My opinion: 99.9% of adult men on road bikes should be on 38 or 40cm wide bars for comfort/fit, or else narrower if they want to prioritise aero performance. No stock road bike should come with anything wider than 40cm even in XXL. It should be difficult to find 44cm drop bars, not 36cm ones.
Noone has 44cm wide shoulder joints.
The title says unpopular though…
I’d take an AG2R speedsuit if it came cheap, just for the bants on group rides though.
I’ve only just broadened my horizons to include navy blue bibs last year though.
I don’t get it, white is the most popular colour of road cycling shoes isn’t it, and sells out first? Certainly is the most popular colour on the roads in summer.
On the contrary, I’d say that bikes in size 52 and below look wrong and should use smaller wheels to better suit their ‘toy bike’ status. Even worse if they have a sloping top tube.
~100% of ebikes I see day to day in my city are illegally modified, hacked together junk with gaffa taped batteries, ridden by arsehole deliver riders, who can hit 28mph with zero pedalling, and use bike infrastructure and pavements interchangeably.
This might tend to colour my opnion of ebikes in general - they’re semi-legal motorbikes invading spaces meant for people.
But surely everyone can agree that at some level of power/weight, an eMTB is just a trail bike with a different type of motor.
Nope. It’s a fact that wearing underwear under cycling shorts does not work, not an opinion.
And the stuff that I was reading years ago said that they likely didn’t help him enough to make him a huge athlete and the edge they provided was likely well in the single digits. I wish I would have saved the article but I found the whole thing such a mess. As I remember it, it was in a medical journal, and it was also discussing the very real problem of high school (!!!) athletes using ‘performance enhancing drugs’ in their sports, which is just the only logical progression from the ‘pros’ using them. The whole thing is disgusting, and is going to be really hard to stop because there are just so many high schools out there and policing them all would be a near herculean task. Imagine drug testing every high school athlete.
Kids ruining their lives, potentially, to make schools look bigger, and keep their ‘achievements’. Good grief… And back when I was on Facebook and the Peloton groups, there was talk about Peloton riders being so driven to ‘get big numbers’ that even they were doping, both their bikes, and themselves. I was stunned. It’s only a damn spinner bike. If your life worth is based on your performance on a (first gen) notoriously inaccurate spinner bike, that is really depressing…
But, personally, I think Lance was a good athlete. One who tried to calm his demons and lost the battle. His insecurity caused him to seek a way to be ‘better’, and the other demons ganged up to support him. Sad… Tragic even… If anything, I feel sorry for him. He was addicted to his ego?
Don’t too narrow of bars cause issues as well? I’m not a fan of super wide bars but 44cm isn’t all that wide
Right?
I’m 6’4 and my XL gravel bike has 45cm handlebars, I find them extremely comfortable and my “aero hoods” position seems directly in line with my shoulders?
Agree. This was my experience as well. The one other thing that I wonder is whether at lower pressures/with more supple materials you lose power from hysteresis due to “bouncing” on smoother roads. Like, when you pedal, some of that power output goes into deforming the tires rather than all going into the crank, because they are so soft.
I haven’t seen this described anywhere. But I thought the ~10w differences between tires when it comes to rolling resistance or aero drag wasn’t enough to explain the ~2kph difference in moving speed at ~30kph that I was seeing in real life.
Instead of trying to crush a grape between your foot and the concrete (where all the power from your leg is going to go into that grape), it’s like trying to crush a grape under your foot while in a bouncy tent. Your leg still puts out the same power, but a chunk of it is going into deforming the bouncy tent, and the grape experiences less crushing as a result.
On rougher roads you would still have these power losses, but the other benefits of wider tires at lower pressures then cancel them out, making them faster.
Anyways, I think we are on the same page. If you’re on relatively smooth paved roads, go with a narrower tire. If comfort is an issue or the roads are shite, go wider.
Especially not compared to flat bars that the trend has been to wider, 700mm isn’t uncommon.
I wore underwear for a few years under my padded shorts before I “knew better”, with no comfort issues or ill effects.
Cyclists who get into arguments with other road users are selfish. They increase animosity towards cycling and don’t make anyone behave any better.
Suck it up or stay on the trainer.
I ride 44mm RH tires on my road-ish bike and use a 38cm wide handlebar and wear navy bibs. So I feel very validated by the recent direction of this thread. But I still draw the line at white shoes.
It’s definitely common for mtb bars to come with 800mm but allow for cutting them down. I cut mine down to 780 and they’re very comfortable.
My road bike had 42cm width bars and they would feel weird when I would ride them after riding my gravel bike which only has 44cm bars.
I could likely not have an issue riding 42 or 44 on my gravel bike but 44 feel fine. I don’t know that I’d like the super wide gravel bars
1.) The most flimsy crankset is not measurably slower than the most stiff crankset.
2.) If you’re not sprinting, clipless pedals are not measurably faster than flat pedals.
3.) A super light saddle is not faster if you have to wear a 5lb pillow in your shorts.
4.) If we ride at 350W up the hill it’s OK for me to ride at 300W down the hill. (this is perhaps the absolute most unpopular notion locally)
5.) Latex tubes are faster than a proper tubeless setup.
I was solo and a guy very nicely asked if he could join me. I let him know that my son turned Covid positive that morning and odds were good that I would probably as well, but join up if you want!
He declined 
You never know these days what is going on with others – always a good idea to ask first!
Long, chamois-less tights are so much better than long bibs with chamois.
you can use on multiple occasions, can get more use out of summer bib shorts and chamois’ that you actually like.
I would always buy pad-less if I could
