nathanong87 wrote:speaking of porte tt
anyone notice or maybe took note of riders this year going higher up with position, and or potentially wide stance arm pads? im sure teams have the tech to do all the aero testing they want, but neat 'change' i guess. Another is sagan TOC. Maybe because specialized doesn't give him a ultra custom long TT tt bike? (maybe that was a thing for his old slice?). The wide arm stance i notice in indoor track pursuit and stuff.
As has been covered above the variations in position have seen some trends come and go, and others be more widely adopted.
Given their resources (ie: having their own wind tunnel) I would look closely to the Specialized-sponsored riders and teams like Movistar who work closely with the Drag2Zero crowd (Simon Smart et al). The ERO Sports guys using Alphamantis are getting some interesting findings too.
From someone in the field the saying was: "Aerodyamics is a tricky she-bitch-goddess of unpredictability." Whilst a frame is aero in isolation or with a dummy, change the wheel and the air flows differently. And some things are counter-intuitive, like rough surfaces being more aero than smooth... in certain places, and like setting up the bars higher (but then hands block airflow to saddle, open up hip angle etc). And, I think we have discussed the booties recently - not all at automatically aero, the form factor of the shoes is highly important as well as the bootie material itself.
Personally I tried the high "twin-towers" bars. It was pretty good, but the more "Martin-esque" curved back (thanks kyphosis!) low bars and narrow arms seems to be really fast... *for me*. One of the best uses of a power meter - dialling in the position.
"Physiology is all just propaganda and lies... all waiting to be disproven by the next study."
"I'm not a real doctor; But I am a real worm; I am an actual worm." - TMBG
