Great video and a great effort, congratulations on the improvement. You are correct that the biggest gains (for speed) that you can make will be with aerodynamics. Be very careful in putting a longer stem on your bike just for an aero gain, you could very well be changing your position on the bike in a negative way (considering bike fit) that could slow you down. An easier change to make would be narrower bars, if your size/bike fit would allow them. You can get some really high quality bars from Deda at a very good price (you don't need caron bars on that bike). You could also experiment with angling your shifters inwards a little (for free). I too like to use known routes to check my fitness/performance, however, given all of the variables of outdoor riding, you can easily encounter anomalous results due to wind speed, direction, etc. One metric that I have been tracking for a few years is my average speed (outdoor rides only) on both a monthly aggregate basis and a yearly aggregate basis. Given the longer durations of the data collection, that will level-out the results from anomalies and give me a good trend to track. This has worked well for me as I have been riding very similar roads/routes consistently over the past few years.
Luckily I have weirdly long arms (200cm vs 185cm height) so I'm hoping increasing the stem length shouldn't cause any major problems. If it's too uncomfortable I'll probably just suffer through this route once then change it back! You're right, there are a lot of aluminium bars for reasonable prices, I'm definitely tempted to pick some up!
The benefits of losing weight when it comes to bike riding is when you go up the hills it's all to do with weight to power ratio. Manipulate your weight on Zwift and see what happens on the flat, going downhill and going uphill that will give you the answers.
Narrow bars make all the difference to aero. Don’t need to be expensive get some aluminium ones. Changed mine from 440 to 400mm, world of difference but I’m not overly broad. Measure from shoulder tip to shoulder tip or youtube handlebar width
Can use best bike split for Zwift routes as well which is handy to get a time estimate. Losing all that weight should reduce area as well (to drop cda)
Interesting video. Does the calculator account for the terrain or just a flat surface? If it's hilly your weight loss should definitely make more of a difference but on a flat surface I don't know. I bikepacked this summer and my gear was quite "aero", on a flat surface I road pretty much just as fast as without the gear but +15kg in the hills made a difference.
Yes it accounts for the route, it's quite a good tool actually. It also has a feature where it will tell you what power to do and where in order to optimize speed, so that's probably the next thing i'll test
IDK about the whole worrying about the difference in bikes. If you really want to get nitty gritty, the wind, temperature, traffic and all sorts of other factors play a bigger role. You'd have to do the same ride multiple times on each bike to reduce the variance, and that's getting silly. Just measure the watts improvement, and the speed will come 😀 Reducing the CdA, probably more important than stem etc, is practicing your position. The "turtle position" is one of the most aero I believe: were you like put your hands on the hoods, tuck down head and shrug shoulders getting as low as possible. It's uncomfortable, but you do go fast.
Very true, the weather and traffic probably makes the most difference. Sometimes here in the countryside you get stuck behind a tractor doing like 30kph and the draft is glorious.
Cool vid! Remember, your aerodynamic silhouette will be smaller as you lose weight, even in a like for like position. Your legs, arms, chest will all be smaller due to weight loss - many of these calculators don't take that into account even if you drop the weight right down so you will likely beat it's improved estimates with a nice bit of margin 👍
Good luck! But I'm a bit afraid you'll soon realise the speed after 30kph isn't increasing easily :D Going from 30kph to 35kph is not comparable to 25kph to 30kph for example. The drag and wattages spike up quick!
To me you focused on the wrong thing which was time which was not much of an improvement In my opinion you should be looking at change in watts You made a HUGE improvement Congratulations 🎊🎉🍾🎈 On a time trial bike you would average approx 24 mph (38 klm) I’m 90 kg and wide shoulders and do that speed at 240 watts You should be majorly proud of your improvement
Thanks!! The 2023 time was done on a bike without a powermeter, so strava estimated those power numbers so I'm not sure if they're accurate. However I do feel like I was a lot stronger in 2024!
Good video, you deserve more views. And nice transparency, and of course nice progress.
