It's All Over

Well it’s all over except for the second guessing and excuse making—le Tour, the beautiful race—has ended. Three weeks of the best and hardest cycling in the world…the long, long build up…the renewed rivalry between Armstrong and Contador…Lance Armstrong going for #8…it is all over. I feel a little like a kid the day after a week spent at Disney.

Before the tour started I made some predictions about the race based on my years of following cycling and generally deep knowledge of the sport—I’ve been following it in earnest for at least two years now. None of those predictions came true. Alberto Contador did win and Team Radioshack did not really have an impact on the general classification. Sure they won the team general classification, but Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, and Andreas Kloden weren’t the combined powerhouse that I predicted. I said Astana wasn’t a strong team, but they proved to be the strongest and best organized one in the race. I predicted that Vinokourov would cause Contador trouble and he didn’t. He worked his butt off for Bertie and made a real impact on the race. So, there you go. It is official—I don’t know what the hell I am talking about when it comes to cycling!

Besides being a big bike race that I was really looking forward to following, I used le Tour as a benchmark for a couple goals I set for myself back in January. That is when I started this blog and started my attempt to lose weight and start riding my bike. In the time that has passed, I’ve lost about 23 lbs (I started at 206.8 and today I weigh 183.7). I had wanted to lose 30 lbs. According to my BMI (28.34) I am still overweight (and in danger of increased risk of health problems), but my protruding belly tells me that every day. It is smaller, but my old friend hasn’t left me yet. I’ll keep working on it. To get my BMI below the overweight threshold, I need to lose an additional 23.7 lbs…or what I just lost. I am not sure I’ll ever get there. If I lost 13.7 lbs more, I’ll be below the increased health risk threshold…something a bit more reasonable to shoot for.

My other goal was to be comfortable going on long bike rides. Back in January I tried to ride my bike and just a ride of a couple of miles nearly killed me. Despite having my bike stolen, I’ve made good progress on this goal. To date the longest ride I’ve gone on is 40 miles. More importantly, I can go on long bike rides and enjoy them and I have established a healthy hobby to occupy my “spare” time. I would like to ride longer distances and will focus now on working toward going 100 miles.

You may think the end of the Tour de France ends my obsession with cycling for the year. Ha! No more cycling? There are several smaller tours, a few late season Classics, and one major 3-week tour left—Vuelta a Espana—and then the World Championships. And don’t forget about the US Championships right here in SC. And the transfer season—when riders get new contracts and change teams—is just heating up, too. Oh no, cycling will go on into the early fall. And here in SC, that is just when the weather gets civilized, so there will be more time for long rides. And don’t forget about the investigation into US Postal, Lance Armstrong, and the bikes-for-doping charges. That surely will drag on past the first of the year. It’ll be ugly, but it’ll get me through until the season starts up again in January.

And in case things lag in the cycling world…football season is just around the corner! Oh yeah and school starts in a few weeks and I am still married with two kids.