So I’ve been feeling kind of fat this whole Fitchburg weekend, and I realized why on the ride to the race this morning. Even on my easiest days of training, I get in more saddle time than I’ve had in two days of this race. Heck, just the ride to work takes up more time than the TT. I realize there are a tremendous number of fields to get through in a given day, but c’mon – yesterday’s Men’s 3 race was 9 laps; the Men’s 2 was 20. Until today, I just didn’t feel like I was getting my money’s worth.

So one for the “The Universe hates Cosmo” file today. Drive into the start with no worries (other than the massive calzone I foolishly ate all of the night before), and rode up (helmet on) to staging to sign in. Immediately I get yelled at to get off my bike at the staging tent. Keep in mind, no one else is here – the Cat 4 race is done, I don’t race for another hour, and Masters 35+ is on course. But hey, just because I loathe authority doesn’t mean I always ignore it. I get off my bike, sign in and head back to the car to warm up.

The last time I did Fitchburg was back in 2005, and man, was it a high-strung race. People cussing, shoving at the start lines, knocking each other around on course. Granted, today was a TT, but I’d have to say the overall scene was far more laid back. Lots of guys in the Cat 3 field just kinda sitting up, missing starts, no aero kits or nuthin’. I’d love to say that this was due to the more selective (if way stupider) course, but I don’t want to advance my own opinions on course design or anything.

On the ride to work today, I hatched this theory that maybe the “men in black” weren’t really Astana like everyone’s been saying. Maybe they were Caisses d’Epargne, a squad that tends wear black kits, and has had a few scrutinized riders. Well, looks like it’s back to the drawing board for me. Matthias Kessler has (of course) no idea how his testosterone became elevated, and Lord knows, asking his team manager, the famously unaware Walter Godefroot, won’t provide any answers either. But I bet Floyd Landis could offer a few suggestions to the young German – provided he doesn’t mind not racing in France for a bit.

Too bad about Kessler, though. I always admired the guy for manning up to finish a Tour stage with a collapsed lung in 2004. I don’t care how much dope you’re jacked up on – that’s some hard guy stuff right there. A decidedly less hard guy is also in hot water on the eve (figuratively speaking) of this year’s Tour – recently re-crowned sprint king Alessandro Petacchi. His offense? Too much asthma medicine. It seems like a stupid exclusion, but as I understand WADA’s draconian rule structure, if Petacchi’s above the the 1000 ng/mL line, then Therapeutic Use Exemption or not, that counts as a doping offense.

Jumping momentarily from those excluded to those inexplicably invited, Cyclingnews has a nice feature on the Barloworld squad. Robbie Hunter aside, I’d still rather see Unibet, or even Tinkoff, toeing the line instead of these guys; that having been said, almost anyone would be a step up from Agritubel. While not nearly as aggressive at recruiting refugee dopers as Team Relax has been, I suppose I can see the ASO harboring some ill will against Tinkoff for hiring Tyler Hamilton and Jorg Jaksche. But excluding an exciting spring performer for purely political reasons really defeats the point of selecting Wild Cards in the first place.

Arrrg! Shimano, why? First Cannondale and now you? You beat SunTour in the 80′s by pouring millions into engineering and research. You were so awesome when you came out with the 10 speed Dura-Ace in ’03 and said “our research shows aluminum cranks are better”. Now you let idiot mechanics say “Nowadays everybody wants to use carbon when possible, so Shimano are starting to use it in areas such as chainsets.”? Simply unreal. This only propagates the idiotic notion that road bike lines go “aluminum, aluminum with carbon stays, full carbon”. I promise you, consumers will make you suffer by remembering that.

But what should I expect, you know? Cycling’s a European sport, and Euros, well, they just don’t make sense. The Tour says it needs to regain its credibility. And how does it plan to do that? By making riders sign a pledge? Awesome. Because pledges have historically been so successful and even-handed. And you’ve gotta love the German approach to anti-doping – banning Erik Zabel for confessingn a single incidence of doping over a decade ago. Got something dark in your past? Just ban it. That’ll keep deep-seated wrongdoing from ever resurfacing. Honestly, when the entire continent functions like this, it’s an economic wonder the Euro remains strong.

