Team Ineos (Formerly the Sky thread)

[armchairclimber]

Wow. No faith in Armstrong. We have not seen a transformation this miraculous since Wiggins learned to climb. Thanks, BPC. This one takes the biscuit.

I think it is hilarious how former Armstrong fanboys have abandoned their man to hop on the Wiggins bandwagon.

Er, do you believe me to have had other usernames in the past?

 

[red_death]

And let's be really sharp about this Tenerife drivel.

Altitude training means Live High, Train Low. It's complete nonsense to think that riding up that mountain is a good idea (muscle damage ahoy). Live High, Train Low can be mimicked much more effectively by using an altitude tent.

Climbers (alpinists rather than cyclists) often do the opposite to acclimatise to higher altitude ie climb high, sleep low, though in that case the low can still be relatively high up as typically I start to notice the effects of altitude above 3000m. The point of that is subjecting your body to lower oxygen at the higher altitude and then going back lower to give it time to adapt and recover. Going back down to lower altitudes eg sea level or 1000m and you do feel fantastic, but the effect is pretty short lived ie leave it 3-4 weeks without going back to altitude and you will probably have to re-acclimatise.

So living high and training low could work, though what you really need to do is also condition the body to work well at high altitude (for cyclists say up to 2000m). I think it is fair to say the studies have been mixed results rather than drivel. The idea that the body can adapt to lower oxygen intake and/or use oxygen more efficiently given training and acclimatisation works otherwise you don't have any alpine climbers going much above 4000m without supplemental oxygen.

 

[Zam_Olyas]

Altitude training

http://velorooms.com/the-doping-section/altitude-training-is-placebo/

 

[Franklin]

I think it is fair to say the studies have been mixed results rather than drivel.

The stories about Tenerife are drivel.

- His 100k climbing is afaik contrary to scientific methods which actually say "go slow to go fast". Climbing del Teide so often would be extremely strenuous, especially at the higher altitude. There will be muscle damage. The Madone was chosen for a reason and we can hardly fault Lance for his training regimens effectiveness.

But let's just chalk that up as smoke and mirrors for his competitors.

- The effectiveness of returning to Tenerife during the season for just a few weeks is completely inefficient due to acclamitizing.

 

[red_death]

Climbing del Teide so often would be extremely strenuous, especially at the higher altitude. There will be muscle damage.
- The effectiveness of returning to Tenerife during the season for just a few weeks is completely inefficient due to acclamitizing.

Teide is 3700m which in the grand scheme of things isn't that high, it wouldn't be particularly pleasant but you can certainly acclimatise to that and you are right that you take the acclimatisation slow and steady. If you can acclimatise then you reduce the chance of muscle damage greatly (without acclimatising then you will damage muscle due to inability to refuel or hydrate properly).

For the high mtn stages you want to be acclimatised so if Sky went to Tenerife (or trained high anywhere) in the month before the Tour then I would have thought there would be some benefit on the highest climbs.

 

[Skibby the bush kangaroo]

Teide is 3700m which in the grand scheme of things isn't that high, it wouldn't be particularly pleasant but you can certainly acclimatise to that and you are right that you take the acclimatisation slow and steady. If you can acclimatise then you reduce the chance of muscle damage greatly (without acclimatising then you will damage muscle due to inability to refuel or hydrate properly).

For the high mtn stages you want to be acclimatised so if Sky went to Tenerife (or trained high anywhere) in the month before the Tour then I would have thought there would be some benefit on the highest climbs.

The road only goes to about 2300m.

 

[iZnoGouD]

Armstrong doper

Wiggins clean

 

[Lanark]

Servais Knaven was a guest at the Dutch show De Avondetappe. When asked why Wiggins and Froome are leading the Tour he unequivocally said it was because they are more talented.

Later on in the show they started talking about training regimes, and what Sky is doing different. Knaven said that it's highly exaggerated by the media. When pressed on this point he said the may be slightly ahead of the rest, but it wouldn't make much of a difference. It was clear that he thinks all the marginal gains stuff, the warming downs and the winter training have very little to do with the succes of his riders. He thinks they are simply more talented.

 

[roundabout]

Paving the way for future success when compeition catches up to the "training disadvantage"?

Deliberatly playing down their training? Possible, but there are smart people in cycling outside of Sky so it might indeed be "marginal" gains.

I am curious what people in FdJ, Credit Agricole and Cofidis thought of Wiggins talent level. We've already heard Vaughters.

 

[Benotti69]

Servais Knaven was a guest at the Dutch show De Avondetappe. When asked why Wiggins and Froome are leading the Tour he unequivocally said it was because they are more talented.

Later on in the show they started talking about training regimes, and what Sky is doing different. Knaven said that it's highly exaggerated by the media. When pressed on this point he said the may be slightly ahead of the rest, but it wouldn't make much of a difference. It was clear that he thinks all the marginal gains stuff, the warming downs and the winter training have very little to do with the succes of his riders. He thinks they are simply more talented.

Interesting when a sky DS dismissed the warming down as fluff.

I thought all this is marginal gains etc was what made the difference to Wiggins, as he wasn't more talented before he joined Sky!

 

[thehog]

Of course the warming down process somehow trumps every other teams post stage procedure. The evidence being that Sky are far superior than every other team in this year’s race. So it’s put down to this one simple element? I do wonder what evidence there is to back this up. That this is the one factor for their success? And that it provides such amazing results? I’m sure it’s out there somewhere. Or do we just believe it without the facts?

Thanks Hog. Good post.

