Tales of my Tail

You'd better bring the bucket for this one.

I've had some bad saddlesores in the past. Fortunately for me, they've always been in the nature of bruises, abrasions, or maybe these little pimple-y things.

The bruises are easy - you just stay off the bike, double-bag it with two pairs of shorts, or ride a bike with a radically different saddle for a couple days. No problem.

The abrasions are pretty easy too. Clean 'em up with anti-bacterial soap, Betadine is wonderful but Dial works too, then dry off well and hit 'em with some rubbing alcohol, 91 or 93%, which is no fun but prevents infection and toughens up the skin after a while. Make sure you don't forget the chamois cream for the next few rides. Oh yeah, *Copious* amounts of chamois cream.

Even the gottverdamte pimples aren't a big deal. The big ones just go away eventually with cleanliness and more riding. The little ones are worse, they are usually like blocked pores or ingrown hairs. You have to just pop 'em, and try to ignore the tears running down your face, and the fact that you're curled up in the corner in the fetal position, weeping and shaking. When you stop weeping from the shear agony of your butt's nerve endings being on fire, scrub up a little better than usual with the anti-bacterial soap and douse yourself with rubbing alcohol.

Yep, none of that stuff is fun, but I've dealt with the saddlesores okay and just moved on. The worst kind are the pimply kind, they always seem to be right on a nerve, and you know one is coming because you can't find any kind of position that doesn't hurt, whether you're on your mountain bike, your road bike, your cross bike, or laying in your bed on your stomach.

But you know, in spite of having had a bunch of those little bundles of joy, I've never had an epic saddle sore, until tonight.

Things started normally enough, except when I left the office I used some Body Glide instead of my normal Chamois Butt'r. This may have been a bad choice.

I did the normal commute, long version, which took about an hour. Now one aspect of my riding has changed in the last few weeks. I hit my magical fitness point last week, reflected by the Cycling Peaks WKO "Chronic Training Load" of 75. I know this is a magical point because I only race well if I'm above 75, and my legs feel great no matter how hard I ride. CTL just reflects your training base, and my base is where it needs to be 3 months before the meat of the CX season.

Hitting this magic fitness level has a real impact on my ass,however. Lately, I don't stop spinning very often when I ride. Below that level of fitness I need a little reset every couple minutes, and I need to shuffle a little and kind of take a breath. Not much, but enough to shift position, and then restart my spinning.

At 75 CTL or above, I'm capable of staying on the rivet for as long as I need to, and consequently have racked up some incredibly strong training rides lately, simply because I can pedal the whole damn time. Amazing how your average power output goes up when you eliminate all the zeros.

Anyhow, I was in a bit of a hurry tonight and rode tempo for an hour to get back to the car. (Yeah, I'm a "mixed commute" bike commuter. So sue me...) I was on the rivet for an hour, not in a bad way, but applying a steady, heavy-ish high tempo load to the pedals the whole time. When I got off the bike my ass kinda felt pinched in a few spots - not a surprise since I hadn't moved it from the position I took when I sat down 60 minutes earlier.

I got home without problems, got in the shower, shampooed my hair, soaped up a loofah, and started scrubbing. All was copacetic until I moved that scrubby sponge under my crotch, and then all hell broke loose.

Suddenly, an alligator was biting the right side of my taint, I was hopping on my left leg and waving my right leg around, as if I was an armless guy trying to hail a cab with my foot. I was spinning around a bit in the shower and bouncing my head and shoulder off the wall. I was also grunting, "Oooh, oooooh, oweee, oohhhhhhh!"

All of this was involuntary.

After a while, I was able to stop spinning, grunting, waiving my leg in the air and hopping, and the alligator left me alone, leaving only a small fire in my crotch.

Since I'm a smart guy, I immediately stuck the loofah back down there and started scrubbing with renewed effort.

After I stopped spinning and grunting and waving my leg the second time, and after the alligator headed back to work at the Izod factory outlet, I hopped out of the shower. I *knew* something was drastically wrong, I needed to see what it was.

This entailed, so to speak, standing on one leg in front of the mirror in my half-bath (Sainted Wife gets the full bath, natch) waving my right leg in the air while trying to check out the landscape for infirmities.

Sure enough, there it was. The Mother of All Saddlesores (MOASS™). In fact it was large enough that it deserved its own name, so I promptly dubbed it, "Kate MOASS™."

Kate MOASS looked like a pinky finger - a very small pinky finger that had been through a Yakuza initiation ceremony and lost the last joint to a stylish but basically evil Japanese mafia knife. It was losing a lot of fluids, and it sure felt bad. So I did what any intelligent person with respect for the medical profession would do.

I played doctor and gave Kate a mighty squeeze.

So, when I stopped crying and got up from the floor and looked at it in the mirror again, Kate MOASS™ looked a lot skinnier and shorter, kinda like fat Renee Zelwegger (whom I like) turning into skinny Renee Zelwegger (who kinda scares me). Problem solved, maybe.

Artist's Rendition: Kate MOASS™

Whatever it was, it needed to drain, and once it did, it didn't hurt so much. I finished the shower, scrubbed it up with Betadine, did the patented dousing with rubbing alcohol, and noted that it's now the size of a merely normal saddlesore, and no longer intensely painful. All is basically well, I can sit without discomfort, and we'll see tomorrow if my home surgical treatment worked. I cleaned it up the floor pretty well so that won't be a problem, and even if it were, I noticed the dog slinking down with a guilty look on his face a couple minutes ago, so even if I missed something in cleanup, I'm still good.

But the psychic pain... my goodness.

I've never laughed at people with saddlesore problems. They are a big deal. Pros have lost their careers due to persistent, severe saddlesores. A few of my teammates have made quiet inquiries about how you treat the damn things. They are ugly - other than knee or foot pain, there aren't many other things that can derail your riding so completely. Saddlesores is bad, chirrets. Specially Kate MOASS™.

I knew this rationally before, but never really emotionally understood the impact of a truly nasty saddlesore until tonight. Sure, I've had some pretty horrific skin conditions thanks to my travels in various hellholes, and I've had the usual quarter-sized taint abrasions and whatnot - but this was the most surprising and shocking skin condition I think I've ever personally suffered from, and it wasn't nice, m'kay? Boils, impetigo, various types of fungus amongus, no big deal. But a blot on my sit'n spot? Not good. Not good at all.

Still, I can laugh at it because it seems to have gone away pretty quick. I have a plan too. I'm resolved to keep an eye on it, keep my goat smellin' ass extra clean, and stick to the Chamois Butt'r rather than the Body Glide. With a little luck, I'll have forgotten about it by Wednesday. (Y'all, with an image of me hopping around nekkid and bleeding from the bottom seared into your brain, I'm not so sure about your ability to put it behind you, as it were).

But that thing looked horrifying enough that I'm not going to be mentally free of it for a while. It's going to be lurking in my subconscious like a drunk haunting a bar during a $2 well drinks happy hour.

And as for Kate MOASS™... Katie, we hardly knew ye.

