Developing Form

Form is often talked about as a component of cycling. Though there are wider (mainly aesthetic) issues that relate to the accepted norms of how cyclists dress and behave, the most important discussion of form refers to the technique applied in transferring our energy into moving ourselves forward on a bicycle. This is a component that, if one has it, is immediately apparent to the experienced eye, and like all subtle aspects of any skill, is easily overlooked, but will greatly improve the speed of your later development if addressed in the early stages.

Technique in any sport can be improved upon, but the percentage of difference this makes to the eventual outcome varies massively from sport to sport. However, the first rule of any sports coaching program is that technique must be perfected before any other work is done, as developing strength, speed or endurance without proper technical base is pointless, or even dangerous.

When we first approach cycling, the simple act of balancing ourselves and pushing down on the pedals to move forward seems to cover it. These are muscles we use daily for all sorts of normal stuff, and it may be hard to see initially how much more involved the technique might get. However, once we clip our feet into the pedals, it should be clear that we now have the potential to use a whole different set of muscles.

If we could get the legs to work equally all the way around the pedal cycle, in theory we would be able to generate a much more even force, and spread the load over a greater range of muscles, thus reducing the cost to our cardiovascular system, and enabling us to go faster for longer.

That's the theory. There are many views on this, and no real consensus in popular circulation. Some coaches insist that tests have shown no real advantage to the development of other sections of the cycle, and that the downward force from the quads is still the main driver. I have seen tests on video that claim to show that there's minimal difference, but these are tests on random cyclists, not on those who have specifically trained their bodies to work in this way.

Of course we have inherited a body that has evolved over millions of years to walk, jump or run, and so the most developed muscles we have in our legs are the ones that push down. If you take the average human and put them on a bike, and run tests to see how much positive difference pulling up on the pedals makes, I'm fairly sure it would be minimal.

If we are to get the other muscles in the leg to work for us, we will have to start developing them over many years before we start to see real changes. Those coaches however, that work with national track teams and can implement the appropriate exercises and monitor them over a longer period of the athletes development, will tell you that developing muscles that work through the entire pedal stroke is an essential part of becoming a world class cyclist.

What is perfect form? A time triallist has the most perfect form of any cyclist. If you think of Bradley Wiggins, Fabian Cancellara, Tom Dumoulin, or any of the other specialists in this discipline, you see that form in action: very little motion in the upper body, and a very smooth and almost effortless-looking pedal cycle. This is because they have eliminated unnecessary movement and balanced the muscle firing patterns and work-load to maximise the power going into the pedals all the way around the stroke. When it comes to pure transfer of power, they are the masters.

So what are the muscles, beyond those that activate automatically, that we can activate and develop to complete the 360-degree motion?

Though it might seem that the quadriceps and gluteus maximus are the main protagonists in the most basic of cycling actions - literally just stomping on the pedals, the actual activation of the glutes is a much less natural one than we're used to from a normal squatting or rising motion. As the largest muscle in the body, the glutes can really be developed for some serious power endurance, but will need some focus to get them to activate to their full potential.

The hip flexors are a muscle group that will probably have the least automatic engagement for most of us, but can really help your pedal stroke if we can effectively engage and develop them. It is these muscles that will give us a strong pull up and forward on the pedals. Then we also have the calves and muscles involved in the rotation of the ankle. By isolating and working on these additional muscles, we start to get a more complete rotational picture to our output.

So how do we isolate and develop the muscles needed to work through the whole pedal stroke? Well the use of standard strength training equipment has limited value aside from helping with the general strength improvement or size of the target muscles. Logically, the most valuable improvements are in drills using the actual bicycle cranks, with resistance adjusted to target specific muscular reactions and development.

A useful diagram showing the effective use of each muscle group in the pedal cycle

ONE-LEGGED DRILLS

The easiest way to identify and engage the other working muscles is to ride on a home trainer or stationary bike and do one-legged drills. Assuming we're clipped into the pedals, removing one foot from a pedal and cycling with one leg only will quickly identify where we need to improve strength. The first time you do this, you will probably have trouble keeping the pedals rotating smoothly, but keep the resistance low and persevere, concentrating on keeping everything except that leg as still as possible. To get used to it you should probably only do it for a max of 30 seconds before either switching feet or going back to using both legs in between each isolated side.

Start with a very light resistance and progress to a set alternating 1 minute per leg for a total of 10 minutes concentrating on a smooth pedaling stroke and keeping the upper body as motionless as possible. The motionless upper body is a real test of form as it indicates wasted energy. It will quickly identify how weak your core is. Specific work on your core should be a part of every athletes training schedule and should be done off-the-bike using dynamic abdominal and lower back exercises.

1+1 FORM DRILLS

This is for me the most effective drill. It can easily be done on a home trainer, but I prefer to do it out on the road - I have an ideal training route for it. Look for either a flat section or a fairly consistent upward gradient that gives you at least 20+ minutes of uninterrupted pedaling.

You are doing 1-minute-on, 1-minute-off drills using both legs but isolating muscle groups used in specific sections of the pedal stroke. The minute between each drill you should spin as easily as possible in a high cadence to recover.

