race radios

Since everyone else is (like how I said that like those dudes are my peers?), I thought I'd also weigh in on the race radio issue:

Lance Armstrong:

"I don't agree with it. I think that technology evolves, the bike evolves, the training, the diet, everything evolves… the fabrics that we wear. Look at the cameras, the microphones, the transponders on the bike… all of it has evolved."

Logic inconsistent with the reality of the sport. Like it or not, Lance, you play at a sport where tradition rules the day. And the UCI has a rulebook full of strange rules to protect it. So, while technology does change things, there are countless examples of technological advances that have been rejected to maintain a something of the traditionalism of the sport (wheel size, bike shape, handlebar configuration, etc.). Just because something can be done doesn't make it worth doing.

Bjarne Riis:

"The way I see it, it puts a big risk on to the teams. Our sponsors put a lot of money into this team, and to win the Tour de France."

Uh, sure. But if the radio ban generates interest, and makes the racing more exciting (it may not, but that's the hypothesis, and the reason for the test), then the sponsors are going to be better off, not worse. Even if your guy loses.

Michael Rodgers:

"It’s not such an issue for the more experienced guys in the race, but there are a lot of guys who grew up with radios as juniors, under-23s and professionals, for their entire careers, and they are just robots. If there’s not someone making a decision for them, they don’t know what to do. So I think it’s a good way to stimulate the younger riders."

Yeah, I think so too. Let's make the sport about decision-making as well as fitness. Every rider a tactician. As a fan, I like it.

Matt White:

"I’d rather we banned radios. I don’t mind if we lost radios altogether. We go through the stage everyday in the morning, and what I am telling them on the radio is only what I’ve told them in the morning, just reminding them."

Hmm... Matt sheds some light on the issue. Makes it sound like those that oppose the radio ban are motivated by sheer laziness...not being willing to study out the stage in detail in the morning. Interesting.

Stjin Devolder:

"Nobody has the experience to ride without the radios.... It’s something they did 10 or 15 years ago. Now it’s two stages here at the Tour, and the stages are pretty difficult. I think it will be a different kind of racing. Different results, also. For everybody, and for safety, I think it’s better with the radios. Now it’s pretty easy to know everything from the car and what position the breakaway is and if you have to do it yourself you have no information you will react on situations later than you would react with radio."

Devolder, oddly, has made a powerful argument for banning radios, even while opposing the ban.

Dave Z.:

"For all those people that say it’s a safety issue, I think it creates more of a frenzy in the peloton than anything. If a right-hand turn is coming up, the directors tell 150 guys to get to the front at the same moment. Otherwise we’d just take the right-hand turn and be done with it. I think it will be something to try out."

Open-minded Dave Z. Let's try it out. See how it goes. Re-evaluate. Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Dave Z. also said:

"It would be cool if they eliminated all the cars and spare bikes and we raced with tubes and things like that, but that’s probably another kind of racing."

Perhaps after he retires he'll be taking up mountain bike marathoning? But I like where this is going. Dave seems to understand the irony of bicycle racing being disturbingly consumptive of fuel. And perhaps a bit troubled by it. But, it's how he makes a living... Whaddya gonna do?

Marc Sargeant:

"In my opinion it’s going backwards. We have to go with our (era), and in every sport it’s a habit of coaching to give information to your athletes constantly. If you are taking that away it can even be dangerous. Certainly it’s a new way of thinking and riding for this generation. (Some say radios have made racing less dynamic), but if you are managing a team you want to be active in it."

I find this comment particularly revealing. Marc's opposed because without a radio he doesn't get to play, he doesn't have as active a part. Marc doesn't want to give up power.

My guess is Marc manages several fantasy Tour teams.

Tom Boonen:

"I don’t really have an opinion. I think it’s pretty stupid to even think about it."

Tom, that word you used. "Opinion." It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Johan Bruyneel:

"I don’t think any argument justifies this. We have a lot of arguments to say we want to use the radios every single day, and against that I don’t see any arguments that make any sense."

