HT vs. FS Testing, Part 2
10.10.2009
Wednesday was HT vs. FS Bike Test, Part 2.
For this test I rode a 90 minute course that consisted of a short road warm-up, a 28 minute sustained rocky climb, and 4 mile down and up paved road connector to a 21 minute descent (with a 6 min climb in the middle) and finished with a 6 mile paved downhill back to the start. For those of you from around Denver, it is the Mt. Falcon-Lair O Bear Loop form Morrison. Same bikes, same set-ups as last week’s test.
The results speak for themselves: not a huge difference between the two bikes. Over the course of 90 minutes there was a one minute difference in favor of the FS. Suprisingly, the majority of that one minute advantage came from the climb. One caveat, however, is that I’m pretty sure I rode the second climb slightly harder than the first, in terms of powerout. The avg HR reflects this extra effort. It’s hard for me to say how much harder I rode, but it’s possible it was 30 seconds harder, so I would consider it a tie on the climb.
The HT held it’s own on the downhill section coming in only a few seconds behind over 20+ minutes. Now again, another caveat. The “downhill” did have a 6 minute climb in the middle of it. Looking back, it would have been better for me to split the section into two descents and a climb so I could see if time was being traded between bikes on the downs and ups. Oh well, this is a pretty unofficial testing process, and I’ll take it as a lesson learned for future testing.
With the results being so close and consistent between bikes again, it is hard to say if one bike is truly faster than the other. It may come down to personal preference and riding style that makes the determination. I hope to get in one more test this week before I leave for Phoenix and Maui.