What's wrong with racing in a speedo??

The lemming had a pretty good blog draught going, and honestly he was ok with that. There are even things waiting to be written, just general laziness is keeping them from coming to fruition. Last night he read the latest issue of Bicycling, and while I thought it would rile him up, it didn't, he just sat there peacefully afterwards.

Then today it hit him, the typical Active.com email spam that he receives, with a simple question, "What's wrong with racing in a speedo??"

The lemming says if you don't know, then no one can help you. There's something to be said about a blissful and innocent existence, running around in a banana hammock, totally unaware of the cries of children and shrieks from women. We salute you Mr. Age Group Triathlete Speedo Wearer!

Unfortunately, asking the question again and again in the same forum could be considered slightly tacky. Which, in that case, we'll have to rescind our salute because you are probably just trying to justify something that you already know the answer to.

Women's triathlons, devil girls, and romantic weekends

This weekend was the annual women's triathlon over here in Pottawattamie. The problem was I didn't know the triathlon was going on as I headed over to the route I chose to ride this weekend. As I got closer signs and barrier fences started to emerge and dread started to come over my furry little body. Would I have to re-route? Would I not be able to resist the trainwreck and end up spending 4 hours watching people stumble out of the water as they ran clumsily to their slicked mountain bikes?

Luckily neither was the case and I was allowed to go about my ride directly on the course, which as luck has it is a recreational racer wannabes dream come true. See as a recreational racer wannabe you should always find opportunities to "test your mettle" against others. This course is also used for an annual time trial where recreational riders try to draft and follow and pass and pass out the paid racers as they go about their race. Stellar for the recreational riders, not so fun for the actual racers.

Luckily for most racers this weekend they were much faster than me anyway, I was left sad, alone and defeated, with only visions of race numbers sharpee'd on the calf. I guess perhaps I wasn't trying that hard, in the back of my mind I was thinking about tattooed Swedish devil girls. If you haven't read this story it's a weird one. 5 tattooed "devil girls" pulled a bloke off his bike and sexually molested him. I don't know what to think about the story, when I hear devil girls all I can think about is this guy.



Most guys will be quick to point out "what a lucky guy" and "I need to go ride in Sweden" as they envision the Swedish bikini team accosting them, to which most women will get disgusted with them, saying it's no laughing matter. But to play devil's advocate (pun alert), what if the devil girls are spitting images of the Red Devil above? Sorry for ruining the fantasy... Just to play it safe you should probably forget about trying to find the devil girls and instead spend a romantic weekend with Chris Carmichael.

Simply sign up for the wildly-popular CTS Create Your Own Comeback program and you can spend a romantic Valentine's day with CTS at a cycling camp probably learning things such as which sports drink is best, how to ride your bike, how to win the city limit sprint, getting tips on bumping in to friends on a grassy field and all sorts of useful information such as that. If you have a significant other, well, it's highly likely that you won't after you spend Valentine's Day at a cycling camp, and you may be out there looking for the tattooed devil girls after all.

My submission for the BikeSnobNYC Fat Cyclist knuckle tattoo tribute contest

Figured I should get in on the bandwagon...

It may shed some light on as to why "Some American rider was very upset because he was positioned to be in yellow and some Swiss team worked to close the gap."



Has anyone else submitted an entry?

Speechless

It's been a quite some time since the lemming has brought up the guys over at RoadBikeRider. Heck, the lemming has even enjoyed a couple of articles lately such as the Hot Date and Tour de Shrink in Scott's Spin, finding them witty and entertaining, in a RoadBikeRider sort of way, not that there is anything wrong with it.

However, the lemming worked himself up in to a frenzy today when he saw the title, "Is it OK to Alternate Water and Sports Drink?" in the current newsletter.

Is It OK to Alternate Water and Sports Drink?

Q: I'm confused about the proper concentration of sports drinks. If I carry one bottle of sports drink and one bottle of water, alternating swigs, won't I dilute the sports drink and reduce its effectiveness? -- Mandy W.

Obviously the reader is confused and needs a lot of good advice, so it's time to put on my coaching hat and answer her question.

Mandy, first of let me just say thank you for letting the lemming chime in. You are wise to be concerned with mixing sports drinks and water. You didn't give indication of your sports drink of choice, but hopefully you are using one with a magic 4:1 ratio carb-protein ratio so that you can increase your time to exhaustion should you want to do a lot of one-legged exercising (no comments from the peanut gallery please, you know who you are :)).

But even if you aren't using a magical 4:1 ratio drink, reaching a personal best on every ride you do will not happen alternating swigs of water with sports drink. Do you think Stevil ever alternates swigs of Bud with water? Hell no! That would decrease Bud's effectiveness. Remember the guy the marathon is named after? Legend has it he died. I'm no historian, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess he didn't have access to sports drinks. That should say enough right there.



Now let's discuss how you are drinking your sports drink. While reaching your personal best, you are going to encounter a lot of competition that don't even know they are racing you. You don't have time to reach down for a water bottle or risk having that alter your heart rate beyond the plan your CTS coach has prescribed (if you are not training with power that is {wink}). That's why I recommend the contraption from AeroNet pictured above. As a bonus, you don't even have to reach back in your pocket to eat, perfect for those impromptu bike trail competitions.

