Chickens can be mean

How'd you like to have a teammate say this about you? The Chicken wasn't too happy with his (former?) team leader Menchov today...

"I am very happy with today," said the skinny Dane. "Now there is no doubt about who is the captain of this team is. I stayed close to Valverde because he had another teammate up there. I felt like it was a victory for me to be able to fight back the 25 times Valverde tried to attack. I felt very clear in the head today seeing the tactics of the race. It was disappointing that Menchov couldn't get his ass over the Galibier. I think it's a climber's Tour."

The above quote was taken from today's Velonews Tour Summary report.

As far as my riding is concerned I tried to imitate the Chicken by doing the Suncrest double (climbed the north side, descended, then rode back up the south side) this morning. Unfortunately my performance was nothing short of dismal. For some reason I just can't climb fast. Maybe I should just accept this as fact and stop wasting my time. The problem is that for some strange reason I think climbing si fun. Well, fun in an extremely painful sort of way. Today I started and ended my ride with the guys from Team Inertia. Curt is finishing up his pre-tour training before jumping on a plane later this week for France. Thus far he has yet to secure a contract but given the current size of his calves, and the relative ease with which he completed intervals at 280 and 310 watts this morning, any team possessing a few grams of common sense would swap him out for one of their existing, lagging riders. With a little work, and a few gold chains as accessories, he could look like any number of European pros!