Into the Wind: A Pro Cyclists First Wind Tunnel Test

Jon Hornbeck is a member of Holowesko-Citadel Racing Team p/b Hincapie Sportswear. Follow him on Twitter.

Unlike other areas of cycling, the time trial discipline is the one area where you can basically "buy time." This is where you see cyclists with the best bikes, top of the line wheels, the newest aero helmets and so on. All that tech only goes so far, though--if your bike fit is off and you're not in the best position possible, you are giving up time.

Personally, I haven't had the chance to do much work with my position--it's more or less UCI legal and I race it as is. That sort of thinking works on a road bike, but on a TT rig it doesn't al-ways end up with the best results. So when our team director, Thomas Craven, sent an email last month asking who wanted to participate in a day of testing at the A2 Wind Tunnel, I naturally jumped all over it.

Am I Aero?

I went into the A2 Wind Tunnel test with no knowledge of whether or not I am aero. I was basi-cally a blank canvas.

From the outside, A2 looks more or less like a typical building. Walking in, you're greeted by walls lined with many different types of aero helmets and wheel choices. Next door, a much larger room houses a warehouse with a very big tunnel inside of it, giving the whole thing kind of a Batcave-like aura.

In talking with the guys at A2, I really wanted to soak up as much information as I could to make the most out of the experience. One of my biggest takeaways was that everyone is so different, meaning what works for me likely won't work for my teammate.

For example, take the latest and greatest fancy aero helmet. It could actually be slower than your helmet from a few years back--it comes down to which helmet suits your personal position the best. That's why you'll notice different TT helmets among riders on even the biggest WorldTour teams.

Testing, 1...2...3

Once it was my turn in the tunnel, I kitted up in my skin suit and put on my new Giro TT helmet, my Felt DA bike with Mavic TT wheels already mounted on the moving platform. I got into posi-tion and started pedaling as the fans came on.

The fans blow at 30 mph, so it really does feel as though you're pushing a descent pace out-side, and not stationary. Each "run" was between three and four minutes, and I was told to ride at a sub-threshold Zone 3 pace. The first half would be at a 0-degree wind angle--a perfect scenario that's nearly impossible in reality--then it moved to 10 degrees for a more accurate crosswind reading.

To get an accurate reading, you have to be completely still. At first I was moving a bit too much forward and back on my saddle trying to get comfortable, preventing an accurate reading.

I worked on staying still while they fired up the fans again, only to be told my head was now moving. While this is apparently a common problem, I still felt like an idiot and not so much a professional cyclist.

There are several cameras in the wind tunnel, each projecting different images of you onto the ground in front of you, so you can see yourself from all different angles. To keep me still, the technicians took out a whiteboard, put me in the position they wanted and outlined the position they wanted me to stay in.

Now my job was to watch myself and make sure I didn't move out of that red outline. I felt like a toddler, but it worked and we were finally able to get my base reading.

Small Changes, Big Gains

Now time to actually get to work. Right away we got my head in the right position and saw a ma-jor improvement but like with all adjustments, it's going to take some getting used to.

Next up was helmet choice. My team has two separate helmets from Giro we can use, and luckily the new one is faster for me. Awesome.

Next they dropped my saddle a bit, which felt more comfortable and also made keeping my head in the new position easier. Then the bar extensions were moved to help block my frontal area.

After each adjustment, they would hurry out, shut the door and come on over the loudspeaker. Shortly after, the fans would start and I would begin another effort. This is where my blank can-vas really came into play, because pretty much everything they tried resulted in a noticeable im-provement.

It was almost comical: After every new tweak, they'd look at the numbers and come back grin-ning as to how much better I was in this new position.

The Takeaway

Overall, we changed just about everything: A new head position, lower saddle height, exten-sions raised, bar pads moved inward and hands moved to on top of each other. I also learned how to arrange my hands depending on the wind direction.

Funny side note--the best possible bottle position still has an aero penalty. The wind tunnel guys basically said don't use one.

Finally, we tested what power output was required to sustain 30 mph in my new position. My blank canvas was more or less a blank sail, and the changes made resulted in a 10 percent im-provement. That's massive, and now I'm actually looking forward to getting to the races and testing out my new position in a time trial.

A2 was a great experience--I learned a ton and got loads of help. Let's hope I can repay them with a bump in my TT results and some help for those GC aspirations of mine.

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