Froome is of a certain age

There was that notorious incident in 2012 on stage 8 of the Tour de France:

"When he accelerated on La Toussuire with four kilometres to go, Chris Froome left behind Bradley Wiggins, the rest of the group and, it appeared, team orders.

Twenty seconds later, he spoke into the race radio, slowed and the fragments drifted back together.

“They asked me to slow down,” Froome said after the finish, referring to Team Sky directeur sportif Sean Yates."

Back in 2012, Froome was aged 27 and Wiggins was 32. Wiggins cracked on that final slope - this chart might explain why:

Elite cyclists are at their strongest aged 27-29: by 32 they're down by a third

Cut to stage 12 of the Tour this year:

"Chris Froome's brief attack on teammate and race leader Bradley Wiggins that day in 2012 is now the stuff of legend and, though clearly not on the same level, there were question marks over Mikel Landa's role as Froome struggled on the brutally steep gradients.

The Spaniard, Froome's last teammate and himself in the top 10 overall, didn't look around as the maillot jaune lost ground, instead forging on to finish fourth on the stage."

Fabio Aru then took the maillot jaune, Landa forging ahead as Froome cracked. Froome is now aged 32, while both Landa and Aru are 27.

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There were other reasons touted. Richie Porte - ever loyal - said from his hospital bed that Froome had hit the wall due to messing up his feeding. Others noted that Aru (66 kg) and Landa (60 kg) are lightweight pure climbers while Froome (71 kg and a generalist climber/time-trialist) is quite a bit heavier.

But the age-related roll-off of performance is hard to argue against. Team Sky will be looking hard for their next GC candidate. A shame that Landa appears to be off for Astana or Movistar.

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Update (Saturday).

Froome emphatically back in yellow today. Not so much a new-found strength as clever tactics completely bamboozling Aru and his team Astana. Team Sky are head-and-shoulders smarter than most other teams.

Me at the gym vs. Chris Froome

My post "Burning it up at the gym" noted that Chris Froome averaged 414 watts on his breakthrough climb in the 2015 Tour de France. The aerobic machines at the gym show Calorie counts, but taken at face value and converting kcals/hr to watts I seem to be generating more than 800 watts during aerobic exercises!

Dream on!

This afternoon I used the Rowing Machine in power-meter mode. Here are the results.

• Protocol: five minutes: three @ one-minute hi-intensity + two one-minute recovery periods.


• Distance covered: 1,100 metres.


• Average power: 147 watts


• Average power during hi-intensity: 210 watts


• Absolute highest power: 265 watts momentarily.

I'm put in my place: I develop about half the power of Chris Froome during a sustained climb.

Burning it up at the gym

A little while ago my sister asked me how many Calories I burned in my hour-long gym session. After a bit of totting up and estimating, I guessed around 600 kilocalories.

Recently Team Sky released power data for Chris Froome on the climb to La-Pierre-Saint-Martin, the decisive stage 10 of the 2015 Tour de France.

“It’s about a 15.3 km climb,” said Kerrison. “Around 41.30 [in duration]. Chris’s average for the whole climb was 414w,"

My '600 Calories over an hour' equates to 700 watts sustained. Gosh, I'm better than Chris Froome!

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Time for a more accurate estimate. The aerobic machines give a semi-accurate account of Calories burned, but the resistance machines are more problematic. I spend 22 minutes aerobically exercising and around 28 minutes on the resistance machines and was assuming roughly equal energy expenditure.

But Lance Armstrong's former website begs to disagree:

"The exact number of calories burned during strength training workouts depends on intensity, time and your body composition. According to the Harvard Medical School, on average, caloric burn ranges from 90 calories per hour of moderate training by a 125-pound person to up to 266 calories per hour of vigorous effort by a 185-pound person."

I'm 70 kg = 154 pounds, and I think I'm doing vigorous exercise. On that basis, and scaling, I'm burning only 90 Calories on strength training.

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So, putting it all together (and adding a minute recovery time after each hard exercise):

• Cross-trainer: 80 Calories (five minutes: 2 x 90 secs hi-intensity)
• Rowing machine: 68 Calories (five minutes: 3 x 60 secs hi-intensity)
• Bike: 58 Calories (five minutes: 3 x 60 secs hi-intensity)
• Treadmill: 44 Calories (4 minute warm-down at the end on 10%, ~6 km/hr).

My aerobic total = 250 Calories in 22 minutes - average power of 870 watts (no way!). *

About half the time on the first three machines is high-intensity but the average power overall seems way too high. Still, the Calorie estimate is not out of line with this LiveStrong estimate.

According to this website, averagely-fit people can produce sustained power at 3 watts/kg, which for me means 210 watts, with shorter-duration power 30% higher, say 280 watts (240 kcal/hr).

Perhaps I'm not burning as many Calories aerobically as I think I am!

Now add in the 90 Calories from resistance training (which over 28 minutes gives an average power of 200 watts - sounds about right).

So my grand total is at most 340 calories burned at the gym.

That's breakfast accounted for.

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*  See this update.

Chris Froome out of 2015 Tour de France?

The Guardian writes:

"The 2015 Tour will include only 14 kilometres of individual time trialling, on day one in the Dutch city of Utrecht. This is the smallest amount since the race was relaunched after the second world war and the first time in recent years that the race has not included a time trial in the final week.

"In a statement issued shortly after the launch of the 2015 race route on Wednesday morning, Team Sky’s Kenyan-born Briton, who crashed out of the 2014 event in the first week, said, “The team and I will have to give it some careful consideration before we make any commitments to which of the grand tours I will compete in.” The 2013 winner was not present at the launch in Paris.

"Froome added: “The Giro with its inclusion of a long TT of 60 km and tough uphill finishes will make it a well-balanced race, which suits me well. If I did the Giro I may also be able to get myself back to top shape for the Vuelta and go there with a realistic chance of aiming for the win. In the past I’ve only targeted one grand tour each season but it could be a good opportunity for me to focus seriously on two.”

"The lack of time trialling in the 2015 Tour should suit the French riders, who staged a dramatic resurgence in the 2014 race, and as if to express their hope that history is on the home nation’s side, the organisers have included a finish at Pra Loup, the resort in the southern Alps where Bernard Thévenet toppled Eddy Merckx in 1975."

This is the kind of hyper-rational analysis which you expect from Froome's cerebral persona. I imagine Bradley Wiggins is aghast: as the 2013 winner, how could you not want to participate in the greatest bike race in the world? Where is Froome's sense of the grand tradition, the honour of cycling?

I wonder whether Team Sky just took a look at the route and figured they couldn't win? Certainly without Froome (and with Wiggins essentially retired from  road racing) they have no credible candidate for a win. Perhaps the notoriously neophilic Team is itself bored with the Tour, and is restlessly seeking new challenges.

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Not many posts at the moment as I'm tied up with various domestic matters. In-between I'm just finishing Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy and very dark, smart and techno-soapy it is, with a soupçon of grotesque horror. Greg Bear's War Dogs and Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things have arrived and joined the queue. I'm looking forwards etc.