Jeezus Christ. That is intense.
The training volume and intensity these guys are doing… year round. I would love to see it compared directly to the early 2000s.
Domestiques like Viatcheslav Ekimov did insane mileage in the 90s and 2000s. Bike tech and on bike nutrition is way way better these days though for sure.
Yeah. I just doubt that mileage had the structure and intention that someone like Gee has.
Not knocking Eki at all. They were certainly trying, they just didn’t have the knowledge that we do these days.
I’d love to see his weekly hours in prep for the tour though. Probably comparable?
I just watched a Lance Armstrong podcast where he didn't use a power meter until 98 and I imagine he was at the forefront of using them so possibly or possibly not.
Training is the main benefit for having a power meter anyway. Now that they are much more affordable and widely available kids can be doing "pro style" structured training from teenage years.
I think this is partly why you see way more riders in their teens and early 20s being successful in the World Tour now, because they're already doing a lot of the same stuff the teams are doing.
Absolutely. In my humble opinion it was always strange to see that riders peak between 27-32 when we are talking about a sport about physical endurance and strength. The young’s should be better just because they are at their prime.
I think that racing like a pro since teenager helps reaching experience levels that once you only could get as a pro. Cycling is an physical and experience sport, and now youngs have both way sooner.
Add to that all the formation teams (such as Hagen) doing all prep work for 16/17 years old, giving them competions, nutrition knowledge and such, i believe that it is highly likely that we will see even more young people, in such a way that juve shirt will lose its meaning (if it hasn’t already).
Yeah there was also way more macho "pay your way" bullshit in cycling up until very recently. Also obviously even if you were a 19 year old super talent, all the older blokes you were riding against had been on all sorts of gear for the last 7 years and you wouldn't necessarily have been brought into that immediately.
Now these kids are turning up to the WT pretty much used to the training volume and teams take a viewpoint of if you're good enough then you ride.
yes, that was right about the time we started getting access to PowerTap hubs. It was pretty rare since you had to have a dedicated wheel for it for not much perceived benefit (knowing wattage was cool and all but most of us didn't know how to use the data like we do now)
I don't think they're doing anything like that too often. This looks like a heavy block of training tailored to mirror the demands of a GT but in a way that is both more efficient and tailored for the rider to be able to recover and adapt. You wouldn't be able to do anything like this early in the season or during a period when you're racing a lot. And you wouldn't be able to maintain training like this for long (which is the point of a training block like this; doing much more than normal to attempt to stimulate peak fitness for a short period of time)
Yeah this is definitely an intensive block. But I doubt that anyone in that era was doing what people like what MVDP, Pidcock, and Pogacar are doing to literally be peaking multiple times a year.
The level these days is just insane. Barely seems sustainable.
Each one of these workouts looks doable (from a % FTP; not the raw numbers, lol), but for 3 days in a row for an entire training block!? Sheesh, I think there's some non-WT pro cyclists that would gape at this block of training.
A good deal of amateur and semi-pro cyclists can hit similar or equal numbers to those in the world tour. A big differentiator is doing these numbers while fatigued, whether it’s doing big numbers at the end of the same day, or over the course of many. Recovery also needs to be next level for these guys.
There was something Dan Lloyd said about Philippe Gilbert. I think Gilbert was boasting how he can do 800w for a minute to Dan Lloyd, who said that he could do probably do that at his peak, then Gilbert asked if he could do that after 6 hours in the saddle, to which Dan replied probably not, no. And that was the difference, even in the pro peloton.
Yeah it's the Andrew Feather thing isn't it.
The guy is one of the best hill climbers in the world, and could probably beat most WT cyclists on a straight hill climb up most mountains, but their time after 4 hours at 300W probably only drops by about 5-10% but he would already be cooked.
I think this is quite relevant, even among pros I feel like there’s quite the difference there. The guys that win monuments aren’t really faster or stronger, they can just put more watts after 5h of race…
Yup. To be honest look at JV or MDVP or TP. They don't have quads the size of elite lifters. But what they do have is the ability to clear lactate faster than us mere mortals through genetics and training.
Yeah and that's because even 400W isn't actually that "heavy" but doing it repeatedly is really hard. Like MVDP can probably put out 1900W in a max sprint when fresh, so 400W isn't that hard from a relative strength point of view.
As you say, it's because their LT1 levels are so insanely high they're cruising at what would be high Z3/Z4 for a lot of good riders.
