1 00:00:00,280 --> 00:00:02,400 Hi, and welcome to the Neil Ashton Podcast. 2 00:00:03,080 --> 00:00:05,920 In each episode, we explained some of the fascinating ways 3 00:00:05,920 --> 00:00:09,080 that science and engineering are changing the world around us. 4 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:12,760 We talked to leading engineers from elite level sports like 5 00:00:12,840 --> 00:00:16,920 cycling and Formula One to some of the world's top academics to 6 00:00:16,920 --> 00:00:21,000 understand how fluid dynamics, machine learning, supercomputing 7 00:00:21,360 --> 00:00:23,000 are bringing in a new era of discovery. 8 00:00:23,960 --> 00:00:27,080 We also hear some of their life stories, their career advice, 9 00:00:27,640 --> 00:00:30,080 the lessons they've learned on the way that I hope will be 10 00:00:30,080 --> 00:00:33,840 helpful to you too. So sit back and enjoy this 11 00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:41,440 episode. Hi and welcome back to the The 12 00:00:41,440 --> 00:00:45,280 Ashton Podcast. So today's episode is all about 13 00:00:45,360 --> 00:00:48,280 cycling and it's something that anybody knows. 14 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:51,520 Me, I'm passionate about. I'm a keen cyclist. 15 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:55,400 I'm one of these people who watches nearly all the races, 16 00:00:55,400 --> 00:01:00,320 not just the Tour de France, but the Classics, the other Grand 17 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:02,560 Tours and basically any cycling race. 18 00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:07,160 I'm I'm kind of obsessed with it and that's partly because I just 19 00:01:07,160 --> 00:01:11,840 enjoy cycling, but also because I think there is a fantastic and 20 00:01:11,840 --> 00:01:14,320 super interesting link to aerodynamics. 21 00:01:14,600 --> 00:01:18,200 Aerodynamics for cycling is one of the key differentiators. 22 00:01:18,800 --> 00:01:23,280 And actually to model the flow over a bike is also extremely 23 00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:26,440 challenging for methods such as computational fluid dynamics, 24 00:01:26,760 --> 00:01:30,080 modelling the movement of the legs and the transition between 25 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:34,720 lamina and turbine flow. And that's why the person that 26 00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:38,760 I'm speaking into this episode, Doctor Michael Hutchinson or 27 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:42,920 Doctor Hutch as some people know him, is one of the foremost 28 00:01:42,920 --> 00:01:48,960 experts on the practical application of improving 29 00:01:48,960 --> 00:01:52,840 aerodynamics or the aerodynamic efficiency of a cyclist, whether 30 00:01:52,840 --> 00:01:55,280 it's track cyclist or world tour cyclist. 31 00:01:56,280 --> 00:02:00,520 In this in this episode, we we talk about so many different 32 00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:01,880 things. I think he is a really unique 33 00:02:01,880 --> 00:02:07,880 character because he was a very top level cyclist himself. 34 00:02:07,960 --> 00:02:11,920 He holds numerous world records in terms of time trials. 35 00:02:12,400 --> 00:02:16,520 He did racing, he then moved on and, and continues to do. 36 00:02:16,520 --> 00:02:18,840 And I, I guess what a lot of people know him as is as a 37 00:02:18,840 --> 00:02:20,880 journalist writing for Cycling Weekly. 38 00:02:21,160 --> 00:02:25,800 He does some commentary on, on Eurosport, he's written books, 39 00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:29,680 he acts as a coach. He was very involved with the 40 00:02:29,680 --> 00:02:33,200 British Cycling in some of the foremost years where that those 41 00:02:33,200 --> 00:02:36,680 marginal gains and the real sort of development of aerodynamics 42 00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:39,000 came in. And I think he is one of those 43 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:43,160 pioneers who, as we, you know, discuss in the early days was 44 00:02:43,160 --> 00:02:46,200 doing things in wind tunnels, Even talks about having his own 45 00:02:46,200 --> 00:02:50,000 wind tunnel in his lounge. Really someone who wanted to 46 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:54,040 tinker and really understood the importance of it, arguably well 47 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:58,960 before it's commonplace today. One of the first people to have 48 00:02:58,960 --> 00:03:03,800 power meters on his bike to sort of try and figure out where the 49 00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:06,960 game was coming from. Just so many things that I found 50 00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:11,040 fascinating and I also took the opportunity to speak to him at 51 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:13,360 length about how things have changed. 52 00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:18,160 One of the common questions you know you get is around why are 53 00:03:18,160 --> 00:03:21,520 the cyclists today so much faster than the ones before? 54 00:03:21,520 --> 00:03:24,400 Is it to do with equipment? Is it to do with training? 55 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:28,200 So we go through all those discussions about how trainings 56 00:03:28,200 --> 00:03:33,280 change nutrition, aerodynamics. I like I said, I this was a 57 00:03:33,440 --> 00:03:35,520 dream for me. It was talking about stuff that 58 00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:39,440 I found fascinating and hearing from one of the from the experts 59 00:03:39,720 --> 00:03:43,560 was was great. So this is one definitely for 60 00:03:43,560 --> 00:03:46,760 cycling fans, but hopefully also for people just interested in 61 00:03:46,760 --> 00:03:52,040 aerodynamics, cycling CFD and just hearing from a fantastic 62 00:03:52,040 --> 00:03:56,040 person about his his life story in a way, even though, yeah, 63 00:03:56,040 --> 00:04:01,600 he's nowhere near complete. So yeah, sit back and enjoy this 64 00:04:01,600 --> 00:04:07,440 episode with Doctor Hutch. How did you get in to cycling? 65 00:04:08,400 --> 00:04:15,920 What age were you, cyclist? I was 22 or 23. 66 00:04:16,399 --> 00:04:22,960 I'd been a rower, hadn't at all. And I, I started, I rode for, I 67 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:26,080 rode for Cambridge Lightweights. And then I stopped doing that 68 00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:28,880 because I started doing a doctorate and I just didn't have 69 00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:31,880 the time to hang about the boathouse while 8 undergraduates 70 00:04:31,880 --> 00:04:36,600 got their lives together. And I took up cycling as a kind 71 00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:40,320 of, I kind of a means to not get fat really. 72 00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:42,280 I just was looking for a sport that I could do. 73 00:04:42,320 --> 00:04:44,400 And I tried running and I wasn't amazing at running. 74 00:04:45,600 --> 00:04:50,320 And my no partner's father was a cyclist. 75 00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:53,280 And he said, yeah, borrow a bike, go for a ride, see how you 76 00:04:53,280 --> 00:04:55,480 like it. And I liked it. 77 00:04:55,480 --> 00:04:57,680 And that's Scott, how I got it was also I liked. 78 00:04:57,680 --> 00:05:00,000 It was also immediately obvious that I was good at it, you know, 79 00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:03,520 So you can tell. I just tell I got kind of 5 80 00:05:03,520 --> 00:05:06,400 minutes into my first bike ride and thought, actually, yeah, I 81 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:08,360 can kind of do this. It just felt right. 82 00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:10,120 So that's that, that's how I came into it. 83 00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:12,320 And that's why I ended up having a slightly funny cycling career, 84 00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:13,840 because I started 10 years too late. 85 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:17,200 Yeah, so that's. So that is quite late, isn't it? 86 00:05:17,200 --> 00:05:19,840 I mean, you know, a lot of people now are like 8 years old, 87 00:05:19,920 --> 00:05:24,440 Yeah, on a bike or something. But you have the card I mean. 13 88 00:05:24,440 --> 00:05:26,880 or 13 or 14 or something. 13 or 14 or something. 89 00:05:26,880 --> 00:05:28,880 It would be a good time to take up cycling because you're kind 90 00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:31,800 of you're old enough to plenty of people take it up younger, 91 00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:34,280 but if you took it up by 13 or 14, you wouldn't be losing out 92 00:05:34,280 --> 00:05:36,240 very much. If you take it up when you're in 93 00:05:36,400 --> 00:05:39,800 in your 20s, you are you're going to be running to catch up. 94 00:05:40,440 --> 00:05:41,560 Some. Some people do it. 95 00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:49,160 Yeah, and how, how did you then? What made you want to go? 96 00:05:50,160 --> 00:05:53,520 I mean, there's a keen amateur cyclist which you get, but but 97 00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:55,320 you went further than that, right? 98 00:05:55,320 --> 00:05:57,320 So what were you always a competitive? 99 00:05:57,920 --> 00:05:59,240 Person. To do that. 100 00:06:02,280 --> 00:06:05,280 Yeah, well, it's, yes, it's partly that. 101 00:06:05,280 --> 00:06:08,120 It's also the kind of the feeling you find something 102 00:06:08,120 --> 00:06:09,200 you're good at. How good can I be? 103 00:06:09,200 --> 00:06:11,480 Because I was a reasonable rower, but I was obviously not 104 00:06:11,480 --> 00:06:14,560 rowing internationally. I kind of university level 105 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:17,400 rowing was clearly my limo and I found something I thought I 106 00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:19,960 could probably be better at and I could do it on my own. 107 00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:22,160 So I wasn't dependent on anybody else. 108 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:27,560 So I kind of just chased that and got faster over two or three 109 00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:32,120 seasons. And then in 1999, which feels a 110 00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:35,320 long time ago, I was second in the national 10 mile 111 00:06:35,320 --> 00:06:37,320 championships. I won the season long circuit 112 00:06:37,320 --> 00:06:39,320 series. All of it was a little bit of a 113 00:06:39,320 --> 00:06:41,080 surprise. I'd, you know, I'd had a good 114 00:06:41,080 --> 00:06:43,800 winter, I'd trained well and suddenly that year I was I was 115 00:06:43,800 --> 00:06:45,600 flying. I was maybe my third season. 116 00:06:47,840 --> 00:06:51,160 And yeah, I hadn't necessarily been the plan. 117 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:53,800 I hadn't started out when I took up cycling thinking I am going 118 00:06:53,800 --> 00:06:55,440 to win this, this, this, this and this. 119 00:06:56,040 --> 00:06:58,520 I just sort of followed what I thought would work. 120 00:06:59,120 --> 00:07:02,000 I did actually. I mean, I started being 121 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:05,120 interested in the aerodynamics of it back right back then 122 00:07:05,120 --> 00:07:08,640 because it seemed to me, well, you kept reading that 80% of the 123 00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:12,000 drag was, was, was from the from his aerodynamics. 124 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:14,240 You think, well, why is everyone else ignoring this? 125 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:20,200 Do we not believe this? And I did, I did a four up race, 126 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:24,440 a university 4 up race with amongst other people, an 127 00:07:24,440 --> 00:07:28,560 engineer who sat down and did some really basic modelling 128 00:07:28,560 --> 00:07:31,280 with, I mean literally a piece of a piece of paper and a 129 00:07:31,280 --> 00:07:33,840 calculator and said, right, the optimum way to ride this is for 130 00:07:33,840 --> 00:07:36,560 Michael to sit on the front for 50 KS and we'll sit behind him 131 00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:40,160 because he just, he just modelled it backwards from the 132 00:07:40,160 --> 00:07:43,000 differences between our, our, our personal best times and we 133 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:44,880 all went well. That doesn't make any sense. 134 00:07:45,560 --> 00:07:47,880 And we went and did the race and it was blindingly obvious 135 00:07:47,880 --> 00:07:49,120 afterwards that he was absolutely right. 136 00:07:49,120 --> 00:07:51,040 The fastest way the four of us would have got round the course 137 00:07:51,040 --> 00:07:52,920 of the bit if I just sat in the front of the three of them and 138 00:07:52,920 --> 00:07:55,160 sat behind me because I was quite a lot quicker than them. 139 00:07:55,160 --> 00:08:00,000 And that just made me think, OK, so if you look at the kind of 140 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,680 the physics of cycling that people talk about, actually 141 00:08:03,680 --> 00:08:05,720 this, this, you know, if you follow that, you get some more. 142 00:08:05,720 --> 00:08:08,160 So that's kind of, it's both how I took up cycling and I mean, 143 00:08:08,160 --> 00:08:10,440 almost immediately became a little bit interested in this 144 00:08:10,440 --> 00:08:13,120 side of things. Then I finished my doctorate. 145 00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:19,320 I was working in an academic job that was a one year contract. 146 00:08:19,320 --> 00:08:23,360 And that came to an end and I started looking for a job for 147 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:26,240 the following year. And at a roundabout that point 148 00:08:26,240 --> 00:08:28,080 somebody rang me one day and said would you like to come and 149 00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:32,400 ride for my team? We'll give you some, they'll 150 00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:34,559 give you some bikes. As if there was a few 1000 lbs 151 00:08:34,559 --> 00:08:36,200 of money involved in it. I mean, it was about the same 152 00:08:36,200 --> 00:08:38,159 amount of money as that I've been getting from the academic 153 00:08:38,159 --> 00:08:40,240 contract. So it wasn't nothing. 154 00:08:40,960 --> 00:08:42,520 And I thought, yeah, let's go and do that. 155 00:08:42,520 --> 00:08:46,240 Let's take a year and see. A part of it was honestly, I 156 00:08:46,240 --> 00:08:49,920 just like the novelty of becoming a, a middle-aged, 157 00:08:50,040 --> 00:08:52,680 slightly overweight, middle-aged professor of international law 158 00:08:52,680 --> 00:08:55,920 and having undergraduates go, hey, Professor Hutchinson, he 159 00:08:55,920 --> 00:08:57,920 won a cycling chat. And the other one's like, no, 160 00:08:57,920 --> 00:09:00,880 no, he couldn't possibly. I just kind of like, I like the 161 00:09:00,880 --> 00:09:03,400 idea of this being a kind of slightly funny piece of back 162 00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:06,440 story that was kind of, it's not a great reason to become a 163 00:09:06,440 --> 00:09:10,080 professional cyclist, but it's more or less where I came at it 164 00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:12,160 from. And So what team what? 165 00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:14,080 Tell us more about what? What was that? 166 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:19,360 What was that like? I'm writing for a team that was 167 00:09:19,360 --> 00:09:22,440 essentially I was a one man team, but I had a team manager 168 00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:25,720 who ran a specialist, a specialist to the time trial 169 00:09:25,720 --> 00:09:28,760 equipment shop on on. Well, I could have said an 170 00:09:28,760 --> 00:09:30,880 online shop. I think at this point it was 171 00:09:30,880 --> 00:09:32,520 probably literally a mail order shop. 172 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:34,240 I think you phoned him and told him what he wanted. 173 00:09:34,240 --> 00:09:38,320 It was like the dark ages and he he done a deal with Giant with 174 00:09:38,320 --> 00:09:42,880 Giant because Giant at that point were making it where they 175 00:09:42,880 --> 00:09:46,280 were making the Mike Burrows concept of the compact bike 176 00:09:46,280 --> 00:09:50,400 where instead of having bespoke frames, you had three basic 177 00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:53,080 sizes, a whole pile of different seat pins and stems. 178 00:09:53,080 --> 00:09:56,600 And Mike Burrows idea was that anyone could fit anyone from 179 00:09:56,600 --> 00:09:59,160 sort of five foot nothing to six foot five could fit on one of 180 00:09:59,160 --> 00:10:02,960 these three basic sizes using the right bets. 181 00:10:04,400 --> 00:10:07,440 And Andy, who was running the team looked at this and looked 182 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:09,920 looked at this concept and said, well, that might be true and it 183 00:10:09,920 --> 00:10:12,320 might not, but I'll tell you what, any one of these things 184 00:10:12,320 --> 00:10:14,800 can be turned into a time travel bike because you can get, you 185 00:10:14,800 --> 00:10:17,840 know, but suddenly all of the lengths and heights were sort of 186 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:21,400 independent of each other. So you weren't dealing with 187 00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:24,400 having to build a special bike that was a little bit shorter, a 188 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:26,640 little bit lower. You could actually do the 189 00:10:26,640 --> 00:10:30,360 specialist geometry by using all the bits that might had had 190 00:10:30,360 --> 00:10:34,160 designed to make it fit anyone. And he went to giant with this 191 00:10:34,160 --> 00:10:36,320 and they and they said, well, if you're right, we're going to be 192 00:10:36,320 --> 00:10:38,880 able to sell these in vast quantities to time trialists. 193 00:10:38,880 --> 00:10:41,520 And he said, well, let me, let me go and recruit you a time 194 00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:42,920 trialist. You will prove this point. 195 00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:47,200 And he recruited, he recruited me and they said my job, you 196 00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:50,280 know, my job was to get my picture in the cycling press or 197 00:10:50,280 --> 00:10:53,360 by whatever means necessary. It was sort of proto proto 198 00:10:53,360 --> 00:10:55,000 social media. That was the almost the main 199 00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:56,600 objective. The easy way to do it was to win 200 00:10:56,600 --> 00:10:57,680 a lot. So that's how I did it. 201 00:10:59,920 --> 00:11:03,200 OK, so this and things have moved on. 202 00:11:03,920 --> 00:11:08,840 I guess at that time that whole aerodynamics, I mean compared to 203 00:11:08,840 --> 00:11:12,640 now where, you know, it is a massive differentiator. 204 00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:17,600 Everybody, even an amateur cyclist is a sort of aero, you 205 00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:20,560 know, obsessed person. I guess then it was very 206 00:11:20,560 --> 00:11:22,280 different. Was it almost the opposite when 207 00:11:22,280 --> 00:11:25,360 people didn't believe in it and you were a slight outlier on 208 00:11:25,360 --> 00:11:29,240 that side? Yeah, they believed and they 209 00:11:29,240 --> 00:11:31,120 didn't. Everyone kind of, it was 210 00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:33,560 perfectly clear that Tri bars were faster than not using Tri 211 00:11:33,560 --> 00:11:36,920 bars because IQ Tri bars came in in the late 90s. 212 00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:39,160 So everyone which was sorry, the late 80s. 213 00:11:39,160 --> 00:11:40,640 So it was a long time before I arrived. 214 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:43,800 But it'd been completely clear from that that you went 215 00:11:43,960 --> 00:11:47,480 significantly faster if you used aero bars than if you just kind 216 00:11:47,480 --> 00:11:50,200 of grip, grip the cow horns in the old in the old style. 217 00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:53,160 So it wouldn't be quite right to say that people didn't believe 218 00:11:53,160 --> 00:11:55,440 in it. I think there was a scepticism 219 00:11:55,440 --> 00:11:58,240 about the subtleties of it. I think if you got on The Time 220 00:11:58,240 --> 00:12:00,760 Machine now and went back and said, well, the difference 221 00:12:00,760 --> 00:12:05,480 between this pointy helmet and this pointy helmet is 2 seconds 222 00:12:05,480 --> 00:12:08,440 a mile, I think you'd have encountered some skepticism 223 00:12:08,440 --> 00:12:10,240 about that. I think people would have gone 224 00:12:10,240 --> 00:12:12,960 the best as to a pointy helmet. Skin suit should have been the 225 00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:15,600 other big one because, you know, you made it out of like her, you 226 00:12:15,600 --> 00:12:17,960 made it reasonably tight. That's it. 227 00:12:17,960 --> 00:12:21,000 A skin suit was a skin suit. So people believe in 228 00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:22,920 aerodynamics. They just didn't believe in the 229 00:12:22,920 --> 00:12:27,480 small differences, and I kind of did because I couldn't see why. 230 00:12:27,480 --> 00:12:29,760 If putting a pair of Tri bars on your bike would be to make you 231 00:12:29,760 --> 00:12:32,360 2, two minutes faster over 25 miles, surely there were other 232 00:12:32,360 --> 00:12:35,640 things you could do that would make you 30 seconds faster over 233 00:12:35,640 --> 00:12:39,120 25 miles. So yeah, I started an awful lot 234 00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:45,160 of very misguided homebro error research, but along the way I I 235 00:12:45,160 --> 00:12:49,240 stumbled in, I stumbled into something, and I can't emphasize 236 00:12:49,240 --> 00:12:50,920 how much more that was luck in the judgement. 