We’re an odd bunch, us Cyclists. Shaved legs, scars, tan lines, muscular legs paired to scrawny upper bodies. These things that make us stand out are some of the things I take great pride in. I marvel at my freshly shaved guns and how smooth they feel under my dress clothes when I’m stuck at the office. I’ll stand in front of the mirror each morning and gauge whether I’m getting fatter or skinnier. I’ll constantly feel my legs to check that they haven’t started to get soft since the morning’s ride. Being a Cyclist, it seems, is a full-time occupation.
Everything in our lives is biased towards riding. On the bike, we are a picture of elegance: perfect kit, tanned guns, magnificent stroke fluidly propelling us along the avenue. Remove us from the bicycle, however, and the graceful Cyclist is transformed instantly into an awkward creature; our legs suddenly look too big, our bodies too small, and we waddle about hopelessly on cleated shoes.
One of the most satisfying experiences of Cycling is to walk in my road shoes. Not only is it a thrill to avoid wiping out down a flight of stairs or in a café, but it marks the start and end of my ride. Kitting up before leaving, I’ll wander to the living room with my shoes in hand. Standing up after strapping them on, I’ll clomp out to the bike, my awkward gait signaling the sweet anticipation of the ride that awaits. Similarly, I cherish clomping back into the house afterwards, the clip-clop of my shoes echoing through the living room and signaling to anyone who is home that I’ve returned from my mission.
I embrace those things that make me strange to the rest of society; we are Cyclists and the rest aren’t meant to understand our ways. But a time will come when we ugly ducklings will blossom into skinny swans.
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@frank I love this article. For me, one of the greatest pleasures is the walk I have to do from the bike parking facilities in to my office building. Clip-clop'ing past the hordes of non-cyclists and fat, gasping smokers in their "look at me I'm killing myself" smoking shelter. My mind is full of "I'm not you, I'm different from you, you don't understand me and I'm loving that".
Those guns of Kelly's were fearsome, but then again, I think Big George had a brain transplanted on to his...
It's completely off thread, but when has that ever been an issue here.
But I am way excited by the fact that have just booked apartment in Bercy district of Paris and then find it is 1.5km from Le vélodrome Jacques-Anquetil.
Any ideas if they have local racing in July?
This Kelly pic is one of my favorites - I think I first saw it in the much-missed Winning. Couple of key things here - those shoes had plastic soles - not carbon, carbon-composite, but friggin' plastic. This lack of "stiffness" was clearly no impediment to dishing out the V. That being said, they were still probably lighter than many shoes around today because of their sheer simplicity - sole, upper, laces. The duct tape (very carefully applied and trimmed just-so), is surely there to prevent issues with loose laces.
Are they Brancales? I know Kelly rode Puma shoes for a while and then Gaernes and Vittorias too for a while.
Finally, the socks = perfection. Fully adhering to the Goldilocks principle.
@markpa
I am sitting just 2-3 km from there, so had a look on line: long story short, in 2012 they tore up the track to widen the interior rugby pitch, did an amateur job re-pouring it, and had to re-do it. According to a recent press release, it remains completely unusable. Here is a link to a Facebook page looking for answers (La Cipale is another name for it)
https://m.facebook.com/SauvonsLaCipale?id=210634225739222&refsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.fr%2F&_rdr
Sad.
@xyxax Have a margherita pizza for me and the kids if you would! They still talk about the corner restauraunt where we ate and had that pizza. Sooo yummy! And have a nice Sauternes for me if you would!
Those look like bowling shoes... except that upon further review, the placement of the duct tape, and near tissue paper covered guns, one would immediately realize that this individual likely cannot hold a bowling ball, let alone toss it 63 feet with enough force to knock down a feather....
@VeloSix
Oh I don't know. If Kelly took his bowling as seriously as his bike riding, he'd be smashing those pins. Remember, he's an Irish farm boy (I remember a pic in Winning of him howking tatties, so throwing a bowling ball would be a piece of cake.
@wiscot
and thus, the youth and ignorance of my cycling history is exposed...
Shame on me
@VeloSix
No worries! This is from Kelly's wikipedia page. A hardman's training for sure! The bit about DeGribaldy driving around the Irish countryside looking for the tractor-driving Kelly is classic.
For eight years he attended Crehana National School, County Waterford to which he travelled with his older brother, Joe. Fellow pupils recall a boy who retreated into silence because, they thought, he felt intellectually outclassed.[2] His education ended at 13 when he left school to help on the farm after his father went to hospital in Waterford with an ulcer. At 16 he began work as a bricklayer.
Kelly began cycling after his brother had started riding to school in September 1969. Joe rode and won local races and on 4 August 1970 Sean rode his own first race, at Kennedy Terrace in Carrickbeg, County Waterford, part of Carrick-on-Suir. The race was an eight-mile (13 km) handicap, which meant the weaker riders started first and the best last. Kelly set off three minutes before the backmarkers. He was still three minutes ahead when the course turned for home after four miles (6 km) and more than three minutes in the lead when he crossed the line. At 16 he won the national junior championship at Banbridge, County Down.
Kelly won the national championship again in 1973, then took a senior licence before the normal qualifying age of 18 and won the Shay Elliot Memorial race in 1974 and again in 1975 and stages in the Tour of Ireland of 1975.[3] Kelly and two other Irish riders, Pat and Kieron McQuaid, went to South Africa to ride the Rapport Tour stage-race in preparation for the 1976 Olympic Games. They and others rode under false names[4] because of an international ban on athletes competing in South Africa, as a protest against apartheid.
The Irish were suspended from racing for six months. They were racing again when the International Olympic Committee banned them from the Olympics for life.[5]
Unable to ride in Canada, Kelly rode the 1976 Tour of Britain and then went to Metz, in France, after a London enthusiast, Johnny Morris, had arranged an invitation. The club offered him £25 a week, free accommodation and four francs a kilometre for every race he won. Kelly won 18 of the 25 races he started in France and won the amateur Giro di Lombardia in Italy. That impressed two French team managers, Jean de Gribaldy and Cyrille Guimard. De Gribaldy went to Ireland unannounced to discuss a contract with the Flandria professional team.[6] He didn't know where Kelly lived and wasn't sure he would recognise him. He took with him another cyclist, to point out Kelly and translate the conversation. Kelly was out driving a tractor and de Gribaldy set out again in the taxi that had brought him from Dublin, hoping to find Kelly as he drove home. They found him and went to Kelly's stepbrother's house. De Gribaldy offered £4,000 a year plus bonuses. A week later Kelly asked for £6,000 and got it. He signed for de Gribaldy with misgivings about going back on his promise to return to Metz, where the club had offered him better terms than before.[7]
@markpa a quick search on the google box provides this info: http://users.rcn.com/barbara.dnai/lacipale.html a short description of the area.
-while you're in paris, hit up an american's cupcake shop 1 & 1/2 blocks from notre dame:
http://www.bertiescupcakery.com/
-they're both runners/triathletes/bloggers/from DC, but don't hold that against them! he's also known as dc rainmaker, & has excellent gear reviews: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/
bon chance!