Wannabe Bike Girl

I completely fail at updating, sorry. Over the next week, I’m going to try to catch up with updating. Talk about the Tour, among other things.

As an aside, I completely failed at riding my bike, but this was mostly due to the fact that I need to get it fixed, which will hopefully happen sometime this week. I’ve been playing with my Wii Fit, so I haven’t been sitting on ass constantly.

In other, other news, Knox, who is one of my primary cycling cheerleaders, sent me a very lovely cycling training diary which I cannot wait to use. I just have to sort out the bike first.

Anyway, I apologize for being such a shit blogger. I hope to try to improve! What usually happens is that I end up wasting a lot of time over at Tumblr (you can see mine here). It’s the world’s easiest way to blog. It’s like blogging made easy for the LAZY. Anyway, enjoy that and you can see what else I seem to adore (aside from cycling).

I finally rode a mile, two days in a row. This is good, I know this. But at the same time, it’s frustrating because I cannot ride every day and now that I haven’t ridden recently, I lack the motivation. Part of the problem is that I don’t get enough sleep, so I’m tired. Another part is that I work six days a week, dealing with public. For a lot of people, this is fine. For me? Not so much, because to be perfectly honest, I don’t actually like people. Which is not to say that I hate my job, because I don’t. I find it to be rewarding and I enjoy helping people. The problem is that they take a lot out of me. As a librarian, people always, always want something or they Need It Now or whatever. So at the end of the day (even if I’m only working for 5 hours), I just want to pass out (for more of an understanding, see John Scalzi’s post:  Portrait of a Closet Introvert).

I know these are all excuses, but I can’t seem to defeat them. I mean, I have alternatives, I don’t limit myself to just riding the bike. I know I need exercise, I’m not stupid enough to think I don’t. I just seem to lack the motivation to do anything, which is ridiculous, because it’s June now and there’s no reason to not do something.

I suppose I should take motivation from the cyclists or from my friends who are riding, or even from my mother, but in the end it just frustrates me. So instead of reading about cycling (not that I’m ignoring it, because I definitely watched a lot of the Giro), you get me whining about not being able to find the energy to get on my bike.

My friend and coworker’s boyfriend found this poster, gave it to her and told her to give it to me. She rolled it up so that the words on the left were the first thing I saw, so I was like ‘wtf is this … OMG!’ I mean, I was literally like that. It was hilarious.

Anyway, it’s waiting to hang up on my wall right now.

I finally got myself a bike. It’s not the best bike, nor is it the worst, but it works for me. Well, it would if I wasn’t so out of shape. Which I am ridiculously out of shape. I mean, we’re talking about my goal for the next couple of weeks is to get around the block without being winded! This is not hard people, but I have become a lazy person and so it’s hard for me. The goal of the summer, (unless you’re talking to Knox, because he thinks I can do way more) is to be able to ride the 6 mile round trip to work and then home again.

But right now, I’d just like to stop being so wobbly-legged after riding around the block! Small steps, right?

For a good article/post on why the UCI screwed up with the Tom Boonen positive, read this over at Cyclocsm.

Funny (as in kind of amusing): Tom Boone tests positive for coke again.

Not funny (at all): Richard Gasquet allegedly tests positive for coke.

Why is one funny and not the other? The answer is far, far too simple and it’s in two parts. a) I like Richard Gasquet and I don’t like Tom Boonen and b) Tom Boonen tested positive for the same drug TWICE. This is his second offense. This means that he’s stupid enough to do the same thing twice, knowing that he’d probably get caught. Of course, we could make a million excuses (for both of them), but this is Boonen’s second positive. He should know better.

That being said, I do feel a bit sorry for both of them, especially if the Gasquet thing is true. But then again, no excuses. They should be smarter than this. I imagine that Boonen’s career might be over, but I expect that Gasquet’s will be. I can see him going completely downhill if he’s banned for two years.

I guess this serves as a reminder, athletes are human after all.

My biggest complaint about cycling (aside from doping and people I don’t like winning races) is how web 2.0 unfriendly it is. Not necessarily the cyclists (hello twitter), because compared to the other sports I follow, they’re pretty accessible. It’s basically everything else, with the exception of places like Podium Cafe and sites like CyclingFans, most cycling websites are not really user friendly. This is not limited to professionally news sites, but especially cyclingnews, which professes to be “the world centre of cycling.” Which, sure, since they have a monopoly on cycling news, I guess it is. But it’s completely unuser friendly and it drives me nuts.

