Its been a while since I last wrote on here and several good ideas have come and gone, which is probably for the better. If you've wondering where I've been I have been balancing an incredibly difficult schedule of interning, watching re-runs, hopelessly applying for jobs I won't get, and racing my bike. Yes, racing. At this point in the year I've probably raced close to 100 days, eclipsing most pros and amateurs.
But if I'm racing this much, how am I still a lowly Cat 4 and why can't you find the results online. Let me explain my racing season and schedule to you a little bit and then it will be quite clear how I manage such a grueling schedule of training and competition.
If you want to nitpick and count formal, sanctioned races, then I only raced 7 times last season. So where to the other 93 come from? Well, it turns out that I'm racing almost every time I ride whether I like it or not. I'm not sure what it is about me that makes people think that I'm in some silent competition with them, but I can't remember the last time I went out and did not have someone try their hardest to beat me at whatever competition they've made up during the moment. Forget the days that I'm on a recovery ride and fiddling with my Ipod while spinning my 39/25 at barely 90RPM, a dude on a mountain bike will make sure to let me know that he is deserving of the King of the Mountain points as he unleashes an epic out of the saddle attack to crest a hill with a monstrous 11 feet of elevation gain. After taking me to the proverbial woodshed, he will almost assuredly look back and smirk with contempt for managing to beat a dorky roadie despite the fact that he doesn't have the proper gear. I will bet everything important in my life that he will go back and tell his friends and family of the occasion and portray it as nothing less than the epic Lance/Jan ordeal of 2003.
So If I'm racing this much I can't be 0/100 for wins right? Don't worry, I sometimes contest and instigate my fair share of races too, mine are just more subtle. We all can admit that we've done it at some point- we've been on a ride, we're feeling good on a climb or something and we begin to catch someone in front of us. As we approach we silently laugh at their peril and then implement one of 3 tactics:
1. The fly-by. Just like buzzing the tower in Top Gun, the purpose of this move is to launch our hardest attack about 10 feet behind the rider so that they hear our 4 to 5 upshifts as we pass out of the saddle. The key to this move is making sure you do not breathe out of your mouth and that you appear very bored as you complete the attack. Its best to almost look annoyed that the person was so slow that they made you deviate from your line. Once your effort is done, make sure to shift down 1 cog lower than normal when you get back in the saddle and pedal at at least 110 RPM so it looks like you're spinning away with no effort.
2. The wait and dominate. This one is best performed on a long climb, preferably with switchbacks or wooded areas. The key to this attack is timing your move properly. When you see a rider up ahead, gradually increase your pace until you're on their wheel. Make sure to cough, make some shifting noises, whatever you can to let them know you're there. Most cyclists will start to get self conscious and increase their pace so they don't appear to be a pussy. Make sure to ride their wheel for a few minutes, and then launch the biggest attack you can, but time it so the attack ends around a bend or where they can't see you. You want to seem like you've disappeared and they've been dropped so hard that they lose all hope of making it up the climb. In reality you are going to end your attack once of out sight and then pant, sweat, and spin your legs out and turn the next 10 minutes into a mini recovery ride. The key is to attack as hard as possible, and then recover once you're out of sight. If you do it right you will give them impression that you've just Pantani'd then with no effort.
3. The bait and switch. This is the true dick move of cycling and you have to be a real shithead/egotistical to consciously do it to someone, but its also a very practical way to do race intervals without a computer or structure. Its similar to the wait and dominate, except that you don't attack as hard and you never go out of sight. The key to this move is to start even with or pass someone else and launch an 80% attack. Make sure to stay in sight because your foe will almost certainly counterattack to avoid seeming wimpy and will make an effort to real you in. Let them. That's the point. Once they do so, ride slightly ahead of them for a bit and launch another attack. Repeat as much as you want. The goal of this is to completely demoralize the other rider every time they think that they got dropped as a result of a fluke or being unprepared. You will be able to smash their spirits over and over again and give off the impression that they can only hang with you when you are not trying whatsoever. At the same time, it will allow you to simulate launching an attack and being pulled back in race so it can be useful.
If you use any of these 3 tactics, make sure that you NEVER look over your shoulder. Why? Because you don't care about the other rider, you want to look like you KNOW that they've been dropped without having to look, and its a sign that you're even concerned with their skill level.
So if I've specified that these are total jerk moves, then why do I know about them so well? This is where my own version of situational cycling ethics comes in. Its pretty rude to do this to someone randomly and, as I noted, its annoying when someone obviously does it to you when you're out on a nice slow 4 hour ride or a recovery spin. The key here is not being obvious and only using these tactics when someone has done them to you first. Consider the following scenario:
The other day I was out for a nice ride up a local climb, the Col de la Faucille. I ride this climb at least 2 times week, often 4 times, and I know almost every single "trick", gradient, obstacle, bend, etc. The climb isn't so hard in terms of gradient, but its difficulty comes in its length, and a bastardly section in the double digits that leaves you on an exposed face of the mountain that almost always has a strong cross-wind or a head wind. The climb starts with a few very easy sections that give the rider a false sense of hope for what is to come. You can lose minutes if you don't know what's coming and most riders seem to have quite a bit of difficulty with it. If you don't know the climb well or, like most noobs, make the mistake of trying to drill it from the get go, you will be in a world of hell and still have a few km to go.