237 00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:56,920 But is this something, you know, you're, you know, having done 238 00:12:56,920 --> 00:13:01,960 things like the 12 hour record 100 miles, To me as a amateur 239 00:13:01,960 --> 00:13:05,520 cyclist, this sounds just horrendously painful. 240 00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:09,480 Is there a do you enjoy putting yourself through that sort? 241 00:13:09,480 --> 00:13:12,960 Is there something about those longer distance that appealed to 242 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:16,200 you? No, not at that point. 243 00:13:16,200 --> 00:13:18,360 I I hated 12 hours. I did 12 hours because I was 244 00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:20,080 under degree of sponsor pressure to do them. 245 00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:23,320 I might have done, I might have done the first one anyway, out 246 00:13:23,320 --> 00:13:24,920 of curiosity. I wouldn't have done the second 247 00:13:24,920 --> 00:13:30,600 or third that I did in that era. But yeah, interesting about 248 00:13:30,600 --> 00:13:32,800 something like a 12 hour is it's a competition between your 249 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:35,720 aerodynamics and your digestion. You you as a bike rider are, you 250 00:13:35,720 --> 00:13:38,720 know, the actual you're if you're aerobically good, you 251 00:13:38,720 --> 00:13:41,160 yeah, you've got an advantage. But the big challenge is 252 00:13:41,160 --> 00:13:44,120 actually keeping itching and and keeping Arrow. 253 00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:48,360 And I did, I've done some 24 hour racing in the last couple 254 00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:50,800 of seasons as a sort of a sort of retirement project. 255 00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:52,400 And it's again, it's the same thing. 256 00:13:52,400 --> 00:13:54,360 It's about it's about eating and about aerodynamics. 257 00:13:56,160 --> 00:13:58,760 And how? So I would say I don't 258 00:13:58,760 --> 00:14:01,000 particularly enjoy putting myself through things. 259 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:04,280 It's it's I'm much rather right A10 than a 12A10 mile time trial 260 00:14:04,280 --> 00:14:06,200 than a 12 hour, believe me. OK. 261 00:14:06,280 --> 00:14:08,200 OK. So it was more, I thought, do 262 00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:12,760 you have some sort of, I don't know, thing that makes you just 263 00:14:13,240 --> 00:14:17,400 love the, the, the torch of going through long distances? 264 00:14:18,800 --> 00:14:21,880 No, no, not to me. I, I would always, I kind of 265 00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:24,320 liked the races less if the distances went up. 266 00:14:24,360 --> 00:14:27,280 I liked, I like the kind of the short races better because I I 267 00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:30,480 enjoyed the kind of focus of that and the high powers and 268 00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:34,680 this the kind of the speed and how all of that balanced quite 269 00:14:34,680 --> 00:14:37,120 critically. I like that much better than the 270 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:40,280 the adventure of going off and trying to do a 12 hour. 271 00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:43,480 It's to be honest, 100 mile time trial isn't very different from 272 00:14:43,520 --> 00:14:47,320 from a 10 mile time trial because particularly if you're 273 00:14:47,320 --> 00:14:52,200 doing it in sort of three hours, 3 hours, 20 or something, it's 274 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:54,880 not particularly long ride because you're going quite 275 00:14:54,880 --> 00:14:56,200 quickly. You cover a certain amount of 276 00:14:56,200 --> 00:14:58,360 distance, but there's plenty of people who go and ride for kind 277 00:14:58,360 --> 00:15:00,640 of ride hard for kind of three, 3 1/2 hours. 278 00:15:00,640 --> 00:15:03,240 That's it's not that it's not that hard. 279 00:15:04,120 --> 00:15:04,920 It's a little bit hard. I. 280 00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:07,000 Was going to say. It's not kind of a long distance 281 00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:10,800 torture. I guess it's more the being in 282 00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:12,640 the position that I well, I guess it depends on your 283 00:15:12,640 --> 00:15:16,120 flexibility, doesn't it? And like how used to you are in 284 00:15:16,120 --> 00:15:18,400 that position? And how how you trained in the 285 00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:21,320 position, because it's one of the changes I made fairly early 286 00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:24,560 on was thinking if if I if I race in a time trial position, 287 00:15:24,560 --> 00:15:26,880 why am I spending my winter riding around in a road bike? 288 00:15:27,960 --> 00:15:32,200 So I built the world's first winter winter low pro, a low pro 289 00:15:32,200 --> 00:15:35,760 with mud guards on up from about probably 2000 and four, 2005 290 00:15:35,760 --> 00:15:38,480 before I came up with that one. But yeah, I had I had a mud 291 00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:40,280 guard low pro for for winter training. 292 00:15:40,400 --> 00:15:41,760 And what did people think about that? 293 00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:45,200 If they saw you on the road, did they take a double look? 294 00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:47,560 I don't think anyone ever really commented on. 295 00:15:47,560 --> 00:15:49,760 I mean, I didn't take it on club runs or anything, so I'm not 296 00:15:49,760 --> 00:15:52,840 sure how many people really kind of stopped and went hang on a 297 00:15:52,840 --> 00:15:54,880 second. Those things don't go together. 298 00:15:54,880 --> 00:15:58,880 I did a race on it once because my, my, my years, my bike for 299 00:15:58,880 --> 00:16:00,880 that year is an early season race and my year bike for that 300 00:16:00,880 --> 00:16:02,800 year hadn't come through yet and it was muddy and I thought, I've 301 00:16:02,800 --> 00:16:05,080 stuffed what I'll risk. I'll I'll do this race with mud 302 00:16:05,080 --> 00:16:07,120 guards. But that's. 303 00:16:07,240 --> 00:16:08,600 Never actually put them in the wind tunnel. 304 00:16:08,600 --> 00:16:10,600 Maybe they're, you know, maybe they're a fairing, I don't know. 305 00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:13,960 This is what you're going to see now in the next track, mud 306 00:16:13,960 --> 00:16:17,200 guards. So what, what was how did things 307 00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:19,600 then progress from there? So you you sort of gone out 308 00:16:19,600 --> 00:16:24,040 doing the PhD gone into, I guess that you said, why not? 309 00:16:24,040 --> 00:16:27,800 Let's let's try and do something exciting, maybe talk what what 310 00:16:27,800 --> 00:16:31,200 was the life after that like? Or how did things progress? 311 00:16:34,360 --> 00:16:38,680 Well, the idea had been to do a year, a couple of years and two 312 00:16:38,680 --> 00:16:40,800 or three years in I was still winning a lot and reckon I could 313 00:16:40,800 --> 00:16:43,560 win a lot more. So I plugged away at it. 314 00:16:43,600 --> 00:16:47,960 I had quite a nice deal in terms of royalties on bikes and things 315 00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:49,200 like that. So I was making a reasonable 316 00:16:49,200 --> 00:16:52,720 amount of money and I thought, well, oh, I could go back to 317 00:16:52,720 --> 00:16:56,080 being a legal academic. I think I'm happy here actually. 318 00:16:56,080 --> 00:16:59,920 So I just, I kept kept going, did things like the 319 00:16:59,920 --> 00:17:03,520 commonwealth's managed not to get selected for the world's 320 00:17:03,520 --> 00:17:07,119 until I'd more or less retired. But I just found I kept making 321 00:17:07,119 --> 00:17:09,480 progress. I kept finding new ways to go 322 00:17:09,480 --> 00:17:12,640 faster. I kept meeting new people who 323 00:17:12,640 --> 00:17:18,440 could help me go faster. I did the R record in 2003, 324 00:17:18,440 --> 00:17:20,839 which I didn't. I didn't break the world R 325 00:17:20,839 --> 00:17:24,800 record, but I learnt a huge amount about particularly 326 00:17:24,800 --> 00:17:27,240 aerodynamics in the course of doing that and aerodynamic 327 00:17:27,240 --> 00:17:29,680 testing. And I always felt that every 328 00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:31,880 year I was working through, I was getting a little bit better. 329 00:17:31,880 --> 00:17:33,200 I was finding new ways to do this. 330 00:17:33,200 --> 00:17:36,240 I kept think kind of stones I wanted to turn over to see what 331 00:17:36,240 --> 00:17:41,120 would happen if, and somewhere around about 2005 or 2006. 332 00:17:41,120 --> 00:17:44,160 I just think actually probably a little difficult to just walk 333 00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:46,200 straight back into an academic job now because they're going to 334 00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:48,360 want to know where I've been for the past seven years. 335 00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:51,600 And I'm not sure telling them I was doing the Commonwealth 336 00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:53,120 Games. It's really going to be a big 337 00:17:53,120 --> 00:17:55,360 selling point if you kind of arrive at the Cambridge 338 00:17:55,360 --> 00:17:57,600 University law faculty looking for employment. 339 00:17:58,720 --> 00:18:00,760 So at that point I thought, well, I might as well ride this 340 00:18:00,760 --> 00:18:03,200 to the bottom. So I kept, I kept going. 341 00:18:03,200 --> 00:18:05,240 I wrote, I've already started writing books and things like 342 00:18:05,240 --> 00:18:07,920 that. That sort of had to be in a 343 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:11,080 different direction because I I sort of became a cycling media 344 00:18:11,080 --> 00:18:12,400 guy. I started writing magazine 345 00:18:12,400 --> 00:18:15,600 columns and writing books and things like that. 346 00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:17,320 So that that was a change as well. 347 00:18:17,320 --> 00:18:18,360 I was. Going to ask about that. 348 00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:23,360 Was that something that you'd always like doing? 349 00:18:23,360 --> 00:18:25,840 Did you ever do stuff with student newspapers or did you 350 00:18:25,920 --> 00:18:29,040 ever have sort of journalism media thing before? 351 00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:35,920 No, not really. I I did some sort of freelance 352 00:18:35,920 --> 00:18:39,880 writing in the winters in the early, early season in the kind 353 00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:45,760 of 2000 and one 2002, mainly because I get a long way from 354 00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:47,440 cycling. There was a friend of my 355 00:18:47,440 --> 00:18:51,960 girlfriend's who was editing a book or a travel guide to 356 00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:54,760 Ireland and there was a section of Belfast, which is my native 357 00:18:54,760 --> 00:18:56,000 city. And she said could you read 358 00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:56,960 this? Because some of this doesn't 359 00:18:56,960 --> 00:18:59,960 feel quite right to me. And I read it and said it's not 360 00:18:59,960 --> 00:19:01,640 really right. No, She said could you rewrite 361 00:19:01,640 --> 00:19:02,600 it? And I said yes. 362 00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:07,040 So I wrote quite a lot of a travel guide to Ireland and I 363 00:19:07,040 --> 00:19:09,320 did quite a good job of that. So I spent kind of a couple of 364 00:19:09,320 --> 00:19:11,760 winters actually writing and editing travel guides. 365 00:19:13,720 --> 00:19:15,520 So I had a little bit of experience of that world. 366 00:19:15,520 --> 00:19:20,040 And then when I did the R record somewhere a week or two after 367 00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:22,840 that, I thought, you know, that's, that's quite a good 368 00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:25,640 story because there's, there's my R record attempt, which was a 369 00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:27,520 little bit chaotic. In the end, it's like all these 370 00:19:27,520 --> 00:19:29,880 things, you start off with the best of intentions and it ends 371 00:19:29,880 --> 00:19:33,800 up being, you know, slapstick and there's a whole history of 372 00:19:33,800 --> 00:19:36,720 the R record and there wasn't an English language book about the 373 00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:40,520 R record. So I, I said, you know, I wrote 374 00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:43,040 a proposal and sent as a few literary agents. 375 00:19:43,160 --> 00:19:46,840 It helps that my, my, my girlfriend is a, a publisher. 376 00:19:46,840 --> 00:19:51,200 So I sort of, I knew, I knew the world of, of what you tried to 377 00:19:51,200 --> 00:19:53,560 do. And yes, somebody, somebody 378 00:19:53,560 --> 00:19:56,960 bought that as a book. So I then spent a year writing 379 00:19:57,280 --> 00:19:59,520 my first book, which did reasonably well. 380 00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:02,760 And say that's, that took me. No, but no, it wasn't. 381 00:20:02,760 --> 00:20:05,760 And it certainly wasn't the case that I kind of did the R record 382 00:20:05,920 --> 00:20:10,120 so I could write a book, the R record and one or two of the 383 00:20:10,120 --> 00:20:12,080 reviews, I sort of said, oh, there's this joker who's had to 384 00:20:12,080 --> 00:20:13,960 go with the R record just so we can write a book about it. 385 00:20:13,960 --> 00:20:15,800 I'm not well, that's really how it worked. 386 00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:20,880 I'm not a terrible bike rider. And then I did another couple of 387 00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:23,560 books after that for magazines and things. 388 00:20:23,560 --> 00:20:26,960 And that was kind of the direction I went in for maybe 3 389 00:20:26,960 --> 00:20:30,560 or 4 years before starting to kind of get a bit more 390 00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:33,440 interested back into some of the technical sides of cycling. 391 00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:39,520 And, and I think actually, you know, your columns bring this 392 00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:42,200 sort of funny side. I remember reading something 393 00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:44,880 about like bike ownership recently. 394 00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:47,720 You know, so many of the things relate, like cycling is one of 395 00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:53,120 those it is very well known and equally not. 396 00:20:53,280 --> 00:20:55,520 You know, it's, it's sort of got a weird relationship, isn't it? 397 00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:59,000 And to some people it's, it's like a really hot topic. 398 00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:01,440 But it's not from what I understand. 399 00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:04,480 And I don't know. But you know, in Belgium and in 400 00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:08,680 Holland, it really is like a national support where the UK, 401 00:21:08,680 --> 00:21:10,840 it feels like it's like a subculture almost. 402 00:21:10,920 --> 00:21:13,120 You know, some of my friends were on WhatsApp all the time 403 00:21:13,120 --> 00:21:16,160 talking where other people have no clue other than the Tour de 404 00:21:16,160 --> 00:21:21,200 France. It's yeah, everybody knows what 405 00:21:21,200 --> 00:21:23,960 it is because more or less everybody can ride a bike. 406 00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:27,000 So there's a familiarity to it. Everybody knows what it looks 407 00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:28,640 like. It's one of those sort of 408 00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:31,360 slightly second tier as a sport. It's one of those slightly 409 00:21:31,360 --> 00:21:33,800 second tier sports like Wimbledon, like like tennis, 410 00:21:33,800 --> 00:21:36,120 which comes up every year. When Wimbledon is on, everyone's 411 00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:38,880 a tennis fan for two weeks. There are a lot of people who, 412 00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:41,600 when the Tour de France is on become something of a cycling 413 00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:44,000 fan. More so maybe a decade ago. 414 00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:48,720 It was, there was such a, a high watermark after London 2012. 415 00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:52,000 Then the, the Tour de France was in Yorkshire, the Jared Italia 416 00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:55,120 was in Ireland. It really was massive at that 417 00:21:55,120 --> 00:21:56,400 point. Everyone was a cyclist. 418 00:21:56,760 --> 00:21:58,960 And now we've got to the point where most people can remember 419 00:21:58,960 --> 00:22:00,480 that. So actually they know what they 420 00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:01,840 knew then. They're still a little bit 421 00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:04,160 interested and they kind of, but they pick it up and set it down 422 00:22:04,160 --> 00:22:08,640 a bit as a, that sort of as a, as a sport, as a pastime, a 423 00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:12,280 little bit the same probably. I think we have people who took 424 00:22:12,280 --> 00:22:16,640 up cycling through the, the 20 tens, 20, fourteens when it, it 425 00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:20,040 seemed to be everywhere and a lot of them are still there and 426 00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:22,560 still around. But it it, it hasn't become, 427 00:22:22,840 --> 00:22:26,360 it's not like football or there's probably only space in 428 00:22:26,360 --> 00:22:31,320 any country for one or two really sort of dominant sports 429 00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:36,320 that everyone is interested in. In Belgium, cycling is the 430 00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:41,120 sport. In the UK, it's, it's football 431 00:22:41,120 --> 00:22:43,160 and it always has been. So you're always kind of 432 00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:45,680 scuffing around looking for whatever else you can find. 433 00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:49,920 Yeah. Before maybe talking about some 434 00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:52,520 of the other media things, I was interested, you know, you said 435 00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:54,560 you started to get more into the technical side. 436 00:22:55,080 --> 00:23:01,040 So after the hour record. So how when did you start to or 437 00:23:01,040 --> 00:23:04,840 could you describe the link then because that was sort of a bit 438 00:23:04,840 --> 00:23:08,520 earlier, but just as British Cycling was, was really trying 439 00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:11,080 to get into more the aerodynamics and the marginal 440 00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:13,040 gains. How was your sort of 441 00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,640 relationship and over that with some of that timing? 442 00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,680 Yeah, I mean, I like I say, I kind of had some home real, real 443 00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:23,280 home brew stuff. I built a wind tunnel on my 444 00:23:23,280 --> 00:23:26,280 sitting room, which didn't really work. 445 00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:28,160 I said. I was trying to say I built a 446 00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:30,200 wind tunnel in my sitting room and then I had it didn't really 447 00:23:30,200 --> 00:23:36,480 work because if anybody thinks it might have done, but I mean, 448 00:23:36,480 --> 00:23:38,200 it produced results that made sense. 449 00:23:38,200 --> 00:23:40,800 But you know, it was basically making little models of myself 450 00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:44,480 and I'd kind of created a balance of that, but it didn't 451 00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:46,160 make a lot of, but it was interesting. 452 00:23:46,160 --> 00:23:48,400 You could actually see that off the kind of little poseable 453 00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:51,080 model. You could see actual repeatable 454 00:23:51,080 --> 00:23:52,880 differences from quite small changes. 455 00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:55,160 So that was a little bit interesting. 456 00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:00,200 The the big thing that I really started to do when I was getting 457 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,880 ready for the our record, actually, I kind of think that 458 00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:04,920 biggest there was the other thing. 459 00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,160 The other thing I used to do was just your frontal area analysis. 460 00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:10,480 My finest star there was realizing that if you took a 461 00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:14,200 photograph of yourself head on and then took another photograph 462 00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:15,960 of yourself head on in a different position. 463 00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:19,480 Printed both the photographs out onto a nice heavy sheet of 464 00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,400 photographic paper and got a scalpel and cut away everything 465 00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:26,520 that wasn't you or your bike and just weighed the paper. 466 00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:30,240 You actually had quite a wow. I probably at that point you 467 00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:32,680 could just about you could probably just about have done it 468 00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:35,280 in a in a photo processing software with a pixel count. 