Real F-ing Racing

I've long held that Andy Schleck is a bit of a whiner. Sure, he got dropped in 2010 because of a chain drop. Should Contador have held up on that one? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not going to speculate on cycling ethics. The point is, Schleck can't blame the loss on Contador. He's the one who lost. Take responsibility like a man.

This year upon losing time to Contador again in stage 16 he complained that the final descent was too dangerous. Strange, Contador, Evans and Sanchez didn't seem to have a problem. I've never ridden it, so I'm not going to speculate on whether or not it is, in fact, too dangerous. Everyone rides the same course; you don't win or lose based on the course. You win or lose based on what you do.

I've been annoyed at the Schleck's timidity in attacking, really attacking, Contador, Evans, et al. I haven't seen them press home their team advantage, which is huge. Today, they played the chess match perfectly. With a teammater up the road, Andy attacked 60 km out and the rest of the riders did what I hate, they sat and looked at each other, everyone waiting for the others to attack. To be fair, maybe they didn't want to bring up Fränk Schleck, but that's the fucking point that Lay-O-Pard (LOP) haven't been stressing. They have the guys, like Monfort, who can get out in a break and be in position for their leader if he catches up. With Fränk in the bunch, you force everyone else to either chase, and then LOP have 3 guys in the pack, or Andy runs away with it, because no one wants to work with his rival. That's exactly what happened. Textbook tactics. This stage needs to be studied for both what to do (LOP) and what not to do (everyone else).

What kills me is that you didn't see (and I haven't watched the full recap yet...) Basso, Evans, Voeckler and Contador working together to bring Andy back. Instead everyone waited for someone else to make the attack. You can't assume that if a guy goes out 50-60k from the line over the mountains that you'll catch him. I had figured Contador would be more aggressive, but he wasn't. I still don't get it. Props to Evans for making the move 10k out, but that was too late. I'll give him respect for being strong, but negate that for not being aggressive when he needed to be. Someday Cadel, you'll put it together. As for Alberto, you'll always have the Giro. Maybe the Vuelta this year?

And for Andy Schleck - a major chapeau. Real f-ing racing.

Thor Hushovd

Recently The New York Times Magazine did a lengthy and, to me, interesting piece about the decline of athletes in general and Derek Jeter as they aged. The conclusion was that since men tend to lose fast twitch muscle as they age, and baseball is inherently a fast twitch muscle sport, a ball player's decline is inevitable, even if he is in his top shape. Since slow twitch muscle decreases at a lower rate, an athlete can have more overall strength, but the balance tips in favor of the slow twitch muscles.

So what does this have to do with Thor? In his younger days Thor was a pure sprinter. He could climb pretty well for a sprinter, but he was definitely a sprinter. In 2009 Thor won him a green jersey by attacking on stage 17 and staying out over a couple of mountain passes to build his lead in the green jersey competition. Now he has taken 2 Tour de France stages in the mountains. And the guy's a sprinter? What happened? I suppose he got older and lost some fast twitch muscle. Thor himself admitted as much, without realizing it. Normally loss of athletic performance is replaced by 'craftiness'. Thor replaced his declining fast twitch muscle with more slow twitch muscle. He's now a much faster climber and more able to run out on the mountain stages. I'd expect to see more stage wins from Thor in the future, especially in these types of stages.

Rest day thoughts

Randoms from the rest day:

-I hope Vinokourov doesn't let his TdF career end like this.

de France, stage 9, Alexander Vinokourov">

-If you're Thor Hushovd, losing the Maillot Jaune sucks, especially to Voeckler. But you have 2 consolations: 1) You held the jersey longer than anyone expected. 2) You're pulling the World Champion stripes back on. So yeah. And the world champion stripes on the MJ team logo looks super bad ass.

-HTFU should be known, from here on out as Hoogerland the F___ Up.

Hoogerland (Vacansoleil-DCM) is attended to by a Tour doctor following a frightening crash onto a barbed wire fence.">

Note: I didn't want to post the photo of his ass all torn up, but it's nasty.

