"Experts"
 

Remember when we all knew 700x20 tires at 130 psi was the fastest? Apparently now we aren't even sure if 35's are any slower than 28's.

Remember all those amazing theories about crank length being a percentage of leg length yielding 200mm plus cranks for tall people? Nope, everyone on 165's now.

Knee over center of axle?
axle centered under ball of foot?
easy gears are for unfit amateurs?
Wide rims are for mountain bikes?
hookless are better than hooked rims?
Lightweight bikes make you go faster ?
etc, etc, etc

So, how much of current trendy cycling expertise is also BS?

I hate BS.

I have devoted my whole life to hone my BS detector so I can smoke them out at first sight.

But still, I am not so naive to call everything BS.

The heart of the problem is, there are assumptions, caveats, exceptions being applied in making a claim, any claim!

If one is not aware of those fine print and just apply whatever is being told to them wholesale without any modification or discerning thought, that's when the issue arises. When that happens, we jump to conclusion too quickly and call it BS.

Nope, it's not BS, it's just partially true or correct.

The best answer is still: it depends. :D

I rely on experience more than anything else.

I know what tires work best for me, I know how to fit myself on a bike, and i know how much more i like low gears getting up a hill rather than grinding a big gear.

The good news for me is nobody is paying me to ride a bike, or to be fast or win races (that would be wasted money!), so I don't feel compelled to listen to experts, I just do what I like.

It kind of feels like some of these trends are way out on a precipice right now and recommendations are extreme right now.

So maybe lots of BS right now too.

Also I think we are quite often to accept the new BS cause it's different than the old BS and it provides a justification to buy something new and shiny.

Pretty sure I never thought 120psi was ever a good idea and I'm not sure I could have even run 20c tires without being out of the tire pressure limits.

Not all of those are BS, strictly speaking. Some of them are over-simplifications, mis-understandings, or simply what the best available evidence tells us.

Our understanding of things is constantly evolving and changing. Largely this happens as new evidence become available. What we know to the best of our knowldge today may be different than it was yesterday, and may be different from what it will be tomorrow. But that doesn't mean that it is strictly BS.

When I was in school, we were told that the dinosaurs were extinct and that Pluto was a planet. Now we are told that not all dinosaurs are extinct and that Pluto is not a planet.. Were we just being told BS back then?

Well, your statement that everyone is on 165s now is BS. :no: But maybe it's not trendy. :p

I don't know what I'll be doing differently in 10-20 years. I do think that we have much better performance metrics than we did in the past, so in general cycling trends are now much more likely to be "actually fast" whereas in the past they were more likely to be "feels fast."

But there are also a lot of situations where one type of equipment is faster in one environment than another, but the race is a mix of environments. The decisions people make may genuinely depend on the choices of other people. As an example, in a road race, a heavier aero bike might be faster than a lightweight climbing bike if you were to ride the course solo. But if everyone else is on lightweight climbing bikes, and you choose an aero bike, you could get dropped on the climb and lose the draft making you slower overall.

On top of that, there are also areas where technological development in one area opens up new developments in another area. Wide range 1x drivetrains have made new suspension designs viable that weren't before. Dropper posts have made geometries viable that weren't before.

Surely there's a lot of "fashion" to the cycling industry, and things change slowly over time, but it's also true that designing and developing new products is costly, and may not always be successful, so it may take a lot time to transition to new technological trends that could be considered objectively better.

But that's all abstract. If I am going to call out one thing, it's that teams/bikes should actually go much further on the wider tires and suspension thing, BUT with a big caveat. In the past, that's always been focused on the leaders, but the leaders are the ones who are worried about surviving onto the velodrome. My take is that for Paris Roubaix, it's the scrubs of the peloton who should be on 45mm tires with short travel bikes. Those are the guys who are unlikely to every make it to the velodrome with the lead group, but they are likely to get dropped on the cobbles. But TdF tech always seems to flow from the leaders down. I think that one is a mistake. Van der Poel can ride the cobbles fine on anything, but the half the peloton who are likely to DNF could use some more help.

There's so much stuff where we take really really precise recommendations for granted but then in the real world most of us have very little ability to repeatably actually do things accurately.

Things as simple as setting your saddle height and setback correctly assuming you actually have #s are actually challenging at home.

[QUOTE=AngryScientist;3368583]I rely on experience more than anything else.

I know what tires work best for me, I know how to fit myself on a bike, and i know how much more i like low gears getting up a hill rather than grinding a big gear.

The good news for me is nobody is paying me to ride a bike, or to be fast or win races (that would be wasted money!), so I don't feel compelled to listen to experts, I just do what I like.

Bicycletricycle,

You make some very good points. What was true 20 years ago, is no longer. But, how do we know that what we accept now as being true will be in 20 more years? Maybe it will be back to the old truths, or something else completely - If so, what does that say about truth? Is truth fluid?

About cycling, I like what Nick said here, and I pretty much go with that also.

Dave

I ride 165's

My experience is that size 41.5 shoes are the optimal shoe size.

