Hi Carl,

After some frantic last minute packing, we finally boarded the plane last Friday and landed safely in gay paree on Saturday morning.

The Hotels in France are rather small and there is not enough room for the bike (or its  case) so I had to reassemble the bike  on the edge of "La rue de monge". Which is just a fancy name for the street that runs outside the front of the hotel!

We hit our first hurdle trying to check into the ride on Sunday morning. French Rail decided to do track work on the line that takes us to the start at St Quintin. They were running a replacement bus service, but I was not allowed to take the bike. So after studying one of the local tourist maps, the only option was to attempt to ride accross Paris and get on the train accross town. If you've ever looked at a road map of Paris, you will understand this is not as simple as it may sound.

As I was studying the map for the umpteenth time, a Spaniard who was also doing the ride pulled up along side me. He had a bigger road map than me and as we were headed to the same place, we road the streets of Paris together. We had a lovely ride alongside the Sienne River, Notre Dame qnd the Eiffel Tower. Unfortunately we weren't supposed to be anywhere near these landmarks. It took us nearly an hour to do the 8km to get to the station. I got to St Quintin an hour and a half after my checkin time, but no major dramas. I got myself registered, bike inspected and ride card issued, ready for the  9.30pm departure on Sunday night.

The start was staggered into waves of 600 riders departing every 20 mins. I choose the wrong line to queue in and ended up leaving in the final group at about 11pm. The amosphere was fantastic. People on the streets clapping and yelling "ally, ally, ally" (Still no idea what this means, French equivelent of Aussie, Aussie,Aussie???). Volunteers were stopping traffic at the intersections to let bikes through and the drivers of the cars got out and clapped. Very different to Around The Bay ride in Melbourne where stopped motorists honked their horns and yelled abuse!

The first 50km of the ride were reasonably uneventful, except for some near misses with some low cobble stoned roundabouts that are just about impossible to see in the dark. Then the heavens opened and the rains came. I took shelter in a Patiessery at about 3.30 am and munched my way through a Cafe Eclair before continuing onto the first official food stop at the 122km mark. 

The first stop was a high school gym kitted out with seats, kitchen and a bar. I didn't really feel like a beer at 4.30 in the morning, but a nice steaming plate of spag bog went down a treat. 

I left the food stop just as the sun was coming up. The rain had stopped and although there was a wind, it started drying everything out. I really enjoyed the next 90km into the second checkpoint and got there a few hours ahead of the cutoff.

I'd had a few gear issues on this stretch, could not get the gears to run smoothely or change down properly. I found the cable had frayed and a couple of strands had jammed into the cable covering, stopping the cable sliding properly. I worked with the local bike mechanic to change it ( He had a new cable but no idea how to get the old one out of brake/gear lever - i'd never changed one either) and after paying the huge sum of two euros I was on the road again. 

The next 90km I refer to as the "hungry kms". Just could not get enough to eat. Every pattiserie or road house I would stop and look for food. Got into the next checkpoint at about 5pm on Monday.

The next stretch was a short 52km. I started having knee trouble. A pain in the top of the quads that extends into the knee. Very similar to the knee problem I had before I left, but the other knee this time. I survived into the next checkpoint (about 360km) but was in a bit of trouble. I rested for a few hours and went and saw the local ambo's who could only give me some gel to rub into the knee and they suggested I spend the night to let the swelling go down. Unfortunately, due to the cut off times I had to keep moving. The plan was to use my lowest gears, spin lightly and make it to Brest (250km away) where I would get a time bonus and a chance for a decent rest before heading back to Paris.

This plan worked well for the next 30km, then hills and a strong head wind caused me a lot of grief. I rode another 50km ( which took nearly 3 hours) in quite a bit of pain to the next major checkpoint. I couldn't stand on the pedals and had to conpensate with my good knee to keep going. 

I got 4 hours sleep at the checkpoint and and woke feeling a bit better. But a quick spin around a flat car park still caused me pain and I realized I couldn't finish the remaining 750km and withdrew after 450km.

Pretty devastated after waiting four years to compete but as Lina keeps reminding me, there is always the next one in four years time.

All that is left now is to get the bike shipped home and enjoy the next 3 weeks of our holiday as we tour around France, Switzerland, Italy and the UK.


Will catch you at spin class when we get back.

cheers,

Chris

As a few readers of the aboc site know, a few weeks ago Dino Apolito had a crash in a motorpace and got a bit of concussion etc, and just got back onto DISC to race two weeks ago.  Last night was his second night back after that crash.  He's written about it in his blog here.

