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3 more Race Reports

The editors here at Team Landall are doing a pretty terrible job of actually updating and writing race reports. They're going to blame it on fatherhood.

Schooley Mill CX | Maryland | 11.13.2011
This was a pretty cool race. Upon pre-riding the course I thought it was nothing but turn, turn, turn, turn, turn and wasn't going to suit me very well, but during the race I felt like there was a lot of actual pedaling which I generally like. I started really close to the back because of my late registration. I was number 68 or something. The start went up a hill and wasn't very fast, which didn't actually lead to much opportunity to pass. I rode the first lap pretty aggressively to pick my way through the field. I continually passed guys the entire race and then on the last lap made contact with one of the better placed riders in the series. He was on a different bike than he started so me must have had a mechanical. Instead of trying to ride by him I decided to follow him to see how he cornered, since I assumed he was better at that than I am. This strategy also let a guy I had previously passed catch back on and we had a group of three in the last half of the last lap. We all came onto the pavement pretty much together and he opened it up right away. I ended up winning the uphill sprint for 12th. This was the first race I felt like I pedaled hard and sprinted out of corners for the entire 45 minutes. I was really pleased with 12th, especially considering my starting position. This also meant I'd score some series points and get a better starting position at my next Super8 race.

Bloomer Park CX | Rochester, MI | 11.20.2011
We went to Michigan for Thanksgiving and luckily there was a race in their CX series going on in the same park where Jill used to play softball as a kid. We invited all of her friends she grew up with and I couldn't believe it, but they actually came out to watch. It was awesome having a cheering section and was definitely motivating to keep the gas on.

The race had a really weird mulch pile feature. There was a dip in the middle instead of just being one pile. That dip got really rutted out and going into it on the first lap I stacked it pretty good. I was able to get my bike and get the chain back on while running out of the mulch pile, jump back on and start the chase. I lost probably 3-4 spots there.

It didn't take too long and I had moved my way up to 2nd. I chased as hard as I could but couldn't bring the guy in first back. He was their series leader and ended up beating me by about 30 seconds and I beat the guy in 3rd by about 45 seconds. Except for the mulch pile it was a really fun course and I even got heckled by strangers at the top of one of the hills. That was pretty cool too.

Capital CX | Reston, VA | 12.4.2011
I was really stoked to start on the 3rd row for once but I did not have a very good race. At least not physically. Not sure what was going on but I felt completely gassed after the first lap and just never quite felt like I was riding fast through the hard pedaling sections that I normally do pretty well through. I ended up sprinting for 11th, won the sprint, but the judges recorded me as 12th. Upon not seeing a camera I decided not to file and official protest, but probably should have. I just wasn't sure how I'd prove that I beat the guy other than saying, "I know I won that sprint." Oh well.

My favorite part of the day wasn't the insane drop-in with snow fencing to catch riders gone astray. It was the guy who on the 3rd or 4th lap chose to cut the course after the tape had been broken by someone else and rode straight into a giant hole filled with leaves. Karma will do that to you.

That may be the end of my 2011 CX season. There's a race in Luray this weekend but it's a 2 hour drive and with the baby that is sort of a logistical concern. Jill has been so great about letting me race this year, and really so quickly after Hudson was born. He was only 3 weeks old when I raced Kinder Kross. I realize how lucky I am to have such a supportive wife. She's always on the side of the course yelling words of encouragement and telling me where I'm at in the field. It's really awesome. The racing side of me definitely wants to race Luray. I've managed to eek out 6 upgrade pts and there's a decent chance I could get the remaining 4 I need for my 2 upgrade. The husband in me thinks I should probably count my blessings and not push it by asking my wife and baby to sit in the car for a 2 hour drive while I race for 45 minutes and turn around and drive 2 hours home.

Either way, I'm really happy with the way this season went and I'm already looking forward to next year when I've had to time work on the limiters. I'm confident I'll get my 2 upgrade and start racing for 60 minutes. It's just a matter of time.

3 Race Reports and a Rant.

First, here's three race reports:

Kinder Cross, 10.30.11, Cat 3/4:
First race back after the birth of Hudson. About 2 weeks off the bike and the entire week going into that race I rode indoors on the trainer. The first time I rode outside was from the parking spot to the reg table to get my number. Got a good start despite being on the 6th or 7th row and went into the first bottle neck in the top 15 or so. Fought my way up to about 5th and then starting making mistakes from not having actually ridden my bike in a while. I ended up dabbing a lot more than usual which forced me to chase harder than needed which caused more dabbing. I finished 9th out of 40 something starters. Not bad for the first race back.

VCU CX, 11.05.11, Cat 3:
This was a smaller race with only about 20 guys on the start line. The course was awesome and had a bunch of really cool features. It was also short so we rode 10 or so laps for the 45 minutes instead of just 4-5. Moved into the top 5 by the end of the first lap then into 3rd by the end of the 3rd or 4th. I got caught by a guy somewhere around the 5th or 6th lap and I tried to recovery a bit while keeping him in striking distance. He was cornering better than me but I was riding faster through the pedaling sections so I figured I just needed to come to the pavement with him and I'd beat him. That's what happened and I out sprinted him for 3rd.

Ed Sander CX, 11.06.11, Cat 3/4:
At the MABRA races the staging takes place based on the order in which you register. The only good thing about this policy is that at least it's transparent and everybody knows it. The bad thing about this policy is that it's dumb but I'll get to that in my rant in a second.

I started 89th, third from last row. I couldn't even see the helmets of the guys in the first 5 rows. I liked half of this course but the section through the Lily Ponds I didn't really find very useful. It wasn't hard as it was just a series of 90 degree corners through the ponds, but it was almost impossible to ride fast because it was turn, pedal twice, turn, pedal twice, turn. I think you get the idea. The other half of the course actually required some fitness, some bike handling skills and concentration. That part of the course was much better.

I ended up in a group of guys and had almost nothing left on the last lap. I was hoping I could hold them off but I gave up a few spots late. I finished 26th on the day, which, in retrospect isn't terrible considering I started 89th. On the results sheets they had a column marked kills, which, in theory is the number of guys you beat based on where you started. I had the 2nd most on the day. The guy with the most started on my row and ended up on the podium. I have no idea how he got through traffic to get all the way up there. Hats off to that guy! http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

And, my rant.

Staging is supposed to act as a means of pre-ranking the riders based on their achieved results that year. At UCI races you are staged based on your UCI points and so the person with the most points it's 1st and it goes from there. At these local races each race assigns series points. And I think that's a good system and those people should get call ups and priority staging. But, after that, staging should be done based on a scoring system that ranks every single rider in the field against one another. But, you may ask yourself, how would the race promoter know how to rank people in that fashion? Easy, crossresults.com already does this work for every single race promoter who uses bikereg, which, all of ours do. All you have to do is copy/paste the url for the confirmed riders into to the race predictor tool and it automatically spits out a list of registered riders based on their crossresults score. In theory, and obviously this wouldn't be absolutely perfect, but you'd get a much more accurate staging line up based on riders previous results. This wouldn't even be any extra work for the race promoter because you're already using an excel sheet to assign race numbers, all you'd have to do is copy/paste the race prediction into an excel sheet and carry on like you previously did. This, would make for a much more accurate race and would still encourage online registration, because you could revert to the old system for anybody registering day of by making those people start in the back, first come, first served.

Obviously this rant is based on the fact that in races where I don't start 3rd row from the back I have all top 10 results and 2 podiums. When I have to fight through rows and rows of people I'm faster than I'm just out of the top 25. Again, I'm not suggesting extra work for race promoters to do a better job with staging at these larger races, but this solution would fix the problem and create a much more accurate race. I just don't like that people get rewarded for sitting at their computer and trolling for registration to open instead of out training. You shouldn't be penalized for pre-registering even if it's 1 minute before online registration closes.

Tachinno CX Race Report

Yesterday I won a cyclocross (CX) race. I’ve never written a race report from a race I’ve won because, well, I’ve never won a bike race before, of any kind. It’s sort of hard thinking back on the day to write about any details that would make it interesting to read about in this format but since I have friends and family who don’t get to come to races I’ll do my best to recap how it went.

