As some of you know, I go down to the wind tunnel at Texas A&M from time to time to test products and tune different athletes' positions for the upcoming racing season. Starting in late October, different companies and racers of all levels begin to call to see when the test dates will be, how much time can be had for their particular needs, and also usually to discuss the past race season and speculate on any upcoming rules changes. During the past several seasons, I have worked with Lance Armstrong and different members of the U.S. Postal team to help them with their time trial positions so they can continue to kick butt in Europe. I just finished a two-day test with these riders, and Dan thought you might enjoy reading about what went on.
I received a call back in August from Lance. He wanted to set up some test days so we could continue development on things like helmets, forks, bars, frames and wheels. Lance is acutely aware of aero performance, the importance of his position being just right, the changes in rules and how over the course of a hard race season your muscles or injuries can trick you into not sitting on the bike correctly. I arranged for two days of test time and began thinking about some new product designs to test. Not long after that, Lance was involved in a crash that left him with a cracked vertebra and cast some doubt on the Olympics for him. He seemingly got over it and went on to take a bronze medal in the individual time trial. Our test time in early December came up, so we all met at College Station to blow some air and find more speed.
Do top pros really kick back in the winter and do nothing? Not the Postal guys. Lance brought their newest team addition, Roberto Heras of Spain, over to Austin for some winter riding and then down to the wind tunnel in College Station for some serious position improvement so he can be more of an all-around threat for the upcoming season.
About now you’re saying, "Why is all this roadie info on the triathlon website?" Well, as a quick reminder, Lance is a triathlete temporarily on loan to the roadie world, and I asked if Roberto could swim just in case this road gig didn’t work out. Turns out that Roberto is a good swimmer and an excellent hill runner, so now he has the option of doing a little cross-training by throwing in a triathlon or two on his off weekends. As a reference, Roberto won the Tour of Spain last year, finished 4th or 5th over all in the Tour de France and is considered one of the very top mountain riders in the world, so some of the Postal directors weren’t really as excited about his swimming skills as I was.
Everyone showed up about on time at the wind tunnel and we got on to the serious business of chasing speed. The testing started at 7 a.m., and the outside temperature was 34 degrees. The wind tunnel is this giant steel tube that recirculates the air, so the wind chill was about 15-16 degrees for the riders. Of course, to get accurate test data the riders need to dress pretty much the way they are gonna race, so sit and think for a moment about how much fun Lance was having on that bicycle with that air blowing over him. Each test takes 7-8 minutes to gather all the data points, and then you change something, blow more air, change something else and blow more air. We ran 96 data-point tests on Lance before noon. He probably still has frozen body parts, but that’s what you do to be a champion.
Because of his recent neck/back problems, we needed to establish a comfortable and still powerful TT position. We made a few minor changes from last year—we widened his elbows about 1 cm and barely moved his bar height angle. All should be well. We tested some new helmets and other components, so it should be another successful season if he can stay out of the grilles of Fiats or the French press cars that chase him around. During this time, Roberto was wandering around watching what all was going on. Roberto doesn’t speak much English and I speak zero Spanish, so we were working on building some kind of communication level. If you don’t know, I’m from the South and it’s been said that I speak "slow"—this probably made it even worse for Roberto, but he hung with us trying to learn. His time to get into the wind tunnel came and we began to establish front position parameters for his elbows, shoulders, hands and head.
I made some very big changes to Roberto's riding position, both on his road bike and his TT bike. We first got his seat in a legal UCI position and worked on his seat height, then started working on handlebar height. I ended up putting Roberto in our "Slam" position—this was very different than the way he’d been riding, but he looked very fluid on the bike this way. Since we had to use a 9cm stem to get everything to work, he’ll have to go to a smaller size frame so he can use a longer length stem. Because of the speeds these guys achieve going downhill, they use pretty long stems to slow down the steering reaction of the bikes. The Postal team really does use stock OCLV frames, so that was kind of cool to see.
Making all these changes was pretty brave on Postal's and Roberto's part, because he is already a world-class rider and I was mostly asking them if he could swim. You know how something seems like a good idea at the time but then a little later on you might like to have rethought something? Well, we decided (well, me) that Roberto should go ride this new bike/position out on the road for an hour or so just to check it out. Realize for a moment that Roberto speaks no English, doesn’t have even a small clue as to where he is in the U.S., has no spare tire or money, no cell phone and was only told to "go ride out on this road for an hour or so and come back." Seems that Roberto is out having this great ride when a redneck pulls alongside and starts in about him being on the road. Roberto's smiling and waving, and things don’t go as well as they should have. Through some miracle Roberto gets away and hustles back to town, except that it’s dark now and that makes navigation a little harder. It had been awhile since we last saw our rider so a small search party was formed, but suddenly he showed up and all was well. I’m not sure how he felt about it all but he did seem to think his improved speed came in very handy.
Wind-tunnel testing is the best way to find the answers to very small problems that can eliminate big speed. Being comfortable can still let you be fast, and I hope this proves out in Europe in the coming season.
