(water splashing)
(foot steps thumping)
- Morning, Trainiacs.
Just about to head out
to the Tuesday, Thursday morning group ride.
That's not what we're talking about, though.
A lot of you have a road bike,
and you're wondering if
aero bars put on that road bike are worth it.
Well, what we're gonna do
is we're gonna slap these babies on the road bike,
and what we're gonna do is we're gonna do some testing
to see if aero bars on your road bike make you faster.
Spoiler alert, yes,
but how much faster so that you can decide
if this is worth it for you.
Let's rip her.
(energetic dance music)
All right, Trainiacs, what we're gonna do here
is we're on a stretch of road that I'm gonna ride on.
I'm gonna start with the road bike here
with no clip-on aero bars.
I'm gonna ride out four minutes out,
turn around, four minutes back to eliminate any differences
between wind or elevation.
I'm gonna do that twice.
The first time I'm gonna do it,
we're gonna do low power.
Second time we're gonna do it,
we're gonna do a little bit higher power.
Then I'm gonna stop, put the clip-on aero bars on.
I'm gonna do that again.
I'm gonna go out with low power,
back with low power, out with higher power,
back with higher power,
trying to keep those power numbers to a normalized power
that's the same both with the clip-on aero bars
and the bike,
and we're gonna see how far I went
in each of those time trials
to see how much difference it makes having aero bars
at low and high power.
Let's do it.
(jaunty electronic music)
All right, so what we did there was eight minutes
on just the drop bars at 150 watts,
then eight minutes on the drop bars at 200 watts.
Then we put on the aero bars, did eight minutes
at 150 watts, eight minutes at 200 watts,
and now we'll go back to the Pain Cavern
and we'll see, well, I know for a fact
that I actually went further with the aero bars,
but we'll see exactly how much that difference is.
Let's do it.
All right, Trainiacs, that worked.
I'm astonished here.
We have excellent data
with results that are around where I was expecting.
So what we've got here is the ride that we did,
and are remember, we did four sections.
We did 150 watts for eight minutes going four minutes out,
four minutes back, 200 watts going four minutes out,
four minutes back.
Then we slapped on the aero bars,
went four minutes out, four minutes back at 150 watts
and then 200 watts four minutes out, four minutes back,
and those last two were in the aero bars.
Now, what you would expect is that the aero bars are faster,
and what I want to see is how much of a difference there is
in between that 150 watts and 200 watt.
Like what I wanna see is
is there a significantly bigger advantage the faster you go?
So let's take a look and analyze those laps.
So what we're looking for is laps number one
and three match up.
So those are the 150, the 150 for eight minutes.
So lap one here, the first eight minute section,
I went 3.81 kilometers and had normalized power
of 149 watts.
Now let's compare that to the third eight minute section
where I did 150 watts
but I went 4.17 kilometers.
So we're looking at a difference in just eight minutes
of almost 400 meters, and this was back to back.
All I did was just circle the round.
So it's not like the wind was even that much different.
Now, let's see how much difference that is
when we increase the power to 200 watts.
So in that case, the first time we did it
when I was up on the bars,
I went 4.37 kilometers,
even further than when I had the aero bars at 150 watts.
And let's see how far I went doing 200 watts
in the aero bars.
That's this last section.
4.65 kilometers, so just under .3 kilometers difference.
And the wattages between the two are largely the same.
The first time I did it, 202 watts,
and then the second time I did it, 201 watts.
So what we're seeing is that regardless of the wattages,
whether you are at 150 watts,
kind of a low, easier effort or 200 watts,
there is a similar advantage,
but what we see is that as you get faster,
the advantage becomes a little bit less
because it becomes harder as you go faster
to gain additional speed.
And the wattages between the two are largely the same.
The first time I did it, 202 watts,
and then, the second time I did it, 201 watts.
So what we're seeing is that regardless of the wattages,
whether you are at 150 watts,
kind of a low, easier effort,
or 200 watts, there is a similar advantage,
but what we see is that as you get faster,
the advantage becomes a little bit less
because it becomes harder as you go faster
to gain additional speed.
So I just did some math here,
and let's say we took the average bike times
for sprint Olympic half Ironman and Ironman,
how much time could you expect to actually save?
Well, depending on the wattage,
we calculated just now between about a 6-1/2
and a 9-1/2% time improvement on the bike.
If we took some of the average finish times
for the bike in a sprint,
we're talking going from about a 50 minute bike time
to a 47, a three minute savings.
Over an hour and 1/2 Olympic distance bike,
we're looking at about a 5-1/2 minute savings.
Over about a 3-1/2 hour half Ironman bike,
we're looking at about a 12-1/2 minute savings,
and then over the course of a 6-1/2 hour Ironman,
we look at a 23-1/2 minute savings by clipping on a set
of $40 aero bars.
Now that is the single best investment you can make
on your bike because doesn't matter
if you go from a $2,000 bike to a $7,000 bike,
if you're a windsail, you're a big kinda just wind scoop
with your hands on the bars
and you're just sucking in all that air
into your chest cavity, 85% of your total aerodynamics
is your body, so you are going
to be slowing yourself down immensely.
If you get comfortable in that aero position
and do quite a number of brick workouts after,
you're going to be able to go faster,
like we show here, and still run after the bike
with a very, very marginal penalty on the run
for being that little bit more aerodynamic,
which is just a tad less comfortable,
but you can overcome that by training
in that aero position quite a bit more.
Now, the reason that I did this test
is because I just finished the first draft
of the Beginner Triathlon Foundation's How to Bike booklet,
and one of the first things that I said is,
"In the series of things that triathletes have to buy,
"there's dozens and dozens of upgrades
"that you can make for your bike.
"It's just a black hole of money.
"The first thing that you should look at
"isn't a tri-bike, it isn't a set of aero wheels.
"It's not even an aero helmet.
"It's a set of clip-on aero bars."
And the reason I say that is because of results like this.
So if you're watching this video right after this video
has been published, that guide isn't available yet,
but it will be over the next couple months,
and if you're watching this video down the road,
it should be available.
So you can go to triathlontaren.com/beginnerbike
and get that free download.
You just put in your email address
and get a little preview of that booklet,
and when it's out, who knows?
Maybe you'll wanna buy it.
All right, upgrade to aero bars.
Later, Trainiacs.