The shifters can be either twist grips, levers, or integrated in with the brake levers. They control the derailleurs via connected cables. This physically guides the chain from gear to gear as you shift. Not all bikes have a front derailleur, but most will have a rear one. Within your crankset, you have your chainrings, which is a key component to shifting. Most bikes typically have either one, two, or three front chainrings.
Road bikes will tend to have more gears that are higher in order to help with speed. Mountain bikes will stick to more lower gears so that you are able to take on hills and inclines easier. With more gears, you have more choices, as well. If you are a beginner, more choices mean more complexity. So when you are going after speed as your priority, make sure your gears are conducive to shifting easily and swiftly when needed during a ride.
And do your homework to become a master at shifting and understanding it. This will allow for smoother transitions, which will lead to shaving time off your ride. But if you are going to be biking on hills, curves, or ambitious terrain, you will want to understand when and how to shift in order to not slow yourself down. For example: if you reach an incline, you should shift right before you begin climbing.
If you do it once you are already halfway up, it will make for a slower shift and you may even hear some grinding.
This is because you are shifting as you apply the maximum amount of pressure to your pedals because you are in the middle of going uphill. The higher gear may seem faster to you because it thrusts you forward at a more powerful rate than a lower one, but it can also exert your energy too quickly.
While we talked a little about the type of tire and things you can do to limit the weight the tire adds to your bike, there are still facets of your tires that can contribute to overall speed that are isolated from the weight. You can look at your tires a few different ways. You obviously need them to be durable and agreeable to the terrain you plan to use them on, but you also want them to be the proper type and size for your bike. Within these parameters, there are ways to increase speed while checking all of those other items off the list as well.
The tire pressure can really be an important factor. It just means you have to be diligent in checking your tire pressure and understanding how it can affect your ride.
If the tires are too soft, it will mean the rolling resistance will become greater, meaning you will need to exert more energy to go the same speed as if your tires were properly filled. If they are really far under what they should be, then it also exposes you to a higher risk for pinch flats.
While a firm tire will mean you can access your average speeds and excel easier, there are still benefits to a slightly less firm tire. If you fill it to around 90psi, it may not be as fast on a flat, smooth straightaway, but it will result in increased grip if you are taking hard turns. So if you are looking for speed on a windy road, the slightly decreased tire pressure may work to your advantage. But if you are more concerned about straightaway speed, keep it right around the full psi so it is nice and firm and will not require additional effort to go the same speeds you are used to.
Cycling Weekly has a great guide on selecting the best road bike tires for if you need some help in your purchase process. When you wash your bike regularly and wipe away grime, mud, dirt, sand, or any greases that build up; you are ensuring it will work at its fullest capacity.
Maintaining the cleanliness will also help the longevity of your bike and make for less trips to the part store for you over the life of your bike. Be especially careful during winter months if you are still out on the roads when the weather provides an opening.
Salt and sand from the road can easily get caught in your drivetrain and cause issues that will slow you down and could even be detrimental to the bike. If you make this into a routine, it will be easier on you as well. Just give yourself a couple minutes at the end of each ride to wipe everything down.
This will save you time if there is a lot of build-up and you end up needing to disassemble certain pieces in order to clear anything up. Not only is cleanliness crucial to upkeep, but making sure you are properly lubing the chain is also a key maintenance concern. Being certain that your chains are properly lubed will make for a more efficient drivetrain, a smoother ride, and ultimately—a faster ride. It all comes down to the aerodynamics of the bike and how you ride it.
Forcing the front end of the bike slightly lower will be a big win for speed junkies out there. As long as you have spacers between the headset and stem, then this will be fairly simple. You will remove the fork, take out a spacer, and replace the stem. While the slight lean forward will help in the science of your aerodynamic ride, it may not feel right to you and your center of gravity.
Otherwise, you will actually end up going over the handlebars. This should also be heavily considered if you are going down a lot of hills. Any changes to the structure of the bike will result in a slight shift in the way you ride it. Tour found that, on average, aero bikes were indeed faster than lightweight ones. GCN used former pros on a short circuit with just two bikes. Tour used just the pedaling lower half of a robotic dummy across 24 different bikes. What I find disconcerting though, was that the differences between the fastest and slowest aero bikes in the Tour test were about two minutes 1 minute 54 seconds over the K simulated route.
Remember the difference between the fastest aero bike and the slowest lightweight bike was only 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Also, the biggest difference between an aero bike and the lightweight one from the same manufacturer was only Surprisingly, in the case of two companies, their lightweight bikes actually beat their aero ones. Mon Dieu! Aero bikes are optimized to reduce drag by using flatter tubes that cut through the wind.
Unfortunately, these tube shapes are less than ideal to improve rigidity and dampening. So, if you already ride fast with big power output, you enjoy and are flexible enough to ride a race geometry bike, you are willing to trade off reduced stability i. If you plan to do time trials and the occasional triathlon, then forget about the aero frame and get some aero bars to put on your lightweight or endurance bike.
