[HAMR] March 6th

[Kim]

Are you implying that the drag, if you'll pardon the expression, of the beard slows me down more than the aerobelly speeds me up?

Must do...   

[Mr Larrington]

Aerobellies, as any fule kno, only work on recumbents.

[Jack_P]

Are you implying that the drag, if you'll pardon the expression, of the beard slows me down more than the aerobelly speeds me up?

Interestingly specialised have recently released some utube videos from there wind tunnel stating that beards have no aerodynamic effect. They also showed that shaved legs have a significant effect, and shaved arms about 20 secs per 40km.
Guess that's why Brad "Mr marginal gains" Wiggo is still furry, along with increasingly more pro riders.

[macnark]

Leading edge turbulators, them beards. I predict that the modern rider in the know will be shaving only the backs and sides of their legs, and will sport moustaches and goatees, but no sideburns. You can see Chris Hopkinson knows he's onto summat with that mohican. Remember you heard it here first - Get the leading edge with a leading edge hedge.  Save 25% on shaving bills. Its gonna be huge.

[T42]

Only problems I've had with mine have been:

- icicle formation in winter
- moustache hairs fencing with nasal hairs in the wee small hours.

[Mr Larrington]

Leading edge turbulators, them beards. I predict that the modern rider in the know will be shaving only the backs and sides of their legs, and will sport moustaches and goatees, but no sideburns. You can see Chris Hopkinson knows he's onto summat with that mohican. Remember you heard it here first - Get the leading edge with a leading edge hedge.  Save 25% on shaving bills. Its gonna be huge.

I'm fairly sure I read something similar in a cycling magazine in the mid-1980s.

A full-on Billy Gibbons might be good for the Spring Classics - keeps the SNO out of the front of your jersey - but I'm not sureit would be a gain in the Midi in July.

[Wobbly John]

Years ago, in the year after Boardman's famous win on the Lotus bike, my boss used to organise monthly physics lectures for schools and uni students at the Cavendish labs. We got Mike Burrows to do a lecture. One of the questions asked was about laminar air flow, and Mike gave a great explanation of: dimples on golf balls; why laminar flow is not possible on something the size of an airliner, but possibly just possible on a bike; etc, using shoppers on Oxford Street as an analogy.

He suggested that putting a strip of insulating tape down the leading edge of tubes would be enough to have a similar effect to golf ball dimples, and aerodynamically, a head badge could make up to half a second difference on a 25 mile TT.

[Ivo]

Around the Nagano olympics there was a lot of debate about aerodynamic strips on speedskating suits. You need quite a lot of windtunnel tests to determine the right position of them. What happened was that a few countries had them and they won a lot. So other riders started to place the strips at random on their suits, which sometimes caused the opposite effect.
These things might work but you need to use them knowing how to use them.

[Wowbagger]

So it's official. It's not my beard that is slowing me down. That's a relief.

[Oaky]

Has Billy Gibbons ever been photographed in a marsh?

[Mr Larrington]

Nearest I could find:



But that was before the Rise of the Beards.