eduskator

CND! Worth a little less than your currency.

After visiting a few LBSs in the last days and seeing how out of bikes they all currently all due to the pandemic situation, I will wait a few more months & am pretty positive I'll be going the TCR 2021 route (Pro 1 + DI2 upgrade) when they do come out. The only one that could make me change my mind for now is the Venge Pro 2020 that is at a much higher price tag than the TCR.

OldTryGuy

TCR >>> looking GOOD

My Propel is an early 2013 Advance SL and I wouldn't go for a Scott over a new Propel. Yesterday's 101 miler was the first time back on the Giant since riding it 7 weeks ago when I was hit by a 150lb wild MAMA pig on a overnight 100 mile ride. The bike flipped after the front wheel dug in to soft ground throwing me off resulting in a cracked left scapula, 2 cracked ribs, a punctured lung and shoulder damage. The Propel came through with a slightly tweaked right brifter. Ortho doctor thinks this soon to be 70yo GEEZER is healing pretty quickly.

Enjoy whatever you get and safe riding.

RChung

Some sources of drag that fall beneath the threshold of "tangibility" matter a lot; some things that are tangible don't matter much at all. I'm not sure that tangibility is a good metric of drag.

OTOH, we ride bikes because we enjoy it and it makes us feel good. That's a metric of tangibility I fully endorse.

smashndash

Right that’s what I meant. My metric is smiles/$. Aero is pretty low when looking at that metric unless you’re really really strong and don’t ride in packs. If all that mattered were speed, we’d all be riding motorcycles, or at least ebikes.

JRonaTrek

Im a trek fanboy, but today while doing some work at a bike store i saw the New Scott Foil, and let me tell you, IT.IS.GORGEOUS! As a former 2018 Trek Madone Rim brake owner, the bike was amazing, but i couldn't work on it, it had to go to a shop. It wasn't pricey, it was just a hassle.

I am not saying the Scott won't be easy to work on, it's just these hi end race bikes are to be cared for like a Mercedes, Ferrari or whatever luxury vehicles are out there. Im happy with a simple Emonda, im not pro. I've just dealt with that bike and didn't care much for the constant visits to the bike shop.

asgelle

I love when someone says they agree with someone else and then repeats back exactly the opposite of what that person said. Who are you to say what makes me happy when I'm riding? Finishing with the group makes me happy and because I'm not really strong, a more aero setup can mean the difference between happy with the group or sad alone.

smashndash

Not sure when I did this, unless I misinterpreted what RChung said.

You’re right that I made a poor assumption. Not everyone is made happy by the same things. But the best I can do is share my experience.

If you honestly think an aero bike is the difference between getting dropped from a group and not, then go for it. I prefer to skip pulls instead

Diopena1

As someone who also ran into this conundrum recently, I’ll add my experience in hopes to enlighten others.
we all know the hype around aero is more of a subjective matter, but here goes my experience:

I have a 2011 Cannondale supersix himod, with 52mm carbon wheels, and sram red 11 spd it weighs 14.7 pounds, it climbs, and handles beautifully.
As a self professed cycling junkie.... I took a dip into the “I wanna go faster, so let’s go aero” pool, and built a 2020 Giant propel advanced pro frame up.... the full build with etap, powermeter, etc came up to 17.4 pounds, which is light for an aero road bike with hidden cables.

Is it faster?, how does it climb?.... is the hype worth it?
it is marginally faster (my avg mph is about 1-3mph faster at the same cadence/power)
climbs pretty well, I did go up to an 11-32 cassette from an 11-28 on the supersix. ( both have 52/36 qrings, same crank length)
The hype?.... in the end it’s all about how you feel on the bike, so, I’ll take the extra weight as the disc brakes make a pretty big improvement, and make me feel more confident on some steep downhills.
And to the more vain side of things, the Propel looks sexier, since the hidden cabling makes it look cleaner.
So, +1 on the Propel.... I did shop around (Venge, Madone, Cento 10pro), and the geometry on the propel fit me best <- remember everything is subjective. 😉

I did manage to get a slight deal on the frame, and had some of the parts saved from a couple of years ago when I began to plan the new build..... so I saved some money, built it instead of buying it, thus, making the experience more enjoyable....

sfrider 

I think it's more that the meat motor has an itch that needs scratching. Just glad it's not me. Some seriously nice bikes at that price point though...

Bah Humbug

Just swapping to an aero frame WILL NOT prevent you from getting dropped. It's a much smaller difference than anyone wants to believe.

guadzilla

I gotta say, i have a Venge and it is a near-perfect do-it-all bike. It's lighter than most other aero bikes, handles really well, is super responsive when you drope the hammar (or is hamer?) - I test rode a S5 and found it dead to ride; the Madone was a couch and just flat-out boring. Didnt have a chance to ride the Propel or the Foil, but you really should consider a test ride of the Venge.

asgelle

I didn't believe it until I saw you put it in all caps. Now I realize it must be true. That said, the difference between getting dropped and just hanging on through a surge can be a handful of watts something easily saved with an aero frame.

RChung

The average difference is small, but racing (and, sometimes, just riding) isn't about average differences. It's about going way past threshold but managing to stay on the wheel in front of you. Everyone is on the rivet and the rubber band is stretched. Once you get behind by just a couple of meters, the rubber band snaps and you end up doing an ITT all the way home. Racing, or riding with a spirited group of friends, is about crisis management, and paying attention to small differences in drag mean you can stretch the rubber band one or two more times before it snaps.

I have to do all the crazy nutty extreme things I do or the ITT of shame would start much sooner.

