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Ronan McLaughlin on Bike Optimizaiton
845 Plays9 days ago
For this episode we welcome Ronan McLaughlin, Senior Tech Editor for Escape Collective and host of the Performance Process and Geek Warning podcasts. Michael and Ronan delve into the world of performance optimization in cycling, covering everything from aerodynamic testing nuances to higher-level strategies for improvement. Key insights include:
- Ronan's meticulous aero and rolling resistance testing and the 'why' behind his painstaking approach.
- The complexity of aerodynamic testing, and the myriad of factors that can influence results and conclusions.
- Ronan's philosophy around iterative improvements over silver-bullet, "fastest" setups
- Outside the box thinking for for performance gains
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Transcript
Intro and Humor
00:00:00
Speaker
My favorite reason not to podcast is checking the weather because if the weather is favorable, you're going to be out doing aero testing. I thought that might come up after I said it. was like, I bet you that's going to come up.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I'm Andrew. And I'm Michael. And you're listening to the Endurance Innovation Podcast.
Meet Ronan McLaughlin
00:00:38
Speaker
everyone, and welcome back to Endurance Innovation. Joining me today is a guest I've tried to get on the show for quite some time, and the cold open sort of teased out as to the yeah part of that process. um And that guest I'm very happy to welcome is Ronan McLaughlin.
00:00:54
Speaker
Ronan is a journalist. He is the senior tech editor for Escape Collective. ah He writes some of their some of my, let me put it that way, some of my favorite pieces on their website. And he also is a host of Performance Process um and as well as a ah very regular guest or co-host on the Geek Warning podcast.
00:01:19
Speaker
Ronan, thank you so much for making the time in your busy aero testing schedule and welcome to Endurance Innovation. Yeah, thanks for having me. the ah The weather this evening has proved conducive to podcasting rather than than testing. So it's been it's been a long time that we've been talking about having me on. So ah delighted to to be here. It's a podcast that I've been listening to since long before I was doing podcasts myself. and So it's strange to be introduced as ah as a podcast host now. The tables have turned, sir. Yeah, they they certainly certainly have um But yeah, as I said, a big fan of the show. We've been listening for a long, long time.
00:02:00
Speaker
Right on.
Bicycle Optimization
00:02:01
Speaker
Well, um so folks, the the reason I really wanted to have, well, there's lots of reasons I want to talk to Ronan, but the we're trying to narrow down the ah the scope for today's conversation. and um And what I want to learn from him today and share with you today is his process in optimization and so as uh as i followed ronan's journey a little bit at least in the you know the public facing part of it uh there's a lot of conversations that he's had with smart folks and uh and also discussions of his own uh experiences on how he makes the bicycles he rides faster and in a uh you know big picture that's uh ronan that's what i want to learn from you today
00:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, and um well, maybe the best way to explain it is that it's my job to convey how others do this best. It's not my job to do this best. and ah But are you finding yourself slipping into that territory now or not so much yet?
00:02:55
Speaker
i I definitely get a lot of requests for support and stuff with ah different events and goals that athletes are are targeting. And yeah but I say athletes, but it's always cyclists. Obviously, that's where my expertise or yeah, I don't even like saying my expertise, but that's that's where my experience lies. and But I never quite feel all that comfortable you know, really delving in and helping too much because I just feel there are better qualified individuals than myself to, to, if someone really wants to, you know, eke out every tiny bit of performance, um, there's only so far that my experience goes, but happy to discuss it nonetheless.
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, I honestly, I mean, if I was to put my thumb on the scales here, I think that thinking about, I mean, any kind of level of expertise is probably the healthiest way to do it. I've talked to a lot of, you know, e air quotes experts in in fields and not just not just this field, of course, but anything. And the more people, don't my experience, the more people bang on about how good of an expert they are, probably the bigger the gaps there are in their knowledge. So being coming at it with that with a little bit of humility is always, I think, the best way to do
The Nature of Expertise
00:04:06
Speaker
it. and Yeah. and anytime this sort of conversation goes up, I always remember a quote, I think I'll call it a quote from Josh Portner on his Marginal Gains podcast. And he had said something like, you know, when you get the the real experts in this space into a room together,
00:04:22
Speaker
he says you you want to hear what their questions are. none of them want to tell you what they know. They want to ask questions that they don't know the answer to. And that's often where, um you know, some of the most insightful conversations in that happen. So I think, yeah, that can be, if someone's, ah ah I often find myself thinking the same, if someone's telling me everything that they know, I'm, I'm,
00:04:49
Speaker
I think you know where i'm going with that. Yeah, yeah. There's some there's some some red flags being raised for sure. Andrew and I were just on um on Bjorn Kafka's A Faster You, their AeroTune podcast. And and we we kept joking about how you know you'll ask us questions and Andrew and are both engineers. And Andrew, um of course, is like my ah co-host.
00:05:08
Speaker
And a lot of our answers were, it depends, which is, you know, the the classic engineering answer. like, well, you know, what what are your boundary conditions? And and whatever you what are we talking about? what's What's the context of the question? So I think, yeah, I think that's a healthy way to approach it.
00:05:22
Speaker
you know And I don't know is another good answer, think. Yes.
Aero and Tire Testing
00:05:27
Speaker
ah I think with my admittedly very limited experience in actually doing arrow testing myself, though, is that there is still a fair bit of... it's It's a developing art stroke science. And and I think that...
00:05:42
Speaker
um any kind of in any Any kind of experience in the field to me is worth a lot more than experience in reading papers or or or thinking about it or or or talking to people. So that's why I put a little bit more um you know more heft in what you've done versus maybe some other folks just because of the sheer number of hours that you've spent out there.
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's got a bit ridiculous at points. I think it was last ah' Thursday, maybe I'd clocked like 100 kilometers of out and backs on a one kilometer out and back course.
