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Sunday, July 27. 2008
Beyond Category
Just had this thought on the bus yesterday: it’s been a year since I’ve owned my once-treasured Ford Ranger pickup. Two years ago if you had said I’d be wandering around Sandy Effin Eggo sans motor vehicle, I’d’ a said you were crazy. It was up in Rancho Peñasquitos, after watching a crazed woman in a Mercury SUV go speeding around a U-turn, full of hatred towards the woman in the old Toyota Corolla who wasn’t driving fast enough.
Having a bus pass is so much more pleasurable!
Carlos Sastre won Le Tour de France. Unlike the Lance Armstrong years, the Yellow Jersey changed torsos several times through this tour and Sastre was by no means assured of a victory when he pedaled to the Champs-Élysées this morning. Cadel Evans, the second place finisher, was only 58 seconds behind the Spaniard and could have challenged Sastre for the title in the “victory lap” 21st Stage.
The unwritten rule of the tour though is that whomever has the Yellow Jersey at the end of Stage 20 is the assumptive winner of the Tour. The ride to the end in Stage 21 is just for the winner to finally brag a little. What the Hell, why not. The Tour is the greatest bicycle race in the world and by far, the greatest endurance competition on the planet.
On Sundays and the occasional Saturday, the “hills” I climb wear me out considerably, but are nothing compared to climbing mountains in the Alps and Pyrenees. I do it once a week, they do it every day, racing against over 100 other riders, for distances that make me blanche.
The last stage is 143 kilometers — roughly 87 miles. Takes me nearly a month to ride that much and on my best days I’ll ride 25 miles — as long as there aren’t any vicious climbs.
Christian Vandevelde was the best American to finish in the individual category. Riding for Team Garmin Chipotle, he came in 5th, three minutes and five seconds behind Sastre.
While watching Stage 16, a climbing stage in the Alps, I had the insane notion of traveling to France for next year’s Tour — with the Trusty Trek — and pedaling up one of those brutally steep climbs of the Tour. Then, after the fantasy began to vaporize into reality — I will be 53 next year, I’m overweight, have a heart that’s only firing on three cylinders and I’m lazy — the decision then was to only pedal part of the vicious climb. Like maybe a mile or two. And then of course as reality really settled in, especially the “lazy” part, the notion then was just to visit France, sans Trusty Trek, and be a spectator on the side of the road as it climbed up a mountain.
Unless of course it’s raining and cold, in which case one of the flat stages in or near the French Riviera would be the best place to watch a stage of The Tour.
That’s how my imagination works: think of the grand heroic gesture first and then settle back into the reality of a 50-something slacker. See, watching a mountain stage of the race would be thrilling. That’s usually where most of the drama occurs before the finish line. The superhuman struggle to pedal up yet one more mountain in a stage of a 21 stage race, that features five mountain climbs in this one stage, just the will to survive will blow you away.
Winning has to be the goal for every rider in The Tour, why else would they be there? But when they’re in the middle of the three week event, climbing another 20 mile stretch of road going up at angles of 8 to 15% grade, winning takes a back seat to finishing the climb and maybe even the stage.
In the climbs, the truly brutal climbs, it stops being a team event. When you’re just a click or two from the summit, the sweat is pouring off your head in buckets and your legs and lungs feel like they will explode with every thrust in every rotation of the gears, that’s a moment when digging deep is just another cliché because you’ve reached as deep as the well goes and all that’s left is superhuman determination to make it just one more summit, this summit, and then let the rest of it fall where it may.
No one pedals Le Tour de France without suffering. It’s the most brutal endurance event in the world and the mountains are where the winners are separated from the wannabes.
Which is why watching a flat stage on the French Riviera sounds like such a great idea. I won’t have any crazy notions of riding the Trusty Trek up a mile or two of say, Mount Sestriere, which is actually in the Italian Alps but often finds its way into The Tour. Sestriere is considered a “beyond category” climb, simply because of it grade and the brutality of the elements. There are five categories for climbs and every year there are a few that are off the charts.
It’s also the climb that made Lance Armstrong a champion in 1999. He won that stage, after winning the Yellow Jersey the day before, and kept the prize for the rest of the 1999 Tour.
My “beyond category” climb? 54th Street between Adams Ave and Montezuma. It kicks my ass every time. In fact, the two little grades I climb everyday getting to and from the bus stops on 54th and El Cajon Blvd make me wish I hadn’t gotten out of bed in the morning. Especially the first one because from the moment I start pedaling it’s all up hill until I get to 54th. Then there’s a short descent where I can catch my breath before the second, steeper climb to El Cajon Blvd. Every day that first climb kicks my ass.
There are a few others: Los Peñasquitos Canyon comes to mind. That place is only 5.5 miles long, just an 11 mile ride “there and back,” but the five hills contained in the Preserve are brutal for a guy like me who’s a little too old to try climbing sandy, rocky hills like the 20-somethings zipping past. I gotta stop at every summit.
So much for the news about Barack. The original intent of this blog was to be political—some think I’m straying from the original premise of the blog. But life goes on around the political world and there are other interests.
