Allen Lim makes sports science fun and cool
And persuades cycling’s biggest name to swallow wireless thermometers and ride in a Mardi Gras outfit
By Clint Talbott
Kevin Costner isn’t a sports scientist, but he played one on the big screen. Allen Lim, on the other hand, is the real deal, and Costner can take some credit for that.
At the age of 12 or 13, Lim watched “American Flyers,” the bike-racing movie filmed partly in Boulder. Costner plays a sports physician who puts his brother through a stress test designed to gauge the rider’s fitness.
“I was struck by the fact that this guy had a job doing that,” Lim recalls. He was also drawn to the beauty of cycling. “I started reading everything I could” about bicycle racing and sports science.
Fast-forward three decades: Lim is a sports physiologist for some of the biggest names in cycling, most recently seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
As director of sports science for Team RadioShack this year, Lim put Armstrong through a set of paces that could be fairly described as unusual.
Lim persuaded Armstrong to swallow a pill-sized thermometer to measure and transmit the champion’s core temperature during training rides in Hawaii. Lim also had Amstrong time-trialing along the Hawaiian coast with dozens of pieces of yarn (to indicate airflow) fluttering off of Amrstrong’s body suit.
Bicycling magazine put it this way: “There is only one word that would excuse someone for asking the world’s most famous cyclist to don an outfit that makes him look like he’s on his way to Mardi Gras. That word is science.”
Lim personifies such science. He is an alumnus of the University of Colorado, having earned his master’s in kinesiology in 1996 and his Ph.D. in integrative physiology in 2004.
But he is more than the sum of his degrees. As an online magazine put it recently: Lim manages to “look like a DJ when photographed with all of his nutty sports equipment … It’s been a long time since applied science has seemed so fun and necessary. And cool.”
Team RadioShack’s marquee rider endured a series of crashes and hard knocks in this year’s tour, his last. But, assisted by Lim, RadioShack won the team competition.
Lim talks about his career with apparent gratitude and a hint of surprise. “I think the odd thing is I’m still on Plan A,” Lim says, noting that by his age, 37, many people have moved on to Plan D, which might include moving back in with parents.
Though he’s spent years sticking with Career Plan A, “I’ve only gotten started to get paid for it recently.”
Lim is known as the sports scientist who helped popularize the measurement of power output in cycling. His CU doctoral dissertation, which focused on biomechanics, aerodynamics, and physiological responses to the stress of exertion in cycling, relied in part on measurements taken by the Saris CycleOps PowerTap, one of several power meters embraced by cyclists in the last decade.
Power meters measure the human equivalent of horsepower, which is the standard in cars.
Lim did some of the first field measurements on the product at CU. His test subjects rode time trials (all-out individual efforts) up Flagstaff Mountain, a popular cycling route and fitness barometer. They also rode a flat time trial in the Hygiene area.
Though CycleOps dubbed Lim the “voice of power,” Lim emphasizes that PowerTap, whose underlying technology was patented in 1998, was the work of a team of engineers. And the support of William Byrnes, associate professor of integrative physiology and Lim’s dissertation adviser, was integral, Lim adds.
“Bill Byrnes was open minded about what the tool meant,” Lim says. “I don’t think many professors or teachers would have taken that kind of chance with me or that project.”
Lim’s dissertation validated the measurements of PowerTap and found that power meters installed on bicycles provide a much more reliable indicator of a rider’s on-the-road performance than heart-rate monitors, which, Lim wrote, “should not be thought of as synonymous with the metabolic or physical demands placed on skeletal muscle.”
Cycling power meters, which measure riders’ on-the-road output in watts, have changed the sport, Lim says.
Lim likens life before thermometers to the days before power meters. Before thermometers, humans could describe temperature only in subjective terms—like “cold,” “hot” and “scorching.” And the description may have reflected the observer as much as the objective conditions.
Now, if you say it’s 65 degrees, people know what that means, even if some find that temperature more comfortable than others. Similarly, riders can now talk about producing 100 watts, and other riders know what that means—despite the fact that pumping out 100 watts might be hard for some and easy for others.
Accurate measurements promote creative, experimental training, Lim says. For instance, Lim might say, “I bet today that if you did 450 watts on the uphill and 300 on the downhill, you might have a lower power output but a faster time.”
(That hunch has in some cases turned out to be true. The reason has to do with the fact that aerodynamic drag, which partly nullifies a rider’s power, increases exponentially with speed.)
Further, Lim says, “We can reassure athletes if they feel like crap, because we can say, ‘You’ve gone harder than you’ve ever gone before.’”
