Froome's SRM data on Ventoux

[McLovin]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

 

[bigcog]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

Now now, don't post data that makes others look worse the anti-christ Froome

 

[carton]

Re: Re:

A couple notes (I didn't get a chance to watch the video but did see Vayer's graph):

1) As has been said before, the power data isn't a smoking gun. 5.8w/kg avg, above threshold efforts of almost 7 w/kg is what everyone expected.

lolnope it is not. Vayer predicted exactly what the file said. Try again.

I don't understand the point you're making.

2) On the flip side, the power data does seem enormously useful for competitors. As in, you need to try to withstand a x watt effort for y minutes to beat Froome, thereafter, his FTP does seem to go down a fair tick. That W balance analysis (not heard of it before), if legit, could be even more so.

lolnope. You train the best you can do have the best endurance possible. The route is released a year in advance, the power figures needed to win are known for the past 10+ years. There is no competitive value in the data whatsoever. Try again.

So why do riders bother with short burst of maximal power to distance their main rivals if all that counts is sustained power? Your story does not match most, if not all, MTFs.

You're either a diesel or a turbo. You can train that to some extent but mentally as much as anything you will lean towards one or the other.

Curiously, the average power by the top is pretty much the same, and over 30 minutes, your normalised power won't be much different because the attacks are not all that frequent, even by the most alien of riders.

So you have a basic formula of weight, ascent and time. Regardless of how you do it, your average power being the best it can be for X km (known 12 months in advance) is the best you can produce. Knowing what someone else can produce makes not one whit of difference.

There is such a thing as drafting, gradients, etc, that interplay with power. But just knowing things like how much does your ftp drop after an attack how much does your competitors should help draw up a game plan of what to do in which slopes and which attacks to follow. If say Quintana or Contador can do a longer attack but with a higher ftp dropoff it might tell him it's a good idea in a steady gradient to hold the wheels as long as possible and attack very late and gain a few seconds before Froome recovers. Or something of the like.

3) A high max HR isn't a indication of athletic performance. A low HR is. The vuelta data would seem to confirm that. As I understand it a low max and resting HR would seemingly indicate a very enlarged heart. I imagine Froome's engine must look a bit like Secretariat's.

lolnope. There are different combinations at every level of the sport. Lance's resting heart rate was 32bpm and his max was 201bpm.

I agree with you there, a low max HR does not tell us much, it's certainly no indication of a high level of fitness or performance, as those are seen with high and low max HRs. In my informal cycling group there are both riders with a high max HR (200+) and relatively low max HR (~150, probably due to age [60+]) who perform relatively well on climbs, especially corrected for age.

What little I know about physiology would seem to point out that the amount of blood pumped is very important for performance, both in terms of delivering oxygen and clearing lactic acid. And that the amount of blood pumped is a function of the heart rate and the amount of blood pumped by the heart in each contraction. So therefore I would assume that for a very high performing individual to have a very low max heart rate, the amount of blood pushed by each contraction should be huge. I'm not implying that it's unnaturally huge, BTW.

 

[the sceptic]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

you honestly think the likes of Peraud and Pinot can outclimb Froome?

that makes a lot of sense..

 

[franic]

Re: Re:

I think people are missing the really interesting thing here. It's not whether this data shows doping or not. It's that this data matches almost exactly the w/kg calculations of Vayer and Ferrari(?), even though Brailsford dismissed them as peseudo-scientific rubbish.

Exactly, there are two views on statistics. My background is in machine learning so I'll call them the Chomsky view and the Google view, as described here http://norvig.com/chomsky.html. The Chomsky/Brailsford view is that you have to perfectly model every conceivable factor with real physics etc and the model has to mirror reality. The Google/ammattipyoraily view is that the predictive accuracy of the model is what matters and not the internals.

My view is that the Chomsky way leads to whataboutery and nothing ever being done. If you have a model and it has very high accuracy despite leaving out certain variables, I think it's obvious that those variables aren't important.

In economics, the Google/ammattipyoraily way is known as the MIT way or the Solow/Krugman way. Strip down all the useless details and keep whatever is useful to have predictive accuracy.

