I hate people who cross the street, crossing against a red pedestrian light, talking on the phone, paying no attention, and expect me to dodge them when they run in front of me. To the girl who did just that this morning, I'll repeat the message I'm sure you did not hear. "WAKE THE F*** UP! MOVE IT!"
My wife's buddy at work apparently spotted me moving down L Street in traffic after the HON ride this morning. Wife calls me at work, says, "You were riding on L Street this morning, right? Well, X saw you, and said you were really hauling butt." Now, I know I'm pretty slow as racers go, but still that felt pretty good. Full disclosure - I was motorpacing and car surfing at about 30-35 MPH the whole way. I was in a hurry to get to a meeting.
Major shoutouts to my buddy Jon, who completed the Wednesday Hill Ride, AKA the Hell of the North (Arlington). He's a rec rider who is taking some serious steps to ramp up his performance and he's hanging tough on a ride that tortures some pretty strong racers. Yeah, Jon was strung out off the back for maybe half of each climb, but that's much better than all the guys who can always find good reasons to not ride the HON.
I'm bummed the hockey season is over. I was just getting into it. Oh well, the Tour de France is getting cranked up on Saturday and that will take away some of the hurt. I think I'll be backing the big rouleurs in this one - the altimetria shows two or three tough climbing days, one in the Pyrenees, and one, possibly two in the Alps. If the big guys - Ulrich, Salvodelli, Hincapie, maybe even Boonen - can limit their losses on these very few tough days and stage a couple climber-punishing big ring breakaways on the flatter stages in the lower hills, they have a good chance. I'm with Lance Armstrong, who pointed out this course is tailor made for a guy like Jan Ulrich who can crush monster gears at high speed up shallower (i.e. 6%) grades. Who do y'all pick? Answer in comments, or shoot me an email if that's how you want to be.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Cancer Fundraiser
The Fat Cyclist, Elden Nelson, has an interesting challenge relating to cancer fundraising underway. Feeling generous, or just in need of a laugh? Check it out.
Ride Perceptions: C&O Canal Trip
This blog entry wasn’t supposed to be here and I wasn’t supposed to be writing it. Not today (Monday), anyhow.
I was supposed to be pedaling my fixed gear Surly Cross Check down the C&O Canal right now, having finished up a nice breakfast in Williamsport. At this very moment, I should have been tooling around in Williamsport, working out a couple creaks in my legs, and getting ready to buzz down to Whites Ferry for lunch and a swim, and then an easy spin into Georgetown.
It didn’t work out that way. Mother nature, it seems, is in fact a real mother.
We had planned this trip for a couple months, and had been thinking about it since February or so. Jon, my LBS owner, and several of his friends who are mainly mountain bikers, but who hit the road with the LBS training rides, were going to ride fixed down the C&O Canal. It would be a two-day blitz from Cumberland, MD, roughly a century a day. It would be hard, but fun, with a bit of camping in the middle, lots of carb loading, and hours of peacefully spinning fixies down the Canal.
It didn’t happen that way at all.
On Saturday, Jon and I discussed the weather. We tried to figure out if we had a decision point lurking out there. For several days, the weather was forecast to be hideous, with thunderstorms, constant rain, basically apocalyptic weather, but nothing happened. The forecast was always wrong. So in spite of predictions of heavy rain, we decided to go.
We loaded up our gear – bikes, panniers full of camping gear and extra bike clothes, and minimal casual clothes – shorts, T-shirts, Tevas, and a swimsuit. This along with tents, bivvy bags, and tarps. We stopped in Laurel at Trevor’s place to pick up the bikes and the other guys on the ride. As we were driving up, it was pretty clear, but overcast. We stopped in Hancock for breakfast. John asked the waitress about the weather, and she told us that rain had been predicted for days, but basically had not shown up. “But it’s supposed to rain all day today.”
We sort of looked at each other after that, and everybody had that look on their face, where hope triumphs over reality and experience.
As we drove from Hancock to Cumberland, the rain started. At first it was heavy. Then it got really heavy. Then it became really, really heavy, and we got slammed with some fog too. It wasn’t the worst weather conditions I’ve ever seen, but you could easily slide into a guardrail, or spin out in it, or back-end the guy in front. Jonathan kept his truck on the road and safe, the guys in the other truck managed to do so as well, and we rolled into Cumberland around 9:30 or so. Jon and I talked and decided we’d mention our idea to leave the camping gear in the bikes and just stay at Tim’s hotel in Williamsport, since camping in heavy mud would be more agonizing than was really necessary.
After a mandatory bathroom break and filling hydration packs and loading the bikes, we set off in what had turned into a gentle to non-existent drizzle. The first few miles seemed pretty easy, the trail was packed gravel, and it was dry enough that it seemed the heavy stuff we had faced in the mountains might have been localized. There were a few puddles and the bikes were throwing a little muddy spray, but maybe it would be okay. Maybe we might dodge a bullet on the weather…
Or maybe not. Within 10 miles, the heavy rain started up, and as the trail moved away from civilization, it became a bit rougher and more potholed. We quickly got soaked in enough mud and grit to make the hardest cast iron Flahute proud. Most of the trail is two-track, as if a pickup truck or wagon had been driven up and down it for years – which is probably the case. So water pools in the wheel tracks, and anywhere there is a slightly soft spot, you get a puddle. We hit puddle after puddle as we tooled along in the rain, and eventually had to break up out of paceline and into pairs, two abreast with a substantial gap, since so much muck was getting thrown up at each puddle. Yea, verily, the bicyclists went two by two, up to the freakin’ ark.
Now a word about puddles. A calm puddle has mud at the bottom, but the water on top is clear, and you can estimate what lies beneath. Sometimes you can see rocks, or sticks, or deeper holes. But when puddles get stirred up, you can’t see to the bottom of them. The mud obscures what lies beneath the surface. When you roll into one an a bike, it’s a bit like Christmas morning. You simply don’t know what you’ll get.
Some puddles were fine to ride through. They were shallow, short, and had a firmly packed gravel base. These didn’t throw much muck, and they didn’t upset the bikes. This was important, because with full panniers and rain soaked gear, not to mention skinny cyclocross tires, the bikes weren’t exactly riding on rails and normal instabilities took on epic proportions, causing tank slappers, un-fix-able head shake, and slithery rear ends. Other puddles obscured deep potholes and mud pits. You hit them, and nearly go over the bars, with an amazing amount of shock being transmitted through the chainstays to your butt and back. Sometimes you could recognize the pothole puddles if you could spot the telltale circular patches of differently-colored muddy water in the middle of a larger puddle, but with mud-smeared sunglasses, and moving at 15-16 MPH, that wasn’t happening much. Other puddles obscured rocks, which was tough because a glancing blow from a rock would tend to wrench the handlebars partly out of your hands. By far the worst, however, were the puddles with soft, muddy bottoms. We would ride into these and lose all momentum. Rather than enjoying a smooth fixed gear spin through them, the puddle would instantly scrub 5 MPH off our speed, and we’d have to expend quite a bit of effort to regain the momentum, once we thrashed through the puddle.
If it sounds like this ride perspective focuses a lot on puddles, it is because we spent 5+ hours riding through puddles; perhaps 25% of the trail was covered in puddles, at least while it rained – which was 80% of the time.
It was a hell of a lot of work, and very depressing business after a while.
The guys were pretty game for it though. Timmy, who is a really powerful rider, was the only guy on a geared bike. He just kept cruising along, and seemed to be hanging tough. Trevor just gutted it out, probably cared about how bad it was, but you wouldn’t know it to talk to him. Jon, my LBS guy, was doing fine but seemed kinda of irritated by the whole thing, and the other John, who is about 10 years older than any of us, and with a very slight build, was struggling with a heavy load. The lack of size probably hurt him a lot, since the bikes scrubbed off so much momentum at each puddle.
So it went for about 45 or 50 miles. We stopped every 10 or 15 for a bite to eat and some drinks, and to wash the mud out of our eyes at the handy trailside water pumps. No, really, out of our eyes. I rode with one eye open for about ten miles at one point, so much mud was in my eye that it hurt badly to open it. Sure enough, when the mud cleared out of that eye, and I slowly started opening it, I took a blast of mud right in the other eye. Arrrrrgghhh! This all was quite a bit of hard work.
The PawPaw tunnel was a hell of a thing as well. It was dark as night, colder than a well digger’s ass, and the concrete sidewalk/bikeway was as lumpy as stale gravy. Bring a small bike light if you ride this portion of the trail. Just take my word on that – you wouldn’t want to experience the 30 foot dropoff, or ride into the guardrail. It was the highlight of the riding portion of the trip - an eerie cavern of a thing, and the trail smelled totally different on one side of it, compared to the other.
So grind on we did. Though we were only averaging around 14.5 MPH, it was hard to keep up that speed. It was basically like a low speed weightlifting exercise, grinding along at 80 RPM – wonderful stuff for a mountain biker, notso-hotso for a roadie who doesn’t train to work at that speed. This was compounded by my V-brakes, which were jammed with mud and dragging for perhaps 15 miles before I figured out what that grating noise was, and opened them up. My bike was geared a little too high, so I frequently took off from the front, spun out for a few minutes, then ambled along until the group caught up. The spinning at 100+ RPM took a lot of work, but it gave my legs some much needed rest for a few minutes.
About 15 miles before our first scheduled stop, Hancock, 64 miles into the ride, the skies really, really opened up and truly started to throw it down, monsoon style. It had been raining before, but now it got very bad. We went through a long patch of puddles, most of them quite deep. The bikes were throwing roostertails and actually had a wicked wake; you didn’t want to ride next to somebody, because the bike could throw a substantial wave 4 feet high, and I found it quite comical to splash Trevor up around the hip/ribcage that way, at least until Timmy passed me and returned the favor. My legs were already hurting a little and my knees were starting to get sore, and the new, deeper puddles didn’t help things. It felt like I was absorbing water as we rode. My words really can’t do it justice. Suffice to say, I’ve kept more dry while swimming, I've suffered less low grade pain in fistfights. Every ride is good for something, and this one was really only good for teaching me how to suffer in several dimensions at once.
The exact moment when I realized this ride had descended into the absurd occurred when I followed Timmy into a puddle. It didn’t look exceptional, just sort of long. By the time I was about 10 feet into it, I realized that the water was up over the bottom of my bottom bracket, and whichever foot was on the downstroke was completely submerged. I had to stand up and pedal through the puddle. Right then I decided (1) this was getting absurd, and we were probably going to be forced to quit; (2) this ride was going to leave me with some hard-to-recover-from damage if I wasn’t really careful; (3) I wasn’t going to be the first one to throw in the towel, but if somebody was throwing it, I would probably offer to help heave the damn thing.
When we got to a flat spot I spun off from the group again. I was really pissed because it seemed to me the weather was going to beat us, and I didn’t want anybody to see me melting down. I just went hard for quite a while, and when I looked down, I was doing a steady 22 MPH spin, and my Hr was approaching threshold. I eased it off and stopped at mile marker 125 or so, a few miles from Hancock. There I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually the guys showed up, discussing something about a “vision break” – I think they had paused to get the mud out of their eyes. We rode in from that point without any further incident, albeit in a pretty heavy rain that only let up when we got into town.
Soon after they caught up, we rode into Hancock. Trevor and Timmy turned left off the trail to go up a small hill. They labored up it. Then John and Jonathan turned up it, and Jonathan stood up and pegged it to get up the hill. John just got off his bike to push. I realized my legs were toast, and I couldn’t go down here, so I dug in, and slow pedaled up, pulling myself downward on the bars to keep the pedals turning. I got to the top of the hill, and that’s when I heard Jonathan saying “That’s it.” We talked briefly and Jon, John and Timmy definitely wanted to quit. I kept my mouth shut because I felt as the nail chewing roadie among the bunch, I couldn’t be the one to let the team down. Okay, that’s not completely true. It was also because the other four guys are old riding buddies, and I didn’t think it was my place to unduly influence the outcome of the vote, so I resolved to gut it out, if that’s what it took, rather than interfere. Thankfully, the vote was 3:1 for abandoning, so my thoughts on the matter were irrelevant, my vote was moot.
We rode up and over another hill, pedaled down to Sheetz, and made the call of shame. Jonathan’s wife had dropped us off, and then got stuck in a 6 hour traffic jam behind some jacknifed tractor trailer on the way back. She volunteered to come back and get us. What a rock star, yes? But her father, who is a fair roadie himself and a real trooper, stepped up and came to get us. Standing and laughing and shivering a bit at Sheetz, we settled on a plan – ride across Hancock to the car wash, hose off, put on some clean clothes, then go sit in a bar and drink beer until our bailout ride showed up.
