pk1 wrote:
bluefever wrote:
Crosshair wrote:
A random brain-dump.
Froome’s FTP is like 420ish isn’t it??
Every time the Velon power data flashed up as the Sky train (the Stem Cell perhaps we could call them!) set up his move he was doing 350. That’s not ‘not-normal’ for a do or die mountain stage.
His attack up Finestre from there was 397w average... a Sweetspot interval!!
Then he had huge recovery on the descent- albeit a white knuckle one.
And then he would have had time gaps to the scruffy, disorganised chase group piped into his ear.
Combined with the attention to detail with the nutrition and the fact he was executing a preconceived plan whilst the others clutched at defensive straws means there really isn’t a fishy smell to any of this.
I do wonder how busy the myriad of Giro threads would have been without him there too...
Well done for posting some sense. He made most of the time on the descents, and then had a more or less one to one TT battle with TD. The last climb they climbed more or less the same time. Sestriere Froome was a little quicker, but not a lot.
yes, if we trust that TD is clean (as seems to be the general feeling, as much as anyone trusts any pro athletes) then froome's performance was not vastly different.
the catch is that he had not previously been showing anything like the form to be able to do that. there was an article on cyclingnews the other day saying that you can't ride yourself into form during a grand tour, if the fitness isn't there you're not going to get it that way. i'm not sure that's quite the same thing - froome has the fitness base from 5 years of being the top GC man and a big pre-season. we know the principle form = fitness - fatigue. but we also know that performance can be poor if you taper too much, despite in principle having high fitness and low fatigue - you get rusty. that is where froome was at to start (deliberate strategy) so for 2 weeks he gained fitness (to some extent, though no rest means limited benefit despite the efforts) and fatigue, much like everyone else. the difference is that he started with lower fatigue than everyone else so by week 3 he'd shaken off the rust and his form = fitness - fatigue was in a better place than everyone else's. especially compared to yates who had great form in the first 2 weeks but then fatigue overcame him in week 3.
to be clear, i'm not saying froome is clean - i find his medical history concerning - just that i don't see his giro turnaround as being especially unbelievable in context and comparison to TD. incredible in the loose meaning, not the specific not credible.
Cyclingnews is full of shit claiming that you cannot gain fitness during a grand tour. The more accurate statement is that you gain fatigue through a grand tour, but one can absolutely gain fitness off 4-7 hours of training per day. The problem is the fitness does not show because of the fatigue accumulation especially if the athlete poorly manages recovery. Sure, SKY may monkey around on the grey zone maximizing recovery approaches, but so do all the other teams (it's like not Sky grads like Landa, Nieve, Porte and others can't take the SKY recovery monkey business to other teams).
Once Froome (or anyone starts gaining fitness after starting in a lower state of fatigue due to being a bit undertrained, then his relative performance vs the field may appear to be better, while others gain fatigue and have already maximized fitness gains (you can't be at max fitness forever). So in addition to pacing out a grand tour so you can minimize fatigue there is gaining fitness.
One more thing....gaining fitness while losing weight simultaneously is a disaster in terms of feeling sharp in that when you are eating into body reserves daily, you just gain fatigue. If you already come in with body composition optimized, then on a daily basis after training you gain less fatigue because you're topping up to where you were, not topping up only to a smaller body that is shrinking over the race. I don't have a Froome weigh in before an after (does anyone) , but his body composition looked excellent before the Giro. Did Froome employ monkey business grey zone tactics to get to superior body composition before the Giro, while being on light training load? Well, that's another topic. But he showed up ripped and by all accounts under trained so that he can peak in late July with a small mini peak last week. It's not like he has been hiding what he was planning to do, it was known to everyone from day 1, except we were all counting him out after the 2x unplanned deck hitting stress loads. While is he was squirming around in pain, (and having to devote body resources to rebuild his body from those), we all figured that he had no chance until he threw the hail Mary on Finistre.
Having said all that, Sky planned his week three surge along with his teammates' form really well, or they are able to get week three blood bags when no one else can. It's all the realm of posibility, but I don't think the delta in his performances (and his teams') are glaringly blood bag worthy. My feeling is if he did, so did Dumoulin, and the rest of the chasers down Finistre.