Road bike vs. recumbent comparison

[Osiris]

So after four years of riding various recumbents exclusively, I decided to take a spin on my 2013 Specialized Venge, which has been collecting dust on my wall rack since 2014. I've been using a power meter for many years, so I made some interesting observations after several rides on the Venge.

First, my peak power production has dropped significantly since I gave up riding diamond frames. No real surprise there. The seating posture on the Venge requires a lot more hip flexion than I'm used to on recumbents, and the greater the amount of hip flexion, the more you rely on the hamstrings and glutes to push the pedals. This became especially clear after several sprints, which left my hamstrings and glutes feeling completely exhausted while my quadriceps hardly experienced any stress at all -- precisely the opposite of what I'm accustomed to when riding a recumbent. Interestingly enough, I'm still able to produce enough wattage to sustain my former cruising speed of 22 mph, so my power output at lower levels doesn't seem to have suffered much, if at all.

The interesting thing was that while it feels no more difficult to produce slightly more power than my FTP on the Venge than on my V20, I can't maintain it for anywhere near as long on the Venge. For example, I can usually maintain about 300 watts for a couple of miles, but on the Venge I can barely manage it for even half a mile. If it was just a case of weaker muscle groups tiring out sooner than stronger muscle groups, that would make perfect sense, but the perceived effort in both cases is roughly the same. I mentioned this to one of my riding partners who recently started riding her roadbike again, and she noticed exactly the same thing. She thinks it may have something to do with the fact that sitting doubled over pinches the midsection, making it harder to breathe than it is on a recumbent, but I'm not sure that accounts for it. It's not my experience that I'm running short of breath; it's that my legs just tire out sooner on the roadbike.

The final observation I made was that its a LOT easier to spin fast on a roadbike. I think I saw it go as high as 180 rpm on the Venge, whereas on my various bents, I haven't been able to exceed 140 rpm. Not sure what explains that, but I doubt it has any practical value, given that my usual cadence rarely exceeds 95 rpm.

 

[jond]

Over the years as I swapped between platforms it seemed to take about two weeks to see same numbers. Power meter hub based and heart rate monitor.

Specifically my heart rate was higher 10 bpm for around 220 watts on the df. After a few weeks I found similar numbers. I put this fact down to rider position and employing different muscle fibres.

When I return to the bents especially the trikes my power is down for a few weeks or so.

On FTP 280-290watts testing outdoors I found after a few years my numbers on all platforms including one trike were remarkably similar.

I concluded that establishment of “bent legs” is a reality and therefore the reverse is true. Which might explain your experience Osiris.

I.e. you are what you ride. Adaptation.

Heck one thing I love about the vendetta is the variety of pedaling positions and styles available to me. Eg cinch forward backwards bring upper body in out etc which all contribute to relieve employ different nuanced muscle fibres I believe. And put all these together and it beats the ability to stand on a df.

One thing that never changes is the thrilling comfort and safety of the vendetta.

It gets harder and harder to ride the df wonder bike though it has its place.

That place for me is mountainous topography. Which is nice........ but the world really is flat after all.

 

[DavidJL]

I find it easier to breathe in the belly down position on diamond frame than in the belly up position on the Cruzbike. I have been riding the diamond frame more than the recumbent lately, and do notice that I don't have as much bent leg ability. Riding diamond frame=going "rojo", and riding Cruzbike=going "ratz".

 

[DavidCH]

If I am doing a ride that has a stopover for lunch then I prefer to be on a DF. I enjoy DF"s for a recovery ride or city sight seeing. If I want to go for a long ride or for speed with a huge adrenalin rush then I use the Vendetta. I find the V is better exercise for my core muscles than my DF. It's a good complement. Max out on the V and coffee and cake on the DF. I actually prefer sharing a cake so it's more enjoyable to share a recovery ride. If you're on a Vendetta no one can keep up with you.

