fisticuffs at the giro

I bet Robbie regrets this today. :-)


Also, I'm pretty sure the only reason Cav won yesterday is because he's riding the most awesome bike in the world:

2011 michaux maximus

Did a little racing in Michaux over the weekend. The 20-miler. It was about all this mountain bike wimp could handle.

As I finished, pulling into the appropriate finishing chute and watching the scorers wipe the mud from my tag and post it on the board, someone asked me something...one of those comments that seems inane at face value but, in the appropriate context and bolstered by integrity*, holds value enough--something like, "How was your race?" or "How do you feel?" In response, I shrugged my shoulders and muttered, "It's what we do."

Bike racing: It's what we do.

Why do we race our bicycles? I don't know, it's just what we do. Why do we endure torrential rain in 40 degree weather (as at SoYoCo a couple of weeks ago)? I don't know, it's just what I do. Why the long winter rides in sub-freezing weather? Why the delayed yard work on Saturdays? Why the hours tinkering over drive trains? Why the money spent on all manner of gear, travel, registration? Why the strain on relationships and other commitments? Why all of it?

I don't know, it's just what we do... (And it feels really, really good when we do it.)

Riders understand. So did the dude who asked me the question.

Ok, enough poetry...

...

The Maximus 20-miler looked like this (the Garmin plot of someone who apparently finished just a few minutes behind me). I wish I had a picture of what my bike and I looked like after the 20-miler. You'll have to imagine... April had record-breaking precipitation. Much of the trail became run-off stream. Sometimes the trail was a stream. I didn't spend all of my time balanced on two wheels. There, that should give you an adequate picture.

Anyway, no great insights from the experience. Which is to say that I learned what I already knew--I'm a stronger rider than most, but I am easily out mountain biked by those that know what they're doing. In other words, I'm a pansy. Or a poser. But I still finished second in my age group (of 26) and fourth overall (of 84). And, as always, for reasons that continue to allude me, it feels downright awesome to ride faster than a lot of other good riders and a few really good ones...

Of course, the real talent was likely attracted to the 40-mile option (or Granogue). Another way to say that is if the 40-milers were racing the 20-miler, well, I wouldn't have fared so well. But I think the 40-mile option may have just done me in. It's not the five hours of riding, of course, it's rather what I'd be riding for five hours. Hats off to you off-road wizards. I'm ever in awe of your mad mtb skills...

...

The sorest part of my body today? Triceps.


* When I say "integrity," I mean to use the word in the sense David James Duncan uses it here, but with the volume turned down a bit, as it were:

Language has vertical limits. Not just any speaker can pack up his speech and tote it at will to a higher elevation. Where there is a will, there is as often a major embarrassment as there is a way. Like a gymnast on parallel bars, the speaker or writer who successfully conveys exaltation must possess sufficient mental muscle to hoist himself above the level of everyday verbiage without appearing to strain. Again, like the gymnast, he must be able to lift himself, all by himself. It is not speech coaches and writers, height of pulpit, number of advanced degrees, thickness of thesaurus, histrionic techniques, or any such contrivance that truly lifts language: it is personal integrity. It’s the ability to imbue one’s words with the physical momentum, intellectual clarity, and psychic depth that only the actual deeds of a life can provide. If Martin Luther King Jr. in his Lincoln Memorial Speech of 1963 had said, “In my heart I know I’m right,” and if President Nixon, in his resignation speech a decade later, had said, “I have a dream,” the world would have remembered King’s heart and forgotten Nixon’s dream. It is not just the words that make words memorable.

monster x 1.0

Introducing my newest rig, Monster X 1.0:

(Bad iPhone 3G photo.)

After my Gary Fisher Paragon died in December, I had to quickly buy a replacement mtb (because who can be without a mtb for more than a week or two, especially during the winter?), which I did, but when the warranty replacement came what was I to do but find a creative use for it?

So I built the monster cross--which, in this case, is essentially a fully rigid mountain bike with drop bars and road shifters.

