Vichyssoise and Types of #Cyclocross Mud

It has been said the Inuit have 400 names for snow.  It’s only urban legend of course.  The truth is the Inuit, like me, are just a very colorful, overly dramatic and adjective laden people.  Thinking about cyclocross however, there has to be 400 types of mud.  I’ve personally ridden in Bronchitis snot, Chunky Gazpacho, Stripper Wrasslin’ Mud, Cincinnati Chili and so on. 

Saturday as the sun came out in Columbus, after 2 inches of rain, elite racers feared The Peanut Butter and not because of allergies.  Peanut Butter can quickly become Mesa Verde mud, named after the type of mud/grass mix the Anasazi used to build their cliff dwellings at the namesake National Park.  Consequently when that type freezes on contact, and can only be removed by a combination of welding torches and jack hammers, you get Dirty Igloo Mud, much like we had at Masters Worlds in Louisville this past winter.  See how that Inuit line came full-circle?

Back in Columbus Saturday, during the Masters race we had more of the chunky gazpacho type of mud.  It was a very wet mud, not as watery as the cold potato delicacy known as Vichyssoise mud or the romantic pottery mud from the movie Ghost.  Like an Italian wine with good nose, this mud featured delicate garnishes of grasses, hints of wild flowers and bites of thistles and briars.  On any Sunday afternoon in fall, you can find grandmothers selling the exact same mud concoction vacuum packed for $22/pickle jar with cute pastel labels as an anti-aging serum at the farmers market in Park City Utah. 

Sadly, as witnessed first-hand after the elite women’s race, after the gazpacho spoiled in the sun for a half hour, it became Emotional Mud, the exact type of mud that will cause a 14 year old girl racer to become so upset she will snap at her family near the start/finish between bouts of shuddering tears.  Kudos to the entire women’s podium for consoling her after the race.  For obvious reasons, one of them being how I could be perceived as a creepy old masters racer, I had to leave the estrogenfest, but it was heartwarming.

Columbus Women's Podium

Unlike the non-sticky Vichyssoise, Sunday’s mud stuck a bit to the bike but, due to the preponderance of puddles (I’m not sure if I’m using that word correctly, but the phrase sounds congressmanly awesome), washed itself off the bike every few hundred meters.  Shifters still shifted.  Brakes slowed.  The bike didn’t get that much heavier whether you rode 200 meters or 10 miles.  Not many switched bikes during the race.    

That said, there is a point when a cyclocross racer should switch bikes due to mud accumulation.  Rather than go through the entire scientific calculation on my Garmin 8045S, (which has something to do with the depth of mud cubed, divided by pi and multiplied by the square root of the area of the starting grid) I’ll spell it out simply.  You need to ditch your bike a half lap before it gets bad.  It’s like deciding whether to add another cup of kale to your morning smoothie.  You have to know when to stop before you’re stuck with a liter of bitter green barf.  Like bike stopping mud, there is nothing worse than too much kale.

Vichyssoise (Cold Potato Soup)

It should be elementary, especially for the well-educated cyclocross racer, but another confounding law of nature comes into play when racing cyclocross in the mud.  Bikes are slower in water.  Ka-pow!  Mushroom cloud above your head.  Blew your mind didn’t I?  Sure now, in your dry air-conditioned office with a heart rate 35% of max, it makes perfect sense that you would be hard pressed to ride 50 meters across an Olympic swimming pool.  However, every muddy race, I’m amazed how many people don’t realize bikes are fastest on smooth concrete.  Using these two known constants, you should be able to calculate the fastest way through any cyclocross course.  Ride the most solid ground possible, unless the reroute will cost you more time than riding over the slower surface.  However, sometimes in cyclocross common sense and elementary math are Hope Diamond-rare.  

#Juniors: Riding Through Butterflies

Four years ago when I nudged my daughter Mackenzie into bike racing we had one consistent concern from week to week - butterflies. Not the kind of butterflies that flutter around your backyard and make little girls run with a net squealing with excitement, but the deep down nervousness that makes the stomach tighten and questions of doubt arise at the dinner table.

My kids were so tight, their stomachs so consumed with butterflies, they were afraid of being sick on the start line or on the bike.  I explained.  We all get nervous, especially when it matters.  Many adult racers go through the same thing.  My friends from BioWheels Gerry and Joe are known for it.  While making last minute equipment tweaks, I've heard them coughing at the team tent.  It happens, even to mom and dad.  It's a reflection that you care about what you're doing.  They'll fly away at the sound of the starter's pistol.  After several minutes of coaxing they'd typically loosen up a bit, at least enough to get them to start line.

Today, probably a few hundred races later, the butterflies before a normal Ohio Valley race have dulled to a mere blip on the radar screen. It's a local race, no big deal.  Occasionally something will rear its head, a misplaced glove or a rubbing wheel, and the wings of nervousness will flutter momentarily, but never long enough to escape the net of reason.  Lately, I thought they had migrated away. 

