Water Bottles: Green Water Edition

I don't know if you know, but I know that Versus is showing Tour of Ireland coverage at 6:00 PM, or at least seems to be doing so over the last couple days. Lovely, lovely scenery, decent racing, and a full range of Irish accents from Northern protestant to broad Southern Catholic to Australian-who-rides-for-Ireland-because-Great-Grandad-was-shipped-from-there-in-chains Irish accent. Begosh & Begorrah, it's racin on Versus! You wouldn't know this unless you happen to be a fan of Punkass, Skyscrape & Mask, the mixed martial arts version of Michael Ball (e.g. less mouthy because getting your ass kicked by a guy who specializes in that sort of thing is scarier and more plausible than getting your ass kicked by a 145 pound pro cyclist.) If you watch MMA on Versus, maybe you'd see ads for the Tour of Ireland. If not... well, you'd have to be searching around in desperation at 6:00 PM for something that's safe for your four year-old to watch, and just happen across it. The Versus schedule is here, and they often stick to it.

----------------------------------

Did the local version of the Muffin Ride with Jon this AM. Sparse attendance - didn't hear from Kidd, Young Tom is now College Tom and living in some dorm in upper Balmer, or thereabouts. Still it was a nice ride, the company was great as usual and the bridge on Rt. 450 is re-opened, with its champagne-smooth covering of new tarmac. The line at Caribou was slow since the college girls seem to have gone back to school, but all in all, it was a great hour of relaxation. In the words of a great man... I like, yes...

----------------------------------

I know we had some music yesterday, but how 'bout some Beastie Boys to put some funk in your trunk? I have this cued up in the MP3 player and play it when I'm riding long hills - it's a good song to keep your rhythm to on a long climb.

Pull Up At The Function And You Know I Kojak
To All The Party People That Are On My Bozak
I've Got More Action Than My Man John Woo
And I've Got Mad Hits Like I Was Rod Carew
You Can't, You Won't And You Don't Stop
You Can't, You Won't And You Don't Stop
You Can't, You Won't And You Don't Stop
Ad Rock come and rock the Sure Shot

---------------------------------

The Soundtrack

Had the first 'cross practice of the year this AM. The first real 'cross practice. I celebrated it by stacking into the barriers and scuffing up my leg.

It's not 'cross season until somebody bleeds, and all his friends are laughing about it, alright?

So apropo of nothing, I was thinking about what my favorite music is lately.

The newest thing I like is this goofball song from the band Rehab. It's goofball because even though I haven't lived it, I know lots of people who have lived it, and they're goofballs. Everybody knows somebody who could sing this song and impart realism to it. Hopefully it's not your dad, or at least not the guy your mom is pretty sure is your dad even though they haven't done the tests to prove it.



The original video is here. It's got actual video action going on, so check it out if you feel like clicking through. I haven't got the album yet, and in truth that doesn't really get me in the right frame of mind to race, but it got me thinking about the music I'll be packing to the races this year. What gets me amped up, what I'll listen to on the way to races to get all jacked up and ready to ride.

I'll probably stick with some older music I like. I'm thinking this year the CD changer is going to get packed mostly with rockabilly, surf music and whatnot. It's just what floats my boat lately. Like...

SCOTS!

I know. I just missed these guys at Ram's Head. Had family in town. Tough luck for me, life can't always be a six hour Pabst binge at Local 506. Anyhow... even if they're not here, why not do a Camel Walk anyhow?



Here's a little Dirt Track Date:


Mabye a little Link Wray to go with a Chimay.



Why not wash that down with a tall glass of Dickie Dale?



And some Reverend Horton Heat?



The interesting thing about that, is it's a lot closer to real roots blues, the kind of stuff that Lightnin' Hopkins or Robert Johnson would recognize. Seriously, old blues from the 20s and 30s frequently had a super high tempo. The first time I heard the Reverend playing this I was immediately struck by how traditional the arrangement was. (Yeah, the psychobilly Reverend is a traditionalist...I was shocked to figure that out.) Check out this 80+ year old Leadbelly recording of Gallis Pole if you want to see what I mean - it's the same song Led Zeppelin recorded as Gallows Pole. (They played it slower).



Mmmmm... good. Good guitar music just taps into something deep down in you, something primal. Some people swear by loud drums, or keyboards, or strings, but I'm all about a good guitar. It just gets me five kinds of fired up.

How 'bout a doubleshot of Dickie Dal and Stevie Ray Vaughn to end today's little musical interlude? Two for the dirt road, right?



Yeah, I thought you'd like that. That stuff gets me totally amped up.

Any of you have favorite tunes you pack in the car or the I-Pod when you're heading to the races?

Crap You Never Wanted to Know

There's an interesting interview on DirtRag online this month. They talk bike industry stuff with Quality Bike Products owner/operator Steve Flagg. What is QBP? It's only the biggest U.S. bike stuff supplier. At least I think it is; their catalogue is ubiquitous in bike shops, and they also operate a few name brands, including Surly, Salsa, Problem Solvers, and some other lines you probably have never heard of. Anyhow, it's an interesting story; turns out there's 400-450 people busy keeping your local bike shop supplied with gear. Your new bike may not have come through QBP; in fact it probably did not. But most of its replacement parts probably did.

--------------------------------------------------

You know what rocks? Getting great gear at great prices. If you race, or ride very seriously, you can't afford to go top shelf all the time. You need to look for bargains. It's best to hit up the Local Bike Shop, but hey, it's a business, right? You gotta get it where you can get it. So check out these affiliated sites that offer rippin' deals.

Chainlove.com - They sell one item at a time. They show how many are left, and in what sizes / options. The prices are lower than a serial email spammer.

Backcountry.com - like REI, but 50% - 75% off. Maybe CampMor is a better comparison. The deals rock, and most of the gear is top drawer.

There are other affiliates in the Backcountry.com empire...

--------------------------------------------------

It's Speed Week at Bonneville. Know what that means? Cool frickin' cars. Check these out:

Chopped & Slammed:
1-ton, long wheel base stake-bed Chevy

"Lakester": racer made from the fuel drop tank of a WWII fighter plane

Woody: A Jesse James "Woody" Station Wagon Conversion

Check out the whole story w/t incredible photo spread at Popular Mechanics.

--------------------------------------------------

Yeah, just in case you're wondering where magnetic north lies on my aesthetic compass, those pictures should pretty much answer the question. And if you want to know what kind of bikes I like, other than the human-powered kind, check out Sucker Punch Sally's.

A Bob Job

Or a Harley Flattrack Bike
(barely capable of being made a street bike)

Well, I love those, or classic Italian iron. Modern Ducks are nice, but if you ever dated a hot chick but then met her mother, and her mother was much better in most ways, you know that age isn't the sole determinant of desirability.

Ducati Hailwood Replica

'62 Ducati 250

Al dente, never soft. Rare, not medium or well. Blues not jazz. Too spicy rather than underseasoned. Bourbon rather than scotch. Espresso instead of cappucino. Jeans not khakis. Black T-shirt instead of a knit golf shirt. Fender Telecaster rather than a Stratocaster.