I finally finished the build last week* and I'm happy to report that I really, really like it. It's heavy, which is a bummer, but it's a lot of fun on the fire roads and bits and pieces of mild single track that make up the majority of my forays into the woods. For that purpose, it's perfect.

There are still a few kinks to work out, however. First, the X-9 rear derailleur that I'm using does not play well with the Rival shifter it's paired with. Though the derailleur was obviously designed for nine-speed use, I didn't figure it would be a problem using it with the road shifter and a ten-speed cassette. But it is--the derailleur won't hold the furthermost inward position no matter what I try. I'm not sure if that's a problem with the derailleur design or perhaps a problem with this particular derailleur, which may be bent from abuse from previous mtb applications.

Second, I've got to make a decision as to whether to run a single-ring setup or a double--a matter on which I waffle daily--and then complete the build, either with an appropriate derailleur or chain guards, depending.

Third, I'm dissatisfied with the fork. It's a nice steel 29er fork, as far as that goes, but besides being heavy (it is), the crown doesn't fit well with the 1 1/2" lower headset bearing. The headset has an adapter to fit the 1 1/8" steerer, but the crown of the fork is so skinny that it doesn't rest nicely up against the bearings and I'm worried about the long-term reliability of the patch. So I have one of those beautiful new Niner carbon forks on order (it's now been two months) and am super excited to see it installed on this rig. Presently, I'm salivating over my mental picture of its awesomeness.

Finally, I've got to find a better solution to the stem situation. I knew I would need a super short stem to replicate my road position on this bike, so I grabbed a 50 or 60 mm downhill number from one of Merv's bins and it works nicely, but probably weighs close to a pound on its own. Finding a nice lightweight stem that's as short as it needs to be on this bike has not been easy. Really, this is a low priority problem--what I have on there works fine, it just distracts from the overall aesthetic of what I've got going on. In time...

Anyway, I've been out three times on this little beauty and I'm really taking a hankering to it. I'm much more comfortable in a road position than on mtb bars (when not truly mountain biking) and a suspension fork is superfluous for a good deal of my adventures off-road. Once the shifting issues are resolved, I'm excited to plot some nice long backwoods routes and really put it to the test.

And of course the bike offers tremendous flexibility too, depending on tire choice, which is one of the reasons I was so excited about this build. I have a nice pair of 700c X 28mm road tires on order that will work nicely for long rides from Ship to the fire roads of the Tuscarora State Forest and back again...or for exploration further south in Michaux and into the Maryland mountains. Knobbies are great and all, but they are not fast...


* Getting this thing together has been way more of a hassle than it should have been. Here's a list of some of the difficulties I've encountered, other than what I already discussed:

(1) The derailleur hanger wouldn't fit on the frame until the frame was modified by file. Personally, I was unconvinced the hanger I had was the appropriate hanger for the frame (as I imagine most people would assume when it doesn't immediately fit), until assured by a Trek dealer that it was correct. I let them do the filing.

(2) The new Trek BB90 or BB91 or whatever the heck it is was a tremendous hassle. In all internet-dom I could find only one supplier that seemed to know what he was talking about and could sell me the appropriate Shimano BB. Even then there was some confusion between the road and mtb versions of this BB, with Trek customer support telling me one thing and the Trek dealer something else entirely. I'm happy to say, however, that the first BB I eventually did buy fit perfectly.

(3) Lack of careful measurement (and an overabundance of wishful thinking) on my part led me to believe I'd be able to use a Dura-Ace 7800 crankset with the frame. But that was foolish--it didn't work at all. So that left me scrambling to find a new crank that would fit the frame. (I ended up cannibalizing the XT crank on my Superfly and buying a new crank for it, but even that was fraught with complication--when one is considering the purchase of a new crank, one wonders if an entire drive train upgrade wouldn't be in order, in this case to a two-ring setup. In the end, I decided against it, primarily with financial considerations in mind.)

