Forget VO2 max - a Tour de France cyclist's defining quality is their frightening capacity to suffer
Professional cyclists and experts discuss the concept of 'suffering' as a defining metric of success in the sport, noting that it remains subjective and difficult to quantify. The article explores how athletes use tools like the Borg Scale to manage and push their physical limits.
Why it matters
Understanding the psychological and physiological limits of elite athletes provides insight into the nature of human performance and the evolution of sports science.
“Cyclists live with pain. If you can’t handle it, you will win nothing. The race is won by the rider who can suffer the most.” Those were the words of the greatest rider of all time, Eddy Merckx, when asked about the relationship between cycling and suffering.
Fausto Coppi rolled out an even briefer response: “Cycling is suffering.”
It begs the question: what is suffering? And if it’s such a strong identifier of road cycling, how can we dig deeper to widen our suffering bandwidth and race faster, longer, stronger?
Despite the reams of data churned out by power meters and analysed by sophisticated algorithms, we can’t objectively measure ‘suffering’.
Blood-related metrics such as lactate concentration offer a glimpse, but there’s no one-size-fits-all direct link between lactate and pain (despite the ‘burn’ we often feel ascending that local hill).
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