So after all this, I’m thinking Unibet.com’s best shot at this year’s TdF isn’t through the courts. The team should instead channel its legal fees into sneaking the same nine riders into the early kilometers of every stage. Sure, they’ll need to use progressively more sophisticated means of insertion as the race goes on (disguises, bribery, HALO jumps) but once a single rider catches a draft off a Unibet wheel, ASO will be forced to accept them into the event, or risk sacrificing the very race integrity all these Scotch-Tape anti-doping measures are aimed to protect.

So, now that Vlad Karpets has locked down his second stage race win of the year at the Tour de Suisse, the blogosphere breathes a sigh of relief. No more posturing, no more shadowboxing – just the Tour. Sure, there’s the Eindhoven TTT and some fancy jersey giveaways, but for the contenders, the hay is in the barn. And for the contenders’ teams, the back-up plans are drawn up and ready. Have you noticed that Astana and Caisse d’Epargne, two squads whose leaders each might very well be Puerto’d before the start, have serious contenders waiting in the wings?

I won’t even hazard a guess at who’ll end up in yellow on the Champs Elysees, at least not until all the racers have signed the waiver. If you’re really looking for predictions, a good person to ask might be CSC’s Frank Schleck, who was dead on in tagging teammate Fabian Cancellara for the final TT at the Tour de Suisse. Maybe after all the teams submit some final start lists, or after the abnormal results waters have cleared, I’ll come forward with a prediction or two. Only thing I’m willing to say now is that the winner won’t be this guy.

I am hilariously frail right now. Yesterday, I bumped my elbow with me knee and it hurt for like, 10 minutes. Most of my wounds have healed/scabbed, but now huge bruises are rising on my forearms and shins. I’m hoping they’re from Monday’s dust-up with the car, but the way I feel right now, they might very well be from scurvy. Even as I type this (lying prone on a blanket alongside the Cox Criterium course), I have to be careful what parts of my body I lean on. I’m essentially disabled without a bicycle underneath me.

So obviously this is the perfect time to start racing again. Especially in a 3/4 criterium with 125 riders on a non-selective course with a fast, bumpy downhill, like the one I was upended on at Great Falls. To be fair, the Cox Criterium course is kinda fun, but it’s not exactly kid gloves for coming back from a hard crash. Plus I drove down with Darcy, who promised that if I crashed again, she’d beat the living $&!t out of me. And Lord know, I don’t need that.

The INTERNATIONAL BICYCLE CENTERS team had more than 10 registrants, so we were officially a “VIT” (very important team), meaning a special warm-up tent, with its own bathroom, trainers, free Accelerade, Endurox, Poland Spring and underripe bananas, was ours to use. But I hate the trainer so much that even this wasn’t enough incentive to get me warmed up properly. At any rate, they kept us on the line for 10 minutes, and there was a neutral quarter lap or so, making warm-up essentially irrelevant.

So after mountains of insurance paperwork, follow-up medical care, driving all over New England in search of a Cannondale dealer and previewing the first stage at Fitchburg (note to organizers – next year, you need to give the fat kids a reason to show up), I have returned! News – Vlad Gusev isn’t just for Paris- Roubaix anymore. The Russian stormed out of his breakaway and onto the top step of a Suisse Tour podium, through weather described as “freezing mist”, so having a little cobblestoned grinta probably didn’t hurt. Chris Horner (no gloves, BTW) came across two minutes later, just to remind American race fans that he is still around.

Today’s stage was taken in a late move by Columbian 20-year-old Rigoberto Uran. It would have been quite the coup for his marginalized Unibet squad, had the neophyte rider simply remembered to zip his jersey, but since he didn’t, he looks like just another Columbian pan-flash. Of far more interest to me is the race behind the race; that is to say, the TdF contenders. Lest we forget, the big show in the July is the primary reason teams come to this silly Apline ramble, and over the past two days, Andreas Kloden (2nd, 3rd) has really shown mettle. I am looking forward to seeing his performance in tomorrow’s TT, especially given his team’s past performances this season.

