Is everybody soft now?

Monty Dog

Given the 'initiation' that new cyclists like me received in the early 80s, it was understandable why cycling wasn't too popular - being 'dropped' 50 miles from home cold and hungry was almost a rite of passage. In comparison to income, cycling was an expensive sport and choices far more limited in terms of components and clothing and there was a lot less information available except by talking to other club-members - learning was through experience (and often a bit of suffering) not a google search.

imposter2.0

Bozman wrote:

When I bought my first road bike(Raleigh Dyna Tech) in the early/mid Nineties it came with a 53/42 chainset and a 12/25 cassette, there was no option and I knew no different so I just got on with it.
The 42 went eventually and was replaced with a 39 when I was told that it would make my life easier.(I was still getting up the hills but apparently it looked like a fight).
I stopped using a standard about 2 or 3 years ago, It took me a while to get used to and I ran an 11/23 for a while to iron out a few creases but there's not a lot of difference, I don't think I'm going up the hills any faster but I am older now.

12-25?? You had it easy. I used to race on 52/42 with 12-21 on the back - up hills and everything. I once bought a 12-23 block for my winter bike and sneaked it onto one of the club runs in the hope that nobody would notice. Fortunately, nobody did.

47p2

Yes we all need to toughen up, processed food and compact gearing is killing us and ruining the sport.
Long gone are the days when I wouldn't be seen with anything less than 53T-42 onto a straight block 12T-18

ugo.santalucia

SInce I dropped my bike computer and sold any lightest/stiffest component I enjoy cycling more... enough said...
I won't probably go all the way to the Penny Farthing, but there is a happy medium.

Moonbiker

I still don't get the point of compacts & really high cadence but im probably doing it wrong.

Also why do bikes need 11 gears? Just means the chain wears our faster.

Surely the current trend for compacts & increasingly lower hill gears & huge ugly dinner plate sized rear casettes must be reaching its upper limit soon, or will bikes in 10yrs have 15 speed casettes with 11t-40t and chains so thin they need replacing after 500 miles?

Fixed wheel could be seen as a backlash agianst this trend.

Moonbiker

Fourty-three nineteen. My gear lever feels like a scab on a wound. During our reconnaissance ride I was using forty-three twenty here. Now I’m sticking to the nineteen, a matter of willpower. My twenty was still as clean as a whistle. Shifting is a kind of painkiller, and therefore the same as giving up. After all, if I wanted to kill my pain, why not choose the most effective method? Road racing is all about generating pain.

The greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is nature’s payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses; people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. ‘Good for you’. Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lady with few friends these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms, she rewards passionately.

Pituophis

Coming to road cycling later in life, I couldn't get up many hills without a compact.
More than 12 months on, and far, far fitter I couldn't see any reason to swap to something that made it harder again! :shock: I don't think this is any reason why I should have to give up the hobby.
Cycling has also rekindled a long lost passion for malt loaf and fig biscuits, though I'm happy to scoff them on the move. I always carry a few gels though, but almost always forget that I've got them (this makes them fairly cheap over the course of 12 months) but they are handy for a placebo effect if I have to ride at somebody else' pace for 50+ miles, to get me through the last few.
Cycling is diferent for all of us. To me its just a pleasant hobby that keeps me fit and I'm proud to have just reached 4500 miles in my first full year. I follow a guy on Strava, my age and from my home town who has just done 14000 miles this year. I suspect it means a little more to him, but he is still happy to give me encouragement or kudos when I post a ride.
I found the OP's post very boastful at first reading, but I'm not sure it was meant like that, and it certainly got a few opinions rolling

gubber12345

DesWeller wrote:

You're awesome, you are. I wish I was as awesome as you.

that made me laugh(love the sarcasm)

chrisaonabike

Chris Bass wrote:

my take on it is that a lot more people cycle these days, the proportion of hard as nails OP wannabes is probably the same as is the proportion of 'soft' OP nemeses, but the volumes have increased so you might notice more softer people about!

This makes sense to me.

Stick me in the 'nemesis' category, I found the OP patronising. It was the "when I were a lad I was fooking amazing" that just came over wrong - and was in fact completely irrelevant, since what he happened to be capable of nearly 40 years ago is hardly related to anything now - it just means he was a fit lad.

I'll nail my colours to the mast here - anyone that spouts shite like "I can get up the steepest hil in <insert massive gear> so everyone else should be able to", or any of the many varieties of that we see all the time, is just talking cack. This sums it up...

Jon_1976 wrote:

I'd rather be a soft ars* on a compact than spending my time hobbling round with sore knees.

Sure, from what some people post, it seems that there's a tendency to eat far more than necessary on some quite short rides, but that's a lack of education rather than anything else. If they actually knew they'd consumed more calories on the ride than they'd expended, maybe they wouldn't eat so much.

That said, the OP's mid-century big fry up could easily have been 2000 calories or more, so eating that after 50 miles, and then riding another 50 miles, presumably followed by supper, that's probably too much food as well. And maybe he'd have done in under the 5 hours instead of over if he hadn't done the whole ride on two bottles of water.

