Monday, December 4th, 2006
Jared:
Frisco Cross:
You never know how you are going to feel on day 2. I was awoken at 2:00am with the recurring back pain. Ever since cross started, my lower back has been acting up. It does every once in awhile during the road season, but not every night like it has for the past month. I have an appt with a doc in a couple weeks to see what’s up. It hurts so bad that I can’t sleep and having sleeping issues in the 1st place plus the back pain…. It’s not a healthy sleep environment
Course Description:
Start on a slight road climb left into a steep drop to single track, to double track to a single with a nasty run-up back to a climb to pavement, drop into single track to double track twistys, to a double barrier, into double track twistys to a slight climb drop to grass to a single and back to the road through the finish line. Big field, 40 or so guys on the line. Race time was 1:20 and I rolled to the line at 1:10 thinking that would be early enough to get the front row start position. 4 rows deep greeted me as I rolled up. I went to the front row and “found” a spot. Nobody said anything. Gun goes out and I get the hole-shot for the 1st half of the road section and 3 guys roll by. We hit the drop into single track and a 4th guy makes a move and cuts me off before the drop and the next thing I know I’m over the bars with pedals engaged. Right there I thought the race was over. I got up and the front brake lever was parallel with my bars. I hit it a couple times and got it straight and settled in mid-pack. I have not been mid-pack for awhile and it was not pretty. The adrenaline kicked in and we hit the run up and I gave it full gas and passed 6 guys. We hit flat section before the double and I dropped a few more. Hit the double with serious speed and made up a couple more spots. Got to the road and finally was sitting top 10. The next lap I made it up to a group of 3 that were in 3rd, 4th, 5th place. I sat and recovered a little and when we hit the road section I closed the gap to 1st and 2nd. Good thing that adrenaline. We instantly opened a gap and the race for the W was on. Moots guy pulled most of the laps and I just “rode smart” and waited. This is not my style but after trying a couple moves on the road section, they were not letting me get away. 3 laps to go we are still together, 2 laps to go we are still together, 1 lap to go a wise man told me last week that you need to lead out the last lap in cross. I went to the front and drilled it on the road and popped 1 guy and I stayed on the gas and we hit the run-up and I again drilled it but couldn’t pop the guy. I stayed at the front until the double barrier and he went by. All I could think of was “get in front of him”. We hit the final little climb and I gave it everything I had and got to the front and heard Tim and Single Life yelling and I kept the hammer down and got a bike length on him – we hit the single barrier and I wasn’t looking back anymore. It was game on.. we rounded the final corner and I don’t think I’ve sprinted that hard all year and came in for the Win. Crossniac Tim rocked the 35+ and Single Life was top 5? In the 4’s? Vitamin Cottage Marty continues his domination in the 4s and I think he as 3rd or 4th. A good weekend for the Breck Wellington Neighborhood boys. Two Wins in 2 days.
Jared put his entry in first and I forgot about it. So I will start the voting tomorrow now.
Posted by Smithers at 9:17 pm in Uncategorized | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Jared:
Frisco Cross: You never know how you are going to feel on day 2. I was awoken at 2:00am with the recurring back pain. Ever since cross started, my lower back has been acting up. It does every once in awhile during the road season, but not every night like it has for the past month. I have an appt with a doc in a couple weeks to see what’s up. It hurts so bad that I can’t sleep and having sleeping issues in the 1st place plus the back pain…. It’s not a healthy sleep environment Course Description: Start on a slight road climb left into a steep drop to single track, to double track to a single with a nasty run-up back to a climb to pavement, drop into single track to double track twistys, to a double barrier, into double track twistys to a slight climb drop to grass to a single and back to the road through the finish line. Big field, 40 or so guys on the line. Race time was 1:20 and I rolled to the line at 1:10 thinking that would be early enough to get the front row start position. 4 rows deep greeted me as I rolled up. I went to the front row and “found” a spot. Nobody said anything. Gun goes out and I get the hole-shot for the 1st half of the road section and 3 guys roll by. We hit the drop into single track and a 4th guy makes a move and cuts me off before the drop and the next thing I know I’m over the bars with pedals engaged. Right there I thought the race was over. I got up and the front brake lever was parallel with my bars. I hit it a couple times and got it straight and settled in mid-pack. I have not been mid-pack for awhile and it was not pretty. The adrenaline kicked in and we hit the run up and I gave it full gas and passed 6 guys. We hit flat section before the double and I dropped a few more. Hit the double with serious speed and made up a couple more spots. Got to the road and finally was sitting top 10. The next lap I made it up to a group of 3 that were in 3rd, 4th, 5th place. I sat and recovered a little and when we hit the road section I closed the gap to 1st and 2nd. Good thing that adrenaline. We instantly opened a gap and the race for the W was on. Moots guy pulled most of the laps and I just “rode smart” and waited. This is not my style but after trying a couple moves on the road section, they were not letting me get away. 3 laps to go we are still together, 2 laps to go we are still together, 1 lap to go a wise man told me last week that you need to lead out the last lap in cross. I went to the front and drilled it on the road and popped 1 guy and I stayed on the gas and we hit the run-up and I again drilled it but couldn’t pop the guy. I stayed at the front until the double barrier and he went by. All I could think of was “get in front of him”. We hit the final little climb and I gave it everything I had and got to the front and heard Tim and Single Life yelling and I kept the hammer down and got a bike length on him – we hit the single barrier and I wasn’t looking back anymore. It was game on.. we rounded the final corner and I don’t think I’ve sprinted that hard all year and came in for the Win. Crossniac Tim rocked the 35+ and Single Life was top 5? In the 4’s? Vitamin Cottage Marty continues his domination in the 4s and I think he as 3rd or 4th. A good weekend for the Breck Wellington Neighborhood boys. Two Wins in 2 days.
