I have (what I was told is a “vintage”) '95 Quintana Roo Kilo Private Reserve (Bless you Dan Empfield!) and I love it. Recently I moved into a river valley with lots of nice climbs and decided that I want to get into “mountain biking” (riding mountains, not doing dirt).
So I figured I should keep my Roo for doing Tri’s and finally get a proper Road Bike for climbing. I bought a Trek Madone SL 5.9. I just returned it. I was struggling on climbs that I do almost effortlessly on my Roo in my 55 “Big Cookie”.
Why was it good enough for Lance and Hincapie, but not me?
Am I a bigger freak than I thought? Was the gearing just that much easier on the Roo (55/12-25 vs. 38/11-23) - my engineering degree says no? Did my 10 years of riding a TT-Tri bike destroy my road bike form and I just wasn’t riding the road bike right? Is it the 650 vs. 700s? Would I be better sticking with my Roo, or should I get that Cervélo Soloist Carbon that I’ve been drooling over and keep the Roo for the flat races?
I know you don’t have enough info for a definitive answer, but educated guesses are greatly appreciated.
After three or four years of riding my tri bikes at 80+ degrees my legs do not like to go back to the 73 degree seat angle of my Cannondale rode bike. If you just switched out the bikes, I’m sure your legs were probably shocked at the change in seat angle, assuming you ride the QR up in the 78+ degree range. Now I leave the Cannondale in the garage and do all riding on my Yaqui tribike.
When I was getting ready for duathlon nationals this year I did some climbing intervals on the aerobars and was flying up the hill (about 6-7 percent grade). If you climb well on the QR then just stick with it. I had some friends who told me "now that you live in the mountains you need to get away from the ‘superman position’, but it has worked just fine for me. I guess I can no longer call myself a roadie. RIP.
Absolutely no difference. I have ridden very fast bike/run bricks and run 21:30 off the bike for four miles when I was riding 650s. I have also run 16:00 minutes of the bike for 3 miles after a 325 watt 20K after I switched back to 700c. The size of the wheel is irrelevant to speed/running performance.
By and large I think 650s are good for smaller bikes and 700 for larger bikes. A friend of mine has stuck with 650s because all his race wheels are that size and he rides and runs just fine, so I don’t think it makes any difference.
Am I a bigger freak than I thought? Was the gearing just that much easier on the Roo (55/12-25 vs. 38/11-23) - my engineering degree says no?
I don’t understand the gearing you describe. 650/55/25 provides a much bigger gear (53.5 gear inches) than 700/38/23 (43.4 gear inches). If you find climbing easier on the former than the latter, then your position on the road bike had to be real screwed up – like sitting backward screwed up. Something is wrong with this picture.
In any event, 650 wheels provide an approximate two cog advantange. Specifically, 650 wheels, with 39 chainring and 25 cog results in 37.9 gear inches, which is approximately the same as 700/39/27 setup (38 gear inches). See http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/
Finally, I can’t believe that switching road bikes is going to make any significant difference. Changing gearing might.