The Hour Record and Marginal Gains, Part 3

In this final (?) part of our Hour Record trilogy, we talk about the rules of the modern Hour Record, how marginal gains start really coming into play, the theoretical upper limit for the hour record and how close we are to it, and the future for the hour record. We give extra focus to Bradley Wiggins' hour record, in part because it comes as close to a perfect attempt — apart from uncontrollable factors — as we've ever seen, and in part because Josh has some fascinating inside knowledge of Sir Wiggins' incredible feat.

Got a question you’d like to ask? Text or leave a voicemail at the Marginal Gains Hotline: +1-317-343-4506 or just leave a comment in this post!

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8 comments


  • fapvid

    Josh is in Europe, involved with some race or something. Which means that Hottie andFat Fatty get to pick the topic for the episode. And that means fewer big words and more talk about a topic Hottie and Fatty have wanted to dig into since episode 1 of Marginal Gains: the process of creating and refining products at Silca. Joining them is John Balmer, who just happens to be the head of product at Silca. If you ve ever wondered where Silca product ideas come from, you won t want to miss this episode.


  • Kevin Schoenmakers

    I love this topic! If you guys could explore the hour record outside UCI rules that would be awesome. It seems like the barriers for technology and aero development and limitless. One thing us cyclists seem to agree on is that we are limited on power! (especially over an hour)


  • Josh Poertner

    Sorry if I mis-phrased.. it wasn’t that it was exactly ‘discovered’ in the 2000’s but rather that the old ways were lost and nobody knew what to do about it. Jobst had some data on this comparing shellac to modern glue, but shellac really isn’t an option for modern racing for a bunch of reasons. I guess, in a way we ‘rediscovered’ it in terms of deciding to try to solve the problem in a different way.


  • Dennis Grelk

    If you’d like to color outside the UCI lines a little, you should explore the recumbent hour records. Matthias Konig did 57.637km on a M5 MOEKOKKEN highracer

    at Frankfurt-Oder velodrome, Germany 9/18/2016 and Francesco Russo did 92.432km at an auto track in Klettwitz,

    Germany in a fully faired recumbent streamliner on 6/26/2016


  • Robert Chung

    I don’t want to go into the details but, just as an example, CO2 is a larger molecule than N2 or O2 yet tires inflated with CO2 deflate faster than tires inflated with atmospheric air. So, not just any large molecule gas will work.

    And, Jobst (hallowed be his name) was right about tubular glue but wasn’t right about inflation pressure and Crr.


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