Ride vs Write

There's a saying, "Men plan, God laughs." I keep looking over my shoulder this year with certainty that someone or something is chuckling loudly at my expense.

With a healthier back and clarity of purpose I expected to be back on the bike. Racing was optional, although the tandem version was discussed often with my race partner John. Riding, for the pure joy of it wasn't optional. I was really excited about riding the bike, especially up long mountainous roads; Europe even seemed likely. And then those Godly snickers grew to chuckles, now it's full on laughter.

The real joke is one of the reasons I can't find saddle-time is researching and writing about other people riding their bikes. There seems an injustice brewing. I now know more about the history of the bike (especially in the Tour de France) and pro cyclists (especially in the Tour de France) than any sane person except Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, Sam Abt, Bill Strickland, John Wilkinson, Les Woodland and a few other Tour journalists. I only hope I can write about cycling with the skill and grace of some listed above.

So on this bright and sunny day, one of the first of spring in Portland, am I riding? No, I'm writing. I sit captive of the laptop and research, and soon start packing for the a trip to the Tour of California. No, not to ride as all my non-cycling friends assume, but to interview and write about riders. Then it's back for a couple more chances in the saddle locally here in Portland before taking off for France and more writing about riders as I chase the Tour counter-clockwise around the land of great baguettes and 400 cheeses.

I'm certain next week when I interview Jens Voigt he will explain with some quintessential and classically humorous Jensism that "this is crazy, you should riding not writing." I will have my bike with me, maybe I'll follow his advice.

Note: This is the last posting I will likely do here for some time - my connection to cycling is evolving. My current cycling book projects, Le Domestiques: The Dog Soldiers of July and Chasing the Lanterne Rouge, have shifted the connection I have to the bike and the Tour. I think that connection can best be explored in a other writings, on a different site. Please join me at Le Velo, Le Tour.

Because sometimes we take ourselves WAAAAY too seriously!

This is wonderful - time to laugh at ourselves!

Trainer Season - Phil, Paul and a Suitcase of Courage

It was sunny yesterday in the Alps, I got over the first big summit, the Col du Madeleine, at nearly 2,000 meters high the scenery was breath-taking, I felt in great shape, but it was early, as I was being told. I hung on through a long plummeting downhill into the valley below, in the distance was where we were headed and another 90 mins, most of it heaven bent. I knew it was there that I would be "opening up my account" and "hoping to avoid being dropped". I just had to "shut [my] eyes, suffer and grab that wheel".

About 90 minutes later I hit the remote and turned off stage 17 of the 2004 Tour de France, and another day with Phil & Paul. Outside my window it was clear, sunny, mid-20's, stinking cold!

You need all the help you can get to survive the Trainer-Season. There was a time when I hated the trainer. An hour seemed an eternity. My friend Lash once said, "If the doctor told me I was going to die in a week, I'd climb on the trainer, it would seem like a month." Now, partnering with Phil & Paul and armed with the hundreds of hours of play-by-play Trainer-Season is almost something to look forward to.

Time and time again I pop in the Tour. Granted there are other races, Spring Classics for example, but the voices of Phil & Paul are a July thing. They feel warm. It's hard to imagine a month of mid-summer mornings without them and a cuppa Earl Grey tea starting each day. It's even harder to imagine the Tour without them - I've even contemplated the day that... well... never mind, that just couldn't happen.

Who are these guys? From a 2004 interview with Outside Magazine these bios:

"Phil's earliest ambition was to be a zookeeper. But in 1967, he got a job as a cub reporter with Cycling and Mopeds magazine, in London. Before long he'd moved on to ITV, where he landed in front of the camera one day in 1978, reporting on a London bike race, and discovered he was good at it. In short order, ITV made him their main commentator for the Tour, and over the next few years his verbal acrobatics impressed enough network suits that he was asked to report on cycling for the BBC at the 1984 Summer Olympics, in L.A. By the nineties he was covering skiing at the Winter Games for CBS.

