Le Tour and Comments

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 1:58:16 AM UTC-7, incredulous wrote:
‘One sneeze and you lose more time that a 15 lb bike would save you on a 16 lb bike. ‘

Yeah, ask Froome about the cost of clearing his nose, anticipating and obviating a sneeze.

“"It sounds like he was at the foot of the descent," Brailsford told Cycling News. "It's obviously very gusty today and he took his hands off the bars to blow his nose and the wind has taken his front wheel. He's hit a wall at 60km/h or something like that."�

In the Tour preview yesterday it showed Bob Roll pre-riding a section of the next stage. There was a very narrow extremely high speed descent. It seemed clear to me that if a man could get away as Julian Alaphilippe did that the peloton would get in their own way and that a solo breakaway would have a clear shot at a solo win. And that is what happened.

The rider in the peloton with that helmet cam sure showed how damned scary that descent was as they were hitting 60 mph. Good thing there were no falls there.

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 2:54:17 PM UTC-5, Tom Kunich wrote:

In today's Tour they showed people getting "flats" fixed. Only they weren't messing around with the wheels - they were playing with the electronic shifting rear derailleurs. I saw two including Valverde - the World Champion - whom one would assume had the most attention paid to it.


Pros crash frequently. In crashes derailleurs get moved and shifting will suffer. I suspect all of the flat fixes you saw were really riders who had crashed previously and were not getting replacement bikes several minutes and miles down the road when the team car could get to them. In races you cannot sit on the side of the road waiting. You have to keep moving if your bike will allow it.

I sometimes adjust my gearing during rides. Stop and turn the rear derailleur cable tension screw one notch. Then ride a few miles and decide it was actually better before. So I stop again and turn the adjuster back to original. I suspect pros do the same thing. They think their shifting is bad or there is some other problem. Mechanics come by and try to fix it by hanging out the window. Or pretend to fix it. Or exchange bikes with the rider. Mechanic gets bike back to the truck in the evening and does the normal cleaning and nothing else. Because there is nothing wrong with the bike.. Its all just made up by the rider. Ever watched a pro race where the mechanic hangs out the car window and adjusts the saddle height by one tenth of one millimeter? I have. Its utter nonsense this would make any difference. Or anyone would notice. The mechanics do it because the pro rider wants the attention. Nothing is fixed or adjusted. You also see pros getting a new bike automatically if they were at all involved in a crash or something. Does not matter if the bike is malfunctioning or not. They automatically get a new bike.

On Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 9:18:05 AM UTC-5, jbeattie wrote:
On Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 3:51:56 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Tuesday, July 9, 2019 at 12:00:31 AM UTC+2, Tom Kunich wrote:
The comments that are going along with the Tour do not seem to be very strongly connected to reality. The first stage sprint hardly shows anything that the end results of Tour are going to be. Sagan did not look good. He looked worse today. But his strong point is that he is capable of staying up with the pack in the hills and most sprinters aren't. And he is capable of blasting a sprint after he gets into the Tour while others appear to slow down.

The Team Time Trial had only something like a minute and a half or two between all of the teams and that gives you a pretty good idea of how close we can expect the competition.

Tiny differences such as the rolling resistance of the tubeless tires vs tubulars do make a difference at this level. What's more, now that the racing is so close, the problem with a tubular having a flat is problematic.. So the value of a tubeless tire would be the absence of flat tires.

With the disk brakes and consequential 10 mm axles you can hardly expect to change wheels for a flat anymore so they are now changing bikes. The neutral support car is providing bikes that may be totally unfamiliar whereas in the past there was very little difference bike to bike.

To repeat an engineering problem with disk brakes, the forces applied on the frameset by disks are in the worst possible place. At the end of the fork and at the end of the thinnest end of the stay. It also adds weight further out on the extremities though I doubt that makes any difference Also there is no way to really make these disks aero and slicing slots in them to lighten them up causes aero turbulence themselves. And they are especially dangerous in crashes especially after hard braking since they have lower radius and lower contact area making them red hot and sharp edged.

Last year or the year before when I contacted one of the mechanics he said that the reason that they were using tubulars instead of clinchers or tubeless was because they could change tires on the go inside the team car.. Well, the consequences of a flat now are too large so tubeless tires apparently are becoming more attractive.

