Your tires are slowing you down. Today we talk about the truth about tire width, PSI, and tubeless. Most cyclists, even racers, are riding the wrong tires this day.
They're riding them at the wrong pressures and they're riding the wrong setups for their goals. Anthony, first question. It's a good one.
Anthony, talk to me about tire setup. Tell me exactly what width, PSI, and tubeless or clincher. And that's from Gus.
Feels like we've done tires to death, but it is something that comes up time and time again because it's so confusing and it's so nuanced and there's so many different aspects to something as simple as tires. The old school logic was really simple. Narrower tires equals faster.
I used to race on 23 mil for the longest time, but time trials could have been 21, even 19 mil. But testing and real world data tells a different story. They were never the fastest.
We just got it wrong for a long time. Wider tires, so you think 25s, 28s, or even 30 mil like we seen in Party Rube last weekend, actually roll faster on real world roads, especially at low pressures. And I know we're going to move on to pressures.
It's because they deform less on the road. So, they absorb less road buzz. Less vibration, that means less energy, means more speed.
But there's a caveat. If you go too wide on tires, you start to create aerodynamic drag and unnecessary weight. So, the sweet spot for road racers seems to be around 28 mil tires.
Gravel. I had Dylan Johnson on two weeks ago on the podcast and Dylan Johnson thinks you should be going north of 47 mil. I rode 47 ms last year.
On my factor gravel bike this year on the Reap, I'm going to go with mountain bike tires. I'm going to go for 2.2s or 2.
1s. That's what Dylan Johnson is saying is the fastest tires. Mountain bike tires specifically because they have different casing on them which is lighter than gravel tires.
But as much of a guru as Dylan Johnson is, if you go on to bicycle rollingresistance.com, it paints a more nuanced picture where not all casings are the same and different tires have different casings. So it's not strictly that a 2.
1 or 2.2 mountain bike tire is going to be faster than a 47 mil. It depends brand specific, but in general, wider is better.
Wider is better. Yeah, it does feel you explained it really well because it does feel a little bit counterintuitive. It just feels that the the tinier the size, the faster it feels.
Two really probably dumb questions. Is every road bike going to be set up to take a 25 28 or a 30 mil? Because I know that that's a consideration in gravel.
Like not every gravel bike will get a 2.2 mountain bike onto it. No.
Especially you got to look up your advertised clearances. Your advertised clearance is normally a little bit less than your tire can actually take. I think it needs to have, someone will correct us in the comments, but I think it needs to have two mil on either side.
So, if a bike is saying it clears 25 mil tires, it's probably clearing at least 28 mil tires, but you run the risk of damaging your frame then if there's a small bit of flex in it. But gravel bikes, and here's kind of my hot thesis, cuz the Reap that we're riding has amazing clearance on it. All the data shown that warrior tours are better, but the bikes haven't evolved.
Some of the bikes that are still coming out, brand new bikes, can only have clearance for 43, 45 mil, which is small. As you said, we were on 47s all of last year. Like, it's small compared to what the data is saying on what's fastest.
My working theory on this is the bike companies are sitting on a bunch of backstock. So, they don't want people to start switching to the wider tires until they've cleared that back. Skeptical skeptical conspiracy theory.
Okay. So, next up is pressure. Because before I, you know, really understood what I was doing, I would get a skinny tire, pump it up to 100 PSI, and hope I could corner and keep pressure is where almost every rider still gets this wrong because they just kind of head out the door and they don't realize how much of a difference pressure makes to traction, to grip in the corner, and to the comfort of ride.
High pressure feels fast, but it's actually costing you a lot of speed, especially on rough or uneven roads. running pressures that are too hard. They make the bike just bounce.
Boom, boom, boom. They make it skip over imperfections and they rob you of that speed. And critically in corners, they rob you of control.
What's the fix? Well, it's drop your tire pressure is the fix. And it's super complicated.
