Forum Replies Created
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Do you mind if ask but.. did
Do you mind if ask but.. did you not like them because you were ‘comfortable’ with rim brakes and thought the discs were ugly , or because you thought they weren’t good brakes ? Your bike so your choice, but just interested.
andyp wrote:No. 73,
No. 73, Uppermill. And doppio espresso is for girls. Quadruplo ristretto is the way forward.Water in coffee is for the weak and needy. Like grinding the beans.
Like water in coffee, i’ve
Like water in coffee, i’ve often felt that milk in chocolate should be included minimally if done at all.
Sanderville wrote:Doesn’t the
Doesn’t the first B in BBC stand for British? Shouldn’t the “British” TV company that I am forced by law to pay for be showing me how well our British cyclists are doing, as opposed to how a bunch of American, Swiss, and I-don’t-care-who-the-fuck-else tennis players are managing to break a mild sweat on tennis courts around the world while managing to maintain the same cast of characters without ever resorting to EPO?To sum up, what the fuck is wrong with this country?
Dunno – perhaps it’s over-filled with foul mouthed, narrow minded pseudo-Nationalists with an over-inflated opinion of their own particular favourite sport, who believe the world owes them a favour and should pander to their every whim. Perhaps.
Would be nice to have more cycling of course….
ajmarshal1 wrote:Loads of
Loads of people have kitchen scales. Not many people have powers meters. Low volume = high cost.I know, that’s why I mentioned manufacturing scale, but there are also manufacturers who can do shorter runs that still don’t cost proportionally more. The cost of applying a strain gauge network for a power meter appears to be many more times that from a commercial unit – at least from comments from power meter company staff i’ve heard over the years, although clearly they would wish to emphasise the high quality, hand-nibbled lovelyness of it all.
(edit) Just to clarify – it’s always going to be more expensive than a kitchen scale, but I didn’t say it should be the same price just that it should cost proportionally less than it does at the moment and that some of the cost could probably be removed if the enhancements for extra accuracy – which are not necessarily needed by most – were not included. Just Good Enough should be cheaper even modulo pricing structures.
bashthebox wrote:Power meters
Power meters are a massive racket, aren’t they? It’s a strain gauge and an ANT+ transmitter…. and apparently that’s worth 700 quid or so. I reckon at some point someone like Decathlon’ll come along and do one for under a hundred quid.
I really, really want one though.They can be over-priced – especially if you just want “good enough” power readings – but they’ll still hard to get accurate, consistent and cheap. If you’ve not already seen it, I recommend looking back at the work Keith Wakeham did with DIY power meters (and the jolly good ANTRide sensor) before he went to 4iiii.
It does seem odd that strain gauge-based kitchen scales can be produced for buttons but we still don’t have a bargain basement power meter to match. Accuracy is nice to have, but not essential to the n’th decimal point, but consistency is a must have. Part of the lack of cheap power meters inevitably is pricing (IIRC there’s a good discussion about that in the first 4iiii Precision article from Ray Maker), part of it manufacturing scale, R&D and so on – and part of it the extra precision and consistency they’re trying to get.
An example of that last one is the use of accelerometers to help with calculating/estimating the crank angle and true angular velocity at various parts in the pedal cycle rather than estimates over a full or (guessed) half cycle using a cadence sensor or similar. The underlying technology is still cheap but it needs to be researched, tested, calibrated, integrated, made robust etc etc….
At the moment 4iiii seem to have the current best bang for your buck in that a single-sided power meter is now under 300 quid – and it’s upgradeable to dual-sided. Watteam may get their dual-sided one out for under ÂŁ 400, which seems good value if it works – so it’s still on the way down with room to go lower, but understandably no-one wants to sprint straight to the bottom just yet, they’ll get there in end though. It’s already a completely different world to only a couple of years ago.
There will always be a market for things like SRM and InfoCrank – but like you, I look forward to the day when we can get hold of a “kitchen scale” accuracy power meter that’s consistent enough to be useful. No, we’re not there yet – but we’re not a million miles away either… anyway, that’s my take on it which may have bugger all to to with reality 🙂
pablo wrote:The 4iii system
The 4iii system is speed play only which could be a problem. Speed play pedals seem pretty expensive (on wiggle at least ÂŁ80) i’ve got two bikes and am looking to get a third so would be expensive to change system. If DC Rainmaker gives any cheap power meter a good review i will probably sign up.The 4iiii Precision is a crank arm power meter with a DIY fixing kit – much of the dev of it was down to Keith Wakeham (he of the DIY power meter) who 4iiii hired. Ray Maker also has (had ?) a 10% discount code for them which was working towards the end of last year – no idea about now. His review of a pre-release version is here
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/09/4iiiis-introduces-precision.html
Started to use a couple of
Started to use a couple of winters ago for injury recovery, as I couldn’t ride unsupported, and now actually look forward to it (as best one can). The sheer number of rides can look somewhat daunting but I find the design, choice and depth of plans to be very good.The desktop application is very good – easy to use, robust and improving – and the work-out editor started out pretty good and has got a lot better over the last year or so.
Video integration is excellent. I use a few (RideFit, Epic, Cyclocore) but by far my favourite is The Sufferfest and the Tour of Sufferlandria is coming up in a few weeks which is good craic with or without the visuals (9 days of indoor ‘racing’).
