It's finally over.....

And this from Crooks and Liars:

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/our-long-national-nightmare-over

“A lot of right-wing talking heads (see esp. BillO the Clown) have been dismissing Bush’s longtime critics as mere “Bush haters” who saw him as illegitimate from the get-go and never gave him a chance. And it’s true that many of us were motivated to defeat him from the day he took office in no small part because of the way he took office — without even a popular plurality, foisted upon the public by probably the most dubious ruling in Supreme Court history.

It wasn’t simply, however, that he was illegitimate; it was something much bigger than that. It was that he was the leader of a gang of political thugs who had stolen democracy from us. From a rotten tree springs rotten fruit; most of us could see well down the pike that the kind of governance the Bush intended would drive the country to the brink of ruin.”

I couldn’t have said it better……

Welcome to the Banality of the Middle-Aged Wannabe Bike Racer

Alright, it's been a week since my last post, but, well, it's that time of year. Not much goes on. Random thoughts:

Our New President is getting inaugurated today, and as much as I'm a supporter of the new administration, I'm tired of and disgusted by the media frenzy. I usually listen to NPR in the morning, but today I watched the NFL networks' "total access". Even then, I had to turn it off because they were running a segment on the inauguration, from the perspective of black football players. I drove to work pressing the seek button on my radio hoping for music.

In the past week I've had to repair both my snow blower (stripped auger gear) and vacuum cleaner (broken brush belt).

I haven't had a good workout in a week, since my last indoor track session with Fernando Braz. But, tonight, I'm going again.

I have a big project at work that is coming due, and it looks like I'll have to go to New York to wrap up some loose ends on the installation.

I've signed up for: Battenkill-Roubaix; Irish Pub Series; and the Harpoon Indoor TT. Look forward to reports.

Welcome to the Banality of the Middle-Aged Wannabe Bike Racer, mired in the morass of the jobwifehomecarkids-life.

POMF

(courtesy of Dr. Dot)

Play Misty For Me

This picture was sent under the header "Redneck Seafood Dinner"

At the risk of exposing myself to several levels of ridicule, this picture makes me misty-eyed. I grew up as an army brat, and my dad was a sergeant, so we never had alot of money. All the way up though my teen years, a staple of our diet was Kraft mac-n-cheese, hot dogs, and canned spinach - the kind with no label on the can, just stamped with ink that said 'SPINACH'. We probably had that at least once a week, sometimes more.

Excuse me, I need to go cuddle with my teddy bear......

Ice Bike!

Or

The Incredibly True Ballad of JC Studds

OK, First things first. I'm not JC Studds. I just wanted to make that clear. I'll get to the real JC Studds later.

It's been a snowy early winter here in New England so far. Not quite as snowy as last winter by this time, but still snowy none-the-less (and don't give me any of that ignorant conservative crap about how global warming isn't real, local environmental incidents are not usable as predictive factors in non-entropic systems). Last year I never got around to riding Ice Bike. This year will be different.

Ice Bike started life as an '95 cannondale MTB. The frame was given to me (yes, given) by a friend who left it in an unfortunate position where it got run over by a car, so the top tube was creased. It was bad enough so that the head tube was visibly misaligned with the seat tube.

I decided to experiment on the bike. I popped out the crease with a muffler clamp of about the right size. Now, I know, once aluminum has been stressed beyond the elastic point, the metal crystallizes, and subsequent working breaks the metal. The crack in the tube was obvious after I had pinched it out, but I didn't intend to leave it so....read on.

step 1 - pop out crease
step 2 - strip paint down to bare metal a few inches on either side of crease
step 3 - trim down a piece of steel exhaust pipe so that the i.d. of the exhaust pipe is slightly smaller than the o.d. of the top tube. This is accomplished by running the length of the pipe with a cutting tool to remove material so that, when clamped, the new pipe will contact the top tube all the way around.
step 4 - liberally coat the top tube with JB weld, fully filling any voids in the aluminum
step 5 - clamp the pipe in place using several exhaust clamps, being careful not to deform the steel pipe.
step 6 - let sit for a week, remove the clamps, paint as desired.

