# Increasing Bike Speed - 10 Ways to Save Watts and Ride Faster | Ep 545

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 2 Jul 2025, 20 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/104510104/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-23%2F09b703b1-5410-f991-78e3-33c62fddeb8c.m4a

In this episode of the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast, Coach Rob provides ten tips for triathletes to increase their bike speed without the need to become a fitter, stronger rider. Ordered in terms of time / power savings, he covers a range of low / no cost adjustments like shaving legs and wearing higher-quality, tighter-fitting tri suits, to those that require a sbigger investment such as aerodynamic helmets and deep-section wheels. Additionally, Coach Rob discusses the value and power savings of optimising tyre choices and pressures, maintaining a clean drive chain, and considering aerodynamic hydration setups. All improvements are quantified in terms of watts saved to offer clear insights into potential time gains and help listeners prioritise the most valuable to them. * * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Like what you heard in this show? Join hundreds of other age group triathletes making the most of their limited training time, training with Team OxygenAddict! http://team.oxygenaddict.com - The most comprehensive triathlon coaching program for busy age groupers. Book an application call to see if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello, and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.
[0:07] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors, Precision Fuel
[0:10] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach Rob Wilby
[0:19] from Team Oxygen Addict Triathlon Coaching, and every
[0:21] week I'll bring you an episode of this podcast to help educate,
[0:24] motivate and inspire you. On this week's Eisode, I'm going
[0:27] to be covering A favourite topic.
[0:28] I'm going to be talking about increasing your bike speed.
[0:31] I'm going to go through 10 ways that you can save watts, you can
[0:35] increase your speed, an you can essentially go faster for the
[0:38] same effort. Some of these changes we're
[0:41] going to make are going to be completely free all the way
[0:44] through to some of the changes we're going to make being
[0:46] extremely expensive. We're going to talk about
[0:48] clothing changes you can make. We're going to talk about bike
[0:51] upgrades you can make. But essentially there's a lot of
[0:54] information in here that I think for everybody.
[0:57] You're going to learn something. For some of you out there,
[1:00] you're going to be blown away by some of the things that I've
[1:02] found. I've spent a lot of time
[1:04] researching this episode and going through what I thought I
[1:08] knew and then checking references and going all the way
[1:11] back to the source data. There's a lot of false
[1:14] advertising out there. There's a lot of false
[1:16] information. And some of the things I found
[1:20] out, I was really surprised by some of the things that I
[1:23] assumed sort of by spending money on this, you would save a
[1:26] tremendous amount of Dragon. Actually, when I've looked at
[1:28] it, it's not been that much at all.
[1:30] There are other things I wasn't aware of at all.
[1:32] We'll talk later about shaving legs, for example, which has an
[1:36] unbelievable effect. So what we'll do today, we'll
[1:39] talk through these changes that we're going to make.
[1:41] But the thing I want you to remember is I'm going to talk
[1:43] about it in terms of what's of drag saved.
[1:46] So what that means is if you were, for example, to change
[1:50] between one set of clothing and another set of clothing, and I
[1:53] say it's a 10 Watt saving, what that means is you would have to
[1:57] ride 10 watts harder to go at the same speed as the change
[2:01] that you've made here. So essentially this is, you can
[2:05] think of it as adding those watts onto your FTP.
[2:08] Essentially that's how you're going to end up going faster.
[2:11] And something to remember here is what I found in the course of
[2:13] the research. A 10 Watt saving and drag is
[2:17] worth about 5 minutes off your Iron Man time for a 5 hour Iron
[2:21] Man rider. So I've run some numbers through
[2:23] best bikes split. I've done some research on other
[2:25] people who've done the same. That's a rough rule of thumb for
[2:28] an athlete who is riding a 5 hour Iron Man pace, which is
[2:31] about 36 K an hour, it'd be slower than that.
[2:34] It's going to be blessed time saved per 10 watts, but we're
[2:38] going to get to the point where I'm going to be pointing you
[2:40] towards somewhere in the region of a a realistic 50 Watt saving
[2:43] here. So to take a 5 hour Iron Man and
[2:47] and knock 25 minutes off that time, that is a significant time
[2:51] shift if you need to make all of these changes.
[2:54] So I hope you really enjoyed the show.
[2:55] SO2 quick things you can do to help us out today.
[2:58] If you like this episode, please consider following us on Spotify
[3:01] or upper podcasts. And if you're looking for help
[3:03] training for your first time man on 70.3, please check out our
[3:06] coaching memberships over at teamoxygenaddict.com.
