started reading paul kimmage's book Rough Ride last night... then reading the whole internet while doing 50 other things at once i found unholy linked to douchebag (i clicked over to see the bracket) and then saw the first post there and clicked to velocity and then found the world wide cycles think with the Armstrong vs kimmage video...
oh and this is a pretty damn good article about glycogen. I like esp the bit about emphasizing when and how to train with low glycogen, and that crit and track (and by my extension cross) racers don't need to worry about it so much because the duration of the exercise isn't enough to deplete glycogen stores... good simple article with some nice facts.
Maybe i should call it an epic article. Maybe i need to over use the word epic too. I certainly use it but not to describe everything. Plenty of other good words are out there. But then like stephen king said - if you have to look it up (in a thesaurus) it is the wrong word.
Back to the book. It was a loaner trade with someone who hasn't read The Rider yet. I'd just finished reading it, good book, well written. Go read it if you haven't already. The copy of Kimmage's book is about the crappiest hardcover i've laid hands on. Epic levels of acid degradation of the pages. Not to the point of being brittle but man alive, it seems like it was printed on newsprint. I like books. Have way too many of them. But then occasionally it is nice when my daughter needs to do some research for homework I can hit my shelves and pull out a decent reference (as long as it has to do with science usually). I've been around books of all ages forever. In high school I would go to used book stores with my girlfriend looking for odd stuff generally just browsing, but in the process storing data. Everywhere I go I seem to store stuff. Pack rat brain. I can't always remember names, dates, or some things, but others I can tag a general feeling to and just seem to accumulate stuff in there. The book isn't going to be damaged from reading but it isn't going to last as long as a book i'm half way through reading printed in the early 1900s. That book is in way better shape.
just finally getting a chance to read the Kimmage article (open and scan is different than sitting down to read) - it is lunch time here in the dungeon - and i clicked over to the radio interview. 'Going to have to read that next.
Midway through the interview posted there on NYVelocity and I'm finding it extremely hard to disagree with anything he's writing. The bit about David [Millar] really was a well crafted answer that even if I take off the sympathetic tendency towards Kimmage (vs Lance) I respect his [Kimmage's] position even more.
this is another point about the Lance thing. People say, what have you got about cancer? I don't have anything against Lance Armstrong or cancer of any of that stuff, I am anti doping and I've been so since the moment I left this sport and that's my only concern here. It isn't about the personalities of the people involved. I want clean cycling, I want a clean sport.
follow it up with this and it gives a perspective that many don't automatically draw a line to about paul's ToC appearance:
So I don't earn my living through cycling, but when I write about cycling I become somewhat different in that because I was a professional cyclist, it does become more personal for me. It's the only occasion where I feel more confident, comfortable giving my opinion, because I never set myself in any other domain I work in as an expert. Cycling is the only sport where I have a level of expertise. So the people who read me, the cycling people who read me, I can understand where they get that impression, but I'm doing my best to explain that now.
For example, I didn't go to the Tour of California to cover the race or Lance Armstrong. I went there for a Nick Faldo interview the week before at Pebble Beach. I flew from the Tour of California to the Barbados to do an interview with a cricketer called Kevin Pieterson, who's one of Britain's most prominent sportspeople. So that's my living, that's what my job entails mostly. Except in the summer, in July in particular, when the Tour is on, because my newspaper's interested, and they want me to go there.
I got goose bumps reading this:
PK: For me, the Tour de France is still the greatest sporting event in the world. I saw pictures of yesterday's stage (of Paris-Nice) and saw how tough it was, and I don't know any other sport that inflicts that much pain and suffering and hardship on its participants. You look at cricket, if it rains, they pull the covers and they go in. Tennis, same thing, nobody plays in the rain. Yet cyclists are exposed to pretty much everything. My admiration for cyclists and the sport never diminished at all. The demands of the sport are huge, and the courage these guys have, I absolutely have great admiration for them. That's what makes cycling special. Tennis, you have five hour finals, that has to be demanding, but you know...
Damn good, long - very long - but deservedly long interview.
Lunch is over - gonna have to print the rest of it out and read it tonight it looks like.
heddwch
G
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