Track Wheels
Other than the rider's position (meaning the aero drag of the actual rider), the biggest aero improvements can be made on wheels.
Track wheels are different from road wheels
First, they have to be secured using a nut and bolt type system. They cannot use a quick release skewer.
The rear dropouts are horizontal, meaning you can move the hub fore and aft. Most road dropouts are vertical so no horizontal movement - you need much less force to hold a wheel in place in a vertical drop out versus a horizontal one. Because of that, although there are front wheel skewer adapters, in the rear it's generally best to have a very strong nut-bolt system, else the wheel will move under pressure, usually shifting sideways so that the tire rubs the frame. Alternatively some dropout screws, designed to limit axle movement within the dropout, will keep the wheel from moving. With such bolts a rider might opt to use a lighter nut-bolt system.
Second, track wheels have two threaded sections on the rear wheel, one for a single cog, with a reverse thread on top of that for a reverse thread lockring. The cog screws on normally, and when you pedal your pedaling action tightens the cog. Believe it or not, it's possible to unscrew that cog, if you backpedal hard, or skip and skid the rear wheel while backpedaling. Therefore the reverse thread locking is critical - it prevents back pressure from unscrewing the cog. It actually tightens if you manage to start unscrewing the cog. Also, for safety reasons, it's illegal to use a hub that doesn't have a reverse threaded lockring.
Although old fashioned road freewheel hubs are threaded the same as a track cog, the lack of a reverse lockring bit means you can't use a simple road freewheel hub on the track. Rear track hubs are unique.
Rear track wheels are also very narrow, 120mm from outside the locknut to outside the locknut. Rear road wheels are much wider, 135+mm. So you can't use a road rear wheel for track without a lot of work. You'd need to narrow it up and add that reverse lockring thread.
Front wheels are easy. They are the same width at the axle as a road hub, 100mm, and with a track adapter skewer, you can use pretty much any road front wheel on the track. There aren't any extraordinary forces on the front wheel so no issues using a skewer adapter system that clamps with a force similar to a quick release skewer.
Rolling resistance, comfort, and rigidity
Since trackies aren't worried about comfort, you can get away with quite narrow tires. Narrow tires are generally more aero, so I'll need to get a few 19mm and 21mm tires.
Also, since tracks are relatively smooth, and tire deflection is wasted energy, track riders tend to ride with a lot of air pressure in the tires. No need for big, cushy riding tires. They'd only absorb some sprint energy better utilized to driving the bike forward.
Likewise, because tracks tend to be sheltered a bit, control in crosswinds is less critical. U shaped rims aren't as critical, and in fact, for indoor tracks, many riders will use a disc front wheel, something completely unmanageable if riding out on the road.
Apparently, and I've yet to verify this, lateral stiffness is a thing, with significant G-forces acting on the rider on the banking. My early T-Town memories don't seem to reflect this but I was probably going too slow.
Wheel Aerodynamics
I did some extensive research on track racing wheel aerodynamics. This basically meant watching countless track videos on YouTube while riding the trainer. It also involved perusing some of the time trial forums to see exactly what people are using, what they've found to work.
I also wanted to work within the experiences I had, meaning riding in some wind (2020 Nationals is at an outdoors track), front disc wheels (I had a 24" front once), and my budget. I love cross-tailwinds with my tall wheels because I can fly. I figure the same applies for the track, but I'll get about 80 meters of flying on the longest of straights before I'm turning again. I know front disc wheels are hard to control. And my budget it limited.
Remember that the front wheel is responsible for about 2/3 of the aero drag of the wheels. It also has a massive effect on handling, since it acts as a lever to turn the bars. The rear wheel is less important, but it affects handling very little. On the road my approach has been to use the tallest rear wheel available (90mm for the Stingers) with the tallest front wheel I can handle in moderate wind (75mm for the Stingers). In really windy conditions I'll use a shorter front wheel to improve control, dropping to a 45mm front wheel or even a non-aero 26?mm wheel.
With that in mind this is what I've gathered, with a "Wanted" list for each section.
Disc Wheels
The fastest wheels are lenticular (lens shaped) disc wheels, meaning they're a bit wider at the hub than at the rim. Viewed from above they're sort of lens shaped, like a flatter contact lens. These sail best when in an indirect headwind and they sail really well in a cross-tailwind.
The problem with a front wheel is that it catches massive air, like massive. On a 24" disc wheel I got blown across about 10 feet of road, almost into oncoming traffic, and I was going only 25 mph. With a full size 700c disc wheel, I would image it's only really usable indoors, with zero wind. My online findings seem to confirm this. Therefore a front disc will be for a different year, when Nationals is indoors, or, if conditions are absolutely ideal, for 2020.
Basically I'll see if I can pick up a lenticular front disc for a steal. Otherwise I'll let it go.
For the rear wheel, again, lenticular discs are fastest, but the flat discs (Zipp) are very close. For me I think it'll be virtually indistinguishable. The biggest issue with Zipp rear discs is that the track axle is pretty much nonexistent, unavailable. It's like the unicorn of wheel parts. List price is almost $300 so it blows the budget out of the water.
This meant I was searching primarily for semi-affordable rear disc wheels, like Corima and Fast Forward. If I could pick up a Zipp track disc I'd do that, as long as it was substantially cheaper than a lenticular.
Wanted: Lenticular rear disc. If a cheap Zipp rear disc shows up, so be it. Less expensive lenticular disc front wheel (since it won't be used much, if at all, in 2020).
Budget: $1000 lenticular rear, $650 flat rear, $900 lenticular front. I'd want a second rear wheel, probably a bargain flat disc wheel, as a spare.
Three and Five Spoke Wheels
With front discs being virtually unusable except indoors, I need to have a low spoke count front wheel. The fastest front wheel on the road has been the HED3, previously known as the Specialized TriSpoke. Fortunately for me this wheelset was my secret weapon back before aero wheels were a thing, and I have both a tubular front TriSpoke and a clincher front TriSpoke.
(I have a TriSpoke rear freehub and a 105 freehub fixed gear adapter but I learned that the TriSpoke uses a Dura-Ace freehub so the adapter doesn't work. I'm waiting to use that fixed gear adapter though as it's a unicorn item.)
I looked into 5 spoke front wheels but found that although they were stiffer, they weren't necessarily faster. If it was all about speed, the TriSpoke should work.
The only drawback with the TriSpoke is that it's flexible. How that affects me on the track I'm not sure, but for now the most cost effective approach will be to use the TriSpokes I have now.
Wanted: nothing, but if TriSpoke is too flexible maybe a 5 spoke front wheel.
Budget: nothing
Spoked Front Wheels
The final wheel for my track racing quiver would be a spoked front wheel, like the wheels I use for the road. I have a couple of them so I figured if the TriSpoke wasn't rideable I could use my Stinger7 front wheel.
At the worst I might invest in a Stinger9, a 90mm front wheel. I don't know if it would get me that much extra speed - it probably wouldn't - so the 7 should be a good fallback wheel. It's be fine in a mass start track race since that's what I use in mass start crits.
Plus I can use a 7 in a crit. I'd really want a 7, with the TriSpoke or a front disc my preference on the track.
Front wheels can be secured using a bolt-nut combination that looks like a quick release skewer without the lever. I have one set already, may need to buy another couple fronts. This means I can buy a quick release hub front wheel without worrying about track legality.
Wanted: A second Stinger 7 or a Stinger 9.
Budget: $500
Trainer wheel
Believe it or not I don't have a clincher track rear wheel, meaning one with the fixed gear and the narrow spacing of a track bike. I have two rear track wheels right now, one so bad its hub consists of steel sheets pressed together; I won't use that one. The other is nice, a 32H Suntour Superbe Pro hub wheel. It's laced with a narrow tubular rim right now.
I'd like to get a 24H clincher rim, a cool looking one with stickers on the side (no braking surface), and lace it onto the hub. It'd be 16 spokes on the drive side, cross 2, and 8 spokes radially laced on the non-drive side. I've done this before when building 24H rear wheels for the road and it works great. I just have to work out the spoke lengths for such a build.
This wheel would be my warm up wheel, trainer wheel, and ultra emergency spare rear wheel.
Although I'm not sure why I'd need a spoked clincher front wheel, I have a Eurus front wheel with a new rim, sitting in my inventory for literally 10-12 years. I'll lace over the new rim - it should work as a wheel for rollers, maybe for warm ups, or out-on-the-road experiments.
Wanted: 24H disc brake clincher rim
Budget: $100
Conclusion
I have some wheel shopping to do.
Showing posts with label aero. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aero. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Plan 2020 - Dolan DF4 Frame
The first step in the whole process was to get a frame. Track frames are different from road frames, and I'd want the frame to be UCI compliant as well, something my beloved Tsunamis are not.
Here's the big thing with track frames: the bars are really narrow.
Wait. Bars? You were talking about frames. Why the bar comment?
It all comes down to that. Nowadays a regular track bar is 33-35 cm wide. In contrast, on the road it's normal to see 40-42 cm, although that's coming down a bit. I'm running 41 cm bars on my Tsunamis, and they look narrow under me.
The ultra narrow track bars cause a problem though. The reach to the bar is shorter, due to the reduced width. If you're reaching 3 cm to each side that's 3 cm of length. If your bars are 3 cm narrower on each side, you have 3 cm more arm "left over".
You need a longer frame.
Therein lies the problem for me. I'm already pushing it with my odd proportions, short legs, long torso. My frame is basically a 50 cm (high) frame, a size which normally comes with a 52-53 cm long top tube. However my frame has a 56.5 cm top tube, and, additionally, has a steeper seat tube angle. That pushes the top tube forward, effectively making it about a 57-57.5 cm top tube. And my head tube, at 12 cm total height, requires a 3 cm drop stem.
I can't commission another Tsunami because they're not UCI compliant.
So I Googled all the track frames I could find. I looked at their frame geometry charts. I needed to find a UCI compliant 50 cm seat tube frame with a 74.5-75 deg seat tube angle, a 57 cm top tube, and a 12 cm head tube. It had to be aero. It had to be a real track frame, not a fixie bike.
And I needed to get it done for less than $2000 shipped.
Dolan DF4
The only frame I could find was the Dolan DF4. A world class frame, no less, raced professionally. Aero design. 50 cm seat tube. 57 cm top tube. 74.5 deg seat tube angle. 12 cm head tube.
It was exactly what I needed.
And with a pre-season discount, it fell way below my $2000 budget, shipped.
Dolan DF4 - size 57 (!!)
It's their second largest size frame.
First, the frame is UCI certified. That means I can do official events, like Worlds. At the very least I know that the frame is okay for Nationals, which is my focus.
The second most important feature of the frame is the geometry - it almost mirrors the Tsunamis. Very long top tube (0.5 cm longer), steep seat tube (1 deg shallower), and short head tube (same height as Tsunami). Although I'll have to move my saddle up within the seat post clamp, I'm at the UCI limit on the Tsunami for a sprint bike (zero setback to nose of saddle) so I should be fine on the Dolan.
The third most important feature, because without it I'd have eliminated it from consideration, is that it is aero. No vintage round tube stuff - this frame is meant to go fast.
After that it's all gravy.
Aero tubing, aero seat post
The aero isn't obvious until you turn the frame. The frame gets real thin real quick.
Cut out for rear tire, but tire will not be as close as on the Tsunami
In my research I've found evidence that a cut out will save a fraction of time, and help a less than optimal rear wheel. In less scientific findings, I think it looks cool. Either way, this frame has a rear wheel cut out.
Rear dropouts.
I need to order spares.
Carbon fiber isn't very strong - it's just a plastic reinforced by carbon fibers. So contact points under pressure tend to be constructed of metal inserts. The rear dropouts on a track frame see a lot of abuse, so those are metal. I forgot to order spares. I'll want to get some dropout screws while I'm at it.
Potential Weak Points
I saw two potential weak points in the frame when researching online. The first was that the rear dropouts are pretty short. This helps handle a problem the longer dropouts had, where the weight of the rider bend the top part of the dropout up. This caused the opening to widen, making it difficult to secure the wheel. If you look at the geometry picture in the Dolan site, you can see the older DF3, with the super long dropouts.
The problem with a short dropout is that you can't move the wheel very much to take up chain slack. This means getting multiple chains for various gear combinations.
Since I prefer a very, very short chain stay, I'd probably want to keep the rear wheel as forward as possible anyway, so this "weakness" becomes a non-issue for me.
The second weak point is the seat post clamp. It's a wedge clamp with a very small bolt, with a very high torque rating. There are reports that it's virtually impossible to tighten enough to deal with jolts, like when you hit a seam on the track.
The workaround is pretty easy - you put a piece of pipe in the seat tube. Cut to the right length, the seat post will just sit on it. I have ideas for that "pipe" as well, so that critical cutting shouldn't be an issue.
So that's the frame. Next up, the wheels.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Tactics - Struggling With Peak Speeds
Peak speeds. One racer, after my leadout on Tuesday, said something about how fast Cat 3s can go. Really, though, anyone can do it. I'm no pro and in fact a strong Cat 2 could do what I did for many laps at a time. So what's the secret?
There are a few things you want to think about, to execute. I alluded to the possibility of a fifth post but I incorporated two things into this post, position/aero and peak speed workouts.
Position
First is your position on your bike. If you look at a picture of a Cat 5 race you'll see a lot of racers up high, hands on the hoods, torsos upright, racers that look like parachutes.
Then look at a pro race, or even a reasonable Cat 3 race. You'll see racers much lower, much more aerodynamic.
The above picture is a nice example of some random corner in a random crit. The Expo rider to my right is a former New England Crit Champion (I was in that race and he and his leadout man just rode away from the front of the field, super impressive). He's been racing for eons. The rider in front of him is also a long time racer, I think he won the Cat 1-2 Killington Stage Race one year (and he's won all sorts of minor races). Both are on the drops, in total control, low on the bike, aero, efficient, and comfortable.
(I thought of putting a Cat 5 picture up but I think that a racer would take it personally if it was them, and every picture of a Cat 5 race out there are pictures of racers who are people. Therefore I avoided putting up a Cat 5 example picture.)
Low Position
That lower position isn't only more aerodynamic, it's more powerful. Think about how you pedal when you're climbing a hard hill. You lean forward, your nose to the stem. You're doing this instinctively because by leaning forward you can recruit more of your major muscle groups.
