coasting 

good read. i disagree about clipless pedals.

Six jours

True story. Last night I washed down my hydrocodone with a pretty fair single malt. So when I logged on a few minutes ago and discovered I'd actually posted the damn thing, I was all ready to apologize and hide.

But it turned out to be a pretty funny thread. I mean, I still kind of wish it was someone elses thread, but hey, I'm getting a kick out of it anyway.

And yes, for anyone who's curious, I do consider 1910 the very best Tour de France ever. Now get off my lawn.

Psimet2001 

Oh... Nothing like a good, old fashioned retro grouch rant. Gauging from the names of posters...looks like its been a veritable emptying of the 50+ and vintage forum. It's seeing more traction than free senior coffee day at an AARP convention.

Nice to see we can still have a good thread on BF. lots of lunacy and good natured ribbing.

I sell wheels....of course. I'll be the first to tell you that no wheel will turn any racer into a winner. No bike will,etc. I love to say that I have never lost any race because I had too many spokes.

Some basics - straps and clips didn't go away and didn't become less popular because they didn't hold as well as clip less.....they became less popular because they were a PITA. I always had to ride around with one strap slightly loose because stopping to loosen them at every light or stop was a total waste. I didn't ride clip less because they were still new and really expensive. It was one of the first "upgrades" I bought. Far better.

Carbon....stronger, lighter, and actually easier to repair than aluminum frames for sure.

Anyone who even remote thinks that DT or barend shifters are even remotely On the same level as integrated shift levers is grossly under-informed. When you've been side by side with a 1 armed Paralympic gold medalist in races and your have to watch him jump all over just to get to his bar end shifter or hear him talk about how he lost a sprint or lost a wheel in a corner because he misjudged and was in the wrong gear....then you just simply won't get it. Yes, he runs Di2 now. When you physically see how difficult it truly is to use those shifters in comparison to an integrated lever....then if you still think the old ones are better then you're really just being difficult to be difficult.

Drivetrain and shifting improve,nets have been great, but IMHO that stopped with Da 7800. Di2 and EPS are great...sure....but out of mechanical.

What else....I'm sure there's more.

Oh yeah, most actual racers don't care much about gear outside of have a setup that's fun to use. It's usually those that 'race' their buddies on open roads on Tuesday nights that care about gear.

patentcad

Old bike crap blows.

Velo Vol 

We've got some old people here.

Six jours

Fair enough. When I was racing I usually had my straps loose for most of the day, and cranked them down just for the finish. I initially figured the new-fangled clipless stuff was for tourists, because the only real advantage was comfort and convenience. In a way that's still true, but of course clipless works just fine for pretty much any kind of racing. I won't argue that clips and straps are better in any way. I just point out that they aren't actually slower in a competitive situation.

Well, like I pointed out, LeMond won the '90 TdF with DT friction, even though several good riders were using STI (or whatever Shimano was calling it at the time.) Being in the right gear was just part of a good racer's skill set, and knowing how to be in the right gear kind of obviates the need for "emergency shifts" enabled by brifters. So I figure brifters allow less-skilled racers to go faster, but have no real effect on more-skilled racers. IOW, they might make a difference in a cat. 3 crit, but don't in the TdF. I certainly don't argue that DT and/or friction is better than brifters - just that it doesn't make much of a difference for skilled racers.

merlinextraligh

I'll Give you Mark Cavendish on a Columbus Sl frame with Campy NR, 36 spoke boxed rims, 1975 circa tires, dt friction 5 speed shifters.

You give me Tyler Farrer, C'dale Super Six Nano, Zipp 404's Di2, and i'll match you paychecks on the outcome of that.

Amesja

Try taking apart a set of brifters in the middle of nowhere in a bufu 3rd-world country at the side of the road. I'm not into single-speed bikes AT ALL.

I repair watches and clocks for fun, so a brifter doesn't scare me on my horology bench with the retention barriers to keep the small parts that sometimes shoot off from disappearing. But doign it at the side of the road is going to SUUUUUUUUCK.

While I agree that brifters are somewhat nicer than bar-ends for usability and especially racing (road or cx) in the real world they don't make that much of a difference. When it comes to durability/repairability they are MUCH worse than bar ends. The 8 & 9-speed bar ends can switch to friction if there is an issue. Tell me you can do that with brifters...

merlinextraligh

Isn't it past your bed time Grant?

I used to make that argument, circa, 1990. I got over it.

Amesja

LOL I'm a long ways from teh grahnt.

I love my eggbeaters and nice tight bike bibs.

merlinextraligh

Six Jours,

You raced in the day. So you bring a valuable perspective to this debate. And I even agree with you to the extent that the advantage of "modern" bike technology is overstated. Where we disagree is that I believe it's real, not imaginary, albeit limited.

My question is what perspective do you have on the other side of the equation? Have you raced a high end modern bike with a well enginereed CF frame, top end moderngroup , and deep sectioned rims?

Six jours

Really kind of meaningless, considering it's obviously never going to happen. Perhaps more meaningful are things that actually did happen, like the 1990 TdF. Or maybe Milan-San Remo, run over essentially the same course for decades, with remarkably consistent average speeds. If modern bikes are so much better than old ones, why was last year's average speed in Milan-San Remo almost exactly the same as the one in 1960?

merlinextraligh

^ 1) the course isn't the same.

2) you've got the confounder of drug,

3) race dynamics make comparing average speeds of mass start races fairly irreleveant. It's not a bout time, but who crosses the line first.

