In article said:Yepper, gave up the "stupid light" quest, myself, 6 years ago. Never been happier cycling. People
now marvel and ask me how I can ride a bike with 36 spoke wheels!
Edward Kleinbard said:The August issue of the French cycling magazine Le Cycle has an interesting article on the
weights of the bicycles used in the Tour de France. One point that the article makes is that the
average weight of the bikes in the Tour declined by roughly one pound from 2002 to 2003 (from
8.14kg to 7.72kg), due to the increasing carbonization of so many components, and lighter
frames. To me, however, the even more interesting fact is that the bikes used by the pros in the
most important road cycling event of the year varied in weight, from lightest to heaviest, by
1.5kg -- 3.3 pounds! (The 2002 Tour bikes had exactly the same range of weights.) Yes of course
the USPS Treks were among the lightest, but the Bianchi ridden by one of Jan Ullrich's teammates
was 800 grams heavier, and a Pinarello Dogma ridden by a Team Telekom rider was one of the
heaviest (at 8.4kg -- 18.5lbs).
All of which suggests to me that if the top pros in the world can compete at the highest levels
on bicycles with these sorts of disparities in weight, maybe I can retire the postage scale and
not worry about saving a few grams (at tremendous cost) with the latest carbon this or that
component.
I would be interested in the reactions of others.
Well, first off, once they get to the mountains, I think you'll find every rider on a sub-7 kg bike,
near the minimum weight.
For the flat stages, the weight just doesn't make a lot of difference, and reliability does. In TT
stages, aero trumps everything.
Various sites offer reasonably accurate formulae that describe how much difference weight makes on a
hill climb. When you're talking about a pound, it has to be a very long or very steep hill for the
difference to be worth troubling about.
My race bike's fighting weight is a relatively porky 22 pounds. Since I started riding it earlier
this year, I've lost about 15 pounds, and the process that got my weight down made me faster beyond
just the weight loss. I plan to lose another 6-9 pounds (see what happens and when my gut
disappears) before stopping.
If, on the other hand, I take weight out of my bike, I might be able to modify it to be a pound or
two lighter at considerable expense, or replace it with a bike 5 pounds lighter at ludicrous
expense. Anything less is probably in stupidlight territory. I have no intention of even thinking
about a bike replacement until I'm at my goal weight, and even then I'll probably just work on some
better training techniques and at least one category upgrade before I change bikes. Why? I have a
low budget, and exercising is nearly free. Light bikes are not.
For "non-optimized" riders, it basically makes no sense (except as a diverting hobby) to spend what
it costs to go from a fairly heavy road bike (say 20-22 pounds) to a fairly light (17-19 lbs.) bike.
For a well-trained racer with no body weight to lose, A bike change might be the easiest way to
improve climbing performance. Maybe.
Tour riders mostly ride what they get paid to ride. When that impedes performance, they "cheat",
mostly by using equipment from one company labelled with their sponsor's logo.
What you can see on the tour is that virtually nobody engages in sponsor-spoofing on the flat
stages. The riders ride bikes made by their sponsors, though in some cases with custom fitting
unavailable to mere mortals (I think some of the Bianchi riders have frame sizing you and I could
not request). But when the mountains hit, sponsor-spoofing becomes quite common. This is where
riders break out their super-light custom jobs, sometimes built by their sponsor, sometimes only
stickered by their sponsor. Similar things happen on the TT stages, where Cervelo was one popular
frame that until this year frequently made cameo appearances under another maker's label. This time
they got star billing as the CSC frame sponsor.
So we can take from this that frame weight doesn't matter to the pros very much except when it does
(in the mountains), and when it does, they want their bikes to be an extra bit lighter.
--
Ryan Cousineau, [email hidden] sfu.ca~rcousineOpen ↗ President, Fabrizio Mazzoleni Fan Club