In CX the start is sometimes the most important part of the race. If you’re unfamiliar they stage us all in rows of 8. Every region seems to have a different method of handling staging, but here, they do it by order of registration. I was number 36, which meant I was the 36th guy to register and found myself on the 5th or 6th row. The field was probably over 100 deep so if you’re on the 10th+ row your race, if you’re trying to place, can be over literally at the first corner when 100+ guys are trying to squeeze through, and the further back you are, the more likely you come to a complete stop. Obviously this is bad when the guys on the front are riding as hard as they can while you’re standing still.

With the importance of the start in mind I lined up on the far left of my row. There was about a bike width of room between the edge of the road and the course tape and so my plan was to shoot up that side through the grass as long as it was open and available. Luckily, the guys lined up in front of me were content with staying on the pavement and I was in the 3rd row before some guys were even clipped in. When that lane of grass ran out an opening to my right presented itself and I shot into that gap continuing to move up as far as I could before the choke point. At this race the choke point happened to be a right hand corner at the stop of an uphill drag. I went into that corner in around 10th position. Out of that corner was a slight downhill that went into an off camber left hand u-turn. I was surprised at how many of the guys in front of me were coasting this downhill so as I continued to pedal I was able to move up maybe 2 or 3 more spots. What goes down must come up and so the next section was another uphill drag in which I was able to continue to move up a few more spots until I found myself sitting 3rd wheel. At this point, I was pretty content to sit there and try and feel out those guys to see who was strong and who just sits at their computer to register the second registration opens so they can start on the front. We went through a few more off camber sections and I noticed that there was a small gap, maybe just a second or two forming behind me.

This brought us into the run up where the first guy shouldered his bike while #2 and I pushed ours. The ground wasn’t muddy so you weren’t at a disadvantage just pushing it. Number 1 tried to make himself wide which isn’t a terrible strategy but he wasn’t running fast enough I went to his right to pass him. He sort of blocked me with his front wheel (maybe not intentionally) so I just assertively made some room for myself and ran by. #2 got the top of the run up at the same time I did so I decided it’d probably be better to get at least a little bit of draft so I let him get on first and followed him for the remainder of the lap.

The run up definitely stretched our gap out but only by a few seconds. There were still plenty of guys within striking distance. It was still early in the race so I didn’t want to attack this guy only to have him sit on my wheel and then smoke me at the finish. And, to be honest, it didn’t seem like he was working that hard. About half way through the second lap I looked back and realized we had a gap of probably 10 or so seconds to the chasing group so I figured at this point it was well worth the effort to work with him to increase that gap and then deal with any winning tactics on a later lap. I pulled around him on the straight away beside the pit and said, “We got a gap, let’s go,” and he responded, “Good job.” I was completely puzzled by the response but decided to just keep the pace high and I could ask for clarification later. After this straight there was a sweeping left that led into a flat right handed u-turn. When I got through the u-turn I looked and saw that he wasn’t into the turn yet. I didn’t feel like I’d accelerated but I read that as a sign that he was gassed so I decided to roll the dice and I hit it hard to try and make that gap expand.

Describing 90% of the rest of the race wouldn’t be very interesting. It was a lot of me riding as hard as I could, alone off the front. I was definitely nervous that I went too early as I was in completely unchartered territory, but, I like racing my bike, not riding in packs, so I figured even if this was a fly and die move, at least I’d tried.

Apparently my gap continued to increase over the next four laps, which was good considering that I crashed on an off camber corner on the last lap. Luckily my friend and teammate Thom, who wasn’t racing, was standing right where I crashed. He immediately started with the reassurances of “It’s ok, stay calm, you’ve got a gap.” Then, when I got up and realized my chain was off, again, “Just put the chain on. You’ve got time.” That made a huge difference. I don’t know how long I was on the ground or how long it took me to get going again but it felt like an hour. I’m sure without his reassurance I’d have panicked and taken at least twice as long. Luckily, the gap I’d built it up was more than enough to recover from that crash.

I rode the rest of that lap pretty cautiously, which ironically meant I actually took a lot of the corners much smoother and faster than before. I guess that’s a lesson for another day. About half way through I realized I’d won as long as I kept it upright and so I started to think about the finish line celebration. I’m sure I’m not the only bike racer who has stood in front of a mirror and thrown my arms up in the air until I got one that I thought looked cool. All of that practice was for absolutely nothing because when I did cross the finish line I had no idea what to do. I did post up but it was more of absolute shock that I’d held everyone off and somehow managed to win a bike race. I rode slowly for a bit and then went back to find Jill because if anything, she’s the one who helped me win that race. I spend a lot of time on my bike and she’s always been nothing but supportive, encouraging and motivating.

With the baby due in a week but could decide to show up anytime I haven’t registered for any more races. This means that I’ll be playing them all by ear and registering at the race if the baby is still holding out for a higher signing bonus and incentive package. With registering at the race I’ll likely be starting dead last in the field. That means I’ll probably get stopped behind the choke point and have to chase and fight my way through traffic instead of leading it and picking my own lines through the corners. But, that’s ok, because bike racing is still fun, no matter what, and just because I got 1 result doesn’t deviate from my goals for the season. I can still ride my bike hard regardless of where I start and regardless of where I finish. But finishing first sure is nice!

And a link to some photos my friend Thom took.

Candy Pedal Question

Hey Fellow CX folks, I have a question for you. I switched pedals this year to egg beaters but wasn't having the easiest time getting back into them. I won a set of candy 1s so I switched over to see if they were any better. I like the extra platform they provide and they're easier to find when oxygen is no longer at a maximum level in my brain, but I do have an issue.

Eggbeater:


Candy:



The big plus of eggbeaters or candy pedals are the 4 points of entry. But, I find that's only sometimes the case with my candy pedals. The engagement piece (we'll just call it the eggbeater for ease of visual aid and referencing) spins freely from the platform which in theory should still allow for the 4 points of engagement. However, I find that it doesn't spin free enough not to also spin the platform and what this means is that occasionally I end up with the eggbeater orientated perpendicular to the platform with only 1 piece sticking up through the platform instead of 2, which is what you need to "properly" clip in.

I say properly because you can still get clipped in this way but the amount of float is almost zero and the amount of twist required to disengage is also a lot greater. They still "work" when this happens but it's not ideal.

Visuals of what I'm attempting to describe above.

Good:


Not Good:


So I basically have 2 questions:

1) Is there a fix for this? I've applied lube to the connecting pieces and spun the two pieces independently trying to get them to loosen up more but it doesn't seem to do much good unless I'm physically holding the platform and spinning the eggbeater with my other hand. If I just push the eggbeater portion the platform spins as well.

2) If there's not a fix, does it make sense to somehow (maybe super glue) fix the eggbeater into place so that there are only 2 points of engagement, but they would be perfect points of engagement and provide reliable, consistent performance. While this option would eliminate the benefit of the 4 points of engagement of the crankbrother's systems it wouldn't be any worse than most companies standard 2 point systems.

I'd appreciate any input that anybody has. Thanks!

CX Season Goals

I'm a big believer in the value of goals. I like to have things to strive for and most importantly, remember what I'm working for when the going gets tough. Sometimes, just like the tag line on this blog says, we set completely unrealistic goals and then get frustrated when we fall short.

Three years ago I raced my first cross race. It was ugly. I'll spare you most of the details but I dropped my chain 17 times (yep, I counted) and was lapped twice. It was probably the most fun I'd had on a bike in a long, long time. After that race I immediately made some changes to the bike, not least of course, to prevent the chain from falling off, and raced again the next weekend, and the next weekend, and so on and so forth.

Since that initial year though I've done a terrible job of managing my motivation and fitness through late summer. I always found myself burned out and needing a rest from the road and then all of sudden it was late September and I hadn't done anything to get prepared for CX season. This left me feeling flat and exhausted and not willing to spend my hard earned dollars on entry fees when I could take a beating for free if I really wanted to.

This season I somehow managed to remember that CX season was on the horizon. I was approved the purchase of an aluminum CX bike with working shifters which, in theory, should make a huge difference in my racing. I find myself coming into this season mentally and physically prepared, at least as much as I can be. I'm ready to race and I'm excited to get in as many races as I can given life's commitments (there is a baby set to be born any day now).

So with all of that in mind I decided to write out some goals for CX season. Realistic goals that I think I can stick to but most importantly use to define success. Winning bike races is hard. If 100+ guys show up to an event only 1 guy wins. It doesn't happen very often for a variety of reasons and because of that I'm going to no longer use "win" as a goal. If all goes well, hopefully I can find myself in that hunt and make that happen. You can't control what other people do in a race, but you can keep control of what you do and so my goals are written from that perspective.

