Archive for Cycling
September 10, 2009 · Filed under Cycling
About a year and a half ago, as I was just starting to get really serious about cycling again after dabbling for about a decade, Michelle bought me every past issue of Rouleur and got me a two-year subscription. 
This is not a bike magazine. This is a quarterly publication for cyclists. It is printed on thick, heavy paper, and each issue is rife with pieces written by pros talking about a particular race, or mechanics putting in a 10 or 15 page piece on why they love tubs, how they select them or age them for a race, and how to glue one onto a rim properly. This isn’t fluffy stuff about Astana’s soap opera politics or What’s Hot and What’s Not; these are pieces you read over and over again: a long account by Robert Millar about the stage to L’Alpe d’Huez when he took the Polkadot Jersey in the 1984 Tour. Chris Boardman’s discussion on his Athlete’s Hour Record attempt, focusing on his collaboration with Royce and the effort that went into building the wheels for his ride.
Each issue starts with a two-page spread of an epic scene from road racing folklore on the left page, and on the right a well-chosen quote referring to the scene. The first issue I opened had a photo Eddy Merckx, complete with grimace on his face, accompanied by the quote, “On some days I would sit on my bike, weeping from the pain.” The next was of Bernard Hinault, growling at an empty road, paired with, “As long as I breathe, I attack.” Seattle is filled with short, steep climbs similar to the Ardenne with gradients of up to 25% and up to 4km in length; one of the hardest things for me as I clawed my way back into cycling form was the pain of hauling my fat ass over our route and its 1.5km vertical. These spreads reminded me to shut up and ride. In cycling, suffering is glory.
If the life of a cyclist is about suffering, why do we do it? Well, the fact is that on rare occasion, you don’t suffer. I’m not talking about those days when you top up on amphetamines or EPO; I’m talking about those days when you find the rhythm and when you find that place in your head where pain doesn’t tread. Many have sensed it, some have claimed to have felt it but haven’t, and fewer still have actually found it. The French call this La Volupte.
I recently read Jean Bobet’s book, Tomorrow, We Ride. This isn’t a biography of his older brother, Louison, but instead is a book about his life as a cyclist. Obviously, that life is deeply intertwined with Louison’s career, but none-the-less, this book is about a passion for cycling that goes beyond careers and racing results. In some places it is historical, in others touching, and yet in others is downright funny. But mostly, it’s about a love for a cycling life. Jean recounts two cases where he found La Volupte. The first was a training ride with Louison around Lake Como before the Giro di Lombardia. You can almost smell the thick, misty air by the lake as he describes their ride and the perfection of that moment on the bike. The second was on a lone training ride on the Cote d’Azur where he floated up one of the climbs on his route in perfect harmony with his machine and the gradient. La Volupte is fleeting, and the spell is usually broken by some external interference, as was the case for both of Jean’s accounts. On Lake Como, it was broken by the horn of a passing vehicle – on the Azur, by taking a sip of water from his bidon at the top of the climb. In an instant, La Volupte is gone and what remains with us is an unquenchable thirst to find it again.
La Volupte translates roughly to “voluptuousness”, and while the first thing the mind goes to is a sexual definition, my favorite is, “the property of being lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses”. In a sport where pain is worn like a badge of honor, those times when cycling is lush and abundant and a pleasure to the senses are what makes us want to climb onto our bikes again tomorrow. When Bobet returned home from his ride on the Azur, his brother asked him how it went. His answer was simply, “I was flying today.”
This was originally posted on Velominati.com
June 29, 2009 · Filed under Cycling, DM Products
I have started a new cycling blog called Velominati – keepers of the cog! The goal of the blog is as-yet not clearly defined, but it will be cycling-specific and I 
will do most of my cycling posts over on Velominati from now on, so make sure to add it to your news aggregator. (For now, all I”ve done is copy all my cycling-related posts to velominati.com, but new stuff will be posted soon.)
The reason I started the blog is partly because I love writing about cycling, but I am also hoping to find other people who enjoy it and want to contribute as well. Topics could cover local racing, pro racing, Pacific Northwest cycling routes, technique, bicycle maintenance, gear reviews, or something cool I haven’t thought of. So, I am inviting anyone who enjoys cycling and writing to become a contributor and help make the voice of this new blog. Contact contribute@velominati.com add tell us why you would like to contribute!
