[HAMR] Current thoughts on the record attempt?

[La Tortue]

A Sky pro (Porte?) rode a comfortable 400km training ride in daylight not so long ago.

There's a report here http://cyclingtips.com.au/2014/02/cam-and-richies-excellent-adventure/. The data at the end is reported as below (not clear whether this was Porte's or Wurf's. They finished in the dark, although they didn't set out to ride 400km originally.
Ride time: 13hrs 30min
Distance: 403km

I believe at these ultra distances Kurt is as Pro as the Pros.  Didn't he ride 253 miles last Feb at Sebring in 11hrs 53 min?  And hasn't he been riding almost every day since?  They have nothing on Tarzan.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Sebring is pancake-flat and a race, not a conversational-pace training ride with hills, coffee stops and dirt roads.

Granted, Kurt is very talented and has done a magnificent effort this year and will rightly take the record but comparing a 50 year old with a professional cyclist in their prime isn't viable.

[Peter]

This is why I pointed out earlier that Tommy Godwin was 27 when he set his mark.

[La Tortue]

comparing a 50 year old with a professional cyclist in their prime isn't viable.

Very viable until a Pro steps up and does it.  The OYTT is a whole lot different than racing.  Training for one  race or sitting in a Peloton till it's your turn to sprint/ climb/ whatever. Racers as good as they are does not mean they  can get up day after day for a year.  That'sthe challenge.   In fact being old and having gone to work at dark thirty for 20 plus years might be an advantage.   Hail half the Peloton can't get out of bed before noon.  Lets not even talk about the amount of drugs they'll need  for 365 days of riding.

[Peter]

Leaving Kurt and Steve out of this (I don't think anyone disputes that they are remarkable riders), almost all, if not actually all professional cyclists are people who were recognised very early to have outstanding natural talent.  This is then built up and built upon in a professional manner.  I think they are qualitatively different athletes from us, certainly from me and I was a champion athlete at school.  I'm sure that if it was put to the professional cyclist in the correct way, i.e. the way they are used to: you will be paid at least as much as you would get from your normal activities and compensation for lost earnings while you recover and you will have a back-up team, then some of them might easily beat Tommy's figure - by a huge margin.  It's just counter-intuitive not to think so.  Most of them are great all-rounders when compared with the likes of us.  Mark Cavendish is thought of as a poor climber but he would smash most of us up almost anything.  Chris Boardman is thought of as a short triallist.  He used to and may still hold the course record on one of the North-West hilliest trials up Dovestones.  These people are just different from us! 

Peter

[La Tortue]

I believe discipline and dodging drunk moped drivers, injury, weather, and just plain bad luck are bigger factors than a racers impressive watt stat sheet for this challenge.  Kurt is within 13 days of finishing.  Every Pro alive has a least 365 days left to go.   Surely the odds favor Kurt.

[Frank9755]

I believe at these ultra distances Kurt is as Pro as the Pros.  Didn't he ride 253 miles last Feb at Sebring in 11hrs 53 min?  And hasn't he been riding almost every day since?  They have nothing on Tarzan.

Err, I've done more than that in 12 hours!  And that's nothing special; any average club rider who focused on distance riding would achieve that.  The 12-hour record is 318 miles - set by an amateur, at age 49.  A professional who put his mind to it would do a lot more.  However, there is no prospect of one stepping up to do so any time soon: when a couple of them ride a 400km, it makes the news!

[LittleWheelsandBig]

LT, given there is a higher percentage of positives from dope testing of USA Cycling masters racers than from the professional peloton, cheap shots about doping should probably be avoided.

Comparing Kurt's and Steve's approaches has shown that speed is a major contributor towards taking this record. Saying that having more inate speed than Kurt is not a significant advantage when tackling this record (as you are doing) is absurd. Boyer demonstrated in RAAM that speed counts decades ago and Ossie Nicholson held the year record between the wars. Both were TdF racers and took long distance records at their first attempts. The training involved in becoming and continuing to be a professional road racer is extensive and onerous.

[Mr Larrington]

Chris Boardman is thought of as a short triallist.  He used to and may still hold the course record on one of the North-West hilliest trials up Dovestones.  These people are just different from us! 

He certainly held the record for the IoM Mountain Circuit (until Wilko knocked about 5 minutes off his time in a f/f recumbent trike).

Apropos the pros, didn't the professional entries for PBP dry up because the markedly different training regime required for that one race practically exclude them from the rest of the regular season?

