GamJams Reviews: On-bike nutrition (off-beat advice)

Paleo Basics

I know this is about what to eat on the bike, but that happens within the context of a complete nutritional plan. My overarching strategy is provided by the Paleo diet. I read Loren Cordain's book not long after it came out, and with a few exceptions, found the logic compelling.

The theme is that our bodies evolved for a hunter-gatherer, pre-agricultural diet, a diet we consumed for nearly half a million years before the invention of agriculture a mere 10,000 years ago. Although agricultural technology allowed the human population to explode, each individual person raised on farmed cereals (rather than gathered plants and hunted meats) fared worse. Post-agricultural skulls are smaller and skeletons show evidence of bone disease, tooth decay, chronic illness, shorter lifespans, and on and on.

The Paleo diet attempts to mimic hunter-gatherer intake as closely as possible in the modern world. This is what you eat: meats, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and occasionally, honey. This is what you do not eat: anything else. In particular, no processed foods, no sugars, no bread, no pasta, no rice, no legumes even. You get all of your carbs through fruits and veggies. Meats should be grassfed beef, organic, free-range chicken and pork, and wild fish. (Standardly-raised animals consume a diet of corn, and are therefore low in omega 3 and high in omega 6: very unpaleo.)

When you get all your carbs from fruits and veggies, you realize how meager the nutritional content of cereals really is. Compared to the Paleo stuff, you get hardly any vitamins and minerals out of one calorie of bread.

Wars rage as fiercely on the subject of diet as on anything in popular science, and everything you were told as a kid (or heck, last month) is now up for grabs. But at the macro level, I see a convergence of theories and studies onto the basic tenets of Paleo. Nobody is out there promoting simple sugars and processed foods. Everyone realizes that our super-high ratio of omega 6-to-omega 3 fats is behind a lot of our inflammation-based health conditions, and maybe depression. Nobody thinks fresh fruits and vegetables are going to hurt you. The remaining controversies are over:

1. the optimum percentage of fat intake, where the trend is definitely towards higher values;
2. the status of saturated fats, where the consensus that they're bad is falling apart;
3. meats, which are looking better and better;

4. grains, particularly wheat, which even in unprocessed form are not looking so great.

(Gary Taubes' book on the history of these controversies is a work of journalistic genius, a bizarre tour through the underbelly of scientific practice. A lecture overview is here.)

It's hard to stick to a Paleo diet and maintain any kind of social life. It's also really pricey. But I've done it off-and-on. Mostly, it's been off, but when it's been on, I've had fantastic results in terms of mood, energy levels, and body composition. So much so that in these periods on the diet I become something of a zealot.

Paleo for Athletes

Ahhhh... but what about cycling? Don't we need simple sugars, quick-burning calories, to fuel our efforts? Yes. Yes we do. Base training can reduce your reliance on carbs and switch you over to burning a high percentage of fat, but for racing and hard intervals, you need lots of fast-burning carbs. There's no way around it. And you won't be able to digest spinach, tomatoes, and zucchini fast enough to meet your requirements.

Our paleolithic ancestors were incredibly fit, ultraendurance athletes who persistence hunted, but they did not train and race repeatedly at super high intensities, and therefore they could get along burning mostly fat, along with a modest amount of carbs.

What to do? Enter Joel Friel, who paired with Cordain to modify the Paleo diet for modern endurance athletes. Their book suggests stacking simple carbs around workouts, pre-, during, and post-exercise, and otherwise sticking to a strict paleo intake. So long as you are burning all of your simple carbs in the moment, you won't suffer from any of their metabolic ill effects (i.e., insulin spikes).

So, when on the bike, I often eat what everyone is recommending on GamJams: Shot Blocks, gels, candy bars and such. It's just that for me, this modern agricultural stuff is a massive departure from the rest of my diet.

On-Bike, Off-Beat

Here are two on-the-bike recommendations, though, that I have yet to see in these reviews.

First of all, I do glycogen depletion rides sometimes in the mornings. These workouts are the brainchild of Dr. Michael Ross, who points out that really long rides have all kinds of nasty side effects like lowering good hormones and weakening muscle fibers, but they're great for forcing your body to learn to metabolize fat. Ross's idea is that you should ride first thing in the morning, before eating, at fairly high intensity for one hour. The glycogen in your liver is already low at this point, and the ride steals what's left of the glycogen in your legs. An hour at intensity brings you right to the point of bonking, but not over it. Up close to the bonk, your muscles are forced to adapt to the low glycogen environment by switching over to fats for fuel. Yet, at the same time, you do not work out long enough to thin the fibers or lower the growth hormone and testosterone levels.

On these rides, it's important that your body doesn't start consuming itself, that is, breaking down your own muscles to meet the energy demands. So Ross recommends adding some branch chain amino acids (BCAAs) to your water. Doing so has been shown to prevent muscle loss in glycogen depletion workouts. I bought some BCAA powder and used it once or twice, but when I looked at the ingredient list, I decided to substitute beef jerky, which I made myself from grassfed beef with a recipe from Alton Brown. I found the jerky is great on just

about any ride. It packs easily into a jersey, doesn't melt, and a few pieces will supplement your sugary drink or gel with perfect, complete protein, plus vitamins and minerals.

One other thing I haven't seen mentioned: a cold V8 is unbeatable on a hot ride. It's salty and loaded with vitamins, lycopene (which protects your skin against sun damage), and other micronutrients. My gas-station purchase is usually Gatorade, V8, and water. Maybe a fruit and nut mix.

You can't be strictly Paleo on the bike but you can do better than eating only processed, sugary foods.

The Geneology of Racing Morals (Or, Cycling as an Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma)

Joe Jefferson (yes, he of "strung out like Amy Winehouse" fame) kicked off a lively MABRA debate over the following question: if someone sits in during a breakaway, should they contest in the sprint?

According to lots of people on the MABRA board, it is low and classless behavior to sprint after sitting in. Just not right.

Now the discussion has spilled over onto the blogs. Over on Firebike, it's ok to contest, so long as you haven't reached any explicit agreement. According to the Robot Diary, there's no rule against it, but you'll alienate potential partners (except in certain situations, when it's totally understandable.) For Le Amateur Domestique, it's a 'no-brainer'... you sprint.

It doesn't make any sense for me to weigh in with my own opinion on the question without the years of accumulated racing wisdom of others.

I can make a meta-level observation about the question itself, though. What, exactly, are we asking, and how could we possibly resolve the matter? I mean, it's already been pointed out that sitting in is not against the rules of cycling. So the question is not whether it's permissible according to the rules. It's also not illegal in any stronger sense. So what are we asking? Are we asking whether it's immoral, unethical? I can't imagine anyone arguing that it is actually a violation of morality or a breach of ethics to sit in.

(Actually, maybe I spoke too soon. I can imagine Kant arguing that it is a violation of the categorical imperative... Oh, if only Kant were a cyclist!)

Are we asking whether it's ok according to cycling etiquette? I think that's closer. But who cares about cycling etiquette? And it's not exactly just etiquette. Sprinting after sitting in on a break is not like riding with hairy legs.

