sasawpg

I can't be bothered to walk, I drive 3 minutes to a grocery store probably daily. I will drive between the grocery store and convenience store, primarily because I'm lazy but also because it is faster and I value my time. I also ride my bike on average 8-10hrs/week. Not as delusional as you may think.

Unlikely you'll be burning 1000kCal at 16-20mph unless you're going up a steady incline and keeping that speed (i.e. high power). That is a bit of an exaggeration. The remainder of your point stands - cycling is a great way to burn a lot of calories.

During aerobic training, Nils van den Poel would average 33hrs/week (3x7hr, 2x6hr) roughly at 250W, which will be in the vicinity of 850-900kCal/hr depending on his body's efficiency, likely around 24-25%. That averages to 4250kCal/day when spread across the week. At his size and fitness level, he is probably in the 1800-2000kCal/day range for metabolic basal rate. He aimed for 7000kCal/day during aerobic training and gained 5kg during that summer on purpose. Math seems to add up to me.

> ... the balance was ~1800-2000 when exercising 5 times a week including 3x1 hour long weightlifting sessions.

I see you added a couple more details to your post. Weight lifting sessions really aren't that productive as far as calorie burn is concerned. I pulled a random 30m weight workout and my avg HR was just over 50% resulting in approximately 130kCal/hr burned (estimated based on HR, actual could be a bit higher but unlikely to be higher than 200/hr), which does not come even close to cycling. My average calorie burn for a recovery ride is about 500kCal/hr, 575kCal/hr for endurance, 750kCal/hr for tempo and 975kCal/hr for threshold. Recovery/endurance are sustainable basically for an entire day (barring discomfort and boredom), tempo for 3-5hrs and threshold for <1hr (the 975kCal/hr effort was a 40 minutes). Cycling values are calculated from measured power output and and assume approximately 25% metabolic efficiency. My numbers are also on the lower side because I'm smaller (smaller typically means less power and so fewer calories).

> 2500kcal was on the high end of my bulking intake when I wanted to add weight for my lifting.

I would be surprised if I averaged less than 2500, though I haven't tracked in a long time. I can always feel when my intake isn't enough. My workout related output is 5000-7500+/week which is probably higher than average, though the low end is fairly well in-line with someone who runs/rides 5+ times per week. To your point, 2500 for an 'average' male is more than likely on the very high side.

I haven't really looked at sedentary ranges, can you point me to the guideline you reference? Are they based on calories burned during an activity, amount of activity, time in HR zones?

As for intensity exercises, unless you actually measure your activity it will be difficult to estimate exactly how much time you're active inside of your hour exercise. I would guess a lot of people will over-estimate how much active time they really had. For example, weight lifting would be on the low side, HIIT classes somewhere in the middle and running/rowing/cycling on the high side.

> Without actually being in a physically demanding job, odds are you're not "active" in any meaningful sense (of course there are exceptions).

That's a curious conclusion. I and most others in my circle of friends are active in a meaningful sense, at least based on my definition of "meaningfully active". Most of us are in desk jobs, and none that I know have what I would define as a "physically demanding" job.

> It’s usually people at the “local elite” level as well. The pros who actually make a living running could never get away with it… it’s just people being vain, who in most cases have legitimate talent but feel so much pressure to perform.

Pros cheat and get away with it often enough.

It is a lesson to be learned for sure! As my cycling ramps up so does my eating. I couldn't imagine surviving on anything less than 3 meals a day and copious snacking. Then again, I burn 6000-7000+kCal in a standard week of training which can be hard (for me) to replace. Your body will like you much more if you keep feeding it while riding!

> Literally no one is doing this, unless you have a diesel engine, you're parked outside, the temperatures are exceptionally cold (<= -10F?), and you weren't planning on driving for more than a day. It's something you'd see on, like, farms or semi truck lots; not houses.

Living in a cold-weather climate, it is the local norm to plug a car (gas or diesel) during winter even if you're only parked for a couple hours. Most cars purchased locally come with engine block heaters installed and most private parking spaces (houses, apartments, office buildings, surface lots, parking garages, etc.) provide an outlet.

I used to be anti pancake mix as well. Then I got a cabin where pancakes are almost a mandatory weekend breakfast and I realized I often forget to bring fresh ingredients (mainly milk). Krusteez was a hit and I became a convert.

As nobody in my household drinks white milk, I only have it on hand if a recipe specifically calls for it. And I suspect they wouldn’t quite be the same with chocolate milk, of which there is almost always a supply thanks to kids ..

> plus making things from basic ingredients increases the understanding of how ingredients work.

That’s a bit of a stretch. Following a recipe doesn’t necessarily imply you understand how ingredients work.

