In article <[email hidden]>,
Kraig Willett said:"Tim McNamara" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:I think you're micro-focusing on something that is inconsequential.
When do performance gains become consequential for you, Tim? 1%, 10%, 50%? The number you give
will help put your comments into a better perspective for those reading.
For me personally? Don't know when those gains become consequential- I no longer race so performance
is really not a personal issue any more. OTOH I have a lot more fun on my bike than I did in the 10
years I raced and that's far more important to me. For me, nowadays, "performance" is evaluated
differently and "performance gains" are more related to comfort and endurance than speed. I can ride
400 km in about 18 hours without too much trouble, having gotten into doing brevets this year. So
the yardstick I use to evauate things currently is different than it was.
When I was racing, performance gains would have been evaluated on a cost-benefit basis. If a 1% gain
cost $1000, I wouldn't have bothered. For a 1% or 2% gain to have been worth chasing, I would have
had to have been convinced that I could not make any further gains by doing something like losing
weight or a better training structure. Very few riders- and probably no non-professionals IMHO- are
anywhere near the upper limits of their potential fitness and physical performance. IMHO it makes
sense to maximize my fitness and abilities- which is cheap- rather than spend beaucoup bucks on
stuff which will in all likelihood provide equivocal gains at best.
I see a lot of guys at bike races riding bikes that look like they were cobbled together out of a
dumpster who kick the asses of guys riding $8,000 worth of wonderbike. Speed is not really for sale,
and neither is race smarts.
