How Much SLOWER Are Normal Clothes For Everyday Cyclists?

[00:00:00]Aerodynamic clothing is pointless for everyday cyclist is what some people say. But is that actually true or is it yet another cycling myth that's ready to get busted? So, we're going to test it out to find out because turns out not many people have actually tested this at the slower speeds of everyday cyclists.

[00:00:20]Now, you might not think this matters to you, but I'm willing to bet it could do because there's a potential here for your clothing choices to actually be a greater upgrade than getting an expensive new bike.

[00:00:34]Look, if you're a serious race up or waiting for that last minute call up to the tour to France, you should already know this kind of stuff. But two weeks ago, I made a reel that over 2 million people viewed showing how gym kit required 75 W more or 20% additional power to ride at 40 km an hour compared to performance cycle clothing. And the comment section went absolutely wild.

[00:00:57]>> You'll get there 5 minutes quicker and take 10 minutes to get changed, but it's 40k an hour. Absolutely no one pedals that wearing normal clothes. Even with cycling clothes, it's only the pros.

[00:01:10]What's the impact at 25 km/h/gravel/social ride? Yeah, this is fake.

[00:01:16]>> So, actually, I wasn't thinking that people would be up here watching as I'm getting changed.

[00:01:21]>> Also, that Stefan's filming you getting the skater boys think I'm total loser if they didn't think that already. What do you think?

[00:01:30]>> Apart from the helmet, you look all right. Yeah.

[00:01:32]>> And the shoes.

[00:01:47]care. Why is my life?

[00:01:49]>> So, here we are dressed as everyday cyclists ready to do a few laps of this track and find the answers that we desperately want to know. I have dusted off my finest suit to represent the office worker/ city banker.

[00:02:03]>> Yeah. Is that your wedding suit? Uh, no.

[00:02:05]I actually got it from a charity shop 30 minutes ago. Trousers £4.75, shirt £3, jacket of fiverr.

[00:02:11]>> Well, that is cheaper than cycling kit.

[00:02:12]It is. And then this uh this is actually an outfit that I used to go riding around the Himalayas a few years ago.

[00:02:19]>> Is that like a humble brag?

[00:02:20]>> A little bit. Yeah. But genuinely, I now want to know whether or not riding around the Himalayas could have been 20% easier if only I'd been wearing Lyra.

[00:02:27]>> Six laps of the track for each setup.

[00:02:30]Three at 150 W and three at 200 W. Once that's done, we can switch to our Aeron Nerd Lyra setups to recreate the test laps and see what the difference is.

[00:02:41]Three, two, one, go. Anyway, while Sai and I ride round and round the cycle track looking like a pair of commuters who have got lost, I thought I would take the time to discuss our testing a little bit further. Now, this kind of test is pretty basic and of course susceptible to a number of external factors impacting the results. But the real world is where we actually ride our bike. So, it makes a lot of sense to test in these conditions. But what about the question that I posed at the beginning of this video? Could Aero Clothing be a greater upgrade than an expensive new bike? Well, the answer is it depends. It depends on a number of different factors, but the reason this is typically the case is because your body accounts for about 80% of your overall aerodynamic drag and then the remaining 20% it's kind of accounted for from the bike. Which means there is a far greater opportunity to try to find performance improvements from optimizing your body position or of course carefully selecting the clothing that you cycle in. Now, your body position is by far the most important, and if you want to optimize your setup, well, focus on this first. But clothing can also have a significant impact, too, as we're hopefully about to find out. Now, swapping out those loose, flappy clothing for tight fitting options is going to help a lot. And then the surface texture of your clothing is also going to have an impact, too. Now, this is something that Ollie explained in a recent video around why Aeroscks are such a brilliant upgrade. Now, a carefully designed textured surface can help to reduce the area of low pressure behind each part of your body. And then if you can reduce that area of the low pressure in a significant way, we can reduce aerodynamic drag and therefore ride faster. Similar concepts can apply to bike design. But whilst you can't exactly change the shape of your legs, your arms or your torso, bike tubes can be made into almost any shapes, which gives bikes a huge advantage. But let's not forget the fact that your bike accounts for just 20% of your overall aerodynamic drag. Anyway, enough chat about it. Back to Sai and I at the track. Well, that was not necessarily the most exciting nor the toughest to Simon yet, but that is precisely the point, right? The toughness bit. This is supposed to represent normal cycling where you can enjoy it and have fun as opposed to batter yourself senseless.

[00:05:06]Yeah. So the powers that we rode at were representative of what I would say is for every person and data from our mix at Zift actually suggests that their average user has an FTP under 200 W. So feels like a good number to me. Okay.

