Introduction

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Before you begin this book you should be aware of a few facts about its methodology and underlying process.

To start with, please understand that I have absolutely none of the standard credentials often considered a prerequisite for authoring such a work.

You will not find any of the standard blurbs on the cover such as: Ph.D, M.D., nor even Trainer of Champions (whom you may or may not know), nor any of the other formal certifications generally required for publication.

If the clear good sense that you find in these pages is not itself overwhelmingly supportive of the truth presented, and your own experience using these ideas does not convince you through your own success, then no amount of ancillary supporting documentation should persuade you anyway. 

If you are not convinced by what you find in these pages, then it is I who have failed in the communication, so you may blame me—hard... again and again, and without mercy—especially if some other writer finally enlightens you through a better handling of the material, and you realize you have wasted much time by not understanding and using these simple principles.

Otherwise, throughout your reading never forget that the final responsibility lies in your own understanding of the concepts, and if you do misunderstand an exercise or idea presented, and you do fall off your bicycle or overwork part of your anatomy to the point of failure, it is not I who has caused it, but you who have done it to yourself.

Be careful out there.

In any case, standard proofs of legitimacy are intended for mass market consumption.

Books found in commercial stacks are assumed to be pored over by prospective buyers who may need an extra smack in the face to be enticed past their inability to tell a book by its cover.

Fortunately, these sorts of hooks into the reader are not needed here, because by its very nature this book assumes it is speaking to a micro niche corner of a very small market.

The use of mass marketing techniques could not change that fact in the least.

Furthermore, the usual encouragements to confidence are perhaps impossible for an innovative (some have said seminal) work such as Cycling Performance Simplified.

Its point of view is a radical departure from the ordinary, so the sideways process of gaining professional credentials might actually have precluded the clear vision required to see the new situation that is posed by the recent development of on-cycle power meters.

Ironically, although this book clearly presents ground breaking concepts, the roots of the work are based on a rather obsolete concept—that of amateur athletics.

The term amateur sport has become an anachronism, as very few of the forces that used to compel people into athletics has survived past the over-professionalizing of virtually every human activity, at least within the United States.

The old ideas that Democracy is based on individual initiative, innovation, and commitment, have long since been supplanted by the single notion that the only thing worthwhile is a pursuit of aggregate wealth doled out by (and only by) the largest sectors of the corporate conglomerates.

Way back when, the worst thing that could be said about Russian athletes (Commies as they were termed, the terrorists or boogiemen of the day), was that they must not be compared to America's own finest examples of athletics, because the Commie athletes were supported by the state.

They were in fact considered professionals (most likely on drugs) while America exclusively sent her best amateurs into international competition.

Those Commie bastards were cheating by using full time professionals.

Things are different now, but it doesn't seem so long ago that we destroyed the old mold by sending an actual team of professional athletes into a formerly amateur venue to whoop-ass .

Few remember the time when a world-class athlete would likely be holding down a menial day job in order to support their passion while living on a subsistence, and doing it with no concern (or prospects at all) of gaining widespread fame and fortune.

Now so much is about the rush to corporate sponsorship that the sport of cycling itself has become synonymous with drug use and the fast win despite the consequences.

This book is not going to change that. It merely presents a few simple guidelines that you may not have thought about which may help you improve your cycling performance along solid lines of true accomplishment.

This is the slow way to get really fast.

Your accomplishment will be monitored and chronicled by your own judgment while using information provided by the newest generation of on-cycle power meters.

These are tools which offer a simple objective repeatable reference.

You are going to love them.

-Bob Fugett

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