As I read this I pictured Johan running around in circles with his hands over his ears yelling, "La, la, la, la... I can't hear you. I can't hear you. There are no arguments for the race radio ban. I can't hear you. La, la, la, la..."

Johan is obviously also concerned about giving up power. It seems obvious that radios benefit the favorites, the strong teams. That should be reason enough to give them up.

Alberto Contador:

"I am against taking away the radios, because without them, a fall or a puncture could cause the strongest rider to lose the race."

I was cheering for this dude to win the Astana feud...until now. But this is pure douchebaggery. Want to be assured the strongest athlete wins? Do triathlon. Cycling is a sport, and in sports you've got to be able to win ugly. The underdog always has a chance. And that's what makes it interesting (and occasionally exciting).

good sportswriting...

...is always worth reading.

also awesome

From 1985...about 2 1/2 years before I bought my first racing bicycle:

awesome

Coming...

...going...


...during the 1935 Tour de France.

the solo win

I love this stuff.

That's the way to win a bike race. Solo wins should be worth three or four times the points (in stage races and for Pro Tour standings) and listed in a separate category when tallying wins.

(Thanks, Graham.)

stuff...

It's been almost two months, but I have my Tarmac back. It's hanging, longingly naked, in the goat cave. Beckoning me. And I'm just about to head home to (hopefully--depending on what domestic duties await me when I get there) start the build.

At first blush, it appears the boys at rrvelo did a first-rate job patching up my baby after its mishap. However, I haven't ridden it yet, so we'll see. I regret a bit not forking over the extra $200 or so for the touch-up paint and new decals, but at the time I just couldn't bear it. The incident has been expensive enough already. I'll get pictures up soon, but the war wounds are more than obvious.

...

I just emptied a cache of pictures over the past month or so from my iPhone. The iPhone doesn't take great pictures (one of the few things it doesn't do well), but they're pictures all the same. Here's a few.


(Not sure why these are taken of the non-drive side, why there are bottles in the cages, and why the odd crank position. Typical goatish amateur absent-mindedness...)

What I've been riding for the past while. Frame/fork purchased on eBay for $150. It's alarmingly easy to find killer deals on frames via eBay, but the prices of used wheels and components are sometimes awfully close to discounted new.

Notice the wheels...
...which I mentioned are the first wheels I've built. This picture was taken right after Poolesville, so everything's covered in a thin veil of dust, but I dig the red anodized rims.

This frame has been ok. It's not the Tarmac, but compared to the Tricross at the Tuesday Nighters...well, there's not much compairson when you get out of the saddle and hammer. My Tricross is just too...spongy. Which is to say non-responsive. This Giant is a worthy second-string road racer.

Some of you will recognize it's strikingly similar appearance to my old Giant, and while I think the fork is exactly the same, the frame is actually quite different. For one, this one is a touch bigger, so it fits. But then there's the seat tube, for instance, which has a much cleaner design than the shim/collar design on the other one I was riding. I don't know the historical Giant catalogue well enough to put model names and years to the differences. What I do know is that the TCR, for the past several years, has been about as much bike for dollar spent as you can buy. And there are a lot of them out there, which makes getting a really good used bike for not much fairly easy.

A couple of bad shots in Horse Valley from Saturday's ride. Jon M. and I rode over Big Flat to pick up Big E, then east to the Arnettesville Fair Grounds to rendevous with Jim H. Together we rode back up over Big Flat and across the valley, over the Upper Strausburg climb, deposited Jim H. at his family Fourth-of-July-get-together, then back to Ship.

Jon M., Big E, and the Joel train at the little country store in Fannettsburg a few weeks ago. A refueling point for the return run over the Strausburg climbs from Cowan's Gap (or whatever the pass is called at the summit on US30 between Fort Louden and McConnellsburg). That was a nice ride. Six climbs of 8-10 percent grade at least a mile in length. Well, the climb out of Roxburg to Lower Horse Valley Road is a just under a mile, but I'm counting it anyway.

poolesville road race

An interesting day (yesterday) at the races.

