Archive for the ‘Cycling’ Category:
Your brain can be your best friend or your enemy. If you can break it down to, ‘I must kill everyone,’ or ‘I must destroy,’ then you’re fine. But if you start thinking, ‘Do I really need to be doing this? It’s raining out. The road is slippery. People are crashing everywhere. It’s cold. My whole body hurts.’ That’s when it’s negative, and the desk job seems quite good. But if you can use your mind to make your body like a motorcycle — you just turn the throttle and go — if you can make it like that, you’re fine. That’s normally how it is in training, you take out the elements of stress and performance, and you enjoy it. That’s the key to racing.
- Pro cyclist Tom Danielson, interviewed by VeloNews
'I ride my bike 45,000km a year,' he says. 'People ask you to come here and there and I say, "I can't." And they say, "Yeah, I realise you're tired, I realise you just want a bit of peace and quiet." And it's like, no. I. Am. Fucked. I'm totally, utterly exhausted. My body is eating itself because I'm so tired.'
- Pro cyclist Mark Cavendish, interviewed by the Guardian
— Filed under Cycling, Inspiration
My brother's currently competing in the Surrey League Revolutions five-day stage race ("Around 100 of Britain's top riders will be taking part in the gruelling 5 day long race. Each day they will cover around 100 miles – as well as climbing some of the steepest hills in South East England.") He's been giving me a blow-by-blow account over the phone every evening, and he's posting daily update's on his cycling team's website.
"The strong riders wouldn't let things go clear, until the second lap of a big circuit… where Rob Hayles slipped away and opened the gas up… I looked at the moves and thought "If I don't get across to that, it will be even more GC time and the stage over" so I took a deep breath, shifted up and went for it. Steve Golla (Sigma) and one of the Irish Team Ras Mumhan racing came with me, and gradually we worked together for a hard five minutes get across. The last 200 metres to the break was pure pain, but it was worth the effort as this now large group (including the earlier move by Hayles) of about 20 worked to put some time into the bunch."
To give you an idea of the standard of racing, many of these guys are pros, and Rob Hayles narrowly missed selection for the GB team pursuit squad (that I've just watch win Olympic Gold, setting a new world record in the process). I couldn't be prouder of my little brother, even if it does mean admitting he can officially kick my arse on a bike.
— Filed under Cycling, Inspiration
"Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own."
Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington
Hill reps in Richmond Park yesterday afternoon (on my 31st birthday), photographed by the brilliant Sam Christmas for a forthcoming piece in Huck Magazine.
— Filed under Cycling, Training
…to go training on a Sunday afternoon: Graham Watson's fabulous photo of this seven-man break climbing the Passo Vivione in yesterday's stage of the Giro d'Italia. At this point they were twenty minutes ahead of the peloton. Grr.
You can see all of Graham's 2008 Giro coverage here.
— Filed under Cycling, Inspiration
I raced in the Ballbuster Duathlon yesterday, the second time I've competed in this epic event (the first was in 2005). At 40 miles (64km) in total (8-mile run, 24-mile bike, 8-mile run) it's not spectacularly long, but what makes Ballbuster so formidable is that those 40 miles contain a combined 875 vertical metres (2,870 feet) of climbing, and that it's in mid-November, around narrow, potholed lanes that seemed covered in wet leaves and horse droppings.
I called my brother afterwards to tell him how I'd done and he signed off saying "Isn't it great it when you set yourself a goal and then go on to achieve it?" My goal was to finish in under three hours – a bit of a step up considering my 2005 time was 3:15 and that I came 77th that year, but I finally grimaced my way under the line in 2:57.33 (coming 21st), an 18-minute improvement. [Disclaimer: geeky detail follows that may be of more interest to athletes than to my regular audience.]
It wasn't a perfect race – the bike leg of the 2005 Ballbuster was the only time I've had bad cramp during a race, and it happened again yesterday. The last run was tough, and I'm not sure I took on enough fluid or calories throughout the race (750ml of carb drink on the bike, two half-cups on the run legs and about 250ml of water at each transition, so roughly 1.2 litres in total, or 240ml per lap. I saw a couple of the leaders running with small drinks bottles and ignoring the cups at the one drinks stop, and that's definitely what I'd do next time round. Food wise, I had a gel halfway round the first run, the carb drink (High5 Isotonic) and a Powerbar on the bike, a gel at the second transition and the last gel halfway round the final run. 716 calories in total, which at 238 cals/hour is theoretically perfect, though I seem to be able to tolerate 250 -275 cals/hr when I'm going hard and another gel at some stage (or carb drink during the run legs) would have been ideal.
Kit-wise, I raced on my Scott CR1-SL road bike, which was perfect. The organisers advise against tri-bars, but all the fastest boys and girls had 'em, and I used a pair of Vison Tech Mini-TT clip-on bars. I also taped my target split times for the bike leg onto my stem, which gave me both lap times and an average speed to aim for. I ran in my funky new Newton Distance S racing shoes, which felt super-speedy throughout.
