Breathless in Brookfield

My last few morning rides have been breathtaking. Not because it's been cold (because it hasn't really been that cold), or because the frost makes even the weeds look pretty in the morning sun.

Or because the new bridge over the North West River has just been finished and it has the best pavement in Colchester County (all 300 m of it).

Gotta love that stimulus money! We should get the province to stick a couple of banked 180s at either end for the first velodrome in NS (if you've seen the way onto the MacDonald Bridge bike-path I think you'll agree that Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal clearly have the expertise)!

Or even that it is so much nicer now one can stop safely in the middle of the bridge and see the view

Rather, the aetiology behind the breathlessness is rather more organic (and self-inflicted). At the 3rd 'cross race ten days ago I had another silly little prat-fall trying to clean a steep narrow muddy leafy bit and had one of those absurdly fore-aft angled stationary moments sawing the handlebars back and forth before I went down in an undignified heap. So no change there then. I did however stick one of these fine pieces of engineering into my mid-section...


Ouf! I swore profusely (as is my want) and then got on with the thing. After all, this sort of thing is what 'cross is all about. Actually, it's also all about Duvel, frites and mayonnaise but that would have to wait!
Oh, and cowbells, but you can't eat cowbells....

Didn't have too bad a race actually. It was a muddy slippy day that slowed everyone up. I spent just as much time on my arse as the week before, but not so much due to my ineptitude this time as the conditions were as bad as I've seen. I was also running way too much air meaning I was losing what little traction was available, which definitely didn't help in the verticality stakes! All this notwithstanding I was actually feeling pretty relaxed and dialed in and even caught a couple of guys I hadn't caught before. Job done!

The conditions really took a toll. Each week maybe one guy has a mechanical and, say, flats out. It's 'cross, it's to be expected. That week there were four or five DNFs, (about ten percent of the field), all with broken chains. We must have littered the park with snapped links!

Old Bess was making funny squeaking noises but this wasn't mechanical. The bottom bracket shell (and the front fork crown for that matter too) was totally jammed with mud, grass and sticks and the wheels were barely spinning unimpeded!



I was caked to the point that you'd be wondering what colour my socks were, how high they went, what design was on them and, indeed, if I had socks on at all!


You know it was a bad day out when even the back of your number-plate is covered!


Anyway, back to that prat-fall and the thing is, ten days later it still hurts to laugh, sneeze, cough, yawn or even breathe too deeply. So you know that bulbous bit of the brifter that you hold on to, the bit that contains the working guts of it ? I think it might have cracked a rib!

That'll do it!

Still running, still riding and even raced the 'cross last week! But somewhat gingerly and definitely not out of the saddle! Aficionados will probably recognise that it was hurting just a little more than usual!


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Oh GAD

I rarely dream about bikes. If dreaming is the subconscious mind trying to make sense of your experiences, perhaps this is understandable. Bikes are one thing, perhaps the only thing, I don't have to "rationalise" and "understand" they just "are".

If bikes do make it into my dreams they are in the context of the classic anxiety dream. Being late for the start, going one way when everyone else is going the other, not being able to find my chip, losing a shoe. Or turning up in calf-high black socks, next to which turning up naked is eminently preferable. Besides, let's face it, most Sunday's we're functionally naked in public anyway, with only a single layer of high-cut lycra we fervently hope isn't too see-through between our collective modesties and the little old lady who got caught on the course while driving to church.

Last night I dreamt I was in the UK renting a bicycle. A fixed-gear bicycle. Every time I said "fixed" the rental guy said "single speed". Even when I was talking to my travelling companion, if I said "fixed" he'd "correct" me.


WTF indeed. Firstly I was in the UK, the one place I don't need subtitles under me when I speak. Or so I thought. Have I lost the ability to seak British English. Was I now speaking some mid-Atlantic collabo, mixing bits and pieces from the various (English-speaking no-less) countries I've lived into a creole that only I understand?

Secondly, I was being corrected on a point I knew something about, and indeed being corrected "incorrectly". Sure, all fixies are single-speeds but not all single-speeds are fixies. Yet the rental guy was adamently, and consistently, mis-correcting me. Grrrr.

So the dream ended, presumably when I turned over in my sleep to say to my dream-land companion (sotto voce)...

