I hope you’re not asking, “Floyd who?” This year’s Tour de France has provided enough white-knuckle thrills to last me for a couple of years. It seems like the mass media coverage is somewhat diminished from the Lance era, though I’m gratified to note that NPR has been doing regular coverage. Melissa Block even managed to score an interview after Thursday’s stage 17, where Landis attacked on the first climb and spent 130Km with his nose in the wind to claw his way back into contention for the yellow jersey.

I don’t usually visit www.bicycling.com (home of Bicycling magazine), but fortunately a friend pointed me at Allen Lim’s reports from the tour. Lim is a physiologist who works with Landis as well as the TIAA-CREF team, and has posted some of Floyd’s power data, as well as his analysis. On-bike power meters, first developed over a decade ago, have become very popular among pros and have trickled down to the amateur ranks over the last few years. As it happens, I use the same type of power meter that Floyd does, so I couldn’t resist comparing Floyd’s power data from his gargantuan effort on Stage 17 to my power data from a 100-mile ride (not race) that I did last weekend.

My observations on this lopsided matchup:

• Floyd’s average power for 5+ hours was roughly what I can sustain for an hour, assuming I get to fall over at the end of that hour and maybe take it easy the next day.
• My 30s power wasn’t near my best-ever. In the last month I’ve actually put out over 570W for 30 seconds…but not in the middle of a 200Km mountain ride after three weeks of racing. Since Floyd did a lot of riding alone during this stage (and not a lot of attacking or covering attacks), I assume his 30s peak isn’t near his best either.
• His 30min power was about what I can put out for 2 minutes (and again, probably nowhere near his 30min max).
• He used about 70% more energy than I did. An interesting aside: as things turn out, kilojoules expended is a pretty good approximation of the dietary calories required to supply the energy. So he was burning about 1000 calories an hour.

This reinforces just how highly talented and trained these Pro Tour riders are, dope or no dope. I’m just not from the same planet, physiologically speaking. I’m absolutely cool with that, but the numbers really drive the point home.

Another interesting note is that Landis reportedly took 70 water bottles (each with a roughly .5 L capacity) over the course of his ride. He probaby dumped most of those over his head, but that’s still about 30 L more than I managed to consume in slightly more time. Of course, I cramped up toward the end, so maybe he’s onto something. Must be nice to have a team car following you with a big cooler full of bottles…

Sometime over the weekend, the total pledges + matches from Fat Cyclist readers (and the man himself) surpassed $1500. That means it’s jersey time! I taught myself enough Adobe Illustrator to be dangerous and came up with this. The order is in, so let’s hope Voler can deliver by the 3rd of August. And that also means I’m dangerously close to having my PMC plans fixed, as it were.
I’m amazed at the generosity of my fellow Fat Cyclist readers. Fourteen people I’ve never met, from eight states and two foreign countries, have donated to PMC. And they probably wouldn’t have even heard of PMC if I hadn’t asked. How’s that for the power of the Intarweb?
I’m still learning just how big a deal PMC is. Last night I saw a frickin’ TV show about it. Yeah, it’s just regional cable news channel NECN (whose studios, by the way, are on the course of one of the local training crits), but that’s still pretty cool. Looks like the clips from the show are available online, so you can see what I mean.

In a few minutes, the first rider will roll down the start ramp for the Tour de France prologue at Strasbourg, and already the first post-Lance Tour is mired in scandal. The fallout from last month’s Operaci

Three days in, and holy cats – $380 received from 13 generous people I’ve never met, plus another $200 pledged. Along with Elden’s match, that puts us over 2/3rds of the way to the Fatty Rules Jersey. Which brings me to another point: I’m not exactly a, whaddayacallit, graphic artist. So if anybody out there wants to help me design the thing, please get in touch (jls at jls dot cx will work fine).
Also, I’m going to need about three weeks’ lead time to get the jersey done. If you want to have a chance at taking it home, please donate now. I promise not to stink it up too much.

