Beware of PowerCranks

[[email protected]]

On Jun 5, 3:22 am, "Phil Holman" <pholman@yourservice> wrote:

> > Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in VO2Max
> > (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and shouldn't be
> > used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed to that argument,
> > both the improvement and VO2Max and the improvement in power should be
> > discounted.
>
> It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something like this
> could be so fixed.

Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is that
fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg issue. OTOH,
one does have to worry about how well the initial tests were done.
Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.

BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your class?
When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary tale for RCTs
(I used tuberculous meningitis as my counter-example).

 

[Ryan Cousineau]

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] wrote:

> On Jun 5, 3:22 am, "Phil Holman" <pholman@yourservice> wrote:
>
> > > Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in VO2Max
> > > (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and shouldn't be
> > > used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed to that argument,
> > > both the improvement and VO2Max and the improvement in power should be
> > > discounted.
> >
> > It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something like this
> > could be so fixed.
>
> Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is that
> fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg issue. OTOH,
> one does have to worry about how well the initial tests were done.
> Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.
>
> BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your class?
> When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary tale for RCTs
> (I used tuberculous meningitis as my counter-example).

Okay, I googled up that gastric freezing was a useless former treatment
for ulcers (finally proven as such with against-placebo experiments),
but what's the tale you tell about tuberculosis meningitis?

--
Ryan Cousineau [email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

 

[[email protected]]

On Jun 5, 9:00 am, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:

> Okay, I googled up that gastric freezing was a useless former treatment
> for ulcers (finally proven as such with against-placebo experiments),
> but what's the tale you tell about tuberculosis meningitis?

A short summary of the gastric freezing thing starts here and goes on
for a couple of posts:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/6db62d599f7be26d

Tuberculous meningitis is the worst kind of meningitis. Before
antibiotics, it was invariably fatal. When they first tried
antibiotics, some (most?) patients died but some lived. In that sort
of situation, you don't do RCTs. Even today I think tuberculous
meningitis has a pretty high mortality rate. You might do an RCT on
different antibiotics but you don't do antibiotic vs. no antibiotic
RCTs.

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] wrote:

> On Jun 5, 9:00 am, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Okay, I googled up that gastric freezing was a useless former
> > treatment for ulcers (finally proven as such with against-placebo
> > experiments), but what's the tale you tell about tuberculosis
> > meningitis?
>
> A short summary of the gastric freezing thing starts here and goes on
> for a couple of posts:
> http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/6db62d599f7be26
> d
>
> Tuberculous meningitis is the worst kind of meningitis. Before
> antibiotics, it was invariably fatal. When they first tried
> antibiotics, some (most?) patients died but some lived. In that sort
> of situation, you don't do RCTs. Even today I think tuberculous
> meningitis has a pretty high mortality rate. You might do an RCT on
> different antibiotics but you don't do antibiotic vs. no antibiotic
> RCTs.


"Hi, we're doing a study on tuberculous meningitis and we're hoping
you'll participate. Subjects will be assigned randomly to one of two
groups. One group will die, the other might live. Please sign here."

 

[[email protected]]

On Jun 5, 4:12 pm, Tim McNamara <[email protected]> wrote:

> "Hi, we're doing a study on tuberculous meningitis and we're hoping
> you'll participate. Subjects will be assigned randomly to one of two
> groups. One group will die, the other might live. Please sign here."

At least that's semi-informed consent. Look up the Tuskegee syphilis
study.

The US health care system doesn't have a very good track record on
informed consent. I think it's pretty horrendous that women in the
throes of childbirth get forced to sign "consent" forms for
anesthesia. In many other countries they discuss it with their
physician during the last couple months of the pregnancy. There's
really no reason to wait until the contractions have begun.