Life just tastes better when it's slightly raw, when it's just a little bit too sharp around the edges.

Water Bottles: Four At Once Edition

Rode the Reston Century today, or more precisely the Reston .82 Century, using my own personal bailout route. I rolled with some Coppis and attacked the early hills - e.g. the first 58 miles or so - pretty hard. Sorry Reston Bike Club, but I hated the course design. I don't mind long hills - the three nasty long brutes on the route were just fine. Nor do I mind rollers generally - rollers are something that I can ride. It was the constant rollers that really wore me out. The middle section was literally two long climbs (cool, I liked that) interspersed with 30 miles of rollers. This followed 20 miles of rollers that wrapped up that last two thirds of the first 30 mile leg. The constant rollers made it impossible to fuel properly on the bike, and the effort it took to ride decently was just frickin' inhuman. And hey, while I'm bitching, as hot and climby as the course was, 30 miles between the middle rest stops was a wee bit too much. I rode in the last half hour to mile 58 with no water, and no sweat. Bad scene - you guys might want to think about the less dedicated trainers out there, the ones that I saw walking some of the hills. I can gut out a drought, and was fixing to sneak into a yard to steal some water out of somebody's pool. I'm not sure the bike walkers would be as savvy. I had to guzzle four large bottles of water at the ~58 mile rest stop to get my legs back under me. (Seriously - 96 ounces in 10 minutes. I was *dry*.)

The wattage, if you're into that, was akin to hard technical crit accellerations - somewhere in the high end of L6, over and over again. My NP for the middle section of the ride was 310 watts, a solid zone 4 effort, average power of 230 - that means tons and tons of very high wattage efforts paired with recovery on the flats/downhills. By 40 miles into the ride, I was hating life. Even after I was off the back of the Coppi grupetto, very few people passed me, and those didn't stay passed for long, since the only place I really slowed was on the steepest ups. But the constant supply of rollers made it a four hour microburst workout, with 300+ Training Stress Points. For non-power people, that means it kicked my ass. A few other people's too.

So we bagged it after about 60, and rode zone 2 / tempo back to Reston. I couldn't manage to down the whole plate of pretty okay food the organizers provided - couldn't eat until dinner time in fact and my total caloric intake for the ride was around 1000 calories, as against 3,800 burned according to the Powertap. Are you getting the impression that I was at least sitting in front of the pain cave today? That'd be about right. Kyle Jones rode Reston last year and it kicked his ass. He came back thinking he was a crummy rider. Newsflash, Kyle: it's a very hilly course with constantly varying grades and effort level, no way to get a rhythm, not a good course for a big man.

Anyhow, many thanks to the RBC for putting on a good event (it was quite good, in spite of my idiosyncratic complaints), the scenery was tremendous and the start / finish in Reston Town Center is a great location. Well done, RBC.

--------------------------------------------
Separated at Birth?

Joel Gwadz (tough on a mountain bike)

Bear from Ice Road Truckers (tougher on donuts)

This Guy's Beard (the beard is not as crazy looking as his eyes)

Jon's Goatee (the rider is not as crazy looking as his goatee)

Breaking News: Obama Names Running Mate on YouTube!

Holy Shit!

Is this a campaign leak?

I heard he was going to do it by text message, but had no idea he'd name a running mate via YouTube.

Very cool.

Water Bottles: Tastes Okay but Smells Kinda Funny Edition

Hey y'all. Just on a rest week, livin' out the dream with the sis-in-law, a nephew and a niece in the house on the last lap on a three week visit from the U.K.

I'm working out the knots from a big crash at Patapsco on Wednesday night. In the words of Family Bikes shoprat Steve, "I heard a noise, looked back, and there's Jim, and a Biiiiiig cloud of dust. And his wheel is totally taco'ed."

Jon Seibold saved me from a three mile mostly uphill walk back to the truck by going all Wu Tang on the front wheel and beating it from taco shape, into wobbly tortilla shape, mostly straight unless I put pressure on it. Which was a *huge* improvement. Seriously though, Bruce Lee didn't beat faceless henchman any harder than Jon beat my wheel into shape. Frankly, I think he was working out some childhood issues on the WTB rim.

The ride was fun in spite of my stupid endo, but I'm all scabby and still a little sore, so I guess maybe that was the way the big coach in the sky tells me, "it's a rest week, moron... you shouldn't be hammering it in the woods."

Regardless, things are looking up, I'll probably do the Reston Century (Century = long slow training ride, for you racer types, it doesn't refer to 100 years) on Sunday, put in some new windows on the house today and tomorrow, and try not to die of rest week ennui, or in-law overload.

Yeah, I told you I'm livin' the f***in' dream. Yeah, you only wish you could live like I do.

-------------------------------------------------

The Olympic cycling TV schedule I posted below is totally buggered. Heavy rains damaged the BMX and MTB tracks, so BMX was delayed and it's not clear that the MTB race will come off as planned. I haven't a clue when it will be shown and just hope I can get a podcast of it off the MSNBC site.

Plus, I can't tell you how much I frickin' loathed waiting two hours for some of the track events, only to find the coverage consisted of showing Chris Hoy in his warmdown, and being told he'd just run a hell of a race. Great coverage, guys. Lovely.

WTF. If they had pay-per-view Olympics, akin to NFL Sunday Ticket, I'd probably spring for it - if for no other reason than to get away from the Americans-only coverage and the watch-it-until-you-choke coverage of gymnastics and diving.

------------------------------------------------------

I did enjoy watching the beach volleyball - Misty May-Trainor is really fun to watch. She's a little intense though. In a fight between her and Kimbo Slice in a dark alley, I'd take Misty.

------------------------------------------------------

Here, have some Cake.



And, by popular request:




The original video for that is here. Damn! That's good...

Duuuuuude...

It almost sounds like a song.




Okay, fine, it's not the F***in' Short Version, but I still think it's pretty good.

WTF?

I've been enjoying the Olympic gymnastics a lot this year. I don't know why. It could be because the U.S teams are pleasing to watch - the women are the usual crop of technically excellent divas who simply kick ass, the men's team are a bunch of over-achievers. Maybe it's rank nationalism on my part. Perhaps I'm turning into some sort of metrosexual who likes things normally reserved for the Oprah and Chablis spritzer set. Or maybe it's because I'm a big old pervert and like ogling teenage girls.

But I think the real reason I'm transfixed with the gymnastics is because Al Trautwig is covering the gymnastic events for NBC, and I feel at home screaming at the TV whenever he says something stupid, which is pretty much whenever he opens his mouth In that way, it's a lot like watching the Tour de France, so I feel extremely at home when I do it - even moreso than watching the bicycling coverage, which featured Paul Sherwen and somebody else.

For instance, a Chinese female gymnast totally stacked it during the balance beam event last night. She wiped out and came down really hard, cracking her inner thigh and knee on the beam on the way down to a hard, hard landing. It hurt to even watch it, approaching Thiesman-caliber cringing-by-proxy.