Who creates these facts anyway, these facts about what separates the classy rider from the wheelsucking 'Reilhans' among us, and makes the former praiseworthy and the latter blameworthy? Contrary to what you might think upon finding Joel Friel's apotheotically titled tome in the bookstore, there is no Bible of cycling where we find the 10 commandments. (Can you see Moses bombing down Sinai on a full suspension rig?)

So where do the cycling mores come from? They come from us. In fact, we're making them up, right now, in this very discussion. And how do we enforce them? By yelling at violators in races, shunning them afterwards, and heaping praises on those who conform. In other words, just the way that community norms are always enforced: social pressure. So in this discussion, we're not arguing about something already out there, somewhere in Plato's heaven, so much as we are making it happen.

Why should we have any norms that go beyond the rules? Why not let the rules stand as they are and just let people race as they see fit, no praising, shunning, or whatever?

We can't help it, for one. Just as we can't help but admire a solo break, we feel a natural, instinctive sympathy for the guy with his nose in the wind who's trying to make a break stick. It's hard not to feel he's earned some kind of reward for that effort. And it's hard not to feel annoyance when the wheelsucker jumps out and sprints past.

But the bigger factor is that we race the same people again and again. If it were a one shot deal, then yeah, the best thing to do is to get dragged to the finish and sprint. Who cares what people think? But when you develop a reputation as a wheelsucker, it'll hurt you in the end, and if you take your pulls, it'll help you. So, the community spreads your reputation around, whether it's good or bad, and that does everyone a service. That's the basic point of The Robot Diary post.

The relevant analogy is a single prisoner's dilemma, versus an indefinitely iterated prisoner's dilemma. The heuristics developed to play those two games successfully are totally different. In the first case, there's a dominant strategy: always defect. In the second, you go tit for tat.

Cycling makes me think about how norms evolved in general. Here in cycling, we have an explanation for our norms that doesn't appeal to utilitarianism or deontology or divine command theory or natural law, just the self interest of a community engaged in iterated prisoner's dilemmas. Interesting.

Crash Sally Crash

Whole Wheel Velo must have consulted with an attorney before they mapped out that course. It was a smooth, wide road with three turns that were more like sweepers than real corners; you could take them all at speed. It was the safest course I've ever raced. And yet, what I saw out there was sketch, sketch, sketch, and just when you thought the sketch well had run dry... more sketch.

I did the 5 race, and then the 35+ 4/5. I went down in both.

Cat 5 race. Right from the start, the peleton was nervous. Like thoroughbreds in the gates, only slower, fatter, and less equine.

I could tell some of the guys just weren't accustomed to pack riding, because they were swerving for no apparent reason on the straights and taking aberrant lines though the turns.

Oh well, it's a huge course, right? We could ride 10 abreast! There's room for some newbies to swerve, as long as people don't overlap wheels. I'm thinking: good on the WWVC guys for taking this into account when setting things up.

At first, the pace was almost comically slow. My teammate Richard and I both found ourselves at the front softpedaling, because at that speed, why not? It's the same effort. Then, maybe three laps in, things started getting intense. We weren't racing all that fast, but braking hard before the turns and pushing hard out of them.

On the back straight, two guys in front of me swerved into each other. I heard crunching and started looking for slots to get around them, but somehow they didn't go down. They bounced off, slammed into other people, but everyone kept their rubber sides planted. Scary riding, but impressive recoveries.

"Ok, race gods. You satisfied now?"

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!"
(race gods laughing their asses off)

A few laps later, I was sitting midpack, fully warmed up now and happy. My plan was simple: sit in, do no work whatsoever, and get into position on the back stretch of the last lap. See what I had left. I knew there wouldn't be any successful breaks.

My teammate Jeff, in only his second crit, was on his limit, and, feeling he might get sketchy himself with his legs and lungs giving out, he let himself fall off the back. Good call. Not only did Jeff spare the tricolore paint job on his sweet C-50, he stayed within his limits and didn't put anyone else at risk.

Then it happened. On the back straightaway, again, two riders directly in front of me locked bikes and went down. I didn't see anything leading up to it. Just seemed like a weird, random, freak event. Their bikes went sidewise, wheels and cranks up in the air, bodies hitting the asphalt below.

It happened so fast and so close to me that I didn't even try to ride over them or bunny hop. It was almost instantaneous. I was focused on my landing. I unclipped somehow, went over the handlebars and did the tuck and roll. Came up with some hip bruising and minor road rash along the left side of my body. Pretty smooth, actually, for a heels-over-head crash at full speed in the middle of a pack.

Not everyone was so lucky. Behind me, an elderly guy was moaning like he'd lost his leg in an artillery explosion. I mean, every exhale wound down like a siren of pain. I tried stabilizing him and asked him where it hurt most. It was his hand, which didn't look that bad. He had a cut above his eye, though, and, from the way he was wailing, must have had the wind knocked out of him. Eeeesh.

My teammate Richard was behind me. He almost got around the wreckage, but alas, didn't quite manage it. Afterwards, he stood cooly by, as he always does, and I assumed he was ok. I asked if he was going to try to get back in and he said something about getting his wrist checked.

Turns out, Richard's wrist was not only broken, but completely shattered. He needs reconstructive surgery: plates, screws, etc. He's out for a couple of months at least, and probably more. He'll set off metal detectors for the rest of his life.

Richard was looking and feeling really strong in the race. He would have contended. Now his season is over.

I got back in. Threw the brake levers open, tried to right the handlebars (unsuccessfully), and rejoined. But my race was essentially over. Rear deraileur was bent and gears were skipping all over the place. Handlebars were pointed thirty degrees leftward. And I was scared. There was still plenty of sketch to be found in the pack, and I just decided: screw it, I'll ride by myself on the side. Which is what I did, braving the wind on my own for much of the way around, for a few laps, chain noisily bouncing between cogs, until deciding to drop out.

Disappointed? Hugely. But there was still the 35+ 4/5. Someone from The Bike Lane twisted my derailleur back into place and repositioned the bars. (Thank you!)

Besides, surely the race gods must have had their fill of biker blood, right? Wrong.

35+ 4/5

What a great category. No Chuck Hutch here. No Ramon Benitez. No Pete Cannell. No Dave Fuentes. These are the guys who actually ride like they're over 35.

Everything was better here. The pace was easy. I had lots of teammates and we were organized, controlling the race. Most of all, riders were smooth.

Then it happened. Again on the back straight, and again for no apparent reason. I was near the right side of the road, shielded from the wind, when I heard the crash in front of me and to my left, in fact, all the way over on the left side of the peleton. The thought flashed through my mind: at least it's way over there; you're ok. But I wasn't. It was the strangest thing, this cascade of contact from left to right across the group, like a spark running along a fuse.

This time, again, two guys went down directly in front of me, only this time I had a second to think. I tried hard to stay on the bike, to stay upright. And that cost me dearly. Instead of the drop, tuck, and roll routine of the earlier race, I performed an awkard pile driver, a high, slow motion forward flip that only got half way. I landed on the back of my head, neck, and upper back. Nice upper spinal, lower cranial impact before sliding along the asphalt. Ouch.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I couldn't move for awhile. Lots of injuries. I think I'll be back on the bike soon enough, but need to see how the neck heals. Right now, I can't really look to the side without turning my whole body. Sleeping is not going to be easy without drugs. And I really hate drugs.

