I’m not going to lie to you, friction is an asshole. In the bottom bracket, in the bending of every single link in your chain as it rolls over the cogs and threads its way through the rear derailleur, and in the pulleys themselves, the devils. I cleaned out my rain bike last weekend after a few rides where I was forced to neglect my usual daily maintenance routine and they puked up chunks of grit before they started moving lightly again. Every turn of the pedals, each of those points of friction adds up and take away from your Maximum V Potential at any given moment.
While this next point is true for Cycling in general, it is true for climbing in particular: the trick to riding well is to keep turning the pedals at your current rhythm. Failing that, you just wind up being less awesome than you were a moment earlier. Speed is like time; you can never get it back (it might also be money, but the math is hard to sort out.) You worked hard to get going as fast as you were, and slowing down just means you lose all that effort. What’s worse, if you want to get going that fast again, you have to do all that same work all over again, and even then, you’re just back to where you were, except a little lighter on the V Potential.
Friction may well be an asshole, but its not as big an asshole as gravity. The acceleration of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared, which means that climbing at a sustained speed is basically like accelerating constantly; in order to climb at that rate, you’re accelerating enough to neutralize the pull from gravity which is trying its best to drag you back down the hill. Not to mention that you’re working against all that friction in your drivetrain.
To summarize, friction and gravity are assholes.
With these two points in mind, earlier this year I had Café Roubaix build me some lightweight climbing wheels. I didn’t really know what climbing wheels are good for, but I wanted to try some and I was thinking that any weight advantage I could find would be a good thing with respect to the winter months and the associated packing on of the wrong kind of weight in the engine room. 970 grams, you say? That sounds good – I’ll have them, thanks.
The first surprise was the box they arrived in, which I was certain must have been empty. Mounting them with tires and a cassette, I got used to how they felt in my hands. Funny how weight works; you grow accustomed to it. When I went to place them in the bike I first removed my rear Zipp 404 from the frame, which in comparison felt like an anchor.
They looked the business installed, but photos do a better job describing that. On to the riding. The first pedal stoke felt good; responsive and light. But nothing crazy, once I got going a bit. There was some more snap, for sure, but it wasn’t like I’d just had a blood transfusion on the second rest day of the Tour or anything like that. But on the hills the world turns on its head as the acceleration of gravity rejoins the conversation. The steeper the gradient, the more the wheels shine; simply put, they just keep spinning. Should you encounter a change in pitch for the worse, apply a touch of V and they spin up like a washing machine.
They almost converted me into a grimpeur. Almost. And, they help answer how the Pros move Sur La Plaque up giant mountains, absorbing changes in pitch like they’re nothing and accelerating away on the steepest sections. I am given to understand that talent and training play a part, but their climbing wheels don’t hurt either. The right tools make all the difference.
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I touched my aluminum front clincher rim today after a steep descent, too hot to touch for more than a half second. What does that mean? Carbone wheels won't work, clincher or tubs? And yet, jets use carbon fiber disc brakes. Maybe heat is not a massive issue, it surely must not conduct away so well.
@Dan_R or anyone else, thoughts?
@frank
Massive chuckle here over that one as I suck down barley wine one mouthful at a time.
@Gianni Aluminum dissipates the heat more quickly. Carbon lets it build up somehow, melting pads, carbon, resin, your tires.
Newer Contis have labels on both sides, so it's a bit harder to glue them on backwards.
@frank How about some two colour symbol packs in Black & White? I have an orange frame that needs some decals but the orange cog would disappear.
@frank
Something terrible has happened to me - no longer, it seems, am I the facetious immature joker, who always sees the stupid in anything clever, and sits in the midle of the cafe slagging everyone off about the state of their nipples, but I appear to have started boring people about the technical aspects of cycling - is this incurable, as I am now sitting at the edge of the room talking secretively to old people?
I feel that despite coming second in the TdF last year with my ridiculous suggestion of a Wiggo Froomie 1-2, and I must complement the De Feet kit - they are the Cyclcist's Ideal (sorry, Cat's Cahunas, see what I mean) - I really know fuck all about cycling
However, I am now building my own wheels, (dura ace 7900 hubs no less) and spent about three hours researching the matter online the other day, as part of my post -ride recovery process
I notice your wheels have only ? 22 spokes at front and ?22 on back? what effect does this have on stiffness? Did you intentionally select so few spokes (I appear to have gravitated to the 36/32 3x camp, don't reinvent the wheel Evangelista)? Or is it bin all the weight you possibly can without the rim collapsing?
On a more interesting note, I am now excremetially depressed by the re-discovery that gravity is of course acceleration, which I had forgotten about. It does explain how when one drops speed on a climb, the initial fade is increasingly rapidly (double adverb = exponential) succeeded by a reversion to stop speed, and this is a factor of weight, if my senility allows me to understand - therefore, we're all fucked
@frank
What's a toe clip strap?
@Dr C Jesus, you'll be elected official club time keeper or record keeper if you carry on like that? Are you growing a beard as well.
There's only one solution: up the doses on your self medication, tell your colleagues you're off to an important conference in Lille at the end of march or there abouts and come and rattle the fuck out of your brain until normal function is resumed.
@monkeyman
Having just passed my Mechanics finals, I'm cringing in pain reading the words being thrown around here.
Gravity is a force. It's not an acceleration. As forces tend to do, if applied, acceleration will be the result.
Secondly, when one is riding steady-state - be it flat time-trialling or steady-state climbing (which is what is described in the article) - there's no change in velocity, ergo no tangential acceleration occurring In that case, assuming equal total system weight, it doesn't matter if you have 2kg training wheels or 900g lightweights as both have the same total amount of force acting on the system, which is what matters. Feel will be different, but not overall performance for this type of riding.
A lighter wheel helps in: A) Reducing overall weight, which is always good, and B) Reducing unsprung rotating mass, which is very nice if you're cornering or accelerating.
Thirdly, as Velocity = Radial Velocity X Radius, unless your hubs are gargantuan, the rim spins far faster than twice the velocity of a spinning hub. But raw velocity has to do with aerodynamics more than acceleration. Even more important is the moment of inertia, which is linearly proportional to mass yet proportional to the square of the radius - which is, again, why the rim weight is important when turning and accelerating.
Unless one is playing with Contador-esque changes of rhythm, there's no real advantage to the rim specifically being lighter. If I could only remove 400g from my bike, yes, I'd do it at the rim, but given the choice between a 7kg bike with ultralight tubulars or a 6.8kg bike with regular, maybe even aero-profile rims (weight-savings done elsewhere), I know which one I'm choosing for a time-trial up the Alps.
Last, all of the above is to be ignored - that is one sexy wheel.
"To summarize, friction and gravity are assholes." Wonderful! I'm going to start summarizing each class I teach with such a simple summary.
Never loved the look of Tall Carbone wheels, but darn, low profile Carbones look beautiful. Really darn nice & I look forward to picking up a pair when the Budgetatus gets closer to fVVl.