Experience Thread: A noobie getting into a specialized vado 5.0 IGH

[mschwett]

…

I don't, that's the point. If I am lucky, I am about to go out for a ride in a few minutes. Assuming I can, I will have *just* enough time to get on the bike and do a 10-12 mile loop between meetings. I literally don't have time to change, get stuff together, put it on (clothes, straps.... etc). This is why a chest HRM is too much. For every minute I need to prepare to go, or do things when I get back, is one less minute of ride time.

Anyone trying to fit daily riding into a 40-50 hour work week when they have young kids would understand this. These bike experiences *are not designed for the busy casual rider*.
…

i beg to differ a little bit here. started from a similar point of view but found that once you get into the routine, it’s quick. i change clothes (if required for the type of ride) and grab the bike and go in a few minutes. the other end is a bit slower with the need to shower or at least rinse off. taking off apple watch and putting on HRM doesn’t even take 15 seconds.

i have two kids (4 and 11), work more than full time as a principal in a global firm, my wife works too, and ride around 500 miles a month, with every single non-utility/commute ride logged.

i also typically bring my bike shoes and clothes to work every day that i ride my road bike, and if an hour or two opens up in my schedule i just go. always need to be ready to seize the moment, which is why i totally agree that it can’t be a whole big thing to get ready and go. except for special rides, throwing on cycling clothes and grabbing the bike can be very quick once you get everything dialed in. the most annoying thing to me regularly is having to top up the air in my tubeless road tires, they lose a few PSI every day!

 

[rayray]

REI purchase page says it. And while retailers aren't always accurate on this stuff, it does seem to align with the way bolt got replaced among other things.

Never trust REI!! I’ve seen several items they’ve listed as discontinued, when in reality it just means they don’t carry it. Items are listed on their site to draw people in. Most dishonest practice ever!

 

[dynamic]

And, that ride has been canceled. It is an example of why the timing of preparation is *so important*. I was running a bit behind and thrown off by needing to unexpectedly finish something before I leave and the colder weather forcing me to prep gloves and get a bit more bundled. I also didn't put my bike pants on this morning because I was taking the car in for service and didn't think I would get a ride at all. I *skipped* putting them on now to "save time" (and also because I thought they would be a little thin for the cold wind out there). I was already on the edge of not being able to make it back in time. Well, I hop on the bike, and 10 seconds in, I break my belt guard because my pants caught. Now, these aren't relaxed pants, they just aren't super slim (like my kuhl bike pants). I really wasn't expecting to have a problem as I did with relaxed fit jeans. I had to stop and take the belt guard off. And, if I were to go, I would absolutely need to change into my bike pants. And the ride would need to be cut back dramatically.

So, no ride for me today. That is the reality of biking availability time of my life. Instead of going on a "shorter" ride I used that time to talk to the LBS about getting a replacement part. (Apparently specialized is out of stock for the part). They are looking to see if a 3rd party one can be used.

So, when I say, I don't want to spend any more time on pre/post routines, this is why. I simply don't have the leeway for the unexpected as it is. Let alone *more* prep time. If I had started on time, I *might* have had time to get the guard off *and* put on dedicated biking pants. But honestly, probably not. Not to mention that I would *love* to up the miles on these rides. Which simply isn't possible at the moment.

For me, the moral of the story: if you don't have time for the dedicated biking pants, don't go.

This ride would have been my first ride with my arkel metropolitan. I have mixed feelings about it from a design perspective. From a build perspective, it is outstanding. Hopefully I will get some riding in this weekend.

If anyone knows of a 3rd party chain/belt guard that would make it much harder to get your pants caught, I would love to know about it.

 

[dynamic]

Never trust REI!! I’ve seen several items they’ve listed as discontinued, when in reality it just means they don’t carry it. Items are listed on their site to draw people in. Most dishonest practice ever!

It's not the only site that has them discounted for this. Even wahoo direct has it discounted currently. Anyway, it's not *solid* info, but if they are about to replace it, I don't want the current one.

