Cycling Smackdown - Small Cog Tale

Introduction

I’m an assistant coach for the Albany High School Cougars mountain biking team. As described in a previous smackdown post, my bike—with its triple crankset—seems, to the Cougars, as antiquated as I am. (More on gearing later—I’ll bet you can’t wait!) Part of my role as coach is to inspire these kids, so I need to convey, through actions alone, that I’m not actually obsolete. This can mean giving them a run for their money which, as you can imagine, gets harder every year. Read on for a white-knuckled (or at least old-knuckled) account of my latest endeavor.

Small cog tale

The weather looked iffy but none of the forecasts matched, so although it had rained all morning, the ride was on. Coach M—, our fastest, was MIA so I got put with the fastest group. As we set out and headed up Thousand Oaks Blvd, I noted that C—, our top rider, was rocking his NorCal League Champion jersey from last season, with the California flag on it. I said to him, “Nice jersey! Where can I get one?”

C— said to S—, “Where’s Coach M—, our fearless leader?”(or something to that effect). S—, who looks like a Pixar superhero, and who almost beat me in two all-out sprints last week, said, “Actually, Coach M— is 0 for 2 this season.” C— asked, “Who’d he lose to?” S— gestured in my direction and said, “Coach Dana.” C— replied, “Oh, shit!” He was surely thinking about the final sprint of the ride, a tradition that, several years ago, was oddly named “VO2.” It’s contested along the final stretch of Wildcat Canyon Road, which descends at 1-2% and winds around like a serpent. The finish line is the intersection with Grizzly Peak Blvd, near the Summit Reservoir where the Cougar ride groups (and those of other teams) tend to congregate before the final (controlled-pace) descent to the high school.

By the end of the first climb a wind had picked up, big dark clouds had rolled in, and the temperature was dropping. We regrouped at the reservoir and then I dragged everyone along Wildcat Canyon Road, heading east. Several times I gestured with a flick of the elbow for somebody to pull through but either I haven’t successfully taught that signal to the riders, or they just didn’t want to help. I was hoping for a team time trial type of group effort, but when I pointedly pulled off and looked at C—, he launched a devastating attack. He totally soloed and S— dropped me too. I overhauled S— on the short downhill toward the Botanical Garden, before the climbing resumed, but never caught C—. We regrouped at Inspiration Point and as the rest of the kids (and the other coach) trickled in, it started to rain.

I decided to lead everyone down Wildcat to where it hits El Toyonal, and back up. Several kids protested but only pro forma … I think we were all electrified by the rain, which increased as I drilled it down Wildcat. Before the ride I’d put a new clear lens in my sunglasses and it worked great deflecting the spray off the road. I could actually (basically) see, though the ridge of hills and all the trees had effectively hastened the sunset. I reached the junction with El Toyonal and turned around. We’d agreed to regroup again at Inspiration Point again after the climb, so I didn’t wait for anyone … they’d be along soon enough.

True to form, C— blew by me with S— dying on his wheel. S— came off and I managed to stay with him to the top. When we arrived C— was jumping up and down to stay warm as he had no jacket and no body fat. Eventually the others arrived, and we turned on our lights and put on all the gear we had as the rain was pounding down now. I loaned C— a spare pair of arm warmers but his arms were too wet and he lost patience pulling them on and chucked them back to me.

A— was still futzing with his gloves when a number of riders rolled out. I yelled at them to hold up. They ignored me—a mutiny!—and ramped up the speed. The cowards! Apparently certain Cougars didn’t want me around to contest VO2. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for cunning tactics, but this didn’t seem very sporting.

Annoyed, I hammered to catch up, moving through our group like in a racecar video game, but it was pretty hopeless. Three of the kids were way off the front, taking turns pulling, fighting the wind together, and I was only one guy. Still, on the downhill toward the Regional Parks Botanical Garden I felt I could close the gap a bit since I’m bigger than these kids and punch through the wind better. But my progress was incremental and not enough.

I was ready to just call it a day—I mean, who cares, really?—when I remembered my mantra: “I … WILL … NOT … LOSE … EVER.” I guess it’s not really my mantra in the sense that I came up with it or anything; I stole it from some rap song. Plus, it’s kind of disingenuous because I actually lose all the time. But “I … LOSE … ALL … THE … TIME” is not a suitable mantra, and when I’m slaying myself on the bike in a dim rainstorm with possibly toxic levels of adrenaline coursing through my system, I sometimes become pleasantly delusional and can pretend I never lose. But how could I possibly manage to prevail now, when already so far off the back?