If anyone from WWVC is reading this... you guys put on a great race and, like me, just got unlucky today. Also, thanks to the medic for professional treatment, patching me up.

I limped back to the start line just in time to see my brother pumping his fist. (Casual one-fisted sidearm victory salute. Understated cool.) He'd won in a sprint finish, throwing his bike. YES! And he'd go on to take 3rd later in the 4 race as well. His best day of bike racing ever. My worst. Our days balanced out. I bet he'll have a very different writeup.

One final note: I watched the women today. I know theirs is a small field, but I am always impressed with how smoothly and smartly the women race. No overlapping wheels. No sketchiness in the corners. Just nice clean lines. Women are competitive, but they're not going to risk other people's safety to win.

Why can't guys be like that?

On the Problem of Freedom and the Incoherence of Sport (Warning: demotivational)

Ok, maybe this isn't the best post to write before racing tomorrow. But I've got to write it.

Why do we race bikes? And why do we care about other people racing bikes? Why do we participate in, or even follow, competitive sports at all?

Dude, why are you asking such idiotic, annoying questions?! Maybe because your only ability of note is descending fast in a (nearly) straight line.

Fair enough. But if the question is idiotic, what's the answer?

Here's one: we're just curious as to who is all around fastest and fittest. Racing tells us who those people are.

Right. Well, that is valuable information, particularly if you're a female looking for the highest quality sperm to fertilize your viable eggs. An evolutionary basis for cycling (and podium girls).












Victor of athletic contest between male primates releases his pressurized, uh, champagne, uh, against a backdrop of attractive female primates bearing tokens in his honor.









But suppose you could determine who's fastest without endangering anyone's testes... without racing, I mean.



The Joe Parkin book I reviewed a few weeks back tells a story about a father and son team of doctors who tested him upon his arrival in Belgium. They first attached some leather straps to his wrists and ankles, each with wires connecting to a tan steel box. Then measured. Parkin reports:

It was amazing how accurately the doctors' numbers foretold the truth... The good doctors had compiled quite a bit of data on riders and had devised a graph that would put me into a category of cyclist. At the bottom of the list was "Cyclotourist" and "Amateur" and then a boundary line signifying "Beroepsrenner" (professional). At the lower end of the professional category was the "Kermis racer" and then "Classics racer," with the top level being "Tour winner." I fell into the category of classics riders, somewhere in the middle of that group.

Parkin goes on to say that if he accepted his fate he would have made a lot more money, and found a lot more contentment than chasing after the polka dot jersey in a grand tour.

Remember, this was nearly two decades ago, with what sounds like torture equipment. Imagine what medicine will be like two decades hence.

Will we be able to determine the winner of a race before the starting gun is fired?

Suppose we could. Not only would we measure brute physical attributes like strength, endurance, and the ability to process oxygen, but also efficiency, tenacity, pain threshold... you name it. Anything relevant to the physical process whereby one bike wheel crosses that finish line before all the others.

Ok, so in that case, why race? We'd already know the outcome. Would we do it anyway? Would we avoid the data beforehand so as to enjoy the surprising reveal?

Is bike racing like the television show, Deal or No Deal, where the logical thing to do is to draw up a curve beforehand with one's risk tolerance, i.e., the price of insurance, i.e., the price one would be willing to pay beyond expected utility for various bets? And then to write down the sequence of breifcases to be opened? (Or accept the proposed order of a random sequence generator. This part of the show is just plain irrational.)

Deal or No Deal continues on, as far as I know, and makes a lot of money. People watch it just to see something unfold over 30 minutes that shouldn't take more than a few seconds.

Hey Howie... Here's what I'm willing to pay for insurance. Here's what you are offering. Here are my briefcase numbers, should you need them. Decision is predetermined by our formulae plus the sequence. Just patch our spreadsheets together and we're done.

There's no reason to sweat over this stuff in real time. But we like the titillation, the surprise, the suspense, of just coming to know something. Is that all bike racing is? A striptease?

In the cheesy, but surprisingly hard to forget film, Gladiator, Proximo (Oliver Reed) tells Maximus (Russell Crowe): "Listen to me. Learn from me. I was not the best because I killed quickly. I was the best because the crowd loved me. Win the crowd and you will win your freedom."

In other words, entertainment requires suspense. Suspense requires prolonged ignorance of the outcome.

Another way in... My brother proposed a different way of setting up racing categories. You do a complete genetic profile and base the categories on groups of people with roughly the same genetic potential. Great idea. If we did that, I'd be racing some pretty sad competition.

But what would separate out the people within each category into faster and slower? Well, the variations in RNA, variations in how neatly the genetic sequences were triggered in development, the history of the person's diet and environment (e.g., altitude), and so on. If we knew all of these, we could make all of the categories more even still. That is, we could make the categories even fairer.

But then what would account for the remaining variation in the categories? Still more causal factors that would need to be programmed into the system, until eventually you would have categories with perfectly evenly matched people, destined to tie, or else some unknown or lucky factors would decide the race (e.g., squirrel gets caught in one guy's spokes). So then the joy of racing rests on ignorance and chance. (And a really great system would take the squirrels into account and predict their actions as well!)

The deep underlying problem, I think, is none other than that old philosophical chestnut: the freedom of the will. We think that for all of the medical factors: genetics, childhood conditioning, diet, and brain chemistry, there is some mysterious leftover: the will. And racing sorts that out; it is a "test of wills", after all.

The will is a magical, living thing, operating outside the scientific realm of cause and effect. It's an unmoved mover, a first cause. There's no figuring it out beforehand. You've just got to reach deep into your suitcase of courage and see what you're packing. That's what racing is all about.

Except I think the notion of free will is an illusion. It's not just that we don't have it. It's that the very idea doesn't make any sense.

(More later. Or not. I'm guessing this post will not be well received. Even I'd rather read about Floyd's apocryphal exploits.)

If China were a Cyclist...

Harvard vs. Princeton. Washington Post vs. NY Times. Strangelove vs. John Lennon.

In a Post article, Harvard economist Martin Feldstein blasts the Waxman/Markley carbon emissions bill:

"The proposed legislation would have a trivially small effect on global warming while imposing substantial costs on all American households."

Feldstein's recommended course of action? Wait until we have a global agreement before doing anything ourselves.

In his NY Times blog, Princeton's Paul Krugman fires back, accusing Feldstein of underrepresenting the potential reductions in emissions, and more dramatically, of consigning the planet to the flames. Here's Krugman:

"Finally, and most important, anyone who has been following this issue at all knows that saying

The U.S. should wait until there is a global agreement on CO2 that includes China and India before committing to costly reductions in the United States.

is basically saying let the planet burn. The only chance we have of a global agreement is if the United States moves first; it will quickly be followed by other advanced countries, and then we sit down and use a combination of carrots and the threat of big sticks to get developing countries into the fold."

Two brilliant economists. Two very different recommendations. Neither has the math on his side. No advances in game theory, no impressively technical articles in econ journals, will settle the dispute.

