A lot of you have seen the information start trickle out from the AeroCamp that Brian Stover of Accelerate3 an I put on with the help of Jim Manton of ERO Sports and Andy Froncioni of Alpamantis. This was a first of it’s kind camp and will help serve as a model for other such camps around the world using the Alphamantis system. For all of us I feel like it was really about bringing this technology and experiences to the masses. It is something that was proven to be very valuable for the age grouper and not just something that pros have access to.
First of all I want to thank the staff at the Stub Hub Velo Sports center for clearing the facility and making it possible to test most of the day on Saturday and all day on Sunday. Also a big thanks to Jim and Bryan from Ero Sports for going above and beyond the call of duty to help us pull this thing off.
The best thing I can do is to try to summarize over 140 runs by saying, you think know, but you really don’t. We were constantly surprised by what worked for people. Often times what worked for one person would be much worse for others. We found a general trend in helmets and ones that tested consistently well across the board. However, the best helmet for me was not what worked best for Brian.
Some rules of thumb, position trumps all. Two of the camper lost nearly 45 and 67 watts of drag just due to position alone. Next would be helmets and then clothing. After personally seeing a nearly 18 watt drop I think that clothing is really the next frontier. Again it has to fit well, otherwise the needle moves in the opposite direction. Hydration was interesting as well. Some products work better on some frames than they do others. Big round straws are bad and a BTA bottle generally was neutral.
I’m sure I’m leaving out a lot of stuff and those that attended will be able to chime in with their own data. Personally I’m happy to share mine and I’m sure Brian will be too.
Really interested in any feedback on the Wing57. With visor vs. without. How did it match up overall. Camp looks great. A nice addition to bike fit options, well done.
The Wing 57 we had there was one without a visor. I believe 5 or 6 people tested it. It tested pretty well on some people and just ok on others. It was definitely faster overall than the wingspan though. Again, helmets are very individual, on one person it was close ( probably within the margin of error of the best helmet on that person).
I think the general consensus when talking about tests with the Rudy Wing57 fell along these lines:
a. It’s consistently faster than the Wingspan
b. It’s normally not the fastest
c. Overall, it seemed a bit underwhelming given the hype it recieved
This is all very interesting. It sounds like a great experience. I would have seriously considered attending if it were within driving distance for me. Had any of the participants been to a wind tunnel before? If so, did this offer many additional gains or refinement?
Also, I think the additional attention to aerodynamic clothing for triathlon in the last few years has been really interesting. Were there any noticeable trends among clothing? I know sleeves have been getting a lot of attention recently. I’m just wondering about the differences between true TT skinsuits, aero tri suits, and standard tri suits. I’ll be making a trip to the wind tunnel in the next couple months and I’m hoping to test out a few different clothing options, both for tri and TT.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like the gains that were made were well worth it! A 40 watt improvement in power output would take a lot of training.
A few aero road helmets got tested. The consensus was you can do a triathlon in them but they are not faster than a real aero helmet. iirc we nicknamed one of the aero road helmets “The Salad Bowl” bc that was it’s best use.
An interesting find was we did have one person who’s regular road helmet tested out faster than their aero helmet. We found an aero helmet that worked extremely well, much better than the road aero helmet.
I think the what was proven is a real aero helmet is substantially faster than aero road helmet.
Did you test any aero road helmets? And if yes, we’re there any trends for relative rankings?
A few people tested the Evade and it tested well for them but not as well as the best aero helmet for them. I did not personally test any aero road helmets. No one tested the LG or Giro since those trends had already been pretty well established. GENERALLY, the Evade>LG>Air Attack. Again it is very athlete dependant (splitting hairs too) and a good aero helmet is going to be better. The Evade and Giro do better than the LG if you are looking straight down. That being said, if you are looking straight down you are a danger to yourself and others. The suggestion was made that if on is to wear the AA to get it without the visor. Also the holes on the helmet where a visor attaches when not running the visor cause drag.
I tweeted this right after camp: Having a helmet sponsor is potentially a big liability.
