I support the Pedestrian Council, I really do. I admire Mr Scruby. I even – kinda – like Mike Tomalaris. But I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that since fewer NSW cyclists are infringing that the police have “backed off” because they are “scared” of the all-powerful “bike lobby”. Far from it. We could investigate further if we wanted, but just throwing anecdotes around doesn’t help us identify the problem – if there is one. So is there a problem?
Long ago I can remember Gary Sutton getting pinged for speeding on his bike – in an 80-zone from memory – but that doesn’t tell us that bike riders are speeding all over NSW right now, or that they did it more frequently in the late ’70s. Few bike riders can break the speed limits – even the lowest - but all of us can take the bell off or forget our helmet (well I wouldn’t but some obviously do) and get included in the stats.
Anecdotes can help us understand that bikes and riders are different from cars and drivers in so many ways – and that they have to be understood in their own contexts. Granted, where it gets messy – and dangerously so – is when each mode of transport mixes with the others. But fining to ‘enforce’ compliance may not actually work, if it doesn’t address root cause.
It’s not as simple as a pedestrian advocate decrying the falling rate of cyclist infringements – and drawing conclusions way beyond the scope of the stats presented. We can’t flick an “infringement switch” and expect to see the problem – if there is one – go away.
Agreed, we don’t want infringing cyclists to be ignored by the police but we should also recognise that groups like the NRMA or the Pedestrian Council have an axe to grind. They don’t need – or deserve – more media attention than the so-called “powerful cycling lobby”, especially when that publicity is at the expense of cyclists of all ages and abilities and taps into a festering resentment of two-wheeled human-propelled traffic.
We should be careful when we “somewhat agree” with groups that offer instant “analysis” tied to their attempt to leverage media attention for their “cause”. We don’t really know from what has been released why cyclists in NSW are seemingly less infringing, only that the absolute number has fallen. It could simply be that police are prioritising some laws over others – perhaps chasing fewer non-helmeted riders and looking out instead for more red-runners. If 74% of infringements are helmet-related it doesn’t take much de-emphasis on a personal-safety law like helmet-wearing to see a swift overall decline in absolute numbers. It may be that the higher numbers were an outlier, an aberration and we are settling back into more realistic yearly statistics. We just don’t know.
And anecdotal evidence of red-running by cyclists is no more or less compelling than anecdotal evidence of jaywalking by pedestrians or speeding by motorists. We know it happens – sure – but what is the actual non-compliance rate by each discrete sub-group, by trip and by mileage covered? What is the actual safety impact by accident rate? And what is the root cause? Sheer bloody-mindedness? Frustration at the delay when agile bikes are stopped by over-sized cars? Despair when once again forced to sprint like crazy from a standstill to maintain momentum – and a safer gap – in a car-dominated world?
We shouldn’t neglect the need for the police to target what really matters first and prioritise the remainder in a sensible, sustainable and managed way. Declining absolute infringement numbers tell us nothing more and simply raises scope for further, deeper analysis. We shouldn’t draw any more conclusion than that.
It may also be worth noting that perhaps non-ferrous bikes are still not being detected at traffic lights, raising the “apparent” incidence of red-running by bikers over “normal” non-compliance. Pedestrians and motor-vehicle drivers have no such excuse – yet they still do it, anecdotally and in raw infringement numbers. Why, and what is Mr Scruby doing about that?
SBS: Cycling Central : Sydney’s easy riders
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald on December 9 with the attached headline “Cyclists getting an easy ride” had me thinking.
At first glance, I assumed it was another token opinionated attack on bike riders who choose to use two wheels as a form of transport or recreation, rather than get behind the wheel of their car.
It suggested cyclists are a law onto themselves when it comes to obeying general rules of the road.
The report claims an overwhelming majority of of riders have been issued for offences such as not wearing a helmet, riding on footpaths and running red lights.
Fine For Riding Without Helmet, Light / Running Red Light In NSW
The documents obtained by the Pedestrian Council under freedom of information laws also show that in the past five years there have been no fines issued for most bicycle-related offences.
These include not stopping at a school crossing, approaching crossings too quickly to stop, not using the cycleway on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and riding more than two abreast on the road.
The chairman of the council, Harold Scruby, said it appeared the government was going soft on cyclists.
”The government is turning a blind eye because they are scared of the powerful bike lobby,” Mr Scruby said.
I have to admit that I’ve worn out a lot of cycling clothing over the last 30 odd years. Sometimes – luckily – it’s just been good old fashioned wear and tear. Less luckily I have managed to write-off valuable gear on even just the first or second ride, by the application of unintended deceleration. Memorably I wrote off a pair of shoes by the simple expedient of snagging the right-hand shoe on the large chainring – something I’ve done just once in over 250,000km of serious riding and never got near to doing again. I can’t even work out how I managed to do it! The shoe simply ripped apart. Mind you bike riders are apt to do strange things when training at 04:30 in the morning. Like most riders I have also written-off a few jerseys and knicks by testing their ability to slide over asphalt and gravel.
Anyway, the nice people at SKINS (thanks Matt!) have given me a set of their compression gear to test and I’m keen to wear these out rather prosaically by actually keeping upright and not testing their road adhesion. Whilst I haven’t paid for ‘em they (ie SKINS) and I have agreed that I should be fair and honest and pull no punches in my assessment. So that’s what I will do.
