The Tour of Sufferlandria 2016.

The Tour of Sufferlandria (ToS) is four years old. I was still 'crushing knarly trails' in 2013 and had no interest in turbo trainers or shaving my legs so skipped that Tour in favour of getting hypothermia digging downhill trials in Staffordshire. I completed the 14 & 15 tours after a change of approach to my riding due to injuries caused by being crushed by knarly trails as opposed to crushing them. The concept behind the Sufferfest is simple, take established structured training sets (the classic 3x10, 1 on 1 off intervals etc) and other equally well structured sessions to simulate road racing, cross, going mental et al, pair these workouts with excellent on screen footage and clear instructions around cadence, effort and timing, then distribute like training crack. All one needs is some sort of exercise bike or normal bike clamped into a rolling road system called a 'turbo trainer' (or treadmill for some new workouts aimed at dentists and accountants aka triathletes), a screen to watch and a masochistic sense of self hatred fueled by the need to suffer horribly for relatively short periods of time thus hopefully removing the need to regularly ride for long periods on potholes occasionally interrupted by a road surface in cold miserable weather among telephonists/text/Facebook updaters who seem to also be piloting a one tonne machine whilst carrying out the latter, primary task. Essentially the 'fest seeks to make the arduous process of riding indoors rewarding, fun and most importantly; shorter than it actually is in terms of time. Those of you who have watched a film of TV show on a turbo will appreciate that a Ronseal advert can turn into Apocalypse Now. One of those very annoying BMW You Tube ads is The Redux with extra scenes and Marlon Brando smoking a huge bong out-takes. What the turbo becomes is a time machine capable of baffling even Aristotle with it's capability to turn minutes into hours.

'The Tour' - Why it is Good, and Bad.

Firstly, it's called 'The' Tour of Sufferlandria, not 'Le Tour'. Any event not in France, Algeria, French Guinea etc which uses 'Le' and the  'The' should be assigned to Rapha like pretentious status and ignored. So well done on that one. Secondly, it comes at the end of the U.S/European winter. Not great for Aussies but they are all out on their bikes getting a tan and having barbecues at the peak of their season so would most likely shun the ToS anyway. It is also good as it raises a load of cash for The Davis Phinney Foundation: http://www.davisphinneyfoundation.org/tag/taylor-phinney/. If you are reading this, please give some dollars up. Other elements that make the ToS good are the generous 50 hour global time slots allocated to each satge and the supporting literature/social media support. Sufferlandria seems to be remarkably free of judgmental arseholes (or assholes if you are a abandon-er of the Commonwealth Queen pissing off Yankie Blue Jeans Revolutionary/American). There is only support and love in the realm, making it a nice place to be. No even Donald Trump hates Sufferlandrians!
Why it's bad? It's hard, really hard. There is something about the workouts that immerses you, makes you push very, very hard then spits you out at the other end without the hour seeming to last more than 20 minutes. Afterwards you realise it was an hour and it was really hard. I'll go into more detail on the stage breakdowns but the intensity level nine days in a row, combined with life, riding to and from work/the shops etc fitting in the three-four resistance sets (as I fear cyclists arms are not good for baby carrying) is nasty. I've ridden long hard five, six and eight days in a row in Spain, France and Italy respectively, and it was hard, but essentially 100 miles of mountains is usually 50 miles going downhill and often interjected with an ice cream and drafting a Piaggio Ape at 30mph for a while. I hit up some cat 1/2 races in Flanders a few years ago and they were really hard, more so than anything in the UK. The Belgians cheat, a lot. I saw two guys holding onto a pizza moped for a clear 2 km in one race, the same two met the same guy at the bottom of the Kwaremont and had a tow there as well. I like to think they had ordered a pizza strategically, knowing the route from the pizza place to the delivery address, timing the moped perfectly for the tow.  I later learned that one of the many hundreds of sponsors plastered on their jerseys in unpronounceable Flemish lingo was a pizza place and the kid on the Honda was the brother of the winner. They still didn't win, another Belgian trio took the 1/2/3 but then all got disqualified for taking an extravagant shortcut involving someones private farm road and a pre-arranged open gate. Eventually I was bumped to third but actually came ninth. I have no idea what happened, my prize was an ashtray.

