Such is life

Big plans to get back into my blogging and give more regular updates seem to have been badly timed. Just as I was getting ahead at work one of my collegues has decided to move on to greener pastures. This would normally not be a problem but seeing as they've decided not to replace him because of the worlds current financial pickle I've been told I would need to pick up his work. The last few days i have been getting in my morning ride but then work has held me glued to the chair until late so no time to sit and write about it.
End of the week though and everyone needs to slow down and get into weekend mode. This week I finished up a course for getting my technical skills a bit more advanced. I learnt tons and the main thing I've found I need to concentrate on is vision, basically to keep my line of site a few more meters up the trials esspecially when I get on a technical climb and then also getting my arms up. Because i don't have a road bike I do my volume rides on the mountain bike. This has led me into a praying mantis position on the handlebars because of all the fire roads and roads that lead to through the fields are pretty smooth. This narrow setup does not work so well on the more technical stuff and need to keep my elbows up as they naturally tend to lock up as they lower down. As I get better at it I can also use my arms as an added shock absorber in this wider position. If you ever watch a downhill race you can see what I'm talking about. However as a XC race my handlebars aren't nearly as wide and here again I prefer the narower approach.
The two team practises we had this week have really been tough. Tons of intervals sitting, standing, high cadence and big gears. I've also been cutting down on the food to get my weight down so the energy levels are obiousvly affect by this but I don't need to starve myself to much longer to get down to my target of about 72kg.

Another country

So the last month or so has seen an orgy of cycling as the whirlwind of the Tour tore through the French country side and headlined the major news channels as the best, well minus Contador, went at it. I had so much to say but the tiring unrelenting broadcasting led me to information overload just reading the views of everyone out there. I thought it better than to add my own brain farts although sometimes I just could help myself. I'm pretty glad the CSC boys pulled it off, a well deserved victory in the end and no doubt they will be a force to be recond with over the next few years. I felt a bit sorry for Cadel as his team mates were more occupied with the Latern Rouge than helping himout up front, really hope the Silence team can get their act together because he is so close to winning the coveted yellow jersey.

So we move on to my next challenge. As you may have read in earlier posts I spent Pessach crossing Israel from north to south. It was an amazing trip and thouroughly enjoyed the challenge. Spider is sending a few riders to the Isle of Mann to compete in the End to End Challenge. So yet again I will be traversing a country from one side to the other as I got the invite. I've been putting in good results this year with my first few races as a rider in the sports division and have decided to go ahead and bump up to the Expert level. I'd wrapped up the cup for the Sport league already but unfortunately I loose all these points and now have to finish off the season in mediocrity. Well its great to be able to push myself and seeing as this is my first year I'm already really happy with what I've acheived. So the rest of the season will be concentrating on the Israeli Championships and I'm hoping to push myself hard till then. Now that the Tour is over I may have more time to blog and keep you updated on my training both for the End to End on the Isle of Mann and the Championship. Might even see Mr Cavendish tearing around the island.

Time flies

Well the Tour for me promised so much for the Queen stage only to be hopelessly disappointed with the conservative methods of attack of CSC. They seemed to have far to many options and didn't know who to go with. Oh well, such is life and tomorrow promises to be a cracker although should Cadel pull it out the bag there would be no surprises for me. I'm a attacker and I attack in races instead of sitting and waiting. It may be becasue of the MTB racing and the fact that it is more of a individual sport than the team work required on the tarmac. Then again Cadel has the mountain biking background and CSC is the best team by far, yet both seemto be breaking with conformity. Cadel sucking onto the wheels of CSC instead of taking it to them or anyone else and then CSC putting in a great team effort but not willing to take that final leap into the unknown. I read that CSC seam to be bound as a second fiddle team, the same as during the Postal days. I can't give much of a comment there but I really can't see them winning without attacking. I just think of Hinnault and the way he would attack no matter what the consequences, as in the '68 tour where he almost rode his team mate out of the yellow he had promised him a year before. Luckily Lemond held on and wore the yellow into Paris.

The cockroach

"If there is ever a nuclear war and all of mankind is wiped out. The first living thing that will crawl out of the cracks will probably be the cockroaches, but they will be followed closely by Simon Gerrans." - Australian cycling coach Dave Sanders

Nabiis

I've often wondered about Flickr and how to search or browse amongst the shared snapshots. I happened upon one of the users sights called Nabiis. From what I gather its a group of fixers in Taiwan who have some serious passion. The photo's streaming out of their sight are brilliant and well worth a visit, even if like me you don't quite understand the fixed gear scene.

I swear

Apparently Saunier Duval's extensive anti-doping practice was based on "swearing on your mothers head" you would not take any performance enhancing products. When teams like Garmin-Chipotle are doing extensive and expensive long term blood profiles we can see how simply vowing never to stray seems so much easier and more lucritive. These pre-school tactics havn't seemed to have worked for Mauro Gianetti and his naivety is just plain idiotic, but then again so was the Worm for thinking that he could get away with it. Now Piepoli is also throw off the team and I think its high time teams start getting serious about these "biological passports" internally seeing as the UCI is thinking about suspending the program after the teams decided to jump the Pro Tour boat.