 

[dynamic]

My last meeting of the day got canceled. So I biked to town to get a few things. Just a quick trip using the arkel metropolitan for a bottle of wine and some kid tylenol before it was time to pickup the kids. RWGPS got completely messed up. Part of it was my fault. Either way, I don’t have a record of this ride. (3.5 miles max)

My only complaint about the arkel is I don’t love how it fits the vado rack. I actually attached it to my extra rack just to see that I am not crazy. The vado rack is fit snugly to the bike, so it’s much shorter in height and is larger and blockier rails. The cam-lock system is just a bit trickier to secure on this rack. And the bottom bungie secure strap thing hangs below what it would clip to. You can shorten the bungie but it’s so much shorter that the bungie hook can’t go through the loops on the bag that keep the bottom from bouncing. You can help this a bit by mounting it on the top rails but the cam-lock is a bit trickier. Ultimately it *is* very nicely secured. But not as simple or quick as on the axiom rack. Other than that, this bag seems amazing. Having a waterproof outer pocket and a large inner with thin laptop pouch and additional pockets is perfect. This thing is going to live on my bike. One weird thing: the velcro flap that covers the cam lock system when used as a shoulder bag has nowhere to go. I feel like I am missing something it should tuck into or roll up. Likewise, the shoulder strap has to be stored somewhere. The other downside could be if you have to adjust the cam-lock system to switch between bikes. If you did need to, this would be a very frustrating pannier. But if one configuration worked well enough on all racks, then it’s a non-issue.

The flaws of using a smartphone are adding up! Collecting my thoughts on that and will post later.

 

[mschwett]

… I break my belt guard because my pants caught. Now, these aren't relaxed pants, they just aren't super slim (like my kuhl bike pants). I really wasn't expecting to have a problem as I did with relaxed fit jeans. I had to stop and take the belt guard off. And, if I were to go, I would absolutely need to change into my bike pants. And the ride would need to be cut back dramatically.

So, no ride for me today. That is the reality of biking availability time of my life. …

this is so weird ! is this a drawback of having a partial chain cover? of the three bikes i ride, two have totally uncovered chains and one is completely enclosed. i ride the road bikes to work with their uncovered chains in jeans or a suit all the time. if this is a common risk, maybe get one of those elastic bands to tuck in the pants leg? i see a few commuters with those, gotta be easier than changing pants.

 

[Camasonian]

i beg to differ a little bit here. started from a similar point of view but found that once you get into the routine, it’s quick. i change clothes (if required for the type of ride) and grab the bike and go in a few minutes. the other end is a bit slower with the need to shower or at least rinse off. taking off apple watch and putting on HRM doesn’t even take 15 seconds.

i have two kids (4 and 11), work more than full time as a principal in a global firm, my wife works too, and ride around 500 miles a month, with every single non-utility/commute ride logged.

i also typically bring my bike shoes and clothes to work every day that i ride my road bike, and if an hour or two opens up in my schedule i just go. always need to be ready to seize the moment, which is why i totally agree that it can’t be a whole big thing to get ready and go. except for special rides, throwing on cycling clothes and grabbing the bike can be very quick once you get everything dialed in. the most annoying thing to me regularly is having to top up the air in my tubeless road tires, they lose a few PSI every day!

My daily commute is 25 miles or 12.5 miles of suburban riding each way.

If I drive the car it is 17-20 minutes depending on the lights and traffic
If I ride it on the Vado on Turbo it is 33-37 minutes depending on the lights.

So riding the Vado basically puts an extra 15 minutes onto my daily commute each way. Of course if I had to pick up and drop off kids during the commute like I used to then it obviously wouldn't work. But my kids are all old enough to get themselves to school. I have panniers on each side. One side holds my work backpack and laptop. The other carries a change of work clothes. Work shoes I keep at work along with a complete change of clothes in case I forget something. Takes me 5 min to change and get ready for the day at work. I'm a science teacher and I just wheel the bike into my school and park it in the secure stockroom attached to my classroom lab.

Honestly the only time I do recreational riding on my regular road bike is on nice weekends and during the summer. I'm also into sailing so my weekends I do as much or more sailing as riding.

 

[dynamic]

get one of those elastic bands

Bought one yesterday at the LBS.

But yeah, I have partially de-belted my belt and broken my guard on separate rides. And, I believe that’s a 100% failure rate with pants that were not bike pants (or shorts). Crazy. Turns out I can’t ride this bike in normal clothes. I was nervous the bike pants would catch on the open belt for my town ride yesterday.

 

[dynamic]

My daily commute is 25 miles

I work from home. I don’t have a commute to give me my miles. People think that gives you more time. Not really once you have kids.

Of course if I had to pick up and drop off kids during the commute like I used to then it obviously wouldn't work.

The plan was to do this by bike. I actually was doing this on the current with the weehoo trailer until I got into a bike accident with my 8 year old in the trailer and the trailer’s buckle system failed. No one was seriously hurt, but my wife and I decided that our kids were not going behind bikes for now. At least not in the weehoo. We are considering a honey bee for the younger one but the older is on his own bike now. Problem is he can’t handle the hill into town yet. So I can’t even ride with him in and back up on his own bike.

