the saddle was previously almost $100 more expensive) . While I don’t wish to justify that even at the now-lower price, I do wonder how it would compare on a $:watts saved ratio if we assessed it purely on the potential aero gains from being able to adopt and sustain a more aero torso angle versus the $:w/saved ratio of say, upgrading from one aero wheelset to another, or last year’s aero bike to next year’s.
To be clear, though, it’s the philosophy change I found most valuable. As mentioned above, I ride various different bikes with various different saddles, and while they don’t all accommodate that forward rotation as well as the Mags does, the fit philosophy I learned from the Wove is now something I apply to various degrees with all those different saddles.
As such, while the Mags is the most expensive non-bike thing on my list, the philosophy behind it is also the something you could apply to your own riding at zero cost. Wove are also working on a more affordable alloy-rail version of the Mags.
Price: $499
Scott Cadence Plus helmet
Assuming you wear a helmet, swapping out a vented helmet for an aero road helmet is one of the only surefire and effective ways to buy your way to a more aero road setup. Perhaps only trumped by better-fitting clothing as explained by Xavier Disley of Aerocoach explained on a recent episode of the Performance Process podcast. My own testing indicates a double-digit watt saving in changing from Kask, Specialized or POC’s more heavily vented helmets to the same brand’s aero road helmets at 35 kph. But, as Disley also explained on the same episode, there’s more to a good helmet than just how aero it is.
Given my riding style and the climate I ride in, I reach for an aero helmet on almost every ride, with a few options in rotation. The Scott Cadence Plus has become my go-to this year, earning its place on my list because it’s an aero helmet that doesn’t feel like one. It’s comfortable, sits right first time every time, it doesn’t look overly goofy (IMO), and doesn’t squish my head … or ears as is increasingly the case with aero helmets. The rear retention system stays securely in place, never shifting or coming open. Simply put, every time I put it on, it just feels right. In other words, the Cadence Plus stands out from many of the other aero helmets I’ve tried.
The Cadence Plus also has MIPS, an integrated rear light, a Fidlock magnetic buckle, front vent plugs – presumably for extra aero-ness, but I’ll probably use them most for an extra defence against the winter elements. All told, it has many of the features I look for a in a helmet. Scott also claims the Cadence has sunglasses storage windows, but that’s not a feature I ever use on any helmet so I can’t comment.
While not the absolute fastest on me based on my own testing, it’s within a few watts of the slightly faster helmets with the vents open, and I didn’t get a chance to test it with the vent plugs attached. Basically, it’s now my go-to helmet for everyday performance, even if I might choose one of the faster helmets on me for outright performance on race day.
I do wish Scott had chosen any other Y-splitter design for the straps than the bulky and fiddly one they did; in fact, that splitter could be contributing to the gap in aero performance between the Cadence Plus and something like the Specialized Evade. I can’t see aero but I’ll put my neck on the line and say that splitter isn’t helping anyway.
Given its lack of vents, there are better helmets for hot days, but I did use it on a recent trip to Mallorca specifically to test this and it was fine for me on those training rides: again, it’s a nice balance between aero performance and other characteristics that make a good helmet.
Price: US$230 / £229 / €250
Circe Helios tandem
This addition is much more about the why than the product itself, but nevertheless this tandem from Circe has facilitated my favourite addition to my riding this year.
Before throwing my hand at my current job impersonating a tech editor and writer, my day job was as an Active Travel Officer for Sustrans, the charity set on making it easier for people to walk and cycle for more of their daily journeys. My job was in schools, getting kids to get more active on the school run. As such, I was always going to have my kids walk and/or cycle to school.
Until recently that meant a park-and-ride type school run, I’d drive part of the 5 km to school, park close by and my daughter would cycle the last bit. She loves cycling to school, and I can skip the car park congestion.
But now we have a tandem, on loan from a local bike shop, The Bike General, and after building up our distances, my daughter and I recently started cycling the whole way to school. There’s a nice, almost entirely traffic-free route we can take and every ride is filled with giggles at various unexpected sights, waving to friends stuck in traffic, and hollering for echos as we ride through the tunnel.
