"Dale Benjamin" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:"Mark Hickey" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Dale Benjamin said:My gut always told me that an optimized top end gave
more gain than an optimized low end, loaf going up
hills because one doesn't gain or lose
much
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:time or distance anyway, but really work going down,
one gets better
cooling
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:at speed, and gains more.
Your gut lied. ;-)
You lose a lot more time by taking it easy going up than
you do going down.
When you're going up, putting out 25% more power will
result in you going nearly 25% faster - or going 25%
further in the same amount of time.
125% 0f 6 mph is 7.5 mph. Big deal.
Quoted message said:If you put that same extra effort into a fast gravity-
aided descent, you'll go only slightly faster (since
aerodynamics will be the chief force to overcome). For
example, according to the excellent calculator at
analyticcycling.comanalyticcycling.comOpen ↗ ...
If a typical cyclist was descending a 10% hill, and
putting out 100 watts, they'd hit a speed of just under
80km/h (or, 50mph).
Increase their output to 125 watts, and the spead
"leaps" by a whopping 0.16km/h (or 1/10th of 1mph).
I haven't found any hills where 50 mph was realizable,
once I got over 40 mph. Something like 35 mph was
generally a pretty good top speed on any hill around here.
Dear Dale,
Actually, that pitiful 1.5 mph difference works out to a
huge deal in practical situations.
At 6 mph, a six-mile climb takes 60 minutes.
Now strain yourself to 7.5 mph uphill on the same 6 mile
stretch. True, this is only 1.5 mph faster, but it's also a
25% speed increase.
You reach the top in 48 minutes, 12 minutes sooner.
At 30 mph back down the hill (I slowed your descent to make
the arithmetic simple), you cover a mile every two minutes,
so your descent takes 12 minutes.
So the 7.5 mph rider finishes the whole 12 mile ride in 60
minutes, just as the 6 mph rider reaches the top. A six-mile
lead on a twelve-mile ride could be called a big deal.
It's also the explanation for most of Armstrong's advantage
in the Tour de France. He keeps up fine on normal riding,
does well on the individual time trial, and goes maybe a
mile an hour faster up those ugly mountains than whoever's
in second place.
It's a matter of how far, how long, and what the relative
speeds are. The 7.5 mph rider is 12 minutes faster per hour
than the 6.0 mph rider.
To gain the same 12 minutes per hour downhill, you have to
go 37.5 mph against someone going 30 mph--and find a place
where you go downhill that fast for an hour, which is
much, much harder than finding a place to trudge uphill
for an hour.
Carl Fogel