Day: August 14, 2012

In the Hurt Bag—Part Two

In the Hurt Bag—Part Two:

After turning myself inside out yesterday I paid today for this effort. I guess some of you have heard of my saying, “Shut up legs.” Well today my body revolted. It protested. My body went on ” just stop working mode.” I think my body was trying to tell me that it had had enough of me yelling at it, had enough of my mind forcing it to do things it was not made for!

And since I struggled more or less all day long just to survive this stage, I started looking for some motivation. But then on the descent of the Port de Bales I found one thing that I kind of knew all along. I probably won’t surprise you when I say that I am not exactly a world-champion descender. I am a “careful” descender (I would not go as far as to say that I am a hopeless descender, just a careful descender).

But the grupetto normally descends pretty fast, because all the riders in there hate the mountains, but they are all pretty skillful in bike handing. And about three corners into the descent Bernie (Eisel) with Cav (Cavendish) passed me. I said, “Please Bernie, don’t drop me on the descent and leave me all alone behind.” And he turned around and said, “No worries, we stick all together here.” And in the process of trying to follow them I actually overtook riders!

Then when things went slower after the descent I rode up to Bernie and said, “Did you see that!? Me, I passed two riders on a descent, I must be a legend! That’s gotta be a first time ever!” And Bernie and Cav started laughing so hard they almost fell off their bikes…little fun things to keep the spirit up.

[Jens is one of the best additions to cycling. His candor is refreshing, as is the wonder of what he accomplishes on a bike. And at the same time, he remains warmly, wonderfully human. I have a list people I’d like to say “I rode with…”, and most of them are folks almost none of you would know. But I’d like to go for a ride with Jens, simply because I think it would be fun, although Cav is of course welcome to join…]

Source: Hardly Serious with Jens Voigt

Another Cheater Confesses : The Last Word On Nothing

Another Cheater Confesses : The Last Word On Nothing:

But as a confession, Vaughters’s essay is a self-serving pile of PR—a textbook example of how public figures use the media to cultivate their images and influence the stories that get told.

[Seems like both sides are wrong in opposition to the old joke. The cheaters give themselves a pass (as they did in the first place) and the “let ’em do as they please” public i wrong as well. Recently, in the London games, a swimmer discussed how other swimmers were taking an extra dolphin kick that is against the rules. because the judges don’t use underwater cameras to adjudicate, it goes unpunished and ignored. And clearly the ethos taught to the vast majority of athletes is wrong. In the drive to teach them to give their all, they’re taught that “all” means “whatever it takes”. This are two very different ideas. And the germ of the solution is in this article. “In 2003, I interviewed Vaughters for a Bicycling article about doping. ‘People tend to forget that this is how cyclists earn a living’ “. Perfect. So here’s the new rules, with tweaking to keep the edge cases away. If you’re caught cheating and convicted by a panel that includes your peers etc. etc. you’re stripped of all your earnings as a professional athlete and the companies related to athletic performance. There. That should fix it. (Any lawyering to work around the system is punishable by having Roseanne Barr sing the national anthem in your bedroom every morning.)]

Some more thoughts:

Heeeeere’s Johnny! « Cycling in the South Bay:

That’s like those dorks who say they want to win the lottery so they can make the world a better place. Next time you see them, they’re broke, drunk in a gutter, and covered in venereal sores. Athletes hate fairness. They want an edge, a leg up, a lighter bike, faster wheels, cyanide in their opponent’s coffee, anything to get ahead of the competition. Cycling was a cheat-filled sport long before EPO, and it will be one long after.

Pricing Experiments You Might Not Know, But Can Learn From

Pricing Experiments You Might Not Know, But Can Learn From:

People are weird and irrational, and there’s much we don’t understand. Like why do shoppers moving in a counterclockwise direction spend on average $2.00 more at the supermarket?

Why does removing dollar signs from prices (24 instead of $24) increase sales?

What will work for you depends on your industry, product and customer. When you try to replicate what Valve did to increase their revenue 40x, it might not work for you, but then again, why not give it a try?

Here’s a list of pricing experiments and studies you can get ideas from and test on your own business.

[Fascinating]