I don't know about you guys, but on a significant climb I'm usually already going about as hard as I can without risking blowing up entirely. I don't have another 5% to give. Under those conditions, losing 3 meters to the 'identical cyclist' means being out of conversation (or drafting) range, and that happens in the first 85 meters of the climb. If you *are* racing to a hilltop finish, losing even a foot means losing, period. You won't see a lot of steel bikes in hilly races!
The question then becomes, how much lightness are you willing to pay for, and how much comfort, durability or versatility are you willing to lose to get it? For me, for now, I'm OK with my 21 pound steel framed, leather saddled, 28 mm tired Riv Road because it's comfortable, durable, pretty, and paid for. But, I live where it's flat, and the only hills I can get to easily aren't very long. I'm contemplating driving an hour and riding Mt. Diablo with the local club today. The Riv has a 'traditional' double crank, 39/26 bottom gear, fine for the local terrain but not low enough for Diablo with my current fitness. That means riding my triple-equipped Kogswell and hauling more like 24 pounds up an 11 mile, 5 to 8% grade and trying to keep up with riders on 17 pound carbon-fiber Cervelos and Orbeas and such. If I go, I'll have to figure on riding alone all day. Bill On Mar 13, 9:51 pm, benzzoy <benz...@yahoo.com> wrote: > On Mar 12, 3:17 pm, Aaron Thomas <aaron.a.tho...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > .... But when it comes to climbing, I cannot > > help but think that the extra 6+ lbs I'm hauling on my 23-ish lb. bike > > (compared to their 16 -17lb bikes) puts me at a distinct disadvantage. > > If one discounts the psychology of having a heavier or lighter bike, > it's all physics! > > Go tohttp://www.analyticcycling.com/and run some models. My > fiddling about comparing two otherwise identical riders except one has > a 6 lbs (3 kg) heavier bike shows that for a 8% climb for 5km (1320 ft > total elevation gain), using 200W of power, the difference at the top > is about 1 minute or 176m. > > That seems like a lot until I started playing with the power output of > the riders. Keeping the standard rider at 200W, just increasing the > test rider with the heavier bike to 208W makes the test rider *ahead* > (not by much, but still ahead nevertheless). The power increment to > pull even with extra weight is more at higher outputs, but even at > 300W for the standard rider, it's still "only" 311W for the test rider > to remain even with the extra 6-lbs-heavier bike. > > Now, given that most of us are not world-class fully-optimized elite > cyclists, training to increase output by a meagerly 8 watts shouldn't > be too difficult. In fact, I would wager that my output vary by at > least that much between a good and better day on the saddle. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
