Polo game

Bike Polo

This weekend's coolest event has got to be the North American Bike Polo Championship, hosted by the Chicago Bike Polo Club.

The championship begins with a two-on-two, winner-stays-on "friendly" competition, on Friday at 8pm. Unfriendly competition will happen on Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday there will be some exhibitions too. Registration for the tournament is at 5 W Hubbard St. (Corner of Hubbard and State).

Bike polo was formally invented in Ireland in 1891. Did you know that the original form of the sport was field polo, on grass?!?!

Here in Chicago, CPCC hosts games regularly in Garfield Park, at the tennis courts south west of the intersection of Central Park and Madison. According to their website

Regular pick-up games start on Sundays at 2pm. Skills and team practice plus more pickup games on Wednesdays 6:30pm until about 9 pm. Loaner bikes are available usually Sundays only.

Come out and watch (and play?) this weekend!

News from FRITES 8-29-08

(FRITES = France+Italia+España)

• L'Équipe: Gerolsteiner to disappear at the end of the season. The new Canadian team Cervelo might absorb part of their personnel.
• AS: Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel), gold medalist in Beijing, won´t participate in the Vuelta, to prepare for Worlds. If you ask me, riding a week or so in the Vuelta would be good training. And a big dose of publicity for modest Euskaltel. Contador will do Vuelta, but not Worlds, whereas Bettini will do both.
• AS: The Vuelta leader's jersey might be red in 2009. Unipublic, the Vuelta's race promoter, wants its jersey to be different from the Tour's. A decision has not been made yet, but ASO, the Tour organizer and shareholder of Unipublic, likes the idea. The particular shade of red will be something like "Ferrari red." Unlike the French race, the Vuelta's leader jersey has made a tour through the rainbow over the years: orange in 1935-36, white (1941), orange (1942), red (1945), white with a stripe (1946-50), yellow (1955-1976), orange again (1977), yellow (1978-1998), and "gold" (1999-2008). (Wow, their jersey changes almost as often as UCVC's...) But everybody kept referring to the "gold" jersey as the "yellow jersey," so Unipublic wants to change it to something more unique.
  
• La Gazzetta dello Sport: Fabio Baldato retires. A crash at the Eneco Tour caused the fracture of his clavicle and hip. Baldato, 40, is the oldest rider in the pro peloton.
  

First episode of Over Drive

The show right now seems to be as much about Shinozaki's love life as it is about cycling, but the cycling part will surely pick up in future episodes. Notice the beautiful coincidence: boy meets girl and cycling on the same day. I foresee a lot of suffering here...

Sorry I couldn't find a version with subtitles in English, but you won't have any problem following the plot--the languages of cycling and love are both universal... No, seriously, the episodes with English subtitles have all been taken off the Wild Wild Web. So if you wanna follow every twist and turn of the plot, you'll have to learn Japanese or Spanish. More episodes next Thursday.

Episode 1, 1/3


Episode 1, 2/3


Episode 1, 3/3

Ganbatte!

Shakariki!, the Japanese cycling movie, is coming out in September. Watch a teaser here.
According to www.cyclelicio.us, the movie is based on シャカリキ！Shakariki!, a popular comic manga featuring high school kids:

These kids suffer, they have bad hair, they sweat and snot runs from their noses as they push with all their might to be the fastest kid to climb the mountain. They have no friends -- only rivals who sabotage them, coaches who berate them for their failures, families who don't understand their passion for bicycling. They somehow manage to ride with second hand jerseys, bikes and headbands from the 80s.

The movie, on the other hand,

features the "D-Boys," a pretty boy acting troupe of young men with corporate sponsorship, great hair, great teeth, no sweat, and no snot who limply wave their wrists in the air as supportive and attractive friends all cry "Ganbatte!" while dramatic music crescendos and they all win some sort of prize.

Any chance that we'll get to see this in US theaters?

* * *

Continuing with Japanese cycling shows, below is the opening song of the animated series Over Drive. The show revolves around first-year high school student Shinozaki and his goal to become the greatest cyclist in the world and winning the Tour de France.

The show begins when, while feeling a deep crush on Yuki Fukazawa, Shinozaki decides to get into his high school cycling club as Yuki's suggestion, even though he has never practiced any sport before. Ironically, the club's leader is Yousuke, Yuki's older brother and a renowned road racer from his town. Yousuke's long time cycling partner and club's vice president Kouichi Terao sees in Shinozaki all the potential and courage necessary to become a road cycling legend.

