I don’t get all this resting during the season by the Pro riders. It seems to be standard operating procedure no matter whether you are a classic or stage race rider. What is really weird is most of them are taking over a month off when the season is hardly 2 months old.
I think Lance set the precedent for racing the least amount of days in a year the last couple times he won the Tour. Contador didn’t race until Paris-Nice after he won the Tour one year. That is close to 8 months. Carlos Sastre took off more than that time one year.
But all these guys disappearing mid to late April until mid May or June seems really strange to me. The race schedule is so diluted nowadays because the Pro Tour teams have 28 guys that it’s not like these guys are over raced already.
And then when the return, they are all over the map with predictions how they’ll be riding after all the time off. That was the case in the Tour of California. Tom Boonen, when he returned to competition in the Tour of California after Paris-Robuaix, said he hadn’t raced enough to have good form. But no one told that to Peter Sagan or Vincenzo Nibali who both took off nearly as long. I believe they raced a week later at Amstel Gold, but we “off” for the best part of a month. And Sagan is undefeated so far in the Tour of California.
Then have Wiggins who raced in Romandie and then not racing all of May and planning to come back for the Dauphine in June. I can’t imagine not being flat after that much time of not racing.
Obviously I have no ability to investigate the issue. But to me it seems pretty weird. It is only a recent thing. I guess I started noticing it 7-10 or so years ago. Now all the guys are doing it. I don’t know the “proper number” of race days that a guy should do. I used to race over a 100 race days in a season pretty consistently. That was with at least two or 3 two week stage races. But for some guys now, the number of race days now are ridiculously low.
It seems so strange that these guys can not race for months upon months and come back at the same speed and strength as they were before. Contador did it that year after the Tour. Valverde sat out for his wrist slapping and then came back at full speed, winning the hardest stage of the Tour Down Under and finishing 2nd overall. I find it nearly impossible that you don’t race for the best part of 2 years and can come back at nearly the same level as you left.
Well, I don’t have any viable answers. Maybe someone out there does?
Maybe they keep their handling skills by simulation.
Stephen Roche, past Tour de France, World Road Race Champion, Giro Winner, father of Nicolas and now an UCI appointed member of the Professional Cycling Cancel, made a few statements about the problems with the sport, in his view. He talked about using cars to get back to the field and unzipped jerseys. Jonathan Vaughters, Czar of Garmin, called Stephen out, and said there were many more important issues than these silly ones.
I would tend to agree with Jonathan in the big picture, but I am sick of these guys getting pushed back up through the caravan when they have a problem. It is full on cheating and I think the officials need to get some balls and start calling the teams on it. The sticky bottle is bullshit. The fake adjustment of the brakes is bullshit. The spraying the topical antibiotic while holding onto the car is bullshit. The deal is, you have to pedal your bicycle from the start of the race to the finish of a race. That is what you signed up for. You have to pedal it and propel it yourself. No timeouts for mishaps, crashes, mechanicals, nothing. Pedal from start to finish. It’s a very easy concept to understand.
I don’t have a problem on drafting through the caravan to get back to the field. That is a part of the sport. I don’t see a way that you could or should stop that from occurring. But this acceleration, holding on or getting a bottle or fake bicycle adjustment has to stop. It is completely unfair and stupid.
Case in point was yesterday’s stage at the Tour of California. The race leader, Peter Sagan, got caught up in a crash on the first big climb. I was just about ready to ride myself, but wanted to watch him get back on. I got my phone out, for pictures, because I knew it was going to be wrong. The guy held on to a bottle and got towed away from George Hincapie, who had also fell, and a small group. Then he motor paced for a bit. Again, held onto another bottle and accelerated up to 30 or so, and then shazam, there he was, back in the field a couple kilometers later. And this whole time, the Garmin guys and RadioShack were stringing it out in the front, when they knew that a bunch of guys had fallen. (That is a whole nother matter.)
