Monthly Archives: February 2011

I have no pictures to share with you from today’s race, so I’ll do my best to be descriptive instead.

Picture the scene: I’m sitting on the side of the road in Merced this afternoon, waiting for the start of my crit, stretching my legs and singing Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” to myself under my breath. It’s a brilliant, chilly Sunday afternoon and I’m almost enjoying myself. That’s when Tyler Brandt (Cal Giant) rolls up to me to make his usual feeble attempt to intimidate me or smack-talk me. I engage him for a while, make some snide comment about his lack of style, and attempt to steal his custom Oakleys. He slaps my hand away like a girl. One by one, more Cal Giant riders roll up: Brandon Trafton, Chris Stastny, Jared Barrilleaux, John Bennett, James Mattis, Jesse Moore…the list goes on and on. Suddenly, I realize that I’m completely surrounded by Cal Giant riders — I mean, I’m literally surrounded by a circle of fruity dudes in spandex at least two deep.

That is a true story about today’s Merced Criterium, and it is a pretty good description of how the race went, as well.

With fifteen riders in the race, Cal Giant seemed intent on putting seven of their guys in every break, which caused pandemonium amongst everyone else in the race and seemed to spell doom for any attempt at racing off the front. I took to cursing in disgust at Jesse Moore, who is one of the few riders I’ve ever met who is unfazed by my aggression; it must be something that comes with old age.

Then, with only around eight laps remaining, the Strawberries dropped their 2010 Yahoo? tactics and launched a real breakaway — one which did not contain me, or any other Webcor riders for that matter. After a near vomit-inducing bridge with six laps to go or so, I found myself in the break. Naturally there were three Cal Giant riders in the break (though, to be fair, their combined age was still under legal drinking age, I think): Trafton, Brandt, and Bennett.

Trafton and Bennett practically smelled confident — Trafton having won a race last weekend and Bennett having won Snelling 22 hours previously — and Brandt looked pretty solid. In contrast, I was still swallowing chunks of my pre-race meal, making it very difficult to appear confident; constipated, maybe, but definitely not confident.

The rest of the break consisted of a hodgepodge: Elliot Jaramillo (McGuire), wearing ridiculous, white Oakley Gascans, a Clif Bar guy I didn’t recognize, Brian Bosch (Yahoo?) and a pair of Chico Corsa guys. I very literally almost passed out on my bike while bridging to this group, so I apologize if I missed anyone.

Bennett led Trafton out for the win; I came off Trafton’s wheel, made it about halfway alongside him, and stayed there for the final 200m. Bosch snuck by me at the line, handing me third place.

I’ll admit, I had tentively written Trafton off as a poser with a flaming calf-tattoo last season, but he’s definitely proven me wrong with two wins thus far in 2011; incidentally, both have come since he shaved his head a la naked mole-rat Steve Reaney. Perhaps the era of the euro-mullet is, in fact, over and Cancellara will show up to Milan-San-Remo with a shaved head. Maybe it’s all coincidence.

Meanwhile, today marks my third top-3 this season, but I have yet to win a race, making me one of the best breakaway companions you can find. Top statisticians agree: you’re gonna beat me.

That’s it for now. I have beer to drink. Goodnight!

Blogging, like bike racing, does not always go according to plan. Work, life, fun, and hardships all get in the way. I’m about a week and a half behind on my writing — and far more on my training — but I’ll do my best to highlight the entertaining parts of my life.

The last time I raced, I split the weekend between Folsom and Sacramento; in between, I drank some spectacular liquor out of a temperature-controlled cabinet the size of my apartment*.

There were ups and downs to the weekend, for sure: the wine cabinet above was certainly an up, and Saturday’s criterium in Folsom was a major down. In the Bicycles Plus Folsom Criterium, I placed 3rd out of a break of nine which contained three Webcor riders. Statistically speaking, that means my team placed last in the break and, though I’ve grown accustomed to botching opportunities for wins, I don’t enjoy it.

Instead of belaboring negative results, I think I’ll talk about my ridiculous reentry to collegiate cycling at the UC Davis Collegiate Crit.