Today, Lim notes, “you can’t talk to a professional cyclist (about a ride) without hearing how many watts it took.”
Lim says the sports-science community is still figuring out how to use all these data, but the general population could ultimately benefit as well. “We need a universal metric for describing physical activity,” he says. That standardized unit could help people have a better grip on their level of exertion and health.
While Lim has been immersed in the world of cycling physiology, nutrition, aerodynamics and power, the sport itself has endured crises. A series of doping scandals and allegations have eroded some enthusiasm for the sport.
Lim takes this in stride. Some allegations, most notably made by avowed doper Floyd Landis—Armstrong’s former teammate and Lim’s former employer—are five and six years old, Lim notes. “What’s happening with today’s scandals are mostly issues from the past. We’ve made incredible efforts in the last five years to eliminate doping, especially among North American cyclists and U.S.-based cycling teams. While cheating still occurs, the sport’s not even close to the same now—it’s significantly better, significantly healthier than the sport I walked into when I first left CU,” he says.
At the same time, he adds, “the skeletons need to come out of the closet.”
In late September, in fact, Lim testified in front of a federal grand jury investigating Landis’ claims. Landis, who was stripped of his Tour de France title after testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance, initially denied doping. This year, however, he admitted the offense and alleged that many others in professional cycling, including Armstrong and Lim, were either doping or assisting in it.
Lim released this statement on his testimony: “I testified willingly, and openly, to the grand jury and took great pride and care in telling them the truth about my experiences in the world of professional cycling. I feel gratified that I had the opportunity to set the record straight and to share all of the efforts that I have made, and continue to make, to vigorously prevent cheating in the sport of cycling. I look forward to continuing the fight against doping and to imbue athletes with my passionate belief that performance enhancing drugs are unnecessary and a tremendous health risk.”
While professional cycling might appear to have a disproportionate amount of doping, Lim argues that of all pro sports, cycling comes under the most scrutiny. “Outside of the Olympics, cycling is basically the poster child for the issue,” he says. “There’s no other sport that scrutinizes itself as much or tests its athletes as much.”
“While that brings continuing attention to us, it also keeps the overall level of doping lower than most sports.”
The doping scandals in cycling actually reflect “our society as a whole,” Lim says. “We don’t often draw the line between medicine and cheating.” Lim offers the example of Ritalin, a drug prescribed for attention-deficit disorder. When he was on campus, many students told him they took the drug to help them concentrate while studying.
Is that cheating? Lim doesn’t say, but he does say this:
“We take drugs and we take medications to be lazy. You can be sedentary and get pills, or you could do exercise change your diet,” he observes.
“There’s so much that athletes can do to enhance their performance naturally that doping is an easy way out.”
Further, Lim notes that performance-enhancing drugs are risky. Riders who dope “actually put themselves in extreme danger. … The question is whether there’s a natural and ethical way to get the same result.”
Further, what happens when a rider develops a bigger engine but has the same old drive train? “The body is so complex that once we start to play with it, we run into bigger problems than we actually solve.”
People are generally ignorant of such things, Lim says. “The public automatically assumes that the only way you can achieve top performance is with drugs.”
That belief runs so deep, even among athletes, that placebos can enhance performance. Lim cites an Italian study involving athletes who took morphine before one day of simulated competition and a placebo before another. “The results of the sham were exactly the same as the morphine.”
Paraphrasing Yoda, the “Star Wars” sage, Lim notes that doping often emerges from fear. He says: “Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering, and suffering leads to the dark side.”
In the end, most elite cycling teams are pretty closely matched in talent, and mental outlook can separate winners from losers. “If you believe you’re going to win, the biggest pharmacy in the entire world is already in your brain.”
Though Lim loves what he’s doing, his longer-term goal is to become a Johnny Appleseed of physical fitness. “I would like to have some sort of stake in physical education in the U.S.”
Lim earned an undergraduate degree in physical education at the University of California at Davis. “When I was going to school, PE was a total dying agenda,” chock full of negative stereotypes like “big, dumb jocks” in a “breeding ground of wedgies.”
“But physical education has the possibility of totally and fundamentally changing our culture,” Lim contends. “If I can take what I’ve learned from elite athletes and apply it generally, I think people can lead better lives.”
He adds, “All that being said, I don’t know how to do it.”
It is a daunting challenge. But a guy who persuades Lance Armstrong to go time-trialing in a Mardi Gras costume might have a good shot.
By Clint Talbott
Allen Lim. Photo by Michael Robson
Kevin Costner isn’t a sports scientist, but he played one on the big screen. Allen Lim, on the other hand, is the real deal, and Costner can take some credit for that.
