Monthly Archives: April 2025

The Bike You Can Buy and the Bike You Should Buy

Posted on April 29, 2025 by alchemyrider

Participants in almost any sport can buy the equipment that the professionals use.

A Sunday league player can wear the same football boots as his or her top goal-scoring idol.

A duffer can tee off with the same club a PGA Major tournament winner uses to drive a golf ball 300 yards.

Photographs courtesy of PGAClubTracker.com

A recreational tennis player can serve double faults with the same tennis racquet an ATP Grand Slam winner uses to serve aces.

Apart from sizing considerations, there is little to stop amateurs from using the same equipment that the professionals in most sports use. No physical adaptation is needed to use such sports equipment.

This is not true of road bicycles. People often buy bicycles that they need to fit their bodies to, rather than bikes that fit their bodies.

There are lots of reasons why cyclists buy pro-level bicycles. Owning a high-end road bike can be a way to express personal identity or status, particularly within cycling communities, or to signal passion for cycling and commitment to performance. Some individuals may be drawn to the technical aspects of pro-level road bikes, including the components and frame materials. Others are attracted to these bikes because they are often beautifully designed and crafted.

Unfortunately, riding a professional-level road bike is generally not recommended for amateurs. These bikes are designed for speed and efficiency, with a frame geometry that encourages an aggressive riding position. The handlebar and stem measurements of professional-level racing bicycles let the professional cyclist adopt an aggressive position that few recreational cyclists could endure for long.

The average male professional cyclist is 27.4 years old and weighs between 66 and 68 kilos. He has a high level of flexibility. He prioritises flexibility in hamstrings, hip flexors, and lower back, alongside areas like shoulders and chest, to counteract the typical low and long cycling posture essential to bike racing success.

The average recreational cyclist is older, has a belly which gets in the way of achieving an aggressive riding position, and is not very flexible. The result is that many amateur cyclists on high-end road bikes end their rides with one or more of these complaints: upper back pain, lower back pain, neck pain, aching shoulders and sore hands.

The main difference between the bicycles the professionals ride and the bicycles most of us mere mortals should be riding is in two frame measurements. These measurements are frame stack and frame reach.

Frame stack refers to the vertical distance between the centre of the bottom bracket and the top of the head tube, while frame reach refers to the horizontal distance between the same points.

A taller frame stack equals a higher handlebar. Bar height can be increased using headset spacers and a positive-angle stem, but it is always better to get a frame that fits you rather than adding headset spacers to a too-low frame.

The longer the frame reach, the further forward the handlebars will be. You can swap the 110 mm or 100 mm stem that road bikes typically ship with for a shorter stem to bring the handlebars closer to you, but this will compromise how the bike handles. Again, it is better to start with a frame that fits you.

The table below shows the frame stack and frame reach for professional-level race bikes and frames with more relaxed geometry from the same manufacturers. The more relaxed geometry frames are usually marketed as Endurance bikes.

The measurements are millimetres for frames that fit a 180 cm tall rider.

Frame Reach and Stack measurements courtesy of the manufacturers’ websites

All the professional-level bicycles have a lower frame stack and/or a longer frame reach than the endurance bikes from the same manufacturer. The biggest differences are in the frame stack.

Despite the appeals of pro-level bicycles, the recreational rider would be wise to prioritise comfort over speed. That means foregoing the admittedly sexy pro-level race bikes in favour of a more forgiving endurance geometry.

Most recreational cyclists need a bicycle that allows them to adopt a more upright back angle than professional cyclists exhibit. In many cases, at least double the back angle. A taller frame stack and a shorter frame reach allow for a more upright position.

The main benefit for most recreational cyclists of owning a bicycle with a relaxed geometry instead of a race bicycle is greatly increased comfort. A secondary benefit is that an endurance bike is likely cheaper than a high-end race bike.

For happier cycling: Make your bicycle fit your body; don’t make your body fit your bicycle.

1 Comment

Posted in Gear and Tools and tagged Endurance, Frame Reach, Frame Stack, High-End, Reach, Stack. Bookmark the permalink.

I Wouldn’t Want to Service a Modern Road Bike

Posted on April 15, 2025 by alchemyrider

Photograph courtesy of Getty Images on unsplash.com

I took a Bike Maintenance course in 2012 to learn how to service my bikes myself. On the final day of the course, we had to completely strip a bike down, including removing the fork, disassembling the chain rings etc., cleaning and lubricating all the parts, replacing cables as required, reassembling the bike and adjusting the shifting and brakes.

I still own a bicycle from that time, a 2010 Alchemy with mechanical shifting and brakes. I can still service that bike if I had to, although I gladly depend on my local bike shop to service my bikes for me now.

Bikes today are increasingly more difficult to service. I do not have the expertise or the tools to service a modern bicycle.

Advancements in modern road bikes make them more complex. Let us start from the top to compare my fifteen year-old bicycle with a modern one.

My bike uses externally routed cables to operate the brakes and gears.

Modern bikes use either partially or completely internally routed cables.

Moving down the head tube to the brakes. My bike has rim brakes. Brakes on new bikes are exclusively disc. Often hydraulically operated.

