flythebike
captain
Reged: 08/26/04
Posts: 272
Loc: N. Virginia, USA
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Re: Sorry Fly...It's Not Me It's the Head Injury :
10/03/05 02:45 PM (66.7.29.142)
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Hey thats cool Lon, no worries. Just get well, and don't worry! I was sort of impressed by how all the regulars jumped in on my behalf. And yeah this forum is pretty special in that it tends to be very respectful. And yeah, its gone from: Wow neato hey everybody I won a race AGAIN, ohmygosh TWO IN A ROW, to snipe, bicker, argue. And people's posts tend to actually get acknowledged here, unlike many other forums where you can make a perfectly good point and everyone ignores it.
Reading Lance Armstrong's book "Every Second Counts" (worth checking out from the library, for sure) only reinforces my decision to use that wheel. He writes about how detail-oriented he is, looking for every edge, both in training and equipment. He is "Mr. Milimeter" to others. But in his own mind he is really "Mr. Micrometer." It is easy to shrug it off and say we're just amateurs, it doesn't matter. If that is so then go out on a 25 pound bike with 36 spoke wheels and see how far you get, and how fast you get there. He says on about page 150 "The Tour is essentially a math problem, a 2,000 mile race over threee weeks that's sometimes won by a margin of a minute or less...Every second counts. (Lecturing Floyd Landis:) 'You had to be willing to examine any small part of your body or the bike to find extra time, ...to look for fractions of seconds in something as small as the sleeves of your jersey. 'Once you reach a certain level, everyone is good, and everyone trains hard,' I said. The difference is who is more meticulous, willing to find the samallest increments of time, and as you get older and more experienced, the percentage gains grow smaller and smaller."
Riding this weekend with my old club reminded me how far I've come in the last three years. Whenever my two new teammates or I would pull, the speed would go up 2-3 miles per hour, and like 6-8 guys would get dropped, even on a flat road. So there really is a pretty big difference between strong 4/5 riders and 1/2/3 class riders. And the difference between a really strong 2 and a new cat three is also quite a gulf.
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