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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

#181

Post by pandaman »

bluGill wrote: post #86
cantSpellSober wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Steel is Real but the last Tour winner on a steel bike was in the '90s (and that's the subject). Bikes weigh no more than 8kg. The weight weenies are winning, carbon everything down to brake rotors. > I was allowed a modern click shifter and modern disk brakes Doubt you'd see a bike equipped with anything else at the Tour.

At the top level - which is pretty much the definition of a tour winner - grams make the difference between a win and loss, so of course they will not be riding steel. I'm not at top level and never will be. If I want to go faster there are many things I can do that are more effective than playing what my bike is made out of.

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.

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

#182

Post by jimbokun »

parthdesai wrote: post #41
Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #9

Note for everyone that will come in here to say the secret is drugs : In cyclism taking drugs is not considered a secret, it's common practice.

My personal semi-conspiracy theory is that cycling is the only sport that took anti doping measures seriously and sort of fucked itself over. All the "anti" doping measures in major sports are laughable. There's too much money involved for the athletes to be not on steroids.

Based on what? Have revenues for pro cycling dropped off? I honestly don’t know.

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

#183

Post by borroka »

parthdesai wrote: post #41
Jean-Papoulos wrote: post #9

Note for everyone that will come in here to say the secret is drugs : In cyclism taking drugs is not considered a secret, it's common practice.

My personal semi-conspiracy theory is that cycling is the only sport that took anti doping measures seriously and sort of fucked itself over. All the "anti" doping measures in major sports are laughable. There's too much money involved for the athletes to be not on steroids.

If it were only for the money...In CrossFit, even in competitions at the regional or provincial level, the top positions are practically all taken by athletes who use performance-enhancing drugs. Or, to take another example, in jiu jitsu, a discipline in which you almost always have to pay to compete and win nothing but a medal that will cost five dollars at the department store, I would venture to say that at least 90% of those placed in the top positions use PEDs.

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

#184

Post by shallichange »

timeon wrote: post #68
n4r9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the point is that in cycling - relative to other sports - money gives you an easy edge. You can afford much better equipment, nutrition, coaching etc... . Compare that to (say) football in the UK: you just need a £5 ball and a few friends, and if you show promise you can track into your local team's programme and get top quality coaching at minimal cost. It depends on the culture as well. From what I read abo…

Peter Sagan started career winning on Tesco bike that he took from his sister. But I think most accessible sport is running. You just need some shoes. Open the door and you are good to go (run). For games like football you also need the ball, playground and other people.

Not if everybody plays, in every school recess, every park, rec center, etc. That's how football is in most countries. "Pay to play" is a very US thing.

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

#185

Post by bluecalm »

jimbokun wrote: post #179
burningChrome wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

Lol what’s the nutritional case for drinking Mt Dew to avoid chocolate?

Pure carbs are better than fat and protein if you're about to start or are in the middle of long endurance effort.

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

#186

Post by vlachen »

wnolens wrote: post #160

I 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.

Interestingly, that same advice was offered to recruits in U.S. Marine Corps boot camp for the final series of tests and challenges, known as The Cruicible. We were directed to put the salt and sugar packets from our MREs into our canteens and chug them. Disgusting, but effective.

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

#187

Post by temporarara »

11235813213455 wrote: post #175

I wish these races were without any assistance at all, and without food/liquid at the start, a bit like in the past, if you're hungry try to spot a fruit tree, if you've a flat repair yourself, thirsty stop at next fountain

That's really the kind of fun that is completely missing in most of today's professional sports. Everything is just too good and planned ahead for my tastes to be worth actively watching. The surprising elements still around, like crashes and injuries, are just not that exciting at all.

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

#188

Post by bluecalm »

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…

Like Spain when there are legal problems with testing on weekends.

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

#189

Post by TuesdayNights »

burningChrome wrote: post #130
deff wrote: post #25

Regarding 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…

Cyclist need to log virtually everything they consume (food, water, medications), on top of declaring their whereabouts and biological passports, in case they return a positive test. I'm not disagreeing with the "price of admission" for competing in the world tour shouldn't be high, but I can imagine it's stressful that something as simple as drinking water from a tap could, effectively, end your career.

Lizzy Banks goes into great detail about her experince with doping control and trying to overturn a positive result due to a contamination. It's a long read, but if you're a fan of the sport it's super interesting. https://lizzybanks.co.uk/

It was also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40612281

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

#190

Post by bluecalm »

hinkley wrote: post #112
deff wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible to use mechanical doping now with the current inspections. Has it been used before these inspections were implemented? Very likely. An hungarian engineer developed a motor with spools in the rims and the stator in the forks. For sure at some point this offered a better risk/reward than PEDs.

Greg LeMond was one of the people calling for more scrutiny of bikes for mechanical tampering. One of the best pieces of evidence he provided were thermal cameras pointed at bikes while they were in motion. Lots of thermal blooming in places no professional bike mechanic generate a tenths that much friction. One of the problems is that bikes can be made so light with unobtainium that there are rules in place requirin…

Bikes being too light and needing weight added to rich 6.8kg minimum is a tale of the past. With aero frames, disc brakes, deeper wheels and bigger cassettes most TdF bikes are way over the minimum, sometimes more than 1kg heavier.
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