Well it's finally happening. The tropics are boiling up storms and hurricanes. Our first official Fall swell came through last Monday. Me? I was in the mountains of Virginia at the Page Valley Road (bicycle)Race near Luray. This was my first Cat 4 road race---in the mountains. Climbs at race speed, some 12 to 20 per cent I guess. My surfing buddies loved me when I returned my having fulfilled the role of sacrifice for legitimate waves head high and larger, clean faces and time for multiple cutbacks, so they told me. Telling me about it was one of their favorite parts second only to the surf itself that day.
It was all about Hatteras Island as the sandbars here in the towns seem non-productive right now. What we need, I suppose, is a real ass-kicker to blow in here and re-shuffle the sand for what I know is coming. How quickly and often things change here, the bottom, the weather, everything, are the reasons the Outer Banks keep your attention, keep your interest. The context is never boring.
Ah yes, the great myth of whom will be sacrificed for the next session. There always seems to be someone to thank for their absence. This never changes.
The bike race had been planned for quite a while. This is something you just don't do here in the Fall swell window. So I'll be avoiding traveling off the beaches as much as possible from here on. The policy now is sit on it till it hatches. I'll probably avoid all travels until after Thanksgiving.
The Page Valley Race was still however, very worth it. It featured as much suffering as any road racing cyclist could possibly want. Climbs which put you on your largest cog, your smallest chainring, standing over your pedals at 9 mph close to spitting up a lung---a situation many road cyclists only dream about.
Around 87 riders were registered in the Cat 4 race. Fifteen mysteriously never started, 12 abandoned the race, and 60 "finished". The range of strength and talent in the field seemed wide. The race was set to include 5 laps around a 10-mile circuit. The promoter reduced the race to 4 laps due to the excessive heat. Of the 60 finishing the race, 27 finished all 4 laps. Some were pulled out at the finish line after completing only 2 laps as they were falling so far behind. Some were pulled out after 3 laps (me) for the same reason.
The finish line was at the top of one of the steepest climbs. I was sure I could've completed all the laps. But let's just say---as I "summited" and the official walked toward my passing bike (yes I was riding slow enough for him to walk)informing me I was done but that he would still "place" me in the standings---I didn't have my happy face on. I didn't hesitate to retire though. For a moment, I even relished the thought of curling up into a fetal position, sucking my thumb, and trying to imagine who else I could blame for my being here this day. Only a momentary thought though. I quickly regained my tough-guy pose along with the other thirty or so guys lining the road at the finish, all either deep in oxygen debt or recovered enough to stand and nervously laugh about our predicament.
After about 15 to 20 minutes of waiting, here came the 4-lap finishers---the real warriors, including Robert, one of the other two riders from our team whom I traveled with up there. Apparently he was fourth wheel going into the last turn at the foot of the final climb and beginning an attack, when suddenly the tubular tire on his rear wheel came off the rim sending him abruptly into a ditch, still upright on the bike. He got the tire back on and still managed to finish 25th of the last 27 riders.
What's more, out of a major display of respect, Jacob Tremblay, the presumed BAR winner for Cat 4 in Virginia and among the lead riders at the time, turned around off the front and returned to check that Robert was okay. They finished together at the rear of the finishing field of riders. I'm happy to say sportsmanship is still alive in cycling at the amateur level.
We expect waves in the next day or two. I'll keep you updated.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
What the Beach Road Says About Us---Time to Connect the Dots
Those of you who have read this blog know that I am a road cyclist and surfer of some years. Almost daily I ride and train on what locals here call the Beach Road. Officially it's Virginia Dare Trail, named for the first English child born in the New World, tragically a member of the Lost Colony.
I try not to ride on the Beach Road during the middle to later hours of the day because of the car traffic and the growing, huge numbers of tourists, and I guess locals, walking, jogging, cycling, crossing to the beach, and just generally promenading. I do love to ride there though when the traffic is sparse. I can ride along on an uninterrupted, steady state ride and see the ocean, check our local sandbars for surf. It's really special.