If I rode by myself all the time, maybe I wouldn't care. I try never to forget that the things that I find enjoyable aren't universally enjoyed, and the things I find important aren't universally important. I'm just explaining that small differences do, sometimes, matter a lot more than if you were just considering the average difference.

asgelle

So it might be better not to think in terms of watts, but kJ saved. This would apply to the cost when riding over threshold power and the recovery of anaerobic capacity riding below.

RiceAWay

Giant makes very dependable road bikes but I don't care for them either. Though if you are buying new, the latest top end models look pretty good and their warranty is bested only by Trek. The Time's I've owned were extremely well made but were very stiff which was overcome with oversize tires. There are all sorts of great bikes around and I have a couple of top end Treks so I'm out of the market finally. My brother has a Look a couple of years old and loves it. (Despite he also has a Giant TCR that he no longer rides). Depending on the sort of terrain you do, the three top Trek's are incredible and you get a lifetime warranty. A friend of mine had a Gary Fisher road bike and it started cracking and since Trek had bought that company they gave the same warranty on it and gave him a new Madone. Mine is a 6.9 and I really like it though I would have liked it better if I could have put Di2 on it. My 2018 Emonda with Di2 is just head and shoulders above any other bike I've owned. I also have a Colnago CLX 3.0 that rides very good. All my bikes are extra-large so they are not on the light side. In fact, I have a Lemond Zurich with oversize Reynolds 853 tubing that weighs about the same as the Colnago. And the steel Lemond steers with diamond precision. The Treks are almost as good but not quite that precise. I will say that the one problem that Trek had - the BB90 Bottom Bracket has solved this year with the T47 (??) bottom bracket. The same thing but with a screw-in metal bearing holder.

RiceAWay

The difference between the rolling resistance of the top tires is more than that saved on an aero bike. The most aero thing you can do is put aero wheels on it and to tell you the truth, half the time the bike squirreling around the road in cross winds destroys that advantage. Furthermore, accelerating the weight of a carbon aero wheel takes a LOT of energy that would not be there with old fashion box rims. That is partially offset by the jillion spoke rims. But the latest shallow carbon rims are overcoming that problem.

American racing is mostly crits and that acceleration out of corners is FAR more important than any aero gain. This is why more and more you're seeing 38 mm or smaller carbon wheels. I put a set of 40 mm aluminum aero wheels on my bike and could immediately tell the difference from the 50 mm carbon rims. They weighed about the same but the feel of the acceleration was completely different, with the aluminum wheels far superior. Though that might be a bias on my part because they also stop so much better that they aren't like carbon wheels where you always have to be concentrating half a block ahead of you in case you need to stop. BTW, that is cured by using Campy carbon brake pads but they stop so much better I wonder about rim brake surface wear.

Here is a good cheap set of wheels for Joe Racer: https://www.probikekit.com/bicycle-w.../11365367.html

asgelle

You greatly overestimate power to accelerate in cycling. Wheel Performance A 50% lower inertia wheel will need 0.02% more power in a typical crit.

RiceAWay

Looking at my carbon aero wheels and my Campy Nucleon wheels the weight difference is twice for the carbon wheel. A simple manner of speaking about it is to say that you not only halve the weigh with the box rims but you essentially quarter the power to both carry the lower weigh and accelerate the lower weight.

So while when you are NOT accelerating this difference in weight makes almost no difference, when accelerating it makes quite a bit of difference. The Cat 1,2 and 3's are often putting out 1,400 watts out of every corner and that difference in acceleration can be the difference between wining of being the lantern rouge. Maybe you could hold that sort of power if you only had a square four turn course but these 10 turn courses are simply too much for the constant acceleration.

Now we can argue that the deep aero rims don't have so bad an effect on acceleration as the box rims via terms of radius, but the overall effect is that it requires a tremendously large amount of human power to ride crits and you are on the very limit every second of the race if you are a contender so this acceleration makes a rather large difference.

Here is a pretty good explanation with the math involved - https://physics.stackexchange.com/qu...n-acceleration

rubiksoval

This is a really odd paragraph.

rubiksoval

No, we're most definitely not putting out 1400 watts coming out of every corner. If even half the field could hit 1400 watts in a one-off sprint I'd be pretty surprised.

In fact, if you're having to sprint out of every corner, you're not likely going to make it to the end of a decent p/1 race.

asgelle

This explains nothing germane to this discussion. Yes, power to accelerate rotating mass is double that for static, but when dealing with power to move or accelerate a bicycle, remember power to overcome resistive forces (gravity, rolling resistance, aero drag) scales with speed or speed cubed and the magnitude of acceleration is much, much less than speed. I would suggest you familiarize with the kinetic equation for bicycle motion as presented here for example. https://www.recumbents.com/wisil/Mart...%20cycling.pdf

RChung

Good racers are really good at not spending a joule more than they need to.

In The Rider, Krabbe says, "A man along the road shouts 'Faster!' Probably thinks bicycle racing is about going fast." A lot of racing is figuring out how slow you can possibly be and still end up first.

smashndash

I think it’s worth noting that OP has made no indication that he actually wants to race.

If he does... it’s a no brainer. Buy all the aero you can afford.

RChung

Except in the title of this thread, which contains the words "race bike."

seypat

This is true in most, if not all contests in life. It's not about how dominant you can be while winning. It's about expending as little as possible while still beating your opponent. That could mean strategy, tactics, physical activity, etc. You never want to show your complete hand if you don't need to. There will always be another opponent. Now If you are trying to break some kind of record/standard, that's a different situation.