I find professional athletes – cyclists in particular – an impressive bunch. They are hard, disciplined people who ply their trade in some of the most atrocious conditions imaginable. To become professionals, they have to be good at what they do, and smart enough to learn how to continue succeeding despite the gaps between the top of the sport continually narrowing. They have to learn to live right and train right. They have to listen to their coaches. They have to learn to control their mind and to override the signals their bodies are sending. They need to be smart enough to read an ever-changing race and smell the right moment to make their move; disaster and glory can be separated only by a split-second reaction born out of intuition mixed with experience and intelligence.
But the best athletes are also a little bit dumb. Men like Fabian Cancellara, Jens Voigt, or Tom Boonen; these are the men who flog themselves for hours on end and, when their bodies are about to break, dial it up a notch and lay it all out on the road. A smarter man would, under those circumstances, say, “You know what? This is nice, but I can also go less hard.”
Not asking that sort of question after dropping the flashlight deep in the pain cave is the perfect amount of dumb.
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Oh good, being dumb is useful in cycling. At last Tomeke and I have something in common. Being a little dumb might help in the training too; going out for a few hours with the brain doing nothing more than guiding the autopilot and keeping the power plant humming helps make the miles zoom by.
Which is what Spatacus is going to have to do when he resets the hour record this year.
I wanna go to survival camp with Jens and team Saxo Bank.
@john
Being a little dumb helps in a lot of things. Zoning out and not thinking about every pedal stroke in a 200km ride is definitely good.
The military - I suspect - also benefits from the perfect amount of dumb; you konw, people not saying, "It's possible I might be over-thinking this one, but how's about I don't walk into that bloodbath over there and get killed? How's about I stay back here at the bunker, knock back a couple brewskies, and you guys fill me in when you get back."
@john
The Hour Record. It's universally accepted by everyone who does it (except Boardman) to be the most awful thing humanly possible in cycling. You definitely have to be a bit on the dim side to say, "Yeah, that one. That's the one I want to do."
Man, that's going to be rad, though, when he does it. Campy Bless that guy.
@Marko
Have you seen the footage of him beating Levi at the Tour of Germany? The guy just fucking pounds up that hill...you can almost smell the lactic acid.
@frank
No, where can I find it? Fun to see him off to a good start at P-N though. Looks like that nasty face crash healed up well. He's cool.
@Marko
I'm not sure where to find it...I saw it on OLN or something back when it was on. I'll look around. The Cycling Photo Archive has a picture of it, though:
[album: http://filemanager.dutchmonkey.com/photoalbums.php?currdir=/download.dutchmonkey.com/Media/Pictures/Cycling/&byfile=yes&file=Schleck_F07.jpg&byfile=yes&file=Basso_10.jpg&byfile=yes&file=Voigt_06.jpg|width=595|height=512]
Jens looks like he has tourettes.
@Marko
I think riding that hard might give you Tourettes.
@frank
Apparantly having Tourettes gets you the yellow jersey in Paris-Nice. Sweet!