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The
Computrainer Time Trial Some time last winter, perhaps it was January, The Conscience of Cycling posted an article after having done a computrainer mountain time trial, describing the epic struggle between man and machine and the heart and soul that went into this epic struggle. It was a beautiful tome about a man finding his true self after confronting the inner demons of fear, self loathing, cowardice and the urge to quit. After confronting the most odious of these demons (and who knows how many other untold inner imps and hobgoblins), The Conscience of Cycling noted in the very last sentence of his otherwise spellbinding story that he managed to post a time up the epic Col du Computrainer faster than a couple of hairy legged, mountain bikers with ganja stained fingernails. After
the posting, The Rev Billy not appreciating the nuance and magnificence
of self struggle and sacrifice as it relates to the Computrainer
BRUTALLY
took The Conscience of Cycling to task…I quote: The Conscience of Cycling has not posted a single word for public consumption since, unless I've missed it somewhere, which is entirely possible since I'm not very well read and generally only read a series of the same 5 books over and over again. One would think that a person with the character to conquer the ghouls of self doubt and fear would be able to withstand the slings and arrows of The Rev's keyboard but then again, The Rev has put paid to more fledgling writing careers than any other person I know. This segues into the point. Man is in a constant search for self value. The competitive cyclist is in the main, more involved in this search, sometimes to the point of imbalance. Let's look at the hypothesis a bit closer. It' is common knowledge that many young cyclists get started in the sport simply because they're not good at any other sport they've tried. Lance freely admits that he was a complete and utter clod when it came to ball sports as a young lad. Middle school chicks don't generally dig skinny boys that can't AT LEAST play soccer much less football or basketball - especially in Texas where Football is a religion alongside guns and buggering sheep. Being unpopular with the girls in middle school has a tremendous negative impact on self value. So Lance and thousands like him in competitive cycling that were maladroit in ball sports took up cycling or swimming or running to fill the athletic accomplishment void. For Lance it has worked out pretty well. $35 million a year a World Championship and 7 Tour de France wins will certainly attract the type of chicks that once spurned him in Middle School. It's well documented that Lance is quite enthusiastic about making up for lost time in that department. Further, it can be assumed that a large number of late arrivers to the sport, namely masters and female riders got into the sport of cycling due to "body image" issues. Let us not be delicate here. Some of us were (ore still are) simply fat or perceived ourselves as fat and we started cycling because we heard it was the greatest calorie burner among aerobic activities. We got the Jones to go faster and longer and then race as our bodies got leaner and actual leg muscles began to appear. Not all of us are this way, but there are enough that fit the scenario for it to be more than anecdotal. Others of us took up the sport to satisfy competitive urges that once gave us a sense of meaning in our younger days. As we grow older we find that careers and weekend golf matches or pick up basketball games just don't scratch the itch to compete quite the way we want. It's just a theory and I'm probably wrong to a large extent but I'll continue because it's my column. Some will say the urge to cycle is a social thing. It's our family, our community and I'll agree with this, but one doesn't need to risk losing skin in a $100 criterium to enjoy the cycling community. One simply needs to join the local bike club and ride ice cream and pie century rides with food breaks every 10 miles to have community. Thus, I toss that happy wappy theory out the window. Regardless of how we came into the sport (this writer certainly fits neatly into most of the above scenarios), we are all here and most of us are the better for it. However, some are not. Some have become craven, empty beings with little to hold on to save a sense of what they perceive as accomplishment on the bike and they'll go to any number of deplorable lengths to scrape together a shard of self value through cycling because it obviously isn't being brought about in other facets of their lives.