This sounds hilarious, for so many reasons... (Remember, this is Japanese anime.) I will post some episodes over time.

CX 101 on video: On-the-bike skills II

So you're riding down a steep section of the course at 20 mph and need to decelerate to go over an obstacle, or to take a turn. How do you do it?

1) How to brake in a turn on CX bikes

OK, you slowed down before the turn. How do you actually take the turn?

2) How to make sharp turns on a CX bike

3) How to go through closed corners

4) How to go through open corners

News and links 8-26-2008

• Bike racks raised to an art form. [UPDATE: The link now leads to the correct article. Sorry about that.]
  
• The king of the bike thieves lives in Toronto.
• Bryce Walsh rode 1,000k non-stop at the Northbrook Velodrome last weekend. He set a world outdoor record in that distance, but missed the 24-hr record. Whatever the result, whoever rides a bike for that long, especially in a velodrome, deserves a big "Congratulations!"
• How about driving a pedicab as a summer job? Earning $700 a night, pulling 800 lbs, and eating 8,000 calories. I'm not making up the numbers. It's all here.
• Running a stop sign might cost you $25 next time... Will the cops take your biker's license too? And how many more cops do we need to step up the enforcement of traffic laws? Is that the best way to use the overstretched police force? I wrote a bit about this a while ago... I anticipate that bikers will defeat the cops on this one...
  

My CX shoes

I just got my Adidas Razors and I wanted to share some thoughts with you, in case they can help you with this purchase. You might also wanna check out these Guidelines for Cyclocross Shoes.
Finding good shoes for CX is hard. First, not many manufacturers make CX-specific shoes, if any, so you have to buy generic "MTB" shoes (retailers abuse the MTB designation so much that I must put it in quotes). What makes CX different from MTB riding is that you need a sole stiff enough for good power transfer while on the bike, but flexible enough so that you're comfortable running in them. It sounds like squaring a circle.

Carbon and rubber are at the two extremes of the stiffness spectrum, so neither might work for you. I would opt for nylon, possibly reinforced with fiberglass or carbon inserts on the cleat area. The Adidas Razors seem to bend quite a bit on the mid section --that is where the arch of your foot is-- but I can't test them on the field yet.

The second thing to consider if you have CX in mind is the hardness of the rubber lugs on the sole. It seems intuitive that very hard rubber will have poor traction and, almost surely, will transfer more shock to your feet while running.

At 365g of actual weight (730g for the pair), the Adidas Razors are quite light, and they're spike-ready. (My knowledgeable sources tell me that spikes come in very handy in courses with steep, muddy climbs.) The toe spikes are not included though.

They come with XC-lite outsole, TPU lugs (whatever those things mean), a micro-ratchet strap plus two velcro straps, and synthetic upper (not real leather). The accents on the top and heels are silver, not white.

The one thing that doesn't please me about the Razors is the large mesh surface on the upper, sides and heel, because these are supposed to be the only shoes I'll use in the winter, my tootsies are very sensitive to the cold, and I don't feel like spending $$$$$ on proper winter shoes. But then, these are performance shoes, so I can't complain.

The size 10/44 I ordered fits me very well with both thin and thick socks, perhaps thanks to the ratchet strap (my shoe size is between 10 and 10.5, depending on the shoe).

The ones I got are available at pricepoint.com for $89.98. BlueSkyCycling.com carries a white version for $74.98, which tempted me for a long time. (I'm going through a period of infatuation with white cycling apparel. Plus, considering that my CX rig will be white, can you imagine how outrageously good I would look?) It finally dawned on me that after my first muddy ride any white shoe would retain a nasty brownish hue forever, even after I washed them, so I went for the more practical black. Sigh.

Other options I considered: Time MXE, Nashbar Pro, and Vittoria Pro X. If you must buy Adidas, you may wanna give a chance to the Voltage, which are less pricey than the Razors, but also less good looking.

This week around Chicago... 8-25-08

CX 101 on video: On-the-bike skills I

(All the videos today are by Mickey Denoncourt.)

1) How to pedal when cyclocross racing

2) Tips for riding light

3) How to work with obstacles

4) How to descend a hill

5) Body positioning tips for hill descents

Do bike lanes increase pollution?

The argument is that bike lanes reduce the space available to cars, contribute to traffic congestion, and therefore cause more idling and more pollution. Obviously, the answer to this question depends on:
a) Whether bike lanes decrease the number of cars in the street
b) Whether they increase the CO2 emissions of the remaining cars (via reduced speed)

I don't take a stand on the issue, but I found it stimulating to read and think about it, in today's Wall Street Journal (I'm not sure whether the link will remain ungated, so I'm pasting the whole article below).

