Rolling Pro Cycling Thread

and only JV ended up in the top ten

Just watched an interview with LeMond where he explained there are hard limits on sustained wattage based on your VO2max, and if the UCI wanted to end doping they could just make VO2max part of your biological passport and then check the sustained wattage. Seems sensible?

to the smaller extent that vo2 max is trainable, and the more slight extent that its expression is influenced by the rider’s mass, i’m always kinda dubious. when dealing with a group of mostly equally-able soooooper outlier aliens, i am not sure how determinative it can be. can one say hey a rider with an 84ml/kg/min can never match w/gm a rider at 95 wrt w/kg? v v fair.

but i don’t know how much the vo2 max can be argued to be a definitive permanent defin stmt. it has a ceiling for everyone, but it does move. with ppl built to cheat, when will you know you’ve got the correct ceiling measurement? also not all races are determined by that energy system. better races (imo) are determined not only by your w/kg at threshhold, but v v often by your super-threshold power layed down in just such a situation to make a gap and get away enough to stay away with other better performers, or if you can hold that superthreshhold power long enough to win with it (these “w’” efforts are ot usually long, they can last 8-10 mins, not much more). And in a long day, lots of difference comes out of how your body can recover during long hard days. Or how good your teammates are at hiding you until it’s time to make those super efforts, of either kind (roughly called aerobic and anaerobic). whether you’re eating enough. whether, even if youre eating, youre digesting it. whether youre digesting. even whether youre drinking. whether you are naturally just low and fast in position. there’s a shitton of smaller variables that cumulatively make big differences.

i mean there are things that stand out as flags. relatively sudden big improvements obv. ppl going from excellence at anaerobic super performance to being aerobic w/kg supermen (like armstrong bw 97 and 99– and there were many of these in the late 90s obv). or low enders who suddenly just became gods, like froome.

my main takeaway for lemond—as talented and as sorta regular decent person as I think he is— is that his vo2max numbers were like all-time great for any sport, like 95ml/kg/min. scandi xc level shit (who btw were also like patients zero for aerobic doping technique—but i’m implying that for lemond at all).

so maybe everything looks like a nail to lemond, named vo2max. but i dunno, srsly all those riders move so much more oxygen that normies like me, and i just watch and clap.

Lemond I like mostly but he also seems pretty obv very emotionally immature. Not fragile, he’s tough and v resilient,but perhaps best termed “whiny.” actually the first time i met him in the early 90s (i don’t know him obv), i turned around so he could sign the back of my team jersey in sharpie. then he was nice enough to talk to me a couple mins. near to the end he made a joke like “well, i’m just a retired wash-out now, they should just put us down, like horses.” it was said humorously and was appropriate and funny, but i walked away thinking “he really does seem a little shook.”

NOT IMPLYING lol

it was not a jersey of his team, it was a long sleeve of my team, i was out riding and stopped at a shop and there he was. I wish i’d kept that jersey in good shape— but i rode and warshed it to rags. ☹️