The Cycling Aesthete

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• Notice that despite their skinny physiques (likely not by choice) they still have upper body muscle development unlike the wee lassies we have in today's Grand Tours whose arms look like toothpicks. Probably because most of these guys worked hard manual labor jobs in the mines and such, but still...

• @Omar
  That's interesting, that they had labor jobs. That's a good point, although by this time, I think there might have been enough money for these Legends to live solely off cycling.

  That leads into a really interesting (and difficult) question I find myself facing; which is, how do these birdlike riders survive a Grand Tour? Some body fat is a helpful thing in a long race in terms of fuel (at least that's conventional "wisdom") because your body can burn it for energy, but these guys are eating like birds during these crazy races.

  It challenges one when thinking about what that means in terms of where they are getting their power and energy from.

  But enough of that heady shit; these were fucking men, eh? That picture of Coppi in the trench coat is one of my favorite photos of a cyclist ever, and he's not even on a bike. What a stud.

• @frank
  Chris Carmichael (as quoted in Road Bike Review's 15 July newsletter):

  "I don't have actual numbers to prove this point, but it certainly seems like more crashes are resulting in broken bones than a decade ago. Some of this can be attributed to the additional 'traffic furniture' in the roads, some could be attributed to the increased speeds.

  "But I think some of it may also be attributed to the focus on being lean.

  "If you go way back in cycling history, riders were not very well paid and they had other jobs during the rest of the year. Many of the riders in the 1940s-'70s worked in manual labor and factory jobs, and as a result they had sturdier physiques.

  "As the sport transitioned into a more lucrative profession and top pros were able to be only cyclists, we started to see a transformation in their physiques. The value of being lightweight has steadily increased, and when you combine high training volume with a drive to lose weight you can start to see problems with bone density.

  "Most professional cyclists don't incorporate much or any upper-body strength training into their training programs anymore. Not only do they want to avoid carrying excess muscle, but the cycling-specific training schedules of elite athletes have become so strenuous that there is not much time or energy available for the upper body.

  "Strength training increases bone density by inducing a load (stress) on the bones. The body responds by depositing more calcium to strengthen the bone. No strength training means no stimulus to build or maintain high bone density.

  "Unfortunately, there is no easy solution. It would be difficult to convince racers to change their training schedules and incorporate more strength training for the sake of increasing bone density. After all, stronger bones don't help you go faster, and weaker bones are only a problem when you fall.

  "At the elite level, your paycheck depends on being able to go faster for longer, and riders will continue to train in ways that optimize speed and power even if it means a greater risk of broken bones."

• @Geof
  Doh - that should be RoadBikeRider's 15 July newsletter.

• Part of what makes these guys look so cool is that they look so real. Just from the pictures you know that their day was filled with life and death decisions and was harder than "if they would get dropped from the lead group" questions.

  The picture of Coppi in the trench coat is right out of a Sergio Leone film.

• What gentlemen, Hardmen, and freakin studs.

  Carry all the gear, many on a select few gears BTW, and have a comb so they are ready for the foto....when I would be gasping for air, they are combing their hair

  That's impressive.

• @frank I've been thinking about this a lot lately. How these hardy "Men" did the kind of riding that they did, given the unpampered lifestyles that they lived. I've also been thinking about modern training diet dogmas and how they differed from what people ate regularly back then most likely.

  You could really even go back in history and look at all the "hard" men, from Roman soldiers, to primitive hunters, who would exert incredible amounts of energy walking all day in armor or with supplies, hunting, battling....all without energy gels and sugar drinks to replace their precious muscle glycogen.

  I recently read the Paleo Diet for Athletes, which is a thought provoking book on how, historically, primitive 'athletes" were most likely fat burners and not sugar burners, and that it takes a good 6-8 weeks of a fairly radical diet change until the body - so used to getting its simple sugars in large amounts in our modern diets - learns how to burn fat efficiently again. Perhaps its this time period of adjustment - never taken into consideration in modern scientific studies in this area - that explains why most modern studies support sugar burning at the expense of fat burning for anaerobic threshold and beyond exertion.

  I think the hormonal implications are also generally ignored. Growth hormone, testosterone, DHEA, etc, etc, all seem to be at healthier levels when we're not regularly pushing the insulin button.

  The bottom line is that there were a lot of tough, incredibly hard Men historically, who did amazing physical feats, who didn't have access to high amounts of simple sugar fuel. I suspect our cycling Hard Men of the past also did not partake in this modern experiment...I don't have time to really support all of this with references, but since we are what we eat, consider it food for thought...

• @KitCarson
  You're really getting onto something here that is really, really fascinating. In conjunction with @Geof's comments, this is really interesting.

  Theorizing on subjects I don't understand is one of my "hobbies", so I'll think about this a while and then write an authoritative-sounding article about it later.

  There does seem to be a trend going on that defies traditional knowledge and understanding about nutrition, bone density, and what it takes to physically exert yourself this way. I suspect there are two options:

  1) Our conventional knowledge was wrong
  2) The new way of doing things makes you go fast but you bust easy, which is almost the same as being wrong if you ever fall off your bike. Which we all do.

  Jens riding the asphalt slip-n-slide yesterday goes against this sentiment, but he's also a meatier dude. He's skinny, but he's built more sturdierified. Same with Spartacus or Boonen. More like Merckx was, or De Vlaeminck. Way skinny-ass, but not the rails we're seeing today. I don't even think the specialist climbers were skinny like this. Bobet was one of the greatest climbers, and he looks nowhere near as skinny as Grimpito.

  Sure makes you go fast, though.

• @frank My only personal experience in this was a 6-month period in 1996, in my pre-cycling days. It took about 4 weeks or so to get used to it - a kind of modified "zone" diet, where I was only eating about 80-100 grams of carbs a day, mostly vegetables, and hearty amount of protein and pretty much any source of healthy fat i could tolerate (mainly butter, olive oil, and flax oil). I ended up increasing my workouts at this time to 1 hour of swimming, 1 hour of hard weight lifting, and an hour of vigorous martial arts 5 days a week...I never felt better -before or since - and gained about 7 pounds of lean muscle in 3 months. After cruising in this zone for about 6 months, I had a rib cage injury and fell off the wagon, never to return...Anyhow...now as I get older, I still consider trying this again, but wonder how much longer the transition will be, not to mention overcoming a monstrous sweet tooth I didn't have the first time around! regarding the sugar versus hardier fare, I found George Ohsawa's writings best explained what I was intuitively noticing...but that's a whole different topic really....Basically, in the rush to find the most efficient way to pedal, eat, etc, etc..I sometimes wonder whether a lot of our scientific research, being myopic as it tends to be, isn't sometimes missing the forest for the trees...

• @frank
  This is why I come to this blog daily... statements like "Theorizing on subjects I don't understand is one of my "hobbies", so I'll think about this a while and then write an authoritative-sounding article about it later." Makes my day to read pearls of wisdom like that.

  On the nutrition/exercise deal, I had a breakthrough this past off season. In the past I was only doing cardio on the stationary bike and swimming with some squats for leg strength in the winter. I thought I was pretty lean and in shape. This year I added chin-ups, push-ups, and dips for upper body. I'm 190.5cm and went from almost 90kg down to 83kg while increasing upper body strength tremendously. That extra muscle really boosted my metabolism and damn did I get lean w/o diet change. I'm no pro cyclist but this season I'm far faster, lighter, and stronger. You have to adapt w/age cuz your body slows down.