As you can drop in and out of TrainerRoad and retain your training history it’s a doddle to only use it when you want but I tend to use it randomly throughout the year so go for the yearly sub, YMMV.
I’d be tempted to give it a whirl, the training options are excellent, the support is top-notch, the subscription is cheap and flexible and the USB ANT+ stick is cheap – and you could always use with another online training setup if TR isn’t your thing or re-sell it.
Colin Peyresourde wrote:Buy a
Buy a wheel and tyre. It makes it so much easier.Whole-heartedly agree with this. If your LBS can’t help, you should be able to pick up a cheap rear wheel from eBay, bikeradar, gumtree etc quite easily especially as it doesn’t need to have much left on the brake track (beyond structural integrity).
Dave Atkinson wrote:Royal1664
It’s actually a non drafting race so I was just a little concerned as there are three main downhill sections ranging from 10-22km descending up to 12%. How do you work out the ratios for speed? I was tempted to take the TT bike for the top end speed but the climbing would be extreme!! Climbs- Gotthard pass, Furka pass and Grimsel passyour time descending a pass has very little to do with your biggest gear. it’s much more governed by your lines and your braking.
once you get into the valleys there’s often a flattish-but-downhill section, although i don’t know this route myself. if there is you could conceivably lose some time there, although you’ll need to be averaging well above 30mph to get anywhere near spinning out a 50/12.
Absolutely – here’s the figures for the OP if you’re wondering
Speed (km/h)
Gear 45 50 55 60 65 70
50x11 78 87 95 104 113 121
50x12 85 95 104 114 123 133
(courtesy of http://www.bikecalc.com/cadence_at_speed)
mrmo wrote:Jimmy Ray Will
How hot will a disk get from that single heavy application? Not sure.not sure, but there are documented cases of the aluminium cores of Shimano Ice-tech rotors melting, so it must be possible to get the rotors HOT.
Yes it’s staggeringly easy to get them bloody hot, especially giving it beans – or in my case Off-road Death Grip Of Fear – downhill. That said the newer rotors in particular (e.g. Freeza) are supposed to shed heat very quickly.
flobble wrote:The place to
The place to start is with a question: “fitter/faster/better for what specifically?” Unless you know where you want to go, there’s little chance you’ll find the best way to get there.Agreed, but to be fair the OP did mention broadly what they want to achieve – OK on the hills, wants to develop more speed on the flats (presumably for a reasonable period of time). It’s not nailed down, true, but sounds like they have rough idea which direction to start in and what training plan goals might make sense for them.
Royal1664 wrote:So the
So the decision is basically choose the 12-30 so that the 4400m of climb will be easier on the legs by allowing a higher cadence, but losing a little top end speed on the long descents. Over the 11-28 top end speed which I assume would be a minimal gain as I would be spinning out regardless of the gearing, but suffer more on the climbs!Sounds a fair assessment to me – for me, one implies a little more suffering but with no bail-out, the other a marginal gain when it’s not really needed. I’d go for the more enjoyable option myself which might let you appreciate the surrounding a wee bit more 🙂
bigshape wrote:i’d go
i’d go equilibrium disc 10 for ÂŁ1099
only box it doesn’t tick on your list is 105 gruppo…re: planet x – they charge a 10% admin fee depending on what scheme you’re on.
That might because, depending on what scheme you’re on, the scheme charges that ‘admin’ fee (mine charged 10%) all of which are frankly extortionate IMO. From the Planet-X website (http://www.planetx.co.uk/cycle-scheme).
An admin fee of 10% applies with cyclescheme.co.uk, On Your Bike and Bike2work vouchers, as well as Salary Extras. A 12% fee applies with Cycle Plus vouchers and a 12.5% fee applies with the NHS SME HCI scheme.All of these third-party organisations charge us a fee on each bike we supply to a customer for administering the scheme on behalf of your employer. We pass this exact charge on to you without adding anything extra ourselves because our pricing is too low to absorb it. The additional charge DOES NOT APPLY if an employer is paying us directly for the bike.
David Arthur wrote:Plus, you
Plus, you can easily make up your own interval sessions, you don’t need an app or website. Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, 30secs on/30secs off are a good one, or you could do 1min on/30secs off, or 5mins on and 2mins off.You can make up your own but, especially when starting out, I believe that using a subscription service like TrainerRoad is a better bet. Once you know what you’re doing a bit more, then maybe that’s the time to roll your own – but using TrainerRoad as an example, there are quite of number of training plans, some of which are targeted at what the OP is looking to do, which have already had the workouts and rest days mapped out and are all free once you have a subscription. At $10 / month that seems worth looking at at the very least (you can discontinue it at any time, your data and progress are saved and available if you decide to re-start it).
One thing to bear in mind with doing your own plan/intervals is that it only costs nothing if you don’t value your time. It is good to do some yourself IMO, i’ve done a few that reflect a very particular requirement, but i’m not convinced it’s necessarily worth it when you’re starting out.
Of course if you’re taking it seriously you probably want to speak to a coach and get a plan in place, based on the results of a ramp testThat’s nice but I think there’s a useful point between someone repeating a couple of Tabata drills over and over again when they think you should and hiring a coach 🙂 Something like TrainerRoad or one of the other paid/free online resources that use virtual power (or equivalent, assuming no power meter here) could be efficient and cost-effective in terms of time, monetary cost and (quite importantly) performance benefits.