Rants and Revelations

I am driving a car, I am not competing in the Tour de France. When travelling with other cars at the same speed, it is not necessary to peel off and go back to the back of the line occassionally for a rest. It’s not necessary to signal to the other cars that it’s their turn up front. When coming up to pass another car, it’s not necessary to pause behind him to catch my breath so that when I pass him I can blow past him so quickly that he’s not tempted to follow on my wheel. And I definitely should not be tossing my water bottle out the window at the feet of pedestrians. Oh, and those pedestrians aren’t holding that water bottle out for you, they’re just standing at the cross walk with a drink in their hand.

That is all.

Once again the organizers of the Tour managed to put the most exciting stages on the weekend. And once again Team Discovery, the supposed best team in the tour, managed to get caught flat footed on the first climbing day after a couple of flat days, just like last Friday. And once again, Lance Armstrong proved himself capable of answering any attacks from the other Big Men of the tour, and dishing it back.
Continue reading ‘Weekend Update’ »

That was the most amazing stage of the Tour de France I’ve seen in years. The peloton falling to peices, all the Big Men being shelled off the back, and Lance pulls up to Popovych and tells him to launch him, and Popovych destroys the three T-Mobile pretenders to the throne, and launches Lance. Five guys left at the front, and Lance sets the pace for a while, and goes to the back of the five to take a quick look, goes back to the front, raises the pace again and slowly kills Basso. Rassmussen, Valverde, Macebo? Who picked them to be up there with Armstrong?

Can Lance keep this up? Can any human challenge him?

I’ve been thinking more about who will lead the Discovery team next year. Obviously for the Discovery team, the consideration isn’t about what’s best for American cycling, it’s about what’s the best use of their advertising dollar and which will get them the most press. But US Postal and now Discovery have been doubly blessed by having an American team lead by an American rider who is winning, and winning big in the biggest race in the sport. A lot of American sponsors have come and gone because they weren’t able to field a winning team or because their wins weren’t being done by an American.

If it came down to having an American rider leading but not winning, or having an non-American rider leading and winning, I don’t think either of those is going to be good for American cycling or Discovery. So I think they’ve got to go with Hincape and hope that in the next two weeks he proves himself capable of leading and winning.

This time of year, I’m majorly enthralled by the Tour de France. I’m going to presume to explain a few things about professional cycle racing even though I’ve only been following it avidly for 7 years now (and a little less avidly back when one of the riders in the peleton was a guy I’d shared tips on preventing penile frostbite with). Some of this might be laughably wrong to people who are really into the sport, but it should be close enough for the rest of you.
Continue reading ‘A tale of two super domestiques’ »

Watching the Tour de France coverage the other day, a couple of riders were accidentally shown by the cameras on a “natural break” (normally they show something else when the riders stop to take care of the biological necessities), and Phil Ligget was talking about how the riders won’t attack when a rival is taking a “natural break”. Paul Sherwin said that when he was riding, there was one rider who frequently attacked at those situations, so one day when he was off his bike for a break, the other riders stole his bike and pushed it a few kilometers up the road before abandoning it in a ditch. The rider had to wait for his team car to give him a spare bike, and maybe learnt a bit of a lesson about pay-back.

Then Phil told a story about when he was racing, and there was a guy who used to sprint on ahead until he was out of sight of the peleton, and then he’d hide and wait, and rejoin the peleton, and then enjoy being sucked along as the peleton tried to chase down this break that they couldn’t seem to catch sight of. He said this would continue for a few minutes until somebody recognized him in the back of the peleton. I guess this was before the days of race radios.

Just a couple of amusing anecdotes to while away the days before the race begins in earnest, with the first mountain stage on Saturday.

It’s nice to see Lance in yellow again, though.

I have a theory about this year’s race. The two time trials in the early flat stages of the race make it seem like it was designed to make Lance and his team have to get yellow earlier than they like and force them to defend it. And then the fact that both Saturday and Sunday’s mountain stages have long downhills to the finish means that no matter what Lance does in the mountains, the other “big men” will have a chance to catch him back up for the finish. I think Tuesday stage with two 1st category climbs and a mountain top finish will be the one that really shows whether this is Lance Armstrong’s tour again.

