December 30, 2008 - A North Shore-based cycling dream team is planning to bring the aerodynamics technology Lance Armstrong uses to the average Masters-level competitor, and they’re betting Armstrong’s impending 2009 comeback will boost interest in the sport, and his brand of training, off-the-charts.
North Shore residents Larry Zimich, a perennial Masters World Games gold-medal threat and Len Brownlie, a PhD aerodynamicist for Nike, 2010 Canadian Olympic team consultant and member of the fabled F1 team of scientists working with Lance Armstrong for his seven Tour de France wins, want to take North Shore cycling training to the next level, bringing riders to the University of Washington wind tunnel next April so they can learn to shave seconds, and even minutes off their times.
The trips won’t exactly be cheap at about $1,400 per rider, but Zimich says he anticipates great interest as dedicated and well-heeled amateur cyclists get stoked about Armstrong’s plans to enter the Tour de France after a three-year layoff. “We’re calling it the Lance effect,” Zimich says with a laugh, interviewed at The Outlook.
Zimich himself remembers reading how Armstrong assembled a team of engineers from his various sponsors at an astronomical price tag, while trying an improbable comeback from cancer in 2003. The team, including Brownlie, gathered at the University of Washington looking for any possible technological advantage by holistically designing equipment from the various manufacturers to fit Armstrong, a landmark change in cycling technology. Still, not many outside the training-bubble believed science could get Armstrong back into a yellow jersey.
“I was like ‘come on, this is just a publicity thing,’” Zimich recalls, of skeptically reading about F1-Armstrong efforts in cycling journals.
When Armstrong went on to win in France, other cyclists, including Zimich, became believers in F1’s aerodynamic-drag reduction gospel.
Zimich subsequently trained with Brownlie at the UBC wind tunnel in 2005 and went on to take a double gold at the World Masters.
“It’s free speed,” Brownlie explains, of the riding stance, bike, clothing and helmet adjustments made that reduce hundreds of grams of drag, allowing cyclists to get equal or greater speed while expending less energy.
Zimich says he felt like he had cut a mini-parachute off his rear tire when he won in 2005. “Before it was, ‘I don’t care if my jersey flaps in the wind.’ After it was ‘Why have I been riding like that all these years.?’”
Brownlie and Zimich say there are two distinct benefits from high-level aerodynamic training. First, according to their calculations, with full equipment, bike set-up and riding position adjustments to maximize speed for energy output, an average cyclist doing a 40 kilometre time-trial at a speed of 40 km/hr, would chop nearly five minutes off their finish time.
Then, there’s the psychological impact. “They know they have the best (equipment) when they roll up to the line and they don’t have to worry about that,” Brownlie says.
For anyone questioning whether Armstrong-level training technology is overkill for the amateur cycling enthusiasts that Zimich typically trains, when not racing himself, Zimich argues his clients have the same will to win in their level races as Tour de France participants. He adds an anecdote about one of his more hungry trainees.
“I have one guy who called me up and asked me to train him because he wants to win at the Canadian Masters next year. He’s a commercial fisherman, and he’s talking to me (by cellphone) while he’s on his (bike-training) rollers on his boat in the middle of the Pacific. That’s the kind of dedication to winning I’m talking about.”
And with cyclists spending tens of thousands of dollars on bikes, training and travel, Brownlie doesn’t see $1,400 for wind tunnel training as a high cost.
“If you look at grams of drag saved for dollars spent, it’s pretty cheap.” Zimich is even more emphatic. “When you’ve sacrificed all this time away from your family and money to train — flat out, (aerodynamic edge) is the difference between winning and losing.”
For information on the wind tunnel testing or training, contact Larry Zimich at zimich@shaw.ca or call Len Brownlie at 604-602-9973.
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Photo: Daniel Pi
CYCLING SHOULDN’T BE A ‘DRAG’ - Len Brownlie (left) and Larry Zimich plan to recruit Masters level cyclists and amateur enthusiasts for world class aerodynamic training at the University of Washington wind tunnel.
Photo: Daniel Pi
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