Goals:

1) Ride as hard as I can for the entire race.
2) Improve technically.
3) Have fun.
4) Race.

If at the end of every race I can look back and say I did those 4 things, maybe I'll get lucky enough to snag a result or two.

tumblr.

The management team here at TeamLandall has decided that we needed to venture out and utilize another social media tool. Sometimes the writers on staff here have something to write or post but it doesn't quite justify an entire blog entry but it's a bit more than 140 characters. In those instances we've decided to post thinghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs to tumblr.

We can be found at teamlandall.tumblr.com.

Right now there isn't a lot posted. In fact there isn't much at all. But there is a video of me going through the barriers at cx practice last night. I've been working pretty hard on this (the barriers, not the posting to social media) so I'm pretty stoked for the upcoming season.

See you out there.

The Community Fund

Yesterday I read this. Which, I suggest you stop reading my post and read that first. But, if you're not going to, because for whatever reason you can't get enough of my grammatical mistakes, I'll give you the reader's digest version.

Guy hangs out in drum shop and starts to notice a trend in the customers. There are guys who only want really specific vintage drums. There are guys who can't play a lick but have a ton of money so they buy expensive drums anyway. Then there's a kid who doesn't look the part but when he plays it's amazing and they ask him what kind of kit he has and he says he picked it up from the ChuckECheese when it was about to close down. It's the kit that the fake animatronic mouse played on. He then points out that now as he likes to hang out in bike shops, he notices the same trends in bike consumers. Then he wraps it up a with a question of how many kids with tons of talent have shown up at a local group ride not looking the part, being ignored, and talent gone to waste?

I guess that's a valid point, except every time I've been on a group ride with a super talented guy, it generally doesn't matter what he's riding. He kicks everybody's teeth in pretty quickly and we stop making fun of his socks.

When I was in high school my baseball coach used to always say, "Son, if you're not a ball player, at least you can look like one." That was his way of correcting all of the sideways hats and un-tucked jerseys. I remember pretty vividly one game when the other team's short stop had on bumble bee stripped socks with his pants rolled up high to his knees. We all made fun of him. Then he went 3-4 with like 4 RBIs and made a couple great defensive plays that left us all in agreement that he could play in a tutu if he wanted.

It's the same in cycling. We all dress the part, mimic the pros, follow the rules and quietly poke fun of the new guy with hairy legs and a pie plate. Well, until he drops your ass on the climb and then you go find out his name as you're still gasping for air.

But just as the author notices a trend in rich guys buying drum kits way more expensive than they need, there are no shortage of rich, fat guys rolling around on $10gs worth of carbon fiber and it's always drove me absolutely insane. I know it shouldn't bother me. In fact, it should make me smile every time I drop one of those guys on their sub 14lb bike on my 19ish lb aluminum CX bike. But, jealousy takes over and one always wants what one doesn't have.

A long time ago I came up with this Title IX-esk system that I thought all bike shops should employee. Every time some slow, rich dude comes in and buys a PRO level bike there should be a sliding scale that actually increases the mark up of that bike based on his ability to actually ride it fast. That extra mark up would then go into a community fund that would help those uber talented poor kids get on bikes that are actually worth riding. When I first proposed this concept to anyone who was unlucky enough to be in ear shot the extra pot of money was to benefit me. But as I've gotten older, wiser and much more philanthropic, I realized I don't need fancy stuff to continue to ride my bikes medium fast. Instead, the talented kids who can't even afford the level of stuff I have should get it so they can go from riding plastic Sora junk to at least Rival or 105.

Obviously this is never going to happen but I think about it every single time I see a rich dude on a [fill in the blank] bike with [highest level component line] rolling on [$3k+ wheels]. But, a boy can dream can't he?

(In the drum scenario there are those guys who want vintage kits and there are those guys in the bike world as well. They ride custom bikes hand made by some buy in a garage or a boutique artists space. While those bikes are often just as expensive as the primary offender I'm speaking of, they are excluded from this discussion as they are riding art slowly, not bikes meant to win the cycling's biggest races.)

Day12 | Stationary Helmets

#30daysofbiking | Day8 | it keeps raining.

#30daysofbiking | Day7 | Fondriest.

#30daysofbiking | Day6 | 2x20s.

#30daysofbiking | Day5 | Indoor Wheelies

#30daysofbiking | Day4 | CX Clinic

#30daysofbiking | Day2 | Rule #80.

#30daysofbiking | Day1

One of the bike people I follow on twitter (@cycloboredom) had a series of posts he titled #30daysofbiking. Then, I found this, http://30daysofbiking.com/ and for some reason that spurred me to take on the challenge as well. I obviously already ride my bike a lot but not necessarily every single day. I suspect this will on occasion pose a challenge or two but we'll see what happens. We all know I don't like to lose, not that this is really something that can be won, but you know what I mean. The rule seems to be pretty lax. All you have to do is ride. Doesn't have to be long or to get somewhere. Their site says it can just be around the block. There may be days where I ride up the alley and back because that's all that fits in. There will be other days where I ride 60+ miles (it is cx season after all) and there will be days when I race. Either way, I'm going to ride my bike everyday for 30 days. It's pretty convenient that I'm starting on 9/1 since there are 30 days in the month of September. I'll try and post a photo everyday. If I weren't so attached to TeamLandall I'd start a flickr feed for this, but I like this site, so we'll use it.

Here's day 1.

Stage 18, Great Stage, Only 1 Gripe

Yesterday's Tour de France stage 18 was, for the most part, excellent. Andy Schleck attacked from a long way out, which was bold, and daring, and all of those other adjectives that people are using the describe it. But, what it really was, was necessary. Andy needed to get back a lot of time and so the only way to do that was to go from a long way out. He wasn't going to get back ~3:00 just on the Galibier. I read a funny quote on twitter yesterday in reference to Andy's attack. The scenario is exactly the same except Andy sent teammates up the road and Floyd just went by himself.

I do have a gripe though. I couldn't help but wonder why on the slopes of the Galibier Voeckler and especially his teammate, Rolland, didn't work with Cadel to bring Andy back? I know Cadel was going hard. His tempo shredded those last few guys and the look on Basso's face pretty much showed how hard they were going. But, still, at least Rolland should have pulled through once or twice to give Cadel a tiny bit of a breather. There's only one minor downside for Europecar by helping Cadel in that scenario. Rolland probably doesn't finish the climb with those guys and isn't in the hunt for the white jersey for the best young ride. In my opinion, that's the wrong strategy to employee.

Voeckler, while not a good time trialist, can't really be any worse than Andy or Frank Schleck (I admit I haven't poured over TT results that included all three guys but the Schleck's are notorious for giving back huge chunks of time in TTs so my assumption is that Voeckler could at least limit his loss to them with a cushion). And, if they helped Cadel bring back Andy and Voeckler can stay with him at a steady, turbo diesel pace, he's not really losing any time to Cadel. Europecar's strategy here should have been to keep as big of a cushion as possible to take into the TT on Saturday. Once Contador was popped off that group, there was absolutely no downside to Rolland coming to the front to help ensure the put as much space between them and Contador as possible and close that gap to Andy. Rolland, was the only guy in that group, outside of Frank Schleck, that looked like he could have contributed to the pace making and clearly Frank's not helping in that scenario. Maybe Rolland has a great poker face, but he certainly didn't look to be struggling as much as everybody else. I think their strategy should be to race for the Yellow jersey even if that means risking losing it, rather than for the podium in two categories. Voeckler finishing on the podium in Paris is still not guaranteed so playing a safe card isn't necessarily any better than laying it all on the line. Nobody's going to remember the white jersey winner anyway unless you end up being a real contender in the future. Maybe Rolland is, but I always see the white jersey (and team classification for that matter) as a fun little competition that teams should be excited to win but unless it's your only option, nobody should care about. Especially when caring about that competition interferes with another.

I also realize this is easy to say from the comfort of my couch.

Armstrong, My Thoughts

In the last month I've written about half of 20 or so posts. They never make it to completion because at about that point I ask myself, "Am I saying anything that isn't already being said?" Generally the answer is no and since there are plenty of professional and amateur writers out there saying it better than me, I hit ctrl+A, delete.

