mary mary quite contrary

Seeing as everyone and everything is talking about the Tour, I thought I would be slightly perverse and draw attention to the most sublime looking event that took place a few days before the Tour started.

The Retro Ronde van Vlaanderen took place on June 28 and looks to have been an absolute hoot. Old boys, old clothes, old bikes, even old cars bound together with that unique Flandrian atmosphere make this a must see (or perhaps do) event for a lifetime list.

Photos are from the Centrum RVV website www.rvv.be/nl/crvv/activiteiten/retroronde

Whilst we weren't talking about the Tour, I caught an Armstrong interview with Ned Boulting for itv4. LA was laidback, nonchalant but talked with subtle barbs aimed at a certain Spanish pretender to his crown. He is the king of smackdown talk without ever resorting to anything so trashy as actual smackdown talk. On twitter I noticed he subtley patronised Contador saying that they would need to re-lay the tarmac where the Spaniard had done his turns in the TTT. Yeah right - Armstrong was pulling as hard as anybody and Popo and Kloden were hardly soft pedalling. Insincere and false praise indeed.........

I'm loving the conspiracy theories around help from Big George and Columbia to leave LA in the Stage 3 break with all other GC contenders behind the split, the did he or didn't he ease up, to keep Spartacus in yellow and even better the assertion that Contador did that massive turn on the front at the end of the TTT to try and put LA in yellow and screw things up!

I hope the next few weeks are going to be rivetting and unpredictable in a way the previous Armstrong Tours never were.

cav does 'speed talks'

Here's a sneak preview of some stuff you're likely to be seeing as the Tour unfolds. Unashamed viral marketing from a huge global company, but hey, Cav's going to be providing some excitement over the next 3 weeks and good luck to him.

Here's to some titanic battles with a certain Belgian who favours a different Class A..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE8zhUYMHA4

climate change and cross

Oh yes, crossjunkie examines all the big issues that other blogs are afraid to cover.......

Actually, sitting here in the middle of an 'official' heatwave (ie more than 2 days of sun), a recent comment from Mark Leyland (past NW Cross League Champion) got me thinking. Soothsayer Mark observed that his tire choice in future seasons would be restricted to file tread for the dry early season and Rhinos for the rest of the predictably torrential and muddy seasons.

A bold gamble or a vision of the future we could all do to take heed of?

In true investigative journo fashion, crossjunkie googled a choice phrase and pulled the definitive answer straight of the interweb in 30 seconds flat. Well, sort of.

At this point I need to lay down my credentials for such high class research. After an abortive career as a professional orchestral player I plumped for the most obvious follow up, a geography degree. Missing a trick by not becoming a geography teacher like any other self respecting outdoor loving person, I plunged headlong into a Masters degree in Environmental Change. At a time when even George Bush Jnr's disbelief in climate change would not have stood out, this was radical stuff. I can't remember much about it, though I got my MSc. I do remember having a sense of deja-vu over the past few years as various dire prognostications came to pass, most of which were being touted and summarily dismissed at the time of my degree.

So what of cross, that most rainfall dependent of cycling disciplines (except open air track racing....)?

Well I am happy to report that the future of proper, real, sloppy, mud type cross is alive and kicking, contrasted with some trumped up road crit style dust races at the beginning of the season. Just how will climate change affect cross in the region close to my heart? - witness these nice graphs from that esteemed body, the Met Office:

So, over time the North West will have 13% more rain during in Winter, with a slight reduction in overall yearly rainfall - sounds wet (and windy probably) to me. The average wettest day will also increase 13% - going to be some real downpours out there. Happy days.

And for those of you outside the North West? Don't bother - come and live here. House prices are still low(ish), the cost of living is cheap, pies are awesome and you can get a pint round the corner from my office for less than £2. If you don't mind being battered at some point in the evening.......

Indeed, those Yorkshire crossers will have a pathetic 243mm of winter rain to our 365mm. Pah! As for East Anglia, forget it - 165mm is the best you'll get, though the figure is 14.5% up from the present so it may feel a little muddy by comparison.

