Lance and PED's

Ok, call me names here, but I think that the pursuit of Lance Armstrong with performance enhancing drugs (PED's) allegations is a misguided, mean spirited and frankly a stupid vendetta.

Here's my rationale - and it actually has little to do with whether Lance used PED's or not.  (I would be remiss if I also note that there has not been any hard evidence made public, and there is evidence in the form of the hundreds of test we had to do over the years that he was not found guilty, at the time).

The first part of this defence of Lance is that he's being singled out because he won.   Sure other riders have been found guilty, but that's because they tested positive at some point - Lance didn't get caught if I look at this in the worst possible light, and so he's been pursued and that equates to "presumed guilty".  Where I live, that's not how justice works.   We aren't going after the 2nd, 3rd, 9th place finishers as no one cares about how they achieved their results, provided they passed the tests at the time as Lance did.

The second aspect of the defense is the reality of professional competition, whether in the Tour de France, the Olympics or various World Championship forums.  The desire in all these situations is to win, and that carries incredible amounts of financial, patriotic and personal pressure.   Do we really think that the one person that wins is the only one using any kind of performance improvement ?  Are we really that naive ?  Every rider does something, every sprinter pushes the limits into the grey zone, and every weightlifter uses whatever it takes to win.  The key -like professional burglary- is to avoid getting caught.  To not 'use', and suffer the performance penalty has to be a worse option that winning and possibly getting caught.  Look at professional baseball losing two star players just this week to this 'scandal'.  Why do it ?  Well in the latter case I imagine it's to land greatly rewarding contracts.  For the athlete it's got to be easy to rationalise as doing what it takes to stay even.   If everyone does it, then are we still looking at the best athletic performance to win..yes.  If we test for the substances and practices, and don't find them, don't we have to assume that the race/competition was done on even grounds (as in with or without PED's) and the winner is actually the winner.  I think so.

The last aspect of my defense here is the timing.  Lance isn't competing any longer.  He's hung up his racing shoes.  So, the question begs why now ?  (Or even - why not pursue Mohammed Ali,  Carl Lewis, George Best or Eric Heiden)   What is it about Lance Armstrong that drives these sporting authorities to chase him ?  Is it his closely held political views or his potential to be a troublesome candidate from Texas. Perhaps.  These days we may still be naive about sport, but we aren't about politics, and this coordinated movement (now) against Lance smells like politics.  After all, the guy survived cancer, founded a very successful non-profit, dabbles in celebrity and seems squeaky clean - on top of being an American athletic legend.  He's a heck of a potential candidate for anyone, and without declaring red or blue...all need to fear him, and neutralise him.

I'd suggest that the man's accomplishment's are celebrated, because in the playing field at the time,  he won, then he won again and again and again and again and again and again.  That spells extraordinary achievement any way that you cook it.  

Tripping

The value is in the journey, not the destination.

That's our mantra when we go into the woods, though it's probably worth remembering when embarking on other things as well.  When we do go into the woods, we prepare like crazy, and try to think through all the variations that could happen - planning wins the day, and all of what we bring has to be woods-tested and very light as after-all we have what we carry on our backs and no more.  I say "backs" but I mean our canoe in this case.  For anyone unfamiliar with the word "portage" it means you carry all that's in your boat, and your boat (on your head), so that makes weight a concern.

Our tripping took us to a park that we hadn't visited before - on the water. Killarney in Ontario where the typical outdoors experience is complemented by quartzite mountains.  This adds to the scenery certainly, and makes the trip worth the views alone.  It also means you are moving from lake to river to lake across mountains at times, and funny thing about mountains - they're uphill. (hence the weight concern)

The park is remote, but legendary enough that it draws people far and wide, so we did see plenty of others in the wilderness.  You'll have to understand my perspective on this when I say plenty - as we have been in the woods for a few days and never seen a soul.  Plenty means perhaps 4-5 other parties a day, and often on portages and campsites we pass by. It's not Christmas in the mall.

The tripping went well - we accomplished our pre-designated routing and saw what we wanted to see, but we planned poorly in one sense.  You see we didn't build in 'down-time' activities, as the last few trips we'd done were about the 'movement'.  Our schedule normally has worked like this: you break camp by 08:30 or so, having had breakfast, packed up, and cleaned the site so it's spotless for the next adventurers.  Then you go about your route for the day, stopping as you need a break, and for lunch, and often at the end of particularly arduous portages. (A few km's with a pack and canoe on your shoulders, up and down steep hills pushes you a little).  You arrive at the next night's campsite about 4-5pm and get set up, think about dinner, get a fire going and so on.  There's down time certainly, but we don't build in relaxing time as such.  We don't bring chairs, or books, or fishing gear - these just aren't those kinds of adventures for us.  Killarney as beautiful as it is is smaller than we were used to, and so we were completing our day's trip by lunch time.  While that certainly isn't bad, the truth is we hadn't planed for a set of half-days, and hence it wasn't attractive to us as an experience.

