Endless Summer

The cycling season in Europe is a Summer affair which means that back home in Australia during this time, it's cold and dark. Heading overseas for the racing season means that I get to enjoy an endless summer. 

This has many benefits. The first being that during the off season, early training doesn't involve 6 layers of clothing and a pair of cross-country skis. While the Europeans are riding through snow on their cyclocross bikes, I get to enjoy the Australian summer. 

Secondly, it means that I can enjoy a break at the end of the year on the beach, rather than rugged up inside in the dark. 

Thirdly, when the first training camp of the season rolls around, I'm not the whitest guy there. The Europeans develop a corpse-like glow after being inside for a couple of months while the Aussies are brown. 

Despite these benefits, during the last few days here in Italy, I have been wishing for some cooler weather. It is hot. Filthy hot. Sit around in your sweaty underwear hot. Not just during the day either bit all day and all night. There is no escaping it. 

 

The worst thing is, for some reason, Italians do not do air conditioning. Perhaps it's because they are in a refrigerated wasteland for half the year so they embrace the warmth but no matter where you go, no one turns on the air conditioning!

 

Cars go past with the windows down. Restaurants are 30 degrees inside and don't turn on the A/C even when there is a giant pizza oven burning away. Shops are sealed air tight with not even a fan turning. You even sweat when you are in a ice cream shop!

 

I do not understand it. I'm suffering. I see people around me suffering. But still, no one says anything about it. I'm starting to look forward to a bit of winter. 

Venice is off the bucket list

Venice is always portrayed in the media as a romantic city that is filled with beautiful places, beautiful food and beautiful people. Movies like Ocean’s 11 give the idea that it is a quiet and secluded city in which only the rich and famous are able to visit or live. The history/mystery of a city that is surrounded by water and the notion that it is sinking gives it even more appeal.

As a result, if you ask people of their top places in the world that they would like see, Venice is usually up there. Most people imagine floating down a canal in a gondola while a Venetian dressed in a black & white striped shirt does all the work. Venice was in my top 10 places to see and this week I got the chance to visit during a rest day here at a team training camp in Italy.

TV lied. Every day, thousands of other tourists come to Venice to do the exact same thing that I wanted; to see this amazing place that TV has made out to be so amazing. This means that it is standing room only.

 

How does one access a city that is surrounded by water? By parking in an outrageously expensive car park then lining up at the boat-taxi rank to ride to the city center. When you arrive, there are tourists everywhere and every second person is trying to get a photo of that gondola you imagined. Street vendors are everywhere trying to take advantage of the tourists with stalls that sell anything you can image with ‘I heart Venice’ on it.

Since Venice is surrounded by water, there is not much room for public places or public seats so be prepared to be standing for an extended period of time. Head into the small back alleys and you will find tourists that have given up and are simply sitting in the middle of the laneway with a map, trying to figure out where the heck they are.

Like most tourist venues, everything is over-priced. The difference with Venice is that it can be justified. The logistics and costs involved with shipping absolutely everything in by boat is mind blowing. The amount of food and water alone that is consumed by the thousands of tourists each day must mean that truck (boat) loads of supplies need to be shipped in.

Shipping so many supplies in each day brings its own problems because somehow, the leftovers and waste needs to be shipped back out. With such small confines, few businesses or people are willing to take on more than absolutely necessary so you will often find random piles of garbage in the street as people just dump their waste. I could only think of one thing… What does a Venetian garbage truck (boat) look like and how on earth do they collect all of the rubbish from the tiny back streets?

Despite all of the tourists, the high prices and lack of public seating opportunities, Venice is still an amazing place. We made our way back to the car park on foot through a maze of alleyways and narrow corridors that are surrounded by beautiful stone buildings. A city that is surrounded by water is a bizarre concept to understand and running into children playing in the alleys is a strange reminder that people still live there despite all of the tourists. 

I didn’t get my gondola ride but I did get a photo and now I can tick Venice off my list of places to see.   

Packing Tips

There is nothing worse than going on a trip and arriving at your destination only to discover that you have left something vital behind. This is especially true when you are going away for a bike race. After spending the last month on the road and having to live out of a suitcase, I have some tips for ensuring that you have everything that you need at your final destination and more importantly, for race day.

