Marginal Gains Podcast

Episode 147

December 22, 2025

Transcript

00:00:04 Fatty

This is the Marginal Gains Podcast, the show that makes a big deal about the little things and how those little things can be a big deal. I'm Fatty and I want to start this Ask Josh Anything episode with a demand, something that came in from one of our listeners, sent into the hotline 317-343-4506. He said,

An aluminum velodrome is being built in Tucson. You must talk about the tire setup and pressure for an aluminum surface. Now, Josh, I will say that when we recorded with Melissa and Barry Anderson of Psychologic recently, Barry sounded very excited about this velodrome and says it is likely to be fast.

So an aluminum velodrome, what do you think?

00:00:48 Josh

I am so excited by this thing. You kind of watch the construction happening and  I mean, heck, just the fact that somebody's building a velodrome. I just, it just felt like something that would never happen again at the rate they're in this country, at the rate things had gone. So I'm also super excited. Yeah, that surface. I haven't been there. I haven't seen it. I don't know. I think the question is going to be what the seams between the quote unquote boards or plates or whatever it is that they've used.

I mean, there have to be transitions between plate to plate. How smooth is that? Because the aluminum surface itself is going to be extremely fast. And then I think my other question is, what have they coated it with? Because there are different, you know, aluminum is not a very high traction surface. And so they're going to have to put something on it so it's not slippy. I mean, it would be like deadly slippy when wet.

And so then the question is like, how much roughness have they added to it? I know when they did the, that was it the North Carolina Velodrome, God, probably 15 or 20 years ago. No, they put like a damn near sandpaper coating on it that actually made it slow and really wrecked people when they went down on it. So hopefully we don't go there. But yeah, if they have the potential here to make this one of the fastest anywhere.

Except that it is outdoors and not indoors, so you'll have wind and some other things to contend with. But yeah, I cannot wait to go out there and see it and hopefully even ride on it.

00:02:24 Hottie

Okay, we love velodromes because of the hour record. Tucson is at 2,600 feet. I'm not exactly sure the precise elevation of the velodrome, but it's somewhere in that neighborhood. So how does that sit for the hour record? 2,600 feet?

00:02:37 Josh

Not quite high enough. I mean, definitely better than sea level, you know, LA or something.

But no, I mean, you really, the optimal, aguas calientes, and you're talking, over a mile high. So you probably want to be in the, 5 to 6,000 feet high is really optimal. There's some great curves that have been published over the years showing, you know, kind of where your aerobic efficiency, you're losing as you go, but it's non-linear. And then of course, the air pressure you're losing as you go up and that's not linear. And so there's a crossover point. And, you know, I think the theoretical for top trained athletes would be somewhere in the like 6,000 to 6,500 feet, everybody's going to be a little bit different, but so it's, we'll call it halfway there.

00:03:30 Fatty

So ideally then, I mean, if we, as long as we are talking about our hypothetical marginal gains, we either move this up to 5,000 or 6,000 feet, or we put, we put this in a building and suck out some of the air, right? So where we essentially duplicate that effect.

00:03:50 Josh

Yeah, that would be, if we could afford that and that were legal, unfortunately it's not.

I mean, I totally have had dreams about this where with the Alpha Mantis aerostick system years ago at the LA Velodrome, I mean, we found, you know, you could see, you could see like in real time in the data when the HVAC would kick on or somebody would open the door to the outside and there would be these like pressure normalizations and you could see that. And it really got me thinking like, oh man, yeah, you could,

If you could use the HVAC to like drop the pressure in the building, and then if you were really cheeky, and you had maybe like some just properly positioned ceiling fans, kind of creating a bit of a swirl, because you see that effect too, the. A little cycling effect. Yeah, and it takes, you see it like a single rider on the track, the aero drag actually falls over like the 1st 10 laps and sort of stabilizes due to the rider sort of, we call it stirring the drink.

But the rider is sort of creating a little bit of a circulating flow around the velodrome. And so you think, if you just, had the HVAC, oriented in the right way, maybe like one on the home stretch and one above the back stretch, and they each just happened to be blowing in the favorable direction. Again, all not legal, but you know, if you're not talking about it, nobody notices, maybe.

I want gladiator-style rules for this thing, right? Who cares whether you know this foundation or that foundation says it's legal? I just want to see how fast we can get someone to go. So the one...

00:05:32 Hottie

An hour record with no rules, no UCI rules, right?

00:05:35 Fatty

That's right.

00:05:37 Hottie

That's where we're, that's where we're at.

00:05:39 Fatty

I would watch. I want a ticket. So is there going to be a parabolic mirror effect with this, Josh Hottie, where, you know, 200 feet above the thing that if you throw a hot dog in the air, it suddenly catches flame?

00:05:54 Josh

That could, I mean, you know, there, there's a chance, again, I don't know what they're coding it with, but yeah, like, I mean, if it's shiny, like, yeah, could you like blind an airplane pilot or something? Maybe. I mean, it's not truly parabolic, so you're not going to get, whatever. But it is, are you guys familiar or have you ever seen, there's the, they call it the walkie-talkie building in London, and it melts cars. It has a, it has a convex curvature in the sides of it and the sun at certain times of day will, it'll literally pump down, it like melts the plastic parts of cars in parking spots below. Oh, wow. Yes, if you just like Google it, you know, London skyscraper that melts cars and it's, and being London, it's melted some pretty fancy cars.

