Yesterday, Jonathan Green pointed out that the July 2004 issue of Wired Magazine has a short article by Ben Hewitt about the gear that Lance Armstrong will use in his quest for a sixth consecutive Tour de France GC win.
I bought the magazine at the newsstand in Newark Liberty Airport this afternoon. A couple of interesting things were mentioned in this article. One is that Lance uses a Ciclosport HAC 4 Plus Cycling Computer, similar to this Ciclosport HAC 4 Titanium, during races. I’ll have to look for that in my recording of The Lance Chronicles episodes about the Dodge Tour de Georgia. According to the article:
In training Armstrong relies on a heavy and expensive power meter that measure output via specially designed crank arms. For the big race, Armstrong slims down to this standard… cycling computer to record speed, heart rate, incline, cadence, altitude gain, and power output.
They’re referring to a SRM Training System as the system he uses in training, but they don’t actually say it.
I was a little bummed about this article, actually, because you’ll probably end up with more information about these products here on Operation Gadget than you got in Wired. (Then again, I’ve got an unlimited amount of ink.) But Wired, what’s with the Photoshopped picture of Lance at the beginning, wearing number 181? That’s a photo from the 1999 Tour (his first ever victory). Isn’t this article supposed to be about that gadgetry that will help him to win the sixth?