Of course, there are those less excited about those surprising Astana performances. Vino and the boys in Robin’s Egg Blue have defended themselves vehemently, but apparently there have already been some “non-negatives”. Impressive that we haven’t heard names for any of them yet, as the UCI is known to have more leaks than the Iraqi Navy (man, I wish I could take credit for that phrase). Hanging out on the obverse of the anti-doping coin (that’s “tails” for all you non-numismatists out there) is Team CSC, who recently released the results (PDF) of their in-house testing program. It’s kinda cool to look at, but I have a few questions; most pressingly, why do some of the lines just stop in mid-April?

So how many of you out there are down with The Secret? Well, I’ve got proof that it works. Wasn’t it just yesterday I questioned CSC’s team anti-doping program in light of Bjarne’s recent confession? And then today – boom – CSC announces that all its riders have been clean thus far. Not too shabby, eh? And of course, CSC’s announcement itself employed The Secret, too – they, after losing a sponsor earlier this year, wanted the universe to make their title sponsor continue. Mission accomplished, I’d say.

Lance Armstrong certainly knows The Secret. He demands that the universe not take doping allegations against him seriously, and behaves as if the object of his desire were on its way. I do find it a bit unusual that Armstrong’s managed to rail against this book before I’d even heard it was going to come out, but hey – can’t let the universe know what you want too quickly, right? Especially with at least five former teammates either confessed, convicted or charged as dopers.

If I were Big Tex, though, I might try asking the universe for something slightly different than I’ve been demanding through most of my career. After all, the frenetic doping denial thing is kind of out of fashion at the moment. And the allegations made against Telekom sound an awful lot like those leveled against Postal, but until some more riders confess, I guess we’ll just have to assume Armstrong was clean, unlike the confessed dopers he was so thoroughly trouncing.

I could go on, really, about how Postal/Disco’s reluctance to play along and questionable hiring practices might be hindering their sponsor hunt – but I’d rather talk about racing. Especially when golf ball-sized hail is involved. It must have damaged the helmet of stage winner Erik Thomas Dekker, forcing him to don an ill-fitting replacement. However, the real action was further back, as the overnight leader, CSC’s clean-testing Frank Schleck, lost 1:21 on the day – quite a bit for a supposedly less difficult stage. Schleck now sits third on GC, behind the Caisse d’Epargne’s other Russian, Vladimir Efimkin, and Saunier Duval’s José Angel Gomez Marchante; the real fun starts tomorrow.

Man, everybody’s got a book these days. Floyd Landis wrote one that was apparently pretty bad (he stole the title, too), and Saul Raisin’s working on one about his comeback, despite not having really come back yet. Used to be only the weirdos and paraiahs of the cycling world wrote books, but with the help of a few co-authors, everyone’s getting in on the act. Maybe I should get a job as a cycling book writer. I guarantee lower rates than Sally Jenkins, and my services will come with the added benefit of making your book not utterly suck.

Personally, I’d love to write the life story of T-Mobile’s Serhiy Honchar. I would call it Low-Hanging Fruit. Honchar’s a veteran rider who’s already built a solid palmares, and hopefully a solid retirement portfolio. Last season’s TdF performance aside, the 36-year-old had only a few seasons left, and his rise to prominence during the dope-happy 90′s, affiliation with Eastern Bloc training programs, and ostensibly inefficient riding style had already made him the subject of rumors; the perfect high-profile target for T-Mobile to say “Look, we kicked someone out! We’re policing ourselves successfully!”

With the UCI now ripping off Hollywood in an attempt to give their existing anti-doping measures more teeth, I really want to trust that Bob Stapleton is putting in a bona fide effort to self-regulate. But since CSC, the other ProTour self-policer, has had a slew of doping cases surrounding it, I think my cynicism can be forgiven. Certainly, I’m more trusting than the French, German and Dutch representatives, who expressed distinct displeasure at the news that Alejandro Valverde would be allowed to compete at this year’s Tour de France.

Oh, yeah, and I guess there was some racing, too. A little-known Italian guy made a gutty breakaway for his first win at the Tour de Suisse, while local lad Fab Cancellara completed the three-day trifecta of winning a TT, podiuming in a group sprint, and finishing with the lead pack on a hill stage. Cance did crack the next day, but teammate Frank Schleck (Andy’s older, fatter brother, in case you forgot) came away with the win and the GC lead. Then today, Robbie McEwen won a group gallop, with Daniele Bennati scoring his third 2nd place five days.