On doping, training, racing, and sitting around in your underwear drinking beer.

Lets start with doping. Specifically in cycling. Doing drugs for fun is your own business and I don’t feel like telling you how to live your life anyway.

“The Tour de France is finished. It has been killed by its own success, by the passions it has released, the injuries and filthy suspicions caused by the ignorant and the wicked.” - Henri Desgrange

Sounds like a familiar lament at this point. With Ricco positive this year. The bombshell of Floyd Landis of two years ago and pretty much all the shit that has hit the fan since 1998 when the Festina scandal (see the doping section on TDF wikipedia page) broke the flood gates on the doping culture of cycling. But really if you think le Tour has been in trouble the last decade that quote above is from the 1904 Tour organizer. During that particular edition of the Tour the first three finishers were all disqualified for cheating and one hundred and one years latter where all flipping a shit fit because just the “winner” gets thrown out? Just trying to put things in to perspective.

Now to transition to training via a discussion about doping.

This morning somewhere between state line and the border of Sparkill on 9W Dave suggested that we should start a doping program over the winter. Now in reality cheating in the lower categories of armature road racing by doing drugs is as easy as lower category armature road racing is to begin with. Which means that doing drugs to win said road racing is the sexual equivalent of fucking your 12 year old sister because you cant get some. Maybe that’s a bit crude but I feel the metaphor works.


After seventy miles and about thirty two hundred feet of elevation Dave and I made it back in to the city and proceeded to get some milk shakes. We also visited Eva at her job in our matching spandex outfits.

Now I’m home. In three days I’ll be leaving with Dave to travel to Vermont to tackle the Green Mountain Stage Race. Since my racing season began on that cold morning in April standing around Central Park shivering violently I have been thinking about these four days coming up. My form has been great the last few weeks. My legs are shaved, tires glued, and I’ve managed to do enough shit talking for all the other two hundred and nine racers I will be taking on. Guess we are about to find out if I got what it takes to be Grimpeur.

Ok time to sit around in my underwear and drink some beer.