Ride the Boards of Glory You Fool

The good ole days of track racing: wooden rims on wooden boards.

2008 Olympics - Spanish Madison team: Juan Llaneras and co.

Ah track racing, the original form of cycle-sport. It conjures thoughts of chamois creme, 225 lbs psi 18c tubular tires, and balls-out tactical sprints in elimination races. Come the depths of winter in northern climes, and track is really all there is left.

Which is likely a good thing. People should find something else to do besides obsess on the weight of their drivetrains. Me? I'm Cuba-bound, and I'm not even taking my bike. The closest I'll get is renting a motorina (as in Vespa). I can let go of it, see? That's what I'm telling you, anyway.

In truth, I'd love to take my track bike out to a velodrome, but that'll be an adventure for another day, like a day when there is a track closer than 250km from where I sit.

But the track is on my mind - the Six Day races are well underway in Europe and Zabel will do his 'final' race of any pro variety in Berlin this January. Thoughts of going have come to mind. Inside dope is that the Berlin Six is the best of the circuit, with the hardest racing.

A Six basically features all the track events or nearly: solo and team time trials, elimination races, derny races (w. each racer paced by an electric motorina at crazy high speeds), and the featured event, the Madison, which is a two-man relay race where teammates hand-sling each other into the action for 80 laps or so. It's fast and furious, and pretty damned dangerous. The winning team has travelled the farthest by the time it's over.

Basically, the trick is 'steal' a lap by launching an explosive sprint when the rest of the field are watching each other. To keep things interesting there are sprints for points every so often and a 100 points accumulated gets your team a lap on the rest (usually). In between all these events are either a whole other 'B' level Six or cabaret style entertainments, just to keep the audience entertained. In many velodromes much of the infield itself is given over to spectators, drinking fine Belgian draught beers and doing a lot of yelling.

I've only been to one Six, and it wasn't European but Ontarian. There was still a bit of a crowd, and the elimination race was damned exciting. Madison wasn't bad either, even if they weren't doing proper handslings. Round these parts, they have 'madison shorts', with a bulging thing sewn inside them to push on (No, not in the crotch area thank you).

As can be seen from the two photos, things have been calmed down considerably since the good old days. Spain got the silver medal in the madison at Peking, for the record.

Provincials '08: Bit More

The off-camber

(photo: M. Clark) and mini-me (photo from J. Safka)

Barriers before the snowy track loop.

Start of M2 race..? Proof that the sun shone that Sunday, anyway.

It was a good day on earth, Sunday 23 November 2008 (at Riverdale Park anyway).

'Cross Provincial Championships 2008

It was a wet and wild time at Provincials, where the snow melted into muddy off-camber bits like you see above at Riverdale Park. (That's Lorne Anderson in the leopardskin tights in the mixed Master 1/Senior 1,2,3 race, and he's passing Cycle Solutions' Stefan W. who's dealing with the most advanced class of racers he'd ever come across; "I have a plan", he told me before the start).

The crowds were pretty big, the falls were plentiful, and the day was altogether successful. There were 190 racers in total, including two or three organizers from the organizing club, who paradoxically won nothing for change. The Angry Johnny's/Cycle Solutions team is the equivalent of a small town in the little world of Ontario club racing: more bodies in their colours fill the ranks of various events than anyone else. Orange and blue jerseys fill podiums continually, but somehow today was different.
My race went reasonably well, as I navigated the course crash-free. I just didn't have any starting power/energy. It took me to the third of four long laps to get the energy flowing past the awful feeling of weak muscles. In the end I cruised to a 6th/35, forty-eight seconds off the leader.
It was a day of old men: Pierre Perrin (age 51)won my event by a healthy twelve seconds or so over Brian Kelly (approx. 46 years); Had Pierre stayed in M2 where he started the season, he'd have been 15th or so. Smart guy.
It was a great course though, and conditions made for a number of upsets. Peter Mogg, national M1 champion and winner of every single 2008 Southern Series M1 event he entered this year, actually lost - finishing off the podium.

All in all, it was a good first season in 'cross. I had good times and a bunch of top five finishes. I love the grinta (Ital. sort of like 'guts') that 'cross is all about, and the amazing feeling you get after the agony of the race is over, and learning to think past the internal chaos outside to the race itself.

Fast Times at Willow Beach

It was a cold, wet, mucky affair with a beach on top of all that. The beach was on Lake Ontario. The day was Sunday in November, a cool four degrees Celcius after 20mm of rain the day before.

It was a day for a cyclo-cross race.

We arrived with mere minutes to spare off the highway, I scrambled to take a practice lap on the winding, mostly flat and lightly forested course and forgot my helmet in the car, which preceded to leave altogether. A baker's dozen had made the drive to Port Hope in my event. Half a dozen more readied themselves for the staggered start: Beginner Men. An appeal filtered through to my competitors and suddenly a man was motioning me to follow him. "Bring your bike", he said and off we went to his house 400 metres away, smack in the middle of this circuit in the middle of nowhere.

A helmet was given over, we returned and the commissaires started the race. I let the small field sprint ahead of me towards the beach section - best to make a slower start after the chaos of the previous minutes, I thought. Eric Sanders (Wheels of Bloor) and I rode together at the back, and for the rest of the race. He was coming off a fourth and third place on successive days at the big UCI races in Toronto the week previous; in my case an 11th and a exploded chain off the hot start on the Sunday past.

