While all evidence points to the contrary, the 20th century’s greatest twatwaffle LE Gunderson may have got something at least half right after all. Of course it’s about the bike, otherwise we’d be runners. But there are other factors that contribute to what makes us Cyclists which can often be overlooked completely. Not the clothes we wear, or the training we do, or the races we love. The people we ride with and the places we ride in help define our Cycling experience.

I’m reminded of this every Tuesday. I know there’s a ride on; there always is. Depending on what kind of day I’ve had, I may or may not be looking forward to it, especially at this time of year when the temperature drops and darkness has already cloaked the sky long before rubber meets tarmac. Motivation can go straight out the window, where it quickly shivers and tries to come back inside. No deal, that portal is shut tight. But it usually sneaks back in through the door when the other protagonists enter through it and mill around, happily chatting while waiting for me to get my shit together. What is wrong with these people?

The act of layering up to ride in the dark in peak hour in a capital city is one usually borne out of necessity, rather than recreational pleasure. Commuters do it every day, right? We do it because it’s what we do. Throughout summer, it’s no problem; chuck on shorts and jersey, cruise around checking out the packed esplanade, work up a sweat then enjoy a beer or two before heading home. The ride is more a conduit for the act of hanging out with mates and socialising. Take away the sun, the light and the warmth, and the ride itself holds a more important post. We could just shelve this ride for the winter, leave it as a summer thing to do, and just use the weekends as our chance to drink coffee, pedal, drink beer, repeat.

But I digress; getting back to cycling in the city at night, this is a huge factor in why this ride endures the middle months of the year. The city we live in contributes hugely to keeping us motivated. The first ten minutes may be spent alongside cars on some of the main arteries, but soon we are unshackled from frustrated drivers and are almost alone on the road, in silent darkness, looking back at one of the most picturesque skylines in the world. It’s always at this point that someone says exactly what I’m thinking; “what a night” or “goddamn, I love this city”. If we were just plodding along a highway we wouldn’t be saying anything remotely similar.

The city, and the people I ride with, makes all the difference. My environment is sorted, it’s just left to me and my bike to fill in the blanks.

In most situations, silence is an ominous thing that signals impending doom. Having never been in any danger myself, I base this largely on my experience watching box-office movies. As a general rule, I use Hollywood as the principal source of information on all subjects as they relate to doom and politics, principally because I’m loath to do any “reading” or “research” of my own; the more thinking an actor or actress can do for me, the better. The more glamorous they look, the more trustworthy they are.

For the Cyclist, however, silence signals efficiency. Noise is loss; every creak, squeak, click, clack, groan, moan, or other emanation of sound from our machine or body is energy escaping the system. Energy that we put into the system through hard-fought application of The V. That includes uncontrolled, dog-like panting or wheezing, and the creaking and clicking of body parts, by the way.

Sound is energy carried on waves of vibrating air. Sound escaping our bicycle or body as a consequence of us applying pressure to the pedals is evidence that some portion of our energy is being expended to produce noise instead of moving us forward. This makes noise intolerable and infuriating in equal measure and in extreme circumstances may precipitate a Rule #65-violating Millarcopter. Drivetrain noise means loss with every link of the chain that passes through the derailleur and over a cog. A click in the bottom bracket or a creaking in the cleat signals energy poured into compression of bearings or plastic, not speed. Wheezing or panting indicates air converted from V-giving breath into the useless rattling of a larynx.

Silence the machine, control your breathing into a steady, muscle-fueling source, and maximum V will follow. The mind fixates on noises and is distracted from The Work; it is only through the Principle of Silence that we may find Rule #6.

But riding a quiet bike is far from riding in the silent vacuum that signals impending danger. On the contrary, a silent bike submits us to the genuine beauty of our Sport: the whisper of the wind in our ear, the song of a bird who encourages us along our way, the crisp click of a perfect shift, the rhythmic patter of rain on our helmet, cap, or the tarmac as we carve our path along La Vie Velominatus.

But the most beautiful sound of Cycling has come to me late in my life as a Velominatus. My reluctance to ride sew-ups has for many years denied me the sublime sound of a handmade tubular rolling along the road. This world opened up to me early last year when I finally built a set of Golden Tickets for my introduction to the Hell of the North. This year, almost by accident, I wound up riding my Café Roubaix Arenbergs for all of Keepers Tour 2013, glued to the best set of tires available – the FMB Partis-Roubaix. The amplifying qualities of the deep-section carbon rim allows the supple hum of the handmade tubular to sing like Merckx’s mighty rollers upon the rock of Mount Velomis.

This sound inspires. It is a reason to get out to ride. It is a reason to be a Cyclist. This sound is a reason to live.

Vive la Vie Velominatus.

Bicycles and automobiles- can’t we all just get along? @Kah writes about this universal (do aliens have this issue also?) problem of us co-existing with humans in cars. We all drive cars too and have cursed the occasional cyclists for some good reason. Cars are our greatest threat. We can crawl away from our own bicycle crashes, thanks very much. We always lose when a car is involved. Thanks for contributing @Kah.

Yours in Cycling, Gianni

High-visibility jackets offend me. I’m not in the position to judge fashion really, and generally don’t care what other people wear, but something that tarnishes an entire mode of transport as unsafe and dorky is not okay. These garments misinform the general public that cycling is an unsafe activity (look, that cyclist looks like a lit up flare and a Christmas tree had a baby!), they make all other cyclists look like dorks.

Now, I’m not picking on genuinely introverted people, but people who are just less comfortable interacting with other vehicles on the road. As someone truly in love with spinning pedals on the road, I don’t see why there is this reticence to spend time on the road. The footpath is by far the worse option: congested with pedestrians, littered with signs, and unpredictable in its ebb and wanes.

There’s a spectrum of how happy you are with sharing the road: going from very uncomfortable to exuding quiet confidence before becoming attention-seeking and finally there is a thin line to obnoxiousness.

Uncomfortable, more introverted cyclists tend to hug the kerb, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Every potential interaction is exaggerated; every passing car becomes a danger. Confident cyclists who are experienced know when to draw attention to their intentions, when to back off while negotiating between quickly moving cars, and how to tell the difference between a passing maneuvere that is actually dangerous and one that is not even worth commenting on. This comfort around other road users is something you can cultivate, but not one you can fake.

Attention-seeking cyclists and obnoxious cyclists tend to feel more self-entitled. “I’m a vehicle/road user too!” is the common mantra of these cyclists who don’t feel inclined to offer the same courtesy they demand to the other road users. To be fair these rolling douchenozzles tend to be the same regardless of vehicle.

My problem is, the introverts are trying to make up for their meekness with the artificial posturing afforded by the YJA. Their mistaken assumption of course is that this magical garment bestows visibility, and thus invincibility in traffic, leading some to jump to the illogical conclusion that they have automatic right of way in every circumstance by virtue of the highly visible jacket.

Magic jackets are not the answer to safer cyclists. Learning to share the road on a bicycle is the answer. Anticipation, not hindsight.

Fucking cyclists.

We close out the 6 Days of the Giro with our sixth and final installment.

A body at rest, stays at rest. A body in motion, stays in motion. Things get a bit more ambiguous when it comes to a body on a bicycle tearing down a twisty mountain descent at speed, particularly in the rain. But it is here, on the boundary between clarity and ambiguity, where things get interesting.

Cornering feels a bit like you’re stealing from Physics, as if you’re getting away with something. Momentum, as fundamental as it is, doesn’t know what’s good for us and stubbornly wants to carry us on its merry path. The faster we go, the bigger its influence becomes and the harder we push against it, balancing on the knife’s edge between our body’s lean and the bike’s pull. For those skilled in this craft, the bicycle and rider carve through the bend in perfect harmony.

I’m not particularly good at cornering, which is to say I’m not particularly good at descending. Its a shame, too, because given my size I’m not very good at climbing, either. The way to get better is to practice, and not to give Rule #64 too much thought. You will crash if you want to get better, but you mustn’t lose your nerve. A nervous descender is a bad descender and everyone knows where to find bad descenders.

The riders getting the most practice in this discipline must surely be les grimpeurs for it seems they would be riding down all those mountains they’re riding up. The surprising truth is that this does not always appear to be the case; one need look no farther than Andy Schleck to find evidence of that particular postulate. Furthermore, one would think that a professional, who by the very nature of their occupation is quite used to finding themselves on the tarmac, would be most able to come off and not lose their nerve. This, also, doest not always appear to be the case.

The Giro, known for its narrow mountain roads, is won as much on the descents as it is on the climbs. Who can forget the 1988 Giro, which was won on the descent of the Gavia, not its climb. Or the 2002 and 2005 editions when Il Falco used every millimeter of road as he swept through the hairpin bends to distance his rivals. This year, Brad Wiggins had already put himself on the back foot on GC when he came off on a slow bend and spent the rest of the stage riding like his tires were made of glass. On the same stage, Nibali attacked and came off on a high speed corner before jumping back on his machine and rejoining the leaders moments later. The difference is a question of not only skill, but fearlessness.

Day 5 of the Six Days of the Giro continues with an impromptu VSP event.

Lets have a look at where we are in the 2013 Giro. Wiggins must have spent time training in Luxembourg because he’s been descending like a Schleck when things get dodgy before disappearing into the team van to have a cry about it. Hesjedal has put in some good moves and then proceeded to get creamed in the time trial before getting shelled on the last climb in yesterday’s stage. Evans seems to be riding like he did when he won the Tour though he’s sure to get sick before very much longer, as appears to be his usual approach to racing. Perhaps the biggest shock is that Gesink has managed to both stay in contention and on his bike. And Nibbles is killing it, proving once again that moving to a team with a long history of doping is usually all anyone needs to convert from contender to winner.

We’ve also had climbs, rain, rain, climbs, turns, descents, twists, rain, climbs, and more rain. The Giro is proving once again why it is the best Grand Tour of the year.

In honor of the first big climbing stage and with the time gaps already big enough to suggest some bigger, gutsier moves from some of those riders who have already lost time, this could be a zinger. Most likely some wild cards will escape and stay away, which makes naming your picks even harder than usual, but surely the favorites who are already behind will lay down massive helpings of The V to try to claw time back. The irony is not lost on me that the climb has the word piano in it, when you know the last thing that would ever happen is that they would ride up there at an easy tempo.

Get your picks in by the time the clock goes to zero. There isn’t much time, so get to it.

We’re into day four of the Six Days of the Giro series, let’s talk trash. 

Yes the Tour de France started a few years before the Giro and has always been credited as The Tour to win. You win the Giro, you are a stud. Win the Tour and you are a stud for life. Why is that? Is the Tour longer, tougher, more murderous, more beautiful? In the 2013 edition, the Tour is a mere 25 km longer. The number of stages are the same. The Tour has earned a prestige it will never willingly cede. The Tour is it. Teams send their best riders. No one uses the Tour to train since the world championships were moved to September.

Obviously the maglia rosa is better looking than the maillot jaune, no argument. There is no arguing about podium girls; let us never argue about podium girls. Unless they are dudes, like that overly-politically correct scene where guys were pushed onto the stage a few years back. Either go Chippendale dancers or nothing if you can’t handle beautiful women on the stage. The Giro trophy is much hipper than the Tour fruit bowl. Is a leader’s all pink bike nicer than an all yellow bike? If not tarted up too much a De Rosa pearlescent pink paint job is beautiful. The same can be said for a beautiful yellow frame, but when the hubs, spokes and everything else on it matches the paint, arguing which is nicer is a lost cause.

Is France a more beautiful country to race through? From the rider’s perspective, they might not opine. They are looking at the jersey 1.5 meters in front of them or the next hairpin corner coming up fast. Day to day they might not even know which country they are in. From the high definition helicopter shots it would be a hopeless argument: both countries are incredibly varied and beautiful, like the podium ladies. Pastries, France, café, Italy. Before the advent of traveling team chefs, riders were at the mercy of whichever overworked, disgruntled chef was employed by the hotel. The French are renown gastronomies and renown for the terrible pasta they would serve Tour racers. If one was always fueling up on pasta and rice, one was much happier in the Giro.

What the Tour defiantly has over the Giro is Paris. Yes it is a parade but what a parade route. Riding into Paris and doing laps on the Champs Élysée; that’s how you end a Grand Tour. The Giro doesn’t always end in Milan, like this year’s finish in Brescia. They know the ride around Milan is not something to always be repeating. The Italians are more inclined to send the Giro route over strade bianche, gravel and dirt passes and up viciously steep ski station goat paths. Sometimes they go too far but they deserve credit for their craziness. The Giro has unfortunately always been about long transfers. Couple that with Italian inefficiency and riders may often eat too late and sleep too little. The French can whisk teams around the country in hours on the TGV. The Tour routes are more conservative, hitting the familiar climbs, avoiding the active volcanos. 

If the Tour is the big show it’s partially because more money flows there, in almost all directions. There is a long standing fight about how little of that money flows towards the riders. The Giro has started to improve the team’s TV revenue sharing. It’s a smart move, if it benefits the teams financially, they will want to always be invited, they will take it more seriously, the Giro will improve. This could eventually put both the Giro and the Vuelta on a level with the Tour. Then we would really have something to argue about. 

]]> http://www.velominati.com/six-days-of/pink-or-yellow/feed/ 88 http://www.velominati.com/racing/dirty-romantics/ http://www.velominati.com/racing/dirty-romantics/#comments Wed, 08 May 2013 20:24:08 +0000 brett http://www.velominati.com/?p=23444 Di Luca, Simoni and Rujano on the gravé

We’re into day three of the Six Days of the Giro series, and it’s time to hit the dirt.

If ever a Keepers Tour goes to Italy, then we’re doing this climb. No doubt. Climbing on gravel up a real mountain, what’s not to love?

In fact, you could probably do an entire Italian Gravé KT, such are the number of iconic dirt roads in the country’s great races. The Gavia (before they went and ruined it with tarmac), Plan Des Corones, Strade Bianche, they’ve all seen their share of legendary racing on their unpaved surfaces, but the one that stands out most for me is the Colle delle Finestre.

Coming from a mountain bike background, the notion of racing road bikes on dirt really tickled my fancy, as if it needed tickling anyway; so when the organisers of Il Giro announced they were sending Stage 19 of the 2005 race up the Finestre, well, we needed to witness that one live. But the month of May wasn’t on the radar of TV stations in Australia back then, and even July only got selective attention. If you were lucky enough (meaning you could afford it) to have pay tv, the genius idea was to subscribe to Italian station RAI for the month, and watch every stage of the Giro live, complete with Italian commentary. It didn’t matter if we weren’t proficient in the language, we could recognise the riders’ names, dammit.

So we gathered that Saturday night, with a gut-full of pizza and Nastro Azzuro to fuel us through the late/early hours. We had an interpreter, or so we told one of the gathered throng who spent the night believing the updates coming from the K-Man were actually genuine. “What are they saying now?” “Ah, still climbing.” “Getting tired.” “Di Luca still on the front.” To this day, that guy probably thinks Italian cycling commentators are the masters of stating the bleedin’ obvious.

What was bleedin’ obvious was that the racing was pretty good, but the spectacle on the mountain was amazing. Thousands lined the roadside and clung to craggy cliffs, creating a stadium-type atmosphere on the higher reaches of the Alpine pass. Being on the tail-end of the EPO era (I mean, Gonchar climbing with those guys? Come on!), the combatants rode the climb at a fast, even tempo; Di Luca, resplendent in all-white of the Pro Tour leader, never left the front for the entire climb, with Simoni and Rujano (an Evanescent if ever there was one) in wheels two and three. They never budged. Maglia Rosa Savoldelli was losing time each kilometre, and Simoni was virtual leader on the road as they summited. Il Falcone used his famed descending skills to pull back time on the descent and save his GC lead. Luckily, Frank wasn’t on the descent and Paolo made it down in one piece this time.

If the stage had finished on the gravelly summit, it would have been decisive, but just for shits and giggles they sent the riders up to Sestriere for some added cruelty. But the Finestre had made its mark on the race, and on me.

Full video of the climb and stage finish:

Oh yeah, they went up it again in 2011…

We continue our Six Days of the Giro series with a look at the troubled bond between Marco Pantani and the Giro.

Some were meant to be tormented, as though it were preordained that their brilliance should be balanced with fatal flaws. These are tortured souls, whose dramatic highs are equalled only by the devastating depths of their lows.

Cycling drinks its fill of these personalities, and climbing seems to attract more than its fair share. Shakespeare himself couldn’t divine a better premise; the discipline most focussed on suffering in a sport totally focussed on suffering will always attract the most enigmatic of sorts. Charley Gaul, José María Jiménez, Marco Pantani; the list goes on.

Italy’s geography seems to lend itself to climbing and therefor suffering. There are mountains from north to south, and it being a narrow stip of a country, there is no occasion to avoid them for very long before any parcourse is once again forced to go over them. Already Monday’s Stage 3 of this year’s race is a lumpy thing with two categorized climbs and Stage 4 has an uphill finish. This will be a race for those able to suffer.

Pantani in particular seemed inextricably bound to the Giro. Even before winning in 1998, he found himself winning some of the hardest mountain stages, though his temperament dictated that for every great day on the bike, he would be pay at least V bad ones. In 1999, he looked to be the sure winner before registerring a hematocrit over the UCI 50% limit at Madonna di Campiglio. In 2000, he returned once again, but was far from his best and rode in support of his teammate and eventual winner, Stefano Garzelli.

He struggled on for a few more years, but always tried to shine in Italy. In 2003, in a heart-wrenching display of defiance, he gave the last of himself in vain before disappearing from the sport for good.

It reminds me of a song written by a man who’s life was similarly tormented, Layne Staley. Perhaps Layne and Pantani were two parts of the same whole.

My pain is self-chosen
At least, so The Prophet says
- Layne Stayey, River of Deceit

Maybe Layne could have been a Cyclist in another life.

We’re heaping coals on the Giro frenzy that’s burning in all corners of the Cycling world by issuing the second installment of the monthly BigRingRiding Sur la Plaque series while at the same time kicking off the Six Days of the Giro series where we’ll post six articles on the subject of this, the best Grand Tour of the year. 

Yours in Cycling, Frank

IT’S GIRO TIME, IT’S SPRING. COME CORRECT ON Rule #33 PEOPLE, OR YOU’RE LETTING THE FUCKING SIDE DOWN. GINO AND FAUSTO WOULD NOT BE HAPPY.

Twiggo is dreaming of a Giro-Tour double. He has sent out mixed messages about his Tour ambitions. Will he use the Giro as the ultimate Tour preparation or will be burn all his matches in May and hope he can find another pack for July? He has abandoned his successful 2012 Tour run-up strategy of winning every stage race he entered the previous spring. Now it’s the seclusion of Mount Doom of Tenerife, his coach and his watt meter his only competition. Team Sky is supporting Wig with a very strong squad, including superman, Kanstantsin Siutsou and with Cav no longer a teammate, it’s all the knights of the round table for Sir Twig.

Will the curse of the god-awful Astana kit continue to haunt non-Kazahk riders? Can Vincenzo’s Italian mojo overpower its powerful pale blue and yellow aura? Roman Kreuziger was finally able to win a big race once he shed that kit and pulled on one of Bjarne’s Saxo jerseys. Maybe it was more Bjarne and less jersey that made the difference.

Ryder gets no respect as the defending champion. His little dance at the end of Liège-Bastogne-Liège showed he is fit and ready for a fight. He can time trial, he can climb. Personally I have to back the local boy. And I always hate the overpowered, overwhelming favorite (read Team Sky here) in any race, unless that racer is Fabian Cancellara. No one can say Fabs has won a race this year surrounded with a team as strong as Sky’s. The Shack is just the Shack or a shack. Once Cancellara leaves for the Swiss “I AM” team, it’s lights out in the shack. Frandy, don’t forget to turn out ‘em out when you leave.

If Cavendish wins the first day’s sprinter’s stage he will be in pink. He may be out of it after stage two, a team time trial.

But this is the Giro: crazy, unexpected, beautiful things can happen. The spinning wheels of fortuna are less predictable in Italy as they are in France in July. The betting window is now open. The complete start list is not yet available, an incomplete one is here and shall be updated soon. So sleep on your picks, wait for all the teams to make it official, unless you want to go with the obvious all Sky podium. The race begins Saturday so don’t Delgado away a Grand Tour opportunity.

Change creeps in slowly, it has a way of taking the seemingly immutable and eroding it over time. It’s inevitable; if the great canyons were carved from the solid rock of Mount Velomis by such a soft thing as water, then it should come as no surprise that the Velominati V-Kit would also change with time. As David St. Hubbins says, “The more it stays the same, the less it changes.”

It was time for a reworking of The V-Kit; it had gone unchanged since we introduced it in 2010. Our Guns are one part turbine and one part road hazard warning, after all; we’re laying down The V and you had better look out. The V-Bibs were redesigned accordingly. We also made the decision to discontinue what has been confusingly called the Zwarte V-Bib; in solidarity with Rule #14, we have done away with the option for white side-panels and are going Spinal Tap Black.

The Zwarte V-Jersey took a cue from the Witte V-Jersey and gone pure Zwarte; it has lost the white side panels of the original design along with the black-to-gray gradient. Both jersey designs incorporate the turbine/hazard signs on the sleeves and pockets, which are an adaptation of the double-slashes we’ve taken to using to delimit items in both the site design and the upcoming book design (scheduled for release June 20). We also love the nod to old-skule Descente.

Then came the question of supplier. It began with Velominati needing more control over the product and more flexibility from the manufacturer. At long last we decided to part ways with our long-time kit vendor, Castelli. It felt like a high school breakup; we love the people at Castelli USA and their products but in the end, it simply wasn’t going to work out. We sent them a note on a sheet of paper – carefully folded into a secret triangle – and pretended to busy ourselves with our locker’s combination so it didn’t look like we were watching them read it.

The Velominati have high expectations. We expect the best from ourselves, and we expect the best from our gear. When we talk about quality, we are looking beyond brands and labels and looking at materials, craftsmanship, passion. When I pick up a piece of kit, I expect to feel the labor of love its maker put into it; I expect their love for the sport to help fuel my own. This is why I love old Campagnolo bits and struggle to find that same love for Shimano.

Cycling kit should last a few seasons. It should be durable. Its color should not fade in the sun. It should be cut from materials that optimize performance. It should be comfortable – so comfortable you hardly know you’re wearing it. It should Look Fantastic in sun, in rain, in snow, in mud.

In searching for a new vendor, we tested every bit of kit you can imagine testing. The fact is, they are all more or less the same. Most custom kit is made in the same factories with slightly different specs; at the end of the line, a different label is stitched on. In the end, you buy a brand; the quality of the product is a matter independent. That isn’t to say the big brands can’t and don’t produce quality. It is only to say big, anonymous factories hardly feel like the path of the Velominati.

In the end, we settled on a tiny, private company called Kallisto based out of Poland. I love the story. The owner is an ex-Pro racer who’s dad was a bespoke kit tailor for Pros around Europe. (As it turns out, the Pros don’t wear off-the-shelf kit just like James Bond doesn’t wear off-the-rack suits.) After retiring from racing, he apprenticed with his dad before he took over the business. Fast-forward a few more years and he decided to break out into custom kit design. The first time we talked, he filled my ears with the nuances of different weight lycra for bib panels to balance durability, weight, and the modern notions of supporting the muscles and promoting blood flow. This chamois or that chamois, jersey stretch versus its wicking properties – he went on and on. This is a man who not only knows his trade; he loves it. He lives it. He breathes it.

Kallisto sources all their materials directly from Italy and has a small factory where they make everything in-house. And custom should be custom. We chose the lycra, the fabric, the cut of the jersey, the placement of the seams – everything is customized and selected by Velominati. And the result is astounding. We’ve been testing the kit and refining the design since January and I’ve found all my other kit starting to collect dust in the drawers. They even took nine days of eating cobblestones on Keepers Tour without so much as a wimper. Well, maybe they did wimper, but if it did, I couldn’t hear its whimpering over my own.

With that, the next V-Kit order will close at midnight on May 10, with delivery expected early to mid June.

Thanks for supporting Velominati. Vive La Vie Velominatus.

Young riders rise through the ranks with such promise. We all know the story; the rider who borrows a bicycle and enters a local race and wins. He decides he might be good at going batshit fast on a bike. Mom and Dad buy him a klunker for his birthday and he takes out a license. He starts winning most races he enters locally and rises to the regional level, then the national.

He has learned to deal with pain in a way most people could never imagine, and has come to understand that this – not his ability to smoothly turn the pedals – is his true talent in Cycling. To reach the next level, it’s time for sacrifice. He first stops eating cakes, then stops eating most things as he comes to the conclusion that every Cyclist comes to at one point or another: being heavy makes this sport even harder than it already is.

Then it’s off to the international level where he gains the attention of a Pro team and lands a contract. He takes well to Pro life and rises through the demanding ranks quite quickly. At a young age, he learns to look into the cold, deadly eyes of Bernard Hinault and stare back. He learns to hold the wheel of the most ruthless competitors in the world; he learns to drop them. He suffers like he’s never suffered before and thrives on it.

Then, in a flash, he finds himself on the world stage, in the limelight of one of the biggest races in the world. The public adores him for it. Then they predict his future success, and as quickly as it came, his greatness is crushed under the weight of expectation and he disappears first into the bunch and then into retirement.

Such was the case for poor Franco Chioccioli, cursed the moment his adoring fans named him Coppino, Little Coppi, after winning the 1991 Giro d’Italia. 

André Leducq was a complete French Badass, with a capital B. He was third, below Merckx and Hinault for Tour de France stage wins. Nicolas Frantz was an equally Badass Luxembourger. He rode to more victories than Frandy Schleck shall ever attain in a few lifetimes. He did win the Tour de France.

The crowd is obviously pleased to have these thin, healthy supermen in their village. Bicycles are properly leaned against a wall. Their caps look a little dusty. Studying the glasses a person might guess they are enjoying some of Belgium’s finest beverage. Maybe, in the late 1920s the French brewed excellent beer. Are they drinking before a race or after a race? Can one look this good after a race back in the 1920s? Let’s assume this is post-race. Someone won, someone didn’t. Two rivals can still have a laugh and a glass of quality malted recovery beverage to make the day complete. These brothers of the road are enjoying some beautiful ale and having a nice time doing it.

As we have pointed out many times, we didn’t invent these Rules, we just wrote some of them down.

There are always at least two ways to accomplish any task: properly and improperly. Drinking beer from a glass, not the bottle; carrying a full umbrella instead of a miniature fold-up; stirring your gin martinis, not shaking them; wearing french cuffs with a suit, not button cuffs. The Velominatus, of course, is drawn towards doing things Properly, even when doing so comes at the expense of convenience.

While its true that doing something correctly may not always be the same as doing something the easy way, when it comes to the practice of leaning one’s bicycle against a wall, doing so properly is is maddeningly easy. Bicycles have wheels and wheels are what enable the mode of forward locomotion that brings us such pleasure. The fine print indicates, however, that these wheels are not biased towards forward motion. On the contrary, wheels are quite happy to roll in any direction they please, provided gravity or an external force provide ample reason to do so. And, despite being more than sturdy enough to bound down a cobbled farm track at high speed, bicycles are rather delicate things not suited for rolling off unsupervised. Derailleur hangers are easily bent, paintwork is easily scratched, and bar tape and saddles easily scuffed when wheels start unexpectedly rolling and steeds fall over.

For this reason, it is critical that one practices safe leaning:

1. When leaning your loyal steed against a well, care must be taken to lean the bike by its saddle and by its inside hood. There are several reasons for this including the notion that neither the saddle (made of lightly padded leather) nor the hood (made of rubber) are as wont to slip as is the frame. Leaning it by the hood also ensures the front wheel is pointing parallel to the wall, not away from it, offering an additional bit of insurance against an errant roll-away. Should one be leaning their bicycle against something too low to make saddle contact, the rear wheel and hood makes for a viable alternate.
2. Lean the machine with the mechanicals facing out. This will help avoid inadvertently crushing the derailleur against the wall and bending the rear derailleur hanger. That said, among Keepers polled, only one (who, in order to protect Brett’s identity, shall remain anonymous) made the case that keeping the mechs facing inward protects them from being brushed up against. Use your discretion here, but if leaning in, make sure ample space is left to prevent contact with the drivetrain and the wall.
3. When leaning a group of bikes against the wall, lean them all in the same direction such that the front wheel of the bike to the left overlaps with the back wheel of the bike to the right. This allows for a compact stacking of machines, prevents tangling of bars or other forms of damage-inducing fraternization between bikes, and allows any of the bikes to be removed from its place in the line without moving adjacent machines. While point two allows for the choice of facing in or out, when leaning groups of bikes against the wall, care will be taken to lean them all in the same direction and in this case facing mechanicals out will help prevent accidentally catching a wheel in a derailleur.
4. If leaning a bike against something smaller than a wall, the safest way to do so is to lean it only by the rear wheel, ensuring ample lean is given and that the orientation of the bicycle is chosen to minimize likelihood of the machine suddenly making a break for it. Leaning it against just the saddle is also an option should a stable leaning point be available. Under no circumstances is one to lean the bike by any part of the frame.
5. If your bicycle should begin to fall or to move in any way, you are to drop whatever you are  doing and use your own or a nearby companion’s body to arrest the fall and prevent damage of any sort to the machine. You should be willing to sacrifice personal injury by way of means to this end. Be it your child or your bong, drop that thing and make haste to rescue your machine. Rule #4, fucktards.

Vive la Vie Velominatus.

Unfortunately the weather for 2013 L-B-L looks a lot nicer than the 1980 episode.  Then again, if the weather looked that bad, they might have cancelled the race or put them on buses before Bastogne and driven them back towards Liege. Who would be the Badger of the peloton of this year’s race in those conditions? Discuss. As always, we have @wiscot to thank for another great historical guest article. 

Yours in Cycling, Gianni

Bernard Hinault’s tires swished and hissed as they plowed through the snow and slush. They were chorused by his rhythmic heavy breathing, the dull roar of the attendant cars and motorbikes that hovered behind him like a hallelujah choir (or a bunch of vultures), and the occasional cry of support from a hardy fan beside the wintry road. Whatever the outcome of the Frenchman’s audacious solo attempt to win Liege-Bastogne-Liege, his team car and the media wanted to be there to celebrate his win ‒ or feast on his failure.

Snow had been ever-present since the first of Liege-Bastogne-Liege’s 244 kilometers and, according to L’Equipe, Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle said that some riders picked up their race numbers and didn’t start – they returned to their hotel. As the race wore on the weather got worse inflicting massive attrition upon the peloton: by kilometer 70, 110 of 174 starters had abandoned. Hinault, who despised bad weather, had, in fact planned on retiring at the Vielsalm feeding station but instead, changed bikes and continued on, partially because his teammate Maurice Le Guilloux was still in the race and as team captain, his pride meant he wanted to be the last to abandon. Hinault also persevered because he had a strong bond with L-B-L: in 1977 as a new pro, Hinault won the race, and in 1979 he finished second.

At the top of the Stockau, Belgian hardman Rudy Pevenage led by 2:15. Twenty kilometres later Hinault and his companions Ludo Peeters, Silvano Contini and Henk Lubberding pulled him back. With 80 kilometers to go, Hinault attacked on the Haute-Levee. Perhaps too cold to respond or hopeful that he couldn’t ride 80 kms to the finish by himself, no-one else joined him. This raised two intriguing questions: would Hinault tire and succumb to the literally bone-chilling cold or would he register one of the most audacious classic wins in living memory? Undeterred and displaying the unmatched mental and physical fortitude that were rapidly becoming his trademark, the Renault rider built a lead of a minute, then two, then three. “I didn’t look at anything. I saw nothing. I thought only of myself” he later said. By the end of the race he would arrive in Liege not just alone, but an astonishing 9:24 ahead of second place finisher Hennie Kuiper. So emphatic was this winning margin that Kuiper recalled “When I finished, there was almost nobody on the line. Radio and television media were already gone.” By the time the 21st and last finisher, Jos Wilstein, crossed the line he was almost 25 minutes behind Hinault. It was one of the most impressive and emphatic victories in a monument ever.

How bad was it? Even though he finished 11th, Duclos-Lassalle told L’Equipe in 2010 that he didn’t even remember finishing. Apparently, many of the abandoned (and never started) riders who did remember were warmly ensconced at the Ramada hotel 200 meters from the finish line. Hinault, knowing where they were, saluted them from his bike “like a general reviewing his troops” according to reports. If there can ever be any doubt as to why Hinault became “le patron” of the peloton, it was victories such as this that brutally reminded his rivals that he was in a different class from them when he put his mind – and legs – to the task at hand.

Heading to the podium to accept his laurels, Hinault was relieved and happy that he had won such a prestigious race. He was also in some dry clothing. However, upon returning to the team hotel, the story is told that he had to be given a tepid bath, because a hot one was too much for his chilled body to bear. Yet one thing bothered him as his body thawed – he couldn’t feel the tips of several of his fingers. The first reaction was that this was just a temporary loss brought on by the hours spent in the cold and wet. Unfortunately, this was not the case. As the weeks, months and years rolled by the numbness remained, and permanent loss of feeling in one or two fingers (accounts vary) were his lasting souvenir of one of the most epic classic rides in cycling history. Even today, temperatures in the 30s mean he dons gloves because his fingers are still so sensitive to the cold.

Hinault’s victorious ride was that of a champion in more ways than one. Even though he was only beginning his fourth season as a professional, he had already won Liege-Bastogne-Liege (in 1977, also in poor conditions), Ghent-Wevelgem, two GP des Nations, two Tours de France, two Dauphine-Libere and one Vuelta. Later in 1980 he would win the world championship road race at Sallanches on one of the most arduous courses ever used. Less than halfway into his career his palmares already put him among the all-time elite of cycling. Yet what truly puts Hinault’s 1980 Liege-Bastogne-Liege win beyond the normal expectations of such a great rider is that Hinault was never keen on the cold and wet: no-one would have blamed him for climbing off. But he didn’t. He stayed on and won.

Likewise, Hinault hated Paris-Roubaix, claiming it to be a lottery of a race where the most deserving victor didn’t always win because of bad luck and circumstances beyond their control. His opinion on this matter never wavered and he could have treated the race with the contempt he felt for it. Instead, in 1981, he won, beating such Paris-Roubaix specialists as Moser, De Vlaeminck, Kuiper and DeMayer in a six-man sprint in the Roubaix velodrome. This was despite two crashes and several punctures that would have seen lesser riders give up before reaching the finish.

Hinault retired in November 1986 at the age of 32 when other riders would have gone on for a few more highly-paid years, showing occasional glimpses of past greatness, but getting upstaged regularly by younger riders. Not for Hinault; his past achievements, his pride, his ability and his mental fortitude meant he showed no fear to the competition, the weather or the parcours. This is what truly elevates champions above even great riders: when they have every reason to quit they conquer their opposition be it competitor, weather, terrain or their own psychology in the most emphatic and decisive manner.

This is why we, as Velominati, love and cherish the Monuments. Each edition of the famous five has the distinct possibility of creating another legend in our sport. Today’s professionals ride alongside the ghosts of the past; their wins are put into context. Regular riders such as us can ride on the same roads and get a personal appreciation of what the professionals do. Few sports offer such opportunities to relate on the most physical and emotional levels. Liege-Bastogne-Liege, first run in 1892 – 120 years ago! – raises more ghosts than the rest and whatever exploits the riders perform this year, the still-living spectre of Bernard Hinault will haunt them all.

