BillHobbs.com is a frequently updated blog of original reporting and commentary by Bill Hobbs, a longtime Nashville journalist and media relations adviser. I am currently serving as communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, a job I began on Oct. 29, 2007.
How much power does it take to finish the Tour de France? A lot, says Wired...
The Tour de France is routinely called the hardest sporting event on the planet, and by most measures, it's undeniably true. No other event demands so much aerobic effort day after day, for three weeks and more than 2,100 miles of riding. But it's never been easy to say exactly how hard the Tour is. The riders tear across the French countryside at scorching speeds and scale unfathomable mountain passes, but, really, just how much work do they do?
This year, we found out. Floyd Landis, a former teammate of Lance Armstrong's who now rides for the Swiss Phonak team, embarked on an experiment.
Landis rode the Tour using a piece of equipment, made by a company called CycleOps, that allowed him to precisely measure his power output through each stage of the Tour, down to the watt. And what's more, he and his personal coach, Allen Lim, published the results online.
Landis' power output was measured through a special rear-wheel hub, which gauged the torque generated by the force Landis put on the pedals. That torque measurement and the speed that the wheel turned let the system calculate the power generated, which is measured in watts.
On his way to a ninth-place finish, Landis spent nearly four hours of the Tour at a power output level of more than 500 watts -- that's a flat-out sprint to most recreational riders, who can only generate that sort of power for seconds at a time. For professionals, it's the ability to ride at this nearly superhuman level that separates champions from the rest of the pack.
"Professional riders are different than you and me," said Sovndal. "They can spend time over their anaerobic threshold, but then recover and be able to come back and keep riding. They can do a 10-minute surge, and then drop back down right below their threshold and recover. For regular riders, once you've crossed that threshold, you can't recover."
Armstrong, unsurprisingly, is one of the great human bicycle engines of all time. According to a seven-year study of Armstrong by Edward Coyle at the University of Texas, Armstrong can simply put out more power without crossing his lactate threshold than other riders, which means he can ride harder, longer.
"The difference is that Lance is still below his threshold while a guy like Floyd is above it," said Sovndal.
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