[3:09] I think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[3:11] programme specifically designed for busy age groupers.
[3:14] If you're interested, there's a link in the show notes to book a
[3:17] membership call with us and see if you'd be a good fit for
[3:19] joining the team. Right, let's get started on
[3:22] these tips and how they can help you.
[3:24] OK, tip #1 is a sleeved Tri suit.
[3:28] The research has shown that a sleeved Tri suit, when we
[3:32] compare this against either a sleeveless Tri suit or even
[3:35] cycling clothing, it's going to be about 10 watts saved.
[3:39] Some of the research from some of the manufacturers and it's no
[3:42] surprise really that some of them are going to say this.
[3:44] They're looking at up to a 15 Watt saving with their skin suit
[3:48] compared to another skin suit. So what we can learn from this
[3:51] is although the numbers might not be exact, there's definitely
[3:55] a benefit to you in having the right skin suit for you that
[3:58] fits. But anybody moving to a sleeved
[4:01] well fitting tight skin suit is going to be saving about 10
[4:04] watts against riding with a normal Tri suit without sleeves
[4:09] on, or even a not very well fitting Tri suit.
[4:11] So bare skin is slower than the fabrics that are out there these
[4:15] days. So changing to a sleeve Tri suit
[4:17] is an instant 10 Watt saving. Second tip here is wearing an
[4:22] aero helmet as opposed to wearing a regular Rd helmet.
[4:26] Again, with information coming out of the wind tunnel, the
[4:29] manufacturers are giving us numbers between 10 and 15 watts
[4:33] of drag saved wearing an aero helmet.
[4:36] Now let's go at the conservative end of that.
[4:39] Let's say it's 10 watts saved. That's absolutely free speed for
[4:43] you just for the price of buying an aero helmet.
[4:47] Now some aero helmets are going to fit you better than others.
[4:49] I would highly recommend you try a range of arrow helmets on as
[4:53] you have your bike fit done. A really good bike fitter and
[4:57] give a shout out here to my friend Matt Bottle.
[4:59] He's got a whole range of arrow helmets that you can try on
[5:02] during your bike fit and you can see with the naked eye and Matt
[5:06] can certainly see with his well trained eye which of these arrow
[5:10] helmets is going to fit your position best?
[5:12] Which is going to close the gap between where the arrow helmet
[5:14] goes down towards your back and meet your back.
[5:17] That's the key to reducing your aerodynamic drag using the
[5:20] helmet O again, arrow helmet here is an instant minimum 10
[5:25] Watt saving and a well fitting one might even save you more
[5:28] drag than that. 3rd tip is to wear calf sleeves or and or
[5:34] shave your legs. So calf sleeves, the information
[5:37] coming back here from the wind tunnels is they're worth about
[5:40] four to six watts. So let's say A5 Watt saving by
[5:44] wearing calf sleeves of your legs.
[5:46] They are in the region of 50 lbs.
[5:48] So it's a massive benefit to you from simply having spent that
[5:52] amount of money. But the thing that really
[5:54] surprised me was the effect of shaving legs, shaving legs and
[5:59] the that it was specialised who did the the tests and they were
[6:02] testing their own equipment at the time.
[6:04] One of the athletes who they were using went and shaved his
[6:07] legs in between runs and came back again and they discovered
[6:10] it was a 15 Watt saving. The two engineers who are doing
[6:13] this were very experienced wind tunnel users.
[6:17] They got 5 separate subjects to do this and validated the
[6:20] numbers five times in a row. So a 15 Watt saving just from
[6:25] shaving your legs. Now I know there are some people
[6:27] who will be shaving legs simply as a matter of course.
[6:29] It's quite fashionable in triathlon to do it.
[6:32] But a lot of people don't shave the legs.
[6:34] I would suggest to you that a 15 Watt saving and remember that's
[6:38] going to equate to a A5 to 7 1/2 minute off your Iron Man bike
[6:43] time. If you're a 5 hour bike leg that
[6:46] is a massive saving for the sake of shaving your legs.
[6:49] So really really considerate. We're talking what 2 or 3 lbs
[6:52] for a leg raiser? Well worth it.
[6:54] If you don't want to shave your legs then the calf sleeves are
[6:57] going to do about half the job aerodynamically for about a £50
[7:02] and 50 LB cost. So well, well worth looking
[7:05] into. The 4th tip I've got for you
[7:07] here is Arrow shoe covers. Now there's a there's a benefit
[7:11] and a trade off here. Arrow shoe covers are always
[7:14] worn by time trial list, but of course there's a time penalty to
[7:17] put them on. Data is showing that they again
[7:20] save between 4:00 to 6:00 watts. So that five Watt saving, you're
[7:24] going to be looking at about a 2 1/2 three minutes saving of the
[7:29] Iron Man bike leg if you can get them on faster than that.
