Vive le Tour

Yesterday, during my day of avoiding any Stage 3 spoilers on the internet (and before I headed down to Lakeside Lounge to watch the two-hour replay during happy hour), I started drafting a post with a list of things I want to see during this year's Tour de France. It's a list of things I'll be watching out for and pulling for, in the name of an exciting tour. I had no idea that I'd see some of it on Stage 3.

That evening, with a crispy Hoegaarden in my hand and a Neighburrito in my belly, I watched Columbia split the field in a stunning manner and with eight of their nine racers represented, drive a huge, late breakaway, and set up Cavendish for the win. The exciting part, however, is that Lance Armstrong was in it and Contador was stuck napping in the peloton forty seconds back. Everybody is speculating about Astana team dynamics and drawing comparisons to La Vie Clair in 1987. Will Armstrong and Contador be riding against each other? For this to happen, Armstrong needs to be a credible GC threat.

The most boring scenario, of course, would be that Armstrong winds up not being a GC threat by the time the race gets particularly difficult, Contador is the only Astana contendor, and the race plods along with a handful of climbers marking each other, racing conservatively, riding up some mountains and then into Paris. Yawn.

But if Armstrong could win the Tour, what would happen then?

Which brings us to yesterday's stage - too early in the Tour to draw any conclusions, but ripe for questioning. Why did Columbia drive the pace from 30k out when they've got the fastest sprinter setting up? Did Armstrong know to be at the front, perhaps thanks to a word from his former faithful domestique and New York City our-boy Big George Hincapie? Rumor has it that Contador let the initial gap open up. Here's a new angle - Armstrong is a master of confounding doubletalk (Belgium Knee Warmers had a great bit on this a while back, but I can't find it now), and Bruyneel is a master tactician. What if all this stuff about it being Contador's year is just smoke? What if Contador let that gap open to give Lance a boost in the GC prior to today's TTT? What if other GC riders mark Contador later in the race only to have Lance fire off on an attack?

Now, as you'll see on the list below, I'm also hoping that thie Tour de France will also feature somebody who's not Lance Armstrong. I can't stand the constant Lance check-ins, I can't stand his faux-nice-guy demeanor. Maybe I'd be able to if they didn't happen every ten minutes, if every other article were somehow about him. There are 179 other people in the race, after all. And here I am departing from my own wishes, but for a good reason: Lance Armstrong, throw down or shut up. You said you were coming back to win the Tour de France. All this nonsense is for naught if you don't make a good show of it.

And so, here's my list of hopes and dreams for this year's Tour:

1: An exciting, dynamic bunch of shaking-up of the General Classification, since there are enough people who can compete with each other. Hopefully this will be assisted by,
2: Lance Armstrong doing pretty well. I mean, for all his fake-humble words, he did say he was going to come back and win the Tour de France. If he challenges it, it could lead to,
3: Interesting Astana intra-team dynamics, with Armstrong and Contador both potential GC threats. Maximum drama probably won't ensue, but you never know!
But more importantly,
4: Occasional TV and news coverage of somebody who's not Lance Armstrong.
5. Lots of George Hincapie leading out Mark Cavendish, but also,
6. That Cavendish gets soundly beaten in a few sprints.
7. That the two radio-free stages go so well that maybe everybody thinks that going radio-free would be a decent idea. Cyclocosm has a good bit on why people who clamor for radio-free racing are missing the point, and Sprinter Della Casa has a good bit on both sides, but coming down against race radios.

Your thoughts on the whole affair?

See you at Lakeside...

Recycled Content #2

Welcome to No One Line's Recycled Content Number Two!

A buddy of mine is a geek when it comes to bikes - and guitars, and (shamefully), cars too. He loves knowing about types of tubing, wall thickness, tube diameter, relative strengths and weaknesses of different tubesets, and he keeps on telling me to get a bicycle made out of Reynolds 531. So it's with him in mind that I sit down to read an article from several years ago in which the author is sent on assignment to test ride seven Mondonico road bikes, identical in almost every respect - except, they are made from different types of Columbus Tubing. Can he tell the difference?

For the math dorks in the house, Cozy Beehive offers a mathematical approach to impacts on a helmeted head.