The only way to know for sure is to cross your fingers and go with the trends or get tested. I think Jim mentioned in another thread the P-09 was the star of the show. But it was fastest on only 75% of the people. Not a bad trend though.
This is all very interesting. It sounds like a great experience. I would have seriously considered attending if it were within driving distance for me. Had any of the participants been to a wind tunnel before? If so, did this offer many additional gains or refinement?
Also, I think the additional attention to aerodynamic clothing for triathlon in the last few years has been really interesting. Were there any noticeable trends among clothing? I know sleeves have been getting a lot of attention recently. I’m just wondering about the differences between true TT skinsuits, aero tri suits, and standard tri suits. I’ll be making a trip to the wind tunnel in the next couple months and I’m hoping to test out a few different clothing options, both for tri and TT.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like the gains that were made were well worth it! A 40 watt improvement in power output would take a lot of training.
As Heath says and the reasons I searched out a good (consumer available) option last Fall, clothing is the next frontier in aerodynamic gains for triathlon.
I did. I was considering one for crit/road races. I tested my (everyday road helmet) Giro Aeon against the Evade, Rocket, Wingspan, P09. The Aeon beat all but the P09. I guess Giro has a right to include it in their aero lineup. HOWEVER, there were a few surprising results in my tests. I am guessing that since I am a straight cyclist testing a TT position, some things may test differently for me than for others so keep that in mind.
A lot of you have seen the information start trickle out from the AeroCamp that Brian Stover of Accelerate3 an I put on with the help of Jim Manton of ERO Sports and Andy Froncioni of Alpamantis. This was a first of it’s kind camp and will help serve as a model for other such camps around the world using the Alphamantis system. For all of us I feel like it was really about bringing this technology and experiences to the masses. It is something that was proven to be very valuable for the age grouper and not just something that pros have access to.
First of all I want to thank the staff at the Stub Hub Velo Sports center for clearing the facility and making it possible to test most of the day on Saturday and all day on Sunday. Also a big thanks to Jim and Bryan from Ero Sports for going above and beyond the call of duty to help us pull this thing off.
The best thing I can do is to try to summarize over 140 runs by saying, you think know, but you really don’t. We were constantly surprised by what worked for people. Often times what worked for one person would be much worse for others. We found a general trend in helmets and ones that tested consistently well across the board. However, the best helmet for me was not what worked best for Brian.
Some rules of thumb, position trumps all. Two of the camper lost nearly 45 and 67 watts of drag just due to position alone. Next would be helmets and then clothing. After personally seeing a nearly 18 watt drop I think that clothing is really the next frontier. Again it has to fit well, otherwise the needle moves in the opposite direction. Hydration was interesting as well. Some products work better on some frames than they do others. Big round straws are bad and a BTA bottle generally was neutral.
I’m sure I’m leaving out a lot of stuff and those that attended will be able to chime in with their own data. Personally I’m happy to share mine and I’m sure Brian will be too.
This is all very interesting. It sounds like a great experience. I would have seriously considered attending if it were within driving distance for me. Had any of the participants been to a wind tunnel before? If so, did this offer many additional gains or refinement?
Also, I think the additional attention to aerodynamic clothing for triathlon in the last few years has been really interesting. Were there any noticeable trends among clothing? I know sleeves have been getting a lot of attention recently. I’m just wondering about the differences between true TT skinsuits, aero tri suits, and standard tri suits. I’ll be making a trip to the wind tunnel in the next couple months and I’m hoping to test out a few different clothing options, both for tri and TT.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like the gains that were made were well worth it! A 40 watt improvement in power output would take a lot of training.
I don’t think anyone had been to a wind tunnel before. Brian, Jim and I have spend time around the tunnel though. I will say my opinion is that this is a compliment to the tunnel and not a replacement. There are things you can do in a tunnel, yaw measurements for example, that you can’t do here. Where this method excels is in real time testing. I’ve seen some crazy positions get setup in the tunnel only to be unrideable or nearly so on the road. It is immediately clear if that’s the case on the velodrome. For example I pushed my extension 10mm forward and by the end of 3k my neck was killing me. Had it been faster, it wasn’t, it wasn’t sustainable.
