Weight is easily measured, but it's really not that important in itself. If I fill up three water bottles and add them to my bike, I've just added about 5 pounds, yet the bike feels the same most of the time. During normal riding, the extra 5 pounds are a non-issue. (I may feel the extra weight when I rise out of the saddle and throw the bike from side to side, or when I carry the bike into the basement, and it probably is measurable against the stopwatch on a long climb.) In summary, the overall bike weight is not very important.
That doesn't mean that a heavy bike feels and rides the same as a lighter one. Here is why: If, during the design process of my bike, I added just half a pound to the frame of my bike by going to thicker tubing walls, by using larger tubing diameters, or by adding extra tubes, then my bike would feel radically different. Through almost a decade of testing at *Bicycle Quarterly*, we've found that frame flex characteristics, more than anything else, determine the feel of a bike. We tested this in a double-blind test, with three bikes that were identical, except one had thicker tubing walls. (Even the weights were equalized.) Two of our three testers could tell the bikes apart with 100% accuracy, and both strongly preferred the thinwall frames. This was despite the difference between the frames being very small - one was flexible by today's standards, the others were super-flexible. (I suspect that the third tester might have been able to tell the difference if we had tested bikes that were more dissimilar, for example, a Surly Long-Haul Trucker tubeset against that of a Roadeo.) So the weight of the frame often does impact the ride and performance, because it usually is inversely correlated with stiffness. We've also found that it's not the overall flex that matters as much as the balance of the frame. Traditional frames had evolved over decades of trial and error until they arrived at a formula that worked well: A relatively flexible top tube (usually 1/8" smaller in diameter than the down tube), a somewhat stiffer top tube, and very stiff (i.e., heavy and relatively short) chainstays. Most of today's best racing bikes are still built to that formula, and actually perform very well. Some of today's builders change that balance, for example, with oversize top tubes, but their bikes often don't perform as well as a result. If you are interested in this topic, I suggest looking at our blog's "Journey of Discovery" series, where we have more details on this: http://janheine.wordpress.com/category/a-journey-of-discovery/ and especially the entry on "Frame Stiffness." There are other factors that influence your bike's performance and feel, most notably the resistance of the tires, your riding position (more upright makes it harder to put out power), and aerodynamics (of the rider, not the bike). Also, in the latest *Bicycle Quarterly*<http://www.bikequarterly.com/current_issue.html>, we tested two titanium race bikes with electronic shifting, and then compared their hillclimbing performance against a steel 650B randonneur bike with fenders, lights, and even a handlebar bag in a hillclimbing competition. The results were truly surprising and showed that factors other than weight are important in determining a bicycle's performance. It is important to remember that performance isn't everything. Not every bike is optimized for performance, and not every rider seeks out performance. It all depends on how you ride and what your priorities are. And different people seem to have different pedal strokes and sensitivities. Some riders can make almost any bike go, while others really benefit from a bike that is fine-tuned to their pedal stroke. Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly www.bikequarterly.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/JbblnIbcfVYJ. 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.
