Cycling Musings

My Boggs Enduro adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:53:00 +0000

This is a tale of what happens when you take a roadie and throw him (me) into a three-day mountain bike race. When Isaac mentioned the race to me a few months ago, I brushed it off almost immediately. Then, after some browsing, checking the dates and my sanity, I decided it would be a good mid-road-season break. If, of course, by “break” you mean destroying your body in every way imaginable in just three short days.

So I ogled the race website and not seeing the “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing on an MTB” category, decided to register in sport. Because why the hell not? And I’m always a fan of biting off a bit more than I think I can chew.

Here’s kind of how it all went down. I say “kind of” because the results don’t really count, and categories don’t really matter, so I’m putting the entertainment factor ahead of accuracy.

Day 1 – Hill Climb

We lined up around 5:30 in the evening ready to climb a 1.7-mile stretch of dusty fire road. Having the benefit of every other group going ahead of us, not only was our view of what’s to come partially obstructed by the dusty cloud ahead, but most of the air was also replaced by dust. Because who the hell needs to see or breathe during a hill climb, right? Just go until you fall over!

I lined up in the front row. On the signal, Zach took off and got a short gap. I immediately bridged (a roadie term) and stayed glued to his wheel for a little bit. Isaac was right behind me. “Holy crap! Why did I just go out so hard? This feels just like a cross race! Oh, I remember why I don’t race cross.”

Luckily, while very strong, Zach wasn’t super human either and the pace settled. Then I did one of those famous reverse attacks I’m known for while going up the hill and attacked myself all the way into seventh place. Which for me, up a hill, is frankly not too shabby.

I apparently also lost my mind near the top of the hill because I swear I recall someone yelling, “sprint!” And I did! I then spent 10 minutes hacking up everything I had just inhaled in the last 14 minutes: dust, some pine needles and maybe a baby squirrel, but don’t hold me to that. The best part of the hill climb was that it was over and I could finally have a beer! You can’t even imagine how hard it was to have been in the woods since noon without a single beer!

Day 2 – 8-Hour Solo

The format is simple: ride until you drop! The course was a loop of about 8.5 miles made up of fire roads and mostly smooth single track. Objectively speaking, it wasn’t technical at all, but because I’m as graceful on a mountain bike as a polar bear riding a tricycle in a Russian circus, some of it was probably more challenging for me than for mostly everyone else.

There is one thing I do well, however, and that is pacing. I knew that pacing and calorie intake would be the difference between having a very hard day on the bike and a “fucking kill me now” day on the bike.

For me, pacing is an afterthought, I have that down to a science: leave the ego at home, let everyone go as fast as they want, and find them bonked a few hours later because they went out too hard, or never see them again because they are way stronger. Calories were a different story mainly for two reasons: I pace to ride non-stop, and it’s very challenging to unwrap food on downhill sections of singletrack and chewing solids up steep fire road climbs isn’t ideal either. Intake would have to be in liquid or semi-solid state.

Here was my plan (and I caution all of you to not try this unless you are 100 percent certain your stomach can handle it – I wasn’t, but mine did): I mixed four very heavy bottles of Cytomax, each having about 5 scoops, or 400 calories, and added endurolite powder to each of the bottles (it was going to be warm). I prepared three full Camelbaks of water, two 100-oz and one 70-oz and stuffed some GU gel packs in my back pockets for extra calories and a caffeine boost. The plan was to drink the syrup from the bottles, drink it down with water, and once in a while pop a GU.

I lined up alongside 700 others, with the 70-oz Camelbak on my back, a bottle in the bike cage, and gels in my jersey pockets. We’re off!

The first lap was fairly uneventful other than the part where I wiped out in a switchback and sliced right though my forearm with a sharp rock, but I had eight hours left to ride, so who has the time to take care of that, right? I figured the blood would just dry up and all the dirt flying through the air would make a nice seal for the wound. If this happens to you, don’t be stupid, go get stitches! Unless you too have so many gnarly scars on your body that one more won’t really make or break it for you on the social scene.

On lap two something very unpleasant happened, I started to cramp. I had no idea why. It wasn’t yet warm enough to be suffering from dehydration, my calorie intake was going great, and I didn’t go out too hard. The only possible explanation I could come up with is that my body is just not used to the efforts required to ride a mountain bike and my muscles didn’t take kindly to being thrown off the deep end.

And so it went on. For the next 7 hours it was a balancing act of steady pedaling to avoid leg seizures, drinking syrupy mix to avoid bonking, and trying to navigate singletrack so as to not go head first into a tree or a rock. I originally hoped to get nine laps under my belt, but as my legs cramped harder and harder, my pace up the hills had to be more and more moderate. On the other hand, by lap four I knew I had eight laps in the bag as long as my “nutritional” plan didn’t go haywire.

The eighth lap. As I passed the start finish at the end of lap seven, I saw the clock at 3:18PM. This meant I had an hour and 27 minutes to do one more lap. (We had to be done with our last lap by 4:45 for it to count.) Up to that point, my slowest lap was an hour and 10 minutes, so with no pressure at all, I made my last pit stop to pick up the last Camelbak and kept on going. Half way through that lap, I realized exactly how perfectly I had paced – I was just getting to the point where I barely trusted my body to control the bike into turns when the final climb was before me. I looked at my Garmin, saw that I had plenty of time and dragged myself to the top one final time. From there, it was just a few turns on mostly smooth singe track and I was at the finish. Eight laps in eight hours and 34 minutes was good enough for 26 out of 68 who started in the Sport category. I, of course could go on and on about how I felt, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

PHOTO CREDT: Isaac Sparling

Day 3 – Super D

So this is the thing where I was supposed to roll down the hill for about five miles as fast as possible. Maybe on a good day, that would have seemed like a good idea, but after almost 70 miles and eight hours and 34 minutes on the mountain bike, there was not a single thing appealing about it except being done. I promised myself at the beginning of this season that barring a mechanical or a ref’s call, I’d finish every single race I start, and being too tired to come up with excuses, I made my way to staging.

My request to start last was vetoed and having apologized in advance to everyone starting behind me, I rolled off. For some, the goal was to get to the finish as fast as possible. For me, it was to show up to work on Monday. My body felt like I was taking the last run on skis at the end of a very long day in the mountains – muscles refused to do anything I asked them to, but I managed to cross the finish line safe and sound. And all the bitching and moaning notwithstanding, it actually was a lot of fun.

Thanks to Carlos, the guys at Bike Monkey, all the volunteers and sponsors for putting on this great event. Also a huge thank you to Muscle Milk, Cytomax, Ritchey Logic, Felt Bicycles and Enzo’s Buttonhole for supporting me in this and other cycling endeavors!

As I was leaving on Sunday, I wasn't sure if I'd do this event again, but this morning as I woke up, I discovered that every single muscle in my body is sore. I will definitely be coming back next year because as far as I’m concerned, once you’ve found a way to put yourself in the pain box on a bike, you have to keep coming back until it stops hurting.

Chico Stage Race report

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 23:24:00 +0000

I’ve eyed this event for a couple of years now, and this year finally decided to give it a go. It would be my fourth stage race in six weeks and I was looking for a solid performance after a few sub-par ones at Madera and Topsport.

The Road Race

The road race is a 45-mile loop out of Paskenta with a 4.5-mile section of gravel that ends 3.5 miles from the finish. The rest of the race is flat with a few rollers.

It was warm and calm, so wind was unlikely to be a huge factor. There were several teams with numbers in the race and I had no intention of doing anything heroic unless a move went up the road with proper representation. As I suspected, everyone was kept on a very short leash and no one was allowed more than 100 meters on the field.

The entire 50-plus field rolled into the gravel section, and I had two thoughts going through my mind — don’t stop pedaling, don’t brake. I wasn’t ideally positioned, but not horribly, in the top third of the field. A few hundred meters into the gravel a guy ahead of me on my left wipes out, takes a few more with him and all I see in a ball of dust is a guy curled up on the ground ahead of me. Luckily there was room to get around and I quickly bridged to what ended up being the selection (with a couple other bridging later).

With the gravel and rollers, we ended up breaking up and after jumping back and forth between groups, I rolled in with a small group in 16^th place, but only half a minute down on the winner. Most importantly, however, I gained a lot of time on guys I knew could TT well, and in this stage race, that makes all the difference.

The crit

The course was an L-shape six-corner crit with strong winds on the back side and a tailwind into the finish.

My plan for the crit was to stay safe and lose as little time as possible (none, ideally). The whistle blew and the pace picked up immediately, which I liked. The peloton strung out and we were single file for the first five or six laps. After the first time bonus prime went, the pace slowed down a bit and the field began to swell, with riders trying to move up in position.

As more primes got called, the field stretched out some more, and then came back together again. I looked down at my SRM and saw we were about 19 minutes into a 40-minute crit when the last time bonus prime was called. I knew after the prime, the pace would die down, which I didn’t particularly like because that’s when everyone becomes a Pro Tour sprinter and corner dives into position. To my even greater surprise, the next time we came around, the 6-to-go card was up. “WTF?” – I thought.

From that point on, I was mainly focused on staying safe and finishing in the main bunch for the same time. I was partially successful – I stayed safe, but due to small gaps in the finishing sprit, I lost about 5 seconds (raw time) to the winner, who also got a 10 second bonus. Jesse Reeves, who won the road race and was in the lead on GC, picked up a second place in the crit and another 11 seconds on me (6 bonus and 5 time), and was now ahead by 54 seconds heading into the TT. The race ended up being only 32 minutes.

The Time Trial

I knew I’d have to ride the TT of my life to pull back all that time and finish in the money (top 5). Luckily, my legs were feeling phenomenal and I was feeling confident I could get it done. I started the TT 15^th overall.

Having looked at past year’s results, I knew I’d have to ride the 10-mile TT in under 23 minutes to have a solid shot at the podium.

Three … two … one … go! I kick and within seconds settle into my aero position. “Shit, forgot to zero out the SRM!” Instead of getting out of the aero position to fiddle with buttons, I made a quick calculation while my brain still had some glycogen reserves and in my head zeroed out the time and distance.

I caught my 30-second man within a mile, the minute man a few miles down the road, then the minute-thirty man and now there was no one ahead that I could see and I just kept asking myself, “can you push any harder?”

With about three miles to go, I could see I was making good time and that gave me even more energy to push. Then I saw what I thought was the finishing tent, and started driving to the line, only to discover 200m later that it was just a combination of a road sign and a van that made it look like a tent, and the finish line was really nowhere in sight. “Oops!” I settled down, kept it steady and soon saw the 1k to go marker. From that point on I just kept revving up the effort making sure everything is left on the line.

As I crossed the line, I glanced at the SRM clock, tried to do some math while focusing on not puking and figured I rode something in the mid-22s – best 10-mile time I’ve ever had. Now it was just a matter of waiting until the results got posted.

The finishing straight

About 90 minutes later, the results sheet got taped to the table and I didn’t have to scroll very far. I was third in the time trial and gained enough time to earn the third spot on the podium – I was very pleased. The time trial has always been my favorite discipline, and I was glad to finally break a streak of lackluster performances and race to my potential.

Final podium. Jersey short and sandals was clearly the outfit du jour.

More importantly, my performance at Chico was the last checkmark I needed to qualify for a Cat 3 upgrade, and am very much looking forward to racing with my Cat 3 teammates!

UCI lends a hand to USAC in fight against grassroots cycling

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:38:00 +0000

When I began riding my bike, as a kid around Chicago, it had set me free. All of a sudden, I was no longer confined to my neighborhood, but could go see friends who lived several miles away. I’d regularly ride all over Rogers Park, and from there to nearby Lincolnwood and Skokie to visit friends and sometimes just to explore; on my Huffy, in my sneakers and of course without a helmet (something for which I would reprimand my younger self now).

Over the years, I’ve met numerous cyclists who’ve expressed the freedom they felt when they first got on a bike and how that moved them to pursue the sport in a more serious way. However, as the cycling world recently learned, if you are so good on a bicycle that you get the privilege of holding an international UCI license, freedom should be the last thing on your mind when it comes to how and where you race your bike.

By now, the news of USA Cycling’s aggressive stance toward UCI licensed riders participating in non-USAC events has spread like wildfire, with several misinterpretations, clarifications and even a letter to USAC from the UCI president Pat McQuaid. While USAC is claiming that it is merely trying to conform with the UCI rule 1.2.019, its past relationships and financial ties to the UCI cast substantial doubt over those claims.

Background

UCI and USAC have long been tied in an interesting financial and personal relationship. The lynchpin of which is one person, Thom Weisel.

In 2000, USAC was in financial distress and on the brink of insolvency. That’s when Weisel stepped in and single-handedly bailed USAC out with a $1.5 million check. In return he got to put his people at the helm, like Steve Johnson (a long time Lance Armstrong supporter), and later Jim Ochowicz, who sat on USAC’s board of directors from 2002 until 2006.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting. As reported bythe Wall Street Journal, from 2001 until 2004, Weisel’s firm managed the finances of then-UCI president Hein Verbruggen. The broker at Weisel’s firm handling Verbruggen’s money was non other than Ochowicz. So from 2002 until 2004, an active member of USAC’s board was in charge of at least a part of the personal wealth of the acting president of the UCI. Who, as it happens, is still the honorary president, likely not without some lingering influence over UCI policies.

As best I could determine, rule 1.2.019 predates McQuaid’s ascension to UCI presidency in 2005. However, given the length of time that Verbruggen has been involved with the UCI, the rules were undoubtedly drafted on his watch.*

Current enforcement

Fast forward to 2013, and UCI licensed riders in the U.S. start to receive emails and letters stating they are no longer allowed to compete in unsanctioned events and may face fines and suspension if they do. The rule has been on the books for quite some time, and states:

No license holder may participate in an event that has not been included on a national, continental or world calendar or that has not been recognised by a national federation, a continental confederation or the UCI.

A national federation may grant special exceptions for races or particular events run in its own country.

USAC has not enforced the rule until now, and I’d like to focus on the last sentence of the rule, which, plainly read, gives USAC discretion to permit riders to participate in certain unsanctioned events.

Is this new enforcement implemented to hurt riders? In all likelihood it is not. This all has to do with the ongoing battle between USAC and grassroots cycling organizations like ABR and OBRA. The grassroots cycling association in Colorado caved and in 2013 folded into USAC, but there are many holdouts. Most of them will likely never fold into USAC unless they are financially pressured to do so. What better way to flex some muscle than prohibit the top cyclists from competing in these grassroots events? The promoter will either suffer from not being able to attract top talent, which then draws participation from amateur participants, or fold into USAC like in CO.

What’s in it for USAC? That’s simple: more money. As promoters are forced to get permits from USAC, they have to pay fees, and USAC’s bank account swells. Additionally, as more events are sanctioned by USAC, more racers have to buy USAC licenses, which would also be a financial windfall for USAC.

My theory

I’d like to postulate a theory, which in light of the above, to me appears to be the most likely one.

If I’m the president of USAC and I see that member enrollment has been holding steady at around 60,000, I know approximately how much money USAC will be taking in yearly from memberships. What better way to increase membership than to force promoters to permit their events under USAC, which in turn will not only increase the flow of dollars from promoters to the USAC, but also from new riders who may have never otherwise purchased a USAC license because they were more than happy to race within their grassroots organization.

The only problem with implementing this plan is the amount of backlash USAC would receive in light of the last sentence of rule 1.2.019, which gives it discretion not to enforce this rule. What better way to deal with such backlash locally than to have some high-ranking UCI official provide an overly complicated explanation as to what those 17 words really mean?

Is it so unlikely that Steve Johnson (hand-picked by Weisel, who took care of UCI’s president’s money) picked up the phone and asked good old Pat to help him out with a stern letter of admonishment explaining what “exceptions for races or particular events” really means? I don’t think it is, and here’s why.

Here’s how McQuaid explains the exception:

For example, an event may be organised by an association that does not have a link to the National Federation, such as a race specifically for members of the armed forces, fire fighters or students or perhaps as part of a national multisport event.

With the exception of these special cases, the National Federation is not permitted to grant an exemption to a cycle event which is held, deliberately or not, outside the federative movement. For example, in no case should an exception be granted to a cycling event that is organised by a person or entity who regularly organises cycling events.

In light of the above, the exception is virtually unworkable and completely superfluous, and had that been the intent of the UCI, the last sentence of 1.2.019 would have never been drafted.

If the event is specifically for members of the armed forces, fire fighters or students, then a UCI holder cannot participate unless he fits into one of those categories. Moreover, reading the two paragraphs in tandem, if the race is created specifically for a certain group, but is created annually, or by a person who organizes other cycling events, UCI holders still cannot participate. According to McQuaid’s interpretation of the rule, the only event for which USAC can give a permission to a UCI license-holder to take part in would have to be a once in a lifetime event, organized for a specific group of individuals by someone who doesn’t organize bike races. Am I the only one who finds that absurd?

This, in essence, narrows the exception to such an extreme as to make it pointless. This fact is what leads me to believe that McQuaid’s interpretation is completely fabricated to aid USAC in its war with grassroots promoters. This could not have possibly been what was envisioned when this rule was drafted, and McQuaid cannot, ex post facto, change the meaning of UCI rules, without an official amendment, in a letter to Steve Johnson. That is simply not how rules are made or enforced in any organization, even one far smaller and less far-reaching that the International Cycling Union.

* Member of the Board of the Fédération Internationale du Cyclisme Professionnnel [UCI’s prior incarnation] (1979-1982), Vice-President (1982-1984) then President (1984-1991); President of the International Cycling Union (UCI) (1991-2005).

Pinned

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:22:00 +0000

I've talked about this to so many racers over the few years, that it finally dawned on me that perhaps if I blog about it, I can stop regurgitating sentences and just regurgitate one — "yeah, I've got a blog on that." Or maybe it will actually help to somewhat alleviate the problem. Either seems like a good cause to continue typing.

So what am I talking about? The horrible, awful, offensive way in which many racers pin their numbers. And I'm not necessarily talking about alignment (full disclosure: I did once manage to pin my number upside-down, but I was extremely sleep deprived), however, I will talk about it briefly below, but rather pinning technique itself. Flapping numbers that don't hold, or blow up like sails aren't only annoying to the rest of the field due to noise they make, but aren't much help to the racer either.