It's a simple collective action problem. Everyone would be better off with a global reduction in carbon emissions. Everyone would be better off with an increase in their own, local, carbon emissions (other things being equal). These two conditions are at odds.

I am reminded of debates in the Cold War about whether to begin nuclear disarmament unilaterally, or, like Dr. Strangelove, to embrace the doomsday machine and wait for the other side to blink, which is sort of what we did.

Krugman is advocating, as a first step, unilateral disarmament. Feldstein is fantasizing about the generous female / male ratio in the mineshafts.

Muffley:

But look here doctor, wouldn't this nucleus of survivors be so grief stricken and anguished that they'd, well, envy the dead and not want to go on living?

Strangelove:

No sir... Right arm rolls his wheelchair backwards. Excuse me. Struggles with wayward right arm, ultimately subduing it with a beating from his left.

Also when... when they go down into the mine everyone would still be alive. There would be no shocking memories, and the prevailing emotion will be one of nostalgia for those left behind, combined with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead! Ahhhh! Right arm reflexes into Nazi salute. He pulls it back into his lap and beats it again. Gloved hand attempts to strangle him.

Turgidson:

Doctor, you mentioned the ration of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Strangelove:

Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

DeSadeski:

I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.

Strangelove:

Thank you, sir.

I have a metaphor more likely to resonate with cyclists. But first of all, the facts...

In absolute terms, the US leads the world in carbon emissions at approximately six billion metric tons. China puts out around five billion metric tons, but is poised to overtake us. The average Chinese citizen is responsible for about four metric tons of carbon per anum. The average US citizen? Over twenty. Historically, the gap has been much larger, of course.
So China's position: you go first. While it's making tremendous technological advances on carbon sequestration and so on, it won't promise to do anything before 2020.

Ok, at long last, here's the cycling analogy.

China is "Big" Jens Voigt. Jens has been "dieseling" on a break over the past 120 kilometers, holding at least a few minutes on the peleton. Sitting on his wheel are some scrawny French dudes from FDJeux. They've been basking in his slipstream all day. Now there's 10k to go and the sprinters are starting to reel in the break. If Jens and the FDJeux guys don't work together, they'll be caught for sure. But Jens feels entitled to a rest. He's looking to sit in for awhile and unleash on the last kilometer.

Here's FDJeux Feldstein: Why should we drag Jens to the line? Even if we do pull, as long as Jens just sits back there, we'll probably still be caught. So we shouldn't do squat until Jens agrees to take his turns at the front.

FDJeux Krugman: Idiots! You're giving up! If we don't pull right now we'll all get caught. Our only chance to win is to go to the front and then through a combination of carrots and sticks, try to get Jens to do some more work.

Except, of course, getting caught by the charging peleton is, in our case, the global climate spiraling into the terrifying unknown.

My sympathies lie with Krugman. I don't relish the idea of playing an environmental game of chicken with the Chinese. They've already demonstrated a willingness to poison water and air for the slightest of economic advantages. And their steroidal chickens scare the heck out of me. I say we first pass the bill, flawed as it is, and then eventually institute, or threaten to institute, a carbon-based tariff scheme to bring others along.

Then again, I didn't win the cold war.

Also, if you find yourself in a break with me, and by some miracle I am still physically capable of pulling, you can probably take advantage.

Dangling, like this very modifier...

So yeah, Clarendon was rough. I had no business racing with the likes of national TT champ Pete Cannell and local stud Ramon Benitez, whose glistening quads nearly frightened me off the staging area.

From the gun, I couldn't get clipped in. It turned out that one of the screws holding the cleat to my shoe was loose and wedging between cleat and pedal. When I took the shoe off afterwards, hardware just fell out onto the ground.

I did manage to clip in eventually, but by then 50 yards of emptiness separated me from the tail end of the peleton. With an all-out sprint, I closed the gap at the first turn, but came into the corner with too much speed, braked too hard, and then had to sprint again to catch back on. How awkward. And exhausting.

After that, I was dangling off the back like Michael Jackson's

baby over a railing.

Spaces kept opening up in front of the guys in front of me. I closed a few, but did it ever cost me...

After five or six laps, I popped like the housing bubble.

Was gapped like a Lauren Hutton dental impression.

Spit out, unceremoniously, like Amy Winehouse's gum...

I crashed like the 17th century tulip market.

Got dropped like acid...

... at Woodstock.

Broken, like health care.

Oh well. My huevos rancheros were delicious.

And with each ego-bruising defeat, I learn something new. Fitness and riding skills are only necessary conditions for success in cycling. A thousand details have to be exactly right in order for your fitness and skill to make a difference.

Riding over to Clarendon that morning, I had serious troubles clipping in. I chalked it up to my own incompetence. (Usually a good bet.) Why didn't I inspect my pedal, shoe, and cleat? Why??? Why??? I could have fixed the problem in seconds with my house key. Then it would have taken former olympian Nima Ebrahimnejad and DC-area legend, "Super Dave" Osborne at least ten laps to drop me.

Lesson learned: if something is bothering you about the mechanics of your setup, don't ignore it. Take care of it.

Glory be to God for dappled things, pt. 4

Heat-stroke-induced catatonia is rest, but it is not sleep. In fact, I slept for only three hours, kitted up at 6 am and walked out to the lobby to claim my continental breakfast.

(Aside, re: "continental breakfast". What is that supposed to mean? Is it supposed to refer to culinary traditions in Europe? Because I don't think donuts and Fruit Loops are the default morning edibles there. Nor is drip Maxwell House the preferred coffee-based beverage. I don't mind the breakfast, but please, just call it what it is: "Complimentary Industrial Sugary Shit Breakfast".)

Here in the lobby, I was accosted by one of the aforementioned cougars, purportedly around my age but entombed in the decaying flesh of a senior citizen. I could recount her dark life of trauma for you (and tell you her credit score) but why would I? Just to pass along the discomfort? Let me just sound the alarm: when someone matching the foregoing description, someone artificially blonde and with a raspy smoker's voice of the sort ordinarily used to summon the dead, purrs/growls, "Mind if I sit down?" in the Front Royal Super 8 Motel lobby... just say no.

I was rescued, incredibly, by a group of cyclists, five middle-aged guys from Lancaster County. They've been riding from Pennsylvania down to the bottom of the Shennendoah on Memorial Day weekend for fifteen years, and were preparing to cover the length of the park today, 115 miles, with someone's kind wife driving sag support. What an amazing, enviable tradition. PA long-distance cyclists: congratulations, and from the bottom of my heart, thanks for the rescue.

Two donuts and two styrofoam cups of coffee (viz., one Continental Breakfast) later, I headed out into the park and started a gentle uphill grade, relieved that my legs would still turn the pedals after yesterday. The park was wet, cool, quiet -- no cars for the first ten miles -- and full of animals.

I saw flea-bitten deer, strutting wild turkeys, ring-necked pheasants, assorted song birds (who, apart from specialists, can identify all the little birds anymore?), a black-and-white snake poised to strike on the inside of one of my turns, and some strange migration of millipedes, all crossing the road in parallel. The first pullout under construction was a millipede massacre. Hundreds of squished millipedes, lives cut short by construction equipment. Talk about dappled things...

