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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

#31

Post by mesofile »

matsemann wrote: post #11

I'm a bit sad that a topic I find so interesting mostly gathers knee-jerk reactions here on HN. Yes, doping, blah blah we get it. But the logistics of TdF is insane. With a new city every day, things need to move fast and preparations start early. For instance Uno-X team has a small trailer with 800 kgs of ice they travel around with, after having trouble sourcing enough ice in the small villages they stay at. Actual…

Sorry, I follow cycling casually but I'm racking my brain trying to think of who 'EDB' refers to.

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

#32

Post by davidw »

avs733 wrote: post #27
deff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed why you don´t see them collapsing and also why the finals are much longer nowadays. Riders train their guts to be able to eat up to 120g of carbs per hour, for the whole duration of the race.

I am far FAR from the tour de france but I do train for and run ultramarathons. When I started the general guidance seemed to be about 200 calories (50g of carbs) per hour during training and races. I followed that or a little above for a long time, and constantly had problems both physically and cognitively near the end of races. It took about a year to get used to fueling heavier (for me...about 400 calories per ho…

Yeah, some of the modern nutrition stuff like gels work really well. I did a 115 mile road bike ride on Sunday and kept eating gels and... I'm not going to say I was super fresh or anything by the end of that, but I was still feeling pretty good.

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

#33

Post by Ekaros »

jamil7 wrote: post #30
Ekaros wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder should we go to basics in many sports. With things like banning any equipment including clothing and shoes... Or with cycling giving one standard mass manufactured piece. And then a pile of standard replacement parts and standard tools. All bought from cheapest supplier randomly distributed to participants.

I get what you're saying but a part of the culture in my experience is tinkering and upgrading your bike, that doesn't have to necessitate spending huge amounts of money, especially if you do a lot of work yourself and buy parts second hand. The sport might appeal less with all that stripped away, but who knows maybe it would also be interesting to standardize some aspects.

Why not then allow motorcycles? They are just bikes upgraded with motors... Would make competition lot shorter too and interesting. Seeing them driving around without speed limits.

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

#34

Post by frereubu »

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 looking forward to a nice salad (i.e. lots of fibre). He partly admired the dedication, but at the same time wondered how on earth they could live like that.

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

#35

Post by jamil7 »

n4r9 wrote: post #22
NoPicklez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a sport of the 0.0001% when anybody can go buy a bike and ride. At the top level of any sport and in the top race or competition of that sport, it is going to represent the pinnacle of that sport.

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…

What makes the largest difference is how physically fit and how well you can ride (technique) rather than equipment.

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

#36

Post by gullywhumper »

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 winning a stage at last year's Vuelta a España (one of the major multi-day stage races) Sepp Kuss took a huge long chug on the podium - and then went on to when the entire race [1]!

Some riders used to drink during races too. Freddy Maertens was able to do it and still win [2].

[1] https://www.atwistedspoke.com/sepp-kuss-champagne-supernova/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Maertens#Alcohol

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

#37

Post by jamil7 »

Ekaros wrote: post #33
jamil7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you're saying but a part of the culture in my experience is tinkering and upgrading your bike, that doesn't have to necessitate spending huge amounts of money, especially if you do a lot of work yourself and buy parts second hand. The sport might appeal less with all that stripped away, but who knows maybe it would also be interesting to standardize some aspects.

Why not then allow motorcycles? They are just bikes upgraded with motors... Would make competition lot shorter too and interesting. Seeing them driving around without speed limits.

I'm guessing because they don't meet the criteria to participate, what's your point?

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

#38

Post by secondcoming »

n4r9 wrote: post #22
NoPicklez wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a sport of the 0.0001% when anybody can go buy a bike and ride. At the top level of any sport and in the top race or competition of that sport, it is going to represent the pinnacle of that sport.

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…

I've never seen so many young people on bikes in the UK as I do now. Sure, the bikes are likely stolen and the kids up to no good, but at least one of them has TdF potential

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

#39

Post by gosub100 »

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.

And to me, there's a distinction between taking a drug that increases availability of red blood cells vs taking steroids or meth.

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

#40

Post by Ekaros »

jamil7 wrote: post #37
Ekaros wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not then allow motorcycles? They are just bikes upgraded with motors... Would make competition lot shorter too and interesting. Seeing them driving around without speed limits.

I'm guessing because they don't meet the criteria to participate, what's your point?

That adding a motor would be upgrade and tinkering of a bike. So why should it not be allowed? Isn't it entirely in same spirit?
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