469 00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:37,720 He's maybe a got on the early side for that. 470 00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:39,360 If you knew what you were doing, you could have done that. 471 00:24:39,360 --> 00:24:42,040 I did it a really kind of analogue way. 472 00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:46,120 So there were things like that. But the first real point that I 473 00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:52,480 started getting actual proper quantitative results was using a 474 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,960 set of power cranks in an era when power meters were unusual. 475 00:24:57,480 --> 00:24:59,680 Just going and doing track testing with a set of power 476 00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:03,520 cranks. And you did. 12 or 16? 477 00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:08,360 Lap run and you just looked at speed against par. 478 00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:12,480 And I'd got a really kind of basic, really basic spreadsheet 479 00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:18,040 model that would just correct for, you know, correct power for 480 00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:20,960 speed so that you could correct everything to 50 kilometers an 481 00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,200 hour and it would just give you your power for 50 kilometers an 482 00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:25,360 hour. And it, it clearly it wasn't 483 00:25:25,360 --> 00:25:28,480 dealing with any of the vertical forces and there was a certain 484 00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:32,000 amount of noise in the system and you couldn't find your Watt 485 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:34,920 one at a time, but you could certainly if there was a 10 or a 486 00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,040 15 Watt difference between things, you could, you could see 487 00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:42,120 it and it was repeatable. It was laborious and it wasn't 488 00:25:42,120 --> 00:25:44,160 cheap. But one of the pluses I had was 489 00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,080 that at that point my sponsors were paying for my track time. 490 00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:51,320 So I could book the track in Manchester and have it to myself 491 00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:52,720 for three or four hours at a time. 492 00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:59,640 And I would go up and do 12 lap run, 16 lap run, come back down, 493 00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:03,760 download it, take, take a take kind of a nice section in the 494 00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:06,160 middle of it somewhere that was just nice. 495 00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,920 And even I very quickly learned that if you were on a rising or 496 00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,680 a falling power trend, you were in all sorts of trouble because 497 00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:16,480 that just because the your speed lags behind your your power. 498 00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:20,200 So if the power curve wasn't flat, but you could almost 499 00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:23,280 always kind of deal with it by making sure the section you were 500 00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:26,040 taking started and finished on the same par like usually dealt 501 00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:27,560 with it. If you were getting faster the 502 00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:28,960 whole way through the run, it was junk. 503 00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,080 But if you have someone on trackside who's giving you kind 504 00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:34,920 of your splits as you go after a couple of laps, you settled in 505 00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:36,160 it. It took a bit of experience. 506 00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:38,760 You certainly you couldn't have done it as a consumer 507 00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,080 experience. You couldn't just have brought 508 00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:42,640 on a stranger and said, yeah, come and do this. 509 00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,440 We'll we'll do your aerodynamic. It it took a lot of skill and 510 00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:49,800 practice to make it work, but it, it produced good repeatable 511 00:26:49,800 --> 00:26:53,000 results that that then could have would validate in the real 512 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,360 world. And it the, the other really 513 00:26:56,360 --> 00:26:59,080 basic thing that was interesting about that was if you did 514 00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:02,800 something like 5 laps of the track with your elbows in a 515 00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:07,440 natural position and then you tucked your elbows right in and 516 00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:10,880 you watch the trackside coach a lap after you started doing 517 00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,960 that, they would have taken several steps away from the 518 00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:16,360 start finish line, which would indicate that you had just 519 00:27:16,360 --> 00:27:18,880 started going faster. And it had an immediacy that you 520 00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:22,040 wouldn't ever see in the real world by doing that and looking 521 00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:26,400 at a, a bike computer because you were maybe only gaining .3 522 00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,480 or .4 of a kilometer an hour. But when you do it on a 523 00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:32,000 controlled environment like a track and you're getting that 524 00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:34,600 kind of lap by lap feedback, you can immediately see the 525 00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:37,360 difference it's making. So it, it kind of firstly had 526 00:27:37,360 --> 00:27:41,440 the effect of really making me realize how very small changes 527 00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:44,720 could produce very significant results and, you know, the 528 00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:46,960 beginnings of actually trying to quantify these things. 529 00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:50,920 And it seems like that's actually a good point about the 530 00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:53,920 power meters. So when you know, again, they're 531 00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:57,320 so commonplace now, so in there, when did you start seeing them 532 00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:00,160 more commonly used then? Would it be in the early 2000s? 533 00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:05,360 Or so 2/2/2000 I was involved with the GB squad in 2000 and I 534 00:28:05,360 --> 00:28:11,760 used one on the track there. And then 2001 I bought 1 because 535 00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:17,080 I had a lottery grant and I rode from the rode race from Northern 536 00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:18,560 Ireland. The lottery grant system there 537 00:28:18,560 --> 00:28:22,040 was you they, they, you couldn't have like a living grant. 538 00:28:22,160 --> 00:28:23,560 They would just buy you equipment. 539 00:28:24,280 --> 00:28:29,000 And the thing I asked them to buy me in 2001 was an SRM power 540 00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:32,960 meter, which I think in 2001 cost something like 2 1/2 541 00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:37,120 thousand pounds. Yeah, I was. 542 00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,440 It was an expensive, it was an expensive thing and it didn't 543 00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,520 work brilliantly. I ended up with two of them 544 00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:46,720 because essentially you needed one to use and one on its way to 545 00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:48,600 repair. Repair or on its way back from 546 00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:52,920 being repaired. But it was it was it was such a 547 00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:55,400 powerful tool. And I was still riding, doing 548 00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:57,560 stuff with British Cycling and they were very keen that I have 549 00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:00,280 because that even in 2000 that everything they were doing had 550 00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:04,480 started to hang off par as the, you know, their core metric. 551 00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:08,560 That was Simon Jones and that era was the head track coach and 552 00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:11,000 he was a very numbers and a very numbers driven coach. 553 00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,960 So, yeah, the 2000, but at that point, people would come up to 554 00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,560 you at a race and point at this thing on your bike and say, 555 00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:20,560 what's that? And you'd say it's a party, Here 556 00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:24,000 they go, what's one of those? And you would explain the 557 00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:26,040 concept. And a lot of them, some, some 558 00:29:26,040 --> 00:29:28,080 people went, oh, it's brilliant. A lot of people just went but 559 00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:29,600 but why don't you just see how fast you go? 560 00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:34,080 And you would try to explain why this was a more useful number. 561 00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:40,160 But yeah, and I would say that was at least a decade before 562 00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:44,640 they became really commonplace. And they'd been, I mean, they'd 563 00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:46,560 been kind of prototyped something wrong for a few years 564 00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:48,800 before that. But that was, that was pretty 565 00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:50,640 much the beginning. I I think I was kind of in on 566 00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:54,400 the ground floor on that one. And did you, you know in terms 567 00:29:54,400 --> 00:30:01,160 of your training, I guess before you were training on feel or 568 00:30:01,160 --> 00:30:04,160 heart rate, did you, did you notice a performance difference? 569 00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:06,640 Heart rate. Transitioning to power meters as 570 00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:10,760 well. And to be honest, not a huge 571 00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:12,600 difference. It meant what you were doing is 572 00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:14,360 much more controlled. You've got kind of real 573 00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:20,880 confidence in it. It probably it isolated kind of 574 00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:22,360 training zones a little bit better. 575 00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:26,560 And particularly for kind of lower effort training zones, you 576 00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:28,520 could judge those more accurately because if you're 577 00:30:28,520 --> 00:30:33,200 trying to get like a Zone 2 off a heart rate monitor, heartbeat 578 00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:35,680 monitors are, yeah, they'll tell you how hard you're working, but 579 00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:38,560 they'll also tell you how warm you are, how dehydrated you are, 580 00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:41,640 how stressed you are, what your blood volume is. 581 00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:43,600 They'll tell you all sorts of other things that will come into 582 00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:44,960 that. And you know, if you use a power 583 00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:48,560 meter now, you notice there's quite a lot of heart rate drift 584 00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:50,560 even across the length of a session. 585 00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:55,600 So it made that more accurate. It I probably got a bit fat. 586 00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,440 I probably did. My performance improved around 587 00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:01,360 that era because I probably up to that point overtrained a bit 588 00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:07,760 if you go back to the 1990s. And that wasn't really what we 589 00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:09,400 were coming out the far side of that. 590 00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,440 But the training volumes people did was insane. 591 00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,080 I was, I'm doing, I'm writing another book at the minute, 592 00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:17,400 which includes some training stuff. 593 00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:19,440 And one of the things I was looking at was kind of like some 594 00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:23,680 historical training things. And I found a recommended, 595 00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:27,920 recommended by a coach training program for doing a 24 hour time 596 00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:32,240 trial that suggested, assuming it is assuming you had a full 597 00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,560 time job, but it was suggesting that you could fit in a couple 598 00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:39,160 of hours before work and probably another 3 or 4 after 599 00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:41,520 work. And you did that five days a 600 00:31:41,520 --> 00:31:45,280 week. So what's that adds up to five 601 00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:46,840 hours, 15, that's 25 hours a week. 602 00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:51,480 Then it suggested some long rides at the weekend instead of 603 00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:54,000 saying you could do six hours on Saturday and six hours on 604 00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:55,560 Sunday. So it's racking you up to kind 605 00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:59,320 of 3839 hours a week. I said you should start doing 606 00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:02,240 that in October and do it till the beginning of the season. 607 00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:06,040 And, you know, I, I think this is being presented as sort of a 608 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:08,640 serious training program for someone who really wanted to go 609 00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,840 places, but nobody in the world does that anymore. 610 00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:15,520 And you were probably doing it harder than zone 2 as well 611 00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:18,280 because you were probably just going out to ride it kind of as 612 00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:23,360 hard as you could. So I in, I had a great season in 613 00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:26,960 2000 and one 2000 and sorry, 2000 I had a great season. 2001 614 00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:30,080 wasn't as good because I, I thought, well, I'm good at this. 615 00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:32,640 I'll train harder. And I realized part way through 616 00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:35,240 2001 that actually I was just knackered the whole time. 617 00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:38,120 It was, there's a guy like a man called Pete Keen who was the 618 00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:42,760 first performance director of kind of the British Cycling 619 00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,400 organization as you would now recognize it. 620 00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:50,360 And I met him for the first time in in Manchester around about 621 00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:52,320 that era. And he said, you're the most 622 00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:54,200 exhausted looking cyclist I've ever seen. 623 00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,560 You need to train less. And he did that literally. 624 00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:01,120 I met him in a corridor and he stopped me and said you're 625 00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:03,680 Michael Hutchinson, I know you. You need to train less. 626 00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,720 Wow. And he seems to have been right. 627 00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,120 So that was right. It's confounding variable 628 00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:14,000 because that's around about the point where I got my first power 629 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:15,880 meter. And of course, I trained 630 00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:19,120 probably dropped my training mileage and my training volume 631 00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:23,080 by probably a third between 2001 and 2002. 632 00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:26,800 So who's to say the power meter helped do that because it gave 633 00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:30,360 you the confidence you could see, you could see that the 634 00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:32,160 numbers were going in the right direction. 635 00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:35,080 You could quantify that and you could you could see that on your 636 00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:37,840 own all winter. You, you because before that you 637 00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:39,840 would train all winter and your first race of the year would be 638 00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:41,480 terrified because you just wouldn't know. 639 00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:47,160 So you turn up to some dumb race in February and right till you 640 00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:49,160 could taste blood in your mouth. So just prove that you could 641 00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:50,760 still do it. As soon as you've got a power 642 00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:52,600 meter on the bike, you get to February and go. 643 00:33:52,600 --> 00:33:56,840 Well, last February I won a race on 430 watts. 644 00:33:57,440 --> 00:33:59,440 This February I can clearly do the same thing. 645 00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,120 So unless everybody else in the world has got 10% better, I'm 646 00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:06,400 going to be just fine. So it gave you that degree of 647 00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:10,080 confidence to to to have faith in the training you were doing. 648 00:34:10,080 --> 00:34:12,440 So yeah, it it was quite important from that point of 649 00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:13,639 view. The thing is, that's what 650 00:34:13,639 --> 00:34:14,440 everyone does. Now. 651 00:34:15,639 --> 00:34:18,320 The idea of that being novel is seems kind of absurd. 652 00:34:18,679 --> 00:34:21,320 Well, that, that's kind of maybe one of the central question to 653 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:27,360 look to dive a bit deeper with you is why if you look at italic 654 00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:33,000 pagatcha or these, you know, the current leading top riders and 655 00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:37,040 then you contrast it back into the 90s or the early 2000s. 656 00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:42,480 What is it that is making them beat all the records and then 657 00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:46,159 smash away with it? Is it the bikes? 658 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,679 Is it the training? Is it nutrition? 659 00:34:49,679 --> 00:34:55,280 Like how have you, how do you analyse the progression and the 660 00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:58,720 influence of each of those factors in how they're going so 661 00:34:58,720 --> 00:35:03,600 much faster now? I I think nutrition's a lot of 662 00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:08,160 them. If you go back even 10 years, 663 00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:13,240 the sort of standard target was 70 or 80 grams of carbohydrate 664 00:35:13,240 --> 00:35:17,680 an hour. And if you, if you've got a six 665 00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:21,160 hour, if you've got Milan Saidorama, 6-7 hours, all of 666 00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:23,440 Milan Saidorama really is in that last hour. 667 00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:25,960 So you've got to survive that first five hours. 