00:06:47 Fatty

I'm sure. So watch out for seagulls that are overhead. I'm excited to see where this goes.

00:06:58 Hottie

The Marginal Gains podcast is presented by Silca. I'm Michael Hotten, Hottie the most. Do we need introductions here? Josh, CEO of Silca is here. Fatty is here. We are recording the show just after Black Friday slash Cyber Monday, but the gift buying season is far from over.

A funny thing about us cyclists, we can really be a tough bunch to buy for. Like clothing can be a pain when it comes to getting our size right, never mind brand. Buying us a saddle, forget it. Shoes, equally as tough. And components just seem to lack that real spirit of the season touch. I mean, I'm the only person I can think of who would be excited about unwrapping a brand new chain. So Josh, help us out here. What on the Silca site stands out as the perfect gift that you would consider almost guaranteed not to be exchanged by the tough to buy for cyclist.

00:07:51 Josh

Oh, man. Historically, every year up until this one, it has been our HX1 hex key set in the wooden box. Oh, yeah. You know, it's the thing I always said, like, it's guaranteed, like, most people wouldn't buy it for themselves, but everybody wants one. We do so many of those through the season. And never exchanged, right? Never exchanged. But this year, our hottest gift so far has been the Electrico, electric mini pump. That thing I, funny story, I was inflating, you put a, we call it the Schrader, it's a quick disconnect for Schrader. You put a Schrader on it, you can use it to inflate your car tires when the dreaded winter TPMS light comes on and it's telling you that your air pressure is low because it's cold outside.

00:08:40 Josh

But we, I was pumping up, topping off my wife's car tires and she saw me and said, that thing is so cool. Where'd you get it? And I'm like, we make it. And so then she went and bought them for her entire family. So yeah, so my wife contributed 8, I think 8 units of sales to the, but it really, it's a perfect, obviously for cycling, but it works great on your cars and sports balls. Anything else that needs air and is it kind of that nice $150 give or take price point.

00:09:17 Fatty

So happy holidays. I will say, yep, I have bought a few for the cyclists in my life. I have not got one for folks who are not cyclists. Suddenly I've got this great gift idea. I'm Fatty. Marginal gains is supported by Shimano.

This time of year is when many kids get their first bike. And while Shimano does not have a bike on offer, it does have a very important piece of equipment to go with that bike. And that is a helmet. Laser helmets are part of the Shimano family and Laser has an entire kids line of head protection. There's 4 models to choose from and each of them comes with Lazer's award-winning Kineticore anti-rotation system. The helmets are in various styles from BMX to trail to one that has a little bit of a roadie look to it, and within each model you will find multiple colors. So whether your new rider is into pinks or blues or what have you, trails or bikes parks, bike parks, you can find a style of helmet to meet their fun on their new bike. To check out Lazer's complete lineup, head to lasersport.us and thanks Shimano for supporting marginal gains.

I will say, Hottie, I remember my first bike, a Schwinn Stingray, very popular model from the late 60s, early 70s. It was purple, thanks to my dad and a can of spray paint. I think he bought it in the Alamos of Colorado newspaper classified ads. I will never forget that first bike. Josh, how about you? What was your first bike? Did it have training wheels or no?

00:10:55 Josh

Yes, training wheels. But I just last year, I think when I was home visiting my parents for Christmas, found the receipt for it, or my mom had found the receipt. And it was a silver Schwinn, don't remember the model, red banana seat. So kind of like a Stingray, but not quite as cool. I didn't have a shifter or anything.

But yes, training wheels. And then, man, I still remember the day the training wheels came off and I was flying. Wonderful, wonderful.

00:11:26 Hottie

Yeah, all my friends had stingrays, but I got a blue Raleigh. I have no idea what model it was. One speed, foot brake, no training wheels. On Christmas morning, dad took me out to the front, gave me some brief instructions, shoved me off. I made it 10 yards and crashed. The call went out immediately for some training wheels. Dad, training wheels.

But a good first bike is worth pursuing, right, for kids. I mean, a bad initial experience can send the kids straight back to video games. Josh Ross of Velo Magazine wrote a great article with a great title. Don't buy your kid a crappy bike for Christmas, it said. He let out five great areas to pay attention to. Fit being one. Many kids into bikes, they'll simply grow into, at least that's the idea.

But in the early days, that usually means they're riding something with a Q factor that's too wide. Their knees are splaying out all over the place. Handlebars can also be too wide on that kid's bike, making handling tricky. Speaking of bars, a bar end into the abdomen is one of the top injuries for young riders. So making sure those bar ends have good plugs on them is key. Another thing is weight. You know, like on marginal gains, we talk about weight, like how much it matters to us. It does. But imagine the small rider, like the author, Josh Ross, spec'd A 16-inch bike from a big box store and found it weighed 18 pounds. I mean, 18 pounds, that's fine if your FTP is like 200 watts. But when you're the target age of that bike, say four to six years old, that's a big ask, 18 pounds. So Josh, I know it's not the job of Aeromind or Silca to marginal gain a kid's bike, but does anything come to mind when shopping. You have kids. So what comes to mind when you shop for a youngster's first bike?

00:13:08 Josh

Oh, man, weight is huge, right? It really is. Yeah. 18 pounds when you weigh 40 pounds. That's a big, you know, this thing is half your body weight. You know, I'll say I both, I mean, my kids are now 19 and 20, but we got a Strider balance bike.

