cycling science

That’s not me at the front and that’s not a fat old man behind.

It’s been a tough few weeks, trying to ride as much as possible in between work. It was made tougher by the appearance of a ‘fat old man’ on the track each morning, arriving earlier than me and leaving later. It got tougher still when I learned that he’s not fat and he’s younger than me.

Then he had the nerve on Monday to sit on my wheel for 20 minutes while I pushed the air aside as fast as I could. Afterwards, as I ‘warmed down’, he slid past and thanked me for providing shelter from the wind. Polite, yes, but somewhat galling. I could’ve done with some aerodynamic help myself, I thought.

The next day I got a copy of new research into just how beneficial wheelsucking can be. It contained the most dramatic figures I’ve yet seen. OK, they were obtained from experiments with dummies in a wind tunnel and shouldn’t be confused with the real world, but they blew me away.

Under ideal conditions, say the Australian researchers, a rider tucked in behind a leader can reduce their drag by 49%. That’s huge. I’m not saying we were in the ideal conditions on Monday morning but it did, then, seem even more unfair if the ‘thin young man’ might have almost halved his drag by tucking in behind me.

Mind you, the same research confirmed that by riding close to my rear wheel, he would also have smoothed my wake, reducing my own drag by a useful 5%. So maybe that’s why I did achieve my fastest average speed yet this year.

Whoosh! The truck pushes more air right in your way

The scientists did some neat research into what happens to the aerodynamics when two cyclists are riding bit and bit, taking turns at the front. You know that feeling you get when a truck overtakes, of being shoved backwards by an invisible maw? Well, the same happens when a rider comes out of the slipstream and draws level with their mate. The drag on both riders increases.

Not that I’m going to tell any of this to the ‘thin young man’. Why should I help him any more? It’s about time he took his turn at the front.

For more info, see The effect of spatial position on the aerodynamic interactions between cyclists by Nathan Barry, John Sheridan, David Burton and Nicholas A.T. Brown

This entry was posted on 02/07/2014 at 2:59 pm and is filed under Aerodynamics, Exercise, Fitness, Performance, Physics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.