Articles
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Is Narrow Faster
– January 16, 2009 Long, Low and Narrow In a recent (February 2003) issue of Inside Triathlon and Velo News, there were two articles written about "proper" positioning for fast times on a bicycle. While this article is not specifically about those writings, that information was not nearly accurate enough. When cyclists start talking about more speed through position, their buddies or local experts generally start with: get lower, get narrow, get longer. This is good thinking until you go to a wind tunnel to test it out, then you'll find that narrow, longer and lower are not always the fastest route. I certainly understand that few people have any experience in properly positioning people with the aid of a wind tunnel. It cost a lot of money, but it is the best way to get your position correct. There is a balance between best physiological position and aero position that has to be observed to get superior speed on the road. It is much easier for the average cyclist to check their mechanical position by using a power meter and heart rate monitor. By carefully noting position changes a good cyclist can work out elbow widths, bar heights, seat heights, cleat placement and hand height very accurately. You should get with a training buddy and spend a little time helping each other map position changes and see the heart rate vs. watts relationship. How does this work? Run your watts at a constant 250 and let your heart rate stabilize (10 minutes). Then, as you make changes, stay at 250 watts. When your heart rate goes down after a change, then what you did is better. If you raise your bars and the heart rate doesn't go up or down then lower them back down. Do the same with elbow widths; narrow is not always faster. So if the best way to get truly set up is in a wind tunnel, why don't more people do it? Well, it's inconvenient and expensive. First, there are very few tunnels that the public can use and there are even fewer that are sized and instrumented to measure the small drag numbers that a cyclist generates. Most wind tunnels test at 200-300 mph, a little fast for bike riders, so getting one down to the 25-30 mph range is difficult some times. The "balance" or the scale that measures drag is generally set for cars or airplanes and they are too large for reading the small drag numbers of a cyclist. Because of their main use (industrial), tunnels are expensive. The least are usually $500.00 an hour and some are $10,000.00 a day. Its not however the hourly rate that gets you, it's the time spent gathering data from lot’s of different rider profiles. Gathering the rider profiles and the results is what builds the “Library” to draw from. There is NO perfect aero position; it varies a great deal from rider to rider. Quite often a very subtle change in hand height or elbow width can "make or break" a good aero position. I've tested hundreds of cyclists in wind tunnels. I'm sure more than anybody by a large margin. I've learned and continue to learn at each test session how important the small things matter. The shape of a rider's shoulders, the width of the hips, the bend of the wrist, all these things matter. Nobody, Nobody, including me can LOOK at a rider on a bike and get it exactly right. I'm the best at setting a bike up for better aerodynamics and bio-mechanics, but if your really wanting to go the fastest, invest some time and energy and money and come to a wind tunnel session. Bicycle racing and time trialing specifically, is a very "pure" sport. If you're willing to push harder on the pedals, then you go faster. Learning to control your concentration, maintain your heart rate and learning to deal with pain is very challenging. Mastering these things will make you a superior racer whether its triathlons or century rides. You can't master these things by giving away performance in your position, work on getting it right.
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