Marginal Gains Cycling Podcast, Presented by Silca

Would your motorcycle chain benefit from an afternoon in the chain wax spa? If you use a gel packet as an improvised tire boot, how much will it affect your bike's performance? When using the Rule of 105, should you be using the rim width at the brake track, or the widest point of the rim as your measurement? And for those of us carrying lunch, clothes, and a computer to the office as we commute by bike, how can we be more aero? Josh bravely answers all these questions...and for one of them, even does so definitively. Don't miss this astonishing episode of Ask Josh Anything!

Aerocoach's business is to help athletes improve their aerodynamic performance, through testing, coaching, and equipment. Josh and Xavier Disley get into a wide-ranging discussion of aerosensors, hype vs data, the need for wind tunnel standards, and so much more. This is an in-the-weeds episode you Marginal Gainer supernerds will not want to miss. NOTE: A prior version of this episode gets cut off partway through the episode. If it shows in your podcast feed, please skip it and listen to this version instead.

Russ Roca  - founder and host of the YouTube Channel the Path Less Pedaled - is our guest. The Path Less Pedaled has become a place to learn about the non-competitive side of the cycling world . Russ has produced hundreds of videos that focus on using bikes to carry stuff, explore, cruise, travel, ride comfortably and yes he has a couple on chain waxing and finding the right tire pressure. We talk with Russ on how he went from 2-packs a day to two wheels, the search for the right gearing, wheel size, the rebound of the road bike, Aluminum’s comeback, his love of Marginal Gains and knowing when they apply to him.

Rob Britton is an accomplished pro road cyclist who has  turned  to the off-road scene in the second half of his career. He’s been doing the Lifetime Grand Prix and other mass start events but he is also taking on ultra endurance challenges. This summer it was an event called Badlands:  Longer than Unbound XL, more climbing than an Everest Challenge and a landscape that blows the mind. Rob takes us through the unique challenges to body and bike this race presented. He talks about trying to scarf  down a jumbo size bag of chips, getting hit by birds, using Jensie’s voice to push through the pain and how a fresh chamois is a marginal gain….   

Josh, Hottie, and Fatty take on your questions in this, our 101st episode of the Marginal Gains Podcast (we forgot to check that we hit 100 episodes -- and 1,000,000 listens -- last time). From contemplating the aerodynamic benefits of chain guards to analyzing terrifying moments of physics in action when riding a high speed descent, to raising our collective eyebrows at the new 750d wheel size, we continue to give credence that we will take on any cycling question and boldly answer, "it depends."

Industry legends Dave Koesel and Stephen Doll join Josh for a discussion about the Stromm track bike, a frame and fork aiming to take advantage of recent UCI tube shape restrictions being lifted. If you love wind tunnels, marginal gains, and engineers getting into the weeds with other engineers (and let's face it, we know you love all these things), this is the episode for you.

If you think the stories you've heard about the 2023 Unbound are crazy, wait 'til you hear Kristen Legan's story of her XL win. She focused on this race this year, and her preparation and dedication will resonate with any endurance Margingal Gainer. Kristen's joined in this episode by Nick Legan: author of the popular book Gravel Cycling, Unbound vet, top-tier mechanic, and Road Brand Manager with Shimano. Enjoy this is deep dive into bike setup, mental marginal gains and thick, sticky mud.

We take our mission of making a big deal about the little things very seriously in this episode, where we talk about whether there's any actual basis for the superstition behind where you rotate the wheel to before inflating a tire. We then move to the admittedly more pragmatic questions of how much of a draft an aero rider provides to the riders behind them, the low-hanging gains for DH racing, and the problems with racing a 1X setup on the road. And that's not even remotely close to all (even though we could have talked about each of these questions for a full hour).

For Silca’s E-commerce manager, Travis  Verhoff, the 2023 edition of Unbound has been a bit of an ongoing science project. In this episode of Marginal Gains, we dig into Travis' expectations, last-minute changes, and key learnings from this experiment...and after all is said and done, what he would change and whether he'd ever race this monster again.

You've no doubt heard Josh mention Slowtwitch.com many times on this show.  It's one of the key places he goes to share ideas and get feedback. But Slowtwitch is more than just a place. It’s a person too. The site was founded by Dan Empfield in 1999, and remains publisher to this day.  But before Slowtwitch even existed, Dan was a competitor. He did his first Triathlon in 1978 and competed in the first Ironman Kona in 1981. You may also know Dan as the man behind Quintana Roo. That stack and reach thing we all use now: that came from Dan’s work. We get into all of that and more with our guest this episode:Tri Hall of Famer, Slowtwitch founder and Publisher Dan Empfield