Letter to a Middle-Aged Cyclist - Buy New Wheels NOW!

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog. And check this out: if you launch the video and then close your eyes, it magically becomes a podcast! Naturally, the traditional text-O-rama blog format follows below.

Introduction

I’m not much of a consumer, but recently a friend bullied me into buying new wheels for my road bike. Based on the outcome, and with all the zeal of a convert, I exhorted another friend, who complained about broken spokes, to buy these wheels as well. Seeing an opportunity to expand my beneficence, I hereby entreat all middle-aged road cyclists to buy new wheels too. Here are my top five reasons, followed by a handy Q&A.

Reason #1 – You’re not getting any younger

Okay, right off the bat you can find some pretty badass looking wheels nowadays. Case in point, these Dura-Ace C40s I just picked up. Have a gander at these bad boys.

Now, if you were 70 years old, would I be recommending these to you? Of course not. You’d be a geezer, unlikely to get much use out of them. When my dad was like 70, and had suffered some shoulder injury he thought to be permanent, he decided he needed a recumbent, because it was closer to the ground. “If I crash on a regular bicycle and land on my shoulder, it is done,” he explained sternly. Alas, he was too old a dog to master the recumbent bicycle, so then he bought a recumbent tricycle. Now he no longer needed to balance, but the supine riding position, he complained, gave him terrible neck pain. Well hell, I could have predicted that!

The awkwardness of the recumbent is not just a physical problem. There’s also the aesthetic consideration. Nobody should ride recumbents, any more than any tortoise should be flipped over on its back and laughed at. Fortunately, after giving up on the trike, my dad decided his shoulder was okay after all and bought a sensible Fuji hybrid/commuter bike. Not bad, except he never rode it either; apparently after his hip replacement he couldn’t swing his leg over the bike. So he asked me what I thought about him trading it in for a women’s model, with no top tube.

My instant reaction was, “What, are you crazy? What’s next, you gonna start drinking rosé? Dude, it’s time to man up, do some damn physical therapy, and ride the bike you got!” But if course there was no point in saying this. By the time a guy is asking you if it’s okay to ride a women’s bike, it’s too late to help him. “Sounds like a great plan,” I told him, “and I’m sure Performance would gladly swap your bike for a women’s model at no charge. After all, you’ve never ridden it.” This was a gamble, of course; would he take my advice, and if so, whose demise was approaching faster—his or Performance’s? (In the end it was a dead heat.)

I hope I’ve made it clear we need to put off the geezer years for as long as possible and hang on to youthful stuff with all our might. In this battle, aesthetics are important. If you’re over 50, you’re heading toward the years when you wouldn’t necessarily carry off those badass new wheels very well. Similarly, there’s something sad about a 65-year-old in a distressed-looking leather jacket and that’s where we’re headed. At some point that jacket would need to be traded in on a cardigan sweater because who the hell are we kidding? As Anthony Bourdain once said, “There’s nothing cool about ‘used to be cool.’”

[Above: my brother Max and I when we were younger and cooler (even if we weren’t, strictly speaking, cool). Can I still wear that jacket? Yes, I think … but not forever.]

Don’t even get me started on all the super-cool sports cars you see in the Bay Area—the Porsches, the McLarens, the Audi R8s, even your occasional Lambo—that inevitably have some 60-plus douche behind the wheel (driving responsibly, of course). Seeing this grotesque pairing of speed-obsessed engineering and delusional, over-moneyed, existential Viagra, I fantasize about the guy’s irresponsible 18-year-old grandson stealing the car and taking it out for a joy ride, maybe even leading the cops in a stupidity-and-adrenaline-fueled high-speed pursuit.

At least bikes provide a healthy outlet for midlife-crisis ya-yas. So we should all be using high-end, kickass gear while we still can. If we can still put the hurt on younger riders, and we can still make our racing bikes go jolly fast, we’re not too old to deserve really awesome machines. Yet. So you need to snap up and enjoy these wheels while you still have the mettle, the minerals, the sound & the fury to put them to good use. Seize the day!

Reason #2 – The price is right

I hear anecdotally that everything is cheaper now because of the COVID-19 shelter-in-place and the low price of oil. New cars, as described here, are still being shipped over here and there’s no place to put them because the dealers aren’t making a dent in their current inventory. It’s kind of a consumer’s market in general, apparently.

So when I broke my third spoke in under 500 miles on my current rear wheel, and complained to my friend Pete, he immediately urged me to buy new ones. He even sent me a link to where the wheels he recommended were on sale for $350 off. Within a few minutes I found them on closeout at another place for $600 off. DAAAAAAMN!

There’s also the price of not buying those wheels. Look, your gear is going to wear out at some point. Why wait until then, when the economy may well be booming again, and you’ll have to pay what the market will bear? And why run the risk of finding out the hard way that your hubs and/or rims are approaching wear-related catastrophic structural failure, like my crankarm back in 2011?

With my new wheels the cost analysis included the crap I’d have had to put up with from Pete if I’d stuck to my penny-pinching ways. He wrote, and I quote, “Do it do it do it do it. Don’t be scared.” I hemmed and hawed and he pointed out, “It’s not like you’re gonna go on some expensive vacation any time soon.” I acknowledged this point and he replied: “See, you’re practically making money on the deal!”

Not a bad argument, but the “don’t be scared” was even more powerful. Did you catch that? How he was, albeit subtly, impugning my confidence? Like I’m too scared to throw money around? I went silent for a bit and he texted me, “I assume your silence means you bought them!” He basically rim-shamed me into the purchase, and I hope I’m doing the same with you. If not, read on because I’m not done yet.

Reason #3 – Aero wheels actually will make you go faster

By “modern” I mean the truly aerodynamic ones. No, not like those super deep-dish time trial wheels, which is frankly overkill, but something a bit more aggressive than what you might have on your bike. In my case, I had been rocking the HED Ardennes, which claim to be aerodynamic but aren’t very deep (and frankly aren’t very durable—long, dull story). I’m talking something at least 35mm deep, from the edge of the rim where the tire sidewall begins to where the spokes go in. And the wheels need to have a relative paucity of spokes—not a mere 16 front and rear, like the early Shimano wheels I swore off of, but not your old-school 28- or 32-spoke build either. And bladed spokes, needless to say. Why on earth did my replacement HED wheel, which I just bought late last year to replace the defective one I bought in 2014, have non-bladed spokes? What, did they forget? What’s next, toothpaste without fluoride? Leaded gasoline? CRT televisions? Dial-up Internet?

Now, the bicycle industry has a long history of total BS when it comes to aerodynamics. I give you the aero water bottle, which led to famous victories by nobody ever.

They’re just hideous. I doubt anybody would use them even if they did confer a real advantage. Aesthetics, remember?

And you think the placement of these shifters, and the internal cabling, led to any actual benefit?

To some degree the bicycle industry pretended that making something needlessly ugly would automatically lead to aerodynamic improvement:

So I’ve been skeptical about aero wheels too (other than, obviously, disk wheels, tri-spokes, etc.). When I was pondering my last new wheel purchase in 2014, I incredulously emailed my teammate Sean (a legit bike maven), “It’s crazy ... the more expensive Dura-Ace wheels are heavier than the C24s … could that be right? Is the idea that the aerodynamics are so much better, it’s worth it? The order of the universe seems out of whack all of a sudden.” Sean replied, “Yes, that is correct. I too have trouble accepting the idea that heavier wheels can be faster, but apparently the aerodynamics more than make up for the weight gain, unless you are doing major climbing.”