I've noticed in the last four or five years on the Beach Road that the numbers of people exercising in some form is steadily increasing. It's nothing but impressive. There has also been more and more talk about obesity in our society, especially in children and the general ill effects for all of a sedentary lifestyle devoid of activity. Maybe this show of activity on the Beach Road is the public's reaction.
Let me clear up one thing with you right now though. I'm not on a crusade for health here. My road cycling and fitness escapades are self-serving and intended to prop up my fitness so that I can continue to surf at age fifty-six. Surfing is a big part of what maintains my happiness. The physical and spiritual benefits are too numerous to get into and would probably sound cliche. Suffice it to say, if you surf, you understand.
Let's get back to connecting the dots. My generation was the so-called Hippie Generation, the Flower Power Generation, the Counter Culture Generation. We went off to the college higher learning experience replete with ten-speed road bikes and attitudes which carried a first line distrust for any idea handed down from the "Establishment". Gas prices went through the ceiling for the first time in the early Seventies with gas shortages to boot. When we did drive many of us drove small light cars which sipped gas. My VW Beetle comes to mind. But we rode our bikes EVERYWHERE. There was however, at the time, a nobility in the poverty of functional daily living. Flash forward to now...
This same generation and it's children are the beneficiaries of a prosperity and gain of wealth like no U.S. generation before us has ever known. Many, many are still driving gas-hogging SUV's and bemoaning the $4.00 a gallon price at the fuel pump. These same people are cheering the possibilities of new offshore oil drilling, and cheering the temporary drops in the price of gasoline. I'm sure that if the price of gas remains high enough long enough, the great minds of science and industry in this country will answer resoundingly with viable alternatives.
The longer we delay this important work the greater the pain will be for every single person who enjoys the freedom of driving a vehicle anywhere they please years from now after paying the almost high enough price of gas. If you think $4.00 a gallon crimps your personal pursuit of happiness now, just support the status quo and watch what happens. This and worse environmental implications hang like a noose around our collective necks ever tightening as we fly into the future. Will it take market dynamics and market dynamics alone to finally teach our spoiled, hardheaded vehicle-driving population that this is where it's headed?
The oil producing countries will keep prices just low enough so that our U.S. research and industrial engine doesn't fully engage. Their approach is founded upon the belief that the U.S. population is fat, lazy and are no longer capable of the profound pain and sacrifice it would take to become more self-sufficient again. The pain and sacrifice to which I refer was demonstrated by our parents' generation during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. It would take the real resolve of every one of us to bull our country out of our present predicament without the market making leadership easy. Can we do it?
Meanwhile our global ecosystem is being trashed by the continued use and addiction to fossil fuel. The obesity-ridden children I referred to above are my generation's children and grandchildren. Maybe we're turning the corner on health somewhat as witnessed by the growing numbers exercising on our 25-mile long Beach Road. I am very encouraged by what I see there now. The Beach Road is actually slammed with physical activity that was never there at this level in years past. It is my local metric revealing whether we, as a nation are getting it. What people do has much more to say than what they say. I still see huge numbers of big fuel-guzzling vehicles on the Beach Road.
But on the side of progress made, I see many new fuel efficient vehicles too...hybrids, flex-fuel vehicles, and many, many more motor scooters for local transportation. One local bicycle shop in Kill Devil Hills rented motor scooters last tourist season. At the end of the season they sold all the used scooters. This year they could get no new scooters because of the overwhelming demand for them on the national market. This is good. We are reducing consumption, finding other ways to get around.
The national strategic oil reserve shockingly though, is good for only about three months oil supply. Think about what that means in leverage to any foreign oil producers who care to put us in a vice over some international issue. Scary thought huh?
We still can't seem to connect the dots on transportation especially local daily transportation which serve our daily needs. Our community planning must begin to support a local pedestrian and cycling lifestyle immediately. I direct you to a website I found which is becoming a clearinghouse for such efforts called World Carfree Network. There you will see another metric for our national awareness on these issues.
