>mfw I realized TdF peleton rides around 60kmh on the flat

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Really makes you think

>>1092380
>>1092388
Really makes you think about what, exactly?
>hurr I suck so much I should just quit
That sort of shit? LOL. Nothing quite like defeating yourself before you even get started.
>If you're not as good as a professional, you're wasting your time and should quit!
That's one of the dumbest things that someone can say about anything.

Guess what? Even the top pro riders started out as slow and weak compared to where they are now. You're not a loser for aspiring. The real losers are the ones who won't even bother trying. Maybe you never reach that level. So what? For every pro rider who can perform at that level, there are hundreds and hundreds of amateur racers who can't compete with that, but that are head-and-shoulders above the typical garden-variety recreational rider. Even if you never even think to try road racing, you can still improve your level of fitness as a rider to raise you above the typical, ride-on-the-weekends-only-when-the-weather-is-nice casual. You crank up hills and make it look easy, and they marvel at how strong a rider you are. You ride for distances on the flat like you're a machine, when they have to slow down or take a break. You sprint to beat the light before it turns red, and they have to stop because they know they won't make it. It's all relative. Then maybe your efforts inspire some casuals to make an effort to improve. Who's the real hero now, you or some pro rider they may never have heard of and will never meet?

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>>1092390
wut

It's their full time job. Of course they're good at what they do. It's all they do.

>>1092419
>It's their full time job.

I understand, but the wind force you feel at 45kmh sprinting is just so strong to even think about the speeds they achive while non-sprinting. It seems unreal actually.

I ride a pretty solid late 80s steely btw, can carbon frames and wheels explain such a difference? how much do non-pro enthusiasts reach at max on flats?

I see you've never ridden inside a peloton

I don't really get why people compare themselves against others like this

You should compare yourself against what you are realistically capable of, taking into account the amount of time you've been training, how seriously you take it, your diet and general lifestyle, and how much you like cycling and want to get better at it (there's no shame in not having the passion to go out and do training rides when the weather's shitty and you're tired), any injuries or problems you have etc etc.

An average person working or studying full time who has a moderate interest in cycling, will never ride anything like the way the guys in the TdF do. There's no point in even making the comparison. Figure out realistic goals for yourself and hit them. Don't shoot for the moon, then you'll just fail and feel bad and make threads like this. Enjoy it for what it is.

>>1092426
By the way I don't mean to say that nobody should try to become a pro, by all means if you have the ambition and think it's at least somewhat realistically possible then go for it

I just mean that you shouldn't feel shame for not achieving something that's totally out of reach for you

>>1092380
They can maintain around 50 km/h on flats for hours because behind so many riders there is pretty much no wind and the ones on the front constantly change places to make sure the team leader does the least work possible to set him up well for the full effort, 60-70 km/h sprint after seemingly a very long ride. But the fact is that if they have done a good job, the sprinter is not really tired.

If you were to ride in the middle of the peleton all of the time and never have to be in the front, you could probably keep up with them. If you have never drafter properly, you might not realise how much of a force the wind is. Going behind just a few riders you are doing pretty much no work at all, no matter the speed. Behind a truck or something you could probably maintain 80km/h or more with small effort.

No one can maintain 50+ km/h for two hours or more without drafting. Current hour record is around 55 km, and keep in mind that it was done in a velodrome with perfect conditions, perfectly flat track, and perfectly aero and stiff bike that would probably break your pelvis on a normal asphalt road.

>>1092436
No he couldn't someone has to be upfront so that means a large subset of pro riders can maintain 60km/h for longer and faster than op can ever achieve.

He would immediately be dropped by the peloton

And he won't know why

>>1092437
I specifically mentioned that he would never have to be in the front.

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>>1092426

>tfw all these energy drinking time wasters can do backflips and I can only do cartwheels

>>1092390
holy god the autism of this post

>>1092421
no one cares about max speed on flats, not sure why that's a big thing for you. All the pros would say is "oh, fast day today" and not give a fuck about "max on flats"

>>1092438
Okay so listen.

Pro riders are capable of holding 60 upfront

Op can't hold 30 upfront

Therefore in a draft scenario they out pace him by a long shot

So far so that he would be dropped from the center of the peloton rather quickly

>>1092380
the pro peloton doesn't ride at 60km/hr

they'll hit 60 km/hr on slight downhill sections or the last couple of km

its not like they ride the entire 160km at 60km/hr

look at the speeds of races in Belgium for the pro peloton, its more like 40-45km/hr

>>1092489
You'll probably gain more average speed from the muscle you'll get during the time you lose weight. Weight doesn't really make that much of a difference while riding on flats. While climbing though, that's when you feel it.

