SomeCoach wrote:
Malmo, maybe I need to review my physics, but I'm not following. What happens in the foward direction should match the backward direction, so with this logic one shouldn't tuck in behind someone when racing into a headwind?
And, also, if I swim out to a large rock sitting in the middle of a river, climb on top of it, and observe the behavior of the water on the backside of the rock, don't I see stalled water?
You might need a review. I went to college at Penn State. The track we trained on was on top of a hill and it was notoriously windy. So windy, that I'm sure that many rarely run in the conditions we ran in for most of the Spring.
When running in a group on a track on a windy day, of course you are going to tuck in behind the leader and ther will be some gain. But I can guarantee you this, that those in file still feel the brunt of the wind, unless one of your leaders is 12 foot tall and 5 foot wide.
Running in still air you are overcoming the resistance of air plus the energy cost of physical movement. When you change the velocity the air resistance increases exponentially by the square of the velocity. You are adding to your velocity with the wind in your face (from an air resistance perspective, of course you aren't running any faster).
When you are running with the wind the opposite happens, and you benefit because the air resistance in front of you diminishes because all of the air that surrounds you and your friends is moving with you. And if the wind exceeds your speed it has the effect of helping you by pushing you as it passes you. If, with a tailwind, you believe you are blocking the wind to your friend in front of you, and he is not benefiting from it, your kidding yourself. For that to happen it means that you beleive that the air in the space between you and your friend is alwasy still as you run down the road, and if it's still then you must always have wind resistance in your face at all times, because, you're blocking the wind, right?
If you were running in front of a Greyhound bus, then I could see the bus blocking a touch of wind, but I can guarantee you that if you are being followed by a car and the wind is behind the car, you will definitely feel it. And a pack of tiny little men for East Africa, who have to run laps in the shower just to get wet, aren't going to block your wind.