More end of year stats and an opinion

What do the following numbers represent:

199

231,004

3,242

They represent the total number of hours, vertical feet, and miles I have ridden this season.  During this year I have joined strava as a way to track my rides and fitness.  Plus, it is a great way to see what rides my teammates and competitors are doing as well.  I still plan on adding more miles this year as I start training for next season with long slow rides.  In an effort to keep these long base mile rides interesting I have decided to start listening to books on tape.  I joined audible.com and just purchased Destiny of the Republic, a book about James Garfield, the 20th president of the US.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to express my opinion of the Lance Armstrong doping case.  Although Lance has yet to admit to doping during his career, the evidence is now overwhelming to point to the fact that he and his team all used performance enhancing drugs on their way to winning 7 Tour de France titles.  About a year ago I read a book called Lance Armstrongs War which detailed his 6th Tour de France win and the overwhelming feeling I got from the book was that he was as competitive an athlete as has ever lived, always looking for an enemy and ruthlessly dispatching each one.

His desire to win was legendary and I do believe that he had the ability to win a Tour de France without the use of EPO and other drugs, how many tours can never be proven.  I also am of the opinion that most if not all of the grand tour contenders during this era all doped so nobody is clean and deserving of the Tour de France wins.  So what should anyone believe of the pro cycling going forward.  I am of the belief that some will always try to cheat to win and that they will be caught over time trying to do this.  The statistics seem to show that almost all cheats are out of the pro peloton and that there is a new generation of cyclists who are sick of being labeled as cheats and want to win cleanly.  

I am interested to see where the Lance case will go in the coming months but it seems like he will have all of his wins stricken from the record and will most likely be pushed out of his involvement with Livestrong as well.  Unless he comes clean he will most likely never be accepted in the athletics community again (when was the last time anyone heard Barry bonds mentioned).

2 weeks of gluttony + Yosemite

Yes, I have officially labeled my off-season "2 weeks of gluttony".  I have enjoyed not going on any rides for the last two weeks and I have enjoyed eating (and drinking) whatever I can get my hands on.  I have gained weight and better yet I have finished my weeks off the bike with the desire to start training again.  The plan for the rest of the off season is long slow rides with some climbing at a very slow pace mixed in.  The goal is to build a really strong endurance base so that I can have more strength at the end of races next year.

I also wanted update everyone on my newest bike.  I bought the frame in August and proceeded to buy the components to piece together the rest of the bike.  By the end of August I had went to a bike fitting to get the best position for me on the bike and then used this info to build the bike.  After a month of riding the bike as I had built it and adjusting a few shifting issues, I can now report that the bike is awesome and ready to race.

Now a few pictures from Kelsey and my trip to Yosemite National Park.  Enjoy.