As a cyclists we're always looking for ways to be faster. Now without a doubt the
biggest factor is you the rider although training hard and improving
your fitness is highly rewarding, but it does take time. I've decided to do an
experiment to see how much speed you can actually buy. We're all led to believe
that a fancy skin suit and aero bike and some fancy wheels will make you faster.
But how much faster will they actually make you? To test this I'm going to do
two ten mile time trials back-to-back on the G 10:42 course
just south of Dorking but first we'll be done on an entry level road bike with
entry level kit and the second will be done on the most aerodynamic equipment I
could get my hands on, the same sort of equipment that you would see a
professional using in a time trial. For consistency both the time trials will be
ridden an average power of 300 watts and I'll aim to keep the normalized power
very close to that as well we'll be using a pedal based power meter and
Garmin head unit. For our entry-level road bike we've got this amazing Btwin
Triban 300 which is incredible value it's available for 199 pounds right now
on Decathlons website which for a complete road bike is brilliant.
So for our fastest bike possible we've managed to get our hands on a Canyon
Speedmax time trial bike which is the same bike as used by Alex Dowsett and
also the Movistar team. Now this bike costs six thousand five hundred and
ninety nine pounds but we've actually made some modifications to it to make it
even faster so the first one is this front wheel which is a Head GT3 tri
spoke the same wheel as used by Wiggins and Froome and several other riders and
it's widely regarded to be the fastest front wheel there is and the rear wheel
is a Vision Metron disc which is the same wheel as used by Tony Martin who's
famous for being a very fast man and the tires on these are Continental Attack
force tubulars the front one is 22 millimetres wide for aerodynamics and
the real one is slightly wider for added traction and is 24 millimetres. We've
also got this Elite chrono bottle cage on the bike as well which is designed to
act as a fairing and improve the aerodynamics of the bike because in a
short time trial like a ten-mile time trial you're not really expected to
drink anything. Another quite cool but subtle modification we've made is the
jockey wheels which is probably the ultimate marginal gain as these are
cycling ceramic jockey wheels and they cost 95 pounds set with their
ceramic bearings they're designed to minimize friction and make your
drivetrain slightly more efficient. So when you ride your bike
it's estimated that usually about 80% of the drag created is from the rider and
20% is from the bike so with that considered it's really
important what you wear if you want to go faster. Thinking about that we've
actually gone for a custom-made Endura skinsuit that's been designed in
collaboration with Simon Smart that's got loads of really cool features on it
to help you go faster in is regarded as one of the fastest skin suits available.
The material used in this skin suit is actually faster through the air than
skin and that's been proven in windtunnel tests but it doesn't come
cheap with a skin suit like this typically costing around 300 to 350 pounds.
Now before we get on to the results we are aware that this is just a sample
size of one and we've only done this experiment one time so it's not the most
accurate in the world but it does give you a really good idea of what's
possible if you adopt all the kit that a time trial this would use and I'd also
like to be able to test things like just changing the wheels in isolation or just
using a skin suit and see what difference that makes but it's also an
interesting experiment to see what difference everything makes when you
combine all the possible gains you can make together. So we have the results and
first for consistency I'll tell you the power that I have ridged so on the
Btwin I actually average 298 watts over 10 miles and the normalized power was
304 watts so that means it's fairly consistent and the average speed was 37
km/h. On the Canyon I averaged 297 watts and the normalized power was 301 watts
and an average speed of 43.5km/h so the power between both bikes was fairly
consistent and as close as you'll probably get. Regarding the times the
Btwin did it in a respectable 25 minutes 50 seconds and the Canyon did it in 22
minutes 11 so unsurprisingly this set up was a lot faster and was 3 minutes 39
seconds faster in total but that's not to say that the Btwin is a bad bike
when you put it in perspective this bike only costs 200 pounds and that's pretty
incredible because it's a perfectly good bike. The other thing about the Btwin is
that for about 400 pounds all in with the clothing that I was wearing in the
helmet you can instantly start riding whereas the set up we had here cost
around 11,000 pounds so we can express that 3 minutes 39 seconds as 50 pounds
for every second saved. So the most important thing is is that go out and
enjoy cycling and if you want to go fast and you want to spend money then you can
but if you just want to go out and ride a bike and enjoy yourself and get fit
then you can do it affordably with a bike like this. So everyone wins!