Up in Ontario

Drafting Lance Armstrong in Outside

At the airport last week on my way to Lake of the Woods for the weekend, I picked up a copy of Outside magazine. The cover package on Lance Armstong caught my attention along with the story on how America's top tester believes drug cheats in sports will never be caught. Both articles delivered. I recommend picking up a copy if you're interested at all in the current state of drugs in sports, and if you, like me, are in awe of the lunatics competing in the Tour de France.

The most-revealing part for me was the sidebar on Johan Bruyneel, the one voice Lance Armstrong hears as he rides. Bruyneel becomes Armstrong's internal dialogue for the duration of the race, and this transcript somehow gets into your own head when you read it and you can start to imagine what it must be like to sustain the hyper intensity of the racer during the race.

In only tangentially related news, I finally bought myself a road bike on the weekend to ride on the triathlons I'll be competing in this summer. A shiny new Trek 1200 and I sped through the streets of Vancouver this morning, along Spanish Banks, up the cursed hill to UBC, around the sign for the UBC Farm, which I have been meaning to visit on a Saturday afternoon for their market, and back along 16th Avenue, topping out at an estimated 65 kmph, passing cars on the downhill. Woo wee. If you just happen to be in Abbotsford this Sunday (hey, there's a chance), come out to the Aldergrove Credit Union Triathlon and cheer my winded ass on.

And since there's been a lot of chitty chat about cycling around here lately, the Duck found this wonderful piece of information, also on the Outside magazine website:

Q) When cyclists draft each other, does the drafting cause drag on the leader? -- Ed Reiff, Skokie, Illinois

A) Actually, everybody benefits from drafting—the lead rider just benefits less. It's well known that the leader, by cutting wind resistance, makes life smoother for the rest of the pack—at race speeds, 17 percent easier for the second rider, 38 percent for the next, and 40 percent for the fourth position on back. But the guy fronting the pace line doesn't do more work than he would if cycling by himself; in fact, he uses 3 percent less energy. According to Chester Kyle, a Long Beach, California–based aerodynamicist who's designed ultrasleek clothes for Lance Armstrong, a cyclist riding solo creates several drag-inducing vortices around him, as well as low-pressure cavities that suck him backwards. If there's a rider clinging to his back wheel, those anomalies in the slipstream straighten out. The same goes for freeway driving: Tailgaters, oddly enough, save you gas.

There is no drafting in triathlons. You get yourself disqualified for that kind of shite.