Recent content by Rupert

Does anyone have recommendations re. Phil Wood touring hubs? I have read the discussions of cones vs sealed bearings and am considering Phil Wood if we go with sealed bearings. Do Phil Wood hubs require frequent service? Can anyone/any bike shop service them easily if needed? We are looking...

Differences While people do break traffic laws on both types, I feel there are important differences between different sorts of rides. I see "Critical Mass" as an IN YOUR FACE type mentality, sometimes set at high traffic times in downtown areas, that goes out of it's way to antagonize drivers...

edited quote... Not highlighted the same as what I posted... my emphasis was on a different part of the quote. I trained for 3 years with a Paralympic cyclist (did not race, just a "training pilot." I am well aware of the paralympics.

Well said in the Washington Post "Horrific but now depressingly mundane practices like transfusing blood. Cocktails of growth hormone, steroids, EPO, testosterone. The list of things riders took to try to beat Armstrong runs on and on. Either Armstrong was monk-like in resisting the temptations...

Legal Discussion Good analysis of this by Bob Mionske: http://bicycling.com/blogs/roadrights/

Markleeville The Markleeville Death Ride is in July every year. Epic would be the Everest Challenge, basically 2 days worth of Death Ride. What's Three Peaks? Saw the movie last night. Good, but photography didn't seem as impressive as last year. Smaller crowd here than last year.

No No way.

Rules I don't have a problem with the rules being called "arbitrary," although I don't think they are in one sense of the word. There is some kind of rationale behind them, whether we agree with it or not. But they could be called arbitrary in the sense that a black/white line has to be...

GTs too hard I don't think the GTs are too hard. If everyone was playing with the same deck (no illegal advantages) the speeds would be slower and performance would suffer toward the end. I think too hard" really means that PEDs confer a really big advantage so it's worth the risk. If it...

yup That's about it. And then they're into fuzzy, subjective judgements that try to catch cheaters and not penalize those that recover more easily without artificial help. Again the problem of drawing a sharp line somewhere that's fuzzy... I'm don't think the bio passport is ridiculous...

Altitude tents I would be skeptical that there are advantages to using altitude tents during a GT - seems like they'd interfere with recovery. But using them prior to the race to get the hematocrit "naturally" pumped up going into a race would be a more likely application. Just interested in...

Semenya? Seems to me this is also similar to the difficulty of distinguishing between fair and unfair advantages - what's the difference between "genetically lucky" (Taylor Phinney) and "unfairly advantaged" (Castor Semenya, probably). There are gray areas and somehow there have to make rules...

Altitude tents BTW, I think there has been discussion of banning altitude tents, but how the heck could you enforce something like that? Seems like a bucket of worms...

Para athlete I trained with a national team para-cyclist (visually imparied). I called myself the "3rd string training pilot," always available to ride but not willing to trust my skills with his safety in races. You guys have my total respect.

Asthma I think this is legit and necessary but lends itself to abuse. I've heard that you can get a good boost from some asthma meds and that the pro peloton has a highly disproportionate number of asthmatics based on the number of TUEs. No facts or numbers to back that up, but it seems...