I never let me get past me, occasionally pulling ahead, passing a Beginner, and marvelling at the sheer exhausting effect of this authentic 'cross grass-and-muck fest. Yet I was the nimbler, figuring to give it my best no matter how far back we were. In the end I got second place, Eric third. That's the strange thing about 'cross. A twisty course, all the concentration you can muster, and somehow you're at or near the front of it with no idea why. My best result so far.

In the midst of pre-start chaos, I'd neglected to even take my chocolate energy gel, but was able to hang in there nonetheless. When you race 'cross, you enter a tunnel of exaggerated experiences. Perceptions distort. Time seems out of whack, indiscernible, as though being held contained in a bag somewhere. The visual field is reduced to a narrow spectrum of the metres in front; the air temperature has no effect. Even the wetness of water splash is minimized in the stress of the task at hand. The key is to focus on the details of the course.

When it is over, relief is palpable and the ensuing minutes bring a continual endorphin rush. You feel excited, sometimes ecstatic, briefly immune to the cold, the dirt, the wet. Jokes and congratulations. A bike to be washed off by the waves.

The Grimace of Joy - Durham

Photo credits: Unrau (Salienta)

Cyclo-crossing All Barriers

Yes, another blog about bike racing. I keep meaning to get to other things but races keep happening and the over-excitement must be channelled somewhere. This mildly rediculous photo documents the final moments of my day out at the Southern Ontario 'Cross Series best attended race to date, ZM's 'Turkey Cross', just over a week ago in this very town I live in.



The sun shone on a lovely Fall day, the course was fast yet challenging, and I rolled and hurdled through it without troubles. It was the largest field yet for my category, a whopping 41 riders; I ripped my way to 5th place, trying to pull back the same Mr Cyclossimo for all of the last two laps (15 minutes or so). I got quite close in the last lap, but then he pulled away again in a hairpin turn and I could not pull him back. I just couldn't figure it out - where was the speed I needed? I felt good enough, yet the momentum just wasn't coming through the bike. Mr C. didn't seem that fast, just grinding away in a low gear.


At home, all became clear at last: my chain had been bone-dry the whole time! I'd made this incredible decision to not properly clean the chain/drivetrain, and then wiped it down just before leaving the house. End result - no lube at all. Which is a real handicap.



Durham Cyclocross Classic - 18 October


Saturday morning rose fresh and cool and I off I went by commuter train - once I'd chased it down at Union Station after watching in the darkness as it rolled right through my stop. I de-trained and, riding through the wide roads of Whitby, Ontario I found myself in the 5 degree C cold of Heber Down Conservation Area with nowhere to go inside and warm up, and was reduced to riding in circles in a patch of sunshine attempting to get warm with ninety minutes to go till my race.


Finally I managed a good semblance of warmth, took fourth wheel off the out-and-back opening lap on asphalt, and settled in to a properly twisty, yet flowing course. The grass was still soaking from the dew, making things a bit technical but not overly. Wetter still was the muddy water-crossing, which became deeper and muckier throughout the race. I found myself in a real 'cross race for once, legs and face covered in mud, shoes getting harder and harder to clip into pedals. Dudes kept passing me, despite my good cardio - none of my usual threshold heart-rate panting-like-a-dog yet it didn't matter.


So what then? This week's minor fiasco turned out to be my seatpost - it sank a good three inches into the frame, having been too low from the gun. As the bike got progressively smaller, I got slower. Eventually I realized afterward that my right-side pedal had gotten damaged on one side, making clipping in an extra challenge on top of the muck itself.


End result of what was actually a blast of a fun race: another 5th place, but an utterly dodgy one due to the complete lack of finish line technology - no camera, no actual line on the ground, no sensor of any kind. Just two guys with a notepad, reading numbers off backsides. Unsurprizingly, somebody got placed as lapped when apparently (according to him) he finished ahead of me. We compared notes and it did seem clear that he passed me mid-race. A protest was made, but what recourse did the commissaires have? Tire tracks on the grass?

It was really the only bad note of the whole day - Mill Street showed up with free beers for racers, and there were no tickets either! Organic microbrews at the end of a 'cross race, in sunshine, in a country wood - it doesn't get better than that. I set up on a picnic table on the sandbar by a stream and commenced highly vocal encouragement of anyone willing to ride the whole hillock-to-sandbar-to-singletrack-to footbridge section, which a number did do, to my great satisfaction. That is la grinta.

The Return of the Comeback

Raul Alcala is not a name I'm familiar with, to be honest. Nevertheless, I have learnt that he made his mark on the pro peloton, winning a couple of Tour stages (pretty remarkable for a Mexican) before he was done.

Alcala triumphantly announced his return to pro racing a week ago, after a scant fourteen years away from the game. His debut being la Vuelta de Chihauhua, where the man lasted all the way into stage two before crashing on a mountain descent and ripping face and body badly enough to pack it in. Alcala declined to comment on the situation, and remained in the team car while holding bandages to his herridos.

¡Qué mala suerte! is a all I can say, being only in the second week of my new Advanced Spanish class. Raul, you'd be happy to know that I'm making a reaparición myself, not having studied any foreign language for some years now. Entonces amigo, creo que es mejor elegir sus batallas sabiamente. At 44 years of age, a man needs to care for his ego gently, I should think.