It's really no surprise that most of the cycling world is still talking about Lance. What is surprising, at least to me, is that so many people still seem to live in some dream land believing he didn't do it. Come on people, at this point, it shouldn't even be a question anymore. Lance's doping allegation defense strategy has always followed a very simple strategy: 1) Act insulted. 2) Angrily deny. 3) Use the tested more than anyone else line. 4) Question the credibility of the accuser, whether that be 1 person or an entire nation. 5) Threaten lives/livelihoods.

With Hamilton's 60 minutes piece it was pretty obvious that the Lance response would follow those 5 steps just like it always does. This response was so predictable I'm not entirely sure it happened because I didn't even bother to look for it. Yes, Tyler denied doping for years, took donations and now comes clean about the whole thing. Does this on the surface seem like the accusations of someone with credibility issues, sure it does. Does this person come from the camp who probably coached him on this life of denial, seems likely.

Hincapie won't comment on it but it's been reported that in his grand jury whatever it's called, he also testified that he witnessed Armstrong doping and that he used PEDs himself. To me, and it should be for all you believers of the fairy tale, that's the nail in the coffin. The other three guys who have come out and said Armstrong doped all have agenda/credibility issues, not Hincapie. There's no alternative agenda for Hincapie except making sure his ass stays out of jail to raise his kids. He doesn't need to rat Lance out because he's mad at him but he certainly doesn't need to keep his mouth shut and do time for the Don either.

In a small way I find this incredibly ironic because a lot of people attribute George's lack of classics success to his loyalty to Armstrong. Instead of being able to put up a sprinting fight against Boonen on the velodrome in Roubaix he was becoming a better climber to be more loyal to Armstrong. Without Armstrong, Hincapie probably wins Roubaix at least once because he'd have ridden for a team who would have surrounded him with guys in those races. Instead, Hincapie stayed with Lance and continually lost the race that meant the most to him while helping Lance win the race the meant the most to him. Let's say Big George goes to another team early on and wins a bunch of Roubaix's it doesn't necessarily mean that he still isn't testifying that Lance taught him to dope, but in the present scenario, it makes it very hard for Lance to use his typical 5 step program against his accuser. If there's anybody the American cycling fans see as the model of credibility, it's Hincapie.

The other piece that strikes me as ironic is that Armstrong is always so quick to point out the previous denial pattern of all those who have accused him of doping. When it's official and he can no longer deny it, what does he think that's going to do for his image? He's essentially lumping himself right into the same category as Tyler and Floyd and in the end, the only thing that's going to separate Lance and those guys, is that he survived cancer and they didn't. But all three will be convicted dopers who denied it for years and took others money under some sort of false pretense. An obvious argument to that is that Lance's money raised went to cancer research, not a fake defense fund, and that'd be absolutely right, but how much less money would he have raised if the story wasn't so grand and dependent on PEDs?

I'm not smart enough to understand exactly what he's up against if some sort of rico charges against him as he used government money to buy doping products. That side of this entire situation seems insanely unlucky since the same thing would have happened regardless of the sponsor printed on their jerseys.

I wrote sometime last year that I hoped for the sake of the cancer community that he didn't get caught. I wrote that I believed 100% that he was guilty but that I didn't think any good would actually come of it. I'm still not sure that much good comes of Armstrong getting busted. For everyone but the most casual cycling fan the writing is on the wall and we've all made our minds up regardless of what the feds find out. But at some point, people, regardless of how big they are need to be accountable for their actions and I think this line of thought is what changed my opinion on the seemingly impending Armstrong trial. Just because you create a larger than life persona doesn't mean you're larger than the law and at some point, you have to lay in the bed you made.

Race Report: The Bunny Hop Crit

Race: Bunny Hop Crit
Date: May 1, 2011
Location: Suitland, MD
Course: 3 corners, flat.
Conditions: Rainy but surprisingly not windy.

To not completely bore you with the details of a 42 lap crit I'll recap the race really quickly:

It was rainy and I figured it'd be sketchy. I went to the front and went with or instigated every move of the race. None worked and it came down to a bunch sprint in which I got pinched in the final corner and got 14th with all my skin fully intact.

Race Report: Meadows Farms or something like that

I'm not entirely sure what this race was called because I just referred to it as "the race down in Doswell" whenever people would ask. I find that to be much more useful than the names of races unless they have some sort of history. It's even better when the name of the race is actually where it's being held. That certainly makes things simpler. But, that's not the point.

This was my first race of the year and I'm pretty pleased with how I felt throughout. It was a 30 mile circuit race on a really technical course. They claimed to have 9 90 degree corners but I only counted 7. There were 3 big sweepers so maybe a few of those were thrown in for the 9 count. There was also a hill but it wasn't long enough or steep enough to really make a difference.

The 4s started out with something like 70 people but that was whittled down to about 25 or so by the time we were at 5 laps to go. We ended up doing 31 miles in just over 1:10, so it was fast. But I think the yo-yo through the corners probably shed more people than the hill or the actual speeds.

With 2 laps to go there was a group of 6 that were about 30 seconds or so up the road. We came through the start finish and everybody slowed so I went to try and bridge up to those guys. It seemed pretty obvious to me that everybody else left in the main field was content for sprinting for 7th and I wanted nothing to do with that. In hindsight I probably went a bit early as I attacked into the cross wind, then into the headwind after the right hander and burned a really big match creating the separation through there. I'm not sure if anybody would have tried to come with me had I waited till the tailwind, but I wasn't interested in towing guys with me to the break so I wanted to make sure I was by myself. Some guy after the race said he tried to go with me and couldn't, so that's at least encouraging.

Trying to get up to the guys I had to fight my way through a ton of lapped traffic who were kind enough to essentially take whatever line they wanted through the corners. I'm not sure why these people weren't pulled but they were still on the course chatting with each other or picking their noses.

I knew I had to make it to the break before the downhill with the headwind or I'd never catch on. I didn't make it so at the bottom of the hill I sort of sat up a bit to wait for the field. As they came by, much to my surprise, it somehow ballooned to at least double as all the lapped traffic decided it was a good idea to latch on and get a free tow. I wasn't sure who in this group was actually still on the lead lap so I forced myself in somewhere about 20 guys back. As we turned left into the headwind it became apparent which guys weren't on the lead lap as they all blew back up and I was left with at least 15 bike lengths between me and the guys in the main field. This was obviously annoying and so I yelled at quite a few of the lapped guys to get the F' off the course as I tried to close that gap down to the main field. I think we're all friends now. (I did apologize to a few of them on the cool down lap) But seriously, what makes you think that getting back onto the main field after you've been lapped is ok? They'd obviously be pissed if they were in my situation as well.

I chased as hard as I could the final lap but couldn't quite catch back on to field. I ended up being scored 19th but I have no way of knowing if that's actually accurate or not. If I hadn't tried to bridge up I'm sure I could have finished top 5 out of the main field but that's only a 7th place finish at best. Anything after that gets the same upgrade points as my 19th. I'm happy with my decision to try and bridge that gap. I'd rather risk losing in an attempt to win than sit in for a marginally better finish on paper.


And a small rant:

Once again the USAC officials enforce all the rules that don't make a difference and completely ignore the small things that can actually make a difference in a race. Why they stopped pulling lapped riders with 2 to go is beyond me. It seems like that is the time they should have been most vigilant about getting guys out of the race off the course. They are the only people at the race being paid to be there so I wish they'd do their jobs a bit better. I know in the grand scheme it's still just amateur bike racing but it's an amateur bike race that everybody there paid to race in and part of that entrance fee certainly pays their wages for the day. They need to worry less about the imaginary perfect place for a number to be pinned on and whether a rider has his/her hands on the handlebars and more about ensuring race results are actually accurate.

At the same time, if you're a 4 you've done at least 10 races and should in theory understand a bit of race etiquette. If you are out of the race, get off the course or at least get out of the way. You do not get to take the good line through a corner when the group is coming up behind you and you are about to be lapped. In fact, you may even need to pull over, slow down, and let the field pass you before you go into that corner. Also, under no circumstances should you get back into the main field that is on the lead lap when you are not. The guys that are still fighting to stay in the field shouldn't have to try and remember who is and isn't on the lead lap. It should be pretty evident by the people that are around them in the group.

I also saw an official up a rider taking a free lap due to mechanical into a breakaway instead of the main field the other day. This is completely inexcusable. Getting a free lap is nice enough. You shouldn't get free entrance into the break as a reward for your flat tire. Luckily that guy wasn't good enough to be in the break and after a few laps was shelled.