And so it would go: animals live and dead, more often the latter. I saw dead baby opposums, dead squirrels (many, many), a dead fox, a dead groundhog, and a dead snake of the same species as the live one I saw earlier. It was good to have a reminder of my chances against the almighty automobile.

A woman I met at a rest area, a through hiker traveling from Georgia to Maine, saw a bobcat sitting on a tree limb just that morning, her first bobcat sighting on the AT. She and I guzzled chocolate milk together and talked about the teaching profession, from which she's recently retired. I hope I'm the type of person who hikes the entire AT when I'm in my sixties. Respect.

The Skyline Drive continued upwards for most of the day. 18 of the first 21 miles from Front Royal were uphill and given the exhaustion from yesterday and the lack of sleep, I was going *very* *very* slowly. Also, the Antares was starting to work its magic on my hindmost parts. Yeah, it's quite beautiful in the Shenandoah, with vistas this way, vistas that way, gradual slopes and steady, swooping corners, blah, blah, blah.

But my butt really hurt.

And I guess nature programed us to put butt comfort ahead of the finer aesthetic pleasures in life. (Maslow needs this in his pyramid.) So, my memory is just a series of ever-shifting pains, mostly centered on the butt area, as I made constant adjustments to my position on the bike.

One more encounter story before signing off. Memorial Day weekend was Rolling Thunder, and all of my riding was accompanied by Harley types booming past. My experience out there proved the good sense of Harley Davidson's sponsorship of a bike racing team. Not only do the Battley-Harley boys ride like they have motorcycle engines hidden in their bottom brackets, the actual Harley enthusiasts are extremely considerate to cyclists. First of all, I can always hear them coming. Secondly, when they do come by, they give me plenty of room. And finally, they're genuinely nice people. Along the Skyline Drive that day, no fewer than five bikers offered me cold bottles of water, and one offered me a sandwich. I also got the thumbs-up from a lot of riders. I think they realize, being out in the air and close to the road, what it means to fight an 8% grade for a few miles. They also realize what it's like to be constantly on the watch for cars.

So, shout out to Rolling Thunder.

More to come...

Glory be to God for dappled things, pt. 3

Where was I? Nature, poetry, religious ecstasy... heatstroke. Yes, heatstroke.

I suffered heatstroke once before, last year on a muggy day in Greenwich, Connecticut. I was also on the bike that day, and should have known something was wrong when I kept mistaking gargantua-homes for clubhouses and lawns for fairways. Except that's an easy enough mistake in Greenwich even when you're not delirious. There is nothing in the DC area that compares, wealth-wise, or power-wise even, to hedge-fund-funded Greenwich. DC is their hired help, the lowly service sector.

Anyway, I got lost in Greenwich, wandered in circles, pulled over and vomited into someone's bushes, and finally collapsed onto a lawn. Over the phone, my girlfriend quickly diagnosed heat stroke and told me to stay put. I felt my way down to the train station instead, but once inside, couldn't figure out how to swipe my credit card. Nor could I form the words to talk to the attendant. Did I want a round-trip ticket or a one-way pass? Where was I going?

How was I supposed to know? How was I supposed to solve these spatial-relations puzzles or answer such enduring paradoxes? Shall I resolve the mystery of consciousness and reconcile free will with determinism while I'm at it?

Eventually, I got on the right train and stared blankly for the sixty-mile return trip to New Haven, skin lobster-hued. The whole evening was spent gazing into space with not a thought in my head. Even the next morning, I didn't feel well, spoke little, and ate almost nothing. Lesson learned: heat stroke sucks. If you see the signs, do not dismiss them, as you will most certainly be tempted to do. (I kept insisting on the phone, in uncharacteristially crude language, that I was "not a pussy" and could continue on to NYC, my intended destination.)

If you feel heat stroke coming on, go to a cool place, take in some liquids, and rest.

So this time I took measures against rising body temperatures, cooling off first under a bridge and then in a general store, where they had a table set up, with old people sitting around it solving crossword puzzles. This was my first encounter with the folks of rural Virginia: hospitable, warm, and mystified as to why anyone would want to ride a bike on a hot day.

I started forming hasty generalizations about the people out here. I know the base of evidence is slim, and people are people, etc., but this is something that cannot be helped. My long weekend of meeting countryfolk yielded the following:

1. Old people out here are *great*. They have a lot of time on their hands. They all want to tell you stories about the past, about how things have changed, about their geneologies, about the formation of the park and how residents were kicked off the mountain by the federal government, how those who refused to leave had their homes burned to the ground. They use words like 'kin' in non-ironic, non-legal contexts. Very cool freakin' old people.

2. The young people here are like young people anywhere, except they reproduce earlier. I talked to a 4-months-advanced 21-year old in Front Royal whose 15-year-old sister was also expecting. According to her, this was not unusual.

While the elderly cling to the past, the youth just want to get out of their small towns and into the modern world.

3. Those between young and old... Hmmmmm. I don't have the kindest generalizations for them.

The women seemed a little too interested in me and looked a solid 15-20 years older than their stated ages. Obesity may have something to do with it, but it could also be the heavy smoking, drinking, and hard life that ensues when you're pregnant at 15.

Yes, I am impressed that you have a good credit rating. But no, that doesn't mean I'm into you. Sorry.

The men? Two anecdotes will have to suffice. On the third day of my journey I walked into a pizza-and-wings place in Front Royal and ordered their hottest wings: "suicidal". Next step down was "homicidal". Not sure why. Two giant flat-screen televisions were mounted on opposite walls. The first was tuned to CNN. The second was ESPN something-or-other (no, not the "ocho"!) featuring 800-horsepower 4x4 trucks circling around a course of mud. Guess where all eyes were turned?

Second anecdote. On one downhill section, which I was bombing in the high 30's, I saw a truck approaching from behind me, but couldn't pull over any further, as there was no shoulder. At the bottom of the hill, things widened briefly and I braked and pulled to the side to let him pass. My reward? The passenger leans out of his window, slaps the side of his gun-rack-outfitted pickup and yells "Asshole!" Why? Because I'm in lycra? Because that inflames his suppressed homoerotic tendencies? I don't know. I have a brief moment in which I contemplate entitling my blog post, "Fat, Retarded, and Packing Heat," but I think better of it.

Final observation. I saw some actual mullets, again, sported non-ironically as far as I could tell.

Back to the journey. Seven miles after the general store I am in a room in the Super 8 Motel in Front Royal, staring blankly at the wall. It takes me two hours to cool off enough to realize that time is passing and that I should probably force myself to eat something.

Two nights later, I would again stay in the Super 8, this time clearheaded enough to realize that the room has a television. Showing? Oh Brother Where Art Thou & Idiocracy.

More to come...

Glory be to God for dappled things, pt. 2

Most people don't think of the bike as a practical way to travel. While many of us have done centuries (typically, supported) or taken in 80 miles in a training day, we still won't go from *here* to *there* on a bike. We drive. We fly. We take a train. The exceptions are fully-loaded tourers and decked-out commuters. But what if you just have a racing bike and no racks, panniers, and such?

Truth: if you're not riding across the continent with Habitat for Humanity, you don't really need any of that stuff.

