The Froome Files, test data only thread

[Ironhead Slim]

How does this one report from one particular day of testing prove anything regarding how Froome went from average to superstar in 2011?

 

[Benotti69]

How does this one report from one particular day of testing prove anything regarding how Froome went from average to superstar in 2011?

It doesn't and it never set out to that.

It was a PR exercise to add more smoke to the screen that Sky/Froome keep changing depending on who is willing to repeat the mantras.

Froome and Sky will now say well Froome was tested by independent scientists and they proved he is capable of these numbers. Not how he can do it, how he couldn't do it before, why at 26 he suddenly went over a 2 week period from hanging onto motorbikes to podiums in GTs.

Remember Swarts/Moore's conclusion. "he lost the fat". No one with any smarts is buying that. But Sky are not trying to sell to smarts. They are selling it to the new fans.

 

[gillan1969]

How does this one report from one particular day of testing prove anything regarding how Froome went from average to superstar in 2011?

it doesn't..if Swart is anything (notwithstanding being too close to his subject) it is a chaff...thrown up to divert from that very question

unwittingly perhaps but certainly enthusiastic..............

 

[pastronef]

How does this one report from one particular day of testing prove anything regarding how Froome went from average to superstar in 2011?

It doesn't and it never set out to that.

It was a PR exercise to add more smoke to the screen that Sky/Froome keep changing depending on who is willing to repeat the mantras.

Froome and Sky will now say well Froome was tested by independent scientists and they proved he is capable of these numbers. Not how he can do it, how he couldn't do it before, why at 26 he suddenly went over a 2 week period from hanging onto motorbikes to podiums in GTs.

Remember Swarts/Moore's conclusion. "he lost the fat". No one with any smarts is buying that. But Sky are not trying to sell to smarts. They are selling it to the new fans.

agree with Beno (wow!)
so let them sell what they want to whom they want.
the pro cycling world is about selling, not about fairness or doing things right.

 

[thehog]

Your questions reads like "When did you stop beating your wife?". You're too obvious sometimes.

What matters is how he conducted himself before, during and after the testing. On that basis he can judged per the report presented.

Judging by some of his tweets post testing he did seem rather "emotionally" involved in the entire endeavor, beyond what I would expect a impartial scientist to be in his test subject. It was also like there a bond to protect the subject and less the actual testing.

I guess you have to be a bit circumspect... Perhaps he is convinced he is clean, and in your eyes is somewhat naive and misguided, if you want to be generous about it. Or are you a bit more cynical about it than that and think he has invested too much in it now to be seen as changing tune ?

Well, to draw the "he just lost the fat" conclusion was awfully naïve, which Swart has now walked away from. That conclusion doesn't make its way into the final report. However, its too late as the Esquire article was sold on that myth and its still being purported.

And that where lies the problem, I think he over sold the exercise because Moore and Esquire were in attendance. Then Cound found the mystery fax with the 2007 test data, it was all a little too beautiful for words - perhaps Swart was star struck and saw this new relationship advantageous to his supplements, sport science and coaching businesses? it certainly is possible, hence why he is so protective of the testing subject.

Reverse Stockholm syndrome if you will.

 

[sniper]

Re:

"The process has also been a bit of a journey of discovery for me," said Froome. "It prompted me to seek out comparative data from tests carried out in Switzerland in 2007 during my time at the UCI World Cycling Centre. I managed to get hold of these figures for the first time in September 2015 and they are published today alongside the Human Performance Lab data for comparison.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/chris-froome-you-can-win-the-biggest-bike-races-in-the-world-clean/

Jeroen Swart ‏@JeroenSwart 7. Dez. 2015
@maximus_hoggus @EwonSprokler @DrMarkBurnley we've been asked by the scientists who collected that [2007] data whether we can publish it jointly.

(((Mark Burnley))) @DrMarkBurnley
@JeroenSwart @maximus_hoggus @EwonSprokler and there we have it - scientists who collected the data confident enough in it to publish.

guess not.