00:06:18
Speaker
It wasn't quite as simple as doing 50 out and backs because I do a bit of a ah turnaround loop at at either end. And so it was maybe 40 out and backs or something that. But um and ultimately i probably don't have anything to show for that testing um in terms of actual results from that day but it nevertheless it is always to some extent it is kind of training it's the most mind-blowing form of training you could possibly imagine and it's not fun in any way and it's not all that specific unless you're you know talking about with that distance you're you're it's just like endurance type aerobic type effort like you're doing and you're doing like threshold intervals very short threshold intervals uh so it's at at the moment i'm not even narrow testing it's actually tire testing um and so and the the intricacies around that because i'm testing various widths and various pressures um
00:07:12
Speaker
of the same tire model on the same rim, but varying the width and varying the pressure. Um, the, it, it gets very, very complex very, very quickly because not only you're not just changing like a helmet, which has ah it will have a change in CDA for but for the rider testing, but you're also changing the the rolling resistance. So if you change like the width of a tire from 28 to 40, you're affecting both CDA and rolling resistance. And how do you then back out calculate that? And how do you...
00:07:44
Speaker
Which one do you apply first to measure the other and then use the measurement to then calculate the original? and yeah um It's a mess. yeah Thankfully, I have much smarter people than myself helping with most of that or all of that, actually. um Another guest you've had in the show, John Buckley of Streamlines, is doing the...
00:08:04
Speaker
he's doing the the the actual smart work around that. um But, you know, even down to the, the change in tire circumference, ah which will be obvious if you're changing from a 28 to a 40 mil tire, but will even changing the pressure and the same width of tire will affect its tire circumference and all of that. Enough, enough to throw off your speed sensor. And, and because that's what you want to know, right? Am I, am I right? and its Yeah. Yeah. that That's what you want to know because it is that speed that,
00:08:34
Speaker
actually you're using to you know that that's basically the the basis of of the result you're trying to find which is faster and you know then obviously there's power and all goes into it as well but ultimately yeah the speed is part of the equation that you're using there to calculate which is faster and it does have enough on effect um it's it in some cases it's one of those where If I was just testing for my own knowledge and my own performance and my own goals, yeah ah to with a certain amount of it, it would be, okay it's close enough.
Challenges in Testing Consistency
00:09:10
Speaker
I can see the trends. I can see that the deltas are big enough that they're not within the margin of error. It's actually this one.
00:09:16
Speaker
I might not know exactly how much faster or slower it is, but I know this one is definitely the faster option of the two. Yeah. But when it, what I'm trying to do is publish data on a global publication, then it just needs to be, and you know, it needs to be a much higher threshold to to pass before i would comfortably publish, publish anything. And so that's cool.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. That, that takes a lot of time. And every time you go out and do the testing, know, you learn something more about error testing that you didn't know before. And so like, I think back three, four months, I was trying to use courses not realizing that even just, even if the corner is fast enough that you can take it without breaking or without even really steering, there is still a cornering effect, which will compromise your results.
00:10:09
Speaker
Um, and, I'm trying to think what else I came across. Um, Yeah, I mean, and everything is dialed in right down to... So I'm yeah i'm using four set identical sets of Princeton rims. Princeton gave me these rims so that I could test tires more. If I was having to change tires on the one single set of rim between runs, it would just get so time consuming. It'd be impossible. yeah And so, yeah, I have that set up, but I've done so much testing that I actually managed to like... ah ah Well, for ah just to caveat this, first of all, I'm using like a torque wrench between...
00:10:43
Speaker
So I'm getting the torque setting on the through axle identical every time. So there can't even be a question. and why does it Why does that matter, though? I don't know that it does. I'm just making sure that it doesn't.
00:10:55
Speaker
i love it. so that's That's next level, Ronan, of experimental control. Like, you know, hats off to you on that one. but But still, also, the the reason I was... that I wasn't saying that just to prove the the detail I'm going to. was more because despite using a torque wrench to set the through axle to the correct torque with a brand new torque wrench that has been calibrated and all that, I still have done enough wheel changes in the last couple of months of testing that I have...
00:11:23
Speaker
ah wrong UDH hanger off the back of the frame and so I'm waiting for a new hanger to come in. So the indestructible hanger standard, huh? ah Yeah, well, the full mount is probably close to indestructible but this is like the adapter, okay the Trojan Hirsch that came first.
00:11:43
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, other things like just even and I mean, obviously your conditions are going to have a huge impact. And so I was, I was doing testing on a course that I had found that was, that was the, the initial course I was using had a variance in the surface, which was problematic for like just pure aero testing, but actually proved quite ideal for tire testing because you, the rolling resistance, as long as you're covering the same line every time. Yes. Rolling over the same bumps. Right.
00:12:13
Speaker
I, I, that's what I'm part of what I'm trying to measure is like how do each of these tires and how do their, um, how, how do they affect rolling resistance and the different pressures in that? And how does it change on the smooth surface versus a very rough surface versus a mixed surface? And so way the mixed surface was kind of my original testing course and,
00:12:33
Speaker
Then I found and looking around, looking for various different courses to test on, I stumbled upon a pretty brand new Greenway shared use path cycle path nearby and And one of the things that I had learned trying to replicate the results on each was that actually my original course, because I had to sprint into the start of the test segment to get up to test speed.
00:12:58
Speaker
I think I was, I don't know the science behind it, but I, and I haven't really even spoke to John or anybody else about this, but what I think was actually happening was I was putting so much energy into the system ah that even though I thought I was controlling for the start of the test segment by being in my in my control position, rolling across the start of it, it was just so varied how I would hit that, that I think that was skewing the results. And so what I was actually looking for then was a smooth surface test,
00:13:27
Speaker
venue that could i could test on and the one that i found happened to have like a ramp into the start of the test nice okay yeah and a ramp out of it and so that's perfect i've done up to three or four hours of testing continuous testing on this course without ever touching the brakes and without ever having to sprint wow so it does a couple of things that gets rid of that sprinting into the and the test segment, which was skewing the results. It also means that I'm not fatiguing as much so I can do more testing because I'm freewheeling up to test speed.
00:14:00
Speaker
And it all just became so much more variable. And then on top of that, because I'm using disk brakes, one of the biggest hurdles that you face is like just making sure that the discs aren't rubbing at all. And so what I was able to do was like remove the rear pads.
