Yes, but you are not a protour rider. You also don't have to train for 500-800 watt surges (and associated heat buildup). It is OK for you to not have the protour race fitness that goes with those massive variations, but for a protour rider, its a difference between staying in the group (race shape) and getting unhitched (still good fitness, maybe local racing fitness or triathlon pro fitness, just not protour race fitness).

I made it clear that the discussion was about pointy end protour race fitness, which is what George, Lance and Andy Schleck were talking about on Wedu TheMove after stage 15 (go to around 15 minutes in and listen in)....Schleck claims it is not possible to get in Tour de France shape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TNj7goukYo. He basically argues that those locked in at home could not get in shape compared to those who could go outdoors and get in race shape during lockdown.

(even for big guys....they have the advantage of more surface area to get ride of the joules of heat built up in their body compared to a small pro generating the same joules of buildup).

That's kind of a condescending, ill informed commentary. I'll resist the urge to yell "You're out of your element Donny!" but only because you couldn't hear it. You had a hypothesis, it is demonstrably false-don't bring the relative success of my career into it. There is a lot more to the world tour than watts, ask Phil Gaimon about that-or rather ask the guys who rode with him.

I do have to train for "that", I race with protour riders several times a season. Plus, training for the North American pro calendar with lots of crits I do plenty of surges. If you want to whip out the power chart, I do have "Protour" (worldtour if you want to use correct terminology) fitness. The top guys in North America all have the numbers to ride with the worldtour but likely not to win. The difference is certainly not enough make indoor training impractical from an output perspective.

I don't disagree with Schleck that you can't train entirely indoors (of course!) for the Tour but no one had to. And if the reduced outdoor volume did impact fitness it had nothing to do with heat, it had to do with capacity to do volume and get the subtle but important variation that outdoor group rides, races etc provide.

Just to derail the thread slightly, I had a look at your strava profile and it came up with a “you vs me” stats comparison. I now hate you, you make me feel wholly inadequate and I want to cry. (Not really...).

OK I thought you were a pro triathlete, not world tour caliber racer but nevertheless, you're saying you gain too much fitness and other pro riders say they cannot get fit enough. I am saying they may not realize how much heat they need to get rid of, which hurts them from getting fast.

Beyond Schleck, Quickstep DS just today said that riders stuck indoors were at a disadvantage:

https://www.cyclingnews.com/...wed-up-on-all-sides/


You're saying its not heat related, but your setup may be OK relative to many protour racers. I provided math on what the heat build up is and how this may factor in. I know a number of you have said, "its as easy as getting an AC and fan", but this is not that practical an option even for a protour racer stuck in a quarantine (the guy could be in a rental etc). But anyway, I am pointing out heat is a much bigger factor for these guys, which subconsciously would affect their quality. Much more so than age groupers.


You almost never hear of pro triathletes saying they cannot get in race shape on a trainer. Their watts per kilo are much lower in general than protour cyclists for the type of racing in tris.

I don’t buy that either. I’m obviously far from a pro rider, but controlling the temp inside and using enough fans certainly allows me to replicate outdoor riding. Indoor humidity is what really kills me over the summer months. However, if you could set up a room with lower humidity, temp & good cooling with fans there is no reason it couldn’t work. I think the real issue comes down to volume. Pro riders often spend 25-35 hours a week on a bike. That would certainly be harder inside in terms of mental fatigue on a trainer vs riding outside.

Nah, I take nothing on faith, and I have a history of disagreeing with real-world HVAC engineers, sorry. For some reason my most fundamental disagreements tend to be with the guys who tell me how expert they are ;)

As noted by an earlier poster, heat transfer in this situation is not primarily via simple convection but rather evaporative cooling facilitated by forced ventilation. Your psychrometric charts will show you where the energy goes.

What's "CFM" and a "2 ton" AC?

