Canadian Road Champ Guillaume Boivin and Marginal Gains
If you saw Paris Roubaix this year, there’s a good chance you saw our guest — Canadian Road Champ Guillaume Boivin — in action. And thanks to the laws of supply and demand (Guillaume needed a chain, and Hottie had a Silca Hot-Waxed Chain available), we were able to nab this interview with this road star about how "G" (as his Istrael StartUp Nation teammates call him) started biking, his fixation on bike tech, and his very intense day at Paris Roubaix.
Got a question you’d like to ask? Text or leave a voicemail at the Marginal Gains Hotline: +1-317-343-4506 or just leave a comment in this post!
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Hi Guys, it’s Lewis again.
Yeah I was actually on the GP5000 tires. I really do think it’s the perimeter weight that’s making me feel super fast in the first few pedal strokes.
My dad did point this out to me the other day so was cool to see you guys back him up (obviously not completely full of rubbish) Also I’ve ridden the pro ltd tubs since I was like 12 so I have so much confidence & I’m really at home on them.
I also heard on another episode where you talked about a wheel with a bit more perimeter weight being nicer on a hill with the idea it stops that feeling of accelerating and then coming to a stop each pedal revolution. For me though I actually prefer that feeling when I’m climbing. It gives me the feeling that I’m super strong as each time I pedal the bikes flying forward.
Yeah no worries I’ll give this season a try and get back to you after I’ve raced and tried out a few different set ups in the classics. I’m also pretty excited to try out these new shimano wheels this year.
Another interesting point for me and I don’t fully know the relationship yet is how the cornering ability of the tire will change depending on the rim. For example this year there was a race in which 33mm tubeless tires were used at very low pressures however they were used with super narrow rims. As a result the tire had no real lateral stiffness and it gave the riders a “sloppy” feeling almost as if the tire was wobbling on the rim. Long story short nearly the whole team wiped out before the important part of the race as the tire was no longer really stable on the rim.
I have a question about old tech: tube/tire combinations and rolling resistance. I’ve set up my daughter’s BMC-TM01 TT bike with some older Reynolds 90/75 deep dish clincher wheels. Those wheels are still fast, and I have them set up with Continental GP5000s with latex tubes, which is supposedly a very fast setup. However, it got me to thinking about rolling resistance when a tube gets stuck on the inside of the tire. After a lot of miles, tubes (latex and butyl) tend to adhere to the inside of the tires and you have to literally peel them off when changing them. Back in the day, we used to put baby powder on the tubes to keep that from happening, but it wasn’t very successful, especially if water got in. So here’s my question: does tube adhesion to the inside of the tire affect rolling resistance?
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