The same "lower position" obviously happens on flatter roads. By leaning forward more you recruit those same muscles, increasing power, but now there's the added benefit of aerodynamics on the typically-higher flat road speeds.
Last Tuesday I did a big effort on the last lap. I averaged about 450 watts for about a minute. The power level is in the realm of possibility of many of the riders in the race. You may be able to do it for 20 or 30 seconds but if you can do that then the power is there. More importantly that means the speed is there also.
By getting aero you gain more power and you reduce the power required to go fast.
One major aero rule - an angled surface, like an angled forearm or an angled bike tube, is LESS aero than a similar shaped vertical surface, like a vertical forearm or a vertical bike tube. This is why TT bikes have vertical seat posts - it's more aero than having a 75 degree seat post (or whatever non-90 degree angle).
Likewise it's more aero to have your upper arms vertical and your forearms parallel than to have your whole arm at an angle. Finally, relating to your bike on a Tuesday Night Race, a bottle in your seat tube cage is more aero (vertical) than the same bottle in your downtube bottle cage (not vertical).
Now I'm not saying you should be sitting upright so your torso presents a vertical surface, but if you're down low, you're struggling, and you have a choice of hand positions or bottle positions then you can make a more educated choice.
With that in mind let's move on.
Position Basics
Some position basics:
1. The most aero position is where you have your forearms parallel to the ground, which usually means the hoods. However your drops give you more control. If you're in the field then you want to be in the drops to retain more control. If you're at the front, if you're willing to gamble your collarbone that nothing will happen for a bit, then the hoods are fine.
Note: since it's a gamble to be on the hoods I prefer to be on the tops. Much of my riding is either on the tops or the drops, even in races, except when climbing. The tops offer no illusion of braking ability so it's a more honest position. It's a real gamble to ride on the tops in the field, but that's what you're doing, in a sense, when you're on the hoods in the field. Either way it's a gamble. I tend to gamble on the tops more than most people. I can ride on the hoods, I've ridden a lot on the hoods over the years, but the drops are my safe choice.
Note: in a related safety related thing I always wear long fingered gloves. It took one fall for me to skin my finger tips before I wore them all the time. Any glove helps absorb the scrubbing energy of pavement, but those with finger tips will save your finger tips.
2. Elbows in. There's no reason to have your elbows splayed out like chicken wings. You'll see some sprinters do it in the sprint but even they tend to keep their elbows out of the wind. One of the most amateur things you'll see in the lower category races are elbows out.
3. Knees in. Unless you have a physical problem (typically a hip problem), there's no reason to have your knees splayed out like chicken… wings. Their knees don't splay out so anyway...
4. No hip rocking. It's easier getting low when your saddle is a bunch higher than your bars. However your saddle-pedal relationship is sacred. You need to make changes relating to aero/position up front. Raising your saddle and making your hips rock is not the way to get more aero. When you fit a bike you start at the cranks/BB, go up to the saddle, then forward to the bars. If you need to change your torso angle etc without major changes then you need to do it using the front end of the bike.
There's a great piece on position, equipment, and aero drag somewhere, and for the life of me I can't find it. Basically someone did a test on a rider (I think a pro rider, and I think it was on a track). They had the rider use different positions and different equipment, from riding a road bike on the tops with a road helmet to the other extreme of riding a TT bike on TT bars with every aero bit of clothing available. Each set up had a power number next to it, telling you what sort of power you needed to put down to go a given speed (40 kph? 45 kph?). The numbers fell dramatically, from something like 400w to somewhere in the 290w range. That's huge, and it drops the power numbers from pro-level to Cat 3 level (and I daresay a lot of Cat 4s and 5s as well).
*edit - I sort of found it thanks to Mike R in Texas - it's in the German magazine Tour and it's from 2006 or 2007. The pertinent stuff is below and I can't find the original page/link for credit:
By the time you get to the bottom of the list he's down below 300 watts to hold 28 mph. That's closer to a mortal wattage.
In a related thing there was some article (that I really can't find) about Colby Pearce. He's a compact rider, a former domestic pro in the US. His claim to fame was his extraordinary time trial efforts. He wasn't that powerful for a pro - he could put down 311 watts for an hour for real - but he held the US hour record at 50.191 kph or 31.3 mph (that's when he did the 311 watts for an hour).
You'd think that going 31+ mph would take massive wattage but he did it at a touch over 300 watts. That's a very sane number, something that some Cat 3s could probably hold. The trick was his aero-ness, if you will. Holding 311 watts is one thing. Holding 31.3 mph is another. To put it in perspective he spun a 55x14 at about 100 rpm for that hour.
Also if you read some of the articles carefully about this or that aero bike, you'll see that the front-facing products (bars, head tube, front wheel, front brake) make the most aero difference. In fact I saw an interesting tidbit when Bontrager introduced their aero drop bar - the bike they showcased (a Trek 7-Series Madone) was supposed to save you something like 120 seconds over a 40 km time trial but the bars alone were responsible for 23 of those seconds (drag reduction 14g). The integrated brakes saved a bit more, 16g of drag, and the frame 60g. Although I don't fit a Madone, although I don't have a bike that can take an integrated brake fork like that, I can install a Race Lite Aero bar. I haven't, but it's a thought.
A final thought on aero stuff - if you want to use just one aero wheel, a front one gets you more aero benefits. However most aero wheels compromise your bike's handling a bit, so you have to think about that. I used to race with a front Tri-Spoke (aka HED3), a front wheel that's acknowledged implicitly to be the fastest front wheel you can get, at least based on all the Tour riders that use them in time trials even if they're not sponsored by either Specialized (the original wheel rights owner) or HED (the current wheel rights holder). My rear wheel was a plain spoked non-aero wheel for a year or two, the only 10 speed wheel I owned at the time.
Pinning Your Number
The racers that know me joke about how many pins I use on my numbers but there's a reason. I read somewhere (again, I don't have a link) about how much drag a flapping number generates. It's huge.
More importantly it's absolutely and totally preventable.
You know how I keep harping about using the drops? It's so that you can reduce the chances of losing control of your bike, at least compared to being on the hoods or the tops. If you know that in, say, every 1000 times you have to brake hard on the hoods you'll crash five times and but you'll crash only once on the drops, why wouldn't you just use the drops all the time?
Likewise if you know that your flapping number is worth 20 watts or whatever, then why don't you take care in pinning your number? It's free power and it's available every single time you pin your number on.
As a promoter I bring my own pins, sometimes a box of them (1440 pins when the box is new). Since I'm using my own pins I don't have to worry about taking a lot of pins from the promoter, plus I reuse the pins. The trick is to keep them dry so if my jersey is wet I immediately unpin the thing. Rusty pins ruin your jersey so toss them in the metal recycling bin before you resort to using them for some reason.
Other Clothing
Although not a factor in most summer races, if you're wearing some cold weather gear - a vest, a jacket, stuff like that - make sure it's not flapping around. You give away power hand over fist when you do stuff like that.
At the 2014 Bethel Spring Series I wore a jacket in the first race. Not a big deal I thought, it's cold and I want to be warm. I noticed a lot of other racers used jerseys and vests. Then I saw a picture of myself with the jacket on. It had flattened out in front, turning into a huge wall of fabric.
I decided that I had to avoid wearing the jacket. It fit a bit loose and I needed something a bit more snug. I decided to wear a rain shell under a long sleeve jersey. That handled the wind (brutal when it's cold) and the long sleeve jersey snugged everything up. I raced warm and a bit more aero from then on. I happened to do a bit better but I think there were so many other factors that I can't give credit to my slightly more aero clothing.
Note: Motion attracts attention like nothing else, at least for humans. Humans see motion, color, then shape. Therefore when I train out on the road I try to use my blinky tail lights (mine have a super bright LED in the middle), I try to ride properly, and, if the weather is under, say, 70 degrees F, I wear a vest. I don't zip it up until I actually need it, which is more like the 50 degree F range, but I wear it if I can bear it. It flaps nicely in the breeze and helps attract motorists' attention. I got this tip via a motorcycle and bike riding EMT/fireman who once had an absent minded driver (he was thinking of his tennis game, this in the age before cell phones and such) ram full speed into a fire truck parked next to a burning house, firemen all around, and hoses and such leading to the burning house. I figure the flapping vest helps me train a bit harder even in my "always low always aero always riding in the same position as I race" training rides.
Um, Power?
Okay, so that's all great you say but you were going to tell me about how to go really fast, how to deal with peak speeds. What about power and all that? I mean, don't I have to pedal the bike in some special hard way to go fast, to hit those peak speeds?
No.
Okay, yes, you do, but it's a pretty straightforward process, at least it seems to be based on the feedback I've gotten on my technique detailed below. Basically you can do it now, it's just that you haven't practiced, you haven't done it fresh, so you don't know you can do it. Remember the power number I rattled off somewhere before? 450 watts. Everyone can go 450 watts, it's just a matter of how long you can go at 450 watts. For me it's about a minute. For Taylor Phinney he can do more (488 watts) for a touch over 12 minutes. Whatever it is for you, that's what I did to go "really fast" that last lap of the Tuesday race last week. You can hit that power and more and often it requires no actual training, just some practice when you're fresh.
It sounds a bit odd but it actually takes practice to sprint really fast. If you don't believe me then try sprinting when you're descending at 45 or 50 mph. It's really hard to apply power to the pedals at that speed without losing control of the bike. Likewise if you're used to topping out at 35 mph then responding to a 40 mph tailwind attack will take you into foreign territory. You need to familiarize yourself with those speeds so that they are at least familiar to you if not second nature.
The basic idea goes as follows:
1. Determine your Maximum Optimal Sprint Speed. I'll explain in a bit but basically this is the fastest you can go on a flat road in optimal conditions.
2. Compare your MOSS to various race pace numbers. I'll rattle some off to help you out. Average speed, 25 mph. Attack speeds, 28-32 mph. Normal fast sprint speeds 36-40 mph. Very fast sprint speeds 40-44 mph. I'm not going to go into the hyper fast sprints that you see on training rides, which can exceed that 44 mph mark.
3. See where your MOSS lines up. Ideally your MOSS will be in the normal sprint speed range, 36-40 mph. If it's below 32 mph then you need to work on it.
The problem is if your MOSS is low, like 30 mph. This puts your optimal max speed within a normal attack speed, a speed that even I can keep up for a lap at the Rent. That means that if someone attacks hard you'll struggle to stay on the wheels.
Your goal is to increase your MOSS as much as possible.
For more on MOSS go here. I explain how to find your MOSS and how to train it.
For inspiration here's a video that I put together from a bunch of training rides while out in SoCal in Jan/Feb of 2011. It includes two MOSS efforts, both about 49 mph:
(Tip: for YouTube videos embedded in the post you can click on the YouTube logo to view it on YouTube. It's bigger and you can see more. I've reduced the embedded size to fit smaller browsers so it's not great to watch the clip in embedded form.)
More Power Stuff?
No, no more training stuff. For most riders they already have the ability to deal with peak speeds. They sabotage themselves without realizing it and end up getting shelled when they could have stayed in the field.
Remember the prior posts, some of the points made there.
First, don't work unless you need to work. If you do a massive 25 mph pull for a few laps, great, but when you pull off and someone attacks at 32 mph, will you be able to follow? If the answer is no then you shouldn't do that 25 mph pull.
Increase the attack speed to 35 mph. Will you be able to follow?
Next, if you can't follow at 32 mph attack, what do you do? Do you pummel yourself at 28 mph, losing ground at 4 mph, hoping the attacker blows up? No, you don't, unless you're one of the last few to react. If you're already spent then you need to rely on others to close the gap for you. It's not always about you.
Of course if it's a teammate then you absolutely do not respond, unless the teammate is your leadout man. Normally if it's a teammate attacking then you ease if you're at the front. You ONLY follow another non-teammate's wheel. If another teammate follows the first one to jump then you wait again. You want to have one teammate go with each counter, with any well placed teammates at the front acting as deadweight at the front of the field.
On the other hand if you look around and see that everyone else is looking around then maybe you'll need to work. Or maybe the attacker will blow up. Whatever happens it's good - you're thinking about it instead of responding like a robot.
Example of Fit + Tactics as Relating To The Rent
So does this all work? Well, I can't make it work every time but I do have an sample size = 1 experiment from the past.
A friend and now-teammate of mine (I refer to him as SOC in the blog, but most of you who race in the area know who he is) had hit a plateau at the B races at the Rent a few years ago. An obviously strong rider, he had trouble doing well at the B race. He got second a bunch of times but couldn't quite win. Until he asked for help I didn't offer it (because that's the way I was taught to do things), but when he asked I think he got a lot more than he realized. I casually mentioned that I might want to change his position a bit. I had some tactical advice as well, but that would follow the fit part of things - without the fit he'd be wasting a lot of energy.
Fit Changes
So we made a major, major change in his fit. We raised his saddle 17 mm, moved it forward 10 mm. We dropped his stem 25 mm (a full inch!) and installed a 12 cm -10? degree stem to replace his 10 cm -6? degree stem. I'm not sure of the angles, I'm pretty sure I was just looking for the longest, lowest stem we had in the pile of "borrowed take-off stems" from the local shop.
Those are some massive, massive changes, and in fact I played it a bit conservative because they were already getting so big. I think I vocalized the fact that I wanted to try a 13 cm or even a 14 cm stem (-17 degree), and if I didn't I was thinking it quietly.
We arrived at the fit just like any other fit - start with the saddle position, finish with the bar position.
I didn't want to change his saddle height much because it would screw up his legs, and by July he had a bunch of miles on his legs. I don't think we changed the height, we just moved the saddle around the arc of the circle defined by his saddle-to-BB distance. This keeps the saddle height the same (as far as the legs are concerned) but rotates the pelvis forward. I think we flattened his saddle out a bit, it might have pointed down more at the beginning. With the saddle position now set we could work on the front end.
(Keep in mind that since we didn't really change the saddle position it wouldn't really affect his leg muscles. There'd be soreness from the other changes but the legs would mostly be the same, except for the heavier emphasis on the glutes and related muscles. This means that any prior training would be applicable.)
