RUTLAND 10 - Hatfield Woodhouse - 28th August 2021

 7th Overall; 1st Standard

Always want to do well on the Rutland CC races, as the rivals of sorts, of Sheffrec CC. so keyed up for this, and felt great in the race...really strong...holding really high wattage - and proved to be finishing in a PB 20min average wattage of 370w...but on stopping the Garmin, was rather surprised to see a pretty slow time (on a course where I regularly break 21 mins) - confirming at the HQ the I had done 21-12....and worse still, finished 7th, with all my peers having decent times...on a pretty decent day...in the race I really thought a PB was possible (20-31)....very bizarre.🤔

Drove home rather perplexed which extended into the week...the only thing I'd changed was the skin suit, could that really make a difference? Well, yes! First contacted Mr B - who confirmed it can be "Massive" either way! 😳

Also my pal in the N Mids - who has a Phd in Computation Fluid Mechanics, sent me a very detailed email...this is part of it:

The power required to do work against a force, F, is F x V, where in the present case V is the velocity over the ground.

The force of interest here is the aerodynamic drag. In external aerodynamics this depends on the drag coefficient, Cd, of the object, usually (but not always) the projected frontal area of the body, A, air density, rho, and the relative velocity between the object and the oncoming flow, U. 

 

Thus, F = 0.5 x rho x Cd x A x U x U

 

So the power to overcome aerodynamic drag is 0.5 x rho x Cd x A x U x U x V

 

You can see why it so hard to go even a bit faster, as those U’s and V multiply up to become a big number. 

🤯🤯🤯

The bottom line is that a skin suit can make a negative or positive impact...and the only way of really knowing is by controlled testing! 

Anyhow I won't be wearing that skin suit again. 😝