> These days, it is an entirely different prospect, with vast sums spent on custom-built food trucks, personalised nutrition apps and meticulously planned meal regimes all in the name of performance enhancement.
> For the nutritionists and chefs tasked with providing sustenance to power their team's riders over 2,170 miles in the coming weeks there are principally two dilemmas [...]
> The answers are gleaned from a year-round process that begins in December during pre- season training.
You know that it has become the Sport Of The 0.0001% when...
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.
It depends on the culture as well. From what I read about China, they're constantly scouting primary schools for Olympic talent, so you can come from any background and reach the top in a sport that would be limited to wealthier people in other countries.
Anyone can learn a bunch of gymnastic moves, too. But last I heard, "Olympic Gymnast" implies a >1k hour/year training regimen, starting at an extremely young age.
An (American) NFL team has 53 "active" players (plus a practice squad, plus ...), and plays a 5-month season. And has a lot of "maintain a major stadium"-type expenses, which (my guess) cycling teams don't have.
Based on your figures, and trying to scale...no, the cycling team budgets really aren't peanuts by comparison.
NFL Data: https://shareholder.broadridge.com/pdf/2022-packers-annual-r...
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.
Similarly in football, by studying your opponents in previous matches, so that you can identify weaknesses during the match, even if playing in isolation.
If your times are, say, 20% or more above the absolute top times for a given course, you've got a long way to go by improving yourself - on just about any bike whatsoever. The super expensive parts make low single digit differences.
That aside, regarding cycling, standard mass manufactured piece? In one size that all have to fit to?
Naa...
Glucose monitoring is banned during races, but I guess that is why you don't see some cyclist collapsing like as 15 years ago is because they understand their glucose levels.
For sure, doping it's still a fear, but these guys cannot climb Galibier at that speed only with storoids/drugs, it's insane the effort that they did over the year.
The tricky word there is average. If Tadej can absorb an extra 5 grams per liter, then you should give Tadej an extra five grams per liter. If Jonas can absorb 2 grams less per liter than the average then you should give him that serving.
These race results come down to mere seconds per hundred miles, for cyclists that are averaging 20 miles an hour. Any 1% difference is going into the training regimen.
The limits aren't wrt water absorption, but gut tolerance of sugar.
I get about 100g of sugar into a bottle by doing roughly 50:50 Gatorade and maltodextrin, and then throwing in some extra Na an K salt if it's going to be hot. Although with the super hi carb stuff you should make sure that you have some plain water as well - it sucks to be super thirsty but only have carb drink on the bike.
if i personally use gatorade for endurance exercise, i'll just cramp up after 90 minutes and not be able to ride normally. if i use a high salt mix instead, this isn't an issue whatsoever. I'm sure the exact same is true about food itself. remember that for the tour de france, last years time difference between the winner (Vingegaard) and the second (Pogadcar) was 8 minutes out of 82h 05' 42", aka only 0.16% faster overall. every single sub-percentage matters here.
there are tons of products that cater to this. the one i've been using is https://www.precisionhydration.com/ which is cheaper and more tailored than gatorade (i have no affiliation to them).
It also said that doping made a 20% difference, so either none of the current competitors are doping or all of them are.
I don’t think modern professional cyclists even can ride at 20 miles an hour ;-)
20 miles an hour didn’t win you the Tour de France in 1950. Nowadays, with better tech, better training, and shorter stages, you have to do over 25 miles an hour to win it, and the last rider in the general classification easily is within 10% of that.
Gatorade’s ingredients list shows sucrose (glucose+fructose) and dextrose (glucose).
Maltodextrin is isotonic in a 6x stronger solution than fructose and glucose. This means you need to drink meaningfully less water during a race to digest maltodextrin. So do we want all maltodextrin? Nope! Fructose can be absorbed by a separate pathway, which is less efficient, but increases your total intake of carbohydrates into the bloodstream.
So you’re probably not going to see Tour de France teams giving their riders Gatorade. You want more maltodextrin and less glucose.