 

[Doug Taylor]

On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:12:46 -0500, Tim McNamara
<[email protected]> wrote:


>In the case of PowerCranks, my thinking is this: the average racer who
>buys these will already have had years of training on regular cranks
>with millions of repetitions of the pedaling motion. Average Racer buys
>the PCs, puts them on his bike and diligently follows the training
>protocol. He learns to lift his legs up and over the top of the
>rotation and into the power stroke. He rides with the cranks enough to
>develop the new muscular recruitment pattern and doesn't have to
>consciously think "up and over" with each pedal stroke. Thus he gains
>the signal benefit of PCs, which is that the leg pushing down through
>the power stroke isn't being resisted by the weight of the rising leg
>coming up through the rest stroke.
>
>Well and good. But in races and on group rides, he might switch to a
>bike with regular cranks due to various reasons. Now he doesn't have to
>lift that rising leg any more, and the long-established "normal" pattern
>of muscle recruitment would probably tend to rapidly reestablish itself-
>just like guitarists lapsing back into a familiar pentatonic scale in a
>performance setting rather than playing the Mixolydian scale that
>they've been learning to use in rehearsal. The question to me is "how
>durable is the new pattern of muscle recruitment" when the rider returns
>to normal cranks. An hour? A day? A week? A month? Once the pattern
>is established, does the rider have to use the PCs daily to maintain
>those cited gains in efficiency?
>
>I could readily imagine the rider falling back into a normal pedaling
>muscle recruitment pattern within 30 minutes. But I could also be
>entirely wrong on that, or there may be quite a bit of variety on a
>case-by-case basis.

I think you might have a valid point and I will put it to (a 100%
non-scientific, subjective and anecdotal) test this evening.

I trained on Powercranks this winter and spring, but put them away end
of April and have been on regular cranks ever since.

I'm guessing Tim is right and I will be pretty much back to "virgin."
Meaning the SOB's will hurt like hell and that I won't get 5 or 10
miles in without crying for mommie. It took a lot of miles on the
trainer this winter to get over the hump of 10 minutes on them
without complete and utter fatigue. Once I could handle 45 minutes to
an hour, I took them on the road.

So I'll find out where more than a month off using regular cranks
leaves me.

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] wrote:

> On Jun 5, 4:12 pm, Tim McNamara <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > "Hi, we're doing a study on tuberculous meningitis and we're hoping
> > you'll participate. Subjects will be assigned randomly to one of
> > two groups. One group will die, the other might live. Please sign
> > here."
>
> At least that's semi-informed consent. Look up the Tuskegee syphilis
> study.

Yeah, we covered that in my ethics class in college. I remember being-
along with the rest of the class- quite outraged.

> The US health care system doesn't have a very good track record on
> informed consent. I think it's pretty horrendous that women in the
> throes of childbirth get forced to sign "consent" forms for
> anesthesia. In many other countries they discuss it with their
> physician during the last couple months of the pregnancy. There's
> really no reason to wait until the contractions have begun.

The problem with informed consent is that sometimes the patient says
"no." ;-)

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
Doug Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:12:46 -0500, Tim McNamara
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> >In the case of PowerCranks, my thinking is this: the average racer
> >who buys these will already have had years of training on regular
> >cranks with millions of repetitions of the pedaling motion. Average
> >Racer buys the PCs, puts them on his bike and diligently follows the
> >training protocol. He learns to lift his legs up and over the top
> >of the rotation and into the power stroke. He rides with the cranks
> >enough to develop the new muscular recruitment pattern and doesn't
> >have to consciously think "up and over" with each pedal stroke.
> >Thus he gains the signal benefit of PCs, which is that the leg
> >pushing down through the power stroke isn't being resisted by the
> >weight of the rising leg coming up through the rest stroke.
> >
> >Well and good. But in races and on group rides, he might switch to
> >a bike with regular cranks due to various reasons. Now he doesn't
> >have to lift that rising leg any more, and the long-established
> >"normal" pattern of muscle recruitment would probably tend to
> >rapidly reestablish itself- just like guitarists lapsing back into a
> >familiar pentatonic scale in a performance setting rather than
> >playing the Mixolydian scale that they've been learning to use in
> >rehearsal. The question to me is "how durable is the new pattern of
> >muscle recruitment" when the rider returns to normal cranks. An
> >hour? A day? A week? A month? Once the pattern is established,
> >does the rider have to use the PCs daily to maintain those cited
> >gains in efficiency?
> >
> >I could readily imagine the rider falling back into a normal
> >pedaling muscle recruitment pattern within 30 minutes. But I could
> >also be entirely wrong on that, or there may be quite a bit of
> >variety on a case-by-case basis.
>
> I think you might have a valid point and I will put it to (a 100%
> non-scientific, subjective and anecdotal) test this evening.
>
> I trained on Powercranks this winter and spring, but put them away
> end of April and have been on regular cranks ever since.
>
> I'm guessing Tim is right and I will be pretty much back to "virgin."
> Meaning the SOB's will hurt like hell and that I won't get 5 or 10
> miles in without crying for mommie. It took a lot of miles on the
> trainer this winter to get over the hump of 10 minutes on them
> without complete and utter fatigue. Once I could handle 45 minutes
> to an hour, I took them on the road.
>
> So I'll find out where more than a month off using regular cranks
> leaves me.

