Posted on 07/01/2023 7:07:52 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Thanks. It’s an addicting sport for sure.
My pleasure.
If you would, add me to your ping list please.
regards, V_TWIN
đź‘Ť
Yesterday (4th of July) I was stopped at a red light by the Berlin Wall and a bee stung me on the back of my neck. I don't know why it stung me but I swiped it down and stepped on it. Now I will always say I got stung by a bee when it is 4th of July. Hope you people had a good one! At least I still have all my fingers.
I meant to post this from the weekend but forgot... I seen these small cars driving around Berlin but now I found their training "track". It was a bit concerning to see how small a loop they train on considering they ride two side-by-side in a group of 10. But they must have driving licenses so I am not THAT concerned really.
Cycling Advice That Sucks!
There’s a lot of advice out there for cyclists, but not all of it is GOOD advice. Some of it could actually hinder your progress! So Conor is here to tell you the bad advice, you don't need to weigh less to go faster and you don't need to slam your stem!
The 2023 race between 2020 & 2021 TdF winner Tadej PogaÄŤar and 2022 winner Jonas Vingegaard had been nip and tuck from the opening gun. Yesterday, Vingegaard put a minute and half on PogaÄŤar in an individual time trial. Today, just to add insult to injury, Vingegaard added five minutes to his lead on a murderous mountain finish (pitches as steep as 24%) on Col de la Loze. Based on their previous confrontations (barring he be struck by a meteorite), the minute and a half Vingegaard already had in hand undoubtedly would have seen him through to Paris. But despite already having the race in the bag, on Stage 17, Vingegaard, Merckx-like, attacked like he was three minutes down.
And on the day after a herculean effort in the ITT, Vingegaard still had enough gas in the tank to motor away from all the other GC contenders like they were Category 3 amateurs. When Pharmstrong saw a competitor pulling a stunt like this, his response invariably was, "Not normal." And indeed it wasn't.
Vingegard came second in the 2021 TdF (to PogaÄŤar). It was his sixth season as a Pro. His best UCI ranking in the five years previous had been 212th (in 2019). In 2021, his ranking jumped to 14th.
Jumping from a ranking of 277th (in 2020) to 14th (in 2021) is the classic case of a transformation from plough horse to race horse, but Vingegaard wasn't the first and doubtless won't be the last.
The same thing happened to Indurain. In his first four TdFs he could manage no better than 47th in GC (1988). EPO is believed to have been in use the pro peloton by 1987 but definitely was by 1988. It took a few seasons to work out the details of administering it so as not to get caught but in 1991, Indurain was so much faster than LeMond that Greg was left believing he had some mysterious (and undiagnosed) ailment that was causing him to slow. And (the aptly-named) Big Mig, a man who until EPO was available couldn't climb a mountain without the aid of a Land Rover, won the TdF five times at the trot.
Pharmstrong had started the TdF four times before the cancer diagnosis. In those four starts he had had three DNFs and came 36th in the fourth. Which doesn't exactly reek of greatness, does it? And during his time off for cancer treatment, he became acquainted with a certain Michele Ferrari, doping doctor extraordinaire.
Chris Froome's best UCI ranking in his first four seasons as a pro was 364th. 364th! Beginning in 2011, his second season with Sky, Froome's UCI ranking improved to double-digits, and kept improving season-by-season until he finally won four TdFs in five seasons.
It bears mention that Froome's move to Sky coincided with the period when Sky was widely regarded as the most dominant and best-doped team since Pharmstrong's Big Blue Train. Sky was so dominant the ASO (who run the TdF) took the extraordinary measure of reducing TdF team size from nine riders to just eight, in the hope it would change the balance of power and curtail Sky's dominance.
Sure, there was doping before EPO, but all those drugs did -- cocaine, chloroform, amphetamines and others -- was give relief from fatigue. They didn't give the rider a bigger engine, just a bigger fuel tank. EPO changed the game because it dramatically boosts a rider's VO2Max, which not only enlarges the his fuel tank, it also ups his horsepower.
In the era before EPO, there were no "great" riders who waited four or five seasons to show their potential. Anquetil, Merckx and Hinault all won their inaugural TdF. LeMond came 3rd in his inaugural, then second (a race he could have won because Hinault, his team captain, had been injured in a crash, but Greg acquiesced to team orders and nursed "the Badger" into Paris, settling for second place).
1986 marked LeMond's third entry in the TdF and his first win. In his three TdFs starts to that point, he had had one close finish, a second he could have won, and a third that he did win. Greg hadn't bothered waiting five seasons to distinguish himself as a force to be reckoned with.
The great ones don't waste any time distinguishing themselves from the plough horses. And the ones that start out as plough horses but miraculously are transformed into a racing thoroughbred after four or five seasons, ... that's just ... not normal.
On a related note, no other sport I am aware of celebrates its last-place finisher, but the Tour de France does. He is known as the Lantern Rouge, the red lantern, an allusion to the red lamp that traditionally was hung from the tail end of the caboose on a railroad train.
The 2022 Lantern Rouge was an Ozzie named Caleb Ewan. Ewan completed the 2081 mile course in 85 hours and 14 minutes, an average speed of 24.5 mph.
1971 was Eddy Merckx's fastest ever TdF ever and the first TdF won at an average speed of 23 mph or greater. The Cannibal covered the race's 2242 miles in 96 hours 45 minutes, an average speed of 23.2.
It also bears mention that 2022 TdF winner Jonas Vingegaard was the first to average more than 26 mph, faster even than Pharmstrong's 2005 victory, which was the first win (until it wasn't) with an average speed of more than 25 mph.
And we know to a certainty Pharmstrong was doped in 2005 because he's admitted it. Yet not only was Vingegaard 2022 faster than Pharmstrong 2005, Caleb Ewan, who not only was 2022's Lantern Rouge, he also was more than five hours off the winning pace, was faster than Merckx 1971.
One last point. The cyclist's greatest enemy is aerodynamic drag. By the time a cyclist is riding in the low teens (in mph), aerodynamic drag is greater than all of the bicycle's internal frictions and rolling resistance combined. At racing speeds, more than 90% of the rider's output is needed just to overcome the aerodynamic drag. And aerodynamic drag increases exponentially with speed.
So although the extra 3 mph Vingegard had in hand over Merckx 1971 seems trivial, that seemingly insignificant 3 mph of added aerodynamic drag would have required somewhere between 25 and 40% more Watts of cycling power to overcome.
And it's all the more incredible because Vingegaard weighs 30 lbs (14 kg) less than Merckx. Which means his power-to-weight ratio (W/kg) is at least 30% higher than Merckx's was.
If I ever should meet the man who can produce 30% more cycling power than Eddy Merckx (without pharmaceutical assistance), I'll shake his hand and buy him a five cent Daniel Webster seegar.
They're still doped, you can bet on it. And the fact that anti-doping positives now are scarcer than hobbyhorse poo means they're doping with impunity.
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