The Stages:

There are nine. Actually there are 12 but over nine days. Days two, eight and nine are double stages, much like old school grand tours where the chaps would race in the morning, time trial in the afternoon. Sadly the double days in Sufferlandria run back to back with no rest, massage, pasta party, blood transfusion or tense press conferences. There one sort of 'rest' day, taking the excellent climbs of France and Italy at a fairly leisurely pace, but it's not that leisurely and still involves grinding away on a turbo for 90 minutes.

The Arena of Pain:

The spaces chosen to suffer within are wide and varied. People from all over the globe complete the tour, some have to account for intense heat, others intense cold. Being from the UK it is never intensely hot, cold or otherwise. I use my garage/gym (a hard earned and saved for luxury after 24 years of dreaming) and one big assed fan, this seems to suffice at the around 2-8 degs I was subjected to. Regardless of how cold it is, you will need a fan... If it's hot, have two or train in a commercial fridge. Other than a fan, my prep for the tour involved a bit of love applied to my permanent turbo bike, an ebay special consisting of a 2000 USA Issue CAAD 8,  1997 Campy Veloce (the ratchet shifters etc - before they chucked in cheap internals up to Athena) with a 53/39 - 11-23 drive train to get the most out of my Cyclops Fluid Pro. The Campy is a testament to the 'Campag wears in, Shimano wear out, SRAM just breaks' mantra -  after almost 16,000 miles it still shifts like a rifle bolt, the Campy one shift big gear drop - rise feature is handy for switching between efforts. All my other bike have Shimano though, and it is great, so only love for them  as well. I had SRAM once, it broke. But that was 'old' SRAM...

The Stages:

I had to start 24 hours early due to some commitments on the schedules last day meaning I would have to do the final and challenging double stage at 3am or on the roof of a car traveling down the motorway. My announcement to this effect was met with only love in the Sufferlandrian Tour Community so I cracked on.

1: ISLAGIATT (it seemed like a god idea at the time)

It's two hours of the Giro, long climbs with attacks, tempo changes and lots of snow. Feeling fairly un-fresh after a misguided and unintended horrid headwind hour and a half commute home the previous night I soon spun my legs to life on the long warm up and felt pretty sweet. I like ISLAGIATT because it's what I'm better at on the bike. God/Budda/Ganesh/Allah etc did not give me many Type 2 muscle fibers but was kind with the T1's, long skinny fibrous legs hanging from a 70kg (I'm 184cm) body that drink oxygen and push out around 300watts at around 95% for hours on end. After crushing a few climbs and finding the will to go on for the last horrible dash for the finish I felt much better about the whole tour, I gave the exact efforts asked for, drank a load and celebrated with on of my 'big bastard' salads (do not be fooled into thinking these are healthy) and a lie down. As I said, I like ISLAGIATT, it's my what I'm naturally geared toward, hence all I can think about during the workout is....

2: Revolver x 2

This stage story starts at 2 a.m, the point I woke up, wide awake, aware than due to 'life' Revolver needed to be commenced at 6 a.m in order to get it done and filed in time to commence existence elsewhere for the day and avoid divorce. I then carried on waking up with death row sweats until I gave up at 5, noted a HRV score of '2', my lowest ever, ignored that and tried to force some food down. Shoes on, chamois cream on, TV on, let us revolve...
Revolver is a bitch. It is the training equivalent or being on a roller coaster that you didn't want to get on, don't want to be on and can't get off. A bit like the one I went on in Tunisia in the early 00's, a rusty car chassis welded to a rail roller with actual car seats and seat belts  operated by a small boy with a big bong. And it actually sent upside down. Sadly it was an out and back; so having cheated death going forwards, I got to do so again going backwards. As the out part ended with the chassis rolling up a big ramp in order to gain momentum for the return journey I had to endure phase two without a ejector option.
Revolver is simply 1 minute on, 1 off, 16 times. Not 15 as advertised, but 16. The warm up is hard, the set is hard, doing it twice is really hard. I gave it all on every interval but my power in intervals 28-31 was similar to that of a small kitten with no legs on Ketamine. I crawled off the bike in a poor state and then had a busy day in an odd state of detached reality and fumbling around, forgetting basic matters and finding myself magnetically drawn to the granola isle in the supermarket.

