Dumoulin.

[Dear Wiggo]

As always, I start with myself and think -- am I surprised at what I am doing. For me, it would rarely be that. I have training data showing me power values at different durations. Yes, it can improve in a race when doing a crit or in a break away but for the most part, my power / times in training matched my power in races, or everyone did better with ideal conditions in a TT or what have you.

The guys I train with can tell when I am coming into form also. They make comments like "You should go well this weekend", either based on training or recent racing form. The people around me are amateurs and they know how I am going.

I then project this collective understanding of my form and ability onto what a pro is saying. I am sure many will argue that I as an amateur am better prepared than a pro, but personally I do not accept that. And never will.

The detail of data available to me is also available to the pro, except they have more time to look at it, it costs them significantly less to capture it and they have people around them dedicated to their profession to analyse it. Their whole life is dedicated to being a better athlete.

And they don't know where they're at?

Seriously?

Then I think back to Tyler Hamilton, not feeling any better than usual after a transfusion. How he had to really dig to get the best from the new blood coursing through his veins. How surprised (all of a sudden) he was to find he could dig deeper, go harder for longer. (The Secret Race, page 91)

Even dopers can have bad days...

 

[Dear Wiggo]

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[Benotti69]

Great posts Dear Wiggo.

I love the quote of Tyler Hamilton "You plan for months, you risk jail and scandal, you WORK HARDER THAN YOU"VE EVER WORKED IN YOUR LIFE and in the end you lose because you didn't eat a gel"

The dopers are lazy and don't train hard enough has been the long cry in cycling(and other sports), i can remember from Roche (when Rough rider came out) those at the back doped to keep up with natural talent at the front, to Sky's not stopping for coffee BS.......

Dumoulin just trained harder than the others...................

 

[Supimilian]

Re:

As always, I start with myself and think -- am I surprised at what I am doing. For me, it would rarely be that. I have training data showing me power values at different durations. Yes, it can improve in a race when doing a crit or in a break away but for the most part, my power / times in training matched my power in races, or everyone did better with ideal conditions in a TT or what have you.

The guys I train with can tell when I am coming into form also. They make comments like "You should go well this weekend", either based on training or recent racing form. The people around me are amateurs and they know how I am going.

I then project this collective understanding of my form and ability onto what a pro is saying. I am sure many will argue that I as an amateur am better prepared than a pro, but personally I do not accept that. And never will.

The detail of data available to me is also available to the pro, except they have more time to look at it, it costs them significantly less to capture it and they have people around them dedicated to their profession to analyse it. Their whole life is dedicated to being a better athlete.

And they don't know where they're at?

Seriously?

Then I think back to Tyler Hamilton, not feeling any better than usual after a transfusion. How he had to really dig to get the best from the new blood coursing through his veins. How surprised (all of a sudden) he was to find he could dig deeper, go harder for longer. (The Secret Race, page 91)

Dear Dear Wiggo
There is just one problem. There was no 'bad day' on stage 20. He climbed at the level with the same guys he climbed with in the earlier of the real mountain stages. He was never able to really hang with Aru in the real mountains, only the weird second stage and stage 9 (not proper mountain stages). He was dropped on 5 (FIVE) real mountain stages. Again, sloppy with the facts.

And please, save the anecdotes from your hobby riding, my cringe muscles will need days to recover.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

People with no argument get personal. Or construct a strawman to knock it down.

See it all the time.

It's a shame. I appreciate measured discussion and rational discourse.

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

Dear Dear Wiggo
There is just one problem. There was no 'bad day' on stage 20. He climbed at the level with the same guys he climbed with in the earlier of the real mountain stages. He was never able to really hang with Aru in the real mountains, only the weird second stage and stage 9 (not proper mountain stages). He was dropped on 5 (FIVE) real mountain stages. Again, sloppy with the facts.

And please, save the anecdotes from your hobby riding, my cringe muscles will need days to recover.

Puhleeeease take off the orange tinted spectacles.

 

[Supimilian]

Re: Re:

Puhleeeease take off the orange tinted spectacles.

1. Was he not dropped 5 times by Aru?
2. I'm not even remotely Dutch.

So much for measured discussion and rational discourse.
And btw, don't get personal, I might cry.

 

[Benotti69]

Re: Re:

Puhleeeease take off the orange tinted spectacles.

