Velo Vol 

Why wait? I'm already on my way.

rkwaki

Rode bikes like any other child but never cycled (broke my ankle and couldn't get anywhere so I started riding).
Was a competitive hockey player and skier, played tennis, gold and water skied.

To add to this I had never run in my life so last fall I started thinking it would be fun. Within three weeks I was running as high as 10 miles at a 7:20 pace - this being at a bodyweight of 220 pounds - then I hurt my damn shin at the gym and haven't run since late October.

Munk69

Thank you Psimet for my new sig!!

ColinL

Thanks for replying.

You see this prior expertise in sports, Psimet???

Quel

10,000 hours? Sounds like a lot of work. I think I'll work on becoming an elitist cyclist instead. Need to get some Rapha gear and a Pinarello first, but that shouldn't take more than a few hundred hours of work to earn the money for that.

Commodus

It still seems like you guys are really quick to ignore a whole lot of science from the article based on "I know a guy who got really fast really quick."

merlinextraligh

Get in line. I already applied.

rkwaki

Not trying to discount it just speaking on experience. I have seen many guys come into the sport, hire a coach, get a powermeter, road bike, tt bike and every piece of gear. Train 15+ hours a week and sacrifice everything in their lives only to make it as far as Cat 4, get frustrated and quit.

My own experiences I know to be true and having been around athletes my entire life I try not to discount the science but there is a little **********??? that cannot be accounted for with training time alone.

pallen

Being an elite cyclist is not just a "skill". The 10,000 hr thing might be true for learning a language, learn to be great at your job, shooting pool, probably even golf. When it comes to elite levels of strength and endurance, genetics becomes an undeniable factor.

For example...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max

"The average young untrained male will have a VO2 max of approximately 3.5 litres/minute and 45 ml/kg/min.[4] The average young untrained female will score a VO2 max of approximately 2.0 litres/minute and 38 ml/kg/min.[4] These scores can improve with training and decrease with age, though the degree of trainability also varies very widely: conditioning may double VO2max in some individuals, and will never improve at all in others."

Sorry, some people have it, some people dont.

2manybikes

OK I'll be ready to race then. I will be 84.

merlinextraligh

I'm still looking for where the science says it takes 10,000 hours to get fast on the bike, or that 10,000 hours is sufficient to make you world class fast on the bike.

Skimming the link, and having read, and heard about this theory before, I think there's something to the idea that it takes a whole lot of time for the adapations to take place to make you an expert at any complex skill. That, however doesn't say that anybody can be world class with just enough time.

And it doesn't say that you can't be smoking fast in your first year of cycling. At most it says the First year wunderkind can still get better over the next 4-5 years.

So I don't see how we're "ignoring the science".

topflightpro

Guys, let's stop and think about how long 10,000 hours really its. That's equal to 5 years at 40 hours/week, with two weeks vacation each year.

Do you know anyone who has not mastered their own professional job after five years?

The theory is sound. Please also note that it requires dedicated training and not just participation. Riding a bike and training to be a competitive cyclist are often distinctly different experiences.

Finally, will this mean that the average rider on this board could turn pro? No. But if you committed 5 years to training as a cyclist for 40 hours a week, well, I'll bet you'll be damn close.

RecceDG

If you think of performance potential plotted on a graph, you will wind up with a normal distribution (in the statistical sense) - the famous "bell curve".

People from the left side of the curve probably cannot extract enough potential to reach elite; agreed. A man born with one lung and one leg probably won't make an elite cyclist. Granted.

Strip off these left-side outliers (who make a small portion of the total) and now you are left with a population much more suited to the task at hand. You have people who sit on a range of "average" potential to "superior" potential, with the "averages" (by virtue of the shape of the normal distribution curve) greatly outnumbering the "superiors".

Now compare, on an individual basis, where each member of the population actually stands. By and large, the actual current performance level (vice their potential) will be some value less than their potential. Express this as a percentage of their potential. Say, for the sake of discussion, two competitors who are performing at 80% of their potential. If both have "average" potential, then we expect them to perform at roughly the same level and will be, all else being equal, equally fast. If one, however, has "superior" potential, his 80% will be faster than the "average" potential's 80%, and so he will be faster, again, all else being equal.

My first postulate is that the difference in potential is not as large between "average" and "superior" as most people think.