I look for signals in the media as well. Advertising is a great indicator of what we as a nation are thinking on a subject and, as if holding a mirror, what the corporations in this country anticipate our posture and positions to be on an issue. There's the T. Boone Pickens ad on TV, there's the very revealing Autozone (auto parts store) ad shown on Versus during the Tour De France of all places, with the scenario of a boy riding his bike who finds an old, giant American gas-hogging car with a note on the windshield, "If you can fix it, it's yours." The kid goes back and forth between working on the car and of course, the Autozone store getting parts and advice until the car finally runs. The narrator victoriously proclaims in the end that the boy will always be able to depend on his local Autozone, but at least he won't have to ride his bike there anymore.
Now this ad speaks volumes. One begs the question, how cash-starved is Versus that they wouldn't filter out an ad like that for a bike-friendly audience watching the Tour. But more importantly here, Autozone's ignorance to the context we are living in, astounds and scares the hell out of me. They like the oil producing nations are betting that the American public just doesn't get it.
Right now I'm shaking my head in disgust. I pray that you are too.
I try not to ride on the Beach Road during the middle to later hours of the day because of the car traffic and the growing, huge numbers of tourists, and I guess locals, walking, jogging, cycling, crossing to the beach, and just generally promenading. I do love to ride there though when the traffic is sparse. I can ride along on an uninterrupted, steady state ride and see the ocean, check our local sandbars for surf. It's really special.
I've noticed in the last four or five years on the Beach Road that the numbers of people exercising in some form is steadily increasing. It's nothing but impressive. There has also been more and more talk about obesity in our society, especially in children and the general ill effects for all of a sedentary lifestyle devoid of activity. Maybe this show of activity on the Beach Road is the public's reaction.
Let me clear up one thing with you right now though. I'm not on a crusade for health here. My road cycling and fitness escapades are self-serving and intended to prop up my fitness so that I can continue to surf at age fifty-six. Surfing is a big part of what maintains my happiness. The physical and spiritual benefits are too numerous to get into and would probably sound cliche. Suffice it to say, if you surf, you understand.
Let's get back to connecting the dots. My generation was the so-called Hippie Generation, the Flower Power Generation, the Counter Culture Generation. We went off to the college higher learning experience replete with ten-speed road bikes and attitudes which carried a first line distrust for any idea handed down from the "Establishment". Gas prices went through the ceiling for the first time in the early Seventies with gas shortages to boot. When we did drive many of us drove small light cars which sipped gas. My VW Beetle comes to mind. But we rode our bikes EVERYWHERE. There was however, at the time, a nobility in the poverty of functional daily living. Flash forward to now...
This same generation and it's children are the beneficiaries of a prosperity and gain of wealth like no U.S. generation before us has ever known. Many, many are still driving gas-hogging SUV's and bemoaning the $4.00 a gallon price at the fuel pump. These same people are cheering the possibilities of new offshore oil drilling, and cheering the temporary drops in the price of gasoline. I'm sure that if the price of gas remains high enough long enough, the great minds of science and industry in this country will answer resoundingly with viable alternatives.
The longer we delay this important work the greater the pain will be for every single person who enjoys the freedom of driving a vehicle anywhere they please years from now after paying the almost high enough price of gas. If you think $4.00 a gallon crimps your personal pursuit of happiness now, just support the status quo and watch what happens. This and worse environmental implications hang like a noose around our collective necks ever tightening as we fly into the future. Will it take market dynamics and market dynamics alone to finally teach our spoiled, hardheaded vehicle-driving population that this is where it's headed?
The oil producing countries will keep prices just low enough so that our U.S. research and industrial engine doesn't fully engage. Their approach is founded upon the belief that the U.S. population is fat, lazy and are no longer capable of the profound pain and sacrifice it would take to become more self-sufficient again. The pain and sacrifice to which I refer was demonstrated by our parents' generation during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean War. It would take the real resolve of every one of us to bull our country out of our present predicament without the market making leadership easy. Can we do it?