So what happened last night?

Dino got to DISC a little earlier than me, and was warming up on the track when I got there.  I got sorted and we did a few efforts together to get ready for the nights' racing.  We went high up the bank and Dino reported that he was feeling better than last week about it, and feeling strong in the legs. 

After a few more efforts we were just pootling around the track keeping warm on the black line at around 30km/h or so, Dino was sucking my wheel when a rider who was up above us on the blue line (I only saw this out of peripheral vision) slipped off the bank (bad tyres?  Too slow?), slipped down into me, bounced off me, and swept Dino's bike out from under him.  I didn't actually see the crash itself, it was all right behind me, but I heard it, felt it and I heard Dino hit the boards.

Being a track bike there was no way I could stop and turn around immediatly, so I completed my lap and pulled up and saw Dino lying flat on his back and in considerable distress.  A couple of officials were milling around, I asked them to call an ambulance once we'd determined that this wasn't a quick tumble, Dino had clearly been hurt pretty badly.  A few of us with first aid tickets got Dino as comfortable as we could, and then a doctor who was there helped out so we handed over to him, and got Dino's kit all sorted out.  I called Rich who came and picked up Dino's bike and pump, and we basically waited for the ambos to arrive and tried to keep Dino as comfortable as we could.  He had a reasonably normal pulse, no obvious neck or collarbone injury, no damage to his helmet etc, but his ribs on his right side were very tender - at least bruised.  I called Ann (Dino's wife) and let her know.

The ambos arrived after about 10 minutes, and took over, gave Dino the anasthetic straw and then some morphine (no more racing tonight Dino, that's on the banned list!).  We organised to get his clothes etc sorted, one of the ambos took his bag and the ambo's oxy cviva kit away, and just after he'd left Dino's condition worsened, he started to have breathing difficulties.  One of the club officials ran off after the other ambo to get him to come back with the oxyviva.  While this was happening the other ambo had to cut Dino's jersey, knicks and undershirt (but we salvaged his Polar HRM !) to get to his chest to check for bubbles.  None evident, but Dino will need a new jersey and knicks (again!).  I think aboc will give him a new jersey as a get well present. He got back, and they put an O2 mask on and more morphine to stabilise Dino's pain.  Then we popped him on a sled, and then the ambos organised their stretcher. We called Ann again and told her Dino was going to the Austin (by co-incidence, Dino used to work there!), then the ambos took him away.

Discussing the crash with a few other people who saw it, it seems that Dino landed ribs-first on the top tube or stem of the other bike, basically spearing himself.  It was the most rotten, awful luck for this to happen.  There was just nothing we could have done.  Many crashes can be avoided and learned from, but this was a real 'struck by lightening' incident.

The rest of the night was pretty subdued, I raced as the only aboc rider there, doing a slingshot for a young lad in the scratch race but unable to hold the wheel of the motorbike in the motorpace in the last lap.  Embarrasing!  The program was shortened as Dino's crash blocked the track for about 45 minutes, so no points races for the night. Dino sent me an SMS message at about 1am with an update, he has, at this time, two broken ribs and a punctured lung.  Not much fun at all, I've had broken ribs before and they're a uniquely painful experience.

I'll keep everyone informed as to Dino's progress as soon as I know any more.

In the constant pursuit of new things to learn and fun to be had on wheel(s), I invested some of my wage from Cycle Science in a unicycle.  It just arrived today.  One of the lads here, Alex, is quite a wizz on one, and I hope to be able to have him and myself rolling around the Blackburn velodrone over summer between races for a bit of a laugh.

Now I just have to learn to ride the thing - the 1st aid kit is full of Mefix, what could go wrong?!

Details : it's a 24 inch 'Nimbus 2', which I'm told is a good size to learn on and my lardy arse won't be too heavy for it.

For some time I've been unimpressed by the stock Bontrager branded Truvativ cranks supplied on my Trek T1 track bike - they're not track cranks, they're short (165mm) road cranks.  This is probably because the T1, as shipped, isn't really a track bike - it's a track frame but comes with road bits for singlespeed road use.  Versatile, but that's not what I got it for.  They do, at least, have outboard bearings which helps stiffen up the bottom bracket area.

I've been looking for a decent set of track cranks for a while, Sugino and Shimano are still using old-school bottom brackets with square tapers.  No thanks.  My roadies have gone way past that, why hasn't track?  Luddites ... anyway ...