And because of that, we spent a bit of time and we spent some resources to build a tire pressure calculator that's totally free. So you can go along, you put in your tire brand, you put in speed, terrain you're riding, you put in the width of your tire, and it will spit out based on your total system weight. That's you and the bike exactly what PSI you need to do.
We're going to pop a link that down below. It's just romancecyclon.com/toolkit.
You sign up there and there's loads of cool stuff in there with that. But like typically to to give people context, I am roughly 80 kg riding 28 mil GP5000 tires. I'm running 62 to 63 PSI on those.
So much much lower than you think and it it changes your ride more than any upgrade of wheels, frames, helmets, anything. One note of caution on this. If you are on hookless rims, the there is a legal pressure limit on your hookless rims.
It's normally written on the rim. It can be around 70 on some of the road wheels. So, just watch out for that.
Yeah. Or on the side of caution maybe with those with those numbers. Okay.
And then the last part of Gus's question is basically around tubeless versus tubes. This is where things get a little bit spicy because tubeless came in with the promise of lower rolling resistance and fewer flats. And the World Tour Pelaton has largely switched to entirely tubless.
There's no one not riding tubless anymore. Tubless setups, they are a little bit heavier, but where most amateurs, time crunch people like me and you fall down is installation. Do you remember when you tried to install your Yeah, we actually have a question coming up in a little while about installation and CN messy to install.
It is messy. Very messy install. Even if you're good at installing them, they're messy to install.
So, for off-road, I still think it's worth if you're going mountain biking, if you're going gravel, I think it's worth the effort to put tubeless on, even though you're going to get a little bit messy. For road racing, road cycling in general, like a tap detour over in Vegas, this is where it gets a little bit complicated. Like, if you want the peace of mind and you've mastered the install, I think tubeless is best.
But if you want low weight and simplicity, go with a clincher and a latex tube and it's going to be almost as fast without all that hassle. Yeah, it's this debate that rages on and on at the moment. I mean, I was doing a little bit of research for this topic and the one that's coming up later.
And you know, you do have people who almost kind of keep it as their it's almost part of their identity that they are only ever riding tubed and then other people who it's almost personality trait absolutely have been bought completely into tubeless. So it's kind of I don't know. I I have tubed on my bike tubeless on my gravel bike and I've never had a bad experience really with either.
I think it's just horses of course. Yeah. For me, it boils down to do I want the inconvenience of installing tubeless in the warm living room or the shed which is nice and sheltered or do I want the inconvenience of fixing a puncture in 4° on the side of the road?
I take the former rather than the latter and that's why I go with you. Absolutely agreed. Okay, next question.
Anthony, are there common mistakes that lead to sealant failure? I followed all the usual setup steps, but when I flatted it just wouldn't seal. I'm starting to lose trust in tubeless.
Is it something I did wrong or are there known limitations? Biggest limitation is I went one of the lads in the club, Rene, we went gravel cycling uh last summer and I think Rene had punctured about four times in the first 5k. He put tubeless sealant into his tires but about four years ago and the sealant had just completely dried up to the point that there was absolutely no sealant in the tire.
So sealant isn't it done set at once and done. It's a liquid that when you puncture it rushes to fill the gap from the puncture. If the liquid is thrown solid it can't fill that gap.
So oh so people become and me included totally complacent with sealant. You kind of think right one and done. You kind of forget about it.
Do you think you need to be replacing New Zealand every couple of months, checking on it? Oh yeah, definitely toughen it up. Yeah, toughen it up.
Throwing another climate depends where how quick it's drying up where you're storing your bike be sort of radiator in a warm shed. That's like a long finger job for me. I know if I had to like put more sealant in my in I'd be like, "Oh, manana.
" Cuz it's just it's stressful. But you do it before a big event coming up all the time. Uh like now if we think about I I was looking on forums and stuff for common issues to make sure we hadn't missed any but we've experienced all of these nearly you know like in the morning you're like oh my tire's flat.
Can't believe it. What's the first thing we'll check? Well is your valve actually just leaking because the valve is different in a tubeless setup and it needs to be airtight and a lot of times it's just worked its way a little bit loose.