Sleeves are good and ones that go to your elbow are better. The big thing is fit. You don’t want wrinkles in the shoulder or across the front of the sleeve. Also it needs to be tight. The PI suit on Brian was slower than his 2 piece, it was neutral on Jack or slightly worse and awesome on me. Texture on the sleeves is a big thing as your biceps are basically two ugly cylinders, the texture helps trip the boundary layer.
Also I understand the drive/fly issues. Most people don’t have the luxury that we do of the A2 tunnel being in NC and driving distance. I may schedule some time there just for pure validation sake. A2 is also relatively cheap at $500/hr compared to SD LSWT at +$1000/hr.
clothing is the next big frontier imo. There are things everyone should pay attention to.
Like Wet suits it’s all about the fit. The PI suit worked really, really well when it works and it kills you when it doesn’t work. Poor fit = slooow and no I did not misspell it bc it was ~20w watt slower than baseline on me which was a 2 piece Desoto shorts and 2xU top.
The trends are texture especially on any cylinder shaped body parts (think arms). Sleeves can be good or they can be bad. Again we found that the trend is when it’s bad it’s really bad. Unfortunately a lot of people are going to be buying this stuff thinking they are buying speed when they are going to end up buying slowness.
we saw skin suits get beat by tri suits and vice versa, we saw aero tops and clothing get beat by standard kit and vice versa.
IMO the only for sure trend we saw applied to females. iirc every single one of them that sized down a size on their top ie a Medium to a Small reduced drag.
I tested both the Wing 57 and a Specialized Evade. The Wing 57 was fastest for me (by a slight margin) but the Evade tested very well on me. It beat the Wingspan and Selector I also tested. I couldn’t cram the LG P09 on my melon since we only had a S/M but the Vortice was just behind the Wing 57 so they would probably be very close.
As for clothing, my CdA dropped in the Fusion top slightly but the fabric wasn’t textured which seemed to make a big difference in some wearing the Octane suit. I unfortunately didn’t test the Octane and am kicking myself for not doing so. Heath dazzled everyone with it on the last run of day 2.
This was a great camp weekend and I’m really glad I went. Jim, Bryan, Brian and Heath went above and beyond to help everyone there with position and testing ideas. I had always wondered about wind tunnel/CdA testing with the A2 tunnel within driving distance for me. I don’t regret jumping on this opportunity which involved a cross country flight for me.
For me going longer was bad. I stretched out 1cm and it killed my neck and was slower. Me dropping 1cm was a big improvement. Brian was already pretty stretched out and had a super low CdA. 2nd lowest of the camp which is impressive given that he’s 6’ish. A couple of the women testing were better stretched out and lower. It is really individual.
Jim says the trend is narrow, long and low. But not to much. Some people got worse when they went to low and started exposing their backs.
The thing for me is that I went to Jim for a fit and found out that I didn’t need one as I done a good job on my own. I think I’d pretty much already gotten 95% way there on the fit. The only thing I changed was going 1cm lower in front. The moral is Fit first. Those that got in a good position got significantly faster in testing.
I saw some gains by increasing my reach but I also made a few other changes that enabled me to do that. I increased my extensions up 5 degrees, anything higher was slower. I moved my extensions forward 1cm and I have no more room to move them forward. I run profile Tx’s and they are the longest extensions. I’m lucky I have long arms.
The biggest thing to think about is your biceps are they are cylinders. Cylinders are typically slow. I’m pretty lucky, I have tiny biceps (actually not sure if that is lucky or not) and slightly longer than normal arms for a 6 foot person. I’m very comfy riding stretched out much more forward than your typical triathlete.
We saw tests where lower was slower, where higher was faster and slower. It’s specific to the person. When I was with some athletes of mine at A2, the praying mantis position was crazy fast on one and elevating the hands higher was slower.
Just as wider arm pad width may be faster for some narrower may be faster for others.
The biggest thing the time at the tunnel and this testing taught me is that what you often think is faster is not and there where times where every single person was blown away at what was faster bc it defied all logic.
