The day I biked up Alp d'Huez in 45 minutes (including two photo stops)

Not many people have the opportunity to take a bike up Alp d'Huez, tackling those 21 hairpin bends and grinding it right to the top. Most people cycling it take over an hour to get to the top and the best of the Tour de France can do it in 40 minutes. I did it on a bike in just 45 minutes and here's the story.

It's amazing how you get into one of those rhythms. You're focused in on the road and it's only after a while you realise you have zoned right out and if you don't look up you're going to miss the world around you. That's forgivable on many rides, but on this one, on the Alp, you dare not get to the top and forget having seen anything on your way up. It was after 22 minutes of cruising at a slow pace that I realised I had covered 9 hairpins and not looked around me at the spectacular sights of the Alps of Western France.

I pulled over at the side of the road, took my helmet off, took a sip of a water bottle and gazed at the panoramic scenes around me. I even took the time to take several photos before hopping back on the bike. Yes, the clock was still ticking.

I moved on, spinning the wheels, taking the turns tight to the inside, feeling good about the elevation gain. Several corners later I noticed a fantastic vantage point and pulled over once again for a few more snaps. After a brief word with some cyclist who was on his way back down I pushed off again and navigated the final half dozen turns that took me up to the summit. One look at my watch confirmed I had made it from foot to top in exactly forty-five minutes and while I was sweating a bit, I wasn't that burnt out. If only the men of the Tour could do it like me.

You don't believe me? Well, that's your choice I suppose...

After half an hour chatting to a few folk who had cycled it up, making small talk about the hardest parts of the climb, of the history of the climb and, as we all do, some talk about the fine weather, I turned around and headed for the bottom.

I got down much quicker than I got up, naturally, but I only put that down to the fact I didn't stop. Instead looking around me as I went and because of it, only narrowly avoiding an oncoming car. It was still morning when I rolled off the incline and into the town of Bourg-d'Oisans below. I had half an hour to spare before I had to get in my car and return to the hotel, so I returned the moped bike back to the rental shop and eased into a local pub for a quick cold pint as a reward for my lack of effort.

The sugar test

Two days until I undertake perhaps the toughest personal challenge of all -- tougher than someone riding the Tour de France route twenty-four hours behind the actual athletes: The abandonment of all sugars (baring those found naturally in healthy foods) from my diet for the next forty days and forty nights. Yes, I'm giving up chocolates, biscuits and other assorted treats for Lent.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I enjoy chocolate and in the more general sense, sugar. It's not going to be easy, there's going to be mood swings and there's going to be many tempting moments when I try convince myself that just one Twix won't hurt anyone, but all being well I'll come through and in a couple of weeks get used to the fact it's not going into my system.

This hasn't really got anything to do with my winter training -- I give something up most years for lent -- but it won't hurt either. Sugar is a big hinderance to me when it comes to shedding a few pounds and getting as fit as possible in the gym. When you don't have the weather to go out in mid-February and knock out 50 miles worth of calorie burning, you have to be more cautious with what goes in your mouth and when, like me, sugar is one of the last things to go, you're only slowing down progress.

All being well if I come through it I'll come out the other end feeling much better for it and I can spend Easter Sunday treating myself to a big milk-chocolate Easter-egg.

CAS slam shut the stable door, but the horse has long since bolted

Remember that talented young rider Jan Ullrich who used to finish second (or third) to Armstrong all the time baring that one time he won the Tour in 1997 when Armstrong wasn't racing? Well, here on 9 February 2012 he has been found guilty of doping offences related to the 2006 Operation Puerto investigation and had all the results he achieved since May 2005 annulled after the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a UCI appeal into the cyclist. In the biggest case of "so what?" since Sammy Sanchez was awarded a podium spot for the 2010 Tour on Monday, Ullrich was also banned from the sport until 22 August 2013 -- not for life as the UCI had hoped -- though they might have well just banned him until tomorrow afternoon given the difference it will make to a rider who has been retired for over half a decade.

It would be like finding out someone from the 70's had doped and banning him from now until 2013. It would be like me getting fired from a job I quit several years ago. It also raises the question as to whether they will now go after Bjarne Riis, Richard Virenque or the several hundred other riders who may or may not have dopped across cycling's long and infamous history? Yes, I know, statutes of limitations and all that guff, but you get the point.

Actually one fan made a brilliant comment at the bottom of one article I read. He said it is like giving him 'suspended detention and lines for finally admitting to copying Stephen's French test in 1989'. As he so aptly put it: 'Yes Miss, I copied him almost word for word, and you never questioned why my pass rate went from 45% to 90%, you fool.' He went on to describe how twenty years later, once the school was short of some cash they came after him and, along with a financial penalty, he is now banned from playtime, use of the bunson burners and has lost his prefect duties.

So what is the hard hitting ramifications of Jan Ullrich's penalties other than the fact his 10,000 Swiss francs fine seems little more than a payment to cover the Court of Arbitration for Sport's 2012 annual Christmas party? Well, he is stripped of his third place in the 2005 Tour de France, along with his second place from that years stage 20 time trial though no word on his 58th place on the final stage into Paris.

Above and beyond that Ullrich has been stripped of his overall win in the 2006 Tour de Suisse and a hatful of other stage victories. Though, as I said with Contador, they can take your results, but they can't take back all those kisses from the podium girls.

The upshot of the 2005 Tour to be specific is that Francisco Mancebo -- yes that Mancebo, that was himself linked heavily to Operation Puerto -- has been bumped up onto the podium, though no announcement from the UCI on bringing Armstrong, Ivan Basso and now Mancebo back to Paris to photograph the new 2005 podium for the record books. In fact, the remainder of the new top ten reads like a doping rap sheet: 4. Alexandre Vinokourov, 5. Levi Leipheimer, 6. Michael Rasumssen, 7. Cadel Evans, 8. Floyd Landis, 9. Oscar Pereiro, 10. Christophe Moreau. I think only Cadel Evans has so far gone through his career without being linked to a doping scandal or indeed an actual postitive test at some point or another. So should we chalk that up to Evans's first Tour win with last year being his second? Or should we just assume guilt to all and hand the title to the Lanterne Rouge from that year, Iker Flores who finished some 4 hours, 20 minutes behind Armstrong?

There is no doubt Ullrich was up to no good. His blood was found in the offices of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes -- the doctor from the Operation Puerto investigation -- and when DNA analysis was conducted it was ruled that to a probability of one in six billion. Given the globes population is seven billion, I suppose Ullrich could have argued that the blood belonged to some bloke in the Southern jungles of Cambodia or an Eskimo in the artic circle, but he didn't and he seems happy enough to get this over with. "Tomorrow is a happy day for me. I am happy to have the decision after waiting for almost six years," he chirped just yesterday before heading down to the local bakery.

BREAKING NEWS: Contador throws his hands up . . . and reiterates hisinnocence; plus PEDs King-Pin Riis weighs in

In a press conference that will have shocked nobody to the bone, Alberto Contador sat down along side team-manager and former performance enhanced doping pin-king, Bjarne Riis, and revealed the mind shaking news that he is in fact innocent of the doping violation for which he was found guilty on Monday. Contador was banned for two years but due to the back dating of the ban, he'll actually be available to ride come August 5 of this year. "The way I feel right now is deceived," he sobbed before assorted hacks, and a handful of his mates who had gathered at the back to roundly applaud him.

For those who had turned up or tuned in with the hope that Alberto would throw his hands up and admit his guilt, begging us all for forgiveness and a second chance come August, were left disappointed, if not foolish for ever believing something like that could happen in the first place. "My dreams have collapsed and my morale right now is very confused. There hasn't been one morning when I haven't asked myself how this happened," he continued.

"I can't understand the final verdict," said Contador, scanning, I would assume, the Spanish dictionary for a translation of the word 'guilty'. "I've gone through everything, spent hours going over things. If there's anything I can do to prove my innocence I'll do it. Baring finding the remnants of his scrumptious stake from that ill fated rest day and proving it to be loaded with Clenbuterol that got there via some Spanish farmer, I think he might be out of luck.

Contador went on to thank those who have supported him, an indirect thought of gratitude no doubt to the Spanish Cycling Federation who done everything in their power to clear him of the charges during the initial hearing. He then finished up by confirming that his earlier statement that he would retire from the sport was ill-founded and more likely a shot at blackmail by saying he will come back. "I'll train clean as I've always done. Right now even though my morale is low I know I'll come back just as strong."

I hope he does and I just hope he races clean as well.

Before all was said and done however the Saxo Bank team boss, Bjarne Riis, believed to be still pissing steroids ever since his 1996 Tour win of which he has long since done what his team's leader couldn't do today, and admitted his guilt, got his word in edgeways by expressing his undying support for the rider before releasing him from his contract.

"We inherited this case, and we patiently waited for a decision," he mumbled, referring to the fact that Contador signed for Saxo Bank before learning of his positive test. "All along, we followed the rules and because Alberto was cleared [by the RFEC in early 2011], he was able to ride."

