ARMSTRONG, THE GREATEST PRODUCT OF OUR SCIENCE

We requested to Victor Plata some information about his training diary, the last two years before Athens where he placed 27^th.  He did not have any problems given his entire training regimen.  It is obvious “the map is not the territory.“  To do the training as it was written merits an athlete with the self-discipline he possesses, the work ethics he has. His conception about life is also necessary, because he has fun doing his best while training.  In a few words, we needed to create a human being able to follow instructions and enjoying the process.  A Russian friend told me once “why in America anybody can be a hero.”  I did not have problems to tell him that the infrastructure make things possible. They can form teams easily, comparing such behavior to other countries.  And the goals are geared to get the best performance.  Armstrong was able to make teams including his cancer treatment team to succeed in his fight against it.  Culture makes the difference as illustrated with this comment made in the webpage of Team TBB:

“a long long time ago , i was recruited to fill in for a major football club in australia as team conditioner back then the team had finnished  last  the yr  before, well the 2 trainers had taken seriously ill and one of them a good friend asked me to step in at short notice for the preseason was about to start in 6 weeks .

i said , if the coach lets me do the job , my way no drama , happy to help , well after 3 weeks , 2 fist fights  with team tuff guys , the team was doin it my way, much like you read here 12x400 for the backs , foreward 50 x 50m with sleds , well you get the picture , i was in the lets train the loser out of them mode ,

we improved dramatically , won the pre season at odds of 100 to one and won the first 3 games of the season . however , i was not liked by "the boys " and i didnt give a shit , we were now winning .

i was called in to the upstairs office , being young and dumb , i thought , they are going to upgrade me and give me a proper contract and i can give the swimming coaching away .

instead i was  flabbergasted ,   i got the sack.

doc , the team is very unhappy , the coach says " the boys " need to have more fun at training .

i said we having the most fun this club has had in  6 yrs , winning is great fun .doc , your a bit nieve about footballers , if they are not happy they dont perform ,

i said , lets do it this way , ill quit because this is a loser club and it starts from the top, not the players , and you will never win a premiership , because the culture here is to lose is ok long as its fun .that yr they finnished 3rd last ,but im sure they had fun

now let me see   that would have been between 25 and 28 yrs ago ,  i dont follow football over their since i left the country , but i know one statistic ,

they are still yet to win a premiership ,

and i know one thing the truth only hurts the fragile .”

The culture of “winning is a great fun” does not exist easily.  It has to be created.

 

But let´s go back to Armstrong.  He was born in a culture that most likely was not his own family except his mother, from where I read in his books.  There were people around him that did a great job with Armstrong   He had the infrastructure; the most difficult part. It took 10 years for us to create that culture and 10 previous years of failures.  Only one of the original team members continues with us and he is the example we needed for the others, a model that is a subject of improvements. It took us ten years to develop this model.  Armstrong had a model to follow; it was, perhaps, a mixture of many people, as generally happens when we grow up.  Nothing is written in our head, everything is an invention.  Somebody told me once that her “transitional object” at the age of 14 was blue and not pink.  Details do not matter for our concepts; the concepts behind the conception stay and are valid.  Show me “your transitional objects and I can have an accurate prognosis.” The transitional objects are our daily life heroes and are represented by objects.  Our heroes give us the limit of what we can do.

We have the culture that nurtured Lance, what about the engine?  What kind of engine is needed?  A formula one athlete, not a tractor for sure; high rpm with no much torque; just like Lance.  I hope you see the video and count his cadence www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFEd9cgGJt0&feature=related. He just played with the triathletes, 41.8 km/hr. average just to warm up for the run.  The only one that stayed with his own game was the twice Olympic medalist, another champion, Docherty.  He knew, even that his best piece of triathlon was the bike, not to push himself like the others.  He did not stay too long on his threshold.  Armstrong did not hit his threshold either. In 2007, Armstrong was interviewed by Ciclismo a fondo.  267: 46.  He said: “The reason why Johan and I were able to win was because we competed against a bunch of imbeciles.  We had a modern planning…There were a bunch of ranchers running around us…still the same situation in cycling.”  I would say that he approached triathlon the same way and thinks the same way.  Not to blame him for such thing, most likely he´s still correct.  It is for us to face reality without lying to ourselves.  Athletes focus on things like doping to explain mediocrity.  Even if that was true, how is he able to hide it?  Other said, “Cream used for treatment has something in it that help him to perform better.”  They never look at how they can improve by applying science.   There is a lot of space to improve swimming, biking and running.  Our friend Gennadi Tourestki used to say: “The majority of the triathletes are average swimmers.”  Tourestki coached world champions and developed the greatest Russian, Alexander Popov. That is what Armstrong proved; triathletes are average bikers and runners.  He won second place in Panama 70.3 running because he warmed up biking and swimming. 

But, what about Lance´s VO2max?  Oops.  Lance has the same VO2 max as our friend Victor Plata when he competed in Athens.  In four years, Victor went from high 60´s to low 80´s.  Is it that Lance will run like Victor? 31 low the 10k competing in triathlon.  No, the economy of the movement needs time to develop (Victor ran the 800 meters in college and had a PR of 1:53).  Lance took seven years to develop his cycling economy, according to the study of Edward Coyle, 2% in seven years (Joyner, MJ and EF Coyle. Endurance exercise performance: the physiology of champions. Journal of Physiology 586:35-44, 2008).  The economy of movement has to do with technique, cadence and the quality of training in general. Greg Bennett mentioned in an interview that it took him four years to improve less than a minute in the 10k of triathlon before Athens, just by improving the economy of running; his VO2 max had a limit.  Macca is another example; he is unable to run below 31 minutes in Olympic triathlons even though he surely has a very high VO2max.  The 80´s are the limit in triathletes.  I will talk about this in the future.