That’s what we did. It was pretty comical, in a lowbrow way. Five guys getting naked-to-mostly-naked in a completely open coin-op car wash, and hosing each other off with a high pressure washer like some demented prison shower, is beyond belief. It was like a Japanese game show. But that’s what we did, ignoring the traffic and curious passers-by.
Little details of that washup are pretty funny, actually. Jonathan and I were both dumping mud out of our shoes. Jon actually was suffering foot pain from the pile of mud inside his shoes, under his arches. My real capper was taking off my bibs, and finding a huge pile of mud in my shorts, covering the chamois. I guess that explains why my @55 hurt so much while I was riding – it looked like I’d eaten mud fiber cereal, and crapped mud poo. And Timmy went behind the car wash to take a whiz, and came back reporting that somebody had recently beaten him to it, as evidenced by a great big ol’ pile of real poo back there.
After blowing most of the impacted mud off ourselves and our bikes, we hopped back on them to ride to the bar – the Town Tavern, as I recall. Putting my shoes back on was deadly painful, and I mushed up the hill, but then took the shoes out and freewheeled down the hill toward the tavern. Mental note to self – do not take feet off the fixie pedals if dragging large panniers. It makes the head wobbly badly. What a relief to put on the dry Tevas to walk into the bar. Timmy, being Timmy, rode back up the hill barefoot. Yeah, he's a monster. I'd love to see him in crits.
When we got to the bar, it was pizzas and beer all around. All they had was Tombstone pizzas, which aren’t my favorite, but they were hot, and we ate seven between five riders. We also drank four or five pitchers of near beer, AKA Coors Light. Though it was a complete redneck townie bar, the folks there were pretty cool, friendly enough, and didn't bother us in spite of the mud falling out of our ears, and our wet clothes and funny smell. So it gets my total endorsement as a bailout bar, or just some place I'll stop for a beer next time I'm in Hancock.
It took a while to talk through all the bizarre details of the trip. Oddly, we remembered specific epic mud puddles, bits of trees in specific spots on the trail, and branches that whipped us particularly badly. We each remembered exactly where it was our eyes got plugged with mud, the exact point where the weather broke our resolve, and we each tried to rationalize away the fact that the ride was a failure in some way. The beer helped.
Eventually, Sara’s dad showed up and we packed into Jonathan’s truck. On the way back home, the rain was as bad as during any time on the ride, except now there was a lot of lightning. We found out that this had been the worst day of rain in roughly 25 years. That made us feel better about abandoning.
On the way back, the guys mostly talked about other epic rides they had been on together. I sort of checked out and sipped a little bourbon from a hip flask, while thinking the ride over. On a long, tough ride like that, I get within myself pretty good. That’s probably why if the group had decided to go on, I’d have been okay with it. I hadn’t vocalized thoughts of quitting because those thoughts are already there, and I find that while I can bitch endlessly, I can never voice thoughts of quitting because they become intoxicating, and too tempting. It’s better to keep quiet, grind along, and just not stop, and after a while you get some momentum going and the thoughts of quitting disappear, replaced by emptiness, and maybe some determination. It was a good thing for our heath’s sake that John and Jonathan had some good sense. Trevor and I probably would have kept going, and might have done some pretty good damage to ourselves in the mud, the thunderstorms, and the next day’s heavy rain.
So it was a disappointing trip on the one hand. We didn’t finish. Yet we were the only riders actually on the trail on Sunday, near as we could tell. It took a good deal of toughness to get out there and attempt the ride, and the fact that it took a 25 year storm to throw the brakes on the trip reflects well on John, Jon’s, Trevor’s and Timmy’s toughness.
Still, the gauntlet has been thrown. It may be later in this year, or it may be next year, but I think we’re going to ride that damn canal on fixed gear cross bikes. It would be a long ride, but not necessarily that tough in dry weather. In the wet, it was a humid, abrasive and damp, very small version of hell. The one thing I’ll probably do differently, is to wait for a weekend when the weather forecast is a little bit less rainy. Y’all are welcome to join me.
I was supposed to be pedaling my fixed gear Surly Cross Check down the C&O Canal right now, having finished up a nice breakfast in Williamsport. At this very moment, I should have been tooling around in Williamsport, working out a couple creaks in my legs, and getting ready to buzz down to Whites Ferry for lunch and a swim, and then an easy spin into Georgetown.
It didn’t work out that way. Mother nature, it seems, is in fact a real mother.
We had planned this trip for a couple months, and had been thinking about it since February or so. Jon, my LBS owner, and several of his friends who are mainly mountain bikers, but who hit the road with the LBS training rides, were going to ride fixed down the C&O Canal. It would be a two-day blitz from Cumberland, MD, roughly a century a day. It would be hard, but fun, with a bit of camping in the middle, lots of carb loading, and hours of peacefully spinning fixies down the Canal.
It didn’t happen that way at all.
On Saturday, Jon and I discussed the weather. We tried to figure out if we had a decision point lurking out there. For several days, the weather was forecast to be hideous, with thunderstorms, constant rain, basically apocalyptic weather, but nothing happened. The forecast was always wrong. So in spite of predictions of heavy rain, we decided to go.
We loaded up our gear – bikes, panniers full of camping gear and extra bike clothes, and minimal casual clothes – shorts, T-shirts, Tevas, and a swimsuit. This along with tents, bivvy bags, and tarps. We stopped in Laurel at Trevor’s place to pick up the bikes and the other guys on the ride. As we were driving up, it was pretty clear, but overcast. We stopped in Hancock for breakfast. John asked the waitress about the weather, and she told us that rain had been predicted for days, but basically had not shown up. “But it’s supposed to rain all day today.”
We sort of looked at each other after that, and everybody had that look on their face, where hope triumphs over reality and experience.
As we drove from Hancock to Cumberland, the rain started. At first it was heavy. Then it got really heavy. Then it became really, really heavy, and we got slammed with some fog too. It wasn’t the worst weather conditions I’ve ever seen, but you could easily slide into a guardrail, or spin out in it, or back-end the guy in front. Jonathan kept his truck on the road and safe, the guys in the other truck managed to do so as well, and we rolled into Cumberland around 9:30 or so. Jon and I talked and decided we’d mention our idea to leave the camping gear in the bikes and just stay at Tim’s hotel in Williamsport, since camping in heavy mud would be more agonizing than was really necessary.
After a mandatory bathroom break and filling hydration packs and loading the bikes, we set off in what had turned into a gentle to non-existent drizzle. The first few miles seemed pretty easy, the trail was packed gravel, and it was dry enough that it seemed the heavy stuff we had faced in the mountains might have been localized. There were a few puddles and the bikes were throwing a little muddy spray, but maybe it would be okay. Maybe we might dodge a bullet on the weather…
Or maybe not. Within 10 miles, the heavy rain started up, and as the trail moved away from civilization, it became a bit rougher and more potholed. We quickly got soaked in enough mud and grit to make the hardest cast iron Flahute proud. Most of the trail is two-track, as if a pickup truck or wagon had been driven up and down it for years – which is probably the case. So water pools in the wheel tracks, and anywhere there is a slightly soft spot, you get a puddle. We hit puddle after puddle as we tooled along in the rain, and eventually had to break up out of paceline and into pairs, two abreast with a substantial gap, since so much muck was getting thrown up at each puddle. Yea, verily, the bicyclists went two by two, up to the freakin’ ark.
Now a word about puddles. A calm puddle has mud at the bottom, but the water on top is clear, and you can estimate what lies beneath. Sometimes you can see rocks, or sticks, or deeper holes. But when puddles get stirred up, you can’t see to the bottom of them. The mud obscures what lies beneath the surface. When you roll into one an a bike, it’s a bit like Christmas morning. You simply don’t know what you’ll get.
Some puddles were fine to ride through. They were shallow, short, and had a firmly packed gravel base. These didn’t throw much muck, and they didn’t upset the bikes. This was important, because with full panniers and rain soaked gear, not to mention skinny cyclocross tires, the bikes weren’t exactly riding on rails and normal instabilities took on epic proportions, causing tank slappers, un-fix-able head shake, and slithery rear ends. Other puddles obscured deep potholes and mud pits. You hit them, and nearly go over the bars, with an amazing amount of shock being transmitted through the chainstays to your butt and back. Sometimes you could recognize the pothole puddles if you could spot the telltale circular patches of differently-colored muddy water in the middle of a larger puddle, but with mud-smeared sunglasses, and moving at 15-16 MPH, that wasn’t happening much. Other puddles obscured rocks, which was tough because a glancing blow from a rock would tend to wrench the handlebars partly out of your hands. By far the worst, however, were the puddles with soft, muddy bottoms. We would ride into these and lose all momentum. Rather than enjoying a smooth fixed gear spin through them, the puddle would instantly scrub 5 MPH off our speed, and we’d have to expend quite a bit of effort to regain the momentum, once we thrashed through the puddle.
If it sounds like this ride perspective focuses a lot on puddles, it is because we spent 5+ hours riding through puddles; perhaps 25% of the trail was covered in puddles, at least while it rained – which was 80% of the time.
It was a hell of a lot of work, and very depressing business after a while.
The guys were pretty game for it though. Timmy, who is a really powerful rider, was the only guy on a geared bike. He just kept cruising along, and seemed to be hanging tough. Trevor just gutted it out, probably cared about how bad it was, but you wouldn’t know it to talk to him. Jon, my LBS guy, was doing fine but seemed kinda of irritated by the whole thing, and the other John, who is about 10 years older than any of us, and with a very slight build, was struggling with a heavy load. The lack of size probably hurt him a lot, since the bikes scrubbed off so much momentum at each puddle.
So it went for about 45 or 50 miles. We stopped every 10 or 15 for a bite to eat and some drinks, and to wash the mud out of our eyes at the handy trailside water pumps. No, really, out of our eyes. I rode with one eye open for about ten miles at one point, so much mud was in my eye that it hurt badly to open it. Sure enough, when the mud cleared out of that eye, and I slowly started opening it, I took a blast of mud right in the other eye. Arrrrrgghhh! This all was quite a bit of hard work.
The PawPaw tunnel was a hell of a thing as well. It was dark as night, colder than a well digger’s ass, and the concrete sidewalk/bikeway was as lumpy as stale gravy. Bring a small bike light if you ride this portion of the trail. Just take my word on that – you wouldn’t want to experience the 30 foot dropoff, or ride into the guardrail. It was the highlight of the riding portion of the trip - an eerie cavern of a thing, and the trail smelled totally different on one side of it, compared to the other.
So grind on we did. Though we were only averaging around 14.5 MPH, it was hard to keep up that speed. It was basically like a low speed weightlifting exercise, grinding along at 80 RPM – wonderful stuff for a mountain biker, notso-hotso for a roadie who doesn’t train to work at that speed. This was compounded by my V-brakes, which were jammed with mud and dragging for perhaps 15 miles before I figured out what that grating noise was, and opened them up. My bike was geared a little too high, so I frequently took off from the front, spun out for a few minutes, then ambled along until the group caught up. The spinning at 100+ RPM took a lot of work, but it gave my legs some much needed rest for a few minutes.
About 15 miles before our first scheduled stop, Hancock, 64 miles into the ride, the skies really, really opened up and truly started to throw it down, monsoon style. It had been raining before, but now it got very bad. We went through a long patch of puddles, most of them quite deep. The bikes were throwing roostertails and actually had a wicked wake; you didn’t want to ride next to somebody, because the bike could throw a substantial wave 4 feet high, and I found it quite comical to splash Trevor up around the hip/ribcage that way, at least until Timmy passed me and returned the favor. My legs were already hurting a little and my knees were starting to get sore, and the new, deeper puddles didn’t help things. It felt like I was absorbing water as we rode. My words really can’t do it justice. Suffice to say, I’ve kept more dry while swimming, I've suffered less low grade pain in fistfights. Every ride is good for something, and this one was really only good for teaching me how to suffer in several dimensions at once.
The exact moment when I realized this ride had descended into the absurd occurred when I followed Timmy into a puddle. It didn’t look exceptional, just sort of long. By the time I was about 10 feet into it, I realized that the water was up over the bottom of my bottom bracket, and whichever foot was on the downstroke was completely submerged. I had to stand up and pedal through the puddle. Right then I decided (1) this was getting absurd, and we were probably going to be forced to quit; (2) this ride was going to leave me with some hard-to-recover-from damage if I wasn’t really careful; (3) I wasn’t going to be the first one to throw in the towel, but if somebody was throwing it, I would probably offer to help heave the damn thing.