Meanwhile our global ecosystem is being trashed by the continued use and addiction to fossil fuel. The obesity-ridden children I referred to above are my generation's children and grandchildren. Maybe we're turning the corner on health somewhat as witnessed by the growing numbers exercising on our 25-mile long Beach Road. I am very encouraged by what I see there now. The Beach Road is actually slammed with physical activity that was never there at this level in years past. It is my local metric revealing whether we, as a nation are getting it. What people do has much more to say than what they say. I still see huge numbers of big fuel-guzzling vehicles on the Beach Road.
But on the side of progress made, I see many new fuel efficient vehicles too...hybrids, flex-fuel vehicles, and many, many more motor scooters for local transportation. One local bicycle shop in Kill Devil Hills rented motor scooters last tourist season. At the end of the season they sold all the used scooters. This year they could get no new scooters because of the overwhelming demand for them on the national market. This is good. We are reducing consumption, finding other ways to get around.
The national strategic oil reserve shockingly though, is good for only about three months oil supply. Think about what that means in leverage to any foreign oil producers who care to put us in a vice over some international issue. Scary thought huh?
We still can't seem to connect the dots on transportation especially local daily transportation which serve our daily needs. Our community planning must begin to support a local pedestrian and cycling lifestyle immediately. I direct you to a website I found which is becoming a clearinghouse for such efforts called World Carfree Network. There you will see another metric for our national awareness on these issues.
I look for signals in the media as well. Advertising is a great indicator of what we as a nation are thinking on a subject and, as if holding a mirror, what the corporations in this country anticipate our posture and positions to be on an issue. There's the T. Boone Pickens ad on TV, there's the very revealing Autozone (auto parts store) ad shown on Versus during the Tour De France of all places, with the scenario of a boy riding his bike who finds an old, giant American gas-hogging car with a note on the windshield, "If you can fix it, it's yours." The kid goes back and forth between working on the car and of course, the Autozone store getting parts and advice until the car finally runs. The narrator victoriously proclaims in the end that the boy will always be able to depend on his local Autozone, but at least he won't have to ride his bike there anymore.
Now this ad speaks volumes. One begs the question, how cash-starved is Versus that they wouldn't filter out an ad like that for a bike-friendly audience watching the Tour. But more importantly here, Autozone's ignorance to the context we are living in, astounds and scares the hell out of me. They like the oil producing nations are betting that the American public just doesn't get it.
Right now I'm shaking my head in disgust. I pray that you are too.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Update From the Beaches and The Chesapeake Criterium
The wheel of time slowly turns. The familiar autumn slant of sunlight leads my memory to past epic surf. The many years flow together and become one atmosphere, one great big luscious feeling representing all those waves ridden.
The ocean water temperature is pushing 80 degrees. Various water brothers talk now of free diving and spearfishing on the shipwrecks littering our local sandbars. The ocean is flat, clear and the wind is light and easterly. This is what our local islandscape, the context in which we live, is like just before the first real swell comes. So as we wait, we do other things in order to be ready.
Last Saturday I raced in my first race as a Category 4 bike racer. I had had two weeks preceding this race of careful, recovery-type training rides due to persistent groin and ligament strain. I believe this is attributed to lack of weight training in support of the racing season following hernia surgery. Lifting just hurt the scar tissue too much. So I just rode miles and put in time on the bike. I kept the intensity dialed down. I didn't really feel prepared, but resolved to ride in the Chesapeake Criterium anyway.
I rode up with my friend Robert. You could say I'm an entry level Cat 4 racer. He's ready to upgrade to Cat 3, but has decided to finish the season as a Cat Four. So for the first time we got to ride as teammates in a race.
Robert has done nothing less than lead many new local riders into the sport, and in some cases like mine, encouraged a few long time riders to enter criteriums and road races. He has led by putting in a Herculean effort himself to improve his fitness and skills for great racing results. I'll post a blog in the future characterizing the kind of unfailing devotion and commitment this takes in cycling as an amateur racer.
