I haven't looked at ST for a while. I was half expecting to see a separate Lance forum alongside the Lavender Room and the Women's fora.
But most of all I was surprised not to see a whole lot of mea culpas from those who dissed LeMond over the years. Let's face it. LeMond was right -- about everything. LeMond was the first Jens.
This should have been obvious at the time. I just dug up an old email where I estimated VO2maxs on the Alpe d'Huez . My rough estimate was that LA would have needed a 95 VO2max to get the time he did.
Jens Heycke wrote:
Interesting. If we assume:
bike+rider weight = 82 kg
distance = 13.2 km
slope =8.112%
temp= 65 deg.
barometer: 29.9inch
air density= 1.117 kg/m-3
crr = .026 (the number for Dugast Speed Silk tubulars)
cDa = 0.31 (from a glimpse at the wind tunnel numbers in the Lance chronicles I know even his TT cDA is pretty high -- .26ish)
Armstrong's 36:37 time would take power of 449.5 watts. If his power curve is like mine, his functional threshold power (FTP) would be at least 441 watts or 6.125 watts/kg.
So what's the implication? A relatively conservative VO2Max estimate is:
VO2 Max in ml/kg/min = 12*(FTP*1.25) + 3.5 where FTP is defined in w/kg
That would estimate his VO2Max at 95.375.
As for Indurain...... At a weight of 80 Kg., his 38:14 took an unbelievable 477 watts. (He could almost power my wife's hair dryer).
I don't think 1995 was a time-trial like 2004, so that's probably close to Indurain's FTP. So he had 5.99 watts/kg which equates to a VO2max of 93.35. Despite the weight difference, there's some consistency here....
For some more fun, suppose Armstrong had clinchers and switched from a butyl tube to an undersized (20c) latex tube. It would have saved him 12 seconds.
- Jens Heycke
Karlgaard, Rich wrote:
Interesting list. All of the top 45 times occurred between 1991 and 2008. http://www.fillarifoorumi.fi/...=1908053#post1908053