Quote Originally Posted by nscrbug View Post
I agree with Kiwi. And like I said in my post above, I'm in the same boat as you dravens, except I'm using Shimano Ultegra shifters. I am seriously looking into the new Ultegra Di2 electronic shifting. It's due out in mid-September. Although I did test ride a bike with SRAM Force on it, and I thought it was a huge improvement over the Shimano shifting...so that is the other option I'm looking at. Either way, it's an expensive switch for sure. But I agree, that I think somebody should come out with a women's specific shifting mechanism that doesn't require a super long "throw". I also firmly believe that, at least in my particular case, the shifting is heavy due to the way the cables are routed underneath the bar tape on all of these newer bikes. My older Trek has the old style 105 shifters, where the cable exits at the inner side of the shifter, and I can shift my big ring with 1 finger...the difference is THAT huge.
The SRAM shifters don't have as long a "throw" as my Shimano triple does, and the response is immediate -as soon as you move shift lever, the derailleur starts moving, there is no slop or "take up".

As far as the cable routing goes, I think you've probably hit on the big problem with shifting on newer bikes. The amount of resistance caused by the extreme bends resulting from routing the cable along the bar under the tape has to be pretty high. When I replace my handlebar tape, I intend to experiment with the routing just to see if I can make it even easier to shift.

Jean