From the Archives - Portrait of the Young Cyclist: Part 3

Introduction

This post continues the tale, from my archives, of how I became a bike racer. In Part 1 and Part 2, I described how my early infatuation with the sport led to actually participating, and the disastrous results of that doomed effort. In this post (and its companion vlog) I go into what changed when I actually learned about training.

By the way, it appears that not a single photo was snapped of me cycling in 1982. My brothers didn’t race the Red Zinger Mini Classic that year, and my dad wasn’t about to go watch. I mean why would he, when I obviously sucked? My brothers and/or mom might have watched a stage or two, but none among them owned a camera. Since I try to include a photo with every post, here is one from around that time. I’m wearing my “Super Dad” pajama top. Why did it say “Super Dad”? I don’t know. Perhaps my mom got a deal on it because it was obviously too small for any actual dad, and not too many kids are real keen on the “Super Dad” graphic. Incidentally, this pajama met a bitter end when it somehow melted in the dryer. It had puddled up and then hardened into a stiff sheet, kind of like fruit leather.

Update! I found a bike race photo from 1982. I am number 62 in the below shot.

Portrait of the Cyclist as a Young Man – Part Three: The Curse Continues (written in February 2003)

Of all the decisions I’ve made in my life, the decision to keep on bike racing, despite mortifying and utter failure in my first year, on top of my ceaseless failure in all other sports I’d tried, is perhaps the hardest to explain. What could I have been thinking? Given the information I had in front of me, there was simply no reason to go on. It wasn’t like by this point I’d learned a valuable lesson about determination, and commitment, and all those other “values” that would have made for a really good ABC After School Special. I was just a stupid kid, and clung to my bike racer outcast identity despite the fact that any boy of my age plucked at random from any setting could easily have beaten me in any cycling event. Maybe this self identity was too much of a habit to drop. Or maybe I figured my body would catch up somehow, with or without training. (There was some reason to believe this; I was a short, small, frail child, after all.)

There were other reasons I stayed in love with the sport. I got a new bike, having completely outgrown the 24-inch-wheeled Fuji Junior. My mom gave me a Miyata catalog on my birthday, and I was shown the model that my family could afford to buy me at some later date. It was the middle-of-the line 310, with the coveted 1-1/8” wide tires, 27” wheels, working gears, and a really smooth ride. Thrilled as I was at the prospect of one day owning that bike, I was even more enthralled by the bikes we couldn’t afford: the Pro and Team Miyatas, and the 912. I still remember the description of the 310: “Offers the looks and the handling ease of the 912, with a price to fit most budgets.” The 912 was their “entry-level racer,” so the fact that the 310 could share a sentence with “912” suggested my new bike’s raceability. It was a great bike, actually. $265. Light blue, not unlike the Team Miyata, though lacking the flagship’s beautiful golden panels on the head, seat, and down tubes. I loved the 310 even before test riding it at the High Wheeler (aka Thigh Feeler), our favorite shop in town (where all four brothers would go on to work in later years).

I suppose it was a few days after the test ride, though it seemed like months later, that I picked up the bike. Mom wasn’t around that day to drive me, so I rode double on the back of Max’s Univega. It was about six miles, and his seat was just plastic on steel, no padding or even fabric, and I thought my butt would be too sore to actually ride home. We rode back at race pace, and as we sped through the college campus we passed some student who must have felt insulted to be one-upped by little kids, because he jumped on our train. He did pretty well until he failed to negotiate the sharp turn down by Fiske Planetarium, hit the concrete median, and wiped out big time. We stopped to see if he was okay, and this was the first time I saw real road rash up close. I was a bit worried the guy would pummel Max and me, and he was pretty pissed, but he let us go and we completed our glorious ride.

Nine days later I rode my new Miyata to the Morgul Bismark stage of the Coors Classic. By this time, my brothers and I were even further along than we’d been the year before in our appreciation of the sport. The hottest talk about this race concerned the dominant Russian team, famous for their Olympic success. At age 12 I could not only pronounce, but probably spell (though not in Cyrillic), “Sergey Sukhorutchenkov”. Sukho was the leader of the Russian team that dominated the Coors that year. Somehow it didn’t matter to us that Greg LeMond actually won the overall stage race. What we remember was that three or four of the Soviets, in their badass plain red Lycra jerseys (well, one guy in the blue KOM jersey), took LeMond out that day and worked him over, had him on the turnbuckles for the whole day.

I didn’t understand that by failing to drop him, they actually lost the bigger race. All I grasped was that a strapping Russian guy, Yuri Barinov I believe, won the stage in style, arms in the air but bent 90 degrees at the elbow, kind of a constrained victory salute, with his vaguely sinister grin, and I remember LeMond looking beaten and downcast as he rolled over the line. Okay, maybe these weren’t Europeans per se (and my knowledge of geography, it must be pointed out, was crummy), but the point was, this just wasn’t an American sport, and Americans even lost (or seemed to lose) on home soil. And this seemed right and good to me, appealing perhaps to my backlash against anything normal and upright, such as patriotism.

The other thing I remember about that July day in 1981 was that my new bike got stolen. I wanted to die. I was so upset I didn’t go to the North Boulder Park criterium, the final Coors Classic stage, the next day. My brothers and their friend Thaine did, though, and managed to recover my bike. The thief, a fourteen-year-old, was arrested. It’s a long but not that interesting story. (At one point I told a fanciful version involving a police raid, replete with K9 dogs, on the guy’s house, but the real events were doubtless much more boring and squalid.)

I think I would have ended up never improving at cycling except that in fall or winter of 1981, my best friend J—, who was a nerd like me but did pretty well in the longer Track & Field events at school, decided to become a bike racer. He got a bike identical to mine and started getting me to go out for training rides. I never would have trained otherwise. Even if I had understood the link between training and getting strong, it would have been for naught because I was incredibly lazy. Even when I was made to swim for years and years, dragged to practice every single day, I never worked hard. I guess it was a defect of some kind. As soon as my mom let me quit swimming, I quit that and virtually all other activity. I think I started watching TV at that time. Cartoons, Star Trek, even game shows. I wasn’t a complete nothing, I guess; I read, too, and for a period read for several hours a day. But athletically I was a non-entity.

Cycling was a particularly poor choice of sport for me given its lack of coaching and structure. J— saved me from a childhood of physical sloth. It may be that the first ride I did with him was the first bona fide training ride of my life. I remember the phone call. He was absurdly enthusiastic: “Hey, you wanna ride out to Eldorado Springs with me?” It sounded terribly far away. I’d never been there. I asked my mom if I could go, hoping that she’d say no. But of course she said yes. What could I do? I was supposed to be the big shot racer, after all. So we rode.

