1/2 ozer wrote:
31 watts saved is extremely unlikely if EK was around 6w/kg for this effort. I can't believe he would have saved 4:35 from the draft of the car and pacers combined. Over 10 seconds per mile seems highly unlikely otherwise Rudisha should be able to run around 1:34-1:35 for 800 in a similar setup. And Webbs AR for the mile would be well under 3:40.
The 31 Watts is compared with EK running alone for 26.2 miles without any drafting. I don't think it is at all unreasonable to suggest that he would run several minutes slower under those conditions. Radcliffe's two "world records" were two minutes different. She ran 2 minutes faster when surrounded by a group of men.
The effect of drafting would be even more significant in a 800m race, DR is traveling 1.35 times faster than EK, thus generating 1.8 times more drag, and expending 2.5 more effort in overcoming it.
The problem here is that it is difficult to form a delta formation on the track. And even if you could, you'd struggle to find enough guys to front run at sub world record pace for two laps of the track. Relaying pacers would be impractical over this distance.
But also the Wattage figures are a bit of a fudge to turn boring drag values into meaningful time differences. What our CFD results really show is that Breaking 2 team managed to decrease the drag by 83% compared with a solo runner.