Cycling vehicles – the solution part 1

May 26, 2011

OK, so the problems with race vehicles should be clear from yesterday’s post. The solution is pretty simple: Get rid of most of them. I would propose four steps:

Step 1: No more team cars.

  1. It makes no sense to have 20 or in Grand Tours 40 cars drive the entire route to hand out food & drinks and the occasional rain jackets, give tactical advice and assist with mechanicals. Yep, I am wearing a bullet-proof vest while I type this.
  2. Food & drinks could be done by neutral support vehicles (of which you would then need far fewer).
  3. Tactics could be done either by having the riders decide it all for themselves or through radios (I’m not getting into THAT debate this time).
  4. Assistance for flat tires would be given by neutral support, just as it happens today. Same for small problems and adjustments. If you break your bike, you’re out (unless you can find a local blacksmith to weld your carbon bike back together).
  5. Not only does this mean we can clean up the race, it also incentivizes teams to use equipment that can take a beating, and it forces equipment suppliers to focus their efforts on reliability instead of stupidity. Imagine the technology that could be developed in that case and go straight into the market for regular consumers (who also have to survive without a team car for assistance).
  6. If we decide there is some reason sports directors should talk to other sports directors or riders, why would you put them in a car with its bumpy ride and bad reception anyway? There is no advantage to being “in the race” if that means looking at a team car in front of you and a team car behind you. They rarely get close to the riders and when they do, that’s exactly when the problems occur. Put them in a central location, with good TV access, good communication tools and even the chance for the media to interview all of them during the race. THAT’s entertaining.
Tomorrow step 2. Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Posted in bike politics | 5 Comments »

Race vehicle nonsense (Crossing off the Crostis)

May 25, 2011

In the Giro, the Crostis climb was taken out at the last moment. The reason was not the safety of the riders, as more than 300 trees were cut and barricades were put up to ensure that. Nope, the reason was that the team cars can’t go up that climb and that having just one support motorcycle per team was considered too little. Hence the concept was introduced that “the sporting value of the race was in danger” because a mechanical could have a big impact on the race.

Tell that to the guys who had to weld and forge their own parts back together if something broke in the formative years of cycling. Apparently in retrospect, there is no sporting value in those early races!

When you watch cycling nowadays, there are hundreds of cars driving like crazy to let 200 guys ride around. This is nuts. I see four major problems with all these cars:

  1. It endangers the sporting value of the race (ha!) when you have the sprinters hang on the cars for dear life as they did up Etna.
  2. It endangers the sporting value of the race (ha! ha!) when the combination of team cars, VIP cars, motorcycles and assorted other transportation regularly hinders the riders, especially on the bad roads of the classics and in the mountains. Many a breakaway attempt is foiled not by the other competitors but by a vehicle that is supposed to be a inert part of the race.
  3. It’s plain dangerous as sports directors often drive like idiots. Most countries have passed laws that make it illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving. Many sports directors do that while at the same time talking into the team radio AND watching television. They seem to think they’re such great drivers and invincible, which makes matters only worse.
  4. It kills any notion that cycling is an environmentally conscious sport (and cutting 300 trees for nothing doesn’t help).
Tomorrow I’ll share a proposal to bring some sanity back into the sport and bring it down to a human level. Do you have any ideas, please share them in the comments section! To receive my proposal and other future blogs automatically, you can sign up for my blog via email, twitter, skype, or instant messaging here.
crostis

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Toe-clips are better

May 24, 2011

When I started writing about ignorance on Saturday, I actually wasn’t thinking of Versus TV. That just crept in. It was triggered by Sporza on Belgian TV.

You’d think that the commentating in one of the hotbeds of cycling would be excellent, and usually it is. I’ll even overlook the irresponsible rant that led to death-threats against Van Poppel during the 2009 Giro (Ah, the memories).

What really surprises me is the technophobia at Sporza. To this day, they maintain that alloy wheels with soldered spokes are the best for the cobbles and that carbon sucks, as is presumably putting a steak on your chamois for comfort. Never mind that alloy wheels haven’t won a major cobblestone classic in several years (not that this necessarily proves their superiority, but at least it shows they aren’t half-bad).

