Bonjour, et bienvenu a Mr Miff's Tour de France - revisited

I hope you enjoy travelling with us.

2019 thoughts....

Many thanks to Mrs Miff for kicking this off way back....

Seems like only yesterday and a long time ago.

I definitely made the right decision to eschew my mountain aka mud bike for the road.

Still one of the defining moments of my life came in my first ever "sportive", the Winter Solstice on Salisbury plain.

Totally exhausted with miles still to go I had the choice of cutting over to the short course. I demurred and pushed on finally finishing 3rd from dead last completely famished and ODing on bananas.

It was both my worst and best ever result.

Books

Sadly this post aged.... lots of much better books around now though the first couple stand the test of time and ofc it was the first one that started it all

Some books that have been of use. Also at the end some stuff about someone who rode the route last year.



THE TOUR DE FRANCE RIDING EXPERIENCE

French Revolutions - Tim Moore
The book that started it all. Relates how the author did pretty much as I did and rode the 2000 route prior to the race itself. Funny, honest and self deprecating it is a good read even for those who have little or no interest in cycling (like my wife...).

Riding High: Shadow Riding the Tour De France - Paul Howard
Just to prove that no matter how daft you are there is always someone dafter. Every year some nutters "shadow ride" the Tour de France, by, each day of the race itself, riding the route the tour will follow shortly after. They almost literally shadow ride as they need to start very early in the morning so as to be able to finish the course without being overtaken by the event itself, so one of the many problems they face is navigating in the dark. To try doing this you naturally have to be a pretty good cyclist as in many ways it is even harder than doing the real thing. Paul Howard's book recounts his tale of doing this in 2004 and is a good read, though more so for cyclists than others.

12 hour power

 Still pretty impressed with myself for ending up not only doing one 12 but several and setting a new club record in the process....


Following on from previous post I have been thinking about what sort of power I will pace at.


I did a tryout on our 10TT course a few nights ago. Conditions were not very helpful with a strong headwind out and tailwind back. Ended up averaging 36kph for 234W/246NW.

Also tried using calculator here: http://bikecalculator.com/wattsMetric.html which reckoned that 34kph should take 195W on the drops and 240W on the hoods. (Aerobar would be 160W but I will not be using one for first attempt for reasons I will go into shortly).

Based on above 2 bits of info I reckon I will need to average somewhere in the region of 220W or so. This is 10w short of my "endurance" zone so is in the right sort of place. Also taking a look at my normal power curve:



My longest ride was my chase of 5000m climbing last year in France. Here I averaged 216NW for 9:30. This is short of target but that is not really a typical day as it was more of a hard tour than a race. This year on the Highclere I averaged 240NW for 7 hours and for the Marmotte 235 NW for 7:30. Extrapolating these as above gives me a guesstimated 12 hour power of between 230 and 215W. So pretty much dead on what I will need to achieve to do the 12 hours at above 20mph.

I will do a few more trials and see what results....

Beauty of the Beast

November 2019 - still a beauty after all these years.....

On a completely different topic on return from Legbreaker I was followed by/followed a beautiful yellow Lamborghini Diablo. I actually heard it before I saw it and it made the most fantastic sight and sound.

By coincidence I saw a Murcielago parked up the night before and definitely of the opinion that the Diablo knocks it into a cocked hat in terms of looks.

Legbreaker 2008

Update 21st November 2019

Ah the Legbreaker. Still up there as one of my hardest ever rides.

The jersey and cap are still going strong and habitual attire.

Sadly the edition I rode turned out to be the last. Bit of a shame as it was well ahead of the trend in terms of UK sportives both in time and difficulty. It also had some of the best food at the finish.

These days there is pretty much one sportive or another happening most every weekend.



 

Did the Legbreaker ride yesterday and, as planned, rode it without looking at my power computer (except for occasional peek).

Actually ride is one where power meter is of least use as consists of lots of sharp, steep ascents and hairy single track descents (as profiles above show...). Quite pleased with how I managed on it, I forced myself to go hard on the climbs and took it easy(ish) otherwise. (ish because high winds and occasional showers made going tough, groups did not really form given nature of terrain).

Overall stats were not too bad. I did the ride in just under 6 hours (it was meant to be 130km but a missing signpost turned it into 140km) and set a new PB for 5 hour normal power at 256NW.

The power distribution makes an interesting picture:
Work time was spread pretty evenly across all of the buckets with near an hour being spent at VMax+Anaerobic. This is in sharp contrast to the Highclere Sportive:


and even sharper contrast to the Marmotte:

While happy I did it not sure I will do Legbreaker again. Not so much the climbing (dont mind that) but the fact that the whole ride felt very samey, just a constant succession of short steep climbs, often in woods, followed by similarly steep descents down single track roads. Latter led to a couple of accidents (fortunately all involved are OK) but even if trouble free are not really much fun.
Next weekend is Tour of Black Mountains, with several serious (but for the UK long) climbs which is definitely more my cup of tea. Just hope weather improves a bit...

3rd March New Hour PB

12 years ago, HR was much higher and power much lower..... 

 3/3/2007

Another end of build stretcher. Decided to do hour of Watts first thing in the morning on the Lifecycle. Started doing criss cross 230-270 but after 30 mins realised bit much following the heavy session the night before.

So stepped down to keep HR around 169 which in practice meant Watts varying 220-240. After 45 mins realised I may be on for a new PB for the hour so paced myself and did it, breaking 900 cals for the first time. Total 905 cals which equates to around 237W I guess.