1. Was he not dropped 5 times by Aru?
2. I'm not even remotely Dutch.

So much for measured discussion and rational discourse.
And btw, don't get personal, I might cry.

Did Dumoulin not drop Aru, Froome, Quintana, Piti, Pozzovivo etc etc and more than once when the road went up!

TTer becomes mountain goat. Cleans of course.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

Weights of the riders currently in the top-10 (according to Wikipedia):
Meintjes 59 kg
Nieve 62 kg
Moreno 59 kg
Chavez 54 kg
Valverde 62 kg
Quintana 58 kg
Majka 62 kg
Purito 57 kg
Aru 61.5 kg
Dumoulin 71 kg

Just a reminder as to why one rider might get dropped by another...

 

[Supimilian]

He is not 71kg. This is settled already.
69 at most, I'd guess 68. Could be even less.

 

[MikeS369]

Re:

He is not 71kg. This is settled already.
69 at most, I'd guess 68. Could be even less.

Where was this settled?

 

[Cntfeelmylegs]

Re: Re:

He is not 71kg. This is settled already.
69 at most, I'd guess 68. Could be even less.

Where was this settled?

when his amateur training buddy lied on national tv. all part of grand scheme ofcourse

 

[Fearless Greg Lemond]

Re:

People with no argument get personal. Or construct a strawman to knock it down.

See it all the time.

It's a shame. I appreciate measured discussion and rational discourse.

Although Supini is being a bit priccly his assessment of Dumoulin's climbing isnt wrong.

How he was able to do that over a three weeks course is something different, and, the real question.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: Re:

People with no argument get personal. Or construct a strawman to knock it down.

See it all the time.

It's a shame. I appreciate measured discussion and rational discourse.

Although Supini is being a bit priccly his assessment of Dumoulin's climbing isnt wrong.

How he was able to do that over a three weeks course is something different, and, the real question.

Supimillian wtfever responded directly to my post with a put-down. The point in my post had nothing to do with climbing or even TTing. It was all to do with knowing where you are in terms of ability and that I as an amateur can do it but a supposed professional surrounded by supposed professional team and staff cannot. I then posted "I/We are surprised" quotes from 6 different sources, including his team mates, admin staff from his team and other teams, and he himself as evidence he has no idea how good he was going to be, nor did anyone else.

 

[matter]

I don't think I understand this discussion.

The people that believe he dopes, also believe (almost) every professional dopes. Then why is this even relevant?
There also seem to be people who believe he hasn't doped at all. (I'm not sure if his defenders think he is 100% clean tough) Can someone who is totally clean really compete against pros who even use the heavier stuff, like bloodbags, as I think many believe Astana uses?

Isn't there a grey area for discussion? Like assuming he uses what any average professional uses versus the full program that for instance (the leaders of) Sky and Astana are on. And what difference that could make. Does his performance indicate that he is on a big program, whatever that may entail, or is it possible for a rider with Dumoulin's potential to be able to be competitive over 3 weeks with a 'normal pro diet'? (the longer period is relevant to me as he has shown for a while he's able to perform at around this level at one-day and week long races).

I do think he dopes, but the posts that argue he does dope don't give me any insight into the extent to which he dopes or how it is done. As long as these posts aren't even insightful to me they will never make someone who believes in his complete innocence think twice. Hence there is no reason for me to assume he's on an extensive program. (Not that that would give him a free pass, but is there a grey area of doping where it feels less of a violation to us?)

What I mostly read here is "he obviously dopes"- "there is no clear reason to think he does" - "yes there is" - "no there isn't" ad infinitum.

 

[Supimilian]

Re: Re:

Supimillian wtfever responded directly to my post with a put-down. The point in my post had nothing to do with climbing or even TTing. It was all to do with knowing where you are in terms of ability and that I as an amateur can do it but a supposed professional surrounded by supposed professional team and staff cannot. I then posted "I/We are surprised" quotes from 6 different sources, including his team mates, admin staff from his team and other teams, and he himself as evidence he has no idea how good he was going to be, nor did anyone else.

Of course the point has to do with climbing and TTing.
If you can't establish that there has been a huge improvement in power and level to set off the alarm bells, then the comparison to Tyler having his first blood bag experience goes out the window. When you skip that part you should expect others to bring it back to you. The 'We are surprised' might as well be from the fact that the output (which is within reasonable distance of earlier performance) is enough for the results he is getting. If you then also go on to compare his 'bad day' to Hamilton when it was just his usual level, and casually imply that he too 'felt so strong he forgot to eat', then that too goes out the window obviously.

