Katya Ushakova: Caucasus by bike, moving to Sochi and Tour de Selishchi by fixed

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Useful from the issue

1. Change the sealant on time

   The sealant in the tubeless needs to be updated every three to six months. Katya's car dried up in nine months, and then they could hardly put the tire back on, even together.

2. Frame size is more important than material

   With a height of 158 cm, Katya chose a bicycle first of all according to rostovka 44 — only on it she is really comfortable. Low riders should look for the smallest sizes in the lineup.

3. First buy a ticket

   Katya starts preparing for the trip by buying a ticket: there is a hard date by which everything needs to be collected, and there is no way back.

4. The ascent comes gradually

   The hill, which you climb on foot on the first day, you can stop by in a few days. Katya's rule is not to stop climbing, no matter how hard it is.

5. Drink even if you don't want to

   On the bike, Katya forgets about food and water, and this is a mistake. Be sure to have a hearty breakfast — she has oatmeal with fruit —and keep the flask where it is easy to reach.

6. Weaving on a fix requires a sample

   Before the first race on the fix for more than 100 km, Katya specially drove 200 km in two days to understand how the body would behave. It is better to check the long distance on the fix in advance.

7. The chain wears out too

   Katya admits she rode 10,000 km on one chain and cassette, and it's not worth doing that: a stretched chain eats up the chainrings. After dirt and storm, she cleans the chain and boils it in paraffin.

8. Empty gravel is also dangerous

   Katya was hit not on a busy road, but on an empty gravel road. A quiet road doesn't guarantee safety, so you can't relax even there.

Cycling as cognition

Katya is presented simply: rides a gravel bike, travels, sometimes appears at races, but they are not a priority. For her, the bike is about learning about the world, watching and searching for Zen. She blogs on Instagram and Telegram and tries YouTube. How it all started is described in detail in Dmitry Lasenko's video, so Ilya starts with something else — has she learned how to change the camera.

Answer: she switched to a camera-less car and didn't puncture a single wheel in a year. But the sealant needs to be changed every three to six months, and she had it for nine and dried up. It didn't work out to pull the tire back on the rim either for her or for the guys she knew, who first joked about the strength, and then themselves suffered for half an hour. Ilya shares his experience: his tire sits down easily, but to install the tubeless one has to tinker with the compressor for a long time.

Sochi instead of a trainer

The main reason for moving to Sochi is the bicycle: Katya's indoor trainer doesn't recognise, and here in February it's +18°C. The weather can be different — recently she rode in the rain for three days in a row, and the hardest part, in her words, is not riding in the rain, but going outside when it's already raining. Now she has a personal winter challenge: to go out for a ride every day, so as not to lie at home with her phone and succumb to the winter blues.

There are two bicycles. The custom Aventon fix is now being repainted in Perm with a personal inscription on the frame. The main one is Specialized in the smallest size: with a height of 158 cm, even the 47th rostovka was too big for her, and she chose the bike for size 44, not carbon fiber. She is not going to change it. Fix — more for entertainment, for example, so that, without reading the description of the route, you can jump off the bridge with a surprise from acceleration, as it was at one of Ilya's races.

All the republics of the Caucasus

Katya has been cycling in all the republics of the Caucasus and is sure that they are completely different: life, people, roads, climate, even mountains. She liked North Ossetia the most — it's easier to communicate with people there. In Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, you need to go completely closed, no shorts, while in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia in the summer you can safely ride in bibs.

At first, she drove mostly on asphalt, and in recent trips she increasingly turned onto gravel, where the car would not pass and it was too far to walk. Ilya asks about tours or camp in the Caucasus. Katya admits that it's easy to come up with a route and points, but she's scared to communicate with everyone and keep the general mood of the group for a week — she needs a companion. She is offended that there is nothing like Ural camps in the Caucasus, although nature is perfect for this.

How to get ready for the road and drive uphill

The first action before the trip is to buy a ticket: this cuts the way back and sets the date by which everything should be collected. Katya hates getting ready and stretches the fees for half a day every time, although there is always one set: clothes for four seasons for the mountains, tools, everything is waterproof. He rides the train — he doesn't fly by plane because he's afraid for the bike.