The Value of Good Teammates

Johan van Summeren was able to win Paris-Roubaix yesterday because Thor Hushovd refused to work with Cancellara, forcing Cancellara to get frustrated and eventually sit up. Hushovd was 100% in the right for not pulling through since he had a teammate up the road. While it was probably annoying for Cancellara and he obviously wasn't interested in towing his competitors to the finish line, Hushovd is not obligated to work in that situation. The result, van Summeren stays away.

In my opinion Sylvain Chavanel lost Flanders because Tom Boonen attacked while he was up the road drawing Cancellara out. Once Cancellara had neautralized that move and then realized Boonen wasn't that strong he kept going and eventually bridged up to Chavanel. Maybe that would have happened later, anyway, but it certainly should not have been sparked by Boonen with Chavanel up the road.

The casual observer of bike racing might not have seen either of these scenarios play out that way. But bike racing is much more about team work and tactics than the casual fan realizes. Most big races are won and lost because a strong team played their hand perfectly. This doesn't matter if it's a one day classic or grand tour. Nobody wins a bike race that matters all by themselves. Just ask Cancellara.

A Retraction (sort of)

With Gregory Rast's 4th place finish at Roubaix I was clearly at least a little bit wrong about Radioshack's chances. Because of that I would like to offer a mild retraction. If it weren't for the long breakaway producing the winner and a bunch of top 10 placings, which he was apart of, who knows where Rast would have finished. But, that's neither her nor there. He was in that long break. It went a LONG way and he got a 4th.

Euskatel on the other seemed to follow my exact predictions. Their best placed rider was Alan Perez Lezaun in 103rd place. How many riders finished Roubaix you may wonder? 108. Perez was the only Euskatel rider to bother to finish the race. Good show!

Obligated to Race

This weekend is Paris-Roubaix. If you're reading this blog, you know that already. As one would expect most of the cycling chatter this week on the interwebs is directly related to Paris-Roubaix. Pictures of Roubaixs in the past, descriptions of just how terrible the cobbles are, technical reviews of the changes being made to team bikes, and, if you're velonews, a sort of odd story that features Ben King, current US National Champion and his upcoming first attempt at Roubaix on a squad that has about no chance at winning.

In the end, what I took away from this particular story is that the current system where the UCI requires the teams with ProTour license to race all the races on the ProTour calender is clearly screwed up. To prove this point, look at the roster that Radioshack is sending to Paris-Roubaix:

Ben King
Bjorn Selander
Jesse Sergent
Fumiyuki Beppu
Robbie McEwen
Nélson Oliveira
Gregory Rast
Sebastian Rosseler

My assumption would be that these guys are working for, I have no idea, nobody in that group is even a long shot at winning this race. I'm going to actually make a point to see how many of these guys even bother finishing. Clearly Radioshack is built to win stage races. With Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner, Andres Kloden, Janez Brajkovic and the rest of their climbing/TT focused team, they don't really give a damn about the cobbled classics. Even Rast and Rosseler are flat stage body gaurds, not classics specialists in a true sense. And that's fine, but for the sake of the race, let's stop forcing teams to participate that don't care. I'm pretty sure whatever squad Euskatel is sending this week will be heavily seen at the back of the bunch and drawing straws for who gets to abandon at the first feed zone. Whichever unlucky riders draw the long straws have to abandon at the second.

Instead of forcing teams with ProTour license to show up and abandon why not give Radioshack and company the opportunity to offer their spot up and enter more wild card Continental squads. I'd be willing to bet if you replaced Radioshack and Euskatel and a few others who don't care with two Belgium squads, you replace pack filler with recognizable jerseys with guys that show up motivated to make some sort of statement in the biggest race of their careers.

Let's face it. The chairman who approved the sponsorship of Radioshack isn't going to brag at the end of the year that their team had two riders finish Paris-Roubaix and most of the Basque fans who go crazy in the mountains during the Tour de France can't possibly have any hope for their guys come Sunday. Those teams are focused on a different kind of racing and that's a perfectly justifiable decision. But the governing bodies are doing both the race and smaller, more motivated teams a disservice by forcing participation on teams that couldn't care less. I'd rather have a race that includes five teams I'd never heard of throwing hail marys every chance they get to make the race exciting than a bunch of feed zone abandons out of obligation.

Top 5 Cyclists

I have a paper to write which of course I'm putting off till the the last possible minute. This is unfortunate because I obviously have other stuff I need to be doing as well. What I don't need to be doing is updating this blog twice in one day, but you know how that goes. This is much more fun and interesting to write than any old paper that's going to earn me a Master's degree.

As I was procrastinating from writing said paper I found this on Rapha's Blog. They polled some of their peeps for a top 5 favorite cyclist list. It's worth a quick look and of course the comments sections are a bunch of strangers top 5 lists as well.

This made me pick up a pen and jot down my top 5 and so I decided to share them and why. I also have my top 5 least favorite cyclists as well. The thing about this list is I tried to be as honest as possible. That's why in the picture you'll see Lance Armstrong was crossed out. In the Rapha blog they mention that most people pick their top five based on how they were drawn to the sport. I'd be lying if I tried to deny the fact that when I first gained interest in professional cycling I lived for July and Lance Armstrong dominance. But, over the years, I've become much less of a Lance fan for a variety of reasons, most of which I'm sure you can guess or know if you're a TeamLandall regular reader. They also mention that you usually pick guys based on what kind of rider you see yourself as, which is also true in my list. So, anyway, here they are and a brief why.



Top 5, in no particular order:

Chris Horner
When I first started following cycling, or really, the Tour de France, there was this American guy who would always do interviews after or before each stage. His interviews always talked about team tactics and how the race unfolded. His explanations were in depth but simple enough for a new student of the sport to understand what he was saying. This guy was also a fantastic domestique for what I have always considered a 2nd tier contender. That has to take a great deal of dedication which I admired. That guy was Chris Horner. He's been my favorite cyclist ever since.

George Hincapie
I'm a bit Scottie Pippen fan and George Hincapie is basically Scottie Pippen with shaved legs and bunch of bicycles in hanging in his garage. He's the guy that every single team knows is absolutely invaluable to their success. Though, I'm not sure I've ever heard George or Scottie say that in an interview. As I became more of a fan of the classics I started to like George for an entirely different set of reasons. It's easy to cheer for the favorites in Flanders and Roubaix, but my allegiance will always be with big George.

Floyd Landis
That's right. I said it. I know he's an admitted doper. I don't care. I liked Floyd when he was on Postal because of his quirky personality. I liked him when he moved to Phonak and have argued till I was blue in the face that he was clean. Obviously I was wrong. He's a polarizing figure and people can feel however they want. I'm not sure there's much that could be revealed about this guy that would knock him off my top 5 list. Floyd was not afraid to risk losing in order to win. That's something, doped up or not, is worth taking note of.

Jens Voight
Jens Voight is on everyone's top 5 list. I like guys that try to win races with suicidal moves that go from a very, very long way out. I wish I had that kind of engine.

Thomas Voeckler
Most American cycling fans think of Thomas Voeckler as the little guy that Lance was nice enough to give the yellow jersey to so many Tours de Frances ago. Thomas Voeckler is not that guy. He is a bad ass bike racer who knows his strengths and takes advantage of race situations that play into those strengths. He's not the best climber. He's not the best sprinter. He's really good out of small groups who have been off the front for a long, long time. He's got a ton of guts and when he does win races it's generally in a dramatic fashion.

Bottom 5, in no particular order:

Heinrich Haussler
The guy just strikes me the wrong way. He wears weird Ed Hardy hats in interviews, which is a characteristic you can hold against anyone! I may be of the "what have you done for me lately?" mentality when it comes to Haussler, but he just strikes me as all hype and little pay off.

Andre Greipel
Remember last year when Greipel cried constantly about not getting to race in big races? Now he is in big races and he's still not winning big races. Blah blah blah, good luck in the Tour of Turkey. I hear you're very good there.

Alexander Vinokourov
I am aware that I picked a former doper and two attacking riders in my top 5 and put a former doping attacking rider in my least 5. That doesn't really make sense right? Yeah, I don't care. I don't like the guy. He made a jersey with his face on it. That's just ridiculous.

