July 11, 2005 – Currently a professional cyclist with the Phonak Cycling Team, Floyd Landis began cycling as a teenager in Pennsylvania. He completed the Tour De France three times, contributing significantly to the success of Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service Team. Now poised to ride for a top finish in this year’s Tour, I’ve come to believe that there is no athlete or person more capable. On that strong sense of faith and a
great time earlier in the year at the Power Tap training camp, I returned to Marietta, California along with Robbie Ventura of Vision Quest to help Floyd organize his pre-Tour Training.

In only a few days of brainstorming, testing, training diary analysis, and planning I’ve come to realize that there are few people who understand the Tour and professional racing like Floyd. He has some incredibly innovative ideas about training and the Tour that I am certain will bring him to new levels this season.

(In between all the planning, Floyd’s coach, Allen Lim, took some time off for this interview with Floyd to talk about life, racing, and power.)

Allen: How did you get into bike racing?

Floyd: I started mountain biking when I was about 15 years old. A friend of mine and I got these mountain bikes just to ride around town with go fishing and hang out. Then the bike shop where we bought the bikes put on a race called the “Big Timber.” So my friend and I did the race in our sweat pants, cause it wasn’t cool to wear spandex in high school. I did the beginner junior race and I won. I thought it was the world championships
but there were only like 15 or 16 guys in the race. Anyway, I got hooked. I did maybe 10 races the next year and pretty much decided then that I wanted to be a professional mountain bike racer. But that didn’t really work out.

Allen: You were still a Mennonite then, right? How did that work with racing?

Floyd: Well, I could only do races on Saturday, until I was 18 and then I stopped worrying about missing church and started going to races.

Allen: So that was your new religion, bike racing.

Floyd: Ya, pretty much. At least that’s what my parents thought.

Allen: What did your parents think?

Floyd: They weren’t too happy about it. They weren’t too supportive of pro sports in general. But after a few years they stopped trying to convince me to stop.

Allen: How did you train back when you were a junior?

Floyd: I just rode my mountain bike as hard as I could whenever I could. Between school, and what my parents wanted me to do, church and work, there wasn’t a lot of time. So I rode at night a lot between 9 pm and 11 pm after I got off work at my job at the grocery store. Fortunately I never got hit.

Allen: So when did you move to California?

Floyd: When I was 20 I left home and moved to Irvine for a few years and lived with some friends who owned a mountain bike company.

Allen: Did you train full time then?

Floyd: Ya, [my friends] sponsored me and I trained full time. For 2 -3 more years I tried to be a mountain bike racer. Then I moved to San Diego when I was 23 and switched to road racing.

Allen: How did you train when you started road racing?

Floyd: Ten hours a day or whatever I could handle until I cracked.

Allen: Really? So how long did it take to crack?

Floyd: Precisely 2 months.

Allen: So what did you do after the 2 months?

Floyd: Quit cycling. I didn’t even have a team. This was before Mercury picked me up.

Allen: So you literally didn’t have a job or anything going on?

Floyd: No. I was actually planning on racing mountain bikes again, but I did some road races in the spring in Northern California and impressed the Mercury team and got picked up.

Allen: What would you have done if you didn’t get picked up?

Floyd: I really didn’t have a plan. That’s what I was trying to figure out during those 10-hour rides.

Allen: How was MTB racing different from road racing?

Floyd: Totally different. In mountain bike racing you have to be very good at the start for positioning and then just hold it. Road racing starts out hard and ends harder. Road racing is a crescendo. Mountain bike racing is more of a decrescendo.

Allen: When did you start using a power meter?

Floyd: About three years ago.

Allen: First impressions?

Floyd: It took a while to get a reference point so that the information was useful. When you first start using it, it’s hard to know what the numbers mean. For the first six months I was on an SRM and then I switched to a Power tap and have been using that exclusively.

Allen: Why did you switch?

Floyd: It was more practical, less expensive, and just as accurate and reliable. For the same price I had three power taps.

