The Moody Bugle

Le Tour Survives

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:18:23 GMT

When you love a sport, it's difficult to see participants treat it with anything less than respect.

When you love a sport, it's difficult to see, or hear, or read, of reporters treating it with disrespect.

I don't care if it's cricket or rugby or checkers or NFL football. If you love a sport, the action, the emotion, the theoretical nuances of it, you know it deserves a measure of respect, even from those who simply "don't get it," or worse, don't care.

In my case, it's the sport of professional cycling.

Those who don't care are the nitwit riders who have tried to get away with the latest syringe full of endurance or power or speed and have gotten caught, just as the race officials at the Tour de France said they would be, as the tour boosted all its anti-doping programs and protocols. Three riders have been nailed so far, one of them being "The Cobra," Ricardo Ricco, who sailed to two stage wins before being nailed and hauled off by the French police.

Which, oddly enough, I'm pleased to see.

I love the sport and the power and the pain and the image of people pushing themselves beyond their normal limits to reach the top of a mountain and achieve something almost other worldly. And, yet, I'm also big on doing it clean. Which is why I've been a big supporter of Jonathan Vaughters and the Garmin-Chipotle team, the Columbia (High Road) team, and all the ASO efforts to "Take Back the Tour."

ASO and UCI have (separately) done a lot to change the atmosphere in the peloton internationally from a doping culture to a clean one. It's not there yet. In some cases, it may never be, as people still like to see the high speed race leading to the gargantuan win, but, the attempt is being made, while other major sports, including American baseball and football, are pretty much paying anti-doping efforts nothing more than lip service, the flurry of management and Congressional handwringing over the possibility fading into the background as the seasons play out.

As for those who simply "don't get it," namely the sportswriters and columnists and TV commentators who blast the sport at every turn and highlight the doping (rather than the dopes who did it and got caught), it grows tiresome.

Look, I hate the cheaters as much as you do. Probably more, because I'm invested in the sport. They make me angry, they make me disappointed. They tarnish my enjoyment of the event. But don't paint the entire sport with the same brush just because you don't see the appeal. Like many other sports and foods and cultures you don't understand at all, Le Tour is an amazing process.

As for the cheaters, they are being caught -- by French authorities, by racing officials. Something is being done. One of greatest (and most difficult) sporting spectacles in the world is trying to clean up its act, in public, on an international stage.

That takes some guts.

At least give the riders and the race officials credit for that.

Bike Racing for Everyone in Ft. Collins

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:04:20 GMT

To those who race bikes, Six Day Races are exactly what they sound like: races that last six days on a bike without a break.

And, yet, a group of riders and racing promoters in Fort Collins have taken that title and given it a new twist: Six Days of racing on six Sundays in a row, through May and into June, on the .4 of a mile CSU Oval in the middle of campus.

And what racing it is!

Slideshow: Photos of June 2's races

There are numerous categories, involving every possible age group, bicycle type, skill level and gender.

There are races for licensed, adult riders on track bikes and road bikes, as you might imagine.

But, then, there are races for kids, ages 7-12 and 13-17 on bikes that range from cut down road bikes to BMX bikes, pink pastel first bikes to tricked out speedsters.

Or, anyone, of any age, on a cruiser bike gets their own category and races as well. One guy, in fact, raced a classic Stingray style bike with a banana seat. He took a magnificent face plant in the last ride of the day. He was okay.

The race styles change as well, from one lap Chariot races, to multi lap points races (with $$ prizes) to 3 lap "Win and Out" races. The packs of racers are big, the sprints are very fast, and the entire program moves very quickly. And that's because the program is so well planned and laid out. There is never a break in the action. The crowds on hand, and they were considerable, were never at a loss for something to watch. (Including a track stand competition, where riders balanced on their bikes, without pedaling, for two minutes and 45 seconds, first with two hands on the handlebars, then one, then none. Winner carried off a Chipotle burrito. I fear I would have carried off a broken arm.)

It was a great way to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. And I can't wait to go back again.

There are two more Sundays of racing left this season, June 8 and June 15 (Rain Date: June 22). Admission to watch is free. There is a $10 entry fee to race.

For more information on watching, racing, check out the website for the Fort Collins Velodrome Association: fcvelodrome.org

(My thanks to Christy Barry for his marvelous pictures of the day in Ft. Collins. See the complete cbs4denver.com slideshow.)