For me the goal was to extend the reach so he'd have more weight on his arms while still allowing him to breathe and see normally. It wasn't just "slam the stem" - we actually thought about the changes. He felt comfortable, albeit a bit low, and once he started pedaling he had decent weight distribution between the saddle, bars, and pedals.
The lower and more forward bar position would increase stability in the turns by weighting the front end more. It did slow the bike's turning at walking pace, like if you were turning around on a sidewalk, but once you get over about 12-15 mph the front end of the bike feels super stable. The heaviness of the slow steering so unnerved him that he almost turned around halfway down his 50 foot driveway, but with my encouragement he kept going.
The lower and more forward position also enabled him to recruit more muscles, especially his glutes. This in turn allowed him to exert more power to the pedals.
Finally the longer and more forward position gave him a much lower profile, improving his aerodynamics.
I'm sure that with more fine tuning we could make even more improvements but at that time it seemed like enough.
For the fit I only drew on my past experience, feedback from the rider (before, during and after the fit, the latter in case there were any major problems with the position), and the available parts we had with us. We didn't have any longer stems, no -17 degree stems (zero rise), etc, so we did what we could do given the ingredients we had in front of us.
Tactical Advice
The other thing I told him was that he shouldn't be attacking willy nilly all race long. It's a rehash of some of the stuff in the earlier posts of this set. Sure, he could do the odd move here and there, but if he wanted to win then he needed to learn how to win. I told him to sit and wait and build reserves for the finish. Follow wheels, make sure to keep gaps closed, and meter his efforts. His fitness would get him to the finish, his hopefully improved power bump him up a bit, his better aero let him be more efficient, and finally the better weight distribution on the bike would make it easier on him in the turns. However he had to execute in order to win.
During the course of the next few weeks he raved about his new position. He had more power, more speed, and he felt the bike was more stable in the corners.
So how did it work out?
Result Of The Fit and Advice
The first race out he won the B race.
He won the next B race.
He got 3rd at a very tough weekend race. (When we raced it together as Cat 3s in 2010 he got 2nd and I was almost dead last, and that was the year I upgraded to Cat 2).
He won the next B race. And he finished the A race, which for me is always a challenge, even in the aforementioned 2010 season.
In years after that there was one thing that stood out in particular - He had a sudden flat (tubular tire) in Turn One at the Rent. He'd just bridged to a break so he was probably going about 28-30 mph. Not only did he not go down but he rode for a bit, confirmed he had a flat tire, and then finally stopped on his own. Yes he was on the drops. I have it on helmet cam somewhere but it was so undramatic I haven't even bothered getting a still of the incident.
Also, in 2010, he won an A race outright, something I've never done.
He is still using the same position.
Conclusion
So that's my bit on approaching the Tuesday races at the Rent for a newer racer in the B races. You should struggle the almighty struggle to stay in the field. You have to think a bit about drafting efficiently. You need to think about cornering properly, safely and efficiently in the field. You need to do some exploration of your maximum optimum speed. You should give yourself an honest fit appraisal ("an honest, no BS assessment," to quote some movie whose title/story/theme/etc that I can't remember now.. this inability to remember things is really bugging me).
In 4-6 races you should see a dramatic improvement in your performance. You should be analyzing your races more closely. If you get shelled then you need to think about why you got shelled. It's not just "I blew up". It might be something like "I wasn't on a wheel going into the headwind for 5 laps and I had to sprint for 100 meters every time we exited that turn." With that kind of analysis you can think about how to improve.
Even if you don't get shelled, if you didn't win or didn't help a teammate win then there's room for improvement. Think about where you made mistakes. Did you leave gaps in certain turns? Did you stay left when the wind was from the left, even though you had room to move right? Did you do a hard pull without saving anything as a reserve and then watch the winning move go up the road after you pulled off?
Unfortunately if everyone applies themselves then the races will become that much faster, that much smoother, and perhaps a little bit harder, so when you chase improvements you'll be chasing a moving target.
Ultimately, though, all this results in you being a better, more capable racer. It requires no extra training, save a few efforts to determine your max speed. I haven't said a word about hours per week, about wattage or intervals or cadence or gearing or anything else relating to training. It's partially because I don't know about all that stuff, at least not well enough to talk about it to anyone. But it doesn't matter anyway because you already do all that. Now you can apply all that precious work to your racing more efficiently, more effectively.
The beauty of bike racing is that you can always strive to race better. Our fitness and preparation vary throughout the years, changing year by year, month by month, sometimes week by week. Work, family, school, personal stuff, it can all take a toll on your bike racing. However, once you're at the race and you've pinned a number on and you're lined up at the start then it's time to race bikes. You don't have to worry about anything else. You have what you have, based on your fitness level and experience. You can't change your training now. You also can't dictate what you do in the race - it's not like everyone is going to ease up so you can go 180 watts for the race. When you finally clip in as the race starts it's up to you to go and make the most of it, whatever that might mean to you.
Final inspirational video for you:
The above video includes someone leaving a gap, watching SOC attack and letting others work, following a counter (and then getting countered hard), ending up in the 3rd group, getting gapped off the back of that group, watching the 3rd group catch the 2nd group, team attack, catching the break, lots of attacks/chases, hanging onto wheels, and a field sprint.
(Disclaimer/note: I am putting these posts up in response to some internal requests from individual riders for advice etc. I am not singling out any particular rider or their request, and this advice works for all racers. In fact I'd claim that these pieces offer universal advice for all new mass start bike racers.)
There are a few things you want to think about, to execute. I alluded to the possibility of a fifth post but I incorporated two things into this post, position/aero and peak speed workouts.
Position
First is your position on your bike. If you look at a picture of a Cat 5 race you'll see a lot of racers up high, hands on the hoods, torsos upright, racers that look like parachutes.
Then look at a pro race, or even a reasonable Cat 3 race. You'll see racers much lower, much more aerodynamic.
2012 Keith Berger Crit, Cat 3 race, from my post here.
The above picture is a nice example of some random corner in a random crit. The Expo rider to my right is a former New England Crit Champion (I was in that race and he and his leadout man just rode away from the front of the field, super impressive). He's been racing for eons. The rider in front of him is also a long time racer, I think he won the Cat 1-2 Killington Stage Race one year (and he's won all sorts of minor races). Both are on the drops, in total control, low on the bike, aero, efficient, and comfortable.
(I thought of putting a Cat 5 picture up but I think that a racer would take it personally if it was them, and every picture of a Cat 5 race out there are pictures of racers who are people. Therefore I avoided putting up a Cat 5 example picture.)
Low Position
That lower position isn't only more aerodynamic, it's more powerful. Think about how you pedal when you're climbing a hard hill. You lean forward, your nose to the stem. You're doing this instinctively because by leaning forward you can recruit more of your major muscle groups.
The same "lower position" obviously happens on flatter roads. By leaning forward more you recruit those same muscles, increasing power, but now there's the added benefit of aerodynamics on the typically-higher flat road speeds.
Last Tuesday I did a big effort on the last lap. I averaged about 450 watts for about a minute. The power level is in the realm of possibility of many of the riders in the race. You may be able to do it for 20 or 30 seconds but if you can do that then the power is there. More importantly that means the speed is there also.
By getting aero you gain more power and you reduce the power required to go fast.
One major aero rule - an angled surface, like an angled forearm or an angled bike tube, is LESS aero than a similar shaped vertical surface, like a vertical forearm or a vertical bike tube. This is why TT bikes have vertical seat posts - it's more aero than having a 75 degree seat post (or whatever non-90 degree angle).
Likewise it's more aero to have your upper arms vertical and your forearms parallel than to have your whole arm at an angle. Finally, relating to your bike on a Tuesday Night Race, a bottle in your seat tube cage is more aero (vertical) than the same bottle in your downtube bottle cage (not vertical).
Now I'm not saying you should be sitting upright so your torso presents a vertical surface, but if you're down low, you're struggling, and you have a choice of hand positions or bottle positions then you can make a more educated choice.
With that in mind let's move on.
Position Basics
Some position basics:
1. The most aero position is where you have your forearms parallel to the ground, which usually means the hoods. However your drops give you more control. If you're in the field then you want to be in the drops to retain more control. If you're at the front, if you're willing to gamble your collarbone that nothing will happen for a bit, then the hoods are fine.
Note: since it's a gamble to be on the hoods I prefer to be on the tops. Much of my riding is either on the tops or the drops, even in races, except when climbing. The tops offer no illusion of braking ability so it's a more honest position. It's a real gamble to ride on the tops in the field, but that's what you're doing, in a sense, when you're on the hoods in the field. Either way it's a gamble. I tend to gamble on the tops more than most people. I can ride on the hoods, I've ridden a lot on the hoods over the years, but the drops are my safe choice.
Note: in a related safety related thing I always wear long fingered gloves. It took one fall for me to skin my finger tips before I wore them all the time. Any glove helps absorb the scrubbing energy of pavement, but those with finger tips will save your finger tips.
2. Elbows in. There's no reason to have your elbows splayed out like chicken wings. You'll see some sprinters do it in the sprint but even they tend to keep their elbows out of the wind. One of the most amateur things you'll see in the lower category races are elbows out.
3. Knees in. Unless you have a physical problem (typically a hip problem), there's no reason to have your knees splayed out like chicken… wings. Their knees don't splay out so anyway...
4. No hip rocking. It's easier getting low when your saddle is a bunch higher than your bars. However your saddle-pedal relationship is sacred. You need to make changes relating to aero/position up front. Raising your saddle and making your hips rock is not the way to get more aero. When you fit a bike you start at the cranks/BB, go up to the saddle, then forward to the bars. If you need to change your torso angle etc without major changes then you need to do it using the front end of the bike.
There's a great piece on position, equipment, and aero drag somewhere, and for the life of me I can't find it. Basically someone did a test on a rider (I think a pro rider, and I think it was on a track). They had the rider use different positions and different equipment, from riding a road bike on the tops with a road helmet to the other extreme of riding a TT bike on TT bars with every aero bit of clothing available. Each set up had a power number next to it, telling you what sort of power you needed to put down to go a given speed (40 kph? 45 kph?). The numbers fell dramatically, from something like 400w to somewhere in the 290w range. That's huge, and it drops the power numbers from pro-level to Cat 3 level (and I daresay a lot of Cat 4s and 5s as well).
*edit - I sort of found it thanks to Mike R in Texas - it's in the German magazine Tour and it's from 2006 or 2007. The pertinent stuff is below and I can't find the original page/link for credit:
What I found interesting is that if you skip the major illegal-for-mass-start stuff (TT bars, aero helmet) you end up with a substantial amount of potential aero savings simply by changing position, using aero wheels, and using a few select pieces of cycle wear. This means that you can realize significant savings on your road bike when you compare a "not very low" position to a more aero position. In fact, by going to the drops the power requirement drops almost 60 watts, or about 13%! It's the largest savings of all the possible ones, and obviously it's cheap because it's free.They put Uwe Peschel on a normal bike:Needed Watts for Speed = 45 km/h :Stevens San Remo bike with normal handlebar 465 Watts needed to go 45 km/hSame bike Hands down the drops: 406 watts neededSame bike Easton Aeroforce bar: 369 WattsSame bike Triathlon position (5.5 cm lower bar, saddle forwards): 360 WattsSame bike Triathlon position (5.5 cm lower bar, saddle forwards) andcarbon Tri spoke wheels front and rear: 345 WattCervelo + Tri spoke front 328 WattsCervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel : 320Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel +Giro helmet: 317Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel +Giro helmet + speed suit: 307Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel +Giro helmet + speed suit +saddle 3 cm further back: 293 Watts
By the time you get to the bottom of the list he's down below 300 watts to hold 28 mph. That's closer to a mortal wattage.
In a related thing there was some article (that I really can't find) about Colby Pearce. He's a compact rider, a former domestic pro in the US. His claim to fame was his extraordinary time trial efforts. He wasn't that powerful for a pro - he could put down 311 watts for an hour for real - but he held the US hour record at 50.191 kph or 31.3 mph (that's when he did the 311 watts for an hour).
You'd think that going 31+ mph would take massive wattage but he did it at a touch over 300 watts. That's a very sane number, something that some Cat 3s could probably hold. The trick was his aero-ness, if you will. Holding 311 watts is one thing. Holding 31.3 mph is another. To put it in perspective he spun a 55x14 at about 100 rpm for that hour.
Also if you read some of the articles carefully about this or that aero bike, you'll see that the front-facing products (bars, head tube, front wheel, front brake) make the most aero difference. In fact I saw an interesting tidbit when Bontrager introduced their aero drop bar - the bike they showcased (a Trek 7-Series Madone) was supposed to save you something like 120 seconds over a 40 km time trial but the bars alone were responsible for 23 of those seconds (drag reduction 14g). The integrated brakes saved a bit more, 16g of drag, and the frame 60g. Although I don't fit a Madone, although I don't have a bike that can take an integrated brake fork like that, I can install a Race Lite Aero bar. I haven't, but it's a thought.
A final thought on aero stuff - if you want to use just one aero wheel, a front one gets you more aero benefits. However most aero wheels compromise your bike's handling a bit, so you have to think about that. I used to race with a front Tri-Spoke (aka HED3), a front wheel that's acknowledged implicitly to be the fastest front wheel you can get, at least based on all the Tour riders that use them in time trials even if they're not sponsored by either Specialized (the original wheel rights owner) or HED (the current wheel rights holder). My rear wheel was a plain spoked non-aero wheel for a year or two, the only 10 speed wheel I owned at the time.
Pinning Your Number
The racers that know me joke about how many pins I use on my numbers but there's a reason. I read somewhere (again, I don't have a link) about how much drag a flapping number generates. It's huge.
More importantly it's absolutely and totally preventable.
You know how I keep harping about using the drops? It's so that you can reduce the chances of losing control of your bike, at least compared to being on the hoods or the tops. If you know that in, say, every 1000 times you have to brake hard on the hoods you'll crash five times and but you'll crash only once on the drops, why wouldn't you just use the drops all the time?
Likewise if you know that your flapping number is worth 20 watts or whatever, then why don't you take care in pinning your number? It's free power and it's available every single time you pin your number on.
My number from last Tuesday.
