Last night, Mick Rogers dislocated a shoulder in a crash while maliot jaune virtuel and looking super-strong, Robbie McEwen, who's struggled since his crash on stage 1 (which he won, adrenaline ... ) was eliminated by missing the time cut, and Stuart O'Grady crashed, breaking five ribs, three vertibrae, puncturing a lung and breaking a collarbone.  Not a good day at all.  I'm sure we all wish our best to Stu for a hasty recovery.

Cadel Evans is still going strong, he's riding defensively, but is holding 6th place and if he can feature in some attacks later and/or pull out the stops in the ITTs he must be a chance for a podium finish.  Simon Gerrans is the other aussie left, and he's staying out of trouble, look out for him in a break in week three.  Maybe a chance for a stage win from him.

But, in an interesting development in Paris, which is related to bikes but not the tour, Paris is about to have a fleet of hire bikes (10,000 of them) all around Paris hirable for some tiny fee (~$45AUD for a year's access to them, ~$1 to hire them) and the guess is that they'll be within 300m of just about everywhere in Paris.  Rumour has it that the City of Melbourne is looking at something similar.  Makes a nice change from all the bunk in the Age at the moment about how dangerous riding bicycles is.  They don't talk about how dangerous it is being a passenger in a train, or a pedestrian, or the occupant of a car, but bikes ... ohhh .. dangerous!  It's the old story really, if it's in the paper, it's because it's rare (man bites dog).

Anyway, you can read about the bikes in Paris thing here. They're calling it a 'Velorution'.

In other news, a few of us made the trip to DISC for Sunday's masters training, and in John Lewis' absence (he's sick) I ran the sessions.  We had about 9 riders I think, including Nathan and Rob Monteith.  We did mainly sprint work, with Stu Vaughan helping out with a new drill to work on flying 200 lines, which worked very well indeed.  Everyone's lines improved significantly.  We then did leadouts and honesty sprints, and finished off with the enduro 'take a lap' Grand Prix.

And, Vanders is back from his 7 week jaunt through South America, and he was frothing at the mouth describing his 3,500 (vertical) descent on a MTB ride somewhere.  That's right, the descent dropped more meters than the height of Mt Cook.  -wow-

This Wedensday is the showdown at the Blackburn Corral.  Club/committee meeting where I need to get the details of the summer sprint series approved so I can start promoting it. I think I may have a workable compromise....

Get well soon, Stuey.

Five of us hardy aboc'ers turned up to race at DISC on Thursday night, Nick Bird (doing his first races on track), Dino, Nathan, Neil and I (Richard is under house arrest on call this week).  Cheered on by Bev, Lucie and Emily.

A big field across most grades, D grade must have had at least 18 riders, and the same in C, and B was big too. This mean lots of willing legs and breaks would be be very hard to establish.  Fortune favours the brave, but tonight, the brave may well be the stupid! We shall see ...

Following the usual format, Nath (who had time for a proper warmup!) raced first, with Nick in D grade.  Nick impressed by finishing well, Nath was still warming up for later, and recorded a DNF.

The us, Dino, Neil and I in the C grade scratchy.  I let them know my plan, for what there was of it.  Shake up the field early and try to smoke out the workers.  I've won there before and also solo'ed away from a points race to take the last sprint, so I'm a threat and have to be marked. The riders there that pay attention know to cover me.  Anyway, Neil and Dino know that I'm not planning on going all the way in the scratchy, I'm going to try and weaken the rest so that Neil and Dino can fare well later.  Dino's in a base/build phase, so won't have much of a kick, but Neil is strong, and we're banking on his legs to finish things off.  It's fast and a bit messy, but with 8 to go there's an opportunity and I kick hard down the back straight, and quickly I establish a small break, two other riders are with me and we roll half lap turns for a lap or two before I sit up to get caught (and overtaken, my job's done for now).  Neil & Dino go through, I roll around recovering and pull out.  DNF, but Neil's finding his legs and Dino's hanging on.  We don't get a result, but the work will pay later in the night.  A few riders who fancy their chances are weakened and will have less later.

We watch the rest of the grades race, then it's the points races.  Nath & Nick are up first, Nath's plan is 'win the first sprint, forget the rest'.  He does. Mission acomplished.  Nick rode well and finished well up but I don't think he took any points? Nick?

Our turn, and our plan is the same, except we want Neil to go on with it after winning the first sprint.  An aboc train forms at the start line, I'm off first, then Dino, then Neil.  Off we go and I do a 4 lap turn pretty hard right from the go, then pull off and it's Dino's turn, but Neil feels it's time to go and he goes over the top, and holds off the bunch for the first sprint.  I'm blown and of course, am trying to recover as the rest of the bunch is sprinting, so I'm out of it.  A short, but pretty intense race for yours trully!  The race pans out, Neil's almost in a break but other legs aren't willing, and they end up all together until one brave lad with 7 to go attacks, and takes the second last sprint and the last, solo.  Strong ... Neil's cooked, but so is the rest of the field, only 50% finished, I think. Fortune favoured the brave and hats off to that lad who took the race by the horns and rode it the way he wanted to win it.

Watching A grade, Stu Vaughan is having an off night, too much work and travel, but he'll be back.

The last race, motorpace.  Nath's blown and doesn't finish, Nick rides well and finishes well up.  He's strong, and will be too strong for D grade very soon.

