sasawpg

I hadn't actually read the chain cleaning page before but I did read his page on chains, which to an extent is contradicting with his chain cleaning page:

"New chains come pre-lubricated with a grease-type lubricant which has been installed at the factory. This is an excellent lubricant, and has been made to permeate all of the internal interstices in the chain. The chain and this lubricant need to be warmed during application.

This factory lube is superior to any lube that you can apply after the fact -- well, unless...see below."

Hard for me to tell what is original content vs. new. It has been empirically demonstrated that factory lube and grease are considerably inferior when it comes to drivetrain efficiency (performance) compared to a wet lube, which is less efficient than either dry lube or wax (with or without additives).

I've waxed chains for a while in the past but stopped a couple years ago. I now do a "good enough" quick clean of a chain using an undiluted degreaser, rinse with water and a final rinse with isopropyl. The whole process takes 5 minutes and the chain is clean enough for new application. Not clean enough for waxing, you'd want to throw in a solvent before ethanol/isopropyl, but good enough for wet/dry lube. I've no science to back longevity of chains following above procedure, I generally swap between 2-3 chains during a season to keep wear reasonable and then start fresh in the fall before indoor.

That would be something I'd personally consider out-of-date with modern chains. Apparently that makes me a "Lazy, careless cyclist" as I would never use grease on a chain. Nor would I ever follow this insane method of cleaning a chain.

Guess I'd consider myself to be an efficient cyclist, which may be construed as "lazy" by some.

edit: reading onward, he claims "Serious cyclists, who value performance..". I wonder what he considers "performance", because it sure appears he didn't consider or measure drivetrain efficiency.

With the most exciting Sunday in the entire year of racing coming up!

Target fixation - you'll go where you look, for better or worse. Inexperienced riders will often stare right at the obstacle they're trying to avoid and ride right into it.

For gels, I do maple syrup, which usually comes with a pinch of salt. I will also add 50-100g+ carbs per 750mL bottle. I find it hard to chew solids when biking at anything higher than low Z2, it actually increases my heart rate a bit.

I think what pros (eg. pro cyclists) do is that they try to find the best of both worlds - they train a LOT in lower intensity zones so they get very good at fat burning without actually reaching keto, but they then supplement it with the right type and amount of carbs during races so that they don't lose sprint power. But this is only my theory, I have never been a pro, and never been close to these circles.

You couldn't be further from the truth, especially in a race scenario, not to mention a stage race or a grand tour. Professional (and most well versed) cyclist will pile on carbs in the days leading up to a race, eat a pile the morning of the race and then continue to eat and drink a massive quantity of carbs. It has everything with them being able to replenish what's lost during a race lasting several hours, it is not at all sprint specific. They'll easily aim at 100+ grams of carbs per hour.

I would consider myself a well versed and well trained amateur cyclist. Depending on length of training session and intensity of efforts, I'll aim for 50-100g/hr. In a race my goal is 80-100g/hr from the second the race starts. I've done well enough in multiple 6-9+ hour races and training sessions.

Can't upvote this enough. Carbs are king for endurance, though I tend to drink most of mine as I find it easier.

If you’re talking DuraAce/Red then yes. Otherwise it does not truly qualify as “very very high end” or even “high end“ for Rival/105.

I have three bikes with electronic shifting in my basement. None are “ultra high end road bikes”.

Shimano also brought electronic to their 105 line and SRAM has it on Rival. Neither is high end, never mind ultra high end. I’m not a MTBer so I’m not aware of how that market is, but electronic shifting is definitely prevalent in road, gravel and cross.

By that logic, you would see very little variety in types of components used by world your teams. Teams are in the business of making money, if SRAM offers them a better deal, team owners will find it hard to say no.

(Replying to wmitty) it happened to him at the start line. His choice was between DNS or little ring.

I’ve seen cable breaks happen, though not frequently. I’ve also seen chains break a lot more frequently, I know of 5-6 instances where it happened last year alone locally. All of these were a result of complete lack of maintenance as you point out, though I suppose it would be possible for a newer component to not show signs of wear and still fail.

Index adjustment on SRAM AXS can be done on the fly from the shifters. Or from the app as you ride without stopping. Try that with cables.

The battery replacement is the real issue as technology gets older. Though to be honest, at some stage it gets more difficult to find parts for any system. I started to run into challenges sourcing several replacement parts for a 8-9 year old bike that had 10 speed Shimano group set, so it got sold and replaced. Batteries are not much different really.

Came in here to say just that - I wouldn’t judge relevancy based on the amount of sponsorship a company is willing to throw at a world tour team.

I just watched a NorCal video where guy had to spend all race in little ring because it snapped at the start line. Ouch!

Mech cable snapping vs forgetting to charge the battery? Yes, end user error with the battery, but I’ve had exactly 0 cables snap and I put my bikes through hell.

My SRAM Force (CX) and Red (road) have clutches.