Ah, I thought. There’s always the “I hate pain” hill.

The “I hate pain” hill is the short, somewhat steep (perhaps 9%) climb between the Botanical Garden and the Brazil Building. My wife gave this hill its name, back when we were first dating. She rode over it and said, “I just learned something about myself. I hate pain!” I can usually do this one in the big ring, after getting up as much speed as possible on the downhill before. For some reason, the mountain bike team always goes around it, via Anza View Road, even though they’re young and strong and fearless. Probably the coaches set the standard ages ago and nobody ever thought to change it up. Well, on a previous showdown, during a ride with my road team that a former Cougar had attended, I’d had a chance to do a little A/B test. He’d dropped our entire group including me and, not knowing any better, went around the hill while I, in desperate pursuit, went over it and discovered that up-and-over is actually faster. So now I figured that maybe, just maybe, I could make up enough time to get back in contention.

Well, it worked perfectly. I came over the top, and as the road dipped down again I could just see the top three riders rejoining the road ahead. I gave it full gas and managed to claw my way across and latch on to the back. I hung out there for a bit, recovering, and before long the last of the three, G—, looked back and saw me there. Haha! Surely they’d looked back several times and confirmed I was nowhere in sight. It must have seemed like I came out of nowhere.

C— was on the front driving a furious pace. I was getting a pretty good draft off G— (who must have grown three inches since last season) but he was dying and letting little gaps open, so riding behind him was unwise, like getting too close to a drowning victim. To G—’s credit, it took me a few tries to take S—’s wheel away from him. As I’ve taught the riders, you look at the wheel you want, not at the rider who’s on it, and you just have to kind of insinuate yourself onto the wheel. Eventually I had S—’s wheel but he’s not such a good draft. I was bent way over the bars, but I’ve got this giant Camelbak stuffed with the tool set, the first aid kit, every size of inner tube, extra clothes, and other bulky stuff so I wasn’t very aero.

The pace was relentless, and pedaling was even harder than usual because my shoes, being absolutely soaked, seemed to weigh about five pounds each. The chamois in my shorts was also sodden and droopy … is this what it’s like having a full diaper? I sensed S— starting to tire … so it was time to move into second. He didn’t seem to mind when I came past him; he knew he’d get a sweet draft off of me and have plenty of time to recover, so he could try to come past at the last second. (He’d come so very close to pulling it off last week, after all.) So now I was right on C—’s wheel and he’s just as lithe and wiry as a greyhound, blocking the wind even less than S—. It was absolutely brutal staying in that draft at that searing pace. C—’s rear tire sprayed up a rooster tail of water right in my face, but my clear goggles protected my eyes, and the water hitting my mouth, though befouled with grit, was almost refreshing. Meanwhile, C—’s unrelenting verve was inspirational, and as I clung to his wheel for dear life I tried to conjure up a plot to defeat him.

This kid had been pulling ever since I’d caught up, and probably almost the whole way from Inspiration Point. Sure, he’s the League Champ, but he’s not invincible … possibly I could come off his wheel with like 100 meters to go and punch his ticket. I was actually more worried about S—, who was just sitting perfectly in position behind me, and who’d have a pretty good idea of when I’d launch my sprint. I decided I had to go early, for the element of surprise.

There’s a spot maybe 300 meters from the end where the road curves around and the downhill gets just a bit steeper, from like 1% to 1.5%. It’s subtle, but the perfect moment to take advantage of my 11-tooth cog. I guess that’s not really such a tiny cog by modern standards—after all, my daughter’s bike has a 10—but that’s because most kids are running the so called “one-by” setup, with only one chainring, which is typically a measly 32-tooth. My triple crankset has a 42-tooth big ring, giving me a 20-30% higher gear than they have, and at a high enough speed, it’s like having nitro or something (if only my legs can manage to push hard enough).

Needless to say what you’re reading here isn’t technically a Big Ring Tale, because we’d all already been in our big rings, and/or our highest gears, for several minutes before the denouement of our battle began. For me, the battle came down to the cog. All last season I couldn’t use my smallest rear cog because it was worn out and skipped like crazy. This season I finally got around to addressing it—but I couldn’t find the new cassette I thought I had somewhere. I ended up finding some random, lone 11-tooth cog floating around in my big bin of extra parts. I had no idea where it came from or what kind of shape it was in, but  to my delight it works great—no skipping at all. So instead of setting up the climax of this yarn with the standard convention of  “I threw ‘er in the big ring,” this is the part of the story where I get to tell you “I dropped ‘er in the small cog.” (Who knows, perhaps with the growing popularity of these one-by setups, and mountain biking vs. road, the term “big ring tale” will become obsolete, and “small cog tale” will take its place.) Now, full disclosure, I might well have already been in the small cog, but that’s immaterial … the point is, now I launched the big move that demanded the 42x11 gear. I was going to spin that gear all the way up or die trying.