(4) It wasn't until I installed derailleur cable and chain that I realized my setup afforded no means of adjusting derailleur cable tension--no barrel adjusters on the derailleur (they're on the levers on mountain bikes) and no barrel adjusters on the levers (they're on the derailleur on road bikes), and of course mtb frames don't have a place for frame-mounted barrel adjusters on the down tubes like many road frames. Anyway, I ordered an inline barrel adjuster and the problem was easily solved, but it's just another one of those things...

(5) SRAM Rival front derailleurs don't have enough reach to get a chain on the outer chainring of a three-chainring mtb crankset.

it's rodeo time!

For Immediate Release:

Shippensburg University Cycling Announces Youth Bike Rodeo

Shippensburg, Pennsylvania – April 26, 2010 – On Friday, April 29, 2010, Shippensburg University Cycling will host the Fifth Semi-Annual Spring/Fall Youth Bike Rodeo. Intended for children in Kindergarten through fifth grades, the event will include activities such as helmet fitting, minor bicycle maintenance, bicycle fitting, safety tips, and a skills-testing obstacle course. The event begins at 4:00 pm and will continue until 5:30 pm.

The rodeo will be held on the Shippensburg University campus, in the Queen St. commuter parking lot at the corner of Queen St. and Richard Ave. While there will be no adult specific activities, parents are encouraged to stay and participate. All participants should bring a bicycle and wear a helmet.

This event builds off the success of previous SU Cycling Team sponsored youth bike rodeos. Thirty to forty children participated in each event.

About Shippensburg University Cycling: Shippensburg University Cycling is organized as a university club sport. The mission of Shippensburg University Cycling is to promote cycling socially as well as to prepare athletes for collegiate competition.

Ship Cycling competes in road and mountain bike events in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (collegiatecycling.org/eccc) under the auspices of USA Cycling (usacycling.org). The team is funded by the University Student Senate as well as the generous support of area businesses including Sunrise Computers and Electronics (www.digitalsunrise.com), The Carlisle Group (tcgrecruit.com), Mountainside Ski & Sport (www.mountainsideski-sports.com) and Wertner Signs (www.wertnersigns.com/).

The team holds regular training rides, open to all area cyclists, in the rural farmland and mountainous terrain of Cumberland and Franklin Counties.

For more information on the Shippensburg University Cycling Team, please contact Nathan Goates, faculty advisor (nwgoates@ship.edu), Matt Conroy, club president (mc3923@ship.edu), or visit our blog at shipcycling.blogspot.com.

CONTACT:
Dr. Nathan Goates
Shippensburg University
717-477-1214
nwgoates@ship.edu
http://webspace.ship.edu/cycling/

# # #

a taste of SoYoCo 2011 goodness

More photos here.

roubaix in super-slow-mo

(FB'ers, click here for video.)

louco com poder

According to CyclingNews, McQuaid and JV have been trading email.

In an email seen by Cyclingnews, McQuaid wrote to Vaughters:

"I have had enough of this High Moral Ground from you and I am refraining myself from writing exactly what I am thinking.

"Enough to inform you that when I have finished with the teams today you will have plenty to "reflect" on and communication will be the furthest thing from your mind!!”

I really wish we had the text of the whole correspondence.

All the same, a preponderance of the evidence over the past few years is that McQuaid is straight loco. And, you know, I'm inclined to agree with him on the radio thing, but it's clear a majority of the riders don't. And the teams sure don't. And given that reality, how can you expect to "lead" when your constituency* so adamantly opposes your policy?

Time to look in the mirror, McQuaid, and make a change...


*It's tricky to pinpoint who McQuaid's "constituency" actually is. I suppose an appropriate parallel might be to say that McQuaid is like a public school board (all of it) and the riders are like the students. It's a shaky metaphor (for a number of reasons), but the point is that McQuaid is NOT directly accountable to the students, but it's still his job to lead them. If he does not have their trust and respect (which it seems clear he does not), then he's failed.

winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Saturday, I won a race. I'm not going to lie: it was awesome.

And now I have to document, because that's what we do.

Fulton Road Race. Fifty-eight starters. Five laps around a 10 mile course for a total of 50 miles. A fair amount of climbing--about 750 ft per lap, most of that over two steeper climbs, the rest over a long false flat / 1-2 percent grade and a few rollers.