"This guy knows nothing about fixies"
"Single-speeds, sir"

...and I woke up. Not screaming or covered in the night-sweats, more a vague sense of academic disquiet; why this dream this night? I'm not worried about anything in particular, or at least I didn't think I was. Sure I worry about the usual things; did I turn the oven off, making the rent, did I use monobasic or dibasic potassium phosphate in the PBS, but who doesn't? Besides, Boston isn't for another 146 days and the dream wasn't in the traditional anxiety-dream mould anyway. If anything, things are pretty copacetic, on and off the bike. Right? Must be the cyclocross. After all, voluntarily spending 50 minutes red-lined in the granny in the mud with ominous grinding noises emanating from your hubs, bottom bracket, headset, knees, lungs and chest is enough to make one question one's most deeply held beliefs. Ya, must be the 'cross....

Red Lined in the Granny

Still getting out on the bike, just don't call it training 'cos it will spoil the fun. I look at it more as "mental health" maintenance. I seem to be progressively wearing more and more layers to the point I'm losing what little flexibility I had in the first place. Having said that I, as I can still reach the drops what more flexibility do I need? The occasional frozen toe notwithstanding, an hour in the lanes before work is infinitely better than spending an hour indoors on a bike clamped in to the hamster-wheel, especially when you see the leaves...

I finish my rides at work most mornings. I have to admit that I am lucky that the college is well prepared for cyclists! I don't think they meant to, but we ding many of the cycling-friendly points that cycling-activist groups say are important for encouraging bike commuting. The big one is changing and shower facilities. No more getting changed in the bathroom, hopping around on one foot trying to sponge-bath the grungy bits and hoping a colleague doesn't come in! The staff-lockers are fairly underused which is a good thing as you can see, I do have a tendency to spread out, especially when everything is wet. No-one has complained yet though!

The reason we have these facilities is because the college is essentially a small farm with a lecture-theatres and a tissue-culture unit built on the side. The lockers are there for staff to wash the smell out of their hair before going home. However, asides myself, the only person using the staff lockers is a colleague who works on ruminant reproduction. In the best traditions of James Herriot, he has a fine collection of coveralls with manure down one side only! So between my running shoes and Helly Hansens on one side and his James Herriots on the other, the staff lockers smell a bit like a cow's gym!

Speaking of a cow's arse, my performance at the last 'cross race was at about that level. As we discussed previously, I had never thought of my Kona socks as my "lucky cyclocross socks", a fact that was borne out only too well in by dint of the sheer amount of time I spent on my arse. Something needed to be done. Going back in time to practice a la Bill and Ted wasn't an option so instead I approached the wall of DeFeet socks at MEC to see if I could find something luckier. I plumped for a pair of gray but sunny "Life Is Beautiful"s and decided to see if they were any better.

Perhaps in addition to being not too long, kinda mud-translucent (even after the race they don't look too bad, non?) and having a funky but not outrageous flower motif, they were luckier than the Konas. Round two of the Cyclesmith Cyclocross was distinctly better than the first. Besides, what with the the complete inability to clean anything other than my own clock and more Limanda limanda than the North Sea what could be worse? The total suckitude exhibited my yours truely is probably exemplified by the following shot showing how not to negotiating the barriers.

Never mind bunny hopping these things, or even progressing over them at speed without breaking too much of your rhythm, I'm apparently stepping daintily over, lifting my bike high (by the saddle no less!) as if to keep it out of the mud! Don't want to get dirty! What a wuss!

Anyway, the last race was a lot better. The laps were longer and more technical with some gravel thrown in as well as another little muddy pitch, this little beauty here.

It doesn't look much but it claims scalps every lap! The trick is to take the line on the outside, even if it leaves you with a sharper turn once you're on level ground.

Of all the scalps it claimed, it didn't get mine, but goodness knows it tried.

Perhaps it was the socks, but it was also down to a hefty dose of "less haste more speed". Last time I was just a bit too frantic. I slowed down a bit this time and thought each obstacle through and slowing down to nail the muddy bits (and the gravel!) I kept the speed up. Cleaned everything every time (well apart from one little Limanda spp). The final finishing position still sucked (as expected) but I managed to finish on the same lap as most people, albeit at the end of that lap. but the same lap nonetheless. As you can see, it still hurt!