RIGHT IN THE MEEDLE OF BROADWAY

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:11:07 GMT

After all that time spent in the gym, I figured it was about time to get into some serious pedaling. If I recall correctly from last year, about this time o' the year, I was trying to climb Squaw Pass Road (Is THAT happening again?) and Lookout. And even with that climbing, I realized on Ride the Rockies that I had fallen short in a very serious way -- seat time. Mon derriere was not quite accustomed to 3-6-8 hours in the saddle. My sit-upon could not be sat upon.

So, I've abandoned the gym until after the Ride, holding onto the active stretching knowledge that I got from Dan Linsacum to work up to enough flexibility to get my leg over the saddle, and have been riding on a regular basis. At the moment, I'm riding two different bikes, one is THE BIKE, the 2007 Specialized Roubaix Expert Triple, which is my go-to bike whenever the mood is upon me and the ride is important. (It's the primary bike and I've named it THE DONALD after my late father. I figured that naming it thus would give him one more chance to carry me on his back through a crisis as he did, oh, so many times before.)

The secondary bike is no slouch, either. It's a 2007 LeMond Versailles, which I use as my rain and station bike. It, too, has a triple chain ring and comfort geometry, plus a range of 30 different gears, like the Roubaix.

How I wound up with two bikes, after having none as of last February, is an interesting story, get me sloshed sometime on the Ride and I'll tell you all about it.

So, anyway, on the weekends, during the week, during working hours (gosh, I hope the boss doesn't see this), I've been out pedaling. Any time to get the seat time.

Then, today, as I was flying down Broadway (start-stop-start-stop-start), a small pickup truck pulled over to the side of the street. A woman got out and gestured for me to stop. For a second, I thought I was getting nicked by Law Enforcement for an obscure cycling law (46.2 (a) -- Too Big a Butt for Too Small a Seat), but in fact it was Phyllis Boccuzzi (of Boccuzzifitness.com), an elite fitness coach and USCF/USOC licensed coach. We stood for a while on Broadway, chatting away, while traffic passed within inches, drivers honking, yelling, making interesting gestures of a singular nature, and Phyllis told me that she had been watching the training stories and that there was no surprise to her in the fact that my knees hurt on a regular basis. From her perspective, I was "crushing" the pedals. Crank, shift weight, albeit slightly, crank, shift weight, grind, churn, crank, crush. It gives you an odd "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh" sound as you ride, rather than the steady hum you should hear.

She told me to work on my pedal stroke to smooth it out, balance the effort, increase the efficiency, power and cadence. Without doing that, whatever miles I might put in would be junk. Make them work for you.

It was great advice. Out of the blue. Right there in the middle -- the MEEDLE -- of Broadway on a Wednesday afternoon.

What a moment.

And I couldn't help but think, as I pedaled (smoothly) toward Wash Park, what other sport contains people who will just pull over in the middle of the street, in the middle of a work day, toss out a bit of advice, shake your hand and drive or ride away?

Only cycling. It's a rare breed.

How's It Going? Better Than I Thought!

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:08:23 GMT

Time is growing short. Ride the Rockies is, what, six, seven weeks away? But am I getting any stronger?

I'm cross training like nobody's business, both to be ready for Ride the Rockies and what I hope to accomplish at the Velodrome track in the Springs. But I've got to wonder -- how's it going, other than slowly?

I don't know if it's the age or the mileage, but it has been a lot tougher to catch up with where I was last summer than it was to get there the first time. I'm getting there, but it's slow progress. Trainer Dan Linsacum is driving the cross training bus for me, and he's trying to make me succeed without serious breakage.

First, we always do something called active stretching. Five different exercises, five reps each, two sets, just to get the blood moving and the parts stretched out a bit. There's very little rest inbetween. 10-15 seconds, max.

Than, an energy development program, which is, essentially, cardio with resistance. That's on the Stairmaster today, with 10, 20 and 30 second intervals, ten to twenty minutes total, depending on the rest of the day.

That's followed by two groups of resistance training for strength and cardio (It always comes back to cardio. You'd think I almost had a heart attack once or something.) Romanian dead lifts are followed by BOSU push up, arm and leg raises (which are easy, I love 'em) and then a second set of exercises, with squat pulls, a one legged shoulder press (for balance) and tossing the old medicine ball around.

About then, I had to ask Dan: How am I doing?

