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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [rruff] [ In reply to ]
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^
Bonus: at times it's easier to tell yourself that you're working on position/equipment rather than just putting in miles. For me, sometimes the uncertainty of experimentation makes "training" a bit more fun.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [IJ] [ In reply to ]
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IJ wrote:
@WattsMatter: Sounds pretty cool what you are doing. Sounds you worked with a few track athletes. Where are you based?

Track (endurance and sprint) riders, roadies, TT specialists, triathletes, paracyclists. Some are locals who are keen to improve for the pure fun of it (that's the main reason most of us ride) but also others who have more serious competitive ambitions and compete at world best level.

Asia-Pacific.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [BikeTechReview] [ In reply to ]
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BikeTechReview wrote:
Watt Matters wrote:
BikeTechReview wrote:
Watt Matters wrote:
<snip>


Best of luck in your business ventures.


Thanks, but in reality it's just fun to make people faster and perform better <snip>


What are your rates?

Not sure, for many years have mostly just covered hire costs or have sponsored/helped people.
Any constructive suggestions?

If not, perhaps we both might want to leave it there, as this is about other people's cool things, new solutions, new technology, new processes, learning what's possible, exploring boundaries, making some mistakes and adapting, and helping people perform better while having fun and gaining confidence. And if some people can make a living doing that, nice. Just like being a teacher in a good school.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [tessartype] [ In reply to ]
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So much for going off memory and guessing at 1/2 of the full Israman elevation listed in the ST write-up. Not good enough for the ST crowd!

Grand Columbian was a fun and interesting race. Literally my first ride with a powermeter, so really just data collection. Didn't even look at output during the race. The climb out is absolutely brutal. There were points were I was standing on the pedals in the small ring, big cog and hardly moving. Always hesitant to give people my time from that race when they ask for my HIM PR..."5 hours...but I won!"

Israman looks like a spectacular race, and definitely suited to my build with all of the climbing.

Interesting to hear that you adapted to that helmet. It certainly fits very nicely. Toss a post up here if you do get around to field testing it.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [rruff] [ In reply to ]
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rruff-
Definitely something I have considered. Not sure my statistics teacher would have been to happy with the data!

I guess my interpretation of the situation falls in line with the following:

a) If you do 10 tests and theoretically save 40 watts, chances are you aren't getting slower. Sure, we didn't go through and re-run each test multiple times against a repeated baseline, but I don't think that's ever the plan when an amateur goes to the wind tunnel. If I pay for 2 hours at the wind tunnel, track, etc. I am going to try and pick the low hanging fruit. If my CdA drops from .26 to .24 chances are I didn't just get slower. It's certainly a possibility, but hopefully not the case.

b) I seemed to be the anomaly of those testing at the track at the camp. Quite a few people were able to repeat their baseline or at least get fairly close to it I believe. I went down to LA with a terrible position and ended up with ~3cm more reach, ~2cm forward rotation, and ~2cm more drop by the time I left on Sunday. It is VERY likely that I had not yet developed the specific muscles for the position, and therefore fatigued abnormally quickly. I am okay with assuming that I fatigued in an approximately linear manner as I don't think it would really be an all or nothing change. Maybe, but at this point I won't know.

b) Field testing is an entire different game. As the weather gets nicer in Seattle I am planning on doing a lot of it. Given that it's an outdoor velodrome repeat trials are essential as you said. At this point I am still working out the system, but for instance went down on Sunday and ran a trial of road helmet (A) vs. tt helmet (B) with 4 repeats of both just to get a sense for data recording, and testing flow (A-B-A-B-A-B-A-B). It's much more practical when you aren't time constrained and paying for the system to take your time. My plan is just to decide on one test for the "session" and focus all my runs on that test.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [JTolandTRI] [ In reply to ]
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Aren't fast enough already?!! :-)

AndyF
bike geek
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [AndyF] [ In reply to ]
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Definitely faster! ...but never fast enough!

In all seriousness, anticipating a bike switch shortly so I want to have the tools to work through some hydration options on the new bike and look at some sleeved alternatives to the Octane. Any recommendations on tops with tiny sleeves? Like girl sized tiny...
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [JTolandTRI] [ In reply to ]
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JTolandTRI wrote:
b) Field testing is an entire different game. As the weather gets nicer in Seattle I am planning on doing a lot of it. Given that it's an outdoor velodrome repeat trials are essential as you said.

There may be some protocol tweaks you can do to help nail things down. When the weather gets nicer give a holler.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [JTolandTRI] [ In reply to ]
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A tailor. Fin someone who can take it in for you.



Heath Dotson
HD Coaching:Website |Twitter: 140 Characters or Less|Facebook:Follow us on Facebook
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [RChung] [ In reply to ]
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Will do.

I was hoping to have some solid data from this weekend to look for critique's on, but my speed sensor was dropping out a bunch due to a cheap magnet. Any recommendations on magnets for use on a disc wheel? I could always use a box rim, but that wouldn't be as fun...

