The Great Braking Debate Thread (Disc/Rim/Cantilever/Fixie/InsertNewTechHere)

[jasjas]

Most try very hard to ride as well as their age, time, ability and motivation will take them....regardless of brake type, just as when descending, even people who are dragging their brakes and never go over 30mph, are trying as hard as they can, its arrogant to criticise these riders - there is always someone faster than you!

Not sure quoting numbers from any rider from the 90's is totally reliable! Even today, pro cyclists have access to stuff that none of us would ever get near without a trip to the local pharmacy.

[Dov]

Good chat I reckon - lot's of great [and differing] opnions from people with good insight. So what if it's off-topic, isn't everything to some degree?

Big Mig was a rel hero of mine growing up and I remember thinking after he won his last TdF in '95 that he must've had another 1 or 2 in him but then in '96 he jsut fell off a cliff. The next few years were properly mental, Riis, Ullrich, Pantani and then Dopestrong.

[mgrl]

Not sure quoting numbers from any rider from the 90's is totally reliable!

It's not, but it's better than Armstrong! (From figures I can find from google, I don't know if LA did the exact test)

[jasjas]

Not sure quoting numbers from any rider from the 90's is totally reliable!

It's not, but it's better than Armstrong! (From figures I can find from google, I don't know if LA did the exact test)

Is it? riders were using Cortisone and Amphetamines etc long before LA, the wpk of someone like Fignon/Induraine vs LA wouldn't so different, the numbers achieved by professional cyclists are always a little suspect.

[mgrl]

They will be for the whole period studied (mid 90s to 2012) in the quoted papers, although the 1999 one did cover the whole team rather than just the big names - going by The Secret Race, the best stuff was reserved for the top guys, or it was DIY. Given Wiggins putting out 6.? W/kg for the hour record, it's likely he'd have been up around 7 for this test too.

[blutto]

Strava has data on more than 70 million users, and it's clear from it that most cyclists don't 'push their hardware.' Most do not log huge miles and most do not speed down long, technical descents. From that data (used in a number of peer-reviewed papers), it's obvious that the supposed advantages of disc brakes are not even relevant to the typical consumer. It's a bad argument to make, and watts/kg, what brake a GC contender chooses on a mountain stage, etc. have virtually no relevance for the typical consumer.

The claim wasn't "people need disc brakes because they push their hardware" or "people need rim brakes because they push their hardware", it was "no people who support disc brakes push their hardware". That is disproved by the existance of at least one person who supports disc brakes pushing their hardware.

So believe lab testing with the subject in situ ( and a peer reviewed published paper )...or interwebs you and one of your training platforms...hmmm, tough call that....

Peer review only gets you so far - eg, here's a peer reviewed paper that claims that the novel coronavirus came from space, which has made the journal that published it a laughing stock : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358766/ . Obviously that's an extreme example, but the point is that you shouldn't take all "peer reviewed" claims uncritically.

I had a look at the paper (Mujika I, The cycling physiology of Miguel Indurain 14 years after retirement. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2012 Dec;7(4):397-400), and the version of the claim in the main text is:

Despite the observed decline, the absolute maximal and submaximal power output and VO2 values of Miguel Indurain are still impressive and similar to values exhibited by active male professional cyclists tested with similar protocols.9,11

Citation 9 is "Santalla A, Naranjo J, Terrados N. Muscle efficiency improves over time in world-class cyclists. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009;41:1096–1101.", but this paper doesn't study power outputs - it's about VO2 max.

Citation 11 is "Padilla S, Mujika I, Cuesta G, Goiriena JJ. Level ground and uphill cycling ability in professional road cycling. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1999;31;878–885." This one does measure power outputs using a similar but not identical testing protocol, with participants divided into categories based on their specialty (Uphill (UH), Time Trial (TT), Flat Terrain (FT) and All Terrain (AT)). Let's see what numbers they get:

When expressed relative to body mass, UH presented the highest Wmax (6.47 ± 0.33 W·kg−1), followed by TT, AT, and FT (6.41 ± 0.12, 6.35 ± 0.18 and 6.04 ± 0.29 W·kg−1, respectively).

The Mujika paper says that Indurain's 4.88W/kg is similar to 6-6.5W/kg, this is clearly nonsense. The testing appears fine, the comparative claim is unsupported. This kind of thing happens all the time and is why it's so important to actually follow up citations. People don't, but they should.

A couple of things....

To the first bolded bit....what exactly would lead you to believe that I uncritically believed in the peer review system as you strongly imply...well, beyond some wishful thinking and/or going down the strawman route....

Btw the peer-review system is a mess way beyond the the example you put forward....in fact the publisher of that article has over last few years gone through several large dumps of articles that were just crap....why ?....because the medical research industry and publishing industry that plays with it is in much in the thrall of Big Money....the results have in many cases been horrific, with crap articles often supporting crap medicine that has killed hundreds of thousands of people....look up the winning class actions launched against the Medical Industrial Complex in recent years ...the courts have awarded billions and billions to claimants....