 

[thehog]

Well I called it. I said they’d go 1-2 and beat Fabian. The dope does strange things to your head. You want to crush everything with your new found power. That they did. Whilst watching I even thought Wiggins was soft pedaling around corners towards the end. Maybe not taking risks but I think he was actually trying not to record a time to far off the charts.

Tomorrow is the biggest day of the Tour. The rest day. Again the dopers logic is Sky will reach for the bloodbags as they’re nervous the other team will be doing the same and don’t want to miss a trick.

My next prediction after getting the ITT result correct and Wiggo’s violent reaction to dope talk is the following…. I predict on the next mountain stage they will go 1-2-3 maybe even 4 in the final group. Rogers and Porte took it easier today. They’re ready to completely smash it apart on the first MTF. Again dopers logic.

I still think something will happen… I don’t know what but something is going to go boom and it will be all over….

Hog when you said something will happen did you mean Frank Shleck positive or something else?

 

[BillytheKid]

Armstrong doper

Wiggins clean

Hmmmm. No more looking the other way now the USADA closes in.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3395/3434625727_bae09fb470.jpg
Wiggins in his Garmin days.

 

[BillytheKid]

Armstrong doper

Wiggins clean

Wiggins is naturally lean?

 

[BroDeal]

Wiggins is naturally lean?

Wiggins' legs are about three times the length of his body in that pic. He must be twelve feet tall. And his left foot is twice the size of his right.

 

[BillytheKid]

Wiggins' legs are about three times the length of his body in that pic. He must be twelve feet tall. And his left foot is twice the size of his right.

Wide angle lenses will foreshorten and enlarge any thing closer to the camera and destort towards the edges, that in mind, he is beyond skinny... to POW look. So I not sure the statement he's clean is something that can be said if we are judging from looks. Maybe he is clean? Found a way to it that works. Is the substance Schleck was busted for used to lean down or to mask?

 

[mastersracer]

Hog when you said something will happen did you mean Frank Shleck positive or something else?

I didn't know Frank was on Sky. Commenting on your own posts: perhaps a sign you're the only one left reading them....

 

[BillytheKid]

I didn't know Frank was on Sky. Commenting on your own posts: perhaps a sign you're the only one left reading them....

That was in reply to BroDeal. WTF?

Back read the the thread!

 

[Krebs cycle]

And let's be really sharp about this Tenerife drivel.

Altitude training means Live High, Train Low. It's complete nonsense to think that riding up that mountain is a good idea (muscle damage ahoy). Live High, Train Low can be mimicked much more effectively by using an altitude tent.

If anything the Tenerife trainings camp seem rather old-fashioned. It's one of those touted marginal gains that are very dubious upon closer inspection.

Why go to Tenerife if it's an expensive, inefficient way of training? Why do people like Wiggins and Vinokourov swear by this training method?

I cannot be certain of this but my general feeling is that pretty much every pro-cyclist these days would own their own altitude tent. They cost about as much as an intermediate sprint bonus.

A PhD student at the AIS did a study a few years ago where they examined LHTL, LLTH, LHTL + TH, and control. The LHTL + TH added 3 or maybe 5 sessions per week x 60min in hypoxia.

The best performance and VO2max responses came from the LHTH group with the LHTL coming in a close second.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20503055

I think that travelling to a location with a bunch of altitude tents and where you can access natural altitude is a great strategy. Randy Wilbur has also done studies which show that if you live at altitude but then use supplemental oxygen for high intensity training, you get pretty good outcomes also.

 

[BillytheKid]

Armstrong doper

Wiggins clean

This prompted my statement. What kind of Masters do u a have.

 

[BroDeal]

Wide angle lenses will foreshorten and enlarge any thing closer to the camera and destort towards the edges, that in mind, he is beyond skinny... to POW look.

The pic, which keeps getting posted, is completely bogus because of the distortion. Look at his feet. Look at the length of his lower legs compared to his body.

I have posted pics from that year side by side with pics from his time on Cofidis. Side views while time trialing. There is no visible difference. Wiggins has always had the lower legs of a twelve year old girl.

 

[BillytheKid]

The pic, which keeps getting posted, is completely bogus because of the distortion. Look at his feet. Look at the length of his lower legs compared to his body.

I have posted pics from that year side by side with pics from his time on Cofidis. Side views while time trialing. There is no visible difference. Wiggins has always had the lower legs of a twelve year old girl.

Ok, check out steephill. Scroll down to second photo of Wiggins on the rest day. This time with a telephoto.

http://www.steephill.tv/tour-de-france/

I don't think the wide is a total bogus, but I was just wondering if they really prove anything or just arouse suspicion.

 

[ianfra]

WELL?

Does anyone apart from me think there's been something fishy about this team for a while now? Today's performance in Dauphiné reminded me of the bygone days of Lance's teammates at the Tour, when all of them (except he, of course) were doped to the gills ....

No offence intended.

Nothing fishy at all. And if you knew anything about cycling your would not even entertain asking such a dopey and loaded question.

 

[BillytheKid]

Nothing fishy at all. And if you knew anything about cycling your would not even entertain asking such a dopey and loaded question.

I think cycling is in trouble because a breakthrough performance will always be questioned in the future.

 

[maxmartin]

I think cycling is in trouble because a breakthrough performance will always be questioned in the future.

breakthrough at 32, 27 of course seems very very suspicious to me and Froom basically achieved nothing and worry about his contract before last year Vuelta.

If tejay van garderen make the podium next year, I will be much much less suspicious, because he is young and have solid previous result to back him up.