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Txzen

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Everything posted by Txzen

  1. FFS...yes, Pantani was doped to the gills. He was also one of the most natural climbers and bike handlers in his generation, with a penchant for climbing in the drops - everyone else looks like a fool doing it but Alaphilippe pulls it off, and descends as well as Il Falco. Hence the comparison This really is the No Joy In Cycling Thread.
  2. Or, dumb luck if your team gives you the wrong tires for the cobbles. Forgot to give Bardet the special tires.
  3. Alaphilippe is the real deal. Haven’t seen someone look so good climbing in the drops since Pantani. Chapeau. Phil Gil’s crash was sickening - did not expect him to walk out of that.
  4. No disagreement. Between the National Parks of Banff, Yoho, Kootenay and Jasper, Jasper was my favorite (as well as the town itself). Maligne Canyon, Edith Cavell meadows, Sunwapta Falls...
  5. Fly into Calgary and drive to Banff. Easy. Not sure what you'll face weather wise there in October. I've been in summer and we had days of 70s and then a front came through with a dusting a snow at elevation. The winters are pretty tough there, but the plus is that the ski season is very long - we just skiied there in late April and it was fantastic. Their ski season is 178 days and is often perfectly skiable into May. The Banff Springs Hotel is one a kind, and worth a visit/drink. The rooms are pricey and small, from what I hear. Banff is pretty, but it's a ski town so there's 'stuff'. If you want to get away from it, best keep driving. Lake Louise gets all the praise, and rightfully so as it's beautiful. The Fairmont has a great location, but with its stucco facade feels more modern than the Banff Springs. Expensive, but good food (particularly the Walliser Stube). Just down the road, Deer Lodge is a rung or two below but maybe has more rustic charm. I've stayed at the Emerald Lake Lodge, and the location is tops as it's harder to get to - they limit the number of cars that can drive up that way. The hiking around and above either Lake Louise or Emerald Lake is just incredible. Highly recommended to hike to one of the backcountry 'Tea Huts' for lunch or a mid-day break. The entire area is an outdoor playground, and there are so many beautiful places to hike to - Bow Lake, Plain of Six Glaciers are two which stand out for me. The Kootenay Park has more geothermal activity which is an interesting visit. The Columbia Ice fields are also worth a visit, and even continuing up all the way to Jasper brings you to a different terrain and town vibe. The Grizzly activity is no joke. You will see one. Know how to handle yourself in the backcountry and you'll be fine. Frankly, the moose and elk are probably more dangerous, but...
  6. I guess as someone who got into cycling watching Greg Lemond compete and win at the TdF, I bristle that the 'Lemond/Armstrong feud took down US cycling'. Armstrong was the aggressor and basically cost Greg his position within Trek because he dared to say the emperor had no clothes - early, consistently, and loudly. Lance poured so much energy into discrediting him personally, in business, and psychologically to quiet him so he could continue with the greatest sporting fraud in the history of the sport. Lance fucked an entire generation of riders, and we still don't know the extent his corruption within the establishment which I have no doubt is still in play given the recent Froome debacle. I don't think the dearth of top-caliber US athletes is completely due to Lance, but it certainly is not due at all to a 'Lemond/Armstrong feud'. Frankly, there seems to be few top-caliber athletes capable of challenging Sky these days. I have a feeling that Doumoulin is having a very Cadel Evans-like career - constantly second to guys who seem extraterrestrial.
  7. If we are going to keep repeating things, can we get back to how this is all Tim Beck's fault? Thanks.
  8. Van Garderen is not having a great Tour, but he has struggled to find what really suits him. A change of teams may be a good thing. Phinney is a rouleur, whose job is to bodyguard Rigo. His best results are in TT or on the cobbles. He's doing just fine. Not so much for Rigo.
  9. It doesn't look like anyone really has legs to attack, or at least attack over the pace of the Sky train - which is as dull and predictable as 'Le Train Bleu'. It's either tomorrow on Alpe d'Huez or maybe stage 17 - those are the only two mountain top finishes where I would think the opportunity to crack Geraint and/or distance Froome would occur. I could see someone taking time on the Portillion and descent on stage 16. There won't be any shakeups on stage 19, unless there's a crack on the Tourmalet. The Soulor/Aubisque isn't hard enough and there's too much descending to be decisive. Geraint might not survive that long, but Froome will have no problem keeping with his rivals. Now or never, Movistar.
  10. Nice write up of the stage (which was the Etape, this year) : Link And the memorial : Maquis des Glières
  11. Not a motor. Please don't start this, it's asinine. Utter carnage, but it made a great spectacle. I'm always amazed how some people (and teams, frankly) just fare better at the cobbles with respect to flats and mechanicals. While it seems like so many are on similar equipment (at least on the rubber side of things) there's clearly some dark magic with the mechanics, as well as the fact that the guys who grew up racing that stuff just know how to guide the bike better so that they have less chance of it. Bardet, not so much. Haven't seen a train wreck like that since Rasmussen's time trial fiasco in 2007. TVG seems like a nice kid, and let me say that he's 100x tougher than I am. But he doesn't have 'it' and I struggle to see where he would be most competitive. Good TTer, good climber but only on steady grades with no attacks, and always seems to fade physically or mentally in a 3-week race. Porte must be one of the least lucky cyclists ever, and while I wasn't sure he'd really challenge the podium this year, it sucks to see him leave so early. And from a rest day, they go straight to an epic mountain stage. All of the climbs tomorrow are nasty, but I don't know Gileres...and with 6km at 11.2%, I plan to keep it that way.
