- There are so many fast cyclists coming through
in triathlons these days; and quite frankly,
I'm fed up with it.
I wanna find out how they're doing it,
how they're going so fast.
So I'm gonna try and track a few of them down.
Whoa! Whoa!
Hang on, there's fast one coming in.
(aeroplane roaring)
Whoa!
That was seriously fast.
I'm gonna chase this guy down.
(siren blares) (upbeat rock music)
Hey!
Hey, Pull over!
Got ya.
Well I think I burst a few blood vessels there,
but I chased him down.
I've got one of the main culprits, Matthew Bottrill.
Do you know what speed you were doing there?
- I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
- Well Matt, I think it's fair to say
you've coached fair few of the speedy bikes
on the triathlon circuit lately.
- Yeah, absolutely.
You know, Tim Don, three time on world record,
Rachel Joyce, Susie Cheetham, Will Clarke, and Lucy Charles.
- Yeah, and me of course.
- Yeah, and you.
- Not anymore though.
- Thankfully.
- What was that, sorry?
Well anyway, I guess there's a good reason for that,
because your 10 mile PB is pretty fast.
- Yeah, 17:40.
- Whew, and you've been the 10 mile, 25 mile,
50 mile, and a 100 mile U.K. champ,
and set a few records along the way.
But one thing I have learned from you,
is it's not just all about strong legs, right?
- No, not at all.
You know it's looking at every element
that's going to make you go fast,
you know, the position on the bike,
the training, just breaking everything down,
trying to find all those one percents.
- Right, well I think it's time we delved into this
and looked at how to go faster on the bike.
- Right, first off we'll talk about optimising
speed power and aerodynamics.
- Yeah and I mean a lot of people get quite carry away
with power and thinking that's the be all and end all,
and I mean it is important,
but I know you are pretty hot on aerodynamics.
- Yeah, absolutely, you know if it was all about power,
then we would literally be still riding
random row bikes like this,
you know generating the most amount of power.
- [Mark] Yeah and I guess it's actually about
going from A to B as fast as possible.
- Absolutely, you know, you've got to be aerodynamic.
The body is 80% of your drag while you're riding,
or while you're racing, so the better aero position
you get in, as well as optimising power efficiency,
then you are going to shave some serious time.
- I do actually remember you telling me once,
I think it was 2014, you had a lot of power in a race,
but you actually went faster than you had previously,
and you beat the opposition.
- Yeah, kind of a lot in 2014,
and this where I learn a lot about aerodynamics.
I lost 20 watts in power but gained 40 watts
in aerodynamics, which was massive.
And it transformed my cycling.
- [Mark] Yeah, so what are we going
to look at today, first of all?
- So the first thing that we're going to look at
is position.
- Okay, well let's head out then.
- Let's go.
(upbeat music)
- So for the head, Mark, obviously the body is 80%
of the drag, but a lot of people focus
on this aero position, just sittin' in the bars.
But what we want to be able to do is drop the head,
and push it forward.
I always call it the tortoise.
It's basically you've got this big shell
when you've got your helmet on,
but in order for the tortoise to eat the food,
he has to push his head forward.
So the idea is you drop the chin,
and then you push the head forwards.
And then this will give you the narrowing on the shoulders.
- [Mark] Yeah, okay, and it's just nice and relaxed.
You're not fighting it too much.
- You don't want to fight it, like really tense.
Even if you're going to hold it for a few seconds,
but you want to be doing drills during training,
to enable you to hold that position--
- [Mark] Don't just sign up on race day and hope--
- [Matt] No, absolutely, you've gotta
train your body to adapt.
Looking good.
So next up, Mark, for aerodynamics
we're going to be looking at shoulder position.
It's probably the biggest area
that most triathletes are neglecting,
where if you look at a pure time trialist,
you'll see this really narrow shoulder position.
So for you to be able to do that,
then what we want to be able to do is,
we're gonna pull on the end of the poles,
and then you're gonna push into your pads,
and then this will give you the narrow end of the shoulders.
- [Mark] Yeah, I got ya.
- Again, we don't wanna be like really gripping on
so you can't hold that position.
Just ease yourself into it.
- [Mark] And I guess again, practise makes perfect.
- Yeah, absolutely, and then with the head,
it's almost like when you're swimmin' in the pool,
you know you've got your eyes at 45 degrees?
- [Mark] Yeah.
- [Matt] It's exactly the same for you,
and then you can feel the road.
So finally on aerodynamics, Mark,
we're gonna touch on clothing.
You have to remember that the body
is 80% of the drag.
You know you look at cycling teams now,
they're spending hundreds of thousands of pounds
on development into trying to get faster.
And the biggest area they look at
is what kind of their skin suits.
It's now translating into what people world class level
are wearing on their tri suits.
You look at somebody like Tim Don,
the suit he's wearing with the silicon strips,
all of this stuff is developing more and more.
- [Mark] So it's not just about getting
the nicest looking tri suit.
- [Matt] No, you know--
- [Mark] Dammit.
- If you wanna go fast,
you can probably save from a standard suit
to one that has been developed in the wind and all,
is probably like a 25, 30 watt savings.
It's huge.
It's hard to believe but, like I say,
because the body is so large
that you can make some serious gain.
- Yeah, so if you are looking to go faster,
look at the materials and design of suit,
not just how it looks.
- Absolutely.
