Nowadays everything is captured. We all carry a device of sorts that is able to video, monitor, track, record and trace our every experience and movement. As cyclists, we love the ability to retrospectively analyse past rides, routes, physiological performance, speeds, and personal bests. From an app on your smartphone to a state of the art military-spec GPS, we are able to track our rides and watch the miles accumulate over time. Its great.
But surely there is an personal ethical boundary that can be crossed when it comes to boosting your own profile? And with the transparency available, you hardly need to be a forensic detective to figure out who is creating pseudo-workout entries. But apart from cheating yourself by loading rides that you didn't do, consider that certain tracking is simply superhuman and quite frankly, not possible. Now bear with me, because here comes the crux of the entry - why would one of our very own founding members fraudulently load rides onto his Endomondo profile? Its one thing that The Oracle says he's away in KwaZulu Natal, but are we going to believe him when he says he's been out riding the Holla Trails when his status reveals the following entry:
77km in 58 minutes? And a PB 50km in 0.03seconds? Now I know Simon has experimented with various protein shakes and energy gels over the years, but not even a secret Lance Armstrong cocktail is going to propel you to those impressive stats.
Simon - we love you for who you are. Please don't feel you need to impress us to these extremes. Just come home safely from KZN and we can all go for a gentle ride together...if we can keep up, that is.
And leave the motorbike at home.
