New York Times Julie Macur doesn't seem like a fangirl to me

[acoggan]

The artificial barriers you've erected to avoid discussing what we discuss in the clinic are comical.

You are free to discuss whatever you desire. Me, I'm only interested in discussing issues where I have better-than-average insight or understanding. Otherwise, I would just be sharing yet another opinion...and you know what they say about opinions.

 

[131313]

I like Sassi on this, a straightshooter who definitely is no egoist egghead, who is heavily involved in the current pro peloton daily, has tons of actual daily SRM data from Basso, Evans, Rogers, etc., up to this very day (i.e., from the Tour stage yesterday):

"If you look at Pantani’s times, the power he produced was very close to 6.8 watts per kilo, and that is something no one can explain if you have physiological normal conditions for any athlete.”

You believe what you want or don't want.

I simply disagree with Sassi's conclusion. If Eddy Merckx can do >6.2 W/kg on a stationary trainer for an hour, before the advent of blood doping, it's reasonable to assume that he could have done very close to 6.8 W/kg on a shorter climb, not on a stationary trainer... I'd also agree that Pantani was certainly no Eddy Merckx, and that he was doped to the gills.

It's also believable that there can be a gradual progression over time in performance, even without doping. When people start throwing around absolutes such as "no one can explain", I think it's wise to look at the comment skeptically.

To say that 6.8 W/kg isn't worthy of suspicion is one thing, to say it's impossible is quite another.

 

[Tubeless]

I simply disagree with Sassi's conclusion. If Eddy Merckx can do >6.2 W/kg on a stationary trainer for an hour, before the advent of blood doping, it's reasonable to assume that he could have done very close to 6.8 W/kg on a shorter climb, not on a stationary trainer... I'd also agree that Pantani was certainly no Eddy Merckx, and that he was doped to the gills.

It's also believable that there can be a gradual progression over time in performance, even without doping. When people start throwing around absolutes such as "no one can explain", I think it's wise to look at the comment skeptically.

To say that 6.8 W/kg isn't worthy of suspicion is one thing, to say it's impossible is quite another.

Merckx's number was presumably achieved at sea level? At Alpe d'Huez, there's approximately 15% less oxygen available due to altitude to produce watts. Alpe d'Hueq climb start: 2,351 feet, finish: 6,102 feet. Using http://www.altitude.org/air_pressure.php, yields 92% of sea level oxygen at start, 81% at finish. Let's use the average of these two, or 86.5%.

Translating this directly to wattage would mean that Merckx would have been able to produce 0.865*6.2 = 5.37 W/kg at Alpe d'Huez, for the altitude affect alone. Comparing that to Armstrong's 6.8 figure should raise some questions.

Altitude does not affect VO2Max and watts/kg in a linear fashion, but one should certainly take altitude into effect when comparing simple power figures.

 

[acoggan]

Merckx's number was presumably achieved at sea level? At Alpe d'Huez, there's approximately 15% less oxygen available due to altitude to produce watts. Alpe d'Hueq climb start: 2,351 feet, finish: 6,102 feet. Using http://www.altitude.org/air_pressure.php, yields 92% of sea level oxygen at start, 81% at finish. Let's use the average of these two, or 86.5%.

Translating this directly to wattage would mean that Merckx would have been able to produce 0.865*6.2 = 5.37 W/kg at Alpe d'Huez, for the altitude affect alone.

di Prampero et al. studied Merckx right before his hour record:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/468661

They calculate that he produced 5.9 W/kg during the effort, all of which took place at an altitude of 7300 ft.

Note that this 5.9 W/kg figure at 7300 ft agrees well with the power he produced at sea level in the Cologne lab.

It also should be noted that Merckx did little to prepare for the altitude of Mexico City, and that different individuals are impacted differently by hypobaria/hypoxia for reasons that are as-of-yet unknown.

 

[Tubeless]

di Prampero et al. studied Merckx right before his hour record:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/468661

They calculate that he produced 5.9 W/kg during the effort, all of which took place at an altitude of 7300 ft.

Note that this 5.9 W/kg figure at 7300 ft agrees well with the power he produced at sea level in the Cologne lab.

It also should be noted that Merckx did little to prepare for the altitude of Mexico City, and that different individuals are impacted differently by hypobaria/hypoxia for reasons that are as-of-yet unknown.

At 7,300 feet, there's 77% of the sea level oxygen available. If you assume Merckx can produce 6.2 W/kg at sea level, his 1-hour record power number should have been 0.77*6.2 = 4.77 W/kg.

How do you explain this discrepancy? Actual power meter used for one figure, an estimate based on a mathematical equation for the other?

 

[acoggan]

At 7,300 feet, there's 77% of the sea level oxygen available. If you assume Merckx can produce 6.2 W/kg at sea level, his 1-hour record power number should have been 0.77*6.2 = 4.77 W/kg.

How do you explain this discrepancy? Actual power meter used for one figure, an estimate based on a mathematical equation for the other?

Neither: the apparent discrepancy is due to the fact that the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve is decidedly non-linear. You therefore can't just multiply by the ratio of the partial pressure of O2 at two different altitudes to predict the effect on arterial O2 content, and hence on VO2max and power output.

 

[acoggan]

At 7,300 feet, there's 77% of the sea level oxygen available. If you assume Merckx can produce 6.2 W/kg at sea level, his 1-hour record power number should have been 0.77*6.2 = 4.77 W/kg.

How do you explain this discrepancy? Actual power meter used for one figure, an estimate based on a mathematical equation for the other?

Neither: the apparent discrepancy is due to the fact that the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve is decidedly non-linear. You therefore can't just multiply by the ratio of the partial pressure of O2 at two different altitudes to predict the effect on arterial O2 content, and hence on VO2max and power output.

 

[buckwheat]

If that were true then numerous individuals wouldn't be embracing the proposed approach as an anti-doping measure.

I think the proposed approach is part of an anti doping measure.

 

[Tubeless]

Neither: the apparent discrepancy is due to the fact that the oxyhemoglobin dissociation curve is decidedly non-linear. You therefore can't just multiply by the ratio of the partial pressure of O2 at two different altitudes to predict the effect on arterial O2 content, and hence on VO2max and power output.

The article you quoted above says the following: "As the decrease of VO2max with altitude is known from the literature". These fellows seem to think you can use altitude for the power calculation? What table did they use?

Altitude in fact has two separate effects on oxygen absorbtion by muscles. Arterial oxygen saturation drops (lungs can't attach as much oxygen to hemoglobin) and also the muscles' ability to absorb oxygen from blood drops - perfectly good oxygen attached to hemoglobin gets returned to lungs unused at higher altitudes when operating near max capacity. Both are due to the fact that oxygen transfer is based on the difference between air pressure and tissue pressure - as the difference gets smaller, the transfer rate slows down.

How an athlete responds to increase in altitude is individual. And the effect of altitude on power and VO2Max is not linear. But would you agree treshold VO2Max and wattage should move in unison with altitude?

 

[acoggan]

The article you quoted above says the following: "As the decrease of VO2max with altitude is known from the literature". These fellows seem to think you can use altitude for the power calculation? What table did they use?

No one claimed that VO2max does not decrease with altitude. My point was that it does not decrease linearly with pO2 as you assumed in your calculations.

(If you wish to revisit them, I've found the equations/tables listed here to provide goods estimates, at least for me personally:

http://midweekclub.ca/powerFAQ.htm#Q17)

But would you agree treshold VO2Max and wattage should move in unison with altitude?

"In unison"? Not necessarily, as they don't move in lock-step in other situations where convective O2 transport is manipulated (e.g., blood doping, EPO, iron deficiency anemia). In fact, you would expect that changes in VO2max would be greater than changes in submaximal power output, although the discrepancy would not be great as we are discussing efforts at ~90% of VO2max.

 

[Tubeless]

No one claimed that VO2max does not decrease with altitude. My point was that it does not decrease linearly with pO2 as you assumed in your calculations.

(If you wish to revisit them, I've found the equations/tables listed here to provide goods estimates, at least for me personally:

http://midweekclub.ca/powerFAQ.htm#Q17)

"In unison"? Not necessarily, as they don't move in lock-step in other situations where convective O2 transport is manipulated (e.g., blood doping, EPO, iron deficiency anemia). In fact, you would expect that changes in VO2max would be greater than changes in submaximal power output, although the discrepancy would not be great as we are discussing efforts at ~90% of VO2max.

Ok, using the "Peronnet et al" table, at 7,300 feet you'll have 91.75% of the sea-level equivalent aerobic power available. Hence Merckx's 6.2 W/kg at sea level would equate to 5.69 W/kg at that altitude. Not quite the 5.9 you referred to. Close enough for you?

Using the same table to traspose Mercx's sea level performance to Alpe d'Huez altitude (using an altitude average of 4,200 feet - 95.6% of sea level aerobic power available), would yield 5.93 W/kg. Compare that to Armstrong's 6.75 W/kg - is Armstrong able to produce 14% more power than the greatest (clean) cyclist ever? Plausible? Or errors in the math somewhere along the line?

 

[Le breton]

Le breton :
I stopped reading here.
Can you tell me when and where I insulted you?

