Lance to return to triathlon….

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Hate on him some more. I wanna see Chrissie ‘chick’ him at Kona.

Lance Armstrong will turn his focus to triathlon and Ironman competition once he brings down the curtain on his Tour de France career at the end of this month….with the Radio Shack rider too far off the pace in this year’s event to pose his customary threat to the podium his thoughts have already turned to what comes after.

“The first thing I have to do is to compete in a half Ironman to test myself,” said Armstrong. “What is clear is that if I want to be competitive, I have to focus on the longer distances as they often have tougher cycling sections and that would benefit me.”

More here.

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About Judi

Bicycles are my salvation. They are my way of life. If you don't like it, then you can go straight to hell. Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

32 Replies to “Lance to return to triathlon….”

  1. Seven back-to-back victories. ‘Nuff said. Anything else is just noise.

  2. Lance Armstrong will make a great masters racer if he so chooses to go that route. Ironman triathlons are just so grueling and long – anyone that can do one is bad-ass in my book – he got his start in the triathlon world, it is fitting that he should go back – and inspire people do to triathlon. Way less crashes as the bike ride is a time trial and no drafting!
    Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck who dopes or does not dope. I got no high ground with my coffee and beer, and neither do you. What? Some drugs are OK while others are not? Give me a fucking break. Bicycle racing is not pure as long as people have to plaster their bodies with corporate logos, ride with a bunch of cars and motorcycles (and under a helicopter) and fly and bus around to get to where the special place is for the special race. It’s just a shame that he ended his career emblazoned with RADIO SHACK – as they are just another fuck-wad Chinese product outlet, and put small businesses out of business.

  3. LJ is right— Lance started in tri, and he would be bad-ass. A whole lotta dudes will be looking at his program and AVOIDING the events he trains for.

  4. And that brings up a question. I recently saw a triathlon on TV and they were riding in a bunch. WTF? Maybe those guys with their sippy cups and sleeveless jerseys will have to learn bike handling skills.

  5. …nothin’ wrong w/ tri except for the running & the swimming…

    …oh, ya…& the poor bike handling…

  6. I’m not a racer, but if I was, tri would be my last choice. Just sayin’.

  7. Ironman’s cutoff times where you can walk the marthon and still be call an “Ironman” , get the tatoo, bumper sticker etc. make it the perfect midlife crisis endeavor.

  8. Ed has it right. Which makes it the perfect group to market products to. Which means more crabon and computer doodads made in china, and more oil-burning container ships to bring ’em over. Which means more sponsorships plastered on more jerseys. Which means more SUVs being driven to and from the training pool, the far-flung races. Which means LJs head may explode.

    Not that I don’t feel you LJ – I do. Just read your “WHAT YOU CAN DO” ALL IN CAPS POST. Or, perhaps MOSTLY in caps. And then I thought to myself, “well, that’s me! I must be doin’ it right!” And then I realize that I’m surrounded by a city of people who think similarly. And then I realize that it’s all relative. And then I realize that there’s no such thing as gravity.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13gravity.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

    We’re all just atoms, dude. Doin’ what atoms do. Fuuuuck.

  9. …danimal…

    …pretty fucking amazing, huh ???…

    …i read that article & while i couldn’t fully ‘grok’ it, i guess i was in good company in that it seemed a lotta highly intelligent scientists weren’t fully assured of an understanding…

    …but that, along w/ death n’ taxes has always been a ‘foundation’

    …guy just pulled out the cornerstone…

  10. @Danimal— wow, cool.

    My brother is a PhD chemical physicist working in the field, and he and I enjoy it when he tries to explain these multi-electron quantum transitions work and how laser pulses that never touch each other can affect the transition energies. Makes my brain hurt. The whole +1/2 and -1/2 particle spin idea is difficult.

  11. …hey, mikey…

    …i’ll bet one basic thing that always comes up is “everything has a frequency”, right ???…

    …just sayin’, but it does make sense…

  12. @bgw— frequency = energy, so yes, in quantum physics, every event (such as an electronic transition) has a precise wavelength. E = H*nu, where nu (sorry I don’t have the correct symbol handy) is frequency, which of course is the inverse of wavelength.

  13. Tri’s are fun, and my second ever one was a Ironman… And that was also my 1st marathon. So a pro road cyclist that starts with a half is a douchebag.

    Yes there is doping in Tri, but the testing done the last few years is similar to raod cycling BUT the pros have less money, way less money than pro cyclists. That in itself contains doping.

    Mo money mo problems.

    On the other hand, in the field of age groupers who are fighting just to finish the darn thing, and people have a bit of cash (lots of dentist, bankers, lawyers, doctors…) the use of HGH is rampant. It does not make them faster, just gets them throu and back to work on monday. I still think it’s cheating.

    And equipement overload is another trait of the same group, Zipp thisn HED that, aero this and areo that, disk and tubulars… I love having one of these mo money than brains slowly overtake me on a straight, only for me to gap him back in the next corner… On my alloy bike with alloy wheels.

    Personnaly why do I do it? For the same reason that I’ve ridden Paris Roubaix alone or other crazy batshit stuff: I am/was a real big asthmatic in my childhood/early teens, I could not go up a flight of stairs without stopping for breath. Real bad. And I was doped, a few years back I checked what the doctors gave me and it was all red list. Now I can do Ironmans, the Tour Of Flanders or an alpine stage of the TDF with NO drugs.