So is he right? In a word, yes. There really is a big difference with these Dura-Ace C40s (35mm deep in the rim-brake version). It’s not subtle. Consider this: there’s a little downhill on Wildcat Canyon Road, where I try to get as much speed as I can to carry me up the next rise. I’m accustomed to hitting a little over 30 mph on that if I pedal fairly hard. With these wheels, putting out about the same perceived effort, I hit 37 mph! Digging extra deep yesterday, I reached almost 40. Going down South Park Drive, without pedaling, I can feel the bike picking up speed like it never has before, as though gravity had gotten stronger. (In a sense its effect is stronger, as it’s impeded less by wind drag.) Descending with these wheels is the difference between paddling your little canoe out on the lake vs. feeling a giant wave pick up your surf kayak and hurl it toward the beach.

Now, I know just what you’re thinking: your decisions these days are data-driven. You don’t want this mealy-mouthed, feel-good subjective nonsense clouding your AI-like judgment. So here are the cold, hard facts about my first two rides with these wheels.

My first ride was one of my favorite loops, 19.3 miles with about 2,500 feet of climbing. My previous best time of the year was 1:19:02, an average speed of 14.7 mph. On this route with the new wheels (their maiden voyage), I clocked a 1:16:26, averaging 15.5 mph. Pretty staggering improvement, eh?

Now, there’s a such thing as “new bike syndrome” where you automatically go faster because a) you’re excited about the new bike, and b) you’re frightened into riding harder by the looming specter of buyer’s remorse. Does new bike syndrome extend to wheels? Anecdotally I wouldn’t say so, and anyway we can account for that effect, to some extent, by looking at average heart rate across the two rides.

For the ride that produced my former best time, my average heart rate was 131 bpm, and I was in Zone 3 (>144 bpm) for 0:17:49. On the new wheels, my record-breaking ride was at an average HR of 132, with only 0:15:55 in zone 3 (and no time in or above zone 4 for either ride). In other words, the level of effort was comparable, one ride to the next. So, yeah—it was the fricking wheels! They actually made me faster!

Of course I can’t base this conclusion on a single ride. But the next ride corroborated this; it’s a bit shorter at 16.7 miles, with just over 2,000 feet of climbing, and I beat my 2020 PR of 1:07:43 handily, completing the ride in just 1:04:45 (15.5 mph vs. 14.8). This year I’ve done one or the other of these loops 17 times on the old wheels, and never averaged above 15 mph. With the new wheels, I’ve broken the coveted 15 mph average all three times on the longer loop plus the one time on the shorter loop. Four for four!

Moreover, factoring in longer rides (with more flat sections), my highest average speed of the year on the old wheels was 16.3 mph (on a 33-mile ride with 2,900 feet of climbing). On the new wheels yesterday, I averaged 17.6 mph (on a 39.4-mile ride with 3,300 feet of climbing). That’s an 8% improvement … stunning.

Reason #4 – New wheels will actually make you ride harder

Okay, I’ll confess that comparing my average heart rate across rides is somewhat specious, given the slippery nature of the term “average.” After all, the average person has one breast and one testicle. Coasting on downhills will lower the average heart rate figure inconsistently, etc. Meanwhile, by looking closely at some of my climbs, it’s clear I’ve been going harder lately. On the old wheels I recently clocked a non-stellar 8:13 up Pinehurst Road, whereas with the new wheels yesterday I managed a much better 7:39. My average heart rate over the slower ascent was a mere 140 bpm. Yesterday, my average for this climb was 148 bpm. Across the whole ride, I’d averaged 122 bpm for the first ride, and 133 yesterday.

So does this deconstruct my whole argument, suggesting that greater effort, not greater efficiency, explains the improvement in speed? First of all, no—the difference is too great, and too consistent, and I do have the pair of rides with very similar heart rate yet dissimilar speed & time. Second, it kind of doesn’t really matter if I could have gone as fast, or as hard, on the old wheels. The fact is, I didn’t. I’m going faster and harder now, clearly. When better equipment puts better performance within our reach, we’re much more likely to stretch ourselves.

There’s also the matter of momentum. The parts of my rides that aren’t big climbs or descents are still lumpy, and with the new wheels I find myself carrying more speed from a downhill into the next uphill, such that if I go a bit harder I can stay in the big chainring for longer stretches (in my case, from Summit Reservoir all the way to Inspiration Point), which inspires and enthuses me. It’s a virtuous cycle.

[Google Maps says it takes 23 minutes to ride the above route. With my old wheels I did as well as 12:58. My new PR with the aero wheels is 11:35.]

Reason #5 – COVID-19

Let’s face it, if we’re smart during this pandemic we’ll all be riding alone for the foreseeable future, with nobody to draft, so we need to be as aerodynamic as possible or we’ll a) get too frustrated to continue, meaning we’ll give up cycling, launching a downward slide into sloth and depression, or b) we’ll be unable to resist drafting others, meaning we’re one snot rocket away from bringing the coronavirus home and killing our entire family.

Meanwhile, returning to the fiscal discussion I started earlier, during shelter-in-place it’s harder to spend money. My credit card bill hasn’t been this low in years, and for the first time in forever all the transactions fit on one page. Why not splurge a little? Besides, there’s a good chance we’ll all be dead soon, along with our would-be heirs, so what’s the point in saving? It’s time to buy! Buy buy buy!

Questions and answers

Q. Why not just get a whole new bike, since there have been so many improvements in technology, such as disc brakes?

A. How can you even contemplate such a major purchase when the global economy is melting the fuck down?! I can’t believe you’re thinking so irresponsibly. Besides, better brakes will not make you go faster. Aren’t we slowing down enough as we head into middle age? Meanwhile, it might be pretty hard finding a new bike anyway ... the pandemic has caused a major bike shortage, as described here.

Q. Why wouldn’t I upgrade my mountain bike wheels instead? Maybe with some sweet carbon rims?

A. With the vast hordes of hikers I’m seeing in the regional parks, I don’t consider mountain biking safe whatsoever right now, or even fun. How are you supposed to socially distance on single track? I can’t imagine spending money on a bike I might not get to even ride in the foreseeable future.

Q. What about crosswinds?

A. Whaddya mean, crosswinds? What the hell are you even talking about? Listen to this guy … crosswinds.

Q. In your previous post about selecting bike wheels you touted the benefits of wider rims and claimed that “the HEDs really do ride better” and “the ride is really plush.” Now you’re pushing Dura-Ace wheels with a narrower rim profile. What gives?

A. You know what else is really plush? Your bed. Or we could ride around on beach cruisers. Look, we’re heading toward old age, infirmity, and death … this isn’t the time to make ourselves comfortable. To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, “The grave’s a fine and restful place/ But no one there is fit to race.”

Q. You seem to assume that all your readers are still gainfully employed right now, even though unemployment in the U.S. is now at historic levels, with more than 20 million people out of work. How can you callously pretend we’re all in a position to spend money on nonessentials?