That being said there are publications that are still fairly trustworthy....and the journal that I originally quoted from is quite good ( my better half has been a medical researcher for a few decades now and did her graduate work in exercise physiology....read she knows her field and that publication as a resonable source of information....and I checked with her before giving any creedance to the original article..)...

As to the other bolded bit...

My significant other also has the ability to access the two Mujika related articles that are in play here.....so after reading them my question is which article was that bit pulled from ?.....and further btw I couldn't find that as a quote in either article...which leads me to believe you have either heavily paraphrased it or just made it up out of whole clothe....either approach is really bad form ( and for some may look quite hypocritical given your critique )... in fact not much unlike the general tone the rest of that gobbledegook-like response you slapped together...

Cheers

[blutto]

Strava has data on more than 70 million users, and it's clear from it that most cyclists don't 'push their hardware.' Most do not log huge miles and most do not speed down long, technical descents. From that data (used in a number of peer-reviewed papers), it's obvious that the supposed advantages of disc brakes are not even relevant to the typical consumer. It's a bad argument to make, and watts/kg, what brake a GC contender chooses on a mountain stage, etc. have virtually no relevance for the typical consumer.

The claim wasn't "people need disc brakes because they push their hardware" or "people need rim brakes because they push their hardware", it was "no people who support disc brakes push their hardware". That is disproved by the existance of at least one person who supports disc brakes pushing their hardware.

So believe lab testing with the subject in situ ( and a peer reviewed published paper )...or interwebs you and one of your training platforms...hmmm, tough call that....

Peer review only gets you so far - eg, here's a peer reviewed paper that claims that the novel coronavirus came from space, which has made the journal that published it a laughing stock : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7358766/ . Obviously that's an extreme example, but the point is that you shouldn't take all "peer reviewed" claims uncritically.

I had a look at the paper (Mujika I, The cycling physiology of Miguel Indurain 14 years after retirement. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2012 Dec;7(4):397-400), and the version of the claim in the main text is:

Despite the observed decline, the absolute maximal and submaximal power output and VO2 values of Miguel Indurain are still impressive and similar to values exhibited by active male professional cyclists tested with similar protocols.9,11

Citation 9 is "Santalla A, Naranjo J, Terrados N. Muscle efficiency improves over time in world-class cyclists. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009;41:1096–1101.", but this paper doesn't study power outputs - it's about VO2 max.

Citation 11 is "Padilla S, Mujika I, Cuesta G, Goiriena JJ. Level ground and uphill cycling ability in professional road cycling. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1999;31;878–885." This one does measure power outputs using a similar but not identical testing protocol, with participants divided into categories based on their specialty (Uphill (UH), Time Trial (TT), Flat Terrain (FT) and All Terrain (AT)). Let's see what numbers they get:

When expressed relative to body mass, UH presented the highest Wmax (6.47 ± 0.33 W·kg−1), followed by TT, AT, and FT (6.41 ± 0.12, 6.35 ± 0.18 and 6.04 ± 0.29 W·kg−1, respectively).

The Mujika paper says that Indurain's 4.88W/kg is similar to 6-6.5W/kg, this is clearly nonsense. The testing appears fine, the comparative claim is unsupported. This kind of thing happens all the time and is why it's so important to actually follow up citations. People don't, but they should.

About that "peer reviewed" paper that apparently did a faceplant....this from Dhavendra Kumar, the serial editor for Advances in Genomics, the book in which that article was published...

Please note authors’s views are not based on any experimental work or data that needed external peer review or any other form of validation. In this context, I fail to understand how external review by some one else could have altered the decision to share this innovative idea with the genetic/ genomic scientific community. Contents of the article were internally reviewed between all of us including me as the serial editor. We did not find it necessary to seek any other view or opinion. Since the article is now available online, all reviews, comments and reflections would be open to all.

It was, uhhhh, apparently never quite peer reviewed in the way the peer review process generally works ( like they probably checked it for typos and idea flow ) ( it seems to have been intended as just an interesting off the wall look at something....and btw playing on a theme that has rattled around in the scientific community as an idea that is plausible for quite a while..)....so before throwing that out there maybe checking on that detail would have been the prudent thing to do...like it was not so much a silly example of peer review gone bad, as it was not even an example at all....

Cheers

[mgrl]

My significant other also has the ability to access the two Mujika related articles that are in play here.....so after reading them my question is which article was that bit pulled from ?

The two quotes are from the articles I name immediately before the quotes. The one from the 2012 paper is the start of the second paragraph in the discussion. The one from the 1999 paper is from the "Maximal power output" section of the results. See attached photos for context.

which leads me to believe you have either heavily paraphrased it or just made it up out of whole clothe....either approach is really bad form ( and for some may look quite hypocritical given your critique )... in fact not much unlike the general tone the rest of that gobbledegook-like response you slapped together...

