Category Archives: Roadie

Woolly thinking

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And so today, without a word of warning, I’m going to talk about my underwear.

bartlg

OK, relax. I’m not (to the disappointment of only a tiny few) going to venture towards the downstairs department. Because, as Johnny Hoooooogerlund had the misfortune to confirm just the other day, there’s nothing to talk about there.

But it will be no surprise to anyone who reads this (because I expect that you all know me already) that I prefer winter to summer. And winter in Brisbane means a wool base-layer. Pretty much any time the temperature gets below 17-18 degrees I’ll be wearing wool underneath my jersey when I step out the front door and head down to the bike shed.

netti_shirt And the reason why I’m bringing this up now? Well, it’s timely for the coolest days of the year here, but it’s also timely because I have a new favourite piece of cycling kit. The Bart (pictured above right) was 25% off at NZO last week, and I couldn’t resist. I said to Annette that it was because I have several wool undershirts that are just about ready to be thrown away. And that’s true, but I can’t bring myself to discard old friends.

I have a David Jones v-neck wool undershirt that is more holes than shirt. And a grey Netti wool undershirt (like this one at left), that has been washed so many times that it has barely any shape to it at all.

And a Body Torque half-half wool-polyester undershirt that is slightly thicker and a tighter weave, and therefore perfect for mornings below 10 degrees.

And my favourite of all these favourites, a long-sleeve Lab-Gear merino undershirt that I must have had for nearly 10 years. (That link goes to a much newer model than mine, which is just basic black).

I have a drawer-full of polyester cycling jerseys. Some of them have sentimental associations. And truthfully I think that for jerseys the artificial fabric works better than wool. Wool tends to be a bit too stretchy, and on cooler days lets through too much breeze when used as an outer layer.

But nothing beats the snugness, the warmth, the rightness, the righteousness, of wearing wool next to your skin while riding. You should try it.

I feel (surprisingly) good

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Karawatha cyclecross 003a

In Karawatha Forest on the CX-ready Frezoni. Great fun.

I had a few days off the bike last week, with the same bug that everyone else has suffered from this winter. But after a couple of good rides on the weekend, I reckon I’m back.

It’s also true that I have contracted Tour de France fever, but that’s a different ailment.

It was a massive weekend in the Tour, with crashes causing all sorts of chaos and carnage. Which has a pleasing alliterative effect, but actually was pretty nasty. I saw an interview with Cadel after last night’s stage, and he was very shaken up by the crash. It reminded him of the death of Wouter Weylandt, in the Giro D’Italia.

So, an update from my point of view, of Who’s Hot and Who’s Not.

Hot:

  • Cadel is smokin’ hot. Everything is coming up roses at present for Cadel and BMC. He is still in position A amongst the overall contenders. He did use his team on the front for half the stage the other night, and it was hard to work out why. But apart from that possible tactical mis-step, everything else has been great for BMC.
  • Thomas Voeckler. Another one of those characters that everyone loves. In fact, on Jens Voigt’s blog on Bicycling.com this morning, its clear that Voeckler is popular in the peloton as well.  Such a great ride by him in the breakaway yesterday. Chapeau!
  • Thor Hushovd. Even though his reign in yellow is over, it was a wonderful defence of the jersey by Garmin-Cervelo and especially by Thor himself.
  • Tejay Van Garderen. Rui Costa. Phillip Gilbert. Johnny Hoooooooogerlund. Legends all. Especially Johnny H. Proudest moment of his career thus far, receiving the polka-dot jersey, and he is so battered and beaten up (as a  result of this) that he is in tears (below).

Not:

  • Vino. Even though I admire his attacking style of riding, I admit that I don’t like Vino. I’m sorry that his career may have ended with yesterday’s crash, and I hope he recovers fully.
  • Radioshack. The whole lot of ‘em are gone now. Imagine having four GC candidates (Horner, Leipheimer, Kloden, Brajkovic), all in good form, and now having basically none. All through crashes. This is a strange tour.

Lukewarm:

  • Alberto Contador. Keeps being involved in minor crashes. That’s going to take a toll. He might not be hurt, but everytime you hit the deck, it means that your condition gets worse. You don’t sleep well, your recovery overnight is not as good your rivals.
  • “Frandy” Schleck. They have shown nothing. I hope they’ve got nothing. But we won’t find out until we get to Luz Ardiden.

