About The Mile Rider
One rider, a lot of checking, and a standing promise to tell you when something is opinion rather than fact.
Who I am
My name is Raaz. I learned to ride at about nine or ten, which felt embarrassingly late at the time. Everyone I knew had worked it out when they were 5 or 6 and had long since moved on to doing things on bikes I wasn’t ready to attempt (Ofcourse not something dangerous).
The bike was a red Phoenix. That bike went to my nephew when I outgrew it. It was eventually scrapped, which is how almost every bike ends. Not in a crash and not in some final dramatic failure, just handed along until one day nobody thinks it’s worth fixing any more. A fair amount of this site exists to push that day further away for somebody else’s bike.
For the first stretch of riding it properly I couldn’t work the brakes at all, because the levers needed more hand than I had. So I stopped the way you stop when you’re nine and the brakes are theoretical: both feet down on the ground, scraping along until the bike ran out of enthusiasm. It worked. It worked better on the flat than anywhere else, which I learned the way everybody learns that.
Neighbourhood streets and the community ground, mostly. Nothing there moves very fast, which makes it a forgiving place to be bad at something.
These days I write about brake pad wear limits measured to the last half millimetre. Either that’s irony or it’s progress.
Starting late does something useful to you, though it doesn’t feel useful at the time. You spend that first day, month, or year painfully aware that you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you’re honest, the feeling never entirely goes away. It’s why this site explains things rather than assuming them, and why nothing here is written as though you should already have known it.
Why I created this site
Most cycling advice online has been copied from other cycling advice online. You can watch it happen in real time. One article says a bike needs a service every six months, and within a year that figure is everywhere, detached from any manufacturer, any climate, and any particular bike. Nobody repeating it can tell you where it came from, because it didn’t come from anywhere.
Then there’s the second problem, which is articles that answer a slightly different question than the one you asked. You search for whether your chain is worn out. You get two thousand words on the history of the derailleur, a paragraph about how cycling is a wonderful hobby, and eventually, if you scroll far enough, the number you needed in the first place.
And there are the buying guides where every product is the best at something, which is a useful trick for filling a page and a useless one for choosing a bike.
There’s a particular version of this that bothers me more than the rest. Bikes have got considerably more complicated since that red Phoenix. The brakes I couldn’t pull as a kid are now hydraulic on a lot of bikes, with a fluid that needs replacing on a schedule and pads with a wear limit published to a tenth of a millimetre.
Twelve and thirteen-speed drivetrains, torque figures printed on the components, sealed bearings you need a specific tool to touch. Most of that complexity is a real improvement. What hasn’t kept pace is the advice, which still gets written as though every bike is the same bike and every rider rides in the same weather.
The Mile Rider is the version of those articles I wanted to find. Direct answers near the top. Real numbers with a source attached. An honest note when the honest answer is that it depends, followed by what it actually depends on.
What I write about
- Maintenance and repair. Service intervals, wear limits, what a job actually involves, and which jobs are worth paying somebody else to do. This is the core of the site.
- Buying guides. How to choose within a category, what genuinely changes between price points, and where the extra money stops buying you anything you’ll feel.
- Reviews and comparisons. Individual products and head to head matchups, written to tell you who a thing suits rather than to declare a winner.
- Commuting and everyday riding. Mudguards, lights, locks, luggage, riding in traffic, and riding in weather you’d rather not ride in.
- E-bikes. What changes on an electric bike, what wears faster, and what belongs to a dealer.
- Gravel, bikepacking and longer rides. Setup, packing, and the practical business of being a long way from home on a bike.
- Technique and fitness. Position, pacing, climbing, descending, and getting stronger without turning cycling into a job.
- Fit and reach, which most sites treat as a road racing subject. Brake lever reach, small hands, short riders and kids all get less attention than they deserve, and a bike you can’t comfortably control is a bike you ride less.
There are things I deliberately don’t cover. I don’t report on pro racing, because plenty of people do it better. I don’t chase industry news, because a site that publishes in a hurry publishes mistakes. And I don’t write training plans that stray into medical territory, because that’s a conversation for a coach or a doctor who knows your history.
How I research
Sources aren’t equal, so I work down a hierarchy rather than taking whatever a search engine hands me first.
Manufacturer documentation comes first. Service manuals, dealer manuals, spec sheets and torque tables. If Shimano publishes a pad wear limit or SRAM publishes a bleed interval, that’s the number, and I name the company when I use it.
Standards bodies and government agencies for anything involving safety or law. Rules on lights, helmets and e-bike classes differ between the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, and often by state or province within them, so I check the jurisdiction rather than assuming my local rule is everyone’s rule.
Peer-reviewed research for health, fitness and physiology claims, with the size and limits of the study noted where they matter.
