I’m almost through J.P. Partland’s excellent book Tour Fever (full review to come soon…really), and a brief passage relatively early on stuck with me. Regarding the relatively unassuming physique of pro cyclists, Partland writes:

They’re not crazy tall like basketball players, big like football or baseball players, beefy like skiers, or as skeletal as marathon runners. At first glance, they may not even arouse notice. Standing around in street clothes, they might look like underfed graduate students or people who have just returned from a grueling trip…Even standing around in bike clothes, they might not arouse too much attention.

And if it weren’t for those shaved legs and tan-lines, we really would blend in to the general populace without notice. For me, it’s been relatively rare that my limbs and lines caused a sensation. Besides having my legs ogled by male go-go dancers on Key West’s Duval Street and having seemingly everyone in the monstrously spacious outdoor hot spring in Glenwood Springs, CO drop their jaws in horror when my shirt came off, I’ve had relatively few instances of my cycling tribal markings being exposed to the public. I’m not a beach person. When I must be a beach person the shirt stays on. I’m a firm believer that Speedos should only be worn by someone swimming for an Olympic medal. I’m not Italian therefore genetically programmed to eradicate tan lines by any means necessary. And all in all, I really don’t care. I ride outside, I get tan lines, I have shaved legs, end of story.

But some of us aren’t so cavalier and thick-skinned. Particularly when you’re negotiating your way through high school. On Long Island. In Joey Buttafuoco land. Hence, my tale of a particular NYC area Junior cyclist who I only know as “The Poodle”. Let me preface this by saying I never witnessed in person what I’m about to describe. I may have unknowingly raced against him in my NY Junior days, but it was only years after while drinking beers with some NYC racing veterans that this story come to my attention. This wise young man wanted the best of both worlds…to race on the weekends with shaved legs so as not to arouse fredly snickers and to simultaneously hit the clubs with the ladies and subtly reinforce his manly prowess with nonchalantly exposed hints of leg hair. See, The Poodle shaved his legs except for a pristine, un-shorn thicket of full-on man hair extending approximately 3-4 inches above each ankle. This way he could render his Poodle trim invisible while wearing the usual socks one dons while cycling and only expose shaved leg flesh to the cycling crowd. And he could also wear his Miami-Vice-esque duds to clubs…slender loafers…no socks…and he could casually sit down with one ankle crossed on top of his other knee and expose his “hairy” legs to the ladies. Just don’t let those Don Johnson trousers hike up too high.

It was never explained to me how he survived gym class showers with his secret intact…or how he ever went to the beach. Perhaps that’s how the legend of The Poodle germinated and spread like wild fire.

So the lesson here is…be proud of your tan lines, be proud of your fully shaved legs, and leave creative shaving to the Best in Show set. There’s just no way you can explain poodle tufts like you can a regularly shorn leg. But then again, it’s stories like these that make cycling lore so preposterously rich.

When I was 19 years old, my biggest concern cycling-wise was staying upright and simply finishing East Coast Cat 3 races. I was a pavement magnet in crits, and road races over 50 miles were dicey affairs for my fledgling diesel endurance capacities. 1987 was largely spent generating scar tissue and getting shelled…what a great introduction to Senior racing.

I’ve only made a cursory perusal of cycling lore and legend, and as best I can tell the youngest Grand Tour finisher is Frenchman Henri Cornet who finished the 1904 Tour de France just shy of 20 years old (19 years, 354 days to be exact). Of course, Cornet did more than simply finish the Tour in 1904, he won it. Thanks to some nefarious and dastardly deeds out on the open roads of France, the first four finishers of the 1904 Tour were DQed, and fifth place Cornet was elevated to the top spot on the podium.

Fast forward 103 years…and witness the exploits of another teen wunderkind, Russian Ivan Rovny (Tinkoff Credit Systems), who’s just getting his feet wet in this year’s Giro d’Italia. If (and that’s one mighty generous if) Rovny perseveres and arrives in Milan on June 3rd, he’ll be about 4 months shy of his 20th birthday and will likely lay claim to being the youngest Grand Tour finisher. I’d say the odds are 50-50 that he’ll make it, and I’m only being that magnanimous because he’s Russian and likely tough as nails. Besides the likelihood of some old school Eastern Bloc genetic manipulation shennanigans under the hood, he’s probably been doing 600 mile weeks since he was 13. And take a look at this photo taken one day prior to the Giro’s first stage. Teenager my ass…Rovny looks rough. If I had to wager on who was the DS and who was riding the Giro just based on this photo, I’d have Konyshev kitted up and Rovny driving the team car, no question. Kids, just be glad that supplying your family with meager supplies of cabbage, beets, vodka, and a marginally functional Lada wasn’t dependent on riding your bike 30,000 miles a year and winning world titles while you’re still in high school.

