What the hell is it about the Teleférico hill that keeps destroying my rear tires? Today's workout was pretty straightforward - 3 hours, with intervals halfway through, then the final 30 minutes at 140-145 bpm. I felt good - I felt a hell of a lot better than I did yesterday with the power meter test (and the subsequent hour-long search along the sides of the El Pardo highway looking for my Polar heart rate monitor, which decided to take a flying leap halfway through the power meter test.) I did well. I hit 160, as prescribed. I managed to get my climbing time down from three and half minutes to two. And at the end of the sixth climb, which felt oddly sluggish, I stuck my finger into my (€37 Kevlar-threaded) rear tire, which had all of the strength and resistance of an unbaked croissant.
I sighed. I got off the bike, grabbed the pump and began pumping. If nothing, kept with the tone of the whole damn week - getting paid late, losing the heart rate monitor, the lack of interest, manners or even timely replies from a certain someone, fighting with the landlady, losing classes, doing the math and realizing that a trip to Canada at Christmas-time is looking even less likely.
No dice. No matter how hard I pumped, the air just wasn't staying in.
I've had days when it didn't seem worth the trouble to get out of bed. It's the first time in a very long time when the entire week has felt, as my friend Kim quipped yesterday, so bad that even bacon tastes bad.
And then I realized that I'd left the spare inner tube in the other saddle bag, the one that was still on the Orbea, the one I'd taken down to Jaén and hadn't switched back to the Specialized.
I am nothing if not consistent.
What has scared me most about this week is that it's the first time in a long time when I've started wondering if all of the sacrifice and denial is really worth it. The utter failure to connect with Whiteshorts in any way has totally thrown me. I didn't think I was ready to let someone to get that close to me. And the subsequent hurt from being ignored by him has made me realize how much I used training and dieting and cycling to keep myself from being hurt again after the mess with Joseba last year. (Worked well, huh?) And yeah, I know that hurt is what keeps you human; that pain, administered in sufficient doses, is what makes you feel empathy. No man is an island, that kind of stuff. Which is not to say that I want to -- that I am going to -- stop the sacrifice and denial. It's gotten me a hell of a long way this year. It's obvious now that I just have to think of the other...you know, stuff.
So I'll go to Mammoth on the way to Scott's, and I'll get another tire. I'll go grocery shopping, I'll make myself a nice dinner tonight and a nice sandwich for my walk in the sierra tomorrow with Alana. I'll bring the camera, I'll take photos of us getting soaked on the Camino Schmidt while we have a good time and a laugh and bitch about men. And I'll remember that nothing lasts forever. Not rejection or losing cycle computers (which have red plastic and can usually be found in beds of pine needles - they don't bounce very far, it seems) or not getting paid or rain or snow or pain.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The House of No (Part One)
See, silly immigrant that I am, where I come from, if you don't wanna do something with someone, you just say NO. N-O. Consonant, vowel. Probably one of the most universal words known to mankind. One of the first words that most children master. I'm 41 years old; I've heard it at least once or twice in my life. It's nice if it comes accompanied with a little white lie or something like that, but I'd rather hear it alone and buck-naked rather than hear nothing at all.
I gave him twenty-five minutes. I'd called The Other One the day before: You still in for Chinchón tomorrow? Nah, he says, I've got the kids and it's Hallowe'en and all, so I won't be able to ride. But if he can't go, he'll call you. He's good like that.
So, silly me, I stood like a fool and waited in front of the church for Whiteshorts for twenty-five minutes before I called him. No answer. No more waiting, I thought, and I took off. When is a plan not a plan in this country? I tried not to beat myself up about it, but it still irritated the hell out of me -- especially since I had sent him two messages during the week asking, first directly and then indirectly, if he was going.
I went to San Martín, I saw someone who looked suspiciously like Contador (but then again, the Vegas are full of tall, skinny riders with big noses, wearing Astana kit and riding Trek bikes. Contador, it seems, has more doubles than Saddam Hussein.)
I got home at about one. Five hours later, I got an offhand message telling me that he went north to Soto, and happened to run into a couple of buds on the way.
And if being stood up wasn't bad enough....at the clubhouse last night, the big NO came when I found out that both Whiteshort AND The Other One met up with the guys at Fuencarral that very same Sunday as if nothing had happened.
Wow. I know that I'm not as good as the other guys in the club, but I had NO idea that I was so bad that people feel they have to lie. There's probably nothing that's more effective at putting you off someone than to find out that he felt some kind of compulsion to lie to you.
I gave him twenty-five minutes. I'd called The Other One the day before: You still in for Chinchón tomorrow? Nah, he says, I've got the kids and it's Hallowe'en and all, so I won't be able to ride. But if he can't go, he'll call you. He's good like that.
So, silly me, I stood like a fool and waited in front of the church for Whiteshorts for twenty-five minutes before I called him. No answer. No more waiting, I thought, and I took off. When is a plan not a plan in this country? I tried not to beat myself up about it, but it still irritated the hell out of me -- especially since I had sent him two messages during the week asking, first directly and then indirectly, if he was going.
I went to San Martín, I saw someone who looked suspiciously like Contador (but then again, the Vegas are full of tall, skinny riders with big noses, wearing Astana kit and riding Trek bikes. Contador, it seems, has more doubles than Saddam Hussein.)
I got home at about one. Five hours later, I got an offhand message telling me that he went north to Soto, and happened to run into a couple of buds on the way.
And if being stood up wasn't bad enough....at the clubhouse last night, the big NO came when I found out that both Whiteshort AND The Other One met up with the guys at Fuencarral that very same Sunday as if nothing had happened.
Wow. I know that I'm not as good as the other guys in the club, but I had NO idea that I was so bad that people feel they have to lie. There's probably nothing that's more effective at putting you off someone than to find out that he felt some kind of compulsion to lie to you.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Move it, girlfriend!
I had no idea that Stephanie was involved so deeply in biking. I knew from Scott that his sister worked in administration at a small East Coast college and had travelled extensively, but I didn't know that she owned three hand-made bikes, competed with Team LUNA Chix and was about to do a 300-mile ride to raise money to combat global warming. I mean, Scott has known me for over twenty years...you'd think that it would have come up at some point in time that his sister spends more on bikes than most guys spend on their cars.
Which got me to thinking. Steph is about two years younger than Scott. Scott's not that much younger than me. And when I look at the faces of the women on Steph's team, it's hard to find someone who would be significantly younger than the bunch of us. This holds true for a lot of the female cyclists I know: cycling doesn't seem to grab hold of us until we're in our late 20s or early 30s, and when it does, it tends to invade our lives in ways that other activities just can't manage.
Which got me to thinking even more: Why is so much focus put on developing junior riders and younger riders when it's the older riders who are the ones who have the time, passion and money to really make a go of cycling? In the States, which uses a (seemingly) well-developed system of categories that allow riders of all ages and genders to move up logically through the system, there's a logical system of advancement. Presumably, that would mean that there's a logical system of rider development. It's a shame that there seems to be so little interest in the Spanish federation to examine this in more detail, and that they're so obsessed with developing medal-level riders that they forget to work from the base, la afición, where the money and passion truly lie.
Which makes me wonder if I shouldn't ask Pepe el Presi for the stats of how many women hold licenses in Spain. I bet it'd be a real eye-opener, and not a good one at that....
Which got me to thinking. Steph is about two years younger than Scott. Scott's not that much younger than me. And when I look at the faces of the women on Steph's team, it's hard to find someone who would be significantly younger than the bunch of us. This holds true for a lot of the female cyclists I know: cycling doesn't seem to grab hold of us until we're in our late 20s or early 30s, and when it does, it tends to invade our lives in ways that other activities just can't manage.
Which got me to thinking even more: Why is so much focus put on developing junior riders and younger riders when it's the older riders who are the ones who have the time, passion and money to really make a go of cycling? In the States, which uses a (seemingly) well-developed system of categories that allow riders of all ages and genders to move up logically through the system, there's a logical system of advancement. Presumably, that would mean that there's a logical system of rider development. It's a shame that there seems to be so little interest in the Spanish federation to examine this in more detail, and that they're so obsessed with developing medal-level riders that they forget to work from the base, la afición, where the money and passion truly lie.
Which makes me wonder if I shouldn't ask Pepe el Presi for the stats of how many women hold licenses in Spain. I bet it'd be a real eye-opener, and not a good one at that....
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
In the loop....
The 2010 season has, more or less, officially begun with the pre-registration process for Quebrantahuesos....
I'm lottery number 4018.
Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, fingers crossed....
I'm lottery number 4018.
Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, fingers crossed....
Monday, September 14, 2009
Why does this feel kind of....sick?
(NOTA : Pedro H., si lees eso, me encantaría oír tus opiniones y tus interpretaciones sobre el tema. -- D)
If your Spanish is up for it (and I apologize in advance, I use that phrase WAY the hell too much), one of the best people writing about cycling in Spanish is Pedro Horrillo. The Basque biker has taken his "Desde mi sillín" column in EL PAÍS to the Internet (YAY for having free access to anything and everything; BOO to EL PAÍS for -- I'm guessing -- being too cheap to pay the guy. Y dinos si no te paguen por eso y pondremos el grito al cielo para que los tacaños de la calle Miguel Yuste se aflojan los cuerdos de los bolsillos.)
So today on the forum they're describing the climb up and through the Sierra de la Pandera. Like most really challenging mountain climbs in Spain, Pandera is located way the hell away from most important urban centres (looking at the map, Jaen's a good 20 km away). The pavement is crap and the road is as wide as a small bathroom, which must create one hell of an element of freaking out when riders have to climb up 12% grades with screaming fans three deep on the side of the road. (TVE's broadcast of the stage showed the Guardia Civil gettin' pretty physical with at least a couple of fans who dared step a wee bit too close to the riders.) You can't see squat when you get to the top, and I pity the poor project manager who's responsible for getting everything and anything down from the peak of the mountain on a road that, really, is little more than a goat path with some asphalt smacked on top.
These stages, however, are the unmissable ones. They're supposedly the ones that make cycling fans, and it ain't because of the scenery. Cyclists have an unnerving addiction to suffering and pain, one which pretty much has to be learned because anyone born feeling that way probably would have committed suicide before his sixteenth birthday. (Yes, the use of the masculine possessive adjective was deliberate.) And it's not enough to haul your sorry, lactate-laden ass up the Marie-Blanque or Angliru: the dictates of the sport insist that you, having stretched and spent the morning hauling or being hauled up several climbs, have earned the right to lie back on the sofa and watch guys (again, note the use of the masculine noun) who earn thousands of Euros or dollars or whatever a year to ride bicycles so hard and with so much force that you can't help but wonder how many of them spend the ten minutes after the race throwing up, or trying NOT to. Our gentlemen cyclist friends, having ridden all the way from Granada, arrive at the military installation looking like they've been hauled out of Wales's dirtiest coal mines, legs hammering like sewing machine needles, freezing (in spite of it being August in Andalusia), wet and probably wondering why they didn't just break down and study Law like so many of their friends.
Am I being overly sensitive or is this, in some way, a little bit sick?
I mean, I'm not dumb. Sports is, after all about being able to exceed, if not destroy, your limits, and though I've suffered through my fair share of climbing this year (and apologies to all, I still have yet to learn to love it) I would be lying if I didn't say that the sweetest thing about doing the Marie-Blanque in this year's Quebrantahuesos wasn't actually knocking the bastard off - it was beating both AG AND Javi, both of whom started climbing three minutes before I did. (Truth be told, aside from that, I honestly don't remember much about the MB except that there were a lot of guys pushing a lot of very expensive bikes.)
But there's a part of me that really doesn't like the idea of suffering for mere spectacle. I watch the mountain stages but I can't say that I enjoy them any more than I like watching time trials. (Maybe because I find the idea of doing time trials more attractive.) What I nearly wrote on Horrillo's blog (but didn't think it entirely appropriate) was:
"¿Vas a ver la Vuelta hoy?" se preguntaba dos o tres veces ayer en la salida de nuestro club de ciclismo. "Poz sí," respondió más que uno, "en una Vuelta tan descafeinado, merece la pena ver la subida al Anglirú del sur." Y lo fue. El esfuerzo, la lucha, la determinación por superar límites y darle todo. Pero hay una cosa que me hace sentir un poco (¿?) idiota.
"You gonna watch the Vuelta today?" was asked two or three times before our club went out on its ride yesterday. "Hell, yeah," more than one answered, "with the Vuelta being so toothless this year, it's worth the trouble to watch the climb up the Anglirú of the South." And it was. The effort, the struggle, the determination to break barriers and give it all. But there's something that makes me feel like a bit of an idiot.
Si se lo piensa mucho (y seguro hay algún filósofo que tiene algo que decir sobre hacer espectáculo del sufrimiento de los demás...¿no?) es un pellín (¿enfermo? ¿triste?) que a veces se base el espectáculo en el grado de puro dolor y sufrimiento que hay en una etapa. ¿Porque gritamos tanto en las etapas de montaña si sabemos que los CRIs pueden resultar casi iguales de machaca en su propio manera? (¿Alguien se atrevería subir los 17 km a Navacerrada desde San Ildefonso en una bici de CRI solo por el mero placer de experimentar?) ¿Es más aceptable disfrutar del sufrimiento si solo se trata de sufrimiento físico? Si fuera un show de humiliación personal, ¿podríamos disfrutarlo igual?
If you think about it -- and there's probably some philosopher who has something to say about creating spectacle out of the suffering of others...isn't there? -- it's kind of...sick? sad? that, at times, we base the quality of the spectacle we see on the suffering that we see in a particular stage. Why do we yell so much during the mountain stages if we know that ITTs can end up being equally rough in their own way? Would anybody really try to do the 17km uphill to Navacerrada from San Idlefonso on a time trial bike for the sheer hell of experimenting? Is it more acceptable to enjoy suffering if we're only dealing with physical suffering? If it were a show based on personal humiliation, could we enjoy it just as much?
Reconozco que les paguen por eso. Entiendo que superar tus límites forma gran parte de cualquier deporte y que mucho de la belleza del ciclismo es ver a gente destrozando los límites, da igual si existen o no. Sé perfectamente que ni Cunego ni Valverde ni Danielson me oyen cuando lanzo gritos que despierten a los vecinos de sus siestas. Pero pase lo que pase, sigo gritando. No sé si eso me marca como idiota o qué.
I recognize that they get paid for this. I understand that passing your limits is a big part of any sport and that a lot of the beauty of cycling comes from people destroying their limits, whether they really exist or not. I understand perfectly that Cunego, Valverde or Danielson can't her me when I scream so loud I wake the neighbors from their siesta. But whatever happens, I still cheer. I don't know if that marks me as an idiot or what.
Pedro (and Jason, Chip, Yago and Walesy), if you're reading this, I would really like your interpretation and thoughts on the subject.
If your Spanish is up for it (and I apologize in advance, I use that phrase WAY the hell too much), one of the best people writing about cycling in Spanish is Pedro Horrillo. The Basque biker has taken his "Desde mi sillín" column in EL PAÍS to the Internet (YAY for having free access to anything and everything; BOO to EL PAÍS for -- I'm guessing -- being too cheap to pay the guy. Y dinos si no te paguen por eso y pondremos el grito al cielo para que los tacaños de la calle Miguel Yuste se aflojan los cuerdos de los bolsillos.)
So today on the forum they're describing the climb up and through the Sierra de la Pandera. Like most really challenging mountain climbs in Spain, Pandera is located way the hell away from most important urban centres (looking at the map, Jaen's a good 20 km away). The pavement is crap and the road is as wide as a small bathroom, which must create one hell of an element of freaking out when riders have to climb up 12% grades with screaming fans three deep on the side of the road. (TVE's broadcast of the stage showed the Guardia Civil gettin' pretty physical with at least a couple of fans who dared step a wee bit too close to the riders.) You can't see squat when you get to the top, and I pity the poor project manager who's responsible for getting everything and anything down from the peak of the mountain on a road that, really, is little more than a goat path with some asphalt smacked on top.
These stages, however, are the unmissable ones. They're supposedly the ones that make cycling fans, and it ain't because of the scenery. Cyclists have an unnerving addiction to suffering and pain, one which pretty much has to be learned because anyone born feeling that way probably would have committed suicide before his sixteenth birthday. (Yes, the use of the masculine possessive adjective was deliberate.) And it's not enough to haul your sorry, lactate-laden ass up the Marie-Blanque or Angliru: the dictates of the sport insist that you, having stretched and spent the morning hauling or being hauled up several climbs, have earned the right to lie back on the sofa and watch guys (again, note the use of the masculine noun) who earn thousands of Euros or dollars or whatever a year to ride bicycles so hard and with so much force that you can't help but wonder how many of them spend the ten minutes after the race throwing up, or trying NOT to. Our gentlemen cyclist friends, having ridden all the way from Granada, arrive at the military installation looking like they've been hauled out of Wales's dirtiest coal mines, legs hammering like sewing machine needles, freezing (in spite of it being August in Andalusia), wet and probably wondering why they didn't just break down and study Law like so many of their friends.
Am I being overly sensitive or is this, in some way, a little bit sick?
I mean, I'm not dumb. Sports is, after all about being able to exceed, if not destroy, your limits, and though I've suffered through my fair share of climbing this year (and apologies to all, I still have yet to learn to love it) I would be lying if I didn't say that the sweetest thing about doing the Marie-Blanque in this year's Quebrantahuesos wasn't actually knocking the bastard off - it was beating both AG AND Javi, both of whom started climbing three minutes before I did. (Truth be told, aside from that, I honestly don't remember much about the MB except that there were a lot of guys pushing a lot of very expensive bikes.)