And they were both ripping around on that thing within days of getting it. And then both of them just got right on their pedal bikes and went. I mean, it was amazing how efficient that went. And yeah, I think the weight of the Strider is a huge deal. And then as they go into that first bike, yeah, having something, a little bit lighter weight really helps. I know my son, he went through a real cars phase. And so we did end up buying a big box store bike because it had a Lightning McQueen on the front and you could put your Hot Wheels Lightning McQueen cars in this like box thing. And that was his obsession. And it made him want to ride it all over the place. You know, my daughter, we did a little bit nicer bike from the bike shop. I think this is a great opportunity to support your local bike shop if possible.

But I will tell you the one thing that we have seen starting this year from bike shops is waxing kids' bike chains. No, really? Because it's so clean. And I think this is so, but you think of a endurance chip wax chain is over 1000 kilometers per application, right? I mean, you look at the, you know, Zero Friction just did his endurance chip data dump and he waxed 1/3 as frequently. And so the 1st 1000 kilometers of that test on one waxing with 0.0% wear, well, 1000 kilometers is the lifetime of the kid's bike. But it doesn't attract dirt. It doesn't leave chain ring tattoos. It doesn't get on the clothes. It doesn't end up, you know, touching stuff in the garage or mom and dad's pant leg when you walk past it on the way to work, the way to get in your car to go to work. So I think that that's been a real kind of exciting one for me. We're like, oh crap, we never thought about that, what an interesting application for it, but it really is perfect. But past that, I think you, the other big one you had, Hottie, was, having it a professionally assembled bike with an eye on the details like bar end plugs, things like that. a lot of these big box stores, and I know I've seen bikes in there, you think, oh my God, I hope nobody buys that thing because the fork's on backwards, right. I mean, just some of the stuff that you see. So, if you're, if you're super nerdy, mechanical, and you work on bikes all the time, you can take one of those and make sure that it's safe. But if you're not somebody who's got a ton of experience there, you know, buy, buy from a pro.

00:16:03 Hottie

all credit to Josh Ross of Velo Magazine and he wrote the article and he put all the, really good, really smart this time of year to just give, obviously, the lighter bike, the more appropriate bike, it's going to be a little more expensive, especially the bike that actually fits because the kid's going to grow them and you're going to probably have to turn over a bike eventually. But again, the first experience, you're competing for the kid's attention. If you want them out on bikes, maybe a good first ride is the way to go.

00:16:29 Fatty

Oh man, I will never forget that first bike and catching my flare leg pants cuffs in the chain. Man, it was the early 70s was a bad time to be a kid on a bike. I will tell you, every single pair of pants that I had, a chain. I mean, not just the chain mark, but like they'd gotten caught in the chain. So, you know, there was, you know, a chewed up hole, but you know, it didn't stop me from riding. Didn't stop me from riding. Waxing would have been fantastic.

Let's jump into some listener questions for this episode. Brian Gaynor of River City Cycles in St. Louis texted us this great environmental impact question. Here's the hotline he texted it into, 317-343-4506. Here's what Brian said. I was a bicycle mechanic for eight years, left the industry to do sales in industrial supply, and now I'm back as a new owner of a bike shop in St. Louis. We opened in July 2025. My time walking around factories and selling industrial services gave me an understanding of what these bigger companies are being pushed to do on the sustainability front. Right now, everyone is talking about ESG, environmental, social, and governance reporting, and what they can do to minimize their impact through shrinkraft recycling, PPE recovery, fluid and oil recovery, and so forth. My question is twofold. One, what is Silca doing to minimize your environmental impact, and what would you like to do more of?

And 2, what do you think are some marginal gains local bike shops can do to minimize their environmental impact now and in the future without spending a ton of money on services from other companies?

00:18:27 Josh

They're awesome questions. Yeah, thoughtful, awesome questions. Yeah. Gosh, yeah, I guess we'll start with what we do here or what we try to do here. You know, a big,

I guess for starters, we've talked about before, we are PFAS free, right? That's, I am incredibly anti-PFAS and have been since the very start, the very start of me owning the company when we were, you know, literally assembling, we were kitting parts and assembling things on our dining room table.

00:18:57 Fatty

Remind our listeners what PFAS means.

00:19:00 Josh

Oh, the PFAS are the essentially perfluorinated family of chemicals. So, things like Teflon as a trade name, but PTFE, PFOA, there's a million of these acronyms. I mean, there's hundreds of them. And, you know, they are fluorinated plastics, essentially, that were developed really kind of in the 50s and 60s around the space program and all that. And the real original was goal was things that could handle these extreme high temperatures, things that could handle vacuum of space. You know, it's where your non-stick pan surfaces come from. But of course, we now in time have realized that those, you know, our generation, you know, us kids of the 70s, we're screwed, right? Like, I grew up eating eggs cooked in Teflon, right? Like, and that's where you're seeing now, like the big trend if you cook is Teflon-free pans, right? So you're seeing a lot of like ceramic coatings or people going back to stainless steel or to cast iron. But PFAS was also Gore-Tex. So, you know, we've been wearing this stuff forever. And the big challenge beyond the fact that it's now known to be a carcinogen, it's now known to affect reproduction. And I mean, just has all of these crazy knock-on effects.

But then the particles, they never, they're called forever chemicals. So they never like go away, right? They never break down. And so they bioaccumulate in like fish and things like that.

And so you're now seeing, all sorts of wildlife issues where, the fish like are eating, the whatever that is eating the PFAS and then the bears eat the fish.

And now the bears are having, reproductive issues, and it just goes, right?