A. Just buy the damn wheels.

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37 Velominati Rules You Can Ignore

Introduction

This is my second of two posts on The Rules, a set of cycling-related standards put forth by Velominati.com.  I bother to write about The Rules in part because I feel that bicycle road racing has a recruitment problem.  In the mid-‘80s when I was a junior in Colorado, turnout was great—routinely we’d get like sixty kids in a race.  Now, in many cases, there are scarcely enough juniors to have a race, even at major events like the Nevada City Bicycle Classic.  Also, the three teams I rode for during my college years had trouble recruiting women even back then.  So when popular websites like Velominati’s suggest that the roadie realm is a bunch of (adult, male) elitists, I feel like somebody ought to step up and assure the newcomer that a lot of us are actually pretty laid back.

Several Velominati fans have commented, below my first post on this topic, that I’m missing the point and that I have no sense of humor.  Well, I doubt that the point of Velominati’s site is that these Rules are entirely facetious and the entire thing is a great big spoof.  If that were the case, a seasoned cyclist like me would disagree with all of The Rules, not just 37 of them.  Moreover, if humor were the only goal of The Rules, we wouldn’t have such straightforward, clearly non-tongue-in-cheek items as Rule #18, “No baggy shorts and jerseys while riding the road bike.”

I suspect that the point of The Rules is twofold:  to inform and to entertain.  It’s evidently meant to be fun to read, while imparting a body of knowledge about the culture of road cycling.  The fact that I don’t find much of it funny doesn’t mean I have no sense of humor.  After all, I laughed out loud at the Ronnie Johns “Harden the Fuck Up” video that Rule #5 links to.  I also chuckled at Rule #34, “Mountain bike shoes and pedals have their place:  on a mountain bike.”  Beyond velominati.com, I can even enjoy a comic declaration I totally disagree with, provided it’s sufficiently funny, as in the case of George Carlan’s diatribe against guys named Todd.

The Rules list strongly resembles a similar list from many years ago, “The Official Euro Cyclist Code of Conduct,” by Dom Guiver and Mike Flavell, except that those guys seemed to be making fun of themselves, and their directives were, in many cases, obviously facetious (e.g.,  “[long] hair shall be neatly slicked back in maximum euro-styling, and helmet SHALL NOT be worn” and “a gold pendant on a very long, thin chain bearing some sort of religious icon is STRONGLY recommended for mountain races”).  In contrast, the overall effect of the Velominati rules is that of actual advice from unapologetically elitist self-declared authorities.

When I asserted this in my previous post, a few Velominati fans told me to lighten up.  Their suggestion seems to be that because The Rules are all in good fun, nobody should object to anything.  The problem is, it’s really hard to tell when a rule is meant as a joke vs. an actual directive.  If something is not obviously funny, it’s not obviously a joke, and we are entitled to think it’s meant seriously.  (It’s a bit like one of my kids insulting the other, and then, when I chastise her for it, saying, “C’mon, I was just joking.”)

This post (like my other one) is for cyclists who have read The Rules and don’t like them, and/or are feeling intimidated by a sport that, as Velominati portrays it, holds its participants to exacting standards.  This post is for cyclists who disagree with some of The Rules and might like being let off the hook.  And finally, it’s for my friend Mark, who originally sent around the link with the comment, “We need to annotate this list … Dana?”

37 Velominati Rules you can ignore

Here is the list of Velominati rules I knowingly break—not due to a rebellious streak, but because I simply think they’re wrong.  Please don’t construe my list as an endorsement of the idea that cyclists need to meet a uniform standard … as far as I’m concerned, other cyclists can do as they please (outside of obvious misbehavior like running over pedestrians as they pursue downhill Strava  records).

Rule #1, Obey the Rules.  This is needless; the idea of obedience is built-in to the notion of rule.  I think it would be an improvement to change this one to, “Take the following Rules with a grain of salt.”

Rule #3, Guide the uninitiated.  Per my previous post, other riders’ behavior is their own business and I don’t want the job of telling strangers they’re doing it all wrong.

Rule #5, Harden The Fuck Up.  This was funny in Ronnie Johns’ video.  It’s less funny when aimed at a reader whom the Velominati folks have never met, and who a) may already be plenty hard, or b) may not care to make the sport a personal pissing contest.  I went further into this in my previous post.

Rule #6, Free your mind and your legs will follow.  This is just blather.  Any good cyclist knows that this sport requires brains.  And “Do all your thinking before you start riding”?  The idea of Velominati acolytes thoughtlessly drifting along, lost in reverie (“wrapped in the sensations of the ride”), is somewhat  frightening.  Yes, much of cycling becomes instinctive and automatic, but decisions still need to be made.

Rule #7, Tan lines should be cultivated and kept razor sharp.  In my book, any behavior associated with suntans—with the notable exception of protecting your skin—is narcissistic.  And yes, narcissism is a bad thing.

Rule #9, Riding in bad weather means you’re a badass, period.  Not everybody who rides in bad weather is a badass (some do it just to show off), and conversely, not all badass cyclists are eager or even willing to ride in bad weather.

Rule #11, Family does not come first, the bike does.  I suspect this is facetious, but it’s not very funny, and certainly isn’t right.  If an amateur cyclist, such as one in the Masters, wishes to bail on his family every weekend to go race, that’s his or her business, but to mandate it is ridiculous.

Rule #12, The correct number of bikes to own is n+1.  No, that’s not always the case.  For me, five is plenty since I don’t ride track or cyclocross.  Also, what about people who can only afford one or two bikes?  Are they not allowed into this sport?

Rule #13, If you draw race number 13, turn it upside down.  As Daniel Coyle describes in his excellent book Lance Armstrong’s War, superstitions can vary from rider to rider.  I have no problem with the number 13 and would want to wear it right-side-up, to make sure the officials can read it (as opposed to giving me a DNF).  Declaring that something should be done a certain way, just because some cool athlete does it, is getting into slippery territory.  Should the Velominati guys, in accordance with Rules #2 and #3, go tell Rohan Dennis—winner of the Mount Diablo stage of the Tour of California—that he pinned his numbers on wrong?

Rule #14, Shorts should be black.  This is silly because the majority of pro teams have non-black shorts today.  Meanwhile, my club’s jerseys are orange, which I love, but which wouldn’t look good with black shorts (i.e., would be too much like Halloween).  We wear navy blue shorts.

Rule #17, Team kit is for members of the team.  In general, I don’t try to impersonate someone on another team.  But I received a sweet long-sleeve Rabobank jersey for Christmas years ago and reserve the right to wear it, with my non-Rabobank shorts. 

Rule #18, Know what to wear, don’t suffer kit confusion – No baggy shorts and jerseys while riding the road bike, no lycra when riding the  mountain bike.  Pure malarkey.  I’m not going to put on my cycling clothes just to return a video.  And mountain bikers have been wearing Lycra for at least a couple decades.

Rule #19, Introduce yourself … it is customary and courteous to announce your presence.  I have never required this of any random Joe joining our club ride, and have never been so formal in joining a random rider or group on the road.  I’ve also never witnessed such formalities, in over thirty years of club rides.  Sure, I’ve had a paceline disrupted by an unskilled interloper, but the best way to deal with that is just to ramp up the pace until he falls off.  And if he doesn’t?  Well, good on him!

