The Fitness Guru

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?