You know, I can’t help myself, I keep going to Cycling News to see what’s going on, despite my better judgment. Maybe it’s the Giro and not the Tour next year for Armstrong.
Here’s a quote from Lance about him appearing in Le Tour next year:
“Everybody knows about its importance but there are the problems with the organisers, journalists and fans. This could be detracting from my main goal, the global awareness of the fight against cancer.” – Cycling News
Mr. Armstrong, the trouble isn’t with the journalists or fans. The organizers, well, I can see that. But the real trouble is that the sport that gave you a worldwide stage is dying. The sad thing is that it is dying by its own hand. What’s worse than that — all we hear from you is, “I never tested positive.” I really don’t care that you never tested positive. I’ve never been arrested for peeing in alleys. Who cares? At some point, you’ve got to stop worrying about recriminations.
How about stepping up to the plate, along with that guy you seem to loathe, Greg LeMond, and help get some real changes made? The two greatest American riders and the bankroll and press that follow would be hard to ignore. It would be like Superman and the Batman working together. Hell, you can even be Superman since we know for a fact that Greg isn’t bulletproof.
Are you going to tell me that the two of you and all the resources you could bring together couldn’t put together a plan (between kicking each other in the sack) that would make it infinitely harder to dope? He seems to be stepping up, in his Dark Knight fashion. You seem to be backing off. Don’t leave Batman alone while he tries FTW. Hell, bring back all the old Posties to get it done and turn it into the Justice League, just not this Justice League.
Greg LeMond, if he’s crazy, he’s my kind of crazy. Go get them Greg. The list of riders returning to the peloton looks like the mafia coming home to Sicily: Armstrong, Vino, Basso, Hamilton, Landis. The shadow of doping hangs heavy over this crowd. What should be done about it?
“It should be up to a group like WADA. The riders just want to know that they can trust the system – that’s all. If a crime’s a crime, you’re going to get busted. Cycling is so black and white when it comes to watts and we can have that data now – it’s not a mystery. Last year there were climbers doing 450 watts but weighing 58-60kg – that’s nearly 8 watts per kilo. That’s impossible – unless we’ve all had some kind of genetic mutation over the past 15 years.” – Greg LeMond Cycling News
The return of these riders creates an atmosphere where others in the peloton are going to scratch their heads and say, “To have a chance, I’m going to have to fudge it a bit.” And off to the races, so to speak.
LeMond’s ideas make sense, why do they not make sense to the Cosa Nostra of cycling? Sadly, I think that question probably answers itself.
And if not him, I think I would be comfortable having him performing oversight over the “rescue” plan. It’s long, but well worth the hour it takes to watch it:
… of whatever Microsoft is doing with their inept search bots. The most informative thread so far is over at webmaster world. I’m still getting the same type of stupid one word searches, but now they have changed it up. The “form=QBHP” deal is the same, but check out the referral link:
Uh hunh — I’m really glad I rate for “633588024724311873″…
As reported by everyone else, the bot (pretending to be a person) comes in right after MSNBot. I’m blocking them, I really don’t care what they are doing other than the fact they are screwing my stats up.
The last five days have been pretty much devoted to the bike. I broke out the truing stand and got my back wheel in shape this weekend. It took some tweaking on Saturday and Sunday but has held steady for the last three days. I’ve seen Waterton Canyon three times (no big horns sighted, bummer), Matthews/Winters once, the Cherry Creek Reservoir for a maintenance ride on a two-fer day, and today was Three Sisters. I did have a bat-man squirrel sighting today, those things are fearless and kinda scary looking. It ran beside me on the trail for about a hundred yards up Evergreen Mountain West with a pine-cone or something large (maybe the head of one of its rivals) in its mouth.
October riding in Colorado is excellent. I didn’t make it to the trailhead until around 2:00 and the temperature was perfect, maybe around 70 degrees. I was expecting the climbs to really hurt, but compared to the climb up from the Strontia Springs dam at Waterton, it was actually pretty easy going. That tight slotty switchback on the Sisters frustrated me. I can’t get the front wheel aligned correctly to hop the back end the rest of the way around. I have a much easier time with it downhill. Up top on the other side of the road, I rode up my favorite rock and kicked back for few minutes. I swear the sun goes down earlier up there, it looked like it was about to set and it couldn’t have been very far past 3:00. I had to break out the vest for the downhill because I got chilly during my break. Even so, it certainly beats climbing while it’s 95 degrees out.
I think I have the headache thing licked (famous last words), the next few days should show whether I’m fooling myself or not.
And more good news, I just got off the phone with Delynn, and it turns out Apple relaxed the Non Disclosure Agreement today — woot!