Wasn't the advice in Tom Simpson's day not to drink much, since the fluid weakens you? Er, we don't believe crap like that any more

DiscoBoy

nickyburnell wrote:

Hi all, I came back to cycling a couple of years ago, I'm now 53, 100kg plus and fine if it's not too hilly!

Pipe down, fatty.

Maglia

The OP might want to read this: http://cyclinguphill.com/cleeve-hill-bushcombe-lane/

Yep that's the reigning UK Hill Climb Champion admitting he struggled to turn a 39/25, we've obviously gone soft. What rubbish. Tejvan holds a number of all-time records for hill-climbs in the UK. Plus ca change...

There are now a lot more people of all abilities riding. The sharp end's quicker and the blunt end's slower but everyone, regardless of ability, who values their knee joints and is looking to be as efficient as possible tend to spin along rather than grinding their way over things.

pianoman

http://www.theendurancestore.com/blog/b ... bad-thing/

Check this article, it's broadly in line with what I was getting at before. That fry-up, while far from "perfect" as cycling food goes, would at least have avoided a sugar/insulin spike, pretty much like that Christmas baguette at the cafe the other week. Since I ditched all energy products I've also thought it best to avoid sugar-only snacks, and have noticed how bad my performance has dropped off if ever I've slipped (my ride on my TT bike this afternoon was awful not least because I was still warming up while some bloke in jeans on a Peugeot 10-speed bike which was older than me proved really difficult to drop going across Formby moss) That'll teach me to say "no" when the chocolate box is handed round after a lunch time office get-together :evil:

As for the gear choices, well I've always used 50x11 through 34x25 and that still gives me a higher top gear than the "traditional" 53x12, in fact it's even saved me having to buy a 54/42 TT chainset which doesn't come cheap - even with the power of the Internet :shock: Interestingly our club hillclimb winner - the only one to go up Shaley Brow in under 5 minutes - was also the only one in the top ten to have used 34x28. Then again he has run 800m on the track in under two minutes so I guess we should all do track run sprints too :idea:

imposter2.0

DiscoBoy wrote:

nickyburnell wrote:

Hi all, I came back to cycling a couple of years ago, I'm now 53, 100kg plus and fine if it's not too hilly!

Pipe down, fatty.

Be reasonable now - maybe he's 7ft tall...

DavidJB

Maglia wrote:

The OP might want to read this: http://cyclinguphill.com/cleeve-hill-bushcombe-lane/

Yep that's the reigning UK Hill Climb Champion admitting he struggled to turn a 39/25, we've obviously gone soft. What rubbish. Tejvan holds a number of all-time records for hill-climbs in the UK. Plus ca change...

There are now a lot more people of all abilities riding. The sharp end's quicker and the blunt end's slower but everyone, regardless of ability, who values their knee joints and is looking to be as efficient as possible tend to spin along rather than grinding their way over things.

TROLOL Lets find an article about someone suffering up a super hard hill and use that to justify riding a compact...

markhewitt1978

In any case if someone wants to do a sportive and spin up a slight incline on 20/40 then good! At least they are out and riding, which is better than 99% of the population and they can do without the OP telling them they're somehow worthless because of it.

nickyburnell

Well well, such a touchy lot.
Points worth picking up on:
If you are that easily offended by my post, god help you.
Fixed gear, yep, Check some of Tony Doyle s achievements, I raced 10's against him fully geared up and wondered at his spinning techniques.
Blame the Internet: Too right, that's why you think you need a compact, why you think you need a BB30 etc. No doubt you NEED parking sensors too.
The post was genuine, not a troll, if your an any way capable of being offended by it, or for that matter any words then maybe I should point you to another old school thing?
Sticks and stones may brake my bones, but words will never hurt me.
I'm off back to LFGSS and Retro Bike, lots of real men there .
Oh, and thanks for answering my question, yep, you've all gone soft.
Bloody Liberals

imposter2.0

1. OP posts something
2. Nobody agrees, some people laugh
3. OP flounces back to another forum where more people are likely to agree with him

There's social commentary for you.

marcusjb

nickyburnell wrote:

Well well, such a touchy lot.
Points worth picking up on:
If you are that easily offended by my post, god help you.
Fixed gear, yep, Check some of Tony Doyle s achievements, I raced 10's against him fully geared up and wondered at his spinning techniques.
Blame the Internet: Too right, that's why you think you need a compact, why you think you need a BB30 etc. No doubt you NEED parking sensors too.
The post was genuine, not a troll, if your an any way capable of being offended by it, or for that matter any words then maybe I should point you to another old school thing?
Sticks and stones may brake my bones, but words will never hurt me.
I'm off back to LFGSS and Retro Bike, lots of real men there .
Oh, and thanks for answering my question, yep, you've all gone soft.
Bloody Liberals

Just awesome.

bompington

I wish that I was so hard. If I get out the original 52/42 and 12-21 that came with the Rusty Raleigh from whatever benighted hole in the garage they have wound up in, and start grinding up hills even slower than I do now, will that make me as awesome as you?

angry_bird

bompington wrote:

I wish that I was so hard. If I get out the original 52/42 and 12-21 that came with the Rusty Raleigh from whatever benighted hole in the garage they have wound up in, and start grinding up hills even slower than I do now, will that make me as awesome as you?