At the age of 12 or 13, Lim watched “American Flyers,” the bike-racing movie filmed partly in Boulder. Costner plays a sports physician who puts his brother through a stress test designed to gauge the rider’s fitness.
“I was struck by the fact that this guy had a job doing that,” Lim recalls. He was also drawn to the beauty of cycling. “I started reading everything I could” about bicycle racing and sports science.
Fast-forward three decades: Lim is a sports physiologist for some of the biggest names in cycling, most recently seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.
As director of sports science for Team RadioShack this year, Lim put Armstrong through a set of paces that could be fairly described as unusual.
Bicycling magazine described this scene this way: “There is only one word that would excuse someone for asking the world’s most famous cyclist to don an outfit that makes him look like he’s on his way to Mardi Gras. That word is science.” The scientist behind the picture is Allen Lim. Literally. Photo by Allen Lim.
Lim persuaded Armstrong to swallow a pill-sized thermometer to measure and transmit the champion’s core temperature during training rides in Hawaii. Lim also had Amstrong time-trialing along the Hawaiian coast with dozens of pieces of yarn (to indicate airflow) fluttering off of Amrstrong’s body suit.
Bicycling magazine put it this way: “There is only one word that would excuse someone for asking the world’s most famous cyclist to don an outfit that makes him look like he’s on his way to Mardi Gras. That word is science.”
Lim personifies such science. He is an alumnus of the University of Colorado, having earned his master’s in kinesiology in 1996 and his Ph.D. in integrative physiology in 2004.
But he is more than the sum of his degrees. As an online magazine put it recently: Lim manages to “look like a DJ when photographed with all of his nutty sports equipment … It’s been a long time since applied science has seemed so fun and necessary. And cool.”
Team RadioShack’s marquee rider endured a series of crashes and hard knocks in this year’s tour, his last. But, assisted by Lim, RadioShack won the team competition.
Lim talks about his career with apparent gratitude and a hint of surprise. “I think the odd thing is I’m still on Plan A,” Lim says, noting that by his age, 37, many people have moved on to Plan D, which might include moving back in with parents.
Though he’s spent years sticking with Career Plan A, “I’ve only gotten started to get paid for it recently.”
The ‘voice of power’
Lim follows riders while monitoring their power outputs with Saris CycleOps PowerTap meters. Photo by Allen Lim.
Lim is known as the sports scientist who helped popularize the measurement of power output in cycling. His CU doctoral dissertation, which focused on biomechanics, aerodynamics, and physiological responses to the stress of exertion in cycling, relied in part on measurements taken by the Saris CycleOps PowerTap, one of several power meters embraced by cyclists in the last decade.
Power meters measure the human equivalent of horsepower, which is the standard in cars.
Lim did some of the first field measurements on the product at CU. His test subjects rode time trials (all-out individual efforts) up Flagstaff Mountain, a popular cycling route and fitness barometer. They also rode a flat time trial in the Hygiene area.
Though CycleOps dubbed Lim the “voice of power,” Lim emphasizes that PowerTap, whose underlying technology was patented in 1998, was the work of a team of engineers. And the support of William Byrnes, associate professor of integrative physiology and Lim’s dissertation adviser, was integral, Lim adds.
“Bill Byrnes was open minded about what the tool meant,” Lim says. “I don’t think many professors or teachers would have taken that kind of chance with me or that project.”
Lim’s dissertation validated the measurements of PowerTap and found that power meters installed on bicycles provide a much more reliable indicator of a rider’s on-the-road performance than heart-rate monitors, which, Lim wrote, “should not be thought of as synonymous with the metabolic or physical demands placed on skeletal muscle.”
Cycling power meters, which measure riders’ on-the-road output in watts, have changed the sport, Lim says.
Lim likens life before thermometers to the days before power meters. Before thermometers, humans could describe temperature only in subjective terms—like “cold,” “hot” and “scorching.” And the description may have reflected the observer as much as the objective conditions.
Now, if you say it’s 65 degrees, people know what that means, even if some find that temperature more comfortable than others. Similarly, riders can now talk about producing 100 watts, and other riders know what that means—despite the fact that pumping out 100 watts might be hard for some and easy for others.
Accurate measurements promote creative, experimental training, Lim says. For instance, Lim might say, “I bet today that if you did 450 watts on the uphill and 300 on the downhill, you might have a lower power output but a faster time.”
(That hunch has in some cases turned out to be true. The reason has to do with the fact that aerodynamic drag, which partly nullifies a rider’s power, increases exponentially with speed.)
Further, Lim says, “We can reassure athletes if they feel like crap, because we can say, ‘You’ve gone harder than you’ve ever gone before.’”
