View Single Post
Old 04-08-24, 09:21 AM
  #574  
Jughed
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2023
Location: Eastern Shore MD
Posts: 944

Bikes: Lemond Zurich/Trek ALR/Giant TCX/Sette CX1

Mentioned: 1 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 603 Post(s)
Liked 860 Times in 435 Posts
Originally Posted by 3alarmer
...yes, it is not intuitive. As I said before, this is not something I ever did for a living. So here's another teaching moment for you. How exactly does that work ? My amateur's understanding tells me that drag increases roughly with the square of speed. What major thing am I missing ? Isn't that the reason for reducing the drag coefficient through wind tunnel testing of different shapes at various speeds ? Feel free to leave out wind as a complicating factor, as I certainly have.

IOW, drag (and design of a bike to minimize it), has dramatically increased at speeds of 25 mph and up. So the faster riders are "getting more advantage" from the design. I don't honestly know how much "time saved over a course" either group is experiencing. It seems you do. What is missing in my thinking on this ?
.
.
.
Watts per CDA ratio. Lower watts/slower riders benefit more, in terms of % of the power you are riding at, than a faster rider. Say for example 10w savings at 200w vs 15w savings at 400w. The faster rider saves more watts, but less in terms of % of overall.

Same for rolling resistance, drivetrain resistance... even weight.

Last edited by Jughed; 04-08-24 at 09:25 AM.
Jughed is offline