[00:05:19]Right. Um to the results. At 150 W size shorts and t-shirt was 22 seconds slower than performance kit per lap. So that's every 1.5 km. At 200 W it was just 10 seconds slower than performance kit per lap. a result that most certainly surprised me. And for my office suit, well, at 150 W, it was 30 seconds slower per lap, but at 200 W, it was 23 seconds slower. A far greater difference than what Sai found. Presumably, this could be because at the higher speed and power, the flappy suit and the fact that my road bike has got fast wood and tires started to play a more significant part compared to size setup using his gravel bike. So I think it's fair to say a fairly significant difference from our test results and also even just over the short time and duration that we've been testing it has highlighted there's some big savings to be had. But if you want to know the sort of examples that might be a bit more relatable to you say over longer distances and durations I can put a couple of different examples up on screen. But it's also worth mentioning that the the different clothing choices we've used today are at the extreme ends of the scale like what yours was.

[00:06:32]Particularly mine. I mean, yeah. So, it's worth remembering that. But also, you couldn't simply rock up to a to a meeting dressed like this, could you?

[00:06:42]>> Not many meetings. No. Um, but I definitely don't think that my casual kit was extreme at all. Like, >> it's something that I would wear to go mountain biking at the weekend, for example. And then just anecdotally, you absolutely notice the difference between that and then full Lyra even riding offroad at slower speeds. So the difference is significant enough to matter when you go to the dark side on the off-road. Exactly. Um also there's going to be other people who are perhaps watching this thinking, well yeah, I'm not riding around in a suit. I've already got entry level cycling kits. We need to consider those as well, don't we?

[00:07:17]>> Yeah, we do. I mean, you will definitely notice a difference going from normal cycling kit to performance cycling kit, but let's be clear, it's going to be a much much much smaller difference. Yeah, it's that sort of law of diminishing returns, isn't it? So, once you've bought into the right type of stuff, the performance advantages you can get become smaller and smaller. There's also something else which is particularly interesting is obviously some of the advantage not only comes from the tight fitting clothing, but the texture of the material and stuff like that. And something I found out when I was doing a load of different testing ahead of going to race unbound last year in the winter was that certain fabrics which perform really well at high speeds, it doesn't always scale down to slower speeds. So there may well be some fabrics which on paper look like they're slow when the wind tunnel tests are like 50k an hour or whatever, but they might actually perform better than that that kit at everyday speeds. It's quite confusing, but it's just worth remembering. don't always use wind tunnel results for relating across to everyday speeds.

[00:08:19]>> I mean, that is quite interesting. Can I tell you one thing I noticed riding around there? So, it was quite windy, wasn't it?

[00:08:24]>> Very.

[00:08:25]>> Yeah. And >> riding in like tight fitting clothing, it's a lot quieter. It's quite It's a lot calmer like when you're wearing baggy stuff that's flapping around and blowing in the wind. You got to try riding in a suit and trousers.

[00:08:38]>> Well, I mean, I don't really want to, but uh but it you know, you might not like the style. That's absolutely fine.

[00:08:43]and you might not feel comfortable in it, but it is quite >> quite good for cycling.

[00:08:48]>> Yeah. I I suppose there's a reason why lots of people use it.

[00:08:50]>> Yeah.

[00:08:51]>> Yeah.

[00:08:51]>> Now, you might well be thinking as well that this doesn't matter to me in the slightest because I don't want to go faster. And that's absolutely fine. Like it's not necessarily about that. But something to bear in mind is that even if you don't want to go faster, it will make cycling slightly easier as well, won't it? like you will go further for the same effort or you will go the same speed and the same distance for less effort. And that's not necessarily something to be sniffed at. It might even help you keep up with your mates at a weekend.

[00:09:22]>> That's a good thing for me.

[00:09:24]>> Definitely.

[00:09:28]Now, one aspect I've not yet discussed is price. And this is where things get even better. Because although the high price tag of some performance clothing does make me feel somewhat sad, it's still way cheaper than the price of topsp spec bikes. Now, if we ignore any specific brands here, top tier performance cycle kit can cost around £500. However, with some shopping around and some smart choices, you can probably get that down closer to around the £150 marker. Essentially, by carefully looking at the different brands and products out there, you can essentially gain 80% of the performance for near 20% of the price. Whereas top tier performance bikes from almost all brands are north of £10,000, which means clothing will always offer a far greater bang for your buck. Even taking into account the 8020% rule that I just discussed, cycling kits will always be the cheaper option. So, there you go. a somewhat fun and loosely scientific test that shows how whether you like it or not, aerodynamics affects all of us.

[00:10:31]Now, what you choose to do with this information is of course totally up to you. But I hope you enjoyed seeing me in my suit and sigh in his gymnastics kit.

[00:10:40]Now, please do get involved in the comments section down below to share what kind of kit that you typically ride in. And as always, hit the like button and subscribe to GCN Tech for more fun and nerdy bike videos. I can't always guarantee the suit, though. See you.