Video of descent of the Sarenne

[airwise]

Nice video, thanks. Did they do anything to these shallow troughs that used to cross the road (for rainwater)? that could be dangerous.

Yes thankfully those are tarmaced over and smoothed out at the top. They are currently doing some "chip & seal" repairs up there which makes it rather unpleasant to ride.

(And Mark, I don't see airwise claiming that he can race with the pros, only that the speed was similar. If he lost 20 sec on 12-15 minutes, that is close enough, <3%, maybe 1 mph or less.)

Many thanks for understanding the point - I should know better than to post a comment on an internet forum and not expect someone to want an arguement!

what camera setup did you use?

Just the basic Contour Roam 2 which I bought for some fun. Mount is noisy but the results are pleasing enough.

I forgot, Stava is the real racing
.

When the times are set on the queen stage of the Dauphine Libere I would have thought you could say it was representative but then..

[mentok]

Dauphine Libere

I believe it's called the "Critérium du Dauphiné" these days. cue fisticuffs. /sarcsasm.

edit: thanks for the video one day we'll get live srm data and on-bike cameras and the grand-tour footage will be truly awesome...

[fitty4]

In 2010 they had live srm data on about 5 rider in the tour, I remember only one of the riders because he is from Denmark Brian vandborg. On a mountain stage he was pushing 300-350 watt while climbing its difficult for me to say his average since the watts was changing all the time.

Thanx for the video. I now understand a little better Tony Martins concern, in the tour they have the alpe d'huez finish right after this descent but in the dauphine it was almost in the begining of the stage. I suspect they will ride faster in the tour maybe 2-4 minutes. Your recording is some weeks prior to your fastest time so how slow was the recording? Those who have strava can see that bart was ahead of ben king on the 1rst 5 km and after that the road is better and more straight and of course a pro peleton will ride faster than an amateur rider. Congrats on the 2nd place in vaujany

[ultyguy]

Well done, thanks for sharing!

It's a bit less technical that I thought, and a bit longer too. I know the lower part of the descent which is no magic carpet either.

I'm sure the Giro does much worse than this though. Even the north side of the Colombiere is barrier-less and poorly surfaced too and no one has ever complained.

Hope there's no accidents on the big day tho.

[jvanv8]

Great, thanks for sharing!
It's just too bad it wasn't the fastest ride ever recorded in history so I felt a little robbed while sitting at my computer watching it [/sarcasm]
Looks like you had fun (and that descent certainly is as well).
Which is the whole point, is it not?

Looks a bit more 'clean' then when I did it a few years ago with lots of debris and gravel in sections. Likely some attention was made to the road surface in preparation for the Tour.
http://vimeo.com/26105971
Sarenne is around the 5:40 mark (between d'Huez and Sarenne) and 8:00 - end for the descent segment in question.
4th place, 9th place... I'm so ashamed I'm clinging to 90th out of 1990 - but I'd be willing to bet that 1990th place had a pretty good day too.

[HammerTime2]

II suspect they will ride faster in the tour maybe 2-4 minutes.

So, how fast was it ridden in the TdF?

[jvanv8]

Although I would imagine they removed the large stones from the road and filled in the drainage ditches for the Tour (everytime I was fearing a flat, which I ended up having 30-40 minutes later with 7km to go)
I had never done it and really had no one around for pacing and ended up passing several. I don't remember making a remarkable effort, just trying to keep it going and taking in the scenery with my camera.. The leaders of the Tour were about 3+ minutes faster on the 16 minute descent. Pretty impressive, but also amateurs have nothing riding on the descent other than to keep it fun. But the Tour riders also tend to be quite good at this type of thing, for one reason or another.

[Rick]

That does look seriously dangerous to race down. We have numerous mountain descents around here that look similar, but I always take them pretty cautiously and reserve the heroics for trying to go uphill.

[airwise]

II suspect they will ride faster in the tour maybe 2-4 minutes.

So, how fast was it ridden in the TdF?

I really don't know but Ten Dam was slower than before (and slower than the video), and he was racing for GC that day.