The one guy who knows what he's talking about said something like, "oh, she just blew that Shostakovich-Rachmaninoff. That will cost her some points." The woman who knows what she is talking about said, "that's a full point deduction. There's no way she can finish in the medals now."

Then Al chirps up: "that had to hurt."

WTF, Al?

That had to hurt?

Jeebus, is he getting paid to say that? That's the best he can come up with? "That had to hurt?"

In the spirit of the people who say "don't criticize Versus, at least they cover some cycling," perhaps I should be grateful that he pointed that out, because I'm sure nobody else other than Al and I were thinking that it must have hurt when her leg made an audible crack slapping the beam.

On the other hand, it's probably a good thing none of the other women fell, because we'd have been treated to other Al insights, such as:

• That'll leave a mark.
• Ouch! and,
• I don't think she meant to do that.

I know that Al Trautwig has a good voice and all, but there's no evidence that he knows anything about any particular sport that he covers. About every two minutes last night, he said something glaringly obvious or just stupid, and it was like a guy standing outside that preacher's Crystal Cathedral, hitting seven iron shots into the glass. Nice coverage, with its flow shattered every time Al opened his mouth.

A color commentator doesn't have to know everything there is to know about a sport. Part of the gig is providing some commentary that keeps people other than die-hard fans interested. Howard Cosell made a living and a niche for himself in history by doing this. He was actually interesting, and even if you thought he was an arrogant ass, he frequently transmitted actual information to the audience.

But Al seems to have forgotten the important part of the color commentator's role, which is that you need to know something about a sport to serve as that bridge between the casual fan and the die-hards. You have to transmit some facts at some point. "Oh, look at all the pretty colors" just doesn't get it done.

I really have to wonder how the guy has a job. It makes no sense to me at all. It's been noted that he replaced John Tesh in the Olympics coverage team - I guess Michael Bolton and Josh Groban were unavailable. So maybe they want an empty head with a full voice sitting next to commentators who know what they are talking about. Beccause honestly, other than a really good voice - which lots of guys have - he doesn't seem to bring much to the table in sports other than hoops and hockey. Well, except maybe a thick packet of pictures of NBC and Versus execs in compromising positions, perhaps.

Training for a Number of Things

I just finished up a nice week or so of riding going into my rest week, prior to getting on the last steep 6 week ramp up into my "peak" for cross season. Sure, my peak is a little hill compared to the Mount Ranier that some of you stand on, but it takes just as much for me to get up mine as for you to get up yours. So there is a lot of work in front of me before Granogue weekend and (hopefully) a month of solid racing before my form evaporates.

The work and the races are only part of the deal, however. Training hard and racing does something for me in my life that I find hard to describe. It is a release from daily pressures, an everyday period of focus that eases the mind and relaxes the body. Because I train and race hard, I can manage other areas of my life better.

Why this is, I do not know. The suffering causes mental and physical focus, it demands total presence in the moment, but I'm not there for the suffering.

I think I'm there because of the moments.

For instance, I had to book to get to the muffin ride about 10 days ago. I was running late, tired-legged, and not warmed up at all. There was a strong headwind, and I was suffering, not in a good focused way, but just hurting in the kind of way that doesn't really have any training benefit. But my ride gave me an almost metaphysical lift. Here's what I saw on the way to the ride start that lifted my spirits for the entire day:







How could that view not make you feel good?

Then, over the last week or so, the bike has been my stress reliever, my place to think and just unwind. I've had some family staying with me for a few weeks, and in spite of my outgoing personality, it grates on me quite a bit. While I'm very outgoing for long stretches, I'm also incredibly quiet and introspective much of the time. When I don't have the time to sit down, read a book or just be silent, my batteries don't get recharged. Long solo basebuilding and tempo rides have been my downtime over the last couple weeks, and truthfully, they are the only thing standing between me and an ugly incident with the in-laws.

Finally, sometimes a ride gives me some insight on my progress. A couple Thursdays ago a hard ride with Jon and Tom, one I could never have hung on with a year ago, opened my mind to the possibility that the training is paying off. Then on Saturday, for the first time ever, I felt on top of a ride at Patapsco, rather than feeling like the hills were on top of me. Sure, I faded pretty hard after 90 minutes of up-down riding, but hammering out a half dozen 6 to 8 minute climbs on the single speed, while managing technical sections decently, felt like a revelation to me. It gave me some confirmation that progress has been made since last fall, and that more progress is possible. This is what makes continued focus during hard intervals and diligence in sticking to the training schedule and diet possible.

It's early now on Monday morning, my first day off during my rest week. Normally I'd go into rest week dreading the time off the bike, but thanks to the last week or ten days of riding, I don't mind it and have a positive attitude about getting rested up, and attacking the training schedule that waits for me on the other side of rest week. Resting is part of training, and I've earned a break; the legs need it to recover and to absorb the lessons of the last month. I'll swim every day instead, and maybe run a bit or do some agility drills to get ready for runups, and work on getting my mind right for the last big push of training, diet and mental preparation before 'cross season.

Ultimately, I suppose it's all work, but if you do it right and keep your mind open, you can find a lot of pleasure in training. I think some racers find success that way. During the most recent Tour de France, Paul Sherwen asked Bobke what he missed most about being a professional racer. "Oh, the long training rides. Definitely the long training rides," he said. I'm no Bobke but I think I know what he was talking about.

Praise Marty Moose! Holy Shit!!!!!

Yep, it's 'cross season alright.

Registration for Charm City 'Cross opened this morning at 9:00 AM. It's clearly the Third Best 'Cross Race in the Mid-Atlantic, in spite of the promoter having bagged MABRA associations for MAC, guaranteeing the fields will be packed, hypercompetitive, and filled with more sandbags than the Olde Schoole Toyes aisle at Toys-r-Us.

Still it's a damn good race that is very much worth attending. There are a couple playgrounds at Druid Hill Park in the Charm City along with other diversions, which makes it a good race to attend with the family. There's great post-race dining & boozing in nearby Fells Point, or at the Inner Harbor, or at one of the 'markets' around town - Cross Street Market on the edge of Federal Hill is my favorite by far. The markets offer a nice combination of fresh cooked food, usually the fishy sort (oysters, fried fish, sushi) along with fresh meat, bread, candy and flower shops, depending on whcih one you go to. I happen to love Cross Street and the other public markets in Balmer because any place that H.L. Mencken found suitable for getting frickin' housed, is good enough for me. It's also got big screen TVs, so there will be an NFL crowd in there getting pounded along with the Ravens on Sunday afternoon.

So support the sport. Go to Bikereg, sign up, and plan on making a day of it. If you're thinking about trying 'cross, this is the one to try, it will give you pretty much the full spectrum of 'cross fun in a single event - borrow a 'cross bike or bring a mountain bike and give it a shot. Even if you're just a fan and not a racer, it's a great event to come watch. See ya there.

Yeah, Sure

According to the manufacturer, this new bicycle seat leads to a better sex life.



How can that possibly be true? I can think of a few possibilities:

• After you crash hard riding a bike with a nose-less saddle, you'll be laid up for a long time, and you know what that means... HOT NURSES! And you know what that means... BOOM chicka-wowow.
  