My best ever 20min was up Epic KOM, indoors, in summer.

marcag wrote:

Just for hoots,

how many hours a week do you think a GC contender or stage winner rides per week in normal circumstances ?

how many hours per week do you think they ride at high intensity ?

Quote:

DENNIS’S TRANSITION FROM TIME trialist to grand tour contender required a huge uptick in training volume and a complete overhaul of his high-intensity workouts.


In late 2014, Dennis averaged about 18 hours of training time per week. Many amateur cyclists ride more. His workouts often revolved around short, intense VO2max intervals, which he would complete three or four times per week. And this was a reduction from the five or six high-intensity sessions he completed during his velodrome days.


By contrast, in late 2017, Dennis averaged about 22 hours a week and rarely completed extreme VO2 work. He also altered the duration of his intervals. In 2014 his high-intensity rides often lasted two hours, while for a typical 2018 workout, Dennis rides for two hours at the same high intensity, and then completes four more hours at an endurance pace. His training rides can also include painful intervals at the beginning and the end, with long endurance stretches in between. These workouts mimic the ebb and flow of a typical stage.

Rohan Dennis is hardly a GC contender, but at one point he thought he was.


https://www.velonews.com/...ohan-dennis-project/




From what I recall reading some place else, it's tempo, tempo, and a lot more tempo. Then repeat for several days in a row.

Appreciate the disagreement, in fact, many of my clients are like you, think they know what they are doing..until they don't, then they have to hire someone that actually knows ;-) all engineers have got it wrong sometimes, but maybe that's what expertise is really about?....

Exactly. I get the rides of several riders from a few teams. Several domestiques but a few contenders and stage winners. Lots of z1/z2 some z3 little z4/z5. I need to spend time differentiating 2019 and 2020.

You can't do 22-30 hours per week on a trainer. It's not about over-heating. It's the mix of training they can't mimic in their air-conditioned Monaco apartments.

seeing some inconsistent performances already and likely more through the fall.

Just looking at TdF GC contenders, I'm a little surprised about how consistent it has been. 8 guys inside 5 minutes of the GC lead. And all the high profile implosions (Quintana, Bernal, Pinot, Bardet) were from guys with falling-off-bike issues either during the race or in the month prior. Or were French. Or both.

Or the whole Ineos squad in the Tour and out?

much lower? there are guys in my age group that output 5 w/kg @ threshold, let's say a 70.3 pro is 5.3 w/kg (I don't know everyones' numbers but definitely not lower than 5 w/kg) and your pro tour guy is 6 w/kg, @ 70 kg (or whatever weight you want to choose for comparison), do you think the watt of 5 -6 w/kg difference is exactly what your average basic European/North American fan/ac system is basically not able to handle?

Consider that, during lockdown, many European and South American pros set up their trainers in their residences but outdoors (social media photos of Gesink, Castroviejo, Uran, ? come to mind). Now you have, an infinite amount of fresh outdoor air and can remove the HVAC "problem". Even with a small fan, this setup is, from a heat dissipation perspective, much more efficient than climbing an 8% gradient at threshold in the middle of July surrounded by a bunch of drunken fans @ whatever weight and w/kg you can think of.

Again, and respectfully, your analysis has a few gaps. You are trying to analyze (without the knowledge of basic heat transfer concepts) something many engineers have been successfully resolving for decades now.

I am not disagreeing with the opinion that perhaps lockdown affected the performance of many pros, but heat gain is not the reason, unless these folks made it a problem themselves.

After all these posts, I think what you guys are not getting is its not as simple as you guys make it out to be for a pro tour level guy to remove the the heat he would build up on a trainer to be race ready for the Tour de France. And they may be subconsciously reducing their highest end training load because of the heat buildup. And yes, I get that they may not do the volume on a trainer that they should be doing....I was mainly saying most of them probably don't even know their heat load and how much cooling they need.

We can debate that they are stupid for not removing the heat. I'd bet most of them had inadequate heat removal, because usually they just get most of their intensity from real world B races.