That'll be interesting. I could of course be completely wrong, which
would be good for the users of this product.

 

[Ewoud Dronkert]

Tim McNamara schreef:
> [email protected] wrote:
>> I think it's pretty horrendous that women in the
>> throes of childbirth get forced to sign "consent" forms for
>> anesthesia. In many other countries they discuss it with their
>> physician during the last couple months of the pregnancy.
>
> The problem with informed consent is that sometimes the patient says
> "no." ;-)

The wink implies you *don't* think it's a problem. But are there people
(doctors), especially in this case, who do perceive it as a problem..?!


--
E. Dronkert

 

[Phil Holman]

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Jun 5, 3:22 am, "Phil Holman" <pholman@yourservice> wrote:
>
>> > Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in
>> > VO2Max
>> > (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and shouldn't be
>> > used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed to that argument,
>> > both the improvement and VO2Max and the improvement in power should
>> > be
>> > discounted.
>>
>> It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something
>> like this
>> could be so fixed.
>
> Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is that
> fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg issue. OTOH,
> one does have to worry about how well the initial tests were done.
> Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.
>
> BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your class?
> When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary tale for RCTs
> (I used tuberculous meningitis as my counter-example).

No, and searching through some articles it looks to be very
controversial. Is it universally resolved yet? For the success stories
we do the Linus Pauling vitamin C to prevent colds and the largest
medical experiment of all time with the Salk vaccine.

It's a shock to students when they see the higher contracted numbers of
polio in the placebo group. "You mean, if they had given the vaccine to
everyone there would be a couple of hundred less children who contracted
polio." Errrm.

Phil H

 

[[email protected]]

Phil Holman writes:

>>>> Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in
>>>> VO2Max (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and
>>>> shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed
>>>> to that argument, both the improvement and VO2Max and the
>>>> improvement in power should be discounted.

>>> It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something
>>> like this could be so fixed.

>> Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is
>> that fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg
>> issue. OTOH, one does have to worry about how well the initial
>> tests were done. Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.

>> BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your
>> class? When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary
>> tale for RCTs (I used tuberculous meningitis as my
>> counter-example).

> No, and searching through some articles it looks to be very
> controversial. Is it universally resolved yet? For the success
> stories we do the Linus Pauling vitamin C to prevent colds and the
> largest medical experiment of all time with the Salk vaccine.

> It's a shock to students when they see the higher contracted numbers
> of polio in the placebo group. "You mean, if they had given the
> vaccine to everyone there would be a couple of hundred less children
> who contracted polio." Errrm.

This whole subject reappear under new guises because people do not
want to believe that there is a direct relationship between aerobic
capacity and performance on a bicycle.

I spent years reading how ankling would improve climbing and top speed
and that it needed to be practiced diligently. That went away only to
be replaced by other beliefs that we can fabricate power by trickery.

In recent times, steam RR locomotives, although not rated in Horse
Power (but rather "tractive effort", the pull at which the wheels
would spin) had a conversion chart to HP based on grate area in the
fire box which governs how much heat can be transferred to steam in
the boiler. Grate area is closely similar to lung displacement for
physically fit racers. That is what limits climbing or TT ability,
not ankling, pedaling style or other external means.

Jobst Brandt

 

[Doug Taylor]

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:41:24 -0500, Tim McNamara
<[email protected]> wrote:

>> So I'll find out where more than a month off using regular cranks
>> leaves me.
>
>That'll be interesting. I could of course be completely wrong, which
>would be good for the users of this product.

