I just use a road bike with clip ons and my poor position doesn’t justify buying a TT helmet. You guys wouldn’t even see the messy garden with the criminal position on show! At the moment I just have a standard road helmet which I pair with some cheap sunglasses. I think some decent glasses would be useful for general riding as well as occasional TTs.
I have looked into buying a new helmet with a visor built in as it would be great at T1 but I’d probably look for something like Giro Vanquish MIPS Road, especially as I’m only doing shorter races at the moment.
Yeah that can be a problem, but even with general riding on my roadie, i much prefer to be without sunglasses for some reason. Yet off the bike, the slightest bit of brightness and i’ve always got my sunnies on! Though i don’t ever run in them either.
So actually i think it’s just cos i’m a sweaty pig, so suffer with steaming up a lot during exercise!!
The only time I don’t ride with glasses is when it’s raining and they impair visibility. I have had too many bugs fly in my eyes not to. Once forgot on a sub 0C day on the commute to work and I live on top of a hill, my eyes were sore for hours.
On the TT helmet and visor I had a bumble bee fly in during a race and it didn’t seem to be able to get out, I had to remove the visor and let it fly out. Scary AF.
Fog spray
Formaldehyde. Always good to prevent misting.
I wear glasses year round, unless it is truly persisting it down and affects visibility.
I get “streamy” eyes and just cry constantly with no glasses on
Recommend these - bought them for a similar reason, riding on the TT in a normal road helmet, these give excellent on account of the top rim being well above the eyeline even if in a tuck. Good value too.
I was going to say they are very similar to the Oakley Jawbreaker. I used them for a hill TT and can confirm that that work very well in the TT position and will be my choice for Bilbao in September instead of full TT mode
Thought this was the best place for this. I thought the reason my rear brake was sticking was maybe the spring needed replacing but actually when the cable is released it opens up fine and so new cables should sort it as when I move them about a bit I can see a bit of corrosion on the rear one.
How accurate is Bike Best Split at CDA Calculation? I just loaded my 160.9km TT into BBS to see what my CDA was. I thought that it would be a good example as I spend 4hours in Aero Position. According to BBS it was 0.2108
Then I read this from Trainer Road Blog
CdA values in the 0.2-0.22 range are very low - you’re into the territory of pros or extremely keen amateurs who have spent time in the wind tunnel and a lot of effort to optimise every last detail of their position, equipment and kit
I was wearing No Pinz aero Suit, aero socks, had Aero Helmet. I never realised before, but I am like Dan Bigham, short legs, long back (didn’t know that this was a good body shape for TT).
It was a sunday morning, hardly any traffic, I certainly didn’t get any significant draft, but obviously as cars pass there is a benefit. I would imagine that there is a benefit of a pretty distant draft when cars pass
Isn’t the road surface a factor in those calculations too? I know they describe the various settings but it’s another margin of error if the surface is slightly better/worse than the option you picked.
I don’t think you can put too much focus in the actual number and try and compare it to a real wind tunnel cda figure. As others have said, there’s a lot of variables that it’s approximating. I wrote on my Bahrain race report that the assessed cda was substantially lower than my prior races yet kit and position was the same. That was almost certainly traffic benefits like Jim says.
What it is useful for is to then be able to reasonably approximate a future race time.
Looks like I will be re-entering the fray next year and going for a 70.3 somewhere in Europe. I let my old tri bike - a Spesh Transition go some time ago as it was gathering dust. Going for 70.3 rather than olympic as in reality I will be the fat lad at the back, so finishing will be an achievement - more so than a shorter race.
I see that there are quite a few bargains knocking about for older bikes - Giant Trinity, Spesh Transitions, Dolans etc. So wondering about picking one up on the cheap - I already have some deep-ish wheels leftover from the last bike.
Is this worth the effort for 70.3? I am a shitty runner, so thinking that saving 15 minutes on the bike could be very useful. I never felt that I ever fully got the setup right on the last bike.
All opinions from ‘Woah you are amazing.’ to ‘Are you the village idiot?’ welcome.
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