However, many athletes worry about giving up their aerodynamic advantage by carrying bottles on their bike, and have therefore experimented with different ways to minimize drag while staying hydrated. But for many athletes the question still remains: Where do I carry bottles in order to minimize aerodynamic losses while still being able to access my drinks?

Our goal in running this experiment was to measure the drag differences between the following drinking systems: no system at all (to determine a baseline), bottles on the frame, an aero bottle between the handlebars, a behind-the-saddle bottle carrier, and a prototype of the new NeverReach drinking system. Each of these systems was tested, with the athlete sitting on the bike then not drinking, and with the athlete taking a drink.

So, after spending all of the hours at the track, what did we discover? First, we learned that the most obvious effort athletes undertake to reduce drag— namely removing the bottle cages from their frames—is probably not worth the effort. Having established a baseline number to compare against, we found that we could not measure a drag difference by putting bottles on the bicycle, nor by putting an aero bottle between the handlebars. This held true both with the athlete drinking and not drinking (Note: the test rider we used is a professional cyclist who was able to take drinks from his frame while staying in the aerobars with one hand, not having to break his aero position to drink). An obvious advantage of the bottle in the aerobars is that any athlete can take a drink without breaking the aero position. We were quite surprised by this, as we would have predicted that both of these systems would have increased the drag on the rider a fair amount.

Second, we learned that while putting bottles in a carrier behind your saddle is a convenient way to carry extra fluids (and gear) on long training days, it is not a good idea from an aerodynamic perspective. Our testing showed that having bottles behind your saddle is akin to the flap being up on an airplane wing, which you probably know is the technique used to slow down planes. We found that simply having bottles behind the saddle slowed the athlete down by approximately 1 second per kilometer, or about three minutes over an Ironman! However, the time losses become much greater as an athlete begins reaching for his bottles and has to break his aero tuck. The idea that the aero advantages of putting bottles behind you is negated by sitting up did not surprise as, hut the fact that the bottles slowed you down so much simply by being back there was surprising.

Lastly, we reconfirmed what was tested in the early l990s with cyclists, which is that if you change the airflow off the back end of an athlete in the right way, you can significantly increase the speed of that athlete. The new NeverReach system is a teardrop that sits behind the athlete’s saddle. The athlete drinks from a tube that runs from the system to the front of the bike. The positioning and shape of the NeverReach is such that it works much like a fairing and significantly smoothes out the airflow coming off the athlete’s back. This leads to a timesavings of about 0.9 seconds per kilometer or about two minutes over an Ironman.