Here are some tips on how to properly pin a number to your jersey for a bicycle race (or any other race, so pay attention runners and triathletes!):

1. Stretch the jersey. Typically at the race site, I stretch it over my knees, zip it, and turn the side where the number goes toward me. If I'm pinning to a skinsuit, I'll put it over the steering wheel of the car and zip it. You have to zip it! If you happen to carry a big pillow around, that works well also. (PRO tip: don't pin the jersey to your pants)

2. Position the number on the correct side. For most races here in NorCal, the number goes either on the right or on the left, so whatever side of the road the camera is on, it can capture your number as you cross the finish line. Keep that in mind when pinning! Your jersey has a middle panel on each side, most of the botton half of your number, should be on that pannel. But no more, otherwise the number will be too far down. Go too far in the other direction, and the number will lie flat on your back. (PRO tip: don't position your number in such a way as to seal off your back pocket — in a longer race, you might need it)

3. Forget the holes. I wish number manufacturers would just stop putting holes in numbers altogether. They are useless for cycling. Do not put pins through the pre-made holes in the numbers. When you pin, make holes in the number with the pin. (PRO tip: read number 3 again)

4. Use 8 pins for each number. The math is easy, 4 corners + 4 sides = 8 pins. (PRO tip: bring the same pins to the races each time — it saves resources)

5. Twice through with each pin. Start with the corners by pinning through the corner, going twice through the number and the jersey. Then pin each side of the number in the same way with the pins going parallel with the side of the number on which you're pinning. Wow, that came out sounding way more complicated than intended. Just look at the picture below. (PRO tip: fold the corner of the number over and pin parallel to the fold for stronger hold — works especially well for stage races, where you have to reuse the same number several times)

6. Check it out. Put your jersey on, lean forward to simulate your cycling position and see how the number looks — I typically use my car windows to do that. It took me quite some time to be able to get all the pins correctly on first go. Usually at least one would be a bit out of place and make a strange fold in the number. But after a few times, I just learned where the numbers go.

This is how it's done.

Knights Ferry Road Race

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 05:15:00 +0000

It was my first race of the season and I was curious to see what my legs can do and what we could do as a team. Knights Ferry is a 60-mile, rolling race on an out and back, and out and back course that finishes on a hill just shy of a kilometer in length. Representing Squadra SF on the line were Alex, Brian, Graham, Mario and I. We had several alternative strategies worked out, but I guess that’s what happens when you have a doctor and two lawyers racing together.

The whistle blew and we headed north into a mild NW wind, with the temperatures in the low sixties. The plan for the first lap was to sit in and see what the field was going to do. I got to the start late, staged near the back and spent the first couple of miles slowly getting myself to the front. Graham got on the nose, I pulled up next to him and said I wanted to test the field and see how much they wanted to race, so I attacked (we’re at mile 4 here) and immediately got separation. I kept going at a steady pace, looking back periodically to see if there was a bridge attempt (no one that crazy in the field today), or a chase.

The field looked wide and not interested in chasing for a while, and I thought that perhaps if I got over the hill solo, it could get interesting, but as I began approaching what would be the climb to the finish, I saw the field narrow and start to get close. Given that it was still early in the race and I had oxygen in my brain, I figured at this pace I’d get caught before the climb, and that’s the last place I want a charging peloton to pass me. So I eased off and got reabsorbed into the group with about 2km to the top of the climb. I got in fifth wheel and we all crested together. However, after the catch, the pace never quieted down. We drilled it hard up the hill, fast down the other side and the race stayed really fast and on for the first 35 miles. While we didn’t drop anyone, it ate up a lot of legs in the field.

Graham was doing an amazing job rotating with a few others in the front and keeping the pace really high. At mile 25, I started to cramp. I’ve never cramped this early in a race, but I went to the back to rest, dumped some water on my thighs [read: crotch] (thank you, black kit!) and kept going. After the first turnaround, we come back through the start and were now heading south to the second turnaround. The pace is still very high and shortly after we cross the start line again, a Suffolk-SunPower (f.k.a. Webcor) rider attacks solo off the front and gets separation.

I get myself from the very back of the field to about fifth wheel, when in a matter of 200 meters, the four guys in front of me disappear. So instead of just eating wind and pulling everyone along, I attack off the front and try to bridge. Incidentally, that’s almost exactly the same place I attacked the last time. I was slowly but steadily getting closer to him, but the guy never looked back. “Does he not want to know if anyone is bridging or chasing?” – I thought to myself. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “slow the f**k down! Let’s work together!” And while I was gaining on him, the field was gaining on me, and the catch was also going to be made at the base of the climb. Now in addition to not being a climber, I have cramps to deal with, so I sit up.

Within a minute I’m caught, and Mario does exactly as we planned, attacks immediately as I rejoin the field. No one answers and he makes the bridge. The field, however, would not be held back and they get caught near the top or shortly after we crest. At this point I’m fading through the back of the field as we go up the climb, but still completely in control of the situation. We hit the north turnaround the second time and the guy front of me takes a horrible line, forcing me to unclip to avoid going in the gutter. The twisting motion of pulling my foot out causes my calf to cramp and I end up pedaling one legged around the cones. I clip in and catch the field on the downhill.

At this point I need to decide how we are going to end the race. One of our plans was for me to attack from about 3-4km out and hope to hold it to the finish (or be the carrot and have the field be the leadout for my teammates) if I felt good. So that clearly went out the window. The second option was for me to get on the front at 2km to go and drill it with all I have to the base of the climb and let Graham, Mario and Brian sort it out – climbing being their forte. So that’s what I commit to. Lucky for me, the attacks and the efforts put in by Graham on the front completely destroyed the field and we went into a complete lull after the abovementioned turnaround.

I ride off the back for a while, then pull up to Alex and tell him to pass on to Brian and the rest the plan for the remainder of the rest. Now my main focus is to get my cramps under control and have something to aid the finish. We were going so slowly, that after the second southbound turnaround, the Cat 5 field, which started a few minutes after us, caught us and passed us. As they passed us, I heard an unpleasant noise in the back – not a crash, but I knew something wasn’t right. Soon after, Tam Bikes guy, Dean, pulled up to me and said, one of our guys broke a spoke. I looked up and saw Mario, Brian and Alex up the road. “F**k! Graham is out!”

At this point, Alex was covering anything that moved on the front and putting in attacks to further hurt the field. I kept my nose out of the wind, spinning as easy as I could and not spinning at all if possible. We’re approaching the 2km mark. Alex did his job and is now toast.

I come up to Brian and tell him what’s going to happen. I see the maker, but I’m slightly boxed in, and Dean is to my right. I ask him to let me out, and being the gentleman, he obliged. I got on the nose and drilled it to 27mph into a headwind until I couldn’t do anything else. But by that point, we were at the base of the climb and my job was done; I pull to the side. Mario and Brian were sitting great, about eight-tenth wheel and as I faded back, attacks went flying and I saw Mario following wheels up the climb. The guys who attacked after I pulled off quickly faded back.

My race was done, I dropped my chain into the small ring and rolled to the finish for the lanterne rouge. Mario is the first guy I see, “Second place!” I’m ecstatic – it worked! Then a minute later, Brian rolls up, “I got third!” Now I’m elated through the roof! I’m so overcome with joy for a great team performance that I almost forgot I just rode for 35 miles with cramps.

Next up, Cantua Creek!

Questions Oprah failed to ask Lance Armstrong

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:02:00 +0000

On Monday, Jan. 14, Lance Armstrong taped a confession interview with Oprah Winfrey in Austin, Tex. Between the taping and the airing of the interview on Thursday and Friday, there was a lot of speculation as to what he would say; how forthright he was going to be; whom else he would implicate in his confession. Admittedly, over the last year, I’ve been following the issue closely (almost to the point of obsession). What interested me most was what he wouldn’t say; where he would keep quiet; and which questions he would refuse to answer.

Within the first minutes of the interview, it was clear that to the world of cycling as a whole, Armstrong’s confession would be more or less useless. He refused to talk about anyone but himself; meaning neither Pat McQuaid (the current president of the UCI), nor Hein Verbruggen (past president of the UCI for much of Armstrong’s racing career) were going to be implicated. I certainly wasn’t holding my breath, but prior to viewing the first part of the interview, there was hope he would bring down the house, throw them all under the train, and force a top down reconstruction of the UCI – something the sport of cycling desperately needs. None of that happened.*

Unfortunately, in my opinion, Oprah came to the interview ill-equipped, and many times throughout the program, I wanted to see a follow-up; I wanted an issue pressed, but she just moved on.

Here are some excerpts from the interview where I felt Armstrong wasn’t pressed far enough:

OW: When did you first start doping?

LA: … I guess early in my career there was cortisone, and then the EPO generation began.

OW: Began when?

LA: For me?

OW: For you.

LA: Mid nineties.

I guess Oprah wasn’t really interested in how he got into the culture of doping in the first place. Follow up questions I would have asked: When was the first time you ever doped? Was it something you sought out, or was it given to you by a coach, teammate, DS? If so, by whom? We heard from Armstrong’s 11 teammates about how each was pressured into doping upon joining the professional ranks. I’d like to know whether the same pressure was applied to Armstrong, or whether he sought out the unfair advantage – that would likely paint a very different picture.

* * *

Armstrong begins talking about the doping culture during his Tours de France and says: “I didn’t have access to anything else that no body else did.” [sic]

Oprah moves on to read a statement from USADA, but before she does, she says the reasoned decision was a 164-page report. Really? I guess she got the Readers Digest version, because it took me about 3 days to get through the entire 1000-plus pages (the decision and all affidavits supporting it). Did other teams have Michele Ferrari on an exclusive retainer? She let him introduce the “it was a level playing field” argument and didn’t even bat an eye.

* * *

LA: … There will be people who say there are 200 guys in the Tour I can tell you five guys that didn’t and those are the five heroes. And they are right.

OW: What did you think of those guys … now you just called them heroes but what did you think of those guys — at the time when you were riding — who were riding clean? Did you think they were suckers? Did you think they were … what?

LA: No, and that’s no, I didn’t. The idea that anyone was forced or pressured or encouraged is not true. I’m out of the business of calling somebody a liar…

How do you not follow that up with questions about Christophe Bassons and Filippo Simeoni? The latter of whom Armstrong single-handedly chased down on stage 18 of the 2004 tour and bullied him — because he testified against Ferrari — in an effort to shut him up. How is that not force, pressure and (euphemistically) encouragement? He lied and she just let it go.

* * *

OW: Were you afraid of getting caught?

LA: No. … There was no testing out of competition. Theoretically there may have been, but they never came. … And throughout my career, there wasn’t that much out of competition testing.

Oprah is like a deer in the headlights listening to Armstrong talk about scheduling of EPO injections and showing up to races clear. However, how does the above statement not set off alarm bells? First of all, you just had the guy who for the last decade screamed he’s the most tested athlete in all of sport say he wasn’t really tested that much. Second, there are several documented accounts of Armstrong purposely evading testing. Mike Anderson, his one time friend, helper, mechanic described it in great detail in a recent article. Additionally, there are accounts in Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle's The Secret Race of how out of competition testing was thwarted, either by evasion or by stalling tactics.

* * *

OW: Your former teammate, Christian Vande Velde, told USADA that you threatened to kick him off the team if he didn’t shape up and conform to the doping program.

LA: That’s not true.

How hard was it, in preparation for that question about Vande Velde, to yank page 19 of his affidavit from the reasoned decision? Which in part reads as follows:

“119. Lance began without any small talk and got right to the point. He told me he felt I was not serious about my preparation for cycling and hand not been following Dr. Ferrari’s program.

120. Armstrong told me if I wanted to continue to ride for Postal Service team I would have to use what Dr. Ferrari had been telling me to use and would have to follow Dr. Ferrari’s program to the letter.

121. The conversation left me with no questions that I was in the doghouse and the only way forward with Armstrong’s team was to get fully on Dr. Ferrari’s doping program.”

Armstrong already stated in the interview that he’s done calling people liars, so why not confront him with these statements and ask: When Vande Velde made the above statements, was he lying in his affidavit, yes or no? Instead, she just let him move on and talk about the whole thing in ambiguous terms, like “I was the leader of the team and I led by example.” She let him go on denying the fact that he ever gave a verbal directive for anyone to dope.

* * *

When Oprah questions Armstrong about being a bully, toward the end of a long narrative and a couple back-and-forth exchanges (where he says that cancer is what made him a bully), he stated: “Winning seven Tours, I knew I was going to win.”

Let’s back this train up a bit. Less than 10 minutes ago, he was saying he felt everyone was doing it and in his mind it was a level playing field, and yet he knew he was going to win? How was he so sure? Was it because he was just overly confident in himself, or perhaps he knew that Postal’s doping program had no rivals at the Tour?

Moreover, immediately after, he begins talking about how doping was like putting air in tires and water in bottles, and that it was part of the job. Again, if it was so common, how was he so sure he was going to win every one of those seven Tours?

* * *

Oprah then comes back to the question of whether he pressured others to dope, and here’s where I was holding my breath for her to confront him with statements of riders. Instead, she threw him a softball:

OW: So you never suggested that [your teammates] see Ferrari?

LA: Umm, Ferrari … and again, it’s hard to talk about some of these things and not mention names, but there are people in this story … Let me say this, they are good people, and we’ve all made mistakes and there are people in this story that are not monsters, and they are not toxic, and they are not evil. And I viewed Michele Ferrari as a good man and a smart man. And I still do.

Immediately they cut to a video about Ferrari. So, where’s the answer to the above question? She asks him directly whether he told Postal Service riders to go see Ferrari and instead of answering, he pays homage to the guy. And when pressed about Ferrari’s involvement with the team, Armstrong simply backs out and refuses to answer under the premise that he doesn’t want to talk about other people.

* * *

OW: You’ve said time and again in dozens of interviews that you’ve never failed a test. Do you have a different answer today?

LA: Umm, no … I mean I never … I didn’t fail a test. Stuff was retroactively tested and so then technically, yes, retroactively I failed those, but the hundreds and hundreds of tests that I took I passed them. And I passed them because there was nothing in the system.

OW: What about the Tour de Suiss? The Swiss tour?

LA: Again, I’m going to tell you what’s true and what’s not true. That story [referring to Tyler Hamilton’s account of how Armstrong told him about the EPO positive test and that it was going to be taken care of] isn’t true. There was no positive test, there was no paying off of the lab, there was no secret meeting with the lab director.

OW: The UCI did not make that go away?

LA: Nope. And I’m no fan of the UCI. That did not happen.

Here Oprah tried, but I would like to have seen one more question asked: Are you saying Tyler Hamilton lied in his interview, book and affidavit when he described that incident at the Tour de Suiss, yes or no? Also, as to the "hundreds and hundreds of tests," there were only around 240 test he took throughout his career, which (counting only the years he was active) works out to fewer than 20 tests a year on average.

* * *

OW: Why did you make that donation to the UCI?

LA: Because they asked me to. [He goes on denying there was a cover-up. Repeats that he’s no fan of the UCI] There were things that were a little shady; that was not one. They called and said they did not have a lot of money. I was retired. I had money. They said, “would you consider a donation?” I said, sure.

That statement was so well crafted, it completely confused Oprah as to what she even asked. First of all, the so-called donation was not made when Armstrong was retired. The UCI admitted in 2010 taking $100,000 in 2002, when he was still very much not retired. Second of all, according to the UCI, they accepted it, not solicited it. Third of all, there are two great follow-up lines of questioning Oprah failed to pursue. 1. What were the shady things you mentioned? Can you give some examples? 2. Who’s “they”? What was the name of the person who contacted you to ask for a donation?

This is critical information that is absolutely crucial to cleaning up the sport from the top down, yet no further inquiry was made.

* * *

OW: When the Department of Justice just dropped that case and no one knows why – I have to ask you -- did you have any influence in that whatsoever?

LA: No. None.

OW: When they dropped that case…

LA: It is very difficult to influence…

So was it just a coincidence that on the same day that André Birotte ordered the investigation closed, Feb. 3, 2012, Livestrong Foundation donated $100,000 to Planned Parenthood, an organization favored by President Barack Obama? The donation was made at the time when the Susan G. Komen foundation announced it would stop making donations to Planned Parenthood and the organization stood to lose a substantial chunk of its yearly funding.

* * *

OW: Was there anybody who knew the whole truth? Have you told anybody the whole truth?

LA: Yeah.

OW: Let’s go back to Kristen.

What? How do you not utter anther three letters after that “yeah” – who? Who was the person you told the whole truth? Who knows everything? How is that not a natural follow up to that answer?

To say the interview fell short of my expectations would be an understatement, and it may be because Oprah was focused more on Lance Armstrong than the world of cycling, but it doesn't excuse the fact that her alleged search for truth fell very short.

*I suspect this was in no small part due to the advice of his lawyers. It is now clear that he lied under oath during his deposition in 2005 when he was involved in litigation with SCA Promotions, but the statute of limitations on perjury ran. However, any mention of a conspiracy now would revive the statute of limitation and could be the basis of a RICO action. Not to mention the ongoing qui tam action brought by Floyd Landis, which the federal government is on the brink of joining.

The myth of Livestrong innocence

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:00:00 +0000

If I were a professional cyclist and a cancer survivor with a charity, and needed a high PR profile with an American hero status, and I wasn’t above subverting everything within my reach to my own purpose, perhaps I would’ve used such a charity as means to serve my own ends, hoping one day it will save my neck when the proverbial shit hits the fan.

The last of Lance Armstrong’s sponsors Oakley released a statement earlier today – after the UCI finally officially stripped all of his palmares going back to Aug. 1, 1998 – parroting what all of his other sponsors said last week, “we will no longer deal with Lance Armstrong, but will continue to support the Livestrong Foundation.”

From the sponsors’ standpoint, I can understand the PR move. They had a very tough choice, with only one financially palatable option. Their choices were: 1. Drop both Lance and Livestrong, in which case they could face a PR backlash for ceasing support for cancer awareness. 2. Continue their present relationships with both, which, if not financial suicide, would be a horrible business move. 3. Drop Lance and maintain their support for the charity. This was likely seen as splitting the baby, but that was the sponsors’ business move.