Our turn.  We spread out so that we can help each other later.  I'm on the bike for the first lap, Neil and Dino are spread out so we're roughly cutting the field into three.  At crunch time, this will mean we'll have numbers and position when we need it.  Away we go and the bike is hooting.  The bunch doesn't split, but it's very messy at the tail end.  With about 6 to go, Neil's on the front and I'm at 4th wheel, perfect.  Neil peels up, I open up a lovely gap and call him in, and he drops in front of me.  Perfect.  Textbook.  The bike peels off and Neil's second wheel, I'm third.  A girl who's name I don't know is first wheel and suprisingly, she hammers.  I've watched her race a lot, and never seen her go all that hard, but she's got legs tonight.  I've got the sit on Neil's wheel, as he pulls out to go around her, and he just sits on her hip. We're flying, my 90" gear isn't big enough, but Neil's on 94" and he just keeps going.  With 3/4 to go I can't hold his wheel any longer and there's a rider cheekily trying to squeeze under me but I block him in place. But at least I've ensured that anyone behind has to come past me first, giving Neil a buffer. In roady terms I was his sweeper,  although I wanted to be the sprinter. Not tonight, I'm at 185bpm (hrmax is 188) just in the draft and way undergeared.  Neil takes the win. The early work in the scratch race and the points race has paid, and we've been a strong team, imposing our will on several parts of the evening. Neil gets $10 for the win.  Aparently there was a crash but it was midfield and we didn't see or hear it at the front.

Off to Ivanhoe Nandos for chicken and chips with loads of extra hot peri-peri. Mmmmm, then I saddle up the roady and ride to Rich's to watch another amazing stage of the Tour.  A pretty good night, I'm happy, Neil's thrilled, Nath's done what he wanted to, Dino's been part of a winning team and Nick's broken a hoodoo and I'm sure is very happy with his courage. We put on a good show for the cheer squad.

Today, a Trek 1000WSD (47cm - it's tiny!) arrived for Emily Apolito, so now she has a beautiful new roadbike to ride the J13 team time trial on.  I did a quick fit for her and she looks so strong on that bike .. for an 11 year old she's great.

Many of you reading this were at the dinner, so I don't need to spill the details, but it was great to have Tom Leaper as our guest speaker.  Thankyou Tom and Jo for coming and sharing your experience with us and trusting us with some special parts of your history. Tom showed us many of his jerseys and told us about racing the Giro and his time with the AIS squad in Italy, and how strong Ullrich was - Jan gave Tom 'the look' (made famous by Lance Armstrong, of course) on one occasion before launching into space during a race Tom was riding.

A few new faces, it was good to meet Teresa Goddard and Steve Fallon, and to catch up with old friends Jason 'Dutchy' den Hollander and Shane, Von, Justin and the HCC crew.  Thankyou Jess for coming too, I'm sure we'll miss you when you're in Shep, but we'll do our best to make it up there to do the Scott Peoples' memorial race.  For the rest of you, you pack of slackers, we'll be doing a doubleup at the next spin session (maybe ....) to make up for missing a night's training!  Double-up on pasta, anyway. Thankyou everyone that came, I hope you all had a good time.  Having a 'full house' makes it worth organising.  Next up is the next climbing camp in November, and maybe a dinner before then. I have another great speaker in mind, but I'll have to ask very nicely!

For anyone that noticed, I spent some time discussing the summer sprint series with Nicko (John Nicholson) and while we don't agree on exactly how to fit it in with the rest of the Blackburn summer track racing, I'm confident that we'll be able to make it work well.  I'm still hoping to be able to run it seperatly from the rest of the season, but Nicko made some good points and it may come down to a judgement call on the impact that the series would have on numbers at the regular summer track season.  Nicko's concern is that if we have two days of racing on one weekend, it will take away from the Saturday program, and he has a point.  I don't think he's necessarily right, but I understand what he's on about.  I think that the impact that the series would have if run seperatly would be minimal, and if anything, it would bring more 'foreigners' to the club than mixing it in with Saturday races. We'll thrash it out at the next club meeting ... then I can start to seriously promote the series.

Now to watch the Tour ... I hope Robbie's feeling better than yesterday, it looks like stage 1's crash really hurt him. Go Robbie! And everyone else, stay upright.

Tonight, the prologue.  For the next three weeks, it's tour-lag every morning.  If this year's tour is one tenth as interesting as last years was, it'll be superb.  There's two Australians with real chances to get on the podium, Cadel Evans and Mick Rogers, and of course Robbie McEwen is a likely candidate for the green jersey, especially with Petacci gone for doping anomilies at the Giro.  Petacci probably wouldn't have made it through the mountains anyway, but you never know ... It's a long, wide open Tour, and it starts tonight!

Don't call me in the mornings, please ... I'm sleeping in!

I had an interesting experience today.  On my way to my day job, I stopped off at the Monash Art Gallery to pick up a book.  Quite a high-end book, a gift.  They have a small book, card and print shop attached to the gallery. 

Two older ladies were sitting behind the counter, and seemed quite taken aback when I walked up to them, interupting their conversation, and asked if they had the copy of 'Lux et Nox' I had organised the day before.  To put this in perspective, they stock maybe 50 items or so.  Not a lot ... But they had no idea and had to call the manager.  Ok, I can live with that, they're volunteers, but their attitude was terrible.  They (and the manager) made no attempt to show me anything else and seemed desperate to get me out of there so they could get back to their chat about whatever it was they were talking about.

I'm no retail expert, but I've learnt a lot in 3 years of working at Cycle Science.  Firstly, the single most important thing to ask yourself if you want to work in a shop, is why?  Why work in a shop?  Sure, some people do it purely because it was all they could get as a job, and you expect bad service when you go to department stores, fast food vendors and so on. But if you're going to work in retail, as a volunteer or by choice, then you need some passion.  You need to believe in something.  When I work at CS, I believe I'm doing a service not only to Peter (the shop owner) by helping him to make a living, but also to the people that come in to the shop looking for service and advice.  I'm passionate about bicycles, and the people that work in a gallery need to be passionate about the art in the gallery.  If I was working there, I'd be taking every opportunity to show customers things, give them a chance to experience something that they hadn't seen before.  Even something as simple as 'have you seen the current exhibition?'.  Working at an LBS, or a gallery, or anywhere with a focus on something specific requires passion if you want to do it well, and contribute to not only the coffers of the enterprise you're working at, but also to the people who visit the shop.