668 00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:31,440 And you can kind of the more you can eat, the more you've got 669 00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,680 left at the end. If you can eat 80 grams of 670 00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:36,400 carbohydrate an hour, well, that's OK. 671 00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,080 If you could eat 100 grams of carbohydrate an hour over five 672 00:35:39,080 --> 00:35:40,960 hours, well, that's another 100 grams of carbohydrate. 673 00:35:40,960 --> 00:35:44,480 That's, that's like another half hours high level riding in terms 674 00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:46,440 of energy that you've you've stashed away. 675 00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:50,640 And most of the, the decent, most decent pros these days can 676 00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:54,920 do 120 a 130, maybe 150 grams of carbohydrate in an hour. 677 00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:58,320 So they're getting on towards doubling what we used to do. 678 00:35:59,960 --> 00:36:01,480 And that that's made a huge difference. 679 00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:07,320 And that's largely based on improved sports nutrition 680 00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:09,760 technology because there are, for example, there are there are 681 00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,720 different, different sorts of carbohydrate have different 682 00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:14,520 transport across the gut membrane. 683 00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:18,760 So fructose goes a different way to glucose. 684 00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:21,840 So the first thing that somebody realized was that if fructose 685 00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,760 and glucose aren't absorbed the same way, well, you can combine 686 00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,680 them into one sports drink. So suddenly, instead of 80 grams 687 00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:30,240 of carbohydrate an hour, you can do 100 just because you take 688 00:36:30,240 --> 00:36:33,400 your standard 80 grams an hour, you put 20 grams of fructose in 689 00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:35,440 it, you give it a shake. This is literally, we used to 690 00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:37,840 buy fructose from the supermarket, like from the jam 691 00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,840 making department put it in. I mean, it was the sweetest 692 00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:45,800 thing known to man and it was probably been quite hard to 693 00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,400 sustain for a very long time. But suddenly you could do 694 00:36:48,400 --> 00:36:50,960 another 20 grams of carb, you could do another 20 grams of 695 00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,440 carbide. And it's we've moved that on 696 00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:56,960 again into kind of different delivery systems. 697 00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:00,920 So that makes a difference. That also helps with your 698 00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:04,120 training, that helps in racing, but it supports better training 699 00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:08,920 and that that helps that. I think training has got more 700 00:37:09,240 --> 00:37:11,360 specific because we can measure it better. 701 00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:14,640 You can, you know, it's much more straightforward to go to a 702 00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:17,680 lab and get good results and then go and do kind of lab type 703 00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:21,520 testing in the field so that that that Physiology to work 704 00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:23,760 with teams can actually monitor what's going on and what 705 00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:26,680 progress they're making without having really to go to a 706 00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:31,440 laboratory anymore. So to that extent, training has 707 00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:33,160 improved like a lot of things, a lot. 708 00:37:33,520 --> 00:37:35,440 Sometimes people say, what do I think's made the biggest 709 00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:37,400 difference of cycling in the last 20 years? 710 00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:41,440 And I say the ability to measure stuff because it's so much 711 00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:43,240 there's so much less guesswork involved. 712 00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:47,240 And a lot of the time it's not something that a physiologist or 713 00:37:47,240 --> 00:37:51,640 an arid analysis from the year from 1999 wouldn't have 714 00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:54,720 understood. It's just that a, a physiologist 715 00:37:54,720 --> 00:37:58,440 or a nutritionist or a, or an arid analysis from 25 years ago 716 00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,280 wouldn't have been able to measure except under very 717 00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:05,680 specific lab conditions. All of the, all of these things 718 00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:08,680 make, make make a difference. And there's, there is also, 719 00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:13,120 there's a psychological aspect in that the expectations people 720 00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:16,080 have of themselves feed into the, the relationship between 721 00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:19,080 psychology and Physiology is not one or two separate things. 722 00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:24,360 There's an extent to which the, you know, there's a central 723 00:38:24,360 --> 00:38:28,760 nervous system input to your physical capacity. 724 00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:34,000 So that now that's an area that there's a lot of interesting 725 00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,640 stuff going on now that I must admit I don't absolutely 726 00:38:36,640 --> 00:38:39,880 understand, but so there's some very good work in that. 727 00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:42,440 So the reason they're going, there are a lot of reasons 728 00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:45,000 they're going faster. The first one I would point out 729 00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:49,880 would be nutrition. And do you think so if if you 730 00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:52,240 say nutrition and I'd agree with you and that's sort of 731 00:38:52,240 --> 00:38:54,480 interesting link to what you were saying before is like, can 732 00:38:54,480 --> 00:38:56,040 you stomach it? You know, if you're doing like a 733 00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:58,280 7 hour or I guess a Grand Tour every day? 734 00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:01,840 Have you got bowel issues? Are you able to sort of 735 00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:04,360 continually do it? I guess you have to be 736 00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:09,560 physiologically not have issues with digestion or, you know, 737 00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:12,000 irritable bowel syndrome or something that just rules you 738 00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:17,360 out from from that. But what about the training? 739 00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:23,480 Do you think that maybe it's more as A and non professional? 740 00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:26,640 I sometimes almost get a bit confused by the different 741 00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:30,840 advice, you know, that you see on various websites or you know 742 00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:33,480 YouTube channels. Do you think the teams and the 743 00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:37,160 riders all pretty much train the same and they know? 744 00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:41,080 Or do you think there is still a lot of variation and uncertainty 745 00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:44,880 on the balance of zone 2, zone 4, zone 5? 746 00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:50,200 I, I think, I think you can get where you're going a lot of 747 00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:52,320 different ways in training. I don't think there's a single 748 00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:55,760 right way to train. I think you could train the same 749 00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:57,920 athlete two different ways and get the same result. 750 00:39:59,240 --> 00:40:01,600 The things you do certainly do need to be aware of our overall 751 00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:05,640 load because overtraining's a, a, a proper problem. 752 00:40:06,720 --> 00:40:08,480 Again, it's easier to measure now. 753 00:40:08,480 --> 00:40:10,640 It's, it's hopefully easier to avoid those problems. 754 00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:15,280 I mean, I kind of. I interviewed within the space 755 00:40:15,280 --> 00:40:17,680 of two weeks a few years ago. I interviewed two different 756 00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:23,120 coaches from the same elite team, and one of them said it's 757 00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:25,760 just about load. Just, you know, you give the 758 00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:28,520 rider the load they need. It doesn't matter if it's zone 759 00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:30,760 2, zone 3, zone 4, sprints, whatever. 760 00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,840 Give them the load they need, adapt it by what they like and 761 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,640 what they'll do and what they're good at, and you're fine. 762 00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:42,360 And a week later I interviewed another coach, slightly more 763 00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:44,560 senior coach, but from the same team. 764 00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:47,760 And I did the thing that you do when you want to look like an 765 00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:51,240 expert, which is you quote what the last expert you talked to 766 00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,080 said to you, and you quote that as an expert. 767 00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,120 And I sat back expertly in my chair and said, well, of course 768 00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:58,760 it's all about load. Yeah. 769 00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:00,720 And he could. No, no, no, no, no, no. 770 00:41:00,720 --> 00:41:02,240 It's really specific. You have to you. 771 00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:05,200 And he he started into explaining to me how you have to 772 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:07,720 find the right gradient of Rd. at the right altitude to 773 00:41:07,720 --> 00:41:11,200 simulate the exact effort for so you work out where the attack on 774 00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:14,200 up do is going to be and you find a road that's that gradient 775 00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:16,760 at the right altitude. And you rehearse that. 776 00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:18,360 It was completely different, I think. 777 00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:21,240 But, but, but you guys are literally training the same bike 778 00:41:21,240 --> 00:41:25,600 riders. And that, that really interested 779 00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:28,560 me. I think specificity helps. 780 00:41:28,560 --> 00:41:31,640 I think it also helps with, with with motivation and it helps 781 00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:33,400 give athletes a lot of confidence. 782 00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:37,320 And this is where it's athletes are very complicated things and 783 00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:41,160 and training an athlete is thereby is a complicated thing. 784 00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:45,360 I mean, athletes that I've coached, I tend to work 785 00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:47,760 backwards from the demands of the event. 786 00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:53,360 With World Tour riders, it gets a little bit more complicated 787 00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:55,880 and you maybe are in the position where they've got a 788 00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,320 target event, but they're actually going to spend a lot of 789 00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:02,080 their time doing something else that they need to do to keep 790 00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,240 their place in the team, to keep actually being that World Tour 791 00:42:05,240 --> 00:42:07,080 bike rider and living in that environment. 792 00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:11,840 So you do often at that level, you have a lot of compromises, 793 00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,040 but it still does basically revolve around the specificity 794 00:42:15,040 --> 00:42:18,840 of of the event. And as I say, the fact that you 795 00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,400 can measure people's progress better, but I don't feel like 796 00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:26,440 training has changed a huge amount in the last 10 or 15 797 00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:27,760 years. People talk about, oh, we're in 798 00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:32,280 modern training and I think coaching has got better. 799 00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:34,960 Athletes have got better at providing feedback, We've got 800 00:42:34,960 --> 00:42:38,840 better at measuring it, but it's, it's been a fairly 801 00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:41,720 marginal gain. It, it hasn't been the same 802 00:42:41,720 --> 00:42:44,320 scale as some of the aerodynamic gain, some of the nutritional 803 00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:47,480 gains. I think, you know, you probably 804 00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:50,200 publish this podcast and I get furious emails from coaching 805 00:42:50,200 --> 00:42:51,880 friends of mine saying, no, we've changed this, we've 806 00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:54,480 changed that. But in the end of the day, it's, 807 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,000 it's not like, you know, obviously there's a doping issue 808 00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,200 in the past and cycling a little bit of the current probably. 809 00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,640 But that's another topic which makes it quite hard to look over 810 00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:07,440 time at things like records, power to wet performances and so 811 00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:08,720 on. Because you go back to a point 812 00:43:08,720 --> 00:43:13,200 where those rescued by doping. But it's not as if in the last 813 00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:16,960 10 years, amateur athletes with decent coaching have started 814 00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:19,520 doing 6 watts per kilo when they were doing 5. 815 00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:24,680 You know, maybe athletes who were doing 5.5 point, 5 watts 816 00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:28,440 per kilo, better coaching, slightly more refined approach 817 00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:31,080 to it, they get into 55.2 watts per kilo. 818 00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:35,440 It, it, it's not night and day, it's an improvement. 819 00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,760 And if you're at a race, well, yeah, it's it's going to be a 820 00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:39,920 decisive difference. But it's not as if people are 821 00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,560 suddenly finding 75 watts where their dad couldn't have found 822 00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:44,280 them before. Yeah. 823 00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:52,240 And I kind of wonder as well of the salary side of things, the 824 00:43:52,240 --> 00:43:56,720 professionalism that, you know, if you're being paid millions 825 00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,960 now compared to I guess what was 10s or hundreds of thousands, 826 00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:06,040 whether the, the professionalism, you know, you 827 00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,800 see that in other like football where they'd say, oh, we'd go 828 00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:11,520 for a drink, you know, after the game or something. 829 00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:14,920 And now you would never do that, you know, Did did you see that 830 00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:19,360 as well, that the level of professionalism has just the the 831 00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:21,600 other stuff outside of cycling almost? 832 00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:28,800 Maybe, maybe I, my feeling is that most of the riders I've 833 00:44:28,800 --> 00:44:31,400 known or worked with have been, they've been pretty 834 00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:34,600 professional. I think probably more 835 00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:36,360 professional than a lot of other sports. 836 00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,560 The ones who've been good at it and done well. 837 00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,160 I've certainly, I've been very in my kind of capacity in my 838 00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,800 later years as a career. My, my later part of my career. 839 00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:50,400 I would go to kind of international events as sort of 840 00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:54,040 someone who was kind of approaching 40 and you know, 841 00:44:54,240 --> 00:44:58,960 riding in a team with, with riders who were 2122, maybe even 842 00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,440 a little younger than that. And I was always really 843 00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,640 impressed by, you know, they did their strength and conditioning, 844 00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:06,520 they did their stretches, they went to bed early. 845 00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:10,320 They took nutrition seriously. You know, I think things, things 846 00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:12,600 like that. I've I've often been impressed 847 00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:15,880 with riders who've done well team to pick that stuff up quite 848 00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:19,800 early on. And I'm not sure that it's got 849 00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:23,320 vastly more professional and I don't think the attitudes share 850 00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:25,440 among the top riders. I think they always rode like 851 00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:27,160 that. I, I, I suppose it's possible 852 00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,520 that if you come down a bit further to a kind of a slightly 853 00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:32,920 more mediocre level, there's a higher degree of professionalism 854 00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:36,440 because people it's, it's that much more straightforward things 855 00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:37,600 like social media. It's that much more 856 00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:42,280 straightforward to see how people, how the good riders 857 00:45:42,280 --> 00:45:44,200 live, how they do it. You can kind of, you can go, you 858 00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:47,240 can follow, you can follow sort of top world tour pro and 859 00:45:47,240 --> 00:45:49,960 Strava. And so to see that, yeah, in the 860 00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:52,040 offseason, yeah, they're reckon they're not really riding their 861 00:45:52,040 --> 00:45:53,600 bike, but you know what, they're still getting out. 862 00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:55,360 They're doing some nice easy rides. 863 00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:58,040 They don't take that long off. They ease themselves back into 864 00:45:58,040 --> 00:45:59,680 it because there's all these things that you kind of know 865 00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:03,440 you're supposed to do. But it's very educational to see 866 00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,720 someone who's really good actually going out and and doing 867 00:46:06,720 --> 00:46:11,040 them. It's why in a team like the, the 868 00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:14,640 British track team, there are always, at any point where I was 869 00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:16,880 involved in it, there were always one or two kind of 870 00:46:16,880 --> 00:46:20,880 tentpole athletes who the other athletes looked up to. 871 00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:26,040 Chris Hoy, probably the the clear, probably the clearest 872 00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:28,680 example of that, because he took it seriously. 