You Think You Got Problems?

In response to my comments on how to know when you have a Bicycling Addiction, frequent commenter, sometimes blogger, and permanent Trackie Big Mike writes on his blog:

Dear Unholyrouleur

I think I may have a problem. Can I please get your expert opinion?

Sunday morning I raced the local criterium (poorly). As I was packing up a club member called out to me that someone had left a pair of gloves in the next parking area up. I promptly forgot. Later that afternoon I realised that I hadn't collected the gloves for lost and found. I was also still fuming about my disappointing race outcome.

So in an act of self flagellation I decided to ride the 42x18 fixie for the 30 mile round trip to pick up the gloves. When I got there I discovered that they had been collected already.

When I got home and surveyed the damage I cried. A rough tough trackie crying like a baby at the demise of a rear hub. Then I slowly turned the wheel and realised I'd killed a Suntour Superbe Pro 32 hole low flange road hub, a collector’s item, which caused the sobbing to deepen.

I undertook some therapeutic activity that mournful Sunday evening, lovingly dismantling the wheel and setting aside the battered remains of a hub to which I owed so much, with which I share so many memories – June 2008 would have been our 22nd anniversary. I then rebuilt the wheel with a similarly configured Campagnolo Record (c. 1985) hub that I had been using as a chain keeper (which was an ongoing source of dismay for my LBS owner).

Last night at the velodrome I showed the corpse to a clubmate who is a precision fitter. He said he could repair it. I told him I didn’t want to ride a Frankenstein hub and he calmed me with words of confidence in his ability to make an “invisible” repair.

A trackie and a foundry worker share a brokeback moment.

I wait panting for the return of my beloved hub. The bike just doesn’t seem right somehow, Campag is nice, but it’s not the same. And that attitude permeates every ounce of my being. I have Suntour Superbe saved in my eBay profile as a favourite search.

Here's where I think my problem lies. Not that I rode 45 kilometres recovery in the afternoon after a hard race. Not that I rode a hilly route on a fixie for that recovery ride. Not that I launched with vigour from a red light near home and stripped the thread on the hub. Not even when I made the call of shame. The problem is that I love Suntour Superbe Pro to the exclusion of all others. I know I’m living in the ‘80s. I know that technology has moved a long way in 20 years. I know I’m worshipping a dead brand. I know my friends think I’m weird. But I love my Suntour.

Please help me
Big Mike

Crikey, Mike. That's a rippah! No need to dangle the baby over the crocs about it though...

Just kidding. You've got a serious problem there. Let's look at that in detail. First you say:

Sunday morning I raced the local criterium (poorly).

What a load of shit. You want me to believe you're a racer? A racer never races poorly... instead a racer has "poor form," "a stubborn chest cold that just won't go away," "a mechanical," "bum luck," or "got beat by f***in sandbaggers who oughtta be racing pro." You *never* race poorly, you understand that?

Second, you state:

So in an act of self flagellation I decided to ride the 42x18 fixie for the 30 mile round trip to pick up the gloves.

I have a couple bones to pick with that. First off, a true roadie doesn't go back to pick up a mate's lost gloves. Any true roadie realizes that a mate's piece of lost kit is an excuse for that guy to UPGRADE! As you know, UPGRADING! is what we do if we don't race well. This explains why rockstar pro cyclists train on ratty assed Surly Crosschecks that are all rusted out and have Shimano Alivio components on them, while fat turds like you and me squeeze into lycra and hop on our carbon fiber WunderBikes, or in your case appropriately blinged Vintage Steel. Anyhow, if you go retrieve those gloves, you deny your friend the chance to pick up a pair of $60 Assos Summer Gloves, or at a minimum you take away his chance to browse the Assos catalogue, a worthy enterprise in and of itself. What the hell kind of friend are you anyhow, Mike? Would you deny him the opportunity to check out Assos uniquely designed bibs for women, which I hear are quite comfortable, and which everybody should know about? If so, you're a right bastard, Mike.

Mmmmm... Bibs & Assos

Third, you show a disturbing lack of appreciation for modern kit. Upgrading from a nearly 30 year-old Suntour hub, to a 25 year-old Campy hub... what's up with that? Here you are presented with a chance for a significant upgrade - you know, heat treating for bearings now involves more than leaving them out in the warm Italian sun over the lunch hour - yet you go back to the old gear. It's like Charlize Theron calls you and asks you to come on over and bring some tea and a case of 4X, but you pass it up because you currently have booty call options with Angela Lansbury and Dame Edna Everage. I'm sure they both have their qualities, but cripes, Mike, what's wrong with you? Ever heard of Zipp? Phil Wood? Chris King? DT? Shymahno?

Dame Edna: Old, Campy

Next, you're going to your mate to get an "invisible fix" on your hub. Do you have any idea how unnecessary and stupid this is? First of all, if you want to get an invisible fix, go to any large bike shop franchise, and ask them to fix it. They'll charge you $80, and you won't be able to detect where they've done their work. The fix will be *perfectly* invisible, plus when the thing blows apart on you at the track and you have to have a leg amputated, the odds are good they'll have some minimal amount of insurance, or you'll at least be able to get your lawyers to seize the blingy bikes on their showroom floor. When the lawyers are done taking their share of the floorplan, you'll be left with a functioning fixed hub off a Specialized Langster, and possibly a lightly used set of leather toe straps - not a lot of spoils for you but enough to replace the existing damaged hub. In contrast, if it goes pear shaped and you sue your buddy, what are you going to be able to collect from him? I mean the guy can't even keep track of his gloves, you think he's got insurance to cover his shady bike repair moonlighting?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it's time for you to move on from Suntour Superbe components. You just can't buy 'em anymore, and face it, the technology isn't exactly state-of-the-art. You need to upgrade, and modernize pal. But given your condition, I'm not sure we're going to be able to bring you into the 21st Century all at once. One trip around the block on a SRAM Red equipped Pinarello, and I think you'd slip the surly bonds of earth quicker and more blissfully than Anna Nicole Smith's penultimate husband. What you need, is not a total upgrade and modernization, but a partial one.

What then could be better than a Mavic Zap shifter coupled to a Ringle Super8 eight speed hub? If you want, we could even throw in a Mavic MA40 rim, for the best technology that Interbike 1992 has to offer. On the one hand, you'll have the convenience of intermittently functioning battery-dependent electronic shifting, just like the new Dura Ace E that Shimano is preparing to inflict on us, but you'll also have the classic Old School Appeal of a nice looking component from a revered company, but which you can never quite get to work right because at its heart it's a poorly made and ill-conceived piece of shit. And while the eight speed Ringle is meant to be used with a stack of 8 cogs, Sheldon Brown's website offers some tips for how you can convert freehubs into fixed hubs with a brazing torch and a bit of nerve. That, and a hacksaw to shorten the 130mm hub so it fits into your 120mm frame, and you'll be on the road in no time. At the same time you should probably consider upgrading from the old school black wool shorts and two color jersey, perhaps to a nice set of acid-washed jeans pattern Carrera bib shorts and a Mapei jersey, just to update your look as much as you can possibly tolerate at this time.

Not a Bug... It's a Feature!

So there you go, Big Mike. I know I'm being a little bit tough on you, but you're clearly in need of help, and I wanted to do what I could to show you a path out of your current woes. I sincerely hope that this helps you out. Feel free to write me any time if you need any more assistance.

V/r

Unjoly Rouleur

You May Have a Problem

Over at BikeSnobNYC, the Snob was trying to define the difference between a Cyclist, and a Guy On a Bike. The key distinction, the Snob thought, was a Cyclist rides a bike when riding a bike isn’t necessary or convenient. One triathlete took the test and determined that he actually is a cyclist. He was upset though, and commented that because he is a triathlete,

Too bad I still have to swim and run to justify riding my bike

I checked with several leading sources on addiction, and according to them, if you have to justify your bike riding, you may have a riding problem.

Other signs you have a riding problem:

Do you ride too much regularly?

Does your riding cause health problems, like sore legs, sore knees, road rash, or unnaturally high VO2 Max numbers?

Do you find yourself craving rides at inappropriate times, such as at work, in church, or while having sex?

Do you resolve to stay off your bike for a day, but then you find yourself sneaking out for a ride?

Does your riding cut into your family time, your work, and your other hobbies?

Do you miss class, or show up to work late because you’ve been riding?

Do you ride at a certain time each day, and feel angry if your riding routine is disturbed?

Have you lost interest in other hobbies that once used to be enjoyable?

Are you able to do a massive amount of riding, without appearing to be bonked?

