Yesterday I did a 4+ hour ride on my MTB. I rode over to Lawrence on gravel, then did the white trails at Clinton and rode back on gravel on the River Road. I fell apart pretty early and it never got better. Ride to the right on Strava. (I’m not exactly sure why that is there now.)

I haven’t felt good riding for a long time now. I thought taking over two weeks off would have helped, but it seems to just have made me less fit and slow. Yesterday it might of been other things I wasn’t taking into consideration at the time. Like it was in the mid 80’s, the wind was blowing over 30mph and I was riding a MTB bike. But, as I write that, even now, I realize I know when I’m riding okay/good. This wasn’t even close.

I lost about 6 pounds and drank 2 bottles, plus a 44 oz Gatorade and a 16 oz Coke. The Coke helped the most. It got me through the last hour. I rarely ride as badly as I did yesterday. Hopefully it was a one time fall occurrence.

I was thinking about baling on the Berryman Epic on Saturday, but I can’t do that. There is a huge cold front coming through tomorrow morning and the high after that is supposed to be in the lower 50’s through the weekend. The same south of St. Louis, where the race is. High on Saturday is supposed to be 49, with a low of 28. That seems pretty cold, on paper, but for racing off-road, it would be good.

I don’t have high hopes for this race, but I have to go through the motions. I need the mileage, plus it is a blast riding for over 4 hours, nearly all on singletrack. The finish place is what it is.

I like the fall for a variety of reasons. I like all changes of seasons. The colors are one good reason. The cool morning and nice days are another. Riding on gravel, you get to see more things than riding on the road. I don’t know if that is because stuff is closer to the road or I have more time to just look around. Whatever the reason, I see more.

Riding on singletrack at Clinton was jarring. The white trail is crazy rocky. And now covered with leaves. It makes it pretty technical. Since I was going so badly, it was extra hard. I wasn’t riding that bad technically, but I didn’t have energy to do it correctly.

I think I’m going to pretty much rest the next couple days. There would be no upside to being tired before a 60 mile MTB race, mostly on singletrack.

Trudi running Bromont a few days ago before it got hot.

There are lots of these rock walls between Topeka and Lawrence. I think the German prisoners of war during WW 2 build most of them.

The camp sites at Clinton seemed closed, except for these guys. Anyone know what kind of truck that is on the tow dolly?

It is a banner year for hedge apples.

All the leaves in Shawnee County fell last weekend. Maybe not all, but most. Guess it’s time to clean the gutters?

This is Fran, she loves playing in leaves.

And our rain gutters are full of leaves too.

I hate this. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The guy has 3X as many bags further back in his driveway. We need, as a society, a better way to deal with leaves. Sending them to the dump is insane. I have a compost pile in the back.

Up in Mt. Prospect, a suburb of Chicago, they collect the leaves with a sucking machine every Monday in the fall. It makes so much sense. A city service, taking the leaves to the vegetation dump instead of the landfill. It keeps the storm sewers clean. It seems like it would pay for itself.

Where’s the honor? I understand the issues with the drug situation. It was a jacked up choice for the riders. I fully understand that. And there are casualties. Good guys caught up in a shitty situation.

Here’s the deal guys. Everyone, and I mean virtually every one of the riders that have won major races on the road, between somewhere in the early to mid 90’s to somewhere relatively recently, took drugs to compete. Sorry, but that is just how it has to be. The facts speak for themselves. The drugs were/are too good. I’ve personally witnessed how much better these drugs make a rider and there would be virtually no way to humanly compensate and compete at that level without the aid.

So, now we can split the whole group, those riders who won events, into two groups. The riders that have been caught and the riders who haven’t. The guys that were caught were mildly unlucky it seems, unless you rode with Lance. Those that didn’t get caught, as of yet, should be thanking their lucky stars.

So, there it is. Let’s stop being surprised, there aren’t any in this respect.

What’s really bothering me now about the whole thing is the extent that these guys will go to protect their legacies. “I did it until 2006 and then it suddenly became too much to handle morally.” Huh? Can you imagine training and racing supercharged for years and then go back to racing normally aspirated? I’m guessing it would feel something like you had the flu 365 days a year training.. Plus, you would have no mental capacity to race one bit. It seems like it isn’t in human nature to allow it to work.

I already ranted about the simultaneous confessions of Lance’s team mates. Pretty contrived. Now, Bobby Julich seems to be continuing the bullshit. His issue, or problem, is that he has an Olympic Bronze medal hanging on his wall. No wait, I guess he should now have an Olympic Silver medal hanging on his wall, since Tyler gave his Gold Medal back. And I’m sure Bobby wants to keep it.

2004 Olympic TT podium.

So, the way I see it, he has to make up this convoluted timeline and excuses to do just that. I guess he confesses to doping during the 1998 Tour de France, where he finished officially 3rd. I’m wondering if he thinks this is a good trade for keeping his medal? Bobby wants us to believe that he raced “clean” from July of 1998 until he retired in 2008, during a very polluted time for our sport? He rode for Cofidis, Telekom and CSC during these years. Wow, he must have been resolute in his anti-doping decision.

Here’s an excerpt from Bobby’s Wiki page. I sure hope he didn’t write this, but I’d bet he’s read it a few times. I don’t know how he could allow it to be in print, I really don’t.

Following the doping scandal of the 1998 Tour, only 96 of 189 riders completed the race, and Bobby Julich finished third on the podium with winner Marco Pantani and runner-up Jan Ullrich. It became clear later that Julich was the highest placed rider not using performance enhancing drugs during the 1998 race and is thus the de facto if not the official winner.

I remember seeing an interview with Bobby back in 1998 complaining about why everyone is asking so much about the Festina affair when the real news is out on the road.

Anyway, this seems to be just another case of a guy that made a mistake that is trying to cover his ass. Why couldn’t he have just said, “I have to leave the Sky Team because I couldn’t conform to their anti doping policies. I used performance enhancing drugs at certain times during my career and told them such. Thus, I am not longer employed by them.”

Then he could have went on and said how clean the sport is nowadays and how he would love to be working with our young up and coming pros, which is what he was supposed to do for Sky, with Joe Drombrowski and Ian Boswell. I don’t have any idea whether he would be the right person to be mentoring these kids. He might be the perfect guy, really, but he doesn’t get a chance this time around.

Can’t one of these guys just fess up with some sort of honesty and honor. Just take it like a man. Everyone wants to get to be involved in the sport still. I don’t blame them. It is a nice way to spend it. I guess it’s up to “the sport” to work this all out and decide if it wants these guys around still.