Coming tomorrow: the 5 Boro Bike Tour

Start of the 2010 Five Boro Bike Tour

Every May, I ride with 31,999 other riders in the Five Boro Bike tour. It's a 42 mile leisurely jaunt through the five boroughs of New York City. Though it's not a competitive ride or even very challenging at this point, it's something that I have a soft spot for. When I first participated in this ride 3 years ago, it was my first "long" ride that I did on a road bike... and was one of the reasons I fell in love with cycling. People who ride this come in every shape and size. They ride on mountain bikes, tandems, recumbents and road bikes. Families ride this together, sometimes even on a single bike. (I once saw a bike that had 5 people on it!) It's really a wonderful display of all the various types of people who love riding a bike. I'll post pictures from the ride tomorrow.

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. -H.G. Wells

Eye on the prize

After doing some hill repeats tonight, my legs are weak and rubbery and I am fighting the very strong urge to go eat some ice cream. Straight up chocolate Haagen Daz sounds really good right now. I'm fairly sure that when I finish the Etape, I will be stuffing myself with all sorts of sweets and candies that I'm currently trying to avoid.

As long as I don't end up looking like this:

Gross... but the clip makes me laugh every time I see it. Yes, I have the maturity of a 12 year old.

Anyways, back to the topic of this post.

I've been following the Cyclist's Training Bible pretty religiously (pun intended) for the past 11 weeks and am now at the tail end of my base training. Though I was on the bike pretty consistently through much of the winter, my structured base mileage training began in February. I scheduled my training plan so that I could put in some decent base miles before going through two build phases and peaking for the Etape.

Work sucks

Hey guys,

Sorry about the lack of posting... I've been rather swamped with things at work so far this week. I'll have a post up tomorrow but in the meantime, I just wanted to share a video that I've probably watched a dozen times in the past few weeks.

Best line: A defect in the gentleman's mind confuses pain with joy.

Reminds me of a quote by Plato: The first and best victory is to conquer self.

Glory.... hmmm. (Updated with LBL quick picks)

A short video worth watching on a rainy day in NYC. I don't ride a Trek bike but it's more about Cancellara and the Classics than about Trek. There are two parts of the video I particularly like... in the beginning when Cancellara says "Glory... hmm" and when he talks about how he was going through the Forest of Arenberg at 5kph. The latter made him sound almost mortal.

Enjoy Liege Bastogne Liege tomorrow!

Updated: Okay, since I was asked why I don't have any picks for today's LBL....

• Vinokourov will try to make a late breakaway again to try to defend his title... but won't get much of a leash this year.
• The Schleck brothers will work together, with the emphasis on Frank being the primary protected rider.
• As strong as Gilbert is, I think the climbs are just a bit too long for him and start to favor the pure climbers. I'll pick Joaquím Rodríguez to win LBL today.

Are you man enough... to use a compact?

"You ride a compact? Why aren't you using a standard crank?"

We've all heard this comment. Many of us have made it. The subtext of that statement is clear.

"You are weak. HTFU and ride a real big ring, you wheel sucking little man."

It's the cycling version of a pissing contest. The "standard vs compact" argument. Many egos out there think that a "real cyclist" should be riding a 53/39 crankset and that a 50/34 is only for "weak" cyclists. Except that's not really true. In fact, a standard crank probably doesn't make sense for most cyclists, except for those who are fairly advanced amateurs and/or racers. And even then.... Garzelli rode a 34x28 when he won the mountain time trial stage up Plan de Corones in last year's Giro. And I vaguely remember reading somewhere that some of the riders even used mountain bike cassettes with 32 teeth on that stage!

When it comes to the standard vs compact debate, most of the machismo-fest focuses on the higher gears (because nobody really brags about how low their gears go). So let's take a look at some of the numbers from a straight-up gearing perspective.