Today is April Fools' Day, a time of year when harmless joke stories pepper the altogether more nefarious broth of lies cooked up by a media soup kitchen in the thrall of our lizard overlords. Allegedly.
As such, we scrutinised our daily influx of press releases with more than customary suspicion this morning, in an effort to weed out the the facts from the funnies. At first we thought Shimano had jumped the gun, with the announcement that its 105 groupset is set to be dialled up to 11 speed. Well, Japan is a few hours ahead after all... but it turns out that's actually a true story (if not, there will be egg on a lot of faces tomorrow).
Next on our radar was the story claiming that British Cycling has appointed two women to its board of directors - Ha! Pull the other one, chaps! But no, this news is also legit - and very welcome too.
While it's nice that everyone is being so honest, we couldn't help feeling a bit let down by the marked absence of hilarity among the British cycling press - although Vulpine at least had the good grace to explain why:
Thankfully, our fun-loving friends down under came to the rescue, with Australian website Cycling Tips delivering a smorgasbord of deliciously ambiguous stories to tease the credulous and troll the cretinous.
From the news that Lance Armstrong is making a comeback to coach an Aussie Rules team, to a story about Greipel tackling the Tour of Flanders in a recumbent, these reports will have you scratching your head in confusion like Alf Stewart in a barber's shop.
Perhaps our favourite though, is the UCI announcement that doping is to be allowed - but only for one race a year, with riders not obliged to reveal which race they are doping for. Well, and why not indeed? Crazier things have happened.
Read the full round-up here. And remember kids, just because April Fools' Day is over doesn't mean you can believe everything you read...
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