Oh Froomey, say it ain't so!

Maybe this isn't going to be as bad as it looks. Then again, maybe it is. But it is really important not to let the noise surrounding this story get us distracted. What is really at issue here is a question of marginal gains and just how far you can take the idea before it gets you into trouble.

We know Salbutamol helps you perform better on the bike. If it weren't the case, why would Ulissi have been using so much of it? Why would guys from historically shady teams be getting caught over the limit? Why do so many riders in the World Tour seem to suffer from Asthma? Even Ale-jet seemed to have some trouble that required quite a lot of salbutamol to fix.

Why was Wiggins getting injections for asthma that were so conveniently timed? David Millar explained exactly why they all have asthma, it is so they can use salbutamol and other drugs like it.

And maybe, just maybe, amateurs are getting asthma too so they can take advantage of what is clearly a loophole (especially when there is more testing.)

But all of this is just noise, the real problem is the blow to what some of us know is a wonderful performance enhancer, legal, and not even filled with yak blood or turtle hormones!

They are those lovely ovalized chainrings, the rings that have been born and almost died many times living under labels like biopace, but now gaining wider acceptance with Rotor, Osymetric, and Absolute Black among the biggest producers of the rings for both road and mountain riding.

And Froome was clearly a big believer. Look at the size of those things:

And particularly because he was into the super ovalized ones (seriously, how much farther until they are square folks?) Apparently actually square chain rings are a jewelry thing and not yet a cycling thing.

But it was important that Froome was always riding these crazy looking rings and winning big races. It may have just been a convenient way of hiding his actual power numbers when the public was so desperate to know.

But I, for one, have been convinced of the utility of the oval rings. Some people would say that my conclusions are irrelevant since I use a Stages power meter that isn't precise enough, but if Froomey is down with it, it has to validate my feelings a little bit. (Especially since Sky started using Stages!)

But if we've perhaps lost Chris as the most recognized believer in oval chainrings, have we now lost the fight? Only time will tell but I take a different lesson from it.

Don't take things too far in your pursuit of marginal gains. Oval chainrings work, they are great, I even like the aesthetics of them, but don't go too far. Those Osymetric things are just too much, the chain bounce and the squashed oval is just a bridge too far. 1000 ng/ml is ok Chris but when you are starting to approach 2000 ng/ml, you've crossed a line!

So go for the marginal gains, put these pretty rings on your road bike, enjoy the performance benefits and the pleasing look that is just odd enough to catch the eye but not enough to frighten anyone.

Seriously, how good does that look!

Just avoid going too far. It is fine to have asthma, lots of people do (lots even have legit asthma!). But if you are suffering from asthma so severe that you need injections of kenacort, you probably shouldn't be starting a grand tour soon. Get that stuff better and then start your grand tour!

Seriously Chris, say it ain't so. As much as I wanted you to lose, as much as I find myself unfairly despising Team Sky, I didn't really want it to go down this way. It is bad for the sport, I agree with Nibs on this one.

(On a more straight-forward note, it does seem really strange to blow it on salbutamol, which hasn't been shown to really increase performance so why go over the line there? Is it just a miscalculation in dosage that got messed up because he metabolized it differently, etc.? I know the science of the testing and the drug itself is super complex and so it isn't an open and shut case, he may have followed all the right instructions and still ended up with the adverse analytical finding. Labs can make mistakes. So I sort of hope this turns out to be nothing because otherwise Froome and Sky are just being dumb. Unless they have done other testing that has shown that salbutamol really does help.)

On Wouters and Weirdness

I re-visited The Barkley Marathons documentary recently and was struck by Wouter Hamelinck's story at the race.

When I've shown the documentary in my class, students are always shocked by the fact that he rode his folding bike from the airport to the race. He may have taken a route similar to this one:

And this seems so bizarre to the typical American high school student, and my guess is to the typical American.

But see, this isn't weird. Riding a bicycle to get places is not weird, it isn't crazy, it isn't just for insane people who have vendettas against cars, it isn't just for vegans.

Bicycles have always been fantastic at getting people around, they are efficient, can be modified to do all sorts of great things like carrying kids, cargo, even other bicycles.

Bizarre is the fact that Wouter wanted to run the Barkley, one of the most tortuous ultra-marathons in the world and famous for crushing even the most accomplished psychos who love this sort of thing like Gary Robbins.

In the US, slow progress is being made. The number of bike trips taken by Americans has steadily increased since the 1970s and exploded in some places in the US. Apparently in Portland, nearly 6% of all trips are taken by bicycle.

But that is seen as weird by the majority of Americans. But it isn't weird, the only reason we think that is because we've been trained to think that.

Elsewhere, the culture of cycling to get places is completely, absolutely, majestically the norm. It isn't just in Copenhagen where people think it is normal to ride bikes.

It is certainly true that US cities lack the infrastructure to make cycling as safe as it is in other countries where people don't feel the need to wear helmets because riding a bike is inherently pretty safe until cars are involved hitting the people riding bikes.

And helmet laws discourage riding, which, as Chris Boardman so eloquently pointed out, makes people significantly less healthy.  Mandatory helmet laws are seen as being so important but have never been shown to decrease head injuries.

This too is simply a cultural problem, a culture that believes that cycling itself is dangerous and weird is incapable of seeing that it isn't cycling that is dangerous, it is the way that people operate motor vehicles that is dangerous to everyone around them and in them.

And this has all sorts of incredibly negative effects on public health. Boardman writes: “In the UK one in six deaths – nearly 90,000 per year – is as a result of physical inactivity related disease including diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Clearly, any measure proven beyond doubt to reduce people’s likelihood to travel by bike, will almost certainly kill more people than it saves.”

I rode my bike to work this morning, even at 6:15AM with roads that are relatively quiet, it can be scary. I have super bright headlights and tail-lights, reflective bits all over, and I don't have that far to go. But it can still be terrifying.

But it is only terrifying because of drivers. Sometimes they are just ignorant about the rules regarding bikes in roads, sometimes (a lot of the time) they are just not paying attention, and sometimes they are belligerent and homicidal. 