873 00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:30,880 He approached it like a like a, like a job. 874 00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:34,520 He did the things the strength and conditioning coaches wanted 875 00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:35,560 him to do. And people would look at that 876 00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,040 and go, OK, well, that's this, you know, that's how Chris does 877 00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:40,800 it. And Chris has I don't know how 878 00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:42,880 many Olympic gold medals. Well, you know, that's, that's 879 00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:44,480 how I'll do it. There is a there is a leading by 880 00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:46,760 example. If if you can see it, it's much 881 00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:49,760 easier to to follow up. Yeah, maybe you're right. 882 00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:53,440 Then maybe I should say the professionalism of the top 883 00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:59,160 riders maybe hasn't changed, but it's maybe the more of the, the 884 00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:01,320 everybody is being more professional. 885 00:47:01,320 --> 00:47:03,600 So it's sort of like the domestics maybe are sort of 886 00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:10,080 rising up because everybody's more, but so training how large 887 00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:13,680 they sort of stayed there is improvements, but you're saying 888 00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:15,400 it's not a massive a nutrition. For sure. 889 00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:18,080 I think, I think what we have with training is, I think what 890 00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:20,200 we have with training is a better version of fundamentally 891 00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:22,960 the same thing. I don't think anything enormous 892 00:47:22,960 --> 00:47:24,960 has changed. And I think, you know, we're, 893 00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:27,040 we're better at suiting the athlete to the, to the, the 894 00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:28,880 training to the athlete and getting the athlete to do the 895 00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:31,120 right training. But fundamentally, yeah, yeah. 896 00:47:31,600 --> 00:47:35,320 And, and I guess the, as you said, the, the data-driven 897 00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:38,680 decisions, the fact that trading peaks and all this sort of stuff 898 00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:42,600 is you can see stuff where I guess before maybe as you say, 899 00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:45,280 they, they knew what they needed to do, but they didn't have the 900 00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:50,080 ability to track it or analyse it to to the same extent. 901 00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:54,680 And maybe I should count about some of this that mainly have 902 00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:59,440 been talking about men's cycling, but there's been a huge 903 00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:02,520 transformation also women's cycling. 904 00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:07,160 Did you see, how have you seen that change? 905 00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:10,240 Is it, is it similar to the men in terms of just nutrition 906 00:48:10,240 --> 00:48:12,200 training? Or do you think there's bigger 907 00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,760 differences on the the women's side than the the men's side? 908 00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:22,560 I, I think, I think that the, the increasing opportunities 909 00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:26,160 for, for, for, for women in Pro Cycling means that there's an 910 00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,680 opportunity to get it right. I think they all, I think the 911 00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:33,360 women's peloton have always known how to do it, but very 912 00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:36,240 often, even at relatively high levels, you've got athletes who 913 00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:40,600 are also working as coaches or having to kind of balance 914 00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:42,720 things. And I think that's been that's 915 00:48:42,720 --> 00:48:47,040 been the big change is actually, you know, we're we're getting on 916 00:48:47,040 --> 00:48:49,800 towards proper sized contracts for a lot of the women's 917 00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:52,520 peloton. And if you went back 10 or 12 918 00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:55,800 years, the top riders were, you know, they weren't getting the 919 00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:58,400 same contracts as the guys, but they were at least able to ride 920 00:48:58,400 --> 00:49:00,000 As for the proper full time pros. 921 00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:02,560 But that's been extended further down the peloton. 922 00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:06,480 So I wouldn't say they're more professional in the sense that 923 00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:11,560 there's been an improvement in, you know, compliance to to 924 00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:13,720 training programs and so on. I think there's been an 925 00:49:13,720 --> 00:49:17,880 improvement in people's ability to actually take on, you know, 926 00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:22,320 the kind of training program that that helps them get to 927 00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:25,760 their, it helps them get to their, to their, to their best. 928 00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:27,160 I think that's been a change, yes. 929 00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:28,600 I don't think it's been a change of attitude. 930 00:49:28,640 --> 00:49:30,480 It's literally been a change of the business model. 931 00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:33,200 Yeah, I I guess you're right. As soon as people can have a 932 00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:36,720 full time job, I guess you can do more training. 933 00:49:36,720 --> 00:49:39,600 You don't have to skip. The, it's, it's, it's a version 934 00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:45,120 of, you know, if you go back to what happened in cycling, in 935 00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:47,920 track cycling in the UK in the, in the very early part of the 936 00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:51,720 21st century, the biggest change there was money that allowed 937 00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:55,040 riders of both genders, of mainly men in that era, but 938 00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:57,520 allowed riders of both genders to be full time to take it 939 00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:03,920 seriously, to, to, to approach cycling the way they knew would 940 00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:06,000 work. And it's just giving people that 941 00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:08,560 opportunity. It's it's, it's just money. 942 00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,120 And that's the balance. Isn't that here, some people in 943 00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:16,120 some ways don't like the way that cycling is becoming more 944 00:50:16,120 --> 00:50:19,600 commercial and more things, but equally that's bringing more 945 00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:24,120 money into the sport and I guess encouraging particularly on the 946 00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:27,480 women's side, allowing sort of more progression. 947 00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:34,080 So I guess it's always a balance of the of the two sides, but let 948 00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:36,000 maybe shifting to the aerodynamic side. 949 00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:44,920 So obviously that has been a made change, but in what sense? 950 00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:50,440 So would you out of let's say the bike, the skinsuit, the 951 00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:54,720 helmet, if, if you were to take the width is the one thing that 952 00:50:54,720 --> 00:50:57,880 you think has been the most dominant and and how would you 953 00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:05,480 say that's progressed? Of of the components, I think 954 00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:06,920 all the things, it depends where you start. 955 00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:09,880 It's the same as I run wind tunnel sessions and somebody 956 00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:13,400 comes and says, oh, you know what, what's the most important 957 00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:14,360 thing going to be? And I say what? 958 00:51:14,360 --> 00:51:16,720 It depends how you're, it depends how you arrive. 959 00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:21,200 So there is that. It depends if your baseline bike 960 00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:25,280 is from 2010 or from 2000 because they were very 961 00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,640 different. In the time I've been involved 962 00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,640 in it. The biggest change I think has 963 00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:34,240 been just looking at equipment issues. 964 00:51:34,240 --> 00:51:37,600 I think the biggest change has probably been skin suits because 965 00:51:37,600 --> 00:51:39,680 in the period of time I've been looking at this property, the 966 00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:41,640 bikes the bikes were were decent. 967 00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:47,200 We've had very few really bad bikes in the last 15 years. 968 00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,880 There've been a few, but most decent manufacturers produce 969 00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:53,760 decent bikes. The wheels have been pretty 970 00:51:53,760 --> 00:52:01,400 decent, but the skin suits have have really moved on because if 971 00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:04,440 even sort of up to I mean the, the, the real watershed for that 972 00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:09,120 was probably 2008, which was the, the, the GB plastic skin 973 00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:13,640 suits which were non air permeable and tripped had like 974 00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:16,840 tripped seams on them. And all the riders had lessons 975 00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,320 on how to put them on so that the trips were in the right 976 00:52:19,320 --> 00:52:23,440 place. And you would talk to riders in 977 00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:28,480 the track squad said we had a, had a session a few, a couple of 978 00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,240 weeks before the Olympics where we all got our Olympic suits and 979 00:52:31,240 --> 00:52:33,920 we were allowed to wear them. And we all went onto the track 980 00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:36,880 to do kind of training efforts. And suddenly we were setting PBS 981 00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:38,640 left, right and centre. And we, we just, we just 982 00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:40,600 couldn't believe it because they told us about these amazing 983 00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:42,760 suits. And we thought, well, skin 984 00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,840 suit's a skin suit, you make it tight, it doesn't flap, doesn't 985 00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:47,400 have any wrinkles there we are job done. 986 00:52:47,400 --> 00:52:51,280 And we put these things on and suddenly people were riding, you 987 00:52:51,280 --> 00:52:54,440 know, 2 seconds a kilometre faster. 988 00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:57,200 And that that was a real wake up. 989 00:52:57,560 --> 00:52:59,240 Those suits immediately got banned. 990 00:52:59,240 --> 00:53:02,120 But at that point, everybody suddenly was saying, OK, so this 991 00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:03,840 is this is not as simple as we thought. 992 00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:08,160 And the first skin suit projects I was involved with were already 993 00:53:08,160 --> 00:53:12,040 happening by the end of 2008. And this was the lead up to the 994 00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:16,280 London Olympics, I guess, where the the real sort of moment 995 00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:24,040 happened. Yeah, yeah, they, I mean the UCI 996 00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:27,520 changed the regulations so that all the skin suits had to be a 997 00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:30,440 tech had to be a textile suit basically the rule which you had 998 00:53:30,440 --> 00:53:34,800 to be able to blow through it. So it had to be a nested fabric 999 00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:37,480 essentially. And I think the assumption was 1000 00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:39,800 that that was going to be the end to this kind of plastic skin 1001 00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:42,520 suit, the larky. But you had a very rapidly 1002 00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:46,000 discovered that what you do with textures and trips it it all 1003 00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:48,160 still works on a on a textile suit. 1004 00:53:48,160 --> 00:53:51,400 And actually, a textile suit is much better because you couldn't 1005 00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:54,840 wear one of the plastic suits for a 40K time child, because 1006 00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:57,080 you'd be like a boil in the bag checking every, you know, you, 1007 00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:01,320 if you wrote, if you wore one of those suits, you couldn't you, 1008 00:54:01,680 --> 00:54:03,720 you couldn't feel the air hitting you apart from your 1009 00:54:03,720 --> 00:54:07,840 knees and your face. It was, I mean, I never wore 1010 00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:10,320 one, but everyone I know who did said it was a very old sensation 1011 00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:12,760 because you did big tall over shoes that came to just below 1012 00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,120 your knees and your shorts that came all of us. 1013 00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:17,480 So they said the only place you, your kneecaps would feel cold 1014 00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:18,680 and everything else would be cooking. 1015 00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:22,440 And as soon as you transfer all of that know how to making a 1016 00:54:22,440 --> 00:54:25,240 textile so you can write, you can wear it for a 40K time 1017 00:54:25,240 --> 00:54:27,440 trial. And suddenly it, it, it's of 1018 00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:31,000 interest to world tour teams because world tour teams aren't 1019 00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:34,280 interested in riding 16 laps of a track. 1020 00:54:34,280 --> 00:54:36,480 World tour teams are interested in riding 40 kilometers. 1021 00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:38,680 So suddenly there's a lot of interest. 1022 00:54:38,680 --> 00:54:43,000 There's a bit more funding and the differences you were seeing 1023 00:54:43,000 --> 00:54:46,000 in terms of total global drag on on a bike rider, you're seeing 1024 00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:50,680 differences of four or 5% between old skin suits and you 1025 00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:54,520 know, the good well fitted modern, you know, current suits, 1026 00:54:55,240 --> 00:54:58,000 which is it's just huge. It's, it's more than you're 1027 00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:01,920 going to get from a bike and unless you're moving from like a 1028 00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:06,320 real old steel bike with exposed cables and round forks and all 1029 00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:08,120 the rest of it. But it's, it's that kind of 1030 00:55:08,120 --> 00:55:10,480 it's, it's covering, you know, maybe two or three generations 1031 00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:13,400 of bike development. So I suppose covering a couple 1032 00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:15,160 of generations of suit development, but you know. 1033 00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:20,200 So is that maybe translating it to the to the world tour teams, 1034 00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:22,040 the people that maybe we see on TV? 1035 00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:26,920 So they're all wearing, from what I understand, sort of skin 1036 00:55:26,920 --> 00:55:32,320 suit or or or partial skin suits almost all the time. 1037 00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:34,080 Yeah, not a lot of jerseys around anymore. 1038 00:55:34,320 --> 00:55:39,880 So the difference, I mean that. So therefore that must explain 1039 00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:43,240 some of the difference in the speed from like the 1990s. 1040 00:55:43,640 --> 00:55:46,640 So four 5% and they're going faster. 1041 00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:50,040 So I guess the influence of the skin suit is also therefore 1042 00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:52,360 bigger. Would you say that is a a sort 1043 00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:56,520 of one of the key elements that is making them if you put a skin 1044 00:55:56,520 --> 00:56:02,040 suit on one of the 1990s riders, they would probably also go 4% 1045 00:56:02,040 --> 00:56:07,080 faster or? Something on a on a, on a time 1046 00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:09,800 trial yeah, it's fairly simple. It translates across it's more 1047 00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:14,680 complicated on a road stage because there were a a big a big 1048 00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:18,080 grant or a road stage for AGC rider is almost certainly 1049 00:56:18,080 --> 00:56:20,720 getting decided uphill where aerodynamics counts for a little 1050 00:56:20,720 --> 00:56:24,160 bit less. You then need to factor in how 1051 00:56:24,160 --> 00:56:27,680 much energy have they saved by being more aerodynamic for the 1052 00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:31,040 excuse me, how much, how much would they say about being more 1053 00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,840 aerodynamic for the sections of the race where they're sitting 1054 00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:37,520 in the wheels? What influence is the 1055 00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:40,280 aerodynamics having on their their domestics or maybe trying 1056 00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:42,360 to control the race because they're not controlling it at a 1057 00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:45,720 slightly higher speed. So is everybody riding at the 1058 00:56:45,720 --> 00:56:47,720 same intensity but going because if you're riding at the same 1059 00:56:47,720 --> 00:56:51,000 intensity but just going faster on the flat, it's not going to 1060 00:56:51,000 --> 00:56:52,600 do you much good. When you get to uphill, it's 1061 00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:54,520 because you'll have put in the same amount of effort and 1062 00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:56,760 suddenly you're riding up hills of aerodynamics matters less. 1063 00:56:56,760 --> 00:56:58,440 And actually it's kind of a wash. 1064 00:56:59,280 --> 00:57:03,520 If you're at a time trial, clearly it matters if you are, 1065 00:57:04,680 --> 00:57:07,480 you know, if you've got better technology than than than 1066 00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:11,520 another team and you can launch a one or two of your riders off 1067 00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:13,640 up the road in a brick, well then you can make the other team 1068 00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:16,160 work that much harder because your aerodynamics is better on 1069 00:57:16,160 --> 00:57:19,280 a, on a road stage. It's quite complicated because 1070 00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:21,800 you know, it's all you've achieved is everybody's going 1071 00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:25,760 faster or have you managed to find some way to make your 1072 00:57:25,760 --> 00:57:29,200 aerodynamic advantage count? So it, it, it plays into the 1073 00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:31,240 tactics and it's not, it's not always straightforward. 1074 00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:38,040 Most of the time when we're looking at speed records in in 1075 00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:40,320 World Tour cycling, in Grand Tours, we're we're just looking 1076 00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:44,000 at climbing where the influence is a little bit smaller in terms 1077 00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:47,840 of aerodynamics in that moment. But if the aerodynamics have 1078 00:57:47,840 --> 00:57:50,400 saved you some energy getting to the climb. 