What I am testing right now (well not right this minute as I’m at the keyboard) is a C400 men’s mesh tank baselayer undershirt (well I call it an undershirt, anyway) and a pair of C400 men’s compression BIB shorts. I am hoping to get a sample jersey to test as well. The size is medium and it’s a fine – if snug – fit on my 1.69m and overweight 73kg body. I like snug. I can’t fault the undershirt at all (only the body underneath, frankly) and the BIB shorts (I really only wear the BIB style, it’s the only way to fly) are well made and a good fit.
First impressions of the compression shorts (or knicks, if you prefer) are of something akin to the “Russian Rubber skinsuit circa 1980″ feel – a sort of elastic “springiness” that almost helps bring the upper leg back up. It’s a very slight effect but noticeable. I like it, it brings back good memories of when I was younger and fitter…
The ‘compression‘ certainly leaves its mark on my pudgey body, though. There’s a faint but visible reddish outline on my upper legs that becomes apparent only upon removal, post-ride. And no, it’s not a rash or other skin irritation. It’s also not uncomfortable at all and the mark disappears quickly – it was a surprise to see it, frankly. It’s not like the sort of mark tight elastic leaves, rather a broader, wider fabric ‘impression’ that suggests surface blood flow. It may well be a sign of improved circulation – I can’t be sure. The chamois is also comfy and I have had no issues with badly-placed seams or other possible pain-points. If anything after 3 short rides in this gear my incipient saddle sores have markedly improved; but again I can’t be certain that’s because of the SKINS product. It might be, though. The chamois in any case is broad and deep, ideal for my purposes, and caused no chafing or rubbing in any sensitive spots – unlike some brands.
Both products ooze quality and compare well with anything I’ve used in the past, be it a premium brand product or something quite cheap that I got for Christmas (in many ways the best knicks of all are free). I did think that the packaging is superb but tending towards overkill, however my 4 year old son has taken a liking to the boxes so perhaps they are re-usable after all ?
This is a long term test, and I’ll post regularly on progress with both pics and data (I’m logging power, speed and heart rate and looking for improvements that can be attributed to clothing alone – a challenge I know but I have a standard protocol in place and my spreadsheet awaits my command). To paraphrase the words of Eddy Merckx, all I have to do now is “ride lots”, I guess.
I have to admit that I’ve worn out a lot of cycling clothing over the last 30 odd years. Sometimes – luckily – it’s just been good old fashioned wear and tear. Less luckily I have managed to write-off valuable gear on even just the first or second ride, by the application of unintended deceleration. Memorably I wrote off a pair of shoes by the simple expedient of snagging the right-hand shoe on the large chainring – something I’ve done just once in over 250,000km of serious riding and never got near to doing again. I can’t even work out how I managed to do it! The shoe simply ripped apart. Mind you bike riders are apt to do strange things when training at 04:30 in the morning. Like most riders I have also written-off a few jerseys and knicks by testing their ability to slide over asphalt and gravel.
Anyway, the nice people at SKINS (thanks Matt!) have given me a set of their compression gear to test and I’m keen to wear these out rather prosaically by actually keeping upright and not testing their road adhesion. Whilst I haven’t paid for ‘em they (ie SKINS) and I have agreed that I should be fair and honest and pull no punches in my assessment. So that’s what I will do.
What I am testing right now (well not right this minute as I’m at the keyboard) is a C400 men’s mesh tank baselayer undershirt (well I call it an undershirt, anyway) and a pair of C400 men’s compression BIB shorts. I am hoping to get a sample jersey to test as well. The size is medium and it’s a fine – if snug – fit on my 1.69m and overweight 73kg body. I like snug. I can’t fault the undershirt at all (only the body underneath, frankly) and the BIB shorts (I really only wear the BIB style, it’s the only way to fly) are well made and a good fit.
First impressions of the compression shorts (or knicks, if you prefer) are of something akin to the “Russian Rubber skinsuit circa 1980″ feel – a sort of elastic “springiness” that almost helps bring the upper leg back up. It’s a very slight effect but noticeable. I like it, it brings back good memories of when I was younger and fitter…
The ‘compression‘ certainly leaves its mark on my pudgey body, though. There’s a faint but visible reddish outline on my upper legs that becomes apparent only upon removal, post-ride. And no, it’s not a rash or other skin irritation. It’s also not uncomfortable at all and the mark disappears quickly – it was a surprise to see it, frankly. It’s not like the sort of mark tight elastic leaves, rather a broader, wider fabric ‘impression’ that suggests surface blood flow. It may well be a sign of improved circulation – I can’t be sure. The chamois is also comfy and I have had no issues with badly-placed seams or other possible pain-points. If anything after 3 short rides in this gear my incipient saddle sores have markedly improved; but again I can’t be certain that’s because of the SKINS product. It might be, though. The chamois in any case is broad and deep, ideal for my purposes, and caused no chafing or rubbing in any sensitive spots – unlike some brands.
Both products ooze quality and compare well with anything I’ve used in the past, be it a premium brand product or something quite cheap that I got for Christmas (in many ways the best knicks of all are free). I did think that the packaging is superb but tending towards overkill, however my 4 year old son has taken a liking to the boxes so perhaps they are re-usable after all ?