OK…let me back up a bit, because I’m sure that photograph of my friend Justin twiddling my nipples in a damn-near translucent pink jersey must have you a bit confused. Perhaps not; now that I think about it, this kind of behavior is pretty commonplace for me. Maybe I’m confused…

Anyway, where should I begin?

I’ll start by mentioning that I raced for Stanford University when I was younger and far less disillusioned. Notably, my final “regular season” collegiate race, near the end of my senior year, was held at Land Park in Sacramento. Many of my collegiate cycling contemporaries will remember that about two weeks later, my team would go on to win the Collegiate National Road Cycling Championships in Lawrence, KS.

What many of them won’t remember, however, is that the UC Davis criterium in Land Park — the final race of that fateful 2007 collegiate season — was the site of one of the greatest athletic disappointments of my life. Having been in the lead of the year-long points standings for the bulk of the year, I lost my lead in that final criterium by four points to Jared Barrilleaux (Cal Giant). Four points was approximately 1% of the total point tally for the year, and I was heartbroken.

I got over it, trained my balls off for two weeks, and helped my team win a National Championship, but I’ve always felt that the UC Davis Land Park Collegiate Crit owed me something.

That’s part of the reason I found myself at William Land Park on a Sunday afternoon when I should have been contesting a P/1/2 event back in the Bay Area.

The other reason is that my Webcor teammate and good friend Justin Fraga recently enrolled at Stanford as a graduate student and wanted to try collegiate cycling on for size. Incidentally, he tried my old-school Stanford skinsuit on for size as well.

Sure, he twiddles my nipples and we share one other’s spandex…but I swear, we’re just friends.

Given that my current graduate institution does not have a cycling team, per se, and because it lacks a dedicated cycling kit, I chose to wear Jessica Layman’s (of Jessica Layman Day fame) pink “Trashy Cat” jersey emblazoned with my school’s logo via Sharpie pen.

I arrived at the race venue and sauntered up to registration as incognito as I could muster, expecting that no one would recognize me and expecting not to recognize anyone else; instead, seemingly half the people at the race knew I was coming and about half the Men’s A field was comprised of P/1/2 riders I see every week. John “Chamois Boy” Bennett (Cal Giant/Cal Poly) and Joe Iannarelli (Yahoo?/Sac State) were notable breakaway fiends whose presence promised to complicate my plans to roll off the front incognito-like and solo to victory. Hell, even my Webcor teammate Justin became a sworn enemy as soon as he donned his ridiculous candy-cane Stanford kit.

So much for an easy day beating up college kids, eh?

Only shortly before the start was it brought to my attention that I actually had a teammate at the race. As it turns out, a charming dude named Musa had recently started medical school at my institution and had founded a collegiate cycling team on his own. Sweet, free teammate!

Musa is shown here in the white skinsuit — his take on our team’s kit was significantly less effeminate, and therefore significantly less awesome than my own — apparently groping Cody Tapley, who also recently found his way onto my blog. Man, this sport is incestuous.

With a newfound collegiate teammate in the field, my odds of a team win were doubled, and I was feeling confident. So confident, in fact, that I started rubbing my nipples on the start line.

Right about this time, the chief official came up to me and said, “You know, your number is pinned way too high.” I responded, “I know, I’m sorry…this is the first time I’ve pinned a women’s jersey.” He chucked and said, rather loudly of course, “That’s OK…I don’t need your number because I’m just going to write you down as ‘Big Pink’!”

As you can imagine, my new nickname became Big Pink for the remainder of the day.

The race started and soon enough Fraga and I found ourselves in a breakaway as always.

Chamois Boy was in there, as was Iannarelli, and we were joined by a few Davis kids, a UCSB guy, and another Stanford guy who was pretty strong. I occupied my time marking Fraga and Bennett, posing in my cool pink jersey, and letting my armpit hair flow freely out the bottom of the petite sleeves.

