Talking about Lieto I saw him ride side by side with Larsen at IM NZ on a LSpeed Ghisallo (well almost side by side) I saw them twice on the two loop course. They were flying! Larsen in a super aero position and aero bike and Leito on a road bike (cant comment on his position as I am no expert and furthermore they were travelling the opposite direction at 40km per hr or more its hard to see clearly)

I bought a P2 recently not because it was more aero but for fit reasons, and it was the recommendation of an LBS I trusted. I figured that if I could get comfortable and stay in my aerobars for a significant period it would make a big difference, we will find out at IMC. Even the LBS was of the view that the aeroness of the bike is not as big an issue for most of us as the marketing would have us think, at least for the vast majority of us.

I had this discussion with a friend recently who on hearing I bought a new bike said "its not about the bike" well I challenged her to ride her steel 25 lbs road bike at IM instead of her LSpeed Saber, she declined the challenge and conceeded that the bike does make a difference in overall performance. I suspect in both our cases the fact that we are able to stay in the aero bars and on the whole more comfortable versus our other bikes is the difference. I suspect if I had two bikes that both fit me for use in a long distance event the difference in times between the two will be very marginal. I suspect this is the case with the like of Fleck etc.

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Simple Simon
Where's the Fried Chicken??

I know, fit, engine and comfort and all that stuff matters more. No argument
about that. But that's exactly why I choose to take a look at the pros, a very
good biker in Lietos case. They obviously have enough time to get proper fit
to save the optimization problem of aerodynamics fit and comfot. But having
optimized that, it would be natural to use the aerotube bike of the company
a pro is sponsored. QR has a big selection of bikes and Lieto could achieve
the exact position on a more Aerodynamic tubeset. Why isn't he doing it?

And he's by far not the only one to do so. The only conclusion I can draw
from this is that it doesn't matter as much as we think.

sorry I did not answer your question. I agree I dont understand why some of the pros dont go the whole way when someone like Lieto and Macca have access to the whole LSpeed/QR and Kestrel inventory. Maybe they want some specific quality from their rides and aeroness comes second or third on the wish list. Or maybe the sponsor wants to them to promote a model? Email lieto maybe he might give us the scoop. http://www.chrislieto.com/main_index.html

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Simple Simon
Where's the Fried Chicken??

Sponsor probably has something to do with Macca riding a Talon.. While the KM40 is probably slightly more aero than a Talon, it's also significantly heavier. How many pros have you seen riding a KM40?? That KM40 design has been around practically before I was born (not really).. I'd rather be on a Talon than a KM40. Ok, biased opinion, I am on a Talon.

mike

I did write Chris Lieto an email to ask, see if he answers.

About the Kestrel thing. Those are really two different bikes, you can't really
compare them. I would take a Talon any day over the KM40 but not because
of aerodynamics. Although they are both aerodynamic in my opinion.

But Chris is riding pretty much a standard road bike although he could have
the same fit on a more aerodynamic frame, same material, weight...

If I remember right, the Talon (at least the main triangle) is actually based on an even older design than the KM40, and has an EMS rear triangle.

As to the original question, it's been pointed out a couple of times that being a pro/fast doesn't make you a guru an all/any aspects of the sport. How many of the pros do you think can do mechanical work on their bikes? Or know enough about how they swim/bike/run to teach someone how to swim/bike/run. Does being fast automatically make you a great coach? Why would they automatically know anything about bike fit/aerodynamics. Granted, they should at least know that they don’t know, and seek out someone who does, so maybe they are stupid. ;-)

I could argue that Kestrel "designed" the Talon after the KM40, given when the Talon came out, a couple years ago.. and I know the KM40 been around for at least 7 years... never-the-less I see your point.

mike

Actually, I think that the Talon was designed more around the Kestrel 4000. It was one of, if their first, production bikes. It hasn't been in production since probably either the late 1980s or the early 1990s. After that came the 200sci/ems and then the first version of the km40 which had a seat tube and geometry very similar to the current 56cm km40.