It is now difficult for apologists to defend Lance with the common “he never tested positive” defense. Those who now make the “even playing field” argument (I’ve made the argument myself in the past.) signal they haven’t adequately familiarized themselves with the evidence made public by USADA. The apologists’ last stand is Livestrong. “Even if he was a cheat and a doper, he’s still a cancer survivor and he’s done a lot for cancer.” That’s a loose paraphrase of the commonly proffered statement. I don’t buy it and here’s why.

Surviving cancer. Yes, he got cancer and survived, can’t argue with that. However, I’d be interested to hear from an oncologist on what the use of testosterone, hgh and steroids do to the risks of testicular cancer. (Remember that those are substances he admitted to using in 1996 while talking to his doctors in front of Frankie and Betsy Andreu as well as his girlfriend at the time and an Oakley rep.) I make that statement with full understanding that even if those substances increase risk, there is absolutely no way to show causation. So let’s give him that – he’s a cancer survivor. But so are millions of Americans.

(No)Money for research. I can’t believe there are still individuals, and some very well respected publications, making statements that Livestrong has done a lot for cancer research. The fact of the matter is that relatively speaking, Livestrong has done almost nothing for cancer research. Livestrong realized early on that it was too small to make an impact in research, so it moved to awareness. Virtually no money went to research after 2005 and very small sums were doled out prior. But even with that platform, funds are sometimes used in questionable ways. Not questionable as in fraudulent, but more in the sense of, “does it really make sense for a cancer charity to do this?” This is a great piece on the Livestrong Foundation in Outside Magazine.

Lobbying efforts. A recent story by the Wall Street Journal examined lobbying efforts by Livestrong on behalf of Lance Armstrong. Namely, a lobbyist on Capitol Hill, hired by the Livestrong Foundation, paid a visit to congressman Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) to discuss looking into USADA and its federal financing (all $10 million of it annually). I typically don’t think of lobbying efforts on behalf of a cancer awareness charity involving blocking funding for an organization created to prevent doping in sports. Ask yourselves, what would motivate Livestrong to do this? Protecting its cash cow (and chairman at the time) is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Questionable payments. On Feb. 3, 2012, the Livestrong Foundation donated $100,000 to Planned Parenthood. The other interesting thing that happened that day is that the federal government officially closed its investigation of Armstrong without reason, or explanation, and contrary to the wishes of those in charge of handling the investigation. Coincidence? If so, it sure as hell is a convenient one.

Does Livestrong do good things? Yes, of course. Is it also a PR front for Lance Armstrong? There’s very little doubt in my mind that’s the case. I’ve donated to Livestrong and I don’t feel cheated, or angry, or entitled to my money back. But I won’t be making any more donations to that organization. I will continue to support other cancer charities because I feel my money will be better used and actually go to research directed at curing this horrible disease.

So what now? I believe Livestrong can go on without Lance Armstrong, but two things have to happen first. One, Lance needs to be completely out with no ties to the organization. Two, an independent accounting firm needs to do a complete audit and determine how much money was spent on ultra vires activities. Once those two things happen, the charity can survive and prosper and continue to fill the niche it has self-chosen without Lance casting a shadow of doubt over its motivations.

The cycling cynic syndrome

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:07:00 +0000

For the most part, I’m not an overly cynical person. Sarcasm with a dose of realism and healthy skepticism is perhaps a better characterization of my nature. However, when it comes to professional cycling today, cynicism is quickly taking over.

This goes beyond Lance Armstrong, but it is due to his prosecution by USADA that myriad doping violations have been exposed in the ranks of pro cycling over the last two decades.

I love cycling. I love racing, reading about it, watching it on TV, rooting for the favorite to win (or sometimes the underdog). But having read nearly all of 1000 pages of the USADA report, the next time I watch a professional race, I’m not sure I’ll know what it is I’m watching.

Like many sports fans, I love an incredible performance. I love to see an attack at the bottom of the climb that blows the field to pieces. I love to see a heroic comeback. I love to see the expression of pain on a rider’s face as he crosses the finish line in a TT, having just come back from behind to win. No doubt, 2013 will have those moments, but instead of rooting and cheering, I’m afraid I’m going to be asking myself, “What the hell am I looking at? Did I just see an incredible performance, or does this guy just have a better doctor?” That's no way to watch a bike race.

I don’t want to have to ask those questions, and I’m certain that I’m not the only fan out there who feels this way. Looking back at 2012, I’m not quite certain what I’ve seen.

Joaquim Rodriguez finished on top in the UCI rankings this season. But today news broke of several of his teammates (Kolobnev, Gusev, Menchov and Ignatiev) being linked to Dr. Ferrari, doping and money laundering. Even if Rodriguez himself is not implicated, winning with the help of doped up teammates is as bad as being doped up yourself. Isn’t it?

And what about Alberto Contador’s triumphant return to cycling at this year’s Vuelta? I like the guy (which wasn’t always the case), but he too has ties to Ferrari and has already served a doping ban. Not to mention he’s passed through the hands of Johan Bruyneel. I want to believe he’s clean now, but I can’t.

Team Sky has Sean Yates, who somehow managed to remain blind to everything that was happening on Team Discovery Channel in 2005 as it ran the most sophisticated doping conspiracy in professional sports. And likewise "forgot" to delve into the past of 'Mick' Rogers and the team doctor Dr. Leinders, both of whom have been implicated in the Armstrong case as being involved in doping. So now when I think back to Bradley Wiggins’ dominant performance at the Tour de France, I don’t know if what I saw was a dominant performance, or another case of a medical miracle. Seeing Wiggo with a bandage over his vein after the TT didn’t help either.

Do I even need to go into any sort of detail about Vinokurov’s win at the 2012 Olympics? I think you see my dilemma.

The problem that’s facing cycling is twofold. First, the penumbra of doping uncovered in the Armstrong controversy is so broad there are few teams and riders not touched by it. There are riders, trainer, soigneurs, doctors, DSs and coaches from that era of cycling throughout the professional sport today. And as soon as new talent joins the pro peloton, it is only a matter of time before he’s touched by one of these people and is then forever tainted by cynical suspicion.

Taylor Phinney (BMC) and Joe Dombrowski (Sky) are great examples. They are both young riders on teams committed (on paper) to clean cycling, but where did they have their start? Bontrager Livestrong run by Axel Merckx, a former doper himself, as implicated by the USADA investigation. I’d like to believe that they weren’t corrupted in their days at Bontrager, but I don’t know! Ben King and Matt Busche are in the same boat, having worked with Bruyneel.

I don’t know how much training Cadel Evans did with Ferrari, but it is enough that I know he did some. I’m even prepared to accept Evans’ explanation that he never used Ferrari for doping, but at the same time in the back of my mind, I can never rule it out.

I’m not accusing any of the riders mentioned in the above two paragraphs of doping. But as much as I really want to believe they have never touched a prohibited substance to gain an unfair advantage in the pro peloton, today I cannot bring myself to make that statement with 100 percent certainty.

The second part of the problem is the omertà – the mafia-like silence of the peloton. As I thought about my dilemma, I also thought of what it would take for me to sit down, watch a bike race, and be near damn certain that what I’m seeing are clean athletes showing their true, human potential. This will happen when with extreme regularity, riders will blow the whistle on their team managers, teammates, doctors and trainers for using unethical methods to gain an unfair advantage; and those riders will be seen as heroes and not as traitors. They will be praised, not fired. They will be shown to the world as examples of clean cycling, not as vindictive and jealous liars. It will take more than riders: it will take management, race organizers, sponsor and the UCI working together for the benefit of the sport and not their own.

When the peloton as a whole accepts the notions of openness and transparency, professional cycling will begin to shed the gray cloud that has hung over it for the last 20 years.

Cycling's biggest clowns

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:10:00 +0000

These are of course Hein Verburggen and Pat McQuaid, the corrupt fools, who protect certain cyclists and have accepted bribes from Lance Armstrong to cover up his positive doping tests in 1999 and 2001. Coincidentally, they are also the past and present presidents of the UCI, respectively, and somehow never manage to run out of shit to be full of.

Now, if I were Floyd Landis, and I said the above, and I happened to be in Switzerland, I’d be in some major trouble with the authorities. The UCI has adopted an unusual practice of dealing with critics – it drags them to court. Which is exactly what it did with Landis, who refused to challenge the charges in a Swiss court and had an order entered against him, prohibiting him from saying the above and more. But I’ll get back to the order in just a bit.

First, I’d like to turn to UCI’s policy in general. In an article in Cycling News, Verburggen was quoted as saying: “…everyone that says we have put things under the table or not done our best is sued. Simple. They can come to the court and prove their case. Simple like that.” This is an astounding statement. He doesn’t say that if someone says something false about the UCI they’ll get sued, but simply that anyone who suggests that the UCI has concealed doping allegations will be dragged to court. This may have been an off the cuff remark, but it certainly doesn’t make it look like the UCI has nothing to hide, quite to the contrary.

Now then, the order. You can download a copy here for your own amusement, but I will reproduce the most interesting paragraph:

“The Chair of the Court, ruling immediately in a closed hearing:… forbids Floyd Landis to state that the Union Cycliste Internationale, Patrick (Pat) McQuaid and/or Henricus (Hein) Verbruggen have concealed cases of doping, received money for doing so, have accepted money from Lance Armstrong to conceal a doping case, have protected certain racing cyclists, concealed cases of doping, have engaged in manipulation, particularly of tests and races, have hesitated and delayed publishing the results of a positive test on Alberto Contador, have accepted bribes, are corrupt, are terrorists, have no regard for the rules, load the dice, are fools, do not have a genuine desire to restore discipline to cycling, are full of shit, are clowns, their words are worthless, are liars, are no different to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, or to make any similar other allegations of that kind.”

So as you can see, if the first paragraph of this blog were in fact uttered by Landis in Switzerland, and someone heard it, he’d be in a heap of trouble with the Swiss courts. But aside from that trifecta, Landis can pretty much scream at the top of his lungs from any balcony in the world (provided it’s not in Switzerland) that Pat McQuaid and Hein Verburggen are the Muamar Gaddafi of the UCI and absolutely nothing will happen to him. Interestingly, however, as was pointed out by a friend, given the specificity of the order, Pat and Hein seem to have no issues with being compared to Hitler. Go figure.

This verdict, aside from the fact it’s absurd to the point of hilarity, raises several issues. This action in and of itself, together with the current lawsuit pending against the journalist Paul Kimmage*, demonstrates that McQuaid is not qualified to lead the UCI into the future. And neither is anyone of similar mindset – hiding the truth instead of taking a personal and professional stake in cleaning up the sport (incidentally, Landis isn’t allowed to say that either). Instead of opening up an internal, independent investigation into its past practices to show it is really not guilty of any wrongdoing, the UCI is using legal maneuvers to shut up its critics. In all likelihood because McQuaid already knows what such an investigation would unravel.

A statement issued by the UCI after the Landis verdict, it reads: “The judgement [sic] upholds and protects the integrity of the UCI and its Presidents.” Except it doesn’t because at no time was Landis there to present contrary evidence, and taking such pride in winning an argument with yourself seems bizarre if not insane. If McQuaid is really trying to help the UCI, he’ll stop wasting its money on lawyers and hire an independent auditor. And even better, he’ll resign. Please resign, Pat!

The order also requires Landis to pay thousands of Swiss franks to Verburggen and McQuaid as well as court costs. Neither the Swiss court nor the two UCI presidents (past and present) will ever see a cent of that money. Landis’ attorney was absolutely correct in saying that “this verdict is un-American.” This isn’t some sort of an ethnocentric statement. Rather, it speaks to the fact that no court in the U.S. would enforce such a judgment, resulting from someone voicing his opinion and criticizing a public body. This is so against public policy in the U.S. that the UCI would simply get laughed out of court. This is assuming they could even get into court because U.S. is currently not a signatory to any international agreement with regard to enforcements of foreign judgments.

The question I’m sure many are asking is: if the UCI is so bad for the sport, why isn’t there some sort of an uprising to overthrow the leadership and install someone who cares more about clean cycling and less about keeping up appearances?

My guess is the answer to that question lies in how cleverly the UCI has positioned itself – nearly any attack or criticism is potentially career-ending on many levels. The UCI assigns pro-tour licenses; it assigns event statuses to races; and it also accredits some journalists to cover races. So a manager being very vocal against the UCI can see his team downgraded. A promoter of a race can face the same wrath; and journalists can simply be rendered unemployable.

Which is why now, ironically, the people who can save the UCI are the ones no longer under its control: Landis, Hamilton, Kimmage and even Lance Armstrong, if he ever decides to stop being a lying asshole.

*If you wish to donate to Paul Kimmage’s defense fund, you can do so by following the link.

Tyler Hamilton made me hate Lance Armstrong

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:40:00 +0000

Well, perhaps “hate” is too strong a word. “Loathe” and “despise” are probably better choices. And thinking a bit more about it, Hamilton really didn’t make me feel anything; Armstrong took care of that himself.

Any delusions I had about Armstrong having won his seven tours clean passed so long ago, I don’t dare take a stab at a date. I’ve known he was a cheat who broke the rules to win, but that didn’t make me loathe or despise him. It gained him zero points on the respect scale, but that was about it.

Then, The Secret Racecame out, written by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle. My knee-jerk reaction was the desire to read the book, coupled with the uncomfortable feeling of allowing someone (Hamilton) to further profit from doping by writing about doping. I was able to resolve my dilemma by borrowing the book from a friend, and thus avoiding depositing any further royalty profit into Hamilton’s account.

Of course, as many you would probably love to point out, Coyle would also be missing out on the profit having done nothing wrong. Prior to having read the book, I would have told you that I’m OK with that because he’s helping an ex-doper make more money from the ex-doping and that shouldn’t be rewarded either. However, after having finished reading the borrowed copy, it had such a profound effect on me, I bought my own copy.

So how is it that this book inspired all these negative emotions toward Armstrong? Well, I dislike cheats. I have no respect for someone who breaks the rules to gain a competitive advantage. Period. However, while I merely lack respect for cheats, I reserve "loathe and despise" for hypocrites.

Armstrong was a hypocrite because while he expected everyone to keep quiet and be loyal to him, to the team and to the concept of omertà, he apparently had no qualms about calling the UCI and reporting athletes whose performance he deemed “not normal,” i.e., they rode better than he did. While the book only mentions Hamilton learning about Armstrong’s call from Landis, there were a couple questions left unanswered for me.

The book is organized in chronological order, and it seemed odd to me that riders would get caught as they were getting closer and closer to beating Lance. Coincidence? Perhaps, but if Landis is to be believed about the incident with Hamilton, how do we know that Armstrong didn’t call the UCI to report other riders in the peloton?

Another interesting wrinkle for which I find no answer in the book is the blood mixup. Apparently, Hamilton accidentally transfused someone else’s blood (on more than one occasion), while having donated only his to his doctor, de Moral. I choose to believe Hamilton when he says he was always under the impression he was transfusing his own blood.

As Hamilton learned, de Moral was not only helping a handful of cycling stars, but anyone who could pay the bill. This raises two possibilities with regard to the blood mixup.

First is the very easy explanation. De Moral was horribly organized and mixed up blood bags. The explanation is easy, but wouldn’t have riders started dropping dead, or been rushed to hospitals in serious conditions from toxic blood? So while that explanation is plausible, it doesn’t sit right with me.

Second explanation is a bit harder to swallow, but makes a heck of a lot more sense – the mixups were done with purpose in order to ensure cyclists would test positive. This way, blood types can be matched up to avoid toxicity, but still ensure a positive test. After all, Lance knew how doping was administered. He knew that if Hamilton was tested in due course, he would have been safe. However, if Hamilton had someone else’s blood in him without knowing it, he’d be more vulnerable to a positive test, which he ultimately was. The book also makes it clear that de Moral was not the type who would have refused a generous bribe, and Armstrong was not above offering one.

When an athlete messes with his body to gain a competitive advantage, he’s a cheat. When the same athlete messes with others to ensure their failure or exclusion from the sport, he’s an asshole. And no one is a bigger asshole in cycling than Lance. My opinion, of course.

With the exception of the incident from the book (which I choose to accept as the truth) – Landis telling Hamilton about Armstrong’s call to the UCI – the rest of what I wrote is just a guess, pure speculation. However, the Hamilton incident alone is enough on my end (my feelings don’t have degrees -- I either despise someone or not) to make up my mind about Armstrong. I simply put forth the other theories in an effort to fill holes I feel were left open, and rightly so, as they didn’t concern Hamilton directly.

Of course the 500lb gorilla in the room is the question of what exact role the UCI had in all of this?

Yes, this comes after a long, long hiatus in my blogging “career.” I’m hoping this serves as a revival and will try to post more frequently going forward. Especially now that there appears to be much to write about in the sport of cycling.

Cascade Cycling Classic recap

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 01:30:00 +0000

Kurt and I arrived in Bend early Thursday afternoon and the first thing we did was kitted up and rode to recon Sunday’s circuit race and then Saturday’s TT course. This also served as our leg openers, because after almost 9 hours in a car, we surely needed them.

Our stage race started on Friday with a 70-mile road race that ended in a climb up to Mt. Bachelor.

Stage 1. The Road Race

The race started luxuriously late for us, 11:40 for Kurt, who raced the Cat 2 field, and 12:20 for my Cat 4 field. This meant plenty of time for breakfast. This was probably one of the best pre-race breakfasts I’ve ever had. Kurt’s parents came down from Portland and his mom made some great pancakes with a variety of homemade jams for us to fuel up!

One of my concerns was that at 12:20 it might be very hot, but the temperatures were chilly Friday and never rose to uncomfortable levels during the race. Lucky me!

The course changed from last year and instead of starting with a ~3-mile climb, it began with a 10 mile descent (that usually came after the 3-mile climb). I’m not a pure climber, so I knew that I would be losing time on this stage. My plan was to attack early and often in hopes of getting a few guys to roll away with me and hopefully build up a healthy lead going into the climb. Of course, the other option would have been to sit hidden in the field the whole time and save all my energy for the final climb, but I came to Cascade to have fun and gain fitness, and that strategy wouldn’t serve either of those purposes.

I didn’t wait long to launch the first round of attacks. After the neutral roll-out, we made the right turn onto the course to begin the long descent. I made my way to the front and attacked on the descent. I did this several times, each time getting a gap, but no one came along and the field reeled me in each time. Once we reached the flatter section of the course, my bladder started to inform me that it was time for a natural. I considered doing it on the roll for about a millisecond before going to the front, telling the guys at the head of the field what’s up and gaining a gap to take care of business. Luckily the follow vehicles didn’t mind me drafting to catch back on to the field.