I’m sorry, but you should have to pay a penalty for the unfortunate occurrence of falling or having a mechanical. Sure, no one wants the race to be decided by either one of those problems, but, it is a part of bike racing. If you think that it’s okay, then we should just make a rule that the rider gets to hold on to a motorcycle and go back up to the position he was before the accident. But, that isn’t the rule. And I don’t want that to be the rule. I think the guy should get back up to the group either using the caravan or having his team come back for him. Those are the two choices.
I’m sure the riders and teams tolerate, and participate too, because when it happens to them, they would like to do it. But, that doesn’t make it right. In reality, Peter Sagan used less energy in the bike race because he fell than if he would not have fallen. That is a fact. It is bullshit. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have won if he didn’t do it, but that isn’t the issue here. The UCI needs to start enforcing the rules. They need to do it slowly, so not to penalize someone too harshly for something that has been tolerated for so long. But this has to stop. The sooner, the better.
This was right after he got going. He was behind this group until he held on and blew by them. I guess that is the advantage of having the first car in the caravan.
Then he motor paced for a bit......
until....he got ahold of his car again and dropped the Rabobank guy.
And all the time, these guys were not letting up waiting for all the guys that fell.
Yesterday I went out for 90 miles. I’ve been pretty tweeked the last couple weeks. Yesterday I felt better. Better enough that I’m thinking about trying to maybe race this weekend. I still am not having much luck standing up with any type of power, but I am better than I was a few days ago.
Anyway, there is a perfect race for me, the Crawdad Kermesse, down in Harrison Arkansas, on Saturday. The guys there have been asking me for months to come down and race it. I actually saw them the day after I fell in Joe Martin and told them that I planned to have their race be my official first race after falling event. I really didn’t have any idea at that time if that would happen, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibilities now. Plus, how can you not go to a race with the name Crawdad Kermesse.
The course is only 3.6 miles and has 400 feet of climbing per lap. It sounds pretty hard. It has a point that is over 20 % grade. I love challenging courses. I like short circuit races. So this is perfect. Plus, the race is being held in conjunction with The Crawdad Festival. I have no idea what to expect there, but it is a true Kermesse in that since.
Anyway, here is a link to the race. If you don’t have anything else going on, come on down. Sounds like a good time.
Yesterday was a good day to ride bikes. It was in the 70′s and the wind was hardly over 10 mph. It was Mother’s Day, so I didn’t expect much of a turn out. Plus, Bill, Brian and the other TradeWind Energy guys were in St. Louis at Tour de Grove. Anyway, we did a loop south and then west of Topeka. I like riding west. The road to Harveyville crosses the Santa Fe Trail. There are signs signifying the trail ruts, but I don’t really see it. By the time everyone had turned back, there were only 3 of us left, me, Teddy and Catherine.
I knew I was going to be in for an all day pull. Which is fine. I got into an okay rhythm after stopping at 40 miles for water. I actually ate a piece of pizza at the Casey’s. Maybe I need to do that more often before races, because I felt pretty good the whole way. Not great, but nothing like I’ve been feeling like. When we got back into Topeka, we had a 20.4 mph average for the ride. Considering the pace for the 1st half, that was pretty good. And considering it was headwind all the way home, it was excellent.
It is great here right now. It has been raining pretty consistently, so everything is green. But, with that, there seem to be more bugs out. The other day when I was riding with Joseph, he got stung by a bee and a wasp. Catherine was stung by a bee yesterday. I was stung by something too. Bigger than a bee I think, but I’m not sure. There is a picture of the stinger below that Catherine removed from my chest.
I’m going to try to ride for 4 or 5 hours again today. I have no top end, but that is okay. I use racing to get that back.
Stinger. Pretty weird looking.
Catherine and Teddy riding through Burlingame Kansas. I love the wide, brick street.
This is in Harveyville Kansas. A tornado went through there about 3 weeks ago and smashed the place.
