You are grossly underestimating the effort to hang in a pro peloton. If it had been so easy, everyone would be on the same time, excluding TT results. No, the issue here is that Simon is making weak excuses.
No he isn’t the power data from these flat stages has been shared before. A small guy like Yates almost has to do nothing (comparatively).
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I’m not underestimating.
Exhibit A from Tour of California: https://www.strava.com/activities/302191907/overview
There are plenty of riders on the TR forums that could have just hung out in the peloton in a day like that.
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Sounds like someone took a trip down to the ole excuse factory!
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Whether or not you can take it easy in the peleton is not at issue. Whether or not you can do so for 8 days and materially de-train is. And I say you will not de-train aerobically to any material degree if you sit in for 8 days. Yates had a good opening time trial so his form was good coming in.
To me it’s more likely the stage 4 crash is more of an issue than Yates is letting on.
Yes. But I’m an OCD engineer, I have to provide the facts.
Hmmm. Didn’t Roglic and Nibali also go through the same experiences? Yet they were sure pretty sharp in the TT.
Without knowing each riders taper and general detraining rates, it’s not an apples to apples comparison.
Not defending Yates performance, just pointing out that his statements are logical and based on a real phenomenon.
You can and will materially detrain from an anaerobic perspective over 14 days, which is where he suffered his time gap in the recent TT.
Some riders will detrain slower or faster depending on the phenotype.
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“You can and will materially detrain from an anaerobic perspective over 14 days”
1.) I did specifically say aerobic.
2.) That’s 14 days. Not 8 days of sitting on. Some of which were 100+ mile days. More than enough to maintain fitness.
3.) S Yates is not a sprinter and even so he was making efforts on some of those days to stay within the 3km rule.
I don’t think VO2max capacity would detrain after even a week long couch taper. Aerobic capacity…maybe 10 days to a week. Again, couch taper. The only thing that might detrain in such a relatively short period of pretty active riding would be the ‘twitch strength’ stuff…sprinting, snap, etc.
In any event, I look forward to what he will do in the mountains. We could still see some exciting things from Yates!
Average power 145w for an hour.
Nibali is a former ski jumper too?
Sorry…
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So, in summary, yes it’s possible but more likely just an excuse.
but most importantly did you know Roglic used to be a ski jumper.
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If Yates was detrained before the time trial, he’ll be even more detrained before this first mountain stage.
He could also be doing lead outs for the sprinters in the last 10 km. Maybe that’s why you see Jungles at the front in the last 5 km? He is putting in some hard efforts to get his body ready for the hard days.
Similarly there was some chat on the Cycling Podcast about Mollema: how he wanted to take a pee break and get back to the peloton under his own steam rather than with his team in an effort to sharpen up.
And Yates loses more time on today’s stage and is out of contention, saving a miracle.
So much for the arrogance before the Giro…
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Any chance of keeping spoilers out of these topics?
Mike
Sorry! I hadn’t realized people might be waiting to catch up on today’s actions.