When we got to a flat spot I spun off from the group again. I was really pissed because it seemed to me the weather was going to beat us, and I didn’t want anybody to see me melting down. I just went hard for quite a while, and when I looked down, I was doing a steady 22 MPH spin, and my Hr was approaching threshold. I eased it off and stopped at mile marker 125 or so, a few miles from Hancock. There I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually the guys showed up, discussing something about a “vision break” – I think they had paused to get the mud out of their eyes. We rode in from that point without any further incident, albeit in a pretty heavy rain that only let up when we got into town.
Soon after they caught up, we rode into Hancock. Trevor and Timmy turned left off the trail to go up a small hill. They labored up it. Then John and Jonathan turned up it, and Jonathan stood up and pegged it to get up the hill. John just got off his bike to push. I realized my legs were toast, and I couldn’t go down here, so I dug in, and slow pedaled up, pulling myself downward on the bars to keep the pedals turning. I got to the top of the hill, and that’s when I heard Jonathan saying “That’s it.” We talked briefly and Jon, John and Timmy definitely wanted to quit. I kept my mouth shut because I felt as the nail chewing roadie among the bunch, I couldn’t be the one to let the team down. Okay, that’s not completely true. It was also because the other four guys are old riding buddies, and I didn’t think it was my place to unduly influence the outcome of the vote, so I resolved to gut it out, if that’s what it took, rather than interfere. Thankfully, the vote was 3:1 for abandoning, so my thoughts on the matter were irrelevant, my vote was moot.
We rode up and over another hill, pedaled down to Sheetz, and made the call of shame. Jonathan’s wife had dropped us off, and then got stuck in a 6 hour traffic jam behind some jacknifed tractor trailer on the way back. She volunteered to come back and get us. What a rock star, yes? But her father, who is a fair roadie himself and a real trooper, stepped up and came to get us. Standing and laughing and shivering a bit at Sheetz, we settled on a plan – ride across Hancock to the car wash, hose off, put on some clean clothes, then go sit in a bar and drink beer until our bailout ride showed up.
That’s what we did. It was pretty comical, in a lowbrow way. Five guys getting naked-to-mostly-naked in a completely open coin-op car wash, and hosing each other off with a high pressure washer like some demented prison shower, is beyond belief. It was like a Japanese game show. But that’s what we did, ignoring the traffic and curious passers-by.
Little details of that washup are pretty funny, actually. Jonathan and I were both dumping mud out of our shoes. Jon actually was suffering foot pain from the pile of mud inside his shoes, under his arches. My real capper was taking off my bibs, and finding a huge pile of mud in my shorts, covering the chamois. I guess that explains why my @55 hurt so much while I was riding – it looked like I’d eaten mud fiber cereal, and crapped mud poo. And Timmy went behind the car wash to take a whiz, and came back reporting that somebody had recently beaten him to it, as evidenced by a great big ol’ pile of real poo back there.
After blowing most of the impacted mud off ourselves and our bikes, we hopped back on them to ride to the bar – the Town Tavern, as I recall. Putting my shoes back on was deadly painful, and I mushed up the hill, but then took the shoes out and freewheeled down the hill toward the tavern. Mental note to self – do not take feet off the fixie pedals if dragging large panniers. It makes the head wobbly badly. What a relief to put on the dry Tevas to walk into the bar. Timmy, being Timmy, rode back up the hill barefoot. Yeah, he's a monster. I'd love to see him in crits.
When we got to the bar, it was pizzas and beer all around. All they had was Tombstone pizzas, which aren’t my favorite, but they were hot, and we ate seven between five riders. We also drank four or five pitchers of near beer, AKA Coors Light. Though it was a complete redneck townie bar, the folks there were pretty cool, friendly enough, and didn't bother us in spite of the mud falling out of our ears, and our wet clothes and funny smell. So it gets my total endorsement as a bailout bar, or just some place I'll stop for a beer next time I'm in Hancock.
It took a while to talk through all the bizarre details of the trip. Oddly, we remembered specific epic mud puddles, bits of trees in specific spots on the trail, and branches that whipped us particularly badly. We each remembered exactly where it was our eyes got plugged with mud, the exact point where the weather broke our resolve, and we each tried to rationalize away the fact that the ride was a failure in some way. The beer helped.
Eventually, Sara’s dad showed up and we packed into Jonathan’s truck. On the way back home, the rain was as bad as during any time on the ride, except now there was a lot of lightning. We found out that this had been the worst day of rain in roughly 25 years. That made us feel better about abandoning.
On the way back, the guys mostly talked about other epic rides they had been on together. I sort of checked out and sipped a little bourbon from a hip flask, while thinking the ride over. On a long, tough ride like that, I get within myself pretty good. That’s probably why if the group had decided to go on, I’d have been okay with it. I hadn’t vocalized thoughts of quitting because those thoughts are already there, and I find that while I can bitch endlessly, I can never voice thoughts of quitting because they become intoxicating, and too tempting. It’s better to keep quiet, grind along, and just not stop, and after a while you get some momentum going and the thoughts of quitting disappear, replaced by emptiness, and maybe some determination. It was a good thing for our heath’s sake that John and Jonathan had some good sense. Trevor and I probably would have kept going, and might have done some pretty good damage to ourselves in the mud, the thunderstorms, and the next day’s heavy rain.
So it was a disappointing trip on the one hand. We didn’t finish. Yet we were the only riders actually on the trail on Sunday, near as we could tell. It took a good deal of toughness to get out there and attempt the ride, and the fact that it took a 25 year storm to throw the brakes on the trip reflects well on John, Jon’s, Trevor’s and Timmy’s toughness.
Still, the gauntlet has been thrown. It may be later in this year, or it may be next year, but I think we’re going to ride that damn canal on fixed gear cross bikes. It would be a long ride, but not necessarily that tough in dry weather. In the wet, it was a humid, abrasive and damp, very small version of hell. The one thing I’ll probably do differently, is to wait for a weekend when the weather forecast is a little bit less rainy. Y’all are welcome to join me.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Cat Named!
Thanks for the input on names for the kitten I pulled out of traffic last Friday after the Squadra Coppi muffin ride. According to the vet, the kitten was probably feral based on his condition, but was pretty healthy and blessed with an unusually sweet disposition.
We had some intensive negotiations about the name. For a while, it looked like it would be Allez Cat, but the name doesn't have the right ring to it; my French accent sounds as bad to me as it does to others. Mandy opposed Fausto, she just didn't like the name. But much to her credit, she suggested Coppi Cat. So Coppi Cat it is. Here's a picture. You'll notice that Coppi very gamely avoided typical photo "red eye," in favor of "Coppi Blue eye". He's a classy cat.
We had some intensive negotiations about the name. For a while, it looked like it would be Allez Cat, but the name doesn't have the right ring to it; my French accent sounds as bad to me as it does to others. Mandy opposed Fausto, she just didn't like the name. But much to her credit, she suggested Coppi Cat. So Coppi Cat it is. Here's a picture. You'll notice that Coppi very gamely avoided typical photo "red eye," in favor of "Coppi Blue eye". He's a classy cat.
Friday, June 23, 2006
I Need Help Naming a Cat...
Hang around cycling for a while and you will meet a lot of people who can say, in all honesty, that their bike saved their life. Heart disease, ulcers, diabetes, escaping from an angry, shotgun-wielding father of that 15 year-old you dated in high school… I have a similar story, having gone from disgustingly obese – heart attack & soon-to-have-diabetes fat, to merely fat. My life ain’t saved yet, but I’m on the way. And that’s well and good.
But how many people can say that their bike saved their cat?
I couldn’t say that until this morning.
On the way home from the Squadra Coppi muffin ride, I was tooling up Route 50 toward Annapolis. “Tooling” is a term of art meaning “going as fast as a 1990 Ford Ranger with 180,000 miles will go without shooting valves through the truck’s hood.” As I approached the I-95 overpass, I noticed something blowing around in traffic, maybe a little brown bag or something. As I got nearer to the little obstacle, I noticed it was a cat. A tiny, tiny orange cat, running back and forth, skidding under an 18 wheeler, bouncing off the side of a car, and tapdancing faster than Mr. Bojangles.
As I passed, the small cat, a kitten, made it to the center median and started heading West along the jersey barriers. He who hesitates is lost, or at least a quarter mile past the tiny kitten in traffic. I didn’t pull over decisively, to my everlasting shame. Instead, I decided several hundred yards up the road I needed to stop and get the cat out of the traffic. So I zipped through moderately heavy traffic to make the I-95 North turnoff, drove to the 450 exit, got off, turned around, and headed down the 50 West onramp, thinking about this poor terrified cat. I got to Route 410, waited impatiently (the only light I didn’t blow this morning) and entered 50 Eastbound. Nearing I-95, I slowed. There was the cat, huddled on top of a sewer grate. I said a quick prayer that the thing was uninjured.
I pulled up on the inside shoulder, past the cat. I told William to sit quietly in his booster seat, Daddy had to take care of something. I took off my shirt – having captured feral cats before I anticipated this one would go down fighting – and started jogging up the road. When I got near the sewer grate, the cat saw me, and took off running Eastward, against traffic but at least adjacent to the jersey barriers. Hey, I can’t blame it, I’m kind of a big scary looking dude, and that’s when I’m trying to be friendly. I prayed it wouldn’t zip into the road, where the traffic was still heavy. After two or three attempts to pick up the cat, I wised up, jogged past it, and then started chasing the cat back toward the pickup. I really didn’t want to be down at Cheverly chasing this cat, while William sat in the pickup truck near New Carrolton.
Eventually, I caught up to the cat, and picked it up. It was very scared, panting and wheezing like Giacamo after a long hill. I rolled the kitten up in my shirt, and held it up to my chest, with its head under my chin. I started whispering to it as we maneuvered down the shoulder and into the pickup truck, and there it sat most of the way to the Vet’s office. William was fascinated by the kitten, and reached out several times to stroke it. He was a good co-pilot while I called Mandy to ask about whether she could handle the cat picking us as new owners. She was cool with it, and I decided to go to the vet and if the cat checked out, to welcome it into our home. The kitten was very gentle, didn’t try to swat or bite me, and eventually crawled down onto the passenger side floorboard to explore a little, then curl up.
About an hour ago, I got a call from the vet. “The kitten is fine. It’s got abrasion on its feet, under one eye, on a leg and its hip.” I explained to the vet the circumstances of its rescue, and she immediately understood.
In an hour or two, I’m heading over to the vet’s to pick the cat up. It occurs to me, that the cat and I have matching road rash right now, with the exception of the cat’s cut under the eye. The cat probably doesn’t have an achy shoulder, however, so I guess we’ll call it even. It’s a male, which makes its passivity when I picked it up in a fight/flight situation pretty remarkable. And that should help it get along with our female adult cat. So it will be fun to bring the cat home. But we’re already having an issue. Here’s my problem, and here’s where you can help.
Mandy, my wife, can’t agree with me about a name for this cat. It’s a boy, and I want to name him… well, there’s really only one name that occurred to me. I was coming home from a ride with Squadra Coppi. Had I not been for a ride with the Coppis – we lawyers call this “’but for’ causation” – this cat would be dead by now. And were it not for the Campionissimo himself, the Squadra Coppi probably would not exist. So it seems to me this cat is destined to be known as Fausto. And after all, Fausto Lives!
Other possible names I might accept include Bill, since he is an orange and white tiger striped cat, greatly resembling Bill the Cat. This would also be a nod to Coppi gregario Bill Cusmano, an incredibly encouraging teammate whose tips and cheering helped me keep up my resolve when starting racing was so very hard in February and March.
And perhaps, possibly, I’d accept Allez (Allez Cat, bad pun there), Robbie (for McEwen, since he was on a number of hostile wheels then pulled it out with a great sprint) or maybe Campy or Cole (short for Colnago). There’s Lance, or Bobke, maybe Geno or Eddie, maybe Johann (for Museew, the Lion of Flanders)… I dunno. I still really like Fausto. Because Fausto Lives! And that's the best thing you can say about this cat today.
In short, I need help with the name. My wife has come up with “Lucky,” which is nice, but not really adequate to express the sense of destiny I feel from the traffic patterns, the bike ride, and my mush-headedness all bringing me to a certain point in space time where I was willing to snag this cat out of traffic.
So leave your suggestions, or votes for one of my suggestions, in comments below.
But how many people can say that their bike saved their cat?
I couldn’t say that until this morning.
