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.