But the problem has nothing to do with me and my bike. But Americans can't see it that way because of the way they've been trained to view people on two wheels. Legally it is basically ok to hit and kill someone on a bike as long as you don't flee the scene and say you are sorry. Real cycling infrastructure always faces huge obstacles and takes decades to happen. Then as soon as it is in place for some time, most residents love it, even the people that don't ride bikes.

But the act of riding from the Knoxville airport to Frozen Head State Park to run the Barkley Marathons is not weird. It isn't unsafe, even though Wouter didn't wear a helmet. 

Why would he? He knows cycling is safe because he grew up thinking that and has lived it. 

Maybe someday America will realize it too.

PS - When I think of Wouters, I cannot help but think of Wouter Weylandt. Cycling can be dangerous sometimes, even for people who do it for a living. But those times are astonishingly few and far between even for the guys who take insane risks because they are racing down mountains in packs and in and out of cars, etc. RIP WW

A sweet new bike being sadly neglected

I got this in the mail a couple weeks ago:

Not this exact frame mind you, but one that is an awful lot like it. Only subtract the nice ceramic bearings. And I find it a little bit sad that I am so busy that I actually haven't even stripped off the packing materials to properly gaze upon this beautiful new (to me) machine. Or started spending money I shouldn't on getting the bits necessary to build this up into the powerful steed it will become.

Pitiful, in a way, but also good to know that my priorities are not entirely demonstrably misplaced. At least not all the time!

And I was struck by another, significantly different observation today. Some of you are familiar with the "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Tennyson. The most often quoted lines come from the second stanza:

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

   Someone had blundered.

   Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

When one team leader quoted it to another team leader in a flashback sequence in Netflix's new Punisher series, Frank Castle (the other team leader) gives a reply that paints the poem in a new light for me:

"Ours is not to reason why, Frankie Boy, ours is but to do or die" mis-quotes the soldier.

Frank's reply: "That's from a poem about a bunch of guys got their asses handed to them on the back of bad intel, right?"

The idea of the rough and tumble Frank Castle having actually read a poem shocks his buddy.

But it is reminiscent of a few good portrayals of the more-complex-than-you-thought hero or anti-hero. Perhaps my favorite is still Omar in The Wire.

One of the sweetest scenes in the series:

That stuff is deep. Truly.

So is the explanation of "Charge of the Light Brigade" as "a poem about a bunch of guys got their asses handed to them on the back of bad intel."

Good work whoever wrote that episode!

"We have to go back from two years to four years. The move down to two did a lot of damage to my sport."

I just read this little tidbit from Sir Sebastian Coe and it got me thinking.

Track and field and cycling, two of my favorite sports, are also the sports where doping of some kind or another has been rampant since about the time they started.  At least now the cyclists aren't taking cocaine, barbituates and rat poison to help them climb the mountains (and sometimes die).  But you can bet they are still doing everything they can to win.  And sometimes that will include taking performance enhancing drugs.

The nature of the two sports with records that can easily be compared across eras, much more easily than in sports like baseball or football that have changed so much and have vastly different equipment, etc. (though baseball fans will often claim that they have the same sort of feelings about records, hard to believe since they too are so frequently the result of some of the most obvious abuse of PEDs) creates fans of two kinds.

The "European" type who understand the fact that doping has always been and will always be a part of it and will look the other way as long as it isn't rubbed in their faces and the "American" type who want to believe in some kind of ideal sportsman thing where they don't take drugs and they don't cheat and records are sacred.  Except in the midst of the excitement when the big sluggers are chasing the records and no one cares that their heads are several inches wider than they were and they are defying both age and physics.

That paragraph was originally much shorter but reading about Bonds and others and the physics of their changing bat speed while maintaining a highly efficient swing corresponding to drug use is fascinating stuff.

But when the largest cycling event in the country is sponsored by Amgen, one of the biggest pushers of artifical EPO, you really shouldn't get too carried away about purity.  But we still do.  There's rampant speculation about the most recent Tour de France winner crowned yesterday after the first evening finish on the Champs Elysee.  Chris Froome claims that he is 100% clean and lots of us hope he isn't doing anything too crazy that will come out 10 years from now.

And therein lies the rub, so to speak.  As Seb Coe noted, lots of damage has been done to "his" or "our" sport because of doping and any leniency about it only increases that damage.

I actually wasn't even interested in his rant about 4 year bans over 2 year ones, I was struck by his ownership of the sport.  Because when we as fans (and even Seb Coe is now a fan, just like every other former athlete) own a sport, we own the spectacle of it, the desire to cheer for our favorite teams or players, the desire to endlessly argue about who will do what in which season and make all kinds of stupid predictions that will almost always be wrong.  And along with that ownership comes a responsibility, at least in my mind.

If we want super-human performance, we'd better be willing to take a "European" attitude about it and perhaps even be willing to stop looking the other way when "our" former players are suffering from the effects of "our" sport.

I don't mean to suggest that it isn't actually our sport, it is our watching on TV and paying for merchandise and tickets and giving sponsors reason to be involved that supports these sports and gives these athletes very big stages to perform on.  And as (at least part) owners of the sport I think we ought to be willing to accept the reality of it and acknowledge that the athletes will do anything and everything they can to win or to make it onto the biggest stage.  This includes doping, cheating, and sometimes sending someone to go hit the other girl's knee with a metal baton.

I think I've just grown weary of the outrage on both sides.  The folks that defended Lance Armstrong right up until his admission and the ones that still do.  They are just as annoying as the ones who rage about how we must throw out all the cheaters and have zero tolerance and everything else.

You don't want guys in the NFL to get busted?  Then be perfectly happy with their very lax and easy to beat testing regime.

You don't want baseball players to get outed as steroid users but you still want to see lots of homeruns and get your favorite players back out on the field quickly from the injuries that are bound to come with playing 162 games a season?  Same as the NFL, just be glad no one is pushing for the same level of scrutiny that comes with being an Olympic athlete or a pro cyclist.

And for cycling fans, learn to overlook the fact that Lance was doping and maybe form your opinion based on how he treated his teammates, took advantage of his fans and his image as a cancer survivor, etc.  If you are ok with that, then be happy that he dominated those 7 Tours de France and still has the yellow jerseys hanging in his house.

If you aren't, then perhaps hope that the lawsuits claw back some of that money he picked up using all that fame and power.