Not so.  There was nervousness tonight in Rimouski.  They were back, big red maple leaf winged Canadian butterflies. It wasn't unexpected.  It wasn't so much that this is a UCI level international stage race.  On top of that, it is their first time team time trial in a foreign country with hundreds of teens watching, kids their own age, peers.  At Mackenzie's side a French speaking Canadian counted down.  "Trois!  Deux!  Un!  Allez!"

Nothing was familiar tonight in Canada, except for one thing...the butterflies.  Now, after four years of racing, hundreds of start lines, the butterflies were back, but this time they were telling my kids everything would be okay.  This is normal.  This is how it is.  Now it feels familiar.  They were where they needed to be.  Like their colorful pretty fluttering cousins, this time the nervous butterflies we're comforting.  Without uttering a word every kid knew the butterflies would take them to the start and see them to the finish.

Tri State 6 Hours Versailles: The Truth Is, It Never Comes

Pre-race Meeting: Courtesy Scott Herrmann

“I don’t get it Dad,” I remember a young bike racer saying while sitting with legs stretched on the grass  after a criterium.  With the clank of the cowbells and whiz and flash of the next race behind, being fatherly, he said in more or less words, “it’ll come.”  The racer nodded reassured and hopeful.  It was a soft way to speak the truth.

Courtesy Kent Baumgardt

Holding our 2^nd place at the Tri-State 6 Hours Co-Ed Duo race in Versailles, IN by a thin margin, as I struggled to get my flat UST tire off my bike, I was faced with the hard truth.  “It” doesn’t whistle down the sidewalk and politely ring your doorbell.  “It” doesn’t tap you on the shoulder and ask you to follow through the peloton.  “It” doesn’t appear at the side of the trail like a bearded wise-man with a reading of the Barnett Bicycle Manual.  “It” never really comes.

This isn’t going to be one of those immature whiner bike racer stories that take away from the preparedness, strength and skills of the competition.  Gerry and I clung to 1st for a while.  We  finished 4^th.  Those other teams earned every bit of it.  So here’s to you: Jason and Janelle, Maria and Brandon, Cooper and Christian!  You were strong, tenacious, skilled, and dialed in your transitions.  Bravo!  Chapeau!

"Tent Alley" Courtesy Nick Lucas c/o Tri State 6 Hours

For goodness sake, Brandon and Maria had diapered twins in their tent.  Cooing and saying all kinds of goo-goo ga-ga gibberish, I overheard Dad baby chatting with them between laps.  He played with and fed them.  They were right next door on tent alley.  As I wolfed down recovery mix surrounded by every bike racing luxury a team of 8 could house under our sponsor’s 20x10 tent, he wrangled diapers and smooshed peas solo in a pop-up.  It was adorable. 

Out of the hour or so we had between laps, he spent 59 minutes making sure his little girl and boy were fed, clean, mosquito free and entertained.  With minutes to spare, he grabbed a bite for himself, pulled a water bottle out of the cooler, changed his shirt, picked his bike off the ground, gave his duo-teammate the kid-status update, handed her the keys to the crib, and was off again. 

So to blame our 4^th place position on a stick that flew into my spokes and a subsequent flat would be for him to place blame on two of the cutest babies you’ve ever seen.  I’m not kidding.  Those kids are stuff ‘em in a cabbage outfit and call Anne Geddes cute.

Courtesy Kent Baumgardt

You can bet, right now Brandon is diabolically dreaming up a quicker way to spoon peas just as I am finding a thinner tire lever to quickly get under a stubborn UST.  We’ll both train harder to be able to pad our gaps better should a flat or a dirty diaper come at an inopportune moment.  I’m patting myself on the back for quickly bending the broken spoke out of the way.  He should give himself kudos, because I heard nary a cry in the 3 hours I lived next door to his kids.  He’s obviously practiced his routine better than I have.

The truth is “it” never comes.  You have to go out and get it. 

(Note: The Tri-State 6 Hours Series gives special thanks to CORA and IMBA National MTB Patrol.  The next race is July 14^th, 2013 at East Fork State Park in Ohio)  

Being Eastwardly Challenged

Your internal compass functions equally in all directions.  Mine?  Not so much.  Maybe you lived your whole life in Indianapolis, the Circle City.  Columbus and Cincinnati are like Indianapolis, you can travel in all directions for miles and miles.  Count your blessings native buckeyes.  Same goes for those growing up with a baby bottle of Bourbon in Louisville.  Others, like me, grew up in a world devoid of easterly travel by land.  

A Milwaukeean by birth, while I have a wine aficionado type appreciation for the variety of cheese curds, I am forever directionally disabled.  So is the guy from Miami I met via email this week.

Aside from the Browns, I can relate with people in Cleveland, northwardly challenged.  Being from Milwaukee, like those who grew up in Chicago, I have no concept of east.  I’d assume riders in LA have a hard time with west.  West is ocean.  I was born with east meaning Great Lakes.  Joe go no east.

