Pay Close Attention to the Driveline

Bike and Save the Earth

If there is anything that you must pay attention to in your bike, it is your drive line:   your shoes, your cleats, the pedal, the crank, the chain ring, the chain, the sprocket and the rear wheel, its hub and bearings.  They are the ones constantly subjected to wear and do a lot of constant repetitive cyclical motion when   you ride.

For instance, if your current cycling shoes weigh 600 grams and you can buy one that is 400 grams.  You multiply the weight loss per pedal stroke as savings in effort/energy.  Say you pedal  5000 times during your ride, youi have saved a total of  l,000,000 grams or l,000 kg or a ton of effort.  That is substantial.  The pedal weight, crank arm length (l70, l72.5. 175) are critical.

There was a champion biker used to 172.5 crank length.  However he heard everybody shifted to l75, and he shifted to l75 on a raced day.  All was well until the last l0 km when his legs gave way under him.  He could not pedal anymore and all the vigor was gone.  The 2.5 mm difference in length, though how tiny it was blew his effort to be first.  2.5 mm extra crank length multiplied by number of revolutions would have mean great energy effort more for the poor cyclist and former champion