This past week they had an ex-rider speculate that Weylandt’s crash was caused by modern sunglasses and high-profile wheels. When I heard that, my ignoranometer went in the red:

  • Why use such a tragedy to try and make a point?
  • As tragic as it is, how can one crash prove anything? Cycling is a dangerous sport, and unfortunately it seems that every few years there is a fatality in the peloton. This was as true 100 years ago as it is today. Given how speeds have evolved without fatalities increasing, it seems that equipment is getting safer (first and foremost the helmet of course).
  • The rider making these statements was from the era where everybody drilled holes in parts to make them lighter, so hardly a safety expert I would say.
  • His argument on the sunglasses was that if you come out of a tunnel, you’re temporarily blinded. Is that because your sunglasses have to adjust, or your eyes?
  • He “boosted” his argument by saying that in his day, riders would avoid riding behind someone with glasses, especially in the rain. How is that friggin related? Of course you stay away from a guy who can’t see anything in the rain, and I doubt they were wearing sunglasses.
  • The high wheels argument has some merit in the sense that they can be more sensitive in wide winds. However, the concept that such wheels are stiffer in the vertical plane and therefore offer less grip has been disproven so many times (they are not stiffer because vertical stiffness is all driven by the tire and the spokes, not the rim).
What’s next? Back to the Danish helmet, drill out your seatpost, and toe-clips are safer?

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Xavier

May 23, 2011

My music shuffle had just reached Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere over the rainbow” when the SMSs and Tweets came in. Xavier Tondo is dead. Im sitting here behind my computer, close to tears for a man I didn’t even know that well.

He rode for the TestTeam for just one year, in 2010. I met him only a half dozen times, but he was special. I never saw him upset or angry, he was always smiling, always friendly, not a bad bone in his body. For years and years he tried to break into the big league, but he was somehow always overlooked. Whatever the reason, it hadn’t seemed to affect him. He loved cycling – anywhere, anytime, in any race and with anyone – and was simply happy that in 2010, he finally got his chance. And he took that chance.

Although there are no locker rooms in cycling, you’d want to build one and introduce a half-time in cycling just so he could be that guy who makes a difference for the second half. It’s important to have a few stars, but it’s even more important to have some guys who keep it all together. Xavier was the glue.

Now my shuffle is playing “Comptine d’un autre été – L’après-midi” from Yann Tiersen, how appropriate.

My favorite memory of Xavier comes from after the TestTeam stopped. He got a contract at Movistar, finally the big Spanish team recognized him for what he was, one of the biggest raw talents despite his age. In November, we held our annual dealer meetings in Portugal, and we were looking for some riders to take our dealers for a spin.

Although there was no reason left to do anything for us, and several riders indeed refused to show up when asked, Xavier was there, smile in tow. He hung out with our dealers, went with them on beautiful rides and afterwards, all these German, Belgian and Dutch dealers had suddenly become fans of a Spanish rider.

The shuffle switches to Pink, that doesn’t work. Better write in silence now.

I particularly remember one ride where he hammered for four hours with our strongest dealers in his slipstream, riding at their max and loving every second of it. Upon their return, the heart-rate monitors revealed a sufferfest of epic proportions. Then one dealer made the unwise decision to check Xavier’s monitor. Average 96 bpm!

A big heart in more ways than one. RIP.

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Ignorance

May 21, 2011

I have a low tolerance for ignorance. Or more accurately, for ignorant people who should know better.

Which is why, when I lived in Canada, I used to hate listening to the cycling commentary. Four guys at the table, some knowledgeable, some completely clueless, with the result that the only safe topic was Lance (because to have an opinion on him, they didn’t need to follow cycling, reading People magazine was sufficient).

With the Ride of the Day (brought to you by Bowflex, the machine of choice for a 50-year-old grandma and a dude who can’t keep his shirt on) guaranteed to be Lance and the Team of the Week (brought to you by a guy who eats at Subways and still wears pants that are 30 sizes too large) always US Postal, any clown can present the show – and boy did they hire some over the years.

The excuse was always they used clowns so clueless viewers had someone to identify with, but don’t the viewers deserve a bit more respect than that?

Now that the Tour of California is going on, I was wondering: How is the commentating now on VS? Has it improved? Let me know in the comments section.

