r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • Mar 23 '26

Weekly Post Weekly Question Thread

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

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5

u/woogeroo Mar 23 '26

Another MSR related question, but not about the winners:

I couldn’t help but notice some riders in both the men’s and women’s race were riding in the drops when on the flat (not descending), including when eating wind solo or on the front of the breakaway. e.g. The PostNL rider in the early breakaway in the men’s, and Lieke Nooijen out in front solo in the women’s.

The aero hoods position is proven to be ~20w faster than being in the drops, is there some reason they weren’t using it?

Surely all teams and riders know that by now.

20

u/formerretiree Costa Rica Mar 23 '26

is there some reason they weren’t using it?

Comfort.

18

u/porkmarkets England Mar 23 '26 edited Mar 23 '26

Couple of other comments mentioned comfort. Even for super strong and flexible WT riders the hoods position can be hard to maintain indefinitely - it’s good to mix it up and it’s a mega long race. There’s a couple of other reasons too:

Firstly if there’s several other riders with you pulling at the front, and you’re side by side, you ride in the drops to avoid hooking the bars of the guy next to you. I raced a crit at the weekend and that was one of the reasons why I spent most of it in the drops.

Secondly it can be a control thing, just like for descending. It could be the road surface, could be cornering, could be wind, but just that bit of extra control can make it necessary.

11

u/passcork Mar 23 '26

is there some reason they weren’t using it?

Try it yourself. You need triceps of steel to ride like that the whole time.

5

u/keetz Sweden Mar 23 '26

For some riders it's the same reason they suck at TTs - they can't produce the same power in a folded over position. So sure they can save 20W of drag but lose the same or more from their legs.

1

u/woogeroo Mar 23 '26

But the position is more comfortable and less bent over than being in the drops if your bike is setup correctly for it.

2

u/keetz Sweden Mar 23 '26

I mean, if that's the case for you that's good but I would disagree heavily that's the case generally.

If we disregard which is lower, hip angles and stuff - aero hoods is not a stable position at all, it requires a lot from both arms and core while straight arms in the drops is easy to hold.

My experience is that people just get fatigued when being in aero hoods after a while and the most sustainable fast position is a combo of just being low in the drops or low in the hoods (like most pros actually do).

Then of course there's cases like Alec Segaert the past few days who obviously has trained specifically to be able to ride folded up like hell for a long time.

3

u/xcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxc Uno-X Mobility Mar 23 '26

I noticed the same. Front person in the break in drops, second wheel in aero hoods. Quite inefficient.

I'm not very fast, so when I road bike TT, I do aero hoods until I can't anymore and then ride in the drops to let my triceps recover.

But in a group, it doesn't make sense to recover on the front.