This is a long term test, and I’ll post regularly on progress with both pics and data (I’m logging power, speed and heart rate and looking for improvements that can be attributed to clothing alone – a challenge I know but I have a standard protocol in place and my spreadsheet awaits my command). To paraphrase the words of Eddy Merckx, all I have to do now is “ride lots”, I guess.
Filed under bicycles, bikes, Felt by Rob.
Filed under bicycles, bikes, Felt by Rob.
Clearly it wasn’t. Despite knowing that I should clean, inspect, lube and replace cables (having broken plenty of gear cables in my time, and clutch and accelerator cables in cars, too) somehow this one passed me by. In hindsight I knew I had a problem. I saw the cable wearing against the head tube and I should have wrapped it with some tape. I also noticed the lack of responsiveness in shifting but I assumed it was related to cable tension and friction, and having lubed it where I thought it “needed it”, I left it at that. Indeed, performance had improved markedly, so I thought I had nailed it. Then yesterday it started to skip gears, or shift belatedly under power. At the end of the ride it refused to go into the smallest gear. No big deal, I thought. I’ll adjust it later. But later didn’t come.
Instead I went for another training ride today and forgot about yesterday’s problems. Until I tried to grab a bigger-diametre rear cog. No dice. It would go up but not down the range. (Which is to say I could grind out a bigger, harder gear but I wasn’t going to get a smaller, easier ratio if I needed it. Considering I live on a hill this was no small thing.) That’s when I started playing with the cables, looking for a kink – whoa. That’s not a kink. That’s a snap. You’d think after almost 30 years of bike riding I’d be on top of this stuff… but complacency never lets up, does it?
File under Bicycle maintenance 101.
   
Clearly it wasn’t. Despite knowing that I should clean, inspect, lube and replace cables (having broken plenty of gear cables in my time, and clutch and accelerator cables in cars, too) somehow this one passed me by. In hindsight I knew I had a problem. I saw the cable wearing against the head tube and I should have wrapped it with some tape. I also noticed the lack of responsiveness in shifting but I assumed it was related to cable tension and friction, and having lubed it where I thought it “needed it”, I left it at that. Indeed, performance had improved markedly, so I thought I had nailed it. Then yesterday it started to skip gears, or shift belatedly under power. At the end of the ride it refused to go into the smallest gear. No big deal, I thought. I’ll adjust it later. But later didn’t come.
Instead I went for another training ride today and forgot about yesterday’s problems. Until I tried to grab a bigger-diametre rear cog. No dice. It would go up but not down the range. (Which is to say I could grind out a bigger, harder gear but I wasn’t going to get a smaller, easier ratio if I needed it. Considering I live on a hill this was no small thing.) That’s when I started playing with the cables, looking for a kink – whoa. That’s not a kink. That’s a snap. You’d think after almost 30 years of bike riding I’d be on top of this stuff… but complacency never lets up, does it?
File under Bicycle maintenance 101.
I had a break. Well several breaks really, and a fall (with no breaks, just pain!). But I’m back on the bike and racing – and training – with the intention of staying race-fit until the “road season” (which is Aussie-speak for our winter as we do track and crits in summer). We shall see. Although I raced at least twice (maybe 3 times) back in October/November last year I have taken January 2010 as the “real” starting point. I am training, rather than just riding, and trying to have an influence on the race.
So here’s an iBike power-meter view of what was race 2 for me in 2010. I was carrying a hamstring injury (of all things) and wasn’t sure how hard I could push it – I could feel a twinge of pain when I rose from the saddle or pulled up with the right leg – so I “sat-in” as any old ex-Randwick-Botany racer would do and just followed wheels. For the 2nd race in a row – hey this is only D-grade at CCCC’s Lucca Rd circuit, don’t get excited – I got 3rd place. But I contested the sprint and didn’t ever feel like getting dropped. Average speed was just under 33kmh for the 30mins + 1 lap. Nornalised power (my own formula with coasting “zeroes” removed and weighting given to “power-on” rather than “slacking off”) was just under 200W (seeing as how I have been cracking 200W training it shows that I was taking it easy, but the iBike is also not that great at measuring power whilst sucking wheels, either). You can see that the sprint (end of the bike race, folks) was the only time I exceeded 50kmh but we cracked 40 every lap. That’s on a downhill but there was a headwind!!) There’s a small but painful “rise” that starts at a left-hand turn (so only the brave really take a run-up at it) every lap and the wattage hit 450-600 every time up that incline as someone always “had a go” to dislodge a few non-trainers. There’s also a smaller power peak each lap just after the “big” hill and past the start-finish straight where we go left again and kick up a smaller but noticeable gradient. The speed rises once more as we hit that gentle climb – must be enthusiasm or the excitement of it all. If you took this seriously you could train to these conditions and increase output in key situations. You could replicate the course or sections thereof and impose repeated loads. Or you could use this race data to optimise race speed whilst keeping the lid on over-enthusiasm, power-wise. Hang back a bit, save the powder as it were. Now you could do this without a power meter – heck, I raced for more than 20 years without one – but it’s so nice to get pictures, isn’t it?
Onward, ever onward. Even at 52.