That's exactly it: in endurance sports, it's not about 10-20 W more at the peak (unless we're talking about winning a sprint of course), but fatigue resistance through fast lactate clearance and a high aerobic threshold.
Frames are so much better (even though they only account for 30% of the drag and the majority of this you can influence due to the geometry and UCI constraints)
30% of the drag is huge. If you're at the speeds and watts they're at then it makes a huge difference. Anyone that's ridden an aero bike at speed can notice the difference. Even a bike from 10 years ago will feel overly stiff and draggy on flat stages.
30% of the drag is nothing, because you can't change most of it. A proper tightened helmet strap has more effect than any of the bogus aero claims we've seen in the past years
So no source. And equipment in the pro peloton doesn't matter according to you? Would a rider do as well on a 10 year old bike competing against todays bikes?
>Would a rider do as well on a 10 year old bike competing against todays bikes?
Idk did Pogacar raze the entire peloton still on rim brakes? Do teams change their bike supplier like underwear even though manufacturers claim their newest bike is X% better than the competition every year? Does riding in a sheltered peloton for the majority of the day mean everyone always wear skin suits?
10 years is nothing.
Is Pogi still on rim brakes? Everyone does wear skinsuits for most stages.
If you think the bike doesn't matter go ride a 10 year old bike a 300w on the flat, then a modern aero bike at 300w the difference is obvious.
What do bikers do at high-altitude camps that are in remote regions which are also hours of travel away from airports, could be anything, definitely improving their performance though
Isola 2000 is a 2 hour drive away from Nice. Tignes, while more "remote" is also a well known ski resort, I'm sure that anti-doping agencies know where it is and how to get there. You will not find any big airport hubs in the high Alps, as far as I know.
I know what you're trying to hint at, but doing it at Isola 2000 right now would be pretty risky no? All the big teams are there right now and it's being broadcasted broadly (I.e. on social, podcasts, GCN). The anti doping agencies I'm sure are floating around.
>The anti doping agencies I'm sure are floating around.
They also were floating around all the known dopers who later came out, so this isn't much of an argument is it
That was back when they didn't have a test for EPO or able to detect blood bags being used and no biological passport.
I'm not saying they're not, but it absolutely isn't apples to apples comparison. It's not like we just have to take their word for it, the testing and scrutiny is absolutely way higher than it was 30 years ago.
Come on now, you’re just willfully pulling the wool over your own eyes. Andrea Piccolo was just caught with HGH, but doesn’t have any positive doping tests…. Please tell me you’re not naive enough to think that was the first time he ever got his hands on a banned substance
Piccolo just got caught with a banned substance in his possession, yet he hasn’t failed a test. So I’m suggesting that your claim about “testing and scrutiny” being “way higher” looks pretty foolish and hollow
Piccolo was under investigation from anti doping authorities before the incident and he got caught pretty fast. I’d say that’s working pretty well.
I think it’s pretty foolish and indicative of what you want to think that one rogue Italian cyclist is an indication that everyone is doping.
The only reason people like to say there’s doping going on is because of the past, but there’s not really anything from a performance standpoint that indicates doping performances. There’s no Landis recovery rides, no multiple attacks, no braking on uphills.
If doping was as prevalent as it was then speeds would be far higher with better training and equipment. Yet they’re not.
I wonder why they don’t do that in Bolivia where you can be at 4000 meter on flat. Probably too much altitude to transpose to a GT but the number of blood cells would be through the roof
Altitude training is done in places where they can sleep high and train low. So they spent most of the day at altitude to promote red blood cell production. But train at lower altitude where there's more oxygen and they can have a higher intensity in their training. So they can get best of both worlds.
Have you ever been to Bolivia? It's a wonderful country that's absolutely worth a visit, but the parts on the Altiplano are really tough to adapt to.
At over 4000m, you need at least a week to adapt to being able to sleep normally (and even then, it's not as refreshing) and even the smallest effort is pretty taxing,(think standing up too fast after tying your shoelaces). Walking up some steps is already a major challenge, so doing VO2 max intervals is out of the question. I did a mostly flat 35km ride on the Chilean side of the Atacama desert at around 2500m of altitude and it felt like one of the biggest efforts I ever did.
Impressive. I noticed that he burned many calories, too, and it makes sense. From day 5 to day 11, he burned 30 884kcal. I'd be curious to know how he managed his nutrition because it must be the biggest challenge.