-I can't wait until the mountains and the real racing starts. Unfortunately(?) I'm going to be camping and won't be able to see any results for the weekend's action in the Pyrenees. Oh well.

Contador, Cadel, Cav

I don't really have any over-arching thoughts on stages 4 and 5 so I'll mention thoughts about 3 riders.

Contador - I'm not sure what I think about Contador lighting up the action on Tuesday. On the one hand, I like the aggression. I like the message he sent to Andy Schleck that he's not going out easy. That he's going to take time wherever he can. I like that he picked up 8 seconds. It's not much, but it helps. I like the psychological boost that I think Contador got. That said, I think Andy Schleck probably let Contador go. And was attacking and burning matches for 8 seconds worth it? I don't know. I do know one thing - Lance's great tactical move was to always race for time. The race is long, will Contador's racing for time on stage 3 help or hurt him in the long run? We'll see.

Cadel - I'm not sure what I think about Cadel lighting up the action on Tuesday. On the one hand, I like the aggression. I like the message that he sent that he's going on the offensive and not sitting back. On the other hand, does it matter? I haven't had a positive opinion of Cadel - I've always considered him too passive of a Tour rider. It's great to see him attacking, but I wonder if it's too little, too late, or rather, too early in this race. We'll see.

Cavendish - I am sure what I think about Cav. I've not liked him for a long time. Sure, sprinters have to be a bit cocky, but look at Thor. On Monday you had the Maillot Jaune, the World Champion, leading out a teammate. I've always thought Thor a class act and a smart rider. I've always respected the fact that Cav is fast, but at the same time I've always given his lead train a ton of credit. If the Highroad train is on, Cav wins. If they're not, he pouts. If you asked me, Mark Renshaw is one of the most important and most under-rated rider out there. Today, however, Cavendish managed to win a sprint Robbie McEwen-style; by weaving through the pack and out-working everyone, rather than having it handed to him on a platter (well, as much as that can happen anyway). So credit to Cavendish, who did it all himself.

Stage 6 is a little more vertical than stage 5. I can see someone like Voeckler going on a break (and maybe sticking it). I'd like to see Jens Voigt go out, but he's going to be watching out for the Schlecks, so not break for him. Still, I can't wait for the mountains. Soon.

Tour de France - preview and stage 1 prediction

Le Tour de France! starts this Saturday, 7/2. So many questions, so much to think and talk about. The big question is - no, not who's going to win - who will have the ugliest shoes? Cadel Evans - I'm looking at you (or not, if you keep pulling crap like this).

Anyway, this course looks, on an overall level, very well suited for Andy Schleck. Minimal KMs of time trialing (only 41 km of ITT), a couple of big mountain finishes, it looks like Andy's year. It'll help that, I think, he'll have an early lead on Contador. Typically the first stage is a prologue, but this year we get a road stage. That's all well and good. Under normal circumstances, this would lead to a typical "pure" (e.g. Cavendish) sprinter's stage. In this case, just looking at the stage profile, with a cat 4 climb right at the finish, one would think more of a "climbing" sprinter's (e.g. Hushovd, Gilbert, Flecha) stage. In such a stage, you would expect the GC contending teams - Saxo Bank (Contador), Lay-o-pard (Schlecks), Sky (Wiggins), BMC (Evans) - to sit back and keep their guys out. Not this year. With a team time trial on stage 2 that's the first change the GC guys have to separate themselves. Given the advantage of starting last (e.g. you can pace yourself better) and since teams go off in reverse order of their highest-placed rider, with only one stage to set up the TTT I think the GC teams are going to go full gas and try to get their best placings possible. To me, this is dangerous for Contador. His team is strong, but he doesn't have the biggest motor in the peloton on his side. That advantage belongs to Andy Schleck and Team Lay-o-pard Trek; Mr. Fabian Cancellara. My pick for stage one, then, is Fabi. I think that the climbing right at the end suits him perfectly. If the Schlecks want to win, expect to see a lot of Lay-o-pard on the front at the end of the stage. Of course Saxo and Sky will be right there with them, but in the end, expect Fabi to put down the hammer. I think Flecha and Hushovd can go with Cancellara, and expect Vinokourov, Evans and Gilbert to be up there too, but I think the Lay-o-pard guys have the most to gain from if not winning, then at least positioning themselves as high as possible and I think they know it.