East is brow furrowing confounding to me.  When I give directions to someplace east of Cincinnati, I lack the typically manly confidence.  I slur out the word east with a slow point to the right.  “It’s about 8 miles eeeeaaaast of here.  Yep.  East.  That way.  That’s east, right?” 

Being eastwardly challenged has its rewards.  Anytime I’m east of town, I feel like I’m only a few minutes away, even if it’s 20 miles.  Being east of home has always meant close to home.  I could never stray too far without getting my feet wet.  My brain is lopsided.  If I were to create a graph, it’s nearly a 2 to one ratio.  2 miles west = 1 mile east in terms of feeling far from home.  This can be dangerous.  What feels like 14 miles, can easily be 30 miles.  Due to my condition, I’m more likely to bonk on a ride east of home.

I got an email from a guy living in Miami last week who asked for advice on the best area to live in Cincinnati and be close to good riding and far away from busy roads.  It was obvious he suffered my disability as well.  Logically, appearing a short drive to the city and an easy escape into rural riding on a map, he was considering Mason.  Mason!  I had to save him from the six-lane freeway as a main street hell-hole.

Mason is a suburban heaven, surrounded by a purgatory moat of traffic jams.  The only saving grace is the right hooks and middle finger throwing come from pretty women driving Lexus SUV’s.  I had to open his eyes to the circle city concept, where living more central to the city affords more pleasant riding in all directions, and consequently, living on the fringes, limits your options.  I live 5 miles from downtown Cincinnati.  I do most of my riding out my front door in all directions, even east.  In 13 years, I’ve never ridden my bike through Mason.  In fact, it’s avoided.  Conversely, the amount of riders passing the end of my urban street on any given week is probably in the hundreds.

When a city offers travel by road in all directions, people and traffic are more spread out.  Imagine how the dynamic of understanding a city would change if you took all the people on the Eastside of Cincinnati or Indianapolis or Louisville, and moved them all west from a centerline through downtown.  Welcome to Chicago, Miami and Milwaukee.  The size of the suburbs is double.

You can’t blame Miami guy.  In Miami, there’s a whole lot of life crammed in that little corner of Florida, let alone King James’ and Pitbull’s entourages.  It was obvious he has no concept of east as well, and occasionally wrestles with south.  There is definitely no east and only a little fart of outlet store highway leading south of Miami to the keys.  Every day, he has to navigate a dense suburban choking hell to lay wheels to peaceful asphalt somewhere north and/or west of the city.  I must have blown his mind when I told him the best places to live and ride in Cincinnati are actually closer to the city. 

The beauty of the circle city is on any given day, I can ride south in to the hills of Northern Kentucky, past the riverboats west along the Ohio River, north on the bike path to Loveland, Xenia and Dayton and yes, east.  Glorious east past the riches of Indian Hill, I can pedal through a covered bridge, down miles of one lane farm roads which eventually turn into switchbacks up the Appalachian Mountains and back down for hundreds of miles before east ever comes to an end with soaking wet feet.

A Cyclist’s Time is Fluid

Pictograph of Hands in Red Rock Canyon, NV

This blog has always been about the trailside tree with the tumor; Mike the grey haired commuter on the maroon Miata, lining up the 80 water bottles from my pantry end-to-end and performing dare devil stunts over them.  They’re slices of bike bread.  I’m sure you have a fave like the Sink Shower, Ault Park Mary, or the Competitive Couple.  Sadly my creative bottle has been a bit empty since February when I puked in my hat at Worlds.  Perhaps I peaked.

When Gumbo boy occasionally writes a guest blog I always remind him to look for the unusual, the details that raise an eyebrow, something that makes you smile.  A week or so ago Corey explained the relationship between a lazy eyed llama and motivating junior cyclists.  It was a good example and reminder of the reason you read, like us on Facebook, and follow on Twitter and Strava.  Cycling is just as much of who we are as our relationships, our professions, and our homes.

If your racing, doing a charity ride or planning a bike vacation this summer chances are your car is painted in bird crap, the cats are licking the dirty dishes in your sink, and you have a family of baby bunnies in the tall grass that used to be your backyard.  I completely understand.

I’ve been doing the opposite.  For the past four months, since racing Masters Worlds I’ve put my focus on some things that took a back seat to training.  My buddy Frank calls them “domestics.”  I planted daisies and an Azalea bush, had great conversations on neighborhood walks with my wife,  and used a toothbrush to get the last bit of Louisville mud out of the shifter box in my 4-Runner.  I ran the beach in the Dominican Republic, hiked down the White Rock Trail to the Colorado River in Arizona and visited Booger Hollow in Georgia.  As a result, I haven’t really had an interest in writing for a while. 

It’s not that I don’t love writing or racing anymore.  I do.  I also like pulling weeds out of the garden.  I like reading good books like “The Art of Racing in the Rain.”  Producing radio commercials for a living, I also like freelance money.