Before your say ‘oh, but they have FORUMS and a TWITTER and BREAKING NEWS,’ I’m going to say right here, that that’s not what I’m talking about. First off, I do not think highly of forums, but that’s my opinion and lots of people like them (personally, I think they’re too much work, which is why I never join). Second, I follow their twitter (we won’t talk about my feelings about twitter in general right now, because they are not good). And, third, yes, they have breaking news. So what? In order to actually follow their news, you have to go to their site, skim through it until you find the ‘latest news’ section. I don’t know if they’ve never heard of database/content management system or what, but there are a lot easier ways of doing things.

I think that, besides the fact that the website basically clutter over content, my strongest complaint is that they haven’t changed since I’ve started following cycling. Sure, they’ve done little things, but where’s the RSS feeds? Where are the blogs? Where’s the quality search engine for the site? I know that money is probably an issue, but if one of the libraries I work at can use a content/database management system, you’d think that a company could afford one (especially since it’s not that expensive). I’d like to be able to subscribe to cyclingnews and get all the news (not necessarily the race results part, but that’d be awesome, too) in my googlereader. But you can’t. I’d like to be able to directly link to different sections of each of their cycling news editions instead of linking to the main one and being all ’scroll down until …’ because that is ridiculous. I think that cyclingnews has lots of potential and … falls short. Maybe it’s just too much work, but god.

Other complaints, not directed at cyclingnews, but at fandom in general, is the fact that all the websites are different, there’s no good database of riders, races, teams (yes, cyclingnews has something, but it’s not userfriend, but I don’t think that’s actually their fault). There’s not main database of startlists. Sure, ATP Tennis has lots of money and thus their website is pretty much awesome, but the best feature is when you can do this little compare head to head thing with two players. I want to be able to do that with cyclists, I want to plug in one name and find out a) what races he’s been in and b) find out what races he’s been in with other cyclists. And I want to do the same thing with teams.

I know I’m demanding, but I work in a field where we’re supposed to be on the cutting edge of technology. I don’t think it’s asking too much for the sports I follow to be the same way. Of course, soccer/football, unlike cycling, has a multiple of professionals who write about their sport, cycling does not. For example, if I can’t watch Barcelona/Real Mardid, I can go to the Guardian and ESPNsoccernet and follow along live. If I can’t watch a race, I can go to cyclingnews and hope they’re covering it, or I can go to Eurosport and know that they’re probably not covering it. Cycling  fandom (UCI, I’m looking at you, too) is stuck in the stone age.

Just like how doping’s not going to change until the cyclists and authorities change, cycling fandom’s not going to change unless the professional sites change. And since neither one of those are going to happen, I should just suck it up and deal. But it won’t make it me happy. If cycling wants more fans, they could at least work at being accessible instead of elitist. Unless that’s what we like …

Haussler “shocked” by Rebellin positive (cyclingweekly)

Germany’s Heinrich Haussler has said that he was “shocked” to hear that his former Gerolsteiner team-mate Davide Rebellin had tested positive for CERA.

Haussler, who recently finished second at both Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders, told cyclingweekly.co.uk that he had no suspicions about Rebellin.

“I did not have one doubt about Rebellin. When I heard it, I was pretty shocked,” he said.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore Haussi, but come on. I’m not shocked that Rebellin tested positive. He’s of that generation, as we say. But come on, how are we surprised? I guess sometimes cycling is a big world of denial. Though from what I can tell, Rebellin’s in a lot of denial as well. Just don’t you test positive, Haussi.

Spanish rider Redondo suspended for doping (cyclingweekly)

Spanish rider Jose Antonio Redondo has been provisionally suspended by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) for failing an out-of-competition dope test taken in March.

This one was a bit more of a surprise, if only because I used to like this kid quite a bit during my Vino fangirl days. Therefore, I shouldn’t be surprised that he probably doped. But, ugh.

Nothing much, just a lovely picture.

Philippe Gilbert by Diskfac @ Flickr