For the minute on, isolate one muscle group used in the pedal stroke, concentrating on only using those muscles for the minute. I usually start by isolating the glutes. I'll do this 5 times (1+1x5=10 minutes) before switching to the next isolation - the ankles - for 5 reps. The next one will be the hip flexors and the upward pull on the backside of the pedal stroke. Another 5 times. Then finally I will combine the 3 above-mentioned muscle groups for another 5 intervals. If you run out of road, start again on another stretch or go back to the start. I'm lucky to have a stretch of 3-4% that lasts me for over 40 minutes of these. Keep the intensity of the effort low. These are not intervals designed to elicit a training effect from your cardiovascular/energy systems, so your heart-rate should not be significantly affected. The muscles will be easier to identify with reasonable resistance to begin with, but you should aim to work the cadence up to your normal spin to complete the picture.

I don't personally find a need to work on the quads and hamstrings in this way. Mainly because they are already well-utilised within my normal cycling stroke, and so the 1-minute recovery interval will, by default, involve these muscles. Others may have different deficiencies however, so keep asking the more experienced riders in your groups for suggestions on where your form weaknesses are.

BIG GEAR DRILLS

At the beginning of the program, or early season, I will deliberately use a higher gear - thus a much slower cadence for these drills. This ensures that you can concentrate on the consistent application of force on the correct part of the stroke. I call these Big Gear drills. As the program progresses I will gradually increase the speed of the cadence right up to my natural spin, though ensuring that I concentrate on the full stroke always. I will usually introduce this shift by increasing the cadence first over the last set of drills (the muscle groups combined).

TRAINING TO STAND - PISTOLERO DRILLS

For me the definitive contemporary example of the out-of-the-saddle style of climbing on a bicycle is Alberto Contador. His "dancing on the pedals" style is his trademark. He says himself that he has trained to be able to stand for up to 20 minutes continuously, and that though it may provoke a 4-5bpm rise in his heart rate, it generates more power, and gives him a significant respite for muscles used in the seated position.

Now most of us will have found that when we get to a steeper part of a climb, we can generate a brief surge of extra power by standing, possibly with a shift up in gearing, and use the full body to power through the steep bit. However, most of us will only be able to keep this up for 10-20 seconds before we go anaerobic, forcing ourselves to sit back down and shift back to the easier gear. The problem is that we are simply using our maximum force - stamping down hard on the pedals in order to achieve maximum leverage. While effective briefly, it is not sustainable.

If you pay attention to how the pro climbers do it however, you will see that most of the time when they stand, they are in the same gear as when they're sitting - meaning that they are maintaining the same cadence with either technique. This is a crucial point to understand in developing this ability. We have to train to stay out of the saddle at a higher cadence. which means a significantly lower resistance.

When we first try this, we will usually find it difficult because we're used to needing to increase resistance - shift up - or we go through the downward part of the stroke too quickly. This is because our pedal strokes are too one-sided - we push down mainly - and when standing we also have most of our body-weight added to the down-stroke. So the first step is to do the above drills working on the other sections of the pedal stroke so that we can then counterbalance with the rest of the stroke.

Again, the most important muscles to focus on are the glutes, hip flexors and ankles. The hip flexors are used to kick the leg up and forward, the glutes start over the top of the stroke and push forward and down, and the ankles maintain a rotational movement of the feet that assist it through the bottom of the stroke. The core plays an even more important role when you're standing since your only contact points with the bike now are your feet and hands.

Once you're starting to feel the effects of the above drills on your technique, the next step is the standing drills. Same approach: 1-minute on, 1-minute off. Again keep it as easy as you can. For the minute on, you should aim to not put too much pressure on the pedal down-stroke, but to keep the pressure light and rotational. It's very difficult at first (if not totally counter-intuitive) to limit the down-stroke, but persevere and you'll feel the change within a couple of weeks. If you find a minute too long, start with 30 seconds. In between you just need to sit back down, but try to keep the cadence high throughout. Eventually you should be able to do this without taking your heart rate up by too much.

Keep it as a regular part of your training week and it could become your secret weapon!

Related Articles:
http://riders-cafe.blogspot.my/2015/05/the-physiology-of-endurance-cycling.html

Review: Giro Factor Cycling Shoes

 Another item that works so well for me that I'm actually looking for my third pair at the moment.

Shoes are such a crucial element in cycling. I'm constantly reminded of the issues that poorly-suited shoes present from the comments of the people I ride with. "Hot spots", aching arches and pinched toes are just a few of the more obvious issues one can have when your poorly-fitting footwear plays such a critical role in transferring your energy into forward momentum.

Again, I've been lucky. Call it a gut-feeling perhaps, but having had positive experiences with all the carbon bits and pieces that the company Easton produces (I use bars, wheels, stems and seat posts made from the stuff), when the helmet-producing giant Giro came out with a range of cycling footwear using soles made from Easton's EC90 carbon, something resonated with me.