I was pretty slow in the transitions (and forgot to remove my spare tube, CO2 canister and tyre levers at the second one, so I was carrying some excess weight up the last hill!) but in all, pretty chuffed with how it went. Next year I'll be in Antarctica, so perhaps I'll break into the top-ten in 2009…
— Filed under Cycling, Running, Training
From a great Guardian interview with T-Mobile-sponsored British pro cyclist Mark Cavendish:
"When you're out cycling up a big hill and it's cold and raining and you've 40 miles to go and you're aching all over and your directeur sportif is shouting abuse at you from the car, do you ever think to yourself: 'What the hell am I doing here? I wish I had a proper job.'
There are times when you do think that, but I've worked in a bank before and I'd rather do 300km on the bike in the pissing rain every single day than go back to that."
— Filed under Cycling, Inspiration
Metropolitan Police threaten to arrest "several hundred" cyclists in my local training haunt, Richmond Park, for breaking the 20mph speed limit (a limit that the local motor traffic seems to routinely ignore). London's racing cyclists will be turning out en masse next Saturday and envisage a slapstick police response. "I don't see how they're going to be able to stop all of the cyclists, are they going to chase us in police cars? Certainly not on bikes, judging by the size of some of the waistlines I've seen on the cyclist cops. I have a image of a Benny Hill chase sequence." Naturally, I'll be there with my camera.
On a serious note, anti-cyclist sentiment seems to be at an all-time high in London right now, and this sort of harebrained "clampdown" isn't going to make the world a better place for anyone.
— Filed under Cycling
My brother and I went out for a quick blast around Richmond Park on our road bikes this morning. Our first two laps were clockwise, our last anti-clockwise, but no matter which way we rode, it was always into the wind. I pulled alongside Steven on one slow stretch and he turned to me, smiling as his legs churned a heavy gear. "Bloody hell", he shouted across, "it's the Richmond Park Vortex".
Elsewhere, my book proposal is finished, and will go out to publishers soon. All very exciting. SOUTH is rumbling on – lots of excitement, a fair bit of banging-my-head-against-a-wall frustration, and a large shopping list. Typically, I still can't talk about a lot of the really funky stuff yet, but stay tuned…
Last up, it seems Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is talking about driving to the South Pole in a hydrogen-powered Hummer, co-piloted by Buzz Aldrin (well spotted, Tony). Part of me thinks it sounds like a fun thing to do (after all, Vivian Fuchs and Edmund Hillary crossed Antarctica using tractors in 1957, and as much as I abhor oversized American SUVs, fuel cells are undeniably exciting technology). Part of me, however, wonders if it smacks a little of this.
— Filed under Cycling, Training
Tons happening right now. Our departure for Antarctica (Tony and I will leave the UK in mid-October) is looming large, but I'm going to keep you in suspense for a few days longer. I'm feeling a bit disillusioned with the whole blogging thing at the moment, partly because I can't tell you about the really exciting stuff until hands have been shaken, ink has dried and cheques have been cashed. But exciting is definitely the word. Stay tuned.
Anyway, on to Floyd Landis. He's a pro cyclist, and he's one of the favourites to win this year's Tour de France. Cycling is my favourite sport, but I'd never really taken to Floyd; he's never quite mastered the slick, poster boy charm of a white-toothed Armstrong, or the testosterone-fuelled charisma of a Cipollini or McEwen. He has ginger hair, he was sporting a dodgy moustache for part of last season, and he's prone to wearing goofy shades and a wrong-way-round baseball cap.
But as of today, Floyd Landis has very nearly out-heroed Lance Armstrong himself. He's well placed to win the toughest endurance event on the planet, yet it turns out that he's long overdue a hip replacement and has been riding through excrutiating pain for months, without even telling his team.
…Perhaps the funniest part is that Landis has been successful at keeping his hip condition a secret from teammates, rivals and the media for 20 months, confiding it only to a small handful of doctors and close friends. This maneuver has involved what Landis, who was raised as a Mennonite in Lancaster County, Pa., calls ‘‘a few adaptations.’’
‘‘I always have to get on my bike putting my right leg over first,’’ Landis told me. ‘‘If I tried to get on the other way’’ — tilting his pelvis against his damaged hip — ‘‘I’d be lying on the pavement. Then people would be standing around wondering what the hell’s wrong with that guy?’’
Landis’s right hip is afflicted with osteonecrosis, or bone death, a degenerative condition caused by lack of blood supply. Essentially, the ball has withered and collapsed, resulting in bone that his doctors liken to a chunk of rotten wood, a sunbaked desert and a half-melted scoop of ice cream. All of which transforms Landis into the embodiment of an intriguing question: Is it possible for someone with a ruined hip to win the Tour de France?
