Go flag yourself

Wow - what a stage in yesterday's USA Pro Challenge To Make A Race in Colorado That Has No Mention of the Word Colorado in the Title!  If you were like me, you were watching the race on your work computer in a tiny window covered up by lots of bigger windows opened up to porn websites so that everyone else in the office would think everything was status quo.  But I almost gave myself away toward the end of the stage when I started yelling at the computer  - which I almost never do when I'm watching porn....other than that one time.  Anyway - what a nail biter...

Tommy D, barely holding off the chase group for the win!

 

I know I wasn't alone in my excitement either when I saw what MO State Crit Champ Austin Vinton Twatted in this Tweet:

 



If Tommy D wins this I will swallow a garmin whole
— Austin V (@austinjosephv) August 22, 2012
 

To which I responded:

@austinjosephv Upload the data to Strava - I want to see if the transit time of your GI system is as fast as mine. #KOMturdmaker
— COMO CYCO POOBAH (@COMOCYCO) August 22, 2012
 

Well, this must have hacked Mr. Vinton off, because he sent me an email challenging me to a race.  And, I'm happy to announce I took Austin up on his challenge of going mono a mono, (or colon a colon as the case may be) - and after a lengthy discussion between his agent and my agent to get the details sorted out - a gastrointestinal match sprint commenced last evening.  Both he and I swallowed our Garmin 500s precisely at 6:00 PM. Upon retrieving them this morning (mine after three espressos and a bear claw), we uploaded the data to Strava.  Here's Austin's mapped segment:

GI transit time: 11 hours, 32 minutes

 

And my data:

GI transit time: 13 hours, 22 minutes

 

On first glance, it would appear as though Austin beat me.  However, I have it on good authority that he chased his Garmin 500 with two tablets of Ex-Lax and a Metamucil shake.  Therefore I issued an official protest and had his entry 'flagged' - which means that I have actually claimed the KOM crown (KOM = King of Movements).

 

Never heard of a flagged Strava entry?  Well neither had I until recently when my trusty sidekick, Pickle 2, did a little experiment on Easley hill.  One sunny Saturday morning, Pickle rode up the hill with his Garmin....only it was sitting in the passenger seat of his car.  He uploaded the data as though he had made the ascent on his bike and posted the data to Strava.  Not surprisingly, he was instantly awarded the KOM for ascending the 0.8 mile Easley hill at 19.2 m/h.

 

That Pickle can flat out MOVE!

 

Approximately 6 minutes after Pickle posted his KOM-worthy ascent of the big hill, he got a response from someone, whose name I've changed to "Mr. Rogers" for the sake of anonymity.

 

Was this Easley climb on a bike?

 

When Pickle didn't respond, the ride was 'flagged' and the KOM status was rightly returned to Mr. Rogers.  By the speed of Mr. Roger's response, and his sheer dominance in KOM crowns around COMO, I wonder if he keeps constant surveillance of Strava, maintaining each of his KOM segments open on his desktop computer and mobile devices at all times. Once an alert pops up on his smart phone that one of his KOMs has been bested, he assesses the data, and dashes over to a fire pole that descends into his garage where his bike lies waiting, tires inflated, chain lubed, skinsuit draped over top tube, bottles full of a 50:50 mix of Red Bull and Cytomax, ready to go at a moment's notice like the Batmobile, eager to reclaim his glory. 

 

The problem with our experiment is that Pickle went up the damn hill too damn fast resulting in him getting called out by Mr. Rogers and subsequently flagged.  But in light of the recent lawsuit surrounding Strava, I'm a little worried this was a reckless stunt to begin with.  What if Pickle's KOM didn't get flagged, and it inspired a whole host of COMO's Strava-teers to go out there and try to best it, and someone stroked out while climbing that stinking hill trying to beat a time that was actually set by Pickle's Bugatti (yes, Pickle drives a Bugatti - I really need to figure out how much we are paying him).

 

At any rate, now that I've flagged Mr. Vinton for inappropriate use of cathartics - I think my GI King of bowel Movements crown will remain safely on my own colon, thank you very much.  And rather than laying down the gauntlet, I will lay down the adult diaper to any COMO Strava-naut that thinks they can best it.  I may not ride a bike up a hill very fast, but I've always taken the advice of "shit or get off the pot" to heart and know how to do just that.

 

Speaking of flagging results, I still have no idea how Christian VandeVelde took the yellow jersey from Tejay VanGarderen yesterday when they finished in the same group.  To add confusion, BMC had previously filed a protest over the Crested Butte stage saying Tejay had gapped VandeVelde coming into the mountain finish on Tuesday suggesting that he should actually have a couple of seconds on the Garmin rider.  One would think the race officials could have reviewed the televised finish (or alternatively just looked at this photo).....