Which is why I'll be there next week, red-lining on the flat in the granniest of granny gears.

Speaking of being there next week the race organisers are thinking about putting on a kids race at one (or more) of the three remaining events. Spread the word!

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Cross-Dressing

OK, so I took a bit of a break. After all three weeks of updating twice-weekly can get a bit much for a guy. Anyway....

The local cyclocross season started two weeks ago. This was imeadiately followed by a week's break during which I discovered that in addition to having the best tunes, the seventh level of hell also has the best chicken. We're back at it this weekend (cyclocross that is, not music and chicken). Three weekends in a row of mud, sweat and tears and I can't wait. Java Jim Diakos sexed up some photos of last years cross provincials and the gravelly sound of Johnny Cash's voice complements not only the event but the sound of my headset and hubs afterwards.

I had to get Old Bess in shape first; the poor girl was still in touring mode and needed to be 'crossed up right quick! She's versatile, but not that versatile. Off came the pannier rack, lights, bottle-cages and any pretense of a placing. On went the 35Cs, SPDs and a generous coat of oil.

Before and after; ready for a relaxed meander in the lanes (above) and a not so relaxed meander off the lanes (below)

Race-day dawned windy and wet. The clouds blew over and the sun was out by the time we rolled to the start. It turned out to be sunny and warm in direct contradiction of http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/ and as this is an official government website, it would appear that the weather was flagrantly disobeying the party whips! After a night of rain the ground was a disgrace and this was before twenty-plus bikes had been all over it ten times each. Well, we say disgrace, I think we were all secretly glad it was muddy, probably because we all also secretly wish to be the star of our own "Sunday in Hell".

The course was very similar to last year; fast and not too technical. One carry and two sets of obstacles. The planks were close enough that for v-diff bumblies such as myself it was easier to run between the two sets rather than mount and dismount twice. This was complemented by juicy climb with a totally gratuitous 90-degree bend at the muddiest spot and, purely for recovery purposes, three descents; one on tarmac, one on mud and one on grass. As all three were liberally covered in leaves with a corner at the bottom they felt a tad manic and I think my HR was higher going down than it was going up!

Doesn't look bad from this angle, but it felt positively suicidal at the time! I don't think going off-line helps either!

I say twenty bikes, but there was a record turnout of some thirty-five. As a mass-start, the first lap was always going to be nervous, especially as we quickly funneled into singletrack and an obstacle within 100 m or so. I self-seeded myself into the final third of the pack, a conscious decision and always one that was going to be a risk. On one hand I didn't want to hold up the race. I'm not exactly the most technically adept off-roader and the last thing I wanted to be was a moving roadblock. I don't mind contributing to the outcome of a race but not when people complain the break got away because they were stuck behind fat-boy before the first climb! On the other, you're at the mercy of the bunch in front, concertinering back and forth, taking the line you're given and not the line you want and are generally more likely to get caught in a crash at the back. I'm not dissing any of the people around me, that's just the way it is.

And so it was. I rode into some guy's wheel on the first obstacle. He didn't crash all on his own, rather it was a concertina effect as he'd run into someone else, who'd ran into someone else and all the way up the chain to the guy who'd originally dropped it! Coincidently it was a guy I knew from back before at Dal and it was good to see him again, but its generally better to do the social stuff over coffee, not when your handlebars were tangled in his spokes!

I pulled myself out of the mess and started chasing. I may have lost places and was dangerously near DFL but at least I was on my own. I made a few places up straight away and then was pretty much in no-man's land for about 35 minutes when I started to lap the very occasional back-marker. I got lapped a lot though. It is always amazing to see the bike-handling at the front; the leaders (Andrew Esperance and Garrett McLeod) were drafting up-hill, down-hill and over the obstacles with nothing to separate them (Espy eventually won). It was also very polite, I guess it has to be with so many people of varying abilities packed into a short loop at the same time. A short "on your left" or "coming through" is all it takes. Oh, and not storming through a non-existant gap or cutting someone off. For your turn, all you have to do is hold your line when being overtaken (roadies are big on holding your line!).