Allen: What kind of numbers could you hold say for 30 minutes or for an hour three years ago?

Floyd: For 30 minutes, when I was really fit, somewhere between 390 to 400 watts. For an hour a little less – maybe 380. But I’d rarely do 1-hour efforts.

Allen: That’s interesting that your 30-minute and 1-hour power outputs aren’t that different.

Floyd: No they aren’t far off. I’m more of an aerobic guy. That’s why I suffer in short prologues. The fast guys put four or five seconds on me at the start with a hard acceleration, and then four or five seconds on me at the finish with a strong sprint and that’s 10 seconds I just can’t make up. But if it’s 45 minutes long I’ll make it up.

Allen: What did you look for in the numbers when you first started using your Power Tap?

Floyd: In the beginning I was just trying to figure out what I could do. I was just measuring what was happening. And then once I figured out what I could do, I just started looking for improvement and ways to improve. You really can’t ask for more than that.

Allen: In that way, the tool is just a measuring device for you? A way to raise the bar?

Floyd: Ya. But it’s become a measuring device for everyone and it’s the common language people are using now to compare training and performance. It makes sense in any language and it helps you set real goals.

Allen: Did it change the nature of training for you?

Floyd: Yes it did. Cause now I go less by just feel and more by a combination of how I feel and power. Before I just had feel and the problem is as you get tired your perception of effort changes for a given power. So before I just went hard and over the course of a day, or a couple of days, I was doing less work. I can focus more on keeping my training load up and knowing when I’m tired.

Allen: How much will your power drop when you’re tired?

Floyd: That depends on how tired I am. It can drop a lot. I guess, it drops to zero when I’m really tired cause I’m not riding. You could ride until you couldn’t ride anymore – that would be a funny test. What if you rode until you couldn’t ride anymore? What would that graph look like? Let’s do that. You can be the subject and I’ll record. You’re allowed to eat and drink but you have to go until the power goes to zero.

Allen: Well, there is actually a type of test called a “Time to Exhaustion Test”, but they’re not really reliable because motivation plays a big role. If someone isn’t motivated they just quit.

Floyd: We’ll have to think of a bonus system.

Allen: How much money do you make?

Floyd: Not enough to do that test. I did do a 24-hour mountain bike relay race once, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Allen: Why?

Floyd: I felt miserable for about a week after. Not enough time to sleep. The breaks are just enough to relax and then you have to get back on the bike. Most of it is fun, but between 3 [am] and 7 [am] in the morning, it really hurts. Then it gets better again.

Allen: Speaking of long days, what is your biggest Kjoule day?

Floyd: On a ride, by myself, I once did 6,000 Kjoules. Not bad for a 7-hour ride. The 10-hour days weren’t much more cause I went a lot slower.

Allen: How fast would you go for 10 hours?

Floyd: 14 to 15 mph. That’s not many watts – about 150 watts. But I don’t do any of those rides anymore. That was back when I didn’t have a job, or a family, or anything else. If you have a family and you do ride for 10 hours you won’t have one for long.

Allen: That’s like Alex Candelario style 15 mph, 9 to 5, industrial strength, trucker speed. He mentioned that slow volume base also. Do you think that helps?

Floyd: It’s a different kind of strength. I don’t know. I’m guessing you become more efficient. I think it’s a brain thing. It could just be a neural adaptation. The more you do something, the less you have to think about it to do it. If you ride that much, it just becomes subconscious. Your brain thinks, “this guy is never going to stop pedaling” and it figures a way to deal with it. But isn’t that what some people think? That fatigue is in your brain?

Allen: I think the distinction is one of peripheral vs. central fatigue. There are interesting studies that show that after someone has fatigued, skeletal muscle can still produce the same force through an external electrical stimulation, showing that the fatigue is due to some neural mechanism (i.e., an inability for the nervous system to create the contraction) and not a central mechanism (i.e., some inherent problem with the muscle itself such as a lack of fuel or build up of harmful metabolites). Certainly, there could be a central mechanism within the brain that regulates everything. As an example, some researchers down at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center have some data that shows that at VO2 max subjects stop exercise after a sudden drop in cerebral blood flow. Anyway, do you do that kind of base preparation for the Tour now?