I go back to the local Brumbies bakery in Blackburn not because they're a chain bakery with a reputation (I don't like franchises) but because I went in there and the lady working there, when I asked about chilli pies, said they didn't have any, but that they reckon their curry pies are ace.  She believes in what she is doing and that what she's selling is good.  Now I'm a regular there. Nick's Souvlaki bar (gone now, alas, and Lambs is not as good) for years was my favorite souvlaki vendor (I'd go there specifically on my way home from overseas trips) not because they made the best souvas (although I think they did) but because the people who served me cared about what they were doing and wanted me to enjoy the food. It wasn't just 'gimme your $8 and piss off'. They wanted me to come back again and they knew what mattered was more than just having good food. My local Indian restaurant (Khusboo, where we have the aboc dinner, plug, plug!) is the same, it thrives because they work hard at customer service, not just making yummy grub.

These people at the gallery could have shown me some of the photos in some of the other books, shown me some prints, suggested I make time to see the current exhibition, asked me if I own a camera, anything .... if they'd engaged me perhaps I'd have not only bought more stuff from the shop, but also broadened my experience and enjoyed it, and spread the word.  If they were more interested in racking up brownie points for 'volunteering to help at the gallery' the'yd be better off staying home watching daytime TV, in terms of them helping the gallery and helping to expose more people to the art they had on display (which is very topical and I think, quite important, but you wouldn't know from these muppets). The hardest thing to do is get people in the door in any business or enterprise, once they're in, it's vital to engage them somehow.

If you come in to Cycle Science, and I'm there, I'll get bikes under you for you to ride, will talk Tour de France, encourage you to consider road riding for transport and think of ways to make it work for you, get into racing in some form, join BV or a racing club, discuss the merits of different bike fit ideas, training and so on. Why? Because I believe that bicycles are great, and that most people benefit from riding them. That's why I work there. If you work in retail, or are thinking about it, ask yourself why? I think it's a valuable question to ask yourself sometimes.

Back to riding bikes ... no DISC for me tonight, will try and squeeze in a training ride between a pile of training programs that need doing, my Dad's in hospital with some nasty internal bleeding thing and is probably getting operated on today, birthday dinners and real world jobs that go crazy sometimes (don't ask me to do another Windows SBS upgrade for a few months, please, Neil & I are -exhausted-!).  Dad, get well, I want you to come and watch some racing at DISC one night!

I stumbled onto this today while showing Briana James and Mike Goldie how relevant (or otherwise) spinning 200+rpm is :

http://software.bareknucklebrigade.com/rabbit.applet.html

It's a calculator for speed vs gear inches.  The bottom line is that the fastest track sprinters, if they're pushing 100" in a flying 200, are doing ~160rpm. If they're pushing bigger than that, it's lower cadence. It depends on the rider, but the fastest flying 200's are around 72-73km/h, which is, on 100", around 155rpm.  I think they ride bigger gears than that (106"?) so that cadence is even lower. It's still a very high cadence, but it's not 200rpm, and top track sprinters would be unlikely to ever break 160rpm in a race situation on a race gear.

Thursday night saw Nathan pull out his best night at DISC so far, with a good finish in the D grade scratch and narrowly missing out on a place in the D grade motorpace.  We didn't notice Mick Thomas in the stands, because the cheersquad (Bev, Dino, Emily and Mick) was too loud to pick individual voices.

I managed a 3rd in the motorpace after a fine leadout from Paul Ambry from HCC.  We split the prizemoney 50/50, so he got a $2 coin for his efforts.  Should have won it, but 250m is a long way to be on the front at full speed and I faded with 50m to go, allowing the mosquito fleet to take first and second.

Emily reported that she had a 1st, a second and a 3rd at the Siemens junior racing on the weekend, and she was even more excited to nform us all that she can now get off her bike without falling!  It's good to have Dino back in the country after his brief stint in the US.

Richard found an excellent skinsuit design that I'm working on adapting to aboc :

The above is a theatrical trailer for "The Flying Scotsman", a telling of Graham Obree's story.  The imdb info for the film is here. More bits & clips are here. MGM (US distributor) has more info here.

It's due for Australian release sometime in July 2007. I'm still hunting for an overseas copy, or a torrent ... but will definatly go and see it at the cinema when it eventually makes it here! One for the climbing camp, I think ... I've had his books on order from Amazon in the UK for months ... waiting waiting ...

While waiting, you can watch Obree do it for real :

I don't want to flood the aboc site with stuff about the details of the Summer Sprint Series, so I've put a blog on the SSS site, you can see it here.  I'd much appreciate feedback from those of you with an interest.

Some excellent news - James Collins from Trek Australia has confirmed that Trek will support the Summer Sprint Series.  I'm thrilled to be able to let everyone know this. We don't have the details sorted yet, but they are enthusiastic and having them as a major sponsor is a really big step for the series.

As such, here's the text of my latest correspondance with Blackburn - nothing here is confidential that I'm aware of :

G'day Nicko and Brian ,
A headsup and progress report on the summer sprint series.

Further to your (Nicko) approval verbally given to me a few months ago, I have organised a title sponsor for the series - Trek Australia, who will provide prizes for series aggregate winners similar to the Inexa series that have run in the past at CCCC and also I believe, BBN track races.

I have also begun low level promotion of the series through coaches and people I know at DISC on Thursdays etc.  The format of the racing will pretty-much limit participants to at most 30 riders I think - with either complete or partial round-robins (I want everyone to get at least 3 races no matter what).