She doesn't train on purpose: she goes out five times a week in the summer, and her motivation is to find new places or make it to sunset. Her first trip through the mountains near Kislovodsk ended with the fact that she was walking up the hill and was offended by the cyclist who overtook her with a lot of gears. Then I realized that it's not about eight speeds, but about preparation. Since then, she has a rule: do not stop in the ascent, no matter how many percentages, and Ilya shares this approach.

A blog without good advertising

Katya's advertising comes mostly boring — detergents and cosmetics that she does not take. There is a barter with bicycle brands, including Perm guys. Most of all, she was surprised by the support of subscribers: when there was not enough money for a trip to the Tour de Selishchi, her friends persuaded her to write about it in a blog, and there were enough donations for both the slot and tickets.

She takes off the rails and mounts them herself on the phone, without courses, and writes the sound to the built—in microphone - she didn't like the external one. Conversational videos require a script, editing, and dozens of takes of voice acting. Daily posting on trips is exhausting: the material accumulates, and you don't have time to live the present. Therefore, Katya looks towards YouTube, where you can release a video once a week or two and answer questions in detail like a bike review. Ilya agrees: it is the frequency that scares him.

Daily challenge and Tour de Selishchi on a fixed gear

Katya started the 24-hour challenge on the day of the summer solstice in Petrozavodsk, on white nights, on the way to St. Petersburg. It ended at the eighth hour: on the gravel road, where trucks passed every half hour, she was hit by a car. I got off with bruises, the driver took me to the emergency room and paid for the repair of the fork, painting and a new rim. In 2024, she is going to try again.

Tour de Selishchi was her first race of this format — over a hundred kilometers on a fixed-gear bike. To prepare, she specially traveled to Kazan and rode 200 km there in two days with bike packing bags. During the race, she didn't have a water bottle — nowhere to attach it, and she had to ask for water from fellow riders on the move. At first, she got knocked out of the pack, then a group picked her up, which she herself was urging when the pace dropped — the men who finished in their sixties later recognized her. The last kilometers were the hardest: the finish came later than her computer showed.

Ilya announces that 2024 will be the last year for the Tour de Selishchi in the current format: the race takes place without road closures, it's roulette, and if something terrible happens, he will have to answer. To make it official is almost impossible, but he will study the issue.

Perm, dreams and sobriety

Katya considers the Perm community to be one of the best: former fixers have moved to gravel, they have a clubhouse with a bicycle workshop where everyone gathers. Slick Disaster camp was also held there — not a race, but an occasion to get together and chat; in 2023, it may have been the last time. Katya's dreams are Sakhalin, Buryatia, Tuva, Central Asia, and then Nepal, Tanzania, Japan and Patagonia.

A separate topic is alcohol. Katya has not been drinking for a year: the last time she got very drunk, missed an important working day and decided to stop. She notices that she calmly communicates in bars with non-alcoholic beer and wakes up without a hangover and memory lapses. Ilya has not been drinking for eleven years and says that it is important to show that sober people live interesting lives. At the end, they discuss the Tsar Grader: a route of about 180 km with a slightly larger proportion of asphalt, a beautiful alley and a balanced alternation of coatings.

Timestamps

1. 00:47Who is Katya
2. 02:22Tubeless and sealant
3. 04:40Why did you move to Sochi
4. 08:14Katya's bicycles
5. 11:36The Republics of the Caucasus
6. 14:06Camp or tour in the Caucasus
7. 16:32Preparing for travel
8. 21:29Blog, advertising and reels
9. 27:55Daily challenge and traffic accident
10. 31:14Food and water
11. 32:10Tour de Selishchi on a fixed-gear bike
12. 39:48Perm Cycling Community
13. 41:29Travel plans
14. 46:24Life without alcohol
15. 51:14What will the Tsar Grader be like

Mentioned in this episode

Tour de Selishchi · Tsar Grader · Slick Disaster · Specialized · Aventon · Instagram · Telegram · YouTube