The Latest
Playing with Storify – Lead Up to Amgen Tour of California
Posted in Bikes Tagged Racing Stateside, STRAVA 1 Comment
News from the Random Chapter
Who rocks the party that rocks the piñata? Oh that’s right, after stealing that tagline from SportsCenter, I’ll have to say this guy.
I’m asked what music I like to listen to. I have an extremely eclectic list from Massimo Bubola and Andrea Bocelli to pay homage to my transplant Italian home, Harvey Danger and Herbie Hancock to appease the H’s when scrolling down my playlist, plus Obie Trice, RJD2, and the Wu-Tang Clan just because I like their music. But if I’m picking 10 songs right now, this is what that list will look like. And while you’re jamming out to that list, feel free to read a quick corresponding pre-ToCA Q’n'A.
In unrelated but news from the delicious, I saw this this morning. Which looks amazing and if I weren’t a professional athlete in season, I just might try it out.
Posted in Bikes 2 Comments
New Hampster
Potholes? Frost heaves? Naw, New Hampshire doesn’t have potholes…
…instead we have man eating craters that rival the Grand Canyon that span the middle of the everyday thoroughfares.
My post-Paris-Roubaix/pre-Tour of California self titled Tour of New England is rapidly coming to a close, as I’m off to California tomorrow. It’s a blast for me to have family and friends all throughout the northeast because between weddings, baseball games, bachelor parties, and simply traveling for the sake of seeing close friends whom I would not otherwise see, I’ve been blessed to tackle some riding across the finest section of America – even if that means occasionally catching air at 70kph on a screaming downhill when I hit a frost heave and jet over it’s frightening crevasse.
One of my recent adventures took me into the White Mountains. I started the day in the basking sun of home down south, nearly two hours’ drive from my riding point. Down yonder it was warm and pleasant and I was definitely not expecting anything but a pristine day. So when I stepped out the car and saw my breath I was less than psyched. But I soldiered on and soon warmed up a bit, until I reached the top of the Kanc’ at which point it was snowing on me and I was reaaally unprepared and freezing, I therefore decided that a rapid descent into Lincoln was in order. A $0.99 coffee complete with a splattering of instant cappuccino warmed my soul while a $5 pair of gas station gloves warmed my fingers.
What’s topped even that is that I then began another, separate five-day journey that saw me in the Upper Valley of NH and VT for a pair of days, followed by a blustery day of riding in Burlington, and then off to the most northern and remote town in all of New Hampshire called Pittsburg (nope, no -h at the end). When you’re in Pittsburg, NH you may as well be on the moon except that we still Live, Free, or Die here in the great Granite State. Despite now being in the midst of New England’s well documented turbulent spring weather, I was still not anticipating snow… or maybe I was just not appreciating snow. So when it dumped snow in downright blizzard-like fashion for 18 straight hours, and I woke up Saturday morning to a blank white scene, I was extremely pleased that I still had those $5 gas station gloves safely stored in my car. I doubled up the riding gloves that day and my toasty warm and extremely stylish fingers were all the happier for it.
If you’re curious what the nether reaches of New Hampshire look like, when you haven’t seen a car in hours and there are far more “Brake For Moose” signs than there are moose, then you know you’re practically in Canada, eh, then let this photo above appease you. To one direction you look back south at New Hampshire and you see this wonderfully English and French signage. Bienevue!
And in the other direction you’ll see the fiercely impenetrable and vastly underused New Hampshire–Canadian border patrol.
Which, believe it or not, on the other side of these buildings looks curiously like northern New Hampshire.
Oh, I was concerned that I wasn’t going to see any moose on this adventure to the great white north. On my big ride in Pittsburg I saw one hedgehog or lemur or ferret or something sprint across the road. That was exciting, but I really wanted a moose – the forest’s most awkwardly tall and gangly animal. Then after feeling defeated upon leaving Pittsburg early Sunday morning, I was about an hour south on my way to show Tim a thing or two about how to ride a bike, I saw my elusive moose walking across the road.
No photo because it was too awesome.
And if you’ve made it this far into the post, you deserve something actually worth reading. Please let THIS site satisfy your viewing pleasure.
Posted in Articles, Photography Tagged Racing Stateside, Winter Riding 3 Comments
Open your mind – Ride dirt!