Funny thing; that first-lap snafu totally cursed that obstacle. We'd gone down the park the day before for a bit of practice and I nailed it every time. Same on the warm-up lap. I'd round the corner, point her straight ahead and pedal. At the top there'd be what Tom Wolfe would call an "adrenal moment" when the bike was perfectly stationary where the gravitational pull back down the muddy slope would be exactly balanced by the forward force through the pedals. You'd hang for a second wondering "will I won't I?" and resisting the temptation to dab a foot before the rear dug in a bit more and you were off. That was then. Now, nada. The lap-counters say I did nine laps and I swear I didn't clean that obstacle once. Didn't matter if I went left, right or centre, either the wheels slipped out from under me, I dabbed a foot or on one lap I'd forgotten to change gear (too much fixed!) and couldn't even get the damn pedals 'round.

Evolution of a scar; 1 hr post, 1 week post, 1 year post.

One thing they say about 'cross is that you should expect to crash. Last year I picked up a nice three-suture job at the first race, so happy first birthday scar! In no way confirming the myth of "triathletes as tricky bike-handlers" the only two triathletes in the race last Sunday (I haven't done a tri since Yarmouth '06 so one wasn't me) both walked away with road-rash and/or stitches. To be fair however, it was also the first 'cross race for both of them and they were both truely entering into the spirit of 'cross. And by "spirit of 'cross" I don't mean insanely strengthed Belgian beer. Well not this week!

Pink Elephants on the course: cause or effect?

You should also bank on writing off your socks. This is no place for a nice pair of gleaming white DeFeets. The Mud Caveat is in effect here and it is acceptable to wear dark coloured socks at the 'cross (or MTBing or even a wet road-ride).

I went for a pair of gray-and-red Kona socks. I actually got these as a draw-prize at the 'cross a few years ago and even though I've worn a hole through the toe, I still wear them. I've certainly never thought of them as my "lucky 'cross socks" and given the amount of time I seemed to spend off the bike they certainly didn't bring luck on Sunday! Despite being red and (shudder) gray they do have a couple of things going for them.

Mud? What mud?

Frankly, they match. This really is important but you'd be surprised how many people don't try to match their socks with everything else. Sure, when the socks are white they'll match everything, but with colours you have to exercise some judgement! In this case the red goes well with either the Cyclesmith jersey or my Crest CC jersey (nothing goes with the Heartland Tour jersey). They even match the shoes! The length isn't too bad either; sure they may seem long but shorty short short ankle socks look silly when there's frost on the ground! Secondly, even after ten or eleven laps in the mud (or a long loop around Victoria Park) they don't look that bad either. Admittedly this may be a minor point but whilst muddy white socks at this point would look a disgrace, muddy grey-and-red socks don't and are definately the better of two evils. Speaking of acceptable socks, check out the sweet Roubaix following the race!

Now that's what I call a Roubaix sock!

I remember reading somewhere that cyclocross was "an excellent way of maintaining post-season form". This may be true, but why spoil what would ordinarily be a good time by thinking of training? Firstly, its fun. Another 40 minute ITT to the turnaround and back singing along to your mental jukebox it isn't. Every minute there's a distraction, something to do and something to do right! Unless you have a flat-lined learning curve, 'cross will improve your confidence and your bike-handling skills. Despite the naysayers who will maintain that the ability to stay upright in the mud does not translate to better bike-handling whilst in "the position" in an ITT, I think that there is some truth to this. You can also enjoy it as a true "B" race! For me, I know I suck so just getting to the end without a broken scaphoid is victory enough. For many however, the real reason may be that after 45 minutes balls-out in the mud you can eat like a goinfre, and as you can see, I did!

Post-race food is the tastiest food

Round #2 is this Sunday, Seaview Lookoff park at 11:00. It's $5 a race or 50c a lap so it's really too cheap not to. No studded tires, bar-ends or, and this should go without saying, no tri-bars! Come down and have a go, or come and have a laugh! I mean this thing makes DILB seem absolutely sane....

Miss Manners

It was the NSAC Homecoming 5K last Saturday, which was was also my first "official" 5 K in many years, if ever. They'd always seemed so short and not worth driving half- (or an even smaller fraction) way across the province for. The whole "road-to-race" ratio seemed far too small. A ten hour round-trip for the 28 hrs of the Cabot Trail Really is a pretty much unimpeachable road-to-race ratio (1:2.8). The twenty-four hour round trip for a 3hr Boston (1:0.125) seems kinda sucky but at least it's a marathon and guaranteed to be worth the trip as the marathon (not to mention getting over it) will occupy a fair amount of time. By comparison, the 6 hr round trip to the Digby 5K (1:0.042) doesn't even start to compute.