And so, from day one of the company, I'm like, hey, I don't want that stuff in my house at my dining room table.

And, to be honest, probably the first year and a half of Silca, if you bought something that was kitted from us, it was probably kitted by one of my kids who were like 8, nine years old at the time.

And I didn't want them touching that stuff.

And so, you know, we internally, like when we assemble, we only use NFS approved food safe lubricants.

And they're more expensive, but they're items that have actually have to go through testing to show like so much stuff in industry.

If you've ever been around industry, you don't have to test it to show that it's safe.

You just, it has to not have testing that shows that it's dangerous, right?

And then eventually stuff happens and they do the testing and go, oh, well, actually this looks dangerous.

But for some of these food safe, or all of these food safe categories of things, they actually have to do the testing to show safety, right?

Or essentially show that it's not creating any issues.

So yeah, we use a lot of that stuff for health and safety.

We have no PFAS in the building.

And then we deal, honestly, and it kind of works on multiple fronts, but local supply chain is really helpful, right?

That the less you're moving stuff around, so like all of our lubricants and chemicals, we try to keep the supply chain as local as possible.

Things come to us in 400 gallon totes, and then we do the mixing here internally and the bottling internally.

All of our bottles are, you know, typically 25 to 50% recycled content. Sadly, you can't, most things, you can't use like 100% recycled plastic because it loses so much of its mechanical properties.

And so it's pretty rare to get to extreme high recycle percentages when you're dealing with things like we're dealing with. If you're putting water in the bottle, it's one thing, but if you're, putting cleaning soaps in there, whatever, it's different.

But like those 400 gallon totes come in and we recycle them with our suppliers.

So, you know, they ship the stuff to us. We put it into kind of a big mixing vat.

We mix, we run our bottling, and then we send those totes back.

And so that, you know, those things are constantly being transported back and forth.

Gosh, I'm trying to think of what else. I mean, we just moved into a new facility in May, and we actually replaced all of the lights in the facility with LED. And that was amazing.

We run an electric bill that's less than half of what the old facility was running when they were here. And we doubled the amount of light hitting the tables in front of the employees. So, you know, we've dramatically improved the brightness and the, their ability to see things while cutting the energy. So a lot of stuff like that. We try to recycle all of our cardboard, all of our non-recyclable plastic, things like that.

But yeah, it's hard to balance. It's even just hard to do some of this stuff, you know, and I think we always have to question, you know, we recycle with waste management, all of the excess plastics, but then you see things in the news that, there's no market, because of our issues with China at the moment.

They're the ones who would buy all the recycled plastic and they're not buying it.

So, you know, they're saying like 75, 80% of what you recycle actually just ends up landfilled anyway, which is a real shame.

And so I think, you know, somebody needs to be creating secondary markets for that stuff, which is where, like I said, we try to do with our bottles.

You know, hey, if I can buy bottles that are at least partially recycled, then I'm helping to contribute to the demand. So I think, it is an issue that you can approach from both directions.

We talked about that with our sealant, the recycled carbon and the sealant.

We've been able to recycle carbon forever, but nobody's buying.

So, you know, it's great to be able to show up and be like, hey, I'll consume, because if enough people were willing to consume, then you can create the demand and actually get the supply chains rolling.

So from a bike shop perspective, I think, really staying on top of your cleaners and solvents, especially in solvent tanks and things like that, you can go a long way, right?

Using low VOC or no VOC cleaners and solvents, using things that are more like surfactant based than true solvent based.

Yeah, I would say just pay attention to the chemicals that you're using and then also pay attention to their lifespan.

you don't want to use them until they don't work anymore.

But, there is, they're, using a cleaner, 16 ounce bottle of chain stripper to clean one chain and then dumping it out.

That's that is wasteful and problematic.

And, you know, we've seen if you, even just pour it through a coffee filter to catch the grease that it's stripped off, you can probably get 24 to 30 chains per bottle.

Takes a little bit more work and a little, a little bit more effort, but you can, that same amount of solvent and that same environmental footprint can do the job a lot more times than if you're not, you know, paying attention to that and you're saving money.

So, and then the other thing I would say to that is, maintenance of parts over replacement of parts is just huge.

We all like to buy the new shiny thing, but keeping the old thing going is a big footprint reducer.

And I think one of the biggest there, and I've always been super particular about my own, but like tires, I shoe goo all the little like cuts in my tires and to, try to keep them going and to try to, one, it reduces risk on your rides, but you can get more life, especially out of your training tires.

And you think of, I don't remember the number, but it's like, to make one bicycle tires like the equivalent of, filling like, a couple of rooms of your house with CO2.

I mean, tires are a very heavy environmental thing.

to make chains, same way.

If you go to chain waxing and now you're getting 10, 15,000 miles out of a chain, rather than 2,000 miles out of a chain, that's that many fewer chains that have to be produced and all that energy created and all of that stuff.

And so, I think just keeping your bike clean and maintenance will saves you money, but also that is probably going to be one of the biggest environmental impacts you can make.

00:27:46 Hottie

Cool.

All right, a 32-inch wheel starting to gain a little buzz out there.

We did a show dedicated to 13-inch wheels here on Marginal Gains.

We've, I think you've entertained a few questions so far. Here's another one.

It comes from Carl, Carl Sundquist, and he texted this question.

Now that your beloved UCI has approved 32-inch wheels for mountain bikes, Why not lobby for 32-inch wheels for Perry Roubaix to roll over cobbles better?