Great video and a great effort, congratulations on the improvement. You are correct that the biggest gains (for speed) that you can make will be with aerodynamics. Be very careful in putting a longer stem on your bike just for an aero gain, you could very well be changing your position on the bike in a negative way (considering bike fit) that could slow you down. An easier change to make would be narrower bars, if your size/bike fit would allow them. You can get some really high quality bars from Deda at a very good price (you don't need caron bars on that bike). You could also experiment with angling your shifters inwards a little (for free).
I too like to use known routes to check my fitness/performance, however, given all of the variables of outdoor riding, you can easily encounter anomalous results due to wind speed, direction, etc. One metric that I have been tracking for a few years is my average speed (outdoor rides only) on both a monthly aggregate basis and a yearly aggregate basis. Given the longer durations of the data collection, that will level-out the results from anomalies and give me a good trend to track. This has worked well for me as I have been riding very similar roads/routes consistently over the past few years.
Luckily I have weirdly long arms (200cm vs 185cm height) so I'm hoping increasing the stem length shouldn't cause any major problems. If it's too uncomfortable I'll probably just suffer through this route once then change it back!
You're right, there are a lot of aluminium bars for reasonable prices, I'm definitely tempted to pick some up!
The benefits of losing weight when it comes to bike riding is when you go up the hills it's all to do with weight to power ratio. Manipulate your weight on Zwift and see what happens on the flat, going downhill and going uphill that will give you the answers.
Narrow bars make all the difference to aero. Don’t need to be expensive get some aluminium ones. Changed mine from 440 to 400mm, world of difference but I’m not overly broad. Measure from shoulder tip to shoulder tip or youtube handlebar width
Good point, I just looked up some aluminium bars and they're actually pretty reasonably priced!
Can use best bike split for Zwift routes as well which is handy to get a time estimate. Losing all that weight should reduce area as well (to drop cda)
Nice .
Interesting video. Does the calculator account for the terrain or just a flat surface? If it's hilly your weight loss should definitely make more of a difference but on a flat surface I don't know. I bikepacked this summer and my gear was quite "aero", on a flat surface I road pretty much just as fast as without the gear but +15kg in the hills made a difference.
Yes it accounts for the route, it's quite a good tool actually. It also has a feature where it will tell you what power to do and where in order to optimize speed, so that's probably the next thing i'll test
Not the result of the pot hole and chain drop last time? 😅
IDK about the whole worrying about the difference in bikes. If you really want to get nitty gritty, the wind, temperature, traffic and all sorts of other factors play a bigger role. You'd have to do the same ride multiple times on each bike to reduce the variance, and that's getting silly. Just measure the watts improvement, and the speed will come 😀
Reducing the CdA, probably more important than stem etc, is practicing your position. The "turtle position" is one of the most aero I believe: were you like put your hands on the hoods, tuck down head and shrug shoulders getting as low as possible. It's uncomfortable, but you do go fast.
Very true, the weather and traffic probably makes the most difference. Sometimes here in the countryside you get stuck behind a tractor doing like 30kph and the draft is glorious.
Cool vid! Remember, your aerodynamic silhouette will be smaller as you lose weight, even in a like for like position. Your legs, arms, chest will all be smaller due to weight loss - many of these calculators don't take that into account even if you drop the weight right down so you will likely beat it's improved estimates with a nice bit of margin 👍
Good luck! But I'm a bit afraid you'll soon realise the speed after 30kph isn't increasing easily :D
Going from 30kph to 35kph is not comparable to 25kph to 30kph for example. The drag and wattages spike up quick!
I think if he work on aerodynamics he can easily push around 35 for this track
There's definitely diminishing returns! I was going to aim for 40kph but that is truly crazy
How many kilometers of cycling did you do this year to improve?
not many, maybe about 4000k
Fit can save pretty god amount wats
What watch are you wearing?
Garmin Fenix 7x pro
To me you focused on the wrong thing which was time which was not much of an improvement
In my opinion you should be looking at change in watts
You made a HUGE improvement
Congratulations 🎊🎉🍾🎈
On a time trial bike you would average approx 24 mph (38 klm)
I’m 90 kg and wide shoulders and do that speed at 240 watts
You should be majorly proud of your improvement
Thanks!!
The 2023 time was done on a bike without a powermeter, so strava estimated those power numbers so I'm not sure if they're accurate. However I do feel like I was a lot stronger in 2024!