Time Trial Prep: Part 1, the wind

The 2022 time trial season is just around the corner. In this series, I’m going to show you how I would use a myWindsock forecast, to prepare for the first Cycling Time Trial event, the Ely & District 25 mile SPOCO on BS19.

PLEASE NOTE: Weather forecasts are updated hourly, this forecast may have changed from the time this article is published. View the forecast for yourself here.

In this first part we look at how understanding the challenges of the course weather so we can prepare a mental strategy. This is what we refer to as the Descriptive side of myWindsock. We are describing race day, so you have all the information required for optimal mental preformance.

In our second part we will look at the Prescriptive tools. We will show you how to formulate the optimal power plan.

First thing, we need a Virtual Athlete to Ride the Course

We want to ensure everything we are looking at reflects our performance on the day. To do this, we need a Virtual Athlete (VA). Your Virtual Athlete will ride the course as many time as you like, with infinite setup choices. The beauty of your VA, they never get tired!

In the next part of this blog series, we will look at how to use your Virtual Athlete to formulate the best race plan. For now, we just need to have a good estimate of race day performance.

Clicking on the Bike icon for cycling events will reveal the Virtual Athlete menu and settings. Ensure this reflects your own performance.

You may want to create a new Virtual Athlete for this race distance, I have one simply called “25 mile”. I will use this as the basis to begin all 25 analysis and then, as we will learn in the next post create a race specific VA for the event when I come to plan power.

Pay specific attention to Power, weight and aerodynamics.

Often I am asked about what to enter for aerodynamics. You can use this post to find your CdA from a previous race activity. You can also use the icons to guide you. For time trials if in doubt use 0.200.

What to expect

We start in the Metrics tab. My attention is initially drawn to the Moving Time and average ground speed. Notice that we refer to ‘Ground’ speed rather than simply ‘Speed’. This is because we also have metrics for ‘Air’ speed.

Power and Aerodynamics are as we have set for out VA.

Weather Impact is quite high at 8.1%. This tells us, for me to achieve the same time as on a weather free day, I’d require an additional 8.1% power. Find out more about Weather Impact.

General Summary

Moving down the metrics panel we have our Feels Like data. Feels Like gives us an alternative way to view the wind. We equate the wind to it’s equivalent gradient. Why? Well, I find it is easier to imagine a how difficult a gradient will feel. Whereas, the combination of prevailing wind direction, wind speed etc. is more difficult to imagine.

Our Feels Like Elevation panel

Next, we move down to the Aerodynamics panel. There are two pieces of information we should be aware of. First is Yaw Angle. This is the average Yaw, we have a chart showing the Yaw distribution, to help make informed equipment choices. I have a couple of wheelsets and some technical data on them that gives me the best operating Yaw angles.

Also in Aerodynamics we have the Air Resistance. This is the percent of your power absorbed by air resistance.

Weather Overview

Our Virtual Athlete has now collected data at the correct speed. So now the data will reflect the correct time and locations for our weather data. Let’s take a look under the Weather Overview.

The above numbers are an overview of the data collected from around the course. It is forecast to be a chilly ride with strong 19.5mph average wind speed, gusting up to 29.5mph. Some rain may be present.

The headline from the forecast has to be the 20mph plus wind, so our next stop is to see where that wind will be on the course. We head to the Course Navigator.

Finding the Headwinds

First thing we note is that there are no significant climbs listed. However there are Headwinds.

Two headwinds are brought to our attention, each around 9-10 minutes in length. The first starts 5 minutes into the ride, then the second almost 38 minutes in. We also note the additional 8km/h air speed, this is quite significant. Why 8km/h. We calculate this additional air speed from the prevailing wind angle, wind speed and wind shear, which is the slowing of the wind close to the ground.

To see each headwind we simply click the headwind we are interest in. This highlights the headwind on the course so we can visualise where to expect the wind to start and finish. This also creates metric summaries for the selected portion of the ride.

