Originally Posted by
frisky99
In prehistoric days we used to fix our own "sew ups" as we called them . We carried a razor blade , sewing needle , dental floss and a patch kit . Are modern tubulars so different that it is not possible to fix your own ?
We also used to wear wool shorts.
Clincher technology improved so much that it makes tubulars near irrelevant in just about any discussion outside of racing. Even then there are still many podiums done on clinchers.
There's a guy around here that still insists on training with tubulars. Why? well....because he can afford it, has absolutely nothing to do all day, and feels like he needs every single advantage he can get so that he can "win" his team's un-sanctioned Tuesday night crit race on open roads....err..."group ride".
But for racing....
You really don't get a good idea of how effective tubulars are for racing on the road until you have extremely technical courses that are super fast. I glued up about 6 sets for a series of races a couple of weeks back. We landed a racer on the podium of the P/1/2 race - in 2nd. Hella-strong kid. His wheels were new when I handed him the set on Saturday morning. Sunday night - the hot-patches were completely worn off of the sidewalls.
The announcer was riding in the pace car for the masters race and came up to our guy - winner - afterwards and said, "you opened up 8-10 bike lengths on guys in the corners."
You can tell the difference between a tubular and high end clincher still....but these are experiences at the upper end of what anyone would really expect to encounter.
Bear in mind I literally just got done gluing up 3 more tubulars. A couple of fingertips are sticking to the keys and not for the fun reason. 3 more to glue up for Saturday.....ugh.... C Ya