My second is that the practice it takes to raise one's potential by a single percentage point is (conversely) much larger and non-obvious than most people think.

My third is that the population of the current elite is not composed soley of people with "superior" potential - that, just like the general population, the numbers of the "superior" are very rare. It's not like ever single person who is genetically predisposed to cycling actually does it (never mind applies themselves that strenuously)

And finally, I postulate that the elite are not maxed out in terms of realizing their potential. Certainly they are higher up the scale than the general population, but it doesn't follow that they are all at their limit - especially in cycling. You don't win races by covering the required distance in the shortest possible time, you win by crossing the line first - two very different criteria.

They key to all this is Postulate 2. Just because I am theoretically within my potential to perform at that level, doesn't mean I am able or willing to pay the price to get the percentage of performance high enough. In my own case, it would require that I do nothing other than train, eat, and sleep, and that all aspects of my life be completely subordinated to the goal of tuning my body to the demands of elite cycling. Specifically, my diet would need to be gripped in an iron vice - and I am not capable of doing that on my own. That would mean hiring a nutricionist (and an effective one at that) to control every single calorie I ingested - and that's just not happening.

Oh, and it is "Walter Mitty" not "Middy". Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sec...f_Walter_Mitty Pet peeve.

DG

merlinextraligh

My postulate is that there are enough peopl on the right end of the Bell curve that are willing to totally commit to training, diet etc. that there isn't room left in the Professional cycling ranks for those of us in the middle of the curve.

I've seen too many guys that were local hot shots that did devote themselves entirely bicycle racing that fell way short.

Conversely, a kid from my first team went on to ride for Garmin, and almost won a Tour de France stage. He didn't train better, or smarter than a numbe of others on the team; he simply was better.

rkwaki

Many simply can't accept that. When I started riding again there were those that started rumors that I was on a heavy doping regiment as there was no way I could ride/climb like that.. haters.

gsteinb

oh. ok.

Scummer

I still remember him pulling around the cat5 field at the Monsters of the Midway for about half a lap during the final lap and just barely getting nipped at the line for 2nd place. About 2 month after he picked up cycling. That just stunned the **** out of me.

Commodus

There are tons of quotes in the article that suggest that natural characteristics are minimally important, even among the most highly skilled.

Is the article wrong? Do the studies not apply to cycling/endurance sports? It could be, I'm neither a doctor nor a scientist. It does seem odd to me, however, that cycling champions tend to come from cycling nations. Also, Greg Lemond did not win his first races, largely because he did not develop physically as quickly as some of his competitors. In his book he seemed a bit bitter about it, actually. But he kept at it.

I mean we can trade anecdotes all day long but without the data to give those stories context we're not accomplishing much.

UCIMBZ

I am at 14040 as we speak. I don't feel a bit elite.

lennyk

apart from vo2max,
its much easier to use the example of fast/slow twitch muscles
even amongst us mortals we can easily see which of the two we each have more of or less

Psimet2001 

According to what has been presented in this thread it appears you have not mastered cycling bEcause you have not trained correctly during that time. While for the genetic freaks it seems that ANY athletic exposure earlier in life explains any sort of gain....

It's almost like there are people that can do well regardless of the training and those that always struggle no matter how much they train. Amazing.

UCIMBZ

DNA, who would have thought.

merlinextraligh

1) pretty sure they didn't test these guys for VO2 max.

2) IIRC Lemond was torturing the local Cat 1's and 2's as 14-15 year old. And I know he won Gold, silver and Bronze medals at Junoir World Championships in 1979.

No one with a straight face would argue that anybody could be an NFL Quaterback with enough dedication; No one would argue any Golfer could win a PGA Tour event if they hit enough balls, No one would argue that anyone could paly professional baseball with enough practice (hell even Michael Jordon couldn't).

Yet on a recurrent basis each winter people come along in BF and contend that anyone with two legs and two lungs can be a European Pro Cyclist with enough dedication. Heck afterall it is just riding a bike.

pallen

If cycling were as popular in the US as it is in those countries, I suspect there would have a few more Lance Armstrongs in cycling history. I wonder how many potential elite cyclists spend there days playing football or something else, never knowing what kind of potential they had for cycling.

merlinextraligh

In fact Lemond placed 2nd in his first race on a POS bike at age 15. https://greglemond.com/cycling-legend/

Rest is history.