Perspective….

Myself, and I’m willing to bet a bunch of other folks at times can find it easy to observe a sport or contest and never comprehend the skill, ability or power that goes into it. 

Be it the Olympics, pro football game, NBA game or MLB game and though there can be spectacular plays -- how many of us put in perspective the immense talent that an athlete is capable of?  Especially when the particular talent on display is hard to quantify, such as on TV.

I came across an article on this year TdF in cyclingnews – that was pretty astonishing to me.  It was an article on a sometimes heard about, moderately popular rider, named Juan Antonio Flecha.  He’s not necessarily the biggest and baddest cat in the cycling world but he mostly gets his respect when it’s due.  Well, if a person hadn’t heard -- he was on a breakaway in Stage 9 of this years TdF, doing an impressive ride until he & another rider got hit by a French TV car ending his opportunity.

Well cyclingnews put out an article on his recorded Power output numbers on that day.  (I believe they use the SRM crank setup as their power meters.)  Therein lay the astonishing reality check for how amazing a top end athlete can be.  Juan Antonio Flecha is about my size, he’s just about 6’ tall & 160lbs.  Now, anyone reading this who’s into power gets this – for those that don’t just put in perspective of how hard an effort you’ve ever done in staying with me (or passing me by) on a bike while we’ve been racing  really, really hard, …..not after I’ve bonked out. 

Here’s the power he produce on his bike during Stage 9 of the 2011 TdF, compared to my best efforts.

	Flecha	Me
Threshold effort – 20minutes --(riding your fastest 20minute Time Trial)	446 watts	345 watts

 

Another example: he can do for 20minutes, what I can do maxing my brains out riding as hard as I can for 3 minutes.  So Juan, if you are kind enough to go at your decent 20minute pace, I can stick with you for 3 minutes before I feel like passing out and dying. 

Think of that the next time you are riding hard or racing to get an even better appreciation of not just the endurance but the power some athletes have.  The human body is an amazing thing.

The above is his short term power.  Long term he can kept up for 5 hrs & 43 minutes….. what I can do for 40minutes.

Lastly, from what one can ascertain in articles and interviews he’s a pretty darn good, head-on-his-shoulders-the-right-way, kind of guy.  To get paid for riding a bike and have this perspective, it’s pretty great.

Details on the power he threw down in Stage 9 before getting bump by the car are here if you want to see them.

So with that perspective…for my clients to know it’s safe for me to say my day job isn’t even remotely close to being in jeopardy.  But for those of you planning on the O2S & Cheq 40 this year… I’m not planning any more than 20 of you to toss down better power than I’m shooting for on either of those days.  And for that matter, as nice as he is I sure hope J.A.F doesn’t show up…….