We were to meet one of our team's boy wonders, Ricky, 24 years-old, whom we knew would be armed with a murderous sprint finish. We also knew he was not happy with his results in the recent Piedmont Triad Omnium in the North Carolina foothills. Ricky is a natural sprinter. He would come to race. If he was in any kind of good position in the last 300 meters to the finish line, he'd be in the money when it was over. I'm always hoping I'm close enough to see it at the end. I raced with him when we both were in Cat 5 together. He kept winning so he moved right up to Cat 4 leaving me to slave through all 10 required races in order to also move up.
I lined up on the start line. Ricky tapped my rear wheel with his front to let me know he was behind me. As we started, I let a few riders find the front of the peloton before I fell in close behind, intending to hide from the wind more than I usually do. Robert had lined up on the start line to my right. The rider on the front set the pace which settled in around 25+ mph. I was watching for a break but there was none. I rotated to the front and took a short pull. I was determined to ride in the top ten, the safest place to be in a race, keeping the majority of the other riders behind me as much as possible.
We had been told by the referees at the outset the race would be 40 minutes. They said they would time our beginning laps then put up the number 13 on the lap board so we could watch the laps count down from there to the final lap. As the leaders cross the start/finish line on the final lap, cycling tradition has a bell ringing (like a cowbell)to signal the riders.
The race announcer could be heard briefly as we passed the finish line each time complaining about the slow pace of the race saying,"when will these riders pick up the pace and really begin racing?" Then a four dollar prime (pronounced preem)was announced the next time we passed by. Four dollars to the next rider to lead across the line on the next lap. We were being demeaned. I never did learn who won that prize. We weren't impressed.
I worked hard to hold a position near the front which had much more to do with bike handling skills and maneuvering than speed and strength. Our average speed at the race's end was only around 26.4 mph. But it's the movement in, around, and among the other racers that is the real intensity in the main part of the race. It's intoxicating.
If the pace sagged coming out of a corner, the leaders would be passed on the right and/or the left all at once. Riders would stream by like river current. I would be left having to pick my way back up to the lead group again after sinking backward until I couldn't tolerate my new position.
A rider went off the front of the pack and pulled out about 20 yards away. So I came out of the lead group and bridged up to him, covering the potential break. He signaled me to pull through and help stay away from the pack. I refused and stayed on his wheel. I was really just enjoying a safer place to ride and rest out of the wind.
We crossed the line, the bell rang and the last lap began. I was about 7th wheel from the front. We turned into the back stretch and ran up to around 28+ mph. I jumped over to the righthand gutter, climbed up the side of the leaders and launched off the front. I separated from the others only briefly as I struggled into the wind. I peeked behind to see the others closing on my rear wheel. Swiftly, the last corner before the finishing straight neared. I leaned hard into the turn holding my speed up. As I straightened my line, the riders behind me exploded across the road and up the sides in a maddening, furious sprint to the line. Among them were my teammates Ricky and Robert.
Robert had found the wheel of a friendly rider we knew from another team. When that rider got up to sprint, he put a watt loaded pedal-stroke down and his chain came off suddenly dropping him on his top bar. He managed to keep his bike up, but Robert had lost much of his sprint momentum, skidded and then all at once started his sprint again.
Ricky, waiting for no one, shot by me on the left and finished third. Robert ended with an eighth place. I finished safely 18th in a field of thirty-nine. It was a worthwhile race. Today I learned I could ride in Cat Four. There's nothing like riding with able teammates.
The ocean water temperature is pushing 80 degrees. Various water brothers talk now of free diving and spearfishing on the shipwrecks littering our local sandbars. The ocean is flat, clear and the wind is light and easterly. This is what our local islandscape, the context in which we live, is like just before the first real swell comes. So as we wait, we do other things in order to be ready.
Last Saturday I raced in my first race as a Category 4 bike racer. I had had two weeks preceding this race of careful, recovery-type training rides due to persistent groin and ligament strain. I believe this is attributed to lack of weight training in support of the racing season following hernia surgery. Lifting just hurt the scar tissue too much. So I just rode miles and put in time on the bike. I kept the intensity dialed down. I didn't really feel prepared, but resolved to ride in the Chesapeake Criterium anyway.