I had a break. Well several breaks really, and a fall (with no breaks, just pain!). But I’m back on the bike and racing – and training – with the intention of staying race-fit until the “road season” (which is Aussie-speak for our winter as we do track and crits in summer). We shall see. Although I raced at least twice (maybe 3 times) back in October/November last year I have taken January 2010 as the “real” starting point. I am training, rather than just riding, and trying to have an influence on the race.
So here’s an iBike power-meter view of what was race 2 for me in 2010. I was carrying a hamstring injury (of all things) and wasn’t sure how hard I could push it – I could feel a twinge of pain when I rose from the saddle or pulled up with the right leg – so I “sat-in” as any old ex-Randwick-Botany racer would do and just followed wheels. For the 2nd race in a row – hey this is only D-grade at CCCC’s Lucca Rd circuit, don’t get excited – I got 3rd place. But I contested the sprint and didn’t ever feel like getting dropped. Average speed was just under 33kmh for the 30mins + 1 lap. Nornalised power (my own formula with coasting “zeroes” removed and weighting given to “power-on” rather than “slacking off”) was just under 200W (seeing as how I have been cracking 200W training it shows that I was taking it easy, but the iBike is also not that great at measuring power whilst sucking wheels, either). You can see that the sprint (end of the bike race, folks) was the only time I exceeded 50kmh but we cracked 40 every lap. That’s on a downhill but there was a headwind!!) There’s a small but painful “rise” that starts at a left-hand turn (so only the brave really take a run-up at it) every lap and the wattage hit 450-600 every time up that incline as someone always “had a go” to dislodge a few non-trainers. There’s also a smaller power peak each lap just after the “big” hill and past the start-finish straight where we go left again and kick up a smaller but noticeable gradient. The speed rises once more as we hit that gentle climb – must be enthusiasm or the excitement of it all. If you took this seriously you could train to these conditions and increase output in key situations. You could replicate the course or sections thereof and impose repeated loads. Or you could use this race data to optimise race speed whilst keeping the lid on over-enthusiasm, power-wise. Hang back a bit, save the powder as it were. Now you could do this without a power meter – heck, I raced for more than 20 years without one – but it’s so nice to get pictures, isn’t it?
Onward, ever onward. Even at 52.
OK, I’m not that fit right now. I was really fit in 1987, but that seems to have worn off already. Who would have thought? So this is 2009, I’m reliably told, and here’s an almost 52 year old trying to get race fit in CCCC ‘D grade’ at the Lucca Rd crits, North Wyong (once more, with feeling). BTW, it’s not a closed circuit, we give way to traffic, follow the road rules, have a marshall and signs as per our plan agreed by the NSW Police. No ‘furious riding’ here, folks. But it all went horribly wrong. Maybe I was off-colour, but no excuses – I made 2 big mistakes. Drifting to the back of the bunch (after keeping to the front 3 riders for a few laps) at exactly the wrong time, and not doing enough interval training beforehand. Oh well. The smaller mistakes include not warming up well enough, doing too much early work either setting the pace or bridging gaps and just generally not conserving my momentum when I should have. Actually they were big mistakes too. All that in my 2nd race back from a 7 month break. Isn’t race data wonderful, even in D-grade?
Oh yeah, I use an ibike to collect the power data. I also must take my screenshots at higher quality. Been testing the ‘Greenshot’ tool. Nevermind, next time!
 
OK, I’m not that fit right now. I was really fit in 1987, but that seems to have worn off already. Who would have thought? So this is 2009, I’m reliably told, and here’s an almost 52 year old trying to get race fit in CCCC ‘D grade’ at the Lucca Rd crits, North Wyong (once more, with feeling). BTW, it’s not a closed circuit, we give way to traffic, follow the road rules, have a marshall and signs as per our plan agreed by the NSW Police. No ‘furious riding’ here, folks. But it all went horribly wrong. Maybe I was off-colour, but no excuses – I made 2 big mistakes. Drifting to the back of the bunch (after keeping to the front 3 riders for a few laps) at exactly the wrong time, and not doing enough interval training beforehand. Oh well. The smaller mistakes include not warming up well enough, doing too much early work either setting the pace or bridging gaps and just generally not conserving my momentum when I should have. Actually they were big mistakes too. All that in my 2nd race back from a 7 month break. Isn’t race data wonderful, even in D-grade?
Oh yeah, I use an ibike to collect the power data. I also must take my screenshots at higher quality. Been testing the ‘Greenshot’ tool. Nevermind, next time!
Yes, one day. Maybe tomorrow.
Anyway, for those new to addicted2wheels.com here’s a summary guide…..
Where you are now is my main focus – bikes, bike racing and physiological stuff. However you could click away madly and find….
Cheers for now, Rob.
Yes, one day. Maybe tomorrow.
Anyway, for those new to addicted2wheels.com here’s a summary guide…..
Where you are now is my main focus – bikes, bike racing and physiological stuff. However you could click away madly and find….
Cheers for now, Rob.
Well I hadn’t seen this before.. it’s a ‘spring frame’, where the top and down tubes are bent into large springs to provide comfort on rough roads. Or so went the theory.
You can find the story (and the bike) at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.
- A great place to start… Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there’s lots of great stuff
- This looks interesting… a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run… annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test… all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on “Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults” – especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I’m neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale… remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained… and I’m not particularly overweight (nor skinny).