00:14:13
Speaker
I still kept the front pads just in case I would need breaks all of a sudden. and But by not never having to use them, the likelihood of them, you know just being sticky or sure just not returning fully and and having a little bit of disc rub was just eliminated. And so that's made testing ah much easier as well.
00:14:33
Speaker
Oh, I got so many questions, but they kind of, I'm going ask like kind of a stupid question first, because those are the most fun, I think. um For listeners who've done aero testing, that all makes sense. But for people who haven't, maybe it's, there's a lot of stuff that has to happen before. Like Ronan is talking about like the the absolute tips of the icing on the cake, the that the aero testing cake here.
00:14:53
Speaker
So there's there's so much work that you're putting into this. ah My obvious stupid question is, why are you doing so much work and because you mentioned earlier that it's not for something that you want to learn that this is something that you you want to publish so this is a kind of like a scholar a scholarly work is that the why i'm just trying to understand yeah it's actually ah i's famous i find myself thinking about this quite often actually because yeah why would i go to such lengths and i think it's actually it it comes back to the kind of core thing that we're trying to do with escape collective and so for your listeners that don't know escape collective that
00:15:28
Speaker
escapecollective.com is the website.
Escape Collective's Model
00:15:30
Speaker
ah We have written articles on the website and we have a podcast almost every day the week at this point in different different podcasts.
00:15:38
Speaker
We have the tech one, which is Geek Warning, you mentioned, then we have the performance one, that's performance process. And we are entirely member funded. and And so, yeah, it's memberships that fund our activities on the website and and make sure that the podcasts happen.
00:15:57
Speaker
And as such, both the written articles and the podcasts available. entirely dedicated to ah the the audience, which is the reader or the listener.
00:16:08
Speaker
And so we're not ah making content just to get page views that we can then sell for marketing. We're making content to try to ah ah without trying to sound like obnoxious or whatever, but you know I always look at it, we're trying to further each of our niches and my niche or my niche, depending on where you're listening to this, yeah north american warm yeah is performance. And so while I'm out there testing,
00:16:37
Speaker
It's as much about, i personally want to know are 35 or 40 mil tires faster than 28? Because if they are, I'm going to start using them. And I want to know that the answers I'm getting are correct for both myself and for the audience because performance matters to us and to my audience. And so it's, yeah, it's just this, I can go out there and spend the time to do this because the the audience that I'm speaking to, the niche that I'm working within,
00:17:06
Speaker
that's what matters to us. yeah and And so by being member funded, I actually have the opportunity to dedicate my working day and my working time to going out and getting answers to these questions or, you know diving deep into whatever other topic it It's not always aerotesting. It's any performance related and usually something aerodynamics related, yeah,
00:17:26
Speaker
that's it's that member funded aspect escape collective.com that gives me the freedom to out and take this approach and go properly deep on getting answers to you know whatever whatever question it might be that i think the audience is currently asking that's uh that's an awesome answer i listened to the podcast so i've heard you folks talk about this but i didn't expect that answer but it's a it's a delightful answer and uh you know if i made well i'm gonna take a little digression i'm uh I'm a big fan of the of the work that you guys do. Huge fan. I'm also like ah a supporting member from day one. I am a big believer in this style of journalism um and very much on the same page in terms of um journalism, whether or not it's sports, you know politics, whatever it is that you're whatever it is that you're you're passionate about, um a robust and independent press is hugely important.
00:18:22
Speaker
Right. I mean, yeah we can argue that the stakes in in recreational cycling are a little bit lower than the stakes in other parts of the world. But it's if it's if it's something that you care about, supporting it makes makes all the sense in the world. Because otherwise you get junk.
00:18:34
Speaker
Right. And that's, you know, I can say that because I'm not in that. And maybe you you want to be careful in saying it. I don't know. But I can say it because I am not in that industry. I'm not ah i'm not a journalist. I'm not in... in that world. So but there's just so much, you know, clickbaity content that's driven purely by by that, by page views. And it's really nice to see outfits that don't follow that that trend.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't i mean i don't think that you know cycling media is... I'm a huge F1 fan, and the the clickbait that you get in that space is just absolutely god-awful.
00:19:11
Speaker
and And still sometimes... It's just so good sometimes that... And when I say so good, I mean so bad, that it's intriguing enough that you just have to click on it, and then...
00:19:24
Speaker
you spend far too long, you know, just knowing that you're never going to actually get the answer that the headline promised, but then also trying to navigate like pop-up ads and auto-playing videos and all sorts of stuff that just make it very, very difficult to actually read what the writer has written on the website rather than be bombarded with ads.
00:19:41
Speaker
And that's what Escape Collective is all about is just like... ah I'm not always the best at writing headlines. That's one. ah if If I have a talent, it is not in writing headlines. and But I can promise that whatever I do write in the headline, there will at least be an answer to that within the article. And and it's usually ah much more in-depth and much meatier than...
00:20:06
Speaker
and than many would expect, I think.
Optimizing for Cycling Events
00:20:10
Speaker
I don't know where with that. They're very good, like long form pieces, like yours and and and your colleagues as well. ah there's some There's some really good stuff in there. Definitely listeners check it out um and better still support Escape Collective if you want.
00:20:23
Speaker
ah really excellent content and an independent cycling media, at least in this case. But um I'm going to steer us back onto onto the the aerodynamic and optimization, um you know, sort of raison d'etre for this conversation.
00:20:38
Speaker
ah So my initial, you know, initial thinking behind this was to was to draw a little box around how would Ronan optimize for two fairly different events? And one would be a very short um time trial, a very short, let's say, flat time trial.
00:20:56
Speaker
And the other would be something like a rolling and even maybe a hilly course that is ah that would take many hours to complete. um And so in terms of what you've learned from your I'm going to say it, painstaking testing. i'm i' that's That's the label that I'm putting on it here.
00:21:13
Speaker
um And then just from having raced all of these different things in your you know in your professional career and in your career since, how do you go about thinking about where your priorities lie? Like, what are you sweating?
00:21:26
Speaker
And what are you maybe not super worried about? ah think you can of you you have to start by just assuming that you don't know anything. And that's kind of the...
