{"id":230166,"date":"2026-02-24T14:04:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T14:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/the-elephant-trunk-skid-in-the-room\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T14:04:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T14:04:51","slug":"the-elephant-trunk-skid-in-the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/the-elephant-trunk-skid-in-the-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The Elephant Trunk Skid In The Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you\u2019re new to bikes, the world of cycling can be intimidating. Which equipment should I choose? What clothes should I wear? How should I set up my bike, and where should I ride it? <\/p>\n

It\u2019s enough to make you declare, \u201cFuck cycling, I\u2019m taking a bath:\u201d<\/p>\n

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Fortunately, the cycling media is full of experts, some of whom have been testing bikes for as long as 25 years! So don\u2019t surrender to the bubbles just yet. Instead, surrender to people who know more about cycling than you ever will, because they\u2019ve been testing bikes for as long as 25 years. (Did I mention they\u2019ve been testing bikes for 25 years?)<\/p>\n

Oh, sure, some of what they\u2019ll tell you is obvious. For example, you\u2019d have to be a complete idiot to still be using rim brakes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Thank goodness virtually nobody will sell you a bike with rim brakes anymore\u2013though there\u2019s still the danger of walking into a bike shop and encountering one with a front derailleur. You may even find yourself contemplating purchase of such a bicycle. BUT DON\u2019T DO IT! Hey, don\u2019t listen to me, take it from someone who\u2019s been testing bikes for 25 years<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

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\u2026yet in that time has apparently not figured out how to work one:<\/p>\n

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As good as front derailleurs have got since their inception in the early 1900s, they are still too fallible \u2013 whether they\u2019re mechanical or electronic \u2013 rasping the chain and still needing fiddly adjustment.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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Every so often you read something and wonder, \u201cAre we talking about the same thing?\u201d Like, maybe a front derailleur is something else in the UK? Because here in West Greenland it means the boringly dependable thing that moves the chain from one front chainring to another, and that you adjust once and never have to think about again. It\u2019s not a \u201cfallible\u201d device requiring \u201cfiddly adjustment,\u201d or \u201cpad toe-in\u201d for that matter:<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a type of performative home mechanic who will wax lyrical about roadside adjustments and fixes, or the joys of pre-tensioning, cable maintenance and pad toe-in.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I was like this, but I\u2019m glad I\u2019ve been able to leave such thinking behind. It\u2019s this attitude that has kept the front derailleur alive, even when mountain bikers were sensible enough to ditch the tech long ago.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I mean fine, I guess with certain integrated shifters a front derailleur can be challenging to set up, but even then once you do get it adjusted you can proceed to forget about it. Plus, if you use a friction shifter, it\u2019s pretty much the the most idiot-proof drivetrain component on a bicycle. Consider this utter monstrosity:<\/p>\n

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This funky old front derailleur mounted roughly 20 feet too high shifts a filthy, grimy, chain between a 42-tooth ring and a 20-tooth ring every single time, and I don\u2019t even have to trim it. This absolutely should not work at all, and yet it does, perfectly. I really wish someone who has been reviewing bikes for 25 years would tell me what I\u2019m doing wrong, why the industry should stop making this component, and how I need a single-ring electronic drivetrain with a clutch derailleur and a cassette almost as large as my rear wheel instead.<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019d be better informed if I placed a higher premium on data collection. Just ask someone who has been hoarding it for decades<\/a>\u2013two and a half of them, if we\u2019re being precise:<\/p>\n

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See, while you\u2019re fetishizing your front derailleur and your rim brakes he\u2019s quantifying the magnitude and intensity of his suckage down the teeniest fraction of a milliwatt:<\/p>\n

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You can talk about the romance and purity of the humble bicycle all you want, but my decades of riding and testing bikes has taught me we\u2019ve never had it so good. I want the myriad metrics my bike\u2019s sensors can transmit and my\u00a0bike computer\u00a0can record.<\/em><\/p>\n

