For those of you interested in the scientific study of power, aerodynamics, etc. - here is a bike.com interview with Allen Lim that may be of interest.
…had an interesting chat about Powercranks as well
Oh, please do tell Andrew. I was going to chat with him about PCs as well, but the talk ran late and I had to get home.
He did mention that the SRM (scientific model) and the PowerTap measured about the same when drivetrain was taken into account. However, PowerTap was sponsoring his talk and helps with equipment for hs research, for whatever that’s worth.
He said that the powertaps were remarkably accurate and was riding a prototype yellow one with new logarythms being used.
Powertaps, said that they appear to spread the load and fatigue across a larger muscle mass and as a result spread the delay and onset of fatigue as well as delay the onset of glycogen depletion.
I have to be carefull here because I dont want to misquote him but it has to be the same guy, he was doing his Phd in Exer Phys primarily based on power and has been studying Kevin Livingstons SRM output from last years Giro. Same guy?
Apparently KL was putting out 400+ watts for 45 minutes on the Anglirui???sp???
Anyway I know that he has talked to Frank about this so maybe if Frank is lurking he might add something.
Allen Lim spoke recently at Steve Larsen’s shop here in Davis and I was fortunate to be able to attend. I thought the talk was only going to be a 1-hourish spiel about what watts are good for and why you should buy a Power Tap. Wrong. It was a two hour presentation of his doctoral research, which, though funded at least in part by Power Tap, is much more nuanced than “watts good, heart rate bad; buy Power Tap.” Especially interesting was the power-data collected from racing cyclists plotted against the elapsed time of the race. Needless to say, a number of us came away from the talk trying to figure out where we would get the 800 bones that would allow us entry into the wacky and wonderful world of wattage.
This was the quote from the interview that caught my attention:
“In fact, it’s our belief that the aerodynamic and rolling resistance values we calculate in the real world using the Power Tap are more accurate than a wind tunnel.”
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