I don’t remember the ride all that well; most likely I tried to assume the role of wily old veteran, coaching J— the whole way, but if he didn’t figure it out on that ride, he must have realized within a few more that I had nothing on him. He was probably out-climbing me right off the bat. His willingness to train was not the main reason behind his superiority: he was also very talented. But he dragged me out day after day, and for the first time in my life I gradually became fit. Before long we were riding the Morgul Bismark circuit, which is hard enough that to this day the thought of riding it fills me with a kind of dread. The first few times we rode, we got kind of a late start because he lived a 15- or 20-minute walk from school. So to expedite things, we adopted a system whereby we’d walk to my house together, get my bike, and ride double over to his house to get his. I think this became such a routine we never even discussed whether we’d ride or not. After school we just went. When a big snow came, we kept to our routine but did cross-country skiing to stay in shape. He had the skis, boots, and poles; my contribution was a ceramic jug we’d fill with Celestial Seasonings tea.

The following spring, my junior high school, Baseline, had a program called BLAST, which stood for Base Line Activities Students Teachers. Every Wednesday for a month, the students and teachers would get a half-day, and would do a specific chosen activity instead of classes. These activities ranged from bowling to Hebrew language lessons to restaurant touring, and of course I chose cycling. By this time I was pretty strong, one of the strongest in the group. The strongest was D—, a really nice guy with a kind of crappy but very Euro bike, a Gitane I believe. He was a couple years older. There was another kid, skinny like me, but not as fair skinned and with black hair, by the name of N—. He was only a year ahead of me. He had a nice red SR Semi-Pro, with Campy shifters (a popular and affordable, if pointless, upgrade). He was a newcomer to the sport, though, I could tell: he wore full-finger gloves despite the 80-degree heat. I don’t think he knew how to draft, which I’d learned recently from my brother Geoff. (Geoff and I went on rides together and he’d make me stay just an inch off his wheel; to remind me how close I needed to be he would hold his hand back behind him, fingers held an inch apart, and if I didn’t do it right he’d drop me.)

The first time I rode with the BLAST group, I stayed on D—’s wheel and we dropped N—. The second time, one week later, N— kept up. The next time, he and D— dropped me. Probably by the last BLAST ride, N— was dropping D—. I don’t know: I was too far off the back to see what they were up to. This, after what happened with J—, began a pattern I would see for years and years: I’d meet somebody, get him excited about cycling, and then he’d pass me up on the way to greater things.

That year I came to the Mini Zinger much better prepared. I must have grown a bunch, because I fit my much larger bike pretty well. Of course the main difference was that I was physically fit, and knew how to draft, and could shift properly, and even had some basic suffering skills. The first event was the Boulder Mall Criterium; it was a qualifying race a week or two before the Mini Zinger proper, to determine which of the two divisions each rider would be put in. There was a good crowd, and a photo finish camera, and I was completely amped up.

From the gun I went straight to the front, just like my brother Max had done the year before, but instead of having a suspicious mechanical problem after a few laps, I was able to keep up the speed, lap after lap. For about five laps in a row I was on fire, feeling like God, leading the race. I was right at the very front, every lap. And I knew what was going on! It was absurdly simple: nobody was ahead of me, and everybody was behind me. If anybody wasn’t close behind me, that person didn’t matter, just like I hadn’t mattered the year before. All I had to do was hold this position, and I would win the whole race!

Of course it dawned on me, eventually, that I couldn’t stay at the front forever, and that every single guy behind me was benefitting from my draft, and that I would need somebody else to take the lead. But I couldn’t get anybody to do it. I’d move to one side, and the rest of the pack moved right along with me. So finally I slowed up just a bit . . . the horror! A huge long line of racers went streaming by. I felt like Wile E Coyote when he looks down and realizes he’s walked off the edge of a cliff and is standing on thin air. The pack had simply used me, taken advantage of a strong but dumb guy, and now it was all I could do to find a place in the pack. I finished somewhere between tenth and fifteenth—a huge improvement over the previous year, but the guys I trained with, N— and J—, finished first and second, respectively. I rode home by myself, bound and determined that I would never attempt anything again, ever.

There was more to embitter me that year, too. I’d assembled a great team for the race, consisting of N—, J—, myself, and a kid named G—, who’d finished second the year before. (Was there a fifth rider? I can’t remember.) I even lined up our sponsor, Fiske Planetarium, where my brothers’ friend’s dad was the director. We were to be called the Fiske Flyers, and would be in contention for the overall team title. It hadn’t been easy figuring out who our fourth guy should be, and it took all the assertiveness I could muster to approach G—, a complete stranger. Everything was perfect, until the race directors, led by Eric Sandvold, decided after the preliminary races that our team was too good, and so he split us up. He kept J—, G,— and me together, but put N— on a different team. I was pretty mad about that, but at least I was still paired with my best friend.

But almost right away, J— and N— had a private conversation following which N—, right in front of me, phoned the race promoter, Eric Sandvold (a teenager himself) and negotiated a change so that he and J— could be on the same team. It bugged me how syrupy sweet and glib he was on the phone, and it bugged me even more how utterly confident he was, like he and Eric went way back (though they didn’t) or like N—  was a made man with no chance of being turned down. It seemed like he did the phone call in my presence just to show off, and perhaps to rub my nose in it.

So I lost both of my best teammates, and endured a major smack in the face: because N— was faster, J— preferred to be on his team, even though J— had been my best friend for years, and though I’d started him in the sport and put the whole team together in the first place. I was left with only G—, who was plenty strong but crashed in about half the stages. The team with N— and J— on it won the overall, and my team wasn’t even in contention. I ended up finishing eleventh overall, and endured a lecture from my brothers about how I lost due to my own stupidity.

Later that year, we all got USCF licenses and N— and J— were recruited to the Flatirons Velo Club and got cool jerseys and bikes at cost, and went on to win many races. I continued to lose, and my only consolation was one race when J— crashed out and cried in front of his mom afterward. She was visibly embarrassed, and told him it wasn’t that big a deal, that there would be other races. He sobbed that it wasn’t the loss of the race that was making him cry, but that he was in pain. I knew this was a load of BS. He was crying because he couldn’t stand to be out of the limelight even for an afternoon. But what about me? I was training plenty, on my own, now, but it seemed I would never see the limelight at all. So even the pleasure of seeing J— getting peroxide in his wounds and bawling in front of his mom was short-lived. For me, bike racing was still largely a depressing thing.

To be continued

Check back in a month or so for the next installment: how I learned the ropes, endured another tragedy, hurled in a race, and suffered other indignities.

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Biased Blow-By-Blow, Tour de France 2014, Stage 17

Introduction

Perhaps you don’t feel like getting up early enough to watch the Tour de France live.  And maybe the TV schedule is too complicated for you, or you’re just not quite interested enough to spend an hour or two watching, and yet want more complete coverage than a final-ten-km video.  Above all, maybe you’re tired of commentators biting their tongues when a known doper does something “not normal” but they have to report it at face value, praising the doper for his strength as though it were legit.  If you’re any of these people, or in fact anyone at all, read on for my journalistically unchained, often biased blow-by-blow report of stage 17, the penultimate mountain stage in this year’s Tour.

