Categories: The BikesThe RidesTraditionUnforgettable Rides

Weight Weenies

Parting the waters on a 24 pound bike.

My bike weighs about 6 kilos. It is no waify little thing either, with it having a 61cm frame and and three stories of seatpost. It has beefy tubes, a stiff bottom bracket and steerer, and deep section wheels which are laced 3x in the back and 2x in front. This bike has never made me go faster; only going faster has made me go faster.

Gianni rode Haleakala in the 80’s on a heavy steel frame with a 42T chainring and a 23T cog in the back. He rode it wearing a cuttoff sleeveless t-shirt; an offense which, had I known when we started this site, I would have put him on probation for. Then he did it again several years later on a titanium, campa-equipped steed with a compact and wearing proper kit. He rode it in about the same time, also proving that you go as fast as you want, not as fast as your bike is.

Gianni Bugno (different Gianni but possibly the source of inspiration for Keeper Gianni’s name), won back-to-back l’Alpe d’Huez stages on a 24-pound steel Moser, beating lighter carbon TVT’s to the punch both times.

Riding light bikes is fun, but they won’t make you go any faster. Pushing harder on the pedals does.

frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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Mikael Liddy says:

Jun 28 2015 at 9:56 pm

@Beers

@wilburrox

@Jay

I have always contended that it is not the bike, but rather the engine (as in rider) that is the most important component. I could ride on the most aerodynamic and lightweight TT bike with the most aerodynamic positioning possible, yet someone like Cancellara would kick my ass while riding a Schwinn Varsity. It comes down to how much power you can put to the pedals.

Nice article. For the record: I am no weight weenie, I go for durable.

Question: Would Ultegra be considered more durable than Dura-Ace ? And 105 even more durable still ?

Tiagra, heavy punched steel, a bit of drilling but all the cogs are splined right to the middle rather than milled out and riveted onto a cage, no alloy to speak of, heavy and cheap as fuck.

But why would you ride it. The profiles and teeth patterns are probably at greater tolerances than all the others put together, so your shifting etc is probably going to suffer. The higher spec cassettes have alloy cogs to make weight, which is obviously going to hurt longevity compared to steel.

I ride lower level on my training bike as it is not a problem to change regularly. Can get chain, cassette and chainrings for the price of a dura ace cassette, and my butt doesn’t clench everytime I ride gravel or it starts raining.

I'm looking at switching to an 11-28 soon rather than the 11-25 that came on The Redback (jumped from 34 to 36 up front), when there's only a 60g gram difference in going Ultegra & I can get 3 for the price of 1 DA, you can bet your arse I'm choosing Ultegra.

Side note, apparently the all alu Ultegra is actually quieter than the Ti infused DA as an added benefit.
Nate says:

Jun 28 2015 at 10:24 pm

@unversio

@Nate

Gert does it with one bottle in the jersey pocket and one cage on the bike.

It's the half-Anquetil, in the Krabbe mythology.
Nate says:

Jun 28 2015 at 10:29 pm

@Mikael Liddy

I'll give you that, but Gert and Big Mig are taking him to style school in that pic.
Nate says:

Jun 28 2015 at 10:34 pm

@Mikael Liddy

@Beers

@wilburrox

@Jay

I have always contended that it is not the bike, but rather the engine (as in rider) that is the most important component. I could ride on the most aerodynamic and lightweight TT bike with the most aerodynamic positioning possible, yet someone like Cancellara would kick my ass while riding a Schwinn Varsity. It comes down to how much power you can put to the pedals.

Nice article. For the record: I am no weight weenie, I go for durable.

Question: Would Ultegra be considered more durable than Dura-Ace ? And 105 even more durable still ?

Tiagra, heavy punched steel, a bit of drilling but all the cogs are splined right to the middle rather than milled out and riveted onto a cage, no alloy to speak of, heavy and cheap as fuck.

But why would you ride it. The profiles and teeth patterns are probably at greater tolerances than all the others put together, so your shifting etc is probably going to suffer. The higher spec cassettes have alloy cogs to make weight, which is obviously going to hurt longevity compared to steel.