In the end, Fraga attacked the group with three laps remaining. I know Justin pretty well, and he usually doesn’t exhibit a whole lot of cardiovascular talent, so I thought to myself, “Ah, I’ll let him dangle, he can’t hold that to the line.” I relaxed for a while and waited for Justin to falter and come back to the break.

I was wrong, and he didn’t.

Fraga won the race alone, giving us a fleeting glimpse of class and panache before he proceeded to perpetuate the “all Stanford students are pretentious assholes” stereotype by pointing to his chest as he crossed the line.

Well played, Fraga…well played. That facial expression is priceless.

In the end, I didn’t fare particularly well in the sprint and finished around fourth overall. At least my old skinsuit won the race and salvaged some of the honor I lost on that course four years prior.

I’ve been taking some flak for my weak blogging and dearth of racing of late, offenses for which I apologize profusely. Having finished a bout of focused labor in the lab, I’ll be returning to the racing scene this weekend in Merced. I hope to see you there.

*This wine cabinet belongs to my hosts for the weekend, Justin’s good friend Darin and his wife Tamara. Thanks to you both for supplying tremendous company, endless stories, a place to sleep, and bottomless booze. Next time, give Justin one more glass of scotch so I can win instead.

This will be quick, as I don’t really have much time to write this evening, but I simply couldn’t resist posting this photograph of the ever-comical Max Jenkins (United Healthcare Pro Cycling) that appeared on Velonews a few days ago.

Here, Jenkins awkwardly sandwiches his new bike’s stem betwixt his thighs while perching his arms effeminately to each side, a cringe-worthy pose no matter the context. It’s made even more awkward by the proximity of the mechanic’s hands to said thigh sandwich; ordinarily, I imagine professional mechanics would frown at the prospect of wrenching that close to a rider’s pubic region, but the UHC mechanic’s campy (no pun intended) smile is icing on the cake. In the words of the reader who sent me this picture, “where’s Max’s publicist when he needs one?”

On a side note, the new UHC kits are quite a sight to behold.

Any more than three UHC teammates riding next to one another is downright epilepsy-inducing.

So, I was sitting in lab this afternoon wearing these contraptions — technically, they’re 3D goggles for looking at protein structures, but I just like them because they’re stylish — when I realized I was hungry. For protein. Three-dimensional protein.

It was a nice day, so I sauntered over to Piccino, a charming cafe near my laboratory. It was there that I encountered the love of my life, this sausage pizza with two eggs cracked on top.

I was thoroughly enjoying my meal when I noticed this guy, fully kitted out, circling around the block repeatedly.

Clearly, he thought he was doing hill repeats on Potrero Hill during his lunch break, but what he was really doing was making me feel like a lazy bum eating an eggy, meaty concoction. Thanks, Morgan Stanley Masters Guy.

In the end, I got on my bike and climbed Twin Peaks, cursing both the pizza — which was doing hill repeats of my esophagus — and the Morgan Stanley Masters Guy for guilting me into the whole fiasco.

It was a gorgeous afternoon, if not exceedingly windy…so maybe it was all worth it in the end.

You don’t come to this blog to read about “results”; if it was results you wanted to read, you’d probably go to some blog with a .pro address, where you’d then be bored by a massive list of 1st Places and a few terrible moustaches.

Instead, you probably come here to read about all the fun stuff that happens while the winners are stressing about performing their winning duties.

Sure, every once in a while I stumble across a winning breakaway and have enough cash in my bank account to bribe my other breakmates into letting me win, but by and large…I lose bike races.

So do the rest of you. Think about it: in any given race, one guy wins, and about 95 other guys lose. Bike racing is a losing proposition.

However, unless you’re some kind of sociopath, I doubt you attend criteriums in office parks solely to win. It just doesn’t happen very often unless you’re a 2011-vintage Logan Loader (Verizon), so you probably attend bike races for the peripheral joys: the camaraderie, the competitive spirit, the “holy shit this feels like flying” sensation, the hot chicks everywhere*…the list goes on and on.

Tonight, I’ll be telling you a few anecdotes about these peripherals, seeing as my alphanumeric placings from this weekend’s Brisbane crit and the Cherry Pie crit are “DNF” and “DFL,” respectively.

