00:00If you've been watching the Tour de France then you'll have seen the world's best riders
00:05making some of the world's hardest climbs look rather tame. But just how good are the pros and
00:11just how hard is a Grand Tour climb? Well, with the help of a trusty set of Fevero power pedals
00:18I'm off to Italy to find out.
00:19Well, I've made it here to Borneo right at the bottom of the Stelvio Pass and now I need to go
00:34and find myself a bike so let's go grab one. Well here it is my bike for the week it's a very Italian
00:39affair a Bianchi Specialisma complete with Shimano Ultegra Di2 and I wanted to hire a bike because
00:47I'm only out here for a few days and so what not only does it cost a fair bit of money to put a
00:51bike on a plane but you also get the the added uh well they're not always the kindest to bikes so
00:57it seemed a shame to pack it all up just for a few days um and I knew that there was lots of lovely
01:03bike shops out here this one is the is the Stelvio experience and uh yeah so I can hire a bike just for
01:09a few days um there is a few things that I need to do to it to get it ready to ride though number one
01:15a computer mount and number two I brought my power meter pedals with me now I brought them with me
01:20to obviously measure my efforts up the climb so I don't go off too hard because I do make a habit
01:24of that and I brought with me the Fevero Asioma Pro RS2 pedals which are lovely and easy to fit and
01:32they'll go on almost every bike so whether that's my bike whether that's a higher bike and I can record
01:38my power to plus or minus one percent there is just one or two more things to do before I get
01:44riding first I'm going to take the power meter pedals out of their sleep mode which I put them
01:49in for the flight um and it was quite nice flying with them because they've got this podless design
01:54it means that all the all the clever bits the accelerometers the strain gauges even the battery
02:01that's uh welded to the circuit board is all housed in those stainless steel spindles and that
02:06means that I could put them in my bag and not fear for them well braking the next thing to do because
02:11this isn't my bike I've actually got a different length crank on this one they're 172.5s whereas I
02:16run a 170 mil crank on my bike and then with any power meter obviously I need to calibrate it and then
02:23we're ready to go right what mountains first today is the Mortirolo and uh I think we're all a little bit
02:32I think apprehensive is the word isn't it just looking at what's in front of us
02:40big climb
02:51okay so this is the start stops off easy apparently but it does feel quite steep
03:02well we're well and truly on the climb now just went past the sign 10k to go so we haven't made much
03:24of a mark on it yet the next section is 11.7 uh but there's going to be sections that are far steeper
03:32than that stereo man is gone he's in the distance and i just wanted to point out this isn't even the
03:40steepest part of the of the climb and i don't have big gears on so down there we've got semi-compact
03:5352 36 and an 11.30 at the back now for granted
04:01i could have gone for an 11.34 probably should have gone for an 11.34 because i haven't come out of my
04:07smallest gear and it's just got me thinking really in the old days how the hell did they get up these
04:17at the end he had four gears at the back absolutely monstrous effort
04:33okay so climb update 7.4 k to go and i also got overtaken by mobistar rider um he overtook me just
04:41before a hairpin i went around the hairpin and then he was gone uh he had literally teleported
04:49up the entire next section of climb i i don't know how he did it literally disappeared
05:02well we've made some good progress we made it to hairpin 11 for the pantani monument we keep on going
05:23past the hairpin signs look a little bit like that behind me and uh they say like there's maybe one
05:30that says like six or seven percent and six or seven percent on this climb feels really nice and then
05:36it's for about 200 meters and then you get to another one it says 14 and that one takes you about
05:41five minutes to get through so uh but yeah we're making good progress um 11 hairpins let's do it
05:50next time 3.7 k to go 10.3 percent next section
06:06not too bad that's about average for this climb and when you see them riding up here in the in the giro
06:14it's like oh they're in the wheels i wonder when they're going to attack there's no easy ride up
06:22here none at all you can see why so many people get dropped in the first kilometer but it doesn't
06:30get down these up in fact if anything it gets harder we found still be a man the movistar guy it's formula
06:44that's formula ah no wonder he was so fast
06:47okay we're just over 1k to go and it's not got any easier but mentally i think it probably has
07:04i think by the time you get to this point it's like i've come so far i'm gonna have to finish
07:10um in trial hold about 270 watts on the ferrero pedals there's someone up ahead that i want to
07:19try and catch but the problem is they don't look like they're that far up the road but it's going
07:25to take me a minute if he was stationary to catch him so let's dig in
07:40out of all the beautiful climbs that i rode out in italy i think it's the motorolo which i found
07:49the toughest harder even than the 21 kilometer long stelvio pass the locals call it the bastard
07:56and it certainly lives up to its name it took its toll on me but how does my time stack up against the
08:01pros well i just about tipped in under the hour and a half mark finishing the 11 and a half kilometer
08:08climb with a time of one hour 29 minutes and 18 seconds according to the ferrero asioma pro rs2
08:15power pedals i rode at an average power of 238 watts and that output gave me an average speed of just
08:217.7 kilometers per hour on the 11.7 cent gradient climb now i'm sure that many of you could have
08:28ridden it far quicker than i did and i'd like to think that on an all-out effort with no talking
08:33maybe i could have taken 10 minutes off this time to be honest though
08:37compared to the pros that would still have been fairly insignificant on the strava leaderboard
08:42eight out of those top 10 times are set by the pros with plenty of recognizable names occupying those
08:48spots the fastest times well they're about twice as quick as mine and that's without a tade figaccia
08:54or jonas fingigo master class supper if we compare the power numbers my 238 watts pales in insignificance
09:02compared to the 435 watts that jack burke held on his successful com attempt oh and then you also
09:08have to take into account that he's also lighter than me 69 kilos versus my 75. in my home country of
09:16the uk watts per kilo is rarely a conversation worth having i'm pretty sure that a rider such as walt
09:22bernard or matthew van der poel would win just about every race in the country despite not being the lightest
09:29why because short climbs are often considered power climbs and it's only when you go to the proper
09:35mountains like these that it becomes a pure watts per kilo fight jack burke averaged 6.3 watts per kilo
09:42for his effort up the motorolo but it's estimated that the needle has been moved once again with
09:47pogaccia and vingigo averaging over 6.5 watts per kilo for nearly an hour up mont bontu during this year's tour
09:54of france my watts per kilo yeah they were 3.17 up the motorolo when i was racing at my very best
10:03i've seen numbers more like 4.5 so why did we do this experiment well it wasn't just to make me depressed
10:10but mainly because it's easy to forget whilst watching the grand tour from our sofas that what
10:16the pros are doing is simply incredible think of the fastest person on your local group ride they'd
10:23probably get blown out of the water by the fastest in the country those people would probably get
10:28thrashed by a continental rider who in turn get made to look quite ordinary by the world tour pros
10:34then you've got the best of the best the likes of pogaccia vingigo lipovitz who are riding these
10:39things at incomprehensible speeds if you still don't believe me come and ride one of these climbs yourself
10:46because they're not for the faint-hearted and that's kind of all i've got to say on that other than if
10:51you do want to ride mountains then i can't recommend borneo enough definitely make sure that you've got
10:56the right gearing that is suitable for these climbs and i can genuinely recommend using a power meter
11:02if like me you often go off too fast then it can really help with pacing your effort because these
11:07climbs don't take any prisoners if you want to find out anything more about the fevere pedals that
11:13we've been using then we'll pop a link in the description below if you want to see more content like this
11:18then please give this video a like and subscribe to the channel for lots more bike stuff
Comments