Originally Posted by
ruudlaff
i had the same questions and opinion. Asked someone who has a bit of “knowledge”, and the time differences to be made are astonishing. To the point that I don’t think even the sprinters would care if it felt like a wet noodle underneath them.
I learned a while back that 1 mph is about 1.5 feet per second, so if you're going 1.5 mph faster than the other rider you're gaining 1.5 feet every second.
At 30 mph you go 44 feet a second, it takes about 7 seconds to cover 100m. Every mph is 11 feet gained, so if you're going 32 mph you'll beat your 30 mph opponent by 22 feet. That's a huge margin, even if it's not a lot of time (few tenths of a second).
For certain disciplines, it seems that gaining a bit of speed up top, maybe as much as 1-3 mph, would outweigh the stiffness factor.
Of course, since I'm one to lean towards a stiff bike, I'm biased towards a solid bike. But my (only) track bike is a skinny steel tubed thing and is not very stiff, and I seemed to be okay on it. I did wish for a more solid BB feel though.