Originally Posted by
canklecat
Yup. Some folks nitpick terminology either to refute or defend their pet position on chainrings. That's why I call them all eccentric. That's an adequate one word summary, including for ovals, egg-shaped objects and the peculiarly rounded near-parallelogram shape of some smaller Biopace rings.
I suspect more people who dislike them didn't spend enough time on overall bike fit to make 'em work -- for example, trying various crank lengths as I did. But I'm not sure it's worth the hassle for most folks either. Any gains are pretty small. I only spent a lot of time on Biopace out of curiosity. And it wasn't my only road bike so I had time to fiddle around with three different crank lengths, adjusting saddle height and overall position, handlebar/stem height and reach, etc.
If I had tried Biopace with only my 175 cranks and didn't make any other changes, I probably would have dismissed them after the first sign of a knee twinge.
But after finding a setup I liked my data shows I was consistently a bit stronger on climbs and a bit faster on my usual roller coaster workout routes. And my stats have shown a slight but consistent decline this year since switching back to regular round rings.
However that decline could also be attributed to aging and bouts with a minor but persistent upper respiratory inflammation all year. Too many variables to say whether switching away from eccentric chainrings was a significant factor.
So I'm going to put the Biopace rings back on one bike and try again.
Where do you even get Biopace rings these days?