sasawpg

I hadn't actually read the chain cleaning page before but I did read his page on chains, which to an extent is contradicting with his chain cleaning page:

"New chains come pre-lubricated with a grease-type lubricant which has been installed at the factory. This is an excellent lubricant, and has been made to permeate all of the internal interstices in the chain. The chain and this lubricant need to be warmed during application.

This factory lube is superior to any lube that you can apply after the fact -- well, unless...see below."

Hard for me to tell what is original content vs. new. It has been empirically demonstrated that factory lube and grease are considerably inferior when it comes to drivetrain efficiency (performance) compared to a wet lube, which is less efficient than either dry lube or wax (with or without additives).

I've waxed chains for a while in the past but stopped a couple years ago. I now do a "good enough" quick clean of a chain using an undiluted degreaser, rinse with water and a final rinse with isopropyl. The whole process takes 5 minutes and the chain is clean enough for new application. Not clean enough for waxing, you'd want to throw in a solvent before ethanol/isopropyl, but good enough for wet/dry lube. I've no science to back longevity of chains following above procedure, I generally swap between 2-3 chains during a season to keep wear reasonable and then start fresh in the fall before indoor.

That would be something I'd personally consider out-of-date with modern chains. Apparently that makes me a "Lazy, careless cyclist" as I would never use grease on a chain. Nor would I ever follow this insane method of cleaning a chain.

Guess I'd consider myself to be an efficient cyclist, which may be construed as "lazy" by some.

edit: reading onward, he claims "Serious cyclists, who value performance..". I wonder what he considers "performance", because it sure appears he didn't consider or measure drivetrain efficiency.

With the most exciting Sunday in the entire year of racing coming up!

Target fixation - you'll go where you look, for better or worse. Inexperienced riders will often stare right at the obstacle they're trying to avoid and ride right into it.

For gels, I do maple syrup, which usually comes with a pinch of salt. I will also add 50-100g+ carbs per 750mL bottle. I find it hard to chew solids when biking at anything higher than low Z2, it actually increases my heart rate a bit.

> I think what pros (eg. pro cyclists) do is that they try to find the best of both worlds - they train a LOT in lower intensity zones so they get very good at fat burning without actually reaching keto, but they then supplement it with the right type and amount of carbs during races so that they don't lose sprint power. But this is only my theory, I have never been a pro, and never been close to these circles.

You couldn't be further from the truth, especially in a race scenario, not to mention a stage race or a grand tour. Professional (and most well versed) cyclist will pile on carbs in the days leading up to a race, eat a pile the morning of the race and then continue to eat and drink a massive quantity of carbs. It has everything with them being able to replenish what's lost during a race lasting several hours, it is not at all sprint specific. They'll easily aim at 100+ grams of carbs per hour.

I would consider myself a well versed and well trained amateur cyclist. Depending on length of training session and intensity of efforts, I'll aim for 50-100g/hr. In a race my goal is 80-100g/hr from the second the race starts. I've done well enough in multiple 6-9+ hour races and training sessions.

Can't upvote this enough. Carbs are king for endurance, though I tend to drink most of mine as I find it easier.

If you’re talking DuraAce/Red then yes. Otherwise it does not truly qualify as “very very high end” or even “high end“ for Rival/105.

I have three bikes with electronic shifting in my basement. None are “ultra high end road bikes”.

Shimano also brought electronic to their 105 line and SRAM has it on Rival. Neither is high end, never mind ultra high end. I’m not a MTBer so I’m not aware of how that market is, but electronic shifting is definitely prevalent in road, gravel and cross.

By that logic, you would see very little variety in types of components used by world your teams. Teams are in the business of making money, if SRAM offers them a better deal, team owners will find it hard to say no.

(Replying to wmitty) it happened to him at the start line. His choice was between DNS or little ring.

I’ve seen cable breaks happen, though not frequently. I’ve also seen chains break a lot more frequently, I know of 5-6 instances where it happened last year alone locally. All of these were a result of complete lack of maintenance as you point out, though I suppose it would be possible for a newer component to not show signs of wear and still fail.

Index adjustment on SRAM AXS can be done on the fly from the shifters. Or from the app as you ride without stopping. Try that with cables.

The battery replacement is the real issue as technology gets older. Though to be honest, at some stage it gets more difficult to find parts for any system. I started to run into challenges sourcing several replacement parts for a 8-9 year old bike that had 10 speed Shimano group set, so it got sold and replaced. Batteries are not much different really.

Came in here to say just that - I wouldn’t judge relevancy based on the amount of sponsorship a company is willing to throw at a world tour team.

I just watched a NorCal video where guy had to spend all race in little ring because it snapped at the start line. Ouch!