I pin the number on the jersey while it's flat on the ground (or the grass in this case). Start at one corner (I like to use the spot where the pocket and side panel intersect, in this case the lower left part of the number). Starting at that point I know my number will be visible to the sides as well as from above.
I then work my way along the edge (lower edge for me). I start adding pins in the middle, to keep the number from ballooning out. I put those in the black part of the number so they don't screw up any kind of finish line camera.
Finally I finish with a row of pins at the top.
You'll notice that one pin ripped, probably while I was getting the jersey on.
As a promoter I bring my own pins, sometimes a box of them (1440 pins when the box is new). Since I'm using my own pins I don't have to worry about taking a lot of pins from the promoter, plus I reuse the pins. The trick is to keep them dry so if my jersey is wet I immediately unpin the thing. Rusty pins ruin your jersey so toss them in the metal recycling bin before you resort to using them for some reason.
Other Clothing
Although not a factor in most summer races, if you're wearing some cold weather gear - a vest, a jacket, stuff like that - make sure it's not flapping around. You give away power hand over fist when you do stuff like that.
At the 2014 Bethel Spring Series I wore a jacket in the first race. Not a big deal I thought, it's cold and I want to be warm. I noticed a lot of other racers used jerseys and vests. Then I saw a picture of myself with the jacket on. It had flattened out in front, turning into a huge wall of fabric.
I decided that I had to avoid wearing the jacket. It fit a bit loose and I needed something a bit more snug. I decided to wear a rain shell under a long sleeve jersey. That handled the wind (brutal when it's cold) and the long sleeve jersey snugged everything up. I raced warm and a bit more aero from then on. I happened to do a bit better but I think there were so many other factors that I can't give credit to my slightly more aero clothing.
Note: Motion attracts attention like nothing else, at least for humans. Humans see motion, color, then shape. Therefore when I train out on the road I try to use my blinky tail lights (mine have a super bright LED in the middle), I try to ride properly, and, if the weather is under, say, 70 degrees F, I wear a vest. I don't zip it up until I actually need it, which is more like the 50 degree F range, but I wear it if I can bear it. It flaps nicely in the breeze and helps attract motorists' attention. I got this tip via a motorcycle and bike riding EMT/fireman who once had an absent minded driver (he was thinking of his tennis game, this in the age before cell phones and such) ram full speed into a fire truck parked next to a burning house, firemen all around, and hoses and such leading to the burning house. I figure the flapping vest helps me train a bit harder even in my "always low always aero always riding in the same position as I race" training rides.
Um, Power?
Okay, so that's all great you say but you were going to tell me about how to go really fast, how to deal with peak speeds. What about power and all that? I mean, don't I have to pedal the bike in some special hard way to go fast, to hit those peak speeds?
No.
Okay, yes, you do, but it's a pretty straightforward process, at least it seems to be based on the feedback I've gotten on my technique detailed below. Basically you can do it now, it's just that you haven't practiced, you haven't done it fresh, so you don't know you can do it. Remember the power number I rattled off somewhere before? 450 watts. Everyone can go 450 watts, it's just a matter of how long you can go at 450 watts. For me it's about a minute. For Taylor Phinney he can do more (488 watts) for a touch over 12 minutes. Whatever it is for you, that's what I did to go "really fast" that last lap of the Tuesday race last week. You can hit that power and more and often it requires no actual training, just some practice when you're fresh.
It sounds a bit odd but it actually takes practice to sprint really fast. If you don't believe me then try sprinting when you're descending at 45 or 50 mph. It's really hard to apply power to the pedals at that speed without losing control of the bike. Likewise if you're used to topping out at 35 mph then responding to a 40 mph tailwind attack will take you into foreign territory. You need to familiarize yourself with those speeds so that they are at least familiar to you if not second nature.
The basic idea goes as follows:
1. Determine your Maximum Optimal Sprint Speed. I'll explain in a bit but basically this is the fastest you can go on a flat road in optimal conditions.
2. Compare your MOSS to various race pace numbers. I'll rattle some off to help you out. Average speed, 25 mph. Attack speeds, 28-32 mph. Normal fast sprint speeds 36-40 mph. Very fast sprint speeds 40-44 mph. I'm not going to go into the hyper fast sprints that you see on training rides, which can exceed that 44 mph mark.
3. See where your MOSS lines up. Ideally your MOSS will be in the normal sprint speed range, 36-40 mph. If it's below 32 mph then you need to work on it.
The problem is if your MOSS is low, like 30 mph. This puts your optimal max speed within a normal attack speed, a speed that even I can keep up for a lap at the Rent. That means that if someone attacks hard you'll struggle to stay on the wheels.
Your goal is to increase your MOSS as much as possible.
For more on MOSS go here. I explain how to find your MOSS and how to train it.
For inspiration here's a video that I put together from a bunch of training rides while out in SoCal in Jan/Feb of 2011. It includes two MOSS efforts, both about 49 mph:
(Tip: for YouTube videos embedded in the post you can click on the YouTube logo to view it on YouTube. It's bigger and you can see more. I've reduced the embedded size to fit smaller browsers so it's not great to watch the clip in embedded form.)
More Power Stuff?
No, no more training stuff. For most riders they already have the ability to deal with peak speeds. They sabotage themselves without realizing it and end up getting shelled when they could have stayed in the field.
Remember the prior posts, some of the points made there.
First, don't work unless you need to work. If you do a massive 25 mph pull for a few laps, great, but when you pull off and someone attacks at 32 mph, will you be able to follow? If the answer is no then you shouldn't do that 25 mph pull.
Increase the attack speed to 35 mph. Will you be able to follow?
Next, if you can't follow at 32 mph attack, what do you do? Do you pummel yourself at 28 mph, losing ground at 4 mph, hoping the attacker blows up? No, you don't, unless you're one of the last few to react. If you're already spent then you need to rely on others to close the gap for you. It's not always about you.
Of course if it's a teammate then you absolutely do not respond, unless the teammate is your leadout man. Normally if it's a teammate attacking then you ease if you're at the front. You ONLY follow another non-teammate's wheel. If another teammate follows the first one to jump then you wait again. You want to have one teammate go with each counter, with any well placed teammates at the front acting as deadweight at the front of the field.
On the other hand if you look around and see that everyone else is looking around then maybe you'll need to work. Or maybe the attacker will blow up. Whatever happens it's good - you're thinking about it instead of responding like a robot.
Example of Fit + Tactics as Relating To The Rent
So does this all work? Well, I can't make it work every time but I do have an sample size = 1 experiment from the past.
A friend and now-teammate of mine (I refer to him as SOC in the blog, but most of you who race in the area know who he is) had hit a plateau at the B races at the Rent a few years ago. An obviously strong rider, he had trouble doing well at the B race. He got second a bunch of times but couldn't quite win. Until he asked for help I didn't offer it (because that's the way I was taught to do things), but when he asked I think he got a lot more than he realized. I casually mentioned that I might want to change his position a bit. I had some tactical advice as well, but that would follow the fit part of things - without the fit he'd be wasting a lot of energy.
Fit Changes
So we made a major, major change in his fit. We raised his saddle 17 mm, moved it forward 10 mm. We dropped his stem 25 mm (a full inch!) and installed a 12 cm -10? degree stem to replace his 10 cm -6? degree stem. I'm not sure of the angles, I'm pretty sure I was just looking for the longest, lowest stem we had in the pile of "borrowed take-off stems" from the local shop.
Those are some massive, massive changes, and in fact I played it a bit conservative because they were already getting so big. I think I vocalized the fact that I wanted to try a 13 cm or even a 14 cm stem (-17 degree), and if I didn't I was thinking it quietly.
We arrived at the fit just like any other fit - start with the saddle position, finish with the bar position.
I didn't want to change his saddle height much because it would screw up his legs, and by July he had a bunch of miles on his legs. I don't think we changed the height, we just moved the saddle around the arc of the circle defined by his saddle-to-BB distance. This keeps the saddle height the same (as far as the legs are concerned) but rotates the pelvis forward. I think we flattened his saddle out a bit, it might have pointed down more at the beginning. With the saddle position now set we could work on the front end.
(Keep in mind that since we didn't really change the saddle position it wouldn't really affect his leg muscles. There'd be soreness from the other changes but the legs would mostly be the same, except for the heavier emphasis on the glutes and related muscles. This means that any prior training would be applicable.)
For me the goal was to extend the reach so he'd have more weight on his arms while still allowing him to breathe and see normally. It wasn't just "slam the stem" - we actually thought about the changes. He felt comfortable, albeit a bit low, and once he started pedaling he had decent weight distribution between the saddle, bars, and pedals.
The lower and more forward bar position would increase stability in the turns by weighting the front end more. It did slow the bike's turning at walking pace, like if you were turning around on a sidewalk, but once you get over about 12-15 mph the front end of the bike feels super stable. The heaviness of the slow steering so unnerved him that he almost turned around halfway down his 50 foot driveway, but with my encouragement he kept going.
The lower and more forward position also enabled him to recruit more muscles, especially his glutes. This in turn allowed him to exert more power to the pedals.
Finally the longer and more forward position gave him a much lower profile, improving his aerodynamics.
I'm sure that with more fine tuning we could make even more improvements but at that time it seemed like enough.
For the fit I only drew on my past experience, feedback from the rider (before, during and after the fit, the latter in case there were any major problems with the position), and the available parts we had with us. We didn't have any longer stems, no -17 degree stems (zero rise), etc, so we did what we could do given the ingredients we had in front of us.
Tactical Advice
The other thing I told him was that he shouldn't be attacking willy nilly all race long. It's a rehash of some of the stuff in the earlier posts of this set. Sure, he could do the odd move here and there, but if he wanted to win then he needed to learn how to win. I told him to sit and wait and build reserves for the finish. Follow wheels, make sure to keep gaps closed, and meter his efforts. His fitness would get him to the finish, his hopefully improved power bump him up a bit, his better aero let him be more efficient, and finally the better weight distribution on the bike would make it easier on him in the turns. However he had to execute in order to win.
During the course of the next few weeks he raved about his new position. He had more power, more speed, and he felt the bike was more stable in the corners.
So how did it work out?
Result Of The Fit and Advice
The first race out he won the B race.
He won the next B race.
He got 3rd at a very tough weekend race. (When we raced it together as Cat 3s in 2010 he got 2nd and I was almost dead last, and that was the year I upgraded to Cat 2).
He won the next B race. And he finished the A race, which for me is always a challenge, even in the aforementioned 2010 season.
In years after that there was one thing that stood out in particular - He had a sudden flat (tubular tire) in Turn One at the Rent. He'd just bridged to a break so he was probably going about 28-30 mph. Not only did he not go down but he rode for a bit, confirmed he had a flat tire, and then finally stopped on his own. Yes he was on the drops. I have it on helmet cam somewhere but it was so undramatic I haven't even bothered getting a still of the incident.
Also, in 2010, he won an A race outright, something I've never done.
He is still using the same position.
Conclusion
So that's my bit on approaching the Tuesday races at the Rent for a newer racer in the B races. You should struggle the almighty struggle to stay in the field. You have to think a bit about drafting efficiently. You need to think about cornering properly, safely and efficiently in the field. You need to do some exploration of your maximum optimum speed. You should give yourself an honest fit appraisal ("an honest, no BS assessment," to quote some movie whose title/story/theme/etc that I can't remember now.. this inability to remember things is really bugging me).
In 4-6 races you should see a dramatic improvement in your performance. You should be analyzing your races more closely. If you get shelled then you need to think about why you got shelled. It's not just "I blew up". It might be something like "I wasn't on a wheel going into the headwind for 5 laps and I had to sprint for 100 meters every time we exited that turn." With that kind of analysis you can think about how to improve.
Even if you don't get shelled, if you didn't win or didn't help a teammate win then there's room for improvement. Think about where you made mistakes. Did you leave gaps in certain turns? Did you stay left when the wind was from the left, even though you had room to move right? Did you do a hard pull without saving anything as a reserve and then watch the winning move go up the road after you pulled off?
Unfortunately if everyone applies themselves then the races will become that much faster, that much smoother, and perhaps a little bit harder, so when you chase improvements you'll be chasing a moving target.
Ultimately, though, all this results in you being a better, more capable racer. It requires no extra training, save a few efforts to determine your max speed. I haven't said a word about hours per week, about wattage or intervals or cadence or gearing or anything else relating to training. It's partially because I don't know about all that stuff, at least not well enough to talk about it to anyone. But it doesn't matter anyway because you already do all that. Now you can apply all that precious work to your racing more efficiently, more effectively.
The beauty of bike racing is that you can always strive to race better. Our fitness and preparation vary throughout the years, changing year by year, month by month, sometimes week by week. Work, family, school, personal stuff, it can all take a toll on your bike racing. However, once you're at the race and you've pinned a number on and you're lined up at the start then it's time to race bikes. You don't have to worry about anything else. You have what you have, based on your fitness level and experience. You can't change your training now. You also can't dictate what you do in the race - it's not like everyone is going to ease up so you can go 180 watts for the race. When you finally clip in as the race starts it's up to you to go and make the most of it, whatever that might mean to you.
Final inspirational video for you:
(Disclaimer/note: I am putting these posts up in response to some internal requests from individual riders for advice etc. I am not singling out any particular rider or their request, and this advice works for all racers. In fact I'd claim that these pieces offer universal advice for all new mass start bike racers.)
Monday, November 04, 2013
Equipment - Wide Tires vs Aero
A little while back I read a post on "Experiencing Suspension Losses" and it got my mind working a bit. Basically the authors were trying to figure out how much bumps and such affect rolling resistance. Although they use the work "suspension" us roadies shouldn't be scared off by visions of pivot points and swing arms - their test grew out of their findings that tires at high inflation pressures didn't roll much better than tires at lower pressures.
This, as they point out, contradicts the tests done on steel drums measuring rolling resistance. In such tests the higher pressure tires seem to roll more efficiently than lower pressure tires.
In the real world, though, higher pressure tires don't always work better.
In their tests, conducted on smooth roads with rumble strips cut in them, they would ride the same bit of road, on the smooth bit and the rumble strip. They went from need about 180 watts on the smooth stuff to needing an incredible 470 watts (!!!!) to maintain the same speed on the rumble strip.