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts.Kg |
Watts.Kg |
| 90 |
10.89 |
9.02 |
| 80 |
10.39 |
8.83 |
| 70 |
10.20 |
8.53 |
| 60 |
9.80 |
8.14 |
| 50 |
9.22 |
7.65 |
| 40 |
8.92 |
6.96 |
| 30 |
8.53 |
6.86 |
| 20 |
8.24 |
6.57 |
| 10 |
7.06 |
5.98 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
- And this…from the same link: “Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults“:
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts |
Watts |
| 90 |
822 |
560 |
| 80 |
777 |
527 |
| 70 |
757 |
505 |
| 60 |
721 |
480 |
| 50 |
689 |
449 |
| 40 |
671 |
432 |
| 30 |
656 |
399 |
| 20 |
618 |
376 |
| 10 |
570 |
353 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people… perhaps non cyclists?
- How about the Human Powered Vehicle association?
- Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike.
- Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one…
- And Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours… STOP IT! Go outside and ride!
- A great place to start… Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there’s lots of great stuff
- This looks interesting… a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run… annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test… all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on “Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults” – especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I’m neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale… remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained… and I’m not particularly overweight (nor skinny).
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts.Kg |
Watts.Kg |
| 90 |
10.89 |
9.02 |
| 80 |
10.39 |
8.83 |
| 70 |
10.20 |
8.53 |
| 60 |
9.80 |
8.14 |
| 50 |
9.22 |
7.65 |
| 40 |
8.92 |
6.96 |
| 30 |
8.53 |
6.86 |
| 20 |
8.24 |
6.57 |
| 10 |
7.06 |
5.98 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
- And this…from the same link: “Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults“:
|
Male |
Female |
| %Rank |
Watts |
Watts |
| 90 |
822 |
560 |
| 80 |
777 |
527 |
| 70 |
757 |
505 |
| 60 |
721 |
480 |
| 50 |
689 |
449 |
| 40 |
671 |
432 |
| 30 |
656 |
399 |
| 20 |
618 |
376 |
| 10 |
570 |
353 |
Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989
Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people… perhaps non cyclists?
- How about the Human Powered Vehicle association?
- Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike.
- Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one…
- And Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours… STOP IT! Go outside and ride!
OK, so now I’m getting into it. It’s addictive. I’m a data junkie and it’s making me get out on the bike and ride, just to see what it looks like when I sprint, chase a car or climb a hill. Then I want to compare sprints, compare hills… goddamn it, I wish I had one 20 years ago! (But they didn’t exist at this price, of course.)
That’s the good side of the ibike – real data that makes sense. You’ve got to set it up right and do the coast-down test properly, as per spec, and make sure the battery is delivering the goods. But once done it’s great. Of course today I punctured and swapped front wheels, but because it’s just a magnetic pickup there was no sweat. I could even swap bikes as I’ve got a spare mount and pickup already on bike number 2. So I think ibike is still looking like a pretty good thing.
Bad news? It goes a bit screwy if you watch the Wattage display too much (it seems to jump around constantly, especially on the flat, only settling down when efforts are made, in a sprint or in a climb) – but when you download to the PC the odd figures seem to have disappeared and clarity returns. And the peak figures on the LCD don’t always match the data logged. The battery seems to play a part in this, as does road surface – bumps and corners definitely throw it off.
 So on to the fun.. the screenshot on the left shows power in blue and bike speed in green. You can see steady state on the left, then I accelerate to catch a slow-moving Toyota ‘Landbruiser’ that pulled out in front of me. You see both power and speed rise as I chase, peaking at around 865W and 45kmh or so; then as I get into the draft speed stays up (for a while, I didn’t stay on as there’s a nasty climb around the corner and I’m not that fit!) whilst power falls off sharply. The ibike seems to handle ‘sucking wheels’ pretty well. You can see that power falls away rapidly to zero until I hit the climb and have to get pedalling again. Speed falls away too and you can see me approach 300W on the lower part of the 10% climb (the bump on the right).
 The next sreenshot shows a zoom-in on that power peak. You can see the effort to accelerate, the speed rising and then the power clearly falls off as I get into the draft, despite speed continuing to rise. In fact the car eventually accelerated, having suddenly realised that the rider they pulled out in front off at that T-junction was still there… and I let him go, as you see the speed dropping again. Wow.
Even better, the power breakdown (the colored box centre-screen) shows what was happening at the point where the cursor sits… all of that green in the pie chart is acceleration. The cursor itself is the black vertical line right on the power peak. So it all makes sense. When I move the cursor into the ‘draft zone’ the proportions all change… as you’d hope.
Bottom line? It works!
OK, so now I’m getting into it. It’s addictive. I’m a data junkie and it’s making me get out on the bike and ride, just to see what it looks like when I sprint, chase a car or climb a hill. Then I want to compare sprints, compare hills… goddamn it, I wish I had one 20 years ago! (But they didn’t exist at this price, of course.)
That’s the good side of the ibike – real data that makes sense. You’ve got to set it up right and do the coast-down test properly, as per spec, and make sure the battery is delivering the goods. But once done it’s great. Of course today I punctured and swapped front wheels, but because it’s just a magnetic pickup there was no sweat. I could even swap bikes as I’ve got a spare mount and pickup already on bike number 2. So I think ibike is still looking like a pretty good thing.