Rule #23, Tuck only after reaching Escape Velocity.  Since I reserve the right to recover during descents (see my comment on Rule #93), I’ll tuck when I please.  And by the way, the velominati.com photo of the “LeMond tuck”?  That’s not even a tuck.  Look at Taylor Phinney soloing in that Tour of California stage … that’s a tuck.  There are plenty of great photos of LeMond tucking; why didn’t the Velominati guys find one?

Rule #24, Speeds and distances shall be referred to and measured in kilometers.  Look, the Americans I ride with mostly use miles, and so do I.  That doesn’t make us “Neanderthalic,” as the Velominati suggest.  (Meanwhile, “Neanderthalic” isn’t even a word.)

Rule #25, The bikes on top of your car should be worth more than the car.  This is only true for juniors in really crappy cars.  And the Velomati guys’ “relatively more expensive” caveat is slippery:  where do you draw the line?  How many bikes are we talking about?  Is a $40,000 car okay with a $3,000 bike?  Their “put your Huffy on a Rolls” example is neither funny nor helpful.  I could agree with a more definitive guideline:  “If you drive a 2010 Nissan Elantra with upgraded rims, but your bike is a 1995 Novara Trionfo, perhaps you should reassess your priorities.”

Rule #30, No frame-mounted pumps.  This is just plain stupid.  I don’t like seeing pumps poking out of pockets because I’m afraid they’ll fall out, and I don’t use CO2 canisters because they’re not eco-friendly.  Prohibiting Zéfal pumps and insisting on Silca is like requiring VHS over Betamax.  And the Velominati-sanctioned method of mounting a pump in the rear frame triangle is wrong.  You don’t prop it on the quick-release skewer, because that’s not secure enough.  You take a big file and put a notch in the pump handle that slots right over the dropout.  But of course you can’t do this on most modern frames anyway (or are we all supposed to be riding ‘80s-era steel frames too?).  One more thing:  the authors spelled “canister” wrong.

Rule #33, Shave your guns.  As a mandate, this doesn’t have much backing among the cyclists I know.  I did a blog post awhile back on leg shaving by cyclists, for which I did a survey of around 50 of my male cycling pals.  Of these, 93% either used to race or still do, and ten are (or were) Category 1 and/or professional riders.  Only 14% of these surveyed riders shave their legs year-round, and 45% never do.  (Meanwhile, 52% indicated they couldn’t care less if other cyclists shaved their own legs.)  My other issue with this rule:  calling your legs “guns” is like kissing your flexed biceps non-ironically.  Pretty sad.

Rule #39, Never ride without your eyewear.  I sometimes do a short ride at dawn.  I don’t need the UV protection, and I don’t suppose the few riders I see at that hour are scandalized from a sartorial perspective.  So who exactly is affected when I break this rule?

Rule #41, Quick-release levers are to be carefully positioned.  As I said in my previous post, I point my levers straight back because I think it looks cool.  As for how others orient theirs, I couldn’t care less and neither should you.

Rule #45, Slam your stem.  Maybe if I did yoga I could change my position to meet the maximum stack height prescribed by this rule.  A marginally cooler-looking bike isn’t worth back pain, at least for those of us who ride our bikes instead of parking them at cafés in the mistaken belief that passersby will admire them.  Meanwhile, a low-rise stem with more than 2 cm of stack height looks way cooler than a high-rise stem positioned directly on the top race of the headset, though this latter configuration would be technically permissible according to The Rules.

Rule #49, Keep the rubber side down.  Are you going to tell me a junior cyclist who can’t afford a bike stand or wheel truing stand isn’t allowed to flip his bike over to true the wheels?  Should this sport be restricted to those who can afford their own truing stands (or can afford to pay a shop to maintain their bikes for them)?

Rule #50, Facial hair is to be carefully regulated.  This rule should explicitly exclude women and juniors; because it doesn’t, I’m led to believe the Velominati folks forgot all about them.  Meanwhile, not shaving on the morning of a race doesn’t have anything to do with virility, as suggested by the Velominati writers.  As a junior I was plenty virile despite being too young to shave.  The reason you don’t shave the morning of the race, as everybody knows, is that you want to avoid the sting of sweat in razor burn (a pointless addition to the suffering you’re already doing).  As far as the prohibition of beards and moustaches, I really don’t think this has anything to do with cycling.  If I desire to grow some facial hair, even for the express purpose of looking like an idiot, that’s my business (see my previous post about the compatibility of iconoclasm with cycling).  In this photo I’m also visibly breaking Rule #14, Rule #33, Rule #45, and Rule #74.

Rule #56, Espresso or macchiato only.  This kind of epicurean fussiness has nothing to do with cycling, as I detailed in my previous post.  Prior to reading The Rules I’d never even heard of a macchiato.  I prefer NoDoz to coffee anyway.

Rule #58, Support your local bike shop—never buy bikes, parts, or accessories online.  Never?  Really?  I do support my local bike shop, by sending them business and by buying basic stuff there, but it’s ridiculous to expect a serious cyclist to do none of his or her shopping online.  Look, if you know exactly what you want, you know how to install and adjust it yourself and have the tools you need, and you don’t have a trust fund, you’d be crazy to buy all your stuff at a bike shop.  Excepting the ten years during which I worked in bike shops, I’ve bought major bike parts mail-order since about 1982 and I sleep well at night.

Rule #63, Point in the direction you’re turning.  What a pointless bit of advice.  If a car is well behind me, yeah, I’ll signal by extending my right arm.  But if a driver is creeping right up on me, he or she won’t see a right-arm turn signal (because my body will eclipse it).  So then I use the left arm bent-elbow signal.  Do these Velominati guys actually think about any of these directives before issuing them, or do they just write down whatever random idea pops into their heads?

Rule #68, Rides are to be measured by quality, not quantity … declaring “We rode 4km” would assert that 4000m were climbed during the ride with the distance being irrelevant.  I’ve never heard a ride described this way.  Why would the Velominati guys require a behavior that absolutely nobody, outside of their own weird little clique, actually does?

Rule #70, The purpose of competing is to win.  I think this was true in the case of Eddy Merckx, but most other racers use some races for training, and know they aren’t always in contention.  I think it’s perfectly fine—admirable, even—to enter a race that you know you can’t win.  How else are you going to improve?  Is the Velominati strategy to carefully select only the smallest of ponds?  This rule is just macho posturing.

Rule #73, Gear and brake cables should be cut to optimum length.  Well, isn’t this a pointless tautology?  Shouldn’t all things be done in the optimum way, by definition?  But actually my main issue is with the text of the rule, which includes “Right shifter cable should go to the left cable stop and vice versa” and the associated directive that cables should “cross under the downtube.”  Yeah, I’ve come across this before.  You occasionally see a complete moron setting up a bike that way.  It’s pointless.  As a bike shop mechanic I never encountered a colleague who did that.

Rule #74, V Meters or small computers only.  Not having heard of a V Meter, I took the bait and clicked the hyperlink.  A V Meter is a bike computer with a Velominati sticker obscuring the display.  This violates Rule #57, No stickers, and Rule #78, Remove unnecessary gear.  It’s also so precious I think I’m going to hurl.  Meanwhile, large computers (e.g., Garmins and power meters) are very common on pro racers’ bikes.