Going with aero bars is about 3x the benefit of going to an aero bike. So how much speed comes from aero wheels? And, what weight penalty do you pay for heavier aero wheels going up hills and when you accelerate? These are much analyzed and debated questions. I think much of the debate comes from what is being tested and how the tests are done. There have been many analyses and wind tunnel tests done over the years to establish the drag and watts absorbed by wheelsets of different depths and profiles box, V, U and toroid and at different angles to the wind also known as yaw.
One of the most extensive and independent comparative tests on wheel aerodynamics was in by Roues Artisanales and remains the benchmark today. Sadly, the rim profile and, assumedly aerodynamic performance of many of these and most other stock wheels have not changed much, and in many cases at all, since the time of these tests.
Compare the watt numbers of the stock alloy wheels to the Citex , HED 3, Zipp , and other top performing aero wheels of that period. These circa aero wheels absorbed 19 to 21 watts, 11 to 12 watts less than the stock alloy ones.
Many new and more aero wheel models have been introduced since the time of this test. The aero profiles have improved by moving to a more rounded versus a V-shaped leading edge and with use by some of a toroid or bulb-shaped rim wall instead of one whose width remains the same or gets linearly wider as it approaches the brake track.
The wheels have also gotten notably wider as measured across the opening between the brake tracks and the beads where the tire attaches. You should look instead at the whole package of benefits and drawbacks that come with a wheelset including its stiffness, comfort, handling, weight, price, how they appeal to you, etc.
I consider 20 performance, design, quality, and cost factors in my criteria for recommending all-around wheelsets, which you can read here. The acceleration benefit of a more aerodynamic wheelset is also notable. The difference, however, is a matter of less than a wheel length, an amount that I think would be trumped by so many other variables e. If you ride in a paceline all the time, you get maybe half to two-thirds of the aero benefits from your gear compared to what you would get riding alone in the wind.
The important thing is that, compared to the stock wheels that likely came with your bike, you can both reduce your wheel weight and improve your aerodynamics with an all-around, 45mm to 60mm carbon wheelset. In this unnecessary weight vs. This is a huge mistake. Tires create rolling resistance that takes power to overcome.
Finally, tires and tubes add weight that contributes to your rotational mass. All of these, roughly in diminishing order of importance, play a role in how to ride faster on your bike. Different brands, tire widths, and tire pressures you select will create more or less rolling resistance, better or worse aerodynamics, and more or less weight. It gets quite involved.
Tube weight matters, not tire weight, but not because of the lighter weight. It just turns out that a lighter weight tube provides better rolling resistance. Rolling resistance is caused by the friction created within the materials that make up the tire, the amount of deformation of the tire over time aka hysteresis , and the energy of the tire leaving and coming back into contact with the road surface.
A tire that is suppler or more flexible, often because of the higher fiber thread count and more elastic compound used in the tire will create less friction and less rolling resistance than one that has a less flexible casing.
You can also save another 5 to 8 watts using a latex tube versus a butyl one at 40kph. The best clincher tires today have about the same rolling resistance as the best tubular ones.
Bicycle Rolling Resistance , another independent tire testing site, has found that the best tubeless tires have slightly lower rolling resistance than tubed clinchers.
Take them out for races only if you race. There are everyday tires that come in only a few watts away. The enthusiast should go for those. These issues make them less practical, harder to find, and probably suitable only for racers. The best option is to go with a light butyl rubber inner tube for fast riding and a heavy butyl one for training. The light or thinner butyl tube will probably save you about watts over a heavy one.
Aerodynamics is the other. What normally improves rolling resistance worsens your aerodynamics. Stay with me. The benefit of the wider tire diminishes as you get incrementally wider. Going from a 19mm to a 20mm wide tire can save 1 watt, shifting from 23mm to 25mm tire saves less than half a watt. The effect on rolling resistance at different tire pressures depends on the surface you are riding. On a bumpier road like those off-road paths and trails ridden by gravel, cyclocross, and mountain bike riders, the unevenness of the road will cause a more inflated tire to leave and come back in contact with the trail more frequently than a less inflated tire, creating more rolling resistance for that more inflated tire than on a smooth road.
The less inflated tire, despite increasing its rolling resistance from a bigger and longer tire patch needed to support your weight, will have less additional rolling resistance on an uneven road than will a more inflated tire because the former tire will lose contact with the rough road or trail surface less frequently than the later will.
Relatively speaking then, a more supple, wider, and more inflated tire will provide less rolling resistance than a less flexible, narrower, and less inflated one on the surfaces that most road cycling enthusiasts ride. How many watts difference do tire width and inflation make on rolling resistance and how rough a road is needed for you to want to lower your pressure below what you normally would to improve your rolling resistance?