That's an astonishing amount of additional power. 180 watts, I can do that for an hour. 470 watts, maybe a minute.
Reduce that 470 watts and you'll be dealing with a massive savings in power, enabling you to go just as fast with less effort, go faster for the same effort, go just as fast for longer, or some combination of the three.
My experiences with tire presssures are a bit less precise. I know that if I go a bit too high then my rear tire chatters in a turn. Bouncing off the road means no rolling resistance but it also means I have no traction. Going too low and the tire slides - try cornering on a flat tire and you know what I mean.
Still, though, having raced with higher pressures and lower pressures, I have to admit that I prefer, for a given tire, a much higher pressure than current convention states. A lot of people claim to run 90-100 psi in their 21-23 mm tubulars. Me? I feel uncomfortable below 110 psi and I prefer 120 psi (+5 psi for the rear).
Considering the findings in the link above, it seems that using wider tires would be a huge benefit on bumpier courses, where you have consistently bumpy roads. To me Paris Roubaix or Tour of Flanders comes to mind, or, more locally, maybe Battenkill (which I've never done). I wonder how my tire pressure thoughts, back in the early 90s, affected my overall performance in the Belgian kermesses. I thought 120 psi in 21mm tires was awesome. It probably was, on the paved bits, but it would also explain (partially anyway) why riders blew by me on the cobbles while I rode the relatively smooth concrete gutter.
I can't think of many crits where the road is so bumpy that I spend a significant amount of time on bumpy surfaces. Therefore it doesn't make sense to me to check out the lower pressure stuff. I will think about wider tires, though, since a wider tire will give me more volume to play with.
Shortly after I read the article I happened to watch, for the first time, the 2011 Paris Roubaix. In it Van Summeran solos to victory. I saw at least one article claiming that the innovative "half-skinsuit, half-not-skinsuit" was responsible for a part of his victory. With marginal gains here and there the 5 or 10 watts saved by the speedsuit was supposed to be enough to give him victory.
The article doesn't note the flapping number hanging off Van Summeran's back, something which probably sucked up a bunch of the wattage saved by the speed suit. In fact, in the manufacturer's site, they specifically talk about the importance of "aero number attachment", pointing out a fairing of sorts to cover the top edge of your race numbers.
I will give the speedsuit this - Van Summeran was in the early break so he did a reasonable amount of work during the smooth paved bits before the cobbles began. It wasn't like he was totally protected for the first 150km of the race, not seeing any wind, and therefore unable to really take advantage of something like a tight fitting kit. Of all the situations that speed suit would work in that would be one.
I'll also point out that the less sleek numbers sat at the back of his body whereas the speed suit dealt with the front. Aerodynamic stuff works best when it's up front, at least on a bike, because by the time the wind gets to the back it's been chopped up by whirling legs and such. This is why some "aero bikes" see much of their claimed gains coming from the tops of a handlebar or the front brake. A flappy number out back won't affect aerodynamics very much, while just a slightly thinned bar could save you a bit of gas.
Whatever... based on the suspension article above, there is probably a much greater loss in efficiency if he'd ridden the wrong tires (too narrow) or used the wrong tire pressure (too high). Saving a couple hundred watts so he could get a gap is much more important than saving 5 or 10 watts while cruising at speed. For a rough course race like Paris-Roubaix choosing an appropriate tire/pressure appears to be much more significant than using a slightly tighter jersey thing.
Keep in mind this is steady state stuff on rougher surfaces. It may not be applicable to most normal US racing conditions, i.e. a smooth pavement crit with lots of accelerations. In fact, in Paris Roubaix, it may be beneficial for team leaders, those not going for the early breaks, to start the race on normal road bikes, switch them out say 50km before the cobbles, then finish the race off on the wide-tired, low pressure tire bike.
On the other hand for us mortals we don't often get to do a cobbled race, and even if we do we probably don't have the luxury of setting up multiple bikes beforehand. So how does the wide tire, low pressure thing apply to us Cat 3-4-5 crit racers?
There's one image that comes to mind when I think of wide, low pressure tires. It's of a bike throw at the finish of a Cat 3-4 or Cat 4 race at Bethel. One rider is on a narrower tire inflated to higher pressure. The other rider is on a wider tire with much lower pressure. The two riders are separated by a few inches, both of them throwing their bikes.
The wider, lower pressure tire is so compressed that, at first glance, I thought the rider had flatted. The high pressure tire doesn't seem very distorted.
The Bethel course has a few bumps here and there but by far it's mostly a smooth, paved surface. The "wattage savings" hitting literally 5 or 6 bumps per lap is probably not very much (I don't have data, heck I don't even know how to collect that type of fine data). On the other hand I've sprinted, out of the saddle, up the hill on low pressure tires (90 psi for me) and it felt like I was sprinting through mud.
The wide tire, low pressure thing is super significant when dealing with a course which offers up rough roads for its main feature. The aero stuff won't factor in as much, although it still comes into play during the non-rough stuff.
The wide tire, low pressure thing, though, can be misleading when it comes to a mostly smooth course. In those situations the low pressure may in fact significantly increase rolling resistance in all out efforts involving less-than-smooth efforts.
As an extreme example you don't see world champion track sprinters with 28mm tires at 60 psi, and trust me, if they could harness their 2000w-2400w peak efforts a bit better they definitely would. You see them on relatively narrow tires at very high pressure. Granted they're on a relatively smooth surface like wood or concrete. I say relatively because although I haven't raced on a wood track I have raced on concrete (T-Town). I was really surprised to find out that even that world class concrete track wasn't super smooth.
My conclusions are as follows:
- For consistent very rough terrain or rough roads it behoves the racer to use a wider, lower pressure tire set up.
- For smooth roads where there are a lot of out-of-saddle efforts, where there's a high chance of a sprint finish, a normal width, higher pressure set up is better.
- Aero always helps so you should always use, if possible, things like a skinsuit (or speedsuit), snug fitting jerseys, etc.
- Likewise all the equipment in the world doesn't help if you apply a large sail on top of your aero equipment. Billowing numbers, unzipped jerseys, flapping vests, these things will wipe out all the money and energy you've put into your aero profile drop bars or the slightly more aero frame you bought. Take care of the major stuff first and then worry about getting that bar with the wing profile top.
This, as they point out, contradicts the tests done on steel drums measuring rolling resistance. In such tests the higher pressure tires seem to roll more efficiently than lower pressure tires.
In the real world, though, higher pressure tires don't always work better.
In their tests, conducted on smooth roads with rumble strips cut in them, they would ride the same bit of road, on the smooth bit and the rumble strip. They went from need about 180 watts on the smooth stuff to needing an incredible 470 watts (!!!!) to maintain the same speed on the rumble strip.
That's an astonishing amount of additional power. 180 watts, I can do that for an hour. 470 watts, maybe a minute.
Reduce that 470 watts and you'll be dealing with a massive savings in power, enabling you to go just as fast with less effort, go faster for the same effort, go just as fast for longer, or some combination of the three.
My experiences with tire presssures are a bit less precise. I know that if I go a bit too high then my rear tire chatters in a turn. Bouncing off the road means no rolling resistance but it also means I have no traction. Going too low and the tire slides - try cornering on a flat tire and you know what I mean.
Still, though, having raced with higher pressures and lower pressures, I have to admit that I prefer, for a given tire, a much higher pressure than current convention states. A lot of people claim to run 90-100 psi in their 21-23 mm tubulars. Me? I feel uncomfortable below 110 psi and I prefer 120 psi (+5 psi for the rear).
Considering the findings in the link above, it seems that using wider tires would be a huge benefit on bumpier courses, where you have consistently bumpy roads. To me Paris Roubaix or Tour of Flanders comes to mind, or, more locally, maybe Battenkill (which I've never done). I wonder how my tire pressure thoughts, back in the early 90s, affected my overall performance in the Belgian kermesses. I thought 120 psi in 21mm tires was awesome. It probably was, on the paved bits, but it would also explain (partially anyway) why riders blew by me on the cobbles while I rode the relatively smooth concrete gutter.
I can't think of many crits where the road is so bumpy that I spend a significant amount of time on bumpy surfaces. Therefore it doesn't make sense to me to check out the lower pressure stuff. I will think about wider tires, though, since a wider tire will give me more volume to play with.
Shortly after I read the article I happened to watch, for the first time, the 2011 Paris Roubaix. In it Van Summeran solos to victory. I saw at least one article claiming that the innovative "half-skinsuit, half-not-skinsuit" was responsible for a part of his victory. With marginal gains here and there the 5 or 10 watts saved by the speedsuit was supposed to be enough to give him victory.
The article doesn't note the flapping number hanging off Van Summeran's back, something which probably sucked up a bunch of the wattage saved by the speed suit. In fact, in the manufacturer's site, they specifically talk about the importance of "aero number attachment", pointing out a fairing of sorts to cover the top edge of your race numbers.
Van Summeran near the finish, alone.
I will give the speedsuit this - Van Summeran was in the early break so he did a reasonable amount of work during the smooth paved bits before the cobbles began. It wasn't like he was totally protected for the first 150km of the race, not seeing any wind, and therefore unable to really take advantage of something like a tight fitting kit. Of all the situations that speed suit would work in that would be one.
I'll also point out that the less sleek numbers sat at the back of his body whereas the speed suit dealt with the front. Aerodynamic stuff works best when it's up front, at least on a bike, because by the time the wind gets to the back it's been chopped up by whirling legs and such. This is why some "aero bikes" see much of their claimed gains coming from the tops of a handlebar or the front brake. A flappy number out back won't affect aerodynamics very much, while just a slightly thinned bar could save you a bit of gas.
Whatever... based on the suspension article above, there is probably a much greater loss in efficiency if he'd ridden the wrong tires (too narrow) or used the wrong tire pressure (too high). Saving a couple hundred watts so he could get a gap is much more important than saving 5 or 10 watts while cruising at speed. For a rough course race like Paris-Roubaix choosing an appropriate tire/pressure appears to be much more significant than using a slightly tighter jersey thing.
Keep in mind this is steady state stuff on rougher surfaces. It may not be applicable to most normal US racing conditions, i.e. a smooth pavement crit with lots of accelerations. In fact, in Paris Roubaix, it may be beneficial for team leaders, those not going for the early breaks, to start the race on normal road bikes, switch them out say 50km before the cobbles, then finish the race off on the wide-tired, low pressure tire bike.
On the other hand for us mortals we don't often get to do a cobbled race, and even if we do we probably don't have the luxury of setting up multiple bikes beforehand. So how does the wide tire, low pressure thing apply to us Cat 3-4-5 crit racers?
There's one image that comes to mind when I think of wide, low pressure tires. It's of a bike throw at the finish of a Cat 3-4 or Cat 4 race at Bethel. One rider is on a narrower tire inflated to higher pressure. The other rider is on a wider tire with much lower pressure. The two riders are separated by a few inches, both of them throwing their bikes.
The wider, lower pressure tire is so compressed that, at first glance, I thought the rider had flatted. The high pressure tire doesn't seem very distorted.
The Bethel course has a few bumps here and there but by far it's mostly a smooth, paved surface. The "wattage savings" hitting literally 5 or 6 bumps per lap is probably not very much (I don't have data, heck I don't even know how to collect that type of fine data). On the other hand I've sprinted, out of the saddle, up the hill on low pressure tires (90 psi for me) and it felt like I was sprinting through mud.
The wide tire, low pressure thing is super significant when dealing with a course which offers up rough roads for its main feature. The aero stuff won't factor in as much, although it still comes into play during the non-rough stuff.
The wide tire, low pressure thing, though, can be misleading when it comes to a mostly smooth course. In those situations the low pressure may in fact significantly increase rolling resistance in all out efforts involving less-than-smooth efforts.
As an extreme example you don't see world champion track sprinters with 28mm tires at 60 psi, and trust me, if they could harness their 2000w-2400w peak efforts a bit better they definitely would. You see them on relatively narrow tires at very high pressure. Granted they're on a relatively smooth surface like wood or concrete. I say relatively because although I haven't raced on a wood track I have raced on concrete (T-Town). I was really surprised to find out that even that world class concrete track wasn't super smooth.
My conclusions are as follows:
- For consistent very rough terrain or rough roads it behoves the racer to use a wider, lower pressure tire set up.
- For smooth roads where there are a lot of out-of-saddle efforts, where there's a high chance of a sprint finish, a normal width, higher pressure set up is better.
- Aero always helps so you should always use, if possible, things like a skinsuit (or speedsuit), snug fitting jerseys, etc.
- Likewise all the equipment in the world doesn't help if you apply a large sail on top of your aero equipment. Billowing numbers, unzipped jerseys, flapping vests, these things will wipe out all the money and energy you've put into your aero profile drop bars or the slightly more aero frame you bought. Take care of the major stuff first and then worry about getting that bar with the wing profile top.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Equipment - Aero Benefits
In the past I've extolled the virtues of aero road bikes. I felt convinced that aero road bikes would sweep the peloton. In a few years I expected everyone to be using frames with internal cable routing, somewhat built-in stems, and integrated brakes.
I went as far as to order a frame from Tsunami Bikes that I thought would fulfill some of the things I thought important. I couldn't get integrated brakes on my budget, nor could I get some cool faired stem-fork deal, but I could do a few things.
First I got narrow tubing. I later realized that I have such a small frame that the tubing really wouldn't make that much difference but if I was going to get an aero frame I wanted the tubing to be narrow.
Second I got a rear wheel cutout. It may not make a huge difference with a direct headwind - in fact I highly doubt it - but it should make for a better sail in a crosswind. I figured that in a cross tailwind it'd be even better. As a bonus I could get really short chainstays because I wouldn't be limited to what room the tube left the rear tire.
Thirdly I got internal cable routing. I dealt with such things enough in the bike shop days so routing cables and such isn't such a pain (although I probably wouldn't have agreed with you the first time I installed a front derailleur cable. The shifter cables travel through the downtube and the rear brake through the top tube. I had no "through fork" method for doing the front brake cable (like for BMX bikes) so that cable hangs out in the breeze.
(I have to admit the main reason I got internal cables is that it's much, much, much easier to clean. I read somewhere that a foot of exposed cable housing costs about one watt. With my very small frame I have maybe 2 watts of drag due to cable housing. That's not a lot. If I had a 35 inch inseam I might have approached things a bit differently.)