4) even controlling for drugs, tt speeds, which are not subject to the confounder of race dynamics are clearly ahead of 1960.

Six jours

No, I haven't. Toward the end of my career (and most of my subsequent coaching career) I focused on the track. In that capacity I rode some of the cutting edge bikes like the Hotta and Corima, and honestly thought they were kind of pointless. The Corima worked every bit as well as anything else, but cost three times more. The Hotta was a gigantic piece of ****. So that colors my opinion, obviously, as do the scars I still carry from sprinting on first generation clipless, which didn't hold well enough.

On the road, brifters were brand new as my road racing career was winding down. I tried them and thought they were a gimick. And as more riders started using them, I noted that I still beat the guys I usually beat, and still got beaten by the guys who usually beat me, regardless of shifters. As I recall, the only ones who thought the brifters were a huge advantage were the cat. 4s who were desperately looking for something. The rest of us just shrugged and said either "It's coming, so I might as well use it" or "What I've got works just fine so there's no reason to change".

rebel1916

Man, the only racing I've ever done is a few MTB races and a triathlon (well I was a decent motorcycle flat tracker, but that's neither here nor there) but comparing the first gen of a new technology to the fully evolved version of an old technology is kinda apples and oranges.

Six jours

Near enough.

Today's drugs are definitely better than what was available in the 60s. Seems like that should mean that Milan-San Remo would be way faster today. Are you arguing that modern bikes are even slower than the bikes from the 60s?

Sure. I made that point in the opening post.

Made that point too. But I'm not talking about TT bikes. I'm talking about the kind of road bike that shows up every week at countless road rides and races around the world. In that context, it's actually kind of hard to find solid evidence that today's bikes are any faster at all than grandpa's old steel 10 speed.

merlinextraligh

I agree with your basic premise. Yo can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Good riders are always going to prevail over weaker riders. And the equipment differences, at best make a marginal difference.

Where you lose it, is suggesting that 2013 bike technology makes no difference over 1950's, or even 1980's technology.

I think if you went out and gave a modern high end CF bike with a high end group, and deep sectioned CF tubulars a try, I think you'd be surprised.

Psimet2001 

Good thing I've never had to repair one, other than a Campy, which was super easy to repair, and that my "real world" includes racing road and cx. Come to think of it I have never had to repair a DT or bar end shifter either. Maybe I just don't ride enough or maybe I just take care of my gear and don't believe that riding it to failure is a badge of courage.

Dudelsack

I can make birds levitate, but no one seems to care.

So it has come to this.

Six jours

BTW, using the same website which hosts the Milan-San Remo results, you can look at many other races as well.

Note that that the 2012 average in the Tour of Lombardy was slower than the 1950 average. The 1976 Tour of Flanders was essentially the same speed as the 2012 version. And the fastest ever Paris-Roubaix was in 1964!

Those courses remain relatively unchanged over the decades, and of course it's perfectly valid to note that the vagaries of conditions, drugs, and mass-start racing have a huge effect on average speeds. But again, if the argument is that modern bicycles are tremendously faster than old ones, you'd think it'd show up in big races.

Bob Dopolina 

Bollocks.

If two equal riders are on a climb and one can change tempo on the other CONSTANTLY while always in the correct gear and the other has to sit to change gears the rider with DT shifter is going to be yo-yoing until they pop.

As a perfect example, I was in the middle of a hilly stage of a stage race when my shifting went wonky. I reached down (while on a screaming descent) and messed with my barrel adj until things improved but were by no means perfect. For the rest of the stage I could sometimes shift ok but often had to sit down and yank on the cable on my down tube to pull the der in place. In short I couldn't match shifts with the others in the group.

It got noticed and I got hammered because of it. Keep in mind I started racing with DT friction and can pick gears and double shift with one hand as well as anyone (a lost art, really)

Anyone claiming that STI is not a CLEAR and DISTINCT advantage in a competitive situation over DT shifters or even barcons should put down the tubular cement and open a window.

Psimet2001 

The racing comparisons are bunk. If you spend one ounce of energy more than you need to in order to cross the line in front of the next guy then you wasted energy. This is the difference between those old grey bearded TT only racers (and triathletes) and actual road/crit racers. The romantic notion of somehow being the fastest. It's never been about that. It's about being first.

Putting DT on LeMond at his peak comparing to lesser pros riding brand new integrated levers after racing on DT their whole careers is...well....silly.

Bob Dopolina 

Straw man commeth.

The average speeds of the TdeF have increased until they peaked a few years ago and have dropped back down to pre EPO levels.

A truer comparison would be TT speeds on the same course over the last few decades.

Who wants to do the google work on that one.

Six jours

It's actually kind of amusing to see folks claiming that faster bikes don't make for faster races.

As for the point that the TdF has been getting gradually faster, that's true. The fact that it is as true during years of technological stasis as it is during years of dramatic change is yet another bit of evidence. It's also worth noting that marathon speeds have been increasing at approximately the same rate, despite the fact that there is very little technology involved in marathoning. I think it's likely that improvements in sports physiology and training techniques (and perhaps doping, the existence about which I have no idea in marathoning) are much more responsible for increased speeds (in the instances where speeds have actually gone up) than brifters and ceramic bearings.

Bob Dopolina 

1964 had a TAILWIND and only 22km of cobbles.

Roll. Of. Eyes.