It's hard to see in the photo, but I filleted the JB Weld with a rotary tool then painted it grey primer.

When I was done the head tube mis-alignment was negligible, using the fishing line method: tie off a piece of fishing line around the rear dropouts, run it around the top of the head tube, measure the distance from the line to the seat tube. Repeat, running the line around the bottom of the head tube. I don't remember the numbers and I'm not interested enough to remeasure it. suffice it to say it was close enough using a micrometer to consider it ridable according to the LBS I was hang around at the time.

The real test was the durability, so I put the bike together and started riding it around some of the local easy trails. I'll make the story short - that was 15 years ago, and the patch has held up through some reasonable abuse.

So I decided to make this just a GP bike - A mishmash of parts, old SR Duotrack 1" elastomer shock fork (elastomers hard as stone by now) and cheap cheezy wheels and tires, You know, something to hop on and ride to the local store and not worry about if it wasn't there when I came out.

Well, in '96 I tookice a trip to the UCI MTB race at Mt. Snow with the dude that gave me the bike. No, I didn't bring Ice Bike, I brought my ride from the time, a Pro-Flex 753. We happened to find a little bike shop that was going out of business, and he had this set of tires - IRC Piranha 2.2s, with - get this - 241 #6x1/2" stainless steel pan-head sheet metal screws installed in the knobs of each tire, points out.

The piranha was designed as a mud tire - big wide-spaced lugs - and JC Studds had put a #6x1/2" stainless steel pan-head sheet metal screw in each and every one of those fucking knobs, pointed end out, pan head _inside_ the tire. Seriously, these things look like something out of Mad Max.

I can ride on hard smooth ice, accelerate, brake and turn, and keep control. I can ride _up_ ice flows. I only run into problems when abrupt changes are made in direction or speed.

Now, JC Studds had made a little business card, but he's no longer in business. He has no web presence. He hand wrote some bits of advice on the back of the card, that suggested a tire liner and cautioning against riding on pavement or ice, even though he named the tires, with an indelible marker, the 'ice 241'. He wrote "if you ride on ice you will fall and get hurt!"

In the over ten years I've had these tires, I've slipped out, maybe twice, and never been hurt. There have been times when the snow was too deep and thick to ride through. They really do suck on pavement, and they have an annoying habit of picking up and holding onto leaves.

But, the bike is a blast in the snow, and the conditions this weekend have been almost perfect (a bit cold).

I got almost 4 hours of riding over the past two days at the winnikenni park in haverhill, riding pretty much every where except the really steep stuff and the single track.

It _really_ beats the rollers.

"When I Say Spin, You Best Spin, Muthafucka"

Pardon the allusion to the classic new wave track "Dance Mother Fucker Dance" by The Violent Femmes (though it's more of the rock-a-billy genre).

Spinning is a time-honored practice in bicycle racing. Coaches will demand your base miles all be done in the small chainring. This is mostly to ensure you don't damage anything from trying to push a hard gear when you don't have the base miles, but it also means you have to turn a high cadence to go fast. Developing leg speed is a crucial aspect of bike racing.

They will advocate riding rollers at a high cadence to smooth out your pedal stroke and keep you riding smooth straight lines. This can be accomplished with stationary trainer, but it's easy to get sloppy at a high spin on a stationary trainer, and it doesn't really do anything for your fitness if you don't have to worry about keep the bike up. No, spinning classes don't help with spinning the pedals on a road bike, unless you're starting from scratch. Even the Great Eddy Merckx loathed stationary trainers for anything other than warming up. His famous quip on the subject was 'all you learn from riding a wind trainer is how to pedal squares'. They didn't have magnetic or fluid trainers in his day, but the concept is the same. Sitting on a stationary trainer (as opposed to rollers) allows you, and almost coerces you, pump your legs up and down, not pedal circles. (OK, I know it isn't exactly what he said, but it's the gist, and he did use the term 'pedal squares'. If you're anal enough to worry about the exact phrase over the intent, then I suggest you shut the fuck up and get on a set of rollers).

