The Fitness Guru

So here’s a great article in the New York Times celebrating coffee! Now, beware! This is not justification for drinking twelve cups while you are at work. But if you are feeling a bit sluggish before your workout or want to go a little further before that evening run, maybe a small cup of Java will do the trick.

Lance Armstrong announced his retirement from competitive cycling yesterday.

“I really can’t say I have any regrets. It’s been an excellent ride,” the 39-year-old said. His record seven consecutive Tour De France wins will likely stand as a record for a very long time to come. His place among the great athletes of his generation, and many others for that matter, is cemented in the record books and the minds of sports fans around the globe. Add to that the brilliant work he has done with his LiveStrong Foundation, and this is a man who carries a mighty mantle with him.

Sure, the glass-half-empty people may deride the fact that he retired before, only to try and stage an unsuccessful comeback. Like so many great athletes– Michael Jordan (happy birthday, Michael), Brett Favre (whose retirement seems an annual event more consistent than Groundhog’s Day)– many people would say he should have left well enough alone and stayed retired at the very pinnacle of success in his sport.

But then he wouldn’t have been Lance. What makes Lance, and so many other athletes, so extraordinary is the drive to attain greatness. He won so many times because he believed if he worked hard enough, trained with enough intensity and wanted it more than anyone else, he could continue winning. But at some point, the athlete must lose. It is an unfortunate consequence of competition.

The doping allegations will continue to plague him, perhaps tarnishing his highlight reel. But the allegations continue to be unproven, and, last time I checked, we are all presumed innocent until proven guilty. He competed in a sport that was riddled with stories of athletes using performance enhancing supplements. Consequently, his work may always carry a whispered question mark.

But today is an opportunity to celebrate a man who was able to rise above his sport and become an inspirational story for people of all walks of life. I read his biography and was struck with his inability to accept defeat, especially in the face of cancer. He fought through illness and rose to the highest levels of performance. And, on top of that, used his incredible status to give back to others through his charitable work.

So I tip my hat: Rock on, Lance! It was great watching you!!

It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Check out the video…….

I sat down this morning, having finished off my oatmeal with flaxseed and spiralina shake, with a cup of shade grown, free- trade Guatemalan coffee, ready to write a piece about the nature of bipartisanship in the fitness world. “Oh, can’t we all live together in harmony?”, I thought, “the P90Xers and the Perfect Push-Upists, the Scarsdale Dieters and the Fat Flushers? Can’t we take a page from the noble book of our politicians and all sit together at the table and learn how to work as a group to better humanity?” Yes, not all is right in the political world. Yes, the give and take is still slightly….what is the term?…….out of whack. But, hey, at least “bipartisanship” is a searchable term now.

I sat down to write all of this but before I could even start, I was Twittered. Tweeted. Twitted. For those of you not in the know, Twitter is the next Facebook, which was, of course, the next MySpace. With Twitter, individuals can update their “followers” on the goings-on in their lives. Perpetual status information. It would be hard not to know a little something about Twitter as it seems that their PR people are working over time to have articles published in as many magazines and newspapers as possible.

But this Twit was not from their PR department. This was Lance Armstrong. I follow Lance for absolutely no reason other than to see what events he considers update worthy. In this case, it was the theft of his $10,000 bicycle. Yup, $10K. The bike was apparently stolen right out of the back of a van during the grueling Tour de California.

For those of you who don’t pay such close attention to Lance, this was the second time in a week that he hit a speed bump in his pursuit of yet another Tour de France title. The first bump came last week when it was announced that he would not be submitting himself for rigorous drug testing throughout his training period. Huh? I thought that the whole point of his comeback was that he was going to prove that he was the exceptional athlete and that drugs had not played a part in any of his victories. He had hired a very well known doctor who was going to keep track of his test results and even go so far as to post the results on the web. But apparently, the testing was pretty darn expensive and even if the results were posted, Lance and his team worried that the information would be a little too complex for us to understand. So, forget the testing. It was a bother anyway. Let’s get on with some good old fashioned bicycle racing.

The Tour of California is especially unpleasant at the moment: rain, cold, windy, yuck. Couple that with having to deal with a flat tire and Lance ended up with an especially unpleasant ride. Again from Twitter: “”Maybe one of the toughest days I’ve had on a bike, purely based on the conditions. I’m still freezing.” So when I got the Tweet that the bike was gone, I became a little suspicious. I’m a child of the Watergate era so it doesn’t take too much for me to start to see some sort of conspiracy. As much as I wanted to see Lance traveling around the country searching for his bike, I was left with the feeling that it is some sort of ploy.

Come on. We have all had that time that we went to the gym only to realize that we left our sneakers at home. Yeah, it’s a bummer, but deep down there is the little cry of “yes!” as you realize that you won’t have to work this time. You have your excuse.

Is the loss of his bike more deception on the road to his Return To Greatness? Probably not. Probably some 12-year old clepto is delivering papers with a pretty jacked up ride. Will he find the bike? I vote no but I could be wrong.

In the end, more than anything, I’m bummed because we are still without a hero. Boy, could we use a hero. President Obama was elected as a hero, but I think we all understand that, with what he is up against, heroism is relative. We’ve got A-Rod spiking himself and poor little Michael Phelps got getting nailed doing bong hits (author’s note: why are you punishing him by giving him more time with nothing to do? Don’t you think a better punishment would be longer hours of training and practice? Is time away from the sport, camped out on his sofa watching reruns of Tool Academy, really going to teach him a lesson?). Lance has dropped the ball that he never really possessed. He had the chance to prove his abilities and the bring back an edge of nobility to a sport that has been put through the ringer. Not him. Not this time around.

Any nominations for a new hero we can celebrate?