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| Of course tailwind will help you go faster, but if you have tailwind on one side of the lake it will be headwind on the other. In fact such a situation will always hurt your overall time, because you spend more time facing the wind (you go slower) than with the wind (you go faster). The only time wind can help you on a circuit is when it changes directions dynamically to be behind you most of the time. | |
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Patrick, Salsa, I agree with you, but my query is a little more advanced than that. What you are talking about is "kinematics": the science of time and speed; it doesn't consider the actual forces. Yes, I am aware that when you go 4 kph one way and 6 kph on the other way, your average isn't 5 kph, but only 4.8 kph. If it were 1 and 6, the average is 1.7142...
What I was asking was in the domain of kinetics, which deals with time, speed
and forces.
Can anyone explain what is happening when a guy is going 50 kph and then has a tailwind of 75 kph? In such cases is it better to have an upright bike than a racing bike becos you can then get more "push" from the back with a larger surface exposed?