teetime

600' of climbing is nothing. You can do that with a few highway overpasses and one river valley anywhere in the Midwest

gaucho777 

I agree that 8 minutes is too much to credit just to the new bike, especially with only 600' of climbing. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but there must be other factors at play. Has the vintage ride been tuned up lately? Maybe there is drag from old grease in hubs/BB/pedals, etc. FormerFF, I see you are in Roswell. Is that Roswell, NM? Maybe you lost 8 minutes during an alien abduction?

FormerFF

Ah, THAT explains the anal probing.

FormerFF

OK, first off, here's the ride in question:

https://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/54870942
It starts off with a little bit of rolling terrain, a short medium gradient climb, and some more rolling. Then, through the center of town (Roswell, GA), across Highway 9, and down towards Big Creek, then up Grimes Bridge Road, then a plummet down to the Chattahoochee River. I follow the river for a few miles, then climb up Eves Road, cross Holcomb Bridge Road, up past Centennial High School, up to Old Alabama Road. That's the highest point on the ride, about 280 feet above the river.

The early part of Old Alabama is mostly flattish, with some rolling hills mixed in. As it goes along, it starts to roll more. After it crosses Holcomb Bridge Road, part of it is a dive back down to the river, where I run out of gears. Then it's a few flat miles along the river, then a climb up away from it, and a return home. According to MapMyRun, total climb is 675 feet.

Last week, I did a triathlon in NW Georgia. The ride part is described by the race director as being hilly. The course profile is here: https://gamultisports.com/tugalootria...n_profiles.pdf , and here's the MapMyRide equivalent: https://www.mapmyride.com/routes/view/134728791
MapMyRide gives this ride a 610 ft total climb, somewhat less than my loop, which is five miles shorter. I would rate the two rides as being equally strenuous. My fellow triathletes all considered this course to be hilly. Now triathletes aren't known to be all that much in the way of being mountain goats, probably because of that odd running thing we do post-ride, but this particular group I was hanging with have been training for an ironman distance race for the last 10 months, and will be doing one in seven weeks, so I'd say they're all extremely fit. I feel confident that most of the world's riders would agree that this ride is hilly. Not mountainous, but certainly hilly.

I should probably throw in these mitigating factors: I'm fairly slow. I did a sprint tri on a nearly flat course in middle Georgia in August, averaged 18.3 mph on a wet course, could have gone a bit faster in the dry. On the other hand, this ride is in a busy suburban area, and there are probably close to 20 traffic lights on the route. I cross two state highways twice each, and probably lose a total of six minutes, more or less, to traffic lights and congestion. Since I'm not real fast, the 8 minutes is around a 9% improvement, not as significant as it would be to a faster rider.

Now, back to that question, is it bike or is it rider? I'm going to say the bike enabled the rider. Let's say I tried to do this ride on a fixie. I'd never make it up the climbs, and would have to get off and walk. Come to think of it, I'd have to be on the brakes on many of the descents as well, there's no way I could spin fast enough. Trying to do this ride on a fixie would add at least an hour to my time. I'd be fine on the section along the river and a few other places, but other than that, I'd be way slow. If I switched to a bike with gears, would that be bike or rider?

I do believe the biggest difference is the number of gears and the range they cover. On my steelie, I have to get up out of the seat and crank to get up the hills. On the carbon bike, I can stay seated and maintain a cadence. Once at the top of the hill, on the steelie, I've usually gone anaerobic and need to recover, while on the new bike, as soon as the hill flattens out, I'm grabbing another gear.

I do think the indexed shifting helps a little, too, though not nearly as much as gear availabilty. If it were super important, nearly all tri bikes would have indexed shifting, while at the current time, most don't. I suspect that will change in the next few years. Also, the bike being five pounds lighter does indeed help when going up, which is probably 40 percent of the ride, time wise.

Because of the reduced effort on the earlier climbs, I'm fresher at the end of the ride and can make that second climb up from the river with a lot more gusto. I have done a lot more running this summer than I ever have before, but it's been at the detriment of riding, which is even more reason that I think most of the improvement comes from the bike.