Results of subjective, non-scientific, biased, anecdotal study:

Tim is neither completely wrong nor completely right. No doubt my
legs were not in the same condition to handle the Powercranks as they
were in mid-April (after two months of practice and use); BUT, I was
pleasantly surprised to find I was able to ride and even climb with
distinctly more strength and less pain and strain that as a total
virgin. Hopefully meaning that there is at least some legitimate
"neuromuscular rewiring" and power conditioning achieved while
training on them, which carried over and remained after a month and a
half of riding normal cranks.

Anyway, they are a challenge, and though I'm a newbie, I like them and
believe they have a lot of potential. So, you won't see mine for sale
on e-bay any time soon.

 

[Johnny Sunset]

On Jun 5, 10:40 am, R.E. Chung wrote:
> ...
> The US health care system doesn't have a very good track record on
> informed consent. I think it's pretty horrendous that women in the
> throes of childbirth get forced to sign "consent" forms for
> anesthesia. In many other countries they discuss it with their
> physician during the last couple months of the pregnancy. There's
> really no reason to wait until the contractions have begun.

However, unnecessary cosmetic surgery has been performed without
consent on nearly 50% of the US population.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
The weather is here, wish you were beautiful

 

[Bill]

[email protected] wrote:
> Phil Holman writes:
>
>>>>> Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in
>>>>> VO2Max (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and
>>>>> shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed
>>>>> to that argument, both the improvement and VO2Max and the
>>>>> improvement in power should be discounted.
>
>>>> It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something
>>>> like this could be so fixed.
>
>>> Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is
>>> that fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg
>>> issue. OTOH, one does have to worry about how well the initial
>>> tests were done. Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.
>
>>> BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your
>>> class? When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary
>>> tale for RCTs (I used tuberculous meningitis as my
>>> counter-example).
>
>> No, and searching through some articles it looks to be very
>> controversial. Is it universally resolved yet? For the success
>> stories we do the Linus Pauling vitamin C to prevent colds and the
>> largest medical experiment of all time with the Salk vaccine.
>
>> It's a shock to students when they see the higher contracted numbers
>> of polio in the placebo group. "You mean, if they had given the
>> vaccine to everyone there would be a couple of hundred less children
>> who contracted polio." Errrm.
>
> This whole subject reappear under new guises because people do not
> want to believe that there is a direct relationship between aerobic
> capacity and performance on a bicycle.

I don't want to make a 'me' thing out of this post but today I both rode
and ran, and there was quite a bit of difference in the two. Riding I
could only seem to get the motivation to get my pulse up to a whopping
105. Running, as in sprint until ready to fall over, I got to about 150
after a 3 football field dead run. Does that even make sense in a
motivational kind of way? It was nasty windy today which kind of dented
the riding but not the running. We actually had a tornado alert for
northern California.
Now, sneaking in a question, does one full blast run per day make any
difference compared to a few hours on the bike? I'm thinking heart
condition mainly on this.
Anybody??
>
> I spent years reading how ankling would improve climbing and top speed
> and that it needed to be practiced diligently. That went away only to
> be replaced by other beliefs that we can fabricate power by trickery.

Like maybe those silly oval crank rings about 15-20 years back?
>
> In recent times, steam RR locomotives, although not rated in Horse
> Power (but rather "tractive effort", the pull at which the wheels
> would spin) had a conversion chart to HP based on grate area in the
> fire box which governs how much heat can be transferred to steam in
> the boiler.

I don't know if I can agree on that one since I am old enough to have
stood to the side of steam engines in regular service and seen them spin
their wheels starting up a mere 5 or 6 car passenger train. There was
one article I remember that rated a big steam engine at about 6,000 HP
at speed. That was about the time the steam companies like Baldwin were
competing with the new diesel upstarts and they had a sort of horsepower
war going on. I think the steam engines horsepower just went up with
speed in a semi linear fashion until they literally 'ran out of steam'.

Grate area is closely similar to lung displacement for
> physically fit racers. That is what limits climbing or TT ability,
> not ankling, pedaling style or other external means.

Are you sure enough to stand behind that 100%. My lung capacity has not
changed since last years summer, but my conditioning has gotten rather
lax due to a winter spent more with the computer than the bike. I
definitely can't climb as well as last summer and it isn't due to lung
capacity. Want to rethink that one? There is also the ability to use
what air you do take in with each breath and the amount of reserve
energy in your legs.
I'm waiting for the big equation now. ;<)
Bill Baka
>
> Jobst Brandt

 

[Phil Holman]

<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Phil Holman writes:
>
>>>>> Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in
>>>>> VO2Max (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and
>>>>> shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed
>>>>> to that argument, both the improvement and VO2Max and the
>>>>> improvement in power should be discounted.
>
>>>> It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something
>>>> like this could be so fixed.
>
>>> Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is
>>> that fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg
>>> issue. OTOH, one does have to worry about how well the initial
>>> tests were done. Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.
>
>>> BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your
>>> class? When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary
>>> tale for RCTs (I used tuberculous meningitis as my
>>> counter-example).
>
>> No, and searching through some articles it looks to be very
>> controversial. Is it universally resolved yet? For the success
>> stories we do the Linus Pauling vitamin C to prevent colds and the
>> largest medical experiment of all time with the Salk vaccine.
>
>> It's a shock to students when they see the higher contracted numbers
>> of polio in the placebo group. "You mean, if they had given the
>> vaccine to everyone there would be a couple of hundred less children
>> who contracted polio." Errrm.
>
> This whole subject reappear under new guises because people do not
> want to believe that there is a direct relationship between aerobic
> capacity and performance on a bicycle.

Here we go again.

>
> I spent years reading how ankling would improve climbing and top speed
> and that it needed to be practiced diligently. That went away only to
> be replaced by other beliefs that we can fabricate power by trickery.
>
> In recent times, steam RR locomotives, although not rated in Horse
> Power (but rather "tractive effort", the pull at which the wheels
> would spin) had a conversion chart to HP based on grate area in the
> fire box which governs how much heat can be transferred to steam in
> the boiler. Grate area is closely similar to lung displacement for
> physically fit racers. That is what limits climbing or TT ability,
> not ankling, pedaling style or other external means.

You continue to repeat this misconception. Lung displacement or lung
capacity is not the limiting factor in climbing or TTing or cycling in
general. If you understood the cause and effect elements you would
understand that extreme "out of breath" is caused by excess CO2 in the
blood stream as a result of lactic buffering. That is, the limits of
aerobic capacity were reached upstream (cardiac output, blood muscle
interface limitations etc) and no further limitations are imposed by the
lungs. It wouldn't matter if you doubled lung capacity, blood lactate
concentrations wouldn't change and this is the culminating event in
limiting aerobic performance. Heavy breathing is an effect not a cause.

Phil H

 

[Tom Kunich]

"Phil Holman" <piholmanc@yourservice> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Phil Holman writes:
>>
>>>>>> Wouldn't that argument mean that if you did observe a change in
>>>>>> VO2Max (in ml/kg/min) then the previous value was faulty and
>>>>>> shouldn't be used as a basis for comparison? If one subscribed
>>>>>> to that argument, both the improvement and VO2Max and the
>>>>>> improvement in power should be discounted.
>>
>>>>> It depends on the definition of VO2max. I don't see how something
>>>>> like this could be so fixed.
>>
>>>> Yeah, I was engaging in Socratic dialog. I don't think VO2Max is
>>>> that fixed, either -- in part because of the kg vs. "lean" kg
>>>> issue. OTOH, one does have to worry about how well the initial
>>>> tests were done. Which sort of argues in favor of RCTs.
>>
>>>> BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your
>>>> class? When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary
>>>> tale for RCTs (I used tuberculous meningitis as my
>>>> counter-example).
>>
>>> No, and searching through some articles it looks to be very
>>> controversial. Is it universally resolved yet? For the success
>>> stories we do the Linus Pauling vitamin C to prevent colds and the
>>> largest medical experiment of all time with the Salk vaccine.
>>
>>> It's a shock to students when they see the higher contracted numbers
>>> of polio in the placebo group. "You mean, if they had given the
>>> vaccine to everyone there would be a couple of hundred less children
>>> who contracted polio." Errrm.
>>
>> This whole subject reappear under new guises because people do not
>> want to believe that there is a direct relationship between aerobic
>> capacity and performance on a bicycle.
>
> Here we go again.
>
>>
>> I spent years reading how ankling would improve climbing and top speed
>> and that it needed to be practiced diligently. That went away only to
>> be replaced by other beliefs that we can fabricate power by trickery.
>>
>> In recent times, steam RR locomotives, although not rated in Horse
>> Power (but rather "tractive effort", the pull at which the wheels
>> would spin) had a conversion chart to HP based on grate area in the
>> fire box which governs how much heat can be transferred to steam in
>> the boiler. Grate area is closely similar to lung displacement for
>> physically fit racers. That is what limits climbing or TT ability,
>> not ankling, pedaling style or other external means.
>
> You continue to repeat this misconception. Lung displacement or lung
> capacity is not the limiting factor in climbing or TTing or cycling in
> general. If you understood the cause and effect elements you would
> understand that extreme "out of breath" is caused by excess CO2 in the
> blood stream as a result of lactic buffering. That is, the limits of
> aerobic capacity were reached upstream (cardiac output, blood muscle
> interface limitations etc) and no further limitations are imposed by the
> lungs. It wouldn't matter if you doubled lung capacity, blood lactate
> concentrations wouldn't change and this is the culminating event in
> limiting aerobic performance. Heavy breathing is an effect not a cause.