 

and made an immediate ruling on it, but they said they wouldn't make a decision until today - two days later?  And then BMC's director Michael Sayers decided to lash out at Team RadioShack for not doing any work in helping bring back Danielson yesterday and made the quote regarding the possum-playing RadioShack squad, "I think they forgot that the women's race is later in the week." Not a cool thing to say from the BMC leader as firstly, his team leader's wife, Jessica VanGarderen, is the race organizer for the women's race, the Blue Ribbon Alpine Challenge.  And secondly, the women's race was actually run yesterday and had to be shortened to a single day's criterium versus the previous 3-day event last year because of an absolute lack of funds.  Sayers can rip on the Shack all he wants, but slighting the women's race like that was pretty low...I think his ass needs to be flagged for that comment....

Virtual Stupidity: Crossing the Boundary into the Surreal

While channel surfing this weekend, I stumbled upon the movie "Saving Private Ryan."  This is a movie that I can pick up on at pretty much any point at any time and just start watching.  I think it drives the GEEC crazy when I do this - but there it is nonetheless.  At any rate, the part that I came in on was where the platoon led by Tom Hank's character (Captain Miller) finally engages Ryan's squadron which has been charged with defending a bridge deep in enemy territory.  After telling Ryan that he is being discharged from the army and sent back home, Ryan says that he refuses to leave his post.  Hanks is flummoxed by this and confides in his Sargent saying,


"We have crossed over some strange boundary here.  The world has taken a turn for the surreal."


This is pretty much exactly how I feel regarding some of the recent cycling news:


First came this message across twitter from Mathew McConaughey:

Stop the investigation of the USADA into @LanceArmstrong. Please sign and retweet say.ly/Oss3yBl
— Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) June 16, 2012

Following the link in the tweet leads you to a site titled "Stop the investigation of the USADA into Lance Armstrong" which is an online petition aimed at collecting 25,000 virtual signatures by July 13th to hopefully encourage the Obama administration to intervene.  So let me get this straight.  LA's defense has now devolved to the point of deploying a full "Bro-shield" from a guy whose new movie is about male strippers?

Mathew McConaughey appearing soon in a theatre near you in the feature film "Magic Mike"....released under the title of "Crocodile Dundee part IV" in France.

Wow.  Good luck with that.

And on to something equally as ludicrous has to be the story of the family of a cyclist who was killed on his bicycle who is now suing Strava.

"Two years ago, William "Kim" Flint was killed on his bicycle as he allegedly tried to beat a Strava speed record.  This morning, his survivors say they plan to file a negligence lawsuit against San Francisco-based Strava, claiming Strava are responsible for ensuring the crowd-sourced routes are safe......Since Flint's death in June 2010, some people believe Strava encourages people to ride recklessly so they can improve their rankings on Strava." 

For starters, I openly admit to being rather anti-Strava.  This is just personal opinion, obviously, but I guess I feel like if you want to race somebody, then go line up next to the person and duke it out on the road, not in the virtual ether.  But that's just me.  Admittedly, I have no experience with Srava, and maybe if I played with it a bit, I'd suddenly be asking myself what I ever did without it.  However, I get my ass kicked by real live cyclists all the time, so why would I want the beating to continue in perpetuity and for every other Strava member to publicly witness?  Is my real-life humiliation not enough?  But I wonder - say for example in the Columbia area - is there a list for the fastest ascents up Easley Hill?  I suspect that if local hard-ass Dan Miller was on Strava, then he'd own the top 20 spots on that list just like this kid I knew in middle school (Mark Hendershot) who laid claim to the top 10 scores on the DonkeyKong arcade game at the local RiteAid.  And truth be told - we all thought Hendershot was one DonkeyKong playing mean-ass mother fucker...but one has to wonder how much more he might have accomplished as a 12 year old if he wasn't always staring in awe at the list of his pixelated initials on that machine.  At any rate, the family suing Strava might as well sue the company that manufactured his bicycle as well, since they no doubt encouraged William to actually ride it outside, thus putting him in danger.....and then they might as well sue the county for building the road which he was killed on as it was clearly enticing people to ride bikes on it.

And speaking of dangerous bicycle encounters, comes the story of the Massachusetts man who was attacked while riding his bicycle by a man swinging a string of sausages! 

Actually, this kind of strategy could come in real handy this coming cross season.

And speaking of swinging phallic meat, comes this photo of the Manx Missile himself, Mark Cavendish, who apparently has decided to finally embrace his inner hipster.

Credit to his main squeeze.

A turn for the surreal, indeed.