Nath suggested I check out the SRAM/Truvativ 'Omnium' cranks.  Seen at Interbike in '06 it would seem, as is shown here on bikehugger's blog and also seen at Monza's trade show last month (where was my invite Pete?!)  Nice ... So I'm trying to track down a set in Oz.  Rumour has it they're here already in Oz, but our wholesaler (Monza) says 'September'. Nothing on SRAM's website at the moment so I can't tease anyone with any more photos or details, but they sure do look the part.

UPDATE: These will ship from Monza on Sept 1st, and RRP is ~$400 without the GXP bottom bracket. There will be some Uber-flash ceramic bearing variant of the GXP BB for these, but I'll stick with steel bearings I think.

In today's Age, Leigh Matthews states, when talking about EPO use in AFL football :

"Blood testing is invasive. It's very different. The one thing you know is there's no health risk in taking urine. Blood requires putting a needle in your vein and the AFL didn't like us doing that with the IV hydration. It's a health risk," he said.

Uhuh .... We'll just bury our heads in the sand, Leigh.  Thankyou.

I had a pretty good weekend on the bike - the weather did the right things (mostly!) and I rode with good company and had a go at a few things new. 

After a bit of a bummer night at DISC on Thursday where I just couldn't get my legs going - spent 18 laps chasing the points race, for example (but at least I kept chasing, got a decent high intensity training session out of the night ...) and then Nandos in Ivanhoe being out of chicken(WTF?!) and having to resort to Red Rooter, I was due a positive bike experience.

On Friday Mark G from Trek brought in a new Trek Madone 5.5 (performance - read 'the old pilot') for us to look at at the LBS.  It was much prettier in the flesh than it looks on the 'net.  We poked and proded at it but I didn't get to keep it for the weekend - Maybe Mark knew I had a few hundred k planned? Mark assured me that we'll get it as a loaner for a decent test and review.  Stay tuned ...

Saturday morning, Bev & I rode in to meet Dino (late!) and then we did a tootle down the Yarra Boule, I stopped off at the crit loop for a few hillsprints and downhill sprints, then we rolled on to Port Melb for muffins and hot chocolate.  By the time we got to Port Melb a fair breeze had sprung up.  Bev and Dino rode with me to Fitzroy St before they turned back, and then I did a hard ride to Mordialloc - tailwind assisted. It was late enough in the morning that all the serious cyclists had finished for the day, so I spent the ride to Mordi chasing rabbits and trying to stay above 280 watts on the flats.  A bit of ego-flogging, no-one managed to hold my wheel for more than a k or two (even on the hills!) so I felt strong.  I caught one bloke who was in boardshorts with v.hairy legs in Mentone, but I couldn't shake him all the way to Mordi!  Including a kick to 800watts for a bit at the Parkdale yacht club and 50km/h on the last kilometer or so.  A good wheelsucker.  I eased off at the last set of pedestrian lights and he went past. 

After that flogfest, I noodled to Edithvale at around 180 watts, before turning into the headwind to ride home back up Springvale Rd.  120km for the day, that'll do.

Sunday was a race - of sorts - the Blackburn/Hawthorn ITTs had been a bit down on numbers last time, so I figured I'd donate $10 to the winner and have a bit of an E3 session.  No-one took me up on an offer of the back seat of the tandem so I had no excuse and had to ride it on my own.  Lots of bling at the ITT this time, Trek TTX's, a lot of aerobars and fancy wheelsets, and a decent turnout - even Barry 'The Wizard' Woods came along (a sprinter at an ITT?! There's two of us stupid enough to be here?!).  It was good to see Jono Lovelock back from his European jaunt, and Jamie Goddard, Steve "The Master" Martin and Tom Leaper turning out, as well as a few fresh faces and a healthy size field.  It was also nice to meet up with Wendy and Lisa, who I hope will have a go next time.  TT's are only as hard as you make them, remember?!

I pushed as hard as I could, but this fat lazy sprinter, even at 450 watts up the hills, was overtaken by his 30 second chaser after about 2km.  I came in at about 20 minutes for the course, ok I guess, it's not my baby .... I'm no climber nor am I a tempo rider, and the Boule has nary a flat centimeter.  HR peaked at about 175bpm (HRmax is 188) so I was working pretty hard - around 93% of HRmax for the last 5 minutes. 

Thanks to Nicko, Sue Dundas, Alan Barnes et at for running the 'race' (cruel ... cruel people!).