Biased Blow-By-Blow Report – 2014 Tour de France Stage 17

I join the coverage just in time to hear “we’re going to take a break.”  So now I’m looking at an ad for LeMond.  Not the cookie, but the three-time Tour de France champ and his new show.  So in the interest of fairness here is an ad for the Le-mond cookie.

Today I’m back to my postcard-sized live Internet feed after seeing most of this Tour on an actual TV set while on vacation.  (I didn’t have an actual PC on me, which is why I didn’t file other reports, other than the second stage which you can read about here.)

The riders are on the second of four climbs on this short but brutal stage.  This climb is the category 1 Col de Peyresourde, 13 km at 7%.  The rider in bib number 3, Vasil Kiryienka (Team Sky), is off the front solo.  His nickname, Vaseline, isn’t really his nickname.  At least, not that I know of.  Actually, his nickname is the White Russian because he’s from Belorussia.  All right, I’m going to come right out and say it:  I don’t know this rider’s nickname.  In fact, though I’ve heard his name many times, I know almost nothing about him.

So Kiryienka has about 45 seconds on a chase group of about twenty.  In that group are Bauke Mollema (Belkin Pro Cycling) who sits in 10th overall ; Pierre Rolland (Europcar) who is in 12th overall; Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol) who’s in 13th; Frank Schleck (Trek Factory Racing) who’s in 14th; and Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) who is way down in 68th but always a contender for a stage win and who will want to pick up KOM points today, being only one point behind polka-dot-rocking Rafal Majka (Tinkoff-Saxo), who is also in this group.

Speaking of J-Rod’s team, I would like to point out that every English speaker in this sport misspells, and mispronounces, “Katusha.”  You can read it in the Russian on their jerseys, or at least I can, and the second vowel is a ю, which sounds like “you.”  So it should be “Katyushka.”  There, I’m glad to finally get that off my chest.

Other than the guys I already mentioned, the chase group doesn’t have any GC contenders.  It does, however, have race leader Vincenzo Nibali’s Astana teammate, Jakob Fuglsang, who’s all the way down in 72nd place after a harrowing high speed crash earlier in the Tour.  The poor guy came in way after the leaders that day, probably just happy to make the time cut, and when asked how he felt he replied (rather casually, I thought), “Well, I’ve had better days, but nothing’s broken.  I just hurt everywhere.”

Kiryienka is really motoring along and now has about 2½ minutes over the chase group, which has about 5 minutes on the peloton.

Tejay Van Garderen (BMC Racing Team) needs to be worried about this breakaway because a few riders in it aren’t that far behind him in the GC.  Mollema trails him by only a couple of minutes; Rolland by a couple more; and Van Den Broeck by a minute more than that.

J-Rod outsprints Majka to the summit of the Peyresourde and takes 2 points out of him in the KOM competition. 

This Eurosport announcer just said something about “taking your crêpes suzettes out of the fridge and putting them on your head.”  What on earth?

Nicolas Roche (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Jesus Herrada (Movistar) have broken free from the chase group and are narrowing in a bit on Kiryienka.

Now they’re on a commercial break.  The Euro ads are far less depressing than the American ones I’ve been seeing for the last two weeks.  I’ve been watching on NBC-SN, which seems to be one of those second-tier networks with cheap ad space catering to a similarly second-tier audience.  The ads, taken together, create a composite profile of a vain, balding man whose home is in foreclosure, and who is trying to lose weight via light beer and vitamin products, and has some kind of sports injury requiring a high-tech knee brace with rejuvenating copper thread (and real simulated snake oil) in it, and whose PC is infested with viruses.  Other than the Tour, this NBC-SN network covers car racing, poker, and a bunch of hour-long infomercials for music CD collections like “Pop Goes the 70s.”  I was getting pretty depressed by all these commercials so now it’s good to see the same ads for cycling shoes, bikes, bike trainers, and watches that Eurosport has been dishing up for years.

Now the coverage is back on and they’re showing helicopter footage of the third climb, the first category Col de Val Louron-Azet, 7.4 km at 8.3%.  It looks suitably monstrous from above:  barren stone faces with sharp edges.

“Cointreau and Nutella in a pancake, not good for the head,” the announcer says.  Man, it’s hard enough to watch the racers while also typing this report when the commentators are actually making sense. 

Roche and Herrada are back in the main chase, which has shed a few riders and now numbers 17 souls, 1:20 behind Kiryienka.

Kiryienka is 5km from the summit of this penultimate climb.  His lead having been cut in half, I’m pretty sure he’ll get caught on the final descent or at least on the final climb, the famous Huis Categorie (beyond-category) Pla d’Adet, 10.2 km at 8.3%.

I really hope the yellow jersey group can catch all these guys.  Not surprisingly I’ve been rooting for Tejay throughout this Tour, and despite a crash early on he was doing great, sitting 5th in the GC with just a few minutes between himself and 2nd overall.  But then yesterday, the first stage I didn’t get to watch, he finally had that dreaded bad day and slipped to sixth, 9:25 behind the apparently unbeatable Nibali and 4:37 behind the filthy doping Valverde who’s still in second.

One thing I love about watching cycling is that I can relate somewhat to the experience of these guys.  No, I’ve never been in any way close to them in ability, but when I have a bad day, I get a taste of the misery that produces.  I’m turning the pedals of a similar bicycle, at a similar cadence, using similar muscle groups, over (in some cases) the same climbs.  That’s a lot different from the home viewers of Indy car racing, who have only ever driven consumer-oriented sedans and station wagons and who are bound by the national speed limit.

So when somebody completely detonates on a mountain stage, my heart goes out to him because eleven years ago, after flying (in my penguin-like way) over the Col de la Croix de Fer and the Col du Telegraphe, I cracked at the base of the Col du Galibier and had to deal not only with the horror of being passed by dozens of guys, but with the profound wretchedness of having to make it over two more horrific climbs, while limiting my losses, before I could call it a day.  In the third week of the Tour this kind of bodily breakdown is bound to afflict somebody and it’ll be something to see.

Kiryienka is really suffering now and his gap is down to 41 seconds as he nears the summit.

Now the chasers have got him in their sights.  Wow, he’s really grimacing.  I wonder what’s going through his head.  Is it “What was I thinking?”  Or is he so fried his mind is a complete blank?  Well, they’ve got him, 300 meters from the summit.  This KOM sprint will be fun to watch.

There goes Rodriguez!  Majka is right on his wheel!  Majka goes for the pass, but he is denied!  Unless there’s a major shakeup on the final climb, J-Rod will have the polka-dot jersey at the end of the day.  (Did you notice just now how I used the phrase “at the end of the day” to actually mean “at the end of the day” instead of as a clichéd throwaway expression conveying practically nothing?  You’re welcome.)

