> On May 12, 2015, at 8:05 PM, Jan Heine <hein...@earthlink.net> wrote: > > I think he was talking about the average "weekend warrior". It is funny (or > sad) that middle-aged men and women on their "team replica" racing bikes are > still toughing it out on super-hard, puncture-resistant 23 mm clinchers, > while the pros roll in (relative) comfort on hand-made 25 mm tubulars and > much lower pressures.
I know many people who will choose puncture resistance over ride quality. A few days ago on a nice sunny day I had my second puncture of the year, having hit a nice shard of glass with the rear tire. I had an enjoyable stop on the side of the road in the sun to replace the tube, pump up the tire and carry on. No fuss, minimal bother and actually a rather pleasant break. But for many riders a flat tire is a catastrophe- they don’t have adequate tools (if any) and they have a 6” pump that takes 15 minutes to fill the tire to a reasonable pressure, they’ve got tight folding tires that are hard to get on and off… basically it’s a huge chore to deal with. Hence the “puncture resistant” tires with extra weight and high rolling resistance. As for middle aged: I hit 55 last fall and a few years back I realized that there is no one- literally no one- who wants to see me out for a bike ride in Lycra. There probably wasn’t anyone who wanted to see me in Lycra when I was 30 and racing with less than 10% body fat and certainly not now. I like cycling shorts but now they are under MUSA baggies and I have rediscovered the comfort of riding in a regular old T-shirt instead of a cycling jersey. Three things have happened. I spend less time getting ready to go for a ride and have a little more time to ride; bike racers have stopped acknowledging my existence; drivers are much nicer to me. The first and last are great and the middle one bothers me not one bit. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