Then it was a tootle to Rich's place to drag him to DISC, but it turns out he'd been out all night on the grog and wasn't home when I got to his place.  Ok ... off to DISC - stop off en-route for a chocolate big-M and a couple of Wagon wheels.  Yum!

At DISC I met up with Nath & Dino and the rest of the old farts, it was good to see Liz Randall doing some fast laps and Lawrence Maskill turned a pedal a few times too.  Big Stu Vaughan got me by a cm in the warmup sprint, I thought I had enough gap, but not -quite- enough!  Nath & I (and Dino after one or two) did some standing 100's before I rode the DISC motorbike for the rest of the training group doing fast leadouts.  Nath & I managed to squeeze in a couple of flying 200's between my leadout sessions, and Dino looked flash with his new wheels. Nath's getting strong, he got over me on both flying 200's.  The summer sprint series is going to be interesting indeed.  Riding the motorbike is bloody cold too!  I had a jacket, but no leg warmers, so my legs were frozen stiff as I span around the velodrone on the motorbike.

After that, it was time for a 50 lap 'take a lap' grand prix.  I set myself a target of taking 5 laps, and I got 'em, a couple on my own and two with Mr Green from Albury and one with Nath.  That got rid of any coldness ... 3 hours at DISC and an ITT for the day, that'll do.  I groveled, and Nath gave me a lift home in the Rayvan. No way would I have been able to ride home, *smashed* legs. Thanks as always to John Lewis for running the session. It was good to catch up with Paul Parker (Mr Cycle Finess) and to watch his charge as she trains for the masters games.  Strong ...

Today, recovery ... 30 mins of tootling ... -easy-

*phew*

Tomorrow, more strengh work and E3's ... Summer track season approaches and I have a date with Alan Barnes and Alan Doran that I want to keep ... I'm not going to beat them much, but I will keep them honest (and will try and stay ahead of Dino, who's gunning for me too ... ), summer's going to be a lot of fun.

A couple of days ago Nick Bird posted a note about the Hawthorn/Blackburn ITT at Kew on the Bicycle Victoria forums.  This prompted a number of healthy questions, and a subtle bomb from an ATTA (Australian time trial association) member, I suspect. 

So what's the problem?  If you're a racing cyclist in Australia (let's leave out the triathletes, MTB'ers etc for the moment, just roadies for the sake of this polemic, and yes, MTBA is a special case, and a good one ...) there's now three different organisations vying for your membership.  Each one has infrastructure to a varying degree, each runs races.  Healthy competition?  No.  Why?  Read on ...

I need to establish some basis for what I think is valuable in context before I go on. 

First and foremost, racing cycling does not exist in a vacuum.  We race on public roads, closed velodromes, car race circuits, special purpose built tracks (eg Casey Fields) and so on.  Each of these types of venue has unique requirements, but of all of them, roads are probably the most difficult to organise access to, once the venues are built, that is.  It's important for a racing cycling peak body to invest in racing venues.  It's also important to invest in other infrastructure to support racing.  This includes training of officials, so we get fair and consistant rules and their enforcement, training of coaches to provide a development path for riders who wish to improve, junior development, age group racing support, managing insurance requirements for races, officials, racing organisers and coaches, managing licencing and grading and so on.

Doing all of that is a big job.  It's fair to say that Cycling Australia is far from perfect, and it's rare to find someone that hasn't butted heads or been frustrated by CA at some time, but the organisation exists, is mostly democratically run and it provides a lot of infrastructure support.  Of course, this means it costs money.  In the overall scheme of things, not a terrible lot and CA seems to me to be reasonably cost-effective in terms of what it provides compared to what it costs.

I think the service CA provides is very important and I do not complain about my membership fees to race.  I know that the money I pay is being used to support not just my racing, but racing across many disciplines.  This is, I think, important to remember.

Along comes the ATTA.

What does the ATTA do?  They run time trials.  That's all they do.  No development, no coaching, no training for officials, no infrastructure. Happy to use CA's infrastructure though, but not contributing to it.  They're cheap to join - I think it's $20 to join, so for most of us, that's 10% of a CA licence.  The ITTs they run are cheap to enter, $7 at this time, I believe. In WA, according to the ATTA website, they are affiliated with CA, but each state body appears to be intependant.  What is the state of play in Victoria?