00:21:38
Speaker
the approach to that. i Like, so i I know you've given two examples and and I can stick to those if you want, but I, and I don't, I don't like doing this, but it is the best example I can think of is like the Everest things that I did.
00:21:51
Speaker
and and Because i think what I had done with those was sort of, while While initially I had planned to do it on you know a road at the back of at the back of my house and then another road nearby and I was looking you know a different climbs and stuff that would be nice to do it on and not really knowing what's going to make the optimal decision.
00:22:16
Speaker
climb here At some point I realized, well, the steeper it is the shorter the distance you will cover to hit your 8,848 meter target for the everything requires do you hit that accumulative elevation gain.
00:22:32
Speaker
And um when I looked at some of the other Everest things that were happening, this was you an early, early lockdown days. Some of them were like 250 and 300 kilometer rides. And I was like, if you 300 kilometer ride in the flat, that's a big day out. If you take that and combine it with 8,848 meters of climbing, that's just, that's a couple of big days out.
00:22:54
Speaker
yeah um And so while I, you know, cutting the long story short, ultimately I settled on a climb that was like, the first segment or the first version of i did it was like 14 average or something and the top of is 23 while i rocked up to the start of that that day not knowing if it was possible to climb it whatever number times it was i had to do it i think the first because i used a longer segment back then it wasn't as steep the first time i did it it was like 60 odd laps or something okay just not knowing if that was possible i also knew that
00:23:28
Speaker
was going to be more possible to ride the 120 kilometers or whatever it was that day than it would be if i was to climb something slightly shallower but much much longer um and so yeah by just like so trying to not focus on what you you know the goal time was or what condition i needed or what weight and what power I had to be at and all these sorts of things and just trying to boil it down to what is, what what are the, what are the key determinant factors of how long this is going to take me and looking at what would make me faster and what would make me slower. And I figured out, well, you know, reducing distance will make the overall event faster.
00:24:16
Speaker
and And what will make me slower is corners on a descent where I have to break for. And so if I can, look for something that's straight and steep, that's going to be better than even steep with corners.
00:24:28
Speaker
and And then sort of really, you know after figuring out it, then thinking we'll actually, not in terms of time, but at least in terms of distance, half the distance of an Everest thing is downhill. Necessarily. So why we all think of it as a climbing challenge.
00:24:42
Speaker
And it's only the climbing that counts towards completing the challenge. Actually, half the distance you're completing is at high, high speed going downhill and not counting at all towards the elevation gain you have to So the quicker you can take that off, the quicker you can get back to taking off your actual goal.
00:25:00
Speaker
And so I really tried to focus on as much as possible, like how do i how they make an everlasting setup? both not, not just light for the climb, but also fast and arrow for the, for the descent.
00:25:12
Speaker
Um, and I don't think that's, uh, something that many others had really focused all that much on at that point. Um, and so I timed perfectly that I figured all that out as everybody else was kind of, uh, getting back to normal racing again, all the, all the pros had sort of moved on from everything because they had races to do again. They could get paid again. Yeah.
00:25:34
Speaker
That sweet spot of figuring out stuff that Alberto Contador hadn't and ah doing it after Lachlan Morton had already done his meant that I was able to yeah the do it pretty well and and wasn't at risk of of those better athletes coming back and froncing it a day or two later. Yeah, just doing the same thing that you did, but a little bit faster. Yeah, they had other things to keep them buzzy at that point.
00:26:03
Speaker
and know it would be the same for yeah 10 mile time trial again it's like if i compare my local 10 mile time trial that i've been doing for 20 years is a pretty rolling course um and so it's not fast but i really want to try and do 19 minute 10 mile time trial on that course because when i was starting out that just would have been unthinkable i think the course record of time was probably 22 or something and oh whoa okay all others have done 19s and maybe even since much better time trials than me um and i've done 2001 a 2002 20 everything in the low and
00:26:44
Speaker
and so that's kind of one of my like still my my big goal so um But if I compare that to a couple of years ago, I did the Irish end-to-end from the most southernly tip of Ireland to the most northernly tip.
00:26:57
Speaker
And again, I did that on entirely the same bike, and most of the same equipment. and It was effectively just 565-kilometer time trial.
00:27:08
Speaker
But actually, I think I got that one... I don't think I actually got it all that wrong. it was the hottest. It turned out I had planned it for the, but I didn't know at the time was going to be the hottest day of the year in Ireland. And so I suffered throughout with heat stroke.
00:27:23
Speaker
and That's maybe a bit extreme, but yeah, the the heat definitely made it very, very challenging. But yeah, by you know actually the the difference in those two events one is going to be 20 minutes the other is 15 hours and how similar they look if you just seen a picture of me and both and seen the setup i was using it was the same bike you would go oh well he's just you know copy and paste but actually um was the fit the same too uh that's yeah it's those minor details where but actually yeah you start
00:27:55
Speaker
to really hone in on what are going to be the limiters and what are they going to be the opportunities of each event. And so um I'm trying to think of examples that aren't just obvious. like Give us the, let's start with the obvious ones.
00:28:10
Speaker
i't I don't want to say it depends because i'm not qualified enough to say it depends. ah We all sort of assume we go, we do some error testing, we get our CDA and that applies regardless of what event we're doing.
00:28:24
Speaker
And actually it doesn't really because the shorter the event, the higher the speed, you will get some probably minor, but you will get some decrease in CDA with increasing
Influence of Conditions on Performance
00:28:35
Speaker
speed. Um, but then other things just like, you know, uh, ambient conditions and how they factor into the Reynolds numbers at play and how those Reynolds numbers then affect your CDA and how the flow, uh, flows over you and, and all the different interactions and, you know, how they they change, and not not in a small way, depending on what speed you're doing and, you know, yaw angles and sail effects and all those various different things.
00:29:05
Speaker
which is Which is why it's so it's such a complicated question that when we do aero testing for performance, it's just where it's a best guess. right It's a best approximation of what we see what we will see on on on game day. And that's why you know so many folks, and I heard you, I think I heard you mention it before earlier in the conversation.