 

[gillan1969]

Re: Re:

"The process has also been a bit of a journey of discovery for me," said Froome. "It prompted me to seek out comparative data from tests carried out in Switzerland in 2007 during my time at the UCI World Cycling Centre. I managed to get hold of these figures for the first time in September 2015 and they are published today alongside the Human Performance Lab data for comparison.
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/chris-froome-you-can-win-the-biggest-bike-races-in-the-world-clean/

Jeroen Swart ‏@JeroenSwart 7. Dez. 2015
@maximus_hoggus @EwonSprokler @DrMarkBurnley we've been asked by the scientists who collected that [2007] data whether we can publish it jointly.

(((Mark Burnley))) @DrMarkBurnley
@JeroenSwart @maximus_hoggus @EwonSprokler and there we have it - scientists who collected the data confident enough in it to publish.

guess not.

to be fair...Burnley's twitter profile describes himself as a comedian

 

[Merckx index]

I don’t think this study was a waste of time. We now know things about Froome’s physiology we didn’t know before:

1) he has a very high V02max, though not quite as high as Lemond claimed his was
2) he has a high but not exceptionally high GE; it’s at the upper end of the range most studies report, but not as high as has been reported for a few elite riders

Setting aside the fact that we don’t have these details for earlier in his career, there are a couple of things that might have been addressed but weren’t:

1) Can he maintain his absolute V02 max, recorded at 70-71 kg (it seems that some tests were run at 70.8 kg, some at 69.9) at a slightly lower racing weight? If he can—and the earlier data we do have indicates he lost less than 3% of his absolute V02max when losing a lot more weight than would be the case from 70-71 to 67--then his sustainable aerobic power, as calculated from the data obtained, might be as high as 6.5 watts/kg. That’s significant, because the study by Dauwe I discussed upthread concluded, based on some of Froome’s climbing times, that he could sustain this value only as long as 20 minutes, while it would drop below 6.0 watts/kg on climbs longer than 30 minutes.

2) What exactly is his sustainable power profile? The values obtained at 4 mM lactate may not be threshold, and even if they are, we would like to know his power at various time intervals, like 20, 30 and 40 minutes. Dauwe in effect obtained such data from climbs, but the laboratory would provide a more accurate view, albeit under conditions not exactly the same as on the road. The profile would also enable us to evaluate independently the rather large anaerobic component that Dauwe estimated. Dauwe’s data seem at odds with Swart’s, in that the latter implies a much higher aerobic power.

I’d be interested to hear Tucker’s comments on these latest data, which I assume will be coming soon, because he argues that 6.2-6.3 watts/kg is about the highest level that can be maintained for 30-40 minutes or longer, clean. Swart's paper strongly implies that Froome at his racing weight could probably exceed this.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

What we have currently is a snapshot in time, that is all. Very hard to draw many conclusions especially when they lost the max heart rate data,

The loss of HR data is inconsequential wrt what conclusions one can draw from such testing. But I suppose some are stuck in some mythical HR paradigm as if it reveals something of relevance/use.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re:

I am surprised Tucker hasn't said anything about this or has he ? Or has he decided it's probably not a good idea to look like a tit amongst sports science community ?

Tucker is more interested in being known than being right. Still, I'm looking forward to his analysis of performance in Rugby 7s and how that clearly tells us about doping.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re: Re:

Peak power output is not VO2max. PPO in this report was the 30-sec mean maximal power power from an incremental test to exhaustion with power demand increasing at 30W/min, and accordingly would include a sizeable contribution from anaerobic work capacity.

Yes, but PPO was determined in the same way as V02max. Both parameters were measured at the same point in the step test. So PPO should be the power put out when the rider is at V02max.

That does not mean PPO = power at VO2max. An incremental test to exhaustion form which one obtains PPO, will also elicit a state of VO2max in the process.

VO2max can be elicited at a range of power outputs. e.g. ride at threshold +10% and you'll also elicit a state of VO2max. It just takes longer.

