On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Sean Breheny wrote: > I think that the limitation here is aerobic respiration. Your heart > and lungs can only get so much oxygen to your muscles. For a very > quick burst, you can use the reserves in the blood in your legs and > you can also dip into anaerobic respiration (lactic acid generation), > but this cannot be sustained for more than a few seconds. So, you can > sprint up a couple of flights of stairs (which for a 100 kg person > going up a 10 meter flight of stairs in 5 seconds is about 2kW or 3 > Horsepower), but you cannot sprint up 10 flights of stairs. > > There may also be a thermal dissipation problem in your leg muscles. > > I wonder if an ultra-fit marathon runner or cyclist could sustain >500 > Watts for minutes? > > Sean They can. A trained athlete can sustain 1 kW for a short time, maybe a few minutes. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .