Power play: What cyclists teach us about energy efficiency

A road bike race is about just one thing: energy. Pro and elite amateur riders obsess about their personal power data extracted from sensors on bikes, but total energy—power multiplied by time—is what really counts. The team that reaches the finish line in first place is the one that figures out how best to create, conserve, and expend that energy.

Take stage 3 of the 2016 AMGEN Tour of California on May 17, for example. The route opened with a 96.7 mile ride up the coast from Thousand Oaks to Santa Barbara, interspersed with a couple of short climbs, and ended with a 7.4 mile, average 8% gradient, winding climb up Gibraltar Road. The long prologue required endurance, carefully conserving energy; the steep final climb needed raw strength. The rider who had best conserved his energy would be positioned to barge up that final climb.

“It all comes down to the power-to-weight ratio,” says former pro cyclist Jens Voigt of ending inclines. “It’s just survival of the fittest.”

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