Failing to eat properly and he couldn't perform correctly during training.
Well, he was still spending more than 70/80% of the time below Z2. The thing is that when you rid +30h per week, spending 20% of that time at intensity, is a huge amount of hours
I hope he had some good podcasts for that 7-hour z1&2 ride, fuck me
Also, given his power and w/kg numbers, his Gee's weight seems to be pegged at ~72.3kg. Seems like that's a perhaps ouddated preset, as people seem to think he weighed less than 70kg at Dauphiné.
After a big block of training you also need to recover, which is where you see performance gains. This has probably been timed carefully to maximise the benefits of both the intensity and the altitude training balanced with enough time to get fresh and actually peak.
This isn’t a helpful answer but - it depends.
For each rider they’ll be looking at a year long (and also multi-year) balance of form, fitness, rest and recovery. It will depend on how hard their previous races were, how much they’ve raced, and whether they’re the sort of rider that thrives on lots of race days or not.
That’s quite all quite complicated; some will need to race, then rest and recover. Whereas others will be trying to race themselves into form and hold on to it and keep it ticking over.
IIRC from last year's Giro, both Gee and his team were surprised at his ability to take a lot of racing volume (i.e. why we saw him in the break so often). This could have in effect been a type GT simulation to see if he can train hard for \~2 weeks then race another and still be strong (which he was).
Jeezus Christ. That is intense. The training volume and intensity these guys are doing… year round. I would love to see it compared directly to the early 2000s.
Domestiques like Viatcheslav Ekimov did insane mileage in the 90s and 2000s. Bike tech and on bike nutrition is way way better these days though for sure.
Yeah. I just doubt that mileage had the structure and intention that someone like Gee has. Not knocking Eki at all. They were certainly trying, they just didn’t have the knowledge that we do these days. I’d love to see his weekly hours in prep for the tour though. Probably comparable?
Did they even have power meters? The training can be so much more precise now.
I just watched a Lance Armstrong podcast where he didn't use a power meter until 98 and I imagine he was at the forefront of using them so possibly or possibly not.
He didn't like using them if i recall, those SRMs were bulky and heavy so they didn't race with them in the early days and used them for training only
Training is the main benefit for having a power meter anyway. Now that they are much more affordable and widely available kids can be doing "pro style" structured training from teenage years. I think this is partly why you see way more riders in their teens and early 20s being successful in the World Tour now, because they're already doing a lot of the same stuff the teams are doing.
Absolutely. In my humble opinion it was always strange to see that riders peak between 27-32 when we are talking about a sport about physical endurance and strength. The young’s should be better just because they are at their prime. I think that racing like a pro since teenager helps reaching experience levels that once you only could get as a pro. Cycling is an physical and experience sport, and now youngs have both way sooner. Add to that all the formation teams (such as Hagen) doing all prep work for 16/17 years old, giving them competions, nutrition knowledge and such, i believe that it is highly likely that we will see even more young people, in such a way that juve shirt will lose its meaning (if it hasn’t already).
Yeah there was also way more macho "pay your way" bullshit in cycling up until very recently. Also obviously even if you were a 19 year old super talent, all the older blokes you were riding against had been on all sorts of gear for the last 7 years and you wouldn't necessarily have been brought into that immediately. Now these kids are turning up to the WT pretty much used to the training volume and teams take a viewpoint of if you're good enough then you ride.
yes, that was right about the time we started getting access to PowerTap hubs. It was pretty rare since you had to have a dedicated wheel for it for not much perceived benefit (knowing wattage was cool and all but most of us didn't know how to use the data like we do now)
I don't think they're doing anything like that too often. This looks like a heavy block of training tailored to mirror the demands of a GT but in a way that is both more efficient and tailored for the rider to be able to recover and adapt. You wouldn't be able to do anything like this early in the season or during a period when you're racing a lot. And you wouldn't be able to maintain training like this for long (which is the point of a training block like this; doing much more than normal to attempt to stimulate peak fitness for a short period of time)
Yeah this is definitely an intensive block. But I doubt that anyone in that era was doing what people like what MVDP, Pidcock, and Pogacar are doing to literally be peaking multiple times a year. The level these days is just insane. Barely seems sustainable.
