No matter what I decide about which bike to bring to Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR) 2026, a few things are pretty firm in my mind One is electronic shifting.
But Electronic Shifting is so Unreliable
I work in a busy bike shop I see a lot of broken bikes. The most common shift problem I see are cable tension, bent derailleur hangers, and broken cables. Even if I account for how many more mechanical than electronic shifters we sell, it is not even close. Electronic shifting breaks less, period.
In all the bikepacking trips that I have done, the only derailleur or shifter failures I experienced were mechanical. Once was my fault for poor maintenance, and the other was my fault for forcing a shift on a jammed derailleur. My fault or not, I was left in a single gear for the rest of those trips.
But a Famous Racer Had a Battery or Charger Problem
The famous racers run at the edge of reliability and performance, while I am much lower on the performance scale. When I look at the failures of electronic shifting in the front of big ultra-endurance events, I can’t find any firm statistics. In the days of mechanical shifting, the bikes arriving at the end of Tour Divide or its border-to-border predecessor often suffered from various shifting problems. Folks didn’t really make note of mechanical shifting issues, but occasionally did admire the racers with the cleverness to finish on an unintentional singlespeed. I amn’t saying that everything electronic is foolproof, but neither was mechanical. My old guy hands get sore from mechanical shifting after 5 days on the bike, and the SRMR is going to take me at least 10 days.
Last time around, I brought 3 spare batteries and a charger. This time, I will likely do the same. If all 4 batteries run out, and the charger fails, then I have a history of singlespeeding to fall back on. I have mission-critical electronics, if my bike computer and my phone both stop working, it is doubtful I will be able to follow the course. If my lights won’t light my way, then I will only be able to progress in daytime, and there isn’t enough of that for a slow guy like me. The shifting is not important enough that I would be willing to compromise it even if I thought it was less reliable to go electronic.
But What Advantage Does it Bring?
There are three obvious advantages that I see. First is the lower effort. I know that the effort to shift modern mechanical setups is minor, but it is cumulative, and I will be better off with the minimal effort to shift electronically. Second, is multiple shifters. I can pair a second shifter to a single derailleur to allow me to shift from my aero (not so mush aero as resting) extension bars as well as from the base bar where I would usually shift from. The last big advantage is the reliability that is gained from having the shift motor only. push as hard as it pushes before giving up. On mechanical systems, the natural instinct is to push a little harder on the shift paddle when a derailleur is reluctant to change. These rage-changes have an unfortunate side-effect of breaking things. Electronics, on the other hand have no emotion, and only push as hard as the manufacturer intended.
But the SRMR is Very Long
Yes, it is, and the finish rate is often around 50%. Of the reasons for scratching, the top 3 are sickness, injury, and exhaustion. Occasionally, a frontrunner will scratch because of a derailleur/shifting issue, but these are folks who are looking to place high, where I am just looking to finish. Should it come to pass that I scratch, it is a near certainty that it will be my body that has not been up to the task rather than my derailleur.
- the caveat to the above article, is of course winter. I have not found electronic shifting that I am confident will make any shifts below -25ºC, even though I have tried, many times. This article is about the SRMR, and if temperatures fall below -20ºC, there will be much bigger problems to deal with.