The first afternoon we ended up storing our boat in the woods on the lake we would sleep on, and packed up our load to the highest local mountains just after lunch. We aimed to do a 10km or so trail and got lost, so still probably covered some distance, but found our way back to the boat a little tired, chagrinned and more than aware that Teva's are great water sandals, and not so good for mountaineering.  Still we were at camp by 4pm.  The next day, we were on our camping lake by 11am.  So we pushed out of the park a day early.

In hindsight, we did what we aimed to do, though if I was going to do it again tomorrow, I'd pack differently, with more campsite (luxuries) that we could pass the time with.  I like relaxing as much as the next person.  I don't feel that we 'failed' in any way either, just that we'd planned poorly. That meant we couldn't enjoy the full potential of the journey we undertook.

I Got Fired Today

Not a great day, as days go.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we don't do well enough against the established standard, and that's what happened I think.   I regret it happening as it doesn't feel good, but intellectually I understand the decision and I know it didn't happen because I slacked off, or didn't put enough effort into it.

Specifically, I was fired from an associated commitment I had - teaching a segment on sales system automation at a locally respected business school (university). This is something I did that was above and beyond my normal work-life.  I enjoyed it, and tried to pass along the benefit of my experience.  I think I was successful in doing that, but by an objective measure, that's also not what I was there to do - I was asked to address an area of business life that is painful and problematic for almost everyone, and to do so within a mixed group of 20 or so people from different companies, in three hours time.  My remit sat amidst other learning these same people had taken on - ranging from conceptual and theoretical ideas about how sales and marketing work together to presentation skills.

The disconnect happened in expectations I think.  You see my area was almost the only one where the audience had some previous experience, and came into the time we had together with genuine pains. I differentiate this from a more generic desire to know more, or work smarter in general.  In many ways, I was asked to try to do the impossible, and I saw that and discussed it with those that had assembled the couse materials.   But at the end of the day, participants rate these courses, and we live or die by these ratings.  I've no issues with that - just that my judges addressed my work as to whether it was applicable to, and/or solved their issues vs the other presenters who would have been judged on whether the ideas were good, or potentially offered an implementation pathway towards working better. I'd offer a medical analogy of a class wanting to know about practicing medicine in general, who arrive  in this session with a stomach ache.  My task was to educate them, and cure the stomach ache - everyone else just had to educate them.

So, in taking on the impossible, did I see this as a potential outcome ?  Yes, but I didn't acknowledge it as a realistic outcome - again with mismatched expectations.

One of the little sayings I like is that if you don't fail 20% of the time, you're probably not trying hard enough.  I'm going to chalk up this experience to that I think - I tried to do the impossible and failed.  I'm glad I tried though.

Shanghai

Work took me to China this week – a long haul for 3 days to be sure, but interesting and instructional all the same.  Few places in the world look like China – the ultra modern (bordering on garish) architecture emphasized with neon light shows.  There’s a correlation here usually – the uglier the building, the more dramatic the multi-colored lighting effect.  The city hums which in 35-43 degree heat (that’s ‘really hot’ to you Fahrenheit types) is all the more amazing as the latin siesta approach has never taken root here.

Shanghai is special amongst Chinese cities, with its historic Bund district of western decadence and seemingly more commercial focus too – Beijing can have the ‘State’ power structures, we just want to have fun and make a few yuan seems the city’s beck and call.  Like New York and Hong Kong, it burps and throbs in barely concealed energy.  It’s exorbitantly pricey and dirt cheap at the same time.  It’s also a real tourist mecca for the Chinese themselves, with the waterfront boardwalk heaving with picture takers from all over this big country.

Shanghai has some tremendous infrastructure, the magnetic levitation train for example that runs from the airport to the city (sort of) capable to speeds up to 400 km/h.  But it arrives at an odd, non-central location.  Subway’s criss-cross the city, but where they connect, you actually come up to ground level, and go back down.   It’s a city of visionaries, where the wow-effect is much more important than usability.

English capabilities and sign-age is smattered across the landscape – billboards and international brands deceptively suggest multilingualism where very little exists.  Don’t get into a taxi unless you have your address written in Putongua – and even then you’ll argue with the driver who doesn’t feel like going in that direction.  (Did I mention it feels like 45 degrees out there on the street ?)

China remains a study in complimentary contrasts and Shanghai is its’ darling.