    I don’t know why I do it, but doing something that I could not dream of as a kid, stuff others kids had the choice of doing or not, well, finally doing it feels good.

  14. Gildas,

    I think that inside, you know why you do it & speaking as an outsider, my respect & I’m glad that you do it.

  15. …props, gildas…

    …different scenario pour moi but my situation allows me to “know” & appreciate…

    …it’s also why, no matter how douche-y a certain 7 time tour winner can be at times, i applaud what he does & will do in the future…

    …did i mention what i think of “tri” ???…

  16. @10 ed – have you done an IM? just wondering. mid life crisis endeavor? the IM was the best fucking day of my life, my biggest and most important accomplishment. and my marathon time was a 5:37. sucky time i know but i finished the entire thing in 14:21. even if you walk the marathon, and you make the cut off times, your an ironman. many, many people do not make the cut off times and it’s pretty fucking awful to see.

  17. Hey Mike, the reason they were drafting is that it was an ITU race. In ITU (i.e. the format used for the olympics) cyclists are able to draft. In any other format there is not drafting, only a 13 second time window to make a pass or a 1 to 2 minute penalty is placed upon one or the other athletes.

    -Joe

    p.s. Try swimming in a bike jersey and you will understand the outfits a little better

  18. @judi- yah I did. Thinking back I really wouldn’t have had to train to make the official cutoff time. So the act of just being an official finnisher is pretty doable by most people. You beat the cutoff by over 2.5 hours so good on you. 17 hours is barely moving.

  19. I’ve seen many average people do Ironman as their first event kind of as a weight loss program.

  20. swim 2 hours(doggie paddle) , Bike 9 hours, marathon 6 hours, walkathon pace…

    YOU ARE AN IRONMAN !!!!!

  21. gildas – just curious, what changed that allowed you to lose the drugs for asthma?

  22. Methinks that the bright ones that say that an Ironman is doable by most people, are mad. Mad in a kind and fuzzy way, but mad.

    If you don’t learn how to swim properly, and then eat and drink properly the two days before the swim… You will not make the cut off. Simple. The swim is 4K (3.8km, but swimming straight is a pipe dream) and usually is 1000m turn to turn. Try swimming 2k in under an hour in a 25m pool (that’s 40 lengths), touching not pushing or flipping the on each end (that’s too easy). You will soon discover that with breaststroke, let alone doggy paddle, you WILL NOT MAKE THE CUT OFF.

    I was only 10 minutes from the cutoff in my first ironman.

    180Km on the bike is easy? Yeah, no problem dude. But you have just swam two hours and spent between 3000 and 5000 calories… The first 50km is spend stuffing your trap and racing at the same time. Remember, no drafting… Overall the bike part is a 6000 to 9000 calories affair.

    On my first Ironman, I vomited for the first 90km, ran on empty for another 60km (bonking) and only started eating during the last 30km.

    Then the marathon. In my eyes, this is the easiest part to fake, if you have made the two previous cutoffs, then you can jog and walk to the finish. And drink beer (I did – Roth is great for marathon beer). And admire the Tri totty overtaking you. FACT: women triathletes have the nicest physiques of any endurance sport (you need fat to float and store energy). Anything from 4000 to 8000 calories.

    I faked that in over 5 hours.

    All in all, the most important virtue is being able to eat AND digest all the food you need… You can’t improvise that. BUT, if you have a very active job (bike courier, lumberjack and he’s OK) just learning to swim will permit you to fake it, and get you to the finish. The other important virtue is to have the will power to do it. Tri is 30% training, 70% mental.

    If you are Joe Sixpack no training, yet have the mental to somehow make the cutoffs… You will damage your knees and hip joints by virtue of cramps, dihydration and lack of muscle control on the marathon. You will also suffer muscle damage that will take months to repair (cramps, tearing, ligament and tendons). Sores on feet, inside of legs, saddle, under-arms, nipples and neck will also be an issue.

    And yeah, sunburns on you lilly white TV tanned skin.

  23. For the Asthma, I had a very good doctor in england when I was twelve, who told me that I going to enter my teens (hairs and hormones time) and thus at a crossroad:

    A-Continue treatement as is – but no hard sports. Easy route.
    B-Start doing everything that I was told not to do, most notably sports like basketball and volley that are HELL for asthmatics – hard route, probably will take 4 years before I could wean of the ventoline, Becotide and other drugs.

    I choose the hard route, and it sucked, I was lame, the fat girls with too much make-up could go round the track faster than me… But I just kept laboring away.

    Back in France, I really hit the wall when I got off the normal treatement to try homeopathy at 14 years old, it suprised me how little capacity I had without the drugs… Going from the basement to the 1st floor of the house was horrible, my lungs would clog up like most of you can chug a beer.

    So I kicked the homeopathy bullcrap, went back to the normal french doctor and against his advice drooped everthing except ventoline and only when I had an attack. I just started swimming, cycling, running playing as much basketball as I could.

    It was fucking hard but, by the time I was 19, you could not detect asthma.

    The problem is that this is a tempory victory, and when I’ll be older and can’t train 4 or 5 times a week, well, I’ll have to start the drugs again. I can’t even stop training for two months before getting shortness of breath again.

    Asthma sucks.

    All of you wankers that have good lungs and breathe well, I fucking envy you.

  24. @gildas, hey man thanks for sharing your story. it’s a good one, BIG props for sure. fuck ed, who thinks anyone can do any IM.