Rule #78, Remove unnecessary gear – When racing in a criterium of 60 minutes or less the second (unused) water bottle cage must be removed.  Once again, no actual cyclist would ever do this, not even a pro cyclist with a full-time mechanic.  On the other hand, at least this rule used the term “water bottle cage” instead of calling the bottle a “bidon” as the Velomati Rules website does in a dozen other places.  “Bidon” is shameless affectation of Euro-cool.  I believe it is a very small minority of English-speaking cyclists who ever say “bidon.”  (I thought this might be a British thing, but the British announcers, on Eurosport and also in the recent Tour of California coverage, all say “bottle,” as does the Brit on my bike club.)

Rule #85, Descend like a pro – all descents shall be undertaken at speeds commonly regarded as “ludicrous” or “insane” by those less talented.  This advice is irresponsible.  Descending at speed isn’t a talent—it’s a skill and should be developed gradually with no pressure from bloviating bloggers.  And the bit about “the inner leg canted” for balance and aesthetics?  I think they wanted the word “bent,” and anyway hanging your inside knee is the mark of a novice.  Once you know what you’re doing, you keep that knee in for better aerodynamics.  (I learned this from Dale Stetina, not some website.)

Rule #89, Pronounce it correctly.  Pronouncing “Tour de France” correctly is no problem.  But I think it’s best if my fellow Americans and I say “Tour of Flanders” instead of “Ronde van Vlaanderen.”  Why?  First, I dislike such showiness, and second, there’s nobody around to correct our mispronunciation.

Rule #90, Never get out of the big ring.  Okay, clearly this one is meant as a joke.  I guess I can’t fault the Velominati fans for getting a big laugh out of this, any more than I could fault a young child for laughing at “Garfield.”

Rule #91, No food on training rides under four hours.  I’m so glad I don’t have to ride with these guys and help them get home after their blood sugar crashes.  This advice is empirically bad, no matter what Johan Museeuw said.  (Besides, he was talking to an individual … perhaps that person had more fat to burn than a typical cyclist.)  It’s also curious that an exception is made for hard rides over two hours.  Well, if you’re not riding hard, aren’t you in violation of Rule #3?

Rule #92, No sprinting from the hoods.  Watch any mountaintop finish in a pro race and you’ve got a pretty good chance of seeing a guy sprinting while on the hoods.  The Rules authors could have so easily made an exception for uphill finishes, but they didn’t.  Why not?  Sheer laziness?  I think it’s also odd how they make a special exception for Saronni in the ’82 world championships.  How come when one rider, like Fabian Cancellara with Rule #13, does something that the Velominati guys like, that behavior becomes a rule, whereas when another rider does something forbidden by The Rules, like Saronni here or Pantani in Rule #50, he’s merely an exception?

Rule #93, Descents are not for recovery.  If you don’t need to recover on a descent, perhaps you didn’t go hard enough on the climb.  Moreover, this seems like irresponsible advice for these Velominati guys to give to readers of varying skill level.  A rider in my area died trying to set a downhill KOM on Strava.  “But we’re just joking, get a sense of humor!” the Rules fans might say.  I reiterate:  this excuse might work better if the rule were actually funny….
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Velominati's “The Rules” - Brilliance or BS?

NOTE:  This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

My bike club has a group e-mail list and we often get into long chains of messages on bike-related topics.  After all, most of us have been riding and/or racing for decades and have strong opinions.  Recently my friend Mark e-mailed around a link to “The Rules” on a bike-geek website called velominati.com.  There was no message text, but the subject line read, “We need to annotate this list … Dana?”  I glanced through the list of rules and knew right away there would be much to say on this topic.  Maybe too much.

Well, too much for the e-mail list, anyway.  Some guys love the endless message cycles, at least some of the time, but others hate them at least half the time, due to Inbox bloat.  Besides, as I discovered when I delved deeper into The Rules, they need to be thoroughly rebutted, and this rebuttal should be as widely accessible as the list itself.  This isn’t a matter of a few rules needing some tweaks, but a fundamental problem of the authors’ approach, as I shall describe.

(In this post I won’t go through and annotate The Rules one-by-one, even though that’s what my teammate originally proposed.  Rather, I’ll save that for a future post.)

A quick aside about the name Velominati:  in this post I will refer to the authors of The Rules as “the Velominati guys.”  I reckon I’m supposed to just call them “the Velominati,” as I would with “illuminati,” but I refuse.

The rules at first glance

At first blush, The Rules look like fun.  There are clear-cut mandates in this list about a variety of topics that get debated on my club, such as sock color, whether cycling shorts need to be black, and whether or not the little knurled lock-ring on your inner tube valve should be discarded.  The Rules list covers aesthetic matters that deserve to be covered, like the orientation of quick-release levers and the need to keep your bars level.  There’s a decent amount of wit involved, like Rule #51, “Livestrong wristbands are cockrings for your arms.”

So I figured, okay, this is kind of like a style guide in “GQ” magazine, a compilation of little sartorial pointers.  Not the kind of thing I normally pore over, but if somebody is seeking to fit in better with the elite cycling crowd, I don’t have a problem with that.  But when I left off skimming the list randomly and started reading from the beginning, right away I had a bit of a problem with Rule #3, “Guide the uninitiated.”  Who am I to tell some novice that he or she is doing something wrong?  I don’t want that job, and probably a lot of novice riders couldn’t care less about tan lines being razor sharp or the right way to position their sunglasses.

But it wasn’t until I got to Rule #5, “Harden The Fuck Up,” that I started to get a bit riled.  Now I see that this isn’t just a list of aesthetic do’s and don’ts, but a document that’s going to cast aspersions on how hard people should ride.  Since the writers can’t know much about their potential audience, I guess they figure everybody needs to harden the fuck up.  So they’re on the brink of calling readers like me poseurs, which is a pretty bold move  when they’re giving advice about how, when hanging around a café after your ride, “having your cap skull-side tipped jauntily at a rakish angle is, one might say, de rigueur.”

Then, right after “harden the fuck up,” they get into psychobabble territory with Rule #6, “Free your mind and your legs will follow,” and how you should “wrap yourself in the sensations of the ride – the smell of the air, the sound of the tires, the feeling of flight as the bicycle rolls over the road.”  These guys need to make up their minds:  are they trying to be George Carlin, Tony Robbins, or William Wordsworth?

My friend Trevor, whose cycling credentials are impeccable (he not only won three collegiate national championships, but two in one day), responded to the Rules list by saying, “I took a lot of crap in high school for having shaved legs and being seen on my bike in ‘spandex’ pants (always black), but I was never embarrassed.  That list is an embarrassment.”

He’s onto something, and I’m going to help explain exactly what.

The poseur paradox

Consider the photo below.

That’s me with my friend Dan.  He’s got a visor on his helmet, in blatant violation of Rule #35, “No visors on the road.”  Is he ignorant, in need of the Velominati link?  No, of course he already knows most roadies would frown on the visor.  But he doesn’t care.  Look at what else he’s wearing:  a national champion jersey.  Yes, in keeping with Rule #16, “Respect the jersey,” he did win that.  Now, should any reader of The Rules, in keeping with Rule #3, feel obligated to point out the visor faux pas to Dan?  Not at all.  First of all, it’s none of any reader’s business, and two, Dan would probably rip the guys legs off, or at least could.  (Perhaps that’s why he had the visor in the first place … as a taunt.) 

