excuse me - i'm not even a cyclist or fan of the sport. but Lance Armstrong has to be one of the biggest studs on the face of the planet. 7 straight tour de france championships? and you can't do any better than going out on top. for years to come the winners will know that they won, "but they never beat lance."

you left out ... and he did it all with only one testicle.

my friend's dad who trains and races, etc. told me something about how Lance has higher oxygen saturation than 99 % of the population, whicha llows his muscles and lungs to perform more ideally, blah blah blah...in other words, no matter how good you are or how hard yo utrain, you'll never beat Lance because he's a Freak.

hmmmm, i wonder if i can get a gov't grant to study the correlation between nut removal and higher oxygen content?

You might draw that connection, but truth be told, Lance's lactate threshold and VO2 max level were beyond that of the average human even before he got cancer. His therapy somehow improved it.

Some news report I saw said his heart was 20-30% bigger than a normal human heart before he started, and with training he got it up to 50%. No report on how big other cylists got on the same scale, though.

Birthday Ride
 

Having never envisioned living this long, I felt free to ride a little bit loosey goosey today. I almost paid dearly. We went up to Shidagin Hollow where conditions are dry and fast right now. We had to ride over a lot of logs which actually went very well today. Unfortunately after clearing one on a slight uphill I felt the need for speed and topped a rise moving pretty good but cheating to the left edge of the single track. I basicly took a jousting pole to the left breast. I saw it happening at the last instant and twisted away from the broken branch making it a glancing blow rather than a rib cracking hit. I then had to choose where and how to hit the ground. The safest spot was closest so I locked the front brake flipped over the bar and landed comfortably on my back. Nice. :) I'm gonna have a nice bruise.

Son, you're younger than me, but that's still too old to be flipping through the forest and impaling on branches.
Happy Birthday! Cheers! Pass the ice pack. :)

Sorry for the late reply Skunks - still finding my way around all of this site. Your bike looks remarkably similar to my Raleigh Record Sprint (pics on website via profile - try cyclefrance2005 calais page for best shot) - campag brakes & gears, Reynolds 501 frame, 700 cm wheels. Mine cost me £70/$130-ish six years ago and have since spent probably five times that uprating it for touring, although have tried to keep to original parts wherever/whenever possible. Have thought occasionally about changing it but like the ride too much and is now family!

Pete and I did the MS150 Figer Lakes Tour this weekend. They moved the base of operations to Canandagua, so we road some new roads. As always, the volunteers took great care of us. Lisa Peck had a very inspirational message for everyone. She and a teammate from Rochester (I think it was Tiffany Pezzulo) rode with us or I should say greeted us as they blew our doors off! Thats one way to meet everyone, pass them all. :) They broke up the ride differently this year doing either 90 or 45 miles on Saturday followed by 60 or 30 on Sunday. We did the 90 mile loop Saturday that included 6100 feet of climbing. One of the guys had a onboard computer that could give a printout of the ride profile based on altitude. Apparently they run a tour called the Highlander out there every year that is 100 miles with 10000 feet of climbing. Petes got the bug now so expect her to train for that one next year. It was raining in the morning for day 2 and I didn't trust that my eczema was done so we waited for the sun and did the short loop. Riding the short loop was pretty impressive because many folks on that ride suffer from MS and really made me feel like a pussy for whining about my skin condition.

Canandagua is a really lovely lake and if you like to see big neat farms and wineries its worth the trip.

After 2 years of yearning, I finally got a bike! I had been pretty religious to attending indoor cycling classes at my gym and really wanted a bike because riding outside is nothing like riding inside... so I saved up all of my graduation money and bought a bike yesterday. It's a 2004 Trek 1000 and I really think it's a good starter bike. I really wanted a Cannondale r1000, but I didn't have $2000 and the sales guy at that shop kept pushing me to finance the bike - no thanks.

I took it out yesterday for a five mile spin... just to get a feel of it. Today, I'm going to take it out a bit farther and possibly participate in an organized ride this evening. The weather is so nice today - it's going to take a lot to keep me off of the bike.

I might do another organized ride this weekend... not sure at the moment.

I love my bike... what can i say.

congrats! I hope the enthusiasm lasts!

Make sure you get a good saddle - otherwise you'll have short romance with your bike and elsewhere...!! This one's off a UK web site but it gives you an idea...

that may be the wrong... geometry for melidasaur. i'm just sayin'.

Of course if you're a lady....