bikemonster

Unless your saddle/bars/stem are made of solid granite, don't spend money on swapping them out. Making your bike light so you can tell the guy who just beat you how light your bike is, is a waste of time and money. Tyres, wheels, pedals and cranks (in that order) should be your priorities. Unless this all just a wnak-fest so you can brag about your candy-ass super-light bike....in which case, fill your boots! James

I know I'm supposed to say that I like your couch. I'm sorry, but I don't. On the other hand, I do like your skateboard...a lot!

Look at saving weight where it rotates. The further from the relevant axle, the greater the benefit for even small weight reductions. Light wheels, especially wheels with light rims will make the bike feel much more lively. Believe it or not, light tyres will also make a difference, especially if you are currently riding heavy tyres. Hard to tell what you are rolling, but Conti Attack/Force are pretty good in my experience. Bear in mind that the couple of seconds that you gain from light tyres pales to insignificance against the several minutes you will lose if they are not at least reasonably puncture-resistant. James

About 5 years ago I used to buy Ride. At one point I was in the market for a pair of Ksyriums, and it just so happened that Ride was carrying a review of a whole bunch of different wheelsets. The "review" of the Ksyriums was word for word, punctuation mark for punctuation mark a copy and paste of an online review that I had already found and read. An open and shut case of plagiarism if ever there was one. So I wrote a letter to the editor. And sure enough it was mentioned in the next issue's editorial. Alongside a glib comment along the lines of "you don't mess with" somebody who rides as much as whoever the fcukwit was who had done the copy and pasting! So, no thank you, I won't be buying Ride either.

Hi Guys I used to subscribe, but I reached a point when there didn't seem much point in renewing because there were three articles that seemed to be on repeat: Lance is God Climb Hills Easily 12 week training programme to your best ever <name of race> So I was interested to see if I was missing anything when there was a freebie in the Burger race pack. Now, what follows is NOT a complaint that I wasn't getting the current issue free. But there are some things worth complaining about: 1. I thought the magazine was thinner than a ramp model looking for work. 2. The editorial quality was rotten. There were spelling errors, grammatical errors and mis-labelled pictures. 3. Lance is still God, it seems. Do you buy the magazine? Was this just one poor issue that I happen to have read? James

If you're a weekend warrior - as most of us on this forum are - overtraining is impossible. What is entirely possible, and it has precious little to do with how much time you spend on the bike, is under-resting. The benefit from training comes between training sessions, when your body rebuilds after the intentional stress that you place it under. If you do not give your body adequate rest time, because you're a career bod, or a parent, or studying or partying your ass off, or some combination of the above, you will be under-resting. Simple rule: if it feels good, it is good. If you're feeling permanently shagged out, rest more. Which is not necessarily the same as saying cycle less. James

Here is what this thread has needed from about halfway down pg 1...and the one thing we can all agree on: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/duty_calls.png

Pay back the karma. Donate twice the cost of a replacement tube to the charity of your choice. Why twice? Well, how much would you have been prepared to pay to get going again when you were stuck without a tube? James

Are we back at skinnies vs. fatties down a hill? If the slope is the sort of experiment you set up on a desk, the disks arrive at the same time because although there is more force exerted on the heavy disk, there is also more inertia to overcome. If we allow for the effects of wind resistance, the metal disk continues to accelerate for longer than the plastic disk. If we steer the conversation back to bike wheels, lighter is ALWAYS better, all other things held constant. Like I said earlier, there are aero advantages which can outweigh (oh I slay myself!) the weight disadvantages, but there is no inherent advantage in more weight. (And for the pedants out there, we are on Earth, so mass and weight are interchangeable in this discussion!)

How so?

They say nobody likes a kiss-ass. I say, WTF do they know?

Race car stuff...now we're into my other obsession. Pull up a chair! Lightening and balancing of engine components is done to improve efficiency and allow for higher max rev limits. Lighter flywheels make for better acceleration, for exactly the same reason as lighter bike wheels make for better acceleration. In a car though, a heavier flywheel makes the car more tractable and easier to drive, particularly at low revs, such as when pulling away from a start. The basics of car racing are not that different from bike racing, and the obsession with weight is about the same. And the same basic rule holds: lighter is always better than heavier. Any advantage that comes from weight comes with a penalty which is heavier (see what I did there?) than the advantage. Finally, back there somewhere ^^^ somebody talked about the "advantage" of heavier wheels in "helping" to compensate for a cyclist with an uneven pedal stroke. Oh yeah? And how smooth do you think your pedal stroke is, given that you are putting in heaps of torque at 3 o'clock/9 o'clock and almost zero torque at 6 o'clock/12 o'clock? James

A similar idea to Shimano Bio-Pace, which used an ovoid (egg-shaped) chainring to try and eliminate "dead spots" in the pedal stroke.