 

[franic]

Re: Re:

Listening to Boardman rattle of Brailsfraud talking point after Brailsfraud talking point in a 2 minute speech, I'm losing my lasts doubts that his world beating performances in the age of Indurain, were less than a coincidence.

Of course you are

I thought you said you preferred just focusing on the racing and all the utopianistic fantasies they bring you, rather than wasting time here. What's wrong, can't help it?

If only a place existed, a place where true cycling connaisseurs could muse over the beauty of cycling, the hard work of these fine gentlemen, a place where you are not allowed to talk about doping, a place where there are no conspiracy thories and jealous losers talking crap about your hero. A place that Jimmyfingers might call home.

What a shame no such place exists on the entire internet. It would be a win-win for everyone.

What’s Lance Armstrong’s place in that world?

 

[McLovin]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

you honestly think the likes of Peraud and Pinot can outclimb Froome?

that makes a lot of sense..

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

 

[bigcog]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

you honestly think the likes of Peraud and Pinot can outclimb Froome?

that makes a lot of sense..

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

Which "figures" are correct ? The ones that suit the argument at the time ...

 

[franic]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

In terms of effort there’s a huge difference between climbing steadily at 400W and going up and down from 300W to 1000W. For instance, climbing Hautacam Nibali attacked pretty soon and probably had a power output with very low volatility.

 

[hrotha]

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

The official numbers just come to confirm the calculations we had - we already analyzed them.

You can't use the data from a single climb, isolated from all the other stages. You can't compare a single performance to Tour averages.

That said, it was already known and acknowledged that 2013 Froome's values were very similar, if slightly superior, to 2014 Nibali's. That's how arms races work.

 

[McLovin]

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

The official numbers just come to confirm the calculations we had - we already analyzed them.

You can't use the data from a single climb, isolated from all the other stages. You can't compare a single performance to Tour averages.

That said, it was already known and acknowledged that 2013 Froome's values were very similar, if slightly superior, to 2014 Nibali's. That's how arms races work.

Ok, then Nibali had better numbers on four climbs out of six compared with the most iconic climb Froome ever produced (including Beal).

 

[the sceptic]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

you honestly think the likes of Peraud and Pinot can outclimb Froome?

that makes a lot of sense..

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

Ventoux is a long climb. You can't compare it directly to climbs that take 20-30 minutes.

 

[carton]

Re: Re:

Given the pretty crummy analysis and ill informed commentary when data is made public, I'm not particularly surprised at people's decision to keep it private.

Confirmation bias is the order of the day.

This man has a point

I just want to enjoy the cycling.

Then what the bleedin' hell are you doing in the Clinic.

I want to... but there's no point pretending. I'd just prefer if we nailed our cheats based on unequivocal evidence, rather than interpretations of data whichno one can bloody agree on

Then you'd never nail pretty much anyone (see: Armstrong, Lance, aka "the most tested athlete in history"), and we couldn't have a bio-passport system. Or, really, much of a criminal justice system, since pretty much all data can be interpreted different ways (see, Simpson, Orenthal James)

 

[franic]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

In terms of effort there’s a huge difference between climbing steadily at 400W and going up and down from 300W to 1000W. For instance, climbing Hautacam Nibali attacked pretty soon and probably had a power output with very low volatility.

BTW, if they have the SRM file it’s not hard to obtain a model-implied FTP given his power outputs on shorter segments and use it instead of the average power on the climb.

 

[LeindersGains]

Wow! Froome's power data are finally out there.

Some one you who can analyze if his heart rate normal? I know a very little about physiology.

 

[McLovin]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

you honestly think the likes of Peraud and Pinot can outclimb Froome?

that makes a lot of sense..

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

Ventoux is a long climb. You can't compare it directly to climbs that take 20-30 minutes.

Chamrousse and Bales are long climbs. Not to mention Hautacam, at the end of a TOur with 6 MTF, which most people agreed it's the hardest climb the ASO is using in Pyrenees.

 

[franic]

Doctors, I'm confused. So if Froome had raced the 2014 Tour like Ventoux then no podium for him??

you honestly think the likes of Peraud and Pinot can outclimb Froome?

that makes a lot of sense..

I asked you because some of you here are full of numbers since 2011. And now that you have the official ones maybe you can answer this.

Ventoux is a long climb. You can't compare it directly to climbs that take 20-30 minutes.