Perhaps learn to read before being insulting. Or at least Ctrl+F, as I literally just C+P'd. And gobbledegook-like? It's all in plain english.

[mgrl]

The 1999 paper also has the following:

It has been suggested that a power output:body mass ratio above 5.5 W·kg−1 is a necessary prerequisite for top-level competitive cyclists (24). However, this suggested value is not intended for professional cyclists. Indeed, this value seems to be slightly low for professional cycling, according with the present (mean value of 6.34 W·kg−1, with a lowest value of 5.58 W·kg−1) and previously reported data (Table 5). Ice et al. (12) described a power output:body mass ratio of 6.79 W·kg−1 for the several-time winner of the race across America.

Ice et al is "Ice, R. G., P. L. Millman, D. C. Ice, and J. C. Camp. A physiological profile of the 1984-1986 race across America winner. In: Medical and Scientific Aspects of Cycling, E. R. Burke and M. M. Newsom (Eds.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1988, pp. 173-180.", so covering the mid 80s - doping still taking place, but not nearly as sophisticated as the late 90's, early 2000's so likely to be not dissimilar to today in terms of power figures what with the improvements in diet, training methods and the like.

[blutto]

My significant other also has the ability to access the two Mujika related articles that are in play here.....so after reading them my question is which article was that bit pulled from ?

The two quotes are from the articles I name immediately before the quotes. The one from the 2012 paper is the start of the second paragraph in the discussion. The one from the 1999 paper is from the "Maximal power output" section of the results. See attached photos for context.

MICP399.png

MPO1999.png

which leads me to believe you have either heavily paraphrased it or just made it up out of whole clothe....either approach is really bad form ( and for some may look quite hypocritical given your critique )... in fact not much unlike the general tone the rest of that gobbledegook-like response you slapped together...

Perhaps learn to read before being insulting. Or at least Ctrl+F, as I literally just C+P'd. And gobbledegook-like? It's all in plain english.

The Mujika paper says that Indurain's 4.88W/kg is similar to 6-6.5W/kg

OK I looked at the pages and that specific relationship is not on that paper....there is a comparison btwn Mikey and "active male professional cyclists tested with similar protocols" ( please note the testing in the other paper that produced those numbers was done using different protocols and you can't simply air-lift those results into the second study...as the author notes, that comparison can only be made "using comparable methods to determine gross efficiency "... )( and btw pro cyclists are something the author would know very well because he has studied their performance and published papers on that subject so he is much more capable of going outside protocol homogeneity and make an educated comparison than you could, even in your wildest dreams, ever do ).....but that qualitative relationship the author mentions is never shown with quantitative values as you have done...

" Learn to read ", indeed...

Cheers

[mgrl]

The Mujika paper says that Indurain's 4.88W/kg is similar to 6-6.5W/kg

It does, because it says that it's comparable to tests done on other cyclists and cites the two papers mentioned. That's what citing something means. He is also a co-author on a paper which explicitly states that 5.5W/kg as a level for professional cyclists is likely to be very conservative as opposed to competitive amateurs. 5.5 > 4.9 (the proof of this is left to the reader).

I also explicitly noted the difference between the tests, in the bit I quoted it was Mujika who called them similar. Take it up with him, not with me.

" Learn to read ", indeed...

Cheers

As we're doing citations, I refer you to the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).

[blutto]

The Mujika paper says that Indurain's 4.88W/kg is similar to 6-6.5W/kg

It does, because it says that it's comparable to tests done on other cyclists and cites the two papers mentioned. That's what citing something means. He is also a co-author on a paper which explicitly states that 5.5W/kg as a level for professional cyclists is likely to be very conservative as opposed to competitive amateurs. 5.5 > 4.9 (the proof of this is left to the reader).

I also explicitly noted the difference between the tests, in the bit I quoted it was Mujika who called them similar. Take it up with him, not with me.

" Learn to read ", indeed...

Cheers

As we're doing citations, I refer you to the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram (1971).

Just a suggestion, but you may want to familiarize yourself with .....the concept of similar, and how it is used in a study/article/science setting...and the danger of backfilling an opinion with a made up story....

Btw....looked up Arkell v Pressdram ( 1971 )......hahahahahaha.....too funny...

Cheers

[blutto]

...whoopsie...

[mgrl]

Btw....looked up Arkell v Pressdram ( 1971 )......hahahahahaha.....too funny...

Cheers

Good place to leave it I think before we just go back and forth endlessly on the same stuff!

[blutto]

Btw....looked up Arkell v Pressdram ( 1971 )......hahahahahaha.....too funny...

Cheers

Good place to leave it I think before we just go back and forth endlessly on the same stuff!

Great idea....

Cheers and Kind Regards