helmet4000

I was interested to see if there was any statistical advantage to different bikes. I picked a one-half mile flat section with a -1% grade that runs in front of the Thomas Edison museum in NJ. Strava now provides wind direction data for my 2020 rides (and I have 19 rides on this section so far in 2020). I found no difference across my bikes after accounting for average power and wind direction.


My equation was:

Natural log of Speed = b0 + b1(log power) + b2(wind direction north or northeast) + b3(dummies for bikes).


None of the indicators for my different bikes (Kestrel Talon, S-Works Tarmac, Giant TCR aluxx, Fuji Transonic) showed any advantage. All bikes use Dura Ace C60 wheelset.


85% of the variation in log speed on this segment was explained by my average power output and whether the wind was blowing north or northeast.

Not surprisingly, power output was of extreme explanatory importance. A 10-percent increase in my average power output resulted in a 4.4% increase in average speed on this half-mile segment. When the wind was blowing from North or Northeast, on average, there was a 11.6% increase in my average speed.


Thus, for this segment my fitness (power output) seems to be the most important variable in determining average speed.


I will repeat this exercise for other segments as I think over several years I have a lot of data. Interaction effects between wind speed and direction might prove useful for future analyses with a larger dataset.

Rides4Beer

Not surprising, no bike is a magic bullet, it's mostly marketing. My 22lb gravel bike has no trouble keeping up with lightweight/aero bikes. The only real jump you would see is with a TT bike, but you can get pretty much the same results with clip-on aero bars on a road bike, and that's just changing your position, not much to do with the bike itself.

That being said, I'm kind of jonesing for an SL7.

RChung

How charming.

Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​It's the wrong people eating the wrong marketing diet. There are small differences in efficiency between modern racish bikes, just enough to matter if a few seconds can make the difference between making the podium or not, but those few seconds are meaningless to most of us over 40 km. According to a lot of threads, it's also consumers refusing to believe that a new aero saddle won't add 7 mph.

My phone tried to typo that as racist bikes. What I'm really saying is there a reason nobody has ever won the TDF on a BMX. But apples to apples, they're mostly all great now.

Koyote

I’m not saying that bike weight matters as much as some people believe it does… But some of us do ride on hills, you know.

helmet4000

I have the SL3 --the Ebay gods were very nice, $850, Dura Ace Saxo Bank 2011 bike. Stiff as hell, 15lbs. May have belonged to the stereotypical "dentist" -- There is something special about the Tarmac. My latest PRs usually happen on it. Upgrading to 52/36 on crank--it came with 50/34.

MinnMan

Is your position equally aggressive on all the bikes?

Also curious about the effect of swapping to a different wheel set, such as a more traditional alloy clincher.

MinnMan

That proves it was a dentist

AlgarveCycling

AlgarveCycling

It is an absolute fact that different bikes will make a difference in terms of watts required to propel them where weight and aerodynamics are not equal. The aforementioned videos demonstrate this and there are many more if you look for them. Personally, I have managed different Strava times between my 5.8kg bike and my 8.2kg aero bike with the former being faster for me - i.e less watts to move forward - on gradients above 7% and my aero bike has proven faster in sprints and flatter segments.

The test is pretty straight-forward with a power meter where you pick a power of, say 200, 250 or 300 watts as suits you and choose a segment to ride at that power. Ride each bike on the same test and then compare. Different segment lengths and gradients will highlight the advantages of each type of bike and as for those time differences only you can decide if they are significant enough to be important to your type of cycling and goals.

I can ride my 8.2kg aero bike a lot faster than any of my team mates up a 15% climb while they are on 7kg bikes. That doesn't mean that the weight differences between the bikes is therefore marketing BS, what it means is I'm the stronger cyclist by a margin that absorbs and exceeds the bike weight advantages. We see this type of rubbish a lot from cyclists who decide because they can keep up with others on more aero or lighter bikes than their own that it must mean the bikes themselves make no difference. Bollocks. They do, but the difference will only show when it is the exact same engine on the different bikes over routes best suited to a given bike's advantages.

