"Experts"

[bicycletricycle]

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?

[weisan]

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.

[AngryScientist]

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.

[prototoast]

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.

[benb]

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.

[dcama5]

[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

[charliedid]

I ride 165's

[RudAwkning]

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

[LegendRider]

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

[sparky33]

Originally Posted by RudAwkning

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

Wide is better, therefore size 43 is better than size 41.5.

[NHAero]

Originally Posted by sparky33

Wide is better, therefore size 43 is better than size 41.5.

These are meaningless numbers without the inner and outer width of the foot.

[OtayBW]

If a fitter or someone told me that the 172.5 mm cranks that I've been riding for decades were 'all wrong' and that I needed to drop down to 165 mm, the research scientist in me would keep an open mind and give them a fair trial before I told him to go pound sand.....

[bicycletricycle]

It is amazing you can even walk will all those years of wrong crank turning.

Originally Posted by OtayBW

If a fitter or someone told me that the 172.5 mm cranks that I've been riding for decades were 'all wrong' and that I needed to drop down to 165 mm, the research scientist in me would keep an open mind and give them a fair trial before I told him to go pound sand.....

[spoonrobot]

Now that "we've" effectively muddied the waters wrt to tire width, we can look at handlebar width.





Just to be safe, I've taken the handlebars completely off my bike and am eagerly awaiting the expert opinion on fastest width before I resume cycling.

[bicycletricycle]

Handlebars over 38cm are for boomers, unless you are on gravel, than you need your bars to be at least 50 centimeters wide

Originally Posted by spoonrobot

Now that "we've" effectively muddied the waters wrt to tire width, we can look at handlebar width.





Just to be safe, I've taken the handlebars completely off my bike and am eagerly awaiting the expert opinion on fastest width before I resume cycling.