CYCLING QUOTES

Here is a bunch of quotes about our sport/pastime/addiction to which most of you can relate. (courtesy of Amazon) "You not bike rider, you nobody."--Eddie B.

"I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft... As for me, give me a fixed gear!" -- Henri Desgrange

"But to say that the race is the metaphor for the life is to miss the point. The race is everything. It obliterates whatever isn't racing. Life is the metaphor for the race." -- Donald Antrim

"Eat before you are hungry. Drink before you are thirsty. Rest before you are tired. Cover up before you are cold. Peel off before you are hot. Don't drink or smoke on tour. Never ride just to prove yourself." -- Paul de Vivie

"Perhaps the single most important element in mastering the techniques and tactics of racing is experience. But once you have the fundamentals, acquiring the experience is a matter of time." -- Greg LeMond

"It never gets easier, you just go faster." -- Greg LeMond

"The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community." -- Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895

"To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain....at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there's no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks." -- Scott Martin

"Is Gabe off the front or off the back?" - Jake, arriving late onto the MB spectating crew and trenchantly illustrating Gabe's propensity for being as oft one as the other.

"Winning never gets repetitive" - Mat "Cashmoney" Glaser

"What's wrong with wearing a wet chammy?", Brian, 8 hours into a wet chammy day

"I've never felt so warmed up for a race in my life" Brian extolling the benefits of a Lance-delivered, Mat-designed ITT warmup. And he never felt so good as afterwards when he changed out of his chammy immediately following the race.

"Why the hell is your dog wearing socks?" - Everyone from every school to Sean, whose dog was wearing socks.

"Im gonna be a pro spectator." - Mat, on the joys of not racing.

"I'm pretty much mediocre all-around." - Kate, who finished the weekend with two victories and one second place behind her teammate.

"Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There's something wrong with a society that drives a car to workout in a gym." - Bill Nye, the Science Guy

"Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride." - John F. Kennedy

"If you were a spectator on one of the mountain passes today, the super-light bikes would be little different in appearance from the machines of years ago, pedaled by earlier heroes, Coppi, Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, LeMond, Roche. They would look like the bikes our dads rode when we were kids. But the Tour is a commercial race, and innovation must be given its place on the catwalk, or in this case the velodrome.... - James Waddington, Bad to the Bone

"The riders come out, knights for the tournament, neck to thigh in slippery Lycra with the sheen of deep space condoms, faired helmets on their heads like the glans from another galaxy and neoprene pixy-boots to slide the air around their feet, mounted on gaudily caparisoned donkeys - the carbon fibre monocoque monoblade." - James Waddington, Bad to the Bone

"What was supposed to be a summer of fun on the bike turned into a year, then two years. It certainly wasn't a calculated plan to have a career as a cyclist." - Derek Bouchard-Hall

"Pain is a big fat creature riding on your back. The farther you pedal, the heavier he feels. The harder you push, the tighter he squeezes your chest. The steeper the climb, the deeper he digs his jagged, sharp claws into your muscles." - Scott Martin

"There was a second supremely sweet moment of victory. As I made my way through the finish area, I passed the Cofidis team. Assorted members of the organization stood around, the men who I felt had left me for dead in a hospital room. "That was for you," I said as I moved past them." - Lance Armstrong after winning the opening time trial and becoming the leader of the 1999 Tour de France

"There are no races. Only lotteries." -- Jacques Anquetil

"I won! I won! I don't have to go to school anymore." -- Eddy Merckx, after winning his first bike race

"I guess I just have bigger ovaries." -- Missy Giove

"I was a hero, and a second afterwards it was all over. Casartelli was dead so what I had achieved was worth nothing." -- Richard Virenque, on winning the Tour de France stage in which Fabio Casartelli died in a crash

"He's dancing on the pedals in an immodest way!" -- Phil Liggett, on a victory by Dag-Otto Lauritzen

"The Europeans look down on raising your hands. They don't like the end-zone dance. I think that's unfortunate. That feeling - the finish line, the last couple of meters - is what motivates me." -- Lance Armstrong

"It was eleven more than necessary." -- Jacques Anquetil, after winning a race by twelve seconds

"The bicycle riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the sun. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves." -- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

"A mountain bike race is a constant hard effort for two to three hours. In road racing the efforts often come in surges. You ride easy for awhile then you have to make an extreme, hard effort. They are two different efforts, two different forms of suffering." -- John Tomac

"I picked my head up during an interval and saw an enormous ostrich zigzagging in the road. I swung wide to get by - and just as I did he started chasing me. These guys can motor. I had to sprint to drop him." -- Tyler Hamilton

"To prepare for a race there is nothing better than a good pheasant, some champagne and a woman." -- Jacques Anquetil

"Ride lots." -- Eddy Merckx

"I'm fascinated by the sprinters. They suffer so much during the race just to ge to the finish, they hang on for dear life in the climbs, but then in the final kilometers they are transformed and do amazing things. It's not their force per se that impresses me, but rather the renaissance they experience. Seeing them suffer throughout the race only to be reborn in the final is something for fascination." -- Miguel Indurain

"Downhill's the future of the sport. Cross-country's not geared for TV. Some fat guy watching it with a beer in one hand and potato chips in the other is going to say, 'I can do that.' America likes to see people crash." -- Missy Giove

"My favorite courses are nasty, technical downhills that frighten my mom." -- Josh Ivey

"I'm lucky that mountain biking wasn't around when I was 20, because I wouldn't have won the Tour de France. It's my kind of sport - hard, individualistic, and not a lot of tactics." -- Greg LeMond

"Cycling is like a church - many attend, but few understand." -- Jim Burlant

"Some people pay a thousand dollars for a tattoo. This scar cost me twenty grand." -- Matt Hoffman

"First week you feel good, the second week you lose strength. Third week, fucked." -- Per Pedersen, on the Tour de France

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." -- Gloria Steinem

"The main thing is to not cut yourself and bleed to death in the tub." -- Frankie Andreu (Retired USPS Racer) on leg shaving advice

"I looked back and bikes and riders were flipping in the air. There must have been 20-30+ riders in the pile." -- overheard after Early Bird 4/5 race

"I'm gonna show you a hill that would choke a mule." -- President G.W. Bush on his MTB moments before losing his front-wheel traction and flying over his bars down a steep drop-off.