Posted in bike racing | 11 Comments »

To Hell and Back

May 16, 2011

With the snow at Lake Tahoe, I thought back to this ride. Originally posted in December 2000.

A week ago Heath Cockburn, our sales manager and a former professional cyclist, told me he would race “To Hell and Back – the Paris-Roubaix Challenge”. I had heard about this local race, 90 brutal miles of which 16 miles are on dirt and 30 are on gravel roads. Add to that the typical November weather around Toronto and you know you’re in for a lot of trouble.

But that’s exactly its appeal, it’s a back-to-the-basics no-nonsense event with minimal support and no excuses accepted. Or as race organizer Mike Barry, Sr., puts it: “Don’t whine about the conditions, it’s called to Hell and Back for a reason.” The event is small with about 50 participants and a $1000 budget, which made me think it was probably similar to the turn-of-the-century bike races or the early Ironman triathlons.

I hadn’t ridden my bike for about three months — since Ironman Canada — and was in no shape to ride to the corner store, let alone to Hell, but I can blame my decision to sign up entirely on Udo Bolts. I read in an interview that he decided to do Ironman Hawaii simply because “I know how it is to climb a 25-kilometer alp in the Tour de France, but I don’t know how it is to cycle after a 3.8-kilometer swim, and run after it. Most are scared to try another sport, but it’s good for your mind.” That struck a chord with me, because although I am at the other end of the skills spectrum, I had struggled through an Ironman for that reason yet had no idea what it would be like to ride to Hell.

So I asked Nigel Gray, a professional triathlete with half a dozen Ironman starts, to come along and Heath convinced his friend Bill “Stafi” Stathoulopoulos to do the same. Two professional athletes, two tourists, four Cervelo road bikes with cross tires, zero off-road experience, 90 miles of misery and hundreds of questions. We studied the map, got some advice from Mike Barry, Sr., test-rode a dirt section on Saturday and on Sunday morning at 8AM we were ready to roll

Heath had his plan all worked out. He would attack from the gun, as the first bit was mostly gravel and asphalt, and then see how long he could stay ahead of the specialists. Bill and I would control the back of the field (in other words get dropped immediately) . Nigel was the dark horse. He can ride with the best of them, but his confidence off-road was about as low as the race day temperature, which, with the wind-chill, was 24°F. Plus he is not feeling very good after a stag party the night before.

The gun goes, the group takes off and after a mile I am happy to see that I’m still in the group. We turn right onto the first gravel section and instantly I am not longer a part of the group. This is something else, the pouring rain has made this gravel a lot tougher than I expected. We make another right turn and hit the first dirt section. It’s tough but doable, and I am right behind Nigel. I look back, and there is only one rider behind us. I shout this encouraging information to Nigel, who just laughs in disbelief. It’s going to be a long day. Nigel pulls away a bit, and we pass Bill. He says he can’t see anything through his glasses, I am having the same trouble. I completely overlook a groove in the road, and now I literally hit the first dirt section. That hurts, but my bike is OK. Bill and I turn onto a paved section and after another turn we go by the start line again. We toss our sunglasses, look at each other and he says his legs are dead already. Only 85 more miles to go.

We enter the first long gravel section and start taking turns, or so I think. After I pull for a few minutes Bill is gone. I look back, and he is half a mile away, the first of many examples today of how quickly gaps occur when the terrain gets tough. I’m noticing a perfectly shaped burr on my right glove, I must have picked that up when I crashed. I resist the temptation to peel it off, and promote it to my official mascot for the day. Every twenty minutes when I shove some food into my mouth, the burr is right in front of my eyes and gives me some encouragement.

I decide to keep going until after the first really tough section, as Bill should be faster there. A guy on a Bike Friday catches me, we ride together for a few minutes while we fend off two aggressive dogs. This race has it all. He drops me, then I drop him, we’re not really racing each other but these things simply “occur” without any intention. All of a sudden an arrow points to the left. Mr. Friday slows down and almost pulls into a muddy field. Since this course is so uncultivated in some areas, it’s hard to always know where to go. At the last moment he sees that a bit further the mud actually has a name, it’s Prouse Rd. I guess it was abbreviated to Rd. because this pile of mud, snow and puddles doesn’t deserve the full four letter word. Yet plenty of other four letter words come to mind to accurately describe it.