Both parties stated their wish to work together again in the future, but whether that happens remains to be seen. Still, once he has served the time handed out to him and is free once again to race, you'd have to be a mug to stay away from him, because even riding clean there is no denying his huge talent. Yet if he just admitted it all -- assuming there is something to admit -- before the lie drags on to Armstrong-esk proportions then I imagine second chances would come much easier, and likewise, public support outside of Spain.

Justice served, but way too late

It's been a good day for anti-doping as this morning the tortoise in the relay race in the case against Alberto Contador that has seen the baton pass from the UCI to WADA to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) finally crossed the finishing line with a decision on the guilt of the beef eating Spaniard. The hammer of justice came thumping down with a "guilty, guilty, guilty" verdict and a two year ban, which by the mathematical calculations of CAS, expires on August 5th, of this year.

Nearly 19 whole months after Contador sat down for a medium-rare stake at a hotel in Pau, Southern France, he has finally been banned for showing trace amounts of the banned bronchodilator, Clenbuterol. For those brave souls who want to get to the bone of the CAS ruling you can do so in their 98-page novel that has been released as part of the case closing.

Despite the panel dismissing the theory that plasticizers found in his sample signalled that Contador had been blood doping, the panel did rule him unable to prove that his meat was contaminated by some Spanish farmer engaging in shady beef production.

"Mr. Contador did not prove but should prove that he did ingest the specific meat he refers to for the meat contamination and that such meat contained the banned substance," blasted the panel, though it's hard to see how Contador could ever have reached such proof.

That the ban expires conveniently in time for Contador to win the Vuelta a Espana later this year is down to the fact he served time during a provisional suspension right after the story broke. His suspension therefore officially began on January 25, 2011 and any results and prizes earned afterwards have been struck from cycling records. They may take his jerseys, his medals or his fourth place finish in the Tour de France, but they cannot take back the kisses he earned from the podium girls.

Why they didn't just strip all his results between January 2003 and January 2005 and call that period his ban, allowing him to get back to racing immediately is beyond me, though this back dated banning for time served and what not is surely the result of a wish to make an example of him but not actually keep him out of the sport for too long.

As a result of the positive test for which he is at last guilty, Contador has lost his 2010 Tour de France and Giro d'Italia victories, but instead of leaving the winners of these events blank, both perennial second place man Andy Schleck, and Italian Michele Scarponi have been promoted to the top step of an imaginary podium. Way to win your first Tour, Andy.

"There is no reason to be happy now," commented Andy Schleck while popping the cork in a 2010 bottle of champagne. "I battled with Contador in that race and I lost. My goal is to win the Tour de France in a sportive way, being the best of all competitors, not in court," he continued without highlighting the fact that by doping, Contador didn't beat him in a sportive way either. "If I succeed this year, I will consider it as my first Tour victory." Scarponi, as well as those elevated into podium positions (John Gadret in the Giro and Bradley Wiggins in the Tour) blabbed much the same responses as is per expectation when you gain a result in this manor.

A man familiar with gaining a retrospective victory, Oscar Pereiro, a good buddy of Contador's, was left furious about the decision. "Do you know what I think? He is innocent, I know him," he screamed over Twitter. "Hopefully he will go through with this to the end and then we will see who we pay for and who does their job like shit." I do believe however that Pereriro is still happy enough about winning the Tour himself through the retrospective disqualification of Floyd Landis in 2006.

It is believed that Contador will not actually retire after threatening to do so if he were ever found guilty, now that push has come to shove, and when his ban is served and he is free to race again we will see him do so.

Armstrong won't go to jail and the public making up their minds is enough

Before it is confined to the annals of history, or until it comes up again in three or four weeks like a your mortgage payment that won't go away, I thought I'd get a few quick words in on the latest development in the case (or as it is now, non-case) against performance enhancing drug using denier, Lance Armstrong.

This week the US Feds tossed out the investigation into Armstrong for potentially defrauding the US Government by partaking in the use of, and supply of, performance enhancing drugs while riding for the US Postal Service team, the same US Postal Service that is an arm of the US Government. We haven't heard officially why the case was dropped and nor are federal investigators under any obligation to reveal why; they only told us at all because of the intense media scrutiny on it.

Armstrong fans will see this a vindication of Armstrong's innocence, whereas the rest of us see it as a wise move for a non-sporting body to stop investigating a former sports star in a case that would cost the US tax payers a small fortune during a time when money isn't free to burn. Yes some people with a real agenda against the Texan would love to have seen this result in some hard prison time for Armstrong, but I think it's safe to say that while he may well have doped, he was just part of an era in which it was the done thing. He wasn't a very nice man, that much is also true, but not being very nice isn't really a crime in the western world.

