I've read somewhere that Floyd did not actually bonk the day previously but simply "felt like crap the whole day and when things heated up [he] couldn't follow." If he was feeling like crap the previous day for reasons besides his legs (we've all felt like crap before for no good reason), perhaps he got an inadvertent rest day on stage 16; enough to win back the time on stage 17.
FWIW, he didn't win back the time because he was going faster than everyone; he won it back because he went faster than everyone up one or two initial climbs and nobody bothered to chase till the end when it was too late to win back the full 8 or 9 minutes he had on most everyone. He got back to within 30" because of a few teams' strategic errors combined with his bullheadedness in pressing on. Not some superhuman strength. It was a mountain stage with 5 big climbs. Riding in a group isn't going to help you much. By the time people started chasing hard, you'd have to accuse the entire peloton of drug doping if they caught him because they would have expended exactly the same amount of energy Floyd did. Actually, probably more. There's no hiding from gravity like you can from the wind.
It looked spectacular because of the way he motored away from everyone and shed the people who were in the initial break (who weren't GC candidates by any means); but really, Lances team has done the same thing before, just that his team usually does it on the last climb of the day and usually someone bothers to chase. Think of how many times USPS (or Discovery) shattered the peloton at the start of the last climb leaving just Lance and only about 4 others hanging onto his wheel. Now imagine the same thing, the same effort from team and leader, but it is on the first climb of the day and nobody bothers to chase until he is 8 minutes ahead. Now you've got Landis. It wasn't a superhuman feat which hasn't been demonstrated before (think Lance, or Merckx before him); it is a supreme effort by a very good cyclist coupled with piss poor strategy by the other teams. You are not supposed to let the guy get 8 minutes ahead of you. 2 or 3 you can get back on the flats between the mountains. 8 or 9 the guy stays away.
As for the recovery bit and the doctor who said it takes three days to recover from a mountain stage: remember that all these guys climbed the same mountains. Landis only had to perform better than his competitors, all of whom were also tired.
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Cat 2 Track, Cat 3 Road.
"If you’re new enough [to racing] that you would ask such question, then i would hazard a guess that if you just made up a workout that sounded hard to do, and did it, you’d probably get faster." --
the tiniest sprinter