And maybe just enjoy watching arguably the most entertaining Tour de France in recent history where guys cracked and the peleton as a whole looked far less superhuman than it did 5 years ago.  I don't believe that guys aren't micro-dosing or doing other things that can't get caught yet.  If you had to drop back to the team car 150 kilometers into a 250 kilometer stage and bring 12 water bottles back through the group, and your livelihood depended on being able to do that, maybe it is ok to put a little testosterone gel someplace on your body to try and recover to be able to do the same thing the next day.

If the sport were exclusively the property of the athletes, they might push for a totally clean sport, make everyone normal, they'd probably get hurt less, hit softer, ride slower, and be out for injuries longer, but at least they wouldn't have to have three alarm clocks set to wake them up in the middle of the night because their massive and super strong hearts can't pump their sludgy blood (thanks to the EPO or whatever else) around and they'd die otherwise.

At some point we have to come to grips with the fact that it is us and our money as fans that may very well be the driving force behind the doping the steroid abuse, etc.  And save your outrage for yourself.  If it really bothers you so much, stop watching, stop talking about it, stop reading about it online and you've done the most you can to change anything.

Don't conflate athletes trying to win with child abusers or others who are hurting people.  Can you make the argument that Lance stole from people and hurt them?  Sure you can, but you didn't turn off the TV during his interview on Oprah did you?

Of course you are just one person and the sponsors and the managers and the athletes don't care if one person stops watching.  But that is the only decision you can be responsible for and make, you don't make the decision to dope or not to.  You don't make the decision to change the testing regime or not to.  Your blanket acceptance by watching, cheering, paying (lets face it mostly paying) for the privilege to do those things is a blanket acceptance in real terms.

A True Champion

Given the recent revelations from Lance Armstrong (or lack thereof depending on your perspective), we are again having to question our ideas of what makes a champion or what makes an athlete worthy of our adulation.  In the spirit of Lance being the "champion" of a sport most Americans know little about but has a massive following in Europe, I'd put forward another little-known (in the US) champion who embodied many of the things we so enjoyed about Lance but managed to steer clear of the megalomania and urge to destroy others who stood up to him (off the bike) that Lance did.

If you haven't watched Senna the documentary from Working Title Films, I must recommend very strongly that you do.  It isn't overly long, it isn't overly sappy, but it will change the way you view racing and introduce you to at least several sides of an interesting man who was a great champion.

As someone who has driven a car, even one with a turbo and a manual transmission, I always felt I had some appreciation for race car drivers.  This film helped to absolve me of that stupid assumption.  The images from inside the cockpit as Ayrton wrestles a car described by the boys at "Top Gear" as more akin to a wild ferocious animal than the powerful but refined machines that F1 drivers today manage will awaken you to what it must have taken to do what he did.

And then it starts to rain.  And suddenly he is even better, in fact his coming out party came at Monaco when driving a really crappy car (compared to other F1 cars) and the rain began and suddenly he was making up between 6-8 seconds on the leader every lap.  Alain Prost, the reigning world champ, luckily convinced the officials to call the race just before Senna overtook him.

The hosts of Top Gear help to give more credence to the feeling I had watching the documentary that Senna was something very special.  And in some ways coming to that realization long after the fact makes it even more valuable in my mind.  Here is a man who was a hero to millions and millions of people and respected by drivers and F1 fans the world over and I'd never heard of him.  Suddenly I have this opportunity to not only know something about the man but to appreciate this sport and some of its nuance by getting this glimpse into one of its greatest champions.

And his "champion" ness is confirmed by his ruthlessness as a driver, his willingness to place other drivers in position to either crash or give way, his attention to detail and precise approach, his unwillingness to accept anything less than being the best, all of these make him a champion.  And strangely enough, or perhaps it seems strange now, I think Lance shared many of these traits.  One of the reasons he was so fun to watch was that he was a ruthless competitor on the bike and he doped himself into a position to be ruthless but if anything is easy to forgive it is that, given its ubiquity at the time in the pro peleton.

But what Senna had that Lance lacked, what made him a true champion was the humility to forgive, the humility to understand his place even as he was worshipped by millions, the humility to care for those around him even as he was trying his very best to obliterate them in competition.  In the documentary "Ayrton Senna - The Right to Win" one of his rivals describes the last moment he shared with him prior to his death and the way that Ayrton clearly showed that he could be happy for others when things went well for them.  This is one of the things that makes a great champion and separates them from someone like Lance.

If you watched Lance's interview with Oprah, you may recall his discussion of doping to win the seven tours and his suggestion that he already knew he was going to win, he almost laughed about it, telling Oprah that they already knew they would win.  He had doped, built a doped super team, done everything he could to be certain that his rivals could not win.  And if you watched Ayrton crash into Alain Prost in the first half mile of the Grand Prix of Japan, you might say look, they are the same, they will do anything to win.  Ayrton argued that he should have the outside lane, that it was the clean part of the track and since he won the pole he should take the outside.  He didn't get it, and knowing that Prost not finishing would make him world champ, he made sure Prost didn't finish, simple as that.

The difference is that when Ayrton faced cars that were technically superior to his, he either couldn't or didn't use his influence or his power to either crush those teams or steal the technology or jump across into one of those cars.  He fought to compete and lost with grace.

The difference is that Ayrton was not selected by the governing body of F1 to be the winner as Lance was selected by the UCI and Hein Verbruggen and Pat McQuaid to be immune to doping controls and to be informed of testers arrival, etc.  Ayrton was victimized by Jean Marie Balestre who repeatedly took the side of Alain Prost even costing Ayrton a shot at the World Title in 1989 and stole one of the greatest victories in F1 history from him.  (A lap or two here) Prost (arguably) crashed Senna out of the race but Senna pitted, got a new front wing, came back and re-took the lead in just the remaining 5 laps only to be disqualified by Belestre at the behest of Prost.

The day that Senna died at Imola, he remarked that morning that he missed Alain Prost, missed racing against him.  Not because they were always best friends, not because they didn't do spectacularly dangerous things to each other to try and win.

Senna missed Prost because he liked having a great rival, someone who he could rejoice in beating when they both were at their best.  Someone who had beaten him, someone who gave Senna's dominance a definite lack of certainty, someone who gave him doubts about his own greatness.

