00:00If you've been watching the Tour de France then you'll have seen the world's best riders
00:04making 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.
00:29Well, I've made it here to Borneo right at the bottom of the Stelvio Pass and now I need to
00:34go
00:34and find myself a bike so let's go grab one. Well here it is my bike for the week it's
00:39a 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 well not only does it cost a fair bit of
00:51money to put a bike
00:52on a plane but you also get the added well they're not always the kindest to bikes so it seemed
00:58a shame
00:58to pack it all up just for a few days and I knew that there was lots of lovely bike
01:03shops out here
01:03this one is the is the Stelvio Experience and yeah so I can hire a bike just for a few
01:09days. There is
01:11a few things that I need to do to it to get it ready to ride though. Number one a
01:15computer mount and number
01:16two I brought my power meter pedals with me. Now I brought them with me to obviously measure my
01:21efforts up the climb so I don't go off too hard because I do make a habit of that and
01:25I brought
01:26with me the Fevero Asioma Pro RS2 pedals which are lovely and easy to fit and they'll go on almost
01:33every bike so whether that's my bike whether that's a higher bike and I can record my power to plus
01:39or
01:39minus one percent. There is just one or two more things to do before I get riding first I'm going
01:45to
01:45take the power meter pedals out of their sleep mode which I put them in for the flight and it
01:51was quite nice flying with them because they've got this podless design it means that all the all the
01:56clever bits the accelerometers the strain gauges even the battery that's welded to the circuit board
02:03is all housed in those stainless steel spindles and that means that I could put them in my bag
02:07and not fear for them while braking. The next thing to do because this isn't my bike I've actually got
02:13a
02:13different length crank on this one they're 172.5s whereas I run a 170 mil crank on my bike and
02:19then
02:20with any power meter obviously I need to calibrate it and then we're ready to go right what mountains
02:26first. Today is the Mortirolo and I think we're all a little bit I think apprehensive is the word isn't
02:35it just looking at what's in front of us
02:39big climb
02:51okay so this is the start stops off easy apparently but it does feel quite steep
03:15well we're well and truly on the climb now just went past the sign 10k to go so we haven't
03:23made much
03:24of a mark on it yet the next section is 11.7 percent uh but there's going to be sections
03:31that far steeper than that stereo man is gone he's in the distance and i just wanted to point out
03:39this isn't even the steepest part of the of the climb and i don't have big gears on so down
03:48there
03:49we've got semi-compact 52 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 11.34 because i haven't come out
04:07of my
04:07smallest gear and it's just got me thinking really in the old days
04:15how the hell did they get up these like they only had four gears at the back
04:22absolutely monstrous effort
04:33okay so climb update 7.4 k to go and i also got overtaken by mobistar rider
04:40um it was opening just before a hairpin i went around the hairpin and then he was gone
04:46he had literally teleported up the entire next section of climb
04:51i i don't know how he did it literally disappeared
05:17well we've made some good progress we made it to hairpin 11 for the pantani monument
05:21we keep on going past the hairpin signs look a little bit like that behind me and uh they say
05:28like there's maybe one that says like six or seven percent and six or seven percent on this climb
05:33feels really nice and then uh it's for about 200 meters and then you get to another one it says
05:4014
05:40and that one takes you about five minutes to get through so uh but yeah we're making good progress
05:46um 11 hairpins
05:49let's do it
05:58next time 3.7 k to go 10.3 percent in the next section
06:06not too bad that's about average for this climb and when you see them riding up here in the in
06:13the
06:14gero d'italia it's like oh they're in the wheels i wonder when they're going to attack there's no easy
06:21ride up here none at all you can see why so many people get dropped in the first kilometer but
06:30it
06:30doesn't ease up in fact if anything it gets harder we found still be a man the movistar guy it's
06:43formula
06:44that's formula ah no wonder he was so fast
06:56okay okay we're just over 1k to go and it's not gotten 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
07:10finish um
07:11in try hold about 270 watts on the ferrero pedals there's someone up ahead that i want to try and
07:19catch but the problem is they don't look like they're that far up the road but it's going to take
07:25me
07:26a minute if he was stationary to catch him so let's dig in
07:43out of all the beautiful climbs that i rode out in italy i think it's the motorolo which i found
07:49the
07:49toughest harder even than the 21 kilometer long stelvio pass the locals call it the bastard and it
07:56certainly lives up to its name it took its toll on me but how does my time stack up against
08:01the pros
08:02well i just about tipped in under the hour and a half mark finishing the 11 and a half kilometer
08:08climb
08:08with a time of one hour 29 minutes and 18 seconds according to the ferrero asioma pro rs2 power
08:15pedals i rode at an average power of 238 watts and that output gave me an average speed of just
08:217.7
08:22kilometers per hour on the 11.7 cent gradient climb now i'm sure that many of you could have ridden
08:29it
08:29far quicker than i did and i'd like to think that on an all-out effort with no talking maybe
08:34i could have
08:34taken 10 minutes off at this time to be honest though compared to the pros that would still have
08:39been fairly insignificant on the strava leaderboard eight out of those top 10 times are set by the
08:45pros with plenty of recognizable names occupying those spots the fastest times well they're about
08:50twice as quick as mine and that's without a tade figaccia or jonas fingigo master class supper if we
08:57compare the power numbers my 238 watts pales in insignificance compared to the 435 watts that jack
09:05burke held on his successful comm attempt oh and then you also have to take into account that he's
09:10also lighter than me 69 kilos versus my 75. in my home country of the uk watts per kilo is
09:18rarely a
09:19conversation worth having i'm pretty sure that a rider such as waltbenaar or matthieu van der poel would win
09:25just about every race in the country despite not being the lightest why because short climbs are
09:31often considered power climbs and it's only when you go to the proper mountains like these that it
09:36becomes a pure watts per kilo fight jack burke averaged 6.3 watts per kilo for his effort up the
09:43motorolo but it's estimated that the needle has been moved once again with pogaccia and vingigo averaging
09:49over 6.5 watts per kilo for nearly an hour up montmontu during this year's tour de france
09:56my watts per kilo yeah they were 3.17 up the motorolo when i was racing at my very best
10:03i've seen numbers
10:04more like 4.5 so why did we do this experiment well it wasn't just to make me depressed but
10:11mainly because
10:11it's easy to forget whilst watching the grand tour from our sofas that what the pros are doing is simply
10:18incredible think of the fastest person on your local group ride they'd probably get blown out of the
10:24water by the fastest in the country those people would probably get thrashed by a continental rider
10:29who in turn get made to look quite ordinary by the world tour pros then you've got the best of
10:35the
10:35best the likes of pogaccia vingigo lipovitz who are riding these things at incomprehensible speeds
10:42if you still don't believe me come and ride one of these climbs yourself because they're not for the
10:47faint-hearted and that's kind of all i've got to say on that other than if you do want to
10:52ride mountains
10:52then i can't recommend vormio enough definitely make sure that you've got the right gearing that
10:57is suitable for these climbs and i can genuinely recommend using a power meter if like me you often
11:03go off too fast then it can really help with pacing your effort because these climbs don't take any
11:09prisoners if you want to find out anything more about the favaro pedals that we've been using
11:14then we'll pop a link in the description below if you want to see more content like this then please
11:19give this video a like and subscribe to the channel for lots more bike stuff
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