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Shouldn't have quoted this -- sorry

That's what it takes to break a code of silence. This is the only way to solve a rampant problem: make those who can fix it responsible to fix it. So who can fix it? Follow the money. A doping cyclist has a contract with a team (and not a race, or anyone else.) The money comes from the team. The team can demand whereabouts, blood tests, etc. because they hold the paycheck. The team boss can fix it. How do you make the team responsible? Hit them in the pocket. Hard. Embarrass the sponsor. Kick the team out. Suddenly teams will pay very, very close attention to riders -- and team members will too.

HR is different for different sports. The easiest way to get HR up, is to use more muscles. This increases demand for blood (sugar, oxygen) Cycling on the road uses more arms and core than spinning -- so HR is expected to be higher. The extra muscles are used for balance and leverage. Cycling off-road uses even more. In other words: spinning, road and off-road are different sports, and put different stresses on different muscles, resulting in different HR. Running uses a lot of the same muscles, but your running HR is probably different than your cycling HR for the same effort level. You could try cross-country skiing. The HR is highest here, because it uses the most muscles of any sport. Otherwise put a power meter in the spinning bike. That way you can compare what's going to the chain and wheel.

Running shop in Dunkeld. Great stuff.

Unfortunately it is a problem. Crank size is almost never used in bike measurements. And it should be. You can normally get road bikes from 48cm to 63cm (ignoring compact measurements) from manufacturers. Or a 31 % change. Cranks are normally 170 mm to 180 mm, or a 6 % change. Doh! So using something like .883 times your inseam to measure your saddle height completely ignores crank lengths: if you are very short or very tall, those calculations are just plain wrong. It doesn't help, though: the bottom bracket clearance doesn't change, so if you plug a 200 mm crank on, the pedals would hit the floor.

The saddle is 2.5 mm lower. (permanently) The pedal is 2.5 mm higher. (at the top of the stroke) 2.5 + 2.5 = 5.0.

reduce == decrease. At the top of the pedal stroke, your knee will be 5mm closer to your chest, and that could be a problem in the drops.

I changed from 170.0mm to 172.5mm after four years. It felt exactly the same, so I checked the writing on the crank. Yep, it was longer. I feel a much bigger difference when getting off my powercranks and on the normal cranks: it feels like the normal cranks are 20 mm shorter, even though they are the same size.

Google for "shimano tiagra sti exploded view pdf" First web site: http://tandem-fahren.de/Mitglieder/Christoph_Timm/STIblues.html Gives useful PDF: http://tandem-fahren.de/Mitglieder/Christoph_Timm/ST-4400.pdf Good luck. It looks like you got lots and lots and lots of little bits.