On the way home from the Squadra Coppi muffin ride, I was tooling up Route 50 toward Annapolis. “Tooling” is a term of art meaning “going as fast as a 1990 Ford Ranger with 180,000 miles will go without shooting valves through the truck’s hood.” As I approached the I-95 overpass, I noticed something blowing around in traffic, maybe a little brown bag or something. As I got nearer to the little obstacle, I noticed it was a cat. A tiny, tiny orange cat, running back and forth, skidding under an 18 wheeler, bouncing off the side of a car, and tapdancing faster than Mr. Bojangles.
As I passed, the small cat, a kitten, made it to the center median and started heading West along the jersey barriers. He who hesitates is lost, or at least a quarter mile past the tiny kitten in traffic. I didn’t pull over decisively, to my everlasting shame. Instead, I decided several hundred yards up the road I needed to stop and get the cat out of the traffic. So I zipped through moderately heavy traffic to make the I-95 North turnoff, drove to the 450 exit, got off, turned around, and headed down the 50 West onramp, thinking about this poor terrified cat. I got to Route 410, waited impatiently (the only light I didn’t blow this morning) and entered 50 Eastbound. Nearing I-95, I slowed. There was the cat, huddled on top of a sewer grate. I said a quick prayer that the thing was uninjured.
I pulled up on the inside shoulder, past the cat. I told William to sit quietly in his booster seat, Daddy had to take care of something. I took off my shirt – having captured feral cats before I anticipated this one would go down fighting – and started jogging up the road. When I got near the sewer grate, the cat saw me, and took off running Eastward, against traffic but at least adjacent to the jersey barriers. Hey, I can’t blame it, I’m kind of a big scary looking dude, and that’s when I’m trying to be friendly. I prayed it wouldn’t zip into the road, where the traffic was still heavy. After two or three attempts to pick up the cat, I wised up, jogged past it, and then started chasing the cat back toward the pickup. I really didn’t want to be down at Cheverly chasing this cat, while William sat in the pickup truck near New Carrolton.
Eventually, I caught up to the cat, and picked it up. It was very scared, panting and wheezing like Giacamo after a long hill. I rolled the kitten up in my shirt, and held it up to my chest, with its head under my chin. I started whispering to it as we maneuvered down the shoulder and into the pickup truck, and there it sat most of the way to the Vet’s office. William was fascinated by the kitten, and reached out several times to stroke it. He was a good co-pilot while I called Mandy to ask about whether she could handle the cat picking us as new owners. She was cool with it, and I decided to go to the vet and if the cat checked out, to welcome it into our home. The kitten was very gentle, didn’t try to swat or bite me, and eventually crawled down onto the passenger side floorboard to explore a little, then curl up.
About an hour ago, I got a call from the vet. “The kitten is fine. It’s got abrasion on its feet, under one eye, on a leg and its hip.” I explained to the vet the circumstances of its rescue, and she immediately understood.
In an hour or two, I’m heading over to the vet’s to pick the cat up. It occurs to me, that the cat and I have matching road rash right now, with the exception of the cat’s cut under the eye. The cat probably doesn’t have an achy shoulder, however, so I guess we’ll call it even. It’s a male, which makes its passivity when I picked it up in a fight/flight situation pretty remarkable. And that should help it get along with our female adult cat. So it will be fun to bring the cat home. But we’re already having an issue. Here’s my problem, and here’s where you can help.
Mandy, my wife, can’t agree with me about a name for this cat. It’s a boy, and I want to name him… well, there’s really only one name that occurred to me. I was coming home from a ride with Squadra Coppi. Had I not been for a ride with the Coppis – we lawyers call this “’but for’ causation” – this cat would be dead by now. And were it not for the Campionissimo himself, the Squadra Coppi probably would not exist. So it seems to me this cat is destined to be known as Fausto. And after all, Fausto Lives!
Other possible names I might accept include Bill, since he is an orange and white tiger striped cat, greatly resembling Bill the Cat. This would also be a nod to Coppi gregario Bill Cusmano, an incredibly encouraging teammate whose tips and cheering helped me keep up my resolve when starting racing was so very hard in February and March.
And perhaps, possibly, I’d accept Allez (Allez Cat, bad pun there), Robbie (for McEwen, since he was on a number of hostile wheels then pulled it out with a great sprint) or maybe Campy or Cole (short for Colnago). There’s Lance, or Bobke, maybe Geno or Eddie, maybe Johann (for Museew, the Lion of Flanders)… I dunno. I still really like Fausto. Because Fausto Lives! And that's the best thing you can say about this cat today.
In short, I need help with the name. My wife has come up with “Lucky,” which is nice, but not really adequate to express the sense of destiny I feel from the traffic patterns, the bike ride, and my mush-headedness all bringing me to a certain point in space time where I was willing to snag this cat out of traffic.
So leave your suggestions, or votes for one of my suggestions, in comments below.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Serious Stuff
In grave times like these, serious men, true patriots are called into the service of their country. Men are deeply challenged by the dangers facing our nation, and all look deep into their souls, asking existential questions about the nature of honor, courage, and the meaning of... Hey everybody lookie here!!! It's Cats That Look Like Adolf Hitler!
Kaiser Jan....
As we all know, Jan Ulrich, der Kaiser, just won the Tour de Suisse. But did you know that if Jan Ulrich were an ice cream, he would be the Chocolate Double Fudge with Chunks of Blood and Baby Tears? That can mean only one thing: a new entry on KaiserJan. The subject? "The Basso's fear is smelling like cigarettes and back hair. No, wait. That's just the Basso."
Nice.
Nice.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Monday, June 19, 2006
Fixed don't mean Neutered...
Lordy, but I love a nice fixed gear bike. Why? Because they are like a bad woman. Which means a good woman, in some senses. Exciting, enchanting, and dangerous. Really, really dangerous. If you've ever dated a woman who tried to stab you, you know what I'm talking about.
Yep, I love me a fixie. It's Zen on wheels, 5 or 10 miles spinning until your brain shuts off, and you're in a smooth rolling sensory deprivation tank, your mind empty, and your smile full of mosquitos wedged between your teeth, because you're too happy to shut your mouth. How do you ride a fixed gear? I don't know. You can read a helpful manual, but it's easier to just get a fixie or put one together, hop on, and ride the damn thing.
I'm ditching my old Fuji for a Surly Cross Check frame I bought off Ken Woodrow, putting some mean old Surly hubs on it, and doing 'er up in black and orange to go with the Bean Green frame. This will be my ride for an upcoming trip down the C&O Canal with some friends, then may get a freewheel cog in time for Cross season.
Yeah, I love my fixie. But I always try to remember that the bitch might just kill me if I'm not careful. At the least, she might bite off finger or two or three.
Yep, I love me a fixie. It's Zen on wheels, 5 or 10 miles spinning until your brain shuts off, and you're in a smooth rolling sensory deprivation tank, your mind empty, and your smile full of mosquitos wedged between your teeth, because you're too happy to shut your mouth. How do you ride a fixed gear? I don't know. You can read a helpful manual, but it's easier to just get a fixie or put one together, hop on, and ride the damn thing.
I'm ditching my old Fuji for a Surly Cross Check frame I bought off Ken Woodrow, putting some mean old Surly hubs on it, and doing 'er up in black and orange to go with the Bean Green frame. This will be my ride for an upcoming trip down the C&O Canal with some friends, then may get a freewheel cog in time for Cross season.
Yeah, I love my fixie. But I always try to remember that the bitch might just kill me if I'm not careful. At the least, she might bite off finger or two or three.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Rollin' wid Saget
Bob Saget stars in an interesting Jamie Kennedy rap video.
Not safe for work. Not nearly safe for work. Has nothing to do with bicycles either, just the funniest thing I've seen in ages.
And while I'm posting off-topic stuff, what's up with the Italian football side? I've been watching the first half of the US/Italia game, and I've seen more diving from the Italians, than you see during the 3 Meter competition in the Olympics. Lordy. It reminds me why I left the roundball code for Rugby Football, where not falling down after a hit is a point of pride. Compare/contrast - Italian diving, Bryan McBride's split open, no-big-deal bloody face. I do like the American style of futbol - it's tough, in your face, and asks no quarter.
Not safe for work. Not nearly safe for work. Has nothing to do with bicycles either, just the funniest thing I've seen in ages.
And while I'm posting off-topic stuff, what's up with the Italian football side? I've been watching the first half of the US/Italia game, and I've seen more diving from the Italians, than you see during the 3 Meter competition in the Olympics. Lordy. It reminds me why I left the roundball code for Rugby Football, where not falling down after a hit is a point of pride. Compare/contrast - Italian diving, Bryan McBride's split open, no-big-deal bloody face. I do like the American style of futbol - it's tough, in your face, and asks no quarter.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Quitting Racing & Frequency of Injuries
The D-20 listserve is having a good discussion about why people quit racing. Fast guy Bill Luecke writes:
A few weeks ago, on the way out to Greenbelt for my first race after the two most recent crashes (Baker Park & the tipover), the range of all possible bad results - the Parade of Horribles - marched across my mind and I felt quite gripped by it, an emotion somewhere short of panic, but somewhere past calm, cool deliberation. I took a deep breath when I caught myself going down that path, and got a grip. It struck me that the decision point was right there, the moment of truth as it's sometimes described. You either get back on the horse or don't, it's that simple, and if you walk away because you are afraid, you shouldn't kid yourself about the odds of coming back.
Probably because of the way I was brought up (in a supportive, but very tough family) and due to my formative experiences as a young man in the Army, I decided that I would be profoundly unhappy if I did anything other than doubling down. I grew up hearing "never take counsel of your fears" every time I faced a tough situation. When you are in a tough fight, you just keep going at the other guy, and never quit. When I looked at the situation and tried to reason out what kind of a reaction was in character, and logical for me, there was only one choice.
So I raced at Greenbelt, and the fear left, leaving in its place increased situational awareness and a safer racer. Albeit a safer racer who still has a very sore shoulder and an achy upper back & chest.
It must be a very tough decision for a lot of people to make. I didn't agonize over it because, aside from questions of fundamental morality, I don't have a conscience. To paraphrase another hardcore amateur cyclist, "I'm a decider... I decide things." No qualms. Yeah, I worry about my family and the thought about how much life insurance I have - and a plan to boost that next open season - went through my mind. But I know who I am, I am a risk taker and a fighter, and I had to race. It wouldn't be true to my character to give up due to my fears.
Surely, this can't be the right line of reasoning for everybody.
Sometimes fear is gutlessness, but when it comes to real risks and bigtime pain, going at high speed with only lycra for protection, fear is nature's way of telling you to proceed carefully. So while I would have hated myself for walking away because of who I am, that's only because I'm wired to operate in a particular way. I tend to value physical courage over self preservation, even where the risks are high and the only reward is the perpetuation of my own personal values system.
I cannot bring myself to criticize people who make a different decision. Going either way is a reasonable decision, and for some people, the smarter decision.
Bill Luecke also writes:
There are also fewer nagging injuries in cycling. For the last 10 years of my playing career, my post game ritual (aside from beer) included icing my knees and shoulders for the evening and day after a game. In fact, the famous beer drinking and staying up late really waned in the last several years of playing, and was normally replaced by a quick two beers right after the game with the opposing team, followed by swimming and sitting in a whirlpool at Bally's, all of which alleviated the regular bruising. I had to do that just to be able to train effectively, in order to play up to par.
Rugby and bike racing strike me as having a similar risk risk of catastrophic injury, I'm speaking about skull fractures, fractured spines and shattered hip sockets. These injuries didn't occur often in rugby - I'd see one of each maybe once every couple years of my playing career, and generally at amateur games I was spectating at rather than playing in - but they happened often enough, and everybody knew of an incident like that occurring to some regional team each year, that safety was *always* of concern to referees, coaches, and veteran players. Among the top 16 teams in the U.S. - that's an active roster of about 450 players each year - I know of one case of permanent quadripelegia occurring in the last 10 years or so, and a number of injuries where temporary parlyzation of that nature was incurred. The risks of bike racing strike me as similar, with one operative difference being that a heck of a lot more people seem to race or just ride bikes than play rugby. And oddly enough, we were discussing groin injuries this morning when one of our young guys pointed out that a bike can knock a testicle clean off, which I consider to be pretty catastrophic. But then I've seen an angry player twist another guy's nut off in a pileup after a tackle, and an inadvertant knee to the jewels is probably comparable to a top tube attack.