What’s going to happen next?

Well, I obviously have less than no clue. There’s bound to be people who surprise us. But from what I can see, it will be Cadel vs Contador vs Frandy. And for the first time ever, I reckon Cadel’s a chance.

Have a look through the group that finished with Cadel on Stage 9. The winner of the Tour was in that group, I guarantee it.

Mind you, I am an incurable optimist. I thought the Matildas were going to beat Sweden.

C’mon Cuddles!

We’ve only just begun …

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(I’m saving Little River Band for later on.)

… but how much fun is this TdF already!

So Cadel’s going well. That’s always good, especially cos it means he’s not being whiny in his interviews.

I really want to like Cadel a lot, he obviously tries his absolute heart out every time on the bike. And anyone who has won the affections of the delightful Chiara must have a side that we don’t see. But when something goes wrong, halfway through the Tour, I just hope he can face it in a way that wins over the cycling fans and the general public, instead of turning them off.

Sorry, side-tracked already. I was going to focus on what I’ve observed thus far, and what I think it may mean in the rest of the race. And I’m concentrating always on the overall, not so much on who wins each stage.

I mean, a win in the Team Time Trial is nice for Jonathon Vaughters and Garmin-Cervelo and Thor, the God of Thunder, everybody’s second favourite rider after Jens Voigt, but it’s not the main game.

I want to know who can win this thing, and how it will all play out. And that has become much much more interesting since the Tour started.

So the easiest way to do this is ‘Who’s Hot and Who’s Not’.

Hot:

  • Cadel. Man, the first two days simply could not have been better for him. 2nd behind SuperPhil in the first stage, and second again in the TTT, with his team nothing short of magnificent on both days. And both days he has looked powerful and in control, and like he’s jumping out of his skin with good form. It’s all very good. He doesn’t have the yellow jersey, and that’s good too, because Garmin-Cervelo can have all the pressure that goes with defending the jersey.
  • Wiggins. (Make sure you say ‘Wiggins’ to yourself in a Princes-Charles-type mock-posh English accent. It will make him much funnier).  Sky were going great in the TTT, and Wiggins was driving them. He looks in great nick to me.
  • The Radioshack crew. Horner, Klodi and Levi. Once again, just a couple of seconds back from Garmin-Cervelo in the TTT, and it was all driven by their GC riders, especially Andreas Kloden. Levi was quoted as saying he was just hanging on when Klodi was driving the bunch. Its a great sign to have your GC riders as the most powerful in your team, because to win the Tour you absolutely must be in top form both in the mountains and in the time trials. I like Horner a lot for the podium in this Tour.

Not:

  • Contador. Not for anything he has done himself. He has been very unlucky. But in the ‘Not Hot’ category, at least partly because his team doesn’t look that good. Alberto has shown plenty of times that he really doesn’t require all that much support in the mountains, because he is peerless there. But being 1.40 down on Cadel and Schleck and Wiggo and the Radioshacks? That’s a lot. And he has to make it up in the mountains, cos everyone apart from Schleck is just as good as him in the TT.
  • Andy & Frank Schleck. Did you see the way Leopard-Trek raced their TTT? I have never before seen a situation where the domestiques were protecting their team leaders in a team time trial. Sure, they had Cancellara driving the train, but it wasn’t just that Andy wasn’t strong when put alongside the massive engine that is Spartacus. From halfway through the TTT, Frank Schleck was sitting on the back of the Leopard-Trek group, not contributing. And soon after, so was Andy. OK, so Spartacus dragged them along to a good result and stopped them from losing time, but how can Andy Schleck be a serious contender for the Tour when he is obviously going to lose minutes in an individual time trial? He doesn’t have the power required to win the Tour.
  • Basso. Liquigas were very disappointing, and Basso is already not a factor for the overall. Mind you, he’s not alone there. You can put a line through Vino, and all of the Garmin GC riders (Van De Velde, Danielson, Hesjedal). They might win a stage, but none of these riders is going to be a factor in determining the podium.

I would say that the next few days should be less dramatic. A ‘normal’ sprint finish tomorrow, surely. But after the first two days of excitement, who can say? We’ve only just begun …

And can I just say that I wrote all this before reading Matt Keenan this morning, who agrees with me on what we saw, but doesn’t draw the same conclusions re Andy Schleck.