PRO

From Bobke Strut - Glen Chadwick shows how to take a beer handup on the Manayunk Wall.

Friday Fun Time

Have a little Groundskeeper Willie... he's the Ultimate Roadie, as evidenced by his famous saying, "Ah'm doin' all the pullin', ye blouse-wearin' poodle-walker!"



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Say what you will about Metallica, I kind of like them and I don't have a problem with people protecting their property rights. They are a pretty badass metal band too, in an age of musical pissants. I remember listening to Fred Durst and before him a lot of the grunge-rs, and thinking, "man, they feel sorry for themselves... pathetic." Somehow, I don't think James Hetfield and Lars spend a lot of time feeling sorry for themselves. Anyhow... Unforgiven.



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Least surprising celebrity buddies ever - John Daly and golf partner Kid Rock.

And why not? They have a lot of common interests. Hookers, booze, blow, killing hobos.

Okay, I made that last one up. There's no proof John Daly is into blow.

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And in keeping with my Friday theme of awful/awfully good cover versions of well known songs, here's Richard Cheese doing Sir Mixalot's "Baby Got Back." It's grotesque. But funny. It's also NC-17 so you've been warned.



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Here's one of my all time favorite songs coupled with an amateur video that is probably better than the original. I think of all of you guys checking this out at the end of a long work week.

Go ahead, take a break.



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Finally - one last bit of fun for you cycling bums. REM doing a boozy cover of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" in Germany in '85. Have a nice weekend, friends.

For Fat Marc...

Ask, and ye shall receive, brother. One of these will be permanent, at least until Nittany Lion Cross. Help me figure out which one needs to be sticky and go over in the border of this page, to help us count down the days. Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Created by OnePlusYou

For Fat Marc

MySpace Countdown Clocks

For Fat Marc...

MySpace Countdown Clocks

Cycling as a Model UN

Do different types of cycling have a personality that matches the stereotypical traits of one or another nationality?

Yeah, I think so.

Here's how I think it breaks down.

Mountain biking – this riding is Mexican all the way. You get epic facial hair, an easygoing attitude, a lot of fun to be around, cute girls, and everybody seems to have a suntan. There’s usually music at the events, and everybody knows how to have a good time.

Track racing – this kind of competition is German. It’s all about efficiency of purpose, brute force, strange customs and a spotless venue. Everybody who isn't from there finds it admirable, but intimidating and a tiny bit weird. Keirin? Madison? Devil Take the Hindmost? What the hell…

Recumbent riding – this isn’t really bicycling, it’s more like France. First of all, like France, recumbent riders shirk their cycle-y responsibility to get saddlesores, occasionally numb hands, climbing hard, and looking damn good while doing it. They’re slow on uphills, look bad, and perfectly comfortable, shirking just like how France wants to get NATO benefits but doesn’t want to cough up troops or get serious about defense policy or economic cooperation. Like France, recumbent riding has a lot of good things to be said about it, but the air of superiority is pretty hard to take in light of the glaring flaws.

Riding as part of triathlons – Triathlon riding is Japanese. Specifically, it’s a game show, or drunk karaoke. It isn’t really bicycling, it’s more about doing really painful and embarrassing things in public. Instead of sitting in an ice cold bath and chugging beers until you pee yourself, you sit on an uncomfortable seat and do 112 miles, chugging Perpetuum until you pee yourself. Instead of eating disgusting food with chopsticks out of a bento box, you eat disgusting dextrose blocks out of a bento box with your dirty, pee-encrusted hands. Instead of being lathered up with Crisco and wrapped in Saran Wrap until you choke, you’re lathered up with Pam and crammed into a wet suit until you swim until you puke. And, like a Japanese game show or karaoke, the respect you garner is in direct proportion to how badly you embarrass yourself in public. You remember the Kona women’s champ who shat herself just before the line? That’s admired in this community. Wayyyy Japanese.

Commuting is America. Commuters are total mongrels just like us Americans. It’s a Cablinasian pastime, as Tiger Woods might put it. Could be racers in drag, could be a granny out to go volunteer at the hospital, could be some lawyer in a suit on a bike with fenders, could be a illegal immigrant on a Magna. But most commuters are, like most Americans, basically nice, mostly Fred-like, pretty enthusiastic, and man, are they ever happy to tell you about it. Yep.

Roadracing... a lot of people associate roadracing with Italy but it is a purely Scottish sport. You whinge, and people either tell you to shut the fuck up, or give you a look that could sear the inside of your mouth if you keep it open. Bitch about how bad a hill is, and people will just laugh at you. Crash, and they’ll tell you to ignore that bone sticking out, Tyler Hamilton would and he’s a pussy, so surely you can do better. Injecting EPO into your Schwantz so you can ride faster? Yeah, you’d do that. The pain would be a badge of honor. Roadracers like speed, but actually prefer suffering to speed. Training all the time with intervals, shitty diet, nasty tasting energy drinks, saddlesores and sore legs... training fuckin’ sucks. So they like it as much as a Scot enjoys walking in the cold rain and then sitting in a dank house, freezing and drinking nasty tasting whisky. Belgian hardmen who train in the icy rain and stiff winds on cobblestones? We don’t think they’re stupid like anybody with normal values would, we look to them as the ideal. Sure it's hard, but who the fuck asked you for your opinion? Now shut up, and go suffer. It's good for you to suffer. Builds character so you can learn how to suffer better. If you work hard and suffer really good, we'll let you have another big bowlful of lukewarm suffering, ye wee git. The only reason there aren't many more Scottish roadracing champions is because they'd have to hang out around Italian pros, and Italians are notoriously pleasant people, so being around all that happiness would suck. It could rub off and that just wouldn't do.

Progressive riding – pushing stout bikes off stairs and railings and boulders, bouncing off trees, doing stunts in a parking lot – this is Ireland, through and through. A progressive rider can find a party pretty much anywhere he goes, and if he has a bike, he is the party. They have great stories too, usually about compound fractures or other horrifying but funny things.

Touring riders – the Dutch of the cycling world. Mad about bikes, nice folks, some funny habits, but ultimately just a great mass of people trying to go everywhere on their bikes. Some are fast, some are slow. They prefer riding in flatlands too.

Randonneurs – the Australia of the cycling world. Harder than you, friendlier than you, traveling a lot further than you, more adventurous than you, more self-reliant, probably better riders, never complaining, and by God, they aren’t going to tell you that and rub it in your face the way a Kiwi would. Everywhere I’ve been in the world that I thought was exotic, where I was at the absolute ass-end of the world, I ran into an Australian who was there first. Kind of like Randonneurs.

Urban fixters – the South Africa of the cycling world. They are down with segregation from the rest of the cycling world… right up until you dis them and make them feel separate, then they’re not down with it, they’re cyclists just like you, man. They will also be in need of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to heal the longstanding rift between themselves and trackies, who feel like the fixters horned in on a pretty good gig that the trackies and a few hardcore roadies used to own exclusively. Fans of cheap beer, which they drink ironically, unlike trackies, who are unaware that any other kind of beer exists.

