That's Fit

After winning the Tour de France seven times, Lance Armstrong is certainly worthy of a relaxing retirement. However, that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Since his retirement, the 35-year-old has found himself constantly on the road, promoting LiveStrong Challenges, the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research, joining with Nike and Apple to publicize his involvement in their partnership, and trying to be home to spend time with his kids. Still, his crazy schedule hasn't stopped him from running marathons.

It's common in serious athletes to see enlarged hearts. The body adapts to the need for more oxygen by creating thicker walls in the heart. But researchers out of France recently took a look at the hearts of Tour de France cyclists and found that their tickers were 20 to 40% larger than average. Though they can't say for sure whether the bikers' hearts were larger than average to begin with, after cyclists retired, their hearts did lose about 25% of their mass, even though the athletes stayed in excellent shape. Tour de France participants are among athletic elite, so seeing how their bodies adapt to strenuous exercise is pretty interesting!

I spend a lot of time listening to internet radio while I work and, while I normally wouldn't pick up on Tour de France news as it doesn't rate very high on my interest scale, I have heard a lot about the famous cycling race over the last few days. The 2007 race has been called a disaster after several instances of doping were reported among a number of riders.

What I don't understand is, how do these cyclists assume that they won't get caught? According to this piece, a random sample of riders are tested each day including the race leader and the winner of the current stage, along with a number of other riders. I figure that athletes who show positive results for banned substances have taken them as they think it will help them win, and they must know that they will be tested at the end of the day and found out, so what's the point? Doesn't seem like a very intelligent strategy.

It's a shame that a few riders had to tarnish the reputation of the entire race, but perhaps this will make others smarten up next year. And in happier sports news, not a single one of the 5,500 participants at the Pan-American Games, which just came to a close, tested positive for any banned substances. Apparently these athletes have brains as well as brawn.

In the world of "fun ways to track your status while working out" cyclists have been a little left out when compared to walkers and runners, who can get heart rate monitors and shoes and mp3 players that tell them what's going on -- all while coordinating their efforts to music no less. Well now there's something specially designed for cyclists by cyclists: the CS600 by Polar. Put together with the help of six teams that competed in last year's Tour de France, it monitors not only your heart rate (of course), but also your bike's speed and altitude, which it sends wirelessly to your computer from it's convenient spot on the bike's handlebars.

Sound cool? It must be -- it costs upwards of $700.

The Tour de France kicked off this weekend. It may take more than talent and intense training to be a world-class cyclist; one physiologist believes that body structure of elite cyclists is, at least in part, created by nature.

Endurance athletes, like cyclists, require amazing lung capacity. Spain's Miguel Indurain -- a five time Tour winner -- had a lung capacity of eight litres compared to the average six. During exercise, Indurain could consume nearly double the oxygen an untrained adult could consume. Other Tour athletes have had similarly high lung capacity. Elite cyclists also tend to have strong hearts. Lance Armstrong, for example, is estimated to have a heart that's 30% larger than average.

Floyd Landis, 2006 winner of the Tour de France, was accused of using synthetic testosterone during his race. He's currently involved in a nine-day arbitration hearing that will decide whether to drop or uphold the positive drug test. At Friday's meeting another pro cyclist, Joe Papp, testified on exactly how testosterone can be used in a race and how it improves performance. Papp, who is currently waiting out a two-year doping suspension, was called to the witness stand by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. His testimony disputes claims made by Landis' lawyers stating that testosterone couldn't have helped Landis win and that, because of standard race tests, he wouldn't have tried to use drugs.

Papp displayed a pack of testosterone gel, saying that using the gel had helped him recover between stages of the race and that it's possible to use it undetected. Papp later stated that he tried to race clean for years, but felt the need to dope in order to remain competitive.

Witnesses for the defense included a University of Florida professor, Bruce Goldberger, who took issue with the manner in which Landis' drug tests were done in the laboratory. In his professional opinion, the chain of custody of the samples is unreliable.