It’s strange, really—crafting a race strategy and timing that perfect attack doesn’t seem so different from devising a policy for dealing with the media and scheduling your tidbits to the press for maximum impact. And yet, cyclists and those involved in cycling seem to have a near-bottomless penchant for screwing it up.

Take Floyd Landis and his latest set of Postal doping allegations. Sure, they were European television interviews and mostly just expansions on previous statements, but come on, dude—Thanksgiving break? When the few people paying any attention to the news will have to make it past irresistible Black Friday newsoids to read your stuff? Why even bother?

Chris Horner has never been an adherent to cyclocross orthodoxy. From top-mount levers, to paired-spoke wheels, to a whole lot of other things, Horner has always marched to the beat of his own drummer when racing on the dirt.

But at Friday’s Jingle Cross in Iowa City, Horner debuted another CX innovation:

(original image from Velonews, by Steve Fry. Thanks to Dave Chiu for the catch.)

Yes, that’s a top tube pad on Horner’s cross bike. Discussion points:

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of Norwegians telling me what to think.

Take Thor Hushovd getting his knickers in a twist because of the local support Alberto Contador has received since his positive dope test. Just because most of his fans are too busy being employed to flood into the streets is no reason for the reigning world champion to be bitter.

And then there’s the head of the Norwegian cycling federation saying that his counterparts in Spain won’t give Contador proper scrutiny. First, other nations haven’t exactly been stringent, and second, hasn’t dumping the blame for the world’s cycling problems on Spain gone out of style yet? McQuaid’s been on that gripe for almost four years now.

Communication is highly underrated. Take my recent dust-up with The Atlantic over a deleted comment on their not-initially-so-accurate history of blood doping.

With no direct contact emails for authors and editors, a reluctance to respond to @replies or Tumblr inquiries, and a Memory Hole-esque contact form as the only institutional recourse, that magazine makes it very hard to open any sort of communication channel. Whether you take this to be intentional or not depends on your level of cynicism—certainly, it’s no way to endear yourself to a blogger.