A paved section provides enough relief to eat half a Powerbar, but then it’s back into the dirt. This time there are some steep descents, and in my learn-as-you-go off-road lesson I notice I’m slipping out of control with both wheels blocked. So I let go of both brakes and now I’m speeding out of control. You just can’t win in these situations. The bottom of the hill appears before I can hurt myself and another hurdle is taken.

I’m starting to get tired, and with the fatigue the questions start entering my mind. “Why am I doing this?”, “How far into the race am I?”, “Is there anybody to ride with?” I drop Mr. Friday again and in the distance I hear a train. I see its tracks 200m ahead and think about how great it would be to be stopped by the train. A forced rest stop that you can deduct from your finish time when you brag with your friends, and no matter what I’ll claim that it took the train at least 10 minutes. I near the tracks, hear the train, but don’t see it yet. When I finally see it, it becomes obvious that I will beat it to the crossing. My thoughts immediately change to the excitement of being able to shake off everybody behind me with the help of my locomotive friend. As soon as I cross the tracks the warning signals start ringing, but I’m safe.

300m ahead of me are two riders, I would like to catch them but I’m not getting any closer. I recognize the gravel road I’m on, and know that it will end with a sharp turn onto a paved road and a very steep hill. We drove this part yesterday and Heath mentioned how one of his teammates turned that corner last year in his big ring, was unable to shift down in time and had to walk up the hill. That’s something professional cyclists don’t like to do! When I near the turn I check my gears, but there’s no reason for action. The rain is making this gravel section so hard that not only have I been in the small ring for the past half hour, I’m in my smallest gear – period. I turn the corner and see the two I couldn’t catch walking up the hill. This is my chance, I can catch them simply by riding up this hill. But I can’t, this thing is too steep. (Heath will later admit that even he walked up this hill, something he has never done in his 20 years of cycling).

I catch the two anyway, because they stop to stretch at the top of the hill. I chat for a few seconds, and when I leave one of them pads me on the shoulder and wishes me luck. It exemplifies everything I like about this event, it’s a race but we’re all in it together. They catch me again a bit further and together we turn into the next dirt section. This is the part I tried yesterday, and it was responsible for my first three cycle cross crashes. This road has very deep tracks, which are filled with water and covered with ice. The ice is then covered with snow. I wasn’t fully aware of the “mechanical properties” of this sandwich construction yesterday, and while riding on the side of the road my front wheel suddenly broke through the ice. Half of the wheel disappeared, the bike came to an immediate stop while my body carried on for a few more meters and landed in a foot deep puddle.

Today it’s a different story, as all the ice has been cracked by the riders ahead of me, and it’s now clearer than yesterday that the middle of the road is where you want to be. Determined not to get any wetter than the rain and front wheel spray has already made me I stay safely on the center wall of the road, until that part disappears under water as well. Now the only solution is to walk at the edge of the road through the brush. Or you can try to ride there, which the eventual winner did until he fell onto the road and completely submerged his head in one of the puddles. After 10min of walking we come out to a paved section, and I notice both of my tires have developed slow leaks. I blow a CO2 cartridge on getting them back on pressure and continue. Thanks to my pit stop I am by myself again. A group catches and drops me, I am not enjoying this any more. I am tired and look forward to the feed station at the halfway point so I can withdraw from the race. Someone passes me and I hang on to his wheel. He pulls me back to the group, I thank him and do a few pulls myself. Now I’m dropping the group, this race is weird.

Somebody else catches me, we chat a bit and he asks me what bike I ride. I explain it’s a Cervelo without decals (I just had it primered the week before) and it turns out he has a Cervelo time trial bike. Smartly enough he isn’t riding it today. He suggests we share pulls for a kilometer at the time, but I have to tell him that my tank is empty. So I offer him one long pull, and then I tell him to go on. I could probably hang on to his wheel, but I don’t want to hang on if I can’t share in the work.

A sharp right turn, and I enter the “Hell of the North”, a nine mile stretch of track. It’s an old railroad bed and 2-inch rocks fly around my ears like a WTO protest turned violent. Yesterday a rock ricocheted off my front wheel onto my chin, today I am dodging the bullets coming off Mr. Friday’s rear wheel. So we meet again. Since this road isn’t big enough for the two of us, I pass him and take off. When I look back three minutes later, he is out of sight.

