Huapango said:
I wonder by how many minutes Froome would've won the TDF or Vuelta, if he was actually trying. My guess is 30+ minutes.
Any guesses on what Froome is looking at while he stares at the computer mounted on his stem? Battery power indicator? SDB text messages? Mexican soap operas?
The computer is on the handlebars though. The stem IS magnetising in its own right it seems.
On screen there is probably power, hr, time, cadence and a real time W' balance reading. The latter indicates how much hi intensity work (in kilojoules) he can put out above his threshold (critical Power) Watts. The harder you go, ie the more you exceed the CP, the quicker the expenditure of the w' balance. Exhaustion occurs near zero balance if the parameter values CP and W' are well defined. In pros, they probably are.
Yoyoing would fit this guess fairly well. Abstain from attacking and responding early on and ride just at CP. Then switch on the afterburners and go for it once the others have expended their capacity AND you can be sure to withstand the effort to the line.
Needless to say that real time W' balance is a race killer metric. Should be banned. heck, computers should be banned.