I planned my Memorial Day trip on a lark; I made reservations and got out the door in less than an hour, everything I needed stashed in a backpack fit for a sixth grader.

I left the city around 2 p.m., the same time as everyone else. Across the Chain Bridge and out through the suburbs, I flowed through the gridlock around me, lungs heaving, heart pumping, legs spinning. Around me, people sat motionless in their steel cages, blood pooling in their extremities. I imagined they were practicing zen techniques. Confined in expensive, high-powered vehicles, they were averaging the pace of an overweight jogger. How frustrating.

Virginia's tangle of asphalt ribbon represents a failed, decaying way of life. It's ridiculously resource intensive and it's hideously, hideously ugly. We are going to look back on this recent period of strip-mall-and-subdivision-development and cringe.

Yet there is an indescribable thrill in blowing through all the man-made ugliness at 20-24 mph under your own power: past the auto malls and gas stations, the chain restaurants and condo complexes ("Already Half Full!", i.e., still half empty), through the underpasses and by the quarries.

I went faster than traffic from DC out through the Manassas battlefields, where the road was still a parking lot. Then I took a right turn. Suddenly, no traffic. I stopped at a nearby gas station to refill my water bottles. Whoa! A southern accent I could barely decipher. Just like that, I was in a different Virginia. Red State Virginia. "Real" Virginia. A major improvement, aesthetically speaking, over Nouveau Riche Virginia.

Back on the bike now, I am hammering. The miles are ticking off and I'm deliriously happy. No more diesel fumes and honking horns. I'm gazing under green oaks, out at decaying farms and gentle-sloping hills. This countryside is speaking to me. Whose voice do I hear? Walt Whitman's? That "American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual". Just like this landscape.

Maybe it was the sight of Bull Run that brought Whitman to mind. Maybe because the fetishization of the Confederacy just annoys the hell out of me -- more on this in a bit -- that I recall the over-the-top line:

Make even the trestles to shake the dead where they lie awaiting the hearses.

In other words: kick some ass, Union.

But Whitman is not the voice of this place. What I hear is Gerard Manley Hopkins. What I see are the dappled things of Pied Beauty. "Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough." I see things "counter, original, spare, strange". I can't bring all of the lines to mind, but his words land like stones.

Now it's "God's Grandeur". The world does seem charged with the grandeur of God. Yes...

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil.

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

What language! What language! Who should be reading this? An old man. A superhero. Ian McKellan!

I look down at my arms and see goosebumps. Am I really having a religious experience? I'm not sweating. I have no appetite. The water from the gas station is still in the bottles, yet I'm not thirsty. Hmmmmm...

How does the poem go? It's an argument.

And for all this nature is never spent

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

So... nature's resilience proves God's sovereignty? The Holy Ghost freshens up the world overnight? After the suburban wasteland I've just ridden through, it doesn't seem like the strongest case anymore. This countryside exists because the people who live on it are too poor to despoil. The park I'm going to see tomorrow exists courtesy of FDR. The Holy Ghost had nothing to do with it.

My speed has dropped. My skin is dry and bright red. It's heatstroke.

More to come...

Glory be to God for dappled things, pt. 1

Conestoga left me with a wheezing, hacking cough, and on my following trip to New York it worsened. I returned to DC hung over, exhausted, and severely respiratorily infected. I also faced some irreversible and, as always, bewildering life choices. What to do?

Trial and purification... by bicycle.

Friday morning I plotted a four-day soul-and-body-cleansing route. That afternoon I would ride from DC to Front Royal. From there, I'd take the Skyline Drive down the Shenandoah to Elkton on Saturday. From Elkton back to Front Royal on Sunday. Home on Monday. Around 70-75 miles per day.

The trip would have been more fun with company, but fun was not the goal. This was a religious thing; it was about corporal mortification. I was supposed to reflect, have visions, or whatever. I sojourned alone.

As it happened, I made no life choices and failed to rid my lungs of invaders. I did find a substitute for the cilice, though. It's called a Fizik Antares.










The Antares is a brilliant invention, really, because it serves a dual monastic purpose. Not only does it mete out constant doses of pain, right up to your threshold. It's also an effective, if temporary, sexual disabler. Ride this baby enough and, like Origen of Alexandria -- who, according to Eusebius and Jerome, castrated himself to stave off sexual temptation -- you'll never have to worry about breaking that vow of celibacy.

More to come...

Conestoga: Circle the F-ing Wagons, It's a Genocide

Yes, I am aware of the many levels on which this title is offensive.

(1) The Conestoga-towing settlers, and not the wagon-encircling natives, perpetrated the genocide.

(2) While borderline cases of genocide (e.g., Armenians, Palestinians, etc.) are hotly contested by scholars and advocates alike, amateur cycling events aren't even in the running. To liken a hilly bike ride through the woods to the wholesale slaughter of an ethnic group is to inflate the currency of persecution. I guess it's like saying you got raped by your cell phone contract. The price of gas is not a holocaust. I get it.

(3) The F-bomb is always offensive.

But you're reading, aren't you? You're reading. I learned that little trick from one Ann Coulter. Thanks, baby. I owe you a drink, but nothing more. Nothing more, I say!

Seriously, though... the Conestoga Challenge lived up to its name. No wagons in sight, but plenty of obstacles, both external and self-inflicted. Foremost among these were the 20% grades. 20% is just a number. It doesn't sound all that bad. I mean, it's only a 4:1 ratio of over to up. It could be a lot worse, like a 1:4 ratio, for instance. But I suggest you try it. Stand up and hammer in your 39x25 for awhile. That's right. Actually feels pretty good for a few kicks, doesn't it? Now repeat until you taste blood in your throat.

Someone in the 3/4 race snapped his rear derailleur cable and got it stuck in his 12 cog in back. Up the sharpest hills, he ran with his bike, and by his own accounting, lost little to no ground on the 3/4 field. Yeah. Not a bad idea, actually.

Take those 20% grades, and throw in some screaming descents on narrow, sharply-crowned and pothole-ridden roads. Cross some poorly-marked, bewildering intersections and turn tightly against camber at the bottom of 50-mph bomb-fests. Add a straight, slightly uphill section with a 15-20 mph breeze in your face, and there you go. All the makings of Little Bighorn.

The 4/5 race had 60 starters, a massive group on narrow roads, with the yellow-line rule in effect throughout. After a neutral start I was near the back of the pack with Gregg, violently alternating braking and pedaling as the pack kept bunching up and, just as quickly, stretching out. Minor gaps up front kept expanding through the pack and whipsawing those of us near the back. It was impossible to ride smoothly in that congested, messy accordion, but I did my best.

Turning up a 10%+ grade, riders in front launched an attack, and just at that moment, someone flatted in the middle of the peleton, directly in front of Gregg and myself. With bikes and bodies bumping all around us, we steered out into the grass and around the mess, safe from the crash. Only now the first 30 riders had a 50-meter gap and on a brutal hill. Gregg and I jumped hard, and we made the front group, but at a cost. My legs were like, "Here's your pound of flesh, boys."

I was in the top 5% of my heart rate range for nearly the next 10 minutes, hanging off the back of the pack and climbing back on. Gregg was gone. I nearly missed a turn crossing a tricky intersection, was gapped while descending cautiously (i.e., poorly), and then dropped hard on the next big climb. We stragglers were all breathing like racehorses.