Sizing is pretty accurate in the Giro footwear range, with European sizes in 0.5 increments. There are also 3 different thicknesses of arch support inserted beneath the insole, so you can get pretty anal with fit.

My choice was the Factor model, rather than the lighter Prolight, entirely because I prefer the adjustable ratchet-buckle thing over the triple velcrose straps. I tend to generally find myself tightening the shoes after an hour or so of riding. I'm not exactly sure why, but I assume that the blood displacement in my working legs means that my feet actually shrink once I'm into my stride. Anyway I hate the feeling of loosely fitting shoes, so being able to tighten on the fly is a worthy feature.

The shoe fits fairly snugly. I worried initially that it was too snug and that I would start to feel pressure points while riding, but none appeared. It really fits my, fairly wide, foot very accurately (they do also have an even wider version labeled HV - high volume). I tried using the fatter arch support pads, but in the end the thinnest ones work for me. It is often recommended that one uses shoes with a bit more room on longer rides, but I do rides of over 200km in these quite regularly, and I've never had foot issues.

The shoe is very light, despite the fact that there are lighter ones in the range. The Easton sole is super light and stiff of course, and transfer of power is excellent. The padding has never caused any friction with my foot. The leather lip did initially rub the front of my upper foot, but that went as soon as the leather got worn in a little. I suppose if there was one thing I'd change it would be that the shoe closure finished a couple of millimeters lower down, but that's just for my anatomy.

They have suffered some serious deluges in their lifetime,  but thanks to the drainage hole in the sole, they don't stay waterlogged while on your feet, and they dry out fairly quickly once you take them off. The pads on the heels - for the aid of walking - don't last long, and I believe you can get replacements, but a bit of glue can work wonders, and it's hardly a primary concern. The first ones I bought around 4 years back are still going strong after a good 20,000+ kilometers.

Price-wise they're not exactly cheap, but then they aren't the most expensive either, and in this case the outlay is entirely justified since they do exactly what they're supposed to, and just keep on doing it.

Review: Kask Mojito

Starting with this one I'm doing short reviews of certain bits of cycling gear that I particularly like, this in the hope that it can be instructive for those looking to not have to go through 100 pieces of kit before they find one that actually works.

Of course it's always very subjective, and I can't pretend to have tried all competitive options, but I'm assessing the stuff based on how well it does what it's supposed to, and doing fairly long-term tests on stuff I actually use daily, so I can definitely address that element of wear-and-tear that is impossible to judge on a new item, and that isn't quite so subjective.

Anyway, to start this off I'm talking about my favourite helmet to date.

Kask are relative newcomers on the helmet market, but have been the recipients of a fair old boost in recent years thanks to their place on the heads of the riders from Team Sky. Not too shabby a recommendation really.

I've always been looking for helmets that don't give you that "mushroom-head" look - especially common to those of us with big heads who are forced to use the L-sized options. So the low-profile looks of the Kask helmets on the heads of the pros was definitely an initial draw.

This helmet first came to me by chance when on the search for a spare. It was light, the right colour, sat snugly on my head, and wasn't anywhere near the most expensive option.

That was about 3 years back. Since then it's rarely been off my head while cycling, and it's lasted very well. One of the main reasons is the great design of the straps, which are a breathable and fast-wicking material at the sides, but under your chin the strap is made of a leather-like material. This is a great and comfortable combination, and even on the sweatiest rides the straps don't stay wet, which is very good news in Malaysia I can tell you!

The internal padding has also lasted well, but then it's just a few simple, and easily replaceable pads, should they ever deteriorate to that point. Haven't had to deal with that so far. The system of the rear section that grips the back of your head has a very effective ratchet dial to tighten onto your head, and so far has held up structurally very well.

It's not the most aerodynamic design of course, and there are plenty of those out there now, but since maximum airflow is more my concern, I'm not too concerned with aero - you usually compromise one for the other by design.

Basically, this helmet has become an invisible part of my cycling experience, because it works so well that I never need to give it any thought. It's never soggy when I put it back on, the straps don't ever need re-adjusting, nothing rubs against any part of my head or neck.

The strongest recommendation for this helmet is that I've just bought another one. Not that there was anything wrong with the first - I just fancied having another colour option.

The Physiology of Endurance Cycling - Getting In Gear

In my role as director and guide rider for our cycling tours I'm often asked about how to gear up for our rides, most of which are relatively long, on consecutive days, and include a lot of climbing. In fact my preparatory correspondence with our riders includes clear recommendations on gear choice.

I recommend from the start that they should aim to get the lowest available gearing - ie a lowest combination of a 34-tooth chainring and a 28 or up to 32 largest sprocket on the back depending on their available range. This would be available within the range of the now-standard "compact" crankset configuration of 50/34, with the new Sram Wifli system also allowing the use of a cassette with up to a 32-tooth sprocket. While this is not going to be everybody's daily choice of gearing, for endurance rides it means we can spend more of the ride at a relatively high cadence, even on steeper gradients, which will mean that we can last longer without a significant build-up of muscle acidosis or fatigue. You can watch a recent GCN video if you need further convincing of the value of a compact when it comes to climbing.

