Happy New Year

One of the things I like about cycling is the time it affords one to think.

Ideas come to me on rides and I occasionally remember them all the way home and write them down, or better yet act on them. More often then not they are spur-of-the moment pearls of wisdom and insight that i promptly forget when the next hill or interval comes along. 

Such was the case on Saturday. I hadn't been on my bike much at all since the last BASP at Coyote Point December 9th, and District CX was coming up on Sunday so I thought a little blow out might help, and it did. During the ride I had one of those epiphanies...a thought that was SURE to revolutionize my training, my coaching, my life, the sport of cycling, or something equally impressive...but I forgot it and can't seem to pull it back. 

I hope it comes back...it was pretty good. I'm kinda the same about memories in general. I simply forget, so I wanted to take a quick look back at 2012 before it gets lost. Let's break it into simple categories: 

Mitch Going Fast!

Race Team - Smaller and leaner this year....Sterling Cross p/b Fusion IO was still in all a success by the numbers. We had ONE elite rider - Mitch Trux...but he pulled a bunch of podiums and was constantly in the top 10, usually the top 7! Our other standout cateogry? Single Speed A's! We pulled a podium at almost every race we did this year. Either myself of Patrick Kitto...weird that we couldn't seem to put it together at the same events...had solid rides at all the BASP's and a host of other events in and around NorCal including:

• WIN! BASP #1 Candlestick Park - Patrick Kitto
• 2nd BASP #4 Candlestick Trippel - Matt McNamara
• 2nd BASP #5 Coyote Point - Patrick Kitto
• 3rd BASP #3 Sierra Point Night Race - Matt McNamara
• 3rd Santa Rosa Cup #3 - Patrick Kitto
• 5th NCNCA District Championships - Patrick Kitto
• 5th Surf City #1 Aptos HS - Matt McNamara
• 6th NCNCA District Championships - Matt McNamara

I think that's about all the races we entered except for 2 mechanicals and a terrible mud race at Manzanita...not bad. Next year....we're going bigger badder and faster!

A Jeff Namba Photo

Athletes - This year I had the pleasure of working with an Elite Team in HONG KONG...Team Direct Asia! They were awesome to work with and the topped it off by taking the OVERALL GC and TEAM GC at Tour De Bintan..a big race in SE Asia. I also had the pleasure of working with some juniors - two talented sets:

• USAC Regional Development Camp - This is my third year working with Larry Nolan and the other coaching stalwarts at the camp, but this year we did it a little different..we divided into teams and got to work with our riders individually the whole week - AWESOME! 

USAC Campers

• Matadors HS MTB Team - I kinda lucked into this one, but it was time well spent as our small 3 rider team finished 16th in the team overall standings for Division 2 in NorCal...a pretty huge accomplishment that was only possible with a true team effort by each rider! 

Matador Racing 2012

My other athletes were also consistently strong and impressive. There are too many to go rider by rider, but suffice it to say that we won some races, reached some new personal bests and I don't think anyone took a major digger this year, which is huge in my world From KMH killing Du's all year to Adam Carr racing the Tour of Vietnam (UCI 2.2) and Joe Carpenter slogging off several top rides in 8+ hour MTB races! Can't wait to jump deep into 2013 and see what turns up...

Personal - This year started off slowly with almost no riding from January til May..then I dialed up a solid summer and hit some of my best power numbers EVER, including new PR's on 5, 20, and 60 minute efforts. That fitness carried me thru a gradual decline in the fall that culminated with almost NO riding the past 6 weeks...

SO - HERE'S TO A BIGGER AND BETTER 2013...so Happy New Year to all...(yea, done with 1:20 left in 2012, I'll post pics to this shortly

US PRO - The Wayward Championship

Check The US Pro Cycling Jersey Site

Since time began...or at least since 1985 the U.S. has chosen their National Champions in stark contrast to most of the rest of the World. While all of Europe holds their National Championships on the same weekend - not coincidentally in the weeks before the Tour starts, the US has followed its own path. For years (1985 - 2005) we had CoreStates US Pro Championships in Philadelphia, but even that was a bit different since the race was open to any pro who wanted to race it - and almost as often than not a European rider won the day:

1985 - Eric Heiden
1986 - Thomas Prehn
1987 - Tom Schuler
1988 - Winner Roberto Gaggioli (ITA), US Champ Ron Keifel
1989 - Greg Oravetz
1990 - Paolo Cimini (ITA), US Champ Kurt Stockton
1991 - Michael Zanoli (NED),US Champ Davis Phinney
1992 - Bart Bowen
1993 - Lance Armstrong
1994 - Sean Yates (GBR), US Champ Steve Hegg
1995 - Norm Alvis
1996 - Eddy Gragus
1997 - Massamilliano Lelli (ITA), US Champ Bart Bown
1998 - George Hincapie
1999 - Jakob Pil (DEN), US Champ Mary Jemison
2000 - Henk Vogels (AUS), US Champ Fred Rodriguez
2001 - Fred Rodriguez
2002 - Mark Walters (CAN), US Champ Chann McRae
2003 - Stefano Zanini (ITA), US Champ Mark McCormack
2004 - Francisco Ventoso (ESP), US Champ Fred Rodriguez
2005 - Chris Wherry

In 2006 they moved the race to both the fall (?) and Greenville, South Carolina. They also made it a US only race finally.

2006 - George Hincapie
2007 - Levi Leipheimer
2008 - Tyler Hamilton
2009 - George Hincapie
2010 - Ben King
2011 - Matthew Busche
2012 - So, what does this year look like? Given the level of racing in the U.S. this year it's a pretty wide open event. Certainly the Euro-Based Americans have an advantage - they are still a tier above the domestic pro's, but there are some US riders who've shown some amazing talent the last few months, including Andrew Talansky, TJ Van Garderen, Chris Horner, and Tim Duggan with US riders like Ben Jaques-Maynes, Nate English, and  Chris Baldwin on my short list for the final selection...but we'll see come Monday.

For 2013 the Championships are moving to Chattanooga Tennessee and a local climb called "Lookout Mountain" - I've looked on Strava and there are a few options that could prove interesting, but I still have to wonder about Tennessee as a race venue. They have less than 2% of USAC membership, probably less than 0.5% but good stats are hard to find. TBRA - Tennessee Racing Assocation - shows typical race fields of 10-25 riders per category and events most weekends of the summer, so I'm not down on the race scene, I'm really not. I'm wondering about the community support more and my reference is the CX Masters Worlds in Louisville KY last year and CX Worlds coming up in January. Good venue by most accounts bu tjust NO presence to speak of. Industry didn't turn out, racers sorta turned out and crowds largely didn't. I'm afraid the same will happen in Chattanooga..but I hope not. I would like to see the race have the same kind of ambiance and excitement as at CX Nats in Golden Gate Park or the past few years in Bend, Oregon. Our National Championships deserve no less, so I'm crossing my fingers.

Chip On The Shoulder, Calm In The Head

The talent in the pro peloton is an oft-discussed topic. Yep, there is A LOT of it! But there are a couple of things that don't get as much play, but that make such a HUGE difference in the long term success of pro's. Ok, there may be three things, but let's start with two...

Topic #1: Chip On The Shoulder - Racers race for a different reasons...but most everyone of them has some sort of chip on their shoulder. It may reside under the surface, but the drive to win comes from a place of internal upset - be it a slight in the past, family/personal experience or a personality trait...there is a reason Phil says the 'turn the pedals in anger'. I don't cast aspersions here, merely point to what I think is a deep internal drive that top riders seem to share, and I think that drive resides in both a quest to be the best and to make/prove a point. Doubt it? Look inside your motivations when racing.

Topic #2: Calm In The Head - Listen to interviews and you'll likely hear a fairly calm and collected assessment of the race to come, or just passed. Riders don't tend to get too worked up about stuff day to day...some ascribe this to fatigue (which may be true), but credit must also be given to general demeanor of the athletes when it comes to their job. While you, or most especially I, may get worked up at the impromptu flat, travel interruption, or race situation that doesn't go our way, pro's generally take a pretty philosophical attitude to these things. I think it's essential to be mostly level headed....



and consistency matters...viscious:




Of course a bit of enthusiasm always helps:



Sorry Adam...had to be done...


Topic #3: Iron In The Gut - This is actually the most important unknown talent, but my title block was getting too long. Pro riders MUST have an Iron stomach, it's a necessity. The amount of stuff they put thru their bodies is simply amazing - fear inducing actually. Let's just shake out some numbers real quick.

First there is the water: 8-10 Bottles PER DAY - On the bike! Plus another couple of bottles post race, then post race recovery mix, then more water with dinner - lots of water! at 20oz per bottle it gets to be over 3 GALLONS pretty quickly (64oz to a Gallon or something right?).