This is the kind of reasoning that should be acceptable to label someone a definite cheat? And somehow you are now wronged by being misrepresented here. The levels of irony..

 

[Lyon]

Re:

I don't think I understand this discussion.

The people that believe he dopes, also believe (almost) every professional dopes. Then why is this even relevant?
There also seem to be people who believe he hasn't doped at all. (I'm not sure if his defenders think he is 100% clean tough) Can someone who is totally clean really compete against pros who even use the heavier stuff, like bloodbags, as I think many believe Astana uses?

Isn't there a grey area for discussion? Like assuming he uses what any average professional uses versus the full program that for instance (the leaders of) Sky and Astana are on. And what difference that could make. Does his performance indicate that he is on a big program, whatever that may entail, or is it possible for a rider with Dumoulin's potential to be able to be competitive over 3 weeks with a 'normal pro diet'? (the longer period is relevant to me as he has shown for a while he's able to perform at around this level at one-day and week long races).

I do think he dopes, but the posts that argue he does dope don't give me any insight into the extent to which he dopes or how it is done. As long as these posts aren't even insightful to me they will never make someone who believes in his complete innocence think twice. Hence there is no reason for me to assume he's on an extensive program. (Not that that would give him a free pass, but is there a grey area of doping where it feels less of a violation to us?)

What I mostly read here is "he obviously dopes"- "there is no clear reason to think he does" - "yes there is" - "no there isn't" ad infinitum.

There is a subtext to the ongoing discussion, namely how the top riders at a given time seem to share a certain body type and how these changes in body type through the years coincide with new drugs/new protocols. Lately we have seen some tall, skinny anglo-norwegians win grand tours and some people see some likeness to them in Dumoulin.

 

[gmedina]

I was reading this and article on tt vs climbing output ( http://cyclingtips.com.au/2013/09/climbing-and-time-trialling-how-power-outputs-are-affected/). It made me think about this thread.

There were some things that caught my eye, and I thought I post it here:

For example, when I climb I can hold a consistent 400 watts for 15 minutes. I can’t do this when I’m on a TT bike though — I can only manage about 330 watts for 15 minutes. It’s not just me – my mates and I have always debated about why this might be the case and to be honest, none of us really knows.
.....
If you’re travelling 50km/hr on a flat road and you stop pedalling, you’re still moving quickly and won’t slow down very much. You’ve got all this energy which helps to overcome the drag and rolling resistance. So you’ve got a lot kinetic energy in the system, but the forces that are retarding you are relatively minor, so you don’t slow down very quickly.

Now, when you’re climbing, you are moving at a slower pace so you have less kinetic energy. When you stop pedalling on a climb you slow down very quickly. This is because you’ve got less energy in the system, plus the resistive force of gravity is significant.

If the total resistive power is 400w it would take 19.3seconds (7720/400) to slow down to a stop from 50km/h on the flat as compared to 3 seconds (1230/400) on the climb.

and this:

When doing the research, they found found that a rider could ride a TT and a climb with the same power, and same cadence, but there could be a 10bpm variation in heartrate, as well in differences in oxygen consumption and lactates. It comes down to an athlete’s predisposition of muscle fibre make-up.

 

[Red Rick]

Interesting. So doing 400w on a flat road on a tt bike is somehow different than doing it on a road bike on a gradient.

Why?

 

[Supimilian]

Re:

Interesting. So doing 400w on a flat road on a tt bike is somehow different than doing it on a road bike on a gradient.

Why?

There is a trade-off if you will between aero position and position that lets you put out the maximum amount of watts.

When riding uphill your position is pretty much only for the absolute watts you can produce, there is not such a pronounced balance point between aero and comfortable position for max output because wind resistance is an unimportant factor compared to the TT where it is a huge factor.
There you ideally find a balance point between optimal aero position vs position for max output to maximize your speed (typically at threshold).

 

[Benotti69]

Re:

Clinic is hilarious.

I have no words for this.

Don't post then. Clinic reflects the sport, but then you know that and had to have your say.........