A series of rolling resistance tests performed by an independent lab for VeloNews here shed some light on these questions. They compared different widths or two models of tubular tires with similar casings or suppleness and different tread patterns. Each width tire was also tested at different inflation pressures. The results showed that width and inflation pressure differences have a pretty small effect on rolling resistance within the range of variables and conditions most enthusiasts ride.
A second model of tires showed about 1. Even on the rough road surface this test simulated, the tires inflated at psi had less rolling resistance than the ones inflated at 84 psi by 0. If you came of riding age like me when narrow, hard, psi tires were the manly thing to ride, and because you thought that those characteristics put the least amount of tire in contact with the road, we were partly wrong as far as minimizing rolling resistance.
Now, most of us want a wider tire with lower pressure for better comfort and handling. I want the right width and inflation that is best to meet these objectives, rolling resistance differences be damned. This chart shows the recommended pressure for your weight and tire width. These are good guides or perhaps starting points in finding your most confident and comfortable inflation levels.
Unfortunately, you cannot look at tire rolling resistance and aerodynamics independently. They must be considered together and in light of the width of your rims. The first thing to note is that narrower tires are usually more aerodynamic than wider ones.
This makes intuitive sense since narrower tires have less rubber going into the wind. Rims on alloy stock wheels and the most popular alloy upgrade wheels these days are 21mm to 23mm wide at the brake track or where the tire meets the rim. However, stock and alloy wheels are almost always less than 35mm deep and typically no deeper than 25mm.
Therefore these wheels are not aerodynamic in the first place and you are better off running 25C wide tires on them for the comfort and handling benefit those wider tires provide.
Modern carbon wheels typically run 25mm to 28mm wide and at least 40mm deep. Tires with the same C designation can vary in width by mm. They will also vary once installed based on the inside width of your rim which itself can vary from 17mm to 19mm to even 21mm for a similar outside width. The most aerodynamic tire is one whose sidewall continues the width and shape of the rim at and beyond where they intersect each other.
The airflow will be more disrupted and therefore less aero the greater the difference in width between the rim and tire. Interestingly, the width of the tires used on the FLO 30 rim for this test, in order of most aerodynamic to least were Most of what represents the modern generation of carbon wheels were designed for 25C tires.
Rolling resistance probably matters more in road racing where the aero benefit is reduced by the amount of time riders spend drafting and staying out of the wind.
If you are training or doing events where you are in the wind a lot i. Maybe your mom used to pick out your clothes when you were younger. Perhaps you played sports and had to wear the same uniform as everyone on the team right down to the socks. Or you just felt the pressure to wear what was within the norms of style, taste, maybe even hip.
Cycling is a release from all of that for many of us. Express yourself with your choice and color of bike and kit, your selection of components, where you ride, who you ride with, what events you do. No two cyclists are the same. You are an individual! Vive la difference. But unlike the restraints you may have felt with school or work clothes, this dress code is going to allow you to literally break free of the pack and every non-conforming cyclist too dumb not to realize how much faster they can go with these easy and inexpensive ways to suit up for speed.
Helmets have come a long way in a few short years. There were time trial helmets, those long, unvented pointy things only the pros and way-to-serious amateurs used. For a while, it seemed aero helmets that skirted the wind and standard helmets that attracted it were in entirely different orbits. These aero road helmets started showing up for us enthusiasts in and there several models to choose from. Specialized ran the wind tunnel test you see below of warm and cool weather kits that were either loose or form-fitting.
Glove your shoes and shoo your gloves. In reality, the straps on your bike shoes create unnecessary aerodynamic turbulence. Shoe covers smooth the airflow. Padded gloves with Velcro straps across the top are not very aerodynamic either. If your arms and hands sweat a lot, you may find gloves to be good for gripping the hoods and keeping the sweat out away from your shifters.
If so, get the thinnest gloves you can find and ones that extend over your wrists. Data and estimates vary over how much savings is to be had from losing the gloves and adding the covers. Another simple, inexpensive way to get faster. Shave your legs. Tradition says to do it but is it really faster? Watch below.
This is probably the easiest and cheapest way to go faster on your bike. Get in touch with your feminine side unless, of course, you are a woman in which case you are likely already shaving your legs. And because I know someone will likely ask, if you are riding with only one water bottle, put it on your downtube rather than your seat tube to be more aerodynamic.
I know most of us ride slower so these time savings will be less, right? Zoom Zoom. A wheel upgrade can really give your bike a new personality and an extra jump when it comes to going a little faster.
They drastically change the ride quality of a bike. In addition, if you have the budget you can get a pair that are lighter and more aerodynamic which will make your bike faster in all conditions. While a more expensive investment than the ones below, wheels make the biggest differences to how a bike feels.
Your tires are the only part of your bicycle that should make contact with the road beneath you. High-quality tires will roll faster and be constructed from lighter rubber compounds.
Next time you are shopping for tires, spend a little extra money to get a higher performing tire if your goal is to go a little faster.
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