 

1. Pack clothing for every possible type of weather. This goes for casual clothing and cycling clothing. There is nothing worse than being caught out in freezing rain with only a pair of arm warmers to wear. The weather channel might say that it is going to be sunny and fine, but don’t trust it! So far this year, the European ‘summer’ has meant that you have to pack for sun and snow.

2. Bring a spare pair of cycling shoes. In my last 9 days of racing, every person in the team except 1, has crashed. Usually, the first thing to hit the ground is your shoes and this means buckles can break or cleats can snap. If you don’t have a spare pair of shoes, you can’t race again the next day!

3. Pack a set of kit and shoes into your carry-on bag. Believe it or not, airlines are not perfect and they may lose your luggage. They make take a few hours to get your bag back to you, they may take a few days. If you arrive at your destination 1 day before the race and all of your gear is lost then at least you will have one set of gear with you and you can start!

4. Carry your helmet on board the plane with you. It takes a lot of force to break a helmet, yet somehow, if you pack your helmet with your bike or in your suitcase, it is very likely to get cracked or damaged. You may look a bit weird carrying around a helmet with you but at least it stays in one piece.

 

5. Pack more cycling kit than casual clothes. When you are at a bike race, you spend the majority of your time in cycling kit or asleep in the hotel room so there is actually very little need for casual clothes. Don’t waste valuable suitcase real estate with clothes that you are not going to wear!

6. Don’t forget your chargers! When you are away from home, electronics become your main source of entertainment and communication so you need to charge them! That means, don’t forget an international adaptor, batteries and a range of USB cables!

7. Pack a laundry bag. Most hotels have a laundry that you can do your washing in. This is helpful when you are producing sweaty cycling clothes every day. When there are 5 other guys doing the same thing, it is much easier to keep your clothes separate in a laundry bag.

8. Label your stuff. In a team where everyone dresses exactly the same and has exactly the same equipment it is very easy to lose your things. Having your name on it means you will get it back eventually.

9. Don’t waste space with a towel. Every hotel will give you a towel so don’t pack one. They just take up too much space and you won’t even use it!

10. Leave some space in your suitcase. No matter how hard you try, you will always end up bringing back more than you took with you. This might be souvenirs, gifts, memorabilia or prizes but make sure you leave enough room for them.

So that is my top 10 tips for packing for a bike race. Just follow these and you can’t go wrong!

Spare time

Everybody needs a hobby so they can get away from their day job. For pretty much all of my friends, their hobby is riding a bike. There is no better way to get away from it all then hitting the road for a few hours. But what if riding a bike IS your day job?

I need a hobby. Something to do in my spare time so that I am not continuously thinking about races, heart rate zones and power outputs. As I need to be resting and recovering, I can’t exactly take up tennis or rock climbing. As I am always travelling on the road, I can’t exactly take up carpentry or painting. So what does a cyclist do for a hobby?

The answer is pretty simple… more riding!

At the recommendation of a team mate that has a penchant for the dirt trails, I have obtained a mountain bike and it is a great change from the bitumen. On a road bike, you spend so much time avoiding stones and potholes so it is a bizarre feeling to be riding straight over them on a mountain bike.

There is only one problem with mountain biking as a hobby… It’s not exactly relaxing. It seems that riding up steep hills in the middle of some forest can raise the heart rate slightly more than expected. This is not ideal for ‘recovery’ days. On top of this, my mountain bike handling skills are a little sub-par, so every time I go out, there is a chance that I will end up in a ditch somewhere.

At least I have something to do when I am not riding my bike.

Fooling yourself...

If someone says to you that they love doing time trials, they are lying. Or they have found themselves in that period of time between time trial races where you have forgotten about the pain and lured yourself into a false sense of over-confidence.

Time trials require a maximum effort for an extended period of time. That hurts. When you haven’t done a time trial in a while, you tend to forget that it hurts. Consequently, when another time trial comes around, you mistakenly anticipate it with enthusiasm. You have grand illusions of how fast you are going to go and how easy it is going to be.

Then comes race day. As you warm up, a small amount of buyer’s remorse creeps up on you but you ignore it and convince yourself that it will be all good once you’re out there on the course. It the start gate, you begin to stress a little as you have probably been standing around for 10-15mins waiting and getting cold.

As you start, your heart rate goes up to 90% within the first 500m and from here until the end, you absolutely hate time trials. Even if you are actually going fast, it still hurts and you just have to put up with it. As you cross the line, you (well at least I do) swear to yourself that you won’t sign up for another time trial again.