The yellow jersey group is over the summit now.  AG2R La Mondiale attacks!  This is probably designed to give their leader, Romain Bardet, an opportunity to take time out of Thibaud Pinot (FDJ.fr).  Pinot sits in 3rd overall, two places ahead of Bardet, and has the white Best Young Rider jersey that Bardet wants to get back.  Surely Bardet is counting on Pinot’s notoriously poor descending skills, which were sad and sometimes bewildering to witness during last year’s Tour.  But Pinot has gotten a lot better and I doubt this attack will mean much with that giant climb still to come.  I’d hate to be Pinot right now, though ... I’ll bet he’s completely stressed out at the pace this group is having to pour on.  Serious pucker-factor there.

What’s really interesting to note is how small this yellow jersey group is.  It’s down to about ten riders.  I’m not sure how far back the rest of the peloton is, or if there even is one anymore.  This group is now only 2:15 down on the breakaway.  I wonder where Tejay is.  That’s one disadvantage to this Eurosport coverage:  being enemies of freedom, the British commentators don’t pay any special attention to American riders.

I’m pretty sure Tejay is in this group.  There’s definitely a BMC guy and he’d be the most likely guy to still be in this group.  (His teammates Peter Velits and Amaël Moinard are in the front group.)  I don’t see any Lampre-Merida riders here, so the other American hopeful, Chris Horner, must have been dropped.

Speaking of Horner, my daughter made a good point the other morning as we were enjoying the Tour together and I was explaining the white jersey competition.  “They should have a best old rider competition,” Alexa rightly pointed out.  Wouldn’t that be great?  He’d get a grey jersey, of course.

The front group is on the final climb now, and Roche has attacked.  He’s immediately matched by Giovanni Visconti (Movistar Team).  Now he’s attacked again and has a pretty good gap.  This group has broken up a lot.  For now we have Roche and Visconti, and a bit behind them Moinard and Rolland, distanced from the rest.

The yellow jersey group is at 1:55 and I think they’ll catch most if not all of the original breakaway riders.

Roche really looks miserable now as he falls off Visconti’s pace.  Roche’s face is the nonverbal equivalent of whining.

Back in what’s left of the original breakaway, Majka attacks!  He’s looking to distance Rodriguez (and of course anybody else he can).  He looks pretty good but now the camera is following Visconti again so I’m not sure if ... okay, Majka’s attack was fruitless and now Schleck is taking up the pace.

Bardet is by himself ... I guess he was dropped at some point by the yellow jersey group and is fighting to stay in contact. 

And now, in the breakaway group, Majka has attacked again and has a good gap!  There are double KOM points at the top of this climb, and by now he’s learned he can’t outsprint Rodriguez.  He grabs the antenna of a motorbike!  I don’t know why!  I think he’s trying to steal it!  Maybe this guy grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.  Other than that I can’t imagine his motivation for this bizarre act.  I mean, yeah, when I’m struggling on a climb I’m tempted to grab anything I can, like the saddle of a little girl on a BMX bike who has just passed me, but this is the Tour and it’s not like Majka could get away with hanging on like that.  What will he say later?  That he was trying to make a point to the motorbike driver, like “You shouldn’t be here” when clearly the guy should?  Totally bizarre.

Visconti is looking very solid as he continues in the lead.  He’s only got 7 km to go, but they’re a tough 7 km.  He has half a minute on Roche, who has now been joined by Moinard and Rolland.

Back in the yellow jersey group, Jan-Christophe Peraud (AG2R La Mondiale) has attacked!  He’s sitting in 4th overall, a minute out of third, so it’s not hard to guess his motivation.  Nibali easily matches him, but this group could explode if there are enough of these attacks.

Majka is really going well, having a sizable gap on the Rodriguez group.

Tejay is still hanging in what is now a group of five:  Nibali, Peraud, an evidently resurgent Bardet, and—whoah, there goes Nibali again!  This is really making things tough.  Peraud is able to match Nibali but that’s it, Tejay looks like he’s dropped along with with Pinot and Bardet.  Notably missing here is Valverde, who has not responded well to all these accelerations and is dropped.  I’m sure Valverde will have strong words for his pharmacist tonight if he can’t catch back up.

Majka must have passed Roche, Moinard, and Rolland at some point because he now catches Visconti.  It’s amazing how quickly he made his way to the front of the race.  He might just be able to get a stage win today.

Tejay’s trio has passed Van Den Broeck.  That original breakaway has been totally scattered, needless to say.  Rodriguez is struggling and will very likely lose the KOM jersey, as Majka is at only 3 km to go.

Nibali attacks yet again!  He’s insatiable!

And now Majka attacks Visconti!  And it’s an amazing attack!  He’s totally spanked him!  Man, Majka has got the power.  Really, really blistering pace he just put up.

And my Internet feed has frozen.  Damn it!

Majka looks at the camera and gives a wink.  That’s how awesome he feels.  Now he’s under the 1 km thingy.  It’s tempting to call it a banner but it’s these four tubes arching over the road.  Well, more like two tubes that intersect each other, like giant crêpes suzettes.  (Have I lost my mind?)

Now Nibali has 1 km to go.  He’s kind of promiscuous, Nibali ... every time I see him he’s with a different rider.  Now it’s some Cannondale guy, must be Alessandro De Marchi who I swear has come out of nowhere.

Majka has this in the bag!  He’s pumping his fist.  And now he crosses the line with the very popular pointing-at-myself victory salute. 

Oh, good, he amends it with a more traditional victory salute.  More on this topic in a minute.

Nibali crosses the line with Peraud right on his wheel.  Rolland crosses, and now Schleck with Mollema right on him.  Roche is not far behind. 

Valverde is over the line, 1:34 down, with Tejay and the two youngsters right behind him.

One name that has not come up at all today is Leopold Konig.  This Team Netapp-Endura rider was in 7th in the GC going into this stage, a handful of seconds behind Tejay.  He’s been dropped today so that’s good for Tejay.

Now, back to this victory salute thing.  I’m really getting tired of the pointing-at-myself business.  The sheer me-me-me aspect of it is just not very gracious.  And last week, we saw Nibali doing this bizarre thumb-sucking salute when he won his second stage.  I guess it was a shout-out to his infant offspring, but you think the baby was watching?  I doubt it.  Babies care even less about bike racing than American adults.

LeMond is being interviewed by some EuroDouche wearing awful, simply awful orange pants.  They’re the color of orange sherbet.  If I were LeMond I would refuse to let the camera roll until the guy changed into some normal pants.

So, where was I?  Oh yeah, victory salutes.  When Michael Rogers (Tinkoff-Saxo) won yesterday, his victory salute was a big bow.  I thought that was corny, but it sort of fits.  Rogers, being a major doper, was giving a performance, the mere semblance of having actually bested everybody.  It’s kind of like Kevin Spacey giving a bow after playing Richard III onstage:  no, Spacey himself didn’t die during the performance, but he did a good rendition of Richard III dying, just as Rogers really did look like the best man yesterday.