Buckwheat replied :I didn't say it was a major insult or that I was offended for that matter, but it was a passive aggressive petty little slap. You objected to my use of Feynman and Einstein because technically you didn't think their fields applied to this issue. I was talking more about their way of thinking about issues and in fact, they in no way viewed scientific issues in the extremely specialized, segmented manner Acoggan views them.

Just objecting to your irrelevant name throwing in a high school level physics problem does not in my book constitute an insult. You are trying to bolster your arguments by doing so and I object to that, I find it very annoying, and I teased your earlier on about the same subject ("surely you are joking Mr Buckwheat").

When talking about such simple problems requiring little expertise I think we can argue by stating facts, and drawing inferences based on simple physics or well-known parameters.

Examples of facts : rider A covers x km on y% incline in t seconds.
CdA of a rider A is, say 0.4 m^2, +/- 0.04; Crr = 0.0036 +/-0.0004. Forumer xyz might disagree and say why.

temperature was 28°C
air pressure was h mmHg.
wind effect negligible

I gave such an example of an easily verifiable calculation, reaching the conclusion that LA exerted 6.79 W/kg during 1263 s on AdH in 2004 TdF, with an uncertainty of less than 2%.

I noticed that nobody challenged that calculation or the uncertainty I arrived at.

The validity of my calculation does not depend on whether or not I hold a degree in physics, physiology or psychology, or on naming Freud, Prampero or Higgs in my reasoning.

Later I might come back on more speculative inferences one might draw on the VO2 of rider A.

 

[buckwheat]

Le breton :
I stopped reading here.
Can you tell me when and where I insulted you?

Buckwheat replied :I didn't say it was a major insult or that I was offended for that matter, but it was a passive aggressive petty little slap. You objected to my use of Feynman and Einstein because technically you didn't think their fields applied to this issue. I was talking more about their way of thinking about issues and in fact, they in no way viewed scientific issues in the extremely specialized, segmented manner Acoggan views them.

Just objecting to your irrelevant name throwing in a high school level physics problem does not in my book constitute an insult. You are trying to bolster your arguments by doing so and I object to that, I find it very annoying, and I teased your earlier on about the same subject ("surely you are joking Mr Buckwheat").

When talking about such simple problems requiring little expertise I think we can argue by stating facts, and drawing inferences based on simple physics or well-known parameters.

Examples of facts : rider A covers x km on y% incline in t seconds.
CdA of a rider A is, say 0.4 m^2, +/- 0.04; Crr = 0.0036 +/-0.0004. Forumer xyz might disagree and say why.

temperature was 28°C
air pressure was h mmHg.
wind effect negligible

I gave such an example of an easily verifiable calculation, reaching the conclusion that LA exerted 6.79 W/kg during 1263 s on AdH in 2004 TdF, with an uncertainty of less than 2%.

I noticed that nobody challenged that calculation or the uncertainty I arrived at.

The validity of my calculation does not depend on whether or not I hold a degree in physics, physiology or psychology, or on naming Freud, Prampero or Higgs in my reasoning.

Later I might come back on more speculative inferences one might draw on the VO2 of rider A.

What conclusion do you arrive at regarding Armstrong doping?

I don't mean to bug ya.

 

[buckwheat]

Le breton :
I stopped reading here.
Can you tell me when and where I insulted you?

Buckwheat replied :I didn't say it was a major insult or that I was offended for that matter, but it was a passive aggressive petty little slap. You objected to my use of Feynman and Einstein because technically you didn't think their fields applied to this issue. I was talking more about their way of thinking about issues and in fact, they in no way viewed scientific issues in the extremely specialized, segmented manner Acoggan views them.

Just objecting to your irrelevant name throwing in a high school level physics problem does not in my book constitute an insult. You are trying to bolster your arguments by doing so and I object to that, I find it very annoying, and I teased your earlier on about the same subject ("surely you are joking Mr Buckwheat").

When talking about such simple problems requiring little expertise I think we can argue by stating facts, and drawing inferences based on simple physics or well-known parameters.

Examples of facts : rider A covers x km on y% incline in t seconds.
CdA of a rider A is, say 0.4 m^2, +/- 0.04; Crr = 0.0036 +/-0.0004. Forumer xyz might disagree and say why.

temperature was 28°C
air pressure was h mmHg.
wind effect negligible

I gave such an example of an easily verifiable calculation, reaching the conclusion that LA exerted 6.79 W/kg during 1263 s on AdH in 2004 TdF, with an uncertainty of less than 2%.

I noticed that nobody challenged that calculation or the uncertainty I arrived at.