Naturally, the fitter and stronger you are, the more likely you are to realise those benefits too since they are indeed incremental after a certain point specific to our relative ability.

Amt0571

Bike influence in riding speed is overrated. Specially if you're not a professional.

I went from a 10.5kg road bike with 3x8 gears and the crappiest rim brakes to a 8.5kg bike with 2x11 gears and hidraulic rim brakes. My times when climbing and descending improved exactly by zero based on literally a hundred of rides in the same section. I have so much rides that I can compare because I've been long distance commuting (30km with 700m climb each way) with a road bike for a few years.

What's more surprising though is that I started commuting with bikepacking bags carrying all my clothes, shoes, lunch, etc... and at one point I removed them and decided to bring the clothes to the office by car on mondays. Difference in total time when carrying the bags with extra weight and such was... you guess it: ZERO.

Probably, there's some difference that you could find with more scientific measurements, but I usually arrive at my destination with a difference of less than a minute and it mosty varies on my mood to ride like I stole the bike (what I commonly do if I feel well), or at a slower speed.

rubiksoval

Why does this always come up? Being a professional or not has absolutely NOTHING to do with wanting to ride fast. Should we start applying this to cars? Appliances? Anything that you buy that's above and beyond what you actually need? Of course not.


No, not probably. Definitely. You call if your "mood". Everyone else calls it power output. It's a very significant thing in performance cycling.

Amt0571

It's not that diffcult to understand. I want to ride fast sometimes. However, since my job doesn't depend on me winning anyone, a 5 seconds difference over 40km is totally meaningless and makes exactly zero difference to me. Hell, I even deleted my Strava account a couple of years ago.

Could I be faster riding an aero bike? probably. Do I care? No.

My mood determines the power output I desire. There are days when I just want to climb slower for whatever reason. I'ts not like I'm going to earn more money or be happier for being faster than everyone else.

rubiksoval

Well, it's wrong, so there's not much understanding needed, there.

And? Whether or not you care has zero to do with whether or not anyone else cares. That's the point. You saying "it's overated, especially if you're not a professional" is just wrong. Maybe it's overrated for you. Doesn't mean the same for anyone else.

Exactly. Power output is what's important here. You saying that your time doesn't change regardless of your equipment, only your mood, is again, wrong. Equipment 100% affects speed. Whether or not you care about that speed, again, isn't part of the equation.

Erzulis Boat 

I have an "after work" decompression spin I do regularly. It's 18 miles of relatively flat pavement (elevation gain of 240 feet) and this just supplements my regular rides.

On my roadbike, I average 230 watts, and on my MTB (29'er XC racer) I have to push 347 watts average to maintain a speed that is 0.9 mph slower than the road bike. Massive difference.

I did the run on my MTB yesterday, and boy, I sure knew it! I was basing the ride on holding MPH, and not on watts.

ETA- in simpler terms, I shoot for 1 hour or sub. I did the same run on my MTB, and kept my 1 hour or sub. Numbers don't lie. It's that much harder to complete the Kessel run on the MTB within my time parameter.

vtje

Not to completely derail this conversation, but a couple of years ago I upgraded from mavic ksyrium elite wheels to a hand build tubeless wheelset. I did not have a power meter at the time to see my power number, but purely from a speed point of view, I saw immediate 5% improvement on all my rides.

MinnMan

It's all about you, isn't it? If you don't care, why are you even in this thread?

Is your mission here to proclaim that nobody else is allowed to care because you don't?

Carbonfiberboy 

I don't think that the choice of bike limits the rider's power output as long as position and gearing is the same. If you have a different opinion on that, love to hear it. I also think that the weight of the bike and whether it's aero or not, are not the biggest factors for performance. I think the biggest factor is how much of the rider's power to the pedals reaches the asphalt. Drive train, wheels, tires, frame, all those things can siphon it off. I've ridden bikes that felt like rocket ships and bikes that felt like I was riding on uncured asphalt, though the weight difference was not particularly significant. I wish I knew more about that, but I don't, though I can certainly feel it. Among modern carbon bikes I don't think it's a big factor, but maybe. Some riders think it's enough that they ride relabeled bikes. I think one would have to ride an indoor velodrome with a pedal based PM to see a difference among modern bikes. I wonder if teams have that done.