Notice that 7-10% average section. It goes above 10% for quite a while and stays close to it in the headwind zone, which is not fun close to the top. This is where you will usually pass the people who fail to realize that they're climbing in the Alps, not local dash to the top of the hill.
So I'm out for a nice ride and I have just given it a max effort and recorded a personal best of 39:30. I decided to descend the climb, which is pretty awesome, climb it again in my easiest gear (39/28) at an easy pace and then descend it again. I was about 1km into the climb in the easiest section when a guy in a 5 year old Credit Agricole jersey on a pimped out Look 595 decides to pull a fly-by on me. His attack ends about 100 feet in front of me, but I don't care because its just a nice easy spin back up the mountain to consume time.
The problem with this rider was that he made his attack way too obvious by not keeping his cool face, by constantly looking back at me, and by revealing how much he was in the pain locker. In addition to these total noob mistakes, I noticed that he was climbing with a compact crankset and an 11-21. The problem with this climb is that even fairly strong climbers will need a 25T cog whether they're running compact or standard. I won't break out a gear inches chart for the sake of keeping this story simple, but lets all assume that a 34-21 is far too tall of gearing to get someone through some of the random, steeper sections and the aforementioned bastardly hairpin.
This part of the climb was still relatively mellow, so I upshifted a bit and increased my pace to catch him in a few minutes. My effort was still low, but he needed to be taught a lesson. I caught him in less than a minute and effortlessly rode about 20 feet behind him so that I wasn't really getting any draft. I made sure to smirk and not indicate that I was putting forth any sort of effort, and I saw him try to increase his pace like an idiot. With an 11-21 his shifts in put him on a 34-17 and I knew that there was no way he could spin this more than 20 feet past the hairpin. I made sure to do an epic fly by at exactly this moment because I know that the hill after the turn appears to be much steeper than it is and that I can climb it out of the saddle in a 39-21 with no problems.
I thought that this guy deserved to be humbled, and I do so and went on my way doing what I was originally supposed to do. I finished the climb and began my descent back down and noticed that he was stuck on that tough part I mentioned early trying to turn his lowest gear at 40 RPM with a painful look on his face that would make Cadel Evans appear to be happier than Joan Rivers with a facelift and an overdose of anti-depressants.
While its super douchey doing any of these tactics normally, they are appropriate when they are done in retaliation. Nothing is more annoying than the local rich guy that buys his Time/Look/Pinarello and things that he has purchased his way into being the local hero and that everyone should know that he is the best despite the fact that he puts in 5 hours on a good week and rarely completes a full climb. I don't care if someone is stronger than me or slower than me; if they drop me or I drop them.
The point is to ride how you want to ride for your given goal and not be an asshole to others. We can debate the whole waving to cyclists thing, but launching the above tactics on random people is no worse than the bro montana that comes into the local gym in an XXS tank top and proceeds to try to 1 up every Average Joe around them just to demonstrate their weight training supremacy. Its not how fast you ride or how strong you are, but how much of an asshole you are to other riders in doing your own thing. There is nothing wrong with being faster and passing some people on a climb, but its another story if you're only doing it in order to try and prove a point that doesn't even matter.
Its this aspect of cycling that has allowed me to complete a more grueling race schedule than anything Eddy Merckx ever attempted. 90% of the time I let it go and laugh to myself, but after a while it gets kind of annoying. We all think that cycling isn't full of the same jocks, macho-men, and assholes that take part in traditional sports, but in the end its almost the same.
The fact that cycling takes a fair bit of money makes the situation worse and heightens the arrogance even further. People put on their local team kits, race a few state races, and somehow think that they are entitled to pass judgement on others. You can not like someone's choice of equipment, but it becomes ridiculous when you make it a point to elevate yourself and classify everyone that is not rolling in identical attire on identical team bikes a "Fred". Some riders forget that they're still just a local amateur even though they might have made it through the ranks and that they will never be pro or good enough to truly elevate their status to another level. In the end, their attempts to look the part and the inherent dishonesty thereof is more pathetic than someone who has failed at putting together a dialed kit or bike. You're not fooling anyone when your sponsor is a local shop and you actually paid for your bike and don't ride it for a living so don't take some kind of attitude about it. Most people don't, but the ones that do are usually the ones guilty of silently racing everyone on the road. Thanks for all of the training days and laughs, keep it up.
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