Pushing the Threshold of Pain and Performance

Imagine cycling over 2,000 miles in 21 days, much of it uphill, battling 8-to-10-foot inclines. It’s an unthinkable task for most of us, but every July the world’s top cyclists take on this challenge as they ride through Europe, scaling mountains and sprinting through city streets in the world’s ultimate bike race—the Tour de France.

This competition is reserved only for a select few with enough will, stamina, and tolerance for pain to withstand such a long and demanding course. According to Phil Gallagher, director of the Applied Physiology Laboratory at the University of Kansas, the Tour de France is a spectacle of extreme human performance.

Gallagher, a lifelong endurance athlete who qualified multiple times for the U.S. Olympic trials as a cross-country skier, is observing this year’s le tour as an authority on the exceptional human physiological processes that allow these top cyclists to compete in a grueling three-week ride and push their bodies to extremes.

For Gallagher, athletic performance is a science.

“In the past they didn’t have any device that measured how many watts, for example, a person is producing,” said Gallagher, who has led research measuring the output of cyclists with a power meter. By gauging cyclists’ productivity in the lab, Gallagher found that average riders generate less than half the power of the elite athletes who compete in the Tour de France.

According to Gallagher, these elite cyclists have been training their entire lives, and as a result, have larger hearts than the average person. These well-trained hearts are able to push out more blood per beat and extract more oxygen from their blood than an untrained individual.

“If you wanted to cheat there’s a couple ways you could do it,” said Gallagher, explaining the various techniques of blood doping to artificially inflate an athlete’s red blood cell count to steal a competitive edge.

In the 1990s, doping was rampant—not just in the Tour de France, but in many sports. According to Gallagher, if you were a tour rider in the 1990s, chances are you were using this technique.

But past doping scandals now ensure that competitors are regularly tested. “I think the current riders are the cleanest riders there have been since doping has been found on the tour,” says Gallagher.

While regular testing discourages blood doping, athletes still aspire to increase red blood cell counts to maximize performance. Gallagher says that one way to accomplish this is to live high and train low. This means that in order to increase production of oxygen supporting red blood cells, athletes will enjoy downtime at a high altitude, but train during the day at sea level.

“You can simulate it with tents; the Norwegians use a special house,” said Gallagher, noting other methods for varying oxygen levels to stimulate performance. “You have to be living at 10,000 ft. in order see any effects. A typical red blood cell lasts 120 days, so you have no more than a three-month window.”

But being a top tier athlete isn’t just about optimal blood oxygenation. Gallagher says that these individuals also have to endure excruciating agony for long periods of time. “Upper level athletes have great discipline and are devoted to their sport. In order to be an upper level athlete you have to have a certain mindset,” he said, “you have to be able to tolerate sustained pain.”

As in any extreme endurance contest, Tour de France riders are no strangers to pain—peddling 100-plus miles a day in mountainous terrain against the world’s top riders is hardly a walk in the park.

“They’re redlining it. They’re going as hard as they possibly can,” says Gallagher. “That can be 150 miles of pure pain.”

While few can compete at the level of Tour de France athletes, Gallagher says that average people can still improve fitness and endurance levels by making a commitment to regular training. He recommends an “accountability buddy” to encourage regular workouts.

“The effects of exercise last for 22 to 28 hours tops,” says Gallagher. “You need to exercise most days of the week. It can just be 30 minutes or so, but it needs to be most days of the week.”

Gallagher says that fancy equipment isn’t necessary for good training, but a little common sense can help. “Don’t take up the entire road like a lot of cyclists do,” he says, “that makes drivers mad.”

Additional reporting by Cat Rooney