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Climbing: riding on the tops vs riding on the brake hoods
On 29 jul, 03:44, hizark21 wrote:
On Jul 28, 12:16*am, Tuschinski wrote: On 26 jul, 20:52, hizark21 wrote: Climbing: riding on the tops vs riding on the brake hoods I have noticed that most climber since the mid 90's tend to climb seated with their hands on hoods.Personally I prefer climbing on the tops since this a more relaxed position. Climbing seated on the hoods put's more strain on my wrists. *The one advantage of the hoods is that you can brake faster. In the end I suppose it's a matter of climbing style. Aero wheels are probably marginally beneficial in longer mountain stages. The Discovery team was using aero wheels on the mountain stages. I have not seen any studies to verify this however. Climbing is really more a matter of pacing than wheel sucking. Definitely not true. Studies like these are done (amongst other by the Dutch Magazine Fiets) and point out that Aero wheel trump a few kilos weight loss if powering up Alpe D'Huez. Its actually rather easy to figure it out. If you ride on the flats with a slowish 25 kmph, air resistance is very noticable if you "suck wheel". Talk about 25% watts. Climbing changes this somewhat, gravity kicks in, upping the weight influence. However, air resistance still drops a neat 25%. If a 75 kilo pro (66 kilo guy, clothes, shoes, water, helmet, bike~9 kilo) drops a kilo from his bike, he gains 13% on gravity. Obviously there is a cut off, but gravity needs to be a bout twice as important as air resistance. With pro speeds (25 kmph+ uphill) Aero is simply a deciding factor. And this is why there is definitely more to wheel sucking than simply pacing. It saves watts! Not as much as on the flats, but definitely noticable. If a pro saves 5% of his power on an Alpe D'Huez climb he could shave of 2.5 minute on a 50 minute climb! This is exactly why not just Lance, but also Jan Ullrich started using Lightweight Carbo high rimmed wheels. Nowadays it's a lot more more common now that Zipp, Mavic and Campa also offer light aero offerings. I checked the pictures of the contender group on the alpe: Most used Carbon High section rimms (zipp for CSC, Evans+Valv used Campa). For a finisher I will quote a study by a university researcher. Cervelo has it on its site, though I found it on other places as well: The effects of bicycle weight, even on a tough climbing course are minimal compared with the effects of aerodynamics http://www.cervelo.com/content.aspx?...erodynamics#10 |
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