Steve Peat today raced on the Wattbike on the Wattbike DHL stand at BikeRadar Live. By the time he raced it was late on in the day and he had already raced in the downhill, but still produced a 9.78z 200m and a peak power score of 1708Watts. Impressive stuff and he is a nice guy, very friendly and willing to sign autographs. When on the Wattbike he immediately understood the value of the Polar View for training and monitoring efficiency. We will try and get him back onto the Wattbikes tomorrow.
The stand was busy all day and we were able to catch up with a few of our friends from other exhibitors including Animal, SIS and Perfect Motion. Ed Waterston from Scott (see A Conference in Adelaide, a Wind Tunnel and James Cracknell) was also there, we hope to catch up with them tomorrow if there is any free time!
We thing that about 500 people tried the Wattbikes and the feedback has been great. Thanks to Eddie for his hard work today.
Last night I was at Forest Fields Improvement Association, Nottingham, where they held an interactive exhibit at the Youth Consultation Event at Djanogly City Academy with the Wattbikes.
Djanogly City Academy Event
The Forest Fields Improvement Association aims to improve community spirit and community cohesion by organising local events. The association hired 2 Wattbikes to run a challenge for their youngsters and adults to get them interested in the project. The group mainly made up of teenagers and young adults from the local area raced across 200 metres on the Wattbikes, trying to be the fastest. With many participants over the evening, quick times were repeatedly recorded getting as low as 10.78 seconds. The winner motivated by the competition and the vouchers for the local Victoria shopping centre, was a 14-year old who stayed very cool throughout the racing. Well done to him!
Bernard Hinault tries the Wattbike
Never wishing to miss an opportunity to meet with the great and the good of cycling, our colleagues at Wattbike France were at the pre-race fair at the Paris-Roubaix (a video review of the 2009 race can be seen on Le Tour website). As everywhere else the Wattbikes go it was a busy day with lots of interest and lots of people trying the bike and learning about the polar view. That we are pretty used to by now, meeting one of only five riders to have won Le Tour five times though, that is really exciting. Bernard Hinault came and had a go on the Wattbike and had a visit with the guys, who were suitably impressed. As well as being a five time Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault is also one of only five cyclists who won all three Grand Tours and the only one to have one each one more than once. In short he is one of the greatest cyclists of all time, and a nice guy.
OK, I have not made one, but I think it would be better! I noticed this image of the treadmill desk, at health giant Humana’s office on Peter Kim’s blog. It got me thinking…..
I often take the opportunity to read or watch a DVD when on the Wattbike, but what about being able to do some work on a long session, of course it would be possible, you move about less when riding than running, the only problem for me would be the sweat ingress into my laptop! Although I could probably get a waterproof keyboard and mouse.
Right that is it. I am off to make one!
Eddie is back!
12 days of international travel, hotels, airports and (since his Blackberry had not arrived before he left) no emails for me to deal with. With his return came a string of emails including an interesting conversation with Florian Rouseau of the French Cycling Federation who are using the Wattbikes. The story starts with Eddie “popping over” to France to demonstrate the Wattbikes to Florian Rouseau, who incidentally can create the perfect circle of pedal efficiency – I suppose that is not that surprising when you understand he has three Olympic gold medals, and a silver! Florian was immediately taken by the ability for his athletes to be able to train and test on the Wattbike, especially the ability for young riders to learn about pedal efficiency.
Two months into their use of the Wattbikes and the the findings are very positive. The track team use the Wattbikes 1 – 3 times per week, mostly for longer sprint work of up to 75 seconds. The monitors are all set to show the polar view whilst the riders are doing their training and testing which is proving to be very helpful, especially for the young riders who are focussing on establishing consistent efficient pedal technique. The key for Florian has been to put his athletes onto the Wattbikes for their testing and efficiency education then put them back onto the track to immediately embed the technique on the track. This has facilitated the breaking down of bad habits that he has not been able to impact on in other ways.
Eddie will be continuing to help Florian to maximise the benefit from his Wattbikes and encourage him to make the most of the polar view during longer sessions which are more productive in creating a change in the pedal efficiency than short sessions. Will keep you posted……
Cycling and running are both things we learn to do as kids and as such I’m sure most of us feel fairly confident that we can do them well enough. If asked most people’s limiting factor to speed in those activities the answer would be fitness, finding the time to train and equipment.
The technical aspect of cycling gets overlooked because when people start taking it more seriously they can already ride and the emphasis is on training hard and spending as much money on carbon as you can afford. Both of those make you go faster but if you were switching to a new sport you’d learn how to master it before splashing out on the best kit.
It’s obviously easier for me to talk about rowing but taking the time to learn the technique and get the right force curve makes a far bigger difference than the boat one rows in. Yet despite having that knowledge from one sport I’d failed to apply this to cycling. I’ve been very lucky in that the physiological benefits from years of rowing training meant I can move a bike ok but it wasn’t until I got a Wattbike to help with preparation for this year’s Etape that I realised quite how inefficient I was.
The first thing I did was look at the rankings for 60 minutes and set about trying to do that for an hour, apart from various pieces of me being splattered all round the room after I blew up with 15 minutes to go there were some other key learnings. Apparently a good force pattern from the pedals isn’t the perfect figure of eight I was effortless producing, according to Eddie Fletcher the Wattbike magician I was losing 0.75m per pedal revolution with my signature profile. I might as well have been cycling through mud.
I was only pushing on the way down not squeezing the pedal all the way round and at 85rpm I was about 15rpm shy of the efficient cadence. I dropped the resistance, increased the cadence and focused on getting a more efficient force profile from the pedals. In the next hour I went 700m further and didn’t explode over the gym since then I’ve done some longer more technical sessions and am preparing myself for another crack at my 60min pb – my legs can’t wait.
Yesterday evening before heading out to the Sports Industry Awards, Alastiar Campbell tweeted that he had finally managed to ride circles on his Wattbike. Having spoken to him before about it, I know that it was becoming a bit of an obsession, but for those that do not know about the polar view on the Wattbike monitor it does not make much sense. Unlike other exercise bikes the Wattbike offers a view that shows you how efficiently you are pedalling, with 100% efficiency being power delivered consistently throughout the pedal cycle. What that means in real terms is that there is always force being applied to the road so that you keep moving forward all the time.
We have been lucky enough to test some of Britain’s (and as a result the World’s) best cyclists and what we find every time is that the difference between the best and the rest is how efficient they are from the moment that they get on the Wattbike. I have created an information sheet about it the Polar View, as well as 10 tips to improving (I had sent these through to Alastair last week – it looks like he found them useful).
Click on the icon to view the pdf.
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