There are some that are calling for this year’s Tour de France to conclude without crowning a winner.  That seems patently absurd to me.  To punish those who are clean because some used drugs or doping to compete makes no sense.  It’s like calling off the World Series because some players were found to be taking steroids.  Geesh.  Take the cheaters out back and shoot ‘em.  Let the honest ones have their glory.

If there is any good news to come out of the Tour, at least for Americans, it’s that the US-based Discovery Channel team will take first and third in the race.  While there is one more leg to go tomorrow, traditionally, riders do not try to jockey for position during the stage.  It’s more ceremonial.

The Discovery Channel Team’s 24-year-old Spanish rider, Alberto Contador, will be wearing the Yellow Jersey for the final stage and will be crowned this year’s TDF winner.  34-year-old American Levi Leipheimer, also of Discovery Channel, will share the podium in third place, having completed today’s final time trial with the fastest time.  Cadel Evans (Predictor-Lotto team) of Australia will take second place.  One more Discovery Channel rider, Yaroslav Popovych (UKR) also finished in the top ten of the race with eighth place.

I’m sure the irony of the fact that the only team, Discovery Channel, from the country with the absolute least interest in the sport in the world, the US, takes first and third positions in the race is not lost on some disgruntled competitors.  Additionally, Americans will take four of the top 25 positions in the race.  Maybe that doesn’t seem earth-shattering, but again, how many kids grow up in the US thinking their going to be professional cyclists?  Not such a bad showing after all.

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Holy crow!  What a disaster.  So, the Tour de France started with several top riders accused of doping being banned from the race.  Then, during the Tour, a few other riders were kicked out for failing blood tests or illegal blood transfusions, including Alexandre Vinokourov, who was favored to win.  In fact, the manager of Vinokourov’s team pulled his Astana Cycling Team from the race entirely.    Following that, the Confidis Team pulled out of the Tour after its lead rider, Cristian Moreni, failed a drug test.

Now, Michael Rasmussen, the clear leader of this year’s Tour de France, holding the Yellow Jersey (worn by the current overall leader) for most of the race, has been fired by his own team, Robobank, for lying to the team and missing several scheduled drug tests.  This move takes him and the team out of contention.

As of now, Alberto Contador, of the US Discovery Team has the Yellow Jersey.  The Discovery Channel Team has three riders in the top ten.

So, is Contador the last man standing?  Is anyone clean?  Professional cycling is a sport for the elite of the elite.  It requires a combination of superhuman genetics, non-stop training and a will to win that overcomes the agony of climbing 100+ mile hills for 26 straight days.  It appears that the self-selecting group of top riders in the world have found that there is no way to differentiate between themselves other than to push their bodies beyond their already distorted genetics.

These guys get tested for drug use constantly.  The top riders even get tested frequently enough to see if they’re getting transfusions of their own oxygenated blood.  Can more be done?  Can the sport be cleaned up?  I dunno.  It would be very sad if young cyclists come to believe that they can only win by following their now banned brethren.

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While looking for some information about the Tour yesterday (other than controversy about doping, it’s really difficult to get decent information about the Tour de France in English), I stumbled across this great website.  It’s a mashup that superimposes today’s TDF stage on a Google map, adds a chart of the elevation of the stage, then, and this is the cool part, shows various riders on the route with their live heart rate, speed, power output and cadence.  Apparently, some riders/teams are broadcasting their GPS coordinates with their ride data for the world to consume.

There aren’t loads of riders involved, but it’s cool to see the data for the ones that are.  Their low heart rates at any speed make me feel even less significant as a bike rider.

The data is only live, so once the day’s stage is over, the site just shows the route.  Worth checking out . . .

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The Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (PMC) is a charitable, 2-day bike ride across the state of Massachusetts that raises money for cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.  The ride was the first fundraising bike-a-thon in the country, starting in 1980.  Since then, over 42,000 riders and 25,000 support volunteers have made it one of the largest and most successful athletic charitable events in the world.  Last year, 99% of the $27M raised was given to the charity (making up 50% of the Jimmy Fund’s annual revenue) with only 1% used to support the massive event.  This year’s ride will take place on August 4th and 5th with 4,800 riders and 2,500 support volunteers along its several routes.  There are already 165,000 donors and rider sponsors.  This year represents my third time making this cycling trek in my home state.

Now onto the shameless sponsorship request . . .

As readers of this blog know, this type of post is highly unusual for me.  I even feel a bit skittish about posting such a request, like I breaking some unwritten blogging rule.  I guess I feel like this situation is a bit different - I’d like to think about it as presenting an opportunity.  If you’re like me, the charitable donations you make are often driven by an event, request or because it’s the right time of year.  While I consider myself a relatively generous donor to many causes, sometimes I still need a kick in the pants to remember to write the check.  Of course, each of us has a different capacity and ability to donate to charities and we all have our favorite ones.  If giving for cancer care and research are on your list this year and you haven’t had the opportunity to give through another channel, please consider this your kick in the pants.  I’d appreciate your support and donation for my ride across Massachusetts this year.  Supporting me isn’t what’s important of course.  Supporting a worthy cause like cancer care and research and a great organization like the Jimmy Fund is.  So, sponsorship of my ride is less important than sponsorship of these organizations and efforts.