However, I often find that though people will set themselves up with low gearing, they often don't really know how to make the most of their gear options, and many will still grind away on a higher gear, leaving  a cog or 2 "in reserve" for when they run out of strength, and I feel there are still a lot of similar myths out there on the biomechanics of riding a bike that are difficult to dispel. It's an old sport with a lot of baggage! This is my attempt to give a basic understanding of what your body goes through on longer rides and how to prepare for it with your equipment and training.

"COMPACT" GEARS

The term "compact" in cycling jargon currently refers to a smaller combination of chainrings on your crankset. The standard issue of chainrings for many years was a 53-tooth large ring, and a 39-tooth small ring. Now the most often-used compact setup is a combination of a 50 and a 34-tooth, though 52 with a 36 is another popular combination (often referred to as "pro compact"). Many people resist getting compact gearing through misplaced fears that moving to easier gearing will make them weaker riders through loss of power. There are a number of reasons why this is not true.

Firstly, we don't all necessarily generate maximum power by pushing a larger gear, and if you happen to be one of those who currently does, you would almost certainly increase both power and endurance by training your biomechanics to work at a higher cadence. Think of the image of Chris Froome on Ventoux in 2013, attacking with those repeated bursts of 120+rpm cadence that gave him a speed which nobody could match. You can laugh at his faith in the numbers, but he had trained specifically to pedal that fast, and knew not only that his power was highest at that cadence, but also that he would recover from that effort faster. I know myself from experience with power meters, that pushing a higher gear at a lower cadence, which feels instinctively like you're putting more power into the pedals, is often a gear or 2 higher (and a few rpm lower) than the one that actually registers the most power on the meter relative to the cost to your energy systems.

This however depends as I said on your own habits, physiology, training agendas and subsequent conditioning. If you're used to a slow cadence, then simply trying to spin faster will have the immediate effect of costing your energy system more. You will need to spend time developing the biomechanical adaptation to a higher cadence before you start to see the improved efficiency I'm referring to.

Secondly, unless you rely on entirely random opportunities to improve your cycling power, your choice of gearing will be based on the currently desired training effect. Just because you have an easier gear won't mean that you have to choose it. And if your body does tell you to back off, it's usually because it needs a rest, at which point it's very beneficial to your long-term development that you have the easier option and take it.

Thirdly, for those who worry about spinning out on a 50x11, if you train yourself to pedal at a higher cadence, you're going to get more speed out of a 50x11 than you got previously out of a 53x11, with better muscular endurance and less build-up of acid. You can refer to an earlier post where I touch a little more on the science of gearing.

There may be a good argument for having a couple of bikes with different gearing for different demands. I know Contador generally uses a 53/39 but changes for steeper terrain, and has been seen to change to a 50/34 for the climbs in the last week of the Giro or Vuelta. Obviously I'm not suggesting we mimic him. He, along with most top pros, has a power output that most of us amateurs will never get close to, and he weighs 62 kilos! I'm merely pointing out that even the worlds greatest climbers find a specific use for the easiest gearing. He's even been spotted with a 32 on the back. He makes sure he can always find his ideal cadence regardless of the terrain.

Contador using a Sram medium cage Wifli RD and 32-11 cassette.

ENDURANCE RIDING

Right, so it's clear that when we're training, we choose gearing according to the desired training effect, but that for endurance rides, a different set of considerations define our choices. What are they?

To answer this we will have to dissect an ideal approach to cycling technique over longer distances.

THREE CONSTANTS

My approach is that in endurance riding there are 3 constants that take precedence over all other considerations:

CADENCE > EFFORT > MOMENTUM

We don't need to obsess on exact rpm, bpm or kmh. It's more a question of a set of principles to keep in mind. Whether you like to use gadgets to monitor these constants for the rides themselves is up to you. Perceived information is perfectly adequate, and often better, than following a set of numbers. However, in order to train for this type of riding, we will need to know what is going on, so a measure and understanding of cadence, heart rate, and power output is of significant value.

CADENCE

As I've already pointed out, with a higher cadence we will resist fatigue longer. We should aim to develop an ideal cadence of above 90rpm. Some of us will find an optimum point above even 100rpm, but according to most of the research, for most of us it will be between 95-100rpm.

So we take our cadence as the primary constant. This means we will need to use our gearing to ensure that as much as possible whatever terrain we meet, we can stay close to our ideal cadence.

EFFORT

Our effort is the secondary constant. This can be measured by power, but for endurance purposes heart rate is perfectly adequate. For most of the ride we should be aiming to keep our effort at a pace we can sustain for the expected duration of the ride. This can be different for each rider as some of us have extended our ability to use our fat-burning aerobic system at higher intensities than others. If in doubt, for rides of expected duration of over around 5 hours, it's best to aim to keep your heart rate within zone 2, or low zone 3. That means we stay well below our lactate threshold as much as possible. As the ride gets longer, so the intensity goes down, It's better to be conservative.

MOMENTUM

Momentum, as the 3rd constant, is the first to be compromised in an endurance situation, but there are situations where we would choose to briefly compromise on the constancy of effort, to maintain momentum.

