Backing floyd in the campaign for yellow

Dr Allen Lim interview, July 12, 2006, part 1

The saying 'behind every great man there is a great woman,' is well known, but when it comes to Tour de France contenders, it's equally accurate to say that behind every serious yellow jersey candidate is a very important support crew. Dr. Allen Lim is one of those who is helping Floyd Landis' challenge. The University of Colorado Integrative Physiology graduate is acting as a training advisor to the Phonak rider. In the first part of a two-part interview Cyclingnews' Shane Stokes spoke to Lim in the lead up to the Tour and after Saturday's time trial. Lim provides an interesting insight into the behind-the-scenes work that helps mount a serious Tour challenge, as well as giving a broader understanding of Landis's character, qualities and prospects in the race.

Allen Lim: Well, he had a little bit of a mishap, breaking his time trial bars and having to change his bike, but he is on track. If we factor in the time lost in the stop and if we also consider the aerodynamic changes that occurred with the bicycles [the angle of the bars were required to be set lower by the UCI prior to the TT], he is exactly where he should be. In fact, had he not had those mishaps, I think he would only have been 22 or 23 seconds down on first place. That is, within plus or minus three watts of where we thought he should have been, so everything is great.

AL: Well, Santiago Botero was originally going to be the team's GC guy there. Floyd had been training very hard beforehand and, not only that, he was coming out of the mountains and it had been very cold up there. He wasn't ready for the heat on Ventoux… it was like a furnace there. So rather than just slaughter himself for a top 10, he decided to use the rest of the week as training. His legs just weren't good in that level of heat so he couldn't perform.

AL: I will say this. It looks very similar to how it looked at the Tour of California and Tour de Georgia, the other strong performances he has done this year. This time round, it is a little better than last year's Tour, but the big caveat is that it is very, very hard to say right now, even with the power data, because this race has been so easy for the riders this first week. Outside of the prologue and the time trial, there really hasn't been any critical moments in the race and so the guys are literally sitting in, relaxing, trying not to do a lot of work.

AL: It is hard to say. You look down the GC and it is like, holy cow, this is such a different race. I had expected George [Hincapie] and Levi [Leipheimer] to be closer to the front. I think Cadel Evans is still right in there still. I guess we will see. I don't know how Klöden is going to be climbing, if he has good legs at all… I don't think Gonchar is going to do it, I don't know much about Sebastien Lang but I don't think he is going to do it and I don't think Michael Rogers is going to be climbing. I don't know much about Gustav Larsson from Francaise des Jeux.

AL: It can affect his power output. If it is not good, then his power is not good. But when he fights through it, man, he is so strong that it is no problem. I think that he did really smart things in the off season in terms of recovering and resting and that is a lot of the reason for his success. Nursing it. That is why I believe people haven't seen what he is capable of. He has got a lot of great people around him, helping him with this problem and I think that once he gets it fixed, then holy cow… He will be going so well.

AL: I don't know if he is that different. There is certainly a point in every athlete's career when they hit their peak, their prime. He is definitely hitting that point. But when you look at things overall, aerobically and anaerobically, he is quite similar to the other top athletes. I would say that physiologically speaking, if you compare him to Ullrich, Basso, Lance, they are all very close to each other on a given day. They are all really the same beast. The beauty of the sport is that once you get that engine, once you are dealing with physiology at that level, it is really about the driver; it is no longer about the car.

I think it is about the skill of the bike racer, about the tactical awareness and the mental strength. Floyd is the kind of guy who is razor, razor sharp. He knows everything that is going on around him, he is an exceptional bike handler and racer. He is very, very smart… he knows what his body can handle and how to dish that out. He is good tactically and good day to day, in terms of the living, the travelling and the recovery. He is exceptionally good with eating on the bicycle… he can take in a lot of food on the bicycle, whereas a lot of people may have stomach problems. So one of the differences is that he has a rock solid gut. That intake of energy during a long stage race is really, really crucial.

After that, the goal was primarily to just check out courses and ride bikes. The plan was to check out all the major courses that we think will play an important role in this year's Tour, in order to have a good idea of what is going on there. It was last-minute preparation at that point. There is not so much else you can do in the last couple of weeks. You need to take it easy beforehand to make sure that you are fresh and healthy. The Tour is such a long race that it is not like you want to be going full steam ahead heading into it.

AL: It is so different, it is like night and day. He made huge gains over the off-season. I think people don't realise that between 2004 and 2005, the off-season was a very difficult one for him for a number of reasons. He got really, really sick in the 2004 Vuelta and that ended up destroying most of his off-season. It took many months to recover from that, so he didn't come into the 2005 season with the same amount of base or conditioning as before. Then in 2005 itself he really brought up his training load significantly, and that was a big adjustment for his body as a whole.

That was an off-season where he was able to maintain much of the momentum he had created in the 2005 training year. We saw the fruits of that labour as a result. If you take the perspective of comparing one year to another year, there is a big, big difference in the power he can generate. But if you take it day by day and just graph it out from 2005 to this point in time, there has been a pretty solid incremental progression. The important thing is that that those little gains have adopted quite a bit over the course of a year or two years.

That said, in order to really optimise somebody's training, you need to experiment with overstepping the boundaries at times and knowing exactly what that limit is. His training is definitely not as hard as it was last year, but he is in better condition and in better shape. For a given duration he is generating a significantly higher amount of power. Part of that is down to him not going off and demolishing himself in the same way as perhaps he did last year.

AL: Well, I think that winning those early-season races was really quite special, and he was quite fortunate to have those opportunities. But if you look at those races, he primarily won Georgia and California based on his time trial performance, and having a strong team. Examining the power outputs he generated in those races, for a short period of time he could certainly handle a higher intensity than before, which is critical for performances. But overall I don't think that the training loads were any more difficult than the loads he did in previous years.

AL: I think just because he was strong earlier this year and seems better than last year doesn't necessarily mean he is going to win the race. It is bike racing - there are so many things going on, in terms of tactics, the day-to-day recovery process, not having bad luck, not crashing, not getting sick. There are a lot of things which may play a part, so we will have to wait and see. But he is certainly strong.