There is something to love about a race that makes a deviation to its route for the simple joy of sending a fleet of professional riders up a fiendishly steep and narrow ramp. The Cote du Stockeu offers zero benefit to the route from a logistical standpoint – in fact, all it does is complicate things. On the way down from the Cote de Wanne – usually at breakneck speed – the race enters the small down of Stavelot. Just before hitting the town proper, you make a right turn and ascend a wall that does little more than become steeper as it twists it way up for 2.4km. Riding the route with Museeuw during Keepers Tour, he quietly tried to dissuade us of riding it, “You don’t need to do this for me; I’ve never enjoyed this one.”

At the top lies the monument to Merckx and his 525 victories. Upon reaching it, the route takes a sharp left turn and descends right back down to exactly the same spot from which it climbed up. This is why I love this climb so much; its just free pain for the racers – a steep climb just for the sake of making their legs hurt a bit more. Shortly thereafter, the route rolls down a few valleys and arrives at the Cote de la Redoute (The Fearsome), which signals the beginning of the finale. Its too far from the finish to make a winning move, but if you’ve got bad legs, you’ll be left behind to suffer all the way to Ans.

Amstel has been sorted, as has La Flèche. Both were won by an outsider. I don’t think the big names will let that happen again. Surely Gilbert and the Sag Wagon will have their act together this time around.

Check the start list and enter your picks in by the time the countdown clock goes to zero at midnight on Sunday morning Pacific Time. The winner of this monument will post for the next year with the LBL Winners Badge. Good luck.

The simple art of riding a bicycle can be undertaken in many ways. Watching the stylish commuters of Amsterdam going about their business in the most Casually Deliberate way makes you wonder if indeed anyone is actually going about any business at all. I don’t know how anything ever gets done in that city; everyone seems to be on their way to the coffee shop or on the way somewhere else from the coffee shop or just generally moving about with no actual destination or modus operandi to speak of. Sometimes the only indication that these aren’t Dutch zombies riding around the city is their abilty to smoke and text while riding, something I’ve never seen a zombie do successfully.

The French are also renown for the laidbackness, and while the volume of Gallic bicycle commuters is nowhere near the levels of the Dutch, they still can lay down some serious Cas Del around the rues. And god knows what those women are talking about on their phones while cruising along, but it still sounds sexy as hell to me. A good reason not to learn the language, as they could be just ordering a pizza, and to hear that accent reeling off a list of meaty toppings would spoil the fantasy, I’m afraid.

Which makes me wonder if Damien Gaudin is in fact French. I’m sure he’s got a voice like honey over velvet, skin as smooth as polished alabaster and eyes you could swim in, but boy, he sure does make a meal of riding his bike. Oh, he can ride it fast for a long time, for sure, but he looks like he’s trying to rip the headtube from the frame with his own bare hands kilometre after kilometre. Bottom brackets must cringe when they see the 189cm, 79kg figure approaching, and his time trial bike is thankful it only has to endure the punishment over a short distance.

With shoulders more often seen on a footballer than the snake-like ones of most cyclists, and knees and feet more at home caving in someone’s skull in a bar brawl, Gaudin is a picture of raw power on the bike the likes the French haven’t produced since The Badger ruled the peloton. While Msr Gaudin exudes none of the supple stroke or total Rule #5 class that Le Blaireau oozed, he may well have a post-racing career pushing people off podiums just like his country’s national icon.

We came tantalizingly close to adding a foray up the Mur de Huy during our excursion to Liege-Bastogne-Liege during this year’s Keepers Tour. But good sense and The Anti-V prevailed, as they are wont to do, and only two of us were left wanting a dig at the most notorious finishing climb in the Classics season.

I write this, then, woefully ignorant of the ferocity of the climb, particularly when combined with with a few hundred k’s of racing and scaling it several times in the process. Such is the nature of this event, and it doesn’t even have the dignity of holding a weekend spot on the calendar for its troubles.

But the Huy is a brute. Steep, long, and steep. Did I mention steep? We’re talking 26% steep. And long? We’re talking 1.3km. Even the best climbers in the world fade when the effort is dished out too soon. Keep the powder dry was ever thus.

Throw the formulas out the window; its best to resort to your eye of newt for this one. Whoever wins will have good finishing speed on an uphill finish and it also won’t be Andy Schleck. That’s about all the farther anyone can narrow this puppy down, the rest is guesswork. Enter your picks by the time the countdown clock goes to zero.

Good luck, regular rules apply.

I might have posted this last year as well, but this is my favorite finish of La Flèche to date, Pre-Cancerian Pharmy notwithstanding. He takes a flier in the only spot on this climb with some easing of the gradient. Its beautiful work, that.

Last year we saw Evelyn Stevens out-last Marianne Vos at the top of the Mur de Huy. The take home message is don’t start one’s charge too early. Vos should know this finish, having won it four times already. It’s hard to know who is on form in the professional women field as the races are too far apart to infer much from the last race. This is their whole Ardennes campaign; one race, no holds barred, save nothing. Who is a badass? Is Marianne tuned up?  Is she still hungry enough? Are there some more young guns looking to make a name for themselves? Ponder all this carefully. The race is Wednesday. To contest one has to first be there in the top ten at the bottom of the Huy. A good team is required to chase down the troublesome breaks and help shape the final kilometers. To win one has to have the best power to weight ratio and the sense to use it at exactly the right time. Experience with this race shows. People who have botched the finish have returned to win. Timing is almost everything, superlative power climbing ability is the rest. The start list is here.

I hadn’t planned to ride them every day. In fact, I had planned to only ride them once and let other people ride them. But, genius that I am, I forgot my ceramic brake pads and had to source some new ones which was a maddeningly difficult process given that Europe observes something in the neighborhood of 363 holidays per year.

I was more than a little apprehensive, to be honest, of riding a lightweight set of carbon wheels down the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix – let alone on three separate occasions and two days on the kasseien of Vlaanderen. At long last, I got my hands on some brake pads, but then my hopes of riding my Golden Tickets died with the harp hiss emitting from Stefano Museeuw’s back when when he took my FMB-clad Nemisis through a hole big enough to lose him in. One thing for sure, the young talent has the “Look Pro Stop at the Side of the Road in Disgust” nailed. I suppose it helps when you’ve got the Lion of Flanders as your dad and mentor.

But truth be told, the Cafe Roubaix Arenberg wheels were amazing to ride, especially on the tarmac. On the cobbles, they were noticeably less compliant than my box-rim tubs, but they more than made up for it in speed and featheriness on the tarmac bits. And that is the element we so often overlook about Roubaix: we identify so heavily with the 50km of Pavé, but we so easily forget there are 200km of tarmac to deal with as well – which is why Museeuw ultimately lost to Tchmil aboard his ill-fated Bianchi “Throne”. When judging a wheel, all these aspects must be weighed against one another.

One thing of note, however, is that on the roughest secteurs of pavé – in particular the Trenchée and Carrefour – I found it more difficult to discover my rhythm than I did last year. Could it be that the lightweight wheels bounced too much and spent too much time going up rather than forward? I find that notion easier to digest than the notion that there was something amiss with my riding.

I proclaim this knowing full well the wrath I’m sure to receive: even for the enthusiast, the carbon wheel is the future for every discipline of cycling. While my Ambrossios are much more lovable in terms of nostalgia and good-old-fashioned hardman looks, the strength and stiffness of the Roubaixs outmatched the classic box-rim of the Nemesis in every respect from weight all the way down to trueness. On the other hand, three-cross bladed spokes on a deep-dish rim are a real bitch in a Flemish crosswind.

Yes it is a race named after a barely drinkable Dutch beer. I have enjoyed Amstel beer, brought to our table by a nice waitress, sitting outside in the Dutch spring. Atmosphere is everything. Do the Dutch brew awesome beer? I drank some good stuff in Amsterdam last spring but I’m pretty sure it was Belgian.

Now we begin the Ardennes three race-fest of Amstel, La Flèche Wallone and LBL. Peter Sagan has been resting up, Phil Gil is looking for his 2011 form (or his cortisone), Andy Schleck is suiting up for da ‘Shack. The big Spring Classic boys have moved on to the couch. They are not welcome here. Riding up to the start line now are the tough riders who can climb and climb again. Power to weight ratios must be honed to the razor’s edge to win these Ardennes races. Cancellara has talked of losing weight to be competitive in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Just winning Ronde van Vlaanderen does not qualify you to win in the Ardennes races. Unless your first name was Edddy and last name Merckx.

Enjoy the start list. The betting window is open. Do not let Pedro Delgado sit on your couch.

Was Paris-Roubaix the best of the Spring Classics in 2013? Milan-Sanremo was amazingly photogenic, Ronde van Vlaanderen was inevitable but Roubaix was just about perfect. We all prefer the wet and gray “This weather is good for us” Roubaix yet this race’s drama transcended the fine spring day in the North of France. There is no better way to understand why they are pros and we are not as when one watches the leaders burn secteur after secteur in the 53 x 17. Humbling is not a strong enough word.

With fifty kilometers left to race it was obvious Cancellara was not in his usual soul crushing form. He was riding a few groups back and not even dominating his own little pack. It was not going to be the Double. He was just another mortal, with no teammates and a lot of young bucks looking to leave him in the dust…and yet.

After a massive match burning rage he was in the lead group of four along with Stybar, Vanmarke, Vandenbergh. Two of the four were Quick-Step teammates. They hammered away toward the end of the Carrefour secteur. Vanmarke and Vandenbergh both looked strong as hell. Had Fabian not bridged up with Stybar spinning for his life right behind, those two big lads were riding away.

When they exited Carrefour it was just Cancellara and Vanmarke.

The evil lady luck was there, not to be ignored. First tempting Vandenbergh to the right gutter, inches from the spectators. He wobbled and his front wheel clipped a civilian. He was on the stones. Zdenek Stybar, moments later spooked to the left gutter and spectators, maybe clipped out of his left pedal for a second. He stayed up but the elastic had snapped. Zednek needed a good draft to stay with those men and he had lost it.

I have many beautiful memories of this race. I know how to adapt to this race, and I like the challenges it poses from a technical point of view but you need the luck. Sometimes it’s like an individual time trial though and along with luck you need to be smart. -F. Cancellara

Evil lady luck was in the gutters on Sunday. Always ride the crown.

While the Northern Hemisphere Velominati were busy arguing about who injected what in the old races they’d been using to distract themselves during their indoor torture sessions, down South a bunch of like minded strangers from the internet decided that coffee, hills, sunshine & beer seemed like a great excuse to meet up for a ride…the reflections from the 2013 CogAdelaide are as follows.

DaccordiRider’s Take

The day for the Cogal finally arrived and of course the first question is which pair of legs had decided to show up. My good legs had been conspicuous by their absence all week but when I got out of bed it was immediately apparent that the “good sensations” had returned (a sigh of relief may have been heard). A bit of breakfast and I rolled down the hill to the start point and the morning caffeine. Not sure what sort of crowd would turn out it was good to see 10 people there. Coffee consumed we hit the road. The first challenge of the day was Windy Point, a 3km climb, where a pecking order could be established. Mrs Daccordi and Mike had shown up on the Tandem and immediately put the pressure on. Matt skipped across to their wheel and Myself, Mikael and The Harminator tried to hang on before realizing we still had 130km to go and better to settle into a more realistic tempo. The powerful Roleur figure of Asyax, my team mate The Chivenator and Sam were close behind.

With introductions made and some testing of guns done we settled into a good tempo and a chat as we went up and down the rolling hills terrain. Turning onto the flat, headwind dominated 6km run into Willunga the tandem upped the ante and chatting came to a halt as wheels were scrabbled for and focused on. To lose the wheel would mean being spat out the back in short order. As we got into Willunga I briefly considered visiting the bike shop for more bar tape, mine was pretty much chewed through!

A refuelling halt was called to get ready to ascend Willunga Hill. With the tandem pushing on due to time constraints whilst we refuelled, we were free to work a more sensible pace up the hill. A stiff headwind kept attacking options to a minimum. At the top we turned right , as the pros will do next Saturday and tracked across the top of the Range before the puncture fairy decided to pay The Harminator a visit. Tyre fixed we set off before a loud “Bang” announced that she wasn’t finished with The Harminator yet. Another tube went in and we headed down Wickham’s Hill and across to Meadows for our final break before the 60km back to the city. Finally picking up a cross/tailwind we headed back to the final set of climbs before descending into the city.

The first of these is up Aldgate Valley Rd, one of the most scenic roads in the area, and a good Sur La Plaque climb if the legs are good. The group split up a bit here as pressure was applied on the first ramp of the climb and we all made our way to the top. Here hostilities were ceased and we worked our way up to Stirling, up nasty Ayres Hill Rd (12% for 300m) and to the deciding point of the ride. From here there are two ways to Adelaide, straight down the freeway bike path, or up to Mt Lofty, a steep climb of 9% for 1.5km which requires a bit of Rule V with 130km under the belt. I’m proud to say all took the harder option, no quibbles, and were then rewarded with the sensational 10km descent back into Adelaide via Greenhill Rd. We all then met up at the pros crit race in town for Beer and yarns. And how could it be any better than to see Jens breakaway 200m into the first race of the year as we drank and chatted? The day finished up with a meal in Norwood and a glass of Red before heading home. Personally this was a brilliant day of riding and socializing. Many thanks to my fellow riders.

Asyax’s Take

When I read there was a Cogal in Adelaide coinciding with the Tour Down Under, I thought “why not?” The VMH had cousins there, I checked and could get Frequent Flyer flights, so why not! I arrived on the Friday night, my carbon steed nicely packed in away in my new bike bag – I had flown with my MTB before, but never taken a roadie on the plane – would it be all in one piece? Would the wheels still be trim?

I nervously unpacked the case and put her back together – no damage. Took her out for a test ride, to check seat / bar positioning, and to suss out the location of the start on Sunday, so as not to be late. A quick bog lap of the Adelaide city square saw things all working correctly – I had just changed the cluster over to a 27-11, and was a bit nervous about whether I had the gearing running quietly. I did not want to upset fellow Velominati by breaking the Principle of Silence, and plus a skipping/ jumping chain was not acceptable given the demands of climbing on the Cogal profile. Managed to catch a glimpse of the Lotto team entering the race compound.

I pulled up at the Red Berry On Sunday morning, and was glad to see Mikael in his Witte Velominati jersey. Others gradually turned up, til we had 10 starters including both Mr & Mrs DaccordiRider (the latter on a tandem she uses to train sight impaired cyclists with Mike, another trainer as stoker). After pre-ride Espresso, we set off, and soon were tackling the first climb of the day of Windy Point. The lead group took off with Mikael and Harminator surging ahead. I was tempted to join them, but as this was the first 10km of a 150km ride , I wanted to last the distance and not go too hard too early. I did not want to cramp towards the end as we had to get over the 700m Mt Lofty late in the day.

I was a little concerned as most of the guys were 2/3 of my size and as this was my first venture out with Velominati, I hoped I would not embarrass myself. I joined the wheel of another and we paced ourselves up, wondering when the climb would end. I live in the hills in Perth, but most of ours cap out at about 300m, with most climbs going for 100-200m max. I had done the work, but perhaps not at the speed that the others were riding at. We regrouped at the top and headed south to the vineyards of McLaren Vale. On the down grades the tandem roared past like a road train, and we eventually caught it on the ups. Another decent climb on “Humpty Hill” saw us on the top of the hills (~400m) and rolling through twisty, tight turns towards a fairly solid push into Willunga. The somewhat famous (in Oz anyway) climb of Old Willunga Hill awaited us and I was keen to ride it so I could appreciate the camera angles as the pro’s tackled it (twice) the following Saturday.

We stopped for a coffee and nature break in Willunga, but the Tandem was keen to go and they set off early – that was the last we would see of them. The climb up old Willunga was fine – most of it at 9%. Harminator and Mikael surged ahead again as I settled into my rhythm and followed them up. It was a lovely climb, following the contours up, with glimpses of the golden fields and azure blue sea in the background. I passed over the “crown” at the top, and the others were waiting there (only about a minute) and we set off across the top of the range, riding 2×2 on quiet roads. A nasty piece of wire caused three tubes to be consumed on Harminator’s steed before we found the little bugger, and we pushed on to the lunch stop at Meadows. We were slightly over the half way mark, and riding well as a group, all taking turns. Temp was in the high 20’s (C). Scenery was fantastic – and no flies!

The final push home saw us heading over the back of the range through Mylor, Aldgate, Stirling and the 750m peak of Mt Lofty. This area is part of the main race stages on the TDU, and credit to Mikael on his parcours. This was some of the nicest riding I had done in a while. We passed the 100km mark and I was somewhat concerned that with 40km to go and at about 400m above sea level, we were heading downhill – what mongrel of a climb awaited us up Lofty??? The route Mikael had picked out through Mylor to Aldgate was spectacular – a narrow, tree lined road, in a steep sided valley with creek at the bottom. We climbed steadily up at about 3-5% and the Garmin altimeter clicked over slowly upwards – yes The V-meter was working, but I like to know where I stand and was still worried about cramping towards the end. Some nasty little pitches saw us into the picturesque villages of Aldgate and Stirling before the final ascent on Lofty. I was riding solidly – I think Harminator had some cramping going on, but I was starting to get hot-foot in my left shoe.

With the radio mast of Mt Lofty in sight, Mikael offered the idea of cutting the climb off and heading down the freeway – bugger that, I did not come all this way to not get to the top of Lofty, and tackle that sweet descent down the old road. We passed the Mt Lofty Lodge (this has been the area of a particularly nasty bushfire about 10 years ago), and headed on a 10km descent to Adelaide city. The view from here was stunning – with the city and sea in the background, this is why we ride!  Warning signs said to watch out for koalas – more concerned about the descent thanks. A quick run down Greenhill Road saw us back before I knew it and after a few riders peeled off back home, Mikael, Harminator and I headed to the Belgian Beer Café for malted beverages and frittes. Time to get those shoes off – as evidenced in photo.

After a few flower-pots of Hoegaarden, and general back slapping – apparently I “ride well for my weight”- Harminator, we decided to part ways for a shower/ change and regroup that evening to watch the pros in the Prologue for the Tour Down Under on a 30-lap criterium in the Adelaide streets.

The first lap saw perennial crowd favourite Jens Voigt and a young rider from UniSA in a breakaway that lasted until about lap 25 until they were consumed and spat out the back of the Peleton. Being my first international bike race, the wind gust from the peleton as they flew past was particularly impressive, even to the non-cyclists in the group. Sprint trains from GreenEdge, Blanco and Lotto Belisol were trying to establish their sprinters in position for the final lap, with Greipel eventually being too strong for local Matty Goss. Note to self – iPhones take shit photos in this situation.

Thanks to @Mikael Liddy and @DaccordiRider for being the host Cogal-istas – a fantastic day out, great company, perfect weather, timed with some world class racing. Bigger and better in 2014 guys!

Harminator’s Take

According to Mark Twain, a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo but doesn’t. By this measure, if you consider the bike an equivalent instrument of pain, Mikael Liddy and Daccordi Rider are true gentleman. During our six hours in the saddle I sensed a good deal of pacing and soft pedalling from our ride masters as we visitors worked to keep the gaps from opening. And still I bonked. Yes Gianni, bonking is dumb but what could I do? I misunderestimated my food plan.

I guess the story of the day reflects pretty much every Cogal story so far. Nobody turned out to be using Velominati as a grooming ground for axe-wielding homicidal mania. Great coffee, clean drive trains, generous, quality characters riding all day on the best routes the region can offer, then beer. Xyaxx had come all the way from Perth – a solid effort indeed.

We were joined by a posse of hired guns who happily drove the pace. Matt, Chiv, (Laurens Ten) Sam and then there was Mrs Daccordi (whose initials happen to be VV) piloting a tandem with Mike riding stoker. This was a formidable combination when the road pointed up and devastating when it pointed down. Winding through the hills, I don’t know when I lost my bearings. I think it was around 1993. I decided it was good enough to follow wheels because I didn’t know the way.  Classic roads – just like the Ardennes in drought. Sam and I missed the tandem move into overdrive on the false flats approaching Willunga and had no hope of chasing on. We battled the crosswinds and watched the train disappear.

After regrouping for coffee, Daccordi and Chiv paced us up Willunga. It was too early to be burning matches but I had to give it a nudge, just because I was there. It hurt so good. The tandem was up the road somewhere (I suspect Mrs Daccordi doesn’t do Casually Deliberate) so the rest of us spun through the vinyards and brown paddocks. At the Meadows feed station I was pretty toasted. Sam asked the waitress if she could administer the lunch via a drip. Memories of the return to Adelaide via Sterling are a blur of vineyards, eucalypts and followed wheels. As always seems the case, there was a final stinger/grinder before the glorious descent. I wanted to take in the panorama but the flowing bends were too good to pass up.

Massive thanks to Mikael and Daccordi and everyone for a heaps good day. They even arranged for a Chimay at ride’s end which was the best bad idea I’ve embraced in years. We got together that evening for a front row view of the Tour Down…oh wait…I remember now…not a real race. (Jens drove a two man break and everything).

Mikael Liddy’s take

When @DaccordiRider floated the idea of a Cogal in our backyard at TDU time I thought “Oh yeah, won’t be a bad way to set up a ride with a few different locals…we might even tempt a couple of interstaters who are over for the race.” Little did I know we’d have two Velominati make the trip over specifically for the cogal (with Asyax heading home to WA the very next morning), no pressure about putting on a good show then!!!

The route was done, the legs & bike were primed (although a ride with DR & his Mrs proved they weren’t as good as others) so all was left was to show up & ride like a lion. That of course didn’t take in to account getting a little too Charismatically Poisoned on the preceding Friday & spending most of Saturday battling a Ventoux sized hangover (oops), however Sunday came, and after a couple of espressi, I was good to go.

As we rolled towards the first climb of the day, there was a little nervous chat combined with plenty of scoping out trying to judge who might be packing Howitzers disguised as Starter Pistols. Much fun was being had with Mrs DR & her stoker Mike who were doing a very reasonable impression of the moto-based camera teams at the TDF with Mike in charge of the video camera. As the road pointed up we quickly realised that none of us were going to catch the tandem although my Grimpeur mate Matt gave it his best shot, I suspect knowing he’d be covering less than half the distance of the rest of us helped his enthusiasm though.

Some lovely rolling terrain delivered us to the vineyards of McLaren Vale & discussions were had around were the first nature/sustenance stop might be taken, with a consensus reached of Willunga we set off along the straight false flat & I managed to tuck in behind the tandem with DaccordiRider right behind me. What we didn’t realise though was that behind us there’d been something of a scramble for wheels and a break had been formed…one thing I will say though, following a tandem as pro as this while you’re on the rivet is the easiest way to work your way in to the tunnel. Watching the legs working in unison was a very mesmerising feeling.

Pit stop completed, the tandem had taken off to travel at their own pace and we set out to tackle Old Willunga hill. I’ve only ever tackled this either by myself, or with a massive crowd as part of Amy’s Ride so was pretty keen to see how I went in a small group of riders at a pretty similar level. Safe to say both Harminator & DaccordiRider equipped themselved more than well, while Sam, Chiv & I rolled over the KOM crown line astern with Asyax quite close behind when you consider the 20 odd kilos & considerable extra height he’d hauled up there. As mentioned above the Puncture Fairy soon joined our group of 5 & enjoyed the company so much she did in two more tubes before she’d had her fill from Harminator. Frustrations dealt with we had the twisty descent of Wickham’s Hill (understandably Harminator took things gently) before some reasonably forgettable km’s to the next break at Meadows.

More forgettable km’s after refuelling before we came to Mylor & one of the nicest riding roads in the hills of Aldgate Valley Road, Daccordi Rider, Sam & Chiv took off Sur La Plaque but I sensed our interstate visitors may be lagging slightly. After pacing the boys up to Aldgate, Sam peeled off home & we tackled what would make up the last couple of km’s of the stage to Stirling later in the week (although they’d do the climb 6 times) before heading up what’s known as ‘B*tch Hill’ to most cyclists or Ayer’s Hill Road to the street map.

At this point I did offer Harminator & Asyax The Anti-V option of a cruise back down the old freeway to the city instead of the final 3k rise to Mt Lofty, but in the spirit of Merckx both refused point blank. We ground our way up to Mt Lofty house before a slight dip gave the impression that pain was over, unfortunately for the uninitiated they didn’t know that the dip reversed itself in a 200-300m rise that easily exceeds 15% for one little bite at the guns.

Climbing done, it was time for the party piece, 15 minutes of descending with panoramic views of bushland, city & sea. DaccordiRider & Chiv respectively ducked away for work commitments while Asyax, Harminator & I rolled through the city to the Belgian Beer Cafe for frites & amber recovery fluid. After regaining our strength we ducked away to freshen up before watching how it was done properly & getting a lesson in breakaway riding from none other than Jens Motherfucking Voight. Put simply, an awesome day that I can’t wait to do again.

It looks so easy on the television. Well, no, actually it looks pretty bloody hard. We think we have some understanding of how they suffer, how their bodies can take the continual beating. But we don’t really know. Not even by riding these abominations they call roads twice in the space of a few days can we understand the scale of the thing. Not even by witnessing firsthand a master of the cobbles effortlessly turning the cranks, cruising past us as if on a cushion of air by comparison to our bed of nails can we fully comprehend what it takes to ride these secteurs with any panache, style or speed.

While we witnessed a Roubaix masterclass from The Lion himself today, a new name could be added alongside his on the long list of legends on Sunday. Or it could be a former vainquer adding to an already impressive palmares. But as we’ve seen in the past, and even the past hours, luck plays as big a part as skill, talent and fitness in this most beautifully horrible race. And it plays an even bigger part in picking the top five in the VSP.

All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the spectacle. We’ll be doing the hard yards at the side of the roads of Troisvilles, the Troueé, and the Carrefour. Study the form guide, then throw it out. It’s no good to you here.

In the meantime here’s a look at a bunch of nobodies and a guru riding a secteur on today’s recon. The lesson comes at around 0.15.

Keepers Tour 2012 veteran @ChrisO is back to his racing ways in Cyprus. Yes, this is not Northern France; let us take a brief respite and go to warmer Mediterranean climes. This is ChrisO’s second guest article about his racing; his first was a stage race, the Tour of Sharjah, last year. 

Yours in Cycling, Gianni

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

 It was with more than a little anxiety that I signed up to ride the Tour of Cyprus for my Dubai-based team, Frankie’s. The Tour of Sharjah last year had been way out of my league, but since then I’d lost about 7kg – the weight of a whole bike – scored some podium places in local Masters races and recorded my fastest times in the mountains. So they promised that Cyprus would be different – more at ‘our level’.

The Build Up

We didn’t know much about the race. It would cover about 100km a day for three days and it had some climbs was all. With a week to go we discovered it WAS climbs. Each stage began and ended with a neutral section sandwiching a 30-40km uphill timed course in the middle. Short enough for people to try to smash it, and long enough to be extremely painful. The second day even started on a gradient – bad luck if you missed your cleat. Nasty, brutish and short. As if the potential suffering wasn’t enough, our team was also hoping to get some results. They were even expecting me to be part of it. Our team ‘manager’ Toufic had somehow persuaded two of the UAE’s best cyclists, Bader, a former national champion, and Murawwi to join us. And Youcef, from Oman, who rode with us at the Tour of Sharjah would be there as part of his build up to the World Masters Championships. I was to be his right-hand-man – then again, maybe he was left-handed. But we had competition. A new mainly-expat team from Dubai called Air Arabia, led by one of our former riders. They were clearly taking it very seriously and there would be bragging rights, and a bit of needle, at stake.

Day 1: Larnaca to Limassol

We’re split in two teams. An A team entered in the Elite, led by Bader, and the B team in Masters led by Youcef. Apart from Air Arabia there are a couple of other teams from Lebanon, some local Cypriot and Greek teams and some Germans who look fit, lean and well equipped. About 100 riders in all, but many clearly there for the ride not the race. The previous day was howling a gale and we’ve woken up to rain and grey skies. We will the blue spots on the horizon towards us and as we arrive at the start zone in time for pre-ride espressos the sun has made a cameo and the brave or determined are removing gilets and armwarmers.

It rolls out with a long neutralised zone. Too long – about 50km riding behind a car. On the first day the bunch is nervous, with sportive and race riders mixed together, plus it’s still windy so everyone wants to be sheltered. It has all the mental stress of riding in a peloton, without the chance to do anything about it. We notice Air Arabia have notes about the parcours stuck onto their top tubes. Not here just for the halloumi then.

The pace picks up as the timed section starts and we hit the first short hill before the main climb of the day. It’s a winding road with an average 5% gradient but steep corners at 8-10%. The attacks start coming and I concentrate on staying near the front – Don’t Lose The Wheel recited over and over in my head. The cyclists’ mantra. This section is only 4km and if I can stay with the group there will be a downhill to get me to the main climb.

I’m focused so much on keeping the pace and staying tight I don’t even look around until we’re more than halfway up. I’m shocked. We’re down to about 12 people. Whoah… how did that happen, and how the hell am I here ? Even two of our good climbers have gone. At the same time Bader and Murawwi respond to an attack and keep going clear, but Mike from Air Arabia is with them. That’s good – two against one with Youcef and Paul, my room-mate from the Tour of Sharjah still in our selection. Races are filled with mental calculations but basically they all boil down to a simple question… ‘Is this going to be hard, or harder ?’

Now we’re over the top and heading downhill before the big Cat 2 10km climb, which someone on Strava has named the “Agata Kelakka Brute”. Quite. The average is also just over 5% but with a final kick of 10-12%. Ouch.

Bader and Murawwi we can see up ahead and, this is big news, Mike is dropping back. As we take the long climb the group splinters more. I go out the back with some others but keep plugging away. I can still see the leaders, although 500m on a mountain might as well be 500 miles. I know there are only seven or eight ahead of me as Elton, one of the Air Arabia guys catches me near the top. We bomb down together, trying to catch the two riders ahead.

These are mountain villages, in Cyprus, and smooth surfaces aren’t high on the list for countries facing bankruptcy. As we go into one village there are suddenly people at the side pointing to something – not something to avoid in 50m, but something we’re inevitably about to hit. A speed bump AND a pothole. Oh… Fuck . And a 90 degree turn. Fuck… More. I narrowly scrape a wall as I try to scrub my speed. I’m sure I’m about to crash, I’ve got that feeling in my stomach, but miraculously I’m upright, and I’m around, and… what’s that noise ? Is it him ? No it’s me. Puncture – pinch flat.

Now I know how David Millar felt when he tossed that bike into the ditch. All that work, all that hard work and effort and luck, gone in an instant, never to be recovered. Riders come flashing past with looks of sympathy, but the bastards know they’ve just moved up a place. Our support car is nowhere to be seen. I have a tube and pump so there’s no other option. I change it, get back on and still catch a couple. Instead of top 10 I’m 23rd on the stage, although I’m only seven minutes behind, so if nothing else it was a quick change. Despite the bad luck I’m still pleased with my effort.

Today’s stage started at 11am so by the time we get back to the hotel (a different hotel, we’ve moved to Limassol), check in, shower and meet up at a local restaurant it’s 4pm. I eat an enormous filled pita with lamb and sheftalia, a traditional Cypriot sausage. I’m very tired. I just want to sleep but it’s too late. As dinner time arrives I’m still full from the late lunch. I have a little pasta but my heart’s not in it, or my stomach.

Day 2 – Limassol to Paphos

The second day promises to be easier. A long steady climb, with just the small matter of what appears to be a hill start. Surely not. We finish today’s mercifully short and far more relaxed neutral zone and reach the start point to regroup. Yep, they’re going to start us facing up what appears to be a 1-2 km rise at around 5-6%. It goes mad from the start as those who clip in successfully start to power away while those who miss, or get checked by people in front try to catch up. I am caught behind two riders who started in too high a gear but I manage to get around and with a lot of effort make contact with the front group of 25-30 riders.

As we crest the climb and go over some rolling hills towards the main climb my legs are feeling heavy. Normally I sustain a good climb at a heartrate around 160 bpm – anything over that starts to drain the battery quickly. Today I’m at 150-152 bpm and it’s feeling tough. I can’t stay with the lead group even to the first climb. I’m paying the price for yesterday, and in hindsight the recovery was where it went wrong. Read any Tour diaries and the riders will tell you it’s the person who recovers best who wins the race. My theory, looking back, is that with less weight I’ve got less in reserve.

I settle down and try to keep a steady pace. Eventually I catch a teammate and another group joins us as we roll up and over the last kms. I’m 20th on the stage and 7 minutes further back. To rub salt in the wound I get another pinch flat on a metal grating as we ride home, although at least it’s not in the timed section. Now I realise I have to recover better and I need to eat as much as I can. So I do. We stop at a village on the way back to the hotel which means eating sooner – a very good idea. Apart from a short nap I just eat, even in the bath, and over the next six hours I consume:

• Date mamoul (filled biscuit)
• Sliced warm fresh pita bread (x 10 pieces, I lost count) Dips – houmous, raita, olives
• Stifado – beef stew, with roasted Potato. Mmmm.
• Fruit – clementine, banana
• Baklava type sweet (x 2)
• Turkish (sorry, Cypriot) coffee
• Chocolate filled crepe
• Pro Bar – chocolate and peanut butter flavour (eaten in the bath)
• Dark chocolate (100g)
• Chocolate and hazelnut biscuits (thanks Paul, x 3)
• Mocha Frappuccino at Paphos Starbucks
• Half packet of salted almonds (100g)
• Large bowl of leek and Potato soup with 2 bread rolls
• Large plate of salad – beetroot salad, tomatoes, Greek salad, shredded duck salad,
• Large dinner plate – rice, steak in mushroom sauce, pork with apple sauce, steamed vegetables, sautee potatoes, penne paste with bolognaise sauce
• Red wine
• Chocolate cake, berry compote, two scoops of ice cream

I don’t know how many calories that adds up to but I’m feeling slightly sick just from stuffing it all in. As the results are posted that night we see that our A team with Bader, Murawwi and Paul is comfortably in first. Bader has calmly won both stages and tops the GC. But the times go on the top three in each team and we see that the B team is third, behind Air Arabia. This matters, a lot, because the top three in the A team are all guest riders and Toufic wants to make sure nobody can say we only won because of our ring-ins.

The main reason we’re behind is because of my puncture and as we plan for the next day it’s clear that it will be down to me to make up for it. Our team leader Youcef will probably do better than their top rider, and Gilles in second might be equal with his opposite number or at worst behind by a little, so the top two cancel each other out. I have to finish two minutes ahead of their third rider, Ahmed, to have a chance of claiming second spot.

Day 3: Paphos-Kathikas-Paphos

The weight of expectation is something new to me in cycling. I guess this is how team leaders or sprinters feel when a team works to set it up for them. Time to deliver, come up to the plate, shit or get off the pot. Maybe it’s also why riders like Cavendish make such a point of thanking their team – they’re not just thanking them for that day, they’re storing up credit against the times they let the side down.

I’m nervous after my Nibali day, but I feel somewhere in my legs that all the food and rest has helped. Today is a short flattish start then a long 12km climb, again around 5-6% most of the way, followed by a 15km rolling section to the finish. Clearly Air Arabia know the score too. We reach the climb in a single bunch and Ahmed is visible near the front. Despite my tiredness yesterday I took 40 seconds out of him in the last 5-6km so I figure he’s at least as tired as me, and if he’s in front I can mark him until I feel I can attack.

As we climb steadily the bunch splinters and half a dozen riders go ahead, including Bader and Murawwi, but nobody else we care about. Paul gets on the front and start cranking out a steady pace, Skybot style. At first I’m worried I might crack, I even start to rehearse excuses in my head. But as my HR goes up near 160bpm I feel OK and I feel I can sustain the pace. The question is, can the others ? Gilles from our team and Elton from Air Arabia, both excellent climbers, up the pace even more and go ahead but nobody else goes with them. Youcef is further ahead of them so that’s one-nil to Frankie’s for now.