[7:32] So no brainer to have them on. But if it's going to cost you
[7:35] more time than that, putting them on and off in transition,
[7:38] then I'd advise you to stay clear of them for your Iron Man
[7:40] races. But it's something to be aware
[7:42] of that five Watt saving is significant.
[7:46] And the 5th tip that I've got for you here is to avoid wearing
[7:50] a loose jacket or flapping kit. And often this is on a rainy
[7:54] day, a loose flapping jacket is going to cost you upwards of 20
[7:58] watts. And I saw some data that
[8:00] suggested upwards of 30 watts in terms of aerodynamic drag.
[8:04] So again, if we go back to the idea that each 10 watts is going
[8:08] to be about 5 minutes on the road, that jacket could be 10 or
[8:12] 15 minutes additional onto your bike time.
[8:16] So if you've got a cold rainy day, I'm not saying don't wear a
[8:20] rain jacket because you are going to have to stay warm for
[8:24] 5678 hours out on the road. But the choice of jacket you
[8:28] have could massively impact your aerodynamics and how long you're
[8:31] out on the road for. So that's really worth thinking
[8:33] about. If the jacket is going to add
[8:36] even 10 minutes onto your bike time, that's a significant
[8:39] amount of time. So consider your options
[8:41] carefully for cold and rainy race days.
[8:44] My tip for you here is to look at the Castelli Gabba Ross
[8:47] jacket or jersey or gilet that you can put on the very tight
[8:51] fitting, the quite waterproof to keep you nice and warm.
[8:55] It's a really good option to have.
[8:57] Now there is going to be a slight aerodynamic penalty over
[9:00] the top end skin suit but nowhere near as much as a loose
[9:04] flappy rain jacket. And for those of you who are at
[9:06] the slower end of the course and are fighting the cut off,
[9:09] investing 100 plus pounds in a jacket for race day, which
[9:12] you're going to wear a lot of the time raining in the riding
[9:15] in the rain anyway, that could save you serious time over a
[9:18] really loose rain jacket. So again, to wrap up this video,
[9:22] then it's worth thinking that 10 watts worth of drag is in the
[9:26] region of 5 minutes saved or added on, whichever way you want
[9:31] to look at it, to your Iron Man bike time for a 5 hour bike leg.
[9:35] So if you can find 30 watts worth savings here, that's about
[9:39] 15 minutes off your bike time. So it's well, well worth doing.
[9:42] Okay, this is a great point to stop and give a shout out to our
[9:45] sponsors Precision Fuel on hydration.com.
[9:48] You can head over to their website.
[9:49] You can use their free fuel and hydration planning tool to
[9:52] receive a personalised strategy for your next race.
[9:54] The plan is going to help you to understand your own
[9:56] carbohydrate, electrolyte and fluid needs.
[9:58] You can even book a free one to one video consultation with PF
[10:02] and HS athlete support team. I've not mentioned it in the
[10:05] course of this podcast, but getting your calorie intake
[10:09] wrong, getting your hydration intake wrong, getting your
[10:12] electrolyte intake wrong cannot just cost you time.
[10:14] It can be catastrophic and cost you even finishing the race.
[10:18] So it's well worth going and getting a complete fuel and
[10:21] hydration planning done. Then you know exactly what
[10:24] you're taking on in terms of carbs.
[10:26] You can plan out exactly what products you're going to take or
[10:27] what you're going to pick up at aid stations and you'll have a
[10:30] really good base plan that you can then adapt on race day if
[10:34] you need to. Again, if you're going to buy
[10:35] from them for the first time, you can support the use the code
[10:38] oxygen fuel 25 and you'll get 15% off your first order.
[10:43] And that's great for us because it tracks on their website and
[10:45] it shows them that our listeners are actually supporting them and
[10:49] buying from them as well. So if you want to go and do
[10:51] that, I cannot recommend their products highly enough.
[10:53] Their electrolytes have been games became changing for me and
[10:56] race saving for me. The hydration planning advice
[10:59] has been similar and they make fantastic gels.
[11:03] The flow gel is an awesome solution for taking up to 300
[11:06] grammes in a single bottle out on the bike.
[11:08] And their PF and H chews are so great that my son steals them
[11:12] and takes them to school in his lunch box, meaning it cost me a
[11:14] fortune. So be aware of that.