Col Agnel

Coming in as the third highest climb in France today's climb up to 2744m summit will see some fireworks for sure. Amazingly it is the first time this climb has been used by the Tour so it will be a totally new experience for all the riders come race dayall though almost positive one that most would rather forget. If all goes well this loopy image we see above may be used more often to punish the peleton on their way to the capital. The average gradient is about 6% but continues for 23km as the make their way to the top. As you can see from the profile the peaks kicks up near the end toping out at about 9%, not pleasant.

Finish points

Based on today's finish here's what the table would look like, as you can see Cadel seems to have layed off the gas. Has he saved some energy for tomorrow's gruesome climb?

Kim Kirchen 201 Cadel Evans 268 Manuel Beltran Martinez 278 Christian Vande Velde 344 Erik Zabel 394 Oscar Freire Gomez 397 Oscar Pereiro Sio 398 Maxime Monfort 428 Denis Menchov 440 Vladimir Efimkin 441 Stefan Schumacher 462 Samuel Sanchez Gonzalez 491 Christian Knees 495 Leonardo Duque 498 Andy Schleck 499 Carlos Sastre Candil 499 Alejandro Valverde Belmonte 503 Matteo Carrara 506 Frank Schleck 517 Damiano Cunego 520

Another sprint

Even as mountain bikers I'm sure we all want to avoid the above situation come sprint time at the end of the race. After today's stage of the Tour the flying Manxman, Mark Cavendish, was dropped on the final category four climb along with some other big named sprinters. I'm guessing that Liquigas and Milram really wanted their men in the front without having the invincible youngster blowing them out the water. It was a hectic final few kilometers with attacks coming in from everywhere, even Team Columbiawithout their main man was trying to set up Ciolek.
I happended across a great article by Mr Carmichael on how to beat the best. Here's his basic run down of how to come out on top:

1. Use your teammates
2. Use your upper body to protect your handlebars.
3. Look for diagonal lines.
4. Get your bars ahead.
5. Make contact if you absolutely need to.
6. Take off like a rabid monkey.

I can't wait for tomorrow as we head into the Alps. the cross over to Italy and there is the HC Col Agnel and the uphill finish into Prato Nevoso.

What to do??

So the Manxman has crossed the line first for the forth time. Well done young man!! The problem is I was just as excited about Ricco's winning, the way he tore through the field on Super Besse was amazing. The reason I watch the Tour is that there will be days where you'll see pure brilliance on the bike(unlike the last two days of boring racing save for the whirlwind from the Isle of Mann sweeping through). I so dearly want to get behind Cav but I'm now held back by the fact fact that we may just have another scandal breakout. I can guarantee you the French Anti-doping agency is screening his blood through every conceivable test as they try to find something floating around that may be on the banned substances list. This is the sad fact of these idiots have placed the cycling world in. I'm relatively new to this but it really wasn't shocking to see these positives come back, I mean I've only been able to witness a scandalous Tour. The only time I can watch epic racing is to take a trip back in time and watch how the boys of old got their rocks off.
I must say that I can't wait for the mountains to start again. Watching two lone riders try to fight a peleton just isn't as exciting as it panned out to be. The only reason I stayed tuned is for the commentary and cool graphics they spit out every now and then. So I decided to make one of my own. If there was another jersey to be added based on place finishes then who do you think would be up there. Before i post my results I'll give a run down of what I did. I sat on the couch wondering if you took the finishing places on each day and added them up who would have the best points, by this I mean the least amount of points purely based on finishing place. this calculation spat out the following:

Kim Kirchen	174
Cadel Evans	231
Angel Gomez	247
Manuel Beltran Martinez	278
Christian Vande Velde	315
Stefan Schumacher	371
Oscar Pereiro Sio	374
Denis Menchov	376
Erik Zabel	386
Vladimir Efimkin	387

I can't say I'm a huge Evans fan purely becasue he is not exciting. My mind however has been changed after seeing him put in a few digs the other day and now viewing this graph it shows that he is not just finishing in the peleton but actually placing pretty high. Obviously the climbers suffer on the sprint stages but I'm sure its pretty much the same way around for the sprinters in the mountains. I'll try keep the table updated for the rest of the Tour. SO I'm now whole heartedly behind the squeaking Aussie. The main reason being his mountain bike background so I guess I have no choice.

