Left at 8:00 sharp on the bike yesterday. Got to work at 8:40, through the metal detectors.

Left at 9:30 today in the car, showed up at work at 10:10, through the metal detectors.

40 minutes either way.

I need to go faster ... it's only 7 miles. If I leave 20 minutes earlier and get to work 10 minutes faster I can leave 20 minutes earlier and get home 10 minutes faster, and have a whole 40 minutes more free in the afternoon...

Plus I can pass myself off as a "foodie" for a while (I have just barely enough background knowledge on everything in the universe to pass myself off as anything; I've even discussed nuclear reactor design and quantum physics at length, at which point a coworker gave up), and eat bigger lunches while people wonder how I don't get fat.

I'm at parity with the car. I must go faster.

go through red lights

I'm with the coworker.

Move to the top of a hill, so its all downhill on the way to the job.?


only parts thing you can do is perhaps improve aerodynamics..

Fairings, aero bars ,skin suits and tear drop helmets.

OP, I don't have a clue what you said?

It's all about reaching an aerodynamic posture. I suggest trying to ride like this the whole way...

yeah whats up with the foodie thing?

do interval training?

Train like a roadie. Do hill repeats if there's any climbing on your route. Spend your evenings for at least the next few weeks getting stronger. Put a set of clip-on aerobars on your bike, and use them where you can. Consider a faster bike.

Get a derny to pace you back and forth to work.

Speed increases with endurance, but there's a point where going faster makes you hot enough to need to cool down for longer at work, negating any/some/all of the time saved by arriving sooner. At least I think that's what you're getting at.

Personally, I think I'd get the R3 instead.

I have to climb 850 foots of elevation to work and 1290 home over a 7 mile trip. The route home is 9 miles because of a 2 mile detour.

Road bikes are slow compared to time trial bikes.

Gibertini and Grassi measured CdA numbers of .304, .288, and .235 m^2 respectively for a 1.8 m tall cyclist riding in the brake hoods, drops, and in an optimal time trial position on aerobars.

Given flat ground, 75kg of bike + rider weight, and .004 Crr with those numbers a modest 200W should produce 21.7, 22.1, and 23.6 MPH respectively.

Skipping the anachronistic UCI diamond frame allows much greater gains.

Too much rolling resistance. Remove a wheel.

You took the words right out of my mouth but... even with some carbon fibre badness it won't squat unless you work on that engine.

lmfao

It is the engine... few have ever gone faster.

I think what the OP is saying is the faster you ride, the sooner you get there, and the more time you have to do other things, like discussing quantum physics with your coworkers. There are lots of studies that have reached this same basic conclusion, and my own experience shows this to be true. I'm looking for links to the studies, and will update if and when found.

If I had skipped reading this thread and not spent 10 minutes trying to come up with a clever reply I could have gone home 20 minutes earlier.

Sounds like hill repeats are the perfect training for you.

I've seen those studies, but the data is sketchy. Plus, other studies show that the slower you ride, the longer you get to be on your bike instead of working.

It's the bike. In the right human powered vehicle even you or I could out do a time traveling Eddie Merckx from 1972 with his traditional bike.

The HPV hour record is 82% faster than the UCI record. For Ondrej Sosenka to close that huge gulf he'd need about 6X the power which is nearly triple the difference between a cat-4 pack filler (about 3.2W/kg) and Lance Armstrong at his peak (6.75 W/kg). To match Boardman he'd still need about 40% more power.

Eschewing the UCI's restrictions entirely the HPV hour record is 90.6 km or about 56.3 miles in one hour.

UCI's best human effort is a mere 62% of that with Boardman covering just 56.4 km or 35.0 miles in one hour.

The official UCI hour record on a drop bar bike is only 49.7 km or 30.9 miles.

it's not too hard to go faster...but it is very hard to go faster and not be a sweatbox when you arrive...

Maybe if you weren't such a "foodie", you average speed would be higher.

Everybody talks about quantum physics, but nobody does anything about it.