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Andy Coggan
July 31st 03, 12:49 PM
"BD" > wrote in message
...
> Hey all,
>
> I have been trying to find a piece that was in a cycling magazine a while
> back. It could have been in a mainstream sports article, but I don't
think
> so.
> The article was about a piece of testing equipment that the University of
> Texas had for measuring lung capacity and performance under stress. The
> article talked about how they had tested all kinds of athletes in all of
the
> major sports and then got Lance to come in, he promptly destroyed the
> previous marks for performance that they had measured on other athlete.
> There was much more in the article, but that is what I remember most about
> it.
> Anyone have any idea what magazine it appeared in or where I can find it?

Never seen the article, but undoubtly it was about physiological testing in
Ed Coyle's lab at UT-Austin. Lung capacity wouldn't have been measured
(since except in swimmers and perhaps gymnasts, it isn't altered by athletic
activity), but VO2max would have been. Unless something has changed
significantly, however, I doubt that Armstrong "promptly destroyed the
previous marks for performance they had measured on other athletes". His
VO2max has been reported to be in the low to mid 80 mL/min/kg range, and I
know for a fact that at least one other cyclist has recorded a similar value
in Ed's lab.

Now that I think about it, Bicycling did a piece about Ed's lab a few years
ago...had a picture of him sitting on the ergometer in normal clothes, maybe
juggling something?

Andy Coggan

Michael
July 31st 03, 05:53 PM
"Andy Coggan" > wrote in message
arthlink.net...
> "BD" > wrote in message
> ...

> > The article was about a piece of testing equipment that the University
of
> > Texas had for measuring lung capacity and performance under stress. The
> > article talked about how they had tested all kinds of athletes in all of
> the
> > major sports and then got Lance to come in, he promptly destroyed the
> > previous marks for performance that they had measured on other athlete.
> > There was much more in the article, but that is what I remember most
about
> > it.

Here's Michael Specter's article that includes a paragraph about Lance
Armstrongs VO@ Max testing:

http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2002/2002_07_15_lance.html

"Armstrong was an outstanding young swimmer, and as an adolescent he began
to enter triathlons. By 1987, when he was sixteen, he was also winning
bicycle races. That year, he was invited to the Cooper Institute, in Dallas,
which was one of the first centers to recognize the relationship between
fitness and aerobic conditioning. Everyone uses oxygen to break down food
into the components that provide energy; the more oxygen you are able to
use, the more energy you will produce, and the faster you can run, ride, or
swim. Armstrong was given a test called the VO2 Max, which is commonly used
to assess an athlete's aerobic ability: it measures the maximum amount of
oxygen the lungs can consume during exercise. His levels were the highest
ever recorded at the clinic. (Currently, they are about eighty-five
millilitres per kilogram of body weight; a healthy man might have a VO2 Max
of forty.)"

Mapei81
August 1st 03, 03:39 PM
I believe the lab stuff was also recounted in a New Yorker feature on LANCE
earlier this year.

Raptor
August 2nd 03, 12:13 AM
jeffl wrote:
> There was some mention of the testing in a UofT in Dec 2002
> Sports Illustrated. The one with Lance as sportsman of the
> year.
>
> It talked about some (?)baseball(?) player riding a cybex machine
> for about 4 minutes before total exhaustion. Lance rides it
> for an hour.
>
> -jl

Quite inconclusive. (Though I do not doubt that baseball players have
little aerobic capacity in general. Most of them don't qualify as
athletes IMO.) A cyclist is going to ride any bike better than another
kind of athlete. In many cases, much better.

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