So that also could be a problem. Poor rim tape installation could be another one where if the rim tape isn't fully seated, if it has creases, if it has tears, if it's too narrow, the air in the sealant can escape through a rim cavity. That could be a problem for as well.
Incorrect sealant application, like just not putting enough of it in, or he's putting it in and it's all going to one spot and it's clumping there, like he's not spinning the wheel when he's doing it. Um, not removing the old sealant could potentially cause some problems. uh tire rim compatibility is another issue.
I think there's obviously inherent limitations in any sealant. It's a liquid to plug a physical hole and the viscosity of the liquid is going to determine how big a hole it can plug. Somebody done a good I think it was Cycling Weekly had a good YouTube video where they got brand new tires and they punctured them with different width stuff on every sealant to see what ones sealed quite well.
And I'm struggling to think which was the best sealant. I know orange seal struggles to seal at higher PSIs. So on road bikes, if you're putting 60, 70, 80 PSI, that was struggling quite poorly.
Mukoff performed quite well. Stans was middle of the road. Silka performed quite well.
Uh go check it out. Everyone will have, again, everyone has their own opinion on on the best sealant. I did see some really interesting threads on Reddit where somebody, you know, a lot of people actually are making their own sealant.
So, if you want to go and do that. Yeah. So, it says try DIYing it if cost is an issue.
You add liquid latex and or antifreeze and add a bit of ground black pepper and that apparently creates the perfect sealant. So I feel like if I got this out like the anarchist's cookbook and he's also like flick the next page of get nap. Yeah.
What else has this guy got? His garage. But there you go.
There's a lot of information online if you do want to start creating your own seal. I think a lot of them are have traces of carbon fiber in them to fill the gaps. Yeah.
And that was actually another thread. Again, you know, you'll find anything online, but you can, some people do recommend that you're adding more of these kind of fibers to it that it's going to work even better, but I don't know about uh messing around with the consistency of these. It's not something that I would personally do.
Okay, good stuff. Next question. Hey, Anthony, what did you make of someone throwing a bottle at Machi Vanderpole during Roé?
Has fan behavior gone too far? It was horrible. It was really bad.
I think it's one thing, not condoning it, but it's one thing to spit at someone. It's disgusting. It's another thing to throw beer at them.
I can't bring myself to say I'd ever do either of those. I absolutely wouldn't. But people have been drinking all day.
They do stupid stuff. People do stupid stuff in nightclubs and pubs every day of the week. It's just something stupid.
When it moves from something stupid to dangerous, dangerous. and actually inflicting harm on someone, it escalates into a new category and yeah, it's just absolutely horrible. It's no place in bike riding and I hope they do track the person down it.
There is it's like throwing coins in football. Yeah, there is an update on that. So the man who uh has not been public publicly identified uh went and handed himself into the police and he basically expressed remorse describing it as a moment of madness.
But my question to you when we were we watched it we were watching it live and I we were like oh my god that yellow bid on was just launched at him. Well no actually initially I thought it bounced out of his bottle cage but yellow I was like it looks like a Vizma bottle. Yeah, maybe it was somebody from Fizma trying to Well, definitely Visma fan because he's not like Dutch team.
He's a Dutch rider riding against them, their arch rival. But that was my point too. It was like why does Machi Vanderpole we saw last year in the cycle cross where exactly like you were saying he's getting spat at.
He's getting awful abuse and then there was people peeing into cups and throwing that at him as well. Like this again is another step further. But what is it about Machi Vanderpole that the Belgies are I mean I think we kind of assume that it's Belgian fans are doing this which is maybe an unsafe assumption but what is it about Machie Vanderpole that he gets so much of this?
What is it about Rory Mroy Diego Maradona? Yeah. Cristiano Ronaldo he's the best.
So therefore he's open to more. So in interviews after Matthew Vanderpole described it as an attempted manslaughter and he emphasized the seriousness of the situation and said it was a full bottle maybe half a kilogram and I'm riding at 50 km/h. It was really like a stone hitting my face.
