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WHO IS THE GREATEST RIDER ON THE PLANET?

12:17·16 March 2021

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How do we judge the best rider on the planet? Is it a GC rider or a one day specialist? I give my metrics for how I decide and name who I think is the best on the planet.

14 day challenge www.roadmancycling.com/14day

Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/anthony_walsh

All the bits & bobs I recommend are here www.roadmanresources.com

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT3 SECTIONS

Roadman today I want to talk about who is the greatest writer in the…

Roadman today I want to talk about who is the greatest writer in the world and how do we decide that? Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another Roadman's Cycling Podcast. It's Tuesday and yesterday the breakaway made it to the finish in Terraino, Adriatico. It's really not that often that we see the big sprint lead out trends get it that wrong, but yesterday they did manage to fuck it up that badly and we didn't get to see the sprint that we were all anticipating through those narrow little shoe canes and instead we saw breakaway which is nice because when the breakaway consistently gets caught and if you're a new viewer to Saiklyn you wonder what is the point they got caught every single time but they actually don't we get rare occasions like that where the bunch get it wrong the information they get in their radio is maybe not as accurate as when they need to take it up or they don't get the cooperation from other teams and one team will say you know well you've equally fast sprinter so you're not leaning 100% on us for the chase and and this negotiation will ultimately mean that the breakaways get extra extra time and by the time they get organized and the discussions have resolved themselves. It's just too late. Today I want to talk about the idea of who is the greatest writer of all, not of all time currently in the world, but it's actually a little bit of a misleading question because what I, as much you want to talk about is, what's the difference between a GC writer and a classics writer? because I don't think he can actually answer that question, who is the greatest writer of in the world at the moment, because they're just too different. It's like comparing apples and oranges. So what I want to look at is what makes GC writers go to GC, what makes the classics writers go to classics and then the crossover and see who's crossing over. And for me the person that's crossing over is the best writer in the world at the moment. So that's what I'm going to do in this short Roadman Boits podcast. Before I do I'm going to invite you all to head on over to patreon.com. As I say, folks, this isn't one of those dispassionate ad reads at the start of the podcast. This actually means something. It's an action point that I'm looking for you to take. I'm looking for you to pause the podcast now and head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. It's right down below in the boy or the description today so you can click it and it'll bring you right there. I'm looking for you to make a tiny donation to Prox Web beer once a month to the podcast to keep going, to keep the momentum building so we can keep reaching out, getting the good guests to keep up in the ante in terms of equipment. Hopefully this summer I bring the travelling road show to France and Tour de France in the van as I've had on the previous podcast spoke about. So it's not an empty donation and it's as much as I say, it's definitely not feeding the beer phone. It's very much feeding the podcast, keeping a lollifone, so the link is there. I want Hammer that point how many forders today? Well, Hammer that I'm against tomorrow. Right, the GC rider versus the classics rider, even aesthetically to look at them, they're two very different types of riders. And what makes one go to riding the Tour de France and another go to at riding Tour of Landers, one vomb Landerin? It's really people niche in down to their relative strengths. If I'm a 75 kilogram rider, Machu van der Paul Esque, I'm never going to get my power to weight ratio to 6.57 watts per kilogram for 24 minutes, 40 minutes, whatever these climbs are in France. So France, we have these crazy long climbs, long alpine and perinine, a sense, same in Italy for the Giro, same in Spain for the Vuelta. So when I'm referring to grand tours, I'm talking about the tree grand tours.

Need to be super light for these

So you need to be super light for these. So the really important measurements we're looking for, it's the same measurement that everybody's talking about in Zwift and I want to mention why that's flawed as well. Parat weight ratio is just good at showing how good somebody is. A good indicator is showing how good somebody is at going uphill. And that's what these GC guys have. Your Eigen Bernals, your Pagachas, your Roglish, they're super light and they're super powerful. So when you divide their watts by their threshold power, it gives you a really big number, north of six. In contrast to that, our classics guys, our Vanderpolds, our Wilt Van Arts, they're bigger dudes, 70 plus kilogram roighters. If you take their power and the void putter weight, it's nowhere near the 6.57 that your pro gachis and your ruglitches and your out-now GC guys are doing. It's not near that. And that's why they're never going to compete and they're never going to win grand tours. But what they do have is higher weight, but higher power. So they've higher absolute power figure. Relative power to weight figure is lower, but absolute power figure is bigger. And why this is important, power to weight is what propels us when we're on going uphill. But power and coefficient of rumple drag, however we are, are the two key determinants when we're on a flat road. So not weight, yes weight's important, but it's a tertiary consideration. So it's power, CDA, and then weight. So what this means is you can take your egg and burnout who can do seven watts per kilogram, and you can put them on a flat road beside Machuveanderpole or a short climb, and he's not gonna be able to match them because absolute power matters so much. So what we have is Reuters focusing on where their relative strength is. We've the super skinny, high-perit weight ratio guys focusing on grand tours, your Chris Frooms, Eigenbarnals and we have your classics Reuters, typically your bigger bill gois and they're focusing on one day flatter races with punchy climbs. So short climbs where the absolute power still gives them a relative advantage. Now the second thing to consider is timing because some Reuters train true races to get ready for events later in the season. Like if Eigenbarnal went all in and trained for Tour of Flanders, it's different than if he's training true Tour of Landers to get preparation for the year of the Talia. So, how this works and I will do a full podcast on how to peek because I think it's an interesting topic. We're building up fitness each day and we assign a score to our training. So, every day we assign a training, a training stress score, it's called TSS score to our training. And this is a function of how hard you can go for one hour. So, I'm not going of the other stuff. I'm going to do this justice on a roadman boy's podcast, but to simplify it. So if I ride full gas for one hour, I get assigned a TSS score of 100. So now everything becomes a function of this. If I ride 50% intensity for two hours, I also achieve 100. So training stress score is the metric we use for assessing how difficult a session is. Now how we graph fitness is we take that TSS score and we map it over a 42 day running total and we have, you know, based off previous seasons, we'll have an idea where we want somebody's fitness to get to by a certain date. So if I'm targeting the Tour de France in July, my fitness is in a very different place in April than if I'm targeting the Tour of Flanders, which is in April because the Tour of Flanders, I'm approaching peak fitness for my event, whereas if I'm the same roider who is going for the Tour de France, he's going to have a much lower fitness score in April than he is going to have in July. So it's getting to your peak fitness score at the time of your event. If your event is further in the season, you're going to have a slower start to the season. If your event is near to the beginning of the season, you're typically going to have a bigger winter buildup. So your fit are for these earlier races. And I'll go in there in full podcast because that's, to be honest, it's quite a confusing topic.