London? Actually they will get almost as much as the Yorkshire lot - 237mm winter average and a whopping 16% up on present. Might almost want to make me live in London. Perhaps not.

So there you have it - the North West is officially the best place to be a cross rider. It pisses all the time, and all courses are a mud bath. Except for September when it is too hot for cross.

Of course, these predictions are for 40 years time when even my enthusiasm might be waning slightly. So we might not notice too much difference in the immediate future. I'm still with Mark on this one though and will be running nothing but Rhinos all year even in heatwave July, just in case it rains a bit more. 2050 is still, then, a long way off but we have to think about the kids, right??
Must remember not to turn off those electrical items to standby, the lights, heating etc and get some real change going so our children can benefit from good old fashioned mud action.

July cometh

1 July has attained a significance in recent years for me - it marks the beginning of the preparation for the cross season in a number of ways.

Comtemplating a season of mud, tubs and washing gear never seems right before this date, despite any summer season cross races that crop up from time to time. Even now it feels strange with the temperature hitting 26 degrees. It is more that it isn't possible (for me at least) to sustain the enthusiasm and dedication to get you through a cross season to January for more than 6 months. Add in the fact that the 3 Peaks entry forms go online on this date, and you have a series of conditions to concentrate the mind, body and equipment for the season of attrition to come.

Any longer than that and even the most obsessive of us can fail to live up to our own expectations. Even 3 Peaks guru :-) Dave Haygarth refused to go out on a cross bike with me a couple of weeks ago - "I know a good 3 Peaks 'loop' for cross bikes but got to leave it till August or I'll go mental if I start too long in advance".

Wise words, promptly ignored by me the following weekend when I went out on the moors and woods with Mark who was also missing the feel of off road riding on skinny tires. Like some kind of forbidden activity, it felt all the better to be doing it when by rights we shouldn't have been. Dave H is sagely restricting himself to a diet of crits and road racing, long the traditional preparation for the hardened crosser. Seeing as I have a phobia of bunch racing and high speed corners it makes sense to throw caution to the wind and get out off road again. Witness a hayfeverish, snotty and sweaty ride across the moors to work this morning........... Must work on those downhills as I currently look like a contestant on a reality TV show who'll do anything however inept to get on TV - 'ride a rocky Black level ski run on a unicycle, blindfold? Sure, where do i sign......'

At least by starting even earlier than 1 July this year I have time to work on those weaknesses........

Also, I can't resist passing on this little story from friend Rich who suffered my whinging and wheezing on an abortive (for me) White Rose Challenge last weekend. Rich mentioned he was starting a club/group called Dead Wren Velo - a cryptic and evocative name if ever there was one:

Dead Wren Velo was named after a ride with Jules, Rob, John and a few others. As Jules and I dropped down to Burnsall, I indicated as a wheel hazard, a perfectly intact dead wren. We then waited for longer than expected for the boys to arrive at the cafe. When they did, John was resplendent in road rash! Robbie had also seen the amazingly intact dead wren and instead of indicating he just slammed on the anchors for a better look with the inevitable result for those following his wheel (John). As always, Robbie was completely unhurt!

Rich is one of those quiet, but always strong riders you love to ride with, but you don't - if you get what I mean in terms of suffering. Always sartorially exact, with an eye not for the latest mainstream fashion, more for what works and works well, in clothing and equipment. He rode alongside me for the first few hilly miles of the White Rose Challenge in Yorkshire, pedalling a much bigger gear and looking like he was working considerably less than me. He was indeed smooth and stylish on a modern steel frame and his own handbuilt wheels, though I noted with some pride as well as consternation that we had picked the same articles of clothing to ride in from the Assos and Rapha stable - the cycling equivalent of not checking with your best girl friend as to what dress she was going to wear at the party. Rich went on to post a very fast time for the WRC despite putting up with me for the first hour while I spluttered and heaved my way up the climbs, before urging him to leave me and tag on to a faster group as it came through. Thank God, I was able to slow down then...............

Chapeau Rich and cheers for the lesson in how not to do it.

daydreaming

12 days to go to the Tour de France and I am dreaming of.........




