- Coming 'round faster than Tom Dumoulin
can remove his cycling shorts,
it's another edition of Ask GCN Anything.
What you ask, and we answer.
We try to anyway.
First up, without further ado is this question
from Stewart @MTB_Stewart who asks,
"I'm an MTB rider who recently got into road cycling.
I love dry roads, but I lack confidence
in the rain, any advice?" #TorqueBack.
Well thanks for getting in touch Stewart.
It is a really good question; especially coming off
the driest grand tour in living memory.
Of course no rain graced this year's Giro d'Italia.
But if you're used to the fantastic control
and traction offered by off-road, wider tyres,
it can definitely be a bit of a shock
when you go from the wider tyres onto the
skinny road counterparts.
Remember only 23, 25, 28 mm.
It's a massive difference, especially
when riding in the wet.
Firstly, there's a completely different feel,
and I think primarily there's hardly any
room for error at all.
So, yeah, what you have to do is just get used
to riding them; just slowly but surely improve
your confidence.
Practice makes perfect basically.
But also what you need to do is factor in
some other things that will make it easier for you.
So, looking at braking distances, and really importantly
making sure you've got your tyre pressure spot on.
Especially, don't have your ties too hard,
otherwise you will come off.
And in addition, you could watch this video too;
our top-10 tips for riding in the rain.
...this to a degree.
And that is to make sure you brake
in good time before the corners.
Now braking before corners is something we
always mention, but in the wet, definitely
back off that little bit more 'cause the
last thing you wanna do is grab some brakes
midway through the corner,
because you're gonna really increase
the risk of wiping out and crashing.
Well next up we have this question from
Prashant Pradhan who asks,
"Can you recommend a training plan
one can follow while working a full-time job?"
Well, firstly thanks so much again
for getting in touch Prashant.
And unsurprisingly this is a question we get
asked pretty much every single week,
because, let's face it, hardly any of us
are full-time pros who have nine or 10
hours a day to train.
So we really need to think about how we manage our time.
All the small things get in the way,
like your study as you say;
a full-time job; just family life.
And getting the balance right can be quite hard,
because the strain that you put on your body,
both physically and psychologically, can mean that
if you get it wrong, something will fail;
either your training or even your quality of life
and the quality of your work you're doing.
So, the key thing for working...
Or training, sorry, around a full-time job
is effective time management.
Once you've got that right, that's one thing.
And also making sure that each and every training
session has a meaning and counts.
But the overriding one when working and training
is to get enough rest.
There are the main three component parts,
which I look at in a bit more detail in this video.
... get fitter.
So, rather than just aimlessly riding your bike
without any real focus, although from time to time
that can actually be quite enjoyable, try and make sure
that every single session counted.
I actually managed to keep the same level of fitness
when I was working full-time compared to when I
was a full-time professional,
simply because my training was of far higher quality.
There simply were no dead miles, so to speak.
It's time now for the rapid-fire round.
But before I embark on this mid-section of this show,
I noticed last week that Si did say that he was
gonna make rapid-fire particularly rapid,
but let's be honest, a few of you did comment
it was one of the slowest rapid-fire rounds I've ever seen.
So I'm gonna try and speed things up
properly starting from now.
This question from Hitesch Dhorajiwala
If I got that wrong, I apologise.
He asks, "In light of the Bolide video,"
That was a TT bike video from Team Sky.
"why do pro riders not just completely get
custom frames with fixed saddle heights, etc?"
That's a cracking question.
The main reason is cost.
It cost a hell of a lot of money to get a carbon mould done.
I mean, an exorbitant amount of money.
So basically the vast majority of pros buy the same frames
and bikes that we can.
It's just a matter of cost.
Although there are a few professional riders...
I mean, probably you could count them on one hand,
who do get custom road bikes,
but they are the real minority,
and it's just a matter of cost.
I think I need to speed things up.
Next question. Here we go.
Jorre van de Weyer asks, "Are there pros who
listen to music during their races?"
Not that I'm aware of.
Next up we have this from Brian Foley.
"Why did Nibali do that aggressive bunny hop
approaching the downhill hairpin bend?"
And I think, Brian, you're referring
to the stage, that's Bormio, descending down the Stelvio.
And the little section you're referring to,
I think Nibali basically did a bunny hop
to jump over some ice-melt water that was
running across the road so he didn't make his tyres wet.
Simple as that.
He's a class descender, and he handles his bike very well;
little bunny hop over the water.
Next up from Saif Akhtar.
"Hi GCN, do you have any advice on racing
on a circuit and any tactics or strategies?"
Racing on a circuit?
First up do those indoor training;
lots of high-end stuff; a lot of sprints.
Try to improve your threshold.
But also, when you're actually racing on the circuit,
don't do too much work.
It's very, very high intensity.
If you hit the wind too early you'll pay for it.
So basically, high-intensity work, improve your sprinting,
don't get in the wind too much.
And finally this is from Liam Sangaku.
"Why don't professional cyclists do Criteriums?"