The two safety wildcards are cars vs. bikes, and angry rugby players vs. the world. I don't recall anybody getting hit by a car on the rugby pitch, but I've seen bicyclists hit, and regularly see close calls. On the other hand, few cars will circle around on their own accord to take a second crack at a bicyclist, whereas a pissed of rugby player thinks nothing of lurking for a while waiting to throw a sucker punch or more often to square up and enforce unwritten rules, unless it's a close game where penalties can't be conceded.
And for the insecure among us, who worry about bicycling's image among contact sports fans, FWIW, I find the level of suffering and the physical toughness of the players to be comparable across the two sports, with rugby suffering being a little more traumatic and short lived, suffering on the bike being more of a grinding and drawn out nature.
Finally (oh thank goodness, right?) the two questions Bill posited are linked. One attraction of racing is that it's bloody hard, with a little bit of danger, combining physical tests that max out the body with hard to manage risks. During a race or hard training ride, the body constantly whispers, "this hurts, go ahead, give up. It's scary, my instincts are to run from this. Quit." For me, overcoming the suffering of races and training, and the suffering of crashes and what my fellow riders inflict on me in races or hard training, is what it's about. If it was meant to be easy, the name of the sport would be "Easy." We'd ask, "Hey, want to go out and do the Poolesville Easy this weekend?" But it's not Easy, it's racing. If you would race, I think you have to accept all that racing can give you, good and bad, as part of the deal. If you can't do that, or if you stop being able to handle that bargain, you should do something else. There's no shame in it and I wouldn't question the decision.
Just don't question my decision to stick it out.
[Update: Scott at Racing Union has an interesting take on it that seems to involve economics or something. Typical marxist take on everything, I tell you. All about the Benjaminskis for them revolutionaries. Seriously though, it's an interesting discussion of racing and the odds of getting hurt. Check it out. ]
Do many people quit because they fear crashing? Let's hear from someI'm a Cat 5 rookie with about a dozen races and three crashes since January. One was a black ice or slippery pavement lowside mid-winter, and no big deal. Another was at high speed at Baker Park, followed a week or so later by a low speed tipover. The Baker Park crash left me pretty much unscathed except for some lost skin and a general bruised and shocky feeling that stuck with me for a week, and the low speed tip, around three weeks ago, separated my shoulder and tore back & pectoral muscles. It still hurts, sometimes pretty badly. I was out for a month after the Baker Park crash.
people!
A few weeks ago, on the way out to Greenbelt for my first race after the two most recent crashes (Baker Park & the tipover), the range of all possible bad results - the Parade of Horribles - marched across my mind and I felt quite gripped by it, an emotion somewhere short of panic, but somewhere past calm, cool deliberation. I took a deep breath when I caught myself going down that path, and got a grip. It struck me that the decision point was right there, the moment of truth as it's sometimes described. You either get back on the horse or don't, it's that simple, and if you walk away because you are afraid, you shouldn't kid yourself about the odds of coming back.
Probably because of the way I was brought up (in a supportive, but very tough family) and due to my formative experiences as a young man in the Army, I decided that I would be profoundly unhappy if I did anything other than doubling down. I grew up hearing "never take counsel of your fears" every time I faced a tough situation. When you are in a tough fight, you just keep going at the other guy, and never quit. When I looked at the situation and tried to reason out what kind of a reaction was in character, and logical for me, there was only one choice.
So I raced at Greenbelt, and the fear left, leaving in its place increased situational awareness and a safer racer. Albeit a safer racer who still has a very sore shoulder and an achy upper back & chest.
It must be a very tough decision for a lot of people to make. I didn't agonize over it because, aside from questions of fundamental morality, I don't have a conscience. To paraphrase another hardcore amateur cyclist, "I'm a decider... I decide things." No qualms. Yeah, I worry about my family and the thought about how much life insurance I have - and a plan to boost that next open season - went through my mind. But I know who I am, I am a risk taker and a fighter, and I had to race. It wouldn't be true to my character to give up due to my fears.
Surely, this can't be the right line of reasoning for everybody.
Sometimes fear is gutlessness, but when it comes to real risks and bigtime pain, going at high speed with only lycra for protection, fear is nature's way of telling you to proceed carefully. So while I would have hated myself for walking away because of who I am, that's only because I'm wired to operate in a particular way. I tend to value physical courage over self preservation, even where the risks are high and the only reward is the perpetuation of my own personal values system.
I cannot bring myself to criticize people who make a different decision. Going either way is a reasonable decision, and for some people, the smarter decision.
Bill Luecke also writes:
With regard to the injury rate, it would be enlightening to compare the injury data to the overall injury rate in other competitive sports that have dangerous, uncontrollable situations. Say for example competitive regional downhill skiing, or rugby, or maybe even mountain bike racing.I played rugby for close to 20 years, at a highly competitive level in the U.S. and a decent level abroad, regularly facing territorial (or regional) level competition, usually as a role player, a hard working grinder who always took one for the team. In my (anecdotal) experience, on a squad of 45 players, it was normal to have 3 to 5 players on crutches or in casts at any one time working through year-long injuries like ACL tears and reconstructed shoulders, or occasionally a cracked vertebra, greenstick fracture or ripped tendon. Moreover, by the end of every season only a few beastly freaks of nature were free from nagging injuries and serious wear & tear, minor joint sprains, torn muscles, etc. The risk of serious injuries, like separated shoulders, concussions, greenstick fractures and blown knees seem pretty comparable in both sports, with more collarbone injuries in biking, more blown knees in rugby.
There are also fewer nagging injuries in cycling. For the last 10 years of my playing career, my post game ritual (aside from beer) included icing my knees and shoulders for the evening and day after a game. In fact, the famous beer drinking and staying up late really waned in the last several years of playing, and was normally replaced by a quick two beers right after the game with the opposing team, followed by swimming and sitting in a whirlpool at Bally's, all of which alleviated the regular bruising. I had to do that just to be able to train effectively, in order to play up to par.
Rugby and bike racing strike me as having a similar risk risk of catastrophic injury, I'm speaking about skull fractures, fractured spines and shattered hip sockets. These injuries didn't occur often in rugby - I'd see one of each maybe once every couple years of my playing career, and generally at amateur games I was spectating at rather than playing in - but they happened often enough, and everybody knew of an incident like that occurring to some regional team each year, that safety was *always* of concern to referees, coaches, and veteran players. Among the top 16 teams in the U.S. - that's an active roster of about 450 players each year - I know of one case of permanent quadripelegia occurring in the last 10 years or so, and a number of injuries where temporary parlyzation of that nature was incurred. The risks of bike racing strike me as similar, with one operative difference being that a heck of a lot more people seem to race or just ride bikes than play rugby. And oddly enough, we were discussing groin injuries this morning when one of our young guys pointed out that a bike can knock a testicle clean off, which I consider to be pretty catastrophic. But then I've seen an angry player twist another guy's nut off in a pileup after a tackle, and an inadvertant knee to the jewels is probably comparable to a top tube attack.
The two safety wildcards are cars vs. bikes, and angry rugby players vs. the world. I don't recall anybody getting hit by a car on the rugby pitch, but I've seen bicyclists hit, and regularly see close calls. On the other hand, few cars will circle around on their own accord to take a second crack at a bicyclist, whereas a pissed of rugby player thinks nothing of lurking for a while waiting to throw a sucker punch or more often to square up and enforce unwritten rules, unless it's a close game where penalties can't be conceded.
And for the insecure among us, who worry about bicycling's image among contact sports fans, FWIW, I find the level of suffering and the physical toughness of the players to be comparable across the two sports, with rugby suffering being a little more traumatic and short lived, suffering on the bike being more of a grinding and drawn out nature.
Finally (oh thank goodness, right?) the two questions Bill posited are linked. One attraction of racing is that it's bloody hard, with a little bit of danger, combining physical tests that max out the body with hard to manage risks. During a race or hard training ride, the body constantly whispers, "this hurts, go ahead, give up. It's scary, my instincts are to run from this. Quit." For me, overcoming the suffering of races and training, and the suffering of crashes and what my fellow riders inflict on me in races or hard training, is what it's about. If it was meant to be easy, the name of the sport would be "Easy." We'd ask, "Hey, want to go out and do the Poolesville Easy this weekend?" But it's not Easy, it's racing. If you would race, I think you have to accept all that racing can give you, good and bad, as part of the deal. If you can't do that, or if you stop being able to handle that bargain, you should do something else. There's no shame in it and I wouldn't question the decision.
Just don't question my decision to stick it out.
[Update: Scott at Racing Union has an interesting take on it that seems to involve economics or something. Typical marxist take on everything, I tell you. All about the Benjaminskis for them revolutionaries. Seriously though, it's an interesting discussion of racing and the odds of getting hurt. Check it out. ]
Water Bottles
Hmmmm... Serious Fungal Infections of the Eye on the Rise. Is that a bad allusion to yeast infections, which are fungal in nature? I guess not. It seems to be related to soft contact lenses, and a Bausch & Laumb cleaning solution that is now removed from the market, was tied to all the incidents of the infection. I don't wear contacts, so I guess I can continue to wipe post-race dirt and sweat off my face using polluted old socks, or the shorts I just took off, or whatever I find on the floor of my truck. Here's the grim part: "Most patients needed corneal scraping to remove dead tissue." Eeeeewwwww. I've had an abraded cornea. It was possibly the worst pain I ever had. It happened in a rugby game, from an intentional gouge with a fingernail. I hurt so badly that I just fell down on the spot, unable to breathe or walk. I tried to punch out the first person who came over to help me. The vibrations from people talking nearby made my eye hurt. I can't imagine paying somebody to do that to me, even if it was to clean out a gigantic, festering mushroom.
His Fatness, Fat Cyclist Elden Nelson, has opened a website to offer random reviews of cycling products. God alone knows what tales of bodily functions, bad crashes, and his climbing mania this will bring us. A couple of his buddies will be helping him out with the reviews. Fatty's first review relates to an answer to a question nobody was asking, featuring a water bottle with an integrated gel tube. How did Fatty like the unholy mix of gel and energy drink? Go find out.
I had a lot of fun on the muffin ride this morning. It's great seeing a a big pack of other Coppis socially, on an easy ride, then drinking coffee afterwards. Racing is pretty socially isolated. You train alone most of the time, when you race, you only see the teammates in your race, and a few from the next earlier or later race. So you don't have much time to hang out socially with team members. I'm reminded at the muffin ride and the monthly team dinner why I was interested in Squadra Coppi - the folks I met before I joined up were amicable and unburdened by the huge (and often unjustified) egos that a some racers suffer from. Racing humbles you so frequently, that you have to approach it with either a sense of humility, or a bigtime sense of delusion about your abilities and accomplishments, and almost all the Coppis are warm and devoid of runaway ego. The muffin ride is also a nice recovery ride. It's slow with a lot of light spinning, a handful of minor accellerations, and then, if you're up for it, one moderately hard effort up a 5 minute big ring hill on Arlington Boulevard. It's just the ticket for loosening up the legs prior to a good weekend of racing. Which I won't be doing this weekend, but you know, just in case. And there's just something right aesthetically about taking a dawn ride with an Italian-themed velo club, then ending the ride with espresso and muffins.
Oh, BTW, if you're wondering why I call these random posts "water bottles" it's because good racers get their water bottles for free, and just kind of cast them off as a race progresses. Low Cat elderly espoirs like myself pay for their water bottles, and use them until the black stuff growing in the bottom gets restless, hires lobbyists and then stages a march on the Capitol to protest against being stuffed full of Gu2O, crammed into too-tight cages, and left in the back seat to fester for days at a time.
His Fatness, Fat Cyclist Elden Nelson, has opened a website to offer random reviews of cycling products. God alone knows what tales of bodily functions, bad crashes, and his climbing mania this will bring us. A couple of his buddies will be helping him out with the reviews. Fatty's first review relates to an answer to a question nobody was asking, featuring a water bottle with an integrated gel tube. How did Fatty like the unholy mix of gel and energy drink? Go find out.
I had a lot of fun on the muffin ride this morning. It's great seeing a a big pack of other Coppis socially, on an easy ride, then drinking coffee afterwards. Racing is pretty socially isolated. You train alone most of the time, when you race, you only see the teammates in your race, and a few from the next earlier or later race. So you don't have much time to hang out socially with team members. I'm reminded at the muffin ride and the monthly team dinner why I was interested in Squadra Coppi - the folks I met before I joined up were amicable and unburdened by the huge (and often unjustified) egos that a some racers suffer from. Racing humbles you so frequently, that you have to approach it with either a sense of humility, or a bigtime sense of delusion about your abilities and accomplishments, and almost all the Coppis are warm and devoid of runaway ego. The muffin ride is also a nice recovery ride. It's slow with a lot of light spinning, a handful of minor accellerations, and then, if you're up for it, one moderately hard effort up a 5 minute big ring hill on Arlington Boulevard. It's just the ticket for loosening up the legs prior to a good weekend of racing. Which I won't be doing this weekend, but you know, just in case. And there's just something right aesthetically about taking a dawn ride with an Italian-themed velo club, then ending the ride with espresso and muffins.
