Category: Cycling

To say I'm upset about this would be a HUGE understatement.

This year, I watched the Tour de France. I watched it intently. I enjoyed stage after stage. I loved watching the team tactics. I grimmaced at the crashes, especially that of Bobby Julich. It was an unbelievable tour this year, especially now that it is no longer the "Tour de Lance."

The most incredible story of the Tour was the story of the eventual winner, Floyd Landis. He was the most consistent rider throughout the entire Tour. He seemed to have everything. He could ride the time trials. He could climb in the Pyrenees. His team, though not altogether the strongest, seemed to be able to help him out in clutch moments.

Then, everything exploded. Stage 16, the much-storied climb to Alp d'Huez seemed to be more than Landis could handle. He completely bonked on the last climb. He ended up losing more than ten minutes to Oscar Pereiro of Spain, ending up in eleventh place -- eight minutes and eight seconds behind in the overall classification. Everyone thought such a horrible performance so late in the Tour was the end of Landis' hopes for winning the Tour. Eight minutes and eight seconds was considered an insurmountable deficit.

But like a phoenix emerging from the ashes, stage 17 brought renewed hope for Landis. He attacked on the first climb of the most difficult stage of the tour. He rode the legs off of the peleton and bridged the gap between the peleton and a breakaway group of a dozen or so riders. Then the left the breakaway in the dust. Mile after mile, he left rider after rider behind him. At the end of the stage, he was in third place with a time deficit of only 30 seconds.

Landis' stage 17 was described by everyone with superlatives. It was an amazing ride only a day after a horrible ride. Bob Roll, who himself rode in the Tour de France, and who has watched the Tour for almost half of its existence called the ride the greatest single-day ride in the history of the Tour.

Landis wouldn't gain or lose time on stage 18, but during stage 19, an individual time trial, he was able to re-gain the yellow jersey with an advantage of almost a minute. He wore the yellow jersey triumphantly into Paris and was declared the winner of the Tour de France.

Today, that all changed. Team Phonak was notified by UCI, professional cycling's governing body, that Floyd Landis' sample showed an "unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone" when he was tested after stage 17.

Phonak has suspended Landis pending the outcome of a second test. Cyclists provide two samples after each race. Landis can now request that his second "backup" sample be tested in his presence. If that one also tests positive for elevated levels of testosterone, Landis will be stripped of his yellow jersey and will be fired by team Phonak.

I'm stunned. I'm hoping beyond hope that this was a mistake. But it's hard to get a false positive for testosterone levels. It's also hard to get a measurable performance boost from testosterone that might cause such an amazing performance as Landis had during stage 17. Unfortunately, testosterone might be used to mask the presence of other performance-enhancing substances and is easier to explain away than something else like elevated red blood cell counts.

Did he dope? I hope not. I'm reserving judgment until after the second sample is tested and the results are published.

Regardless of the results, Landis' performance and his win in the Tour de France is now tainted.

I've registered for my next big ride. It's the CASVAR: The Cycling Association of Star Valley Annual Ride. It takes place on 26 August.

CASVAR Route Map

I registered for the 100-mile ride. Between now and then, my goal is to ride a hundred miles a week until the week of the ride. That week, I'll back off a bit, because that Saturday, I'll ride the whole hundred.

Why am I doing this?

Well, last year, I rode a hundred miles in the Desperado Dual in Southern Utah. I rode through Circleville, Utah, where my dad grew up. In the process of training for that ride, I fell in love with road biking and I lost around 30 lbs.

This year, I'm going to ride past the farm where my mom grew up. And hopefully, I'll lose the 15 lbs that I gained back over the winter, the cool, rainy spring, and the summer of landscaping.

I haven't been pulled over for a good long time. The last time was a dozen years or so ago. I had a headlight and a taillight out on the same side of my car. The policeman gave me a "fix it" ticket.

Well, today, I got pulled over again. This time, it was for speeding. I was doing 36 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone. But I didn't get a ticket. I got off on a technicality.

I was riding my bicycle at the time.

The poor officer couldn't get his computer system to print a ticket. You see, in order to issue a moving violation, he had to enter a vehicle license number unless he was also issuing a ticket for an unlicensed vehicle. My bike had no license number. Since no license is required, he couldn't ticket me for having an unlicensed vehicle. He called it in and they told him to let me off with a warning.

Dutifully, he lectured me about going too fast and told me that by next time, he will have figured out what to do and then I'll get a ticket.

I think he said a lot of other things, but I was too busy thinking "Cool! I was going 36 miles per hour!"

Good thing he took the time to deal with me, a true menace to society!

I don't know how far we went yesterday. We made a sort of spur-of-the-moment decision to take a Sunday afternoon bike ride.

I pumped up a few bike tires and we tracked down riding gloves and other accessories we hadn't used since last fall. Finally, we were ready and we headed down the driveway, then up the hill behind our house.

The boys aren't ready for that kind of a hill, though my oldest made it more than halfway up before he had to get off the bike and walk. But when we had arrived at the top, neither of the boys wanted to stop riding. We probably rode 3 or 4 miles, all the way up past the temple, past the High School, and down the hill to the park with the pond.

The pond is extremely full--TOO full due to the abundance of rain and snow that has, so far, kept us from doing much riding. There were ducks and geese chasing each other all over the grass and all over the water's surface.

The weather was beautiful... At least, it was beautiful until we decided to turn back towards home. We rode (and the boys walked) our bikes back up the hill and then we told them that the hard part was over and it was almost completely downhill all the way home. We were halfway right.

It was certainly downhill almost all the way home, but the hard part wasn' t over. We hadn't counted on such a strong wind blowing in our faces all the way home. But we all pushed on against it. It started to get cold - almost a biting cold. For a while, my youngest didn't want to keep riding. There was, however, no alternative, so he pushed on even harder against the wind.

When we entered our neighborhood, both boys were pretty worn out. We must have ridden 7 or 8 miles, half of it into a pretty stiff wind. In the end, despite the challenge of the wind, we were all happy to have done something active together. We're a little sore this morning (I'm speaking for the adults. The children seem completely unaffected), but we're looking forward to the next family ride.