This blog will look at how far we can
go in the quest to do what every timetrialist and cyclist wants to do go faster,
A little bit about me, could be called abit obsessive,
stupidly focused, a nightmare etc. etc., but a firm believer that cycling is
80% in your head.
How many times have you talked yourself out of a good ride,
or shocked yourself on how well you have gone all from how you’re feeling in
your head, if like me loads of times.
I need everything to be spot on, trained right, kit right,
head right and im away, any of these things are wrong forget im walking away
thinking I should of / could have done better.
This year I have behind me two of what I think are the
strongest support a cyclist could have and feeling dam lucky about it all (
this obviously doesn’t include the friends and most importantly family who put
up with me on a daily bases )
Firstly a man that needs no introduction Matt Bottrill , tt
superstar ,master of motivation #smashit and a guy even more hyper than me when
on a mission to get stuff sorted .
And second the man who brings one of the best bike fit minds
out there , and a very generous support from bike science Bristol to the game ,
What does all this mean in the fight to beat the clock in
2015 ,EVERYTHING
Over the next however long we will try and test as much as
we can and find exactly what works for me .
The best thing is the support from bike science and Andy is
not all about bigging up products they sell or promoting products that look
nice but don’t work, it’s all about going faster.
Lucky for me bike science stock a lot of the things I want
to try , bont ,rotor cranks and chain rings , the awesome looking Boardman TTE
that will come face to face with the current tt rig a Cervelo P4 , ENVE wheels
, Lazer helmets the list goes on so there is lots to test and a very
interesting road ahead ,
Will update at least monthly if not before on what we are
testing or due to test , what’s worked what hasn’t , how the training is going
and how the improvements and changes have affected the real world riding ( no
point being fast on paper )
So far this month ( Tuesday the 21st to be exact
) we have just had a very initial fit to see how I am on the P4 and to get the
measurements so the Boardman TTE can be set up for me to test , this was done
using the retul 3d bike fit and this is where a really good fitter like Andy
comes into his own .
I had the saddle to low which resulted in a very tight hip
angle and a massive loss of power in the tt position , some people say the
saddle low can get you into a better aero position but I don’t believe it
should be at the price of big power loses and for me it caused the muscles to
fatigue faster and a sense of really having to force the pedals ,
Andy explained that the retul system has recommended angles , im pretty flexible and
riding a max of 100 miles in the tt position so I could go outside of these as we
were after aero and power .
the main problem I had in my current position was getting my
head tucked in and being compact at the front , I was perched on my elbows rather than relaxed and able to sink into the
position , this was causing my head to lift when putting in a race effort .
Now this is key as setting up a position I could hold me
head in a great tuck and make myself super tiny frontally ,but soon as I put
the hammer down it all went out the window and I became as aero as a brick with
the head of a nodding dog in a tt helmet .
what we found is by raising the saddle I could get a very
smooth pedal action and a powerful one ,and this got me effectively lower at
the front and a better head tuck .
the key now is to test it , some steady rides in the
position and some harder efforts and report back .
Coming up is the exciting bit I get to test stuff ,lots of cool stuff .
im a man with champagne taste on a cherry panda pop budget
so most of these things would normally not be a option , I would like most go
down the road of looking what the fast guys have , reading reviews and seeing what’s
in the sale,
First up I really want to get my hands on the rotor
powercranks and the rotor rings ,
I tried osymetrics last year and thought I really liked them
, had a super bling carbon osymetric from fibrelyte ( this thing looked so good
it was worth a watt of power just from the street creed ) but ended up going
faster on a sram red round ring ,
Now this could have been for many reasons so il have to go
back and test again when we have a solid position , but it has to be one change
at a time , gather all the info and go from there .
I will update the blog in November but you can keep up with
it all on twitter @billyoliver80 .
Hope you all enjoy will be brutally honest and pretty open
on what we find out along the way
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