Nature Valley is over. The final day is the Stillwater Criterium. It’s more like a very hard circuit race. A little over a mile with half up and half down. The bottom of the climb is nearly 20% grade and then it keeps going for another long ways. The descent has a couple 90 degree corners and then a 45 mph pitch to nearly a U turn and the bottom to start up the wall again.

The start is pretty important. They called nearly 1/3 of the field up to the line. The top 25 in GC plus the top three in every jersey competition. Everyone else camped out behind the ropes for a long time. It was hot today, so standing around didn’t go over that well with most the riders. The race was 20 laps. That only alittle over 20 miles. But, the average speed of the race isn’t hardly 20 mph, so it seems long. Ben Raby from our team was 2nd place in the King of the Mountain Competition. The best result for our team was having him win that. I assumed that I could make that happen. There were KOM sprints at the top of the hill at lap 3, lap 6 and lap 9. I moved up pretty good the first lap, but Tim Johnson, Ouch took off up the hill at the end of the first lap. I was next to Ben and told him to follow. Then Chad Gerlach, who was winning the KOM competition jumped out of the field and I followed. He caught those two in front pretty quickly. Bissell had barely organized their tempo session at the front, so we had a good lead. I felt good and went by and just pulled. After a lap and a half, it went bad. Ben thought the sprint was the third time up the climb. It was after 3 laps. So, I was pulling and when we hit the bottom of the climb Ben attacked and dropped us. Then he sat up. When I got back up to him I told him he sprinted a lap early, but he didn’t think so. We were still dangling off the front and when we hit the bottom of the climb the next lap, Chad jumped. Ben went with him, but his chain skipped off under torque, and he came out of his pedals and skidded to a stop.

The Bissell train came by us. Gerlach was done I could tell. I just sat in the field for the next 5 laps until the last KOM. I felt good, so I started drifting back looking for Ben for the last KOM. There weren’t more than 40 or so guys left, but no Ben. I assumed that he took a free lap. He didn’t. That’s when I lost motivation. I kind of put in a half hearted effort to ride back up the front but just pulled over to the official at the bottom of the hill and told her to score me. You only had to ride 5 laps to get a finish time. But, she told me I was quitting and that she had to officially pull me. So I sat there another minute or so and discussed it with her. Then rode another lap and got pulled officially. I can count the times I’ve quit races on less than two hands. I guess I didn’t quit really, but I really did quit. I felt fine. I wasn’t struggling. I just didn’t want to be that hot for another 20 minutes. And it seemed my purpose to race was gone. I don’t regret the decision yet. I hope I do pretty soon. That wouldn’t be good if I don’t.

Rory Sutherland did what I thought. He took off with two laps to go, bridged up to a 2 man break and killed it the last lap. He put something like 10 seconds into Tom Zirbel and won the Overall by 3 seconds.. Pretty good riding. I’m not sure what the Bissell team could of done to stop that.

I’m trying to decide whether to go to Chicago and race a few of the American Dairyland Races Thursday and Friday or just go home and ride The Winghaven NRC race outside St. Louis on Sunday. I probably should let it sit a little bit before I decide.

Start finish stretch showing the start of the hill in the background.

Each criterium had bike corals that were always full. Pretty cool collect of bikes.

I was just on Velonews interactive and saw the results of a poll asking if Alejandro Valverde’s Italian 2 year suspension should be extended worldwide. The current vote total is 60% no, 40% yes. And my own Tom Boonen poll vote total is pretty much the same.

I see a huge difference in the infractions. Personally, I don’t think that the results of Tom Boonen’s out of competition test should have been released. He wasn’t positive according to any rules of the sport. And wasn’t positive in the out of competition test. Valverde is much different. They matched the DNA from a blood bag found in a lab in Spain during Operation Puerto to his blood taken in the Tour de France. That is enough for me. Why should Alejandro get by with a slap on the hand. My view is that 2 years is a slap on the hand.

I know in the US you are innocent until proven guilty. But matching blood isn’t rocket science. It’s simple science. And let me tell you, as an athlete, I want every single drop of my blood in my body. I can’t think of a reason that I’d have some extra laying around somewhere, other than for cheating/doping purposes. Basso served a suspension for his blood being there. Even if Valverde never got around to using it, he needs to sit out for awhile.

What kind of bothers me about all these polls is that everyone seems to think it’s okay to use drugs. At least it is reflected that way. The last couple weekend at the NRC races, Floyd has been there. He is super popular. The crowd is super supportive. I haven no personal views on Floyd Landis’s guilt. I love him. I’ve known him from way back in MTB racing. He is a super nice guy. But, he’s also the only rider in history to have a Tour title stripped. He tested positive and spent two years out. That was enough for me. But the popularity kind of baffles me. Here’s a link to a website that wrote about his opinion of Floyd. It is too generous to me, but I like getting different people’s views.

Here’s my take on drug usage. It’s immoral. If you take drugs in sport, you’re stealing results from your friends. Not to mention money. I might as well be breaking into their cars and stealing their shit. And more importantly, you’re stealing life experiences. For me, the reason that athletics is so cool, and athletes so envied, is that people sometimes do things that on the surface seem inhumanly possible. I’ve personally experienced it 1000’s of times myself. And when you take drugs to do these inhuman things, it diminishes everyone’s accomplishments. Everyone’s.

I’ve been the recipient or at least associated closely with both money and results disappearing. I was “fired” or replaced on the Specialized MTB Team the same year Filip Meirhaeghe was hired. It was obvious to me that he was taking drugs at the time. After he signed, but before he wore a Specialized jersey, he was removed from the World MTB Championships for having a hematocrit over 50 and had to sit out the race. Then he rode for Specialized the next 6 years. Finally they caught up with him at the Montreal Airport with an out of competition test. EPO. No shit. It was so obvious. To everyone.

I don’t have any problem with Filip. He’s a nice guy too. But, morally, he stole a ton of life experiences from a ton of different people. Every single World Cup, Olympics, World Championship, or any race for that matter, that he was on the top step of the podium, the guy in 2nd missed that experience. And he did it over and over. But, the baffling thing is that he is so, so popular. He was on something like the Belgium Survivor and had his own TV show. It is so weird. Something that one should be ashamed of gives him more notoriety that he had before. I don’t get it.

Cyclists earn their popularity. They earn their results. And their results are partially a result of years of training. Years of suffering. And to bypass that process through drug usage, destroys the foundation of our sport. Enough said.