Amour de "Low"

I'm not sure how to spell "love" in french - it's Amor in spanish, and Amore in Italian, that much I'm sure of, and so, well, I reckon it's probably close to "amour" in french...

Anyway, after watching today's ITT in the tour, I'm pretty amazed at how much of the peloton is demonstrating behaviors symptomatic of the "disease of lowness". By that, I mean all the guys who wind up riding the tip of the saddle, only to shift themselves back on the saddle every 5 pedal strokes (I don't know what was more painful - how Contador felt during the ITT or how I felt while watching the DVR'd coverage a few minutes ago). The funny thing, for me, after seeing first hand how reach and drop interact in a wind tunnel with a wide cross section of athletes (from elites like Kristin Armstrong, Sarah Hammer, Phinney, Hincapie, Astarloza, Leipheimer, Popovych, Danielson, Marchante, Simoni, Millar, Sanchez, etc.. etc... to masters National champions like Ruth Clemence, or Alpenrose kilo record holders like BTR member Snigelmannen - way to take the record from Marty Nothstein! - to IM folks like Sindballe, Evans, Andersson, Fuhr, Ferguson, Major - to chubby, amateur, wannabe time trialists/IM'rs named Kraig) is that this disease has a cure...

The cure is simple, and it's called raising the bars in order to decrease the drop. huh? I mean, everyone knows that if you want to be aerodynamic, you have to have lots of drop, reach be damned, eh?

The favorite refrain from the "prophets of low" is: "move the saddle forward" or "get steep" isn't it:

http://www.biketechreview.com/performance/faster.htm

Move the saddle forward and drop the bars "a little", or get "steep" is the magic elixir for the sickness of being too low, according to the pundits. Well, yeah, that seems like kind of an indirect way of solving the "bars are too low" issue, eh?

The fact of the matter is that from an aerodynamic perspective there exists a relationship between reach and drop for each individual, it's not an either/or deal...and despite what the interweb forums are full of, the UCI really isn't limiting things in the "forward" department based on my experience.

I'll use myself as an example of the "disease of lowness" - the last time I tested my TT/IM position in the wind tunnel was just a week or so after my IMAZ effort last november. During that test, I baselined my position, then looked at how reach and drop interacted. At three different bar heights, it became clear that if I "tipped it" (riding the nose of the saddle, rather than sitting on the saddle square), I was less aerodynamic than if I wasn't "tipping it"...and despite lowering the bars (more than "a little") the most aerodynamic overall position came at the highest bar height I was able to achieve - this bar height was probably a couple cm higher (or more) than the position I used for IMAZ.

These tunnel data suggest that if I were to take the advice of the "prophets of steep and low", (i.e - you just need to "move the saddle forward, and maybe drop the bars a little") well, I would be less aerodynamic and, therefore, slower. Thanks for the blanket, mantra-driven advice, but I think I'll pass, and let the beta/yaw equal to and not equal to zero data speak.

So, yeah, I can't really be bothered by all the "get low shenanigans" or "get low theatrics" the pro peloton seems to be brewing up these days. The wind tunnel here in san diego is the medicine that cured me of my own personal "disease of lowness". Keep in mind that I'm not alone with the uniqueness of how my reach/drop interact. Others demonstrate this same unique trade-off (some are listed above) of reach and drop from an aerodynamic perspective.

If one takes a "forest driven" rather than a "tree-driven" approach or process to TT setups, one just might realize that there exists a real opportunity to explore how much power one can produce (or wants to/chooses to produce in the case of IM) for the duration of their intended effort as a function of different reach/drop combinations.

I mean, if one can raise their bars, extend their effective reach, be more comfortable, be more powerful, and have the same (or better aerodynamics), well then, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

In the end, I'm pretty much enamored with "fast" and am not burdened by "the disease of lowness" anymore.

Kind of along these lines, I'm pretty sure LANCE demonstrated today, that once again, it's not about the bike...it's really about the floppy, un-aerodynamic jewelry hanging from your neck!!! ;-)

(and yeah, I think LANCE needs to raise his bars back to where they used to be four years ago... ;-) )

Rainy Day TT Positioning Activity - Garage Wind Tunnel?

Had the day off for President's Day, but it was raining, so I fiddled around in the garage a bit. Originally, I wanted to see if I could set the TT bike up in a UCI legal Superman position.