The validity of my calculation does not depend on whether or not I hold a degree in physics, physiology or psychology, or on naming Freud, Prampero or Higgs in my reasoning.

Later I might come back on more speculative inferences one might draw on the VO2 of rider A.

The problem isn't as simple as you're making it out to be, that's why it's contentious.

Let me quote Feynman again and maybe you will have the patience to read it, rather than having a hissy fit.

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next.

It's not a physics problem, it's an analysis problem.



Hopefully you'll give your very simple deduction with a lot less hot air.

As I pointed out previously, we already know that the majority of these guys including Armstrong, are doping.

Actually Freudian analysis might reveal LA's motivation, ie. impress the blondes who remind him of someone.

 

[Cozy Beehive]

Ok, using the "Peronnet et al" table, at 7,300 feet you'll have 91.75% of the sea-level equivalent aerobic power available. Hence Merckx's 6.2 W/kg at sea level would equate to 5.69 W/kg at that altitude. Not quite the 5.9 you referred to. Close enough for you?

Sorry to b_u_t_t in the convo, but aren't those equations for runners? Besides, 97% confidence fit on top of it all. Example, plug in x=0 km for both Bassett's math acclimatized and non-acclimatized and you get power y = 99 and 98% respectively. So where is 100% power, down on the sea floor?

Eitherway, this gave me a chance to compare the altitude effect on power (my calculations using simple physics for a 65 kg rider producing 6W/kg) with Bassett's and Peronnet's estimation formulas. The comparison is as follows. Not too visually pleasing of a graph, but bottomline : 1% error between me and Peronnet upto an altitude of 400m (1312 feet). Errors just shoot up after that. At 2200 m (the top of Tourmalet), the error is 7.4%. So this is just to give a perspective to those who're arguing here about the efficacy of simplistic calculations vs those of more specialized techniques :

But like I said before, I'm not sure how applicable the data for runners is, when we're talking about cycling. And these are all estimations at the end of the day, nevertheless.

 

[Cozy Beehive]

Ok, using the "Peronnet et al" table, at 7,300 feet you'll have 91.75% of the sea-level equivalent aerobic power available. Hence Merckx's 6.2 W/kg at sea level would equate to 5.69 W/kg at that altitude. Not quite the 5.9 you referred to. Close enough for you?

Sorry to b_u_t_t in the convo, but aren't those equations for runners? Besides, 97% confidence fit on top of it all. Example, plug in x=0 km for both Bassett's math acclimatized and non-acclimatized and you get power y = 99 and 98% respectively. So where is 100% power, down on the sea floor?

 

[Le breton]

The problem isn't as simple as you're making it out to be, that's why it's contentious.
.........
It's not a physics problem, it's an analysis problem.
.....
Hopefully you'll give your very simple deduction with a lot less hot air.

I guess I'll never understand your English.
example : your sentence in red
and you will never understand mine
example : in green ( no hot air in my view in what I explained, unless 28°C is hot for you)

 

[Le breton]

dbrower;276082]Great stuff here -- do you have any of your own power files for the climb to share?

Never climbed it with my Powertap. Was going to do it one time, after Croix de fer, Télégraphe, Galibier, but felt worn out upon reaching Bourg d'Oisans. I understood why when I reached my car and my scale : I had lost almost 10% of my starting body weight! (hot day)
I am quite curious about one of the assumptions made in most of the analysis, that of effectively constant effort. I have heard it said that the Alpe is something of an abnormal climb, being neither constant grade, nor steep switchbacks, but odd in having flattish switchbacks with straight connecting sections. This could place odd demands, or favor certain types of riders who accelerate and recover differently.

Frankly I don't see any merits to these speculations, you just keep the same speed usually on those 20 m. flat stretches and it's just like a microrest, certainly no time to change gears ( you can shorten or lengthen the rest by riding "inside" or "outside" the hairpin.
As for the gradients between hairpins, while not constant, they are almost always above 8.5% - there is just a little stretch near Huez at or below 6.5% where Pantani used to reach 30 km/h
Secondly, one of the things that seems dubious to me in all of the estimations are the assumptions of rider weight. It seems unlikely that most of the riders hitting the Alpe at the end of one or two weeks is carrying the mass they did at the start; nor does it seem likely that those hitting it at the end of the day are going to be carrying the full load they had at the beginning of the day.

If you are severely dehydrated ( as I was the day I did not climb AdH) at the bottom of the climb you are at a distinct disavantage and won't perform well at all. Also, racers constantly get resupplied with food and drinks, so that their total weight at the bottom of a major climb will not be too far below their starting weight.
Same is true for day to day variations, except for Ullrich type who are overweight at the start. When you make a calculation of Watts/kg for a steep uphill climb, since gravity accounts for 85% or more of the energy expenditure, an error of a few kilos on the racer's weight hardly changes the resulting watts/kg necessary to climb at a certain given speed.


