This was not supposed to be worthy of a full blog by itself but having the experience I just had, it was only right to do it justice and give you a full blog about what I got up to with the team at Body Rocket.
Once again I need to thank Chris Fennell for him inviting me to this amazing opportunity to work with such an advanced piece of equipment. What we were essentially doing is working with engineers from a Company called Body Rocket at the Geraint Thomas National Velodrome in Newport, Wales on their system to allow data across all areas of the bike to be captured and most intriguingly, display real time accurate drag coefficients (CdA) which for time trialists could be an absolute game changer.
The day consisted of 4 of us riders (one of which being another aero legend of the TT scene in the UK Matt Bottrill) being given a run plan of baseline rides at a steady state pace then we added drag onto the bikes to calibrate and then we got given the opportunity to have a 4km blast around the Velodrome at Newport to firstly give us data of how well we can pace but to see body position on the saddle and how much movement.
I would love to tell you exactly how everything went and how it all worked but I will be completely honest and say the technology is so advanced it was hard to understand anything that wasn’t dumbed down enough for me to understand after just doing my runs.
The system blew me away with its capabilities and we were told they were just scratching the surface of what the system could potentially do. To be a part of the development and calibration of such a special system that has the potential to change how we Time Trial for ever was an absolute honour and a privilege. It gave me really positive data about my own body position and how aerodynamic I truly am and I will take these values into my Time Trials for this year and make use of what we found.
I’d just like to say a huge thank you and a congratulations to the whole Body Rocket team for allowing me to come and experience just how advanced their technology truly is and I hope to be a further part of this project in the future.
Hopefully I will get a few more photos from the testing from the photographer Body Rocket had at the velodrome so watch out for those and a round up of 2022 soon…
Lance Childs 