Well, the good news is, I did succeed in taking both kids by surprise and quickly got a good gap. The bad news is, with the rain and the dark and my somewhat fogged-up goggles I’d totally misjudged where we were; maybe it was wishful thinking that we were finally close to the end. I’d gone several curves too early! No wonder my sudden move had been so effective: you’d have to be a  fool to go from that far out! O my god, what had I done? But there was no way to change my plan now … if I let up at all, both kids would fly by and that would be the end of me. There was nothing to do but try to make the move stick. I had that 42x11 turning pretty well now. (Having gone back and done the math, I can tell you my cadence was just under 100 rpm, which isn’t so fast for a track racer, but pretty much perfect for a mosher like me.)

I died over and over again with every pedal stroke, and the wimp in my brain was chanting its usual defeatist litany, notions like “It’s over, you went too early, you’re doomed, just sit up, these kids are in their prime, S— looks like a Pixar superhero, C— is the reigning League Champ, there’s no shame, you gave them a good run for it.” Fortunately the song in my head (there’s always a song in my head), which was “King of Pain” by the Police, was drowning out the inner voice. Going early had not been the plan, of course, and yet I seemed to be following a familiar script. There seemed something so inevitable about the excruciating suffering I was going through once again: the blood-taste in my mouth, the turbine-like whoosh-whine of my breathing, the white-hot burn in my legs. It could be no other way and I wasn’t going to let up for a second until I’d won or lost. No looking back, either—I cannot fathom why pro racers in solo breakaways so often look back; it’s like the kiss of death. Just face forward, face the music: “I will always be King of Pain!”

I was around the final curve, out of the saddle now, thrashing, feeling like I had a bear trap clamped to each leg. This twisty road with the tall trees around it, and the dark and gloom, with sometimes even a bat or two, have often made me think of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and now I felt very much like Ichabod Crane dashing madly toward the final bridge, the Headless Horseman hot on my tail. The end in sight, I flogged myself like it mattered, and less than 50 meters from the finish still no kid had flashed by. With 25 meters to go I finally looked back. C— was there, of course, but well behind me, not even in my draft, and S— was nowhere to be seen. I’d pulled it off! Something like a wicked laugh fluttered to life deep within me but couldn’t make it anywhere close to my mouth, not with all that sucking wind and other respiratory havoc. But the feeling that flickered there was real and joyful. Can you imagine it? Actual joy, at my advanced age?

Needless to say my triumph, for all the thrill of the moment, was actually meaningless, a matter of pure trivia, something to be forgotten almost instantly (were it not for the stubborn persistence of this text). Surely C— didn’t much care. It’s just one more sprint of many, and like every coach I’m just a stepping stone on the kid’s way to greater things, if even that. But hey, that’s what I’m here for … my glory days were over thirty years ago and the point here is the current crop, the Cougars. When, some weeks from now, an actual race—a sanctioned NorCal mountain bike race—comes down to a final sprint, and C— wins it through timing, tactics, and grit, I will be stoked to have played any role at all in helping him reach that level. As for myself, I’m just glad to still be in the mix.

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From the Archives - Shakespeare Knockoff

Introduction

It’s another slow news day here at albertnet, so here’s an old poem from my archives, with all-new footnotes and commentary. Enjoy please enjoy.

Judgment of true minds – ca. 1992

Let us not in the judgment of true minds
Admit impediment. A student fails                                         2
Who misinterprets books or falls behind,
Or when assigned his reading moans and wails.
Oh no! The only academic lord
Is one whose clever insights oft are quoted;                         6
Who’s always interested, never bored;
Who’s worth’s unknown, although his grades are noted.
He’s at no teacher’s mercy, though exams
Will keep him studying from dawn to dusk;                       10
For nothing can detain him from his plan
Of making fools of the rest of us.
    If this be error, proven unto me,
    I never took a test or got a “C.”                                            14

Footnotes & commentary

Date: ca. 1992

I forgot to date this one. I’m guessing it was 1992 because thematically, it had to correspond with my college years, and it was probably inspired by the Shakespeare class I took at Berkeley in ’91 or ‘92. That was a great class. Professor Richmond was a renowned Shakespeare authority who traveled to London to consult on the restoration of the Globe theater where Shakespeare’s plays were first enacted.