"Your effort is 100 percent. There's no problem there. In fact, sometimes, I've got to slow you down a little. All these exercises are aimed at a goal, which is Ride the Rockies. A second goal, is to lose 30 pounds. I'm glad that's the SECOND goal. We'll lose the weight as your activity increases. Right now we want to focus on strength and balance and endurance."

Then, the capper for the day is a few minutes of boxing. I like boxing. I like to spike my heart rate. I like to punch things. It all makes me a much nicer person at the end of the day. Much nicer. Even you might like me.

Ah, but the weight -- the weight. It keep clawing at me, like a two ton mosquito in the middle of the night. Look. If you're under 50 and you've got to lose some weight, a bit of advice. Lose it now. Once you pass 50, you're going to discover that your body hangs onto weight like crazy Aunt Marge hangs onto her cats and old newspapers. It gets harder and harder to lose. No matter what the effort.

One thing I've realized -- I was always able to 'cheat' a bit in the past and get away with it on the scale. No more. Despite the siren song of the dessert tray that I still hear each and every night.

Oh, my.

******************

AN UPDATE:

After my story on the cross training program ran, Trainer Dan Linsacum decided to see if we had made any progress AWAY from the scale. It turns out that we have. In the two months of training we've completed, my body fat has dropped by more than two percentage points, my blood pressure has taken a nose dive, from 138/99 in February to 115/84 this week. My shoulders, biceps, thighs, calves and forearms have grown, while my waist has somehow misplaced a full 2 1/2 inches. No wonder my pants fit. Well, fit better.

So, we are on the right track. The weight is not necessarily going away -- depending on when I weigh, what I wear and which scale I use (and if I'm thinking light and airy thoughts), I'm down anywhere from 1.5 to 5.5 pounds.

None of that -- and I mean none of that -- is bad.

We're on the right track.

And just seeing those numbers has put me in a tremendous mood.

A Participant, Not a Spectator

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:15:00 GMT

Over the past few weeks, I've been dealing with a midlife crisis of sorts. (Midlife, HA! How many 100 year old Moodys do you know?) I've been bothered by my exercise efforts, which seem supreme ("Can't Bre-a-the"), versus my exercise results (slow weight loss, slow return of fitness, hips that feel like they're coated with sandpaper). Anyway, if you've been following this blog, you know the riff I've been playing. Darned depressing, if you ask me.

But, today, I got a boost. The workout wasn't any easier, but I did stick with it, even when I couldn't seem to catch my breath. I made it all the way through, including a few moments of high heart rate were I looked at the monitor and dimly realized that if it went a few beats higher, a red light would go on between my ears, a bell would ring and I'd win a free ride in an ambulance.

Anyway, there I was, walking between exercises (schlumping between exercises) when Ted, a friend of mine at Matrix Fitness, wandered past and said, "You know, it may hurt to put in the effort you're putting in every day over here, but remember something -- at the end of the day, you're a participant. There are participants in life and spectators. You're a participant."

And, somehow, that made me feel a lot better.

No, I'll never be able to race Taylor Phinney. (I could. I'd lose.)

I'll never see 145 pounds again -- until I've been dead for a couple of months.

I'll never this. I'll never that.

But, as my wife and other friends keep reminding me, "You're trying."

I am. I am awfully trying.

I may not be good. I may not be fast. I may not be thin.

But I'm in the game.

I'm a participant. The gym. The track. Ride the Rockies.

I'm a participant.

That is the greatest compliment I've heard in years.

Struck by a Reality Overload

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:20:11 GMT

So, Tuesday afternoon, I was up in Boulder at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, talking to Juniors World Champion Cyclist Taylor Phinney, son of Connie Carpenter Phinney and Davis Phinney. We chatted for a few moments, a humble, focussed kid and an ego-driven, highly unfocussed reporter, then set up to videotape one of his training sessions. Taylor was joined by other riders, a group that included state champs, solid riders and promising juniors: Jamie, Jesse, Janek, Robin and Coach Neal Henderson.

On computer trainers, Henderson put the group through an interval training session, taking them up to max, then pushing beyond, with eight intervals for 40 seconds, followed by 20-second breaks, a drop down to easy pedaling, back up to max for 7 intervals of 40 seconds each, followed by the 20 second break, then again, through intervals of 6-40's and 20s.

Hey, I thought, that's nothin! I've done that many intervals.

So fat, so silly, so full of hot air.