Once I felt I was rested from the 30mph, post-natural chase back to the field, I made my way to the font and put in a big attack. I looked back, no one came with, but I had a significant gap and the peloton was spread across the road, so I got into my TT mode and tried to keep an even pace, realizing there were 50 miles still to go. I stayed off the front for about four miles, with the maximum lead being 30 to 40 seconds, but as we approached feed zone one, the field chased me down and I was reabsorbed.

I ended up putting in a few more attacks and going with one move later in the race, but nothing stuck, so at about mile 42, I decided it was time to sit in and save what I had left in my legs for the final climb. This was also about the time that my left inner thigh began to seize up. I managed to make it to feed zone two, where I botched a bottle hand-up that resulted in me being at the rear of the peloton, having to briefly chase back on with a second bottle I actually managed to grab. I poured water all over my thigh in an effort to relieve the cramping. I also upped the Cytomax intake from the bottle I had on board. This seemed to do the trick in the short term.

The peloton continued to move along steady until we hit the first series of climbs at mile 57. It wasn’t too steep of a grind, so I didn’t have any problems keeping contact. Then we’d hit the flat section for a bit, and then the slopes pitched up and of course the attacks quickly followed. As if a passenger in a 007 car, I was ejected from the peloton with speed. At this point, I was probably 40th-something on the road. There was one rider ahead of me and the ref’s car was about to pass me.

Then, something clicked, and I said to myself: “Oh, no you don’t!” Alternating the two phrases – “Shut up legs!” & “Embrace the pain!” – I caught the rider ahead of me, getting ahead of the ref car. Then I dropped him and bridged to the next group up the road, before dropping them and doing the same thing two or three more times. I caught the last group as we crested the climb and drilled it as much as I could to the finish. It took some convincing for the three guys I caught to take some pulls to make up seconds, but I did get a couple of them to work with me.

I ended up 23rd and 2:40 down on the leader after stage 1 (2:30 on the road, plus 10 second time bonus). If I had to do one thing differently, I’d stay much closer to the front at the beginning of the climb. Given how I was able to climb it, I probably could have saved a couple dozen seconds having started further up in the peloton. I raced top 10 for most of the race, but lost a bit of focus toward the end and slipped back.

Stage 2. The Time Trial

The TT course is a 12-mile out and back course. Out being pretty much all uphill and back being an extremely fast downhill.

Not much to report here, other than I made two major errors and had one thing going against me.

The first mistake was not pre-riding the course from the start – Summit High School. On the map in the race bible, it showed I would be making a left, then a right and continuing on course. In reality, I had to make four or five turns in very quick order to get out of the parking lot and onto the straight part of the course. Had I known that would be the case, I would have taken a few laps of the first 1K to make sure I didn’t lose any seconds in the technical portion of the TT.

The second mistake was pacing. And this has something to do with what I had going against me. For some odd reason, my TT bike came with a 52/36. Why a manufacturer would put a compact crank on a TT bike is beyond me, but that was the case and I found out about the course too late to do anything about it. Knowing that I would have not been able to push to full capacity on the downhill, I should have started out much harder than I did. Instead, I paced myself as I normally would, starting out conservatively and building as I went along. On the return leg, I spun as fast as my legs would let me, but really could have used at least a 54 (a 56 would have been even better). I ended up 18th in the TT, which moved me up to 16th overall.

Stage 3. Criterium

The course was a four-corner crit, with the first two corners being very wide, corner three coming into a very narrow stretch of the course and corner four again opening up to a wide road with a very long finishing straight, maybe 300 meters or so.

The crit was scheduled to be very short – 30 minutes – so the pace was high from the whistle and the first 10 minutes my legs were screaming. Then I settled in and moved myself to the front of field, taking a few pulls on the front and trying to go with one move late in the crit, but that was shut down from the get-go. With three to go, I realized I needed to be near the front, so I moved myself into 5th wheel after corner two. Just then, the guy ahead of me had some sort of noisy gear mechanical and moved off, so I was fourth wheel heading into the dangerous corner three. Two guys went down right behind me.

I stayed near the front for the remaining two laps, but got pinched in the last corner on the last lap. Sprinting to ensure no gaps in time, I ended up 12th and kept 16th overall. I could have done better with slightly better positioning, but while I did pass a few guys in the finishing sprint, my legs had no top end by this point in the day (the TT was in the morning).

Stage 4. The Circuit Race

Pre-riding this course was one of the best things I could have done. I knew exactly where I would need all my strengths and where I could rest up.

Unlike most other stage races I’ve participated in, all but one racer were at the start line on Sunday. Typically, the attrition rate is much higher. After the neutral start, we hit the course and I could immediately tell that there was much less spunk in the peloton than the previous two days. The first lap was fairly uneventful as we rolled around together.

In the middle of lap two, as we hit the climb up to the feed zone, I realized that a lot of people were cracking, as I was going up fairly easily while passing others on the road. There were two right turns after the feed. After the second right turn, there was a short downhill followed by a short but steep uphill. I ended up toward the end of the peloton and when the steep climb came, a gap opened up and several of us were caught out – including some riders high on GC. The gap wasn’t large, but did take us about 4 miles to close.

By the time we were four or five miles into the final lap, most of the field had come back together. As we made it up the climb to the feed zone, the field was starting to break apart. Just as we crested the climb and hit the flat part of the feed, a guy stuck his front wheel into my rear wheel ripping one of my spokes out of my wheel. I knew if I stopped for a wheel change then, I’d never see the front group again. The wheel seemed to roll fine and I continued with the group.

I made sure not to get caught out the second time and kept myself in the top 10 heading into the steep section for the last time. I crested with the main bunch, while half the field dropped off, as I expected.

Then a few attacks followed and one guy managed to get away. Two more took off after him and we (whatever was left of the main field) began to chase. The load of continued climbing did a number on the wheel and it was becoming more and more out of true as the climb continued. I opened up my brake as much as I could, but with less than 3k to go, it became pretty worthless. I dug as deep as I could to work with four or five guys who got gapped off the main chase group and finished 27th, much worse than I was hoping. I did, however, keep my 16th GC spot.

It was an unfortunate and perhaps expensive (I don’t yet know how much it will be to fix the wheel or if it’s fixable at all) note on which to end my first time racing Cascade Cycling Classic, but overall I had a ton of fun and really enjoyed the racing. I’ll definitely be back again next year!

Strava Legal

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:46:00 +0000

This is a slightly out of character post for this blog and perhaps one of the more boring ones for most of you, but I felt the need to say the following. Given that Strava is such a huge part of our cycling community, especially here in the Bay Area, this is still somewhat cycling related, tho tenuously, I admit.

Yesterday, this blog post was brought to my attention by a teammate. And in case it gets taken down, it was also picked up here for whatever reason.

The author of the blog is Dean Frieders, an attorney in Illinois. Personally, I wasn't too fond of the absurdities he decided to present as some legal analysis worth merit, so I felt the need to reply. The problem with Dean's blog is that he likes to really be in control and moderate each and every comment. So much so, that he edited my first comment without even asking me. My last comment, which was made last night hasn't yet made it to his blog, while another comment posted later is already there. Perhaps Dean is simply taking his time trying to think of a witty response, or he just had enough of me and decided to silence me through moderation. Or maybe I've jumped the gun and he's going to release my comment at any moment. In any event, I figured I'd recreate our little exchange here. The first comment made by me is in the original form, not the edited one released to Dean's blog. I haven't edited any of the comments, other than a few annotations in brackets.

Vitaly:

You're not a lawyer, are you? [Before I found out he actually was] If you are, by some miracle, please turn in your law license and never set foot in a courtroom again.

I'll do you the favor of taking this apart piece by piece:

" Strava is a big company, with significant revenue." I'd like to see where you pulled this from? It's a startup funded mostly by investor $. Do some research before going out and making asinine statements.

Users getting sued by users:

Please, explain to your reader what would the alleged "cause of action" be against a fellow Strava user. Is it negligence? In which case the plaintiff would have to establish duty, breach of duty, proximate cause and damages. What duty of care do I owe another member/user of Strava? I certainly can't think of an intentional tort that fits into your made-up liability scheme. So, no, users cannot get successfully sued by other users.

"What is to stop someone who is injured while trying to beat your Strava time from suing you? Nothing." - This statement is deceptive. Yes, anyone can file crap in court, that doesn't mean that it states a valid claim and there are thankfully statutory provisions which allow for sanctions in such actions.

"In Strava’s case, they will undoubtedly assert that the decedent released any claims against Strava by agreeing to their terms and conditions, which include a waiver/release of claims." - I had no idea you were a member of the Strava defense team. I certainly don't have great insight into the defense either, but there is a difference between having a claim dismissed on a demurrer, for failure to state a cause of action (which is what Strava is likely to do) and assert the waiver as an affirmative defense, thereby admitting that the plaintiff has stated a valid claim, but that the claim is defeated by a contractual provision. The latter being called a motion to dismiss.

"Of note, Strava could have chosen to include language here to waive claims against other riders, but did not do so." - I'm not so sure that it could have done that. It would seem that for me as a Strava user to waive my claim against another Strava user, the users would have to be in some sort of horizontal privity of contract.

Indemnity:

Here, it's absolutely clear you have no clue what the hell you're talking about. For the indemnity to kick in, there has to be a valid claim. If you do something on Strava which results in a valid claim, then you should pay the resulting damages. California Civil Code §2772 provides: "Indemnity is a contract by which one engages to save another from a legal consequence of the conduct of one of the parties, or of some other person." If there is no legal consequence, there is no way that one party can invoke the indemnity provision.

As an analogy, I give you Craigslist. If you post a discriminating advertisement and Craigslist gets sued, under an indemnity provision, you would have to pay the judgment and the attorneys fees if a judgment is rendered against CL as a result of your post. However, if there is no cause of action, i.e., no claim, there is no "harm"/consequence from which you have to indemnify Strava or CL.

You were apparently too busy reading what the indemnity provision says to realize what it doesn't say. The provision doesn't say you agree to DEFEND Strava from any claims. If that was the case, I would agree with you that it's a horrible provision because users would be on the hook from the outset. As worded, the indemnity provision is fine and not overbearing.

Strava should NOT take out the indemnity provision simply because you are too short-sighted to see its broader implications. If someone slanders someone in a comment on Strava, or harasses someone on Strava in a way that could be actionable in court, and indemnity provision is a must!

Dean:

Vitaly,

It is cute that you tried to submit the same comment under a number of different usernames. One of the wonderful things about the bully pulpit of a blog is that I can see things like usernames, IP addresses and the like, and can see when someone is acting in such a fashion. I hope you don’t mind that I edited your post–I’m not certain why your comment was dripping with quite so much venom, but I decided to spare you from looking more inconsiderate than you otherwise would look, by deleting the ad hominum [sic] comments.

As for your question about what cause of action one Strava user may have against another, I would assume that it would not be an intentional tort. It is unlikely that there would be assault or battery arising out of a Strava post. Given your mastery of the English language and our system of laws (shown in large measure by the colorful comments that I edited out of your post), I’m sure you understand the difference between intentional torts and negligence. I don’t think it is too terribly hard to envision a circumstance where one could violate even the most basic duties of care between two unrelated parties by creating a Strava route that exposes another rider to an unreasonable risk of harm. Perhaps more importantly, you missed the whole point of the post. I’m not suggesting that the lawsuits against Strava are meritorious. Writing a blog post with detailed legal analysis as to Strava’s risk might be interesting to me, but would be decidedly less interesting for my readers. The post is about identifying a risk that very few Strava users out there recognize…the risk of litigation arising out of their use of the app. Is litigation likely to be initiated, or likely to be successful on a user-to-user basis? Hopefully not. But it does not take any stretch of the imagination to see how such litigation could result, nor does it take a great legal mind to devise a theory upon which such a claim could be based.

Can we protect against every petty, small-minded or frivolous lawsuit out there? No–sadly, we cannot. But Strava users are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t at least consider the ramifications of their actions. Strava has certainly considered it…hence their terms and conditions. When someone gets sued, they may be comforted to know that the claim is subject to dismissal…but I’d prefer to not be surprised by a lawsuit in the first place. It is only by identifying risks that we can minimize or mitigate them. The idea of the blog post is to get people to think…not to give legal advice.

Am I a member of the Strava legal team? No–afraid not. If I were among Strava’s legal counsel, their terms and conditions would be far more precisely drawn. But does it take some insider knowledge to forecast that they will assert the waiver as a defense? Not really. Will that defense be asserted as a motion to dismiss, an affirmative defense or something else? It will likely be asserted in just about every way they can assert it. Here in Illinois, an attorney would likely start with a motion to dismiss claiming that the lawsuit is affirmatively barred by other legal matter. Oh, and “admitting that the plaintiff has stated a valid claim” isn’t an entirely accurate description, Vitaly…you’re simply admitting that for purposes of the motion. It is not an admission that can be later used against you.

If you genuinely believe that indemnity does not apply until a judgment is entered, or that Strava could not invoke the indemnity, as it is worded, to force a user to pay their legal fees incurred in defending a suit based on user conduct (whether it be from comments posted on the website or from routes posted on the website), then…well…there’s no polite way to say this. You’re wrong. I agree that the indemnity is poorly worded, but it appears to be Strava’s intention to put users on the hook for any claims or damages arising out of user conduct, as they say “including reasonable attorneys fees.” The reference to reasonable attorneys fees, while inartful, undoubtedly refers to Strava’s own legal fees. (As an aside, I have no idea why people do not understand that slander refers to oral statements, and libel refers to written statements. But unless you’re uploading insulting audio clips to Strava, it will be pretty difficult to slander someone on their website.)

Anyhow, thanks for writing in. It is clear that the post did what it was intended to do, by making you think. Even though I don’t agree with your analysis (or your rhetorical style, in resorting to insults in the absence of strong arguments), I appreciate that you thought about the issues.

Vitaly:

I actually tried to submit only once, but then was prompted to login (I forgot I had a WP login). Didn’t see it pop-up, so tried to put it in again, then saw it was awaiting moderation (that’s pretty lame by the way). Computer glitch, nothing more. I’m glad you only let one through. I hate when the whole “multiple-post” thing happens. Tho I wish you didn’t edit my reply, because now I feel like I have to put the unedited version on my own blog and rip this apart word by word. But I digress.

Why did you delete the part where I corrected you and said that Strava was a startup funded by investor $?

“I don’t think it is too terribly hard to envision a circumstance where one could violate even the most basic duties of care between two unrelated parties by creating a Strava route that exposes another rider to an unreasonable risk of harm.” – That’s the point I’m making. There CANNOT be a duty of care between unrelated individuals. “Duty of care” is not some ambiguous thing. It’s a term of art defined statutorily or via common law. It simply does not exist in the context in which you present it. Period. If you think I’m wrong, please provide an example or a case that says otherwise.

“Here in Illinois, an attorney would likely start with a motion to dismiss claiming that the lawsuit is affirmatively barred by other legal matter. Oh, and “admitting that the plaintiff has stated a valid claim” isn’t an entirely accurate description, Vitaly…you’re simply admitting that for purposes of the motion. It is not an admission that can be later used against you.” – Illinois! How fortunate, one of the states where I’m admitted. In Illinois, a lawyer worth his salt would first file a 2-615 motion to dismiss for failure to state a cause of action before going on to file a 2-619 motion to have the case kicked on an affirmative basis. Of course, there’s this unique 2-619.1 motion, but some judges are not keen on that (Cook County’s Kathy Flanagan comes to mind) in my experience, as in the 615 motion, you’re basically saying the plaintiff is full of shit, and in a 619 motion your saying “the plaintiff has a cause of action but is SOL because of….” But this is one of those side issues that’s not really central to your post anyway.

Thank you for the slander/libel correction, I of course mean the latter and have no issue admitting I was wrong in that statement.

As I said in my original reply post, if the indemnity provision has the word “defend” in it, you’d be correct in some of what you wrote. As drafted, however, it does not obligate the user to pay for the ongoing defense. As far as whether the fees to have a frivolous suit dismissed could be charged to the user via this indemnity agreement, that’s a far stretch. You realize what type of legal gymnastics would have to happen here for this to even come into play, right?

As I read this: “claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys’ fees” The fees go with the “claim or demand,” and don’t pertain to the cost of the defense. This seems pretty clear to me, but if you feel it’s ambiguous, that’s great! You probably know that ambiguities in indemnity provisions are interpreted against the drafter, as all contractual provisions.

You claim that your blog post is a service to Strava users, but it isn’t. It doesn’t even come close. You raise a bunch of non-meritorious issues. If the main point you are trying to raise is that using Stava could expose someone to a frivolous lawsuit, well unfortunately so can doing pretty much anything else, from taking out the garbage to washing your windows. Congrats on being one of those sensationalists with no merit or substance.

Dean:

You’re still missing the point. I don’t have a particularly compelling need to determine which of us is the bigger e-badass of an attorney via blog comments. If you feel compelled to “rip this apart word by word,” then by all means, be my guest. One of the marvels of the internet is that it can be a forum for anyone, no matter how uninformed they may be. If you’re on a cycling blog and feel compelled to name drop and cite to the Code of Civil Procedure–well gosh, I just can’t help you there. Perhaps I can start a legal blog and we can debate this further…but since I practice law here in Illinois on a daily basis, I really don’t have a need to justify my professional abilities online. I’m really not sure why you have such a persistent bee in your bonnet. Frankly, I’ve never understood why people posting online feel a need to attack others, rather than have a reasonable, rational dialogue.

If you’re comfortable looking at an agreement that obligates you to indemnify a company based upon your conclusion that the language is ambiguous and will thus be construed against the drafter, again, more power to you. The risk that I’m describing in my post is a real potential risk–it certainly is no more tenuous of a legal argument than the underlying ‘real’ claim. Would such a claim survive? Will the underlying claim survive? The likely answer to both questions is no. That said, Strava’s terms show that they are thinking about the issue. Strava’s users should be thinking about the issue too.

