dexa is also illuminating as it shows you were the fatty tissue resides.

it only needs to last 6 miles. :) seriously, though, if i get one it would only ever be used for a few timed hill climbs.


had a similar experience when i got on di2 in late 2010.

only question is i may have a few shifts under load, but all other parts, chain, etc. will be clean. could shear off a tooth, i guess, but it's not like the whole cassette would fail.

hadn't considered them as there was much unfavorable about them a year or so ago. maybe i'll look, but i'd prefer not to modify things that could affect my pedal stroke.

nokon brake housing (which is lighter than other stuff--nokon shift housing is generally heavier, thought!), and otherwise di2. also, i'm only going to use a front brake.

actually some tubular cronos.

no tape. i do use grip tape on my TT bike, and may put a few cms of it for this case.

good point. garmin doesn't tend to record when in my jersey pocket. might mount it under the saddle.

you name a road and i've probably already gone down it. open to suggestions.

i've considered tires, built up light wheels, skewers, top cap, seat post collar, post, cassette, removal of FD, 1 brake, different bars, stem, using my lightest frame...and a few things i've ruled out.

thanks! definitely no sunglasses, even though they're light. not taking any bottles or cages. don't need it for 30'. last year i took a hammer gel flask with some sips of water, but that is more comfort.

saddle cover is interesting, though my saddle happens to be a very light one with minimal cover/padding (it's what i happen to use regardless of weight). it's like 110g or something ridiculous--but the main point for me is comfort.

i appreciate the ideas.

and, yes, after reading the thread and learning there were 110 options, i ordered some rings today. trouble is due to racing/travel schedule i won't have a ton of time to test, but i'll definitely get some testing in. won't fly blind.

this thread is helpful as it helped narrow down that ring situation for me. your experience with the recon makes me curious enough to possibly give it a go. if you had a bad experience with that or with the wide/narrow, i'd be more likely to avoid it.

i have a chain guard on hand and can run an inner catcher, so if the wide/narrow thing doesn't work to my satisfaction i can always bail back to it.

thanks! very much appreciate the discussion.

so just a climb. Have you considered not gluing your tubulars or maybe just one glue layer. Get a good shave early am or night before. take the padding out of your helmet.

no way on the glue. weight is super minimal and the quality of the glue job affects the way the tire rolls (i've measured via roller tests).

you're a data guy--i can tell you how to test tires sometime using a power meter, speed sensor and some rollers.

no padding in the helmet. hadn't thought of that one! it's not a USAC race, so i was thinking the other day i might not even have to wear a helmet. the non-USAC thing is why i can run one brake. bet the insurance of the event would specify helmets.

as for the shave...i'm not that hairy. :)

This might be helpful The Mt. Washington Hillclimb: A case study | ccbracing

If it's a short hillclimb, you can drink an extra gallon or two of water for the couple days leading up to it which will cause you to shed a bunch of water weight in order to maintain ph levels. Wouldn't do it for a long race, but for an hour? Sure.

Fudgy's full of healthy ideas. Mega doses of caffeine, enemas, and now hyper hydration.

I actually like the colonic instant weight loss idea. Except it might violate the usual rule of not trying anything radically new before a race. Hate to think of the potential downsides there (though the downsides would probably continue to contribute to weight loss).

thanks for the useful ideas. we probably should rename this thread...and maybe start a new racer tech thread as this got highly specific.

i apologize if we got derailed a bit and the thread became more focused on the entirety of my hill climb than i intended...i'm pretty confident in terms of the gear i plan to run but wanted to vet the single ring/catcher/bolt stuff. going to test the wide/narrow ring w/o a catcher and w/ a shorter chain; i'll fall back to a guard and/or catcher if i'm not satisfied with my testing.

PS cogburn's a super smart and strong guy! thanks, grumpy.

Remove the the seat and seat post and stand the entire race.

Here's a postman outclimbing Phillipe Gilbert after handicapping Gilbert with an extra 50 lbs of bicycle.

