In a previous segment of Tuesday Banter, we reviewed the testing of leg hair drag at the Specialized wind tunnel. In the tests of Shaved vs. not shaved legs at the Specialized wind tunnel, what was found was amazing. Among the riders tested, an average of 70 seconds over 40km was saved. Over a minute in a 40km distance is massive time savings. This is approximately the same difference achieved from aerodynamic efficiency as switching from a standard round tube bike to an aero bike such as the Venge. Ergo, the question remains what kind of aerodynamic efficiencies can be gained from shaving the rest of exposed body hair.
In the first video here, Specialized utilizes their state of the art wind tunnel to test the drag of a beard in the segment titled “The Win Tunnel: To Beard or Not to Beard.”
After running multiple tests and analyzing the results, it was found that the tested subject Joe, did gained only less than a second over 40km from shaving the beard. These type of gains are nearly negligible. Ergo, if a rider has an emotional attachment to their facial hair, or simply keeps a beard out of laziness or for convenience, his aerodynamic efficiency shan’t be affected by his beardyness.
Naturally, the other ares of exposed body hair when in cycling bibs and jersey are to be tested to come full circle. Ergo, specialized has tested the effects of shaved arms in the Specialized segment titled “The Win Tunnel: Are Shaved Arms Faster?” The video of said segment follows here.
The findings of the testing of shaved arms vs. not shaved arms were as predicted after analyzing the results of the prior two wind tunnel tests at Specialized. Shaved arms does in fact increase aerodynamic efficiency, much more than shaving of the beard, but much less than shaving of the legs. It was found that shaved arms were an average of 19 seconds faster over a distance of 40km. This represents a decent size chunk of time saving from aerodynamics; significantly more than the under a second saving from shaving one’s beard, yet significantly less than the 70 second saving form one shaving their legs.
Ergo, if a rider is going to shave anything at all, these should be the legs. And while you are at it, it couldn’t hurt to toss the arms in there under the razor. A rider nee bother with the beard, it is affecting his aerodynamics at a negligible rate.
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