A couple of weeks ago, I went to interview the former pro rider Sean Yates. One of the strongest racers Britain has ever produced, he won stages of the tours of France, Spain and Belgium, and in 1994, when the Tour de France came to the UK, wore the yellow jersey for a day (the only other British riders to share that distinction being Tommy Simpson and Chris Boardman). He retired in 1996 and now, in his mid-40s, works cutting hedges near his home in Sussex in the autumn and then as a team manager during the cycling season. Latterly, he was brought on to the Discovery Team by Lance Armstrong to be one of its "directeurs sportifs", which meant Yates was the guy in the team car who organises everything on the road and calls the shots in races.
Until a recent health problem, he was still riding competitively as an amateur. We went for a ride around Ashdown Forest, where he must have done countless thousands of training miles. Yates had very little coaching during his career: his philosophy was just to go out every day and ride his bike - hard - for five, six, seven hours. He was probably "overtrained" for virtually his whole career, he believes. Only last yearwas he given a Powercrank: an essential piece of kit for a pro rider because it measures watts, ie precisely how much power you are putting in at the pedal. As we rode up a short, sharp climb, Sean was reading out the numbers ... 400, 420, 450 ... and then, thankfully, we crested it.
Cycling now, at elite level, is all about the appliance of science. Even "overtraining" is a relatively new concept: a rider such as Yates raced on "feel", and still talks about having "good legs". Training was measured simply in miles. For Boardman, a generation on in the 1990s, his eye was firmly on a heartrate monitor (HRM). Post-race, his first words would be not about the action, but his pulse. Now, the HRM has been supers eded by the power meter, and sports science is a burgeoning faculty on university campuses everywhere.
Even a no-account weekend racer like me can take part in someone's research project into some aspect of training and performance. Thus I found myself, last week, churning away on an exercise bike, hooked up to a machine measuring my respiration, at the University of Kent in Chatham. This was a "ramp test" to establish my VO2max: how much oxygen I use at peak output - a classic measure of performance potential for endurance athletes. This means it's a "test to exhaustion", and they're not kidding: you are asked to sign a disclaimer in case you drop dead in the lab.
For what it's worth, I recorded 69ml/kg/min, which is not bad for a club rider (a normal, sedentary male my age would be expected to score in the low 40s). To put it more in context, Armstrong was clocked at 87, Greg LeMond reportedly at 92, and a Nordic skier at 95. Apparently, horses and huskies have VO2maxes that make humans look puny. Only they're not so clever on a bike.
Sports science treats the body as a machine - which, in many ways we have not understood, it is. It is clear that to be a world-class cyclist, you must have a superb engine, finely fettled and tuned. But to be a great cyclist, you need more: skill, experience, determination, will. Even, on the right day, good legs.