 

[McWheels]

Sounds kike you need an n+1 = S40

 

[super slim]

Sounds kike you need an n+1 = S40

Keep your Recumbents legs, with a more comfortable S40 which is less Aero but a better hill climber, and your face will be at the same height as the DF riders

 

[bladderhead]

My Silvio is less aero than my Grasshopper.

 

[dtseng]

If I am doing a ride that has a stopover for lunch then I prefer to be on a DF. I enjoy DF"s for a recovery ride or city sight seeing.

I agree with DavidCH, for a ride in the city that has a stopover for lunch, I will take my 7 Kg DF road bike.

 

[paco1961]

As a recent convert from DF to S40, one major difference that should have been plainly obvious but wasn’t until now. Never realized how much looking ahead of the rider in front of me I used to do in a pace line. On th S40 I find myself cheating to the inside of the pace line to get a better look at the road ahead. Also hard to run as tight a line since I still can’t seem to convince myself that my feet are in fact out in front of the wheel! All part of the learning curve.

 

[john b]

Side query: how does it feel by comparison on hills/mountains?

 

[paco1961]

Hills . . . On moderate hills (up to about 10-12%) I am at least as fast on the S40 as I was on DFs - maybe a bit faster. I'm getting better as I develop my 'bent legs. From 12-15% I feel like I'm more like 80% of DF climbing speed. Very steep hills are just a grind. Don't have many of those. Where I feel like I lose the most to DFs on climbing is on those punchy rollers - short relatively steep hills that on a DF you'd carry lots of momentum off the decent and then rise out of the saddle for a short stint of 10-20 seconds to power over the top. Of course I'm still building top end speed so the carrying momentum thing is improving. But also learning the point on those rollers when it pays to sink back into that big, comfy seat and power through the climb. In short, I'm more than holding my own with my DF buddies.

 

[LarryOz]

Hills . . . On moderate hills (up to about 10-12%) I am at least as fast on the S40 as I was on DFs - maybe a bit faster. I'm getting better as I develop my 'bent legs. From 12-15% I feel like I'm more like 80% of DF climbing speed. Very steep hills are just a grind. Don't have many of those. Where I feel like I lose the most to DFs on climbing is on those punchy rollers - short relatively steep hills that on a DF you'd carry lots of momentum off the decent and then rise out of the saddle for a short stint of 10-20 seconds to power over the top. Of course I'm still building top end speed so the carrying momentum thing is improving. But also learning the point on those rollers when it pays to sink back into that big, comfy seat and power through the climb. In short, I'm more than holding my own with my DF buddies.

Shows how different we all are. On the short hills that you say you loose to DF's I seem to excel. I can bomb down them so fast that I can almost carry full speed (or at least 20mph back up them). Obviously it depends on how short and steep they are. Anything over 6% that are longer than say 1/4 a DF with equal fitness will beat me every time. Of course I will catch him on the downhill or flats.

 

[paco1961]

My biggest problem on those short hills is that I’m not yet up for screaming down the downhill at 40mph so there isn’t much momentum to carry up the next hill. Getting there slowly but 28mph is my current max.

 

[benphyr]

It took me a while but I realized today that on a reasonable hill that I had forgot to shift so went did an instantaneous 0-200rpm - it didn't throw me off at all. I was not going very fast but was in a quite low climbing gear, got distracted by some kids shouting or butterflies, clouds, or something and was coasting easily twice as fast down the other side of a small hill on the path. And after that I didn't even shift the wrong way!

 

[Osiris]

It's been several weeks now that I've been doing a mix of riding my road bike and V20 recumbent, so I've had time to do a lot more comparisons and have a lot more hard data to go on.

The first thing that surprised me is that the road bike doesn't require nearly as much effort to go fast on as I seem to remember from four years ago. Using the same Garmin Vector 3 on both bikes, I see that at speeds below 25 mph, the V20 doesn't have an enormous aerodynamic advantage. Maintaining 25 mph takes only about 30 watts more on my road bike than on the Vendetta. My current FTP is somewhere in the low 280's, so going 25 mph isn't much of a strain, but for some reason I can go at or near full power for much, much longer on the V20 before I tire out. Even though pedaling at 500-600 watts doesn't feel like its putting more strain on my muscles, they just seem to tire out much sooner on the road bike. Something feels decidedly unnatural to me now when pedaling in a bent forward position with my hands in the drops. It's as if my brain is sending the right commands to my muscles, but they're just unable to react accordingly. This is particularly true at the top of the pedal stroke, where I feel very strong on the V20, but very weak on the road bike.