I've been only eating salad for dinner recently. It is that time of the year when you crave more fresh fruits and vegetables. The garden in front is going crazy with lettuce and spinach. I did eat some tuna yesterday, so got a little protein.
Talk about a man that lived a full life, Carrol Shelby was the epitome of that. He flew airplanes, raised chickens, raced cars, made chili powder and designed unbelievably beautiful automobiles. Click here to read more about his life. He did treat the world as a playground. There is no question about that.
I was watching some silly Jim Carey movie last night and there was a line that said, “The world is a playground. We all knew that when we were kids. Somewhere along the way we lost that thought.” Or something like that. I was thinking about that later when I was walking Bromont and I think that is true to a certain extent. Many people forget that they can still do child like things and still be adults.
Quite a few years ago, the father of my high school girlfriend was thinking about getting a new bicycle. He called me up out of the blue and asked me about what kind of bike he should be looking for, etc. I told him I’d bring a bike over to his place and let him try it out. So, I loaded up a MTB bike and drove over there. I thought he’d be more comfortable with the upright position than that of a road bike He was in his 50′s and said he hadn’t ridden a bike since he was a kid. After I got over there and explained how the shifting worked, etc. he took off. I was surprised how unstable and frightened he seemed riding, something like a kid just learning how to ride. He was a pretty athletic guy, so I assumed he knew how to ride a bike. But, it he didn’t very well the first couple minutes.
Anyway, after a few minutes, he got it down pretty good and disappeared for 10 minutes or so. I wish I was literate enough to describe his facial expressions, in detail, when he returned. They were of pure joy and freedom. I had been pretty intimidated by the man for all my life. I’d met him when I was hardly a teenager. But, after seeing him relive his youth, and realize what he’s been missing, by riding a bicycle for only 10 minutes, I realized that he wasn’t that much different than me. It was a pretty good moment for both of us. That was the first time I’d seen someone transform right before my eyes. I’ve seen it since, a couple times, but nothing nearly as personal or to that extreme.
As cyclists, most of us, obviously, aren’t main stream. It takes a certain person to dedicate such a large percentage of their lives to something as “silly” and “indulging” as riding a bicycle. But, we’ve learned through the many, upon many, hours of pedaling, that the process of living a lifestyle of a cyclist is way more fulfilling than just pedaling around for an hour a day. Our fringe benefits apply to most aspects of our lives. It takes a certain amount of discipline to allow yourself not get caught up in the adult world so much and see the world through the eyes of a child. When you do that, it makes life much more enjoyable.
Yesterday I rode around 100 miles. It was actually 98, but I didn’t have the time to ride the extra 2. I would have, just because I hadn’t done a three digit ride in such a long time, but was at the repair shop for my van at closing and had to pay and pick it up.
The guys at the repair shop were into building race cars and were pretty interested in my bike. They couldn’t believe how light the bicycle itself was or the wheels. They were probably used to hauling around old steel Schwinns, so my bike was a shock to their knowledge. Anyway, when a guy asked how far I had ridden and I told him 98 miles, he couldn’t believe it. He kept going no way, over and over. He said lots of things, one about my ass and others, but one thing I remember is something about monotonous repetition.
I never considered it much, but I think that to the layman, cycling seems like it is all about repetition. Monotonous, I don’t know if they think that, but this guy did. Anyway, that is exactly the opposite of how I view the sport.
The only repetition is of the pedals going around and around. I figure I’ve ridden somewhere around 500,000 miles. With an average cadence of 90, that makes close to 150,000,000 pedal revolutions. But, what he doesn’t realize is that it is second nature. Nearly an extention of my body.
I rode out a road here in Topeka named Burlingame the day before yesterday. I’ve ridden the road probably close to 1000 times. For the first few years riding, it was nearly the only way I ever left town. Anyway, I never tire of the road. Cycling allows me to witness change first hand. The same road over and over again is never the same. The seasons change, the fields mature and recycle. I have been watching this new baby horse grow the last few weeks. Around every corner there is something that is the same, but always a little bit different.
