Once upon a time I used to be a professional bike blogger and author, writing books and columns for commercial publishers and mainstream media outlets respectively. Now those days are mostly behind me, and while some might argue it’s because I’m no longer relevant, I prefer to believe that it is I who abandoned the media and not the other way around. Frankly I find working to be undignified and business matters to be sordid and vulgar, and the true wordsmith knows that the writerly arts are best approached as a purely gentlemanly pursuit, like sitting upright upon a Rivendell rather than toiling on a plastic racing bike and riding straight into a headwind.
Even so, I do occasionally deign to check up on which company is buying which website, and apparently some company has bought some websites:
I wanted to learn more about Kelsey Media, and so I visited their Internet presence, where I learned that they own a whole bunch of titles, including “911 & Porche World,” “Cage & Aviary Birds,” and that dynamic and at times controversial publication “Alpaca,” the magazine of the British Alpaca Society:
This vital periodical “covers all aspects of alpaca ownership including health, welfare, breeding and shows,” but under no circumstances should you confuse it with the extremely similarly-named “Alpacas” magazine, which for generations now “has chronicled the evolution of the alpaca industry while capturing the heart and soul of the alpaca lifestyle:”
Welcome to the cut-throat world of the alpaca mediascape. Anyway, I don’t know if “Alpaca” is better than “Alpacas” or vice versa, but it is worth noting that the latter has a hard-hitting feature on the burgeoning alpaca yoga craze:
So is alpaca yoga just people doing yoga in close proximity to alpacas? Or do the alpacas themselves also participate in the yoga? You’ll have to read the story to find out.
Anyway, alpacas and bicycles may seem like strange stablemates for a media conglomerate, but clearly there’s lots of overlap. For example, to most people all bikes look the same, but we cyclists know there are major (MAJOR) differences between road bikes and endurance bikes, and gravel bikes and mountain bikes. Similarly, the layperson may not be able to tell an alpaca from a llama, but the alpaca enthusiast knows better:
[The llama is the gravel bike of the camelid family.]
Also, while it’s the rare cyclist indeed who only has one bicycle, you can’t be an Alpaca Fred and have just one alpaca:
Indeed, many a cyclist has made exactly this argument when defending a new bicycle purchase to a spouse or life partner.
Alpacas notwithstanding, there’s no doubt in my mind that BikeRadar will soon be the crown jewel in Kelsey Media’s lifestyle publication empire, and one look at their front page will tell you why:
This should really be a three-word article, and they should be:
Because I’m old.
Though I guess you could approach it from a slightly different angle if you prefer:
Because I suck.
But yes, apparently it’s “Say really obvious stuff” week in cycling:
Look, say what you want about sports, but how dare you impugn the integrity of business and politics!
Then there’s this:
On the surface this story too seems really, really obvious. For example, let’s say you’ve got a 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe in your garage (and if you do please keep it to yourself, you don’t want to make the rest of us jealous):
Languid off-the-line acceleration notwithstanding, 88mph is way faster than a Tour de France bike. In fact it’s the speed at which time travel becomes possible, provided you’ve got a flux capacitor fitted, of course:
If you don’t you can pick one up at your nearest Auto Zone.
But the results are different if you don’t have a 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe in the garage, but you do have a weed wacker, because in that case the Tour de France bike will be much, much faster:
In fact it’ll blow the edge guard right off of that thing.
So, realizing there was probably more to the story, I actually read it, and it turned out to be pretty interesting, whadya know? Basically he compares the pro-level Trek road bike to the inexpensive model, and while I’m not sure I buy the modeling stuff:
This question is relatively easy to answer when it comes to uphill performance, because uphill performance is quite easy to model mathematically. On a 1.26-mile climb that averages 10.7%, riding at 4.3 watts per kilo, the effect of a bike that is 4 lbs lighter will result in a saving of 13 seconds on that climb.
The actual testing was in fact pretty revealing:
So, how much faster is a bike when it costs an extra $9,800? In my test, the Madone SLR 9 was 1.2 mph faster over the cheaper Madone SL 5. This worked out to about 8 seconds per mile, or a saving of 1 minute and 20 seconds over ten miles.
This is very useful, because it means that the pro bike is definitely worth it, assuming saving 1 minute and 20 seconds over 10 miles will net you at least $9,800–which maybe it will if you’re a professional bike racer or you’re a trader who needs to get back to his Bloomberg Terminal before the market closes. Otherwise, you can probably skip it. In fact, even if you do need that 1 minute and 20 seconds you can probably still skip it, because just changing the tires saves 50 seconds:
The most impactful single gear change (and 2nd place overall) was swapping out the stock Bontrager wirebead tires and butyl tubes on the Madone SL 5 for a pair of Specialized Turbo Cotton tires and Vittoria latex tubes. Just doing that one thing bumped our speed up by 0.8 mph, saving 5 seconds per mile.
And tweaking your position saves…1 minute and 20 seconds:
In first place was yet another completely free intervention, which was riding in the flat back aero hoods position. If you look closely at the photos, my neutral position on the hoods isn’t particularly upright to begin with, but bending in my elbows and getting my back flatter completely erased the speed advantage of the Madone SLR 9 compared to the SL 5. It was 1.2 mph or 8 seconds per mile faster. Meaning that if I could hold this position for ten miles, it would save me about 1:20 at 280 watts.
This circles right back to the whole “You suck” thing. See, most of us don’t just suck only because we’re weak and pitiful. We also suck because of our ungainly position, pedal stroke, and overall technique. Sure, we may feel like we’re grace incarnate when we’re out there on the bike, but mostly we’re the cycling equivalent of that dance recital in “The Big Lebowski:”
But like him, we’re committed to the bit, and that’s all that matters.