 

[SlowFeet]

Re:

Interesting. So doing 400w on a flat road on a tt bike is somehow different than doing it on a road bike on a gradient.

Why?

In addition to the way it is explained in the article, think of it this way.

When you're going fast on a flat road putting out P watts of power, the amount of force working against you to keep you from going faster is actually quite small. Power = Force * Velocity...so for a given power, the higher your velocity, the lower the force.

When you're climbing at the same P watts of power, the force keeping you from going faster is larger. Let's say you climb at 16kph but you cruise flat roads at 42kph...that means that for the same power output you're dealing with drag forces that are 42/16=2.6 times as big when you're climbing.

So, when you're climbing, as soon as you ease off just a tiny bit during your pedal stroke you slow down much more quickly. Force = mass * acceleration (or deceleration in this case...which is just negative acceleration). Since the force is 2.6 times bigger, your deceleration is 2.6 times faster.

During your pedal stroke, if you are going to hold to close to a constant speed, you're going to have to keep the power on during more of your pedaling stroke when you're climbing. In a flat TT setting, a short dab of force on each pedal stroke will be enough because you coast better between pedal strokes.

So, for holding speed...climbing = longer power phase of pedal stroke, flat/TT = short jabs of power.

If you were to do short jabs of power while climbing your average speed would drop because you'd slow down so much between the jabs and you'd be spending power accelerating your mass back up to speed (fighting inertia) instead of spending power to keep going (fighting gravity and aero drag, etc). Besides, that would feel weird.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

Interesting. So doing 400w on a flat road on a tt bike is somehow different than doing it on a road bike on a gradient.

Why?

It boils down to inertia (kinetic vs potential energy) and muscle activation, training, and body position.

On a climb your kinetic energy (movement) is being matched by a greater resistive force of gravity. You have less inertia due to the slower speed, and greater resistive force. On the flat, it's just wind resistance. Your muscles activate differently because (non-scientifically), they have to "catch up" to the power stroke on non-uphill surfaces. You can see this really simply by smashing up a small hill, watching power, then turn around and try to sustain that power on the descent. At first your brain says "WTF!?" and most people I know struggle to do it for sustained periods of time. If you persist, you can teach your legs how to pedal downhill. In my experience, TTing into a really strong, consistent headwind can allow much greater power generation more easily than a fast, tailwind TT section. Slower speed, more manageable muscle activation sequence.

This is one reason why people who can generate a lot of power doing sprints uphill don't necessarily win sprints in races -- the muscle activation of a flat or downhill sprint is very different. (Ignoring positioning and tactics and recovery etc). As is your position.

If people trained on the TT bike like they do when climbing, they would narrow the gap considerably between TT and climbing power, but they don't. People rarely go out with their mates on their TT bikes and hammer each other. Compare that to the weekend ride where you will hammer each other up every climb. You become good at what you train. I know a group who do TT together regularly and they are all capable TTers.

On a climb your posture is opened up - arms out (comapred to TT bike), hip angle increased, natural head position, maximum lung expansion possible. On the TT bike you are restricting lung expansion, arms together, compressing the hip angle, and typically restricting your wind pipe with an unnatural neck-head angle. There's also an aspect of the artery through the hip being compressed but I'm fuzzy on that one.

 

[Red Rick]

I still don't get it. I thought it was all about overcoming resistance. So if a rider pushes an identical amount of watts with an identical cadence and position on a different grade, muscle recruitment will still be different due to differences in negative force and kinetic energy?

 

[Supimilian]

Re:

I still don't get it. I thought it was all about overcoming resistance. So if a rider pushes an identical amount of watts with an identical cadence on a different grade, muscle recruitment will still be different due to differences in negative force and kinetic energy?

Yes, it is about resistance, but the position that allows you to push the maximum amount of Watts will increase resistance because it's typically not close to the optimal aero position. They have to balance these two factors to get the highest possible speed for a given intensity.
You go towards optimal aero position (from optimal absolute power position) -> Wind resistace goes down, but power also goes down at same effort level
You balance these two for max speed. Again, when air resistance is a less important factor (like steep hills), the optimal position (for speed) is the one that sacrifices little to no absolute Watts for a better aero position.

The kinetic energy thing on flatter roads is also because of muscle response time and psychological factors. With for example varying wind, it is difficult to keep applied power as constant as when going against gravity on a steep road.