The USADA, the American anti-doping agency has said they will continue to investigate, which is all well and good if they have the patience for going after a star who is retired and resigned to a time in the history of the sport which we all know isn't entirely rosy.

I'll not lie and say I wouldn't be interested in knowing the truth, but if I never do, I think I'll live. It's 2012 now and there's the potential for a fascinating cycling season ahead and there are current riders out there, albeit in diminishing numbers, who no doubt are still liable to cheat and who need to be watched more. If all Armstrong receives a trial in the court of public opinion, something he's had many times, then that's enough for me. I made up my mind along time ago just as I did with the likes of Richard Virenque, Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani, Joseba Beloki, Alexandre Vinokourov and Tyler Hamilton, all of whom have been judged by the public (some later admitting guilt or failing future dope tests), but seen no retrospective (or in the case of Pantani, posthumous) investigation.

Seeing Armstrong stripped of Tour titles won against other dope fiends would only leave us scanning a long way down the results sheet in speculation of who might have been the first place clean rider and therefore retrospectively awarded a Tour de France victory some ten years down the road.

Break out the podiums, aging champagne and and now considerably older podium girls for that one...and do it all again in another few years when Mr. We Thought He Was The Clean One reveals in his tell-all book that no, he was in fact, dirty.

My Comeback

The sun was beating down. The kind of sun that you long for all winter but find almost unbearable once you begin to sweat hard underneath it. My heart rate was somewhere around 190 and that was thirty seconds ago. If I had to guess now it was probably pushing 195 and showing no signs of leveling out, just like the climb in front of me. I was but four minutes into my first mountain bike race in anger in the better part of a decade.

I had already slipped off the back of the main field but made no attempt to try and go with them. I knew the distance of the race in front of me and the goal here was seeing the finish line, not the man in front. My carefully constructed plan that I had put together on the ninety minute drive home from the course following open practice the day before had been to pace myself to the conservative degree. To find myself riding at about 80 percent, and then ease off just a little. At least until the final lap.

But the reality was hitting home hard. It didn't matter that I'd been riding 20-30 miles (and sometimes nearer 50) home from work most days, when it gets down to the nitty gritty of a race, you can never replicate it. I was trying to follow my big plan, but as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry. I had seen the big climb the day before during practice, I had warmed up pretty well, but as I rolled over the top of the first climb of my first race back on my brand spanking new mountain bike I looked behind me to see where about on the climb I had coughed up my right lung.

"What in the hell is going on here?" I asked myself, before telling myself that "you're a dammed moron for buying that bloody bike and thinking this was ever a good idea."

I also took a moment to curse the man who decided it was a good idea to stick the climb right at the start of the race. Of course I knew why they put the climb there -- and if truth be told, for the well conditioned rider, the climb was far from savage -- but suffering clouds rational judgement.

"Two more runs up that, not to mention the tough challenge that the rest of the course brings," I told myself as I gulped at my water bottle and tried to compose myself for the single track section ahead. Like only ever seems to be the case when you're on a bike by yourself -- in particular on a single track trail in the middle of the woods -- with an elevated heart rate, I could hear the thump thump thump of my heart inside my head. I knew I hadn't gone all out, if I had I might have been lying somewhere about fifty yards short of the top of the hill, but I knew I had pushed a little harder than I knew I needed to, so I backed off a little more and decided that the man ahead would have to be beaten another day and got ready for the wave of riders from the next category that started one minute behind to sweep up on me and start looking to get past.

The thing about mountain biking that is different than racing on the road, is that there is rarely ever a point to properly recover. On the road you can file in behind a group, shelter from the wind over a long flat section, or indeed enjoy a long descent after a tough climb. On the mountain bike the flat sections are normally in the woods and so you are navigating loose rocks, slippery roots, off camber corners, drop-offs, or indeed short sharp little climbs or jumps that force you out of your saddle and to call on your upper body strength to heave the bike up and over. And if truth be told, there is no such thing as a flat section on a bike. The downhill sections are never smoothly paved . . . they're either single tracks with more loose rocks, slippery roots and off camber corners, or it's on a gravel path in which a crash can be spectacular if only for those watching it. If the climbs require the heart, lungs and leg muscles, then the descents and rolling single track requires the brain, upper body muscles and a different kind of heart. I've raced both road and mountain bikes over the years and while both are challenging and, in a perverse kind of way, fun in their own right, the mountain bike is infinitely harder. You only have to look at the cross over ability in the sport and how many more mountain bikers make a success on the road scene than the other way around. Some of that is down to the fame and riches that come with the road scene -- because road races are easier to track with cameras -- but many pure roadies you just know would be out of sorts in a mountain bike race.

