- [Narrator] Resistance
is our biggest boundary
when riding a bike so to make it so fast.
We basically want cheat
the wind and that's where
aerodynamics comes in. But
to make ourselves more air
on the surface that's what's in the bike.
It doesn't necessarily
need to cost us anoma
like he can do actually quite cheaply said
today, am gonna be running
through my top aero.
(light playful music)
Okay, if you are serious
about your aerodynamics
then you probably already have an error
helmet like this one. How you actually
thought about the tail of that helmet is
on your head. I mean it is all very well
having nice aero helmet
with a pointing tail
but to really optimise the helmets.
Aerodynamics is ideally you want that tail
things snarkily into
your back and therefore
that will allow the
head flow smoothly over
the helmet and into your back. If it's not
things not the entire
back then you'll then
have flown over through a gap creating
disturbance before then hitting your body.
You don't want that. So you can of course
adjust your hats and the tilt of that
but a nice option to then really further
optimise it is to add some increased
padding towards the front of the helmet
around the forehead and the front
of the head. Now in the past I've used
something called go cart seat padding
very similar to this where I have some
sticky tape on one side and then a nice
thick foam around 10 millimetres.
The go cart seat padding comes in a nice
big sheet that you can then cut to size
and stick it in a nice safe manner within
the helmet. Of course
the rules are a little
bit wishy washy on adapting and modifying
a helmet so if you really want to own the
side of caution you can just get existing
padding from your supply of the
manufacturer of your helmet. Sometimes
they do increase thickness so you could
just buy that. They
don't. You can just buy
more padding and then just stick on top
of the existing padding.
Okay so this one might
seem a little bit picky and pedantic but
to be honest viable aerodynamics is all
about. I see this cable
here now that cable
is coming from the
shift at the end through
to the base bar into the frame.
That is not good. That
is no aerodynamic kitto.
Basically you are flying around that
rise of block snaring out the back of the
rise block and then into the cable might
be small but that's disturbance and we
don't want that side to
eliminate that easily.
A tape like this electrical
tape. We're going
to wrap it around the
rise of block and the
cable. So now when the air flows round
the rise of block is going to fly around
the rise block and the cable all in one.
So therefore smoothing
out the afellay, simple.
Okay you the last one is a
little bit over the
top. Then just wait for
this film because I'm now going to be
covering some of the bolts and openings
on my frame. Now this actually really
popular in the cycling time trial world
where attention to detail is perhaps
the key. And if you think about it
you've got nice me frame the fly nice
since we over the frame and then it goes
through a little bowl or a little opening
in the frame. It's
going to disturb the air
just a little bit but
it's still something and
we do tend to get quello
bolts and openings
around the stem area. We've got a lot of
parts going together so to eliminate that
again we're going to use a little bit of
electrical tape just to place that over
those bolts and openings for steel
really neat. You can of course get some
nice thin plastic which is taped and
sticky on one side and then you can cut
about to size placed on those parts.
And you can even get any common effects.
Okay, for this next one
I have switched bikes
because I'm not going refocusing on the
bar tape on a previous bike had his own
fall tape solution of design. Now have
spoken about and this fool from
using a TTN triacetone bike. We're going
to be in the air about myself awake going
through our elbows. Not so much on the
end of the bars particularly the
baseball set. Do we really need this bar
tape that is potentially causing a
disturbance of the air as it flows over
the bars. I don't really think so.
Now some athletes actually opt to
completely roomy and leave it completely
bare. However I'd say given that we are
doing triathlons and we're going from
a swim to the bike we're going to have
wet hands. We kind of want a little bit
of grip there particularly if we're going
to be racing in wet conditions as well
so that's when something like this grippe
take comes and yes this is scape grip tape
its grip here on one side like sandpaper
and on the other side
we've got an adhesive
so we can simply cut this to size.
Wrap it around the
handlebars and then we get.
OK I'm going to stick with
this bike for this one.
And now we're going
to talk about a quick release bolts and
author axels. Now manufacturers spend
a long time working on the aerodynamics
of the bike but it sort
of feels like the quick
release bolts and the throttles are a
little bit of an afterthought. Now they
just juts out from the sides and they
sit in basically exposed to the winds.
It's probably only one walked maybe
even two watts out the most. As you
know of aerodynamics is all about these
aggregation of gains. I have a little bit
of a solution. So if you are using a bike
that's got standard
brakes, calliper brakes
then it's likely you've got a quick coleus
skewer like this one with quite skinny
scale going through your whole axle
going through the wheel. Now you can
search for something that has a slightly
slimmer thinner or more aerodynamic
handle to it that might take a little bit
of research but then we also have
anthrax so those that are used on
perhaps a desperate slice one hair can
his one still has quite
a big handle coming
off to the side allow me to release them.
But given that is a screwed and as you can
see here on this thread then you can
actually use a hex key or an ailing heat
to screw it in and therefore removing
that handle completely. Now again this
may take a little bit of research to find
the right one for your bike in terms of
its length, the length of the thread on
it and also the width but
is quite a good saving.
Now the position and the
shape of our bottles on a bike can also
have a huge effect on aerodynamics.
So one option is to
completely hide it from
the wind. And for that you want to pipe
behind you so you can have it like this
where it is behind the saddle. This and
in this case it's attached
to the rear of the
seat post but you can also attached to the
rear of the saddle.
Another option is to have
them on down cheap or
you'll seat cheap hair.
But if you are going to
do this then you really
want to consider having an air bottle.
Given that this is
exposed to the winds the
air is going to fly around the frame and
then into the bottom. Then of course
we have probably the
better preferred option
for triathlon and that
is between the erebor.
Now before all this integration actually
seems just a standard bottle with a
standard bottle cage and literally attach
that to the erebor as well. And it was
considered to be fairly aerodynamic but
now we have this for integration.
Now this actually literally integrates
the bottle to the stem the erebor and
then into the frame. And it almost creates
this fairing that looks part of the bike
it's actually believe
that this is faster than
not having one at all. It also then allows
the athlete to stay in
that area was to take
fluid on without moving from the airbags
which in turn that improves
the aerodynamics and speed.
Okay, now I'm going to step away from
the bike and the equipment and focus more
on us. Yes we can change
our position on the
bike we can change your clothing that
we use about shaving our legs.
Yeah, the debate is
being out for years as to
whether shaving our legs for cycling in
triathlon is out fashion off with function
but with normal wind tunnel testing over
the last few years we
see more more studies
that are improving the shaving our legs
actually has a significant difference.
Specialised claim can save anywhere
between 50 to 80 to seconds over
40 kilometres it's high control and few
theoretically that's when I'm on
that's around five minutes. So whether
you believe is quite
as substantial as that
or not there is still
clearly a saving to be
had. So if you don't
shave your legs already
it's possibly worth considering.
Okay well hopefully I
didn't disappoint you
with my error hacks today but as always
please do share your own in the comments
section below and hopefully I can feature
them on the channel in the future if you
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