Lance can't handle doubts about his greatness, even as he admits cheating his way to it.

PS - How a race car driver drives a regular car (watch his feet)


PPS - The book about Ayrton by Christopher Hilton, Ayrton Senna: The Whole Story has been great so far.  I am just about 1/4 of the way through after getting it in the mail today.  So far it would suggest that he is even more of a champ than I thought!

Interview on Bob Long Sports Radio

Got on Bob Long Sports for their weekly show last night.  Talked about Lance and the reactions to his interview.

Same old Lance

Lance Armstrong pretended to tell the truth for the past 15 years about his cycling accomplishments, the doping he didn't practice, the things that other people said that he did, about who he was as a person.  And then he went on Oprah last night to tell the truth, the real truth.  And he continued to pretend.

But don't get caught in the "level playing field argument."  

Don't for a minute think that Lance himself is anything but a cheater, a liar, a bully, and isn't repentant about a single one of those things.

It is telling that those who know him, those who were his friends are the most vocal about how little his interview on Oprah has changed things or perhaps made it worse.  

Read Rick Reilly's column and be aware that he played people who then went to bat for him over and over and over again.  Everything he did, the number of tests he claimed to have passed, everything was a lie and he was incredibly adept at making people believe them. 

Read Betsy Andreu's interview with Austin Murphy prior to the Oprah show and after Lance called her to begin apologizing.  Then watch her interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN last night post Oprah.  She is furious, and rightly so about the lack of contrition, the unwillingness to answer arguably the most important question for her about whether he told doctors that he doped prior to his cancer diagnosis.  She is hurt by his boorish comment about not calling her fat and points out that he gives little reason to trust him now.  Perhaps even more importantly, she points out in her interview this morning on ABC that he can't admit that the hospital room conversation happened because it would open up more legal issues.

Read Greg Lemond's comments on cyclingnews.com and elsewhere.  He argues that it is possible to win the Tour without doping.  He points out that Lance never apologized to the people he destroyed, the people like Lemond.  He also points out that Lance's story included the whole idea of his incredible talent, all the myths about his body not producing lactic acid, etc.  Lemond suggests that “If Armstrong had given Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton the same stuff he was taking, he would never have won – they would have beaten him.”  

Remember that he made it very clear that all doping ceased after 2005.  He had to make this point to keep him safe using the statute of limitations.  If he admits doping in 2009 and 2010 he is wide open for perjury charges and likely jail time.  If he admits that, and his blood values from those tours suggest very strongly that he did, he stands to lose even more money.  The prospect of him being bled dry has become very real with the Landis whistleblower suit along with SCA trying to get their money back, the Sunday Times going after theirs and the possibility of other civil suits that could be filed depending on what he admits to.

Lance said last night that he "wanted to control the narrative," that he always wanted to be sure that the story fit with his version.  And nothing, absolutely nothing has changed.  He is attempting to use Oprah and this two-part "confession" to clear the way for him returning to competition earlier than he hoped while still keeping him free of the legal troubles that a real admission would bring.  He is still covering for his friends McQuaid, Verbruggen, Ferrari and Bruyneel.  He is trying to make it clear that he never was the ringleader of doping at US Postal because that might protect him in Landis' lawsuit.

The bottom line? Lance hasn't changed at all.  He isn't contrite any more than he thinks he needs to be.  He isn't admitting any more than he thinks he can get away with.  He isn't answering the toughest questions thoroughly and none of it is under oath.  He is protecting the figures that sullied the sport for years.  He admits that he was treated differently because he won so many races and had so much money but then continuously makes the "level playing field" argument, one that is disproved by his own admission as well as the different physiological reactions to doping and different systems and levels of doping.

Lance is still a bully and a jerk and a liar.  The only difference is that perhaps now without all the glitz and the money and the foundation and everything else, more people will see through his charade.  And there's still a possibility that someday he will drop it and come clean.  But I doubt it.

Watch out, its the tyranny police

I just read something on facebook that got my attention.  The premise was that the second amendment is about allowing people to wield power as individuals within a collective.  That just as individuals voting responsibly keeps the collective healthy, individuals wielding firearms (whether as a peace-keeping citizen or a member of the military) responsibly helps maintain a proper balance of power within the collective.

In his article, Kevin Yuill at least points out the fact that most people tend to ignore which is that there are quite a few powerful people who really would like to repeal or change the 2nd amendment but of course they realize this is impossible given that the majority of Americans would not support it.  Because of this impossibility, the drive is for gun control whether through Congressional measures or by executive order or both.  But Yuill's argument is that the 2nd amendment is not about who can or can't bear arms but is aimed at preventing the "tyranny of the seizure of weapons."

In a literal sense, he is correct.  The amendment states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  And if the state or federal government decided that they should take guns away from people or tried to prevent certain people from having them, that would be a tyrannical action.

But what about the tyranny of gun owners and wielders that is carried out against Americans every day?  Anyone taking someone else's life with a gun is certainly practicing tyranny.  I think it is fair to extend that to the idea that simply living in a country with so many guns means that I or my family are more likely to be killed by someone with a gun than in many other civilized countries.  I think Yuill and others that use the tyranny argument want to make it clear that only a government or group of lawmakers or even an individual like the president are being tyrannical in suggesting controls on who can own guns.

But he's wrong.  There's plenty of tyranny to go around.

If you as an individual decide that you want to have fewer restrictions on who can have what kinds of guns and where they can carry them, you are in favor of a tyranny that is visited upon those who would like to go to the park or into a school under the assumption that no one is carrying firearms.

Of course "bad people" or "sick people" may break those rules and you can argue that the tyranny of the sick or bad can only be stopped by the tyranny of the responsible gun owner.  You can argue that the rules shouldn't be decided by the tyranny of the ignorant who don't know the difference between an AR-15 or an H&K-5 or even a .40 S&W.

But I'd appreciate it if we could stop pretending that tyranny is something only the government can wield.  When you walk around carrying a gun and most other people around you don't have one, you are capable of more tyranny than many of those people put together.  When you have a gun in your home, particularly if it isn't locked up and stored securely, you can even be a victim to the tyranny of the accidental or the stupid.