The NSAC 5K had a ratio of about 1:1.5 given it was about a ten minute drive to the start, a ratio only bettered by the Cobequid 10K which at a ten minute walk from my apartment was at ca. 1:4. In other words 5Ks may suck when you train for marathons and stuff but with a road-to-race ratio better than unity for a race that lasts minutes (and a trip shorter than the race itself) I was fresh out of excuses.

I'd love to give you a blow-by-blow of the race but I can't for the simple reason that there weren't that many blows; "start, run hard, finish as first loser" was all she wrote. The blows, such as they were, started by getting beaten by someone half my age! Then to rub NaCl into the as-yet unclosed wound, he ended up winning my age-group too. Somehow, in this event, "Open", (that is the 19-39 age-group) is synonymous with "Overall" (that is to say everybody), so the 18 y.o. Nicholas Wood (#3652 below I think, I didn't really see his face. Oh, watch for the name and under no circumstances attempt to stay on his heels, don't say I didn't warn you) won the U18 and the 19-39 categories whilst yours truly didn't even get a name-check in the weekly college e-bulletin (redefining "faculty rights and privileges").

"And they're off....". It was all a red- and-lactate tinged blur after this point

Still, I mustn't really grumble; after a health scare I should be (I am) thankful to be running at all, I am thankful that I am still able to be competitive at events, to be at the pointy end of affairs and help to make (not follow) the race, and compared to this getting name-checked (or not) in the campus newsletter is not important. Besides, it's not personal, not like Monty Mosher at the Chronically Horrid, a guy who has seemingly gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid printing my name (the print-union at the Chronic obviously charges over-rates for 'a's).

One reason my lungs still felt bruised twelve hours later was that I posted a PB 17:24, and it was only a PB because I couldn't remember running one before! The idiot box gave an average pace only slightly higher than riding 68" fixed into a stiff headwind, which I found scarily sobering. Something else that is sobering is that at Canada Games Matt Piggot ran way faster than I did last Saturday, but after the swim and the bike.

La belle posted a PB 21:15, taking 15 seconds off her Lung Run time. The record should show that unlike the pan-flat Lung Run course, the NSAC course has a couple of hills in the first 2K which are nowhere near compensated for by the net downhill in the last 2 km as you've likely already shot your bolt on the climbs! She should have been 30th, but had to settle for 31st when she was outsprinted in the chute by a guy she'd passed a mile earlier and his very momentum seemed to carry him to the Popsicle-stick lady first. Kudos to buddy for making up the time but to outsprint a lady for 30th place, let's just say even Mark Stein seemed to look on with a slight air of "Duuude, WTF?"

Etiquette. I'm a roadie and I'm British which means I've got manners and etiquette stored up for the most unlikely situations; probably even etiquette on etiquette. What can I say? It's genetic (like apologising for everything, but that's another story).

Always remove your hat to a lady; especially if it's an IronMan visor.

This blog is ostensibly about clothing etiquette, but finish-line etiquette seems to be equally as obscure to some and exposition is clearly required. When it gets to the point that even Mark Stein (who has stood at more finish lines than I've had hot dinners) goes "duuuude, WTF", the time has come to act. Or write a long, polite note (does it get any more British than that? I'm sorry).

In our line of work the sprint is something special and like Grandma's fine china, you only get it out for special occasions. Only sprint "for something". The podium or money are the only things to come to mind really. If you aren't sprinting for the podium or money, what are you sprinting for? 30th? In a field of 70? In a local race? Nice. That'll look good on your palmares.

Call me old-fashioned (and if you do it will be the nicest thing I'll have been called all week) but endurance sports are all about pace, are they not? What separates a Rami Bardessey from the rest of us, apart from no fast-twitch muscles whatsoever, zero body-fat and a camel-like ability to survive without food or water (and yet it's me who has the hump!) is the ability to measure his effort so that he hits the line with nothing left, having used every last molecule of ATP getting from A to B as fast as he can. If you have something left to sprint to the line with, then you didn't leave it all on the course. What's the point in trying to save two or three seconds in the final 100 m when with a more careful application of your reserves, you could have saved two or three seconds per kilometer. It doesn't take a Stephen Hawking to prove that three seconds saved per kilometre, in even a 5K, is "better" for your time than saving three seconds in the final sprint.