Pero hay otras reapariciones actualmente, Raul: Atras de Armstrong (37), Laurent Brochard (40), y Ivan Basso (29?) tambien. Yes, the fad is growing madly since Lance announced his return to the pro peloton this Fall, if only to spread everywhere the message of the yellow bracelet.

Now we could speculate madly about Lance's reasons (i.e., for the glory of Kazakhstan), or his chances in le Tour 2009, or the palace coup brewing in his Astana team (la ragia azul de Alberto Contador), but why do that when one can speculate juicily about who will be the next to announce his great reaparición (yes, I've heard about Aleksandr Vinokourov's ludicrous announcement about re-joining the Astana team he founded - that's not going anywhere). Attempts to reapariciónar, so to speak, the peloton back to c. 2002 have only just begun you see.

No, I'm thinking the time-away-from-pro-racing can be vastly improved upon - let's listen carefully to Belgian national news in Flemish - I'm waiting to hear from you, Eddy Merckx. Come back and spank these ignorant young punks, why don't you M. Cannibal?

Cyclocross: My Newest Adventure

Originally I started this to document some months in the south of Mexico and the intention was to go beyond the usual 'personal album' type of subject matter of the web log. At this point I've abandoned all pretense and barely blog at all, but when I do, what I've succumbed to is this.

Here I am on this past Sunday racing my second ever cyclocross race in the grassy hills of Earl Bales Park, at the 'Octoberfest Cross'. 4th place of 25, thank you much. Missed the podium by ten seconds to that big Cyclossimo bastard. A big, tall road sprinter should not be getting the better of me in the up-and-down twistiness of 'cross.

In first race, over in Steeltown, I pulled off a fabulous 5th/28 after a timid start - a flattish, fast course. Some contraversy followed that excitement after a debate w. one K.M. Seems like I'm always sitting on a toilet somewhere as the minutes countdown to the gun. Better before than during, as I'm sure Stephen Harper would agree. We've all heard about roadies pissing from their bikes (and sometimes on them, says Hayward, who wouldn't know) but imagine bike racers squeezing off excess weight directly au cours. Wow. Already I know it will be the next great thing in race-weight-shaving technique.

Perhaps Lance Armstrong's comeback will be a Livestrong/Ex-lax co-presentation. I can't wait to see him on Mt Venteux, letting it all hang out. Now that would be truly horrible.

And I was one

Where: Central Park, 6am on a Sunday (09/07/2008).

What: 5000 + going for a ride (Manhattan + Brooklyn + Queens + the Bronx & back to Central Park = 19th NYC Century Ride).

Why: TransAlt fundraiser.

Who: Me included.

Enough

Here is the truth: I've had a shit racing season, minus some early quasi-success. At this point I'm just sick of it all and I don't even want to think about it. Yes, that is a tandom track crash. As Tofu would say, things could be a lot worse.

Los Olimpicos

So I spent half of August glued to a television. A remarkable achievement any way you slice it, really, and one rather new to me.


Formerly, I subscribed to the anti-spectacular philosophy of Guy Debord, finding only emtiness and alienation in such mediatized pseudo-festivals of staged importance. Olympic Gold: a vacuous bore from start to finish delivered with an unrelenting nationalist narrative.


But I've outgrown all that critical snobbery - this August I soaked in every televised moment of athletic glory, transfixed by the cavalcade of human endeavour. From the 10m diving board to the indoor volleyball court, to the ladies' softball baseball diamond (w. Canada getting kicked around like everywhere else), to 4 X 100m relay, to marathon, to the British battling only themselves in the velodrome - I sponged it in morning and night, never tiring. I even figured out how to navigate the relentless commercial breaks on CBC, by ingeniously switching to Radio-Canada (the French version of our public broadcaster).


In fact, Radio-Canada was a huge relief, having a smaller market to play to they have a far less commercials so you could see the Olympics without constant interruption and improve your French comprehension simultaneously. As with all French television, a panel discussion was in effect half the time, complete with medaling Canadian athletes being interviewed in English with an instant re-capitulation en francais afterwards by the interviewer speaking to the camera. Which I loved.


It all began with a vain attempt to watch some cycling events ,which track-wise were almost totally ignored by both broadcasters as Lori-Ann Meunser and Kurt Harnett are long-retired. I missed the road events as I was holidaying or working, though accidentally caught a few minutes of the total downpour that was the women's race, while waiting for a commuter train. The track race that CBC did cover was the among the least interesting - team pursuit, where you see nothing more than identical, faceless men riding in single file for 43 seconds. (Worse still, some strange compressed angle shot was used to show both teams riding the front and back of the track at the same time, with the infield looking more like a bowling lane and everything out of focus.) In the drama of good television spectacle, some sports really work on television, others do not.

Gymnastics and beach (and even indoor) volleyball work really well, with lots of close-calls and individual skills (like bikinis) being displayed clearly, and plenty of time for replays. And shorter duration for a whole contest. Cycling has a tough time matching up in this medium. Even diving, though it was on enough to make me go outside, works better as there is a new diver every minute or less. Even something as totally obscure as showjumping works, as it is a tight competition with plenty of triumph-or-failure action and the oddness of people in jackets and ties competing as Olympians while riding horses.