Vitaly (this is the last comment that as of 8:24PDT has not yet been released from moderation):

I'd be more than happy to explain why what you wrote made me so angry, and why, as you say it, I have a "bee in my bonnet." The reason I am angry is because what you wrote is irresponsible and borderline unethical. In the above reply, you agree with me that claims predicated on acts in your original post would likely not survive. So why sensationalize the issue? Why make such crazy assumptions? Why be vague with the law, leading those who don't know better to believe that what you write actually has some meritorious legal analysis behind it? Yes, it's a cycling blog, but you are a lawyer. We are professionals 24/7, as you very well know, and just because you sit down to write a cycling blog, doesn't mean you can take your lawyer hat off. You put forth a specious legal argument I challenged, and you have twice now failed to address the challenge head on.

I asked you to give me an example, or a case, where two people, linked only by the fact that they use the same online service would be in such a relationship that would give rise to a duty of care, breaching which would be actionable in negligence (assuming the proximate cause and damages requirements would be met). Twice you have not bothered to address that argument, which is the central point of your blog.

As far as the indemnity argument goes, here's the indemnity language from Wordpress:

"You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Automattic, its contractors, and its licensors, and their respective directors, officers, employees and agents from and against any and all claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising out of your use of the Website, including but not limited to your violation of this Agreement."

Where's the post warning bloggers they might be in trouble? Or is that coming in the next installment? Someone reading your blog could take it a legal advice, go out and sue Strava, lose, get slapped with sanctions, then sue Automatic, which would seek contribution from you for whatever judgment results. Sounds absurd, right?

Coming full circle, the reason I'm angry is that lawyers like you give the rest of us a bad name. I don't post anonymously. You know my name and who I am, and what I do (if you bothered to use Google). But I can understand why you would want your name hidden. [Before I realized that BikeRumor had his name front and center, but it's nowhere on his blog]

Do us all [attorneys] a favor and take this post down, please.

The gadget bell curve

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:20:00 +0000

I got my start in road cycling through mountain biking. Kind of like Cadel Evans, except not at all like Cadel Evans. I enjoyed it, but was never very good at it, I’m still not very good at it, but I still enjoy riding dirt once in a while.

When I’d ride trails around my home in suburban Chicago, or singletrack in southern Wisconsin, I never really cared about how fast I was going, all that mattered was keeping it upright, which quite often proved to be a challenge.

Then a year later I got my first road bike, and compared to my mountain bike, it went fast. Clearly, the first thing I needed to know was exactly how fast it went. So I got one of those cheep cycling computers that just measures speed and distance. And that satisfied my curiosity.

Then, my friends, who have been road cycling a bit longer than I, said I really needed a heart rate monitor. “Why?” I asked. They told me that I would be able to train better with an HRM, and I would know my efforts and how hard I was going. “Huh?” I thought I could figure that out because I felt like I was going to puke and my legs were on fire?!

A year later, I got my first Garmin – Edge 305 with an HRM and a cadence sensor (a useless piece of information, I thought at the time). And all of a sudden, I could no longer go on a ride without one. I needed to know. I wanted to see how hard my heart was beating, how hard I was working. Going by feel suddenly wasn't enough. What's worse, I stopped trusting "the feel."

Instead of saying, “boy, that was one killer MTB ride we just did.” I’d say, “shit! I don’t think I’ve ever seen my heart rate that high for so long!” What the hell does that even mean?

Then a couple more years passed and I started getting curious about power. I started training indoors at Vision Quest in Chicago and really got hooked on them. I’m a numbers kinda guy in general, so it should come as no surprise. It would be another couple of years before I decided it was finally time to fork over the dollars for a power meter. And all of a sudden, riding became even more calculated and numeric.

Every race was a dilemma: do I race with my heavy powertap, or the lighter race wheel set but no power data? Almost always I’d opt out for the latter and feel a little guilty about it.

A little time passed, and I got familiar with my power outputs and stopped being dependent on the meter, and raced without it, being able to fairly accurately estimate the stress after the race given past performances with the power meter. So that became less of an issue. Then at one point, it was race day and my HR died, and I raced with no data other than the feelings in my legs and the speed on my Garmin – that first little piece of data I was curious about as a novice road cyclist.

And all of a sudden, I stopped caring about the numbers. I no longer need to see the numbers, and a lot of times I don’t want to see the numbers. (Interval training being the exception) “Why do I need HR and power?” – Sound familiar?

Numbers are great, and I love them. I love sitting down with my Golden Cheetah once or twice a week and checking out my workouts, and stress scores, and seeing what my body has been up to, but the desire for real time feed back during a ride or a race is no longer as important to me. In fact, I finally did what many of my fellow racers did a long time ago, I created a Garmin screen for racing only, time/distance/speed (that one I still enjoy seeing). I guess you can say I’ve come full circle.

Sequoia Double Metric - a lesson in pacing

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Another year has passed, and that means it was time to embark on my favorite organized ride of all time – the Sequoia Double Metric, organized by the Western Wheelers cycling club. This year, however, I wanted to do things differently.

The ride has incredible support, with the most out-of-this-world food at each rest stop and great treats at the finish. But I wasn’t planning on enjoying much of it. The ride came at an end of a heavy week, with a lot of miles already in my legs and quite a few intense workouts, not to mention a race on Saturday. Setting a goal of a finishing time would have been pointless because regardless of what that time would have been, it would not have been my “best” time. Not to mention that the course was different this year, with an extra few thousand feet of climb thrown in for good measure.

I decided that this year, I wanted to do this ride on minimal stopping time. Given my past experience with long rides of this sort, I figured I should be able to do it on less than 10 minutes of total stop time.

So I tweeted this:

Almost instantly, this followed:

Now it was on!

It helps to know where you’ll be riding to confidently state how much rest you’ll need. There are several factors, the main one being the weather. If it’s too hot, more water stops will be necessary. If it’s too cold, more food should be taken “on board” because the body burns more calories as it tries to keep itself warm.

The plan was to ride out of the Palo Alto VA Hospital with the Mission Cycling Club and then see where my legs take me in terms of pace.

We departed around 6:30 and rolled together for about the first dozen miles until we hit Redwood Gulch, a pretty nasty climb with some insanely steep pitches. Luckily, it’s sort of a ladder, so you get a breather between turning the legs at 40rmp. That’s where I let everyone who could and wanted to pass me. I kept my legs turning over steady, conserving energy, knowing that ahead are another 11 thousand feet to be climbed.

I started the ride with two bottles of Cytomax, a banana, a PBJ sandwich, cut in half and individually wrapped in foil, and a little flask of GU. The weather was cool in Palo Alto and we headed up into the Santa Cruz mountains, which were also cool and shaded. I figured that what I had on me would get me through the first 65 miles of the ride and I wouldn’t have to stop until the lunch rest stop as long as I followed my feeding protocol.

After passing the second rest stop, I knew that I was ahead of everyone I started with – I heard later many of them were lounging on the grass, probably enjoying coffee cake and hummus (was there hummus again?). Somewhere between the second and third rest stop, Michael with a few others blew by me like I was standing still, but I kept on clipping along at my own pace. Then a few seconds after, Andrew came up behind me and we continued riding together. He’d drop me on the climbs a bit, I’d catch (and sometimes drop) him on the descents a bit, but we kept each other company.

Then we came to the first new segment of the route on this year’s ride – China Grade. That was a total “WTF” moment. I’ve never done that climb before. It goes for 1.5 miles, averaging close to 11 percent with many sections over 14 percent. There were definitely a few moments where keeping the front wheel to the ground was a challenge. Unfortunately, my Garmin had mapping issues and placed me on a parallel road, so I have no personal data for that climb other than the memory of it being very slow and painful.

The good news, however, is that once I was done with China Grade, I knew there was no significant climbing left in the ride other than the eight-mile climb up Tunitas Creek that came at me around mile 96, but more on that later.

Andrew dropped me on the climb toward Skyline and I was slowly catching up to him on the rollers before the turn onto Alpine Road, which lead to lunch. I figured if I didn’t catch him on the rollers, I’d certainly make contact on the 10-mile descent into La Honda. I was right. I caught him on the narrow twisty parts of that road, a few miles before the finish of the descent. I flew into the lunch stop and saw Michael (he told me he had already had two servings of rice and beans). Then it was down to business: bathroom first, water second, food third and back on the bike.

I lucked out, as there was no line at the port-a-johns, then quickly to refill my bottles. I filled one bottle full of water, drank half of it where I stood, refilled it again, and put Gatorade into the second bottle – can’t believe that still serve this on long rides, but beggars can’t be choosers. Then it was time to find some salt. To my dismay, no chips, no pretzels, no cheesy crackers. Who the hell has the time for eggs, potatoes and rice and beans on my pace schedule? But there was a whole tub of quinoa salad (seriously, quinoa?), so I inhaled a bowl full of that and began to search for some bars to take with me. Couldn’t find any of those either – were they even there? Grabbed a few pieces of banana, hoped on my bike and off I went.

I don’t think I rolled even a mile before G pulled up from behind and started pulling me along. I couldn’t in good conscience let him do all the pulling, so I said he’s welcome to draft me, but that I would not be matching his pulls, as I had a certain pace to keep and I knew he’d drop me as soon as the road pitched up anyway. Not too long after, Andrew came up behind us with a group of three to four in a paceline. Before I even had time to think, “Gee, what a nice group we have to work together,” everyone but Andrew and G made the turn to do the shorter, 100-mile route. So it was just the three of us, with less than 50 miles to go.

We continued together in a fairly constant pattern: ride the flats together, I’d pop off on the climbs, catch back on (or they’d wait up) on the descents and flats, and so on.

As we approached the penultimate rest stop at the bike hut, I continued while my companions pulled off for a stop. I knew they’d catch me on the 8-mile climb up Tunitas Creek. However, Michael’s group was the first to catch me and they once again flew up the climb and left me in the dust – no surprise, no worries. I slowly continued to clip away. Then some dude went flying by like he just got stung by something. “Holy crap,” I thought, “he must not be on this ride and just training with some intervals.” I passed him later on the climb as he was barely turning his legs over – probably hating himself for going out too fast.

Andrew caught me on the steep part of Tunitas, about half a mile from the grassy knoll. I did my best to stay with him and he end up pacing me all the way to the top, where he stopped to wait for G and I proceeded to descent Kings Mt. Road and make my way to the finish.

I was surprised to see Michael come up behind me with Bruno and Ben, who I thought were long enjoying their It’s It at the finish. I gladly took the invitation to latch on, and did for a bit, before popping off and finishing at my own pace, probably five or so minutes behind them.

Total stopping time for the ride was around seven minutes, two of which were due to stop lights getting out of the parking lot and on Foothill – I made sure to time all the stop lights coming back as to not actually stop at any of them.

What did I eat/drink on the ride?

4.5 bottles of liquid – 2 bottles of Cytomax, 1 bottle of Gatorade, 1.5 bottles of water = 450 Cal.

2.5 bananas = 400 cal

1 PBJ = 300 cal

1 cup of quinoa salad = 200 cal

4 GUs = 360 cal

This is the third year I’ve done this ride, and I’ve never finished it feeling better than I did this year. I’ve said it many times and will continue to say it over and over, nice and steady is far superior to hammer-stop-hammer-stop (unless you’re doing HIT). It’s not easy and it takes discipline. It’s hard to let people pass you know are slower than you. It’s hard not to grab that wheel and pick up the pace, but it’s even worse when after holding that wheel, that rider pulls off to take 10 minutes of rest and you have to keep going, having wasted an effort for nothing, as you would have passed him as he was stuffing his face with coffee cake.

This way of riding isn’t fun for everyone, and it certainly not the most social way of riding. But I need my rides to be challenging. There always has to be a thought in the back of my mind - “there’s a chance I might fail” – and that motivates me to press on. While for some, riding 120 miles is a great accomplishment and I commend everyone for trying it and succeeding, simply going the distance is not really a challenge for me these days. Good problem to have, I know.

Turlock Lake road race report

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:16:00 +0000

This has been a race I had on my mind since last year, when I heard what a great event it was. The terrain suits me and my legs have been feeling better in the last few weeks, so despite the poor performance at Cat’s Hill the day before, I was feeling confident about Turlock. I had two strong teammates in the race with me, which proved crucial, Franco and Francisco.

I was going into the race with a three-pronged plan. Plan A was getting Franco or Francisco into a break, which as we were warming up, we saw succeed in other categories. Plan B was to try to get into a break myself; and plan C was to save it, position myself well in the final kilometers and give the bunch sprint a go.

There was one limiting factor in the race – the temperature. Our start time was scheduled for 12:20, and it was forecast to heat up to 85 or so, and as I’ve written dozens of times in the past, I don’t like the heat. I filled my bottles with Cytomax to keep the calories and liquids going during the race, and stashed a couple GU gels for later in the race. I was also trying something new – instead of the usual bibs and jersey, I raced the race in my Prooff skinsuit. I figured that if it so happens that I get into a break, the extra aerodynamics wouldn’t hurt. However, the main reason I donned the skinsuit was because it keeps me cooler than the bibs/jersey combo – and controlling my body temperature was way more important than any aerodynamics.

We started on time with 22 riders in the field. The wind was blowing steadily from the west, which meant a tailwind coming into the finish and on the first leg, head wind on the back end of the course and cross-winds on the other two legs. However, the cross-wind on the fourth leg of the course was much more noticeable than on the second, perhaps because it wasn’t as shielded. The temperatures were still comfortable, probably in the high- to mid-seventies.

As in most road races, the pace started out mellow, but after a few miles, Francisco and Franco came to the front and started to make things interesting. Tri-Valley Velo had four guys in the field, so we knew that one of them would have to get into the break with one of us for it to work because with each of our guys in the break, the remainder were 25 percent of the field and could try to shut down or interrupt chase efforts. A few break attempts were made on the first lap, but all of them were quickly reeled in.

At one point, a Fremont guy attacked and got a good gap up the road. I kicked to bridge and dragged two more across, but before we could get organized, it got shut down again.

For probably 95 percent of the race, one of us was in the front 3-4 riders. The minute the pace would slow, Franco or Francisco would come to the front and stretch it out again. Once we got to leg four into the cross-wind, Francisco immediately guttered the entire field, which I saw was draining a lot of guys in the field.

We made it through the feed zone and across the start finish the first time all together. Then it started to get really interesting. Franco pulled up to me and said that he just snapped his rear derailleur cable and was stuck in two gears. My heart sunk, mainly because I really needed Franco in that race, but I also felt bad for Franco because the way he was riding, we could have easily both had good results.

There were a few flat miles ahead, so told Franco to go back and rest and save what he had for the rollers, when he would really need to grind it out to stay with the field. The temperatures also went up and I knew that plan B was not going to happen because a long sustained effort in the heat for me means I overheat and go out the back like last week’s trash.

My efforts were now turned to staying near the front and trying to cause a gap in the field to give Francisco some room to get away, but the field just wasn’t going to let anything get away, and the few attempts that were made lacked organization and were quickly shut down.

What happened next still has me in awe. As we approached the rollers, Franco gets on the nose, and in two gears, drills it up nearly every single roller at a rate that had some guys in the back of the field letting out audible groans. And when Franco wasn’t on the front punishing the field, Francisco was attacking on the rollers trying to get away. By this point, I was mostly useless because with 10 miles to go, my quads began to seriously cramp up, and with five to go, my inner thigh, from the knee all the way up my groin, decided to seize on me. I still don’t know how I managed to pedal through that, but resting in the back and spinning a faster cadence relieved some of the pain.

We pass the 3k to go sign, and Francisco once again gets on the front and drills it, which stretches out the field in this crucial moment. Francisco pull off, and Tri-Valley gets on the nose and I’m riding their train as fourth wheel. We pass the two to go, then one to go, and a guy from Delta Velo jumps, Fremont covers and I kick hard to get his wheel. The Delta guy dies almost immediately and Matt from Tri-Valley attacks. I’m still barely recovered from the last kick, but I give it all I’ve got as we’re now flying out of the feed zone and it’s 100m to the finish. With about 20m to go, I hear wheels to the side of me and the Freemont rider slips in for third and Alex Lockwood of Fusion gets me by half a wheel. I finish up sixth, Francisco 10^th and Franco 13^th (beating out a huge chuck of the field with 2 gears!).

I had no idea they were going to do podium shots with all 6 of us (they placed down to 6). So I had to run to my car and get a clean jersey that I just happened to have had with me. No way was I getting back into that skinsuit.

A huge thank you to Francisco and Franco for doing an insane amount of work during the race, which kept the pace high, weakened a lot of riders in the field and kept the race safe. Squadra was on the nose of that field for probably 60 percent of the time, and about 90 percent of that work was done by Franco and Francisco. Thanks to them, I was able to go the back of the field and rest when I needed to cool off when I was overheating and to position myself well for the final sprint. When I was in the back, I never had to worry about something getting away because they were solidly in control of the front of the pack. Essentially, they allowed me to race the race I wanted to race. My only regret was that I didn’t wait for the second attack, which probably would have had me a few slots higher at the finish line, but I guess we all make gambles at some point. I also could have moved over in my sprint, which would have shut the door the Fremont rider, but as we all saw in today's Giro stage, moving sideways in a sprint is not a good idea. Next week, it’s going to be my turn to sacrifice myself for my teammates at Berkeley Hills.

I'd like to end with this. I've raced most venues in NCNCA over the last 2.5 years, and this is one of the best organized races there is, period. The low turnout is extremely disappointing to see. Five guys in Cat 5?!? And that's only because Heather McDonald missed her start and raced with the guys. I know that Golden State was on the menu that day, but I hope in the future, racers come out to this venue and keep it going. I'd hate to see it die due to the low turnout.

Three-feet law, take two

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Wed, 02 May 2012 21:31:00 +0000

When I moved to California, a little more than two years ago, cyclists in Illinois have already been benefiting from the 3-feet law for two years. In fact, soon after the law was enacted in Illinois, it was also adopted in Louisiana, a state which to this day incorporates some aspects of the Napoleonic Code into its justice system.

That’s why when I first wrote about it here, under the assumption that in a cycling-friendly state like California it must be the law, I was surprised when John swiftly rubbed my nose in my erroneous assumption.

What is the 3-feet law? It’s as simple as it’s sounds. In different jurisdictions that have adopted it, there are nuanced differences, but the main point is the same, whenever a vehicle passes a cyclists, the driver must give the cyclist at least three feet of room.