This brings me to the actual subject of this post: Fixed Gear Training.

I'm not talking about track racing, I'm talking about riding a fixed gear bike with a ratio in the low to mid 2s for a few hours at a time on the road.

My Friend and fellow blogger Exemplar Solobreak has a post on power training, where he referenced the idea of mashing a big gear over varied terrain as a training tool.

But, That's something to be saved for later, _after_ you develop your base miles.

It's winter. When the roads are clear, I love riding a fixed gear. Last year was tough since it snowed so early and we had snow on the ground from the day after thanksgiving through the end of march. This year does'nt look much better for winter miles so far, but you know what they say about new england weather, all this snow could be gone next week (though I find it highly unlikely)

So, let's talk about riding one gear, no coasting, trying to keep a cadence of about 100 rpm on flat ground, while keeping your HR in the low aerobic range, about 80%, for two to three hours.

This teaches you several things:
1) Spinning a cadence on a fixed gear makes you pedal a circle. If you have a bad pedal stroke, keeping the bike smooth and steady as you zip along at a higher cadence - say 120 - will bounce you all over the road.
2) It prevents you from taking it too easy. If you want to get home, you have to push the gear. No coasting, no shifting up/down on the hills,
3) It teaches you to be attentive - while I personally would _never_ go out on the open road without two working brakes, it's a good learning experience for keeping your pace steady, especially when riding with a group.

Of course, the right gear for your area is essential. in flat areas, like where Solo lives, you can get away with a heavier gear, possible something pushing a 3.0 ratio. Where I live, we have a lot more rolling hills with some short steep climbs. I've been using a 42/16 for almost 20 years (2.625:1). I can ride most of the local hills and still keep my cadence over 70, and they aren't long enough to horribly stress my knees.

This brings us to another aspect of fixed-gear training. Depending on the route, I can pick out hilly route to work on power, or longer flat routes to just work on base miles. Of course, the hilly routes are much shorter in duration, and the beauty of the smaller gear is that I can get an effective warm-up/cool-down by spinning to and from the hills I want to work out on.

Conversely, on some of the _downhills_, in isn't uncommon to spin up to 160 rpm. This brings me to a question I'd like to ask from anyone who may skim past this blog that has any knowledge on the issue. The question is 'spinning vs. being spun'.

A coach that I hooked up with a few years ago was not a fan of fixed gear training. He felt that it didn't really teach you to spin a high cadence smoothly, since usually the high cadences one experiences on a fixed gear occur on the down hills. He said, there is a big difference between spinning and being spun. I think I see his point, but I think it's relative minor. I think the benefits of fixed gear training vastly outweigh any detriment from 'being spun' on a downhill, and I also think there is a benefit to letting the bike push your leg speed up past the 160 rpm range. I think that pushing your legs in a circle at that speed is something that _must_ be done consciously, and therefore it _does_ teach you how to spin your legs smoothly.

Did you notice how many times I wrote "I think" in that last paragraph? Hell, I'm not a coach, and I'm quite mediocre as a bike racer, so it doesn't really matter what I _think_.

Tell me what _you_ think. Any professional coaches that may wander this way are especially welcome.

Mill City Relay

(warning - long read)

The Mill City Relay is a point-to-point relay race from Nashua NH to Lawrence MA. 27.1 miles broken up into five legs. This year had 140 5-person teams enter. This is the skinny:

I'm normally not one to get up before dark on a weekend without a damn good reason. Years ago, when I had just been bitten by the bike racing bug, getting up at 4 am sunday to make a 9 am start in the wilds of vermont or maine wasn't a problem. But I was younger then, less jaded, and less tired......_way_ less tired. So, when my alarm went off at 5:30 AM , sunday, December 7th, 2008, it was to my resignation and my wifes' chagrin. I half-way expected her to accuse me of some twisted 67th commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack.