[11:16] If you buy some of those, you're going to have to hide them in
[11:18] the garage. But anyway, massive shout out to
[11:21] Position Fuel and Hydration. Love the team, love the people
[11:24] behind the team, and I love their products.
[11:26] So get over there and check it out if you haven't done already.
[11:29] Now here are 5 bike upgrades you can make that are going to
[11:32] significantly save you time #1 proper arrow positioning on the
[11:37] bike. Now here we're looking at
[11:39] between 25 and 35 watts saved when we compare it against
[11:43] somebody riding a road bike sitting up on the hoods.
[11:46] So firstly, adding clip on bars to a road bike is going to save
[11:51] you about 20 watts worth of drag.
[11:53] If you then move from a road bike with clip on Tri bars to
[11:57] riding a TT bike, that's going to save about another 5 watts.
[12:01] This is information that's come from wind tunnels.
[12:04] And then on top of this, having a very good TT bike fit and
[12:08] optimising the position and most crucially learning to hold the
[12:12] optimised position could save up to another 10 watts.
[12:16] We add those together and we're in the region of a 35 Watt
[12:19] saving just by moving from sitting upright on a road bike
[12:23] to being in a really good position down on a well fitted
[12:26] time trail bike. So again, it's going to cost
[12:29] money, but there's massive savings to be made there.
[12:32] Next upgrade is deep section wheels.
[12:35] Now here the information suggests that moving from
[12:38] standard Rd wheels to about a 60 mil wheel is going to be in the
[12:42] region of 10 to 15 watts worth of drag saved.
[12:46] Individual wheels vary here and in the the information that
[12:49] looked at from wind tunnel testing, there was about a 5
[12:53] Watt difference between the very best performing 60 mil wheel and
[12:57] the worst performing 60 mil wheel.
[12:58] So we're somewhere in that 10 to 15 watts worth of saving.
[13:02] Now obviously you can go to deeper wheels, you can go to 80
[13:05] or 90 mil wheels, you can have a disc wheel on the back and there
[13:08] will be increased but incrementally small gains from
[13:12] having those on. The biggest win here is to get
[13:15] yourself onto a set of 50 to 60 mil carbon wheels.
[13:19] That's really going to reduce the drag that you've got.
[13:22] There doesn't seem to be a correlation between spending
[13:25] more on the deeper section wheels.
[13:27] There is a correlation slightly to the deeper section.
[13:30] So the deeper the wheel goes, the faster it's going to be, but
[13:35] the returns are are reduced after that 60 mil level and also
[13:39] it's going to be much harder to handle the bike in crosswinds if
[13:42] you get much above 50 or 60 mils.
[13:44] So for me, I think the sweet spot is a 60 mil deep section
[13:48] wheel and we're looking at that 10 to 15 Watt saving.
[13:51] Now the third saving, this was a big eye opener for me is race
[13:56] tyres and the way we set them up.
[13:58] Moving to a good race tyre from a standard winter endurance tyre
[14:03] is going to be in the realm of 10 watts per tyre saved, any
[14:08] amount of dragon rolling resistance.
[14:10] There's even more extreme tyres that were giving 13 or 14 watts
[14:14] per tyre saving, but again, there's there's a reduction in
[14:18] the amount of puncture protection Giga as you go to
[14:21] more and more extreme tyres. But with a really good tyre like
[14:24] a Conti 5000 race tyre, we're looking at a 9 or 10 Watt saving
[14:29] compared to one of the Conti winter tyres that they compared
[14:32] against. So there's instantly an 18 to 20
[14:35] Watt gain there just by changing your tyres over.
[14:39] If you then swap over to running tubeless as opposed to running a
[14:43] standard inner tube, the gains there are about 5 watts extra
[14:47] per wheel as well. So again, now we're into the
[14:49] realms of 30 watts saved. So again, this is getting to be
[14:53] massive. And then information from Silca
[14:56] on their website suggests that optimising tyre pressure can be
[15:00] up to an 8 Watt gain. So either much too hard or much
[15:06] too soft, it's obviously going to be really bad.
[15:08] But by optimising that the correct pressure for you and
[15:11] your weight, there's a few extra watts to be saved here.
[15:14] So we're looking in the region here of a 30 Watt saving just by
[15:18] changing tyres, running them tubeless and having them set up
[15:22] at the correct the correct pressure for you.
