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Does shaving your legs make you faster? The answer may surprise you.

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Road Cycling “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” -- Ernest Hemingway

Does shaving your legs make you faster? The answer may surprise you.

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Old 07-08-14, 01:55 PM
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Originally Posted by FLvector
and are much easier to wipe off the grit and grime.
Indeed.
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Old 07-08-14, 02:00 PM
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Originally Posted by therhodeo
Does no one else shave just because they think it looks better?
I do. (Mostly. Tradition too.)
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Old 07-08-14, 08:55 PM
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Originally Posted by sced
This is great. One educated guess after another. Keep combining them and you'll get Hamlet.
Hair does wick water away from the skin, giving the sweat more surface area for faster evaporation and more effective cooling. It also keeps some of the sweat from rolling off of the skin further improving cooling effect of sweat.
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Old 07-08-14, 09:31 PM
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Originally Posted by wphamilton
I look forward to your results. You use the powermeter and recursive estimation for CdA and Crr right? The coast-down method that I dabble with isn't really convenient for this kind of question.
Okay, tested tennis shoes. My normal setup is Shimano TR51 shoes on Crank Brothers Candy pedals (with the 3-hole cleat of course), for the tennis shoes I put the little flat platform cover things on the pedals and wore Brooks Green Silence running shoes with the laces tucked in.

No difference that I could find, I assume with a larger normal platform there would be at least a slight increase simply due to extra surface area, but with my setups I couldn't discern any differences.
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Old 07-08-14, 10:46 PM
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Originally Posted by rpeterson
Okay, tested tennis shoes. My normal setup is Shimano TR51 shoes on Crank Brothers Candy pedals (with the 3-hole cleat of course), for the tennis shoes I put the little flat platform cover things on the pedals and wore Brooks Green Silence running shoes with the laces tucked in.

No difference that I could find, I assume with a larger normal platform there would be at least a slight increase simply due to extra surface area, but with my setups I couldn't discern any differences.
Awesome. One more thing we don't have to worry about! Thank you for going to the trouble.

Uh, it just occurred to me, and this has nothing to do with your experiment, but it just struck me that the video wind tunnelers should have had a control group, with hairy and smooth legs, measured again without shaving, just to demonstrate that the control group had no changes in drag measurement. I'd feel better about their experiment anyway.
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Old 07-08-14, 10:48 PM
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Originally Posted by sced
Unless you can test outside on roads under a range of conditions it doesn't mean squat.
Just like aero frames
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Old 08-09-14, 05:09 AM
  #107  
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Shaved legs, My experience, observations

Makes me Faster ? Nah,

Wound management ? Yeah, somewhat, a little.

At the end of a ride, back at the trail head with sand and sweat n dirt all over my legs I rinse off a lot faster
and this helps when I have only a gallon jug of water.

So yeah, another plus but no biggie.

Chiggers n ticks, nothing for them to grab on to when I go off trail on purpose, yeah on purpose, never by accident

I don't shave I 'Epilate', Google it, Last a lot longer, no stubble..

The main reason I do it, Makes my legs look better, stronger, and IMO sexier XD

Hairless legs say, " I am Into biking big time"
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Old 08-16-14, 12:26 AM
  #108  
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I'm very faired skin and burn easily. I do it because it makes a mess applying it on the legs when all hairy. I don't do it late fall to February because I don't need to,use sunscreen
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Old 08-30-14, 01:19 PM
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I had enough time to grow all the hair out and try this again.

Came up with nearly identical results to the first test. Might try it one more time before it gets too cold to go pantless.
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Old 08-30-14, 02:01 PM
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Originally Posted by HOWSER
Acne scars apparently rule.
I gotta get me some smallpox.
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