And he went on to say if it lands on my nose my nose is broken. This really needs to be prosecuted. But yeah look let's watch this space.
Pretty sure it won't be prosecuted as attempted manslaughter. Vanderpole definitely doesn't have the legal degree there, but we'll leave it at that one. Okay, next question.
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Back to the show. Anthony, can we have an honest conversation about whether cycling clubs are keeping people away from the sport rather than bringing them in? I know riders who feel intimidated, excluded, or just completely uninterested in the old school club mentality.
Is it time for something new? I think there's a temptation to blame a cycling club because they're excluding or there's systems in place that will go through and perceived elitism, intimidation. We'll go through there's a I think a couple of barriers, but I think there's one thing with it not being 100% efficient and on boarding every new rider that they're caught versus is it a negative thing?
Like it's not a negative thing. It gets everybody that's into cycling into cycling currently. Could it be doing a better job?
Yes. Like and that's where the conversation is. It's not like is it time for something new?
We need to abandon the cycling club structure. It's arguably the very best thing we have about cycling at the moment. Our club is flying at the moment as well.
Like we've Saturday, Sunday and Thursday spins and like numbers are through the roof. It's going from strength to strength and there's just great crack and great camera. It's different between being stuck behind a microphone or a screen and actually being in person banging shoulders with someone.
Oh, look, like I talk about it every single week that it's just this beautiful feeling when you're in a group with loads of cyclists and this synergy of that group spin and having fun and everyone's just loving the sport and yeah, it's it's amazing. What do you think though? Do you think that there is what do you think are PE clubs can do or people can do to kind of grow this or make it more welcoming or better for newcomers?
can feel daunting for sure, especially if the group is a fast-paced group or if it's a competitive group and if the no drop ride doesn't quite like live up to its promise of a no drop ride. If you wanted to be super critical of cycling clubs, but I think you got to level this more at cycling as a sport. It maybe lacks a little bit of inclusion.
The idea that anybody can join. Well, there's a big big difference between saying that anybody can join and it actually being inclusive. Like without intentional outreach, I don't know if we're going to get there in terms of inclusive.
Like if you show up to a group ride and there's no one of your gender, no one of your skin color, no one of your socioeconomic background in the group, you can say it's inclusive, but it's very very intimidating to break through those invisible barriers. Right. I totally agree.
I will I will kind of push back though as well because the onus really is on the person who is joining the club to perhaps find a club that is suitable to them if you're lucky enough to have a lot of clubs in your area. So like I can think of six clubs in Dublin and they all cater it seems to me to different things. So I would can I think road man you know there's a lot of racers in it and that's not to put anyone off coming on a Saturday because big mix as well.
There's a mix but then there are other clubs that are you know very much leisure and they all have great crack and disapportif and going away and then there's an there's other clubs and we see them in the fingers park most weeks and they're mo genuinely just social clubs where can I dive in on that before you expand on that further you've broke all those down according to speed but there fitness is only one of the barriers no it's it's not even speed it's about what you want to get out from the day so like people who are let's say going out in that piano ride in the Phoenix park. They are all going out on the most gorgeous bikes. Their kit looks absolutely stunning.
They all look like world tour riders. But what they are getting out of it is a social chat and then they're going to go for a few beers after. Whereas that's very different to it's largely speed we're talking about here.
They're they go it's inclusive because it's social because of the speed. Yeah. What I'm talking about is that's just one of the hurdles is the fitness level.
The hurdles that are a little bit more structural or endemic are is there a working-class club in Dublin that you can name? Is there a club for Chinese in Dublin? Is there a club for There is a club for Brazilians cuz Wes W our videographer, you know, is there a club for those different ethnicities?
Is there clubs for and we're making strides on this female only clubs? I think speed is only one of the metrics we need to judge this inclusion by. Yeah.
