Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I have been walking a fine line between feeling good and feeling sick for about a week now. My symptoms come and go. Sometimes I feel a little warm, maybe a little lightheaded, maybe a little congested. Then things go away and I feel fine. Kind of weird. This afternoon has been one the times when things feel odd so I am taking the night off and not stressing my body.

With nothing else going on here are a few more 2006 awards...

Toughest Crit: Normally I wouldn't award this year's Columbia Cup course as the toughest but I sucked so bad that weekend that I was out of the race after 18 minutes. I have no choice but call it the toughest crit this year.

Best road race: I did a whopping three road races all year. I rather liked the State Road Race. It was my first time on that course and found it's constant rolling hills to be very challenging. I wish I had been in better condition that weekend.

Toughest race: I'm not sure what happened in my race prep. The race started okay but a few miles into the race, the pace picked up and I was gasping for air. I chased and chased and chased at 25mph with some help from a couple others. I damn near caught back on to the pack only to blow up as we headed back into town for the first time. This year's winner is Hillsboro-Roubaix.

Leave it to Erik Zabel to be the one person talking some common sense about the Puerto affair...
(from Velonews.com)
Speaking at the Milram team presentation in Germany on Wednesday, Zabel said it was unfair for riders to languish in a legal purgatory, given the absence of hard evidence that they had doped.

"As long as there is no formal evidence accusing any of them of doping, what is the purpose?" he said. "It appears that all that (investigators) have to work with are rumors, innuendo and assumptions. As long as that is all they have, then all of them should be allowed to ride."

The 36-year-old Zabel said that his former teammate, defending Giro d'Italia champion Ivan Basso and others named as clients of the now-infamous Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes "must be able to take their rightful places in the peloton again."

Basso was signed by the U.S.-based Discovery Channel team, a move that has generated considerable controversy among other ProTour teams. Managers of competing teams - including Bjarne Riis, of Basso's old CSC squad - say the signing is a violation of a "gentlemen's agreement" not to hire riders named in the Puerto investigation. Ullrich, however, has not been successful in finding a ProTour team and is said to be in negotiations with the European continental squad, Acqua e Sapone.

Zabel embraced the idea of mandatory DNA tests in the case as a way of resolving any questions.

"They need to resolve this quickly," he said. "It is unfair to cycling in general and unfair to those riders."

3 Comments:

Blogger Bobber said...

You agree with Zabel? I am somewhat surprised.

Have you tried taking any vitamin C?

Vitamin D is also looking like a possible factor in flu and colds.

8:15 AM  
Blogger Jim said...

Why would I not agree with Zabel? Because of my Dope-o-Meter, etc?

I want to see people racing clean but you darn well better present some evidence before people are denied the right to make a living at the top level of the sport.

If Basso or Ullrich or whoever is shown to have doped, then I will have no mercy for them. Until then, let them sign with a ProTour if they can work out a deal.

At the time Puerto broke, I had no problem with keeping the riders from racing in the Tour. But, that was because the news was that they had sound evidence against these guys. If that was the case, why has nothing more happened in six months? It should not take that long. The Spanish need to wake up from their siesta and present some evidence.

6:11 PM  
Blogger Bobber said...

Not that you wouldn't agree with Zabel but your prior position seemed confident (as a pound) that Puerto was true.

12:11 PM  

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