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 hour or 100g). Lots of figuring out digestion and timing and sources and other factors. But once I got there it was transformative...I could push much harder for much longer without a deep bonk and recovery was faster. More importantly, my ability to think/plan/make decisions at the end of races was orders of magnitude better.
I'd bet if you went to an aid station around 80 miles on a 100mile ultra marathon you could pretty reliably identify who had been on the 200cal end of the spectrum and who had been on the 400 + end.
The way I heard it, the don't use doping to improve their performance. They use it so they can train longer and more intensely than they would be able to without it.
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.
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 set schedule, all the while being able to maintain he was being tested more than any other athlete - when in reality, he was just avoiding being tested.
It seems like a lot has changed since his scandal and several others that followed and they've really clamped down on what you're saying, changes in blood values and getting suspended if you cannot be reached for testing.
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
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 not get tested by going somewhere remote for a height camp for a few weeks.
Hard to believe it took a scandal for that to be a rule.
Is that like parole where they check in, or is it like house arrest where you have an ankle monitor?
Some people will try, and some scandals will happen, sure. But it is not a widespread problem and is unlikely to become one.
See here, for example: https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/tour-de-fran...
https://www.uci.org/pressrelease/uci-reveals-technological-f...
Ghost in the Machine [1] is a great podcast on this topic.
[1] https://play.pocketcasts.com/discover/podcast/de6ba1d0-9132-...
I think pectin is easier on the stomach than insoluble fiber, but I have a lot of gaps in this part of my knowledge.
The cheeseburger calls to us all. Some of us are just "better" at resisting the call.
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 in need of complex carbs and protein?
This is purely anecdotal evidence of this, but in my experience as an endurance athlete (soccer, cycling, adventure racing) its seems to work. When I've craved chocolate, I just eat some toast or chips or drink some Mt. Dew (a lot of people have no idea how many carbs are in soda) and the desire for something chocolatey goes away.
As others have pointed out in the thread, everybody is different, but in my case, this idea seems to be accurate.
Fixed. Cycling has one of the strictest out-of-competition testing regimens. Which isn't to say doping doesn't exist - it does, no question - only that it's WAY better now than during the Armstrong era.
Some details... https://lanternerouge.com/2023/03/26/how-clean-is-cycling-an...
For example, Greg LeMond won the TdF in 1990. In 1991 he came 7th, and then never completed it again. There is some complication here because of the hunting accident he suffered in '87, but he also said "The speeds were faster and riders that I had easily outperformed were now dropping me", and the guy who won in 1991 was Indurain who was basically the first mega-doper.
Without EPO and blood doping becoming prevalent, does Greg LeMond compete for a few more years? Do other guys with similar talent who aren't willing to dope also make it to that top level. I think the answer is probably yes, and so all those guys who doped are responsible for excluding those clean athletes from the top level.
EPO and other red-cell increasing drugs provide a massive gain for endurance athletes (runners, cyclists, XC skiing). Steroids are a massive gain for strength athletes (sprinters/athletics, contact sports).
Both can be used "safely" or "unsafely" depending on dosage, combinations with other drugs, etc.
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.
Actually having your own chef source stuff is one way to avoid accidental doping scandals.
I've read the Velochef book and like the recipes there. One thing I've never appreciated before is how hard it is to actually get this amount of calories down. Especially since much of it must be consumed on the bike so needs to be easy to transport/store/eat on the fly. And eating while working out can be tough on the stomach. EDB finally got his break through when they managed to nail a nutrition he didn't get cramps from eating.
That’s some top-notch nominative determinism.
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 something like Soylent and protein powder and supplements. To see them chowing down on "normal" food and drinking alcohol (at all) was surprising for me.
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/
TRAINING TIME(HOURS)x60=CARBS(GRAMS)
Start with series 1, even though it's 2 years out of date. They explain how the sport works, and they skip over this in series 2. It's important information.
Aren’t they trying to maximize calories?
