Foldable Bikes Party: The future of going fast

Thursday, 18 February 2016

The future of going fast

http://ift.tt/1QLX80Y

Winning bike races meaning skirting the outer edge of sustainability. How light can you make a bike or a wheel before it breaks? How thin can you make a racer's body before he gets sick? How fast can you take that descent without flying off the cliff? The best performances push right up to the edge of disaster.

In the future, high-tech tools could precisely measure and analyze the minutiae of performance on and off the bike, guiding the sport out to the razor's edge of possibility. Here, we talk to coaches, nutritionists and even a mathematics PhD about what that future could look like.

As much as we romanticize the sport, winning often comes down to cold math. Develop the rider with the best power-to-weight and power-to-drag ratios and you have a champion. While doping is the quickest way to boost the engine, we’ll focus on legal options here. Similarly, the shape and weight of the bicycle is still arbitrarily held in check by the UCI with a 6.8kg minimum weight and 3:1 ratio on aero shapes.

Although that minimum weight may be changed, regardless of what is set — streaming video cameras on all riders, hyperlight bikes — all teams will do everything they can within the same set of parameters.

In racing, the difference could come in the exploitation of data — from riders’ bodies, race-day conditions and real-time mathematical analysis of race dynamics.

The body – 24-hour quantification of performance, rest and recovery

“The future is more internal metrics,” Benjamin Sharp, currently the power education specialist for power-meter company Stages Cycling and former USA Cycling national coach, tells BikeRadar. “Soon we’ll see on-the-fly, real-time blood lactate measurements. I’m already doing oxygenation measurements with athletes I coach to see how they are recovering on a day-to-day basis and as well as handling indoor workouts.”