Harlem Criterium

I had high hopes of racing up in Harlem last weekend, yet alas, I decided to get married recently and, as this race always falls on Father's Day, my desire to race my bicycle rather than attend a BBQ with the in-laws became a sore subject with the wee-fay.

In the end, I relented and attended the BBQ, yet the video looks pretty good.

Next year . . .

Trailer for Hincapie Movie

Well this certainly looks interesting.

The Lead-Out

Lots of exciting and utterly thrilling updates to follow shortly, including a 240-mile 2-day Montauk ride, quitting the CRCA Board of Directors, leaving NYVelocity, the cocaine in Tom Boonen's hair, etc., but for now, let's have another look at Lester, the man who is plastered across the cycling-related Internet.

Here he is, doing what he does, which is ride hard. Extremely hard.

(Photos from the June 13th CRCA club race.)


Unfortunately for Lester, there's something to be said for a long, strong lead-out train. That guy who's about to pip him at the line (who the hell do I think I am using a word like "pip," Paul Sherwen?), that's Mitch from NYVelocity. How did he manage to get to the line first? Apart from training, dieting, and stuff like that, I've got two words for you: lead-out train.


Still, Lester is a strong mofo. You had to be strong to survive that race. I know as I was the first man in the lead-out train (that started back at Tavern on the Green) and I barely lasted three out of seven laps, yet here he is, contesting the final of a total of twelve sprints that race.

And his reward? Third place when all was said and done.

Priceless Post

Just came across this on Bicycling.com:

Questionable Decisions

-Speaking of Kohl again, one of his claims in the l’Equipe interview was that his manager, Stefan Matschiner, handled his blood transfusions at the Tour. Matschiner would apparently fly to France while the blood bag thawed out in the hold. At the hotel, Kohl would steal away to Stefan’s hotel room for 20 minutes for the transfusion. All of this begs the question:

Are you f__king nuts?

Relying on Easyjet’s cargo hold to manage a temperature-controlled thaw of a living bodily tissue that you will reinject and which could KILL you if it goes bad is not my idea of sound decision-making. Although the whole process does speak highly of Matschiner’s phlebotomy skills should he be in need of a second career, post-prison.

Fog and LCAs

Despite the shitty weather, which you might think would keep more people off the streets and indoors on the trainer (I know this godforsaken weather stymied my desires to race round three of the Rockleigh Crit last night), it’s been an odd, odd week cycling-wise.

First, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this total piece of white trash struck and killed two cyclists while injuring a third.



How? Apparently, the LCA (that’s acronym for Low Class Asshole) was drinking and driving behind the wheel of her big, bad SUV (that’s LCA for Sport Utility Vehicle) . . . at four in the afternoon. If drinking while driving at four in the afternoon is not a total indication of actually being an LCA then I don’t know what is.

You can read more about it HERE, although apparently, this ugly bitch swerved off the road onto the shoulder, struck the three cyclists, and then continued driving. When another driver tried to stop her, she attempted to keep driving. It wasn’t until other drivers forced her to stop did she actually stop.

Yet she claims she doesn’t remember hitting anyone or anything. If that’s true, Ms. LCA, then why not just pull over? Why try to get away?

Here’s to hoping she does some time and gets raped in prison by several overwhelmingly large African-American women on a frequent basis. (And I only mention the women as African-Americans for one reason: since this women is a LCA, there’s no doubt she’s racist, so it’ll hurt that much more when a group of taunting, laughing black women shove a broomstick up her ass.)

Apart from the LCA in Tulsa, did everybody hear about this Brian Dooda character? I found this on NYVelocity.com. This douche was riding in Central Park around 5 PM a few days ago, holding up vehicular traffic in the left-hand lane when he should have been riding in the bike lane and, when a driver cut him off, he caught up to the driver at the next light and stood in front of the driver’s car to lecture him about his unsafe driving habits.

Before I go any further, here’s a pic of Dooda:



As the story goes, without waiting for Dooda to move out of the way, the driver then started driving again at 5 - 10 MPH with Dooda clinging to the hood while he begged the driver to stop.