Saturday: Brisbane Crit

No offense to the Pilarcitos crew, but I simply cannot refer to this race as the “Ronde van Brisbeen” as they so desperately intend. I apologize…it’s an awesome race with a totally cheesy name.

As I was pumping up my tires and checking myself out in my car’s reflection, I was approached alternately by Chris Turner (Perpetually On A Different Team Each Time I See Him) and his girlfriend Shea.

Turner is a great guy: he’s funny, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he is pretty fast. Chris also tends to disconnect his brain when he’s racing, which is a lot of fun when you’re in a break with him, and is probably the only reason he’s not winning every other weekend.

Anyway, my interaction with Chris himself consisted of my usual, “Dude, why do you even bother showing up to these things anymore; you know you’re gonna lose,” to which he shrugged and said, “Definitely, but I love losing.”

He did, for the record.

However, my interaction with his girlfriend was far more entertaining. Somehow, we ended up talking about Turner’s facial hair; the how and why is not important. The point is that — according to Shea — Brad Pitt once shook Chris’ hand and said, “Hey man…dynamite beard!” You can be the judge of the dynamiteness, using this photograph as a reference.

Typically, “Hey man…dynamite beard!” would be construed as a great compliment, but coming from a guy whose beard looks like this, I don’t know that it’s of much value.

Alternatively, maybe I’m just bitter because all I can muster is five-o-clock fuzz.

Anyway, the race started with a most-unusal, “OK, whenever you guys want to go, you’re welcome to do so,” from the Chief Referee — usually we get a whistle, if not a Burlingame-esque cannon fire.

After the awkward start, we rode around in circles, and it hurt a lot…pretty much the way criteriums go as a breakaway rider. I bridged to a break containing my teammate Hendrik about 10 minutes into the race, and the eight-man group lapped the field.

Sadly, heading into five laps to go, I felt my front wheel bottom out against a botts dot — flat tire.

As I rolled around the course, grinding my beautiful Williams tubular wheel along the broken pavement, I prayed there would still be free laps available. Sadly, as I approached the pit the announcer exclaimed, “Oh, and here comes Rand Miller of the Webcor team with a flat tire! Too bad there are no more free laps! What a bad stroke of luck!” over the PA system.

Race over.

Naturally, I was crestfallen, but my reaction was stoic compared to that of my three fans waiting on the sidelines, who were incredibly caught on film the instant my misfortune was announced.

(Photo Credit: Katharine Edmonson)

That’s Jessica Layman, Darien Reed and Mary Maroon from left to right, and their expressions read as follows:

Mary: “Aw, hell no. I should kick that official’s ass. What a bullshit rule.”

Darien: “Aw, man…that sucks. He worked so hard…I feel bad for him.”

Jessica: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! OH, GOD, NOOOOOOO! HOW CAN I LIVE NOW?

I wish that I cared that much about my results — I don’t — but it’s still nice to know that others are so bummed to see my race end because of an errant piece of glass.

My teammate Hendrik, a very intense German guy whose only goal for the race was “to ride so hard I vomit,” stayed cool, kept his stomach under control, and finished 3rd to Logan Loader (Verizon) and Pat Briggs (Yahoo? Masters Cycling Team). Thank God for strong teammates, eh?

Sunday: Cherry Pie Crit

The Cherry Pie Crit is always a fun race because it’s the first time everyone in the district drops the whole “it’s the early season, so I’m not actually trying right now” nonsense and rides like a real bike racer.

I showed up at the venue in Napa early enough to pick up the first installment of coffee from my new caffeine sponsor, Relegate Coffee. I’ll be talking more about that later…for now, just note my proximity to the Vanderkitten Racing tent, which automatically increases my sex appeal.

Just before the race, I happened across Cody Tapley (Whole Athlete) and Jack Maddux (Specialized Juniors), two young kids with enough attitude and swagger to buck the “cyclists are dorks” stigma; however, both of them race hard enough that they stand a solid chance at making it big in the sport. Tapley was kind enough to lend me his ridiculously neon-colored Oakley Radars for my race which, when paired with my green kit, provided the crowd with a clinic on clashing cycling apparel. At best, I figured the electric shades would power me to victory; at worst, I’d look awesome getting dropped.

