I second the cadence work. I know that's going to be a big focus of my base training. There is a video or article on the interwebs about how Egan Bernals training is actually not too complex in terms of intense but he varies the cadence a lot. It just shows on the climbs the most, gives your legs a break and let's the heart do the work and vice versa. 

Want to find the right tire pressure for your bike?

or at least get a somewhat more scientific guess?

Silca has a calculator for it.  https://info.silca.cc/silca-professional-pressure-calculator

FWIW, their calculator recommends the Conti' 4 Season tires on my training wheels are nominally 23mm, measure 26.4mm on my rims, and, at fast training ride speeds, should be inflated to 85psi front, 87.5psi rear.  

Bump.

A reminder to measure your tires on the bike and dial in pressure, as the right tire pressure will make you faster.

My everyday wheels have Ritchey Tom Slick 700c x 23mm tires on them.  The front rim is wider, a Velocity Quill, pushing out the practical width to almost 27mm.  The rear rim is a H Plus Son, and the same model tire measures a shade over 25mm.

Tire pressure, according to Silca should be 75psi for the front, 86.5psi for the rear.  For moderate group riding speeds.  

Socks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKSIt1rprN4

Dylan Johnson is a fool and a bit of a jerk.

Easy on the ad hominem Eloy.

I mean it's not about Johnson. It's about Josh Poertner—technical director at Zipp for 15 years—who gives you a pretty comprehensive aero cheat-sheet.

eloy said:

Dylan Johnson is a fool and a bit of a jerk.

Last year, I got a pair of Silca socks for the track state championships.

It wasn't the winning difference.  (not that the result proves anything).  

They felt pretty thin and light and stayed up. MOST IMPORTANT: white socks with blue and orange accents are Kissena colors.

https://images.app.goo.gl/48B2o8Wt1V1T2sie9

Great find JP. 

Champ Sys has been making aero socks for a few seasons now at $16.

Pretty sure they offer them more as an easy way to customize, as it is easy to sublimate the lycra. Here's MVdP wearing them (or the exact same fabric and concept by a champ competitor)

JohnMalcolmson said:

Great find JP. 

I was bugging Defeet to do a custom aero sock for us, but no go. These guys do custom @ $32 per for 50 or more.
https://tdsportswear.com/custom-cycling-apparel/aero-socks/ but there’s no data to support their aero claims.

For KCC kit, the plain white Rule 28s would be a good investment. If you trust their data—which a lot of pro TTers do—they test fastest and work well across yaw angles.

While Silca has a reason to show their socks are pretty fast compared to the competition, they do have a basic line graph putting their socks as second-best to Castelli, which I take are ribbed spandex.  I guess I'd prefer a sock that stays up.  And one that seems to have testing behind it.

https://images.app.goo.gl/YLkfScYY9jqAqUHN8

Specialized's Hydrogen Blaze socks come in Orange and are nearly as good in the chart.



Here are Castelli's



Local shop Hudson Bikes is home to the Montecci brand.  They have similar-looking socks, but with zero testing behind them.




FWIW, I've known Josh for 17 years.  In person and in presentations, just ask him a question and he goes and goes.  

I should add that I put Zipp aero drop bars on my track bike some years ago.



I'm not that happy with them.  The tops are not comfortable to rest my hands on.  The reach is too short for me, the drop shape I don't find particularly comfortable either.  I wouldn't want these on my road bike.  But, for the track, when the races are short and all the racing time is spent on the drops, they work out fine.  

I've been looking at different aero drop bars.  Reach is generally short on the bars and most of the curves are kind of similar to this.  To me, reach matters because it is about the difference between where your hands are on the tops, and then for the hoods/drops.  I find this short a reach makes me feel like I'm either jamming my hands on the hoods or am too stretched out on the tops. 

I'm interested in aero road bars in concept, but the cost is definitely a turn-off, as they're pretty expensive to replace after a crash.

A digital tire pressure gauge makes some sense.

at $249 you're only buying it because it costs $249

James Reeder said:

at $249 you're only buying it because it costs $249

Largely agree.

However, if you've already dropped $10k on a bike and have tried to optimize everywhere else you can, why not get a cool-looking tool that you probably won't use the right way. Just because...the placebo effect is worth several watts.

I like Silca stuff, but they really need to stop it with the 3D printed titanium if they aren't going to take advantage of the tech (other than the ability to do small runs without large capital expense).  Like make the shape something that can ONLY be made via 3D printing.

I used to own the previous iteration of the SKS, lasted for a couple of seasons, the one above looks a bit nicer. I own a topeak today, they make, btw, multiple gauge variation, this one which is probably their most popular. 

One could argue, that the silca should last forever -- it better -- but even than the price is, well, about something else.

@RichardKaufmann

I wanted you to know this thread exists.  If you're looking for efficiency and marginal gains, this is the thread for it.

Also, I wanted to share an article on the efficiency of various jockey wheels.  Note that it's several years old, and while it's on the CeramicSpeed site, it was performed by a then-independent outfit called Friction Facts.  Still, it gives you a sense of the differences possible.

https://www.ceramicspeed.com/en/cycling/support/technology/test-data-reports/11-tooth-derailleur-pulley-wheel-efficiency-test

I've loved the Tacx 11-tooth ceramic-bearing jockey wheels.  The price, about $40 when I started getting them, couldn't be beat and the pulley is ranked fourth, ahead of several more expensive pulleys.  To me, spending for ceramic-bearing pulleys, I guess with a cap of $100-130, is worth it. But I've been able to find ceramic bearing pulleys for $70 or less pretty easily--and a set can last for at least a few years.  Just swapped in Enduro pulleys on my road bike last year (couldn't find Tacx at the time); still running smooth, and when they're not, I pull off the dust covers, blow out the grit, add a little oil, and they're good to go for months.