The other difference is that riding a roadbike hard takes a lot of upper body muscle to keep your lower body stable, whereas on the V20, all my muscles from the hips up are perfectly relaxed. There is obviously some use of the arms to pull/push to counteract pedal steer, but it's hardly noticeable. I may have done permanent damage to my lower back years ago when I was weight lifting, so now I'm feeling some lower back pain after a hard effort on the road bike, which I don't experience on the V20 even after some really hard climbs or sprints. Because of he aforementioned problems, I'm going to reserve my road bike for more relaxed rides rather than giving in to my impulse to go really hard on certain segments. I'm a speed junky, so the ability to travel at high speeds is absolutely indispensable to me. If I had to rely solely on my road bike to get the sort of adrenaline rush I get from the V20, I probably would have given up cycling long ago.

Overall the experience has just confirmed that recumbents are much better riding machines generally, but there are a couple of areas in which road bikes excel. One of them is visibility. When seated on the road bike, I feel like I'm up on a ladder. I can easily see over hedges, cars, and fences, and I can turn my head almost 180 degrees to obtain a much larger field of vision than would be possible on the Vendetta. Road bikes are also ridiculously easy to ride by comparison. Even if you forgot to downshift, it's not much of a problem getting started in the wrong gear by just standing on the pedal. Keeping your balance is just a matter of shifting to one side or the other, so there's no danger of falling over when starting from a stop or an incline in the wrong gear. It also allows me to climb very steep hills at speeds below 1 mph if necessary, whereas on my Vendetta I start weaving all over the road at speeds below 4 mph. I was also surprised that I could still perform track stands after all these years, though I can't think of any practical use for them.

 

[paco1961]

Bottom line for me . . . despite all the difference here and there, the biggest advantage of a DF is stability at high (>25mph) and low (<below 5mph)speed. Everything else falls in favor of the S40. Aero advantage of the CB (or any aero advantage when it comes right down to it) over any kind of DF is minimal below 20mph. Plus, the only DF that gets the kind of ooohs and aaaahs as an S40/V20 is a 6kg carbon minimalist steed that I admit makes me too go weak in the knees . . . but I'd probably not want to take bombing down a mt at 50mpg!

 

[dtseng]

For cycling on the cross-island highway (elevation 3275 meters) in Taiwan, I will always use my 7 Kg steel framed road bike. For a light person like myself (body weight 55 Kg), the weight of the bike is a critical factor when climbing the mountain. If they could make FWD/MBB bikes sub 8 Kg, that would be a different story.

 

[LarryOz]

My biggest problem on those short hills is that I’m not yet up for screaming down the downhill at 40mph so there isn’t much momentum to carry up the next hill. Getting there slowly but 28mph is my current max.

Yeah - when you bomb down at 50+, it is amazing how much easier the next hill is!

 

[LarryOz]

I was also surprised that I could still perform track stands after all these years, though I can't think of any practical use for them.

There is a reason they are called "track stands" and not "stop-light stands", or "street stands". I just crack myself up sometime! haha

 

[jond]

The only advantages I see for my 7 kg wonder bike is it’s weight up very steep inclines. And for my vendetta set up horizontal boom extreme slow speed stability.

But the latter is fixable with setup and practice. Did I tell you I don’t love big big hills.

As far as lookers go I’ve grown to love the lines of cruzbike. I know which looks fastest standing still. That mbb is so sexy svelte .

In every other aspect the vendetta is the demonstrably superior machine and at half the cost too.

I only want two more cruzbikes

In the end I am blessed for having a choice.