So while we are standing up for our rights and protesting against tyranny, real or just possible, I just want to make sure there is a space for me to do the same.

(And I am super curious how many guns I'd have to mention and link to within a blog post to make an adsense thing pop up advertising a gun store or particular weapon.  Apparently this wasn't enough, maybe next time!)

I put the new photo in above, along with a few other changes.  The reasons I put that particular photo in are as follows:

1.  I never understood what people meant when they said "bike porn."  To a certain extent I think I do now and that photo would fit the definition for me.  I objectify to a rather absurd degree that beautiful mixture of carbon fiber, aluminum and other stuff.

2.  I really want one of them and perhaps putting pictures of it will convince the powers that be at Argon that they should let me ride one.  (without charging me for it of course)

3.  I think it is really a beautiful object, maybe even for those who've not caught the wanna be big time bike racer's disease.

Dare I also add that I'd really like to get this too since it matches so well?

I write this from my parents couch while I should be back home in Pennsylvania.  I am not home in Pennsylvania because I am not very good at riding bikes, mis-judged a very innocent and non-dangerous turn and then went off said turn into a significantly less innocent and rather dangerous and angry ditch.  A ditch with big teeth made of rocks, one of which I struck with a great and powerful blow.  Sadly the rock-tooth shook off the blow and my ribs did not.  Four of them gave way, and also allowed something called a "pleural effusion" to open up which then required a chest tube to drain.  Chest tubes are not fun though I suppose it can be interesting to watch bloody fluid drain out of your chest through a tube inserted in your armpit.  It gets old after a rather short time though.
I learned a lot of new words like hemopneumothorax and flail chest, and that you can use the word "paradoxical" to describe the motion of your ribs, but generally only the broken ones.  But it has been a couple weeks and things seem to be coming along nicely.  Maybe someday I will be good at riding my bike around turns.  For now I still seem to excel mostly at riding in straight lines by myself.  And I am ok at going uphill.

I had a fun year last year on the bike except for that most recent incident.  I got dragged up to the Killington Stage Race (really, I still get super nervous about any race since it involves almost invariably going downhill with other people that I trust almost as much as I trust myself.  Which isn't much.) where I had a lovely time and managed to win the GC despite not winning any stages and almost getting crashed out in the 45mph sprint on the first day in which I was not participating.  But being the Cat.4 race, there's always shenanigans.  But that was fun, I got a nice pink jersey out of it and had a wonderful time with Goates, Alan Royek, Paul Frandsen and his lovely wife, Jonathan Marshall, the eldest Goates child and met some of the Round Here guys that I hadn't met before.

I managed to pick up another GC win at the Tour of Washington County in decidedly baby-baby fashion.  Finish in the front group (15th or something) on the first day's circuit race (while riding with a back wheel that I kept worrying about as it felt rather squirrelly and then realized at the end of the race that it was not tight at all in the dropouts...) win the TT by 40 seconds or so and then hang around the back end of the crit and not lose too much time there.  Now on to Cat. 3, should be fun.  My goal of racing with Goates is foiled again however as he has been forced to move up to Cat. 2 after a banner year and who knows if I will ever make that kind of leap.

So after finishing December with just under 1000 miles, many of which were logged on the trainer so I am almost tempted to count them double, I will probably miss most/all of January and start the year in incredibly bad shape.  Super.

By the way, I'd need a small in the Gallium Pro road frame and probably a medium in the E-118.  Just in case you need to check before boxing them up.

Thanks.

My Kind of race

I wish it hadn't taken me so long to do one of these, I suppose South Mountain was similar, but really doesn't compare.  I drove up to very upstate New York on Friday afternoon with Mo and we ended up spending a little time waiting for someone to bring us some diesel...  But we didn't get in a ride that evening like we planned though we did have some nice trout (supposedly caught from the river behind the restaurant...)

The next morning we got up and went for one of the slowest rides of my life, just lolly-gagging around and watching the hordes of triathletes pass us.  Apparently it is a big practice weekend for the Lake Placid Ironman coming up in a couple weeks.  So the geek factor was extremely high.  The poor quality of this photo is also in the extreme range but off in the distance covered with clouds is Whiteface Mountain, the hill we'd climb later that evening along with several hundred other nuts.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing, had an incredible lunch at the Chair 6 in Lake Placid, a little house that happens to house a really skilled chef whose lunch prices are not out of reach though dinner might be.  After we picked up our packets we relaxed a bit more and then strolled over to warm up.  And by stroll I mean rode slowly.  I did a bit of warming up, maybe rode the first half mile or mile with some guy that talked a lot about how he'd ridden the thing more than anyone alive.  Interesting.

We start in age group waves, sort of random, women and tandems first, then 20-29 and 60-69 started five minutes later.  Then us 30-39 year-olds started up the road.

True to what I've heard, in many ways the first two and a half miles are probably the hardest in terms of grade as they have (I thought) a couple steeper sections.  But in general, this thing just goes up at a steady 8-9% for the entire 8 miles.  A group of three guys shot off the front and I was trying to be conservative so I didn't chase.  I sat around with a group of guys for maybe less than a minute before it was clear that they weren't going to be getting up the road too well and so I moved on with one guy for company.  he was pretty quickly shed though.

So for a long time I watched the three guys pulling away slowly but just tried to keep my heart rate from going too far north of 180, not really wanting to blow up but also wondering if I couldn't sustain 185+ for the entire thing.

But I loved it, just grinding away, trying to change gears every so often and taking advantage of slight changes in grade to pick up some speed.  It was also nice to be passing people the entire time as the waves in front of us started coming back.  I started to see one of my age group foes fall off the wheel of the two guys in front and he slowly came back over the course of mile 2.5-3.5 until I caught him.  I briefly sat on his wheel figuring I would give myself a little rest, but it seemed better to just keep up my own pace so I moved on in search of the other two guys.  I thought I could still see one of them so I just kept my eyes focused on that red jersey off in the distance.