Use these wisely, use them sparingly but use them all on the course, and by course we don't mean "finishing chute"

There are of course, a couple of exceptions to the general "all on your own, mid-pack and still sprinting" embargo. If you hit the finishing straight and you know that a personal best or a Boston qualifier is on the cards then by all means lunge for the line, although given the mathematics of it you'd probably be better off starting to wind it up from a couple of kilometers out rather than scattering finish-line volunteers like nine-pins. I accept these exceptions and have taken advantage of them myself but given the volume of "sprints" that I see, please don't try and convince me that everyone is always seconds away from a PB or a bus to Hopkinton.

Sprinting to get a time to go here is fine, sprinting just to get a time is not!

What is worse than sprinting for 142nd is outsprinting a lady. Convention once required us to hold doors open for women and let them go first. What held true in the hallways and drawing rooms of Victorian England still holds true in the 21st century finishing chute. Whilst accepting that there are few doors on a race-course, this doesn't abrogate your responsibility to let the lady go first. How fragile can your ego possibly be that it will be assuaged by sticking to a F30-39 age-grouper in the Sprint to claim 63rd? That's really going to bolster your reputation as a hard-man come race day. Classy!

However, the crime even more heinous than outsprinting a lady is outsprinting the lady who has paced you all the way. What better way to thank her for all the hard work she has done by nipping in front of her at the line? She's done the graft, she gets the applause. Simple. There are, again, a couple of exceptions. One is she's a pace-bunny. Once you put on the silly ears and the "Follow Me 10-and-1" T-shirt you have abdicated all rights and responsibilities to a place, a time and sometimes even a prize (not to mention your dignity!). As pace-bunnies we pretty much pace, promise, plead, support, cajole and threaten you to within sight of the line and then let you go for your moment of glory. In fact, if we do our jobs right, we won't even be on your finish-line photo. So if she's wearing ears, you can go for it.

You can outsprint the Pace Bunny, but first you have to stay with the Pace Bunny!

The second exception is that you have made a prior agreement. And I do mean prior, I don't mean within sight of the line. I mean many, many miles down the course. It can be implicit, it can be explicit. Try asking "let's work together for the next x miles", try asking "wanna go for it?". Either way, so long as you both know that after a certain point, the race is on, then it's fair. You might want to wait for the sprint, she might want to go for the long flier but with 100m to go there's no point asking a "long flier"if she wants to make a race of it; she wanted to know twenty minutes ago! Once the race is on, all's fair in love and war apart from an egregiously-thrown elbow and so long as you both fully understand this, it's OK.

Oh, and apart from looking good when you cross the line; jersey zipped up and straight, shades on and a big smile there's one more, slight point of finishing-chute etiquette those of us in reflective vests would like to ask of you; please don't vomit on the head of the chip-retrieval person!

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Dogma va Reality

This morning was the first time this season that temperatures in Nova Scotia were below 0C, with the (virtual) mercury in Truro at around -3. That said, the sun was shining and the wind had completely died. It was a great morning for a ride, even if it was a short "extended commute" rather than anything more serious.


It felt like a winter's day in the UK and no matter how much a Brit will whinge about their weather, it rarely gets colder than it was this morning in Blighty. Buy yourself some peace and remind any and all expats you know in NS about this today. After the initial surprise stepping out into minus temperatures, it really was a great day to ride. There was still some warmth to the sun and the way it shone off the frost and ice was nothing but magical. Plus, sleeping in and leaving later than usual meant what traffic there usually is (and this is Truro remember) was already at work whining about having to scrape their windshield in October, leaving the lanes all for me.


It was definitely a fixie morning. The tribars are off the Lemond now, as much as to coordinate with the uber-traditional woolen Flemish cycling cap under my helmet as it was that the things are a genuine pain in the arse(and ugly too).