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Yup. Grinding through the long distance miles killed their speed. Nicholson was never as fast a racer after his year record.

[Mr Larrington]

I've just read in Citizenfish's Scholarly Monograph that Nicholson was advised to taper down by riding ~30 mile days for a couple of months after completing his record year, which I imagine would not be optimal for a pro wishing to continue a regular career.

Incidentally, big kudos to Citizenfish for his book, which kept me up way past my bedtime last night.

[Ben T]

...I'm sure that if it was put to the professional cyclist in the correct way, i.e. the way they are used to: you will be paid at least as much as you would get from your normal activities and compensation for lost earnings while you recover and you will have a back-up team, then some of them might easily beat Tommy's figure - by a huge margin....

The only slight problem with that is... is that per year, or per hour spent cycling??
If it was the former, they might think they were getting a rough deal because they're spending 15 hours a day in the saddle, every day.
If I was offered a job where I was paid the same amount but expected to spend my entire waking life devoted to it I would probably leave (this in fact did happen, and I did leave fairly rapidly, but that's another story)

Let's say an average pro cyclist does 80 days racing a year average 4 hours each - 320 hours. Also assume they get a fairly modest £100k per year - nothing like the 7 figure sums the big names like Froome or Wiggins get.
Scaling this up to what they would want to do the HAMR which is 365x15 = 5,475 hours. This is a factor of 5475/320 = ~17, which means even only an average pro cyclist would be needing to get paid £1.7m a year to contemplate it. Where are they going to get that from?
If you wanted Froome to do it, who gets £3m anyway, you'd need to be forking out £50m.

[MikeFromLFE]

Incidentally, big kudos to Citizenfish for his book, which kept me up way past my bedtime last night.

You too!

This book - even though I'm only upto the pictures - should be a pre-required read for anyone commenting on the attempts. The backgrounds of the contenders, the strategies, feeding regimes, and backup, as well as the after-effects are all pertinent to this thread.

[marcusjb]

Let's say an average pro cyclist does 80 days racing a year average 4 hours each - 320 hours.

OK - I am not going to get drawn into this in any big way, but pros spend rather longer than that in the saddle each year.

Niki Terpstra - 836 hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/340874
LTD- 792hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/laurenstendam
Roy Jeremy - 758hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/royjeremy
Thibay Pinot - 680 hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/tpinot

There are lots of gaps in all of their schedules, so I suspect it is significantly short for all of them.

David Lopez is at 1030hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/davidlopez

It's still less than 3 hrs a day.

Anyway, I can not see a current pro going for this record even if there were big bucks on the table, which of course there is not.

[Bianchi Boy]

Tommy didn't do the whole year in a solo 'romantic' fashion. His big mileage months had full-time motorised support. When that was withdrawn, Tommy was much closer to his average daily distance, much the same daily distance as Steve was doing in summer.

The professionals' physical abilities could put the record well beyond the reach of even such rare and talented riders as Tommy, Kurt or Steve. For example, mid-range professional Jock Boyer won his first RAAM at record pace on the basis of no specific distance training and with an inexperienced crew, though he was run close by Secrest. A Sky pro (Porte?) rode a comfortable 400km training ride in daylight not so long ago.

I have always noted that there is quite a lot of people who ride Audax who believe they are really good cyclists. Well some are but most are not. Before I had my stents fitted I chased Richie Tout to the finish of the BC in 17 hours, I only ever finished half way up a club TT and was always blown away on the hills by my club mates. All this distance stuff is about what you want to do, and if you cannot go too fast you can do a creditable endurance performance. There are many riders at my club that if were so disposed could put in fantastic Audax performances, but they choose to race, do TTs and some ride the track. There is one who asked me where the fun is at riding 70% of your max all day? Then I asked him what is the point of doing a 10 mile TT where your legs hurt for the rest of the day - get my point. It is about desire.

By the way the worst I have ever been after a ride was a 30 mile TTT. After 10 seconds I was on my limit and it is the only time I have wished for a puncture so the pain would stop. When I got home I had to lift my legs out of the car. I was in a worse state than after LEL, PBP or any Audax I have ever done. I was broken.

So if any talented athlete puts their mind to this endurance stuff they will do very well, and we must enjoy the days we have and not assume that because we have chosen to do a minority sub branch of cycling that it actually makes us very good cyclists, we just do it a lot. If you are like me you will just love the time on the bike, the big days out and the friends you meet.

BB

[Ben T]

Let's say an average pro cyclist does 80 days racing a year average 4 hours each - 320 hours.