Tour de Dope

This morning I opened cyclingnews for the daily information on whats going on in our little world of cycling. As the Tour goes by though controversy seems to be getting worse and worse. The ASO stating that this would be the unavailing of the new Tour seems ill founded. The last six days have seen three positive doping results popping up. Rasmus Damsgaard was is the team doctor behind CSC's success and this morning I read of his dispair at the inificiency of the doping controls being done on this years Tour. He reckons that were the controls up to scratch and they tested every rider in the peleton today for EPO we would see twenty riders being thrown out. So is this decision of the ASO to hold the race outside of the UCI have anything to do with them trying to control the test results? I can't say that I have been suprised by the positive results, what I don't understand is why there aren't tougher measures against the offenders.
Firstly the team should be excluded from the race or even any other races for the season. I feel that the riders should not be held soley responsible becasue if the team had had their inteam testing in order then these riders would be picked up before the controllers come along. Secondly the rider should be banned from the sport for life. Why such a tough sentence? Well the damage being done is madness at the moment, sponsors are shying away from our tainted sport that we love and follow with such passion. Now with this Tour quickly decending into the same cesspool of drug related news. We see our sport coming into the news for all the wrong reasons and it is sad. A transition in the sport? I don't think so. This is here to stay unless there are stronger regulations.
As Paul Liggett said at the start: "Ricco is an idiot"

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Long Time

Quality has definitely been a problem lately in terms of valuable blog info. I've gotten quite tired of blogging about the training as I'm sure reading about me sweating over my handlebars isn't exactly the most stirring thing to read with your morning coffee. Its not even that there hasn't been interesting things to blog about, I mean we're in the midst of the greatest (and often most controversial) cycling event of the year. The last few days have been heading towards the more hilly parts so it has gotten a whole lot more exciting. Very impressed with Team Colombia, their leadout train must be the wet dream of every sprinter competing for a stage win. They showed us in the Giro what their tactics were and have somehow perfected the final few kilometers.
Yesterdays epic stage was the fist of the serious climbing stages. I was at work and with no television in the office and none of the internet streams working I was forced back into the days of listening to the race through Eurosport. I must say I rather enjoyed it trying to picture the different riders grimacing as they crunched the gears. I highly recommend just listening to a stage or two. This moring I'll watch all the highlights so its not like I missed anything. I can just imagine now how Valverde, one of the race favourites and mine, dreams must have sunk faster than the titanic as the CSC machine got there groove on. Rest day today so I'll go for an extra long ride with my spare time.
I've also started building a pump track in the old vegetable garden. The soil is like clay so moulding the berms has been quite fun. Took me back to my childhood playing in the mud or damming up rivers when the rains had come.

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Going dotty

I was under the impression that sprinter's would often dominate the Tour. all the glory of the first few days has left me with the impression that many overall leaders would also have the green jersey tucked away beneath the yellow they sport on the final day of the trip around the french country side. I was mistaken! After taking a look at the records I see that the over all winner that has also won the points jersey has occurred only once, well twice but I'll get the the technical one a little later. The great Bernard Hinault whom I did an earlier post on happens to be the last winner of the Tour that also won another jersey to boot. So the Badger makes his way into another of my posts, this must be the tenacity that they spoke about.For the last quarter of a century the jersey has each been won by an individual rider.

It does seem the Polka dot jersey is more likely to adorn the winners shoulders come the Champs-Élysées. Seven is the number of times the two have been worn by the same rider. The greats likes Coppi, Bartali and Merckx all accomplished the double. The later has officially become my hero after I discovered that Edi Merckx managed to win all three jerseys in 1969. I mean the double is impressive but to come away with all the jerseys of the time is something that is truely amazing. I mention all the jerseys of the time, had the white jersey then been in use he would have added that to his coffer. I rasie my glass to you Mr Merckx.

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World Championships 2008 - Val di Sol

The Tour is upon us but the world Champs from the Valley of Sun is still fresh in the hearts of most mountain bike fans. These are some clips I've been able to trawl off the all so trusty YouTube.

Some Chilli Peppers to get us going with the U23 race:
The Start:

Swiss Rock Machine:

Even legends fall sometimes:

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Gradient

After reading Joe Friel's entry of how to calculate gradient in miles I went in search of how the metric version could be found. Google started spitting out maths and physics with pressure and diluting orange juice. I was clearly not on the right track but I pushed on. I didn't understand why he divided the reult by fifty and still don't but grade is basically broken down by diving the rise by the run. In simple terms that is the height of the climb divided by the distance of sweat lying in th eroad to get you to that point. So during the next few weeks as we listen to Sean Kelly & David Harmon decide who's going to get to the top of L'Alpe-d'Huez. There's a few gradients on Stage 17 that just hurt looking at never mind climbing, ca't wait. Richard highlighted the fact that the first Columbian to win a stage at the Tour and start the emergence of the Columbian climbing revolution was Lucho. I thought it quite relevant after watching todays stage and seeing last years Polkadot jersey holder go down in th elast few kilometers, Soler. He then almost went over one of the cement blocks at a turn in his determination to get back to the peleton. Looking forward to seeing him in the hills.

Update 06/07/08: Here's the gradient chart from Will's site. He has a full run down of the climb and even some alternative back routes to get to the top should you be lucky enough to be in the area:

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