The BMX races were good televisual sport. Thirty-five seconds start-to-finish makes for plenty of action, not to mention a huge 35 foot table jump right in the middle of the race. I compared notes with my self-proclaimed 'BMX scholar' buddy Wade, and even he thought it was good, noting that BMX racing is actually way older than mountain bike racing despite only seeing its first Olympics this year. Finally, a little respect for the 20" bicycle and its Latvian and French world (+ Olympic!) champions. Natually, the only Canadian to make either final crashed out brutally in the first six seconds.

Banks of Sand, Days of Solar Radiation

Sand Banks Provincial Park, gateway to Lake Ontario. Last week end you could have found me amongst the bacci ballers, frisbee throwers, and Queens University jock types amidst the occasional burka-clad wader on the fine sandy beach.

Rainclouds threatened, but were over-ruled by the sun. People crashed through small waves as they hit the break point. Dead fish and geese piled up upon the rocky far shore, and a fine, holiday air prevailed. Tripmates Miss P and A amused themselves with reading, as did I.

Miss P spend the weekend with pencil in hand, editing a 170 pp master's thesis on the white settlers of Peterborough, Canada. Whether in car, train or beach there she was, marking her way through all 600 paragraphs. Determination. If it would have gone underwater, Miss P would have been there too removing excess commas and conjunctions.

I contented myself with some of the shorter works of Edward Abbey, mostly about floating wild rivers in the American West. The more Abbey I read, the more I despise my life behind a desk working for the local government. I should just move to rural New Mexico and take up a life of desert adventure as he did. Instead I play it safe, and bore myself to death in the big city.

What's amazing about frontcountry camping is the density of people - vastly moreso than in the big city itself. Campsites are all cheek-by-jowl, the beach is a dense pack of vacationing families, etc. In a country where people are supposed to be so desirous of privacy what do they do but run to the densest campground the first chance they get? Yet they seem happy enough.

No Sunday for Old Men.

I guess this is what I was trying to avoid - here we can see the result of Oscar Pereiro's chute while descending the Col D'Agnel over at the border of France and Italy, where gravity is particularly severe.

One trip to the hospital and a broken arm later, Pereiro's '08 Tour was history; it's too bad, he really had been doing quite well in the service of Alejandro Valverde's current bid for this year's race. Better, I'd say, than the Green Bullet himself, who's been a bit of a disappointment to Spain and likely to poor old Oscar too.

But life is full of disappointments, as readers of Hunter S. Thompson would agree. I spent Sunday watching the epic struggle that was Stage 15, in rain, cold, and heat across the Franco-Italian Alps and I did so because it was raining like hell, not just there but here too.

It poured from about midnight, continuously into the morning when I awoke at 5am to eat, dress, and catch the commuter train to my O-Cup race in a valley at the north end of Burlington. I went nowhere. The thought of that course, one vast puddle in the valley low and clay muddy wet on the flat, laid waste to my motivation. Why kill yourself getting to a race, already soaking wet, only to end up on your ass in some ditch? It's been two races and two crashes and frankly I wasn't looking to pay $75 for a third. Had I not pre-ridden the racecourse the Friday before, perhaps I would have thrown caution to the wind, but I knew too much. The longish descent into the left-right-left at the bottom would be a hydroplane I for one had no ambition to sail on, vertebrae first.

So the day was spent inside increasingly comatose until the darkness of my living room paralyzed me completely. By three p.m. I couldn't do anything but lay on the wood floor, wondering what was happening to me. At last it was clear: caffeine withdrawal had combined with the continual wet to leave me in a state of hideous collapse. What the hell kind of summer was this? And somewhere in the Italian Alps, Oscar Pereiro had to be wondering the same.

CMWC '08 - It happened here.

Somebody had a friend at FedEx. Carrying these things were good fun (Hayward, that's for you.)
The floating checkpoint had victims.
Hayward (no-helmet man) gives main race instructions - "Don't be an asshole, don't ride like an asshole; assholes will get red cards and be kicked out. And don't be assholic to the dispatchers or you'll be made to re-do the whole race."
Martin de la Rue delivered special 19th c. telegrams (I got one!), and raced in a wool jacket.

It has been a veritable inferno of cycle sport action around here in the last weeks, and being in the maelstrom of that inferno can keep a man away from his tiny little piece of the world wide web for longer than he should do. So much, so fast.

Where to begin? The Cycle Messenger World Championships 2008 came and went amidst thunderstorms of controversy and rain - but in the end it was all a success and people went away bruised, hungover, and jazzed for more. The '08 Worlds were my first-ever, and I did get excited, did race the main race qualifier, did have a lot of fun doing it, and didn't do the sprints, which I have regretted since watching them happen on 14 June in the afternoon Island sun. It was 333 metre match sprints and most interesting. I bet I could have won a heat on my bad-ass track bike (which received complements all weekend long, I'll have you know).

Trackstand and reverse circle competition, bike polo tourney, skids (and sprints at 3 a.m!) on Temperence Street for old time's sake (nice one Nappy), parties galore, at least one alley cat (2nd place/28 for me Sat. night), four-up goldsprints at Navid's parties - it all happened and best of all, hundreds of messengers showed up from the U.S., Europe, Scandanavia, Japan, and maybe even Australia. It was the real thing - kudos to Shino of Tokyo for taking 1st place in the main race final.