Do you feel annoyed or defensive when others criticize your riding habit?

Do you find that buying bike bling messes up your finances? Do you need to finance bling purchases with credit cards?

Do you associate with questionable characters when you ride?

Does your riding take you to questionable or dangerous places?

If you answer “Yes” to three or more of these questions, you probably have a riding dependency condition, or an addiction. You should get counseling.

Or maybe a new Cervelo.

Conceptual Series: Movies as My Bike Imagines Them

Recovery ride today - commuting in and out at *low* speed. Got passed by a BTG that I have tormented recently with BTG Intervals. He comes up behind me pedal mashing, gets up to me, gives me the hairy eyeball, then does a standing sprint until he's a hundred yards ahead. Then he stays there the whole way up the Cap Crescent. Meanwhile, I'm spinning along doing about 14. Couldn't even be bothered to spin up to him and screw with him. Bit of a headwind today, gave me some time to think...

What if my bike re-wrote some of my favorite movies?

The Untouchables: “They put one of yours on hybrid, you put one of theirs on a fixie. They put one of yours on a Huffy, you put one of theirs on a Magna. They give one of yours a Sora, you give one of theirs an Alivio. It’s the Chicago way. SRAM has a nice headquarters building there, by the way.”

Caddyshack: “So the Lama tells me, on my deathbed, I’ll get total enlightenment, and a set of Zip 404s. So at least I got that going for me. Which is nice.”

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy: What? You pooped in the weeds? And you ate the whole box of Gu packets? How'd you do that? Heck, I'm not even mad; that's amazing. How 'bout we get you in your lycra and we hit the trainer for four hours."

Bull Durham: I believe in the Church of Bicycle. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 links in a properly sized Wipperman chain. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us."

Glengarry Glen Ross: "Put that Accellerade down. That Accellerade's for sprinters."

The Big Lebowski: “F*** it, Dude. Let’s go biking.”

Yeah, that's some pretty dismal shit. But do you know how frickin' looped your mind gets when you're riding 14 miles an hour, for over an hour, going up a boring ass biketrail hill? The weather was a little sketchy, gray and windy. Very few interesting looking people were out using the trails, mostly just a bunch of commuters. And the trip was slow. Did I mention that?

Frankly, I think I deserve a medal for not grabbing some hapless commuter's wheel and setting fire to his panniers, just to break up the boredom.

Rest Day

Today is a rest day. Good thing - I'm friggin' exhausted. Legs sore, triceps sore (mountain biking, I guess) and I'm so, so weary. My training stress balance is about -30 which is going to take two rest days to clear up, work was brutal today and it's going to get worse tomorrow, and I'm tired to the point where I could frickin' binge eat, or binge drink or go on a work binge. Basically, the wheels are falling off. There's only one thing to do when I'm this desperately whipped - it's 8:55 and I'm about to hit the sack and get 9 hours sleep. I go for weeks at a time on 6 hours a night, one night of 9 should fix me right up. Hopefully I can get on a roll and do that a few times this week.

And I need to be fixed up - 12 Hours of Lodi is on Saturday. If I don't get rested up for that I'm going to stink up the joint.

Why I Ride... Why? I ride.

I had a really nice day riding Rosaryville with Art and Dave yesterday, fellow Coppis who will make up Squadra Sporcizia for the 12 Hours of Lodi next week. We're a splinter cell of Squadra Coppi making a probably ill-advised foray into team endurance mountain bike racing. To paraphrase Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, We are... in a world of shit. It's still fun though, and yesterday's ride was just about perfect, 60 degree temps, very sunny, perfect trail conditions, and a couple other friends who are appropriately easygoing and truly a pleasure to ride with. Mid-ride, Dave said "I like mountain biking because it reminds me that riding a bike is supposed to be fun."

Yeah, that sums it up for me too.

So today I had to grind out some more miles, the bike don't pedal itself. I was supposed to do a little short of two more hours on the mountain bike, but the weather closed in overnight and we had heavy thunderstorms. That's bad for the trails. I don't want to go out there and be *that guy* who wrecks the trails, so I decided to ride the roadbike and just do a moderately hard ride but with highly variable effort levels, all out on the hills, and a range of efforts on the flats, to simulate the highly variable ride you get on a single speed MTB. It was 50 out, damp as hell, the roads were wet, but I figured I would be okay in a base layer, knee warmers and short sleeve jersey. It was chilly, but there was no rain at ride start, so I figured it would be fine. Right?

Houston, we have a problem.

About 45 seconds out of the house, I was still getting comfortable on the seat, and the frickin' skies opened. At first, it was just a crack, like being spit upon by an angry cat. A fleck of water here and there, nothing for a second, then more consistent flecks...

About halfway around Crofton Parkway I decided to turn around since the rain was getting heavier. It was cold and raining harder and harder, and it was making me feel as uncomfortable as Paris Hilton in church. This was a pretty straightforward stimulus/response cycle. It hurt, so I turned and ran.

Back near the house - with about 8 minutes of riding under my belt, there wasn't as much rain. Weird... but Crofton's like that, we seem to have two or three little microclimates here, for some reason. So then I stopped to adjust my bars - first ride with the new bolt-on aero bars - and noticed that it was suddenly bone dry. Maybe it would be safe to go, not too painful, and I was only a little damp. So I started turning the pedals.

Then it started to rain heavily, as if the sky believed fairly strongly that it needed to wash me down.

What to do?

For me it was pretty simple, though the decision wasn't easy. As much as I wanted to turn around, it occurred to me to ask myself if I gave more of a shit about being warm for two hours, or racing better. Racing better won out, and within minutes I was 5 miles away from the house pedaling hard in a downpour, head down into the teeth of the wind, freezing my ass off.

I saw two other riders out over on Herald Harbor Road. The one guy had on what looked like Route 1 shorts, so I assumed it was a couple other equally numbskulled racers. Nobody else was out on bikes though... just some idiot racers.

No, it didn't remind me that riding a bike is fun. I only mentioned Dave's comment because today's ride was the exact opposite of fun, but I suppose if you want to be a good rider, especially if you want to race well, you don't let rain and cold and other obstacles get in the way of your training.

That it's for a good cause doesn't make your hands and feet any less numb when you stop, it doesn't make your sodden, sore ass feel better, and it doesn't help you stop shivering violently any sooner when you get home and hop into the shower. In the end, it may not even make you a better racer or rider. That may be a hopeless cause when you look back on it in retrospect.

I'm willing to consider, however, the possibility that a ride like today's, makes a ride like yesterday's stroll in the sun that much sweeter.

Get Out Your Shovels and Rubber Boots

Hey, check it out. Competitive Cyclist is now selling old-school, tied & soldiered wheels. The wheels are new - Dura Ace hubs (great gear) on DT 1.1 rims (good rims).

I looked into getting a set of tied & soldered wheels a couple years ago and rejected it, eventually determining that 32 or 36 straight gauge spokes on an aero or semi-aero rim, with liberal amounts of Blue Loctite drizzled into the nipples, was sufficient to keep my rims true.

Tying and Soldering is an old school method of theoretically tightening up a wheelset and keeping it in vertical and horizontal true. Thin wire was twisted around each point where spokes crossed, then solder was dribbled onto the wire & spoke junction to keep it in place. It was thought that such a setup made the wheel stronger - and if a 1970's or early 80's vintage wheelset was whippy (yep, some were) then this probably made some sense. They are marketing them as do-everything-short-of-pool-table-smooth race wheels.

Here's what Competitive Cyclist says about the process:

But here's where we go bananas: This isn't just any set of handbuilts. We've gone ahead and tied and soldered the spokes. We use bee-keepers wire and lead-free solder. The wire does the work, and the solder keeps it in place. Why do we tie & solder? It hardens the wheels up in all dimensions. By tying & soldering them, it effectively increases the flange diameter of the hubs, increasing torsional stiffness. The interlaced crosses are locked together when you tie & solder them, which braces the spokes, making them laterally stiffer and more durable.

Increases torsional and lateral stiffness, eh?

Gee, I wonder if anybody has ever tested that. Now who would have ever properly tested wheelbuilding techniques to see which methods might be empirically superior?

Oh yeah, Jobst Brandt. The wheelbuilding engineer. The invaluable Sheldon Brown (RIP) archived what Jobst said.

With the hub rigidly secured, with its axle vertical, dial gauges were mounted at four equally spaced locations on the machine bed to measure rim deflections as a 35lb weight was sequentially hung on the wheel at these positions. The deflections were recorded for each location and averaged for each wheel before and after tying and soldering spokes.