The heavier rims would indeed act as a flywheel. Time to accelerate not a prob? We both ride a 40km TT at an a steady max speed of 40 km/h. (As if I could!) With my super-light, wispy wheels I accelerate to 40km/h in 90 seconds. With your hefty, slower accelerating wheels, you accelerate to 40km in 120 seconds. I win! While there is some advantage to sacrificing lightness for aero, there is never any advantage to adding weight for its own sake. James

Have you tried replacing the battery in the Polar? On a side-issue, why can you not use the Vist-arse laptop? Now that I have gotten around to getting a USB/IR goodie-gad, I have no probs with getting my Polar (625X) to talk to Vist-arse. James

The more I ride my bike, the more I'm convinced that the best training is to ride your bike. Of course this is absolute heresy. As bike geeks we ought to have some form of heart rate monitor, ideally coupled to a GPS and preferably a power monitor too. Most of us really don't need all the other cr_p...just the bike. If you have a knowledgeable coach who is able to tailor a personalised training programme for you, they may be some real benefits to be had to HR based training, but for most of us, not so much. Most of the time, we go riding with our buddies. We ride the way the ride works out that day. Sometimes we try and make each other suffer, other days we pedal along shooting the breeze. Sure, it's kind of interesting to know whether we are at 73% of max or whatever, but if you ride for fun, chances are you ride at the pace that the bunch is riding at. If the pace feels too gentle, kick it up a notch. If you are bleeding from the eyeballs, slack off a bit. Now, all the other cr_p is fun and interesting, but I am heartily (see what I did there?) sceptical that the gadgetry can make a difference to our training because of the social and sociable way we weekend warriors ride and train. One more thing, and this is in no way aimed at the guy who posted the link, but age-based HR zones are about as accurate as horoscopes, and as useful. There is just too much variability from individual to individual. The only use that I can see for a HRM for a weekend warrior, is as a rev limiter for a noob, to ensure that (s)he takes it good and easy until they get used to cycling. Heretical, I know, but I do believe it to be true, certainly for me. If you want to use the gadgetry, go ahead, fill your boots. It's just that I honestly believe that unless you are prepared to abandon the very things that make bike riding fun, there are very limited training benefits to HRM training for reg'lar peeps. James

Ahem! Slowpoke, I think that you will find that it was I who said it best and not SarelM. Just setting the record straight for straight-talking butts everywhere!

Other peoples' saddle recommendations mean very little unless their azz bones are similar shape to yours. I know people who have hated the Arione, regardless of how many people rave about it. One of the most comfortable saddles I ever rode was the local, cheapy 'Top Gear' saddle that came with my Raleigh RC6000. Zero bragging rights but a very happy bottom until the saddle stitching gave up.

Your RC6000 should have 105 everything. Use the cheapest compatible chain.

If you take a short cut (literally or figuratively) and win, you cheat everybody. If you take a shortcut (see above) and improve your position from 2,654th to 2,653rd you only cheat yourself. As a weekend warrior I care about my time and an indication of where I finished. 1/3 of the way down or better in my start group and I am delighted. A handful of wnakers who cheat will not impact on my enjoyment of the ride or pleasure at a good result (by my own standards). If you can afford to get your bike to 5kgs, and believe that it will still be strong enough to carry you, go right ahead and do it. And if it's not a UCI event you are not cheating.

Steve, rules are rules, but the 6.8kg is a UCI rule. It applies to UCI-sanctioned events, it does not apply to non-UCI events. There are also UCI rules about where and how many numbers riders should display, what jerseys they ride in etc. So, does your nose get out of joint every time you see somebody who is not a member of Discovery wearing a Discovery jersey, with a single number clipped on their back instead of one each side on the left and right? Mebbe you should ride up to them and tell them how much you hate cheats.