They do.
Caleb Ewan, for example, is the
Ozzie National Criterium champion.
The pros do them. Just not as much.
There you go. How'd I do?
I reckon four out of five for speed.
Straight off the back of the rapid-fire,
let's slow things down a little bit
with this question from Phill Tromans over on Twitter,
who asks, "How important are head units and powermeters
in the modern peloton? How would things change
if they weren't allowed?"
Well thanks Phill.
That is a really, really good question;
very interesting one in fact.
Now I think they are important, to the pros that is,
for a number of reasons.
But the most obvious one...
The kind of reason that causes the most controversy
because it potentially detracts from the spontaneity
of racing, is the fact that riders can see
the amount of power on their head unit.
They basically ride to that power;
making for a kind of quietly-controlled environment
depending on the way you look at it.
But, saying that, not all of the riders in the peloton
actually ride to power, but what I can say is,
from experience, escpecially in this modern era,
is that pretty much 100 percent of the riders in the peloton
will collect the power data in the powermeter.
They might not look at it immediately,
but what they will do is review it
in conjunction with their coach after
a training ride or after a race.
And that's really important information.
Information is power.
If you get my drift.
Now as for your second part of the question;
how would things change if powermeters
and head units weren't allowed,
well, I think that racing may be a little bit different.
I don't know how different because obviously riders
wouldn't have the ability to ride to
a set, fixed number in front of them.
They'd have to learn to ride on feel,
which on the one hand I think is a fantastic thing.
I think young riders should understand their bodies better.
Although I do, on the other hand, understand
the importance of data.
And just to mix things up a bit, I think in
every grand tour there should be two or three
stages where the riders can have powermeters on,
but they're not allowed to refer to their data.
I'll just throw that one out there,
and see how that one goes.
But, just to look at what the riders actually
look at on their head units, I spoke to a
smattering of riders at the head of a stage
at the Giro d'Italia last year, and the answers
are quite interesting and very varied.
Not everybody rides to power.
What data fields to you prefer when racing?
- I've got speed, distance, average power and time.
- Good Stuff. Why is that?
- Well, seeing the current power is bad,
'cause I'm just gonna look at it and get it in my head
and like, AAAAH, 500 watts.
And average power I can kinda gauge like, oh yeah,
it actually is, has been hard all day.
But, that does it for me.
- Simon's explanation of the unwritten rules
in last week's Ask GCN Anything has really caused
some fantastic debate and interaction
in our comment section with a really broad
range of views; which is fantastic.
But that is the very nub of this whole issue.
The rules are unwritten, so therefore ambiguous
and open to various different forms of interpretation
given a specific set of circumstances viewed,
of course, by many different people.
And that I think is the real beauty of the unwritten rules.
'Cause what you have to consider is that there's
no case law that's rooted in statute or law
to firm up any examples of breaches based on
a very specific set of circumstances as it is in law.
Now, loads of you got involved.
I had a lot of fun, actually, reading through the comments.
I'm just gonna throw a couple of people out there;
a couple of names so Joseph Burty, Maxime de Clerk,
Mick Buckley, Limited Gary, a kind chap, cracking name.
There are numerous, numerous others,
and think this one will run and run
because every time there's a set of circumstance
that unravel in a race, and the unwritten rules are
called into question, the whole thing is gonna
raise its head again.
I think what we have to look at is, in relation to
etiquette in the peloton, in relation to the
unwritten rules, the whole thing is evolving as well,
and there's different pressures in the modern peloton
than there were, say, 50 or 60 years ago,
when the unwritten rules were first written.
If you get my drift.
So, I just think it's a fantastic fertile ground
for debate and discussion about the sport
that we all love.
And on that very note, someone didn't throw
to this video last wee, so I'm gonna do it now.
It's my look at five of the unwritten rules of cycling.
This is volume one.
You can also check out volume two as well.
Enjoy. See what you think.
The sticky bottle.
Now, this entails a rider grabbing a bottle
as it's being passed to them from a moving team car.
But rather than releasing their grip immediately,
they'll hold on to the bottle for a short while.
Now, the unwritten rules allow for between
one and three seconds.
And anything above and beyond that, and it moves
into the written rules territory.
In other words, it moves from
a sticky bottle to getting a tow.
Well, that's it for another edition of
Ask GCN Anything.
Please do keep those questions coming.
If it's the first time you've watched this show,
the hashtag to use on all platforms of social media
and of course in the comments section is
#TORQUEBACK with a Q.
Now, if you haven't already subscribed
to GCN, your one-stop shop for everything cycling,
if you click on the globe for free
you will not miss another video.
Make sure you do that now.
And, if you are heading up high this summer
to do some riding, you might wanna click
on this video; How to Ride at Altitude.
Or, alternatively, you could do both.
How about clicking on this video where
I took a peek inside a grand tour rider's suitcase.
In this particular case, it was Simon Geschke;
a teammate of the Giro winner Tom Dumoulin.
Don't forget to Like and Share.
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