I would say I’m an “above average” cook (define as you will), and yet I still use Krusteez pancake mix. They’re very good from the mix and I’d prefer to waste my time scrolling endlessly or other crap instead (I’m not fooling anyone, time saved making pancakes from scratch is entirely time wasted elsewhere).

> Ukraine announced a full military mobilization and banned adult male citizens from leaving the country.

And it just got that much more complicated to leave.

As someone who lived through 4 years of war, my advice is to get out while you still can. As incredibly difficult as it is, it will only get more difficult to leave and it is unlikely to get any easier to stay. I have absolutely no knowledge of the current situation in Ukraine, I'm merely advising based on my own personal experience.

To everyone questioning why Ukranian population haven't heeded the warnings from Biden/West and left already - I can only assume you have never been in a comparable circumstance. It is easy for me to suggest/advise people leave, but I know all too well that's easier to type on a keyboard than act on in real life.

> I'm very confused by this because I'm arguing the exact opposite: that people in tech romanticize these "simple" trades of the people.

I live in a climate where normal (I.e. not extreme) temp fluctuates between -25C and +30C. You can add 5-10C to either end for the above/below average days. There is absolutely nothing romantic or glamorous about working outside in those temps. This “romanticism” you speak of, while very real, often comes from a place of ignorance and inexperience. I’ve done enough physical labour in my time in reasonable weather than I see no reason for me ever want to make a career out of it. Similar goes for interior work, I’ve done the “good” and “mediocre” jobs as DIY enough to know I would not want to do it for a living.

Short answer: yes. Long answer: absolutely, yes.

I owned a Walmart bike when I was 16-17. Rode it into the ground and had a blast. I did zero maintenance on it for two years (not ideal) and it serves the purpose. Bought a much nicer entry level Trek in my mid-20s and hardly rode it. It wasn’t until much later that I bought a bike that I rode more. It just happened that I could afford more and decided to spend more, but it absolutely wasn’t necessary. In fact, a guy I ride with in summer works at a LBS and still rides his trusty 1990s MTB (mid level). Oh, still regularly beats on most other riders too on it.

Nowadays Walmart is actually quite involved in the biking community and used to sell moderately high end bikes, though they may be out of the game now. Most people looked down on these bikes for some reason even though the entire group set was equivalent to a major brand high end bike. But it was sold by Walmart so how bad could it be? I suspect you don’t own one of these but the point is the same - as with many other hobbies, snobbery is very much thriving in cycling. Hell, I’m guilty of it to an extent too.

Have you taken a look at prices of a used Allez lately? Put a few IG/TikTok faces to it and it doubled the cost. Once upon a time it was a cost efficient way to race crits and not worry too much about cost of crashes. Now it is apparently a high end highly desired bike …

Edit: I’m also a ma… hang on, when does middle age start? I may still have a year to go technically! (But not in reality)

Not to mention risks and extra time added for mid-ride bathroom stop! If you don’t coffee and poop before a ride, are you even a real cyclist?

Side note - loving the downvote! I can only guess a local Cat 5 legend got upset they didn't win their Tuesday night worlds even after spending $4k on Zipp 454s. That or didn't bother to read my whole post where I'm poking fun at myself for doing precisely this :p

> I think without middle aged men in lyrca spending $10k on bikes, most of the performance/road oriented bike shops in major metro areas would go bankrupt, because the profit margin on some of that stuff has to be insane. Particularly the accessories. Yes, I totally need a $95 carbon fiber bottle cage... Hook me up!

The markup on higher-end parts and bikes is quite ridiculous. I've SRAM Red eTap on my road bike and cassette alone is over $500. Compare that to a Rival eTap cassette at $180 (two steps down) or Force eTap at $260 (one step down) and it is enough to make your head spin. Or if you want to stick to "old technology" and go with 11sp Force/Ultegra, you can get them for $130. I half-jokingly say that I'll sell the bike before any part wears out as it will be more cost effective to replace it.

My approach is to purchase lightly used high end bikes through private sales. Find a trusted source and let them take the initial hit. Covid put a bit of a dent in those plans due to lack of bikes everywhere, but at least there's still some deals to be had as you approach top range. You can forget any deals for bikes under $5000, you're likely to pay similar prices for used as for new.

My cross bike will take up to a 38mm 700c tire but I can size up to 45mm 650b with no changes! Small miracle of dropping rim brakes.

Don’t underestimate middle aged men in lycra with too much money to burn. They’ll spend hours obsessing about individual components and won’t bat an eye when it comes to spending $15k or more (Canadian, a bit closer to $10k USD/EUR) on a brand new bike every couple years, $3-5k on the newest dimpled wheels from the big Z manufacturer, tires, and so forth, all in the name of besting their mates in the Saturday morning world classic coffee ride.

