If I Gave You The First Verse

I ended up with another fucking third at the State Champs points race today, cheated out of second place by my own stupidity and lack of attention. That's not too bad - as I've stated before, I don't mind losing because I do dumb things - and nor is it what this post is about. Instead, this post is about a little bit of Brunswick pride.

Greg Brunt didn't need to be down at the track this afternoon. I think Steve Leishman may have asked him to come down and offer advice for the sprints, and he must've just hung around to watch the points. Not content to sit and watch, however, he took it upon himself to look after the Brunswick boys in the race - Sam McGregor and I. Once he checked that we had our spare wheels ready to go - with the correct sprockets on and fully pumped up - he kept us fed, hydrated and well advised on how he saw the race unfolding. Short of mopping our brows he did everything he could to make sure we went into the race comfortable - he even cleaned my glasses for me.

After the race was done - 100 laps, sprints every 10 - I was pretty dehydrated, and wanted nothing more than a drink. Without me saying anything, Greg appeared once again, my water bottle in hand. I mean, I knew he was a nice guy, but I didn't know he could read minds too.

Cycling can be a mercenary business at times, because essentially - despite involving teams, and despite it being next to impossible to win serious races without the support of a team - it's all about individual glory. And yet the best clubs have this kind of solidarity, this willingness to stick around and help each other out, occasionally give each other leadouts, let each other in, ride out to the race together and ride home together. It's something that tends to happen organically, rather than being dictated and rostered and obliged. We spend all this time hanging out between races, swapping stories and spinning shit, that when it comes to the serious races we're willing to look after each other. Brunswick Cycling Club does this very well, and today Greg Brunt exemplified it.

Got Me A Girl From Minnesota.

I remember seeing this when it first screened on Recovery. I remember calling up Leith afterwards, with a slight tremble in my voice. "Did. You. Just. See. That?" I asked. He was wavering too. "Yeah." He answered. Then there was a silence.

Every karaoke performance I've ever pulled off sprung from this clip.

Her Sisters Work In Woolworths, Her Brothers All Drive V8s.

So, with a new coach generally comes new extras. While pretty much all coaches these days recommend rolling around the floor with the soccer mums in a pilates class, the gym can still be a contentious topic. Pretty much all coaches recommend some gym work. The trouble is, there's so many different kinds of gyms, different kinds of gym programs, and different variations on those programs. Eventually, I guess, you just have to throw your lot in with one bunch, and decide that you're going to trust them without question.

My coach, Brad, recommended I do some weightlifting. I must've raised an eyebrow or something, because he caught on to my skepticism and insisted I give his mate Peter at the Victorian Weightlifting Centre a call. So I did, and a week or so later headed over the river to Glenferrie Oval, where the Centre is based.

While asking around for Peter I noticed two things. The first was that there were a whole lot of Anti-Doping Officials around, way more than I've ever seen at a cycling event. And the second was that while the dudes there were seriously gigantic, the women were of an average size, and generally not the cliche behemoth weightlifting types. Strange.

Perhaps due to me being about half the size of every other guy there, Peter set me up in a back room, working just with the bar at first, without any weights on it. He didn't tell me until about halfway through that the bar itself weighs twenty kilos. I've been and seen a few experts on Brad's recommendation, and they all seem to share this same slightly sadistic sense of humour. That same session Peter told me that he should be able to fix my posture - and improve my power numbers - but that I'd have to learn to toughen up a bit.

So since then I've been heading out there twice a week. Lately I've also been sharing the back room with a couple of disabled athletes, who - needless to say - can bench press a lot more than me. Peter hums songs to himself in between sets and occasionally fills me in on cycling gossip. The other guys in the gym still look at me like I'm that puny wimp on the beach, but that's ok. My arms crack, my shoulders ache, and occasionally I spend what seems like hours throwing a medicine ball against a wall. I haven't really seen any power gains through the soreness just yet, but like I said earlier, you gotta trust that what you're doing is right.

