Quote:
Originally Posted by cgates66
Just a quick timing point about wind. In a higher wind, for the same effort, and assuming you start and end at the same point with equivalent elevation etc. - you'll always be slower than light wind, and no wind is fastest of all.
The reason is that, for the same power, you'll spend more time on the leg into the wind than you'll save on the leg with the wind.
Suppose you have a 20MPH average speed on a course with no wind. With 5MPH wind on the same course, for the same power, you could maintain about 16MPH into the wind, and 24MPH against the wind - for an average speed of 19.2. For a 10MPH wind, it'd be about 16.8MPH - reason being that you spend more time at a slower speed.
This is a rough calc., but windy days for rides that finish where they started (assuming the wind stays the same!) are slower.
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Excellent. The appropriate average is the harmonic mean, 2/((1/16)+(1/24)) = 19.2, rather than the arithmetic mean, which of course is just 20. A similar argument can be made for uphill outbound/downhill inbound.