my college daughter recently informed me that she can get an AARP card and all the discounts
I’m bigger rider and going up hills on 33x36 was better than doing the DeathRide on 34x32 (65rpm for 8 hours baby!!!). The Tarmac is 35x36 so a little better than the 34x34 upgrade I had on the Domane before selling it this year.
Shimano vs SRAM is mostly a wash for me, but I truly dig the aesthetics of SRAM Red AXS crankset & power meter. And the clutch = no chain slap so far. Definitely warming up to the closer gearing. But I’d ride either of them to be honest.
I didn’t want to throw it in this thread but the rise of 1 x transmission (planetary hubs) is happening also. These systems in the future will be within a few hundred grams of wheels we have now but allow frame manufactures a world of new development.
If Shimano was really smart about this they would have bought a transmission company and developed a great 1 x system with there wheels and handed it over to the manufactures and said build amazing frames.
That would be proactive, instead they are being mediocre and reactive and still a little behind IMO
Even on the road I don’t think that’s true when you live close to proper mountains and you want to spin. Let me illustrate that on a Strava segment that I recently climbed in Z2. I’m fairly fit, so Z2 translated to about 258 W (77 % of FTP) or 3.5 W/kg. That is way higher W/kg than what many unfit people have. My average cadence was 74, and in some parts of the climb it was much lower than that. Since my lowest gear was 42:36 = 1.18, if I had 1-to-1 gearing, it’d be 18 % lower. But IMHO once you plug in, say, 2.5 Wk/kg and compute, you’ll see that normal people need to grind on many hills. Especially if the person does not correspond to the archetypical image of a cyclist Why? It’s 2021, this can be fixed with proper gearing. Cycling is way more fun if you don’t have to grind. Even Phil Gaimon uses 34:40 on his Everesting bike, and he puts out more power during his Everesting attempts than many ordinary people do when they climb.
Once you want to go off-road, even a little, then it is plain as day that 1-to-1 gearing is nowhere near enough. I blame the stupid separation between road bikes and gravel bikes that Shimano has in mind. 11-34 just doesn’t have the range to cover all applications of drop bar bikes.
I have a 1x setup on my road bike with a 10-36 cassette. The gaps between gears feel identical to those of my 11-32 cassette I used previously, save for the extra gear, of course. With a 42-tooth chain ring I have enough climbing gears, too. Only Z2 training rides in the mountains are more challenging than with my previous setup (50/34 with an 11-32 cassette).
This.
On my old road bike I had 34:32 = 1.05 as my lowest gear and I used that gear much more often on climbs than you’d think for a fit person.
No, SRAM offers 30:36 = 0.83 as its lowest officially supported 2x gear ratio (43/30 crankset with 10-36 cassette), which is significantly lower than 1.00 = 34:34 or 1.05 =34:32. Its smallest 1x gear ratio on a road-style setup is 38:44 = 0.86 (38-tooth chain ring and 10-44 cassette). Phil Gaimon’s lowest Everesting gear ratio is 34:40 = 0.85, i. e. very close to SRAM’s lowest 1x and 2x gear ratios. So no, Shimano is still leaving that unaddressed, and IMHO one of the reasons is their focus on the pro peloton.
Starting with an actual 10% climb / 7.5minute at 282W / 108% ftp, on 34x34 and using a gear calculator to compare here are the differences:
65rpm on 34x32 Shimano
68rpm on 34x34 Shimano
71rpm on 35x36 SRAM
74rpm on 33x36 SRAM
A couple months ago I did one of my favorite 10% climbs at 273W / 17+ minutes / 68rpm, on 33x36.
Go ahead and get a good laugh at my ~2.8W/kg awesomeness, but SRAM gearing actually appealed to me for the reasons above. Even if I hit my body comp and fitness goals, I’m looking at likely topping out at 3.3W/kg. And will still want that SRAM low gear.
Because that’s a large customer segment: older people with cash to spare, but they are not necessarily fit. Do you think all Porsche owners are good drivers, too?
And I think the market has changed, people want multi surface bikes. Call it gravel if you must. Shimano is leaving this market segment to SRAM, at least if you want to be flexible and/or on the cutting edge.
Sure, but I think it is fair to compare them to the competition, and they fall short in what I think are significant ways. They lost market share to SRAM for mountain bike group sets because they were very late releasing 1x12 group sets.
My previous road bike had a Ultegra 6800/105-equivalent mix, my mountain bike has an XT drive train and my current road bike Force eTap AXS. (I would have gotten Red cranks, but they were not available in a reasonable time frame.) I think I’m squarely in the Ultegra/DuraAce market segment.
That’s a crutch, not a solution.
If it is not officially supported, then OEMs aren’t going to spec it. Hence, most people wouldn’t even know that it is possible. Ideally, you want a whole range of officially supported cassettes that are specified to work with those cassettes.
And imagine if you had to ride that climb in Z3 instead, because e. g. you are spending a whole day in the saddle. Outch. My knee joints cry out in sympathy.
I was speaking of a trend. SRAM’s market share is still small, but IMHO there are signs that it is rising. I noticed that a lot of the big manufacturers have been offering their bikes with both drive train options (e. g. BMC, Canyon, Cube). A few years ago, many were Shimano-exclusive. IMHO this is a good thing, because competition is good for customers.
Yup. A few weeks ago I rode up Mt. Constitution with some friends. It’s not incredibly high, but I’m not incredibly strong, either. I had to spin my 32x34 drivetrain at sub-60 rpm for over an hour to get up there. I think my legs would’ve been much happier with me if I had been able to run 42x52.
You can always make an argument that it is ok that feature ABC or XYZ is absent or not as good. (If you scroll up, I did it with shift speed.) But when comparing product I think you will eventually need to look at features in aggregate. Missing features add up and are often interlinked, i. e. feature XYZ (wide range cassettes or 1x) only really makes sense if you also have feature ABC (a clutched rear derailleur).
For example, in your case Ultegra wasn’t made with gravel riding/racing in mind, which is why you don’t have a clutch. But I’d say you’d be better off with a clutch in that situation. Even on the road you sometimes drop your chain, and a clutch would help make that less of an occurrence.
I think that is the crux: my criticism of Shimano is that they set out to design a road race group set in the first place. And if that was their design goal, which clearly seems to be the case, I am sure they did a great job. (We will have to see whether they solved the power meter issues, though, but given the symmetric design, I am optimistic.)
My point has been that the concept is too narrow, Shimano is missing the important trends when it comes to drop bar bikes. Drop bar bikes come in all shapes and sizes, they cover the gamut from aero road race machines to essentially old school mountain bikes with drop bars. For example, should you spec a gravel group set on your 3T Exploro or Open UPPER? Maybe, but not necessarily. And perhaps the answer is yes for one wheelset and no for the other … Many of these versatile bikes are specced with highest-end components, i. e. customers pay DuraAce or Ultegra money, and IMHO it is ultimately about money. An Open UPPER is not cheap.
A plethora of interesting competitive gravel/multisurface races, many of them not sanctioned by the UCI, are also becoming more famous (think Belgian Waffle where you spend time on smooth tarmac and single track or even Leadville), and Shimano has no optimal solution for that. I reckon the teams it worked with have not participated much in those either.
Irrational? Yes. Fully supported? Yup.
