Bicycle, bicycle, I want to ride my bicycle

My wife made that Queen song the ringtone on my nifty new IPhone. It took a week, but I got another good ride in. I rode for an hour and three quarters, covered just over 22 miles, averaged 13.30 mph and burned 1050 calories. Most importantly to me, I went further than 20 miles. I wanted to break that barrier, just to know I could do it. I can do it without a great deal of suffering. I feel pretty sure I can work my way up to 30 miles before the end of the Tour at the end of July.

The cool thing about going on long rides is that you burn a lot of calories. When you burn over 1000 calories on a ride, it really doesn’t matter what you eat afterward. You just blew more than half the calories you consume in a day. After that kind of effort, you can go ape shit on food. I like that idea because I really like food and I really like to eat. These glorious thoughts started me wondering what 1000 calories represented in terms of food. What could I eat and not really mess up my exercise and diet progress?

Well, here goes. Here are things that contain 1000 calories:

1. Burger King Big Quad Stacker
That’s right, four fat-laden, flame-kissed burger patties on a soft, high fructose corn syrup laden white bread bun reel in about 1000 calories. Mmmm, I can taste the fake flame flavored burps now.

2. A whole loaf of white or wheat bread
Yep, Elvis would love to know that the beginning of his famous peanut butter and banana sandwich with bacon and butter on an entire loaf of bread costs 1000 calories.

3. A whole roasted chicken
Yes, you can eat the entire thing, including some of the skin, at the expense of 1000 calories.

4. A full one-third of a whole cheesecake
Rich, creamy cheesecake; I love it and I could eat fully one-third of one and break even on my ride. Sure, it sounds a bit heavy.

5. One half cup of lard
Nothing like creamy spoon-fulls of lard…don’t know if I could eat a half cup’s worth, though.

6. A six-pack of Guinness Stout
I love stout beer and Guinness is one of the best. Drinking six bottles nets you 1000 calories and one wicked-ass drunk and I am sure a killer hangover—sounds filling, too.

The sad thing is that I didn’t go off the deep end at all after I went on my ride. In fact, I don’t remember what I ate, but it wasn’t anything special. Maybe when I ride that 30 miles (and burn almost a day’s worth of calories) I’ll eat half a cow, 50 hot wings, or a gallon of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. I do best when working toward goals.

Predictions on le Tour de France

Warning: What follows is endless babble and arm chair prognosticating about the Tour de France. If you don’t like cycling, think I’m full of shit, or don’t want to hear what I have to say, don’t read any further. You won’t get a thing out of it.

I want to be the first to stick my neck out and say that Lance Armstrong is playing possum and will come to the Tour de France in great form. He hasn’t raced much, he’s crashed out or dropped out of several races, and generally has done nothing on the bike this year. To the untrained eye he sounds like he’ll be an also ran in this year’s Tour. The fact is Andreas Kloden has kept a low profile, too. The Radio Shack one-two punch is going to be ready to come out and play this year. And they’ve got their usual complement of monster domestiques and a couple of dark horses for the GC like Leipheimer and Horner. Contador will get lots of attention and rightfully so. Coming off their win in the Giro de Italia, Ivan Basso and the Liquigas team will be watched closely, as will Cadel Evens after a really strong spring. Bradley Wiggins and Sky will mount a strong attack and don’t forget about Menchov who skipped the Giro to focus on the Tour.

I think Evans will be in the top five but he doesn’t have a strong enough team and he’s raced a lot this spring. Menchov will make a strong showing, too but will suffer because of his lack of a strong team. Andy and Frank Schleck may be in the running because they work together so well and have a decent team around them. Contador is the strongest individual grand tour rider out there, but his team isn’t that great. Vino has had a great spring season, but I think Bertie will find that Astana is Vino’s team and Vino’s goals will get in the way. While the fans and the peloton seem to be happy to have Basso back, they don’t seem to be happy to have Vino back. I don’t think Astana is going to get a lot of help from the peloton and I think Vino ultimately will be more of a distraction for the weaker Astana team this year than the Lance-Contador thing was last year.

Team strength is going to win again this year. That really throws it to Radio Shack, Sky, and Liquigas. We’ll see how Basso recovers from the Giro and I am not sure Sky has enough fire power to outgun Radio Shack. Evans has been racing incredibly well this year and he will have the best BMC has got to field, including George Hincapie, so maybe they should be included. Everyone will be gunning for Contador and Astana. With Vino at the wheel there’s going to be little respect for the team. The rest of the peloton will gang up on Astana and I don’t think Contador can win it alone. If he does, he’ll deserve the praise he gets now.

Did I leave out Garmin and Columbia? They have pretty strong teams and I like riders on both. I am mad at Jonathan Vaughters for screwing Hincapie out of the yellow jersey last year so I really can’t root for Garmin. Zabriskie is riding well, though. And Rogers rode a great Tour of California for HTC. I just can’t get into HTC now that Hincapie is gone…and they will really be there to support Cav’s try at winning the points jersey so Rogers will be on his own…kind of like Evans and Menchov.

I think we’ll see in the Tour this year what we saw in the Tour of California—strong teams toying with one another, throwing attack after attack. It should be a fun Tour to follow. I’d love to see Lance or Kloden or Leipheimer or Horner win. I’d be just as happy to see Basso or Evans win. Hell, I’ll even take Andy Schleck, Rogers or Zabriskie if I have to. I’ll be disappointed if Wiggins wins, mostly because I feel like Sky is the New York Yankees of cycling. I’ll projectile vomit if Contador wins again.

But hey, why the hell are you listening to me? I am just a fat archaeologist. I can barely ride 20 miles. Go read VeloNews or find out what Greg LeMond is predicting.