• Installing this seat takes your bicycling to new levels of dorkitude, and a lot of riders may just give up riding as a result and decide to have a social life instead.

• If tight lycra makes you hot, and getting epithets flung at you by drivers makes you really hot, and if suffering on long hills sends you over the moon, while flogging yourself on a $6k carbon fiber bike makes you sound like Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally," then this bit of self abuse will make you feel like Dirk Diggler on wheels.

• Some kinds of people are turned on by generally harmless, ineffectual dorkiness. Nothing is more generally harmless, ineffectual or dorky than noseless saddles and other goofball designs. Seriously - every story that seriously evaluates them that I've ever read has had to discuss how crash-ey they make your bike.

Noseless Bike Saddles:
The Milton Waddams of Bicycling

Cycling Coverage on TV

The really exciting part of Olympic cycling is about to start - the track racing. Yeah, I know, most of you are roadracers, and if it doesn't involve tiny men struggling up huge hills in the brown Chinese air, you don't want to hear about it. But they did that the first day, and you need to get a fix somewhere. Track cycling is it - the goofiness of the Madison (an event called The American by some, a name that would never be allowed by today's IOC); the sheer suffering of the pursuit; the speed of the match sprint, and the mega insanity of the Keirin. These disciplines, along with a couple others you are familiar with, are explained in a nice animation over at ESPN. Here is a schedule of the track cycling. Track cycling will be covered:

• On USA Network, from 10:00 AM to noon Friday
• On USA Network, from 10:30 AM to 2:00 PM Saturday
• On NBC from 12:00 noon to 1:00 PM Saturday, with a feature on the Phinneys
• On USA Network, from 10:30 AM to 2:00 PM Sunday
• On NBC from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM Sunday, with a feature on the aptly named Sarah Hammer
• On MSNBC (web) sometime between 5:00 AM and Noon on Monday, with the Men's Team Pursuit Final (May be available as webcast video?)
• On USA Network, from 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM Tuesday, certain track finals. (Yuck, sorry about the schedule, that's all they tell you).

BMX will get prime time coverage starting Tuesday at 10:00 PM, running to 2:30 AM Weds. Gee, do you think they're trying to catch the west coast market? It will also be featured next Weds from 9:00 PM to 11:00 PM.

Womens mountain bike XC will be webcast on MSNBC next friday between 5:00 and 10:30 AM. Men's mountain bike XC will be on NBC between 12:30 AM and 5:30 AM next Sunday.

[UPDATE: Those are the listings. The listings have been accurate with respect to swimming and gymnastics, the road race and the TT. Whether the people at the networks stay faithful to the listings is beyond my control. NBC is the same network that became famous among sports fans when it cut away from a key NFL game so as not to interrupt a showing of "Heidi," so please, have some understanding and don't blame me if they drop the Keirin in favor of a compilation tape of The World's Poutiest Teenage Female Gymnasts, Greatest British Olympic Disappointments, The Amazing Amazingness of Everything About China, or something similar.]

Epic Fail

The problem with saying you're going to crush the other guy, and generally talking shit about how f***in' good you are, is that if you lose,



you look like an enormous ass.

And that's even before you put on speedos and walk around being a French dude with a tramp stamp on your hip. French cheese? Works out pretty good. French wine? Works out great. French work week? That works pretty well too. French poetry? Nice.

But French threats of dominance?

Pssst. Monsieur Bernard, wanna know a secret? If you ain't first, you're last. You know what I'm talking about?

I bet you do.

Bwah ha hah.

They Olympics - I love how they bring us together.

Okay, You Didn't Ask Me...

You didn't ask, but I have a sense that a lot of you are burning to understand what it's like when I finally start getting my ass in gear and get ready to race, instead of just popping into a mountain bike race here and there, signing up for a crit but bagging it when rainstorms kick up before the race, etc. Well, here's what a base miles ride from my house to Chesapeake Beach and back looks like, [Okay, really, most of you should just click on Velo News or something on the right of the page. Unless you're a Training w/t Power geek, this stuff will mean nothing to you. And even then, you probably won't care].

Entire workout (283 watts):
Duration: 3:56:39 (4:09:29)
Work: 3988 kJ
TSS: 242.7 (intensity factor 0.788)
Norm Power: 321
VI: 1.13
Distance: 68.497 mi

Min Max Avg
Power: 10 1040 283 watts
Heart Rate: 95 163 134 bpm
Cadence: 23 244 93 rpm

Aw yeaaahh!!! Now that's how to take your CTL from 81 to 85 in a single bound. I'd like it up in the low 110's prior to peaking for 'cross season in October. It's all part of my plan to come through the winter in decent enough shape to actually do some real roadracing next spring, and to not totally suck in 'cross this year. I'm thinking there are some sore legs in my future in the next 6 weeks.

Okay - all the non-power geeks gone? Cool. Here's the interesting stuff about today's ride. The weather was pretty good except for a quartering wind that was kicking my ass the entire way. I didn't eat enough food before, or bring enough, and didn't stop until about mile 48 - after I'd been out of GoJuice and food for 15 miles. (Shoulda stopped in Chesapeake Beach, I guess). Going up and down rolling hills, tank on E, sucked ass. I had a Clif bar in my back pocket, but I've sort of gone off Clif Bars lately. I can eat 1, but the thought of eating a second, 2-3 hours into a ride, makes me nauseous. Plus I had nothing to wash it down with - that would have sucked, riding 15 miles with bits of soy protein flecked all over the inside of my mouth. I ate a pack of Shot Blocks pretty greedily - they went down except for turning my mouth into a sticky cherry-flavored desert for the next half hour - but I was hurtin'. That was a 3900 calorie effort due to the sheer consistency of my grinding (no downhills off!), and I challenge you to tell me how you would stay fueled for something like that.

Anyhow, I'm stopped at the 7-11 in Deale, and was in the process of throwing down a 16 ounce skim milk, a couple breakfast bars and a 32 ounce water (yeah, I was in the outskirts of BonkCity at that point) and refilling my bottles with Gatorade Classic, while literally shaking like a leaf. This guy in a minivan pulls up, a youngish daddy with alternative facial hair and tats. He gets out of the van, his wife and daughter start to get out, he gives me the hairy eyeball, gets as far as the door, and then turns around and herds the herd back into the car. "Too many faggots here," he says. "Gotta go." Then they all get into the minivan, and he backs out and lays rubber.

WTF? Did that just happen?

Yeah, I guess it did. The only people in the store just then were the women behind the counter and a couple older ladies buying some food and stuff. Weird. And offensive. Good for him he got back into the car, because when what he said clicked in my mind, about a half minute later, I was ready to melt down. No, it's not the being called gay part of it that bugs me, it's the intent behind the insult. He was trying to lay the heaviest insult on me that he could, and apparently, that's what sprung to his wee unimaginative, bigoted and seemingly closed mind. Hey, you don't have to approve of homosexuality, but living in a civilized society means you can't go around just laying insults on people at random - not unless you want to forgo your invitation to the Country Club Social and also have random people go all medieval on your ass.