I'm Sick With This, I'm Sick With This.

I'm not a great bike racer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good at riding my bike, and I'm ok at winning races from time to time, but I'm not great at reading races, and I for one am of the opinion that right there is the difference between a great racer and a great rider. I like to think that because I came late to the sport I haven't quite developed that immediate instinct, that ability to instantly know which breaks to follow, how to time my efforts, when to let some muppet hang out the front and burn himself out.

This isn't to say that I don't get it at all. It comes to me, it just takes a while. And with each race I'm getting better at it. This is what has been happening with me down at the St Kilda crits over the past few weeks. I wasn't heaps enthused when I saw them written into my program, but a couple of races in and I'm starting to feel it. Last time I raced there - a couple of weeks back now, due to rain - I sat at the back and only did some work at the front in the last ten minutes, trying to chase down a break that was way too far gone. This morning I went out in a couple of breaks of my own, watched other racers, bridged to other breaks and helped another Brunswick member into what we thought was a winning position. I'm a while off the win just yet, but being active in the race, starting to understand its ebb and flow, and anticipating moves before they occur is a definite step in the right direction.

Them Hazzard Boys.

And also this:

Two Time!

That guy on the left there? That's Commonwealth Games Keirin Gold Medalist Josiah Ng. That girl on the right there? That's 9 year old Emily Hughes. This is my entire roller racing report. Who won, who set the best times, who got the most drunk, that's not as important. Or as fun.

Ok, I'll list the winners later.

Evacuation! I Shout It Out!

You Be Emmylou And I'll Be Gram.

We all have bad days on the bike. They shouldn't destroy us every time, shouldn't make us ask any questions, shouldn't make us uncertain about the training we've been doing, the food we've been eating, the rest we've been getting. Bad days on the bike should just be written off as bad days and forgotten, because the memory of bad days is always accompanied by doubt. And doubt, so useful in the cut and thrust of social discourse, has no place on the bike. To do well in this game you have to have the utmost in self-confidence - self-confidence that cannot be dented, no matter what the setback, what the loss. No matter how bad the day.

I did well yesterday at the Metro track champs, as well as I expected, but no better. I'd never ridden a real pursuit before, and yesterday morning did two, coming home with the bronze - second to a VIS athlete and a state pursuit champ. No shame there, but my qualifying time (5.01) was about five seconds slower than I'd hoped. And I brought home a silver in the kilo in the afternoon, but my tired legs were still unable to break that 1.10 mark that has been mocking me for over a year now. This being said, I was happy with how I was feeling - aside from those tired legs, I totally nailed my food intake, and the rest of my body was exactly where it should've been.

Today was a bit different. I skipped the sprints and arrived early for the scratch. Exactly how early quickly became apparent, and it slowly dawned on me that I didn't have quite enough food. Still, I watched Sean the Man - with the directions for the Grafton to Inverell 280 kilometre road race still taped to his stem - take a second in the sprints, then warmed up on the rollers. Then warmed up some more. Then warmed up some more. It wasn't the best preparation. The day was dragging on. A headache was coming. Casey texted me to ask where I was. When eventually our race started I was pretty much cooked. The pursuits yesterday had taken it out of me. I wasn't feeling great, and I felt even less great when I felt my rear tyre go all squishy. Five laps out for a mechanical. Still, I got back on without too much trouble, and even managed to pull a turn or two.

Before the race there had been a lot of discussion about how to beat the two VIS kids who had lined up with us. We had our man who we thought could win, and all we had to do was ensure that he did as little work as possible until the decisive moment. It was my job to mark one of these VIS kids, famed for making early escapes that somehow succeed. So this is what I did for the next ten laps. Every time he jumped, I jumped with him. If he moved up the track, I moved up the track. I followed him so closely I think I got some of his sweat on me. Eventually our man made his move and took a hundred metres or so. I held up the kid for a little more, but eventually he took off and I couldn't go with him. He joined our man at the front, I sat up, and was, a few more kilometres further in, pulled from the race.