Lots of pros used to slam their saddles back and now many slam them forward.

Truth is a big word . The main problem seems to be that we just aren’t as smart as we think we are. Truth is mostly out of reach.

Seems like we can know some things for sure about cycling though.

1. Simple facts , how much things weigh, dimensions, rigidity, material attributes , who won the race, etc. These things are interesting to know but don’t always mean much about the actual activity of cycling.

2. Our own experience- we can know how we feel about cycling , this is probably the most important thing we can know about cycling.

Everything else seems to get a bit too complicated though. When we ask more complex questions about cycling we run into a lot of snags. Examples.

What is a riders ideal crank length?
How stiff should a bicycle be?
What is the best material for a fork?
Are 1x drivetrains better than 2x ?
What causes bicycle shimmy?
Best place to put load on a bicycle?
Are recumbents better than uprights?
Wool or synthetic?
Ideal width of tire for riding on smooth roads?
Ideal pedaling RPM?

Absolute answers to these seem out of reach for a whole variety of reasons. Certainly we can know some things about all this stuff, even come up with some pretty useful conclusions. 50 years from now our answers may all seem kinda stupid though.

For me the lesson is just that we should all take it easy, especially the experts. None of us know as much as we would like to think we do.






[QUOTE=dcama5;3368594]

When I bought the Open last year, I converted my disc Boyd Altamont wheels from QR to TA. The Altamont wheels were my "road" wheels for the gravel bike. The gravel wheels are XMR hubs with QR, and WTB I-23 rims. I looked around the internet for QR disc wheels and the pickings are slim. The best option besides custom looks like Boyd. Thru axles have assimilated the wheel world.

I still have the QR caps for the Boyd hubs along with a HG freehub.

I'm an expert on this as well so let me chip in:

Bikes with integrated cables are dramatically faster than bikes with exposed cables. Also maintenance is much easier on those than exposed cables. I learned it from bike manufacturers' website so it must be true. Again, I'm an expert on this.

If you live in Arizona, Pluto is still a planet. ;)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arizona...-not-a-planet/

Knowledge and truth are always an approximation, hopefully with every revision, getting closer to an unreachable absolute.

At least, that's how I view science. It's never static, always subject to change, as it should be.

In our little world, crank length has evolved and not in a vacuum, either. When Indurain won the Tour in the 90's on 180mm cranks, what was the lowest gear most pro racers (on Campy) had? Maybe 42-24? Somewhere in that range? So the longer levers maybe made sense for a 6-2 rider.

And now, along with shorter cranks, we have much much lower gear ranges to work with, so there's no reason for ever dropping down to 50-60rpm cadences like back in the old days. (Watch the video of Merckx in the 70's in the Giro - the cadences of them climbing are painful to watch, with their whole body rocking.)

So I'm not gonna worry about experts and the like. I'll take current trends as useful bits to consider, and some work well. As far as 120 psi and 20mm tires, that may still be the way to go on a banked wooden oval track.

Yes, that was BS you got taught and the current crop of “facts” has a lot of BS in it as well. We don’t have very many facts at all about dinosaurs so most of the info we think we have is just guessing. Similar situation with planets.

Experts like to turn their guessing into facts but it is a bad habit. We should be more honest about what we actually know.

Time flies like the wind.

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Fruit flies like :banana:

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Thank Zuess we don't believe everything today that we did back then.

It's called progress.

You live. You learn. You bleed. You learn. You live, you live you learn.. a-woooooo.

:beer:

A very smart member of my thesis committee told me during my defense (after I took a pretty strong position on a point that had not been investigate much at that point), be careful what you draw a line in the sand on, that is unless you are prepared to eat crow when someone else finds strong evidence to the contrary.

with most everything these days, the only thing I go with is what feels right and is comfortable.

A true expert knows the limits of their knowledge, and accepts that what is known in any field is subject to change. That's why they start all their statements with phrases like "to the best of our knowledge" or "what is currently believed is". But many in the general public want absolute "truths", and instead seek out "pseudo experts" who will give them the absolute truths they seek. When those "absolute truths" turn out to be wrong, who then is to blame?

And mixed metaphors exhibit hybrid vigor.

Most of the things you note, does not look to me like experts giving their expertise. But rather people, or a bunch of people somewhat in agreement, giving their opinions.

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.

Experts
 

I recall an article a few years back about bike fitting. This fellow went to 5 or 6 "super expert" fitters. A lot of $ spent, but it was for the article. I am no expert at reading numbers but all of them came out with different fit numbers for his bike set up. Yet the common approach is "you HAVE to go to a fitter."

Read a bit and you find there are these different approaches to fitting. Add in each fitter's subjectivity.

I concluded - do what is comfortable for you, experiment a bit. Consider the cost involved and what you want to spend (rim vs. disc, tire size, etc ). And be at peace.

The problem in recent times is that many of the experts are employees of the marketing department.

Add "aero" to the list.

