Tour crashes and abandons signs of a cleaner peloton?

[karlboss]

Well....well....well

blood doping with your own blood gives atleat a 12% boost to most guys done properly & too a very high crit of 54% or better.

Chris anker Sorensen posted his average power of 370 watts over a 25 minute period during the TTT on stage 2 of this years TDF......

assuming these are his real numbers he averaged 5.75 watts per kilo (weighs 63 kg). That is includes sitting in the draft behind the train over 80% of the course. His power at the front was hitting 500 watts.

I bet his FTP is 5.8 watts per kilo which tis not possible clean.....Not to mention he's currently sitting in what, well dont know because he's so far down the list in overall I cannot find his name............BTW his FTP here is listed higher....at 400 watts. At 63 kg thats 6.3 watts/kilo. Very, very high. Almost as high as in the good old days of Pantani, Riis aka "Mr 60%" & chicken man's climbs of 2007.

Even more jaw dropping is where he is overall, not a top climbing contender in these Grand Tours by any stretch.... So either his FTP/Kilo listing is fibbing and "jacking him up a bit" as they say or the top 75-100 riders in the TDF all came in with their packed red cells deep frozen & ready to go like the last 8-10 years after epo testing became the norm.

http://home.trainingpeaks.com/races/saxo-bank-sungard/2011-tour-de-france/stage-8.aspx

What could Lemond do? and plenty of others back before blood doping and EPO?

 

[Velodude]

What could Lemond do? and plenty of others back before blood doping and EPO?

Collapse totally exhausted after a mountain finish and be kept warm with blankets.

 

[swuzzlebubble]

old news? http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showpost.php?p=21627525&postcount=235

 

[craig1985]

To measure your own or somebodies PTW ratio, do you take your weight and divide by your max power output? What is the correct forumla to make these calculations?

 

[Roninho]

If there is one...just one rider that I would pin my hopes on being clean, it is Voeckler. I have never seen such a tormented face as the last time he defended his yellow jersey. If there are real performances in the peloton, this is the guy who can make them.

Yes him, and Jan Ullrich. These guys have such tormented faces and you really can see how much they suffer by looking at their faces. So much suffering can only be due to no dope.

 

[BigBoat]

To measure your own or somebodies PTW ratio, do you take your weight and divide by your max power output? What is the correct forumla to make these calculations?

Generally speaking, the old old FTP per kilos of past Tour winners before epo use began was in the 5.7 watts per kilo range.

That jumped to 6.7 watts per kilo after the 91' Tour.....No Dr. Ferrari, its not because higher pedaling cadences & improved training.

Upper range clean is 5.6-5.7 nonstop for an hour straight....and a little more at V02 max. In fact the upper V02 max power for a talented clean rider is the same as the doped FTP's pf the top riders today. So a clean rider would be dropped within 8 minutes on a steep climb to the finish if that helps at all.

You can maintain V02 max at the most for 8 minutes.....And a well trained man can maintain 117% of FTP for that long. With some draft they may be able to hang on for 10 minutes. I dont imagine much longer than that.

But if there's mountains before the finish they'd be dropped there.

We know the power levels are the same as the 1990s right now because of Sorensen releasing his power files and showing off his 400 watt FTP at 140 pounds......And he rides way down the field in the mountains....60 places down the field.

Its possible Sorensen is not a garden tool like he claims, he may weigh 10 pounds more than what he has listed. He doesnt look more than 150 lb (67 kg.)

 

[karlboss]

Collapse totally exhausted after a mountain finish and be kept warm with blankets.

Ah the romance

 

[GreasyMonkey]

Drifting....

Nah, it's just overly light and rigid frames and wheels. So nice, in a straight line.

Sorry for the thread drift, Mods, move it to a new place if deemed so needed ....

Light & rigid frames have very little to do with the causes for crashes IMO - most of the more "modern" frames are made to be more suitable for racing crit's, rather than for high-speed mountain descents.

Often now the "trail" is between 50 & 55mm, which offers a bike that rides quite stable at low speeds, becoming "lighter and faster" in the handling as speed increases (50mm is worse than 55mm, the latter considered "neutral"). Most of the bikes from 1980's or so had 56-58mm trail, so had a tendency to be squirrely at low speeds, but tracking more true as speed increased.

