A look at Lance Armstrong
And now for something largely fluff, but cool nonetheless… The NYT is running a piece on Lance Armstrong, and what sets him apart from the rest. Some have called him a genetic freak, which is actually sort of true. I thought I’d run through it briefly in honor of his record-breaking 7th straight Tour de France victory. (Yay Lance!)
But is Lance Armstrong that unusual? It depends on whom you compare him with.
Mr. Armstrong, for example, can maintain a power output of about 6.8 watts per kilogram of body weight for 20 minutes. “I would say there are probably no more than 20 people on earth with that ability, and probably at least 10 of them rode or are riding in the Tour de France,” Dr. Coyle said.
This doesn’t explain why he’s won so many times:
“When you look at elite athletes, cyclists or marathoners, you have to have the physiology to get to that point,” he said. “But then, if you looked at the top half-dozen, you really couldn’t tell the difference.”
Mr. Armstrong’s numbers may not be much different from other elite racers, but he has the average cyclist beat by a mile. A good recreational rider could generate about 4 watts per kilogram, which would translate to a speed of about 20 miles an hour on a flat road. Mr. Armstrong, Dr. Coyle said, would be traveling at 34 miles an hour.
I find that hard to believe. I can easily ride 20mph on my bike (a mountain bike, even), without much trouble, and I’m not in especially good shape. But maybe that’s just because I’m relatively young?
Mr. Armstrong’s VO2 max is 85 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. An average untrained person has a VO2 max of 45 and with training can get it to 60.
“Lance would be 60 if he was a couch potato and never trained,” Dr. Coyle said. “For the average person, their ceiling is Lance’s basement.”
But wait, there’s more!
“I’m sure there are other Lances out there who have the same potential,” he added. But they may not know it because they never tried to train. “They could get on a bicycle right now,” he said, “and if they were willing to suffer they could ride with the average person who’s been training for two years.”
Training can make a huge difference to those who are genetically gifted. Mr. Armstrong, for example, had a lactic acid test after he had recuperated from cancer and had just begun to train again. He had 8 millimoles of lactate per liter of blood. The average person has a value of 12. But after Mr. Armstrong trained, his levels were 6, an astonishingly low number. “He has to train hard to have those very, very low levels,” Dr. Coyle said.
This is one instance where I’m disappointed that I’m not a genetic freak.
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