So, I am relegated to squeezing real rides in while the kids are in school or the wife will give me an hour or two sans kids. This is how I know I won’t be crossing the 25 mile mark in a single riding day anytime soon.

Sailing is awesome. My sister has a catamaran she wants to live on. Forget the weekends.

 

[Avg_Joe]

Apple Fanboi everything must conform to Apple......l33t software dev angry other sw doesn't work the way he'd design it for his own personal needs...no time to fuss, but untold hours writing the same thing over and over == no need to check this thread again.

 

[dynamic]

no need to check this thread again.

Then what’s the point of this comment?

 

[mschwett]

Bought one yesterday at the LBS.

But yeah, I have partially de-belted my belt and broken my guard on separate rides. And, I believe that’s a 100% failure rate with pants that were not bike pants (or shorts). Crazy. Turns out I can’t ride this bike in normal clothes. I was nervous the bike pants would catch on the open belt for my town ride yesterday.

wow. this makes me seriously doubt converting my utility bike to a belt. i have the kit ready to go, but have been holding off since the install looks tricky. it involves removing the chain cover, because supposedly you don’t need it with the belt drive!

 

[dynamic]

wow. this makes me seriously doubt converting my utility bike to a belt. i have the kit ready to go, but have been holding off since the install looks tricky. it involves removing the chain cover, because supposedly you don’t need it with the belt drive!

I don’t know if this is belt specific. I know when I did use chains I hated them in part for all the de-railing and chain specific issues. Putting a chain back on the cogs was the one thing I could do from a young age. As long as nothing was bent. It’s also possible the guard was the problem. My jeans kept slipping behind the guard and then was blocked to come out and pulled into the belt. I think these pants just caught the corner of the guard and snapped the plastic (possibly weakened by the de-belting incident)

 

[Rollegourmet]

Hello derek,
I wonder if it will be better for you to get a Vado 5 SL equipped and bringing back your IGH.
It is a light, fitness bike.
The bike does not have a display computer attach to it so you will add your own.
By doing this, I believe you will be able to have all the datas you need.
It does not come with a belt and no automatic shifter but you do not ride that much because you are busy and this way you do not have to worried about which pant to wear and breaking the belt.
Also, what about getting a Sena R2 road cycling helmet, Bluetooth helmet, that will allow you to get direction directly to your hear or will allow you to listen music.
This is just my opinion.
What do you think?

 

[BEC111]

How are you getting cadence?

I’m not getting cadence data into Strava or Ride with GPS. I hadn’t realized it until this discussion. I also realized that I hadn’t missed it.

I use cadence captured by my TCD while riding as a simple means to monitor my riding performance from a cardio POV. And as an alert for changing gears when I’m not paying attention to what my legs are telling me.

I don’t care if I don’t see my BPM while riding. That info is more useful for post ride review in Strava and more importantly, Apple Health. My heart rate hasn’t been a concern while riding unless it’s getting too high. My Apple Watch can alert me to that so viewing it in real time doesn’t matter to me.

All of this is a change. A year or so ago I too was extremely frustrated by the same data capture issues. I’d gohe so far as to posit that an e-bike is really a computer on two wheels with an electric motor. Just as my car is a computer on four wheels with an internal combustion engine. I was terribly disappointed that Specialized didn’t appear to get this, though as Stefan points out they do a better than the other OEMs. They’re closed now I guess, but since they don’t have an upgrade path to the MCU I won’t find out since I’m not about to buy a new ebike at this time.

 

[BEC111]

Don't get me wrong BEC but your use of Apple Watch for e-biking reminds me of fooferdoggie who rides his Bosch E-Bikes but uses a cycling computer for ride data (because he cannot get the data he needs from his e-bikes or rather is not interested to get the data)

When I first started ebike riding a few years ago, I was very desirous of getting al the data there was. That’s when I was lamenting Specialized weaknesses. BLEvo answered my needs for data quite well and I was reasonably satisfied with using my iPhone, though having it on my handlebars was worrying.

For this past year I’ve evolved. It started when Trek bought my preferred LBS so I couldn’t go there for specialized specific help. I took advantage on the change and bought a left over TCD at a big discount from them. Now my phone resides in my pocket. If I need turn-by-turn directions I put on an earbud so I can hear them. (My Apple Watch does have a speaker but it’s not audible over road noise. Especially if there are cars.

So you’re right. I’m no longer particularly interested in all of the data for now. Since we’re talking about computer technology this inevitably will all change. Oh well. The economy will grow.