June 19, 2009 · Filed under Cycling, Doping
Tom Boonen, one of my favorite riders, tested positive for cocaine in an out-of-competition drug test (for the second – or maybe his third – time). 
Both WADA and the UCI don’t consider this a positive dope test because cocaine is an amphetamine whose effect lasts for only a short while and thus is only banned during competition, and even then it’s only considered positive if the drug is found to have a concentration of more than 0.5 ng/mg. That means that any control that comes back positive for cocaine during an out-of-competition drug test should be considered negative.
Boonen tested positive for cocaine during his recuperation time between Paris-Roubaix (which he won) and the next goal of his season, which is to win the Green jersey at the Tour. Tom says he doesn’t remember taking the drug, but acknowledges that he suffered a blackout from drinking too much the night before the test and, given the apparent availability of cocaine in nightclubs in Belgium, does not rule out that he may have taken some. However, it has since been revealed that his “positive” test was for a concentration of 0.09 ng/mg, which falls well below the threshold for a positive control and should therefor actually be considered a negative test.
This has not stopped the most autocratic organization in cycling – the ASO (who organizes the Tour de France and is thus the most powerful organization in cycling) – to declare that Boonen is “unwelcome” at the Tour due to his positive test. Meanwhile an independent panel has asserted that in order for the concentration to be so low, Boonen must of had only indirect contact with the drug and in any case does not use regularly. Basically, he didn’t inhale.
It is absolutely necessary to have out-of-competition drug tests. The most effective drugs in cycling like, for example, EPO, have lasting effects for up to 30 days and can only be detected for a small number of days after taking the substance. Obvsiuosly, any rider with even half a brain will not take the drug immediatly before or during a competition while the substance can be detected but will instead take it some time ahead of the race. Therefor, the UCI has to be allowed to test for the drug arbitrarily during the season. Cyclists are required to account for their whereabouts for each and every day during the year and guarantee their availability for a drug test for a 4-hour window each day.
Obviously, this is a huge sacrifice of personal freedom and many consider it an invasion of privacy. The argument that it is required in order to gaurentee fairness in the sport and an invasion of privacy both have merrit, but I strongly believe that out-of-competition tests should test – or at the very least report – only drugs that are on the out-of-competition prohibited substance list. The fact that Boonen had cocaine in his system is irrelevant to the sporting world and a private issue between him and legal authorities in Belgium. I find the fact that it was made public disgusting. If I take a drug and test positive during an interview process, I expect that to be a matter between me, my prospective employer, and any authorities they would be obligated to report the test results to. It should be no different for a professional cyclist, especailly given that they may be tested any day of the year.
ASO, please reconsider and let Boonen race.
December 11, 2008 · Filed under Cycling
I didn’t get a chance to write very much about cycling this year, which is one of my favorite topics when it comes to this blog. 
It’s been quite a year for cycling in our household, with both Michelle and I buying our dream bikes and, more importantly, us getting out on them much more frequently and moving towards something that resembles fitness.
But the professional cycling season was something of a mixed bag. Doping continues to cast a huge shadow over the sport and, while the nature of the racing seems to point towards the sport getting cleaner, the emergence of the blood-booster CERA seemed to make it seem just as dirty as it has ever been. Add to that the re-emergence of riders who have tested positive (Alexander Vinokourov, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton), admitted to involvement with doping (Ivan Basso), and were suspected to be doping despite any actual proof (Lance Armstrong) and it paints cycling into a corner that I don’t believe it should be in.
The bottom line is that cycling is doing much more than any other sport to clean up, and – whether or not these guys have the right to return (they probably do) – the sport and the fight against doping is complicated considerably by their involvement.
Drugs also spoiled what I look back on as the best ride of the year: Frank Schleck’s ride up Hautacam during the Tour de France. He happens to be my favorite rider, and not just because we almost have the same name. It’s also not just because he’s tall and lanky like me. It’s because he rides his bike beautifully, races intelligently and aggressively, and is a really nice guy. But those other things don’t hurt. It also helps that he rides my bike.
Team CSC played the perfect tactical game over the day’s earlier passes to demolish the race and set up their leaders to take the lead in the race. Jen’s Voigt set a brutal pace over the Col de Tourmalet (Michelle’s and my favorite pass) to shell some of the main contenders off the back before the final climb even started. Meanwhile, they had sent Fabian Cancellara up the road in a break which was caught by the Voigt group in the valley between the Tourmalet and Hautacam. Together, they set a brutal pace that put pre-race favorites Damiano Cunego and Alejandro Valverde out of contention for good.