 

As the results come in, you start to think about all the little things that could have cost you more time. ‘If I just went harder up that hill. If I just started out harder. If I just took that corner faster.’ You seem to forget how much pain you were in at the time.

A few days or even hours later, you find yourself looking forward to your next opportunity to do another time trial. All the pain is forgotten and you convince yourself that the next one will be significantly different.

You are only fooling yourself.

Tour de Beauce, Take 2...

So a few weeks ago I mentioned that I was heading back toCanada to do the Tour de Beauce, a race that I was not particularly fond of due to the highly undulating terrain. In my last attempt, I missed the time cut on the 2^nd last stage so, hence, did not complete the race. Here is what happened this time…

Stage 1: As we started the Tour of Beauce, memories that I managed to repress for the last couple of years came flooding back. The stage went relatively calmly until the final 5km. With 4km to go, a sharp pinch split the field up and riders were scattered as they crossed the line. I finished a couple of minutes behind the eventual winner but my team mate, Andrea Peron held on and sprinted for 3^rd place.

Stage 2: The stage started fast. With wind and rain, it was single file in the gutter for the first 30km before the race settled down. I really couldn’t remember this stage from the last time that I did it nor what happened in the end. Then I got a violent reminder. 

With 20km to go, we took a sharp left turn straight into a ridiculously steep climb. Somehow, I ended up with a 23 cassette on my wheels and churned my way up the climb. The group split apart and I ended up 5mins down on the winner.

Stage 3: This is the queen stage of the Tour, finishing with a 7km climb up Mt Megantic. Team mate, Javier found himself in the break and we were able to sit in the bunch until the climb. I struggled my way up Megantic.

Stage 4: A relatively short individual time trial, this stage was seen by many as a chance to ‘recover’ from the previous days. I ‘recovered’ as best I could and rode a time to put me in the middle of the field.

Stage 5: This was as far as I made it in my last attempt so I was keen to better it. The stage was a circuit race around Quebec city with a steep climb each lap. It is known for being a difficult race.

The race started VERY fast with riders getting dropped on the first accent. I managed to hold on and completed the first 7 laps with the main field before dropping off with a small groupetto. All we had to do was pedal the last few laps to advance onto the final stage.

With only 1 lap remaining, we began the descent for the 2^nd last time. I leaned into a sharp right turn and felt my rear wheel jump and slide out. I hit the road and slid as the rest of the group went past me. I got up and picked up my bike. The last of the cars went past assuming that I had just over cooked the turn. I looked down and realized I had rolled the tire off the rim.

I was disappointed to not finish the stage. In my mind, I had already considered the stage done and dusted. Instead, yet again, the Tour of Beauce got the better of me. I really am not fond of this race.

Spares

At home, I have a few spare bits and pieces for my bike just in case something goes wrong. I have spare tubes, tyres and cables as well as a plethora of tools to cover most situations. Add a set of race wheels that I bust out for big events and I have just about covers all of the equipment that I may need. Despite this, there is still the occasional incident where I find myself stuck without an item and I can’t ride my bike until it is repaired. This puts a dent in my training schedule and is slightly more than annoying.

At Team Novo Nordisk’s U.S. service course here in Atlanta, they have a similar set up. There are a few spare tubes, tyres and cables as well as a few spare frames, wheels, groupsets, bikes, kit, saddles, trainers, cars and anything that you could possibly need during a season of hard racing. The scale of the service course is mind boggling.

If you thought that this looks like a lot of stuff, consider this: There is also a team bus, team cars, vans and truck that is also packed full of spare parts and bikes. Add to this, there is also a European service course in Italy that contains pretty much the same equipment and spares. That is a lot of stuff.

We always have everything that we could possibly need which also means that we have no excuses!

Take 2...

On this day, 2 years ago, I was on my way to Canada to race the Tour de Beauce. At the time, I had no idea what to expect but I quickly discovered that Beauceville has very few flat roads and I suffered every day as I struggled to hang on when the roads went up. 

On the 2nd last stage, it got the better of me as I missed the time limit and consequently, registered a DNF for the race. I was disappointed but I was also glad it's over. 

I had hoped I would never have to go back and do the tour de Beauce again but as it turns out, I'm on my way back there right now. I am on the roster to race it again and to be honest, I'm not looking forward to it. 