Now upon first reading Dooda’s account, my immediate reaction was that the driver was another LCA psycho. Yet upon reading more of the story, thinking it through, and actually seeing that pic of Dooda and that ridiculous hair on his lip, I’m almost siding with the driver. Granted, Dooda probably deserved a few harsh words, perhaps a slap in the face for acting like an uppity bitch, but nobody should be carried along on a hood while some nut job drives down Park Drive.

That’s me, though. You decide.

Then there’s this professional, Bert Grabsch. I’m sure I’ve heard the name before, yet until the other day, I had never seen the guy. Earlier this week, though, while watching the opening prologue for the Dauphine Libere, I actually saw the rolling mass of muscle that is Bert Grabsch.

Could this guy be any bigger? This guy makes Lester look like . . . me.

You can watch a video of Grabsch winning the World Time Trial championship HERE (because, apparently, Universal Sports doesn't like anyone embedding their video coverage outside of YouTube).



Next up? CRCA club race tomorrow. At 5:45 in the AM. You know, I love riding my bike, but dragging myself out of bed at 4:45 AM to race?

Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my frigging brains.

Bernhard Kohl Comes Clean

Last year's winner of the Tour de France's polka-dot jersey who was recently banned for EPO use, has been talking about what he did and how he did it. It's an interesting read and you can check it out by clicking HERE as it's hosted on VeloNews.

Taylor Phinney and His Loving Mother

Anybody pick up the July copy of VeloNews? Anybody read the piece around Taylor Phinney? You know who I’m talking about? (Or to be grammatically correct, do you know to whom I refer?)



Apparently, this kid is the next big thing, the great American hope, and the great white hope of professional cycling all rolled into one even though he’s only eighteen-years-old. Apparently, he’s got incredible talent when it comes to riding a bike, although considering his father was a successful professional cyclist and his mother an Olympic athlete, I’m not so sure if I’d call what this kid has talent.

(As a useless aside, I guess I’ve always been challenged by labeling a person’s ability to pedal a bike as talent. To me, it’s a simple motor function and the size of each person’s motor is first determined by (a) genetics, followed by (b) repetition. In my opinion, talent is not just an innate genetic trait, but the result of hours upon hours of practice, such as having a head for race tactics, or archery, or brain surgery. If I handed Kenny Picco a scalpel and asked him to perform a vasectomy on Ron Jeremy, he just couldn’t do it. Flip side of the coin, if I handed a bike to a kid with Olympian parents and asked him to ride as hard as he could, I’m sure he’d beat the rest of the neighborhood kids in a race. Is that talent? I’m not so sure.)

Apart from that, the young Mr. Phinney strikes me as an arrogant bastard based on his comments from the interview. This is the first, one in which he references the national kilo record which, as we all know, is the epitome of cycling achievements:

“People have been trying to beat that record all their lives, and I blasted it out pretty easily,” Phinney said matter-of-factly.

So this douche bag (if interested in reading about other cycling douche bags, feel free to click here) is only eighteen and his first order of business is to belittle other cyclists’ attempts? Granted, I would imagine his world consists of a cycling bubble from which he never really has to step and that means the time he spends off the bike is probably time spent listening to other people in his camp showering him with incessant praise--especially the brat’s mother, Connie Carpenter. Get a load of this:

Connie Carpenter was so thrilled by her son’s success in Mexico that she put together a shrine to Taylor in the dining room of their two-story home, which sits quietly on one of Boulder’s leafy streets near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

A shrine? Is this kid supposed to be enlightened?



Not much of a resemblance. This chubby guy’s a lot better looking.

Shrine’s aside, here’s another of Phinney’s ripe quotes as he refers to playing soccer during his childhood spent in Italy:

“I was one of those under-10 kids who was the best player on the team and scored all the goals,” Phinney said.

Is this douche the picture of modesty or is it just me? This is the kid who will no doubt grow up into that guy, the guy who’ll no doubt try to steal your girlfriend/wife after you just finished shaking his hand and congratulating him on breaking the national kilo record for the sixth time. I can practically hear it in my head, exactly what this douche would say to a friend who just returned from the men’s room during a black-tie banquet for Phinney hosted by Phinney’s mom.

