Others will float like helium filled balloons. Use the bike as a lever to help pull your weight over to the other foot. I’m too tired from my bike ride up a 10 mile hill at the moment to be certain your formula could be used to get the answer to the problem I pose. Encountered maybe 20 other cyclists throughout the day enjoying this incredible experience. Starting in October Ted did twice a week endurance rides. Some skip up like mountain goats. The reason for my interest is in order to correlate the energy expended during my own endurance rides with trips I’d like to do. Year-by-Year Results (2001-2020) google_ad_height = 90; Rider A’s mate, Rider B, is also able to hold 326W for 20 minutes, but he and his bike combined only weigh 85kg. jfletch. I’ve gone through and calculated the required wattage for the whole number gradients from 0% (a flat road) to 20% (ouch), assuming that I want to maintain a speed of 20km/h on each of those grades. A: Not as much as you probably think. The 88.2 that you have calculated is actually the WORK required to lift your mass 10cm (or move up the 10% gradient one metre). The Effects of Weight. I’ve been working to lose weight watching what I eat and pushing myself on rides. You guys are thorough bike nerds. Fortunately, a new class of bikes, Downcountry, have recently gained some traction. But, in order to lose weight, you need to know how to approach your biking workouts the right way. We can estimate that a well-maintained bike has a drivetrain efficiency of roughly 95% though, so: So, at 90kg (me + my bike), on a hill of 5% gradient, with no wind and on a decent road surface, I need to produce roughly 139W of power to travel at 10km/h. 1. Some trip data of yours and Wades for endurance trips we can see online as Strava reports however they cannot be compared with Garmin reports. If an athlete can lose weight without compromising power output, there is almost always an increase in performance, regardless of the course profile. Thanks a lot! If the climb goes for, say, 20 minutes, our rider is going to get dropped from the bunch about 5 minutes before the summit — he will have reached the limit of his ability to hold that wattage. I climbed twice with each weight and maintained (to the best of my ability) the same speed, letting wattage vary. However, a rider who is already lean will likely lose some lean muscle (and therefore power) if he tries to lose more weight, and this loss in power could trump the benefit of lost weight. /* bottom text banner, created 2/9/09 */ But even when programmed with correct resting & max HR, both are skewed by fatigue drift, skin & core temperature, elevation, and cardiac response delay. Weight and speed. You can lose weight on the bike, and you can read some good advice on how to do that, but while it’s easy to throw money at weight savings on the bike… Rigidity and power can make more difference. Road bikes are not optimised for riding up 20% gradients because the gears are generally too high and they’re hard to ride at slow speeds (lower than 10km/hr). We rated each bike on the predetermined metrics of downhill performance (worth 30%), climbing performance (30%), versatility (20%), weight (10%), and build (10%). For a start we need to realise that there are three main forces acting against a cyclist while riding: wind resistance, road friction and gravity. They are light-weight and climb like an XC bike but with the geometry of a modern Trail bike so that they also descend well. But it will happen in the more mountainous parts of the world. /* right side */ I was guessing the other way i.e. What I might do is plug your formula into a spreadsheet and vary the grade, and take the difference in wattage. metres/second, the distance from the speed multiplied by the gradient gives a vertical distance, the seconds makes it into a vertical distance per second). 1) can produce more power, These are your weight, how steep the hills you'll be climbing are, how strong you are, how hard you want to work, and how the bike fits you. There’s an interesting way to apply this to longer rides with a lot of climbing such as the Three Peaks. Let’s assume I want to work out how much power (in watts) I need to produce to get up a hill of 5% gradient at a speed of 10km/h (not very fast). My favorite part was the diagram which uses as an example, Rider + Bike = 85kg. I surprised myself. How does kg*(m/s) = Watts? Hi Fabio, this might be of interest: http://cyclingtips.com.au/2013/09/climbing-and-time-trialling-how-power-outputs-are-affected/. As a heavy rider with a heavy bike I have prioritised the body element of the equation. If the total ascent is 4000m, and the weight of the bike and rider is 90kg (I wish! Weight and speed. This means it’s possible to express the effect of weight on climbing, with a fair degree of accuracy, by dividing one weight with another using the following formula: Let’s take a typical, relatively sprightly bike of 25lbs / 12kg as a demonstrator. If you have to push a few extra watts uphill every time you climb, this can make a significant difference to your fatigue levels by the time you reach the final climb. On the plus side loosing weight makes a huge difference to climbing so it has to be worth it. It’s worth noting here that the 1 in 20 probably isn’t the best hill to use as an example as there are two significant gradient changes: from the first section into the false-flat, and from the false-flat into the final section of the climb. Site Map, KOM: A Guide to This article is a masterpiece. 1kW to do those 20% gradients is A LOT! Let’s say that our rider needs to climb at about 25km/h in order to stay with the bunch up the climb and that maintaining that speed requires our rider to produce 330W. Postings saying "How much does X bike component weigh?" google_ad_client = "ca-pub-2062310126166513"; An already lean cyclist should be very careful when trying to lose weight and should consult a nutritionist before embarking on any nutritional program. People reduce their overall packing weight in the pursuit of minimalism, to improve bike handling, in order to use a bike that isn’t designed for touring (a road bike for example), to make flying cheaper, to make carrying your bags up stairs (and into hotels, onto trains) easier, and to reduce the stresses on your wheels and frame. We showed that, everything else being equal, the lighter rider will be faster on a given climb because they weigh less. It's a simple fact that the less weight needing to be powered up a climb will result in a faster climbing speed. You can’t just discount the speed term in that equation and regard it as calculating the same thing. On a 10% gradient that is equal to 9.8 x .10 x your body mass. If there is a tail wind, this number will be less than 0. 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