I have looked at the race manual and it is exactly the same. And as a special reminder of my last experience, right there on the cover of the manual, is an image of me from 2011 suffering up a hill. 

We have been training on the roads in Northern Vermont and just like Beauce, there are no flat roads. I have been having flashbacks. There are times where I get a false sense of security and think 'this is not going to be a problem this time'. Then my team mates fly up the next hill and I have to work hard just to hang on.

 

The race starts tomorrow. I'll see what happens. 

Liquid Gold

In Australia, buying genuine maple syrup can be a costly venture. Maple syrup can range anywhere from $50-$200 per litre. If you don't believe me, check out www.ocanada.com.au! I never understood why it cost that much and to be honest, I was pretty content with my imitation 'maple flavoured' syrup. After spending a week here in Vermont, I can understand why the price is so high. 

Maple trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter which is turned into sugar and carried through the sap in the tree. By boring a hole or 'tapping' the trunk, you can extract the sap to produce Maple syrup. The sap is boiled to remove the water and leave behind the concentrated syrup. 

Traditionally, the sap was collected with a bucket which seems like a simple process, however, it can take up to 50L of sap to produce only 1L of syrup and a single tree will generally only produce a maximum of 50L of sap per season! This makes for a pretty inefficient system. 

 

To speed up sap collection, all over Vermont you can find fields of trees all 'tapped' and connected by a series of pipes. These pipes run downhill and the sap is collected at the bottom. While riding, you can tell when you reach the summit of a hill because the pipes stop. It is a relieving sight. 

The sap is then boiled in traditional 'sugar houses' and graded (and priced) according to its quality. The best syrups are produced early in the season before the sugar has time to ferment in the sap.

In the USA, for a product to be labelled 'maple syrup', it must be made entirely of maple sap. 'Maple flavoured' syrups, 'pancake' syrups, 'waffle' syrups or 'table' syrups will contain other ingredients and are quite often made with high fructose corn syrup. They are only imitations. 

After sampling real maple syrup, I have to be honest... I don't see what all the hype is about. It seems like a heck of a lot of effort and $$ for a pancake topping. I really don't get what the big deal is. 

In a couple of days, I head to Canada, producer of around 75% of the world 's maple syrup. Maybe I'll ask them what makes it so special???

 

'Australian' Dining

Thanks to movies like Crocodile Dundee and Australia, some Americans have a warped idea of what Australia is actually like. If these movies were all you knew of Australia, then you would think that we are all Fosters drinking, giant knife carrying, boomerang throwing, cattle herding bushmen that have no home and just camp by a billabong. Here in America, they even have restaurants to replicate this exact idea.

 

Outback Steakhouses are Australian themed restaurants that perpetuate an incorrect stereotype of Australia. Inside you will find decor that is reminiscent of a country town pub in the 90’s and, as their website suggests, ‘a casual atmosphere suggestive of the Australian Outback’ with ‘generous portions’ of food.

This made me think, what exactly is Australian food? Do we really have any other than damper? We certainly don’t ‘throw another shrimp on the Bar-B’ as often as many think. Pretty much all of the popular dishes and restaurants in Australia have been stolen or modified from other countries. If it wasn't for people from other countries bringing over their delicacies, we would probably be eating damper and eucalyptus leaves. So, just what food does the Outback Steakhouse think is Australian?

Here is a sample of some of the dishes on the Outback Steakhouse menu…

• New Zealand Rack of Lamb.
• California Chicken Salad.
• New York Strip Steak.
• Norwegian Salmon.
• Grilled Chicken & Swiss Sandwich.
• Chocolate Thunder from Down Under.

So the food is obviously from a wide range of places. Here is a sample of drinks available from the menu…

• Canadian Whiskey.
• Samuel Adams Boston Lager.
• Hawaiian Blue Cocktail.
• Fosters ‘Australian’ Lager.

Needless to say, Outback Steakhouse’s menu is far from Australian. In fact, while I was there I had my first ever Fosters beer, a drink that is renowned for being ‘Australian’. Despite the obvious errors and misrepresentations, Outback Steakhouse really have nailed the Australian dining experience…

You go to a restaurant that hasn’t been redecorated since 1996, get served by someone from another country to order food from another country, drink imported beers and pay way too much for the whole experience. That is pretty much an Australian dining experience right there!