Ahead of the curve

[totient]

Someone shared the viral "superman" bike descending video with me, which made me go look for an example of the one-armed supertuck I was fond of back when I was racing in the 1980s. I couldn't find one, nor much evidence of supertucks' existence then, though I did eventually find a text description of someone doing something like it during the Race Across America at about that time.

Then I went and read my feed and, speaking of the 1980s, discovered that I had also anticipated yesterday's XKCD by about 35 years.

In neither case was this a particularly good idea.

Comments

[milktree]

It always boggles me when there are *zero* pictures of something on The Internet.

[coraline]

…so what is a one armed super tuck?

[totient]

A super tuck is any aero position extreme enough that your butt is no longer on the seat of the bike. Most commonly it's on the top tube, but not always. This is reasonable easy to Google.

Often a super tuck involves resting some part of the body on the top of the handlebars other than the hands.

By one armed I mean an asymmetrical position in which only one hand is on the handlebars, and the other is behind your back. This kind of asymmetry is common in speed skating, especially short track speed skating, but apparently quite uncommon in cycling.