3: The Best Thing in The World

It is not. It is two long and hard race simulations with attacks, leg churning climbs, sprints, threshold efforts and all of the other joyful elements of racing that make you ask 'why am I doing this'?Fortunately the Sufferfest have removed the 100km of dull rolling along that precludes these sort of efforts in a race and get straight to the juice after a testing 'warm up'. After yesterday TBITW feels like trying to drag my tattered legs through a burning pool of treacle and the muscles that operate my lungs hurt, so breathing actually hurts. It ends, I eat porridge and carry on with my day,  hoping that a someone steals my turbo overnight.

Sadly today is a pre agreed calisthenics day with a friend. I bumble my way through 'The 500'; 100 reps each of pistol squats, pull ups, push ups, dips, rows all interjected isometric holds during the 'rest' period .... I am tired now....

4: To Get To The Other Side

Praise sweet Jesus, a rest day! Sort of. TGTTOS is a beautiful thing. I tested it and it was beautiful, they polished it and it is even more so. The workout takes my abused and flagellated corpse over some stunning Alpine and Italian climbs with Mike Cotty from The Col Collective. There are some efforts but they are O.K and widely spaced. It is mostly a steady state efforts that still hurt due to fatigue but not enough to really make me cry or wail. I enjoyed it, the weather outside was grotty, it was my day off and I had some rest afterwards. Apparently George Hincapie used to just ride and then just lie down and eat pizza with his legs up. This was the key to his greatness. Now we know what we do there may have been some extra toppings on the Meat Feast but I stuck to the theory and replaced pizza with sweet potatoes and fish in a big bowl.

5: The Wretched

I wake up feeling better, a bit more alert and alive than the past four days. I hit up The Wretched with vigor and enthusiasm, then blow up 3 minutes from the end of the single limb destroying single 35 minute session in a Jan Ulrich Style. After three minutes of trying to recover just enough for the last sprint I flail about like a demented witch doctor, then cool down on the tri bars, just to have a rest. The rest of the day is difficult and I eat a lot.

6: I'm too tired to finish this,,

9: I finished. hooray.

Corbyn Reshuffles - Sells Everything! Then Buys a Titanium Adventure/Gravel Bike

Brian Cookson impersonator Jezza Corbyn has announced that he has sold his garage full of bikes and re-stocked with just one ride!! Corbyn announced yesterday that 'the bike industry is just a load of hype that is on this earth to make us all buy more bikes we don't need. I looked in the garage and thought I don't need all these bikes, trying to decide is hard enough, I just need one type of bike that does everything well enough, I need on of them gravel bikes'

Corbyn has sold:

Canyon Ultimate CF - Pure race machine - Too flashy, too stretched out on the back, un-comfy as shit - If you don't race, you don't need a race bike.
Giant Propel - I can't do 50kph and don't ride it in a wind tunnel, I have legs, a head etc... useless
Cannondale Synapse - Sportive Bike - Heavy and does not really work in that bendy way it claims
Focus Mares - CX - Toe overlap is crap and it's got no rack/bottle mounts
Santa Cruz V12 - Why do I keep a bike I push 99% of the time, I live in Surrey!
Charge Duster - It's a BMX, I look like a monkey sexually abusing a football on that one
Giant Reign 27.5 - Because I can't be arsed to buy new tubes for it
Dolan Pre Cursa - I bought this after watching Premium Rush, I rode it once and stopped pedaling to freewheel at the lights, it threw me into an ice cream van, then my sleeve tatts fell off, disaster
Ragley Blue Pig - It's not this nor that, fast or bouncy, and Dave Cameron fucked it's head so that put me off

He has purchased:

On-One Pickenflick with 105 11 speed & disc brakes.

Corbyn has discussed his re-shuffle and decreed that he needs only one approach to riding and any others will be dismissed from the garage at once. He quite liked his old trusty Trek but after he noticed Dave 'Lance Pants' Cameron using a Trek (later stolen due to being chained over a three foot high bollard) he sold it. He did consider the communists special, the Flying Pigeon, later bemoaning their 'uber shitness' and casing international tensions with the East.

