Recent content by TarmacExpert

Published research is useful, but I think it is also important to perform personal experiments and to think about the underlying principles behind things. Most studies look for a change in the average, based on the assumption that all subjects will be affected in the same way. This can cause a...

I'm not able to dispute the specifics of the possible mechanisms, but your argument makes me think of the issue of cadence vs efficiency. As far as I'm aware, when people ride at max effort for an hour they do not use the most efficient cadence. I'm not aware that anyone has ever been able to...

Like Frank, I'm not convinced by this argument. If VO2max is limited by demand rather than supply, it's not implausible it could enable greater demand, increasing VO2max. Also, I see no reason to assume that sub-maximal performance is limited by oxygen consumption. As far as I'm aware, the...

But worthwhile enough for the NZ team to be making changes, as you said. There are people going to significant efforts to reduce drag by fairly small amounts, e.g. the TriRig aero brake using Andy Coggan's home wind tunnel saving perhaps a couple of Watts, or the UCI illegal Cervelo P5 front...

Earlier in this thread I mentioned that I had changed from 165mm cranks to 175mm after seeing Frank's wind tunnel data. I lowered my saddle by 1cm, so my thighs were coming 2cm higher at the top of the pedal stroke relative to full extension, which ought to be more aero, as it will get more of...

When trying to establish whether or not two things are different, my statistics text book from my Uni maths course describes the outcome of failing to find a difference as "the null hypothesis cannot be rejected". I.e. we cannot discount the possibility that the null hypothesis is true. This is...

IMO Frank has a fair point, here, in that the results of Martin's study may well have been different with riders in the TT position. It depends what exactly you mean by large, of course, but I'm surprised you haven't thought it worthwhile to field test longer cranks. 190mm instead of 170mm...

I would dispute that frontal area doesn't change. At the top of the pedal stroke, if your legs are pointing outwards beyond a certain point, your thighs will present more frontal area than if they are pointing forwards. Also, if you channel air along the inside of the thigh, it strikes me that...

IMO most people would be better served by training in the TT position and gradually increasing their saddle to pad drop as their flexibility improves, until the optimal drop is achieved. I have personally seen a huge improvement in my flexibility purely from doing all my training in the TT...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tcXU7mL88rsJ:www.ecss2006.com/asp/congress/ScPro1AbstractText.asp%3FMyAbstractID%3D1179+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

FWIW I tried single leg pedalling in today's session, in the TT position (12.5cm saddle to pad drop) with 175mm cranks, and it was no problem. I have a feeling that part of this is down to the fact that I train every day on the turbo, always in the TT position, and I think this has enhanced my...

This is true but you get the work back on the downstroke. I.e. you lift the leg on the upstroke, giving it potential energy. You can then let the leg drop back on the downstroke, getting exactly the same work back. It's no problem for one leg to be losing potential energy at the same rate as the...

I actually tested that after the change in crank size. With my bike (Speed Concept), moving the pads up and down is quite time consuming and requires having different length bolts and tools with you, but moving the saddle up and down is easy. So what I did was one field testing session with the...

You misunderstand, Frank, I was trying to offer you helpful advice based on knowing what quite a few people have found from wind tunnel visits. As for my own efforts, I have moved from 170mm cranks to 165mm cranks in the past, and I did not change my saddle to pad drop when I made that change...

What is to be gained is quantifying the aero change by moving up or down. I know one person who went to the tunnel and found that he could move up several cm with essentially no change in aero drag, very useful information for him as it meant there was no point suffering the discomfort and...