The Heavy Pedal consists of Terrence Patrick and Victor Vasquez. The two friends met in Phoenix, Arizona at an art school where they both attended college. Terrence is a native to Arizona while Victor is a transplant from El Paso, Texas. Their passion for design and love for cycling is what brought them together to collaborate on The Heavy Pedal.
Originally, Terrence rode for Leader Bike as a trick rider in 2008 and one of the stipulations was that he had to have a blog. This need for a blog lead to Terrence turning the name of his crew he rode with locally, “The Heavy Pedal,” into the name of the blog site. Once the blog was up and running on the WordPress server Victor caught wind of it and wanted to help redesign it along with his friend Chris Sample who had web experience. Around this time Terrence and Victor were interning together as graphic designers at the Tostito’s Fiesta Bowl.
One day after work at the Fiesta Bowl, Chris showed up to collaborate with Terrence and Victor on the web design and made the site look official and have its own feel, not just another WordPress template. Finally, the site was designed well and working perfectly with its own, dedicated URL. People took to the new blog very well and had heavily requested stickers and shirts that they did not have just yet. This led to the first run of stickers and the first run of shirts but the quality was not what Terrence and Victor, as graphic designers, saw as professional. They had to seek out the right resources for the stickers and shirts and they did just that.
In the beginning it was a rocky road because they were students, working part time, so finding money to fund projects would always fall short. However, the good thing about this time was that they never stopped looking, never stopped working and never stopped blogging. Terrence left Phoenix, Arizona for San Diego, California to work for Leader Bike in April of 2011, which got him more in tune with the California cycling movement that has been great for fixed gear riding.
In October of 2011 he really wanted to separate The Heavy Pedal from a blog with quality product to a quality product with a blog. During his research he found the perfect platform to suit the needs of The Heavy Pedal and began to build around that. While Terrence was busy designing the new store Victor finalized the shirt designs that have been on his computer since the summer of 2011 by getting them print ready.
During this time Terrence also made a trip to Los Angeles to pick up shirts in bulk from a wholesale source and drove them back to Arizona where their trusted screen printer, Wes, lives and works. Wes printed all the shirts over a 3-day weekend and was very busy. Now, they had the product and the new platform to push it but the blog needed to match. Terrence then integrated the blog into the site to look seamless and work flawlessly together. Now you have the new and improved Heavy Pedal operating out of Arizona and California while still being ran by 2 designers, Terrence Patrick and Victor Vasquez.