00:29:25
Speaker
You're not talking about absolutes. You're talking about relatives. Like a is faster than B and slower than C kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and And I think that is the way we have to treat it. But what I was just going to say is like,
00:29:38
Speaker
the closer we can get to testing in our race conditions, the better. And obviously that will be impossible for some, if you're planning to do Kona, yeah you can't just fly down to Kona to do some aerotesting. For sure. and But yeah, the closer we can, so for me on that local 10 mile time trial course, I could go out there and test and and, and that would probably be the best way to tackle it.
00:30:02
Speaker
But also the flip side of it is like, Yeah, at some point you just have to draw a line. You say, gonna do the best I can up to this point. I'm gonna look for, and like you were saying there, I'm just gonna look for, ah i'm not I'm not looking for an absolute, so I'm looking for deltas and which one is faster and which one is slower and which ah helmet is faster, which skin suit is faster than and apply all those. But go out there and also be open to the idea that although I've maximized this the best I can,
00:30:33
Speaker
it's still best guess. And so not to get too hung up on it. And so, you know, do, do everything and approach it with the most rigorous and process driven way you possibly can.
00:30:44
Speaker
and but also just keep a little bit of sort of mental headspace there that you go right with it. This is, it's just like training. We make a best guess as to what training will work best and get me to event day and the best condition.
00:30:58
Speaker
But if I turn up at event day, you know, and it's 10 degrees colder or warmer than it previously was, you know, is, is, am I still confident that my aero tested setup is set up as the best I possibly can do?
00:31:15
Speaker
For sure. For sure. um To your point about conditions, we yeah we were in Texas for the Ironman North American Championship a little while ago, and Andrew did some back-of-the-napkin math on the way home.
00:31:26
Speaker
and I think we shared it on the podcast, but the race, the bike leg started. It was low 20s finished. It was, I think, high 20s or in the 30s. And he just did some math. That 10 degrees Celsius air delta from 20 to 30, for the same power, you had a three-minute faster Yeah.
00:31:45
Speaker
Just for the, just the temperature, because it was, you know, the density of the airdrops as it warms up. And so your, your, know, all of your, your math changes. And I think like but the that that i mean that just shows you how powerful what we think are small changes and how big a difference they can make. And I think that applies then also to when we look at other things like pro athletes and how are they doing, the ridiculous times that they're doing now. And yeah yes, there is so much of it that's to do with training these days and so much of it to do with training.
00:32:16
Speaker
you know, proper nutrition now. And so much of it also to do with optimizing, whether it be arrow or drive train or whatever other factors we can, we can optimize, but there is also just, you know,
00:32:28
Speaker
we maybe need to have a look at historical events and how did the weather conditions on those days compare? Because if it was 10, 15, 20 degrees warmer when such and such an athlete did a new bike leg board record, does that account for a considerable part of it that maybe the comment sections online attribute to more nefarious methods of trying to get those results? For sure. There's... there's there's There's more than meets the eye almost always. and And the example I was gonna give earlier was just like for the end-to-end ride that I did.
00:33:08
Speaker
I had started that day with, and you know I wasn't to know that it was going to be as hot as it was. And we started 5 a.m. in the morning or whatever it was, cold and foggy conditions at the most solid night tip of Ireland.
00:33:22
Speaker
and But I was wearing a black skin suit and a black helmet. And the only thought i had in my mind in selecting those two were those are the two with that tested fastest for me a week earlier when I was doing yeah when I was doing velodrome testing in a different country yes with no with no sun uh incident sunlight on you yeah and and eight hours later and when I'd spent five minutes lying at the road thinking how am I going to another eight hours of this and I was thinking yeah had I just started with the uh
00:33:53
Speaker
The helmet that tested s slower but had more vents in it, I might have not spent five minutes lying on the side of the road here. And so you know I think ah think, again, we optimize everything we can and we learn from every test event, we learn from every event.
00:34:09
Speaker
We're constantly adding all those learnings to whatever process it is that we're applying to the next thing that we're targeting. Yeah. And i I really like that point. I think it's important. There's ah the concept I think is, if I'm remembering correctly, in engineering or and analysis is is sensitivity. Like if you were to change a to B, how much of a difference it is, right? So like if you were to change your black unvented helmet to ah a white vented helmet, how much would you lose? And then you could make a decision on the day.
00:34:36
Speaker
are you, you know, a somewhat educated decision? Are you willing to take the the arrow penalty for the extra ventilations? Yeah. And a question I get quite often for our podcast is because, you know, I will have genuine experts on there as as frequently as we can, almost every, every weekend.
00:34:54
Speaker
the question you get a lot of time is what is the time saved to risk ratio? That's an impossible question. I love it, but it's impossible answer. Yeah. And I think we would all love to have an answer.
00:35:07
Speaker
Um, and I think it's most relevant to things like, like tires that I'm testing at the moment. It's like, if I find that, uh, such and such a tire is 10 Watts faster than the other one, but it's as thin as paper. Yeah. And what situation do you decide to use that? And,
00:35:25
Speaker
you know i think the only real uh what way you could have a risk to reward ratio in and that way is like if it was i don't know a mountaintop finish in the tour de france and actually if you get dropped it's just game over yeah there's no coming back so it's worth yeah and if you can save 10 watching tires you're not going to get dropped then then that's worth taking the risk for but and now in all other scenarios it's like you're trying to answer the impossible. It's like, am I going to puncture somewhere between the most southern and the most northerly type of Ireland?
00:35:55
Speaker
yeah You just don't know. You can puncture with even the most puncture prone or puncture resistant tires on the market. and And so you're, yeah, it's it's very difficult to answer that. But that is...
00:36:07
Speaker
That would be a, if we, if we could get some sort of ratio for that, we would be, I think we'd be in a better place. Yeah. You'd be, you'd be, you wouldn't be in cycling media. You'd be in some kind of like hedge fund or something. Yes.
