I especially wanted to note that in view of this post, I have now moved Velocity Nation in my tabbed RSS reader from “my blogs” to “my news.” BTW, Pez went the other direction (But I haven’t seriously read anything from Pez in a couple of years anyway.)

Facts can always be slanted, and some info can be bad. The “rational adults” part comes into play in determining what information you can safely take away from an otherwise slanted article.

Let’s examine the Ashenden interview. Andy Shen claims to know “from speaking to teammates” that Armstrong is ” 5′ 5″, 5′ 6″ “.

I think this is pretty verifiably false given the size of Armstrong’s frames, stem and cranks (58cm, 120mm 175mm).

While these could be garbage PR numbers from decoy bikes, and Armstrong could have a secret fleet of otherwise-identical minibikes that he actually uses in races, I think in proportion to the UCI-mandatory 700c wheels—as well as to other competitors—5′ 10″ seems far likelier than 5′ 5″.

Ashenden, for reasons that are clear in his interview, is not an Armstrong fan. I trust him on methods and data, but his inferences are way off: Example:

It is incomprehensible that someone would get himself into such perfect condition and then essentially eat like a horse so that his body weight ballooned up to 79 kilos, and then somehow intend to go back through that hell to lose 7 kilos again for the next race. That’s just not true, it doesn’t happen.

I’ve done this. Repeatedly. “Perfect condition” hasn’t won me any Tours de France, but it’s no great feat to regain and re-drop that amount of weight at my (5′ 9″) size.