Nosmo wrote:My take on this:whp4 wrote:While I count myself among the Freed doubters (no independent witnesses to any of these fabulous rows?) this particular fact isn't one of the reasons why. Good old Joop Zoetemelk (TdF winner 1980, 6 time TdF 2nd place, 16 completed TdF rides (the record), 1985 World RR champion (at age 38!)) had a resting HR in that range.hjs wrote:Have you ever heard of a very well trained endurance athlete with a resting puls of 60/65 ?
1) High resting heart rates among top athletes are not unknown. It is not common but it happens.
2) I've met a number of athletes who do no interval or speed training and a very high volume. They are very good at
3) long distance and bad at short distances. They have small differences in speed as the distances increase.
4) Those same athletes psychologically dislike the short races and rarely do them. One would not expect them to do them well. It is not surprising that they would do a poor 2K and that it would be relatively much worse then longer distances, or that they do them so rarely they wouldn'
5) Top OTW and 2K ergs have to train for speed and they will have a much bigger pace difference between their 2K time and their distance times then those who only do long distances.
6) The ERG in the upper age groups is not nearly as competitive as many other sports. It is not surprising that someone may come along who can erg seeming very fast.
7) People cheat. They cheat with HGH, EPO, steroids and other drugs. They lie about their weight. They lie about their times. People cheat at lower levels not just the elite level. High School football players take steroids. Amateur master and veteran cyclists take EPO. Any one who thinks rowing is "pure" is naive.
Rod Freed's times seem a bit extreme and suspicious but still plausible to me. It is also plausible that he is a fraud or that some of his times are a fraud.
Without more information we just don't know. Whether any of us chooses to believe he is a fruad or his times are legitimate says something about each of us, but not nothing about him.
If something is extra ordinaire and extreem proof is needed in my book, everything is strange about Freed, his results, his "slow" 2k, the way he set's his pb's, his hartrate, and on top of that he never seems to have done anything in public.
Without any proof I don,t believe his results.