Pity our cyclist, it’s Saturday and he won’t shave his face, it might sap his strength but he has to shave his legs or he won’t look serious. He certainly can’t have sex, more strength stealing there, and kissing his wife, whoa, slow down, that could spread some germs. He doesn’t want to get sick so going to that birthday party tonight, that could be dangerous, crap fattening food on platters, touched by possibly sick people, and standing around, no way, think of the guns. Who can drink alcohol before racing anyway? I need some steak and pasta. Darling, I’ll go to your office Christmas party, I promise, if I can sit with my legs up a bit, and take the elevator up to the office on the second floor.
A little browse around the town center Saturday evening instead, can’t do that. That would require walking and standing. I’m an athlete, damn it. And this talk of going to the pool, basta! Every cyclist knows swimming is bad for the legs.
Pre-race Sunday morning breakfast- this oatmeal could stand some butter and maple syrup. In the name of Merckx, non-fat milk please and what part of high glycemic index don’t you understand? Oatmeal, does that contain gluten?
Our cyclist rolls with two teammates to the race. In the car all the talk is pre-race excuses: I’m too heavy, I might be getting sick, my legs are unbalanced (?!), I drank too much coffee, I stopped drinking coffee, I have too much inflammation in my body.
Cycling mythology never dies. In a world were we still can’t predict the day when we will have great legs, there are still a thousand things out there that will give us not-great legs, and I’m pretty sure it’s all crap. Having just read this amazing interview with Freddy Maertens (thanks @pistard), it’s plain what gives you great legs, train like a bastard. And by bastard I mean back to back to back to back 300 km training days. Only professionals need do this, or can do this (who has the time or will?). That, get a lot of sleep and eat well, that is what a professional from Freddy’s day might tell you. No one was losing sleep over their power to weight ratio, no Pros then looked like Chris Froome now. These passistas looked like guys you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.
Now cyclists train smarter, watt meters and training coaches, weight rooms and soy milk, skinnier and colder. Is there a professional now who just scoffs at such data and just trains long and hard? Look at the legs of riders in the 1970s, almost no one looks like that now and it’s not drugs that did that. It’s unholy training in big gears, some V in the bidon, repeat tomorrow.
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@anthony
What fun would it be if we didn't compare ourselves to people we don't compare to?
@San Tonio I like Sagan too, San Tonio. The kid looks like he just likes to race bikes - he raced mtbs and CX too. That makes him okay in my book.
@anthony
While I'm sure there are some over optimistic 80kg riders who fancy themselves to be equivalents of an 80kg Merckx the math works both ways.
While it's amazing the benefit of dropping from 76kg down to 69kg at this point I am bumping up pretty hard again the law of diminishing returns. I look at a Belgian gauffre the wrong way and I add a kilo...... On the other hand my best friend, and a flandrian, has lost just as much weight as I have, but just happens to naturally have another 5kgs in muscle mass in his legs. While he might admire the climber's guns I have, I can assure you that he wouldn't have swapped places with me when he walked away from me on the pavé of the carrefour.
IMHO its a helluva lot easier to drop 6kg of fat, than to add 6kg of muscle. At the end of the day power to weight requires power to compensate for all those other unnecessary bits like bone and bicycle frame and the numerator in my equation ain't quite high enough for my liking and I'm running out of denominator to cut. I'm seriously jealous of the lean athletic muscularity of these guys, let alone their ability to apply rule #5 in far greater amounts than I.
@Rob I hear you man, listen I wish I had a couple more kg's of muscle, I just think it's funny that there is a backlash against skinny riders(not just on this web site) I don't care really, just an observation, believe me being 54kg's and 170cm does nothing for you in a cross race or a sprint finish but it won't stop me from pretending that I am much more than a spindly climber, Cheers
@frank
titled: Casually Abandoned ?
@anrthony
I am not maligning skinny cyclists, I wish I was one, I'd climb somewhat better. Everyone would like to be a thinner cyclist, many can't be bothered to lose the weight.
I should have been more specific in the post that all those passiatas in the photos were mostly men for the spring classics. As Maertens points out, they raced everything, spring classics, grand tours and everything in between, but they really killed it in the spring classics.
In general, it's very hard to change your body type as it's genetics, not power squats that really make you look like you do. And genetics that make you a great cyclists, not riding a lot.
@Gianni I thought your article was awesome, and I didn't think you were at all, it was more of a general comment, seems like a lot of people are sick of seeing Twiggo's and Spider's so I decided to call everyone fat, like you said, there is little a lot of people can do to change there bodies, the more squats I do the skinnier I get, so I stopped that silliness now I just ride a lot and drinks shitloads of beer, it's a lot more fun. Once again great reading as always, Cheers
@anthony
That is correct, sir.
@frank
Initially, I was with @imakecircles, butafter running the numbers I'm not so sure.
If we assume the 62 and 72 kg cyclists have identical power to weight ratios without bikes (i arbitrarily choose 6.13 W/kg), then add the dead weight of bikes described (6.8 kg and 9.5 kg) I found that the heavier cyclist would have a .08 w/kg advantage with the lighter bike, but .12 w/kg advantage with the heavier bike. Some of my assumptions are questionable, but mathematically it is clear lighter riders gain when bike weights go down.
That said, I don't think .04 w/kg is significant enough to account for the differences between the era's. Frank's suggestion of epo reducing the stress of a GT is interesting. The Freddie interview supports the idea that the weight was necessary to handle the training load by pointing out that riders now race 60 days per year instead of 200, though epo would not be required for that to be the driving factor.
Basically, imakecircles has a point, but bike weight can't be the only factor. And if you read this far, apparently you have as much time as I do...
Stems go up, stems go down. Neckties get wide, neckties get thin. Pants devolve into "carpenter's pants" for all men, glad we made it through that. "Pants" evolve into hosiery as pants for many woman. For the most part, I don't mind this trend.
(really, when did stockings become leggings, which became pants? They're clearly under pants, but the pros outweigh the cons, from my perspective.)