Short story: First place after an 18-mile solo break.

(Through the start/finish after lap four--ten miles to go...)

Long story: Things started out chill enough, but then you hit those hills and everybody races, races, races up. After the first time over the climbs you got the sense about 35 percent of the group had fallen behind...but they probably caught back on again...then fell back once more the second time through...

And so it continued until the beginning of lap four. People seemed to realize that the race was now between the folks left riding together and things slowed significantly. There couldn't have been more than 30 riders left in the field. No one up the road, no one pushing the pace.


So about two miles into lap four six to eight of us sat around at the front. Chatting. Playing around. Then Jon came up and took a bit of a pull--sort of stretching his legs--and as we came down and then up from the little valley between a couple rollers I accelerated and rode right away. (I say "accelerated," but it was a real effort.) No one chased. And I can only assume they all just kept dinking around like they were before.

My effort was half-hearted at first. I figured I'd be off the front for a few miles and they'd get motivated and catch me so I didn't want to burn too many matches. But after getting to the top of the first climb and seeing I still had a significant gap I started to push it 100 percent. I was hoping that a couple of guys might bridge up to me, using one of the climbs as a catalyst for their attack--and they appeared to try to do just that--but no one ever got that close.

On the second climb, fourth lap, I could see the advancing hoard maybe 20 seconds behind me and thought they'd easily catch on by the start/finish, but I poured on the gas anyway and after the climb they must have just shut it down (no one wanting to be the one chasing) because going through the start/finish I had 1:30 on the field.

And that's where you begin to think you might just have it--when you get out-of-sight. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind in these sorts of races.

I turned myself inside-out on the last lap. Again, I thought they'd get me just after the second climb--I could see a chasing group of two--but while they seemed to get awfully close on the accent, once the road leveled out I couldn't see them behind me anymore. Later, I found out the two weren't really cooperating and were content merely to stay away from the field and sprint for second. Their loss. :-)

At the 200m mark I knew I had it and sort of just rolled in across the line. Second and third came in maybe 15 seconds behind me...and the field maybe 10 seconds after that.

On the last major climb, which tops out some two miles from the finish, I'm sure Jon could have bridged up to the two chasers. He's good at that sort of thing--plus he said he wanted to. But had he done so he likely would have pulled up others, which may have sped the chase considerably, which then may have caught me. So many thanks to Jon for the smart team racing.

Notes:

* The motorcycle official would occasionally come up to me, get a time split, tell the chasing pack the split, but not me. How lame is that?

* It's funny, Jon and I were trying to talk ourselves into not going on Thursday. I had completely forgotten that I had done this course before, two years ago (Ryan and I finished 11th & 12th), and that it is easily my favorite Lancaster Co. course. I figured this out on the drive there, and then I got all excited about the race. Even if I hadn't done well, it would have been a shame not to have been there--if I'd figured out later what course this actually was I'd been sad to have missed it.

* Rich (Ruoff) puts on an organized race and all, but they really are kind of boring. No announcer (and they had a megaphone there, they could have at least done a little announcing). No podium. No leader's jersey for the series (which I would be wearing; which would be awesome). No real hullabaloo at all. To me, it's that sort of stuff that makes the difference. It's a very inexpensive way of making the race more interesting and endearing for participants. It's how you make just a boring race into an event...into something. Anyway, promoters could be a little (a lot) more creative.

* I don't know how (some) pros have the energy to throw out those exuberant displays of excitement at the finish. I could barely get my hands off the bars for an understated (but heartfelt, believe me) fist pump.

* This is my first non-TT road win since August of 2006. It feels good to win. It's been a long time.

mavic gets a win...

...on it's first go with this wheel. Lucky ducks.



(Facebookers, you'll have to visit the blog to watch the video.)

(Photo from cyclingtips.)

Though, I've got to say, while the video is cool (and who can't help but have a bit of a man-crush on Thor), it doesn't make me any more likely to buy a pair of Mavic hoops.