Can I have the club's permission name the series this :

The Trek Summer Sprint Series presented by the Blackburn Cycling Club and aboc Cycle Coaching

If you can approve that for me ASAP, I'll do up some flyers for it and start to promote it a bit more seriously.

I would also like to request from the club a commissaire be present for each day - we're going to run this every 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month from November through to March, so that's a total of 10 days racing (baring weather or other circumstances).  Racing will commence at 12 with flying 200s, and then starting at 1pm, graded match sprints.  I haven't yet worked out a final points system or the best way to structure the grades and round robin/partial round robin system, but that won't be too hard, and I hope that Rowan Geddes will assist me in that side of things when he gets back from his holiday.  We will support the club commissaire with at least a free lunch and drinks.

We'll see what else we can do to support the people who assist, which will mostly be sourced from aboc people I think. They're highly motivated to make the series a winner.

So to proceed I need from the club permission to use the name suggested above, permission to the velodrome on Sunday afternoons and a commissaire once a fortnight.  I expect the club will want to review the proposed format for these races when I have them a bit more sorted, which I hope to have done in a few weeks.  I would also hope that the club would recognise volunteers who assist with the running of this series and not double-schedule them - ie: they get helping at this counted towards their overall contribution to the club and that be considered with rostering for other club events.

Thanks!

Carl

Good news first.  Monique Hanley, former Warragul club member, defected to Blackburn, partner of Simon Quick and state level trackie, has just completed the RAAM (Race Across America).  The RAAM is a bike race that crosses the USA.  It's some 3000 miles or so (around 5000km).  An interesting type of race for a track rider to even contemplate.  Finishing  this on its own would be a lifetime achievement, but it's made even more inspirational by the fact that Monnas is a type 1 diabetic, rode in a team made up of type 1 diabetics, and they won their division.  You can read all about it here.  On behalf of us all, Monnas, awesome ride.  Well done.

A few weeks ago at Cycle Science we got a new spin trainer in from Cyclops - nothing exciting, just a Fluid 2 (IMO one of the best spin trainers, that's why I bought one), but on the box there was a picture of an 'electro pro' which seemed to be some sort of power meter combination - similar to the Tacx trainers.  I googled, found nothing, I called Trek (Aust distributor for Cyclops/Saris), they said they'd find out about it, I got sick of waiting, and I emailed Saris/Cyclops myself. It turns out it's vapour :

Hello Carl,

I'm sorry, but unfortunately, we have discontinued our Electronic
trainer line.  We are no longer manufacturing this product.

Thanks,

Maggie Walz
Customer Service Representative
Saris Cycling Group
800-783-7257 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Brewer [mailto:carl@aboc.com.au] 
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 12:08 AM
To: Saris Products Email
Subject: cyclops "electro pro"?


Hello,
We have a Cyclops Fluid 2 trainer here at an LBS I work at, and on the
box is a picture of an "electro pro", which appears to be a trainer with
a builtin power meter.  This has some interest to me as a coach for a
training tool.  We haven't been able to find any further information on
this anywhere though.

Does the product exist anywhere other than on this box?  Google has no
record of it, there's nothing on the Saris website and the local Saris
distributor (Trek Australia) knows nothing about it either.

Thankyou

Carl

Poo.  It looked interesting on the box, and the Tacx power meter trainers top out at 999 watts, which is great for enduros, but for doing sprint strength work isn't enough.  I'm still waiting on the Powertap SL 2.4 to come back, and I miss my watts, especially now I have a copy of CyclingPeaks WKO+, and I want to use it.  Saris do make a power meter trainer, but it's a whole excercise bike thingo and very expensive, not something I can cart to track races and spin classes without needing a station wagon and a trolley.

Finally, bad news ... of a sort.  I get around, and I keep my ears open (and, my mouth, too often!), it's very upsetting to hear and read so many people bagging the De Bortoli Tour, but they are.  I overheard a conversation at DISC last Thursday about how bad the DB Tour was (the results, of course ...) and the same theme runs through emails on Hawthorn's Bicigaga mailing list, chat sites on the web etc.  It's a great shame.  I had a conversation with Tabatha Cole about it, and expressed that the club needs to make some steps to address the issue.  I did speak to the people at DISC who were bagging the DB Tour, and expressed my dismay at their negative attitude, but they were right, and when they said 'yeah, but we get it right every year with our tour (3 day tour, northern combine)', there was nothing I could say except that everyone did their best at the time.

We can't fix what went wrong at the time, but we can fix some things (there's still no breakdown of the prizemoney available, etc), and IMO we as a club need to very honestly, completely and openly explain what went wrong, why, and how we will prevent it happening again. This needs to be made public on both the club website and the De Bortoli tour site, and the longer it's left undone, the less benefit it will have in terms of fixing some of the damage that the clubs reputation has taken.  Nicko's paragraph wasn't sufficient, I think.  When club members who volunteer to help run these events overhear this sort of thing it's demoralising and serves to demotivate them to help out in future.  We want to be part of a team that delivers and has a reputation for excellence, not "the club that stuffs things up".  If the DB Tour is just too big for us as a club to run successfully, then we need to look very hard at if we want to run it at all.

Other tours do not have the same problems we've had - the Colleraine Tour, the 3 day tour etc, they have results up quickly enough to be useful to competitors.    I'm sick of hearing people bagging BBN as the club that stuffs things up, but that won't stop until we look them in the eye, accept that we got it wrong, and explain what went wrong and how we will fix it in future.  We as a club run many things very well, but the De Bortoli Tour (and the 1:20 ITT from two years ago when we also got the timing wrong) - these big things get noticed.  There was a club meeting that (I asume) addressed a lot of the Tour issues, last week.  What's happened since? Nicko, as president, the buck stops at you.  Communicate with the club members, please.