The wheels were also measured for torsional rigidity in the same fixture, by a wire anchored in the valve hole and wrapped around the rim so that a 35 lb force could be applied tangential to the rim. Dial gauges located at two places 90 degrees apart in the quadrant away from the applied load were used to measure relative rotation between the wheel and hub.

Upon repeating the measurements after tying and soldering the spokes, no perceptible change, other than random measurement noise of a few thousandths of an inch, was detected.

Hmmm... any difference in rigidity, according to Brandt, was statistically insignificant.

Maybe back in the day, when wheels were so flexy that looking at them would put them out of true, it made sense to tie and solder. But when Brandt tested the technique - what, in 1992 or 1993? - it didn't make sense any longer. I suspect it truly doesn't make sense when you're talking about stout DT semi-aero rims on high quality DA hubs, with modern spokes. I don't know for a *fact* that it doesn't make a difference, but if Jobst tested it, and that was the result, I'm inclined to agree.

You can make up your own mind about whether Competitive Cyclist is selling wheels or horseshit here, but I'm putting my money with Jobst. I love the Competitive Cyclist catalog, love a lot of the gear and bikes they sell, and love the way Competitive Cyclist loves everything about bikes and bike culture. But this isn't the first time that their marketing caused me to shake my head and wonder what the hell they are trying to do, besides rolling cash. You can talk shit about Nashbar and Performance - and I do - but they don't seem to pull this kind of crap. You have to wonder if, in the long run, it's bad for cycling to sell useless products and services to the high end customers. If they ever catch on, those are big fish that won't buy from you again. Then again, maybe those BTGs on the $10k bikes never really do catch on. I don't know.

I guess the next thing they ought to start doing is selling a tubeless tire aging service - set up a room at the warehouse like a humidor, where, for $10 per month, Competitive will age your tubeless tires for you. It will have to be made out of Siberian Birch or perhaps Snakewood, put brass fixtures on the little drawers where the tubies are stored. Hey, if people are going to pay several hundred extra because putting on pedals and handlebars is too hard, and pay a couple hundred extra for disproven technology to 'strengthen' tires, why not? And while they're at it, maybe they could package the new wheelsets with small tubs of slipstream, any oily gel to rub on your knees to reduce wind resistance. 'Cuz you know, it's easier to ride in the slipstream...

First They Came for the Saturated Fats, and I Said Nothing...

Dammitall.

THESE are the times that fry men's souls. The summer baker and the sunshine cook will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of pork and pork by-products; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as BACON should not be highly rated. California, with a Health Department to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to DE-BACONIZE us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being de-based and de-baconized in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God


Yes, that's right. Los Angeles has banned bacon dogs.

The Swine!




With apologies to Thomas Paine.

Shark Attacks Triathlete

This article indicates that a shark attacked and killed a triathlete swimming in the ocean near San Diego.

You'll note that it says "killed," not "ate." That's because the shark figured that men who wear sleeveless jerseys, stick food to their bicycle frame, pee on it, and never stop to have an espresso and a biscotti and to generally appreciate la buona vita, are basically tasteless.

Ps. To my triathlete readers: No offense. I'm just busting your chops. I'm sure you all taste great, especially if you've just used bacon-flavored Pam to lube up and squeeze into your wetsuit.

Friday Fun Time

I love my Friday AM rides with my club. The only downside is that I'm usually working from home on Fridays and driving into D.C. for a recovery ride and coffee with my teammates is a bit of a production, moreso since Mandy changed jobs. The kid handoff is sometimes problematic, since she has to bring him into her firm, and you never know how that's going to be received.

The last few weeks I've had a comparable early morning spin with Jon, and Kyle joined us last week. Same principle as the muffin ride - 60 - 90 minutes, easy spin, maybe do a couple leg openers if you have a race, otherwise ride recovery, then stop at Caribou for a coffee and a muffin. Roll at 6:00 or 6:15, be done by 8:00 and all charged up to face the day. There's no set route though we've been doing a Bell Branch-450-Crownsville-Gambrill route which is rolling to flat.

If you live on this side of town and are maybe interested in joining us on Fridays, drop me a line or maybe stop by Family Bikes and talk to Jon.

Water Bottles: Squirting Random Strangers

Rode lots of recovery/L2 today. It felt good. However, it seems that as the training volume goes up, so too do the hunger pangs. Since I've actually started paying attention to diet, it felt like I pigged out today. In fact, I had two light meals, three snacks, a moderate dinner (small entree, big salad = moderate, right?) and some cheese post-dinner. On top of 3 hours riding, that's pretty minimal. I'm *just* full-ish now. Yep, I shouldn't eat late, but if I go to bed hungry I don't sleep well and then eat like peeg the next day, so I lose weight better by eating more - not huge amounts of food but spreading it out, dawn to dusk. If that makes any sense at all. It seems easier to calibrate my diet when I'm riding more volume - 12-14 hours per week. If I feel like ass, it means I need to eat more, and as soon as I don't feel like ass I know I've had enough. Easy, huh? In contrast, when I'm not riding that much it's never quite clear to me if I'm really hungry, or just kind of eating out of (probably bad) habit. The other thing that happens is that to fit that much riding into my day, I have to get up real early, so that means I have to go to bed early. Ultimately I'm better rested, and don't need to eat as much to keep my energy level up. For the naturally thin, this must be easier. For those who have to work at it, there are a lot of tricks to learn if you don't want cutting weight to be sheer hell.

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I don't suffer fools gladly. There is some irony in this, since I was the world's biggest jackass until about 10 years ago, and have been merely a moderate jackass for the last 5 or so, up until about three minutes ago. That doesn't matter, however; the operative principle here is you have to do what you can to uphold the standards, otherwise everybody will feel free to be a jackass. Hypocritical? Yeah, sure. But be a grownup, willya? Hypocrisy isn't the worst thing in the world; a little well-placed hypocrisy keeps the wheels turning smoothly. The same rationalization lets cops speed all the time, but then issue you speeding tickets without going to jail themselves. It's not about their speeding, it's about yours. Yeah, it's hypocritical, but what, are you going to let everybody drive like an ass, just because sometimes the people in charge of stopping that kind of stuff sometimes act like asses too?

A broader question is, can you imagine if we had the Jackass Police? I'd be one for sure. "Driver's license and insurance please... do you have any idea how much of a jackass you were being back there, sir? Honestly, we were all a little amazed. You were being such a freakin' jackass, we couldn't even capture it on the J-band radar gun. You need to be a little more considerate in the future, sir..." If we had jackass police, I know people who be the equivalent of these guys with $50k in unpaid tickets, and a handful of outstanding felony warrants...

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Me and the Boys in Blue - the Uniformed Jackass Police - did our bit to police the bikepaths today. I did it by playing BikeTrailGuy (BTG) Olympics with the BTGs. Today's event - decreasing restVO2 intervals, which is the equivalent of rhythmic gymnastics in the real Olympics - a thing of beauty, but not exactly a huge display of raw athleticism.

To operate this event takes decent baseline fitness. The key is to ride your ride, without letting the BTG ruin it. Over time, I've gotten stronger, so my resting spin is around 18 -19 MPH on flat ground - probably a pretty normal recovery / very low L2 speed for racers. You could mistake this for me trying to go fast - I sometimes pant because I'm trying to keep up 96-110 RPM, which makes me winded. But it's still godawful easy and the wattage chart is low and flat.

So I'm headed up the Cap Crescent, chilling out in L-1. This guy pedals up next to me, I slow down because we're in traffic... and he jumps like he's Armstrong and we're on the Hautacam - bobbing head and shoulders, deathgrip on the bar. He shoots past a girl on a bike, nearly hits oncoming joggers, a woman with a baby stroller... So I think, "feh, whatever. I'm recovering. Don't bite." Serious, that's what I have to remind myself because I'm the same dumbass hypercompetitive jackass who will wreck his workout just to prove a point and try to outride somebody.