And here’s the tear-jerker story to compel you to donate . . .

The PMC is a fun and athletically challenging event (especially as my old legs lose their power), which becomes more emotionally meaningful for me each year I do it – this will be my third year.  There’s nothing quite like the experience of reaching back and trying to find the energy to climb a hill 90 miles into the ride when you spot a lone kid on the side of the road holding a sign that says: “because of you, I still have my daddy.”  All the pain and weariness of the ride immediately drains from your body and the next mile takes on a whole new meaning – although with the added challenge of struggling to hold back tears.

If you’re interested in donating to Dana Farber and this seems like a reasonable way of doing it, you can do it online at this web page.  My PMC Gift ID is: wh0028 if you choose to sponsor me.  Of course, you can make the donation directly to Dana Farber if you prefer.

No obligation and donations can be made anonymously, if you prefer.  Thanks for even reading this far and if you choose to donate, thanks in advance for your support.

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I’m a bit late with this, but if you haven’t been watching ESPN 8 (”The Ocho” for Dodgeball fans), you probably missed the huge pile-up crash a couple of days ago during the Tour de France (or, perhaps more appropriately, the Tour de Dopage, as the 1998 Tour became known as).

Ouch!  It’s not easy to see, but these guys are moving pretty fast when they go down like dominos.  Also, if you consider all of the sharp, pokey things that make up a bicycle, you can easily imagine how unprotected body parts might get pierced, sliced or severed.  Let alone the painful effect of bare skin moving along pavement at high speed.

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A while back, I had the opportunity to visit the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, home to Andy Pruitt and his gang of cycling experts.  I’ve posted about Andy before and how his books have been very helpful in assisting me in ridding myself of many of the aches and pains that are associated with long distance riding and, ahem . . . age.  Of the many services BCSM provides to athletes (or in my case, people who think they’re athletes), bicycle fitting is a big part of their stock-in-trade.

As all serious riders know and some less serious riders should know, bike fit is critical to efficient and fun riding.  Trust me, if your bike doesn’t fit your body well, your bike’s gonna win the battle over the long haul and it just won’t be fun to use.  For those interested, comfort on the bike is also highly correlated with performance.  As, of course, is the dynamic between an individual’s musculoskeletal system and the geometry of the bike.

Having fractured my neck several years ago in an accident.  I have somewhat limited range of motion in my neck and shoulders.  That makes it a bit harder to get a bike to fit me well.  I have had many fittings before and ride a custom bike (Seven Elium).  I’ve been having some difficulty doing long rides recently, though, and thus my desire to seek out Andy and his team.

At BCSM, Andy does, among other things, a 3D bike fitting.  Passive sensors are placed on the rider’s body and video recordings are taken of the rider as he/she pedals their bike in a stationary trainer.  The result is pictures like the one below.

What a mess.  In the picture, 1 is the motion of my left knee.  2 is the motion of my right knee.  3 and 4 are my left and right feet, respectively.  So, my left knee moves from inside my foot to outside of it during the pedal stroke and my right knee stays inside my right foot during the entire stroke.  As you can imagine, ideally, you’d like to have your knees and ankles aligned through the entire stroke.  When they’re not, you lose efficiency and, like me, start having knee problems.

Andy changed my seat height, decreased the length of my stem (the tube that attaches your handlebar to the steerer tube - where your front fork attaches to your frame) and built up orthotics for my shoes.  After making these adjustments, my knees looked slightly better (the muscles in your legs have to be retrained for the changes).  More interestingly, my cadence picked up about 10-15 RPM at the same power level (good thing - I could spin faster, which makes pedaling easier).

I’m not sure where my knees are now, a couple of months after the changes.  Subjectively, they look like they’re in a better position.  They feel a lot better, though.  The other changes BCSM made have made my overall riding experience a lot more comfortable and I’m riding faster this spring than I was riding last fall.  All good.

If you’ve never had a fitting, any good local bike shop can do one.  They won’t use cameras, lasers and computers, but they can probably make your bike better with a few simple adjustments.  It doesn’t cost a lot, either.  If you’re heavily into riding, you probably have had bike fits before.  If you find yourself in the Boulder area, you may want to have one done at BCSM.  My fit also gave me parameters for a new bike when I get one.  It’s certainly more expensive than a bike shop fit, but if you’re serious, it can make a big difference.

