mercy

Behold. A hard man:

the story

I mean, really. Is there a more hard-core sport than cycling? Misery, misery, misery, and then TRIUMPH! Oh... The glory of this sport. But it is not for the pansy-arsed faint of heart.

It's as Jon and I were discussing on our four hours riding through the occasionally snow-covered roads of rural Cumberland County in temperatures that never rose above the 20s, the only two to complete the long-publicized tree and farm race: Cycling requires physical toughness, sure. But it's the mental fortitude, the disposition to sacrifice and suffer that makes a dude (a gender neutral term) on a bike a cyclist.

What a sweet picture. Greipel, you're my new hero. Best of luck to you in the classics.

...

And then there's the poor dude who just didn't quite have enough gas:


For Footon - Servetto's David Vitoria, however, the finish came 200m too late. The exhausted Swiss rider was swept up by the peloton at the foot of the steep finishing pitch after spending 195 kilometres off the front.

"It’s a pity, because the stage was extremely hard due to the weather, and I bonked in the last three or four kilometres," said Vitoria. "I knew that the final slope was really steep, but [I] got on it with no energy.

"I did what I could, and that's how cycling works: sometimes it makes you happy with less effort, and today, when I did so much work, I was given no prize.


Yup. I hear ya, dude. I hear ya.