July 22 -
Rest Day & Coaches Analysis
Again, remember that this entire exercise is meant to help you learn
to read a race and understand strategies and tactics. I help you do
this by analyzing the Tour de France before it begins and as it
develops. This year, I am adding a Post Race Analysis. In doing
these analyses, you have to consider all possibilities including the
worst possibilities. As a coach or racer, you can't just consider
the possibility you want to happen because it is not likely to
happen. After all, your competition is "racing back at you." They
are not going to just sit there and let you beat them up without
them fighting back.
This Tour will probably go down in history as the strangest Tour
ever ridden. Yesterday, Lance and USP brought to fruition a very
radical, high risk strategy that took us all by surprise. They
completely blind sided everyone. If they hadn't, it wouldn't have
work as well as it did.
I spent the last 24 hours going over what they did to break out
their strategy and figure out how to explain this without writing a
book. It seems that Lance is so far off form that they didn't
believe he could win the Tour with a more traditional strategy. They
didn't believe he could sustain the efforts it would take to gain
even seconds on the three critical mountain stages so they decided
to put all their eggs in one basket. For the first time in the
history of the Tour, a coach has made a day of rest to be one of the
most significant days in the Tour.
What they did, is they decided that Lance could not do a traditional
picking away at the pack gaining a few seconds or minutes on each of
the three critical stages so they decided to do one maximum effort
suicide run on one of the three critical mountains climbs. They
chose the Luz Ardiden because it was so late in the Tour and
mountain stages that the other teams wouldn't have much time or
opportunity to recover from the damage done. Another key factor
about this stage is that it preceded a rest day. If you go back
through the Tour and look at every time a rider did an all out
suicide ride in a mountain stage even close to what Lance did
yesterday, he was so wasted the next day that he lost at least five
to ten minutes.
Therefore, they chose Luz Ardiden for Lance to do one maximum all
out effort that would trash him for the next day to gain as much
time as possible so he would be able to rest the next day and not
break in the mountains losing at least five to ten minutes. If you
look at the other two critical mountain stages, they are followed by
very hard days in the mountains that would break a rider who had
done an absolute 100% effort the preceding day. It had to be Luz
Ardiden.
This is one of those high risk strategies that, if they succeed, all
the ardent Lance fans will scream forever that it was brilliant.
But, if it fails, the same people will whale and moan about it being
stupid and foolish.
This strategy is so high risk that most other coaches would have
never thought to use it and none of us would use it except in
desperation. In stage racing, consistency is your ally and the one
shot effort is an extreme risk unless you can't do the consistency
and are willing to take the risk. USP using this strategy should
tell you just how out of form Lance is, which is far enough out of
form to risk the entire Tour on a one shot, high risk strategy.
The big question is how did he make this work up to this point in
the race? It started by Lance just admitting and proving in the
Dauphine that he is off form. This permitted the mind set they
needed to start the ball rolling. When they got to the first
significant mountain stage, Lance began a very good energy saving
tactic of riding defensively marking the most dangerous rider and
permitting the others to go up the road until they had gained enough
time to pose a threat to Lance. Then Lance would be forced to mark
that rider also but now that rider is a little more tired.
This strategy saved a lot of energy because going the little faster
the other riders would have to go to gain those minutes Lance had on
them would tire them out more quickly than it would tire out Lance.
The idea here is to tire out the other riders' legs enough so that
you have a two or three percent strength advantage on them.
The other riders became encouraged by his defensive riding and him
being out of form. They began regularly stripping away his team and
relay attacking him. Except that it wasn't really relay attacking
because Lance would just let them go up the road. The other riders
soon became so confident in beating Lance that they began making
mistakes thinking Lance would surely break any moment. They began
attacking him and riding hard on the KOM stages which is normally
not acceptable for GC riders. I noticed this but didn't think much
about it because, if they were forcing Lance to do as much chasing
as it appeared they were, then everyone would tire at the same or
slower rate than Lance was.
I realize now that this was a mistake because no one was really
paying attention to just how hard Lance was or was not riding. We
all thought he was working much harder than he was until I went back
over the race yesterday. It seems that Lance was using this false
perception of being about to blow to entice his competition to chase
the other riders while he rested on their wheel as much as possible.
I pointed this mistake out when discussing Ullrich two days ago but
didn't realize that Lance had been sucker punching everyone (we call
this brilliant racing unless it is being done to us) even on L'Alpe
d'Huez.
Brilliantly, Lance made it not matter whether his team was being
destroyed by the Buryneel strategy because it doesn't matter whose
wheel you are resting on since you will still be resting on a wheel.
If you can use your actions and body English to convince other
riders that you are too tired to chase much, they will realize that
they must chase to cover their own position. If you then position
yourself on their wheel to rest as much as you can while they chase
down your competition for themselves and, inadvertently, for you,
then, just as if they were one of your domestiques, they have done
your work for you while you rested on their wheel. You, in effect,
make them your virtual domestique. I realize now that Lance did a
great job of using the other GC riders' attacking against him to
beat them. When we thought he was getting really beat up, he was
resting much more than we thought he was.
Think of it this way. To do what Lance did on Luz Ardiden, you only
need to be about 2% stronger than your competition. You spend days
resting on their wheels while they are attacking you with you doing
at least 20% to over 30% less work than they are doing, how long do
you think it will take for them to fatigue more than you for you to
be 2% stronger than they are?