The beauty of cycling is that our lives aren’t on schedule.  We don’t eat dinner at six o’clock every night, get the oil changed every 5000 miles or put the trash on the curb the night before pickup.  A cyclist’s time is fluid.  What a shame to arrange your life’s activities by minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. 

We save laundry for rainy days; cut coupons on the couch at night, only make the bed when company is coming over and hide unopened mail in the pantry.  You discover how to live among a thriving population of dust bunnies, how to romanticize a drippy faucet, and smile at peeling paint. 

I was going to apologize for not writing a whole lot in the four months since cyclocross worlds.  However, I know you get it.  To do so would be apologizing for living the wonderful life we share with bicycles.  

Smedium: New Clothes Sizes for Cyclists

I Propose A New Size

“Where’s your ass?” my wife asked.  “I know you have a butt, a nice butt, but I don’t see it.”  Apparently my caboose got derailed in these 33W X 33L jeans I’m wearing.  I think I pulled them off the hanger from the pre-vegan section of my closet.  Maybe I’ve slightly neglected my personal sex appeal over 14 years of marriage, but my wife deserves to see my fine cyclocross sculpted rear bumper.  Two days later, the golden e-mail hit her smartphone, “Tonight only, 40% off at Banana Republic.”  It was mutually decided, skip the easy Monday night at the gym for an hour or two doing dressing room gymnastics.  Oh boy, it got gymnastical.

With four plaid collared button down dress shirts, a baby blue merino wool sweater and a long-john-esque “waffled” long sleeve tee, Joe or Nick or Kevin or one of the Jonas Brothers working at Banana Republic showed me to my stall.  As far as the button downs, I’m upset to report I’m a size Smedium.  From the last time I bought nice shirts and today, I’ve probably lost 12-15 pounds.  Staring in the mirror with the medium, I could gather 5-6 inches of fabric around my middle.  Dammit, it took me months of intervals and hummus to earn this waist.  I want to show it off.  So with the hesitation of a former large, I slipped on the small. 

Hmm...not too poochy in the small.

I could sort of see the last uncyclocrossed remnants of my pooch showing.  I’m not 6-pack sculpted, more of a two-pack.  Like the woman in the dressing room next to me, I went back and forth between the two sizes: small, medium, small, medium.  “Welcome to my world,” I could hear my wife saying.  I spent so much time in that dressing room with so many items I wondered if the Jonas Brother was getting suspicious of shoplifting.  I opted for the small, yet still puzzled.  Why do pants come in so many different sizes stores practically need a card catalog to organize the shelves by size and style, yet shirts at Banana Republic have only four sizes for men, small through XL?  So there’s my case for Smedium (SM) and Mediarge (ML).

As for the jeans, I walked into the store saggin’ no ass pre-vegan 33 squares, 33W x 33L.  Going sub-33 was new territory for me, so I sent Jonas ahead, armed with 32’s, 31’s and even a pair of 30’s.  The 32’s were clown pants.  I hooked the waist with my thumbs.  I could probably shove 3 summer sausages down the front of them.  The butt looked like denim drapery.  So I got extreme.  Wiggling and shimmying, I had to get gymnastical to get the 30’s on.  Beyond surprised, they buttoned right up and fell flat on the hips.  However, the thighs were so tight they could double as muscle recovery wear.  It’s the cyclists curse. 

Those Quads Need A Belt

You ride your butt off, try to eat healthy and lose weight, but your newly acquired Andre’ Greipel in training quads and hammies get so big you need to opt for the larger size.  I walked out of the dressing room without pants, new pants, and this thought.  I propose adding three dimensional sizing to men's pants.  The “T” could mean thigh or tree-trunk, or for skinny people, tent pole.  Instead of 31W x 33L, for those with 20 inch hams like me, we’d have 30W x 33L x 21T.  One way or another, my wife deserves to oogle my ass.

Masters #CX Mediocrity: Hope in the Delta

“Delta Delta Delta.  May I help ya, help ya, help ya.”  The Deltas are what keep me on the grid week in and week out racing a combined Elite/Elite Masters cyclocross field in the OVCX series (Ohio Valley Cyclocorss).  Racing a field with 80% of the guys being younger than you can make you feel 25 again, but the fact that I quoted the movie Animal House tells you I don’t know what the buttons do on an X-Box game controller.  Sure, you and the young guns are the fastest guys in your riding circles, but on race day you’re the guy on the trainer behind your buddy’s RV who pays more to store it every month than they do in rent.  They are the guys warming up under the hatch of a ’98 Honda Civic with those big stoopid Jay-Z headphones which remind you of the Koss you used to wear while listening to Led Zeppelin surrounded by black light posters in your high school buddy’s basement bedroom.  You may be in the same race, but your Delta’s are still waaay off man.