In that same theme: Boogerd getting out climbed on the Cauberg by postman.

awesome. i generally do a ride per week where i remove my saddle, but that's just because i like the feeling. ;-)

i think i'm going to go with a unicycle instead.

did something of a dry run today. i decided to do two hard efforts up this climb. it was mainly for my bigger training picture but also would give me a chance to see where i am for this hill climb. ran 50/34+11-25 today and stayed in the 34 the whole time as a test; i think a 36 or 38T single will be fine. there were a couple spots where i could spin out, but i could do with a few seconds of rest.

for reference, last year i rode up it in 32:08 during the mass start race. on friday, i rode up it in a little over 38', but it was the first climb of a day when i went up 3 mountain passes, and i have training wheels/tires, 3 24oz bottles, food for 4h, etc.

today i rode up in 33:10. i'm a bit lighter (5#), bike was in the same trim as last year, and i was carrying a full bottle and some other stuff (phone, multitool, etc.) that added up to an extra 2# or so. my little back-of-the-envelope calculation based on my after-the-fact power predicted 33:02. i dragged my feet so started 4h later than the race day start (i'm no morning person!)....so got the bonus of >25F warmer....85 vs 57F.

on race day this year i hope to be a bit lighter, i'll ditch all the excess bike weight, and will carry pretty much nothing. might be 7# shaved.

even though the power was down about 5% from last year on race day, i was pretty thrilled. if i want to meet my goal i'll need to be UP 2-3% from last year. don't know that will happen as i'm in a situation of rebuilding post-injury rather than gaining, but i've got to do the work anyway for the long-term, so it is what it is.

i intentionally trained through. for those who speak power, post-clavicle and then post-femur, my CTL was in the low 40s. over the last 5 weeks i've built back up to 90. (i don't put any stock in a difference of, say, 94 or 97CTL, but there's a difference between 105 & 80.) TSB was -30 this morning...so 5% down isn't bad. (last year was sitting at 105CTL & +13TSB.)

i'll either go without water entirely or maybe my wife will do a mid-course hand-up. i used a hammer flask with a few sips of sports drink last year, but it's mostly psychological.

was strapping on my HRM today and realized there's 50g of excess. the HR is only for data recording...and probably the most useless data. (yeah, i could ditch my SRM, but that saves only 73g over a specialized spider...or 126 w/ a garmin 500; i think that data post-ride will be more valuable to me, but it also may be useful during the race to help save the 3" it will cost.)

again, if the turbo doesn't fire on race day or if the winds are unkind, i won't make it in my goal time, but all this sweating of the small stuff helps stack odds in my favor.

for a laugh, i've thought about doing this climb with a backpack & jugs of water totaling what i used to weigh in 2009. quick calcs put me at 8-9' slower, but it is a substantial amount of weight so i think the back-of-the-envelope thing falls down a bit...would probably be far, far slower.

Consider the energy cost, in terms of TSS, you incur by worrying about fiddly stuff on your bike.

not much, historically. i've done alright in this one w/o any special parts, but i am going all-in here.

i don't run parts that don't work. anyway, this is a special project. i recognize it doesn't matter anywhere else outside of a pure hill climb, and the goal is totally personal / i.e., has no relevance to anyone but me.

On a whim, I picked up a new old stock Scott Foil (and because it was super cheap), but it's got a 25mm offset seatpost and I'm needing the zero offset version. Anyone know if these are available for sale anywhere?

41?

Yes. Scott will sell you one at a stupid price, but if you Google around I've seen several people that would swap your 25 for their zero (I would have when I got my Foil).

If you really want to go light on this ditch the Di and go to a single friction shifter mounted on the bar and a SRAM red rear mech (it'll take a 14t lower jockey). 10speed Token aluminum cassette. Tufo S3 Lite tires (145g). Ti skewers with screw on fasteners. Carbon saddle as noted. No rear brake. KCNC front with a cyclocross type lever. Powercordz cable. You can get a flat carbon MTB bar in the 105g range. There's around 2+ pounds right there.

If this is the Venge there's >200g of paint on it...

There's a guy that used to do the Gimbels ride with no post/saddle. I think he was featured in some local paper article. I tried to stay away from him.

I was soft pedaling while coasting the other day, meaning the freehub body was clicking, aka not engaged. I could get the SRM to read 2-5 watts. I know my bearings are pretty crunchy, not as bad as 2010 (when I could get the SRM to read 15 watts on no load - the bearings were literally indexed every so many degrees). My comment on Contador's bearing thing has got me thinking that saving 2-5 watts would be significant for me, at least in terms of background wasted energy. One of these days.