To illustrate what I mean we should look at a variety of terrain conditions.

ROLLING TERRAIN

This refers to terrain that is mostly maintaining the same altitude, but has recurring short rolling hills of anything from a few meters of road surface to 50 or so. Again it depends on the rider and situation. It would usually mean a surge in effort of no more than a few seconds. A peloton in full stride, or a solo Cancellara or Gilbert would probably consider a rise over a 100m stretch of road within this category, but even that may change after 300km in the saddle.

In this situation it will be better to maintain cadence and momentum at the temporary expense of effort, since we lose too much by constantly switching gear and slowing down to maintain a low heart rate. We should keep it to a point at which we can recover quickly between efforts so that our overall effort doesn't creep above our target zone.

So instead of switching gears all the time, we should select a gear that gives us enough resistance for a good spin on the flat, and push over each rise by getting out of the saddle. This of course increases our effort momentarily, but not enough to push our average out of our endurance zone. The added benefit of this is a regular change of position, which aids in resisting the onset of stiffness and cramps that can occur on long rides.

SEVERELY ROLLING TERRAIN

This is terrain that is repeatedly up and down, but with ascents that are too long to blast over without compromising the consistency of your effort, and usually with descents that allow you to get a bit of speed up.

The way you'd approach this for an endurance ride is to maintain quite a strict consistency of cadence and effort, which will mean quite an annoying amount of gear changing, but there's no way around it if we want to comfortably get to the end of the ride. As we hit the beginning of the ascent we shift down to the small chainring and then down the cassette as the gradient demands to maintain cadence and effort. We will lose quite a bit of momentum on the uphill to stay within our effort zone. As you crest the hill, keep the force on the pedals constant and shift up as you go over, shifting to the big chainring as soon as you pick up enough speed to do so while maintaining cadence. If you continue the work rate on the downhill you will pick up enough speed to retain some momentum into the start of the next ascent.

LONG HILLS

When we're looking at an hour or more of continuous climbing, we should aim to maintain cadence as much as possible, thus momentum is the first constant that we drop. As the gradient creeps up, or the length of the climb starts to take it's toll, our effort will start to push out of our desired zone. At this point, we will have to make a decision based on the remaining agenda. If we still have a long ride ahead of us, we will have no choice but to compromise on cadence in order to keep our effort within our endurance zone. If however, we are about to finish, or even just stop for a break, we might choose to maintain a good cadence and push our effort up towards our threshold. To illustrate I'll give an idea of an endurance approach to a 15km climb I often do. This would be my approach if the ride were over 150km or so.

At the start of the climb proper I'll probably work quickly down to a low combination as the road hits an average gradient of 5% for the first km or so, as I stay at my preferred cadence of around 95-100rpm and in my target effort zone. Then the road flattens out a little, and varies between 2-4% for most of the next 3km so I'll shift up a gear or 2, maintaining cadence/effort. Then there is a kick at 8% of around 200-300m before a flatter section, at which point I will probably be down to my lowest 34x28 but to maintain effort I'll allow for a drop in cadence. Once on the flatter section I'll shift up to maintain cadence until the road kicks up again, at which point I shift down and continue to maintain cadence and effort. The second half of the 15km climb is tougher, with more sections between 5-6% and some kicks up to 8-9%, so my cadence will creep down accordingly in order to keep my effort constant. Though in training on this same hill I would often use bigger gears, in this endurance situation I will probably be on my smallest compact combination for around half of the climb.


SHORT, SHARP HILLS

Think Flandrian "bergs" here. These are hills that are steeper than we can comfortably spin up even in our lowest gear. Say we have a ramp of anything from a few hundred meters to 1.5km at an average gradient above 15%. Most of us will be in extreme discomfort if we try to maintain an endurance effort, as we will be compromising too much on cadence even with the lowest gearing, so we will need to allow our effort to rise considerably while keeping a cadence and momentum that is sustainable. Once we're over the crest we'll need to ride easy until we recover and our heart rate comes back down to the lower end of our zone. We will benefit greatly on these climbs by being able to comfortably ride out of the saddle for longer durations, spreading the effort to full-body muscular power, and giving our body a chance to change position. Of course we need to train specifically for this if we want to be good at it. Check my post on standing form drills for ideas for training this skill.

The ability to confront this sort of terrain repeatedly over extended periods requires a superior ability to recover from anaerobic efforts of 1-5 minutes. However, it should be obvious that the lower the gearing, the easier we make the task, and the more likely we are to survive to the finish. Again, we have to maximize cadence during the climbs, and also return to our ideal fast cadence whenever we get a chance to recover. Though Fabian Cancellara is possibly one of the most decorated time-trialists in history, his preference for a high cadence is key to his latter-day ability to also dominate the spring classics of Flanders.

So hopefully this gives a basic introduction to the principles of endurance riding and the preparation needed, both physiologically, mentally, and mechanically. As always this is based on my own personal experience, and is part of a work in progress. There are surely many other ways to think about this, and I'm keen to hear how others have approached the same challenges with success. I keenly await points of discussion or ideas that add to or challenge the concepts I present here.

