Debuted today. Was good. Not sure what to think of the guy - douchebag comes to mind first. Even after all these years.

He's an admitted cheater. But the worst thing to come out of him was all these psudeo professional bikers w/ their bullshit pajama outfits clogging up the roads.

Shots fired at JORR !

I generally don't dress like I'm in a three week race. Although once in awhile my wife will buy me some fancy gear. That stuff is comfortable. I can see why guys wear it, but I'm fine in regular shorts and a t-shirt.

Cycling is not something I consider a passion. I just do it to try to stay in shape. I much prefer running. I only started biking because my knees were getting so bad.

I do respect those guys who are passionate about it. A man has to have his enthusiasms. Some of them do get a little ridiculous though.

The other day I noticed that something was fucked up with the GPS on the ride tracking app I use. At certain parts of my ride it was bouncing me all over. I want to get an accurate read on my mileage so I reported the problem. You can see below it has me going back and forth across the canal at places where there are no bridges:



It also failed to record the segments that I covered in that part of the ride because the GPS was picking me up as if I wasn't on the route I was actually riding. The segments in the latter part of the ride are accurate. I rolled a pretty good time on Orrington from Lincoln to Garrett- 55 seconds- otherwise I would have deleted the whole ride and manually reentered it at 17 miles which is the real approximate distance instead of the 22.63 the app recorded.

A few days later I noticed that this ride had been "flagged". I had to Google that to find out what it meant. It's when another user calls your ride into question, i.e. suggests you purposely tried to fool the app to make the leaderboard. Now, I don't know who would do such a thing. You'd have to be a pretty sad person to care so much what a bunch of dopes wearing Lycra think about you that you put up a phony time. And what kind of douchebag actually flags another person's ride? Who cares? I've seen stuff I consider questionable, but it is what it is.

I looked at the other people who rode parts of my route that day to see who I thought might have flagged me. I came up with a guy named Newt Cole. He looks like a real strong rider. He rode that Orrington stretch in 57 seconds that day. He was probably annoyed that I put up a 55. I don't have a motorized bike. I'm riding a 1992 Trek 820 Mountain Track. I can put up a 55 on that seg anytime I want. I've got the yellow jersey, b!tch!

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Newt Cole sounds like quite a douchebag.

I'm not a big bike guy but I've read that those early 90's Trek's were some of their best.

I'm not sure he was the guy who flagged me. He's the most likely suspect though.

That's good to know about my Trek. I'm not really a big bike guy. I don't know a whole lot about the equipment. Sometimes I'll see a guy on a bike that looks special and I'll Google it when I get home. Some of these things cost $5,000-6,000.

I've had this bike pretty much rebuilt at least three times. I always consider getting a new bike, but this one is like a part of me. I'm sure I could go a lot faster if I had a lightweight road bike, but I ride all winter and I think I would tear a bike like that up. I'm hard enough on this sturdy thing I've got.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I had a professor whose son had raced against Armstrong when they were teens in Texas. He was always complaining about what a jackass cheater the dude was...and this was before anyone knew anything about the doping scandal.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Riding a bike for nearly 1.5 hours only burns 700 calories? That's very low. When I used to do an hour on the elliptical back in the day I would always get right around 1000 calories. Never rode a bike for exercise because of my back...is it not that good a workout in terms of high cardio? Maybe because there's gliding involved whereas the elliptical is constant leg work?

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That's a good question. I don't think that could really be that accurate. I would suspect it's different for every individual. Realistically, how could the app know how hard a rider was working? It must be an estimate based upon distance and speed. If I ride with my wife I keep it in a lower gear so even though I'm going slow in covering ground, I'm getting a decent workout. The app couldn't know that though.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I enjoyed it. I got into cycling about 10 years ago so I did not follow the Armstrong era closely but I have watched quite a few of his Youtube clips and different documentaries. It is clear that Armstrong's dbag personality brought him so much of the vitriol from the cycling community. If he had been a nice guy, you could excuse some of the cheating since EVERYONE was cheating. Personally, I like Armstrong and LOVE his "The Move" podcast. Armstrong is insightful, interesting, honest, and funny at times. NBC Sports is slowly bringing him back into cycling and I hope he plays a bigger role in the future.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Best thing I ever saw in regards to Lance Armstrong...I was at a B&B remote at The Lamplighter in Palatine the Friday before 4th of July back in 2010...There was a cardboard standup ad of Lance Armstrong promoting Michelob Ultra or something...Terry asked to cut the head off. The result:

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So this morning I got out riding and I spotted a guy about an eighth of a mile ahead of me on the trail. I figured I would try to catch him. He was going pretty good but in about a mile I had caught up to him. He was on some kind of fancy bike. As soon as he noticed me behind him he started really riding. He was a lot stronger than I thought. When we got to the light at Oakton he let me go. I rode out of there quickly but he was right on me. Now we were hauling ass around the bends. It was early so nobody else was out there. I wasn't exactly comfortable but there was no way he was stronger than I am.

When we got to Dempster he got off his bike and pulled out an Allen key or something and started messing with the gearing on his bike. I got the green light and went while he was still there fucking around. Suddenly he blew past me like I was standing still. I don't know anything about the mechanics of bicycles so I have no idea what he did to the bike but he did something that made it faster because I was riding my balls off, killing myself trying to stay with him.

36 miles today. That's 2625 miles and $3.33 for the year.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

JORR were you affected by Stravas recent pricing restructure? I use the free version and noticed my access to segments (many of which I created) has been greatly reduced.

Yeah. I always used the free version too. When they limited the features I bit the bullet and paid the 60 bucks for the year.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I’m annoyed but not enough to pay the money. As long as it logs my miles and my vert the free version is fine. I will miss the leaderboards and the segments.

I like the leaderboards because I tend to be lazy unless I have something to compete against. Knowing where the segs are gives me something to shoot for to make me work hard.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don