£s per seconds saved question
ethanp
Posts: 2
in General Chat
Hi I have an entry level Giant Defy 3 with Alex rims/Kenda Kriterium Tires, outland clipless pedals and a Foor Quantum wetsuit, I'm happy with the lot but thinking about an upgrade.
I'm going to get some Carbon Stryke Tribars but apart from proper training what investment upgrade will give me the best speed savings per pound???
Eg Particular Wheels, better wetsuit?
All ideas welcome
Ethan
I'm going to get some Carbon Stryke Tribars but apart from proper training what investment upgrade will give me the best speed savings per pound???
Eg Particular Wheels, better wetsuit?
All ideas welcome
Ethan
0
Comments
I think one of the biggest savings was aerobars, then add the bottle, wheels and then helmet.
One issue, Carbon Aero Bars, might be a bit extrvagant, can save just as much time with a standard alloy pair, that don't weigh that mush more, but frees up more cash to spend somewhere else. I know this goes against the carbon thing, but . . .
In the interim, if you take your wetsuit off, you'll cycle faster
Once I got the wheels and tyre, the difference was like night and day. The cost was split £150 wheels and £30 tyres, I think. I can only wonder what difference would have been made had I spent more on the wheels.
Thats going to cuase some controversy on here as evryone tell you how big theirs (ring) is.. but I did my first year of riding on a standard 39/52 and then moved to compact 36/50 - This massivly improved my cycling technique and average speed... a further 18 month on I am thining about moving back to a standard chainset but the time witha compact was I belive the eureka moment for me.
You coudl perhaps get two new ring fro you exsisting crank for £30 OR pay £70 for a new compact.
Aerobars - I think these will slow you down unless you have the cycling base to build on (perhaps just use for racing).
Wheels n tires - Yes defo! - I recomind Conti Attack and force.
If you can do wheels, tires and a new crank you will be riding a different bike!
This way you actually spend a negative amount and therefore more money goes into the secret Tri fund to afford those Aero bars/wheel/helmet/aero bottle/red paint goodies to make you faster on the bike:)
A new wetsuit may not make you faster! however learning to swim properly will... 99% of us are still trying to do this though after spending loads of money on it:(
Stick to making gains on the bike and run first....then throw your entire wages for 10 years on learning to swim to see if you go any faster...
So over a 4K OD distance bike ride
1. Aero helmet eg bell advtange (£103.49) saves 60 sec at £1.72 cost/second saved.
2. Bladed aero fork eg oval aero jet stream (£314.99) saves 18 sec at £17.49/sec
3. clip on aero bars eg proile century(£44.99) saves 180 sec at £25/sec (not sure how that works)
4. deep rim wheels eg zipp 404s (£949) saves 60sec at £15.81/sec
5. aero drinks bottle eg profile (£37.99) 20 sec at £1.89/sec
6. Full aero frame eg P4 at £3699 120 sec at £30.82/sec
7 disc rear wheel and aero front eg zipp 909 wheelset (£1633.83) 70 sec at £23.77/sec
So I'd say aero bars, aero drinsk bottle and helmet are the most economical ways of saving time on a budget.
I can't recall the podcast number but the podcast page has short summaries of each podcast and uyou can find it pretty easily.
IIRC his #1 price per seconds saved item was Joe Friel's TTTB!
There is another podcast with the top 8 things to improve your 40K bike leg/TT time but that doesn;t go into cost analysis. I do remember that #4 was caffeine!
didds
Aerobars (alloy at £30 - £50 - not carbons)
£2 drink bottle on standard frame more aero than none
Helmet
Tyres
Wheels
Nice to see someone agrees with me on going 'compact'
But as Hussler says; lose weight, why spend £100 on carbon bling to save .01 Kg when you can lose that through training and proper diet. Unfortunately as an old git I am struggling with 1.5kg of tummy - I really would like to shed 3kg then there would be no visible fat - one day.
Also re weight reduction on bike important thing to shed is rotational weight i.e chairings, cranks, pedals, wheels
Item, time saved, cost, cost per second
Aerobars 3.5 75 0.36
End shifters 1.5 100 1.11
Aero drinks system 0.5 50 1.67
Aero helmet 1 125 2.08
18mm tubs at 150psi 0.5 100 3.33
deep section front wheel 1 400 6.67
disk wheel 1.5 600 6.67
aero frame 0.5 1000 33.33
It doesn't actually say what distance course this is over (!) - I'm assuming OD.
I would hope it saves more than 20 seconds over 40K. Currently I'm doing slow down a bit - reach for bottle on frame - drink - put bottle back - speed up a bit - repeat X times at intervals.
It's the slowing down to reachy safely that loses the time, hopefully the aero bottle will allow me to drink at full speed.
I was already thinking along these lines in my head (congratulates self), much as I'm a fan of racing bling .. in terms of value to my race i could and should train a lot more first. As it is now the PB's are coming thick and fast meaning I'm only just breaking through from the 'average fitness' to the 'in real training fitness' arena .. I think i can knock a good few mins off my times yet with some more weight loss and strength training (sprint tri 1hr22mins - i want this down to about 1hr17mins or less) .. costs wise that's maybe 300secs .. @ £10/sec.. i think I'll go for the free-ish training option until it's all i can do to reduce my time by about 30secs... then let it rain carbon, drink bottles and red stuff ..