On road.. How hard can it be?

This hard?

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/hardest-time-trial-world-riders-suffer-dutch-headwind-championships-video-149282

Very. I’ve been stopped by a headwind of not a huge amount more than that before. It’s also hugely buffeting and really disconcerting if there’s traffic as it will affect the wind around you as it passes.

very.

I don’t think I’ve ever ridden in wind that strong (except on Snowdon, but that’s a different story). But I have had a strong headwind bring me to dead stop.

I’m not sure which would be harder/worse, a 50mph headwind, or a 50mph sidewind…

Gone to work in some stupid winds before, sidewind is far worse than headwind. I know my route very well by now and know where the gaps in the hedges are… Be known to hit well over 400 watts to do 10 mph before and 30mph just sat up and not pedalling.

Did a tri with an out and back bike leg along the coast. 40mph headwind on the out and it was pretty much in the two smallest cogs grinding it out the whole way even on the only downhill bit. I wouldn’t do it just out of curiosity. Flew back mind.

I think that kind of wind speed would force me to dismount and March the bike.. Possibly faster, deffo safer as wind tends to come in gusts of various speeds, so it’s not like you can lean into it without going flying when the speed of the wind drops!

Hard, we hit a few gusts last weekend on our annual trip to Southend, sheeeeet as we turned into it….

Very. Once rode to work flat out against a 50mph wind. 13.2mph. Including the bit where I swung away from the headwind for a couple of miles. Did I mentioned I was pedalling really fing hard?

Some stiff gusts stopped me dead a couple of times this week. Could not ride into that sort of headwind for very long

Some proper gurning on that Dutch Vid. Love this from a couple of years ago. Roadie winter training.
[video]https://youtu.be/H8qgjyqibwY?t=46[/video]

I would expect that if that were to be a sidewind – which it will at some point in the ride, that you’ll be at risk of being blown into oncoming traffic…

I would expect that if that were to be a sidewind – which it will at some point in the ride, that you’ll be at risk of being blown into oncoming traffic…

Beware of hedgerows, specifically the gates.

Bloody hard was up Selworthy beacon on a fat bike Wednesday and it got very dangerous so knock it on the head nearly got blown of 3 times using the brakes just to keep the bike stable.Not so bad today.
Remember going up the broken road out of Castleton in 2004 on a Trek full suss and the wind was so strong it blew the bike 6 foot in air while I was stopped lucky I kept hold of it or it was gone no joke came back down got knows what it would of been like on the top of Man Tor and that was the summer scary.

I had to pedal down a hill today, and the water was flowing back up past me on the tarmac.

Oh and did I mention the stinging rain and my frozen toes because I thought I’d be OK without overshoes.

Pretty much had it with the wind this week.

Impossible I’d say, unless you can pedal at 40-50mph on a still day. Anything other than aero drag will be pretty negligible.

We had some epic head and crosswinds riding across Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming. With four panniers sometimes making more than 7mph was an all out effort. We cursed our east to west route. We met guys that were easily riding two hundred mile days, cruising at between 25 and 30 with no effort at all. We had one epic afternoon in Montana where the wind was in our favour, we screamed at well over 30 for about forty miles.

40-50mph sustained would be seriously hard going and dangerous with much traffic. Cattle grids can provide moments requiring a change of shorts.

B’stard hard, that’s what. I took a visitor from Belgium around the South Downs and Friston a few years. Legs like giant redwoods! Basically they’re training involved all day slogs into a head wind along the coast roads or muddy slogs around the edges of wet flat, wind exposed fields with the occasional beach race for fun. I was a broken galactic dictator by the time we got to the pub I can tell you. The only redeeming feature was he couldn’t do singletrack for toffee!

Hmmm, it was predicted to be around 45mph by the BBC the other day on my coastal commute, either their predictions were out, or I’ve cycled in 60mph+ headwinds and that really was hard and really did feel dangerous and nearly brought me to a standstill. Was in both instances only four miles however 😀

I live fairly high up and ride quite a lot into strong headwinds. Often up to 40mph. Occasionally more. I’d say a straight on 50mph headwind would easily have you down to 5-6mph territory, pedalling fairly hard. In days when I was less fit, it was closer to 2-3mph! You wouldn’t want to be travelling very far like that.