Ok, carry on...

clever, clever

Yesterday, I was off riding the new Wildcat reroute (the cat's meow) with Aaron. We were bouncing along ok (well, you might say I was stumbling heavily through the gnarly rock gardens as Aaron floated magically over them) when I flatted from a substantial sidewall tear.

As I was grumbling with the prospect of having to put a tube in a tire full of gross sealant while fumbling with a make-shift energy-bar boot, I realized I hadn't brought tire levers. Aaron hadn't either.

So while I'm prepping mentally for the walk out and call to rescue-lady Valerie, Aaron suggests that I use his quick-release lever.

Wow. Major light bulb moment. A quick-release lever doubling as a tire lever! Who knew?

After that moment of realization, I figured my quick release lever was just as good as Aaron's, and so I tried it...BAM: worked perfectly.

How is that I've been riding bikes (w/ quick release levers), getting flats, and fixing flats for nearly two and a half decades and I'm just now learning this trick? It's brilliant! And while I'm tempted to say 'life-changing,' and realizing that might be a bit hyperbolic, I've got to say it's a pretty revolutionary insight. I mean, really, this is right up there...

...

Incidentally, I quickly learned that while a quick-release lever makes a great tire lever, one has to take care to keep track of the nut on the other end through the process or it will no longer serve its primary function--securing a wheel to a bicycle. Because, yes, I lost mine sometime mid-tire-removal/install. In the woods. Among last year's fallen leaves. And a fresh pile of deer poo.

But after an eternity of panicked searching (five minutes), Aaron and I found one spring and one nut...which was enough. So, with energy-bar-wrapper-tire-boot in place, air in tire, and skewer once more secured, we headed home.

Trying to stay warm between laps at the MASS relay on Saturday.

the hard men of spring

There's been some tremendous racing during the past two weeks.

My favorite winners: Gilbert, Evan, and Vockler, in that order.

I mean, Gilbert is just unreal. Did you see this from Stage 5 of the Tirreno-Adriatico?



Or from the Montepasche Strade Bianche a couple of weeks ago?



I love this guy. I mean, Gilbert's becoming more of an odds-on favorite in some of these races than a high-seeded team in the NCAAs!

Then of course there was Evans pulling out a tremendous win in the race leader's jersey in Stage 6 of the Tirreno-Adriatico on his way to the overall:



Awesome.

Interesting (to me) to note that Gilbert seemed to get the better of Ballan in the Montepasche by taking the inside line in the final corner before the finish, whereas Evans gains the advantage over Visconti and Nibali by carrying his momentum through the outside line of two of the final turns.

Finally, Vockler impressed in Paris-Nice by pulling out stellar victories in both Stage 4 and Stage 8.





What a great year of racing so far!

forget the radios, let's ban the tyrants

Generally speaking, I'm in favor of the radio ban in professional cycling. Notably, however, I express that opinion as a fan and an amateur cyclist, which is to say that I don't have any real idea what it's like to live and work in professional cycling.

That said, Pat McQuaid (the president and face of the UCI), is handling the conflict that has arisen from the ban in typical fashion: horribly.

"...the system does not have to adequately represent the interest of the teams and their employees (interests which, by the way, conflict among these two at many times) - or of any other particular stakeholder..."

Really?

Legally, of course McQuaid is right. Practically, however, it's hard to imagine a less enlightened leadership strategy.

I honestly don't know what to think of this (Alexi Grewal's comeback):

His fame is, believe it or not, a little before my time, but from what I remember he worked pretty hard to be known as the biggest jerk in the peloton. Incredible talent; incredible donkey. (Wasn't the "Cannibal" character in American Flyers loosely based on this dude, at least temperament-wise?)

Anyway, my interest is piqued. (And based on this picture alone, scared to death.) Here's to the big 5-o!

what it means to be a competent bicycle racer

Wade of cyclingtipsblog.com made a nice little post the other day linking Maslow's stages of learning with general racing competence. I liked it enough that I thought I'd quote it here.