Jared put his entry in first and I forgot about it. So I will start the voting tomorrow now.
Posted by Smithers at 3:17 pm in Local Cycling | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, December 4th, 2006
LaSalle Street pointed me to the Landis Case Wiki in regards to the blood doping theory I posted about earlier:
Any blood that was stored for that period of time would have to be stored frozen, and since whole blood can not be stored frozen, the plasma and red blood cells would be separated. In this case, the plasma (where most of the free testosterone could be expected) would not be kept for re-infusion, only the red blood cells would be kept.
Why would only the red blood cells be kept if the goal would be not to increase the haematocrit level? Is it not possible that both the red blood cells and the serum (plasma) would have been stored frozen, all be it separately, to be reinjected later?
Pure testosterone has a half-life in the blood of 10 to 30 minutes. Within just a few hours, the testosterone has almost completely disappeared from the blood. Some have said that because of this, testosterone will only be detected in a urine sample for a few hours (or a few urination cycles) after the doping. Others have said that it is not this simple, and while it leaves the bloodstream immediately, metabolites (by-products) would still be found in the urine as much as a day or two later.
OK, if this is true then it sounds like any testosterone used to boost the beneficial effect of EPO would have been degraded fairly quickly. I need to read more about this issue. The next paragraph has a fairly interesting nugget:
Affecting this is also the unusually high metabolism of athletes competing in the Tour. It seems likely that they would eliminate testosterone more quickly than your average person. Further, Landis was seen to be drinking quite a lot of fluid during his stage win, which would also tend to eliminate any detectable metabolites. (bold and italics mine)
Yea, he was drinking quite a lot of fluid during that stage wasn’t he?
In the first place, it seems to me that it was quite an unfair advantage that Landis had his team car there right next to him handing off bottle after bottle after bottle while he was off on his epic Stage 17 break. But, at the time, I thought “whatever”, it probably did not matter in the end because the strong guy won.
But what if Landis really was making a hail mary pass to win the Tour? How would it work?
• Engage in some kind of post-Stage 16/pre-Stage 17 boosting
• Attack off the front early in the stage in some kind of crazy suicide move
• Keep the pressure on until you have dropped every last competitor and are riding solo
• Start pounding down the liquids to dilute and/or eliminate any detectable metabolites
• Keep riding and keep drinking in a desperate attempt to pull back as much time as possible while also desperately trying to clear your system of as much of what ever you put into it
• Win the stage, take over the lead, pray that you pass the drug test
OK, so I ain’t no scientist and I don’t even know if this would even be possible. But this is what flashed through my mind when I read that paragraph on Landis Case.
All you guys that are waaaaay more into this case than me can feel free to shoot down this theory.
Posted by Smithers at 1:57 pm in Uncategorized | Permalink | 18 Comments »
Monday, December 4th, 2006
LaSalle Street pointed me to the Landis Case Wiki in regards to the blood doping theory I posted about earlier:
Any blood that was stored for that period of time would have to be stored frozen, and since whole blood can not be stored frozen, the plasma and red blood cells would be separated. In this case, the plasma (where most of the free testosterone could be expected) would not be kept for re-infusion, only the red blood cells would be kept.
Why would only the red blood cells be kept if the goal would be not to increase the haematocrit level? Is it not possible that both the red blood cells and the serum (plasma) would have been stored frozen, all be it separately, to be reinjected later?
Pure testosterone has a half-life in the blood of 10 to 30 minutes. Within just a few hours, the testosterone has almost completely disappeared from the blood. Some have said that because of this, testosterone will only be detected in a urine sample for a few hours (or a few urination cycles) after the doping. Others have said that it is not this simple, and while it leaves the bloodstream immediately, metabolites (by-products) would still be found in the urine as much as a day or two later.
OK, if this is true then it sounds like any testosterone used to boost the beneficial effect of EPO would have been degraded fairly quickly. I need to read more about this issue. The next paragraph has a fairly interesting nugget:
Affecting this is also the unusually high metabolism of athletes competing in the Tour. It seems likely that they would eliminate testosterone more quickly than your average person. Further, Landis was seen to be drinking quite a lot of fluid during his stage win, which would also tend to eliminate any detectable metabolites. (bold and italics mine)
Yea, he was drinking quite a lot of fluid during that stage wasn’t he?
In the first place, it seems to me that it was quite an unfair advantage that Landis had his team car there right next to him handing off bottle after bottle after bottle while he was off on his epic Stage 17 break. But, at the time, I thought “whatever”, it probably did not matter in the end because the strong guy won.
But what if Landis really was making a hail mary pass to win the Tour? How would it work?
• Engage in some kind of post-Stage 16/pre-Stage 17 boosting
• Attack off the front early in the stage in some kind of crazy suicide move
• Keep the pressure on until you have dropped every last competitor and are riding solo
• Start pounding down the liquids to dilute and/or eliminate any detectable metabolites
• Keep riding and keep drinking in a desperate attempt to pull back as much time as possible while also desperately trying to clear your system of as much of what ever you put into it
• Win the stage, take over the lead, pray that you pass the drug test
OK, so I ain’t no scientist and I don’t even know if this would even be possible. But this is what flashed through my mind when I read that paragraph on Landis Case.
All you guys that are waaaaay more into this case than me can feel free to shoot down this theory.
Posted by Smithers at 7:57 am in Pro Cycling | Permalink | No Comments »
