Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, March 31, 2008

So, over the weekend, I had a chance to attend a TT clinic and a fitting session with 8 time Australian National Time Trial champion Nathan O'Neil. The clinic was about what I expected it to be with only a little information I didn't already know but the fit session was really interesting.

The idea was to get me into the best position I could be in on my time trial bike. Since I'm a pretty compact rider who is also pretty thick, I have a hard time getting down into a super aero postion so I needed some help to figure out how to squeeze more time out of the bike. In the discipline of time trialing, aerodynamics are really important as the biggest limiter to going fast is drag or air resistance. As body position is the biggest contributor to this, fit to the bike is a big deal.

So, for about an hour and a half, I worked with Mr. O'Neil to tune this up. We first looked at my cleat position and my leg length. Both of these were pretty good with the only adjustment being to shift my left cleat position back by about 3 mm. Once we finished that, we went to work on my position on the bike. I have, let us say, an unorthodox TT position. My saddle is shoved about as far forward as I can get it (and actually in violation of UCI rules) which puts me in a position where it's almost like I'm running on the bike. This tends to force my body upwards but it also allows me to produce huge amounts of power. We decided not to mess with this too much as it seems to be working for me right now.

So instead, we dropped the height of my handlebars by about an inch. Later on, I'll flip my stem over and lower it a bit more. The other thing we decided was something I tried about two years ago and abandoned because it was hard on my body. I tilted by aerobars up so I moved to a similar position as Levi and Floyd have been riding in. I'm not in quite as aggressive a position as they are but the idea is the same. Over the next two weeks, I'll work on trying to drop my head and tuck it in behind my hands. If I can do this (lots of stretching, exercises and on the bike time) I think I can really improve the aerodynamics of my body which means more of my power goes into going fast instead of pushing the air out of the way. Add to this the fact that I think I finally got a real aerodynamic front wheel and I might just be moving back towards scaryfast on my TT bike. The two time trials over the next couple of weeks will give me a much better indication.

As a final note, Nathan is really a nice guy. He was very respectful of the fact that I'm basically a cycling spud who has somehow found a way to go a little bit fast on a bike. I never felt like an idiot even though I'm sure he probably shook his head inside and wondered where guys like me come from (i.e.-guys who are fat and have totally goofy positions on their bikes). At the end of the session we ended up talking about our Golden Retrievers and agreed to meet up at the Gainesville Georgia Cup race this weekend to see how things are going with the new position. I have to say that if he was available as a coach, I'd definitely be interested. My guess, however, is that he's already booked up in that capacity and even if he wasn't, he'd be way too expensive for me.

Anyway, it was a good Saturday even though we stuck in death traffic coming back from the session and ended up missing a wedding reception we really wanted to make it to. It could have been worse. The traffic on I-75 north was so bad that it was stop and go all the way from exit 238 on the south side of Atlanta down to at least exit 201. I'm thinking that driving north on 75 has got to be the most insane thing ever.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |