Going Stateside

Right then. This time tomorrow I’ll be in Boston, Massachusetts. A week of work and a little bit of time to check out what New England has to offer. Of course there’ll be a visit to Independent Fabrication whilst I’m in town and hopefully an opportunity to do a little bit of riding too.

Looks like there’ll be an answer on the Floyd Landis case by the time I get back too. As has been discussed elsewhere, who’s to say that Floyd doesn’t have above average testosterone? Maybe in this one instance he did, but it seems unlikely. If he had a naturally high level of Testosterone, surely this would have been picked up a lot earlier in his professional career? As Armstrong was always very clear to say, he was like a pin-cushion with all the tests he was having to take.

It may be that there has been some lifestyle change that has led to a recent increase, or maybe this year the UCI have lowered the threshold value. I sincerely hope that there is no foul play involved, but at the moment I can’t see how his body would suddenly produce a significant increase that has led to this positive test. I guess the world will find out soon enough. Keep an eye on cyclingnews for more news.

Finally there’s this. Maybe something to add to the to do list:

From: Tom Purvis of greatdividerace.blogspot.com
Subject: Great Divide race ends with only one finisher

The grueling Great Divide solo, self-supported mountain-bike race, run on 2,490 miles of trails that dissect the United States from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, ended last week with only one finisher. Matthew Lee finished in 17 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes, just missing Mike Curiak’s record, which still stands at 16d 00h 57m.

Lee encountered lots of rainy weather and had a couple of key mechanical problems, otherwise he might very well have beaten the record. Matthew won the race last year in 19d 04h 17m.

In all, eight riders started the 2006 Great Divide Race. The next closest finisher, John Nobile, made it as far as Steamboat Springs, CO July 5 before dropping out. Kenny Maldonado made it to Rawlins, WY. on July 16th when he too stopped.

Good work by Matt Lee. If he’d had a more reliable bike, it looks like he’d have broken Mike Curiak’s record. I don’t agree with some of the riders trying to do the route by getting back to the ‘roots’. They weren’t trying to ride the GDR on bikes in the 1800s. They were too busy trying not to get killed by lots of nasty North American predators to be buggering about in the mountains on bikes. Mountain Bikes these days are the product of various cycles of design, testing and development which has actually let to all kinds of wonderful technological advances like cycling shoes and clipless pedals. When a custom frame builder tries to ignore all of this you have to think that they’re a bit off the wall.