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To try to get just a little more focused in this blog, I decided to start writing posts related to detailed cycling-specific stuff on my new blog on yourcycling.com.  On that blog, I’ll be mostly writing equipment reviews, outlining details about some rides I’ve done and generally whining about how sucky my most recent ride went.  I’ll still post cycling stuff on this blog, but it’ll only be the more important stuff - to me, anyway.

Yourcycling.com is a sister web site to yourrunning.com, yourclimbing.com and yourmtb.com.  They’re all sites of the Enthusiast Group - a company that develops web sites “that serve sports/recreation enthusiasts in telling their own stories without professional writing or photography help.”  Pretty cool stuff.  If your into cycling, running, mountain biking or climbing, they’re definitely worth checking out.

Using the Lijit search box on the right of this blog should search both my 2-Speed blog and my yourcycling.com blog - a one-stop shop.  But, it’s not working right now.  I’m gonna have to figure that out.

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As a guy who spends a reasonable amount of time cycling and even more time thinking about why I can’t ride faster and further than I do, I found, David Shenk’s new post titled, The Nature and Nurture of Muscles enlightening.  The post, on his The Genius in All of Us blog, discusses how muscles are built and how they change through exercise.

The author discusses the huge variance in the ratio of slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers found in humans.  But, more importantly, he states that this variance can’t alone describe the difference in athletic performance between people.  This is because, among several other factors, our muscles are inherently adaptable.  We can change slow-twitch fibers to fast-twitch fibers and visa-versa, through exercise, for example.

From the post’s summary:

“While evolution has given humans some variability in muscle types, the much more powerful product is its adaptivity. Muscles are designed to be rebuilt.”

“The ability of striated muscle tissue to adapt to changes in activity or in working conditions is extremely high. In some ways it is comparable to the ability of the brain to learn.” (Bottinelli and Reggiani, 2006)

I guess I’m going to have to find other excuses for why I’m always getting dropped on rides.

The post demystifies some of the physiology of musculature and its adaptation through exercise and in a totally readable and understandable way.  Yes, even if you’ve never even tried to understand what fills the space inside your skin.  Descriptive drawings, too.

Check it out.

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In its second year, the Amgen Tour of California, the first big race of the professional cycling season, attracted some of the the best teams and riders from around the world.  The ToC is an 8-day, 650+ mile race through California from north to south.  The US-based Discovery team (Lance Armstrong’s old team) led the pack, garnering both first and third place finishes.  No word yet from the French anti-doping authorities on whether or not any of the 4 Americans in the top 10 will be stripped of their titles for taking Advil.  [ed. note - OK, while that felt great to write, it's completely unfair.  Cycling, as a sport, appears about as honest as professional wrestling these days.  Someone's gotta step up.]

The ToC is the biggest race in the US, but is still dwarfed by the great European cycling events.  The high level of participation and the exciting finish to the race indicate that this event has great promise in continuing to become bigger and better.

The downside for the Discovery Team was that George Hincapie fell and broke his wrist in stage six.  It looks like he’ll miss the Spring Classics - shorter, very challenging races in Europe where he tends to be a leader.

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My family and I trekked out to Scottsdale, Arizona to see my father over Thanksgiving.  We’ve been out there many times and I’ve always wanted to ride (cycle) out there.  So this year, I borrowed a bike case (thanks, Chris!), took my bike apart and loaded it up with all our other crap for a short trip to the desert.

On the first day, I did a round trip to Carefree, AZ on a crowded road with loads of construction.  Of course, everything seems to be under construction there as the Valley of the Sun is expanding faster than the universe.  The MotionBased entry for the 27 mile ride is here.

I did a much more interesting, 47 mile ride on Friday.  It wasn’t supposed to be that long, but I got lost in the desert.  The picture above is at a point where I was thinking that Scottsdale was well on the other side of the mountains in the background and I really didn’t know how to get back without backtracking, which I refuse to do out of principle.  To add to my concern, I was only about 10 miles into the ride and I had already given up almost 1500 feet of elevation, with more to go.  I just hate when I leave all the work to the end of the ride, I’d much rather do all the climbing when I’m fresh.  As can be seen from the elevation chart below, it didn’t work out that way.  You can check out that ride here.

In the end, the climbing out there isn’t bad at all.  There are few steep climbs (you can find ‘em if you want ‘em, though), but the desert floor is not as flat as you might think.  You find yourself moving slower than you expect to and in a lower gear than seems right, until you realize that you’ve been climbing for 10 miles.

I’m going to travel with my bike more often.  I really got to see much more of the place than I ever had before and TSA and the airline were much better about the whole thing than I had expected.

BTW, if you haven’t checked out MotionBased before, it’s a pretty cool site (I’m not affiliated, just a user).  You upload the data from your GPS unit and MotionBased analyzes it and stores it.  You can have private and public data.  The two rides mentioned here are public, obviously.  I did a search through the public rides of others to get some potential ride routes before heading out to Arizona.  It’s a cool way to get introduced to an area before you arrive.

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