Ever wonder why it's kind of easy to be a bit obnoxiously righteous as a cyclist in NYC? Streetsblog has a piece on a cyclist who tapped a car that was parked in a physically-protected bike path and, in return, was assaulted by the driver and then charged by the police. Assholes are everywhere, which in turn makes it a challenge not to be one on the road. Stay safe, y'all.

Congrats to Mellow Velo. That photograph makes you look like the bride of the bike (which I heartily approve of), but don't you think the bike should have worn a more traditional, tux-like black-and-white bartape and saddle?

And, finally, with the Tour de France coming up and a crisis in Astana, we can expect my fitness to take a questionable turn as I go right from work to Lakeside Lounge, to enjoy Versus recap and two-for-one happy hours.

Excitement: Results and Potential

The weather has been ridiculous lately, with rain all month long, and so even though the sun is shyly, tenatively shining from behind thinning clouds I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that track racing will not be rained out, like it's been for the past two weeks. Track racing is an hour of hard training, guaranteed. A good warm-up ride out to the track, a few races with regular hard efforts, sprints, and, if I'm lucky, a long race made up of constant suffering.

If you're lucky, or if you live in New York City, you can have all of your training take place in racing. It's a little bit more expensive, but a lot more fun. To that effect I've had a good week of training via racing: Saturday was a Prospect Park race in which I planned to spend the first half going off the front and the last half watching from the start/finish, saving my energy for Housatonic Hills on Sunday. That race tested the legs in the hills and found them sufficient for the task of staying with the front but not for whittling it down further - it came down to a sprint of about two dozen. A fast, technical end - a downhill false flat flying toward the start finish, a ninety degree corner, and a 300-meter sweeping uphill sprint. I took the corner third wheel but missed the wheel of the attack going up the inside, jumped into the wind with 200 meters to go, and watched, sprinting and cramping, as two more racers came around me, knocking me down to fourth. A fine finish nonetheless.

Thursday, I plan to ride up to Rockleigh, New Jersey, to give the crit there another whack. Last time I had a whopper of a sprint but poor position and only managed eighth. I've got an odd habit of either having the sprint or the positioning but never the two at the same time and I'm trying to rectify that - I wouldn't mind a win. On Sunday comes one of the races that I've been enjoying more and more throughout the season - the Cadence Cup Series at Prospect Park. My club has been showing out in full force for these, bouyed by some good results early on and the very compelling promise of increasingly adept teamwork. In the second race we put our teammate Yack into the Green Jersey for sprinter's points, and in the third and fourth we've kept him there. While I'm generally on the lookout for results I know it's time to lay it down to keep Yack wearing that jersey, and I'll be a part of our large, guns-to-a-knife-fight leadout train for him.

Now that, my select and loyal readers, is exciting.

Leading up to Housatonic Hills I was excited but nervous. Could I do well? I should improve on my results from my last major road race, and if I don't it's an opportunity wasted. Fourth is good and I'm pleased but I saw second place tantalizingly close (first place was taken with a commanding sprint from a BVF rider).

But with the prospect of laying it down directly for a teammate the nervousness of letting myself down dissipates, and it's not replaced by nervousness about letting somebody else down. Why exactly I can't say - maybe because it's all still pretty new to me.

Sunday - I can't wait. And speaking of excitement for things to come, good things are in the works.

photo above by Marcia Van Wagner.

Tour of New York

We had numbers in this race, and I knew who to mark in the event that a leadout train failed. I stayed sheltered, and felt strong. I've been sprinting well. I can do this. I was in position. Brooklyn Velo Force had a strong train going up; our train was running strong at the front. Westwood Velo moved up and things got chaotic, dense, elbows bumping and everybody struggling to hold position and suddenly it wasn't fast enough. Our train fell apart. The front got jammed up and was very tight.

Suddenly BVF's two sprinters were on the front with 500 meters to go, and I had some daylight to the right. So I jumped, went across the road, hard, and tried to hold it. Opened a gap. Peeked under my armpit. Watched it start to close. Saw a guy come up on my right hip. The line was right there. Then more guys.

I was swallowed twenty meters from the line.

Maybe I salvaged a top ten. I came close to winning. Sigh. There's always next time.

I think it was a good move. Our train had started to disintegrate in the ragged, aggressive front. BVF's sprinter wasn't going to jump from that far out. I felt strong; the pace had slowed. It was worth a shot. The opportunity was there and I took it. What should I do next time?