I look around. Paul’s pace has shelled Ahmed. Great, but yesterday he climbed back to me so I can’t count on it. And Mike from AA is with us. He’s a dangerous rider and just ahead of Paul on GC in the top 10. The sort of rider I’m surprised to find myself with. I understand how Ian Stannard must have felt in Milan-San Remo. For the gregario it’s a triumph just to be there with the campiones. I don’t think of beating him but if I can stay near Mike, and with two of our guys ahead, we’ll be sure to get the time we need. I tell myself to do it or die trying – no excuses.

Now I’m enjoying it. This is tactical racing and Paul is looking after me. I just hope I can live up to it. He stays on the front with Mike on his wheel and me on Mike’s wheel. There are four or five others with us but I won’t let them between and we won’t help them work on the front. We have just one job. Every now and then Paul comes off and puts Mike on the front, and I let Paul slot in ahead. Once Mike makes a little dig around Paul but I’m ready and go with him. In my head I’m thinking how awesome it is to be The Protected Rider.

After the hill there’s 15km of rolling roads to come, full of sharp little twists and turns and Mike is in his element. He flies through the little villages, hard into blind corners and harder out, up from his saddle like in a crit, sometimes overshooting he is going so hard. Paul is mainly a track rider so he’s also pretty handy and several times I need him between us to make up the ground I lose on Mike.

After two punctures on the last two days I’m also being a little cautious over the gratings and bumps. Better to finish 30 seconds down than have to change a tube again. And sure enough as we go into another bonus points-combo of Grating and Super Tight Corner there’s that sound again. But, it’s not me… it’s one of them, Paul, please God no ? No he’s fine. Mike ? Yes, it’s him. He pulls aside and I flash past to relay the news to Paul.

We’re about 5km from the finish so now it’s hell for leather to make as much time as possible, maybe even get Paul up on GC. Now we tell the other guys we’ll work with them, although they’re tired and it’s mostly Paul and I who work as we give it everything to reach the line. I don’t care about the sprint, just the time, so I stay on the front and let the bunch go past. Now it’s a matter of time and I check my Garmin to get the gaps. Incredibly Mike comes over the line, having ridden the last 5km on a flat clincher, and still only lost a minute on us. It could be tight but it should be enough, and when Ahmed comes through two and a half minutes later we are sure of taking the place. The mood in the team is excited and bubbling. Bader has won all three stages and the GC, and in the Masters we have a 1-2-3 with Youcef, Gilles and me, plus the teams in first and second. It’s a Frankie’s whitewash and the prize ceremony is a procession of medals, trophies and jerseys. We found our level.

So, what do I know now that I didn’t before…

1. A good racer can beat a better rider. I came in with or ahead of stronger climbers because I’d improved my race ability so much since Sharjah.

2. The only way to race well is to race. I see why even pros don’t want to leave a week between races.

3. Power to Weight. Cycling is this.

4. Race on tubs. Our mini-race went one way then the other on pinch flats – got to be a message there.

I said before that I would never have a Pro head and that’s still true. But being physically in better shape has given me better results. In turn that’s improved my confidence and made me race better. I give less and take more.

I also said there were many things I could do to be a better rider before I needed new wheels. There still are, but the list is shorter so I’m entertaining suggestions… tubulars only please.

Winning one Monument in a career is more than most Pros will ever achieve. Winning two in a season, nearly impossible. Winning two a week apart, it has been done more than a few times, by only the toughest of men. The Ronde and Roubaix both have cobbles but that is about all they have in common. Roubaix might be the harder one to win. The evil Lady Luck lurks on the Roubaix course. Flats and crashes are more likely on the farm tracks of Northern France, helpful team cars can be minutes away. Granted, Miss Luck does like to install errant road furniture and roll loose bidons in feed zones in Ronde van Vlaanderen, and that is a cause for concern for some riders.

A paceline, drafting, hiding behind teammates all fall apart on the cobbled secteurs of Roubaix. The ability to hit the cobbled secteurs with the throttle jammed fully open again and again and again is what separates the beasts from everyone else. Speed on these stones is only sustainable by having huge power and a Roger De Vlaeminck ability to ride over the cobbles. It’s like riding your bike through sand; only power keeps the bike moving forward. If you ease up, you don’t go. Tom Boonen is the perfect example of power and ability and he has a mighty sprint. Who could even stay on his wheel to arrive in the velodrome for a sprint? Oh Tommy, you will be missed this year.

Historical perspective? I don’t think so, not here, not now. Paris-Roubaix is coming on like a freight train. Fabian Cancellara is halfway to the double, again. And unless some Johan Vansummeren break gets away… how did Boonen do it last year? He didn’t have to worry about towing everyone up the road, he just hauled ass, dropped everyone and rode away solo. That should work for Fabian. It doesn’t work on the route into Sanremo but it will work on the way to Roubaix. No wee Simon Gerrans will be riding in his slipstream all the way to the velodrome.

Who you want to pick for second through fifth place in the VSP tomorrow is your business. This is a lock I’m telling you. Bet everything you have. That college tuition your Dad gave you to hand over to the bursar, double it down somewhere, this is easy money. This is the double.

During last year’s Keepers Tour, the motor was fine for about two or three days until it suddenly sputtered and shut down completely on Wednesday. My basic problem, it appears, lies with my ongoing struggle with body dysmorphia; based on the quantity of calories rolling into the station on the Malteni train, I was loathe to lay into the vast spread of home-cooked meals our beloved Keepers Tour cook, Geneviève, was churning out on a daily basis.

This would be idiotic for more reasons than the basic fact that I was depriving myself of second and third helpings of her incredible cooking. More critically, I was depriving my body of the nutrients it needed to rebuild after riding day after day on the pavé and bergs.

There is something about the stones and their way of knocking your bike against you over and over and over again that demands a bit more sustenance to mend the muscles than does your average Sunday roll up and down the local boulevard. This is not the time to whinge about waist lines – this is time to focus on building reserves and recuperation.

Herein lies the genius of the Pavé Cycling Classics boys William and Alex. William somehow tricked his mother-in-law Geneviève into catering to us – two years running. I can imagine that coming into the experience blind last year, perhaps no one knew better. But that’s no excuse for this year; William must have done some serious sweet-talking in order to convince her to do it a second time. From what I know of him, I’m guessing he’s not above blackmail that involves grandchildren or bamboo shoots.

There is strength in numbers, of course, so this time around Geneviève was smart enough not to take it on herself and somehow enlisted her best friend Odile as second-in-command. And in command they are. I used a bucket from the kitchen to clean my bike, upon which discovery they made some angry sounds and now I’m scared to make eye contact with them.

William’s cunning doesn’t end there though; he managed to cajole his lovely sister, Gemma, to agree to participate as well, though I assume the bartering of his children was involved in that negotiation as well.

Between these three ladies looking after us, we’re eating like kings and this time I’m all-in on the food. Tonight’s meal of lamb, pommes boulangère, and white beans in cream sauce didn’t stand a chance. I piled a mountain of it on my plate that made Odile do a double-take; when Geneviève collected the plate after I crushed it, she made a gesture that said she was putting it back on the shelf straight away; no washing needed.

Moderation is not my strength. Maybe there’s a middle ground, but I’m never sure how to find those.

Imagine a world without the little things we take for granted; a house without a roof, a pub with no beer, a Keepers Tour without any clothes. The last one is a reality for me at the moment, five days in and still no trace of where the hell between Wellington and Paris my bag (filled with V-Kit, shoes, helmet, everything) is. The other thing that has me perturbed again this trip is that there is no Muur de Grammont/Kapelmuur in the Ronde. To me, the race feels naked without it.

That won’t stop us from riding it next weekend though, and although there will be no crowds, no pros, there will still be the magical spirit of the great battles past on these hallowed stones. We’ll try and emulate The Lion and climb it in the big ring (or the 50t) while the man himself watches on, probably laughing inside, or indeed outwardly, as we succumb to the gradient and stab frantically at the left-hand shifter. Then we’ll realise just how ordinary we are and how special this hill is.

Even though the Muur is absent again this year, the 2013 Ronde is shaping up as one of the best in recent history. The battle between Faboo and Sags is well touted, but will they mark each other out of it and let an opportunist take their chance? My money’s on that scenario playing out, but if you have any sense you’ll see my VSP scores reflect a total lack of tipping nous so far this season and reject anything I predict as hogwash.

Check out the start list, grab a cold Malteni or other fine Belgian ale, slather your frites in mayo and keep your eye out for The V-Flag on the Oude Kwaremont this Sunday. Goed geluk!

Marianne Vos has never won this? She who wins everything all the time has never won this? Is it not hilly and tough enough? This seems like a tear in the time-space continuum. Someone is going to be wanting to add this to her palmarés. Weather sounds like a cold but dry day for racing. This is a big one, maybe worth two bumper stickers, so ponder this race well. Have I scared everyone into picking Vos for the win? She didn’t win last week, maybe she was saving herself. I’ll stop now. Here is the provisional start list.

The KT 2013 crowd should just be well into their Maltenis and baguette sandwiches on the Oude Kwaremont when the crazy Rodania car comes by, signaling the business end of the race is getting close. This thing plays some insane tune over and over and over again, lights flashing, horn beeping. It shows up at all these Belgian races. The driver must have earplugs in his head and a bottle of Rumple Minze between his knees. Truly this tune would drive a normal person quite insane. Spectators only hear it once, maybe three times if on the Ould Kwaremont during the men’s race but this madman keeps hauling ass around the course for hours and hours. I don’t get it. Maybe with enough Malteni and frites inside them, one of the KT 2013 riders can enlighten us.

I’ve been lucky enough to do quite a bit of travelling in my life. As a family, we travelled all over Europe when I was just a lad, and recently I’ve had the opportunity to visit more exotic places like India and Hawaii. What I’ve learned from my travels is that the key to a great experience is to leave your predispositions on the airplane and commit completely to the culture; eat like the locals eat, travel like the locals travel, and – provided you’re skiing in France – wear a fart bag.

One of the things I learned very quickly is how much people appreciate travelers who make a genuine effort. Americans get a bad wrap by Parisians for bustling about in their “Born in the USA” leather jackets by Wilsons and asking random people where the nearest McDonalds is and, when they find one, spending an inordinate amount of time holding up the line while trying to order a Quarter Pounder. To be fair, these people should get a bad wrap anywhere including back here in the US of Fuckin’ A. While every culture is different, I find that by and large, if you simply make an effort and show a some respect for the local culture, people will be very accepting of you.

But everywhere you go is different, of course. In Europe, they like it when you speak the language or admire the beauty of the country. In India, they love it when you show enthusiasm for how batshit crazy the place is. This particular anecdote will ring louder for the software developers in the audience, but one afternoon while I was in India, I was chatting with a manager at my old company and remarked how amazing it was that given the hierarchical structure of their culture, that the traffic is so chaotic. “In most things, we use the Waterfall method. In driving, we use the Agile method.”

On the other hand, the Dutch just like to prove that they know something you don’t, so all you have to do in the Netherlands is ask questions. Don’t overdo it, though; the Dutch don’t suffer fools lightly. For example; I am fluent in Dutch but don’t spend enough time there to understand the rail system the way they do. So, I rarely ask for help with the trains in Dutch; if I do, they treat me like I’m one step left of an amoeba. If I ask in English, I’ll be politely guided through every step of the process. After all, it would be impossible for an American to understand that intricacies of their highly sophisticated system.

The French, I’ve come to understand, only resent people who don’t try to speak French. You don’t have to speak much of it or speak it very well; just make an effort, and they will be fine. I’ve never had a single experience with the “disdainful French”; in fact, I’ve had more than a few discussions with wait staff at restaurants who insist on speaking (a very broken) English to me, and I insist on speaking (a very broken) French in response. This particular case is more polite than it is effective.

French is perhaps the most glorious sounding language on the planet; I’d love to speak it fluently, but am only conversant at infant-level French. Nevertheless, I find it very important to familiarize myself with the most important phrases I’ll need when travelling there. In an effort to lend some assistance to those in the community who are joining us in Lille for Keepers Tour 2013 this year, I offer the following Quick Start Guide. And, always remember Rule #89.

A general expression of surprise:

Qu’esque c’est le fuck avec ça?

An acknowledgement of someone’s not inconsiderable skill on the bike:

Pas bad.

You can close down a misunderstanding with a simple phrase like,

C’est la meme chose thing.

Being amenable with a choice,

Je suis OK avec that.

Asking a mate how s/he is doing:

Qu’esque c’est up?

When intimidating your riding mates:

Laisse tomber le hammer.

Finally, when referring to whomever wins Roubaix this year,

Il est une homme bad ass, n’est pas?

See you on the flip side in France. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

The Velominati site has drawn out many interesting, talented people these last few years, from frame builders to custom V-bar plug makers. We all know @pedale.forchetta as a Moots riding, bidon cage disdaining Italian cyclist. What’s not to love already… and generous too? From the beginning he has been sharing his photos with us all: the Giro, Milan-Sanremo, Il Lombardia. Luckily for us he is not a professional cycling photographer. For starters he might not post his photos on Velominati so easily. He is not on a moto. He is on foot taking pictures of the Italian fans, police, riders, directors, ex-riding legends and the tifosi’s cars. While most professional photogs shoot the race, Angelo captures the tension and excitement before the race and the emotion and exhaustion after it. He is the best.

His before-and-after photos of Milan-Sanremo 2012 were amazing. He has ridden in a Androni Giocattoli team car during an edition of MSR. His black and white photos on the Muro di Sormano were otherworldly. If he was not a cyclist we wouldn’t know him on Velominati. We might have missed his photography, until Milan-Sanremo 2013. The day of the race he sent a few fast photos to Velominati so we could be there too. Since this MSR, I’ve seen his shots on PEZ and Il Dolore. When the going gets tough, Angelo gets going. Luckily for us all, Angelo Giangregorio was there on that crazy day from Milan to Sanremo.

Personally I’d say these are some of his best photos ever. It was an epic day. I’ve watched some poor quality video of the race, yeah, it was grim, I get it. But no, I didn’t really get it until I looked through a set of Angelo’s photos. There is a shot of Mark Cavendish at the start that is so mesmerizing, it could be in Vogue.

Does being a cyclist make him a better photographer? It has to. He understands the beauty and humanity that is cycling and captures it with his camera. Does being Italian make him a better photographer? Of course it does. He shoots the people at races as much as the racers and his Italian generosity come through in his photos.

I’ll let Simon of Il Dolore say it properly.

The Cycling Photographs of Angelo Giangregorio.

I’ve known Angelo for about three years now ever since I used his photographs on my old website La Gazzetta della Bici. Ever since then I don’t think I have ever seen Angelo take a bad snap. He is by far my favourite photographer and one of the nicest people I know. Italy bleeds from Angelo’s photographs. He not only photographs the sport of cycling but manages to capture the heart and soul of the riders and the fans in every photograph he takes. I always look forward to a new set of Angelo’s photographs not just because they feature Italian cycling but that they always show the very soul of what it means to ride a bike, watch cycling and be aware of the life around us.

Grazie socio, Angelo.

Writing about photography doesn’t work so I’ll stop right now. Look at his pictures. In fifty years from now, when people are looking back to the old days and epic races, Milan-Sanremo 2013 is going to be one of those races and Angelo’s photos are going to be the pictures people remember.

Here is his MRS 2013 flikr set, and make sure you check out his amazing Photo Stream.

As many of you know, there’s been a lot of synergy between BIGRINGRIDING and Velominati for several years now. Though BRR and Velominati have very different flavors, we work on a similar principle: foster passion for the sport through a mix of knowledge, history, and humor tempered with a healthy dose of irreverence, all while obviously making things up as we go along.

It seems only natural, then, that we should work together and thus it is with great delight that I present our monthly feature with the Big Ring taking his capitalized view on a Rule of his choice. No better Rule to start with than my personal favorite, Rule #9. And remember, it’s more than just a chainring, it’s a state of mind.

Yours in Cycling,

Frank

–

LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR. IF YOU DON’T SEE ICE, YOU’RE NOT AS BADASS AS GREG. PERIOD.

This is the second round of the Women’s World Cup, the first being the Ronde van Drenthe. Laveno Mombello to Cittiglio, 120 km of racing in Italy. It is a very worthy course and we know who will be wearing the number 1 on her jersey. Enough already, I like Ms Vos as much as the next person but someone has to work her over on the climbs and ride away. Anyone?  She has only won this race three times. A race with 174 racers from twenty-nine countries, someone must know her weaknesses. Maybe Eva Mottet knows, maybe her father Charlie has fired her up into a Vos crushing frenzy.

Review the profile and start list and roll your eyes or bones or whatever it is that you think will make you less bad at picking the winner. So get your picks in by midnight on Sunday Pacific time. If you don’t know what time that is, just get your picks in by the time the countdown clock goes to zero. Points collected go towards the 2013 Velominati Super Prestige where the winner’s spoils include the personalized Velominati Shop Apron. Good luck.

Gent (Deinze)-Wevelgem, it starts with 130 km of cruising around Belgium and Northern France followed by a flurry of bergs and then a final 38 km of  flatter riding to the inevitable sprint finish. How hard can the climbing be if Super Mario got over them? Ask the riders from KT 2012, (the ones not in the following car) and they will tell you the Kemmelberg, for one, is a steep beast of a climb. It does not go up too far but it goes. And all these bergs seem to have some climbing just to get to the named climb, so yes, one can be gassed real fast in this area. Luckily there is the chance of catching back on each descent too, something sprinters like Cipo must have been good at.

This is one of the final tune up races for Ronde van Vlaanderen. The Velominati banner shall be flying in Flanders in a week from this Sunday’s race. Whomever is fit and fast  into Wevelgem shall be on the short list for the Ronde.

Here is a provisional start list and here is the race profile. The start list shall be updated by Saturday so double check your picks before start time. No whining, no delgados.

Wellington isn’t renown for its great summers; a mate is always quick to remind me that if the weather was perfect all the time, everyone would want to live here and we’d be overrun by Aucklanders (just like Aussies but not quite dumb enough to live in Canberra). As our summer goes into its last death throes of amazingly calm, sunny, cloudless days, the arm warmers and undershirt have only just emerged from their longest hibernation ever. And I probably won’t need them for tomorrow’s ride either.

Come next Monday, however, I’ll be on the other side of the world and months of unzipped jerseys and SPF30 will be but a memory; a cold, wet, distant memory. And I have to say I’m almost looking forward to it with a strange enthusiasm and a hint of romanticism. Almost. No amount of fitness gleaned from training in perfect weather can prepare one for the rigours of a Belgian spring.

We know how the body will react when it is pulled from its warm cocoon and plunged into an icy bath. How the mind will handle it is a bigger concern. We can prepare ourselves physically to the nth degree, but if we’re mentally inept then the sag wagon becomes a likely option. At which point something deep inside takes over, thought processes return to normal and the mere thought of getting off the bike is quickly and methodically banished. Not here, not now.

Let the hardmen be hardmen, let it rain and blow and the cobbles turn to mud when they grace these roads. But Merckx have mercy on a fair-weather soul, even if only for a few selected days. Let our Flandrian Best suffice and our tubulars have sure grip on dry stones. Failing that, at least keep us upright and we will drink a toast to you night after night.

Bring it on.

It’s not too late to book a spot on the Keepers Tour 2013 and make your own history.

If I spent half a summer riding with one hand on the tops and one on the hoods, I spent the other half riding with each hand deliberately gripping the hoods differently. As any young Cyclist growing up in the United States in the late 80s, I had a major thing for Greg LeMond.

I imagined Greg to be the perfect Cyclist, as youth often does of their heroes. I modelled my position on his; when Scott Drop-Ins became available, I hastened to save up for a set and mounted them on my bike. In the interim, I mounted some mountain bike bar-ends on the drops of my regular Cinelli bars. (If I could ask Greg one question, it would be whether he ever actually used his Drop-Ins in any race situation. I’ve never seen a picture of him riding in them, and after having owned a set, I can tell you those babies were the flexiest bars I’ve ever had on a bike.)

But I digress. Back to me and my BFF, Greg LeMond. However much I idolized him, one personality trait I knew we didn’t share was an obsessive/compulsive need to have things be symmetrical. I am all about symmetry; my hoods have to be mounted at exactly the same height, the cables have to emerge from the bar tape at exactly opposite the other side, the gap between the tape and the stem has to be exactly the same on both sides of the bars. LeMond did not share this compulsion, a fact most readily demonstrated by how he gripped his hoods with each hand usually sharing a different number of fingers in front and behind the brake levers.

I could understand that people might differ on precisely how many fingers should be in front of the levers and how many behind, but the idea that one could grip their bars with an uneven distribution across hands completely blew my adolescent mind. If I was going to win the Tour some day, this was obviously a skill I needed to have.

So I set about practicing holding the hoods the way he did; one hand with no fingers in front of the brake lever, the other with all but the littlest hand-piggie in front of the brakes or two fingers in front, two in back on one hand, one finger in front on the other – the quantities were irrelevant so long as they were not the same on both sides.

But I couldn’t do it. It drove me crazy – it twisted my guts up inside. And that was when I realized I would never become a Pro Cyclist, if I lacked such a basic skill.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and with my failure came an interest in the various ways one could grip the bars. The first obvious point to make is that the classic “three-position bar” actually offers about a trillion positions, although I admit I lack both the skill and the fortitude to count them all, and am therefore unable to confirm that figure.

I find the hoods offer the most interesting position variations; depending on how you grip them, you can stretch your back or shoulders, settle in for a relaxing spin, or go low and aero for some Passista hammering. Most importantly, if you add a scowl or a grimace and a little bend to the elbow, you can instantly look the Flandrian Hardman.

Finally, we have Milan-Sanremo. I hope pedale.forcetta is ready to shoot some pictures, especially black and white because it will be cold and possibly wet. Throw in a little wind and a race of this distance will weed out the less hardy. Recently, but not too recently, this race would be won out of a decent size field sprint. And yet, besides Fabs winning in 2008 it does come down to a sprint finish of some size. That race was setting up for a field sprint when Cancellara bolted and no one could catch him. The solo charge to the finish just doesn’t seem to work here. It is such an interesting race because the finish is unlike any of the other monuments. Moreno Argentin lost the race because he was not as good as descender as Kelly. Getting down the Cipressa and Poggio well is not easy. The descents are tight narrow Italian roads, hairpin turns, madness. Fabs and Sagan are two excellent descenders and Sagan has a killer sprint. NIbali just won Terreno. Thor has recovered. Boonen is back with Cavendish, on the same team! Gilbert is wearing the rainbow jersey. Andy Schleck has pre-dropped out. God Damnit, if you are going to get up at some weird hour of the night to watch a race this year, this is it people.

An American has never won one of cycling’s monuments and Sunday’s race does not seem to be where it is going to happen. Tyler Farrar would have to latch onto a special train and surely Cancellara will not be towing people to the line this year. The odds of Australian riders winning the last two editions were very long but it demonstrates how exciting and unpredictable this race is.

Here is the incomplete start list, it will be updated when available. No Delgados, no whining, the betting window is now open. Get you picks in before the countdown timer goes to zero at midnight Pacific Time. The winner of this event is awarded the MSR comment badge for the remainder of the season.

Here is a little video from last year, interesting more for the behind the scenes action and the amount of bleeped out cursing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Prophet was very clear on how best to ride an individual Time Trial; start as fast as possible and finish as fast as possible. As for the middle, his advice was to ride that as fast as possible.

The same can be said of climbing; as we covered in Part I and Part II of the Sur La Plaque series, the key to climbing well is to hit the bottom as hard as possible, and then move into the big ring as you go over the top in order to finish the climb as fast as possible. As for the middle section; well, hit that as hard as possible and focus on keeping your momentum going.

The trouble is with this pesky notion we have of “gauging our efforts”. Certainly, the perfectly measured climb would result in riding the whole of it à bloc before moving Sur La Plaque over the top, blast down the other side and – just as you hit Escape Velocity – explode spectacularly, using your perfectly honed LeMond Tuck to recover in time to crush it in the valley to the next climb where you repeat the process. Panache.

Panache is a dualistic thing; almost without exception do we admire it in others, and almost without exception are we too cowardly to hold it inside ourselves. Panache doesn’t speak of caution, or of measured action. It speaks of impulse – compulsion, even – to attack despite one’s better judgement. It speaks of throwing caution to the wind. It weighs heavy with the risk of exploding magnificently and trading angel’s wings for the devil’s anchor.

But those who venture freely into that realm have blown up so many times that it hardly features in their reasoning. Pain and climbing are inseparable;  what difference does it make if you blow up and suffer a bit more for a bit longer? And, should we blow up often enough, we will learn how to suffer through and push to the top with grace. And perhaps by that same grace, will we recover enough to try again on the next climb.

Vive la chance. Vive le Grimpeur. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

Exhibit A: The master of Panache, Marco Pantani. And the master of blowing with grace, Richard Virenque. For a prime example of how to blow up properly, jump to 2:00.

My first article on Velominati was to introduce one of my favorite cyclists, Eros Poli. I refered to him as a domestique on the Mercatone-Uno team. This faux pas was properly pointed out much later by @KaffeineKeiser, a commenter who suddenly surfaced and unfortunately submerged just as quickly, like Das Boot in the Straits of Gibraltar.*

I do take exception to you calling him a “domestique”. Eros was a “passista” of the highest order. A team position no more or less glamorous than the former, but one that certainly warrants its own designation.

To der Keiser, calling Eros a domestique was to call him a mere bottle carrier. I was completely unfamiliar with the term but in debt to der Keiser for setting me straight. Poli was an Olympic gold medal winner in the four man team trial. He was engine number one on Cipo’s Mercatone-Uno original lead-out train. He raced Paris-Roubaix. I’m sure he carried his share of bottles. Everyone carries bottles up from the team car when necessary. Poli was a passista first, a domestique second.

More light was shed on “passista” when Pez published the excellent Italian for Cyclists a while back.

Passista (pahs SEE stah) - Francesco Moser fits the bill here. The passista is a big, powerful rider able to maintain 50 km/h for an hour at the front of the peloton. Their strength and toughness make them naturals in the northern classics.

By that definition, Jensie Voigt is a classic modern passita, our own Frank Strack too. Tom Boonen is absolutely one judging from the work he has been doing this week at the head of the peloton in Paris-Nice. Boonen’s elbow infection foiled his usual preparation for the Spring Classics so he signed up for a week-of-beauty spa called Paris-Nice. Need some fitness? Ride from Paris to the Mediterranean at ass hauling speed, do hour sessions at the front of a professional peloton. On the rainy cold days, do even more.

Passista is a type of rider rather than just a job description within the team. I don’t think there are designated bottle carriers these days. One can’t be really good at just riding back and forth to the team car. A friend who has done it told me how damn hard riding back to the field at high speed towing an additional seven kilos really is. No one makes it to the pro ranks on their bottle carrying savy. The fact that one is on a team for a particular race means one is a badass, except for the newbies who are just hoping to finish and gain some race experience (like Andy Schleck). If this is their mission, then either they are future badasses or their team lacks any depth and therefore sucks. Julian Dean may have carried bottles during each stage during the Tour but he still had to man up for the last twenty km and be faster than everyone except his team’s designated sprinter. He was the lead- out guy.

If I had chosen my parents perfectly, I too would aspire to be a passista. Pure climbers- too small, pure sprinters- too crazy; who wouldn’t want to be a big cobble crushing beast that can can just ride people’s legs off when required?

*Yes, for you Das Boot fans, I know that was an imperfect metaphor.

Ok, so you guys and gals don’t miss a trick, but sometimes we do. In fact, we kind of specialize in it. @Bianchi Denti just texted me to point out, as others have done on site, that we have almost missed the next stop on the VVomen’s VSP calendar, the Ronde Van Drenthe. On International Women’s Day, of all things.

All I can tell you about this race is that it’s in the Netherlands, and that Drente houses a number of Frank’s relatives. It that’s not scary enough, Marianne Vos is racing. Do you need any more information? Because the longer I look for it, the less time you have to get your picks in… here’s your start list, have at it.

Points go towards the season-long VSP where the winner takes home a personalized Velominati VVorkshop Apron. We’re being super cereal.

I don’t have to tell anyone around here that @Cyclops is weird guy; most of you have already figured that out, and if you haven’t figured it out, you will soon enough. But weird doesn’t have any negative meaning, if you ask me. In fact, I’d say we’re all weird which makes normal more suspect.

Several years ago, long before I’d met him, he emailed asking for my address. Despite founding a international online community, I’m actually rather uncomfortable with internet “friendships”, so to be totally honest it freaked me out a little. But he seemed like a good enough guy, so I sent it to him, hoping that whatever he sent me wouldn’t be ticking when I got it.

What wound up in my mailbox was the first prototype V-Pint, and it blew my tiny little mind that such a thing could be made. He wasn’t the guy who made it, but he thought of it and designed it, and that showed he had some creative and crafty skills. Over the years he sent other creations along – some better than others – and after a bit, I have to admit I got accustomed to him making cool shit and sending it to me. Then I got some emails where he asked very specific questions about when I’d be home to pick up another package; he didn’t want it sitting on my porch. Whatever, dude – I’m busy, I live in a good neighborhood, Rule #5. The usual. But he insisted, and I arranged to be home at the time UPS suggested they might deliver the package.

Lo and behold, he had built me a steel CX frame. Un-Be-lievable. What’s more, it actually rides really well. Amazing. But now the noob is progressing into his own and starting a buisiness called Deacon Bikes. His tale here chokes me up a bit; I never imagined our little community could inspire such dreams. It is very, very, very cool and I’m filled with pride that we can make a difference in people’s lives. 

Thanks again to @Cyclops for the frame and words below. Thanks to all of you in the community who help make this place worth while and help inspire dreams. 

Merckx bless you all. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

Frank

–

Bike #2 is Bike #2 in more than one sense. It is Bike #2 in the classic Velominati sense in that it will be the go-to ride when Rule #9 needs to be applied as well as commuting and the occasional cyclorcross race.  In the more important sense it is bike #2 in that it is the culmination of a nearly life-long dream of becoming a frame builder. It is also Bike #2 because I thought that plopping my fat arse on my first attempt at crafting a “chariot of the gods” could lead to serious injury and/or death – so Bike #1 went to Frank, who was more than willing to risk gun and limb on home-made frame.

But let’s get back to that life-long dream. Mrs. Cyclops and I feel very strongly about the entrepreneurial spirit and being free from the bondage of working for someone else*. In light of that we have kicked around various ideas. I have restaurant experience so we’ve thought of doing a sandwich shop or a brick oven pizza place – The Gran Fondo Pizzeria, all the pizzas would be named after the Classics and Grand Tours – or a food truck. But what is my passion? After further discussion about the role bicycles have played in my life and my passion for them it was decided that “Living the Dream” was the way to go. “The Dream” usually means making a living racing the bike, however at this late stage in the game this would be impossible for me. But the Velominati have taught me that we can still dream nonetheless. So how about building frames AND running a food truck?  It would be pretty cool to show up to the races with a food truck and a sponsored team on my bikes to go with it, huh? More dreams.

It seems that many of us have been “keepers of the law” (aka The Rules) while being unaware of the law. But then we stumble upon www.velominati.com and we are translated from darkness to light. From death to life. We are given a raison d’être. While the dream of riding in Le Tour is beyond us, we live our lives (on the bike) as if we might attain that dream. The Velominati are kept on task by a worldwide community of like-minded idiots that don’t realize that THE DREAM will always remain a dream so we strive on. Each of us trying to balance cold hard reality with being as marvelous on the bike as possible. Finding Velominati.com and riding in a cogal with Frank and others of the Black and Orange brought my dream into focus. I don’t know which came first – the chicken or the egg? I don’t even know which is the chicken – actually building a frame, and which is the egg – doing something freaking awesome for Frank (and thus the Velominati as a whole). I’m not sure how they worked out and intertwined with each other but it was because of being involved with the Velominat that I got off my arse and actually built a frame. So, naturally, the fruit of my labors needed to go to the Monarch, I mean, the (Dutch) Monkey behind all this madness. In a very real sense, were it not for Frank, “The Dream” would have remained a dream.

Now back to Bike #2.

Deacon:  Middle English dekene, from Old English dēacon, from Late Latin diaconus, from Greek diakonos, literally, servant, from dia- + -konos (akin to enkonein to be active) (perhaps akin to Latin conari to attempt)

The Greek diakonos (hence the lower case Greek delta on the head tube) literally means through the dust.  (Ah, visions of Paris-Roubaix.)

Bike #2 turned out to be much more of a learning experience than Bike #1.  Maybe Merckx was having pity on me and blessing my desire to bless others because #1 went together with nary a hiccup. Not so with #2. After much gnashing of teeth and about two months past the originally expected ETA I finally have the finished product but it was not without its headaches – I actually tore the back end of the frame off and redid it after realizing that my “short cut” led to a mis-aligned frame.  But all things work for the good…  I just chalked up the headaches as learning experience – like not trusting the painter to get the graphics on straight before he clear-coats the frame. Bike #3 (a road frame for myself) will not (I hope) be plagued by these headaches because #2 taught me some valuable lessons; for example, there are no short cuts. One thing I have learned in my many other endeavors in life is what separates a professional from an amateur. Namely, a professional knows how to fix his mistakes. Eric Clapton says a note in a lead is not a mistake if the note that follows it corrects the situation. So that’s what we have with Bike #2. A series of “events” that led to what you see below.

I’m actually very pleased with the end result. Since it was going to be my personal bike I tried some things out – like the dropped seat stays with all the filet brazing involved. I know what a low BB feels like so since this is a CX rig I tried a higher BB. I’m getting old and have less flexibility so the head tube is a little taller – so I can still have it look like the stem is slammed. It’s all about appearances, you know.

Some basic info: the frame was constructed with Richard Sachs lugs (with a set of NOS Ritchey drop-outs) and Columbus PegoRichie Uber Oversized tubing. PegoRichie tubing is custom drawn for Richard Sachs and Dario Pegoretti. It is a size 53cm and weighs in as you see it at 18.1 lbs (8.2k).  It has a full Ritchey cockpit plus some NOS Ritchey V (hey, hey) Cranks and a Ritchey Carbon Pro fork, Chris King headset, SRAM Force derailleurs and shifters, Dura-Ace chain and cassette, TRP Mini-Vs, and obviously Zipp 303 tubs with Vittoria sew-ups (because the red labels match the bike). A recent snow storm has rendered the local roads pretty treacherous but I’ll post a ride report as soon as I can.

Oh, if anyone is interested in an affordable custom frame visit deaconbikes.com – I should have the website sorted out within a week or so – and give me a buzz so we can talk.  If you want geometry built to your specs, I can do that. If you want polished stainless steel lugs and the like, I might not be your guy (yet).

*Not that I think I’ll actually ever be able to make a living building frames but at least it will afford me some extra cash so that maybe someday Cyclops will be seen at a Keeper’s Tour.

We interrupt our usual programming to announce a new and exciting program between Velominati and our Partners: Velominati Partner Coupons & Discounts.

DeFeet has been quietly supporting Velominati almost since our inception, using Rule #5 and Rule #9 to promote their line of products which fall squarely into the Flandrian Best range of cycling kit. As of last Summer, we officially partnered up to offer prizes to some VSP events and to provide the V-Socks.

We’re proud to announce that we’re opening the throttle a bit more and are now offering discounts at the DeFeet online store for the Velominati Community. For those Community Members who have risen above that of a Level 4 Velominatus, we are offering a coupon worth 10% off any order. Furthermore, anyone who has purchased a pair of V-Socks will earn a coupon for 20% off their orders. Rule #49 applies; don’t share your coupon with non-Velominati and please don’t abuse these promotions. I’d also like to point out that this is not a Rule #58 violation; DeFeet sells their product direct to consumers via their website.