It was a year ago last week that I returned home from a European spring racing campaign for a little American decompressing RnR before Tour of California and the second half of the year. To put it mildly, it was a challenging spring where I was trying to meddle some lemonade out of tendonitis plagued lemons. In that situation, half the battle is putting on a smile and telling everyone that everything is peachy and that tendonitis and time will heal itself. The other half is convincing yourself that’s the truth.
Planned all through the spring by my good friend and photog to the stars Chris Milliman, I had the perfect slice of welcome home goodness in the form of UVEpic – a hundred mile group ride of which more than 70% is dirt(!) with friends, friends of friends, and “that fast dude with hairy legs from across the state”. The email invitation which begins small, slowly seeps out to riders worthy of an epic with probably 50 or 60 people ultimately get the nod of approval. If the weather is perfect probably a third of those will attend because of family commitments, conflicting race schedules, travel to the nether reaches of New England, and whatever other lame excuse people can spew out. If the weather is junk, however, then maaaaybe ten neoprene and Gore-Tex clad idiot cyclists will show. With sun and temperatures in the 60s all week leading up to last year’s UVEpic, we woke up on ride day to a sloppy sheet of white on the entire Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont in the form of frigid April snow. Crud. We still rode, but our century turned into about fifteen treacherous miles until safety and good sense prevailed when we ended up at the pub. Un-crud.
Fast-forward one year to this past weekend and things are peachy. They’re downright awesome in fact! I’ve had a very successful start of 2012, factoring into wins at Tour of San Luis way back in Argentina in January, followed by wins in Italian races to follow in February, then an excellent Classics run. Riding for a guy like Peter Sagan makes it easier to have such an “excellent” cap to the spring, but lest we forget that it’s riders like me that help make him look so fast and savvy on a bike. You’re welcome Peter.
A few iterations of the UVEpic have spun off over the past year so that we’re now onto version 6.0. Chris meticulously studies the countless roads, dirt roads, fire-roads, and strade marroni (brown roads, as opposed to stradi bianchi) that spider web all throughout the Hanover area. As a friend on the ride yesterday said, “I’ve lived here for ten years and I’m still finding incredible new roads all around me.” Beat that Boulder. Zing.
I had the distinctive and fortuitous pleasure of being back in America when version 6.0 was rolling out this year. Making it to the start was less of a To-Do and more of a Must-Do when I once again found myself home after the European spring classics and before Tour of California. The only stick thrown in the spokes was the 60s, 70s and sun all the week leading up to the UVEpic-6.0 and the contrasting angry lightning bolts and massive rain drop icons on the weather forecast icons. But gosh darn it, when you’re going to ride an epic, you may as well make it an EPIC.
To take the snap out of my step, I rode 99 miles (with just 1% of it on dirt) the day before with the coincidental pleasure of seeing the Dartmouth collegiate bike race with my beloved Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference. I got my start in the sport with collegiate cycling and I shed a tear with nostalgia, seeing the abundant mismatched kit intertwined with the well dressed folk sporting more carbon wheels than were raced in my day, the full white skinsuit with TUFTS hand inscribed on the back, and the jorts (jean shorts) competition taking place post race. UVM won that competition, but they weren’t even trying. (Seriously, collegiate cycling is incredible. I donate a lot of my gently used clothing and equipment to local colleges and those poor, leg shaving co-eds need all the help they can get. You should contact your local college and do the same. Or go marshal a race or coach a team.)
Here’s that 1% of dirt on Saturday’s ride.
I’m honestly having trouble producing the words to describe how awesome Sunday’s UVEpic was. With the lowest point coming early in the form of Chris’s tubulars feeling spitefully jealous by just how bright his shoe covers were and therefore spouting out latex with a messy, foamy cloud, the rest of the ride was the tops.
We had seven hours budgeted from start to finish – which I figured was a ridiculous over estimate – and it turned out to be a hair short. With short punchy climbs the order of the day, more often than not tipping over the 20% gradient line, we quickly and easily (…or not so easily) notched more than 3,500 meters of climbing. By comparison, Liege-Bastogne-Liege which I’ve raced twice and which also took place yesterday is about 50% longer than our ride and has a small sliver more climbing. Again, zing… to the legs.
