blogs, bikes, and red bulls with TJ and alex

Bloggers are generally really weird. It takes one to know one, so trust me on this. The degree of weird varies, but anyone who chooses to spend their free time talking into an anonymous public space is either desperately lonely, has stunted social skills, or is too prideful to let go of the reality that they're never going to get published for real.
Possessing all three of the traits above, however, has never kept me from being embarrassed about it. When people ask me why in the world I'm at a bike race or event I've sometimes been moved to admit that "Iblogaboutbikes," under my breath. It usually makes people uncomfortable enough to be hyper aware of when I'm taking pictures of anything. It's okay. I understand the creepiness of possibly being inadvertently published on a website that is not Facebook. Really, I do. And there are enough weird/not exactly flattering but 100% accurate pictures of me on the Internet that keep me from doing the same to others [well…for now].

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I didn't get much pictures of hang times with Tim et al. this year. None of lunch which was enthusiastically inhaled by Tim, Alex, and me, none of the casual ride around Tokyo we went on [I blame that on Tim grabbing my backpack and shaking me from side to side like a delinquent stray cat to test my handling skills], and only one of dinner and drinks with Arnie and Ai of Red Bull. I did, however, get a can of the F1 flavor Red Bull, which is supposed to taste like blueberries, not gasoline.

The more organized among us, thankfully, filled in the blanks this year. Alex shot one of our lunches – ramen at Soranoiro – with a real glass bottle of Coke. I did grab a shot of some of our wagashi [traditional Japanese confectionaries] eats at the Tsuruya Hachiman café, but nothing really compares to the last picture. Because no TJ visit to Tokyo is complete without some half-drunken photos taken by Arnie of Red Bull [this year of Ai, also of Red Bull, and I making the Japanese sign for “money,” while Tim does air quotes around our heads].

Early the next morning, my voice all raspy and my breath probably definitely still reeking of booze, I met up with Tim and Alex again at Bonsai Bike Shop before their respective flights home. I played semi-competent translator and Tim gifted a signed jersey to Yoshida-san. He had also dug out a package wrapped in brown paper, filled with Skratch Labs contraband. I have the BEST bike friendz, EVAR!

By the end of the day, they were in air. I would spend the next three days trying to recover [unsuccessfully]. Although the visit seemed way too rushed, the weirdly cool thing about this time around was that we were still planning stuff even while Tim and Alex were headed home. The trip felt short – what trip doesn’t when it involves good friends you haven’t seen in more than a month? – but I’m pretty sure that next time we’re in the same 1 km radius of each other, it’s going to be really fucking rad.

cyclocross tokyo 2013: a really late race report

Since meeting Chandler and Tim at Cyclocross Tokyo last year, I’ve taken the liberty to clog their inboxes with rants about ‘cross, Tokyo, and bikes, and stalked both of their racing seasons. I sent a lot of emails with exclamation marks. I met up with them at the Gran Prix of Gloucester. They kept telling me that “yeah, yeah we can’t wait to go back to Tokyo,” but a part of me doubted they would make the flight over after Louisville. I mean, isn’t going to sleep for a week with an ice cream IV the natural thing to do after Worlds, not run off to race again, in Tokyo?
But last Friday two Fridays ago, I was sitting in a bar in Ginza with Tim, [Rapha-Focus mechanic]Tom Hopper, and [Rapha-Focus team manager]Jeff Rowe, having a beer at 3pm. We sandwiched coffee at Café de L’Ambre [where Tim had a café oeuf, a meticulously poured-over coffee with a raw egg yolk in it] between the watery beer and a stop at a whisky bar, and thus started the weekend.

24 hours later, I was cheering on Chandler in the Cat 2 race on the same course that the pros would be racing on the next day. Lined up pretty much in the last row, Japandler moved his way steadily up while Tim, JF [a Boston friend of Tim’s, in town for business], and I screamed and yelled. We all tried to shame Chan into at least beating the guy on the Surly Pugsley, until we realized that that guy was beating everyone. Well, until he rolled his tire and had to switch to a regular ‘cross bike [“oh, that guy that was riding everything?” Chan would later say]. Chan came in 4th, and I got to play podium girl for the first [and last] time in my life.

I only really found out how much sand was actually involved in the course after JF’s masters’ race the following day. There was the long stretch of sand that was there last year, but this year an additional beach section was added, presumably to allow for more spectating space. A pavement sprint led right to a wide curve along the beach [a few guys endo-ed as they hit the sand], before the riders raced through the twists in the trees. A small ramp added some excitement between the wooded sections, before a descent back onto the beach, into sand that seemed to swallow front wheels. I had seen Chan ride the high line the day before, but most of the amateur field had chosen to run the sand section. Both Chan and JF would say that it was the hardest race they’d done this year. It looked brutal.

Back at the Sram tent, with the sun coming out, Tim’s primary concern was how much he would be sweating, and Jeremy Powers’ primary concern seemed to be trying to walk without stepping on a herd of Japanese fans. Arnie from Red Bull came to hang out, as did Sam from the infamous Behind The Barriers. The latter would, later that night, get footage of me weaving around the streets of Shibuya after chugging 1.5 beers with him........Yeah.

I actually did a lot of weaving in and out that day. Once the gun went off, JF and I ran around the course, shooting pictures of Tim and Jeremy with our respective iPhones. JF, having raced a few hours earlier, was familiar with the best places to get pictures, and we jumped over Shimano tape and ran through sand to cheer on the guys. Japanese national champion Yu Takenouchi led the race just like he did last year, and flew through the sand like it wasn’t even there. Jeremy and Tim would close the gap between the trees [with Jeremy bunny hopping the barriers every single lap, to waves of cheers by the fans], but Yu would stretch it back out once on the beach. The field was getting lapped; the course more crowded. The elite field did a total of thirteen grueling laps, with Yu holding on until the last lap, when Jeremy cleaned up any hope of a Japanese win. Tim claimed the last spot on the podium, and the race was done.