What about me?  As a friend, could (should) I tell Dan to ditch the visor?  Yes, but only because a) that’s what friends are for, b) I have a matching national champion jersey (we won them together in the Team Time Trial), and c) if Dan tries to rip my legs off, at least I can give him a run for his money.  Authority is earned on the road, not through bluster and fancy prose.  (There:  I’ll make that my Rule #1.)

Not that being an accomplished cyclist gives me the ride to give pointers to just anybody.  On my bike, the quick-release levers point straight back (in violation of Rule #41, which says this is only okay for time trial bikes—never mind I’ve been doing this since before time trial bikes existed).  If anybody gazing upon my bike decides my skewer orientation looks cool and wants to copy me, great—but the fact that nobody does bothers me not at all.  Why I should I mind if my bike looks cooler than everybody else’s?  And why should I mind if some ignorant person thinks my bike looks silly, especially when, chances are, that guy is having trouble holding my wheel?  It’s kind of a “speak softly and carry a big stick” approach.

In contrast, the philosophy of the Velominati folks seems to be, “speak brashly and swing your big dick.”  They seem to think that by striking an air of authority and machismo, and employing great emphasis, they can achieve instant credibility.  Consider Rule #9:  “If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass.  Period.”  That’s completely untrue.  When I lived in Boulder (where they have real winters), it was a running joke that a certain breed of poseur only rode in bad weather, to show off.  You’d see guys on rainy or snowy days, in their fancy cold-weather gear, whom you’d somehow never see out riding when the weather was nice. 

I’ve certainly done my share of riding in miserable conditions (and have described recently in this blog what a pointless activity that is), but I’ve never had the experience described in The Rules:  “Those who ride in foul weather – be it cold, wet, or inordinately hot – are members of a special club of riders who, on the morning of a big ride, pull back the curtain to check the weather and, upon seeing rain falling from the skies, allow a wry smile to spread across their face.  This is a rider who loves the work.”

My goodness, what pretty prose!  And what a bullshit notion.  Yes, there are riders who love the work, but they’d love it more in good weather.  The rider that Velominati.com describes here loves the idea of braving the elements, and conflates the idea with the reality.  It’s self-deception born of narcissism.  Sure, any solid professional will ride in bad weather if he has to, but I’m sure he grumbles about it and he’s right to do so.  And if, say, he does better in the rain than his rival, he might be happy about that. 

Lance Armstrong wrote, of the first Tour de France mountain stage in 1999, “When I woke up that morning in Dax, was raining yet again, which I considered perfect attacking weather, mainly because I knew the others didn’t like it… ‘It’s a good day for me,’ I thought.”  This, to me, seems far more credible than what the Velominati guys have to say.  And when Lance fricking Armstrong has more credibility than you, you know you’ve got a serious problem.

What would the Velominati guys say to me about my refusal to ride in the rain?  “Harden the fuck up,” of course.  But they’d be off-base.  When it’s raining I ride the trainer because it’s a better workout, and I can suffer due to effort alone, which gives me more benefit than needlessly enduring painfully cold fingers and toes.  I’ve done trainer rides long enough that, mid-ride, I had to change not only my sweat-soaked shorts but my shoes.  For complicated reasons involving stress release, I’ve had trainer rides so hard I couldn’t stand up in the shower afterward.  So I don’t need anyone telling me to harden up.

Ironically, just about anybody could make modifications to his equipment and his behavior such that he’s in compliance with all of The Rules (especially since “Harden The Fuck Up” is pretty hard to police).  And the mix of ideological and sartorial rules would suggest that adherence to The Rules would make him not just a more stylish cyclist, but a more “real” cyclist.  But in my experience, the “real” cyclists—such as the ones who actually achieve great things—aren’t so focused on any of this trivial stuff. 

I have a friend whom I see on the road from time to time, who has great form, and rides a great bike, but who wears an off-brand helmet from the ‘90s that was a piece of crap when it was new.  I’ve actually fantasized about doing an intervention, such as asking to see his helmet for a second and smashing it on the ground (like John Belushi did with that dude’s guitar), but only because helmets have a functional lifespan and his old helmet might not provide good head protection.  If my friend doesn’t care how he looks, I shouldn’t either.  And yet—and this is the crucial point—this guy is one of the most successful cyclists I’ve known.  He rode for the 7-Eleven pro team back in the day.

I am in violation of thirty-seven of The Rules.  And yet, I know in my heart I’m plenty legit as a cyclist.  Thus, I find it absurd that this band of foppish writers, and whatever acolytes they’ve acquired, would judge me and find me lacking.  But that’s not even what bugs me.  What bugs me is that the Velominati have this idea that cyclists have to toe the line, to adhere to any code of conduct at all.  To Trevor’s point, I came up in this sport embracing the role of the rebel.  Not a cool, admired rebel like James Dean, either—cycling made me a social outcast.  In the early ‘80s, I had black shorts, a wool jersey, a single bottle cage, used a Silca pump with a Campagnolo head, and had even snapped the visor off my helmet—in short, I was obeying The Rules.  What did I get for my troubles?  A self-satisfied Velominati feeling?  Hell no.  I was mocked by my peers, who routinely cast aspersions on my masculinity due to my shaved legs, my tight shorts, and my helmet. 

I tolerated the abuse because that was just part of what it meant to be a cyclist.  (I think that experience was universal among cyclists; after all, Dave’s iconoclasm is what made “Breaking Away” such a charming movie.)  And yet now I’m supposed to let these fancy-talking Velominati guys bully me because I like my navy blue shorts, prefer expressing distance in miles to kilometers, and can’t be bothered to shave my legs?  Yeah, right.  To do as I please, without obsessing over my image, is entirely consistent with my approach to the sport for more than three decades.  (By the way, Bernard Hinault himself broke at least one rule—I’m thinking of Rule #36, regarding cycling-specific eyewear—and looked very good doing it.)

But wait, there’s more

Remarkably, the assertion of poseur-ish codes of conduct isn’t even the worst thing about The Rules.  The biggest problem is that there’s a Neanderthal sensibility lurking beneath this list.  I’m talking about the unwritten rule, both implicit in The Rules and directly suggested, that cycling is for men only.

Skeptical?  Consider this.  Within the (incorrect, pointless) rule about how to signal turns, Velominati acknowledges that the audience for The Rules is international:  “This one is, presumably, mostly for Americans.”  That is, since this rule doesn’t apply to the entire group, they go ahead and say so.  But check out Rule #50:  “Facial hair is to be carefully regulated.”  No mention is made of the women to whom this rule obviously doesn’t apply.

Of course that’s not enough to make my case on, so consider also Rule #11, “Family does not come first.  The bike does.”  Is there room to construe this as meaning a wife could put her bike before her family?  Not likely, since this rule is based on an interview in which cycling legend Sean Kelly rags on his wife for leaning on his car, and—when challenged—doesn’t deny that his bike (and his car) come before his wife.

There are other examples.  Rule #29, “No European Posterior Man-Satchels,” doesn’t mention non-man-satchels.  Rule #33, “Shave your guns,” makes no mention of the fact that most women do this anyway.  Rule #61, “Like your guns, saddles should be smooth and hard” doesn’t make any allowance for the reality that in most cases women legitimately need a bit more padding.  It really does seem as though it never occurred to the creators of The Rules that women ride bikes too.  For a group that purports to have all the answers, this omission seems remarkably unenlightened.

