pk wrote:
ericMPro wrote:
dkennison wrote:
All the bikes tested were “as sold”...
I'm not a fan of this. Each bike, in testing and in life, should be ridden "as needed", ie. set up for whatever use case you have. In our case here that's basically three bottles, a food storage solution, and a flat kit. From there, each bike should be ridden "as optimized", ie. whatever is best for you and that particular bike in that particular use case.
There's a lot of calculus that goes into bike frame and aerobar selection and sizing, and certainly the way those things interact with your hydration and nutrition preferences should be considered.
Same goes for other choices like flat vs. lenticular rear disc wheel and interactions with frame, deep or tri spoke front wheel and interactions with fork, etc. As long as the fit coordinates are the same, and the use case is the same, I think everything else goes for the rest.
Finally, you're right the bikes are all pretty close, but just think of how much better the long and low Tactical would have done if I, a low Cd long and low well-sailing at high yaw rider who demands the most out of a bike's adjustability, were the test rider instead of Kiley.
E
i guess you cant do everything in one test as you saw yourself using only 2 bikes and having done testing before.
if companies where to provide their fastest set up ie optimised wheelset fine (and i think companies should )
if not i guess we would agree there is likely no budget to test the fastest config.
with the proposal for more cyclists testing this time you should get some differences as you would likely need two frames for the test and could set up a bike long and low and short and high but i guess at the end a lot depends on budget which most likely is the biggest limiter.
I think you can aggregate what you know from the distributed tests and various athletes and bring an optimized bike for each brand for the test rider and position.
OTOH, if you're trying to find the fastest OEM bike it's good to either test with OEM equipment or use "standard" wheels, extension shape, etc.
I just think it's silly to try to find the fastest bike. We should be finding the fastest *optimized* bike for each brand in the IM triathlon use case space, which would inform us on how to value each bike based on the aero data as well as other tangibles like ease of adjustability, form factor, etc.
For example, new Canyon is 10w faster than a Trek Speed Concept. How much $$ is 10w worth? To me, they therefore should at least be priced equally, based on adjustability, and I'd probably purchase the Trek over the Canyon based on other things beside aero data.
Eric
Eric Reid
AeroFit |
Instagram Portfolio Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting
“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”