Lance Armstong is amazing.

[FatSlob]

He's going to win six straight Tours. Surely he is one of the greatest athletes in history.

[Blayde Starrfyre]

1. Hey! Don't jinx him!

Don't go saying he's won his sixth before he actually does it, we don't want to jinx him. And I agree, one of the greatest athletes in history. Chalk up another sport being dominated by the Americans.

[judge_smales]

2. From another board:

Read this over the weekend actually, and thought it was interesting. The Executive Committee of the Tour recently changed some of the rules to "level the field" a bit. As you probably know the overall winner is determined through a formula that sums up a riders performance over the whole 13 days. Previously the winner of any days events had the amount of time he won by added in to the calculations. Becasue of that you could come up with a situation where somebody who had a really strong showing on one day and had a lot of time "in the bank" could run at 80% for the next day or two and still stay in the top of pack. Basically that person could rest while everybody else had to go full out. So- say, just hypothetically of course, that you had a really strong rider who was really good at, well just for example lets say he was really strong in the mountains, where most riders are at their weakest. (Maybe he could be from Texas, or some place like that) He could get a 10 or 20 minute lead comming out of those days and just coast for a few days following- then he'd be fresh for a big push on the flat ground where he could easily overtake the rest of the field.

Well jeeze, a guy like that could win 5 or 6 Tours in a row. So this year the winner of any daily leg get 40 seconds and that's it.

Why I think that this is interesting is that the rules were changed basically to stop one rider (Armstrong), and he's *still* kicking ass!!

So I don't want to hear any drug crap. The guy is fucking amazing, and I'm amazed. Go Lance. Bring it home to the USA!!

[Blayde Starrfyre]

5. Word

The French were just insanely ticked that an American was not only beating them, but DESTROYING them at their own game. And he's still doing it. Go Lance.

[underpants]

6. Two (?) years ago a guy in the back broke a "rule" and got a huge lead

Was it two years ago or three.

The guy (name?) broke the unwritten rule that if the leader/leaders has to take a pee everyone waits and let's him catch up. This guy bolted and didn't wait. The "powers that be" on his team held him back and let the expected winners to take the lead, though they were way behind for a couple of days they were always running their own race.

[Tosca]

3. My theory...

Lance Armstrong is SuperMan!

[underpants]

10. Two factors:his nature energy producing ability and cancer

Armstrong has the ability to turn oxygen into energy in a way that doctors have never seen EVER.

He admits that he couldn't get to this level without having had cancer. As an American his nutrition while growing up was such that his body though thin couldn't get thin enough. He had the chance to rebuild his body (around the skeleton and incredible cardio abilities) as an engineer would.

Also when he was sick his health insurance company was going to boot him off their policy-the owner of Rayban called them and told them if they booted LAnce they would lose ALL Rayban business, the same company also had the Nike account-Phil Knight called too-they paid for Lance's recovery and rehab.

[Tosca]

14. All I remember is...

his photo on SI last year (I think) and saying to myself "It's Super Man!!!!!!!!

Incredible shot.

[Kolesar]

4. The toughest guy in the toughest athletic competition in the world

... with a tough name, too!

[underpants]

7. Riders lose ON AVERAGE 4-5% of bone mass per year

One of my best friends trained a bike team (mountain bike guy himself) so he read up on it. Lance may have lost 24-30% of his bone mass in the last 6 years, no way to get it back.

[Blayde Starrfyre]

8. Can't be right

Lance was riding in the tour before this streak of wins, so if that was true he'd have toothpicks for bones.

[judge_smales]

9. Makes him weigh less

I guess that helps.

[underpants]

12. I'm just telling you what my buddy told me

and it was from a respectable sports medicine magazine or research group. Maybe it was 3% (I remember it as 4-5%) but either way it is extremely draining on the body. You simply can't replenish what you burn daily, the body is eating itself. BTW- the team members ride as far but don't burn like Lance does everyday so their loss is less than his.

[BiggJawn]

11. Wonder how much he'd lose eating cheetos and watching ESPN...

...like a lot of Murkan "Sportsmen"?

That'd be scary, knowing you're setting yourself up for fake hips in your old age.

Yeah, so at least he'll be able to afford good PT when he gets them, unlike me, who'll probably never walk out of the nursing home afterwards...

There was an article last winter in "Bicycling" about that. right after the article about heart attacks and biking. for a while, I thought they were trying to kill the sport by scaring everyone away from it...

[underpants]

13. I suspect the roadies were trying to scare off the cross trainers

especially the mountain bikers :grr:

All my friends that ride are mountain bikers and they HATE egomaniacal selfish roadies, but then ride on the roads themselves from time to time.

[BiggJawn]

16. Actually, they were making a case for "cross training"

Not MTB-Roadie training, but more Tri-type training

Road biking doesn't use the upper body. its just there to hold the lungs and hang the arms onto for steering. So they were claiming that overall bone density suffers if the only thing you do is ride bikes.
they recommended doing weights, push-ups, other sports to keep the upper body toned and busy.

Now the heart article was down-right scary. Written by a guy who had a nasty family history of men clutching their chest and going "ARRRGH!" in their early 40's. So this guy's writing shit like "Do I want to win that sprint to the town sign and possibly blow a major coronary?"...Encouraging, eh?

In the sidebar, turned out there is a new (and expensive as hell, not covered by most HMO's) test that will tell you if you're "at risk" for blowing the pump on a 12% grade....Method to their madness, eh?

And no, I DON'T want to "learn the ropes", either ("Bicycling" readers will understand)

I don't "get" the TOOD problem some of these roadies have. *I'M* a roadie, and even I get "The Eye" from the guys with fancier kit or newer bikes. "Retro-Grouches" is what I think they call us..

Yep, there IS a Bridgestone in my stable...

[Fovea]

15. If that were true

then I would have to turn everything I know about calcium loss and moderate exercise on its head.

Perhaps tour riders, and those who overtrain lose calcium, as their bodies absorb it to replace lost metabolites, but a normal person, riding a normal distance should increase bone density and Calcium deposition over a sedentary one.