‘‘Well, I’m doing it, so it must be possible,’’ he said, his face flashing into the sharp, faintly incredulous expression he often gets when he talks about his hip. ‘‘All the doctors have ever been able to tell me is that I should get a replacement when the pain gets to be too much. O.K., that sounds fine, but how much is too much? Can anybody tell me that? How much is too much?’’
There's a wonderful interview on the New York Times website (you'll have to register to view it, but it's worth it) and there's a quote for the day from the latest Outside Magazine:
Everbody wants to say, ‘I couldn’t win because of this or that’ To my way of thinking , it doesn’t matter if your head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn’t make it you didn’t make it. One excuse is as good as another.
— Filed under Cycling
Tony impressed the hell out of me last weekend. As I mentioned last week, we were racing in the Saab Salomon Mountain Mayhem 24-hour mountain bike race. And while it may not have been held over real mountains, there was certainly plenty of mayhem. I had the dubious honour of going out on the first lap, which entailed an 800m run to our waiting bikes. We were told that the start of the race would be marked by 'an explosion of some sort', and sure enough, after a colossal bang, I found myself in a mad scramble for the line, dodging elbows and breathing clouds of light-brown dust.
As none of our four-strong team had test-ridden the 7.2-mile route, I had no idea what to expect. It soon transpired that the course's designers subscribed to Marx's view that 'the only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain', as the event delivered equally hefty doses of both. The climbs were hellishly long, 'granny-gear' drags that wove through impossibly hot patches of breeze-free air, and the descents (eye-wateringly fast, crazy off-camber turns, huge bumps baked rock-hard in the midday sun) would have had your average kamikaze pilot thinking twice.
Anyway, back to Tony. He'd never actually raced a mountain bike before. The week before the race, I found out that pro rider Jenny Copnall had described the 2004 Mountain Mayhem as 'one of the most extreme experiences I have had on a bike'. Tony and I do most of our training on the road, and our lack of technical bike-handling skill soon proved a big disadvantage. He crashed hard on his second lap, headbutting a tree. I'll let him describe what actually happened, and I was hugely happy (although hardly surprised) to see him carry on for another 18 hours of racing.
It was a wonderful event, and I was utterly humbled by the gang of solo riders that spent the whole 24 hours lapping the course alone. Worryingly, I seemed to get stronger as the race (and the lack of sleep) went on, and I'm now toying with the idea of doing a few solo events after SOUTH. The chances of me matching the lap times of some of the top team riders is slim (there were two Olympic athletes and a T-Mobile pro in attendance) but I reckon I'd be competitive in the solo category. Of course, it'd also give me an excuse to buy a camper van as well…
— Filed under Cycling, Training
A couple of months ago, on the spur of the moment, I decided to join good friend (and Cornish pasty-munching Ironman triathlete) Rhys Ellis-Davies in entering the Saab Salomon Mountain Mayhem 24-hour mountain bike race. In fact, I decided to enter Tony as well, despite the fact he's never raced a mountain bike. I think the last time I did was eight or nine years ago. To add a little spice to the challenge, Tony no longer even had a mountain bike, and mine was stolen four weeks after entering the race. (The fourth member of our team is Tom Longland, grandson of 1933 Mount Everest hero Jack Longland.)
It dawned on me one afternoon in Greenland that although the event was fast approaching, neither of us had a set of wheels. After a few abortive attempts at getting sponsored bikes, I spotted something promising on eBay. A couple of days and a few emails later, the bike's owner brought it round, and it was love at first sight. A fairly vintage Specialized S-Works M4 (either 2001 or 2002) that, to my delight, hadn't seen much in the way of use. Sadly, it hadn't seen much in the way of love, either – it was covered in grease and dirt and my fingers looked like I'd dipped them in tar after putting the chain back on. I felt like I'd found a starving thoroughbred racehorse living in a garden shed, or a mistreated Siberian husky chained to a pole in a dusty yard with an empty water bowl. I simply had to buy it, and give it a better home.
Once in the safety of my living room, I took it apart and inspected the damage. I'd been assured that the tyres had 'plenty of life left in them', but the back one had a hefty rip in the sidewall. There was a sizeable dent in the rear rim and one of the spokes was completely loose (although the wheels still ran perfectly true). It had no brakes, no grips and no pedals, so I drew up a shopping list and raided both the Fulham and West End branches of Evans Cycles, and after a bit of nifty spanner-work (and some nerve-wracking, sweaty-palms hacksawing as I cut the steerer tube down) it was time for a bit of spit 'n' polish. The results were startling – with a bit of love (and a full bottle of degreaser) lavished on it, the bike looks like new.
At least it did, until I took it for a burn around Richmond Park this morning. It's now caked in orange dust…
— Filed under Cycling
Quote for the day, spotted in an interview with Tour of Georgia winner and Tour de France hopeful Floyd Landis in this month's Pro Cycling magazine:
"The reason I am a pro cyclist is that I have been doing things my whole life that people have told me I shouldn't or couldn't do."
— Filed under Cycling
