I gotta be honest, if I drew a line north/south through Raleigh there's about three dudes and a girl west of here that when they show up to a weeknight world's ride I just have to roll my eyes.

I think most of them roll Cat 1/2 and show up to a mostly non-racer and Cat 3/4/5 ride and act like they're damned UCI world tour riders.

I work for Novo. In non Covid years they let me organize a fund raiser where some employees attend a fondo as a kind of "raise money and get fit" initiative. Each time they give us some pro Team Novo kit for the effort. Those douches can't stand it each time I'd show up wearing it. But, none of them were ever social enough to even bother to ask what the relationship is.

I bring that up in that I wouldn't be surprised if they were some of the offended.

Roadies in the US gotta get more jolly and communal. Given how low we are in road and TT numbers to Europe we've got nothing to stick our noses up about if we care to improve participation!

It's amazing how hard we make it to ride bikes in America.... especially the industry and ourselves.

Pump track and crit course and cross course at every elementary school IMO.

E

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
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boys did this question get derailled...
one effect that has been brought up in the hour record is that even a single rider on a track will eventually stir the air to the extent it becomes a bit of a tail wind, so in the above case the wind from all of those riders turning around the track would have a definite wind advantage which would be interesting to model, since the faster they go, the faster the wind and it might top out eventually (when the aerodynamic drag overcomes the tailwind?) but it would be fun to see what would happen.

That "wind" is just the rider's wake. So what you're saying is that on a short enough loop you can draft yourself. that's not a separate phenomenon to drafting.
I think the OPs question is essentially asking what's the maximum benefit you could gain from drafting with the infinite paceline provided by a continuous line of riders on a velodrome providing the model for achieving this.
While that's an interesting hypothetical question, I don't think it's practically feasible. You see I'm certain that if you put a continuous line of riders in close drafting proximity, you will almost instantly have a traffic jam. You need any or all of significant spacing, movement in and out of the line, and non-negligible gaps opening and closing, to provide damping for the response waves that travel backwards through any line of independently controlled traffic. The only way around that is to connect the vehicles together (i.e. a train) or have a central controller capable of synchronising everything without the propagation of signals backwards through the line leading to failure. It seems others here don't agree based on some of the earlier comments but perhaps they are assuming this will be an imperfect paceline with ripples and minor gaps to absorb minor fluctuations?

Track Cycling World Championships Stayers in Vienna 08/28/1987
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58ogT99I9Qw




1993 Track Cycling World Championships - Motor Pace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdLj2Nvv3k0

So true... but all you are saying is that talent is required... ;)

I really like the idea of this. National teams. Would be quite a spectacle. Get in line and get up to speed, no passing allowed, fastest lap wins.

I don't think that's necessary. I've been in some very fast, long pacelines. For example a motorpaced warmup with 40-50 riders - most of the way around a 333m track (though not fully connected). >30MPH.

Those disruptions are no big deal, and are handled gracefully by even moderately experienced riders. If you sense a slowup in front of you, you just put your wheel a little downtrack or uptrack of the person in front of you, to allow for some overlap. There's a natural "zipper" effect that takes place. Then once it picks back up, you get right back in pursuit formation. And trackies are all pretty acutely aware of the "wave" effect. And innately work to not hammer to close gaps, or suddenly put back pressure on the pedals if there's a slow-up. It's not like a Cat 5 crit.

I don't think it'd be a big deal at all.

Edit: That sort of wheel overlap might send up alarm bells for non-trackies. It's the sort of thing we're correctly taught to avoid in most group ride or road race scenarios. But in track with very defined movements and some degree of trust among experienced riders, it's a common practice, and you do leave enough lateral space for the person in front to make some corrections of their own.

What you're describing is pretty much what I meant by "movement in and out of the line". So yes, I agree that seems plausible. I've never ridden track so no directly applicable experience just know how that sort of setup wouldn't work out if trying to have it perfect.

There's no such thing as perfect! Even world record team pursuit efforts have lots of little corrections and errors.

Of course not but even "trying to have it perfect" in this hypothetical would result in a traffic jam. Never mind, I think we mostly understand each other and further explanation would just get me lost in irrelevant detail!

If we got enough people on the flat Richmond 3mi circuit in Zwift I think we could see how much we could break their algorithm though! Lol.