And and and: BikeSnobNYC is freakin’ hilarious. And I love that Bicycling.com has him listed under ‘Expert Analysis’.

 

Velour dressing-gown

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So I’m all abuzz with a new mountain bike and have spent the whole morning out at Mt Joyce, but that’s an upcoming post.

But I believe there’s a bike race starting soon, that lots of people are interested in.

A friend sent me an email during the week, asking the following question (which I have to say is a very good one): “I was just wondering if in Brisbane there are little parties in relation to the Tour de France?”

So if you know of any bars, cafes, night-spots of any kind that host TdF parties, let me know. The Alpe d’Huez stage would be the right one, I think.

I do know that right about this time last year I managed to snaffle what I thought was the most important item in the Tour de France watching arsenal. Not a new espresso machine, but a velour dressing-gown.

So that probably tells you all you need to know about whether I am hosting any TdF parties. If we uncover any, I will go along for at least one night! And just maybe, I will wear my velour dressing-gown (which is not nearly as snappy as the one pictured).

Edit: OK, so Eleanor’s mentioned this now as well. Maybe we will have to get our heads together and come up with a HrH/briztreadley joint promotion? All we need is a licensed venue with a big screen. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Weekend at Ernie’s (now THIS is journalism)

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So one of the techniques they taught me when I was younger was the inverted pyramid. If you have a story to tell, you can put the most important thing first, and then the next most important and so on until you run out of information to impart.

Then when your article is cut short because of space restrictions, well at least the stuff that was cut out was less important than the stuff that went in.

Of course, there’s a judgement to be made about what is ‘most important’, and what is ‘less important’.

Back then the commodity in short supply, (we thought) was space. These days, the scarcity is attention span. So the very fact that I have now spent the first four paragraphs on inverted pyramids is a less-than-optimal use of that technique on this report about ‘Weekend At Ernie’s’. Cos you might already be bored. Oh well.

So here it goes then, with careful and not-at-all-random news judgements informing the order of every single sentence, the placement of every photo.

We had fun, and the sun was shining. And we, in this case, was me, Ernie, Bruce, Dean, Greg, Jan, Darren, Ian, Stephen, Susie & Phil.

Mr Ian Darcy picks a mean guitar, and that James Taylor song that starts ‘I can’t help it if I don’t feel so good” is actually called ‘Angry Blues’.

The Fed-Up cafe is a pretty good find, not that I have coffee at Ipswich all that often. All this time I have been mis-hearing a lyric from The Sound of Music. I now know that it’s a lonely goat turd that is high on the hill.

Ernie’s country retreat comfortably* sleeps 10. We had 11 people, and Dean Winchester is a hero for sleeping out on the deck. Road bikes are fast and enjoyable for a two-day ride, but you would probably get fewer flats on a touring bike.

Darren Creevey has a shite-load of music on his iPhone. And he knows the words to every hit song from the 70s and 80s. It’s cool for cats.

The dam levels (Wivenhoe and Somerset) are doing fine and the countryside is looking fabulous.

It is good that the Moggill ferry survived the floods, and cyclists don’t have to pay the ferryman, or even fix a price.

You can get a sandwich at the Fernvale bakery, but why would you? Best. pies.

Neurum Road, between Kilcoy and Woodford, is still one of the best touring roads in south-east Queensland. Also Pine Mountain Road is the best way to ride from Ipswich to Fernvale.

The best place to catch a fish is just over there, in the original river channel.

When you’re catering for a BBQ and there are about 12 people, probably one bag of baby spuds is enough. Even if the group is one-quarter vegetarians. Just cos they’re vegos doesn’t mean they eat more spuds.

It wasn’t all that cold on Sunday morning.

You can fit 11 bikes in the last carriage of a Queensland Rail suburban train without taking over any seats, mostly using the space for wheel chairs. Secure the first bike to the rail using your helmet strap, and stack subsequent bikes nose to tail, and hold them in place with each person’s helmet. And, I suppose, hope that nobody in a wheel chair gets on!

You can never have enough grilled haloumi. Everybody loves squeaky cheese.

Not even Dean Winchester can give a bunch an hour and half start and expect to catch up in the course of a day’s ride. Although he can give it a red-hot go.

Apparently American Honey is a liqueur made by Wild Turkey, and has actual honey in it.

Just because Jan doesn’t say anything at the time when you’re giving her a push up another nasty hill doesn’t mean that she doesn’t appreciate it. Cos she does.