Next we have food: There are lots of discussions about how many calories a day the racing cyclist burns, but let's put it in a couple of understandable formats. First, let's baseline at 5000 calories a day for a race like the Tour of California. It's an oft cited number, but not far off and we can use both Marc DeMaar and Luke Bobridge as our references here - DeMaar did 3935KJ's for the stage, Bobridge 4468KJ's (It's farily common to equate KJ"s to Kcal -calories). This doesn't include their BMR (basal metabolic rate), so the 5000 calories guess is pretty good. In simple terms:

A Big Mac has 550 calories (with almost half of those coming from fat!)...so you're gonna need 9 Big Macs each day. Not health enough? Ok, Chicken is healthy so let's get some Nuggets! at 190 calories for 4 Nuggets - about 47 per Nugget - you'll need about 106 Nuggets each day.

Healthier still?

Ok, cyclists are famous for their pasta consumption. WikiAnswers tells me there are 220 calories in a cup of Spaghetti. Why, that's only 22 cups of Spaghetti...a pittance! But of course they eat many of their calories on the bike, let's say 250/hr based on absorption rates and how much the stomach can process (60g is a good baseline), so they get another 1250 calories from on bike nutrition in a five hour stage. Gels are typically in the range of 100-110 calories each, so let's call it a dozen on the bike, or if you want to be truly Machiavellian 50 gel packs for a full days nutrition,yum!

Ah, you're more of a liquid nutrition kind of rider, eh? Ok, Hammer Perpetum is about 130 calories per scoop - 38 scoops and you've got a day! Of course you have to add that to a liquid, most are using 3-4 scoops per bottle (9 bottles'ish), so you may never actually get out of the bathroom to race...but i think you get the point.

So what's the bottom line? Success in cycling requires talent and natural ability, but it also requires a good head on your shoulders, a stomach that won't quit and a desire to avenge whatever wrong motivates you...

Sticky Stupidity

Topic #1: Sticky Bottle Stupidity

Watching various live coverage over the last few months it's occurred to me time and again that the infamous sticky bottle has jumped the shark in relevance. Now, I'm not saying that getting an assist from time to time isn't acceptable, especially on climbs if one is truly fetching bottles and the like, but now we see riders coming back for a chat and getting said hard surge of asssistance for no reason at all. Perhaps the most flagrant example is when they take it even while sitting directly behind the lead commisaire's car...within meters of the field! Such was the situation today at the TOC, several times!

So what does the UCI say? Oddly, nothing specific in the technical guide for road racing, although there are some interesting tidbits like 2.3.030 - "The greasing of chains from a moving vehicle shall be forbidden." or 2.3.031 - No equipment for riders may be prepared or held ready outside the following vehicle. Persons riding in vehicles shall  ot reach or lean out." - but not much on Sticky Bottle Syndrome.

Speaking of Sticky Bottles....quick google search lead me to Sticky Bottle.com ...which is an Irish racing site that gives an almost admirable definition of it's name sake:


A stickybottle, put simply, is the knackered cyclist’s best friend. As a rider is being dropped from a group, the team manager or support worker in a following car holds a bottle out the window to hand it up. As the handover is taking place, the rider grabs the bottle tight, as does whoever is handing it up, enabling the rider get a good tow and push from momentum of the car. It’s known as a stickybottle because it appears neither the rider nor the person handing it up is able to take their hand off the bottle; it looks stuck to their hands. But please don’t try this at home. We’ve been slyly cheating this way all our lives; it takes a while to perfect.

I like that they refer to its application for a 'knackered' rider - and that seems somewhat reasonable..but somewhere it got lost in translation as it's now become derigeur for most every situation where a rider may be at the cars. So, who's to blame? I dunno, but I'm guessing it's with the Directors. Most are former riders who, having been on the edge innumerable times, may justify their actions as merely trying to help their riders stay in contention, but really in the classical application it's to try and gain an advatage, any advantage, that might pay off later, and in the modern iteration it seems merely a slap in the face of tradition and the rules.

So is it part of the tradtion - if I want to argue that, probably need some evidence right? There's a great scene in "Stars and Watercarriers" about twenty minutes in where a rider is dropping back to the medical car - a legitimate need certainly - except rather than grab the car and go for a ride, he rides along side and waits patiently for the ointment. This is followed by several scenes of riders in various states of conversation at team cars and none gets assistance. About 37 minutes into "Hell on Wheels" there is a segment about going back to the cars and you see a Saeco rider toting something like 14 bottles and he takes a couple of lingering holds, but it just seems different - and that's because the car doesn't jam on the gas to add a couple of miles an hour. Check it out from 36:00 on...



Contrast that with the coverage of late...grab a bottle and get a free acceleration! "But today's races are faster!"...uh, not that much, or really at all actually according to VeloFacts.com. (I may have a new favorite blog btw!)

So I'm going on the war path over Sticky Bottles...they've become almost as much an embarrassment as open jerseys...

more tomorrow...