"what the hell are you doing?"
"going to that relay race, I _said_ I had to get up early"
"You said it was in lawrence"
"it starts in nashua"
"in the dark?"
"just go back to sleep"
"oh my gawd..." and she rolled the pillow over her head.

I normally don't have to worry about waking her up. She gets up at about 4 am every day, usually. She doesn't want to, she doesn't set the alarm, she just wakes up on a circadian rhythm...except for today. I had most of my stuff together, so I threw what else I thought I'd need in my bag and headed out.

It was cold. Cold enough to show, though it wasn't yet. I stopped off at the local Dunkin Donuts and bought my usual prerace meal - large medium regular coffee, a Chug of OJ, a Chug of milk, and a bagel.

I was surprised by the turnout in the claddagh parking lot. I got one of the few available parking spaces. I had never met any of my teammates before, so I wandered the parking lot looking for Frank. I asked several people if they had seen Frank.

"Frank who?"

Ummm....hmmm...drawing a blank here. I remember the email from Frank.....something. I hadn't anticipated that there would be pretty close to 100 people milling about in the claddagh parking lot at 6 AM.

"Frank, the captain of the masters team"

Finally someone pointed him out. We got the rest of the team together, hopped in Franks minivan, and headed out.

Myself
Frank Row
Brian Reeves
Todd Lagimonier
Janos Mako

Now, I had been scheduled to run with the Masters Co-ed A team, headed up by Tina Dowling. A week before the event I was asked to run with the Master Men A team. Before I responded, I looked up the other names on the team in cool running results. One of the first listings was for Janos, at the 2006 masters indoor track championships, 5:15 in the mile.....I stopped looking, I didn't want to get depressed. But, "OK, I'll bite, if you can't find anyone else I'll do it, but just be aware that I'm generally speaking about a minute per mile slower than any one of you.....just so ya know....."

By the time we hit new hampshire in the min-van it had started to snow quite heavily. The ground was completely covered, the snow was getting packed, and it was slick. No one had thought to bring anything other than road running shoes, so traction was dicey at best. Brian was to run the first leg, so as soon as we got him set up with the baton, we hit the road. Dodge mini vans aren't known for their adverse weather handling, so we needed time. Fortunately, both Todd and I had worked in the nashua area for some time, and advised against following the race route. Single lane roads, runners looking for traction.......let's not get hung up. We went through downtown nashua, over to the DW highway, across the new 3/3a bridge, and made it with time to spare, although Frank bringing the van sideways approaching an intersection on the DW highway gave us pause that we might not make it.

During the ride there we had been talking about races and results. Brian, I was told, had been running a 5:30 pace for the past two months. At that point Janos looked at me and asked, "you want to switch legs?"

"YES!!!! I've been thinking all along that it's probably a good idea to have your slowest guy run the shortest leg"

So Brian pulled into the transition area in about 33 minutes.

Exceptional considering the conditions. The MVS Open Mens runner came in first had a good minute over second place overall. Brain was about 10th or so. The transition in the parking lot was treacherous. The driveway itself had turned to ice forcing the runners to stay on the grass. I saw a few runners down in the parking lot slip out and hit the ground. Janos took the baton and hit the road. Uh, bad euphemism. He took off, he didn’t actually ‘hit the road’, though we found out later that he _did_ take a spill out on the course. We caught up to him and frank got a few pictures, then proceeded to the tech school for my transition.