This doesn’t even take in racing. Racing is hardly ever close to the same. I’m not much into redoing a race two days in a row, like I did a month ago in Dallas. That is just from a personal perspective. I don’t like to compare how I feel one day to how I feel the next day on the exact same course. But that wouldn’t mean the race is the same. Put the same 100 guys in the same race day after day and you’ll never have the same results. It is impossible. The dynamics of a bicycle race are unique only to that race, never to be repeated again. That is one of the thing that keeps me interested in the sport. The ever changing evolution of it makes it exactly opposite of monontous.
But, to realize all the little nuances and minute differences in each and every race/ride takes quite a long while of observations. It is one of the things that makes the sport so wonderful.
Is this what the average uninformed spectator sees at a criterium of 60 laps or more.
Yesterday I was having a pretty great day. Everything wasn’t going perfect, but I was trying to make the best of it. I had expected to get my van back on Tuesday, but here it was Thursday and still no van. I called the shop and the guy said they had changed all the parts and were just doing the alignment now.
So I got on my MTB and decided to take a loop of the city. Exploring on my bike was one of the things that got me hooked on cycling intitially. I love riding around towns and see what you miss driving around in a car or what you don’t get enough of walking. I especially like riding in alleys. Alleys are a small window into a perspective of people’s lives that you don’t normally see.
I ran into a super interesting man on the bike path. He was blowing the path free of debris. He had this micro blower on wheels hooked onto an old Schwinn and was riding slowly down the path. It was another one of those situations of people who are working behind the scenes to make everyone’s life a little better. I talked to him for a while. He was a retired, 72 year old lab tech, who liked to roller blade and was tired of having stuff on the path, so he decided to do something about it himself. He had done over 6 miles of trail the day before and 6 that day. He wasn’t too happy with the parks department. A pretty interesting guy though. I can’t believe I’ve never seen him before.
Then I went down to a coffeeshop and had a cup and a muffin and read 785, the local Topeka magazine about groovy things. Then I started meandering my way over towards the alignment shop. I went by the building I roofed to check a couple things out and headed down the alley behind it. A couple blocks down, there used to stand a really old limestone house that was encircled with scaffolding. A super interesting mason lived there. I talked to him a few times over the years about the right mortar to use on 100 year old brick. The house was raised last year sometime when I was gone. I assume that means he is no longer on this planet. It is now just a lot where the house stood.
I noticed a mulberry tree at the back of the lot, near the alley. I hadn’t eaten many mulberries this year and decided to pick a few handfuls. I was picking mulberries and reminiscing about hot summer days when I was a child, when low and behold, a police car comes rolling up.
He stops, unrolls his window and asks me what I’m doing. I tell him that “I’m eating mulberries”. He then asks me if it’s my property. I think a second about why he would ask that, but go ahead and answer “no”. He asks me if I think that is okay. I hesitant longer, trying to figure out what he expects me to say, and finally answer what I think, that “yes, I think it is okay picking mulberries off a tree in a lot”.
Then he says, let me see some ID. I knew it was coming. I think I kind of laughed and said something like, “you have to be kidding”. He doesn’t say a word, but gives me an menacing stare. I think about it for a couple seconds. I didn’t feel like I had to produce any ID and I normally wouldn’t have even had it on me, but I was going to pick up my van, so had my wallet. Anyway, I took out my wallet and gave him my driver’s license. He called it in. It took a bit. He handed me my license back and said that I should be movin’ along. I never said another word to him after the “you have to be kidding”.
I don’t get it. I wasn’t dressed like a dirt bag. I had on jeans, a white t-shirt and my MTB shoes. Anyway, it kind of bummed me out. I was having such a nice day and he threw a wrench into it. I guess that is what makes life interesting. I had met this inspirational guy, that was doing me a service by clearing the bike paths of stuff. Then I see the other part of society, that is supposed to be doing me a service, but has somehow evolved into something else. I’m not quite sure what else it is, but it isn’t something I particularly like.