Oh, BTW, if you're wondering why I call these random posts "water bottles" it's because good racers get their water bottles for free, and just kind of cast them off as a race progresses. Low Cat elderly espoirs like myself pay for their water bottles, and use them until the black stuff growing in the bottom gets restless, hires lobbyists and then stages a march on the Capitol to protest against being stuffed full of Gu2O, crammed into too-tight cages, and left in the back seat to fester for days at a time.
Greenbelt C Race
For Art - I attacked off the front on the downhill on the last lap, led for a while, got passed by 11 people going up the hill, took 13th.
For everybody else - it was a pretty normal C race. A bunch of people launched attacks that didn't stick for more than 15 seconds. I mostly sat in. Unlike last week, I never actually got gapped. There was a crash with 3 or 4 people involved about 4 or 5 laps from the end. A guy who is a pretty strong rider, but who wobbles a lot, half wheeled another guy and the inevitable occurred: the wobbly guy's front wheel touched the other guy's rear and wobbly guy went down taking a few people with him. I was near wobbly guy when it happened, but unlike at Baker Park, I had made a lot of efforts to stay away from him, and another guy who was just plain squirelly. So I was about five feet away from wobbly guy, on his left, when he went. I couldn't go further to the left because there were some A or B riders warming up on the left, so I was right on the yellow line. Imagine my surprise when wobbly guy's bike slewed left at a 90 degree angle, and T-boned me. I was ready for it, and as wobbly guy went down, I braced for the impact. He hit my lower right ribs and hip, and my upper thigh. Then as his bike slid to the tarmac like the Titanic going under, his bar end caught on my knee and calf, leaving a six inch long, perfectly rectangular scrape. He hit me *really* hard, and I sort of went airborne for a second, got lofted up and over the yellow line, bounced, and then kept pedaling. I heard crashing noises to my rear but didn't want to know, and just kept rolling.
Three laps out, we had a prime lap. Nobody really wanted to compete for it since there had been some tentative attacks on the prior lap and the guys who were attempting to control the pace were gassed looking. A Navy guy (Mike Sullivan, I think?) caught up to us. He had been gapped badly when he was caught up in the crash, and TT'ed up. He seemed like he was going pretty well and we just chatted while the guys up front wasted energy in a couple little useless attacks. As we went up the hill, I encouraged him to try a feint and see how the front would react. I figured they were too gassed and told him it would probably throw the pack into disarray. Sure enough, he attacked a little bit, the three or four guys on the front tried to stick with him, and gave up after about three pedal strokes. Mr. Sullivan looked back after 10 seconds, saw that nobody was coming, and just kept going off the front for the win.
The rest of us stuck together into the last lap. Going down the back hill, I attacked *hard*. I didn't think I could win it, but I figured I could blow up the pack like last week and maybe help a Snow Valley guy I race with a lot to win it. So I told him to catch my wheel. He got blocked in, and failed to catch the wheel, and I opened a 50 yard gap on the field pretty easily. I shot around the bottom corner at full tilt, and went until my legs sort of lost it. Just as I crested the second little hill before the start of the long rise, the chase group and a few people just off the back of it flew by. And here is where I screwed up badly. My legs were really bad, so I expected it would be like last week - I had nothing in the tank and couldn't really do anything about it. So I just sat down and spun, noticed that I had again destroyed the pack, nobody was really close. As I spun up the last hill, it appeared that the chase got about 20 yards ahead of me, and then just completely lost momentum. It didn't occur to me that I had a few more matches to burn until I got up onto the finishing straight, when the leaders were sprinting. In retrospect, an hour later, I think I might have recovered enough by halfway up the hill, to sprint myself back into contention.
You see, the problem was I was racing as if I was in last week's race. I *expected* that I had nothing left, so that's the way I rode. The truth of the matter was that I was hurting, but that I probably recovered enough after a ten second pause on the downhill after the second rise to catch up to that group, which burnt themselves out pretty good catching up to me. I was pissed when I figured this out. I don't think I could have won, but I think a slightly better placing was within reach.
The lesson is pretty clear. Forget about expectations, listen more closely to what the body is saying right at that moment.
For everybody else - it was a pretty normal C race. A bunch of people launched attacks that didn't stick for more than 15 seconds. I mostly sat in. Unlike last week, I never actually got gapped. There was a crash with 3 or 4 people involved about 4 or 5 laps from the end. A guy who is a pretty strong rider, but who wobbles a lot, half wheeled another guy and the inevitable occurred: the wobbly guy's front wheel touched the other guy's rear and wobbly guy went down taking a few people with him. I was near wobbly guy when it happened, but unlike at Baker Park, I had made a lot of efforts to stay away from him, and another guy who was just plain squirelly. So I was about five feet away from wobbly guy, on his left, when he went. I couldn't go further to the left because there were some A or B riders warming up on the left, so I was right on the yellow line. Imagine my surprise when wobbly guy's bike slewed left at a 90 degree angle, and T-boned me. I was ready for it, and as wobbly guy went down, I braced for the impact. He hit my lower right ribs and hip, and my upper thigh. Then as his bike slid to the tarmac like the Titanic going under, his bar end caught on my knee and calf, leaving a six inch long, perfectly rectangular scrape. He hit me *really* hard, and I sort of went airborne for a second, got lofted up and over the yellow line, bounced, and then kept pedaling. I heard crashing noises to my rear but didn't want to know, and just kept rolling.
Three laps out, we had a prime lap. Nobody really wanted to compete for it since there had been some tentative attacks on the prior lap and the guys who were attempting to control the pace were gassed looking. A Navy guy (Mike Sullivan, I think?) caught up to us. He had been gapped badly when he was caught up in the crash, and TT'ed up. He seemed like he was going pretty well and we just chatted while the guys up front wasted energy in a couple little useless attacks. As we went up the hill, I encouraged him to try a feint and see how the front would react. I figured they were too gassed and told him it would probably throw the pack into disarray. Sure enough, he attacked a little bit, the three or four guys on the front tried to stick with him, and gave up after about three pedal strokes. Mr. Sullivan looked back after 10 seconds, saw that nobody was coming, and just kept going off the front for the win.
The rest of us stuck together into the last lap. Going down the back hill, I attacked *hard*. I didn't think I could win it, but I figured I could blow up the pack like last week and maybe help a Snow Valley guy I race with a lot to win it. So I told him to catch my wheel. He got blocked in, and failed to catch the wheel, and I opened a 50 yard gap on the field pretty easily. I shot around the bottom corner at full tilt, and went until my legs sort of lost it. Just as I crested the second little hill before the start of the long rise, the chase group and a few people just off the back of it flew by. And here is where I screwed up badly. My legs were really bad, so I expected it would be like last week - I had nothing in the tank and couldn't really do anything about it. So I just sat down and spun, noticed that I had again destroyed the pack, nobody was really close. As I spun up the last hill, it appeared that the chase got about 20 yards ahead of me, and then just completely lost momentum. It didn't occur to me that I had a few more matches to burn until I got up onto the finishing straight, when the leaders were sprinting. In retrospect, an hour later, I think I might have recovered enough by halfway up the hill, to sprint myself back into contention.
You see, the problem was I was racing as if I was in last week's race. I *expected* that I had nothing left, so that's the way I rode. The truth of the matter was that I was hurting, but that I probably recovered enough after a ten second pause on the downhill after the second rise to catch up to that group, which burnt themselves out pretty good catching up to me. I was pissed when I figured this out. I don't think I could have won, but I think a slightly better placing was within reach.
The lesson is pretty clear. Forget about expectations, listen more closely to what the body is saying right at that moment.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Water Bottles
- Kent Peterson, an extraordinary bike guy & ultra-distance rider, notes that you can get bad mouth sores as a result of long distance riding, perhaps from sweat & metabolizing action leeching B and C vitamins out of your body while your ride. I've not gotten cold sores, but my mouth gets awful sensitive to spicy food after about 50 miles of hard (>zone 2) riding. My nose is usually clogged up from getting hit many times in contact sports, so in a way, being able to taste the subtleties in a nice wine is really special. On the other hand I crave Mexican food after a tough ride, and it just about blows my recalibrated taste buds out of my mouth. I bet it's related to the phenomenon Kent comments on. Kent's solution is to take "Stress Tabs" vitamins, which are heavy on B Complex and C. I'm going to have to try it. I'm a bit tired of my post ride burritos scorching both ends of my body. It just ain't right, folks.
- In an unrelated post discussing a 600km brevet ride he completed last weekend, Kent Peterson discusses waiting for a younger, fast rider at the end of the ride. Eventually, the younger guy shows up. Kent had been really concerned, since the weather turned cold and rainy, and on a 600km unsupported ride, those conditions are no joke. (That's an unsupported 360 mile, 36 hour ride with lots of climbs and lots of deserted roads.) The young guy's explanation for his inexplicably late arrival?
Nice. That pretty well sums up my brief rando experience this spring. Next year, I'll be back for more. Hopefully the 300km brevet isn't up against Poolesville. (Because you know, a man shouldn't be forced to pick between two brutally punishing rides; he should get to ride them both.)
- Holy Fashizzle, Batmanizzle. Racing Union (which really should be pronounced the Racing Onion) has new blinged out uni's. Not only that, but they're Cat Tested, Cat Approved for racers in any Cat... or for the Cat of any racer. And they are described in loving detail in a most excellent blog post.
- And speaking of the Onion, Lance Armstrong Just Grateful the UCI Doesn't Test for Heroin. Key graf: "Without smack, there's no way anyone could finish the Tour De France, let alone win it. . ." Well, they say dopamine (produced in great quantities when the body is under severe loads) is the same substance released by the brain in response to ingesting heroin, so I suppose the comparison isn't totally out of the question. It would explain how top climbers stay so skinny...
- In an unrelated post discussing a 600km brevet ride he completed last weekend, Kent Peterson discusses waiting for a younger, fast rider at the end of the ride. Eventually, the younger guy shows up. Kent had been really concerned, since the weather turned cold and rainy, and on a 600km unsupported ride, those conditions are no joke. (That's an unsupported 360 mile, 36 hour ride with lots of climbs and lots of deserted roads.) The young guy's explanation for his inexplicably late arrival?
"I spent several wet hours huddled somewhere wishing I was dead, but then I realized I could wish I was dead while pedaling."
- Holy Fashizzle, Batmanizzle. Racing Union (which really should be pronounced the Racing Onion) has new blinged out uni's. Not only that, but they're Cat Tested, Cat Approved for racers in any Cat... or for the Cat of any racer. And they are described in loving detail in a most excellent blog post.
- And speaking of the Onion, Lance Armstrong Just Grateful the UCI Doesn't Test for Heroin. Key graf: "Without smack, there's no way anyone could finish the Tour De France, let alone win it. . ." Well, they say dopamine (produced in great quantities when the body is under severe loads) is the same substance released by the brain in response to ingesting heroin, so I suppose the comparison isn't totally out of the question. It would explain how top climbers stay so skinny...
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Throwing Water Bottles...
- You know you are spending too much time on the bike when you are driving along in the car, and your wife asks you what you are doing - and only then do you realize you are waving your arm wildly at a pothole over on the left side of the road, and waggling your fingers when you pull into the right lane to allow others to pass on the highway.
- I was at the beach this weekend for the wedding of a dear friend. I was drinking martinis as if my life depended on doing a good Dean Martin imitation. This did not help the riding today upon my return home. The martini, especially with Tanqueray or Gordons, is a drink that I could become an alcoholic for. That was something my dad used to say as a way of explanation for why he avoided martinis, generally. It made no sense to me until I started drinking martinis. As Mr. Hope said, the problem with martinis is that two are too many, and five aren't nearly enough.
- I noticed at the beach, a lot of old (55-65 year-old) rich guys have AMG Mercedes' cars or similarly tuned Porsches or BMWs or Italian exotica, full Dura Ace Serottas or Colnagos, and good looking 30-35 year old wives. I notice they don't drive the cars very hard, don't ride the bikes very fast, and... well, I'm not going to speculate about their personal lives. Suffice to say, if you have a piece of high quality machinery like an AMG Mercedes or a high end race bike and don't ride it pretty hard, you aren't doing the machinery any justice. It's a tragic misuse of a fine tool, like using a Lie-Nielson shoulder plane as a paperweight in your office; or like using a thoroughbred horse to tow a Hansom Cab. There's just something wrong with it.