Another problem is apparently showing up. The electronic shifting is on virtually every bike in the Peloton. But these things are not in the least reliable. On a ride with a guy that always has the latest and greatest, he had Di2 and said that the battery was supposed to last a week. Yet his shifting failed in less than an hour. You can manually move the rear derailleur into an appropriate gear so you can get home - but there goes the ride. Not to mention a race.

My friend says that those people standing by the side of the road reportedly for flats are instead there because of the failure of the electronic shifting. I thought it a bit unusual since they weren't looking at a tire as most do when they have a flat. So I guess he was right.

One thing to remember is that they still have a UCI weight limit though all of the components are getting lighter. This gives the builder the ability to make heavier framesets. It appears that Specialized and Cannondale have gone this route and Trek has not. Trek is presently making the lightest frameset on the market that is mass produced. Oddly enough they offer these spectacularly light framesets under a variety of groupsets so that you CAN get one of these quite cheaply. Trek's email to me showed a $3,000 version I think with Tiagra on it. That is a Chinese level of Shimano. I didn't have any particular problems with that groupset when I tried it but since it is on the cheap end of the Shimano production I would worry about the reliability of it. And buying higher end stuff later is considerably more expensive.

The advantage of Trek is the lifetime warranty. So you don't have to worry about it if you buy it in your 20's and keep it for the rest of your life. But most people "move up" and seldom keep a bike very long unless you're like the non-riders commenting on .tech who have bicycles from the middle of the last century.

Having looked into Graphene rather than mentioned its name this stuff is not going to radicalize carbon fiber bikes though it could make it less prone to failure via tearing. The material itself is very difficult to manufacture in sheets of any significant size so most things labeled with "graphene" have particle-like small flakes like your skin peeling after a sunburn.

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 2:16:20 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 2:54:17 PM UTC-5, Tom Kunich wrote:

In today's Tour they showed people getting "flats" fixed. Only they weren't messing around with the wheels - they were playing with the electronic shifting rear derailleurs. I saw two including Valverde - the World Champion - whom one would assume had the most attention paid to it.


Pros crash frequently. In crashes derailleurs get moved and shifting will suffer. I suspect all of the flat fixes you saw were really riders who had crashed previously and were not getting replacement bikes several minutes and miles down the road when the team car could get to them. In races you cannot sit on the side of the road waiting. You have to keep moving if your bike will allow it.

I sometimes adjust my gearing during rides. Stop and turn the rear derailleur cable tension screw one notch. Then ride a few miles and decide it was actually better before. So I stop again and turn the adjuster back to original. I suspect pros do the same thing. They think their shifting is bad or there is some other problem. Mechanics come by and try to fix it by hanging out the window. Or pretend to fix it. Or exchange bikes with the rider. Mechanic gets bike back to the truck in the evening and does the normal cleaning and nothing else. Because there is nothing wrong with the bike. Its all just made up by the rider. Ever watched a pro race where the mechanic hangs out the car window and adjusts the saddle height by one tenth of one millimeter? I have. Its utter nonsense this would make any difference. Or anyone would notice. The mechanics do it because the pro rider wants the attention. Nothing is fixed or adjusted. You also see pros getting a new bike automatically if they were at all involved in a crash or something. Does not matter if the bike is malfunctioning or not. They automatically get a new bike.

If you crash a CF bike they are replaced period. Please don't invent a world you would like to live in and present that as fact.

On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 2:23:24 PM UTC-7, wrote:

My Shimano Di2 7970 battery last 2-3 YEARS between recharges. YEARS!!!!!

I suppose if you never ride, a battery can last a long time. According to https://tempocyclist.com/2016/02/02/di2-battery-life/ "From a 100% charged starting point, the indicator light on my system changed from solid green to blinking green at 750 miles (1200km). I do change gear quite often, but not so much on the front which requires more battery power. After 1030 miles (1650km) the indicator light changed to solid red."

While I presently have about 2000 miles I would normally have 4,000 after the 7 months and since I'm riding fast I'm probably shifting more than this reporter.

But I actually only have about three months of riding about 3 to 4 times a week. That looks like I would have had to completely recharge the battery twice.

Exactly how is it that you're getting 2-3 years?