Though I’m about to mock it, I appreciate Chris Carmichael’s blend of optimism and opportunism which has allowed him to create the CTS Empire. In addition to creating a stable of ready-to-help coaches and managing to wriggle onto OLN (urk…”VS” now, eh?) at every opportunity, CTS sends out an email newsletter. The most recent one points out that donuts and alfredo sauce are not good for you as training fuel, not to mention fireproof “cheese”.
But, I do have to wonder about the graphics which they chose to illustrate this insightful piece of investigative journalism. That’s it right (or rather “left”) there. At first consideration, it may appear that the young lady is about to eat this gastric destructive device, thereby ruining her training regimen for the day (or possibly week). That assumption would appear to be flawed for a few reasons.
a) Spotless nails. If the woman in question is an active cyclist, there would have to be some measure of grit or chain grease under her nails, which would by necessity be shorter. Or, she’s on a fully-funded team where the wrenches do all the work, and her caloric intake is monitored by a team nutritionist, in which case she’d never have the chance to get her mitts on that glazed goodness.
b) Nekkidness. The assumption here is that the woman in question has chosen to put on lipstick but no clothes, then wander out to the kitchen (or possibly down to the local donut shop) for this treat. Yeaok…
c) Mouth position. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but most folks I’ve noticed eating donuts (or bagels, which share the same general exterior shape) would have retracted their lips by this point, in order to expose their teeth to the shiny sugaryness. That would mean that there’s another approach involved, or some sort of enticement being given to whoever shares the same point of view with the photographer.
She’s clearly offering up the tasty torus. The only conclusion one can reach is that she’s some sort of fried flour treat pushing harpie, gliding effortlessly through all countermeasures designed to stop her, on a mission to convince libido-driven-but-repressed cyclists into scarfing these performance killing caloric artery bombs. There is no help within the CTS article as to resist the charms of this type of sultry wench attack (which T-Mobile may have actually tried during the 2003 Tour).
The whole point of the supplied graphic element seems to be that bike riders are laying around, with seductive maidens offering up donuts….and I’m going to sidestep entirely any observation about the subtext implicit in that imagery.