I think I should be a little more patient; another hundred feet down the road, if that kept up, and I could have jumped clear to hold it. Maybe. If somebody else hadn't taken initiative by then. Maybe they started sprinting, saw me dangling out there, and laughed.

I'm glad I tried it. Sitting in and waiting for a possible sprint victory is tough - it's tough with ringers like Lombardi and Aracena in the field, it's tough on the psyche, the notion that I spent twentyfive bucks to risk my bike and my neck cruising around Prospect Park for over an hour so I can race for a minute and a half.

I'd rather upgrade on points than on top ten finishes, and to do that I'm going to have to take risks. So I should try it. Attack. More often. Go ahead. I think about a guy who races out at the velodrome, Tadeusz Marszalek. He's a great racer to watch because he attacks constantly. I'd rather race like him, not try to sit pretty and then hope that by some accident of registration I'm the best sprinter in the field. Because I'm not.

The right attack might get me that podium. Not this time, though.

Two teammates went down in the madness of the final moments before the sprint uncorked in earnest. Shoulder injuries. Kerry and Todd, best wishes for your rapid recovery.

Old Timers

Doing some circles outside the velodrome to keep my legs moving between races during a recent installment of the Twilight Series, an old-timer approached me and asked, "Hey, do they have any of these kind of races out in Jersey?"

"No," I said, "This is the only track around. The nearest one is out in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania."
"So, not out in Jersey?" he repeated.
"No."
"They used to have these races out in Jersey, I can't believe they don't have them anymore."
"Well, this is the only track around, these days."
"Do you win any money at these races? Any money in them?"
"No - I guess we just do it for bragging rights or something," I replied.
"You know, I used to race. Not anymore. I'm ninety-three years old! And back then if there was any mention of money they'd take away our racing card!"

We chatted for a while longer and he told me that he used to race at the old New York Velodrome (that would be the old one in Inwood, not the hopeful/future New York Velodrome), they Coney Island Velodrome , and the Newark Velodrome, out in Vailsburg Park. He even raced at the old Madison Square Garden, home of legendary six-day races. "Before the six-day races," he said, "there would always be amateur races, and I'd enter those! I'd come in third place, fourth place. Madison Square Garden was the only place you could earn money as an amateur, and I'd win fifteen or twenty bucks, which wasn't bad back then..."

I introduced myself and he gave me his name, Gimelli, as I shook his arthritic hand. He reminded me of my grandfather, who passed away a year and a half ago - not because of similar looks, but it was his baseball cap, his skin of wax paper and wrinkles, and the creaky enthusiasm in his voice that congealed into a sort of familiarity. He was racing this sport in the 1920s, and it just seems fascinating and somehow supernatural for me to converse with somebody who, as a kid, could very well have been in my shoes, talking with somebody who lived through the Civil War. I had a million questions for Gimelli that I didn't get to ask - how'd you start riding? What was the bike like? Why did you stop? What were the crowds at Madison Square Garden like? Did you train? Did you smoke? What was the building like? What were the people there like? What did you feel, think, see? What was the city like? Who did you talk do?

I felt like I was in a Utah Phillips story, knowing that the past didn't go anywhere, that it's with us if we find it. It reminded me of sitting with my grandmother at her kitchen table, clutching cups of tea when we weren't holding each other's hand, me writing down recipes that she was reciting off the top of her head.

But it's a tenuous process, ties to the past, which I learned the next time I lined up on the rail. He walked over from the bleachers and leaned on the rail next to me, across the fence. Maybe he came up to me because I was familiar to him from our last conversation, but maybe there was only a faint recognition picking in his mind, because when he leaned on the rail he asked me, "Hey, do they have any of these kind of races in New Jersey?"

"No," I replied after a moment. "This is the only track in the area."
"Do you win any money at these?"
"No. I guess we just do it for ourselves... or for bragging rights..."
"I used to race. I'm ninety-three years old, and back then, if we mentioned money, they'd take our racing card away!"

The race began and I threw myself into a 15 lap Devil's Scratch, properly exhausting enough to make me nearly vomit at the end, so it was a while before I was able to give this man the proper amount of thought. I enjoyed talking to him, and missing the old people who were in my life that I loved to much. And I gave thanks that my grandfather and grandmother lived out their days with continued mental acuity, though the discomfort of progressively diminishing health.

The past doesn't go anywhere.