I'm a Trek fanboy, I make no apologies for this.  I have 5 of them, and many of my friends ride them, and when I give bikes to people, they're generally Treks ... Why is this?  My first roady was a Trek 1400 and it's still going (after some 65,000km or so) and I love the ride and handling, and when I went up to a carbon bike, the Madone 5.2 with Project 1 graphics just seemed 'right', and I wasn't disapointed by it, to say the least. It rides like a real bike should ride, it handles high speed decents with confidence and predictability, even with my lardy backside on it, and it looks like a proper road bike should look , even with the tail on the seat tube and the bulgy down tube on the '05 Madone.

They're not perfect (nothing is ...), and the T1 track bike in particular has some missing things that a track bike at its price point really should have - the most glaring missing feature is replaceable rear dropout surfaces. It really should have them, but it doesn't.  At least, unlike the Specialized 'Langster' it does have stainless dropouts, but at a RRP of around $2,600 in Australia, it has less real track features than the Raceline 'Record' at a thousand dollars less. It also comes with some pretty ordinary road cranks, not track cranks, and the wheels are servicable but the bearings are low end Bontrager and mine haven't survived a summer's racing all that well.  A service will probably fix them up, but now I have high end wheels (Bonty Carbon track, yum!) it's not urgent.

Their roadies in particular, I do love, the traditionally shaped top tube, the feel and poise on the road, the handling works for me.

Until now.

Trek have just released their '08 (it's June '07 ... this US marketing stuff is crap!) Madones, and there's a -lot- of new stuff in them.  New to Trek anyway, long time Cannondale fans will see a few borrowed features, and, shock/horror the new shape looks very similar to a Giant TCR! Sloping top tube, seat masts.  I don't like, mkay? They've also obfuscated their OCLV carbon, instead of knowing what the frame is made of, now you get a rather insulting 'red, white or black' to signify the three 'levels' of frame material used.  Huh?  I'd actually like to know what's in there, please.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and until I actually get one under my backside for a ride, all the above is based purely on not liking the look of the sloping top tube and the obfuscation of the carbon grades used.  If Mark G from Trek wants to lend me a 56cm '08 Madone to test and review, then I'll be able to make up my mind about if it's a better bike, despite the Giant TCR looks and the rubbery seat mast.  Does the huge BB shell (90mm, with integrated bearing seats) keep the bottom bracket more solidly in place?  Does it weigh significantly less than the '07 models?  Enough to justify the sloping top tube?  Enough to justify the 1.5" lower headset bearing. The UCI limit for weight starts to make weight loss a waste of time anyway, we can't race a 6kg bike, it's illegal. Does Chris King make something to suit the new headset or do we have no choice with bearings? LBS's will have to carry (or order in) different seat 'post/mast' bits for different saddle heights, which is a PITA. We already have a pile of seatposts and stems, now we might have to carry these bits, and for how long until the trend swings back?  Will Trek Aust have stock of these in 5 years time?

You can read a less biased review at Cyclingnews.com here, or see Trek's own marketing spin here. Make up your own mind, but have a testride first, I'll be riding one as soon as I can to see if I'm full of it and the bike's a real winner, or if it's a pile of gimicks and slick spin. I'd like to see it tested and some hard data, weight, flex at the BB etc.

In jumbled order, DISC on Thursday last week.  Richard makes his DISC debut and rode very well, he managed to finish strongly in all his races except the motorpace, but the motorpace was disturbed by a crash that not only saw Rich get spooked, saw John Lewis (masters session coach) crash heavily through no fault of his own, get a pretty impressive concussion (It's Thursday night John, you're at DISC, you were in a crash, remember?) and almost certainly break a collarbone.  We wish you all the best for a speedy recovery John.

Dino rode well, he took a punt in the points race in a very strong C grade field and overdid it, but in the motorpace took a good 4th and was unlucky to not have placed in the money.  Wayne Evans handled the move up to B grade (about time you sandbagger!) well and never looked like he was struggling.  I sat the night out taking photos due to a feeble excuse (headcold!).  Justin Wornes rode A grade and was strong, but no-one could beat big Stu Vaughan, who won everything in A grade. The photos are here. The team was cheered on by Bev, the Llama and Von, Emily and Anne Apolito.  Thankyou everyone for your support.

And on Sunday, Byron, Dino, Steve Bourke and I did a lazy cruise down Beach Rd, the lads all clocked up around 100k each and I put 100 miles in my legs for the day including a grovel home up Whitehorse Rd after one too many sprints against Dino and rather a lot of time in E2  Lucozade and red eye got me home up the hill!  Bourky's thrilled with his new steed (Trek 1400) and we'll work on getting him racing next summer .. Glenvale maybe ..

Finally, gleaned from aus.bicycles, for your and my amusement :

QUOTE
Minneapolis, MN -- Greg Lemond today released a statement that said he
has, reluctantly and with great sadness, been forced to add the 2006
Tour de France to the long list of tours that he should have won. Lemond
initially believed, and was even quoted in an earlier interview as
saying, that this was the first clean Tour de France in many years.
However, in light of the recent positive doping test of tour winner
Floyd Landis, Lemond has concluded that, in all likelihood, he himself
should have won the tour this year.

This brings the total number of Tours de France That Lemond Should Have
Won (TDFTLSHW) to 167. Lemond first won the tour in 1986. However, as he
has explained many times over the years since, he should have won the
Tour in 1985, but was lied to by Bernard Hinault and cheated out of the
race victory. Lemond next should have won the Tour in 1987 and 1988, but
was incapacitated by a shotgun blast from his brother-in-law. While the
incident was ruled an accident by the police, Lemond believes that his
brother-in-law was working with Hinault and a young Texan by the name of
Lance Armstrong to remove him from the sport.