Bad news? It goes a bit screwy if you watch the Wattage display too much (it seems to jump around constantly, especially on the flat, only settling down when efforts are made, in a sprint or in a climb) – but when you download to the PC the odd figures seem to have disappeared and clarity returns. And the peak figures on the LCD don’t always match the data logged. The battery seems to play a part in this, as does road surface – bumps and corners definitely throw it off.
So on to the fun.. the screenshot on the left shows power in blue and bike speed in green. You can see steady state on the left, then I accelerate to catch a slow-moving Toyota ‘Landbruiser’ that pulled out in front of me. You see both power and speed rise as I chase, peaking at around 865W and 45kmh or so; then as I get into the draft speed stays up (for a while, I didn’t stay on as there’s a nasty climb around the corner and I’m not that fit!) whilst power falls off sharply. The ibike seems to handle ‘sucking wheels’ pretty well. You can see that power falls away rapidly to zero until I hit the climb and have to get pedalling again. Speed falls away too and you can see me approach 300W on the lower part of the 10% climb (the bump on the right).
The next sreenshot shows a zoom-in on that power peak. You can see the effort to accelerate, the speed rising and then the power clearly falls off as I get into the draft, despite speed continuing to rise. In fact the car eventually accelerated, having suddenly realised that the rider they pulled out in front off at that T-junction was still there… and I let him go, as you see the speed dropping again. Wow.
Even better, the power breakdown (the colored box centre-screen) shows what was happening at the point where the cursor sits… all of that green in the pie chart is acceleration. The cursor itself is the black vertical line right on the power peak. So it all makes sense. When I move the cursor into the ‘draft zone’ the proportions all change… as you’d hope.
Bottom line? It works!
Well the software looked good enough sitting on the CD-ROM, and it seemed to install on my PC OK – and I followed the instructions – but it failed to find the USB driver first up. I followed the instructions again, went through the whole install and once again it failed to find the driver. So I went manual in control panel and found the driver had indeed installed correctly on my hard drive, it’s just that the “automatic, preferred” search doesn’t look there… of course. Wonder if this happens to everyone? Anyway, it really does extract and copy it to your ibike program folder, so a bit of searching will find it. It’s just a manual approach is needed when ‘auto’ fails. Once loaded it all worked.
The software is simple. Connect, download all or some files… ooops, it crashed. And the ibike itself froze. OK, this has only happened once, but again I followed instructions, restarted the software and took the battery out of the ibike. I popped the battery back in and it fired up again and has worked flawlessly since. In fact it works better now than before. The battery started life reading 2.80V and fell to 2.70V during the 2nd ride, before recovering to 2.78V. However after refitting (and perhaps putting the cover back on a bit tighter?) it reads 2.82V pre-ride and hasn’t fallen below 2.77V. The instructions say to get a new battery if it falls below 2.75V before a ride. Perhaps my first-day glitches were battery related?
 Anyway, back to the software. It’s good enough. It loads up the whole ride as a .CSV file and you can ‘play’ with power, wind speed, elevation, slope and bike speed for starters. You basically can graph it as you like it, including looking at neat breakdowns of acceleration, hill and friction readings at any point in the ride. And you can probably read and modify it in any spreadsheet, too, given that it’s saved as a .CSV (but I haven’t tried – yet). It’s simple, but does the job for a data junkie like me. It’s strange though that the ibike itself displays slightly different maximum values than that logged in the data file. That aside, overall it’s what I expected.
Well the software looked good enough sitting on the CD-ROM, and it seemed to install on my PC OK – and I followed the instructions – but it failed to find the USB driver first up. I followed the instructions again, went through the whole install and once again it failed to find the driver. So I went manual in control panel and found the driver had indeed installed correctly on my hard drive, it’s just that the “automatic, preferred” search doesn’t look there… of course. Wonder if this happens to everyone? Anyway, it really does extract and copy it to your ibike program folder, so a bit of searching will find it. It’s just a manual approach is needed when ‘auto’ fails. Once loaded it all worked.
The software is simple. Connect, download all or some files… ooops, it crashed. And the ibike itself froze. OK, this has only happened once, but again I followed instructions, restarted the software and took the battery out of the ibike. I popped the battery back in and it fired up again and has worked flawlessly since. In fact it works better now than before. The battery started life reading 2.80V and fell to 2.70V during the 2nd ride, before recovering to 2.78V. However after refitting (and perhaps putting the cover back on a bit tighter?) it reads 2.82V pre-ride and hasn’t fallen below 2.77V. The instructions say to get a new battery if it falls below 2.75V before a ride. Perhaps my first-day glitches were battery related?
Anyway, back to the software. It’s good enough. It loads up the whole ride as a .CSV file and you can ‘play’ with power, wind speed, elevation, slope and bike speed for starters. You basically can graph it as you like it, including looking at neat breakdowns of acceleration, hill and friction readings at any point in the ride. And you can probably read and modify it in any spreadsheet, too, given that it’s saved as a .CSV (but I haven’t tried – yet). It’s simple, but does the job for a data junkie like me. It’s strange though that the ibike itself displays slightly different maximum values than that logged in the data file. That aside, overall it’s what I expected.