Were I gay (which I am not, in spite of being able to use the subjunctive tense immaculately) I would have been doubly insulted by all this. Even though I am not, I was still pissed enough to throw fingers had Triumph the Insult Redneck not beaten feet toward North Beach. Maybe it was the bonk operating my brain; things were pretty fogtacular at that point and I may have been crankier or sillier or dumber than usual, or more susceptible to provocation. But upon further review, I think it would have been appropriate and within the realm of good manners - dueling manners, Marquis of Queensbury rules or whatever - to kick that guy's ass right then and there. Aaron Burr shot people for less, for goodness sake.

I was seething as I headed back out on the road, extremely bloated stomach in tow. The seething was only partially due to undigested food stuffs and 50 ounces of fluid gurgling in my gut.

I have had some insults tossed my way from passing cars, some of them well-deserved because I was riding like an ass, or just not paying enough attention to my situation on the road, as well as undeserved insults. But I have never caught that kind of deliberate, uninvited insult before. Weird.

Any of y'all ever get that kind of thing?

The Secret Eating Diaries

Okay, it's not about secret eating. I'm not bullimic, and lord knows, there's about 175 pounds between me and anorexia, a fairly substantial (and indeed, quite flexible and well developed with Kiwi Muscle) wall.

But it's about the problems that a large guy and habitual overeater has.

I wasn't always a fat bastard. For a long time, I was a big endomorph with freakish aerobic abilities, playing rugby and generally running sub-11 two mile times for my Army PFT. I was compulsively active, not because I had a problem but because that's just how I was wired.

During those years I developed a huge appetite that never really left me.

I wasn't eating hoggishly - it's just that when you're 220 pounds, bouncing between 6 and 17% bodyfat depending on whether you're in-season or out, and you lift, run, ride, do sprint tris, play full court hoops, swim, ruck march, and do a million other things, you have to eat like a horse or you just keel over.

I only about halfway adjusted those eating habits when I got married and slowed down. The rugby player me - not a quick guy but a fast one - lost a step or three, but compensated with heavy powerlifting. I might not always be able to run you down but if I got my claws on you, it was over. The hoops player took up half court. The rucking went by the wayside when I quit wearing a tree suit for a living. The running and swimming me just plain died. I think we buried him near Manhattan, Kansas.

So I packed on a lot of weight.

A few years ago, when I took up serious road riding, I recovered a lot of the fitness I used to have. I'm still kind of fat, but each year since 2005 I have moved the bar a little higher. I progress more each year. My eating habits are still... erratic, at best.

I'm not a secret eater. Hells no. I'm happy for the company. I ain't ashamed of the fact that I can eat like a starved Hyena at any time.

But I am an opportunistic eater. When I'm hungry, I eat. It's kind of how I'm wired. Just the way it is.

So after a ride, if I'm not careful, instead of getting a 5 fruit, ice, soy milk, flax seed (and maybe Accellerade) smoothie, I'll eat a few [Ed. However much is in the fridge...] pieces of leftover pizza.

Finish up the shop ride, I'm hungry - "oh, look at this. Two servings of rice in the pot left over from dinner last night. A perfect refresher."

The worst kind of eating though, is post-workout, stopping by the store-on-the-way-home eating. It just destroys the diet. I've eaten on the road more than Jack Kerouac on a marijuana binge.

It's not eating-disorder-type-eating. I'm not buying a bucket of KFC and downing it. But if it's a few hours between now and dinner, and my gut is churning, I'll get a couple pieces. Or I'll stop for a couple little cheeseburgers. Or while I'm picking up the French bread, I'll grab a donut and munch on that on the way home.

Can't hurt, right?

Me and my size 40 pants will testify to that. Right? Right?

Thing is, a few hundred or 500 calories extra here or there does hurt. I know damn well it's the difference between competitive racer-fit, and fat guy who-can-hang-on-surprisingly-well-in-races fit.

So I've been working on this.

Now a few entries back I mentioned that I've been aboard the training ramp for 'cross season for the last couple weeks, and that it's easier to diet.

This is true. It seems to help me keep focused, and truthfully, MAC cross in particular scares the bejeezus out of me. Shame, and that moment in 'cross races where your hands go numb, your lips go cold and dry and you hear buzzing in your ears...

Just as happened last year, I'm trying to move the ball forward on the diet front a few yards at a time. As I started out last year in better shape than the year before, I'm much fitter and considerably leaner going into 'cross season this year, than last year. Upping the ante, downing the Diet Coke, as it were.

The primary change in diet involves trying to eat better stuff. I try to stick to nothing processed, and for snacks, I try to stay away from anything I couldn't grow or make myself. So I've been eating a lot of fruit lately, and a lot of good cheese. It's working fine, the off-season weight is coming off and I think I'll be in considerably better Power-to-Weight-Ratio trim than I was last year.

But damned if improving my habits doesn't manifest itself in odd ways.

Take today for instance. I didn't eat much for breakfast since it was a rest day, just toast and coffee. (Rest day diet is *so* hard, I tend to feel the need to eat like a training day, even though the output is 2500 calories lower). For lunch I had a ham sandwich, extra cheese. Somewhere in there, I managed 15-17 very, very easy miles on the bike. Then I had to run out and buy some stuff for dinner, a very healthy gumbo I've been craving for weeks.

While I was at the store, I totally broke down.

Yeah, I hit the salad bar, and packed maybe 8 ounces of chopped brocoli into a takeout container. I drizzled a little salad dressing on it, and stuck it in my shopping cart. I paid for it at the cash register, blithely handing over money, ignoring the fact that for a racer 45 days out from the season, sneaking food is more socially unacceptable than standing in front of the parish priest at 7-11 and asking for the latest copy of Big Bazooms Quarterly.

So I'm driving home, and sticking broccoli in my face. I'm sitting at a stoplight, and this cute woman pulls up next to me. She sees me furtively eating. I look over and smile at her, and wave some broccoli. Upon noticing my secret snack of choice, she looked away icily, never to look back.

Yeah, what kind of a sick freak breaks diet to eat broccoli?

Some kind of pervert, no doubt.

That's the level to which racing has driven me. Even where I'm straightening out my old bad habits, I'm picking up new ones that are equally degrading and weird, if not more socially unacceptable.

People with bulimia should shut up and be happy about it. At least their eating habits are excused by society as a disease.

Racers?

Nah. We don't get no respect.

As Fyodor Dostoyevsky put it in Notes From the Underground,

[T]he pleasure came precisely from being too clearly aware of your own degradation; from the feeling of having gone to the uttermost limits; that it was vile, but it could not have been otherwise; that you could not escape, you could never make yourself into a different person; that even if enough faith and time remained for you to make yourself into something different, you probably wouldn’t want to change yourself; and even if you did want to, you wouldn’t do anything because, after all, perhaps it wasn’t worthwhile to change.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up racing, right there. You suffer for the damn sport; you degrade yourself; you place yourself in absolute servitude; you eat broccoli.

And even if you could change, you probably wouldn't.

