We cyclists are an obsessive bunch. There’s always a few more watts that can be churned out, a few more seconds that can be dropped. Instead of celebrating a hard effort with rest, it’s often easier to just continue to work yourself into the ground. With no end in sight, it can seem like training is an endless pursuit without definitive victory.

Luckily, there’s the offseason. Having raced for the last six months, I’m ready for some downtime. I’m ready to be- at least temporarily- done.

At first I felt bad about taking time off the bike. After all, cycling is just about my single favorite thing. Period. Without my bicycle, I feel not quite complete, like Calvin without Hobbes, Butch Cassidy without the Sundance Kid, or, perhaps more aptly, Andy Schleck without Frank Schleck.

However, the more I talked to other cyclists and coaches, I began to realize how important this break can be. Cycling is an incredibly demanding sport, and after many months of physically and mentally demanding training, nothing will help your training more than, well, not training. It’s important to come back to the main season of training fully rested.

So, for those of you who have been on the bike for the winter, the spring, and the summer, think about taking a couple weeks off. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bike at all, but just have fun, and don’t even think about intervals. We’ll have plenty of those later.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some training to do. This box of Fig Newtons isn’t going to eat itself.

Big ups to everyone who rode the Greylock TT this weekend. Here’s the deal:

– Amy Levine ’14 won her age group
– Erik Levinsohn ’12 won third overall and third in his age group
– Cecelia Davis-Hayes ’11 won second overall for women and first for her age group

For full results, check out BikeReg.

I really like time trials. There’s something remarkable about racing against the clock, and it’s not just the goofy helmets or the really cool looking bikes. When you’re riding in a peloton, you’re afforded the luxury of not having to think for yourself. Which way to go? Just follow the wheel in front of you. How fast should I ride? Just follow the wheel in front of you. What line can I take on the next turn? Just… well, you know.

This is all absent in a time trial. It’s really just you, the road, and the clock. Because you rarely know how your time stacks up against competitors while you are riding, it always seems like there’s no margin for error whatsoever. Stop pedaling for a second and you might just be losing your lead. Start hammering in the big ring and you might have just moved yourself onto the podium. Your success or failure is only apparent after the fact, once you’ve already agreed to torture yourself for what seemed like an eternity. Seems like the best outcome is a Pyrrhic victory.

Pretty rough, huh? Sounds like it couldn’t get worse, right?

You have no idea.

The annual time trial up Mount Greylock is one week from today. Not only is this a time trial, this is a time trial to the highest point in Massachusetts. And it doesn’t even start at the base of the mountain! The course begins at Heritage Park in North Adams, which means a few very steep climbs just to get to the welcome sign to the Mount Greylock reservation, kindly letting you know that you have 8 miles to go.

🙂

Here’s a very brief (chronological) introduction to the course. Anyone interested in a longer preview shouldn’t hesitate to ask me.

– Furnace street: the steepest climb is at the very beginning of the race. Don’t kill yourself here. You have a ways to go before you meet the base of Mount Greylock.

– Flats and downhill section: take advantage of this section. If you use it only as a rest period you’re wasting a precious opportunity to move at a really fast pace.

– Switchbacks: the hardest part of Mount Greylock is right inside the gates. You’ll want your easiest gear here. Take smart lines on the switchbacks and remember that there’s a lot left to go.

– Rolling-ish section: try to keep your momentum from the downhills and flats as much as possible for the uphills.

– Round the top finish: dig deep and lose yourself.

I did this race a year ago and it instantly became my favorite race. If you like climbing, time trialing, and masochism, this is for you. Otherwise, you might be disappointed. But then, if you don’t like those things, why are you biking in Williamstown?

We’re going to Utah!

When most sporting events begin, you often have a pretty good sense of who is going to come out on top. Put my poor Detroit Lions against the New England Patriots and you can be pretty assured that the pats will win handily. The same goes for basketball, soccer, and even other endurance sports, like running. Given a list of teams or athletes and their respective records or PRs, you can usually make a really good educated guess of who will end up winning.

I would argue that this is less true in cycling. One big reason why is luck.

I raced the Topsfield Circuit Race earlier this week. About 35 or 40 miles in, I got a flat on my back tire, and was forced to stop, switch in a new wheel, and then attempt to catch the main field. Unfortuantely, when the main field is moving at 26-28 miles per hour, there’s not much hope for catching back on. I might as well have been riding on a flat tire.