Lemond came back to win the Tour in 1989 and 1990, but lost in 1991 due
to the fact that, as incredible as it may sound, every other rider in
the Tour de France besides Lemond was taking performance enhancing
drugs. Lemond believes these drugs were supplied by Bernard Hinault, who
realized that if nothing were done, Lemond would continue to win the
Tour for the next 50 years. The drug-tainted Tour would continue through
2005, including the reign of Lance Armstrong. In the absence of doping,
Lemond clearly would have won the Tour from 1991 to 2005, bringing the
total number of TDFTLSHW to 21.

Going back before 1985, Lemond believes that in all likelihood, he would
have won the Tour de France each year since his birth in 1961 if a) he
had known about it and he had not had the small stature and limited leg
length common to children between the ages of 0 and 10. As Lemond
explains, clearly it would be unfair to him to discount the Tour wins he
should have achieved were he only able to reach the pedals of his
bicycle. This brings the TDFTLSHW to 45.

While Lemond concedes that some may believe him to be "stretching it" by
including in his TDFTLSHW years from Tours before his birth, he claims
that if one is to think about it logically, the only possible conclusion
is that the greatest bike rider in the history of the Tour would
absolutely have won the Tour since its inception in 1903, if only he had
been alive at that time. It was not Greg Lemond's fault that his parents
were not alive and able to conceive him in time to ride the initial Tour
in 1903; thus, it would be unfair to strip him of the Tour wins that he
rightly should have been awarded.

Note that there have been 11 years since its creation in 1903 that the
Tour de France was not held due to the two World Wars. Clearly, stopping
the Tour due to worldwide war would have been unfair to Greg Lemond, had
he been alive, and would have in all likelihood, been a move
orchestrated by Bernard Hinault, had he himself been alive, to keep
Lemond from winning the tour. Thus, Lemond believes that these years
should also be included in the TDFTLSHW, giving him a total of 103 wins.

Finally, Lemond explains that he has included the years between the
invention of the bicycle to the first Tour de France (1839 to 1903) in
the TDFTLSHW. Had the French had the foresight to create the Tour de
France in a more timely manner, Lemond would have definitely won it each
and every year, again assuming he had been alive (see above). Obviously
Lemond cannot be blaimed for the shortsightedness and general ineptitude
of the French, and therefore the victory from the Tours de France that
should have been held in these years must be credited to Lemond,
bringing the final tally of TDFTLSHW to 167.

Note that while Lemond has not yet been able to rationalize including
years before the invention of the bicycle in the TDFTLSHW, he has
created a company to pursue such an effort. The company is hard at work
on a rationalization and hopes to produce one for him within the year.

7am, 6 degrees, ride the tandem to the boule, meet up with Vaughan Bowman en route, and a few others.  The tandem on my own, is a barge.  It'll be fun doing the BBN ITT on it.

Arrive at the ITT, meet up with Rob Monteith, we set up the tandem stoker seat for him and enter ($10 for the team! that's half price!).  We do a practice run, it's a barge, it's a truck ...

ITT time, and we go pretty hard, not a great time, but we only get caught by one rider, on a hilly course on a great big heavy bargebike.  It's a handfull, on the descents it drops like a missile, on the flats .. we don't know, the boule has no flats, and up hills ... urgh!  We managed to get around the turnaround at the roundabout without having to get off it.  19:40-something.  Tom Leaper wins it, Jono Lovelock wins the juniors(!). Not a big turnout, but I think it'll grow.

Then, off to the velodrome.  3 hours of some decent training.  A big aboc turnout - Dino, Rich, Rob, Nath and me.  We train pretty hard, and to finish off, Dino wants to do a match sprint. Ok, I'm game.  We roll around, and at the second turn, Dino's about 2m ahead of me up on the red line, I'm down on the duckboards - we're going pretty slow, and Dino slips and falls right in front of me.  Nowhere to go except straight into him!  He's ok, a bit of skin off, but otherwise ok, my bike .. bent chainring, bent crank spider.  Bugger!  I was only doing 2-3km/h when it happened.  No bones broken.  I need a new crankarm.  A Bontrager/Truvativ 165mm crank.  I hope Trek have some in stock, or no racing for me this Thursday!

The Rowbust skinsuit Dino was trialing was torn!  But, it did fit well before then, and generally everyone liked the aboc jacket. You want one?  Send me an email.

Thursday night, and it's time to debut the new wheels.  My new Bontrager Race-X-Lite carbon singles, with Tufo S3 Pro tyres, all glued up and ready to race.

The wheels are the hr0n!  First impressions - these things are responsive.  I don't feel any faster (how can you tell anyway outside of a wind tunnel with a power meter?) but they have thought-control steering.  I'm glad I have a solid 10 months of track racing in my legs, they'd have been way too responsive for me as a beginner.  But now, I like .. yes.

It's only Dino and I tonight, and Bev, the Llama and Von in the crowd. No other aboc'ers present (slack ... but Nathan has an excuse, he starts racing there again in his next block)

Anyway .. did ok in the scratch race, maybe 6^th or so?  Lain Hammond won it, which was pretty impressive, she's maybe 17 or something?  I don't know how old she is, but for a female, and a female junior, to win (ok, only C grade .. but still, some strong boys ride it) is pretty impressive.  Well done Lain.

The points race and for the first time since I've been racing at DISC I don't get dropped.  Positioning and knowing who's who, and not working as a leadout. Thankyou to Dino for my leadout for the first sprint, I should have talked to you more, my fault! I contested every sprint, got 3^rd in the final sprint but 4^ths or worse for the rest, so no points to speak of.  Still felt good though, good to not have to chase for 10 laps. A bit crampy in a leg, but that soon settles down after an easy roll around.

