Dumoulin.

[Dear Wiggo]

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 and position on a different grade, muscle recruitment will still be different due to differences in negative force and kinetic energy?

It doesn't matter than you don't get it.

 

[motty89]

Re: 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.

I would guess a tter/gc rider would have a much smaller gap between tt power and on hills compared to amateurs. But if higher power on a climb is due to low inertia, why can I produce more power on a climb but less on the turbo which is also low inertia???

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Wiggo never did 6.4W/kg for an hour on a climb in the 2012 Tour, but that's the average power he generated for 63 minutes in the final TT.

 

[motty89]

yeah, but climbs are done at the end of a stage, not completely fresh and sometimes at altitude >2000m.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: Re:

Agreed, I would guess a tter/gc rider would have a much smaller gap between tt power and on hills compared to amateurs. But if higher power on a climb is due to low inertia, why can I produce more power on a climb but less on the turbo which is also low inertia???

Because turbos suck.

Heat plays a part, and your inertia may in fact be significantly less than riding uphill. It's a less natural movement, and for prolonged efforts the mental stimulation aspect is mind numbing.

But again, I know people who do generate similar power. It's a training thing.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re:

yeah, but climbs are done at the end of a stage, not completely fresh and sometimes at altitude >2000m.

Completely fresh after 2 weeks in the yellow jersey at the end of the single most important 3 week race on the professional cycling calendar, racing over 1000 km a week at an average speed around 40km/hr over some big mountains, in a stressful bunch of 200 or so riders?

Hmmmm...

 

[motty89]

Re: Re:

yeah, but climbs are done at the end of a stage, not completely fresh and sometimes at altitude >2000m.

Completely fresh after 2 weeks in the yellow jersey at the end of the single most important 3 week race on the professional cycling calendar, racing over 1000 km a week at an average speed around 40km/hr over some big mountains, in a stressful bunch of 200 or so riders?

Hmmmm...

ok, i'll give you that. However I still don't think you can really compare final climbs of mountain stages to tts

Does anybody know power output for dumoulin in a tt?

 

[Dear Wiggo]

All I'm saying is some riders can easily do their best power on the TT bike on the flat, rather than the mountains.

 

[HelmutRoole]

Re:

I don't think I understand this discussion...

Isn't there a grey area for discussion?...

It boils down to, define doping. I've seen the phrase, define doping, used on this forum and it deserves its own thread.

Without going into details, I'd say he was a guy who could be competitive on a program minimal for the World Tour but now he's taking baby steps in the direction of full-genius.

 

[SlowFeet]

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 and position on a different grade, muscle recruitment will still be different due to differences in negative force and kinetic energy?

Resistance isn't the same as watts. Resistance is the force you're pushing against. Power is the amount of energy per second you're putting out.

So, this is all about the resistance. The statement here is that it is different to put out 200 Watts against a 100 Newton resistance force than it is to put out 200 Watts against a 10 Newton resistance force.

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: 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 and position on a different grade, muscle recruitment will still be different due to differences in negative force and kinetic energy?

Resistance isn't the same as watts. Resistance is the force you're pushing against. Power is the amount of energy per second you're putting out.

So, this is all about the resistance. The statement here is that it is different to put out 200 Watts against a 100 Newton resistance force than it is to put out 200 Watts against a 10 Newton resistance force.

Nicely put.

 

[Benotti69]

I wonder has La Vuelta become the testing ground for 'rider transformations'............

 

[The Principal Sheep]

Re:

I wonder has La Vuelta become the testing ground for 'rider transformations'............

Perhaps it is like a trade show, what we see at Vuelta is a 'concept' of what a cyclist may be like at future grand tours

 

[classicomano]

Dumoulin released his numbers for the Vuelta. Time to give your final verdict Clinic.

Its pretty unique. With some exceptions like Steven Kruijswijk after the Giro, there are no GC guys who publish their data. Out of fear that the competition gets something from it, or that the data is being labeled as suspicious. Dumoulin: "I cant think of a good reason not to share my numbers. Only the data from my time trial is off limits because you could pick up things from my aerodynamics, the rest everyone can know about."

His trainer Adriaan Helmantel says: "We can explain Toms development with the data we have, and we like to share them with everyone else. That he could compete for the Vuelta overall is something we didnt expect, but its not totally strange what happened. In the winter we asked ourrslves when Tom could win a grand tour. His power output showed that it was possible. He earlier put out watts in training that he couldnt match in the races, in this Vuelta he finally managed to do it after being in the saddle for several hours.

In the second stage he already showed that he could be up there with the best climbers: 460 watts in 8 and a half minutes, took him to second place in the stage. Dumoulin: "I wanted to show that he didnt sit still after the Tour, I was incredibly motivated." Helmantal: "Tom gets his best performances in these steep short efforts, they are ideal for him."

That shows. In the first week Dumoulin can keep up with the best on the short steep climbs, but also on the longer ones like La Alpujarra. The day after the finish is on Cumbre del Sol, a wall of 4 kilometers. Dumoulin attacks, gets caught by Chris Froome, but rebounded and took the stage.

The power meter shows 460 watt for 11 minutes. Helmantal: "Extremely high, but still below his record in training. What makes it special for him is that he can do this effort after 4 hours in the saddle." Dumoulin:"I surprised myself here. I felt even stronger than in the first few days of the Vuelta.

 

[Dekker_Tifosi]

He did well over the Puerto de Morcuera even... but the effort of chasing caught up with him on the final climb.

 

[Red Rick]

Cool that he did that,

Whats Froome waiting for?

 

[Benotti69]

Re:

Dumoulin released his numbers for the Vuelta. Time to give your final verdict Clinic.

There are no final verdicts. History has shown that!

 

[roundabout]

He should release the numbers from his best performances prior to the Vuelta.

 

["Jeff"]

He should release the pics of the needle track marks.

 

[roundabout]

way to be defensive there

 

["Jeff"]

No just curious.

 

[yespatterns]

Averaging 6.6 w/kg when he beat the dawg according to the story here on CN...

 

[Tyr]

Should be "Dumuolin released random credible numbers to prove he is clean".

 

[Roude Leiw]

Re: belief

............so it's 'as you were?'.................doubters continue to doubt and believers prefer to believe

..............nothing achieved......................

Mark L

you thought something different world happen in (of all places) the clinic

 

[Merckx index]

I give Dumoulin a lot of credit for doing this, and his comment about why shouldn’t he do it ought to put Froome on the defensive.

The best and therefore most suspicious performances:

Ermita de Alba: 6.1 W/kg for 25 min.
Alto de Sores: 5.8 W/kg for 38 min.

These values aren’t unbelievable for any rider, but they're pushing the envelope*, and are certainly higher than what would have been expected from TD going into the race. I doubt very much that the team's earlier tests indicated he could do > 6 W/kg for that length of time. Also, each of these rides was preceded a few days earlier by another climb of almost exactly the same length (Alto de Chivo; Cortals d’Encamp) in which his power output was about 10% lower. The latter climbs are more in keeping with what one might have expected.

As another poster mentioned, it would be nice to see values from the past, a la Pinot. And some physiological parameters. But this is a good start.

*keep in mind on Alba, Aru and Purito finished almost 30" ahead of Dumoulin, and on Sores, Aru, Majka, Quintana and some others finished I think around 20-30" ahead. I didn't see these stages, but assuming they were together at the start of the climb, this means their power outputs were even greater, I think roughly 6.2 W/kg on Alba. I'm not going to do it now, but there should be enough information available to determine their outputs fairly precisely.