Review: Easton EC90 Aero Wheelset

Rim Material: Carbon Fibre
Rim Depth: 56mm
Rim Width: 21mm
Hubs: R4 SL
Spokes: Sapim double butted black
Bearings; Hybrid Ceramic Bearings
Weight: 1700g without skewers
Spoke Count: 18/20
Tyres used: Vittoria Rubino Pro. Continental GP4000. 23mm

OK, I've resisted this one for a while. These wheels have been knocking around in my collection for a couple of years, but I could never quite take them seriously.

THE BACKGROUND

You see, as soon as I'm anywhere that has hills, there are 2 things that just rule these wheels out: weight and braking surface. The second is probably more crucial for me. Weight is just about performance: a) you're dragging weight you don't need up a hill, and: b) you can't change pace as fast. Braking surface is about safety, much more significant, though with an indirect effect on performance as a result. Carbon just doesn't stop like alloy does. Most specific brake pads for carbon are virtually useless, and then if it rains you might just as well not have brakes at all. If you don't have confidence that your brakes can stop you, you don't ride fast.

So I live in a place that is surrounded by great hills. Actually it's hard to find a flat ride around here, and my most regular training route has at least one 15km stretch of descent, so you can see that a deep rim carbon clincher has little scope for me. My usual choice of wheels are relatively light, strong laterally, but forgiving of road roughness, with alloy rims, and I usually run 25mm tyres now.

Anyway, it's kind of unfair that these wheels never get much of an outing. I bought them a few years back for my TT bike which I hardly ever use now. They are great, fast wheels, when put to the purpose for which they're designed. So when I found myself doing a few days of long, relatively flat riding, I set my stiff race machine up with these and enjoyed getting low and fast. I then did a bit more than a week in a different area, almost completely pancake-flat except for one single nasty 15-18% grind for 3km on either side. The bike was once again my choice, considering the amount of flat, but I couldn't resist the occasional blast up that hill. This of course meant coming down at least one side, which I accomplished gingerly with a lot of screeching-of-rubber-on-carbon.

It was actually these rides that convinced me that these wheels could have a life beyond the flat time-trial. Between these rides I was experimenting with just about every carbon specific brake pad I could find. Most of which are pathetic (I mean I'd get better resistance with rolled up bits of sock in my brake shoes!)

The best performers were the good old SwissStop yellow pads. I think once I'd been down that hill a couple of times with the brakes on, the braking surfaces were a little less pristine and perhaps more primed so that the yellow pads actually worked quite well....in the dry at least. So now that I've discovered that I can stop relatively reliably, I'm starting to take them a bit more seriously.

THE RIDE

The wheels roll beautifully. Ceramic bearings of course. And they show their true colours once you're hitting some decent speeds, with a definite aero advantage. My reservations about the strength of carbon clinchers are beginning to fade, and the fears of weak points or general lack of durability have so far proved unfounded. I'm really enjoying riding these. They feel stiff and strong and yet I don't feel a lot of road vibration through them.

I still don't have the confidence to throw myself down hills like I do with my alloy rims, so it's hard to get a really good feel of these on some of my test descents, and they are definitely sluggish on the uptake going uphill - completely expected of this type of rim. As a result it's difficult to compare these to any of the other wheels I ride regularly since they are such completely different animals, but when I get onto a flat or slight downhill, they really come into their own.

THE X FACTOR

But maybe I'm missing the point here. Ever since triathletes started using the deeper rims, and companies like Zipp and Hed reciprocated with the coolest-looking wheels on the planet, deeper rims have become increasingly de rigeur for the majority of us, and offer another chance to spend a king's ransom on a bit of gear. It's not about performance, it's about style isn't it? Deep rims are sexy.

A quick glance through the pro peloton would confirm that on your average road race, pretty much every rider sports something between a 35mm and a 60mm rim, provided for them of course by their wheel sponsor. All carbon, and all tubular. Only on long climbs or windy days will you see anyone on anything more shallow. The rims are being built to take a serious hammering these days, with even the Paris-Roubaix riders choosing deep carbon for the cobbles! These guys must have sorted out the braking issues, but then they probably have the surfaces customized somehow.

Where the pros go, the rest of us will follow, and even guys I know who ride deeper carbon rims (mainly around cities) happily point out that the braking is woeful. They still ride them in preference to anything else. This means, I guess, that being safe has been traded for being fast and looking good.

The bling factor on these is definitely reduced by the fact that they sport the rather in-your-face, bold decal lettering of a few years ago, whereas newer offerings from most companies - including Easton - have gone more understated, if not downright "stealth". However, on the right bike (I have the right bike!), they still look pretty awesome.

Anyway, I'm not likely to be replacing these with anything more modern anytime soon, so I'm banking on them retaining some element of coolness for a few more years.

Bottom line is that, though these work perfectly well, for me they have limited value. On solo rides on quiet roads with moderate gradient and reliably dry weather these have some applicability. That unfortunately doesn't account for much that I do on a bike, so I'll still opt mainly for the more versatile and controllable shallow alloy rims.

