Stage 6 isn’t messing around as the UCI women take you out for a team time trial up the infamous climb of Torgon, a true proving ground for WCC athletes. After a short break, you’ll get to do a race simulation with the team up the final climb of the day – can you stay with their South African climbing ace?
Remember, you have 50 hours to complete each stage. As long as it’s still today’s date anywhere on earth, you’re golden. Check out The Tour Challenge Page for details on stage open and close times.
NEW for 2023 - Daily Challenges!
During each day of The Tour, the top fundraiser of the previous 24 hours will earn a Wahooligan Tour jersey, custom created by our friends at Cuore! The 24-hour block will run from midnight-to-midnight MDT (Boulder, CO, USA). We’re already underway for Day 1, so kick that fundraising up a notch and be the first to earn the jersey!
Find out more about some other challenges happening this week by visiting our Official Race Guide page.
You never ride alone.
Wahooligans unite! Join us on the Official RGT open road for your warm-ups, cool downs, or stage rides. Use the voice chat feature to talk about your Tour experiences so far with fellow riders.
Looking for something more intimate? Join fellow Team DPF members, Wahooligans, and VIPs on Zoom at 9 am MDT (Boulder, CO USA) during the tour - add this zoom link to your calendar to participate!
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Surprisingly, although I had been dreading this Queen stage, I really enjoyed it! The two previous stages were just sufficiently easy(ier) to allow me to fully recover, and I nailed it today! I did much better this time around than the first time I rode it in December, with a higher average power (updated numbers from Half Monty in January) and a lower average heart rate (8 bpm lower).
I’m all set for tomorrow’s final stage!
I did some rudimentary calcs: If you assume a ~165cm rider of about 40kg riding 220W up a 6% slope, a 185cm rider of 80kg need to pedal at about 375W to keep up…
An 8kg bike is 20% of the weight of a smaller rider, but only ~10% of a larger rider.
The windage area of a 40kg person with bike is not half of the area of a 80kg person with bike.
In terms of W/kg, the smaller rider therefore produces 5.5W/kg, whereas the larger rider ‘only’ does 4.7 W/kg.
In summary: Larger riders benefit from ‘economies of scale’ and hence smaller riders are disadvantaged.
Well, this one played right into my Sustained weakness, that’s for sure.
Good thing it was preceded by an easy and a not-so-hard stage, otherwise those final two minutes would’ve been too much.
I doubt I could’ve done this at 100% if it was Stage 2…
Not really though. That’s true for short efforts (like some track events), but road cycling is an endurance sport and the main limits are the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. They impose a ceiling on how much oxygen you can supply to the muscles, and without oxygen, muscles are dead weight.
There’s a reason the top male climbers only weigh 60-65 kg…
Just warming up on it right now, the big ramps of blue look really imposing, with some “lovely“ yellow and orange goodness at the ends! Can’t say I’m really looking forward to this…
Not gonna lie, it was bl00dy hard. Worse than usual, seeing as legs have some fatigue (not sure why).
30 min ramp from SS to FTP - really, who’s idea was that anyway? Then 14 min sustained with surges - i wanted to pause so many times, but the youngsters kept me going. @Glen.Coutts, thinking of you
Ok, I’m at the top, wasn’t nearly as bad as i feared. Stayed just below LTHR and leg pain threshold (LPT?). This spin section leads straight into something resembling Thin Air by the look of it, but shorter. I love/hate TA so suspect I’m going to feel similar…
I really enjoyed this, even though that first climb really bites. The scenery is great and I like the story line as you are taking turns with the riders doing their 5 minute pulls. I was a bit surprised to see that compared to when I first rode this in December 2022, my Normalized Power was down 9W and HR up by 2 bpm, but shouldn’t be since I did Full Frontal on January 7 and my numbers were down so this ride was with the new ones. As I am a day ahead, I will do something different tomorrow and then watch Milan-San Remo on Saturday morning while doing Stage 7.
Sir @Coach.Neal.H and I reduced the targets slightly as they made the 2nd block too difficult for most people to finish. It’s a more finely balanced affair now between agony and misery rather than being all misery.
One of the main characters in Stage 6: A Week with the UCI World Cycling Centre Road is South Africa’s Madelaine le Roux. Relentlessly chipper, warm and eager, she’s also the one who rips your legs off, throws them off the mountain and then attacks once more to make sure you remember her name. And all with a smile. Be sure to follow her on Strava as she takes on the '23 European cycling season: Strava Pro Cyclist Profile | Madelaine (Maude Elaine) le Roux
That was a great ride. Just hard enough to finish feeling thrashed without feeling broken. On the long trip down hill, the music was just funky enough for me to hope that the Mothership would land and Parliament would tell us to “ tear the roof off.” That would have been awesome. I really would have liked to see Dr. Funkenstien land in Switzerland.