1079 00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:54,920 So it kind of depends how that balances out. 1080 00:57:55,760 --> 00:57:57,440 Yeah. And that was a really rubbish 1081 00:57:57,440 --> 00:57:58,120 answer. I'm sorry. 1082 00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:00,400 I didn't really, I didn't really give you anything you could work 1083 00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:02,960 with there at all. I said it's complicated. 1084 00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:04,280 I should have said that and shut up, no? 1085 00:58:04,960 --> 00:58:07,160 No, no. The reason I say is I'm always 1086 00:58:07,160 --> 00:58:12,200 wondering if when you watch and, and obviously we can get into 1087 00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:14,720 this, you know, when, if you watch the commentary on TV or 1088 00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:20,560 the analysis afterwards. If you take Formula One, it is 1089 00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:26,720 very well established that the car plays a huge part to the 1090 00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:31,400 point that it even outweighs the driver and that there's no way 1091 00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:34,120 that someone with a lesser car is going to, you know, go as 1092 00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:36,640 well. But with cycling, unless I'm 1093 00:58:36,640 --> 00:58:41,960 mistaken, it's not often as much discussed that the the bike 1094 00:58:41,960 --> 00:58:46,320 they're using or their skin suit I think could actually be making 1095 00:58:47,600 --> 00:58:49,920 a difference. If it's only 30 seconds, they 1096 00:58:49,920 --> 00:58:51,840 win. But do do, do you see that or do 1097 00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:56,800 you think the difference between the teams is not as big or or do 1098 00:58:56,800 --> 00:58:59,200 you think that is actually one of the reasons why one team 1099 00:58:59,720 --> 00:59:03,440 could be sort of doing better? Yeah. 1100 00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:05,560 I mean, I think it can. I think that can happen 1101 00:59:07,200 --> 00:59:10,480 certainly on the track you see some very tight margins in, in 1102 00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:12,840 things like pursuits and kilos and the timed events. 1103 00:59:12,880 --> 00:59:16,760 And quite certainly, yeah, at that point the technology can 1104 00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:20,720 make a difference. It also depends a little bit 1105 00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:22,840 what you define as the technology. 1106 00:59:22,840 --> 00:59:26,920 If you take AI mean I've taken bunch race track riders to the 1107 00:59:26,920 --> 00:59:31,280 wind tunnel to work on their position on the bunch bike on 1108 00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:33,520 like a, a drop handlebar upright bike. 1109 00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:36,840 And then you see one of them clipping off the front in a 1110 00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:38,560 scratch race four or five laps before the end. 1111 00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:41,000 There's a question of how, how are they going to stay away from 1112 00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,080 the bunch? So if you can pick them up, 1113 00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:48,560 let's call it a quarter of a second a lap and they've got 16 1114 00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:50,440 laps to stay away. Well, then that's that's 4 1115 00:59:50,440 --> 00:59:51,760 seconds. And you haven't gained that 1116 00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:54,840 through hardware or skin suits. You've just gained that through 1117 00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:59,840 education, but you can get, I think you get the same thing. 1118 00:59:59,840 --> 01:00:02,520 I've certainly seen kind of elite level world championship 1119 01:00:02,520 --> 01:00:06,080 time trials that are being won by someone who, had they been 1120 01:00:06,080 --> 01:00:09,440 riding the equipment of the guy who came second, well, yeah, 1121 01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:13,640 they'd have been second. A lot of the time the margins 1122 01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:15,360 are big enough that it doesn't make any difference. 1123 01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:19,880 But as soon as you're down around, if you're into anything 1124 01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:24,880 much under a second a kilometre, there's the potential for a 1125 01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:27,840 good. I think the best world tour type 1126 01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:31,840 set up to get that kind of margin over an average to per 1127 01:00:31,840 --> 01:00:33,960 world tour type set up. So as soon as you're into that 1128 01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:36,560 bracket, you have to accept the possibility that maybe the guy 1129 01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:40,440 that won it won it because of, of, of the kit he was using. 1130 01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:45,160 But it's, you know, he's also to some extent he or she's also 1131 01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:46,840 responsible to some extent for that kit. 1132 01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:49,200 There are choices that get made. The team decides where it's 1133 01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:52,000 spending money, It decides what bike sponsor it's going with. 1134 01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:57,080 There's a tendency to regard that as kind of an act of God. 1135 01:00:57,080 --> 01:00:59,280 And it's a series of decisions that a team and a writer have 1136 01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:01,720 made. And you know, if you go to 1137 01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:05,920 Formula One, I read an article a couple of days ago that was 1138 01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:09,840 speculating on why Mercedes last season wasn't Mercedes F1 1139 01:01:09,840 --> 01:01:11,600 produced a terrible car that bounced up and down. 1140 01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:14,640 And there was, I read an article that was speculating why that 1141 01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:16,480 was and it was talking about kind of they reckon the wind 1142 01:01:16,480 --> 01:01:19,200 tunnel team had got it wrong. And then regarding the wind 1143 01:01:19,200 --> 01:01:22,720 tunnel team, that's, you know, it's, it's not as if the wind 1144 01:01:22,720 --> 01:01:26,120 tunnel team are a different thing from the drivers of the 1145 01:01:26,120 --> 01:01:28,240 team at the race. It's, it's all one organization. 1146 01:01:28,240 --> 01:01:30,280 It's, it's the same in cycling. People are, you know, making 1147 01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:31,960 these decisions and and doing the research. 1148 01:01:32,200 --> 01:01:35,880 That's, that's kind of what I'm wondering if the next few years 1149 01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:41,320 evolution or five years of Pro Cycling is going to go more into 1150 01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:43,680 the equipment because they are going faster. 1151 01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:48,960 And as soon as they see that actually their setup can be 1152 01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:53,400 more, then it will only increase the investment because they see 1153 01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:55,840 it as legitimate area to advance. 1154 01:01:56,160 --> 01:02:01,320 And, and to sort of, as you said, even just saving the 1155 01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:03,560 domestic, if they have to do 20 watts less, they're going to be 1156 01:02:03,560 --> 01:02:05,880 fresher. They can, they can push more. 1157 01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:10,160 Whereas I liked having one of your articles and I think we're 1158 01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:13,560 all, we've all felt that, that how do you really know the 1159 01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:16,240 difference between 2 bikes? You know, every advertisement 1160 01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:18,600 comes out that is 8 watts more efficient or something. 1161 01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:21,400 And then you think, yeah, but what rider was on that bike? 1162 01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:23,960 You know, what was the system level drag? 1163 01:02:23,960 --> 01:02:25,800 And it all seems a bit hand WAVY. 1164 01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:28,960 You know, it doesn't seem very like scientific. 1165 01:02:29,080 --> 01:02:33,360 And, and, and if you go to I read a white paper of a bike 1166 01:02:33,360 --> 01:02:34,760 that was saying it was, what was it? 1167 01:02:34,760 --> 01:02:36,840 How come it was it 10 watts faster than their leading 1168 01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:38,280 competitor, who they didn't name. 1169 01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:41,480 And if you look at the white paper, they were testing at 55 1170 01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:47,040 kilometres an hour and 30° y'all, which is, yeah, that's a 1171 01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:48,480 blow you off your bike type CrossFit. 1172 01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:49,960 At that point, you're not worrying about how fast you're 1173 01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:50,920 going. You're just trying to stay on 1174 01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:55,760 the road. Yeah, it's, yeah, I, I, I, I 1175 01:02:55,760 --> 01:02:58,320 think, I think you're right. I think that can be quite 1176 01:02:58,320 --> 01:03:02,120 difficult to keep track of. I think the good teams are 1177 01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:05,680 already doing a lot of this because they're well aware of, 1178 01:03:05,680 --> 01:03:07,680 you know what we've talked about, which is, you know, if 1179 01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:10,600 you can save energy, if you can make life easier for, for your 1180 01:03:10,600 --> 01:03:13,880 dumb mistakes. Even if you're making if, if, if 1181 01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:17,080 you've got a team that's got AGC rider and, and maybe a sprinter 1182 01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:20,000 in it and you are responsible for controlling the race for 1183 01:03:20,040 --> 01:03:23,760 stage after stage after stage. If you can do that for 20 watts 1184 01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:26,600 less cost day after day after day for your whole team, after 1185 01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:28,680 three weeks, you've, you've saved a lot of energy. 1186 01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:33,480 So I think the good teams are already working with their, 1187 01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:36,120 their sponsor, we're working with their equipment suppliers 1188 01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:38,120 to, to try to get these things right. 1189 01:03:39,120 --> 01:03:41,920 And certainly if you, it's interesting how much World Tour 1190 01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:44,680 riders know about everyone's equipment because they all talk 1191 01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:47,200 to each other. So you'll find them, you know, 1192 01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:50,440 one, the the entire bunch will know whose helmet is the fastest 1193 01:03:50,440 --> 01:03:53,160 because they'll be told one of the riders will have done the 1194 01:03:53,160 --> 01:03:55,760 testing for it in a wind tunnel. And then there are the results. 1195 01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:58,160 And they'll say, yeah, we tested our helmet, we tested yours, we 1196 01:03:58,160 --> 01:04:00,000 tested theirs. We tested those guys. 1197 01:04:00,600 --> 01:04:03,600 Our helmet was 5 watts faster than yours, 10 watts faster than 1198 01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:05,720 theirs. They all, they all kind of know 1199 01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:09,040 that stuff. And I think, yeah, a lot of the 1200 01:04:09,880 --> 01:04:12,800 the better funded teams can afford to take, can afford to 1201 01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:15,440 take this seriously. And there is a trickle down of 1202 01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,560 knowledge because you can get quite a long way by just going. 1203 01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:20,600 And you know, if you go around and ask asking writers in the 1204 01:04:20,600 --> 01:04:24,560 bunch what the best stuff is, they know they'll tell you. 1205 01:04:25,920 --> 01:04:29,080 And that then gets fed back to equipment manufacturers. 1206 01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:31,360 And there's a certain amount of kind of cross, cross 1207 01:04:31,360 --> 01:04:33,480 pollination. Let's be polite about it and not 1208 01:04:33,480 --> 01:04:37,600 call it theft. If somebody comes up with a good 1209 01:04:37,600 --> 01:04:41,680 shape or a good idea or, or even like a good tunnel protocol. 1210 01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:44,160 Sometimes your engineers talk to each other and somebody finds 1211 01:04:44,160 --> 01:04:49,280 like a good way to test helmets that is produces better results 1212 01:04:49,280 --> 01:04:51,440 in the real world. You know, this, this stuff 1213 01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:54,520 isn't, kind of isn't sealed off from each other. 1214 01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:58,000 So there is, there is kind of a, a level of progress, but it's 1215 01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:03,560 very difficult for one team to suddenly find 2 or 3% that that 1216 01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:06,800 nobody else is finding because everyone's everyone's working at 1217 01:05:06,800 --> 01:05:10,640 it at the same time. Yeah, and I guess the, but the 1218 01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:15,360 counter example, I guess to some of the aero is some of the 1219 01:05:15,360 --> 01:05:19,080 sprinters like, you know, Milan, who are these massive guy where 1220 01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:21,720 you think surely aerodynamically they must be paying a massive 1221 01:05:21,720 --> 01:05:25,800 penalty and yet they're doing like nearly 2000 watts or 1222 01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:27,440 something. And you think, OK, well, I guess 1223 01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:30,040 if you're powerful enough, aerodynamics doesn't really 1224 01:05:30,040 --> 01:05:32,200 matter. But then you have these other 1225 01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:34,320 riders who are like in a tiny little ball. 1226 01:05:34,320 --> 01:05:39,480 So I guess there's always a a balance, isn't? 1227 01:05:41,640 --> 01:05:43,760 It I mean, you go, there have been there biomechanical issues 1228 01:05:43,760 --> 01:05:48,280 just in terms of how how particular riders get the par 1229 01:05:48,280 --> 01:05:49,640 right. I mean, yeah, if you're 1230 01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:52,120 sprinting at 2000 watts, well, aerodynamics counts for 1231 01:05:52,120 --> 01:05:55,320 something because you're you're only trying to win by half a 1232 01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:58,240 wheel or less. And you might only have 1233 01:05:59,440 --> 01:06:01,400 effectively a single. If you couldn't. 1234 01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:04,240 I would think of it as kind of a Sprint, a Rotary Sprint that's 1235 01:06:04,240 --> 01:06:07,160 happening over more or less a single lap of the track. 1236 01:06:08,080 --> 01:06:10,840 But you can get in 1/4 of a second at a lap in aerodynamics 1237 01:06:10,840 --> 01:06:14,040 if, if you've got to get good versus bad, you're not kind of 1238 01:06:14,040 --> 01:06:17,760 really having to deal with the the absolute outliers. 1239 01:06:18,400 --> 01:06:22,000 So, yeah, you can gain that, but if you're doing it, you're 1240 01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:24,520 compromising what someone can do in terms of their power. 1241 01:06:24,560 --> 01:06:26,000 You you have to balance those things. 1242 01:06:26,000 --> 01:06:28,680 And for those guys, yeah, it works out a bit differently. 1243 01:06:28,680 --> 01:06:32,840 I mean, I know one sprinter who talked about one thing, longer 1244 01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:36,360 axles on his pedals because he felt that gave him more leverage 1245 01:06:36,440 --> 01:06:38,400 as he throws the bike from side to side. 1246 01:06:38,520 --> 01:06:42,640 He's got more width. So I'm, I'm not completely 1247 01:06:42,640 --> 01:06:44,560 convinced about that, but it's one of, you know, it's an 1248 01:06:44,560 --> 01:06:46,680 interesting example of the kind of thing that actually, if you 1249 01:06:46,680 --> 01:06:48,680 were looking at the system properly, that's one of the 1250 01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:53,720 things you would, you would have to look at because it's not in 1251 01:06:53,720 --> 01:06:58,120 most cycling, most endurance cycling is centrally governing 1252 01:06:58,120 --> 01:06:59,800 that. It's got to do with the heart, 1253 01:06:59,800 --> 01:07:03,920 the lungs, the aerobic system. Those kind of sprints aren't bio 1254 01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:07,280 mechanically, they're very different and you could produce 1255 01:07:07,280 --> 01:07:10,280 a better, a better aerodynamic solution, but you would be well 1256 01:07:10,280 --> 01:07:13,200 advised to do it in consultation with with with the bio 1257 01:07:13,200 --> 01:07:15,760 mechanics. Now one of the things that I 1258 01:07:16,920 --> 01:07:21,080 found interesting when I was doing some stuff myself with BC 1259 01:07:21,080 --> 01:07:25,240 was the riders. And I'm just wondering how you 1260 01:07:25,240 --> 01:07:30,080 have found this, which is I observed quite a lot of like 1261 01:07:30,080 --> 01:07:34,480 superstition almost. And you know, people felt like 1262 01:07:34,480 --> 01:07:39,760 this is better. Do riders now more firmly trust 1263 01:07:39,960 --> 01:07:43,520 sort of aerodynamics advice and positioning advice or how much 1264 01:07:43,520 --> 01:07:48,160 do you find? There is still a gut feelings 1265 01:07:48,160 --> 01:07:49,840 and and and superstition. I don't. 1266 01:07:49,840 --> 01:07:51,600 I don't know if you understand what I'm getting at. 1267 01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:55,280 Yeah, I, I understand the question. 1268 01:07:55,280 --> 01:08:00,640 I, I think there's been such a history of the science being 1269 01:08:00,640 --> 01:08:04,960 right that most riders at the very least acknowledge that they 1270 01:08:04,960 --> 01:08:10,080 ought to try things. The, the, the GB sprinters were 1271 01:08:10,080 --> 01:08:13,640 the first guys who turned up with 35 centimetre minimum width 1272 01:08:14,280 --> 01:08:18,120 bars. And as I understand that a lot 1273 01:08:18,120 --> 01:08:21,399 of that had to do with Chris Hoy, because all the most 1274 01:08:21,399 --> 01:08:25,840 sprinters in 2000 and seven, 2008, if you said, right, we 1275 01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:27,840 need you to race in 35 centimetre bars, they'd say, oh, 1276 01:08:27,840 --> 01:08:30,080 no, we won't have the, we won't have the leverage, we won't have 1277 01:08:30,080 --> 01:08:32,560 the control. We can't do that. 1278 01:08:33,800 --> 01:08:36,520 And, and Chris, I think said, I tell you what, let's try it. 1279 01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:37,880 The only way we're going to find out. 1280 01:08:37,880 --> 01:08:42,160 Let's let's go and do a Nation's Cup or something and we'll do it 1281 01:08:42,160 --> 01:08:43,720 on the narrow bars and we'll see how it works. 1282 01:08:43,960 --> 01:08:46,560 And, and it worked. And it's one of the reasons you 1283 01:08:46,560 --> 01:08:51,200 need those riders in your team is that you want somebody like 1284 01:08:51,200 --> 01:08:55,760 him to say, let's try it. Jason Kenney was kind of the 1285 01:08:55,760 --> 01:08:59,000 same. He would be a guy who would who 1286 01:08:59,000 --> 01:09:01,640 would say, OK, new bike, yeah, let's try it. 1287 01:09:01,800 --> 01:09:04,520 And, and if he tried it and liked it, a lot of the other 1288 01:09:04,520 --> 01:09:06,359 riders would go, well, if it's good enough for Jason, it's good 1289 01:09:06,359 --> 01:09:10,279 enough for us. But yeah, I think, I think bike 1290 01:09:10,279 --> 01:09:15,600 riders, if you test people at a tunnel, it's surprising how 1291 01:09:15,600 --> 01:09:20,640 often they turn up and say, I do this because of this. 1292 01:09:22,319 --> 01:09:24,960 There would have been a point. There would have been a point 1293 01:09:25,560 --> 01:09:28,279 kind of before I was really at a point where more I was in in the 1294 01:09:28,279 --> 01:09:30,760 tunnel as a subject than in the tunnel as a technician. 1295 01:09:31,279 --> 01:09:33,240 But they're doing points where people had turned up and said, 1296 01:09:33,240 --> 01:09:37,279 I, I want my, I want my elbow shoulder width apart because 1297 01:09:37,279 --> 01:09:41,120 that's in front of my knees because that's fastest because 1298 01:09:41,120 --> 01:09:43,800 that test. And often they'd be talking back 1299 01:09:43,800 --> 01:09:47,399 to things like Chris Borbon did his first tunnel sessions way 1300 01:09:47,399 --> 01:09:49,600 back in 1992 for the Barcelona Olympics. 