Today, Elden acknowledged my callout. And, to my great satisfaction, my fellow FC readers responded. In the first few hours we’ve raised another $160, which will be matched by both me and Elden. Thanks to everybody who donated, and to those of you who left comments over at FC to let everybody know just how big a deal the PMC is. We’ve got a ways to go before we hit the “Fatty Rules” jersey level, and even further before – ulp – I have to figure out how I’m going to survive nearly 200 miles without coasting. But I hope we get there. Really. So if you want to join the fun, step right up.

6/27 update: Welcome, fellow Fat Cyclist readers!
So PMC is a mere eight weeks away, and I’ve raised only 10% of the minimum I for the ride. “Plenty of time,” part of me says. “You need to get on the stick,” responds the other part. I’ve started reaching out to everybody I know – friends, classmates, co-workers, people who stand too close to me on the T. If I haven’t asked you yet, consider this fair warning. You could just save me the trouble and go pledge.
But the part of me that’s saying “get on the stick” is whispering a few other things, too, such as “you don’t actually know all that many people.” Now the people I do happen to know are mostly generous (or at least they were before I started posting on the Internet about the voices in my head), so I’m confident that they’ll come through. But this isn’t an exercise in meeting the minimum. I want to raise as much money as I can, and I’m not terribly concerned about looking ridiculous in the process.
I happen to know another guy who likes to ride bike and knows a thing or two about cancer. Coincidentally he’s also got a big ride coming up in August, and his flair for looking ridiculous is well known in certain circles.
That’s right; I’m calling out the Fat Cyclist. I’m shamelessly attempting to use his miniscule celebrity as a lever for my microscopic celebrity, all in the name of cancer fundraising.
So, here’s what I propose:
1. I will match dollar-for-dollar, up to $1000, any donation from a Fat Cyclist blog reader or FC himself. Just put “Fatty Rules” in the comments when you donate.
2. If FC readers give me up to $1500 in donations, I’ll have the folks at Voler make me up a custom “Fatty Rules” jersey to wear on the second day. We are, ahem, encouraged to wear the official PMC jersey on the first day. In turn, I encourage anyone with embarrasing vector art or extremely high resoluton photos of FC to email me. One caveat here: I will need three weeks or so to get the jersey done, so don’t wait.
4. If FC readers shoot the moon and donate $2000 or more, I’ll do the whole route – 192 miles – on my fixed gear. While wearing the jersey.
5. Since this is, of course, all about the Fat Cyclist: If Fatty makes his goal weight for the Leadville 100 by the time I go to the start on the evening of August 4th, I’ll throw in another $500. Of course I will require suitable documentation of this achievement. And if he doesn’t make his goal, maybe I’ll do the ride on his fixie.
Of course, I’m open to counter-suggestions from the man himself, so this list may expand.
A little bit about PMC – this ride has a low profile outside of New England, but it’s a massive charity event. Last year, about 4,000 riders raised $23 million for Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, one of the premiere pediatric and adult cancer research centers in the United States. Ninety-nine percent of the money raised goes to cancer research, so this is an extremely efficent way to help out. This year the goal is $25 million – please help us get there.

I’m pleased to report that my PMC fundraising is underway; my bike-riding buddies Jamie and Ivy have both pledged to support my ride. And I’d like to thank them again for doing so – there are plenty of worthy ways to spend that hard-earned money, and I’m honored that they chose my ride. So you’ve lost your chance to be first, but you can be next. If you’d like to join them, you can do so via my PMC profile page.
For my part, training has been going pretty well. My spring racing campaign came to a soggy end in Sterling this weekend, unfortunately to no great result. Between this race and Turtle Pond a few weeks ago, I’ve learned to be wary of roads that are named after hills. From here on out, I’ll focus more on endurance but I must admit that I like the local training criteriums more than I expected. They’re short, intense and chaotic. No falling asleep on somebody’s wheel, I’m too busy dodging dropped water bottles and setting up for turns.
But I’ll need the endurance more than the intensity of a half-hour training race. I ride my bike a bunch, but I’ve never ridden 192 miles in two days as I will do come this August. Thanks for helping me make that happen.