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B. Lafferty said:

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Quoted message said:

B. Lafferty said:

If you have any doubts, give us your assumptions before you start
crunching.

How's this for starters (using the quote that Benjo Maso provided):

"[Ferrari] drew the line, and came up with the threshold Armstrong
already guessed he was.

Four hundred and seventy watts.

The number had an immediate effect; it soaked into him, it vibrated in
the soft spring air. He was 470, 40 watts higher than this time last
year, the same number he was last June, just before the Tour. The
same! It was a short test, which usually based higher, but still, it
was promising news. To get to 6.7, he had to get 30 watts more
powerful,
and lose 5.5 kilos, and he had six months to do it.

(....) It was good to enjoy it, because the feeling wouldn't last. In
fact, it was disappearing even now, evaporating as Armstrong leaned
over to look at Ferrari's graph paper.

"What did Floyd get?" Armstrong asked Ferrari. The doctor pointed a
pencil tip toward a line: Landis had 420 watts but he only weighed
sixty-nine kilos (152 pounds). Landis was faster.

Quoted message said:

From Daniel Coyle, ``Armstrong's War'.

Based on the above description, it sounds as if Ferrari estimated
Armstrong's and Landis' maximal sustainable power based on lactate
responses during an incremental exercise test using average-length
stages. There are limitations to this approach, and we don't know
exactly what criteria Ferrari used to define "threshold", but the
values seem quite reasonable in light of other data (e.g., Lim's
estimates that Landis averaged 417-425 W during the first ITT this
year), so I'll go with them...here's what we know/can deduce:

1) Landis power/mass was 6.09 W/kg

2) this was higher than Armstrong's at the time of the test

3) Armstrong's absolute power was 470 W

4) to get to 6.7 W/kg, he had increase his power to 500 W, and reduce
his body mass by 5.5 kg.

Quoted message said:

From #3 and #4 above, we can conclude that at the time of the test,

Armstrong weighed 80.1 kg. This would make his power/mass at the time
to be 5.9 W/kg, i.e., consistent with #1 and #2.

Now moving on...Armstrong's VO2max (in mL/min/kg) is reportedly
somewhere in the low to mid 80's. However, even if it were "only" 80
mL/min/kg, then his absolute VO2max was 6.4 L/min. Indeed, quoting
Coyle (Edward, not Daniel): "VO2 max during the competitive season of
1993, soon after winning the World Road Racing Championships (September
1993), was 6.1 l/min and 81.2 ml/kg/min, results that were corroborated
by the United States Olympic Committee (Colorado Springs, CO)."*

If you then accept that 1) he could sustain 90% of his VO2max for the
duration of, e.g., l'alpe de Huez, and 2) he had high-average cycling
efficiency, then his power when climbing would have been 475-500 W,
i.e., consistent with the quote from Coyle's book. The only real
question, then, is whether loss of 5+ kg of body mass would have
adversely affected his VO2max, and hence his ability to produce power.
That we don't know, but given that 1) he raced quite successfully in
1993 at 75 kg (calculated from quote above), and 2) he reportedly lost
some upper body mass as a result of cancer cachexia (a common
occurrence), then I think it is quite possible that he could have
dropped to the 72-74 kg he reportedly raced his Tours at w/o any
negative effects (aside from being hungry much of the time!).

*Although 6.1 L/min is 5% lower than the 6.4 L/min estimate I derived,
the fact that the OTC is at 1860 m could easily account for the
difference. The reason that Coyle (again, Edward, not Daniel) reported
a lower value likely reflects the fact that 1) Armstrong only went to
UT-Austin for testing in the off-season, and 2) the metabolic cart
there (which I built/modified) tends to underestimate VO2 slightly.

Conclusion: I have yet to see any physiological or power data on
Armstrong that could be taken as definitive proof of doping. (OTOH, the
above can't really be taken as proof that he didn't dope, either.)

Andy Coggan

Professor, you wrote in a prior post:

"No, I'm lazy, and don't really feel like digging around the web to try
to come up with reliable values for his time up such climbs, their
length and steepness, etc. Moreover, even if I did do so, we're left
with one great big unknown, which is this: how much did Armstrong
*really* weigh at the time of these exploits? I've seen estimates that
vary by as much as 10%, which obviously has a huge impact on whether
the required VO2 would be believable."

So all of your candyassing above in this post is relatively meaningless.
Nice job. Get back to us when you have the climb stats and plug them in.

Where are your calculations proving he DID dope?

Stu Fleming said:

Quoted message said:

4) to get to 6.7 W/kg, he had increase his power to 500 W, and reduce
his body mass by 5.5 kg.

I'm reminded of the cartoon with the scientists standing in front of a
complex chart, with one step marked "At this point, a miracle occurs"
and for one to say "I think you need a bit more detail here."

6% increase in absolute sustained power.
7% drop in body mass.
6 months.

Forget the papers on doping, all someone needs to do is write a paper on
this training method.

A 6% increase in absolute sustained power in 6 months (from January to
July) would be fairly easy to achieve...all it would take would be
ramping up the training the way people normally do. Assuming you've got
the weight to lose, dropping 5.5 kg in the same time period also
wouldn't be that hard, as we're only talking about the loss of ~0.5
lbs/wk. The tricky part would be pulling both off at the same time w/o,
e.g., getting sick (in which case, it would probably help to minimize
one's racing during this time-frame, due to the uncontrolled and
uncontrollable nature of the stress that racing entails).

Andy Coggan