So I just cut around the girl when the traffic eases, and spin. Pretty soon, I'm on Lance's wheel and we're starting to go up the hill towards Bethesda. When he hears me coming up, whirrwhirrwhirrwhirr at 110 RPM, he starts bobbing again and trying to surge. Funny. It would have been easy enough to pass and then disappear with a little tempo surge, but it seemed smarter to stick to the chart. Besides, Lance was clearly inviting me to help him work out. So I kept spinning and stuck to his wheel 'til we were close to the first bridge. Then I stopped spinning and in fact spun my pedals backward, so the freehub made a super-duper-clicky noise. Lance then does a standing effort and takes off. Ahh, he likes my workout program, guess he just agreed to hire me as his coach. So I just kept spinning, 215 watts or so, spin spin spin. After a half minute or so, Lance was toast, he sagged back into his seat and tried to find a climbing rhythm on that brutal 4% grade. Pretty soon I was on his wheel again, more or less, but I hung back a bit. Lance needed some recovery time. After he looked suitably recovered - i.e. cooked, but not totally burnt - I surged up onto his wheel, and then stopped pedaling again. The freehub's clicking set him off again, and he did a huge seated effort to get some gap on me. Meanwhile... I kept spinning. This went on up the hill and up to the second bridge. He did a huge standing effort in order to fly up the bridge. I decided to burn a match and threw slightly-over-threshold watts for 20 seconds, just to stay on his wheel and really coach him on climbing form. At the crest of the bridge, Lance sat back down, slumped into the saddle, and I let the bike coast again. He immediately downshifted a couple times and stomped on it again. He was getting a great workout, but it was decreasing rest intervals. I just assumed that was what he wanted since his hard efforts were getting shorter and shorter in duration.

We did a few more short intervals until we got about two thirds of the way from the tunnel, up to the big bridge in Bethesda. At that point, Lance was toast, barely turning 'em over at maybe 9 MPH. I had been going slower and slower - hey, it's a recovery day - and didn't want to pass. But this was getting ridiculous. So I pulled around and just spun away. Now here's the damnedest thing. After all that work, he didn't pay me, didn't say thanks, nothing. Here I am, putting the guy through the workout of his life, and he can't even be bothered to say thanks. Can you believe that? Man. Some people are just ingrates.

Water Bottles: Green Crap Growin' in Em Edition

First off, Happy Earth Day! I hesitate to talk about this topic at all because I'm about to make fun of a lot of people's religious faith... but here goes. When people speak with you about some radical change that will save the world - not just on environmental issues but on any issue - and they do so with religious fervor, you should either rigorously question what they are saying until you find the gaping hole in their theory, or simply run like hell. I present to you the results of radical change to save the Earth. Blood is being shed because of a cockamamie idea which turns out to be not a lot better than witch doctor science. At least witch doctor science has a placebo effect; but this snake oil was sold as having better effects on all of us than aspirin, penicillin, and Dr. Mertens Hair Restorative Tonic, rolled into one. Unintended consequences? Sure, it's possible to be surprised by what happened here. But only if you were willfully blind to the warnings. No, it's not the end of the world yet, and I'm sure the press reports are subject to the usual distortions and exaggerations, but there's clearly a problem here caused by bad policy. Remember this the next time somebody says they're here to save you, and all it will take is radical change, and by the way, they have *exactly* the plan... Thus endeth today's sermon, flame away in comments if you think we just haven't tried hard enough to convert our food sources into fuel for our cars and homes, and that if we try a bit harder or encourage the Brazilians to raze the rain forest to grow extra cane sugar for the Escalades, that it will all work out for Ma Earth...


Different subject - you probably think that Shaquille O'Neill was the first sports star to transition from playing to singing. But he was just following in some much smaller footsteps... Fausto Coppi's. Seriously. Check this out - Coppi and Bartali sing a duet.



Okay, that wasn't good enough for you? Fine.

How 'bout I let this jackhole steal ten minutes of your life, that you'll never get back? Here, have a heaping helping of that insane little dude, the Opinionated Cyclist.

Rest Day / Rain Day

Enjoyed a much-welcomed rest day today, if "enjoy" is a synonym for "stayed off the bike and spent 11 hours chained to my desk at work." If stress on the central nervous system is the key factor, I just racked up 280 TSS points today. Not much actual rest, but I'll try to make it better by going to bed at 9:45 and feigning narcolepsy. That should put some life in my legs, right?

Not like the workday or rest day mattered; it rained, mostly hard, all day long, and I couldn't have ridden anyhow. The roads were messier than a fart in a wetsuit.

Artist's Depiction: A Fart in a Wetsuit

Oh well. Can't have a good one every day. See y'all tomorrow, maybe down at Hains if the weather ain't too vile.

And here's something from regular reader Stephen to hold you over until a more interesting blog entry:

The All Request Hour...

Hey, I was wondering if you'd be willing to click on a link and give some of my friends a shoutout? Just a hello to let them know they aren't alone, just a pick-me-up, alright? I know they'd appreciate it. You may know some of them as occasional commenters here or from their blogs. Here are the folks who need a kind word:

• Elden - whose wife is struggling with a very tough cancer that she may not beat. He's a great guy, and basically fighting the trench warfare of cancers, struggling with his wife's medical situation, their large family, and the fact that his superpower (being able to eat anything, any time, in copious amounts) is also his kryptonite.
• Sorelegs - a sometime commenter, full-time cycling enthusiast who loves to ride. A puddin' cyclist. He's fighting the Big C as well.
• Judi - regular commenter, who is trying to work through a hard time with some relationship issues.
• Suki - a friend of a friend whose pregnancy is driving her crazy. Or possibly crazier than usual. NSFW. No way, no how.
  

Like I said - giving them a click and a shoutout would be mighty kind, and mighty appreciated.

Water Bottles: I'm Twentysick.

* Michael Ball says the Tour of Georgia agreed to let Rock Racing compete on one condition: "conduct yourselves in a manner that doesn't freak us out." Ball seems a little surprised by this, but what I think he fails to grasp is he could get away with a lot of the flamboyance, have a blast, and given his marketing prowess could perhaps build a team that makes pro cycling its (richer and ultimately happier) bitch, like what Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders did for the NFL, back before Al Davis went insane. Ball would be embraced by pro cycling and by the grassroots of the sport, racing amateurs, touring riders, hard core commuters - people who actually follow the sport, and would attract the casual riders/casual Armstrong fans. They would embrace a team if it had an interesting mix of top riders and was interesting as a team, that is capable of doing some excellent thigns. Who knows, maybe the combination of heavy metal, profligate displays of hot girls, bike racing and mild lunacy (versus the current jackassery) could even make roadracing a mainstream sport in the U.S. Last time I checked, we're still looking for a 7th national sport (behind NASCAR, Hockey, and Pro Wrasslin'). Ball could be a beloved figure and maybe a billionaire instead of a millionaire. And all he has to do is turn the freakout factor from its current level of 11, to about 9.5. It's there for the taking; like the Tour de Georgia organizers told him, he just has to stop doing things to intentionally freak everybody out. He can still be a little crazy, but he has to lay off the "I'm so crazy I just might jeopardize your business" crazy.

* CNN News talent Richard Quest was busted the other day in NYC's Central Park with methamphetamine "n his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot. It wasn't immediately clear what the rope was for. . ." Who hasn't been caught in exactly that predicament? According to the NY Post, which only reports on serious news such as "Headless Body in Topless Bar," "the officer at the scene was able to ID the drug because of his prior experience as a police officer in drug arrests, observation of packaging which is characteristic of this type of drug, and defendant's statements that . . . 'I've got some meth in my pocket'. " I predict Mr. Quest's attorney is going to have a rough time getting that evidence suppressed.

* It was a day of firsts.

• The first long L2 ride of the year to occur in thoroughly pleasant weather. It was 47 at ride start, 67 at ride finish, just a lovely, long ride in temperate weather. I literally *never* broke a sweat, nor did I stop pedaling for the entire ride, taking off the arm and knee warmers on the fly.
• It was the first time my son has ever thrown up all over the livingroom. He had a bad stomach and sore throat, and just blew a huge load of grapes (literally, no metaphor there) all over the carpet. Purple grape stains are fun to get out of a (formerly) cream colored carpet, let me tell you. I told him to think about throwing up on the dog next time, since the dog is easier to clean. Later on, when I asked him if he felt better, he said he was still sick. "How sick?" I asked. "Twenty Sick" he said. He said if he felt good he'd be "Zero Sick." So I guess 20-sick is about as bad as it gets.
• It was the first fresh corn-on-the-cob of the season. It wasn't local-local corn and 3 hours removed from the stalk, but it was locally grown enough, and fresh enough, to be exceedingly tasty. The real big day comes around late June to early July, depending on the weather, and that day is the First Locally Grown Corn of the Year Day. We're talking about exquisite tasting corn when that happens. But that's merely gravy, the champagne of corn-on-the-cob. For now I'm happy just having fresh corn again.