No, because you can't chat shit as well as he can.

junglist_matty

nickyburnell wrote:

lots of real men there

I'm sure they'll happily tickle your hard'n'hairy retro balls

BillyMansell

It appears nickyburnell firmly believes in the old adage of "the older I get the faster I was"

Off you go back to the hardmen bumfest and take your ball with you.

alan_sherman

he has a point. I started riding as an under 16 about 1990 with 52/42 and 12-23 cassettes being the norm. This was in an area of a lot of 1 in 5 hills. We all got up the hills by standing on the pedals and honking. These days everyone is told to sit and spin a low gear.

I switched to a compact a few years ago and did the sit and spin thing - noticed I was slower up hills. Then I started to get quicker again as I acclimatised - but wasn't as quick as I used to be when powering up the climb out the saddle. However now I had lost the leg strength to climb out the saddle for any period of time.

Forward again a year and I commute through London with the overload of traffic lights. I've found the constant accelerate away from the lights (out the saddle) has returned some leg strength. Now I can climb faster again by standing up to inject some speed.


My conclusions?
Training for a mixture of both styles is needed - sitting down is 'more efficient' standing up allows 'more power' - but they both have trade offs - i.e. acceleration and fatigue respectively. It seems to be a lungs vs leg muscle thing.
Maybe I was crap at spinning even after a while of acclimatisation!


I do think people are a bit nuts with chomping down so much energy food and drink. I mean people are eating gels when riding around Richmond Park! 3 laps is only an hour / 21 miles! I don't know if they are soft, I think it comes more down to being taken in by advertising (and too much disposable income!)

ju5t1n

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

ugo.santalucia

I don't think the OP point is coming across... nobody is saying that the old way was a better way and we should all ride 42 x 21 up the hills, what he is pointing out is that these days people are put off going for a ride if they don't have the compact crankset, the sport nutrition, 2 litres of electrolytes and the lightest bike they can assemble... I have been on rides where people deliberately avoided one route because they didn't have their "climbing wheels" or their 29 teeth sprocket, which is frankly pathetic

marcusjb

I sort of hear you on that - people talk and stress too much about riding their first century (or whatever) - just go out and do it. If you fail, so what? Get the train home, work out where you went wrong, try again in a couple of weeks.

junglist_matty

ugo.santalucia wrote:

put off going for a ride if they don't have the compact crankset, the sport nutrition, 2 litres of electrolytes and the lightest bike they can assemble

You forgot to add fair weather to your list

markhewitt1978

ju5t1n wrote:

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

You got paid to work at the mill! Luxury! For us the mill owner would charge us for going to work!

pianoman

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I don't think the OP point is coming across... nobody is saying that the old way was a better way and we should all ride 42 x 21 up the hills, what he is pointing out is that these days people are put off going for a ride if they don't have the compact crankset, the sport nutrition, 2 litres of electrolytes and the lightest bike they can assemble... I have been on rides where people deliberately avoided one route because they didn't have their "climbing wheels" or their 29 teeth sprocket, which is frankly pathetic

Well taken to the other extreme I know some people who use one plain water bottle in winter and fill the other with heavy lead weights to make the training even more difficult! (not that I'm taking any responsibility if that snaps your seat tube and you lose on the warranty claim).

I actually wonder if the OP has the same mentality (which more of us could do with from time to time) or is even the same person, as this bloke who got fired from the head coach job at an under 10's football team for being "too driven". I agreed with this guy too except for where he said his son would get in the first team no matter what, which let's be honest smacked of double standards: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... g-fun.html

roger_merriman

ugo.santalucia wrote:

I don't think the OP point is coming across... nobody is saying that the old way was a better way and we should all ride 42 x 21 up the hills, what he is pointing out is that these days people are put off going for a ride if they don't have the compact crankset, the sport nutrition, 2 litres of electrolytes and the lightest bike they can assemble... I have been on rides where people deliberately avoided one route because they didn't have their "climbing wheels" or their 29 teeth sprocket, which is frankly pathetic

Chose better riding companions or at lease ones less into the sport? while I have the twin duo of gramin and strava.

It's certainly true people are capable of more than they think, i rode with friends on the Capital to Coast ride, and turned around and came back, was a long slow day but quite doable even on the SS.

My wife's grandmother used to as a teen ride down (1930's) from london with friends, to Brighton and then back.

there are a lot of things about bikes that have got better but equally they aren't needed for most part. and sports science needs to be looked at with some cynicism.

Also people are different, I'm no fast climber but I'm fairly unstoppable, can roll up tarmac walls plodding away at sub 30 rpm, hardly troubling strava times but equally untroubled by the gradient ether.