"Science
offers the disadvantage of preventing one from believing what he
wants to believe. It's the fence which separates fact from opinion,
and keeps ones mind out of the fallow ground of wishful thinking." Ahh that Bastard Science! You can't argue with numbers. You can't lie to a machine. When weighed and calibrated and asked to pedal when connected to a device that measures your power output with each pedal stroke, a cyclist is taking a tremendous personal risk with the ability to believe what he wants to believe. When we talk about our cycling prowess and our level of fitness to impress our office mates, team mates, spouses, girlfriends and complete strangers at convenience stores, our minds are traipsing around in the fallow ground of wishful thinking and our egos flourish. When given the chance to prove the boasting, the Computrainer is on the other side of the fence mentioned by Dr. Warbass. The Rev Billy has noted for some time that if you cannot produce 4.25 watts per kilogram of body weight while at lactate threshold, you're simply not going to be an elite bike racer. Period. You might be able to hang in the peloton - draft and dodge and have a chance to perhaps sprint for money at the end of a race, but those opportunities are going to present themselves in settings both few and far between. So, after each computrainer time trial, the requisite number of complaints is registered. It's quite illuminating to the discussion at hand. I've done it myself, with bruised ego after making serious efforts that register power output measurements that reveal the fact that I'm simply a Schlubb. This is not how I would prefer to have myself defined so I make excuses. "The
machine I was on clearly isn't calibrated right" The reader can think of many, many more potential excuses. I also note here that the Computrainer NEVER errs on the other side. Ergo, you'll never hear riders get off the bike after in indoor TT and exclaim, "The damn computrainer measured my wattage too high - there is no way I can put out that kind of power." NEVER. Faced with the fact that some rider is going to produce significantly more power output than we will on any given day is for some, too much ego strain to bear. Hence, the majority of riders who show up for the indoor computrainer events are not Category 1(one) and 2 (two) riders. The registrants are clubbers, triathletes and other Children of Lesser Gods - Masters, Cat 3 (three)s, women and seniors who while they care, have graciously and maturely learned not to care "THAT MUCH". There is a surprising dearth of Category 1 (one) and 2 (two) racers who are willing to pay money to have their power outputs publicly displayed. This is revealing. One cannot keep the flame of the 12k Dream* burning if one cannot produce more wattage per kg than a 40 year old citizen Category 5 (five). *The term 12k Dream belongs to Maximus K Agro and Labor Power Inc and is used without permission The
Cyclists Search for Self Value On Sunday 1/28/2007, while cooling down after a computrainer time trial put on quite famously by the ABD Cycling Club in Winfield, IL another racer was exiting the staging area. The other rider is an acquaintance and friend; we exchanged the usual pleasantries about the machines being broken and not calibrated correctly and the scales being out of order and inaccurate. The other rider had a 6 lb weight loss between rides one and two, and I had gained a pound between rides one and two despite sweating profusely and having made a bowel movement between sessions. It was at this point that my friend stated "At
least you're getting yourself weighed". So there you have it. Now instead of asking the question "But, gee whiz, how starved for self value do you have to be to brag about finishing first in a computer ride up a virtual mountain?" We can ask the question "But gee whiz how starved for self value do you have to be to CHEAT at a computrainer time trial?" Answer? A LOT. "I
used to do drugs, but don't tell anyone or it will ruin my image."
You
could just as well take Courtney's words above and apply them to
Tyler Hamilton, Why should it be a surprise to us, that if a gang of 40 and 50 year old Cat 4 riders are willing to cheat at a completely meaningless computrainer time trial by telling the machine they weigh 20 lb less than that actually do, simply to have more theoretical watts displayed on the jumbo projection screen, that cheating would be endemic at the highest level of the sport? Hells bells, real money is on the line in the European Peloton. Millions of Euros are to be had and sponsors are willing to provide those millions of Euros in order to have their Television Channel or their Flooring Adhesive or their Hearing Aids and Vitamin products represented by cyclists. Can it be a surprise that there is so much pressure to perform that a rider would seek an advantage via pharmaceuticals? Is it the money or the ego though? I suggest at the most basic level, it is the ego gratification of winning and being stronger, not the money that drives the cheaters to cheat and when the edge is slipping and the ego is being bruised by not performing up to the "fallow ground of wishful thinking" the rider will either ask for the EPO or take the even more pitiable and wretched action of attempting to skirt a weigh in at an indoor time trial in order the get the validation of the self. But…Doesn't the cheater know in the back of his mind that he didn't really attain what he pretends to have attained? Doesn't the cheater KNOW that he let the air out of his own tires in order to get a free lap? That he used a banned substance to gain an edge? That he skirted the weigh in at the indoor TT and the wattage he pretends to have produced was simply a delusion? Well, those questions can only be answered by the cheaters and you're not likely to get straight answers from sociopaths. The point is proven. For the cyclist whose sense of self is built around the bike, the cyclist's desperate search for self value drives the cyclist to become completely void of self respect.
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