biking, biking, biking: road bike vs time trial bike

I like days like today. Perfect weather = lotsa miles on the bike :)

Went up to time trial heaven and did 5 laps of the 8 mile-ish out and back. Wound up with almost 44 miles. The goal of today was to do 4 mile efforts at my half ironman wattage, which is in the high 170's.

Another goal for today was to see how doing that effort wound up whether I was on my time trial bike or my road bike.

My babies, all lined up

I did 2 laps on the road bike, and 3 on the time trial bike. The 4 miles out were done at an easy pace, then I hit my target wattage on the way home. The wattage felt good and I wasn't exurting myself. I was definately working harder during Timberman, hence my blow up on the run that day.

And the conclusion between a road bike and time trial bike? Drumroll please....

Yes, OF COURSE the time trial bike is more efficient at the same effort. I just wanted to see it for myself with my own data. Yes, I am a data junkie sometimes :)

Lap #1: Time Trial Bike

Lap#2: Road Bike

Lap #3: Road Bike

Lap #4: Time Trial Bike

Lap #5: Time Trial Bike

Some trends between the 5 runs: Besides pushing less watts and going faster on the time trial bike vs more watts and slower on the road bike, I noticed that my cadence was also higher on the time trial bike and the amount of torque was less. i.e. I was not putting as much strain my legs to pedal faster to go faster and using less energy all at the same time.

I also held an average of 92 RPM cadence on all 3 time trial runs. I am proud of that!

The course is mostly flat, with a few slow ups that will spike your wattage if you aren't fluid with your gearing choices.

Its really smoother than this...

I was really trying to maintain a constant wattage so I had to anticipate and change my gears. A few times I would spike or not change soon enough on the next down section, bottoming out my wattage. By my last run I had it figured out.

If you can't tell, I had a good day on the bike today!