How fast are cycling sprints

How to Become a Faster Sprinter on the Bike. To better understand sprinting, lets define the three components of success: acceleration, top end speed, and fatigue resistance. Acceleration is the ability to increase speed rapidly. Sprinters with great acceleration create immediate gaps and leave other riders fighting to get on the wheel. In my experience, acceleration is driven more by cadence than pure power.

Riders with smart gear selection and the ability to spin high-cadence sprints will always out-accelerate riders who love big-gear, heavy-power sprint accelerations. Top end speed is exactly what it sounds like: how fast can you go in an all-out sprint.

Top end sprinting is all about generating speed and is a combination of form, cadence, strength, and positioning aerodynamics.

Clearly power plays a role here, but tracking sprint speed gives us insight into the ability to translate watts into speed through quality of form and aerodynamics. Fatigue resistance is often neglected in sprinting but is very important. Simply put, fatigue resistance is the ability to resist a decline in power over time when sprinting compared to your Pmax max power output for at least one revolution of the crank. Look at the chart below. This type of power decline is a real limiter in longer sprints.

High Acceleration and Low Fatigue Resistance These are the sprinter who can put three bike lengths on you before you know it but cannot sustain the long sprint. This type of sprinter needs to be skilled at positioning in the finishing setup, finding the right lead out, and using it to wait to the last second possible to complete the final sprint.

I often recommend that this sprinter be more of a freelancer and focus on racing the other racers, targeting key competitors and looking to pass them late in the sprint. Starting the sprint too early is death to this type of sprinter, as they open a gap, get chased, and end up passed by more fatigue-resistant riders. The long sprinter wants things fast and hard over the last two kilometers to soften the peloton and prepare his move.

For this type of sprinter, I often recommend having a marked sprint point not as much freelance on the course that triggers the sprint. This will help the long sprinter focus on the pre-setup lead-in instead of waiting too long to start his move.

If you are shifting while in the midst of your sprint, remember your gears are under load. Shifting under load could result in skipping gears or even breaking a chain.

Before a race, make sure your gears are in tip-top shape and you have a new chain on your bike to avoid any big problems. You can also lighten up on your pedals for a half stroke while you shift, which will take some practice to perfect! Arms control the bike and add leverage: As you sprint, pushing and pulling on your handlebars and thus moving your bike from side to side underneath you will help you control the bike and increase your leverage — helping your legs provide more power!

So how do you get faster at sprinting? Set aside some rides specifically for sprint training. Body Position Hands in Drops Placing your hands on the drops instead of on the hoods will give you more traction and leverage to throw the bike during your sprint.

Out of Saddle Standing up and getting out of the saddle during a sprint will allow you to put more power into your pedals and accelerate during a sprint. Bent Elbows Bending your elbows as you stand will give you room to move the bike underneath you. Flat Back The taller you are on the bike, the less aerodynamic you will be. During the study, participants rode metres in two directions at 25kph, 32kph and 40kph and in each of the three positions, resulting in a total of 18 efforts per participant.

During these efforts we measured cycling velocity, power output, road gradient, wind velocity and direction, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. We then used these variables, together with the weight of the cyclist and bicycle, and constants for rolling resistance and the efficiency of the drive system, in a mathematical model to calculate the aerodynamic drag.

This model has previously been shown to give valid measurements compared with a wind tunnel. This decrease in drag could potentially result in an important increase in cycling sprint velocity of 3. Read more: Skill vs luck: who really deserves the rewards from success? Throughout the average duration of a typical road cycling sprint about 14 seconds this would result in a gain of metres, which is why it could mean the difference between winning and losing a race.

This is currently under investigation in this PhD project. But cyclists who want to improve their sprint performance might want to start practising the forward standing position.