It should be a real firecracker of a stage. I'm excited. TdF baby.

The Basics

You get on your bike and ride it. Easy as that, right? Not so fast there chief. Unless you’re participating in one of many naked rides around the world (no, I’m not gonna link to that), you need to put some clothes on, certainly for your own comfort, if not for your modesty. If you’re just riding a bike the choice of apparel is easy; shorts, t-shirt, athletic shoes, sunglasses. Maybe a hat (although everyone should wear a helmet). But that’s not us. We are not People Who Just Ride Bikes. We are Cyclists; we had better dress like it. But how do you do that and not look, well, uncool. This is why you have me. Everyone who gets involved in any activity carves out his/her own niche and cycling is no different. Some cyclists become racers, some wrench, some become coaches. I like to think of myself as a coach, but not a coach who focuses on training athletes to become faster cyclists. No, I focus on training People Who Ride Bikes into becoming Cyclists. After all, getting faster is easy (ride your bike!); to look good takes a lot of work. To most, that sounds elitist. It is. I make no bones about it and neither should you, dear Cyclist. I don’t condemn or look down on anyone who just rides bikes. I celebrate everyone who rides a bike. After all, one does not become a Cyclist without first riding a bike. No, for those who are ready to make The Leap, here are a few things you need to know. The basics of Cycling style, if you will:

1. Spandex. Get to love it. Cotton is your enemy. I understand that a lot of the People Who Ride Bikes don’t wear Spandex because they think they’re too fat/skinny/etc or they’re just not comfortable with it. Nonsense. If you’re in this to transform your body, and you’re serious about it, first transform your mind. Spandex is the gateway drug to the world of Cyclists. And don’t cover it up with cotton. That just defeats the point. Wear that Spandex with confidence and pride.
2. Bike shorts are meant to be worn directly on the skin, if you know what I’m sayin’.
3. Wear a helmet. Cycling is sexy; brain damage is not. Modern helmets are comfortable, light and well-ventilated. There’s no excuse.
4. Neon is fine if it’s raining, dark, or the 80’s, otherwise keep it simple and clean. By clean I mean both in design & style (here’s a great place to start) and literally clean. You gotta wash that.
5. Cycling shoes and pedals aren’t that complicated. Sure, you’ll fall down a couple of times while you’re getting the hang of them. That just speeds up the learning process and is a rite of passage for all true Cyclists. We all have at least one story about falling while learning to ride clipless pedals. Once you get on the clipless pedals, you can start on the cycling shoes. Go with white.
6. Shave those legs. Men and women. When you’re wearing Spandex (and why aren’t you?) nothing looks worse than hairy legs. Plus, you get a better tan, don’t pick up as much road grit, and your newly-ripped legs look much more ripped.

So there you go. Is that everything? No, of course not; I need material for further blog posts. Trust me, there’s plenty more to come. Sure, it’s a lot to digest and takes a lot of leaps mentally, which is exactly the point. Changing your life isn’t easy, but it is definitely worth it. Look at me – I look good. The results speak for themselves. This isn’t the time to go small. Now if you’ll excuse me, my legs are looking a bit stubbly and I have to go shave.

Running myself into the ground

Thank goodness it's a gorgeous day in MSP because I ran myself silly. 49:50 in a BB10K training run. Not bad, but not good enough. Practice like you play because you play like you practice. Running season ends in 3 weeks - get on it.

Enough, cliches? OK, I'll stop.

Get off my lawn!

(Technically, this happened yesterday, but I was a bit under the weather so I didn't get to posting.)