Critics have said Corbyn is simply following the very industry trend he is critical of, he replied 'fuck off, you'd never see me on a fat bike'. Corbys single minded approach is expected to draw comparisons with fellow outspoken but focused professional Dr Ferrari, who also had a single solution to increase performance and level the playing field. Arch enemy in a Pendleton/Mears stylele Dave 'Pig Head Terrine Old Bean?' Cameron scoffed at Corbyn's approach, following up with 'I have 30 million pounds worth of bikes so choose what I like, life is about choice and I worked hard to be able to make mine, anyone can have 30,000,000 worth of bikes if the work hard enough, if they work really hard they can have a Rapha sock or hat. I would suggest Corbyn get a Cannondale Lefty! Gaffaw.... Get it, a lefty!!!'

The debate continues - Corbyn was last seen trying to work out how to true yet another bent rotor having parked his Pickenflick next to a lodd of other bikes in Westminster.

I'll Ban all Fixies entering Shoreditch!

Controversial Republican Party of London Village candidate Ronald (Super) Tramp has announced his plans should he win his campaign to oust Boris (the bike) Johnston. Among his many racist and fucking ludicrously  bizarre policies he has announced the plan to build a temporary autonomous death ray cyborg system to patrol the border of Shoreditch targeting any person(s) with sleeve tattoos riding fixed gear bikes, deterring them using lasers. Failure to do a 'stoppie' and turn back to Tower Hamlets will result in the riders 'non US values' being cleansed with radiation and their off the ankle trousers being made baggy and ill fitting. Tramp has released his plans, stating that 'These Hipster freaks have beards, so must be evil terrorists. I hear some of them are friends with blacks and don't eat meat? Obviously I'm opposed to all of that multi cultural vegoterrorism shit, I've taken advice from Oliver Letwin around the black issue, he tells me London's black folk are morally corrupt and I accept that.
Tramp's plans have been widely condemned by all other candidates except for the cross party agreement on a ban on Bianchi Pista bicycles, and the persecution of anyone wearing Rapha Cycling kit under clause b, subsection 5 'because it's pretentious wank'.
Big Blonde Bozza has denied he is related to Tramp despite the glaring physical similarity, quoted as saying, 'I'm no relative, I'm the descendant of a Turkish fella and French aristocrats, so a Muslim and people who wear eau de toilette, Tramp approves of neither, I've met him, he's a cunt'.
The election drama contines, hipsters of Shoreditch await the result with baited beards, peppered with the suds of a craft beer and grease from a 'gourmet' burger.

Floods.. And Phil (the voice of cycling)