MVS still had a big lead - over a minute - in the overall at the 2nd transition. The Kid strolled through relaxed and smooth, taking long strides, almost smiling. He's one of those guys that makes it look easy. Down in Lowell the snow was very slight, and the roads were wet, so the run downhill into the tunnel was no problem. I took the baton from Janos, and headed off. There was a runner in a yellow shirt in front of me, maybe 15 seconds, that I looked to be gaining on slightly. I felt smooth, I had a good stride, I was running within my limits. Once we got out of the school though, the runner in front of me at first held his distance, then pulled away slightly, and kept going.

I'm new to this running thing. When there is someone right with me, it's easy for me to hold a pace and keep my form. But, when I'm completely alone, my stride drops off. My steps get very shallow. This happened repeatedly sunday; I would 'wake up', then drift back to the bad habits. I'm hoping, with time, this will change. Eventually, another runner came up on me, and I managed to use him to pace. The runner in yellow had pulled to about 30 seconds ahead by the time we reached the roarke bridge, and I was still only a few steps behind this new runner.

We came into the 3rd transition, and it was a mob scene. People standing all over the course. I had planned to run through it, handing off the baton to Todd, but I had to dodge other non-runners, as did the guy in front of me. Todd had to weave around someone in front of him after the hand off.

I'm not sure of my time, I forgot to start my hrm. Afterwards I was thinking I'll just get everyone elses' time and do the math. Well, it turns out Janos did the same thing, so with two variables in the formula and no corresponding simultaneous equation, there would be no reliable answer. At the 3rd transition, I ran into two of my cycling friends. One is one of the better masters riders in New England, and wins about half a dozen races a year. Turns out his wife is Cathy Pearce, who runs for Whirlaway and has this annoying habit of running a sub-six pace at the age of 44 - not bad for a girl (oops, sorry, gender stereotyping, bad blogger) . The other is more of a mutli-sport guy, but a good training partner. He has one speed - fast.

The temperature was now well into the 40's and good for running. We caught up to Todd at about the 5 mile point and he looked smooth and comfortable. He had passed one runner (at least), probably from that team that passed me at the end of my leg, and looked to be distancing another runner behind him. He said he felt good, so we left him and waited at transition 4. He had definitely put a gap on the runner that was behind him at that point. That change went off without a hitch, and Frank went on his way, taking on the only real hill in the entire course.

We went to the top of the hill and waited for him. Two runners came by, one was from whirlaway, followed by gate city. By the time Frank made it to the top over 1:40 had passed. Since this was about the two mile mark of a 4.75 mile leg, it didn't look too good for frank to catch them. There was a young kid behind Frank that had paced him up the hill, about 10 seconds behind him. As we headed toward the finish, we passed the gate city runner, but the whirlaway guy was gone. They had crossed the hill about 15 seconds apart, and the whirlaway guy looked like he was dying, but he must have hit the downhill like Bode Miller. He had a good minute on the gate city guy at that point, finishing 1:10 ahead of him. Frank came in 2:30 later. and managed to put 30 seconds on the kid behind him.

We finished in a time of 2:43:17. That was 7th over all and the 4th place masters team. I'll probably do this race next year, if they'll have me. The next thing I have planned is the millennium mile, and I'll be attending the indoor track works to prepare for that. But that was it for a while, I took the past week off. I mean, _really_ off. I haven't had my heart rate over 100, and I've been eating _lots_ of food. No, not all the Gu that was given away at the relay. It turns out, Frank had worked some race recently, and the gave him like a dozen cases of Gu. 48 packs in each one. He handed me two, that's 96 packs of Gu. Well over $100 worth. I'll be sucking orange gu for awhile. If you see me, ask for some.

Another reason to love Liz Hatch

From an interview on "Triple Crankset"

"Racing on my own gave me a lot of freedom to make my own moves. I would always think "WWLD", What Would Ludo Do? Haha, maybe that's odd but I totally dig Ludo Dierckxsens style of racing. Or Jacky Durand."

A drop-dead Gorgeous professional female cyclist who considers Ludo Dierckxsens and Jacky Durand to be role models......What's not to love?