Graeme Miller

The Boulder Report is maybe the most insightful place for cycling journalism on the web. Unlike others, it doesn't focus on the obvious and star-centered aspects of the sport; who really cares if Lance and Alberto are friends or where Wiggins is going. It's reporting is instead aimed at better stories that make you want to get out and ride your bike. Logging on this week I was surprised to see an entire article devoted to Graeme Miller. The author, Bill Strickland, had this to say about Miller:

In a career of a little more than two decades, Miller made four Olympics, with an eighth in the road race at Seoul in 1988 as his best finish, but he won races all over the world — just not many that casual fans ever heard of. Instead of the Spring Classics and Grand Tours it was the vagabond workingman slog around the world for Miller. If he’d been a boxer instead of a bicyclist he’d have been going bare-knuckles behind the abandoned factory for a hundred bucks a fall.

And he looks it. There’s that indefinable set to his jaw and in his stance and eyes that the authentic tough guys all over the world have, not preening like the fake fighters who do pretty good until they run into the real thing, and not visibly spoiling for a brawl like troublemakers, but a bearing that comes from a kind of confident — almost resigned — comfort with getting into a fight they’ll more likely than not lose. He and the guys like him are genetically talented sure, more so than most of us can dream of, but because they were missing that last, miniscule final bit of the gift that puts racers over the top, they learned that if they were going to make a living with their bikes they had to ride as if they were knocking the shit out of people.

As a rider who had the shit knocked out of him on a weekly basis by Graeme, it was great to see him paid such a tribute.

The full article can be read here.

Beer, Christmas, Cycling

Came across this the other day and thought it was one of the coolest cycling videos I had ever seen. Really, you need to watch it right now. And then re-watch it. The crowds. The starter running out of the way. the dismounts and speed. And God, those stairs! How did they do it.

The video is cyclo-cross before there was cyclo-cross. It's racing on the only streets availible, and if that means dismounting to climb 500 stairs and whipping through single lane roads, well that's just what you have to do.

I've thought a long time about why there's no cross on island and am stumped. To me it makes more sense than mountain biking here given the terrain and the circuit courses. Also, initial reports from mountain biking vet Dave Collins in BC are that "you've never really raced until you've raced 'cross."

In that spirit I'm tossing out the idea of doing a fun race towards the end of December around Shelley Bay. The course can be done on a road, mountain or single speed bike and there's a stair case each lap. Dave will also be back to give tips and pointers he's learned. More importantly, a case of beer will be on the line for the winner.

Let me know if there's interest or ideas to make it a better event.

Open Road Race

If you haven't seen it already click here to view the great footage of the Open Road Race.

The lesson from the race; it pays to be at the front if you want to stay out of trouble.

What the Fall is all about

Good writing captures a sentiment that people relate to. By that metric this may be the most interesting/unique/funny cycling related articles I've read all year. I had Carbonara for dinner four nights in a row last week, and that compounded with the fact that weekly mileage has fallen to almost zero is starting to reveal just how much I eat and drink. Something needs to be done stat to turn things around, but not tonight, the Czech beer in my hand is too good.

Notes from the Grand Prix

The wind, rain and the twenty five times up the hill at Morgan's Point made for a great race Saturday. There was great racing Sunday too, and I think the change in time allowed for more crowds than we've seen at a race in a long time.

-Award for best back handed compliment recipient goes to Garth. The lead three weren't asking what the gap to the chasing pack was, they were asking what the gap to Garth in particular was. When it got close I could hear them talking up the hill, "shit, we can't let him catch us. He's really strong."

-I love that you can practically make out the brand of helmet that was worn here.

-Being in a pace line is a beautiful thing. You're in pain and agony, focused on nothing but the wheel ahead. In a race it feels like it is impossible for anyone to ever have been faster, so in the red are you. I took a lot of photos of the day, but I don't think photos of cycling often portray the paradoxical emotions of a bike race. They look like what they are; are bunch of guys riding in single file. That's why I like this photo. Mud and sweat splattered, it captures the pain of a hard bike race.