To be fair to the ATTA, in Victoria they do appear have a significant amount of membership overlap, but that just adds to the crazyness of the situation.  This means that a racing cyclist who wants to do regular ITTs has to join yet another organisation (and one that provides very little to the racing community save to run these races).  Yet another licence.  Woe betide the rider over 35 who has three licences now, thanks to the ATTA, the Vets and CA all being different.  I'll leave the Vets out of the picture for the moment, that's the subject of another essay on stupid sports politics that costs us all.

The immediate problem for those of us who race is that there's two (or three, if we're over 35) bodies that we need to be licenced with if we want to do ITTs and mass start races.  It's inconvenient and it's more expensive than it should be.

The structural problem is deeper, and arguably more important. The ATTA and the Vets are essentially taking from CA while at the same time competing with CA.  CA provides the infrastructure to support racing cyclists all the way through from juniors to masters.  Vets and ATTA riders train on CA provided infrastructure (who pays for the upkeep of the velodromes you all do intervals on?), they copy from the CA rulebooks, CA clubs have organised permission to use roads and established precedents and so on.  ATTA and Vets clubs organise competing events using the same roads, so CA clubs and Vets clubs and ATTA events have to compete for the use of the roads through local councils etc. Fields get split between competing bodies in the same regions which means the standard of racing is compromised. The world won't cave in and the sky isn't falling, but this is far from ideal when it comes to seeing our sport grow and prosper.

So what would be the sane thing to do, given the three organisations?

Here's what I think :

Roll the Victorian ATTA body back into CA if it isn't already.   It should be if it isn't.  If the ATTA people want to just run ITTs they can run them through CA clubs.  Clearly there's a healthy demand for ITTs. Rather than buck CA, work with CA.  That's what I'm doing with the Trek Summer Sprint Series, and everyone will benefit from it.  It took some politicing to get past some club stalwarts who had reservations, but it can be done and everyone wins.

Roll the Vets back into CA as well.  Not likely?  Why not?  All it takes is some sanity and a recognition by the Vets clubs that CA provides infrastruture that lets the sport grow and that that is something that all racing cyclists should contribute to.  The Vets, without junior development, will become extinct. They need juniors, so there's people old enough to race against in 20 years who have a clue about bike racing.

What does CA need to do to make this happen? 

Review the licencing system and talk with the other organisations. 

The licences need a revamp, there's the mostly useless 'Ride It' licence that CA provides (and many of my non-racing and vets licenced riders have a Ride It so they can attend my training sessions).  Ride It needs to be upgradable to a racing licence as a first step.  It's dumb that you can't upgrade it. 

Revisit the masters licencing fees, and talk to the Vets clubs about some level of licence parity - MTBA and CA have a swapover licence system now, which while not ideal is at least a step in the right direction. Many riders in the current generation of the Vets are dual licenced, it's just dumb. AUDAX can do it, MTBA can do it.  Why can't the Vets?

Introduce a cheap CA ITT-only licence that's then upgradable to a full racing licence.  There's a huge opportunity to grow the sport by mining triathalons and the Beach Road wannabes and poseurs and ITTs are a great way to get people involved.  Bunch racing might not be for everyone but ITTs will get these people mixing with those who do bunch races and some crossover is bound to happen accordingly. This is a market that the ATTA has tapped into and CA needs to pay attention to this.

And finally, get the CA licences to be valid for 12 months from date of payment, not the current archaic system it has at the moment.  This is 2007, membership records are computerised. There's no excuse anymore.

And wouldn't it be nice if Bicycle Victoria had licence/membership links with CA too? One can but dream ...

And so it ended last night, the 2007 Tour de France.  Three weeks of some of the most intriguing and exciting racing I've ever seen, mixed in with a backdrop of doping and subterfuge. 

Remember way back in stage 1, with Robbie McEwen blasting the rest of the field to smithereens on pure adrenaline after crashing some 20km prior?  Robbie didn't recover from the crash and missed the time cut in the Alps.

Remember Cancellara winning a sprint finish in yellow?  Boonen's leadout man winning a stage (Gert Steegmans the missile).   The usual early stages with futile breaks, stages ridden at touring speeds, Brad Wiggins being hung out to dry for 100km, every time he slowed down, the peloton slowed too, torture ....

Almost everyone winning a stage early on (sprinters, that is!) - Hushovd, Boonen, McEwen, even Zabel managed to be consistantly high up, although unable to take a win, showing that cunning and positioning is just as important as raw speed yet again.