Much of the UK is emerging from underneath a fairly deep and depressing series of floods. The last series of these 'once every hundred years' events in the UK was around 15 years ago. This non-centennial aqua apocalypse happened in the same regions as the recent events. Sadly our government has a large voter majority in the South of England so invested heavily in weather defences there, where it does not flood very often. The North and Scotland were hit hardest but had the least protection. Apparently the experts advised the Tories that they should perhaps move some sandbags and a bucket beyond Watford but were told to 'fuck off back up north' in order to 'dig up some coal' by our Old Etonian leaders who cut funding by 14%. Oliver 'black people are morally defective' Letwin suggested the Northerners use their copies of Das Capital to stem the tides. Sadly the old guard have now had to stump up £90,000,000 (around fifty trillion dollars and nine cents) to help the communists and their soggy copies of The Guardian. One Tory who visited the scene of devastation in his personal helicopter remarked that 'I didn't think it was a problem, if you don't have a toilet or electricity and get to work at the mine on a donkey why worry about some floods?'
So to the 'why' in a TED style? Global climate change, building on flood plains messing with river beds and routes, God judging us for watching and TV show starting with 'Made in' (see Essex, Chelsea, Syria). Can we correct it? Probably not, we're fucked. But wait, what would Phil Liggett do? Probably dance on his pedals and go to South Africa for a break and to check on some gold mines with Paul. I'll tell you what Phil would do, he would watch the floods rising but buy some stilts, he would mooch around the water logged streets telling everyone that his shoes were sans water and thus, there are no floods! And all amongst him would say 'no Phil, flood Postal, Storm lance is a shitter and is real, I am fucking soaking!'. And the waters would rise, Phil would accept some longer stilts from the flood Lance fund and, behold, his Nike's are still toasty and dry, whilst being supportive and light, ensuring his gait is correct. Still people would bob around in big yellow Livestrong hoops, hailing Phil; 'we have a problem here Phil, it's rife, my Miele toaster and Gaggia machine are merrily floating away and I can't keep up with them'. 'Don't worry about it' replies  Phil, those Italian appliances are simply more buoyant than you, it's science you see, they must be O.K, they have been PAT(McQuaid) tested and did not fail!'. And behold, the people of the North, despite being piss wet through and occasionally dying due to the thick and gloopy nature of the flood waters clogging their arterial roads by night listened to Phil. They trusted their PAT tested appliances, the Belgian waffle makers worked, the Italian Gaggia gurgled espresso into a silly little mug, the German Bosh tumble dryer tumbled away, all despite the obvious fact that they were submerged under turd infested, ever faster flowing waters. The only thing Phil could not explain was the apparent regular failure of the Peugeot cars and American deep fat fryers, for they sank and rusted amid the deluge, The American fryers were heavy and unable to fry chips for very long before simply blowing up, the Peugeot's and Citroens were PAT tested but had to have another test before leaving France, perhaps this made them less flood proof? Occasionally a Rover 200 would chug by, beating all the Lancia's, Seat's and BMW's in a short time trial, only to be left behind on the steeper banks, confused as all around them seemingly got faster despite deeper waters. Indeed, Blightly had only one appliance of any note, a Damillar limousine. seemingly rust resistant due to being imported from the Orient, for the Damillar could keep up with the Alfas and the VW's despite the thick and dragging waters flooding their radiators.
After some time the floods leveled after much of the rains and storms were shipped to Ireland and never came back, Phil explained that the PAT tested stickers found in the back of an engineers car by some policemen on Belgium were fakes and thus not approved by PAT himself, so some of the appliances had to be thrown into the scrap heap, for a few months, but could come back after a while once the water level had fallen. But still the rivers flowed faster than ever before, the Northerners asked Phil about this, he explained that technology and science meant that the clever Southerners could make water go faster, just in general, don't worry about it. But then, aghast in horror, the Northerners watched the floods rise again, this time they believed Phil a bit less but soon came around when they found that the appliances previously rendered useless in the waters were now omnipotent, especially those previously defunct American fat fryers. The French cars were still a bit unreliable but seemed a bit better than in the past, just a bit slower than the rest. So people rejoiced, they listened as Phil told them there were no floods, Phil organised charity canoe races to the shops with his new American PAT Tested appliances in tow, the US companies paid Phil handsomely for this work and he smiled broadly from his new set of golden water resistant stilts. The voice of Phil continued to dispel myth and rumor and most of the Northerners believed it, there were some who said 'but why Phil, why do we keep getting these floods and why, every now and then, does my Fiat seemingly break down only to either fail it's MOT on emissions and be condemned to the scrap yard then start up the next day and be faster than ever?' Phil laughed from his diamond encrusted Subaru powered Nike Air water flotation boots 'there are no floods, Storm Lance brings only sun and joy. Your Italian car? well Mr Ferrari is "one of the most talented minds" in engineering. Those appliances are just out of line with PAT testing methods but will soon catch up!'
One day, a really big tidal wave came, the wave swept all of the Northerners appliances away and then Storm Travis and Hurricane Brian followed, seemingly give a fuck-less as to whether appliances were PAT tested or not. Not even Phil's Trek hover bike could save him, and his voice was drowned out by the sound of revving Citroens and screeching Renaults driving over the Belgian waffle makers and Spanish Omelettes, the huff and puff of The Sky Train merrily and boringly rattling along the flood free lines, just fast enough out run Storm Lance and Cyclone Alberto but not fast enough to excite any of the passengers.
And then there was calm. Occasionally an appliance would blow up due to residual flood waters left in the sockets, and sometimes new appliances would behave oddly but most of them no longer worked under water and PAT testing seemed to reflect their vulnerable nature. Phil emerged (dry) from the floods and although people were now much more skeptical of his preaching, he still imparted his annoying fucking diatribe, and people still paid him to do it.
Phil is introspective now, he thinks there may have been a bit of a flood, perhaps one or two front rooms got a bit damp? He is happy that General Motors now know how to repair a flood damaged interior but still loves the 1990's Vauxhal Astra GTE for it's unholy ability to go really fast despite having a really shit chassis and unreliable engine, it just needed 4 star and new oil every other day. The fact that he earned lots of money saying how great those 90's American cars were in a flood laden world of seemingly impossibly functioning submerged European appliances has been archived by ITV, hopefully things will change and Phil will drown (notionally).
Phil now has a mantra:
1: When the whole world is flooded, the best PAT tested appliances still float to the top
2: Storm Lance was not 'normal', but every inch of the world was rained on by Storm Lance so it (the flooding) was 'fair' - a level  playing field (albeit under water)
3:Blaming Storm Lance and putting up dams to stop it causing flooding again will do nothing to prevent more flooding and is very unfair indeed, especially when Storm Lance flooded my mates gold mine, with cash

