01 Riding hot or cold
Balmy sunny evenings are here, which means short-sleeved shirts, bib shorts and fizzing bottles of electrolytes. But does it mean more speed on the bike? That was the premise of a recent study led by Pedro Valenzuela that featured in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance.
Anecdotally, cyclists perceive to ride faster in the heat, an idea supported by controlled efforts such as Sir Bradley Wiggins' 2015 hour record, where the team at the Lee Valley Velodrome cranked the temperature up to 30°C. It made empirical sense, too - warmer air is less dense than cooler air and so provides less resistance. The pay-off is the greater physiological pressure exerted.
To quantify the impact of hot and cold air on cycling performance, Valenzuela and his team gathered power data from 74 professional cyclists (48 men; 26 women) over an eight-year period. The researchers also investigated whether there was a gender-specific reaction to the ambient temperature.
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If you're thinking of trying to beat the hour record, you'll want favourable humidity and air pressure as well as temperature...
Each of the riders' bike computers included a builtin temperature sensor, so the team could divide the power data in 5°C increments starting from -5°C to above 35°C. Within each temperature segment, they categorised average power generated over four different durations: 5secs, 30secs, 5mins and 20mins.
What did they find? Perhaps expectedly, when temperatures were over 30°C, performance started to drop off. Why that happens is down to myriad reasons including impaired nervous and heart function, plus dehydration.
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