* Boring-ass of interest to nobody but me training note: toward the end of the morning's long aerobic spin I spotted a couple triathletes about 600 yards ahead, and spun up to them as we approached the nasty three-tiered St. George Barber Road hill. It's always weird coming up on unfamiliar riders as you hit a hill or some other geographic feature that is a natural test of strength on any group ride. What do you do - lag back to try to avoid the inevitable biggest schwantz contest? Ask to sit in with them and match their pace, whatever they go? Try to blow by them? I decided to rationalize what followed - which was either Roadie Cool or perhaps BikeTrailGuy Pathleticism - with the excuse that it never hurts to open up the legs for a few minutes. So I kept the same cadence and gear, held my pace, spun up to them, said hello, and at the bottom of the hill never bothered to shift out of the big ring. I just stayed there and mashed like a sonovabitch, grinding up the hill. Eventually I downshifted a little but kept moving pretty fast, doing a short standing effort at the 20%+ grade section, but otherwise just grinding along seated the rest of the way. Ahhhhh... instant extended 700 watt effort. The result? Other than searing leg pain at the top of the hill, a 2-3 minute climb consisting of three separate pitches, there was no result. What, you're waiting to hear how I embarassed myself, blew up, and got passed by two guys in sleeveless jerseys? Nah. Didn't happen. The triathletes were long gone by the time I cleared the top. I sort of forgot about it until I downloaded the Powertap and checked out my power chart, and saw this incongruous "Python Eats a Whole Pig" bulge in the power chart.

Today's Power Chart: Suspiciously Lumpy

Turns out that I set a new personal best for mean maximal power for everything from 50 seconds, up to about 2:30. Totally blew out the old power curve. It seems like the enormous hole in my VO2max Power:Weight ratio is slowly being filled in with a composite made of pain and sweat. My VO2 P:W is still sucky, but it's no longer the anomalous hole in my otherwise fair-all-arounder/strong sprint power profile. This is thrilling to me (and nobody else) because I've been worrying about that enormous gap in my fitness for a solid year, it's been bugging me because that limiter (along with being a fat bastard) was hurting me in cross races with repetitive climbs last year. At Granogue, for instance, I blew up *each lap* roughly 25 yards before the tower, just totally lost gas at the tail end of the two minute climb, and lost maybe 2 spots per lap. Maybe this signals I'll be over the hill before blowing up this year. Then again, maybe I'll get to like, 10 yards from the top before blowing up on each lap. We'll see.

Lessons for Human Biketrail Cholesterol

I get on a tear sometimes about BikeTrailGuys, the fellows who hop on a bike and turn into Fast Freddy Rodriguez - that is, sprint sprint sprint, crash sprint. They get a little over competitive on the multi-use trails that provide the easiest way to get around the DC area on bike and they are a hazard to all cyclists. A "cyclist" is simply somebody who rides a bike and does so appropriately, within the limits of their own skill, with proper respect for others, and in a manner that does not make Tullio Campagnolo rise from the dead and beg the Madonna di Ghisallo to put a curse on all their descendants. This includes most regular commuters, most racers, most 'bent riders, at least the two wheeled variety, and those rec riders who ride in such a way as to give an impression that they at least sorta know what they are doing.

Cyclists trying to use the trails are plagued by a variety of trail users, however; these flaky users don't appear to be capable of applying a quarter of the skill to their endeavors, that cyclists apply to theirs. Take today, for instance - the Cap Crescent was ridiculously packed with so many insane-acting lunatics that after 10 minutes spinning, I was sure that some enormous group home was having an outing day. Apparently, that wasn't the case; rather it was the result of the semi-annual moron migration. During the winter, the morons apparently migrate onto their sofas, into the malls, and into that bar at the western end of the Georgetown Branch Trail, the one that can't keep the same name for more than two consecutive weeks. It was Le Bon Turde or something like that, then it was F.U.zion, then it was ConFusion, now it's boarded up and the sign says Cornholio or something... At the end of the winter, when the weather turns warm, the morons migrate outside to plague local bike trails. It's like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, but instead of swallows they merely suck.

So the trail was packed with morons. Being the helpful kind of person that I am, it occurred to me while I was riding homeward that the difference between me and the morons (aside from being exceedingly slim) is that people regularly provide me with the constructive criticism, "Hey, fucko, stop doing that! Jerk!"

Since I'm the kind of person who appreciates a gentle corrective comment of that sort, I decided to offer advice to my fellow trail users, to help them become less moronic, and more, um, well, less moronic anyhow.

To the Older Skinny Lady on the Mixte: First, nice vintage bike. That must have been 60 years old. Did you get it as a 50th birthday present? I applaud your use of the horn on your vintage bike. I need to warn you, however, that no matter how many times you hit the horn, Scottie is not going to beam me up to the Enterprise, out of your path. For this reason, and because the broken hip you get will likely kill you, you *might* just want to consider riding on your own damn side of the trail. Please, don't be offended by this - the last thing I want to do is piss off somebody who banged Grover Cleveland, Alice B. Toklas and John Rockefeller, but I'd hate to see you get hurt out there.

To the 500 Pound Woman: It does my heart good to see you out there busting your ass, sweatin' gravy walking up the trail. Believe me, I am fighting the same war as you. Granted, you're in the trenches with the Foreign Legion and the Lost Battalion, while I'm inspecting for bedbugs and making sure the K-Rations are properly warmed at Fort Wegotcha, but we're on the same side here. And don't take any shit from skinny ass roadies; the reason they are skinny assed is they are as obsessed with food as you, just in a different, White Goodman-esque sort of way. Anyhow, check it out - the trail has two sides. The 6 foot-long yellow broken line - those aren't painted footprints where Yao Ming once walked before a Chinese government expedition captured him, shaved his body, and trained him to post up. No, the stripes denote the different sides of the trail. Granted, it's probably hard for you to see over the port side and realize this, but you could move approximately 5 feet to the right, and still be walking on tarmac that is rated for your weight. I'd appreciate it if you did so, because it's hard as hell to get around your 4 foot-wide ass when it's planted in the middle of the trail and there's oncoming traffic. Keep it up, honey. Just keep it up a few feet to the right.

To the Hipster Mailroom Clerk-looking Kid on the Fixie With Flopped & Chopped Nittos: Don't worry about how your new, tres chic, hard-to-handle fixed gear bike is weaving all over the trail. Soon enough you'll forget to pedal, it will throw you to the ground as if you had roofies in your water bottle and it *really, really* liked you in an unhealthy and illegal sort of way. You'll wind up losing most of your meager higher brain functions because the upscale baseball cap you are wearing isn't sufficient to protect your mostly empty head. Then you'll be incapable of worrying. So there's no reason to get all wound up about it now.

To the Angry Triathlete in the Aero Bars: Dude, you should race some Cat 5 mass start races. Then you'd hear a new term: "WATCH YOUR LINE!!!!!!" Unlike everybody else who has ever heard that command, it might actually help you. I really didn't appreciate you nearly head-on-ing me today. Tinkling your bell at me wasn't real smart either. Just take my word on this skinny boy: I'm a bigtime asshole, and you do not want to be riding at a high rate of speed in my lane, chide me with your bell then crash me out. If you had hit me, I could have just about dealt with you crashing me out; you being in my lane riding in your poor handling aero position would really have put me on edge, but the tinkling of that pathetic bell just before you speared me... That would have been the final straw. Oh yeah, and your sleeveless shirt? That would be like the chocolate syrup on the cherry on top of the whipped cream on my Sundae of Things That Piss Me Off. Yeah, I'm a dick about this, but I wouldn't even have noticed you if you hadn't been on the biketrail equivalent of a crime spree.

To the Old Pervy Guy Who Pulls Up to Girls, Matches Their Pace, Then Stares At Their Boobs: Dude, you're my fuckin' hero. I can't wait until I'm old enough to get away with doing whatever the hell I want to do. And while ogling random 25 year-old girls on bikes isn't exactly my thing, I *completely* understand how you could get into something like that. Girls are as easy to look at, as ice cold beer is to drink on a hot day. But lookit, you need to wear a helmet. If you ever crashed, the coroner would have quite a laugh about your odd combination of a skull fracture, dangling tongue half bitten off, road rash, and an erection. You don't want to go out like that, partly because it would be immortalized on pictures on the internet forever, and partly becuse dying that way, you'd be condemned to roam the earth forever as a lameass soul. Heaven is clearly out for a big perv like you at this point - I don't think you'd want to go there unless all the angels look like the Specialized Angel anyhow - and Hell wouldn't want you because Hell is for evil people, not pathetic ones. No, your fate is to be found in your apartment, dead six months before the landlord opens the door to find you, schmeckel in hand, with the Spice Channel on. And if you don't wear a helmet, you may not meet your assigned fate. Then you'll have to come back to life in a fresh new body, just like in the movies, and live out your whole damn dismal, creepy-ass life all over again. And *nobody* wants that - you included, I'd guess.

