Interesting little piece about Armstong's diet from an English newspaper which is, thank goodness, a drug free zone:
For those of us who get a stitch jogging to the corner shop on a full bowl of Cheerios, there's something compelling about the diet of sportsmen and women. I once interviewed Jonny Wilkinson and my abiding memory of the encounter had nothing to do with rugby; what lodged in my mind was the fascinating fact that he eats an omelette of seven egg whites every morning and six to eight grilled chicken breasts for supper.
Finely tuned athletes, you see, are cosseted and deprived in equal measure. And it's this curious combination of excess and ascetism – vast quantities of food, but with the tasty (i.e., fatty and sugary) bits taken out – that represents a much greater sacrifice than training eight hours a day.
Armstrong, who survived testicular cancer in 1996, has an obsession with diet. He weighs his food down to the last gram and calculates, calorie by calorie, precisely how much nourishment his body will need over the course of the gruelling three-week Tour de France.
In The Lance Armstrong Performance Program (Rodale Books, £10.99), a training guide he co-wrote last year, Texan-born Armstrong, who lives in Spain with rock star girlfriend Sheryl Crow, revealed fascinating details about the fuel that powers him to victory.
For breakfast, before a race, he eats tagliatelle with an egg on top, a sprinkling of Parmesan and some shredded basil. A little protein, contained in the egg, helps to break down carbohydrates and replenish and maintain carbohydrate storage. He also drinks between eight and 16 ounces of a sports drink. For a ride of four to six hours, cyclists competing in the Tour need 7,000 calories a day. Lunch is prepared by the team trainer, and typically consists of small sandwiches containing honey and chopped bananas, or smoked turkey with cream cheese, plus energy bars and fruit, such as peeled apples.
These lunches are dispensed to the riders en route: the trainer stands at the side of the road, holding out a light cloth bag called a musette. The cyclist rides past, holding out an arm, and transfers the contents to his rear jersey pockets.
To avoid dehydration, the riders drink four to eight ounces every 10 to 15 minutes. Most of us would be hard pressed to keep the handlebars steady, with so much eating and drinking going on, but, as if all that wasn't enough, after a gruelling day's cycling, riders can't put their feet up.
This is because the 30 minutes after exercise is the "glycogen window", when the body needs to replace the carbohydrate storage in the body. Glycogen depletion is a key cause of exhaustion, and so cyclists must quickly eat potatoes, pasta, rice or muesli. Later in the evening, Armstrong's dinner comprises lean steak or grilled chicken, potatoes or rice and steamed vegetables.
During the final week of the race, when riders are drawing on all their energy reserves, they tend to cut back on foods that require more effort to digest, such as fresh vegetables, and much of their food is pureed.
Armstrong insists there is no magic formula behind his winning streak. "There's no mystery," he says. "It's a 365-day-a-year mixture of talent and work." Or rather, talent, work, and a large bowl of tagliatelle every morning.