It was after the first single track section, which involved nothing but lifting the front wheel up and over obstacles or avoiding a fall that my thighs began to really burn and I knew something wasn't right. They weren't hurting as they should and I was slowing drastically. The next fire road climb confirmed that something was wrong when suddenly I realised it. My saddle had worked itself loose and had drooped several inches in height and I was putting nowhere near the kind of power through the pedals as I should have.

How long had this been going on? Had that first climb, that seen everyone else ride off on me, made me suffer as much as I did because of the dam saddle problem? How on earth had I not noticed already? On any given casual ride you would notice almost immediately, but with the heart pumping, the lungs stretching and the mind working on keeping me upright, I clearly didn't notice. I stopped, fixed it, got back on and immediately felt better. Certainly not enough that I would claim this cost me the win, heck not even enough to claim I would have been on the back wheel of the man in front, but I felt stronger.

Until I hit the opening climb again at the end of the start of the second lap.

In the end my pre-race plan came good to a degree. I suffered hard at times in the second lap, stopping for about two minutes at one point to get myself together, and it took that to remind me that I still had to pace myself and that since fixing the saddle I had probably gone on a little too hard in that first lap. By the third lap I was starting to ride into the race and -- perhaps with the knowledge that the serious climbing was over -- I began to ride stronger. I caught and passed a handful of people that belonged to starting categories from behind me that had caught and passed me earlier in the race and finished if not feeling I could hammer in another couple of faster laps, then that I had listened to my own advice and left enough in the tank to ride the third lap better than the second.

In the end I finished the three laps in 1 hour, 45 minutes and 52 seconds. I navigated the first lap in 32:33, the second a lot slower in 37:05 as fatigue began to set in, but proving I left enough in the tank I completed the final lap in 36:12. Had I thrown all caution to the wind the last part of that second lap, I dread to think the time I'd have put up on the third circuit. I placed 12th of 12 in my race, but as I knew all along, I was out to finish the race and enjoy the fact I was riding in a race again.

The word enjoy only came into it once I was back at my car, had washed the bike, got changed and got my heart rate back to normal. It's incredible the bodies ability to forget self inflicted pain. If it couldn't nobody would give birth twice and certainly nobody would ride the Tour de France a second time. Likewise, I was congratulating myself for buying this bike and looking to sign up for the next available event.

* * * * *

That next event came just a few weeks later in a new event called 'The Tour de King' in a region just north of Toronto. It was a point to point race over 50 km with about 50 percent on single track and the other 50 on fire roads and paved roads. The race was split into two waves, the first wave was for those out to put in a serious time, the second wave was for those like me looking to race it, but enjoy it as well. In those few weeks since that first race I had spent some time riding the trails near my home and getting used to the mountain bike as opposed to the road bike once again. As a result I felt infinitely stronger than in the Championships race.

I entered myself into the unique 'Clydesdale 200lbs Plus' category and finished 8th of 22 in severely contrasting conditions to the first race. The temperature was about 4 degrees Celsius and halfway through the skies opened and it began to pour down. The single track was slippery and challenging in parts, but fast and smooth in others. Those who entered the event on a cross bike however struggled badly.

The event organizers had put on a wonderful barbecue at the finish line with a live band and cold beer, though the weather meant that most of us whose cars were parked back at the start, sat shivering and freezing while munching through the grub. It didn't stop me, among many, from drinking that cold beer though. Eventually school buses shuttled everyone back to the start to get cars and return to the finish to wash down the bike and head home again.

Still it was a fantastic event, the first point-to-point race I had done and one I'll enter again next year, though I hope that that the temperatures are more favourable.

* * * * *

The funny thing is, this winter in southern Ontario has been one of the mildest in recent memory. There has been some days in the high negative temperatures, but for the most part the snow has stayed away and a number of days have seen positive temperatures with just yesterday topping out at 12 degrees C at 9.30 p.m. The Tour de King in early October took part in one of the more miserable days of the fall/winter, which in this part of the world given the typical December/January temperatures, is just bizarre.

As a result I was able to get out on the trails a long way into the winter and enjoy that new bike. The Tour de King, however, marked the end of the competitive events until next April, but now that I've got the racing bug again, despite what my body might tell me halfway up a tough climb, I cannot wait to race again in 2012.