1301 01:09:49,600 --> 01:09:54,640 They said, OK, you need your arms flat and you need them knee 1302 01:09:54,640 --> 01:09:58,680 width apart. So it all lines up and fairly 1303 01:09:58,680 --> 01:10:01,680 basic testing also running at 0 yo because they're getting ready 1304 01:10:01,680 --> 01:10:04,280 for the track. But 20 years later, you people 1305 01:10:04,280 --> 01:10:07,720 who would still be that because that was a data point that 1306 01:10:08,400 --> 01:10:10,320 they'd had faith in for 20 years something. 1307 01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:12,720 And they, they and there was a logic to it and you'd sort of 1308 01:10:12,720 --> 01:10:14,000 say, well, we need, well, let's change that. 1309 01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:18,640 And there be a bit of resistance just because firstly, they 1310 01:10:18,640 --> 01:10:22,080 genuinely think it's fast. And secondly, if they're wrong 1311 01:10:22,080 --> 01:10:23,680 and they've spent 20 years getting this wrong. 1312 01:10:23,680 --> 01:10:27,800 So there's almost like a, some cost policy to it as a 1313 01:10:27,800 --> 01:10:31,320 superstition isn't yeah, I know what you mean by superstition. 1314 01:10:31,320 --> 01:10:33,240 It's not really what we're dealing with, but it's, it's 1315 01:10:33,240 --> 01:10:36,160 just people who tested something or have a friend who tested 1316 01:10:36,160 --> 01:10:39,160 something. I think it's got lesser because 1317 01:10:39,160 --> 01:10:41,960 more people test individually and accept that it's different 1318 01:10:41,960 --> 01:10:43,840 for different people. I mean, I still occasionally you 1319 01:10:43,840 --> 01:10:46,160 read magazine features on what's the fastest helmet. 1320 01:10:46,160 --> 01:10:49,080 You go, well, that's really an answer to that question. 1321 01:10:49,080 --> 01:10:53,360 It's you can find the fastest helmet on you for a particular 1322 01:10:53,360 --> 01:10:56,600 race if we're going to be picky. But I think it's less of that 1323 01:10:56,600 --> 01:10:58,720 because I think there's much more of an acceptance that it is 1324 01:10:58,720 --> 01:11:01,840 quite individual and you have to find what works for you and what 1325 01:11:01,840 --> 01:11:04,960 works for you. Even if you look at things like 1326 01:11:04,960 --> 01:11:10,960 the team pursuit squads now, it's not at all unusual. 1327 01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:13,120 It's usually 4 riders wearing four different helmets. 1328 01:11:14,000 --> 01:11:17,080 And it's not that long ago they would always have worn matching 1329 01:11:17,080 --> 01:11:19,640 helmets because they're one, because one of the riders who 1330 01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:22,760 would have done all the tunnel testing so one of the riders 1331 01:11:22,760 --> 01:11:24,080 would have optimized their set up. 1332 01:11:24,080 --> 01:11:27,520 And all the other riders who wear what they wore because the 1333 01:11:27,520 --> 01:11:31,240 assumption was, well, this helmet is fastest on Lucy, so 1334 01:11:31,240 --> 01:11:34,280 it's going to be fastest on the other 3. 1335 01:11:35,440 --> 01:11:38,080 And you know, it's, it's not. If you're going to get really 1336 01:11:38,080 --> 01:11:40,080 picky, you can start sort of saying, well, which is the 1337 01:11:40,080 --> 01:11:42,920 fastest helmet on what rider in what position in the string? 1338 01:11:42,920 --> 01:11:45,000 Because it doesn't depend on the rider in front. 1339 01:11:46,440 --> 01:11:51,840 And you can disappear down, down a rabbit hole plenty. 1340 01:11:51,840 --> 01:11:55,640 Plenty of engineers these days don't because you can find you 1341 01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:57,320 can find very small margins of these things. 1342 01:11:57,560 --> 01:11:58,920 And how much? I mean, we spoke at the 1343 01:11:58,920 --> 01:12:01,760 beginning about track testing, so you know, you have power 1344 01:12:01,760 --> 01:12:06,320 meters and obviously you have the the real thing. 1345 01:12:06,320 --> 01:12:08,520 So I mean for certainly for track testing. 1346 01:12:09,520 --> 01:12:15,480 But how much have you seen wind tunnels change and evolve and 1347 01:12:15,480 --> 01:12:18,040 transform the sport? Would you say that wind tunnels 1348 01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:23,280 have been one of the biggest influence and the fact that you 1349 01:12:23,280 --> 01:12:26,840 can more readily go to them like the Silverstone facilities? 1350 01:12:30,040 --> 01:12:32,600 It's it's it's made a yeah. It's made a very big difference 1351 01:12:34,440 --> 01:12:37,640 because most of the serious riders now will test 1352 01:12:37,640 --> 01:12:39,800 individually in a wind tunnel and you don't have to go back 1353 01:12:39,800 --> 01:12:41,960 that far. Before wind tunnel testing was 1354 01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:46,160 something really only done by a handful of top end riders and 1355 01:12:46,160 --> 01:12:48,560 top end teams. And even then they wouldn't test 1356 01:12:48,560 --> 01:12:50,960 all the riders they would do. They had one or two riders who 1357 01:12:50,960 --> 01:12:53,680 would do all the testing. Sometimes even riders who 1358 01:12:53,760 --> 01:12:55,800 weren't even competing anymore would do all. 1359 01:12:55,800 --> 01:12:59,480 Jason Queley did a huge amount of testing for Team GB after he 1360 01:12:59,480 --> 01:13:01,400 retired. They did a lot of Skintoot 1361 01:13:01,400 --> 01:13:06,680 testing with Jason. So yeah, it's the availability 1362 01:13:06,680 --> 01:13:10,080 of it has made a difference in that firstly individuals go to a 1363 01:13:10,080 --> 01:13:13,560 wind tunnel, they find stuff out and it's it's much faster than 1364 01:13:13,560 --> 01:13:18,080 track testing, It requires less skill than track testing and you 1365 01:13:18,080 --> 01:13:21,920 can get a lot more data. There is to me a little bit of a 1366 01:13:21,920 --> 01:13:25,240 debate in that you can produce vast amounts of data from a wind 1367 01:13:25,240 --> 01:13:27,800 tunnel session, but how it translates to the real world, 1368 01:13:27,800 --> 01:13:31,760 Sometimes it's very easy to produce a riding position at a 1369 01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:35,040 wind tunnel that a that a rider then will not do. 1370 01:13:35,440 --> 01:13:39,200 In reality. If you test on the track, you're 1371 01:13:39,200 --> 01:13:41,600 testing in a slightly more realistic environment. 1372 01:13:41,600 --> 01:13:45,760 Partly that's the skill of the the wind tunnel arid analysis. 1373 01:13:45,760 --> 01:13:48,920 Partly it's properly briefing the rider and partly it's the 1374 01:13:48,920 --> 01:13:50,720 rider understanding what they need to do. 1375 01:13:50,720 --> 01:13:54,120 So you can get things badly wrong in a wind tunnel, but you 1376 01:13:54,120 --> 01:13:56,400 can also in three hours in a wind tunnel, you can belt 1377 01:13:56,400 --> 01:13:59,120 through maybe 25 or 26 different setups. 1378 01:13:59,720 --> 01:14:03,600 And if you think about the sheer physical nature of doing 25 1379 01:14:03,600 --> 01:14:08,400 setups 16 laps a time, so that's 25 times, that's 100 kilometers. 1380 01:14:09,320 --> 01:14:11,720 You know you're going to ride 100 kilometers in a day at race 1381 01:14:11,720 --> 01:14:14,360 pace, at that pursuit pace, That's that's not going to 1382 01:14:14,360 --> 01:14:17,800 happen. So that their wind tunnels have 1383 01:14:17,800 --> 01:14:20,840 made a very big difference. And they have the actual, the 1384 01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:23,720 tunnels that we use have improved in that they've become 1385 01:14:23,720 --> 01:14:26,360 much more focused on what we need from them. 1386 01:14:26,360 --> 01:14:30,080 We started off using aerodynamics tunnels and 1387 01:14:30,560 --> 01:14:33,800 motorsport tunnels, which are fundamentally designed to do 1388 01:14:33,800 --> 01:14:37,240 something slightly different, so that that's helped a lot. 1389 01:14:37,240 --> 01:14:40,280 The tunnels have got better. One of the things that I've been 1390 01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:42,840 interested to know your thoughts on this that I saw as a 1391 01:14:42,840 --> 01:14:49,080 challenge is sort of repeatability because you've got 1392 01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:53,480 a human in a tunnel who you're asking to be in a position and 1393 01:14:53,480 --> 01:14:56,360 then you're trying to test the difference between two things 1394 01:14:56,360 --> 01:14:58,960 that may only have a very marginal difference. 1395 01:15:01,320 --> 01:15:04,720 And I remember, you know, various people have started to 1396 01:15:04,720 --> 01:15:07,800 explore, you know, mannequins and then moving mannequins. 1397 01:15:07,880 --> 01:15:16,040 And I kind of wonder how that, again, that's all my interest 1398 01:15:16,040 --> 01:15:18,520 between the F1 and the cycling. I just kind of wonder where this 1399 01:15:18,520 --> 01:15:20,360 is going to, where this will go to. 1400 01:15:20,360 --> 01:15:23,720 Are we going to have some, you know, robotics moving around to 1401 01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:26,680 replicate? Yeah. 1402 01:15:26,680 --> 01:15:30,600 How challenging is it to really find the gain when there may be 1403 01:15:30,600 --> 01:15:34,720 a difference in the rider, the way that they, you know, sit on 1404 01:15:34,720 --> 01:15:39,440 the bike? It repeats, repeats, repeats. 1405 01:15:39,560 --> 01:15:41,040 You just do it again and again and again. 1406 01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:43,160 If you've got the time, you just do the repeats. 1407 01:15:43,160 --> 01:15:50,960 I mean, anything down below half a percent starts to starts to be 1408 01:15:50,960 --> 01:15:53,240 in the noise for a normal rider and a normal test. 1409 01:15:53,240 --> 01:15:56,080 And for most decent riders, you know, if you're a decent male 1410 01:15:56,080 --> 01:15:58,560 world tour level rider, that's a couple of watts. 1411 01:15:59,080 --> 01:16:01,400 If somebody says, oh, we did such and such and we found a 1412 01:16:01,400 --> 01:16:03,280 Watt, I say, how many times did you do it? 1413 01:16:03,920 --> 01:16:06,640 And if they say once, I say, well, you don't really know. 1414 01:16:06,640 --> 01:16:08,680 In that case, maybe it's good, maybe it's not. 1415 01:16:09,080 --> 01:16:11,200 Do it 3 or 4 times, get it 3 or 4 times, then yeah, it's 1416 01:16:11,200 --> 01:16:13,360 probably real. And that as you, as you get to 1417 01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:17,200 finer and finer, let you know finer trying to get finer and 1418 01:16:17,200 --> 01:16:20,480 finer resolution, you, you can do more repeats. 1419 01:16:20,680 --> 01:16:22,480 Some riders are really good at it. 1420 01:16:23,760 --> 01:16:31,560 I did a skin suit project using a team rider who was phenomenal 1421 01:16:32,880 --> 01:16:35,880 in terms of her repeatability. You would kind of do a test 1422 01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:39,080 you'd say, right, get off the bike, walk around the tunnel for 1423 01:16:39,080 --> 01:16:40,280 two minutes, get back on the bike. 1424 01:16:40,280 --> 01:16:43,160 Let's do that again. Try to hit the same position and 1425 01:16:43,160 --> 01:16:47,080 she perfectly regularly would be careful of doing 3 or 4 baseline 1426 01:16:47,080 --> 01:16:52,400 runs within .2% of each other, which you'd nearly see that much 1427 01:16:52,400 --> 01:16:54,480 variation if you just did a bare bike in the tunnel. 1428 01:16:55,280 --> 01:16:57,680 So if you find one of these people, if you're developing a 1429 01:16:57,680 --> 01:16:59,760 skin suit or developing a helmet or something, you find one of 1430 01:16:59,760 --> 01:17:01,040 these people, you hang on to them. 1431 01:17:02,360 --> 01:17:04,320 It's no coincidence that she was a scientist. 1432 01:17:04,320 --> 01:17:09,000 She, she's a doctoral and she's got a, a science PhD, so she 1433 01:17:09,000 --> 01:17:12,800 understands what you're trying to do and how important it is. 1434 01:17:13,560 --> 01:17:20,320 A lot of riders can do kind of, yeah, under .5% levels of 1435 01:17:20,320 --> 01:17:22,720 repeatability. And if you want to start looking 1436 01:17:22,720 --> 01:17:25,520 at things like wheels or tyre interfaces and you want to do it 1437 01:17:25,520 --> 01:17:28,520 with a live rider on the bike, either you, you, you preferably 1438 01:17:28,520 --> 01:17:31,240 you find someone who's good at it and you, you do several 1439 01:17:31,240 --> 01:17:33,040 repeats. And if you do that, you can get 1440 01:17:33,080 --> 01:17:37,640 to at a pretty granular level. What of course you then struggle 1441 01:17:37,640 --> 01:17:41,000 to do is validate on the road whether that's really worked 1442 01:17:41,000 --> 01:17:42,600 because it's now such a small margin. 1443 01:17:42,600 --> 01:17:45,600 You're taking a lot of trust out of the tunnel. 1444 01:17:46,880 --> 01:17:50,920 And you know, you get to a level where I think we worry a lot 1445 01:17:50,920 --> 01:17:53,600 about the repeatability in the tunnel and maybe not enough 1446 01:17:53,600 --> 01:17:55,720 about the validation back out into the real world. 1447 01:17:55,720 --> 01:17:58,200 Because wind tunnels are quite artificial environments. 1448 01:17:58,200 --> 01:18:01,400 The air in them is, it's been through that lovely honeycomb. 1449 01:18:01,400 --> 01:18:05,000 So it's, it's all unturbulent and flowing and lovely parallel 1450 01:18:05,000 --> 01:18:07,320 lines. Go out into the real world, go 1451 01:18:07,320 --> 01:18:09,840 and ride a world tour time trial where there's kind of there's a 1452 01:18:09,840 --> 01:18:12,600 motorbike up the road, There's maybe a guard bike. 1453 01:18:12,600 --> 01:18:15,480 They've been, you know, you're maybe if you catch another 1454 01:18:15,480 --> 01:18:19,440 rider, you're going to be in the, in the wash of their team 1455 01:18:19,440 --> 01:18:21,760 car for maybe two or three minutes. 1456 01:18:23,040 --> 01:18:25,440 And it's, I think one of the things that we're going to see 1457 01:18:25,440 --> 01:18:30,080 in the next 10 years is better examination of the real world 1458 01:18:30,080 --> 01:18:32,920 conditions because we've got quite good at designing things 1459 01:18:32,920 --> 01:18:34,360 that work really well in wind tunnels. 1460 01:18:35,600 --> 01:18:39,000 I'm not completely convinced that all of that transfers into 1461 01:18:39,400 --> 01:18:41,400 into the real world. Well, and that's. 1462 01:18:41,400 --> 01:18:44,680 Even at a really basic level, you know the the go no. 1463 01:18:45,360 --> 01:18:49,360 No. I'm going to see even at a 1464 01:18:49,360 --> 01:18:51,160 really basic level you're dealing with a bike that's built 1465 01:18:51,160 --> 01:18:55,400 into the floor. So the bike doesn't doesn't do 1466 01:18:55,400 --> 01:18:58,520 that. So if you think a little bit 1467 01:18:58,520 --> 01:19:00,600 slight, how does that do to the what does that do to the 1468 01:19:00,600 --> 01:19:03,720 effective Yaw angle? Because almost nobody rides in a 1469 01:19:03,720 --> 01:19:07,360 ruler straight line. So you know you're dealing And 1470 01:19:07,360 --> 01:19:09,520 then if you've got slightly different Yaw angles or the Yaw 1471 01:19:09,520 --> 01:19:12,680 angle, the same for the front wheel as it is for the rest of 1472 01:19:12,680 --> 01:19:17,160 the bike. Yeah, and that's. 1473 01:19:17,440 --> 01:19:20,000 Probably in practice the difference it makes is quite 1474 01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:22,400 small, but we're starting to look for very small margins. 1475 01:19:22,960 --> 01:19:25,880 Now that's so interesting. And I think to your point in F1, 1476 01:19:27,560 --> 01:19:30,360 from speaking to some colleagues who still work in F1, I think 1477 01:19:30,360 --> 01:19:36,120 that is the growing challenge of exactly that, of correlating. 1478 01:19:37,640 --> 01:19:40,520 You know, many, like you said, the Mercedes issue, a lot of it 1479 01:19:40,520 --> 01:19:43,520 is because they develop in the wind tunnel and then go to 1480 01:19:43,520 --> 01:19:45,280 track. And when they test on the track, 1481 01:19:45,280 --> 01:19:47,800 they don't necessarily see and they're like, how do I know? 1482 01:19:47,800 --> 01:19:51,000 And what's the difference between the wind tunnel and the 1483 01:19:51,000 --> 01:19:53,040 track? But they can't do track testing 1484 01:19:53,880 --> 01:19:57,920 to the same extent. But that leads me to the other. 1485 01:19:57,920 --> 01:20:02,000 Now this is sort of my a lot of my focus, but I'm interested. 1486 01:20:02,680 --> 01:20:05,240 What your opinion is this, particularly as a someone who 1487 01:20:05,240 --> 01:20:07,640 does a lot of testing and coaches and works with 1488 01:20:07,640 --> 01:20:13,400 companies, CFD computational fluid dynamics is sort of build 1489 01:20:13,400 --> 01:20:16,840 and certainly if you look in the automotive sector as part of the 1490 01:20:16,840 --> 01:20:22,560 solution because you can model things and you're not confined 1491 01:20:22,640 --> 01:20:27,320 to the limitations of a wind tunnel, but you have accuracy 1492 01:20:27,320 --> 01:20:30,960 issues. How much have you seen that be 1493 01:20:30,960 --> 01:20:36,600 used in the development of helmets and bikes more so than 1494 01:20:36,600 --> 01:20:39,720 just pretty pictures? Or is is it still the case that 1495 01:20:39,720 --> 01:20:43,160 it's slightly not trusted and people still really use the wind 1496 01:20:43,160 --> 01:20:46,440 tunnel as their, you know, development tool? 1497 01:20:48,360 --> 01:20:51,480 Most most of what I've been involved in has really just used 1498 01:20:51,560 --> 01:20:55,000 used the tunnel. I've really only used CFD to 1499 01:20:55,000 --> 01:20:59,720 help visualize flow patterns to think well, OK, that's 1500 01:20:59,720 --> 01:21:01,560 interesting. There's a big low pressure area 1501 01:21:01,560 --> 01:21:04,080 there. That might be an interesting 1502 01:21:04,080 --> 01:21:08,160 place to put a bottle fill in that low pressure area, things 1503 01:21:08,160 --> 01:21:12,920 like that. It's also fair to say that most 1504 01:21:12,920 --> 01:21:16,840 of what I've been involved in, I've done more riders and skin 1505 01:21:16,840 --> 01:21:20,000 suits and things like that, which is kind of bluff body 1506 01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:23,000 aerodynamics, which isn't really CF DS absolutely strong suite. 1507 01:21:23,000 --> 01:21:28,480 It's getting better at it, but if if you try to develop a skin 1508 01:21:28,480 --> 01:21:32,960 suit using CFD, you might get it right, you might get it wrong. 1509 01:21:32,960 --> 01:21:34,640 To be honest. It'll give you some things to 1510 01:21:34,640 --> 01:21:38,320 play with when you get to the tunnel, but you could nearly 1511 01:21:38,320 --> 01:21:40,480 just as well have made a few more prototype suits and and 1512 01:21:40,480 --> 01:21:43,600 done them in the tunnel Hardware like bikes and helmets. 1513 01:21:43,600 --> 01:21:45,960 CFD is a much more powerful tool. 1514 01:21:46,600 --> 01:21:50,880 I haven't done a lot of that. Helmets I think is a a very a 1515 01:21:50,880 --> 01:21:55,200 very useful place for CFD. Bikes are a great place for CFD, 1516 01:21:57,360 --> 01:22:02,040 not least because in suits and and riding positions and so on, 1517 01:22:02,040 --> 01:22:06,080 you're working within some some quite tight constraints. 1518 01:22:07,040 --> 01:22:09,080 The shapes and positions and things you do with bikes, 1519 01:22:09,080 --> 01:22:11,360 despite the UCR rules, there's quite a lot of space to play 1520 01:22:11,360 --> 01:22:15,800 with, like the the Hope Lotus bike that, that, that, that Team 1521 01:22:15,800 --> 01:22:19,120 GB use. That's not what the UCI expected 1522 01:22:19,120 --> 01:22:22,360 when they made the rules. The UCI thought they'd come up 1523 01:22:22,360 --> 01:22:24,600 with a set of rules that produce a normally shaped bike and 1524 01:22:24,600 --> 01:22:26,600 suddenly you arrive and go, well, here's here, here's a 1525 01:22:26,600 --> 01:22:29,800 different thing. And if you wanted to make a 1526 01:22:29,800 --> 01:22:32,280 series of randomly shaped bikes and put them in a wind tunnel, 1527 01:22:32,280 --> 01:22:34,080 you'd have made a lot of prototypes before you got to 1528 01:22:34,080 --> 01:22:37,600 that. So it it particularly for 1529 01:22:37,600 --> 01:22:43,240 hardware, it can be a great way of producing models to look at 1530 01:22:43,240 --> 01:22:48,320 and and paradigms to experiment with because the the the danger 1531 01:22:48,320 --> 01:22:51,400 of any wind tunnel testing is that you perfect the role model 1532 01:22:53,160 --> 01:22:58,800 by my favorite was the forks that Team GB did for 2008, which 1533 01:22:58,800 --> 01:23:01,880 were very, very narrow and just hugged just down the disk and 1534 01:23:01,880 --> 01:23:06,240 flared out to the hub. And then 2012 they suddenly 1535 01:23:06,240 --> 01:23:09,160 produced a set of forks that were the absolute opposite and 1536 01:23:09,160 --> 01:23:11,040 going in the direction of the hope notice bike. 1537 01:23:11,920 --> 01:23:15,680 And it kind of turns out that it doesn't matter what you do to 1538 01:23:15,680 --> 01:23:19,120 set a forks as long as you don't do the standard straight leg 1539 01:23:19,120 --> 01:23:22,120 fork to the outside of the hub. Wider is better and narrowers. 1540 01:23:22,320 --> 01:23:25,960 But obviously if you're doing this in a wind tunnel, you say, 1541 01:23:25,960 --> 01:23:27,280 well, let's make a narrower report. 1542 01:23:27,280 --> 01:23:28,600 You make one that's narrower, it's better. 1543 01:23:28,600 --> 01:23:30,840 You go narrower again, we make it narrower again, you go 1544 01:23:30,840 --> 01:23:33,800 brilliant, we've been done here. And what you never tried doing 1545 01:23:33,800 --> 01:23:36,760 was making it wider. You know, if you are one of the 1546 01:23:36,760 --> 01:23:38,840 things I would do in the tunnel, if I'm working with a rider 1547 01:23:38,840 --> 01:23:40,880 who's got time and they've got the budget to do it. 1548 01:23:40,880 --> 01:23:43,400 Let's say we go down 10 mil on the, on the front end, very 1549 01:23:43,400 --> 01:23:45,080 simple and really simple intervention. 1550 01:23:45,080 --> 01:23:49,040 Make the, the, the elbow pads 10 mil lower and that's better. 1551 01:23:49,360 --> 01:23:51,440 And we go down 20 mil and that's better again. 1552 01:23:51,440 --> 01:23:54,840 And we go down 30 mil and that's a little bit worse. 