Not quite as nostalgic a trip down memory lane as bikes 1-6. No Detto shoes, Benotto tape, untamed hair…but there are still some fine memories tied up with these rides:

7.			8.
9.			10.
11.			12.

Reason #473 why Oscar Freire is my hero:

Because nothing says PRO quite like…

…a mini-pump duct-taped to the top tube of your Colnago Extreme Power:

Photographer: Phil O’Connor | Procycling, April 2007, pg. 42

Bobke Strut: Hey Oscar, why not a mini-pump bracket?
Oscar Freire: Well…I think Ernesto Colnago would crap his pants if one of those brackets appeared on my ride.
BS: And duct tape is ok?
OF: Hell yeah.
BS: What about jersey pockets?
OF: But that would mess up the exquisite lines of my kit. Plus, don’t you know that guys like me don’t have functioning pockets? They’re sewn shut, just there for show. If I need something to eat, I just stop at somebody’s house. Everyone in Torrelavega knows Oscar Freire. If I need a tube, I flag down a fellow cyclist and he gives me his. If he doesn’t have a spare tube, then I just take one out of his wheel. Then he gets on the cell and calls to get picked up.
BS: Then why bother with the mini-pump? Wouldn’t said rider have a pump you could scam, too?
OF: I need it to whack smart-ass journalists upside the head. No more questions from you…

I’m not sure what’s going on in Spain these days. Igor Astarloa and Alejandro Valverde definitely have unique theories regarding training techniques, but Oscar Freire’s got them beat hands-down when it comes to his no-tech, just-give-me-my-brother-on-a-scooter workout regimen. If Oscar Freire is healthy and he can get in a solid two two-week block of motorpacing, there’s not a one-day race in the world (barring a TT up Mt. Ventoux) that Freire isn’t capable of winning. The man is a total freak of nature. And just a plain freak.

The World According to Oscar
On using an SRM: “Are you trying to turn me into one of those crazy riders or what?”
Paris-Roubaix: “Roubaix is a nice race to watch on TV, but not to ride…We were doing 60kph as we rode into the [Arenberg] forest and never in my life would I have thought we were going to turn down that road.”
Rainy training rides: “Stay at home and ride the rollers”
Training volume: “I go well with relatively little training…if I did as much as Erik Zabel I wouldn’t win anything”

Just read that Procycling interview (April 2007 issue) and drop your jaw in awe…

2007 marks the 25th consecutive year that I’ve held a USCF/USA Cycling license. I’ve probably ridden a bike in excess of 200,000 miles, raced maybe 1,000 times, but there’s no confirmation of either statistic. I’ve never kept a training diary, and the remnants of races past are not particularly plentiful. However, I do have a fair amount of photographs of my racing endeavors. Over the past 25 years I’ve owned and raced 12 different bikes. These are their stories:

1.			2.
3.			4.
5.			6.

Part 2, with bikes 7-12, is coming soon…

Matt Kelly as seen in an ad for Lemond bikes, Rolf wheels, and Icon bars/stems: VeloNews, March 1, 1999

A trip down memory lane to Poprad, Slovakia…

Hoopty bike:
1999 Junior Men Cyclocross World Champion Matt Kelly is likely the first and last person to win a world title on clincher tires (and Trek’s house-brand Icon bars and stem have likely never seen another world title, either). No Dugasts here! Check it out–he’s sporting a Michelin Mud on the front and a Ritchey Speedmax on the rear. And equally as low tech is Kelly’s steel 853 Lemond frame, likely simply one of the Lemond road frames with a ‘cross fork plus a set of cantilever bosses welded on for the rear brake. For the 1998/1999 ‘cross season, Lemond did not offer a ‘cross bike to the public–this is a one-off supplied to Kelly. Look at the cable routing, these are most definitely not ‘cross friendly with both derailleur cables routed along the downtube and the rear brake routing designed for a road caliper brake. And I bet the reason he’s sporting a Speedmax rear tire instead of a Michelin is that the Michelins are too fat to fit in the road chain stays, while a skinnier Speedmax will just fit (as long as you keep your wheels exquisitely trued).

The Belgian that Kelly outsprinted was Sven Vanthourenhout, who had won each of the 26 cyclocross races he had entered that season. While Vanthourenhout was raging in Europe, Kelly had a comparatively sparse American ‘cross schedule. In fact, the bulk of his training was done in the basement of his Wisconsin home on the trainer. It was Rocky vs. Drago in Poprad, and the underdog American defied logic and precedent to emerge with a rainbow-striped jersey.