Gray beards race with pimple poppers in OVCX.  The payout goes 20 deep indiscriminately to those with ear-hair or zits.  As a guy who can operate a nose hair trimmer, I get pummeled week in and week out by guys with Safe Auto Insurance.  It’s tough to feel success in 30^th, 40^th and 50^th place.  While less bruised, even the fastest Elite Masters struggle for a top 10.  The only thing that keeps me coming back next week is the compliments I get at dinner parties from un-athletic friends and constantly improving Deltas which give me hope for that 20^th place prize.

If you're a bottom of the pickle jar Elite Masters racer like me and are looking at the overall results, you’re likely two races away from selling your bike and playing catcher for the office softball team or using the cash to get the deck stained.  To me the Elite purse is an Everest-like pursuit, so in the time being I find unseen prizes hidden the lap splits, the deltas.  For the past 25 years it’s been useless, but now is the time to put your college statistics class and Texas Instruments calculator to work.  Dig into those lap times results with the furor of a U-23 with his head in a bag of Doritos and find a glimmer of hope.

Me at Cincy3 KingsCX by Kent Baumgart

Delta to the Leader

The first step is to chop off the head of the monster.  As a Masters racer, you’re not lapped until Andy Rooney eyebrows gets past you.  Looking at the results of an early race, disregard everyone placing higher than the fastest guy in your Masters category.  This will likely eliminate the top 5-8 guys, automatically making you feel better.  Then look at the overall time of the lap finishing at the :40-:45 minute mark.  In this case, my delta to the best placed Grey Beard was a beer-belly-big 5:33.

SEPTEMBER EARLY SEASON RACE EXAMPLE

1 Pimple Popper 40:02

2 Squeaky Voice 40:04

3 Mama’s Basement 40:28

4 Dorm Room 40:42

5 ’98 Honda Civic 41:44

6 Fastest Grey Beard 42:10

51 The Best Bike Blog EVER! 47:43

Now, drill down to a more recent race like the USGP Derby Cup.  This past weekend at USGP, two months later, I’m a much slimmer 4 minutes behind the fastest OVCX grey beard.  I shaved more than 90 seconds off my Delta to my direct competition in the last two months, finished top 20 in back to back USGP races, and earned 4 USGP points.  That’s velvet smoking jacket in a leather chair good. Clink of the bourbon glass to my JBV Coach Chris Mayhew.

USGP MASTERS 45+ DERBY CUP SATURDAY RESULTS

1 EX PRO 40:04

2 PRO’S HUSBAND 40:05

3 FAST OUT OF TOWN FOGIE 41:00

4 FASTEST OVCX GREY BEARD DU JOUR 41:25

17 THE ELUSIVE WHEEL IN FRONT OF ME 45:23

18 THE BEST BIKE BLOG EVER! 45:27

Me chasing Papa @ USGP Masters 45+ by Christine Vaughan

Delta between Best and Worst Lap

Even though you’re wallowing way deep below the payout bar, there can be enough hope in your lap delta to keep you from turning on the gas and sticking your head in your stainless steel oven.  Never compare the fastest lap from your aging carcass to that of the guy who may still own Cars 2 Movie bed sheets.  Instead, compare overripe apples with overripe apples.  This Delta compares the time difference between your best and worst lap with those of others with wrinkly elbow skin.  It’s best to compare only the cruising laps.  Toss out the first lap split which is usually impacted by high traffic, a hole-shot sprint and/or a short first lap start grid shoot-in. 

SEPTEMBER EARLY SEASON RACE

#1 Overripe Apple 6:20 6:22 6:28 6:28 6:33 6:41 6:25 6:43 (best 6:22, worst 6:43) Delta = 21 seconds.

52 Me 7:25 7:11 7:31 7:25 7:48 7:38 7:36 7:35 (best 7:11, worst 7:48).  Delta = 36 seconds.

What you can see in these numbers is room for improvement.  The overripe apple is much more consistent.  Only 21 seconds separate his worst lap from his best.  Me?  Not so much.  But if I can improve my lap consistency by 15 seconds, I’d likely be 1-2 minutes faster over an hour long race, which would translate to 31^st place in this particular race.  I’d gain nearly 20 spots if I could increase my capacity for pain and mental strength to keep racing hard.

This brings us to the Delta from Saturday at the USGP Masters 45+ race, two months since that early race.  You see my lap to lap Delta has improved to 15 seconds from an early season 36. 

USGP MASTERS 45+ DERBY CUP SATURDAY RESULTS

18 THE BEST BIKE BLOG EVER! 7:17 7:29 7:37 7:41 7:44 7:41 (best 7:29, worst 7:44)  Delta = :15 seconds.

Masters Cyclocross: What’s Your Chore Score?

I have trouble figuring out whether a $2.57 12oz jar of pickles is a better deal than a $3.27 16oz jar let alone figuring out which time I race on the BikeReg.com page without my blue tortoise shell Ray Ban reading glasses.  Don’t ask me what category you should race.  However, if pressed to give you an educated answer based on your performance, this Masters 45+ racer who writes juvenile comedy pieces for top-40 radio morning shows will pull out his 1983 Texas Instruments scientific calculator and show you that on the screen, if you type in 5318008, it spells BOOBIES when held upside down. 