The Circe Helios has been great because it allows for a saddle position low enough for my daughter to reach the pedals. I don’t have much experience with tandems, but even still I don’t suspect the Circe is the best ever made. It has a few design quirks, not least of which is that the rear handlebars are actually the widest point of the bike, a fact that led to one set of tiny squished fingers. It also features frustratingly uncommon handlebar and stem clamp diameters. But, it makes the list because its addition to the house has meant three big things: more time with daughter, less time in car, more time on bike … win, win, and win.
Our new commute has an additional unexpected benefit: a free three hours of extra riding every week. How so? The school drop-off time is still the same, but given there was a drive, unpacking the bike from the car, and the walk to and from the school with our old park-and-ride strategy, the 40-minute ride to school and back on the tandem takes roughly just five minutes more than the old routine. As such, the new school spin has added an extra three hours of riding time to my training week with very little impact on the rest of my day.
It’s the second year in a row a Bike General loaner has made my list; we do need to sort out our own commuting bike, but part of me knows that it probably won’t be long until my daughter wants to break free of the tandem or cargo bike and pedal her own bike. Time flies!
Price: starts from £2300
Wahoo Trackr
The Wahoo Trackr heart rate monitor is an unexpected addition to my list. On the one hand, a heart rate strap that does little more than broadcast heart rate probably shouldn’t be all that noteworthy in 2024. But on the other, it’s the fact that it does just that, when and where I want it, with no fuss, and no failure that is remarkable for me. That’s something I haven’t been able to say about heart rate straps in the longest time.
I published a full review of the Wahoo Trackr not long ago. TLDR … The Trackr is just a good product, that works, and I love it for that.
Price: US$90 (AU$150/ £80 / €90)
Xert
Last on my list is Xert’s Adaptive Training Advisor and Forecast AI. As mentioned, I’m still pretty addicted to this cycling lark and doing so to the best of my ability. But my training time is both greatly reduced and much more random than it’s ever been.
It’s that randomness that makes it impractical for me to have a coach right now: I’d likely miss so many sessions I’d be wasting the coach’s time writing a plan and stressing myself out by not adhering to it. Problem is: I’ve become terrible at self coaching. I prescribe myself the sessions I like most, often avoiding the sessions I don’t like but sometimes need most. On top of that, I’ll procrastinate my training time away without a set session to do on a given day. As such, I’m now a “do as I say, not as I do” type coach.
That’s where Xert has been a breath of fresh air for me this year. Xert’s Forecast AI and Adaptive Training Advisor let me pick goals and set dates by which to achieve them. It analyses my historical training data to determine how feasible the goal is, and then builds a personalised training plan around it. Nothing a good coach couldn’t do, but the key for me this year lay in Xert’s “adaptive” feature.
The AI will build a plan to get me from where I am to where I want to be, but then crucially it updates automatically as I progress (or don’t progress as has been the case) through said plan. If I miss a session, or magically find some extra free riding time, it’ll automatically update the subsequent plan, sometimes two or three times per day depending on what I tell it.
Of course, one could argue that a constantly changing plan is useless, but it’s this adaptability and the fact it’ll tell me to do the sessions I wouldn’t otherwise prescribe myself that is the winning combination for me. Crucially for me, it still feels like I am doing a session designed to progress me towards my goal, rather than a random session I’ve decided to do on a moment’s notice. It’s almost certainly not how Xert intends for its platform to be used nor how I would train in a perfect world, but it’s working for me right now.
I am still a huge believer in human coaches doing a better job than AI ever can. Furthermore, Xert is not perfect; there are quirks to the user interface that take a while to get used to; those tandem rides I mentioned above don’t have power meter data and so aren’t factored into my plan; and some other minor issues, but, in the meantime, Xert’s AI (combined with the experience I have) has put some much-needed structure back into my training.
Xert has added several more features since announcing Adaptive and Forecast AI around this time last year, new features we discussed in detail with Xert’s founder Armando Mastracci on the Performance Process podcast recently.
Price: US$15/month
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