On Sunday evening, a series of celebrity riders will take on Chris Froome in a charity cycling event; The Race - Wheels for Heroes. The aim is to raise money for NHS staff helping them access bikes to travel to work during the Covid-19 crisis. The various celebs will be given a head start before the seven-time Grand Tour champion sets off to hunt them down. The Race will take place not in the real world, but in the virtual world of Zwift’s Watopia, on the 22.9km Volcano route and will broadcast on both Sky Sports and Youtube.
Having previously written about the extreme endurance levels needed to compete at the pinnacle of cycling, we decided now was a good time to revisit Froome’s incredible performance levels and outline quite what the celebrities are up against. But first, let’s find out a bit more about how the technology behind The Race is changing cycling.
Chris Froome for Team Ineos prior to the Tour de Yorkshire
Platforms such as Zwift, The Sufferfest and FulGaz have transformed indoor cycling, providing a level of entertainment and gamification to indoor training that makes it much more enjoyable. As well as providing a higher level of engagement for the riders, it has also provided an unexpected opportunity for content producers with live broadcast and YouTube videos of Zwift racing proving surprisingly popular. Outside of broadcast, the potential value for brands and event organisers is enormous. For years the holy grail has been to engage with participants during their training prior to major events. The virtual world, giving fans the opportunity to train with athlete ambassadors, could be just what they have been looking for.
Virtual courses can be developed to fit different types of training and events. The Zwift Volcano route is suited to those with a great power to weight ratio. You need to be light, so you are not carrying too much weight, but powerful to propel yourself up the mountain quickly. For a sport like cycling, so driven by statistics, the numbers associated with the fitness of tour winners in peak condition are surprisingly hard to find. Luckily, one relatively recent study did get access to a major tour winner while very close to the peak of his powers. The study didn’t name the rider, however, our spies reliably inform us it was Froome that took part.
Published in 2017, the case study reveals some incredible statistics that don't make for pleasant reading for those taking on Froome this weekend. To the best of our knowledge, these fitness results are considered amongst the most impressive ever recorded in cycling. Obviously, the outdoor sport of cycling is about more than just numbers from a lab, however, in a virtual world, if a rider can outgun their opponents via superior cycling-specific fitness there is little that their opponents will be able to do to stay in front.
Below are some of the highlights recorded during an incremental sub max and max cycling fitness test.
VO2peak (absolute) - 5.91L.min-1
VO2peak (relative to body weight) 84 mL.kg-1
Peak Power Output - 525W
Power to weight ratio - 7.5 W.kg-1
4 mmol-L Power (lactate) - 430 W
This, along with anecdotal evidence and data from previous cycling trials allows us to build a picture of the quite extraordinary fitness cycling’s elite riders reach in order to stand on top of the podium.
The authors, Bell et al, highlighted that these tests were conducted a few weeks following the Tour de France, but prior to the Vuelta a España. They reported that the rider had actually gained between 3-4kg in body mass since the Tour de France. So, while the absolute power data is in line with that recorded by other professional riders, the power to weight ratio, the key factor associated with world-class climbing, based on race weight could have been as high as 7.84 W.kg-1 which would have been the highest value ever seen..
To add to the pain of those being chased on Sunday, the power to weight ratio when at 4mmol-L (when lactic acid begins to build up and it starts to hurt) was 6.1 W.kg-1. This is significantly higher than recorded in a directly comparable study of elite international riders but is marginally lower than the number reported from a previous Tour winner. Once again though, applying the reported race weight of 3-4kg lighter than during this testing, the number equates to 6.4 W.kg-1 at 4mmol-L which would be the highest on record… This means that when it is nothing but pain for everyone else on Sunday, Froome could still be in cruise mode, sipping that Champs-Élysées Champagne and still catching everyone.
The difference between the world’s elite performers and even the best of amateur sportspeople is difficult to truly comprehend. Simple time trials and distance tests often don’t do the comparison justice, (although if you want to know what it looks like when an amateur cyclist is overtaken by one of the world’s best, check out this video). The levels of the truly elite are beyond the physiological capability of most. However, on Sunday, due to the staggered start, the celebrity riders might have a chance to beat the best ever. Looking at Froome’s numbers, I wouldn’t bet on it...
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