OK - I am not going to get drawn into this in any big way, but pros spend rather longer than that in the saddle each year.

Niki Terpstra - 836 hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/340874
LTD- 792hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/laurenstendam
Roy Jeremy - 758hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/royjeremy
Thibay Pinot - 680 hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/tpinot

There are lots of gaps in all of their schedules, so I suspect it is significantly short for all of them.

David Lopez is at 1030hrs - https://www.strava.com/pros/davidlopez

It's still less than 3 hrs a day.

Anyway, I can not see a current pro going for this record even if there were big bucks on the table, which of course there is not.

yeah I admit, only a very very rough guess. Those strava figures probably include training, which only fair to do.
You're right, difficult see a pro being willing to do it. Possibly due to the detrimental effect/risk  it might have on the rest of their career afterwards.
But we're talking in times when the year record is not particularly fashionable. Apparently back in the 1930s it was a lot more fashionable. Who knows in times to come it might gain much more publicity and be a much much more coveted/respected thing to achieve, in which case it might be a different story.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

Not all pros think they are paid just for the time they are riding. Allan Peiper (contemporary of Sean Yates) remarked that he was paid as a professional cyclist for the whole year, so eating the right things, stretching and other physical preparation, media interviews and appearances for his sponsors was just part of the deal.

[Greenbank]

yeah I admit, only a very very rough guess. Those strava figures probably include training, which only fair to do.

And those times probably won't include turbo time, which they'll do a fair amount of for specific training gains (it's not easy doing very specific intervals on the road with traffic about).

[Peter]

Not all pros think they are paid just for the time they are riding. Allan Peiper (contemporary of Sean Yates) remarked that he was paid as a professional cyclist for the whole year, so eating the right things, stretching and other physical preparation, media interviews and appearances for his sponsors was just part of the deal.

Yes.  And I didn't say that I thought for one minute a pro would take up the offer, well-remunerated or not; it is a very peculiar thing to be doing, though fascinating.  I was echoing LWaB's assertion that the right pro could do serious damage to this record.  None of this diminishes Kurt or Steve's efforts - they are actually doing it.

[Wowbagger]

@Bianchi Boy: I think that there are lots of ways of being a "good" cyclist without being especially fast. I think there are lots of very good cyclists on this forum who have never entered a race in their life.

[Karla]

I believe at these ultra distances Kurt is as Pro as the Pros.  Didn't he ride 253 miles last Feb at Sebring in 11hrs 53 min?  And hasn't he been riding almost every day since?  They have nothing on Tarzan.

Err, I've done more than that in 12 hours!  And that's nothing special; any average club rider who focused on distance riding would achieve that.  The 12-hour record is 318 miles - set by an amateur, at age 49.  A professional who put his mind to it would do a lot more.  However, there is no prospect of one stepping up to do so any time soon: when a couple of them ride a 400km, it makes the news!

I wrote the same post on my phone last night, but the internet ate it.  There are several posters on here who've done more than 253 miles in twelve hours: I can think of at least four and I'm probably missing some.  At this year's national, 253 would have put you just over 1/3 of the way down the entirely amateur field - on a tough course, on a windy, rainy day.

[Greenbank]

Obviously speed comes into it as you need to be able to maintain a certain daily mileage to have a chance in the first place but I'd say speed is lower down on the list of priorities than:

• mental strength (being able to go out there and ride day after day in all kinds of weather)
• having the time - doing this with a young family would be far from ideal, or "losing" (harsh but most would see it as a year lost) a year of career/racing/life
• financial position (sponsorship helps, but it'd be much more of a burden if he still had a mortgage to cover)
• luck

I'm sure plenty of pros would be more than physically capable of smashing the record, but they would probably be lacking in one or more of the other things on that list.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

I reckon the only chance of a pro doing the year record would be an old Belgian domestic (or similar) without a contract for his last year, paid by a wealthy enthusiast or start-up bike maker. Chance of that happening is virtually nil.

[zigzag]

i'm interested why a pro (as suggested above) would not be able to go back into racing after this, or similar, challenge? in my understanding, he/she would need to do the speedwork again and be back on track within six or so months (if they could still look at the bike).

[danridesbikes]

i see it as something that Jens Voight might have done at the end of his career, already wealthy, big company backing in Trek, already has the social media side of things ticked, first to re-do the hour after they changed the rules, wasn't even a high mark, just the new mark, marketers dream

#shutuplegs