The Lemond looks a lot more relaxed after Riverport

There is a definite relationship between cold and discomfort in my hands and feet and interestingly, they are opposites. I wonder if I've inherited my mother's northern European hands and my father's south-east Asian feet. My hands (solid line, -), though initially cold, acclimatise pretty quickly to a cold day of ice-age foraging whilst my feet (dashed line, ---) are initially macho "Cold? Meh!" but after 30 minutes are whining like a child on a road-trip "are we nearly there yet?". The relationship looks something like this;

If 0 is "sitting on couch comfort" and 1.0 is "OMG!" then the "discomfort" in my hands is almost asymptotic for the first ten minutes or so, to the extent that if someone offered to amputate my fingers in this time my only question would be should the prosthetics should be steel, titanium or crabon? This feeling of acute "arghh" soon abates as, unfortunately, my feet slowly freeze! The intersection between the two lines, where both hands and feet are equally tolerable, is temperature dependant. On a morning like this, and dressed as I was, it was about 40 minutes, which as luck would have it was as long as I was out for.

Now, here at Socksnob we aren't dogmatically rigid. We recognise that in the real world the ideal cannot always be maintained. Ideology may require, for instance, white, ankle-length socks but this image shouldn't be maintained at the cost of losing a toe. On days like this morning we are quite comfortable to break the taboo in the interest of keeping a full complement of digits. Which explains this morning's dress-code; yes, that is a whack-load of grey and black!

The nice thing about long tights is that they cover a multitude of sins, or in our case lengths and colours, but this doesn't mean you can completely let go. So we offer this morning's sock, the Balega Trail, as this week's Sock Of The Week. These are pretty much the comfiest socks I have. A bit longer than talus high means they can be both worn with shorts for running (and I ran all last winter in Balega Trails) and they're high enough to wear with tights. Plus they are woolly and warm! Plus there is the mud caveat, which we'll investigate in more detail later but suffice to say a nice pair of white socks can be irretrievably ruined by the end of the driveway and unless your sponsor keeps you in socks then darker colours can be worn (and even embraced) as long as approached and worn with caution.

Here's hoping Aerobics First gets a new stock of Balegas

This segues nicely into the first reader question (and I'm surprised as you to find there are actual readers apart from myself obsessively proof-reading entries). "Should I match my outfit to my bike?" asks x of Canada. Well x, obviously colour coordination should always be your first choice but unless you are a sponsored pro where all your kit, from your track-mits to your frame-decals are matched, this is going to be impossible. It's one thing to have a couple of helmets so you can sorta match with reddish, blueish and black n' whitish jerseys (none of your jerseys are yellow, right? Good!) but to have a stack of bikes to do the same? Plus, do you really want to be constrained to only wearing this jersey on this bike and only this one on that one. Then what do you do with the '09 Heartland Tour jersey, seemingly and unerringly chosen to clash with everyones bike?

That green '09 Heartland Tour jersey on an orange bike? Smile and the world smiles
with you (and hopefully doesn't notice the orange bike and/or are deuteranopic)

As long as the kit internally matches itself and at the same time keeps you warm (or dry or whatever the day requires/demands) then an e.g. blue jersey on an e.g. yellow bike is acceptable. Take your care over the jersey/jacket/gloves/socks/cap (your tights and shorts are all black so there are no problems there, right?) and don't worry that your bike was only offered in fluorescent-orange-fades-to-neon-pink that year. Whatever you are wearing, wear it with a certain insouciance, a certain "just a little something I threw on this morning", wear it with confidence, wear it with a spring in your step (although that may only be your cleats, perhaps we should say "wear it spinning at 100 rpm instead") and wear it with a smile and only your style will be noticed, and not the lime-green bike you're sitting on.


Happy colour-matching.

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Recycling the Cycle

Another sign of my continuing Canadiansiation. The UK is a tiny island and England, although accounting for 2/3 of it, does not rank highly in the "large geographical entities" table. It rather reminds one of what is said about Rhode Island, that is only exists to be compared to things vastly larger or smaller then it, such as France, the Vatican City, the daily deforestation amounts in the Amazon or the hood of a '54 Cadillac Eldorado.

Seriously though, England is on a par with Nova Scotia for size. A crow would only have to fly 565 km to get from Hastings (on the Channel coast) to Coldstream (in the Scottish borders). To drive it is about 700 km, which also happens to be the approximate distance from the Yarmouth Triathlon to Heart of the Highlands.

