Hour record observations

"Carl Sundquist" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:lAfKd.4124$G31.575@okepread05...

Quoted message said:

"Peter Allen" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Agreed it seems obvious the UCI would regress to the Merckx record along
with the equipment, but they didn't actually do so until a couple of days
before Boardman's ride. AIUI, this was because there was some issue about
altitude (Boardman certainly wanted there to be a stipulation that
attempts had to be made below 600m, and some such was being considered -
that would automatically dump Merckx's distance).

Reports on cyclingnews.com lean toward breaking Merckx's record rahter
than establishing a record. No indication of any last minute altitude
clarifications by the UCI.

Yes - evidently my memory is [censored]. With the CN report of Merckx's record
being reinstated being nearly 2 months before Boardman's ride, and a quote
that he just hadn't been told it had to be beaten until 2 hours before,
looks like you're right about the UCI being less than helpful.

Peter

I said:

That's what I was afraid of. I suspect that webpage overstated the power
output of the Mexico City efforts (i.e., Merckx and Moser). If you were
to believe it, it would say that Merckx had hugely more aero drag than
Boardman, even in Mexico City. I've done a cursory search and there's
huge variation in the estimates for the power output for the hour
records.

Here's a comparison of the power estimates for hour records, as given by
Bassett et al., and by that webpage (www.bikecult.com).

http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/rbr/hourrec3.png

The bikecult figures are higher in every case than the Bassett estimates,
especially so for the Mexico City records where the two sets of estimates
are way, way, different.

Both the Bassett and bikecult figures for Indurain are lower than the
figure reported in the coyly-written abstract here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11007591

(Note that you can download the entire paper from the link at that
abstract)

Quoted message said:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11007591

Quoted message said:

(Note that you can download the entire paper from the link at that
abstract)

Figure 1 from the full paper is pretty impressive.

Indurain had the highest average power output
Rominger the best Power to body mass ratio
Boardman the best Power to drag ratio.
....Ohh and Boardman was the fastest

Boardman's "normal bike" record (at the end of his career) had a
similar power output to the record when he first broke it (at the start
of his career). There may be other aspects to riding a bike in a
"normal" position that prevent an athlete producing their best power
output.

Indurain:
Average Power [W]: 510
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 6.30
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 2.11

Rominger:
Average Power [W]: 460
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 7.08
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 2.38

Boardman Super:
Average Power [W]: 440
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 6.37
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 2.54

Boardman Normal Bike:
Average Power [W]: 401
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 5.9
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 1.71

"Robert Chung" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11007591

Quoted message said:

(Note that you can download the entire paper from the link at that
abstract)

Figure 1 from the full paper is pretty impressive.

How so?

Robert Chung said:

Both the Bassett and bikecult figures for Indurain are lower than the
figure reported in the coyly-written abstract here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11007591

VO2 at OBLA is 69.75 ml/kg/min which squares nicely with the rule of
thumb that a V02max of 75 ml/kg/min is the entry point to elite cycling.

Carl Sundquist said:

"Robert Chung" <[email hidden]> wrote >>

Quoted message said:

Figure 1 from the full paper is pretty impressive.

How so?

In comparison to how much prep it's said that most of the other recent
hour record attempts involved.

Rik O'Shea said:

Indurain:
Average Power [W]: 510
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 6.30
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 2.11

Rominger:
Average Power [W]: 460
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 7.08
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 2.38

Boardman Super:
Average Power [W]: 440
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 6.37
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 2.54

Boardman Normal Bike:
Average Power [W]: 401
Power/Mass Ratio [W/kg]: 5.9
Power/CdA Ratio [KW/m^2]: 1.71

Where do you get these power and CdA numbers?

Carl Sundquist said:

Perhaps I misunderstood your meaning of "impressive". You stated
earlier, "Figure 1 from the full paper is pretty impressive.".

Unless you consider the amount of testing to be impressively lacking,

That's exactly what I meant. Evidently, his decision to attempt the hour
record was made with only about 10 total lifetime hours on the track. The
four velodrome tests he made before the record attempt appeared to be less
than that in additional time. I'm not saying that the amount of testing
was excessive. I'm saying that considering these were over his entire
lifetime, that didn't seem like very much at all, especially since:

Quoted message said:

Failure to break the hour could have damaged his image significantly,
at least at the time.

"Robert Chung" <[email hidden]> wrote in message >>

Quoted message said:

Evidently, his decision to attempt the hour
record was made with only about 10 total lifetime hours on the track. The
four velodrome tests he made before the record attempt appeared to be less
than that in additional time. I'm not saying that the amount of testing
was excessive. I'm saying that considering these were over his entire
lifetime, that didn't seem like very much at all,

Some people may think it doesn't take much talent to ride in circles around
the bottom of a track. In many instances, they're correct. But when you're
trying to ride absolutely the most efficient line through 400+ turns
especially later in the hour when you're fatigued, you want to be able to do
as much on auto-pilot as possible so you can focus on other things to avoid
dropping your speed.

Indurain's advisors may have discounted that or felt confident it should not
have been a problem. I can't remember if it was Indurain or Rominger who
crashed early on in one of his training sessions on the track. Indurain's
advisor's may have felt that assessing his power might have been all they
needed to do to see if he could break it although he only broke it by about
300 meters, the smallest increment since Anquetil in 1967.

