Munning about

I went 'Munning about' too today. On roads that used to be familiar but, that in the absence of my two training partners from the North Western suburbs, Casey Munro and Mitch Docker, have become a rare treat indeed.

It was a good ride, and to be honest I don't have much to say about it, apart from the fact that autumn can really be a nice time of year around these parts.

Oh and that this is I think my favourite road name amongst a plethora of odd and often repetitive road names that you find out in Australia.

I actually wanted to photograph this sign a long time ago as the NO THROUGH ROAD sign was dangling at a perfectly dishevelled angle that made for a cool shot. As always though when training alone I was reluctant to stop and get the phone out to capture said image, so I kept leaving it. Then today I was of course so startled to find the sign fixed that I made myself stop and take the picture.

WILD DOG CREEK - it's all in the name.

Well cobble me..

As I may previously have mentioned, I do love this city. I consider myself pretty lucky to spend roughly half my time (and all of my off season time) in Melbourne Australia. It just seems to have it all, and as much as I try to explore the place there always seems to be more to find, do and experience.

Aside from the cafes, the bars, the rooftop cinemas, the laneways and streets that make up my experience of this city, there seems to be so much more to be found. I am a particularly bad explorer when left to my own devices, but I do have a penchant for being led to some great places, and on some interesting journeys.

I happened to be lucky enough recently, to have had the call answered to experience Melbourne.. or Melburn as she is now known, in all it's cobbled glory. In the company of two great explorers - my main man and fellow Glowing Young Ruffian Munners and Andy from the great Fyxomatosis, who joined me for a day of alley bashing along the route of the Melburn Roobaix event that I will one day take part in (see the non-race race calendar).

What a jolly time we had, I have no idea how Andy finds these roads - admittedly some of the harder ones are used every year for the event, but most of the fun it has to be said, is finding your way about the route. Checking for painted arrows on the roads, and turning left at the same time as the guy who knows where he is going.

Here is a rather cool set of pics, that featured on fyxomatosis, of the day.

Thanks Chaps.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44948571@N03/sets/72157625966108350/show/

T x >ƒ = V but does V = F?

There are many useless myths that float aimlessly around the cycling world and, to be honest, I kind of like it. It reminds me of the arcane world that cycling used to be, and just how gullible and how much I wanted to be a bike rider, that these little myths could actually dictate my lifestyle and thoughts for so many years.

Even back in my impressionable late teens and early twenties I knew that some of these myths were absolute rubbish, but I’m not going to write a blog busting them all right now. You can work them out for yourselves, that’s where the fun is after all.

There was one myth though, that I will admit, did indeed suck me right in. It was that ever so enticing, and curiously believable equation: Veins = Form.

In my first year on the national team I remember being told by a slightly older (and therefore influential) rider, that Charly Wegelius always knew when he was going well because he could see the veins in his stomach.

Like an idiot, I then spent years looking desperately for veins, in my legs, in my stomach, anywhere. Sitting in hotel rooms in my underpants with the heater on full, waiting in a state of desperate dehydration until that magical form that was going to get me a contract with Mapei would spring forth like a road map from my thighs.

Just like that elusive Mapei contract, those coveted veins never did arrive. No matter how well I actually went I just wouldn’t see a vein. So I gave up the hunt, got my head down and eventually found my way in the cycling world.

Now lately something funny has happened. I have found myself arriving into the new cycling season in possibly the worst form of my life; I can barely get out of my own way at the moment, I struggle in club races and my legs just seem to hurt this is, without wanting to sound too much like a wanker – a bit of a new phenomenon for me.

Seriously not being sure of your form is a nightmare at this time of year. It feels like I’m stuck in that lane of non-moving cars in the middle of the motorway, unable to pull out and get going because the cars are flying by too fast. Desperately searching for the gaps and hovering indecisively over the accelerator just isn’t good. It’s frustrating, and it’s just not fun.

What I am hinting at is that I am acutely aware of my potential inability to make a bike go fast for minimal effort, or if you want to look at it with an alternate perspective – it takes a lot of effort just to make my bike go slowly, and yet, my legs look like this:

Go and ahem… Figure…

The Race, Race, Race Calendar.

Now I’m in no condition to really comment, but I am going to anyway. By this I do not mean that I am in any way inebriated, I have just popped the cap on my first imported beer of the evening, and I dare say it will be the one and only tonight. I am in fact talking about my fitness levels; they are just ok, but not startling; normal I would of thought for this time of year, but nowhere near good enough it seems.

You see, I have to say; things really seem to be changing, the season really truly has begun. People are already going very fast in search of the publicity that their team sponsors are paying for. It might be January the 17^th (probably the 18^th, by the time I finish this) but it is on.

This isn’t in itself that surprising; the writing has been on the wall a while. Ten to fifteen years ago a guy called Francesco Cabello of the Kelme team, changed the game of pro cycling just a little bit. He became the only ever specialist at the previously unheralded Trofeo Mallorca, and slowly inched the parameters of the cycling season, and indeed the cycling world, a little closer to the end of the previous year.

Cabello was a pretty decent rider, who under normal circumstances would have won the odd race here and there, but instead decided he would focus his entire season on the early season races. He would have made a good card player Cabello, because he had simply worked out the odds, he was in the publicity game and he wanted to make sure he would get his.

Races such as Trofeo Mallorca, Luis Puig, and the Ruta Del Sol, had been traditionally pretty laid back ‘training’ races of little importance. However with the modern media beginning its snowball towards the Twittering, jabbering, insatiable, instantaneous beast that it has become, there was an increasing focus on these races. The value of these races, in column inches, photographs and public interest was in fact greater than the worth they had as races.