Fourth I got an integrated seat post (or ISP). I knew and forgot that BH bikes "invented" it. I think it has its place but what I have is more of a style thing. I think that a shaped ISP has its place, able to significantly reduce shock while presenting a minimal profile to the wind. My ISP does neither but it looks cool so I did it.
Finally I had the frame built with only secondary consideration for the water bottles. I knew that my frame thoughts gave me only "fine" benefits. This is significant so I'll explain why.
In the early aero days things were so conservative that a 16 mm tall rim was considered "aero". Seriously! Nowadays a 32 mm rim would be called "really conservative". When disk wheels and then tall profile rims burst onto the scene they gave tremendous benefits over things like a 16 mm tall "aero" wheel. You could save many minutes in a 40 km TT by using a true aero wheel like a Specialized TriSpoke (with HED selling the wheel, with a slightly modified rear hub, as the HED3)
I call that a "coarse benefit". What's the point of quibbling over a second or two when you can save 4 or 5 minutes? Suddenly aero brake cables (some were still being routed up in the air) seemed kind of minor. Aero wheels would make a huge difference.
I realized this a long time ago and used the TriSpokes in races where I expected the pace to be flat out all the time. In tight crits I would use my normal superlight 28 spoke 280/330g tubulars, but by the mid 90s I had a slew of aero wheels at my disposal - the TriSpokes, Zipp 440s (pre-404s), Zipp 340s (pre-340s), Spinergy Rev-Xs, a rear disk wheel (17 mm wide rim prototype and extremely light), Campy Ventos (all aluminum rim aero wheels - they were tanks), and finally my first aero wheelset, the 16 mm tall Araya ADX-4s.
Not everyone seemed so openminded, especially at the pro level. That held true for a long time. Even in the mid-90s most pros didn't use significantly aero wheels. Spinergy made some inroads with the Mapei, Rabobank, and Polti teams, with some very, very good riders on the wheels. Next to those wheels the relatively primitive, full aluminum Campy wheels looked heavy and outdated.
Then Mavic hit the pro ranks with the Cosmic. Aero wheels were still not totally accepted but some of the better Classics racers used the Cosmics to great effect. Well that and doping apparently, but still, if they were all doping then the aero wheels would help make a difference.
Finally Zipp hit the big time with CSC. After a year or two of disasters (wheels breaking on the cobbles usually) Zipp could boast some major tough victories on their wheels.
Now everyone uses aero wheels. Not only that, everyone uses pretty tall aero wheels. A lot of riders use rims initially meant for time trials in road races - the 80 and 90 mm tall rims.
That's great except for one thing - now everyone had to have aero wheels just to be even with the others. This means that any benefit from one wheelset to another, if they're both aero, will be minute. The very coarse benefits of aero wheels, the minutes saved per hour, have now become, between similar aero wheels, mere seconds.
Now the benefits are "fine benefits", minute ones. Got it? Good.
So what's that got to do with aero road frames?
Well, aero road frames, at least ones reasonably well designed, offer a small benefit over non-aero frames. Within the aero frame market though the differences are barely measurable. Velonews found less than 10 g difference in drag, about 10 watts worth, spread across four frames (if my word problem logic skills are correct - 4.3 g spread for the 2nd - 4th frames, 5 g spread from 1st to 2nd frame.) They claim a 20 watt difference from their control bike, a wide tubed Masi with Cosmic wheels.
The benefit seems pretty small when you stick a rider on the bike, a computer on the bars or stem, and, wait for it, waterbottles on the downtube and seat tube. Suddenly you get a whole bunch of things that coarsely affect drag. Yes, a seat tube bottle has been show to be more aero than not having one at all, but if you have a rear wheel cutout and a very aero rear wheel, I think that a bottle won't help much.
Regardless it's beyond dispute that a bottle on the downtube really screws up the aerodynamics. Cervelo, in their top of the line time trial frames, integrated a bottle into the frame shape, essentially proving that sticking a bottle on the seat tube is not the ideal solution for frame aerodynamics.
Therefore, although I detailed all sorts of things I did on my aero frame, they were all "fine" benefits. Minute. Probably not measurable.
Except for the bottles.
I decided that I'd race with no bottles at all. Instead I'd use a CamelBak for that year (2011). I figured that the little hump on my back would help with aerodynamics, filling in the space behind my helmet, and the bare frame would be more efficient slicing through the wind.
I hoped for a somewhat coarse reduction in drag. Not a lot, not the 2 or 3 mph that I see at high speed with aero wheels, but maybe just enough to save me 5 or 10 or 15 watts average in a race.
The thing I wanted to do was to reduce my average wattage just enough to give me a sprint. All too often I'd waste myself in a race just hanging on for dear life. I'd get to the finish having averaged 190 or 200 watts and have absolutely nothing left.
On the other hand if I finish the race with an average wattage under 180 I've usually done quite well for myself. Under 170 and I probably did really well.
My goal was to bring the 190 watt races into the 180 watt range. This would allow me to contest the sprint and get a place.
Pause for a bit to catch your breath.
(Jeopardy theme song)
Okay, let's keep going.
Today I realized something. All this is "fine" benefit stuff. The bottle idea was a more significant fine benefit but it was still a fine benefit. I realized this because of a couple things.
First, I've noticed a lot, and I mean a lot of racers who look like they're on a 3 speed bike when they're in a race. They're up in the air, they're on the hoods, they look like they're rolling down the boardwalk to pick up the Sunday paper. I almost always hold my tongue when I see this because I was told a long time ago not to offer advice but to wait for someone to ask for it. People who spontaneously gave advice usually didn't get received well since the advisee wasn't necessarily ready to hear said advice. The problem with the 3 speed position is that it's really upright and catches a lot of wind. It's not aero, and it's way worse than having a non-aero frame. You can't buy your way out of an inefficient position, not with wheels or a frame or anything. It's just bad.
Second, the riders I fit have done well. I have never had the opportunity to fit someone using a powermeter but I did fit a few riders using a trainer to make sure I was in the realm of reality. The racers I fit showed immediate improvement. My fits tend to be the same kind of thing. I couldn't describe it technically but I always found I did the same thing for each rider - extend them, drop the bars, usually raise and move the saddle forward. Basically they went from looking like a rider going to pick up the Sunday paper to a rider that looked like a racer.
I knew each rider would be better but I couldn't tell you why.
Now I can, for a couple reasons.
First, I read somewhere that Michele Ferrari told Armstrong to raise his saddle 2 mm, in order to flatten his back a bit. I thought, okay, come on, 2 mm, that's nothing, that won't do a thing for your back.
Then I remembered that when I put the 170 mm cranks on my bike and raise my saddle 5 mm, it feels like a new bike. I'm much lower in front, my back is that much more comfortable, and I can roll along just a touch easier. I never really quantified it so I just dismissed it as a minor benefit to 170s (and it was a reason I tried sticking with the 170s for a year, then for a summer, before finally giving up and going back to the 175s. The position was great but the long crankarms were an even more coarse benefit.)
Second I had a chance to sort of quantify why the 170s felt better. I saw this site today, for the first time. Don't mind the 1995 graphics. What's important is the link to "Real Customers, Real Results + Improvements". Take a look at what the riders look like before and after. Before - they look like what I described above - a rider on a 3 speed.
Okay, maybe not that bad, but look at any random picture of you (meaning you, the reader) in some random ride/race this year. Look at the picture with a discerning eye. Look at your back, look at its angle toward the lower back area. See how your hips are sitting on the bike.
Now look at the "after" pictures on that site. See how low their torsos are? See how their arms extend forward? See how their hips are angled forward on the saddle a bit?
They look pro now. It's not just a look though. Look at the numbers, how much wattage they're saving, how much faster they can go. It's incredible, the changes. Even an experienced racer saw a huge improvement in performance. Body positioning gives you a tremendous benefit - it is the biggest of the coarse benefits.
Finally, I saw some article somewhere (forgive me for not linking, I've followed so many links recently I have no idea where this was) where someone gave the benefits of a time trial frame, helmet, and wheels. The main benefit came from the frame but not because of the frame itself but because of the position.
Aha!
This is where all this starts to come together. I know that I know how to fit a rider, within reason. I couldn't even describe what I was trying to do, I just did it. Now I know that I fit a rider in order to tilt their hips forward, let them open up their hip angle, get their back more flat, drop their shoulders and arms, and get their head tucked in a bit more. The pictures from that wind tunnel site really illustrate the kind of results I would go for when I fit someone.
Next, the wind tunnel site quantified for me the savings on the position. They even comment somewhere that aero helmets are aero helmets, probably like aero wheels are like aero wheels. Get something in the right family and they're really close to one another.
At the same time the site illustrated to me that aero frames aren't where it's at. Aero frames may help incrementally but without a good rider position the frame won't be significant. In fact it's probably more important to get aero wheels, maybe some other aero stuff - flattened bar tops, even more aero shoes - before the aero frame becomes important.
So it's position. And position, for most of us, is pretty easy to adjust.
For me, not so much. I have limiters - I have short legs so my preference for 175s means I end up with my saddle back just a touch more than I prefer. I end up with my hips tilted up just a touch more than I prefer. And therefore my back isn't quite as flat as I like.
(I should point out I have a bad back and the flat back really feels comfortable. The other week I got on the bike specifically to help my back, it was really hurting for a few days. The ride really helped it feel better, and I was on the drops virtually the whole time. Another thing for people to open their minds to - the idea that a flat back could be more comfortable than one that's elevated a bit.)
I have been thinking of a third Tsunami, primarily to explore the use of compact drop bars. I really like the FSA Compacts but they're 3 cm shorter in reach and 2 cm shorter in drop. To fit me properly I'd need a 15 cm stem (not happening) which drops 2 cm (especially like that). A longer frame by say 2 cm (and a 13 cm stem instead of a 12 cm, to keep weight over the front wheel) would be good.
The drop presents a problem. The headtube is already as short as possible. With the Chris King InSet headset I could drop the stack height just a bit but I'd want to drop it about 2.5 cm, 2 cm for the bars and at least 0.5 cm for the cranks (since I like it when the saddle is 5 mm higher). The only way to get this extra drop is to raise the rest of the bike, i.e. the bottom bracket. That's not ideal but it would definitely work. A track stem would give me about 1 cm drop.
It's definitely just a gleam in my eye but the idea with this third evolution frame would be to hone body position. It's not as important to have an aero frame (especially for a frame with a 9.5 cm headtube) but having my body position adjusted a bit would really help.
Because on my bike now even I look a bit like I'm out for a stroll to pick up the Sunday paper.
I went as far as to order a frame from Tsunami Bikes that I thought would fulfill some of the things I thought important. I couldn't get integrated brakes on my budget, nor could I get some cool faired stem-fork deal, but I could do a few things.
First I got narrow tubing. I later realized that I have such a small frame that the tubing really wouldn't make that much difference but if I was going to get an aero frame I wanted the tubing to be narrow.
Second I got a rear wheel cutout. It may not make a huge difference with a direct headwind - in fact I highly doubt it - but it should make for a better sail in a crosswind. I figured that in a cross tailwind it'd be even better. As a bonus I could get really short chainstays because I wouldn't be limited to what room the tube left the rear tire.
Thirdly I got internal cable routing. I dealt with such things enough in the bike shop days so routing cables and such isn't such a pain (although I probably wouldn't have agreed with you the first time I installed a front derailleur cable. The shifter cables travel through the downtube and the rear brake through the top tube. I had no "through fork" method for doing the front brake cable (like for BMX bikes) so that cable hangs out in the breeze.
(I have to admit the main reason I got internal cables is that it's much, much, much easier to clean. I read somewhere that a foot of exposed cable housing costs about one watt. With my very small frame I have maybe 2 watts of drag due to cable housing. That's not a lot. If I had a 35 inch inseam I might have approached things a bit differently.)
Fourth I got an integrated seat post (or ISP). I knew and forgot that BH bikes "invented" it. I think it has its place but what I have is more of a style thing. I think that a shaped ISP has its place, able to significantly reduce shock while presenting a minimal profile to the wind. My ISP does neither but it looks cool so I did it.
Finally I had the frame built with only secondary consideration for the water bottles. I knew that my frame thoughts gave me only "fine" benefits. This is significant so I'll explain why.
In the early aero days things were so conservative that a 16 mm tall rim was considered "aero". Seriously! Nowadays a 32 mm rim would be called "really conservative". When disk wheels and then tall profile rims burst onto the scene they gave tremendous benefits over things like a 16 mm tall "aero" wheel. You could save many minutes in a 40 km TT by using a true aero wheel like a Specialized TriSpoke (with HED selling the wheel, with a slightly modified rear hub, as the HED3)
I call that a "coarse benefit". What's the point of quibbling over a second or two when you can save 4 or 5 minutes? Suddenly aero brake cables (some were still being routed up in the air) seemed kind of minor. Aero wheels would make a huge difference.
I realized this a long time ago and used the TriSpokes in races where I expected the pace to be flat out all the time. In tight crits I would use my normal superlight 28 spoke 280/330g tubulars, but by the mid 90s I had a slew of aero wheels at my disposal - the TriSpokes, Zipp 440s (pre-404s), Zipp 340s (pre-340s), Spinergy Rev-Xs, a rear disk wheel (17 mm wide rim prototype and extremely light), Campy Ventos (all aluminum rim aero wheels - they were tanks), and finally my first aero wheelset, the 16 mm tall Araya ADX-4s.
Not everyone seemed so openminded, especially at the pro level. That held true for a long time. Even in the mid-90s most pros didn't use significantly aero wheels. Spinergy made some inroads with the Mapei, Rabobank, and Polti teams, with some very, very good riders on the wheels. Next to those wheels the relatively primitive, full aluminum Campy wheels looked heavy and outdated.
Then Mavic hit the pro ranks with the Cosmic. Aero wheels were still not totally accepted but some of the better Classics racers used the Cosmics to great effect. Well that and doping apparently, but still, if they were all doping then the aero wheels would help make a difference.
Finally Zipp hit the big time with CSC. After a year or two of disasters (wheels breaking on the cobbles usually) Zipp could boast some major tough victories on their wheels.