I hadn't bothered to look at the gearing the guys where riding in, or the resistance on the trainer. These guys, these high school students, where ALL in the BIG RING up front and one of the small guys in the back, like 51-53 x 12-14. Those are the gears I use when I'm riding downhill. Like down a mountain side. They were using them for their regular interval training -- with resistance -- and -- early on, anyway -- no one was really breaking a sweat.

That came later. As did the look, the sounds of effort.

For me, those sounds come earlier. Much earlier. Like during warm up.

And, suddenly, I had an epiphany.

Who the hell was I kidding?

I'm not a racer. I'm not even that much of a rider. I can do enough not to embarrass myself in front of small children, but anyone who knows anything has only got to look at my form to determine that God did not build me for such activities.

It's like that way with pretty much everything.

I play bridge, but I can't keep the suits straight. (A cousin lobbed a soda bottle at my head after one particularly stupid play.)

In chess, which I love, I'm a patzer, a patsy, an easy mark.

In cribbage, I'm an easy skunk.

In golf, which I played for years, including two on the high school team, I'm clearly a duffer. (Ask me sometime about the slice off the tee in Three Rivers, Michigan, that darned near took out the front window of a passing car ... hoo-hah!)

In most of what I do, especially when it comes to athletic activity, I'm an amateur. Not a gifted amateur, mind you, an amateur, pure and simple. One step, perhaps, above a novice, thanks to the books and equipment I've bought along the way, but a beginner, nonetheless.

In the end, I'm essentially stumbling down the road, bumbling down the path and wobbling around the track -- and it is the track that has got me worried.

I mean, you see somebody really, and I mean, REALLY good, like Taylor Phinney and his roomful of compatriots, and you really begin to question your own lopsided passion for a sport that torques your back and burns your knees and gives you a set of saddle sores that even Gene Autry would admire. You question your bike handling skills, skills that will be necessary, if not life-saving, on the track. You question your speed, your endurance and your will to do it. You even question your courage, as you realize that you're stepping outside your comfort zone in a way that may just bite back. Even Taylor Phinney told me, "Those mass start races on the track? Wow, they can get dicey."

And he's a World Champion!

All these thoughts keep crowding into my head like a bunch of empty, worthless boxes being stuffed into the walk-in attic of my mind. They threaten to push aside the passion and the joy and the thrill of not only riding, but taking on a new challenge every year, another route for Ride the Rockies, another way to ride as fast as I possibly can in a circle with 33% walls. I want to move them out, but they tend to take root quickly and refuse to leave.

But, then again.

Maybe ... maybe ... if I just say 'the hell with it," and go ride my bike.

That should blow the stink off me. That might just move a few boxes.

That's -- is a plan.

Too Cold? Suit Up and Ride Your Bike!

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:42:08 GMT

My wife thought I was nuts, which, to be honest, is nothing new in our relationship, but she may have had a point. After all, it was snowing, 20 degrees and I was dressing to go ride. There are conditions I won't ride in, thunderstorms, for instance, as the Moody Family Tree has a strange attraction for random bolts of electricity, and, maybe ice storms, as traction tends to go downhill as quickly as I fall over, but when it's merely cold, or just raining or merely snowing to the point of slop on the roads, I'll ride. I'll ride because that's what I do.

It's not a matter of being nuts, it's a matter of having the right gear. The right tires, certainly, the right bike, definitely, but certainly, above all else, the right clothing.

Riding into work when it's 15, 20 or 25 degrees is certainly doable (if, you can stay out of the wind and keep your eyes from turning into two frozen grapes). And it's fun. You ponder the cold at the start, question why you're crazy enough to do this, but eventually drop into the rhythm and just plain ride.

If, again, you have the right clothing.

I'm riding with mostly Descente winter gear, from socks to tights (and, oh, they are cute, believe you me ... I look like an olive on toothpicks), base layer to long sleeve jersey, jacket to gloves. And all of it wicks away the moisture from my skin, allowing it to evaporate away from me and thus keeping me warmer, longer. (Nothing worse than having a pair of old wool tights that get soggy about half way through the ride and then freeze to my knees). There are a lot of great companies out there, making a lot of great gear, but check the ratings and quality for all of it with cycling magazines and your local bike shop.

Nothing makes a ride more miserable than gear that even lets too much in or keeps too much out. Theres a delicate balance between the two.

Sure, it's cold, but on the other hand, you can't simply wait for the great days to get in your miles.

Every day is a day to ride.