So I've liked doing MABRA races in the past, but this one had a strange vibe to it. I don't know, maybe it was the douchbags that were still in diapers when I started racing bicycles telling me when it was my turn to take a pull (which was lame and wrong, on so many counts). Or maybe it was the weird finish off the circuit, which didn't seem to make any sense. Or maybe it was the officials starting the race a solid six minutes early, catching everyone off guard, including some who weren't at the starting line. Or maybe it was the insane pace we kept on the tailwind section, the only section where we encountered oncoming traffic, and the snail's pace we kept on the hills, where real damage could have been levied. Or maybe it was the super narrow roads, which allowed _no_ movement back-to-front in the pack for at least the first two laps.

Well I don't know what it was, but it felt weird, and I felt weird afterward...

The course was run on a 10+ mile lap through pretty mild rolling hills. The major terrain element of interest was the one mile dirt road section--essentially a one-lane, water-flat dust ally, with two parallel tracks of pretty smooth dirt and gravel in between and on the shoulders.

I enjoyed the dirt section tremendously. Got me all kinds of excited for cross season. And it would have been nice to be in the front at least once through the dirt. I would have liked to push the pace, which seemed way too slow each of our five times through.

But where I most wanted to push the pace was on the incline just after the dirt section, on the last lap, about five miles from the finish. After the first lap I decided that's where I wanted to make a move. But before I had a chance I got caught behind a touch up on the dirt section which felled a handful of riders and, having to brake, then circumvent the bicycles and bodies splayed about, by the time I closed the gap we had reached the road, and the effort had left me winded. So I waited. And waited. And waited too long.

Way too long. Of course, not really having any idea where the finish line was didn't help. I was looking for a 1K to go sign...then for a 200m sign...I saw neither. By the time the sprint began in earnest I was too far out of position. I finished 12th.

The finish line business really made no sense. I simply can't understand why the finish wasn't somewhere on the circuit, like it is in every race everyone has ever done on a circuit like that. I'm sure the rationale had to do with keeping finished riders off the course or something to that effect, but I still think it silly. One strike. And if there were 1K and 200m to go signs, they had to have been practically invisible, because I was looking for them. Two strikes.

But as much as I'd like to blame my poor finish on the promoter (that's the bike racers' style, right? blame your disappointing finish on someone or something else...never the rider's fault...not ever), I know where I gave up. Or, I think, more accurately, chickened out.

So here I'm reminded of this (start at about 8:30 in, for about 30 seconds):



It's not so much that I gave up physically, but it's lacking that special little crazy something that allows some people the mental capacity, the fearless-thoughlessness for this:



I mean, it looks all pretty from a bird's eye view, but when you're in it, when you're going a bazillion miles an hour and you're afraid to blink for fear of some obstruction coming your way while your eyes are closed, and when the consequence for failure (and remember, we're all a bunch of douchbag amateurs here...a USCF Cat 3 sprint finish is every bit amateur hour) is yet another broken collarbone and strawberry mash for skin for days...well, I just don't have it in me. And there were only like 15 of us even contesting the sprint.

I'd like to think it has something to do with being older, wiser, having a family...but I know it's not that. It's that I've never had it. I'm just not that guy.

But not for not wanting to be.

...

Back to Poolesville... Seventy-five started. Only 24 finished. Probably about 10 crashed out. Another handful flatted. What happened to everyone else? When we were in the final few miles and I looked around and counted only 20 riders I was dumbfounded. What happened to everybody?

Wild.

...

Oh yeah, I raced the wheels I built earlier this week. Thirty-two spoke, three-cross numbers on one dura-ace and one ultegra hub. The rims some discontinued Mavic box section numbers in a snazzy red anodized finish. The first set of wheels I've built or, for that matter, had success truing. They held up wonderfully. I'm bursting.

two (eBay) pet peeves

It really drives me nuts when eBay sellers advertise their auctions as "no reserve," but then indicate a minimum bid.

News flash: If you set a minimum bid (eBay calls it a "starting bid"), you have, in fact, set a reserve for your auction.

...

I think eBay rightly encourages potential buyers to communicate with sellers prior to bidding. However, while eBay gives lip service to this policy, the mechanism they provide for doing this is so cluncky and antiquated that it rather discourages communication.