 Right, so it’s mounted and ready to go. We have total weight, it’s leveled (so it can tell if it’s climbing or descending) and it seems to be sensing wind speed OK. Now we need to calculate the aerodynamic drag and the friction between road and tyre. Now we can estimate this pretty well, but the “coast” test will actually time your deceleration run – ie measure the drag induced by you and your bike on the road. So out we went, ibike and I, on our Look KG76 for test number 1.
It’s harder to find a flat, smooth quarter-mile of road than you’d think. Slightly uphill is good, downhill is bad, bad, bad as it distorts the results. So naturally I chose a road that looked flat-to-uphill but actually wasn’t, so I got some fantastic results. Fantastic as in no way could it be real.
Look at this: 1459W, man! Beat that!
Oh well, back to the “coast” test. In fact I kept finding roads with dips, declines, potholes, corners and really smooth fast bits. Which raised a question or 2 in my mind. Like how accurate is it when road conditions vary? And how is it calculating wind speed, let alone direction? I guess it’s a straight subtraction of total airflow “in” minus forward velocity, and angle isn’t relevant, but the final figures look odd… anyway, wind aside, if I calibrate on a smooth fast road presumably I’ll get errors unless I only ride on that exact same smooth fast road… so are the errors small enough that it won’t matter? Or when I get to new territory should I re-calibrate?
 So I chose to retest a few times (OK, about 5 times) and compare. Firstly the ibike captured the whole thing, despite my many, many retests – which is good – and secondly I never again got the sort of fantastic result I got with the first coast test. Instead of 1459W I was now in the region of 600-1000W tops (I was getting tired, too, after countless sprints!!). So which ‘coastdown’ is correct? Hmmm.
Now if you look at the screenshot on the left (of the ibike software) you will see a few strange things. Firstly it shows maximum Watts on this same ride as 1495, yet the LCD display showed a maximum of 1459! Oddly similar but dyslexically different. On the right of the pic you will see the figures for a precise moment in my ride. Using those figures (28kmh wind speed, 8.9% slope etc) you could indeed calculate that a 72 kg rider at 47.5kmh on that slope is indeed putting out about 2100W, not the ‘fantastic’ figure of 1459/95. But to me, fallible old me, I could have sworn the road was (a) almost flat and (b) that there was little if any wind.
If you take me at my word, that it was a flat road with nil wind then Kreuzotter calculates it as 715W. I’m happy with that. So – assuming a multiply-by-2 glitch occurred – there’s an error of more than a percent or 2, isn’t there? Hence my scepticism and need to rerun this “coastdown” test until it checks out against ‘expectations’. Or am I too harsh? Did the mostly flat road dip and climb suddenly for an instant, or did I pull up on the bars, lifting the front wheel a tad (I was sprinting, after all)… and maybe the wind suddenly gusted? No, I reckon it was a glitch.
So, I think I’ve got the “coast” test figured out and I’ll keep it “as is” for now until I see questionable figures. Certainly my max power figures have come back to earth. Some doubt remains over what happens if you ride very different terrain, but it’s easy enough to re-do the coast setup if on super-smooth or super-rough road. Perhaps do the coast test just before a race on a new circuit? Certainly do it if you swap bikes, but that’s a test I’m going to do later, just to see what the diffence may be… I suspect it’ll be neglible, though, unless my race wheels really are that much better!
Right, so it’s mounted and ready to go. We have total weight, it’s leveled (so it can tell if it’s climbing or descending) and it seems to be sensing wind speed OK. Now we need to calculate the aerodynamic drag and the friction between road and tyre. Now we can estimate this pretty well, but the “coast” test will actually time your deceleration run – ie measure the drag induced by you and your bike on the road. So out we went, ibike and I, on our Look KG76 for test number 1.
It’s harder to find a flat, smooth quarter-mile of road than you’d think. Slightly uphill is good, downhill is bad, bad, bad as it distorts the results. So naturally I chose a road that looked flat-to-uphill but actually wasn’t, so I got some fantastic results. Fantastic as in no way could it be real.
Look at this: 1459W, man! Beat that!
Oh well, back to the “coast” test. In fact I kept finding roads with dips, declines, potholes, corners and really smooth fast bits. Which raised a question or 2 in my mind. Like how accurate is it when road conditions vary? And how is it calculating wind speed, let alone direction? I guess it’s a straight subtraction of total airflow “in” minus forward velocity, and angle isn’t relevant, but the final figures look odd… anyway, wind aside, if I calibrate on a smooth fast road presumably I’ll get errors unless I only ride on that exact same smooth fast road… so are the errors small enough that it won’t matter? Or when I get to new territory should I re-calibrate?
So I chose to retest a few times (OK, about 5 times) and compare. Firstly the ibike captured the whole thing, despite my many, many retests – which is good – and secondly I never again got the sort of fantastic result I got with the first coast test. Instead of 1459W I was now in the region of 600-1000W tops (I was getting tired, too, after countless sprints!!). So which ‘coastdown’ is correct? Hmmm.
