Ask a pro: Pier-André Côté and Lex Albrecht on mid-race bathroom breaks
When nature calls, you have to be ready to do your thing–and fast
Photo by:
@theMachoRed
In the world of professional cycling, managing bathroom breaks mid-race is a crucial skill that riders must master. Pier-André Côté and Lex Albrecht share their insights on handling this challenge efficiently. There are two options for male cyclists–stopping at the side of the road, or going on the fly. With female cyclists, it is the former…mostly.
For Côté , timing is crucial if you are stopping.
“When’s the best time? I’d say there’s the obvious one: when the teams control the race or just letting the breakaway go. You obviously don’t wanna go before the breakaway goes,” he says. And then an obvious time is once they allow the gap to build up. Usually, we ride pretty easy. It’s less and less common these days to give them a big gap, but usually, you still get three or four minutes of easy riding.”
View this post on Instagram
Early on in the race, the neutral zone is also a safe spot to pull off.
“You’re not supposed to start the race unless everyone is back in the main bunch. So when you’ve got longer neutrals, you can always stop. But normally if you didn’t need to go in the bus five minutes before the race, there’s no reason for you to need to go in the neutral. And then, yeah, you gotta pick your times, use the momentum as well try to do on top of climbs when the pace is fairly controlled, just keeping the break at bay,” the Israel – Premier Tech Academy rider adds.
View this post on Instagram
Côté says you learn how to”feel” the race. Tops of climbs are usually a good time, because it’s the slowest the pack will be riding.
“Then you don’t shave as much speed to stop on top. And usually the descent right after it helps you get back to speed,” he says. “You can use the cars more efficiently, the faster you go, the more draft you get. So it’s a good, good spot to come back. You don’t wanna be coming back in an uphill section, you know.”
Despite careful planning, unforeseen circumstances can disrupt even the most well-laid plans. Côté recounts a memorable incident during the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal where a spontaneous bathroom break by several riders led to a split in the peloton.
The right time and the wrong time to stop
“I saw Peter Sagan stopping and Antoine Duchesne stopping. So I stopped with these guys and, eventually, everybody kind of had the same idea from like in the middle of the bunch, but on top of Camillien Houde, the bunch is quite stretched out,” he recalls. “So we ended up being 40 guys stopping, but that created the split in the bunch because 40 guys suddenly stopped. That’s a big gap. So the race ended up splitting in two and it took two laps to come back because the front ended up riding the breakaway lost like five minutes over two laps. It was kind of an adventure. It was an expensive pee break.”
#TdS2015 @tds Stage 4 “nature break”
“united colors of #cycling” photo @TDWsport pic.twitter.com/UAwH5NmdhW— Groove Collective (@eurocyclingnews) June 17, 2015
Of course, it’s not always feasible to stop. Often, you’ll see pro cyclists having to resort to peeing while on the bike. Côté suggests choosing a downhill section where pedaling is unnecessary, ensuring privacy from spectators, and having a teammate provide assistance if needed.
“You make sure there’s no one watching the race at that point, usually in a field or somewhere remote when there’s no one if the race really is on. But you actually really need to go because you need a good urge to go. You can’t just have a mild pee,” he says. “It’s pretty hard to pee on the bike. But yeah, if you really have to go then you just have a teammate push you and you can pee on the bike really quick, 30 seconds or so and then you don’t lose that much ground. You lose a lot less energy than stopping and having to chase back.”
For female cyclists, it’s a little different.
Lex Albrecht hasn’t been in the pro peloton for four years, but had plenty of experience with bathroom breaks in her career.
“Orchestrated pee breaks were rare. The goal was to keep as hydrated as possible without filling up the bladder; that’s a fine balance,” she explains. “For a couple of years, I was on a team with a nutritional sponsor that made electrolyte drink mixes that were sweetened with sugar alcohols. This particular product tended to make me have to pee, a lot. I tried to avoid it during races, and use it only for rehydration between stages or after training.”
In some races, organized pee breaks occur, she says, typically initiated by the leader’s team or someone with authority, she explains. Riders pull over, strip down, and relieve themselves while others soft-pedal nearby. It becomes a race to rejoin the group, with assistance from the caravan. While there’s no rule against making a race move during this, riders are cautious not to upset the pack, especially top riders, as reputations can linger in the peloton.
Bibs made to help with breaks
There are some women’s bib shorts now that are created to be easier to remove for a pit stop.
“I own some now, but in my career I never had a team kit with a great design for peeing pit stops. One year there were bibs that had a clip in the back, but it was much harder to find the darn thing and get it done back up, than to use it for what it was apparently designed for,” she adds. “I tried to adopt a technique of pulling one leg of my shorts over, so I could pee out the leg hole but I quickly stopped trying that because I never had any success, other than peeing on myself and my shorts. Kind of gross.”
Over the years, Albrecht found a few hacks for when she had to go so she wouldn’t waste too much energy.
“My best trick was this though: ff I had to pee, really badly, I would typically call the team car for mechanical support (by radioing them if radios were allowed in the race, and/or, by raising my hand to inform the chief com that I wanted the team car,” she says. “I’d hang out at the back of the pack and get my jersey open and maybe off, ready to jump off my bike and pull down the shorts.
Once the car arrived at the front of the caravan, she’d pull off to the side, ask the mechanic to pretend he was fixing something with her bike while she peed, then I’d get back on and use the team car to hop back into the caravan and get back to the peloton that way.
“I also got really comfortable with using porta-potties (a rarity in Europe), a random bar and café bathrooms and I developed quite a knack for finding bushes and dumpsters to pee behind before races. Now that I’m retired, I like to ride my bike as much as ever, but I don’t tend to make myself suffer for too long,” she jokes. “I have a few routes with favourite pee stops along the way, and whenever I can, I try to find a spot with a nice view. Nothing like getting a bit of relief while enjoying a beautiful vista!”