The first attempt to pass the 3-feet law under the current Brown administration ended in failure for reasons known only to Governor Brown and the coffers of the AAA -- SB 910 was promptly vetoed once it came across Brown’s desk.

In several recent press releases I’ve received from the California Bicycle Coalition, it appears a new 3-feet bill is before the California legislature and is quickly gaining momentum. SB 1464 was passed out of committee in a unanimous 8-0 vote and is on its way to the Senate, and then the Assembly. No one came to testify against the bill at the initial hearings. However, I was able to find at least one (in my opinion asinine) objection to the bill.

It just so happens, that this past weekend I was in Chicago, with a bike, and went for a ride with my former teammates in the north suburbs not known for their particular friendliness toward cyclists. Once the team ride was over and the coffee had been drunk, it was time for me to make the three-mile ride back to my parent’s house. The most direct route goes on some busy roads, Waukeegan, Kates and Pfingsten. None of them have much of a shoulder or bike lane, and all of them have speed limits of over 40mph.

As I began my ride home, I noticed that car after car passed me with enough room to fit at least another cyclists between the vehicle and me. No matter if there were two lanes heading in each direction or one, every single motorist gave me ample room to pass. That is not to say that I’ve never had or heard of driver/cyclist conflicts in the north burbs of Chicago, but on that day, during that short trip home, I remembered what it was like to be a beneficiary of the 3-feet law.

Contrast that with my daily commutes and training rides in San Francisco. I will never understand why nearly every motorist who passes me on the road decides to play a game of “how close can I possibly get to this cyclist.” Maybe I should take it as a compliment and assume that each driver has 100 percent confidence in the line I’m holding, but I would prefer they assume I’m some sort of Fred and can dart sideways at any moment.

The most unpleasant part of my commute is southbound on Market after it crosses Castro St. When I first started to take that route, I would stay as far to the right as possible while crossing the intersection, but then the cars would buzz within inches of my handlebars as they zoomed up Market Street. So I changed my tactics – I now take the entire right lane as I cross Castro and keep it until I have room to move sufficiently to the right where the cars and I can share the lane with enough room to make me comfortable. Whom does this benefit? No one. The cars are pissed that I’m slowing them down, and I’m always nervous that some texting teen will ram me from behind. (But I figure the chances of that are lower than some daredevil hitting my bars with his side-view mirror).

The bottom line is that California desperately needs the 3-feet law. It will keep cyclists safer and give guidance to motorists on how to properly overtake cyclists on the road. The passage and signing of this bill into law is only the first step, however, which will have to be followed by a state-wide campaign to educate drivers and cyclists on the new law and perhaps some enforcement measures for drivers to actually follow it.

The California Senate and Assembly will be voting on SB 1464 sometime this month, and if you’re a cyclists who cares about this issue, this is a as good of a time as any to write to your local senator/assemblyman and tell them why this bill is important to you. You can find the right person to contact by simply plugging your zip code into here.

The Bucchere Report

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:48:00 +0000

I wasn’t planning on writing about this. I didn’t want to because I felt I’m a bit too close to the conflict and I didn’t feel that this would be accepted as a neutral analysis of the events. But as I saw the anger, and the accusations, and the unfounded speculations flying left and right in comments under every article or blog that mentioned these events, I felt I needed to do it. I must say, the level of journalism and reporting with regard to this event has set the bar extremely low for what I consider news reporting, or even news blogging.

I hope to lay out the facts as we know them, and those facts that we can ascertain from the very strong circumstantial evidence, and take an objective, outside view of what transpired that morning, without assumptions, without hate, without anger, and most importantly, without any preconceived notions of what may have happened.

I’m not sure if any of the below will make even a dimple in the opinions of the lynch mob that has apparently formed over this, but if it causes at least one person to view the situation in a different light, it’s worth it.

Full disclosure: In 2010 and 2011 I was an official member of Mission Cycling. I am not this year due to other commitments and constraints that I have. I have ridden the MC AM Headlands Raid dozens, and dozens, and dozens of times. I have ridden it as part of a group with Chris Bucchere dozens, and dozens of times (edit: I was not on the ride that morning). We became acquainted through our rides together. I’m not claiming to be his close friend or know everything to know about him. I’m not claiming to have some insight into his personality or who he is as a person. All I have is my impression of him based on our interactions on these morning rides, which is that he’s an intelligent guy, who likes to joke and goof around. He’s always been nice in all our interactions and never did he give me cause to think, “man, this guy is an asshole.” And I’m also a lawyer – but not Chris’ lawyer, obviously.

Now that you know where I’m coming from, here’s my take on the situation.

The facts

The morning of March 29, CB was coming back from an MC morning ride. There is no reason to doubt that he was coming down Divisadero toward Market Street. There is also no reason to doubt that he crossed Market Street and as he was crossing Market Street, he collided with a pedestrian who later died in the hospital.

We know that sometime after the accident, CB sent out an email to a list of recipients close to 1000 detailing the events of that morning. Before I get to that email, I must say that the carve job the papers did on it is absolutely amazing. Additionally, we also know that at the time the email was sent, CB had no idea exactly how serious of a condition the pedestrian was in. He had no way of knowing that the pedestrian would die.

What can be inferred from the email and the early accounts, before any speculation began, is that CB hit his head in the collision, was blacked out and also taken to the hospital -- the same hospital as the pedestrian.

My point here is the guy hit his head earlier in the day before writing the email. So two flags should come up for anyone reading that email: first, clearly not the best judgment was used in sending it out and definitely in drafting some parts of it; second, it is not to be taken as a picture perfect account of events. Eye-witness testimony is perhaps the most inaccurate testimony a court ever hears. Add to that a traumatic event and possible head trauma, and things get fuzzy.

Another thing I’d like to point out, CB actually mentions the victim twice in the email, not once like most outlets report. He first says: “I really hope he ends up OK.” And then two paragraphs later, after listing his own injuries, he writes: “The guy I hit was not as fortunate. I really hope he makes it.”

What color was the light? That’s a fact we don’t know. CB writes that it was yellow as he entered the intersection, but as I mentioned above, those accounts might not necessarily be accurate due to the trauma during the even. It is unlikely that the light was red when he entered the intersection because I ride through that crossing two times a day and he would have been run over by a car at least twice before he reached the other side. Likely, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I’m not going to guess what the color the light was because the only thing guessing has done in this case is flamed more hatred.

The ode to the helmet. The fact is it was written. Not the best judgment was used in writing it, but it was written before the pedestrian died, before CB realized how serious these events were going to be, and at a time where he most likely was not entirely “with it.” Had I just been to a hospital after losing consciousness and seeing how I just hurt another human being, I’m not sure what my psychological reaction would be. I don’t claim to know what CB’s was, but what I am saying is he shouldn’t be vilified for it, not without more. To say he was dumb to write it is fair, to say he’s an evil, callous human being is in my opinion going a step too far. Which brings us to the next segment of this saga.

The spinathon

From the facts above -- the only facts known or those that can be inferred from circumstantial evidence with any degree of certainty -- a whole other pile of information has come forth, literally out of nowhere. Here are some examples:

He was riding a fixed gear bike with no brakes. This originated in a comment on a forum or on a blog and spun completely out of control. I will admit that currently, there are no public facts (word public is key, read between the lines here) stating what kind of bike he was riding, but there is also absolutely NOTHING to suggest he was riding a bike with no brakes. Why make this assumption and sell it as gospel? Moreover, cops have CB's bike, a part of the email conveniently left out by all the papers and blogs.

He was racing another rider that morning. This came by way of a “witness account.” Someone claims they saw CB and another rider blasting through stop signs and red lights. If there were two riders, wouldn’t one of them still be on the scene? There were no reports of a fleeing rider. All information suggests he was traveling alone down Divisadero. The witness account sounds completely made up. If the witness saw CB and another rider running lights and stop signs, the car would have had to follow them and also run red lights. If the car stopped at the red light, the bikes would have been out of the line of sight, or if they were in the line of sight, wouldn’t the driver had also seen the accident that was at the bottom of the hill? And why did this motorist wait a whole week to come forward?

Moreover, anyone who’s a cyclist knows this is BS because all of us had instances where we’ve ridden with someone many times, but when we run into the person on the street in street clothes we don’t recognize him. For some driver in a car at 8 am – when bike traffic is very heavy – to connect the dots between two cyclists traveling together and CB is specious at best. Lastly, this witness report came in about a week after the events, when all tempers were flying high, and it is wholly possible that some “well-intentioned” individual was trying to help the DA make up his mind as to whether charges should be filed.

Strava did it! This is America, and in America no one is responsible for his own actions. The coffee was too hot, the knife was too sharp, the gun was too loaded and the building was too tall – find a scapegoat and sue. That’s the motto! (Feel free to enjoy a bit of irony as this is written by a lawyer)

Yes, we know Chris was on Strava. We know that the segment he was riding used to have a word “bomb” in it. We also know that “bomb” is part of cycling slang that has at least two meanings. First: I bombed that descent. This means that I went down a hill REALLY fast. Second: That’s a bombing descent. This usually means the descent is steep and has the potential to take you to high speeds. And that’s all we know. Unless someone out there has ESP and can read CB’s mind on March 29, don’t assume he was going down that hill in an attempt to set a new fastest time. And if you are going to assume that, don’t claim that anyone other than he himself made the decision to go down that hill as quickly as he did.

In law, there is a concept called the attractive nuisance doctrine. It applies where a dangerous element is present at a site that would normally attract kids. There is a reason it only applies to minors.

CB is an [insert a demonizing term]. No, he isn’t. If you spend five minutes in conversation with him, you'll know he isn’t. But it’s easy to hate someone based on an image you construe in your head based on inaccurate reports and accounts.

Have we not learned yet? Anyone remember Richard Jewell? He was the man falsely accused and subsequently completely cleared of the 1996 Atlanta bombing. Even now, George Zimmerman has had his life ruined by early accounts of what transpired that night. And now that conflicting accounts of the story have come to light, it might be too late to unring the bell that was rung. In this country, we continuously try people in the press and convict them in the public’s eye. Then we forget about what we have done and move on to other current events, but the scars we leave on a person we condemn without all of the facts before us do not go away. This obviously goes beyond CB and this accident.

The hatred

“Hatred and anger are like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Remember that, you’ll live longer. The level of hatred that I have seen over the last few weeks has been astounding and depressing. It saddens me to know that so many human beings have it within themselves to hate with such strength, or at least that’s what comes through in the comments they post.

On some level, given the information that is funneled to the audience, I can understand a level of disdain for CB. However, I don’t understand why we as cyclists are hated with such ferocity. We don’t all break laws. We aren’t all arrogant assholes who think we’re better than our motorist friends. In fact, most of us cyclists are also drivers and pedestrians, the reverse of which is far from true.

When I ride down the street and someone without signaling cuts me off by turning to the right in front of me, I get mad at the person, but I don’t hold it against any other driver on the road. I cannot understand why this is the complete opposite with cyclists. If one breaks the law, everyone must do it too. If one is reckless, the rest are as well. It’s like we’re all members of the same political party.

I know that as a whole, we as cyclists need to do better with regard to sharing the road, just like motorists need to be better about sharing the road (give me more than 5 inches when you pass me on the road, please). As more and more cyclists flood to the roads, the infrastructure needs to catch up. Lights need to be longer, so that if a cyclist enters on yellow, he has time to cross before the light changes. Or if a cyclists comes to an intersection with a red light that can be only tripped by a heavy metal car, what is he to do but run the red light (assuming no car comes behind to set it off)?

The main point here is that pedestrians, cyclists and motorists need to work together to make our roads safer. This means we have to obey laws, but also put ourselves in the shoes of the other and not lump entire groups of people together as if they are a projection of one person’s actions.

Take an honest look at yourself. If you’re a cyclist who normally rolls through stop signs and disobeys red lights, make an effort to be better. This will keep you safer and will build goodwill for all of us. If you’re a driver who sees a cyclist break a law, don’t extrapolate and don’t vilify. In all likelihood, the drivers in the car behind you and the one in front of you probably exceeded the speed limit, changed lanes or turned without signaling, or ran a sign in the last 20 minutes. Heck, you might be one of those drivers. And if that’s the case, you too try to be better. As pedestrians, understand motorists and cyclists. Give us the right of way if we’re already crossing an intersection. It scares us when you come onto the roadway – we really don’t want to hit you.

All of this seems so common sense that I feel silly writing it out, but as I walk, ride or drive I see these principles violated with extreme regularity by cyclists, motorists and pedestrians alike.

I hope this incident teaches us not only to be safer cyclists and reminds us that our actions can oftentimes have heavy consequences, but that it brings all sides to the table for a calm discussion, resulting in a better environment for everyone. This tragedy already claimed one life, let’s make an effort to stop it there.

San Dimas Stage Race

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:02:00 +0000

I've raced in many parts of NorCal, but this was my first time racing in SoCal. I've heard many good things about this race, from racers I know who did it last year and teammates who've done it in the past. I knew the race was completely not suited to my abilities, but I really wanted to experience it and see how I'd do. There were two other teammates in the race with me, Francisco and Mike, both much better climbers than I am, so I figured that if I can be there and help them somehow, that would be my role for the entire stage race.

Stage 1: Hill Climb

There were 125 riders registered in my field, and 110 showed up for this first stage. I'm not really a climber. I can be a middle of the pack climber, but I felt absolutely no pressure going to the start line. The goal was to pace myself and leave it all on the course and see how I stack up.

The course was a 3.8 mile climb up Glendora Mountain Road. It starts out flat, but quickly pitches to about 4-5 percent and stays there for most of the climb, pitching a bit more in the switchbacks. This year, the start of the TT was moved up the road by about a fifth of a mile and the finish was also moved up one fifth of a mile to keep the distance the same. However, that changed the course quite a bit, as the flat one-fifth at the start was now replaced with a climby one-fifth at the finish, so historic times up the climb didn't really apply and this year's times were a bit slower across the board.

I was pleased with how I paced myself. I didn't go out too hard, paced myself during the climb, hit my target HR about two-fifths up the climb and kept it steady. I caught my 30 second man around minute seven and kept churning away toward the finish. My official time was 18:32, which on that day was good for 61st out of 110 -- told you I wasn't a climber. Francisco, on the other hand, killed the TT and ended up in top 10 going to the road race the next day. Good day for Squadra SF.

Stage 2: The Road Race

We pre-rode the course the day before, so we would know what to expect, but nothing could have prepared us for what was to come on Saturday -- that is not to say we didn't know it was coming. The course is a seven-mile loop that we'd be doing six times for a total of 42 miles. It starts out flat, then there's a power hill that was also the designated feed zone, followed by some more flat roads and the .6-mile KOM climb with a 13 percent kicker at the top. Then comes a really steep twisty descent, that drops you off onto a flat road and a flat mile and a quarter to the finish line.

The forecast for Saturday was rain, rain, more rain and some strong, strong winds. We got dressed at the hotel to limit the time outside at staging. I decided to go with embro on my legs because I didn't feel like dragging an extra few pounds that would have been the wet knee/leg warmers. That was a good decision. The bad decision I made was not getting a proper warmup because there's nothing I hate more than sitting on a trainer while getting rained on. So I rolled around for 10 minutes and went to staging. Where we sat for another 10 minutes before the course was clear for us to start. The whistle blew and off we went. The first lap was going just fine until we hit the KOM climb. I was actually holding my own on the climb, it's just not long enough for me to get popped, tho I probably was working a bit harder than some folks in the field.

Then came the decisive moment, the downhill. To put it frankly, I simply didn't have the balls to bomb it, it was probably at least -10 percent, the roads were a mess, looked like ice, and the last thing I wanted to happen was go sliding into a ditch on my side -- I already did that not so long ago. So those with a bit more testicular fortitude gapped the rest of us on the descent, which dropped the field into the finishing stretch that was being hit by a 20-30 mph crosswind. The field was immediately guttered by the leaders and shattered to pieces. I tried to chase back on with other groups of riders, but all I could do was watch the main bunch roll away in the wind. At some point during lap two, I got into a group of about a dozen riders and we did our best to work together to either close the gap or at least not miss the cutoff time, which was 10 percent over the winner's time.

For a second there, I really wanted to roll it in after lap two and call it a day, but then I remembered how I felt after I did that at Madera, and decided I was going to finish this race no matter what. Plus, I really wanted to race the crit the next day, and I knew if I abandoned now, that wouldn't happen and I wouldn't be able to do anything for my teammates in the crit if they needed me. I had to stay in it.

By the end of lap three, our group was whittled down to six riders. On that lap and on lap four, I noticed that I was dropping everyone in the group on the main climb and my legs started to feel great (should have really warmed up, I'm not 20 anymore). I was very happy to make the crest first because I had the best look at the crazy descent, but on laps three and four, I let myself get caught because there is a lot of flat ground to cover in the wind, and we were working much better as a group, even managing to form a proper echelon at one point.

On lap four, one of the riders in the group said, "we're probably going to miss the cutoff," and I immediately knew that there would be no more waiting on my part if another split happened. Waiting for people who are not motivated is not a good plan. On lap five, I and another rider dropped our four compatriots on the KOM climb, hesitated for just a bit in the flat section, and then I turned to him and said, "we have to go, if they want it, they'll catch us." From that point on, it was just the two of us to the finish, taking hard pulls, getting to that finish line as fast as we could to avoid getting cut. One last time down the crazy descent and I gave it all I got going into the finish, pulling at about 32mph into a headwind. If I was going to be cut by minutes, so be it, but I didn't want to get cut by seconds and know that I could have pushed just a little harder at the end.

With about two hundred meters to go, the other rider came to the front and began to pull us to the finish. Then as he was about to get out of the saddle and sprint for it (what "it" was isn't really clear to me), I said, "don't worry, you can have 'it'." He relaxed, but kept looking over his shoulder as if I was playing a trick on him. "I don't play those games," I said and we crossed the line together, with his wheel just a bit in front of mine. As long as we got the same time, I didn't really care which one of us would cross first.

I finished not knowing if I made the cut. I was wet, cold, miserable, but happy that I did not abandon and that my legs came around and performed, even when I no longer was in any contention for any placement.