1. Unconscious Incompetence

   The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, and does not recognizes the deficit. An example of this might be someone giving racing a crack for the first time. He might be fit but still does not understand how to bike race. The best place to introduce someone to the race environment would be in D-grade.

2. Conscious Incompetence

   Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it. This would be after a few races getting comfortable in D-grade and then racing in C-grade. This is a pack of cyclists who have a good fitness base but still learning the major details of how to bike race and the skills required. Things are still being learned such as how to roll turns properly, how to corner, where to position yourself.

3. Conscious Competence

   The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration. Now we’re getting into the B-grade level of racing. Everyone who is good enough to be out there is committed to racing. Many people’s ambition is to make it into A grade but there is still lots experience required to put what has been learned into practice.

4. Unconscious Competence

   The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes “second nature” and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned. This should be the skill level of an A-grade cyclist. An A-grade cyclists should know how the game is played, the tactics involved, and not have to second-guess details such as cornering, positioning, attacking, counter-attacking, the direction of the wind, echeloning, holding your line, etc.

The "grades" Wade is referring to are how amateur bike racing is organized in Australia. From what I gather, it's more of a self-policing category system, unlike the more institutional USA Cycling category system here.

I like Wade's application of Maslow's model to cycling. However, I believe a distinction should be made between what I'll call race survival skills and race winning skills. Race survival skills are more or less technical in nature, easier to achieve competence in, and you don't necessarily need to race that much to get there. These include skills such as drafting, pace-lining, echeloning, cornering, holding a wheel when you think you have nothing left to give, how to close a gap, knowing how to eat and drink in the peloton, knowing when to eat and drink to survive the race, and countless other things you just learn by doing a lot of riding with others. Race winning skills are less technical and more nuanced in their application, and are thus harder to learn. These include skills such as positioning, attacking, counter-attacking, when to burn matches and when to save matches, how to race with teammates, how to race without teammates, etc.

[The rest of this post was written with novice to intermediate collegiate cyclists in mind as audience (it gets kind of lecturey), and is posted on the Ship Cycling blog without this explanatory note, in case you were wondering.]

The distinction between these two types of skills is important, I think, because the four levels of bicycle racing competence that Wade describes seem, at first, to map nicely onto the D-A category system in US collegiate racing, where D fields are comprised of novice, USAC Cat 5 riders, and A fields are comprised of elite, USAC Cat 1-3 riders. However, upon reflection, I think the comparison is a more appropriate typology only for race survival skills. Race winning skills, well, that's another matter. While every pro cyclist is likely fully competent in race survival skills, there surely is a great deal of variance in race winning skills (one reason I suspect directors are so adamantly opposed to the elimination of race radios--they want control over in-race tactical decisions because they don't trust their riders' judgment). And I think an argument can be made that some riders are natural racers, which is to say that they seem to have an innate gift for reading a race, attacking at opportune moments, conserving when attacking would bear no fruit, etc. These riders can't really explain how they do it and may be only vaguely aware of the difference between themselves and others in the first place. However, like any skill, no matter the rider's disposition, education and practice can make him or her better, whether that person is the equivalent of a tactical moron or race-reading genius.

Education and practice. With emphasis on the later. Unless you are orders of magnitude more fit than your competitors, wins will not just fall in your lap (and if they do, you're racing below your category). In bicycle racing, to win you have to try to win.

And, in my opinion, that speaks to one of the great ironies of bicycle racing--that those trying hardest to win the race often finish amongst the last in the standings. You see, once a cyclist reaches some standard of competence in race survival skills (and requisite fitness), it's not really that hard to hang on for a top 25 percent placing in any race. Race conservatively, and with minimal effort you'll find that's easy. But to win, you have to be willing to risk colossal defeat. So it would seem that the limiters to winning (if you're counting) include being willing to risk personal pride. And it may be useful, at least from the racer's perspective, to think of a race as having one winner and n-1 losers. No second place. No top 10s. There is just a winner and a lot of unhappy losers.

So that comfortable (and respectable) top 25 percent placing? Screw it. Exhaust your matches winning or lose big trying.