Just a head’s up, there’s a show scheduled for Monday night on Discovery channel called the “Science of Lance Armstrong”. A little plugging from the sponsor, but sounds like a pretty interesting show.
There’s also a 5 part series on FIT TV (Channel 368 on Direct TV) starting tonight called Chasing Lance. I think it is @7 or 8:00PM CST.
I wonder if they have anything on his crash??
Guess it can happen to anyone.
"Lance Armstrong has suffered several small injuries in a crash during a training ride around Nice, France. News agency AP reported the six time-Tour de France winner to have a black eye, a cut over his right eyebrow and abrasions on his hands and knees, after the fall, which happened at low speed during the start of a training ride last week. Apparently, he lost control on his time-trial bike after trying to hit a wasp, and sailed over the handlebars, his helmet splitting in two on impact. "
yeah this whole week the Discovery Network will have specials about Lance, Discovery Team, etc. I am almost positive there is a show on Lance’s mom Tuesday on TLC…
Keep posting reminders of the show schedules…I have the worst memory, and usually remember to watch the shows after the fact…
His show was so bad I couldn’t watch it, even my wife thought it was worse than bad. Our favorite announcer says "Lances heart pumps blood better than anyones, It goes over 200 beats per min. Lances legs don’t get tired, Lance gets rid of lactic acid faster than anyone. When others suffer Lance is just feeling good. Blah blah blah yada yada yada. I hope the rest of the teams have to watch that every day till the Tour.
It was ok but packaged for the masses. I was hoping for more depth (being that it was discovery channel) but there you go…
I’m no exercise scientist, but given how little of the show was devoted to anything relating to science (as opposed to telling the Lance story the umpteenth time) I was surprised how weak some of the facts seemed.
“His peak power is 500 watts, while the average male is only 250 watts”. Yeah right, you can be sure that Lance’s peak power is far higher than 500 watts. It may well be that his functional threshold power is that much, although Kraig Willet speculates closer to 450 watts. But peak power and sustained threshold power are two very different things. Assuming that they are, in fact, talking about threshold power, I’m not sure what they mean by the average male, all I can say is that my FT power is in the 250 range (FWIW, I’m 51 and 158 pounds), and my cycling power appears to be higher than the vast majority of recreational cyclists, above average by tri standards, and towards the low end of road racing cyclists. So what are they talking about???
They said his heart pumps 200 beats a minute. So what? At what intensity? I regularly hit 200, and I ain’t no lance. Beats per minute has nothing to do with performance.
They talked about changes in his aerodynamic positioning saving 4 minutes in a 190 KM stage. But in a road stage, Lance is protected from the wind on the flats at all times by his teammates. Lance in a solo 190 KM breakaway? Yeah right. He only rides solo on climbs. This number is meaningless for a road stage.
Among other things, the aging of tubulars in a basement has been claimed to be hokum by people that are a lot smarter than me.
Lots of great product placement for Trek, CTS, Subaru, etc.
I think that you all have to remember who this show is geared for. The average american does not know squat about cycling. So when they get at all technical, ie 500 watts for Lance, 99% of veiwers look at it with their mouths half open and go “uhhhh, what’s a watt?”
I just thought it was cool to see the bikes and hear about some of the training intensity.
I liked that commercial with Lance walking down the hall of a hotel wearing his Discovery team kit and passes a room with banging noise and sparks flying out from under the door. He unlocks the door and walks in to find Mikee, Pauly, and Senior standing there in front of what apparently his race bike after the OCC crew has made a few modifications.
That commerical cracked me up.
I found it interesting that Lance’s tires are 7 to 8 years old and that they age them in someone’s basement.
jaretj
Did anyone else cry when they saw the bike that Nike sent to OCC as inspiration for the Lance Chopper? Bontrager Disc, Hed 3, DuraAce, Trek Time Trial Frame… basically a super sweet bike that won’t get ridden. Its kinda like Toy Story and the toys that don’t get played with… just sad.
I thought there was some neat science. I liked the visual when they showed the “golf ball dimpled” clothing and showed what the air flow looks like around the upper arm with and without the dimples. seeing the air tunnel live was pretty neat too.
Even though I read Lance’s book, I never saw scans of his brain and lungs with cancer cells. Much worse than I thought, even though I had read how bad it was.
So yeah, it was a long commercial, but there was at least 10 minutes of cool stuff in the 60 minute show.
It was also pretty impressive hear johan (sp?) speaking 6 different languages to his riders. And it didn’t sound like basic conversational stuff, that guy sounded pretty fluent.
Did anyone else cry when they saw the bike that Nike sent to OCC as inspiration for the Lance Chopper? Bontrager Disc, Hed 3, DuraAce, Trek Time Trial Frame… basically a super sweet bike that won’t get ridden
Yes indeed…as the episode continued, you could see the bike just sitting there, leaning against the wall. Crying to be ridden…
And the commercial with those guys and Lance cracks me up every time I see it.
I got asked at a party this weekend by a relative of a relative “so, does Lance’s bike REALLY weigh less than a horseshoe?!?!?!”
To which I responded “Maybe, but then he’d have to add weight to it so it would be legal to ride.”
Not the answer the guy was hoping for from me (‘resident expert’) I guess…
Agreed that the pseudo science was pretty farcical. “Science can’t understand why Lance’s muscles make less lactic acid than any other riders.” (not an exact quote, I’m not the RainMan, and this wasn’t a classic 80’s teen flick) WTF?
'Lance’s heart is 1.5X the size of a normal heart" OK, but it’s a peanut compared to Miguel Indurain’s, and many well trained endurance athletes have oversized hearts.
And yer right, I think the “average male” would be pretty damn happy w/ FT power of 250W, that’s definitely decent by Tri standards. The “average male” of today would probably keel over and die at any intensity if they had to pedal non-stop for 30 mins or more.
I thought it was interesting/embarrassing that they included footage (this may have been from another broadcast) of the team support car getting lost, and therefore missing the end of the race. Looked like they had GPS in that thing, and it’s not like they move the location of the Classics from year to year - how the hell do you get lost in the team car???
Yes indeed…as the episode continued, you could see the bike just sitting there, leaning against the wall. Crying to be ridden…
It was crying after Senior took a socket wrench to the QR skewers, that’s for sure.
“This ain’t nuthin’ like my old Schwinn.”
I’m located in Calgary and couldn’t get it here. We have a Discovery channel also Learning channel, but neither one showed it. Did ANYONE in Canada see this program and if so, what channel?? Have been waiting all month to view it and was disappointed we couldn’t get it!!
I’m in Ontario and didn’t get it either! It’s just like OLN, who cut cyclign coverage from just before the Giro until teh Tour starts! Ugh!
I didn’t know that either, Maybe I need to start my own ‘tubular wine cellar’…
The show was a good starting point for people new to the subject of cycling. You have to understand most guys on this forum are ‘smarter than the average bear’ on this subject…