Carlos Sastre
I remember watching the CSC documentary Overcoming and being left with the impression that Carlos Sastre is a whinny baby. I had never paid much attention to him before seeing that film and then it was the same thing in every interview. I know he won le Tour. I know he's never been tied in to any doping controversy. I know all of these things, but still, I'm just not a fan. He seems slow to respond to attacks in the mountains and except for that one time on Alpe d'Huez, he certainly doesn't attack on his own. Maybe I should make a list of wheel following grand tour contenders as well?

Alessandro Petacchi
This one probably isn't even that fair of an assessment. I'm sure there's somebody I like less than Petacchi and I'm just not thinking of them right now. But for as many times as he's busted for some sort of over the counter banned substance, I figure he's always on some sort of juice. Not to mention the fact that he gets very whinny in the media when nobody considers him a favorite in sprints.

That's enough procrastinating. That's my top 5 and least 5 favorite pro cyclist. If you feel so inclined put yours in the comments. They can be alive, dead or me for that matter. I'm probably a good choice for your list.

Successful Customer Survey Campaigns

Businesses clearly want to know what you think of their business. Take a look at just about every receipt you're given these days and there is some sort of online survey that could be filled out with some sort of incentive for doing so. I fully understand why and even believe they want real feedback. But what I don't understand is why so many of them get the incentive to the customer part of this so wrong.

From my possibly limited experience, though I'd assume I'm just about as average of a consumer as the next guy, there are basically two strategies that companies use to offer an incentive to gather feedback. The first, which seems to be the most common, is to offer a chance at some insanely large reward for filling out the survey. I was at Giant over the weekend and was informed that if I filled out the online survey I could be entered into a drawing at a chance to win free groceries for an entire year. The other day Jill and I ate at a large nationwide chain restaurant which I won't name from being slightly embarrassed that we actually went there and the bottom of their receipt included a chance to win $5,000 in a drawing if you filled out their survey. I would easily characterize both of these incentives as big, but neither made me sit down at my computer and give them any feedback.

The second, which I see a lot less, is a guaranteed discount or free product on your next purchase in exchange for information. Currently Dunkin Donuts is running one of these and if you fill out their survey you get a free donut with the purchase of a medium or larger coffee on your next visit. When I lived in Portland, the greatest fast food chain on the planet, Burgerville, offered a similar incentive where you could get a free basket upgrade (think combo) if you ordered any sandwich. You know how many of these survey's I fill/ed out? Every single one of them!

I'm sure the survey I would fill out from Giant would take the exact same amount of time as the survey from Dunkin Donuts (3 mins by the way) but I'm just not that interested in the chance at winning free groceries because to be honest, I don't really believe that the drawing ever takes place. Now, I'm sure for legal reasons that it does take place, but if you don't win you're not notified of that and so to me, it just seems like a waste of time. I understand that my and everyone else's feedback is valuable to helping you improve your business, but I like stuff I can touch, feel and walk back into the store and cash in on the exchange of information I provided you with.

The thing about the guaranteed incentive is that it doesn't even have to be big. The free donut with a medium coffee at Dunkin Donuts costs $1.75, which basically saves me a little less than $1 if I didn't have the coupon. But, I'll also admit that because I do have it in my wallet, I'm a bit more apt to go get a donut and coffee on a Friday morning than if I didn't. So while I realize it's cheaper for Giant to offer a drawing that they only give away to 1 person and not 1,000s, I might not be as likely to return and purchase additional groceries for a variety of reasons (convenience being one of them) than I would if I had some sort of small tangible incentive to do so.

Maybe I'm in the minority here and everybody else rushes home to fill out the survey on the bottom of their Giant receipt to try and get free groceries for a year. To me, it's just not worth it. I'm aware these companies aren't dumb and have a lot of smart people and consultants figuring out all of the breaking points for what incentive is just large enough to generate survey results but small enough to remain profitable. But for me, I'd rather take the time to offer feedback on a business when I'm given a guaranteed return for that information, even if it is much smaller than the chance at winning a very large prize.

Please Try!

An open letter to all Pro-ass bike racers not named Fabian Cancellara.

Dear Pro-ass bike racers not named Fabian Cancellara,

I know you're 100% aware of this but the Tour of Flanders is on Saturday which is awesome. It happens to be my favorite spring classic, not that this should matter that much to you.

I stumbled upon a little video on VeloNews.com where a few of your colleagues were making comments about how Fabian Cancellara is basically unbeatable and while nobody came right out and said it, everyone was pretty much insinuating that if he attacks it's a race for second. Look, I get it, he's really fast. And, I've read and heard the accounts that say even just staying on his wheel is tough. I get that too. But please, for the love of Eddie Merckx do not, and I repeat, DO NOT have another pitiful show of cowardliness that took place at Paris-Roubaix last year. When Cancellara attacked with 60k out every single one of you besides Tom Boonen all sat up and felt sorry for yourselves that you were now going to get 2nd. Don't do that again. Please chase. Make me and all my fellow cycling fans believe that you guys actually want to win races, even if that means you risk losing them.

If Fabian wins on Sunday fine. He's a super fast bike racer and I'm sure he'd like nothing more than to prove he's unbeatable. Shouldn't all of you take that as a challenge to prove he is? I don't even care who wins I just want to see a good race where all the "stars" of cycling actually look like they've earned that title because they're willing to bury themselves to win.

I know you all want to win to so I'm sure you'll all be trying very hard and that's all we ask.

Sincerely,

TeamLandall

Finish Line Salutes

I really like it when riders have finish line salutes other than simply sticking both hands in the air touchdown style. Mostly I like them because they make absolutely no sense or actually need to be interpreted. Now, most of the time these types of celebrations take place on tops of mountains or after successful breakaways where the rider is coming to the line alone. It's hard to fault the bunch sprinter for not being overly creative at 70kph when he's just trying to see straight to avoid any arrant photographers. Although there was that time that Robbie McEwen did the weird running arms gesture after winning a stage of the Tour de France. He later said that was a dare from Levi Leiphemier.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Christian Vande Velde rocks the baby since he and his wife recently had a baby. Cut to about 1:30.



Carlos Sastre shows some real planning by having a pacifier available. Maybe VdV should have had some better planning. Possibly an entire bottle would have been cool.



Then there's the guys who like to incorporate weapons, real ones.

Ryan Trebon takes a sword from a fan on the finishing straight of a cross race. At least I'm pretty sure he didn't have it sheathed throughout.



Juan Antonio Flecha likes to shoot a pretend arrow.



And of course we're all familiar with Contador's fake pistol shot.



But this is something new. Today, Contador wins solo on top of a mountain and instead of pulling out his fake pistol he does what I can only assume is asking the world to have some heart when discussing his pending doping situation. It's all about the subtle suggestions.

Bikes are Great!

Like most people who love bikes I didn't grow up riding in lycra or even know what a derailleur was until about 8 years ago. My parents had bikes that changed gears but that didn't mean much to me. I was always more interested in finding some pile of dirt to transform into a jump. Or, if it was big enough, a table top. My first real bike, and I still consider it that today, was a Redline 220. It was a low end bmx bike that cost $200 and I remember I saved for what seemed like 1,000 years to buy it. The guy at the bike shop told me I could spend another $30 and get a Dyno something that was better. But I didn't care, I like the Redline and I had enough money for it on the spot. Didn't he realize how long it'd take me to save another $30?

I don't often speak very highly of where I grew up but one perk that even I can't bash is that we had plenty of access to trails, open fields and in some cases heavy machinery we had no business operating to build a new bmx track whenever we wanted. There were about 8 of us that would split up and make teams of 2 or 3. We were inspired by the movie Rad which we'd watch religiously and dirt bike racing, which we all wished we were doing but were too poor to afford motorcycles. Team Green (Kawasaki), Big Red (Honda)and Suzuki, if the other two got picked before you had a chance, would all work together to build a track and then race in 3-4 up matches. A lot of the cyclocross racing strategy that I employee today I learned on a bmx bike trying to pass my friend or get the whole shot. I'd do almost anything to get my Redline 220 back.

I remember one summer I had a job cutting the grass at my dad's church. Man I hated that job. But one day I decided instead of getting driven out there I'd just ride my bike. It couldn't have been more than 10 miles thinking back on it now, but on a bmx bike with a single gear ratio of something like 33x15, it took a while. It seemed like it was so far, but I remember the sense of accomplishment when I got there. At the time, I never would have guessed that a bike would eventually lead me around the perimeter of the US in 2006.

