…and keep the yellow jersey during a mountain stage of the TDF (much less, place as a top finisher in time trial)? That’s genetic’s and talent combined like I have never heard or seen. Lance never ceases to amaze me.
Joe Moya
It strikes me as odd that someone like Lance, who has so much experience in the TdF and is so meticulous in his preparations, would somehow lose (how did this word get so universally corrupted?) that much weight in a one-hour effort. I know he ran out of water, which shows how hot it was on the day, but I suspect he lost most of the weight before the time trial even began. In other words, he was probably afflicted with diarrhea, which would mean that not only was he low on hydration but also electrolytes that get flushed out of the system when one has “the runs.”
Hope he comes back strong. Jan is smelling blood.
Losing 15 pounds in one day is probably impossible unless:
1: You have a major wound and are bleeding profusely;
- You weigh at least 300 lbs and also happen to have the metabolism of a cheetah.
I suspect a bit of hyperbole on Lance’s part.
Lance has looked very gaunt in this year’s Tour. He said before the Tour he was overweight, but he looks underweight. I wonder if he’s been well since the Dauphine…
Regardless, if he lost 7-8 lbs to diarrhea he lost a lot of fluid and electrolytes and was weakened, probably on the order of 3-5%, performance-wise. With so many viruses and bacterial infections floating through the peloton it’s a miracle more of these guys haven’t dropped from illness.
Ullrich is more physically talented, but Armstrong is mentally tougher. Did the playboy train hard enough during the winter? He looks awfully strong to me. But, if it comes down to a battle of wills, Armstrong will win if he is healthy.
However, I don’t think Lance will take the victory this year. It looks like Ullrich or Vinoukorov. Lance does not look physically strong enough to take it. This pains me to say because I’m a great fan of his and contribute every year to the LAF. But, “merely” finishing that race, regardless of where you finish, is a monumental achievement. Too bad so few people realize it…
Viva La Tour de France!
-Robert
I agree that it’s a bit of hyperbole on Lance’s part, but water has been found to constitute about 70% of the lean body mass. So, given that… why can’t Lance lose 15lbs before, during and after a time trial? I’m a pretty decent sweat producer and I can lose 8 pounds (1 gallon) and my motor is probably putting out half the power Lance is.
(But that “bleeding profusely” business … waddyatalkinabout!? The human body only contains approximately 4.5 liters of blood, or about 1 gallon, and if we assume it weighs slightly more than water maybe the total weight of blood in the body is 12 pounds. So… you can’t really lose 15 pounds of blood… at least not in this world!)
“Ullrich is more physically talented, but Armstrong is mentally tougher.”
I’m not sure I agree with this statement. I know Mr. Armstrong likes to talk about how naturally good Ulrich is and how much he has to work to stay fit. And that certainly makes for good commercials and endears you to the fans. But I’m not sure if it’s true. To say that Armstrong wins because of hard work and Ulrich wins because of genetics is not fair to Ulrich. I’ve seen a lot more suffering in his face than I have in Armstrong’s.
Of course, if you have some lab test data that shows Ulrich to have a significantly higher VO2max than Armstring I will take all of this back 
The distribution of water in a person who is of average size is in the ballpark of 60/40/20 - 60 % of total weight is total body water, 40 % of total weight is intracellular fluid, 20% of total body weight is extracellular fluid which includes plasma and interstitial fluid.
Take lance who weighs about 150lbs
90lbs of his weight comes from water
60lbs of his weight is intracellular
30lbs of his weight is extracellular
plasma is 1/4 of ECF making it 7.5 lbs
so if you were to remove all of the plasma (fluid compnent of blood you would be losing 7.5 lbs.)
However this is not a static measurement your body would try to compensate for the loss of plasma by retaining salt through the kidneys and as a result would increase the osmolariity of the plasma which would shift the fluid balance from the intracellular compartment to the extracellular compartment. So at any given time if you were to remove the blood from someone it would not be a large amount of weight, but with a steadier bleed (often seen in GI cancers) you could very very very easily lose 20 - 30 - 40 pounds within a couple of days. This is becasue the body has time to compensate for the drop in vascular volume that can’t happen in a trauma.
The more important point that the earlier poster was trying to make is that as you increase lean body mass, your body has less ability to store water within fat which means a decrease in the overall amount of weight that can be lost by a lance versus what could be lost by a fat person. 15 pounds sounds like a lot lot lot lot for lance to be losing. He just doesn’t have that 15 pounds to lose
Taku: Unfortunately, you have hit on a theme that must trouble Lance daily-the recurrence of his cancer. Although he has been free of it for, what, almost 6 years, the thought must pierce his soul like a knife. Seeing him so gaunt has actually made me fearful for him. I hope none of this is cancer related, but merely the stress of racing.
