Hell of the North 2009

It's been a while since my last post. That time has been spent deep in a meditative state and a strict training regimen. To say it best, the weather's been good enough to ride and train and ride and train I must. After all, the local version of Hell of the North was close at hand and I was aiming for the podium.

The course is relatively straight forward...five laps around a 5-mile circuit, including 1.75 miles of dirt. The dirt is always the X-factor...wet, dry, fast, slow...it always plays a role. Typically the first lap includes a spring to be first on the dirt and then jockeying for position so you don't end up being dropped before you hit the pavement again. 25 miles doesn't sound like a lot, and it's not, but the dirt is like a climb on each lap at crit pace...lots of surges, nervous riding, etc...

And then there was the weather — 34 degrees, snowing, raining, blowing...messy to say the least.

For the first three laps me and the Z Train stayed right where we wanted to be...top 5 or 10. On the beginning of the fourth lap another team tried to get someone away off the front but Zach and I helped close it down. However, the accelerations whittled the group down to about 15. Perfect. Only strong legs would be in the finale. But things didn't work out like I wanted.

Suffice it to say, my luck was bad but my legs were good. On the fourth lap two guys touched wheels in front of me and completed a spastic waltz on their bikes before deciding where to lay it down....right in front of me. I managed to unclip one foot and steer clear of the crash, but in detouring away from it I found myself off the beaten path in the thick mud at a dead stop. 

I heard several more people pile up in the mess with the clatter of steel and carbon and grunts and groans. I tried to hook up with another rider who had just escaped the fray, but he was on a stupid cross bike and couldn't get things rolling himself, so I dropped him and set off to bridge back to the remaining group of 10.

From there it was all chase, chase, chase. Which I did without being able to close the gap, which at one point was only about 40-50 yards. Having done my own little TT in the wind I finished about 200 meters behind the lead group.

Z train ended up sprinting for 5th and I rounded things out somewhere between 10th or 12th.

Great race. Disappointing outcome. Good legs. And some motivation for the next race.

Two wheels for life.

The crappiest generation of spoiled idiots

I bought a new bike.

It's beautiful. It's so Italian it smells like garlic. And it rides like a dream.

But that's not the purpose for this post. No, it's a little more complicated than that. While I love my new bike, I could have survived just fine with my old bike, or the one before that, or the one before that. There's no true need for the string of bikes I've owned in my lifetime.

But lately I started to think I'm becoming part of what I consider a younger generation who seems to have a sense of entitlement from the outset. They want a bike, so they jump straight to the lightest, stiffest, most expensive racing bike they can find...the latest cool frame maker or material (Ti, Carbon, stainless steel, etc).

As I've raced over the past few years, I've noticed that the least experienced racers seem to always have the newest and most expensive bikes of all the groups (Cat. 1/2 aside since they often get their bikes for cheap/free or are paid to ride something).

And so I present to all of you this:



Two wheels for life.

New girl in town

Someone's sleeping on the couch, and it isn't me.

--Two wheels for life

Can you feel this?

Or this?


Or maybe even this?


There's something about February for me. I know it's still winter, but once the month is over, March is spring in my mind. The time for the European Classics where the toughest athletes on the planet slog through mud and shit and pain and rain and snow and fatigue and end up gritting their teeth to get over one last col to battle it out in a sprint.

I've always loved a race, but ever since Greg Lemond beat Laurent Fignon in a time trial duel that may never be repeated, I've been a sucker for bike racing. There's no judges or officials or timeouts or any of that crap. You line up, ride for several hundred kilometers and the first man across the line wins. Simple. Elegant. Beautiful.

There aren't very many things that will keep me up at night, but thinking about racing my bike is one of them. I'll probably never win a race, but just knowing that I'm going to feel that surge of pre-race anxiety where my senses are heightened and I feel more alive....that's worth the entry fee and the masochism.

Even if I end up baked and cross-eyed, there's always something to love about racing. It's you and the bike. Caked in dirt and sweat and someone elses spit and you don't know if you'll make the selection but you know if you do you're going to hang on 'til the end. That energy and emotion makes everything more poignant.

Two wheels for life.

You look like several hundred dollars...

A few days ago I was browsing through a mail order cycling catalog when a particular piece of clothing caught my eye:

Campagnolo 11-Speed Bib Short:

And then I found it's partner...Campagnolo 11-Speed Full Zip Jersey:

I actually turned the page before the reality of what I had just seen registered: $339.99 for a pair of bibs? Holy crap! Sweet fancy Moses! Are you freakin' kidding me?

I started to wonder if it was a misprint...and then it all made sense. Of course, it's made by Campy.

Yes, the Campy...as in Campagnolo...the supreme Italian component maker. Only now they've taken their mechanical expertise into the apparel world. How genius of them to offer a very affordable kit to all of us cyclist. And it's an 11-speed jersey and bibs...not the crappy 10-speed stuff they're pawning off to has beens and recumbant riders.

But for upwards of 700 bones, this thing better come with a pair of Marco Pantani's legs in the bibs to get me up the next climb. For $639.99, the chamois in these bibs better not only protect my taint from saddle sores, it better massage it, buff it, wax it, clear coat it, and finish it off with a spot free rinse.

I can heard the proponents now..."But it's the best kit out there...the last one you'll ever buy."

And they're right...it would be the last one I'd ever buy because it'd have to be the last kit on the planet before I'd spend $700 on a skin suit with a diaper sewn in it.

I'd rather wear burlap shorts with a sand paper chamois than pay this much cash to a too-cool gear company that thinks it's all that and a bag of pork rinds.

For $700 you could get a pretty decent wheelset:

For $700 you could get a lot of tubes, several really nice tires, a box full of components, and many lightweight trinkets.

For $700 you could also get nearly 400 packages of Clif Shot Bloks; about 600 Powergels; 400 servings of Endurox recovery drink; and 700 Clif Bars.

But more importantly, $700 would easily cover my race fees for an entire season of events.

I understand that there's the notion that you get what you pay for, but there's a law of diminishing return that eventually kicks in when the outfit I'm wearing costs more than much of my bike.

And who's making these things? I'm pretty sure it's not Italian models in Tuscany crafting them by hand to fit every inch of my body. My guess is the small hands of children in an Asian nation sewed these over-priced clown suits for pennies on the dollar.

I could be wrong, but there's something amiss about Campagnolo thinking they can get away with this.

I'd rather be seen in this:



Or this:



For now I'm sticking with my Taint Training ensemble and I'll mock anyone wearing the aforementioned kit who isn't being paid to do so.

Two Wheels for Life...