 

[dynamic]

get a Vado 5 SL

I strongly considered it. But even the vado 3.0 was a lot harder to get up my hill. On my 5.0 I have not tackled it at less than 50% microtune. And that only happens on a very good day. This is still stronger than the SL at 100% if I understand correctly. And I do hills where lacking the 5.0 power would be problematic, both from a power perspective and a battery life perspective (not to mention length of ride). Then at some point I am going to start hauling the burley nomad with groceries. Or possibly kids again. SL may be a recipe for battery anxiety.

I don’t think SL changes the connectivity situation. At the end of the day, a bike computer is the only thing that is capable of combining all the data with the fewest restrictions on either bike. As long as I am willing to use a separate HRM, strava and a bike computer, any of these ant+ bikes will use all of the data ant+ supports (does microtune settings come through on a bike computer? Don’t know, could be mission control only) and put the pieces I want into apple health. Then I can choose to use other things on top of that. But that must be the base.

Also, I love belt, automatic and radar. Honestly, I am going to struggle not having these on other bikes. Automatic in particular likely helped in adjusting to clipless pedals. When I started using clipless, I only had to worry about that. The bike took care of everything else. And still does. All I have to do is decide how hard I want to pedal.

That said, when fitness allows I would love to be on a lighter bike. SL could be a step on the way there.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Sure you do not need a SL Derrek.

 

[mschwett]

…

I don’t think SL changes the connectivity situation. At the end of the day, a bike computer is the only thing that is capable of combining all the data with the fewest restrictions on either bike. As long as I am willing to use a separate HRM, strava and a bike computer, any of these ant+ bikes will use all of the data ant+ supports (does microtune settings come through on a bike computer? Don’t know, could be mission control only) and put the pieces I want into apple health. Then I can choose to use other things on top of that. But that must be the base.

SL connectivity is identical. bike computer is a good choice for you. you live in a cold place, want the bike ready to go at all times with minimal setup, and the computer is a much more robust bridge between the ANT+ world and the larger internet than cable + iphone is. leave the computer on the bike, paired via ANT+ (which is way less fussy than BLE in my experience) and get whichever HRM suits your fancy - there are wrist and chest ones that will pair with either mission control or the bike computer. most support both BLE and ANT+. even if your bike computer is wi-fi only, it’ll automatically upload to strava when it gets within range of your home or office wi-fi.

i haven’t seen a ANT+ LEV field for “motor power percentage,” likely the way that’s managed is too specific to individual manufacturers for them to have bothered standardizing it. with the LEV profile you will get good battery info, rider power, cadence, speed.

you might also find that a HRM plus mission control gives you what you want except navigation. again, it’ll upload to strava automatically, which will go into apple health. (you might have to open the app to trigger that, not sure.) you’ll have rider power, cadence, heart rate, speed, position. but you’ll have to live with mission control as it gets worse/better with each update, and navi in a separate app. the way i did this if i need navigation (almost never) is i start both RwGPS and MC at the beginning of a ride, with no sensors connected to RwGPS except the phone’s location service, of course. i have both set to keep the screen on at all times, and just flip between them with a swipe when needed. it’s really not any more trouble than changing from one screen of info to another within the app, it’s just an up-left swipe instead of a left swipe…

worth a try before buying a computer since you need the HRM anyway.

 

[dynamic]

live with mission control as it gets worse/better

This is quickly becoming a no. And there are a couple of simple reasons. We all know the disadvantages of smartphones in the winter. I have one more: I have a corporate profile on my phone that prevents me from disabling auto-lock. This means, typically, I can’t run the phone with screen on all the time. You know how that will go with winter gloves. Even touch screen friendly ones.

Today there was a road closure for my route and I had to re-route. I stopped, killed navigation on rwgps and opened route planner to try and find a similar distance and time route. I did. From my understanding, the bolt would have required the phone to re-map. The roam *could* but isn’t great at it without the phone.

This means, the phone definitely needs to be present and accessible. But, ultimately if the experience is re-map on the phone (ideally with offline downloaded maps), then go, it’s fundamentally the same.

If I need the phone anyway, it seems like bolt 2 really may be the better option.

Mission control just frustrates me every time I use it.

This is an example of why I want the data: The cadence selector on the bike has a large influence on how I ride. I have been experimenting with pushing faster RPM with lower settings, or just setting the cadence selector higher than I typically want to pedal. So, today, I ran in “fast” which corresponds to an 85 rpm cadence target for the bike. And I was really surprised at the results. So, it felt like I could maintain moderately high power for much longer. A lot of the climbing felt easier. But I have zero data to back that up. I do understand that 85 rpm is supposedly very good for both the motor and human side of the bike.

Also, I road through one of the most beautiful tree canopy dirt roads I have ever seen because of this re-route. Great ride!