Contador Comes A Cropper

So the Vuelta a Espana came and went, and due to a poor turn-out in fantasy-land I couldn't be arsed with the blogging. I did have quite a good time playing the Road.cc fantasy game though, although it was a bit complicated with the transfers - I generally seemed to have the knack of either transferring someone into the Bile Beans the day before they crashed, or transferring them out of the team the day before they won. It all turned out well enough in the end though, and I managed to finish in the top 70 or something.

I'm still out riding my bike every once in a while, as you can see from this eye-catching piece of roadkill I spotted the other day.

Cycling's OK I guess, but I'm always looking for something hip and new to try. I'm thinking cycling is a bit past-it after I noticed these guys doing their thing in the park the other day.

It maybe hard to tell from my poor camera work, but they have some big signs that they're throwing up in the air and spinning around and catching and shit. They were engaged in this activity for at least an hour and seemed to having some sort of fun. I don't know what they call this exciting pass-time, I'm thinking its either 'signing' or 'tossing', probably the latter.

Anyway, to the reason that actually brings me over here to my dusty and neglected blog. It seems Alberto Contador has tested positive for clenbuterol from a urine sample taken on the Tour's second rest day. Now being a former analytical chemist, who may have even analysed a beta-agonist or two in my time, I can declare the 50pg/ml detected to be firmly at the "fuck all" end of the spectrum, but a positive is a positive and it's all another black cloud hanging over cycling. His tainted meat excuse does sound a bit far-fetched, but it is least vaguely possible - check this out for some science stuff.

Anyway, I best be off. I've got to do some more fine tuning on my cyclo-cross stead ready for my first race on Saturday. It's been a hot and sweaty summer in Atlanta, but the weather finally broke last weekend and we've even had a bit of rain to make for some authentic 'cross conditions.......time to get reminded jsut how bad I am at cross.