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Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#221

Post by hinkley »

ruszki wrote: post #147
hinkley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been a cyclist since about the time that the market of energy drinks first exploded. And at the time there were a number of articles that said that really all you need is Gatorade, that most of these new drinks were advertising more calories per liter, but Gatorade was already tested out on absorption rates and dialed in to the maximum calories per liter of water that the average human stomach can absorb. T…

They count it as gram per hour. If I remember well, pro cyclists can absorb 2-2.5 times as much carbohydrate in an hour than beginners.

I wonder how much of that is adaptive and how much selective. Does your body learn to absorb more, or do you have to have a high absorptivity to make it as a pro.

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#222

Post by dyauspitr »

matsemann wrote: post #156
burningChrome wrote: post #130

Earlier 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…

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…

I didn’t understand this. You have to show up at a location once a day and stay there for an hour?

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#223

Post by pandaman »

bluGill wrote: post #215
pandaman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a steel frame bike which will be lighter than the UCI weight limit with modern technology. It's just nobody cares to make one because the "unracer" crowd who believe steel frames are magic, won't be spending a couple grand on a light steel frameset and the actual racers are fine with the carbon frames, where it's much easier to control properties of different parts of the frame through fiber layout.

What I want as a non racer is different from what racers want so I prefer a cheaper steel fram, as the gains from an expensive one won't be worth it. of course the above is a guess, if someone makes such a frame I may try it and decide it is worth it.

Non-racers appreciate light and comfortable bikes too (if anything it's much easier to load a 20 pounds bike on a car/bus rack than a 30 pounds one), this is why carbon is now even in the midrange consumer segment. And with the tubeless tires even on the road bikes nowadays, the magical suspension properties of a steel frame are hardly noticeable over the effect of lower pressure in the tire. So I don't think steel frames are ever coming back.

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#224

Post by canucker2016 »

nradov wrote: post #212
rfergie wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so either none of the current competitors are doping or all of them are The drafting effect in cycling means that a clean cyclist can finish very closely behind a doped cyclist

That only works on the flat stages. A small difference in power to weight ratio makes a huge difference in finishing times on the mountain stages where drafting is less of a factor.

Don't forget the GC rules for assigning times.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_classification:

    Riders who finish in the same group are awarded the same time, with possible subtractions due to time bonuses. Two riders are said to have finished in the same group if the gap between them is less than three seconds. A crash or mechanical incident in the final 3 kilometres of a stage that finishes without a categorised climb usually means that riders thus affected are considered to have finished as part of the group they were with at the 3 km mark, so long as they finish the stage.
For this year's 5th stage of the Tour de France, the first 155 riders were assigned the same time.

see https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/tour-de-france/2024/sta...

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#225

Post by xarope »

gullywhumper wrote: post #36
ydant wrote: post #21

I enjoyed this show about feeding the tour riders: Eat. Race. Win. https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Race-Win-Season-1/dp/B086HVQ5RB Related, Unchained ( https://www.netflix.com/title/81153133 ) has been an interesting view into the race although food isn't discussed at all. Before Eat. Race. Win. I had this entirely uninformed idea the food the riders ate would be incredibly streamlined and controlled - I was thinking some…

The alcohol really surprises me given how meticulous they are about everything else - especially sleep monitoring. After a big win, it's not uncommon for the entire team to have sparkling wine or beer that night. Maybe not a big deal for one day races, but with stage races they usually have another hard race the next day. On the podium during stage races, victors will often drink sparkling wine/beer too. After winnin…

and then there's the Radler, a beer and lemonade mixture specifically created for cyclists. It's quite tasty and thirst quenching, although I'm not sure I'd use it as as peri-workout drink (post-workout? sure)!

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#226

Post by bleakenthusiasm »

frereubu wrote: post #34

The 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…

I get it, though. I often crave salad when I have eaten too much fat for a day or two. Sometimes the body really just tells you what it needs.

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#227

Post by LinkinNg »

Optimal_Persona wrote: post #101
frereubu wrote: post #34

The 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…

Tomorrow's headline: Turd de France - How professional cyclists poop (or don't) on the road...

Cavendish breaks Tour de France stage record

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#228

Post by Arainach »

jimbokun wrote: post #177
hinkley wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't been a cyclist since about the time that the market of energy drinks first exploded. And at the time there were a number of articles that said that really all you need is Gatorade, that most of these new drinks were advertising more calories per liter, but Gatorade was already tested out on absorption rates and dialed in to the maximum calories per liter of water that the average human stomach can absorb. T…

Maximum calories per liter sounds like something you really want to avoid unless you are engaging in extremely intense exercise.

Sustained cycling is intense exercise. Your body burns through its glucose reserves rapidly, and if you run out of energy the effect ("bonking") is awful. On the other hand, trying to eat a bunch of energy and having too much in your stomach will make you sick and is also awful. So you do in fact want to ingest the most you can process (but no more) per hour, particularly for extended events.

Nutrition doesn't matter for rides up to 15 miles, and you can improvise almost anything for rides up to 40 miles. More (or particularly hilly courses, etc.) and it becomes very important to get the amount you eat and drink right.

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#229

Post by 0_____0 »

matsemann wrote: post #144
0_____0 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped gels pretty fast. Hard to get if you're not somewhere with sports stores, and expensive. These days I cram haribo and peanut butter M&Ms, although I think the latter are more useful for multiday things.

Yeah, I bought a huge bulk pack online, and then it was okay. But when you need a couple a week it quickly adds up in cost. Same with bars, which I sometimes prefer over gels for longer rides to not just have gels in my stomach. I've tried to bake some bars myself, or make some rice cakes from Velochef ( https://www.rouleur.cc/blogs/desire-journal/velochef-henrik-... ) instead.

Thanks for the recipe! Reminds me... A friend of mine made a megagel that was some kind of chocolate concoction that he carried in a 300ml soft flask. It had sugar, salts, caffeine, actually tasted great, and I believe was pretty cheap to make. I have to get the recipe from him.

Edit: I did the math on that risotto cake recipe and it comes out to about 2500kcal for the batch, for me that comes out to calories for ~5-6 hours of riding.

Re: Tour de France: How professional cycling teams eat and cook on the road

#230

Post by wiether »

matsemann wrote: post #92
wiether wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I can't find anyone close to it.

Sorry, it was an autocorrect by my phone. EDB means Elektronisk Data Behandling, which is an archaic Norwegian way of writing computers, lol.. I meant to write EBH, Edvald Boasson-Hagen. I probably should've spelled it out, but the Velochef book is by the Team Sky chef, the team of EBH.

Don't worry!

Given Henrik Orre is Norwegian, I thought about EBH but it was still far from EDB... All is good now!

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