This isn’t just a problem for female cyclists, though.  Readers of velominati.com shouldn’t let The Rules be a bad influence.  Although male cyclists aren’t generally babe magnets, a great many of us have wives or girlfriends, and these women—who, after all, have to put up with our stick-thin bodies, our constant blathering about bike gear and race lore, and the sheer amount of time we spend out on the road—deserve our respect.  Not grudging respect, either—I mean that they’re the main people we should be worried about impressing … not our fellow cyclists.

Here’s a little story to illustrate what I’m saying.  Two of my teammates, a married couple, were doing a mountain bike tandem race together.  Mike (a very good rider who has punched my ticket almost as many times as we’ve ridden together) cramped up terribly and had to climb off the bike.  Sprawling on the ground, he apologized in advance to his wife Alyshia for losing the race.  Alyshia, though she stands about five-foot-nothing, has the kind of Command Presence I’ve always admired—she’s the kind of person you hope will take charge if there’s ever an earthquake or something.  As Mike recounted in his e-mail report to the group, “Alyshia had a very diplomatic response:  ‘The race isn’t over yet.  Please, harden the fuck up.’”  Inspired, perhaps, as much by her fighting spirit as the prospect of his wife no longer finding him studly and awesome, Mike remounted, resolved to push past the pain, and they went on to pass everybody back up and win the race!

So how does Alyshia’s exhortation match up with Rule #5?  Far, far more impressively.  When a website says to harden the fuck up, that’s just more disconnected Internet blather.  When a spouse says it, suddenly it has some teeth.  Similarly, when another of my teammates (also a darn good cyclist, one of our best) told his wife he was thinking of shaving his legs, she replied, “Please don’t.  The hair on your legs is almost the only masculine thing about you!”  (What makes this comment great is that, far from being ill-spirited, she’s actually paying him a tacit compliment:  “I know you’re secure enough to laugh at yourself.”)

Of course society is rife with retrograde macho bullshit, but cycling is supposed to be progressive.  Its image is of a modern, forward-thinking mentality.  To succeed at this sport requires a much more enlightened approach than, say, the shot-put or the hammer throw (which is why rules like Rule #93, “Descents are not for recovery,” are so annoying—if you don’t need to recover on a descent, maybe you didn’t go hard enough on the climb, and need to harden the fuck up!).  So why do these Velominati guys seem to want to embrace an Andrew Dice Clay ethos, and suggest that male chauvinism is part of the sport?

“Lighten up,” they might say.  “We were just joking!”  To which I’d say, sure, masculinity and femininity can be joked about, and sometimes walking a fine line can enhance the humor.  But you better get it right, and it better be funny, or else you’re suggesting there’s something intrinsically funny about a hierarchy that puts men at the top.

Rhetorically, the Velominati guys are like a bad group of hackey-sackers:  you see them start up, and you head over to watch, maybe you’ve even got your hopes up, but they can’t keep the damn thing up for more than a few kicks.  You keep hoping they’ll hit their stride, but they don’t, and it’s pathetic.  The Velomanti guys’ declamatory haplessness is harmless enough where stem height or tan lines are  concerned, but begins to chafe when they try to delve into the intersection of cycling and machismo.

Wait, I’m not quite done

Since I’m on the subject, I’d like to bring up a fundamental disconnect between the archetypes of the ideal cyclist and those aspiring to match them, at least in form.  It’s clear that the Velominati guys base much of their ethos on the example set by old school bike racing heroes (Merckx, Kelly, Sean Yates, and Marco Pantani are named).  These were all working-class guys who happened to get fairly rich and famous by being really, really fast.  I doubt they spent much time worrying about their image.  To the extent they achieved studliness, they did so effortlessly, not by carefully mimicking others or poring over lists of rules.

You think Merckx was caught up in macho posturing when he allowed this photo to be snapped? 

The rules about hardening up and riding in bad weather strike me as tacked on, to offset the reality that the Velominati guys are ensnared in a hipster, yuppie ethos.  They can afford n+1 bikes (Rule #12), all of which cost more than their car (Rule #25), and they actually care what angle they wear their cap at (Rule #22), use highfalutin terms like “bidon” when a simple word like “bottle” will do, and have a rule (#56) about only drinking espresso and macchiato.  They remind me of the Roger Moore James Bond, with his bow ties, his silly witticisms, and his epicurean tastes.  (The latest Bond movie reboot was wise to break with all this.  My favorite line in “Casino Royale” comes when Daniel Craig’s Bond, rattled after losing $10 million at cards, asks for a vodka martini.  “Shaken or stirred?” asks the bartender.  Bond snaps back, “Do I look like I give a damn?”)

My overall impression of The Rules is it’s all a bit too self-aware and twee, far closer to “Portlandia” than to, say, the dairy farm that Sean Kelly rose from.  The cycling giants of old wouldn’t have hung out in coffee shops drinking this:

They’d have made their own coffee, probably instant, and if anybody told them they therefore weren’t real cyclists they’d have laughed.  Drive, talent, luck, and tenacity made them great athletes, not a bunch of silly rules about what to ride, what to wear, and how to behave.

And one more thing?  Merckx, Kelly, et al wouldn’t have called their legs “guns.”  Trevor is right.  That list is an embarrassment.

Update

My second (and final) post on this topic, “37 Velominati Rules You Can Ignore,” is here.

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Biased Blow-by-Blow - Tour de France Stage 5

Introduction

As I’ve blogged before, there’s a benefit to bike race coverage that is far from unbiased and fair.  Sports fans have their favorites and so should commentators.  So here you go.

Biased blow-by-blow – Tour de France Stage 5

As I join, this Eurosport bloke, Declan I think he’s called, is delivering his “fireside chat” style commentary.  “The chase is on but it’s ever so gentle.  We are teeing ourselves up for a sprint as we look at some lovely lavender.”

Markel Irizar (RadioShack, like you care) is apparently adjusting the mirror of a Tour de France logo-emblazoned convertible.  Now he’s fixing the window glass on the other side, and now giving some woman in the passenger seat a little hand massage.  It makes sense when riders hang on to their team cars for a free ride, but with this vehicle it makes no sense.  This guy has chutzpah!

I wonder if there’s actually anybody using this video feed who is stupid enough to believe that an upgrade to “Video HD” is necessary, especially when the words “Wait to close ad 20 seconds” appear.  On the other hand, maybe it’s only a matter of time before computer operating systems start actually showing ads.

The breakaway of four has only six minutes now, which suggests it’s doomed since they had only twelve minutes when the entire pack was somnambulating.  If you don’t know what “somnambulating” means, shoot me an e-mail because that would make me feel superior.

There’s a duo attempting to bridge to the group.  The on-screen text with the video feed calls them “poursuivants,” which is French for “the dudes who are chasing,” but when I first saw it on the screen I thought it said “poor suckers.”  Might as well.  What are they thinking?  “Hey, I heard the break is doomed!  Let’s go join it!”  I guess their belief that all the breakaway needs to succeed is them is what makes them champions.  I can’t decide whether I envy this attitude or not.

The pack just divided beautifully around one of those roundabouts.  I wish American drivers could handle them with such aplomb.  Get two or more of us at a roundabout and everybody kind of panics, except certain old dudes in Benzes who seem to think they have some special credential and can just ignore the other cars entirely.