While I don’t strictly identify as above (I’ve more sense than to spend $1000/watt, or so I like to claim anyway), I do my fair share of purchasing the extra few watts. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time obsessing about what the optimal tire choice is for my next Cat 3 CX race. At least I’m realistic enough to know the hoards of 16-20 year olds with more handling skills and less fear will destroy my every day of the week. Joke is on them because they’ve real life coming to crush them :p

In all seriousness, I know fully well the 5-10W gain is marginal for me at best and will only get me so far. Genes, age and hours in saddle cannot be purchased. Being a late comer to the sport and not being blessed with the requisite body type, I can’t have any one of those three, but I can however throw more money at the hobby, unlike the younger ones can. And why not enjoy myself while doing so and ride around in style.

As for diminishing returns, don’t talk to bike enthusiasts about those. They’ll only be outdone by audiophiles

As for the water bottle vs. rotating weight, I noted that as well. Which is why I compared dropping 100-200g of rotating weight (tires) to dropping a 500-750mL water bottle. It is a very rough comparison, I haven’t ever done the math to figure out how close they are, but I suspect it is close enough. Even 200g of rotating weight isn’t THAT significant when you consider the likelihood your pair of wheels weigh 2500g+ (assuming low end box wheels since we are discussing wire beads).

That’s exactly my point :) Puncture resistance may be improved with more aggressive tread but handling and rolling resistance will definitely suffer. It’s all about the amount of contact patch on the ground. Same reason why on ice you want to run very shallow tread while on snow or mud you want a very aggressive tire. You can correlate this with slick car race tire vs a rally tire. One is great on road while the other wouldn’t get you far.

For a fun experiment, head out on a wet day and try to corner on both 28mm slicks and 33mm+ tires with a decent amount of tread (bonus points if you use a mud CX tread). Personal experience dictates that aggressive tread will treat you to a good dose of road rash while slicks will continue to grip far longer. I’ve far more experience with this than I should (one should be plenty).

Can I ask why OCR, other than to learn something new. From a functionality standpoint you’ve hit the nail on the head. Some suggestions in this thread however start to take away from the appeal of the site. I suspect the target audience will much rather type out the dozen numbers/chars than they will attempt to mess around with taking a picture and having OCR take over. I’d be willing to bet the time to enter data is comparable and if there are any savings to be had from OCR (doubtful) it would be measured in seconds at best.

Identify the audience and build the product for it. A tech savvy audience (HN) would love to see OCR because we have nothing better to do than look for “latest cool gadgets”.

Don’t worry, fixies are still cool among a select bunch of people. I’ve never cared for them, but plenty still do. There is also a budding fixie racing community outside of the track (including crit and CX), which is simply terrifying to me.

Correct tread pattern and pressure for conditions will make a significant difference in rolling resistance, far more than just about every other tire property (weight, suppleness, etc). Different conditions require different tread patterns and different tire pressures. As for weight, you’ll save maybe 100g of weight per tire, which is admittedly amplified due to rolling. Drop a single water bottle and you’ll be back on top. You won’t of course find many “performance” bikes with wire beaded tires.

Most paved paths are best paired with slicks/semi-slicks, even when wet (snow/ice is a separate discussion). Yet many hybrid/city bikes are equipped with a bit of tread depth. The tradeoff is durability and puncture resistance - slicks/semi-slicks can’t compete. And for people buying these types bikes, it is far more important that they reliably get from point A to point B without any flats or maintenance costs than saving a minute off their daily commute, so it is a fair trade off.

As for tubeless setups, I would hesitate to recommend those to anyone that needs this site (not that you’re suggesting that). If you don’t know what tire you need I would be willing to bet you have no idea how to fix a tubeless puncture, top up sealant, or remove/reinstall the tire.

There are tire/wheel TL combos that are just not compatible, no matter what you try. Centering the tire is key, soapy water helps, you may need to warm up the tire, a tire jack may be needed in some cases .. but none of those will work 100% of the time, which is ridiculous.

Ah fully understand, I thought you meant there is somehow incompatibility between tubes and TL wheels/tires.

I’ll echo your frustration 100%. I found Schwalbe Ones are much looser fitting and have no problem mounting them on two sets of rims I have that will barely take a GP5K.

I take the chance and run my hand on the inside. Gloves should usually work well too, though I use fingerless on road.

For off-road riding (cross) I pinch flat almost exclusively so I don’t bother checking around. It is pretty obvious when you smack a root or rock.