1553 01:23:55,320 --> 01:23:58,000 So you go great, 20 mil done, job done. 1554 01:23:58,440 --> 01:24:02,240 If you've got the time, you should go up as well because up 1555 01:24:02,240 --> 01:24:05,240 might be faster too. It might just be that your rider 1556 01:24:05,240 --> 01:24:07,760 was in kind of a debts, but was in kind of the bottom of AU 1557 01:24:07,920 --> 01:24:11,520 somewhere. And, and, and you need to go in 1558 01:24:11,520 --> 01:24:13,360 both directions. It's one of the problems is that 1559 01:24:13,360 --> 01:24:17,480 because you're a bit limited on budget, you can end up taking 1560 01:24:17,480 --> 01:24:20,440 your best guess at what I ought to work, finding it sort of 1561 01:24:20,440 --> 01:24:22,520 works and deciding that that that's a triumph. 1562 01:24:22,520 --> 01:24:25,240 Job done, Let's go home. When actually, you really ought 1563 01:24:25,240 --> 01:24:27,160 to look up a lot of other options as well. 1564 01:24:27,600 --> 01:24:30,160 Yeah, I think that's when. CFD can be good for that. 1565 01:24:30,400 --> 01:24:34,600 Exactly, that's why I think the CFD does hold a lot of promise 1566 01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:38,800 and but at least from my experience, the problem is 1567 01:24:39,400 --> 01:24:42,000 Formula One is really complicated and so is cars. 1568 01:24:42,000 --> 01:24:45,800 But cycling is far more complicated because you have 1569 01:24:45,800 --> 01:24:51,320 moving legs, which is incredibly difficult to model in CFD. 1570 01:24:51,680 --> 01:24:55,960 You have transition effects by design with skin suits, and 1571 01:24:55,960 --> 01:24:57,480 that's really difficult to model. 1572 01:24:59,360 --> 01:25:02,840 And then you put them all together and you have a problem 1573 01:25:02,840 --> 01:25:05,480 that's probably even harder than modelling a car or or an 1574 01:25:05,480 --> 01:25:07,280 aircraft. And you're probably doing it 1575 01:25:07,280 --> 01:25:10,440 with far less budget because there's just less money in in 1576 01:25:10,440 --> 01:25:12,320 cycling than Formula One or or cars. 1577 01:25:12,320 --> 01:25:15,760 So it feels to me there's so much more that could be done. 1578 01:25:16,160 --> 01:25:18,760 You know, there's, there's more Ave. like you said, most of the 1579 01:25:18,760 --> 01:25:23,080 time you come into a tunnel and you test 5 things rather than 1580 01:25:23,080 --> 01:25:26,320 500 things because you just can't manufacture 500 things. 1581 01:25:28,200 --> 01:25:33,600 But where maybe the question then to you is more around where 1582 01:25:33,600 --> 01:25:36,920 should it go? Because you could extrapolate 1583 01:25:36,920 --> 01:25:40,960 this and say, you know, aerodynamics is going to do more 1584 01:25:40,960 --> 01:25:43,840 and more and more, but at what point do you think there should 1585 01:25:43,840 --> 01:25:49,320 be the, where should the regulations sit to avoid it 1586 01:25:49,600 --> 01:25:51,520 going too far? Where do you think there's a 1587 01:25:51,520 --> 01:25:55,560 balance of the sport versus the, the technology? 1588 01:25:55,560 --> 01:26:03,800 And is the balance correct now? Question of philosophy, really. 1589 01:26:04,120 --> 01:26:06,240 What do you think the sport ought to be exactly? 1590 01:26:06,320 --> 01:26:09,800 Do you? Let's go, let's wind it all the 1591 01:26:09,800 --> 01:26:13,120 way back to the R The R record attempt that I made was on, it 1592 01:26:13,120 --> 01:26:14,600 was called the Athletes R Record. 1593 01:26:14,600 --> 01:26:17,200 So you had to do it. The idea was you had to do it on 1594 01:26:17,200 --> 01:26:18,960 Eddie Merck's bike. Basically you had to have a 1595 01:26:18,960 --> 01:26:22,560 round chewed bike, which the UCI had kind of envisaged being made 1596 01:26:22,560 --> 01:26:24,880 of steel, but you could make it or something else if you wanted 1597 01:26:25,480 --> 01:26:27,520 with a pair of old fashioned drop handlebars. 1598 01:26:27,520 --> 01:26:30,000 And the idea this was going to be completely standard. 1599 01:26:30,920 --> 01:26:33,040 First thing any of us did when we got involved in this was 1600 01:26:33,040 --> 01:26:35,520 that, OK, what I make a really long bike, what if make the bars 1601 01:26:35,520 --> 01:26:37,080 really narrow? Let's get the spokes out of the 1602 01:26:37,080 --> 01:26:40,240 wheel. You, you kind of and you ended 1603 01:26:40,240 --> 01:26:44,920 up bringing all the same measuring and and testing to 1604 01:26:44,920 --> 01:26:47,160 bear on up that you would have done to anything else. 1605 01:26:47,160 --> 01:26:49,080 You made less difference. But because the margins were 1606 01:26:49,080 --> 01:26:53,840 small, you still have to do it in F1 works on the basis they're 1607 01:26:53,840 --> 01:26:56,400 kind of going to restrict, effectively restrict either 1608 01:26:56,400 --> 01:26:59,440 budget or in terms of either cash budget or time budget. 1609 01:27:00,000 --> 01:27:03,800 And and they restrict the amount of testing, which is a very 1610 01:27:03,800 --> 01:27:05,960 direct way of trying to level the playing field in terms of 1611 01:27:05,960 --> 01:27:08,480 the budgets that people have to have to play with. 1612 01:27:11,160 --> 01:27:14,760 I think it would be a difficult job to create that effect by 1613 01:27:14,760 --> 01:27:18,000 changing the actual regulations because the tighter you make the 1614 01:27:18,000 --> 01:27:22,000 regulations, you've got less literal space for innovation in 1615 01:27:22,000 --> 01:27:24,040 terms of what shapes and things you can make things. 1616 01:27:26,120 --> 01:27:28,640 But you're still going to find the top teams looking for the 1617 01:27:28,640 --> 01:27:33,560 margins and measuring them. So maybe, maybe you come up with 1618 01:27:33,560 --> 01:27:37,800 a really tight set of skin suit regulations that make the 1619 01:27:37,800 --> 01:27:39,960 difference in the best skin suit and the worst skin suit stops 1620 01:27:39,960 --> 01:27:45,840 being 3% and it starts being 1%. You think you know, you, you, 1621 01:27:46,280 --> 01:27:48,560 you, you think Vismo Lisa Bike are going to say, well, tell you 1622 01:27:48,560 --> 01:27:51,200 what, we, we won't bother looking for that 1% anymore. 1623 01:27:51,880 --> 01:27:54,280 That 1% matters even more. It matters just as much as it 1624 01:27:54,280 --> 01:27:56,760 did before, because everyone's going to finish closer together, 1625 01:27:56,760 --> 01:27:58,280 but the winner is still going to be the winner. 1626 01:28:01,200 --> 01:28:04,680 I so I, I think doing that with regulations is really difficult. 1627 01:28:04,680 --> 01:28:07,440 And one of the, one of the things the UCI have done that's 1628 01:28:07,440 --> 01:28:09,720 been a mistake in the past is they've actually tried. 1629 01:28:09,720 --> 01:28:10,840 They haven't done it for a while. 1630 01:28:10,840 --> 01:28:13,480 They've learned, I think they've tried to reduce costs by 1631 01:28:13,480 --> 01:28:15,880 changing the regulations to make things more restrictive. 1632 01:28:15,880 --> 01:28:19,320 And what you do every time you do that is give a huge advantage 1633 01:28:19,320 --> 01:28:21,520 of the teams that have got the budget, because every time you 1634 01:28:21,520 --> 01:28:23,880 change the regulations, you're starting again from scratch. 1635 01:28:24,480 --> 01:28:27,760 So whoever's got the biggest budget, you know, if the great 1636 01:28:27,760 --> 01:28:30,920 example of that is if they'd left the plastic skin suit legal 1637 01:28:30,920 --> 01:28:34,800 after 2008, by 2012 everyone would have had a plastic skin 1638 01:28:34,800 --> 01:28:36,920 suit and they would have been quite close together. 1639 01:28:37,320 --> 01:28:41,600 They changed the regulations and Team GB particularly went, hey, 1640 01:28:41,680 --> 01:28:44,360 that's great. We know how to develop skin 1641 01:28:44,360 --> 01:28:47,920 suits and the know how from developing the plastic skin 1642 01:28:47,920 --> 01:28:50,480 suits transfer straight across to developing a textile skin 1643 01:28:50,480 --> 01:28:51,440 suit. We're going to have an even 1644 01:28:51,440 --> 01:28:56,240 bigger advantage in London 2012. And that's kind of that's an 1645 01:28:56,240 --> 01:28:58,440 example from kind of the last from a decade ago. 1646 01:28:58,440 --> 01:29:02,480 But it it's, you will get that if you keep changing the 1647 01:29:02,480 --> 01:29:06,440 regulations to try to keep costs down, you're just giving an 1648 01:29:06,440 --> 01:29:09,000 advantage to the teams of the budget. 1649 01:29:09,160 --> 01:29:11,840 You can now, you could now go and win a World Tour time trial 1650 01:29:11,840 --> 01:29:15,080 on a 5 year old time trial frame, which you could buy a 1651 01:29:15,080 --> 01:29:16,920 third or fourth hand, get resprayed. 1652 01:29:17,520 --> 01:29:19,280 In terms of budget, you could do that on the cheap. 1653 01:29:19,280 --> 01:29:21,400 It's not, not particularly the issue because World Tour teams 1654 01:29:21,400 --> 01:29:22,760 are getting their bikes free anyway. 1655 01:29:22,760 --> 01:29:27,040 But that kind of type forming means that the, the, the, the 1656 01:29:27,040 --> 01:29:30,160 playing field has become a little bit more level. 1657 01:29:30,640 --> 01:29:34,320 Because if you can get the deltas between setups down from 1658 01:29:34,680 --> 01:29:40,440 5% to 2%, where you're much more than the in the area of, of what 1659 01:29:40,440 --> 01:29:44,000 a rider can do now. Because if you have a 5% delta 1660 01:29:44,000 --> 01:29:46,680 between a really good setup and a really bad setup, but a rider 1661 01:29:46,680 --> 01:29:50,320 who's at the soggy end of that is going around looking for 20 1662 01:29:50,320 --> 01:29:53,560 watts to catch the guy at the front, If you can cut that down 1663 01:29:53,560 --> 01:29:55,440 to 2%, suddenly he needs 7 or 8 watts. 1664 01:29:55,440 --> 01:30:01,040 So, and in some ways, leaving things as they are is is not the 1665 01:30:01,040 --> 01:30:05,280 worst approach. Or you find a way of saying we 1666 01:30:05,280 --> 01:30:07,800 need to limit the amount of research you can do that then 1667 01:30:07,800 --> 01:30:12,360 runs into problems because Specialized say do a new time 1668 01:30:12,360 --> 01:30:14,040 trial bike and you say, oh, well, yeah, but you're 1669 01:30:14,040 --> 01:30:15,400 developing that for a World Tour team. 1670 01:30:15,400 --> 01:30:16,840 So you can only test that for so many hours. 1671 01:30:16,840 --> 01:30:19,960 But they say, but we're selling this, we're not testing it. 1672 01:30:20,560 --> 01:30:22,600 We're not testing it for, for, for Quickstep. 1673 01:30:22,600 --> 01:30:25,240 We're testing it for all mankind. 1674 01:30:25,400 --> 01:30:27,880 Anyone who wants to buy a bike, you know that that that would 1675 01:30:27,880 --> 01:30:31,560 get quite difficult. Yeah, it's and this is and 1676 01:30:31,560 --> 01:30:33,880 that's the same loophole in F1 that you know, where there was 1677 01:30:33,880 --> 01:30:38,280 like a certain team would, would develop things through one of 1678 01:30:38,280 --> 01:30:41,200 their subsidiaries and then, you know, transfer the technology 1679 01:30:41,200 --> 01:30:43,360 back. And as you say, it's very hard 1680 01:30:43,360 --> 01:30:47,400 to to the loophole, but I, I guess maybe you would agree that 1681 01:30:47,760 --> 01:30:51,600 it is still quite exciting times for cycling in that there is a 1682 01:30:51,600 --> 01:30:55,680 lot more focus on it and there is a focus on the technology. 1683 01:30:55,680 --> 01:30:58,600 And I actually think that's only a, in a way of good thing. 1684 01:30:58,640 --> 01:31:01,400 Commercially it helps probably more sponsors want to come in 1685 01:31:01,400 --> 01:31:05,640 because they see it as like an exciting technology sport as 1686 01:31:05,640 --> 01:31:12,160 well as the human side. And I guess my main question was 1687 01:31:12,160 --> 01:31:17,080 just to make sure it doesn't create a too much of A like A2 1688 01:31:17,080 --> 01:31:19,960 tier system where it really is because of. 1689 01:31:19,960 --> 01:31:25,720 The technology I think, I think, I think it produces more issues 1690 01:31:25,760 --> 01:31:28,240 up to junior levels and things. I think that is more of a 1691 01:31:28,240 --> 01:31:32,600 problem. I, you know, I, I have the 1692 01:31:32,600 --> 01:31:35,560 National, the junior 10 mile time trial a couple of years ago 1693 01:31:35,560 --> 01:31:38,240 was just down the road for me. And I went, I went over, 1694 01:31:38,240 --> 01:31:40,680 actually I went over to report on it because the magazine, I 1695 01:31:40,680 --> 01:31:42,400 write a column for it didn't have a report for it. 1696 01:31:42,400 --> 01:31:44,600 So I said I'd go and do it, which is kind of my job from 1697 01:31:44,600 --> 01:31:46,400 about 12 years ago. But I went and did that. 1698 01:31:46,920 --> 01:31:50,720 And I was chatting to a friend of mine who I used to race 1699 01:31:50,720 --> 01:31:52,320 against and whose son was now racing. 1700 01:31:52,320 --> 01:31:54,120 And that didn't make me feel old at all. 1701 01:31:54,960 --> 01:31:58,120 But he said, yeah, his, his, his son's racing this year was going 1702 01:31:58,120 --> 01:32:02,560 to cost him was at £15,000 and some of that things like 1703 01:32:02,560 --> 01:32:07,720 accommodation. But he, he said that a certain 1704 01:32:07,720 --> 01:32:09,040 amount of it is wind tunnel time now. 1705 01:32:09,080 --> 01:32:12,760 And this is kind of this, this, this, this, this, this is a 17 1706 01:32:12,760 --> 01:32:17,640 year old rider who reckons to be competitive, he needs, you know, 1707 01:32:17,640 --> 01:32:19,760 he needs good bike, he needs the best skin suit, he needs the 1708 01:32:19,760 --> 01:32:22,680 tunnel time. And The thing is, it's one of 1709 01:32:22,680 --> 01:32:25,240 the suggestions you find is, oh, we should, we should make junior 1710 01:32:25,240 --> 01:32:29,280 riders ride certain, you know, age of bike or they should have 1711 01:32:29,280 --> 01:32:31,840 to ride a road bike, I think. But the problem is, it's, it's 1712 01:32:31,840 --> 01:32:35,120 not, it's not the equipment, it's the tunnel time. 1713 01:32:36,360 --> 01:32:38,960 And that's always what you, what you boil down to in any of this 1714 01:32:38,960 --> 01:32:42,640 is that because you're not developing hardware, if you're 1715 01:32:42,640 --> 01:32:44,560 developing a car, it's a hard object. 1716 01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:48,240 If you're developing and, and you know, it's not like Mercedes 1717 01:32:48,240 --> 01:32:51,000 developed one car for one driver and a different car for the 1718 01:32:51,000 --> 01:32:54,240 other driver, there'll be clearly some mechanical set up 1719 01:32:54,240 --> 01:32:56,240 differences, but in terms of the aerodynamics are the same. 1720 01:32:57,600 --> 01:33:01,440 Because like things so individual, you need to test, 1721 01:33:01,440 --> 01:33:03,040 every rider needs to test individually. 1722 01:33:03,040 --> 01:33:06,480 So it, it that, that produces a significant skew. 1723 01:33:06,480 --> 01:33:08,560 And I don't know what that, that feels to me like more of a 1724 01:33:08,560 --> 01:33:11,520 problem because once you're a world tour team, like once 1725 01:33:11,520 --> 01:33:13,560 you're a world tour team, that's kind of it's a business. 1726 01:33:13,560 --> 01:33:15,960 It's up to you how you how you run that, how successful you 1727 01:33:15,960 --> 01:33:18,040 are. If you've got riders who are 1728 01:33:18,040 --> 01:33:22,480 trying to make up and actually get into a good development 1729 01:33:22,480 --> 01:33:25,720 squad, maybe get into in our national team to show what they 1730 01:33:25,720 --> 01:33:30,480 could do there are the money can make much more of a difference 1731 01:33:30,480 --> 01:33:33,680 there than it did 20 years ago. 20 years ago, the fastest 17 1732 01:33:33,680 --> 01:33:38,080 year old bike rider in the country, whoever won the the 1733 01:33:38,080 --> 01:33:41,600 junior national 10 was probably the fastest junior time Travis 1734 01:33:41,600 --> 01:33:43,920 in the country. If it was very tight, maybe, but 1735 01:33:43,920 --> 01:33:45,680 even then they aired an average kind of luck. 1736 01:33:45,680 --> 01:33:47,680 So it didn't feel quite the same. 1737 01:33:48,360 --> 01:33:50,800 Now you might have someone who's winning the national junior 1738 01:33:50,800 --> 01:33:53,800 national 10 by 2 seconds who has done 10 hours of wind tunnel 1739 01:33:53,800 --> 01:33:56,520 time squeaking in in a couple of seconds in front of someone who 1740 01:33:56,520 --> 01:33:58,920 hasn't done anything. You think well, quite honestly. 1741 01:33:59,880 --> 01:34:02,560 And if you are looking, if you're a team manager looking to 1742 01:34:02,560 --> 01:34:05,240 assign someone, you can't even look at these two guys and go, 1743 01:34:05,240 --> 01:34:09,080 oh, well, you see, this guy is riding a disc shave. 1744 01:34:09,320 --> 01:34:11,400 It's a great bike. He's got like, you know, he's 1745 01:34:11,400 --> 01:34:14,280 got a nice pair of unmoulded nice pair of moulded watch out 1746 01:34:14,280 --> 01:34:15,880 bars. He's riding a great set up. 1747 01:34:15,880 --> 01:34:18,160 This guy's riding a steel bike from 1999. 1748 01:34:18,160 --> 01:34:19,320 I know which one of them is faster. 1749 01:34:19,320 --> 01:34:23,160 If it's, if it's, you know if. If the difference between them 1750 01:34:23,160 --> 01:34:25,520 was wind tunnel testing, you can't even see that anymore. 1751 01:34:26,600 --> 01:34:31,080 Yeah, that, that's a very good point actually. 1752 01:34:31,080 --> 01:34:36,400 And I guess the problem is then it may be the case that they get 1753 01:34:36,400 --> 01:34:40,720 selected to, you know, to make it as a professional. 1754 01:34:41,600 --> 01:34:43,880 I guess the teams do look at the Physiology, don't they? 1755 01:34:43,880 --> 01:34:46,400 Look at their, you know, power numbers and, and I guess 1756 01:34:46,400 --> 01:34:47,040 there's. Serious stuff. 1757 01:34:47,080 --> 01:34:49,080 Yeah, Yeah, it's true. But but, but it's also 1758 01:34:49,080 --> 01:34:51,520 attracting attention because if you know, nobody's looking at 1759 01:34:51,520 --> 01:34:54,240 the Physiology of three different random 17 year olds 1760 01:34:54,240 --> 01:34:56,360 who turned up in the top ten of a National 10 somewhere. 1761 01:34:56,360 --> 01:34:59,120 Because the National 10, there's not, it's not even particularly 1762 01:34:59,120 --> 01:35:01,800 where people find the next big rider. 1763 01:35:01,800 --> 01:35:06,400 They mean is much more road race based and that probably is a bit 1764 01:35:06,400 --> 01:35:09,560 fairer. But there still is, you know, 1765 01:35:09,760 --> 01:35:12,600 there still is this to me. And to me, that kind of that 1766 01:35:12,600 --> 01:35:15,560 level of the sport is more of an issue than the the elite level. 1767 01:35:17,600 --> 01:35:21,400 Well, this has been fascinating and I'm sure we can continue 1768 01:35:21,400 --> 01:35:23,400 talking for hours. And so I love, this is what I 1769 01:35:23,400 --> 01:35:25,120 love about cycling. There's so many like little 1770 01:35:25,440 --> 01:35:27,800 rabbit holes where it does make a difference. 1771 01:35:27,800 --> 01:35:30,960 And it's, it's sort of the beauty, I guess, of, of cycling 1772 01:35:30,960 --> 01:35:35,200 in the cycling industry. But what, what's going on with 1773 01:35:35,200 --> 01:35:37,440 you over the, you know, the next 12 months? 1774 01:35:37,440 --> 01:35:41,320 So are you. So you're writing a a book. 1775 01:35:41,840 --> 01:35:44,840 You're doing still more. Just finishing a book at the 1776 01:35:44,840 --> 01:35:45,360 minute. Yeah, great. 1777 01:35:45,400 --> 01:35:47,560 And. Can you say when that's coming 1778 01:35:47,560 --> 01:35:50,040 out or is I don't want to put you on the spot? 1779 01:35:50,360 --> 01:35:55,400 It will be out next. It'll be June 2025. 1780 01:35:56,040 --> 01:35:59,600 That'll be out great. And then what about the? 1781 01:36:00,080 --> 01:36:02,480 Look forward to that, yeah. The, the commentating is that 1782 01:36:02,480 --> 01:36:04,880 something you're that you love doing? 1783 01:36:04,880 --> 01:36:07,200 It's, I actually love listening, especially when you have 1784 01:36:07,200 --> 01:36:09,600 somebody who knows something about aerodynamics and they can 1785 01:36:09,600 --> 01:36:12,960 sort of like chip in, especially like doing time trials or things 1786 01:36:12,960 --> 01:36:17,320 like that. Yeah, I do a bit of that. 1787 01:36:17,320 --> 01:36:19,880 I, I, I do sort of do tend to do the world sort of world 1788 01:36:19,880 --> 01:36:22,720 Championship, European Championship, time trials, a few 1789 01:36:22,720 --> 01:36:24,560 other odds and ends. I probably don't do, I don't 1790 01:36:24,560 --> 01:36:26,280 think I do as much commentary as people think. 1791 01:36:26,320 --> 01:36:28,320 I'll probably only maybe do 10 days a year. 1792 01:36:28,960 --> 01:36:33,960 I, I mean, I, I enjoy doing it. It's, yeah, I very, very happily 1793 01:36:33,960 --> 01:36:35,320 do more of it. But it's one of those things 1794 01:36:35,320 --> 01:36:36,720 you're always sort of struggling to fit in. 1795 01:36:36,720 --> 01:36:41,760 And there are I, I tend to do say, more time chatting and road 1796 01:36:41,760 --> 01:36:42,960 racing. I'd like to do more road race 1797 01:36:42,960 --> 01:36:45,920 commentary, but you end up kind of pigeonholed slightly because 1798 01:36:46,000 --> 01:36:47,840 that's the side of the sport you know a lot about. 1799 01:36:48,720 --> 01:36:51,920 And they're always looking for people who know about time 1800 01:36:51,920 --> 01:36:54,240 chatting because most, most pro cyclists hate time training. 1801 01:36:55,000 --> 01:36:56,880 So the last thing on earth they want to do is spend the day 1802 01:36:56,880 --> 01:36:58,920 talking about it. Whereas I said I'll bring out 1803 01:36:58,920 --> 01:37:00,720 four hours to talk about time training. 1804 01:37:02,040 --> 01:37:05,560 So, but hopefully, yeah, I'll be keeping keeping that up for the 1805 01:37:05,560 --> 01:37:07,680 next couple of years. Amazing, Amazing. 1806 01:37:07,920 --> 01:37:12,320 What? I'll, I'll put some links for 1807 01:37:12,320 --> 01:37:14,680 people to look because you've already got a couple of books 1808 01:37:14,680 --> 01:37:15,280 out. They're great. 1809 01:37:15,280 --> 01:37:18,080 Obviously there's the second weekly column and some of the 1810 01:37:18,160 --> 01:37:21,440 other things that you've done. So I'll, I'll, I'll put some 1811 01:37:21,440 --> 01:37:23,720 links below so people can catch up because there was stuff we 1812 01:37:23,720 --> 01:37:27,440 didn't manage to talk about that I think people could catch up 1813 01:37:27,440 --> 01:37:29,280 on. But yeah, really appreciate you 1814 01:37:29,280 --> 01:37:34,200 coming to chat all things Arrow and cycling and yeah, thanks so 1815 01:37:34,200 --> 01:38:00,040 much. Music.