It was hugely impressive to see the Japanese show up - about ten of them in total if you count Izumi from New York and Okapi who lives here. They came, they raced, they won - at least Shino did. Somebody explained to me that Shino was the star of the Monster Track movie, where he is brought in to New York by Mike D (who I got to hang out with - one hilarious dude) and co. to race Monster Track in the middle of winter and gets second place. There was no stopping the man this time - apparently Shino finished an entire manifest ahead of everyone else in the main race final amidst the pouring rain on Sunday, or so I heard. And there he was back on the island on Monday to help with clean-up. Classy.

Sure the main race went off four hours late on Saturday, the bike polo tournament had to be rescued from oblivion at the last minute, and the I-beams on the floating dock checkpoint were removed after Hayward (of course) slipped on them. But it all happened, and when it happened it was a great thing - kudos to Hayward as race captain for pulling together the very complicated logistical nightmare that is the two day main race and doing it really well despite the delayed start. Chapeau. The whole organizing crew seemed to have an hour's sleep between them all weekend, and ten hours that week.

With his leftover black eye, sunken eyes, and overall sleep deprivation under massive pressure for weeks, by Saturday Hayward looked like a man who had just set a small town on fire and then shot his way out of it, leaving a trail of dead behind him. I just stayed at least an arm's-length of his way at all times. He told me on Monday that almost no one had complained to him about the race, and those few who did were quite mild about it. Imagine that.

There are a dozen other stories I could tell - Jumbo riding from Montreal to Toronto (575 km)down the 401 in 36 hours, Dangerous Dan Hatcher riding his track bike from Calgary to Thunder Bay, the fight I broke up between the winner of the alley cat and his friend at the finish, the kid who did the skid comp final on his face, Mike D fighting Manny at Sneaky D's over a bowl of taco chips, on and on but it has to stop somewhere, even if messengers never know when to stop.

Down to the County by Train I Went to a Wheelsucking Paradise.

Close examination of this photo will reveal a) a wrinkly finish line, b) the presence of deep section carbon rims and minimally spoked wheels ($2000/wheel?) being bested by aluminum box rims ($500/wheel), and c) my mysterious absence.

Among other world events this Sunday past was the Milford Cycling Weekend's Ontario Cup road races out in Prince Edward County. Le temps etait bon, le parcours etait glisse et écoulement, et les coureurs etait sans courages. The Senior 4/Master 3 race amounted to a paltry, measly 47 kms; no escape suceeded due to a total lack of initiative, and a wheelsuckers' paradise strolled along at 29 km/hr, or 31 km/hr, or lined out (lined out!) at 35 km/hr with me pulling at the front. What a bad joke.

In bike racing slower is not necessarily safer: everyone rides closer together to the point where one big guy to my immediate left was pedalling away while his quad smacked into my arm repeatedly. The yellow line rule was to blame - all of us confined to the right-hand side of the road, on the narrowest country roads there are in this province. The finish line was on a wider road but the rest of the 15 km rectangle was classic country road with each lane about 10 feet wide, which meant the only route to the front from the back of the pack was the dirt shoulder. Cheap.

By the final two kms I'd had it, and launched an attack in full view of the 30 km/hr main field. As I launched into the sprint with head down the chain came off immediately and I was reduced to pulling over and untangling it. Luckily, the pace was so slow I was able to catch back on, and finished tenth in a hot sprint across a bridge and up a slight hill won by the road hogs you see in the above photo. At least it was a good excuse to spend a weekend in the country.

Pappy's Big Adventure On and Off Screen

(The early St Lawrence Race.)

What a moment it was. It is mighty rare that you'll see me on the boards anymore, and I don't just mean the velodrome, I mean the theatrical boards, but last Thursday was one of those times.

Just to the left you can see me shoulder-checking a blocked Pee Wee Herman in the opening scene of the Big Adventure, where P. W. fantasizes about winning a stage of the Tour de France on his 50 lb red cruiser. To my right are Cris and John, displaying their cyclo-cross racing abilities to a packed house at the Bloor Cinema.

This Rocky Horror Picture Show-style screening raised well-nigh $14 000 for the new Toronto Cyclists Union and its new sister magazine, Dandy Horse. I guess my 'Espa~na' jersey was a bit wrong - nobody is wearing long sleeves in the movie, just Italia jersies. Nobody has a beard either...

Bike Month is in full swing here in Toronto, and things are busy.

Twenty-four hours after playing in Pee Wee at 7 and 9:30, I was down at the Toronto Criterium @ St Lawrence Market, freezing my tuchus off marshalling in Turn One with a whistle in my mouth and a flag in my hand. It made for a front row seat for a terrific barrier crash that brought down a good four racers, the first of which got squared by his bike. Five riders managed to crash in the neutral lap. What the hell was going on? Perhaps it was those Zipp wheels on offer for the winner of the open Masters race, they just brought these guys over the edge.

In one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a bike race - no wait, make that the most stupid - three crashees decided to run carrying their bikes from the bottom of Scott Street back towards the start/finish to get their free lap, taking the inside of Turn One to get there. Of course the lead idiot in this footrace to nowhere came within an ace of causing a truly disastrous crash of epic proportions. He got away with this exercise in selfish idiosy extraordinaire - I wanted the paid duty cops to arrest him on the spot but they weren't taking orders from me. In fact they weren't doing much of anything for the first thirty minutes as the crowds of angry commuters swelled, except pulling in $70/hour by standing around.

Luckily some sort of sanity prevailed and a) no racer got maimed for life and b) no mob surged the barriers in search of their commute homeward, and c) thousands of the curious turned out to watch the races. And it didn't even pour rain till well after the whole event was over.

