Welcome back to the Win Tunnel. We are
super excited because it's Kona week.
And with the Ironman World Championship
right around the corner, we wanted to
look at a question that pretty much
every triathlete—but really most road
racers—ask which is how much does head
position matter? Now putting aside all
the internet memes, we have seen that
head position can make a big difference.
So what we're going to test today
are three different head positions. The
first position is our baseline position,
with the head high and eyes looking up
the road to make sure you don't hit any
potholes or run into anyone in front of
you. The second position will be a bit
more extreme with your head down, looking
at your arms or the stem, not quite being
able to see what's going on in front of
you. And lastly, we'll pick a position
somewhere in between, which involves the
head still looking up the road so you
can see, but also shrugging the shoulders
to bring in that frontal area. For
all three of those positions, we'll keep
the bike in the exact same configuration:
same saddle height, same stack height,
same wheels. Nothing is changing except
for head position. We'll also be running
the fans at around 50 kilometres an hour.
Cool, let's see what the numbers say.
Well, Jesse, the results are in, and
compared to the baseline position of
being relaxed and looking up the road,
that aggressive position of staring down
at your stem or your arms was the
savings of about 24 seconds over 40
kilometers now the last position with
the head shrug and still looking up the
road was a much larger difference
of 64 seconds over 40 kilometers. Well,
that's good to hear because
as good as that second position looked
with your head down, I'm glad to hear
that I can still look up the road,
hopefully not hit any potholes, and still
be pretty fast. Agreed. Well, Jesse, across
the three head positions there's a
pretty massive spread in terms of time
saved, and what was cool is that that
last position where you could still see
up the road was the fastest. That's
something we've seen across our
professional triathletes and
professional cyclists that come through
the Win Tunnel: They'll come in with
that higher head position that was our
baseline position, we'll teach them the
shrug, and then get some free speed out
of it. While that last position may
take some adaptation and training to get
into, it certainly is worth it because
it's safe and it's a massive time
savings. And you won't become an internet
meme. With that, thank you for
watching, and as always, if you have any
questions for us here in the Win Tunnel,
please just send them our way. Thank you.