I’ve been pretty lucky for the most part. This is the first race I’ve flatted in and I didn’t have any chance of contending for the win anyhow. But this danger always exists. You can do everything right, be the fittest rider, and still come up short. Take, for example, David Millar in the 2003 TdF prologue. He threw his chain and lost the prologue by less than a second. Had he not had a mechanical, he would have won easily.

Technology is making luck less and less a part of cycling. Wheels and tubes are becoming increasingly puncture-resistant. Electronic derailleurs are making shifting faster and more precise. Stiffer and stronger components mean that you’re less likely to have your front crack during a hair-raising descent. At the same time, technology has found yet found a solution to the hapless racer who can’t handle his bike to save his life and takes down half the field. Until this problem is solved, luck will always play a big role in deciding who finishes first (or, really, who finishes at all).

I think it was Clint Eastwood, one of my heroes, who best explained how luck works, so I won’t try to improve on his quite compelling argument. I’ll just say that you already have enough to worry about- your competitors, the pothole just in front of you, and the epic climb just up the road. Don’t bother worrying about the things that are out of your control.

Just in time for your return to school, or in John’s case, your month of awkwardly chilling waiting to start your Oxford experience: a cycling video that will blow your mind and hopefully inspire you to get out and ride when you’re back (disclaimer: DO NOT try this at home, ever. That goes double for me, since apparently I can’t ride a bike these days without injuring myself, and triple for Lumby just because he’s Lumby.) I remember mentioning this video to Erik once but never got around to sharing it with anyone. These guys do just about the sickest things I’ve ever seen anyone do on a bike.

The video is about San Francisco bike couriers. Who all ride fixies. In San Francisco. Think about that. I can barely ride a fixie in Williamstown. No joke, the way they brake is by skidding. You’ll see what I mean. Their insane handling skills are almost rivaled by their sometimes appalling stupidity, which makes for a very entertaining 54 minutes of film. It’s formatted a little like a ski video, although clearly what these guys can do on bikes is much more badass than what most people can do on skis. Good music, great cinematography, unbelievable bike handling, and some beautiful views of San Fran. Download it here.

Keep in mind it’s quite a large file so you’ll want to either wait till you’re back on campus or set aside a couple hours at home to download it. But it’s well worth the 600MB and the hour you’ll spend glued to your computer screen.

Collect your shiny new video on my WSO site:
http://wso.williams.edu/~inesbitt/MASH.zip
If you find yourself unable to play it, download VLC media player.

You won’t regret it.

Inspired by John’s update, I thought it was worthwhile to keep the blog rolling.

“Fun” with power meters!

One of the good (bad?) things about cycling is that it’s so hard to get a completely quantitative measure for your fitness. Track athletes can trade 400 splits, swimmers can brag about their 200 fly time, and rowers can gauge their fitness by … er… whatever crew people actually do. Cycling is different. It’s a lot less clear exactly where your fitness is in comparison to others because of the huge number of variables that influence performance (terrain, quality of road, tire pressure, hydration/nutrition, restedness, and whether or not you gave an arm and a leg just to buy that Zipp wheelset that looks so damn good). In short, it’s not easy to see exactly where you stand.

I’ve been using a heart rate monitor for a couple years now. While it’s certainly more useful than just going by RPE alone, in actuality it tells you nothing about how powerful you are. I just borrowed my dad’s Power Tap, which is a wheel that has a power meter built into the rear hub. In two days, I’ll be doing a 40-minute all-out time trial to see actually how much wattage I can produce. The prospect is at the same time terrifying and exciting. In all, it’s pretty cool to be told by a computer where exactly you stand.

On a (barely) related note, I just might start calling the ark the “wattage cottage.” Yeah, I know I’ll probably be the only one. That’s okay. I’m used to that.

Why would anyone want to bike up Mount Greylock?

I actually don’t have a good answer to that question, but if you’re reading this then chances are you also have a distorted sense of what counts as “fun.” Therefore, you should all register for the Greylock Hillclimb. I’m missing convocation to go, so “doing schoolwork” or “studying” are poor excuses (as always).

Not to be trumped by John, here are some more awesome cycling videos.

1) An amazing save

2) The only thing more awesome than racing up a 3000 ft. mountain? Racing down a 5000 ft. mountain…
without roads.