Up until recently, I had hardly ever had to produce a license to a police officer for anything other than a speeding ticket. Now, it seems like on a monthly basis, I’m having to do it for virtually no reason. I guess I just happen to be in the wrong places at the wrong time. But, I like being in those places at the times I’m there, so I guess it is something that I’m just going to have to get used to, no matter how much it rubs me the wrong way.
Anyway, the day didn’t get better. The van wasn’t repaired. A new bushing they put it failed I guess. Taking Bromont around is always something to look forward to. He ran a couple miles, decided it was too hot or something and jumped into the creek and wouldn’t get out forever. He likes swimming, so I guess it wasn’t that bad. I rode 35 miles with Bill. My shoulder and back are worse than last week. I can’t stand and am tweeked climbing sitting down. I thought since I felt okay last week, it would be much better by now. That isn’t close to the case. It’s only been two weeks, I need to remember that, but it’s hard.
I ran into this nice man clearing the bike path of debris.
I stopped and talked to him a good while. His name is Roger Steward and lives up on top of the sledding hill here in Topeka. The machine is a Yardvark. It is actually a small blower on wheels. Pretty interesting.
The mulberries were hanging and calling my name.
I'd only eaten a few handfuls before the police showed up.
The scene of the “crime”.
I've always liked train & tracks. I like what they represent to me - Movement of things efficiently. I think they nearly always make interesting photos.
The day got longer when I took Bromont for his run and he did a 90 degree turn into the creek and wouldn't get out for 10 minutes.
For some reason, I’ve been replacing a lot of rear derailleur cables recently before or after the club rides. I’m not sure with Sram or Campy shifters, but Shimano shifters have always had a tendency to eat up rear derailleur cables up inside the shifter body itself. My brother is notorious for having the cables break, in races and training.
Anyway, there is a new guy from Florida that is riding with us now and his shifting sucked yesterday. We stopped after 1/2 an hour and I messed with it. I realized pretty quickly that the cable was suspect. It wasn’t shifting good up or down. So when we got home, I told him I’d look at it for him.
Just like I suspected, his cable end was frayed. Pretty badly really. He only had a couple more rides left on it. Anyway, I had heard that he had taken his bike into a local shop to get worked on last weekend. He said that his derailleur hanger was cracked and that he got a new one. Plus he said he had paid for a tune up. It surprised me that he could have gotten his bike back after a tune up and it shifted like that.
But, there is a huge difference between a race mechanic and a local bike shop mechanic. A race mechanic fixes a bicycle like he would if he was going to be racing the very bike when he was done. He fixes it and then will usually take it out for a short ride to make sure it acts the same off the stand as it did on the stand. The same with everything else he does. A race mechanic realizes even a very small problem with a bicycle can be the difference between winning and losing. Or winning and finishing sometimes.
Most race mechanic I know have raced bicycles sometime in their lives. I don’t think it is mandatory that is the case, but it usually is. I think this gives them an appreciation of how perfect a race bike has to be at all times.
I think the average person would be surprised how many times a bike get washed. From a riders point of view, I think that the team race mechanics wash the bikes way too much. Especially since the addition of power sprayers all the teams are hauling around. Power sprayers can do a number on the bearings of a bicycle. I do understand if you have to wash 18 bikes or more a night, a power sprayer makes the job quicker, but it makes the longevity of some of the parts on bicycles much shorter. But, the team mechanics usually have a fairly unlimited supply of parts, so that is of little concern for them.
The teams I’ve ridden on have always had good mechanics. That is something I miss riding on a local team. The relationship between a rider and a mechanic is a special thing. It takes a long while for the relationship to form. But after it does, it is a true bond. The mechanic knowing exactly how the rider wants his bike to be in every instance. There are very few people I would allow to work on my bike ever. I’ve been fortunate having some of the best guys in the business as team mechanics. And most are good friends still.