It never rains but it pours...

Not a Resolution

I'm going to blog more, about all sorts... Spread my wings. I like writing so why not? Send me content ideas, I'll write about it. I'll mostly writ about what i want to as I'm a narcissist. This is a joke, har de har.. Is that what a narcissist would say? I hope not, perhaps I really am?

Happy New Year..

EPOh Shit!

I had spinal surgery in July (again). Sadly this one did not go so well and the after effects and nerve damage in my legs is lingering. I can still ride a bit, for a while, but it's difficult. Healing is slow, I will improve, repeat mantra... I hope this explains my lack of travel and bike related prose. It is not an excuse as I have been 'in' more and lots of the writing is based on past experience, my new daughter had waylaid me somewhat but I promise to keep working from the menu soon and adding new stuff as and when I can steal a moment.

This week is a departure from the travel, still dips into the bike genre though. I'm branching out now, I'll be musing about any old shit that comes to mind. Expanding my repertoire if you like? Life is too short to focus on such singular topics.

I've been reading a lot about a lot just recently, five weeks off work does that. Due to a recent cancer scare (to go with the spinal surgery) I have learned an awful lot about blood, how it works, what it does other than stain my collar and how it can be manipulated. I know about crit levels, blood transfusions, platelets blah blah. I already knew about HGH and testosterone, the endocrine system and it's love of endurance sports (or not), cortisone (I know a lot more about it since a surgeon filed my spine with it a few weeks ago) and cortisol, I'm definitely more versed with that one recently.