Which was kind of cool, because it meant that I got to watch the finish. Our man was pulling the softest turns imaginable, knowing that the only people remaining in the race were the VIS kid, who was burning like a diesel engine at the front of the race, swearing at our man and getting angrier by the minute, and one other friend, whose initial job had been to lead our man out with four laps to go. That friend raced on his own for a good fifteen laps and held out for third. With two laps to go our man jumped and the VIS kid, perhaps tired from straining to stay away, never managed to get on to the wheel. It was good watching, and good racing.

I'm still unable to shake the feeling that I had a shitty day. But writing it out here helps. It takes that doubt and makes it reasonable, factual, typed out in black and white. Writing it out helps you reckonize the errors and localize them, keeping them small, not allowing the doubt to magnify them. In the past half hour I've gone from thinking, "Everything sucks," to just thinking, "Well, my food intake sure sucked. If I'd had more to eat I probably could've held on and finished the race." And in another half an hour I'll be thinking about races to come. I couldn't have done that if I'd kept lying here in the dark listening to Gillian Welch.

Who Tries To Make Game.

Where You Run To.

So I'm kinda sick again, this time four days out from a medium-importance race. It's the same kind of sick that plagued me earlier this year, a sickness that leaves my throat sore, glands trying to burst out my neck and a weird tiredness that doesn't allow me to get to sleep. At least last time the Winter Olympics were on, and I got to watch some sweet snowboard 4X / Nordic skiing action. This time I'm trying to manage a new, full on training schedule, work, and some crappy fucking shit-league European soccer. I'm also in a strange kind of mood, one that makes every single comment made by anyone else anywhere seem like the most irritating kind of annoyance ever uttered, but which also makes every comment that I make seem so deeply profound and enlightening and original that I should really be rushing down to Dinkum's Photocopying right now and preparing flyers for mass distribution. But I'm not, because I'm not sure that Dinkum's is open this late, and also because I know that I'm sick and should be heading back to bed and commencing my eleventy-billionth attempt at sleeping in a couple of minutes. So at this point I'd like to apologise to the larger, non-blog reading population, for depriving you of the halluncinogenic insights that arrive only after hours of laying in bed trying to think of nothing at all. Sorry.

Still The Same Old Story.

Every Planned Occupation.

So, Thursday was kinda a big day for me. First up I had some physiology testing with the good people at ERA. They were set to measure my VO2 Max, blood lactate levels, skin folds, and a whole bunch of other stuff. They'd also set my training zones out for me, so I can target those zones more effectively and train smarter rather than harder. All pretty cool stuff. But first I had to take the test. And let me tell you, sitting on a stationary bike with all manner of ridiculous head-and-face-wear attached to you isn't the easiest or most comfortable way to push pedals until you no longer can. I'm pretty sure I nearly blacked out at one point. Unconsciousness is obviously the desired outcome, however, because the assistant was pretty impressed by my results.

Second up was a long drive to Geelong to see John Hine at Cycle Edge Coaching Consultancy for some bike set-up hints and tips. My new coach had just given me his number and not mentioned any of his history - like the picture on the wall of John at the Olympics, or his win at the Warny in 1980 (looking at my track bike he casually stated, "Hmmm, yeah, I won the Warny on a track bike one year. Broke my road bike the week before and couldn't get it fixed in time..."). He also has a long history of coaching AIS and VIS athletes - definitely one of those quiet old guys who have been in cycling forever and have accumulated more knowledge than I could ever comprehend. As well as the set-up tips he gave me a whole bunch of pointers on breathing and pedalling technique, some of which may have come in handy that morning, but my favourite of which I'll share with you here:

"Every time you breathe in you want to make a little air baby with your abdomen."

Yes, that's right. I went all the way to Geelong to make myself an air baby.

Full Of Cocaine And Cosmetics.

Also this!

The Highway's Jammed.

From here.

The Flow Finesse.

Oh man, if this wasn't the same day as the Metro Champs...