Line 1: true minds

This line doesn’t make much sense, but I guess I wanted to make sure the (hypothetical) reader would catch the allusion to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, which begins, “Let us not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments.” I needn’t have worried; anybody who would bother reading amateur poetry would surely catch on.

We covered Sonnet #116 in Richmond’s class. He stood at a lectern on one side of the stage while reading it to us, and then his wife, who I think was also a professor, stood at a lectern on the other side of the stage and read Sonnet #138, which begins, “When my love swears that she is made of truth/ I do believe her, though I know she lies.” This was a stark contrast, obviously, to #116 and its lofty, uncompromising claim that true love admits no impediments. This paradox kicked off a great lecture about the complexity of Shakespeare, but I know you’re already getting bored so I’ll move on.

Line 2: admit impediment

While writing this I was all too aware of the impediments of my own mind. It’s hard for me, even now, to think about Sonnet #116 without a flush of embarrassment. I was asked to read this poem at my dad’s third wedding, and my reading didn’t go so well. To be fair to myself, it’s a bit odd attending a parent’s wedding, and nothing a kid should have to go through.  But the bigger problem was hubris: I decided, being already familiar with the poem, that instead of just reading it I would go ahead and memorize it. How much more impressive that would be!

Well, things were going find until around the bit about “Love’s not Time’s fool,” when my gaze—which I had been casting about the audience, like I was taught to do in speech class—happened to meet that of my father. He was looking at me so intently, I completely froze. He seemed to be regarding me as some kind of freak, or like a space alien, and in fact my love of liberal arts was alien to him, since he was a diehard scientist and engineer. He had probably never before heard this sonnet—or indeed any sonnet—and perhaps my enthusiasm bewildered him. Whatever was behind his intense, piercing look, upon seeing it I choked, completely, and couldn’t come up with the next line of the poem. Well, my soon-to-be stepmother, who was a librarian, knew the poem well (having selected it, after all) and gave me a little stage whisper that got me back on track. Now that I think about it, she was probably delighted that I stumbled and needed help, and that she was there to give it. But the little ordeal is still embarrassing to recall.

Line 4: moans and wails

If you think this is over-the-top hyperbole, you don’t know my brother. I can still remember when he was in junior high trying to learn German, and would moan and wail, “I can’t memorize!” That said, upon being given our reading assignments, my fellow English majors and I would certainly groan. The best thing about majoring in English is that there are no labs or problem sets to do, and not all that many papers to write—but there’s a whole lot of reading required.

Line 5: only academic lord

Who is this academic lord, whose shadow seems to have fallen over me, inspiring me to write this poem? Nobody specific comes to mind, but it’s fair to say I was feeling a bit self-conscious about my academic performance. Around this time I was taking an English honors seminar which admitted only thirty students (two classes of fifteen). I got in by the skin of my teeth: after initially being denied admission based on the deficient quality of my writing sample, I audited both sessions and discovered that one girl had been admitted to both. I wrote to the professor, provided a new writing sample, and claimed the extra spot.

You’d think I’d have worked really hard to distinguish myself after that (as indeed I’d promised in my letter I’d do). The problem was, the course was all about critical literary theory, which I despised. My total lack of interest made it almost impossible for me to even stay awake in class.

There was one guy in that class, Dan, whom the label “academic lord” does kind of fit. I remember the first conversation I had with him, after the first class discussion. “What did you think of that Derrida essay?” I asked him, hoping he’d say, “Dude, that shit went right over my head,” and then we could commiserate. But instead he said, “I really liked it. It reminded me of Beckett.” I thought he was referring to Thomas Becket, some religious figure whom I vaguely remembered from history class, and I couldn’t fathom what parallel Dan had drawn between the two. Only much later did I realize he meant Samuel Beckett, who wrote famous stuff like Waiting for Godot—but by then it was much too late. Nevertheless, we did become friends, mainly because, through sheer coincidence, we were both writing about the same author.

So was Dan as competitive as the guy described in this poem? Not at all. In fact, he generously let me read all his notes, and the rough drafts of his thesis. I returned the favor. Honestly, I didn’t find myself intimidated by his writing (and in fact was tickled to see that he used the shorthand “il y a” for “there is” or “there are,” from the French, just like I did!).