San Francisco Ponders:
Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution?

City Backpedals on a Cycling Plan
After Mr. Anderson Goes to Court

By PHRED DVORAK
August 20, 2008; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO -- New York is wooing cyclists with chartreuse bike lanes. Chicago is spending nearly $1 million for double-decker bicycle parking.

San Francisco can't even install new bike racks.

Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That's put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report.

Cyclists say the irony is killing them -- literally. At least four bikers have died and hundreds more have been injured in San Francisco since mid-2006, when Mr. Anderson helped convince a judge to halt implementation of a massive pro-bike plan.(It's unclear whether the plan's execution could have prevented the accidents.) In the past year, bike advocates have demonstrated outside City Hall, pushed the city to challenge the plan's freeze in court and proposed putting the whole mess to local voters. Nothing worked.

"We're the ones keeping emissions from the air!" shouted Leah Shahum, executive director of the 10,000-strong San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, at a July 21 protest.

Mr. Anderson disagrees. Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It's an "attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy," he wrote in his blog this month.

Mr. Anderson's fight underscores the tensions that can circulate as urban cycling, bolstered by environmental awareness and high gasoline prices, takes off across the U.S. New York City, where the number of commuter cyclists is estimated to have jumped 77% between 2000 and 2007, is adding new bike lanes despite some motorist backlash. Chicago recently elected to kick cars off stretches of big roads on two Sundays this year.

Famously progressive, San Francisco is known for being one of the most pro-bike cities in the U.S., offering more than 200 miles of lanes and requiring that big garages offer bike parking. It is also known for characters like Mr. Anderson.

A tall, serious man with a grizzled gray beard, Mr. Anderson spent 13 months in a California federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. He later penned pieces for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a muckraking Northern California weekly owned by his brother that's known for its savage prose and pranks.

Running for Office

In 1995, Mr. Anderson moved to San Francisco. Working odd jobs, he twice ran for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, pledging to tackle homelessness and the city's "tacit PC ideology." He got 332 of 34,955 votes in 2004, his second and best try.

That year Mr. Anderson, who mostly lives off a small government stipend he receives for caring for his 92-year-old mother, also started a blog, digging into local politics with gusto. One of his first targets: the city's most ambitious bike plan to date.

Unveiled in 2004, the 527-page document was filled with maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier. The plan called for more bike lanes, better bike parking and a boost in cycling to 10% of the city's total trips by 2010.

The plan irked Mr. Anderson. Having not owned a car in 20 years, he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights, and sees bicycles as dangerous and impractical for car-centric American cities. Mr. Anderson was also bugged by what he describes as the holier-than-thou attitude typified by Critical Mass, a monthly gathering of bikers who coast through the city, snarling traffic for hours. "The behavior of the bike people on city streets is always annoying," he says. "This 'Get out of my way, I'm not burning fossil fuels.' "

Going to Court

In February 2005, Mr. Anderson showed up at a planning commission meeting. If San Francisco was going to take away parking spaces and car lanes, he argued, it had better do an environmental-impact review first. When the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the review, Mr. Anderson sued in state court, enlisting his friend Mary Miles, a former postal worker, cartoonist and Anderson Valley Advertiser colleague.

Rhonda Winter/San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

San Francisco cyclists protest bike-plan delays in front of City Hall.

Ms. Miles, who was admitted to the California bar in 2004 at age 57, proved a pugnacious litigator. She sought to kill the initial brief from San Francisco's lawyers after it exceeded the accepted length by a page. She objected when the city attorney described Mr. Anderson's advocacy group, the Coalition for Adequate Review, as CAR in their documents. (It's C-FAR.) She also convinced the court to review key planning documents over the city's objections.

Slow Pedaling

In November 2006, a California Superior Court judge rejected San Francisco's contention that it didn't need an environmental review and ordered San Francisco to stop all bike-plan activity until it completed the review.

Since then, San Francisco has pedaled very slowly. City planners say they're being extra careful with their environmental study, in hopes that Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles won't challenge it. Planners don't expect the study will be done for another year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles have teamed up to oppose a plan to put high-rises and additional housing in a nearby neighborhood. He continues to blog from his apartment in an old Victorian home. "Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings -- because they are politically motivated to do so," he wrote in a May 21 post.

"In case anyone doubted that you were a wingnut, this statement pretty much sums things up!" one commenter retorted.