Keep your eye on this space as we’ll be looking to expand this program with our other partners where it makes sense. In order to access your coupons, log in to your account (or register if you don’t already have an account); you can access your coupons from either the Dashboard or your Profile page.

Vive La Vie Velominatus.

There was no clear indication that Rick’s car had actually come to a complete stop. It wasn’t that the car hadn’t stopped its forward trajectory – it had – it was just that the car hadn’t actually stopped moving. Long after the vehicle had come to rest in what could only be considered a legitimate parking spot by the most liberal of reasoning, bits and pieces kept clanking about, seeming almost to defy the laws of perpetual motion.

I was more familiar with his car than I wished I was. For one thing, the cafeteria tray on the passenger side that covered the hole between the wheel well and interior was not nearly as effective as Rick supposed, though to be fair, it was hard to discern that particular draft from the various other drafts whipping about the cabin. For another, I was uncomfortable with how the entire contraption shook when it accelerated beyond walking speed. This shaking did not prevent him from punching well beyond the freeway speed limit, usually with one hand on the wheel and somewhere between zero and two eyes on the road.

Once the car had shimmied to rest, Rick climbed out with his usual happy grin and motioned towards the pristine, full suspension mountain bike perched atop the rack affixed to the roof of his car. Without so much of a hint of justification, he pronounced a phrase that stuck with me and eventually evolved into Rule #25: “Hey, the bike’s always gotta be worth more than the car, right?”

This was Rick’s typical flavor of genius: simple and concise, irrefutable in its logic. The car exists only to carry us to The Ride. Beyond that, all it does is suck money away from The Bike. The first cars I owned fell comfortably into this way of thinking, though I was never able to afford the rack required to actually get the bikes on the roof of the car. It was on that technicality, then, with my bikes shoved inside instead of atop my car, that I went merrily along my way knowing the vehicles I drove were only minimally siphoning money from my bicycle fund.

Rule #25 has been a challenge ever since we sold our fun little beater car and bought a nice car. After a few years of wrestling with what to do about our negative Car to Bike Value Ratio (CBVR), I came to the conclusion that we needed to buy another crappy car and use that one to drive out to our riding destinations. After a while, the crappy car sucked so much more than the nice car that we never drove it, so we sold the crappy car and bought a second nice car. Now we were really in deep water from a negative CBVR perspective, if not from the perspective of enjoying locomotion or safety.

The solution, of course, is rather simple. Within the next year, we’ll own both cars, which means they must be nearly worthless as otherwise neither the bank nor the car dealership would allow such a thing as “ownership” to happen. Barring that, owning a nice car simply dictates that one is to buy more and better bikes. This also requires, of course, a rather significant ancillary investment into roof racks for your vehicle if you don’t have any welding or nunchuck skills that you can use to fashion your own.

Just remember that a happy bike is a bike that gets ridden; there is nothing sadder than a loyal steed who sits unused in the basement.

If you ever doubted for a minute that the hardmen of yore drafted the blueprint for The Rules, you need only look at these fine examples to be reminded that no matter how limited the resources they had to work with, they still managed to do a better job of Looking Fantastic than we ever could.

It matters not to them that having pockets in the front of the jersey gave the impression of gynecomastia, their aching backs ably supported by crude inner-tube mansierres. They didn’t care that their cycling caps were actually just handkerchiefs tied at the corners, or that the bulging gusset in their shorts needed to be covered up at all times when off the bike by a strategically placed hand. It meant they got to fraternise with the likes of Wevelgem Mayor Wally de Schmoi, infamous for his love of wine, women and tucking his tie into his pants.

That’s just the way they rolled back then. And if you think they gave a fuck, well, think again. They were too busy laying waste to fools like us to even consider rolling their socks back up.

As many of you know, one of my specialties is examining events, imagining trends in them, and then predicting future events by painting with broad strokes based on those findings. I find this approach particularly effective when it pertains to topics of which I know less than nothing. In many ways, this is the same thing meteorologists do, so in that sense it is very fitting that my current prediction is for the weather of the 2013 Cobbled Classics.

I consider Het Volk to be a harbinger of what is to come for the major classics coming about a month later. By ignoring all data points that don’t support my assumptions, my study has conclusively demonstrated the following points:

• Rare is the case when a rider wins Het Volk and also wins de Ronde or Roubaix.
• Weather can’t hold a peak any better than a rider can, apparently; dry weather in Het Volk means wet weather in April and vice versa.
• Riders who race Het Volk in their Flandrian Best generally perform better in the monuments.
• Racing to the win in too-long a pair of knickers is a specter of failure for future events.
• Racing with an upturned cycling cap brim will yield a season fraught with spectacular highs and lows.

In light of this, it was with great relief that I noticed that while the weather was cold for Het Volk, it was also dry. Which conclusively shows that the bergs in de Ronde and the trench in Roubaix will be coated in heaps of slippery mud. Thank Merckx, too; it’s been too many years of dry weather for my taste. For those of you smart enough to sign up for Keepers Tour, this will be epic. And yes, I know its not called Het Volk anymore. (We have a few open spots left on the Tour, so get in while the getting’s good.)

Until the 70′s it was common to race on gravel roads, but the Paving of the Planet has led to nearly every road being graced by smooth, black tarmac. As is the case with most things, once we are shown the easy path, it is difficult to return to more arduous ways. So it is with gravel roads; we take measures to avoid unpaved roads and in doing so, we eliminate some of the most rewarding experiences.

Marko has been at the leading edge of the Minnesota Gravé Scene (which has been at the leading edge of the American Gravé Scene), going so far as to build a custom carbon gravel racer called Le Graveur tuned not for CX but for fast racing on gravel roads and snow machine trails. Limited paved roads has lead race organizers to look for alternatives and the result has been several great rides cropping up in the Midwest, East Coast, and in Montana. Challenge has even developed a tire named after one of Minnesota’s most popular gravel races, the Almanzo. Its exciting stuff, and I’ve caught the bug myself; I’ll be planning several big Gravé rides this summer with the boys at Veloforma in Portland as well as some up in Northern Washington near Mazama. What could be better than riding a road bike on gravel roads in the quiet of the wilderness? Not much.

I digress; riding gravel is nothing new, and until the last 30 or so years, most races featured some manner of gravels roads, especially once races hit the mountains. The Italian race l’Eroica, is a throwback to those days, sending the riders over the glorious white gravel roads known as the Strade Bianche. It may not be pavé, but with steep climbs and long sections of gravel racing, this is one of the most unique and best races of the year. And the lack of cobblestones won’t stop me from praying for rain. On a side note, stay tuned for a Keepers Tour coming to this area in the coming years.

Enough of the chatter, lets get onto the Naming of the Picks for the 2013 L’Eroica/Strade Biache. As usual, enter your picks by 5am Pacific time on Saturday. If you can’t do Time Zone Math, just watch the countdown timer in the banner and put your picks in before it goes to zero. Points go towards the season-long Velominati Super-Prestige competition; the winner will receive a personalized shop apron. Check the start list and try to pick riders who are actually going to be there; I know that’s a stretch. Good luck.

Gratuitous Photos of @Marko’s Le Graveur

Sometimes, getting the job done means doing it by any means necessary. Football coaches, who have just seen their team scrape out a win by a dour defensive effort and a lucky goal, refer to it as “winning ugly”. But any true Velominatus would rather lose photogenically than win ugly. In fact, our credo could well be “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how Fantastic you look doing it”.

Never one to adhere to this philosophy was the Spanish Crab, Fernando Escartin. If ever there was a more awkward, uncomfortable looking rider, then I’m at a loss to name them. He never stood a chance really, riding on teams with less-than-classy kit for a start never helped. Mapei wasn’t too bad when he was there, but he’ll always be best recognised in the lime green of the Kelme dope squad. His Gios was the only saving grace, the beautiful blue frames always looking good no matter who is aboard.

But it wasn’t Fernando’s propensity to sweat profusely, his straggly black hair, and sunburnt Roman nose that earned him the reputation of being hit with the ugly stick; it was the way he rode his bike. Knees sticking out to the side, head permanently tilted to the right like someone had glued his ear to his shoulder, back arched into a hump that would’ve made Quasimodo jealous, constantly lurching in and out of the saddle, rocking from side to side like a demented bored orangutan that had been locked in a cage and poked with a stick for its entire life. Somehow, it got him up mountains fairly quickly.

This day he went up a couple of mountains very quickly indeed, in le Farce of 99. From 50km out, no less, it was hard viewing as he held off a supercharged pack of pock-marked pin-cushions including some forgotten YJA (Yellow Jerseyed Asshole) with a note from his mum. *Coincidentally, the stage finish town of Piau Engaly is French for Pure Ugly, fitting for Fernando’s only win in le Grande Farce.

@scaler911 likes beer and pizza, as we all do. I bet Jensie does too. He races more, we drink more, he has to finish each stage at the Tour, us, not so much. There must be a balance to all our cycling lives. Since we don’t have to earn a living racing we can relax a bit but this word “relax” maybe where the trouble lies.

Yours in Cycling, Gianni

“For him who has no concentration, there is no tranquility”- Bhagavad Gita c. BC 400.

If you ask people close to me about my ability on the bike, you’ll probably hear different versions of the same story, “Scaler is a genetically talented cyclist, but it’s too bad he lacks focus.” I’m the first to admit it. If I put any energy into developing a solid training plan, laid off the IPAs, and (my VMH’s fine/ healthy cooking aside) stopped having pizza and Monster energy drinks for staples at work, I might be able to be consistent in my beloved craft. Instead, I have a few flashes of decency, but I’m mostly just pack fodder and excuses these days.

I’m consistently amazed at people that have this ability to focus. It’s akin to a superpower I think, like flying or laser beams shooting out of your eyeballs.

It really breaks down to a few different types of focus, with the endgame being the same. Focus from a global perspective: setting and achieving season-long goals, from winning the TdF, to being the first up the big climb at your local Tuesday night club ride; abiding the hard days of winter Rule #9 training; not having that 5th slice of combo pizza that you wash down with your 4th (or 8th) beer. Focus in the short term- be it Tapering before a Grand Tour, or spending time in the shop making sure your rig is cleaned and tuned to perfection before your group ride. Focus in the moment- being right near the front before the big climb, finding just the right gear, the right stroke, position, rhythm. This is the one place I can find that focus. All the joys and troubles of day to day living melt away. All that’s left is the deep, singular objective of the task at hand. Pushing a little harder to bridge to that wheel 50m ahead of you; not making eye contact with them as you stay in focus, or my favorite-smiling and saying “Hi” just before grabbing the shovel to make the Pain Cave a little deeper.

I firmly believe that this, along with choosing the right parents and a bit of luck is what separates us mortals from the pros.

There are many hours and kilometers where we suffer alone. Velominati strive to Look Fantastic, and we make sure our machines glisten and are properly silent. We study our heros as well as the douchebags. This all requires some form of focus, and I hope that I get as good at it as others here already are.

VLVV!
-scaler911

Outside my window, its pouring rain. My bike is leaning agains the wall in my office, covered in grim and grit from the ride in, which was characterized by equal parts cold, wind, and rain. The spot in the locker room where I changed before my shower was marked by sand and mud, and when I walked to the shower, I left a trail of dirty footprints.

It doesn’t bother me one bit, however. My mind is already cast ahead to Vlaanderen and the Cobbled Classics which kick off this weekend with Omloop Het Neiuwsblad. I still want to call it Omloop Het Volk, and people more brazen than me would call it Gent-Gent and people even more stubborn than that would call it “Feburacing”. (I made that last part up.)

Most importantly, this is when we kick off the third installment of the Velominati Super Prestige. We Keepers are all about the Spring Classics in general and the Cobbled Classics in particular – going so far as to host the second annual Keepers Tour: Cobbled Classics in April. (Sign up now, by the way, as we are looking at other projects for Keepers Tour next year and there is no guarantee we’ll hold it on the cobblestones again in 2014.)

With that, we kick off the season-long 2013 Velominati Super Prestige with the first major race on the berggen and Kasseien of VVest Vlaanderen. Name your picks in the boxes below; 7 points for naming the winner correctly, 5 for second place, 4 for third, 3 for fourth, and 2 for fifth. One point for naming a rider to the top five, but getting the place wrong. Points will be amassed over the course of the season, and the winner will win a personalized Velominati Shop Apron. Full Rules and Scoring Guidelines on the VSP Main Page. Starting roster is over on CyclingNews.com. The ladies event will go up later today or first thing tomorrow.

Good luck, and Merckxspeed.

Finally, some cold nasty Belgian one day racing. Oman, Qatar, does anyone brag about winning those stage races? Yes, they might but really, it’s a tune up for the real season which finally begins this Saturday. Will racing in China or Oman grow the sport? Will there be a new wave of inspired young racers from these countries. Does professional racing require geographic or historical context? Yes, I believe it does. There are many historically significant European races that have ceased to be while in October the professional peloton flies to China to race in the smog. What is the point? The money spent getting everything to China would be better spent supporting the smaller historic races and making sure they include women’s categories.

This Saturday’s forecast calls for zero percent chance of precicitation and near freezing temperatures. I wouldn’t want to ride in those conditions but I do like to see professionals race in them. And if it’s a little wet too, excellent. They can all test out their embrocation layering and neoprene gloves. Early season Belgian races should be cold and wet. It’s the Belgian brand.

The women’s provisional start list is here. The names of many teams have changed, a few big hitters are gone but it is just as large as the men’s field, 248 riders! Granted, many will get shelled on the first cobbled berg but that’s all in the game. If you want to call yourself a professional, you have to survive cold (and wet) races like this.

Let the betting begin. Velominati is an equal opportunity betting parlor. For points awarded, the women’s races hold as much value as the men’s.

I’m not going to lie to you, friction is an asshole. In the bottom bracket, in the bending of every single link in your chain as it rolls over the cogs and threads its way through the rear derailleur, and in the pulleys themselves, the devils. I cleaned out my rain bike last weekend after a few rides where I was forced to neglect my usual daily maintenance routine and they puked up chunks of grit before they started moving lightly again. Every turn of the pedals, each of those points of friction adds up and take away from your Maximum V Potential at any given moment.

While this next point is true for Cycling in general, it is true for climbing in particular: the trick to riding well is to keep turning the pedals at your current rhythm. Failing that, you just wind up being less awesome than you were a moment earlier. Speed is like time; you can never get it back (it might also be money, but the math is hard to sort out.) You worked hard to get going as fast as you were, and slowing down just means you lose all that effort. What’s worse, if you want to get going that fast again, you have to do all that same work all over again, and even then, you’re just back to where you were, except a little lighter on The V Potential.

Friction may well be an asshole, but its not as big an asshole as gravity. The acceleration of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared, which means that climbing at a sustained speed is basically like accelerating constantly; in order to climb at that rate, you’re accelerating enough to neutralize the pull from gravity which is trying its best to drag you back down the hill. Not to mention that you’re working against all that friction in your drivetrain.

To summarize, friction and gravity are assholes.

With these two points in mind, earlier this year I had Café Roubaix build me some lightweight climbing wheels. I didn’t really know what climbing wheels are good for, but I wanted to try some and I was thinking that any weight advantage I could find would be a good thing with respect to the winter months and the associated packing on of the wrong kind of weight in the engine room. 970 grams, you say? That sounds good – I’ll have them, thanks.

The first surprise was the box they arrived in, which I was certain must have been empty. Mounting them with tires and a cassette, I got used to how they felt in my hands. Funny how weight works; you grow accustomed to it. When I went to place them in the bike I first removed my rear Zipp 404 from the frame, which in comparison felt like an anchor.

They looked the business installed, but photos do a better job describing that. On to the riding. The first pedal stoke felt good; responsive and light. But nothing crazy, once I got going a bit. There was some more snap, for sure, but it wasn’t like I’d just had a blood transfusion on the second rest day of the Tour or anything like that. But on the hills the world turns on its head as the acceleration of gravity rejoins the conversation. The steeper the gradient, the more the wheels shine; simply put, they just keep spinning. Should you encounter a change in pitch for the worse, apply a touch of V and they spin up like a washing machine.

They almost converted me into a grimpeur. Almost. And, they help answer how the Pros move Sur La Plaque up giant mountains, absorbing changes in pitch like they’re nothing and accelerating away on the steepest sections. I am given to understand that talent and training play a part, but their climbing wheels don’t hurt either. The right tools make all the difference.

First off, cycling needs a different term for what it would like to convene. To equate cycling’s past with South Africa’s and Liberia’s dark histories is just wrong. Maybe the “I was a lying dick” tribunal. When I hear riders I admire say the past is the past, let’s look forward, I now assume they cheated. Cipo, Bugno, Faboo. Do I care? That has become harder to answer over time but yes, I still do care. Should I be surprised? No, I should be surprised if they were clean, like Jens, from East Germany. That actually does surprise me. If I was a “clean” rider, like Jens or Stuart O’Grady, I’d be rather pissed off about the missed opportunities. I would be damn angry rather than mildly surprised. They wouldn’t be lying to me too, would they?

Gianni Bugno seemed to take little pleasure in some of his greatest victories. When he beat Museeuw in the 1994 Ronde van Vlaanderen he looked a little guilty to me. If there ever was call for some Italian chest thumping and end-zone dancing I would think that might have been the day. Yet he seemed to want some privacy and there was no blinding smile a top the podium. Even back in 1994 the thought flickered in my head that my man, Gianni Bugno, didn’t just beat Museeuw on cunning alone.

Professional cycling is a brutally hard sport. It’s hard enough that drugs have been associated with it since men have been racing each other over unholy distances. I’d rather have cycling known for that than have cycling known as The Liars Club. As cycling fans we have been lied to by most everyone involved with the sport. I’m sick of being lied to much more than I’m sick to know Cipo was doped to the gills during the best season of his career. Let’s get this over with. Let us get to the Truth. It might even be fun reading. You did what how many times? Are you that stupid? Wow, that really resets the perfect amount of dumb meter doesn’t it?

If cycling does completely air its dirty past it will be a first. I don’t see American football or baseball ever addressing their doping issues. If it wasn’t such a hard damn sport doping wouldn’t be such a temptation: bike racing, horse racing and syringes. If it was just money that corrupted sports every golfer would be doing something besides drinking alcohol at the 19th hole. And fat bastards named Fuzzy or Daly wouldn’t be stubbing out their cigarettes on their caddie’s hat before teeing off. Will it ever happen? Not if the present UCI has anything to say about it. A lot of people who are involved in cycling above the level of the riders don’t want the dirty laundry snapping in the breeze.

Reconciliation…let’s call it freedom from legal prosecution. The reconciliation is going to happen between riders and fans in the cafés not in court. I don’t believe it will be a big deal, we still love cycling, I still love Bugno and Cipo. Nothing will have changed except everyone will know the truth. What will the record books look like after the smoke clears? Maybe nothing different, maybe that’s part of all this. Yes, Cipo finally won Milan-San Remo sprinting against other racers who were not clean either. He was the best of them that day.

Cipo, you worry too much. The tifosi won’t turn on you. Has the pope been roughed up yet? No? You are good then.

All right, enough talk, let’s look at some Spring Classic action, 1994, the Ronde van Vlaanderen

Click here to view the embedded video.

Every night I pray to Merckx that in the morning when I wake up I’ll have a Campagnolo Free Candy Van with a Super Dome.

And every morning, its a fresh disappointment that it didn’t come true.

This photo also serves as further evidence that Cool peaked some time around the summer of 1977.

Ah, February 14 is here again. A very special day for all of us. A day you don’t want to forget. A day when you make that extra effort to show the one you love just how much they mean to you. V Day.

On this day, I will rise early, tiptoeing out of bed so as not to make any noise and stir the sleeping. I will dress quickly and quietly, leaving the shoes until the last moment to avoid any heavy footed clomping. Making my way to the kitchen, I’ll prepare snacks and drinks, to be enjoyed during the adventure I have carefully planned for the day. The excitement builds within me as I think about what lays ahead.

When I see her there before me, waiting, my heart rate increases, and continues to rise as I make first contact with her. I whisper seductively “Are you ready? I’m gonna ride you hard today.” I reach for the lube and the pump.

I love her deeply. But she alone is never enough. I need more, to keep the flames of my infatuation burning bright. Yet I never feel unfaithful, I just have more love to give than one can handle. The others don’t mind, they never complain, and are always happy to let me ride them too. They are the best, most loyal friends a man can have.

This V Day, do something special for your loved one(s). Bathe them. Buy them a gift (maybe something in rubber, or a nice bottle of something). But most importantly, take them out, spend the whole day together, share some beautiful views… and make it a V Day to remember.

Before the New Year, it was my ride up Haleakala. At present, it’s Keepers Tour: Cobbled Classics 2013. Before Haleakala, it was one of the various Cyclocross races and before that the Zoo Hill Time Trial. The targets change, but throughout my life as a Velominatus, there always seems to be a goal looming over the horizon which spurs me on. Training, for its endless nature, is like painting the Forth Bridge in Scotland: it takes a year to paint and you have to paint it every year.

In contrast to my opinion of painting a bridge, training is something I fundamentally enjoy. Lucky for me, I love training for the sake of training; I don’t feel any compelling need to do a particular ride in any particular time. What I do feel, however, is the need to do any particular ride in a better time than I have previously. I’m fortunate to delight in the process of finding form and fitness, of getting better. I love seeing the improvement; I love setting incremental goals and reaching them through the elementary process of working towards them.

Cycling, in this way, presents me with an incredibly rewarding outlet for that bit of my nature that lives on seeing marked progress. In every walk of life, things are complicated. The deeper we wade into any endeavor, the more embroiled we become in the mechanics of staying afloat – to say nothing of actually moving towards an end. Yet, Cycling is simple; put in the work and the results come.

The more complicated my life gets and the more conflicted my priorities, the more I find I love Cycling for its elemental simplicity. Set a goal, make a plan, follow it. There is no one to look to but yourself. There are no external dependencies. There is only the endlessness of The Work.

Vive la Vie Velominatus.

Somehow Movember and Vajanuary have slipped out of our grasp without too much fanfare. It’s never too late to pay homage to a ‘stash and a rider such as Urs Freuler. Our trusty cycling historian @wiscot has once again stepped up and delivered, many thanks. 

Yours in Cycling, Gianni

Rule #50 exists for a reason: facial hair and cycling are a dangerous combination, fraught with perilous decisions – and outcomes. Should I do full beard, goatee, moustache or designer stubble? Can I grow one quickly? Will it look good? Will I be the object of much ridicule? Will there be grey in there? Will it strike fear and terror into my opponents’ hearts and legs? In the days of yore before today’s seemingly ubiquitous stubble, few pro riders sported facial hair. (The Prophet was always smooth in more ways than one). In a sport where necessity demands identical kit and gear, it takes a brave man to step away from his peers and assert a degree of individuality and grow facial hair. Currently, and most obviously, Brad Wiggins asserts his personality with sideburns and unkempt mop, maintaining the grand English tradition of eccentricity, but often looks, well, like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Certainly a look of questionable appeal.

Taking these variations into consideration, let’s review the hirsute options:

The sideburns. Currently owned and benchmaked by the first Brit to win the Tour. His career path has been unconventional in trajectory, yet strewn with success. All imitators will be judged by the Brad-standard. Exemption duly given.

The cyclo-beard is rarely seen; in fact the only bearded cyclist picture I’ve ever seen was 1982 Milan-San Remo winner Marc Gomez sporting full face fuzz during a winter cyclo-cross event in France. Off-season. Pick-up event in France. Exemption duly given.

Marco Pantani owns the cyclo-goatee. All others imitate him – and usually fail. Il Pirata was Italian and therefore possessed style genes unavailable to most of us. Exemption duly given.

The cyclo-stubble. Sported by many a rider, notably, and successfully by Mark Cavendish. 23 Tour wins permit indulgences. Exemption given. However, it must be meticulously maintained to avoid looking like Roberto Ferrari in this year’s Giro. The latter’s face fuzz just looked like a half-assed beard. No exemption given. Fail.

The cyclo-tash is a more common beast, but almost as rare as Lance Armstrong allowing a teammate to win and as tricky to pull off as a Ricco blood transfusion. Lech Piaseki, John Eustace, Luc Roosen, Dave Zabriskie, Steven Cozza, Tom Ritchey and Danny Clark all wore moustaches with varying degrees of aplomb. (Cozza and Zabriskie’s moustaches have been sporadic and often comedic; Clark’s and Richey’s were, however outstanding and matched their undisputed hard-man reputations). However, the undisputed king of the cyclo-tash was/is Swiss rider Urs Freuler, super-fast sprinter and trackman of the 80s, who not only rocked the crumb-catcher, but could generally be regarded as one of the cycling studs of his era. With a ‘tash that both Freddie Mercury and Tom Selleck would envy, he proudly wore it throughout his career, exuding an aura of movie-star good looks and ability that few matched then – or now. (Can you imagine being a neo-pro and lining up for a race next to Urs? That kit, that physique, that Swiss multi-linguistic ability, that ‘tash. Bingo, you’re instantly feeling inferior).

The facts to support the hypothesis that Urs owned the greatest cyclo-tash ever are many. To wit:

The name Urs: a studly name if ever there was one; with a manly name you can go where others fear. (Can you really imagine Andy Schleck or Alberto Contador with a ‘tash?)

The height: tall, tall, tall – clearly the ‘tash is not serving as compensation for being vertically-challenged; indeed, many of his bikes featured monstrous headtubes that extended above the crossbar in order to avoid flex and keep the frame somewhat stiff.

The multiple wins of high caliber: World Champion in the Points race 8 times, World Champion in the Keirin 2 times, 15 stages of the Giro d’Italia, the Points classification in the 1984 Giro d’Italia and 1 stage of the Tour de France. In all, 71 career victories.

The kit: his greatest victories were obtained in the splendid Atala gear of silver and blue stripes he wore from 1981-87.

Freuler was one of those rare cyclists who seemed to have it all and offers salutary lessons to all Velominati. You want evidence? Just look at pictures of the man: the sweet position, the perfect socks, the proper cap, the immaculate gear and the full Campagnolo gruppos on Italian steel. The stuff of desire and ill-fated emulation.

As if this wasn’t enough, he was fully Rule #5 and Rule #8 compliant: track in the 80s was way more competitive than today. In addition to the palmares listed above, he raced―and won―21 six day races with various partners against the likes of Patrick Sercu, Danny Clark, Tony Doyle, Rene Pijnen and other hardmen of the boards.

On the road he was a sprinter who, in his one and only Tour in 1981, was a mercenary for TI-Raleigh boss Peter Post who hired him to go for sprint wins; he also gave him full permission to quit before the mountains. On stage 7 into Bordeaux he won in awful conditions against stellar opposition such as Freddy Maertens and Eddy Plankaert; he duly quit the race before the mountains. Job done. Yet, in 1988, the year of the notorious Gavia stage of the Giro, he made it through the mountains to win Stage 21a, a feat that would have seen many other sprinters (and yes, I’m looking at you, Mario Cipollini) bail early. For a big sprinter to drag himself through that snowy hell, fixated on a late-race stage win, puts him in the Rules 5 and 9 Hall of Fame.

Freuler retired in 1995 and currently owns a bike shop in Zurich. If web-based evidence is anything to go by, he still rocks the cyclo-tash and is in such fine shape that he looks like he could swing the leg over and dish The V to riders half his age. Alas, today’s riders wear helmets and sunglasses which robs them of an opportunity to exert a measure of individuality. The 80s were really the last decade when riders were more clearly visible to the public and Freuler, with his moustache, asserted himself as a champion, looked like a man amongst boys, and singled himself out to an extent that we can only bow down in deference to his status of being one of the coolest riders ever.

That is the question. Are carbon wheels a viable option for everyday riding? Should carbon wheels be your go-to wheels rather than your just-for-racing wheels? I don’t really race and I don’t own any carbon wheels and I wonder. Granted, every professional is and has been on carbon wheels for many years so it’s easy to think we should be on them too. Brett’s review of ENVE wheels certainly made a case for them, who dosen’t want to go faster, all the time? Frank has raved about how fast his Zipp 303s are since he first put them on his Cervelo. I hefted his Café Roubaix Haleakala climbing wheels and one dosen’t need to heft them as much as hold them down, they are unbelievably light, sub-1000 grams light.

Those wheels are too light for the rigors of the East Maui Loop pavé and potholes, or so I thought. I talked Frank out of using them and he did the Cogal on Zipp 404s and 25mm clinchers. In retrospect, with bigger tires I think he would have been OK doing the Cogal on his climbing wheels. If ultralight carbon wheels are tough enough for that ride then when are they inappropriate? Ambrosio golden ticket aluminum box section rims versus Zipp 303s, let’s see, Boonen just won Paris-Roubaix on the Zipp 404s. That is the end of the discussion. It should be the beginning of the end for three-cross box section aluminum wheels. If Zipp 303s win Paris-Roubaix then when wouldn’t one use carbon wheels?

@chiasticon-

Surprised to see so much talk of carbon wheels for a Cogal; which is, essentially, not much different than a club run. I understand Frank wanting to run them for his climb up Haleakala, since he was going for a PR up a huge friggin’ volcano and I’m sure they certainly helped. But as an every day wheel for a club/social/training ride? At least within the circles I ride in, that’s a good reason to get laughed off the ride (comments would especially come from the local racers). It’s like saying “I can’t keep up with you guys without these wheels!” Or at least that’s how people generally take it.

…but how common is it among Velominati to use carbon wheels on an everyday basis?

On the Cogal ride, out of seven riders there were two people on carbon wheels. On our Sunday club ride there is maybe one user. I see a lot of bikes on the site with drool-worthy carbon wheels. Are aluminum rims old school? Are we being played here or are we all just a little behind the times or are we saving our money for better bike investments? 

Strong, light, cheap. Pick two – I’m going to attribute this to Keith Bontrager as it was etched on my Bontrager’s stem cap. I’d like to add a fourth adjective, aerodynamic, but my tiny brain can’t compute how picking two or three might work so cleverly.

Strong

There are not many high end frames made from aluminum anymore. Could the same case be made for wheels? The aluminum box rim may be light but it is not strong unless you lace a lot of crossed spokes on it. I have some 80s Campagnolo Vento deep wheels, aero maybe, not light and the ride is a bit harsh. An unlaced carbon rim may not be lighter than a light weight aluminum rim but it is much stronger.

Light

I’m afraid carbon is going to win here. While a case could have been made for the Ambrosio golden ticket being strong, it is not light. There are some semi-aero aluminum wheels out there that are light but they make me nervous with their low weight limit.

Cheap

Boing! There it is. Strong and cheap is aluminum’s territory. One pays $1100US more for Easton’s Carbon EC90 SLX wheels than the aluminum EA 90 SLX wheelset. 200 grams is the only difference between the two models. If that was the end of the comparisons I wouldn’t lose any sleep over my lack of Carbone wheels but there is still one other factor.

Aerodynamic

Carbon wins this easily. The carbon can be a fairing or integral to the wheel’s strength but carbon’s moldability is the future. Formula 1 cars are no longer made of aluminum. Boonen must have saved significant energy on the long paved run-in to the pavé sectors using his Zipps, maybe enough energy to help burn everyone off his wheel later on. @Tommy Tubulare’s Cervelo with Campagnolo Bora deep carbon wheels makes my heart skip a beat. Carbon wheels look badass. 

Conclusion

Once again I have no informed opinion having never ridden carbon wheels. Would I love to see my bike looking extremely pro with some deep section carbon wheels? Yes. Would it be very bad to be shelled out the back end of a group ride while riding said wheels? Yes, it would be very bad.

Should my wheels be worth more than the rest of the bike? Who cares. Let’s address @chiasticon’s question, who’s riding carbon and when?

As a dyed-in-the-wool Northerner, my time living in the South was a mixed bag. Southerners think differently, speak differently, eat differently, and prioritize life differently than do Yankees. In many ways, I became a better person during my time in the South, learning to relax a little bit and stop chasing my tail over everything all the time. In fact, the new and relaxed Frank was probably better prepared for the mellow attitude towards living that I’ve found so delightful here in the Pacific Northwest. (Believe it or not, PNW Frank of today is less-uptight than previous iterations.)

On the other hand, trying to get something moving faster than it was already moving was a near-impossible task and one that caused my impatient self frustration at times. I also learned that while the North has long since moved on from the trials and tribulations of the Civil War (er, the War of Northern Aggression), parts the South has not. In fact, any conversation with an elderly Southern Gentleman would invariably lead to the assertion that the South would rise again, to which my query was ignorant as always: “Again?”

My sense of nationalism is a wonderfully flexible thing. I was raised in the States in a Dutch household by Dutch parents speaking Dutch as my first language. I was, however, born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, about a score after Johnny Cash accidentally met a heartbreaker there. On any typical day, I self-identify as a Dutchman, despite my passport being inarguably American after having been born within the borders of the United States. But whenever the good ol’ US of Fuckin’ A pulls one out of the bag, my allegiances happily flop over and I’m suddenly a proud American. Its very convenient, always being on the winning side this way.

Seeing the turnout at the Cyclocross World Championships was one of those times. Everything fell in place; the crowds, the racing, and the weather going full-blown Cyclocross by throwing ice, snow, mud, and rain at the racers. American Katie Compton even brought home a Silver medal. (Oh, and by the way, the Dutch won 3 out of 4 events, so put that in your pipe, Belgium.)

This was already enough to restore my faith in American Cycling, but it wasn’t until the Elite Men’s Award Ceremony that I was nearly brought to prideful tears. There isn’t any population that has a healthier disdain for authority than do Americans, and I can’t think of any group of Americans with a healthier disdain for fat white corrupt assholes than Southerners. Given the current state of affairs, I tip my hat to the great work done by Louisville, Kentucky in organizing the event, the throngs who showed up and proved that Cycling can be successful in America, and booing Pat McQuaid like he has always deserved.

I’m not sure if the South will rise again, but I’m mighty proud at how we pulled this one up from the ashes. Chapeau, ‘Murca.

Cyclists can (and usually do) go on for hours as to why they ride their bikes, and most of their reasons can sound, well, a bit flakey to anyone not enamored with shaved legs and being done up in lycra. “I do it to keep fit”, “It keeps me slim”, “I’m a competitor, I love to race”, “It’s the freedom it gives me, an escape from the day to day”. Ok, maybe a few of those are somewhat justifible, but we all know why we really ride; so we can drink beer. And if you are tutting and pffting at that statement, then you probably don’t belong here. Cycling and beer are kindred spirits, inseperable, like Moore and Cook, Hall and Oates, Fränk and Andy, Gunderson and lying.

You need look no further for proof than Belgium. It’s where both beer and cycling were invented (I don’t know if that’s actually true, but the Belgians do both better than most so I’m running with it). Any Cyclist or beer drinker worth their malt will always look to Belgium for the very best of their craft. We’re talking Merckx, Duvel, Van Looy, Leffe, Boonen, Chimay, Museeuw and Malteni. Try and tell me any of those names don’t conjur up greatness.

Malteni, you ask? Why yes… this has to be one of my favourite Belgian beers, and not only because there is an almost endless supply of it catered for on Keepers Tour. You could offer me all the Budweiser at the ToC or Vic Bitter at the TDU that I could drink, and I’d probably choose to go dry. But at the end of a day of being pummeled by pavé or crushed by kasseien and bergs, a cold Malteni is the proverbial icing on the cobbled cake. Got a long day of spectating ahead on the Oude Kwaremont? A backpack full of the malted goodness will keep you in fine fettle and make the frites even tastier. We tested it on real live Flandrians and all were suitably impressed (then suitably disappointed when we refused a chaser). The kicker? Its gluten-free, which means it will make you live longer the more of it you drink. And there’s no hangover. Believe me, we tried.

