On Mar 12, 3:17 pm, Aaron Thomas <[email protected]> wrote: > .... But when it comes to climbing, I cannot > help but think that the extra 6+ lbs I'm hauling on my 23-ish lb. bike > (compared to their 16 -17lb bikes) puts me at a distinct disadvantage.
If one discounts the psychology of having a heavier or lighter bike, it's all physics! Go to http://www.analyticcycling.com/ and run some models. My fiddling about comparing two otherwise identical riders except one has a 6 lbs (3 kg) heavier bike shows that for a 8% climb for 5km (1320 ft total elevation gain), using 200W of power, the difference at the top is about 1 minute or 176m. That seems like a lot until I started playing with the power output of the riders. Keeping the standard rider at 200W, just increasing the test rider with the heavier bike to 208W makes the test rider *ahead* (not by much, but still ahead nevertheless). The power increment to pull even with extra weight is more at higher outputs, but even at 300W for the standard rider, it's still "only" 311W for the test rider to remain even with the extra 6-lbs-heavier bike. Now, given that most of us are not world-class fully-optimized elite cyclists, training to increase output by a meagerly 8 watts shouldn't be too difficult. In fact, I would wager that my output vary by at least that much between a good and better day on the saddle. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