The gap slowly came down over the course of about two miles and not too long before 6.5 or 7 I caught up to him and did the same thing, sat on his wheel briefly and then tried to move on.  I even tried to pick it up a little bit as I didn't want him to sit on my wheel and then muster the energy to beat me to the finish but he hung on pretty well.  So we rode together for a bit, then just after mile 7 we hit the short bench that is pretty flat.  I actually got into the big ring and really tried to push, hitting maybe 23 mph after quite a long time doing 8-9mph.  The guy in the red jersey stayed right there and the road started to kick up again before the last switchback to the top.

Then, suddenly he was gone and I was on my own.  I couldn't see the other guy from our age group (and the people were getting pretty scarce at this point) but there was a guy in front of me that I wasn't sure about so I set about chasing him but wasn't really sure I could get him.  I thought the finish was at the castle thingy but it actually was quite a ways before, catching me a little by surprise.  I tried to "sprint" through the line but it was rather pitiful.  There were a lot of people up there cheering and ringing cowbells and it was really fun.  Supposedly Lance said that the difference between a flat time trial and an uphill on was just pain and then "sweet pain" for the uphill ones.  I'd have to agree.

The couple times you come around a corner and get an exposed view it was breathtaking, even as I was breathing far too hard and loudly.  But the view from the top was tremendous, and I hadn't quite started freezing yet from the wind and the significantly lower temps at the top so I could enjoy it, have some orange slices, and wait for Mo and the guys who'd been kind enough to give us a ride down to show up.

I ended up riding to the top in 51:10, and I was feeling pretty good about getting second in my age group.  Turns out I was 8th overall, (in the men, there was one super-woman who beat me by 18 seconds) and times were significantly slower thanks to the headwind that was with us for a lot of the race.  Really a blast, I can't wait to do it again and maybe even find another one of the BUMPS that I can do this year.

Finally opened my account

Not with any money but at least a win in the Cat 4s.  In fact, I actually feel pretty good about this one because I was 6th overall and only about 30 seconds behind some guys that are pretty darn good at this TT stuff.  The other thing is that they are all significantly bigger than me so I feel like it is evidence of some decent watts/kilo on my part, but I still have some work to do so that hopefully I can catch them.

 The numbers :
47:40
27.3mph avg
1st in Cat. 4 and 6th overall.

I actually averaged a bit faster on the longer return leg and felt good enough to get up to 31-32mph on the (I think) slight decline over the last 1-2K to the finish.  It was also convenient that there were several guys that were ahead of me that I could focus on catching them over the last little bit.



I've tried a few different things at this TT and the Wednesday night ones that are just 10 miles one way and I am starting to think that I just go better pushing a big gear, channeling my inner Jan Ulrich or something.

I will have to take Marshall's advice and work on a fixed gear on my single speed, something I've thought about but been rather afraid of.  I am sure it will help me improve my pedal stroke and maybe by next year I can be spinning the gears I am pushing now.  Maybe then I can close the gap to the TT beasts that win all the events in NJ like Lundgren and his boys.  He managed to average 28.8mph for the same event and I think he might have been going a bit easy since he is peaking for the NJ State Champs this weekend.

Anyway, next up is the Philly Amateur TT, hopefully picking up some BAR points there and at the State TT the following weekend.  TTT anyone?

Second place is...

The first loser.  But I suppose that's what I get for riding my bike twice a week and thinking I can ride fast!  The course in Upper Freehold was actually pretty interesting, much more up and down, some pretty good little turns where I am sure I lost time, and the weather turned out better than I thought it would, not a drop of rain the whole time.  I actually warmed up on the road which I prefer so immensely to riding on the trainer so that was a big plus.

I was hoping to start at the end of the 4-5 guys but it appears that the ranked starting order only counts for NJ guys maybe so I was starting in the middle and caught a few guys right away, maybe a minute or two in.  Then I took the first major right turn and it got lonely pretty quickly.


I'd actually heard several stories of going off course so I was nervous about it and after riding for what felt like quite a while and not seeing a single rider or marshal, I was getting nervous but it turns out I was on course.  The time I sat up to look behind me just to see if someone was coming probably cost me a second or two (and losing by nine I suppose I regret it, but...)  The other part that was extra fun was having to squeeze by two cars on the right who had slowed down behind a guy in front of me (who had a sweet HUGE beard, extra props for having that amongst the "aero" crowd) and hoping they didn't decide to creep over to the right and push me into the bushes.  This of course distracted me from shifting and I ended up going up the hill in the 55x18 or so, not really what I'd recommend.

In the end, I lost by nine seconds to a guy that I beat by forty seconds in the TT at LBI despite taking a wrong turn and all that.  So I figure it has to be partly due to the fact that I had ridden nearly every day prior to that race since I was on Spring Break and had time, and this week I barely rode at all because we have eighteen track meets in the span of two weeks.



But I think the next race will probably be the Philadelphia Amateur TT, hopefully a chance to pick up some PA BAR points since it is now looking like I won't really factor into that competition since I haven't been in a BAR race yet!

C-130 Hercules Time Trial

So starting out of the back of a C-130 was cool, but it would have been cooler to have a ramp that didn't make you wonder if you would either bust your wheels or just go face first into the tarmac coming down.

Actually, it wasn't quite that bad.  Maybe because I also kept wandering around thinking that I was #378 when I was actually #371 so I almost missed my start time like an idiot.

You can't really see it too well in there, but that is me rolling out of the back of the plane.  The start was interesting, semi-technical and VERY fast with a huge tailwind so it was easy to get well past 30mph and then find yourself going into a corner and, if you are terrible at driving your bike like me, it can give you a scare.

I also knew the guy in front of me was actually quite good so I was trying to chase him down and I know he made some serious distance on me coming out of the gate so I set about trying to run him down on the outbound leg.  I was happy that my HR came right up and so I felt like I was able to push pretty hard despite only going between 24-26 on the way out with the wind coming from the front and the side.  I think I got to within about 10 seconds (with some very rough calculations on my part) and passed a few other guys when we got to the turnaround...

And from there he was gone.  He was a bigger guy than me, so maybe he just had more power, but he really opened it up and even with the ten to fifteen seconds I lost when I had to slow up for a truck turning with a big trailer right in front of me, he would have killed me.  It was fun to roll past a bunch of guys but I was bummed because I knew he was in my category and I was losing the race even as I was spinning a 55x12 for a while and wishing I had an 11 on there.