The sun was slowly setting by the time the guys finished the podium presentation and conducted quick interviews. We were all shivering in varying degrees, I finally met Alex of Sram who also worked the pit with Japandler for Tim, and I found out that Tim has these zip up tights that are like the Lycra equivalent of basketball rip-off pants [par for the course, I guess, when you’re the “Michael Jordan of the cyclocross world”].

Getting shitfaced off less than two beers and wandering aimlessly around Shibuya followed, plus some riding around town and a night with Red Bull. But more on that later.
[Lots more pictures here.]

a pro, 38mm bars, and some cock grease

Josh, who makes a regular appearance on this blog, happens to be not only a Photoshop master, but also one of my oldest friends. We actually haven't hung out in real life in basically forever, but given the below, I'm pretty sure he would be the best wingman, EVER.
Josh‬: yo‬ adam emailed me back ‪me‬: NO FUCKING QAYA‬ alkfjdal ‪Josh‬: hahahahah‬ panty change time ‪me‬: F U ‬ OPMG OMG OMG ‪omg so jealous‬ ‪Josh‬: haha‬ ‪me‬: BEST MONDAY EVAR‬ ‪Josh‬: hahahah‬

‪me‬: WE RIDE THE SAME SIZE BARS‬ IT'S MEANT TO BE [also I like how Adam Hansen's saddle to bar drop is bigger than my crank length...] ‪me‬: seriously WHY AREN'T I MARRIED TO A PRO CYCLIST BY NOW? because, think about it i can make decent money i'm totally okay with working for a living i like bikes i'm not THAT crazy ‪Josh: hahahha‬ ‪me‬: the pro peloton should be chasing after me ‪Josh‬: cause pro cyclists‬ meet their girls in their hometown not at a race except for hincapie ‪me‬: hey hamilton didn't neither did lance see i have a chance just not with this [Skrillex meets Hitler] haircut

[But without this haircut, I probably wouldn't have discovered this. And yes, it does "keep it up all day."]

AND THEN THIS HAPPENED [NOTE: NOT PHOTOSHOPPED]:

I can die happy.

a [time] trial of faith

There’s a place that you fall into at the tail end of a series of power intervals – the kind that puts you in a severe oxygen deficit – or, as I also discovered a few days ago, in the last three minutes of a 20 minute TT.
It comes after the nausea sets in [that’s at around 12:36], and you’re already aching. By which I mean, everything hurts. You know it, you can feel it, but the worst part is that your brain keeps ranting and raving about it. It starts off a high-pitched wail [like Tony Soprano’s mother when she got outraged] that you can push aside temporarily. You can sort of fight it, and beat it down with willpower because you’ve been there before and you still pulled through. Then it changes. The shrieking to stop becomes more of a seductive whisper. “But you’re perfect just the way you are,” it might say, “You don't need to be doing this. I’ll give you a rich, gooey, calorie-free brownie spoon-fed to you by Bernie Eisel/Adam Hansen/[insert favorite hot cyclist du jour here] if you just….....stop….”

It sounds so easy, because by minute 17:00, motivation has abandoned you faster than Nike dropped Lance. People might tell you that under the laws of physics, anything in motion likes to stay that way. Indulge in a 20 minute self-flagellation on the bike and you'll realize that those people are actually wrong. There is nothing easier than stopping the pedals when you are in that dark, special place. There's actually nothing you'll want more. [And don't get me started on how absurd the principle of relativity seems when you're counting down seconds in a TT.]
When shit my heartrate hits the fan, I’ve tried different tactics, like telling myself I liked the burn – “I AM TOTALLY ENJOYING THIS!" – that the pain felt good. This can work on long climbs done at a “let’s just get over this without killing ourselves” kind of pace, and partners into BDSM. It’s harder to do when ceasing the extremely painful activity in question is entirely within your control.
It is, however, one of life's wonderful mysteries that you don't consciously go into the red [unless we're talking about debt]. It doesn't even happen in degrees, really. You hurt, near an edge, then all of a sudden you're at a place where conscious thought becomes detrimental to survival. I guess you can say it gets worse, but you can really only tell in hindsight.
When my brain flickered back on a few seconds after the 20 minute mark, I felt like absolute shit. The pressure that had been pooling at my right temple drained, leaving behind a weird, woozy throbbing. I couldn't remember a thing that happened in the last two minutes of that TT.

People have an obnoxious way of telling me that nothing easy is worth doing. Usually this happens when life has essentially stomped on my throat, when the primary objective in life becomes curling up in a ball while eating brownies and Googling pictures of Bernie Eisel and/or Adam Hansen, not hearing that this is the way life is/more suffering is required but it will all, probably, be worth it in the end. I always temporarily hate those people out of a selfish need to wallow in my self-pity. Like they couldn't give me a second to weep/stuff my face/fantasize about hot pros before powerslamming me with their advice, which is also conveniently structured for a follow-up "I told you so." It's an even harder pill to swallow because it requires faith. Sometimes in the economy, but mostly in myself; and that can be scary. It is much easier - and safer - to believe what others have told me is true: that my legs will always be slow, and that I deserve to be on the receiving end of phrases like, "well, my friends and I usually do that ride faster."
It makes for a lot of bitter, hoarded rage. The weirdly demotivating thing is that no amount of that anger could get me past the 17 minute mark. With 180 seconds left to go, there's no room for even a sliver of doubt; it's you vs. you, and at that point you just have to choose.
Can you do it, or not?
I dug in, hung on, and held some faith in me.
It totally made my week.