Established cycling publications and independent testers for anything needing testing at a scale one person can’t manage, like tyre rolling resistance or long-term durability across a whole category.
Forums, Reddit and social posts are useful for finding out what actually annoys people about a product. They aren’t evidence, and I don’t cite them as though they were.
When a figure can’t be verified, I say so and describe the range instead of inventing a number. Prices in particular move constantly and differ hugely across markets, so you’ll usually see a band and a suggestion to check locally rather than a figure that will be wrong by the time you read it.
How I handle conflicting opinions and data
Cycling runs on disagreement. Tyre pressure, chain lube, whether tubeless is worth the mess, how often anything really needs doing. Five approaches, roughly in the order I apply them.
I name the conflict instead of quietly picking a side. If two credible sources say different things, that’s information you should have. Hiding it makes an article look more confident and leaves you less able to make a decision.
I separate arguments about facts from arguments about preferences. Whether a chain is worn at 0.5% elongation is a fact question with a checkable answer. Whether you should run dry lube or wax is mostly a preference question dressed up as a fact question, and it deserves a different kind of answer.
When manufacturers disagree, I say who says what. SRAM asks for an annual bleed on its DOT fluid brakes while mineral oil systems generally go longer, so the right interval depends on whose brakes are on your bike. Reporting an average of the two would be tidier and wrong.
When lab data and rider consensus disagree, I explain the gap rather than picking the more interesting side. Controlled testing and real riding measure different things. Both can be right, and the difference is usually the useful part of the story.
On anything safety-related, I default to the more conservative number. If one source says a pad is usable to 0.5mm and another says replace at 1mm, the article tells you both and recommends the earlier swap, because the cost of being wrong in that direction is a set of pads, and the cost of being wrong in the other direction is a rotor or a crash.
What is fact and what is interpretation
This is the part most sites skip, so here it is plainly. Everything on The Mile Rider falls into one of five categories, and the wording tells you which one you’re reading.
Manufacturer specification. Attributed by name, as in “Shimano specifies 0.5mm” or “RockShox lists 50 ride hours”. If a company published it, you’ll see the company.
Verified figure from a named source. A standard, a study, an agency, or a test from a publication that does testing properly. Named, and checked on a date rather than remembered.
Established consensus. Phrased as consensus, using wording like “most mechanics” or “riders generally find”. These are widely agreed positions rather than published specifications, and they’re deliberately softer.
Editorial judgement. This is opinion, and it’s phrased as opinion: “the sensible default is”, “worth it if”, “most riders are better off”. Service intervals no manufacturer publishes, buying recommendations and verdicts all live here. You’re free to disagree, and the reasoning is always attached so that you can.
Preference. Called what it is. Saddle choice, lube choice, bar tape, whether you enjoy riding in the rain. There’s no right answer and I won’t pretend there is.
Four commitments sit underneath that.
I don’t invent experience. If an article says a part was ridden through a winter, it was. Where I’m writing from research rather than personal use, the article reads as research, without a fabricated story bolted on to make it feel more authoritative.
I don’t invent specifications. Weights, prices, compatibility and warranty terms are either verified or absent.
I don’t state a law without naming where it applies.
And I correct things. If something here is wrong, I’d rather fix it than defend it. Corrections get made on the page itself with a note saying what changed and when, not quietly edited away.
About the author
I started riding at nine or ten, several years after most of the kids around me, on a red Phoenix I couldn’t stop properly. The brake levers were beyond my hands, so I put my feet down and let the road do the rest. Neighbourhood streets and the community ground were the whole world of it, and that was plenty.
That bike went to my nephew when I outgrew it. It was eventually scrapped, which is how almost every bike ends. Not in a crash and not in some final dramatic failure, just handed along until one day nobody thinks it’s worth fixing any more. A fair amount of this site exists to push that day further away for somebody else’s bike.
What I’m not is a qualified mechanic, a coach, or a bike fitter. I’ve never worked in the trade. Where an article touches those areas it’s built on manufacturer documentation and published research rather than a certificate, and it says so. If a job needs somebody qualified, the article tells you to go and find one.
The name comes from the obvious place. Miles are the only thing that reliably teaches you anything about a bike, and they’re also what wears it out.
How to reach me
The best way to reach me is through the Contact page. I read everything and reply to most things, usually within few days.
Three kinds of message are especially welcome. Corrections, which I’d genuinely rather receive than not. Questions a whole article could answer, which is where a good chunk of this site comes from. And disagreements, provided they come with reasoning, because those usually make the next version of an article better.
A few things I don’t do: paid guest posts, link exchanges, sponsored articles dressed up as editorial, and posts written by somebody else under my name.