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.