I ended up finishing 3rd in the 4's, clearly a lot of work to do.  I am sure it would help if I rode my bike more than 2-3 times a week.  Hopefully I can at least go back this week and race the NJ crowd and do better than my previous run and just make all the right turns and see how I stack up.  Plus this one has at least one hill in it which I always think plays to my advantage, even when it doesn't.

Good and Evil

So, I had a few minutes to kill today and I was reading random things and two really struck me.

The first one I had to stop reading partway through and come back because I thought I was going to be sick, so just like they warned us on the radio last night, this article is horrifying and I don't want to put a link to it until after I warned you.

But if you aren't convinced that evil exists in the world and you are sitting down, read this.

But just after reading that, I read this, an interview with a young man who was convinced that joining the military was the right thing to do and then grew increasingly troubled after joining up.  He grew so concerned that he was convinced he would go to jail rather than finish his term until he found out he could apply for conscientious objector status, which he did.

But his willingness to examine his own approach to the world and to make decisions and take actions that were so against the grain of the organization he was in, what his family thought and any number of other difficult obstacles.

It is difficult to imagine a person willing to not just deliver late term abortions but do so in the manner he did.  Perhaps you could dismiss it and say he could only do that because of some psychosis or very serious mental disorder.  But what about the people he paid to help him?

To then read about a young man willing to go against all the community or local pressure to go along with doing something wrong was very refreshing.  So in the same few minutes that I almost threw my computer out the window because of what I read and the pure evil of the people involved, I came back (I had put it down so I wouldn't throw it) and read about this courageous young man.  Nice turn around.

Amy Chua and the Brooklyn Free School

Lots of people read the article in the Wall Street Journal about Amy Chua and her outlook on parenting, and a lot of people have responded.  Or was it alot of people...

Regardless, it was an interesting article, one that stirred up lots of folks and apparently made Ms. Chua feel like she needed to retract or explain some of the things she wrote.  She took the time to interview and try to re-work her image, but she must be excited about the buzz as it clearly helped sell a lot of books!

David Brooks took a slightly different tack and called her a wimp!  He felt that the sleep overs and play dates her kids were missing were a lot more intellectually demanding than the thousands of math problems or hundreds of hours of piano practice.

Interestingly enough, the most recent edition of This American Life and the last piece of the story in particular suggest something similar.

The episode ends with a piece about the Brooklyn Free School which opened seven years ago and is modeled after the Sudbury Valley School with no classes, no set curriculum, no grouping based on age, no grades and an emphasis on democracy as students really do control and vote on everything that goes on in the school.

The story ends with a discussion of an all-school meeting called by a young woman upset at being called a "whore" by a couple of her school-mates.  She felt it was important to discuss the issue as an entire school, that calling people ugly things was something that they needed to bring up in front of everyone.

In the end, there was no resolution, there was no proposal to be voted on for a new rule, in some ways it felt like a let down.  But not to the young lady in question.  She was so glad that she had the chance to call a meeting, that she had that authority and that respect and that she had a chance to discuss this with her peers and then be able to move on and feel good.  She felt sorry for adults because they don't have that power in their daily lives.

But to navigate that environment, a world where students really do have control and authority and respect sounds to me to be a far more challenging and also far more rewarding environment than one in which everything is decided for you, whether it is by your mother or an autocratic school environment. 

So maybe Amy Chua really is a wimp, but in a larger sense, perhaps many of us adults are as we'd rather know that our children are in an environment where adults decide what is best for them and provide control and structure and authority.  Maybe we are all afraid of the Lord of the Flies rearing its ugly head and scaring the little ones.

I'm starting to think that Daniel Greenberg and others like him who've built the free school movement and suggested that kids really ought to be trusted with the opportunity to decide for themselves what is important are right.  I wonder if we have the courage to try it.

Posted on Sugoi website

No, not like the ones all you super hot triathletes have nightmares about, sandy feet into cycling shoes and all that, but trying to go from cycling all summer to being ready to qualify for Boston in my first marathon.

Let me first describe my feelings about the marathon as a race:  This is likely one of the most absurd things that people do, and this is coming from someone that loves the steeplechase and cross country and races with big hills, bike rides like the highlander (death before dismount) and uphill time trials.  But as I’ve been training for the marathon with a couple buddies, the utter stupidity of this race and training for it has been the subject of much musing.

When you are an hour and fifty minutes deep into a run and just getting ready to start some intervals, that really strikes me as stupid.  As I headed out the door to start a three hour run (the idea being just to simulate being on my feet that long, practice feeding myself, etc.) I thought to myself that this was a particularly idiotic thing to be doing on a Saturday morning.

Don’t get me wrong, I am vaguely excited about the idea and particularly to run with my brother at Boston assuming he qualifies.  He is the whole reason I am even considering running this thing, but I like him so I can’t be too negative about the whole endeavor.

I actually wanted to write this because I have either convinced myself that compression socks and tights and half-tights are the greatest thing around, or perhaps they actually are the greatest things around.  I have been toying with the idea of them for a while, wearing the socks sometimes, wearing the full tights other times, but as I’ve started doing these absurd runs, 16, 18, 20+ miles, I have been more and more intrigued by them.

I’ve worn the R+R socks and the half-tights pretty frequently, half tights because I have huge fat legs that chafe like mad if I am not careful, and the socks because I have huge fat calves that appreciate being squeezed into something perhaps slightly more pleasing to the eye.  And after the runs I have pulled on the compression leg sleeves or the tights depending on whether I am in a place where I can hide while changing.

And I swear they make a difference.  I have put up with ridicule (mostly in my head ridiculing myself for looking totally ridiculous in long socks and half tights) and desperate shame from heading out the door looking like that, but I am beginning to be, as I said before, completely convinced of the benefits of this stuff.

So for all you folks that love marathon-ing…  I pity you almost as much as I pity myself these days.  But while you are at it, I would suggest the compression stuff.  Sure you might look ridiculous, and all the benefits could be in your head, but isn’t the marathon all about using your brain to convince your body that what you are doing isn’t totally idiotic?

Wanna-Be

Did you ever get into your blog dashboard (if you are primitive like me) and get distracted from the task of writing something only to read someone else's blog leading only to further distraction and in the end a helpless feeling of inferiority that makes you seriously consider never writing anything again?