Josh, is there an application for this? Would 32-ers make sense on the cobbles?

00:28:21 Josh

I mean, I don't like it, but they would roll over the cobbles better if you had reasonably good tires for them. But yeah, this is a hard one.

Like this technically is a good solution for that application, but at the same time, it's kind of the, for me, the equivalent of like those  those like aerodynamic calf sleeve things that the triathletes wear, where you're just like, oh, Jesus, really?

Like, it just, like, on the one hand, they were and it's faster, and I love that.

00:28:51 Josh

And on the other hand, like, can we stop looking stupid?

Like, I just, I don't like the way these things look.

They make the bikes funny. They really do some weird stuff for position.

It would be interesting to see, put my science hat back on again. It would be really interesting to run a test, you know, if I could get like an equivalent high-end, you know, Vittoria Roubaix tire for, a 32 and a standard in C, it essentially has to be a little bit faster.

How much? Really hard to say, but this is definitely one of those where, if a couple millimeters of width and a slightly lower pressure are faster than a couple inches of diameter are going to be faster because you're just presenting so much shallower of a of an angle to the road as you're rolling.

So yeah, you're going to get a nice, short, wide, beautiful contact patch, and you're going to really be able to pick up that next cobble edge and recover better than a wheel of smaller diameter.

So technically, I think he's spot on. It's probably a good solution. And then I put my curmudgeon hat back on again and …

00:30:17 Hottie

You're going to roll over stuff better, but it seems that you're going to pick up weight.

You're going to add weight to the platform. I mean, it's just going to happen.

Not a lot of climbing, Roubaix, which is good. Yeah, and there's a weight penalty and there's absolutely an arrow penalty as wheels get bigger. And you'd want to, but you'd want to maintain width, right? I don't think you'd want to say, well, we're going to gain diameter, so we'll give up some width. You'd still want the width, would you not? So if you're running a 32 and a 700, I think you'd still want that in the, so you'd run a 32, 32 is what I'm saying. Would that, does that make sense?

00:30:53 Josh

Yeah, and you, I mean, you still may, if you could fit, you know, I'm still, well, and for quite a few years, we've run 33s where we can fit them, but yeah, I'm still on the, I think 34 is probably the sweet spot there, 35, most of the bikes won't fit them, but I think we could for Roubaix.

I think the problem is it's just such a singular, unique thing, right?

Because then we do the testing at, Flanders and we're kind of, for most riders, you're back to like, **** should be 28 or 30.

Although we don't have the wheels to work with these tires. So I think that's the other, you know, we've talked about it before, but my big, we just have, we need to change the way we're thinking about this and that like everything needs to start with the tire and then everything else is like after that, right?

Like the tire should be picked first for the course and then that should drive what wheel you need and then that will drive into what bike you need.

And the problem is in most of these cases, nobody makes that wheel and nobody makes that bike.

And so that's where we end up with people like me, going to Roubaix every year and still having a job because, it's now all trade-offs, right? Well, I really want to ride this tire, but I don't have a bike. The bike I want to ride, it doesn't fit in. And the bike it does fit in is kind of aero, is like slow aerodynamically.

But then we only have these three depths of wheel, but they're all too narrow. You know, like you're just always trying to like pick the best, worst solution from the available equipment.

00:32:39 Fatty

So too many compromises, right?

00:32:40 Josh

It's a lot of compromises. Yeah. And I think it's because the industry has never thought of it from that direction, right?

00:32:48 Josh

I mean, I think the bike people dominate the industry because that's the name that you see on the bike. And that's the most expensive thing. And that's the thing thatthey wield the most power.

And they're the biggest, it's the most expensive things, so they're the biggest companies.

And so that's where the power comes from. And so, the bike brands dictate how big a tire it fits. And then the wheel brands, who in a lot of cases are owned by the bike brands, are like, nobody wants to be too far out of the norm. So they're going to, you know, they're making the wheel that basically everyone else is making. And then, you know, maybe if you're lucky, somebody gets a wild hair and they're like, well, we're going to make one that's 2 millimeters wider. And you're like, yay, great.

Like, what giant balls you have to make that decision to let's go 2 millimeters wider, but like, and then you're like, oh, and now I need to pick the tire for my event.

Oh, ****. Well, I'm kind of in a corner here.Like, it doesn't, you know. Oh, and they made it hookless, right? to beat that dead horse. **** I can't ride the tire I want anyway because it's freaking hookless. So I mean, I think, from the position I'm in, when I walk into these situations with one of these World Tour teams or whatever, you're just stuck with what you got. And so you're kind of making the best of it.

But yeah, I mean, if you had, Dylan Johnson, World Tour athlete racing Roubaix, and you're like, oh, we can, he refuses to be sponsored and he's going to ride whatever he wants.  Or could have somebody make that for him.

I think you would end up with all sorts of different stuff than we have now, because I mean, that event in particular, it just needs equipment that quite frankly, we don't really have at the moment.

00:34:41 Fatty

So imagine you could wipe that slate clean and you can start from the way that you're describing from the tire.

What is the tire you start with? And then what wheel would you put it on?

What is the perfect Paris Roubaix machine and tire.

00:34:58 Josh

I mean, we don't know because we can't, I would say, when I started in this game, it was 24. And if it rained, we'd ride the 27, right? That's my whole Magnus Backstedt story of him breaking all his stuff in that year because he, it was sunny and he was nervous about the 27 and so they go back to the 24.

And then we spent all this time showing, nope, 27's actually faster. And so, you know, we got to cancel our to ride the 27 and then can we get a 28? the bikes don't exactly fit it and you can do some stuff.

And you make these little half moon shims that you like put under the fork tips to try to, you know, shim the wheel 1 millimeter down. Because it's typically not a width problem. It's like a radial distance problem. And so you're doing this stuff to try to fit the 28s, right?

And then, you know, we did the 303 and that was even better because it had compliance in the rim and it was now super aero with a 28 millimeter tire.

But the specialized bikes of that era had that stupid bulge in the chain stays and you couldn't ride a 303 in the rear, right?

And so then ENVE was like, oh, well, we'll make rear rims that are narrower, which, you know, I mean, it's like this kind of fun, like walk of innovation.

But I mean, you know, even the last couple of years, like, you'll, we have 33s. And some teams have 32s and 33s, but all hot patched as 32s, because the tire sponsor doesn't make a 33. And that's all we can test do, right? But I mean, what we know is that 27 was better than 24, and 28 was better than 27, and 30 was better than 28.

And now 32 is better than 30, and 33 is better than 32 if you can fit it, but you generally can't. And then 33 can be a bit of an issue if it's like rainy and muddy because the clearances are so low that now you've got a mud clearing problem.

But we don't know if 34 is really faster because nobody's, you know, nobody's got that bike, right? And so, and you can sort of test for that, but not now it's like private testing, right?

We're not in the context of the team because the team's looking at you going, well, we can't get caught in a photograph testing a bike that's not our sponsor's bike.And our sponsor's bikes don't fit 34s.

But you know, some companies make 35s, like, or 35, I mean, I, you know, my gut is that 34, 35 is probably the sweet spot from a Arenberg Forest, Carrefour de Labre, like the couple of really rough sections, but you probably don't need to be quite that wide on the...

00:37:36 Hottie

I mean, there's so much tarmac in the event that you still have to pay attention, right?

00:37:39 Josh

Because, yeah, there's a ton of tarmac.

Well, and because there's so much tarmac, and you know, we've talked before about like the winds and where the attacks go and does it break into echelons.

And so you need good aero performance and you need good crosswind stability and you need good crosswind aero performance.

And so that means that you really need rims that are kind of in that equal to the tire width or wider, Rula 105, you got to have rims that are wider than those tires, but nobody's making those rims.

And so that's where we just get into this sort of like death spiral of like, oh, okay, well, that tire is faster in these parts of the race, but then aerodynamically, it really hurts you in these other parts of the race.

I mean, I, you know, I think if it were up to me, yeah, pick a bike. If I were racing, had the money and the time, I would pick a bike that could fit to like a 40.

And do you guys see the new Factor, like this crazy like Factor super aero bike wide, which I love, because it's all stuff that I've been preaching for like 15 years.

Super happy for my friend Rob Jatellis, who owns Factor, who I've worked with for 25 years, that he got that thing to the finish line. But you know, this is a bike where you're like, hey, this thing is super aero and you know, we could put like 3 inch tires on.

You can't literally for the radial clearance problem, but it will not have a clearance problem with these wider tires.

So you take that thing and you go out and you're like, okay, we're going to run cobble tests from, you know, 32 to 40 and see what the rolling efficiencies look like between them And if you find that, oh, 34, 35 is the sweet spot.

Now it's like, okay, now next step, somebody's got to make that wheel. Who's making that wheel?

Because that 35 millimeter tire, we need a wheel that's like 37, 38 millimeters wide, maybe 40, right? And okay, now we got to have somebody to make the wheel, okay, you know, and then does it all fit in the bike at the end?

And so that's how I would do it. But yeah, I think Crazy enough for as much time and energy and money and trips to Belgium that I've taken over the years, we still don't know the exact answer to the question of what's the best tire for Roubaix, because we've never been able to really do that.

And the other piece of this, you know, before we got on here, we're talking about that Escape Collective article about tire width.

The other problem is that the people making the tires seem to have this really frustrating habit of like making the tires thicker as they get wider.

And so part of the industry has been telling the story of like, oh, wider is faster. And then the tire companies are like, yeah, but we'll make the wider tires with more hysteresis so they're slower. And so you get in this thing of like, well, to really do the test, I need the same tire construction at all these different widths.

And so in a sense, and again, certainly with the pro teams, you never have that option because you're stuck with whoever you're stuck with, right? From a tire manufacturing perspective. But yeah, we need somebody to show up and be like, okay, we're going to make a 28, a 30, a 34, a 36, a 38, a 40, you know, whatever it is, with identical construction.

And then we can really see what the answer is.

Because certainly the, Pirelli tires that they use in that test, I mean, you look, as they get wider, the casing measurement gets thicker. And so by definition, they're higher hysteresis, slower rolling tires. And so you, know, it's a good example where you can, if you're not able to fully control everything, you're going to spend dozens and dozens of hours testing for something and go, oh, we found a, We found the answer here, oh, except for that, thing over in the corner that's making all of our results completely useless and kind of invalid.

So yeah, I clearly have a lot of strong opinions here. And that's before you even get to the point, does it look cool, right? Which at the end of the day is like kind of the most important thing.

00:41:52 Hottie

Yeah. Well, Carl, we love your idea, but we don't, right?

You're thinking the right way, but man, it could be in one ugly bicycle.

00:42:03 Josh

Right.