You can keep your simple mechanical drivetrains and last-century tech, I want slick electronic shifting, power, cadence and speed recording, altitude tracking, and radars to tell me about traffic. I want to know everything my bike can tell me. So, bike engineers, bring it on. I\u2019m hungry for more.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Though apparently he\u2019ll occasionally do it pantsless:<\/p>\n

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Occasionally, though, I like to have a raw-ride.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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At least I assume that\u2019s what he means.<\/p>\n

Speaking of data, chronological measurements don\u2019t tell the whole story. Sure, you may have been testing bikes for 25 years, but how many bikes have you tested in that time<\/em>? See, the more bikes you\u2019ve ridden, the more you know about bikes, even if you probably haven\u2019t ridden most of them long enough to so much as wear out the chain. So when I see that someone has tested HUNDREDS of gravel bikes<\/a>, I sit up and pay attention:<\/p>\n

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Sadly, my own lack of knowledge prevents me from fully understanding what I\u2019m reading and seeing. For example, what\u2019s going on here?<\/p>\n

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Has the elephant trunk skid returned for the gravel era?<\/p>\n

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Or maybe he\u2019s demonstrating the new gravel rule of thumb that your front rotor should be three-quarters the length of your shoe. Or he could be having trouble maintaining rear wheel traction because he\u2019s ditched his saddle pack<\/a> and the bike is now too light in the stern, even though he\u2019s tested bikes for 25 years<\/s> tested hundreds of bikes<\/s> tests bikes FOR A LIVING:<\/p>\n

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Seriously, the only thing dumber than using a bike with a front derailleur is strapping your tools to the underside of your saddle. Instead, you should buy a completely new bike with a downtube storage compartment, since if your saddle bag gets wet over and over again and you never, ever unpack it then it\u2019s possible that stuff can get rusty:<\/p>\n

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I unpacked the pack earlier this week and the contents are pretty much totalled. The inner tube has corrosion on the valve, my multi-tool is rusted shut and the glueless patches have glued themselves together \u2013 not to mention the C02 cartridge that\u2019s so corroded I\u2019m scared to use it in case it fails.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m left with a three-figure bill to replace what\u2019s been ruined inside a pack that, despite the claims, does let water in.<\/em><\/p>\n

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I really don\u2019t understand these people who go all-in on downtube storage compartments:<\/p>\n

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Like, did none of them have toys as children? Everybody knows the first thing you lose is the battery compartment cover. In a few years all these people will be using tape to keep their toolkits in there, like their $10,000 crabon gravel bike is a remote control car from Radio Shack.<\/p>\n

More importantly, he missed a real opportunity here. Instead of throwing the humble saddle pack under the bus, he could have penned a searing indictment of the post-Internet media landscape and the disappearance of the living wage. The headline could have been, \u201cI\u2019ve Tested Bikes For 25 Years and This Crappy Media Company Doesn\u2019t Even Pay Me Enough To Buy A New Inner Tube, Some Patches, and a Can of WD-40 to Free Up My Stuck Multi-Tool.\u201d<\/p>\n

I mean come on, this is someone who\u2019s tested gravel bikes since their inception<\/a>. SINCE THEIR INCEPTION. That\u2019s gotta count for something, right?<\/p>\n

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At first glance I wondered why he didn\u2019t once again say that he\u2019s been testing bikes for 25 years, since the inception of the gravel bike falls well within that window. However, thinking more about it, I realized that it\u2019s always possible someone could have been testing bikes for 25 years yet pointedly eschewed any and all gravel bikes. (Hey, I managed to mostly avoid them until a couple months ago.) Of course, we d know he\u2019s tested gravel bikes\u2013hundreds of them in fact, see above\u2013but still, it\u2019s a good thing he reminded us.<\/p>\n

As for me, I\u2019ve been testing bikes since the inception of the safety bicycle. It\u2019s time we dropped listening to people. I can\u2019t wait to ditch giving a shit. <\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re new to bikes, the world of cycling can be intimidating. Which equipment should I choose? What clothes should I wear? How should I set up my bike, and where should I ride it? It\u2019s enough to make you declare, \u201cFuck cycling, I\u2019m taking a bath:\u201d Fortunately, the cycling media is full of experts, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-230166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}