Let’s now look at how these two advances make servicing more complicated.

When it comes to replacing cables on my bike, everything is visible so you can see what you are doing. The challenge with internal cables is that you have to thread them inside the frame blind, so to speak. Threading cables internally can be hindered by a tight curve around the bottom bracket.

A magnetic internal cable router is often needed.

Replacing internally routed cables is more complicated when they are fully hidden. The headset often needs to be disassembled because the headset components can obstruct access to the cable path.

Then there are the brakes. Apart from infrequent cable replacement, all I need to do to service my rim brakes is to replace worn brake pads. Rim brake pads for road bikes are a standard shape. To replace them, undo the screw that holds each pad in its holder, slide the old pad out and slide a new pad into the holder and tighten the screw.

How difficult it is to replace mechanically operated disc brake cables depends on whether they are externally or internally routed.

Replacing disc brake pads is a more involved process. First, you must choose the type of brake pad: sintered, organic and semi-metal. Your choice depends on the type of riding you do. You also need the right shape pads for the disc brake caliper you have on your bike.

Then you to use a tool to push and hold the brake caliper pistons apart. Woe betide you if the pistons close without brake pads in place. You must also ensure that you do not touch the pad surfaces or the disc rotor. Getting oils on the pads or rotor will adversely affect braking performance.

Lastly, you need to bed in the new pads. The bedding in process heats up the pads and rotor, transferring an even layer of material from the disc pad onto the disc rotor. Failing to bed in your disc brakes will almost guarantee to result in vibration, noise, poor modulation, and loss of power.

The brake servicing process is much more complicated if you need to replace your hydraulic brake hoses or bleed your hydraulic brakes. Bleeding requires the correct type of fluid for the disc brakes on your bicycle: mineral oil or DOT fluid. The bleeding process is too long to describe here, but you get a sense of the steps involved from the number of parts in the Disc Brake Bleed kit pictured below.

Further down the bicycle are tyres. My bike has clincher tyres and inner tubes. Many new road bicycles, particularly higher-end models, ship with tubeless-ready tyres and wheelsets. Some bikes may ship with tubes in the tyres to simplify showroom setup, but the wheels and tyres are often tubeless-ready.

You can argue that tyres do not need service. However, a tubeless setup requires semi-regular maintenance to keep it performing at its best, as brakes do.

Tubeless tyre sealant gradually dries out. Manufacturer recommendations for sealant top-off intervals range between three and six months. It is also suggested that you take your tyre completely off the rim every twelve to eighteen months to scrape out the dried sealant.

The need to regularly top off the sealant, scrape out dried sealant and the fact some tubeless tyres are tricky to mount and/or need a dedicated tubeless inflator or air compressor to seat makes tubeless setup and maintenance inherently more onerous than using clincher tyres and inner tubes.

Photographs courtesy of bike radar.com & bicycling.com.

Last year, I wrote a post titled Tubed or Tubeless Tyres? The photographs below from that post illustrate how much more stuff you need to run tubeless tyres versus clincher tyres.

I’ll stick with my fifteen-year-old bicycle. My bike mechanic and I prefer the simplicity.

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Posted in Gear and Tools and tagged Cable, Clincher, Complex, Disc brakes, External, Headset, Internal, Rim brakes, Routed, Sealant, Service, Tubeless, Tyre. Bookmark the permalink.

What Size Jersey Do I Buy?

Posted on April 11, 2025 by alchemyrider

Illustration courtesy of WordPress AI

An article titled We need to talk about why jersey sizes are getting smaller by Wade Wallace appeared on the Escape Collective website on 1 April 2025. It is a Member Exclusive article, so you need to sign up to Escape Collective to read it. Articles like this one, Member Podcasts and a Member Purchase Program that offers 25% off products from Cane Creek, and 20% off products from Ritchey, Silca, Mavic, Velocio and others make the annual USD99 subscription well worth it.

Back to Wade’s article. Despite the publication date, this is not an April Fool’s gag. Wade asks why fifteen-year-old size M cycling jerseys fit him the same as new size XL jerseys? Wade uses these photographs to prove his point.

Photograph courtesy of escape collective.com

He discusses several reasons for this size inflation. Modern fabric technology and fashion are two culprits.

The article generated 175 comments. Some of these touched on how jersey sizes are inconsistent from one manufacturer to another. I was intrigued and did some research.

I looked at the online size guides for men’s cycling jerseys from twenty-six brands. Some brands have different size guides for the various types of jerseys in their catalogues: short-sleeved, long-sleeved etc. Some brands even have size guides for each of the fits they offer for a particular jersey type: relaxed, enthusiast, pro and so on.

I tried to compare like with like. The figures below are for men’s tight-fitting short-sleeved jerseys. There are indeed inconsistencies between manufacturers.

To start with not all brands offer sizes 2XS, XS, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL and 6XL. All twenty-six offer sizes S to XL.

Attaquer offers the jersey in the smallest chest size of 74-79 cm. Decathlon offers the largest of 147-159 cm. Santini is the only brand with a size 6XL. Interestingly, Santini’s size 6XL is roughly equivalent to Decathlon’s size 3XL. You are starting to see the sizing inconsistencies between brands.