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.

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!

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.

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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.

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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.

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&ampliar=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.