But there's a part of me that really doesn't like the idea of suffering for mere spectacle. I watch the mountain stages but I can't say that I enjoy them any more than I like watching time trials. (Maybe because I find the idea of doing time trials more attractive.) What I nearly wrote on Horrillo's blog (but didn't think it entirely appropriate) was:
"¿Vas a ver la Vuelta hoy?" se preguntaba dos o tres veces ayer en la salida de nuestro club de ciclismo. "Poz sí," respondió más que uno, "en una Vuelta tan descafeinado, merece la pena ver la subida al Anglirú del sur." Y lo fue. El esfuerzo, la lucha, la determinación por superar límites y darle todo. Pero hay una cosa que me hace sentir un poco (¿?) idiota.
"You gonna watch the Vuelta today?" was asked two or three times before our club went out on its ride yesterday. "Hell, yeah," more than one answered, "with the Vuelta being so toothless this year, it's worth the trouble to watch the climb up the Anglirú of the South." And it was. The effort, the struggle, the determination to break barriers and give it all. But there's something that makes me feel like a bit of an idiot.
Si se lo piensa mucho (y seguro hay algún filósofo que tiene algo que decir sobre hacer espectáculo del sufrimiento de los demás...¿no?) es un pellín (¿enfermo? ¿triste?) que a veces se base el espectáculo en el grado de puro dolor y sufrimiento que hay en una etapa. ¿Porque gritamos tanto en las etapas de montaña si sabemos que los CRIs pueden resultar casi iguales de machaca en su propio manera? (¿Alguien se atrevería subir los 17 km a Navacerrada desde San Ildefonso en una bici de CRI solo por el mero placer de experimentar?) ¿Es más aceptable disfrutar del sufrimiento si solo se trata de sufrimiento físico? Si fuera un show de humiliación personal, ¿podríamos disfrutarlo igual?
If you think about it -- and there's probably some philosopher who has something to say about creating spectacle out of the suffering of others...isn't there? -- it's kind of...sick? sad? that, at times, we base the quality of the spectacle we see on the suffering that we see in a particular stage. Why do we yell so much during the mountain stages if we know that ITTs can end up being equally rough in their own way? Would anybody really try to do the 17km uphill to Navacerrada from San Idlefonso on a time trial bike for the sheer hell of experimenting? Is it more acceptable to enjoy suffering if we're only dealing with physical suffering? If it were a show based on personal humiliation, could we enjoy it just as much?
Reconozco que les paguen por eso. Entiendo que superar tus límites forma gran parte de cualquier deporte y que mucho de la belleza del ciclismo es ver a gente destrozando los límites, da igual si existen o no. Sé perfectamente que ni Cunego ni Valverde ni Danielson me oyen cuando lanzo gritos que despierten a los vecinos de sus siestas. Pero pase lo que pase, sigo gritando. No sé si eso me marca como idiota o qué.
I recognize that they get paid for this. I understand that passing your limits is a big part of any sport and that a lot of the beauty of cycling comes from people destroying their limits, whether they really exist or not. I understand perfectly that Cunego, Valverde or Danielson can't her me when I scream so loud I wake the neighbors from their siesta. But whatever happens, I still cheer. I don't know if that marks me as an idiot or what.
Pedro (and Jason, Chip, Yago and Walesy), if you're reading this, I would really like your interpretation and thoughts on the subject.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Smarter than Hunger
"Eres más lista que el hambre."
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I hate missing workouts, but missing yesterday's workout was entirely my own fault. September 1: not only the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II - it's also the day when Madrid essentially wakes up from its self-imposed state of suspension to start back to work. Job interview in the morning, e-mails before lunch, was supposed to do volume training up near El Pardo for a couple of hours but after getting caught up in watching the Vuelta (and the subsequent crashfest) in the afternoon, I didn't get my ass in gear until 6PM, by which time the trip up to El Pardo would have gotten fairly complicated, what with managing the cloverleaf of traffic between two ring roads - bad enough mid-morning, probably impossible at the start of rush hour.
ººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
I hate missing workouts, but missing yesterday's workout was entirely my own fault. September 1: not only the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II - it's also the day when Madrid essentially wakes up from its self-imposed state of suspension to start back to work. Job interview in the morning, e-mails before lunch, was supposed to do volume training up near El Pardo for a couple of hours but after getting caught up in watching the Vuelta (and the subsequent crashfest) in the afternoon, I didn't get my ass in gear until 6PM, by which time the trip up to El Pardo would have gotten fairly complicated, what with managing the cloverleaf of traffic between two ring roads - bad enough mid-morning, probably impossible at the start of rush hour.
The doubts start: So, what to do? Risk it? Go to the Casa de Campo? Haul out the static trainer? Doubts doubts doubts doubts. I get dressed, heart rate monitor and all, but I keep staring at myself in the mirror and thinking, The reason why you're not into training today is that you know that today is the first day when you need to be making money, which you're not, and you don't have enough money to pay the rent, let alone get groceries or pay for your monthly transit pass, which you need because the bike you normally use to get around Madrid has been sliced and diced into various pieces, rendering it unusable and you need to make money and you're going out to train?? (Yes, unfortunately, the voice in my gut is that eloquent.)
I shuck the cycling clothes, grab the posters and head out.
For most of the year, the easiest places to find private students are the Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas, the state-run language schools which are a rich source of English students, mostly because the teachers who work there are not (mostly) native speakers. The closest one near me is open between 4 and 7 this week. Shooting fish in a barrel, I think. This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel, and you are smarter than hunger.
The staff at Goya are friendly and helpful. I decide to make a beeline to Embajadores. The building was closed for all of August for renovations, and the small groups of nervous, smoking students loitering on the sidewalk doesn't set off the alarm bells that it should. Bad news. Not only is the building still under renovation, the staff give the impression of having been flown in from an EOI in some remote part of Teruel. They're not just unhelpful and ignorant; they're rude to a degree that I haven't seen since I left working in the media in Toronto. The badly-named Information Desk is staffed by the Laurel and Hardy of crap customer service; one is as thin and as welcoming as a praying mantis; the other keeps looking at the punters with a face of resignation.
- Good afternoon. May I put a poster up on the notice board?
- No. (Fattie turns her back to me and starts digging in her purse for a pack of cigarettes.)
- I'm sorry?
- No, you can't put an ad on the notice board because we're still dealing with renovations and the notice boards are in a pile on the floor. Come back later. (She starts digging in her purse for a lighter.)
- All right. (No reaction from Fattie. I clear my throat.) How? MUCH? LATER?
Fattie walks out the door. I look at Praying Mantis with a shark grin and a "don't fuck with me, you irascible excuse for a public servant" look stolen out of "Brüno". Being able to yell, enunciate very clearly and smile is one of the few pisstakes that foreigners can get away with in Madrid.
- Mid-September, says Praying Mantis.
Two more weeks? Fine. I am gonna give my printer the workout of its life and then come back here and paper every single piece of cork with posters. I'm gonna steal every single student you've got and give them the knowledge that will permit them to question and challenge every single Princess Di lookalike who got hired by this half-bit outfit. And, for good measure, I Scotch-tape an ad on the signs outside the school.
I am angrier than hunger. I didn't deserve to be treated like a piece of errant earwax and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some paper-pusher who OD'd on beach and tinto de verano deny me a living. This is the advantage of giving up everything except work and cycling: I have a lot more energy and drive to invest in both. And if I can't work out, then clear the track for Eddie Shack. Little Miss SuperSyntax is hungry and determined and will be solvent before you can say, "What happened to your cell phone bill this month, Iñigo Cuestecita?"
But then again, hunger isn't particularly intelligent. Hunger is a whiny-ass preteen who is able to reason, but won't. Hunger is lazy, and feeds on a person's laziness or lack of drive. Hunger is a motivator that doesn't know what it wants. Hunger is the main way out of jealousy.
I stomp up Ronda de Toledo. BANG! Pedro Salinas library, one poster. BANG! Centro Cultural Ronda de Toledo, one poster. Up past the Palacio Real; my bunions are starting to ache and the sweat is dripping down the back of my neck but I ain't done yet. BANG! Replace the poster in the José Acuña library. BANG! Two photocopy shops in Isaac Peral. That leaves five more posters for Wednesday, which I will spread around Carabanchel and pass onto other students.
Screw this being broke shit. Just because there are hundreds of female cyclists who are willing to be financial San Sebastians, riddled with arrows and bills and empty bank accounts, doesn't mean I want to be one.
I'm not just smarter than hunger. I'm angrier than hunger. I'm more resourceful, more determined, more pigheaded than hunger.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Pull
"Learn to control your emotions, or they will control you." -- Gary Mack
Let me amend that. Learn to harness your anger and your frustration, and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how far it can take you.
Eight-twenty: six people. Eight-thirty: closer to twenty-five. Everyone's started to roll back after holidays, including some (but not all) of the hammerheads. My instructions: Draft, draft, draft. I'm not sure how to handle this. The easiest option is to draft someone who rides with Group C, but I know that I'm going to be bored as hell if I keep doing that. I want to ride faster, push myself harder, but it looks like anyone who would have ridden with Group B hasn't bothered to show up. Well, not totally. Edu's here. Alberto's here, too, but Alfredo isn't, and Alberto, unaccompanied, will usually go pretty fast.
"We going in groups?" I ask Pepe el Presi.
"I think we're gonna go in one group," he says.
This is a bit of a misnomer. There's never one group; there's always a system of pairings and sub-groups and cross-hatched matrices of who rides with who and who won't go with someone special, so I've just learned to try to go as fast as I can and see who I end up with. Especially on days like this. Most days, getting everyone back on their bikes and in gear is an easy enough task. Days like this, when it's hot and a considerable people have rolled in at the last minute (probably because they've just rolled out of bed), it's like herding cats. Bit by bit, we trickle out of the Plaza, trying not to skid out on the bed of sand the road workers have laid down as they repave the street that leads to Bravo Murillo.
I get irritated more than I get angry. I consider myself a moderately rational person: I'm far from being the living embodiment of Zen, but I'm a long way from being the Tasmanian Devil. But I'm not inhuman. I dislike being blown off, being ignored tends to rub me the wrong way, and if I've gone to the expense and trouble of joining a club, I expect to be included, not left to fend for myself.
And it happens again. For reasons I don't totally understand, I always tend to get separated from the group in the three kilometres between the bike lane/M607 split and the Autonomous University. It never ceases to piss me off, but because I don't really know what I'm doing to get left behind. And it happens again today, but this time, with an added twist: Everybody is getting flats. Everybody. The main culprit: thistles. Road maintenance workers in Spain don't use lawn mowers; they use weed-whackers. So the dead vegetation that blows onto the shoulders of the road and the bike lane tends to be sliced and diced into various pieces, rather than shredded so small that the resulting detrius can't cause problems. The thistle heads have given up their thorns, which are too small to see from the seat of a bike that's going 32 km/h. First it's Zurdo. Then Ángelito. Then Eva. Then Eva's dad. Then Agnes, the new woman who's joined us. Paul. Sebastià. In total, over a dozen people end up flatting out, which is a bitch for Raúl, who's driving the club car, but kind of a bonus for me, since it takes out the fastest riders.
But I still get separated. I get to the Autónoma, and all I see are heads disappearing as the bike lane dips under the turnoff to Alcobendas. I lay it on to get in and out of the tunnel, but they're going over the bridge by the army base.
I am not getting left behind today.
I don't know where the thought comes from. It's not even a particularly angry thought: it's just a matter-of-fact statement, like it's hot out or Alberto's wearing white shorts again.
I am not getting left behind today.
They've spent four months leaving me behind. Half of them just got back from holidays, which means that they can't keep the rhythm up forever.
I am not getting left behind today.
I come off the bridge by the army base knotted up in a gorilla tuck. Six hundred metres ahead, I can see them head up the hill.
I am not getting left behind today.
And then I start getting angry. Nadie te regala nada en el ciclismo, Pedro Delgado never tires of saying, and you know what? If no one's going to give me any gifts, I'm gonna start taking my due. I'm gonna start stealing what no one is willing to give. And if I blow up, so what? I just hang back and go with Group C.
I can see Alberto's white shorts ahead. I can see heads bobbing; and, most importantly, I can see heads start to bow down. Heads that start to fall are a sure sign that you have to attack, even more than a line of cyclists that get drawn out. In we go.
You bastards are not going to drop me any more.
Three or four mountain bikers are hanging off the rear wheels of our bunch. (A short aside: I realize it's a bike path, but can someone please explain why a man would pay two thousand Euros for a double-suspension mountain bike and never take it off asphalt?) I worm my way up through the group, the mountain bikers eventually veer off at Colmenar Viejo, and I hang on with most of the group until the turnoff to the M325 towards San Pedro.
"How long have you been doing this?" says Mario, who I've seen with the group but who I wouldn't have been fast enough to keep up with three months ago. (Mario is easily identifiable by his Barbie-pink Kaiku culottes, which can be seen by motorists a kilometre away.) One year. Well, less than a year. What do we consider "doing this?" Do I count the time from when I joined the Chamartín? From the day Ellie showed up at Ciclowork, her deep blue carbon frame glowing in the afternoon sunlight and Susanna kept grinning and saying, "Go ahead! Touch her! She's all yours!", and I spent the afternoon hugging her, watching the ascent up l'Anglirú in the 2008 Vuelta, cheering on Alberto Contador and wondering what in God's name I'd gotten myself into by buying an expensive road bike. I guess the easy answer is that no matter how long I've been doing this, I haven't probably been doing it long enough. But after twenty-six years of just thinking about it, I finally did do it. So I guess I don't know what the correct answer is.
We don't exactly fly up the west side of San Pedro, but we work it hard enough that the descent off the peak down to Guadalix is a treat. I feel good going down, too. I corner more aggressively and go down far faster than I would attempt to do if I were on my own, especially because I'm more confident about using all of the pavement and all of the road at my disposal.
Alberto, Carlos and a bunch of other are hanging out at the fountain that lies within the Guadalix town limits. We chat, we wait for the others, and when about twenty of us have gathered, we set off again - Edu and I going directly towards Miraflores, the rest (including Mario, who said he wasn't sure he was going to do the extension) head up to Bustarviejo.
Edu, having just come back from holidays, isn't up to a lot of hammering, so I head up to Miraflores by myself. We meet at a bar that's not far from the turnoff to Canencia, and the truth comes out: between the flats and the vacations, not many people made it up to Miraflores. Luckily, David does make it up - the first time we've had a chance to chat since he got back from the Alps - and with more people taking part these days, the atmosphere is a little lighter.
And on the way back, I pull harder. I pass a bunch of the guys in the club (though I get buried by Angelito and a couple of others near El Goloso) and I refuse to give up. I am not going to get left behind any more.
Let me amend that. Learn to harness your anger and your frustration, and you'll be pleasantly surprised by how far it can take you.
Eight-twenty: six people. Eight-thirty: closer to twenty-five. Everyone's started to roll back after holidays, including some (but not all) of the hammerheads. My instructions: Draft, draft, draft. I'm not sure how to handle this. The easiest option is to draft someone who rides with Group C, but I know that I'm going to be bored as hell if I keep doing that. I want to ride faster, push myself harder, but it looks like anyone who would have ridden with Group B hasn't bothered to show up. Well, not totally. Edu's here. Alberto's here, too, but Alfredo isn't, and Alberto, unaccompanied, will usually go pretty fast.
"We going in groups?" I ask Pepe el Presi.
"I think we're gonna go in one group," he says.
This is a bit of a misnomer. There's never one group; there's always a system of pairings and sub-groups and cross-hatched matrices of who rides with who and who won't go with someone special, so I've just learned to try to go as fast as I can and see who I end up with. Especially on days like this. Most days, getting everyone back on their bikes and in gear is an easy enough task. Days like this, when it's hot and a considerable people have rolled in at the last minute (probably because they've just rolled out of bed), it's like herding cats. Bit by bit, we trickle out of the Plaza, trying not to skid out on the bed of sand the road workers have laid down as they repave the street that leads to Bravo Murillo.
I get irritated more than I get angry. I consider myself a moderately rational person: I'm far from being the living embodiment of Zen, but I'm a long way from being the Tasmanian Devil. But I'm not inhuman. I dislike being blown off, being ignored tends to rub me the wrong way, and if I've gone to the expense and trouble of joining a club, I expect to be included, not left to fend for myself.
And it happens again. For reasons I don't totally understand, I always tend to get separated from the group in the three kilometres between the bike lane/M607 split and the Autonomous University. It never ceases to piss me off, but because I don't really know what I'm doing to get left behind. And it happens again today, but this time, with an added twist: Everybody is getting flats. Everybody. The main culprit: thistles. Road maintenance workers in Spain don't use lawn mowers; they use weed-whackers. So the dead vegetation that blows onto the shoulders of the road and the bike lane tends to be sliced and diced into various pieces, rather than shredded so small that the resulting detrius can't cause problems. The thistle heads have given up their thorns, which are too small to see from the seat of a bike that's going 32 km/h. First it's Zurdo. Then Ángelito. Then Eva. Then Eva's dad. Then Agnes, the new woman who's joined us. Paul. Sebastià. In total, over a dozen people end up flatting out, which is a bitch for Raúl, who's driving the club car, but kind of a bonus for me, since it takes out the fastest riders.
But I still get separated. I get to the Autónoma, and all I see are heads disappearing as the bike lane dips under the turnoff to Alcobendas. I lay it on to get in and out of the tunnel, but they're going over the bridge by the army base.
I am not getting left behind today.
I don't know where the thought comes from. It's not even a particularly angry thought: it's just a matter-of-fact statement, like it's hot out or Alberto's wearing white shorts again.
I am not getting left behind today.
They've spent four months leaving me behind. Half of them just got back from holidays, which means that they can't keep the rhythm up forever.
I am not getting left behind today.