I challenge anyone to recommend (or better still, lend) me a pair of deeper carbon wheels that they believe work as well, if not better than, my favourite alloy climbers on long rides with hills. Surely all those pros can't be riding dodgy stuff just because someone's paying them lots of money to do so (!!). Until then I'm relegated to being one of the "old school".

Other related posts:
Orbea Orca Build
My reviews of other wheelsets:
Fulcrum Racing 3
Rolf Prima Vigor
Soul S3.0

The Poetry of Cycling

Facebook did something interesting for me today. It pointed out that I'd posted the above photograph 3 years ago today in the album "Reasons For Cycling In Malaysia".

That means it's 3 years since I had my epiphany with cycling that started a journey which brought me to where I am now. In that 3 years I have set up a cycling touring operation, run a lot of tours and excursions, ridden bikes a lot, spent hours every day setting up new adventures, poring over routes and hotel options etc, I've gone through a lot of tubes, tyres, chains, cassettes, saddles, shoes and other bits of bicycles and all the related gear that wears out fairly quickly when you're riding this much.

I have also shifted the focus of my energies massively, which has been tough in many ways, but that's the only way to make such a seismic shift happen: put all your eggs into one basket!

We're still nowhere near a point where I could sit back and enjoy my achievements. However, this poignant little reminder from Facebook prompted some reflections on the journey so far.

Around 3 years back I started taking photographs during my rides around Kuala Lumpur as I rediscovered the joy in being alive in such beautiful surroundings, with the fitness and freedom to propel myself anywhere I wanted. I felt I had to share this stuff with others - that it was too good to keep to myself - and so i started posting the pictures on Facebook. Many people reacted. Even many living in the area had never seen these roads and hillsides. I felt that we had as much to celebrate, as cyclists in our humble little environment here in Malaysia, as the cycling residents of the Alpine and Pyrenean regions did, albeit in a completely different climate - and with no winter! From there ideas formed that would lead me to where I am now.

At the core of my epiphany, of course, is the humble bicycle, and my relationship with it. So here are some reflections on what I believe are the universal underpinnings of a passion for 2-wheeled self-propulsion.

CYCLING - A TRIBUTE

To love cycling is to relish the act of self propelled travel, to find expression in the giddy speed of the downhill, and to extract meaning from surmounting the obstacle of the uphill.

Maybe an essential part of it, is in the early discovery. As a child, a bike meant freedom. It was a ticket to the wide outdoors. I think for those of us who continue into adulthood with our fascination for cycling still intact, despite the fact that we may now have a wide array of easier, motorized options, that sense of freedom never really leaves us. The next adventure is at the mercy of our next whim, with our strength and motivation being the only required forces to get us wherever we want to go.

There is joy too in the knowledge that overcoming everything that challenges us makes us stronger. Thanks to our physiological inheritance, the more stress we throw at our bodies, the better they adapt to deal with it next time. It's a kind of poetic justice.

The solo cyclist is a lone traveler in intimate communion with the natural environment. An inquisitive child of the earth, a Don Quixote in search of a worthy opponent. Like all really worthy things in life, there’s a certain madness to it. In a group we become part of a fraternity of challenge, where the social and competitive agenda can elicit effort from us beyond our expectations.

We are fiercely competitive beings in our essence. We should embrace these instincts with good humour and tolerance. I think it’s only when we develop issues with this that things start to get ugly. Too much intellectual interference. If we deny our base instincts with misguided aspirations to lofty ideals, we usually end up amplifying the worst of them (think of our experiments with communism!).

Racing is still the ultimate expression of this competitive instinct, and provides a healthy focus to our training, giving us peaks to strive for, which are then followed by natural moments of respite for recovery and reflection. These days however, I don't meet many cyclists who join races. Many seem to find their entire ethos in the new order of GPS-tracker-cum-social-network programs like Strava that open every aspect of your rides to public scrutiny. and have created a constant-achievement-agenda that seems to have imprisoned a large contingent of roadies into a kind of mental hamster wheel.

I’m a happy Strava user myself. It’s a very useful monitor of training volume and progress, with many features that other training systems would do well to copy, but I know that if I fall into the trap of feeling like I have something to prove on every ride it will seriously undermine A) my ability to improve as a cyclist, and B) my enjoyment. These 2 facets may seem mutually exclusive, but they coexist quite happily on most of my rides. However, I'd say that my rides generally fall into one or the other: I'm either following some structured plan (training), or I'm going with the flow (group or longer solo rides).

For me though, the real joy surfaces when I’m on a quiet road in the hills, with nothing but the sound of my breathing and the conversation of nature around me. When I am in no hurry to get anywhere in particular, nor to return home. This sense of oneness with the world is my mantra, where the rhythm of my legs spinning is a meditation on the meaning of life; a prayer to the forces of nature that combined to put me here on this piece of precision engineering among these gigantic geological protrusions from the earth.

