Welcome back to the Win Tunnel. Now over the last few videos we've admittedly
done a lot of drop bar testing, so we decided to change it up a little bit and
do a mountain bike test this time around. And another thing that's new is we have
Jesse Frank who just joined our team recently, and Jesse has been responsible
for all the tests that have gone on in the Win Tunnel. As part of that
you've tested all of our pro athletes over the last year. Over that experience
what is something that you've learned? So we've obviously tested a lot of
equipment with these athletes but by and large the thing that has the biggest
effect on these athletes' aerodynamics is their body position. A lot of people get
comfortable but also aero in a position that can maintain the whole race is
obviously, because the rider has the most amount of drag that's gonna be affected during
the course of a ride. That makes a lot of sense. So knowing that in combination
with the fact that Leadville is just around the corner, we decided to look at a few
different cross-country race positions and especially since a lot of you
recently have been asking, "Hey is that position where people are just holding
the crown actually fast ]?" So that's one of the positions that we'll
test out today. So Jesse, run us through what we're gonna do for the test. Yeah, of
course. We're gonna be using a Specialized epic cross-country bike
inside the tunnel. Nothing about that bike is going to change when we go
through different positions. We're gonna take the average speed from last year's
Leadville winner, Howard Graz, which is around 26 kilometers per hour for the
entire course. We're gonna use that as our wind speed today and then go through
and test four different positions. The first position we're going to test is
just your baseline position. You might be sitting riding in a pack at the
beginning of a race, just riding on a training day, hands out wide, hands on the
brakes, nice and relaxed. The second position is going to be a crouch
position with your hands same place over the brakes but you're going to be
crashed down a bit more like you're chasing back a group or you might be in
a pack of two or three and putting out a good effort. Third is going to be that
fourth crown position that we've seen some athletes take. Might be a more aero,
we're not sure, might be a little sketchy handling wise, but we'll take a look and
see what we find. And lastly we're gonna go into a narrow
tuck where you place your hands still on the handlebars so you have some
control but it's close to the stem as possible and tucked super low. Great, let's
see what's the fastest.
Well Jesse, the results are in, and compared to baseline, that first slightly
crouch position represented an entire 17 minutes saved over the Leadville course.
Now the next position that was more aggressive where you were holding the
four crowns that was faster and represented a twenty-one minute savings
over Leadville. Finally the third position where your narrow and crouched
down that was actually the fastest, and you saved 23 minutes over the entire
Leadville course. Wow, that's really cool to know I
definitely felt slightly more locked in and secure with my hands on the
handlebar still and narrowly tucked than I did with my hands on the four crown so
pretty stoked to hear that. That's great. Well Jesse, those numbers were almost
unbelievable how big they were right? And granted we're not suggesting that anyone
uses any of those positions throughout the entire hundred mile race right. No,
but if they ride in that position for even a quarter of the race you can enjoy
at least one burrito before your next competitor finishes. So I guess the
bigger takeaway is that anywhere where it's long and straight and you feel safe
and comfortable holding any one of those three positions, that it'll be an
enormous benefit. So with that, thank you for watching and as always if you
have any questions for us here in the Win Tunnel, please just shoot them our way.
Thanks.
you