There was no need for Rule #74 until the cyclometer showed up on our handlebars. According to the late Sheldon Brown, the cyclometer has been around since the early 1900s.
“Star-wheel cyclometers, such as the Lucas unit, suffered two serious problems. They made an annoying “tink-tink-tink” noise. At high speeds, the star wheel would sometimes turn too far when hit by the fast-moving striker, then, the next time around the striker would hit the tip of one of the star points, sometimes knocking the unit out of position.”
My thought is, these things have been annoying us for much too long. As a youth no one had any measuring device on their bike. There are no old black and white photos of racers staring down at their front hubs to the Lucas meters. Eddy had retired before the Avocet made its debut. He would have caused his to go to failure or he would have removed it because it was extra weight and rubbish.
I bought an Avocet digital cyclometer as soon as I could. It had two slightly inset buttons to better hold water to seep inside. It read speed and elapsed time. That was something to get excited about. Going from no data to data was big, this was going to improve cycling.
Thirty years and many cyclometers later I’m not convinced. My most recent model was a Cateye wireless cyclometer with heart rate and it demanded a new battery every two months…enough! I needed anything else, which made me ask an obvious question- why? Do I care how fast I’m going? I know it’s not very fast and no I don’t really care.
It’s more a question of how hard am I going? Hard or not so hard and again, I’m not trying to quantify this anymore. I’m no quant. I’m beyond quant. It’s not being too old as much as I’ve been riding for so damn long the numbers no longer interest me. Even if I was training for a specific event I have moved past the desire to have data. I did encourage my wife into upgrading to a Garmin 500 as she is into data. I encouraged her because I wanted to know the grades of some of our climbs. I should have kept quiet and emulated a friend who actually went out with a tape measure and long level and quantified the grades to the island’s most “interesting” climbs, bless his heart.
It’s been gratifying to look around on the Sunday group ride I’ve fallen into and notice that some of my cycling friends also have no cyclometers on their bikes. I’m not even sure it’s an interesting point of discussion amongst us. The people who are training with data don’t show up on this ride often because we spend the first 40 km gossiping, riding two abreast, riding a route too curvy, hilly and breath-taking for staring at a watt meter. The second part, I’ve heard*, turns sporty as the big guns get fired leaving bodies scattered along the route home. Training with data requires control of effort. Luckily my people have little interest in that. This Sunday ride is more pleasure than pain and I don’t need a meter to tell me a serious workout was logged.
I was visiting friends who worked and lived in Monaco and was told about the eighty year old owner of the building they rented in. Most every Sunday morning he and his buddies would kit up and go for a ride either east into Italy or west into France. I assume this had been the routine for decades. Eventually they would stop for a nice long Sunday lunch then they ride to the nearest train platform, roll their bikes on the train and return home via rail. Damn, I want to be one of those guys if I get close to eighty. And damn I wish I had a bike and kit when I was there, it would have been a riot to ride with them. I bet those old dudes have V-meters on their bikes.
*either I have turned back before the official turn around or I’m shelled out so early that all I hear are the distant reports. At some point the return always becomes a death slog and as such, a good training ride.
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@xced
I've done that too on long rides to find out total elevation gained. Once we all stopped on a climb to fix my wife's flat tyre. Grrrrr, strava gave me the slowest time on that climb, like #104 so I had to go back weeks later and redo the ride to make sure my shit time did not stay up on strava. Take home message-pause your strava on the iphone if you stop to fix flat tyres.
I love cyclo-computers - and have owned a gazillion different types. Oh how I pined for an avocet when I saw the magazine ads with them next to an Oreo. The fact that i had never seen an Oreo before made the ad pointless to me - but I still knew it was small.
And the skill of being able to wrap the wire around your brake cable to keep it clean. I never had it.
My all-time favorite, the Campy Ergobrain. The way it attached to the bars to sit forward of the stem - sheer beauty. The changing of functions via your brake hoods? Fantastic. That it told you what gear you were in? Sounds not that useful, but it actually was - somewhat. The genius of it calculating your cadence based on your gear and speed - beyond genius. And for the first fuckwit who suggests that wasnt useful because it didnt know if you were soft-pedalling - if you are soft-pedalling why the fuck would you want to know your cadence?!.
I now have a K-edge mount for my Garmin that gets it a bit closer to the Ergobrain look - still a bit bulky but a vast improvement on having the thing sit atop my stem
I have a race computer. It sits somewhere between my ears, It never runs out of battery, And it only measures one thing.
The V.
@Deakus
best part brother is this is my work office...and yes, for viewing the Giro, Tour, Vuelta and every single spring classic, pull up a chair friend! bring beer
I have a simple wireless Velometer setup on all bikes. Same model on each that tells me all I need to know, i.e. speed, distance, total, max & avg. The only time I really look at it whilst riding is going uphill. More so to see how slow the butterflies beside me are travelling than anything else. All other info may or may not be looked at when I get home. If I do happen to look at it then it's probably because I've changed or increased my usual route and may be curious as to the distance.
I did install Strava and Map my Ride on the phone, used it a couple of times and then.....boring to my mind. If it floats your boat, enjoy the data.
Much like a few others I love the data post ride but tend not to look to closely while I'm out there, my 500 has 3 readings on the front 'page' (not that I ever actually use the other 2).
Speed, time of day & distance covered...they're the only things I want to know when I'm out riding, the rest I'll have fun playing with at work.
I am saving my dollars for Garmin 200 - I've had to forego the Strava goodness of my iPhone as it doesn't last the whole ride and inevitably cuts out right before I really go after a segment.
The only time I really wish for power data is when I'm trying to pace myself for later in the ride or stay at base.
While I see the charm and regularly enjoy rides where you just ride for the sake of riding, I also love my cyclometer. I have a Garmin 800 for two reasons a) you need a f@#king map if you live in Kuala Lumpur and b) I love pouring over the data both during and after a ride. I enjoy breaking down the output of my monthly mountain time trial run searching for where I lost cadence, where I can go faster, what do I need to work on in the next month to improve. I create a run in my mind, where to stand, where to push, where to back off ( a bit like those boys from "Cool Running" in the bath tub) and then during the ride I will use the little screen in front of me to try to execute my mental plan hoping that my legs will follow my imagination. The best bit is when the pain is all over rolling through the rest of the ride, not caring about speed, cadence or HR, but knowing that for a short moment in time I was in the zone and executed my plan to perfection.
@Auto-X Fil YES - the iPhone is exactly that.
Have an Edge 500, LOVE data, to me it's like internet banking - information any time any where on how poor/unfit you are. It keeps the desire to keep riding burning. Have a spreadsheet that documents the last 10 years of rides - what does it tell me? Basically the only trend is that every ride increases my total kilometres.....no shit, Sherlock.
@scaler911
Wife-"do you want to know how far we gone?"
No
Wife-"do you want to guess how much further we have to ride?"
No
Wife-"Care to guess how many feet we have climbed?"
Not really