Spectators camped out at the sharpest inclines, urging us on. Even though they were mainly interested, I think, in seeing a human being explode before their very eyes, it was cool to have fans. I wish some of them had been running beside us shirtless, with pitchforks, antler-helmets, bodypaint, and such. But if that's not going to happen, I'll take nice, neighborly Pennsylvania folks on lawn chairs over the usual audience of locusts and cowbirds.

Back to the race... The bike twenty yards in front of me missed a sharp right turn. I don't blame the rider. I saw no markers anywhere, though my vision was so narrow at that point, I would have missed an illuminated billboard for free hookers and blow. (Not that I'm into that sort of thing *cough* Tom Boonen *cough*.) But I followed him and we rode for nearly four miles off the course before realizing our error and doubling back.

This is what I meant by "self-inflicted" obstacles. The worst part about Conestoga was not the 20% grade on the course. It was the 20% grade *off* the course that I didn't actually have to do.

Turns out, we were not the only ones. We hooked up with some other lost souls after doubling back, both of whom had taken different routes out for a couple of miles and back.

I knew my race was over, but I had paid my entry fee, packed up early and driven over two hours, and there were still these lost guys to beat, right? The will to power is strong with me. (Nevermind wattage. My Will-to-Power-Tap readings are off the scale.) So I hammered. And yeah, I didn't see those three guys again. Ah, the sweet taste of victory.

Up the worst of the hills the next time round, I saw the police escort's lights flashing from behind me. It was the 3/4 race, and I thought, "With this grade, I bet it's Rugg on a break". Yep. Rugg had at least 100 yards on the field, which was only like six or seven people by now. Yeah, that's right. Field shattered.

Rugg looked effortless, floating by me on the 15-20% grade, not so much an angel of death as a kid riding his bmx around the cul-de-sac. I handed him a bottle of water and told him he looked strong, which wasn't the right thing to say. He looked easy.

I pulled over when the five or six riders in the peleton came by and I saw that my brother wasn't there. What? Calvini dropped? Doubtful. An accident? Possible. But these were all 3's chasing Rugg, who is, by all accounts, a freak on hills. Polka-dot man. None of the five or so Shirks guys who started was there. Wow. Maybe my brother really was dropped. I mean, the rest of the field was gone, wasn't it?

When I crossed the line in full asthmatic attack, feverish and coming down with a cold -- full-blown illness at the time of this writing -- I saw my brother there cheering me in. He had indeed been dropped, despite throwing down some massive wattage numbers and hitting 50 mph on the downhills to catch back on. Insane.

End of the story... Some beastly rider bridged up to Rugg on the flats and helped him stay away from the field, then jumped at 200 yards to go and held it to the line.

In sum:

Gregg: valiant, but dropped
Me: cracked, lost, destroyed
Calvini: dropped, despite riding well
Rugg: wrecked nearly everyone
Conestoga: genocidal

My plan to win next year:

1. Starve and train til I have Andy Schleck's watt-to-kilo ratio.
2. Nurture an indifference to death.
3. Know the course.

That's definitely do-able.

CAT 5 HEROES

For me, Fort Ritchie was just another day of MABRA-tic ignominy. But for two shining beacons of wonder and awe it was a day of glorious triumph.

Marcus Aurelius Floro, you proved worthy of your namesake, "the wise," by positioning yourself shrewdly in the final turn and taking second in the following sprint. As the great emperor and sage philosopher once observed:

“The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.”

I don't know if you were the strongest in the field, Marcus, but you sure organized the hell out of the non-obvious. Smart, gutsy racing. Hail to thee...

The second of today's heroes was John LaRue. With a lap to go you took the manliest of gambits. You bet the guy behind you that he couldn't hang on your wheel. You bet all the guys behind that guy that they couldn't jump and catch you either. You cursed aerodynamic advantage, the swirling vortex of peleton power; you surged off the front like Cancellara in the Tour of Switzerland. Man-versus-the-wind. Man-versus-nature. Man-versus-himself.


You were only just nipped at the line. That was GLORIOUS, dude! A day to be remembered... and repeated.

Nota bene: it is my understanding that neither of today's heroes had previously placed in a bike race.

Why I Love Crappy-Category Amateur Racing

A new allegation against Alex Rodriguez: he tipped opposing players about what was coming next from his own team's pitcher. A-Rod would signal the batter to expect high heat, a slider off the plate, or a pick off. In return, the opposing players -- a cabal of midfielders -- would tip A-Rod when he was at the plate.

It's just what an economist would predict, because giving tips doesn't hurt you as an individual, while receiving them helps you. But what a devastating blow to the sport of baseball. Whereas steroid use cheats the history books, the fans, and non-steroidal players (if there are any), tipping cheats your own team. I mean, free agency is one thing...

Professional cycling is apparently not so different, though. Everybody knows about the drug abuse in the peleton. What is, perhaps, less well known is that riders routinely sell races or grab UCI points by sandbagging and then sprinting in events where they should be working for their teams.



I've been reading A Dog in a Hat, by Joe Parkin, an American who raced professionally in Europe in the late eighties and early nineties. Parkin's gripping and well-told tale will shock even those who are already resigned to the fact that everybody dopes.

He describes the typical scene before kermis, in Belgium, where riders prepare for the race in someone's living room near the start line, shooting up and/or ingesting their favorite drug cocktail: some of the racers, amphetamine addicts who race in order to use, rather than the other way around.

He tells how riders infuse clean urine, catheter-to-bladder, before testing, or sneak it into testing rooms via condom-in-body-orifice.

But more disturbing: when Parkin gets into his first winning break with nine other riders, he realizes that they're working together well and will stay away from the pack. He's thrilled, knowing he'll place top-ten, but his director asks him if he's in the deal.

"Nee," I responded. "There's a deal?"

"Of course there is, dummy. Why do you think they are all so content with each other? You must attack. When they take you back, you must go again and again, until they speak with you. Understand?"

Parkin follows orders and eventually they let him in on the deal: seven thousand francs.

Parkin explains:

"Over the years I have recounted the stories of selling kermis races, and the response has run from shocked disbelief and anger to fascination. My experience as a pro cyclist in Europe has left me with a somewhat altered moral code, such that many of the things that bother normal people are invisible to me. This race that I sold would not be the last. In fact, I was able to make good spending money by making it into the breakaway and then attacking at precisely the right moment if I thought a deal was forming. A rider from the town where the race is being held will often want to win more than anything else in the world. Think of this as Homecoming for bike racers. As such, the local cafe might offer him a small bonus for winning in front of his people. Most likely, he would also receive a bonus from his team. Add to that the prize money, assuming he didn't have to split it with any teammates, and his cost for buying a kermis race could be reasonable."

Interesting. Very interesting. It is, of course, just what an economist would predict. But it goes against the very spirit of bike racing.

The Parkin book is a great read and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in pro cycling, or in human nature for that matter. Parkin never achieves much in terms of results, but he becomes a real European pro in every sense: language, values, skills, body-type. If you'd like to know what that means, well, A Dog in a Hat is probably your best guide.