What is the best way to isolate Crr when rolling on the velodrome? I found Gribble's computational cyclist roll down calculator, but not sure that is the best approach. If not any estimates for the GP4000S, latex tubes, and wide rims on a concrete track? All this may be more appropriately placed in the Platypus thread...
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [Ex-cyclist] [ In reply to ]
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Somewhat afraid of what a tailor may think will work/try to do with a spandex like material that gets put under pretty high load. I might try it down the road. For now I am going to wait and see. Would like to get my hands on one of the Castelli Stealth T1 tops as I could swim/bike in that and then ditch it for the run.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [JTolandTRI] [ In reply to ]
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JTolandTRI wrote:
What is the best way to isolate Crr when rolling on the velodrome? I found Gribble's computational cyclist roll down calculator, but not sure that is the best approach. If not any estimates for the GP4000S, latex tubes, and wide rims on a concrete track? All this may be more appropriately placed in the Platypus thread...

If you really want to isolate Crr (and you don't always have to, but if you do) on an "unknown" or "first-time" track you'll have to be pretty careful. Basically, you'll have to double-check that your PM is calibrated right, that the speed sensor is working right, and you'll need a wide range of speed. One protocol is the "Shen method" (i.e., monotonic speed change).
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [RChung] [ In reply to ]
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Shen method looks interesting. I'll have to do some more reading on it and then give it a shot.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [JTolandTRI] [ In reply to ]
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It's much more practical when you aren't time constrained and paying for the system to take your time.

I'm not in a big hurry either. I don't think you can be. I went out to test on 7 different days last summer and fall, and I'm still in the phase of working out my baseline and repeatability. Day to day it is around 1% if the wind (yaw) is similar and I compensate for tire temperature. Of course these are less of an issue if you switch back and forth on the same day, which is how you should do comparisons. Chart the numbers and look for drift or other odd trends.

Too many people think they don't need to worry about establishing scatter. You can do one run and get a number, so why confuse things by doing multiple runs, eh? I have a friend who went out and did a single out-back run (on a busy highway!) with two different configurations and concluded that one was better. I think he picked the right one at least.

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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [rruff] [ In reply to ]
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Definitely a benefit to having the velodrome, although even there you can get some funky results with other cyclists. It's somewhat on the way home from school for me so it is easy to just pick a couple days a week to go do some testing when I have time. Maybe it's time to revive/bump the platypus thread once I get a more solid set of baseline tests done.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [Duckie] [ In reply to ]
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Duckie wrote:
My first several runs were position and BTA, all with the Aeon, which took me to .2449. The LG Rocket (also my helmet) tested at .2566. The Evade was .2648. The Wingspan .2403 and the P09 .2267.


Something seems amiss here with these data.

http://biketechreview.com/index.php/blog/551-specialized-evade-aero-helmet-claims

=================
Kraig Willett
http://www.biketechreview.com - check out our reduced report pricing
=================
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [Watt Matters] [ In reply to ]
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Watt Matters wrote:
BikeTechReview wrote:

What are your rates?


Not sure, for many years have mostly just covered hire costs or have sponsored/helped people.
Any constructive suggestions?

Fair enough. You were very adamant in plopping your resume on the table, so I figured I'd give you the opportunity to finish your pitch.

My constructive suggestion would be to not quit your day job - keep field testing fun and stress-free...and understand the limitations of your tools/methodology.

=================
Kraig Willett
http://www.biketechreview.com - check out our reduced report pricing
=================
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [Duckie] [ In reply to ]
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Duckie wrote:
Educated? Those are your words, not mine. I said "guess".

Jim commented that bc I was not going to be doing anything longer than 40K, there were some differences in the position. My head is pretty buried in my shoulders which are relatively wide, as are my hips. I did not test pad width as an old shoulder injury dictates a lot for me there but given my conformation, I would think that a wider position would shield my lower body and that might be why I got the nutty results on the BTA bottle. I suspect that somewhere in there is the reason that my helmet results seemed slightly out of sync with the others.

As to the Aeon, I ran it as my baseline bc I wanted to cover helmets for road/crit, as well as TT. My first several runs were position and BTA, all with the Aeon, which took me to .2449. The LG Rocket (also my helmet) tested at .2566. The Evade was .2648. The Wingspan .2403 and the P09 .2267. In my mind, that all makes sense, except the Aeon (which had far more runs than any other helmet so I am inclined to believe it's results). All the TT helmets tested faster than the aero road and they tested basically oldest=slowest to newest=fastest. IOW, technology works. Now that Aeon, just kind of blows my mind and I will certainly not be replacing it with any other aero road. It was after the fact that I looked it up on Giro's site and discovered that it was listed with the aero helmets as well as the road helmets.

If it matters, I tested with my team skinsuit (not very fast or tight), my P4 with standard brakes and a brezza bar w/s-bends (and stinky old bar tape- gasp!), training wheels. I was the only one testing on training wheels to get a final result of .2267 so it's not like ANY of those helmets actually sucked.

