When I was busted stealing my daughter's (significantly lighter) headlight for the Alpine Classic, she accused me of becoming a weight weenie.
Weight Weenies are a bunch of cyclists obsessed with saving every gram on their bike. And I mean obsessed. Weight Weenies do crazy stuff. Replace brakes, saddles, stems, bottle cages & handlebars, often at vast cost trying to shave a few grams off their bike. Great example - my mechanic told me the other day about a bloke he knew who spent $1200 (not to mention a heap of hassle) to get the paint stripped from his frame - weight saving about 100 grams.
Occasionally weight weenies have even been known to their bike with a drill trying to make it lighter. Behold the drillium groupset:
Thankfully drillium was consigned to the weight weenie dustbin when it was proven any weight gains were swallowed entirely by aerodynamic losses. (not to mention obliterating any warranty or resale value for your componentry)
Actually the whole aerodynamic thing has sucked a lot of air out of the weight weenie movement. It's long been proven that bike weight isn't the be all and end all of bike performance. That said, weight weenies are still very much a thing.
So back to my daughter's (wild) accusation. It must be said if I'm a weight weenie, I'm possibly the world's worst weight weenie. I'm 90 kilos and am riding a mid range big standard aluminum bike. Most weight weenies scorn anything other than blue chip carbon customized to hell, and have to run around in the shower to get wet.
(Granted though, my swapping of headlights has an element of weight weenie to it).
So how much will the famous lighter headlamp save me up Mt Hotham? Using bike calculator if I go up Hotham at 150 W, it's take me 171 minutes, 58 seconds. 100 grams less, and that drops to 171 minutes, 43 seconds.
15 seconds. That's precisely 2/3 of 3/8 of fuck all. Even I was rather underwhelmed with that. Weight weenie my arse.
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