Originally Posted by
D1andonlyDman
Nope. The loss of credibility attributes to anyone making the absurd claim that carrying your water on your body does NOT degrade one's physical performance while pedaling. If you carry an extra pound to pound and a half of weight on your body in the form of a water bottle, where it can shift as you move, as you engage in the activity of bicycling, it will at least slightly degrade your physical performance. That is not subjective. It's objective fact. Much more so than if you anchor that same amount of weight, plus an extra 2 ounces of cage to do so, to the seat tube or down tube of your bicycle.
There is a reason that, universally, professional bike racers do not carry their water bottles in their jersey pockets when they are sprinting or climbing. It's because their performance would drop, at least slightly.
So why do
professional bike racers use expensive, and light, carbon bottle cages and not $2 ones? After all they both hold the bottle in place.
Maybe there's a performance gain by doing so....