Obviously, if you do the math, the $3.27 jar is the better buy.  But, all cucumbers are not equal.  Other factors come into play.  So, when a fellow Masters racer asked me, during a dark and serious beard scratching conversation in my paid-in-full Toyota 4-Runner, whether he should enter the OVCX Masters 2/3 category or the traditional elite category, I asked him how he likes his pickles. 

Are you okay with store brand or can your distinguished Masters taste buds discern the superior crunch of the famous Milwaukee Polski Wyrob pickle?  Do you like sweet or sour?  Are you that guy in polyester suspender pants arguing with the clerk fishing pickles out of a barrel at a Jewish deli in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, or you more of a metro-sexual mini-pickle man?  For Sven Nys’ sake, you’ve got a mortgage but are acting like a kid scrutinizing tater tots in a school lunch line when it comes to clicking a box on BikeReg.com.  

What kind of man are you?

Let me tell you.  We discuss the types of Masters Men below.  Each is accompanied by a Masters Chore Score or the amount of household chores a Masters rider can reasonably accomplish between training rides, work, calling his mother Sunday morning on the way to races, cleaning both your bikes, comparing hill repeat times on Training Peaks, ice baths in your en-suite Jacuzzi tub, being a head case to your coach via smartphone email and running up to the bike shop to have wheels reglued because you have the money but not the time. 

Who's the Fridge Cleaning Champ?  This guy!

A Masters Chore Score of “0” means you’ll be training so much you’ll end up with a filthy black ring around the toilet and be eating off paper plates as you watch passers by slip on your unsalted icy sidewalk in January.  “10” means you’ll remember your wife’s December birthday, figure out a way to get the deck stained before winter, and kill enough dust bunnies to change the bag on the vacuum once or twice. 

The “I Just Want To Have Fun Man” Man

If you’re the hippie dippie type of Master that wants to have fun and feel the competition, by all means enter the 2/3 Masters.  If you crack the top 3 before your left hip, you’ll win some great prizes.  If not, you’ll be trading wheels with fellow grey beards for 40 minutes straight. 

Masters Chore Score: 8 (Yes Honey, I’ll clean the fridge this weekend)

The “Bowling with the Champs” Man

95% of my readers under 35 and from outside Wisconsin just tuned out.  Growing up in Milwaukee in the late 70’s, when real men, not hipsters, with chunks of meat and blood on their work boots drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, there was a local live TV show called Bowling with the Champs.  Yeah, think Dancing with the Stars, only with bowling.  Equate Milwaukee to Belgium, South Side to Brussels and Bowling to Cyclocross and you get the picture.  The premise was, if you practiced hard enough, you, a cigarette smoking pitcher of beer drinking meat cutter from Wisconsin like my Dad, could share the South Side lanes at the Red Carpet Bolero with your bowling heroes. 

If this is you and your orthopedic insoles are putting a spring in your step over the barriers, race the 2/3 category but consider the occasional elite level Masters event where you can race with your cycling heroes like Katie Compton’s husband, but it’ll be, as my father used to say in his 40’s, for shits and grins.

Masters Chore Score: 6 (Oh crap, it’s garbage day!)

Elite Masters in Natural Habitat

The “Skunk Rubbin’ Man

At the top of the USA Cycling Ranks page the paragraph states, “Our revamped rankings program aims to provide increasingly accurate rankings using an innovative new algorithm emphasizing quality over quantity.”  Ganarf.  I don’t know what kind of NASA rocket scientists they have working on this project but its accuracy is worthy of a Nobel Prize, especially for me.

In college I took a course nicknamed “Math for Creatives.”  Consequently, I develop a turrets syndrome type tick when I read the word “algorithm.”  Ganarf.  While I can’t explain the buttons on a scientific calculator, my real world experience is that if you race against faster guys, such as in the combined Elite/Masters Elite field of OVCX, your USA cycling rank number will improve.  More or less, if you rub a skunk, the stink’s going to wear off on you. 

The hitch is that this number is basically useless, aside from one important fact.  Call-ups on the grid at Nationals are based on this number.  The lower the number goes, the higher your place on the grid, in January, in Madison, with 100 guys on the line.  Consequently, your chore score decreases dramatically the more you use the word “tabatas” to describe your training rides.  If you aspire to be competitive at Nationals and Worlds, consider springing for a coach, like Chris Mayhew at JBV, and rubbing skunks with Elite riders on Sunday.

