Bike Weight is Overrated

Efforts to reduce bike weight amongst amateurs are largely wasted. Many are willing to pay beaucoup bucks for a carbon fiber component, but does it really matter? For example, my pedals are the Look Cleo classic. The pedal and cleats in carbon weigh 0.1 lbs less than the steel version but cost $100 more. Is that worthwhile?

Playing with numbers on bikecalculator.com, shaving a full 6 lbs off your bike on a flat half-Ironman (56 mile) course would save 34 seconds (assumes you are generating 150 watts and you weight 190 lbs). If the grade is 2% up, and then 2% down, you can save 2:06. On a course that would then take 3 hours and 40 minutes, even an extra 2 minutes is quite minor. Again that's 6.0 lbs, not 0.1 lbs.

So in a nutshell, spending beaucoup bucks on a carbon components is wasted. 

As a final note, any good analyst would ask: "is bikecalculator.com correct?" The September 2003 Bicycling Magazine had an analysis by James C. Martin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of exercise and sport science at the University of Utah.  He wrote that for a 160 lb rider who puts out 250 watts, traveling up a 7% grade over 5km, would add 30 seconds to the climb for every 5 lbs added. Running these numbers into bikecalculator, that model said the difference would be 31 seconds, so yes bikecalculator has been validated.