Why train when you can just ride?

This was posted on BikesnobNYC a couple weeks back and it still cracks me up. After years of racing and beating the crap out of my body, I'm pretty much at a level of grumpiness that is summed up below:

"Personally, I'm against training. In fact, I feel that if you're against doping in cycling, then you should be against training too. Some riders have access to more and better training, which in turn forces their competitors to attempt to match that training in order to level the field. In turn, the former riders seek out increasingly esoteric training methods to reclaim their advantage. The result is a cycle as vicious as it is dorky, and as anybody who's spent any time around bike racers knows, training (like drugs) can take a horrible toll on a person. Sure, training is much less likely to kill you than drugs are, but in large doses, it is almost guarenteed to make you incredibly boring and unpleasant to be around. If I want to have fun, I'll ride my bike. But if I want to spend a lot of time around people who constantly monitor their bodies with electronics, can't drink alcohol, and go to bed early, I'll volunteer my time at a hospital."

So that's it..no training plans for a while. If I ride 25 hours in 3 days, its because I've planned an over-ambitious, spur-of-the-moment 3 day epic over a warm weekend, not because that's what a piece of paper says I should do. I WILL NOT spin for hours this winter on the trainer, and if I can't suck it up and drag myself outside to ride (hell, I only live a mile from 15 miles of trails) then I ought to just not ride. Yes, this winter I'm going to try the "riding for fun" non-training plan and see how that goes.