Chamrousse and Bales are long climbs. Not to mention Hautacam, at the end of a TOur with 6 MTF, which most people agreed it's the hardest climb the ASO is using in Pyrenees.

Hautacam is 13 km long, Mount Ventoux more than 20. Moreover Hautacam is at 1520m, Mount Ventoux at 1912

 

[Dear Wiggo]

Re: Re:

Given the pretty crummy analysis and ill informed commentary when data is made public, I'm not particularly surprised at people's decision to keep it private.

Confirmation bias is the order of the day.

This man has a point

I just want to enjoy the cycling.

Then what the bleedin' hell are you doing in the Clinic.

I want to... but there's no point pretending. I'd just prefer if we nailed our cheats based on unequivocal evidence, rather than interpretations of data whichno one can bloody agree on

Still doesn't make any sense why you are here. Coming and whinging about what the posters here are doing and have always done and expecting a change is the definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

 

[SeriousSam]

Re: Re:

I think people are missing the really interesting thing here. It's not whether this data shows doping or not. It's that this data matches almost exactly the w/kg calculations of Vayer and Ferrari(?), even though Brailsford dismissed them as peseudo-scientific rubbish.

Exactly, there are two views on statistics. My background is in machine learning so I'll call them the Chomsky view and the Google view, as described here http://norvig.com/chomsky.html. The Chomsky/Brailsford view is that you have to perfectly model every conceivable factor with real physics etc and the model has to mirror reality. The Google/ammattipyoraily view is that the predictive accuracy of the model is what matters and not the internals.

My view is that the Chomsky way leads to whataboutery and nothing ever being done. If you have a model and it has very high accuracy despite leaving out certain variables, I think it's obvious that those variables aren't important.

Please don't compare Brailsfraud's PR *** to Chomsky's criticism of the statistical approach to things like AI. Brailsfraud isn't a scientist and I would be utterly shocked if he has a correct understanding of what a confidence interval is.

Chomsky is essentially saying (in an essay of his I've read on this) that genuine scientific advances can't be brought about with, say, some new classification method that has polynomial time complexity and brings down out of sample 1-0 loss more than any existing method.

I think he's dead right about this, but what vetooo etm al are trying to do is estimate the Dawgs w/kg given observable data we have and knowledge of the quite well understood basic newtonian phyics of riding a bike. Not ground breaking scientific advances. This is the type of problem statistics excels at.

 

[LeindersGains]

And can a perfomance like be done with "normal doping" or only archived by mechanical doping?

If it is "only" archived by using medical drugs, he's just a cheater like the rest of them. We know that all the top riders are juiced up like crazy.

But if it's done by using a motor, I'm drawing the line. Then he is a scumbag who should be in jail. And so should his manager.

 

[McLovin]

Ok, between Chamrousse record and Ventoux record it's a difference of only 8 minutes. Not to mention the Ventoux stage had zero climbs before (I know, 40 km longer) but Chamrousse had Palaquit before it. Even if you are right I am not convinced Froome's numbers are sic. Maybe next time (today?).

 

[the sceptic]

good good. Looking forward to Froome getting dropped by the french today.

 

[hrotha]

Re:

Ok, between Chamrousse record and Ventoux record it's a difference of only 8 minutes. Not to mention the Ventoux stage had zero climbs before (I know, 40 km longer) but Chamrousse had Palaquit before it. Even if you are right I am not convinced Froome's numbers are sic. Maybe next time (today?).

They were always just shy of crossing into unbelievable territory.

 

[vedrafjord]

I'm trying to work out a way to plot the data from those tables in a sensible way that incorporates the length and steepness of the climbs. I made a couple of very simple plots of the averages and posted them here before which was interesting but was definitely skewed by very long and very short climbs (and also road surface in one case). I intend to do it when I have less work and more time.

My personal view based on nothing other than intuition is that the Ferrari formula underestimates watts/kg but the important thing is that we're always comparing like with like so it doesn't matter so much.

 

[the sceptic]

What we need next is a side by side video of Dawg vs Lance for the final 15 km


-1. Lance Armstrong ______ USA | 48:33 | 2002
-2. Chris Froome _________ GBR | 48:35 | 2013