I am now 3-and-a-half hours into this race and I am wondering why I’m not at the halfway point yet. I am so ready to give up, yet there’s no place to do it. When the Hell crosses a paved road I ask the marshal where the halfway point is, which he explains is behind me. Now I’m starting to think I have missed my opportunity to quit, could I have missed the feeding zone? So when I see the next marshal I ask where the feeding zone is, which he says is still ahead. It now dawns on me that the halfway point is not halfway, it later turns out to be at 56 miles. I cross a bridge made up of random pieces of slippery wood, I feel a few of them slamming all the way to my rims. This is where we turned around yesterday, and I was told it was close to the end of Hell. But this stretch keeps on going and going, although it changes from pebbles to very deep gravel to rollers covered in slush and back to pebbles again. Variety is the spice of suffering.

I stop to stretch my back, but I don’t want to wait too long as Chantal, Nigel’s wife, is supposed to be at the feeding zone and I really want her to take me back to the finish line. I am afraid that if I get there too late she’ll presume I’ve quit and leave, and I can’t blame her for wanting to be back at the finish line when Nigel arrives. When I get back on my bike a group passes me which includes of course Mr. Friday. I am content to follow his lead, and it is amazing to see how that wheel slips all over the trail. I wonder if my wheel is doing the same, but I can’t really look down without crashing.

Then I see light at the end of the tree-lined tunnel, then a van, a car, and Chantal. I respond to her “Hi Gerard, you are doing awesome,” with a sincere “It’s been fun, but it’s enough, do you have room in your car for me and my bike?” In fact, I’m willing to leave the bike behind if I have to. She tells me Nigel and Heath are together in the top-10, and they are only 30 minutes ahead. Half an hour in 56 miles, that’s not nearly as bad as I had thought.

In an attempt to clean me up she pulls the burr off my glove. I cringe, explain to her it’s my mascot and put it back on the glove. A minute later somebody else walks by, and she too removes the burr. Why is it that while I’m covered in mud from head to toe, this tiny burr really gets to people? I look at the burr lying helplessly on the ground, look at Chantal and we just laugh. She tells me to continue, as there are only 34 miles left and only 3 miles of dirt. She forgets to tell me that most of the rest is gravel, and my brain is so fried that I actually believe her and get back on my bike. While a lot of riders have a complete change of clothes here, I just put on dry gloves. I’m only wearing two layers, a base layer and RNH White Jacket, but it has created a perfect microcosm for my body. It’s my saving grace, as I wouldn’t be able to cope with being cold on top of all these other tribulations.

Off I go again, without the burr but surrounded by a fog that has been rolling in stronger and stronger. It takes all of five minutes before I regret my decision to continue, but I’m hoping that Chantal will drive by and I will be able to flag her down. Ten minutes later she passes me, but all I can do is wave. I’m such a wuss, too weak to quit. But I am finding my rhythm, and while “enjoying” would be slightly overstated I am feeling better. Every now and then I pass somebody, it’s strange to see that this far into the race the differences in speed are so big. You pass, and you disappear out of sight.

I’m on Concession #3 now, and recognize it. Nigel trains here a lot and once sent me out in this direction by myself. I got lost, bonked and had the greatest troubles getting home. A bad case of history repeating itself. This road is a never-ending series of small but steep hills, and on the steepest one I convince myself that walking must be easier than riding. On my right is a golf course, and I make a note-to-self that golf is really my sport, not cycling. Strolling along whacking at a ball every once in a while, now that’s entertaining. Pushing a bike up a hill, that’s just stupid and not as easy as it seemed when I was still riding up it. So I hop back on and summit this 80-foot giant.

A marshal waves a flag to indicate I should cross the road. She warns me of a drop-off into the ditch, but I can’t see anything until I’m a few feet away. I make the 15-foot drop without a problem, and start crawling through the mud and snow once again. There are two riders just ahead, but whenever they dismount and I think I can catch them, I have to dismount as well.

