Q's while watching the TdF 2021 ...
#1
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Q's while watching the TdF 2021 ...
1. Watching a mountain stage that featured constant cold rain and 45 mph downhills: is there such a thing as rain tires for bicycles? Like car and motorcycle tires get, some rubber compound that grips better on wet surfaces?
2. How come just about every cyclist out there is clean shaven? Athletes in other sports who are in their 20s and 30s have some hip-looking growth. Is it aero something? Or tradition?
3. What is the point of "chasing down" a breakaway rider, especially uphill? So the pursuit riders catch up with him ... then what happens? They can't slash his tires.
4. After a big crash and pile-up .... how do they sort out or assign times to the riders caught in the pile-up, whether they are injured or not, or their bikes broken or not?
5. Mountain stages: what's a typical rear cassette gear pack? They have big gears for the brutal uphills but also tiny gears for downhills - I see them pedaling for more speed when they're already going 45+ mph. Related Q: Do riders ever use triple chainrings?
=K
2. How come just about every cyclist out there is clean shaven? Athletes in other sports who are in their 20s and 30s have some hip-looking growth. Is it aero something? Or tradition?
3. What is the point of "chasing down" a breakaway rider, especially uphill? So the pursuit riders catch up with him ... then what happens? They can't slash his tires.
4. After a big crash and pile-up .... how do they sort out or assign times to the riders caught in the pile-up, whether they are injured or not, or their bikes broken or not?
5. Mountain stages: what's a typical rear cassette gear pack? They have big gears for the brutal uphills but also tiny gears for downhills - I see them pedaling for more speed when they're already going 45+ mph. Related Q: Do riders ever use triple chainrings?
=K
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The high tire pressures and relatively low speeds of road bikes make them generally immune to hydroplaning, so there's no point making tires with channeled tread patterns. Some tire manufacturers do put shallow "herringbone" tread on some tires in an effort to improve wet grip by getting the rubber to interlock with road irregularities, but there doesn't seem to be consensus on whether this has any actual efficacy.
Oftentimes racers will run a bit lower pressure in nasty conditions.
2. How come just about every cyclist out there is clean shaven? Athletes in other sports who are in their 20s and 30s have some hip-looking growth. Is it aero something? Or tradition?
Shaving the arms and legs, however, has a tangible aerodynamic benefit. And if a crash occurs with nasty road rash, things clean up far better if there's no hair.
3. What is the point of "chasing down" a breakaway rider, especially uphill? So the pursuit riders catch up with him ... then what happens? They can't slash his tires.
If you're well behind someone at the top of a climb, but you want to catch up with them, you'll potentially need to spend a lot of time on the subsequent descent and flats putting out a bigger effort than them in order to do that.
But if you catch someone before the crest, you can use their draft to keep up with them at much lower effort. Or the two of you can work together, trading turns at the front of the pair, so that the two of you are able to ride faster than if you were each solo.
4. After a big crash and pile-up .... how do they sort out or assign times to the riders caught in the pile-up, whether they are injured or not, or their bikes broken or not?
There is the "3km rule": if you crash or suffer a mechanical in the last 3km of a stage, and riders from the group you had been in continue up the road and finish ahead of you, then when you cross the finish line you're awarded the same time as those riders.
Other than that, being in a crash basically just sucks, and any time lost due to injuries or bicycle damage is just lost.
5. Mountain stages: what's a typical rear cassette gear pack? They have big gears for the brutal uphills but also tiny gears for downhills - I see them pedaling for more speed when they're already going 45+ mph.
On mountain stages, big cogs in the ballpark of 30T or even larger sometimes show up.
Related Q: Do riders ever use triple chainrings?
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They won't use triples because of tradition essentially. I often theorize that will change in the future. In general triples aren't as clean shifting as doubles. Anyway - back in the day they would put a 27 tooth cog on the back with their 53/39. Then they used compact cranks. Then we widened out the cassettes. Today it's simply a combination of what is available to the rider through the team gear and what they want to use.
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Thanks for the detailed replies; I appreciate those - and I'll head over to the "Pro Cycling Fans" section for more info (didn't know it was there).
=K
=K
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Very often, it's defensive tactics. If the rider up the road is a potential threat to your team's top-placed GC rider for overall time, chasing down that rider eliminates any time advantage that rider might have gained at the finish of the stage. For flat stages, a team may work hard to chase down a breakaway so their sprinter still has the opportunity to win the stage.
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Incorrect. The wind doesn't care [sic] where on your body the hair is so long as it's exposed...so if facial hair "has very little impact on aerodynamics" than so too does arm and leg hair.
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Ahh.... the wind tunnel.... where every bicycle race is conducted.
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Correction. That's not a wind tunnel. It's the *Win* Tunnel.
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It's how the Slovenians crush dreams. Sometimes you risk repeatedly getting slammed to the ground and withdrawing from the race because of it.
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There are guys in the peloton that often have facial hair e.g. Thomas De Gendt always does and Peter Sagan sometimes.
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I thought the clean shaven was mostly because so many are still young and would be really scraggly looking trying to cultivate facial hair
Quite a few of the older guys sport a beard or mustache or even the Don Johnson/Miami Vice look. But by far most are clean shaven. Just like most of those I see day to day that aren't pro cyclists.
Quite a few of the older guys sport a beard or mustache or even the Don Johnson/Miami Vice look. But by far most are clean shaven. Just like most of those I see day to day that aren't pro cyclists.
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I thought F1 races were won or lost in the pit stops.
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Except for the actual scientific wind tunnel tests that proved otherwise. Facial hair made no appreciable difference, but shaved legs saved about 82 seconds over 40 km. Facial hair made no appreciable difference, but shaved legs saved about 82 seconds over 40 km.
EDIT: Did they test different densities of leg hair? I mean, there's the kind that you can barely see, and then there's the sort that so thick it looks like socks.
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Wait, so shaved legs (82 sec/40km (or 25 miles)) work better than a lighter bike (30 seconds/100 miles, based on a long, argumentative thread)?
EDIT: Did they test different densities of leg hair? I mean, there's the kind that you can barely see, and then there's the sort that so thick it looks like socks.
EDIT: Did they test different densities of leg hair? I mean, there's the kind that you can barely see, and then there's the sort that so thick it looks like socks.
It's an interesting series of videos, they did ones on various types of cycling clothing, haircuts, etc. I'm certain I watched one where they tested shaved arms (they actually make a bit of a difference if I recall) but I can't find it now. Bottom line is aero is pretty important.
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Wait, so shaved legs (82 sec/40km (or 25 miles)) work better than a lighter bike (30 seconds/100 miles, based on a long, argumentative thread)?
EDIT: Did they test different densities of leg hair? I mean, there's the kind that you can barely see, and then there's the sort that so thick it looks like socks.
EDIT: Did they test different densities of leg hair? I mean, there's the kind that you can barely see, and then there's the sort that so thick it looks like socks.
You know in one of the videos they actually talk about where their test subjects ranked on the Chewbacca scale.
It's an interesting series of videos, they did ones on various types of cycling clothing, haircuts, etc. I'm certain I watched one where they tested shaved arms (they actually make a bit of a difference if I recall) but I can't find it now. Bottom line is aero is pretty important.
It's an interesting series of videos, they did ones on various types of cycling clothing, haircuts, etc. I'm certain I watched one where they tested shaved arms (they actually make a bit of a difference if I recall) but I can't find it now. Bottom line is aero is pretty important.
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