I come off the bridge by the army base knotted up in a gorilla tuck. Six hundred metres ahead, I can see them head up the hill.
I am not getting left behind today.
And then I start getting angry. Nadie te regala nada en el ciclismo, Pedro Delgado never tires of saying, and you know what? If no one's going to give me any gifts, I'm gonna start taking my due. I'm gonna start stealing what no one is willing to give. And if I blow up, so what? I just hang back and go with Group C.
I can see Alberto's white shorts ahead. I can see heads bobbing; and, most importantly, I can see heads start to bow down. Heads that start to fall are a sure sign that you have to attack, even more than a line of cyclists that get drawn out. In we go.
You bastards are not going to drop me any more.
Three or four mountain bikers are hanging off the rear wheels of our bunch. (A short aside: I realize it's a bike path, but can someone please explain why a man would pay two thousand Euros for a double-suspension mountain bike and never take it off asphalt?) I worm my way up through the group, the mountain bikers eventually veer off at Colmenar Viejo, and I hang on with most of the group until the turnoff to the M325 towards San Pedro.
"How long have you been doing this?" says Mario, who I've seen with the group but who I wouldn't have been fast enough to keep up with three months ago. (Mario is easily identifiable by his Barbie-pink Kaiku culottes, which can be seen by motorists a kilometre away.) One year. Well, less than a year. What do we consider "doing this?" Do I count the time from when I joined the Chamartín? From the day Ellie showed up at Ciclowork, her deep blue carbon frame glowing in the afternoon sunlight and Susanna kept grinning and saying, "Go ahead! Touch her! She's all yours!", and I spent the afternoon hugging her, watching the ascent up l'Anglirú in the 2008 Vuelta, cheering on Alberto Contador and wondering what in God's name I'd gotten myself into by buying an expensive road bike. I guess the easy answer is that no matter how long I've been doing this, I haven't probably been doing it long enough. But after twenty-six years of just thinking about it, I finally did do it. So I guess I don't know what the correct answer is.
We don't exactly fly up the west side of San Pedro, but we work it hard enough that the descent off the peak down to Guadalix is a treat. I feel good going down, too. I corner more aggressively and go down far faster than I would attempt to do if I were on my own, especially because I'm more confident about using all of the pavement and all of the road at my disposal.
Alberto, Carlos and a bunch of other are hanging out at the fountain that lies within the Guadalix town limits. We chat, we wait for the others, and when about twenty of us have gathered, we set off again - Edu and I going directly towards Miraflores, the rest (including Mario, who said he wasn't sure he was going to do the extension) head up to Bustarviejo.
Edu, having just come back from holidays, isn't up to a lot of hammering, so I head up to Miraflores by myself. We meet at a bar that's not far from the turnoff to Canencia, and the truth comes out: between the flats and the vacations, not many people made it up to Miraflores. Luckily, David does make it up - the first time we've had a chance to chat since he got back from the Alps - and with more people taking part these days, the atmosphere is a little lighter.
And on the way back, I pull harder. I pass a bunch of the guys in the club (though I get buried by Angelito and a couple of others near El Goloso) and I refuse to give up. I am not going to get left behind any more.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
99 Things I Want to Do Now That the Season is Effectively Over
1. Try to sleep in on Saturday mornings.
2. Do more Pilates.
3. Start working again and make money.
4. Get my nails done (and try to get the chain grease out from my cuticles.)
5. Get the triple chain ring back on Ruby in time for cyclocross season.
6. Wash the floors.
7. Go out for paella.
8. Go sit on a beach somewhere for a week.
9. Find a boyfriend.
10. Or find someone I can have a regular flirtation with.
11. Start planning trip back to Canada at Christmas.
12. Get rid of any other clothing that's bigger than a size 40.
13. Not look at either Coca-Cola or Aquarius for at least four months.
14. Take a cooking class.
15. Not look at any PowerBar products until at least March.
16. Take a trip up to Rascafría and actually *try* some of the restaurants I've always ridden by but never actually gotten into
17. Get a nice haircut without having to worry about what a helmet is going to do to it.
18. Spend afternoons in September watching *others* kill themselves in the Vuelta.
19. Buy a nice pair of heels.
20. Buy a form-fitting Lycra garment that doesn't have either a pad or three back pockets.
21. Go out for Mexican food.
22. Think about having a nice glass of wine (even though I probably won't actually do it).
23. Take a stretching class and get eight months' worth of kinks out of my back.
24. Wear makeup.
25. Join a gym and get more strength into my legs.
26. Join a gym and spend time flirting.
27. Escape for a weekend and spend the entire time sightseeing, reading books and soaking in the tub.
28. Work on the "Chicas por Chamartín" women's cycling project.
29. Plan the 2010 season with Yago.
30. Make a list of races that I could take part in, then train to get my speed up.
31. Take an endurance swimming class.
32. Go to Pontevedra next weekend to visit Scott and Luis.
33. Go back to using the handlebars of the bikes as a place to dry socks.
34. Not feel guilty about being up after 11.30 at night.
35. Experiment with more gluten-free recipes.
36. Take a language course.
37. Exfoliate vigorously every day to get rid of farmer's tan.
38. Read more.
39. Find a different Saturday group to go out with.
40. Learn how to make my own nut butters. I'm getting sick of peanut butter.
41. Take a fun dance class. Bollywood or something totally impractical like that.
42. Eat gorgonzola without feeling guilty.
43. Eat Mexican food without feeling guilty.
44. Eat Thai food without feeling guilty.
45. Put croutons and Caesar salad dressing on my salad without feeling guilty.
46. Start looking for a bigger apartment.
47. Catch and strangle the SOB who keeps taking my ESL ads down in the Central Library.
48. Listen to my iPod for the sheer hell of it and not because it's the only thing that keeps my brain quiet during training.
49. Watch "Lawrence of Arabia."
50. Plan and offer an English course for actors.
51. Get around to planting that window box that I bought with Kinga in May.
52. Tell that annoying guy from Illescas that I met when I was out with Kirsty last year that there's no way I'm, ahem, "inviting him over to dinner" again because I know damn well he's got a girlfriend.
53. Buy a new sofa.
54. Buy a new fridge.
55. Buy some nice linen!
56. Stay at 62 kg.
57. No, wait. Lose another 4 kg.
58. Watch all of Billy Wilder's movies.
59. Get my eyebrows waxed properly.
60. Start getting the paperwork together to apply for Spanish citizenship. (I can't do it until 2012 but might as well start sooner than later.)
61. Take singing lessons.
62. Sell the rest of my flamenco gear if I'm not going to use it.
63. Ascertain if a certain someone is gay, married or just not interested.
64. Flirt more with a certain other someone.
65. Flirt more. Period.
66. Get the chemicals and the blacks that I'd need to be able to develop black and white negatives in my bathroom.
67. Go to Girona to visit Josep and Delors and la Avià.
68. Go out somewhere in the country and do nothing except lay on my back and stare at the sky for a whole afternoon.
69. Go hiking in Navarra when the leaves start to turn.
70. Find a cycling mentor.
71. Meet up with The Oik "by chance", wearing something tight and sexy, and let him know just what he missed out on.
72. Fix all of those broken bead necklaces that are sitting in a Ziploc bag in my closet.
73. Get my Chanel earrings fixed. It's only been 17 years....
74. Start seriously looking at (and saving for) a tri-TT bike for 2010.
75. Go to a football game.
76. Have Tora, Des and Kinga over for dinner now that I have a dining room table.
77. Get a flat-screen TV.
78. Go hiking in the Sierra Nevada.
79. Take a rock climbing course.
80. Have breakfast in bed at least once a month.
81. Eat more chocolate.
82. Buy a better printer!
83. Go to a gig. Any gig.
84. Learn how to make paella.
85. Do a "matanza" with the girls and make my own chorizo.
86. Do "calçots" with the girls in Valls in January.
87. Learn how to make my own sushi.
88. Start saving to buy a flat.
89. Pay off my credit card debt.
90. Go visit museums, like the Sorolla or the Navy Museum, that I walk past all the time, but never go into.
91. Take the AVE somewhere.
92. Finish reading "Paris, 1919".
93. Have a bocadillo de calamares.
94. Borrow Tora and Des's drill and finally put up that knife magnet I bought last spring.
95. Get caught up on correspondence.
96. Give Ellie a damn good cleaning (including cleaning the chain.)
97. Fix my Waterman pens so that I can use them again.
98. File all of the photocopies that are left over!
99. Choose which of these things I would honestly, truly do, if I had the time and money!
2. Do more Pilates.
3. Start working again and make money.
4. Get my nails done (and try to get the chain grease out from my cuticles.)
5. Get the triple chain ring back on Ruby in time for cyclocross season.
6. Wash the floors.
7. Go out for paella.
8. Go sit on a beach somewhere for a week.
9. Find a boyfriend.
10. Or find someone I can have a regular flirtation with.
11. Start planning trip back to Canada at Christmas.
12. Get rid of any other clothing that's bigger than a size 40.
13. Not look at either Coca-Cola or Aquarius for at least four months.
14. Take a cooking class.
15. Not look at any PowerBar products until at least March.
16. Take a trip up to Rascafría and actually *try* some of the restaurants I've always ridden by but never actually gotten into
17. Get a nice haircut without having to worry about what a helmet is going to do to it.
18. Spend afternoons in September watching *others* kill themselves in the Vuelta.
19. Buy a nice pair of heels.
20. Buy a form-fitting Lycra garment that doesn't have either a pad or three back pockets.
21. Go out for Mexican food.
22. Think about having a nice glass of wine (even though I probably won't actually do it).
23. Take a stretching class and get eight months' worth of kinks out of my back.
24. Wear makeup.
25. Join a gym and get more strength into my legs.
26. Join a gym and spend time flirting.
27. Escape for a weekend and spend the entire time sightseeing, reading books and soaking in the tub.
28. Work on the "Chicas por Chamartín" women's cycling project.
29. Plan the 2010 season with Yago.
30. Make a list of races that I could take part in, then train to get my speed up.
31. Take an endurance swimming class.
32. Go to Pontevedra next weekend to visit Scott and Luis.
33. Go back to using the handlebars of the bikes as a place to dry socks.
34. Not feel guilty about being up after 11.30 at night.
35. Experiment with more gluten-free recipes.
36. Take a language course.
37. Exfoliate vigorously every day to get rid of farmer's tan.
38. Read more.
39. Find a different Saturday group to go out with.
40. Learn how to make my own nut butters. I'm getting sick of peanut butter.
41. Take a fun dance class. Bollywood or something totally impractical like that.
42. Eat gorgonzola without feeling guilty.
43. Eat Mexican food without feeling guilty.
44. Eat Thai food without feeling guilty.
45. Put croutons and Caesar salad dressing on my salad without feeling guilty.
46. Start looking for a bigger apartment.
47. Catch and strangle the SOB who keeps taking my ESL ads down in the Central Library.
48. Listen to my iPod for the sheer hell of it and not because it's the only thing that keeps my brain quiet during training.
49. Watch "Lawrence of Arabia."
50. Plan and offer an English course for actors.
51. Get around to planting that window box that I bought with Kinga in May.
52. Tell that annoying guy from Illescas that I met when I was out with Kirsty last year that there's no way I'm, ahem, "inviting him over to dinner" again because I know damn well he's got a girlfriend.
53. Buy a new sofa.
54. Buy a new fridge.
55. Buy some nice linen!
56. Stay at 62 kg.
57. No, wait. Lose another 4 kg.
58. Watch all of Billy Wilder's movies.
59. Get my eyebrows waxed properly.
60. Start getting the paperwork together to apply for Spanish citizenship. (I can't do it until 2012 but might as well start sooner than later.)
61. Take singing lessons.
62. Sell the rest of my flamenco gear if I'm not going to use it.
63. Ascertain if a certain someone is gay, married or just not interested.
64. Flirt more with a certain other someone.
65. Flirt more. Period.
66. Get the chemicals and the blacks that I'd need to be able to develop black and white negatives in my bathroom.
67. Go to Girona to visit Josep and Delors and la Avià.
68. Go out somewhere in the country and do nothing except lay on my back and stare at the sky for a whole afternoon.
69. Go hiking in Navarra when the leaves start to turn.
70. Find a cycling mentor.
71. Meet up with The Oik "by chance", wearing something tight and sexy, and let him know just what he missed out on.
72. Fix all of those broken bead necklaces that are sitting in a Ziploc bag in my closet.
73. Get my Chanel earrings fixed. It's only been 17 years....
74. Start seriously looking at (and saving for) a tri-TT bike for 2010.
75. Go to a football game.
76. Have Tora, Des and Kinga over for dinner now that I have a dining room table.
77. Get a flat-screen TV.
78. Go hiking in the Sierra Nevada.
79. Take a rock climbing course.
80. Have breakfast in bed at least once a month.
81. Eat more chocolate.
82. Buy a better printer!
83. Go to a gig. Any gig.
84. Learn how to make paella.
85. Do a "matanza" with the girls and make my own chorizo.
86. Do "calçots" with the girls in Valls in January.
87. Learn how to make my own sushi.
88. Start saving to buy a flat.
89. Pay off my credit card debt.
90. Go visit museums, like the Sorolla or the Navy Museum, that I walk past all the time, but never go into.
91. Take the AVE somewhere.
92. Finish reading "Paris, 1919".
93. Have a bocadillo de calamares.
94. Borrow Tora and Des's drill and finally put up that knife magnet I bought last spring.
95. Get caught up on correspondence.
96. Give Ellie a damn good cleaning (including cleaning the chain.)
97. Fix my Waterman pens so that I can use them again.
98. File all of the photocopies that are left over!
99. Choose which of these things I would honestly, truly do, if I had the time and money!
Friday, August 14, 2009
Hello?
In this month's CICLISMO A FONDO, Joaquím Rodríguez, almost-formerly of Caisse d'Épargne, writes of the declining tradition of cyclists saying hello to each other on the roads. Time was, he says, that it was just considered normal to greet anybody you came across because the mere fact that you were meeting someone on a bike meant that you belonged to an instant kind of fellowship - the Fellowship of the Chainring, as it were. The tradition, however, seems to have been dying out, to the point where saluting someone on the roads is more likely to get you a strange look than a hello back.
Ignoring someone who says hello to you is something I've never understood. Obviously, if we're talking about blowing someone off because said person slept with your wife or sank your business, then that's understandable, to a certain extent. I'm talking about just everyday saying hello to someone - or even just a nod of the head or a flick of the chin to acknowlege that the other person, you know, like, EXISTS.
Maybe it has to do with being from a small town, coming from a place where the failure to say hello to someone would be common knowledge amongst everybody in the town within forty-eight hours. (If you think I'm exaggerating, you're probably from a place that has a population greater than ten thousand people, and doesn't have a network of secretaries, bank tellers and supermarket cashiers whose knowledge of the townfolk puts the CIA to shame.) Maybe it's because my parents were raised in the 40s and 50s, where people tended to be far more aware of their manners. Maybe it just comes from being Canadian. But damn, the number of times that I've said hello to people and just not gotten anything back makes me wonder where Spaniards get that reputation for being friendly. Outgoing, yes. But friendly.......?
So I decided to conduct a little experiment.
ººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
Tuesday's workout was pretty straightforward - two and a half hours of not particularly strenuous riding. I decided to head down to the Casa de Campo at mid-morning, thinking that there would be a fairly sizeable number of subject to observe. And here's what I've found. Note that my observations are subject to highly questionable methods, and it wasn't like I could write down what I saw while I was riding (aside from never learning to ride no-hands, it would have messed up my heart rate):
Chicks never say hello. Yes, I know it is politically incorrect to call a female a "chick" (unless one happens to be Selene Yeager, The Fit Chick from BICYCLING Magazine - see link on the right.) But there are female cyclists and there are Chicks, and the distinction can be made by the choice of top and riding companions. Is she wearing a tank top that allows you to see right down to the elastic of her undies as she bends over the handlebars? She's a Chick. Is she wearing makeup in 95ºF heat in August? She's a Chick. Is she, all of five-four feet tall, riding a Decathlon Rockrider with a 57" frame and turquoise knobbies? She, poor thing, is a Chick with a Giant of a Boyfriend - and either or both of them is too cheap to invest in a decent bike for her (or one that is small enough to let her touch the pedals.) Not that there's anything wrong with being a Chick. Some females love to embrace, trot out, show off their inner Chick. More power to them. But if said female is so unstable and so unsure on that bicycle that she can't stop staring at the ground directly in front of her (or looking over her shoulder at the boyfriend riding behind and yelling inane comments), you might as well save your breath and start talking to the prostitutes or the recycling bins that line the roads of the Casa de Campo.
Guys with Chicks never say hello. Probably because your bike is nicer than theirs are, and the Chick in question would probably flagellate him with the bike chain.
Old-Timers on Aluminum Frames will sometimes say hello unless they're dressed in yellow Saunier Duval kit, which seems to beam some kind of radiation into their retinas and make them stare at you, the Female Cyclist, with a look that lies somewhere between Hangdog and Oh God Pass Me The Visine.
Guys on Really Expensive Bikes will never say hello, especially if they're riding tri bikes. This one has always made me curious, simply because almost every male cyclist I know has some kind of sixth sense that permits him to distinguish between carbon, aluminum and steel frames at a distance of one hundred metres. It's like watching a bunch of guys yabber on about cars, but with far fewer components to talk about (Carrie Bradshaw and her Manolos have absolutely NOTHING on a gearhead in a bike shop.) So why doesn't this extend to women? Perhaps they think that most women who ride high-end bikes don't know their Campys from their Shimanos, or use Speedplay pedals because they like the colors better. Who knows. But I've had so many guys on high-end rides blow by me without so much as a by-your-leave that any time I see a dude on a bike that's worth more than mine -- ESPECIALLY if he's wearing white cycling clothing -- I just think "asshole" and move on.