  12. My personal favorite. Sagan parks bike on top of car
  13. If you want cycling perspective from a human being, I would suggest Greg Lemond. Greg Lemond - What I've Learned
  14. What has never really been uncovered is how he managed to evade a positive drug test. From either being tipped off to the testers coming, 'donations' to testing agencies, and who know what sort of backchannel skullduggery, they not only operated an unbelievable doping program but did so at a time when almost everyone one else was getting popped. The full extent of the corruption has never been uncovered, and those repercussions are still with us today with the latest Sky/Froome bullshit. For his lingering effect on the sport, I say fuck off.
  15. Sure, the top 20 were mostly doped to the gills. The victims were the ones who couldn't afford 'the program', or were determined to ride clean and were thus deprived of an untold amount of professional achievement. Then's there's also the clean riders who he literally bullied out of the sport. So, fuck him.
  16. This one hits hard - I worked with her really closely, and she was a lovely human being. She was on a delayed honeymoon / 1st anniversary. A woman originally from the Chicago area was shot and killed in Mexico, where she and her husband were celebrating their first wedding anniversary. Senseless.
  17. Someday, Movistar will have to realize the importance of TT, let alone the ITT. Tough to see Nairo continue to go backwards. Froome gained a little on some of his rivals, but it's interesting to see him still down at this point. The cobbles stage could be intense, but I would bet some of the interim stages with those Cat 3/4 rollers might also be interesting as people try to make up some lost time. I wonder what form NIbali has. I'm sure he's not happy about losing his advantage due to the TTT.
  18. Houston is where I developed an education and appreciation for Turkish, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, food, while finding little gems like a great Belgian restaurant (and yes, almost all in ugly strip malls). It's an amazing food town for many of the same reasons LA is.
  19. Nairo can’t catch a break, and that three leaders thing is really working out well for Movistar. Sheesh. And Porte - guy must have done something wrong in a previous life as bad luck follows him Heck of a day for a ‘boring’ stage.
  20. Little places like this are what makes LA a really interesting food town. Once you get past the endless strip mall hell, there's some real gems to be found.
  21. I like Quartino, but perhaps the vibe is better than the food. Don't get me wrong - the food is solid, and I would go back, but ultimately there may be better choices closer to you. The Gage is great - prefer to eat at the bar solo when I'm there on business. The tasting menus are interesting at Topolobampo, I quite enjoyed the recent 'Art Menu'. The margaritas there are seriously good. Jotting down notes here for my next visit. . .
  22. It's not surprising that this happened, more so that it didn't happen for others busted previously for the same infraction. The main issue is that there's too much scientific grey area in the salbutemol test, which was so easily exploited by Sky. The biology is too complicated for such a stringent failure line. It's easy to get over the limit without really abusing the drug. Worth a read. The second issue is that even from their press release, WADA quotes the rule to say that they need the CPKS to prove that this wasn't an attempt to gain advantage, but then accept that there are all these mitigating circumstances which render the CPKS unnecessary. This should open the flood gate to any challenge in the future for salbutemol, as they basically quoted the rule and then decided it was invalid. What's the purpose for a rule if it is then thrown out in the face of scrutiny. Third, TUE exemptions are off the charts. Without it, we wouldn't be here.
  23. Eh, I don't know it's all that dire (the death of WADA). A shit-show indeed, though. Month of this crap, and all it took was the ASO threatening to ban his start for this remarkable ruling to occur. That said, so many of these tests are remarkably qualitative and noisy - it's the nature of the beast. I'm absolutely sure in my heart that Froome/Sky have pushed to the edge and abused his therapeutic exemption. But the study which gave birth to the threshold of the test appears to be somewhat flawed. Scientist behind salbutamol threshold admits 'terrible blunder' The founding scientific work for salbutemol abuse and threshold came from work with swimmers. The urine is even more concentrated in a cyclist at the end of a three hour stage, which makes that threshold determination more tricky. It's not a blood test, and it's not a test detecting the presence of a man-made cytokine (like recombinant EPO) or something which should not be there (a simple yes/no), it's a threshold detection. There's a factor for 'urine dehydration' built into the test, and even with that, he was 19% over the limit. But that's frankly not very inspiring, when you consider the variation of the biology, and however they decided to factor in the dehydration. Of course, that would have been a nice way for Sky to attack the finding, but yet we've subjected to months of reports suggesting that their defense would be that a kidney problem caused adverse drug metabolism, which is a fun argument. Not only is it likely utter horseshit, but it would be darn near impossible to re-create, even if they did do in-patient pharmacokinetic test they were supposed to do. I'm sure they'd argue that no resting test would re-create the stress of a stage. The fact that they decided to go the whole Tyler Hamilton Vanishing Twin route is pretty telling, in my opinion.
  24. It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.
  25. Agree with this - even a short ride mid-week will do wonders. I'd recommend signing up for something like The Sufferfest and getting a trainer - it makes it even easier to add in those additional workouts.
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