I guess I should be happy to be seeing LeMond’s commentary instead of just watching the barbaric, retrograde spectacle of podium girls presenting awards, but I guess I just can’t get past the orange pants of LeMond’s co-commentator.  Plus they keep bringing strangers over to talk.  I guess this is the Tinkoff-Saxo director they’re talking to now.  Do I care what he has to say?  Well, I don’t know.  He’s not a master orator or anything.  “Majka is a fun kid,” he says.  Yeah, I gathered that based on the wink.  You know what?  I think I better cut this off here.  I have my day job to get to.

Biased Blow-By-Blow, Tour de France 2014, Stage 2

Introduction

Once again I’m delivering a live blow-by-blow report of the Tour de France, this time the second stage.  (Okay, it’s only live if you’re chatting online with me, which opportunity so few of you have availed yourselves of, but I try to post the final report before most Californians are even awake.)

Sure, you could watch replays of the race online, or read the cyclingnews report, but then you’d be missing my utterly frank commentary, the kind of commentary that responsible journalists aren’t allowed to make or which would be, for them, career-limiting moves.  Since bloggers can’t be fired, I’m going to call a spade “a filthy doping spade” and also make fun of any rider who I think deserves it.

I’ve noticed that the mobile version of my blog includes a thumbnail photo with each post, even before you select it, and I don’t want that first photo to give anything away.  So here’s a random photo of Tour legend Greg LeMond being interviewed after the race. 

 Biased Blow-By-Blow Report – 2014 Tour de France Stage Two

Not surprisingly, nothing much is happening yet with 90 kilometers to go in this stage.  There’s a small breakaway group about 2:30 ahead of the peloton.  They’re heading up the Côte de Ripponden, a category 3 climb, where they’ll duke it out for King of the Mountain (KOM) points.  I have joined the coverage far too late to see the riders on the Côte de Blubberhouses, and the amazing thing is that I didn’t make up that name.  It’s really called that in the listing I downloaded last night.  It’s a shame my kids aren’t here to giggle over “Blubberhouses,” or to enjoy a “teachable moment” as I explain to Alexa, who’s studying French in middle school, that it should be “Côte des Blubberhouses.”

I didn’t originally plan to cover this year’s Tour de France at all because last year’s race was such a travesty.  Christopher Froome (Team Sky) was so dominant in both time trialing and climbing, there was just no way for anything interesting to happen.  I can’t overstate how unrealistic it is for a tiny, scrawny pure-climber type to do so well in flat time trials.  Let me make a soccer analogy:  it would be like a player who can lead the offense but also be the goalie, at the same time.  He’d be running back and forth across the field, shooting on goal, passing, and then—in the goalie role—blocking shots and throwing the ball to himself, outrunning the thrown ball to take up the offense again.  The big problem with my analogy, of course, is that such a soccer game would actually be pretty fun to watch, unlike the Tour de France lately.

But today’s course is supposed to be pretty awesome.  It’s in England, on some very narrow roads, and it has a whole lot of short climbs, making it comparable to a spring classic.  (If you don’t know what a “classic” is in this context, you’ve come to the right place.  This blog caters to newbies and experts alike.  For my explanation of the classics, click here.)

In addition to the cool course, today promises some crazy action because it’s the Tour de France and this early in the three weeks everybody still has plenty of energy left.  Everybody tries to get to the front of the peloton at the same time, due to the race radios, and this creates a very dangerous situation.  What’s that, you ask?  Why do radios cause this phenomenon?  Well, I’m going to make a college dormitory analogy.  (Yeah, I know, that’s my answer to everything.)  Imagine that you’re a college kid, living in the dorms, and you’ve got this really helpful guidance counselor who speaks to you through a radio 24x7.  Imagine if your every move is dictated by this guy over that radio.  I mean, you don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you don’t even go to the bathroom without this guy telling you to.  And of course you’re not unique; every single student has the same arrangement.  And for some reason every counselor tells every student to go to the bathroom at the same time.  With all that synchronized flushing, of course the plumbing system is completely overwhelmed, which is the dorm equivalent of a pileup in the peloton.

Not that I’m hoping to see crashes, of course.  I wouldn’t wish any injury to anybody.  Whoah, speak of the devil!  Froomestrong’s eerily strong super-domestique Richie Porte has hit the deck.  (See?  I do actually plan on describing some of the racing here.)

Amazingly, after an incredibly slow bike change, Porte is chasing the peloton all by himself.  The storied Sky team, while the best in the business at doping (possibly even better than Postal back in the day), seems to be oddly poor at everything else, such as supporting a rider who a) is Froome’s best asset in the mountains, and b) is Sky’s second hope for the overall classification should anything happen to Froome.  They’re just letting the guy suffer by himself against the peloton.  (Don’t even get me started on the abject stupidity of excluding Bradley Wiggins, a former Tour winner, from the race simply because including him might scare Froome and/or bruise his ego.)

Okay, finally they’ve sent Danny Pate back to help Porte.  This is such bad timing for Porte... this early in the race he probably hasn’t even gotten a blood bag yet, and he looks to be really suffering.  (No, I don’t know for a fact that Sky is doing blood transfusions, but when Sky can routinely put four guys on the front of the lead group on a major climb and ratchet up the pace until honest-to-God GC contenders are being spat out the back, you have to assume they’re doing everything, perhaps including some stuff the other teams haven’t discovered yet.)

Sky has sent another rider back for Porte.  It’s Bernhard Eisel.  “More hands on the pump,” the Eurosport guy says, employing a charming metaphor in true British fashion.  That should help (the extra support rider, not the announcer’s metaphor), though these guys are climbing the Côte de Holme Moss, the hardest climb of the stage (a category 2) so the draft won’t help Porte too much.  Speaking of Moss—a different Moss this time, that being the supermodel Kate Moss—I was chatting with a pal the other day about how Froome is even thinner than Kate Moss, and how if she met him she’d say, “Dude, go eat half a sandwich or something!”  This got us thinking about how this new clothing that Sky wears, which is sheer and mesh and totally obscene, would look a lot better on Kate Moss than on Froomie.  Not that I’m a big fan of fashion models or anything; they’re too thin and should take a page from the playbook of the non-super models who adorn the hoods of muscle cars.  But anyway, the less predictable conclusion we came to is that if Kate Moss were put on the same doping program that Froome is on, she could probably win the Tour de France.  And that might be really good for the sport.

So, back to the Côte de Holme Moss:  Thomas Voeckler (Team Europcar) is hammering and gaining on Blel Kadri (AG2R La Mondiale), hoping to pass him up by the summit and get the 5 KOM points on offer.  (If “Blel” is a typo, it’s not my typo.  That’s how it’s spelled in the start list.)  The Eurosport announcer has called Voeckler a “commando style” rider, and I’m not sure he (the announcer) knows what he’s saying.  My brothers and I always took “commando style” to mean “doing something while naked that is normally done while clothed,” such as working at a bike shop (full disclosure:  we wore aprons), but I think the general connotation of “commando style” is “not wearing underwear” in which case every rider in the peloton (and every peloton) would meet this description.