Guys from your own club will never say hello unless they're over sixty, have broken chains, or are from other countries. I try not to spend too much time thinking about this one.
Mountain bikers will never say hello. Backhanded snobbery, methinks. They don't like roadies and many roadies aren't exactly wild about fat-tire types (especially the ones who carry 30L backpacks, stuffed to the breaking point).
Guys wearing hockey helmets (oooooooooh, I WISH I were making that up) will say hello. And tell you their life story. And ask you a ton of questions about your bike. And not listen to the answers and ask you the same question over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then tell you about all of the meds that they need to take to make the voices in their heads go away. Guys riding bikes and wearing hockey helmets, ladies, are the reason why your bike comes equipped with a 50x11 configuration - to help you give life to your inner Fabian Cancellara and get the f*** away ASAP.
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Like I said, these are just observations which were conducted without any kind of scientific protocol. At some point, I may get inspired and follow my buddy Lysander Cross' lead and invest in a helmet-cam to back up my observations. But for the time being, I think I'll run the risk of being considered an antisocial little snob - unless I happen to cross paths with Purito Rodríguez, in which case I expect a hearty "hello", the likes of which I've never seen before.
Ignoring someone who says hello to you is something I've never understood. Obviously, if we're talking about blowing someone off because said person slept with your wife or sank your business, then that's understandable, to a certain extent. I'm talking about just everyday saying hello to someone - or even just a nod of the head or a flick of the chin to acknowlege that the other person, you know, like, EXISTS.
Maybe it has to do with being from a small town, coming from a place where the failure to say hello to someone would be common knowledge amongst everybody in the town within forty-eight hours. (If you think I'm exaggerating, you're probably from a place that has a population greater than ten thousand people, and doesn't have a network of secretaries, bank tellers and supermarket cashiers whose knowledge of the townfolk puts the CIA to shame.) Maybe it's because my parents were raised in the 40s and 50s, where people tended to be far more aware of their manners. Maybe it just comes from being Canadian. But damn, the number of times that I've said hello to people and just not gotten anything back makes me wonder where Spaniards get that reputation for being friendly. Outgoing, yes. But friendly.......?
So I decided to conduct a little experiment.
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Tuesday's workout was pretty straightforward - two and a half hours of not particularly strenuous riding. I decided to head down to the Casa de Campo at mid-morning, thinking that there would be a fairly sizeable number of subject to observe. And here's what I've found. Note that my observations are subject to highly questionable methods, and it wasn't like I could write down what I saw while I was riding (aside from never learning to ride no-hands, it would have messed up my heart rate):
Chicks never say hello. Yes, I know it is politically incorrect to call a female a "chick" (unless one happens to be Selene Yeager, The Fit Chick from BICYCLING Magazine - see link on the right.) But there are female cyclists and there are Chicks, and the distinction can be made by the choice of top and riding companions. Is she wearing a tank top that allows you to see right down to the elastic of her undies as she bends over the handlebars? She's a Chick. Is she wearing makeup in 95ºF heat in August? She's a Chick. Is she, all of five-four feet tall, riding a Decathlon Rockrider with a 57" frame and turquoise knobbies? She, poor thing, is a Chick with a Giant of a Boyfriend - and either or both of them is too cheap to invest in a decent bike for her (or one that is small enough to let her touch the pedals.) Not that there's anything wrong with being a Chick. Some females love to embrace, trot out, show off their inner Chick. More power to them. But if said female is so unstable and so unsure on that bicycle that she can't stop staring at the ground directly in front of her (or looking over her shoulder at the boyfriend riding behind and yelling inane comments), you might as well save your breath and start talking to the prostitutes or the recycling bins that line the roads of the Casa de Campo.
Guys with Chicks never say hello. Probably because your bike is nicer than theirs are, and the Chick in question would probably flagellate him with the bike chain.
Old-Timers on Aluminum Frames will sometimes say hello unless they're dressed in yellow Saunier Duval kit, which seems to beam some kind of radiation into their retinas and make them stare at you, the Female Cyclist, with a look that lies somewhere between Hangdog and Oh God Pass Me The Visine.
Guys on Really Expensive Bikes will never say hello, especially if they're riding tri bikes. This one has always made me curious, simply because almost every male cyclist I know has some kind of sixth sense that permits him to distinguish between carbon, aluminum and steel frames at a distance of one hundred metres. It's like watching a bunch of guys yabber on about cars, but with far fewer components to talk about (Carrie Bradshaw and her Manolos have absolutely NOTHING on a gearhead in a bike shop.) So why doesn't this extend to women? Perhaps they think that most women who ride high-end bikes don't know their Campys from their Shimanos, or use Speedplay pedals because they like the colors better. Who knows. But I've had so many guys on high-end rides blow by me without so much as a by-your-leave that any time I see a dude on a bike that's worth more than mine -- ESPECIALLY if he's wearing white cycling clothing -- I just think "asshole" and move on.
Guys from your own club will never say hello unless they're over sixty, have broken chains, or are from other countries. I try not to spend too much time thinking about this one.
Mountain bikers will never say hello. Backhanded snobbery, methinks. They don't like roadies and many roadies aren't exactly wild about fat-tire types (especially the ones who carry 30L backpacks, stuffed to the breaking point).
Guys wearing hockey helmets (oooooooooh, I WISH I were making that up) will say hello. And tell you their life story. And ask you a ton of questions about your bike. And not listen to the answers and ask you the same question over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then tell you about all of the meds that they need to take to make the voices in their heads go away. Guys riding bikes and wearing hockey helmets, ladies, are the reason why your bike comes equipped with a 50x11 configuration - to help you give life to your inner Fabian Cancellara and get the f*** away ASAP.
ººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
Like I said, these are just observations which were conducted without any kind of scientific protocol. At some point, I may get inspired and follow my buddy Lysander Cross' lead and invest in a helmet-cam to back up my observations. But for the time being, I think I'll run the risk of being considered an antisocial little snob - unless I happen to cross paths with Purito Rodríguez, in which case I expect a hearty "hello", the likes of which I've never seen before.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Keep an eye out for this guy.
Funny thing about cycling - people tend to live so much in the present of racing that they don't tend to talk about The Next Big Thing as much as they do in other sports.
Well, here's the guy who gets my vote: Xavier Tondo of Andalucia-Cajasur. After having a season of "almosts" since April - almost won the Vuelta a Andalucia (came in second by a mere eight seconds) this spring and almost won the Vuelta a Burgos yesterday (if Valverde had exploded fifteen seconds earlier, we wouldn't be talking about second place). He's aggressive, explosive, tenacious, and, by all accounts I've read, a really sweet guy.
http://www.e-bici.com/index.php?page=24&liar=418&p=-1
The look on Alejandro Valverde's face says it all....he nearly got killed, and doesn't he know it. (Interesting that the media keeps refering to him as "young Tondo" - I think he's actually two or three years older than Valverde.)
I'd put €5 on him making the Top 5 in the Vuelta a España this year, and raise it to €10 for him making the Top 3 if Valverde explodes or pulls out.
One to watch!
Well, here's the guy who gets my vote: Xavier Tondo of Andalucia-Cajasur. After having a season of "almosts" since April - almost won the Vuelta a Andalucia (came in second by a mere eight seconds) this spring and almost won the Vuelta a Burgos yesterday (if Valverde had exploded fifteen seconds earlier, we wouldn't be talking about second place). He's aggressive, explosive, tenacious, and, by all accounts I've read, a really sweet guy.
http://www.e-bici.com/index.php?page=24&liar=418&p=-1
The look on Alejandro Valverde's face says it all....he nearly got killed, and doesn't he know it. (Interesting that the media keeps refering to him as "young Tondo" - I think he's actually two or three years older than Valverde.)
I'd put €5 on him making the Top 5 in the Vuelta a España this year, and raise it to €10 for him making the Top 3 if Valverde explodes or pulls out.
One to watch!
Stormy weather
As I write this, it's lunchtime. The weather looks as if it's going to take a turn for the worst. Thunderheads started building in the Sierra as we came back in from Manzanares and by the time we hit Tres Cantos, there were definite anvil-heads hovering over the peaks of Yelmo and La Maliciosa.
"Hurry up," yelled Álvaro. "Close the gap. Don't let them get away from you." And I thought, Why not? It's going to be inevitable anyway. I will push and push and I will still end up alone. But I didn't. I closed the gap. For ten klicks, I stayed with Álvaro and Alfonso and Ángel and Julio and A#2, who made a point of not talking to me all day. (It took me about five seconds to catch onto this; I made sure that it was mutual.)
And now I'm home, I've eaten lunch (ramen noodles and cherry tomatoes and a Diet Pepsi - whoo-freaking-hoo) and I'm watching the re-broadcast of the climb up Mont Ventoux from this year's Tour. I should get the laundry off the line; the weather has been threatening to explode for the last fifteen hours, but nothing's happening yet. Lemme see the lightning and the thunder first. Then I'll start to worry.
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7:37 AM: Staring at the computer screen, re-reading Yago's instructions. Basically, climb if you've got the legs; if not, do whatever you want. Like SuperLopez would say, es lo que mi cuerpo me pide. It's what my body wants. I don't know what my body wants.
My brain, on the other hand, would prefer not to go alone today: my brain would like a little bit of company rather than beat the hell out of myself by myself without any kind of backup. I'm getting TIRED of being alone, damn it. I eat alone, I sleep alone, I mostly work alone, I clean the house alone, I earn something resembling a wage alone, I almost always train alone, I go to the cinema alone, and since practically everyone's on holidays until the first week of September, I'm pretty much in Madrid alone. I would really prefer to have one day where I have company.
Which means, naturally, that with the reduced number of chamartinistas who will show up today we're only going to have two groups: Go like Hell and Take it Easy. I'd prefer not to take it easy, but if I'm to have company and not go by myself, then I don't have much of a choice.
The streets of Madrid are pretty much deserted at 8AM. There isn't even the usual assortment of teenagers and drunks and drunk teenagers spilling out of the bars, their hands full of toast and beers. Seventeen minutes up. I get there thirteen minutes before we're due to take off. Félix, Zurdo, Alfredo and Alberto are there. I get a cursory hello. (Has a certain someone read this blog? Did he misunderstand what I wrote? Or is he just hung over and in a bad mood? Who the hell cares?) I go to the bathroom. One quick pee (making sure to leave the seat down - I wonder if the guys ever wonder to themselves why the seat's never up after I leave), wash my hands, go outside. Stretch. Tomás shows up, as does Pepe el Presidente and a handful of other people.
I don't try to make conversation. Félix does, asking me how the preparations are going for the Delgado. I'm friendly, open. I just don't feel like being the stupid bouncy happy guiri today. Unlike most of these guys - especially those who were invited to come along on Thursday and didn't even have the manners to respond - I've already put 300 km into my legs this week. I've stopped counting how many times my gams have come back from the dead since the beginning of June. I'm worn out, emotionally and physically. I'm tired, lonely and working very hard trying not to let resentment and fear and anger choke me in the process, just praying that I make it past next Sunday without imploding.
We take off at 8:30. The ride up to Fuencarral is uneventful. The ride down and through Tres Olivos is incident-free. Not long after we hit the bike lane on the M607, a couple of the strongest riders take off. The attacks have begun. Let 'em go. There's precious little sense, on a day like today, trying to keep up with them when all it's going to do is make me even more tired and even more resentful.
Our little pelotón gets whittled down to seven of the most pleasant people in the group, including Tomás with his repertoire of corny jokes about the Guardia Civil. We're supposed to ride up to Mataelpino (which one of the other English speakers refers to as Kill the Pine Tree) and El Boalo but we cut off early and head directly to Manzanares.
Uneventful coffee in Manzanares. The groups divides itself among three different restaurants - quite a change from the last time we were all up here, when forty of us took over one of the terrazas and ran them out of tortilla and Aquarius. No one's really talking. A couple of people make the effort to be sociable, but then it occurs to me that maybe we're just all starting to get a little sick of each other.
I was supposed to treat Tomás to coffee, but he pays, saying that he needs to break a fifty-Euro bill. No one's making much of a move to get back. Finally, a couple of restless souls start picking up their bikes and start shuffling off towards the highway.
In a way, I don't want to go back with the main bunch; I'd just as soon hang back and go back on my own, wait to let the others catch up to me, but Álvaro's having none of it. Charles says that Álvaro rides with some pretty big names, plus he and I basically do the same job, and he's a helpful and friendly guy, so I'm more likely to pay attention to what he says than I am to others in the group. I don't ever really get up and inside the grupetta, but I do hang on enough to the back that by the time we turn onto the M609, I'm going fairly well.
And that's when the hammer gets dropped. Between the turnoff to Manzanares and Colmenar, there's nothing but bike lane, and the leaders start going like hell. Álvaro points at the leaders and shakes his finger disapprovingly at the same time: "You be careful with these guys on the way back. They can ride really aggressively on the way home." He gets no arguments out of me: I've seen how those guys are capable of plowing down unsuspecting cyclists.
But at the same time, it pisses me off to no end that I'm still not capable of hanging on with them. I know that it may be a lot to ask - there are some guys who have been riding for a number of years - but I also know that that group contains riders who have only been on their bikes for three or four years, tops. I train, I lost weight, and I'm still too damn slow to pose any kind of serious threat. Yet.
It pisses me off for about twenty kilometres. And for the final thirteen kilometres, I make up my mind: Any time I have any doubts about the need to get faster, I will remember this day and remind myself of how badly I would like not only to keep up with these guys, but unashamedly rip their goddamn legs off. I would like to have one day where I stick it to those mothers so hard that their knees squeak and their tongues scrape the ground. I'm not saying that it would always happen, but at least it'd make a nice change.
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The storm still has yet to hit. The guys at the Café Moderno haven't even opened the joint yet, and the Mexican restaurant only has one line of tables out. The square is quiet, for once. I bet it's raining like hell in the Sierra. Good. Let it happen now and get it out of its system, so that next weekend I can do the Pedro Delgado, get it the hell over with, and get my life back in order.
Things probably will not change. I'll probably still get ignored by certain people in the Chamartín I thought I was more friendly with; my English-speaking non-cycling friends who live here in Madrid -- how do I say this? -- will go on with their lives and the fact that I'm about to do one of the toughest rides on the peninsula, a ride that scares the hell out of me, will pass unnoticed and unmentioned, and when they all come back from their holidays, I'll probably still be dealing with exhaustion and being broke and alone. But I asked for it. In the meantime, the priority this week is keeping my shit together. I can't afford to let things fall apart now.
"Hurry up," yelled Álvaro. "Close the gap. Don't let them get away from you." And I thought, Why not? It's going to be inevitable anyway. I will push and push and I will still end up alone. But I didn't. I closed the gap. For ten klicks, I stayed with Álvaro and Alfonso and Ángel and Julio and A#2, who made a point of not talking to me all day. (It took me about five seconds to catch onto this; I made sure that it was mutual.)
And now I'm home, I've eaten lunch (ramen noodles and cherry tomatoes and a Diet Pepsi - whoo-freaking-hoo) and I'm watching the re-broadcast of the climb up Mont Ventoux from this year's Tour. I should get the laundry off the line; the weather has been threatening to explode for the last fifteen hours, but nothing's happening yet. Lemme see the lightning and the thunder first. Then I'll start to worry.
ºººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
7:37 AM: Staring at the computer screen, re-reading Yago's instructions. Basically, climb if you've got the legs; if not, do whatever you want. Like SuperLopez would say, es lo que mi cuerpo me pide. It's what my body wants. I don't know what my body wants.
My brain, on the other hand, would prefer not to go alone today: my brain would like a little bit of company rather than beat the hell out of myself by myself without any kind of backup. I'm getting TIRED of being alone, damn it. I eat alone, I sleep alone, I mostly work alone, I clean the house alone, I earn something resembling a wage alone, I almost always train alone, I go to the cinema alone, and since practically everyone's on holidays until the first week of September, I'm pretty much in Madrid alone. I would really prefer to have one day where I have company.
Which means, naturally, that with the reduced number of chamartinistas who will show up today we're only going to have two groups: Go like Hell and Take it Easy. I'd prefer not to take it easy, but if I'm to have company and not go by myself, then I don't have much of a choice.
The streets of Madrid are pretty much deserted at 8AM. There isn't even the usual assortment of teenagers and drunks and drunk teenagers spilling out of the bars, their hands full of toast and beers. Seventeen minutes up. I get there thirteen minutes before we're due to take off. Félix, Zurdo, Alfredo and Alberto are there. I get a cursory hello. (Has a certain someone read this blog? Did he misunderstand what I wrote? Or is he just hung over and in a bad mood? Who the hell cares?) I go to the bathroom. One quick pee (making sure to leave the seat down - I wonder if the guys ever wonder to themselves why the seat's never up after I leave), wash my hands, go outside. Stretch. Tomás shows up, as does Pepe el Presidente and a handful of other people.
I don't try to make conversation. Félix does, asking me how the preparations are going for the Delgado. I'm friendly, open. I just don't feel like being the stupid bouncy happy guiri today. Unlike most of these guys - especially those who were invited to come along on Thursday and didn't even have the manners to respond - I've already put 300 km into my legs this week. I've stopped counting how many times my gams have come back from the dead since the beginning of June. I'm worn out, emotionally and physically. I'm tired, lonely and working very hard trying not to let resentment and fear and anger choke me in the process, just praying that I make it past next Sunday without imploding.
We take off at 8:30. The ride up to Fuencarral is uneventful. The ride down and through Tres Olivos is incident-free. Not long after we hit the bike lane on the M607, a couple of the strongest riders take off. The attacks have begun. Let 'em go. There's precious little sense, on a day like today, trying to keep up with them when all it's going to do is make me even more tired and even more resentful.
