Lance Armstrong's Comeback Training Plan - Bicycling

The Comeback Training Plan
athlete was producing at threshold, as this is
the key determinant of how fast an athlete
can ride for prolonged periods of time—as in
time trials and long mountain climbs. In the
mid-November test, Lance’s lactate threshold
power was determined to be 400 watts.
At the training camp, team director Johan
Bruyneel observed that Lance was one of the
three strongest riders, an impressive feat
considering he had been training seriously
for only about three months. But it was
still too early to deem Lance’s comeback a
complete success. Lance had been training
hard while the other cyclists on the team had
been finishing up their racing seasons and
taking some well-deserved time off. Dean
Golich, a coach and sports scientist who has
worked with Lance and me since the early
’90s when Dean and I coached together at
USA Cycling and Lance was a member of the
US National Team, summed up the situation
well by commenting that Lance’s fitness was
about 10 percent better than expected and
his teammates’ power outputs were about 10
percent below their peak racing fitness.
A few days after Lance returned from
Tenerife, Dean and I traveled to Austin, Texas,
to test Lance’s lactate threshold in the Pedal
Harder Performance Center located inside
Lance’s Mellow Johnny’s bike shop. Lance’s
former teammate, Kevin Livingston, runs
the center and was in charge of administering
the test and gathering the blood lactate data.
The positive training impact of the team
training camp was immediately apparent:
Lance reached lactate threshold later in the
test and his new lactate threshold power was
measured at 425 watts. He had improved by
25 watts in just two weeks.
As impressive as his power improvement
was, Dean and I noted that his blood lactate
levels throughout the test were also lower
than they had been during the previous test.
Lactate is made when an athlete produces
power using the anaerobic energy system, and
lower lactate levels indicate that the aerobic
engine has become stronger. That told me
that Lance was adapting well to his training
because it meant his body was getting more
energy by burning fat through his aerobic
system.
baCk To raCing
Bolstered by encouraging test results, Lance
readied himself for the first race of his
comeback: the six-stage Tour Down Under,
in Australia. He traveled first to Hawaii for
a two-week training camp that consisted of
more three-day training blocks, this time
with only one day of active recovery between
each. And I joined him in Hawaii to put him
behind the motorbike for a handful of onehour
motorpacing sessions. Lance’s power
output showed he was ready to race, but he
and I both knew it was also important for
him to get reacquainted with the 40 to 60
kilometer-per-hour (25 to 40 mph) pace of
professional racing.
Lance had chosen the Tour Down Under as
the launching point of his comeback for a few
reasons. First of all, it was a great opportunity
to bring the Livestrong message to another
continent. And from a racing standpoint, it
was important for Lance to get back into the
fray. You need great fitness to win the Tour
de France, but you also need to race shoulderto-shoulder
with nearly 200 other racers
day after day. The professional peloton is a
hostile and unforgiving environment, one
that demands an athlete’s complete attention
in order to stay safe, let alone win. Along
these lines, Lance’s main objective was not
to win the Tour Down Under, but to use the
At the team training camp, Lance was one
of the three strongest riders, an impressive
feat considering he had been training
seriously for only about three months.
race to get used to the rhythm and routine of
professional racing.
For me, the Tour Down Under was also
an important component of Lance’s training.
During his Tour de France years Lance never
raced in January, preferring to train and wait
until later in the spring to start competing.
But my comeback plan included an earlier
start to Lance’s racing season as well as
more races than normal, because there is
no better way to gain race-winning fitness
than to race. It is impossible to replicate the
demands of racing in training, because the
intense efforts in races are unpredictable and
extreme, and often come one after another
in rapid succession without adequate time
to recover. To get Lance ready for the 2009
Tour de France, I encouraged him to enter
the Tour Down Under in January, the Tour
of California in February, Castilla y Leon in
March, and for the first time in his career, the
three-week Tour of Italy in May.
Lance performed well in the Tour Down
Under and even tested himself a few times
with accelerations off the front of the peloton.
It was a good first step because, although the
race is difficult, it doesn’t include either a
long individual time trial or a major climbing
stage. It was still a little early for those efforts,
but six days of high-quality racing in high
temperatures and gusty winds provided
Lance with a superb training stimulus.
In preparation for February’s Tour of
California, Lance spent more time climbing
and continued to work on his time-trial
power. The work paid off and Lance was
more than capable of fulfilling his role
of superdomestique for his team leader,
Levi Leipheimer, who went on to win his
third Tour of California. Race fans had an
opportunity to observe a Lance Armstrong
they weren’t accustomed to seeing. Instead
of riding as the team leader at the back of a
long line of teammates, it was Lance who was
sitting at the front of the line setting the pace
for Levi. What was most impressive to me
was Lance’s ability to do so much pace-setting
work and still finish 14 th in his first major
time trial since the 2005 Tour de France.
Fourteenth was a long way from being a
dominating performance, but when you put
it in the context of his comeback and his role
within the team during the preceding days of
racing, it was a performance that indicated his
form was right on target.
Racing is a great form of training, and we
used the Tour of California as the start of a
high-volume training block for Lance. Instead
of taking a recovery period right after the race,
Lance kept riding. For the next week, he piled
on the miles; we were taking advantage of
the training stress he’d already accumulated
during the Tour of California by heaping on
more volume. But in order for this block to be
effective, it was important to cut back on the
intensity and focus on long, steady hours in
the saddle. By the time Lance was done, he
had completed a massive two-week endurance
block that would build the stamina necessary
to return to competition in Europe.
The Tour of Italy was the race Lance was
building up to. Sure, the 2009 Tour de France
was the long-range goal, but the immediate
© 2009, CarmiChael Training SySTemS, inC. all righTS reServed.