I'm not saying anything about whether any of the top rides were "assitence"; probably most will. What I can't figure, because of what seems like a lot of uncertainty, is the reliability of any w/kg estimates as potential predictors of assistence.

Apart from cases when you have a strong wind, the factors mentioned above will not impact greatly the power estimates.
Besides, a 70 kg racer reaching, say the bottom of AdH, with a body mass of only 66kg due to dehydration will certainly benefit through the lesser mass to carry up, a reduction of about 5% of the power required, but will lose much more that 5% due to his dehydrated status.
-dB

 

[poupou]

dehydration and power

A n% dehydration implicates a 2*n% less physical power !

 

[Le breton]

A n% dehydration implicates a 2*n% less physical power !

Not that simple! but more reasonable than Hermansen's 1971 often quoted result (-5% ->-30% and -10% -> death). Hermansen Liv. Helse, 1971, 38, 121-124
I have been dead several times and still able to produce well above 100 watts.
Up to 5% dehydration -> hardly measurable effects.

Above 5% very serious loss of power

 

[Tubeless]

Sorry to b_u_t_t in the convo, but aren't those equations for runners? Besides, 97% confidence fit on top of it all. Example, plug in x=0 km for both Bassett's math acclimatized and non-acclimatized and you get power y = 99 and 98% respectively. So where is 100% power, down on the sea floor?

For the Alpe d'Huez altitude-adjusted number for Merckx of 5.93 W/kg to compare to Armstrong's 6.75, I used the "Peronnet et al" table which is based on a study on cyclists from 1989, before the blood-doping era.

http://midweekclub.ca/powerFAQ.htm#Q17

Or, Armstrong's effort in the 2004 TT is the equivalent of achieving 7.06 W/kg at sea level.

I have not seen anyone previously take into account the effect of altitude which is significant. Trying to pair up Alpe d'Huez power numbers with sea level performance is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

[buckwheat]

I guess I'll never understand your English.
example : your sentence in red
and you will never understand mine
example : in green ( no hot air in my view in what I explained, unless 28°C is hot for you)

Well, if you go back to the post where you extracted these sentences, you've eliminated the most important sentences.

This is kind of like your analysis of physiology. It's entirely too gross. Small bits of info you've eliminated as being unimportant are actually very important.

You think you've got a handle on some extraordianrily complex systems and you're just scratching the surface.

An example is Coggan's intuition regarding "efficiency."

"Efficiency" is used as a catch all for things that are not very well understood. Coggan thinks intuitively that we become more efficienct.

Regarding Armstrong, I believe these adaptations that make human beings more efficient happen over a relatively short time, like a couple of years at the absolute most.

By the time Armstrong became WC in 1993, all of the little engines in his muscles became as efficient as they were ever going to become.

It's still not understood very well how lasts weeks potatoes become this weeks mitochondria.

What role do the oxidative effects of training have on the degradation of the constituents of mitochondria? Do other positive effects of training outpace the degradation of mitochondria or other possible negative atomic effects. No one has much of an idea.

The physiology of anything is not a static situation in the least.

Directly regarding Armstrong, the guy has taken so many hormones that he's made any kind of study on his physiology, as analogous to normal physiology, meaningless.

 

[Le breton]

Well, if you go back to the post where you extracted these sentences, you've eliminated the most important sentences.

This is kind of like your analysis of physiology. It's entirely too gross. Small bits of info you've eliminated as being unimportant are actually very important..............
.

You lost me again.
Where did I do that analysis of physiology?
I know I have irritated some people sometimes with my simplistic views of physiology, but you were not around at the time.

 

[buckwheat]

You lost me again.
Where did I do that analysis of physiology?
I know I have irritated some people sometimes with my simplistic views of physiology, but you were not around at the time.

Your calculations have no relation to physiological processes?

The don't represent a measure of function?

 

[Le breton]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Le breton
You lost me again.
Where did I do that analysis of physiology?
I know I have irritated some people sometimes with my simplistic views of physiology, but you were not around at the time.

Your calculations have no relation to physiological processes?

The don't represent a measure of function?

Of course not.
I just calculated how much power is needed to do the climb under the stated conditions.

I said NOTHING about where the power came from. It could as well be from an electrical motor + battery hidden in the frame, would not change the result.

I also added that I might do some physiological interpretation later if I feel like it and at a considerably greater risk of making mistakes.