Drafting - conserving energy

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A trip to the local book store was the order of last night...

While there I picked up the book High Performance Cycling (Human Kinetics) and read on one page that a well place rider in the peleton during a tour de france race stage averaging 40km/h will only need to produce 90-100W of power. It said that if the rider was to cycle this route along this figure could be expect to jump to 275W.

I'm not sure about 275W figure according to analyticcycling.com, however, does anyone know if it is true that you can expect to conserve such amounts of energy by being so well placed in the pack?

Thanks,
Tom.

Originally posted by tomUK
A trip to the local book store was the order of last night...

While there I picked up the book High Performance Cycling (Human Kinetics) and read on one page that a well place rider in the peleton during a tour de france race stage averaging 40km/h will only need to produce 90-100W of power. It said that if the rider was to cycle this route along this figure could be expect to jump to 275W.

I'm not sure about 275W figure according to analyticcycling.com, however, does anyone know if it is true that you can expect to conserve such amounts of energy by being so well placed in the pack?

Thanks,
Tom.

from memory the actual data for that Tour stage was 98 W for the front group. Now, that's good drafting skills!

275 W is definitely the ball park for an average sized male cyclist at that speed on a normal bike.

ric

well from my experience in large groups (50-100) sitting at 45km/h in a bunch I can ride for hours, but when I pull them along I can manage at most 30 minutes. So I guess the figures are about right