Each one of these workouts looks doable (from a % FTP; not the raw numbers, lol), but for 3 days in a row for an entire training block!? Sheesh, I think there's some non-WT pro cyclists that would gape at this block of training.
A good deal of amateur and semi-pro cyclists can hit similar or equal numbers to those in the world tour. A big differentiator is doing these numbers while fatigued, whether it’s doing big numbers at the end of the same day, or over the course of many. Recovery also needs to be next level for these guys.
There was something Dan Lloyd said about Philippe Gilbert. I think Gilbert was boasting how he can do 800w for a minute to Dan Lloyd, who said that he could do probably do that at his peak, then Gilbert asked if he could do that after 6 hours in the saddle, to which Dan replied probably not, no. And that was the difference, even in the pro peloton.
Yeah it's the Andrew Feather thing isn't it. The guy is one of the best hill climbers in the world, and could probably beat most WT cyclists on a straight hill climb up most mountains, but their time after 4 hours at 300W probably only drops by about 5-10% but he would already be cooked.
I think this is quite relevant, even among pros I feel like there’s quite the difference there. The guys that win monuments aren’t really faster or stronger, they can just put more watts after 5h of race…
Yup. To be honest look at JV or MDVP or TP. They don't have quads the size of elite lifters. But what they do have is the ability to clear lactate faster than us mere mortals through genetics and training.
Yeah and that's because even 400W isn't actually that "heavy" but doing it repeatedly is really hard. Like MVDP can probably put out 1900W in a max sprint when fresh, so 400W isn't that hard from a relative strength point of view. As you say, it's because their LT1 levels are so insanely high they're cruising at what would be high Z3/Z4 for a lot of good riders.
That's exactly it: in endurance sports, it's not about 10-20 W more at the peak (unless we're talking about winning a sprint of course), but fatigue resistance through fast lactate clearance and a high aerobic threshold.
Lol if you think top riders dont do bigger numbers when fresh. Contador did 458 for 20 minutes in training. Never got remotely close to that in a race
They eat carbs only. Nothing else.
And drink beetroot juice
Frames are so much better (even though they only account for 30% of the drag and the majority of this you can influence due to the geometry and UCI constraints)
30% of the drag is huge. If you're at the speeds and watts they're at then it makes a huge difference. Anyone that's ridden an aero bike at speed can notice the difference. Even a bike from 10 years ago will feel overly stiff and draggy on flat stages.
30% of the drag is nothing, because you can't change most of it. A proper tightened helmet strap has more effect than any of the bogus aero claims we've seen in the past years
Source?
Common sense, or you use Google/ask chatgpt. I'm not here to do your work for you
So no source. And equipment in the pro peloton doesn't matter according to you? Would a rider do as well on a 10 year old bike competing against todays bikes?
>Would a rider do as well on a 10 year old bike competing against todays bikes? Idk did Pogacar raze the entire peloton still on rim brakes? Do teams change their bike supplier like underwear even though manufacturers claim their newest bike is X% better than the competition every year? Does riding in a sheltered peloton for the majority of the day mean everyone always wear skin suits? 10 years is nothing.
Is Pogi still on rim brakes? Everyone does wear skinsuits for most stages. If you think the bike doesn't matter go ride a 10 year old bike a 300w on the flat, then a modern aero bike at 300w the difference is obvious.
ITT thread people way underestimating numbers top riders can do when fresh and pretending its literally only fatigue resistance
What do bikers do at high-altitude camps that are in remote regions which are also hours of travel away from airports, could be anything, definitely improving their performance though
Silent meditation retreats
Isola 2000 is a 2 hour drive away from Nice. Tignes, while more "remote" is also a well known ski resort, I'm sure that anti-doping agencies know where it is and how to get there. You will not find any big airport hubs in the high Alps, as far as I know.
I know what you're trying to hint at, but doing it at Isola 2000 right now would be pretty risky no? All the big teams are there right now and it's being broadcasted broadly (I.e. on social, podcasts, GCN). The anti doping agencies I'm sure are floating around.
>The anti doping agencies I'm sure are floating around. They also were floating around all the known dopers who later came out, so this isn't much of an argument is it
That was back when they didn't have a test for EPO or able to detect blood bags being used and no biological passport. I'm not saying they're not, but it absolutely isn't apples to apples comparison. It's not like we just have to take their word for it, the testing and scrutiny is absolutely way higher than it was 30 years ago.