Along the way we're cheering on big Stu Vaughn and Mal Sawford, Mal had come over because he's afraid of the dark and wet, and wanted a ride.  His track bike looked pretty clean for something that had been (he claims) not ridden for years.  Uhuh ...

On to the motorpace, and I'm feeling pretty good.  It does the usual thing, I manage to be in almost the perfect place, on the bike for the last paced lap, the bike pulls off, I surge for 50m or so, then sit up, no-one comes over the top, I surge again for aother 50m or so, sit up .. still no-one, 1 lap to go, put down the hammer and go ... and ... 250m later, still no-one comes over the top!  That'l be a win, thanks Eddie. w00t!  Wave to the aboc cheersquad, do the 'touch the tyres, burn the hands' thing, roll around and think 'that was pretty good!'.

I felt strong all night and never felt like I was struggling or in any danger of not being able to contest the finish of any of the races, which was a first at DISC - I'm getting close to how I felt at Blackburn over summer racing C grade, where I knew that I could win anything if I did the right things tactically.

So what did the win pay?  $10!  That's $16 total DISC prizemoney.  $10 to enter, so for last night, I broke even (if you don't count the new wheels .. the tyres, dinner ... etc etc one does not race for the money ... )

This morning I picked up the prototype of the new aboc polarfleece jerseys.  Very nice.  Perfect for cold nights at DISC. Royal blue with yellow trim, and the aboc logo on the front and back, 300 weight fleece, good quality, low pill and made in Australia (no Nike sweatshops here!).  It looks pretty snazzy.  Once I have a firm price from Rowbust we'll be putting in an order for a bunch of them.  Got a prototype skinsuit (size L) for evaluation too .. I think Dino will fit into it so we'll try that on Sunday afternoon at DISC. If he likes it, we'll get the pattern done up in Illustrator and then I'll do a design with aboc colours.  I'm reviewing Steve Hogg's (of Bicycling Australia and cyclingnews.com fame, as well as being regarded as one of the bike fit gurus in Australia, with John kennedy as the other) DVD at the moment, 'Sitting pretty'.  Interesting to watch, I like the layout of his fit studio, will have to negociate with Pete from Cycle Science about my fitting 'space' at the shop.

I'm also trying to convince Dino to ride the BBN/HCC ITT on Sunday morning with me, on the aboc tandem.  Place your bets .. but if he's crook I'll have to look elsewhere.  Maybe Rob Monteith? Rob? You want to do it?

Now it's time to go and get some extra hot chilli noodles and work at the shop for the evening.  I have bikes to fix, people to fit and stories to tell.  Thanks for reading.

Those of you that know me, know that I'm big on being graceful in victory and defeat, and that I do my best to get riders I work with to also be graceful in both. Even if someone does something very wrong, dangerous or stupid (and that does happen in bike races!), we have to always respect each others' safety and fight fire with water.

The following video from a US Keiren race is a great example of the worst kind of sportsmanship. 

Jame Carney gets knocked off at the finish line.

I'm sure most would agree that there is never justification for that action.

Good news first.  I got my first lot of prizemoney at DISC last Thursday.  After a messy scratch race where I surged a couple of times to break things up a bit, and getting boxed in, then leading it out and Dino missing my wheel, the points race was going to be worth a go.  Unlike the last few weeks, this week I wasn't riding as Wayne's leadout/chase monkey/shock trooper.  I got dropped at the first sprint, but chased for 10 or so laps, and got back on to the bunch about a lap before the second last sprint.  I took 3rd in the sprint, but I had momentum, and rolled through and before I knew it, I had at least 80 metres on the bunch.  Oh well, let's see if I can hold them off ... 4 laps and a new HRMax later, and I did, winning the final sprint by about 50 metres or so.  Gets me 2nd in the race. That hurt .... that really, really hurt.  I've often told my riders that the race that hurts the most is the one you win, and that was a reminder - I didn't win it, but I did win the final sprint, which feels almost as good, and hurts just as much!

Last race, the motorpace, pans out beautifully, I'm 4th wheel when the bike pulls off, with big Pooley on the front hammering, but in front of me is a girl, and when Pooley kicks, a gap opens, and it's too late.  4th ... that'll have to do.  Payday for the night, $6.  Entry fee is $10.  So I lose $4.  Heh ... There'll be more, I'm getting a feel for DISC now and who to watch for and the timing of sprints etc.  Dino's a real threat too! He's got a sprint on him ... that's for sure.

So to the De Bortoli Tour.  A lot of aboc'ers helped out with this, which was great.  Nick, Nathan, Rob, Mick and Will, Bev ... all the troops.  Byron and Wayne Evans and Simon Alder racing.  My role, web site and photography.  I took some 1,200 photos, and published about 1,100 on the website.  The aim was to get at least one photo of every rider in the event, and most of the officials and volunteers.  I think I managed.  A hell of a long weekend, especially as I had to drop Vanders off at the airport on Sunday morning at 6am.

Everyone did a great job, except we had one glaring, disasterous problem.  Race results.  I don't know what went wrong, but even now, 2 days later, we still don't have the final results.  Why is this a problem?  In a stage race, times count and gaps count.  The riders couldn't make smart decisions about breaks etc, because they didn't know any times or places.  Feedback from some (and I agree with them) is that the Tour was, because of the results failure, a collection of social rides, not races.

One feedback email contained this :

First and foremost, Results? WTF? How can a tour be run without results?
Can you imagine if The winner of the 'Bathurst 1000' was announced the next day?
Or if by the time the TDF winner was determined Lance Armstrong was back at
home on the ranch. This is a major issue for everybody from Riders,
Teams and Sponsors (Both of teams and of the event i.e. De Bortoli)
WITHOUT RESULTS ANY BIKE RACE JUST BECOMES A SOCIAL RIDE!

This is from a friend, and it's completely fair critisism.  I can't agree more.