I've avidly followed the sport for years and read Walsh's books, painfully translated from French on slow dial up sites in the early 00's. I think Lance Armstrong is a bully, an asshole to coin the Texan Term. But so was Pantani, just in a different way. Pantani was the product of an Italian system pioneering blood doping long before the Postmen ever added and 'E' to the 'P.O' of the post office. Basso is a nice guy, but he cheated just like Armstrong, did he ever apologise? Perhaps he will now he has retired? Merckx, the great one was, well, great. No doubt the guy was gifted like no other and I do have my doubts about the 69 Giro. But 1973, Lombardia. 1977, Pemoline, again... Eddy starts races for ASO, Lance starts fights on Sunday club runs. Fignon, pissed petrol in 89. Kelly in 91 - even though he gave the testers his mechanics sample - sadly the spanner had been having a dab of speed to keep up with the fact that Kelly's Vitus was shit and needed more TLC than a Fiat Uno. Kelly in 1993, EPOh no! Denied all round then written off under statute limits for prosecutions. Zabel and Aldag killed the sport in Germany for years, Ulrich was just taking the piss (or not). Riis is a bit of a dick but has not been Lanced, Virenque is a commentator for Le Tour and actually challenged Sky's performance. I bit like the FBI using hackers to test security.Vandenbroucke really went for the full on James Belushi effect by adding morphine to his predilections. Di Luca, Hamilton, Millar x 2 (R&D), Heras, the excellently and most aptly named Cunto, Barrie, Visconti, Frank Schleck etc etc... What have these guys got in common? Even when doping they were only a bit better, slightly less average. What has gained them notoriety, well it's not being a bit shit compared to Lance (acceptance of Heras as the odd one out), it's getting popped. Are any of them being hunted by their Governments? Well no. Millar (D) comentates for ITV4, Schleck wins the odd stage, may of them work in the sport. I know the arguments about the tactics used by Lance, the wealth obtained by 'fraud'. It's a shame the CPS did not review his case, the let David Mellor off with fraud as it was 'not in the public interest' to prosecute. Is it really such a big thing that L.A was the 'best' of the dopers? That he had a genetic blood cell volume that benefited massively from EPO whereas others more gifted than he in the gene pool had less of a boost is simply 'life'. I would add I think he deserves a lifetime ban, but so does Contador, Merckx, Shcleck, McQuaid (from all sports associated activity).
When my daughter is old enough to understand and we visit my family in Italy she may as why 'VIVA PANTANI PANTANI PANTANI' is written on the roads in the mountains above my Dad's place? I'll tell her he cheated a lot, won off the back of cheating, regretted what he did and died a sad death. She may ask why 'LANCE IS A WANKER' is written on a road I have ridden in North Yorkshire. I'll tell her he cheated a lot, won of the back of it but his personality meant he did not regret it and is now paying the price for that, but not a toll as heavy as Pantani. She may ask why they are different? I'll tel her Lance is strong in the head and the legs, Marco just the legs, but they are both cheats and idiots.

ENTIRELY SPECULATION! DON'T SUE ME LANCE!!

Commuting - General Chit Chat

I ride (did until I had spinal surgery, but will again) to and from work. I've had 60 mile commutes, 3 miles, 12 miles (about right!!) and currently have about 30 miles, which is O.K. Why do I ride to and from work?

1. Time: Even the 35 miles each way to and from Birmingham was faster or about the same in terms of time on my bike riding in at 6.30 am. However, getting home was a different matter, I could be home in 1.10 on my bike, in fact, wind assistance or misery accounted for I could be very accurate with my arrival home on the bike. Riding at a fairly brisk pace.
My record sat in my car on the M42/M6 was three hours and fifty minutes to cover 35 miles. I never took this long on my bike but on the other hand could not listen to Radio 4. He giveth and he taketh away.

2. Training: I have a life outside of racing/riding. My wife is very patient but I would not envisage her being too jolly if I topped up my 45 hour work week with the 10-15 hours riding time afforded to me by commuting. The option to throw in some intervals, hill reps, tempo and threshold work is handy. Ragging the mountain bike cross country in the winter is good for skills work and good fun. Why don't we get so cold on mountain bikes? Wind I suppose.
A sweet recovery ride in the morning sun is a fairly nice way to start a day. A thrash through the traffic into rolling hills is a nice way to end it.

3: Money: In the UK petrol seems to occupy the mantle of 'luxury goods' alongside of Rolex watches and those massive headphones I see people rocking out in. Porridge is cheaper than petrol, and porridge is my fuel. I do own a car but it's crap and rarely moves.

4: Fun: Depending on your disposition, riding in cities is fun. It firms the nerves and skills, hones the senses and only slightly destroys your lungs. Thankfully not as much as car drivers due to the air intake/exhaust relationship.

5: Smugness: Not really! I actively resist the 'smug rider' clan. Cars do not emit much crap any more. Significantly less that cattle, energy production, air travel etc etc.. Bicycles are mass produced and often made of alloy. Carbon production is horrid and the side effects for the Chinese workers are nasty. Tyres are made of rubber, rubber production is not the most friendly process. I ride because I enjoy it and it is convenient. If you enjoy the rattle of the train, the comfort of a Mercedes S Class or the John Travolta like rhythm of a funky walk then more power to you.

Whatever you ride, however you ride it; enjoy it.

PS - Left ear for podcasts (usually cyling360) right ear for traffic is O.K. But a duo of ear plugs for Metallica is not clever. Lose the buds kids.