“Josh, listen, your girl Crystal wanted to go down on me while you were taking a leak so I figured why not? I know you’ve been trying to seal that deal for weeks but I blasted it out pretty easily, huh? I think my mom took some pics when she was under the table, so I would get on Facebook in a few days if you want to check those out.”

Eighteen-years-old and already an egomaniac. I guess that’s what happens when your mommy calls you on your cell six times a day to tell you how totally awesome you are and you spend as much free time as you can with Lance Armstrong. This kid should go on a few rides with Pozzato. I get the feeling he wouldn’t be as impressed as everybody else in Phinney’s camp. Maybe the Italian would do us all a favor and shove a few canolis up his ass.

Back to Rockleigh

Went back to Rockleigh, NJ last night for the criterium. Thankfully, last night went much, much, MUCH better than it did last week. While I wasn't close enough to the front to know exactly where I finished, I think it might've been somewhere in the top 20 out of 50+ riders, so that was satisfying (as opposed to getting lapped by the same riders last week . . . god, that EPO really works).

And I checked the results that are listed online here, but they're wildly inaccurate. How do I know theyr'e inaccurate? The rider who's listed as having placed two spots ahead of me? Reginald Rasch? He's a terrific racer but I know for a fact that he finished behind me as he was pushed wide and off the road into the grass by some jackass in the second-to-last corner and, as a result, finished way behind me. So I don't know who the hell is doing the scoring on these things, but they might want to think about wiping the dirt from the video camera lens they have set up at the finish line.

As usual, though, I arrived much to early, so I grabbed this extremely exciting, utterly thrilling video clip of the 1/2/3 field whipping along the start/finish straight.



I mean, come on. Have you ever seen a more entertaining cycling video online?

To add to the overall excitement, I was reviewing the power meter file from last night's race. Typical criterium with the wattage all over the goddam place. You're either going full gas or soft-pedaling or braking into a corner. Un-freaking-believable.

(FYI, the yellow line represents watts.)

The Man of the Hour, the Tower of Power . . . Jens Voigt

It's no secret I'm a big fan of Jens Voigt. I mean, how can you not be a fan of a bike racer like this?

Lester Is Everywhere!

Despite all the talk, despite all the rumors, despite what you may have already heard, I am now the proud owner of a Powertap power meter.



As I usually say, how utterly exciting.

And now that I’m gauging my rides via watts rather than heart rate, the first thing I learned extremely quickly is just how inconsistent my (and yours, probably) pedal strokes actually are. What may seem like a steady effort is most likely far from an actual steady effort. What exactly do I mean by that?

My first time out, riding down 70th Street, which is flat, toward Central Park, this is what my wattage was looking like, all in the space of less than five or six seconds:

168
192
201
141
151
158
198
212
166
179

So on and so forth.

At first, I figured, “Something’s wrong with this thing,” although upon speaking with Saris, the customer service rep quickly informed me that nothing was wrong.

“That’s just the way people ride,” she politely informed me.

“It’s hard to imagine my output is going up and down by 40 watts on a flat road,” I said.

“Try decreasing the sampling,” she suggested, which basically means I had to decrease the frequency with which the CPU provides readings. So I moved it up from 1 to 10. Now my readings, on a flat road while trying to hold it steady, look more like this:

168
177
162
178
180
175
166
170

That’s the kind of variance I can live with as, after having ridden with this thing for a week now, I’ve learned that a 10 or 20 watt difference in perceived effort is extremely negligible and I say all that to say, this thing is INCREDIBLY ACCURATE.

You know how every person you meet who has a power meter never fails to say, “It’s SO much more accurate than heart rate?” Well, we all say that because it’s so goddam true, so I’m here to tell you, “Power meters are SO much more accurate than heart rate monitors.”

Yet all that accuracy comes at a price. Granted, the Powertap was a gift and it came with the complete gift, but this bad-boy, the Comp wired model, cost almost $700, which, in this economy, is a pretty hefty price tag.

Apart from all that boring bullshit, take a look at some of these pics from last Saturday’s race in Central Park. Is it me or does Lester somehow manage to get into every goddam picture from every goddam race? Is his wife the woman behind the camera? I mean, this guy is all over the Internet!







Finally, is this guy spitting or is that a snotshot?