As cycling isn’t about just riding, beer isn’t about just drinking (or drinking to get drunk, a concept largely lost on anyone swilling Bud, VB or Tui). It is about the senses; the effects we get from both riding a finely tuned bicycle and imbibing a quality ale are quite similar. Bikes and beer both look good, they smell good, and they provide us a cerebral and physical euphoria that at once relaxes and stimulates us. Enjoying both activities, in tandem, in the motherland is like reaching the cyclists’ nirvana. Yes, I’m looking forward to meeting up with old and new friends and riding the storied roads of the Monuments with The Lion this April, but if there were no Malteni at the end of each day, then the Belgian experience just wouldn’t be completely and genuinely Belgian.

The severity of a crash exists on two planes, the physical and psychological. The physical is the most obvious and one we busy ourselves with in the immediate vicinity of coming down. Our bodies need time to heal, our kits may need replacing or mending, and our bicycles may need repair work. For weeks and sometimes months, we may carry with us the scars that result when our bodies, bicycles, and tarmac momentarily occupy the same space.

We endeavor to reach a point where the mechanics of bike handling has moved into the subconscious. An experienced Cyclist no longer thinks in terms of steering or pedaling; instead, we exist in a stream of subconscious consciousness where our senses are heightened, yet none of our actions exist on a plane of explicit thought as we make subtle adjustments to our stroke, steering, and balance. As our experience grows, the bicycle becomes an extension of our physical selves; it is through finding this harmony that we are able to live on the razor’s edge between grace and disaster.

When disaster does strike, we are faced with scars beyond the physical that take much longer to recover than do our equipment and flesh. In the space of a single moment, the trust we felt in our machine and our ability to control it evaporates, leaving a hollow sense of betrayal that burrows away deeply into our minds. It stays there, far from view, only to surface during moments when we most rely on our confidence to avoid crashes; the sliding of a tire in a corner or the sudden interference of an object with our path – these situations require complete confidence in our machine and skills, yet during the time that our confidence is being rebuilt we doubt our instincts.

This is particularly true of cornering, where we are most prominently faced with the realities of our confidence, trust, and skills. Normally, we sense a crash approaching some time before it arrives. A problem with our trajectory or a slipping tire will give our minds a moment to react, even if our bodies are unable to. As we reflect on the crash afterwards, we’ll understand what happened, and what might have been done to avoid it; we use this knowledge to tell ourselves it was avoidable and tuck that nagging sense of doubt a bit farther out of reach. But a crash with no warning and no remedy sits naked in our minds and permeates every action and sensation as we struggle to regain our confidence.

This past December, I slipped on some black ice on a cold morning commute to the office. There were no signs of anything going amiss; there was only the crash. In the blink of an eye, I went from happily entering a corner to laying on the tarmac. The impact was so sudden, in fact, that the force of the fall was taken up by my hip and elbow – my hands never left the bars – and the impact so swift that my cleat tore apart as the impossibility of my occupying the same space as my bicycle and the road was resolved by my being separated abruptly from both.

My rides since then have suffered from nagging questions that flood my mind as I enter a corner, particularly in the wet; I no longer trust that I can judge the corner adequately or that my equipment will loyally carry me through. Logically, I know that while statistics suggest that one’s chances of crashing remain constant so long as environmental conditions don’t significantly change, I know shaken confidence ensures that crashes come in clusters as self-doubt overrides intuition cultivated over years of experience.

I must force myself to regain my confidence; the only path to doing so lies through ignoring my doubt and wrapping myself in the craft. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

I didn’t want to climb the Eiger, I wanted to have climbed the Eiger.
- Jon Krakauer, Eiger Dreams

Gianni’s Take

This Cogal seemed like a good idea to Frank. Right up until he understood we had to be riding at 5:25am to meet up for espresso or muffins, or dense fuel omelette loaded with cheese and sausage (Peter only). This ride had been weighing heavily on my psyche for a long time and I needed to get it underway. I needed to have done the East Maui Loop. Long distances and climbing are two of the many weak points of my cycling. This was by no means the Too Much on 100 slog; the East Maui Loop was 50% the distance and 80% of the climbing.

Frank proclaimed he was going to do this cogal without fuel. Frank is other worldly. He is from Mars and I, evidently, am from some outer orbiting pussy planet. I had stuffed one of my rear pockets with Clif products. Hell yes, bonking is dumb and I didn’t need to add that to my list worries. Why would one propose such Rule #91 folly? To meet the Man with the Hammer, a confirmed date with him, to really get it square in the forehead? No, Mr. Body Dismorphia wants to lose weight. With tongue cleanly bitten off I mimed that it was a fine idea.

After a zero dark thirty start we met the other riders, most of whom had no idea what a Cogal was. They were just up for a day of riding through the many climates and geographies of the East Maui Loop, followed by pizza and beer gorging. Frank and I were the only East Loop virgins on this ride. @mauibike was our guide but with one road and no turns, he didn’t have to worry about us getting lost.

Everyone returned to their starting points. Frank suffered a non-fixable flat with five miles to go and had to call in the support truck. He will have to come back to  finish this one. It was a hell of a ride. I’m glad to have done it. Everyone else treated it like an easy roll around session. Rob even added some climbing after dragging me along.

The beer and pizza made us whole again.

Frank’s Take

At a cozy 160km with and a few thousand meters of climbing, this ride has been given something of mythical status by Gianni ever since our first trip out to Maui a few years ago. Poor tarmac, dirt roads, loads of climbing, and heat all add their unique elements to Maui’s already unique climate.

Being a small island just big enough to have distinct climates in different areas, there is a tropical rainforest on the north and northeast sides of the island, desert in the south, and normal in the isthmus that runs between East and West Maui. That makes this ride the only ride I’ve ever been on that takes you through all these weather zones in one day. I’d experienced part of this when riding the Kaupo ride with my friend Dave Ezzy on our last trip, and I was thrilled at the chance to ride the whole thing.

Bad roads and peer pressure meant a last-minute change to clinchers, as the wheels I had brought were my Café Roubaix climbing wheels and it was (repeatedly) postulated that I might destroy them when introducing fat ass, carbon, and potholes. I scrambled to get tires and valve extenders sorted out and claimed the VMH’s Zipp 404s for the ride. This turned out to be a bad idea as the extender I bought sucked, and the inner tubes I repurposed from her wheels were old and cracked and destined to fail just prior to us completing the ride. You’ve never been doing this so long that you can’t learn a basic lesson: never change your equipment the night before an important ride.

I had a rough night; I stayed up late writing, and staying up late writing customarily requires ample portions of wine. When I finally got to sleep, it was soon interrupted by phone calls from work when the servers chose to fail. I was awake just long enough to realize how hung over I was going to feel in the morning and how few hours were left before the alarm would go off.

Hangover, no food, and coffee seemed like an excellent way to meet the Man with the Hammer, and though I brought a Clif bar and a few shots by way of escape chute should I need it, I was determined to run the tank empty. This endeavor was aided somewhat by losing a bidon on the Maui Pavé.

This is dragging on, so I’ll stop after making a few final points. First, this is an amazing ride and despite the pouring rain, was one of the most beautiful I’ve done – full stop. Second, riding from desert into rain forest is one of the coolest things you’ll ever do. Third – and this is mostly just for the islanders – that tarmac on the back end of the island is rough, but it is nothing like the Pavé of Northern France and Belgium.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Is this still the off season for the people of the North? I hope so. I know it’s -34 fahrenheit where Marko lives so he is only riding three times a week to prepare for the Keepers Tour. It seems @souleur has a little holiday guilt and now that those damn holidays are behind us it’s time to think about the cycling season ahead.

Yours in Cycling, Gianni

The season has passed that all cyclists are cautious about. That time of year where food is abundant, and for most of us, we are in a respite as well. This calculates into a caloric excess. And we must admit, we cannot avoid it. Tis the season as we say. At work, our partners and colleagues bring in food and drink to enjoy. Our families make coveted goodies and neighbors even send treats over to express gratitude and friendship. To fully reject these things would indeed be the highest order of an asshole, yet to fully accept it is to throw away our many months of riding and training; at least that is for us north-of-the-equator types. Nonetheless, this time of year we do our best to be friendly and gracious to our friends and family even if that means eating that extra piece of pumpkin pie.

Brothers and Sisters, we must be careful. As cyclists, we know the price we pay for such friendly behavior. Because lurking in the shadows of our get togethers and parties is the man with the hammer. I know, you may not have realized this, but it is an observation I have recently made. We have indeed become familiar with him in seasons past when he visits us as the uninvited guest of our friendly bike rides. But now in the off season, the man with the hammer’s love of being the peeping Tom is in full swing. See, for now, the man with the hammer is taking notes on all of our indiscretions, each and every single one. He has a flawless memory bank and each and every thing we indulge at this time of year is officially on the record. Sure, it’s just a piece of pie, but each goodie we take in, it will be required of us one day. See, for the man with the hammer, it’s a special day he looks forward to and it’s called payback day. He’s a bored lunatic who has nothing more to do than inflict loads of hatred upon us. In fact there is nothing that he relishes in more than to take advantage of us at that perfect moment, when you are bleeding out your eyeballs, you are gasping for a short breath of air and this fifty pound monkey jumps on your back. For some, he rarely pays a visit because they are very, very disciplined. For those like myself, he visits often and repeatedly and in heavy doses. Because of his regularly scheduled appointments, I have become more familiar with him and I take note of his characteristics, his virtue, his habits. And the more I learn of him, the more he reminds me of Jack Torrance in the Shining, BAMM, there he is and boy is he ever-present and somebody is gonna pay because he is all about the bat-shit-craziness.

Yes, it’s that special day when you resume your training. That day becomes the day we recognize our sins of the past. It may be the hill repeats, it may be that perfect stretch of road that we find ourselves doing max intervals in V-locus fashion, it may be that long steady climb; but whatever it is we all will come to that pivotal point that we crawl before the alter of the man with the hammer and pay penance for the luxuries of the holiday season. The man with the hammer recalls each and every one of our sins as he checks them off one by one. He calls us to atone and inflicts loads of V commensurate our just deserts.  Sadly, some will be discouraged, but for us Keepers of the highest order, we understand this is required. We understand and accept the pain, the suffering, and that atonement is called for. What the man with the hammer doesn’t get, is when we actually sit down at the table like gentlepeople, sit, talk and take account of all that we have done, we then ask for more pain, another pounding,  a repeated mashing to make us hard as nails. Because that is exactly what we realize we need in order to become better. The problem is the man with the hammer isn’t interested a conversation and he isn’t a gentleman.

Exposure to religion in my youth was by way of a brief dose of sunday school at the local Unitarian church. The point there, evidently, was to learn about other religions and turtles. If a point was being made, I missed it. When Catholic friends of mine came over for the weekend I would accompany them to the closest Catholic church and we would endure the mass together, the experience leaving us just as clueless as the moment before we walked in.

A girlfriend of @Rob briefly worked for the English bike company Raleigh in Boston, Massachusetts. These were the Jan Raas, Didi Thurau, Ti-Raleigh years, where Raleigh made beautiful bikes and their team was one of the dreadnaughts of professional cycling. I was visiting this friend at the Raleigh offices, which to my eyes seemed like any other office: fluorescent lighting, linoleum tiled floors, men in coats and ties. It was uncontaminated by bicycles or red and yellow  kits. This place was not cool. My friend ushered me into a nondescript room, pulled out an enormous sliding drawer and showed me something she knew was cool.

In this sliding drawer was a complete set of Campagnolo bike tools, all set in blue foam cut outs, each tool nestled in its perfectly shaped place. I didn’t fall to my knees but I must have gasped. Each tool was a work of art: form and function in unison. Each tool designed for a specific task in the wedding of components to frame. The tools had a uniform silver finish. There were facing and chasing tools with beautifully milled cutting teeth of high speed steel. I’m serious about reverence here. I had never seen anything like this. The seeds to my Italophile religion were sown. I was already a devout fan of the components but did the tools have to look this fantastic? What did this say about a company? To me it said-these tools are designed and made to make sure Campagnolo components work perfectly on any frame. What goes into the tools goes into everything else. The passion, the design, the tools and the components are one. Perhaps the intention was never there to make cool looking tools, maybe it was just a by-product of making cool looking components. What else could they do?

I had found my religion. I never needed the complete tool set, I was never a professional bike mechanic. I do own a few civilian Campa tools: some cone wrenches, the peanut butter wrench, a T-handle wrench, a 10-speed chain tool. These are beautiful tools. Park makes functional tools, no one would say they are beautiful. Why make a functional tool beautiful? Is a beautiful tool a better tool? It is when one is making a living wielding them. Pride in your tools reflects pride in your work.

I was going to write that those days are over, adding beauty adds cost and the bottom line is everything now. Then I remembered my Lezyne pedal wrench. It is functional as it removes pedals without impaling knuckles onto greasy chainrings (and opens beer bottles) but it is beautiful because it has a wide smooth machined aluminum handle bolted onto the body of the wrench. It lacks the refined industrial design of a Campagnolo tool but it is beautiful in its own way.

Cycling is hard; I’m not leaking any trade secrets with that statement, but it feels good to say it anyway. No Cyclist avoids suffering, but of those who venture into our world, there are some who seek to limit it while others choose to embrace it. Then we have a handful of characters who consider playing Whack-a-Mole with the Man with the Hammer to be good sport, particularly when playing the part of Mole.

In the current climate, it’s impossible not to consider the impact doping has on our sport. I, for one, have happily watched professional bike racing and delighted in the spectacle for close to thirty years, aware to varying degrees that doping is part and parcel of that spectacle I enjoy so much. In the last decade, I’ve gone so far as to assume most – if not all – riders are doping; a regrettable situation but one which has done little to temper my enthusiasm for the sport. After all, when all the riders are doing it, then surely what we’re watching is a level playing field of willing participants who understand how the game is played. Cheaters cheating cheaters hardly seems like cheating.

It’s all beautifully romantic so long as all the riders are doping. This is not the case, however; there are those who are racing clean against dopers. These riders are truly being cheated out of a livelihood by a culture which not only turns a blind eye to cheating, but who ostracize those who don’t. These riders who refuse to dope have few voices and last week, the sport lost one of the most forward of these with the retirement of Nicole Cooke.

Nicole has been a force in Women’s Cycling since turning Pro in 2002. A powerful rouleur, she excelled in every terrain and in any race format, but was nigh unbeatable in uphill finishes, taking a total of three La Flèche Wallonne Féminine titles, each of which required such a large laying of The V that it brought her to collapse. I was aware of her as much as anyone can be with the state of the coverage of Women’s Cycling, but she became one of my favorite riders after reading a piece in Rouleur about my favorite hub manufacturer, Royce. In the article, Royce’s Cliff Polton described being at a trade show when a young girl better described as a ball of loosely-contained energy bounded up on his booth and started asking about bottom bracket axles and wondering aloud if he could help her achieve her goal of becoming the wolds most dominant female cyclist.

Given what I understand of her personality, I get the feeling it was more like executing a plan than achieving a goal.

Cooke raced at the top of her sport for thirteen years; she scaled the heights of achievement with wins in every major race on the calendar including the Ronde van Vlaanderen voor Vrouwen, La Fleche, the Giro d’Italia Femminile and Grand Boucle (women’s Tour de France), the Olympic Road Race, and the World Championship Road Race. What’s more, she accomplished it while remaining staunchly anti-doping to the point that she faced sackings for refusing doping products.

Anyone who is a fan of Cycling should read Nicole’s retirement statement - I could never do it justice here. My personal hopes for the Pharmstrong Legacy is that it yields a a blood letting in the UCI and that the energy it spends on covering up its own corruption goes instead into promoting Women’s Cycling.

I’m sad to see Nicole go. Yet, for a rider who thrived in the hardest conditions and who unyieldingly stuck to her principles, I find it very fitting that the final two wins of her career came in Stages V of the Giro Femminile and Energiewacht Tour, respectively. Bravo, Nicole.

Here is the finale of her last Giro stage win:

In order to win one must first make it into the selection. The selection, as it were, can take many forms; a lone break away, a small group, or half the peloton. It can happen within the last 500 meters of a race as it does in a sprint finish or, more rarely, from the start line. Selections are a part of virtually all types of road bike racing except maybe for TT’s. For some, making the selection is a victory and a worthy goal in and of itself. The selection always comes down to one thing though; everybody who’s not in it knows they won’t be winning that day and everybody who is in it knows they have a shot at glory. Making the selection is the sum of good fitness, having good legs, riding nous, and lady luck. It also stands to reason that the more selections a rider makes the more checks he or she will have in the win column.

The first part of the equation, good fitness, means without it you’ll get shit out the back when the racing starts. There is no substitute for long hours of training on the bike for getting fit. The second is having good legs when the time comes. Fitness is a precursor to good legs but the two almost seem mutually exclusive at times. We’ve all had our legs inexplicably carry us further and faster than we thought our level of fitness would allow. We’ve also turned squares while being in the form of our lives. When this happens we’re left baffled as our friends/competitors ride up the road. Go figure. Nevertheless, the legs must respond when needed. The third piece is possessing some amount of cycling nous. You don’t generally go out and win a race the first time you enter it unless your given name is Eddy and your surname is Merckx. It pays to know the course, how to handle your bike, how your competitors race and what their form is like. This information contributes to your tactical and racing nous. The final part of the equation is having lady luck perched on your handle bars parting the waters as her hot older sister, la Volupte, carries you along effortlessly. In cycling there are some things you just can not control. Crashes, punctures, kamikaze dogs, twatwaffle media car drivers, erratic other riders, and sketchy roads can all be somewhat mitigated by savvy riding and bike handling nous. But then how, all other things being equal, do we explain a broken chain and two punctures 75K from home just out of cell range on a perfectly sunny training ride versus a crash and mechanical-free day riding over rain soaked pavé with a support car 20 bike lengths behind? If it wasn’t for bad luck, after all, the Schlecks would have no kind of luck at all would have four Tours de France between them, non?

When the four parts above are present and on your side you have a good shot at making the selection. Making the selection is not mutually exclusive of these factors nor does it guarantee a win . Fitness, good legs, nous, and luck all have to be present in order for a rider to make the selection. The really good riders take matters into their own hands and make the selection happen. This is usually one, two or three guys who crank up the pace often at a crucial point on the course. As it is said, Roubaix isn’t won in the Troueé d’Arenberg but it is certainly lost there.

I had first hand experience with this during the Heck of the North this past September. The ‘Heck’ is punctuated by six or seven sections of double track ATV (snowmobile) trail ranging from 2 to 5 k or so in length. These sections are where the field is thinned, where selections are made. My good friend and training partner Dietz, who’s finished no lower than sixth or so the few time he’s raced the Heck, told me over and over – “go as hard as you can and then one more on the snowmachine sections, that’s where the selections are made, the guys in the front go really hard on those sections.” He was right. I held my own on the first couple sections as the lead group drilled it over everything from swamp to muskeg, to tall grass, to loose bouldery trail. Then I lost contact on the third section but was able to ride myself back up on the gravel that followed. Then, I was able to put myself in the front five or ten riders at the start of the next section. This section started with a punchy, boulder strewn climb which led over a knoll and dropped into a small swamp that required a dismount to navigate. It started with my front wheel washing out on some soft deep sand as I turned onto the section from the road. I was able to stay upright but lost a couple places. Then I had to put my foot down about half way up the first climb as a softball-sized rock skipped underneath me and stopped my momentum. As I scrambled to shoulder my steed and walk up the rest of the hill it sank in; I had missed the selection. All that work, not just of that day but of the entire summer culminated in me walking up a dirt trail and through subsequent swamp, alone. At least now I had time to stop and take a much needed piss.

It’s during times like these when we need to gut check ourselves. The conversation I was having in my head at the time, as the top 15 riders or so carried on without me, was about what I wanted the rest of the day to look like. My first choice was to ride at pace and wait for the second group to catch up. I could then seek the solace of other riders and the relative ease of group riding. Or, I could continue on solo, going as hard as I could being assured only of a grueling rest of the day with little or no chance of catching the front group again. This, however, provided me with some hope of reeling in a guy or two who might fall off the front and possibly being able better my finishing position. I also wanted to finish under 6 hours. I had two choices but as I glanced down at the right leg of my Zwarte bibs I knew I only had one option. I still had fitness and the legs on my side and luck seemed not to be playing a factor that day. Apart from lacking the nous on the last trail section, I still had the opportunity to feel success at day’s end. The rest of the day went fine and I was happy with the result.

In the spring of this year I had a formative experience with ‘the selection’ on the Keepers Tour watching Paris Roubaix unfold on our last day of the trip. This, of course, was not on a bike though. It was on the side of the road. Actually three roads, pavé secteurs to be clear. The first was Troisville à Inchy, the first secteur of the race. After sprinting (one of two times I ran this year) across a freshly plowed field we lined up and waited for the race to pass. First came the sound of helicopters followed by the race caravan and finally the peloton, a procession that would repeat itself twice more that day for us. Somewhere, up near the front but safely tucked in 30th position or so were Boonen and the other riders who would eventually become the selection. As the dust began to settle we ran back to the bus stopping only to snap a few pics with the lovely Mrs. Vansummeren. As we sped toward the Arenberg Forest in the mini bus on back roads being expertly navigated and eloquently sworn at by William of Pavé Cycling Classics we enjoyed cold Maltenis and sandwiches.

The traffic on the thoroughfare was jammed leading up to Wallers-Arenberg but our guides knew ways around that. They were making a selection of their own. Just below the railroad trestle seen in all the classic shots of “the trench” we set up shop with a full messenger bag of Malteni that Alex had been carting with us all week. Again; helios, caravan, peloton. This time though Boonen and company were closer to the pointy end of the bunch. It’s an incredible sound the peloton makes as it speeds over the cobbles at speeds that make the rest of us envious on the smoothest of roads.

Finally, we were back in the yellow bus speeding toward the Carrefour de L’Arbre. Charged by what we had begun to realize we were witnessing first hand and lubricated by the bottomless bag of Malteni, none of us could get a word in edgewise as we pontificated about what we’d see at the next secteur. The radio coverage in the van was spitting out updates in French which provided us with clear information that William had to translate.

After another sneak around traffic we parked about a kilometer from the famous Café, walked up to our vantage point, and waited. There was the telltale helicopter. Only this time it was flying over only one rider. Imagine what it would be like to be cycling along all by yourself being followed by a low-flying whirly-bird. Bizarre. But there it was, the selection had been made. From 200 to 50 to 20 to 6 to 4 to 2 to 1. That was it. Fitness plus legs plus nous plus lady luck equaled the selection and finally the win. The win being greater than the sum of the parts.

After a long period off the bike I’m starting to train again. Training for this year’s Keepers Tour and for my first gravel race of the year, the Ragnarok 105. Time, but moreover my fitness, legs, nous, and luck will tell if I can make the selection.

Let’s talk about bikes. Yeah, bikes are good. After all, they are “the central tool to our craft.” They are the reason we became Velominati, the portal through which we travelled to this life. When we were kids, we saw a bike for the first time; we liked the look of it, and when we rode it our lives were changed forever. We didn’t one day say “I want to be an athlete, what type of sport shall I do?” or “I need to feed my massive ego and make millions, what tool should I use for its exploitation?” No, we liked the sensations the bike gave us, the freedom, the speed, the endorphins (although we didn’t know what they were called or how they worked, we knew they felt good). From our first bike to n+1, each bike has a a story to tell, and a part of each of those bikes stays with us forever. Or maybe it’s just me.

For about a year now, my beloved Bosomworth has been sitting forlornly in a corner of the shop lunch room, just a frame and fork waiting to be extricated from its dusty home under the fake plastic pot plant. But it needed the right gear to bring it back to life. It was the only way I could do it justice; Campa Gruppo, circa 80s, maybe some downtube shifters and tubulars. Yeah, I wanted to do it properly. But a lack of available parts and a bigger lack of the funds to procure them meant that the poor old girl remained in the corner. It almost broke my heart. Then I had a vision.

I’d watched the insanity on two wheels on display in the movie Line Of Sight, a doco on filmmaker Lucas Brunelle, who follows alley cat races all over the world and films the action while dodging the same traffic and pedestrians as the nutjobs racing. I’d gotten into his stuff when I first came to Wellington and was riding a fixed gear Langster as my commuter and for longer road rides on the weekend. I remembered how it had made me pretty strong at the time, how my stroke was the most magnificent it had ever been, and I thought “why not? Let’s get the Bozzie back into action as a singlespeed”. I say ‘singlespeed’ and not ‘fixie’ as I kinda like the idea of coasting down the other side of the hills I’ve struggled to ride up. A scour of my boxes of bits would provide enough to get her functional. After all, I wouldn’t be needing derailleurs, shifters or a cassette.

I already had some vital organs put on ice for the eventual rebuild; a Regal saddle, Chorus carbon post, a brand new Chris King headset (which I picked up for $60 off the distributor who had lost the contract and was clearing out stock), ITM quill stem, and a Mavic front wheel which came with the bike when I first bought it. My friend Ash had bought a beater a few weeks back and swapped the drop bars for a flattie, leaving a set of Sakae Modolos with 105 brake levers behind. Perfect. All I needed was a back wheel, cranks, BB, and brake calipers. I scrounged the wheeel and brakes from Ill Pro Ghetto, and found a set of 105 cranks and Octalink BB in the bins. It was all too easy. Josh donated a 42t single ring and bolts, and I broke up a cassette to get a 17t cog for the rear. A new set of brake hoods and bar tape finished her off.

One of the great misnomers of singlespeeding is “oh, it’s the simplicity of it”. No. Anyone who has ever tried to convert a mountain bike into a singlespeed will tell you it can be a royal pain in the arse. Getting chainlines perfect and tensioners to actually tension the chain, finding the best gear ratio, joining and re-joining chains, it can be an exercise in frustraion. Luckily the Boz has slotted dropouts with screw adjusters, which made the tensioning task so much easier. The wheel, being quick release, had potential to twist in the frame under load, but the adjuster screws help eliminate that. A few rides up the ramp and she was deemed fit to take out for a real ride.

Now, riding a singlespeed when everyone else has gears can be great if you are strong and the terrain is right. Or it can find you spinning like a madman while watching the pack ride off into the distance while clicking their levers as if to say “you know bikes come with gears, don’t you, dickhead?” So my cunning plan was to gee up my mates a week or so before with sending out the link to Line Of Sight, and suggesting we all break out our singlys. I knew @Rigid and @Kah both had bikes already, and @BianchiDenti was in the process of assembling his old Bianchi frame into a commuter. The seeds were sown and when our Tuesday night ride rolled around, there were three singlys, one fixie and a 1 x 8 under @BianchiDenti, with the promise of “I won’t change gears” affixed to it. All we needed were skinny jeans and messenger bags.

But we are road riders, not douchebags. We were riding road bikes, in road gear, on our usual road route. And it was a hell of a lot of fun. Mostly. Except when going uphill, or downhill, or into the wind (which was particularly strong, even for Welli). No, it was definitely a good time, and a hard ride. Denti managed not to change gears the entire ride, which must have been difficult because my thumb was constantly ghost shifting where the lever should have been. I managed to pull off a monumental save when my chain derailled as we started to sprint up a rise in the road at a known attacking point; as I somehow avoided a) nutting myself and b) hitting the deck, I wobbled into the path of @Paul whose pedal lodged in my back wheel, with enough force to lift his bike off the ground and bend a spoke in my wheel to breaking point. It would’ve looked cool to anyone behind us, but we were at the rear so no-one got to laugh at our gymnastics. That spooked me a little, as I’d had the same thing happen about ten years ago on a mountain bike, with much worse results. The rest of the ride was spent thinking about nutted track wheels and not getting out of the saddle again.

Il Progetto still has more twists in its tale, I’m sure. The Bozzie deserves to be dressed in old Campa, but until those planets align, she’s going to be doing at least one ride a week to help with my prep for Keepers Tour. If I go fixed again, then at least I may be able to perform on Eddy’s velodrome a bit better than last year. But the main thing this conversion has brought (back) to me is that sense of fun that the simple act of riding provides, without gears, without bells and whistles, and without a huge price tag. Just riding.

VLVV.

Doubt. It speaks in whispered tones but echoes in our actions and lingers heavy on the mind. It is a thing that weaves itself into the seeds of our dreams and erodes vision into whim. Doubt leads to uncertainty; uncertainty to fear; fear prevents us from reaching as high as we might.

Doubt is a clingy thing. Like a snowball dropped down a mountainside in a cartoon, it starts small but grows upon its own weight. It continues to collect more doubt until finally it crushes any positive thought. Doubt is the fundamental element of The Anti-V.

As Cyclists, our morale rests on a knife’s edge where the slightest drop of grace can send us into the waiting arms of La Volupté while even the smallest grain of doubt can draw us to the cold anvil of her husband, the Man with the Hammer. Little things such as a freshly wrapped set of bars or a recently cleaned and silenced drivetrain can send morale skyrocketing, even in otherwise atrocious conditions. An elusive click or creak, on the other hand, can coax squares from even the most magnificent of strokes.

Clicks, creaks, or a misfiring drivetrain are guaranteed to send me into a tailspin of frustration and doubt; if my machine disobeys the Principle of Silence or malfunctions, I am sure to face a dismal day on the bike. Clean kit and freshly shaven guns, particularly when the guns are glistening with sweat or rain, is for me one of the greatest sources of form and good morale. To see the muscles moving under the smooth, tanned skin as they strain with effort instantly sends away any lingering doubt and leaves only optimism and drive, my conditioning and training cease to hold sway over my desire and willingness to suffer. And when we are willing to suffer, we can do anything.

Rule #34-Mountain bike shoes have their place-on a mountain bike.

During our very recent Cogal I gained some on-the-road insight on Rule #34. We were on a part of the route I have never ridden on a bike and had no memory of. The pavement was pavé, Maui-style. Somewhere deep down below the surface of the road was primordial road, patched with only scoopfuls of asphalt over the years until the surface is completely dimpled with mango sized mounds of road. This was good and expected. The Roubaix technique of big charinring (ahemmm, errrr, 50 tooth), powering along, keeping the weight on the pedals and handlebars had us making good progress through some of Maui’s most remote country. And it was raining and there was cow manure to ride over…almost Northern France.

I came around a bend and hit a steep berg. The tilted road kept curving right so it was impossible to know when it ended but it couldn’t end soon enough for me. I was quickly in the worst of straits: out of gears, out of the saddle and fully gassed with no end in sight. There were still two people behind me that had to be looking to get by; they could not possibly be going slower. I was unintentionally weaving over the pavé as my complete focus was on keeping the bike up and not hitting a hole or a bump big enough to stop me dead.

Totally redlined on a climb that has no immediate end in sight, these are the worst and best times for a cyclists. If you let your back wheel slip, you stop and the foot goes down, unacceptable. If you just say basta, pull on your brakes and put down your feet, that is worse. I assume all cyclists feel this way. If you are on the Koppenberg someone better have blocked your way. No one gets off halfway up that and says, nah, I’d rather walk. If I have a heart attack trying to ride up something horrible, that might be better than the alternative.

“He wasn’t the brightest, but he didn’t put his foot down”.

It is the best time for a cyclists simply because given all alternatives, there are none, it’s Rule #5. No need to think, better not to think, just keep it going up.

If I did put my foot down on a shiny, wet, steep berg, what then? I have speedplay cleats and those aren’t getting me anywhere if I’m not on a bike. No cleat covers that day so I would be laying down my sweet steed, sitting on this hill while I take my shoes off? That is not going to happen.

The only way my putting a foot down that would not end in a bad nickname for life would be if I was wearing mtb shoes. No one needs that temptation. Looking past the obvious reasons for Rule #34: the mtb shoe-cleat connection is sloppy, mtb shoes look lame on road riders and we are riders, not walkers is the cruel temptation to put a foot down and push the bike up to the top of a hill. This is something no one needs in their time of need.

There is something supremely Fantastic about a precisely manicured set of sunglasses, particularly when they’re not being used for their intended purpose. Certainly, there are times when circumstance offer no alternative but to actually look through them, but for the most part, it’s a bit pedestrian to use sunglasses for seeing through.

I’ve been obsessed with sunglasses since I was a kid; photos of the Smallest Frank Imaginable feature sunglasses in close proximity, usually perched atop my head of wavy brown hair and rarely anywhere near my eyes. As an athlete, sunglasses have never been far adrift, whether in skiing or cycling, and – in all seriousness – for good reason: eyes are fragile things that should be protected.

Nevertheless, whenever any kind of effort is required, I quickly find myself moving the eyeglasses away from my eyes in an almost claustrophobic panic, and it wasn’t until my most recent ride up Haleakala in my 30th year of sport that the reason for this occurred to me. As athletes, we are hugely dependent on our vision to gauge our effort.

Flying by V-Meter only, our vision offers a constant feedback loop to how near the Man with the Hammer has wandered, and how sharp his blow might be. As we approach sustained effort at or above aerobic threshold, one of the early signs of Diminishing V Returns is the flushing of blood from our cheeks followed closely by the tunneling of our vision. Color is desaturated, then the sides box in a bit, then things get a bit narrow and blurry, and after that the deterioration is not normally recalled in any degree of clarity.

It struck me like a bolt from Merckx’s Crankset: when my vision starts to go, I tear away my sunglasses in order to gauge my effort without the abstraction of the lens. So long as I ride within myself, the shades happily cover my eyes; when I am at my limit, they come off and pop onto the helmet. I used to blame claustrophobia, now I realize it is a matter of gaining an unobstructed view on The V-Meter.

Vive la Vie Velominatus.

At some point, I reckon the idea may dawn on me that I’m not a climber. Eighty kilos and standing something just shy of two meters, I’m not clear on why climbing is what speaks to me most about Cycling; I’m certainly not built like a grimpeur. But there is no question about it; I love riding in the mountains. I only have to catch a sideways glimpse of a twisty ribbon of road from an airplane window or spot a lump on the horizon before my mind starts wandering towards what suffering may be hidden there.

And that may be the key to it, it’s very easy to suffer on the climbs. Fighting the acceleration of gravity means that even by riding at a constant speed up a climb, we’re effectively accelerating our mass along the gradient. In my case, that’s a lot of mass, and in Haleaka’s case, its a lot of gradient aggregated over a lot of distance.

My love affair with this particular mountain started the same way my first elementary school crush did; I approached and was summarily rejected. I returned half a year later with the dual goal of not cracking completely and setting a high (low?) water mark for future attempts. Eighteen months on, in reasonable condition and at a reasonable weight given the human urge during the cold winter months of eating foods consisting of meats, heavy sauces, and potatoes and serving them over meats, heavy sauces, and potatoes.

My training allowed me to ride at threshold for 3 and a half hours; a statistic which supports what makes Haleakala such a unique effort. No other ride affords the rider the opportunity to suffer so comprehensively and without respite. The last ten minutes of the effort were an anaerobic patchwork of pain and agony. The winds kicked up as I worked my way up the mountain, serving to amplify both my suffering and my fatigue. Wind is a cruel thing; you push hard into it in a vain effort to maintain your speed, and as you do it saps your strength and more quickly depletes The V-Stores tucked away in your body. To say nothing of your morale.

Riding Haleakala without cracking is one thing; to ride it with the intent of setting a personal best is another thing entirely. Even despite my feather-light Cafe Roubaix Haleakala wheelset, I came up short of my personal goal of 3:30, but thankfully the high winds on the day have strengthened my belief that with proper planning I can achieve that goal.

I will return. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

Video: (Also available in QuickTime)

If you can’t take watching a 10 minute video, skip to about 7 minutes in for some good suffer footage.

Photos:

Strava:

@steampunk dropped this beauty of a photo on us. Volumes being spoken here, none of which makes being a pro look so great. Thanks Steamy.