Crashes ... so many crashes this year, Obviously McEwen, but more tragic was Stuart O'Grady on a descent breaking ribs and puncturing lungs but not breaking his heart.  Mick Rogers, while virtual tour leader, crashing and dislocating his shoulder, Vino crashing early and riding on swathed in bandages and oozing blood for days.  Riders crashing into loose dogs not once, but twice. David Millar doing his best to ruin Mavic's reputation by ripping a Mavic disk wheel to bits on the startline of the final ITT.

The young German rider taking yellow and white for a day, on the podium the podium girls were tripping over his smile it was so broad.  David Millar putting on a show, bathed in sunscreen because of a bizzare allergy.

And then the hills ... Rasmussen, to cheers at first, then jeers and boos as the story unfolded, tearing the road up in the Alps before pulling a time trial from nowhere to hold his lead.  Who believed he was that strong?  Then, the controversy as he was removed by his own team after way too many mysteries about his wherabouts and missed doping controls during the leadup to the tour.

Vino winning a time trial, Vino driving Astana to split the peloton in a crosswind, destroying the French hopes by putting minutes into Moreau but seemingly to have no real purpose.  Vino cracking in the hills and losing 20 minutes, Vino attacking in the hills and winning a stage, Vino testing positive, Vino and his whole team being evicted from the tour. Vino living up to his reputation.  Never a dull moment.

And along the way, Contador going punch for punch with Cadel Evans and Rasmussen in the mountaintop finishes.  Attack, attack, attack ... Cadel driving himself beyond exhaustion to limit his losses in the hills.  Levi Leipheimer and Contador taking turns attacking Cadel until eventually getting clear.  Could Contador get enough gap to stay in front after the final ITT? Would SBS interupt a finish with an ad break to tell us all about Sniff and Stiff (with no irony at all re performance enhancing drugs) or some particularly dull car advert.  Yes to both.  Can Tomalaris say anything sensible at the end of a stage?  will Graham Gate with his Faux-French accent cribbed from Peter Sellers movies finally choke on some overstuffed foie gras?  One can but hope ... Will Paul Sherwin manage to squeeze in a mention of testicular cancer? Yes!  And David Millar .. yes!  Did anyone run a book on how many times?

The humour - Borat sightings, the usual nudity, the crazy drunken spectators in the mountains. Rasmussen waving away motorbikes (we think, still not really sure of what he was on about).

The late transitional stages where finally some breaks stayed away, the old soldiers (Jens Voight, Sandy Cesar and co.) dicing it out for a last stage win in their careers.  Sandy Cesar winning while dripping blood from an early crash.  Setting everyone up for the crunch - the final ITT.

Could Cadel catch Contador?  So close in the end, but so desperatly close also for Leipheimer, who won the ITT but Cadel held second - 31 seconds seperating first from third.  Footage of Cadel sprinting up the last 200 meters of the ITT, sweat spraying everywhere, just a few more seconds ... everyone in Australia with a bike and a TV glued to the time trial willing Cadel to find a few extra watts from somewhere, and probably quietly wishing for Contador to puncture or crack, but the race was true and Cadel got second in the end.  The Australian media being clueless about stage racing (too much time playing footy) and media pundits telling us Chicken Little stories about the death of the Tour.  The sky is not falling.  The Tour is much bigger than a couple of scandals - it wouldn't be a tour without scandals.

The amazing spectacle of riders protesting about dopers, not dope tests.  Surely one of the most promising signs that the sport is purging itself of the old guard.

Tom Boonen's vindication, taking home a stage win and the green jersey at last.

And Cadel, second place this year.  Achingly close to first, but beaten by a stronger climber with a more focussed and polished team.  Discovery/US Postal have now won 8 of the last 9 Tours. They know how to win a tour.  Bruyneel taking his team, post Lance, to a win no-one expected.  Cadel being so close that many are disappointed that he didn't win, but that's to miss the point - he did win, he won respect and he won admiration and he rode clean, and he got the best result ever by an Australian.  Next year Cadel ... Imagine if it was Cadel and Rogers fighting it out for the podium next year.

And now we can all get some sleep, no more tour lag 'til next year.  Thankyou for reading.

After some 2 months or so, the Powertap SL 2.4 is back.  It arrived on Friday, and I built it back into a 28 hole Mavic Open Pro, did a final retension today.  Now to get back to using it.  We can do power testing and power training again!  W00t!

Read this opinion piece in today's Age.  Good Stuff!

In case you can't get to The Age's copy, it's here too.

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