Kasseien: bloedloze keizers van terreur en harde stenen stilte

Loosely translated as:

Cobblestones: bloedloze emperors of terror and hard stones silence.

Photo: Stephan Vanfleteren

losing with style

What do Eddie the Eagle, Fasuto Coppi and cyclocross have in common?

The answer lies in the murky tale of the ‘maglia nera’ or black jersey - the antomym creation to the ‘maglia rosa’ pink jersey of the Giro D’Italia.

Viewers of a certain age may remember our Eddie at the 1988 Winter Olympics, pride of a nation with little to celebrate in a post Falklands, post Black Monday, recession dominated landscape:



Eddie’s complete inability to compete at the sharp end of the competition won the hearts and minds of the public, so much so that he managed to crack the Top 50 (no less) with ‘Fly, Eddie , Fly’ and amassed a fortune of £400k within a year. True to form he was bankrupt by 1992.

Luigi Malabrocca was the Italian Eddie during the late 1940s, though to be fair to him, he exhibited considerably more ability and flair than Eddie ever did in his chosen sport of cycling. His claim to fame centred around his singleminded pursuit of the ‘maglia nera’ awarded to last placed rider in the Giro between 1946-1951. His dedication to the cause of winning (albeit a slightly different version) mimicked that of a certain Texan cancer survivor – there was no end to the ruses he dreamt up to ensure his ownership of the jersey for slowest rider in the race. From playing hide and seek, performing long bar crawls, self inflicted punctures, feigning illness, there was nothing this performer could not turn his hand to.

Distressingly, he actually only won the jersey twice out of 3 attempts as his particularly inventive blagging one day in the '49 Giro led to the time keepers becoming bored and leaving in disgust, only to award him the same time as the bunch and gift the jersey to a co-competitor, Sante Carollo. It tickles me that there were more than one of them vying for the honour.

Then again, that is to underestimate the honour of the maglia nera, and explains why the Giro still recognizes the jersey with a black number, the jersey itself now being deemed to have negative connotations.

Whilst he never tried for the jersey again after the debacle of ‘49, Malabrocca had more success in cyclocross. He was Italian Champion in ’51 and again in ’53 and apparently exhibited some flair for the dark art. So much so that he became affectionately known as the ‘Coppi of Cyclocross’. History does appear to record what Coppi thought of the moniker nor is there much evidence of the great mans involvement in cross some years before. Italy first had a National Cross Championship in 1930 and some Tour riders of the period liked to keep fit in the winter through cross racing – a better placed researcher than I may be able to uncover Coppi’s involvement or not.

But for now, I like the image of this celebrated failure turned cross champ and his hard earned maglia nera, floating stylishly across the fields like a Coppi of the mud………..

in search of connection

I love this photo and for a while I couldn't work out why. It appeared the other day on the Rapha Continental section http://www.rapha.cc/onekama-mi accompanied by a succinct and insightful write up from Jeremy Dunn.

After chasing it round my head for a bit, and riding out with Duncan 'Here Come the Belgians', I pinpointed it: fellowship.

Robert Millar describes himself, perhaps ironically, as a sociable loner in the excellent 'In Search of Robert Millar' by Robert Moore. I instantly related to this, though hopefully I come across as less spikey than the Glaswegian enigma himself. Growing up, effectively as an only child (but with a learning disabled sister), I got used to amusing myself for long periods with a variety of past times. Those formative experiences have left me with a confidence in spending time with myself. However, when people come along for the ride then it is all for the better.

I still ride alone mostly, with some exceptions (http://crossjunkie.blogspot.com/2009/03/cheshire-cat.html) but the chance to ride in good company is one I increasingly err toward. Perhaps I am getting more gregarious as I get older, or just better at seeking out others to share the road with. Either way, a 3 hour hilly ride with Duncan (whom I had never previously been formally introduced to) passed in a blur of conversation, ideas, banter and shared experience as well as some serious physical effort. Thanks - here's to fruitful future collaborations.

The photo says it all really - effort showing on the faces, tough conditions leaving their mark, an intimate shot but showing a shared experience to be savoured for some time to come. Everything a good ride should be.