Masters Chore Score: 2 (Honey Do Blues)

Don't Un-friend the Bathroom Scale

So, like many women, I’m reading an issue of Self magazine while on the toilet, except, I’m not a woman.  Guys will read anything put in front of them while in the moment.  I’ve been known to read the ingredients of shampoo bottles.  “Hmm… I never knew Aveda was in Minnesota.”  Self is a well done kitchen sink women’s magazine with advice on everything from fitness and food to love and fashion.  After a man is done paging through the pictures of women bending over Bosu balls wearing beach volleyball outfits, he starts reading articles.  He bounces from “Toning the Tummy in Ten Minutes” to” 6 Ways Light Up the Bedroom When the Lights Are Out.”  Within minutes, he’s overwhelmed, filled with self doubt and reaches for the comforting factual label of the shampoo bottle.  While I may not understand why bright argyle socks and ankle boots are part of this fall’s hottest looks, I do know the best way to approach the cyclist’s nemesis, the scale.

The reason I was reading Self magazine in the first place was because I was a man on a mission, taking the steps necessary to get an accurate comparable measurement of my weight.  It’s science dammit!  It matters which foot you step in the scale with first.  It’s not a 50/50 daily proposition where either you’re fatter than yesterday or your not.  Weighing yourself like that, especially daily, is closer to the odds of Powerball than a coin flip.  No wonder you want to unfriend the scale.  In your diet, work life and exercise routine, Tuesday is never the same as Wednesday.  You need to tip the scale of the scale in your favor by flushing out the variables.

Eating a vegan diet, this was not my first flush of the morning.  Carnivores won’t get that joke.  My scale ritual is a bi-weekly Monday morning process that involves standing, sitting, a few sips of hot coffee, then sitting again.  Self magazine may softly describe this as emptying yourself.  Remember, if you’re on the toilet, by definition you’re losing weight.  However, it’s not so much as trying to be as light as possible, but trying to be as accurate and comparable as possible.  Welcome to Nerdville.

The Doctor’s office is the worst.  You want to scratch her eyes out every time she points you in the direction of the scale with your jacket still on and your cellphone in your pocket.  “Step on the scale,” the nurse says.  Like the bailiff hauling you out of the courtroom to the gallows, you frantically try to jettison anything heavy.  Clink!  Car keys.  Kick!  Shoes.  It boggles my mind how they can be trusted to prescribe accurate amounts of medication when they have no clue how to measure the weight of a human body.  She plays with the weights.  You hold your breath when she grabs that big 50lb piece and slides it to the right.  You sigh when she reverses and grabs the 25.  Before the teeter totter even stalls, she’s writing down a number.  It’s so frustrating.  Surprisingly, most of us do the same thing to ourselves at home.  Raise your hand if you’ve ever weighed yourself with wet hair. 

So here are my rules for hitting the scale with success:

Same Tile, Facing East

WEIGH BI-WEEKLY:  The scale is like the stock market.  You can’t sweat the daily ups and downs when your focus is on retirement income.  Like meeting with a financial advisor, Bi-weekly is more or less a check in to see if things are moving the right direction.  If you’re reading this blog, you probably eat fairly healthy and workout nearly daily.  Trust in your good habits.  A pound a week is quite an accomplishment.  Two weeks is more likely.  Bi-weekly weighing gives you 13 days of waking up happy, or at least not wanting to pound the scale with a sledgehammer. 

FIND YOUR DAY AND TIME: You’re likely to be lighter on a Monday morning after a weekend of nice long bike rides and a peaceful Sunday night, than on a Thursday, after Wednesday night’s steakhouse social.  If you work odd hours, think about the day and time when you’re likely to be lightest and stick with it.  That’s your day.  As for a time, pick the earliest waking moment, after taking care of business, but before breakfast and a shower.  

WEIGH ONLY YOUR BODY: Aside from your wedding ring, drop the pajamas and lose the watch.  You’d be surprised how much flip flops, socks, undies and a t-shirt weigh.  Besides that, unless you’re wearing the exact same ensemble every time you step on the scale, your weights won’t be comparable.  A large cotton t-shirt weighs more than a dry-fit running shirt.    

BE COMPARABLE: I’m almost savant-like in my process.  I place the scale on the same tile of the bathroom floor every time, the scale always facing east.  I approach the scale the same way, right foot first.  It’s no different than a pre-race warm-up ritual. 

REALIZE LIMITATIONS: Keep in mind, most bathroom scales don’t measure fractions of a pound.  For me, the scale read 154 this morning on the first step.  I was hoping for better.  However 154 could be anywhere between 154.0 and 154.9, nearly a full pound in slop!  Trust that if even if your weight is flat after being good for two weeks, that you probably on track, but its not showing up on the scale.  Or, sit down, re-read the shampoo bottle again, and see if you can muster a 153.  It works!

Evasive Maneuvering: Bucket Truck of Death

Confident, the index and middle finger on my right hand began to squeeze the brake lever trigger.  It would send my rear wheel skidding out to the right at 25mph.  My left knee augered away from my bike to take the initial impact of my left hip, hand and handlebars hitting the rain soaked oily pavement.  Coming down the Gilbert Avenue hill into downtown Cincinnati I judged I had about a two foot ceiling and a 10-12 foot gap to shoot between the wheels and under an energy company bucket truck.  I think I would’ve made it.  Then it stopped.