To me, bikes are beautiful. From the incredibly simplistic and clean track bike to over engineered full suspension mountain bikes and time trial rigs, bikes are beautiful. Because of that, I will watch just about any video that has something to do with cycling. My wife makes fun of me constantly for it, but the bike geek in me just can't get enough.

The bike world is incredibly diverse and I should be the first to admit that sometimes that diversity drives me insane. At times I want there to be some sort of outlaw on guys on hybrids with day-glo jackets clogging up my commute to work by riding a top speed of 12mph and swerving all over the place just to try and remain upright. I realize that's incredibly selfish and I'm working on it. Those guys have just as much a right to enjoy the bicycle as I do.

Today I saw the video below. It is absolutely amazing to me what some people can do on a bike. The bike handling skills and control that this guy has is absolutely amazing. To me, it's equally as impressive and no less brave than sprinters rubbing elbows at 70kph (~42mph for those of us in America). It's seeing a video like this or reading an update about the work that Richmond Cycling Corp is doing as they work with under-privileged Richmond youth and use cycling as a vehicle to do so that simply reinforces just how great I think the bicycle is.

Watch this video and be amazed. Watch Milan-San Remo this weekend and be amazed. Go to the Richmond Cycling Corps website and be amazed. But, don't forget to get on your bike and remember what it was like to ride as a kid.

A Hill in Spain from chris akrigg on Vimeo.

Stay Classy Ohio State

Remember last bowl season when the news broke that Ohio State's star quarterback and wide receiver had violated NCAA sanctions by selling memorabilia? Then remember how Jim Tressel came out and said he wasn't going to suspend his players for the bowl game because it would hurt all of the seniors who had worked so hard for four years. Instead, he would suspend his players for the first five games of next season so they'd learn their lessons. Obviously the only people that bought this line of crap were Ohio State fans because everybody knows the first five games of the next seasons are cream puffs and scrimmages. Clearly Tressel saw a way to "punish" his star players but not have any the record of Ohio State be tarnished in the process. So, if you remember all of that then you remember Ohio State went on to beat Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl. Good plan Jimmy!

Then there's this which hit the news today. Looks like Tressel's boys were slanging a little more than throw back jerseys. And, the best part, he knew about it and did nothing.

Mr. Tressel your sweater vest, parted hair and principle glasses are obviously just a costume. If you want people to believe you when you say you're trying to mold young men then the prudent thing is to actually act on those beliefs. Sometimes this may mean that your seniors are affected by the actions of your star players. But those are the players you recruited. You become responsible for them when they show up for the first day of practice and throughout their tenure at your institution. If you don't want to have to make tough decisions then recruit players that won't put you in a position to do so. But, how would you continue to win BCS bowl games without them? Take a look around. Some of your colleagues seem to be figuring it out.

Since we're talking about BCS bowl game wins here's a fun fact about old sweater vest. Ohio State has not won a BCS bowl game under Tressel that did not include a player(s) who were later sanctioned by the NCAA compliance violations.

2003 - Ohio State beats Miami for national title - Maurice Clarrett - improper gifts
2004 - OSU beats Kansas State - Troy Smith sanctioned
2005 - No BCS
2006 - OSU beats Notre Dame - Troy Smith again
2007 - Lose to Florida
2008 - Lose to LSU
2009 - Lose to Texas
2010 - Beat Oregon - Terrell Pryor & Company
2011 - Beat Arkansas - Terrell Pryor & Company (with known NCAA sanctions)

Overall BCS Record without an NCAA sanctioned star player on the field: 0-8.

Stay classy Ohio State, stay classy!

Burglars, Dopers and Thieves

I'll be the first to admit I waffle on this whole doping issue quite a bit. Sometimes I want to figure out a way to be a champion for a cleaner sport. Other times I figure it's a losing battle and it would make more sense to have a buffet of drugs available to every rider before every race so that the playing field is leveled. But this argument assumes it's an accessibility issue, which, it hardly is.

I read Steve Tilford's blog on basically a daily basis. I'm not really sure why because to be honest, overall, it's not that interesting. He mostly writes about himself and changing the brake lines on his really old van. He also writes in a very "good old days" fashion, which at times can get old. But, like most blogs, there is occasionally something that is really great. A perspective on a subject that I couldn't get without the insight of an old pro. Today was one of those days and if you have a minute, read this.

At the end, Steve refers to the dopers as common criminals, robbers, thieves, burglars, etc. In a sense I've never thought of them quite like that. I've heard the argument repeated by the cycling world that you should own your victory and that dopers can not. But this is much more powerful. It takes away any onus for the dopers to have a moral dilemma by the decisions they are making. Anybody can justify their criminal behavior to themselves, that happens all the time. I think the more powerful stance is to start referring to the dopers as thieves, because there's no way of getting around it, they are absolutely stealing victories.

Confused

The Contador suspension being overturned confuses me. It makes me believe Floyd even more that there is basically a top ring of cyclist where conspiracy boils over. It makes me wonder how Don Alejandro Velverde actually got suspended when to my knowledge he's never actually tested positive for anything, only linked to the Puerto issue. I could be wrong about that as now days doping stories and facts are all running together. I'm also confused as to why Contador's defense is really any different than Tom Zirbels? Seems like they both had tremendously low amounts of clenbuterol in their system. Both claimed it was ingested without their knowledge. Only difference is Contador isn't proving it came from meat but that it's the only explanation because it couldn't have been anything else and Zirbel couldn't prove which supplement it might have come from since he was notified so late. Neither seem like realistic defenses but if one works why wouldn't the other?

I'm obviously not a lawyer or a chemist working in a testing lab but as average as my mind may be I can certainly tell that if this doping issue is really going to get resolved, fair/equal treatment and adherence to policy is a good place to start.

Response To a Piece on GMA

GMA ran a story on a kid this morning who got cut from his high school baseball team because he's not good enough to make the team. Unfortunately, the kid is a double below the waist amputee and therefore the version of the story they ran was about that and not about what actually gets you cut from a team, lack of skill set. I firmly believe and have written in this space before that sports are the great equalizer between a lot of other socially driven issues that face society. Take a look at at almost all professional sports from their beginnings to present day and it's clear to see the changes that took place from a socio-economic prospective. Sports, at their core are about winning, and in order to win you need the best players available to you. The owners of every major sport in the world didn't all get together and say, "Hey, let's help the racial divide by giving minorities a chance to make a living playing this game." No, they went out and found the athletes with the highest skill set and thought it was a wise decision to pay them for that skill regardless of race, creed or anything else that makes one person different than the next.

There were a few facts that GMA pointed out that I thought did not help their point in the story.

1) The kid is a pitcher. While pitchers aren't often thought to need a lot of mobility there are very specific plays in baseball where a pitcher needs to be able to run. Covering bunts was brought up in the piece. I can also think of covering home plate in the event of a passed ball and a runner on third. And, a ground ball fielded by the first baseman often requires the pitcher to cover first. These are not un-athletic moves and often turn into a foot race between the pitcher and the base runner. You would be a pretty bad coach if you simply over looked this skill set for your pitching staff. While they didn't give his 40, 60 or shuttle times in the piece, they did have ample footage of him walking at it looked a bit awkward and forced leading me to believe mobility in any of these situations would definitely be an issue.

2) The kid has a fastball of 80 mph. Without calling names I could go through a litany of guys I grew up with playing against that at the little league level threw the equivalent of 80 and were dominant. Probably the case with this kid. But, like all those guys I'm not naming, everybody else grew up too and by the time we were playing varsity baseball, the kids you used to fear were the ones you hoped were pitching because their 80mph fastball was the same as it was 5 years before. What used to be dominating was now basically a batting practice equivalent fastball. I played on a lot of pretty good baseball teams growing up and an 80mph fastball was easily on the low end for most of the guys on our staff. It certainly is not an impressive number and I'd also venture to say it's probably not accurate as there was no video footage of a gun actually recording an 80mph fastball.

3) The kid is right handed. If you know anything about baseball this is a big factor. If he's left handed and throws 80 and can't run but has other decent off speed stuff, he probably makes the team.

The thing that gets to me most about this story is that it's so easy to see this situation isn't about this kids disability or his ability to overcome it to this point in his life, but the media sensationalizing it and skewing the facts to get a reaction out of the uninformed masses sitting on their couch drinking their morning coffee. Whoever the correspondant was doing the story said the kid had a real shot as a big league prospect. This is just a ridiculous statement and no big surprise that there were no MLB scouts offering their opinions on his skills.

