On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Adam Blythe, 2013 BMC, 2014 Continental team NFTO, won the London-Surrey Classic this past Sunday in a remarkable upset, beating the World Tour riders otherwise dominating his winning breakaway. I watched the final 10 km on youtube, although that video seems to have since been pulled. Too bad -- it was an impressive final. Adam was there with 5 pro tour riders including Sky's Ben Swift and BMC's former world champion, Philippe Gilbert. Although Blythe was on BMC last year, obviously his preparation for this race was handicapped by the lack of top caliber race opportunities available to his team, NTFO. Despite this, he took his share of the pulls, longer pulls than some of the others. Surprisingly there were no attacks in the final kilometers, the group instead working together until the end game began well within the final kilometer. Adam went from relatively long, not wanting to get jumped by Swift, and it worked. He held his gap to the finish, winning his home ...

According to a recent CyclingNews article , Mark Cavendish downsized from a 52 cm to a 49 cm Specialized Venge this year. The article quotes Specialized Body Geometry fit manager Sean Madsen: "One thing about Cav is that he likes to periodically change his position around, based entirely on his feeling," Madsen said. "He may change it back in a couple of weeks, when his mood changes!" So did he change his position? Here's some BikeRadar/CyclingNews reviews of Cavendish bikes: 2011 2013 2014 I took the 2011 and 2014 side shots. Unfortunately these are from relatively different camera positions. To compensate, I did a combination of image scalings, rotations, and perspective transformations on the images to match the bottom bracket positions and the heights of the front and rear tires. This is 3 transformations for 3 constraints. It's not enough to fully match the photos, but it's a lot better than taking them unprocessed. I aligned the fro...

L'Equipe recently posted a nice article on the history of time trialing, including the hour record. The posting included a wonderful photo of Jacques Anquetil , an unsurpassed time trialer in the history of professional bike racing. Jacques' peak was the late 1950's and early 1960's. He won the Tour 5 times, perhaps with the assistance of blood transfusions in the later years. Anquetil was famous for his extreme toe-down pedal style. It's typically recommended the foot at the bottom of the pedal stroke be at a relatively shallow angle, for example 15 degrees. But Anquetil's foot was at a much steeper angle: closer to 45 degrees. It's hard to argue this approach slowed him down at all, but I've not seen it imitated by accomplished racers. The dominant time trialist of today amomg the ProTour ranks is clearly Tony Martin . His most recent victory is the first individual time trial in the 2013 Tour de France , which is ongoing as I write this. De...

Previously I described data I'd come across on the saddle positions of various pro cyclists. I plotted those results, showing lateral position of the saddle versus saddle height, each relative to the bottom bracket center, as follows: The fit corresponded to a 66.4 degree seat angle with an intercept 93.5 mm ahead of the bottom bracket. So if the saddle was aligned with the sitting position aligned with a zero-setback post, then a slack, forwardly displaced seat tube would do the best job of fitting this diverse set of positions. It was pointed out to me on the WeightWeenies forum that such a bike had been sold. Here it is: the Aegis: I can superpost the data on the bike. First, I need to flip the axes, then I need to convert saddle height to vertical position above the bottom bracket. Here's the result: The match is remarable to the numbers I derived previously. Evidently the bike didn't sell. The issue is that it isn't needed: you don't need a sin...

CyclingNews published a gallery of photos of the Astana team getting tested for bike position by Specialized. Of particular interest was the position changes given to Viscenzo Nibali, their new star for stage races, who rode for the Cannondale-sponsored team last year. Presumibly the superior fit provided by the Specialized crew led by Andy Pruitt would improve Nibali's time trialing. I was curious in how the position change, so I superposed the before and after photos in the article. To align the photos, I rotated and scaled them to align the arm pads. According to the article, "Nibali's bars were raised so he could try to relax his shoulders and drop his head". However, to me if anything his "before" shot looks more relaxed, with a lower head and a more aerodynamic position. If on top of this you shift his "after" position up (the bars being higher) the advantage of the before shot appears even greater. Of course, there's alwa...

This year Cervelo overhauled its road bike geometry, merging the previous R and RS series into a single unified R. I plot head tube angle versus reach for 2010 and 2011 series: the 2011 R series goes from R-like at small sizes up to RS-like in large sizes. On Sunday, Garmin-Cervelo's Johan Van Summeren produced an epic win at Paris-Roubaix riding his modified "R3". Johan's a tall guy: reportedly 2 meters in height, and rides the largest-size Cervelo. From the plot you can see this bike has a 22.5 cm head tube, 2 cm longer than the comparable bike from last year. And you can see every cm of this length in photos of Johan's bike, borrowed from VeloNews: Impressive. Johan is at the limit of the frame's geometry with a slammed -17 degree stem (of course he could have used a retrograde stem to get even lower, but this is generally considered undesirable). This seems to support Cervelo's geometry. But it got me thinking: is this the longest hea...

I got on the trainer and tried the following two positons, both representing a "chase to close a gap" mode (I couldn't necessarily hold these positions for a half hour, for example). In the top photo, I've got my head up to focus on where I'm going. I used to ride this way all the time. In the bottom, I'm shrugging my shoulders and relaxing my head, looking up to look forward. I can see fine, it's just I'm looking up instead of straight. In the top photo it actually seems my arms are more bent (sloppy of me). Yet despite this advantage, you can clearly see my head is higher above my back: the difference to the bottom position is a full 5.6 cm. With a head width of 17 cm (which I measured), Cd = 0.8, air density = 1.1 kg/m³, I can calculate the effect of a 5.6 cm drop in head position on power, assuming power depends on frontal cross-section and the head down allows more of my torso to draft. The result: 6.7 watts @ 45 kph. Chasing to close gaps i...

I took a break from thinking about the Metrigear Vector to think a bit about position, after the subject came up in BikeTech Review . Position's a tricky deal. Move the saddle forward and you feel like sliding back. Then move the saddle back and you feel like riding on the nose. Saddle fore-aft must be dialed in, right? Wrong. The reason is when you change the fore-aft position of the saddle, you're changing other things as well. For example, the distance from the saddle to the bars. Keith Bontrager has an interesting article on position, based on physics. His argument is the key thing is to get your center-of-mass positioned correctly for good handling in the different orientations you typically find yourself. The bike should be balanced in the saddle, out of the saddle sprinting, and out of the saddle climbing. I might add descending is another position which counts. But if you have the right center of mass relative to the bottom bracket, and the right bottom bracket...

Well, maybe not as much as one might think. Anquetil broke the hour record in 1956 with 46.159 km covered. He's arguably the best all-time in road time trials, having won Grand Prix des Nations a ridiculous 9 times over 14 years from 1953 to 1966. Taylor Phinney is reigning world pursuit champion, and more to come...

An eye infection has me sleeping poorly and feeling generally crappy. In these situations, I prefer to take a few days off from worrying about training (except for stretching), get plenty of rest, and focus on getting better. A good chance for a sanity check on my position. CyclingNews did a nice article about the Saxo Bank Squad team getting fitted by Andy Pruitt. Specialized, who sponsors the team, likes to represent itself as experts in ergonomics, and so really play up their relationship with Andy Pruitt, a respected bike fitter who wrote a nice book on the subject (not as "complete" as the title would imply, but definitely worth the read). In the cyclingnews story, there was this side shot of Frank Schleck, showing a side view . I'll take this as an example of, for Frank, a relatively exemplary position. Frank Schleck fitted by Andy Pruitt ( CyclingNews ). So, how do I compare? Leaning the bike against the wall (not the best: a trainer would be better) I took p...