00:42:04 Josh

I preface all that with like, you just go Google like Frank Vandenbroek and just like, look at how that guy sat on a bike and looked and like that, like that, like, okay, that just looks, that's so cool, right?

You know, Merckx had it too I mean, those people, you know, like, I just, It's about the kids, people. Like we want the kids to see the cyclist and think like, oh, that is so cool. I want to be, I want to look like that.

And as soon as we start, some of these technically right answers really take us in the wrong direction, in my opinion. Think of the children.

That's another reason I want to go back to the non-UCI regulated bikes. Like we want bikes that look like aircraft and, I mean, we want bikes that are like the random average person like flips the page of the magazine and goes, holy **** what is the, like, that's amazing. That looks like the future.

Like, you know, I think the UCI rules on bikes have done us a huge disservice that, I mean, we think, you know, modern bikes, whatever, maybe some people think they look sexy or not, and some of them do, and some of them don't, but they're not striking, right?

They're not striking to the average person where it's like, whoa, I don't know anything about cycling, but that's cool.

00:43:33 Hottie

All right, Dave from Massachusetts sent us a question about aerodynamics.

He asks, why doesn't the front brake housing emerge from behind the fork blade rather than the side. Wouldn't that be more aero to come from behind?

I think what it means of side means like the inner side, right? The wheel side, how it comes in there, meets up with the caliper.

00:43:57 Josh

He's completely right. And the answer there, because I've thought the same thing on the last dozen bikes I've built. And the reality is it comes out where it does to minimize the bend in the hose so it can hit the part of the caliper that it's got to hit.

We could change that with, we could talk to our friends at Shimano and SRAM and say like, hey, why don't we make the caliper, have the ****** a little bit more over here so we can hide it behind the fork leg.

But yeah, that hydraulic brake line is, it's fairly stiff stuff.

And so it just, it's pretty limited in how far you can push the bend. And so they do that.

Really sort of out of convenience and kind of clean, straight line flow. But it's, I think, I'm trying to think, there have been a couple of companies who have tried to put little like fairings and kind of like, or design the fork in a way that the shape sort of blends that in and hides it.

I think Time might have been doing that.

00:45:02 Hottie

Well, I know that our friend Keegan and I think Sophia both ran fairing suspension forks from RockShox at Leadville. Now, I don't I didn't get a good look at how they hid cabling, if at all.

I mean, first of all, a suspension fork is a nightmare aerodynamically, right? Two round tubes sticking out there. That's just bad.

So anything you do is going to be better, whether or not you're hiding the cable, whether or not you're hiding a brake hose. Just shaping those darn things is going to help. And I know that RockShox at least did that.

I don't know if they hid the hose.

00:45:37 Josh

Yeah, I don't know if they hid the hose, but I will say. I just ran that test with, was in the wind tunnel 2 weeks ago, I think, maybe 3 with Dylan Johnson. And we ran a number of tests around that concept. So stay tuned for a video about that coming in the near future.

00:45:57 Hottie

And I'm taking a quick look at the fork right now. It looks like it did a pretty good job of hiding the, oh yeah, there's a good one right here. They did hide the brake hose with that fairing. So good on them.

00:46:12 Fatty

All right, Josh, I've got one last question for you. You've posted videos about Clik valves and that Silca pumps do in fact work with them. And I got to say, Clik valves, at least for a while, were more or less 90% of my Instagram feed. I apparently identified myself as someone who was interested in those. And I got to admit,

The 6 to 7 pounds of air pressure measurement differential doesn't really bother me.

I could live with that math. I can do that much subtraction.

But I'm curious what you think of the Clik valve as engineering. And has anyone at Silca moved over to it?

00:46:55 Josh

Yeah, I think they're I think they're super clever. Super clever. I definitely like the way they've solved the problem. You know, I think the challenge we've had is, well, We were interested, I would say relatively from the beginning, but there's some business complications of the way that they've done some licensing and with Schwalbe and, because it's, American guy, American company that started it all.

But the European license and kind of like right to sell is through Schwalbe.

And so if you want to do anything with Clik Valve, you have to deal with Schwalbe in Europe. And we're a global company. I've got warehouses in five countries. And I can't just do something for the states that I don't do globally. And the way that works, we're talking, but we're not, we haven't done anything officially with them yet.

I think the engineering is very clever. I think personally, I kind of struggle with all of these valve modernity things, these, high flow valves that people love and stuff, like I struggle with the need and I don't know if that's just because like, I've done that, it's kind of like someone the other day, wrote this kind of scathing thing on our social media about our tire lovers, like because they're aluminum with the plastic coating on the back, you can get any tire off with it, but we say, hey, you risk scratching a rim if you use it to install, so don't install.

And they're like, what good's a tire lever if you can't install? And partly I come from a world of like, I have never needed a tire lever to install a tire, no matter how tight ever, right? But I do it all day, every day.

And so I think they're, you know, and the answer there is you need a bead jack, because that is much less risky to your to your wheel and your tire. And if you're using a tube, it's much less risky to your tube. Vittoria and Quick Stop, a couple of companies make them.

But anyway, yeah, I think some of that is just my like, why do we need high flow valves? Like just take the core out. It takes 2 seconds.

And you know, they're all equally prone to clogging with sealant. And you know, it's kind of like the thing with all of these, the Fillmore, and there's a new one from Bontrager that looks cool, but it just creates all these other problems.

I'm like, okay, to me, it feels like we're not really solving any problem, like to any significant manner. We're just introducing all these new changes.