I’d rather do that any day than ride through 50mph crosswinds though. If the wind’s that bad I choose my route carefully.

It’s an odd thing that you can ride into really quite fast winds, since supposedly almost all your effort is to overcome wind resistance

There’s a clever explanation, isn’t there ? 😐

Reported wind speeds aren’t measured at ground level. iirc it’s something like 10 metres up.

Oh and a lot of the time the weather forecast or news report the expected gusts. So “Gusting to 50mph” doesn’t mean sustained 50mph wind speed.

Went out for a ride …and all the way I was pushing against the wind …in the way home the wind was with me I didn’t realise coz I was knackered ….but when I looked at my speedo….**** me i was doing 40mph ……so I went hell for leather …..and got a few PR on my strava……works both ways ….but in all ..give me a calm day

I’m just about to be reminded, getting ready for a ride now.
Off-road from the door, a linear railway line ride of about 30 miles.
‘downhill’ there with what sounds like a 60-ish mph wind behind me, ‘uphill’ against it on the way back.

On the final section of the C2C recently I left Parkhead cafe and from a standing start I got blown along at 32 kph before I started pedalling.
Reached 72kph on gravel before the wind turned sideways.

Impossible I’d say, unless you can pedal at 40-50mph on a still day. Anything other than aero drag will be pretty negligible.

Rubbish! That’s like saying you can’t walk in a 20mph wind unless you can run at 20mph.

Really hard.

Had a few mad headwind days when riding in Sweden this year, including one day where I was riding south and south-east, straight into what was advertised as a 40mph wind. It was only 60miles or so, but felt much longer than that. With a deadline to make, I had no choice but to crouch down as much as possible and dig in. If I stopped pedalling, I’d stop instantly. It was so hard, hot and sunny that my sun cream was combining with my sweat, then running into my eyes so I could barely see. There was one point where I’d changed direction, so it was a side wind, and a threshing machine was working upwind from me. Of course all the dust and chaff (whatever it’s called) got stuck to my sun cream caked face and arms, and I was picking bits out of my earhole for days.

So yah, possible but really hard. Not having panniers and camping gear on the bike will probably help.

Also, channel Vazques: http://fatgirlonabicycle.tumblr.com/post/127017957348/from-yesterday-this-ghettofabulous-look-was-the

scaredypants – Member
It’s an odd thing that you can ride into really quite fast winds, since supposedly almost all your effort is to overcome wind resistance

There’s a clever explanation, isn’t there ?

The difference between “power” and “tractive effort” !!!

The power a human can output is limited, to something round about 400Watts, depending on how fit you are.

But the tractive effort, or the FORCE you can push a bike forward with is pretty much unlimited, assuming you have low enough gears.

And as Power = Force x speed, for a given power, as speed rises the force you can produce at that level of power falls inversely.

So, if 400w is enough to do lets say 20mph, the tractive effort you are generating at that speed is 44.7N. So, if your speed is constant, then we know the 20mph head wind (ignoring other rolling frictional losses) is pushing back at you with the same force (44.7N)

Halve your speed, to 10mph, and your same 400w output gives you double the tractive effort (89N). So at this new speed, the same 20mph head wind is only now using up 200W, leaving you with 200W to propel yourself along (which is the power needed in our example to go 10mph)

So, basically, headwinds of a given speed require you to halve your previous speed. ie, if you could do 20mph without a headwind, a 20mph headwind means you can do 10mph, and a 40mph headwind gives you the capability for just 5mph…….

I did this on Wednesday. 42mph average wind speed gusting at a max of 64mph. It took me 1.35 hours to do my usual 50minute 28km commute and I was utterly, utterly exhausted. I felt like I’d earned my impending heart attack by the time I arrived into work.

The winds had dropped by this afternoon so we went for a ride up the dale. Fairly constant 30kmh or so headwind on the way out made it pretty hard work.

Gusty this morning! But getting low (12″ off the ground) and adding an extra wheel seemed to help. The trike needed some lower gears, but I stayed above 20 km/h on the homeward stretch into the wind.

Downwind, above 50 km/h you are just a passenger!!