Symmetrics dominated the main race as predicted getting four out of the top five places (1st = new Cervelo for Pinfold, plus Bell won the bunch sprint, Andrew Randell was right there as well...). It all made for super-exciting criterium racing. Friday night bike racing returns to Hogtown!

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Pedaled.

How many bikes is too many?

In the past I had a clear rule: anything more than two bicycles in my life at one time was a recipe for disaster. This spring I'm up to 4.5, the most I've ever had; my apartment is like a train station for bikes. Everywhere you look there's one, waiting to go somewhere.

The newest is an Opus Stelle, a pearly white 'cross machine, brand-new from the sponsor; then there's the Blue TR250, my bad-ass track racer I've had lying around since this winter, followed by the road bike (Allez Comp) with the new wheels, and the old steel beater track bike for the bad weather. The .5 being my de-commissioned Schwinn road bike w. Campag Athena brakes, now boxed up in the closet. It's just frame, fork, handlebar, and derailleurs at this point and I should really get rid of the damned thing, minus the brakes.

I have a photo of them all jammed into the hallway, that should really be in this very post, but alas it is not. Meanwhile in China, eight million people have no where to live post-earthquake. See? We all have problems.

The Effingham Hill Disaster

(Effingham Hill, last year.)

I went down to Niagara, and rode the race of the day. The skies were clear to start, a chilly spring day in the green hills and dales of wine country, and when the rains came they were gentle enough.
We were eighty in the race, and things stayed together nicely till the fourth lap or so, when the pace was upped and and I spent a good while chasing back on in the wet, the flashing red lights of the neutral service vehicle (a pickup truck full of spare wheels) just up ahead. I pushed onwards, caught the main field and stayed in at last. On the final kick up Effingham Hill, I felt okay, just kept it steady in 39 x 26 and down in the drops, like Marco Pantani. A few riders passed me, and I didn't contest it. What I was not aware of was what lap we were in - I thought we had two laps still to go! You don't win battles without a good look at a map of the terrain now do you?

Well, I had a map printed off at work, but what the race didn't have was a person ringing a damn bell for the last lap. Twelfth place, 37 seconds behind the winner. Still, I finished delighted with my race, the pain instantly gone.

A Trip to the Isle

A trip to the Isle indeed was made by me this Sunday past.

Whatever did I find there? Nought but gusty breezes, under-insulated juniors with teeth aclattering, whitecaps sea-spraying the ferry-boat, and myself a forgettable sixth. Yes, I was off to the races as per usual, going out of my way for a bit of Sunday morning cycle-sport suffering. And suffer I did.

I never cease to amaze myself at my capacity for self-sabotage when it comes to many things in life, including bike races. Having carefully planned my whole weekend around this event, Ziggy's "Islander Crit" on Mother's Day, having stayed home the Saturday night carefully observing the state of my derailleur while others were perhaps out enjoying life as still-living people should (and having given the miss to the work-weekend at my place in the country - Wa-hoo!), still I managed to land myself well behind the eightball.

Did I underdress for the raw maritime weather? No.

Did I forget to bring $ for the ferry and make myself late? No.

Did my bike not work in the crucial moments of the race? No.

Did I do a 120 km training ride the day before, with an hour in the headwind? Yes.

Somehow I can't seem to restrain myself - the old phobia against all success-based-planning struck again and off I tore on Saturday a.m. when saner folk lie abed, counting their blessings in a dream. It's the regimen my body adhers to: Donut Time. So off I went to my doom, as it were, without even pumping up my tires for a 4.5 hour ride the day before race day. As my old dad said over brunch on Sunday, 'You left victory on the road to King City'.

Now why do I do these things? To have a built-in excuse for failure? Out of a misguided notion of race-day preparedness? A total loss of short-term memory? All of the above perhaps. In any event, despite being a flat course and no more than 45 minutes or so, the race was pretty hard as the field was very small and the cross winds intense. Bike racers just don't fancy trips to Toronto Island it seems - must be the lack of car access. You have to take a boat, which could sink, for crissakes. That (and Ziggy constantly picking holidays for his race days) makes for small fields and more work for everybody involved.

It is more exciting though - you can see the front of the race because you're constantly at or near the front, and so you feel your chances are really good. My big idea was to attack the race from the gun, with M3 cross champion Dennis Thang. We did that, got a gap right away, and lost it after two exhausting laps, two little guys trying to act like Jens Voigt. Dennis figured we'd gotten respect from the field for doing it nonetheless. I spent the next five laps trying to recover and eventually mostly did. I was just damned tired of there never being a breakaway in an M3/S4 race and I wanted to make one happen for once. But two of us were not enough. In the end I took sixth place out of thirteen.

Dennis likely felt better about the whole failed escape because he won the S4 (from a field of two!), and put in a great move before the final hairpin to be fourth overall. He gave me his prizes, which included a pot of flowers - there you are Mum. Our new plan is to go to Niagara next Sunday for a proper road race - my first ever.

#404 = No. 1!

Ah, the sweet taste of victory.

Really and truly there is nothing like it. Robbie McKewen, when asked what motivates him now that he's won three Green Jerseys in the Tour, and who has been a pro sprinter for ten years + , did not hesitate - "I still love winning, it never gets old".