VLVV, Gianni

I’ve waxed lyrical on the darker side of le métier on these pages in the past—on the physical and psychological demands that pro riders endure. But this photograph requires even more of the cycling fan. Tan lines? Check. Eye wear? Well placed. These are pro, right?

But this kind of voyeurism almost inspires an awkward kind of guilt. Witness: the still-open door; the suitcase stand still leaning against the wall—suitcase dumped on the floor beside it; shoes (as beaten and worn down as the rider) askew in the general vicinity of the shoe mat. How do we process these? Dingy hotel. Emaciated rider. Sun-burned face. Chapped lips. Hunched shoulders. Heavy head. Distant eyes. Broken. Total, utter, complete fatigue. And tomorrow they expect panache. Again.

I rousted Frank early. The Sunday morning group ride rolls out at 6:30 am from Twin Falls. As I put bikes in the truck  I saw a sky full of stars, a good indicator for a beautiful morning ride. I have been crazed to show Frank our local Sunday morning group ride and now he was on Maui it was finally going to happen. It is a Casually Deliberate ride along the north shore of the Haleakala volcano – the windward side, which is also the wet side. Frank is from Seattle and actually prefers to ride in the rain, I knew a little rain would not scare him off. We start at dawn to avoid the mid-day heat. A brief rain storm is a welcome way to cool off and still be dry twenty minutes later.

Some light mist was hitting the windshield as we came around the volcano, the wipers went on. This grew into a healthy, steady rain. We passed one rider using a headlight and rear flasher. I couldn’t tell who he was but I knew he was heading where we were heading. No one would be out on a bike at this hour for any other mission. When we finally pulled into the gravel parking area it was a proper wind/rain event. I wanted to invoke Peter Van Petegem’s beautiful line about how this weather was good for us. If the sun was over the horizon, no light was penetrating the clouds. My wife pulled up in a second car just long enough to curse the weather gods, bid us a fond farewell and head to a drier, warmer part of the island for a more civilized ride. Most reasonable people would have done just that.

We are not reasonable people. A few more unreasonable guys showed up. A reasonable girlfriend/cyclists was overjoyed to hear my wife had departed, she did too, leaving her shivering man and his bike behind. Starting a long ride wet is never great but it is warm here and we would get some dry and sun eventually. This group of unreasonable cyclists rolled out in good spirits. This was the Sunday group ride.

Frank had his new ultra-light carbon climbing wheels and their braking in wet conditions needed to be understood. He likes his brake calipers set very open (which I don’t get) but it made the testing even more exciting. Even my aluminum rims were only partially effective on roads this wet, I felt like I was pulling on the levers half the ride. Frank said the carbon rims worked well in these conditions; he could feel warm water coming off the wheels in the corners.

We reached the half-way point where coffee and food are enjoyed at an outdoor but sheltered picnic table. This was by far the wettest of these rides I’ve ever done. I’m not sure the rain stopped for one minute. Frank was in his element; talking cycling and being wet. Even through the rain and mist he understood this was a special route.

From our coffee stop in Nahiku, the strong continue on to Hana and the not-as-strong start the long initial climb back, happy the climbing will eventually put some warmth under the soaked lycra. Frank went to Hana, I headed back.

A friend and I spent the return ride diagnosing an annoying click coming from his bike. The rain never let up. Every descent was done squinting into the wet, hoping the piss poor visibility was sufficient to avoid mayhem. A moment behind another rider meant a face full of water coming off his rear wheel.

By the time I returned to the truck I had eaten everything in my pockets and rifled the glove box in the vain hope of finding something else edible. Every part of my kit was soaked many times through. Frank returned a bit later, buoyant, not the least bit annoyed at the weather. This was not a Rule #9 ride; we were not bad-asses for going out in these conditions, but we are not normal people.

This was a great ride.

I can’t really call it an obsession. If it was an obsession, I would have commissioned a bloke I’ve never met to build me a set of ultra-light wheels and I would have spent an outrageous amount of money to upgrade my handlebars in an identical shape from aluminum to carbon in an effort to shave a few grams off the top end of my machine. After all, science has proven that buying lighter gear is a more effective strategy for climbing faster than that weight-weenie bullshit like quitting beer or steak. 

Alright, so maybe I’m obsessed. But it’s not an all-consuming obsession – not obsessive obsession. Its more like a weighty thought that bends all the other less weighty thoughts towards it, like Einstein described why gravity bends light. It started less than a single Cognitive Unit after the VMH informed me of my time up the mountain on Part Deux. (A Cognitive Unit, obviously, is the unit of time it takes one to process any piece of information after the dishing up of a massive helping of Rule V.) It was around that time that my thoughts started warping towards riding Haleakala again – faster.

It started in low, then it started to grow. No, I’m not quoting How the Grinch Stole Christmas; I’m describing what happened after my gut was accosted by the Holiday Season. I’m fat, I’m out of shape, and I’m slow. What training I’ve been doing has been done in Seattle around the freezing point in stubbornly wet weather. Maui, on the other hand, insists on having warm weather – something I’m unaccustomed to – and the forecast for the coming week is hot, hot, and hotter. Despite Ryder Hesjedal setting the record up the climb during this time of year, the conventional wisdom around these here parts is that this is the worst time of year to try for a personal record up Haleakala.

You will understand, then, that this is the perfect time for me to leave a lung or two on Crater Road for the third time running. Assuming the weather holds and D.S. @Gianni, Coach VMH (whose “coaching” consists mostly of chastising and comparing me to small and adorable yet unwanted rodents), and @MauiBike fail to come up with compelling reasons to move the effort to another date, I will be visiting Pele for the third time on New Years Day, 2013.

Prognosticate on my upcoming ride at your own risk. For your reading and viewing entertainment, the two previous editions of Frank vs. The Volcano are provided here: Frank vs. The Volcano // Frank vs. The Volcano, Part Deux.

Now usually, we try our best not to delve into the seedy side of cycling. There is just way too much cool about our sport to focus our collective energy and attention on asshats. Besides, we’ve got bikes to ride. But the COTHO’s public announcement that he would no longer fight, er, defend himself against allegations of systematic doping, money laundering, blackmail, intimidation, and international douchebaggery has to be the biggest Anti-V moment of the year, if not in the history of pro cycling.

The COTHO could have feasibly taken one of three tacks as the winds of pressure, evidence, and public opinion continued to blow against his house of cards. Tack one would have been to continue lying, bribing, and digging an ever deepening hole as he steadfastly proclaimed his innocence. This obviously hadn’t been working for the past 10-odd years but at least it allowed him to maintain his base of supporters. Even as it became more difficult for him to maintain the façade he still had a sizable group of survivors, apologists, journalists, and mis-guided cycling fans who believed.

Tack two would have been to come clean (pardon the pun) and admit to the whole sordid mess he created but he didn’t have the ball to do this either. Who knows what his reasons are for not being honest? Best guesses are he’s rationalizing a set of excuses ranging from mitigating his financial liability, evading criminal implications, and blaming the corruptness of the sport. Maybe he’s trying to save face in some twisted way. But for as cliché as Tyler Hamilton even admitted in his tell-all; the truth will set you free. The COTHO could have stood in front of those microphones and cameras and said “Hey, you know what, I doped. I made some poor choices and lied to everybody and for that I’m deeply sorry.” Had he done so his detractors would probably still be his detractors and he would have given his supporters a legitimate reason to continue supporting him but at least everybody could say he fessed up and there is some integrity in doing that.

Alas, he took The Anti-V tack. He stopped defending himself, er, lying without admitting to anything and seems to be hoping to just fade into the background. In essence, he’s taking his toys and going home. What’s striking about this is that it is contrary to what we’ve come to understand about the guy. If anything, we’ve come to know him as a fighter, both in life and on the road. But this latest, and hopefully last maneuver was just plain weak. (Notice I’ve added the categories of “Evanescent Riders” and “In Memoriam” to this article in addition to “Awards”. The first two are much more fitting.)

Perhaps it belies the true nature of the man. A nature that involves intimidation, serial emotional and physical aggression and even violence. A nature that includes socially isolating his victims, arguing them into submission, and propagating rumors, gossip, and lies about them to sway public opinion in his favor. A nature that involves amplifying the mistakes of others in order to strengthen his own self-image. A nature whereby there are many innocent bystanders who are too fearful of repercussions to come forward themselves. The nature of a man who may be trying to compensate for his own insecurities and feed his own narcissism and megalomania. The nature of a simple bully who ultimately shows himself to be a big pussy.

Yes, I know, I have a major thing for Boonen. But come on, wouldn’t you? Look at those guns. Look at that position on the bike. He even makes that ugly Specialized helmet look good. He even makes that ugly Specialized Roubaix look good, come to think of it. And those White Ladies? Kill me now.

Picking The V-Moment of the year is always a tough one, especially in a year when there were so many great moments. In fact, that I’m glad I didn’t get saddled with The Anti-V Moment of the Year Award because it won’t be easy to pick out a loser for that one.

Some of the greatest instants of the season were Johan Vansummeren continuing on after he went through the meat grinder at the Tour. Or Hesjedal hanging tough on the Stelvio to stay close enough to J-Rod to take the win for the first Canuckian Grand Tour at the Giro. Faboo gritting his teeth to finish the Olympic ITT in tears despite a moronic but devastating crash in the Road Race. Gilbert coming back to take a decisive win in the Worlds Road Race after a disastrous season.

Maybe its my man-crush on Boonen, maybe its the fact that we were at the roadside for both events, but two moments stand out as what must have been two of the hardest moments in racing – with the most at stake. One was Boonen riding the Paterberg at the back of the three-man breakaway with Ballan and Potato during the Ronde van Vlaanderen; his gears were jammed and he couldn’t get into his lowest gear on that brutally steep climb. As the group got to the top, Boonen was overgeared and losing ground. Standing in a Flemish field not more than 1000 meteres (as the crow flies) from the Paterberg, I could almost hear his bike cry out in agony as he scraped the bottom of The V-Barrel to hold onto the back of the group.

But that’s not The V-Moment of the year because, in the end, there was only something to be gained by holding on – he had nothing to lose. If he got unhitched from the group, he would have called it training for Roubaix, and gone home feeling good about his chances in the Queen of the Classics.

The V-Moment of the year was instead a moment that wasn’t captured on camera; it was a solitary moment that echoed inside only one man’s heart. It was a moment that must have fluttered through his mind as he came off the secteur of cobbles about 55k from Roubaix, looked around, and noticed that no one was with him. At that moment, he had everything to lose. A wiser man would have sat up and waited for the group, knowing he could conserve his energy and pick his moment later, when the risks were more manageable.

But The V isn’t about sensibility. The V isn’t about planning. The V isn’t about calculation. The V is about making your own luck. The V is about bending the odds to your vvill. The V is about making the race beg you to relent. The 2012 V Moment of the Year was the moment Boonen decided to carry on to Roubaix, alone.

It has been a crazy year, this, with our first annual Keepers Tour sorted, partnerships with the industry’s leading icons including Johan Museeuw, Pavé Cycling Classics, DeFeet, fi'zi:k, and Lezyne – and a book deal to boot (deadline looming large on January 1st). We couldn’t have asked for a better year, and would like to remind you all that none of this – not one part of it – works without you, The Community.

It is a dream come true to be part of Cycling and to have some perceived value within this amazing community. Thank you all. From the bottom of our hearts, we wish you a very Merckxy Christmas, and a Coppi New Year.

Merckx bless you, one and all.

- The Keepers

Truth be told, how many of us can resist a photo of ourselves Looking Fantastic on the bike? How many of us can resist the temptation of taking our eyes off the road and stealing a glimpse of ourselves in a shop window as we pass by? Not me, but then again a strong case could be made for my being a narcissist and I freely admit that I love looking at photos of myself riding, though this is mostly because they take me back to the experience I was having at the time.

This time of year has us looking back at the season past and getting nostalgic about the best rides and moments of the year. In the coming Holiday week, the Keepers will be naming The V Moment and The Anti-V Moment of the year, but we thought we’d give the community an opportunity to get a bit narcissistic and share our favorite photos from 2012.

With that, we announce the first annual Velominati Photo Contest. To enter, post your favorite photo(s) from 2012 below and The Keepers will monitor the conversation and use our judgement to name a winner on January 1st, 2013. The winner will receive a free pair of Witte V-Socks (available in the first quarter of next year) and the top three photos will be offered as VVallpapers. Just as with the VSP, The Keepers can post photos and are eligible to win, of course, but we are excluded from the prizes.

Even as I write this I know we won’t be able to resist posting photos of ourselves laying down The V; I already did it in the lead photo of this article. Nevertheless, the photos don’t have to be of yourself, they can be of anything so long as you took the photo or you have permission from the photographer to share it.

Have at it and so far so good on the world not ending.

Two summers ago my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting friends in Switzerland. The country is so expensive that I took home only two souvenirs: white Assos socks and a pair of Lezyne tyre levers. I assumed Lezyne was a European company. It was in this Swiss bike shop and I’d never seen the brand in an American store, ever. “Ewwww, exotic Swiss tire levers, I can afford these.” The levers were white “composite matrix” with a natty neoprene sleeve but really I bought them because I could fit them in my luggage and they were affordable ($4 US). Switzerland wisely (for them) never joined the EU but the Swiss franc makes buying swag painful. As a side note, the Assos socks are really well made. They look a tad less white now but have retained their essential Assos sock essence in every other respect.

Two years on and these levers have earned and kept the coveted number one position in my mobile rear pocket man-sachel. They are superior levers. Their hook design works better than levers made by Park, Pedros or King. I haven’t tried the Mavics Bretto has revered. I don’t know what the “composite matrix” is but it is strong as hell. Should it be so hard, designing an effective tyre lever? These are like medical instruments. Nurse, Lezyne tyre lever please. The thinness and specific curve of the bead hook makes these the levers used atop Mt Velomis.

Michelin tyres and Campagnolo rims (my favorite pairing) are at opposite ends of the clincher fit tolerances. They are wicked tight, harder to get off and on than the recently abandoned tubeless Hutchinsons. No other levers so easily get under the Michelin bead and take the horrible strain like these Lezynes do.

Sitting on the edge of the road in Kuala Lumpur, sweat pouring down your face as you bend to the task of switching inner-tubes, the sounds of snapping stalks from the jungle getting closer. Do you want the best tyre levers in your sweaty trembly hands? For you tubular riders, these might be excellent for husking that punctured tyre off the rim. At 26 grams, it would not be a bad bet. Hell, if you have to defend yourself against the enraged Malaysian monkey, a mini-pump in one hand and an unbreakable Lezyne medical instrument in the other might work out for you.

There, I’ve gone and done it. I’ve written an article singing the praises of a tyre lever and I can’t stop spelling tyre with a “y”. It’s what we do here. We obsess.

Disclaimer: Velominati has a friendly relationship with Lezyne and we have received some very well designed and well executed products of theirs, as have Keepers Tour riders from the 2012 Belgian love-fest. As I stated at the begining of this post, I bought these tyre tools when I didn’t know the first thing about the company. I admit that I was so impressed by their tyre levers I was inclined to try more of their products but my Dirty Schleck Love for these levers is not influenced by our relationship with Lezyne.

Eight point V bar. From the moment I bought my first set of high quality road clinchers, I’ve ridden at that pressure. I started with that number because that’s the pressure the sidewall told me to pump them up to; I didn’t yet understand much about balancing the benefits of high and low pressures to optimize comfort and friction; I just pumped them up as instructed and off I went merrily down the road.

I’m not as thin as I’d like to be, which is the same thing as saying I’m fatter than I should be, though I certainly hope I Climb Well For My Weight, especially as my third (and hopefully charmed) ascent up Haleakala is looming large in Vajanuary. The point is, I’m not a whippet and even if I starved myself for the next five months and subsist exclusively on IPAs (I draw the line at cutting beer out of my theoretical diet; I might get desperate, but I’m no savage) I’d still be an Eros Poli at best. Being a big guy, the only factor that mattered to me when it came to tire pressure was avoiding the pinch flats that plagued me during my time riding cheaper tires and that meant maximum pressure, no questions asked.

We always dialed our pressure in for Mountain biking and would pull a few pounds out of our road tires when riding in the rain, but by and large, tire pressure was tire pressure, and as far as I was concerned, more was better. I even had a set of 20mm tires on a makeshift TT bike I had that I blew up to a whopping 10 bar. In the last few years, however, the Cycling world has become obsessed with doing the limbo and seeing how low they can go on tire pressure. It all began with an article in Bicycle Quarterly which conducted an extensive and flawed study on the effects of tire pressure and tire width, and concluded that lower pressure and wider tires are faster and more comfortable than high pressure, narrow tires; the idea is that lower pressure allows small bumps to be absorbed by the tire rather than bouncing the bicycle (and rider) in the air, and that wide tires flex more efficiently than narrow tires resulting in lower rolling resistance. Its important to remember that this gain in comfort and efficiency also comes with an increased risk of pinch flats.

This is all well and good, of course, though we always have to be careful to remember the basic principles of such a compromise; lower pressure and wider tires also mean an enlarged surface area which necessarily means more friction; a perfectly hard, narrow tire on a perfectly smooth surface would have almost zero friction, to the point that you’d be unable to gain enough traction to actually move the bicycle at all. What we’re after, in a practical sense, is a balance between the two extremes which optimizes comfort and tire efficiency against reduced surface area and the risk of pinch flats.

I became infected with Tire Pressure Fever myself as the Cycling world became increasingly obsessed with tire pressure. Down went the pressure in my tires and immediately I felt sluggish and lethargic on the bike. Climbing out of the saddle, I could feel the tires flex as I unleashed the Awesome Devastation of the Toothpicks of Navarone. Cornering was like steering in molasses; turn the bars, weight the pedals and then wait a few moments while the bike got round to responding.

These observations first had me reaching for the pump and then got me theorizing about what is really going on with tire pressure and what pressure is right for a given rider. I say “theorizing”, but most other people would use something closer to “guessing assertively”. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Basically, it comes down to finding the highest pressure and narrowest tire you can that gives a rider of your weight the right amount of tire flex such that your bike isn’t bouncing as it rolls over the tarmac and allows it to roll efficiently, all while minimizing surface area, risk of punctures, and sidewall deformation when accelerating (cornering and climbing are basically the same as accelerating; the acceleration vector is just in some other direction than forward.) This means that each rider at each weight with different preferences on the sliding scale between the above compromises will find a different optimal pressure. Impressed by Tom Boonen’s tire pressure at Roubaix? Tread carefully; that pressure was dialed in based on very specific criteria and unless you’re eating the same cobbles and weigh the same as he does, you’ll need a different pressure to find the same balance. Bicycle Quarterly has a chart that shows what they believe to be the ideal pressure by rider weight, though I don’t believe a word of it; I do however entertain the possibility that I could be missing something based on the fact that I didn’t actually read the article.

Me? I’m still happily riding at 8 point V. I’m comfortable, I’m not flatting, and I’ve got good control. Besides, it just has a nice ring to it.

It is less than a week from the longest night of the year for us lucky cyclists in the Northern hemisphere. Articles about lighting systems and losing form are what we cough up. @Strathlubnaig has even shorter days than most of us, works at sea, gets out on the bike and writes about it. Rule #9 or not, when is it ever a bad idea to ride a bike? 

VLVV, Gianni

Two weeks offshore, trying to save an oilfield. I return to the beach and try to remember where I parked the car. Driving home I notice not much has changed since I left except there are even less leaves on the trees, more mud on the roads, it gets lighter later and darker earlier.

I arrive home in the dark, but my thoughts turn to The Bike. I check the forecast, and the following day is to be commuter chaos they say, windy and torrential rain, more floods they say.

Perfect day for a bike ride then.

In the morning it takes forever to get light. It is bad enough at 56.5 North at this time of year, but the Great Cloud Belt which can seem to perpetually hang over us like some Biblical Punishment makes it seem worse. In fact, it is worse.

I pull open the closet door under the stair where my kit lives. I pull out some bibs and a jersey, then look at the twilight-like conditions and change the jersey for a slightly brighter colour. Safety first. The kit is clean and laundered, it smells fresh and hopeful, full of optimism. It is around 8 degrees out, so a merino undershirt goes on too, and a pair of Ron Hills over the top of the guns.

I dig out the spare tubes and the little tool kit and slip them in my back pockets; tubes in the right, tool in the centre, phone in the left. Out the door I go and into the garage where The Bike sits, waiting patiently and stoically like a loyal Edinburgh terrier, unmoved and untouched for two weeks. The small meter still has the last ride on screen. That seems like an age ago. Using the track pump I check the tyres and stick a bit of wind in. I spin the pedals and the chain flows through the cogs smoothly and silently. All is in order. Helmet and glasses on, I wheel her out and down the drive, clip in and away. How will my legs be, I wonder. Two weeks of gym bike on the rig, not the same at all.

There is a fine feeling of comfort and joy. It is raining, the sky is sombre and low clouds scud across our nearby mountains, pregnant with more rain. Bring it on. Down the road and I head off the long straight which leads to the first climb. My mind slips deftly like the gear changes into ride mode. Work issues, family troubles, general worries and other concerns always exist but for the next two hours such things will be dulled and even forgotten. Riding The Bike is like codeine and I am grateful to be back.

It was said by someone in the posts following Gianni’s excellent review of his tubeless system that an honest, long term analysis by a ‘real’ rider was most welcome. Well, you’re not going to get that here. You will get honesty, for sure, but ‘long term’ doesn’t come into the equation when a week is the amount of time spent ‘testing’ a product. Especially when that week sees more time spent working a real job (one where I have to be in a certain place at a certain time) than I’ve spent in the last two years. But I can give you some impressions on a few good rides on the sweet carbon goodness that is the Enve SES 3.4 clincher wheelset.

There has certainly been a lot of buzz about for the Enve hoops for a while now, and recently they gained a foothold here in NZ with distribution by Wide Open up in Rotorua. Owner Matt ‘DogBoy’ Whitaker has been a friend for a few years now, and I’ve been on at him to get me a ride on some of the wheels since he took on the brand. He also added friend of The V Kris ‘Grom’ Withington to his team, fresh back from Europe after his stint as mechanic for the Garmin pro road squad. Not a bad guy to have on your staff. So we finally co-ordinated our emails enough for me to get a loan of some wheels last week.

Without getting too technical, let’s look at the numbers; the 3.4 designation means the front rim is 35mm deep and the rear is 45mm. SES means Smart Enve System. ‘Smart’ refers to Simon Smart, who is working with Enve and using his Formula 1 background to help develop the manufacturing of the rims. While we can marvel at all the intricacies of carbon layups and aerodynamics etc, and that can be cool, all I had to go on was how they rode. So that’s what I’ll tell you about.

The rims came laced up to Chris King R45 hubs, 20/24 spokes F/R. Kris had mounted some Conti GP4000S 25mm clinchers to them (he even taped around the valve stem where it exited the valve hole; that’s pro right there). I’ve never had much luck with Conti tyres over the years, and while some of my colleagues swear by them, I was still leery but ready to be proven wrong. I mounted my cassette, aired up the tyres and rolled out of the workshop for a quick spin. It was night, I’d had a beer and I was in jeans, so a roll up the ramp and twice around the carpark was all I had time for. By the time I rolled back into the workshop, the front tyre had punctured. And I hadn’t even left the building! Just bad luck, surely? I patched the tube and vowed to give them another last chance.

The first real ride was in windy conditions (not that unusual in Wellington) so the first thing I noticed was a bit more side deflection from the cross gusts when compared to my box section Ambrosios. The next thing I noticed was the venerable Chris King bzzzzz from the freehub. I’m used to some noise from my Chorus hub but the Kings have a distinctive tone and pattern; whereas the Campa has a uniform zzzzzzzzzzz sound, the King had more of a pulsing zzzz zzzz zzzz to their schtick. I got used to it pretty quickly though. The hubs spin really smoothly and with little resistance, as noted by my mate Kah when he said I was ‘rolling away from him’ through town before we had even started pedaling in seriousness.

The bigger 25mm rubber gave a pretty cushy ride over the shitty road surfaces, and I felt like I was riding on air somewhat. Maybe this was due also to the carbon rims; probably. When we arrived at the bottom of the first real climb of the day, I wasn’t expecting any miracles as a couple of weeks off the bike and some fit guys should’ve put me in my place. I sat on second wheel and expected to be swallowed up sooner rather than later. No-one attacked, I sat and spun, and got to the top with what seemed like little effort. Was it the wheels? Possibly. Maybe their light weight aided getting my lazy ass up the hill with a minimum of grunting. Maybe.

Down the other side and speed was easily held without much pedalling, and I seemed to be on the brakes trying to avoid running into the wheel in front of me. Was it the smooth-rolling hubs? The aero rims? Had to be. I wasn’t doing much. We turned off for the steady gain in elevation before the road turned steeper. Conversation came easily as we turned the cranks and approached the climb. I made sure I wasn’t over-stressing my unfit legs and lungs. I looked around and there were only three of us there. Could it have been I was climbing better than I believed because of the stiffness of the wheels due to their moulding process? Well, it wasn’t anything I was doing, surely (I wasn’t doing any more than Surviving on V, after all). Kris explains this process better than I ever could: “The spoke holes are part of the moulding process, whereby the rim comes out of the mould with the spoke holes already in the rim allowing uninteruupted carbon fibres around the spoke holes, which means no additional alloy or brass inserts. This process then in turn means where the spoke enters the rim is very strong, allowing the builder to build the wheel with very high spoke tension which then means a stronger, stiffer and more responsive wheel.” Yep, that was probably it.

The bottom line is, these wheels are pretty sweet. They feel stiff and light, they roll and roll, they look the business and they cost a lot. Do I need them? Shit no, but I don’t need 11 speeds or fancy shoes either, as one of my savvy friends pointed out. I felt like I could climb better with them, they felt solid when cornering hard, they accelerated snappily, braked well and they elicited a lot of comments. Placebo effect? Doubtful. But I must admit I didn’t want to send them back. Matt, Kris, when your demo days are over and they are ‘used’, I’ll be happy to give them a good home…

*Kris can build your wheels in-house with the King hubs in any colour and they come with a 5 year warranty and crash replacement. Thanks to Wide Open for an impending credit card blow-out.

The only thing worse than being two months from peaking and Too Fat To Climb is being two months past peaking and in the middle of the season of rapid weight gain. At least with the former there is something to look forward to as you measure the incremental gains of your training as the almost daily rides of the season accumulate on your Strava profile. The latter can seem like a long dark tunnel that leads only to fat and slow. For those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, on the tundra and ice-covered roads, with only 8 1/2 hours of daylight, a proper road ride and last season’s gains can seem like a distant dream. The juxtaposition of climbing well for your weight and expanding into a larger jersey size before your very own eyes is a cross the Velominatus must sometimes have to bear.

2012 was perhaps the best season I’ve ever had on a bike. It actually began on the trainer on New Year’s Day as I started training for the Keepers Tour. After returning from the trip of a lifetime riding the cobbles of Norther France and Belgium I was able to hold momentum at the start of the season at home. Next up was the Almanzo 100 in May, a very hard gravel race in which I was happy with my result. Then, the guys began gathering for our Tuesday group rides. On the whole, the group really got after it this year and we pushed each other to some great levels of fitness. Coupled with my almost daily solo rides, I was seeing progress early and often. Then the season was punctuated in September by a 15th placing in the Heck of the North, another gravel race. I had timed my peaks pretty well for an amateur and as my Strava numbers got bigger La Volupte and I had become closer acquaintances.

Then November happened. I hold about as much appreciation for November as I do for March in this part of the world. That is to say none. November and March are the shoulder seasons and the only time of year when running actually seems like a plausible way to stay fit. In November the Rule #11 chickens start coming home to roost, the roads can turn to shit and aren’t safe to ride, and graveling becomes an exercise in survival as half the month is slotted for deer hunting. Mates that haven’t been seen all summer start to wander into town again for Happy Hour beers at the local micro-brew. Food becomes laden with butter, chocolate, and carbs. This November was exacerbated by the fact that I went down for two solid weeks with a viral infection. I was so fucking sick I shit the bed one night. For Merckx’s Sake it took a lot of The V to recover from that one. Now I know how Thor must have felt about this year’s Spring Classics campaign. The only difference being my spring was better than his and my fall was his spring.

So let me have it. Tell me to Rule #5. Tell me to get out and ride my bike, set up the trainer, stop whinging. I probably deserve it after all this. I’m banking on the fact though that there are others like me out there. Others who have witnessed their own precipitous descension from peak form to shit in the matter of weeks. It really is incredible, the difference in how long it takes to build that form and how quickly it disappears. So please, grant me this one confession. Share your own despair if you like but then let’s move on. Let’s share in the fleeting catharsis that being a little bitch can offer and then begin the long, painful, and awesome slog back to The V together again.

What do you do during the off-season when your name is Roger de Vlaeminck and you’re a certified organic free-range studmuffin?

You roll down to the local Six Day in your Chick Magnet^TM tweed suit and bring the ladies in for your pals while you stay Pre-Race Kelly, that’s what.

December 6th is possibly the biggest holiday of the year for the Dutch. We put out our shoe, we write gedichten, we play pranks on each other, and we exchange gifts. As luck would have it, the good old Sint made a stop by the Velominati Headquarters in Seattle and left me an absurdly large bottle of dry lube; the the point where I felt like I need to explain what it is for. (I use a lot of that stuff, you know, on my chain – because I ride in the rain every day this time of year. I swear.)

Take a dive into the archives and have a look at our 2010 article on the subject for a full background on why December 6th is the real Christmas and why the Dutch (and I assume at least the Belgians) rule so much harder at holidays than the rest of the world, except maybe the Jewish community, since they figured out how to make the gift-giving last an entire month and everyone knows that’s pretty hard-core.

In any case, from the bottom of my heart, thanks to everyone in our humble little community, and I wish you each a Gelukkig Sinterklaas.

There must still be a few readers out there who have not followed the Dutch Monkey down the merry tubular path; for them I offer an update on an alternative. Road tubeless has been lauded as the best thing to happen to cycling since the introduction of seatpins. These have been around for years but the road version has not gathered the expected momentum. Michelin made them then discontinued, Continental* is not interested, Bontrager said they were coming out with a model or two, Maxxis has a model. Hutchinson has a nasty little near-monopoly on the road tubeless market. Basically, there are maybe six models total and Hutchinson makes three of them. The tyres are different from regular clinchers in two ways: their square carbon bead  snugs into square extrusion in the tubeless specific rim and they have a butyl inner-wall layer. The bead makes an airtight seal. The addition of latex sealant inside the tyre prevents almost all air loss and self-seals.

For unexplainable reasons I was advocating for them long before I actually used them. I liked the idea of no pinch-flats but moving to 25mm tyres mostly solved that. I liked the idea of using lower tyre pressure, which also was solved by going to 25mm inner-tubed tyres. It is claimed tubeless ride like sew-up tyres due to the lack of inner-tube but the tubeless tyres have a butyl coating on the inside to keep them airtight so they can’t be as supple. They may ride better than clinchers but they are heavier than sew-ups. Tubeless require forty grams of liquid sealant, there’s some more weight.

Pros

• No inner-tube means no pinch flats.
• No pinch flat worries mean lower tyre pressures.
• No inner-tube also means better ride and improved cornering.
• Sealant seals tyres automatically.
• An inner-tube can still be installed if sealant fails to work or has dried up.
• An inner-tube and regular clincher can always be installed on tubeless rims if one wants to go back to regular set-up. No harm, no foul.
• Tyre stays on rim even when deflated.

Cons

• Very limited selection of tubeless tyres and only one 25mm model.
• More expensive than most clinchers.
• Sealing process is messy, to put it politely.
• Post sealing clean up of bike is necessary.
• Periodic maintenance of tyres/sealant required.

Debatable misconceptions

• Tyres don’t seat on the rim without CO2 cartridge.
• Installing inner-tube roadside is impossible.
• Tyres are very hard to install and remove.
• Tyre stays on rim even when deflated.

I’ve been using Hutchinson Intensive tubeless tyres on Campagnolo Eurus 2-way fit wheels for nine months. I’ve had a total three punctures, all resulting in latex spew, sealing and riding. So the good news is I haven’t been sweating on the side of the road replacing inner-tubes. That never was a big problem, I can do that in seven minutes, I’ve been doing that for many years. Seven minutes is less time than it takes to clean the bike from the latex after-party. What I don’t know about are the slow leaking punctures that the latex handles without messy fanfare. Seven minutes is also about a tenth of the time one will spend fixing a flat on a sew-up tyre. Even if “fixing” means peeling it off, putting in a pile you will never touch again and installing a new sew-up tyre.

I can dispel some misconceptions. The tyres do easily seat with a floor pump. I’ve installed the last resort inner-tube in my shop for practice but not in the field. Installing an inner-tube with the sealant covering everything roadside would be nasty. If one keeps the bead at the center of the rim and finishes at the valve, most can install a tubeless tyre with cycling gloves on, no tools. They will also come off easily if the bead is kept in the center of the rim and one starts near the valve. It is no harder than clinchers. I haven’t tested the claim that they stay on the rim while riding deflated, nor will I.

Do they ride better? That is the Question. We would happily put up with the lack of tyre selection and latex cleanup if the ride was a lot better than inner-tubed clinchers. I wish I could proclaim right here, right now that they rule but I can’t. I find it very hard to qualify those differences without some real testing. My inaugural ride on road tubeless was also my inaugural ride on my new Eurus wheels. The bike did corner much better, that was obvious and I assumed it was the Eurus wheeels not the tyres. Maybe that assumption was wrong but there is no way to tell unless I had two wheelsets to test one after the other, which I don’t. If the ride improvment was definitive, should it be the tyre of the future? If more tyre manufacturers jump into the pool the technology would improve and remove a few of the problems.

What the world needs is this: three wheelsets, a clincher, a tubeless and a tubular. All built the same except for rim/tyre choice. Have a group ride where wheels are swapped and tested, blindfolded! It is the only way. We await the offers.

Are we all confused? Are you sorry you just read an article with no definitive conclusion? You are welcome.

*Continental won’t manufacturer a tyre unless it stays on the rim at double it’s maximum pressure. I can’t imagine clinchers perform better than tubeless for that particular test.

The flat back position is perhaps the greatest lie ever told in sport, provided you ignore any of the racing we’ve seen in the last decade or two.

It is possible, I suppose, that when we talk about a flat back, what we really mean is that on an elementary level, all curves are really just a series of straight segments connected at an angle; while a rider’s back may look arched, it really is flat in an existential sense.

Because no one really rides with a flat back. Even riders who famously rode with a flat back, like Greg LeMond, actually rode with only the upper portion of their backs flat. In fact, the only rider I can think of who was as happy as a Texan in an Amgen factory while riding with a truly flat back was The Gypsy himself. It bears mentioning, however, that a search through the Velominati Archives shows only intermittent evidence of him riding with a truly flat back.

If you’ve ever tried to get your back completely flat, you’ll have noticed that it feels awful. Your shoulders tense up, your hips roll forward. It certainly doesn’t do your bits any favors. As you try to accelerate, your shoulders and hips tense up even more in an effort to keep the back as flat as possible.

There is a very simple explanation for this: The V abhors a straight line; it requires smooth curves in order to flow freely from the various V-Receptacles spread throughout your body and into the guns where it is processed and converted into Monumental Devastation.

As you pursue The V-Locus, keep the following points in mind:

1. The key to a Magnificent Stroke is to find a tension-neutral position on the bike.
2. Let your hips find their natural position. It will likely be somewhat vertical, causing your lower back to arch.
3. Tension is the enemy. Relax your shoulders, elbows, hips, and neck. Even relax your fingers if you find them trying to strangle the bars.
4. Like a Jedi uses the Force, let the power of The V flow from your arms through your lower back and hips, and down into the cannons.
5. The harder you are hammering and the closer you are to achieving nuclear V-ission, the more important it becomes to keep your back and shoulders relaxed; you are wasting precious energy on staying tense. Use that energy to fire the the guns instead.