Not The Exact Bucket Truck, But You Get The Idea

I tacked right and skirted around the front bumper, the truck jutting two-thirds of the way into my lane.  I looked back at the driver.  His window was down, bare arm on the frame.  We locked eyes.  It’s at these moments you wish you had something clever to say, something like, “What the F*** Bucket Head!”  Like Peter Sagan contesting a sprint infraction, the back of my Italian left hand leaped into the air toward the driver and the only quip my mouth could muster was “Dooooood!”  So I’m only a quarter Italian.

As I was coming down the hill in the left lane to make the left turn at the light only 150 meters away, the bucket truck was coming up on the other side of the median then made a sudden U-turn midway into my path to the light.  Had my bike rolled 20-25 feet closer I know I would’ve squeezed that lever.  At 25mph, a bike travels 36.6 feet per second.  Looking back, I estimate I had a little more than a half second to waffle on the option of grabbing a fist full of brake and taking myself human bowling. 

The light was red.  I slowed to a stop in the left hand turn lane.  The truck pulled up in the far right.  With no one else at the intersection, he could’ve quickly turned and drove away, but he stopped for me.  His eyes were wide, visibly shaken.  He shouted sincerely out the window, “Sorry.  My bad.”  I half smiled.  Considering my stupidity for riding too fast for conditions, I waved him off saying, “It’s all good,” and turned back up the hill for my 5^th hill repeat.

Choosing Cycling Socks: Win with Pearl Izumi

Win Pearl Izumi Socks Below

Admit it.  When you ride past a store window you look at your reflection, your flat-backed position, your dandy color coordinatedness.  In your best Dave Chappelle voice you shake your head and say, “Mmm.  Damn.  I’m one fine looking two-wheeled specimen.”  Like fly-fishing, cycling is half fashion show.  Rolling past Cincinnati’s Verdin bell and clock factory on Riverside Drive, I checked myself out in the reflection of the blacked out windows.  Holy hell!  My socks were as hideous as rubber waders.  Tall white socks with light blue stripes stuck out of the top of my red accented jet black Pearl Izumi shoes like aero bars on a group ride.  It was a triple-snap-clash sista. 

My Team Jersey

Getting ready for a work meeting, my wife stands in front of the full length mirror.  She kicks off one pair of shoes for another, keeps the bag, but ditches the belt.  She asks if the shirt looks better tucked in a little or a lot.  “A little tucked in,” I answer.  There’d be a lot less dorky looking male cyclists if they took a tip from a primping business woman and wheeled their entire ensemble (bike, shorts, jersey, helmet, shoes, sunglasses and all) in front of a full length mirror. 

Drunk Artist Rendering of Perfect Sock

Instead of learning from my wife, my fashion feeble man brain thought I needed tall blue cycling socks…you know, to match my blue and white BioWheels team kit.  I typed the exact phrase into the image search of Yahoo.  Magically 300 pictures of tall blue socks appeared in every shade, length and color combination imaginable.  Row by row, page by page, I dismissed every last one of them as too aqua, too tall for UCI, not enough style.  I went so far as to drink 3 beers and design the perfect sock with Microsoft Crayon 2.0.

I was Mister Pitt, Elaine’s incessantly picky boss in a sock buying episode of TV’s Seinfeld.  He screams, “I want a decent sock that’s comfortable THAT WILL STAY ON MY FOOT!”  Mister Pitt proves what has eluded scientists for centuries.  The fashion part of the male brain can only decipher two variables, in his case, comfort and tightness.  Shorts match jersey.  Bar tape matches bike.  Socks match team kit.  Throw in patterns, design, helmets, shoes, gloves and glasses and the male fashion brain drops to its knees like Elaine, covers its head and screams away the impending frustration induced aneurism.  Hence, most men end up with two pair of work shoes, black and brown. 

Socks Bridge Jersey & Shorts to Shoes & Bike

Two pair of shoes!  That was the key right there.  I have two pairs of cycling shoes.  My road shoes are black with red accents (at left).  My MTB shoes are white with green accents.  My shoes match my bikes.  I needed socks that bridge the gap between team kit and my bike and shoes.  Like my wife’s belts, shoes and bags, cycling socks tie the ensemble together.  I virtually rolled each look in front of the full length mirror.  I ended up choosing three pair of socks, one for each look …road, cyclocross and mountain. 

WIN THREE PAIR OF SOCKS FROM PEARL IZUMI:

1-Consider your three favorite cycling looks: road, mountain, cyclocross.

2-Click here and choose 3 pair of Pearl Izumi socks to complete your outfits.

3-Post a comment with your 3 choices (style/color/size) by 11:59p 7/25/12.

RULES OF THE ROAD: Winner will be chosen randomly from all entries.  “Anonymous” comment entries will not be considered.  Please be aware that we’ll need to get in touch with you, so include an email in your profile and/or “like” us on Facebook so we can get in touch with you if need be.  Winner will be announced on 7/26/12.  Good luck and thanks for reading!