The study does not discuss Indurain's training regimen beyond the testing
protocol nor the philosophical approach with regard to time training on the
track for his preparation for the hour, so we are in the dark on that.

Carl Sundquist said:

Some people may think it doesn't take much talent to ride in circles
around the bottom of a track. In many instances, they're correct. But
when you're trying to ride absolutely the most efficient line through
400+ turns especially later in the hour when you're fatigued, you want
to be able to do as much on auto-pilot as possible so you can focus on
other things to avoid dropping your speed.

Indurain's advisors may have discounted that or felt confident it
should not have been a problem. I can't remember if it was Indurain or
Rominger who crashed early on in one of his training sessions on the
track. Indurain's advisor's may have felt that assessing his power
might have been all they needed to do to see if he could break it
although he only broke it by about 300 meters, the smallest increment
since Anquetil in 1967.

The study does not discuss Indurain's training regimen beyond the
testing protocol nor the philosophical approach with regard to time
training on the track for his preparation for the hour, so we are in
the dark on that.

Yeah, what I was impressed by was that it seemed that they took the
attempt pretty cavalierly. As an interesting bit of additional info, all
of the calculated models based on the distance of 53.04km suggested that
Indurain should've used less power, or that at 510W he should've gone
farther.

BTW, you might be interested in www.insideride.com

"Robert Chung" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Yeah, what I was impressed by was that it seemed that they took the
attempt pretty cavalierly.

We don't know.

If you look at the abstract as the big picture, I'd say you're right. That
would also bring in to question how qualified Padilla, Mujika, Angulo, and
Goiriena were in terms of contributing to the success of the ride or if they
were just tagging along, learning and reporting. If it was just a portion of
a larger picture, then it may not have been approached as casually as it
appears. Pinarello seemed to have gone to a lot of trouble to develop and
build the Espada for the ride. Granted, they used that development to build
other bikes for the Italian pursuiters for the '96 Olympics, but I recall
Pinarello had the chain go through a slot in the oversized chainstays. They
also had made a pretty wild cf fork for Indurain's bike. Instead of having
two conventional blades, a single tube followed the curve of the wheel
rearward from 12 o'clock to 9 o'clock, then forward horizontally to minimize
the fork's frontal area.

Quoted message said:

As an interesting bit of additional info, all
of the calculated models based on the distance of 53.04km suggested that
Indurain should've used less power, or that at 510W he should've gone
farther.

Frontal area of a rider is a pretty difficult thing to access, as indicated
by the widely varying power estimates that have been published. It doesn't
help that it is not static. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, Indurain was known
for having a pretty bad aerodynamic position, although you ought to be able
to punch a pretty big hole in the wind at 510W.

Quoted message said:

BTW, you might be interested in www.insideride.com

I saw that earlier today. I'm sure I had seen the cyclingnews.com writeup,
but I had forgotten about it.

Carl Sundquist said:

"Robert Chung" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Yeah, what I was impressed by was that it seemed that they took the
attempt pretty cavalierly.

We don't know.

Well, I don't know about you, but I absolutely positively don't know.

Quoted message said:

If you look at the abstract as the big picture, I'd say you're right.

I was looking at it the other way: I was trying to fit this paper into the
big picture of the other studies done on the hour record. I'd been vaguely
puzzled by how far off the models were on Indurain. It was when I saw that
figure and read the thing about 10 lifetime hours on the track that my
lightbulb went on. In combination with the observation that he used 190mm
cranks, making his pedal speed the highest among the recent record
holders, I think there's prima facie evidence that he was under-geared.
Moser and Rominger's first records were followed very shortly by second
attempts (4 days in Moser's case, 2 weeks in Rominger's) with higher
gearing. Despite plenty of power, Indurain never made a second attempt. My
guess is that after his record, Indurain said "no mas."

Quoted message said:

Frontal area of a rider is a pretty difficult thing to access, as
indicated by the widely varying power estimates that have been
published. It doesn't help that it is not static. Plus, as I mentioned
earlier, Indurain was known for having a pretty bad aerodynamic
position,

Perhaps, but I'm thinking that it wasn't his aero drag or his power that
were mis-estimated; I'm thinking that it was his bike handling skills on
the track that were mis-estimated. He had the record and he wasn't
interested in pushing it any farther.

Robert Chung said:

Moser and Rominger's first records were followed very shortly by second
attempts (4 days in Moser's case, 2 weeks in Rominger's) with higher
gearing. Despite plenty of power, Indurain never made a second attempt. My
guess is that after his record, Indurain said "no mas."

Factor in he was both mentally and physically tired after having ridden Giro and
Tour that year, with no rest period since May, and that he never felt
confortable in his track position. No reason to prolong the pain once his goal
had been achieved. Compared to him, Rominger, who had quitted the Tour, was
quite fresh at the end of the season.

But Indurain did make a second attempt the next year, in Bogota, just after the
Worlds. He started fast but soon faded. Despite the altitude, he was not going
to improve his 1994 record when he abandoned. CN gave it almost daily coverage
from October 11 to October 19
http://www.cyclingnews.com/results/archives/octres.html

Jenko