But I don't think that we need to kind of silo different like women's only clubs, national clubs by nationalities. I think that the speed or the kind of what you want out of a particular club will help you decide whether that club suits you or not. As I said, if it's social, is it racing, is it pleasure.
Do you get what I'm saying? where like if you're the sole female Chinese rider who rocks up to an entirely white middle-aged club, speed isn't your primary consideration here. It's like no one in the club looks like me.
I'm not saying you can't join a club. Most clubs are going to be super welcoming. What I'm saying is it's very intimidating to join that club.
It's more intimidating. The other thing that I will say about clubs and I think when you're in a club, anyone who is in one and who are trying to, you know, welcome more people and grow their club a little better is do exactly what Anthony says. Kind of have a little think about are we inclusive?
Are we adaptable? Think about how you kind of how you communicate with each other. What is the WhatsApp group like?
I mean, we have a WhatsApp group with about 100 people in it. Is that a positive experience for somebody coming in? if a new person puts in a question, are people willing to take time out to kind of say, "Oh, well this, you know, I'll help you with this or here's some advice of this or this is my experience.
" So, all of those little things that aren't just on the bike can make somebody's experience and wanting to come back and back and back and kind of, you know, help you grow a club. The other thing I will say about growing clubs, and I know that's not totally the question here, but try and I think not stay off Facebook, stay off all the um you know, there's certain ways to kind of promote your club and I think some of them are a little bit older and maybe not working as well. So try and be a little bit more inventive how you bring people in.
Definition of clubs is slightly broadened. Like if you don't need a formal club structure affiliated through cycling Ireland, what do cycle Ireland give a leisure club? like genuine question.
I have no idea if someone lets me know down in the comments why you would affiliate with Cycling as a leisure club. I don't know like I don't think they are. I don't think leisure clubs are.
I mean I know again Dash in the Phoenix Park they are not affiliated with Cycling Ireland as well at all. Like a club isn't really much more than a WhatsApp group. Like all you need is a WhatsApp group with a bunch of friends that are likeminded and you've got your own club.
Yeah. And I think that was another point I was going to make. I do think when I roll up beside somebody and I'm, you know, have a chat with them about who they ride with, where they're from, and I ask them, "Are you in a group?
" They're usually like, "Oh, do you know what? I have like six mates that and we go out every Saturday or we go out every Sunday." We're not we don't do the club thing.
So, I think people are maybe moving a little bit away from it. I don't know. That's that's my tuppence anyway.
Okay. Onto the next question. Anthony, I've been using Garmin for years, but I've been eyeing up the new Hammerhead.
The screen looks super clean and easy to use. And I saw that you got one on YouTube. So I wanted to ask, is it actually worth making the switch from a training point of view?
Is the better screen and inter interface something that actually helps or is this more aimed at long gravel days and navigation heavy rides? That's a good question. It's brilliant.
So I made the switch after being since 2012 on Garmin. Made the switch across the Hammerheads Caru tree. Love it.
big screen is amazing once you start using it for a while. Like my time trial bike will only take my because of the mount on it. I can only use the small little Wahoo Bolt.
Going from the Wahoo Bolt to the Hammerhead is like stepping through a time portal. Like they're totally different. It's like going from the Nokia 3210 to your iPhone.
Yeah. Like the Hammerhead user interface is really sweet as well. Like everything just integrates so nicely into it.
It feels like the future. But there's really nice aspects on it I use all the time. Like the live track is super easy to send.
I send you that all the time when I'm at coffee shops or I ask you to send it. The other one I love as well is I can get a link. Someone can send me a link to something or I can look something up when I'm on the bike.
If I'm trying to navigate to, I don't know, a restaurant across town or a coffee shop across town. You're meeting someone there, you can click on the Google Maps link and open it in your Hammerhead and it'll send it straight to your car and navigate there. So, there's all sorts of cool little features built into it.
And then I just add in the main reason I went to was the bigger screen for the better navigation. So, I can navigate off-road. Whereas Garmin and Wahoo was just this one unambiguous blur of lines and I couldn't navigate off-road at all with them.