Today, Lim notes, “you can’t talk to a professional cyclist (about a ride) without hearing how many watts it took.”
Lim says the sports-science community is still figuring out how to use all these data, but the general population could ultimately benefit as well. “We need a universal metric for describing physical activity,” he says. That standardized unit could help people have a better grip on their level of exertion and health.
Pursuing ethical competition
Lim with Lance Armstrong while training in Hawaii. Photo by Rysard Kielpinski.
While Lim has been immersed in the world of cycling physiology, nutrition, aerodynamics and power, the sport itself has endured crises. A series of doping scandals and allegations have eroded some enthusiasm for the sport.
Lim takes this in stride. Some allegations, most notably made by avowed doper Floyd Landis—Armstrong’s former teammate and Lim’s former employer—are five and six years old, Lim notes. “What’s happening with today’s scandals are mostly issues from the past. We’ve made incredible efforts in the last five years to eliminate doping, especially among North American cyclists and U.S.-based cycling teams. While cheating still occurs, the sport’s not even close to the same now—it’s significantly better, significantly healthier than the sport I walked into when I first left CU,” he says.
At the same time, he adds, “the skeletons need to come out of the closet.”
In late September, in fact, Lim testified in front of a federal grand jury investigating Landis’ claims. Landis, who was stripped of his Tour de France title after testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance, initially denied doping. This year, however, he admitted the offense and alleged that many others in professional cycling, including Armstrong and Lim, were either doping or assisting in it.
Lim released this statement on his testimony: “I testified willingly, and openly, to the grand jury and took great pride and care in telling them the truth about my experiences in the world of professional cycling. I feel gratified that I had the opportunity to set the record straight and to share all of the efforts that I have made, and continue to make, to vigorously prevent cheating in the sport of cycling. I look forward to continuing the fight against doping and to imbue athletes with my passionate belief that performance enhancing drugs are unnecessary and a tremendous health risk.”
While professional cycling might appear to have a disproportionate amount of doping, Lim argues that of all pro sports, cycling comes under the most scrutiny. “Outside of the Olympics, cycling is basically the poster child for the issue,” he says. “There’s no other sport that scrutinizes itself as much or tests its athletes as much.”
“While that brings continuing attention to us, it also keeps the overall level of doping lower than most sports.”
The doping scandals in cycling actually reflect “our society as a whole,” Lim says. “We don’t often draw the line between medicine and cheating.” Lim offers the example of Ritalin, a drug prescribed for attention-deficit disorder. When he was on campus, many students told him they took the drug to help them concentrate while studying.
Is that cheating? Lim doesn’t say, but he does say this:
“We take drugs and we take medications to be lazy. You can be sedentary and get pills, or you could do exercise change your diet,” he observes.
“There’s so much that athletes can do to enhance their performance naturally that doping is an easy way out.”
Further, Lim notes that performance-enhancing drugs are risky. Riders who dope “actually put themselves in extreme danger. … The question is whether there’s a natural and ethical way to get the same result.”
Further, what happens when a rider develops a bigger engine but has the same old drive train? “The body is so complex that once we start to play with it, we run into bigger problems than we actually solve.”
Lim at work in graduate school at CU.
People are generally ignorant of such things, Lim says. “The public automatically assumes that the only way you can achieve top performance is with drugs.”
That belief runs so deep, even among athletes, that placebos can enhance performance. Lim cites an Italian study involving athletes who took morphine before one day of simulated competition and a placebo before another. “The results of the sham were exactly the same as the morphine.”
Paraphrasing Yoda, the “Star Wars” sage, Lim notes that doping often emerges from fear. He says: “Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering, and suffering leads to the dark side.”
In the end, most elite cycling teams are pretty closely matched in talent, and mental outlook can separate winners from losers. “If you believe you’re going to win, the biggest pharmacy in the entire world is already in your brain.”
Though Lim loves what he’s doing, his longer-term goal is to become a Johnny Appleseed of physical fitness. “I would like to have some sort of stake in physical education in the U.S.”
Lim earned an undergraduate degree in physical education at the University of California at Davis. “When I was going to school, PE was a total dying agenda,” chock full of negative stereotypes like “big, dumb jocks” in a “breeding ground of wedgies.”
“But physical education has the possibility of totally and fundamentally changing our culture,” Lim contends. “If I can take what I’ve learned from elite athletes and apply it generally, I think people can lead better lives.”
He adds, “All that being said, I don’t know how to do it.”
It is a daunting challenge. But a guy who persuades Lance Armstrong to go time-trialing in a Mardi Gras costume might have a good shot.