RE: [CR]Re: Friction shifting and ramped cassettes

(Example: Framebuilders:Masi)

In-Reply-To: <000601c839a5$41b5ce00$6401a8c0@maincomputer>
References: <a06230903c37dd54c084f@[192.168.1.33]> <500512.63733.qm@web55909.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2007 08:02:41 -0800
To: "Kenneth Freeman" <ken4bikes@att.net>, "'Tom Dalton'" <tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com>
From: "Jan Heine" <heine94@earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: [CR]Re: Friction shifting and ramped cassettes
cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org

Tom,

Sorry that I overlooked your taking the thread off-list in my response.

Ken and Tom,
> If you shift 200 times in a brevet and lose a comparative and
>seemingly imperceptible half-second per, that's an effect of 1 2/3
>minutes over that event.
>
>If you also consider it might take 10s of seconds to regain lost
>momentum, the penalty can be significantly worse.

As you say, the problem is not the loss of time during the shift, but the loss of speed. If I enter a short hill at 19 mph instead of 20 mph, I climb most of the hill 1 mph slower, and that adds up. It always amazes me that guys on STI can't keep up with me on the initial part of a hill, and then have to catch up. It happened all the time in PBP. On a mountain pass, where you climb for an hour, not a problem. But on these short, steep rollers, you lose time or have to ride harder.

In our brevets, I often find that people who can climb mountain passes as fast as I do, lose 10 minutes over 30 miles of rolling terrain.
>I like threads where I learn something, and this is a good one IMHO!!

But illegal! Good thing Dale wasn't watching closely...

Best,

Jan
--
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.bikequarterly.com