A couple hours later, as we were eating lunch, results were emailed to us and I saw that the rider I finished with an I were the last two guys to make the cut (by about a minute), the four riders we dropped missed the cut by 11 seconds. Out of 103 riders who started, only 70 finished, and 60 made the cutoff. * The conditions were truly extreme and in parts dangerous. My teammates and I all made the cut, all stayed upright and were all going to be racing in the crit the next day. Given the circumstances, we called it a good day, and went back to our hotel to keep warm and hope for dry conditions for the crit.

The extreme conditions of the day merit a short paragraph of their own. The roads were completely wet and slippery. Whatever small groves were at the intersections or sides of roads turned into streams of running water that in places were rim deep (I was racing Zipp 404s). Crashes were happening left and right in every field. On one of the laps, making the twisty corner at the base of the KOM we saw a guy in the fetal position in a ditch next to his bike and volunteers running toward him to help. Every time I went down the descent from the KOM I had zero confidence in the fact that I would keep it upright or in my ability to correct my line if an emergency happened ahead of me -- it was as good as descending on ice.

*Due to extreme conditions on course, the cut for E4 was extended to 12 percent. So the four guys I mentioned above actually made the cut under the new extended time, but they only found out about it at midnight when that email arrived.

Stage 3: the crit

This will be very brief. It was just really not my lucky day. The course was a six corner L-shape. There was a shallow riser that started after corner two and continued to corner four, where it flattened, then there was the downhill after turning corner five into the final corner and finishing straight.

On lap two or three as we hit corner two, I heard a weird noise. I'm in a pack, so I don't know if it's me, or the guy next to me or in front of me. All I know is that at that particular moment, I don't feel anything, so I keep rolling. Then we turn corner three and all of a sudden the group is pulling away from me going uphill. My legs are lactic like crazy, I'm doing all I can, but I can't keep up. I figured that I just worked too hard the day before, but I didn't understand how everyone else still had way more power than I, even guys I was dropping the day before.

After I realized that I just got dropped in a crit for the first time in my racing "career," the strategy was to move fast enough to get placed and not get pulled before the half way mark of the crit. I made it to the point where the field was coming up behind me and seeing three to go. The ref made the hand gesture, I sunk my head and pulled over. I went to the corner and watched the field roll by. Then as I got ready to move back to the car, I felt some resistance and immediately knew what the noise I heard earlier was. I began feeling my rear spokes until I found the guilty spoke dangling loosely in my wheel. The snapped spoke resulted in the wheel rubbing on both the chainstay and the brake pad. I guess that's where all the watts I was trying to use to keep up with the field went. Oh well, not my day. On the bright side, I thought to myself, I'm not weaker than everyone else in the field, I was just too dumb to realize I had a mechanical. Had I figured that out, I would have been able to grab a neutral wheel and continue the race. Another "rookie" error.

The overall

I really liked this race and I'm definitely eager to come back next year and give it another go with better fitness and hopefully better luck and weather. This is definitely the one to target, not just train through. I doubt that the course will all of a sudden suit me next year, but hey, things like that don't stop me from doing races like Everest Challenge for what might be the third year in a row (I'm about 60 percent ready to do it again this year) and certainly won't stop me from returning to San Dimas, if for no other reason than to be a better helper to my climber teammates. The organizers do a phenomenal job and create a great racing atmosphere. Receiving results via email shortly after the race is also a great touch. I wish more races in NCNCA would use that technology. I would have to say that despite all the adversity and some bad luck, the experience was positive, as I learned quite a bit and gained some fitness and mental toughness.

Madera Stage Race 2012 - mistakes, mechanicals & wind

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 22:36:00 +0000

This is long overdue, in part because I've been extremely busy last week trying to cram a five-day week into three days so I could take off for San Dimas Stage Race in SoCal (blog on that coming shortly) and in part because I've been pushing off writing this report. Some races I can't wait to write up, others I'd rather forget. You can probably guess this is the latter, but I think it's beneficial to write it out if for no other reason than to replay it once more in my head and reinforce the lessons learned.

Stage 1: Crit - the mistake

I had three teammates in the race with me, Jared, Francisco and Tyler. We figured that no one would be going out to kill themselves in the crit because a few hours later we'd have to race a TT. We also counted on the fact that no break would stick because no one would want to lose time on GC in the crit. So the plan was to sit in, preferably near the front, not lose any time and take advantage of the opportunities as they present themselves.

We lined up for the crit, which was advertised as a 20 lap race, but I knew better, so I asked the ref about the time for the crit, and he said we'd be going for 45 minutes - normal Cat. 4 crit time. The whistle blows and we're off. Other than a few break attacks and a sprint for the first prime (5 seconds), nothing really happens in the first part of the crit. The the bell rings for the second 5-second prime. I look down at my Garmin and see we're at about the 30 minute mark. I estimate we have about six or seven laps to go. A Webcor guy attacks out of corner two and I hesitate for just one second, then realize I can recover in time for the finish and dart after him. I've raced with the guy before, so I know he is very explosive, but I counted on him fading toward the start/finish line. He proved me very wrong. I kept closing the gap with another rider on my wheel, but not fast enough. If I got into his draft with 200 meters to go, I would have probably taken the sprint, but I could only get within 4 feet of him before it was time to kick for the sprint, and my legs didn't have enough juice left, so the guy I dragged with me came around and took the prime.

On the plus side, this move helped me avoid a crash in the field that happened on that lap. On the down side, the next time we came around, I saw three to go -- at least three laps less than I thought I had to recover. "Well, I just screwed my finish," I though to myself, but I stayed in the group, trying to be as efficient as possible and save as much energy as I could. The bell rang for final lap and approaching corner three, riders got tangled in the cones and a crash happened to the side of me. I managed to get by, turned the corner and observed the field slowing down -- "WTF?!" I thought to myself. I saw Jared in the lead group, yelled out "let's go!" and hit it as hard as I could. The field got motivated and took off, but I had no legs for the finish and rolled in with the pack. No time lost, but no result either. The only silver lining was that Jared was in great position, followed the right wheels and won the final sprint.

I was really happy to see my teammate win, but really pissed at myself for making such a stupid mistake. Lesson learned -- pay attention to lap cards earlier in the race. The crit was cut about five minutes short, but I have no one to blame than myself for my inattention to the lap cards. I should have seen five to go on that prime bell and never chased the Webcor rider.

Stage 2: TT - the mechanical

I knew that I wasn't in quite as good of TT form as I was last year, but I was hoping to at least replicate my performance or come close. My legs felt good during warmup, but exactly how good would have to be seen during the race.

Three-two-one, off I go. I'm not feeling it at all during the first leg of the TT. I'm trying to be conservative, yet ramp up the power as I go and find a good rhythm. There was no 30-second man ahead of me, but I was slowly reeling in my minute guy. After corner one, I feel much better, my legs come alive and I really started to push it hard, the minute guy getting larger and larger as I got closer. Then I turned corner two, went to upshift and ended up with the rear shifter in the palm of my hand. I try to keep this blog more or less PG-13, so I'll let you imagine what went through my mind at the time. I was stuck in my 11 and the only shifting I could do was in the front, so it was either mash-mash in my 52x11, or spin like crazy in my 36x11 (why I have a 52/36 on a TT bike is a whole separate story). As I hit the 1K to go mark, I see that I need to cover the last km in one minute to hit last year's time. I'm not Fabian, so going 60kph isn't really an option. I do the best I can with my gears and cross about 30 seconds slower than last year for 13th place -- my worst TT placing in quite some time.

Stage 3: Road Race - the wind

I held my own in this race last year, so I figured this year would be no different, or better. At this point, Jared was sitting in 2nd place on GC after winning the crit and placing 4th in the TT, so our plan was to cover attacks, do no work in breaks, regardless of how good they looked, and try to get Jared across the finish line first to get the time bonus and that number 1 spot on GC.

There were a few early attacks I easily covered and they rolled back into the field. Third turn on lap one, a guy attacks and I happened to have been pushed back a bit, so could not cover right away. I see him quickly approaching a field of riders ahead and make my way to the front. My fear was that if he passed the field of riders, we'd have a very hard time bringing him back. I get to the front and drag the field within 50 yards or so, until my legs can't really do much more work. The field ends up catching the guy just as we hit the 2.5-mile bad section of road and attacks go flying. I'm struggling to grab wheels and know that I'm about to be majorly screwed as we hit the power rollers. I'm out of juice. I see the field slowly rolling away from me.

This was the dumbest thing I've probably ever done in a road race. My first error was that being fresh at the start of the race, I totally underestimated the headwind on the first leg of the course. My second error was chasing the guy on lap one of four in a 65. Why the hell did I chase him? Why not let him fry in the wind and come back into the field, why not save my legs for later in the race to keep myself as an asset to my teammates? Those are all questions I keep asking myself and find no answers for at the moment. Really, really stupid racing on my part. I guess the best I can make of it is keep reminding myself of what happened and try to avoid doing it in the future.

Going back to the race. I tried to chase on for the entire second lap, working with individual riders and catching a small group at one point, but losing contact with them as well due to the energy I wasted catching them into the wind. I finished lap two and rolled back to my car, hoping my teammates who remained in the race would be able to defend the GC. I hate how DNFs feel.

Once again, the silver lining was Jared totally kicking ass in the road race and winning in style, taking first on GC and earning respect of the entire peloton in the process.

Lessons learned -- first of all, to be patient and smart about where I spend my energy. This is obvious, but at times needs hard reinforcement (check!). Second of all, I realized I have very little experience racing in the wind and have to work really hard on my positioning to not get gapped because in a headwind or a crosswind, a bike length can be as hard to bridge as a mile.

Merco crit and road race recap

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:43:00 +0000

Last year, racing the weekend at Merco was probably some of the best fun and atmosphere I had all season, so returning this year wasn’t even a question. A major change from last year was that Elite and Masters racers not doing the stage races (everyone but P/1/2 and M35+1/2/3) were not allowed to participate in the TT, but only the crit and the road race.

Merco Grand Prix

The course was different from last year with the completion of construction in Merced. The hairpin was out and a nine-corner course, resembling a profile of an old phone receiver, was in. The weather was warm and sunny, with 33 of us at the start line. No teammates in the race.

My original plan for the race was to sit in conservatively in the field until the final laps, then move up and contest the sprint. However, the more I thought about that plan, the more dissatisfied I had become. I figured there will be plenty of time for this type of super-strategic, one-move focused racing once I’m in my race block, racing my target races. On Saturday, I wanted to race really aggressively, and try to contest primes as well as get myself in a break – the latter often comes on the heels of the former.

I line up at the front, the whistle blows and we’re off. The pace starts fast and I’m fifth or sixth wheel. Half way through the lap, the lead guy figures out he can’t pull us all at that speed for long, and normal Cat. 4 racing resumes. As we finish lap one, prime bell rings and I’m in good position near the front of the field. Half way through the lap, I attack from two bikes back, get a small gap and gun it for the line. The fresh field wasn’t going to let me go and chased back on. I say, “what the hell,” and kick it as hard as I can down the finishing straight. Didn’t get it as two riders ~~got me by about half a length on the line~~ got around me.

[Above edited as post-race photographic evidence that I wasn't quite recalling that correctly.]

We keep racing and I try to keep myself near the front as much as possible, chasing a chance to get a break. Finally, around lap 11, a junior rider attacked and got about 100 meters of breathing room. I’m second wheel, again I sprint out of the field, get a gap and bridge to the junior. We start taking pulls, but as we go under the start/finish, the prime bell rings again. This prompts a bridge attempt, which ended up dragging the field to us.

We go under the start/finish seeing six to go and the bell rings again. Going into the penultimate corner, I find myself riding second wheel behind Trevor, but I know he’s not going full gas. The thought that went through my mind was I either have to go now, or we’re about to get swarmed and I’m going to be boxed in at the line. If we were going all out, I would have waited 30-50 meters, but at that speed, I figured I had to give it a shot. I kicked really hard once again, but Trevor caught my wheel and ended up coming around me at the line. That effort sent me to the back of the field with five to go. I managed to get up front again in a lap or two, but legs were no longer there and the peloton got very erratic on the last lap (what else is new?), with nervous wheels shifting in all sorts of directions. I figured I had a fun time thus far, and decided a dangerous move to break out of the box I was in wasn’t really worth it. Rolled in 20^th, but very content with the type of race I had. I tried everything I wanted to try, raced aggressively, and gave the legs a good test run to see how form is coming along.

Hilltop Ranch Road Race

Sunday was another beautiful day in Central Valley. The temperatures were probably in the upper 60s when the race began and the winds were relatively calm. On the menu was a 48-mile road race, consisting of two 24-mile laps with gently rolling terrain with full road closure.

Jared and I left the city around 8:30, with plenty of time to have my usual 1.5 hours pre-race time. However, being an idiot, I didn’t read past the first line of the directions and just plopped Keyes & Olsen into my GPS and off we went. On Keyes, I was promptly stopped by a police officer blocking the course and he had me turn around and go another way to the staging area. Long story short, by the time we got to staging and got our numbers, we had about 50 minutes before race start. I didn’t even bother getting on the trainer, but just rolled around a bit and got to the line in plenty of time.

Advice from a teammate was to sit in, move up toward the end and contest the sprint – my original strategy from the day before, but Jared wanted to get a break going. He’d been successful with that previously, so I was certainly going to do all I could to help him. Despite the lack of wind, the chances of a break were not that bleak. There were many Tri-Valley and Webcor guys in our field. Together, those two teams were probably about 40 percent of the peloton, and if each of their guys was in the break, that would severely limit the leg power left for the chase.

There 43 guys in our field. The whistle blew and within 30 meters, I’m on the nose. “What the hell,” I think to myself, “might as well warm up.” So I attacked the field, got a gap and extended it a bit before settling into a nice rhythm just to get the blood moving. I spent the first five miles off the front, warming up, changing up my efforts from hard to medium. I kept looking back at the field to see what they were doing, but they didn’t seem to be concerned. Then I noticed the peloton assumed a more pointed formation, meaning they were trying to reel me in. Feeling warmed up, I eased off my pace, making sure when the field came by to stick myself near the front again and watch the action.

Jared made several attempts at a break, and I tried to be near the front to try to block or watch for someone to bridge me to him. After a few failed attempts, he finally got into a four-man break that I thought might make it. A Tri-Valley guy went, Jared followed, and Webcor and another rider came up. Two teams with greatest numbers got near the front to slow the peloton and give the guys a chance to survive in a break.

The break stretched out approximately a 20 second lead, but then what I feared happened, Jared and another rider popped both the Tri-Valley and Webcor guys and a rush of fresh leg power came to the front to chase down the rest of the break.

Jared and I spent most part of lap one and a part of lap two on the front trying to create a break opportunity. The last attempt was made by Jared as we turned onto a stretch of bad pavement, but that was another short-lived break and I realized a break was not how this race was going to end. I moved to the back of the pack and rested up, as I was doing for a good part of lap two.

The last 3km start with a prolonged S-turn, then a straight, then a slight uphill and a straight into the finish. This is the part where I lost focus and let more guys get around me than I should have. This forced me to attack up the little riser boxed in, dodging between riders who were no longer able to keep pace. I saw the sprint start and did all I could to be there, but was just too far back and not in the best position. I just snuck in across the line in the number 10 position. I was content, but definitely not satisfied, as I know I could have done a better job being near the front of that race.

Side story

As the road race kept going on, once in a while I’d hit these horrendous pot-holes that no one pointed out and eventually, on the second lap, my bars started to slip. Meaning they began to rotate. In the final few kilometers, I hit the last of the bumps, which twisted my bars to the point where I could only be in the drops. The drops that now were somewhere in between the hoods and where the drops usually are, so it kind of worked out, but it definitely took my mind off the race in the last few crucial moments. When I got home, I discovered that the shaking and rattling of the road shook the stem screws a bit loose. Hopefully a quick application of locktite will prevent that from happening in the future.

Takeaways

I came into this weekend with fresh legs and used it as a test to see where my fitness was, as well as practicing racing with tactics and purpose. As far as fitness is concerned, legs are coming around nicely, and I should be on form around early April, as I figured earlier when mapping out my training plan for the year. The one item that I recognize I really need work on is positioning myself toward the finish. That will be one of the things I will focus on over the next series of “training” races because more often than not, Cat 4 races end in a bunch sprint and being in the right place at the right time in the last 300 meters often means the difference between top 10 and a 20-something place.

Know thyself - changing things up

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:20:00 +0000

As cliche of a title as I could come up with, but couldn't ring truer these days. As I enter the last build cycle before the first peak of the season, the routine is really starting to get to me. This isn't burning out that often comes toward the end of the season, or even earlier if I'm not careful, but something much simpler -- same old is getting old.

The particular problem I've been having lately is seasonal - I'm tired of riding in the dark. I don't want to leave my house at 6 in the morning when it's still dark and often cold. Frankly, the cold doesn't really bother me, but the dark is really annoying (I've been doing this dark training since October). It's not the lights I have to put on my bike that I mind, it really is the lack of daylight that's getting to me.

I realized this after sleeping through a couple workouts because I simply lacked any and all motivation to get out of the house in the morning. However, when I'd finally drag myself out of bed and start getting ready for work, the sunshine though my window would wake up an urge in me to get on the bike, but by then there is no time. This resulted in many hours spent at M2, which is and awesome and efficient workout, but I do like to get most of my hours on the bike outdoors, so I needed a solution.

The first step in all of my problem solving is identifying a problem and the ideal solution, then taking the next immediate step toward said solution. Problem: reluctance to ride in the morning and missed workouts. Ideal solution: riding in daylight and getting all of my prescribed weekly hours.

After working through some logistics and figuring out what my next few months will look like as far as training, I've come up with a system that will hopefully work. Step one - I plan on leaving my house no earlier than sunrise. By doing this, I will be forced to cut my workouts short, from my usual two to two and a half hours to an hour and a half. So step two is - do my workouts as close to my house as possible. I know that it takes me 20 minutes to get to the polo fields and to the base of the climb up Twin Peaks or Medical Way (I can actually climb Twin Peaks right out of my front door, but I prefer to take the long way to warm up first). Step three - pick up the missing hours at M2 in the evening two days a week. While I love doing my hill workouts in the evening, I simply don't have the hour it takes me to get to the base of the climb and back. From the top of Twin Peaks, it's a 5 minute drop downhill to my house, so I'm cutting the non-work time from an hour to 25 minutes. Major win!