Update: It occurs that people might ask what cycling nationality I am. I think it's pretty obvious... Maori. Check it out.




I think the resemblance is pretty obvious.

Race Report:: Wednesday Wipeout at Wakefield

I rode the first Wednesdays at Wakefield race tonight. It was my third ever mountain bike race and first short cross country race and frankly, my legs feel hairier for having done it.

Mountain bike races are really different from road races. First of all the people are really hairy. There is lots of facial and leg hair, and a lot of the men have it too. (Just kidding, ladies... you won't find a better looking group of girls than on the starting line at an MTB race.)

Then everybody is friendly. There's passing - if you are riding hard on a guy's wheel and he knows it, you can get a pass, unlike the Alpha Male sort of politics you need to play in road racing. The officials don't yell at you (weird...) and everybody cheers for you.

Then there's the dust. Holy cow, is it dusty. It's worse than cross.

And crashing. Crashing in a road race is a 50/50 chance of ending your race. In a mountain bike race, it just means you need to try not to overcook that corner next time around.

So how'd it go? Not bad. I raced in the Clydesdale class, which is a pretty unusual blend of enormous fast dudes, and enormous slow dudes, and some middling folks, also enormous. Thing is, compared to the general population, we looked pretty healthy. Compared to the typical cyclist... well, we're just lucky we're not called the Bacon and Spam Class, is all I can say.

I was a bit undergeared on the single speed on this rolling course and a bit out of my element on the first lap. Everybody else apparently knew the course pretty well. I wound up near the back of the pack but started picking my way up pretty quickly. Here's a weird thing I heard chugging up one of the fairly short power climbs - "oh. He's got roadie power." I had to chuckle because I'm not normally considered a strong climber. The single speed really helps here, you simply have to redline it up hills and as a consequence become stronger. I'm not going to share that secret with anybody though.

It was sort of tough picking through all the corners and stuff. There are lots of rocks and dips on this course, it's not that rough, but was just hard to figure out first time through. I was slow on the first lap, maybe a 24, the fast guys rock a 17. The second lap through I really found a flow, passed several clydesdales and found myself working up through the women's expert pack, which had started two minutes before us. There's nothing interesting to report from this lap, other than seeing a pretty deer out in a field, literally on the side of the trail watching racers pass and chewing on some weeds.

All was uneventful until I got to this little stream crossing, where I promptly unceremoniously endo-ed. This taco'ed my wheel and left me pretty bruised, so I hammered the wheel into semi-rideable shape and limped in at around 21-22.

Final result - DNF after two out of three laps. Sore hands. Scuffed leg. Bent wheel, busted saddle. BIIIIGGGG smiles.

Yep, I'm going to do that again. It was a lot of fun and if I can keep from breaking the bike, who knows - maybe I can do better than DFL.

Slow Day

Did a commute with extras for the training ride today. Gotta take it easy since I will try to kill myself tomorrow night at Wednesdays at Wakefield. (See y'all there, boys & girls).

Meanwhile, I'm going to wax Jeff Foxworthyish for a minute here and talk about the re-emergence of the BTGs, the BikeTrailGuys. There weren't that many of them out today amongst the swarming crowds of commuters and stray velopeople, but the ones that were out were doozies. Forthwith:

You may be a BTG if...

You are doing the chickenhead pedalmash just to pass that guy in a local velo club jersey, who appears to be doing an easy spin and chatting on the phone.

You are swerving back and forth more than Tomke's Porsche in an effort to hold some other commuter's wheel.

You step into the middle of the trail without looking, obstruct damn near the entire thing with your wide stance, look up, then freeze like a rabbit in the middle of heavy bike traffic.

You wheelsuck for 5 miles without asking, then swoop around at the end of the biketrail to sprint for the post that marks the end, y'know, to take the win. Dude, a standing sprint?

Yep. You just might be a BTG if you're sprinting to win the commute. [Applause].

You might be a BTG if you're a Japanese guy who, two years after it was first noted, still wears his helmet backward - square end forward - and commutes in a down jacket never mind the 80 degree temps.

If you nearly cause a huge crash trying to pass three Mommies, each pushing a double stroller... you just might be a BTG.

If you have an enormous backpack on, front and rear panniers, yet you're trying to race people on the bike trail... you might be a BTG.

If you're a reasonably fit looking guy in a Primal jersey and you're transparently riding behind three very cute but obviously under-age high school girls on hybrids going 4 MPH, then you are probably a BTG.

If you go to the family re-union to meet girls... who you can later drop on a Cap Crescent biking date the way Armstrong dropped Ulrich, you might be a BTG.

If you stand up and do a hard climbing effort on one of the tiny bridges because somebody just passed you like you were standing still... it's possible you're a BTG.

You might be a BTG if your bike squeaks like a cage full of chipmunks. Chipmunks blowing on tiny whistles, slapping tiny cymbals and rubbing their tiny fingernails on tiny chipmunk blackboards.

Finally...

If you are riding a bike that costs more than a good top-of-the-line suit, but you can't break the speed limit on the Cap Crescent, except when you're riding in the downhill direction... you just might be a BTG.

Chuck Norris' Jeans are Tougher Than Yours

This ad tells us that Chuck Norris' jeans have a unique hidden gusset.

Rumor has it that it used to be a completely normal gusset, but the unique terror caused by seeing Chuck Norris' enormous manhood forced it into hiding.

Reputable sources indicate that the gusset is in the super-secret DARPA* witness protection program and working as the reinforcing stitching on a gardener's apron in Tuscon, AZ. Others in hiding from Chuck Norris' awesomeness are said to include the chamois from Chuck Norris' bike shorts, the knuckles on Chuck Norris' work gloves, and most of the Yakuza.

*DARPA - Defense Against (Chuck Norris') Rampant P***s Agency

Friday Fun Time

- Okay, downer note first. I couldn't ride yesterday due to work issues, can't ride today due to family issues. So I'm pissed and all down, and I'm going to share it with you. If you're in a good mood, go here, it'll straighten you out. Let that depressing article serve as a friendly reminder to you of a couple hard facts of life.

• Public policy is hard work. Don't believe too hard in anybody who tells you they are going to make everything better. They can't possibly be serious, and if they are, you should probably be afraid of them.
• Meaning well, which earns people extra credit in our hearts, means nothing to the physical world, which is filled with physical problems that are staggeringly immune to our good intentions. Good intentions don't help solve physics problems.
  
• Big plans usually go awry. Don't try a big plan that affects other people unless you've figured out the million or so small action items you'll need to do to get the big thing fixed. Square away the logistics before you put the troops ashore at Normandy.
  

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A new curse word - "SCHLEEEEECCCCCKKKK!"



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Frank Schleck's new theme song: The un-gay-est version of "I Will Survive" ever recorded, by Cake.



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I'm getting kinda amped for the Tour de France. I'm down with Versus ads - "Screw the dopers." It should be pretty wide open this year, again an open race. Here, have a little trippy freaky-deaky Kraftwerk and vintage race footage to help get your mind right.