Or change the slope of the power demand (e.g. 20W/min) and you get a different PPO but still obtain the same VO2max result.

The anaerobic contribution means that his aerobic power is not all that contributes to his power. So aerobic power should underestimate his climbing times, right?

A little perhaps, and assuming he has a fully loaded AWC at the start of a climb, but even if fully loaded you are spreading the limited AWC over a longish duration. e.g. for 30-min and say 11kJ

11kJ over 30-min = 6W. That's a bit over 1% of 30-min power.

Pithy Power Proverb: "It's an aerobic sport, dammit!"

 

[thehog]

What we have currently is a snapshot in time, that is all. Very hard to draw many conclusions especially when they lost the max heart rate data,

The loss of HR data is inconsequential wrt what conclusions one can draw from such testing. But I suppose some are stuck in some mythical HR paradigm as if it reveals something of relevance/use.

It is when you cut half my post out and focus on a single part of it.

No one has mentioned anything about a mythical HR paradigm. The reason is it gets brought up is in relation to Ventoux and the possible use of motor. So, yes, please continue with your own narrative.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

What we have currently is a snapshot in time, that is all. Very hard to draw many conclusions especially when they lost the max heart rate data,

The loss of HR data is inconsequential wrt what conclusions one can draw from such testing. But I suppose some are stuck in some mythical HR paradigm as if it reveals something of relevance/use.

It is when you cut half my post out and focus on a single part of it.

No one has mentioned anything about a mythical HR paradigm. The reason is it gets brought up is in relation to Ventoux and the possible use of motor. So, yes, please continue with your own narrative.

And as has been pointed out before, the HR data from that climb is meaningless as a means of performance assessment. HR just doesn't tell you what it's being claimed to (e.g. motor on bike).

Another pithy power proverb for you: "HR data is redundant at best, misleading at worst."

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re: Re:

The power estimates based on V02max, GE and utilization by the well-known formula used in your graph seem to correspond to what others refer to as critical power (CP). In this study,

http://www.fietsica.be/Grand_Tour_Champions.pdf

Dauwe defines CP empirically, and determines it by plotting climbing times at various distances, but it’s clear he believes it's directly proportional to V02max. In his Table 1, he assumes 23% GE and 80% utilization for all the elite riders in his study. The total power put out for any particular length of time is then estimated by adding in the anaerobic component.

Obviously, differences in GE among riders will affect these estimates, but since he assumes 23%, which is just what Swart found (under normal conditions, with a slightly higher value under hot/humid conditions), his calculations seem to apply well to Froome. So consider the anaerobic component. You say the 11-12 kJ you get by assuming all the power above 4 mM lactate is anaerobic is a typical value. For Froome, that would be about 0.17 kJ/kg. I assume that would not be his total anaerobic component, though. From his climbing times graph, Dauwe estimated a value for Froome about ten times that, 1.58 kJ/kg. This was one of the highest values he estimated, but Contador during one period was estimated to have an even higher value, and the other riders were at least about half of Froome's value.

Moreover, studies of non-elite athletes have found values in the range of 0.2 – 0.4 kJ/kg.

http://facstaff.bloomu.edu/jandreac/class_notes/575/Labs/Wingate%20paper.pdf

http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/22382171

If we use the 1.58 kJ/kg value for Froome,

There is no way Froome has an AWC in excess of 100kJ!
Something very wrong with the AWC values quoted in that paper.

 

[gillan1969]

What we have currently is a snapshot in time, that is all. Very hard to draw many conclusions especially when they lost the max heart rate data,

The loss of HR data is inconsequential wrt what conclusions one can draw from such testing. But I suppose some are stuck in some mythical HR paradigm as if it reveals something of relevance/use.

It is when you cut half my post out and focus on a single part of it.

No one has mentioned anything about a mythical HR paradigm. The reason is it gets brought up is in relation to Ventoux and the possible use of motor. So, yes, please continue with your own narrative.

And as has been pointed out before, the HR data from that climb is meaningless as a means of performance assessment. HR just doesn't tell you what it's being claimed to (e.g. motor on bike).