Now if you look at the screenshot on the left (of the ibike software) you will see a few strange things. Firstly it shows maximum Watts on this same ride as 1495, yet the LCD display showed a maximum of 1459! Oddly similar but dyslexically different. On the right of the pic you will see the figures for a precise moment in my ride. Using those figures (28kmh wind speed, 8.9% slope etc) you could indeed calculate that a 72 kg rider at 47.5kmh on that slope is indeed putting out about 2100W, not the ‘fantastic’ figure of 1459/95. But to me, fallible old me, I could have sworn the road was (a) almost flat and (b) that there was little if any wind.
If you take me at my word, that it was a flat road with nil wind then Kreuzotter calculates it as 715W. I’m happy with that. So – assuming a multiply-by-2 glitch occurred – there’s an error of more than a percent or 2, isn’t there? Hence my scepticism and need to rerun this “coastdown” test until it checks out against ‘expectations’. Or am I too harsh? Did the mostly flat road dip and climb suddenly for an instant, or did I pull up on the bars, lifting the front wheel a tad (I was sprinting, after all)… and maybe the wind suddenly gusted? No, I reckon it was a glitch.
So, I think I’ve got the “coast” test figured out and I’ll keep it “as is” for now until I see questionable figures. Certainly my max power figures have come back to earth. Some doubt remains over what happens if you ride very different terrain, but it’s easy enough to re-do the coast setup if on super-smooth or super-rough road. Perhaps do the coast test just before a race on a new circuit? Certainly do it if you swap bikes, but that’s a test I’m going to do later, just to see what the diffence may be… I suspect it’ll be neglible, though, unless my race wheels really are that much better!
No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely ‘rock-solid’ on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It’s easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks.
Mounted it looks like this…
And the mounting itself looks like this….
All in all – dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular ‘wired’ bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it’s easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.
Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the ‘turn 180′ exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate – hey I was only out by 10m!).
All up – simple and quick.
No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely ‘rock-solid’ on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It’s easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks.
Mounted it looks like this…
And the mounting itself looks like this….
All in all – dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular ‘wired’ bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it’s easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.
Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the ‘turn 180′ exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate – hey I was only out by 10m!).
All up – simple and quick.
OK, so I chose the ibike.
The first hassle was the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can’t login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the ‘log-in’ option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 ‘tabs’ to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs… they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)
Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the ‘tracking’ option didn’t work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with ‘Velocomp’ written on the box… hmmm. Go figure.
The box looks like this:
Which is fine, although for around $A600 it’s a trifle underwhelming. Still, it’s the technology we are buying, isn’t it?
And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):
It’s showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.
And then I mounted it on the bike… well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.
More soon!
OK, so I chose the ibike.
The first hassle was the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can’t login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the ‘log-in’ option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 ‘tabs’ to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs… they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)
Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the ‘tracking’ option didn’t work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with ‘Velocomp’ written on the box… hmmm. Go figure.
The box looks like this:
Which is fine, although for around $A600 it’s a trifle underwhelming. Still, it’s the technology we are buying, isn’t it?
And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):
It’s showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.
And then I mounted it on the bike… well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.
More soon!
When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.
In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle ‘computer’, although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out BikeBrain for example)
Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go ‘ah, look at that average’ after a hard crit.
The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go ‘wow, that was a tough ride’.
Which brings me to my newest desire: power measurement. Up to now I’ve calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit. SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options – the German HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don’t offer download, so it would be a ‘write down later’ sort of thing – like back to the 80s.
The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end ‘real’ power meters. I also looked at GPS units like Garmin‘s and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.
Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces – wind, friction and inclination – and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren’t good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the “coasting” test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).
I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the “buy” button in the ibike website. I’ll tell you more later…
When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.
In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle ‘computer’, although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out BikeBrain for example)
Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go ‘ah, look at that average’ after a hard crit.
The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go ‘wow, that was a tough ride’.
Which brings me to my newest desire: power measurement. Up to now I’ve calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit. SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options – the German HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don’t offer download, so it would be a ‘write down later’ sort of thing – like back to the 80s.
The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end ‘real’ power meters. I also looked at GPS units like Garmin‘s and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.
Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces – wind, friction and inclination – and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren’t good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the “coasting” test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).
I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the “buy” button in the ibike website. I’ll tell you more later…
First it was Mavic’s Zap in the late 80′s, later renamed Mektronic (or something similar – anyone actually use one??). Looked good but faded away… now Campag and Shimano are having a go. Batteries are smaller and lighter, for starters, and that’s a big plus. Potentially smoother and maybe even lighter, the main object of course is to do away with those nasty wires that do a great job but aren’t cool in the 21st Century… we gotta go wireless, haven’t we? Yes?
Pez has a story and Pics here.
From cyclingnews.com:
The first priority for a training camp, aside from handing out the new equipment, is aquatinting the new riders – whether they be new to the team, or new to professional cycling as a whole.
Now we all make mistakes, especially when writing under pressure, but what exactly is aquatinting? Do all the riders get spray-painted in blue? Does it have a performance-enhancing quality? Is it cooler to ride with an aqua tint? Should it be banned?
From cyclingnews.com:
The first priority for a training camp, aside from handing out the new equipment, is aquatinting the new riders – whether they be new to the team, or new to professional cycling as a whole.
Now we all make mistakes, especially when writing under pressure, but what exactly is aquatinting? Do all the riders get spray-painted in blue? Does it have a performance-enhancing quality? Is it cooler to ride with an aqua tint? Should it be banned?
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