Despite the incredibly close geographical proximity of just about everything, driving in the UK has, or at least had, the air of something not to be undertaken lightly. They say that no place in the UK is more than 60 km from the ocean and yet going to the seaside usually takes on an air of epic proportions; service the car, fill it with emergency rations and (for all I know) a locator beacon, take high-resolution Ordnance Survey maps not just of the route but of all adjacent areas (in case you get lost) and obsess about taking the A24 all the way there with the attendant traffic or trying the avoid the Greater Whinging roundabout by taking the B3256 and B6472 but having the possibility of delays due to sheep-crossing ("but it is so much more scenic dear, and your grandmother would love to stop for tea at that little place in Lower Mold-by-the-Vein").

Certainly no Brit in their right mind would jump in a car with nary a thought for a 200 mile round-trip in an evening, but recently I did just that to collect Old Bess from a friend who’d borrowed her for a bike-tour. The trip came with the realization that after nine years in the Maritimes this actually seemed to be a fairly short excursion. Indeed I was congratulating myself that it was only a quick dash to and from Moncton rather than having to drive all the way to Bathurst or something. Plus I got dinner at St Hubert!

200 miles for chicken, gravy and a Pouding chômeur; who wouldn't?

It’s good to have Old Bess back. We often attribute personalities to our bikes and Old Bess is a real trooper. She always does me right, goes where I want her to go and does so without complaining. I couldn’t say I love any of my bikes more than any other but when push came to shove, it was Old Bess that I decided to keep. She’s definitely La Doyenne, and I’ve done what any self-respecting roadie does and tart her up with hand-me-downs from my racing bikes. Originally specc’d with a triple, dubious low-end Shimano (and that’s what you could see, I shudder to think what the BB and headset were, and curiously enough the words "headset" and "shudder" were often linked) and very dubious V-brakes she’s now rocking 9spd Ultegra, a sweet little compact and a pair of bombproof cantis, some of which has trickled down from erstwhile "Sunday Best" racing bikes.

After placing me in the recovery position, Old Bess takes a well deserved post-race breather

In this day of crabon windcheating goodies, I think this recycling aspect of cycling has gone by the wayside. The old boys in my old club all had amazing tourers and winter “beaters”; all Campy and Mavic. What they had done is ask the age-old question whenever they bought something for their Sunday racer; “but when I’m done with it can I put it on my touring bike?”. Far too many of us fail to ask this question and are stuck with a shed-full of full-on racing kit which is only used three times a year. Sure, spend $2000 on an aerodynamic wheel-set but unless you are a pro it is, frankly, of dubious utility, and you can’t go touring on Zipp 404s! The "kit-isation" of cycling doesn't help either; nothing is compatible with anything else nowadays. Gone are the days of nonchalently mixing Shimano levers with Campy derallieurs and a Stronglight crankset! It has reached absurd extremes; Cadel Evens may well have lost the '09 Vuelta because his DS was worried he'd got an incompatible wheel from neutral service (he hadn't and anyway, can you imagine that happening to Merckx?).

It is more appropriate to suffix "Tour" with "ing" and not "de France"!Old Bess in full-on touring mode.

So many people buy new bits, or even a new bike, and immediately sell the old stuff on Ebay. Yet eventually they will end up shelling out another couple of grand on a lower end bike for commuting, early season training or a wet-weather bike. Oh yes triathletes, not only do we ride in the rain we do so with a frequency that requires a specific bicycle, and with fenders no less (fenders, although often dirty, are not a dirty word). In reality, you should keep all that Tiagra or 105 stuff when you upgrade to Red or Chorus. Find a nice frame (preferably steel) and graft all your old racing stuff onto it; et voila, a sweet little ride that cost (relatively speaking) next to nothing, because you already owned most of it. Something always needs to be bought new however, more than likely a headseat or BB (because there are more HS and BB “conventions’ than there were schisms in the early church) but other than that, you get that new bike smell for a fraction of the cost. Plus you get the satisfaction of riding a one-off that you built yourself. In this day of generic, cookie-cutter crabon “monocoques” with low-end mish-mashed drivetrains and a Bonkranger cockpit what isn't sweeter than that?

Glow in the dark handlebar tape? I don't care if it is Cinelli - NO!!

Just do us all a favour and don’t make a “statement” with the handlebar tape!

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