Jersey pockets are accommodating, but more than seven hours of tough riding requires more fuel than you can cram into a jersey pocket. Moreover, one of the best parts of riding these far reaches of New England are the village center stores, selling anything from red pickled eggs in a three gallon jug (which we avoided) to maple whoopies pies (which I purchased the last one) to the ahem… “white trash mocha cappuccinos” – a heavenly mix of 1/2 coffee and 1/2 instant $0.99 impossibly sweet hot chocolate. These steamy beverages served exclusivity in environmentally hateful containers compliment a mid-ride whoopie pie on a chilly, dank spring day perfectly.
Those aforementioned angry lightning bolts and massive rain drop icons in the weather forecast? We apparently had a ginormous umbrella over our ride the entire days because the few miles of pavement were virtually bone dry, the 70+ miles of dirt were matted down perfectly by rain the night before, and I could count all the mud puddles I saw the entire day on one hand. What’s more, within ten minutes of putting my bike in the car and swiftly shuttling south for a family dinner, the skies opened up and I drove through one of those it-cannot-possibly-rain-any-harder deluges.
I pin on a number and race because I love racing my bike. But rides like yesterday, UVEpic 6.0, one of the top 3 bike rides in my life? THAT is why I ride a bike. Thank you Chris and everyone else who helped make it awesome. I already know that UVEpic 7.0 is in the works and I can’t wait.
Here it is:
Posted in Bikes, Photography Tagged Classics, Every day is an Adventure, Random excellence, STRAVA 5 Comments
Done and Dusted
Quite literally.
Be either really excited or completely confused, faithful readers, because this is one of those once annual iamtedking race reports.
Easter Sunday 2012 marked my second Paris-Roubaix. The first time around one year prior I was coming back from a mind-bending few weeks of knee tendonitis. Steeped in heavy frustration, Roubaix was my fifth race in 2011 after a month off the bike followed by a few weeks of very easy spinning. Take it from me that there’s nothing quite like jumping into the biggest Classics of the year, where everyone around you is chomping at the bit like a pack of two-hundred rabid wolves, and you’re the sheepish rookie popping up in the middle, unbeknownst just how gnarly these races are. Ready… aaaaand go!
So fast forward to yesterday – every chocolatier’s favorite spring holiday – and I’m in an entire different league. The fitness is there, the focus is there, and my hands are getting that calloused, “Belgian chap” from riding three weeks of cobbles. That said, I’m still hesitant to call my spring campaign experienced having now completed just one full spring of northern cobbled Classics, but the learning curve is steep, and slowly but surely it’s coming.
Also worth noting, we don’t do what many other teams do: recon. We don’t stay the weeks between races and scope the courses. We don’t blast through pave to test different tire pressures, which lines to try, where to tape your fingers to prevent the blisters. It’s six in one and a half-dozen in the other, because while half the peloton is stuck in the same dank hotel in overcast Belgium, I’m home reaping sun and glassy smooth pavement while at home in Tuscany. But remember that aforementioned learned curve? Turns out you gotta study in order to ace the test. Sooo maybe it’s more like eight in one and half-dozen in the other.
First section of pave? Flat tire. Crud. We’re now 100km and a hair over two hours into Paris-Roubaix. Heads up fellas, the boys are now coming out to play. Riding cobbles with a front flat is a similar sensation to hydroplaning your car over those WAKE UP rumble-strips on the side of a highway. With your eyes closed. While getting punched in the junk.
Anyway, fresh new wheel installed, I speedily jumped back in the caravan around car number 25 out of 25 and proceeded the slow and steady chase. While catching up to the peloton is obviously a priority, blowing my wad sits low on my to-do list at this point in the day. 160km to go, which of course is a proper race unto itself, my stunning experienced showed in this slow and steady return to the pack of wolves.
Zoom zoom zoom, I make my welcome return to the peloton complete with fanfare, cars celebrating by bottoming out aggressively, and having ingested ample dust kicked up from the cars to kill a lesser man. Around this time, one of the most memorable and horrific anecdotes of the race occurred. Out of the corner of my eye on a cobbled descent (yeaaup, there’s ample up and down in P-Rx), I caught sight of a rider hit a bump awkwardly, have his rear wheel pop up as he slowly rotated forward while his front wheel still rotated normally along the pavement – his bike is just at a 45 degree angle with rear wheel half-way to vertical. Maybe two seconds after lift off and with very few options left, he hit the eject button causing him to Superman off his bike from a full six feet in the air… at 40kph… onto cobbles. That’ll scare you straight: Focus Ted, focus, focus, focus, dammit!