Hoopty threads:
“Hey bitches, you go to ‘cross worlds with the skinsuits you have, not the skinsuits you might want or wish to have.”–Performance Bicycle management

Team issue Performance skinsuits sucked ass in cold weather. In steps Verge…

“It was cold in Poprad, Slovakia during the recent [1999] world cyclocross championships. It was so cold that the official U.S. team uniforms brought by the team proved woefully inadequate. Fortunately, a couple of ‘locals’ knew just how cold it would be in Poprad and, about a week before the event, started constructiong long-sleeved, knicker skinsuits at their Polish clothing factory. Michael Magur and Brad Hogan, who own the Poland-based Verge Sport, carefully reproduced the graphics on the American uniforms–including all of the sponsor’s logos–and set off for a day-long winter drive from Poland to Poprad. The trip concluded with a treacherous three-hour drive on a snow-covered single-lane road over the Tatra Mountains. No guard rails and lots of snow.” VeloNews, March 1, 1999.

Hoopty pit crew:
I forgot about this story from Poprad–how a Frenchman in the espoir race got screwed by his pit team. A Frenchman named John Gadret. On the final lap Gadret had his silver medal wrapped up–Wellens was out of reach about 1 minute in front of Gadret and the duo of Tim Johnson and Tom Vannoppen were about 40 seconds behind Gadret thinking they were duking it out for bronze. Gadret’s pit crew thought he was home free, too, and abandoned their post at the second pit and ran to the finish line to greet their silver medalist to-be. Alas, Gadret suffered a flat just before the second pit and he rolled into that pit area expecting a smooth bike change to carry him over the final kilometer. To his horror, there were no French mechanics or bikes to be had–he had to bum a wheel off neutral support after his frantic search for his chain-smoking compatriots came up empty. A weeping Gadret crossed the line in 5th place, and if he wasn’t so freaky skinny and freaky cold he likely would have given his slacker pit crew a world-class beat down.

February, 2007…Just another snow-filled day in backwoods New York

In a former life, back when I lived in upstate New York and still had aspirations of signing my name on a pro contract, I may have found a way to actually ride outside in such snowy environs (or at least bust out the cross country skis). But I’ve grown soft and count my blessings that I spend my winters in North Carolina rather than the frigid netherworld of the Tug Hill Plateau. It’s nice riding outside in February with the thermometer at about 50, rather than -50, degrees F.

Does the name Jackie Earle Haley ring a bell?

He’s likely best known for his portrayal of chain-smoking Little League bad boy Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears. But to me, he’ll forever be Moocher — the pint-sized Cutters compadre of Breaking Away cycling hero Dave Stoller.

I haven’t been much of a cinephile in recent years, but I’ll be tuned into the Academy Awards this evening anxiously awaiting the results for Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. Jackie Earle Haley has been lying low acting-wise since the early 1990s, leading for all intents and purposes a humdrum life in San Antonio. But due to his portrayal of a “vile yet heartbreaking pedophile” in Little Children, he’s once again being acclaimed for his acting prowess. Mr. Haley has some particularly stiff competition for this award (other nominees include Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, Djimon Hounsou in Blood Diamond, Eddie Murphy in Dreamgirls, and Mark Wahlberg in The Departed), but if there’s any justice in the world then Moocher will emerge victorious…

…Because I doubt if any of Haley’s competition could have pulled off these sweet ‘cross maneuvers captured on film in Breaking Away:

1. Check out that mounting technique…Not bad for a 17-year old non-cyclist on a crappy bike that’s too big for Haley.

2. Now that’s some fine bike-handling…Doing a simultaneous high-speed powerslide/dismount on a cinders track.

3. Jackie Earle Haley…then and now. And who knew that Barry Wicks was in the cast of Breaking Away, too?

And the Oscar goes to…

[updated] Alan Arkin. Well, I guess a heroin-snorting grandparent teaching a pre-teen how to gyrate like a stripper trumps a convicted sex offender released back into the community. Those Academy voters can be so fickle.

Image sources:
Breaking Away stills: Screen captures from Breaking Away DVD
Jackie Earl Haley: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0355097/

My straight-laced, journalist alter ego weighs in on the state of American cyclocross, aglow in the aftermath of the Hooglede-Gits medal-fest.

Pay a visit to cyclingnews.com to peruse the feature article. Enjoy!

Lost in all the media frenzy out of Boston regarding the city’s invasion by Mooninites was the simultaneous, mysterious appearance worldwide of the Mooninites’ obscure, equally angry, and more highly pixelated brethren: the Menninites. Evidently, this disturbingly advanced species of alien being has been sighted afixed to bridges and buildings in locales such as Austin, TX; Solvang, CA; Montreal, Canada; Dublin, Ireland; Aigle, Switzerland; Vigo, Spain; Châtenay-Malabry, France; and Colorado Springs, CO. A spokesman for the Menninite species, residing in San Diego, CA, had little to offer besides, “Explanations are pointless, Earthling press corps. Our culture is advanced beyond anything you can possibly comprehend with 110% of your brain. Just give us our maillot jaune and we’ll spare your planet.”