Next week is the BBQ. These social occasions are an important part of sport; the competition part should not be all consuming. If you are going can you please complete the doodle poll that was emailed out by Friday13th!
Anyhow, here's something more cheerful. A special guest blog courtesy of Ireland's answer to physicist Brian Cox, namely our own Stevie Smartt!
My wife doesn't like me in lycra. Not surprising as it's not a pretty sight, although the male competition on Tuesday evenings doesn't look an awful lot better to me. But I would guess the TT girls were unhappy not to see me in the figure hugging outfit tonight . Of course this is not because they have any different opinion to that of my wife, quite the opposite. I'm one of the weak animals at the back of the MAMIL pack that they have a chance of hunting down and picking off. Survival of the fittest on Tuesday evenings. The weak are encouraged to participate, but only for a ritual beating.
Thankfully the human route out of the African savannahs was not led by bike pedalling apes or who knows what path our evolution would have taken. Would MAMIL dominance have meant we would all be called Mark and walk around in garish catsuits ? I don't think I'll ever be able to pull off the Morrison-Carroll look of a seriously fast TTist, so I'm staying well away from the one piece. The invention of the wheel was a probably good idea but using it as an instrument of weekly punishment was not what the Babylonians had in mind. Why is it so hard to get faster ?
It's very simple. Power = velocity cubed. On a reasonably flat course, the limiting factor to increasing
your speed is air resistance. Rolling friction from the road is negligible and the force you
are up against is fluid friction which is proportional to your speed squared. Total energy needed to cover the course is just force x distance, so your instantaneous power output is energy divided
by time. This means power = force x distance/time, so that's another speed factor. Which means
your power output to maintain a certain speed is proportional to speed x speed x speed.
This is why it's so hard to get even 10% quicker. You would need to increase your power output
by 30% (1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.3). That's pretty tough - burning out 200 Watts on a stationary
bike is good going in a spin class, but to get 10% faster you need to push this to 260 Watts, constant.
Enda's power pedals are at least good for something, he's about 15% faster than me and
tells me his pedals read about 280W average. Sounds about right as I reckon I would be
down around 180-200W. Of course, better to be more efficient. So aero helmet, get lower,
pull in the elbows and …. the one piece.
Is it worth it ? Not on Killynure, once the gradients start then beating gravity dominates your power
budget. And you can't draft gravity. If you're reading this and thinking there must be some
truth in Vaughan's jest last week, you're probably right. I do have a new bike.
The results then ...
Girls
1. Judith Lowry 29.39
2. Emma Kerr 33.16
Primates
1. Mark Kane 24.28
2. Mark Millar 25.03
3. Vaughan Purnell 25.52
4. Gavin Browne 27.08
5. Enda Maron 27.12 **KHD**
6. Michael Sinton 27.30
7. Chris MvEvison 27.54
8. Dave Lonnen 28.43
9. Bill Rafferty 29.16
10. Mark Hanna 29.59
11. Steve Begley 30.18
12. David Morrisey 30.22
13. Desi McHenry 30.58
14. Paul Hetherington 31.24
15. Johnny Boylan 32.03
16. Peter McGuicken 32.33
17. Conor Preshaw 32.56
18. Carl King 34.20
**KHD = kept head down **
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