Thanks for the insightful post on blood and cell biology!
-Robert
Back of the envelope calculations by some folks much more knowlegeable than me in exercise physiology suggest, based upon the time trial results, that Ullrich was putting out about 5% more wattage than Armstrong. (approaching the neighborhood of 460-490 watts!) This implicates VO2 max as well. I would not doubt that Ullrich has a higher VO2 max, though I don’t have any other data to offer. Furthermore, he is a bit heavier than Armstrong and is beating him in the mountains. This also suggests his VO2 max might be higher. But, there is more than VO2 max to consider and I’m not the one to explicate those issues.
Some comparative numbers would be interesting. Maybe we should just skip the Tour and have them duke it out in the physiology lab! :),
But, yeah, my views are highly subjective.
As for respect for Ullrich, I have enormous respect for him. After what he went through last year he has gotten his act together and maybe enough to win the Tour. We’ll see. Unlike some guys, he didn’t make a cameo appearance and then exit stage left. <cough, cough>
As for Armstrong, he simply has a laser-like focus that many top athletes are missing. His decision behind the Beloki crash is a good example. And his patience when guys make a breakaway is quite sublime. Ullrich has this quality, but he just doesn’t EXUDE as much of it. Maybe it is just a matter of appearance and nothing more, eh?
-Robert
Being a former collegiate wrestler, I have witnessed others lose 12-15 lbs in a day. It is all water weight and it is not safe, but it can and has been done. And no, these guys did not weigh 300 lbs. 150-190.
I don’t normally weigh myself before and after workouts but this thread, and the fact that I’ve been intentionally doing all my long workouts in the hottest part of the day to try to prepare for Vineman made me curious. Today I weighed myself before my long run. I was 166.6 lbs (I’m 6’0") before I started. I then did a 3 hour run where the temps were ranging from 95-98 degrees. I was carrying two 12oz bottles of Gatorade in an Ultimate fanny pack, and another 24 oz bottle of water. I was also carrying a flask of gu and Succeed tabs. Hydration/nutrition plan was as follows: at minutes 10, 20, 40, 50 I’d drink Gatorade. At minutes 30 and 60 I’d take a shot of gu and a Succeed with water. I drank all 24 oz of water and all 24 oz of Gatorade by the half way point (1.5 hours). I stopped refilled water and Gatorade at a gas station, and returned home with the same plan- again drank all the water and all the Gatorade by the time I got home (drank a total of 96 oz of water/Gatorade). I then wieghed myself again- and I had lost 6 pounds! I was totally shocked because I felt like I was drinking about as much as I could stomach. This is nowhere near as much as Lance claims to have lost, but it’s still about 4% of my total body weight, and definitely enough to affect performance (in retrospect it could partly account for my HR drift). My point is, even if you think you’re drinking about as much as you can, it’s very easy to lose significant body weight in a relatively short period of time if the temp is high.
I don’t think he lost that much. He said what he normally weighed, not that he’d actually weighed himself, before the event.
Some people may be able to lose that much in a day, I myself, a champion sweater, have lost as much as 7 lbs on a 7 hour bike ride, but I can’t believe he could have lost that amount in 1 hour.
For the poster who drank 96 fl oz during a 3 hour run, I’d assume you probably peed 50 fl oz.
One thing I’ve noticed is that as I lose more and more fluid on a long bike or run, I eventually begin sweating less profusely. I guess that’s when it’s time to stop.
For the poster who drank 96 fl oz during a 3 hour run, I’d assume you probably peed 50 fl oz.
Sorry, should have mentioned that… I peed right before weighing myself beforehand. I never peed during the run. Peed again when I got home, right before weighing myself again (nowhere near 50 oz, though. Maybe 8-10 oz).
Red: I wrestled in high school and always had to wrestled UP, so I never tried to lose weight. I doubt if I could have lost much as I was pretty lean.
From memory only, the most weight I remember losing was in a force march of 20 miles in the Marines on a 90 degree day carrying a Prick 6 radio, two M-1 rifles and two backbacks (my buddy couldn’t make it carrying his load) only to find out at the end of the day that I had the Hong Kong A2 strain of influenza. I lost about 8 pounds according to the corpsman and spent a week in the hospital. I had a 103 temperature as well. That’s the sickest I’ve ever been.
I just find losing 15 pounds very difficult to believe, but what is more unbelievable is doing a time trial at such a high level and coming out the next day and racing at the same high level. Something isn’t kosher here.
-Robert