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.
I know as well as any of you that I've been checked out lately, kind…
Peter Sagan has undergone quite the transformation over the years; starting as a brash and…
The Women's road race has to be my favorite one-day road race after Paris-Roubaix and…
Holy fuckballs. I've never been this late ever on a VSP. I mean, I've missed…
This week we are currently in is the most boring week of the year. After…
I have memories of my life before Cycling, but as the years wear slowly on…
View Comments
@frank
I had the green one (not shown). It got smashed in a crash a few years after I arrived in oz, not to be replaced.
Now I'm on Strava, but I just use the iPhone app with the phone in my pocket (in a ziplock bag-apparently the moisture corrodes the pins on the jack at the bottom, rendering the phone entirely useless in time). This allows me to ride entirely on feel but to geek out on the numbers afterwards. What I like about it is that I can track progress as a trend as well as to see how fast I'm sprinting / climbing, whatever.
I hear you about reliability, and whilst I've had a few instances of the app not properly recording, I'd suggest their strike rate is about 99% for me, so I'm pretty happy with that.
Use the Force Luke...
Only here could a thread about reverence for riding without a cyclometer, become a thread revering cyclometers... I just have a clock so I know I'm late for work or to get back to the missus... Odo/avg speed for events, that's it. Not sure I'd be keen to strava each commute on my bikes. I like the back pocket idea for training rides.
OK number nerds, here's a question for you:
I was on my rollers last night, which I don't use very often but I didn't feel like going through the hassle of setting up my trainer and swapping my rear wheel out.
I had my Garmin on to record speed and cadence. I was easily able to get up and over "40kph" without any trouble.
Riding outside, I very rarely ever reach that fast on flat ground. A comfortable relaxed speed for me is more like 25-28kph, and really working it I'll be in the low 30s.
Is it the simple lack of wind resistance that allows such a 'speed' on rollers? Or do the rollers themselves somehow cause the Garmin to mis-measure speed?
I find speeds reported while riding my trainer reflect my real-world speed very closely.
@Beers
I think it may be the least-followed rule. There just seems to be a desire with a lot of people to quantify their rides as something more than just having fun. Totally guilty of it myself.
@eightzero
@mcsqueak
Absolutely. The "rolling resistance" on a flat ride is insignifcant compared to the wind resistance (that goes up as as square of the velocity.) Naturally the power required to climb on an incline rather changes the calculus. I'd prefer the nastiest, knarliest sustained climb over pushing wind any day.
Or as Vader would say "the power to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of the Force."
@unversio
This holds a place in my office right next to the photo of Merckx from Friday's AOP.
@frank
Funny, this is on my desk at work:
I never got around to painting the top orange though...
@eightzero
Also, trainers are designed to provide increasing resistance similar to actual riding. Rollers: I can spin out with some effort in 50x11 or 53x12. In the real world I can only do so on a descent.