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What do you do if you're Didi Senft, and the TdF is in those boring, slow, flat stages, where it doesn't make sense to try to run alongside the riders?

Why, you make an enormous guitar-shaped bicycle and ride it around wearing your devil suit, of course!



If Didi riding a guitar-bicycle doesn't get you amped up for the tour, you gots problems.

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Finally, I give you... Baconhenge!

To Wear a Helmet or Not?

As Counsel to Professor Clyde Crashcup, I wear a helmet pretty much all the time while riding, except once in a while on a very nice day, while going a short distance at low speed. On such days, I like to let the wind whistle through my short hair. But I feel terribly conflicted about it, and I have a couple broken helmets that sit in the corner of my cycling closet at home, and when I open the door to put my bike away they chastise me in sullen silence for my nerve and stupidity. A guy who has busted four helmets in 2.5 years, two helmets in 5 months, all by running into the trees or hitting the pavement at parkway speeds, doesn't need to be riding around with an unprotected bonce. Yes, riding without a helmet is fun sometimes, but I only do it rarely because I like being able to think more than I like to enjoy the marginal bit of pleasure that cycling helmet-less adds to riding. Still, it's a nice feeling, one I wish I could enjoy more often, but one which I can't. In the end, I almost always make the choice to wear a helmet because I know it's the smart thing to do, but in the end, I want the freedom to not wear the helmet, to put on my Columbus hat and tool around. I want you to have that same freedom too - it's a personal choice, not one that should be dictated by anybody else.

Ultimately, this might leave you thinking I'm against helmets. I'm not. You should wear a helmet all the time, or almost all the time - really, it'd be a shame to die in a low speed tipover. There's better ways to go. But if you don't want to wear one, that's your business. I may call you stupid but I'll defend your right to be As Stoopid As You Wanna Be. It's a free country, mostly. What a mess of an opinion, eh?

I'm not the only one who feels conflicted about the whole matter. Here's my favorite foreign politician, British Tory Boris Johnson, on wearing a helmet whilst cycling:

Here, then, is the political position. In my efforts to do the right thing, I have ended up giving offence to both opposing factions. As soon as I started to wear a helmet, I was denounced as a wimp, a milquetoast, a sell-out to the elf and safety lobby, a man so cravenly attached to his own survival that he was willing to wear this undignified plastic hat.

As soon as I was pictured not wearing a helmet, I was attacked for "sending out the wrong signal" and generally poisoning the minds of the young with my own reckless behaviour.

The situation, my friends, is a mess. I have been convicted beyond all reasonable doubt of complete incoherence on the question of cycle helmets - and complete incoherence, therefore, is what I propose to defend.

You can see why I think highly of Boris - he's disarmingly honest.

He uses the helmet discussion to riff on a couple other issues currently tearing their way through British politics, including a particular issue that would have a lot of people in the U.S. marching in the street with pitchforks.

Go read the whole thing, it's very much worth a minute of your time, and not just 'cuz of the helmet discussion.

Rebuttal

I generally don’t bother arguing with goofball commenters, but a comment to the post below, by “TheTruth” merits it. Apparently, TehTroof's gig involves going around and pissing on people about their low quality lives, bike racing, and blogging. He was happy to stop by here and share his wisdom with us, with some excellent put-downs of my non-excellent blog & brain, so I feel it's necessary to marshal both brain cells in response.

Dude, first off you put Tom Boonen on there who's only positive test came from cocaine in an out-of-competition test. Therefore he is not penalized by WADA or the UCI.

Well, it's true that he *probably* won’t be punished by WADA or the UCI per se. He may still be punished by Belgium’s cycling sanctioning body or anti-doping body because punishment isn’t entirely foreclosed by the WADA Code, so national bodies can impose stricter standards. Cocaine is on the prohibited substances list, but not the "in competition" portion of the list, so it's in a sort of never-never land. There is also the matter of illegal possession of drugs to deal with. It's amazing how dimly sanctioning bodies view illegal drug use, and alleged dealing. The alleged dealing, er, excuse me, "providing," is why Boonen was targeted for an out-of-competition test by the national sanctioning body *and police* in the first place. In the shady, low-due-process world of anti-doping, Boonen isn’t safe from disciplinary action. The national anti-doping and sanctioning bodies are the ones to watch, but in an Olympic year, a "message" suspension from the UCI & WADA wouldn't shock me at all, even though initial comments indicate he probably won't face suspension.

Your retarded.

Nice spelling. Stooping to correct people’s spelling on teh intarwebs is usually bad form, but in this case I’m going to point out that you opened the door by insulting my intelligence. You meant to say, "you are retarded." You probably want to employ a contraction of "you are" (you're) rather than "your," which is merely the possessive form of the second person personal pronoun. I'll use both words in a sentence to help you see the difference: "If you say a bad word about illegal drug use, you're going to draw retarded people to your comment section." See? It's pretty easy. I'd also like to make the peripheral point that many individuals with cognitive impairments find the term "retarded" offensive.

Second, it's poor taste to have Pantani on there as he died from a drug overdose, obviously he was facing some demons. Not to be poked fun of.

Really? I figured that somebody who was caught twice in races with over-the-limit hematocrit levels, one time with a level (60) that isn't exactly achievable without help, merits mention. Yep, nobody proved anything, but I brought him up precisely because his off-the-bike drug of choice is the same as Boonen's. Does it matter that Pantani's depression apparently stemmed from getting thrown out of the Giro for blowing his hematocrit test? Or was he just really f***in’ gifted when he tested with a 60 hematocrit in 1996, and they didn't have tests to detect the presence of EPO? The larger point I'm trying to make is that destroying your life getting caught using EPO isn't a lot different from turning yourself into a coke addict, and seeing Pantani suffering from both problems sort of brought that home for me. Sorry if you find it tasteless; I find the spectacle of people who have everything throwing it all away on drugs to be the tasteless part, a senseless, heartbreaking loss, and I find not speaking up about it to be kind of cowardly. Guess we'll just have to disagree on that.

Then you bust on people who have tested positive or been accused of using drugs and go out of their way to clean up their acts later in their careers- millar, bjarne.

So Bjarne’s cool in your book? I guess he went back in time to award palmares to the racers whose wins he ripped off with his doping, making it all better now?

Not to mention your picking on the best team the US has to offer- slipstream.

First of all, you mis-spell "you're" yet again, and "Slipstream" should be capitalized since it's a proper noun. Seriously, check out Strunk & White's. I wouldn't be picking on you here but isnce you decided to call me various names, some centered on my intellect, well, you sort of asked for it. Second, on the merits, most people would probably say Team High Road - now Team Columbia - is the best U.S. team. Third, how do you figure I’m picking on Slipstream? I’ve got Millar circled, nobody else, and I’m asking a question about whether he's a doping loser at that. Picking on Slipstream would be claiming that their program is a sham or something like that – a statement I’ve not made but which you seem to impute to me. In fact I think Slipstream is doing a great job on and off the bike and wish them all the success in the world. But if Millar and Riis are such friggin’ heroes, why didn’t they fess up before getting busted by the cops and before having their names named by other dopers (in Riis’ case)? You want to see somebody who earns my respect? It will be the first big time pro who realizes what he's doing is wrong, goes public, repents, names names, and walks away from the sport because he feels he's betrayed it, or maybe sticks around like Millar and tries to fix it. *That* will earn my respect. Saying "I'm sorry for taking the cookies" after you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar doesn't cut it. Yeah, I have some more respect for Millar than if he was unrepentant. But I still have a lot of reservations about the guy.