And this just makes navigation so much easier. So, for me, yeah, it's a winner. Before you know you've missed your turn, it's telling you to, you know, backtrack on yourself.
But there doesn't seem to be any of those issues with the Hammerhead. The bit that I love about the hammer before you remind me something there before you say that. Do you remember Santa Val last year?
Like how many times did I go wrong? Oh yeah, you had to. I just kept riding straight past turns.
I had to lead. Remember I was like, "Oh my god, I'm nervous here now cuz I'm I'm in control." Um but the I've used all of them now.
I even had the hammerhead that was the prior version to the crew three and I've always loved it. The feature that I love and I think some people would hate this and some people will love it is distance to the top of a climb. Sometimes I'm looking at I'm okay if it says something like 4 km to top of the climb.
I basically flick that little H part off because I'm like I don't need to know that I'm way too far away from the top here. But I will turn it I will flip it back up and I'll be like okay only like 800 meters go I can do this. So that's the feature that I absolutely love.
It's really helps me with pacing as well. So, I love the hammerhead. Okay, next question.
Can we talk about cycling kit sizing? I'm 6' and 13 and 1/2 stone, which is not exactly overweight, and I just had to size up to a 2XL jersey that still felt like it was spray painted on. In normal clothes, I'm a large.
Spray painted on. Is that not what we're going for? Then I ordered a pair of bibs shorts in XL, labeled relaxed fit, but the straps felt like dental floss pulling the pad into the wrong postcode.
Honestly, it feels like buying kit is a self-esteem test half the time. Is the industry just designing for world tour climbers and hoping the rest of us squeeze in? Are there any brands that actually make kit for normal humans?
That can go so wrong. Okay. So, the jersey being a little bit small, a bit snug, it can feel a little bit restrictive if you get your bib shorts.
I've noticed this as a female anyway, that if and I'm quite tall, so like the bib straps can kind of move the actual shorts or kind of almost like wedgie the shorts up super high. So, the the shammy the pad is not sitting exactly where it's supposed to be sitting. So, I feel this this listener's pain uh pretty sharply.
So, it is kind of a problem, isn't it? doing the Club Kit order. You know the pain of this.
We were Yeah, we Yeah, we just put in a big order for Club Kit and there was massive confusion. I am going to straight to heaven after that because I've earned my spot behind the pearly gates because there was so many questions about will this fit? What's the inside leg seam?
What's the you know waist length on it? Because people are nervous. It's custom kit.
So once you order that kit, you can't send it back if it doesn't fit you. So people are nerv I think people have been hurt a lot by the cycling industry and sizing and they're they're a little bit kind of you know well I think we have the race fit obsession and it kind of comes from the like it's probably Italian French cycling culture it's like the homes of cycling you would say and it feels like they're benchmarked off that archetypal cycling 58 52 kg build and they've used that as like a small and than everything else is. And we've also inherited this race cut idea where pros kits got more and more aerodynamic.
So even 10 years ago like you get a santini to be flapping everywhere even if it's a race cut. Everything's got so aerodynamic which means painted on. Painted on works if you're at 10 to 15% body fat.
When you get painted on after that and you have a couple of layers of visible fat on your body, painted on starts looking like the paint is poured into the crevices and it's not a good look. So I think because of that race cut everything is just so much tighter and even when you step away from race race cut into the what do they call it like relaxed fit I think it's still based on the sizing of quite a lean frame and then you add in and I've experienced this with a Castelli where I'll own a Castelli which is a small and extra large in the same brand. Yeah.
And it's like what? It's minefield. It's really confusing.
What I would say is this is kind of like me going in to buy a pair of jeans, right? When you're going jean shopping as a woman, I'm not sure I can't speak for you guys. You have to be in a certain frame of mind.
You have to have had your coffees and definitely no kind of low sugar. And what you also need to do is not look at the tag. So, let's say listener, you have to buy an 3XL bib short and it says 3XL on the inside label.
