Today, on the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast we chat about the quality of riders in the Tour de France.  Our cycling coach Devlin Eyden touches on things like your VO2 capacity, the actual conditioning going on, holding back on energy reserves and your fuelling.  If you have your eyes set on the likes of the bigger cycling events then this podcast is for you.

Transcript

David Katz:          Thanks for joining myself, Mr Active, David Katz and Devlin Eyden once again on the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast, a great question in today. Of course the Tour de France still fresh in the memory of a lot of people and one of the great riders over the last few years is sadly retiring this season. He had a fine send off, he was the first rider allowed to go onto the Champs-Elysées on the last day by the rest of the peloton and I’m talking about Joaquim Rodriguez. I like him, I think he’s a fantastic climber, but he doesn’t seem to be able to match the likes of Chris Froome over the course of a long climb Devlin. He’s got this incredible kick that most people can’t match, so the question that comes out of that is, while the endurance athletes generally have more slow twitch fibres and sprinters fast, where does the abilities of the likes of Purito fit into that?

Devlin Eyden:      Joaquim, as you mentioned, he’s a specialist climber and when you compare him to someone like Chris Froome, Chris has ability as a really good climber. Chris is trained as an all-rounder, so he’s also, when I say an all-rounder, I’m not saying he’s necessarily an incredible sprinter and what have you, but he’s there to win the Tour de France which is his primary goal number one. They climb very well, but at the end of the day what it comes down to is more sustained effort and we then start talking with conditioning.

If you had to go and analyse a lot of data, you’d probably quite easily be able to find that Chris Froome might also have a higher VO2 capacity which allows his endurance capacity and the actual conditioning he’s been doing, a lot easier for him to maintain a sustained effort over those long climbs. Whereas Joaquim might be able to burn a few matches quite quickly and be quite strong in the kick, but not able to necessarily sustain that.

I think it would be quite key to look a bit deeper into the actual conditioning going on. Then a few other things that could play a role is over the strategy that the team would play and him as a rider would play over the course of the Tour de France. Something like a grand tour like that and what their goal is. So is Joaquim there to try and win it, is he there to get a bit of publicity on the climbs and be out in the breakaway for most of the day? It’s things like that, the strategy will come in and hand in hand with that will determine how much energy he would have burnt over previous days before leading into the mountain stages as well.

Energy reserve in terms of holding back on that and Chris Froome this year in the tour was a brilliant example. He had his team around him and that’s another big thing, is to make sure the team is built really well around the team. Chris had an incredible team built around him. When they got into the mountain stages, at any given times on the climbs he had at least two or three riders still with him that did all the pace making and he just sat quite comfortable with the guys in the front group. Not necessarily the lead breakaway group, but right up at the front end of the race, he sat comfortable. When the guys started burning a couple of matches and making surges and little false attacks, he never panicked, he stayed quite calm.

It then comes down to, like I said, strategy where he’s not burning unnecessary matches and just keeping a handle on what’s going on and then able to up the tempo when he feels it necessary, without having burnt matches earlier on, on the climbs, wasting energy like some of the other riders might have.

With that, things like fuelling as well, so making sure that the nutrition that they would have taken on the climbs and at the right timing throughout the stages would also play a role in terms of that surge of energy and sustained effort over a period of time.

DK:         Devlin, thanks for that, I think it sums it up incredibly well and it is sad to see Purito in the Olympics around the corner and he could surprise us with getting an Olympic medal. Of course Sammy Sanchez winning it for Spain in Beijing, so we’ll wait to see.

Spain will have one of the strongest teams but from Devlin Eyden and myself, Mr Active, David Katz, please do tune in to the next edition of the Ask Coach Parry Cycling podcast.

Also, if you can, leave us a review and rating on iTunes and you can stand a chance to win a lifetime membership to the podcast.