The race was fast this year — fast enough to convince nearly everyone in the race that a breakaway was futile. No matter how hard riders attacked, no breakaway could get more than about ten seconds on the field, regardless of composition.

To the dismay of breakaway riders all over the world, the race came down to a field sprint, led out by Kirk Carlsen (Garmin-Cervelo), and was won by…wait for it…Logan Loader. I rolled in well after the bunch with Pat Briggs, both of us complaining loudly about the sketchiness of the field and the lack of coherent teamwork which led to our respective poor finishes.

Congratulations to Logan for doubling up on the weekend. That dude is flying right now.

The true winner of the day, however, was Specialized Junior David Benkoski, who showed up to the race so impeccably stylish, I couldn’t resist asking for a picture with him.

(Photo Credit: Jono Coulter)

The photograph speaks for itself, but what you can’t see is that David has paired his popped-collar track jacket, Oakley semi-Aviators and jeans with a pair of leather shoes. That’s right, leather shoes. At a bike race. Not only that, but he pulled off a 4th place finish on the day. What a pimp.

Alright, it’s time for me to get some sleep…which is going to be hard, because I’m wired on sponsor-approved coffee beverages. Goodnight, cycling world!

*Good luck with that one.

Out with 2010, in with 2011: the racing season has begun, about like it ended.

Photo Credit: Paul Doran

Some might argue, but as far as I’m concerned, the Cal Aggie Criterium marks the true beginning of each season. I’ll be telling the tale of the P/1/2/3 crit — overplayed as always on NorCalCyclingNews.com — in one of my ridiculous “race reports” in the near future. If you haven’t had a chance, I’d recommend reading through my archive of race reports; originally required by my team to receive reimbursement, these reports became something of a hobby of mine last year. I hope people are enjoying them now and then, lest they become an utter waste of time.

Until I get around to the official “race report,” I’ll briefly mention that this year’s Cal Aggie Crit was a more exciting affair than usual, at least from my perspective, largely due to the fact that I ditched my 2010 Felt bike and built my 2011 Focus bike less than 24 hours prior to the race.

Out with the old, in with the new, right?

Incidentally, this is the first bike I’ve ever ridden with SRAM components, and is also one of the…uh…let’s say quickest-handling bikes I’ve ever ridden. Its cornering is so quick, it’s practically telepathic; sometimes, it guesses wrong.

As you can imagine, the combination of a hairpin corner on the dynamic, rapidly changing, wet Land Park course, a brand new bike, and a totally novel shifting mechanism led to a most-exciting event for me.

However, my bike isn’t the only topic which adheres to the title of this post.

Recently, I was forced to put down my white 1990 Honda Prelude.

That old car carried me faithfully to nearly every race I’ve entered as a P/1/2 rider, and therefore carries particular sentimental value relative to other vehicles I’ve possessed. It was more of a friend than a vehicle, and it lasted longer than most of my teammates during the same period. I’ve spent more time celebrating victories and lamenting defeats with that car than I have with anyone else; it headbanged with me to Rage Against the Machine on the countless 4am slogs to Godknowswhereville, CA, rocked out to AC/DC after my infrequent but hard-earned victories, and joined me in moping to Dashboard Confessional following my all too frequent losses. Following a late-2010 crit in Suisun City, CA Sterling Magnell characterized the ‘Lude as “tits” — which is loosely translated as “awesome” — and he was right.

That car will be missed.

Sadly, bike racing simply cannot happen without a car, and I’ve been rudely forced to move on. I suppose I ought to stop eulogizing the late Prelude and introduce my new car: a black 1997 Acura Integra.

This is the first non-flippy-headlight car I’ve ever owned, and is definitely the youngest, sexiest one as well. Does this car have what it takes to be a graduate student race chariot? Will this new car be with me through thick and thin, through loss and win? Only time will tell.

Out with the old, in with the “new,” as it were.