Who gives a Nobody is going to see that. We know that in the cycling industry, the the labels the sizes are all so different. So, if the label says a size 14 or, you know, I'm talking about women's jeans or a size 18, even though you kind of think that you're a size 10 or a 12, just get the jeans that fit.
No one is going to identify as a medium. No one is going to know. And you're going to be so much more comfortable.
You're going to have blood flow to all of the steam in the gutter after that. I know. But you just This is what you have to do.
You cannot let your day be ruined by some arbitrary XL or 3XL that Castelli or whatever want to h print on their jerseys or their leggings or their bib shorts. So, just get the size that fits you and leave that ego at the door and don't worry about what the label says. We have three long form podcasts every week.
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Okay. Next question. What do you think of Adidas Vel samba?
Are they cool or not? I wore them to my group ride last week and you would have thought I had committed some kind of war crime by the reaction I got. Don't wear them to your group ride.
So, we talked off air about this. I went bike packing la was it last summer? The summer before with one of my friends, four of us went annual Shami time tour.
One of the lads, Al, had a set of Vel sambles. Game changer. Like, we were stuck.
I lost my flip-flops after like 6K. So, I had my gravel shoes and I I looked back to see where my flip-flops still on and then I was like, "Oh, no. Well, that simplifies life.
" That's such an outlier of a story. Like, not everyone. It's one less thing to carry is what I'm saying.
Like, yeah, flip flops will literally weigh probably 250 gram. It's more the space. It's I I cannot get behind these.
I think they have a they do have a place. Is the only Oh, no. Commuting is another commuting is maybe the only application that I can kind of get on board with them.
I just think especially with you stick them on, you've got cycling shorts on like they just look so cool. Look, I guy's wearing a dress short and a pair of uh shorts like and then half the day you're trying to dry your clothes on a makeshift clothes line on the front of your handlebars with bike bags and a moog dangling from your bag. Like you're not really a style icon.
So if you have to wear a pair of sandals with your Aeros socks, you know, the Illuminati police will have to excuse you. Yeah. And you know, I I don't know.
I guess I have to take my own advice and not kind of be judgmental of people. But if someone showed up to our group, why would fellow sambas dropped you? That's very true.
The social currency is the social currency being good at cycling or looking like you're good at cycling. Well, you don't look like you're good at cycling if you're wearing Sam. But precisely my point.
Yeah. Like if so if the person wearing them dances away from you up the climb and he trounces the strongest lad in your group ride. Now what?
Now what's up? Now what's up? Yeah.
I don't know. I guess that that definitely does give you kudos. But I think they're I think they're hideous.
There's a lot of flex in them. A lot of flex. Yeah.
They're not for performance, are they? It's like it's more for as you said convenience on the dance floor. Performance on the dance floor.
I don't know. I give your bike packing and space is an issue. You got to understand people are cutting their toothbrushes in half.
Like you're getting rid of a full pair of flip-flops. I was carrying Oh, no. I actually was carrying flip-flops, but last time I went I was carrying Burks, which take up like the majority of your bag.
So heavy. Did Yeah. Like I get that if you're riding across Morocco or Albania and it's 40° all day and you're sweating into your things all day, it doesn't sound super hygienic, but if you've ever been bike packing, there's nothing about the experience is hygienic.
You wear the same kit for two weeks. You wear the same clothes in the evening for two weeks. It all gets piled back into the same little mold fungi infested bag in the evening.
And you wash your clothes in a sink. But like when you were when you were bike packing, did you not crave to get wiggle get your toes out and wiggle them after being in, you know, in your cleats for 200 km. Barefoot's an option as well.
Oh, that's very true. You just be like that crazy hippie. Yeah, but it's a it's a no for me.
I think it's yes for yes for me. Yeah. Road man, thank you for tuning in to another episode.
Like I said, the tire pressure calculator is well worth checking out. The link is below. It's romancecycling.
comtoolkit. There's a video up here which you're going to love. And take a moment to subscribe to the channel.
See you next day.