Winning here was the equivalent of winning a sprint up a mountain on a training camp, and getting put on the cover of a magazine for it.

Cabello would go to altitude in November and December to be ready for these early races, so he clearly wasn’t quite right, but he certainly started something.

Fast forward a few years and I have recently competed in the most fiercely competitive Bay Criterium series anyone has ever known. The absolute cream of Australian cycling took part in the series, as well as a full squad from team Sky.

Team Sky’s presence was interesting, not because they have several Australians on board, but because it costs $10,000 to put a team in the Bay Crits. While other pro riders were happy to be farmed off into the usual composite teams, Sky had clearly looked to the event to garner at least $10,000 worth of publicity by having their own team in the event.

This would suggest that a win in the Bay Crits would have a value in monetary terms, perhaps beyond that of its actual cycling merit – remember these races are not UCI events, they actually pay as little as $350 per win. The series was previously more about appearance fees and a little intensity for the international pros with a little bit of big time excitement for the locals.

Even for the team with the biggest budget in the world, you have to account for every penny, and every effort should be made when that money is spent. Having seen quite how fit some of the Sky riders were looking prior to the event – which starts on the slightly uncomfortably early (at least if you like to enjoy your New Years) date of the 2^nd of January.

So what next? If no quarter is given even in races that begin on the second day of the new season, then riders are going to have to start doing preparation races for the preparation races.

Interestingly there is already a criterium series in New South Wales in early December. I don’t think it will be too long before anyone serious about getting their head start at the Bay Crits will be racing these pretty seriously too. They are less than a month apart and crucially of course, get pictures up on cyclingnews.com.

So this year I might stop racing in May, have a break and get ready for starting my next season in September race through December and Jan, take Feb easy and then get ready for Summer again.

O.k. So there is no way I will do this, I lack the inclination more than anything else, but lo and behold: The 12 month racing season is upon us.

Better By Design

I like my teammates. It’s a funny thing the team dynamic, and it is almost impossible to get completely right. There will always be characters that clash, and some egos that are destined to bruise others.

I have to confess to being as bad as anyone else when I think of the harmless things that my team mates can do that for no reason annoy me, or the way I can pick holes in another riders ideas on preparation or race tactics. It’s a professional sport after all; we are all monsters to some degree.

So it was refreshing the other day to be able to think about my teammates outside of the confines of a race or team environment. Part by accident, part by design, I got a glimpse of each and every one of the Rapha Condor Sharp team for 2011 the other day, and I quite liked what I found.

In one of my first tasks as Press Officer for the team this year I had come up with an idea to make more interesting, the usually quite dull, ‘Rider Profiles’ on the team site.

I had been flicking through my sometime well of creative stimulation (courtesy of the ever cool Ms Diana Downs), a book called ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’, when I came across a profile the author Alan Fletcher, had come up with for the Swiss designer Jean Robert.

Apparently Fletcher had been commissioned to write a profile on Robert but had no idea whatsoever as to who Robert was, nor anything about the man. So he simply sent Robert a message simply saying: “Tell me what you like” and Robert’s response was a breathless list of the things that he felt passionate about (printed on page 330, of the book if anyone is interested).

This list was so interesting, in Fletcher’s eyes, that it simply became the profile, and it works marvellously. Better than knowing where the man studied, or a detailed history of his achievements (available anywhere), the profile is actually a very detailed and revealing look into the man himself. Like all the best things in life, it is brilliant because of its simplicity.

I, being the great artist that I am*, then pinched this idea for our own team site. Profiling 13 guys who you may have very little interest in, or may have spent very little time with, can be quite hard. I was also keen to avoid the formulaic pap that most sites churn out, detailing weight and ambitions for the upcoming year can get a little tiring.

So I made the boys do the work themselves, and it makes for highly interesting reading. Seeing what we mostly all have in common (the most common liked thing: girls, followed in equal measure by sunrises and sunsets) and the things that make each one of us a three dimensional human being (Jon Tiernan-Locke likes Guide dogs; who would have thought it?).

I had quite a bit of fun reading these, less so sorting out the punctuation (anyone with even half an idea of what it is to punctuate will know how bad I am at this). But it is good to know that you actually like the blokes you are about to have to share all the good, and all the bad, of a racing season with.

The team profiles will be up on the 2011 team site www.raphacondor.cc after the official press launch at the end of January.

Check the detail..

It's the little things.. Thanks to Northside Wheelers, Melbourne.

The non-race, race calendar..

I’m trying to come up with a list of races to ride. Not the usual list of races, the Tour of Britain, Tour of Japan or any kind of conventional race program. I’m trying to come up with a list of really interesting races to start doing post actual racing career. Lets call it a non-race list.

It has been burning in kindling of mind for a while now to ride the crocodile trophy; ‘The Worlds longest hardest, hottest and most adventure (I think they meant adventurous) Mountain bike race” that runs across the outback of Australia for ten days. Sounds firm but fair to say the least.

And now I can finally start to claim I have started an actual list, as I have a second event (without which, it wasn’t really a list). I want to ride the Melburne Roobaix http://www.fyxomatosis.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=310:melburn-roobaix-sunday-30-may-2010&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50.

The Hell of Northcote, is not really a race, more scavenger hunt/pub/café crawl over just about every stretch of cobbles hidden down the Melbourne alleyways, and finishing with grandeur on the Brunswick track. Pretty damn cool I reckon, and now elbow joint depending firmly fixed on my 2012/13 non-race list.

After that I think I might consider some sort of cyclo-cross race, if I can find one somewhere warm that is. Or is that simply asking too much?