More crashes ensued. Heck, this is Paris-Roubaix after all. Wind, gutters, cobbles, flats, mechanicals, and at this point we’re no longer 195 dudes who started back in Compiegne, we’re maybe 80 guys chugging along in the front group. Remember when I talked about recon? Meticulously learning the ins and outs of the race? Something to the effect of, “When you enter the town of So-and-So, you will go through one roundabout and then about 250 meters later you will see two white houses with brown trim on the right. Be absolutely sure to be in the top twenty spots in the peloton there or your Arenberg will be hell.”…? Yeah, it’s around this point that those lessons turn out to be crucial.
As a related aside, this reminds me of something our very seasoned Italian bus driver said to me when he picked me up at the airport for Paris-Roubaix less than 48 hours before the start of the race. To win in the north, you must live in the north. Sage words Luigino. You all can all stew on that for a while.
Anyway, when you’ve never even heard of the town of So-and-So, let alone know that there’s a roundabout, least of all have any idea where these white houses with brown trim are, you’re at the mercy of whoever is driving the peloton at this ferocious pace. Politely asking for them to slow down a touch so that you can prepare yourself for Arenberg just doesn’t work. ‘scuse me fellas, but I’ve never actually ridden Arenberg before. Never even seen it either, in fact. Mind if we stop at this bar ahead, I’ll pay for a round of coffee, and then slowly group ride it all together?
Apparently they didn’t hear me.
So zooming through So-and-So, zipping through the roundabout, I was soon presented with a dilemma: go left and crash, go right and crash, or proceed straight and do not crash but stop entirely. To the delight of both my skin and bones, but to the chagrin of my speed and momentum I opted for straight. Thankfully a mighty sprint caught me back up to the peloton just as I caught sight of a whole bunch of trees, an enormous throng of people, and a banner that read, “Sector 16 – Arenberg”. Cripes, if only I’d known.
The anxiety is palpable as we hit Arenberg forest. It’s what I call the square peg, round hole syndrome. Even with what’s left of the decimated peloton, everyone wants to be at the front of the race. Simple physics on small, French farm roads prevent this from being a possibility. But darn it, you may as well try.
My aforementioned stop-start at this very inopportune time resulted in a crazy first ever trip through Arenberg. The crowds are deafening, the pace is maddening, and the cobbles are about fifty times more absurd than you could ever imagine. In retrospect, the word that strikes me as most fitting is unnatural. These roads are made for four wheel drive farming equipment – not for bicycles. Again, square peg, round hole.
Exiting Arenberg, the racers riding in ones and twos around me naturally melded together to form a groupetto. Still amid a caravan of cars and with the peloton still in sight, we optimistically chased. And chased. And chased. And twenty kilometers later, with now only a helicopter hovering in the distance and dust swirling somewhere up the road to show where the peloton was consistently riding away from us, we settled into the silent rhythm of a groupetto just riding to the finish. Our jobs complete at this point of the day. Protect a rider, offer assistance with mechanicals, maybe have ridden and been shelled from the breakaway. From here, just finishing the race and a shower is our day’s main goal.
The remaining pave sections ticked down into the single digits. The crowds still cheered with (nearly) the enthusiasm as the lead group. Bells ringing, shouts and whistling with the vigor of… err of proper, well-lubricated European cycling fans.
Then among one of the few pave sections left to pass, a cobble deflated both my tire and me. Psssshhhhht. I rode the rim for a while as I waved goodbye to my groupetto. Hoping a support car or team vehicle would come along and offer their services, it was not to be. A few kilometers later and still no support in sight, the only car that came along was a family of three generations of Belgian fans who were here for the race. Fine tuning the radio to catch news of their native hero Boonen riding to victory, grandpop, father, and son meticulously studied maps and GPS to get us precisely to the velodrome. Warmed up by a thermos of coffee brewed that morning but still piping hot, they were just the friends I needed to sooth the soul. And give me a lift home.
Paris-Roubaix. Simply awesome. Enough said.
Posted in Bikes, Life Tagged Bicycling 101, My Hiney, Race report, Random excellence, Spring Classics, STRAVA 29 Comments
