The Sound of Footsteps

It was almost exactly a year ago today that I spent an afternoon hunched over that barely paved precursor to triage known as the Col de Peyresourde. I watched scores of seasoned cyclists step off their bikes and either lay down on the side of the road, or walk in bike shoes. Grown men were taking off their shirts and taking naps next to the nearby stream, cursing the signs along the climb noting the number of miles to the top and the average gradient of the road.

Long freaking day in the saddle, folks.

Our journey came at the end of L'Etape du Tour, in which Tour de France organizers allow average Joe's to ride an entire Tour stage. In our case, the day was brutally hot, my Cervelo was a dream ride, and I'd managed just a handful of training rides. The Peyresourde was a new addition to the Tour, the road itself having been nothing but gravel until very recently. The new pavement grew so bubbly with the heat that chunks of gravel lodged in my cleats (yeah, I walked. That's what happens when you can't turn the cranks anymore). I finished, and lived to run the Col d'Aspin a week later. But the bottom line is that it sucked. To tune into today's coverage and watch the peloton zip up those long miles of climbing as if it were an afterthought was, for me, yet another reminder of the great gap between those who race bikes for a living and those who ride as a habit. Onward. Dara Torres says she wants to be tested, and one can only assume that she's clean. But if she weren't an American we'd all be watching her swim and having awful flashbacks to the heyday of East German swimming. Love to hear from Shirley Babashoff on this. Or Lance Armstrong. Now that Manuel Beltran was booted from the Tour for EPO use the other day, four of his former Discovery team members have been busted for doping. ASO, the Tour's parent company, didn't just put Beltran on the first flight back to Spain, they had him arrested. What does this mean? Well, if you've watched too many hours of The Closer or Law and Order (my wife is addicted), it means that French police may be seeking some greater source of information from Beltran than just the name of his helpful doctor. Tour officials have been trying to crack cycling's code of Omerta for years, specifically hoping to bust Saint Lance for impropriety. Does this mean Beltran will squeal? Maybe. A few well chosen words of confession might be preferable to a French gulag. Tour officials are making a great display of cleansing the sport of the last decade's dopers, and they have the full support of their government and national police force -- a group of jackbooted men who don't appear to need much of an excuse to revive the rack. Ullrich, Landis, etc are being pillaged daily on that bastion of mediocrity formerly known as OLN, whipped like redheaded stepchildren for their doping, despite the fact that cycling and all of sport have been a cesspool of drug use for more than a century.

Christian Prudhomme, an affable man who doesn't have the steely posture required of his duties, is currently the Tour's grand director. But don't think former director Jean-Marie Leblanc isn't looking over his shoulder and calling the shots here. Leblanc, as arrogant as DeGaulle and half as tall, had epic run-in's with Lance and always came out the loser. I remember watching them wag fingers in each other's faces after a L'Alpe du Huez finish a few years back as Sheryl Crow stood a few steps away, looking as pretty and out of place on that setting as outdoor furniture in Times Square. Leblanc would love to have the last word in that little duel. Don't think the Armstrong camp is taking the Beltran bust lightly. If there's a smoking gun out there somewhere, the French will unearth it sooner or later. Be sure of that. And no matter how many years will have passed between that day and the conclusion of Armstrong's career, they will see to it that he is stripped of any title and asset within their churlish grasp.

Not that it matters, but all those Tour guys smoke like chimneys and hardly live a Puritan lifestyle. It always seems so absurd that they behave like purists.

Finally, spent a few days in the country outside Manhattan last week as part of the next book (by the way, you could all do me a load of good and buy a copy of The Training Ground, currently available on Amazon.com and in your local bookstore. It's a great book, if told with the sort of revisionist cant that is driving the Civil War geeks crazy. Seriously, if Michener ever wrote the great sage of Grant and Lee in 1846 and 1847, it would feel something like Training Ground). Anyway, forgot my running shorts because I packed at the last minute and in the dark, so I was reduced to walking in great circles around the Sleepy Hollow Country Club rather than pounding out a rocking hour on their 50 miles of equestrian trails. Sleepy Hollow was beautiful and it was tranquil, and my room was big enough to land a plane in. But I am not much of a walker. It's not the endorphins that I crave, it's the cleansing sweat and its partner in crime, suffering. I like to hear the lungs gasping for air and feel sweat soaking my clothing so badly that I have to wring it out in the final miles. Having said that, I'm running a lot and at a great pace these days. A day of walking might not have been my first choice for a workout, but it did the job quite nicely. Other than that, it was an awesome couple days of business in a historic, overgrown, and beautiful corner of the world. I love any place where running and lacrosse make the front page of the local sports section, as was the case.

Keep Pushing... always.