Where my intellect diverged from Dan’s is that he was already applying to grad school in English, whereas—my love of my major notwithstanding—I’d had enough college and was ready to get out into the work world . I didn’t envy Dan’s mind, because I simply felt like a different species of scholar. For me to resent him would be like an ostrich resenting a hawk.

Line 6: oft are quoted

Is it realistic to assert that any student’s insights could be “oft” quoted? Nah. This is kind of a sloppy line, frankly. But since we’re on the subject, I did quote Dan in my thesis, but only once. He quoted from my thesis as well. Perhaps this was a bit of a parlor trick; I for one felt kind of sneaky in having access to unpublished literary criticism that real writers, such as our professor, did not.

Line 7: always interested

An English major friend of mine always pronounces this word “IN-ter-est-ed” (i.e., four syllables) whereas (like so many others) I pronounce it “INT-rist-ed” (three syllables). Within this line of verse my friend’s pronunciation clearly works better. It also sounds more intellectual, I think, though I can’t bring myself to adopt it in regular speech.

Line 7: never bored

I wanted to like literary theory, but I just didn’t have it in me. If you think I’m exaggerating about falling asleep in a discussion group of only fifteen students, I assure you I’m not. Fairly early in the semester, I was at a party and was checking out this girl—not because she was all that fly, but because she looked kind of familiar—when she walked over to me and said, “Okay, I’ve been trying to figure out where I know you from and then it hit me—you’re that guy who always falls asleep in my H195 seminar!”

Line 9: no teacher’s mercy

This should have been “TA’s mercy,” since it was mostly the teaching assistants who graded our papers and exams.  Nobody goes by the title “teacher” in college, of course.  What was I thinking?

Line 10: dawn to dusk

This is just more sloppiness. Think about it: what student would stop studying at dusk? At the longitude of Berkeley, dusk would fall before 9 p.m. year round, hours before most students call it a day. And as late as September, dawn would begin before 7 a.m., which is much earlier than most students wake up. It’s a good thing the sonnet I wrote for Richmond’s class was more coherent.

Line 12: making fools of the rest of us 

I gather that with certain college majors, grading is done on a curve, and grades are posted publicly so students can envy those at the top and pity the sad sacks toward the bottom. But this wasn’t the case with English, which never seemed to encourage competition. It’s not like we were all jockeying for position in class standing so we could better compete for jobs after graduation, because—being English majors—we weren’t thinking that far ahead. 

Did students try to outshine each other during class discussions? Nah. We legitimately seemed to be freely sharing ideas and trying to learn something. One time, a classmate caught up to me as I was leaving class because she actually wanted to continue the discussion! This was no pretense based on the college mating ritual, either; this was a 60-something woman who’d decided late in life to attend college just to improve her mind. I was so flattered that she’d responded to something I’d said. (I didn’t sleep through class every time.)

Line 13: error, proven unto me

My commentary here seems to point out the overall error of this poem. This pleases me, because I feel like I’ve actually wised up a bit since college. Another 25 years from now, I might look back at this blog and reflect on how lame this writing is, which would be nice (as it would show further progress). Or maybe in 25 years I’ll have come full circle, realizing that I actually peaked in college and merely slipped into delusion in the following decades.

Line 14: never … got a “C”

I did once get a C in English, in junior high. Our class spent a whole quarter reading Greek mythology, and I hated it, even more than the critical literary theory I’d get a decade or so later. I didn’t sleep in class back then—my pre-teen hormones were raging too much for that—but I didn’t put in much effort, either. We each had to write a myth, replete with a moral, and I don’t remember much about my myth other than my moral, “Don’t try for perfection,” which seemed to really annoy the teacher. She gave me the worst grade in the whole class on that assignment, and made sure I knew it.

My dad was furious about that C. He really chewed my head off. If he’d asked what went wrong, maybe I could have explained about the Greek mythology, but he didn’t. All I offered in my defense was that my other grades were fine, and I even got an A+ in French. This made him even angrier and he launched this big lecture about why English classes are important. It’s funny to look back on this because when I eventually majored in English my dad was really disappointed. It’s tempting to wonder if he saw my choice of major as some kind of payback for his angry lecture, but I really doubt he remembers any of it, least of all the C. In case he reads this (which I also doubt): Hey Dad, guess what? I once got a C in English!

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