First Headwind 5 minutes from the start, lasting just under 9 minutes.

How to use this data

Why do we need this information? By understanding how the headwinds will affect our performance, we can create an effective mental strategy.

What usually comes into your mind when racing through a headwind?

I’ll tell you what comes into mine.

Sometimes, I can be defiant, “I’m not going fast enough”, “I need to push harder”.

Then there is, “this sucks”, “I’m having a bad race” and “today’s not my day, I don’t have the legs”.

Non of these thoughts keep us in a calm high performance mindset and are likely to sabotage a race performance. To combat these thoughts we need facts as our weapons. This is where our analysis goes next.

By being mindful during a race we can discover what information we need to have. This is personal to you. However, I will outline from my experience what helps me.

  • When and where to expect the headwind to start.
    Use the map and the Course Navigator to ensure we know the start position.
  • Know what the affects of the headwind will be
    • Check the Average Speed Graph. How much does the speed rise all fall during the headwind. This helps with any thoughts around not going fast enough.
    • View the Feels Like Elevation chart to visualise how the headwind relates to gradient. You may find it helpful to imagine this theoretical hill you are climbing. Imagine the summit to be where you know the headwind finishes.
  • Know where and when the headwind will finish
Rolling Average Speed. The Black line indicates the overal ride’s average speed evolution. The orange is the rolling average for the highlighted section.
Feels Like Elevation Profile. The grey section is the actual gradient. The red section and coloured line depicts the Feels Like elevation gain due to the wind.
The Feels Like Summary for this headwind. It will have an average gradient feel of almost 1%.

We repeat the above for each of the significant headwinds. The crucial part of this planning phase, what we call the descriptive phase, is to minimise the unknowns. I think of it this way, if we were tennis players we would expect to know what court surface we would be playing on. The weather poses as much of the race day challenge as the distance and terrain.

In our next post we plan the optimum power strategy.

This graph, will change how you feel about the wind, forever.

Why view the wind this way? It’s all about putting our efforts into context. Gradient, is far better understood than wind speed combined with it’s prevailing direction. The better we can relate to the challenges the course gives us, the better we can plan our efforts and understand our past performances.

You can learn more about Feels Like elevation, here.

Quick Winter Cycling Quiz

As Winter rolls on, we thought a short Winter cycling quiz would be fun. We’ve thrown in a couple of our latest facts about Winter riding, so we hope you’ve been paying attention. If not, check out our Instagram or Facebook for some cool Winter cycling analysis.

How many did you get?

Would you want to learn more about Cycling efficiently in all weathers? Make sure you are following us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Slow vs Fast riders, who suffers most in Winter kit?

Winter jacket on or off?

We’ve made the myWindsock Virtual Athlete very dizzy. 32 loops later and we have some stats. We wanted to know, what difference Winter kit has on cyclists, with different abilities. Do slower riders have it harder or easier than faster riders when it comes to our choice of Winter clothing. It seems, we all suffer but in a different way.

In the Winter, slower riders will spend relatively more time in headwinds and will ultimately take more time to complete their ride. However, for faster riders, the overall average Speed will be reduced by a greater amount. Less bragging rights is the penalty.

Learn more about myWindsock

What’s your max wind speed? Find out how it compare to other cyclists.

It’s impossible to avoid the wind when cycling. In fact, we have 20mph plus winds blowing across the UK right now.
At what point do most cyclists jump on the turbo, rather than blow in the wind? We analysed over 2 million rides, to discover the wind speed most cyclists stay in doors.

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Learn more about the weather you ride in. Discover the highest winds, longest headwinds and more. Simply sign up and connect Strava.

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Here’s why you’re slow this Winter.

We’ve analysed 2 million rides to find out. Do we ride slower in winter? and if so why. Purely to make ourselves feel better about our current off season performance.

February is the Slowest month, with an average ride speed of 26.6kmh. Speeds begin to pick up in March, rising through Spring and Summer, to peak in September at 30.2kmh.