- My bike isn't a premium bike, and I roll with an Ultegra gruppo. I flog the bike to within an inch of its life. Well, really I don't, it's capabilities are much higher than mine, but I give it a go pretty regularly. A good road bike is built to go really fast. That is its purpose, and we all find great satisfaction in fulfilling the purposes for which we were designed. If my bike could talk, I believe it would say, "Faster, please. A little more effort. I can go harder if you can." I do my best to oblige. Like most high quality equipment these days, the abilities of the tools far outstrip the abilities of the users. Wasn't always the way, even 15 or 20 years ago in cars, motorbikes, or bicycles. Nevermind computers and consumer electronics, which didn't really even exist back then, not in the sense that they exist today. And don't get me started on the wonders of STI integrated brake/shifter levers versus friction shifters on the downtube and phoney-baloney never-works-quite-right attempts at indexed shifting in the late 80's...
This discussion, if you can plot the trajectory, will soon degenerate into a senile rant about 'kids these days, and how we need More Matlock...' so I'm just going to stop right here.
- I was at the beach this weekend for the wedding of a dear friend. I was drinking martinis as if my life depended on doing a good Dean Martin imitation. This did not help the riding today upon my return home. The martini, especially with Tanqueray or Gordons, is a drink that I could become an alcoholic for. That was something my dad used to say as a way of explanation for why he avoided martinis, generally. It made no sense to me until I started drinking martinis. As Mr. Hope said, the problem with martinis is that two are too many, and five aren't nearly enough.
- I noticed at the beach, a lot of old (55-65 year-old) rich guys have AMG Mercedes' cars or similarly tuned Porsches or BMWs or Italian exotica, full Dura Ace Serottas or Colnagos, and good looking 30-35 year old wives. I notice they don't drive the cars very hard, don't ride the bikes very fast, and... well, I'm not going to speculate about their personal lives. Suffice to say, if you have a piece of high quality machinery like an AMG Mercedes or a high end race bike and don't ride it pretty hard, you aren't doing the machinery any justice. It's a tragic misuse of a fine tool, like using a Lie-Nielson shoulder plane as a paperweight in your office; or like using a thoroughbred horse to tow a Hansom Cab. There's just something wrong with it.
- My bike isn't a premium bike, and I roll with an Ultegra gruppo. I flog the bike to within an inch of its life. Well, really I don't, it's capabilities are much higher than mine, but I give it a go pretty regularly. A good road bike is built to go really fast. That is its purpose, and we all find great satisfaction in fulfilling the purposes for which we were designed. If my bike could talk, I believe it would say, "Faster, please. A little more effort. I can go harder if you can." I do my best to oblige. Like most high quality equipment these days, the abilities of the tools far outstrip the abilities of the users. Wasn't always the way, even 15 or 20 years ago in cars, motorbikes, or bicycles. Nevermind computers and consumer electronics, which didn't really even exist back then, not in the sense that they exist today. And don't get me started on the wonders of STI integrated brake/shifter levers versus friction shifters on the downtube and phoney-baloney never-works-quite-right attempts at indexed shifting in the late 80's...
This discussion, if you can plot the trajectory, will soon degenerate into a senile rant about 'kids these days, and how we need More Matlock...' so I'm just going to stop right here.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
CRP: Greenbelt Training "C" Race
The race started unusually fast. My legs are a bit dead from the welcome misery Bill Gros is encouraging me to inflict on myself. On the plus side, I guess it’s noticeable that we Cat 5s are in mid-season form – everybody got clipped in and there was no swearing.
After the Baker Park Debacle, I’m leery of squirrelly riders. So I spent the first lap or two identifying squirrels. I spotted perhaps three or four. I passed a couple of them, but one guy who rode very jerky and bouncy was up front for the whole race, so I just had to live with him. Another racer opined the guy’s seat was too low, I think he may have been right. It hurt just to watch him bounce up and down on the seat, and the bouncy guy's line was a bit erratic as a result.
So we kept going around for a few laps mostly in a large group, I was near the front so I don't know about any attrition. I hid going up the hill – soft pedal on the first couple little uphills, pedal hard on the little dips to pick up easy speed, and then grind up the last long uphill to the finishing straight. Sit behind dudes with big butts. The heart rate was tempo going downhill, just above lactate threshold for most of the uphill, and by the finish line straight I was typically at LT+15. That was the routine. Hard, but I'm learning to manage the effort and recover while rolling along. I think that's the goal...
As we settled into a rhythm as a pack, I noticed something. There were a few near crashes here and there from what appeared to be concentration lapses. Guys would get into a groove, and then suddenly jerk for no apparent reason, or just drift off line. Concentration drift is the enemy of safety. So are big dudes who bomb down the hill, and then fly past folks in the one technical, off-camber turn on that course. I did that a few times and had to pick some unique lines to pull of bigtime passing maneuvers safely. I almost got pegged by a couple other big guys doing the same maneuver a few other times, but not applying my innovative (i.e. way wide, or way narrow) cornering techniques. I noticed that if you communicate your way through, there are fewer close calls. Hey, maybe I should charge for that advice – “if you want to be in a safer race, communicate with those around you.” Regardless of communication strategy, it seems imprudent to try to pass a bunch in a corner unless you are away from the middle of the pack.
Speaking of communicating, a nice guy who I later found out is an MTB racing convert, aka a socially unschooled hermit on wheels, was taking a drink as we went down the back hill. The only problem was he was in the middle of a 4-wide pack, swerving with every savory gulp, and scaring the bejeezus out of everybody. Now, I’m trying to be kinder, gentler Jim. I really am. So I said, “Hey, don’t drink while you’re in the middle, will ya?” Calling somebody out like that might at first seem rude, until you know the first thing I thought of saying. Which was, “Hey! Move to the side, to drink, f***o.”
I spent most of the race wheelsucking. If I’m not on flat ground, where I can actually do a couple dynamic things, the way I view my job is to hide out on the hills until I can be useful to myself, or others. The wheelsucking was aided by my incredibly sophisticated understanding of racing body language. I'm developing a great sixth sense about when an attack will stick. Either that, or for the most part, Cat 5s can't make attacks stick, so my usual prediction (it'll never stick") is almost always accurate by default. A few guys ttried attacks going up the hill and started out strong, but they looked labored, pulling up hard on the handlebars as they tried to jump going up the hill, so I counseled those around me to take it easy, not panic, the attackers would fade. And if they didn't, several of us were strong boys and maybe we'd just have to work together - but no sense killing ourselves if the attackers were going to collapse. Sure enough, they did. Pretty sophisticated system, eh? “They look tired.” I should sell that advice too. od, who know that the biggest flaw in my character – the lazy procrastination that is such a handicap elsewhere in my life – would be such an asset in racing. Um, I guess racers don't call it lazy procrastination, they call it "patience." That's it, I'm not lazy, I'm patient, and patience is a virtue. Damn, I'm good. I should be a lawyer.
I wasn’t a parasite the whole way though. We had a prime with about 3 laps left. Right after the bell, the pace went crazy. I resolved to just cruise, and not try to compete for the prime. We bombed down the hill, shot through the turn, and a few guys attacked up the hill. The front of the pack got all strung out, then all of a sudden everybody ran out of gas and those interested in winning the Gu packets or whatever slogged hard up the hill. By the time we passed the bell, I was gapped by 15 seconds, and maybe in 18th place, towing a small line of gasping riders. My Hr was only 175 or so – LT+18 – so it was a moderate effort lap for me and I had a couple matches left, which is what I’d wanted to have at the end of it. So on the next downhill after the prime, I bridged up with my hands in the drops, just spinning easy and fast down the big backside hill. I closed the 15 second gap by the time we were halfway down the big hill. That gave me an idea for a last lap attack. I had no chance of winning this race – the loooong finishing uphill guarantees that. But maybe I could cause some devastation in the pack.
Coming around the bell turn on last lap, I was pretty relaxed since the front-ish group had just punished themselves with the prime lap, and the field was down to maybe 20 or 24. I was at the tail end of the pack, which was a little strung out, again I had taken it as easy as possible going up the front straight hill. I got into the drops down the first little downhill past the bell. I stuck ‘er in the highest gear, 50:12, and pegged it going down the hill - not all out, but just a light, fast spin that you fixie riders will be familiar with. As I passed the front, I shouted at Joe from Racing Union, “Stay there. Wait. Then counterattack." I had no hope of winning due to the long uphill finish, so I wanted to make a decisive move, splinter the pack, force some guys to chase, and hopefully give Joe – a nice guy and stronger overall rider than me whose blog I really like – a decent shot at the win. I shot by the leaders and was quickly off the front. At the bottom of the hill I hit 45, spun right up to the corner, leaned ‘er way over – drawing a cheer from the corner workers. Wooo hooo! I guess they don’t see a ManBearPig hauling butt on a bike every day. I stayed off the front until after the first rise, well up the second rise. Then I got passed by three or four guys working very hard. Racing Union Joe was among them. Dammit! NO! NO! NO! I said. It wasn't about getting passed, it was that Joe must not have heard me, and went with the other guys in the chase, thinking I was a real threat to win. As we lugged it up the hill, the grupetto that passed me, with Joe in it, flagged, and a bunch of single riders ground past me, one at a time, they were pretty fresh looking, probably because they didn't chase me, and most bridged up to that grupetto pretty quickly. By the time we were at the top of the hill my spent self was maybe 10 seconds off the back, and a handful of guys were sprinting at the line. Just before the end, I drafted and then slingshotted past a guy who, I think, had crossed eyes and steam coming out of his ears. Looking back, the pack was destroyed, just scattered ones and twos coming up the hill. My job was done here.
Result: 11th place. This was my best ever finish at Greenbelt, first real pack finish there, and much better than I expect to do on that course due to the long hill. The best part was realizing I could make a move, ujderstanding what would probably happen, and then executing on it, totally blowing up the pack. Racing isn't going fast, it's manipulating chess pieces at speed, and for once, I was able to look three or four moves ahead, which isn't a lot, but it's more than I've ever done before on my own. Though I wasn’t positioned to win, that attack wound up being the decisive move of the race, I think. (Others in the race may disagree, that's what comments are for). It culled the field, and even though I had no chance of a win, it meant I could duke it out for 10th against maybe 14 guys, instead of fighting for 10th through 25th. Oh yeah, and the girl Jen from NCVC beat me too. What can I say, she’s pretty good, and I’m mediocre at best.
Random Stuff
– I kept having to dodge a few riders who weren’t racing. Just out for a spin. On the course. What a frogging nuisance and basically dangerous situation that was.
- Do people really get what the yellow line means? Guys were cruising up the hill in the wrong lane. It’s not just for race purposes, guys, it’s because you’ll get killed if some redneck in a car, sick of waitin’ for all these bikers, comes bombing down the hill. The whole training race notion is, in part, to learn how to ride in and manuever through a pack. You don't get that if you are riding up in the off-limits lane.
- I took advantage of my hard learned experience at Baker Park. I tried to identify squirrelly people early and put them behind myself quickly. It mostly worked.
- Hey, if I'm all fouled up, fellow riders, please feel free to un-screw me. I will try to repay the favor some time, and I will try to accept your correction - and dole corrections out - with an absence of ego. The peleton seems to work fantastically if you approach it with humility and consider that it is comprised of fellow people. Done right, it is more than the sum of the parts, and the magical feeling of a smoothly flowing peleton is one of the indescribable essences of roadracing, something I find gives the sport an almost mystical vibe. That only works if you are open to the experience of the pack and what others are trying to do, and not trying to get on top of the peleton or riding along damaging the interconnected social network of the thing.
- Cornering is my friend as a lifelong motorcyclist. Around Cat 5s, it’s important to pick cornering lines that are almost impossible for those around you to puck up. Most other riders you see every week, they are pretty trustworthy most of the time. But a lot of inexperienced guys have trouble in technical turns, and even the more experienced guys have concentration lapses, hit pebbles or paint and skid or throw their chain. Better to find a clean line if you have to go through 4 wide. Going way wide at mega speed is good, other than crashes and mechanicals, nobody winds up that far out in a turn. Going way narrow at mega speed is pretty good too, pegging it right around the curb and hanging off the inside of the bike with your butt over the grass. You can handle a remarkable lean angle if you eyeball the slot you want to ride through, or corner hard while being remarkably upright if you can hang off. The nice part about the inside line is that almost no bad handlers choose that line, and almost no bad handlers move way in during a turn, they almost always swerve around the middle lines through a turn, usually veering outwards.