Your not doing the sport any good.

Really? Am I violating the conspiracy of silence here? Seems to me we owe it to the sport to stigmatize the dopers, create peer pressure to encourage them to stop, to let the teams know we fans are sick of them pressuring their riders into doping – yeah, I don’t think it’s a purely individual choice, not from what I’ve heard. You really think the riders and the sport served by our silence? How 'bout the 16 year-old kids on Italian pro developmental teams? You think they're served by fan silence? That’s like keeping quiet when you know a kid in your family is being abused, for fear that reporting the abuse to the cops will only make the abuse worse. I suppose there’s an internal logic there that works in a twisted sort of way but you’re only buying temporary amelioration, in exchange for eventually receiving long term destruction. But hey, if you think it's more honest or in the interests of the sport to remain silent, well, I'll shut up, just like everybody Lance has sued. Y'know. For the good of the sport.

The best part is, at the end of the day,

Yes, at the end of the day… What are you, Michael Ball’s Escalade polisher? That’s the only sports cliché he knows, based on how often he says it. You paying tribute to the guy who hired all the known & suspected dopers? Or are you being unintentionally ironic? 'Cuz that would be funnnn-y.

your still just yet another faget with a blog.

Yes, I am. And you’re just another guy who repeatedly fails to use "you're," employ remotely proper grammar, or spell your anti-gay slurs correctly.

I'll repeat my advice: Strunk & White's. It will totally fix up your major usage problems. I got nothin' for your other problems though.

Dopers Suck

A photo[shop] essay on those who dirty the name of our sport and damage themselves.

Video Friday

Ahhh... is it Video Friday already? Ok-ally doke-ally.

In honor of Tom Boonen, who apparently says he was only joking about having a relationship with an underage girl, The Dead with a live performance of Mexicali Blues. "All I've got is this bottle, and a girl who's just 16..."



J.J. Cale, Cocaine:



And Limp Bizkit covering Johnny Cash's Cocaine Blues:



And, what the hell, have a heapin' helpin' of Hank Jr and Kid Rock explainin' why they drink, smoke & toke:

Just Two Things

- Yeah, I managed those stinkin' 5 x 6 minutes >threshold aero intervals, two minutes rest, this morning. It hurt. Fairly bad.

- Y'know how I said yesterday that Boonen's supporters would be out today coming up with plausible stories, denying away his coke snorting? I was only being half facetious. It didn't take long:

Lefevere made an effort to distinguish his star rider’s behavior from the "real doping problems," which have occurred in the Tour in recent years, noting that Boonen’s difficulties were of a "private" nature.

And Prudhomme agreed that the positive was "not a case of performances being improved; this is something that has happened in a social sphere well outside of sport."

It's always rough when life imitates some fool blogger's crude jokes.

Now here's the sad part about it: Boonen committed a couple serious crimes and I'm getting so jaded about all this that I'm one of the people who almost doesn't care. This is screwed up because it shows that my own values system is getting eroded here by watching these guys in action and thinking about them.

People say culture doesn't matter. But it does matter. If I think it's no big deal for Boonen to be a coke-snorting, underage skirt-chasing, drunk driving fool, then it's hard for me to maintain the distinction in my own life, to raise my own kid properly, to impart to him that it's a big deal to break those rules.

Why does it matter to keep up these standards? Because there's a serious cost for not doing so. I lost three friends in the space of about 18 months to coke addiction; it's not harmless, not if you look at their truncated lives, and the disaster situations they bequeathed to their families. One of my best friends and the best man at my wedding was killed by a drunk driver, two days before my friend was to take the bar. He was an exemplary Army officer, law student and human being, and had his life stolen (from himself, his family and friends) by a guy who had enough money to be drunk to three times the legal limit, but not enough money to call a $10 cab to get home. We're not talking about having two drinks then driving, we're talking 15. Totally trampling on the law & social stigma.

Those social stigmas and laws are in place for a reason; it's because violating them causes harm, sometimes immediate, sometimes with wide ranging consequences. We should uphold them.

If Boonen gets sanctioned, it's a reminder that this is not VietNam*; there are rules here. It's easier for me to tell my kid to stay away from destructive drugs, to not dope for sports, to call me rather than drive home drunk. If Boonen isn't punished, then it's one more guy getting away with it, one more argument in favor of the rule of "Who gives a damn anyhow."

Don't get me wrong - I've nothing against *you* destroying your life with dangerous and illegal drugs. That's your problem if you do, but I would ask that you don't damage the social fabric and the people in your life and neighborhood and town while you do it. I expect the same thing of sports stars. If they are going to destroy themselves, they should do it quietly, and not set a bad example for the kids and the rest of us. Even asking us to be non-judgmental and tolerate their bullshit is wrong, because it sends the message that even though it's very wrong, it oughtta be tolerated. Thing is, if we tolerate it, how wrong can it be?

I sure hope Tom Boonen wises up; he's an immense talent and beloved rider, and it would be a shame to see him go the way of Pantani and van den Broucke. I am going to hate seeing him lose any of his career, but he has done some bad things, and he needs to pay for them, for his own good and for ours.



*There were rules in VietNam too. Walter Sobchack was a caricature of a deranged, Deer-Hunter-esque cartoon of a VietNam veteran, a very funny character at that. The vast majority of troops in that era displayed the sense of duty and adherence to the rules, at least the important ones, that we traditionally expect of our military, media portrayals notwithstanding.

Dehydrated Water Bottles: But What Would You Add Edition

You know your sport has a serious doping problem when its top star gets busted for being all jacked up on cocaine, and your first reaction is, "Oh, that's no big deal. It's not like it was EPO or human growth hormone or something." Seriously, I'm thinking, "It's just DWI and Peruvian Marching Powder... coulda been a lot worse."
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I'm sure that Boonen will have his defenders, just like Tyler Hamilton and all the other dopers. But unlike almost everybody else who races, Tomke is a rock star. So the cover story will have to reflect that. I'm expecting somebody like Gert Steegmans to step up and say something like:

Yeah, so Tomke had no idea that the pile of white powder was blow when he snorted it off that hooker's ass. He probably thought it was confectioner's sugar for the waffles we were about to eat (we're Belgians, we eat waffles you know, we're famous for it). Or maybe he thought it was salt off the 5 gallon bucket of rocks margaritas he was going to funnel with Stijn Devolder, two guys from Bayern-Muenchen, and this chap we met partying in Amsterdam. Coulda happened to anybody, really. *Totally* innocent mistake, right?

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It was so hot out today, this is what I looked like at the end of my commute.