And yes, Cycling is hell for your posture. If that’s what you’re after, take up yoga.

Is anyone else in need of some bike racing? I’m strung out and need a fix. @chrisO has come to the rescue by actually racing his bike and filing a proper report. He didn’t just jump into some Sunday Cat IV event either. He raced a stage race, the Tour of Sharjah, which might be part of Abu-Dhabi, no embrocation and Belgian booties for them.

VLVV, Gianni

My team in Dubai-Abu Dhabi was recently invited to, and competed in, the inaugural Tour of Sharjah. A four day stage race around Sharjah emirate. While not a UCI tour event it was a proper pro race, and with big prize money on offer it attracted two Continental pro teams, ten national teams from Arab countries and a combined African team. And us, Team Frankie’s-Raha-Wolfi’s. 12 mostly middle-40s guys who could match them with kit and bikes, but what about the legs… ?

Sometimes the story ends with the hero waking up to find it was all a dream. In this case the dream was the starting page. A pro-level tour, with accommodation at a luxury hotel, support cars and sponsored stuff while spending four days riding closed roads with police escort, TV crews and all the trappings of an international race. Well, apart from podium girls.

We’re essentially a Masters team doing local races in the UAE. Mostly over 40s, with a smattering of experienced riders and a couple of really good ones, but a lot of people who took it up later in life. If Jane Austen lived in Dubai she might have added to her universally acknowledged truth that, once married the man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a bike.

So here we were, invited to the biggest race of the season, ready to live the pro dream.

Day 0

Anyone who has lived in the Middle East will know that events are approached flexibly. Only uptight westerners expect everything to be set in stone. Sand is the medium of choice here.

We arrive for the team briefing to find that there is a misunderstanding and the local teams have no accommodation. We’ve got two guys from Oman, and a couple more from Abu Dhabi, which is a two hour drive away – or more in Sharjah’s notorious traffic. But the sands can be shifted, and after heated conversations and various phone calls from the one Arabic speaker on our team we have a magic upgrade. Not the standard twin rooms of the hotel for us but the spacious serviced apartments of the adjacent resort.

Our team liaison Toufic goes to the briefing alone – it’s in Arabic anyway. Here he learns useless things – the order of stages has changed, there will be team classifications but we don’t know how, the African team will join on Day 2. It will all change anyway.

We have dinner and a team meeting. We don’t know the level of the teams, we don’t know the favourites and we vaguely know the routes. Team dynamics kick in – some people want to plan it all in advance, others want to let it unfold. It’s stressing me out so I mostly shut up.

Room-mates are chosen and I’m with Paul, a chap I’ve only met that afternoon by giving him a lift to the hotel. He seems to have been around bikes and racing most of his life. He’s also an ex-Marine so I figure he should be tidy if nothing else.

Stage 1 : 90km Umm al Quwain to Sharjah Academic City

The cars arrive, bikes are unloaded, riders warm up and we see the teams for the first time. The Algerians look like a unit. There are national squads in national jerseys from Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE among others. We sign on and warm up and take our places when the starter calls, mostly leaving the front row to others.

Racing here is usually fast and furious from the start and by comparison to the levels we’d be riding in Europe it’s aggressive and with an all-or-nothing approach. With no team limits in local races a big squad can just throw people off the front until it sticks. There are two local club teams plus the UAE team so that’s effectively 18 riders.

There’s no neutral zone and the attacks start as soon as we are off. It’s punishing stuff – fast accelerations get 50m ahead and are caught. Again and again. As they’re caught the breakaways sit up and slow right down, often spread out, causing chaos behind as the fast moving bunch hits the decelerating break. Bikes and riders go spinning through the air with rubber the wrong way up. One lands on his feet and hands and goes sliding along without falling.

Eventually, thank heavens, a break sticks and we have men in it. The rest of us stay together. Despite some confusion over the exact finish, which is 10km shorter than expected, we are safe and with well-placed riders. One box ticked.

Stage 2 : 150km Maleha to Dibba

The decisive day. 150km with a Cat 2 climb and some rolling hills and power climbs which will split the field.

I’m no grimpeur (I really do climb well for my 85kg weight) though I am good on steady slopes and hope to be able to help the team and maybe finish in the second bunch. But today is a triumph of inexperience over hope.

Early on we’re rolling at a decent pace when there’s a crash ahead and I have to stop dead and waddle around. I was too far back in the field but there are others to help chase back. Only three of them don’t chase and I’m left with a skinny Kuwaiti kid who I actually believe when he says he can’t take a pull. Within a minute I am on the redline and for 10 minutes I am over it, dragging us slowly back.

The last few meters are the worst. Tantalisingly behind and willing the bunch to just slow down for a few seconds so I can reach the haven. With a final effort we are there and I am exhausted.

Just in time for the first climb. I have nothing left and immediately drop like a stunned fish sinking into murky depths. Now I despair.

With 130km to go I am alone. This was my day to be Stuey O’Grady not Tail End Charlie. There’s nothing to do – I know I can ride the distance on my own, so I get on with it. Soon I start to pick up other stragglers including two of my team mates and we have a group of 10, all working together. We will survive.

I am faster up the climbs than the others so I go at my own pace and we regroup at the bottom. We reach the coast with the climbs behind us and now 60km to go as we start to pace ourselves in an echelon. We are at the tail of the field with the last race car and ambulance behind – perhaps they know our ages.

The wind is gusting from the side now and on the open flat some team cars are coming up to hand over food and water. As one comes beside us I move instinctively away, just as the wheel in front is pushed by a gust of wind and…

There is a frozen instant where you know you are crashing but you haven’t yet crashed. Too quick to anticipate the pain but the brain is deploying mental airbags.

I am quickly up and doing the obligatory check – limbs move, the bike is OK, nothing sears through the general pain. The ambulance guys look as shocked as I insist on continuing. My two team mates Mark and Gareth have come back to me. I could hug them.

We plug away, and after a while I am able to do some turns. 40km later we catch the others and fall in together. Grupetto Reunited.

Incredibly as we approach the finish the Kuwaiti kid, who has done turns you could count in pedal strokes on two hands, starts asking who is our sprinter. He’s not joking. As mature middle-aged men we should be above this, so I end up sprinting to get 82nd place by half a wheel. What a day.

Stage 3 – 100km Sharjah Corniche Criterium / Circuit

In the aftermath of my crash the team rallied around, for which I am very grateful. After all, if I dropped out now who would notice ? My stuff is gathered, bike taken to my room, checked over, new kit and cage arranged. I limp early to bed but not before being told that Stage 3 will start much earlier than expected at 6am. It’s dark until 7… were we supposed to bring lights ?

Paul promises to set the alarm once the time to leave the hotel is decided, while I leave them to it and fall gratefully into bed.

As I regularly get up about 5am to train my body clock is pretty much set, and I’m always anxious when I have to get up earlier. I wake about 4am thinking we must be getting up soon, then go back to sleep in fitful 5 and 10 minute blocks waiting for the alarm. Which doesn’t come.

Finally about 5am I get out of bed. This disturbs Paul who tells me the start is really 8am but he didn’t want to wake me up. My relief at extra sleep and not racing a dawn crit outweighs the thought that I would have slept better without fear of missing the start, so I go back to bed.

The stage is not far from the hotel and the team cycles over as a group. Sharjah traffic isn’t car-friendly let alone cycle-friendly. The day before when police vehicles with lights and sirens blocked roundabouts for us, cars were still squeezing past them in any conceivable gap.

But we make it and wait for the start. I’m glad to have had a gentle ride to warm up and loosen my stiff limbs. I have a truly massive and deep bruise on my hip and my groin muscles are strained. Lifting my leg to mount and dismount is a challenge, but pedalling is OK. Otherwise it’s just elbow gravel rash and some minor scrapes.

It’s more of a circuit than a crit. Five laps of 18km. With two tight hairpin U-turns at each end and strong crosswind in between.

I’m sore and nervous and nearly get dropped at the very first U-turn as the bunch stretches right out. My head is begging them to just slow down and let me back on. I can’t keep doing this and I try to stay in a better position further up. In sections I manage to stay out of the wind, but as we navigate the course my inexperience puts me on the windward side again and I have to fight to get to shelter, usually just in time for another change.

After two laps the pace starts to pick up for an intermediate sprint, with me being towards the back and in the nastiest stretch of crosswind.

We’re in the gutter, stretched single file.

Being shelled is like ice breaking. It starts behind you, then the deadly crack reaches your wheel and you plunge into the void.

50-ish kilometres to go, but my team mate Toufic has been dropped with me. And what do you know, my Kuwaiti friend. I can’t keep the peloton pace but I’m not exhausted so I do most of the work, with Toufic joining in. We pick up more stragglers briefly, joined by a rider from the Seychelles, part of the otherwise strong African team – I know how he must feel. At least we won’t be last.

I suggest Toufic tells them in Arabic we are both probably older than their fathers and they should show us some respect, even if we hadn’t dragged their scrawny arses around. No surprise then that I lead out Toufic for a stunning 1-2 in the fight for 70-somethingth place.

With the early finish we are back at the hotel to catch the end of breakfast and have a welcome recovery day to sit by the pool, put our feet up and generally chill.

Stage 4 : 170km – Sharjah Airport – Madam – Sharjah Airport

Last day and, inshallah, I know I will make it. I’m determined to do better today.

Today is mostly flat but even as we left the hotel at 6.30 the wind was strong, and it will only pick up. There are four riders within three seconds of each other at the top. The Algerians have five in the top 10 but none on the podium. It could be brutal, or they could be tired and not willing to risk early attacks on a long stage. If anyone asks my preference I have my answer prepared.

The pace is settled early on, with only half-hearted attacks into a tough headwind. I make myself go up the field, finding my team mates and working in with them. For a while I am in the leading line, very happy near the front.

But how quickly things change. One second I’m comfortable in a line or with someone at one side. The next moment I have riders pushing me on both sides, getting their bars just ahead and squeezing me back. Forcing themselves into gaps between rear wheels, where I dare not go. I drop 30 places in 30 seconds. The mental concentration and edginess is just as draining as the physical effort.

But I try to keep moving back up and stay in touch until there is a big split, not just me. Soon after there is panic ahead. A crash and our leader Martin has a damaged wheel. Without hesitation Duncan gives his rear wheel but the bunch is lost and they know Martin is dangerous. There will be no waiting.

Half a dozen of us slow and wait to bring him back, but Martin is stronger than all of us put together even in this crosswind. We are killing ourselves, gasping and rocking, but soon he leaves us and forges ahead to rejoin the bunch as we reel them in meter by meter.

Finally we are nearly there, just 200m to go, but again we see Martin at the support truck. A puncture. I could cry. Really. We slow down and the bunch moves away. Again we dig deep and we get him further up the road before he leaves to bridge, helped heroically by Paul dropping back from the bunch to meet him in the gap.

I’m ready to make the call for survival but Tim is still gung ho and urges us to keep fighting. I want him to go away. I want it all to stop. I make a token argument but knuckle down and try. I start missing turns but only when the strongest riders are behind me. It was their idea to chase wasn’t it ? We are supposed to be doing through and off but the stronger guys are doing longer turns. Bless them, curse them… I don’t know any more.

Up ahead we can see the bunch slowly coming back, and then closer still as there is another crash. Now we are just 100m behind the cars, and I’m on the front. I dig deep and bring us into the lovely shelter of 4x4s and flatbed trucks. We made it.

We infiltrate the peloton, moving up to make sure we aren’t spat out straight away. Now we are at the turning point, around the Madam roundabout and the wind will be mainly behind us now. Alhamdulillah. God be praised.

I last another 10km but now the attacks are coming, the bunch is stretching, riders have dropped off long before and I’ve done my day’s work. One time I manage to get back using the cars again but it doesn’t last long and I’m off for good. I’m at peace with that. The wind is with me and others are behind me. Today is OK.

Post-race Analysis

I had two missions. Get through it and don’t crash. Do the math yourself on that score.

I was way out of my depth but not physically. I felt early on I could compete with about a third of the field. In the final standings I was near the bottom but not the worst on our team, and if you take the DNFs into account I was probably about two thirds down the field. Given I’m twice the age, with more to carry and had a fall, I feel good about finishing a four-day race with no major physical effects. I didn’t climb off feeling I couldn’t look at the bike for a week. And in the end our team leader got back and finished Top 10, so the team looked good too.

Where I couldn’t compete was the mental effort and ability. It’s so inextricably linked to the physical. Many of these guys are full-time riders. I can see where immersion in the whole lifestyle helps support them – thinking and living nothing much more than bikes and racing. It takes mental force to be able to place your body and bike where you want it, and squeezing out the bloke next to you saves physical effort. They are chatting and moving and giving shoves and moves where I am gripping the bars and praying for personal space. They think no more about the ebb and flow of 90 riders than I would think about walking down a crowded street.

With that in mind I leave you with, Five Things I Learned on the Tour of Sharjah

1. Riding is not the same as Racing.

2. You don’t want to climb off, you just want it to be over.

3. The three most important things are position, position and position.

4. If nobody is riding there, there’s probably a good reason.

5. New wheels would make me happier, but there are many, many other things I can do to be a better rider (don’t tell my wife though).

Would I go back ? Maybe. At least I know I can do it. But while I can temporarily live a Pro life, eat Pro food, have Pro kit and even Pro(ish) legs, I don’t think I’ll ever have a Pro head. And that’s the difference.

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that ‘useful’ things like practicality and functionality can often take a back seat to more basic pursuit of aesthetics and taste. If you haven’t, then your name might just be Paul.

You may have also become aware that there is occasional flagrant flouting of certain guidelines by curators and purveyors alike. Long black socks, red bar tape and big bidons, facial and leg hair, some have even been known to experiment with the much-maligned and socially destructive drug EPMS. Some things shouldn’t be tampered with, while others are prone to some manipulation as seen fit by circumstance. And some things will always be ‘just the way it is’.

Take tyres for example. Rule #8 was one of the first decreed (it was the eighth, if memory serves) and is one of the more complex in its simplicity. To put it in layman’s terms, tyres are a simple thing to get right. Black. They match any bike regardless of colour and will always look good no matter how much abuse they receive. But look more closely and a myriad of options are offered; match this to that or that to the other bit, and the other bit back to that. Or just go black. See, told you it was simple.

So why should choosing a new set of rubber be a cause of consternation? I needed to replace my trusty Pavé CG’s as they’d seen better days, from the cobbles of Belgium and France in April through a winter of more off-road detours than any road bike should be subjected to. Punctures became a feature of almost every ride, two at a time on a couple of outings. The green tread was worn and cut up and my mates were getting sick of waiting and probably wanted to strangle me with a tube as I attempted to get aired up and mobile yet again. Hang on, green? Surely not compliant…

Well yeah, the hue that is ubiquitous with Pro bikes in the European spring is the one color of tread that gets an automatic pass due to that other great cornerstone of the dual pursuits of Cycling and Looking Fantastic: heritage. From Malteni orange to Lampre pink, green goes with anything and everything in Spring. Vittoria’s Pavés and FMB’s Paris Roubaixs have seen more action on more bikes on more cobbles than Mother Theresa has seen sick kids, and thus get almost as many blessings as she gives out on a mission to Africa. But go back further still, and the sidewall colour of choice to set off any steed is the gumwall. Or skinwall. Maybe tanwall, depending on your diocese.

It should’ve been easy to choose a new tyre due to my spate of flats. Thick, heavy rubber with all kinds of Kevlar reinforcement, varying TPI counts and tread patterns all were mulled over, for about five minutes. I wanted gumwalls. To hell with practicality and functionality, not to mention cost. I made the call to my rubber pusher Graeme  and he administered the goods stat. Thinner, lighter, faster, probably less durable; my new Corsa SC’s may not solve any puncture issues, but damned if they don’t look the business. Fantastic, even.

The gumwall is back, and there’s no going black.

I say my feet are weird because they are apparently wide but also low in volume. To put it in technical terms, I have flippers for feet. You might think that would make me a good swimmer but my talents where swimming is concerned are more accurately described as “not drowning” than “swimming”. As far as fish’s grace goes, I’m more like the “free candy” fish than one of those sexy colorful fish that swim up in the good water.

Over the years, I’ve ridden in loads of shoes, to varying success. The Sidi Ergo 2 was possibly my favorite shoe, with its sufficiently stiff shoe and the delightful combination of three different kinds of buckles, which always served to fascinate me. The f”iz:ik white R1 is possibly the most beautiful shoe I’ve ever seen and the dead baby kangaroos were wildly supple and comfortable. The problem for me with those was not the width, but the volume; at one point, I had two pairs of insoles in them (at the same time) in an effort to reduce the volume to the point that my feet stopped sliding around whenever I let the cannons off the leash. Sometimes, no matter how badly you want to love a product, you have to recognize the reality that it simply doesn’t work for you, and that was the case for the fi'zi:k line of shoes and me.

Bont shoes caught my attention at the Beijing Olympics and I became immediately fascinated by their approach to making a cycling shoe; fully heat-molded and a toe box designed to allow the foot to spread out into its most natural position. While most shoes are basically designed to constrain the foot in order to hold it in place, Bont takes the approach that a foot is actually very good at finding its most optimal position naturally, and designed their shoe to allow this to happen.

The result is a bit of a funny looking shoe; it doesn’t have the usual pointed toe box we’re used to seeing, but instead continues to expand until it reaches the end of the toes. Basically, it looks like a foot rather than a torpedo. And since feet aren’t shaped like torpedoes, it seems a sensible approach.

Bont also doesn’t fool around when it comes to the construction of the uppers; whereas cycling shoes generally have supple uppers with stiff areas placed strategically about the shoes for buckles and such, Bonts have stiff, unforgiving uppers which are also intended to be heat molded to form to your foot. The idea being that a stiff upper is more efficient than a sloppy one, and you can afford to have an entirely stiff upper when it is shaped precisely to the form of your foot.

Lastly, Bonts soles are also made of completely heat-moldable carbon fiber. I’ve never seen a sole so stiff and thin. The stiff sole is great for power transfer and the thinness of the sole improves pedaling efficiency by bringing the foot closer to the pedal axle. This also has the consequence, however, of requiring the shortest screws that come with your cleats or possibly even specialty short screws if necessary as they can stick out through the sole and poke your foot. Which is uncomfortable, assuming you have feeling in your feet.

I started riding the Bont Vaypors in July and spent about a week experimenting with heat molding them before I got them perfect. But once I got them right, I was absolutely amazed at how good these shoes are. At this point, I can’t imagine going back to a “normal” cycling shoe. In fact, I commuted a day last week in my old Sidis, thinking I’d use them in the wet and save the Bonts for dry weather. Nothing doing, pal – once you’re used to Bonts, there’s no going back.

For one thing, the stiffness of the sole is staggering and the resulting power transfer is amazing. The molded sole and uppers mean I have zero hot spots anywhere in the shoe and the numbness I’ve always experienced has gone away completely. Riding with feeling in my feet is not entirely unpleasant, as it turns out. The shoes have also managed to somehow resolve the pressure distribution in my foot; all the force of the stroke now comes down straight through the ball of the foot and into the pedal, fully supported by the length and width of the entire sole.

I’ve also been riding the Vaypor XC off road, and the shoe is similarly impressive. Bont basically took the Vaypor road shoe, added just a bit of extra padding to the uppers for comfort, and added some rubber grippers to the sole for those pesky occasions when you find yourself running with your bike, which everyone knows should be avoided if at all possible. Personally, I try to ride any climb, but after I crashed and monkey-jacked my chain, I was forced to find alternative means to complete the CX course; I was much more hindered by the broken bike and gash in my knee than I was by the shoe’s performance in a cross-country running application. On the bike, the shoe is nearly indistinguishable from the road shoe in terms of power transfer and pedaling efficiency.

These shoes aren’t for everyone, though; Marko tried a pair of both the road (Vaypor) and off-road (Vaypor XC) shoes and wasn’t able to get them to work for him. G’rilla, on the other hand, had complained on several occasions of a baby’s arm growing from one of his feet which made cycling shoes uncomfortable. The heat molding on Marko’s rejects did the trick for him and initial reports indicate these shoes work very well. You would think that as a courtesy for giving him a pair of shoes he’d not drop me on the hills, but some people simply have no manners.

Fitting & Heat Molding Tips

I had the opportunity to speak with Bont’s CEO, Steven Nemeth, on several occasions to discuss molding the shoes and I’ve outlined my recommendations below. Remember that these are high performance racing shoes and, while they are very comfortable after molding, they are unforgiving and stiff. If you’re looking for something of an evening slipper in your cycling shoe, you may want to pass over the Bonts and see about having a pair of cleats nailed to an old pair of oxfords.

Fitting & heat molding tips (please watch the official video on the Bont site first):

1. Take out the insoles that came with the shoes. Throw them away because they are useless. Bont is working on making a better insole, but for now fi'zi:k makes the best heat-moldable insole. I have used the Specialized blue foot beds myself and have been very happy with them. Keep that between us; if asked, I will categorically deny using any Specialized product full stop.
2. Don’t worry about making mistakes, you can re-mold them as many times as you need to or want to.
3. Ideally, you’d wear the shoes on a ride or two before molding them in order to get a feel for what parts of the shoe need to be worked on most.
4. If you have particular hot spots, you can use gauze and athletic tape to build out those areas. Typical areas would be the Achilles heel or any protuberances on your feet. Tape the gauze to your foot and put your socks on over it before stepping into the shoes when molding them.
5. Before chucking the shoes in the oven, remove the cleats.
6. Don’t chicken out when heating the shoes; you want the soles to become fully pliable; they should be really soft by the time you take them out and put them on.
7. The sole can be pushed out by as much as a half centimeter; don’t be afraid to push it out to give your foot room in places where you need more. If you need room in the toe box, push the toe box out with the handle-end of a screwdriver.
8. When the shoes come out, put the new insoles in and put the shoes on. Stand in place, don’t walk around as you may crack the softened carbon in the sole.
9. The cleat holes are mounted further back on the Bonts than most shoes; keep that in mind when placing your cleat.
10. Bonts are designed to allow your toes to move, which is almost certainly contrary to the shoes you’re used to. Don’t let this freak you out; take a week to get used to being able to wiggle your toes. Despite this, when the shoes are fitted correctly, they hold your feet firmly in place.
11. You can use the Bont fit chart for sizing; for me, the sizing transferred directly to Sidi (I wear a 46.5 in both). You should have a little bit of room in the length of the shoe to allow your toes to spread out when dishing out The V.

The days of the proper head badge, I’m afraid, are numbered. It seems it used to be that any road bike with a pedigree that was really worth riding was festooned with an artful adornment on the head tube. By that I mean something made with a bit of heft, stamped or cast of alloy and riveted front and center. More and more though we’re seeing what amount to head decals put on bikes. This isn’t anything new, head badges have been suffering a long, slow demise. More like religion, instead of the relatively quick and painless one like dinosaurs. Yes, decals are put on bikes with pedigrees that are well worth riding. But these bikes, I would argue, would have a modicum more panache with a proper head badge.

I suspect that this tradition is giving way to “progress”. Economies of scale would suggest that it’s cheaper for mass producers of bike frames to use decals over badges. Material, labor, and production costs must all be considerably higher per production run when using a badge. But when you’re clearing an easy few grand per individual frame would a few extra cents really matter all that much to the buyer? Then there is the question of weight. When bike manufacturers are all clamoring to declare that their frame is 10 grams lighter than the next it wouldn’t surprise me if eliminating a proper badge was one way they got there. That being said, it’s a fine hair to split and there isn’t one of us in this community who couldn’t stand to drop at least the corresponding weight of a head badge from our gut in order to climb faster. After all, it’s not my kit that makes me look fat, it’s me. And what of the aesthetics of badge vs. decal? You won’t find a compelling reason there for me to opt for a decal.

Now there are a number of manufacturers still using proper badges. Bianchi and Pinerello come to mind as common high-end frames still using badges. The badges they use may not always be made of alloy or robustly riveted onto the head tube but at least they are raised and give the illusion of tradition. Other companies using them are often smaller brands striving to carve a niche or stand out among other brands. I commend all these frame builders for holding to the small but significant tradition of branding their frames with a proper badge. Then of course there are the handful of small artisans who fabricate custom badges, made to order, with your own design. I’ve always thought a V-cog head badge would look rather nice on a bike.

Sadly, none of my bikes have a proper badge. Not surprising given bikes one and two are high-end modern carbon tech-weenie steeds. But bike number 3 is a Serotta, a boutique brand one would think would be worthy of a proper badge. Like many of you, I’ve come by my bike frames through the mysterious happenstance of being in the right place and the right time with just enough money and dedication to Rule #11 and Rule #12 to pull the trigger. I wonder though, all things being equal between ride quality, cost, purpose, pedigree, and performance, if I wouldn’t choose a bike with a proper badge over one with a decal. I’ll probably never know.

Economics, in its most simple form, follows the Conservation of Mass as defined in physics. Basically, everything goes according to plan so long as outflow is less than or equal to inflow. Failing that, the balance is upset and things start getting complicated. Before long, the calculus starts revolving around “imaginary numbers” (like eleven-teen and thirty-twelve) and people making statements like “less is more”.

Similarly, the problem with having a line of credit on The V-Bank is that when you go on a spending spree, your bike will occasionally need to lay down for a rest.

Aside from wheels staying in one piece and the frame holding together, the thing we take most for granted when riding a bike is how our bodies instinctively respond to and absorb bumps. The human body is, in fact, an incredible shock-absorber; our arms and legs are capable of flexing and shifting in ways that no mechanical suspension is capable of and reacts at near-instantaneous speed to the intelligence streaming in from the ocular system. Remove the power of sight from the equation and the effect is staggering.

My first encounter with night riding was during a 24-hour mountainbike race in Minnesota. Until that race, I had taken care to always ride during the day, partly because I couldn’t afford a reasonable headlight and partly because I could always arrange my training to take place during daylight. A 24-hour race, however, held distinct implications for nighttime riding.

I never bothered practicing riding at night, and I didn’t bother with buying a proper headlamp. Instead, I recommissioned my semi-reliable headlight which I used for nordic ski training in the dark winter months. The week before had also seen the decommissioning of my first-generation Rock Shox which had always graced the front-end of my beloved Schwinn mountainbike, made of what I assume were sand-filled tubes. I didn’t maintain the shock the way a shock should be maintained, and with its death came the rebirth of the fixed fork that had originally steered the machine.

I don’t need to go into detail on the race, but suffice to say that my headlamp stopped functioning within minutes on the first nighttime lap and that I rode the remainder of the race by the light of the moon and my insufficient instincts. Climbing was unpleasant, flats were uncomfortable, and descents were a blend of suicide and anarchy. Each bump the front wheel found blew through my unprepared arms and cascaded through my body, usually focussed on the saddle which ungracefully found its way to my crotch whether I was sitting on it at the time or not.

With this induction into the dark art of night riding, it has been something I’ve typically done with some reluctance. In other words, I’ve avoided it like the plague. Living in Seattle and having the privilege of a fulltime job does have certain ramifications on riding in daylight hours in Winter; namely that it isn’t possible. With the introduction of a good headlight comes the surreal solidarity of riding cocooned in a cone of  light. The shorted line of sight together with the elimination of one’s peripheral vision has an inexplicable calming effect despite the sense that you can’t properly judge the bumps in the road as your headlight briefly illuminates them, and that every puddle looks like a small lake whose depth cannot be judged until you’re on top of it.

I’ve ridden with a Mammut Zoom headlamp and a Lezyne Super Drive, both of which served the purpose of making nighttime riding slightly less terrifying. But with my new 45km commute, I moved to the Lezyne Mega Drive, which is basically a car headlight refactored to fit on a handlebar. I heard that the lights in small villages dim when I turn it to full power and I’ve noticed that deer come running towards it when I ride by with the mistaken belief that it signals the arrival of a deity.

Never one for half-measures, I still mount the Super Drive on the helmet and the Mega Drive on the bars; its like riding with the Eye of Sauron on your bike. Oh, and I have three different red flashers on the back of the bike and another white flasher on the front. You know, just in case.

Joshua – of Beer in the Bidon fame – returns from the depths of doing something scholarly in Montana. I hadn’t realized that Montana even had schools, but apparently they have loads of them. And, based on the fact that they awarded him a Ph.D., they are apparently prone to poor judgement.

Josh deposited this little gem in the queue on his way from Montana to his new home in Portland where I expect he will resume his research on beer. 

Yours in Cycling,

Frank

–

It took me a moment to recognize exactly what I was looking at. Eight men, dressed in the boots, high-waisted woolen pants, and flat-brimmed hats of 19th century U.S. Infantry. The men posed on nearby Minerva Terrace, next to elegantly simplistic steel-framed, fixed-gear machines, loaded with gear. Fit men. Strong men. Hardmen. Rouleurs. Black men?

In retrospect, had I not been blessed with a certain mastery of body and mind that makes the true cyclist feel at home in any setting, I myself might have made for an odd site, standing there staring in disbelief at an 1896 photograph of Missoula, Montana’s 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps on the wall of the Mammoth Hot Springs Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. Bleary-eyed and at the end of a hot half-century from the south end of the Hayden Valley, standing in full kit amidst a sea of cotton-clad tourists ambling out of their RVs to perv the elk grazing on the lawn, I couldn’t have been more out of place to the common observer. But I was an anomaly staring at an even greater anomaly. Sure, the rouleur, Casually Deliberate in posture and psyche, graces in 21st century Yellowstone only periodically… but what the fuck were eight black soldiers doing riding fully-loaded bikes around Yellowstone in 1896?

The answer, of course, is that they were following orders. And there orders were to serve up a huge helping of The V to a Western America steeped in hardmanhood but only just coming to terms with the reality of a new breed of elite pain-mongerer who had traded in leather and tack for the sleek beauty of steel and rubber.

More specifically, they were following the orders of Lt. James A. Moss, the ranking officer and progenitor of the U.S. Army’s first officially sanctioned experimental bicycle unit. Moss’s orders were simple: ride to Yellowstone. Hang out. Ride back. Thus, essentially, was the legend of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps cemented in Montana lore.

The advent of Missoula’s Bicycle Corps and the account of its two major tours—the first to Yellowstone in 1896 and the second an epic, salt pork-fueled slog to St Louis, Missouri in the summer of 1897—have become a familiar tale in Montana’s history.

22-years old and last in his class at West Point, Moss arrived at Fort Missoula in 1894. He found the place a little boring. The last major skirmish between Army troops and the region’s Nez Perce was more than a decade old, and the Army itself had begun to recognize that perhaps Fort Missoula had outlasted its utility. Moss and his men had little to do but drink and drill, and the young lieutenant, not yet versed in Rule #10 and Rule #47, didn’t particularly like either one.

Moss turned to something—perhaps the only thing—he was relatively good at: cycling. Having read a number of manuals on military cycling produced by European bicycle units and entrepreneurial American bicycle manufacturers eager to capture the military market, in April of 1896 the young lieutenant petitioned the Army to allow him to form a small bicycle corps to test the utility of the bicycle as a vehicle for American military use in Montana’s rugged, mountainous terrain.

The Army approved. Military brass had only one condition; the Army would not buy the bikes. In place of Army issued machines, Moss secured modified “test” versions of the “Spalding Racer” and “Spalding Special” from Chicago-based A.G. Spalding and Brothers—a venture the young Spalding Company took to with alacrity in a competitive and contracting bicycle market. By the fall of 1896, the 25th was rolling, first across Southwestern Montana and then, later, across the Eastern Rockies and the Great Plains to America’s Gateway to the West, St Louis.

The story of the 25th has fascinated its authors in the same way the photographs on the wall of the Mammoth Hot Springs Lodge so fascinated me the first time I saw them, in full kit amidst the masses, years ago. Consequently, it is a story well told. George Niels Sorensen chronicled the 25th’s exploits in his 2000 book, Iron Riders: Story of the 1890s For Missoula Buffalo Soldiers, and that same year PBS released a documentary, The Bicycle: America’s Black Army on Wheels. The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula houses a variety of historical materials on the 25th, including one of the original machines.

At first, the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps appears as a startling anomaly in our image of the historical landscape of Montana—and one incongruous with a sport whose roots and traditions are so clearly dominated by continental Europe. Black men in military garb riding bicycles across the rugged 19th century West strikes us as interesting because we can only imagine how wholly and completely out of place these soldiers and their machines must have been at the time.

But the true rouleur knows better. Yes, as the only officially sanctioned Army bicycle unit in the US—and one operating far out in a rugged new state, no less—the 25th has a unique place in history. As a Buffalo Soldier unit, its demographic makes it more remarkable still.

The American Velominatus knows that the roots of The V not only run deep but also spread wide. And in the Western United States of the 1890s, hardmen with guns (literal and figurative) on steel steeds were not out of place at all.

In fact, when the 25th rolled through the Gallatin Valley in 1896, it was almost normal. Moss and the U.S. Army came to cycling relatively late, at the back end of a nearly decade-long boom in cycling and bicycle design that supported more than 300 bicycle manufacturing firms, producing more than a million bikes in 1896 alone. Touted as the “nag of the people,” the so-called “safety bicycle”—a chain driven machine with pneumatic tires that bears a striking resemblance to something you might find between the legs of a skinny-jeaned hipster stopped to smoke an America Spirit outside of H&M—made the sport accessible as transportation and recreation across the rigid lines of race, class, and gender characteristic of Victorian culture.

Bicycles constituted a physical embodiment of a new, mechanistic age with all of its efficiency, independence, and spirit of reform. The Velominata, Velomihottie, and Cognoscentrix flourished, their newly-trousered legs churning in silky-smooth strokes that tantalized the uninitiated and exploded the period’s stuffy gender norms.

Bicycles were wildly popular and widely used, and for a time, track racing was America’s most cherished sport—more popular even than baseball. In the same year that the 25th embarked on its first mission, the man who would eventually become America’s first cycling world champion, Marshall “Major” Taylor, himself African American, launched his professional cycling career in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, the 25th’s first major destination—Yellowstone—was already on the American cycling map. As David Herlihy notes in his Bicycle: The History, tourists had begun to show up en velo in the park as early as 1884.

And the American Velominatus, though he tips his stylish cycling cap toward the old countries with a casual and yet earnest respect, knows this.

The American Velominatus knows that when Moss rolled past the artist Frederic Sackrider Remington on his way up the ragged railway service road in the pie plate that was his only gear (obviously) on his way over Bozeman pass, he pointed to his crotch, gave Remington the finger for his Alsace-Lorrainian roots, and yelled out across the continent—and across the Atlantic—in the primal scream of a cycling tradition that, like the nation that birthed it, had a big toe in the sands of Calais, but a huge fucking boot in the badassedness of a huge new landscape.

And Remington, ever the gentleman, delivered the message to its intended audience–the Belgians–in simple prose. It read:

“I got yer pavé right here!”

There was no need for Rule #74 until the cyclometer showed up on our handlebars. According to the late Sheldon Brown, the cyclometer has been around since the early 1900s.

“Star-wheel cyclometers, such as the Lucas unit, suffered two serious problems. They made an annoying “tink-tink-tink” noise. At high speeds, the star wheel would sometimes turn too far when hit by the fast-moving striker, then, the next time around the striker would hit the tip of one of the star points, sometimes knocking the unit out of position.”

My thought is, these things have been annoying us for much too long. As a youth no one had any measuring device on their bike. There are no old black and white photos of racers staring down at their front hubs to the Lucas meters. Eddy had retired before the Avocet made its debut. He would have caused his to go to failure or he would have removed it because it was extra weight and rubbish.