When one thinks of a bike race mechanic here in the US, Bill Woodul's name is on the forefront. Bill was around when I first started racing. I did many European and South American trips with him. He might be the most colorful person I've ever known.
This is Calvin Jones. He was with me on the Levi's Team. He now works for Park Tools and teaches at the Bill Woodul mechanic's clinics.
I go through a box of these cable ever other year. It is amazing how fast they disappear.
I found this photo at a website that tells you how to properly wash your bike. It is overkill, but okay.
It's probably not the best idea carrying diesel around in this. I use a little diesel on the chain, some use kerosene, and then just use Dawn dish soap in water. Pretty simple.
I can fix a car. There are a few things I don’t mess with. Replacing windshields and such just doesn’t make any sense. Actually, any repair that takes expensive specialty tools, that don’t need to be done very often, are the ones I don’t do. Front end work falls into this category most of the time.
And paying someone to do front end work is a repair that you rarely get much satisfaction out of. The few times I’ve had it done, it doesn’t fix the problem much and it seems to cost way too much. Actually, all car repair seems to cost too much relatively.
I’m not sure when it happened, but I think it was sometime around when the on-board computer started recording misfires, etc., but somewhere down the line automobile repairs seemed to skyrocket. The repair shops, dealers, etc. would say the devices to read the check engine light, whatever, were so expensive that they had to charge more. It was total fabrication. An OBD2 scanner now doesn’t cost hardly anything. It tells you nearly exactly what is going on with your automobile. You can go down to Autozone, and probably other parts stores, and they will scan your car for free.
Anyway, a few months ago I took my van to get aligned. My front tires were wearing uneven and there was a shutter in the steering wheel. I was driving out to Colorado later in the day and needed the van back. The guy called and said I needed new ball joints and it was going to be $900. I can do ball joints myself, but still would have had to take it back to the alignment shop so I told them to go ahead and fix it. They did and it didn’t do anything. I was gone for a month or so and when I went back, they looked at the van again and said it needed another $1500 worth of work. New bushings, springs, shocks, etc. Nearly everything. Anyway, I didn’t want to put on the new tires I got until I got the front end straight and wasn’t ever going to have those guys touch my van again.
I’d planned on just replacing everything on the front end myself, but with this separated shoulder, I’m pretty much unless in that regard, so I took it over to East Topeka to another alignment shop. The shop was immaculately clean and the guys seemed honest. They said I needed new swaybar, stutrod bushings, a tie rod end and that was it. Around $800 including the alignment. So, they have it. I haven’t gotten it back yet, but I am crossing my fingers.
I’m not sure why the industry of auto repair has a bad rap as a place to get ripped off. It probably is more to do with ineptness than with dishonesty. Fixing cars isn’t an easy thing. There aren’t enough smart guys in the industry to handle the volume of business. So, we all end up with work that doesn’t satisfy our expectations. Even if the work doesn’t repair the car, the costs involved usually are so absurd that you can never leave with a good taste in your mouth.
Finding a competent auto mechanic seems to be nearly as important as having a good doctor nowadays. If I had another lifetime, I wouldn’t mind being a fulltime auto mechanic. I’m really a blue collar type of guy anyway. It takes lots of mental concentration, plus it is very physical. But, that isn’t happening in this lifetime. I have my hands full just fixin’ my own cars.
I took my wheels over to a tire place to have the new ones put on the aluminum wheels. It is amazing what the weight difference is between the steel and aluminum wheels. I wonder if that makes a difference in fuel economy?
Even though my van is diesel, it rarely gets over 20 mpg. My insight get way better mileage, but is very, very small.
Someone pissed someone off big time here. I rode by this car a couple days ago. It made me daydream all ride about the circumstances involved. I decided there was probably a woman involved. This was only the tip of the iceberg here. The tires were flat and the roof was pretty scratched up.