-I always like to see so many juniors toeing up to the start line. Congratulations to all of them for toughing out the conditions and ending their season on a high.

-Hot Tubes are fast. They are a junior team that tore it up pretty good, but most people have never heard of them. As background, they are one of, if not the best US junior talent scouting teams with their riders graduating to bigger and better things. This year Lawson Craddock was one of the young riders down who finished second at the Junior Worlds this year. A couple of years ago, one very young Ben King was top 10 on GC in Bermuda. He went on to ride for Lance Armstrong's Trek-Livestrong team and is now having a great season with Fly V Australia.

He's still only 20, look for him to make the ProTour jump soon. Maybe we'll see the same progression from this year's Hot Tubes class.

-An interesting race day nutritional option for those who just can't face another bowl of pasta: "Put a PowerBar choc gu in a coffee cup and then pore a shot of espresso over the top. Time prior to departure: when leaving out the door- Get your favourite flavour of PowerBar between two pieces of bread, or fruit toast and place in microwave for 30seconds. The PowerBar melts…this is soooo good." Courtesy of Mr. King.

-Speaking of Grand Prix alumni, it's good to see that Russel Downing who famously won on Mark Lombardi's old bike, has finally been offered a well-deserved ProTour contract with Team SKY. He's always been a good rider, but his performance in the final stage of this years Tour of Ireland was one of the best rides of the year. If you haven't seen it watch it here. Isolated and surrounded by a dozen other riders, he demonstrates that the best defense is a good offense.

-If you see Darren Dowling, ask him about the almost-crash-of-the-year he witnessed. It involved Brian Drea, a superman position, a sideways bike and a 20 foot slide.

-I want to buy a pair of new wheels this winter. I want Zipps - because no other wheel is as fast and well engineered - but scenes like this make me wince. It wasn't any one's fault, a moment of inattention was all it took. I'm now more than ever leaning towards a pair of handbuilts on Chris King hubs.

-Tony Gibbs wins teammate of the weekend award. My mental calculation has him being on the front for 95% of Sunday's crit. In the first half of the race he diligently chased down attacks when they happened. In the second half he set a pace fast enough to deter any attacks. It was an impressive show of force totally dedicated to his teammate's ambition. When the race was done he rolled across the line 30 seconds behind the leaders, content that he had done his job and his team had capitalized on it.

-Peter Dunne has made all of our lives more difficult. He's taken a (previously fun) B Group race, and recruited three teenagers with heart rates that go north of 200 and have a penchant for sprinting and attacking. Dominique got the wins this weekend and I won't be surprised to see him racing in A next year. Treshun and Marquise also showed impressive racing this weekend and with another winter of training can only get faster. Everyone take note and consider yourselves warned.

I don't think anyone would have expected this amount of success from the Berkley programme a year ago. It's incredible and I hope it only grows from here.

-I've already mentioned Garth and Brian, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the great ride that Mark Hatherly put in to hang with the best for as long as he did. He was taken out by a crash on Saturday, but really showed himself well on Sunday.

-Bikes have come a long way in the last ten years. You hardly ever see an aluminum rim under a PRO and almost all frames are carbon as if by fiat. It's amazing then that amongst PROs the one piece of bicycle equipment that has defied the never ending pursuit of lighter/stiffer is the saddle. Check out the saddle that Tom Barras is sporting. It's an old Concor.

-Sponsorship works. After seeing Tom ride wheels I'd never heard of - SL Carbons - I spent time on the web trying to find out more, and that's got to be worth something. They make two wheels, a 50mm carbon deep rim and a Mavic Comet knock-off. The website is pretty disappointing, and the product discription is brief to the point of making a Haiku seem wordy: "round, black and they have spokes." That's it. No weight. No commentary. Nothing. Still, at £595 with the ability to give them a trial run they're worth consideration.

Roads

Someone told me I must be crazy for writing that "the reality is that the roads here are pretty good." Argument ensued.