Moral Equivalence, Motes & Beams

I'd rather keep conventional politics out of cycling, and stick to the usual zany brand of politics inflicted on bicycling by national sanctioning bodies, anti-doping bodies, the big international organizing bodies and batty-acting pro teams, but the recent muzzling of American track cyclists who wanted to wear smog masks in Beijing sort of interposed itself in my quiet little world this week like a slap in the face from a leather-gloved hand.

The cyclists wore smog masks when they arrived in Beijing - y'know, like half the Chinese who live in Beijing do - and were publicly shamed by the Chinese for it. They "spontaneously" apologized for having grievously offended the delicate sensitivities of the hosts. All in all, it was a pretty sickening sight, and that's before considering the muddy brown fog we see on the television set that is likely to obscure Saturday's olympic roadrace. Seriously, when the best that can be said is, "the air was really good today, it was only light brown," making note of that and trying to protect your lungs shouldn't be an international incident.

Chinese Cyclists, Apparently Offending the
Host Nation by Using Smog Masks

As bad as that scene was, with outraged official Chinese reaction seemingly geared to humiliate the United States, western reactions generally to the team's antics (which may actually have been earnest efforts to protect their lungs) highlighted a truly irritating trend in this country and elsewhere, which is to assume that because the U.S. isn't perfect, we've no standing to criticize anybody else, anywhere, ever. [Paging the former colonialist powers... White courtesy phone, please...]

Another Chinese Cyclist, Offending Chinese People

A good example of this impulse is the Cap'n Jimmy, Jimmy Caple of ESPN. He writes a great column talking about all the ways that the Chinese are Reifenstahl-ing the olympics, but then ends the serious portion of his critique with an apology for how gawdawful America is. We're not perfect, so who are we to criticize, right? Quoth Captain Cliche:

And not to sound like an apologist for China's government,

That's a sign for you to stand up and shout, "too late, Cap'n Jimmy!"

but before we get too high and mighty with our moralizing, we should pause to look in the mirror.

That worked out well for Michael Jackson, didn't it?

Yes, China's policies in Tibet and Darfur are contemptuous. Then again, there are many U.S. policies and actions that draw international ire, as well.

Well, there you go. We aren't perfect, so that disqualifies us from noting the horrorshow that is Darfur, and similar problems in Tibet, religious repression in Mongolia and against Falun Gong, national forced abortion (a woman's right to not choose?), organ "harvesting," and wholesale environmental destruction affecting the region. Nevermind the historical forced starvation of maybe 50 million fellow humans in misguided or downright evil notions of economic "reform" and progress.

Still More Chinese People, Busy Offending
Chinese People by Wearing Masks

Here's a newsflash, folks. Morality is about line drawing and making distinctions. There is a philosophical notion that man is a moral actor. What that means is that you have the capacity to weigh good and evil. Some of it weighs an ounce, some weighs a ton. You are empowered, by virtue of higher reasoning abilities, to make the distinction and to choose to act on it.

Just as you don't have to be able to throw a perfect pass to know that your team's quarterback stinks, you don't have to be morally perfect yourself to recognize a moral abyss.

Yep, our country is imperfect, but if you think our problems ought to render the U.S. morally and operationally paralytic, then you suffer from an inability to weigh the morality of serious issues, and you've made the perfect the mortal enemy of the good.

Yes, the U.S. has its problems and makes its share of mistakes, but we do try very very hard to fix them. I've met very few Americans who bring bad faith to their political activities. We may have profound disagreements about how to fix things, but most people have broad agreement on the types of things we're trying to do - maximizing individual liberty, maximizing prosperity and security, spreading liberal government around the world. Where we have problems and the divisions are bone deep, the fight to fix them often has an immense cost in blood and gold that we are frequently willing to pay - see, e.g. the Civil War, the desegregation struggle, the immense political fights over wars and social policies.

Our divisions are a lot narrower than the things that bring us together, and one of the things that unites us is a fairly common sense of what is just and right - what is moral - in man's affairs. We shouldn't be afraid to admit our failings, nor should we be afraid to point out steadfastly and honestly (and not uncharitably) the failings of others whose failings demand reproach and correction. It's called leadership and to those who are blessed with much, that duty falls. We all have a pretty good idea of right and wrong, and as Hannah Arendt supposedly said, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Sitting there in a pool of equivocation, failing to speak up because, Stuart-Smalley-like, you're just not good enough, goshdarnit, is a bad thing, not just for us but for others.

Failing to point out grievous errors of another, failing to at least speak out (which don't cost much) when we have an ability to help fix the situation, is an abdication of our own responsibility. If an issue of morals and natural law is really close, okay, fine, we can withhold comment or go either way. But weighing a few pounds of evil against a freight ton of it and calling them equal is either blind or disingenous, and if disingenuous I will presume it's generally because of a lack of conviction in our own beliefs.

C'mon folks. You're better than that. Have the courage of your convictions and don't be afraid to call it what it is.

If you disagree with me, try this experiment involving sports and free expression. Get a ticket to one of the events in Beijing. Stand up and give a long standing ovation to your favorite sprinter, be he American, Cuban, North Korean or Sri Lankan. Unfurl a small poster with this: "?" on it. If you really want to frost them, when you get out of jail, go hang out with your buddies, and demand that the bar outside the stadium serve liquor to one of your black friends. When you finish getting deported, after the terrible U.S. government bails your butt out, go to a Washington Nationals game. Stand up through the whole game. Moon the U.S. flag during the national anthem, then burn one in the smoking pavillion (wouldn't want to violate the smoking code, a fairly oppressive law we like...) Then loudly boo the President.

Then come back and try and tell me, with a straight face, how both situations are alike.

Somehow, I don't think you'll be able to pull off the straight face part, in spite of the other bits being quite achievable.

Oh yeah, and for goodness sakes, don't go to Beijing during this experiment and attempt to argue against genocide or religious persecution, or to try to bring peace and humanitarian relief to genocide victims. I wouldn't want you to get seriously hurt.

I'll leave you with this comment from George Orwell, that I fully agree with, about how we should think about those bad things in the world that ought to be remedied, and how we should not be blinded by our own political prejudices, but accept our own flaws (and note others) using the same, equally weighted scale:

When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

George Orwell, "Charles Dickens" (1939), Inside the Whale and Other Essays (1940)

Water Bottles: Blood in the Water Edition

Holy Shit! I guess these recent recalls explain the mechanical problems I'm having... well, that's the last time I'm riding my Electra Amsterdam with its chromoly Look Keo pedals on a hard group ride, that's all I can say.

I guess that failing chain guards, derailed chains and getting thrown into the gutter in excruciating pain mid-ride are part of the funky charm that Electra Cycles tries to portray in its ads. They should use Bobby Julich as a spokesman instead of all these emo kids. He's good at crashing.