I ride lower level on my training bike as it is not a problem to change regularly. Can get chain, cassette and chainrings for the price of a dura ace cassette, and my butt doesn’t clench everytime I ride gravel or it starts raining.

I’m looking at switching to an 11-28 soon rather than the 11-25 that came on The Redback (jumped from 34 to 36 up front), when there’s only a 60g gram difference in going Ultegra & I can get 3 for the price of 1 DA, you can bet your arse I’m choosing Ultegra.

Side note, apparently the all alu Ultegra is actually quieter than the Ti infused DA as an added benefit.

I am all for the less expensive, more durable cassette that weighs 30 grams more. Especially in Campagnolo, I just looked and a Chorus cassette seems to cost more than DA! But an all steel cog Chorus cassette lasts a very long time if you keep your chain clean and replace it at appropriate intervals.

BTW I am pretty sure Ultegra is all steel cogs too. I can't imagine an Alu cog lasting for more than a nanosecond.
Mikael Liddy says:

Jun 28 2015 at 11:12 pm

@Nate

could well be the case, when it comes to research, I'm a student of the Strackian school of thought.

Regarding style, it may have been something to do with the name similarities, but Mig has been my idol from very early days...
Mikael Liddy says:

Jun 28 2015 at 11:22 pm

While we're on the topic of bikes of that era, the original Phast Phil brought one of his Zullos to the Melburn Custom Bike Show for some ogling on the weekend, pictured here with the man behind many a ruined marriage here in Australia
Mikael Liddy says:

Jun 29 2015 at 12:09 am
Oli says:

Jun 29 2015 at 4:33 am

@Mikael Liddy

I'm not sure what Lance thought about Rule #15 but in those days (1993-ish) he had to wear black shorts. If the team kit had registered with the UCI with coloured shorts or short panels that was fine, but a rider couldn't wear different shorts from the rest of his team so he was stuck with Motorola black shorts.

It was only when Cipo started accepting the UCI fines for wearing different coloured shorts in the Tour a couple of years later that things started to change, with the UCI caving in to custom kits for tour category leaders/World/National Champions eventually.
Oli says:

Jun 29 2015 at 4:35 am

Why don't my italics show up after posting when the option is there in the post editor wtf??
extra special and bitter says:

Jun 29 2015 at 6:07 pm

@frank

@ChrisO

@Daccordi Rider

ChrisO, I didn’t take that from Fronks article, just calling bullshit on a couple of responses. I thought Frank meant it doesn’t matter what you ride, you get better by hurting yourself. That’s the fun of some of his articles, we can misinterpret them any way we like. People frequently misunderestimate Frank…

Well there’s not much misinterpreting this:

Riding light bikes is fun, but they won’t make you go any faster. Pushing harder on the pedals does

which is quite simply wrong. The same effort on a lighter bike WILL make you go faster. Pushing harder will make you go more faster.

But that would be letting facts get in the way of the story.

Apparently there is misinterpreting it; the bike is not what makes the bike go, fucktard. Pushing on the pedals does; the bike does not have a motor (we hope). I never said you’d go the same speed on a light and heavy bike.

A light bike, or aero bike, or light wheels, or aero wheels, or better tires, or sleeker kit etc will all make it possible to go faster. But they won’t actually make you go faster.

Your guns and the level of suffering you wish to inflict on them is limited by your brain. I'm sure there are many things that can effect your relative level of suffering, but it just might be that in certain cases you push harder for longer on the steel bike rather than on the lightweight plastic bike. If you go into it with the mentality of 'this thing is slower, there I will push harder,' then you might just go faster. And maybe no matter how hard you tell your brain to suffer on the lighter bike, it just won't go to the same limits.

I watched the Marinoni Movie back in April. Giuseppe Marinoni broke the... "Senior's" (74-79) Hour Record in 2012 on the same bike frame he had built in the early 80s for Jocelyn Lovell. He raced on that bike not because it was the lightest or the fastest, but because it gave him the mental fortitude to push harder.