What is the most aerodynamic way to carry hydration and storage on a bike?

Question

I am informed that you will most likely be participating in a long-distance race and thus, you are now busy optimizing your setup. Fitness crazed cyclists often ask themselves, what is the most effective way to carry the water and storage on my bike while minimizing resistance from wind?

Answer 1

Some interesting results were obtained during the wind tunnel testing concerning on-bike hydration and storage. It turns out that A U-Swe Hydration Pack is worn while riding the bike can in fact be faster than not wearing the pack at all, resulting in 3 watts or 2 minutes and 11 seconds of saving. Furthermore, on-frame storage in the form of a top tube bag, a frame bag, or a bikepacking saddle bag does mildly improve aerodynamics. One problem however was that the handlebar-mounted burrito bag was discovered to be the least aerodynamic alternative, losing 9.8 watts or 7 minutes and 22 seconds. A correct strategy has to be taken in which the aerodynamic advantage of the part is put against the weight and handling factors relating to having extra equipment aboard.

Comments

My biggest takeaway from this is that today - for free - I can just start throwing a water bottle in my back pocket and see gains. Fantastic content as always.

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The Aerocoach testing on bottle placement was done an an indoor velodrome (close to 0 degree yaw I assume), and only one bottle & cage was tested in different placements. Those results would be quite different from two bottles with various yaw angles taken into consideration.

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The large saddle bag drag coefficient reduction is not surprising. Have a look at the saddle used on Thierry Marie's TT bike in the 1992 Tour de France (he was a short TT/prologue specialist way back). The large fairing behind the saddle help with air flow and reduced aerodynamic drag. The UCI killed that pretty quickly. An extremely interesting content. Thanks!

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My compliments to the chef, Dylan, either you or that backwards hat guy.  Thanks for showing us all of these aero gains and penalties and I'd be interested in knowing, next time you are there, is whether there's a gain or not with those two-bottle behind-the-saddle carriers.  And yes, the aero gain for a bottle in a back jersey pocket is mind-blowing, that and the aero sock advantage seem easily attainable.  Thanks again for the news we can use, to quote the Top-40 newscasters back when stations were required to run hourly newscasts.  "News you can use" took a bit of the sting out of stopping the music for news.

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This is such an exciting topic! I'd love to see another wind tunnel vid of yours. I wonder how good frame bags, that fill the whole triangle, works. Some of them can contain water bladders, so the loss of the bottles wouldn't be an issue. Also combination of items would be interesting. Like how much penalty are handle bar bag or number plate still giving combined with top tube bag and/or frame bag.