On discussing road quality I'm going to start with stating what they aren't: no cobble stones, no packed dirt, no pitch and seal, no tram tracks or railway crossings and very little traffic furniture. Going on to what we do have, I admit that W&E must have a fetish for re-paving roads to then turn around and trench them up, but the trench is just a couple of inches wide. Additionally, the Corporation of Hamilton may be the most inept group in Bermuda with their roads almost a physical manifestation of that. But really, how much riding to does anyone do in city limits? Finally, there are potholes on the island, but since I ride the same roads everyday I know where they all are and could almost ride around them blindfolded.

My main point at the time was that a bike needs a balance between being stiff and being comfortable. In most cases it’s either very stiff or comfortable. Except if you start getting into the $3,000+ frame territory where the engineering is so good that you get both. But those are pro bikes, meant for people who ride 1,000K a week on Belgian roads.

The roads here are fine for the most part and most people here only ride for 90 minutes at a time anyway so fatigues isn't a major concern. With that in mind I’d rather have the racy and stiff bike at the expense of comfort and save the money.

Cyclingnews.com is dead.

I love reading the news. Real news - The New York Times, The Economist, BBC - not online compilations. For reasons best explained here by Malcolm Gladwell, opinion is cheap. In depth and resource heavy reporting on the other hand is difficult and expensive. The benefit of the reporting is that the information acts as a check and balance and provides a social good. But newspapers are failing everywhere, usurped by information that apparently wants to be free. A world without good newspapers makes me nervous.

My passion for actual published news doesn't carry over to the cycling world, however. I've long thought that there was very little actual journalism in the traditional cycling publications and I unless I'm stuck in an airport I rarely buy magazines anymore. I'm thinking of Velo News, Cycling News and Bicycling in particular.

Their bike reviews are formulaic and reveal nothing insightful. Just have Chris Boardman or Marco Velo ride around somewhere beautiful and say "the bike was vertically stiff while being laterally compliant." Or, "when you step on the pedals the bike just accelerates without any bottom bracket flex." The problem is that they say this for all bikes, and the truth is that the $6,000 bikes they review don't need reviews: they are all nice. They're all unaffordable too, and don't provide any insight to what the average person looking to buy a bike may want to consider. It's just ripe for satire.

Secondly, their race reporting is terrible. Whatever race is up this month is the biggest race of the year even it's the Tour of Qatar. They then go on to to pick favorites that are beyond predictable. How can you justify getting paid for picking Cavendish in a bunch sprint or Cancellara in a TT? That's like picking England to not win the World Cup; it's a foregone conclusion. The real fun of race reporting is to pick the up and comers or the wildcards: Fuglsang at the Vuelta, Boasson Hagen at the Worlds, Brent Bookwalter or Dominique Rollin in the Spring Classics next year.

These two things - bike reviews and race reporting - should be the bread and butter of the official cycling publications. But they aren't. I've also noticed errors in reporting coming up. Two in CyclingNews.com today alone. 1, "Sanchez...his home Tour is the focus of his season by putting in the best time trial performance of his career to take sixth on Saturday's rainy test." Surely his best TT would have been when he won the final TT in 07 to snatch 3rd on GC from Evans. 2, "Pozzato...third in Paris-Roubaix." He was 2nd.

To make matters worse the websites of the all these publications have gotten progressively worse and navigable.

Luckily, unlike news that actually matters there's a wealth of sites that have filled the void. Foremost among all cycling writing is Red Kite Prayer, put together by the man responsible for the great BKW. For race predictions there is Pave, and then there is the everything site of Pez (with the accompanying Daily Distraction). Different medium, but Cervelo is offering some amazing insight into their team at Bartape.net, from Hausler trying to explain what it's like to lose San Remo by an inch or Sastre explaining why he pulled Deignan back from a break he was sure to win.

It'll be interesting in the next year to see if the major publications make their read more interesting or if they begin to fade away. In the mean time, I'm going to keep trying to offer a different perspective on things. Acknowledging that this site is far from perfect, it's also completely flexible so let me know if there is anything anyone would like to see reported more.