00:36:18
Speaker
i Making the real dollars. ah Yeah. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a pipe trip. I was, so as you were talking about, I was like, was thinking of some disclaimer that I said something that I saw somewhere that like, you know, life involves risks and this is just something you have to accept if you want to go a little bit faster,
00:36:35
Speaker
you know, you may end up with ah with a hole in your tire. ah big thing though, I think is often overlooked in terms of trying to optimize our own performances is like we often just, again, and and it's it's kind of why I've been reluctant to publish aero testing data, you know, and at times when I would have had data to publish is because it will undoubtedly be perceived as Ronan tested these
Personalized Optimization
00:37:00
Speaker
10 helmets. This one was fastest. That's the fastest helmet.
00:37:04
Speaker
And it's such an individual thing. And I'm sure your audience knows this. And so I'm sort of, you know, preaching to the converted or whatever. But the point I want to make though is like, rather than And this is something that Dan Bigam has spoke about on on our podcast and the Cycling Spy, the anonymous and Instagram account has spoke of recently as well. It's just like if you're looking for binary results like that, you're limited by your you're how much cash you can throw at the thing, I think is the best way to explain it.
00:37:34
Speaker
every single helmet on the market and test them up. and find the fastest then you know so long as everything else we've just discussed doesn't apply yes of your fastest helmet um but if you can think about it slightly different and rather than looking for what is a faster so a helmet you're looking for an actual an actual uh trying to trying to understand what the the problem you're trying to crack is and then trying to look for not not even you're trying to look for something that hasn't been done before, but you're just trying to look for a way to optimize something that doesn't limit you by what others have done already. him You know, so ah again, I don't want to do it, but I'll use the Everesting example again. It's like the the third time I did an Everesting.
00:38:23
Speaker
Again, I wanted ah the lightest bike i possibly we could for the ascent, but then the fastest, most aero bike for the descent. And looking at all the various options and not really finding anything that was light enough or arrow enough. And all the, ah all the lightweight things had exposed cables and round tubes and all these sorts of things. And all the arrow options were too heavy. And at some point I just thought, well actually, what if I just got a fairing and stuck it on the front of a lightweight bike, that would be a lighter option. than And I didn't actually do a test out and it's probably a great example. Yeah.
00:38:57
Speaker
ah maybe a better example and it's not really related to arrow testing or anything like that, but I think it, ah I do genuinely believe it's very related to performances.
Sim Racing and Cycling
00:39:07
Speaker
Like I've, I've always been a writer who could,
00:39:11
Speaker
descend when I needed to and so if I was getting dropped in a race I could descend my way back into the bunch and I think i that worked for me because I was lucky not because I was a good descender and I survived rather than I thrived but being an F1 nerd and having recently got into some racing I and I'm i'm I've been working in the last six months on an article about how some racing makes you a better bike rider and and ah I do think there is, I'll not give it all away here in case there's other publications waiting to, listening who would write it up in the meantime.
00:39:48
Speaker
and But yeah, i think there is a lot that I took in terms of ah understanding actual cornering and lines and you know, ah how to set up a corner rather than just navigate a corner.
00:40:03
Speaker
When you're talking about racing, are you talking about like auto racing or bicycle racing? Yeah, mean, like, so I've got a, like a big kid, I've got a steering wheel and pedals and a, like a cockpit with a widescreen TV and a PC set up for playing iRacing.
00:40:18
Speaker
um And yeah, that's, Too bad Andrew's not on the show because he's a huge F1 nerd. he'd He'd love this part of the conversation where I'm like, ah the my F1 knowledge is is drive to survive on Netflix. And that's that's the extent of it.
00:40:31
Speaker
but so But please, I'm sure there's lots of folks listening who would benefit from it. So the more I just think was trying to get better at that and learning it and understanding it and and that actually just understanding, and we've all been told about racing lanes and we all have been told enter, you know, set up the corner, be wide, enter narrow and exit wide.
00:40:53
Speaker
And actually there's just so much more to it. And when I started to understand those things, I then got a much better understanding of how to ride a bike and how to descend properly. And thus now you can,
00:41:07
Speaker
actually descend faster but feel safer um and that's not you know if you were if someone had a problem with de descending or if a world tour rider needed to get better at descending I'm not sure they would take to some racing even though we've all been told a hundred times if you want to learn racing lines play Gran Turismo but I think that is an example of just looking for lack of a better term looking outside the box to try and find ways to improve performance and you know looking outside of cycling or triathlon or triathlon whatever it might be that you participate in for understandings that you can then bring back to the sport that you do and how those understandings can be much more valuable than just
00:41:51
Speaker
you know trying to I don't know how many times I watched Fabian Cancelaro descend in the yellow jersey on YouTube. It didn't really help me all that much. But when I started doing something a little bit differently and was able to gain an understanding and bring it back to my sport, that's where I found I did get bigger
Aerodynamic Optimization Techniques
00:42:07
Speaker
leap.
00:42:07
Speaker
But doing is also so much more powerful as a learning tool than just watching, right? So even if you're like, driving. The problem with doing descending practice is that, you know, if you get it wrong, you're not doing it for a while afterwards. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah.
00:42:20
Speaker
You've got other problems at that point. But yeah, 100% agree, yeah. But if I can take that, if i can take that um you know, your line of thinking of of learning something from, you know, learning something and and and applying it, and that was what you were talking about earlier too, about be that being your, I guess, your your ethos at escape, if I'm not, you know, putting words in your mouth.
00:42:42
Speaker
I'm going to try to pin you down just a little bit on practical advice for folks, ah because that's kind of, that's something that I'm always very, I was never, you know, i'm I'm an engineer, but I was never very good on the academic side of things. I'm like, how do I, was always very interested in how do I use the thing that I learned?
