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?

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.

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.

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.

2009 Season Starts: Camp in West VA

The Viking and El Presidente

For three days in mid-March, twenty six of us amateurs and our one pro rode through the mountains George Washington National Park. Four rides, 168 miles long, 12,000 feet up, mostly in rain and with temperatures in the mid 40s.

This is our second year as a club. Last year there were about 15 of us, only one with racing experience, and he was too busy to do anything other than give us some advice (e.g., don't wear underwear under your bib shorts). We were naive, enthusiastic, fitter than most CAT 5s, but also dumber. We caused our share of accidents and committed tactical blunders. We did do a lot of attacking, not knowing any better, but at least we did more than cluster together and hide from the wind.

By the end of the season, we'd had a number of CAT 5s ranked in the top 100 nationally, and the top ranked local CAT 4s. And we had a few riders with real potential: young guys like Tony Abate, Tim Rugg, Tim Brown, Lance Anderson, and Sam McCadney.

I hadn't ridden much since October, so camp was my attempt to jumpstart my training year. Clearly, others had been riding hard all winter. The sixty mile afternoon ride with 8,000 feet of climbing killed me. Miles of uphill grades steeper than 10%, my cadence at <50, speed around 6 mph, and I was absolutely roasted. I got dropped with about 5 miles (and 2,000 feet uphill) to go.

I nearly gave up. If I hadn't seen Dennis climbing in his 42/21 on his ancient cast iron Bianchi, I might have called it quits.

When I finally made it back to the cabin, I reminded everyone that I'd gained 20 lbs since last year, and that I'd ridden exactly six times since October. I made the rounds, explaining this to everyone. Repeatedly.

Truth is, it's awesome seeing the improvement in those who trained with dedication. Some guys hired coaches, others read Friel's Cyclist's Bible and created their own plans, guys bought Powertaps and Quarqs, guys rode through snow and on Christmas Day and got up from warm beds (leaving their SOs cold), guys stopped drinking beer (unbelievable, huh?), guys went to bed early, guys ate vegetables.

Now some guys have the watts/weight ratio of CAT 2 riders. Knock on wood, they're going to tear some legs off this season.

After Mt. Weather and Naked Mt.