Training with the Pros, it sounds like fun but it can’t be. Pros are genetic freaks; they put more kilometers on their bikes than any of us civilians do on our cars each year, they ride around whole countries at an average speed greater than 40km/hour and they can dish out such Rule V style day-after-day-after-day. We all dream about it but we don’t have it.
In an earlier life I came close to landing my dream job in Monaco with the IAEA. Serious people counseled me not to take the job, they said it was a bad career move. How could I explain to them I didn’t give a shiet if it was a bad career move, the chance to live, and more importantly to be a cyclist near San Remo and La Madone was all I cared about? Yet I knew if I even saw Tom Boonen or one of the many Aussies who call Monaco their home out on a training ride, I would only be seeing their lycra-clad asses disappearing up the road. Could I at least catch up to Stuart O’Grady to chat him up for a minute before my inability to talk and breathe would force me to lie and say I was turning right HERE? Maybe I could drink beers with the Aussies, I could keep that professional pace, actually no, I would get dropped there too.
Oh that job fell through and my dreams of commuting into work on Merlin on the Cote d’Azure disappeared like those watery mirages on a hot highway, but I digress. I have some good and funny direct video evidence why training with the Pros would be a cruel lesson in our mortal failings. One such Pro is Ted King, an American racer living the dream; he is based in Lucca, riding for Liquigas, riding in support of Ivan Basso and Peter Sagan. He is tough, he has finished every Giro d’Italia he has started. He broke his collarbone this summer racing in Philadelphia when his front wheel dropped into an inexcusably lame drain grate (thank you very much, oh third-world infrastructure that defines the USA).
To bring his training back up to speed he did the 200 on 100 with fellow Pro Tim Johnson and amateur racer Ryan Kelly. The 200 on 100 means 200 miles on Route 100, riding North to South from the top to the bottom of the state of Vermont, the Green Mountain State. Unless you are Marcus, 333 km seems like an impossibly long ride to do at once, I would be in broom wagon long before the end of such madness.
And by madness I refer to the 338 km at 34.1 km/hr average speed with 3,197 meters of climbing thrown in for good measure.
Video credit to Chandler Delinks
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@Buck Rogers
We do a trainer session once a week. With 8 to 10 of us doing a set we reckon we could power the suburb for the 1.5 hr session. Plus you can all grind away 'at your own pace' side by side in pain.
I was out this morning on one of my usual rides, happily motoring along, not quite the V-locus but pushing that little bit harder because the legs felt good when, all of a sudden I found myself going quite fast. In fact, after down shifting a few more cogs, faster still when I felt that I almost couldn't keep up with my bike! An unusual but enjoyable experience.
Now it may have been the tail wind helping things along, but I like to think it may have been the hand of Merckx giving me a gentle nudge, almost Madison style - "come on son, this is the way, more of the V". A great morning's ride.
@jen
now if I could get a turbo trainer that would contribute to my electricity bill......
@il ciclista medio
Volupte
@Dr C
Pretty sure someone did an experiment not long ago about using cyclists to power household items. The conclusion was that the power provided as output did not justify the increase in the amount of food and other inputs.
Makes sense - most of us would be doing pretty well to maintain 200-250 watts at threshold for 4-5 hours. An electric kettle is like 1200W - even if we could store it in batteries it would be blown by a few minutes of microwaving.
Mind you, it would probably improve television no end if people had to think about whether they really wanted to watch X Factor.
@ChrisO
Hey, your a TV person, so let's pitch "The V Factor". Road cycling reality show of trying to make it as a pro. Or MAMILs cut-throat machinations in trying to win the town sign sprint. Or stars training with pros to do an etape de Tour. Is Kim Kardashian busy? Donny Osmond?
The mind boggles.
@Dr C @ChrisO
'Fraid this is a long shot. Students of mine conducted a study on retrofitting all the machines at the university gym"”stairs, treadmills, bikes, etc."”in order to generate power. The cost of the upgrades versus the amount of energy savings made this a non-starter. Not even data we wanted to share with the school's sustainability office. Even a roomful of Jenses...
@xyxax
Pretty sure I read that in Belgium they've already done this, ish. If I recall correctly, two DS's, past Belgian pros, think PvP, etc, coached a couple of amateur teams in regional races. Can't find any trace of it on the web tonight, so maybe I dreamt it.
@Steampunk
My new school is a marvel of sustainability and whatnot. Amongst all of the cool enviro-stuff, we have ceiling fans that can run very effectively on 5 watts. With two in each classroom, don't think I haven't done the maths.
@Steampunk
But yeh, addressing your point, the cost of retro-fitting kits to feed back into your system (never mind those machines use electricity to run) would be ridiculous.