My coach had me scheduled for a rest day today, as I taper for my race at Ironman 70.3 Musselman this weekend.  I used the time to make sure my bike is clean, and set up well ahead of the race.

There is a saying… “a clean bike is a fast bike”.  This is actually very true.  The most important part of the bike to get clean is the drivetrain. Studies have shown that a dirty drivetrain can result in a 10-15 Watt penalty, compared to a clean and well lubricated system.  You read that right, you can waste over 10 Watts of your output, just overcoming the resistance of a dirty chain.  

That number of 10 Watts might not sound like much, but if your average power during a race is 150 Watts, you are ‘wasting’ 6.7% of your power on that dirty drivetrain.  Wouldn’t you rather have that power used to produce more speed?  I know I would, which is why I always clean my bike ahead of a race.

In reality, I never let my drivetrain get that dirty, so I am probably saving much less than 10 Watts by cleaning.  Even if cleaning means I can go just 1% faster on the bike, I will take it.  For me, that might only be about ninety seconds over the course of a my race this weekend, but think of it this way.  How much training time in the pool, would it take to save a minute and half in the swim portion of my race?  A whole lot more time, than the time it takes me to clean and lubricate my chain!!

So make sure your bike is clean.  Racing is hard enough, without wasting effort on things that are easy to fix.