Declan just delivered a two-minute treatise on what the road does in the last few kilometers of the race.  Are the British just smarter than us, in being able to actually follow such a complicated description, or is Declan out of touch with how (and whether) sports fans think?

It’s 37K to go.  That’s about 22 miles for you Americans.

One of the guys in the break (there’s no point learning their names) has a little moustache.  I saw that Sagan had one a week or so ago.  Please, guys, this sport is funny looking enough as it is.

There’s a Euskaltel guy motoring away from the pack on this climb, and his upper body is so still he looks like half-assed CGI.  Very impressive.

I read recently that Tony Martin was fined for his bike having rainbow stripes in the TTT, which he’s only allowed to have in an ITT (not having won a world’s TTT).  That’s ridiculous.  Specialized bikes have had rainbow stripes for ages, since the first mountain bike world championship was won on one.  Should a guy be disallowed from riding his Ciocc Mockba ‘80 in a race, simply because the guy himself didn’t win the Moscow Olympics in 1980?  Look, TdF officials, Martin wasn’t wearing rainbow stripes on his person.  His bike was wearing them, and I’m sure that’s appropriate.  (With so many Specialized bikes out there, surely a world’s TTT was won on them at some point.)  Besides, what will happen when the first openly gay Tour rider wants to show his pride?  Will he have to win a world championship in every discipline first?

Wow, this big Lotto guy is really drilling it at the front.  I love to watch these guys suffer.  It makes my old desk chair here feel so cozy (though actually this chair is kind of a pile).

GreenEdge is leading the chase now.  It’s the least they can do after screwing up the race with their bus on Saturday.

I haven’t seen Omega-Pharma at the front at all.  Wouldn’t they rather do their work while it’s flat, rather than risking shelling Cavendish on the category 4 climb toward the end?

Okay, Omega-Pharma must be clairvoyant, finally they’ve got a guy on the front.  Or maybe it’s just my talent for stating the obvious.

Orica GreenEdge is no longer in obvious danger of losing the yellow jersey, having limited the time gap to the break, so maybe they’ll make the other teams step up.  But so far the other teams are still being lazy.  I guess passing the buck has become a habit for them.

It’s 19K to go and Declan is talking about geology and techtonic plates.  Interesting choice.

Cannondale finally has a guy on the front.  Whoops, only for about five seconds, like a kid dabbing his toe in a swimming pool ... “Ooh, that’s cold!”

Kevin Reza (Europcar), one of the guys in the break, is black.  That is rare among road cyclists.  The announcers haven’t said anything about this, probably terrified of committing some kind of gaff.  I hope I’m not...

The break is starting to turn on itself.  Yukiwa Arashiro (also Europcar) attacked the others but they quickly chased him down.

The leader of the chasing peloton flicks his elbow and the guy behind him shakes his head.  Now the peloton, which had been doing better, is spread all the way across the road.

Another inexplicable pileup in the middle of a dead straight section!  Obviously the handiwork of some inattentive rider, who should be strapped to a chair and beaten with garden tools.

Christian Vande Velde looks like he hit the ground pretty hard.  Dang, that sucks.  Even if he’s uninjured, that’s a hard chase with only 15K to go.

The Astana guy in the break is Alexey Lutsenko.  I don’t know his patronymic.  These Spanish riders get all three names on the roster; why don’t the Russians and other Slavs get their patronymics?

On this long road the peloton is in sight of the break.  Predictably, the announcer says “The peloton can see its prey.”  I’d like to remind him that the breakaway riders are the aggressors here, so the predator/prey metaphor would be lame even if it weren’t so hackneyed.

Lutsenko has attacked the break!  They’re hauling ass on this descent and Riza is diving after him.  But the pack is really flying.  Lots of curves on this descent but nothing too sharp.  Still, the pucker-factor is significant, at least for this spectator.  (Not familiar with that term?  Hint:  it’s not my lips that are puckering.)

Arashiro and De Gendt, the other two from the break, are now caught by the peloton.

Now Omega-Pharma are swarming the front.  Cannondale is still loafing.  They better start riding soon so they can get warmed up for the sprint ... they’ve been practically hibernating (or “hobbernating” as my younger daughter used to say).

My older daughter needs to leave for camp!  She’s asking me to make a sandwich!  I’m shucking her off!  I’m such a bad parent!

I wish I’d paid attention to Declan’s long description of the parcours.  But I just don’t have it in me.

My feed has frozen up!  It’s fake browser widget upgrade ads again!

So 4K to go, ten seconds for the leaders.  Frankly, the sprinters could close that up in the final 200 meters.  Wait, the two leaders have already been absorbed.  Must have happened when my screen was obscured.

Euskaltel is trying to do something.  How cute!  Wow, now their guy is going backward so fast it’s like he was clotheslined.

Sylvain Chavanel has a bright orange bike.  Perhaps he’ll be fined for this, as he never won the Dutch national championship.

Marcel Kittel has launched something.  I don’t know what you’d call it, really.  Not quite an attack, but it’s about 1.4K too early to be anything else.

Lotto leads it out with 1K to go.

Omega Pharma has the lead at 500 meters but the frenzy begins...

Mark Cavendish launches way the hell out and manages to stick it!

Whoah, massive pileup behind the winners!  It’s unbelievable how many guys are down.  I think the vast majority of the riders were caught behind it.

I’m going to go ahead and admire Cavendish for that win even though he’s wearing this totally awful helmet.  I don’t know what it is this year with the helmet manufacturers trying to outdo each other in ugliness.  I can’t even describe Cav’s lid.  It looks like a cheap knockoff of some ‘80s helmet, like the patent just ran out and you can buy this piece of crap at Target for like four bucks.  Little stripes like a 1982 Ford Fiesta.  (No, I don’t know anything about cars, but I hope you get the idea.)

Edvald Boasson Hagen was second, Peter Sagan third.  I have to confess, I’d have been ticked to see Sagan win this, because his team was such a bunch of deadbeats.  They should interview him.  “I have to not hand it to the team, I really owe this non-victory to them.  They were just un-amazing today, working together like a badly rusted machine, really just not stepping up and not getting the job done.”  I realize I’m giving Sagan far more credit for rhetorical ability than he deserves.  A more realistic made-up quote would be something simpler like “Me Tarzan you Jane.”

Okay, something exciting better happen in the podium presentations because I’m missing breakfast for this and it smells good!

Oh my god, Cav’s teammate has a helmet that is absolutely unconscionable.  It’s some quasi-aero S-Works thing that is probably more dangerous to the future of cycling than doping is.  What the hell is wrong with this UCI organization when they’re fining riders for rainbow stripes but allowing helmets that would make Carmen Miranda wince?

I think that more riders were merely stopped behind that crash than actually crashed.  I hope nobody’s Tour was ruined by this.  Maybe somebody needs to conduct a bike handling workshop for these folks.

Cavendish, in his interview, claimed to have launched his sprint 500 meters out.  It was a long sprint, but certainly not 500 meters.  In his defense, I’m sure it felt like 500 meters.

Well, the coverage is ending and I only got to see one podium presentation.  I guess that’s not as bad as the Tour of California coverage a few years ago when they ended the coverage with about 2K to go because it was time for the pre-show for some stupid American sport I never cared about.

 

Thanks for tuning in.  I hope to do this again soon.