- I got a really nice compliment on my attack. It’s the best merit-related compliment I’ve received since I’ve remounted the bike: “Dude, on that last lap, when you went, you passed everybody and nobody could catch you on that hill. That was a great descent.”
- I know it’s only a training race. But damn, it feels good to be making some measurable progress. That said, all credit must go to Bill, whose coaching is really helping me improve, and to the folks whose wheels I sucked for dear life tonight.
After the Baker Park Debacle, I’m leery of squirrelly riders. So I spent the first lap or two identifying squirrels. I spotted perhaps three or four. I passed a couple of them, but one guy who rode very jerky and bouncy was up front for the whole race, so I just had to live with him. Another racer opined the guy’s seat was too low, I think he may have been right. It hurt just to watch him bounce up and down on the seat, and the bouncy guy's line was a bit erratic as a result.
So we kept going around for a few laps mostly in a large group, I was near the front so I don't know about any attrition. I hid going up the hill – soft pedal on the first couple little uphills, pedal hard on the little dips to pick up easy speed, and then grind up the last long uphill to the finishing straight. Sit behind dudes with big butts. The heart rate was tempo going downhill, just above lactate threshold for most of the uphill, and by the finish line straight I was typically at LT+15. That was the routine. Hard, but I'm learning to manage the effort and recover while rolling along. I think that's the goal...
As we settled into a rhythm as a pack, I noticed something. There were a few near crashes here and there from what appeared to be concentration lapses. Guys would get into a groove, and then suddenly jerk for no apparent reason, or just drift off line. Concentration drift is the enemy of safety. So are big dudes who bomb down the hill, and then fly past folks in the one technical, off-camber turn on that course. I did that a few times and had to pick some unique lines to pull of bigtime passing maneuvers safely. I almost got pegged by a couple other big guys doing the same maneuver a few other times, but not applying my innovative (i.e. way wide, or way narrow) cornering techniques. I noticed that if you communicate your way through, there are fewer close calls. Hey, maybe I should charge for that advice – “if you want to be in a safer race, communicate with those around you.” Regardless of communication strategy, it seems imprudent to try to pass a bunch in a corner unless you are away from the middle of the pack.
Speaking of communicating, a nice guy who I later found out is an MTB racing convert, aka a socially unschooled hermit on wheels, was taking a drink as we went down the back hill. The only problem was he was in the middle of a 4-wide pack, swerving with every savory gulp, and scaring the bejeezus out of everybody. Now, I’m trying to be kinder, gentler Jim. I really am. So I said, “Hey, don’t drink while you’re in the middle, will ya?” Calling somebody out like that might at first seem rude, until you know the first thing I thought of saying. Which was, “Hey! Move to the side, to drink, f***o.”
I spent most of the race wheelsucking. If I’m not on flat ground, where I can actually do a couple dynamic things, the way I view my job is to hide out on the hills until I can be useful to myself, or others. The wheelsucking was aided by my incredibly sophisticated understanding of racing body language. I'm developing a great sixth sense about when an attack will stick. Either that, or for the most part, Cat 5s can't make attacks stick, so my usual prediction (it'll never stick") is almost always accurate by default. A few guys ttried attacks going up the hill and started out strong, but they looked labored, pulling up hard on the handlebars as they tried to jump going up the hill, so I counseled those around me to take it easy, not panic, the attackers would fade. And if they didn't, several of us were strong boys and maybe we'd just have to work together - but no sense killing ourselves if the attackers were going to collapse. Sure enough, they did. Pretty sophisticated system, eh? “They look tired.” I should sell that advice too. od, who know that the biggest flaw in my character – the lazy procrastination that is such a handicap elsewhere in my life – would be such an asset in racing. Um, I guess racers don't call it lazy procrastination, they call it "patience." That's it, I'm not lazy, I'm patient, and patience is a virtue. Damn, I'm good. I should be a lawyer.
I wasn’t a parasite the whole way though. We had a prime with about 3 laps left. Right after the bell, the pace went crazy. I resolved to just cruise, and not try to compete for the prime. We bombed down the hill, shot through the turn, and a few guys attacked up the hill. The front of the pack got all strung out, then all of a sudden everybody ran out of gas and those interested in winning the Gu packets or whatever slogged hard up the hill. By the time we passed the bell, I was gapped by 15 seconds, and maybe in 18th place, towing a small line of gasping riders. My Hr was only 175 or so – LT+18 – so it was a moderate effort lap for me and I had a couple matches left, which is what I’d wanted to have at the end of it. So on the next downhill after the prime, I bridged up with my hands in the drops, just spinning easy and fast down the big backside hill. I closed the 15 second gap by the time we were halfway down the big hill. That gave me an idea for a last lap attack. I had no chance of winning this race – the loooong finishing uphill guarantees that. But maybe I could cause some devastation in the pack.
Coming around the bell turn on last lap, I was pretty relaxed since the front-ish group had just punished themselves with the prime lap, and the field was down to maybe 20 or 24. I was at the tail end of the pack, which was a little strung out, again I had taken it as easy as possible going up the front straight hill. I got into the drops down the first little downhill past the bell. I stuck ‘er in the highest gear, 50:12, and pegged it going down the hill - not all out, but just a light, fast spin that you fixie riders will be familiar with. As I passed the front, I shouted at Joe from Racing Union, “Stay there. Wait. Then counterattack." I had no hope of winning due to the long uphill finish, so I wanted to make a decisive move, splinter the pack, force some guys to chase, and hopefully give Joe – a nice guy and stronger overall rider than me whose blog I really like – a decent shot at the win. I shot by the leaders and was quickly off the front. At the bottom of the hill I hit 45, spun right up to the corner, leaned ‘er way over – drawing a cheer from the corner workers. Wooo hooo! I guess they don’t see a ManBearPig hauling butt on a bike every day. I stayed off the front until after the first rise, well up the second rise. Then I got passed by three or four guys working very hard. Racing Union Joe was among them. Dammit! NO! NO! NO! I said. It wasn't about getting passed, it was that Joe must not have heard me, and went with the other guys in the chase, thinking I was a real threat to win. As we lugged it up the hill, the grupetto that passed me, with Joe in it, flagged, and a bunch of single riders ground past me, one at a time, they were pretty fresh looking, probably because they didn't chase me, and most bridged up to that grupetto pretty quickly. By the time we were at the top of the hill my spent self was maybe 10 seconds off the back, and a handful of guys were sprinting at the line. Just before the end, I drafted and then slingshotted past a guy who, I think, had crossed eyes and steam coming out of his ears. Looking back, the pack was destroyed, just scattered ones and twos coming up the hill. My job was done here.
Result: 11th place. This was my best ever finish at Greenbelt, first real pack finish there, and much better than I expect to do on that course due to the long hill. The best part was realizing I could make a move, ujderstanding what would probably happen, and then executing on it, totally blowing up the pack. Racing isn't going fast, it's manipulating chess pieces at speed, and for once, I was able to look three or four moves ahead, which isn't a lot, but it's more than I've ever done before on my own. Though I wasn’t positioned to win, that attack wound up being the decisive move of the race, I think. (Others in the race may disagree, that's what comments are for). It culled the field, and even though I had no chance of a win, it meant I could duke it out for 10th against maybe 14 guys, instead of fighting for 10th through 25th. Oh yeah, and the girl Jen from NCVC beat me too. What can I say, she’s pretty good, and I’m mediocre at best.
Random Stuff
– I kept having to dodge a few riders who weren’t racing. Just out for a spin. On the course. What a frogging nuisance and basically dangerous situation that was.
- Do people really get what the yellow line means? Guys were cruising up the hill in the wrong lane. It’s not just for race purposes, guys, it’s because you’ll get killed if some redneck in a car, sick of waitin’ for all these bikers, comes bombing down the hill. The whole training race notion is, in part, to learn how to ride in and manuever through a pack. You don't get that if you are riding up in the off-limits lane.
- I took advantage of my hard learned experience at Baker Park. I tried to identify squirrelly people early and put them behind myself quickly. It mostly worked.
- Hey, if I'm all fouled up, fellow riders, please feel free to un-screw me. I will try to repay the favor some time, and I will try to accept your correction - and dole corrections out - with an absence of ego. The peleton seems to work fantastically if you approach it with humility and consider that it is comprised of fellow people. Done right, it is more than the sum of the parts, and the magical feeling of a smoothly flowing peleton is one of the indescribable essences of roadracing, something I find gives the sport an almost mystical vibe. That only works if you are open to the experience of the pack and what others are trying to do, and not trying to get on top of the peleton or riding along damaging the interconnected social network of the thing.
- Cornering is my friend as a lifelong motorcyclist. Around Cat 5s, it’s important to pick cornering lines that are almost impossible for those around you to puck up. Most other riders you see every week, they are pretty trustworthy most of the time. But a lot of inexperienced guys have trouble in technical turns, and even the more experienced guys have concentration lapses, hit pebbles or paint and skid or throw their chain. Better to find a clean line if you have to go through 4 wide. Going way wide at mega speed is good, other than crashes and mechanicals, nobody winds up that far out in a turn. Going way narrow at mega speed is pretty good too, pegging it right around the curb and hanging off the inside of the bike with your butt over the grass. You can handle a remarkable lean angle if you eyeball the slot you want to ride through, or corner hard while being remarkably upright if you can hang off. The nice part about the inside line is that almost no bad handlers choose that line, and almost no bad handlers move way in during a turn, they almost always swerve around the middle lines through a turn, usually veering outwards.
- I got a really nice compliment on my attack. It’s the best merit-related compliment I’ve received since I’ve remounted the bike: “Dude, on that last lap, when you went, you passed everybody and nobody could catch you on that hill. That was a great descent.”
- I know it’s only a training race. But damn, it feels good to be making some measurable progress. That said, all credit must go to Bill, whose coaching is really helping me improve, and to the folks whose wheels I sucked for dear life tonight.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
The Persistence of Memory
I've had two bloody hard crashes in the last month. In spite of a blackout, or near blackout during one, I remember most of it quite vividly. I remember the crash from two weeks ago friday very well. It was a terrible, low speed tipover that separated my right shoulder, tore a pectoral and aggravated anther old back injury. I remember that as if it had happened five minutes ago. The memories of these Adventures in Novel Bicycle Dismount Methods are so incredibly vivid.
Yet I can't remember where I placed my car keys when I came in the house after work, and while I can remember that they were very good, I can barely remember what the nice barbecue ribs I had the other night tasted like.
In short, that crap they tell you about how you only remember the good stuff is bogus. You bite the asphalt, it's seared into your brain just as if somebody had cracked open your skull and inserted a red hot branding iron.
Which, based on how I still feel, might be what happened to my shoulder. Yeah, that's it. The Secret Crash Cowboys of BrokeBike Mountain branded my A/C joint with a red hot Ti steerer tube. That would explain the pain, and why my jerseys smell unusually bad lately. It still doesn't account for my car keys, but I will settle for a win any way I can get it.
Yet I can't remember where I placed my car keys when I came in the house after work, and while I can remember that they were very good, I can barely remember what the nice barbecue ribs I had the other night tasted like.
In short, that crap they tell you about how you only remember the good stuff is bogus. You bite the asphalt, it's seared into your brain just as if somebody had cracked open your skull and inserted a red hot branding iron.
Which, based on how I still feel, might be what happened to my shoulder. Yeah, that's it. The Secret Crash Cowboys of BrokeBike Mountain branded my A/C joint with a red hot Ti steerer tube. That would explain the pain, and why my jerseys smell unusually bad lately. It still doesn't account for my car keys, but I will settle for a win any way I can get it.
Monday, June 05, 2006
My Racing World View
Might as well say something I thought of saying to a friend who got the Full Monte over the weekend in his first crit. Naturally, I forgot to tell him this little gem when I was discussing my crit experiences, which in 6 or 8 of them, range from complete suckage, to mediocre, to promising but ultimately disappointing so far.
Crits are unbelievably hard until you figure out how to keep your speed up in the corners, and discover how/where to wheelsuck and conserve energy for the big pushes.
After that, they are merely hard.
Someday, if everything works out favorably, I shall podium in a crit. Oh yes.
Of course it may take an enormous crash in the field sprint for it to happen, but what the hell, I race Cat 5, so the odds are in my favor.
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