I've looked at replacing standard bearings with ceramics at the  BB and hub.  You can find a speculative video posted in this thread from a guy who calls himself Hambini; his videos can be interesting, but, to me, he doesn't post enough about his methodology to be trustworthy, and there are lots of transparent tests on ceramic bearings which rebut his findings, like the one I shared from Ceramic Speed.  

My feeling is that the ceramic bearings that I could put the most trust into, like Enduro, Kogel, CeramicSpeed, a few others, are, for the hub at least, too expensive to be worth it.  I put ceramic bearings in my bottom bracket because of the at-home spin tests I've done on Quarq bottom brackets that are non-ceramic indicated too much drag and when I replaced standard bearings with ceramic at the BB, I saw a noticeable drop in drag.  

I have tried cheap ceramic bearings for a few wheels.  I got bearings from a company called Boca Bearings.  When I did at-home spin-down tests, the front wheels seemed to take longer to come to a stop after I installed fresh ceramic bearings.  The rear was harder to suss out a difference, possibly because of the cassette body pawls clicking when coasting.  Maybe I should have taken the chain off in some way.  

But, as I wrote on the other thread, bearings are probably one of the last places to spend big bucks for efficiency.  

please ignore anything hambini.

mugwump said:

@RichardKaufmann

I wanted you to know this thread exists.  If you're looking for efficiency and marginal gains, this is the thread for it.

Also, I wanted to share an article on the efficiency of various jockey wheels.  Note that it's several years old, and while it's on the CeramicSpeed site, it was performed by a then-independent outfit called Friction Facts.  Still, it gives you a sense of the differences possible.

https://www.ceramicspeed.com/en/cycling/support/technology/test-data-reports/11-tooth-derailleur-pulley-wheel-efficiency-test

I've loved the Tacx 11-tooth ceramic-bearing jockey wheels.  The price, about $40 when I started getting them, couldn't be beat and the pulley is ranked fourth, ahead of several more expensive pulleys.  To me, spending for ceramic-bearing pulleys, I guess with a cap of $100-130, is worth it. But I've been able to find ceramic bearing pulleys for $70 or less pretty easily--and a set can last for at least a few years.  Just swapped in Enduro pulleys on my road bike last year (couldn't find Tacx at the time); still running smooth, and when they're not, I pull off the dust covers, blow out the grit, add a little oil, and they're good to go for months.

I've looked at replacing standard bearings with ceramics at the  BB and hub.  You can find a speculative video posted in this thread from a guy who calls himself Hambini; his videos can be interesting, but, to me, he doesn't post enough about his methodology to be trustworthy, and there are lots of transparent tests on ceramic bearings which rebut his findings, like the one I shared from Ceramic Speed.  

My feeling is that the ceramic bearings that I could put the most trust into, like Enduro, Kogel, CeramicSpeed, a few others, are, for the hub at least, too expensive to be worth it.  I put ceramic bearings in my bottom bracket because of the at-home spin tests I've done on Quarq bottom brackets that are non-ceramic indicated too much drag and when I replaced standard bearings with ceramic at the BB, I saw a noticeable drop in drag.  

I have tried cheap ceramic bearings for a few wheels.  I got bearings from a company called Boca Bearings.  When I did at-home spin-down tests, the front wheels seemed to take longer to come to a stop after I installed fresh ceramic bearings.  The rear was harder to suss out a difference, possibly because of the cassette body pawls clicking when coasting.  Maybe I should have taken the chain off in some way.  

But, as I wrote on the other thread, bearings are probably one of the last places to spend big bucks for efficiency.  

@mugwump

Thank you for this. Awesome advice as usual, and I’ll be in the market for new bearings soon. As someone less mechanically inclined, I’m a bit of an easy target for bike shop salespeople. 

for those who are ceramic-curious, I found the Origin8 pulleys on eBay.  

https://www.ebay.com/itm/174957782894

Not as good as Tacx, but they beat Shimano DA in drag, though not by much and are pretty much the same price.

I wrote this on CeramicSpeed back in 2008

mugwump said:

I wrote this on CeramicSpeed back in 2008

1.21 Gigawatts to go that far back, eh?

I've lately been wondering about how much drag is reduced by switching to a flat-topped "aero" drop handlebar or going to one that is part of a one-piece bar/stem combo.

I would be very surprised if flat tops make a big difference at cycling speed. The human immediately behind the bars would dwarf the benefit, I suspect.

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about the bartape though.

CyclingTips has an article about TT tech.  The bikes aren't the big deal now, it seems.  It's the clothing.  Maybe the bikes have been so 'optimized' that the only gains are in the marginal range.

An aero shrug baselayer (Pogacar and Ganna, among others used it.)
https://www.rule28.com/collections/aero/products/aero-base-layer

Aero arm-warmers (coolers?)
https://www.rule28.com/collections/aero/products/aero-sleeves?variant=32409590923339

article
https://www.rule28.com/collections/aero/products/aero-base-layer