But there is one item worth a brief mention: First Obama gets insulted by McLiar for not going to the war zones, and then he gets insulted for going to the war zones. Same as it ever was.
I’m going for a bike ride.
Having a bus pass is so much more pleasurable!Carlos Sastre won Le Tour de France. Unlike the Lance Armstrong years, the Yellow Jersey changed torsos several times through this tour and Sastre was by no means assured of a victory when he pedaled to the Champs-Élysées this morning. Cadel Evans, the second place finisher, was only 58 seconds behind the Spaniard and could have challenged Sastre for the title in the “victory lap” 21st Stage.
The unwritten rule of the tour though is that whomever has the Yellow Jersey at the end of Stage 20 is the assumptive winner of the Tour. The ride to the end in Stage 21 is just for the winner to finally brag a little. What the Hell, why not. The Tour is the greatest bicycle race in the world and by far, the greatest endurance competition on the planet.
On Sundays and the occasional Saturday, the “hills” I climb wear me out considerably, but are nothing compared to climbing mountains in the Alps and Pyrenees. I do it once a week, they do it every day, racing against over 100 other riders, for distances that make me blanche.The last stage is 143 kilometers — roughly 87 miles. Takes me nearly a month to ride that much and on my best days I’ll ride 25 miles — as long as there aren’t any vicious climbs.
Christian Vandevelde was the best American to finish in the individual category. Riding for Team Garmin Chipotle, he came in 5th, three minutes and five seconds behind Sastre.
While watching Stage 16, a climbing stage in the Alps, I had the insane notion of traveling to France for next year’s Tour — with the Trusty Trek — and pedaling up one of those brutally steep climbs of the Tour. Then, after the fantasy began to vaporize into reality — I will be 53 next year, I’m overweight, have a heart that’s only firing on three cylinders and I’m lazy — the decision then was to only pedal part of the vicious climb. Like maybe a mile or two. And then of course as reality really settled in, especially the “lazy” part, the notion then was just to visit France, sans Trusty Trek, and be a spectator on the side of the road as it climbed up a mountain.
Unless of course it’s raining and cold, in which case one of the flat stages in or near the French Riviera would be the best place to watch a stage of The Tour.That’s how my imagination works: think of the grand heroic gesture first and then settle back into the reality of a 50-something slacker. See, watching a mountain stage of the race would be thrilling. That’s usually where most of the drama occurs before the finish line. The superhuman struggle to pedal up yet one more mountain in a stage of a 21 stage race, that features five mountain climbs in this one stage, just the will to survive will blow you away.
Winning has to be the goal for every rider in The Tour, why else would they be there? But when they’re in the middle of the three week event, climbing another 20 mile stretch of road going up at angles of 8 to 15% grade, winning takes a back seat to finishing the climb and maybe even the stage.
In the climbs, the truly brutal climbs, it stops being a team event. When you’re just a click or two from the summit, the sweat is pouring off your head in buckets and your legs and lungs feel like they will explode with every thrust in every rotation of the gears, that’s a moment when digging deep is just another cliché because you’ve reached as deep as the well goes and all that’s left is superhuman determination to make it just one more summit, this summit, and then let the rest of it fall where it may.No one pedals Le Tour de France without suffering. It’s the most brutal endurance event in the world and the mountains are where the winners are separated from the wannabes.
Which is why watching a flat stage on the French Riviera sounds like such a great idea. I won’t have any crazy notions of riding the Trusty Trek up a mile or two of say, Mount Sestriere, which is actually in the Italian Alps but often finds its way into The Tour. Sestriere is considered a “beyond category” climb, simply because of it grade and the brutality of the elements. There are five categories for climbs and every year there are a few that are off the charts.
It’s also the climb that made Lance Armstrong a champion in 1999. He won that stage, after winning the Yellow Jersey the day before, and kept the prize for the rest of the 1999 Tour.
My “beyond category” climb? 54th Street between Adams Ave and Montezuma. It kicks my ass every time. In fact, the two little grades I climb everyday getting to and from the bus stops on 54th and El Cajon Blvd make me wish I hadn’t gotten out of bed in the morning. Especially the first one because from the moment I start pedaling it’s all up hill until I get to 54th. Then there’s a short descent where I can catch my breath before the second, steeper climb to El Cajon Blvd. Every day that first climb kicks my ass.
There are a few others: Los Peñasquitos Canyon comes to mind. That place is only 5.5 miles long, just an 11 mile ride “there and back,” but the five hills contained in the Preserve are brutal for a guy like me who’s a little too old to try climbing sandy, rocky hills like the 20-somethings zipping past. I gotta stop at every summit.So much for the news about Barack. The original intent of this blog was to be political—some think I’m straying from the original premise of the blog. But life goes on around the political world and there are other interests.
But there is one item worth a brief mention: First Obama gets insulted by McLiar for not going to the war zones, and then he gets insulted for going to the war zones. Same as it ever was.
I’m going for a bike ride.
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