If I touch it, A small bit of information is probably a bad thing for…

And if I touch it, A small bit of information is probably a bad thing for understanding that it's a sort of complex enough metrics for determining when someone is faced, when somebody is fatigued, and when somebody is fresh and ready to go. It's training stress score, chronic training load, training stress balance, and a cute training load if you want to go and Google them and look them up. It's actually interesting to watch how they intersect. We have two different things at play as to what's determining the best roiter in the world at the moment. have timing and the realization that some guys are just training true events and their target isn't until later in the year and we have people training for events based off their relative strengths. We also have attitude which I would say is a toward factor to consider here because attitude a tree week grand tour it's Giro Vuelta Tour de France. There's a lot of patience goes into a tree week tour and not every rider is designed or has the make up or the tactical nips for a 3 week tour. They prefer to get it all out of the way in one day. Boom! Explode, everything done, parry rubay, big build up, tapered and one day. And there's a number of reasons for that. Maybe historically they don't fatigue well as the race goes on. So they're more suited to on one day getting everything out. But then day two maybe they're not as fresh as their peers. They tree. So there's a diminishing margin or returns for them. Whereas other riders deal super well with fatigue. I know for me I've always enjoyed stage races. Yes, I fatigue in stage races like everyone else, but I seem to fatigue at a slightly slower rate than other people, which as we get later in the race, I've historically had better results because I have more of a marginal edge than I had earlier in the race. So I think you've got to weigh up all these factors when you're thinking about who is the best rider in the world, and it's a very difficult question to answer. And for that reason, I'm probably not going answer it properly. But when I weigh up all these, when I weigh up attitude, timing, genetic makeup, what's per kilo, I think the best rider in the world is well-fon-art. And the reason is he seems to be able to go all season long. He's a rider who can ride individual time trials on the flat. He's a rotor who can climb with the Grand Tour riders in three-week stage races. He's a rotor who can and so I clockross in the winter. Machuveander Paul is a great writer and he's super entertained to watch. You only have to look back two days ago to see that electrifying attack in Torreino, Adriatico. But he, to date, hasn't been able to do what Wout Van Arth has done. Yeah, he can mix it in the big bunch sprints. But Wout Van Arth has climbed and all pined passes three weeks into Grand Tours for Primo's Roglish. And I haven't seen that from Machuveander Paul yet. So for me, going to the head at the moment, Woutfangart is the best bike rider on the planet. Rob Man, thanks for listening. Tomorrow I'm back with a COVID-related podcast. I have Barry Murray joining me, and it's going to be a No-Halls Barred the Base. So I'm gonna welcome you back tomorrow for that one. Until then, Rob Man, ride safe. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I wanna invite you to join I argue the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.

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Communitysolo

WHO IS THE GREATEST RIDER ON THE PLANET?

12:17·16 March 2021

Listen on

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How do we judge the best rider on the planet? Is it a GC rider or a one day specialist? I give my metrics for how I decide and name who I think is the best on the planet.

14 day challenge www.roadmancycling.com/14day

Support this podcast: www.patreon.com/anthony_walsh

All the bits & bobs I recommend are here www.roadmanresources.com

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Searchable, deep-linkable, every word.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT3 SECTIONS

Roadman today I want to talk about who is the greatest writer in the…

Need to be super light for these

If I touch it, A small bit of information is probably a bad thing for…

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

Weekly insights from the podcast. The stuff that actually makes you faster.

FREE TRAINING PLANS

TOUR OF FLANDERS →

USE THESE TOOLS

RELATED EPISODES

More episodes you might enjoy

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Community35:30

DOPED RIDER WENT UNDERCOVER TO EXPOSE DOPING | RIDER SUPPORT

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LIKED THIS EPISODE?

Join the Clubhouse to discuss this episode, ask Anthony your questions, and connect with serious cyclists.

Join the Clubhouse — Free More Episodes

WHO IS THE GREATEST RIDER ON THE PLANET?

Roadman today I want to talk about who is the greatest writer in the…

Need to be super light for these

If I touch it, A small bit of information is probably a bad thing for…

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WHO IS THE GREATEST RIDER ON THE PLANET?

Roadman today I want to talk about who is the greatest writer in the…

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WHO IS THE GREATEST RIDER ON THE PLANET?

1.Roadman today I want to talk about who is the greatest writer in the…

2.Need to be super light for these

3.If I touch it, A small bit of information is probably a bad thing for…

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WHO IS THE GREATEST RIDER ON THE PLANET?

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If I touch it, A small bit of information is probably a bad thing for…