Ah, Spring.

Last night Vicki and I went kayaking. It was great. Vicki used Baycreek’s new Hurricane Aquasports Tracer which looks like a really nice West Greenland style kayak, very similar lines to my Skerray or the Avocet she was using last year, but made of “Trylon” plastic using a new vacuum forming method. Surprisingly sharp bow for being plastic. So is my Skerray RMX, but Valley are famous for how good their rotomoulded kayaks are. We saw lots of geese, some guarding tiny fluffy goslings. Also saw swans, most of them in aggressive postures, swallows, red winged blackbirds, a flicker (which was a surprise) and a kingfisher (which was also a surprise). The river was fast, but not so high as to make the weir too challenging. The reeds are starting to come in, but they’re still low enough that we could see what was down the other branch when the creek diverged. We went pretty far, and my elbows aren’t that sore today.

As another highlight of spring, today was the first real mountain stage of the Giro D’Italia. It’s been great how the sprint stages have managed to avoid being “the Alessandro Petacchi show” that they were last year, but it’s good to be up to the part that matters, where the GC riders make or break. Basso did great today, and I was surprised to see Cunego lost ground to Simoni. I’m still mad that OLN TV isn’t covering it daily like they did last year. And the “live streaming” software only works on Windows and probably wouldn’t work through the company proxy server anyway, plus what’s the point without Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin? It’s hard to get a real feel for what’s going on when all you’ve got is the web updates, but CyclingNews.com is doing a pretty good job.

And the third highlight is the Kodak Perigrine Falcons. I haven’t been following them as obsessively as I used to when I could compare notes with Maddy, but it’s good to see that they’ve hatched another 5 this year. Pigeons beware!

I don’t know why I get as excited about the road bike season as I do. As a rider, it was mountain bikes that I liked, not road bikes, and even there I only did one piddly little race before my knees started hurting. But the season’s started, at least as far as OLN TV’s coverage of it is concerned. And that’s a good thing.
Continue reading ‘Bike season’ »

Well, another Tour de France is over. And it was a great one.
Continue reading ‘Tour de France wrap up’ »

Last night, the Good was that Vicki and I went kayaking. I enjoy it so much - being closer to the water than in a canoe, it seems like you’re just flying along. Vicki was a little pissed at me because every time I tried to do a succession of 5 or 10 good technique paddle strokes, I’d end up 20-30 metres in front of her. Towards the end I think I figured out how to do good technique without pulling too hard, so I could paddle well but not too fast. I feel a good sort of pain afterwards - muscle tiredness, but no untoward joint pain that I can detect.

The Bad was that my TiVo recording of the Alpe d’Huez time trial cut out just as Lance Armstrong was about to catch Ivan Basso and Ullrich was still out on the course. Dammit - I wanted to see Lance’s climb on the upper parts.

The Ugly is that after a few hours of feeling that my glasses weren’t working out, I tried a few hours without them, and the net result was horrific eyestrain - not sure if the eyestrain came from the time I had with glasses or the time without them. I know that this morning my eyes are all gunked up, which seems to be happening because of the dryness I feel when wearing my glasses.

As if I didn’t have enough reasons already. One of the best things about having a TiVo is that I can record the live Tour de France stages and watch them when I get home, instead of the half-hour summaries that I sometimes got to see back in the years BT (Before TiVo).
Continue reading ‘Yet another reason to HATE Time Warner’ »

Another great day in the Giro d’Italia.
Continue reading ‘Giro!’ »

Cunego does it again in the Giro. I haven’t watched the TV coverage yet, but I’ve been following it on the live updates on the Cycling News web site, and it seems like a masterful ride once again.
Continue reading ‘CUNEGO!’ »

Today’s stage in the Giro D’Italia was the best so far.
Continue reading ‘Now *that* is bike racing!’ »

I’ve been enjoying watching the 87th Giro d’Italia, 2004 this year.

I’ve got a few thoughts about it, though.
Continue reading ‘Some thoughts on the Giro’ »