I did a practice shave of my legs last night, to get used to it and also figure out how long it takes me for planning purposes.
Today in practice, I was faster than usual. The most obvious was in my 200 free warm-up. I dps the first 100 and then gradually speed up to about 75%. Usually I am around 3 minutes. Monday, I went 2:51. Today, I was 2:36 with the usual effort level.
My 200 *** warm-up was about 10 seconds faster than usual.
Can shaving really improve things that much? Is some of this because I am tapering?
Also, for those guys who shave your heads, do you also wear a cap? If not, is the bald head better than a cap?
From what I remember of fluid dynamics, shaving would help more with streamlining where water flow around you is more laminar. Hair will tend to disrupt the flow of water around your body and make it turbulent sooner and further forward which I suppose will break the streamline sooner.
Laminar flow is not necessarily advantageous from a drag reduction standpoint. Consider the flow around a cylinder: www.princeton.edu/.../blunt.html
You actually want flow separation to occur earlier (as in the turbulent case) because it creates a smaller wake. Now the question is whether or not a swimmer in the water is anything like a cylinder. In a streamlined position we should create less drag than a cylinder, but we aren't exactly airfoils, either.
From what I remember of fluid dynamics, shaving would help more with streamlining where water flow around you is more laminar. Hair will tend to disrupt the flow of water around your body and make it turbulent sooner and further forward which I suppose will break the streamline sooner.
Laminar flow is not necessarily advantageous from a drag reduction standpoint. Consider the flow around a cylinder: www.princeton.edu/.../blunt.html
You actually want flow separation to occur earlier (as in the turbulent case) because it creates a smaller wake. Now the question is whether or not a swimmer in the water is anything like a cylinder. In a streamlined position we should create less drag than a cylinder, but we aren't exactly airfoils, either.