No, not really, but this does make me a bit grouchy. This morning I saw a girl riding her bike (yay!) blow through 2 stop signs making no attempt to slow down, stop or look for traffic; while talking on the cell phone, riding no-handed and not wearing a helmet. Boo! I hate to be all grouchy about it, because I hate stopping at stop signs too, but it's the law. Yes, the law. On a bike we need to obey these laws and demonstrate our respect for the road if we want the road, in the broader sense of everyone out there, to respect us. Luckily for her, there was no on-coming traffic at either sign, but there was no way she was stopping; and a car coming 35+ mph (by the way, also a violation of the law) is not going to be able to stop for her. A lot of motorists see such blatantly awful behavior and they extrapolate that across an entire population, which by the way, includes me, my friends (generally good behavior all around), my wife, etc. who all ride. Those motorists then become angry because they think that we think we can ignore the law while they have to obey. It's the old "I'm getting screwed" mentality, but in this case I can totally understand it.

Anyway, ride nice out there OK. Please? Thanks.

It's about time...

It's about time that someone rec-a-nized my awesomeness.

Berliner liebe

Ich liebe Berlin. Die Stadt habe ich als zweiter Heimatstadt angenommen. Jetzt bekommt Berlin grosse liebe und Respekt von der internationalen Presse. Dazu habe ich gemischte gefuehle. Auf der einer Seite, ist Berlin doch eine super, tolle Stadt, die die Welt anerkennen solle. Anderseits, hatte die State ihre Styl, ihre coole ausstrahlung trotz des Erkenntnisses bekommen. Berlin ist eine wunderschoene Stadt genau weil die nicht von Hipsters uebergewaeltig war bzw. ist. Wenn alle das erkennen, werden alles sich aendern.

Auf jeden Fall, diese sind gute Fotos.

Mayday! Mayday!

It was 40° F at 6 PM last night when I left for a ride. This was May 1st, by the way. Normal highs for May 1st in Minneapolis are 64°. Yikes. It's been a gloomy spring to say the least. But there are a couple of advantages to being out when it's cold and windy:

1) Less traffic. Seriously, there were only 3 people on Lake Calhoun. It was that slow;

2) Awesome tail wind if you plan the route right;

3) You feel like a total bad ass for being out when most people are complaining about the crappy weather. 40 and gray is better than 4 and icy, right? My thoughts exactly, even if it doesn't help the vitamin D deficiency.

Of course, riding a bike in 40° weather is nowhere near as bad ass as these guys. Chapeau ST6.

The Nick of Time

When "selling" cycling to the general public, most cycling advocates focus on the grand benefits: health, cleaner air, sunshine, saving money, etc. While all of those are certainly excellent reasons to choose riding a bike over driving, and I certainly don't want to diminish any of them, it's easy to overlook the far greater number of small joys that cycling offers. Sprinting to beat a red light. Finally crushing the local killer climb. Cruising down a slight decline with a tailwind. The Smile and Nod pass from another cyclist. Rolling up to a coffee shop and smelling the roasting beans. A pretty girl (or guy, if that's your thing) smiling when you ride pass. Stopping by the side of the road to enjoy the view, knowing that you got there solely on your own power:

Each ride can have a hundred such small moments, and when taken in the aggregate, riding always leaves a smile on my face. While driving can certainly have enjoyable moments, to my experience those tend to be outnumbered by the thousand constant annoyances of other drivers. Getting cut off. Merging. Slow drivers in the left lane. I have a 2-mile rule; every day I drive to work within 2 miles I'll wish I would have ridden, regardless of the weather. It never seems to fail. Sure, cycling has its frustrations; the close pass. The Heckler. On the whole, though, I find that the thousand small positives of cycling vastly outweigh the few small negatives.

Last night, Friday, while sitting at work and deciding if I should leave now or finish one more small task, I looked at the weather radar. Not good. A huge swatch of green was bearing down on the City of Lakes. Fortunately, my decision got a lot easier. I bailed on the office post haste and headed out. Rain was definitely coming. Having the rare tailwind (I ride east-west on the way home) I made great time. About 2/3 of the way home, thinking I was in the clear, I noticed a car on my right waiting to turn right onto the gridlocked freeway entrance with his window down. "Great," I thought. "Heckler". "Hey man!" came the call from the car. "Hey! You better get home fast, that storm is coming!" I'm sorry, what? Concerned for my safety? Since the traffic was all gridlocked, and we had a red light, I was able to chat with this guy for a couple of minutes. Nothing earth-shattering, just him hoping that I got home before the storm came. It felt great. For the next couple of miles I had a smile on my face, thinking about the human interactions that you get while biking that never, never happen when you're driving. Being out in the open, with all of the risks inherent in that, also has a tremendous benefit that no one really talks about all that much; interactions with people as people. It doesn't happen all that often that you find a driver who is willing to chat with you a bit at a red light, but it happens enough and is nice enough that I would say it's probably my second-favorite small-moment-of-greatness while cycling.