It's better than how I normally look so I don't know why I'm complaining.

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I've been working on riding in the aerobars a little bit. It's really comfortable. Compared to getting beaten by the Yakuza, I suppose. Not sure how it's going to work out at Church Creek. It's pretty easy to go at a decent pace - about 1:07 hour pace - at tempo (L3) power. The problem is getting above that is pretty hard. I'm going to be doing some L5 intervals tomorrow and working on that. I'll let you know how it goes. If it goes well, maybe there's a hope for a sub-hour 40k. If not... well, the stories about how bad my ass and legs hurt will make an interesting blog entry.

The Group Ride

It’s the same guys this week, pretty much, as it was last week. Since it’s mid-season, everybody has some kind of form. You can try to keep the pace easy, everybody says it’s just a spin today. Whatever. But pretty soon you can bet you'll be going at a near-maxed-out pace, on the rivet in one way or another.

So you pull out, hear the clacking of a dozen or more cleats into clipless pedals. Everybody swims around a little on their seat getting their rear end positioned “just so,” everybody starts conversations with guys they haven’t seen in a week or a few. How’s the family, how did that race go last week, do you like those new shorts, I’m thinking about buying some. There's that girl who comes out sometimes who can hang... she's tough, climbs like hell, one of the guys, as far as everybody's concerned. If you ride with us, you're with the band. Let's go.

It’s an easy spin for a while. A few guys with Fresh Leg Syndrome go off the front a bit before they wise up and remember there is a fifty or sixty mile stretch laid out in front of them, and it wouldn’t do to blow up early.

You get to some hills, and a couple guys go off the front a bit. They don’t totally peg it – they’re being charitable to the fatboys on the ride, going a little easy. They know enough not to murder anybody this early in the ride. There’s not much talking here, just a lot of heavy breathing, and a lot of silence as the ride strings out a bit.

Over the top and it’s back together, a little regroupment, and settling into a good tempo pace. The fatboys move to the front and start setting a good tempo pace. They go pretty hard, but not all out. It wouldn’t do to hurt those climbers. For one thing, it would violate the spirit of the ride to try to shatter it. For another thing, the climbers will repay any injuries in spades on the next set of hills. The big boys chat at the front, pounding out tempo, the climbers find a nice wheel to settle behind, and all is right in the world for a while.

Soon enough, it’s a long false flat into a hill, and again the group labors. Everybody is closer together now, the big fellows have taken a little pepper out of the climbers’ legs, the climbers are probably realizing that the group can go faster if the rouleurs and the grimpeurs work together, at least for now.

There’s a flat tire, with the signature hisssssssthwackhisssssssthwackhissssssthwack. The group stops and gathers around the patient, everybody offering their considered medical opinion, one or two brave souls stepping up to risk embarrassment and help speed the repair. You do not want to be the guy who sets the tire on the rim for the flat victim, only to have it blow off because you didn’t set the bead properly. Soon, you’re back on the road, and the group is subdued for 10 minutes, the break having caused a the legs to tighten up a bit. But that’s okay, it’s a Saturday or Sunday, and you’re on the road with friends – even if the legs never get better today, the day itself is as good as it will ever get.

Then the group is off into the flats. There’s a lot of chatting and laughter now, and some games as people challenge each other in quick jumps off the front. It seems pretty effortless, going in the low to mid-20s, because everybody’s legs are warmed up. The group pounds out the tempo in the flats and across some mild rollers for what seems like days, but it’s only the better part of an hour.

The golden hour of the ride is transcendent. The miles slip by in a gentle hiss of tires on smooth tarmac, and in occasional gusts of wind that each rider hears separately through the helmet air vents. The riders who aren’t talking in this part of the ride seem almost unconscious, almost otherworldly… they are fully alive in the moment, open to the experience to the point that they are only experiencing it, not commenting on it, not thinking about the moment or anything else. Just soaking it in.

Then the golden hour ends, and the ride is back into the hills and rollers, the hour of hell is upon us. The riders see-saw back and forth in and out of the group. They come to a hill and some rouleurs power up it, staying ahead of the climbers until near the top, when the climbers with their steady spin pass the rouleurs. Then it’s down the other side, and into some more hills. There’s a long rolling flat where the rouleurs, near their limit, pound out tempo while trying to recover, and the climbers absorb the punishment.

Then it’s onto a real climb, and some of the rouleurs are off the back. Maybe one or more of them have a long chase back onto the group. The group is content to let them suffer, and one-by-one, they rejoin. The group slows its tempo a bit, enough to still punish the outliers, but not enough to make it a slow ride. Back together, the group gathers its strength for the last climb.

There’s a game that goes on here about who will lead out into the hill. Some lead out really strong, and hope they can get off the front and hold it to the top, which is the de facto sprint line. Others spin and hope to overtake near the top. Still others lag off the back, content that they’ve left it all out on the road somewhere the group passed an hour ago. It’s not only the riders’ energy that has been left out on the road – worries about family, work stress and all the cares in the world are back there, in some immense cosmic garbage can. We won’t be seeing those again, not this week.

Up and over the top, and the ride turns back into a Sunday spin. Guys gasp and stretch and shake out their legs and hands, and drop it into a small gear. The end is clearly in sight, psychologically and physically, and they’ve made it through with great shared effort.

Everybody spins easy, and the talk reverts to chit-chat, now it’s about what the rest of the day and the rest of the week will be. Although the riders were weighed down by cares at the start of the ride, by the end, they are looking forward to taking up their burdens again. Sweat and calories aren’t the only thing they burned off on that ride.

And all good group rides end the same way. In the waning mile or two, everybody talks about what a great ride it was, remember that hill, thanks for coming out, see you at Joe’s party, good to ride with you. And, always, some form of “see ya next week.”

The group ride may have a slightly different cast from week to week. It may be on the road or in dirt or some combination of the two. It might be fast, or sometimes a little slower. The weather might be so hot that a couple mid-ride stops are needed to prevent the riders from turning into beef jerky, or it may be so cold that it only lasts 90 minutes because the riders hands are freezing solid onto the handlebars.

But in the end, it is *exactly* the same from week to week. And that is why we keep coming back.

Why I Ride

Why do I ride?

Basically, so I don't do this:


http://view.break.com/513310 - Watch more free videos


Why do you ride?


It's time. Get out of the cubicle. Go ride. Have a happy weekend.

Water Bottles: Tchotchke's 17 Pieces of Flair Edition

- Started the day with the Crofton version of the Muffin Ride with a couple riding buddies. Damned if a 90 minute easy ride with friends capped off with a scone and triple espresso isn't the best way to start any day. If you're a late riser, you should try it. Greeting the sun and friends and your bike and our friend Mr. Java at the same time is better than drugs.

- You may have seen that Campagnolo is coming out with a new 11 speed gruppo (gruppisimo?) Why 11 speeds? I'm not the only person to immediately think of this, but I'll let Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel explain why he prefers Campy's 11 speed gruppo, and why it is molto superiore compared to Shimanhole's puny and pathetically slow 10 speed gruppo:

Nigel Tufnel: These cassettes all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...

Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most cassettes go up to ten?

Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's faster? Is it any faster?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one faster, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be riding on ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your bike. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One faster.

Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten spin faster and make ten be the top number and make that a little faster?

Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

And there you have it. 11 gears is just faster. From Nigel's lips to God's ears.

- The cycling world is at a standstill - or so you'd believe from the coverage of it on the Italian RAI channel's Ciclismo. We're getting a half hour of coverage this week. Basically, if there aren't a hundred Italians involved, it doesn't exist. When the Dauphine gets going and Le Tour and the Tour de Suisse (an event I feel strangely neutral about) I'm sure the coverage will be ramped up again. I guess this is an example of the European worldliness that we're always hearing about...

- The Church Creek TT is going to feature electronic timing chips and a big clock right at the start/finish. That means when you cross the line in your lactate haze, you'll be able to see your time. Yes, they are going to ram your pathetic inadequacy right down your throat. If that's not reason enough to go do a race, I don't know what is.

- As usual, Ryan has an interesting look at the question of how the ProTour teams travel when they're racing in the U.S. The answer: like your grandad, except with team logos.

- Have a nice weekend, all. Shop Ride at Family Bikes tomorrow AM, call the shop to get time & other details. Since it's Video Friday, here's some tunes for the weekend:

In honor of Teammate of the Rouleur Adrian Kroepsch, who kicked ass at Ironman Brazil a couple weeks ago:



In honor of bad 80's rock, and on the subject of iron men, Run to the Hills, with good vintage bicycle racing / Injun wars footage in the video. Too bad there's no swimming, because then it'd be All Three Sports and the tri geeks would get all tingly about it, as it is it's just running, shooting, biking, horse riding, and archery, so maybe if there's any modern pentathletes out there, I just made your day:



Appropo of nothing, a little Hayseed Dixie doing "Walk This Way...", a strangely compelling bluegrass band that only plays hard rock. Weird, but I like them.



And after that, while we're on the whole topic of weird, let's end with a little Richard Cheese cover of "Enter Sandman."

Water Bottles... Too Drunk to... um... Edition

Since the Pens survived and won just about the longest Game 5 in Stanley Cup Finals history - a triple overtime - I think we all deserve a little reward. Here you go... bask in The Glory That is Hockey Night in Canada's Don Cherry! Old Time Hockey... Yeeeeaaaaahhh!


I know Hoovis is probably pleasuring himself looking at that picture, and thinking about the Pens' big win, and fantasizing about Don Cherry naked except for hockey skates and a Hawaiian shirt halter top with a big Edwardian Collar... but that's okay. It's the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It's okay to dream, Burt. Yep, my ode to Grapes is for you, buddy... enjoy it, don't be afraid to hope and pour your heart into that stupid team of yours, because you're either about to get a mind blowing high from the Pens, or the worst gottdamt feeling ever, and the two feelings are not independent of each other, if you want one you need to risk the other. Such is playoff hockey. It wouldn't be the best if it wasn't heartbreaking too.

What, you other people don't think Don Cherry is cool? Okey, fine, then how 'bout this for having the coolest job in the world:

In the distance an orange cyclist, hunched over on his bars, his rain jacket catching enough wind to make him look like a human pillow, appeared. A good cyclist can always tell if another cyclist is competent, a professional, even if he is just a spot in the distance. Although just a spot of bursting orange, we all had a hunch it was Juan Antonio Flecha. . .

As he neared our group, he spun around, peeled off his orange cape and began climbing with us. A couple of quick hellos, some chatter about the Giro and its ludicrously hard stages, and then we were back breathing deeper as the pace intensified, everybody quiet, glancing down occasionally at their power meters to see the pertinent numbers: heart rate, watts, cadence.

Once at the top, we could see Barcelona, the Mediterranean coast, Girona and to the north the high snow capped Pyrenees. George Hincapie and Flecha pulled out their cameras for the photos of the day; we zipped up our jerseys, covered up with our rain capes, ate Powerbars, drank, and then began the descent towards home. The clock read that we had been out for well over three hours; we needed to make it home in two and a half to avoid the doghouse.

For all the bullshit in pro cycling, that right there is what's cool about it. At its core, it's a bunch of guys who mostly just love riding their bikes, getting together to ride their bikes. Just like us, except they totally don't suck. "Hincapie and Flecha pulled out their cameras for the photos of the day; we zipped up our jerseys, covered up with our rain capes, ate Powerbars, drank, and then began the descent towards home." I'll be damned if that's not the coolest thing I will read all week. There's more at the Velo News diary of Michael Barry.

Comments about the CSC Classic from Friend of the Rouleur Brian, who rode the Pro race: "I loved riding with Magnus... he's a monster." "The race wasn't bad. Until the last laps, then...[head shake]."

Comments about racing crits in the U.S. from Roger Hammond, who tasted some fine, fine North Arlington Tarmac before chasing back on, and competing in the bunch sprint - alongside 60 riders that he and the 12 man break had just lapped - 'cuz in crits, a break can re-join the pack and everybody sprints:

It was strange racing really," he said. "It was ok until 30 laps to
go when we lapped the peloton, and it should have been race over, but
I don't understand the rules over here. We work hard to separate the
guys from their teams, like Colavita who has half the peloton here.
"So we attack until there are only two of them left but we lap the
field and then they have eight riders again," he added. "So if I come
back next year I'll just sit in and do nothing, because it makes no
difference!"

I think it's safe to say that Healthnet/Maxxis, Colavita and the other hot US-based teams with a strong crit focus won't be hiring Hammond as a Director Sportivo when he retires from racing. His comments remind me of Chef, on SouthPark. "It don't make no sense, chirrets." Except Chef usually made sense.

Comments from a fast cat on Coppi who chatted with CSC director Lars Michaelson about the trials and tribulations of bringing Euro Pros to the U.S. to race crits:

He agreed that it really was a different race from what those guys were used to. He said, with hand motions, "They either take to it like little fishes, or they drown." And he went from waving his hand with side to side fin motions to palm flat.

Nice. I hope the fast cat forgives me for lifting that quote from him. It's too good to keep secret.

Final thing - since everybody is doing them lately, I'm going to give you a quiz. Match up the Unholy Rouleur Phrase with the Unholy Rouleur Ride Experience on the new and improved Capital Crescent Trail, with its 15 MPH speed limit that is going to make us all safe.

PHRASE

A. Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. JEEEEEBUS. EXCUUUUUUSSSEEEE MEEEEE!

B. Holy f***in' shit, lady! CRIPES!

C. What the f***? I mean, what the f***in' f***?

RIDE EXPERIENCE

1. A cute Golden Labrador puppy (off the leash) belonging to a cute 20-something jogger cuts directly in front of my front wheel, nearly causing a major crash and getting itself killed, while the jogger giggles.

2. A cute 20-something jogger with the situational awareness of a Golden Lab pup, looks me right in the eye and steps off the side of the trail where she was stretching, *directly* into my path, causing me to take emergency evasive maneuvers and nearly take out an older couple walking in the oncoming lane.