To the Chubby Cute Girl on a Bike and Obviously on a First Date with the Fratboy: The giggling is cute, the halter top is cute, the no-helmet-lettin'-you-hair-flow-in-the-wind thing is cute. But you want to know what isn't cute? A Georgetown girl playing dumb to hook up with some feckless fratboy. I had to ride behind you for a couple minutes waiting for traffic to clear, and couldn't help but hear the conversation. I'd swear I heard your intelligence dripping out of your left ear (note to girl: lean head to the right sometimes when listening to idiot fratboy) and hitting the ground with a wet splat. Lissen up, here's the deal. If you're stupid, he's not into you for your personality, so don't fool yourself and don't try to show him your personality, it won't matter. If you're smart, and he expects you to play dumb for him, then he's not good enough for you, so quit wasting your time. So just be your little brainy pre-med self and let the chips fall where they may, unless you're trying to set yourself up as a booty call. Being your brainy self would include not straying into the path of tall, nordic-looking, fast-moving roller bladers. And if you're just in it for the booty call, why not hit up the older pervy guy? He probably wouldn't ask you to humiliate yourself to get on his booty call list, which makes him a cut above the fratboy, at least from the standpoint of trying to preserve a couple shreds of your apparently meager dignity.

To the First Time This Year Commuters Who Were Gagging on Blood Coughed Out of Their Own Lungs: Hang in there guys. It will take month for you to get fit enough so that the 11 mile commute doesn't kill you. That, or you will discretely park that $600 Novara commuter wagon in a dark corner of the garage, ditch the bike commuting plans, get your car detailed, start driving to work every day, and NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN. Either way I'm cool with it, but for now, providing you can manage it in your severe oxygen-debt haze, do you think you could stop weaving dangerously long enough for me to pass? Thanks.

To the Residents of Old Anglers Road Whose Sewage Overflows the Trail When it Rains Hard: Jeebus, I don't know what you people ate, but the CCT *still* stinks from the last time we had a minor sewage overflow. I mean really, it could gag a frickin' maggot. I have no sense of smell, and I ride past the overflow location, and damn near choke. What the hell are you people doing up there in those nice houses? Sacrificing humans in Satan worshipping rituals? Running a secret meat packing plant? Discretely operating a kosher hog farm?

To the Series of Cute Fit Chicks Jogging South on the CCT: What this guy said. Twice. Board Certified Plastic Surgery Representin', yo!

The Return of Spring

Note to self: Smiling at the pretty girls is fun on the first warm day of spring, but the first warm day of spring is also when all the gnats, mosquitoes and beetles hatch.


The Capital Crescent is particularly bad. A Downhill MTB helmet will not help you here.



If you find your teeth infested with bugs, have a friend hold your mouth open and chew on a wooden stick. That always helps.

The Fat Guy's Zen of Hillclimbing

Hills are death for fat guys or big riders. If they agree to let the hill kill them. It doesn't have to be that way.

I'm starting to understand why the mental part of hill climbing is said to be the tougher part of it. The biggest limiter in climbing hills is the mind. The limiter is your acceptance that hills must be where you blow up and lose the wheel. It doesn't have to be that way, but to make it different you have to climb with confidence, and climb differently from the spinners. You need to use that sheer power to your advantage.

Make no mistake - you need to have a good engine. Big guys who ride for any length of time ultimately develop one. You don't stick on *any* group ride or any regular long solo rides unless you have an engine. The Big Guy Engine is different. You may have a great aerobic engine, but to ride decently, you probably have had to build the fitness to go into the red zone for short bursts, repeatedly, all day long. You just can't get up even a slight incline without working much harder than a little guy. This engine can be an advantage for you if you learn how to use it.

But how you climb as a big guy has to be totally different, get over the idea that you will just grab a wheel, hang on, and spin up a hill. That won't work for you Charlie, because you aren't built to spin up hills. Riding hills The Fat Guy Way starts with your outlook. You need to whip out your Testosterone Bucket, take a drink, and really believe, "I'm not going to be doomed to riding the way other people think I should ride." Seriously - it sounds flaky but you need to forget other people's expectations at the outset. What they think doesn't matter.

I've had a pretty good spring of training as you may have read here. I'm just starting to build, but doing well on climbs. Okay, I'm one of the slower guys in the group on an MTB on long, grinding climbs, but on the road... I'm doing way better, especially on shorter power climbs, and killing it on uphill false flats. I even did okay at camp using a sag/descend like a demon approach.

Things have just changed for me, and a lot of it comes down to attitude and confidence in what I can do, rather than assuming that my limiters are going to hold me back. Some limiters are for real - I'll never be good at steep, long climbs - power to weight is a tyrant. But shorter, shallower hills - the sheer power of a big guy, fat and strong or just big and strong, can be a tyrant to a small rider. Forthwith, the Fatguy's Zen of Climbing.

The hill thing is funny for a big guy. You have to just understand who you are and how you ride – know that 800+ meter hills won’t be your thing, the goal there is to survive; but 100-200 meter long climbs, and false flats, you can positively crush…

It’s hard to accept that you can actually do well on hills when your mental picture of a “hill” is a painful place where you get dropped by little tiny bastards, the Secret Elephant Graveyard where your races and group rides go to die. You start thinking of yourself as unable to climb.

That isn’t the truth. The truth: if you can keep up momentum on a short climb, the advantage you have in the flats - a superior power-to-frontal surface area ratio is as helpful to you as power-to-weight ratio is to the little guys on a long steep hill. That's right, there's a kind of hill where you big guys have an advantage.

The key is to hit the hill fast, and not lose momentum. That may mean going off the front of the group, then 'sagging' back through the gears - keep good pedal pressure on for 6-8 pedalstrokes, then downshift without stopping your pedaling. Cadence is on top of the gear, or nearly on top of it.

To keep up momentum, you may need to dip a little into L5-L6-L7 power - VO2 Max through neuromuscular - but just briefly. That effort level is not long-term sustainable, but if it gets you up over a hill quickly, you can recover.

This approach, going off the front then sagging back slowly (if at all) probably drives the little spinning buggers nuts, but it seems to me a big guy can come through a limited number of rollers with a series of those short efforts and still have fresh legs, and be un-dropped, or even have a gap.

If you do get dropped a little, don't give up hope. At the top of the hill, gas it, hard, and hit the ensuing downhill at a near sprint. Then settle into a tempo push. If you're a big guy, you need to know how to recover at tempo. If you are big, you descend like a rock. Add pedaling at a tempo level of effort, and you will be a rocketship. You should gas it past the little guys before the bottom of the hill. If there's another roller - pedal hard into the next roller and repeat the process.

The little guys will go apeshit when you pass them on the downhill and they have to work real hard to catch your wheel - not bloody likely. The downhill was rest they were counting on and they don’t like losing it. Your power preys on their weakness, which is a mental image of “descent” as a hellish place that speeds by faster than they like. It is compounded because a small rider on an ultra-light bike tailored for climbing hops and bounces a bit, maybe gets headshake in the turns and on chop. You, on the that 18 pound beast - you track like a freight train, on freakin' rails baby. The small guys may have to pedal at redline to stay close to you at tempo - force them to do this. Descending while pushing threshold+ power is sketchy, make 'em hurt here.

The gap you can develop in a good set of rollers may shock you. Enjoy the shock, and understand, there's no reason you can't repeat the performance. It's the "Eureka!" moment when you figure this out.

Now no bullshit here, it takes a little nerve to ride it this way, because the first thing that goes through your mind is, “I’m a big dude, I’m not *supposed to be* off the front.” Well, screw that, it’s not about where you are supposed to be, it’s about where you are at, where you actually capable of going.

It's kind of like being on a good wheel going into the last lap of a crit, something I know I can do but have trouble sometimes visualizing, and because I sometimes think I've got no business being there, so this makes it hard to pull off. Screw that noise about how it's not supposed to be - you don't belong someplace else, you belong exactly where you are at any given moment in time, and if you can get to a spot, then damnit, you belong there.

Now my zen approach isn't going to guarantee you will crush pure climbers, or even the most difficult kind of riders to cope with, the good all-arounders.

On some kinds of rides, if you're on the right terrain, and you're not outclassed, it will put you out front. I hope your flatland time trialing skills are good. (Of course they are... look who I'm talking to).

On the other hand, on a lot of rides, hills will still be a problem, the longer and the steeper they are, the worse they will be. In those environs, these tactics and your healthier mindset will only work to limit your losses. But on a lot of rides that's enough. Quickly catch the group on the downhill and you'll be okay, and if there's a big flat or false flat following the downhill, you can lay the hurt.

