Chris Horner

I'll say it here, as I've said it before: Chris Horner is clean. So many people I know were speaking in complete doubt by the time he won stage 10 at La Vuelta. But this is not about doping, I just had to get that out of the way for all the doubters out there. I might expand on my 'why' later on, but I'll just go with this:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>If you don&#39;t think Horner&#39;s performance is believable, you haven&#39;t been paying attention to the little details of his career.</p>&mdash; Adam Myerson (@AdamMyerson) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamMyerson/statuses/378908857495347202">September 14, 2013</a></blockquote>

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Adam Myerson is a class act. Especially when it comes to doping/anti-doping topics. I had the good fortune of spending some time riding with him last winter. I saw him (at 40 years old) come back from his offseason. I went from riding ahead of him, to getting dropped on a 1% grade in the matter of 3 weeks. He said himself, that his FTP has improved and the only part of his riding that has fallen off is his peak power. Which makes sense: It has been long known that muscle composition is reduced in Type II as we age (especially following 30+ years).

The real reason for this post is about how much I like Horner and the fact that he has not yet signed on for a team for 2014. I'm 'new' to cycling, and don't know a whole lot of its history. The first year I really even watched the Tour (de France) was 2011. My favorite rider going into it was Chris Horner. He was by far a longshot, but I watched some of the Tour of California and was enthralled by his ride there. I had no clue how small or big his chances were, but I was excited to see him head to the big race. Sadly, he crashed early on and was out of the race. My interest dropped quite a bit. Nevertheless it was formed that he was one of my favorite riders in the peloton.

Now, following an injury-ridden midseason, he was able to come back and get 2nd at Tour of Utah and then get on the squad for the Vuelta. He made his underestimated presence known, when he was "let go" on Stage 3 by the "Big Names" and took a stage victory. It was a summit finish, so a decent selection was already made. With 1K to go, Horner attacked and people just looked at each other. If it was 2K left, the result would have been VERY different. But the short lack of response/concern with such a short distance left gave Horner the gap he needed to win. He lost the lead the next day (intentionally?), and thus the team was not under pressure. Horner went on to take stage 10 as well. And the overall victory. An unprecedented feat in a Grand Tour for a 41 year old to do (even the stage victories hadn't been done).

So, Horner did something that has never even close to been done before. That's pretty awesome. He is 'old' in terms of pro cycling, and is fragile - reinforced by his broken ribs at Worlds (although, if I fell on a coke can in a hard crash I'd be busted up pretty good as well). How much more time does the guy have left? Well, for one he's clearly in the best form of his career. He's a class act and is responsible AND respectful of his sport and his peers. That alone is reason to hire him. I don't know what sort of money he wants and what he's being offered - so that is likely the full reason why he has not yet signed.

Teams are hesitant to do an unprecedented thing - give a lot of money to an guy his age. But didn't Horner just prove his capabilities and riding at his current age are exactly that? Should he be getting a two-year high paying deal? That is debatable. He definitely deserves at least a good, solid 1-year contract. Then that team gets a nice boost in WorldTour Points...who knows what extra he could have gotten if he hadn't crashed out of Worlds!

I really don't think having Horner on your team causes any real doping concerned threats. His history of even mention in any doping scandals is less than most of the 30 year olds in the peloton (that would be zero, to my knowledge). He doesn't carry baggage like Contador, Basso, or even Frank Schleck and Danielson. He has 2 flaws: age and injury.

So, ProTeams, hire Horner. Just listen to him. Expect him to dictate the terms of his own training. And don't over-race him or throw him into crits or Paris-Roubaix. Maybe have him try to double up on the Vuelta by racing early, skipping part of mid-season, and no other Grand Tours.

I think Horner's a badass and deserves a reasonable, good contract. He's a talent whose capabilities are unprecedented, don't let that go to waste.

Inadventent Reflection: Looking Back to June

It's interesting to look back on your thoughts from months ago, when things go entirely different than you ever anticipated. Well, here's a fine example of that. I wrote this on Tuesday morning, June 26th, 2012 - the day of the Exeter Crit. When I wrote this up planning to put myself in great position for the finish as I did at Keith Berger on Sunday the 24th. It was great - my positioning could have been slightly better...going into the sprint I was in 7th, but too far back on the top three to get up there. I was already into 6th place, and was next to a younger rider - he was about 3 feet to my left so I had a real clean lane - when out of nowhere someone completely cleaned out my front wheel. He came from behind me and on my right side, where no one was when I started the sprint so I was focused forward and to the left - working to pick off a couple final guys. Had my acceleration been typical to me, I would've given a really great battle for 4th place. But that was long gone when I hit the ground at a touch over 38 miles per hour. It would have been my best ever race. Even if I ended up in 5th, it would've outweighed anything: 2nd at Washington County GC, Winning the 4/5 Witches' Cup, controlling an entire crit - placing in all 3 primes and 2nd in the finish. Would've put all those to shame. But some ignorant and foolish rider took me out...I could never find a video of the finish to figure out who did it, because I didn't see a damn thing when it happened.