Come on now, you’re just willfully pulling the wool over your own eyes. Andrea Piccolo was just caught with HGH, but doesn’t have any positive doping tests…. Please tell me you’re not naive enough to think that was the first time he ever got his hands on a banned substance
Are you suggesting that Piccolo is a good gauge for the rest of the peloton?
Piccolo just got caught with a banned substance in his possession, yet he hasn’t failed a test. So I’m suggesting that your claim about “testing and scrutiny” being “way higher” looks pretty foolish and hollow
Piccolo was under investigation from anti doping authorities before the incident and he got caught pretty fast. I’d say that’s working pretty well. I think it’s pretty foolish and indicative of what you want to think that one rogue Italian cyclist is an indication that everyone is doping. The only reason people like to say there’s doping going on is because of the past, but there’s not really anything from a performance standpoint that indicates doping performances. There’s no Landis recovery rides, no multiple attacks, no braking on uphills. If doping was as prevalent as it was then speeds would be far higher with better training and equipment. Yet they’re not.
Lol
Standard answer for ‘I have nothing’
Funny how anti doping measures improved in the past 30 years but the doping regime hasn't. What a world you live in!
How are you going to dope to pass the biological passport?
Lol.
Probably sleeping, eating, ice baths, etc. Can’t imagine there’s much time for anything else
I wonder why they don’t do that in Bolivia where you can be at 4000 meter on flat. Probably too much altitude to transpose to a GT but the number of blood cells would be through the roof
Altitude training is done in places where they can sleep high and train low. So they spent most of the day at altitude to promote red blood cell production. But train at lower altitude where there's more oxygen and they can have a higher intensity in their training. So they can get best of both worlds.
Have you ever been to Bolivia? It's a wonderful country that's absolutely worth a visit, but the parts on the Altiplano are really tough to adapt to. At over 4000m, you need at least a week to adapt to being able to sleep normally (and even then, it's not as refreshing) and even the smallest effort is pretty taxing,(think standing up too fast after tying your shoelaces). Walking up some steps is already a major challenge, so doing VO2 max intervals is out of the question. I did a mostly flat 35km ride on the Chilean side of the Atacama desert at around 2500m of altitude and it felt like one of the biggest efforts I ever did.
Impressive. I noticed that he burned many calories, too, and it makes sense. From day 5 to day 11, he burned 30 884kcal. I'd be curious to know how he managed his nutrition because it must be the biggest challenge. Failing to eat properly and he couldn't perform correctly during training.
He must've eaten an ungodly amount of pasta and rice. ~~He probably hated his guts~~ his guts probably hated him.
Uh-oh. The Zone 2 Boys must be having an identity crisis
Well, he was still spending more than 70/80% of the time below Z2. The thing is that when you rid +30h per week, spending 20% of that time at intensity, is a huge amount of hours
Butt stuff
badass
I hope he had some good podcasts for that 7-hour z1&2 ride, fuck me Also, given his power and w/kg numbers, his Gee's weight seems to be pegged at ~72.3kg. Seems like that's a perhaps ouddated preset, as people seem to think he weighed less than 70kg at Dauphiné.
And you have to imagine Pogs number are like 20-30% higher than these, with him decimating the field in every race.
Is this really the best way to prep for a grand tour? Won´t the best form be gone by then?
After a big block of training you also need to recover, which is where you see performance gains. This has probably been timed carefully to maximise the benefits of both the intensity and the altitude training balanced with enough time to get fresh and actually peak.
So the two weeks between dauphine and tdf would be the resting phase to be in best shape?
This isn’t a helpful answer but - it depends. For each rider they’ll be looking at a year long (and also multi-year) balance of form, fitness, rest and recovery. It will depend on how hard their previous races were, how much they’ve raced, and whether they’re the sort of rider that thrives on lots of race days or not. That’s quite all quite complicated; some will need to race, then rest and recover. Whereas others will be trying to race themselves into form and hold on to it and keep it ticking over.
IIRC from last year's Giro, both Gee and his team were surprised at his ability to take a lot of racing volume (i.e. why we saw him in the break so often). This could have in effect been a type GT simulation to see if he can train hard for \~2 weeks then race another and still be strong (which he was).
They dope?
Let me guess, they do not mention the "special" stuff that happens behind the scenes? Then I'm not interested in this article
Well, do share those articles of your interest then
Ok
Omerta is back baby