yep...Galileo Galilei was the one who said it was round...

I think that works out at about $150 a minute ! I think our times are pretty close. Send me a check each year for $100 and I'll let you beat me.

So you spend $800 on an idea like this and lo and behold!, it turns out to be demonstrably good. You improve and soon more studies are done and they prove, at long last, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the PCs give you an extra 5/10 minutes. Shortly after that so many Tri geek bozos demand the product that some entrepreneur buys 20 and opens a PC club. 500 Tri geek bozos join and within a year everyone who has any sense is training with PCs.

For a short period of time you improved relative to your geek competitors, now you're back where you were.

Except of course that now you're $800 poorer and Frank's $800 richer.

But good luck, I applaud your efforts anyway.

Thanks for the education, Ken! As you can tell, I was just pulling the idea out of the ether, and it wasn't factual.

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Quid quid latine dictum sit altum videtur
(That which is said in Latin sounds profound)

 
Pythagoras beat Galileo to the punch on the "earth is round" hypothesis by about 2000 years.

that is a good one, blacksheep.

one thing i personally think gets left ot of a lot of PC conversations is the main reason i keep using them and enjoying them - they are fun as all hell. i mean to say - no question in my mind they do pretty much exactly what mr day and all the actual users of them say - but i do not keep track of minutes or anything. riding away from guys who used to ride away from me on my singlespeed is good enough.

well no it is not. carrying cinderblocks on my back as i ran the local football stadium steps would probably make me faster too, but i am not gonna do that. PCs are just fun. i consider them to be another niche bike like a fixed gear that actually does what dudes say riding fixed does for ya. more. so, it is not about minutes per dollar, but a whole new niche of cycling for a pretty reasonable price ( consider what a new fixie costs . . . . ) that adds chalenge and reshapes your riding and makes you go faster than your long time buddies to boot.

and, that is not to mention the added fun and obvious benefit they give winter trainer/roller riding. they are worth the asking price for that alone, in my opinion.

anyway, just thought i would ad that in there to the mix - cyborg's new fixie felt costs about the same as the PC's and it will not do as much for her triathlon splits. so wahat? it will be and enjoyable and mke her a better rider. and, minutes per dollar is a pretty funny thing in cycling anyway - what DOES deliver on that front? once you have a 105 cheap ass aluminum bike for 800 bucks under you what actually makes you any faster for the money? PC's deliver far better enjoyment, entertainment, new thought, better pedalling, etc etc than anything i have run across, which is why i like to talk about them. oh yeah, they make you ride and run faster too. there have been several threads recently on the value ( hate that stupid overused word . . . . ) of componant upgrades - PC's cost about the same as many of the normal upgrades a cyclist goes thru - ihave gone thru them all - and deliver tons of fun/pain/enhancement/etc for the buck compared to most of these, again imho. you buy a new DA upper end bike to replace your old 105 bike and you are just as fast as you were . . . . . . . . just sayin.



but, i can totally appreciate your attitude. the attitude i still do not get is the guys with an actual vested debate as to their effectiveness when they have not triied or used them at all. i am waiting for the day when one of those dudes attempts to explain his thought behind that most puzzling of positions - posting and discussing something which you literally know nothing about. totally bizarre, that. oh wait - i did that myself for a few months - then i shut up and triied them. . . . . . . . .

anyway, thanks for the funny joke. nice internet name, btw. . . . . . . .

indeed, the greeks (along with the egyptians, the romans and the chinese) knew the earth was round...then came the holy catholic church that needed to keep everyone in fear and ignorant of nearly everything to gain power...

But Francois, you make my point. The Catholic religion is obviously protected by a Supreme Being. It was so badly managed for so long that there is no way it would have survived without divine intervention.

Forward that thought to your friends in France and maybe they will allow Muslim school girls to keep their scarfs, Jewish boys their yamaks (sp?) and Catholic girls their crucifixes.

Mises, I am no machine, but I do agree that my results in general have been quite consistent (with or without PC's). Generally 4:25 - 4:35 on a variety of half Ironman courses and 9 times sub 11 on many Ironman courses....but there is always an exception. I ended up hyponatremic and walking at Ironman LP for the frist time in my life and did a 5.5 hour run-walk and finished in 12:30 going from 140 to 150 lbs. Ended up in the medical tent at 150 lbs and got pumped with 4.5 more IVs due to some poor judgement by the medical staff, thereby going from 150 to 160 lbs in the process and ended up with a concussion to my brain from which I am still recovering 6.5 months later. Not good.

Just lucky to be alive to tell you the truth. After many consultations with Neuro specialists and an MRI I have been given the green light to go out and train and race and that I will eventually make a full recovery.

But that is another story...back to PC's

All this to say, that I do have some inconsistent results. The PC's are fun as TTN says ! Even if they have a placebo affect, and make me a faster rider, then great. All my riding buddies seem to think that I have been riding faster since they were purchased so who knows.

Again, 0.5% return rate after the 60 day trial period speaks volumes for their value. In 18 years of racing tris, I have never been as passionate about endorsing a product which I was not sponsored by.

that really has nothing to do with the catholic religion...there is a clear separation between the church and the state in France and until now, Jewish and catholic boys never had a problem not showing religious signs in public schools. Why should it be different for muslim kids....

that said, if you really want to worry about what kids wear/bring in school, maybe you want to take a look at your backyard and make sure no american kid can enter a school with automatic weapons...

just a thought.

The cool thing with powercranks is you can do one leg drill without having to unclick the other foot. (I think I read somewhere that Mark Allen use to do 30 minute 1 legged drills). I had the oportunity to try a pair out and darn it was a very hard workout. Based on how I felt after words I would say these are really good.

IMO if you really want to get fast though you need to ride with the roadies. Last year I road really hard with those guys and my bike really improved (Both speed and handling).

I think it was Archimedes rather than Pythagoras that devised a triangulation proof of the earth being round and came up with a decent estimate of the size.

 
"that said, if you really want to worry about what kids wear/bring in school, maybe you want to take a look at your backyard and make sure no american kid can enter a school with automatic weapons..."

If that was happening in my backyard, I'd move...

"I think it was Archimedes rather than Pythagoras that devised a triangulation proof of the earth being round and came up with a decent estimate of the size."

I'd bet that God knew it was round, all along.
b

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"What's good for me ain't necessarily good for the weak-minded."

 
Pythagoras postulated the earth was round a couple hundred years before Archimedes did, based on the earth's shadow on the moon (among other observations and lines of reasoning.) Eratosthenes, a contemporary of Archimedes, seems to be credited with the first good calculation of the size of the earth.

Not sure if any of them were powercrankers.

Archimeded was a powercranker...
the legend is that one day, when riding his bike, he came up with the idea, build a first pair of PC in wood and installed them on his bike on a greek bottom bracket.
He went out for a ride and suddenly said "Eureka!!!"
which was badly translated into "I've got it" when it actually means "shit, it hurts!"

he took the PC off, because he saw no reason to train so hard as most bike races and tri were not gonna start before an other 2 milleniums and gave the patent to his great great great great....great son, Frankeaies Dayes who americanized his name to Frank Day, but who did not really invent PC.