3. Four middle aged ladies, none of them deaf as far as I could tell, were walking down the trail four abreast, and refusing to give me a passing lane, so I hopped into the gravel/grass fringe and pedaled past them, and bunny hopped back onto the path, offering my good-natured opinion about their chosen mode of travel as I passed.


Answers: A - 3; B - 2; C - 1


And just in case you were wondering I was going under 15 MPH at all times, and these three little dangerous events - okay the one was just rude, not dangerous - occurred in a 5 minute period of time on the upper CCT, the one that is now speed limited, "for our safety."

It just goes to show you, speed doesn't kill, but stupidity is a self-deploying Weapon of Mass Destruction. Can't wait to see what else gets dreamed up to save us dangerous cyclists from our own bad selves.

A Great Weekend for Riding...

I just had a great weekend that reminded me why I like to ride.

I took the workweek off from riding with a dinged up knee, I did an easy 90 minute spin with Kyle on Friday AM to ease back into it. It was a kind of a local muffin ride type of thing. We're hoping to get more people out for it (hint, if you're on the east side of town and looking for a 6:15 Friday pre-race spin drop me or Jon Seibold at Family Bikes a line). Jon was a little sick, and some other folks who do it had commitments so it was just two of us, which was fine. The post-ride coffee at Caribou was particularly good tasting for some reason. Kyle asked me what is up with espresso so I got him one. He drank his first shot of espresso and didn't vomit, so I guess he must have loved it.

On Saturday I hit Patapsco with a pretty big crew, and we rode around a lot. The initial prediction was for 2-2.5 hours, so I only brought two Gu packets, and one water bottle. I was slow to begin with, the punctured knee didn't help things. I'm also in weird place in terms of my skill development. I've realized how much I don't know on the mountain bike, so I'm riding technical stuff *much* slower than I was riding it before. That's good because I recognize where there's danger. But it makes me as slow as molasses until I get my line figured out, and I'm not carrying enough speed to clear any obstacles past the technical sections. As usual my climbing also sucks, so I was the slow guy on the ride in most sections. The group was really patient with me, perhaps because I rewarded them by nearly coming off this 6' high ramp / drop stunt thing that's up in the back woods. That was good for a laugh, but it upped the ante for all the skinny fast guys, who then felt compelled to ride it. I'm looking forward to hitting it next time and trying to do it without any dabs. But all good things have to come to an end sooner or later, and I completely ran out of fuel about 2.5 hours in and became miserably slow. John H led me and another guy in, while Jon Seibold and friends did the Extended Play version, getting back quicker but adding a few extra miles. Coming up the last hill, I was in the outer suburbs of bonk-city, it may have been Bonkville or possibly Bonkton Town. It wasn't a total bonk where you lose track of where you are, which side of the bike goes downward and so forth; it was just cramps all around for the last half hour, mild disorientation and severe difficulty keeping my focus on the trail. (Magical Secret: Tune the internal dialogue to keep shouting abuse at the conscious mind: "Pay Attention to the Trail, Fuckhead, or it WILL Hurt!; Watch that rock, Moron! Carry speed or your front end will go under you dope!") We got to the parking lot at the right time because another 15 minutes of riding and I was going to be catatonic. This sounds bad, but it isn't; I screwed up a number of things on Saturday, including nutrition, and managed to get away with it. Part of it was luck and good, undemanding ride companions, but the other part of it was that I've got enough skills and base fitness now to get away with the occasional minor slipup. That I could push my luck a little was a confidence builder for sure. Of course I'm still cursing myself out (Internal Voice: "Dumbass...") because a lot of that suffering was unnecessary.

Sunday's menu featured a solo ride into D.C. which made me remember why I drive partway into town when I bike commute. There doesn't appear to be a good route from Crofton/Bowie into town, so I found myself big ringing it up Greenbelt Road/193 at full tilt, trying to get to roads with shoulders that provide at least a modicum of safety for riders. That route also took me well north, and by the time a couple wrong turns were added in along with some planned tooling around downtown DC, I was at 45 miles when I got to the Java Shack, and thence to the race. I was a mess, since the effects of the prior day's near-bonk were still with me, but I was resolved to get in a ride and enjoy the race. I hung out with the team at the Boulevard Wood Grill, ate a little bit, drank a couple beers, cheered the pros, and did very little of any use. No shock to me, the two big European (but American-owned) teams (Slipstream, High Road) had a little bit of problem in the heat, appearing to fade late, with the trademark bright red faces and profuse sweat that the Euro pro teams seem to specialize in when they pop over to the 'States for a couple crits. If you only ride in temperate weather, you never get acclimatized to mid-80's weather and truly scorching heat when you're on treeless pavement - though one never knows if the DS'es were telling their riders to back off and let the local boys fight it out for the win... road cycling has some curious customs and manners. The race flow was straightforward; Magnus Backstedt attacked a number of times very early until one stuck, and he sat there off the front with Damiani, a little terrier of a guy, for a few laps until most of the major teams stuck a guy in the move. They got away with about a dozen guys, with most of the major teams represented. That group worked like hell until they lapped the field, then everybody sat in and rode like dogs until about 10 laps were left, at which point the pace suddenly shot up and everybody had to fight like hell to hold on. In addition to the weather and pace taking a toll on the Euro stage/classics racers, some other predictions I made were fairly good. Colavita was indeed hot as I predicted, although Luca Damiani (not a great crit racer, though a strong 'crosser) took the win by virtue of pulling off the best sprint in the bunch of 12 or so to lap the field. Healthnet/Maxxis looked pretty strong near the end (as predicted), putting four guys on the front in an attempt to set up for the win, and they controlled it for the last two laps but apparently misjudged the turn on the last lap, with Karl Menzies finishing third. Dominique Rollen, who was the sole Toyota rep (and who completely took me by surprise), rode a very good race and sprinted for second at the end. Team Type 1 also had a strong performance. Magnus was awarded the Most Aggressive Rider award, to huge cheers -- he's the guy that made the huge break happen. You can catch the results at Velo News, story by Ryan Newill, my teammate who also writes the excellent Service Course blog. (See, I told you he's good). Special props to Battley Harley Davidson, which had several riders finish, including Russ Langley with a great result (top 10 of the lapped field?) and Brian Butts, who yet again made it all the way to the end, this year with a very good result. It's no shocker the Harley guys make life hell (in a good way) when they show up at Hains. I also ran into this guy, who seemed to be enjoying the racing in spite of the fact there are no trees, rocks, dropoffs, stout steel bikes, or guys with alternative facial hair, save Rock Racing.

After the race, we retired to another Coppi's house in Arlington, for a cookout and family-style get together that put the sublime finishing touch on a great cycling weekend. I didn't race, didn't do anything spectacular or of particular note, no yellow jersey or inventing the quick release skewer. I just rode my bike, hung out with friends and family, and had a great time, all centered around two wheels. The weekend doesn't have to be filled with unusual events to be amazing.

So how was your weekend?