The first reason, in our unique analysis of 2 million rides, is the reduction in aerodynamic efficiency. CdA is the overall measurement of an object’s efficiency moving through the air. As CdA increases so does the power to maintain the same speed. Or, a reduction in speed for the same power.

myWindsock calculates CdA for every ride that has power data. Subscribers can monitor their aerodynamics ride by ride, learn more.

In February, CdA is 7.5% higher than in July where the average CdA was 0.340, compared to 0.366 in Winter. The difference at an average speed of 30.2kmh is around 10 Watts.

Why? We don’t dress quite as minimally as we do in the Summer. Short sleave jerseys are replaced with rain and wind repellent jackets. Lights, mudguards and less aerodynamic bike frames also contribute to the reduction in aerodynamic efficiency.

Reason 2, cyclists in Winter don’t pedal as hard. We expected this, however we are suprised at by how much. Riders are averaging 173 Watts in September. By February we are down to 146 Watts. On our Instagram page @mywindsock we’ve had so speculation as to why this is.

@itsjakevita
“Most cyclists that train only do Z1/2 rides all Winter and the higher FTP stuff in Spring/Summer.”

@ade_fox71
“Wet slippy roads, cold temperatures never good for fast riding. “

@fazzasphotos
“Keep some spare energy to get home as you don’t want to be on your last legs and breakdown at 2 degrees. Plus it’s mainly endurance, efforts are done on Zwift.”

The myWindsock population of athletes tend to be actively racing, this may also account for the difference in power. During Peak racing season1 to 2 rides a week are likely at full race pace during the Summer months.

A very typical myWindsock weather stat here. Air Density becomes greater as the temperature decrease. Meaning, in the Winter, there is literally more air to move out of the way when riding along. The air density between Summer and Winter can cost as much as 7 Watts, or 0.5kmh off the average speed.

Conclusion

If your speed is lower in the Winter, you’re in good company. You now know it’s a combination of your clothing, a natural change of pace and the colder air holding you back. For safety, it’s probably not a bad thing our speeds are a little bit lower. Carrying a little less speed into potentially slippy corners is not a bad thing. It also makes Summer special. Remember ‘Winter miles mean Summer smiles’.

Would you like to discover more about your own rides? It’s easy to discover your CdA and more about the weather conditions you ride in. Start by signing up to myWindsock and connecting your Strava account for free.

Updated Desktop Interface

We have been working on the desktop user interface. We noticed, the most frequently selected chart item was ‘Summary Data’. Switching between the activity or interval Summary, whilst experimenting or learning about your activity, isn’t very efficient.

In desktop view, you can now view the Summary Data (left panel), along side charts and Current Marker Location (right panel).

You may not always want the Summary in view, or even charts and Current Marker Location. So we have added the functionality to hide each of these as required. Simply click on the “Hide” button on the required panel.

$50 Off a Notio Aerometer! When you upgrade this Black Friday Weekend.

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What is a Notio?

Attach a Notio to your bike and you’ll be recording live air speed data. With this data, your aero computations are enhanced with moment by moment calculations. Combine a Notio with myWindsock Premium and you’ll have the ultimate package for aerodynamic analysis*

How Aero Analysis helps you go faster

To go faster you can either produce more power, or become more efficient. One of the ways to become more efficient is to move through the air with less resistance. Making changes to your position, or choosing better equipment, can lead to big improvements in your aero efficiency.

myWindsock Premium enables you to track your aero changes and make informed choices.

We measure your efficiency in CdA. The more efficient you are at moving through the air, the lower this number will be. Typically a road cyclist will be between 0.300 – 0.400. A racing cyclist on a road bike will be in the 0.250-0.300 range. Time trial cyclists will be even lower, with some specialists below 0.180.

Learn more about myWindsock’s aerodynamic analysis.

Get the upgrade offer

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*Notio data analysis in myWindsock is expected January 2022.