I’ve have/had mech SRAM, mech Shimano, SRAM Red AXS eTap and the new Ultegra Di2. Well maintained (change cables every couple years), mech just works too and has crisp shifting. While I love electronic and won’t go back to mech on some of my bikes, mech has its place. It has not left me stranded with a dead battery and it hasn’t entered crash mode during a cross race. Mech also won’t brick a $1000 derailleur after a firmware upgrade (it magically came back to life 2 months later, after I had bought a replacement).

I do agree with your first point, I don’t see much revolutionary here.

Maybe in NL, but in US/Canada organized bike theft is a bit more than "pettiest of petty crimes". For example: https://bikeindex.org/news/closing-the-loop-a-deep-dive-on-a...

A number of my friends have had $10-30k of bikes stolen. Based on the surrounding circumstances, at least some, if not most, were targeted by an organized set of individuals and not just random.

My journey started with Action Quake II mod, which was an action-movie inspired mod (complete with Lights, Camera, Action when a round starts). I wasn't too thrilled with sci-fi style FPS games, they held little appeal to me, but I easily logged a thousand hours on Action Quake. Then moved onto CS and BF2 from there. There went my high-school years!

Probably not as different as one would hope compared to North American news of unjust harassment/abuse by police, religious/sport organization some 10-20+ years ago. I didn't see major Canadian news sources overflowing with content about abuse suffered in residential schools until fairly recent for example. That's not to paint any sort of a rosy Jugo picture, far from it.

Ah yes - familiar and agree with this as well. It does however depend significantly on whether the perp was known to you or not. You'd be far more likely to report a stranger abusing you randomly on the street than say your family member, teacher, coach, etc. (see Hockey Canada for a sad example of this continuing to date).

My experience ends in mid-90s, but from what I understand it is still far more permissive than US/Canada. In Finland for example, kids go to school alone starting in grade 1 (walk or public transport). That is definitely not something you will see often in Canada. I do absolutely agree though - anecdotally speaking of course, parents today are far less permissive than "back in the day".

I have no issue with my kids (8 and 9) playing outside alone provided they don't venture out onto the thoroughfare street. My concern is with irresponsible and inattentive drivers, including residential construction traffic.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. In ex-Yu, they'd go through criminal proceedings.

Fully agreed here - I grew up in ex-Yugoslavia, which while it wasn't part of the Eastern bloc, it wasn't too dissimilar. It was perfectly acceptable and expected for kids to be out and about without direct parent supervision. Neighbours knew kids from the surrounding and would take care of them as needed. At 11-12, I walked to the store by myself or with similar aged friends many times to buy beer for my dad. The store owner happily sold it to me as he knew my dad and knew if I did buy it for myself, it would take no more than a day or two to find out. Police would have never questioned any part of this behaviour, it was fully normalized. I'd say it definitely resulted in children being more independent.

At 25% efficiency (on the high side), 1000kCal is about 1050kJ, which is just shy of 300W. Most adults can't sustain 300W for an hour. In addition, reasonable riding conditions (flat, low to moderate winds) will get you moving faster than 20mph at 300W. Most adults are definitely not burning 1000kcal riding a bike for an hour and even fewer are doing that rate of calorie burn for longer than an hour. I regularly have >1000kcal rides, but I have yet to hit 1000kcal for a single hour at my highest intensity. I can do close to 300W for 20 minutes after which time the power drops off rapidly. Larger cyclists that are trained can absolutely sustain 300W for an hour, but won't do this without a significant training effort.

I don't mean to imply that you won't burn a lot of calories cycling, quite the opposite, I think it is one of the easiest and gentlest ways to do so. You are however overstating what most non-elite cyclists can regularly accomplish in terms of calorie burn per hour.

Source: I have averaged 450hrs/yr for last 3 years and closely monitor my data.

He talks about 20 seconds, that's quite the length to hold 1000W+ on. Not to mention repeat it multiple times with 2 minutes of recovery, which is nowhere near enough for untrained or trained athletes unless you dedicate a significant amount of your recent training on sprints.

FWIW, I'm in a similar boat, my FTP currently is around 275W, granted I'm smaller (62-64kg), but I am still a long ways away from holding 1000W for 20 seconds.

My all-time high for 20s is 863W. I don't think you understand what it takes to push 1000W for 20 seconds, not to mention 1500-2000W.

That simply isn't true. Unlike running, cycling at an low endurance pace is quite gentle on your body. Reaching 500kcal/session isn't going to be a problem after a few weeks of getting your mind and body accustomed to biking for more than 15-30 minutes, and chances of injuries will be quite low, especially if you use a stationary bike. You can hit 400kcal in an hour of biking without too many issues. Larger people will generally put out more power and therefore burn more calories.

I would be writhing in pain if I attempted to consume 3-5k calories in a sitting. I consume a lot of calories on basis that I also burn a lot cycling, but nowhere near that in a sitting. Even 5k/day for me would be painful.