Floyd: Just long miles? No. It’s more like long and hard now. What do you think? Do you think I should do more of that mileage? Does it have any value? You tell me. I mean we don’t do any long slow rides in the Tour so there’s no sense in training like that is there? I guess my reasoning is that if you can do long and hard, why do long and easy. There are only so many hours and days for training. And sometimes an extra hour riding the bike is one less hour of recovery.

Allen: I guess specificity rules. But who knows, I’ll think about it. So are you’re saying less is more?

Floyd: No, I’m just saying training needs to be efficient. At the very least I’m not in a position to waste time anymore.

Allen: What kind of training do you do to prepare for the Tour?

Floyd: The real hard training is the racing. So it’s more about a race program now and less about a training program. In training now, it’s not so much about the high intensity. It’s more about the long and steady climbs. We get plenty of intensity in the races and often in training we have to make up for the lack of time at threshold.

(Note: This year Floyd’s racing preparation for the Tour de France has
included Paris Nice, the Criterium Internationale, the Tour of Georgia,
Cataluyna, and the Dauphine)

Allen: Compared to when you first started using a power meter, what kind of
power output can you produce now? Has it changed much?

Floyd: It hasn’t really changed a whole lot. The difference now, is that I can do more time at a given power and do that power more days in a row. So before I could only do 400 watts for 30 minutes once, and now I can do that four times in a single ride. The difference is just how much total work I can do now at higher intensities. My top-end or threshold hasn’t changed that much. But I guess in the races I do, it’s the guy who rides the hardest the most who is the best bike racer, not the guy who rides the hardest or the most. Riding 180 hours a month doesn’t make you a good bike racer, and riding so hard one day so that you lose five training days doesn’t work either.

Allen: Are you surprised by that improvement?

Floyd: I am surprised, but that was the objective in the first place to improve. Improvement is always the goal.

Allen: Do you use heart rate monitor to train?

Floyd: No. Never.

Allen: Why?

Floyd: Originally, I did when I first started riding but all it did was confuse me, so I stopped.

Allen: Hardest race?

Floyd: The Tour de France is the hardest race in the world.

Allen: Most overrated race?

Floyd: That might offend someone.

Allen: Most underrated race?

Floyd: No idea. I don’t know how they’re rated.

Allen: How much does altitude change your power?

Floyd: 5% at 6,000 feet.

Allen: What do you do to taper into a big race?

Floyd: I don’t do much of that anymore. I guess it depends on the race. Before a stage race a week easy is important. Shorter races I just train through.

Allen: What do you eat during a stage in the Tour.

Floyd: I eat a lot of food. I have no idea how to answer that or where to begin. It’s just a lot of food.

Allen: Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out. Anyway, what would you do if you
weren’t a pro cyclist?

Floyd: I don’t know. I guess that makes me pretty lucky or unlucky.

Allen: Well how about this. What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Floyd: Succeed? I don’t know. What do you mean? You mean anything? What
kind of question is that?

Allen: I mean create your own reality, your own meaning. If you could make it mean anything what would you want it to mean. But I guess what I hear you are saying is that it doesn’t really mean anything anyway, so everything is all kind of arbitrary, including this particular question. You know, “Waiting for Godot.”

Floyd: That sounds about right.

Allen: What is Power?

Floyd: You mean like Power Tap power or rule the world power? Cause they say power is money and money is power. Is that right? I guess money is a combination of time and intensity and that equals work, so ya power for some is money.

Allen: What is a Kcal?

Floyd: The amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of water 1 degree.

Allen: Nice. You know how many people don’t know that? Specifically, a Kcal is a thermal representation of energy and is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius from 14.5 degrees Celsius to 15.5 degrees Celsius.