In other words, Lance rode a brilliantly energy efficient race to
save as much energy as possible while capitalizing on the over
confidence and mistakes the others were making. He then used his one
shot effort to punish the others for their mistakes.
While Lance's competition thought they were wearing him down by
riding too hard in the wrong stages, he was using their efforts to
wear them down and they lost more time on Luz Ardiden then they had
gained in all the other stages because their legs were not as fresh
as Lance's legs.
But it is more complicated than that. That is only the beginning. We
have to come to the part of the extremely intense suicide ride up
Luz Ardiden. Lance planned to use the rest day following Luz Ardiden
so he could ride the Luz Ardiden stage so hard that he would not
normally be able to recover enough to keep from losing huge time in
the next stage. The rest day would give him an extra 24 hours to
recover from his extreme effort. It was so radical and high risk
that it took us all by surprise plus the other riders' legs were
tired from all that attacking and towing Lance. He was able to
shatter the top GC riders with time gaps large enough that only one
rider now has a chance to beat him. The top riders are separated by
the large time splits that a more fit Lance would have established
much earlier on L'Alpe d'Huez.
But now we have to consider the risks they are taking because Lance
is off form. First, by racing so defensively, there is the risk that
some of the riders who went up the road will gain more time then you
had planned on. If this happens, you will end up down on time at the
start of Luz Ardiden and your effort will be used to bring you back
into competition.
Then there is the risk of consistency. Any rider can have a bad day
and, if that bad day arrives on the one day you had planned for your
one shot move, you just blew your stage race. This is why all
coaches prefer a consistency strategy instead of a risky, one-shot
strategy.
Probably the worst risk is that you will ride so hard you wont be
able to recover for days and your Tour will be over even if the next
day is a rest day. This is something you must consider because there
are different types of fatigue. We have the food and water bonks
where the body stops functioning properly because we have become
hypoglycemic or dehydrated. With the right recovery techniques,
these can be significantly recovered from in 24 hours or less.
On the other hand, you have cell fatigue which can take from days to
months to properly recover from. I have seen riders do an extremely
hard ride and blow the rest of their season. Most riders will
recover in a few days or week or two.
It is amazing how many people don't understand cell physiology and
don't realize that, when the enough of the cells stop functioning
right, you don't go any more. Tired legs don't turn pedals. These
people think it is a simple matter of suck it up and having the guts
to ride through it. This ignores the scientific fact that, if you
damage these cells enough, they just simply cannot continue to
function right. If you think I am wrong, the next time your legs
cramp up from fatigue and you can't move them, try sucking it up to
keep going. There comes a point in cell fatigue where your race just
ends and it doesn't matter who you are. More fit riders run into the
same point with a greater workload.
The really big risk with this extreme strategy will be how much
damage has Lance done and how fast will he recover. The more damage
you do to your cells, the longer it will take for them to recover
enough so they wont stop functioning with the next effort. Only time
will tell.
The greatest advantage Lance may have gained from his effort was the
psychological impact it has to have on his competition. In a matter
of kilometers, his competition went from attacking and trying to
beat Lance to him devastating them. They went from being one or two
minutes down (several a few seconds) to most of them being five to
ten minutes down. Add to this that most of them are so spread out in
time that there are only a few races to be ridden between them.
Imagine going from believing that you are about to beat the
four-time winner of the Tour to being drop kicked into a position
five or more minutes down on him. Will you just pack it in and
finish the Tour or will you find something or some reason to fight
back? Fortunately for them, they have a day of rest to think through
this but they still don't have many options.
The only one who really has a race left is Ullrich. You have to ask
what his strategy will be. Obviously, he can't continue with the old
strategy. Will he put his team to the task of trying to break Lance
in the last mountain stage tomorrow just in case he has not
recovered enough from his effort? Or will he decide to save his
energy and take that time back in the next time trial? Will Ullrich
try to take a few seconds out of Lance tomorrow or try to take it
all in the time trail?
After yesterday, you know what Lance's strategy will be. He will
glue himself to Ullrich's wheel so tight you will think they are
riding a tandem. Lance will continue with conserving energy for the
time trail in an effort to decrease time lost and hoping to win it
increasing his time. Don't be surprised if this race gets so close
that it will be won by a 6 second time bonus from a road prime. It
is possible that Lance and Ullrich will find themselves sprinting
for road prime time bonuses in the last stage going into Paris. If
they are close enough, the one who is down on time could even try to
win the last stage with a break in an attempt to gain a few seconds.
Tomorrow
Tomorrow's 197.5 km stage only has two cat one climbs. They will
only be significant if legs are really tired and there is a lot of
very hard attacking. I expect to see USP let a break of low placed
riders go up the road for KOM and Points points and for the stage
win. They will use the break as a control and ride defensively
covering Ullrich like he has the measles. The racing should start
fast with there only being four road stages left and this will be
the last mountain stage. Plus, with only two cat one climbs and a
flat finish, don't be surprised to see the sprint teams back in
action trying to gain points for the Points Title.
Tomorrow we will find out what Ullrich plans to do about yesterday.
This will be very interesting. What a Tour. Just when you think you
have seen it all some one does this to you. :-) That is bike racing.
