Enron vs. Dopers

I posted this in a forum today and figured it could make a good blog entry too.

In the business world, every transaction is watched over with computers. It is easy to cook the books within one company’s computers, but the companies on the other ends of those transactions will be watching over your math with their own systems. Obviously sometimes there are situations that a company has the chance to get away with the tactics that Enron used, but even that can readily be watched over with outside sources that have enough vested interests to watch over millions/billions floating around. On the other hand, cyclists would have to be tested every day of the year for the entire duration of their careers and even then, it wouldn’t be as effective as a computer watching over every little mathematical corruption. The cost of manually watching over all of the top cyclists would be extremely tough and invasive to their lives, but likely effective enough to stop them from cheating. The cost of watching over billions of $ at big companies, unquestionably worth doing and it’s done, for the most part, extremely effectively with computers. The question of to punish or not to punish the cyclists who get caught, well my opinion is that punishment is a must as long as the system is effective. Otherwise, you have the majority of top cyclists making big $’s and getting a lot of glory for cheating while the unfortunate few who get caught get nailed really hard. That system (our current setup) is really messed up and I can completely understand why people would say that if we don’t have the means, we are forced to give in to the wide spread corruption that is not fixable through smacking up the few who get caught. Scare tactics just can't overcome the desire for glory and $. The only fix is to test every pro cyclist every day all year long. When that is in place, I’m all for tough punishment (lifetime bans). As for the Ken Lay’s of the world, I say nail em’ extremely hard! I have a harsh perspective on people like that and would have no problem with capital punishment (death penalty) in that case.

Here comes Mt. Hood Cycling Classic

Currently there are 149 pro-1-2's signed up for this race and bobs-bicycles.com is one of only 5 teams to have a complete 8 man team signed up. I've done this race two times before, but each year has been a totally different race since each year has seen a significant increase in the number of top level pro's that come. This year, the time trial (my specialty) is significantly longer and has a lot more climbing. The last roar race will be tougher as well since it has more and tougher climbing. To do this race, I had to take off 4 days of work and with the holiday, I've got 9 straight days off!
The local 9.8 mile thursday night time trials started up last week and I managed to pull off one of the best times I've done out there since 2004 when the road was much smoother before they chipsealed it. My fastest time is 19 minutes flat but my second fastest is 19:32. On thursday, I did a 19:34. The current fastest time trialling woman on the face of the planet (literally) was there as well (Kristen Armstrong) and she put in a 20:08 which is just amazing fast! My teammate Justin Mayfield managed to take off over 90 seconds of his previous best at this event and did a 20:14. There are only two riders to have gone under 20 minutes at this time trial, Kelly Williamson (did a 19:54 in 05) and myself, but it looks like there could easily be two more names to that list by the end of this year!
There is a race today in Pocatello that I did last year and would really like to be doing now. It is 108 miles and with only two days of rest between now and the start of Hood, it just wouldn't be the optimal thing for me to be doing. Two of my teammates are doing this race and I'm really hoping that they beat Richard Feldman, who is on the start line for this race. It is the first somewhat local road race that I've seen him start since I've moved to the Treasure Valley. He's a time trial phenom, but the guy must have the most awful personality of any person I've ever raced against, so I really like to see him get beaten at any event.
Anyways - over n' out
and hopefully it will be much sooner between posts this next time.

Return of the infrequent blogger

Getting a dog down in a Cave with a backpack may sound like a great idea, but I now know - DON'T TRY THAT!
Packing out the Elk - Nov 27th

It's been 3 months since the last post and all of that time was during the offseason., so I've gotta get you caught up. In that time, I've had two major breaks - a 9 day Thanksgiving break and a 12 day Xmas break. During that time Jami and I managed to get in some serious road trip time. We went north both times (Lewiston, Kendrick, Weippe area). We did some crosscountry skiing, lots of hiking, catching up with old friend (a.k.a. drinking) , the traditional eating too much fine food - one of the turkeys was smoked in a newly drilled steel garbage can (highly suggest trying this), and many other miscellaneous things including keeping our little beagle, Lucy, in line. The rest of the time has been spent finding little local outdoors adventures, the best so far being the Kuna Caves and a natural hotsprings near Banks. As for the offseason fitness, I've spent the least amount of time on a bike of any offseason - ever! The redeeming feature is that I've burned many an hour in the YMCA doing all sorts of aerobic and weight work. For those that don't know, the Y has some pretty sweet equipment, not to mention 3 pools, hot tubs, saunas, rock climbing walls, indoor track,... anyways, it rocks for keeping the offseason form. Another source of workout that I wasn't expecting was a trip packing out my dad's cow elk from the Riggins / Salmon River area - 1900ft vertical in about 1.5 to 2 miles with 80+lbs on the back = very hard.
As for the team news, we just recieved our new Giant TCR Composite frames in, but I've yet to pick mine up. Turns out that we get to do some serious racing this year - travelling to New Mexico (Tour of the Gila), Pennsylvania (Elite Nationals), California (Sea Otter), Colorado (don't know what race yet) and the usual Oregon and Washington. Should be fun.

First Blog

1 day after my 27th B-day and 1 day until the 2006 Bogus Basin Hill Climb -
Jami and I went to Shige's sushi last night - it's a cool little place that has a little circlular river system with boats floating down the river and the cook places various sushi rolls and sashimi on the boats for customers to choose from.
The air quality is in it's 2nd straight day of being in the red zone (very unhealthy). Most of it has built up in Boise, clogged up against the hill. The particular matter is around half that out at our house in Nampa, still being on the border of the red and yellow zone. Hopefully it clears out before the Bogus Climb; don't really need smokers lungs.
Jami and I dodged a small bullet two days ago as our 4 month old puppy, Lucy, managed to get her leg under my front wheel when we took her for a short ride/run. We took her to the emergency vet and determined that it wasn't broken even though it flopped around very unnaturally. I guess it's good to be young and very flexible!