The Talon came about more as a price point bike since it is manufactured with the same size rear triangle regardless of the size. Only one mold is required for the rear triangle and then the others for the front half. This year marks the first year that it is in the EMS/SL version.

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

The pros are "stupid" because they generally don't have the time to even care about equipment. This is not always the case, as there are a few gear heads who are also pros. But in general, if the equipment works, it's fine. Even Empfield talks about a certain pro triathlete who never does anything to her bike and was in the same state as he saw it the time before.

The average age grouper obsesses over the things like aerodynamics because we (lacking the genetic gift for being a pro) are looking for every single advantage. The pros only think to train harder, train longer, and train as often as possible. Elite pro cyclists have everything done for them, and with the rare exception, take the directeur and their mechanics' word for what equipment they use. Usually, when races are continually lost by mere seconds is when a pro athlete looks at their equipment, and that is after they tear down and re-do their training protocol.

The stuff out there that the pros use is for our (read: consumer's) benefit. Sure, the pros want good equipment, but truth be told, they could beat us on a $700 road bike with 32 spoke wheels. And only half would tell the difference if it weren't for the weight of the cheaper stuff.

So, in summary: most of us know that we have reached our physical limits in training, which is why we look to the equipment. The pros have not (in their mind) reached their physical limits and therefore look to themselves, rather than their equipment for improvement.

pros live the life i want to lead. travel and sponosor problems included. they are smart.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

I haven't reached anywhere close to my limits in training due mostly to repeated military deployments, but I sure "feel" faster with a new bike or "faster" wheels!

Naw.. the avg age grouper doesn't have the time or motivation to reach their genetic potential.. any way to short-cut better performance, especially if you have the cashola, is very hard to resist.

Wishing I had more time and motivation,
mike

Going out to buy new, lighter cycling shoes with carbon fiber soles.. ya that'll help ;)

"the avg age grouper doesn't have the time or motivation to reach their genetic potential"

Too true. Does anyone else out there truly believe that they could be really good at any one or all of the tri disciplines if they could just focus and dedicate themselves to reaching their potential? My non tri friends and family marvel at my dedication to training and participating in tris. But I know the truth. I know how many workouts I blow off or muddle through completely half assed. My respect for the pros comes not through their talent or potential, but from their ability to stay focused to be able to come so much closer realizing their potential than I can. Then again, maybe I'm wrong and they half ass as much of their training as I do and just have much greater innate ability than I give them credit for. It's not that I think that if I were more dedicated and disciplined I could be a pro. Far from it. I just think I, and most age groupers, have the potential to much better than we are. I just get down when I realize how hard it is for me to discover what that true potential is.

I remember the "aero industry" claiming that Fignon would have beaten LeMonde (did I spell those right?) if he'd not had the pony tail. The drag from that small bit of hair cost him far more than 8 seconds on the final TT.

When Dave Scott came back at 40 and placed 2nd to Welchy, he used down tube shifters! The "aero industry" never mentioned that, that I saw, but I'm sure that they'd be sure that Dave would have beaten Welch by 5 minutes if he'd only used some bar end shifters.

The pro's aren't stupid. The "aero industry" (although quite a legitimate field of study) markets the idea TO SELL PRODUCTS.

IMHO we all realize that we need to cut drag down on the bike, but all the "40 seconds" here and there are proveable only in a wind tunnel... and look great on paper, but racing has far too many elements of the chaos theory to bet that buying a certain part or frame will actually improve your time.

Chaos theory?

So, "Stack", "Reach", and we also need "Lyapunov Exponents"?

Dre'

Chaotic systems are so mandatory to our every day life, small variations in initial conditions result in huge, dynamic transformations in concluding events.

The very name "chaos theory" seems to contradict reason, in fact it seems somewhat of an oxymoron. We, the triathletes, would like to believe that the "aero industry" has discovered some new and definitive knowledge about utterly random and incomprehensible phenomena. (That by installing this fork or riding that frame, we'd be 1 minute faster at the next race)

The "aero industry" like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next... they serve as a measure of how easy it is to perform prediction on the system.