I see very few “to the best of our knowledges”


We have very limited, possibly no access to truth. This means our “truths” will always turn out wrong or at least incomplete.

Nobody needs to be blamed for that.

The problem is when people are misled or bullied by overconfident “experts”. We should all recognize the limits of our own knowledge and knowledge in general

A reminder, 65 psi 700x35 tires are no slower than 120 psi 23s. We were all
amazingly wrong.

Bicycle fit is weird, seems to be a strange mix of superstition and fashion.

The way people talk about / obey their bike fit….. well, just strange. Certainly they know some stuff but it ain’t a science, it’s barely an art.

I was talking to a bike builder who built a bike for a customer, they rode it around and liked it, then went to get a fit, the guy told him he couldn’t get the bike to fit him so he sold it. Well, what can you say.

First up my rules are that fit is the most important thing if you want to go fast. If your fit is correct then you are comfortable and can push your bike fast and sustain it.

2nd I too at 6 foot tall went to 165’s and like it. I converted all my bikes and went shorter on the gravel and mtb but 170mm.

I like my 5000S at 25mm which when I measure with my calipers and once stretched are really 27mm. Never went wider on the road and don’t plan to unless I am not comfortable. Do ride 83 psi front and 79 psi rear. Lower pressure definitely helps.

My favorite was: “You can climb anything with a compact 11-32”.

Cycling had to invent a whole new genre (gravel) to justify what should be fairly obvious: when climbing, lower gears are better for a lot of people—not just folks on touring bikes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Scroopy noopers would like a word with Arizona.

Rick and Morty Pluto Is A Planet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvcXC-VEUXQ

Tim

I think fit is the most important part of a bike. For some people, fit is a moving target as their body ages, they move things around. I think some people just want to follow the latest trends set by the "experts". There was a study done at the OTC in the 80s, the "experts" of the day had established the ideal seat position due to a bunch of body measurements. They tested everyone in their current position with an ergometer, adjusted the bikes to the "new and improved" position, gave everyone some time to adapt, re-tested and found that almost everyone was just as powerful in their old position as the new one. My takeaway was to establish a painfree, powerful, aero position and leave it there. I still use the same position from the 80s.

Look at the positions of guys racing from the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc. they are all still pretty close to what we are seeing now in the 2020s, but their positions are being poohpoohed just because of some tweaks here and there.

My gravel bike came with 172.5 cranks instead of my usual 175s, I'm still trying to make friends with them, but it is getting better.

My biggest problem, and asset, is that I don't know what I don't know. So that makes me go down the rabbit hole of research until I find:

1 The latest thing is BS

2 The latest thing works 100% and is a massive improvement

3 The latest thing works, but not 100% and not in all situations

4 There's no clear answer the latest thing works or doesn't work

Number 4 makes me a little sick because I know there will be a thousand forum threads, full of world class arguments, for and against. The good news is these threads, before they get locked, often drift to subjects that have nothing to do with the original post and I learn something. Like, where does mohair come from?

All I know is that I sure as hull am not riding my 700x23 Vredsteins at 145psi anymore. That is all....:rolleyes:

In Illinois too - https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/pl...over-illinois/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Classification

Also true in New Mexico and possibly California

This "truth" is actually a lie as well. 120 psi (or even more!) 23s are faster, in the wooden track.

On a tangential note, are the truths revealed to us via science not truths anymore because they could be revised or changed later? No, they are still truths that we know as best we can. One cannot (or should not) discard these truths simply because they will be revised later. If one does, how are they going to find truths? Via beliefs and opinions? I would rather pick the scientific truth over opinions and beliefs any day.

Discarding scientific truths by the populace because they could be revised later and then believing something else with even less evidence captures the zeitgeist of our USA and perhaps even this world. It is depressingly sad that in the age of internet, anyone with a internet connection and a computer can expound their beliefs as truths and have hordes and hordes of people believe it as truths.

The fact that brings us all back down to Earth: at what point in time would you be able to make this statement and have it be a broadly true statement?

I know it wasn't true in the recent past because I went out and bought the fastest 700cx35 tires I could find, and they were significantly slower than regular high-level 700cx23 tires.

So, it apparently wasn't true in 2014, or 2004, or 1994. So 2019? 2021?

Is it broadly true today?

Does this heuristic apply to anything else?

For example, at what point does bicycle geometry (and the ergonomics of the average cycling population) change such that KOPS no longer applies, if it ever did?

The point is not to nitpick, but to understand that looking back with the technology we have today as well as the iterative experimentation - almost always carried out by others! Have you done your rolldown testing and quantified the results for upload to the HiveMind today? - makes it seem like "we" are so much smarter than everyone that came before. However, engaging with the past time periods, at their level of technology and understanding, often makes it clear we would be able to do little better.

If you had to rewrite this book, today - how do you think it would be received in 50 years?

https://www.parktool.com/assets/img/blog/cycling-1.jpg

"Knees and ankles absolutely need to be covered below 60°f or long-term damage will result"

Still hearing this one IRL when I show up to race in Feb with bare legs.