Bob Roll was racing in Europe at the same time, and in fact advised Parkin to leave the U.S. for Belgium. He pens a ridiculous foreword, which is, by itself, worth the price of the book. In the following excerpt, he recounts running into Parkin along the canal, years after seeing him last:

"Joe was no longer the rheumatoid doughy tosser type that ruled Stateside racing in those days. He was an avenging angel of misery and, best of all, not a starry-eyed regional time trial champ with delusions of grandeur about to be sent home in a pain-induced coma after falling asleep in a crosswind battle. No, Joe knew the score. Joe had become the inside skinny. Joe was a twelve-toothed assassin.

What was it in those bleak landscapes that carved the fat off Joe's carcass like vultures around a kill? The weeks, months, and years of isolation in Belgium? The vicious, epic races that were virtually unknown by Americans then but are now part of our own cycling lore? The ancient, semi-illusionary dialect of a downtrodden people who revere cyclists as beacons of hope and cultural pride? The food, the dirty deals, the pig-shit toothpaste, the two-faced team managers, the smoky bars, homicidal teammates, and demented competitors? All these things and many more that you will read carved Joe into a missile of sinew, veins, sunken eyes, narrow shoulders, skinny arms, and huge ass and legs typical of a survivor of the toughest game on two wheels.

You should count yourself lucky to have stumbled across a treasure map from the old country of forgotten dreams and buried riches. In Belgium, bike racing rules, and I am not surprised in the least that Joe Parkin was a Flemish prince.

I have a rather ominous premonition that many a cycling fan will take umbrage with the grittier side of our sport that Joe writes about. If you do, you do not deserve to read this book -- and feel free to FO and D! For everyone else, you may now read and be enlightened and entertained by the most authentic book ever written about making a two-wheeled living as a pro cyclist in Europe."

The Quale of Turkey Hill

A recent ad from Carmichael Training:

"37 years old. THREE KIDS. Lots of business travel. SOUND FAMILIAR?"

Yeah, sounds very familiar. But how about this?

"AP athlete of the year from 2002-2005. BEAT CANCER. Seven-time winner of the Tour de France, RESTING HEART RATE: 32. Max heart rate: 201. DATES CELEBRITIES. Has piles of gold lying around the house that weigh more the UCI bike limit. SOUND FAMILIAR?"

No. No it does not.

Very little about Lance Armstrong is "familiar". I'm gonna quote David Foster Wallace: "To be a top athlete, performing, is to be that exquisite hybrid of animal and angel that we average unbeautiful watchers have such a hard time seeing in ourselves."

And yet, we do see a little bit of that hybrid in ourselves. We fantasize it anyway. We see it in potential. We see it in our greatest moments. Which is why the Carmichael ad will work. It's why Lance inspires. He's not just transcendent. He's also flesh and blood. (And maybe some cow-blood derivatives.) What separates Lance from us is only an iron will and a few hundred thousand mitochondria. That's all.

I'm afraid my race report will not be inspiring in that exquisite-animal-angel-hybrid, familiar-yet-unfamiliar, immanent-yet-transcendent kind of way. It's more like just the animal side, the familiar side, the immanent side.

It's like the war-movie screenplay I've always wanted to write. It opens like Saving Private Ryan: D-Day madness, from the soldier's-eye point of view. Within minutes, the character you've been inhabiting on screen gets shot. Credits roll. (I'm not suggesting the ushers come out and shoot the actual movie watchers. That would be one hell of a war movie!)

For a lot of soldiers, that is what war is actually like. You get shot. You die. In battle, the camera does not hover, lovingly, over the people who matter, pausing the action when one of them is hurt or in danger, and following out their narratives in a dramatically satisfying way. And when you die, your movie is over. YOUR camera doesn't pan over to your best friend who goes on to avenge / mourn / learn life lessons from your death. It's just OVER. But we watchers, spectators, always follow the survivors.

And that is true in racing as well.

All of this to say: my race report for the Turkey Hill Country Classic will be about as popular as my war movie. Yeah, that's right: I got dropped. Bang, I'm dead, roll credits.

It wasn't exactly a surprise. I'm untalented and I've been training for less than a month. I knew it would be rough going out there with that kind of fitness. It didn't help matters when the riders from the 3/4 race came in. There was a haunting, hollow-eyed look about them. I was reminded of a scene from Glory, the Matthew Broderick / Denzel Washington film about the 54th regiment from Massachusetts in the Civil War. In the scene, the 54th is passed by another regiment marching back from the front lines. The 54th is cracking jokes when one of the marchers says, "Men are dying down that road."

The 3/4 race featured crashes and the Gamber Wall. The field was shattered, literally -- I saw a cracked helmet and a bloody buttock -- and in racing-speak as well. Men were dying down that road.

But, apart from our own individual bouts with fear, pain, thrill of victory, agony of defeat, etc., the 4/5 race was uneventful. No crashes. The course was hilly, but not absurdly so, with two climbs of about 80 ft. and one triple climb of around 200 ft per lap.

My positioning was poor: I was in the back quartile of the pack for most of the race. With each hill, and especially, with each corner, I could feel the mounting fatigue as I sprinted to 're-compress the accordion'. Yet, there wasn't a lot of room to move up, except in the moments when I had the least energy.

I could see one of my friends up at the front of the field, launching off into space, then slowly coming back to earth. He was just having fun.

I got dropped coming out of a corner in the third lap, 13 miles in. There was a very short sprint, two guys went around me, and I was gapped. Too bad I was nearly on my limit. I tried sprinting, but the legs would not co-operate. I turned around and saw only the police escort. No riders in sight. None.

It's like drowning in open water, not because you can't swim, but because you can't swim forever. Fatigue sets in. Except for your own breathing, it's quiet. There's nothing to mark the urgency. Your mind is telling you that your SURVIVAL is at stake. But the natural world around you -- and Lancaster county is so peaceful, so pastoral -- is indifferent. I'm gonna quote Auden:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That for all they care, I can go to hell

And to hell I went. Sprinting wasn't going to work. My legs were balloons of acid. Worthless. The only option was to settle into a steady rhythm. In front of me, a mild set of hills. Only 80 feet of elevation over the next a mile or so. I lost even more distance, but bombed the downhill and took the corner well, without having to slow for any riders ahead, because, um there *weren't* any. I was gaining on the pack and starting to believe I could fight my way back on.

Over the next mile or so, on a slightly uphill grade, I time trialed ever closer, the police escort, menacingly, right behind me. Steady, steady rhythm. Steady. Smooth pedal stroke. Deep into the drops. Knees high. Massively into the red. World shrinking. Fighting doubt. Don't give up on that wheel 50 yards in front of you. Nothing matters but that wheel. Get that wheel. Get that wheel. Catch that fucking wheel!

And I catch it. I catch it.

And then I'm dropped again. This time, falling back rapidly, helpless, my heart and lungs and legs exploding, bike weaving, police escort zipping past, as if to say, in an official capacity, "You're DONE, sir".

I gather myself and settle in to work again. The peleton is receding quickly, but I still want to chase. Want to chase, but can't. Until the end of the race, I'm alone, out in the Pennsylvania countryside.