I can understand why. Last night I nipped out to Midweek for the first time since last July, did the short, early race of 25 laps, and won it. It felt very nice, very nice indeed. Even though it was only the early race and early in the year to boot, it was a huge boost to the ego as I've never won there before in say, twenty races over the course of a couple of different seasons - about half of them the late race, i.e., elite.
It was criterium racing near its lamest, I admit. I think they skipped laps 10 and 8 just to get the whole thing done in the alotted 30 minutes, that's how tortoise it was. Its the same old same old: nobody wants to work off the front, and any breakaway attempt fails instantly, and anyone left at the front refuses to work at all so a 30 minute race seems to get progressively slower, all in anticipation of the final lap where carefully conserved energies will be spent of a sudden.

What this ultra-conservative racing strategy lead to last night was... a minor disaster. A fattish middle-aged guy in Brampton Cycle Club shorts, who I had spent the race keeping a close eye on (he was whipping the bike side to side for the most minor accelerations), started his sprint and cut off another guy hitting him and sending both down. I had a front row seat for guy number two, at 40 km/hour, as he flew head-first over handlebars, his bike jackknifing sideways, so that I was just able to avoid its back wheel. Then I decided to take leave of them all and bolted to victory unaccompanied as the other racers who'd had position ahead of me post-crash simply faded away.
They gave me #404 for the season. I love that - reads the same in either direction and reminds my of my number when I was in Little League.

I look forward to moving to the faster, safer late race.

Alley Cat Racing: Springtastic!

Springtastic went off Saturday night as per schedule. For the first time, I didn't race but served as a checkpoint. Hayward had promised me Casa Loma but did not deliver, so I ended up with the Glen Road bridge in the riches of Rosedale, on a quiet, wet Saturday night.

And there my troubles began.

I settled in, armed with rain hat, rain coat and a few cans of beer + stickers, one for each racer manifest as they stopped by. There was plenty of time to hang about in the semi-darkness, small mansions all about me, and I admit to feeling a little paranoid about being there, just hanging around doing nothing with a beer at my side and a red light blinking away. Would some paranoid manion-owner call the police on me? And what would be my story if they happened upon me? 'Doing a traffic study officer', I could have said flashing City ID if I had had it with me. Pretty ludicrous.

The only harassment I got was from a racoon who kept emerging from his side of the bridge, as though he wanted my can of beer, which annoyed me thoroughly. I hissed at him enough and finally Racoon stopped coming around.

After seven racers showed up (1/2 the field), I had a new problem: I was in the wrong place. The proper checkpoint location was the Glen Road pedestrian bridge. Smitty and Kuz went away very pissed with the race organizer who shall remain nameless (but who answers to Tofu), who had never given me a manifest where this proper location was written, along with all the others.

Off I went to the correct location, and started waiting again. Eventually a few more racers rolled in, some admitting that they'd gone to the other bridge. I said nothing.

Alley cats, for all the excitement and adventure, tend to have a very small buffer where chaos often reigns. For instance, this race had the added feature of three separate phases in its structure. The first phase was five checkpoints to be done in any order, with a secret location to be asked for/told after the racer completed all five. From there a time trial started (200 Queens Quay East ending at 388 Carlaw); after this race-within-the-race, three more checkpoints had be completed, including the finish, where finishers posted their names on the wall. The secret within the secret of the time trial was that it featured a separate prize entirely, discreet from the main race.

For the record, two people were dq-ed for missing the time-trial, and Charlie Randall, youngster with the legs of fire, won the race proper. Most eveybody thought it was a great time and were thoroughly entertained. Wish I'd have been one of them.

Pinning on numbers once more.

L. vs J., c. 2001, with both running downtube shifters to save the grams.

The sun shone without heat, the wind was calm by the lake and being some kind of glutton for punishment, I went out and spent $45 to race for less than an hour last Sunday, in criterium race a five minute ride away from my place. But I had my reasons.

The course was actually our lakeside bike path, meaning it was damned narrow, ie, three metres across if that, and featured not one but two hairpin turns. Naturally the second turned onto the final straightaway and meant that good position was crucial in the final lap, as there was no breakaway group to be in.

And so it went that I found myself a good thirteen or more wheels back going into that turn, and sprinted to an uninteresting 11th place out of twenty-five. It was a thoroughly unsatifying conclusion to $45 worth of nervously sitting in the wheels, trying not to get run off the path into a tree by some over-zealous junior.

And it makes me wonder.

Alley cat races are vastly more fun, creative, and dynamic. They seem to win on every front: cheaper to enter (ie $10), you get to see people you know and like, all sorts of creative curveballs can be thrown in (ie, store checkpoint where you have to buy a can of beans, or park where a particular plaque on a statue must be found), and the sponsors' prizes are vastly cooler as well. There is also this complete lack of equipment sport snobbery and attitude that road racing is notorious for, and which I continue to find nauseating.

So why do I even think about sanctioned races, all of which are hill-less around here and meant only for sprinters anyway? Just because.

Hincapie Enigma Revealed

So I had been wondering what made George Hincapie keep ticking what with all those broken wrists and heartbreaking losses, and now thanks to the power of the Internet I know: his line of sportswear.

The man is not so busy he can't give the cycling public a chance to get inside his very own shorts, for a mere $189 + tax and shipping. And just what lies inside these specials? Why ceramic panelling no less.