Froomie has dropped his chain!  That’s ridiculous.  This totally avoidable mechanical problem has become practically an epidemic.  I just don’t understand it.  He’s not panicking, though, despite this happening on a cat 2 climb, because he’s so much like Dash, the character in “The Incredibles” who due to his super-powers has to hold back in running races so as not to give himself away.  This particular comparison breaks down in that Froome isn’t as convincing as Dash; he keeps forgetting to soft-pedal and takes the lead too early and defends it without even having to breathe through his mouth.

Kadri has crushed Voeckler on the Côte de Holme Moss and gets top KOM points.  And now some Cofidis rider has passed Voeckler for the runner-up points.  It’s a glorious sprint!  Wow, Voeckler surged and looked like he had it but the other guy, Nicolas Edet, just totally spanked him.  Fine by me ... I’ve never liked Voeckler.  I don’t know why.

The yellow jersey, Marcel Kittel (Team Giant-Shimano), is way off the back.  His team somehow conjured up a yellow bike for him.  It’s not that surprising when an obvious GC contender has a yellow bike waiting for him in case he takes the overall lead, but it’s pretty surprising to anticipate, with such confidence, that your best sprinter will prevail in a chaotic flat stage.  Either the team mechanic just grabbed a can of yellow spray-paint, or the team made special arrangements.  That would sure put the pressure on a guy, though I guess it’d be a drop in the bucket for a Tour de France stage winner anyway.

Kadri is attempting to solo and has like 30 seconds on a small chase group comprising Voeckler, Edet, and Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quick Step).  If Kadri can hold this for a bit longer he’ll get KOM points on the Côte de Midhopestones, and if he lasts 13 km he’ll get the points for the Côte de Bradfield, a 1-km cat 4 climb, which would put him in the lead in the KOM competition.  And if he’s really good and can make it 7 km longer out front he’ll get the points for the 1.5-km cat 3 Côte d’Oughtibridge.  Those are pretty big ifs though.

So, if you missed yesterday’s stage, there were to my mind two really noteworthy things about it.  First, Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) tried to shoot through a gap that didn’t really exist, and crashed really hard, taking down Simon Gerrans (Orica Greenedge) in the process.  Cav is out of the Tour with a separated shoulder, which is a great shame because a) it’s a shame when anybody crashes out, b) he’s a formidable rider who always makes the sprint finishes more exciting, and c) he gives pretty interesting interviews because he wins so often he probably practices his speeches in front of the mirror. 

The other notable thing about yesterday’s stage is that, despite it being a flat stage specifically designed for sprinters, Froome finished in sixth place.  Again, it’s very difficult to express how absurd it is that Froome can seemingly do it all.  There have been decent climbers who could duke it out in field sprints, such as Heinrich Haussler (this year riding for IAM Cycling), but they’re only KOM-style climbers—the kind who do fine on shorter climbs and have the punch to finish first over them.  But Froome is a real Grand Tour climber who does well on the long climbs because he’s so small and light, he’s practically doing no work so it’s like a motorcycle dropping a semi.  No true pocket-climber has ever done anything in a final sprint on this kind of Tour stage and in fact wouldn’t even bother trying.  It would be no less astonishing if a jockey, rounding the final bend in a horse race, decided to jump off his horse and run the rest of the way in himself.

Porte is back in the main bunch, by the way, and Kadri has been caught.  The riders now have 35 km to go and have crested the Côte de Midhopestones.  Wow, the race reshuffled when I wasn’t looking.  It looks like a couple of Garmin guys are on the front now.  Vincenzo Nibali (Astana Pro Team) is in there, rocking the Italian national champion jersey.  One of the Garmin guys is Andrew Talansky, the American who won the Critérium du Dauphiné recently.  That race started out really boring, with Froomie absolutely crushing everybody on an early mountain stage, but then Froome crashed in a later stage and was hurt badly enough to relinquish his lead and make the race worth watching.

Man, Garmin is just sitting on the front, hammering the pace.  They’re approaching the Côte de Bradfield.  Wow, Kittel is only just finishing the Côte de Midhopestones.  He’s over 7 minutes back now.  I doubt he cares that much since surely he’s mainly interested in the green points jersey (for best sprinter), and wants to be fresh for future sprint stages.  He could lose this stage by seven feet or seven minutes and there wouldn’t be any difference to him.

This Côte de Bradfield climb hasn’t ended up being very exciting.  Perhaps the pace is too high for any KOM contender to try anything.  They’re over it now without a sprint.  It was only worth one point anyway.

So all the main GC contenders and most of the green jersey contenders are still together.  They’re snaking through a little town that looks very charming.  I have to confess, I do enjoy the scenery in these European stage races.  America has plenty of wilderness, which I really appreciate, but so many of our little towns just look like strip malls with tract houses attached.

The peloton is on the Côte d’Oughtibridge.  It’s a cat 3 due to only being 1.5 km long, but it’s a 9% grade.  These climbs never look as steep on TV.  The camera angles just seem to flatten everything out.  It’s scary to think that the camera also adds five pounds.

Alexander Kristoff (Team Katusha), winner of this year’s Milan-San Remo, goes off the back.  Serves him right because his helmet  is so fricking ugly.  It’s the same dome-like thing that was sitting crooked on his head during his victory salute in San Remo. 

Pierre Rolland (Europcar) and some AG2R bloke are off the front at the moment.  It’s 14 km to go.  Not sure what the gap is at this point, or what the point is either.

Rolland is soloing!  He’s obviously going uphill but it’s not a named climb.  Pretty decent gap but then, it’s a huge group behind him with all the sprinters’ teams.

Cannondale is swarming at the front, making sure Peter Sagan is in great position.  Oddly, Rolland is holding them off.  I don’t know what he’s after unless it’s the single KOM point at the top of the Côte de Jenkin Road.  Funny climb names, these.  This is England, after all, where they surely don’t say “Côte” unless it’s French affectation, which the Brits aren’t known for.  I guess this handy little chart I found on the Internet has been Franco-fied.  I wonder how they’d have tweaked “Blubberhouses.”  Côte de Maison de Blubbér?  Anyway, it’s 5 km until that final climb ... is there any way Rolland could hang on that long?

Answer:  no.  He’s already caught with 8 km to the finish.

So, Jenkins road could be very exciting.  It’s in about 3 km and is just under 1 km long, but it’s a 10.8% grade.  Perfect for Sagan, who climbs better than the sprinters.  A few years ago Sagan seemed equal to the fastest sprinters in the world, but that’s changed.  Fortunately for him, Simon Gerrans, one of the best sprinters in the race, has just been dropped.  So Gerrans, Kristoff, and Kittel are all dropped and Cav is out of the race, so Sagan’s chances are pretty good.