Now everyone uses aero wheels. Not only that, everyone uses pretty tall aero wheels. A lot of riders use rims initially meant for time trials in road races - the 80 and 90 mm tall rims.
That's great except for one thing - now everyone had to have aero wheels just to be even with the others. This means that any benefit from one wheelset to another, if they're both aero, will be minute. The very coarse benefits of aero wheels, the minutes saved per hour, have now become, between similar aero wheels, mere seconds.
Now the benefits are "fine benefits", minute ones. Got it? Good.
So what's that got to do with aero road frames?
Well, aero road frames, at least ones reasonably well designed, offer a small benefit over non-aero frames. Within the aero frame market though the differences are barely measurable. Velonews found less than 10 g difference in drag, about 10 watts worth, spread across four frames (if my word problem logic skills are correct - 4.3 g spread for the 2nd - 4th frames, 5 g spread from 1st to 2nd frame.) They claim a 20 watt difference from their control bike, a wide tubed Masi with Cosmic wheels.
The benefit seems pretty small when you stick a rider on the bike, a computer on the bars or stem, and, wait for it, waterbottles on the downtube and seat tube. Suddenly you get a whole bunch of things that coarsely affect drag. Yes, a seat tube bottle has been show to be more aero than not having one at all, but if you have a rear wheel cutout and a very aero rear wheel, I think that a bottle won't help much.
Regardless it's beyond dispute that a bottle on the downtube really screws up the aerodynamics. Cervelo, in their top of the line time trial frames, integrated a bottle into the frame shape, essentially proving that sticking a bottle on the seat tube is not the ideal solution for frame aerodynamics.
Therefore, although I detailed all sorts of things I did on my aero frame, they were all "fine" benefits. Minute. Probably not measurable.
Except for the bottles.
I decided that I'd race with no bottles at all. Instead I'd use a CamelBak for that year (2011). I figured that the little hump on my back would help with aerodynamics, filling in the space behind my helmet, and the bare frame would be more efficient slicing through the wind.
I hoped for a somewhat coarse reduction in drag. Not a lot, not the 2 or 3 mph that I see at high speed with aero wheels, but maybe just enough to save me 5 or 10 or 15 watts average in a race.
My "aero" frame. Note no bottles - that was my "coarse" benefit.
The thing I wanted to do was to reduce my average wattage just enough to give me a sprint. All too often I'd waste myself in a race just hanging on for dear life. I'd get to the finish having averaged 190 or 200 watts and have absolutely nothing left.
On the other hand if I finish the race with an average wattage under 180 I've usually done quite well for myself. Under 170 and I probably did really well.
My goal was to bring the 190 watt races into the 180 watt range. This would allow me to contest the sprint and get a place.
Pause for a bit to catch your breath.
(Jeopardy theme song)
Okay, let's keep going.
Today I realized something. All this is "fine" benefit stuff. The bottle idea was a more significant fine benefit but it was still a fine benefit. I realized this because of a couple things.
First, I've noticed a lot, and I mean a lot of racers who look like they're on a 3 speed bike when they're in a race. They're up in the air, they're on the hoods, they look like they're rolling down the boardwalk to pick up the Sunday paper. I almost always hold my tongue when I see this because I was told a long time ago not to offer advice but to wait for someone to ask for it. People who spontaneously gave advice usually didn't get received well since the advisee wasn't necessarily ready to hear said advice. The problem with the 3 speed position is that it's really upright and catches a lot of wind. It's not aero, and it's way worse than having a non-aero frame. You can't buy your way out of an inefficient position, not with wheels or a frame or anything. It's just bad.
Second, the riders I fit have done well. I have never had the opportunity to fit someone using a powermeter but I did fit a few riders using a trainer to make sure I was in the realm of reality. The racers I fit showed immediate improvement. My fits tend to be the same kind of thing. I couldn't describe it technically but I always found I did the same thing for each rider - extend them, drop the bars, usually raise and move the saddle forward. Basically they went from looking like a rider going to pick up the Sunday paper to a rider that looked like a racer.
I knew each rider would be better but I couldn't tell you why.
Now I can, for a couple reasons.
First, I read somewhere that Michele Ferrari told Armstrong to raise his saddle 2 mm, in order to flatten his back a bit. I thought, okay, come on, 2 mm, that's nothing, that won't do a thing for your back.
Then I remembered that when I put the 170 mm cranks on my bike and raise my saddle 5 mm, it feels like a new bike. I'm much lower in front, my back is that much more comfortable, and I can roll along just a touch easier. I never really quantified it so I just dismissed it as a minor benefit to 170s (and it was a reason I tried sticking with the 170s for a year, then for a summer, before finally giving up and going back to the 175s. The position was great but the long crankarms were an even more coarse benefit.)
Second I had a chance to sort of quantify why the 170s felt better. I saw this site today, for the first time. Don't mind the 1995 graphics. What's important is the link to "Real Customers, Real Results + Improvements". Take a look at what the riders look like before and after. Before - they look like what I described above - a rider on a 3 speed.
Okay, maybe not that bad, but look at any random picture of you (meaning you, the reader) in some random ride/race this year. Look at the picture with a discerning eye. Look at your back, look at its angle toward the lower back area. See how your hips are sitting on the bike.
Now look at the "after" pictures on that site. See how low their torsos are? See how their arms extend forward? See how their hips are angled forward on the saddle a bit?
They look pro now. It's not just a look though. Look at the numbers, how much wattage they're saving, how much faster they can go. It's incredible, the changes. Even an experienced racer saw a huge improvement in performance. Body positioning gives you a tremendous benefit - it is the biggest of the coarse benefits.
Finally, I saw some article somewhere (forgive me for not linking, I've followed so many links recently I have no idea where this was) where someone gave the benefits of a time trial frame, helmet, and wheels. The main benefit came from the frame but not because of the frame itself but because of the position.
Aha!
This is where all this starts to come together. I know that I know how to fit a rider, within reason. I couldn't even describe what I was trying to do, I just did it. Now I know that I fit a rider in order to tilt their hips forward, let them open up their hip angle, get their back more flat, drop their shoulders and arms, and get their head tucked in a bit more. The pictures from that wind tunnel site really illustrate the kind of results I would go for when I fit someone.
Next, the wind tunnel site quantified for me the savings on the position. They even comment somewhere that aero helmets are aero helmets, probably like aero wheels are like aero wheels. Get something in the right family and they're really close to one another.
At the same time the site illustrated to me that aero frames aren't where it's at. Aero frames may help incrementally but without a good rider position the frame won't be significant. In fact it's probably more important to get aero wheels, maybe some other aero stuff - flattened bar tops, even more aero shoes - before the aero frame becomes important.
So it's position. And position, for most of us, is pretty easy to adjust.
For me, not so much. I have limiters - I have short legs so my preference for 175s means I end up with my saddle back just a touch more than I prefer. I end up with my hips tilted up just a touch more than I prefer. And therefore my back isn't quite as flat as I like.
(I should point out I have a bad back and the flat back really feels comfortable. The other week I got on the bike specifically to help my back, it was really hurting for a few days. The ride really helped it feel better, and I was on the drops virtually the whole time. Another thing for people to open their minds to - the idea that a flat back could be more comfortable than one that's elevated a bit.)
I have been thinking of a third Tsunami, primarily to explore the use of compact drop bars. I really like the FSA Compacts but they're 3 cm shorter in reach and 2 cm shorter in drop. To fit me properly I'd need a 15 cm stem (not happening) which drops 2 cm (especially like that). A longer frame by say 2 cm (and a 13 cm stem instead of a 12 cm, to keep weight over the front wheel) would be good.
The drop presents a problem. The headtube is already as short as possible. With the Chris King InSet headset I could drop the stack height just a bit but I'd want to drop it about 2.5 cm, 2 cm for the bars and at least 0.5 cm for the cranks (since I like it when the saddle is 5 mm higher). The only way to get this extra drop is to raise the rest of the bike, i.e. the bottom bracket. That's not ideal but it would definitely work. A track stem would give me about 1 cm drop.
It's definitely just a gleam in my eye but the idea with this third evolution frame would be to hone body position. It's not as important to have an aero frame (especially for a frame with a 9.5 cm headtube) but having my body position adjusted a bit would really help.
Because on my bike now even I look a bit like I'm out for a stroll to pick up the Sunday paper.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Equipment - Aerodynamics and Frame Fit
The other day I saw this article on aerodynamics, a kind of "ramble in font" by Chris Boardman. He explains, in very layman terms, his very layman way of reaching his optimal position on his bikes.
I knew, from his GAN days, that he rode about a 53 cm frame, meaning a frame with a 53 cm seat tube length. Nowadays that doesn't mean much what with compact versus regular frame set ups, seat tubes measured in all sorts of different ways, and of course the fact that the seat tube has nothing to do with length/reach, very little to do with saddle to bar drop, or even very little to do with the saddle height. The basic 53 cm frame size immediately says a few things though - you can expect a top tube length of about 54 cm and a head tube length of maybe 14 cm.
What's surprising on Boardman's regular looking 53 cm track bike (with drop bars) are the other dimensions.
63 cm top tube?!
17 cm stem?!
To look at him on the bike he doesn't look wrong at all - in fact he broke the non-aero hour record astride the machine.
He came to the position using a couple basic principles plus an open mind. He wanted to keep frontal area to a minimum (although this is technically flawed it's better than nothing) and he had to be able to put down reasonable power (i.e. threshold, since, by definition, he'd be making a 60 minute effort).
(Which makes me realize that his threshold lets him ride at over 31 mph. His threshold! I'm so far into the red at 31 mph it's crazy. Jeepers creepers and holy canolies. Wow. Okay, fine, he was a great short distance time trialer, he broke the hour record, but he was, with all due respect, basically nowhere in the big races. Wowsers. Anyway, back to the post...)
He pointed out that he avoided measuring things until after he set up a position that worked for him. He used a powermeter and pedaled at 50% of his threshold, give or take. By not measuring he let himself let go of any preconceived notions of what would or wouldn't work.
(Incidentally if I rode at 50% of my threshold I'd be doing about 100w, which, honestly, I could do in almost any position. I guess he just kept his pedals turning so anything they tried would be somewhat reasonable.)
One thing you'll notice is that if you look at Boardman on the hour record bike versus a road bike (even a TT bike) you'll see that the head tube on the road bike is much shorter. This is because the bottom bracket on a track bike is higher, by about 1.3 cm. Since frame "size", i.e. seat tube length, is measured from the bottom bracket, if you move the bottom bracket up 2 cm then the frame suddenly looks about 2 cm higher.
As an example look at my 50 cm track bike, which, I have to point out, can't do 31 mph for even 3 km:
I knew, from his GAN days, that he rode about a 53 cm frame, meaning a frame with a 53 cm seat tube length. Nowadays that doesn't mean much what with compact versus regular frame set ups, seat tubes measured in all sorts of different ways, and of course the fact that the seat tube has nothing to do with length/reach, very little to do with saddle to bar drop, or even very little to do with the saddle height. The basic 53 cm frame size immediately says a few things though - you can expect a top tube length of about 54 cm and a head tube length of maybe 14 cm.
What's surprising on Boardman's regular looking 53 cm track bike (with drop bars) are the other dimensions.
63 cm top tube?!
17 cm stem?!
To look at him on the bike he doesn't look wrong at all - in fact he broke the non-aero hour record astride the machine.
He came to the position using a couple basic principles plus an open mind. He wanted to keep frontal area to a minimum (although this is technically flawed it's better than nothing) and he had to be able to put down reasonable power (i.e. threshold, since, by definition, he'd be making a 60 minute effort).
(Which makes me realize that his threshold lets him ride at over 31 mph. His threshold! I'm so far into the red at 31 mph it's crazy. Jeepers creepers and holy canolies. Wow. Okay, fine, he was a great short distance time trialer, he broke the hour record, but he was, with all due respect, basically nowhere in the big races. Wowsers. Anyway, back to the post...)
He pointed out that he avoided measuring things until after he set up a position that worked for him. He used a powermeter and pedaled at 50% of his threshold, give or take. By not measuring he let himself let go of any preconceived notions of what would or wouldn't work.
(Incidentally if I rode at 50% of my threshold I'd be doing about 100w, which, honestly, I could do in almost any position. I guess he just kept his pedals turning so anything they tried would be somewhat reasonable.)
One thing you'll notice is that if you look at Boardman on the hour record bike versus a road bike (even a TT bike) you'll see that the head tube on the road bike is much shorter. This is because the bottom bracket on a track bike is higher, by about 1.3 cm. Since frame "size", i.e. seat tube length, is measured from the bottom bracket, if you move the bottom bracket up 2 cm then the frame suddenly looks about 2 cm higher.
As an example look at my 50 cm track bike, which, I have to point out, can't do 31 mph for even 3 km:
Note head tube length.
I wonder if a 63 cm top tube would help.
This head tube looks shorter.
Saddle height is the same. 56.5 top tube.
The Riggio has a 16 cm total head tube height, with headset. The Tsunami is 11.5 cm with the headset too. With spare bars on the track bike, the same make/model as the bars on the Tsunami (Mavic 315 bars, crit bend, circa 1997), I need a slight rise to fit the Riggio properly.
I'm veering hard off my original thoughts though, that of Boardman's approach to fit. The most important thing was that he threw out any preconceived notions on what should or shouldn't work. He admits in the article that if he took measurements while changing stuff around he probably would have ended up with a more conservative set up.
That BikeRadar article made me go "hm." Boardman's had a good approach to his fit, unconcerned about staying within his comfort zone, open minded as far as possibilities.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Equipment - Aero Road - Giro Air Attack
Giro announced that they'll be introducing an aero road helmet for 2013. It's not just a time trial helmet - it's meant for mass start races.
A while ago I started thinking of aero road helmets. It started a long, long time ago when someone (Cannondale? Specialized?) tested a couple riders and a slew of helmets in some wind tunnel. It was probably in the early/mid 90s since they were testing foam-and-mesh helmets as well as the "new" plastic shelled ones. My take away from that presentation was that a rider's posture/body makes a huge difference in selecting an optimal aero helmet. In the case of the presentation one of the riders (he had a shorter neck) was most aero with a normal, slightly tailed road helmet. Other riders, with longer necks, tested best with proper aero helmets.