Whilst you absorb the cultural implications of the leap ceramic has made from wheel bearings to inside leg, let me say this - George, you must be racing too much, because your hand looks like it is made of carbon fibre. I know carbon is all the rage these days, but really? Carbon fibre hands? That's just going too far. I'm sure they're not cheap either, a pair of those, and that's perhaps why Hincapie is selling his shorts to the general public.

G.G. '08

It was time for Global Gutz 2008 this past Sunday aft. This time I was out for racing enjoyment and not winning, and to baptize the new track bike. And I was three for three!

It was really a blast to be back in the saddle again, careening around like a semi-madman, following a few others from Lakeshore Blvd to St Clair to Dufferin down to College over to Unie, down to the Roundhouse for the big finale. I decided to ride 'within myself' as they say, and finished 10th, which was good enough for me. The fact that Hofman made this one go uphill and then downhill did not favour the track bikes, but it was still a great time.

I wasn't going for it; once you've been off the road a good while, getting the timing right through intersections becomes a whole different thing, and it was all just too committed for the bike I was riding. There was also a big east wind to contend with on an otherwise lovely day, but that only made the battle feel like a proper battle. I beat Toby anyway, which isn't saying that much.

The cameraderie of those races and afterparties is the real joy of it - a big adrenalin blast and then the laughs later on (i.e., Pete Brewer falling on his ass crossing Lakeshore on foot - a classic ciertes).
Worldwide ranking aganst 220 riders in twenty-six cities:
105 (Pappy) Toronto 0:44:06.

And I'm fine with that.

Scottish city, Cuban playa.

Untruth: R. Remembers the Beef & Calixto Garcia (Rush Hour, Holguin)

Babies, Baby Sprocket, Scotland.

Winters of Canada.

Winter, T.O.

Purple Face

Afghanada

Another coffin is loaded up in Kandahar:

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

If you look at the domestic media, you'd think we are there for completely self-involved reasons: to strengthen our military (Stephen Harper), to honour those who have already died fighting there (Man in the Street), to keep Canadians safe from terrorist Islamikaze attack (General Hillier), and to finish what we started, that is, 'operational objectives' (Lewis Mackenzie, ex- general whoes expertise consists of having presided over one long screwup in Bosnia in the 1990's).
And what exactly is it we started? There is the securing civil society angle - can't leave until little girls can go to school without threat of violent retribution - that'll keep us there for a good 140 years or so, at least. Then there is the security of the periphery, or something, that is Kandahar Province. We can pronounce it, but we can't secure it. After six years in Kandahar city, people are still suicide-bombing the place, people recruited by the Students.

The Students are our lethal enemy. They weren't our enemy until we brought a war to them. Ah, that is, joined a war brought by our friendly neighbour to the south, USA. Which brings me to the central military objective, the eradication of the Students, who previously ran Afghanada when it was Afghanistan and nobody cared about it besides Pakistani military people and heroin dealers (that is, Pakistani military people). The fun thing about a counter-insurgency war of occupation is that your presence causes the problem - the longer you are there the greater the motivation of the resister (the Students) to kill people, any people, in order to sabotage all progress being claimed on the 'security' front. Sort of like bombing fish in a barrel, but not exactly.
After six years occupying Kandahar city, we've secured a limited perimeter that is commonly called "the Wire" by our boys (I mean, media) - that is that base they live in. The governor of the province is a warlord who has been personally involved in torturing his enemies, etc. - now how can he behave this way?
Perhaps it is because he is like all the other warlords who ended up in top jobs in the Kharzai (I think that's Pashtun for 'puppet') government, as USA did not want to struggle with these guys while fighting the Students, who are hard enough to find let alone fight. Yes, what we have here is a farce, and the central motif of this farce is political, not military: the idea that we can make Afghanada last longer that a week or two after we leave, if that long. This gender equality- loving, constitutionalist-government thing we like is just not what that country is about, let's face it. The Afghans do things differently. Very differently.
The only solution we can really offer those who want to live with our rights and freedoms is simple: immigration papers for the model country upon which Afghanada is based. You know the place - the home of the Timbit. Or the home of the giant pretzel.

(By the way, I must have been in Mexico or somewhere when it happened, but since when did the French join NATO? I have been mystified about this for months, as all this talk of France sending a thousand soldiers to Afghanada has been bouncing around, then finally I saw a TV5 show about the Champs Elysee and there was the acronym, stuck on the automatic doors at Navy headquarters: 'OTAN'. Perhaps they confused me by spelling it backwards.)

Track Bike Revolution.

Yes, the track bike is now sort of ubiquitous, seen on the streets of the developed world's great cities from ___n to ____k. So what? Naturally one grows to dislike the overweening nature of fixed gear style properly mocked in the above illustration.

Yet it all came from a good, solid place, that of the working class pride of the bicycle messenger. I'm thinking of all this because I've finally got my hot-ass new track bike set up and rolling. At first I felt exactly like one of these posing twenty year old hip-ster people, over-matched by an ill-setup machine meant purely for the velodrome. Now I've got my old school toeclips on, and a proper seat that doesn't keep tipping up and down, so I'm feeling good about my totally over-the-top Blue TR250, complete w. removable dropouts and gleaming Major Taylor handlebar, set up high on a flipped over stem Hayward gave me.

If only I had a) a normal stomach and b) proper form then I would be getting the proper kick out of my riding. And c) Global Gutz 2008 is ten days away...