There's a thread on weightweenies for people to swap.

tetonrider, just curious what bike is this going to be on?

Thanks. I'll do some searching, would prefer to not shell out a ton of cash as I'm trying to keep the costs for this bike loooow.

I'll check it out

i'll be riding a tarmac.

thanks for the suggestions.

Di2 RD, battery, wires and TT shift/brake lever are ~375g for me.

going the red route (rd, friction shifter, separate brake lever, cable/housing) would be about 300g. that's a meaningful difference.

might leave this one on the table for next year as it involves buying more parts and a bit more building. (not much, but at this point i'm low on time.)

I've got a recon cassette on the way. check.

i'm seeing ~200g on the tufo (tubular). am i wrong?

regardless, i've got some light vittoria tubulars (190g) on a light wheel set. glued up, tested low Crr... race proven for me already.

got some light QRs coming in at 33g for the set. could use the bolt-ons, though. got a suggestion there?

saddle's already as light as i am willing to go right now, in the model that works for me.

could go with a saddle+post combination...they make some crazy light ones. probably looking at 50-100g, which at this stage where gains are tiny is actually huge.

already doing this one. already have a light + functional brake (eebrake) on my rig. it's the only light brake that i've found where performance isn't a trade-off.

i'll be running a di2 tt brake/shift lever. it's essentially the weight of a regular TT brake lever, so that's one area where di2 pays off a bit.

i've used power cordz before on a MTB...shifting, not brake. couldn't get too cozy with them where failure would have a real consequence. for the HC my brakes shouldn't really be an issue, but i'm already running nokon (relatively light), and it's a front brake (short run)....and the powercordz would be destroyed after that one use (can't really reuse the inner). still, probably about 20g savings.

flat bar is definitely a savings of about 100g. i went the bullhorn route because i have one and i have the TT brake/shift levers. great thought.

not the venge. my tarmac is approx 150g lighter (frame+fork).

at this point, i've got to pretty much shut things down. the HC is in about 2.5 weeks, i'm traveling for about 10 days in between, and i need to install and test the setup (wide/narrow single ring+no FD+no guides/guards; bullhorn+tt shifter setup, etc.).

i think i've trimmed about 3# off of my bike (which is ridiculous...it wasn't exactly heavy last year) vs how i ran it last year. the ideas above could trim another 300g (red, flat bar, powercordz, saddle+post), which is insane.

might leave those to ponder for next year, in case i'm close but fall short on my goal this year.

thank you!

cdd, man....with as measured as you are in so many areas....maintain that bike! :)

bearings aren't hard to replace.

incidentally, one reason why some pro teams use full ceramic bearings is not that they save energy (bikes are really the wrong application), but rather they can power wash the stuff without risk of corrosion. yeah, they have to use proper grease, but rust isn't a factor. a good steel bearing is pretty awesome.

losses like what you describe don't scale with power, so with your self-described lower average power, you would stand to see more gain.

if i were closer i'd personally replace them for you.

thanks for these, cdr. i do use Ti axles (you can convert look pedals aftermarket).

probably not going to do the aerolites at this point but may consider in the future...esp if this year is "close-but-not-quite."

had a MTB race a few years back where i broke a saddle rail in a crash. race was basically 25' all-out uphill followed by 20' downhill. had to ride the last 15' standing. that was pretty painful.

wound up losing a spot due to the crash but finished pretty respectably. i was 3rd or 4th over the top (the riders ahead of me were way out of my league)--and i didn't want to give up that performance.

in hindsight, it was pretty risky. the terrain wasn't insane at that point but the rest of the descent was fast & loose. my quads have never been so sore!

I'm sure I've missed it, but how much have you lost since 2009?

about 50#. i used to play ice hockey and was a defenseman on some teams (though i preferred playing center). wish i had a body composition/DXA from back then. definitely had more body fat, but a whole bunch of what i lost is upper body muscle....along with a bunch of fat. i'd guess i was something like low-20s.

as of this morning, i'm 1.5# away from the target weight i set 8 months ago. will probably go for a DXA in a few weeks, just out of curiosity. i've been a little heavier and ~9% BF. i think i'm lighter and leaner now. i'd guess 7-8%.