In most real world situations we do not know the differential equations and so we must calculate the exponents from a time series of experimental data which is provided by those in the wind tunnel. Extracting exponents from a time series is a complex problem and requires care in its application and the interpretation of its results.

"For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;
For want of a rider, a message was lost;
For want of a message the battle was lost;
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost!"

So that explains why Tim Deboom wins, right?

Thanks for the little chaos primer, really ...

I get your point. I just think that "chaos" is strong a concept here. I think we both agree that whatever dynamics driving one's bike split lives "on a torus" (to quote our friends Kolmogorov, Arnold, and Moser). Very few conditions will lead to a scatter of little islands outside of our nice stability world (I can think of a broken chain, or fork ... a flat tire will still allow you to finish the race). Whatever you claim is "chaotic" here will only apply to perturbations of pretty high order, so it's not clear to me why one could claim that the improvements are only verifiable in a wind tunnel.

"Random and incomprehensible" is fairly strong a statement when one discusses hydrodynamics, a field that's been tweaked left and right for over 75 years.

How much, do you think, the "error bars" on wind tunnel data affect the reliability of the predictions? Don't you think that this is the main limiting factor, and not "every day life chaos"? But maybe you think that moving your head to drink is a chaotic event? I think that whatever you do, a faster fork will always be faster, and it's up to the rider "not to screw up" and use the advantage fully.

Now, *how* the aero advantages add up ... that's a different question. As it was mentioned earlier, you can't just get rid of the bike completely and get an instantaneous bike split.

Dre'

yes, but...

the original question concerned the pro's ignorance of aero benefits as put forth by those who SELL aero products... and maybe I've added that last part.

But racing isn't about calculating seconds in a wind tunnel. It's about 1 million other factors all inter-playing on the given day. The pro's might well know that to be the case, thus Dave used the down tube shifters and almost won... is he stupid, I think not.

Does the aero industry marketing ploys need to effect our next purchase?

Is Chris L stupid?

The answer to both, no.

I suppose I'm really looking at the race as a whole. To postulate that the supposed benefit will be such and such is just erroneous from my view. The fork in question held in one position with winds in one position has said properties... true. The fork moving through 40K of a chaotic world, well, it has many outcomes.

I'm sure the data that is used in marketing is accurate.

The race may well be determined by the small benefits of the chosen fork, it is highly unlikely that this factor will be the determinating one though.

I've really lost my whole point but these three are the gist:

1. the pro's have the understanding 2. aero marketing sells products 3. the race is determined by other factors.

actually the PDE modelling a rider are non linear and therefore, it is part of chaos theory (in a general sense...there are several definitions such as li-yorke chaotic etc..).
so we have a chaotic system,
so the only thing to do is to email John Cobb et al.
and tell them not to waste their time modelling the whole system but instead try to study the strange attractors of the system.

my guess is that if Lieto reads this, he'll say "hey, screw aerodynamics, let me ride!" :-)

Finally, The Maths Guy chimes in ...

In my initial post, I was just trying to get someone to give me a magnitude of the "chaosness" (?) involved. I know that some people apply chaos to everything (if problem boils down to solving the harmonic oscillator, it's just like having your Lyapunov exponents set to zero).

If you tell me you think all these friendly exponents are either zero or negative, then I'll consider myself "right" into thinking that we are mostly dealing with damping terms and that "chaos" is a bit strong a word. However, if you think that a bunch of exponents might be greater than zero, than I'll have to thank Spode for starting this whole thing.

And to be truly buzzword-compliant, we should add a little discussion about which of wet paint or powdercoat is more fractal ...

Dre'

Sorry, I'll disappoint you...not my field.
anything that has a non linear PDE can be part of chaos theo.
but as you said, you can apply (pretty much) anything to any problem. some might just be better
for following interpretation.

for the last Q: email JC and ask him which one lowers Hausdorff dimension...if he answers something coherent, then to answer an other post, he will definitely reach mythological status :-)

OK OK, chaos is too strong of a word.... but chaosness... that's chaotic! lol

with the powder coat vs. wet paint, can we throw in brushed titanium also?