If you have the right Garmin bike computer and enough software on your computer, you can produce a number called a trip score that will rate the difficulty of a ride against any other ride that you have done, that you also have the trip score for. Just in case you wanted to do that.

I had such a good time that I ALMOST TYPED THIS WHOLE ARTICLE IN ALL CAPS.

MORE PIX!

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* where by “comfortable” I mean jammed together with almost enough room between bodies, fold-out beds and air mattresses to get to the loo at 3 am without smashing your knee into something solid. I said almost.

Since Pontius was a pilate

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It is possible that I might see the need for disclaimers later in this piece, but let me start off bold and work back from that position as the need arises.

There’s lot of things you can do to improve your cycling. Until now, reading briztreadley hasn’t been one of them. Cos this is a site about enjoying the ride, not smashing yourself in competition.

However, even those who are enjoying the ride sometimes want to get better. Here are some things that I think probably work pretty well …

  • Ride lots (the Eddy Merckx training program)
  • Shed some kilos, fatty. (Brad Wiggins and Chris Horner are among the pro cyclists who have improved their results by being at their absolute lightest).
  • Get a training plan (just about guaranteed to work, if the plan is good and you stick with it).

When all of those things are working, those are the times when I have had my best performances as a cyclist. Although (here’s where the disclaimers start) in my case those performances have never risen to any great heights.

But I’m just about ready to add another important strategy to the list of things that really help to make you a better rider.

Here it is:

  • Pilates

I’ve been going for about a month to a pilates class at Black Dove in West End. And yesterday someone asked me ‘what effect has it had?’

So I can’t claim very much that is quantifiable yet (and how would you separate a general performance improvement out from the various components that went into it?), here’s some possible indicators.

  • I can touch my toes quite easily now. Haven’t been able to do that for a couple of decades, I reckon
  • My regular series of core strength exercises that I do myself (once a week, or less) finishes with a plank or bridge in a modified push-up position, held for 30 seconds at a time. Before Pilates, I could do exactly one of these bridges, at the end of 10 minutes of other crunches, push-ups, etc. This morning, with a short rest in between, three.
  • My first lap on Mt Gravatt this morning was my fastest one of the year. (I have been very slow this year!)

And although it seems to me that the pace of my improvement is glacial, and everyone else in the class can do these exercises better than me, and I know I have put myself in situations before in which I could be accused of being a creepy old man but this one surely takes the cake/biscuit, seeing as the rest of the class is all women, as is the leader/instructor, all of whom are very nice to me but what are they thinking really but wouldn’t you probably be better off without that cake or that biscuit?

I thought so. Glad you agree.

No doubt the question will be asked: What does your headline mean? Pontius Pilate doesn’t have anything to do with Pilates, surely. That’s what you think.

Who doesn’t love a big cheque!

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Nice work from Nico on the design of this piece of symbolic banking*, too. None of your Comic Sans here.

So this $8000 was the money raised by Tour de Dave participants, and it was presented to Grant Murdoch (left, chair of the board of Endeavour Foundation), and David Barbagallo (centre, CEO of Endeavour Foundation). Right of pic is Dave Clarke, the patron, founder & eponym of the Tour de Dave, and not coincidentally proprietor of Graceville Bike Hub.

Good folks all. Pic unceremoniously nicked from fund-raiser extraordinaire SuperMarg. (Nice photo-bombing work from Mr Darcy as well).

* … you know that a cheque can take all sorts of forms, don’t you?

 

Stealth black, with pink highlights

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I don’t have a single tattoo, and I’m never likely to get one. I don’t have a single item of Rapha clothing, although I only hear good things about their stuff. Next time I want a wool jersey I’ll get one made-to-order from Gerard at Lab-Gear and support an Australian small business.

Call me a sucker for a particular style of marketing, but damn I love watching the films that Rapha produce. They are beautifully shot & edited, the sound-track is always great, and the aesthetic of bike-riding that they capture appeals to me.

It all seems so well thought-out, but yet at the same time natural and unforced. Classy wool jerseys. Cycling caps. Steel bikes, all made by great names among the boutique frame-builders of the US (Richards Sachs, Bilenky, Moots, can’t get any cooler than that). Getting a good dose of Vitamin G on every ride. At a minimum, stubbly chins, all the way to extravagant facial hair. Black with pink highlights, cos we’re stealth and hard-core, yet not afraid to show our sensitive side.