I thought that I was pretty successful - y'know, I whipped out the look ergostem and tried to make the bars even with the top of my saddle. Next, I put the ends of the extensions right at 75cm in front of the bottom bracket. I took some video of me riding in the position, and it felt eerily familiar. yep, I'd basically re-created how I have been riding for the past 9 months or so!

Seein' as how I had the fiddle-with-your-position bars out, I figured I'd just do some fartin' around with the whole forearm angle thing.

I shot some video and tried to do a sweet voice-over/narration (that's a link to a *.wmv) of the exercise, and have quickly come to the conclusion that I need some practice doing the voiceover thing! Holy cow that's pretty funny! "Fiddle-futzin!" Oh dear...

:-)

Check out what happens to my shoulders when I do the snowplow thing with my forearms with wide elbows (ala Jan Ullrich) - pretty crazy, huh!? Here's the lo-fi version of the video (sans my sweet narration!) :



Here's something similar when I have narrow elbows (not as big an effect, but still there):



The side views during this exercise also show how stable the rest of the body is when elbow position is more or less controlled for - the exception appears to be when doing the snowplow to the max - that's just not going to work out, eh?




What was my point with this whole thing - oh, I don't know if I really had one, other than to encourage everyone to try stuff out when it comes to your TT position. You never know the things you might notice when using something as simple as the supercomputer between the ears, a video camera, or even pedalin' in front of a mirror!

Have fun with it, and I'd encourage you to not "sneak up on the problem". Fartin' around with a cm here and a cm there is a good way to confuse yourself. Big changes at first and explore the design space - that'd be my recommendation.

Peace,

Any Golfers Out There?

I've been doing the sporting good product thing for a little over a decade now (a couple years in the bike biz, and the rest where I currently am in the golf biz), and I still get pumped when the team I am on launches a new product:

http://www.taylormadegolf.com/campaigns/burnerbloodline/content/microsite/

When new product ships, it's a crazy mix of nerves and pride for the team - it's an amazing process to be involved in - to watch an idea go from thin air, to a 2-d sketch, to a 3-d model to several iterations of prototypes... There are a lot of folks involved along the way, and that is pretty cool.

I don't think I step away from the process enough to really appreciate what goes on, sometimes. A golf club seems so simple, but the projects rarely are! Those challenges along the way, with the pressure of being a bit under the gun, are where it's at for me.

Back to work, though - we gotta come up with the next product that will make the Tour Burner obsolete in 18 months! ;-)

Process

There's a school of thought that suggests that if one focuses effort on the "process", the results will come. I've heard this, or lines of thought like this, for quite awhile - I read/listen to (I subscribe to audible.com, which I totally love as it allows me to "read" books while commuting to/from work...) lots of different books that have peripherally addressed this topic, so I'm not sure where I picked it up in the past.

However, recently, I read a couple books that really drove this "focus process development" point home once again. The first book that I hammered through in a couple days is "the four hour work week" - I didn't take everything to heart in that book, but there is some good stuff in there. In one of the sections of that 4 hour work week book, the author refers readers to some other business books - I latched onto "the e-myth" - and read that one. There's a great section in there that talks about process development being the goal of running a successfull business. I think there are many different applications of the "process development" concept - be it work, life, relationships whatever...

The combination of these two books, along with some other things clunkin' around in the ol' melon have given me some more things to think about in my typical non-linear, conceptual based caveman brain.

Simply put, I'm an achievement oriented kind of person, who thinks that the goal is pretty much "learning" - life experience is the best kind of learning IMHO. I've got to tinker, refine, learn along the way. The journey from "novice" to "expert" in any of my pursuits is a fun one full of great satisfaction for me...

What the heck does this philosophical crap have to do with bikes? Well, a few years back, I started learning about testing cyclists in wind tunnels - I focused on process development from day one and the results have been coming ever since then - not just for myself and my learning, but for those that I've met along the way as well - it really is just a big long journey where most folks benefit from the experience.

Results? Two out of the top five on GC at the tour de france this year have spent time with BTR and lswt.com tweaking things. Now, today in the Vuelta - Samu just won the final TT and grabbed a spot on the final GC podium. More pics/discussion of the results of that Euskaltel tunnel test here.

I'm super proud of Samu, and the guys at Orbea who also seem to value the concept of focusing on the details of process development - and then reaping the rewards of that approach!