A great basic formula I stole from NorCal Cycling's YouTube channel for coming up with a nutrition plan for a bike ride is:
TRAINING TIME(HOURS)x60=CARBS(GRAMS)
Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
151–160 of 253 posts
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#152Nowadays, some riders use glucose monitoring devices during training with relation to how long it takes from ingesting and getting into blood. They are now measuring more and more things, and food is a crucial role. Glucose monitoring is banned during races, but I guess that is why you don't see some cyclist collapsing like as 15 years ago is because they understand their glucose levels. For sure, doping it's still a…
> For sure, doping it's still a fear, but these guys cannot climb Galibier at that speed only with storoids/drugs, it's insane the effort that they did over the year.
The way I heard it, the don't use doping to improve their performance. They use it so they can train longer and more intensely than they would be able to without it.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
A UCI WorldTeam has a budget of about 10 to 60 million euros. That's peanuts in a lot of other sports.
If that budget is for an 8-man team, in a sport with a 3 1/2-week season... An (American) NFL team has 53 "active" players (plus a practice squad, plus ...), and plays a 5-month season. And has a lot of "maintain a major stadium"-type expenses, which (my guess) cycling teams don't have. Based on your figures, and trying to scale... no , the cycling team budgets really aren't peanuts by comparison. NFL Data: https://s…
Even you think it is peanuts in comparison when expecting it to be for one particular race.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Riders are tested a lot and have to provide year-round whereabouts for random testing. If I remember correctly, these rules were changed after the Armstrong scandal where he would be scheduled for testing, he would say he was at his house in Texas. The testing folks would show up and he just wouldn't answer the door and wait until they left so they couldn't test him. It was one of the ways he was able to dope on a…
> and getting suspended if you cannot be reached for testing. Hard to believe it took a scandal for that to be a rule.
Afaik that was already the rule 25-30 years ago when Armstrong was cycling.
I can remember track and field athletes being banned when they didn‘t show up for surprise tests.
So either cycling was more lenient or he got a bonus treatment because he was famous.
On a side note: much harder today to not be available/found than it was 30 odd years ago.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#155A great basic formula I stole from NorCal Cycling's YouTube channel for coming up with a nutrition plan for a bike ride is: TRAINING TIME(HOURS)x60=CARBS(GRAMS) https://youtu.be/WNhOAIMDmQ0
= 1 gram of carbs per minute of training
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#156Regarding drugs, yes it´s most likely still happening, but nowhere near the levels it used to be. Riders are tested a lot and have to provide year-round whereabouts for random testing. They also have a frequently updated blood passport to detect sudden changes in values caused by PEDs. It can never be fully waterproof, but at least serious efforts are made.
>> Riders are tested a lot and have to provide year-round whereabouts for random testing. If I remember correctly, these rules were changed after the Armstrong scandal where he would be scheduled for testing, he would say he was at his house in Texas. The testing folks would show up and he just wouldn't answer the door and wait until they left so they couldn't test him. It was one of the ways he was able to dope on a…
There is an app where you have to give your whereabouts for one hour every day. If you don't fill it in or are unavailable at the location for that hour, you get a strike. Three strikes in a set period and you will get a ban as if you had been doping.
One problem with the system is that it relies on countries being strict with their athletes, which they aren't incentivized to do. Also, it's easy to "be available" but not get tested by going somewhere remote for a height camp for a few weeks.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Runners also warn about high fiber being bad. I keep being drawn back to our friend the Banana. I think pectin is easier on the stomach than insoluble fiber, but I have a lot of gaps in this part of my knowledge. The cheeseburger calls to us all. Some of us are just "better" at resisting the call.
>> The cheeseburger calls to us all. One my trainers when I was in college told me that when you crave foods, its not your lack of willpower, its actually your body telling you it needs certain nutrients. He told me when you crave chocolate its because your body needs carbs, so if you get some carbs, your chocolate cravings will go away. I'm guessing the idea you crave a cheeseburger is the same thing, his body was i…
Someone told me once that food cravings are often driven by our gut's bacteria. We eat what they want us to eat.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only one person has been caught. It's been a long time since I bothered to look into this, but LeMond suspected at least half a dozen people, with video evidence of varying degrees of plausibility. The thermal imaging and the fallen rider with the spinning wheels were especially damning. But if you're analyzing old races how do you get a conviction? You can't.
> with the spinning wheels were especially damning No it wasn't. Wheels spin through crashes all the time.
And if this is the Toms Skujins case, it spins for like 3 seconds on video after the video cuts to him. It's obvious that he just had lifted his bike up and spun the pedals to see if everything was in order before biking on. And when an alternate video later was released, this was proven to be true.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#159The part about not eating too much fibre because it irritates the gut reminded me of an amusing anecdote in Dan Martin's autobiography, where he talked about coming (I think) third in The Tour and was sitting with Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas from Team Sky (now Ineos Grenadiers) after the finish in Paris. He was looking forward to a big burger and chips, and Froome and Thomas were discussing how they were really l…
Salads can be really good in Paris! :D Martin might just be imagining a slice of tomato on a leaf of lettuce, Froome and Thomas might have been imagining a range of herbs and roasted nuts with a delicious oil or vinaigrette, chunks of an interesting cheese or two and some powerful olives and garlic. Or thereabouts.
Yeah, I'm sure he knows that - he lives in Andorra - but I read it as him being surprised that of all the tasty things they weren't allowed to eat (as the article makes clear the food during the Tour tends to be pretty bland) the first thing they'd crave is a salad.
Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road
#160I recently participated in an 85 mile race, and all the nutritional advice boiled down to.. drink a water bottle with a ton of pure sugar and some table salt every 10-20 miles. Bananas and gummies etc. were had, but mostly because they're pleasant to consume.