So, summing it all up, and I know I'm hard to follow. You never EVER want to mix sports drink and water AND you want to use a sports drink on EVERY ride regardless of how short it might be, don't forget the recovery drink! You need those 60 grams of sugar. Lastly, please let me know what sports drink you are using so that I can buy stock in the company.

Ten thousand spoons?

Why ten thousand spoons? Every time I hear "it's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife" I think of a gray field of thousands of creepy-assed spoons standing around staring at you while "The End" by the Doors is played off in some barn, clear enough for you to hear as if it was right beside you. Ten thousand spoons, that's a lot of spoons. It would have been easier to say, "it's like a drawer full of spoons when all you need is a knife", but even then it still wouldn't be ironic.

What might be considered ironic though, is riding on a busy street, encountering a firefighter (Charles Diez) who wants to give you a safety tip about about how unsafe it is to ride on a busy street, and then shoots you in the head to teach you that lesson. Amazingly the helmet stopped the bullet, which opens the door to a whole bunch of easy jokes for an unfortunate situation. Read all about the irony here.

I'm not sure what's worse, getting shot in the head but being saved by your helmet or getting hit by a full can of Coors light at highway speeds while out on a ride. I suppose the lesson here, going by Charles' line of thinking, is that getting hit by a beer can may teach you how unsafe it is to ride on a road while others are out unsafely drinking and driving. The can of Coors light again opens the door to a whole bunch of easy jokes in an unfortunate situation.

Irony aside, just goes to show there is a lot of crazy shit going on in peoples' heads out there...

Taper complete

Well the lemming is back from the blog taper, RAGBRAI was a success. I suppose now that my taper is complete I should peak and enter blogging in a pure race form that only J-Lo could surpass. Is anyone still out there?

Uncovered: Tour de France conspiracy

As many of you know, I'm on a self-prescribed blogging taper as RAGBRAI gets fully underway. Putting my entire blog training plan at risk, I decided to put in a little post today as some material was simply too good to pass up.

Anyone following the Tour has undoubtedly seen or heard the drama that developed when Big George got away in a break with some serious horsepower that managed to stay away. The US-based team Garmin-Slipstream worked hard on damage control for some vague unknown reason, with a little help from Astana in the beginning.

Armstrong: “When the break got to be about five or six minutes, we put two guys on the front so it didn’t get to be 10 or 11 minutes. There were 13 guys in the break and two guys riding moderate tempo. That is by no means a chase. It’s the Tour de France. You can’t let a break have 15 minutes. When George became the virtual leader, AG2R decided to ride. We immediately stopped, everybody back in the peloton. They started to bring it back, and they got it down to about a minute. Then Garmin came and closed the rest.”

This caused Hincapie to miss being in the yellow jersey by a mere 5 seconds. Big hit for George, great guy, helped Armstrong win all of those tours, late in his career, and really just deserved to be in yellow.

Bruyneel: “I think it was more personal, or a clash between two American teams, and one American team not wanting another American team, or another American guy, in the yellow jersey. I don’t think that is nice. Everybody, of course, has to decide what they want to do, but I think if you start to race against others having his moment of attention. If Hincapie takes the jersey, I don’t think it affects anything in terms of Garmin’s race.”

Being George you had to imagine he was pissed, and he was. Lots of friends in Garmin and worked so hard as a lieutenant for Lance all those years. I knew there had to be more to the story, and to get that extra information I turned to the pulse of cycling, recreational riders such as myself who simply watch the Tour. The following is true depiction of a conversation overheard this morning.

Cruising along by myself, enjoying the scenery, I started to overtake a small group of 3 friends on a small incline. Not wanting to be one of those riders who gives it everything he has to pass someone, then dies 30 feet in front of them, I decided to hang behind and wait for another small incline where I could pass without "wasted efforts".

I mentioned, "hey, just letting you know I'm back here. Let me know if that's ok, not really feeling the power to pass you right now." The rider in front indicated it was no problem at all, while simultaneously surging to pick up the pace.

Lead Rider: "Did you hear what happened in the Tour the other day? Just goes to show there is more going on then what we're told."

Chase Rider: "What happened?"

At this point the lead rider was picking up the pace so much he was dropping one of his friends and a good-sized gap was growing. I proceeded to pull up along side the friend and ask if he'd like me to pull him back to the group. He gave me a sort of angry, "no just go", so I swung around and caught back up to the lead rider, anxiously wanting to hear the rest of the story about the Tour conspiracy.

Lead Rider: "Some American rider was very upset because he was positioned to be in yellow and some Swiss team worked to close the gap."

At this point I wasn't sure how to respond, I assumed the American rider mentioned was Hincapie and the Swiss team mentioned was Astana, but even having a hard time getting excited about watching the Tour at times myself at least I knew that much. The little devil on my shoulder told me to construct an amazing story about the politics involved with the move and hope like hell to hear the story propagated to legendary status, but just at that time they pulled off to wait for their dropped friend.

So the inside story on Hincapie not being in yellow is, "Some American rider was very upset because he was positioned to be in yellow and some Swiss team worked to close the gap." I know this new and highly enlightening information was worth the 2 minutes used to read this blog. Have a safe week out there and back to my taper.