The only benefit to having the shoulders of a 12 year old girl…

In case you have not noticed yet, I can roll at 45.75 kph and only expand around 270 watts of energy (depends on air pressure on the day).  That is quite impressive, even for a women or child, let alone a 6 foot 1 inch tall 160 pound man. This is really my only advantage as a budding hour record breaking cyclist, I just don’t have the raw power, my attention to detail and tireless testing and over analyzing have allowed me to get my fit dialed to a pretty crazy aero factor. The down side to my super aero fit is that I give up some power. Below are some numbers (best average power for duration) from this year for different bikes/terrain:

60 minutes on road bike going uphill: 321 watts
60 minutes on a road bike with clip-on bar on the flat: 301 watts
60 minutes on track bike full aero (1 hour test): 269 watts

You can see that I give up 10% of my power going from road aero to full track aero, pretty crazy. I will have future post about some ideas on this large loss in the future. What I can say for now is that my sustainable speed is higher with the more aero fit and lower power, still makes you scratch your head a bit though.

I guess I have to give some credit to my parents for passing down the super narrow shoulders and petite build, great for being aero.  Not so great for going to the beach and taking your shirt of though, but I like riding my bike more than going to the beach anyway.  My current estimated CdA is .195, this is a pretty darn good, this number has been measured on my track bike not road.

Basic pic of my current fit below

© Pat Bennson