Our little pelotón gets whittled down to seven of the most pleasant people in the group, including Tomás with his repertoire of corny jokes about the Guardia Civil. We're supposed to ride up to Mataelpino (which one of the other English speakers refers to as Kill the Pine Tree) and El Boalo but we cut off early and head directly to Manzanares.
Uneventful coffee in Manzanares. The groups divides itself among three different restaurants - quite a change from the last time we were all up here, when forty of us took over one of the terrazas and ran them out of tortilla and Aquarius. No one's really talking. A couple of people make the effort to be sociable, but then it occurs to me that maybe we're just all starting to get a little sick of each other.
I was supposed to treat Tomás to coffee, but he pays, saying that he needs to break a fifty-Euro bill. No one's making much of a move to get back. Finally, a couple of restless souls start picking up their bikes and start shuffling off towards the highway.
In a way, I don't want to go back with the main bunch; I'd just as soon hang back and go back on my own, wait to let the others catch up to me, but Álvaro's having none of it. Charles says that Álvaro rides with some pretty big names, plus he and I basically do the same job, and he's a helpful and friendly guy, so I'm more likely to pay attention to what he says than I am to others in the group. I don't ever really get up and inside the grupetta, but I do hang on enough to the back that by the time we turn onto the M609, I'm going fairly well.
And that's when the hammer gets dropped. Between the turnoff to Manzanares and Colmenar, there's nothing but bike lane, and the leaders start going like hell. Álvaro points at the leaders and shakes his finger disapprovingly at the same time: "You be careful with these guys on the way back. They can ride really aggressively on the way home." He gets no arguments out of me: I've seen how those guys are capable of plowing down unsuspecting cyclists.
But at the same time, it pisses me off to no end that I'm still not capable of hanging on with them. I know that it may be a lot to ask - there are some guys who have been riding for a number of years - but I also know that that group contains riders who have only been on their bikes for three or four years, tops. I train, I lost weight, and I'm still too damn slow to pose any kind of serious threat. Yet.
It pisses me off for about twenty kilometres. And for the final thirteen kilometres, I make up my mind: Any time I have any doubts about the need to get faster, I will remember this day and remind myself of how badly I would like not only to keep up with these guys, but unashamedly rip their goddamn legs off. I would like to have one day where I stick it to those mothers so hard that their knees squeak and their tongues scrape the ground. I'm not saying that it would always happen, but at least it'd make a nice change.
ººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
The storm still has yet to hit. The guys at the Café Moderno haven't even opened the joint yet, and the Mexican restaurant only has one line of tables out. The square is quiet, for once. I bet it's raining like hell in the Sierra. Good. Let it happen now and get it out of its system, so that next weekend I can do the Pedro Delgado, get it the hell over with, and get my life back in order.
Things probably will not change. I'll probably still get ignored by certain people in the Chamartín I thought I was more friendly with; my English-speaking non-cycling friends who live here in Madrid -- how do I say this? -- will go on with their lives and the fact that I'm about to do one of the toughest rides on the peninsula, a ride that scares the hell out of me, will pass unnoticed and unmentioned, and when they all come back from their holidays, I'll probably still be dealing with exhaustion and being broke and alone. But I asked for it. In the meantime, the priority this week is keeping my shit together. I can't afford to let things fall apart now.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Final Vuelta Route Shaping Up...
Unipublic, the organizers of the Vuelta a España, have announced that the penultimate day of the Vuelta will be a ITT going around the city of Toledo. Good stuff; not only is Toledo easy to get in and out of (provided you don't have a car), it's completely well kitted-out for tourists and makes an easy day trip from Madrid.
Why Toledo again, if there was a stage finish there last year? This year is the 50th anniversary of Federico Bahamontes' Tour de France victory, and while Vuelta organizers haven't come out and said that the ITT is meant to pay homage to the Eagle of Toledo, it's worth noting that, instead of taking advantage of the highways around the city (of which there are not really that many), the route's going to go through a number of neighborhoods that lie outside of the city centre. (If I have time today I'll try to cobble together some kind of map, or see if the Toledo City Council will get one together.)
Hints: If you're going, for God's sake, don't drive. The route will go right by the train station (a trip on the high-speed AVE will get you to Toledo in about 35 minutes), going east through the Santa María de la Benquerencia neighborhood (probably following the N400 highway), then head south and back towards the city, going along the Tagus before heading back up to finish beside the Army Artillery Academy. Since the recently refurbished Toledo Youth Hostel sits right over the AVE station and right beside the Academy, THAT's the place you want to stay in if you want to be in the middle of the action. Bring a hat and tons of water - there's little or no shade along the route.
I'm not sure why the final TT route was posted before all of the other routes - maybe the organizers got the traffic permits sorted for that route before all of the others were firmed up. At any rate, it promises to make for a great day out of Madrid!
Why Toledo again, if there was a stage finish there last year? This year is the 50th anniversary of Federico Bahamontes' Tour de France victory, and while Vuelta organizers haven't come out and said that the ITT is meant to pay homage to the Eagle of Toledo, it's worth noting that, instead of taking advantage of the highways around the city (of which there are not really that many), the route's going to go through a number of neighborhoods that lie outside of the city centre. (If I have time today I'll try to cobble together some kind of map, or see if the Toledo City Council will get one together.)
Hints: If you're going, for God's sake, don't drive. The route will go right by the train station (a trip on the high-speed AVE will get you to Toledo in about 35 minutes), going east through the Santa María de la Benquerencia neighborhood (probably following the N400 highway), then head south and back towards the city, going along the Tagus before heading back up to finish beside the Army Artillery Academy. Since the recently refurbished Toledo Youth Hostel sits right over the AVE station and right beside the Academy, THAT's the place you want to stay in if you want to be in the middle of the action. Bring a hat and tons of water - there's little or no shade along the route.
I'm not sure why the final TT route was posted before all of the other routes - maybe the organizers got the traffic permits sorted for that route before all of the others were firmed up. At any rate, it promises to make for a great day out of Madrid!
Too good NOT to share!
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/web-comic-skewers-world-of-pro-cycling/?ref=sports
Lance Armstrong...the Tandy Man. God, that's better than Texas Toast. I thought he annoyed the hell out of me, but obviously I've got it easy compared to some.
The Jonathan Vaughters images are priceless, though.
Wait! "The Tandy Man Can...The Tandy Maaaaan Caaaaan!" Someone get Weird Al Yankovic on the phone!!
Lance Armstrong...the Tandy Man. God, that's better than Texas Toast. I thought he annoyed the hell out of me, but obviously I've got it easy compared to some.
The Jonathan Vaughters images are priceless, though.
Wait! "The Tandy Man Can...The Tandy Maaaaan Caaaaan!" Someone get Weird Al Yankovic on the phone!!
Monday, July 27, 2009
OK! OK! Permit me ONE last swipe for this year!
Subtitled: Why Lance Armstrong Never Ceases to Bug the Living Bejeezus out of Me: Can't Texans SPELL??
So Lance takes personal offense at Contador's declarations in the press yesterday that Contador doesn't think much of him as a human being, and Lance tweets (or whatever the hell you call it) back that "Hey, Alberto, there is no 'I' in team."
And all I can think of is....
a) Nice one, Texas Toast: Did you, along with the million subscribers, happen to read that little gem in the centre spread of the July issue of BICYCLING?
b) How many US Postal and Discovery riders would have been allowed to even get NEAR the podium, let alone score a Top 10 victory, while you were riding and winning? Hm. Why don't we ask guys like Hincapie, Vande Velde and Zabriskie, and get their feedback? I bet Zabriskie in particular, were he to drop the stoner-Zen act, would have some choice things to say.
c) Of COURSE there's no I. But it cannot have escaped your attention that 50% of the word "team" is made up of the letters "M·E".
Radio Shack, for the love of Pete. Lance? Michael Ball from Rock Racing on Line 2.
So Lance takes personal offense at Contador's declarations in the press yesterday that Contador doesn't think much of him as a human being, and Lance tweets (or whatever the hell you call it) back that "Hey, Alberto, there is no 'I' in team."
And all I can think of is....
a) Nice one, Texas Toast: Did you, along with the million subscribers, happen to read that little gem in the centre spread of the July issue of BICYCLING?
b) How many US Postal and Discovery riders would have been allowed to even get NEAR the podium, let alone score a Top 10 victory, while you were riding and winning? Hm. Why don't we ask guys like Hincapie, Vande Velde and Zabriskie, and get their feedback? I bet Zabriskie in particular, were he to drop the stoner-Zen act, would have some choice things to say.
c) Of COURSE there's no I. But it cannot have escaped your attention that 50% of the word "team" is made up of the letters "M·E".
Radio Shack, for the love of Pete. Lance? Michael Ball from Rock Racing on Line 2.
Going with the Flow
WARNING: This blog post, in particular, contains information and opinions about certain female bodily functions that is almost guaranteed to offend at least 50% of the population, especially those of the male persuasion. Yes, it's about THAT. If THAT offends you or does not provoke chuckles of sympathy you are hereby warned to STOP READING NOW. I MEAN NOW!
I have a medium Chamartín jersey and a small one. The small one is, effectively, toast after the fall I took in Tres Olivos last week. The medium isn't really all that medium, more like a North American small, but what it does have is three nice, big pockets that allow me to carry what I need for the day: wallet, cell phone, iPod, gel and food, packet of tissues. And a Tampax. The pockets are big enough that I can fit a regular (read: paper-wrapped...the girls will know what I mean...) Tampax in there, sideways, which stretches the jersey a little but usually secures it in place. All of us end up looking a little bit like backwards kangaroos with the quantity of stuff we can stuff into our jerseys, but it makes it a lot less cumbersome than a CamelBak.
From time to time, a dead (always unused, always green for Super) Tampax will mysteriously appear at the side of the bike path, especially up around the M30 bridge, and I always feel bad for its former owner. Dollars to donuts, the owner of that little green bullet of relief is going to have a hell of a shock when she needs to stop. She'll scootch into the bathroom, trying hard not to walk funny in order not to let on that anything's up (which is a lie unto itself -what normal woman bolts into a bathroom while trying to grip her butt and Kegel muscles, as if she were an Olympic speed walker?). She'll slam the door shut, turn the light on, unzip, pull down, sit down, be annoyed at the stain (or relieved at the lack thereof) and reach into a pocket, hoping to feel that reassuring polychemical crinkle of the plastic, only to come up empty-handed. Oh. No. And with cycling being such a male-dominated sport, it's not like you can stick your head out of the loo, glance at your sisters-in-arms with that specific look of panic on your face (while still trying to hide the rest of your body behind the bathroom door) and hiss, "Does anyone have....ONE?" No sir.
WARNING TO THE SENSITIVE: We are getting into the genuinely gross stuff now. If your sensibilities might still be at risk, stop reading and go watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAJf-hf1Zk
....or this, if the kids are around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHeGX0wqazs.
(Don't ask me why the Ting Tings made a Yo Gabba Gabba video, but it's strangely engaging.)
My sister-in-law used to call it "dropping a clot". It is NOT a pleasant feeling: it's the feeling of being out of control, of being held captive to something you didn't ask for and can't stop no matter how hard you try. Well, you can, obviously: that's why we have sanitary products. More insidious, however, is the gentle leak, the one that destroys jeans and expensive underwear, the one that gives no feeling to its existence until you notice that protein-based stickiness and that your undergarments aren't moving the way they normally do.
The one advantage of cycling is that culottes, which usually contain some kind of pad in the genital area, provide the perfect backup. Both men's and women's models are designed to absorb sweat (and whatever other inopportune body fluids may emerge), shocks and friction; so, gentlemen (if any of you are still reading by now), THAT is what it's like to use an Evax/Kotex. (And a Tampax? Well, if you've inserted it the right way and you haven't used on that's too absorbent, it shouldn't really feel like anything.) So if you have an accident when wearing a decent pair of cycling shorts, you're covered in the short-term. Nothing that a handful of salt and some stain remover can't take care of later.
Provided, of course, that the flow is, uh, NORMAL. And you can't control that.
I don't really notice anything until Colmenar Viejo. No gloppy burning sensations, no lower-back pain, nothing out of the ordinary. But I do feel the call of nature, which isn't surprising considering I refilled (and drank) two bottles of water before leaving Madrid. I decide to stop at the Miratoros restaurant in Soto del Real, get a quick coffee, eat a home-made PowerBar and then head off to do what's gotta be done - ride up to Miraflores, down to Guadalix, beat the hell out of San Pedro and get home before it gets too hot outside to even think. The guys in the Miratoros are pretty used to us making pit stops there. As long as you buy something, they don't care.
Coffee. Pay. Bathroom. Culottes down. Damn. Leakage. Reach behind.....
Uh-oh.
It's not there.
Left pocket: iPod, gel, two PowerBars. Middle pocket: wallet and house keys. Right pocket: phone.
Oh CRAP. What now??
And no, gents (if any of you are STILL reading), stuffing a handful of TP between your legs won't cut it. Why not? Go take a handful of TP and rub it against your lips...for the next three hours. You'll get the point.
Ergh.
Okay. Nothing to do but keep on keepin' on.
I blot whatever I can (which is actually a fair bit), pull up, wash my hands and head back out. Not much to do except go like hell and try to get home as soon as possible.
The worst part of accidents like this, however, isn't necessarily the stainage; it's the strange hypersensitivity about the flow that you get once you realize that the flow is underway. All of a sudden, you become convinced that EVERYBODY is aware of what's happening to you. Images of CARRIE start coming to mind (God, are those rain clouds over there??) You become convinced that every wild animal in the north end of the Comunidad -- if there are any left -- will be chasing your sorry ass because you smell like a canapé on wheels. And you're very thankful that you're out by yourself, because if ANY, A-NY of the guys in the club knew of this, you would never have anyone willing to go out with you, ever again ("We don't care if you bleed when you fall and take half your knee off, but....but...THIS??") It's like Grade Seven all over again, except that you don't have the comfort of the silly tampon ads on the back of Seventeen magazine, the pigtailed girl dressed in a white bikini waterskiing with a great huge grin on her face rather than sulking over the picnic basket on the beach. It's like being back in high school gym class and knowing who's been served with a visit from Aunt Flow, because she's taking forever in the bathroom stalls, and doesn't everyone know it, too.
I try beating it like hell up the Cuesta de los Pobres towards Miraflores, which means not going very fast because you've got to climb nearly 200m in less than ten kilometres. Ouch. I stop at the turnoff to Guadalix, try to choke down an energy gel, wash it down with some very hot water (the sun has been beating on the bidones for about three hours by now) and do some mental calculations: it's about fifteen minutes to Guadalix, through the town and up over San Pedro twenty-five minutes later, then go like hell and - ugh. Oh God, there it goes again. What happened to the days when you could just buy emergency three-packs? Why don't they have that here? Why can I buy gum, toothpaste and condoms in vending machines in bars in Spain, but never tampons?
Guadalix is an easy coast downhill from Miraflores, on a highway that really is worth the trouble to ride slowly and enjoy. But I've been down here five or six times before, and besides, there's a bit more of a pressing matter, so I hit the pedals and try to get there as soon as I can. Not a problem, except that two kilometres out of town, I catch the business end of some kind of stinging insect on the right side of my mouth - the side that happens to be coated with ChapStick and leftover PowerBar Caffeinated Apple Gel. I try blowing the insect away. Nothing. I curl my lips back and try to dislodge whatever it is - I'm afraid to look - with the snuffle patch of my right-hand glove. Most of it goes. There's still something left over, something may or may not be stuck in my top lip, and the right-hand side of my mouth is going slightly numb (though that could just as well be the caffeine from the gel.)
Great. Carrie, meet Jean Chrétien.
And then I think something that's not entirely printable, grab the water bottle, give my mouth a blast of hot water, head through Guadalix and just GO. Even if I do have an allergic reaction (and I probably won't), there's nothing I can do about it until I get to Colmenar anyway. More inspiration to get my sorry ass over San Pedro as soon as possible.
San Pedro isn't an impossible climb. The first five kilometres of the M625 leave Guadalix de la Sierra at a gentle, easily beatable 3% grade, before peaking up to 5% or 6% near the Segovia-Valladolid AVE line and reaching 8% in the final bit before the crest of the hill, near the abandoned road workers' hut - so you get a good swing at killing most of the climbing on the relatively flat sections below, before the hurt comes on in the final two kilometres. But I'm not taking any risks. I throw the gears up to the 52x17 and keep my cadence up over 80 so that I'm going at least 28 kilometres per hour, while keeping a steady eye on my heart rate. If there are any weird jumps or increases, I'm gonna head back down to Guadalix and head straight for the Health Centre. I don't know how I'll explain the bleeding (surely THEY would have some Tampax on hand) but I'll figure it out.
The further up I go, the hotter and windier it gets, and the hotter it gets, the stickier it gets from the waist down. All I can hope is that the flow doesn't stop and that there's some dampness there at all times, because when that dries out and seizes up everything down there, I'm in serious trouble and it's gonna be like someone filled my keks with Elmer's Glue.
Luckily, it being Monday, there's very little traffic (they're gonna look at my shorts from behind they're gonna know!!!) which means that I can use more of the road and not stick to just the edges. Then it strikes me that, if anything happens to me, I am going to scare the living SHIT out of any driver who pulls over and takes a look at me from the waist down.
And I pull it off: San Pedro in 21 minutes 15 seconds, beating my old time by exactly 44 seconds. I don't know how much of it is due to sheer brute force or the desire to get the hell home as soon as possible, but screw it, the job is done.
