I was listening to a podcast (think it was a Cycling Tips tech one) and the guest clever chap did aero testing for EF and Cannondale, he said the Cannondale white paper for the system six said when climbing anything under 6% aero trumps weight.
Got me thinking how long on my rides I am at various gradients. Does anyone know of a method to find this? It’s not a Strava option or Wahoo app.
Elevate add on for Strava
The “Elevate” (formerly Stravistix) chrome extension which is free provides this.
Awesome, cheers y’all
I suspect I might be missing it but can’t see anything like this.
Might be something no one really needs.
If you go on a Strava activity, click around where the stats are on the right hand side (there might be a button that says display extended elevate statistics), it will take you to a page with a lot more details like time spent at each power, speed, cadence, gradient etc. Sorry I’m on mobile at the moment but will try and remember to look on my laptop tomorrow.
Edit : you can see the analysis you can access here Elevate For Strava
That grade chart was what I was thinking of but over a month, 6 months, a year or what ever.
I kinda mocked one up in intervals.icu but I have no idea how I build it without getting all the fit data into a SQL database.
Oh you mean cumulative stats over multiple rides? I’m not sure if that’s in elevate from memory sorry.
Yeah I didn’t think so, it really looks like it should be available somewhere. Help make decisions whether to focus on weight/aero/combo.
Thanks for the help though.
How was the testing done ? I mean, while riding outdoors, there are so many external forces that change the behaviour of the bike/rider combo that is is almost impossible to say what is actually better.
This is the white paper referenced: https://www.cannondale.com/-/media/files/whitepaper/systemsix_whitepaper_v2.pdf?la=en-gb&hash=A3AA582653C2FFC179E3CAA08BF1EAEA0C72D6B6
I am not an aerodynamic expert and cannot verify validity of those tests.
What I did notice is that all of their test data presented comes from a wind tunnel. That alone makes bugger all difference in real world, due to ever changing conditions.
Of course, the biggest red flag is that the whitepaper comes from the manufacturer and not an independent party. If it helps Cannondale to sell bikes, more power to them. I however, try to stay as far away from these types of “studies” as possible as they are incredibly biased.
Found the podcast: Nerd Alert Podcast: How much does bike weight actually matter? - CyclingTips
