Two Wheel Blogs

I was reading CyclingNews today and saw the Allen Lim interview where he gave a glimpse into Floyd Landis' powertap files from his amazing breakaway in yesterday's Stage 17 of Le Tour de France. Lim is part of Floyd's training entourage.

There are some interesting statistics in the article which I've pulled out here in bullet form:

• Floyd Landis' average speed for Stage 17 was just over 37kph, or 23mph. There were five mountains to climb in Stage 17.
• Floyd's power for the nearly 5 1/2 hour stage was 281 watts. He raised that to 318watts for the last two hours.
• Some of his peak power levels for the stage (all of which took place during his attack):
  

  Time           Wattage
  30 seconds     544
  10 minute      431
  30 minute      401
  

• On the Joux-Plane, the final climb of the stage, with an 8.5% grade for 11.7km / 7.3miles Floyd averaged 373watts. Must have been getting tired.
• His average cadence for the stage was 89rpm.

I'm curious to know whether his cadence average includes zeros. If not then his average cadence when pedaling will be much higher, because a great amount of the descending time would be spent coasting. His top speed on the final descent was only 83.7kph, or 51.9mph. Not all that fast if you go by how fast the OLN guys always say the peloton descends. Then again Floyd was alone, so he didn't have the aero advantages the peloton affords.

So do you think these guys are normal people? There is certainly nothing normal about those results. That they can make this kind of wattage over such and extended period of time is almost beyond belief. Simply amazing.