Congratulations and thanks, Rapha.

This latest effort, which is kind of a ‘greatest hits’ of 2010, is just brilliant. And I don’t care if the whole last five years of Rapha has just been about trying to sell me expensive cycling kit. I don’t care if I’m being manipulated. In fact, I don’t believe that is what its about. Seems to me that these folks just really do love riding, and just happen to be in the cycling apparel game.

Makes me want to get out for a two-day adventure ride to Somerset Dam and back. Think that’s what I’ll do one weekend soon.

People who are awesome

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Amongst that group is Kerryn who just completed her first half-ironman triathlon in under 6 hours.

This image had the caption: Hello from Busselton WA, the K-dog is ready! (little in-joke there)

The race was in Busselton, so maybe all those months of training, and going all the way to Western Australia to race was just an elaborate ruse to justify a holiday in Margaret River region afterwards. Looks very serene on the night before the race.

Maybe, but no. Kerryn is the most dedicated trainer I know. When the rest of us roll into work after whatever puny ride we’ve done that morning, Kerryn is already at her desk, looking sparkly fresh and happy. Why? Because she has just smashed out another gruelling run, swim or bike ride. Or all three on the one morning.

The highest stress time of year for BQ staff is the lead-up to Cycle Queensland, our 9-day ride in September, and a month later the big one-day event, Brisbane to the Gold Coast.

Kerryn likes to make this time even more eventful by training for the Noosa tri. So on the rest day of Cycle Queensland, while most are flaking out, lying low, generally looking bedraggled and exhausted, Kerryn goes off for a 60km bike ride. (It is true that during Cycle Qld 2010, I went for a ride with Kerryn on this day, but this post isn’t about me.)

I looked around for a good pic of Kerryn on her bike (which by the way is the most beautiful Bianchi Infinito, which was originally owned by another friend, and has featured in this blog before). But I couldn’t find one. So here is Kerryn’s mugshot.

So, massive respect to ‘K-dog’. You are a machine!

Riding towards the rainbow

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Tour de Dave’s Group 1, headed towards Mt Lindsay on day 2. In perfect formation, natch.

Just back from the Tour De Dave. My second one, I think Dave has run this ride maybe five times.

This edition went:

  • Graceville to Beaudesert (via Kalbar)
  • Beaudesert to Casino (including the lovely lovely ride over the Mt Lindsay highway).
  • Casino to Murwillumbah
  • Murwillumbah to Graceville (by various means, by including the Border Range, via Natural Arch)

About 25 participants, led by Dave Clarke himself, and the irrepressible Les ‘Legs’ Hewett. We were divided into three groups, and I was fortunate enough to go in Group 1. The good thing about that was I knew that the first group were all about doing the ride together, and aside from big climbs, the group would work well together.

So that when I looked around Group 1 and saw that just about everyone was stronger than me, I wasn’t too alarmed. A rising tide lifts all boats (good cliche, that one), so I would get the benefit of being in the fastest group, and my ride wouldn’t probably be as hard as if I was having to take a lead role in a slower group.

And it turned out pretty much like that. Our ride was almost incident-free, and yet entirely memorable. Group 1 was a well-oiled machine just about straight away, taking turns and keeping a rock-steady rhythm for the whole four days. We were like the Oscar Peterson trio with ‘Relentless’ Ray Brown on bass. Drivin’ it on all day, and yet relaxed and comfortable and in the groove.

So that was the most fun. Just to feel my legs getting better and better as the days wore on. Just to enjoy the beautiful sunshine, and the cool mornings, and the crisp Northern Rivers air. Just enjoying the mateship (I know that’s a blokey word and our group did have a female member, and camaraderie fits almost as well, but pffffft, Sally feels like a mate to me) of the peloton.

At the end of a long first day on the road, our bunch kicked over the last hills on the Boonah-Beaudesert Road. Ahead of us lay our destination, obscured by a light grey rain cloud.

And a perfect semi-circle rainbow, so clear, so distinct that you could count every colour.

Les and I were on the front of the bunch, and it seemed to us that what would happen next was that we were so close that we would ride under the rainbow, and possibly then into some mystically altered universe in which Beaudesert was transformed into a wonderland of peace, tranquillity and unicorns. And puppies.

We didn’t. It wasn’t.

But the rainbow was still pretty damn special.

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