Comments for Cycling Technology Blog

Comment on World’s Lightest Power Meter option at 622 grams with BB and chainrings. by tim

tim — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:45:20 +0000

I was wondering if you had used an SRM or other power meter previously and how the numbers seem to compare. I have 7 years of SRM data and would like to use a power meter that I could compare numbers to.

Comment on World’s Lightest Power Meter option at 622 grams with BB and chainrings. by Nico

Nico — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 17:29:37 +0000

Surprisingly those chainrings are quite stiff, and they calibrate really well, according to Quarq.

Comment on World’s Lightest Power Meter option at 622 grams with BB and chainrings. by djconnel

djconnel — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:41:43 +0000

With the Metrigear change of platform resulting in both delays and likely added mass, I agree this is the more weenie solution, although I don’t think Quarq would claim 2% accuracy with those chainrings.

Comment on TRP 960 Brake Review by Scotty

Scotty — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:09:48 +0000

Thanks for the review, very helpful, look forward to the rest!

Comment on Do Old Guys Rock? Or Do They Only Win When the Young Guys are Out of Town? by Phil Ganderton

Phil Ganderton — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:54:10 +0000

First off, that’s a great photo of you, Nico!
Second, I’ve always believed that the Masters category was the strongest, not only because of the numbers involved, but also due to the tremendous level of strategy that is on display in those categories. The young guys often win with strength or brute force alone. In the older categories, the fastest/strongest guy is often not the winner. I agree that HCs and TTs reward the strong and fast, but there’s some wily old farts who have figured out that efficiency is what’s really being rewarded–and that comes from knowledge and experience as much as slow-twitch muscles!

Comment on Do Old Guys Rock? Or Do They Only Win When the Young Guys are Out of Town? by john smathers

john smathers — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:53:15 +0000

Some related pie charts:
http://www.usacycling.org/corp/demographics.php

Comment on Do Old Guys Rock? Or Do They Only Win When the Young Guys are Out of Town? by john smathers

john smathers — Sat, 08 May 2010 18:47:38 +0000

In New England there is basically no junior racing. Most road races don’t even have a junior category. Some of the criteriums do, but it will often be really short, 5-10 miles. It’s weird. And very unsatisfying when I tell people that I did a lot of racing as a junior – they are often totally unimpressed.

Comment on Do Old Guys Rock? Or Do They Only Win When the Young Guys are Out of Town? by Nico

Nico — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:30:03 +0000

It would be interesting to know how that percentage has changed over the past few decades. My sense is that it has gone up steadily since we started racing in the early ’80s, and if so, that should be the obvious canary in the coal mine for the sport.

John, when you and I raced the Red Zinger Mini Classic in 1982 there were around 80 boys who signed up for the 12-13 age group. That was enough that the organizers decided to break it into two separate groups the 12-13A and the 12-13B, because they didn’t like the idea of 80 inexperienced boys, elbow-to-elbow in a criterium. The Zinger was slightly anomalous, and not completely representative of Cycling’s popularity among young people, but I’d say on a weekly basis we had 15-25 guys show up for the Intermediate category. That doesn’t appear to happen to me anymore.

Comment on Do Old Guys Rock? Or Do They Only Win When the Young Guys are Out of Town? by john smathers

john smathers — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:46:26 +0000

There was a quote in a recent velonews article with a guy from USACycling saying that their membership is about 75% masters now.

Comment on World’s most aero UCI legal bars? by Nico

Nico — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:00:30 +0000

Update: I’ve raced with this first version 5 times so far this year and they actually feel better than I thought they would. It’s not a problem at all to control the bike, even on sharp corners, despite the super narrow bars. Climbing out of the saddle is where they don’t really work, so as long as the course doesn’t have many steep hills, they work great. I also tend to be more efficient remaining in my aero bars while climbing so I don’t see this as much of an issue.

Small things that bother me are:
1) The extensions are so close that it’s hard for me to see my PowerTap head, which I have mounted between my forearms.
2) My elbows occasionally bump into the stem part of the bars, which is a little higher than it needs to be.
3) We didn’t drill a hole for the front brake cable to exit the wings on the bottom, rather it comes out of the rear of the wing. This makes for an awkward cable route. This will only take 20 min to rectify, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I’m planning on filing the welds down more, to make the bars smoother, drilling a new front brake cable exit hole, and having them anodized or painted. And I’m working on the drawings for V2, which I hope to have done in a few months.