Paul began as a cyclist as well but stuck with it a little longer than Phil. He suffered through seven Tours (his best finish was 70th, in 1978) and was an excellent sprinter, he says, but in the mountains he couldn't keep up with the likes of five-time French champion Bernard Hinault. Still, he won two British national championships, in 1986 and '87, and became something of a multitasker: In 1986, while he was still racing professionally, the UK's Channel 4 hired him to help Phil manage the herculean task of covering the Tour. The two have been a team ever since, even with Paul's periodic extracurricular activities, like working as the PR director for Armstrong's Motorola team in the mid-nineties and, in 1999, lending help as a translator when Lance was having trouble with the French media during his first Tour win. But his line-crossing days are over; now he splits his time between covering cycling and running a gold mine in Uganda, where he and his family live."

Phil & Paul have helped World Cycling Productions become a bit richer off of me - the DVD collection now stands at nearly a complete decade, plus the historic stuff. I know their overlapping voices so well now that I catch myself saying their lines just before they do - a bit spooky sometimes, especially when I'm "coming down the finishing straightaway like a grand prix motor car" and gasping "like a goldfish".

Part of the reason it is so great to ride with them is they love cycling. They love it the way we do. They are cyclists. Phil was once quoted as saying, "One of the nicest things in the world is to go out and climb a mountain ... look at the scenery ... talk to no one ... freewheel it home. And all of your problems of the day are gone."

Phil I couldn't agree more. So this week I've started the winter Trainer-Season, made survivable only thanks to my daily ride partners. Over the coming weeks Phil & Paul will be a part of my everyday routine as I "reach into my suitcase of courage" and begin "dancing on the pedals", even if they go around and around in the same place. More than once I'll ask, "Bridge to engine room-more power." But this much is certain "sunshine, I'm giving it all I got". In the end I'll know, "That's what you get when you suffer - you get results."

Thanks Phil & Paul!

8,500 of My Fellow Nut-cases

Well, I drank the cool-aid, or Gatorade, or Accelerade, or what ever liquid that is that makes us spend a small fortune to torture ourselves. My registration is in. I've bought the "package", including the 220 Euros for official "non-Residence in France" entry fee from Cyclomundo. As Goethe is quoted saying, "until one is committed there is hesitancy". Well hesitate no more, 2010 I'm tackling the Col du Tourmalet with 8,500 committed (or should be!) nut-cases - bring on the L'Etape du Tour!

The L'Etape is a little version of torture the folks at ASO, who run the Tour de France, dreamed up to let us wannabes try a shot at the pain and suffering the big boys go through. So in the true spirit of cycing-masichism ASO selects one stage of the TdF each to toss out for the amateur Convicts of the Road (and perhaps the truest Convicts)

Next Sunday July 18th I've decided to forgo my normal Tour de France ritual: morning cuppa Earl Grey, flip on the tube at 4:30AM and ring in the day with accented voices of Phil & Paul. Seven months from now Jenn and the "cycling kids" will have to hold my place in the cycling-room as the boys in the Tour begin their onslaught in the high mountains of the Pyrenees - Revel to Ax-3 Domaines. I'll be on the other side of those same French hills, staying in the Pyrennean foothill town of Tarbes, a half-hour from the my own start in Pau.

On a beautiful and warm (I hope) Sunday morning at 7:00 am I'll mount my trusty ride and join "a flow of more than 8,500 riders will be on their way for a warm up” over Col de Marie-Blanque and Col du Soulor before tackling Tourmalet!" according to the Cyclomundo's pre-package info. Haven ridden over Cols such as Marie-Blanque and Soulor, even at a casual pace I would not discredit them by referencing their gradients as "warm up". They are listed as

Col de Marie-Blanque	9,5 km at 7,5%
Col du Soulor par Ferrières	22 km at 4,9%
Col du Tourmalet par Barèges	19 km at 7,4%

But after riding there a couple years ago my legs and lungs can vouch for inclines of 9-12+%. And of that final little lump in the road, the Tourmalet? Well, I hammered my way up the easier west slope in 2008 - and foolishly muttered how fun it would be to tackle the steeper east slope, so next July 18th I'll find out, along with many other shared suffering souls - 8,500 of my fellow nut-cases!