Nibali attacks!  Pretty awesome!  But here comes Contador, or “Lubrador” as my online correspondent called him earlier.  Oddly this was in the context of my pal hoping, as I do, that Contador is well lubed for this race.  We used to hate all dopers, but anything is better than Froome totally dominating.  It’s pretty sad when we’re rooting for a known doper, and liar (using the “tainted imported beef” excuse that oddly enough actually worked for one rider), especially one who, as his victory salute, pantomimes shooting a gun.  Yes, as annoying as all that is, it’s better than watching Froome mock everybody with his grotesquely awkward riding style and smug grin.

Speak of the devil!  Froome totally attacks!  He takes the KOM point, but more to the point shows his would-be rivals that he’s totally recovered from his Dauphiné crash.

Sagan hits the front!  He’s in a full tuck on this descent.  It’s 4 km to go.  Sagan is absolutely murdering it.  But at this speed, slipstreams are very long and he hasn’t shed the peloton yet—or what’s left of it.  Dudes are strung out in a long line, big gaps developing here and there.

Some Astana guys attacks and a BMC is right on him—I think it’s Tejay van Gardaren.  It’s 2.3 km to go.  Now they’re slowing up and watching each other and I hear the hackneyed phrase “cat and mouse” for the third time today.

Wow, Nibali launches a supersonic attack up the side of the road!  He’s trying to solo!  Just a tremendous boost of speed.  It’s kind of incredible how big a gap he’s opened up in such short time.  It’s a slight uphill which certainly serves him.  Criminy, he’s on fire.  The peloton has broken in two with a group of maybe twenty splint off from the rest. 

Only 800 meters for Nibali!  I think he’s got it!  But wait, the pack is absolutely drilling it!  Sagan is leading the effort.  But now he looks back, lays off the pedals, and suddenly everybody is watching each other again.  It’s slightly uphill and 250 meters to go ... will Nibali hold out?  And will my Internet feed hold out!?  Nibali looks back, he’s out of the saddle, the group swarming behind him, and DAMN!  He’s got it!  What a badass!  Balls like King Kong!

I don’t know if Nibali is just lucky or really, really smart because I sure wouldn’t have predicted the sprinters would screw up so badly, all looking at each other instead of just going for the line.  It’s like when you’re playing volleyball and the ball come arching over the net, its trajectory obvious, its speed low, and yet everybody just stands there, figuring somebody else will get it, and BONK!  It’s on the ground.

Van Garderen was 9th, Talansky 7th, so a pretty impressive showing by the U.S.  I sort of have to say that because I’ve been feeling guilty lately for not supporting our economy better.

So Nibali took 2 seconds out of the rest, and is the new race leader!  If I’m not mistaken, that’s his first-ever yellow jersey enough though he’s often a GC contender in this race. 

Nibali is being interviewed and says, “Everybody thinks I suck so I knew they’d let me go.”  At least, that’s what I think he said—I got distracted for a second.  It’s what I hope he said.

Eurosport is showing some highlights.  But now my feed is blocked by an ad for a beautiful girl who’s “Looking for a boyfriend.”  Her name is Liz.  Poor Liz.  It’s showing a snapshot of her chat and nobody is responding!  She’s just waiting for some nice Internet user to notice her!  But I don’t care.  I’d rather hear what LeMond has to say about the race.  He’s questioning Sky’s stupidity in taking so long to send riders back to help Porte.

Now LeMond is on to discussing the race in general.  “I’m not very optimistic about the Americans’ chances,” says LeMond.  Hmmm.  Some part of me thinks LeMond wouldn’t mind continuing to be the only American to officially win the Tour.

They’re showing very brief snippets of the podium ceremony but nested within a boring interview with Kittel.  Sagan gets the green jersey (and the white jersey of best young rider but they only showed like two seconds of that and I missing grabbing a snapshot).

I was already losing my patience with this endless interview format, and now they’ve brought over the notorious doper and all-around tool Alejandro Valverde, so I’m going to cut this coverage off here.  I hope you’ve enjoyed my biased account.

More Q&A With Dr. Tyre

Dear Dr. Tyre,

I’ve been all over the Internet trying to get a straight answer to this question:  what’s the difference between the Continental Grand Prix 4000 and the 4000S?  Which one should I buy?

Len P, Louisville, KY

Dear Len,

The 4000S has Black Chili compound, which (according to the manufacturer) means that the rubber has “special nanometric carbon soot particles” in it that give the tire all the best characteristics of solid grip, low rolling resistance, and longevity.  (I like that these nanometric carbon soot particles are the “special” kind, not just the regular kind.)

The 4000 doesn’t have Black Chili, unless you get the all-black ones, which do.  Got that?  The only difference between the 4000S and the black 4000 is graphics.

Which should you ride?  Does the Black Chili actually mean anything?  Probably it’s a benefit, but can’t say for sure.  I can say, though, that there’s something twee about using brightly colored tires on your bike.  And do you really want to give up a potential functional benefit just for the sake of style?

By the way, the first time I was asked about 4000 vs. 4000S, by a friend, I hadn’t done my homework and replied, “You want the 4000S because it’s better.”  My friend asked why it’s better.  I replied, “Because I have it, and I only ride the best.”  If you invoke this line of reasoning and have your authority questioned, use your tire choice as evidence of your superior taste.  This rhetorical trick—technically a logical fallacy—is called Petitio Principii and is the backbone of many a successful argument. 

Dear Dr. Tyre,

Let’s get down to brass tacks.  What’s better:  clinchers or sew-ups?

Byron T, Boston, MA

Dear Byron,

That all depends on who’s buying.  If you’re on a pro team, with a crackerjack mechanic, and get all the tires you want, then tubulars (i.e., sew-ups) are still the best way to go.  They handle better because they deflect more in corners, are less vulnerable to pinch-flats, and are a lighter overall design since the rim doesn’t have to have the little shelf to hold the tire bead.  On the other hand, tubular tires cost a lot, are virtually worthless after you get a puncture, and are really hard to glue on properly.

Naturally, there are those who maintain that punctured tubulars can be repaired.  An e-mail thread among my bike club members a year or so ago dealt with this very topic, presided over by our club guru, Bob Muzzy, whose cred is established by this photo:

(Yes, that’s Greg Lemond.  Bob has just presented Greg with a signed photo of the two of them at the start line of a race in Belgium in 1980.)

Bob wrote the following: 

Now gather ‘round in a circle, youngsters, while I tell you a story about sew-up tire repair, long, long ago.  We used to fix our own!  That’s right.  And we got good, and fast, at it.  I swear I could do it faster than some of you can change a clincher flat…  Rarely is it necessary to replace the inner tube, valve and entire base tape.  I’ve even spliced in replacement sections of inner tube when there was a large blowout.  Say there was a 2” long rip in the tube.  I’d cut it out to square the ends, then splice back in a 4” section of tube from another salvaged tire; leaving 1” overlap on either end.  I have also replaced treads; shops used to sell replacements.  Most of the time the sidewall failed prior to the tread so this wasn’t a common repair.  It was easier to lay down a thin layer of shoe goo to build up the existing tread.  There must be instructional videos on youtube.   I’ve long suggested that this would be a great business for a young person.  