And on the way back down into Madrid, I think about Pete Gerrard, a guy I knew in college who used to quip, after five or six Glenfiddich had gotten the better of his judgement: "How can you trust something that bleeds thirteen times a year and LIVES?" Oh, no, Pete - that's not the question. The question is: How can you trust something that bleeds thirteen times a year, lives, can still beat the hell out of itself and JOKE about it when the day is done? That, gentlemen, is what makes women truly frightening.
I have a medium Chamartín jersey and a small one. The small one is, effectively, toast after the fall I took in Tres Olivos last week. The medium isn't really all that medium, more like a North American small, but what it does have is three nice, big pockets that allow me to carry what I need for the day: wallet, cell phone, iPod, gel and food, packet of tissues. And a Tampax. The pockets are big enough that I can fit a regular (read: paper-wrapped...the girls will know what I mean...) Tampax in there, sideways, which stretches the jersey a little but usually secures it in place. All of us end up looking a little bit like backwards kangaroos with the quantity of stuff we can stuff into our jerseys, but it makes it a lot less cumbersome than a CamelBak.
From time to time, a dead (always unused, always green for Super) Tampax will mysteriously appear at the side of the bike path, especially up around the M30 bridge, and I always feel bad for its former owner. Dollars to donuts, the owner of that little green bullet of relief is going to have a hell of a shock when she needs to stop. She'll scootch into the bathroom, trying hard not to walk funny in order not to let on that anything's up (which is a lie unto itself -what normal woman bolts into a bathroom while trying to grip her butt and Kegel muscles, as if she were an Olympic speed walker?). She'll slam the door shut, turn the light on, unzip, pull down, sit down, be annoyed at the stain (or relieved at the lack thereof) and reach into a pocket, hoping to feel that reassuring polychemical crinkle of the plastic, only to come up empty-handed. Oh. No. And with cycling being such a male-dominated sport, it's not like you can stick your head out of the loo, glance at your sisters-in-arms with that specific look of panic on your face (while still trying to hide the rest of your body behind the bathroom door) and hiss, "Does anyone have....ONE?" No sir.
WARNING TO THE SENSITIVE: We are getting into the genuinely gross stuff now. If your sensibilities might still be at risk, stop reading and go watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAJf-hf1Zk
....or this, if the kids are around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHeGX0wqazs.
(Don't ask me why the Ting Tings made a Yo Gabba Gabba video, but it's strangely engaging.)
My sister-in-law used to call it "dropping a clot". It is NOT a pleasant feeling: it's the feeling of being out of control, of being held captive to something you didn't ask for and can't stop no matter how hard you try. Well, you can, obviously: that's why we have sanitary products. More insidious, however, is the gentle leak, the one that destroys jeans and expensive underwear, the one that gives no feeling to its existence until you notice that protein-based stickiness and that your undergarments aren't moving the way they normally do.
The one advantage of cycling is that culottes, which usually contain some kind of pad in the genital area, provide the perfect backup. Both men's and women's models are designed to absorb sweat (and whatever other inopportune body fluids may emerge), shocks and friction; so, gentlemen (if any of you are still reading by now), THAT is what it's like to use an Evax/Kotex. (And a Tampax? Well, if you've inserted it the right way and you haven't used on that's too absorbent, it shouldn't really feel like anything.) So if you have an accident when wearing a decent pair of cycling shorts, you're covered in the short-term. Nothing that a handful of salt and some stain remover can't take care of later.
Provided, of course, that the flow is, uh, NORMAL. And you can't control that.
I don't really notice anything until Colmenar Viejo. No gloppy burning sensations, no lower-back pain, nothing out of the ordinary. But I do feel the call of nature, which isn't surprising considering I refilled (and drank) two bottles of water before leaving Madrid. I decide to stop at the Miratoros restaurant in Soto del Real, get a quick coffee, eat a home-made PowerBar and then head off to do what's gotta be done - ride up to Miraflores, down to Guadalix, beat the hell out of San Pedro and get home before it gets too hot outside to even think. The guys in the Miratoros are pretty used to us making pit stops there. As long as you buy something, they don't care.
Coffee. Pay. Bathroom. Culottes down. Damn. Leakage. Reach behind.....
Uh-oh.
It's not there.
Left pocket: iPod, gel, two PowerBars. Middle pocket: wallet and house keys. Right pocket: phone.
Oh CRAP. What now??
And no, gents (if any of you are STILL reading), stuffing a handful of TP between your legs won't cut it. Why not? Go take a handful of TP and rub it against your lips...for the next three hours. You'll get the point.
Ergh.
Okay. Nothing to do but keep on keepin' on.
I blot whatever I can (which is actually a fair bit), pull up, wash my hands and head back out. Not much to do except go like hell and try to get home as soon as possible.
The worst part of accidents like this, however, isn't necessarily the stainage; it's the strange hypersensitivity about the flow that you get once you realize that the flow is underway. All of a sudden, you become convinced that EVERYBODY is aware of what's happening to you. Images of CARRIE start coming to mind (God, are those rain clouds over there??) You become convinced that every wild animal in the north end of the Comunidad -- if there are any left -- will be chasing your sorry ass because you smell like a canapé on wheels. And you're very thankful that you're out by yourself, because if ANY, A-NY of the guys in the club knew of this, you would never have anyone willing to go out with you, ever again ("We don't care if you bleed when you fall and take half your knee off, but....but...THIS??") It's like Grade Seven all over again, except that you don't have the comfort of the silly tampon ads on the back of Seventeen magazine, the pigtailed girl dressed in a white bikini waterskiing with a great huge grin on her face rather than sulking over the picnic basket on the beach. It's like being back in high school gym class and knowing who's been served with a visit from Aunt Flow, because she's taking forever in the bathroom stalls, and doesn't everyone know it, too.
I try beating it like hell up the Cuesta de los Pobres towards Miraflores, which means not going very fast because you've got to climb nearly 200m in less than ten kilometres. Ouch. I stop at the turnoff to Guadalix, try to choke down an energy gel, wash it down with some very hot water (the sun has been beating on the bidones for about three hours by now) and do some mental calculations: it's about fifteen minutes to Guadalix, through the town and up over San Pedro twenty-five minutes later, then go like hell and - ugh. Oh God, there it goes again. What happened to the days when you could just buy emergency three-packs? Why don't they have that here? Why can I buy gum, toothpaste and condoms in vending machines in bars in Spain, but never tampons?
Guadalix is an easy coast downhill from Miraflores, on a highway that really is worth the trouble to ride slowly and enjoy. But I've been down here five or six times before, and besides, there's a bit more of a pressing matter, so I hit the pedals and try to get there as soon as I can. Not a problem, except that two kilometres out of town, I catch the business end of some kind of stinging insect on the right side of my mouth - the side that happens to be coated with ChapStick and leftover PowerBar Caffeinated Apple Gel. I try blowing the insect away. Nothing. I curl my lips back and try to dislodge whatever it is - I'm afraid to look - with the snuffle patch of my right-hand glove. Most of it goes. There's still something left over, something may or may not be stuck in my top lip, and the right-hand side of my mouth is going slightly numb (though that could just as well be the caffeine from the gel.)
Great. Carrie, meet Jean Chrétien.
And then I think something that's not entirely printable, grab the water bottle, give my mouth a blast of hot water, head through Guadalix and just GO. Even if I do have an allergic reaction (and I probably won't), there's nothing I can do about it until I get to Colmenar anyway. More inspiration to get my sorry ass over San Pedro as soon as possible.
San Pedro isn't an impossible climb. The first five kilometres of the M625 leave Guadalix de la Sierra at a gentle, easily beatable 3% grade, before peaking up to 5% or 6% near the Segovia-Valladolid AVE line and reaching 8% in the final bit before the crest of the hill, near the abandoned road workers' hut - so you get a good swing at killing most of the climbing on the relatively flat sections below, before the hurt comes on in the final two kilometres. But I'm not taking any risks. I throw the gears up to the 52x17 and keep my cadence up over 80 so that I'm going at least 28 kilometres per hour, while keeping a steady eye on my heart rate. If there are any weird jumps or increases, I'm gonna head back down to Guadalix and head straight for the Health Centre. I don't know how I'll explain the bleeding (surely THEY would have some Tampax on hand) but I'll figure it out.
The further up I go, the hotter and windier it gets, and the hotter it gets, the stickier it gets from the waist down. All I can hope is that the flow doesn't stop and that there's some dampness there at all times, because when that dries out and seizes up everything down there, I'm in serious trouble and it's gonna be like someone filled my keks with Elmer's Glue.
Luckily, it being Monday, there's very little traffic (they're gonna look at my shorts from behind they're gonna know!!!) which means that I can use more of the road and not stick to just the edges. Then it strikes me that, if anything happens to me, I am going to scare the living SHIT out of any driver who pulls over and takes a look at me from the waist down.
And I pull it off: San Pedro in 21 minutes 15 seconds, beating my old time by exactly 44 seconds. I don't know how much of it is due to sheer brute force or the desire to get the hell home as soon as possible, but screw it, the job is done.
And on the way back down into Madrid, I think about Pete Gerrard, a guy I knew in college who used to quip, after five or six Glenfiddich had gotten the better of his judgement: "How can you trust something that bleeds thirteen times a year and LIVES?" Oh, no, Pete - that's not the question. The question is: How can you trust something that bleeds thirteen times a year, lives, can still beat the hell out of itself and JOKE about it when the day is done? That, gentlemen, is what makes women truly frightening.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
If I had a Euro for every time someone asked me....
...these questions, I'd be able to make my rent. Every month. It's nice that people are curious but I'm almost to the point where I'm going to get a t-shirt made up with the following:
a) Yeah, that IS my bike.
b) 50x34, but I put a triple chainring on for the Quebrantahuesos.
c) No. I stole it off some cyclist who was floating dead in the Artouste Reservoir. (Of COURSE this is MY Quebrantahuesos jersey - participating was the only way to get one....9h 39m)
c) Canada.
d) Because my friends are all either lazy or on holidays; otherwise I wouldn't be alone.
e) No, I'm not afraid of going out alone, because I have a lot of lazy friends.
f) Nine years in November.
g) Ottawa.
h) Compared to the weather in Ottawa, this is a huge improvement, so yeah, I think I'll stay.
i) Thanks, but I kind of like riding by myself.
j) Thanks, but I'm already a member of the Chamartín.
k) It was cool that Contador won over Armstrong but I was kind of cheering for Sastre.
So that's 12 questions, multiplied by about 50 times I get asked this in the course of a normal month...yeah. Rent, phone and the light bill.
a) Yeah, that IS my bike.
b) 50x34, but I put a triple chainring on for the Quebrantahuesos.
c) No. I stole it off some cyclist who was floating dead in the Artouste Reservoir. (Of COURSE this is MY Quebrantahuesos jersey - participating was the only way to get one....9h 39m)
c) Canada.
d) Because my friends are all either lazy or on holidays; otherwise I wouldn't be alone.
e) No, I'm not afraid of going out alone, because I have a lot of lazy friends.
f) Nine years in November.
g) Ottawa.
h) Compared to the weather in Ottawa, this is a huge improvement, so yeah, I think I'll stay.
i) Thanks, but I kind of like riding by myself.
j) Thanks, but I'm already a member of the Chamartín.
k) It was cool that Contador won over Armstrong but I was kind of cheering for Sastre.
So that's 12 questions, multiplied by about 50 times I get asked this in the course of a normal month...yeah. Rent, phone and the light bill.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Git down!
Some gratuitous dance music for a Saturday afternoon, after the thrills (but no spills) on Mount Ventoux:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJOAZq2dW5w
And a gratuitous factoid: The guy who played bass on Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" was, at one time, also the bassist for ZZ Top.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJOAZq2dW5w
And a gratuitous factoid: The guy who played bass on Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" was, at one time, also the bassist for ZZ Top.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Passing on the "shrink and pink"
Much to my mother's eternal disgust, I have never been a fan of overtly feminine...stuff. It took me ages to start buying decent (i.e. remotely sexy) underwear, I still don't own any china or a set of silver, and I do have several strands of good pearls that I could probably excavate and wear if given a couple of days' notice.
So it's no surprise that the culture battle that comes with trying to get more women on bikes (more of which later) seems to be fought, more than anything, in the stores than on the streets. Simon Usborne, of Britain's The Independent newspaper, touched briefly on the subject this morning in the paper's Cyclo Therapy blog and, with any luck, will hit a very sensitive nerve with some of his readers of the female persuasion. Give it a couple of days and I might even be able to score an interview with him....
http://tinyurl.com/lo53pn
So it's no surprise that the culture battle that comes with trying to get more women on bikes (more of which later) seems to be fought, more than anything, in the stores than on the streets. Simon Usborne, of Britain's The Independent newspaper, touched briefly on the subject this morning in the paper's Cyclo Therapy blog and, with any luck, will hit a very sensitive nerve with some of his readers of the female persuasion. Give it a couple of days and I might even be able to score an interview with him....
http://tinyurl.com/lo53pn
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Getting the 800-pound gorilla off the bike.
The sun has finally come out and the wind seems to have died down (at least temporarily) and I have decided not to go out and do the climbs up Marañosa, as programmed. I know that Yago would probably say that it's not a good idea to try doing climbing tests up Marañosa when it's windy out, anyway; and since I'm not going to Burgo de Osma for the Ciudad de Uxama Classic this weekend, I might as well do the climbs this afternoon or tomorrow.
I'm not going to the Ciudad de Uxama because I have no money. I slept badly last night because I'm broke. I have spent the last month doing magic tricks with my bank account and most of the time, it does work, but I know I can't keep the juggling up for long.
I knew that being a female cyclist and being broke was, almost, a foregone conclusion. Even Katie Compton, the US National Cyclocross Champion, is scrambling to find funding after her main sponsor backed out. In a sense, I'm fortunate, because I've already gone through university and know that I'm not likely to have kids, or get divorced, both of which are guaranteed drains on finances. Still, I can't bring myself to make an honest calculation on how much I've spent on cycling (Mom, you may want to stop reading at this point...) because if I thought about how much I could have invested in something reasonable like a pension fund or decent furniture or even plastic surgery.
So, this morning, I am lightening up the bicycle considerably. I am going out and doing the rounds to put up advertisements for new English classes because if I don't find more work soon, I'm going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Please keep in mind, though, that this is not a cry for help. It's the last third of July, when practically every English teacher I know (especially those who don't have another household income to fall back on) freaks out and, on some level, is convinced that he or she is going to end up penniless and homeless within hours.
Which never happens. August comes, the calls start coming in, the 800-pound gorilla of fear and agony goes back into his hiding place until just after Christmas. But I've had just enough of hauling this useless hairy beast about, and there's no place for him on the bike, especially when I'm trying to keep focussed. If it means having to shuffle my training around to make sure that everyone gets paid, then that's the risk that I'm willing to take.
I am not willing to spend the next seven weeks sweating bullets and eating chickpeas, no matter how healthy they are, because I can't afford anything else. I refuse to be the typical broke female cyclist who can't make ends meet. I am determined to be successful...and solvent.
I'm not going to the Ciudad de Uxama because I have no money. I slept badly last night because I'm broke. I have spent the last month doing magic tricks with my bank account and most of the time, it does work, but I know I can't keep the juggling up for long.
I knew that being a female cyclist and being broke was, almost, a foregone conclusion. Even Katie Compton, the US National Cyclocross Champion, is scrambling to find funding after her main sponsor backed out. In a sense, I'm fortunate, because I've already gone through university and know that I'm not likely to have kids, or get divorced, both of which are guaranteed drains on finances. Still, I can't bring myself to make an honest calculation on how much I've spent on cycling (Mom, you may want to stop reading at this point...) because if I thought about how much I could have invested in something reasonable like a pension fund or decent furniture or even plastic surgery.
So, this morning, I am lightening up the bicycle considerably. I am going out and doing the rounds to put up advertisements for new English classes because if I don't find more work soon, I'm going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble.
Please keep in mind, though, that this is not a cry for help. It's the last third of July, when practically every English teacher I know (especially those who don't have another household income to fall back on) freaks out and, on some level, is convinced that he or she is going to end up penniless and homeless within hours.
Which never happens. August comes, the calls start coming in, the 800-pound gorilla of fear and agony goes back into his hiding place until just after Christmas. But I've had just enough of hauling this useless hairy beast about, and there's no place for him on the bike, especially when I'm trying to keep focussed. If it means having to shuffle my training around to make sure that everyone gets paid, then that's the risk that I'm willing to take.
I am not willing to spend the next seven weeks sweating bullets and eating chickpeas, no matter how healthy they are, because I can't afford anything else. I refuse to be the typical broke female cyclist who can't make ends meet. I am determined to be successful...and solvent.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
I think I want the Tour to be over.
I think I want the Tour to be over already.
I think I want Alberto Contador to just go ahead and put the screws to Texas Toast (sorry..."He Who Shall Not Be Named" was already taken) one more time so that people on the Bicycling Magazine forums can have something else to whine about.
I think I want the Tour to be over because I want Alberto to have won and I'm having a lot of trouble enjoying the winning.
I think I want the Tour to be over because I want to know about the inevitable shitstorm that will come with the Contador-Brunyeel divorce.
I think I want the Tour to be over for selfish reasons, too, because then it'll be fun to do volume rides down around San Martín de la Vega and see the Peña, and try to figure out which skinny guy with the big nose and Giro glasses he was.
I think I want the Tour to be over because I love Contador's phoenix-like reappearances, how many times this...this KID...has pulled himself out of crap situations and come out the stronger and better rider for it.
I think I want the Tour to be over because then I can focus on my own cycling, and it'll mean that Yago and Zaida will be back in town and there'll be, like, y'know, reasonable cycling fans I can talk to about cycling, in English.
I think I want to Tour to be over because I want to believe in the underdog, no matter how strong he is.
I think I want the Tour to be over 'cause I really want to see Bradley Wiggins, or anyone in the Argyle Armada, place higher than Texas Toast.
I think I want the Tour to be over because then I'll know whether I have to deal with a broken heart or not...
I think I want Alberto Contador to just go ahead and put the screws to Texas Toast (sorry..."He Who Shall Not Be Named" was already taken) one more time so that people on the Bicycling Magazine forums can have something else to whine about.
I think I want the Tour to be over because I want Alberto to have won and I'm having a lot of trouble enjoying the winning.
I think I want the Tour to be over because I want to know about the inevitable shitstorm that will come with the Contador-Brunyeel divorce.
I think I want the Tour to be over for selfish reasons, too, because then it'll be fun to do volume rides down around San Martín de la Vega and see the Peña, and try to figure out which skinny guy with the big nose and Giro glasses he was.
I think I want the Tour to be over because I love Contador's phoenix-like reappearances, how many times this...this KID...has pulled himself out of crap situations and come out the stronger and better rider for it.
I think I want the Tour to be over because then I can focus on my own cycling, and it'll mean that Yago and Zaida will be back in town and there'll be, like, y'know, reasonable cycling fans I can talk to about cycling, in English.
I think I want to Tour to be over because I want to believe in the underdog, no matter how strong he is.
I think I want the Tour to be over 'cause I really want to see Bradley Wiggins, or anyone in the Argyle Armada, place higher than Texas Toast.
I think I want the Tour to be over because then I'll know whether I have to deal with a broken heart or not...
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Last Bitchin' Thing I Will Ever Write About That Pretentious Redneck. I promise.
(Subtitled: Why half a litre of coffee and listening to the Squirrel Nut Zippers at 7AM is a really BAD idea.)
"Lance is an athlete unlike any other!"
- Gabriele, BICYCLING Magazine's Facebook page.
Of course he is! Haven't you heard? Lance Armstrong has escaped the bounds of mere mortality to transcend anything beyond what we understand humanity to be. Seven Tours de France weren't good enough for him...no sir!
Lance Armstrong solved the subprime mortgage crisis while shaving his legs!
Lance Armstrong Twittered the location of AF447's black box to the National Transportation Safety Board while climbing an 8% grade! (See, he doesn't hate the French!)
Lance Armstrong had a good reason for draining the water table around his ranch - how can a guy practice walking on water without having a sizeable practice area? That'd be like training for the Tour in the parking lot of the local public school!
Lance Armstrong convinced Gordon Ramsay to stop swearing!
Lance Armstrong, to prepare for the climbs in the Pyrenees, lost 6kg of muscle overnight simply by sheer willpower and by dancing nonstop to the soundtrack of "Hairspray"!
Lance Armstrong was just awarded a PhD in philosophy for his thesis "Wittgenstein's Existential Interpretation of Parent-Child Relationships: The Harry Potter Dilemma."
Lance Armstrong is dating the Queen of England! WITH Prince Philip's blessing!
Lance Armstrong brings puppies back from the dead!
No, sir. Contador's days as a mere rider are numbered, and as for the other guys in the pelotón, especially the Americans, they might as well slouch home with their rear derailleurs between their legs and keep their fingers crossed that someone'll pony up the money for a bike shop or something like that. All bow down before the greatness of Lance Armstrong! Embrace your inner Lanceness! Armstrong Über Alles!
(With kudos and thanks to THE ONION, Paul Rudnick, Christopher Buckley, and those brainless Lanceamaniacs who haven't seen one friggin' stage of the Tour in their LIVES and who keep clogging up cycling forums around the world. You guys are an endless source of inspiration. Go Wiggo, Conta, Miller, Zabriskie, Christian and Sastre.)
"Lance is an athlete unlike any other!"
- Gabriele, BICYCLING Magazine's Facebook page.
Of course he is! Haven't you heard? Lance Armstrong has escaped the bounds of mere mortality to transcend anything beyond what we understand humanity to be. Seven Tours de France weren't good enough for him...no sir!
Lance Armstrong solved the subprime mortgage crisis while shaving his legs!
Lance Armstrong Twittered the location of AF447's black box to the National Transportation Safety Board while climbing an 8% grade! (See, he doesn't hate the French!)
Lance Armstrong had a good reason for draining the water table around his ranch - how can a guy practice walking on water without having a sizeable practice area? That'd be like training for the Tour in the parking lot of the local public school!
Lance Armstrong convinced Gordon Ramsay to stop swearing!
Lance Armstrong, to prepare for the climbs in the Pyrenees, lost 6kg of muscle overnight simply by sheer willpower and by dancing nonstop to the soundtrack of "Hairspray"!
Lance Armstrong was just awarded a PhD in philosophy for his thesis "Wittgenstein's Existential Interpretation of Parent-Child Relationships: The Harry Potter Dilemma."
Lance Armstrong is dating the Queen of England! WITH Prince Philip's blessing!
Lance Armstrong brings puppies back from the dead!
No, sir. Contador's days as a mere rider are numbered, and as for the other guys in the pelotón, especially the Americans, they might as well slouch home with their rear derailleurs between their legs and keep their fingers crossed that someone'll pony up the money for a bike shop or something like that. All bow down before the greatness of Lance Armstrong! Embrace your inner Lanceness! Armstrong Über Alles!
(With kudos and thanks to THE ONION, Paul Rudnick, Christopher Buckley, and those brainless Lanceamaniacs who haven't seen one friggin' stage of the Tour in their LIVES and who keep clogging up cycling forums around the world. You guys are an endless source of inspiration. Go Wiggo, Conta, Miller, Zabriskie, Christian and Sastre.)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Why Lance Armstrong Never Ceases to Bug the Bejeezus out of Me (Part 3 of....)
I'm trying to decide if I have enough nerve to send this letter to the editors of BICYCLING magazine. There are still 11 stages left in the Tour de France and still over 150 riders taking part, though you'd never know it from the magazine's coverage. What do you think?
ºººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
Dear Ms. Mooney:
Lance, Lance Lance Lance, Lance. Lance Lance Lance? Lance Lance, Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance, Lance Lance, Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance. Lance...Lance Lance Lance Lance, Lance Lance Lance: Lance Lance Lance Lance. Lance Lance Lance Lance.
Or, at least, please bring back "The Sex Issue."
Kind regards
Dawn Severenuk
Madrid, Spain
(PS: Feel free to nick this idea. Maybe for once they'll get the hint.)
ºººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººººº
Dear Ms. Mooney:
Lance, Lance Lance Lance, Lance. Lance Lance Lance? Lance Lance, Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance, Lance Lance, Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance Lance. Lance...Lance Lance Lance Lance, Lance Lance Lance: Lance Lance Lance Lance. Lance Lance Lance Lance.
Or, at least, please bring back "The Sex Issue."
Kind regards
Dawn Severenuk
Madrid, Spain
(PS: Feel free to nick this idea. Maybe for once they'll get the hint.)
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Fight
Elvis was a hero to most
Elvis was a hero to most
Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant $#¡% to me....
There's no Group B today. There's only Group A, who are headed up to Abantos, me....and quite possibly some other bodies still staying upright on bikes from here to Guadarrama. God knows where anybody is. I got dropped right at the VOR airplane beacon just south of Colmenar Viejo. For various reasons, I only slept about four hours last night. I'm premenstrual and exhausted and hungry and bitched off. Remind me, again, why I pay over €85 a year to ride with a bunch of guys who can't seem to get away from me fast enough?
Armstrong was a hero to most
Pantani was a hero to most
Perico was a hero to most
But they never meant $#¡% to me....
There are two options: Option One is to return home to a blaze of indignation from various parties. Today was the day I was supposed to take my revenge on Abantos. "Let's see if we can finally kill the ghost of Abantos," wrote Yago in the training plan, and it's not that I'm against killing any ghosts, but damn, do I have to commit murder starting from so far away?
Option Two is to keep plodding along, wind and weariness be damned. And given that the body of the Ex Mex, splayed on the floor, was still generating snores that made his blankets vibrate when I left the house this morning (much as it did for all of last night) if I manage to get a couple of hours of peaceful riding in before I get home, then the day isn't totally lost.
Connie Carpenter was a hero to most
Mari Holden was a hero to most
Jeannie Longo was a hero to most
I gotta fight the powers that be....
But I resent this. I don't resent riding alone; I resent riding abandoned. Alberto, Alfredo, Moncho, Vicente, Miguel Ángel, Rafa...granted, they've all been riding at a higher level than I have, and for longer periods of time. I don't want to be coddled, but there are limits to how many times I can get dropped and feel happy about it. Especially when there's no one else around riding at my level. I'd even make a crack about being happy to have some girls to ride with, but Eva showed up with her dad this morning, and both of them took off like shots at the first opportunity. And I'm not even sure I understand why Eva is allowed to ride, since she doesn't have a license.
Get used to it, my inner cynic thinks. You think it sucks now, you just wait 'til it starts happening in real competitions and those young things start looking at you like the mutton you are...and wait for the showdown to begin. Mental advantage? Ha bloody ha, girlfriend. Either get faster or get lost.
My inner cynic is usually shut up by caffeine and food. Right. Breakfast run to Guadarrama, and if no one else is around, say screw it and take the train back from Villalba.
At least this time I know it's not personal. Or at least I don't think it is. Not like with the Saturday Bunch. It's just carelessness - no one called the B group this morning, everyone took off like a shot, the bodies will start showing up at some point in time.
Pee break just outside of Becerril de la Sierra. Couple of slugs of energy gel/food/something which is basically peach compote in a foil packet and doesn't taste that bad. Uphill through Becerril, Collado Mediano (what the hell is a collado, anyway?) Downhill into Guadarrama, and then I hear the beeeeep-bee-bee-bee-bee-beeeeeep! of a car horn. Too many beeps to be unfriendly.
It's Zurdo, who never misses an outing; he's driving the club car. You alone? Zurdo has a lot of problems understanding my accent, so any attempt at sarcasm will go flying straight over his head. I nod. I'm gonna park over by the big fountain; you know where the big fountain is? This is a bit of a dumb question - Guadarrama has at least three big fountains that I can remember. I just nod, and try to follow him into town.
Zurdo leaves me at the same bar where Luis Ali and Moncho and I had coffee before climbing up Alto de los Leones about a month earlier. The bar is hopping. The waitresses are stressed out, the owner isn't hearing much of what anyone is saying to him. I leave my bike in the presence of an older couple who are a with a boy who suffers from some kind of extreme cerebral palsy and I remember that Contador has a younger brother who suffers from mental paralysis and how scared his parents were, after Conta suffered a stroke, that they'd have two sons in wheelchairs. I let myself feel slightly ashamed of my attitude, and go in for coffee and tortilla.
The owner of the bar told us, when we were here before, that his niece rides with Bizkaia-Durango, but seeing me today doesn't ring any bells. I try to make myself small, eat and drink as fast as I can.
Bingo. Two magenta and gold-clad bodies walk into the depanneur next door. It's Alfredo and Jorge. If Alfredo's here, then Alberto #2 is around somewhere.
That's more like it.
Elvis was a hero to most
Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant $#¡% to me....
There's no Group B today. There's only Group A, who are headed up to Abantos, me....and quite possibly some other bodies still staying upright on bikes from here to Guadarrama. God knows where anybody is. I got dropped right at the VOR airplane beacon just south of Colmenar Viejo. For various reasons, I only slept about four hours last night. I'm premenstrual and exhausted and hungry and bitched off. Remind me, again, why I pay over €85 a year to ride with a bunch of guys who can't seem to get away from me fast enough?
Armstrong was a hero to most
Pantani was a hero to most
Perico was a hero to most
But they never meant $#¡% to me....
There are two options: Option One is to return home to a blaze of indignation from various parties. Today was the day I was supposed to take my revenge on Abantos. "Let's see if we can finally kill the ghost of Abantos," wrote Yago in the training plan, and it's not that I'm against killing any ghosts, but damn, do I have to commit murder starting from so far away?
Option Two is to keep plodding along, wind and weariness be damned. And given that the body of the Ex Mex, splayed on the floor, was still generating snores that made his blankets vibrate when I left the house this morning (much as it did for all of last night) if I manage to get a couple of hours of peaceful riding in before I get home, then the day isn't totally lost.
Connie Carpenter was a hero to most
Mari Holden was a hero to most
Jeannie Longo was a hero to most
I gotta fight the powers that be....
But I resent this. I don't resent riding alone; I resent riding abandoned. Alberto, Alfredo, Moncho, Vicente, Miguel Ángel, Rafa...granted, they've all been riding at a higher level than I have, and for longer periods of time. I don't want to be coddled, but there are limits to how many times I can get dropped and feel happy about it. Especially when there's no one else around riding at my level. I'd even make a crack about being happy to have some girls to ride with, but Eva showed up with her dad this morning, and both of them took off like shots at the first opportunity. And I'm not even sure I understand why Eva is allowed to ride, since she doesn't have a license.
Get used to it, my inner cynic thinks. You think it sucks now, you just wait 'til it starts happening in real competitions and those young things start looking at you like the mutton you are...and wait for the showdown to begin. Mental advantage? Ha bloody ha, girlfriend. Either get faster or get lost.
My inner cynic is usually shut up by caffeine and food. Right. Breakfast run to Guadarrama, and if no one else is around, say screw it and take the train back from Villalba.
At least this time I know it's not personal. Or at least I don't think it is. Not like with the Saturday Bunch. It's just carelessness - no one called the B group this morning, everyone took off like a shot, the bodies will start showing up at some point in time.
Pee break just outside of Becerril de la Sierra. Couple of slugs of energy gel/food/something which is basically peach compote in a foil packet and doesn't taste that bad. Uphill through Becerril, Collado Mediano (what the hell is a collado, anyway?) Downhill into Guadarrama, and then I hear the beeeeep-bee-bee-bee-bee-beeeeeep! of a car horn. Too many beeps to be unfriendly.
It's Zurdo, who never misses an outing; he's driving the club car. You alone? Zurdo has a lot of problems understanding my accent, so any attempt at sarcasm will go flying straight over his head. I nod. I'm gonna park over by the big fountain; you know where the big fountain is? This is a bit of a dumb question - Guadarrama has at least three big fountains that I can remember. I just nod, and try to follow him into town.
Zurdo leaves me at the same bar where Luis Ali and Moncho and I had coffee before climbing up Alto de los Leones about a month earlier. The bar is hopping. The waitresses are stressed out, the owner isn't hearing much of what anyone is saying to him. I leave my bike in the presence of an older couple who are a with a boy who suffers from some kind of extreme cerebral palsy and I remember that Contador has a younger brother who suffers from mental paralysis and how scared his parents were, after Conta suffered a stroke, that they'd have two sons in wheelchairs. I let myself feel slightly ashamed of my attitude, and go in for coffee and tortilla.
The owner of the bar told us, when we were here before, that his niece rides with Bizkaia-Durango, but seeing me today doesn't ring any bells. I try to make myself small, eat and drink as fast as I can.
Bingo. Two magenta and gold-clad bodies walk into the depanneur next door. It's Alfredo and Jorge. If Alfredo's here, then Alberto #2 is around somewhere.
That's more like it.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Disappointment
Sending a text to Yago goes something along these lines:
I end up texting him with whatever it is I have to ask or say for one of two reasons: One is that I don't feel I have the right to disturb him on a Saturday. He's a coach, but he's not a family member who can be rung up whenever I feel like chatting about something. The second reason is that I don't really believe that what it is I have to ask about is all that important - I probably know the answer to the question I want to ask; I just hate having to bother him for a reality check.
No, I'm lying. There are three reasons. The third reason is that I'm scared as hell of making him angry or disappointed in me.
Saturday, 5:00 AM: I probably would have been woken up by the kids doing wheelies in the plaza with their Vespas, had it not been for the Hiroshima happening in my stomach. I don't know what I got into yesterday, but it's not making me particularly happy today. By 6:05 I've made three shuttle runs to the loo, and am lying in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking, Ohhh, this is not good. It's never pleasant to have the trots anyway, but today is the Clásica de los Puertos, which means 154 kilometres of riding up and down and up and down in 35ºC heat.
I'm not stupid. I know that the combination of 35ºC heat and a case of diarrhea is a recipe for disaster. I know that going out today and risking severe dehydration is beyond moronic. Yet I cannot shake the feeling that I'll end up causing disappointment and anger if I don't take the start today, even though I've got the option of doing the Etapa Reina tomorrow. That's just the feeling. In my mind, I know that I'd get an even bigger chewing out for killing myself this close to QH.
After all, I don't get paid to do this. And he genuinely wants to see us succeed and triumph next week at Quebrantahuesos. So why do I feel like I'm back in Grade 6, continually cowering from someone who's perpetually on the verge of exploding, even though I probably have the coolest, most supportive coach on the whole peninsula?
So I text him anyway, an hour after I've sent him an e-mail which I know he's not going to read until Sunday night, and give him an abbreviated rundown of what happened. I know what's going to happen: He'll call, ask me how I'm feeling, we'll weigh the options of what we can do and then he's just going to tell me to do the Etapa Reina tomorrow. So where does the fear of being chewed out come from? I don't know. Maybe because I can't shake the feeling that I'm not doing enough, even though I don't know that I could have done more. Maybe because I'm worried about alienating my most trusted ally. Maybe because I'm so desperate to show that I'm not a loser that I need to behave like a total loser and continually seek reaffirmation that I'm not.
Anyway. He hasn't called and I need to go to the bathroom. Again.
I end up texting him with whatever it is I have to ask or say for one of two reasons: One is that I don't feel I have the right to disturb him on a Saturday. He's a coach, but he's not a family member who can be rung up whenever I feel like chatting about something. The second reason is that I don't really believe that what it is I have to ask about is all that important - I probably know the answer to the question I want to ask; I just hate having to bother him for a reality check.
No, I'm lying. There are three reasons. The third reason is that I'm scared as hell of making him angry or disappointed in me.
Saturday, 5:00 AM: I probably would have been woken up by the kids doing wheelies in the plaza with their Vespas, had it not been for the Hiroshima happening in my stomach. I don't know what I got into yesterday, but it's not making me particularly happy today. By 6:05 I've made three shuttle runs to the loo, and am lying in bed staring at the ceiling, thinking, Ohhh, this is not good. It's never pleasant to have the trots anyway, but today is the Clásica de los Puertos, which means 154 kilometres of riding up and down and up and down in 35ºC heat.
I'm not stupid. I know that the combination of 35ºC heat and a case of diarrhea is a recipe for disaster. I know that going out today and risking severe dehydration is beyond moronic. Yet I cannot shake the feeling that I'll end up causing disappointment and anger if I don't take the start today, even though I've got the option of doing the Etapa Reina tomorrow. That's just the feeling. In my mind, I know that I'd get an even bigger chewing out for killing myself this close to QH.
After all, I don't get paid to do this. And he genuinely wants to see us succeed and triumph next week at Quebrantahuesos. So why do I feel like I'm back in Grade 6, continually cowering from someone who's perpetually on the verge of exploding, even though I probably have the coolest, most supportive coach on the whole peninsula?
So I text him anyway, an hour after I've sent him an e-mail which I know he's not going to read until Sunday night, and give him an abbreviated rundown of what happened. I know what's going to happen: He'll call, ask me how I'm feeling, we'll weigh the options of what we can do and then he's just going to tell me to do the Etapa Reina tomorrow. So where does the fear of being chewed out come from? I don't know. Maybe because I can't shake the feeling that I'm not doing enough, even though I don't know that I could have done more. Maybe because I'm worried about alienating my most trusted ally. Maybe because I'm so desperate to show that I'm not a loser that I need to behave like a total loser and continually seek reaffirmation that I'm not.
Anyway. He hasn't called and I need to go to the bathroom. Again.
Friday, June 12, 2009
GARMIN'S GOING TO THE VUELTAAAA!!!!
The organizers of the Vuelta a España have announced that Garmin-Slipstream has officially been invited to take part in the 2009 Vuelta.
Two words:
YEAH BABY!
Kirsty, can I crash on your couch on September 4th, so that I can see DZ wipe the highway with everyone else's butts?
That is all. Thank you for your attention.
Two words:
YEAH BABY!
Kirsty, can I crash on your couch on September 4th, so that I can see DZ wipe the highway with everyone else's butts?
That is all. Thank you for your attention.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Last (adverb AND verb)
There's a poem that has been circulating around the Internet for the past, oh, about fifteen years ago that ends in the lines (and I'm misquoting here): "Victory doesn't always go to the swiftest or fastest man," and today, looking back on what happened in the Marcha Cicloturista Iñigo Cuesta yesterday, I can't entirely say I disagree.What happened? Hell, what didn't happen? The weather report was way off-base (to our advantage, luckily.) I got dropped by the pelotón within the first five kilometres, ended up making a new friend, got thrown in the sag van by the Guardia Civil so as not to be run over by a rally car derby (thereby missing one of the climbs), went up one of the longest climbs in Cantabria, got my period in the middle of the following climb, did NOT finish last, but finished enough last that I had the opportunity to hang onto the wheel of one of the most experienced pro cyclists in the world. It was just one of those days that you had to live, because otherwise you would never get the full flavour of the weirdness of the contrasts. But I'll give it my best shot.
Up at 6:30, a full half-hour before David. Laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, mustering all the greatest hits of "Mind Gym" so as not to get too freaked out (Rahsaan Bahati: "The race ain't in yo' legs, it's in YO' HEAD!!"). At seven he gets up, we get dressed. In the muss and fuss of the days leading up to the Cuesta I have somehow forgotten to put my maillot in the wash and it has developed an embarrassing sweaty pong. I can't find any hair elastics. My stomach isn't jumping around, and I can't decide if that's a good sign or not. Breakfast. Car out of the hotel garage, water in bottles, neoprene booties on feet, anything to keep our minds off the task at hand. David tells me to go ahead to the start line; he's got some final things to do. I ride ahead and in a group of nearly 400 cyclists, I see exactly two other women and a lot of very young guys with very ripped legs who pay no attention to me, which is good in a way - the last thing I need is someone getting in my face with some smack talk. Cuesta himself is at the front, giving an interview to the local press: you can tell it's Cuesta, not only by his distinctive profile, but because he's the only one who's not nervous.
The race is due to start at 8:30 but it doesn't get started until 8:43, which is still not enough time to find David. The group takes off like a shot and no matter how fast I ride, I'm still being passed left, right (and almost centre) by guys who are young enough to be my son or men old enough to be my father. How the hell fast are we going, anyway? I flip the computer over to the Speed function. Nothing. At some point, the magnet on the spoke has gotten twisted around. Damn, damn damn damn. At what point will I remember to check for this stupid stuff BEFORE the races start, instead of standing around like a catatonic teenager?
I stop, flip the magnet. The rest of the pelotón shoots off. I hammer to try to keep up, but it's not enough - my heart rate is climbing too fast, my athsma is starting to give me trouble and it would be ridiculous to kill myself in the first ten kilometres when there are still 140 to go.
We turn off onto a secondary highway after six or seven kilometres, and the first DNFs start to show up. One guy's hit something and has taco'ed his front wheel. Another older gentleman is being pulled out of a ditch by a Cruz Roja ambulance team. I start doing yoga breathing: better to finish last and in one piece, rather than go like hell and not make it at all. When they start paying me to do this shit, then I'll start doing crazy shit to beat the kids and the hammerheads. But this is my first year of riding - it's not even a year yet, more like eight months - and there's no sense in risking injury this close to Quebrantahuesos.
At some point, I catch up with a guy who's wearing a QH jersey, and I stick with him; he keeps looking behind him every so often, and I can't tell whether or not he's annoyed that he's got a chick on his wheel. We get to talking: his name's Roberto, he lives and works in Bilbao, and he did the Cuesta last year: "It's a LOT faster this year." We stick together through the first climbs, and make it to the Alta de la Magdalena, on the border with Cantabria, together. We're pretty much the last ones to show up, but we're still 45 minutes ahead of the final cutoff time. Roberto is a little flipped out: "I'm doing the same as last year, and when I got here last year, I was in the middle of the bunch. I can't believe how fast it is this year." Roberto takes off after Magdalena, but I take it a little more slowly: I don't know this road, and since I've never been to Cantabria, I want to enjoy the views a bit.
Cantabria, for those of you who are looking for a bit of green Spain, is gorgeous. It's amazingly beautiful. It's frightfully hilly. It's lush and green and friendly and requires a degree of concentration on the downhills that I haven't had to exercise since I left Kemptville - not because the curves are closed and dangerous (they're no worse than anything in Madrid) but because there's a surprising amount of cow plop on the pavement - not something you have to watch for in the capital. On the way down, Ellie's back wheel starts fishtailing a bit on the curves, something which I think is due to having caught a bit of cow pattie, but which turns out to be a fast-developing flat....which, of course, we discover on a closed, 3m-wide highway near Vega de Pas.
I say "we" because, at that point, I was last, and had the luxury of having the sag van, the mechanics AND the food van behind me. "Don't worry," yells Manolo, the sag van driver, "we gotta be behind somebody!!"
We get through Vega de Pas and up the second climb when, one kilometre up, Manolo scootches in front of me, slams the brakes on and yells, "Get in the van!!"
"What?!" I yell back. "Am I that far back!"
"NO!" he yells. "I just got a call from the Guardia Civil and they're closing the road in five minutes! There's a rally car derby scheduled for two PM and the first practice sessions start NOW!"
"Does this disqualify me?" I yell.
"Just get in the van!" he hollers back.
He's got a 24-pack of Coca Cola and eight kilos of Martínez pastries in that van, and going with him saves me eighteen kilometres of riding. He's not gonna get any arguing out of me.
We pick up Roberto and another guy from Cariñena on the way up the hill and drive down to the next village, where we're dropped off and sent up the Alto del Caracol. By my calculations I'm probably an hour behind David, but not so far back that I'm going to get disqualified.
And this is where the really annoying problems start. At some point something sharp has gotten embedded in the €35 Kevlar rear tire, making the rear wheels floppier than Sylvester Stallone's jowls; the mechanics, glad for something to do, cheerfully change the wheel in three minutes. I start again, ride a couple of kilometres with the mechanics behind me (Manolo's headed off to the next intersection to drop off the Coke we didn't drink) and then I start feeling those sharp pains in my back that every woman dreads.
One note to organizers of races and sportives: If you want to increase the rate of female participation in your events....PROVIDE TOILET FACILITIES. I don't care if they're Port-a-Potties or calling up the owners of the bars along the way to ask them to let the ladies use the loos. There is NOTHING more embarrassing than having to drop trou (culotte?) on the side of a highway, behind a pile of gravel, Tampax in hand, praying that no one happens to drive by at that moment...and it's even worse when you've got the unfortunate luck of having a van full of mechanics who genuinely care about you arriving safely, but don't hang back enough to allow you to pee in private. Luckily, the mechanics I was with had to stop for the same reason, so that gave me two minutes of privacy. That said, I'm pretty shameless with stuff like that; I can't say that most other women I know would be as willing to attend to nature's call in the middle of a road as I am.
Which is a shame because, really, you CAN go faster with an empty bladder. Surprisingly more quickly, really. Make it over Alto del Caracol ten minutes later, quick downhill to the turnoff, where there are now eight guys waiting for me with Aquarius, pastries, gels and Coke in hand; I now have an entire entourage waiting to see if I can get my butt over that next climb.
The entire climb up Lunada, when done in its entire 32-kilometre length, is rated at 220 on www.altimetrias.net, making it an HC if it's included in the Vuelta. The final 15 kilometres up to the ski resort really isn't THAT bad if you take it easy - something which not everyone is able to do. I haven't let my competitive gene come out much this year simply because I don't want to blow up that close to the end. Especially when it's not terrain I know well. Technically I should have gone up the first three climbs with a cadence of 75, keeping my heart rate below 150, but since I didn't do the second climb, I consider Lunada the third climb and try to maintain the same stats, which I manage to do by repeating, like a mantra, in yo' head, not yo' legs, in yo' head, not yo' legs, in yo' head, not yo' legs, for LITERALLY twenty minutes.
(I'm gonna knock you out. Momma said knock you out.) In yo' head, not yo' legs.
(Enfer du nord, Tourmalet, Tour de France, Tour de France....) In yo' head, not yo' legs.
(The only one I know is waiting to take me away....Most of the time you are happy; you're a weirdo...) In yo' head, not yo' legs.
I'd rather listen to the fight between my mental iPod and my inner coach rather than think about what's happening to me.
The further higher I go, the more empty packets of PowerBar gels I see. A little further on, small puddles of vomit start appearing on the edges of the pavement....
(I'm gonna knock you out. Momma said knock you out.) In yo' head, not yo' legs.
I pass a guy from Hondarribia CC who is paler than my untanned stomach and looks like he's going to suffer a coronary any minute now. I offer to stick with him but I don't think I can go that slowly. He just looks at me like he can't decide whether he should say "yes" or hurl.
The mechanics have gone ahead and are sitting on a curve about five kilometres from the top.
"How you feeling?" they yell as I brake and stop and pull out what's left of some PowerBar candies.
"I'm all right, to be honest," I say.
"That's good," says the cute one with the long curly black hair, "'cause that poor bastard is really suffering." He jacks a thumb towards a guy who I think passed Roberto and I at the first feed station. "You might want to ride with him and make sure he makes it to the top."
I nod and push off. "See you at the top."
Going up Lunada presents one other problem that I hadn't anticipated: the view down. On most climbs, you get a pretty good view of the surrounding scenery, but because the climb up Lunada basically follows the inside line of a crescent of mountains, your view of the scenery is basically limited to the surrounding peaks and a bird's eye view of the highway you just climbed. All. The. Way. Down. All. Eight. Hundred. Metres. Down. This is where my vertigo, which I manage to keep in check on most occasions, kicks in big time. I literally cannot look down because it makes me nauseous in a way that climbing itself does not manage. I keep my eyes focused on the guy suffering in front of me because I know that looking over my shoulder will make me seize with fear.
"Hi," I say, pulling up beside him. "Want to hang on my wheel for a while?"
He nods. We make small talk, about as much small talk as you can when one person is totally blown and the other is afraid to look side to side. His name is Nacho. He's one of the organizers of the Clásica de Bilbao. He looks a lot like Yago. Do NOT look down whatever you do. He freely admits that he only got about two hundred hours of riding before this. Don't look to the right. Don't even look at the billy goats feeding by the side of the road. Nacho is surprised by the calibre of rider who's chosen to take part "It's a lot like a race but without prizes." Boy, does he ever look like Yago. Does Yago have a brother who lives in Bil--Christ Almighty, Dawn, do NOT look to the right --
"How much longer?" he puffs.
"Two kilometres," I lie. This is how the Arabs got Lawrence through Arabia: they never told him the truth about how much further there was. Maybe they lied to themselves, too, in order to survive.
We make it to the top at 14:42, three minutes before the cutoff time, to applause and cheers from twelve different people, including a couple who are hiking in the area. They cannot force enough Aquarius or Martínez pastries or Coke on us. There is no sign of Hondarribia Man; the Guardia Civil on a motorbike who's waiting there says that the man refuses to stop.
All I want to do is get off this effing mountain and get down to Villarcayo and hope David's not too pissed off that I'm taking so long.
Snowplows have basically scraped the living bejesus out of the surface of the road, which makes the six kilometres down to Espinosa de los Herreros a living hell on the ankles and hands; I keep under 40 because I'm not sure who's likely to be sent flying by a pothole first, me or Nacho. Both of us are pretty frigging shaky.
And we get down to the bottom, where the mechanics are waiting for us with a thin guy wearing Cervélo team gear, and it doesn't hit me immediately just WHO this guy is. It doesn't hit me, honestly, until I see the Cervélo bike and see the profile that we're being led home by Iñigo Cuesta himself, who traditionally has accompanied the final riders home on the last 35 kilometres. Cuesta is gracious enough to keep the average speed down to about 35 kilometres, though you get the sense that he wouldn't think twice about riding up this road to go to Santander, oh, to do something simple like have breakfast with a buddy.
The mental iPod gets shut off and Yago's voice comes on: Stick to his wheel!!!
Bloody damn flipping well RIGHT I'm sticking to his wheel!! You think I'm gonna give up bragging rights to something like this??? Hang for an hour on the wheel of the guy who helped Carlos Sastre win the Tour de France last year??!?! SIR, YES SIR!!!
We make small talk on the way down - you enjoying the ride? What do you think of the jerseys? Think you'll make it back next year? - and I'm impressed by Cuesta's personal involvement in the project. Frankly, aside from the lack of toilets for the ladies, I'm impressed by the whole setup. The entire town of Villarcayo has gotten involved in this to a degree I haven't seen since I was in college and Canton would back St. Lawrence's hockey team.
Cuesta breaks into a grin. "Hey, I forgot to mention...we've got one more climb before we make it back to Villarcayo."
"Cat One?" I yell back.
"Of course!"
"Well, let's get it done now before the effects of the Coke and gels wear off!!"
Cuesta laughs. Nacho looks like he purposely wants to take a header into the ditch.
It occurs to me later that maybe I should have made more of an effort to converse and be funny and witty and stuff like that, but it's not every day that you get the chance to follow the line and the wheel of someone who's got more than twenty years of pro experience under his belt. You can watch pro cycling on TV to try to get ideas on what to do (and what not to do) but there's absolutely nothing like riding with a pro to learn. Cuesta is the very image of calm on his bike, and in my pre-bonk mental state I focus intensely on trying to pick up hints: Don't move your hips so much. Focus on the fluidity of your pedaling. I take his line through curves: he pedals through curves, I pedal. He drops his outer leg, I do the same.
I hope I'm not making him nervous staring at him like this, but I know that it will be a long time before the next time I get the road handling lessons that I will get in these 35 kilometres. And let's not kid ourselves. We all want to believe in the magic of being with someone special. We want to believe in the transfer-ability of an experience like this, hoping that we get touched with some kind of magic touch, hoping that something like this will prove to be transcendental and career-changing. I want to impress him, too: "Wow, there's this chick who rides with Chamartín who's not all that bad...." As if: If I were really that impressive, I wouldn't be third from DFL. But if I weren't third from DFL, I wouldn't be getting a lesson like this. I wouldn't be riding with the guy whose name everyone mentioned when I bought Ellie last year: "Why can't you ride at 40? Look at Cuesta: he's the same age as you and he's still enjoying a pro career."
We make it into Villarcayo just after 4, when they're in the process of taking everything down. David's at the finish line, camera at the ready, and he breaks into an enormous grin when he sees Cuesta and I come in together. Cameras are out. High-fives are exchanged with the various guys who manned feed stations, the various support vans. Photos are taken. I manage to get off the bike without falling off. At some point, Nacho disappears and I don't see him during the post-race meal and raffle. I can't even think of taking a shower now: I'm so out of it that if I submit myself to a flow of hot water I will fall asleep on the spot.
Roberto's sitting by himself in the sports centre for the post-meal ride (I win an Orbea mountain biking shirt that will look good on my little brother). We invite him over to sit with us, have a good laugh with some of the other cyclists and volunteers. We pile our stuff into David's car at the end, swap, exchange numbers so that we can go for coffee at Quebranta this year. The drive back is uneventful, since we manage to stay ten minutes behind most of the thunderstorms that are blowing through Castile.
And it strikes me that even though cycling has come very close to breaking me physically and emotionally many times in the past year, I have never seen so many rainbows as I have while on my bike.
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