My eBay experience would be vastly improved if eBay would update its message function to look, feel, and function like email.

I wish Google would buy eBay. It would be better.

yeah...posting from my iPhone...

bike racing as therapy

Yesterday morning was the pits. Or I was in a pit. But I had a race on tap in the afternoon...and though all morning I didn't feel one bit like racing, I'd already paid so...

The girls (A & M) and I trotted the 25 some miles down to Lancaster. They parked their lawn chairs behind the announcer's tent (Joe Jefferson has never pronounced my name right...really, it's these mid-state folks...I can pop down to DC and no one will bat a tongue's eyelash, so to speak, but safe in the bosom of Pennsyltucky they just can't quite get their tongues untangled enough to roll it out) and cheered their little hearts out as I attacked midway through the 25 mile crit, taking an NCVC rider with me, and putting about 15 seconds (according to Beth) on a slow-to-get-motivated field. But, despite the power of little girls' cheers (which are not to be underestimated), after six laps or so they brought us in. But racing for the win lifted my spirits considerably. I just like racing my bike.

(Interestingly, I wasn't really planning on racing this weekend, but some days ago Valerie suggested that if we were staying in Hershey we might be close to something, which we were, so I registered. I'm not sure that yesterday she didn't regret that suggestion. But it did me a world of good.)

Bike racing... In so many ways an absurd activity. The carnage, for one. (A crash in the third or fourth lap--just after I'd moved to the front, thankfully--left two ambulances and a firetruck on the course for about half our race...then finally they took off, one ambulance with sirens blaring. Ugh.) The $ expense, for another. (Exhibit one: I got a quote from rrvelo on fixing my Tarmac's two breakpoints--$600. Holy nuts. It may be just enough for me to swear off carbon...especially when there are perfectly reasonable alternatives.) The time expense. Yeah... Well... And finally the inarguable arrogance of it all. I mean, I'm 35 stinking years old. Why is it so important to get to the crest of a hill or an inauspicious white line quicker than somebody else? What is it about my damaged psyche that takes so much pleasure in being better than some other poor schmuck on two wheels? And yet I do take pleasure from it. A great deal, as a matter of fact. And I'm sure I'm a smaller man because of it, but... Well... What is the defense of middle-aged competitiveness? But of course there's a flip side to the pleasure of being better. And that is, of course, the indignity of being worse. And the thing about low-stakes amateur bike racing (or really all bike racing but for a handful of the world's best) is that there will almost always be people much, much stronger/fitter/more cunning than you, and you will much more often be worse than you will be better. If I were to write an essay on the topic it would probably be called "Of fishes and ponds..."

Yet, for all the reasons not to, I'm somehow convinced that it is a very good thing for me to be doing. Fitness. Endorphins. Self-efficacy. Identify. Goal-setting and achievement. The explanation lies somewhere in that crowded landscape. I suppose.

...

So the year-to-date race resume...

One mountain bike relay as a season warm-up. I wasn't expecting exceptional results and I didn't get them.

A seventh at the Philly Phlyer.

Third at SoYoCo.

The crash at Turkey Hill. (Despite the obvious disappointment of the in-the-last-500m crash, probably my worst race this year. I've only raced TH twice, but both times that course has just kicked my butt. Those hills...and the constant attacks with nothing really ever getting away...it takes a toll.)

A crappy 13th at Fulton. (I wanted this one bad. On the first lap, up the second, steepest climb I thought, "I'm never going to finish this thing." But by the fourth lap I realized the racing had beat down most everyone more than me and so I rode a pretty stinking aggressive fifth lap. I was in a three-man break for a couple of k (I blame it's lack of success on my breakaway companions not being as strong and/or motivated as me). Then pushed the pace up the leg-breaker hoping for a selection of four or five by the top, but ended up with a selection of more like 20 (a field of around 70 started), then made a bid for solo glory with about 2k to go. To no avail.

And then a back-of-the-field finish at Race Ave yesterday.

...

I wonder how much my summer Pennsylvania allergies affect my performance. It certainly can't help.