I feel like that all the time.

But press on I will.  Just like Andy Schleck who must have known that he couldn't quite beat Alberto pistol-grip Contador in the time trial today but absolutely destroyed himself trying.  Just like Floyd Landis who decided after years and years of lying and covering up what actually happened that he would just come out and tell all of it.  ALL of it basically making sure that he will never be on a cycling team or have a friend in the pro-cycling world ever again.  But apparently it does make him feel better, which is a good thing in my book.

I watched a movie yesterday and today that was quite intellectual, a big surprise actually from what I thought it was going to be about.  If you know some of my movie preferences, you might be able to easily guess which one this was, but how about a modern movie with pretty big stars in it basically examining the idea of using scripture as either a weapon or a panacea.  It had some fun twists to it as well, one that I didn't see coming that was really fabulous.  Although I do have to wonder if that particular version of that particular book wouldn't have been significantly larger than the one in the movie...

Two last semi-random notes...

1.  One of Liz's co-workers asked me yesterday if I agreed with Jonathan Kozol.  Then he asked what I thought about affirmative action programs in public universities.  Pretty interesting stuff.  I kept thinking back to what Joel Salatin brought up, the idea that by making civil rights and other things laws you may have actually hindered their progress.  I'd never considered that as an option before, but it does make for a more interesting debate, that's for sure.

2.  The folks at the Sudbury Valley School argue that children will learn to read on their own when the time is right.  They point out the fact that they've never taught a child to read since their opening in 1967 and everyone who has attended the school has learned to read.  They also claim an incredibly low (almost zero) incidence of reading disorders, their theory being that most of them are caused when adults tell a child that they are behind and then forcing them to learn to read before they are ready.  I tend to buy into this theory but I have so little practical experience in any part of that process that it is a somewhat tenuous position for me.

Really, this is a school?  I think I'd take that one over the 100+ million dollar building we are moving into in a month or so.  Then again, we have a pool...

I don't remember learning to read.  I haven't had a child learn to read and so far our three year old mutt hasn't picked it up.  I haven't taught children to read.  I haven't even really been around a child learning to read for any significant part of the process.  But it sure seems right.  I wonder what the reading specialists at school would say about it.  Maybe someday I will ask them.

Why Copenhagen makes sense

Thanks to El Presidente, I took a gander at this video detailing some of the reactions of American bicycle infrastructure folks to their visit to Copenhagen.  To be perfectly honest, the video made me want to cry a little bit.

Can you imagine a place where mothers would feel comfortable riding a bicycle with their kids attached in all kinds of different ways, perhaps this one:

I honestly can't do it.  We are about to add a player to be named later to our organization and I literally cannot imagine a place where I wouldn't worry about it, maybe Narberth...  But especially riding right next to major streets in the city?  No way.  But of course when you have low speed limits that are enforced, huge penalties for people stupid enough to hit someone on a bike, and a culture that actually celebrates cycling as a valid, viable, even wonderful part of life, everything changes.  You almost lose the need for various infrastructure changes because drivers are trained to ride around bicycles.  So too cyclists are taught in school and expected to demonstrate certain levels of competency.  Amazing.

I also wanted to mention that I've become a rather huge fan of Chris Horner after this year's tour.  He just rode himself into the top ten with a HUGE ride on the Tourmalet, bypassing his more absurd teammate Levi Leipheimer who was too busy sucking wheels and then blowing up to ride up the way Chris did, but of course Horner downplays his great achievement.  He writes a great blog about each day's stage here.  Did I mention that he is 38?  I still can't elevate him about Jens, but here's to Mr. Horner!  Chapeau!

This is Mr. Horner after winning the Basque Tour this year and got to wear the awesomely silly hat and spray the crowd with champagne.  Must be fun.

Here's to hoping that Andy Schleck knows something nobody else does about his TT in a couple days.

Suspension of Disbelief

I've had a bit more time on my hands recently, thanks to the fact that I don't have to go to work every day.  So sometimes, when I need a break from pretending I know how to do anything about fixing up or cleaning up our house...  I've watched a few things on hulu when the tour hasn't been on and I came across the pilot episode of "Covert Affairs" recently after hearing a review of it on NPR.  I can't say that I shared the same rather effusive feeling about the show but I was entertained.  I think it is pretty interesting to find that Adidas has paid for all the athletic product placement.

What I struggle with is the typical willingness of shows to just ignore the laws of physics and engineering in the simplest of ways, ways that are maddening to me.  Just like watching Goose die in Top Gun in a way that is as unlikely as me winning the lottery and the fact that they couldn't take the time to learn that Migs are always odd-numbered, the car chase in the pilot was unbelievably ridiculous.  Literally.

The young female agent in her first week on the job finds herself being chased by a black BMW after leaving work.  She manages to evade the Beamer with some fancy moves, decides to counter chase for a bit, then ends up stuck when her car kind of craps out.

Now, here's the good part.  She drives what looks very much like a 2003-04 Volkswagen Golf, a few years before but very similar to this baby:

This hot little ride will do 0-60 in about 8.5-9.5 seconds depending on the model, but hers was certainly not the R32 so we are looking at no faster than 8.5.  Quarter mile in about 16.7 seconds in case you were wondering.  Of course, it is a well-engineered German automobile and so it handles pretty well and it's a stick, which was a nice touch.

The opponent in all this fun on the roads?  Another German car, a BMW no less.  Looked like a very late model 5-series, but missing the tell-tales of an M.  So it doesn't look faster or anything:

Of course it also doesn't drive faster.  Because that would make the chase academic wouldn't it.  The fact that the BMW does 0-60 in just about 5.3 seconds.  Even if the driver is a bit slow, let's give them 6.0 seconds.  That will still cover the quarter mile in just about 14 seconds.  So if the chase lasts more than a mile or two, she would have needed a rather large lead in order to get away from this puppy.  Given the greater mass of the BMW and its far superior handling, etc., the chase should have been over just about the time it began.

As I said, I was entertained, but I do get tired of the idiotic nature of so many car-chase/stunt/war scenes and find it irresistible on those rare occasions when the director or whoever controls this sort of thing gets it right.