If he tweets ... they will come. And that is what people did this morning in response to Lance Armstrong's tweet about riding in Griffith Park.

Hundreds of people turned out this morning to ride for an hour alongside seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong in Griffith Park.

Armstrong arrived at the parking lot a few minutes after 7:30 a.m. and was surrounded by cyclists hoping for autographs and a handshake, and news crews hoping to catch the athlete on camera before he sped off.

Armstrong led the group through three loops around a section of the park. Not everyone at Griffith Park knew what was happening. As the cyclists went by and photographers positioned themselves along the route, onlookers wondered about the commotion.

Click here to read more from the L.A. Times blog. read more

A lot of people have been asking about the workouts Lance used to prepare for the Tour de France, and especially the time trials. The tricky thing about time trial training is that you need to train at race pace even when you're not in shape to sustain efforts that difficult. In other words, we know that Lance has to be able to ride 45-50 kilometers an hour, sometimes faster, in either an individual or team time trial. But back in February and March he didn't have the power to ride that fast for the duration of a full time trial. So the workouts that I used with Lance earlier this spring - which are the same as what we used to use back when he was winning the Tour - were time trial intervals.

To perform time trial intervals, Lance would get on his time trial bike. It seems like you could perform these on either a road or time trial bike because you're concerned about power output, but it's important to remember that these workouts are also essential for developing the skill and feel necessary to handle the TT bike with confidence at race speeds. So Lance would go out, do a nice warmup and then 4 8-minute intervals that were pretty much all-out. This meant he was holding a power output and speed that was greater than what he would hold for a 60-minute time trial. In essence he was doing "over-speed" intervals, because riding at that intensity forces the body to adapt and develop the power necessary for sustaining long efforts in individual and team time trials.

Since there are a lot of amateur cyclists competing in summer time trial series, here's what I would recommend for you. You can do a very similar workout to Lance's, but I'd back the workload down a bit to 3-4 6-minute intervals. If you know your time trial pace, push yourself to ride 10-15 watts above that intensity, or 5-10 heart beats above your time trial heart rate if you're not using a power meter. In terms of speed, these intervals should be 2-5mph above your time trial pace. Take 6 minutes of easy spinning recovery between intervals.

Chris Carmichael
www.trainright.com
www.twitter.com/trainright
read more

read more

“Wassup, world? My name is Max Armstrong and I just arrived. My Mommy is healthy and so am I!” Lance Armstrong posted to Twitter Thursday night. Max weighed in at 7lbs 5oz and is 20 inches long.

Armstrong and his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, announced in December they were expecting a baby in June. Armstrong also has three children with his ex-wife, Kristin. read more

read more

read more

read more

read more

read more

read more