 My response was as follows: 

A buddy of mine started his own tubular repair service in the mid-  ‘80s.  He called it Professional Independent Sew-up Repair and didn’t realize what the initials spelled.  His business, which he ran out of my dad’s basement (he was couch-surfing there at the time) was booming right from the beginning; the only problem was, he never actually fixed any of the tires—he just took them  in.  Years later I found PISR’s backlog, still in the basement.  The PISR customer files were long gone, so there was no way to get the tires back to their owners.  So I took them, along with  the half dozen or so tires I’d punctured over the years, and gave them to another friend who had just started his own  tubular repair business.  Well, I pestered that guy every six months or so for the next three years, and then one day, amazingly, he gave me all the tires, fixed.  He was too embarrassed to accept any payment, though I tried to insist.  So, I went  back to training on sew-ups because I suddenly had this incredible inventory of tires, but they lasted an average of one  ride apiece before the stitching would blow.  I went through the whole lot of them in less than a month, I think.  Never  again!   Moral of the story?  Sewing up a sew-up is harder than a lot of people think, especially for those dang youngsters these  days...

To this tale, Bob replied, “Dana, you clearly hung around with a scoundrels and incompetents in your youth.  Your parents and I are glad to see you’ve straightened up.  A bit.  Your lame buddy simply used lousy thread.  A double thickness of sturdy waxed dental floss is recommended.”

Of course, puncture repair is only part of the story.  Guys roll tires (i.e., an improperly glued tire can roll off the rim, causing a crash), and did so even back in the day, when your average racer got a lot more involved in maintaining his bike than modern-day types (I’m sorry, but it has to be said).  I marshaled the Albany Criterium last year, and a dirtbag rolled a tire coming through a corner, crashing the guy behind him in the process.  The second guy (i.e., the innocent victim) let us fuss over him, but the first dude got the hell out of there, rightly fearing a tongue-lashing.

When I worked tech support for races in the ‘80s, I prided myself on being a hard-ass and flunking as many bikes as I could by rolling the tires off the rims with my hands.  Guys would complain and I’d remind them that I’d done them—and the rest of the peloton—a favor.  A properly glued tire should be impossible to push off a rim while inflated.  Alas, gluing tubular tires (like patching them) is a lost art.  So unless you have lots of money and you really know what you’re doing, just stick with clinchers.  The modern ones are very good.

Dear Dr. Tyre,

I’ve been dieting and have lost ten pounds over the winter (even though it meant huddling by the radiator a lot of the time).  Plus I have been working out in the gym, and am getting loads of base miles.  In other words, I’m really stepping up my game.  So I’m thinking:  is it time to go tubeless?

David M, San Diego, CA

Dear David,

Not to be a jerk or anything, but I frankly couldn’t care less about your training program, your “efforts,” your “game,” and your racing, and I’m sure my readers couldn’t, either.

Sorry, I guess I’m still riled up thinking about guys who roll tubular tires.  Anyway, my approach to tubeless tire systèmes is that, while they afford a pompous advice columnist the opportunity to throw around terms like “système,” they should be approached cautiously.  Will tubeless really catch on?  And if it does, will it be a lasting innovation, or just a fad?  I sat out the whole Biopace “revolution,” and while it’s easy to downplay oval chainrings now, a lot of people paid perfectly good money to replace their perfectly good round chainrings with Biopace, only to come full circle and pay more money to return to round chainrings.  Same with the roller-cam brakes and U-brakes that came after them.  Meanwhile, if the technology does end up sticking around, it’ll only get better and cheaper over time.  In my opinion, the only reason to go tubeless at this early stage is to show off (though maybe that’s reason enough for you).

Dear Dr. Tyre,

I’m going to make my own studded snow tires for my mountain bike!  Any advice?

Kate S, Buffalo, NY

Dear Kate,

While there are several web resources for this project (for example, here, here, and here), I haven’t come across one that addresses the biggest problem with this idea:  longevity.  The standard method is to use wood screws as studs.  Wood screws will wear down really, really fast.  This is not a story my people tell, but something I know myself. 

To get around this problem, you can buy expensive studded bike tires (e.g., this one) that have tungsten carbide studs, or you can try to buy the tungsten carbide studs by themselves to make your own studded tires with, as my brothers and I managed to do in the ‘80s.  It was terribly hard work, drilling a small hole in each tire knob and pushing the stud through by thumb.  I’m sure we’ll all have arthritis from the manufacturing process.  But the tires were indestructible!  I used to cruise into the garage at speed and lock up the rear wheel, carving grooves in the concrete.  We had to use Mr. Tuffys in the tires to protect the tubes, and the whole setup weighed a ton, but once you had the bike up to speed, it was good times.  I wish I had a photo, or for that matter the tires themselves.  Where did they go?  Who knows.  We all moved away from Colorado and the ‘rents must have pitched them.  A pity.  Anyway, here’s a photo of a proper (commercial) studded tire.

 Dear Dr. Tyre,

I’m kind of a connoisseur of print ads.  What is your favorite ad for a bike tire?

Sheila S, Boston, MA

Dear Sheila,

There are lots of great old ads for tires, but two of them leap readily to mind.  First, this one:

The other one, alas, I can’t find anywhere, but the following photo has much in common with it:  the same guy, on this same giant bike, pitched over in a turn at the same angle:

This second ad was for the new Avocet Fasgrip tire, which had no tread whatsoever.  It was sort of the Atkins diet of the bike tire world:  take everything we thought we knew about tires and reverse it.  Completely bald tires.  The actual ad showed the guy on a wet road, fearlessly banking over like that.  The text promised that the tire really would stick like glue in the wet, and I think it even gave some silly reasons why slick was better.

I guess if I have to pick between these two favorite ads—and I clearly do, based on your question—I’d go with the Clément ad because it doesn’t promise, or indeed even say, anything at all.  The man and woman seem to be fighting over the tire, but the woman looks bored.  Then there’s the guy in the back in the suit … what’s his story?  You might question whether this is a persuasive ad, but it sure worked on me.  I refer you to last week’s question about my favorite tire, and to the fact that Clément was a runner-up despite my never having tried it.  Its mystique owes a lot to this ad, I think.

The Avocet ad, meanwhile, didn’t convince me, but did convince my brother Geoff.  He completely trusted those tires, up to and until the rainy day on which he took the turn into the bike shop parking lot at breakneck speed and slid right out, crashing hard.  He ended up with close to thirty stitches in his chin.  From that day forward (actually, probably from the very beginning) we called the Avocet tires “Fas-slip.”  (To be honest, they probably weren’t any worse for traction than any other tire.  The ad alone is at fault in suggesting the impossible feat of cornering that hard in the wet.)