20 years of progress

Here’s a measure of progress in the last 20 years: when Greg LeMond won the 1989 World Championship (in an amazing finish), we had to grovel for token TV coverage and scraps of news buried on page 10 of the sports section. 20 years later, on a rainy Sunday morning, I sat and drank coffee [...]

Suck wheel or get dropped?

Here’s the situation: you make what looks to be the winning breakaway. But quickly you realize that if you keep working at the same pace you’re likely to be dropped from the break.
What do you do? Sit on and be a wheel-sucker, or continue to work and most likely get dropped?
This was the [...]

Don’t try this

When you see someone on a bike talking on a cell phone, do you think, “what a wanker”? What about texting? What about someone laying in the road, one foot clipped into a pedal and one hand holding the cell phone?
Yeah, that would be me.
My defense is: the text was from my [...]

Don’t need a weatherman …

What did we do in the days before weather radar was a few mouse clicks away? We looked up at the sky, decided it was safe to ride … and then got wet a lot more often.
The forecast today was for ’scattered showers’. Scattered is OK, as long as the rain is scattered [...]

Just riding around

I’m coming to the conclusion that interesting encounters happen more often while you are out “just riding around”. That’s “just riding around”, as opposed to an intentional training ride — the dreaded 2×20 minute intervals, hill repeats, sprints, etc. For example …
Not long ago while just riding around I found myself helping an [...]

Wrong time to start riding to work

The ideal time to bike to work is in the middle of summer, right? Warm mornings, lots of daylight, and most importantly no parents rushing to get their kids to school on time.
But most of the time riding to work seemed to interfere with training: need an easy ride on Mon; Tues go to [...]

Mind your equipment

Some things don’t belong in races.
To the rider in the Shreve road race: you must remove that giant saddle bag attached to your bike. Especially since it contains a bunch of tools that clank around every time you hit a bump. But if you do insist on racing with it, you must at [...]

Tug of war

In 2006 I went to see a pro cyclocross race in the Netherlands.
Before the big race were amateur and masters races. When I saw the local guys cleaning off their bikes, standing around rehashing the race, I wished I had been out there with them. After seeing the pros race I thought, “I [...]

How old are you again?

My birthday came, and I wasn’t a year older.  I’ve already been a year older for the last 9+ months.
That is one of the oddities that comes with having a USCF racing license.  Your racing age changes on January 1st, not on your birthday.  Since being asked your age is most common in the racing [...]

Like greyhounds chasing rabbits

The curse of competitiveness.  Once switched on, it seems impossible to switch off.
You’re out on an easy recovery ride.  You rode hard yesterday.  Or you raced.  Or maybe you have a race tomorrow.  In any case, you don’t want to go too hard, so you’re just spinning around at 18mph.
Someone passes you.   With hairy [...]