~OT~....THE LONG RIDE
by MICHAEL SPECTER
How did Lance Armstrong manage the greatest comeback in sports history?
The New Yorker
Issue of 2002-07-15
newyorker.com
<<...Carmichael believes that rigorous training is what ultimately turns a talented athlete into a star. "Who hits more practice balls every day than any other golfer?" Carmichael asked. "Guess what? It's Tiger Woods. Well, Lance trains more than his competitors. He was the first to go out and actually ride the important Tour stages in advance. He doesn't just wake up in July and say, 'God, I hope I am ready for this race.' He knows he is ready, because he has whipped himself all year long."
Armstrong describes his bike as his office. "It's my job," he told me. "I love it, and I wouldn't ride if I didn't. But it's incredibly hard work, full of sacrifices. And you have to be able to go out there every single day." In the morning, he rises, eats, and gets on his bike; sometimes, before a particularly long day, he waits to eat again (in order to store up carbohydrates) before taking off. "We schedule his daily workouts to leave late in the morning, so that he can ride for six hours," Carmichael said. "He returns home about five or six o'clock, in time for a quick dinner—a protein-carb smoothie, a little pasta. Then it is time for bed."
During the cycling season, Armstrong calculates each watt he has burned on his bike and then uses a digital scale to weigh every morsel of food that passes his lips. This way, he knows exactly how many calories he needs to get through the day. When he is racing, his meals are gargantuan. (It took three men to lug the team's rations—boxes full of cereal, bread, yogurt, eggs, fruit, honey, chocolate spread, jam, peanut butter, and other snacks—into the hotel breakfast room during the Dauphiné.) On days when a race begins at noon or later, Armstrong will eat two heaping plates of pasta and perhaps a power bar three hours before the race, after having had a full breakfast.
When I visited Carmichael in Colorado Springs, he showed me Armstrong's training schedule for a few weeks this spring. On April 28th, a Sunday, Armstrong competed in the Amstel Gold, a one-day annual World Cup race in Holland. He finished fourth, covering the two-hundred-and-fifty-four-kilometre course (which included thirty-three climbs) in six hours, forty-nine minutes, and seventeen seconds. His average speed was 37.32 k.p.h., the same as that of the winner, who beat him by about three feet. Carmichael scheduled a rest day and urged Armstrong to stay off his bicycle. "He almost never listens when I tell him to do that," Carmichael said. "But I tell him anyway." Tuesday was an easy day: a two-hour ride, maintaining an approximate heart rate of a hundred and thirty-five beats a minute. The next day was more typical: five hours over rolling terrain, with a heart rate of about a hundred and fifty-five beats a minute and an average effort of three hundred and twenty watts. Friday was a slow ride for two hours. Then, on Saturday, Armstrong rode for four hours with two climbs, each lasting about half an hour, during which he kept a heart rate of a hundred and seventy-five beats a minute with a power expenditure of about four hundred watts. After that, Carmichael had him draft at a fast rate behind a motorcycle for two hours without a break. In addition, Armstrong always stretches for about an hour a day, and during the off-season he spends hours in the gym, improving his core strength. "Nobody else puts himself through this," Carmichael said. "Nobody would dare."...>> |