Then, at the base of the climb, Frank Schleck attacked and did a magnificent ride to get within 1 second of the Yellow Jersey. Disappointingly, his breakaway companions included eventual stage winner Leonardo Piepoli who later tested positive for CERA. It’s a perfect example of how drugs damage a sport: Frank Schleck would have won the stage and taken the Yellow Jersey but was cheated out of that experience by a rider who was on a blood booster. It breaks my heart that my boy was not given the stage win, but watching that stage was the most exciting moment of racing of the year.
December 6, 2008 · Filed under Cycling, Entertainment
Cycling is a funny sport. Funny not so much in the way that it’s hilarious; it’s funny in the sense that suffering is a badge of honor. 
Greg LeMond once said, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”
I moved to Seattle a few months before Michelle did. The first weekend I was here with a bike, I headed down a route that I’d driven with the car and veered off onto a road that looked “interesting”. (To cyclists, “interesting” means steep.) It was a one-way street (the wrong way) heading up Queen Anne. I figured, “one-way-street, schmone-way-schtreet”. As it turns out, this isn’t a one-way street because it’s better for the flow of traffic. It’s a one-way street because if a car tries to drive up it in wet conditions (this happens in Seattle more than you’d think), it will spin out and not make it up the hill. It’s somewhere around the 35% mark. Traffic is allowed down, but not up. When I drove down it in my car, my bumper scraped the road as I reached but bottom. I haven’t ridden it since, but it’s the only hill I’ve ever ridden a bike up where, when I got to the top, 2.2 km later, I got off my bike and laid in a stranger’s front yard for a while.
The point is, I will ride it again. That’s because cyclists love to hurt. A friend of mine turned Pro for Jelly Belly a few years back and at one point I was talking to him and I said, “It’s hard to attack when you hurt so much.” His response was, “It doesn’t matter how much you hurt. You just have to go harder.”
I think at a primordial level, cycling is about the locus of control. In Seattle, people never, EVER jay-walk. But it’s one of the most innovative cities in the world, which means we have innovative thinkers who don’t follow the “rules” (you can’t be innovative if you follow the rules. Einstein said something about this.) Obeying the law and breaking rules are not mutually-exclusive. It’s about the ability to choose.
Cyclists love to suffer because they choose to suffer. Because it challenges your mind. As Jens Voigt – my all-time favorite cyclist – says, “When you go hard, your body says, ‘STOP!’ and your mind says, ‘BODY, SHUT UP!’ And, sometimes it works! And then you GO!”
Cycling is about the glory of suffering, which is something few other sports can say. The men and women that race the Tours de France (yes, there’s a women’s race and no, they don’t play it on Versus, and yes, it’s every bit as challenging and exciting as the men’s race) suffer for 21 days, 6 hours a day, over the most challenging terrain and awful weather you can imagine – and they race hard. Cyclists don’t refer to their legs and “their legs”. Cyclists refer to “the legs” as though they are a separate entity from themselves. Something to tame but not to control. We can control our mind, but we can not control our legs.
Cycling folklore speaks of “The Man With the Hammer”. He is a man who lurks around any corner and will unexpectedly bang you on the neck with his hammer. He will cause you to go from smoothly spinning your pedals to pedaling squares and putting your bike in “reverse”. The Man With the Hammer strikes when your mind takes more from legs than your body can provide.
Most endurance sports refer to this as “bonking” but in cycling this is out of your control. For a sport that is centered around forcing your body through suffering unlike any other sport, this an interesting paradox. Cyclists can avoid him temporarily, but all cyclist are hit by him at one point or another in their careers. Eddy Merckx on the climb to Pra-Loup when he lost the Yellow Jersey to Bernard Thevenet. Bernard Hinault when he lost the Yellow Jersy to Greg Lemond at Serre Chevalier. Lance Armstrong when he nearly lost the 2000 Tour on the Col de la Joux-Plane.
So, next year, when the weather is warm and the roads are dry, and when my morale is high, I will ride up the 35% ramps of 4th Street to the top of Queen Anne and I will not climb off my bike at the top and rest in a stranger’s yard because – I am quite certain – the Man With The Hammer will be waiting on another hill. The next hill.
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