------------------------------------------------------------

I'm happy as hell about my riding today. This morning was the first day of the 8 week ramp up to my more-or-less peak during cyclocross season. Bill Gros has been taking it easy on me all spring and summer, knowing 'cross is the main focus. Today? Today we suffered. 3 x 15 second sprints on 4-5 minutes, followed by 5 x 3 minute L5b intervals at about 120% of threshold power (CP6), followed by 3 more sprints. My sprint power looked good, my VO2 power... well, it was okay until the middle of the 5th interval, when I suddenly dropped down to threshold power at about 90 seconds. Time to shut 'er down. Right when that happened, I was tasting blood in my mouth, and just after that I coughed up a solid chunk of something in my lung, I think it was a ball of yarn from a Hudson Bay blanket, or maybe a leftover mussel from last year's 'cross season. Yeah, I was hurtin' for certain, but the important thing is I stepped on the ramp, made the leap, started the process of getting ready for cross in earnest. Though it gets harder for me, it feels easier in a lot of ways. The desperate exhaustion I feel at day's end makes it easier to get to bed earlier. The harsh suffering keeps me motivated to stick to my diet - this is when I had big weight loss last year because it is just too physically expensive and mentally draining to train this hard then piss it away on cheeseburgers, plus on hard days I just don't feel like eating much - the 6 hours of nausea sees to that. But best of all, the suffering reminds me that the sword is coming out in just 6 weeks or so, and I'll be chopping away for real in 8 - 10 weeks.

Oh yeah. It's on.

------------------------------------------------------------

My kid, a 4.5 year-old male who loves riding his bike with daddy, just completed a 4 mile hammerfest around the Crofton Parkway. It's got significant hills on it, at least when you're 3'5" and on a 32 pound, training-wheeled pseudo BMX bike. He flies down the hills shouting "wheeeee" and scaring the hell out of daddy. About halfway around, this girl comes running by - a serious jock, keeping a sub-6 minute pace I think. Will picks up speed so he can chat with her. On the downhills, he shouts "bye bye" and flies off. On the uphills, she catches him. On the flats, they're even. Meanwhile, daddy is riding behind Willard T. Player, watching this little flirting madman. At the end, she peels off across the golf course and says, "nice riding with you." My boy Smoove B answers back, "yeah, thanks, bye."

I'm not sure whether to be proud, or worried.

------------------------------------------------------------

The Olympic roadrace is this Saturday. I'm taking action on how it gets covered by NBC. Here's the odds I'm giving:

1:1 - NBC ignores it, in favor of Bob Costas emcee'd human interest stories about how tough it is being a gay figure skater, a farmboy wrestling champion, or a diva-ish 14 year-old gymnast. (The olympics being Greek, sticking to archetypes is probably appropriate, right?)

3:1 - NBC covers the roadrace, with long intermissions to run sidebar stories about doping in cycling. 4 riders eliminated from the TdF... shameful. Meanwhile, 71% of the weightlifting competition is eliminated for excessive testosterone levels... the female weightlifting competititon.

5:1 - periodic newsbreaks interrupt constant stories about the glory of China, in order to give basically meaningless updates ("Valverde is in first place in the roadrace... now Cunego is...") and to mis-pronounce the names of the French and Russian cyclists.

16:1 - one time, inadvertent listing of the results in the news crawl during the swimming preliminaries.

33:1 - they show LeBron James riding a Canondale during the off-season, and mention that he liked the bike so much, he bought the company. (They leave out the part about him selling it to Taiwanese interests).

100:1 - they show a 27 minute summary, broken up over the evening, with Robbie Ventura and Marv Albert commentating. "Devolder leads out Boonen... Yeeee-esh!"

572:1 - the only mention of cycling in the Olympics is to note that triathletes have a tough time riding their bicycles in the smog. Oh yeah, and when a Spanish rider who is a reserve and not actually racing gets popped for EPO.

1100:1 - they cover track cycling, only to mispronounce Keirin as "Kie-ryan."

1,000,000 : 1 - they show the full race, with decent commenters such as Sean Kelly and the SkySport team, on the HD channels NBC has reserved for Olympic coverage.

Lunchbox Heroes - Off-Topic

Here's an ode to the lunchbox heroes we see on some of the TV reality shows. The real reality shows, like Dirty Jobs, not the put-up Big Brother and MTV Road Rules crap. I was just thinking today that I'm grateful we have a good quality cleaning crew working in our building. They go the extra mile, and even when some jackhole is completely unreasonable they try to accomodate him. (Say an attorney who just moved 15 boxes of documents out of his office after they've clogged it for 6 months, and now wants the carpet vacuumed immediately, and everything dusted. Not that I know anybody like that... ahem...) I appreciate what they do for me. And I appreciate the guys who fix the plumbing regularly in our building that looks pretty nice, but which apparently has plumbing built in Victorian England, salvaged, and re-installed in our office building. We'd be screwed if these guys weren't fixing the crappers every few weeks, and designing a system overhaul that will fix the problem permanently.



I was one of those guys for a while - enlisted Army, then working as a contractor to help pay the bills in undergrad. I miss the life a little - it's very satisfying, very human, to look at a job you've done with your own hands and to know you're responsible for making a little corner of the world nicer. I took delivery of a bunch of windows from Lowes tonight. I'll be working with a guy from across the street to install them. That'll be a nice change from regular work.

Want to know a secret? The reason a lot of people do tough jobs with their hands is they don't care much for sitting around and reading books or looking at lines of numbers. They'd rather be out there using their hands, producing tangible results. They like to accomplish things.

Want to know another secret? My job isn't tough. Sure, you need to be bright to go to law school, and once in a while you have to think pretty hard, but compared to digging holes or building a frame for a 20 ton cooling unit on a factory roof in 100 degree temps, it isn't hard at all. It's a piece of cake. Most people in most offices could say the same thing.



I went to a meeting the other day where the topic was how we should format and schedule future meetings. A lot of blue collar folks I've worked with would have instantaneous projectile vomiting at the mere the notion of holding a meeting to discuss the format of future meetings. They'd be right to do so.


For some people, a blue collar job is a way station on the way to prosperity. For others, it isn't a means to an end, but hard honest work is an end in and of itself.


A good quality tradesman merits respect. They're doing jobs a lot of us aren't tough enough to do; and when you sit and think about what our lives are like in our hamster cages at work, it's entirely possible that they are doing jobs most of us aren't smart enough to be doing. Yeah, we talk shit about how tough a climb was, or how dirty we got on a wet ride, or how scary a descent was, but it's only thrills we're chasing, and we can hit the brakes and limp back to the car any time we want. Try chasing tough work for a living. There's no turning around and heading back to the car on that climb.

Even the garbage men can teach us something. They come around twice a week and I'll be damned if I've ever seen anybody work harder than they do. The wages, I'm told, are pretty good, since nobody wants to smell like garbage all day and have to bust ass that hard.

Now I've noticed in my decently-paid workplace that there are a lot of slackasses who like to sit around, more or less, and cause trouble. It's funny - I never saw a bunch of two-by-fours build themselves into a wall thanks to a bunch of framing carpenters standing around and bitching about how inadequate the wood was. And, I've seen houses go up in under a month because everybody got down to shutting up, cooperating, and busting their asses. In contrast, I've seen a lot of offices where the main work product is bitching and grinding, as in "grinding to a halt." Apparently, where the results of work are not concrete, some people feel they don't have to put out, since the absence of a concrete product won't really be noticed. I think these folks could benefit from learning the blue collar attitude toward work - it's there, you'll get paid for it, git 'er done.