Do you have any side pics of the different runs? I've been in the tunnel and did quite a few position changes and helmet changes and my bandwidth was so much tighter. My base aero to what I thought was an extreme aero position only lowered me by .005. At least it confirmed I was slippery. To swap an aero helmet for another aero helmet and drop .03 is unfreakin believable. I use the lg rocket and am very curious about the PO9.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [JTolandTRI] [ In reply to ]
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JTolandTRI wrote:
rruff-
Definitely something I have considered. Not sure my statistics teacher would have been to happy with the data!

I'd be curious to see others post data from their repeat runs. I don't recall seeing any others in this thread, but it is a long thread...and I'm getting old!

I don't think you got any less aerodynamic (based on position changes alone that you describe, I'd have expected a 2-3% CxA improvement). Head position is another biggie that is low hanging fruit.



The challenge with your data set presented in this thread (as I see it) is in answering with any amount of certainty: why might you have gotten more aerodynamic? and, _how much_ more aerodynamic are you really (important when you start thinking speed/supply side issues)?

Best of luck with your upcoming field testing - I like the way you are thinking!

=================
Kraig Willett
http://www.biketechreview.com - check out our reduced report pricing
=================
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [Watt Matters] [ In reply to ]
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Nice. All the best to your athletes racing in Cali!
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [coates_hbk] [ In reply to ]
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coates_hbk wrote:
Id keep it and just wait for the P09 to be available to the masses

Checked the P09, it's not available yet unfortunately, ordered the Selector mainly for the style and color. And Cancellara was wearing it before but maybe this year they'll be wearing bontrager helmets. Probably keeping the wingspan anyways in case.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [BikeTechReview] [ In reply to ]
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I will just make this general comment. I feel this thread have somewhat derailed and the testing that was performed taking out of context. The athletes, me included, are not professionals. We all have day jobs and triathlon is our hobby. We had to pay to do the testing. No one had a sponsor that paid for testing, hotel, airfare, car rental, taxi etc. Most of us had to burn a few days of vacation in order to attend. In this thread we are not trying to sell you anything. We know there is a lot of interest around aero testing in general and we decided we would be willing to share our experience. The way you try to hold us accountable for the numbers and the repeatability is unrealistic. On average we had about 12 runs each and a ton of stuff we wanted to test. I did 10 runs and of those 10 runs two were baseline runs. Without looking up the numbers I can’t give you the exact delta between the two runs but they were very close.

If I had time and money I would do many repeat runs. I happen to have a good statistics background and I use statistics daily for work so I understand what you guys are talking about. I understand that the numbers reported are single data points. I simply cannot afford to do 30 runs just to determine if 15mm of less stack is better or worse than my base line. I did one run and it showed much worse numbers so I abandoned it. If I didn’t I would have used up all my 10 runs on that one change and still not had a sample size that would be large enough to show a statistically significant difference. What some of you are asking of us is simply not realistic.

I have in the past bitched about equipment manufacturers not showing their data. We get a graph showing how much better wheel A performs compared to wheel B. We never get to see if the difference between wheel A and B is statistically significant. As a consumer I feel they should show give us that information. If not, that sexy graph they give us in my mind is not worth much as it can be very misleading. The manufacturers are trying to sell you something. The weekend warriors hat did the testing are not trying to sell you something. Trying to hold Heath accountable for a big drop of his drag number is not realistic. Heath like the rest of us had a limited number of runs. The huge drop for him came late in the testing session. There was not time to repeat the run 15-20 times nor was that in anyone’s budget.

The demand for repeat runs and statistically significant data from us is not realistic. If anything you should be adamant about getting that from the equipment manufactures. Not from a bunch of age groupers doing testing spending their own time and money.



http://www.frostyjunction.com/
https://twitter.com/FrostyJunction
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [rruff] [ In reply to ]
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Just curious but what do you think constitutes a "run"?

We did at least 10 laps on each setup but each lap is measured. So is that 10 runs?

Some changes we made were so obviously worse that we would just bail out on the run because you can watch the numbers pop up each lap.

If you were doing the testing, how many laps would be a "run" and how many times would you do that for each change? Keep in mind that you are riding, not sitting in a wind tunnel.


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Wattie Ink Triathlon Team
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [Ex-cyclist] [ In reply to ]
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Here's a question I haven't seen anyone pose yet: did anybody try a "mantis" position and, if so, how did it work for them.

From what I've gathered, the mantis position either works or it doesn't but when it does it's extremely effective.
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Re: Ask us anything about Aero Camp [GreenPlease] [ In reply to ]
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I think it was posted, but it might have been a question I answered elsewhere as it is all starting to run together now. At any rate, Frosty was going to try it but the i.d. of the extensions he brought were too small to get the shifters into. We could have cut the cables and blocked a gear, but he decided not to hassle with it because of the PIA cabling a TREK SC is.

I've seen it both work and not work from observations in wind tunnel testing. For one person is was much better and the other it was worse. Most of my exposure to wind tunnel testing has been with pro cyclists who are bound to UCI rules, so I've not seen it tested a lot of times.



Heath Dotson
HD Coaching:Website |Twitter: 140 Characters or Less|Facebook:Follow us on Facebook
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