The most important thing about the approach, however, isn't your final placing coming out of the hill - that may be beyond your control. The most important thing is climbing up to your potential, and if you're a big guy, you may not be hitting your potential sitting in with the spinners and desperately holding on. If that's your situation, consider that maybe you have some real strengths that you are overlooking, that might get you out of getting hopelessly dropped hell. Believe you me, getting dropped by 20 yards coming over the top of a hill is infinitely better than getting dropped by 400.

Now a special word about really big hills - the 20+ minute climbs and stuff like that. You are going to have problems on many of those hills. Don't worry about it. At the start of a long climb, tell yourself you are going to ride within yourself. If it helps, wave buh-bye to the people who take off like they were on a ski lift, and you the lift operator. Let 'em go. Now ride up the hill at a level slightly below your threshold. Just get up the damn thing, since it's a long effort going at threshold will probably get you up as fast as you are capable of going. Vary your cadence and gear a little bit if you can - it works the muscles in different combinations and you'll feel a little fresher at the top. Now, you may be wayyy off the back but hope is not lost. The moment you crest the hill, do a short 10 or 15 pedal stroke jump. Then spin like hell. Assuming there is a drop on the other side of the crest, hit it at full steam, and pedal tempo until you catch up. This works like a charm if the little fellas aren't killing themselves to drop you. Sure, the hill kinda kills you here - but the zen strategy, to not worry about it, then ride your part hard, may bring you back up into contact with the group.

I'm slightly off the back and about to
rejoin the group, with my tuba. The
Big Dude always plays the tuba. It's a rule.

Thus endeth the hard-earned lesson that took me 3-4 years to really learn. Hope you pick it up faster than me.

Water Bottles, Rest Day Edition... In Other News...

- It was a rest day so I had time to catch the news. I notice a prominent politician stepped in it by saying that when times are tough, we commoners resort to guns 'n' God. Which sounds like a pretty good title for a church to me, if you were to add another "G" word in there, like Gennie Cream Ale. God, guns, and Gennie Creamers... it don't get much better than that, Clete. Okay, I keed. But still, what's wrong with exercising your first and second amendment rights? Is it bad that when times are tough, a lot of people won't allow the quartering of troops either? I'm just sayin'.

Either way, I noticed some people have been riffin' on this theme for a while. As for me and my beliefs, I'll just note that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sounds like a bad name for a government agency, but a damned good name for a convenience store, and leave it at that.


Or was the candidate talking smack about these profligate God & Gun mixers? I don't know...


As any kid who went to Catholic school back in the old days could tell you, ya don't f*** with the penguins. That's especially true if they are packing heat. Those old girls were deadly with an eraser, a textbook (kin to the boomerang, apparently) and a triangular wooden ruler; I can't imagine the fresh types of hell they'd unleash if you armed 'em up with 12 gauge pump action shotguns. Just take my word and don't screw with the penguins, m'kay?

In other Papist news, the Pope is coming to Washington. I'll probably cut work for a few hours Thursday to check him out when he heads down Pennsylvania Ave. In keeping with his background as an ass-kicking theologian of German heritage, here we seem him practicing his moves to deal with the unholy D.C. traffic.

Stop! Pedestrians have right of way.
Don't make me send you to hell now, because you know I will...

Okay, that's cool and all, everybody loves a good papal visit and everything, mass in a football stadium and the popemobile.

But you know what really rocks? A good hockey playoff full tilt check. Like where Calgary Flames' Corey Sarich knocks the ever-loving kidneys right out of the San Jose Sharks' Patrick Marleau right here:

What did that hit do in the game? It took a depressed Flames' team that had its ass in its hands, motivated them, and sparked a comeback. The Flames were down 3-0 at the time of that hit. They came back and won, 4-3. Sweeeeet. Betcha can't do that in an industrial park crit.

Race Results

BOONEN!

Takes it from Ballan and Cancellara after the three laid in a 35 Km breakaway.

Hincapie flatted for the second time 54k out, the group attacked when the High Road team car was slow to respond with a new rear wheel, gapping him by 1:30. He never regained the lead group, finished 9th after outsprinting a grupetto including the hard workin' Flecha.

Backstedt blew up in the Arenberg.

Maestent (sp?) of Slipstream took 4th, first member of the non-lead group to come in.

Major shoutouts to Cycling TV, who were having problems with logon; they put the race up on their website for free.

Race Day

I'm catching the race coverage live, on this text feed from Velo News.

Admittedly, I'm pretty amped up, so I went hunting with a friend this morning to blow off some steam before the race. It was nice.

We bagged our limit.

Paris-Roubaix

Over a million men on both sides of the Great War were killed here in the mud and stench of poison gas, the metallic flavor of high explosives (did they use cordite then, too?), plagued by foot rot, rats, dysentery, shell-shock, bad tactical leadership, and national leaders who didn't really have an idea about why they were fighting, only that they probably ought to be doing it, so they did.

At least one pre-war winner of Paris-Roubaix, Octave Lapize, died in an aerial dogfight, not terribly far from the site of the race.


These men won't be cheering today. The race is, in part, a memorial to them. It's a monument to human suffering, to human efforts that sometimes may appear senseless. Their sacrifice is the ultimate, it is unquestionable. It would be sacrilege to say that the racers have much in common with them; they do not. But in any epic struggle of will between men, there are some common threads. The more epic the struggle, the more that the non-essential aspects of civilization are stripped away, the more down to human basics it gets. There we see the similarities.



Hinault hated the race, rode it, won, and lost the feeling in his fingertips after this race, but never complained about it. Dulce et decorum est...


A lot of the epic suffering we talk about relates to the winners, who stayed upright.



Just as in the trenches in the nearby battlefields, however, the cameras rarely show the great mass of men, up to their ankles in muck, slipping, sliding, falling. There is an existential question in that: if a man falls and there is no camera capturing his suffering, does anybody notice it? Does it even exist? Wilfred Owen tells us that no stones are so red, as the stones kissed by the blood of the English dead. But he was there; in fact, he was killed there. He wrote that poem to tell us - perhaps somewhat sarcastically - that we don't know a damn thing about what suffering and sacrifice really is, and that we can't know. If we don't see all the suffering, if we don't know the full depths of it, is it real?


The answer, of course, is incontrovertibly yes, in spite of the fact that we know not a whit about what Owen went through - he and his comrades defy augury. Soldiers on the Somme and elsewhere in Flanders formed a tight (and socially troublesome) brotherhood during and after the war, it was a bond formed in the forge of common suffering, and the politicians in the great powers failed to understand this, much to their own detriment. Learn your World War I history, you'll be struck by how grievous the suffering of the soldiers was, but how oblivious to the suffering in the trenches the civilians really were. Yet the soldiers knew, and they caused the authorities real trouble then and later on; look up the French mutinies, the benefits marches in the United States, the pacifist movement and Siegfried Sassoon in Britain, or consider the post-War unrest in Germany and its ultimate end. Their knowledge was genuine, their suffering real, and ignored, missed by the casual spectators at home, who probably would have rioted had they known about how outrageous conditions really were. But they simply didn't know; they couldn't know.

So too racers in the world's toughest roadrace. We cannot know what they go through. Yet they know. When a racer goes down in pain on ridiculously rough, slippery cobbles, the other racers who manage to stay upright notice it. They made it, they came through. They look down at their fallen comrades as they pass, 'better you than me, mate,' and keep pedaling. But the knowledge is there. A little further on in the race, they hit a wet cobbled turn, the knowledge must mark them, and maybe slow them; maybe makes their refusal to hit the brakes that much more impressive. After the race, aching, tired, it sinks in. Maybe it's years later before they realize the significance of finishing, contending, or winning. Sometimes they tell the media what an awful race it is. Yet they come back for it, year after year. They must feel a bond to their team, the other racers, the race, the road. The gloire.


Ahh, yes, there it is. Joy in merely having survived. A happy warrior whose suffering is almost past. He came through just fine, thanks. No problems, mate. Time to finish up, hit the showers, and get on with life. Maybe next week we'll be on smooth roads in the Netherlands, maybe it won't rain, maybe I won't be taken out apparently at random by a loose brick in the road, flying debris, or my fellow racers. It's good to be alive.

