Time Trial Setup 2004

I love to Time Trial…

So with that said, last year at the end of the season, I found a long desired toy. A used Hooker Elite TT machine.
Shown here with the “training” wheels on.

So, anyway, I also found a nice used Bell Vortex. Another long time search. I had found a S/M earlier, but after doing a few pics, It was obvious that it was WAY too small.
The search continued and finally one came my way.
A little fanagling with HED and I had a set of “cosmetic blem” carbon bars on the cheap.

And I was ready to go.

Then I started to worry about optimiziong my position.

I went back and found a nice pic of myself at state TT last year (on this years Masters Nats course). I had a horrible day that day, and was still coming back from my broken collarbone and the resultant surgery.
But I know that I had descent position, and after looking at the pics, I thought that was a good starting point.

After many discussions with Jim Martin (who turns out is my neighbor!) and Andy Coggan (nice to ~finally~ meet you in person @ boston) I got some great feedback:

“Keep your head down!”

So I started my winter right, riding hard even if it was in the garage @ 11:00 at night.
And I followed Andy’s LT workouts. In the aero position.
And I listened to Jim and worked on keeping my head down

So after looking at Kraig Willet’s website and his great analysis (biketechreview.com) I wasn’t really prepared to go that in depth.
In fact, I had already disassembled the old paramount (built and modified to be as close to a hooker as I could afford at the time).
So I just took a quick stab based on a couple of pics I DO have:

The photo from state TT

The photo of the hooker set up almost EXACTLY like the paramount

The photo I took of the hooker complete with HED’s:

The photo of the hooker on the old setup from the front:

And the photo on the new setup:

So I grabbed my ol’ photoshop and started cracking.
I looked at all the images, cropped then and measured out the smallest image that I had (the state TT)…
I then flipped the state image (all the others were drive side), and started to compare.
I then found a fixed object on all the bikes in the pics and resized all the images to be the same.

Note, the state image is at a slight angle and obviously this is a problem, but as you will see, it is close enough to count (I ain’t counting pixels here).

I then rotated the images until the wheels were roughly in alignment (obvious error mentioned above, notwithstanding).
I overlaid these images, added transparency and an outline to make the differences more visible…
and this is what I came up with:

black is the photo from state
red (blue outline) is the hooker as set up from the paramount
blue (red outline) is the hooker in the new position

You can see I have lowered myself, lowered my shoulders and my head.
I have stretched out a bit too…
But the position still feels confortable, and acutally the stretching of my shoulders helps it to be comfortable keeping my head down.

I also looked at frontal area, but the images were too dissimilar to be accurate:

black is the photo from the hooker as set up from the paramount
red (blue outline) is the hooker in the new position

But you can still see the drop of the head relative to the shoulders, and the decreasing frontal area.

While this is FAR from conclusive, I still think that I am closer than when I started.
Thanks for looking.

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Raw Images:
state
bSide
hSide
bFrontal
hFrontal
bike

Power Follow-Up

Many have asked after the sending of this email about power losses due to the “extreme” position.

But I have been working towards this position for some time (not jumping into it from a standard road position…
So last night, the questions got the better of me, and out to the garage and the trainer I went.
I rode a little test for all of you. First, during the warmup, I wanted to look at HR response to set power in standard (upright) vs. aero position. I rode at a LOW power, trying to keep it around 120W. On the first interval you can see that I averaged 119W, NPower was 120 and HR was 109 (94/113 min/max).

On the second interval, I rode the same wattage (~120W) but in the aero position.
This resulted in average power of 121W, NPower of 122W and HR of 114 (103/130 min/max – and looking at the file, the 130 looks erroneous). That is only an 8bpm jump for essentially the same power output. And from what I have read that is consistant with what others see.

So then I thought, does that comprimise my LTPower (currently ~300W)? So I rode in the aero extensions for 5mins (I had already done my workout for the day!). Which I thought would be a long enough duration to elicit a LT like response and show that I ~can~ maintain my LTPower in that position.

5:01 minutes, average Power of 297W, NPower of 297W (good agreement), aveHR of 169 (max of 178, approaching LT for me, which is 189).

That to me shows that in fact I can put out LTPower in that position. Granted, it will become harder as the duration increases, but that is true of ~ANY~ LT workout right? 🙂

Actually, Thursday will be telling as it is the first TT of the season and usually takes about 13-14mins (depending on wind). Target wattage of 300-315 (100-105% LTPower) for now, 350+ by end of season.
Last season an average of 285 was good enough for 2nd in the B flite with a time that would have been 5th in the A flite.

More to come…

Actual Files:
SRM Format (.srm)
CPS Format (.wko)
Polar Format (.hrm) note: the polar does NOT have the markers in it