Seattle Forrest

Nobody who doesn't race wants to go fast because you deleted your strava?

It's fine if you don't appreciate the benefits of things like aero gear and good tires. You don't have to. Not enjoying the little bit of extra speed saves you money. But you should understand there are other people in the world who have different priorities and enjoy different things. And we don't want you speaking for us.

Rides4Beer

Definitely, apples to apples it's close.

Did the local Tues Night Worlds last night, first time in a long while. Held my own, spent most of the time up front and stayed with the breakaway on the last lap. But couldn't help but wonder how many watts I'm giving up on my gravel bike, even with good road tires (GP5000s w/ latex tubes, on non aero wheels), as I'm watching the guy next to me on a SystemSix with deep wheels. lol From looking at Tour aero tests, the TCR gives up 24w to the SystemSix, so I'd have to guess that the Revolt is a lil higher still, prob ~30w, def not insignificant when you're averaging 24+mph over 40+ miles. Makes me want an aero bike again.

Bulette

Strava, among other data-loggers, has made statistics a bit more accessible. I exported an up-to-date version of my Strava's activities.csv file. I have around 731 total rides logged, but only 347 where I recorded my "Gear". Of those 347 rides, the Gear includes a Touring bike, a Mountain bike, an older rim brake Crux, and more recently, a Planet X disc cross bike. The results from the mountain bike were significantly different from the rest, however, this reflects course preferences (Single track) more than it reflects the bike's effect on pace.

The final sample include three road bikes ridden on similar routes: CX (106 obs), CX Disc (98 obs), and Touring (45 obs); n = 249.



The results of statistical testing suggests that a significant difference does exist between the three bikes; pairwise comparisons reveal that the Disc cross bike is faster than either the rim-brake Crux or the touring bike.



These results match my experience. I can ride either of the three bikes fast (relative to my own thresholds), and I can ride either of the three bikes slow. More often though, there is a "pace" that fits each bikes design and configuration.

prj71

The answer is Justin Bieber.

Just ride fercripesakes. Meaningless data unless you are a pro racer getting paid.

surak

I also want an aero bike, but for different reasons. Many of the nicer climbs are a ways out from where I live. Most of my riding time is just getting there on uninteresting, flattish roads that I've taken many times. I literally had to ride more than a metric century the other weekend just to include one Cat-1 that I'd never done. The way there and back on a windy day was tiresome, even when trying to get as low as possible (crosswinds making going IAB too twitchy). So a modern aero bike is appealing to me because it would reduce the time riding that I don't care about, at a slight - if any - slowdown to the riding I enjoy. The time saved with more aero actually increases the slower I ride (and I would be going slow to save energy for my destination hills), so the argument for aero being useless under racing speeds doesn't hold water. I don't know that it's worth the $5k minimum it costs to get a good aero bike, but I know my next road bike will be more aero for sure.
​​​​

Notso_fastLane

Flat(ish) ground without a lot of starts and stops. Your best power/speed ratio is going to be a velomobile.

I'm not a strong rider (~18MPH level ground cruise on my recumbent), but in my velo, my cruise speed is 4-5 MPH faster over the same stretch.

I don't have a power meter, but have only tested myself using stationary bikes at the gym (so all the caveats that go along with that, at least they're also recumbent), and make somewhere around 190W as a sustained output.

Climbing is another story....my velo weighs in at 80 lbs.

Rides4Beer

Def don't need to spend that much, unless you want new of course. There are some used Felt ARs out there pretty reasonably priced, it's at the top of the list for aero bikes, only 2w behind the SystemSix, which is the "fastest" at 203w (and disc, Cannondale def nailed it). The Felt is rim brake, but for where I want to ride fast, that's not a concern.

Agreed, my next bike with be aero and focused on speed. I have the gravel bike for all around use.