I did beat the storm. Beating a storm is, without a doubt, the number one underrated small-moment-of-greatness.

And then I voluntarily went out in the rain this morning to ride over to the Angry Catfish. It's only about 1.5 miles from my house, but I'm sure that I would have regretted driving.

An Ode to Todd Sample

A couple of weekends ago I ran into an old friend. A bunch of us from the Birchwood bike team headed down to Red Wing for a weekend of hard riding. It was a great time. I got dropped, but it didn’t matter. I caught up to the group in Lake City, MN at a gas station. This was 50 miles into a 72 mile ride. All was good. Then I went inside to use the restroom and came out to find I was all alone. Yikes. Well, not completely alone. Team mates Schultz and Smith were there, although Smith headed off to do the long route back to Red Wing. Schultz and I rolled out, northbound on Hwy 61. While rolling we spotted a lone figure, clad in black, in the distance. Being the tailwind-assisted hardasses we are, we caught him in no time. Upon passing said solitary rider, we realized it was none other than Todd Sample, a former teammate of ours. Todd was doing some crazy ass 110 mile race on gravel and had decided to bow out at around 70-75 miles. None of that sounds like fun to me. Todd was hurting and had been riding for a long time alone. Needless to say, he appreciated taking a bit of a draft and having someone with whom to chat. While some would say that quitting is a terrible thing, I don’t see it that way. To me it takes a lot of courage to admit when one is at one’s end, that the pursuit of a fun activity has stopped being fun and that there are more important things than the fleeting vainglory of finishing a meaningless bike race. You gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. I respect Todd a lot for that. But that’s not why this is an Ode to Todd Sample.

I started this blog as a way to memorialize some of my thoughts and connect with the kids. OK, not really. I just wanted to write what I was thinking. I was going to write up thoughts on races, bike culture in the Twin Cities, my pending wedding (she said yes!) etc. It was going to be awesome. Then I got lazy and stopped. I still had and have a lot of thoughts I want to capture, and frankly everything I say is so awesome that the world does deserve to read it, so the idea of blogging again stayed in the back of my mind. The impetus for making this a reality again, however, came from the good people at Groucho Sports. They have a team of bloggers (one of whom I happen to know personally) and were looking for a couple of new recruits. I whipped up a couple of posts and ideas and sent in an entry. I don’t know if I have been or will be selected, but either way I was feeling like now was the time to start blogging again. I started to get sad about the prospect of not being selected when I realized “Hey – I can still blog on my own, if that’s what’s important to me!” Technically that’s important, but I was/am hoping for some Groucho swag. More on that later.

In any case, Todd was my inspiration to start blogging again. Not because of his riding courage. No, Todd is my inspiration because of a race – the 2009 Nature Valley Grand Prix Uptown Crit. No, we didn’t race. Actually, I haven’t raced since August, 2009 (more on that later, too). I ran into Todd and we were chatting and he mentioned that he had found the race report I did on the 2007 Square Lake Road Race. He had found it by Googling his own name. This was awesome to me for several reasons: 1) I love Googling myself. It’s totally narcissistic, but it’s still fascinating. 2) He admitted the Googling himself. 3) It meant I had a reader. So, out of respect for Todd and with the desire burning again thanks to the good people at Groucho Sports (whose black and white West River Racer jersey is hot) I’ve decided to blog again. This time, I have a few posts in the hopper and will actually make something of it. It’s the least I can do for my readers. And Todd, you can say you were there first.