Wanting to just git 'er done is a winning notion that any office could do with. Of course there usually isn't a lot of glamour in mere hard work, and the reason a lot of you people laugh at Larry the Cable Guy is you don't realize he's laughing at the slackasses among you. When he says "git 'er done," you probably think it's a punchline. To you, maybe it is. To the other half of the country, it's an anthem. Yeah, he's joking about it, but half his audience is up two hours before dawn on some godforsaken worksite, gittin' 'er done. Maybe our understanding of work needs to change a bit, and perhaps we ought to return to the old ways and glorify hard work as an end in and of itself.

It turns out that really smart kids benefit from being taught a blue collar approach to work, even where the work is scholarly and creative.

Maybe some of the smart kids I work with would benefit from it too.

$%^@in' Bicycle...

I have two superpowers. One is eating like a hog. Okay, fine, I'm no Kobayashi. 98 hotdogs in 6 minutes is a little bit beyond even my powers, he's kind of like Superman to my The Thing, but I'm still pretty strong there, young Jedi. Sure, Elden Nelson may eat faster, but he's just attacking off the front and taking a dig. You want to see an attack with staying power? Put two pizzas and a twelve pack of Saranac in front of me, and you'll realize immediately I'm the gustatory Jens Voigt, especially after a long bike ride.

My other superpower is breaking shit. Regular readers know about this. Broken steel, and sex appeal, that's what my riding is all about. Okay, fine, sometimes it's wrecked Ti and a bruised thigh. Or CX pain and broken chain. You people know all about this.

But some people doubt my powers, and they have to learn the hard way. I pity these fools, at least on days when I'm not busy being tired of their jibber-jabber.

Take Kyle Jones.

He doubts my powers. He is on record as trying to ride me off his wheel on a flat, then later attempting to out-eat me at a cookout at his own damn house where he hadn't put a limit on the hamburger:guest ratio. And he goes and doubts my ability to bust any bike component I touch.

So we took off this morning for a long ride. He just refitted his Salsa with aero bars to make it a time trial bike, following the theory that putting lipstick and The Perfect Little Black Dress on a sow will make it a suitable date for the Number 7 Dance later on. Sorry Kyle, that bike of yours still has hooves and roots for truffles...

We agreed to just row along in zone 2-3 down to Chesapeake Beach and back. A nice base ride since he's been off the bike for a week with some creeping crud, and he's going out of town for a few days for some kind of training with work. We even left at 6:00 AM, based on my reasoning that he'd stop bitching about his wife being on his ass about riding all day, the day before a business trip. Her bitching - justified. Kyle's bitching about her bitching... you're losing me there, Kyle.

So anyhow, we're hammering along, he's pedaling however hard he is, and I'm at threshold holding his wheel. He tells me he hasn't broken out of zone 3 power yet - not surprising since the loose flaps of elbow skin (loose since he started dieting a month or so ago) cover the air intake of his "I-Bike," which is a low-rent power meter that people who live in the low-rent districts of major urban areas would use if they didn't have any self respect or money.

Eventually, we hit 408 and get ready to cross, to head into Southern-by-God Maryland. I reach to upshift, and my rear derailer cable snaps off at the STI. I dropped a few F-bombs, a couple enhanced F-bombs, and some curse words that would probably be okay in a PG-13 film. We decided I'd just have to ride it as a two-speed. I'd ride 53-11 on the flats, and 39-11 on the hills. Easy. Nothing to it, right?

So we get going down the road, and it's a bit of tough going, since it's hilly there. I'm flying up the hills, pulling 75-80 RPM, going maybe 20 up some fairly steep little hills, then just 'cruising' at 23-24 MPH. Yeah, this was shaping up as a great aerobic zone basebuilding ride.

We get to the second or third hill, and it's really, really steep. About three quarters of the way up it, I'm out of the saddle and doing a single-speed mountain bike style 70 RPM grind, and my frickin' chain snaps. I come halfway over the front of the bike, nail my top tube with my left inner thigh, hear a painful noise that sounds like a derailer and chain eating themselves, and I eventually get my left foot down and use it to Flintstones Brake to a halt. Yeah, it was a balletic maneuver, if you pronounce the word as "ball-a-tick."

Kyle pulls up next to me and doesn't say anything, just stares. I look up the road about 10 feet, see a mostly empty fifth of of Hiram Walker on the side of the road, and consider hammering what was left in the bottle. I cursed a bit - a few more entertaining permutations of the F-bomb, and heaved the chain into the woods instead, and started pushing.

With a bit of scooter-riding, and a little push from Kyle, I got to the intersection of Fiorenza & 408, and made the Call of Shame. Kyle confessed that he had been pretty quiet when it happened because it looked like a classic Cat 4 kind of crash was unfolding, and then when he saw what happened he was afraid anything he said was going to cause me to Millar my bike into the woods.

Yeah, I probably could have fixed the chain, I had a chain tool. But a few links were just all twisted up, and I figured only clean living and God's good grace kept me from sucking the derailer into the rear wheel, where it would either destroy the wheel or tear the carbon chainstay off with the derailer. Plus I figured these things come in threes, so even if I fixed it, I was only a couple pedal strokes away from a snapped frame or 7 flat tires, or maybe exploding hemmorhoids or something.

Kyle kindly waited with me until the Sainted Wife arrived, shaking her head. She knows of my superpowers, and wonders aloud sometime why I don't take up a pasttime more suited for my talents, like joining the local blacksmith's guild. I rejected that idea because while beating on iron is nice, I like to beat on carbon fiber and aluminum too. So I guess I'm stuck on my bike, like Superman is stuck on Earth and Amy Winehouse is stuck on that dude who beats her and gives her drugs. Personally, I think Kyle was afraid to leave me alone out there, for fear I'd ride his bike and destroy it while he's out of town on business. There's a Freudian thing going on there with Kyle... can't quite put my finger on it though.

Where does this leave me? Headed to the shop to get parts, and unable to return to my original planet Krypton - that moon of Mars called Rugby, where all humans have my powers - it looks like I'm stuck here among you puny earthlings, waiting for stronger components. Maybe SRAM has something that would help?

In the meantime, I'll try to use my powers for good, not evil, I promise. While I'm waiting for the bike to get fixed though, do you think y'all could send over a couple pizzas? I'm starving.


[Update: I hadn't checked the Crackberry all day. When I did, I had a voicemail. It was from Kyle. Doleful, sad sounding Kyle. "Jim, you'd never guess what happened. I went down the road to Route 2. When I got to the traffic circle, I broke my rear wheel. So I had to call Amy to come pick me up."

Yeah, that's right. I'm so damn hard on bikes, sometimes I break other people's bikes just by riding near them. I'm like the Bermuda Triangle for bikes.

Any of you people want to ride with me, consider yourself on notice. You may want to pack your big mini-tool. And a tire boot. And some extra bottom bracket bearings. And some brake pads. And a seatpost. And...]