Originally Posted by
Machin
The interesting thing is that whilst the above is true, because the slower ride spends more time on the course he/she will save more absolute (as opposed to relative) time from the aerodynamics than the faster rider, despite travelling slower... take the overshoe example; a rider travelling at 17.5miles in an hour saves 33 seconds, whilst a rider travelling the same 17.5 miles in 45 minutes saves just 27 seconds.... the same effect can be seen with riding on the drops... a more aero bike, etc....
Don't take my word for it.... the nice guys at Cervelo have written a nice page on the effect here:
http://www.cervelo.com/en/engineerin...st-riders.html
And while that is true, it forgets one thing: watts are energy spent. there's only so long you can put out certain amounts of watts, so saving more watts will allow you to go longer and faster before tiring out. the cervelo example assumes the rivers are not affected by the greater requirement of watts, only by time. in the real world that wouldn't hold up.