So here I am, almost 5 months later, and nothing for the rest of summer went according to plan. Actually, it went quite a lot worse. I did a few smaller races, but never returned to the fitness I had back in June. I've flat out missed over 4 whole weeks training since that crash (only a few days due to injury). I probably missed 4 weeks in the previous 4 years. I'm getting back into riding consistently...not feeling perfect, but much better is for sure. After this weekend I'll be into my 2013 training and getting set to run my 24 Miler birthday run in January.

Here's my write-up that was from June 26th...which was effectively the end of my 2012 season:

Title: Self-punishment to yield self-benefit

"Everyone knows that in order to grow you need to challenge yourself and work your ass off, sometimes to a point that is seemingly beyond your capacity (but really you just learn that your capabilities are greater than you ever imagined). That's what cycling has been to me. Ever since I really started racing bike last spring and declared myself a cyclist a year ago, I have been growing so fast my only rationalization of it is to soak up every bit of it. For a while I just accepted it and loved it, as naturally as anyone would. But a couple months ago, when I was a Category 4 racer and I wanted to race Green Mountain Stage Race as a Cat 2, I realized that accepting improvement was not nearly enough anymore. I was going to have to embrace every little component of cycling in order to grow as I needed for myself: making sure my body position is stable and smooth, knowing how to race and not merely racing, knowing every last strength extremely well...and knowing my weaknesses even more, and on and on. There is a theme in cycling when it comes to getting better: knowledge is absolute power.

A teammate and good friend, Jeff, has been guiding me through this process and with excellent effectiveness. He might know my capabilities - both intellectual and physical - even more than I do. I am slowing gaining progress on learning how to race well, something that is borderline subconscious for Jeff after his years of high level racing. It is extremely hard to learn to race when your focus is jumping categories quickly. When you upgrade really quickly you don't have time to test yourself with attacks, bold moves, igniting a breakaway, and drilling the hills so hard you think you're going to explode (with the hopes that everyone is even worse off than you by the summit). You learn to race just smart enough and just strong enough to ensure those upgrade points keep coming - but by doing this you merely learn to race in a comfort zone that results in...well...a result, regardless of how good or bad it is. You get many top 10's and not so many wins, where a couple more months in the category would yield big wins. Along the way you're bound to get a W here or there but while your focus is winning, the strategy is getting yourself to the next level. In order to ensure this, you sacrifice a little bit of that top end of the potential that is needed to yield a win.

Now that I am Category 2, something I desired to complete at the end of the season, it is an entirely different sport. I was beautifully positioned on Sunday at the Keith Berger Crit for at very worst a top 10 (my head was 100% on a top 5 as we went down the back straightaway), and it fell apart in milliseconds. And I couldn't do a damn thing about it. All of Monday I was struggling to focus on anything else, I wanted to find where I failed to adapt to the situation and give myself the edge above everyone else. I couldn't find it. I was ready to give an amazing effort at a top finish, and it disappeared in front of me and I was hopeless in doing so. As much as I hate failing at a goal because I made a mistake, I learn so much from these things: I have had few situations in which I made an error that was fatal to my finish. At the Nutmeg crit, I foolishly went on a massive bridging effort and then breakaway for half of the race. I got sucked back into the pack despite trying to stay away. I recovered enough for a 4th place in the end. No longer will I get such chances, every little thing you do to waste energy will cut you down in the finish. If that wasn't enough, the guys I am racing for cash and upgrade points are amazing atheltes. They are guys who write off people like me as 'not worth the worry' and cruise seemingly effortlessly to victory."

It was interesting reading this after going back through past drafted, but not posted blogs. I think that should be the key reason many people write their own diaries (whether public or private), so you can put yourself back in time to when you wrote it.

It's nice to see a little flicker of the excitement I had within me back in such prime fitness this summer (even though I wasn't even close to where I could have ended up in 2012). That excitement about my current fitness is no longer there, but it is not a bad thing as I know I am sitting in what I would like to describe, mathematically, as a 'local minimum'. Not sure if that has ever been used in actual endurance sport terminology, but here is my definition: The time point that signifies the lowest fitness on a periodic or seasonal  scale.

My excitement about my fitness may no longer be present, but it has been replaced by the raging fire that will ensure great levels of improvement.