I don’t know what is meant by Kate being “terminal”, but at the end of the day, the article was likely pulled because 1) she had some basic facts wrong re: F1 (there are not multiple “sprints” on any weekend, 2) R&T drivers are likely to bombard social media after reading a piece by a self-admitted “socialist”, 3) R&T readers don’t care about cycling and likely don’t care for cyclists 4) she pretty much stuck her thumb in the eyes of the company who paid for her to be there and 5) it was really more of a social commentary vs. a piece for a car mag.
Overall, factual errors aside, I thought it was a very good article, if perhaps a bit over-written (but that is also Kate’s writing style). But again, not surprised it got pulled down. At least Escape was able to publish it anyway.
That may all be true, but any one of those things would and should have been caught in the editing process, especially for a story that had been in the works for months, not an hour after publishing it. At least not at any serious publication, which maybe says more about Road & Track than about Wagner’s piece.
Sadly, I suffer from an unprofitable disease that makes me only ever capable of writing about the experience I’m having. The doctors say it’s terminal.
The key word to me is unprofitable. And the story started with the editor explaining that R&T pulled the story from their web site. No wonder.
My point is that she is unprofitable because she can’t enjoy a $70 steak with billionaires. On the other hand, she can take the free journalist buffet at the Tour and crush hard on millionaire riders Pogacar. She crushed on Hamilton too.
She was fun when she appeared as the wide eyed newbie on The Cycling Podcast.
The oil is evil and I just can’t enjoy this steak with these pleasant rich people is just a weird vibe IMO. But she can crush hard on rich cycling dues or super rich race car dude even though their money comes from that oil. It’s a strange dichotomy to me.
Yeah, it seems like a weird article to get bent out of shape about. I think it would be more at home on Defector, but fits ok over at EC. The whole point of the piece is the author’s perspective on the relationship between sports and the companies that pay tons of money to associate their name with something people enjoy (racing) rather than something that is more fraught (petrochemicals).
As for writing this piece while putting the athletes on pedestals, she mentioned a literal order of magnitude difference of salaries between the athletes at the top of the two sports in that piece. I mean, that’s the whole deal, right? F1 has way, way more money pouring into it than cycling.
To others who joined last year: will you be renewing? My year’s membership is up in a week or 2, and I’m on the fence.
I would very much like to support independent journalism, but I have found myself engaging less and less with the content on both the site and the podcasts and as such I’m not convinced it’s a good use of my cycling budget*. It may be simply a snapshot of when I’ve tuned in, as it were, but they seem to have developed a weird F1 fixation and LR does the race coverage way better. I very much do enjoy the product reviews, though they seem to have got thinner on the ground.
Anyway, what’s everyone thinking?
*TR, Zwift and Strava Premium are staples that I can’t see going
Yup, already renewed last month with their 13-month promo. Even as someone who has no interest in the racing side that dominates the site, I like what I get from the tech side enough to support them as a whole.
I re-upped, but lowered myself to the $69 level. I don’t have any use for the discord chat which I find utterly confusing. I mostly just subscribe for the tech stuff.
I do admit that I don’t tune in nearly as much to the podcasts now that there are so many of them, but I also just plain listen to podcasts a lot less these days and pick and choose segments or episodes.
I also tried out the paid Strava service for the first time ever and won’t be renewing that. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what I get from the paid service that I didn’t get from the free one. I also let my TR subscription lapse for the very first time and will just be using Join. I have a hard decision to make on TP vs. Intervals.icu coming soon. I am also currently going through all my streaming services and figuring out what to keep and what to let go. I think I’m going to consolidate my Cloud, Music, and News services all through AppleOne. Video streaming is going to leave either my wife, my kid, or myself disappointed. We have far too many and I just can’t justify paying for so many services any more.
100%…like @Pbase I have zero use for the Discord channel and had considered dropping down to the $69 level, but then the Member’s Only pods came out and I enjoy those quite a bit so I just renewed at the full level.
As is often my rationale, lord knows I drop ~$100 on dumber stuff related to cycling.
I renewed at the member level with the 13 month promotion. I listen to almost all of the podcasts while walking my dogs, and read a bunch of the articles, so figured paying to get the member’s only podcast was a small price to pay.
Ha, glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t get discord.
I never subscribed to EC as I find Caley Fretz incredibly off putting, but I do hope they do well, we need all the independent journalism we can get.
I am actually on a knife edge of letting TR go as well. I’ve been a subscriber since like 2015 or something, kind of nervous to cut the cord, but it’s basically only a workout player for me these days.
I really really really want to boot TP as they do zero progression on stuff that maters….their calendar work well and i really like being able to cut and paste previous workout blocks, and i have multiple plans with them…so they kind got a hold of me. Intervals.icu is so much more deserving of money over TP.
Same. I want to give my money to the guy working hard to deliver the best possible product, but I find it confusing at times. I think it’s just that I’ve been using TP for long enough that I know how things work, but I don’t really know what to do to teach myself how to get more out of Intervals. I should probably start investigating, Example - today there was an interesting post here with a lot of talk about Z2 HR vs. Power and decoupling, and a multiple people posted a cool chart that shows how theirs looks, and I have no idea where that chart is in I.icu and that makes me wonder what else is out there that I’m unaware of.
OK, that’s it. I need to start digging to figure out where people are learning this stuff.
I really like Escape Collective - Love the pods and think the site is solid when I have some time to kill. I’ve come to enjoy discord - but I wouldn’t miss that piece of it.
click on activity in calendar > click on ‘activity power’ (directly under activity in left pane) > click ‘charts’ but at bottom of activity power page > make sure decoupling or power/HR box is checked
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