Regardless, a rider's helmet (and head I guess) create a tremendous amount of drag and is a place to gain a "secret" edge. These secret spots give you a chance to make subtle but significant changes, sometimes making quite a difference in performance. This is especially true, relative to other racers, when the others get distracted by other aspects of your gear. In car racing such "hide through distraction" works really well - a team will carefully cover its "secret" design wings and such when in fact their performance gains come from elsewhere, like a floor design or something. The other teams, seeing the wings get covered, expend a lot of energy photographing the wings, examining just what makes them different from theirs (made more difficult because they're not that different), and after countless hours of analysis will say, "Daggummit, they led us on a wild goose chase."
For me, too, I tried to use any advantage I could through equipment choice.
It started with the Cannondale frames in the mid-late 80s. As a big gear stomper, especially in sprints or up short power hills, I felt the Cannondale frames gave me a huge advantage. I know I would climb in at least one cog smaller, and I knew I could jump as hard as I could and not make the rear derailleur shift.
See, in the old days frames were really, really flexible. One of the "flex tests" was to jump/accelerate really hard while you were just riding the bike. If the frame flexed enough then the rear derailleur cable would loosen (the cable would literally hang limp) and cause the derailleur to shift into the next cog inadvertently. Magazine reviews would talk about "... and the bike wouldn't shift up no matter how hard I sprinted". The Cannondale was stiff enough that such nonsense was never an issue.
I used other equipment choices to my benefit. For many years, before any shift/brake lever integration, I raced with a right side bar end shifter. This allowed me to shift rapidly during a sprint, giving me an edge over my rivals with a normal set of downtube shifters. I could jump in a low gear and sprint in a high gear, the best of both worlds. Others would debating jumping in a bigger gear (in order to max out top speed) or a lower gear (to get a better jump). Sadly, after STI came out, guys I could regularly beat became untouchable - my equipment choices had given me a huge advantage in this case.
I also used super light Aerolite pedals, 38 grams each (with cleat and hardware), 76 grams for the heavier steel version. Combined with a lightweight and super stiff wood soled shoe (criticized for being "too stiff"), I had a super light shoe/pedal weight. Although I never had a definitive "test" like with the shifter in the previous paragraph, I can tell you that when I finally went to a normal pedal it felt like someone strapped weights to my ankles.
I also adopted aero wheels in the early 90s, racing frequently with a rear disk wheel and front TriSpoke (aka HED3). Given the chance I rode on a pair of TriSpokes. When Zipp came out with their first rims (the 440 and 340, precursors to the 404 and 303), I used them as well. Nowadays everyone uses aero wheels - my 2 or 3 mph advantage at top speed disappeared. Interestingly enough I no longer sprint the fastest. I mean, okay, I'm getting old and stuff, but it used to be ridiculous, me on TriSpokes and everyone else on 32 spoke box section wheels. Okay, if they had "super duper" wheels they'd be on 28 spoke versions of the same.
And, because I felt aerodynamics really helped with the bike, I'd take other approaches to reducing my overall drag. For example I know that the body is the least aerodynamic part of the bike racer unit. Therefore I worked on reducing my own drag as much as possible, through posture and equipment.
I used Scott Rakes whenever I felt fit enough to justify putting them on the bike. They gave me a super aero position with my elbows close together. I tried other aero bars too but found them less helpful - the Spinaccis (kind of short aero bars but illegal for USCF use), the copycat 3ttt product, some bar that connected the drops (think of a towel bar connecting your two brake levers), Scott DropIns (the end of the drops had extra tubing that turned inward). All had their disadvantage for me - the Spinaccis were more TT than sprint, the bar that connected the drops were unwieldy to use, the DropIns put my hands too far back.
Nonetheless I understood the importance of taking advantage of these things. The Rakes were always close to the surface of my "extra parts" box and they went on whenever I thought I'd need to chase (bridge to a break or just chase after getting shelled).
Along those lines of "subtle changes" I sometimes taped the vents closed on my old Giro Air Attack, reducing both the ventilation (when temperatures plummeted) and decreasing drag. Later I did that to almost all my helmets, usually for the Bethel Spring Series races (like here, for example). I used either clear packing tape or, later, black electrical tape. The black tape was more discrete and easier to remove when the weather got warmer.
Eventually I started thinking of getting a helmet that was more aero. I was thinking more in terms of the Bethel Spring Series, a race series normally held in cold conditions. At that point a racer doesn't need a lot of ventilation; in fact, when I did one week with a brand new, super ventilated helmet, my head hurt from the cold air hitting the now-insufficient skull cap I wore under the helmet.
Since I decided that since I really don't want air flow I should be able to get by with a rounder helmet, one more conducive towards my head tilted down sprint position. This would also work on the track, but that wasn't part of my thinking yet.
I contemplated, but couldn't bring myself to wear, BMX/skateboard helmets. I tried them on a few times at a local shop, probably prompting questions about me ("Is he going into BMX?"). I ended up getting such helmets but mainly for my brother. He does skate and skaters fall a lot more frequently than cyclists.
Recently I thought of the ski helmets, with vents you could open and close while you rode. As a bonus they had goggle strap indents in the back, so when it was really cold I could wear goggles to protect my eyes. For me, riding in bitterly cold weather hurts my eyes, and with prescription glasses I can't wear regular eye protection type glasses. As a bonus if I went skiing I'd have a helmet (and at some point I do want to downhill ski again and I won't do it if I don't have a helmet). The problem with these helmets was that with rapidly changing helmet standards I wasn't sure if the ski helmet would be legal for use in a bike race. I nixed the sliding vent closure Giro helmets at that point.
My favorite helmet thus far was one that I couldn't buy locally and I don't think passes the right safety regulations for use in USAC. It's made by Kask and I saw it at Interbike in 2009.
For me that's a win-win so I'm signing up.
Image stolen from their site because inevitably the site will change.
A while ago I started thinking of aero road helmets. It started a long, long time ago when someone (Cannondale? Specialized?) tested a couple riders and a slew of helmets in some wind tunnel. It was probably in the early/mid 90s since they were testing foam-and-mesh helmets as well as the "new" plastic shelled ones. My take away from that presentation was that a rider's posture/body makes a huge difference in selecting an optimal aero helmet. In the case of the presentation one of the riders (he had a shorter neck) was most aero with a normal, slightly tailed road helmet. Other riders, with longer necks, tested best with proper aero helmets.
Regardless, a rider's helmet (and head I guess) create a tremendous amount of drag and is a place to gain a "secret" edge. These secret spots give you a chance to make subtle but significant changes, sometimes making quite a difference in performance. This is especially true, relative to other racers, when the others get distracted by other aspects of your gear. In car racing such "hide through distraction" works really well - a team will carefully cover its "secret" design wings and such when in fact their performance gains come from elsewhere, like a floor design or something. The other teams, seeing the wings get covered, expend a lot of energy photographing the wings, examining just what makes them different from theirs (made more difficult because they're not that different), and after countless hours of analysis will say, "Daggummit, they led us on a wild goose chase."
For me, too, I tried to use any advantage I could through equipment choice.
It started with the Cannondale frames in the mid-late 80s. As a big gear stomper, especially in sprints or up short power hills, I felt the Cannondale frames gave me a huge advantage. I know I would climb in at least one cog smaller, and I knew I could jump as hard as I could and not make the rear derailleur shift.
See, in the old days frames were really, really flexible. One of the "flex tests" was to jump/accelerate really hard while you were just riding the bike. If the frame flexed enough then the rear derailleur cable would loosen (the cable would literally hang limp) and cause the derailleur to shift into the next cog inadvertently. Magazine reviews would talk about "... and the bike wouldn't shift up no matter how hard I sprinted". The Cannondale was stiff enough that such nonsense was never an issue.
I used other equipment choices to my benefit. For many years, before any shift/brake lever integration, I raced with a right side bar end shifter. This allowed me to shift rapidly during a sprint, giving me an edge over my rivals with a normal set of downtube shifters. I could jump in a low gear and sprint in a high gear, the best of both worlds. Others would debating jumping in a bigger gear (in order to max out top speed) or a lower gear (to get a better jump). Sadly, after STI came out, guys I could regularly beat became untouchable - my equipment choices had given me a huge advantage in this case.
I also used super light Aerolite pedals, 38 grams each (with cleat and hardware), 76 grams for the heavier steel version. Combined with a lightweight and super stiff wood soled shoe (criticized for being "too stiff"), I had a super light shoe/pedal weight. Although I never had a definitive "test" like with the shifter in the previous paragraph, I can tell you that when I finally went to a normal pedal it felt like someone strapped weights to my ankles.
I also adopted aero wheels in the early 90s, racing frequently with a rear disk wheel and front TriSpoke (aka HED3). Given the chance I rode on a pair of TriSpokes. When Zipp came out with their first rims (the 440 and 340, precursors to the 404 and 303), I used them as well. Nowadays everyone uses aero wheels - my 2 or 3 mph advantage at top speed disappeared. Interestingly enough I no longer sprint the fastest. I mean, okay, I'm getting old and stuff, but it used to be ridiculous, me on TriSpokes and everyone else on 32 spoke box section wheels. Okay, if they had "super duper" wheels they'd be on 28 spoke versions of the same.
And, because I felt aerodynamics really helped with the bike, I'd take other approaches to reducing my overall drag. For example I know that the body is the least aerodynamic part of the bike racer unit. Therefore I worked on reducing my own drag as much as possible, through posture and equipment.
I used Scott Rakes whenever I felt fit enough to justify putting them on the bike. They gave me a super aero position with my elbows close together. I tried other aero bars too but found them less helpful - the Spinaccis (kind of short aero bars but illegal for USCF use), the copycat 3ttt product, some bar that connected the drops (think of a towel bar connecting your two brake levers), Scott DropIns (the end of the drops had extra tubing that turned inward). All had their disadvantage for me - the Spinaccis were more TT than sprint, the bar that connected the drops were unwieldy to use, the DropIns put my hands too far back.
Nonetheless I understood the importance of taking advantage of these things. The Rakes were always close to the surface of my "extra parts" box and they went on whenever I thought I'd need to chase (bridge to a break or just chase after getting shelled).
Note the Zipp 340 wheels and the Scott Rakes (the "extra" bars at the center of my normal bars).
Note also that no one else has aero stuff.
Final note: the Zipp 340 wheels weighed the same as my slightly higher spoke count 280g rimmed wheels, so they were light too. Most riders at the time were running 400g rims, 28 spoke up front, 32 spoke in the rear. I ran either the 28 spoke 280g rims or the 24 spoke Zipp 340s (which were about 320 grams). They were quick on acceleration and gave me about 1 mph more top end. By now everyone is using a brake/shift lever so no more advantage there.
In the picture above Keith Berger, for whom the Keith Berger Crit is named, is on my wheel. He was still a Cat 3 at the time and he won the 3-4 race (the picture was taken during the 1-2-3 race). Keith launched when the field was already at its limit, bridged to a break, and won the sprint. It shows that even with equipment it doesn't matter if you're not able to use it. I won the Series either the year before or the year after, mainly through the sprint. In that particular year's Series I removed the Rakes after this first week - I had enough teammates to chase things down so the Rakes became unnecessary.
Along those lines of "subtle changes" I sometimes taped the vents closed on my old Giro Air Attack, reducing both the ventilation (when temperatures plummeted) and decreasing drag. Later I did that to almost all my helmets, usually for the Bethel Spring Series races (like here, for example). I used either clear packing tape or, later, black electrical tape. The black tape was more discrete and easier to remove when the weather got warmer.
Eventually I started thinking of getting a helmet that was more aero. I was thinking more in terms of the Bethel Spring Series, a race series normally held in cold conditions. At that point a racer doesn't need a lot of ventilation; in fact, when I did one week with a brand new, super ventilated helmet, my head hurt from the cold air hitting the now-insufficient skull cap I wore under the helmet.
Since I decided that since I really don't want air flow I should be able to get by with a rounder helmet, one more conducive towards my head tilted down sprint position. This would also work on the track, but that wasn't part of my thinking yet.
I contemplated, but couldn't bring myself to wear, BMX/skateboard helmets. I tried them on a few times at a local shop, probably prompting questions about me ("Is he going into BMX?"). I ended up getting such helmets but mainly for my brother. He does skate and skaters fall a lot more frequently than cyclists.
Recently I thought of the ski helmets, with vents you could open and close while you rode. As a bonus they had goggle strap indents in the back, so when it was really cold I could wear goggles to protect my eyes. For me, riding in bitterly cold weather hurts my eyes, and with prescription glasses I can't wear regular eye protection type glasses. As a bonus if I went skiing I'd have a helmet (and at some point I do want to downhill ski again and I won't do it if I don't have a helmet). The problem with these helmets was that with rapidly changing helmet standards I wasn't sure if the ski helmet would be legal for use in a bike race. I nixed the sliding vent closure Giro helmets at that point.
My favorite helmet thus far was one that I couldn't buy locally and I don't think passes the right safety regulations for use in USAC. It's made by Kask and I saw it at Interbike in 2009.
"City" helmet
Apparently the helmet was made for commuting. What caught my eye was the built in face shield, a huge factor in the aero-ness of a human head.
I'd have gotten it simply for the cool looking liner inside.
As you can see ventilation is a bit low on the list of requirements. At a Bethel Spring Series race it would be fine, but in 90 degree summer crits this helmet would probably see you head to the hospital after having heat stroke.
Now Giro has a helmet due to be released for 2013. I'm sure we'll see it in action in the Tour and at the Olympics - that's why they "released" it now, so people like me would go, "Oh, cool, look, an aero road helmet!" and talk it up.
I'm such a sucker.
Seriously, though, an aero road helmet is huge. I haven't looked at any stats or anything but I bet that such a helmet will save at least as much as an aero road frame. Okay, probably more. Maybe close to an aero front wheel. Whatever, it's going to be a huge savings relative to cost. At the $200 price point it'll be less than a top of the line "regular" helmet, weigh within 50-90 grams of said "regular" helmet, and probably be worth the same as a $1000 front wheel as far as aero is concerned, and way more than a $4000 frame.
For me that's a win-win so I'm signing up.
Now to wait for the next team Giro ordering window. Hopefully before the 2013 Bethel Spring Series.
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