00:43:00
Speaker
So the stuff that I'm learning about, you know, like aerodynamics and cooling, which is something that we're really interested in right now. um How do I use it? How do I make myself faster, more comfortable? How do I make the folks I work with faster, more comfortable? So I'm going to,
00:43:14
Speaker
turn things a little bit on you and say like you have let's say you have somebody with who's a blank canvas who doesn't really hasn't had much aerodynamic optimization and they're you know time trial is triathlete let's say um what are the things that you're looking at first if they if you do accept the challenge of of helping this ah you know hypothetical individual where do we start i've written about it recently and we had a series called the dark side of marginal gains um on on escape collective.com and sort of unpacking when this thing that was supposed to be making us better is actually potentially making us slower and how that comes about and but what i what i've mentioned in that series and what i've mentioned
00:44:00
Speaker
and i didn't I certainly didn't find this, I've heard it somewhere else, is that the rider themselves accounts for probably something around about 80% of the aerodynamic drag of the total rider and bike system.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yep, that about right. And so the obvious place to start is by... reducing the thing that creates the biggest amount of drag. Yes. In that 80%, there's going to be much more opportunity in a blank canvas than there would be in the 20% that comes from a bike. 100%. And so that would be, you know, trying, first of all, my own personal approach would be to,
00:44:36
Speaker
if you think about your your legs and that as the engine for the system, you want to try to, you know, if we're talking about blank canvas here, we probably can't take many steps know, we can't take too big a risk. We kind have to optimize the, the power production element of their body first. And so getting saddle height four and aft and that sort of thing. And, and saddle, the other thing that I'm really big on at the moment is both saddle angle and a saddle that allows you to get anterior rotation of the pelvis, which will allow you to get into a more dynamic position, more comfortably,
00:45:13
Speaker
while being able to still produce power. And I personally find that just comes down to having cutout or a central channel in the saddle that relieves soft tissue pressure and and having a nose that on the saddle that does the same and actually supports the rider at the same time. And so once you then have,
00:45:31
Speaker
the right saddle in the right place and you can produce power, then looking at the the sort of the upper body, the torso and and that and and getting that and as optimized as possible. And, you know, you kind of, I ah think you maybe, previously I would have just said, well,
00:45:51
Speaker
if you have a blank canvas, you don't really know what's going to work. You have to start making guesses and then test those guesses and see what's working. following recent episodes, our performance process, I would probably change that slightly now and would try to find a trend and, uh, a trending direction. So if, if we move to more and more and more reach, does it get faster and faster and faster for this writer or does it get slower and slower and Um, and,
00:46:19
Speaker
if you find something that's making you faster and faster and faster, take that to its conclusion and then look to move somewhere else. Whereas before it would have been maybe a case of, okay, we need to, I probably would have been working with some,
00:46:34
Speaker
list of here's what's worked for all the people let's apply this to you so you know get a high hands position get your face into your forearms and try to have your head in line with your torso try to get your shoulders to touch your ears all these things that we've all heard for years and years and and they they a lot of them do work for the record right i mean they they do they work if you look at the fastest positions Quite often they have ah they have ah most of those boxes ticked. Yes. and Although I did do a Giro d'Italia time trial gallery over the weekend. No, I haven't seen that yet. Who knows? maybe
00:47:07
Speaker
Maybe it was just like the photographer happened to catch Primoz Roglic at the wrong moment and he wasn't in a time trial position. But what struck me about the photos that I've seen of Roglic were that...
00:47:19
Speaker
despite now you're working with an expert like Dan Bigham, who they're both in the same team now, um, his position has seemed to come back to what, you know, his, his arms there.
00:47:29
Speaker
He doesn't have his arms horizontal, but they're not the high hands position that others are doing. There's a much bigger gap between his face and his forearm. Interesting. Stuff that, yeah, he definitely doesn't tick all those boxes, but he I think he was one second the hand shot. he was second by a second.
00:47:45
Speaker
Yeah. yeah And so it's, well, I was going to say it's working for him. We don't know, perhaps... that's perhaps he's just at a very difficult athlete to work with and he has said this is a position i want to ride and had dan had this wicked way with him perhaps he would have won the time job we don't know but that's true certain assumptions here that are probably fairly safe but um yeah the point i was just going to make is like when you apply all these things in one go i think and you're catching me in a moment now where i haven't had an opportunity to test this theory myself, but I think what you end up doing is not really knowing what is making you faster or what's making you
Challenges in Quick Optimization
00:48:21
Speaker
slower. It's just that some combination of the things that you've done has provided this, uh, this sort of position that you find yourself now, uh, position in terms of like result, from not by position. yeah
00:48:36
Speaker
Um, whereas if you iterate one at a time, perhaps you have a better chance of getting to the optimal position for that, that writer, um which is again, not the answer anybody wants, because that means more time and more testing and all that. But if I was working with a blank canvas now, and and we do have a project in the works with one or two writers at the moment, targeting a specific event later this year and,
00:49:01
Speaker
one of the things about it to stress me out at the moment is that we're looking to do in six weeks what i firmly believe is probably a 12 month project and and that's for various reasons just it it hasn't we haven't been able to get it off the ground until this point and so i'm kind of looking at it going do we try to do something now or do we reset and recalibrate and go again for next year but um the other like the other simple things are like ah again focusing on the writer being 80 of the drag it's like well clothing and that might be skin suits helmets over shoes gloves all of these things could be shaving their legs could be shaving their arms all these things like what what does the actual covering the stuff covering the yes um did skin drag and
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah. um And yeah, I think that those are, again, those are the two big things that are the biggest contributor to drag. And so focusing on those is probably and the place to start at I think that's, yeah, I really like that answer, but and none of it, none of it excuses the user from doing a heap of testing, right? Like you got you got to test all of it. There's, there's no such thing as, you know, the, the, the, what we used to call it, the slow twitch wind tunnel. The slow twitch is like the big triathlon forums. Like you look at a position like, oh yeah, that's fast.
00:50:24
Speaker
and That's gone. Yeah. I think that's, Unfortunately, that has gone because we all want that to be, we all want that to work. We all just want to be able to put our picture up online somewhere and ask what do we think? And for the suggestions that come back to, to make us faster and, you know, almost always the intention is good with those, but yeah, without testing, it's, it's very, very difficult to know. And I think that feeds into the other point I was going to make was just like, we shouldn't assume that because something is faster for someone else or because someone, something has been
00:50:58
Speaker
suggested as being the fastest way to do something that ah is the fastest for us. and And I've learned that I'll not give away the results just yet, but I am learning that with the tire pressure testing that I'm doing. I think what happens with a lot of these things is we start moving in a direction that makes us faster.
