Adding Air Resistance Costs to Power Estimates in Running | White Paper
Today, we release our white paper that covers the methodology and results that informed the creation of the new Stryd. The white paper discusses how well we account for the wind’s effect on the runner in a personalized and accurate manner that accounts for a runner’s unique running environment and conditions.
We believe that this white paper will help further push wind and its potential to help runners and inform their training and racing decisions to the forefront of the collective running community.
Before the new Stryd, the effects of the wind were unavoidable and entirely incomprehensible to the vast majority of runners. It is paradoxical but in our customer interviews with our Stryd community we learned that a light head wind can fool runners into backing off and a heavy headwind can cause runners to push forward, without fear. This is a paradoxical finding because it often leads to runners leaving their potential unfounded in light winds and pushing themselves to failure in strong winds. The truth is clear from this finding: runners have long been intimidated by the wind. However, this reality does not need to exist. If runners could comprehend and understand the wind, could they harness it to their advantage? This is a question that Stryd has been looking to answer since our inception and creation of running power.
From the very first day we began working on the running power meter, Stryd has been looking to understand and report the wind in a friendly way to runners. We think that we have finally figured out the solution with a combination of the new Stryd and a new metric to report the wind’s and air resistance’s effect to runners by using Air Power. These two new technologies, in combination, can fully capture the effect of wind on the runner and report that effect in an easily digestible method.
This white paper evaluates the accuracy of Stryd’s wind measurement capabilities and how these new capabilities effect running power. By evaluating Stryd against controlled and real world conditions, we believe that we have created a technology that is both accurate and applicable to daily run training.
Please click the following link to download the white paper to read more.