Originally Posted by
pdlamb
This thread is still dragging on?!
OK, let me ask another serious question. What are you fit for?
I can't think of any job or sport, other than generic gym rat, where the number of pushups and squats you can do would impress me. Manual labor? No, if your average bike ride is only five (5) minutes, it doesn't sound like you'd have the endurance to be able to carry packages of shingles around a rooftop, or pick up lumber and carry it from where the delivery truck left it to where the journeyman carpenter needs it, or even shoveling dirt or gravel into or out of a bucket, for any length of time. Probably not until the first break, much less a full day's work. Sports? Better knock out your boxing opponent in one round, or you'll get pounded. Football? are you going to be shuttled off after three downs? Baseball? Hope you hit a homer or strike out, it's a long way between bases after 7-8 innings.
Or do you perceive bicyclists as 95 pound weaklings, and decided to come over and kick some sand?
Not whom you were quoting, but an interesting post. Work in my shop was very physical, even aerobic once one got good at it. I was always on my employees to go to the gym so they'd get strong enough to do repetitive hard manual labor, which wasn't sufficiently continuous to make one really fit just by doing the work. Manual labor is really tough that way. If you're a roofer and don't get to roof every day, it sucks. I run into folks with injuries from doing that kind of thing all the time. Workman's comp is a drag on the system. I like the Chinese system, where everyone exercises on break! OTOH, I was never such a tyrant as to make my employees do that.
It really is exactly like you say. If you want to play at any competitive sport (or do manual labor) and be successful, you work your butt off every day. I remember Lance answering a reporter's question about how they tapered for the Prologue. He said, "Until 3 days ago we were on our bikes 6 hours a day." That's just what one does. You want to get good at whatever, you train, it's what you do. You try to fit your life in around that.