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>>1092436
>>1092437
>He would immediately be dropped by the peloton

OP here, I can maintain 30khm on my own with not much trouble, maybe even 40khm but it would be really hard. Once Im around 40kmh, it does feel like a wall that I cant pass.

Regarding holding it with the peloton of TDF, I would be dropped - I never rode with a peloton, but I know, that it also means catching up after corners...and catching a 50kmh moving peloton after you create a gap from the back is not possible for me. Moving with a 50kmh peloton? Idk, if it is as easy as you say, sure.

Thanks for the explanation anon, I would like to try some proper group rides with non-supercasuals to really see the effect of drafting at higher speeds.

>>1092480
>the pro peloton doesn't ride at 60km/hr

it was probably a fast section on a lighter downhill peloton. But it was around 60khm for at least 5 min.

Professionals are actually gifted individuals, they also ride bikes for a living so you cannot compare to them.

>>1092496
aero does make a big difference though once you get past 20mph or so, and hamplanets have more drag

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>>1092655

What if we make a body device to squeeze the hamplanet fat to reduce frontal area and elongate their "structure" along all key areas?

Then with some conditioning and bio alterations to fight that lactic acid burn we could develop a weapon that can travel for thousands of miles on only water.

The energy reserves are....immense!

A ten thousand dollar bike with a wheel set to match will be way efficient in all areas than a bike you pulled out from the dumpster.

There was a gravel race that went by my house and some US domestic pros did it

they flew up the climbs and went over the mountain bike shit really fast but thats whatever

the craziest shit is how fast they descended the dirt roads

they are perpetually fucked up with washboards, ruts filled with sand, trees mottle your road vision from spotty shadowing, most grades on the hills are 8-12% average so sections of 15-20% are everywhere and these guys were flying down 15% grades at 45mph over washboards around blind corners with the roads not closed to traffic
would take about 0.000005 seconds to mess up and fly into a big tree or rockwall at 45mph

>>1092684
That explains roughly 5% of their speeds though. Pro riders haven't really gotten much faster since the 80s. A lot of that is due to less doping... or at least less effective doping... or something, but the point is that the difference between a $1000 bike and a $10,000 one is really barely a percent.

>>1092687
So what's 1-10% over four to six hours of racing?

>>1092688
The same as it is over 1 second. We're talking about percentages.

>>1092690
just did the math. 1% equals 30 minutes. Go troll elsewhere.

>>1092692
You just misunderstood my post dude.

>>1092686

The same reason why rally racing is much more interesting than formula 1.

>>1092426
You should compare yourself to how long hard and fast you've gone in the past.

>>1092692
>botching basic math this badly
You're fucking retarded.
Six hours is 360 minutes. One percentage of that is 3.6 minutes.

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>>1092388
Legitimate legs made out of golden brown chicken.

>>1092706
>>no shit

>>1092380
1) 90% of them are drafting, so they're making a 30% energy saving.
2) They have the most expensive (and thus lightest) bikes in existence.
3) It's their full time job.
4) They have an entire team of people (nutritionists, masseuses, soigneurs, etc.) whose job it is to extract the maximum performance from them.

If you had a bike as good as theirs, then you'd be able to get up to 60kmh on a flat section too, I guarantee it.

If you put in the effort to get semi-competent, that is.

>>1092390
I think it's funny, because pro riders are made to be amazing cyclist. They probably come from a long line of cyclists, who won at cycling then boned the trophy girl. It's not surprising people can't keep up.

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>>1092871
2. UCI weight limit, you can buy a bike straight out of the store close to 2kg under it these days.

>>1092706
"Weaker" is a weird term in cycling, cycling itself is not about strength or power at all, it's about power in relation to weight over a long long long time, it's an endurance sport.

When we're talking about power in cycling really all that matters is your power to weight or watts / kg, in that respect todays pros might be worse than the previous generation who were super doped up (lance supposedly did 6.97 watts kg up the alp d'huez, pantanti apparently did a similar amount once) but they're still well above cyclists of a few decades ago like lemond or whatever who were sitting at around 5.7 watts / kg.

Froome is 6.25 watts/kg.

So I wouldn't say they were weaker but in the post-drugs (lol) era of many sports people are prioritizing smaller with better power to weight over bigger with drugs, (see, small ball in basketball)

>>1092426
>I don't really get why people compare themselves against others like this
Because what they do is not impressive UNLESS I compare myself to them.

>Jaque Veleau can ride X kilometres in Y hours:minutes
>okay...
>See how long it takes me to ride the same distance
>Holy fuck, is Jaque from another dimension, Jesus Christ, there's no way, WTF!