As I become more comfortable with the gears on the new bike, I'm confident more minutes will come off. Also, tri season is over and I'll have more time to ride, so who knows what I'll be able to get that time down to this fall.

FormerFF

I have to think that MapMyRide is calculating things very differently. It looks like you have three 140' +- climbs.

I congratulate you on seeking out the hills in the area, I never went looking. As a child I lived near West Dundee in Kane County, but all the roads there avoided the hills.

gaucho777 

Chrome Molly

Most tri bikes don't have indexed shifting?

FormerFF

None of the ones I've seen had, or at least used, indexed shifters. I assume that the indexing doesn't work well for the long cable runs that tri bikes use, with bar end shifters at the end of the aerobars.

There are a couple of indexed systems out there that should do the trick nicely, and with tri guys tending to be equipment happy anyway, I expect there won't be many friction shifted tri bikes around a few years from now.

catonec 

That 1984 trek doesnt owe you anything. You have had many many years of enjoyment from it. Unless you are financially strapped (and it cant be so bad otherwise it wouldnt be an option at all) Id say go for it!!

Im not saying spend 6k on a super bike but 2k will put you on a beautiful new ride that you will be proud to show-off to all your buddies.

Do you own a car??? is it 25 years old??? of course not! times change, things wear out and need/deserve to be replaced. consumable items are consumable.

keep your old trek. restore it to its original glory. ride it every now and then. But dont deny yourself the luxury of a shiney new, modern, probably superior, bicycle. yolo.

RobbieTunes

That must be regional. Definitely not in this area, on the actual TT/Tri bikes. SRAM dominates the high-dollar folks, especially with the "return to center" indexed shifters. Below that, the majority are on Shimano's 9sp and 10sp bar end shifting, definitely indexed. Very few are on Campagnolo bar end shifting, as few, if any shops carry it or can even set it up. Note also that this crowd doesn't do a lot of their own maintenance or setup.

There may be someone around here running friction bar ends, but I've not seen any. Heck, I didn't even know you could set some of those bar ends to friction. I had some DA bar ends, (with the warning on them about using the right RD) and can't recall even being able to move them to friction. I never checked the owner's manual, though, because they came used.

The only difference I've seen in bar end setups here are "up" or "down." Some riders like to mount the shifters to pull cable while pointing down, and some like them the opposite way. I once heard a triathlete say to another "your shifters are upside down," to which the other replied "show me the "up" side." Then they started looking all over their shifters, and both advised the other to "try it my way, see what happens." I doubt if either elected to unwrap, re-route, re-wrap just to satisfy curiosity.

As for the cable run affecting indexing, I must disagree. Thousands of riders run bar end shifters on drop bars, with a longer cable run, to no ill effects, and many do it with brake housing, not shifter housing. I've built about a half dozen tri-bikes and maintain about 5 for other people. It's never been an issue. My last build was a 9-sp with Sunrace DT shifters mounted on the aerobars, and they were dead-on accurate.
,

iab

Nope. All of them, map my ride, ride with gps, strava use the same data provided by the us government. I also have a map my ride account and the data is the same as ride with gps. I like ride with gps better because map my ride has way too many ads cluttering the screen.

Again, I am happy you broke your pr by 8 minutes. I wish you luck in breaking it by another 8 minutes. But its not about the bike. Its about you. Do your loop 200 times over the next year. Do loop 201 on the new bike and loop 202 on the old and tell us the time difference.

StanSeven

This statement isn't correct. I think you're seeing bar end shifters and assuming it's not indexed when it is. No good triathlete or time trial person would use friction shifting. In fact electronic shifting like Di2 is accepted as much, if not more, by the tri and tt community as the road riders.

FormerFF

The guys I talked to were still using friction shifting. It may be their personal preference. I see that all the new bikes come with indexed shifters and that some of them are no longer switchable.

