Back to the Lifetime treadmill today, running on roads must have taken all my speed away, either that or all this travel has zapped my energy. Had a really hard time getting it all going this morning. Eventually was able to get up to marathon pace for the last 2 miles of the run. I finished Tyler Hamiltons book on the plane home yesterday, I was actually really into it and had a hard time putting it down. I used to think that maybe there were some clean riders in the Tour De France during the "Lance Era" but after reading this book it only made sense that everyone had to be doping, that's the only way they could get away with it for so long. The ICU didn't care, the Tour De France didn't care, the sponsors were making tons of money, the riders were making tons of money, Cycling was getting more world wide attention than ever, all the viewers were eating it all up. The only thing Lance really did wrong 'in my opinion' was being a huge jerk, it's not like he started the whole doping problem, Spain didn't even have laws against doping, Germany's government probably sponsored Jan Ulrich's whole program, so really in European cycling you pretty much had to do it to compete. I was pretty surprised to find out they were doing transfusions. I thought that was total 70's and that EPO had replaced blood doping. The other thing that kind of struck me was that the doping really controlled their entire life, dodging testers, smuggling EPO and Blood Bags across borders in Dog Kennels, flying to Spain every 2 weeks for transfusions. I kind of pictured it being, well less dramatic.
Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, it was really facinating to read what a glamorous life these guys were living, living in villas in little European villages, riding bikes around the alps everyday for a living, flying on private jets, and then for it all to come crashing down around them. Pretty amazing stuff.
| 