Jim Abbott is probably one of the greatest pitchers ever to play the game and he only had one hand. His disability didn't hold him back because the rest of the skills he brought to the table made up for the fact that he only had one hand. There was another story I saw the other day about a division one basketball player who is an amputee from the elbow down on one arm. At some point, his playing career will probably end as well, but for now, he's able to bring other skills like size to the table to make up for that fact.

Unfortunately for this young man he's reached that point where, at least to this coach, the level of the game has passed his skill set. It sucks. Believe me, I know. But no coach would be around very long if he cut talented players simply because they didn't have the legs he was born with. If you're good enough to play, you'll play regardless of what may be seen as a disability to others.

I'm not here to bash this kid. In fact I think it's great that he's overcome all of the obstacles he had to just to make it to this point in his life, much less baseball. He loves the game of baseball and wants to keep playing and he's hurt that now he's reached that point where the level of the game has passed the skill set he has to offer. Unfortunately, this happens at some point to 99% of the people who play sports growing up. Even the ones who work really hard and really want to be professionals. If it didn't, professional athletes wouldn't be as well paid as they are because they'd be easily replaceable.

Football Trick Shots

Holy crap, this has nothing to do with cycling!

I found this retweeted on twitter through the various channels. I guess this guy is the backup QB at UConn and if you're the backup QB at a small program, this is probably the best way to showcase your arm strength and accuracy. I'm not sure how many other D1 QBs would watch this video and shrug as something they all sit around and do and never thought to film. I'm guessing a lot. Still, it's pretty good stuff if you like this kind of thing. Some of the throws are pretty impressive, especially if you go ahead an assume it was the first take on each one, which, there's no real proof of that. In my opinion the best throw is when he hits the ball that's been kicked off the tee. I would think those don't exactly fly in straight lines.

What I've never understood about these videos, since there's basketball versions all over the place, is how excited the other guys around get when he makes it. Sure it's impressive, but jump up and down, leap over a trash can impressive? I don't know...

Finally a Non-Doping Cycling Controversy

The latest cycling controversy has nothing to do with anything that can be put in your body to help you perform better. Well, that's not entirely true. Radio ear pieces are inserted into your ear and without them as a modern day rider you probably perform less efficiently.

As most are aware the UCI wants to ban the use of two way radios used by riders and their directors in professional cycling. This year they have instituted a ban on the radios at all but the largest races and the riders are not happy about it. Most of them cite safety concerns about being alerted to road conditions and other crap like that. But, let's face it, most of these guys have matured through the professional ranks with someone in a team car, watching the race feed on a tv, telling them exactly what's going on. I don't have any specific statistics to back it up, but I'd be willing to bet way fewer breakaway attempts succeed these days because the team directors can tell their boys exactly how fast to ride to catch the break inside the final kilometer. This is insanely valuable information if you're the guy/s who is/are assigned to lay down a pace that will ensure the break gets caught. You don't want to catch them too quickly because other attacks will get launched. You don't want to leave it too late, because, well, you lose. Without a team director in a car with a calculator and a radio you've got to send a guy back to that car to try and find out this information. The riders can give me all the lines about safety they want, I'm not buying it.

But, the real concern here shouldn't be safety or the dissemination of information. The real concern should be what long term affects this fight between the riders and the UCI will have on the sport. We've already seen our first protest by the riders at the Mallorca Challenge. They all defied the rules by using radios and the UCI fought back by neutralizing the stage and not recording results. Tyler Farrar won the bunch sprint, but without real results he basically won a group ride on closed roads. Minus the closed roads, I now have something in common with Tyler Farrar.

On twitter this morning Robbie Hunter writes that the UCI will lose the fight. But, I'm not so sure. The UCI is nothing if they aren't stubborn and I think we can clearly see with their constant denial of ever doing any wrong and their need to always be the ones dictating policy, I don't know that they'll ever back down.

The way I see it the two sides both have these chips to play. Riders can continually defy the rule by wearing radios. Which, they've already shown is sort of a weak hand to play because even after their first little exhibition at the Mallorca Challenge they already folded for the rest of the race and will not use radios out of respect to the Mallorca Challenge fans and race promoters. At the Tour of Qatar, same thing. Riders were going to protest and then the chest beating ended when a punishment that nobody was really willing to chance was laid out in front of them. Every time the riders decide they want to protest by using radios, the UCI, who has the power here, can simply lay out some harsh punishment and call everyone's bluff.

The real test is going to be for much bigger races with a larger viewing audience and much more prestige to the winner. Sure Tom Boonen really likes being the winner of the Tour of Qatar, but I'm sure he'd trade every Qatar victory for just one more Paris-Roubaix (They can use radios at Roubaix). Criterium International and Ghent-Wevelgem are both big races where radios are banned. Player lockouts and strikes happen in other sports all the time. Maybe a unified rider strike at either of these races would get the point across. But, it just seems apparent to me that as soon as riders stop racing big time races over something as frivolous as the use of radios, sponsors start fleeing and taking their money elsewhere.

We've already seen big time teams struggle to find title sponsorship and with the other controversy that is consistently hanging over the sport like a black cloud, who in their right mind is going to pony up a few million bucks just to have their logo on the butt of some cyclist planted firmly on the ground?

I'm not saying the riders are completely wrong. And I'll admit this opinion completely omits a larger problem that the radios are really just a piece of the total problem. The UCI is basically a tyrant writing new rules without consulting the constituencies they represent. But, in the end, like most things, it's going to come down to money. If the riders stop racing their bikes I hope they all have some other form of gainful employment lined up because the money that feeds them is going to dry up pretty fast.

And, while I clearly think the safety argument from the riders is stupid, I'm not in favor of the ban. I actually think Craig Lewis has the best idea.

Connect the Dots

With all the new talk about the Floyd interview and what that might mean there are a set of dots that I'm connecting that I'm not sure most people are. It's not a complicated line of logic to follow but it's sort of indirect.

Bill Strickland, editor something or another at Bicycling magazine, wrote a blog where he looked at all the podiums of Lance's 7 Tour de France victories and he wrote something along the lines of fine, you want to say Lance was on the juice, here's the other podiums and how many of those guys have been connected to doping so who do you give the award to? How far down the placings do you have to go before you find the first legitimate clean guy to FedEx a yellow tshirt too? His podiums here. And, obviously those are more my words than his because he gets paid to type things and I just do it because I want to.

Sticking with the same idea we make it to the 2006 Tour de France and Floyd wins, then he doesn't, and Oscar Pereiro becomes the new champion and he makes public statements about how Floyd stole his Tour de France title but Floyd says he knows for a fact that Pereiro wasn't clean either. Floyd was his teammate the year before on Phonak and witnessed Pereiro taking part in blood transfusions. Then Floyd says he talked to Pereiro before the final TT of the 06 Tour and Pereiro says he still has half a bag of blood to take. But, Pereiro says he's clean, Floyd says he isn't, you can decide for yourself who you want to believe. But, if we go by the same sort of logic that Strickland is using above, if Floyd's dirty then the next guy probably is too, so who should actually be winning the 2006 Tour de France?

This brings us to our most current doping controversy in this drama free sport. Three time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and contaminated beef ingestion related positive. Here are the facts, the amount of clenbuterol found in Contador's system is so little that the performance boosting affects are scientifically questionable at best. Here's another fact, on that great battle to the summit of Mt. Ventoux this is past Tour de France a seemingly clean Andy Schleck had no issue matching a doped Contador pedal stroke for pedal stroke. This can only mean a few things, 1) Contador is really clean or 2) Schleck isn't so clean either. I guess it could also mean 3) Schleck is super human going uphill but sucks against the clock?

Basically, what I'm trying to say here, is all you Andy Schleck fans out there might want to keep your stones in hand before chucking them at Contador through the walls of your glass house. I know Andy Schleck is the golden boy in the media, but I'm not sure you've got to jump to too many conclusions to connect the dots in this situation. I'm not convinced that if you want to find the real clean winner of the 2010 Tour de France your search will stop at the 2nd step of the podium.

And, please don't take this as some sort of cry to give Levi the jersey. Levi used to be a guy that was good for two weeks and then dropped time like a rock in water. There's no way I believe age and experience have suddenly made him a 3 week contender. Gonna have to keep looking down the results list further than that.