Another pithy power proverb for you: "HR data is redundant at best, misleading at worst."

surely the HR data is useful in that regard precisely because it doesn't correlate exactly to power?

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

surely the HR data is useful in that regard precisely because it doesn't correlate exactly to power?

Enlighten me as to what insight it provides that we don't already know given the power and gas exchange data.

 

[gillan1969]

surely the HR data is useful in that regard precisely because it doesn't correlate exactly to power?

Enlighten me as to what insight it provides that we don't already know given the power and gas exchange data.

I'm unlikey to enlighten you...forgive the amateur physiologist..hence the ?

I am working on the assumption that HR and power output would correlate exactly under 'perfect conditions' and hence any deviation from that allows you to explore the potential cause e.g. gradient, tailwind, illness (motor ), etc or at least it might give clues as to the potential cause especially if these are physiological?

i.e. its not great as a key indicator of output for those reasons but when combined with all the other data gathered is quite useful for performance analysis in a broader medical sense?

 

[sniper]

Correct me if wrong, but the max heart rate was the one single data point that could have been of any kind of interest in the context of whether or not Froome is cheating, as we could have compared it to his heart rate from the leaked Ventoux file.

What are the odds that exactly that data point is missing due to an unexplained technical failure...

 

[sniper]

Re: Re:

Tucker is more interested in being known than being right.

You defend Swart's pseudoscience and then make this sneer towards Tucker? Telling.
You'd be about the only one accusing Tucker of this. He's mostly done rather lo-fi publicity stuff and, well, he likes twitter, but not in self-righteous way.
Swart, otoh...

That said, I would agree with the second part of your statement.
Tucker is not interested in being right per se. He is actually capable of admitting he was wrong, and without getting all whiny about it.
Swart, otoh... could only offend people who pointed out to him that the BMI didn't correspond to the weight on the 2007 fax or that Sky aren't as innovative as he claims they are.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

I am working on the assumption that HR and power output would correlate exactly under 'perfect conditions'

Yet it doesn't. HR response is variable for a whole host of factors other than how hard one happens to be pedalling (even under perfect conditions). What's more interesting is cardiac output, and for that you also need stroke volume, which can change with training status/fitness/fatigue as well as neural and hormonal factors (which vary somewhat during such events).

HR is typically more consistent relative to power when indoors on a trainer compared with outdoor riding. e.g. if you plotted avg power v avg HR over a season of riding, indoors you'd get an R^2 of say ~0.8 or so. Outdoors more like ~0.6.

Indoors it's not unusual for HRmax to be less than what one can attain outdoors but it's not a firm rule or anything. Some people find HR is elevated indoors compared their response at same power outdoors, and that may be a function of the type of trainer and set up they are using (especially inertial load and cooling).

In stage racing HR response is also subject to many factors as mentioned above, and the rate HR changes and the level it reaches can often be somewhat suppressed compared to when a rider is fresh as a daisy.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re: Re:

Tucker is more interested in being known than being right.

You defend Swart's pseudoscience and then make this sneer towards Tucker? Telling.
You'd be about the only one accusing Tucker of this. He's mostly done rather lo-fi publicity stuff and, well, he likes twitter, but not in self-righteous way.
Swart, otoh...

That said, I would agree with the second part of your statement.
Tucker is not interested in being right per se. He is actually capable of admitting he was wrong, and without getting all whiny about it.
Swart, otoh... could only offend people who pointed out to him that the BMI didn't correspond to the weight on the 2007 fax or that Sky aren't as innovative as he claims they are.

Putting aside the pseudoscience aspect as we've dealt with that already so I don't propose to repeat myself (and I'm hardly defending anyone), that's probably a fair call on Tucker. Maybe I was a bit harsh - it just seems that way and often I get the feeling he doesn't really understand the sport, and I disagree with his notion of a definitively clean threshold value.

