- Morning, trainiacs.
This is going to be a very intense morning workout.
So I'll explain the workout later, but you might notice
that I'm putting the road bike on the old CycleOps Hammer.
That's not for really any other reason than,
as I mentioned to you the other day,
I am going to be making some tweaks to the old Ventum
that's in parts over there.
Still from Coeur d'Alene.
We're gonna take it into the shop
and I'm gonna explain how I'm gonna get more aero,
so hopefully get faster in races with less work.
Same work.
Still hurts.
(techno music)
Oh yes, that is a green jersey.
Helps that I'm just one person that's done that sprint.
All right, 20 minute run at race pace.
(groans) It is just pouring rain out there now.
So, that workout, as promised, was intensity.
We're gonna try to do a really intense,
not like a little bit intense on Tuesday,
but a lot intense Tuesday.
So that was a 45 minute bike, doing seven minute warmup,
and then three times three minutes going 180 watts,
200 watts, 230, 240 watts thereabouts.
Then three minutes regroup at around 150 watts,
kind of just cool down, mellow, flush the lactic acid out,
and then I did four times three minutes max effort
and then two minutes rest in between.
Six minute cool down at the end.
I did not have a lot of max effort
as the first really hard bike back.
And then, 20 minutes, 12 seconds, 4.6 kilometers,
just under three miles in 423 per kilometer pace,
somewhere around a 649 mile.
On top of that all, I look stupendous
in my polka-dot SCODY tri shorts and my backwards ROKA hat.
All right, trainiacs, as per usual
I'm well over my nipple allotment for a video
so YouTube is guaranteed to blacklist this.
After I go put on a shirt,
we'll pick up how all of you can make changes to your bike
without a 500 dollar an hour wind tunnel.
It's free.
All right, so I'm trying to do
two things with the bike here.
Number one, I mentioned this just a couple days ago,
I want to bring down the head tube by about an inch.
And number two, I want to--
Oh, careful.
I wanted to bring in the arm pads
by maybe just a quarter inch on each side.
And I'm using 51 Speedshop aerobar pads to do that
because these have a heck of a lot
of options to dial in your fit.
Now, the reason that I'm doing all that
is because I want to narrow up my frontal plane
and become a little bit more aero in the aero position.
And if I can adjust to that really well,
then with the same power, I can go faster.
I'm gonna tell you two ways to figure out how to do that.
So number one, what you can do that is really easy
is while you're on a trainer on a bike,
you take a full length mirror and you gradually see
how you can get yourself narrower and narrower.
Basically what you're looking at is the full surface volume
of your entire body shape.
And the narrower you can make that,
the smaller you can make that,
the more aerodynamic you're gonna be.
It's just as simple as that.
I mean, there are little nuances to your positioning
with your hands like this, but in general,
the more narrow you can make it,
the more aerodynamic you're gonna be,
but to a point, not at the expense of comfort.
So in general, you don't wanna really make much more
than a half inch movement in one way or another
any more often than about once a month.
Probably takes around four weeks for your body
to adjust to a new position.
So you can make a new position and commit to that
being the change that you're gonna make every month.
Relate that to South Africa, here it is, July 10th,
South Africa is September 2nd, I'm making the change now,
and all it is, is gonna be bringing my front down
by about an inch, which is actually
really just to my old aero position
that I was using back in October
so it's not gonna be that different and difficult
to get into, and I'm gonna bring in my arms
by about a quarter of an inch on each side,
half inch, so little bit further in,
little bit further down, adjust to that
over the course of eight weeks,
and I should be able to be a little bit faster
going at the same speed.
Now, here's how you can get access
to wind tunnel-like testing for free.
So what you wanna do is you wanna find yourself
a hill or basically a dip, two hills,
on the side that go like this.
What you're going to do is, you can get a huge amount
of the benefits that you'd get from wind tunnel testing
without using a wind tunnel.
So you start on one side of the hill,
and without pedaling, just get yourself started
and let yourself coast the entire way down
and you are going to see how far up you get the other side.
Take a piece of chalk, mark where you stop
going up the other side of the hill.
Go and pedal yourself back down,
make whatever change you want,
so maybe it's a little bit lower,
maybe it's little bit more upright,
maybe it's tucking your elbows in,
maybe it's a different helmet.
Do the same thing.
Push yourself off, roll down, and see how far up you go.
And over the course of two, three, maybe four hours,
you're gonna get a sense of which changes you can make
that are going to have an effect on your aerodynamics.
And if you find that there is one really big change
that you're like, holy smokes, this makes a huge difference,
but even if it's not super comfortable,
like sometimes getting your shoulders in
for a lot of age groupers is really tough,
you just gradually start, month by month,
bringing it closer and closer,
maybe you're working on your flexibility,
maybe you're changing things just very slowly,
but incrementally, at least you've got a direction
that you can work towards based off of
this simple little test.
And instead of costing 500 dollars an hour in a wind tunnel,
costing you zero dollars, little bit of time,
and some smarts from your favorite Canadian.
All right, now let's take this gorgeous little wheeler
to Alter Ego Sports.
Do it up!
(techno music)
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Triathlon Kim has been sweating away in the car.
Told her I'd be 30 seconds.
- 30 seconds.