I bought an Avocet digital cyclometer as soon as I could. It had two slightly inset buttons to better hold water to seep inside. It read speed and elapsed time. That was something to get excited about. Going from no data to data was big, this was going to improve cycling.

Thirty years and many cyclometers later I’m not convinced. My most recent model was a Cateye wireless cyclometer with heart rate and it demanded a new battery every two months…enough! I needed anything else, which made me ask an obvious question- why? Do I care how fast I’m going? I know it’s not very fast and no I don’t really care.

It’s more a question of how hard am I going? Hard or not so hard and again, I’m not trying to quantify this anymore. I’m no quant. I’m beyond quant. It’s not being too old as much as I’ve been riding for so damn long the numbers no longer interest me. Even if I was training for a specific event I have moved past the desire to have data. I did encourage my wife into upgrading to a Garmin 500 as she is into data. I encouraged her because I wanted to know the grades of some of our climbs. I should have kept quiet and emulated a friend who actually went out with a tape measure and long level and quantified the grades to the island’s most “interesting” climbs, bless his heart.

It’s been gratifying to look around on the Sunday group ride I’ve fallen into and notice that some of my cycling friends also have no cyclometers on their bikes. I’m not even sure it’s an interesting point of discussion amongst us. The people who are training with data don’t show up on this ride often because we spend the first 40 km gossiping, riding two abreast, riding a route too curvy, hilly and breath-taking for staring at a watt meter. The second part, I’ve heard*, turns sporty as the big guns get fired leaving bodies scattered along the route home. Training with data requires control of effort. Luckily my people have little interest in that. This Sunday ride is more pleasure than pain and I don’t need a meter to tell me a serious workout was logged.

I was visiting friends who worked and lived in Monaco and was told about the eighty year old owner of the building they rented in. Most every Sunday morning he and his buddies would kit up and go for a ride either east into Italy or west into France. I assume this had been the routine for decades. Eventually they would stop for a nice long Sunday lunch then they ride to the nearest train platform, roll their bikes on the train and return home via rail. Damn, I want to be one of those guys if I get close to eighty. And damn I wish I had a bike and kit when I was there, it would have been a riot to ride with them. I bet those old dudes have V-meters on their bikes.

*either I have turned  back before the official turn around or I’m shelled out so early that all I hear are the distant reports. At some point the return always becomes a death slog and as such, a good training ride.

The task spreads out before me like molasses poured onto a tabletop, indulging in its viscous immensity. Its growing breadth makes it a kind of enigma, the sort distinguished by an elusive end and therefor an intangible beginning. It occurs to me, at this moment, that the difference between those who achieve and those who stagnate is not measured by their greatness, but by their courage to begin. There is a boldness in embarking on that to which the end is unknown, to trust in your ability to navigate a path along which the way can be felt more than it can be seen.

In life, our path is fractured by the paths of those in our social and professional proximity. In training, we are simply a product of our discipline and will. In a world full of change and flux, training stands out as a beautifully simple thing. Time in the saddle goes in one end, and progress comes out the other. The magnitude of the change we see as a result is directly proportional to our commitment to a goal; there is nowhere to to seek answers to our failures but inside ourselves.

The most sacred act in Cycling is, for me, the day-long solo training ride, especially in Winter. On these days of 200 or more kilometers, I rise with the sun still lingering behind the Cascades to the East. There is a chill in the air even inside the house as I shake off sleep and prepare for a ride book-ended by the twin fires of sunrise and sunset. I wait patiently for the streets to be lit well enough to allow my safe passage; perhaps I’ll have another espresso while I wait for the sun to laze above the horizon.

Setting out, my heart will be heavy with dread knowing the ribbon of kilometers, hills and climbs that lies ahead. In Winter, the effect is heightened by the gray clouds in the sky and the knowledge that rain and possibly snow will accompany me. Before I even begin, my mind casts ahead to the warm shower and hearty meal which will greet me at the end of this long day. Yet, the only way to arrive is by loading the pedals at the outset and getting to the business of turning them endlessly until I return to the house.

My usual long training route consists of chaining together my daily training loops. While familiarity with the route serves to comfort me, the conclusion of each loop carries me by my home – each time I find myself tempted to escape into the warm confines where my family, a shower, and a meal awaits. Yet, with each passing of the house, my resolve is energized, I continue. I continue with only the thoughts in my head, my discipline, and the cold and wet to keep me company. When I finally return home, my spirits fill with a sense of accomplishment.

These rides help me find form, certainly, but they serve a more fundamental purpose that echoes in my personal and professional life. They serve to remind that a large task is an aggregate of smaller, more simple tasks and that we need only the courage to begin. Just as a long ride is accomplished by the simple act of turning the pedals, we achieve our goals in life by starting today to incrementally move towards them.

I am reminded through the solitude of the ride that simply beginning is the most critical element to finishing; fail to do that, and you will never have the opportunity to finish. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I’d need a thousand just to describe the carefully disheveled cap placement. I’d need another grand just to describe the positioning of the cranks or front skewer or downtube shifters. I’d be another mille mot in the hole to discuss the fit of the jersey or the white socks and black shoes.

All those words and still I wouldn’t have touched the way he’s holding his bike with his forearm. This is the Casually Deliberate masterclass. Full stop.

Recently we had a photo of Yates on the stones. Two days later, it was the killer photo of Boonen getting down to business. Until then, Frank’s photo from that day was the best photo ever but @Harminator’s shot is better. Tom tosses the squeezed bidon. The glove-less Belgian is already on his own- it’s business time. I’ll be hard pressed not to nominate that as ride of the year and not because a few of us were actually there. The above photo is from the same day, same location, maybe a bit after Tommeke soloed by.

Alex and William are the fixers, enablers, the Mr Wolfe(s) of the spring classics. You want to see Paris-Roubaix at three different locations and two of them have to be the Arenberg Forest and Carrfour de l’Arbe? They can do that. You want to ride two classics courses with support, then watch the same two classics with an ample supply of free beer and food? It’s all in a week’s work. You want to see Museeuw naked? He is right at the top of the stairs.

There really should be more than one article just to praise Pave Cycling Classics. For 2012, they put together an itinerary to give any hardcore cyclist heart palpitations. In cooking up the 2013 Keepers Tour, they paired a museum and dinner out, stirred in three cups of Museeuw and added a slab of Ardennes.  Alex and William are the Pavé boys: one French, one Irish, one quiet, one loud. Both are great guys and very strong cyclists. I’m pretty sure they were toying with us that whole week. They were the professional guides: ride well but not too well, look after the slackers (me), and let the stronger ones have their fantasies of greatness.

When we first arrived in Lille I was amused to see that the Pavé business was run out of William’s family apartment, a little like Velominati headquarters, which is loosely based at Frank’s house. William’s mother-in-law, Genevieve, a retired French doctor and an amazing cook, was chef for the git. William, if he stops riding, will be a fat fuck. They have a business concern with a Belgian brewery, hence Malteni Beer. They have wives and employers who let them do this on the side. Did I mention they seem much too happy and young to be in this position?

One thing the Velominati have in common with Alex and William is we are doing all this because we want to share our passion for cycling. I assume they are losing more money than Velominati; passion and profit don’t seem to be good bed-fellows. But maybe that makes it more fun. We came back from a morning museum trip (relax, it was a cycling museum) and Johan Museeuw’s car was parked at the git. Mama Mia, you mean Museeuw is inside our place? We were immediately reduced to giggling teenagers. And Johan Museeuw is a very nice guy! He immediately put on his Velominati t-shirt and was ready to joke, tell us we were too fat, abuse us about The Rules. We all sat down to lunch with him. If he had then answered his ever-ringing phone, bolted for the car and driven away we still would have considered it an amazing Museeuw day but he didn’t. There was lunch, there was a naked Museeuw as he changed into kit, there was a RIDE, and there were beers afterward. We spent an afternoon with Johan Museeuw, all thanks to Alex and William.

I made one big mistake which was to drag my bike to Belgium and back. It’s expensive but more importantly it was a real pain in the ass, with multiple legs and stop-overs. The Pavé’s custom steel Cyfac bikes are perfect for the routes. None of the few flats and mechanicals we experienced were on the Cyfac bikes. Their bikes are well maintained and all running 27mm Vittoria Pavé sew-ups, with some SRAM and some Shimano components.

We all had a long week of memorable experiences but it’s Alex and William who really impressed me the most from this trip. They both have cool sounding full- time jobs in the French bike industry. They are doing these Pavé tours because they are as excitable as we are. Alex has done the L’Eroica Strade Bianche on a 1910 fixed gear beast. He loves cycling in all forms- no rules, no snobbery for him. William, our leader who rode at the front of all our rides is a racer, who looked as good at the end as he did at the start. And he is a lot of fun to travel with, always ready to deliver some abuse with a smile. The two of them kept their humor and patience with this large group of agitators on the road, in the van, and at the dinner table. By their actions they reminded me, it’s the love of cycling that’s really important, not Obeying The Rules.

Clouds hang heavy in the sky, plump with a rain which contemplates the opportunity to hurl itself towards the Earth below. I get the sense that we wait for each other, the Rain and I; the rain relishes the opportunity to soak my clothes and skin, seeking to corrode my resolve while I cherish the opportunity to prove to myself that it will not be shaped by such things.

As a kid, I had an illustrated book of Aesop’s Fables. This time of year, I’m often reminded of one fable in particular, that of the Wind and the Sun. As the tale goes, the two are in the midst of an argument over which is the stronger when they spot a traveller on the road below. The Sun suggests that whichever of them can cause the traveller to take off his cloak will be declared the winner. The Wind blows and blows with all its might but the traveller only pulls his cloak closer. The Sun, on the other hand, beams with all its yellow glory, and the traveller soon finds it too hot for his cloak and discards it.

Aesop’s moral was that kindness is more effective than severity, but that sounds a lot like it would require introspection to really digest. Instead, I like to think of myself as the traveller and my resolve as the cloak; the worse the weather, the closer I pull it to me and the more determined I am to hold my course. In fact, this concept extends to any hardship in life; the greater the challenge, the stronger my determination.

So there we are, the Rain and I, waiting for each other; me with my cloak and the Rain with its severity. At this time of year, when the skies have turned grey but the chill hasn’t yet arrived to keep it company, I enjoy waiting for the rain to fall before embarking on my rides. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the questioning looks from the neighbors who descend from their homes in coats and hiding beneath their umbrellas for the journey from front door to automobile; they serve as further evidence that the public still has some distance yet to cover before understanding the Velominatus.

The rain pours down and in minutes soaks my clothes. Rain drops drip from the brim of my cycling cap; when I clench my fist, water steams from the fingers of my gloves. The roads are soaked; both the rain and traffic cast debris towards the gutters. My path crosses between the two and the grit and dirt afloat in the rain water are flung onto my machine and body.

When I return home from the ride, the evidence of my journey is carried in my clothing which is heavy with water and debris. Overshoes and knee warmers, once removed, reveal my Flemish Tan Lines via the clean skin beneath.

Perhaps Flanders is a place not defined by the borders between people, but between wool and flesh. Vive la Vie Velominatus.

The first Velominati Scottish Cogal is in the books. Organized and supported by Clan Engine, it looked to be a beautiful Scottish day on the bikes. V-kits and Casually Deliberate in Callander, this Cogal thing is catching on.

VLVV, Gianni

Engine Report

Remember how you used to go to bed the night before Christmas excited? Well it turns out that the night before a Cogal is the same. When the six of us all met first thing on Saturday at the Deli the first sentence that that passed between us as we made our intros was “I’m really excited about this”.

Velominati may hail from mixed backgrounds but all love cycling with a passion so you can guarantee that a day spent with Velominati for a Velominatus is a day well spent. For starters Obeying the Rules means that at the beginning of a Cogal, as with no other cycling event, time is not spent wondering who to avoid as they look like an accident looking for somewhere to happen – rest assured everything will be just so.

So with double espressi on board and stopping only briefly to Wait Properly for pictures to be taken, the first ever Scottish Cogal rolled out of Callander. There was plenty weather around but nothing that could slow a McVelominatus. This being Scotland there’s a 5% 2km hill 2kms in to the ride. On my girlie compact I can do this one in the big ring, a feat of which I am inordinately proud – JohnB was the nearest thing we had to a pro on the day and he could have handled the rise backwards on a unicycle faster than me. JohnB is one of the nicest people in the universe however and settled in to motivation mode thus sparing blushes.

Over the first hill and it was down a crappily surfaced descent, the first of many, where top speed is a function of being able to see straight. Upthetrossachs has a facility frequently demonstrated to obey Rule #85 and has not yet found the outer limits of Rule #64 so a pattern was established JohnB at the top first and coming down again to take pictures and Upthetrossachs leaving a cloud of mist (not dust – this is Scotland) on the way down the other side.

Aberfoyle is the small town at the bottom of the first proper climb of the day. “Aber” comes from the ancient British language and means “confluence of waters”. In summer the town is full of bus loads of ancient British people but by this time of year it’s getting quiet again.  Sir Walter Scott (or Walt as he was known to his friends) set his poem “The Lady of the Lake” in these parts 200 years or so back leading to the Trossachs becoming Scotland’s first tourist attraction beyond public executions. The whole area’s a National Park now and the climb up the Duke’s Pass (only a public road since 1931) is a good reminder why. Through half a dozen or so hairpins of autumn colour you break out on to an open pass and another plummet, this time towards Loch Katrine. Being Too Fat To Climb I stuck at the back of the group with Snoov as long as I could, encouraging him as he disappeared up and off.

Loch Katrine is the most picturesque piece of civil engineering you’ll ever see. The original loch was dammed in the 1850’s and has supplied Glasgow’s water ever since via aqueducts and tunnels. The road round the North side isn’t open to cars except for local access so, although you have to look out for said locals there’s 15kms of traffic free undulating and twisty roads. The cattle grids become deer grids along here and you skirt the edge of some proper wilderness. The big hill with all the rain to the West is Ben Lomond.

Round the top of the Loch and back to public, albeit single track, road there’s a recently resurfaced long straight descent between secteurs of lunar surface where 60kph was seen and surpassed and then back to Aberfoyle and Mrs Engine in the team car at about half way for tea and fruit loaf. To bridge from Aberfoyle to the bottom of the Crow Road you need to ride 16kms or so of the A81 across the flatish bit that goes right through central Scotland. This is chain gang territory and before you know it you’re in Strathblane and out of the traffic. Campbellrae1 took the opportunity to cut the delights of the next climb and headed back to his car and the happiness that is a dry backside in October. We’ll get you round the next one – don’t worry.

At Strathblane because I’m such a nice guy I decided to bunny hop the kerb and wait for Snoov who had decided to enjoy the traffic all on his own for the last five minutes of the A81 blast. Much to the amusement of Upthetrossachs, my front wheel found the pothole in the pavement artfully covered by leaves and down I went after executing a nice 180 turn on the increasingly soggy surface. Obviously I made sure I was between the bike and the road so no damage was done other than to my pride.

And so to Lennoxtown and the southward turn up the Crow Road. The good people of Glasgow have a euphemism for death along the lines of “He’s away up the Crow Road”. The euphemism was clearly coined by cyclists trying to climb this piece of tarmac in tweed suits on steel bikes in the rain circa 1930 as it’s a bitch. Not particularly steep but endless by Scottish standards and frequently windy and/or wet (although not for the Cogal). I took up my usual position of encouraging from the rear and Strathlubnaig took on photographic duties on the way up and the way down.

By the time of the right turn at Fintry it was most definitely starting to rain and at “The Top of The World just before Kippen the Flanders Mirrors were there for all to see. As Upthetrossachs said whilst waiving a damp glove at the grey vista, “On a nice day you can see ever so far from here”.

Kippen is built on a hill – unusually for Scotland it’s a “down” one so achieving the 50kmph speed limit’s a doddle. Unfortunately is wet street is also surfaced with diesel and I avoided crashing again only by swearing continuously until I reached the bottom of the hill.

And so across the last roundabout and to Flanders Moss the last outpost of the huge raised bog that caused all Scottish battles to be fought at Stirling.  Fighting anywhere else around here it was a toss up whether you’d be drowned before some mad red headed man with a sword could slice you from arse to tit.

Thornhill is home to the world’s smallest Masonic hall and the bottom of Upthetrossach’s favourite hill – the final hump before the long finishing straight at Callander. This is a private joke between me and Upthetrossachs – in fact pieces of his sense of humour can be found scattered all over its slopes.

Down the final twisty bit (recently resurfaced for once) under the Flamme Rouge and it’s on to the last and slightly downhill straight to the speed limit sign. Time for my party piece – a big ring sprint to the line – gratifyingly Strathlubnaig’s picture of this shows me from behind and alone crossing the finish.

So a short recovery section back to Ancaster Square and agreement to head back to Casa Engine for showers and avoidance of Rule #22 non-compliance whilst consuming Malted Recovery Beverages. The Waverly Hotel in Callander used to be the strangest of things – a Temperance Hotel a hostelry specifically set up not to sell alcohol only in Scotland (and possibly Utah). For many years now it has seen the light and has been lubricating the good folk of the town with proper beer as far back as anyone can remember. Some were driving but still managed a swift half of Thrappledouser a brew from Perth. Belgian hoppy goodness was available in bottled form from Leffe. Then it was back to the ranch where Mrs Engine served industrial portions of chili con carne.

Agreement was reached even before the froth was blown off the first refreshment that there’ll be another McCogal in the spring – probably in the East. Once we’ve seen this write up safely published we’ll let our fellow Velominati of thoughts on dates. Quite a few suggested that they’d have travelled from places as far away as England and we’d love to see them here.

The view from Strathlubnaig

When I read about the historic premier Scottish Cogal I came close to showing some emotion, realising I would miss out on the Big Day due to having to go offshore and save an oilfield.

However, sometimes the cards fall the right way, and just days prior to the event I got the good news that my offshore hitch was being delayed….result !

So the Saturday dawned grey and dull, cool but dry, so far. I had laid out my kit the night before, and filled the bidon, went to the store and bought some snacks, even picked up a pack of those little self adhesive tube patches in case I ran out of tubes, so at 0825h I rolled out the driveway and headed down to the Deli Ecosse to meet my fellow Velominati, grab a pre-ride java and hopefully have a great day oot.

I was a little apprehensive, perhaps these guys would be full on heavy metal no holds barred climbing monsters and leave me chewing the bars before turning meekly for home, but thankfully they, like me, were regular dudes with bikes wanting a memorable ride with like minded fellers.

We had our coffee, got some snaps taken by Mrs Engine and set off. Initially it felt a brisk pace, but things soon settled down to a pleasant enough speed, I was mindful not to go too quick early on as the first decent climb, the Braes o’ Greenock comes within 3km, and is a stiff test of the guns even if warmed up. We all settled into a rythym after an initial breakaway attempt by one or two.

The kilometres rolled by, the road surfaces alternating from smooth to tooth rattling. Pretty soon we were cruising along Aberfoyle main street before turning sharp right and uphill for the famous Dukes Pass climb, an 220 metre ascent on alpine style switchbacks. On a climb like that everyone had to find their own pace. It was at that point that I knew for sure that JB was the KOM for the day, having effortlessly drifted up the hill he then announced to me he was going back down to get some photos of the lads on the climb. A regroup at the summit before a fast descent to Loch Achray and the picture perfect castle across the water. Sharp left and on to Loch Katrine and the very quiet loch side road, with a few lumpy bits thrown in. Classic autumnal southern highland views opened up at every bend. We had a couple of really nice steep drops with near 180 degree turns, complete with wet leaves and gravel patches, and everyone coped very well.

The group split into two for a time after the head of the loch and run to Stronachlachar, followed by a short climb to Loch Arklet then a good long descent on a new surface, which is followed by ten kilometres of rough and potholed corrugations back to Aberfoyle.

At Aberfoyle we came to the zone de ravitaillement and met by Mrs Engine and copious supplies of homemade cake and a thermos of coffee, bon effort !

Sometimes I find it hard to get back into the ride after a break like that, and today was no exception. South of Aberfoyle there is a series of long deceptive climbs which in the SW headwind really started to tax me, though I don’t know how everyone else felt, I can say that I was glad to have The Engine and JB up front most of the time to give me some close wheel draughting practice. I did attempt to follow Rule #67 and get a few turns at the front, but evidently I must have dropped the pace a bit as the two stronger riders did not usually wait too long before passing me and punching through the wind again.

Once we got past the Dumgoyne distillery and had less of a headwind I felt better, and we all made good time into Strathblane and its ungodly pavéesque roads, a short climb up through the town and a left hander to head East towards Lennoxtown and thoughts turned to the Crow Rd climb. I pulled over as I became aware I was alone. I knew it wasn’t my turn of speed though, and eventually three of the troops came by in tight formation, evidently managing to follow Rule #88, with The Engine a short distance behind. I found out later he had come off after disappearing into one of the deeper ruts, but in true Rule #81 style this went unmentioned other than a passing remark by a third party in the tavern later on.

A quick resupply for fluids in the village and we turned up the Crow Rd, which starts with a steep elbow or two which is best not attacked to violently, otherwise you may go into the red too much to enjoy the following 4km and 230m ascent. We spread out a bit, with JB floating past me in good style, this after he had pulled over at the bottom for a comfort break !

At the county boundary sign on the high point of the climb I paused to get some pics again as the Gruppo came past. The descent to Fintry some 220 metres below was a blast, spoiled by a bit of a headwind though. The last few sharp bends really test the skills, especially for those who have no prior knowledge, so chapeau to those guys for giving it their best Rule #85 efforts.

After Fintry there is a pleasant 100m big ring climb to The Top o’ the World, with great views West and North. We paused to enjoy the Scottish splendour before heading towards Kippen, reached by a fun descent complete with diesel slicked roads and double parked cars, best approached at 50km/h or better. Everyone survived.

At the bottom of the hill we entered the Flanders moss country, and of course, it rained heavily. No one seemed to mind at all, the pan flat roads and realisation we were a mere 12km from the end of the ride put a smile on all the faces. A photo op at the Flanders sign and soon enough we reached Thornhill, beyond which lies the base of the final climb of the day, the infamous Mini Braes, which essentially mark the Highland Boundary. There was a wee bit of moaning from somewhere back in the pack, not sure who, but the brand new surface near the summit made things very pleasant, it’s only a 100m climb and the drop in towards Callander on the North side was a lot of fun in the heavy rain.

The potentially tricky three way junction at the bottom was uneventful and soon the long Mollands straight pointed the way into town and journeys end. The traditional Rule #79 town line sprint went to The Engine. I did try to bridge across with camera in hand to get an action shot as he passed the sign, but did not quite manage. In fact, one Velominati remarked to me “Let him take the sprint since he organized this whole thing” to which I thought, “Aye right, like we have a choice”.

One last tooth rattler session up Bridgend and back onto the Main St and the first Scottish Cogal was history, job done, 140 plus km and some 1775m climbing apparently. More coffee and cake at Chez Engine before a visit to the local hostelry for recovery beverages.

Very enjoyable and great crack. The lads all showed their strengths at the right times and the on road camaraderie was very welcome. Talk in the tavern was of another ride in the spring, so will look forward to that.

Thanks troops.

Snoov’s Story

The VMH always complains that I never get excited about anything but boy was I excited about going on the first Scottish Cogal. I made sure the sacred garments were washed, I made sure my bike was clean and lubed, I ate pasta for three evenings in a row before checking maps to make sure I knew where I was going and then sat down to relax.

It was a sleepless night before the Cogal as is usual for me before anything important. I usually don’t get much more than 5 hours sleep but every once in a while I forget to set the alarm and end up being late for something. I got up before six and rushed around trying to think of anything I might have forgotten. I looked at the salbutamol inhaler beside the alarm clock but decided to take one of the ones downstairs. Everything packed into the van, bidons filled (1 500ml and 1 750ml how was I to know this would soon become a broken rule?) and off I went. I estimated that the journey would take an hour while Google thought it’d be an hour and a half so I put the foot down and after twenty minutes realised I hadn’t picked up an inhaler. My asthma is very mild and mostly doesn’t bother me it’s only exercise and pollen that makes me wheezy so I got a little worried and texted @theengine. None of his family had one and it’s not possible to buy one without a prescription, I was gonna have to hope it’d be ok.

I arrived in Callander at ten past eight and got into the back of the van to cover myself in V-kit. I was feeling a wee bit self-conscious in it and hoped I’d be able to hold my own. I hadn’t been on my bike much since getting home from Oz, and had only managed some surfing out there causing me to bring back eight pounds of extra @snoov. I noticed my bike was gleaming as I lifted it down and swung my leg over it. It seemed to move off on it’s own towards the meeting place with no pressure from my feet on the pedals. I first bumped into @JohnB in his Angus Bike Chain bibs with long sleeved V-jersey and he gave me a hearty hand shake and showed me the way to the cafe. @theengine turned up next and we made our way inside. @cambellrae1, @UptheTrossachs and @strathlubnaig (who for some reason had been the chap I’d spoken to at the hill climb I was a steward at the weekend previously) also appeared and they all had double espressos and I had a nice cup of tea. Mrs @theengine was also there with a little @theengine and a little @Upthtrossachs who sat up the back eating bacon rolls. Then we went outside.

We set off and settled into a good pace, there may have been rule violations but I didn’t care, six Velominati were involved in the first Scottish Cogal and from the conversation in the cafe, everyone was just chuffed to be involved. I’d removed my computer so that I could ride on pure V but later I realised that I’m not yet experienced enough for V-meters. When we hit the first little climb I hit the front, I wasn’t trying to impress, I knew they’d catch me by the top, anyway it wasn’t a long climb, that would be the one called Dukes Pass which we hit before too long. I ended up at the back climbing Dukes Pass but managed to stay with @theengine and have a blether now and then when breathing allowed. There was a few spits of rain but it was still dry in Scottish terms. The scenery was breathtaking even though visibility wasn’t great, the road surfaces were bumpy and there was more traffic than I’m used to but, I was on a Cogal.

Mrs @theengine was waiting for us in a car park somewhere with cake, coffee and tea and more chatting etc. took place and again I was glad to be out riding with this bunch. It occurred to me again and again that it shouldn’t be a surprise that as we are all attracted to the same website/community therefore we’d get on like a house on fire. Maybe that’s overstating things but just as this same phenomenon had presented itself on every Cogal I’d read about so far, here it was again, but there was still more than half the ride to complete. We got back on and made for Crow Road. This was where my inexperience and V-meter use came into play. The group started to circulate but when I got to the front I surged a bit and probably caused @cambellrae1 to get a bit disheartened, I feel terrible about it, and will endeavour not to repeat it. Of course a shout of “easy” from behind would have pulled me back but a lack of familiarity probably stopped this happening, and we lost @cambellrae1. Then @theengine pulled us for a while along a straight road into a headwind which eventually got us to the next climb. Now I was the rider being waited for but everyone was in good spirits and after the long climb up Crow Road the weather took a turn for the worse. We were all soaked through and I stayed at the back in case anyone dropped anything. The area’s terrain is pretty rolling and the rolls are a bit steeper than the ones I ride around Dundee. I struggled to keep up with everyone but I was still enjoying the hell out of the Cogal and the “last wee hill” as @UptheTrossachs described it seemed to go on forever probably due to the water I was carrying in all my clothes and as the sprint finish appeared I was just glad I could still see the guys up ahead.

We got back to Callander and most of us went to @theengine’s for a shower before hitting the pub for post ride recovery beverages. This was when the conversation was able to really get going and I could appreciate how incredibly special an event it was. We chatted about La Vie Velominatus, the Keepers, all things cycling, and wondered about whether we’d be able to get Cogal V-pint glasses, surprisingly all in fluent Cogalese. So my fellow Velominati, I’m already anticipating the next Cogal and looking forward to seeing Ivor, John, Simon, Alan and Campbell for another ride. HAT!

John Bremner’s Report

I have not been so looking forward to a bike run for a long time and there were quite a few butterflies while travelling down to Callander. I thought that I had lost that nervous excitement for riding my bike but yesterday showed that it’s still there with the right route and company. On arrival (more than a little early) I quickly located a fellow Velominati (Campbell) then Nick resplendent in full V kit (lucky boy). As the group gathered, introductions by all were instant and very friendly.

The pre ride double espresso set me up very nicely for tackling the weather and hills ahead. Please apologise to the café owner, I fear I may have left the establishment with a slight atmosphere of a road race strip. Nerves again?

I cannot thank Jenny enough for her support throughout the day, the boys for their enthusiastic wave off and to you all for one of the most memorable days out on the bike in a long time. Special thanks to you for your extended turns punching the south westerly around us and to Alan for being determined to give me a challenge on the climbs. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so comfortable ascending, I put that down to the Cogal preparation miles to as not to potentially leave me hanging out and not enjoying the ride, plus my week riding in Tenerife at the start of the month. The hard work is building on that now at home.

I also intend to petition my council to leave minor road maintenance alone so I can get some of that pseudo pave in Angus.

Thanks once again to you for organising the Cogal and to Frank for bringing us all together.

I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop in the Lance affair. That is a long wait. And I’m burned out on the whole doping subject so it’s great @wiscot writes up a profile of Charlie Mottet. Here is a man whose sock height I can believe in.

VLVV, Gianni

It was, in the first instance, the shoes. Just as cycling kicks were emerging, literally, from the dark ages in the late 80s, French rider Charly Mottet wore perhaps the finest shoes of his generation: red and white Rivats. Not too garish, not too bulky, not too cheesy-looking, they were just right and, to a great extent, complemented the rider who wore them: a professional who did things properly. They got my attention and he became a favorite rider for me. As we now know, Mottet did indeed do things “just right.”

In his recent memoir “We Were Young and Carefree” Laurent Fignon writes bluntly and tellingly that in the early 90s there was a subtle, but seismic shift happening in pro cycling. Riders, previously considered domestiques, were riding beyond their expected abilities. Champions with exemplary palmares, like Fignon, found themselves struggling against riders who were previously fit only to fetch bidons. While it must be said that doping has always been present in cycling, it was relatively unsophisticated and tended not to turn “carthorses into thoroughbreds.” The 1990s however, saw much more sophisticated and powerful drugs becoming the norm and while EPO might not have been openly discussed or detectable, clearly something was amiss. Fignon writes of his disgust and despondency at being humiliated in the sport he loved – hence his decision to retire rather than follow the same unsavory path to dishonesty.

One rider whose own palmares were outstanding and had a reputation for attaining them honestly was Fignon’s one-time teammate Charly Mottet, The diminutive rider from Valence in the Drome region began his career with Renault in 1983, a top echelon team that included Fignon, Marc Madiot and Bernard Hinault. Under the guidance of brilliant directeur-sportif Cyrille Guimard, Mottet, like so many others, flourished in his profession. He then rode for Systeme U (again under Guimard) and RMO before retiring after two seasons with Novomail. In retrospect, his 1994 retirement (one year after Fignon) was timely and dignified. In the mid-90s and beyond, doping was becoming de rigeur and riders like Mottet would have encountered the same dilemma most riders would face: dope or be dropped. David Millar (to name but one) succumbed; Mottet did not.
Even a cursory glance through Mottet’s palmares show a rider of versatility and strength: 45 victories in the amateur ranks and 75 wins as a professional. In his second pro season he was best young rider in the Giro and winner of the Tour de l’Avenir. He won stages in all three Grand Tours, the Tour of Romandie overall and the Dauphine Libere three times. In one day classics he won the Tour of Lombardy and Zuri-Metzgete. Digging deeper, we see a rider of amazing all-around abilities: he could time trial, winning the Grand Prix des Nations three times; he could climb, winning Romandie, the Tour de Haut Var and the Dauphine; and he rode track, winning the six days of Grenoble (twice), and Paris. He won 6 top-level criteriums. In his grand tours he finished 2nd in the 1990 Giro and was three times in the top 10 in the Tour.

But what really sets Mottet apart from many of his fellow pros as the age of rampant drug-taking dawned was that he was known to be a clean rider. No ifs and buts or suspicions, he was clean. Disgraced soigneur Willy Voet, who would be at the center of the doping maelstrom with Festina, worked with Mottet and remembers him well: “A year later the French rider Charly Mottet, who twice finished fourth in the Tour de France, joined the team. The arrival of Charly Mottet helped to clean up the team. He was the team leader, he had more influence than anyone on the way his teammates thought and he never wanted to know about drugs. When he arrived at RMO, we knew hardly anything about him. We knew he had the ability to win the Tour de France, but we didn’t know what means we had to put at his disposal to help him get there. It was only as the races went by and we ate with him and spent time with him that we worked out what kind of a fellow we were dealing with. This was one clean cyclist. An iron supplement or an injection of an anti-oxidant (Iposotal) and that was as far as he went.”

“You could honestly say that Mottet was a victim of drug-taking right through his career – of other riders’ drug-taking. If he had used some stuff to help him recover, perhaps only now and then, the list of races which he won – already a long one – would have been considerably longer. Who knows if he might not have won the Tour? As it was, he was a rider who was said to fall apart in the final week.”

Maybe Mottet also became disillusioned as lesser talents usurped him? After all he retired at the age of 32 when he could have been expected to ride for a few more years. Nevertheless he has a record to be proud of and something that no amount of money or rationalizing can give: a clean conscience. The pressure to stay active and dope must have been immense: by the early 90s, the French had enjoyed many years of Tour triumphs. Beginning with Jacques Anquetil (61, 62, 63, 64) followed by Lucien Aimar (66), Roger Pingeon (67), Bernard Thevenet (75 & 77), Bernard Hinault (78, 79, 81, 82 & 85) and Laurent Fignon (83 & 84), the French had 15 wins in 25 years – a remarkable run of success. With Hinault retiring in 86 and Fignon struggling in the LeMond years, the expectation and hope for a new great French hope was palpable. Why would such dominance not continue? Mottet looked a possible successor to the fame and fortune that a Tour win would bring. Alas, the dark and pernicious encroachment of doping meant that Mottet began to struggle against other riders who were theoretically not in his league. It’s hard to believe that the diminutive Frenchman would not be aware of talk and rumors as well as unexpected results. To maintain a drug-free stance in the face of on-and-off the bike pressure shows a remarkable strength of character. Recent books by David Millar and Tyler Hamilton as well as the recent USADA report bear stark witness to the Hobson’s choice riders faced: dope or be dropped. Tellingly, the only Frenchman to podium since 1990 has been Richard Virenque and, through Voet and other sources, we all know about his stance on performance-enhancing drugs.

Here at Velominati we look backwards to bygone days to seek warmer memories than seem plausible today. Riders come and go but some remain in the memory as examples to be honored and Charly Mottet is one such rider. Look at the picture above for reasons why Charly was the consummate professional:

• The full effort being expended: the essence of V.
• The superb position with the flat back.
• The radical (by standards of the day) Gitane TT bike with full Campagnolo Delta Gruppo.
• The immaculate and stylish Systeme U skinsuit with matching custom saddle.
• The aero helmet paired with cool Rudy Project sunglasses.
• The red aero Coke bidon.
• The perfect socks.
• The magnificently color-coordinated outfit; look how the red shoes sync with the U logos, the bidon and the decals on the rear disc wheel. A more put together rider you will struggle to find anywhere.
• And last but not least, the red and white Rivat shoes.

What’s not to like and admire? Nothing. Hopefully our sport is going through a catharsis where the misdeeds of the past will be banished to awkwardly-written record books. Sure, some riders will always look for an edge, but I believe the new generation are riding cleaner than they have in decades. On this site we can, and do, express our opinions readily and with conviction. However, none of us were pro riders in the 90s and 2000s and can’t really say what we would have done if put in the same position most riders found themselves in. They say that to truly understand someone, you have to imagine standing in their shoes; in more ways than one, I’d like to think that we, as Velominati, could stand in Charly’s Rivats.