Love SRM…..El Fares in the breakaway today

Their HRs are up around 160 now for 350W ish.

Looking at those wattages, I’m somewhat surprised at how easy it is (relatively) to be in the peleton. I reckon if it was mostly flat I could stay in the peleton for a couple of hours 🙂

Farrar dropped!

Looking at those wattages, I’m somewhat surprised at how easy it is (relatively) to be in the peleton. I reckon if it was mostly flat I could stay in the peleton for a couple of hours

I’ve heard that on a flat stage if you stay in the peloton you only output an average of ~80 watts. So nearly any club cyclist could comfortably stay in the bunch.

The difficult part of the peloton is the technical aspect when its on flat stages.

You also need the fitness too 😉

Is wattage absolute? How does fitness come into it? If i rode at x watts, surely i’d be going slower than a Tour rider…?

You need to be fit to sustain x wattage for x amount of minutes??

if your heavy you need more watts to maintain the same speed as a lighter rider.

Fitness wise many of us could stay in the peloton for a few miles. Unfortunately the bulk of thos that could do that would crash because they couldnt handle riding in a group of 200 folk.

Cav was once asked how long a normal club level rider would last in the peloton.
His answer was that no-one would make it out of the neutralised section! He’s right as well. 😉

Yeah from experience it’s wishful thinking that you could ever sit in a racing group and just be sucked along. It’s not a club run where everyone is nice. If you are not moving forwards in the group you’d very quickly find yourself out the back.

Worth a quick read

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/tour-de-france-rest-day-gallery

His answer was that no-one would make it out of the neutralised section! He’s right as well.

Might be right, depends on the acceleration I guess.

if your heavy you need more watts to maintain the same speed as a lighter rider.

Only when going uphill.

Fitness wise many of us could stay in the peloton for a few miles. Unfortunately the bulk of thos that could do that would crash because they couldnt handle riding in a group of 200 folk.

I’ve wondered about this. How is it any different from riding in a bunch of 30? You just follow the guy in front, don’t brake, and don’t knock into the guys next to you.

Cav was once asked how long a normal club level rider would last in the peloton.
His answer was that no-one would make it out of the neutralised section! He’s right as well.

Thats in his book.

If in theory the roads were straight and you sat and drafted you could prob hang on, but everyone knows thats not the case.

SBZ many of those in the peleton are struggling to ride in a group of 200!

CaptJon – Member
Is wattage absolute? How does fitness come into it? If i rode at x watts, surely i’d be going slower than a Tour rider…?

SRM and the like measure watts transmitted to the bike. For a given size of rider on the flat, wattage for a given speed will basically the same irrespective of fitness and weight (well heavier will slow you down very slightly). For a given weight of rider on the hills at a given speed, wattage will again be the same irrespective of fitness.

What’s different for different fitness is your ability to generate that wattage and sustain it. A fit rider may be able to ride at x watts for 8 hours while the unfit one could only do x watts for 10 minutes.

So basically if you rode on the flat in the tdf peloton, you’d be doing the same watts as the other riders around you. If you hit the hills, unless you’re a complete whippet, you’d be doing more watts for the same speed or more likely less watts and less speed 🙂

Cycling is a funny old sport. The problem is (watching it) that pretty much everyone can ride a bike so they don’t see how it could be *that* difficult. After all, you just sit there and pedal right?

Watch a local road race, the local chipper. Then watch the best UK pros, maybe at a Premier Calendar or the British National Road Race Champs. It’s chalk and cheese. Then watch the Tour/Giro etc. The riders in that make even the best UK pros look average. You put Rapha, Endura, Team Raleigh etc into the Tour and most of them wouldn’t last the stage. Yet they’d absolutely muller your average club rider.
The difference in ability is just phenomenal.

Cheers Clubber.

The problem is (watching it) that pretty much everyone can ride a bike so they don’t see how it could be *that* difficult. After all, you just sit there and pedal right?

Surely that’s the same for running, swimming, etc.

Surely that’s the same for running, swimming, etc.

People already see those as sports though, that take effort. Most people see cycling as just a way of getting around if you can’t afford a car..

anyone feel like mentioning the stage ?
Bunch sprint with the usual suspect then

Maybe not, they’re really dishing it out now. Really messing things up.

Yellow and green in the break 😀

risky from gilbert, if he gets caught, he’ll be nowheere in the sprint.

this is what I said yesterday, he has to attack, doesn’t know how to do anything else

give me more info fellas the Tdf Site just shows a group 😳

5 guys off the front, including Voeckler, Gilbert, and Martin. Main bunch about 10-15 seconds behind, with Cav.

ta

is the TdF live on the radio anywhere (in English)?

Man, I wish I could see this. He aint going to be first up the Alpe but right now Gilbert is the school bully.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_five_live_sports_extra
no speakers here but should be TdF may only work in UK not sure

gilbert looks like a man posessed!

Poor Gilbert, good effort from him though!

ah. spoke too soon. blown out his arse.

Cooked himself there, waste of energy.

Cav FTW

Cav FTW

I dunno, HTC under a lot of pressure at the moment…

Are HTC at the front ?who is leading the train?

I dunno, HTC under a lot of pressure at the moment…

Is it right Renshaw has been dropped???

No Goss or Renshaw in the HTC lead out train though.

Cancellara or Millar for the win – he’ll jump out at TT it with 1km to go…

f*** me I’m good – Millar just attacked! Go Millar!!

Millar attacks off the front