A typical June ride will see me launching a blurring sequence of snot rockets from an allergy-induced runny nose, red, bloodshot eyes, and by the end of the ride my arms and legs are aglow with inflammation. Something like a southern Utah landscape--random mounds and ridges of deep red against a peach-orange background... And if I'm on the mountain bike... Yikes. It's enough to almost make me long for the good ole slip-slide ice-skating runs of December-February. Almost.

...

Six a.m. in the Ronald McDonald House. I can't sleep. Marian sawing logs in bed next to me may be a contributing factor.

The Ronald McDonald House... Just as with children's hospitals, I love that there are such things, I love the beautiful strangers that work here, the volunteers that come to make breakfast and dinner, the granola ladies that bring their dogs for the kids to pet, all the leftover food from local restaurants, all the corporate and private donors... But I hate being here. Hate, hate, hate... I hate that I've been to enough of them that I can compare their architectural and policy nuances. I don't want to know these things. I hate that I know these things.

I hate that the charity century ride I did a couple of times in high school benefited the Ronald McDonald House. That memory hangs hauntingly in the past, a wickedly cruel foreshadowing of the present.

And though these are special places, one feels far from special being in one. Just as in the hospital, everyone has their tragedy. You feel so me-too. Wallowing in your own sorrow seems even more selfish and tawdry. Because. You know there's someone just down the hall with a kid that's ten times sicker than yours, with a story ten times more tragic. I don't want to talk to that person. I don't want to know. I can't stand to know.

They say it's the house that love built. Love... Such a damned awful word. If there were no love, there would be no pain...

lipless lovers

A mother runs away with her 13 year-old son after a court orders that he continue his chemotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma. Arrest warrant issued.

Mixed feelings on this one.

The state certainly has an interest in protecting children (and, methinks, obligation to do so) from negligent parents. However, does refusing chemotherapy and radiation constitute negligence? Dismissing the religious question for the moment (though the religious question must certainly be considered in the whole of the ethical/legal analysis), that seems a question on which reasonable people might easily disagree...so much so that the judge's decision to issue an arrest warrant seems both unreasonable and extreme.

The real danger here is the sickening hegemony the mainstream medical establishment bears over society--to the extent now, apparently, that disobeying a physician's prescription is a crime.

Damn technocrats... A technician who's not a philosopher is about as useless as a lover without lips.

guts

All respect and admiration for people with the guts to do stuff like this...because I so don't have it.

The creativity I have. The balls, no.

sadness...

With cautious optimism, blooming from the soil of sorrow, as it were, I just sent the following email:

Dear Calfee Design,

From the information on your website (and the recent mention on VeloNews.com), it appears that you’ll have no trouble fixing my frame. However, I was hoping you could give me a ballpark estimate on cost and time before I send it in.

My ’08 Specialized Tarmac SL2 has two cracks/damage points. Both are consequences of a ~30mph collision with a downed rider’s back which resulted in me and my bike tumbling airborne into the bushes.

The first damaged area is about midway down the down tube on the underside. The damaged area is sort of like a crack (though it looks more caved in or wrinkled than cracked) about 1.5 – 2 inches long.

The second damaged area is about midway down a seat stay. The damage here looks more like a crack, and it spirals about 3/4 the way around the tube.

As the damage resulted from a head-on collision, I would also like my fork inspected, though my preliminary inspection (I haven’t yet looked at the steerer tube) revealed no damage.

Again, I’d like to know if (1) you can fix it, (2) how much you expect it to cost (I realize this will be a non-binding estimate), and (3) how long you expect it will be before I have my frame back in my basement and ready to ride.

Thank you very much,

ng

I really love that bike.

...

In the meantime, I've drowned my sorrow in the prospect of this:

Frame only. Silver.

I've needed a solid backup racer / rain bike. This will do. Swimmingly.

When the Tarmac gets back, it may see Red.

anthony tan

I love this guy's sports writing. Refreshingly non-formulaic.

Take this, for instance.

I don't understand who gets what assignments and whatever, but I love it when the Giro roles around and Tan gets on his laptop.