whiteboytrash said:
I'm going out to eat 5 steaks and drink 47 pints of German beer to celebrate....
jerks, all of you. It is 10:30 in the morning here at work. Just ate three oranges and getting ready for a lunchtime run. I am a long way from steak and beer. Ok, that's taken care of.
What a great TT. Lots of thoughts. Ullrich was amazing. He pedaled a 90-95 cadence so no worries about his knee. He also kept taking little breaks to stretch his legs. His mouth wasn't in the wide open suffer position we see in July... so this bodes well. More on him in a minute
Basso, amazing ride, he looked really fast. great cadence and great turn of speed. Ullrich definitely won the PR battle by winning when he had nothing to ride for but Basso, staying close still means something. As does his crushing of everyone else.
Savoldelli. Decent ride but doesn't have the snap he had for the first week.
Danielson. About what expected. The climbs will be interesting.
The other favorites got crushed. Basically, until last year, the TT wasn't a big deal in the Giro with Simoni, Garzelli, Cunego battles. That's why Gonchar did so well. He is a man among boys in that crowd. Now, with Savoldelli improving his TTing last year and Basso too, now Ullrich there with Mick Rogers etc. Suddenly the TT matters and the Simoni crowd lost what I would generally expect them to lose in a GT TT. They will have to attack and attack big in the mts or hope basso cracks big. Otherwise it is his to lose.
Back to Ullrich. I am so excited. He looked good out there. Interesting, though, his torso looked fat again in the aerobars but his belly was dead flat on the podium. This means, to me, that the wind was going down the neck of his skinsuit. This is a serious problem. One that would cost him 1-2 minutes in a 50k TT. He needs to get that fixed. Perhaps the skinsuit was made for him when he was fat and now it's a touch loose in the neck. Being a tri geek, I read up on aero stuff a lot. A skinsuit that fits right is worth over a minute in a 40k TT so more in a 50k plus the fact that the wind down the neck is an additional penalty. So he could have been 90 seconds to 2min faster with a proper suit. It goes like this, aero position #1, aero wheels #2 (he also didn't have a deep front wheel), skinsuit #3, then aero bike tubes, then helmet. I would say the suit and the front wheel cost over two minutes today. No big deal when training and he still won the stage.
Basso, on the other hand, had cervelo p3 carbon, zipp 999 with ceramic bearings, sweet pink suit, and wind tunnel tested position. This all means that Ullrich's power is up there. A few pounds and he will have good chances come July.
Next..... the big mountains.