And now it's, you know, if you have the...people want pumps that are Clik.

I'm like, but the problem is if I make a pump that's click valve, now you can't pump Presta valve with it, right? Whereas if you have a pump that pumps Presta valve, you can pump click valve. So I don't like that it doesn't, it doesn't go both directions. But yeah, I would say the last couple of years we've all been through, I've probably had five or six of the high flow valves.

I've had click, I've had, and I mean, everybody here, myself included, pretty quickly just goes back to standard Presta valves because they're just not a problem. They're not solving any of the problems, but it's like, I don't know, I just don't have any of the problems that other people seem to have.

I would say the one negative that we've identified with click valve is that if you are using like, you know, standard inner tubes, particularly TPU interview inner tubes that aren't the Silca one where it's metal on sandwiching the rim.

The Clik valve is actually a pretty considerably higher force when you push the head on and then an equivalently higher force when you click the head off. And so, you know, for a lot of the like Tubalito and like all of the TPU tubes with plastic valve cores, they also have plastic valve bases. And those bases they get cut into by the, essentially the edge of the hole in your rim. And every time you're installing and removing, you're basically just kind of like sawing a hole into the tube and the click, the higher force to click it on and click it off really accelerates that.

And so I would say that's really, to me, the only downside of the product is that, you know, you hear of people who, you know, have try to go over to them on their, I've actually got some here I don't remember who right now, these pink, the pink TPU tubes with the half metal core, but it's still plastic at the base.

And you just see that, you know, boom, the thing wears out so much faster than it would have otherwise. But that's really more of a cheap TPU tube problem than it is a click valve problem.

00:51:53 Fatty

So the one grievance I have against Presta valves, has more to do with my own clumsiness or awkwardness, whatever you want to call it, and as opposed to the Presta valve itself.

But over the course of writing for 25 years, I still have not learned how to never bend that little valve. Is there a Josh-approved technique so that I will never do that again?

Because I have tweaked, I don't know how many dozens, when I am generally in the field trying to pump up a tire, you know, with a little, you know, with a little hand pump.

What am I doing wrong?

00:53:04 Josh

Yeah, I mean, I think the big one, the way we teach it is valve at the top, right? And you push the pump on from the bottom.

I think a lot of people can bend the stem when they remove the pump because they try to pull the chuck off and you, the way we teach it, and we even have a video, I think it's got like 10,000 likes or something on it, but with the valve at the top, you put your two thumbs either side of the rim and you just push straight down, right?

So we call it push on, push off, because we get people all the time, we're like, I hate so good chucks because I cut my hand on the cassette.

I'm like, how are you cutting your hand on the cassette?

And then they walk you through what they're doing, like, oh God, you're yanking …you're yanking down with your hand motion going right into your cassette.

Yeah, don't do that. So there's that.

And then I think the other is, yeah, when you're pumping in the field, it's, you know, I, if you can, I generally recommend with the wheel off, but I actually like, if it's an Imperial style pump, I'll hold the wheel in my hand.

You know, you hold the front of the pump almost like you're holding a rifle pistol grip or something, and then you're only putting load into that and the wheel's just kind of hanging straight down balanced on the valve stem, or with like a Tattico Gravelero.

I mean, a lot of other brands have the hoses in the little pumps.

And that seems to solve that problem for a lot of people. But I mean, even when that thing gets bent, it's like, it's like less than a buck to replace it with a new one.

And you probably, you know, I think that's where, again, like with so many of these like fancy valves that are on the market right now, they are higher flow than like a Presta valve with the core in, but all of them are the same diameter at the base as a normal Presta valve.

And so they all have the same flow as a Presta valve with the core out.

And then actually some of them, because they have like a little stick that goes all the way through and then seals at the bottom, some of them are actually lower flow than a standard Presta valve with the core removed because they're that same diameter, but you now have like an extra little piece of metal sticking through there, right?

So yeah, to me, I mean, I love the ingenuity and all the stuff that people have done to kind of try to fix it.

But gosh, for the money of just, you know, yeah, every time you pump tubeless sealant in, just replace your valve, you know, with you're taking the the seven seconds to unscrew the valve anyway, just throw a new one on there.

I mean, I literally keep a, they laugh at me because I always call it the crack baggie in the videos, but I keep like this little crack baggie of valve cores and it's whenever I'm doing any sort of maintenance around sealant or whatever, or if you happen to bend one, I mean, it's literally 7 seconds of unscrewing and seven seconds of re-screwing.

But I think as a piece of engineering, I think click is very clever.

00:56:11 Hottie

All right, Clik Valves. Thank you very much for that question.

Who did that come from?

Well, that came from Fatty himself, which is allowed on this show, right?

00:56:18 Fatty

I sometimes have questions. Look, I put myself at the bottom. I did not cut the line.

Hey, we're always on the hunt for more questions from Fatty or from whomever. So please, if you have a question, send it our way.

Text at Marginal Gains Hotline, 317-343-4506.

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Also, we are putting out the call for your bike fit questions. Bike fitter extraordinaire Barry Anderson, who's been on the show a couple of times now. has agreed to do a Ask A Bike Fitter episode of the podcast.

We're talking pedaling mechanics, crank length, anything at all that involves the way you physically interact with your bike.

Text or call your questions in to 317-343-4506 and we'll have Barry on the show real soon.

Thanks again for listening and we'll be back soon with some more questions and answers and some it depends on marginal gains. Happy holidays, and thanks for listening.