After our little "warm up" we set our sites and front wheels on the geant of the Pyrenees - Col du Tourmalet - where we like the Pros (four days later on Stage 17) will summit; of course this is after they have crossed the Tourmalet two days earlier, hey, they're Pro Convicts, they get paid for gratuitous suffering. In a true statement of cyclo-dedication, I will also stick around and reclimb the Tourmalet to watch (and film) them come over on Tuesday Stage 16 (the epic Peyresourde-Aspin-Tourmalet-Aubisque). Yes, you read that right - I'll end up climbing the Tourmalet three times, from the steeper east side, in five days. I'm also considering swimming the English Channel and rowing a boat, with my bike, back across the Atlantic,

.... KIDDING - one collective act of insanity at a time :").

So now that I am mentally and financially committed, totally psyched to do this, I'll alter my racing plans for next year just a bit - coming off of Elkhorn Stage Race in late June I'll put in a few more long mountain kilometers getting ready for France - unfortunately the Cascade Cycling Classic stage race will be the victim, since the L'Etape and Cascade overlap - but hey, maybe I'm just exchanging one set of nut-cases for another?

More later on the L'Etape, my preparations and a daily blog from the Pyrenees as it all develops. If you want to know more about L'Etape 2010 check out Lindsay Crawford's experienced review on BikeRadar:

Preview: L’Etape du Tour 2010

No Phil, No Paul - Tour de France Withdrawals

Sleep-in 'till 6, listen to NPR Morning Edition, return emails, just reconnect with the world, but no --- instead I wake at 5 AM and lay there, my brain says rise, stagger to the remote and say good morning to Phil (Liggett) and Paul (Sherwin). As they get settled, telling me what I have heard a dozen times, but somehow I feel hooked like a cycloaddict needing to hear it said one more time, maybe somewhere inside I know I have limited time for a fix, I fill the water pot to boil and get my cuppa Earl Grey tea started. But it's Day 24 of the Tour's 23. It's the morning after. It's the coming down, going cold turkey, slamming on the breaks. It's like dropping a chain a 15% climb, all forward progress ceases, your brain sends a warning - "clip out NOW!" It's Tour de France withdrawals.

Sadly, this has been going on for years, you think I would learn, I would adapt, for God's-sake species go extinct for less flexibility. Has 4 million years of cranial evolution not prepared me for this one Monday morning each late July?

I think what makes it harder is the general death valley of cycling that August is, or historically has been. In the past the Tour of Germany gave me brief reprieve with the mono-a-mono hilly battles between Levi Leipheimer and effervescent road warrior Jens Voigt. Perhaps this year will be different, I hope, I pray, but staring into my cuppa EG I'm doubtful. I'm not alone. On the Tour's final Sunday I heard Phil say, lamentingly, resolutely, "tomorrow I have no job", and while the pro race calender has a couple of things for Phil (and Paul) to do - a reborn Tour of Ireland, Vuelta Espana, World Championships, and the most poetic, graceful finish of the season in any sport, "the Race of the Falling Leaves" - Giro di Lombardia.

The cuppa EG stares back...

It's like an annual death in the family - and the family is already squabbling; Maillot jaune victor Contidor is dissing Lance, "My relationship with Lance Armstrong is zero," (careful skinny-legged little boy, don't pull the tiger's tail); LA shrugs when asked about Conti, too busy forming a new team - USPS v4.0; Sastre still complains of no respect and trying to figure out why his Tour went "all pair-shaped" (Conti please take another note: TdF requires a team, yours is upgrading without you to LAv4.0), Cadel sits in the corner pouting; Menchov is still trying to reverse the Invisible-man Giro potion he swallowed in May; but these brats are my family of wheeled wonders and I love them one-n-all. The thought of waiting another year for this family reunion is killing me.

The final obit is written later in the morning when I return the box to Comcast - still set on Versus where it began 23 days earlier when the tech guy installed; I only awaken the tv-beast for the three weeks of the Tour, otherwise it's my December through January DVD training partner. The Comcast clerk doesn't even ask why it's coming back, there must be a note on my file, "don't ask".

Phil, good luck on the resume, despite getting older, with your experience there will be openings, otherwise swing by for a cuppa.