I happen to know that Mondays at M2 are recovery days, which will work perfectly as a recovery ride post a Monday morning workout. Tuesday will probably be a hard AM and hard PM workouts, and the rest of the work week will consist of a short workout, a recovery ride and medium intensity ride to recover for the weekend of racing. This will obviously be tweaked week-to-week, but that's the general idea.

I feel that being able to really turn inward and figure out exactly what's bothering me and how I can get around it without having to force myself was key to this solution. Forcing yourself to do something when you really don't want to is what willpower is all about, and as athletes, we're supposed to be armed to the teeth with it, right? Well, I understand that perfectly well, and I agree. However, I also know that continuously forcing myself to do something in a sport is the quickest route to mental burnout town. At least for me it is. I need to want to be on the bike; it seems only natural.

I think that I've found a solution that at least on paper seems to solve the problems I'm having with motivation. I know that this solution is only temporary, as it's only a matter of a month and a half or so before sunrise hits the pre-six-am mark, and then I can go back to doing my longer outdoor workouts without being in the dark. I'll be trying this "new way" starting next week, and will come back with an update of how that's been going. I also hope to have some interesting race reports coming up as my race season is about to really get going.

Weight-control without misery

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:05:00 +0000

I’ve previously written about dieting, and raceweight, and the various plans I read about and was following. However, many of my past attempts to shed pounds and get to my ideal race weight would be rollercoasters of excitement, results, fatigue, annoyance and weight re-gain.

To be more specific, after finding a weight managing technique that seemed practical and doable with a heavy training load (e.g., not the Paleo diet), I’d be excited to try it and often saw great results in the early stages. However, as the diet plan would progress, I would start feeling starved and hungry all the time. In addition, logging calories, while motivational on some level (when I was good), was just becoming another time sink in my day.

In December, with the season fast approaching, I needed to find a way to manage my weight that would be effective, practical and most importantly, doable! I was already eating healthy, so there wasn’t much restructuring I could do in terms of what I ate; however, I placed a great deal of focus on how I ate.

In an effort to not drive myself crazy, I designed a diet from much conventional advice and wisdom I’m sure you’ve heard before, and some counterintuitive methods you may not have considered (or considered and dismissed).

Meal timing

The primary emphasis was placed on when I would take my meals and what they were composed of. Breakfast had to be large; and by “large” I mean about 700 calories or so. This isn’t that difficult to do, a double serving of oatmeal with some raisins, frozen berries, brown sugar and almond milk almost does the trick. I sometimes top that off with a banana or another piece of fruit.

One wrinkle is that most of the time, I train in the mornings, and a 700-calorie breakfast is hardly enough to make up for the 1,000-2,000 calories I burn. This requires a contingency plan for that 10:30 feeling when my stomach begins to growl and lunch is another couple hours away. The answer? FRUIT! I find it spikes my sugar just enough to keep the hunger at bay, but not so much that I crash, or feel full before lunch. As a whole, I probably consume eight servings of fruit daily.

Lunch is the time to load up on carbohydrates. I probably take at least 60 percent of my carbs in at lunch. There is one simple reason for it: the earlier in the day I eat most of my carbs, the more time I’ll have to burn them through my usual daily activities.

For dinner, I limit myself to vegetables, a small serving of carbohydrates (usually in the form of bread with dinner) and a lean protein. Sometimes when I’m craving a snack after dinner, I’ll have some yogurt with granola and maybe throw some nuts in there. The fat and the high-density foods, like nuts, fill me up pretty well without packing on an insane amounts of calories.

Fat

Bring back the fat. I cut out most of the silly low-fat options from my diet. If I’m having yogurt, it’s going to be whole milk. If I’m having breakfast meats, let it be bacon. What most people refuse to understand is that fat is good for us. It protects the organs; cell membranes get their rigidity from saturated fats; the immune system is enhanced by a regular intake of saturated fats; the risk of heart disease is reduced due to a lower Lp in the blood; and most importantly, fats protect the liver from alcohol and other toxins. So if you like that Pliny after the ride, munch on some fries to go with it.

One of the most important and relevant benefits of fat as it pertains to weight management, however, is that it makes me feel fuller. Eating a low-fat cup of yogurt, while satisfying momentarily, leaves me wanting to reach for another in an hour. Eating whole milk yogurt keeps me full much longer. And don’t forget, for the most part calories are calories. Two low-fat yogurts have more calories than one whole milk alternative.

I take the same approach with my evening meals. Having a piece of chicken breast and sautéed vegetables is great, but it keeps me fuller longer if I throw in some butter and parmesan cheese. The longer I stay full post dinner, the least likely I am to snack before bed, and eliminating unnecessary pre-bedtime calories goes a long way toward a healthy weight.

Controlled post-ride meals

I’m sure you’ve all experienced moments of extreme post-ride hunger, where you get off the bike and are ready to inhale anything and everything in sight. This happens primarily due to insufficient calorie intake during the ride, which causes a drop in glucose and triggers hunger. If I have a proper meal before I ride and fuel properly on the ride, I don’t finish my rides wishing I had two servings of Thanksgiving dinner in front of me.

Moderate hunger is normal and I even expect it, especially if I’ve just put 4,000 KJs in my legs. No way can I replenish those calories while on the bike, but I make sure to maintain a steady flow of calories and sugars into my body to avoid bonking and the that feeling of extreme post-ride hunger.

If I mess up and don’t take enough food in on the ride, or go much harder than I expected and happen to reach that feeling of extreme post-ride hunger, there’s a trick I use. I reach for a candy bar and eat about half of it. This does two thing: first, it begins to replenish glucose to my muscles, thus speeding up recovery; second, it spikes my glucose and takes the edge off the hunger. I can then have a normal meal and not try to eat everything in the kitchen.

Regardless of whether I’m in the extreme-hunger mode or just regularly hungry after a long ride, here’s another trick I use. I imagine the meal I’m about to have and the amount, and take half or three-fourths. As we all know, at times of hunger, our eyes can eat way more than our stomachs should ever have to process. More often than not, by the time I’m done with the smaller portion, I’m full enough to stop eating. The other side of that coin is that if I pile on too much onto my plate, I make sure to stop when I feel full.

Making smart choices

This one will be easier for you if you know the things you like and can categorize them into healthy(ier) and unhealthy categories. I know this about myself and also know that sometimes I’ll have cravings, or will want a snack. Instead of denying myself, and thus leaving myself hungry and annoyed, I go for the healthier of my favorite foods. This often involves grabbing a bowl of granola and yogurt over a bag of Kettle potato chips. Or grab a banana if I just feel my stomach is empty and hunger is about to strike.

All of the above seem very common sense to me: I eat regular portions, of regular food and don’t really deny myself too many things I like. Once in a while, I’ll indulge in something like In N Out, or that bag of Kettle potato chips, but as long as my week-to-week nutrition intake is in accordance with my plan, those indulgences make absolutely no difference.

On this plan, over the last month I was finally able to get rid of those extra few pounds and am now happily residing below that pesky 170-pound mark. I don’t feel hungry, or starved, or deprived of any foods and I feel like I can continue eating like this for as long as I want.

One thing that I will also mention, and I have no idea whether it played a role at all in my weight loss, but in December, I gave up drinking dairy milk. I still consume a lot of dairy, but just not milk. I found that almond milk was a great replacement and don’t really miss its dairy equivalent.

The Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:05:00 +0000

Rides come in all shapes and sizes. Some are your regular training rides, the kind when you know where the pain will start and where it will end; the ones you start, knowing that the greatest joy will be its end. Others are defined as epic, where each turn is an adventure and you know before you start that at the end you will have accomplished something monumental. And then there are rides that just start and grow into something more than a regular ride by their end. Saturday was just that type of ride.

The most predictable thing about the weather last week was that it was unpredictable. So when I woke up around 7 on Saturday and looked out the window onto dry roads and clear skies of San Francisco, I felt a bit of joy that the ride I called for later in the morning wouldn’t be 90-mile wet slog.

Three of my teammates, Kurt, Kirt and Matt agreed to meet at 9:10 by Kirt’s house, and we drove out to San Rafael for the start of the ride. This would knock out all the junk miles up to Fairfax and avoid dealing with the tourists on Golden Gate Bridge. We loaded up and left the sunny San Francisco, heading northbound into what looked like a big gray cloud. Right as we were crossing the bridge, a comment sounded about leaving sunshine and riding into clouds and I began to feel a little guilty about dragging the guys into what could be a horrible rainstorm.

I didn’t feel any better when we parked at Lucas Valley Road and 101 in a light drizzle. To the west and north, we could see blue skies, but that didn’t resolve the immediate problem of us getting rained on. As we got our bikes out of the van, the rain began to really come down hard and leaving our bikes on the ground to "wash," we huddled inside the van and frantically began looking at radar pictures to determine how long our van-entrapment would last. It looked like the whole system would pass in about 20 minutes, and while it was still raining lightly, we figured we should get going and hit the road.

The first five miles were the most unpleasant, with very strong winds and variable precipitation. Kurt and Kirt got on the nose and pulled pretty much the whole way up to the top of Lucas Valley Road, thus, shielding Matt and me from the winds, but also giving us a good backspray wash from their tires. Personally, considering it was raining anyway, I’d take tire spray in the face over headwind any day. And once I was totally soaked, it didn't really matter where the water was coming from.

By the time we reached the big rock that marks the top of the climb, the sun was shining and the rain was mostly behind us. Turning onto Nicasio Valley Road, we got into a rotating paceline and moved smoothly toward Petaluma. Before long, it was time to make the turn toward Marshall Wall and tackle that already gnarly climb into a headwind.

The next 10 miles after the "wall" proved to be pure joy as we moved down the coast with a tailwind, pushing 25mph at 130 watts or so, on butter-smooth pavement. Once in Point Reyes, there was one thing I had to do – mission: acquire blueberry buttermilk scone at Bovine Bakery. If you’ve never had one, next time you’re in Point Reyes, get it! For $3.50, you get a scone that’s vertically almost the size of your head and is nothing short of delicious.

With full stomachs and wet everything else from the drenching on Lucas Valley, we continued. As we passed the stop sign marking the turn toward Olema, the 66-mile route option was behind us and we were all committed to the full near-90-mile route. Whether everyone else except me knew that, I’m not so sure, but we pressed on.

As we rolled over BoFax, through Alpine Dam, Fairfax and toward the turn on Lucas Valley Road that would be our “10 miles to go” marker, the greatness of this ride began to sink in. I suppose there’s something about sharing the misery of wind and wetness and the joy of sunshine with teammates that creates a sort of a bond, a memory, a je ne sais quoi that made this particular ride special.

Regardless of conditions, the route is exceptional, with great views of Marin county and virtually no junk miles. Below is a map if you'd like to have your own adventure.

It's a new year: recaps and updates

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:08:00 +0000

The new year has been here for almost two weeks and I haven’t had a single update – shame on me! Here’s the latest roundup of old and new.

Finishing out 2011

Last year was a good year for me on the bike. It wasn’t a great year, but it was definitely a good year. I lined up for about 40 starts last year, with mixed results, but overall saw fitness improve as the racing season came to a close.

For the number geeks among you, I rode a total of about 8,600 miles and climbed 520,000 feet in 2011. I also likely burned enough calories to fill a truck with Big Macs. It was definitely my biggest volume year to date, and I hope to keep the trend of increasing yearly volumes in 2012.

New for 2012

There are a few changes happening this year. The main one being that for the first time since 2008 I will not be in a Colavita kit. As much as I enjoyed the company of my former teammates, I made a decision that to further my own advancement, it would be better for me to have teammates in races and be on a team that is more local, so riding with said teammates on a regular basis would be possible.

In light of the above, I’m happy to announce (for those who haven’t yet heard through other channels) that next year I’ll be racing for/with Squadra SF, a team formed as a result of a merger between Squadra Ovest and Audi. I feel it’s a great change for me for several reasons. First, I found what I was looking for - a team with teammates in my age group/category who are in or very near San Francisco. The second very important aspect of Squadra SF is the sheer amount of talent and accomplished riders from whom I hope to learn lots and lots of important things about racing and becoming a stronger rider. Lastly, and this is probably most important, my new teammates are great guys and fun to ride with and be around. Can’t emphasize the importance of the last item enough.

All in all, I’m in a very happy cycling place right now.

Training update

As of a few days ago, my cold has finally cleared up and my crash wounds are almost gone. My guess is that another week will take care of the deepest gash in my side, but everything else is new skin and nothing hurts, so whatever is there isn’t really bothering me on the bike.

The last two weeks of base are upon me, which means the largest volume of the year - 17 hours this week and 19 hours the next. There are only two ways I know that those hours are achievable while working full-time (doing the lion’s share of the hours on weekends isn’t the best alternative) and you have to use both of them: (1) realize you’ll have no life outside of cycling for two weeks – frankly, I like cycling, so that’s not that big of a deal; and (2) resort to two-a-day workouts. The latter has been a little harder to get used to. I can definitely do a workout in the morning and then follow it up by another in the evening, that’s not the hard part. The hardest part is to drag myself out of bed the morning after the evening workout to do it all over again. Luckily, I’ll only have to do it a few times before the hours get reasonable.

The legs are finally starting to feel good and I’m beginning to introduce some tempo and threshold work as I go from base to build. Last night’s 10-minute power test also showed that the legs are in decent form for January. The key going forward will be monitoring fatigue, getting myself into races that suit me and hopefully seeing some positive results throughout the season.

This upcoming weekend is the first of two team training camps this winter, and I’m all amped up to soak up the sunshine and warmth in San Luis Obispo!

Tahoe on PowerCranks

noreply@blogger.com (Vitaly Gashpar) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:01:00 +0000

I'm spending the last week of the year in Tahoe. Last year, I swore off writing anything this time of the year because I was playing in pow-pow up to my unmentionables, but this year, Tahoe is pathetically dry (so far). I knew the conditions were not ideal for skiing, so I brought two bikes: my cyclocross bike for some potential trail riding and my Jack Kane equipped with PowerCranks.

On Saturday and Sunday I went to do some skiing and finished off the days with an hour and half hour, respectively, on the trainer spinning PCs. The sets were really clicking and I hardly ever had to think about how my legs should be moving.

On Monday, I decided that I'd get bored very quickly if I continued to ski the same few open runs, so I deiced to make it a day on the bike. I mapped out a route on Strava and figured I'd hit Donner Pass summit first, and finish the day off with a near-seven-mile slog up Alder Creek/Skislope back home. Now I had to decide whether I wanted to ride PCs, or ride my CX bike. The difference between the smallest gears is one gearinch, so that wasn't really a factor. But I didn't want to ride 35s on the road because of how heavy they felt, so I decided to ride PCs.

I've previously never ridden this far on PCs or climbed that much, so I had no idea what would happen to me. I asked my usual question: "What's the worst that could happen?" I figured that if it really got to be too much, I'd just turn around and head back.

I rolled out of the house and headed toward Donner Pass summit through the first few flat miles. The first thing I noticed was how smooth my pedal stroke was. I didn't even have to think about what I had to do, my legs just knew it. I think having spent some trainer time on PCs the two previous days definitely helped.

Then I hit Donner Pass - a 3.2-mile climb that rises about 1000 feet - the pedal stroke remained smooth, but I definitely felt that I wasn't on my regular cranks. I didn't have any issues going up the climb, even when it pitched up, but I did notice that my legs were in a greater amount of pain than they should have been for the watts I was seeing. At the top, I flipped myself around and descended back down toward Donner Lake. I figured on the way back, I'd go around the lake on the other side, but for those of you trying that in the future, don't do that in December. There was about a 70-meter stretch of snow/ice that I had to hike my bike over, which could have been avoided had I gone back the same way I came.

My legs were feeling relatively good after coming down from Donner, so I decided to proceed to do the other major climb in the area - Alden Creek/Skislope. Strava has this at 6.8 miles (my Garmin measures it at 7.5 miles) and rising about 1500 feet; however, a good chunk of that elevation is gained in the last 2.5 miles, so if you feel like you're flying for the first four miles, don't worry, you'll pay for it soon enough.

That was roughly my experience, as the first four miles of the climb came and went relatively painlessly, but once I hit the last 2.5-mile stretch, the really hard climbing began and my legs were definitely in a lot of pain. The one good thing about reaching the summit of that climb was that from that point, it's a downhill shot back to the house, so I knew that once I was done with the climb, I was done!

Yesterday, I decided to go ride once again, and see if can better my time on Alder Creek. I rolled form the house up to Skislope and began climbing the road I descended earlier in the week. It's a 2.1-mile climb that goes up about 700 feet and it really hurts near the top as the pitches go higher and over 10%. It's especially unpleasant when you hit it 10 minutes into your ride without enough time to thoroughly warm-up. But once that was over, I knew I had a seven-mile descent down to the start of the main climb of the day.

I hit the climb hard and took about five minutes off Monday's time, though I managed to lose about 30 seconds when I dropped a bottle and stopped to pick it up.

Both rides above were done on Power Cranks. So how did they feel in comparison to riding regular cranks? There are at least three different aspects of riding you work while riding PCs. First and foremost, they force you to work on syncing your pedal stroke, otherwise you end up in a galop. Having never ridden PCs before September of this year, I've been on them for about three months now, and I no longer have syncing issues while riding them. From my experience, I feel that anyone who's willing to put in at least 2-3 hours a week riding PCs (on trainer first then outdoors), can get their legs consistently in sync in one to two months. Obviously, more time on PCs, yields faster results, but 2-3 hours is what I've been doing.

The second wrinkle PCs help iron out is leg power disparity. I don't suffer from this to a great extent, but traditionally my left leg has been stronger, and on some climbs, I have noticed that my right is in just a little more pain than the left. Hopefully, with time on PCs, that will even itself out.

The last, and in my opinion, largest issue is engaging muscles in your pedal stroke you never knew you had, or knew you had but didn't know you could use them to propel yourself on a bike. The need to engage the hip flexors and hamstrings definitely makes climbing harder - it almost feels like I'm riding with a heavy backpack. However, at the same time I realize that it's harder simply because those muscles were not developed enough in comparison to my glutes and quads which are likely more engaged when I'm on standard cranks. As the muscles strengthen, with time this third issue should go away, but in the meantime, I definitely feel it helping me when I jump back on my regular bike and head uphill.