00:51:15
Speaker
And then at some point we take it too far. yeah And, and we, uh, we, there were gains to be had there, but we're no longer getting gains. I see. I'm going to, going to read between the lines on that one, but, uh, I'll keep it to myself.
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah. I, I, I can't, testing is ongoing, so I don't want to, uh, make assumptions, but that is the trend that I'm seeing so far. I think it's probably the safest way to,
00:51:39
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's like, um it's like, I don't know, I think it was Josh's, you mentioned him earlier, Josh Bordner, Josh's hockey stick. I don't know if he came up with it, but like with the, you know, the rolling resistance versus pressure plot where you'd be like, okay, you would you know, you would decrease, decrease as, as, as pressure went up, rolling resistance would go down and then there would be a sharp break point and it would rapidly increase.
00:51:59
Speaker
So that's maybe not exactly analogous to what you're talking about, but it's reminiscent of that, at least in the way you tell it. Hmm. And I mean, the other the other thing is just like, if we get away from Arrow again for a second, but just looking at every aspect of performance and, you know, I think the obvious example right now is just like nutrition again. Yeah. And for the longest time, we looked at all the research papers and they all said, you know, initially 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour was the max and then it was 80 and then it was 90. And now we have Cameron Morf doing, i think 200 grams of carbohydrates per hour. And I'm, I am by no means saying we should all be taking in 200 grams of carbohydrates per hour.
00:52:42
Speaker
I don't think we should. i think that's a mistake. no No. Yeah. Well, I think we should be matching the expenditure too Exactly. I think that's that's the point. And I think that that's, i'm I'm super keen on carbs right now, just because I think that's where the like the the fastest in you know cycling, triathlon, the the folks are really, really fast. That's how they're winning now. That's how they're they're that's how they're doing the crazy things they're doing.
00:53:03
Speaker
But if like me... you know, to take, I'm a very average athlete. I do not need that kind of carbon take. It's, I cannot possibly expend it. So I shouldn't be doing like 90 grams an hour is fine for me, which is kind of fun, you know, especially in like really long stuff.
00:53:18
Speaker
I would be reticent even to put a number on it. and You might have, I don't know if you have gone and you've done any testing or whatever to determine length. I'm making up but um a number, but I've done some like, I've definitely done a fair bit of metabolic testing. So I have a pretty good idea with like my, you know, carbohydrate and fat metabolism rates are a different power output. So I have a pretty good idea of where I want to be. And yeah, like I just cannot produce enough, you know, i cannot sustain a carbohydrate intensive enough power for long enough for it to make a difference to me.
00:53:50
Speaker
You mentioned the metabolic testing there and that was the real eye opener for me. was like, I, yeah, I had, i was aware of 90 grams per hour or whatever being the limit, according to the understanding of the time.
00:54:02
Speaker
But when I started doing metabolic testing and started doing it for others, and then you're getting this carb max or whatever you want to call it graph, and you can plot on it. If I do this many watts, I burn this many carbohydrates per hour.
00:54:16
Speaker
And you're looking at it going, well, that's more than 90. and That tech is going to empty, unless I fill it. And then you just go, okay, well, it's saying 140. I'm going to try and do 140 and see what happens.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah. And lo and behold, you go faster. Yeah. It turns out you can do it. Then it turns out you can do it and it turns out it's actually a good thing. and And that's where I think being, again, I didn't make the point very well earlier, but being beholding to binary,
00:54:42
Speaker
Answers of what has been done previously or binary faster versus slower and these sorts of things is limiting in the long run and being open to trying to understand things better and just looking and going with something doesn't look right or something doesn't feel right about what I'm hearing versus what I'm seeing and trying the other thing.
00:55:00
Speaker
quite often you stumble upon something that can be you know genuinely performance beneficial. I think that that sort of approaching these questions with curiosity, I think is always the way to go. I think that's kind of like, you know, that's that's the golden ticket to to you know success. I think a lot of the stuff that we're doing is if you're curious and you're willing to try and experiment with stuff, I think there's ah there's a lot of wins to be had there.
00:55:24
Speaker
For sure. For sure. Yeah, it's better sums it up than I've been trying to do for the last. I don't know. I think, um I think this has been, has been great Ronan. I'm sorry. There's like a battle Royale upstairs. My kids were were homesick and then they, they get along pretty well. They're eight and 10, but they've just like had it of each other. And they're just, it's just, you know, it's full on fisticuffs upstairs.
00:55:45
Speaker
It's to a point where it's just there. All good, all goodwill and, and patience has been eroded. um Yeah. No, it's just angst. um I think it's a good place to wrap it up. um Ronan, thank you so much for, for taking the time and for, ah for just having a chat with me. I i think we, i came into it with a very loose idea of what I wanted to talk about and we, we covered a lot of ground and I'm grateful to you for that.
00:56:12
Speaker
Well, um, don't know. I think i embraced the opportunity to be the guest more than I maybe should have because I'm, I'm supposed to be, uh, coherent and working to a plan and all these sorts of things on podcasts and i think that all went out during the when started talking here i think the plan was very uh very flexible to begin with um like yeah so you're you did quite well and i also did that very frustrating thing when a guest just refuses to answer a question directly so apologies i tried a couple of times and then i'm like all right i'm just like go with the flow on this one But at least, you know what's fun is that you recognized
00:56:49
Speaker
it. I was trying not to. No, it's good. It's good. um try Try being my editor. ah ah i have my I have my hands full editing myself. Yeah. um So, we yeah, folks, as ah as we mentioned a couple of times, um if you haven't already, definitely check out Escape Collective, both in in web print and in podcast form.
00:57:14
Speaker
I promise you it is very much worth your while. And I promise you that we have actual experts answer rather than trying to get me to answer stuff. But sometimes it's nice to, you know, to have the the the and the expertise aggregators on the show. that's I like people like that too, because then you get, you know, it's it's been like, it's been maybe mixed together and and processed a little bit and pre-digested a little bit as well.
00:57:39
Speaker
Well, thank you for having Folks, as always, thank you very much for listening. And if you like what you heard, to give us a rating and review, and we'll talk to you soon.