As proof of what Phil has to say about this - when you're staggeringly out
of breath and can hardly move your blood oxygen is still more than 90%.
Normal blood oxygen runs about 98%.

I have an ex-brother in law who was the longest surviving person without a
main coronary artery. Until he got a partial heart transplant in 1999 his
blood oxygen was normally 70% or less. Proof that blood oxygen is NOT the
problem in climbing - rather lactac and excess CO2 is. BTW - he's still
alive at about 55 years old now.

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
Doug Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:41:24 -0500, Tim McNamara
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> So I'll find out where more than a month off using regular cranks
> >> leaves me.
> >
> >That'll be interesting. I could of course be completely wrong,
> >which would be good for the users of this product.
>
> Results of subjective, non-scientific, biased, anecdotal study:
>
> Tim is neither completely wrong nor completely right. No doubt my
> legs were not in the same condition to handle the Powercranks as they
> were in mid-April (after two months of practice and use); BUT, I was
> pleasantly surprised to find I was able to ride and even climb with
> distinctly more strength and less pain and strain that as a total
> virgin. Hopefully meaning that there is at least some legitimate
> "neuromuscular rewiring" and power conditioning achieved while
> training on them, which carried over and remained after a month and a
> half of riding normal cranks.
>
> Anyway, they are a challenge, and though I'm a newbie, I like them
> and believe they have a lot of potential. So, you won't see mine for
> sale on e-bay any time soon.

Thanks for the report!

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
Johnny Sunset <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Jun 5, 10:40 am, R.E. Chung wrote:
> > ... The US health care system doesn't have a very good track record
> > on informed consent. I think it's pretty horrendous that women in
> > the throes of childbirth get forced to sign "consent" forms for
> > anesthesia. In many other countries they discuss it with their
> > physician during the last couple months of the pregnancy. There's
> > really no reason to wait until the contractions have begun.
>
> However, unnecessary cosmetic surgery has been performed without
> consent on nearly 50% of the US population.

Ummm. What? Ah. Circumcision.

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
Bill <[email protected]> wrote:

> Now, sneaking in a question, does one full blast run per day make any
> difference compared to a few hours on the bike? I'm thinking heart
> condition mainly on this.

The literature I have seen in the last year or two has indicated that
sprint training has significant benefits for endurance. I don't think
your heart can tell if you're running or riding a bike.

 

[[email protected]]

On Jun 6, 12:42 am, "Phil Holman" <piholmanc@yourservice> wrote:

> > BTW, do you ever discuss the gastric freezing debacle in your class?
> > When I used to teach intro I used that as my cautionary tale for RCTs
> > (I used tuberculous meningitis as my counter-example).
>
> No, and searching through some articles it looks to be very
> controversial. Is it universally resolved yet?

You mean gastric freezing? Yup. One of the side-effects is that
nowadays it's generally required that medical researchers declare
their potential conflicts of interest, like whether they own the
company making the gastric freezing machines. Or did you mean the
ethical line of when to do placebo controls? That's not universally
resolved. Remember the fast-tracking that HIV activists wanted the FDA
to do? Much of that fast-tracking was about whether placebo controls
were necessary.