But do any of us who haven't raced it really know about this? Do any of us understand? I don't think we do. Racers, like other modern athletes, sometimes talk about their events as 'going to war.' They think of good domestiques as 'footsoldiers.' In one way, the comparison is facile. With rare exceptions, nobody really wants to kill anybody else in a race. But in another respect, it's a fair comparison; a good peek at this race tells you it is a torture test, it is as hard as a roadrace can be made. It strips away all the non-essentials, it is just plain suffering. In a microcosm, it is a play war. Men are good at war and play war, it seems.

A comparison to real veterans' attitudes, as I've seen them, is worthwhile here, to try and get a sense of the mechanism of shared suffering, shared knowledge, and the futility of an outsider trying to penetrate into the arcane books in a library of suffering that is rarely entered by outsiders.

Nobody really knows what a war veteran has gone through, not even another veteran, because you can't know what the other guy goes through, even if you were standing next to him, you weren't in his shoes. The closest you can get is to have suffered yourself. Then it's at least possible to offer respect to another veteran. There is some shared knowledge of the depths, some degree of shared suffering that you both understand. You can't communicate it to others; there is no grammar to do so. Communication fails; you either know suffering, or you do not, and if you know a particular type of suffering, you are an authority on it, in your own modest way. Nobody has cornered the market on your kind of suffering, but you're a journeyman, as are the others who have made the same study of it.

A veteran offers another veteran the best sort of respect - the hard-earned and not-freely-given type. To one veteran, another veteran's respect is worth more than the appreciated but fleeting 'Thin red line of 'eroes' respect granted by those who just don't know.

You want to see what respect really is? Watch how veterans treat a fellow who has received the Medal of Honor. Do you know that MOH recipients do not have to initiate a salute, but that a higher ranking servicemember, even a general, will salute a junior enlisted soldier who wears the Medal? Do you know that a 90 year-old veteran will still be accorded the same respect and awe, by all who serve, and pretty much anybody who once served who is still in possession of their faculties? Do you know what an MOH recipient does within the military after receiving the MOH? Pretty much anything he damn well wants, as long as it's not breaking the law; and I've heard stories of WWII vets who received the Medal who behaved very badly indeed (a man does heroic things; this does not make him a hero, he is still a man). Yet the Military Police or Shore Patrol still treated him with kid gloves. He was forever marked, and respected.

This is a footwashing ritual, a sign of respect so profound, that it shows a willingness to briefly overturn the entire social hierarchy of the military, in order to honor and show respect for the dues that one man paid. That is reverence; that is true, enduring respect; not lip service but something tangible to those who understand. It is how a duty and tradition-bound segment of our culture shows piety in the face of those who are a living expression of its ethos, those who have, however briefly, stood on the pinnacle.

In our much lesser cycling version of epic suffering, one that merely crosses many battlefields, we see the same pattern played out in a dim imitation of that kind of respect for real achievement.

As a fan, I love Paris Roubaix; I think it is *the* race. I can say this, I can know and tell you that it is the race whose winners I most respect, because it is obviously a challenge that is a order of magnitude beyond that posed by any other race. But in the end, I know basically nothing about what the racers go through. Hinault still doesn't feel anything in his fingertips 25 years later? Damn. That's impressive, but the worst numb fingers I ever had went away after a couple months. I just don't know the truth about what he sacrificed that day. I've sprained and bruised and cut a knee; but how did Museeuw feel when the cobbles nearly took his career, leg and life? Only Museeuw holds the key to the vault holding that gnostic wisdom. George Hincapie, a perennial P-R contender, went down two years ago with a snapped steerer, getting hurt pretty bad in the process. All he could manage to say about it, was "It was a bummer." Do you really think it would be just a bummer, to have a mechanical and bust up a collarbone, in the race you have been chasing, dreaming about, dying to win, in contention for but never quite winning, your entire career? The fact is words can't convey what he felt. So he doesn't bother trying. You wouldn't know, and he can't say.

Those who have raced it, those who have raced Paris-Roubaix know the full truth.


Among pro racers, the brick that one gets for winning Paris Roubaix is accorded the ultimate respect. Those who have won it are known forever afterwards as Paris-Roubaix winners no matter what else they have won; even if they won the TdF, they will be described as "TdF and Paris-Roubaix winner ____," though that is an increasingly rare double in an age of specialization. Champions with many palmares and many trophies in their bookcase have been known to say that the brick is the only one that really matters to them.

The ultimate respect, after all, is not what strangers to your trade accord you. It is the respect that your colleagues, The Knowing Ones, show you. While so many fans adore Tour de France winners, the fact that so many racers bow down before Paris-Roubaix winners tells you what you need to know about this race. It is *the* race. Whatever reverence we fans show it, is probably not deep or significant enough to do it justice. We don't know, and they can't tell us. That's just how it is, so we fans will give what we can. The racers though... tomorrow, someone will earn their respect. Forever.

The weather forecast is for 49 degrees, 60% chance of rain at start time. It will be wet and cold. It will be epic, and may produce the mud puddles, blackened faces, horrible crashes the race is known for, along with a hardman who wins it in epic fashion, and is forever after known for what he did on that cold day, in the mud, in the rain, in the wind, and on the cobbles.

Je le respecte.

Water Bottles: Hey, Who Hucked That At Me edition.

In honor of SoFauxPro, whose noveau blog savaged Walter's parenting habits and character, and Kyle's spelling and grammar, I've decided to roll out a special award recognizing the fresh, cool nature of his blog. That's right, it's the First Semi-Periodic Unholy Rouleur Fresh as a Summer's Eve Lifetime Achievement Award, for SoFauxPro. I think the picture pretty much explains everything.

URFAASELLA Lifetime Achievement Award

Thanks, SoFauxPro! You're like a breathe of fresh air, or a blast of cool water on a smelly fat guy's bottom in the bathroom of a dank French boarding house. With your meta-critique of blogging bikers, you've pointed out the little bits that others might have missed, digging deep, scratching away in hidden cracks and crevices, hunting for juicy, sticky little tidbits, the things that really stink about all of us. Thanks for sniffing out these little nuggets, chewing them over, digesting them, and letting all the rest of us know what you've been up to by flashing us a big web-based evil grin. I don't know what we'd be doing without you. Well, yes I do, actually. Not laughing at your ass, is what we'd be doing. And we wouldn't be cringing at your baseless attacks on other people's character. Cringe humor is okay though, as all the Sarah Silverman fans will confirm, and there's certainly nothing wrong with laughing at you. If you saw her joke in The Aristocrats about being raped by Uncle Leo, I'm sure you understand cringe humor. You're not l'enfant terrible, you're just ordinary terrible. Nevertheless, we are coming to think you you as a member of the MABRA Family, SoFauxPro, our own personal Uncle Leo, really.

So thanks for all the fish, FauxPro. Keep up the good work.

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In other news, International Olympics Committee chief Jacques Rogge's mouth moves, and Chinese government talking points come out. That's cool, they are a sovereign nation and they can do that, but the stuff about the Olympics being noble... well, Jesse Owens winning medals in Berlin was noble, but the political spectacle made of the games was cruelly ignoble. Whether or not to use the games as a political club against a nation intent on using the games as a political club is a really tough call, and I'm glad I don't have to make it.

Anyhow, Rogge says that athlete's participating in the games will be free to speak their opinions, but not to propagandize. Presented with several hypothetical situations relating to Tibet, Rogge declined explain where the line between personal opinion and propaganda would be drawn.

I have a few questions about that myself.

These guys have a pretty good discussion of some of the facts, though I don't endorse everything they say.

One wonders if an athlete praising the P.R.C. for its stellar human rights record would be ejected from the games for spreading propaganda, which we are told is banned...

I think Mr. Rogge is doing a pretty good job of running things at the IOC, in keeping with his role as an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat. What, you expect him to do something other than look out for the interests of the bureaucracy? Hmmmm... surely you have not read many books discussing the organization of, and motivations of bureaucracies. Let's just say that as a general rule, they aren't strong on taking the bull by the horns and doing tough things that may not be in their own best interests.

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On a nicer note about the Olympics, British trackie Victoria Pendleton discusses cycling here. One of the interesting things about her career as a sprinter is that she had to overcome prejudice against her because of her tiny size - she notes that many of the women she competed against were 20 or 25 pounds heavier and much more muscular. I suppose Tom Boonen and Magnus Backstedt have faced similar issues. Power to weight is always the key figure for a cyclist, and the key skill is knowing how to ride so as to hide weaknesses, and take advantage of strengths. Sarah Pendleton can do that, and she's going to go to the Olympics as a result.

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Now for a bit of uplift, from Flann O'Brien, about one of my favorite topics - beer, which as we know is the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.


The Workman's Friend

When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When money's tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.

In time of trouble and lousey strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life -
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.