Brad Wiggins is sitting at home, watching his team implode at a Tour de France he was not invited to.
What’s on his mind? An attempt at the Hour Record, that’s what. Now that the UCI has allowed riders to mount a conventional (track) time trial machine in their efforts and the likes of Boardman, Obree, Moser, Rominger, and Indurain all get their records back, I’m getting wicked psyched for a renaissance of one of the coolest periods of Cycling when rider after rider attempted and re-attempted the record during the 90’s.
Unfortunately, the regulations won’t allow for anyone to hop aboard Fignon’s old monster – which he never rode – but at least we have a chance that Wiggins, Cancellara, Martin and co will spend the next few years one-upping each other in what could be the most gratuitous suffer fest our sport has to offer.
Bring it the fuck on.
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Honestly, what is up with the aero bikes that break enough wind to displace a train. Recently, some non bike oriented adult friends and I visited a trek bike shop. While I drooled on the floor, imagining myself on a 7 series, they learned that this was an aero bike. The instant response was, "Wouldn't a skinnier downtube be more aero?" As the salesperson attempted to outmaneuver this bit of logic, it made WAY too much sense to me. Wouldn't a skinny tube have to break less air?
@hyppy Totally agree The Hour should be there - I've said it before. And his new book Faster is pretty good too, but The Hour is a classic deserving of being in The Works.
@Fausto Crapiz Well as someone else said recently, aero is a funny thing. The problem, as I understand it, is not so much the breaking of the air as the release of the air. So if you can make air 'stick' to surfaces for longer, or not have to attach and re-attach to different bits, and then be released in a more controlled manner it ends up being more efficient.
The measure is drag i.e. how much air are you towing, not how little air are you pushing.
@ChrisO
Wow, I think I need to look into this more. Thanks ChrisO for the info.
@ChrisO
+1 he is behaving these days more like Frandy than any sort of Spartacus. There is an awful lot of guff escaping from his face and none of it is emanating from his legs.
@Fausto Crapiz
This is the 7-series Aero bike:
and this is the 7-series aero road bike:
The first has a super-skinny downtube, and is, in fact, the second-fastest bike you can buy right now if you're doing a time-trial. The second is a road bike first, with aerodynamic shaping second. That means stiffness, weight and handling all have to be taken into account.
I've ridden thousands of kilometres on my TT bike, and yet it will never be as reassuring as the road-bike. Bombing descents and muscling up rolling hills is integral to road racing, and if the bike feels noodly and unstable, you'll lose the race.
Plus, aero is weird, and shapes and their interactions often matter more than nominal tube thickness - especially when a rider's legs dwarf the size of any tube. The Madone has a thick downtube but it's shaped properly, and still comes out more aerodynamic than the skinnier Spesh Venge - while keeping the famous sublime Madone handling. I'd rather have a Cervelo S3 if it were my money, but it's still a decently-aero bike.
@Fausto Crapiz
It's all to do with attachment of laminar airflow which results in reduced drag as summarised by the below. In a round wire the airflow does not attach and so you get turbulence=drag behind. In the aero section the airflow attaches and you get minimal turbulence and so low drag. However, in the aero section if you start to change the angle of the airflow you do get turbulence at the trailing edge and so in a crosswind drag increases. So the challenge is that this also has to work where the airflow is not necessarily straight ahead. In essence this is achieved by some rounding of the trailing edge to reduce trailing edge turbulence as the angle of attack increases. So optimising the shape is more to do with reducing turbulence as the angle of attack changes. If the airflow was always directly ahead a narrow aero blade would be more efficient but as the angle of attack changes some fattening of the section will help the airflow to remain attached on the downstream side to minimise turbulence/drag.
Sorry to drag you all away from the fascinating science, which I don't really understand and which is all starting to sound like ways of "breaking wind" more efficiently. I'm amazed that no-one has yet posted this...
Insert "Dueling Banjos" at 1:30
@ChrisO
Just goes to show how clueless the UCI was (is?) about their own sport, thinking the innovation in the Hour was killing the spirit of it.
Of course, that's also the attitude Desgrange had during his reign in the Tour, but overall, when innovation does spur interest, as you say.
But in the end, we just want to see people go batshit fast. Bring it on.
Actually, I think Boardman was behind the decision, or at least was involved in it. Honorable then that he at least went and broke the Merckx record, but still so ridiculous.
Christ I've missed hanging around here while getting the servers humming again. That last line is gold.
@ChrisO
I wish we could get the fucking book outside the UK so I could read it and make the call. I've heard excellent things but can't get my hands on the bloody thing.