- There is some interesting insights in that.
And being the data junkie that I am.
Their average height was five foot five
and one-half inches, and their average weight.
Only minus four celsius, whoo.
Third Zwift ride, digging it.
That hour and five minutes went by like boom.
Big fan.
And so far, Wahoo and Wahoo,
it's working okay.
Stay tuned, make sure you're subscribed
if you wanna stick around for more Wahoo
and Zwift goodness as the offseason
and training indoors rolls around.
See that, biking, rolling around, it's the offseason,
so it doesn't really roll around.
Now did anyone see that
profile that Slowtwitch did
on all the pros' bikes from Kona?
It had like the entire specs, I think the pros
had to fill out what they were using.
So we've got data on what bike they're using,
what size they're using, how tall they are,
how much they weigh, what wheels,
what rubber they've got on the wheels,
the power meter, the hydration bottles.
There is some interesting insights in that.
And being the data junkie that I am,
I put it into a spreadsheet and tried to see
if we could figure out some trends,
and there are some definite trends.
Let me pretty myself up, and we'll walk through
some of the more interesting ones, all right?
I mean, I'm pretty as it is,
but we're getting prettier.
Prettier.
All right, trainiacs, for starters,
how do I look?
Do I look smoother, do I look more aerodynamic?
Do I look like I'd be a faster swimmer?
I'm not saying I did give myself a full-body shave,
but I'm saying I might have.
Now look at this, look at this.
There's a whole bunch of data.
I'm a really big fan of spreadsheets,
being a former finance nerd.
For starters, let's talk about the top 10 pro men.
That's Patrick Lange, Lionel Sanders, David McNamee,
Sebastian Kienle, James Cunnama, Terenzo Bozzone,
Andy Potts, Patrick Nelson, Dan Hoffman, Boris Stein.
Their average height is just under six feet tall,
and their average weight is just under 160,
coming in at about 159.5 pounds.
So they're tall and lanky.
The two most common bikes amongst the men
were the Canyon Speedmax CF SLX, and the Cervelo P5x.
There were only two of each, so it's not like
there's one bike that's really dominating the others.
And those two bike companies are spending a ton of money
getting their bikes underneath pros' undercarriages.
So don't read into that a whole lot.
But here's where we start getting into a few of the things
that we can pull out from the data.
There's not a whole lot of consistency in which
front and rear wheels these athletes used,
however, there is a big trend towards
continental, grand prix, 4,023 mill tires.
That's that tire right there.
Why I've selected this tire might be the same reason
that a lot of the pros have selected this tire.
This tire is really really good for racing.
It's got a low rolling resistance,
but it's not also so brittle
that you're gonna risk punctures.
When you're going on a 180K, basically self-supported ride,
you don't wanna risk a lotta punctures.
I myself have a 23 mill front tire
and a 25 mill rear tire, so that the rolling resistance
on the rear is quite a bit less than on the front,
whereas the front is more aerodynamic
because of that narrower wheel.
We didn't see that with the men.
Just wait, however.
The most common group set by far was
the Shimano Dura Ace DI2 with
one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, eight of the 10
athletes that placed in the top 10 in Kona
racing on that group set.
And then the two other things that we can pull out
from this data is that the most common saddle
with one,
two, three athletes riding it,
is actually,
our new friends over at Cobb.
I believe that this Cobb 55 had two athletes, and then
another model of the Cobb saddle had the third athlete.
Apparently, they know what they're doing, Cobb.
And ceramic speed pulleys and bearings
on the rear derailleur of the bike
is something that,
one, two, three, half of the athletes used.
Now Ceramic Speed, I ended up showing a Facebook Live
when I was at Interbike, and the difference
between the spin and the drag
on a Ceramic Speed bearing vs. a traditional bearing.
Apparently, there's something to it, or
maybe Ceramic Speed is sponsoring a ton of athletes.
All right, now getting into the top 10 women.
We're talking about Daniela Ryf, Lizzie Charles,
Sarah Crowley, Heather Jackson, Kesa Salley,
Susie Cheetham, Carrie Lester, Liz Lyles,
Annabelle Luxford and Jocelyn McCauley,
their average height was five foot five
and one-half inches, and their average weight
was just under 122 pounds.
Seeing any sort of correlation between size
and performance, we don't really see that.
Daniela Ryf is actually a fairly tall,
fairly muscular athlete, so of any one in the top 10,
it looks like Daniela Ryf is actually the tallest
and the heaviest, she's jacked.
With the bikes that they rode,
the Felt and the specialized Shiv again had two each.
I told you that you needed to hang on.
The interesting thing about the female riders
is that, again, we don't see many trends
in which wheel sets they're using,
but we saw a very big trend in wider tires.
So there are 24s, 25s,
and there are even a 28 mill wide tire
on Daniela Ryf's rear wheel.
This is kinda counterintuitive when I think about it,
because I think that the best bang for your buck
on wider tires is that because the tires are wider,
the, say it doesn't squish as much onto the ground.
Thus, you get better rolling resistance.
The more you weigh, the more the tire is going
to squish on the ground.
With male athletes being heavier than the female athletes,
I would have thought that it was actually the opposite.
But like basically, across the board,
almost everyone had at least
one tire that was wider than the standard 23 mill.
Again, with the group sets, Shimano DI2
ran away with the count, with over half
of the athletes again using that group set.
And everywhere else, with the bike computer,
with the crank length, with the design of the bottles,
with the saddles, there was no single trend
that I could pick out besides, again,
Ceramic Speed rear pulleys being used by six
out of the 10 athletes.
Okay, so what are the things that we can pull out from this,
that we can apply to our riding?
Well, certainly look at trying Ceramic Speed.
Now, they are damn expensive.
I think I might try to reach out to them
as we're doing a new bike build that's coming up,
hint, hint, be subscribed if you wanna see that.
It's very exciting, and I am jacked about this new bike.
Shimano DI2 still seems to be the gold standard
in group sets that are electronic,
even with SRAM eTAPS coming out
and apparently being awesome, but we just don't
see athletes using it.
Take a look at wider tires,
and don't stress about being the lightest
you can possibly be in a race
and getting the exact right setup dialed in,
because we see that there are a huge number
of exact right setups based on
the different athletes' preferences.
And figure out what works for you,
and you can only do that by training a lot.
Oh, and by the way, if you train a lot,
you're gonna get a lot faster, as a bonus.
So that was interesting, that was very very interesting.
If you're interested in seeing this spreadsheet,
comment below, and let me know that you're interested
in seeing the whole thing, and I'll send you the link to it.
We can do that.
Now, we are insulating Triathlon Taren HQ.
It's coming along, folks, come see, come see.
Oh, it's downright balmy in here, only minus four Celsius.
Whoo.
(upbeat music)
All right here, gang.
Almost got the thing insulated.
We got that wall
not done.
We got that wall,
half done.
We got that wall done.
Like,
hour away from having this done.
Just running outta light.
We will have many more lights once it's all done.
It'll be lit the F up, lit up.
All right, trainiacs,
go on inside to warm up.
Full on comforter on the couch time.
And Stranger Things, good, so good right now.