On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

Watching the Astana supremacy in the final kilometers of today's stage at the Giro gave me an idea... The biopassport is based on the assertion that there is a statistical uncertainty in testing values. But the more data you have, the tighter the bounds which can be set under a given threshold of certainty. If you're examining data from 8 riders in a batch, while any one of them may exhibit variations consistent with normal variation, if they exhibit correlated variations then that becomes less consistent with random chance. So does it make sense to apply testing protocols to teams as a whole in addition to individual riders? If the team fails analysis while each individual on a team passes, do you eliminate the whole team from the race? It seems a promising idea. No two-year bans, of course:, that would be unfair to individual riders, but disqualification from a race, at least. The key is you're introducing an additional source of variation in addition to tempora...

This being Interbike and all, I was surprised by the relative lack of, well, bikes. There were bikes, of course, but not nearly to the level as the North American Handbuilt Bike Show, a personal favorite. But to be fair I missed the far better forum for bicycles at Interbike, which is the outdoor demo. We've hit a saturation level in carbon fiber technology, where a light carbon frame is a commody produced in bulk quantities in Taiwan, so the sight of a carbon frame barely draws attention. Hey -- is that a new Bonk Breaker flavor? I'll come back to this bike later.... maybe. Comments on some of what I saw, starting with pro bikes. Peter Sagan's very cool Cannondale Evo Two bikes which drew my attention were the bikes in the SRAM booth. Peter Sagan's Cannondale Evo was really nice. Notable was that SRAM showed it with its competitor SRM power-measuring crank; SRAM bought Quarq and so was promoting that. But hats off to SRAM for having the confidence and mat...

Quick post today..... I estimated the power taken for Contador to do the climb to Nevegal, which took him 20:58 from the checkpoint at the base of the climb to the summit: 600 meters climbed in 7.30 km for an average grade of 8.2%. For direct comparison with Horner's Sierra Road climb I used the same numbers: 65 kg body mass, 6.8 kg bike, 1.5 kg of other stuff, 0.32 m² CdA. I reduced rolling resistance from 3% to 2.5% since Contador was on time trial tires. I still assumed 3% drivetrain loss. I used a power-speed model including inertia. I assumed he started the climb at 40 kph. The result: 6.24 W/kg. This is lower than the 6.56 W/kg I had for Horner on Sierra Rd. Horner's VAM was 1916 m/hr while Contador was 1750 m/hr. Of course it's not a fair comparison as Contador had finished two brutally tough stages immediately preceding the rest week the day before, and may not have fully recovered. It seems riders aren't having rest days as productive as the...

Yesterday as I rode the train into work I turned on my phone to watch the official video feed of the Giro d'Italia television coverage. 12 km to go, and the pack was split on the final, steep but short climb. A group got off the front, including two Garmin-Cervelo riders. They did a nice leadout, but the protected Garmin rider, who turned out to be David Millar, was able to take only second place to an Italian I didn't recognize. The screen froze on the top five stage finishers as I was approaching my stop, so I turned off the phone. stage profile (from PezCyclingNews ) At work, I later checked CyclingNews for the results. Only then did I learn that, on the descent prior to where I started watching, Wouter Weylandt had fallen to his death, thrown off the edge of a steep descent to fall "twenty meters" to the roadway below. I was stunned. I'd been blissfully ignorant of the tragedy as I'd watched the stage finish on the train. Most of the riders h...

Last time I wrote a bit about the Giro 2011 route, more about the qualititative than the quantitative. The Giro route just recently announced for next year is brutal, that nobody denies. The striking feature is the incredible series of mountainous stages. But how does the distance stack up? First I show data i took from CyclingNews for the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France for the last two years as well as for the announced 2011 routes. The Tour was a bit longer in 2010 than the Giro, but other than this one race, the Giro and Tour cover essentially the same amount of total ground: close to 3500 km over a three-week race. I look a bit closer at these data in the next plot. On the lateral axis is the day of the race from 1 (the first day) to 23 (the final stage). On the vertical axis is the number of km covered by the race to the end of that day. The Giro is plotted in green while the Tour is in blue. First comment: neglecting the longer Tour in 2010, the Giro has b...

The 2011 Giro d'Italia route was recently announced. I never get very excited about Grand Tour route announcements. There's pro cycling year-round to attract my attention, and fall is when I'm, at the pro level, checking out cyclocross results, while at a personal level doing my best to make the Low-Key Hillclimbs a success. In any case, it's really the riders who make the race, not the course. Whatever the route, there will be climbs, sprint stages, and time trials. The relative weight changes, but the race is really dictated by the teams and individuals who come to play. The last few years has been particularly interesting, however. For example, in 2010 the Giro visited the Strada Blanca near Siena, while the Tour de France featured a stage on some of the cobbles from Paris-Roubaix. So I admit my interest in these announcements has been perking up a bit lately. Nevertheless, I didn't think much when I heard the Giro was announcing it's route, a...

Basso climbing Zoncolan ( CyclingNews ) Last post I proposed an estimate of the power used by Basso and Evans while climbing the mighty Zoncolan stage of the Giro d'Italia. However, no sooner did I publish my estimates than CyclingNews published claimed numbers from Basso's SRM. That Basso had an SRM was surprising to me: this stage is one of the rare days in pro racing that riders use a 110 mm BCD "compact" crank. In the past, they've not made the investment (or their sponsors haven't made that investment) of a separate power-enabled 110 mm spider. But 110 mm BCD power meters are gaining increased acceptance as people realize that "compact" gears are suitable for racers, too, in addition to the substantial power meter market of performance-oriented cyclists who don't race. So they probably want to promote their compact option, and a epic stage like this one attains substantial visibility. In any case, the numbers: Basso averaged 395 watts...

Yesterday's Giro stage finished on the epic Zoncolan climb, a truly brutal slope which I've vowed to climb myself some day. If numbers alone can induce pain, these numbers surely qualify: Zoncolan profile: ouch!!! I watched the last 50 km on Justin.tv (linked via CyclingFans ): absolutely riveting stuff. Sure, L'Alpe d'Huez has its character and history, but the mighty Zoncolan is in a separate category of "beyond". With the pathological gearing used by riders on the stage (for example, 34-52 front with 11-29 back), riders were at least able to maintain a decent cadence, but that couldn't hide the brutality of the slopes. This hill is truly every rider for himself. Given this, it's interesting to see what the numbers say about what transpired on the mountain. I took a few time checks from the main group (ignoring the break) starting at the 10 km to go point. The climb "officially" begins 100 meters sooner. But it didn't appear to...

It's amazing to me all three of the Grand Tours within a 12-month window begin in Holland. I'd love to go to Holland, especially Amsterdam, and take in the refreshingly bike-friendly culture in which the need to slow down cars to protect public safety is well established (in stark contrast to the "drivers own the road" mentality in good-old-friendly U-S-A). But from a racing perspective, the convoluted roads and complex network of traffic circles make racing there quite a challenge. Challenge is good when it's a test of skill, but with the Russian Roulette of a peloton surviving an almost endless series of traffic circles in the final kilometers of a win-at-all-costs pro bike race, not so good unless you're into random blood-letting. So here's the profiles for the first three stages of the Giro d'Italia, from CyclingNews , each stating in Amsterdam: Heck, I can't ride from home to the local market (in San Francisco) without doing more climbing t...