Best Bike Split Combines Math, Physics and Cycling

May 13, 2014 - DALLAS -- Best Bike Split is a new web based application that uses detailed information about a race course, a cyclist’s equipment, power data, riding style, as well as race day conditions to develop the optimal power plan for an athlete to achieve the fastest possible time on a course while staying within target power ranges.

It uses advanced mathematics to determine where on the course it makes sense to power up and power down to hit the best time for a given power target.

How does it work?

Athletes enter rider data as well as details about their bike and equipment. Many specific technical details such as drag and rolling resistance are auto-calculated, but more advanced users can overwrite these values based on wind-tunnel data or their own testing.

Courses containing GPS data can be uploaded from devices such as a Garmin or selected from the existing course library. The race plan is then created with a few more details, such as road conditions, weather conditions and specifying the type of model you would like to run.

Currently we have 3 advanced models; the Normalized Power Model determines the optimal pacing and race strategy to minimize time while targeting a specific Normalized Power goal, the Goal Time Model uses your goal finish time to determine the optimal pacing and effort needed to complete a course in that time, and the Training Stress Score Model which uses a goal target training stress score value to optimize your power pacing for the course.

What’s in a race plan?
The main power plan chart displays an overlay of power, estimated speed and the course elevation profile. The yaw angle distribution chart shows how much time an athlete will spend in each yaw angle range for the race.

This can be extremely useful for equipment selection or if an athlete was planning to purchase a new set of wheels or bike frame. Other summary results include details like estimated race time, average power, normalized power, training stress score and average yaw angle.

Some of these metrics are more advanced, but once they are understood can be very powerful especially for long distance triathlon athletes looking to have a good run off the bike. Along with the charts and summary data, the athlete can also download multiple file types that are compatible with both popular training applications such as CompuTrainer or Trainer- Road as well as popular cycling computers and watches like the Garmin Edge 500, Garmin 910XT, or the PowerTap Joule GPS.

By press release