So next up, Mark, we're gonna talk about pacing.
You know it's like when I first came into the sport,
I started coaching people,
everyone was speaking about this I am on pace 70.3--
- [Mark] Just holding a set par for a whole race.
- Yeah, absolutely, you know this even way of pacing,
but if you want to ride a bike faster,
it doesn't work like that.
You need to know what you're going to do
in a headwind, a tailwind--
- A Hill?
- Yeah, a hill, going downhill.
There's so much more involved in it than that.
- Okay, so what are we going to look at first?
- First off we're going to look at hills.
So when it comes to climbing, Mark,
what we don't want to be doing is
making massive surges,
having great big spikes in your power.
- I guess that's quite damaging, right?
- Yeah, absolutely, you start going 50, 60, 70 watts
above your FTP, or making a massive effort,
then you're gonna burn a big match,
and that's gonna bite ya later on in the race.
So I would always kinda go
on the rule of thumb for Olympics, 70.3.
Aye man, you wanna be within,
say around 40 watts above your threshold pace.
- [Mark] And then, it's the idea that we get over
the crest of that hill and we're just laying the power down.
- Yeah, absolutely, the biggest mistake
that a lot of athletes make,
they'll come to the top of the hill,
they'll be fighting the bike like this,
and they'll get to the top, and it's like yes, I've made it.
- They're so tired, they have to ease up.
- Yeah, absolutely, but you're gonna lose a lot of speed.
But the idea is that we come to the crest,
and we lay that power back down.
So pacing downhill is a key part of going fast.
You'll see a lot cyclist triathlete,
they're almost spinning out of gear,
you know this really high cadence.
- I guess that's quite tiring and quite damaging.
- Yeah, you're gonna burn a lot energy riding this way,
so to ride downhill far, you can have little micro breaks--
- So free wheel for a second.
- Yeah, get on top of the gear and then go again.
And you're really gonna build that speed up,
and the idea is you conserve energy,
and then when you hit those flats,
you can really get that pace back up.
So next on pacing, Mark,
we wanna be focusing on the headwind.
The idea behind the headwind section is
that power is the most important part.
- Okay, so we're not just riding at sort of
a set power we were hoping to for the whole race.
We're actually changing the power slightly.
- Yeah absolutely, the rule of thumb is 10 to 15 watts
above that race pace.
You wanna be out in a good position,
but the power is the most important part.
- And I guess, iF we're going 10 to 15 watts higher,
we're maintaining our speed a little bit better
into the headwinds?
- Absolutely.
So finally on pacing,
we wanna be focused on those tailwind sections.
That's when aerodynamics is the most important.
- [Mark] Okay and I guess that is the point
that our power is going to drop off slightly
'cause we're kinda getting pushed.
- Absolutely, you wanna try to keep
that momentum of speed going,
so you've really gotta focus on the aero position.
- Right, so accept that the power is going to drop off
but keep the speed there, aerodynamics is key.
- Absolutely.
So the next item I'm gonna touch on is gearing, Mark,
and kind of how to use that cadence in a race situation.
A lot of athletes, they're either over gearing,
or their spinning too high.
- Right, I'm actually in triathlon too,
we have a lot of over-gearers.
So that's 60, 70 RPM, very very high gear, low cadence.
- [Matt] Yeah, and I feel that stems
from a lot of what people are replicating in training,
but in order for you to get faster,
you need a variety of cadences.
- [Mark] So you do that in your training, you practise it.
But then what are a lot of the top
time trialists and cyclists doing, cadence-wise,
when they are racing?
- I'd say a real good (mumbles) is kinda the 85 to 90.
- And then in terms of on race day or on the course,
we hit a climb, should we be preempting those climbs
and the terrain and the course ahead?
- No, you always need to be 200 yards up the road,
because the last thing that you ever want to do is,
you hit a hill and you're in lights,
you're big and scared, and you're fightin' the bike.
You're almost gonna come to a standstill.
The final act among gearing is gear selection.
- Actually, on this, I have noticed
you've got a 58 tooth big ring.
I thought I was doing well with 55 tooth,
but you've outdone me.
- Yeah, kind of a lot of people are scared
by big chain rings, but it's kind of you riding 55/11
compared to me riding 58/14.
Obviously I'm gonna be in a smaller gear,
but I'm gonna have better chain line efficiency.
- 'Cause it's straight,
whereas I'm almost like a cross chaining...
- Yeah, absolutely, and the idea being that
when we're looking at finding all these marginal gains,
that's gonna be a bigger marginal gain than I'm gonna find.
- Right, and then also, I guess we think about
different terrains, different courses
that we're gonna be racing on,
so we might opt for different gear in there as well.
- Yeah, and that's why you always know,
it's like the events that you select,
and you need to look at all these fine details
to give you that advantage over everybody else.
- Because I'm guessing you probably wouldn't
go do a helicourse on a 58 tooth.
- No, I'd probably select the biggest rocket on the back
and a smaller, more like a 44 or 42 on the front.
- Okay, right, well if you'd like to ride faster,
this man clearly knows a thing or two,
so thanks for joining us, Matt.
- You're more than welcome, Mark, it's been great.
- Well I'm sure quite a few of you is gonna be trying
to nail that tortoise position and getting very aerodynamic.
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- And we also today talked a little bit about cadence,
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and to see that, just click down here.