So what can we do?  I don't know ... I know Nicko and Alan spent ages (up 'til midnight on Saturday etc) trying to sort out the mess, but the key thing is why, and how can we make sure it never happens again?  Blackburn has an unfortunate reputation now for stuffing up results - a 1:20 ITT not long ago had a similar problem, and we've become rather famous for being the club that can't run races properly.  That's not fair, because for everything that went wrong, heaps more went very well, but the lasting impression that most riders who rode the race will have is of not getting any results. 

As a club, we have to look very hard at what went wrong and how it can be fixed in future.  I've held the belief for a long time that the Tour is simply too big for a single, small club to organise.  I think it's a club killer, as it's too hard and uses up too many people.  I hope I'm wrong, but the washup from this tour is going to be messy. Then again, the Colleraine Tour seems to work pretty well, maybe we as a club need to have a talk to them, and see how they do it.  That's outside my area of interest within the club, my line in the sand is clearly drawn.

Enough said on that ... Spin is tomorrow night and I've a bolla to cook to feed hungry cyclists!

Just in case anyone's been wondering, we've been busy at aboc HQ working on ideas for how to run the Summer Sprint Series at Blackburn.  Here's my latest correspondance with the Blackburn CC :

G'day Rowan, Brian and John,

I'd like to get the summer sprint series stuff started so I can start to promote it and people can start to train for it.

Here's how I think I'd like it to work (details to be finalised) This is a proposal, I'd like your feedback on it.

Once a fortnight (say 1st and 3rd week of the month?) on Sunday, starting at 12 for Flying 200's, match sprints start at 1.  Graded based on F200 times, at least 3 grades, ideally 4. Round robin match sprints to accumulate points, then a ride off for first & second, and third and fourth for each grade.  I expect each match sprint would take 3 minutes at the most? 

Nicko?  If we ban anything slower than walking pace they can't take longer than that! That would be about 20 races an hour as long as we can keep them flowing.

Round robin points as follows :
2 points for a win, 1 for a loss, 0 for a forfeit, -1 for a disqualification.

All grades pay $10 to enter, we divvy up the prizemoney in the usual way.

Have an aggregate points system leading to some prizes at the end of the season (I'm working on some sponsorship for this).

Points for attending, points for places, points for going up a grade, lose points for relegation to a lower grade.
Something like 2 points for entering, 6 for a win, 4 for a second and 2 for a third, 6 points for a promotion, -4 points for a relegation. The winner of a grade when there's more than 6 riders gets promoted, last place gets relegated. If there's less than 6 riders on a day, no relegation or promotions occur.

What do we need to run it?  I'm thinking 3 people?  Entries, a commissaire and a line judge/score recorder.  Do we also need to register it with CSV? Could we promote it through the CSV summer calender?  What are the requirements for a commissaire?

Would it be an 'open' as such?  The summer track season seems to run as an open, or at least, it has no restrictions on
members of other clubs attending?  Would this be the same sort of thing? Would we need a 1st aider present?

I think I can recruit a few aboc'ers to help run it, in return for free entry, but am not sure of the club's requirements?

Any thoughts?  I'd appreciate feedback and thoughts from you all, either here or by email to me.

Some readers of this online diary of mine may know of our efforts to revamp the Blackburn Cycling Club's website.

Have a look at this for a superb Plone site : Team Priority Net (Richard England from Blackburn is in this team fort 2007). I think that's an excellent example of what can be done with Plone.  The aboc site is a pretty basic implementation, but that one's very well sorted.

In other news ... The Blackburn AGM is tonight (Wednesday the 9^th of May) at the Blackburn clubrooms at 7:30 pm and I urge any Blackburn members to attend.  I'm sponsoring it with food - if you show up you'll get free grub!  Hopefully this AGM will see a few changes in the club that I think it needs, and it's an opportunity for you all to voice your opinions and thoughts re the direction the club is taking and to suggest improvements (and maybe even make some contributions!). 

I hope to see as many of you all there as can make it.

Saturday I rode down to Casey to do the first Casey Field crit of the season. Not long after I left aboc HQ the rain started, but assisted by a decent northerly tailwind I averaged 29km/h to Casey and did the trip in a bit over 90 mins.  The race, we won't mention, combined A & B grade due to low nubers of A graders, and I got blown to bits after a hard turn at the front chasing down an early attack when we thought the bunch was under control.  I was the only aboc rider present. Where was everyone?!  It's just a bit of rain! Rather than waste the day, I did a couple of 20 min E3 efforts and then rode home.  Being in no mood for traffic or hills, I thought I'd try the Dandeong Ck trail rather than Stud Rd. Nice enough, partially sealed, partially gravel, ok on a roady, except in places very poorly signed (where's the trail go, again?!). The usual collection of loose dogs etc ...

As it was getting dark I tok off my sunnies and next thing, a bug flies into my left eye.  No big deal, except I've always had eyes that react badly to any scratches, and before I knew it I was monocular.  10km from home, 125km in my legs and one eye, into a headwind up a hill (Boronia Rd to Canterbury Rd on my crit cassette!)... not happy, Jan!

When I finally got home Vanders fed me and I went out for eye drops and dinner.  Spent most of the night unable to sleep and finally woke up with one eye glued shut.  Today, I took the masters track session at DISC, but didn't ride as I basically can't see from one eye so have poor depth perception until it's better.  Only two people came, Nath (thanks for the lift!) and Nick, an Australian/Canadian former semi pro MTB racer. With a split between enduro and sprint riders I couldn't do much interesting stuff for them, so we did reaction drills and Nath did flying 100's.  A bit sad to see how poor the resource (DISC) is utilised.  It's cost a fortune to build, but trackies aren't taking advantage of it.

I'm going back to bed, hopefully I'll have stereo vision tomorrow!