Friday Follies ~~ Speed?

Speed wins races.  Strategy and tactics are important, but speed does the winning.

Once I had visions of being the next great thing, of making a serious mark in the world of cycle racing.  Never mind that this was completely delusional.  I come in the large-economy size.  The best racing weight I ever achieved was 179 pounds.  That’s lean for me, but way too much weight for a cycle racer.

I’d had early good results, and I was convinced that I (yes I!) could be something.  So I bought the best and fanciest bike that could be had at the time.  I was stoked about the idea that this thing was fast!  It was Italian!  It was made from some wonderful super-lightweight steel.  In truth it was significantly lighter than the beast I had been riding.  It sure felt fast.  I just knew that my next race was going to be a triumph.

It wasn’t.

I got my posterior handed to me.

On a plate.

Time to re-group.  I tackled the thing with a two-prong approach.  I “trained,” and I went to work on the bike.

In those days “training” was simple.  We got n the bikes and rode as hard as we could, for as long as we could stand it.  A “good” training ride was one that left the rider trembling, gasping, and unable to walk.  A great one involved loss of the stomach contents.

The “bike work” was more subtle.  Sort of.  It was based on the sound principle that weight equaled loss of speed.  Mass has weight.  Material has mass.  So!  Remove material and the bike gets both lighter and faster.

On most other bikes of the time removing “material” simply mean unbolting all of the non-essential accessories.  At the time, most bikes sold in America had a plethora of non-essential crap attached.  But this was an honest to goodness European racing bike.  There wasn’t anything on it that wasn’t strictly necessary to the job.  However…  Most of the bike was made out of metal and metal was heavy.

The conventional wisdom among racers of that day was that most of the metal on a bike wasn’t really needed.  I had access to a number of machines at work.  I set about removing a lot of unnecessary metal.

I disassembled the bike and went to work on the bits and pieces.  By the time I finished with the drill press the chainrings looked like lace.  I drilled holes in the crank arms too.  Lots of holes, in varying sizes.  Judicious grinding work removed a goodly bit of matter from the pedals, and the brakes.  I cut a lot off of the seatpost.  (After all, most of it was inside the frame where it wasn’t doing me any good.)  Then I started drilling and cross-drilling the remainder of the post.  The handlebars came in for a similar treatment.  So did the stem.  I even cut away a lot of the saddle.

The idea of science never crossed my mind.  I didn’t weigh the bike before, or after.  On reflection, I probably didn’t remove all that much weight.  It is barely possible that the bike was a pound lighter.  Of course it was a very large frame, so it was still more than a pound heavier than most of my competitor’s rides.

I did accomplish one significant thing with this weight reduction program.  I removed a lot of structural material.  With predictable results.  I didn’t go any faster, but I did crash.  It could have been a lot worse.  One of the cranks failed on a rough climb.  Considered against the range of possible results, this was about the least injurious thing that could have happened.

Total result?  I spent a lot of time and effort effecting the absolute ruin of a lot of very nice parts.  I didn’t win anything.  The cast came off six weeks after.

 The "training program" didn't seem to help much either.  At least it didn't result in breaking anything.