Bifurcation and Marginal Gains

Just a fast hello and also to thank you for discussing your ideas on this web page. I wound up inside your weblog right after researching physical fitness connected issues on Yahoo guess I lost track of what I had been performing! Anyway I’ll be back once once more inside the future to examine out your blogposts down the road. Thanks!

Thanks for the always interesting content. We moved from Australia to Chicago 4 years ago and have caught cyclocross fever as Chicago Cross Cup is an enormous series each Fall/Winter.

Given it is (usually) Cross Season at present, i was curious to know what are the marginal gains for CX as it is sort of like MTB but races are shorter and with lots of accelerations.

I assume drive train makes a difference due to mud and am now waxing chains with crock pot submersion.

But what about wheels – weight vs aero vs width.

And tires? Pros still us tubulars due to ability to run super low pressure but is it really an advantage these days with such great CX/Gravel technology? and is the lowest practical pressure really the best for grip vs rolling resistance? The limitiations on all for this is frame clearance plus UCI measured width limit for tires is 33mm although Masters and non-pros can run 38mm (in USA). Finally, what effect does tread depth have on all of this?

Thanks for reading this far and i’m sure “offroad on drop bar bikes” is an episode in itself

Andrew

One thing that you didn’t cover in this episode was what to do if your bike does have the tendency to speed wobble. I recently bought a new bike and it reliably wobbles for me. When I ride the downhill part of the Brooklyn Bridge, which has a unique wooden slat surface (you can see it here: https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/03/26/the-tourists-are-gone-from-brooklyn-bridge-i-miss-them/), the bike will basically always go into a wobble. It hasn’t yet happened anywhere else but of course I’m a bit nervous that it might happen in a scarier spot.

I’ve seen people mention that you can change out the wheels or make other similarly major changes, but I’m curious if there are any simpler tricks that I might be able to test out.

Really love the podcast. Hearing you’re doing an episode about chains, I have an observation and a question as a follow up. I mostly cycle on gravel roads here i Norway, and have been running 1×11 drivetrains for 3-4 years. This year, however, I bought a new bike (3T) with a Sram Force/Eagle AXS 1×12 drivetrain. I’m mostly happy with it and the larger range (I’ve ridden 6000+kms with it this year), but one area where it is annoying, is when I ride in wet conditions on gravel and dirt. I usually start with a clean chain and use the NFS chainlube, but after a while the drivetrain gets noisy, as if the increased friction makes noise. This might happen on a 1×11 drivtrain as well, but seems to start way earlier on the 1×12. My question is: Is this due to that the 1×12 system has smaller system tolerances? Has is something to do with the 1×12 chain? Is there a lube/wax which is best to use if the tolerances are much tighter? Or is there something else going on?

Josh,

thanks for introducing a “Many worlds interpretation” to bike racing, it is all ruined for me now! Jokes aside, great content as usual.

My question comes with the advent of ultra-wide rims: We’ve always talked about box vs deep carbon and the advantages of the latter. With road rims going as wide as 30, 32, 35 mm (Zipp 303, Enve AR, Hunt Limitless 48, respectively), are we “forced” now to go even deeper since the air is being pushed sideways and we need a longer “tail” to keep the airfoil shape? Is there a ratio of width/depth we should use selecting a suitable depth for a given width?

Thanks from the big, white, north.