Anecdata from the BMJ

[hellymedic]

Shock Horror!
Super snazzy lightweight blingbike does not shorten single doctor's cycle commute.
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6801.full

[clarion]

[mrcharly-YHT]

He spent £950 on a bike but still used flat pedals, not clipless? 

[MattH]

And the Marathon Plus tyres won't help much, either 

[hellymedic]

And the Marathon Plus tyres won't help much, either 

True but he's not done too badly on the Visitation score.

[Tom B]

he doesn't appear to take into account days differnces in commuting time caused by being knackered, hungover, eating too much or too little breakfast, running late, knowing he had plenty of time ...

[Greenbank]

he doesn't appear to take into account days differnces in commuting time caused by being knackered, hungover, eating too much or too little breakfast, running late, knowing he had plenty of time ...

By randomly choosing his bike in the morning with the toss of a coin you would expect him to commute with a hangover roughly the same number of times on the steel bike as the carbon bike, same for the other scenarios...

[andygates]

IME, a flash bike makes it nicer, not necessarily faster.

It is faster on the open road.  Most commutes don't have a lot of that...

Niceness is reason enough.

[mattc]

His methodology looks pretty sound, but the data would always be improved by having more data points.

What is interesting is that his data is leagues better than anything ever quoted on an interweb forum, when debating the merits of this or that frame material or spoking pattern. So good on 'im!

[Tom B]

By randomly choosing his bike in the morning with the toss of a coin...

Thanks, Greenbank! 

[ed_o_brain]

When I had a carbon bike, it was much faster to commute on than the steel equivalent in my stable.

Might have to start an experiment of my own...

[Karla]

PDM, do you know this guy?

[pdm]

PDM, do you know this guy?

Yes,
I know him well.
I had a preview of the article before it was sent in too but did not make any "helpful suggestions". 
He has been cycle commuting for about 2 years now IIRC. I guess you can also blame the M+ tyres on me - I introduced them to him when he complained about all the fairy visits caused by the state of Sheffield roads.....

[ian]

Purely anecdata, but I have a tank bike that I usually commute into London on. Probably weighs about 18 tonnes kilos. Last weekend, the tank bike's gear cable broke (at the bottom of the hill, and whilst I was fully laden with half the contents of Waitrose, so thanks to the capricious gods of metallurgical fate for that), and I have yet to replace it. So, instead I have been using the skinny 9-ish kilo bike for the commute. I can't argue that it feels a lot faster and I always assume on this basis that it was a lot faster, and I was hurling myself through the streets of south-east London like I had shot out of the end of the Large Hadron Collider. But I have noticed that it's taking exactly the same treacling amount of time to commute.

So, I'm in agreement, there's really little tangible difference between the Chunkmeister General and my more svelte hipster hugging hybrid. Which reduces the number of excuses I have to not replace that gear cable.

[David Martin]

His methodology looks pretty sound, but the data would always be improved by having more data points.

Apart from the distinct seasonal variation in the data. His averages cover all seasons and show virtually nothing. He need to do a correction such that each month is normalised. So his confidence limits are probably vastly overstated.

..d

[rower40]

Purely anecdata, but I have a tank bike that I usually commute into London on. Probably weighs about 18 tonnes kilos. Last weekend, the tank bike's gear cable broke (at the bottom of the hill, and whilst I was fully laden with half the contents of Waitrose, so thanks to the capricious gods of metallurgical fate for that), and I have yet to replace it. So, instead I have been using the skinny 9-ish kilo bike for the commute. I can't argue that it feels a lot faster and I always assume on this basis that it was a lot faster, and I was hurling myself through the streets of south-east London like I had shot out of the end of the Large Hadron Collider. But I have noticed that it's taking exactly the same treacling amount of time to commute.

So, I'm in agreement, there's really little tangible difference between the Chunkmeister General and my more svelte hipster hugging hybrid. Which reduces the number of excuses I have to not replace that gear cable.

+1.  My Soho Trek is stored awaiting parts at present, so I switched to the Dawes SuperGalaxy for the week before the SNO. It felt quicker, but not even Concorde is going to make much difference on a 3.5 mile journey.

[RichardD]

There's a big difference in my commute times depending on how hard I feel like pushing that day. Recently I've been aiming at target speeds so being on a slower bike would make me push harder to make the difference.

I think that only riding flat-out will accurately show up the bikes' performance. Come the spring, when the road bike can come out to play, maybe I'll make some comparisons.