We can’t help obsessing over the weight of our bikes, but we really shouldn’t, argues Cyclist editor Pete Muir
Last issue my esteemed colleague, James Spender, penned an opinion piece entitled ‘Weight matters’ (you can read it by going to cyclist.co.uk/weightmatters). And, of course, he’s right. Weight matters a lot if, say, you are deciding who should go at the top of a human pyramid. But when it comes to bicycles, weight doesn’t matter nearly as much as we think it does.
I’m not suggesting it is irrelevant – plainly a one-tonne bicycle would be a nightmare to ride compared to a 10kg bicycle – but weight is given far too much importance when it comes to how we assess the quality and suitability of the bikes we choose to ride.
Whenever a manufacturer releases a new version of its top-tier road bike, it will be lighter than before. Brands make a big fuss about the percentage of weight they have managed to strip from a frame and how much lighter they are than rival frames, but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be bamboozled by the numbers.
Last issue, James called on his maths A-level to justify the need for lightness. Well, it turns out I’ve got one of those too, so here’s some more maths.
Imagine brand X makes a bike frame that weighs 1kg. Thanks to hi-tech materials and advanced fabrication techniques, when X releases version two of the bike it does so with the proud proclamation that is has reduced the frame weight by 10%. That’s a big difference – 10% is headline-grabbing news – but what does it mean in reality?
The new frame now weighs 900g. If the original bike was built up to weigh, say, 8kg then the new one now weighs 7.9kg, a reduction of 1.25%. Add in rider weight (in my case 80kg) and a couple of kilos of clothing and accessories, and the overall reduction in weight comes to a measly 0.11%.
Now factor in that weight only really matters when you’re going uphill, and that even then a gradient has to be over 6% before weight matters more than wind resistance. I don’t know where you ride, but on my local loops the amount of climbing at above 6% can’t be more than about a tenth of the route. For the money I’ve shelled out to get that 10% reduction in frame weight, the resultant time saving over a 100km ride can be measured in fractions of seconds. And that assumes I give a hoot about time.
Priorities, priorities
In his defence of lightness, James points out that pro riders love a light bike, so weight must make a difference to spe