I rode up with my friend Robert. You could say I'm an entry level Cat 4 racer. He's ready to upgrade to Cat 3, but has decided to finish the season as a Cat Four. So for the first time we got to ride as teammates in a race.
Robert has done nothing less than lead many new local riders into the sport, and in some cases like mine, encouraged a few long time riders to enter criteriums and road races. He has led by putting in a Herculean effort himself to improve his fitness and skills for great racing results. I'll post a blog in the future characterizing the kind of unfailing devotion and commitment this takes in cycling as an amateur racer.
We were to meet one of our team's boy wonders, Ricky, 24 years-old, whom we knew would be armed with a murderous sprint finish. We also knew he was not happy with his results in the recent Piedmont Triad Omnium in the North Carolina foothills. Ricky is a natural sprinter. He would come to race. If he was in any kind of good position in the last 300 meters to the finish line, he'd be in the money when it was over. I'm always hoping I'm close enough to see it at the end. I raced with him when we both were in Cat 5 together. He kept winning so he moved right up to Cat 4 leaving me to slave through all 10 required races in order to also move up.
I lined up on the start line. Ricky tapped my rear wheel with his front to let me know he was behind me. As we started, I let a few riders find the front of the peloton before I fell in close behind, intending to hide from the wind more than I usually do. Robert had lined up on the start line to my right. The rider on the front set the pace which settled in around 25+ mph. I was watching for a break but there was none. I rotated to the front and took a short pull. I was determined to ride in the top ten, the safest place to be in a race, keeping the majority of the other riders behind me as much as possible.
We had been told by the referees at the outset the race would be 40 minutes. They said they would time our beginning laps then put up the number 13 on the lap board so we could watch the laps count down from there to the final lap. As the leaders cross the start/finish line on the final lap, cycling tradition has a bell ringing (like a cowbell)to signal the riders.
The race announcer could be heard briefly as we passed the finish line each time complaining about the slow pace of the race saying,"when will these riders pick up the pace and really begin racing?" Then a four dollar prime (pronounced preem)was announced the next time we passed by. Four dollars to the next rider to lead across the line on the next lap. We were being demeaned. I never did learn who won that prize. We weren't impressed.
I worked hard to hold a position near the front which had much more to do with bike handling skills and maneuvering than speed and strength. Our average speed at the race's end was only around 26.4 mph. But it's the movement in, around, and among the other racers that is the real intensity in the main part of the race. It's intoxicating.
If the pace sagged coming out of a corner, the leaders would be passed on the right and/or the left all at once. Riders would stream by like river current. I would be left having to pick my way back up to the lead group again after sinking backward until I couldn't tolerate my new position.
A rider went off the front of the pack and pulled out about 20 yards away. So I came out of the lead group and bridged up to him, covering the potential break. He signaled me to pull through and help stay away from the pack. I refused and stayed on his wheel. I was really just enjoying a safer place to ride and rest out of the wind.
We crossed the line, the bell rang and the last lap began. I was about 7th wheel from the front. We turned into the back stretch and ran up to around 28+ mph. I jumped over to the righthand gutter, climbed up the side of the leaders and launched off the front. I separated from the others only briefly as I struggled into the wind. I peeked behind to see the others closing on my rear wheel. Swiftly, the last corner before the finishing straight neared. I leaned hard into the turn holding my speed up. As I straightened my line, the riders behind me exploded across the road and up the sides in a maddening, furious sprint to the line. Among them were my teammates Ricky and Robert.
Robert had found the wheel of a friendly rider we knew from another team. When that rider got up to sprint, he put a watt loaded pedal-stroke down and his chain came off suddenly dropping him on his top bar. He managed to keep his bike up, but Robert had lost much of his sprint momentum, skidded and then all at once started his sprint again.
Ricky, waiting for no one, shot by me on the left and finished third. Robert ended with an eighth place. I finished safely 18th in a field of thirty-nine. It was a worthwhile race. Today I learned I could ride in Cat Four. There's nothing like riding with able teammates.
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