For a sport he does purport to understand there seems to be very little in the way of scrutiny wrt doping considering Rugby is in the top 10 sports by number of anti doping rule violations.

 

[Alex Simmons/RST]

Re:

Correct me if wrong, but the max heart rate was the one single data point that could have been of any kind of interest in the context of whether or not Froome is cheating, as we could have compared it to his heart rate from the leaked Ventoux file.

What are the odds that exactly that data point is missing due to an unexplained technical failure...

Think I covered that in response to gillan. Even if the data was there, I don't think there's much one can infer by way of comparison between a lab test HR value and what HR response is in middle of a race on a climb at a key point deep into a stage race.

 

[sniper]

Fair points Alex, thanks for expanding.

 

[thehog]

Re: Re:

Correct me if wrong, but the max heart rate was the one single data point that could have been of any kind of interest in the context of whether or not Froome is cheating, as we could have compared it to his heart rate from the leaked Ventoux file.

What are the odds that exactly that data point is missing due to an unexplained technical failure...

Think I covered that in response to gillan. Even if the data was there, I don't think there's much one can infer by way of comparison between a lab test HR value and what HR response is in middle of a race on a climb at a key point deep into a stage race.

That's not actually true. Observation would tell you a lot, it may not draw a formal conclusion but you'd certainly gain a clearer understanding. On Ventoux at the end of a 220km stage, Froome's attacks were clearly at or close to threshold. His heart rate on those videos barely cracked 160bpm. If in the lab testing it got itself to 180-190 then something would be up.

Regardless Froome has always said his max heart rate is low - in the 160 range. It would have been good to have verification of this per his statements.

 

[ac4tw]

Going back to the data, I think there are some interesting aspects.
First of all there are a few errors in the paper, which may be corrected for the final print version and may not have been picked up when the manuscript was proofread.
The abstract gives the VO2Peak as 84 mL/min/kg but it is 85 in the body, with the actual value 84.4 mL/min/kg using a weight of 70.0 kgs. Interesting they round the VO2Peak. Also, based on racing weight of 67 kgs his VO2Peak comes out to 88.2 mL/min/Kg
The Dexa weight is also stated as being 71.0kgs yet further along it is stated as being 70.8kgs which seems odd (I have since noticed that his ambient weight is 70.8kgs and his Hot and Humid weight is 71.0kgs as per table 1 which probably explains the discrepancy, but odd that they use the values interchangeably without explanation).

Going on the values from 2007 (which I agree need to be interpreted cautiously given possible different methods in calculation) his weight is 75.6kgs, body fat 12.8 kgs (based on 16.9% BF) and lean mass of 60.0 kgs (assuming bone mass is unchanged). In 2016 lean mass is 61.3 kgs (assuming a DEXA weight of 70.8 kgs) so he gained 1.3kgs of lean mass between 2007 and 2016 and lost 6.1kgs of fat. Again given a "racing weight" of 67kgs, body fat would be 2.9 kgs (assuming lean mass and bone mass unchanged) which works out as 4.3%, and probably fits with what he looks like when racing.

They calculate peak power by weight, and report an increase from 7.1w/kg in 2007 to 7.5w/kg in 2016, but this increase is largely due to weight loss. If we look at peak power per lean mass (which is probably a better way of looking at it as fat doesn't contribute to power generation) it is 9.00 w/kg in 2007 compared with 8.56 w/kg in 2015. Which means his time trial performances early in his career should have been a lot better than they were. Additionally, (which may be jumping to conclusions) if his power per lean mass has fallen, a significant contributor to increased performance may be an increase in Vo2Max, and we all know how that can be improved...

The break down of body fat also seems weird - 0.9kgs of fat on his arms seems surprisingly high.

The conclusion that he performs better in hot and humid conditions is weak. Given the fact that cold muscles don't perform as well as warm muscles, you would expect his performance to improve when his muscles were warm, particularly given the duration of the test (less than half an hour for sub-max test). His sweat rate of 1.7 l/hr means that he needs to drink a lot of fluid to maintain hydration over the length of a stage.