[15:26] It's really surprised by the amount of time we're talking
[15:29] about that that 30 Watt saving. It's going to be in the realms
[15:32] of 15 minutes of your bike, like for a 5 hour Iron Man bike like
[15:36] person, which is amazing. Now Next up, water bottles and
[15:41] considering a between the arms hydration set up.
[15:45] The savings here are between 5:00 to 20 watts, but we have to
[15:48] be careful how we quantify this. There's great information here
[15:52] on the website by the company absolute speed.
[15:55] They're making an arrow add on that allows you to have either
[15:58] one or two bottles that sit between your arms as you ride in
[16:03] the time trial position. But they're claimed wattage
[16:07] savings are based around removing the round bottles of
[16:10] the down tube. And here's the challenge.
[16:14] If you're racing Iron Man or 70.3, you're going to have to
[16:16] have a way to carry your fluids with you.
[16:19] But it looks like there's somewhere in the region of a an
[16:22] 8 to 10 Watt penalty for having round bike bottles on the bike
[16:27] frame on either the down tube or the seat tube.
[16:30] It looks like the penalty, if you like, for having it behind
[16:33] the saddle. It's about 5 watts and having
[16:37] the bottle between your arms can even be U to a 10 Watt saving if
[16:41] it closes that gap between your arms.
[16:44] O The numbers here are going to be different for different
[16:47] people. But in the perfect world, if you
[16:50] could run a set up where you don't have any bottles on the
[16:53] frame, you have a single bottle behind the saddle and you have
[16:56] two bottles between your arms, you've got plenty of options to
[16:59] carry your bottles there and you don't have to have anything on
[17:02] the frame messing up the wind. So do that information as you
[17:05] will. There is somewhere in the region
[17:07] of 5 to 20 watts worth of drag to be gained by optimising your
[17:11] bottle positions there. And lastly, our fifth tip and
[17:16] this one is basically free is to have a really clean well oiled
[17:21] or well waxed chain and drive chain.
[17:24] OA lot of us don't give any thought to this yet There's
[17:27] there's up to a 10 Watt saving to be had just in the efficiency
[17:31] of your drive chain just by changing to have a new clean
[17:35] chain on your bike for race day compared to one that's covered
[17:38] in grime and oil and dirt up to 10 watts.
[17:41] That's 5 minutes off your Iron Man bike time for having that
[17:45] new clean chain. So again, something to really
[17:48] think about there. Add all of those up together and
[17:52] they're not all going to work on top of each other like a
[17:54] complete stack. But there's in the region of
[17:56] 5050 watts to be saved there. I think in a, in a reasonable
[18:01] and best case scenario, you know, the tyres and the tubes
[18:04] and the correct pressure set up there and alone is a massive,
[18:07] massive saving before even people think about going on to
[18:10] optimising the railroad position.
[18:12] So there's a lot of free speed to be had.
[18:15] There's a lot of extra speed to be had, not very expensively.
[18:18] And then if you want to spend thousands and thousands and
[18:21] thousands of pounds, you can absolutely do that.
[18:24] But when you think moving from a road bike set up with TT bars on
[18:28] to ATT bike with TT bars on, we're only looking in the realms
[18:32] of a 5 to 10 Watt. Saving the 30 watts you can get
[18:36] by optimising your tyres is massive for the amount of money
[18:39] it's going to cost. So lots of things to think about
[18:43] there, and lots of ways you can hack massive amounts of time off
[18:46] your Iron Man race day without needing to be any fitter.
[18:49] That's the key thing here. OK, to wrap up this episode of
[18:53] the podcast, hope it's been really helpful for you.
[18:55] I hope, I hope you've you've lessened this and thought, you
[18:58] know, there's tonnes of ways I can save loads of drag and save
[19:01] loads of time here for free. To wrap this up, here are some
[19:04] discount codes and deals for you over at Precision Fuel and
[19:07] hydration.com. You can use the code Oxygen Fuel
[19:10] 25 for 15% off your first electrolytes and fuel order.
[19:15] I know over at teamoxygenaddict.com I think
[19:17] we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching programme
[19:20] specifically designed for busy age groupers.
[19:23] If you're looking for coaching for Iron Man or 70.3 Triathlon
[19:27] this year, please get in touch. There's a link in the show notes
[19:30] to book a membership call with us and see if you'd be a good
[19:32] fit for joining the team. So remember, links are down
[19:35] there in the show notes so you don't have to remember them
[19:38] until next week. Have a great safe training and
[19:41] racing week. Get out there and optimise your
[19:42] position, maybe buy some new kit, maybe change some clothing
[19:46] and I hope it gives you some free speed.
[19:47] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[19:50] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.