Mr. Anderson is running for supervisor again this November -- around the time the city will unveil the first draft of its bike-plan environmental review. He's already pondering a challenge of the review.

Write to Phred Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com

CX 101 on video: Off-the-bike skills II

1) How to go through barriers in a CX race (by Mickey Denoncourt)

(Velonews.tv has its own video on going through barriers, but as of the time of writing this post, I couldn't play it. Maybe you'll have better luck: How to get through barriers. Click on the "how-to" tab. You'll find this video near the end of the list.)


2) How to run in sand in CX racing (by Mickey Denoncourt)

CX 101 on video: Off-the-bike skills I

So you have dismounted and need to carry your bike: How do you lift it? How do you carry it? How do you drop it back on the ground?

1) How to carry and shoulder your 'cross bike. (Again, click on the "how-to" tab and scroll down to the end of the list of videos.) From VeloNews.

2) How to carry a cyclocross bike on a shallow run. (By Mickey Denoncourt.)

3) How to shoulder a cyclocross bike for a steep run. (Also by Mickey Denoncourt.)

Some weekend CX fun

A seven-minute excerpt of the 2007 Women's UCI World Cyclo Cross Champs. I'll be back on Monday with more educational videos.

CX 101 on video: remounting

1) VeloNews' video is the best I could find. (The guys approach the subject from a, hmmmm, male-centric perspective, but I'm sure everyone can benefit from a smooth remount.)

How to remount your 'cross bike. (Click on the "how to" section and then scroll down to near the bottom of the list of videos.)

2) Mickey Denoncourt didn't do a very good job of making videos about remounting, but here are his two cents anyway:

How to remount a cyclocross bike at a run

How to dismount and remount in cyclocross racing

Free books from a tricycle

From DailyCandy Chicago:

August 15, 2008
Free Ride
The Book Bike
bookworm!

Once upon a time, there was a bibliophile named Gabe Levinson who wanted to spread the word about his passion for books.

So he did the obvious: ordered a custom-built tricycle with a 200-pound capacity and wrote to dozens of publishers asking for book donations. The hook: He?d ride around in his Book Bike and give away free books to the masses.

The responses flooded in ? from McSweeney?s, Dark Horse Comics, Not for Tourists, Drawn & Quarterly, and Washington Square Press, to name a few.

Levinson now spends his Saturdays pedaling around Chicago parks giving away free reads. Cops have tried to stop him, but he woos them with his bounty.

This Saturday, you, too, can be wooed (check his website for location).

Pretty cool in our book.


For locations, go to somethingtoread.net.

CX 101 on video: Dismounting II

The first of today's videos doesn't teach a new skill, but brings up an issue that is relevant to those of us who are building a CX bike now: the setup of your brakes.

1) Dismounting II. Part I. Dismounting a bike at speed in CX racing.

I can't explain it better than cyclingnews.com does in its CX section:

Often the brake levers are set up opposite from road bikes, so that the left lever controls the rear brake. This is to allow for better speed modulation during a dismount, where the racer is still moving quickly, has already swung their right leg over the bike and only has their left shoe clipped into the pedal and has their right hand on the top tube (or down tube) ready to lift the bike. Using the left hand to brake the rear wheel allows for a smooth deceleration without the risk of locking the front wheel or making the rear wheel pop up.

Would our in-house CX experts care to chip in with their experience in this matter?

Now a video on how to dismount in sand, which apparently is different from dismounting in other terrains:

2) Dismounting II. Part II. How to dismount in sand from a CX bike.

Let's wrap up the dismounting section with a summary from VeloNews (hat tip to Bernard for directing me to these videos):

3) Dismounting wrap-up from VeloNews. How to dismount your 'cross bike. (Scroll down about two thirds down the list of videos.)

CX 101 on video: Dismounting I

Mickey Denoncourt explains the basics in three videos (watch them in that order):

1) Dismounting I. Part I . Introduction to dismounting and remounting.

2) Dismounting I. Part II. How to dismount a cyclocross bike.

3) Dismounting I. Part III. Doing a step-through technique.

CX 101 on video: more "get-excited" stuff

OK, one more get-excited video and then I'll post some educational material... This one is more about the atmosphere surrounding CX, plus some people talking about the sport.

Cyclocross 101 on video: a prologue

I'm gonna start posting videos about cyclocross, starting with the basics and hopefully proceeding in an organized way towards more advanced stuff. (Warning: this is a learning process for myself too, since I've never ridden a cross bike...)

Watch this first to get excited...