After finishing a windy event ride, I rode back along the route to find my wife and her friends. She was tucked in behind a fat guy. Smart gal, my wife.

Draft me. I'm 6'4", 198#.

the technique i use most for a headwind is to not ride against it.

I favor Machka's approach and use it myself.

Mathematical modeling can be useful, but I'm leery of relying too heavily on it for problems that contain too many variables. The first problem in the case at hand is that wind almost never behaves like a vector in real life. The direction and speed changes constantly.

A side wind hurts you and winds can even hurt you when they're a bit behind you if the side component is sufficient. Just because you ride into a headwind going out does not necessarily mean you'll get a tailwind coming back even if that is a real possibility.

Most cyclists have a difficult time fighting the temptation to maintain speed/cadence, particularly when they're trying to maintain a decent pace. When you're going into a headwind that's changing continuously, the practical effect is that you're constantly accelerating and wasting energy. In effect, you get tricked into putting out more power than you should.

If I find myself in wind, I drop the effort and try not to look at the computer. When it's windy on organized rides, I sometimes catch drop the entire pacelines while riding solo 30 miles after they blew by me because they worked too hard.

If you're going to be out for awhile, the key with wind is to come to terms with inevitability. Fighting Mother Nature is an exercise in futility. If it's raining, accept that you'll get wet. If it's windy, accept that you'll be slow. You'll last much longer and have more fun. In the end, you might well find you're faster as well.

+1 on the power meter. I hit the drops and try to aim for steady power output regardless of speed. If the wind is gusting, my speed will go up and down a bit, but I always try to aim for steady power and avoid hard accelerations to regain lost speed due to a gust. Heartrate is a good indicator as well and I find myself using that even more and power output less these days. I don't like to be too focused on power coming out of my winter/lazy season.

Ouch, I imagine that would be hard on my knees...

Curse a lot. It won't make you go any faster but it may make you feel better.

yeah, but I can't be everywhere for everyone at once.

Step 1) start ride into wind. Step 2) ride second half of ride with wind at your back.

Draft

Many's the ride I've gone 5 miles past my house just so I could turn around and finish with a sweet tailwind.

Living near the coast, this is the guiding principle for most every ride.

You're probably right, but in a TT wouldn't the assumption be to go as fast as possible by maintaining high output for the entire event, more like the 200 watts for 2 hours regardless of the wind speed or direction? In other races where speed would matter you'll most likely have others to draft and this discussion becomes less of an issue.

For those who are just out on a daily ride, maybe trying to minimize a little bit of the suffering, Machka's method has a lot of merit.

I thought that was for the direction not to spit or pee in. :lol:

Don't forget snot rockets...

No, the 5% solution tests out as faster with wind, and hills. In a flat windless TT, you'd ideally want to put out constant power at threshold for the full time. But because you lose more time going into the wind, and uphill, the better pacing is 5% over threshold in those circumstances, and then recover (5% under threshold) on the downhill or down wind, where you're losing less time.

The studies in the links i gave confirm this. Thus the conventional wisdom that you go hard when its hard and easy when its easy.

Now, a strategy of easing off into the wind, and going harder downwind may be helpful as a coping strategy, or to avoid blowing up on a long ride.

But it is going to be slower.

I never said there's anything wrong with that approach. I just said it's slower, and it is.

No.

Merlin is saying (correctly) that you are better off time wise to push above your "mean" output when going into the wind and drop below that (to rest from that greater exertion) when you have a tailwind.

Riding into a headwind on a down slope I use a technique that I borrowed from my MTB days. Put your butt off the back of the saddle and get real low. You can spin a little but not crank.

If I am not on a down hill I slide back as much as possible and spin in the drops.

I just quit looking at the speedometer.

fify. ;)

x2. I just ride what feels like a normal effort regardless of actual speed. Now the one time my son talked my into a ride with 30 plus head winds was interesting, we didn't get far.

say in cadence: I think I can, I think I can.:D

Good call, I forgot to do the cycling translation.

I ride gentle into the wind when heading away from home - that way I have some juice left in the tank when I get to the furthest point from home and the wind changes direction so I can hammer it all the way back. I never rely on there ever being a tail wind on a windy day, it just never seems to happen around here.

There are some exceptions, 1 being if there is another cyclist in front of me struggling, then I will make sure I pass them at max 2min sustainable effort so they dont get on my tail. Its also a bit of a laugh :)

It definitely does. The problem with this is that you are using half the time (as you stated). If you are really riding an out and back, or a loop with constant wind direction, you will be in the headwind for half the distance but more than half the time since the headwind is slowing you - and the opposite for tailwind.

Merlin's advice is sound in cases of an out and back or loop TT. In cases like Machka is describing (several hours into a headwind), it would be best to simply maintain whatever pace you can maintain for the duration, whether the headwind is blowing strong or letting up. If you're riding several hundred miles one way, you can't exactly say "OK, I'm going to ride over threshold until I get out of this headwind."

In either case, getting as aero as possible is going to help you out.

Edit: I'll add that one thing that works well for me is not being able to hear the wind. Headwind doesn't bother me nearly as much if I've got headphones on.