These older geometry frames (to my feel) are better in general, giving faster handling in tight corners (lower speeds), but then quite stable and tracking better at high speeds, greater than 60km/h.

Deep section wheels will amplify the feeling of "lightness" in the front-end, add in the wind effects & it may cause a rider to go off line at critical times.

 

[Cloxxki]

Sorry for the thread drift, Mods, move it to a new place if deemed so needed ....

Light & rigid frames have very little to do with the causes for crashes IMO - most of the more "modern" frames are made to be more suitable for racing crit's, rather than for high-speed mountain descents.

Often now the "trail" is between 50 & 55mm, which offers a bike that rides quite stable at low speeds, becoming "lighter and faster" in the handling as speed increases (50mm is worse than 55mm, the latter considered "neutral"). Most of the bikes from 1980's or so had 56-58mm trail, so had a tendency to be squirrely at low speeds, but tracking more true as speed increased.

These older geometry frames (to my feel) are better in general, giving faster handling in tight corners (lower speeds), but then quite stable and tracking better at high speeds, greater than 60km/h.

Deep section wheels will amplify the feeling of "lightness" in the front-end, add in the wind effects & it may cause a rider to go off line at critical times.

I'm a bit off a geometry nerd myself, although mostly aimed at MTB's and beyond. I like to think I've in fact contributed my humble share to MTB'ing, in terms of geometry.

IMO, road bikes are barely rideable. I know I am rare in this opinion.
I don't see why a tall guy riding a TdF at 40kph average " needs" to have a wheelbase under the magical 1000mm. Head tube angles STEEPER as speeds are higher? 73-74º is typical? What turning radius do TdF corners have, anyway?
Lots of road bike geometry is tradition of course. And the funny thing with bicycles, is that they're hard to really mess up. It will always ride like a bike, and the human brain adjusts for any quirks. that doesn't mean that what ProTour teams are riding is in fact the best mankind can do right now.
I prefer a knobby tire MTB for high speed road descends over a road bike, and in that, I will be lonely as well.

 

[craig1985]

Lars Boom couldn't the speed of the peloton and has since dropped out.

 

[Escarabajo]

To measure your own or somebodies PTW ratio, do you take your weight and divide by your max power output? What is the correct forumla to make these calculations?

Estimate power here:

http://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/ProdDiss/Bicycle/bikecalc1.htm

http://www.oocities.org/mdetting/sports/cycling.html

http://www.analyticcycling.com/ForcesPower_Page.html

There are many others that mostly do the same thing.

I recommend you to do it on mountains only because on flat or TT is very difficult to control the drag factors and they are very sensitive so the error could be higher.

If you can do the mountains on sections is more accurate but most of us assume an average speed for the whole mountain.

If you want to learn about how to do calculations with headwind and crosswind you can read it here. Is very simple.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/brandt/wind.html

Once you get the power simply divided by the weight of the rider only and you get the actual PTW ratio.

If you want to normilize it there is a different formula for it but I never do it because it confuses people. Besides people are not very familiar with the normilized tables. You saw what happened in the Verbier calculation with Greg Lemmond.

 

[GreasyMonkey]

<Snip>IMO, road bikes are barely rideable. I know I am rare in this opinion.
I don't see why a tall guy riding a TdF at 40kph average " needs" to have a wheelbase under the magical 1000mm. Head tube angles STEEPER as speeds are higher? 73-74º is typical? What turning radius do TdF corners have, anyway?

I am in agreement with you (insofar as modern frame geometry goes), so you are not "on your lonesome"
But I find MTB's "un-rideable", to the point I do not own one..... The wheelbase is not the real issue (I use 72.5 deg HT, with 45mm rake, giving 57mm trail, but with 974mm wheelbase).

Why somebody wants to ride a bike that has a steep head-tube (which contributes a little to shorter "trail"), and be trying to control it at high speed with 60mm deep sails on the front wheel on a descent is beyond me.

If a bike is fairly "nimble" at 35-45km/h, that is usually fine for most hair-pin corners - any more stable in the corner, it becomes very hard to flick it around and a chance of understeering (over the edge).

But it all comes down to riding style and personal preference.