Let's put it this way op, an elite amateur MAY be able to sit in the peloton on a flat stage, but that would be all they would do.
The level these people are at just doesn't compute with most people. Even the bigger sprinters would outpace most hitters, even uphill.

>>1092919
If you consider the legs you realise it's about blood flow. A powerlifter can deliver like 4000W but only for a powerlift. Pro cyclists take their max power way down with the smaller muscles, but they develop their blood supplies so that they can sustain high levels of exertion over long periods of time.
Instead of thinking in terms of '400W of muscle' they're training in terms of '400W of blood supply'. Having super power-lifter legs is useless in a bike race if you can't supply it with the amount of oxygen and glucose they need to sustain high power outputs, and oxygen and glucose are supplied by blood.
And so they have huge VO2 and super veiny legs, but even just looking at their legs they look pretty weak. They likely can't squat very much weight at all since their max wattage is very close to their sustainable wattage.

>>1092700
True dat double true

>>1092903
LoL, no.

They are people that have been riding competitively and taking performance enhancing drugs their entire adult life.

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>>1092663
sideway bicycles

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That's why I picked bicycle touring, I don't have to compete with anyone but meself lol. Steady 25kmh on flats for hours? Fucking great.

>>1092688
Hahahahahha you're retarded and it's hilarious

>>1092421
Riding in a group is a very different from riding on your own. I can sustain an easy average speed of 38km/h in a group but I can only ride about 33-35 when cycling alone. I tried a few top of the line Specialized bikes once and there really is a difference: less weight and more stiffness already make you able to go a bit faster. But in the end you just have to train.

I can reach about 55km/h sprinting on my old bike.

>>1096502
Reclined bicycles are unironically much more efficient and that's the reason the UCI banned them.

You need a team of doped up domestiques who you can wheelsuck all the way to the finish, they never podium and often l'autobus so nobody tests them.

>>1092919

>implying froome isn't a cheating dope skellingtong

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>>1101949
>mfw

>>1101756
UCI bans stuff like that because they want competitive cycling to be more like stock car racing rather than Formula One (or whatever, I don't know cager sports).

>>1102198
Some UCI rules are straight up retarded, but some are there to actually ensure safety of the riders. At this point the weight limit is obsolete, but back in days people would drill or saw off parts of the bike to make it lighter, and that wasn't really the safest idea. Would you really like to watch some frankenstein circus riding around in tricycles or sideways bikes just because it's faster?

>>1092380
Dont forget Aero and mechanical efficiency

http://www.kreuzotter.de/english/espeed.htm

>>1102198
They once allowed a recumbent to race and deemed it legal (look up mochet) and changed their mind after it broke records with a low tier rider since it threatened upright bike companies

>>1102331
I can already imagine a recumbent team equipped with different bents for different days.

>>1102331
Or more likely they realized that having a peloton of recumbents would be a safety nightmare.

>>1102198
Formula 1 is just as restrictive as the UCI.

>>1102331
They suck at climbs though.

>>1102537
Front wheel driven not.

And it depends on the weight, and I am sure you can get a bent down to 6.8-7kg if you have a proper budget.

I think the biggest reason why bents have the rep of being shit at climbing is that there are no serious pro cyclists riding on bents, and they're often ridden by old men who don't care about the weight of their bike.

Uprights probably still have a much easier time being in a peloton.
But a bent with a tail fairing would already negate that.

It also depends on the rider, the more watts the more pronounced the aerodynamic advantage is.

Maybe one day we'll see a tour with bents, probably never.
But it would be interesting, especially because even mountain stages have average speeds around 20 mph.

With proper fairings a talented individual can probably win the tour de france on a handcycle.

Also since those handcycles are tricycles they're going to be proper stable and will be able to form a tight peloton like a normal upright bike.
>inb4 hue hue it's still going to be heavier

Imagine an epo'd Lance Armstrong with his legs amputated on a faired handcycle.
It doesn't matter if the the handcycle is 4-5 kg heavier.
Without legs Lance is probably at least 10 kg lighter. (conservative estimate that his legs are 15% of his bodyweight)

What is Chris Vroom going to do when paraplegic Lance does 70 mph front wheel skids on the downhill?

Downtube uprights on suicide watch.

>>1102554
Pedal Prix is close, flat circuit tho not a tour, also mainly for colleges. 24 hours of velomobile racing, and there are some nasty crashes too.

>>1102517
https://youtu.be/uS4noicpl8Y

The need to draft is reduced since everything's super aero anyway

Their bikes are really really really really good with engineers servicing them after each ride, oh and they are on drugs 24/7