That Di2 stuff has got to be the cat's meow for a tri or TT bike. Anything that lets them stay better in aero position has to be a good thing.

storckm

I bought a used Shogun about 5 years ago from a guy who used to ride it in triathlons. He had a new carbon fiber bike, but his wife told me he bought it because his friends used to laugh at his steel bike. She didn't mention any dramatic change in his speed, though.

StanSeven

That's probably it. A good many triathletes do one or two a year. If you've got an existing tri bike, it's difficult to justify a brand new bike based on use. Many of the older bikes did use friction setups and the people you talked with maybbe don't see a need to change

RobbieTunes

Well, at least with friction bar ends, you know they're probably paying attention to what their doing.

I don't know about other places, but around here,
it seems like the rider's brain often shuts down on the aero bars.

They seem oblivious to the road, other bikes, cars, you name it.
They wreck spectacularly, and fairly often.
I know it must hurt, but it's kind of funny, too.
We call it "racing to the scene of your next wipeout."

Six jours

An earlier poster kind of beat me to it, but it's worth pointing out that in the 80s, the TdF winners averaged 23.1 MPH, while in the 2000s, they averaged 25 MPH. Even ignoring better roads, shorter stages, and EPO, the bike just isn't worth 5 MPH.

So the OP either got fitter, has a better position on the new bike, or never figured out how to operate the old bike correctly.

FormerFF

I got a clarification on that friction shifting thing: They have the shifter for their front derailleurs set up as friction shifting. The shifter for the rear derailleur is indexed. That makes a lot more sense.

storckm

Of course, in pro-racing, various performance enhancing substances may have had something to do with the increase.

RobbieTunes

I agree. Their "programs" now encompass everything from aero to diet to sleep to tactics, all fed into computers and optimum decisions made. These guys know the watts it takes to pee. They get together in the off-season camps to develop strategies on riding, terrain, tactics, along with conditioning, bike setups, diet, body-mass indexes, recovery strategies, coordination of support and equipment, even just getting to and from the venues. The contending pro cyclists, these days, are managed machines, and often what separates them is their suffering psyche, and how their genetics react to their training regimen.

All other noise aside, riders like Armstrong and the top of the pack were competitive, driven beasts long before we knew who they were. They simply had the egines. Very early testing identified Contador's engine. Armstrong was killng 'em in 5K's and 10K's as a teenager. These engines were simply plugged into systems, and set upon bikes. The bike was the platform that displayed their considerable abilities to suffer, push themselves, and tactically dominate others on pretty much similar platforms.

What the guys in the 80's did, and into the 90's, was generate information that is now being used to make the entire peloton just under 8% faster. The bike is not the major factor in that 8%. Most team managers just don't want the bike to be the factor in not winning. Amateur cyclists tend to amplify that anxiety and make it bigger than it is.

I know where the blame for my lack of success in the TdF lies. It's definitely not my bike.

Six jours

Also worth noting that the increase in pro racing speed has been fairly linear since the 1920s. Even during times when bicycle technology has gone essentially unchanged, speeds still increased at about the same rate. Of course, the nature of wind resistance tells us that the 0.7 MPH increase from the 90s to the 2000s was a lot more significant than the 1.1 MPH increase from the 50s to the 60s, so I don't believe that bicycle technology has had no impact whatsoever. It's just that that impact is nowhere near what some people seem to think.

old's'cool

Robbie & Six, very interesting & plausible comments. Thanks for posting!

rhm

I don't race, and don't know anything about modern bikes (rode a century on a 1954 one yesterday) but I do know it's a good idea to do what my boss tells me to do, buy what he tells me to buy, and so on.

And I submit receipts for it all.

So I'd say, if the boss is buying, then yes, you need a new bike. Otherwise, not so much.

bobbyl1966

I put on my road bike bianchi strada lx wheels fulcrum racing 7 with 9 speeds cassete. And crank 53-39. That bike is weight around 27 pounds with two bottle water. My bike is can compete with new carbon fiber bikes if have the same setup?

RobbieTunes

Sure.