When we get back on the paved road, they are 100m ahead of me. I give it my all and close the gap. The luxury of sitting on somebody’s wheel and eating a bit is indescribable, and I decide to stay with them and share the work. One of them asks me if I am getting my $25 worth, I just ask what mud is going for per pound these days. We’re all covered head-to-toe, I’ve been eating mud with every Powerbar, drinking it with every sip of water, that’s gotta be worth something.

Then a sound, a crack, and a rubbing noise. My bike comes to a complete stop, my rear wheel is busted. I’ve covered 75miles, there’s only one dirt section left, and I’m stranded. The other two continue, and I have to try and call the race office for tech support. It takes me half an hour to find a living being that has the technology to make the call for help. I’m surprised at how unaffected I am by this mishap, I had just warmed-up to the thought that I would finish this race and now I’m standing here in the freezing cold in anticipation of the broom van. There is no talk of repairing my bike, it’s simply thrown into the van and I huddle inside to warm up.

When I get to the finish, Chantal, Nigel, Heath and Bill are all waiting for me. It turns out Nigel has been riding like a champ on the way back, mastering all the dirt sections without dismounting and making up some ground on the roads where he trains regularly. He finished sixth, only 26min behind the winner. Heath had to walk the last dirt section and let Nigel go, he came in tenth.

But in the end, it all matters little. We all have a feeling we have experienced sports the way it is supposed to be, the way it was before million dollar contracts and $350 entry fees. The spirit of the sport, any sport, is alive and it can be found in hundreds of little events around the world.

Posted in bike riding | 3 Comments »

My new bike – Volcano dustcap

May 13, 2011

It’s ironic that I write about the Volcano dustcap while sitting in a Rome hotel room, stranded on my way to Sicily because of an eruption of the Etna volcano (which I presume spews ash or shall we say; dust).

To be honest, I don’t particularly like the look of the Volcano under the stem, but it creates a stiffer set-up than having a separate dustcap and spacers. And with my massive sprinting power, I need that 0.0003% extra stiffness (insert self-ridicule). So the Volcano puts the stem at the right height in one piece, making it elegant in an engineering sense if not in an aesthetic sense.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I do actually think about these little things when spec’ing the bike, just because I can. That it won’t make a noticeable difference in the end doesn’t matter, that it is the “technically correct” solution does.

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My new bike – Stem

May 12, 2011

This part was a pretty easy choice. It’s the stem that we spec on most of our bikes because it is light, available in the right lengths and bombproof. No problem with tiny bolts that break or strip out, the only thing I really want from a stem it that it doesn’t cause me any problems and this one doesn’t.

Especially when you travel a lot, it’s important that the bolts are 1) all the same size; and 2) able to tighten and loosen often. With the Ti bolts in the 3T Arx Team and the Alloy grade used in the stem body, that all works. Beyond that, it’s just a stem.

Oh, and it has a red stripe, which is nice with the red stripe on the frame (the eye wants something too), although I think I would actually like a white stripe (from the Arx Pro) better. Maybe that’ll be a “vanity upgrade” later on.

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My new bike – Intro

May 11, 2011

Although I ride many different bikes throughout the year, I don’t often get a new bike really for myself. My stable currently consists of a 2004 SuperProdigy and a 2009 S3.

For my new bike, I had to stick with an aero frame (I’m so slow I can’t afford to lose any watts to drag). So I went with the most beautiful Cervelo frame of 2011, the WHITE S2. It sports what may be my favorite technical feature of all time, the ICS-3 system. Internal cables without the usual drawbacks of heavy internal housing, high friction or cumbersome routing. You just insert the cables at the top and they pop out at the bottom (for those who don’t have much luck doing this, make sure the frame is level, don’t hold it upside-down). Anyway, there is step 1, I’ll slowly build up my S2 on my blog this month.

Posted in bike equipment | 8 Comments »

Our cupboard

May 7, 2011

My favorite photographer, Edward Burtynsky, was interviewed today at Ryerson in Toronto. Very interesting, if you’re not familiar with his work you should check it out. His work for the past 10 years has been on a project called OIL, which chronicles the “life cycle” of the liquid that makes our world tick. The exhibit OIL is currently on display at the ROM in Toronto. The quote that stuck with me most was simple but powerful:

“Nature is a cupboard we go to when we need things”

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