Review: Rotor 3D+ and Q Rings

I actually first came upon the idea of trying out Rotor cranks when investigating the options for a crank-based power meter a couple of years back. I had whittled my search down to the German company power2max's offerings which they pair with a selection of crank options, and within their range the Rotor 3D+ seemed to have good reports and an unusual look, and was designed for the BB30 bottom bracket of my new frame.

As I documented in my account of the bike build, my initial responses were positive. The cranks felt stiff. Rotor machines them from aluminium using their "trinity" drilling process in which three holes are drilled out along the length of the cranks in order to shed weight without reducing stiffness. Since I was dealing with quite a bit more weight in the power meter unit, I couldn't really compare them weight-wise to my previous Dura Ace crankset.

I had opted to just switch the chainrings from my other crankset, in part because I wanted to get a better idea of comparative merits without too many variations, so I had opted against the more radical change of fitting Rotor's iconic Q Rings. I had also selected the 130BCD version of the power2max, a choice that I would come to regret only a couple of months into riding my new set up when faced with the gradients of Northern Thailand.

After grinding my way up the monster of Doi Inthanon, narrowly escaping destroying my lower back on the last 5km to the 2600m peak at gradients above 20%, I became a sudden, immediate, convert to the compact crankset. Unfortunately the 130BCD dimensions of my power2max allowed nothing more compact than what I had. Major dilemma. If I'd had no intention of riding hills much, the choice was perhaps forgivable, but given that my immediate and long-term future was increasingly gradient-orientated, the choice seemed ridiculously short-sighted. Especially when I found out that for a 110BCD spider, Rotor now make chainrings up to a 55 - thereby eliminating entirely the need for the larger BCD format.

CONTINGENCY PLAN

By chance, one of the bicycle shops near where I was staying in Chiang Mai was a Rotor dealer. Having had a couple of conversations with the owner about the local hills and my set up, I decided to see if the conversion of my chainrings to the elliptical Q Rings would make a difference. The claim is that the shape of the Q Rings takes you through the dead spot in your pedal stroke faster, so that your maximum engagement of power coincides with the wider point on the chainring. This should translate to a better application of your power when pushing hard.

I can actually see myself as having been in quite a fortunate position now. A lot of reviewers of the Q Rings are unable to be really certain of the advantage offered by the technology, whereas I, doing monster gradients on back-to-back days, could immediately feel the advantage the Q Rings afforded me even though the chainrings had the same number of teeth. I wasn't spinning exactly, but there was a smoothness to the grind that really made a difference on those 20%+ gradients.

There are often worries with chains slipping off elliptical rings during shifts at the front derailleur as highlighted by some of the pros losing their chains at crucial points in races. Though this has happened to me a couple of times, it is always due to the FD not being properly set up. The variation in distance of the chainring to the FD cage within the cycle is not that great, and as long as you have both rings set up in the same configuration, and well adjusted, there's no more chance of losing the chain than normal.

THE NEW ORDER

Next step was to get myself a compact set. I wasn't prepared to fork out for another power meter crankset, but since my older frame had a BSA threaded bottom bracket I decided to give the original Rotor 3D (BSA specific) cranks a try. This time with the 110BCD and a set of 50/34-tooth Q Rings. This is the basic "compact" chainring combination used often now by climbers.

As I've chronicled before, the transition was seamless. I immediately loved the compact set up and found myself increasingly less inclined to use the bike with the standard chainrings, using it mostly only when I want to know my power output for specific training or testing purposes.

The 3D cranks are apparently a little heavier than the 3D+, but irrelevant in my case as, with the Rotor spider instead of the power meter, they are definitely lighter. I can feel very little difference between the two models.

GETTING IT RIGHT

More recently I have built up another bike. This one is specifically a climber, and once again I've opted for the 3D+. This time it's the new 2015 model which aesthetically varies from the older one with a more subtle and understated logo. It's also a 110BCD of course, with the 50/34 Q Rings again. I don't currently have a power meter on this bike, but my intention is to add the Rotor InPower crank-spindle-based meter when it becomes available later this year.

Obviously on a brand new bike, the newness of everything devalues judgement of the performance of individual components of the bike, but I'd say that the new 3D+ feel even stiffer than the old ones. The weight difference is also now tangible, though I opted for the new MAS (Micro Adjust Spider) which adds a little more mass, and so a tiny bit of weight. However, when I get the InPower fitted, there is a proprietary software that can track your pedal stroke and give you a reading on exactly where you should micro-adjust the spider to the Q Rings to maximize the power application in your own pedal stroke.

So I guess you can assume from this that I am rather a devotee of Rotor's products across the board. I haven't yet tried the Q Ring XL which ovalizes the ring even further. I would be interested to try them of course, but not so interested that I'd go out of my way to find them - which i would need to.

Since you can tell I go by the maxim "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", it will probably have to wait until something else comes along to rattle my cage before I make a significant change (to my current hamster wheel!), but Rotor are consistently making stuff that works for me, so as far as their scope of expertise goes, and for the moment at least, I'm a happy end-user.

I will update once I have the new InPower meter and have optimized my set up even further.