2009 Canadian National Cyclocross Championships

So, Ed and I decided we should try again to watch 'cross nationals - though there were 2 major differences this year compared to last year: 1) weather - below freezing temperatures with snow, and 2) our 4 month old daughter with whom we'd had no prior experience yet out in the snow and cold. Chloe got a brand-new snowsuit the day before and we were set to go. Except that it took more time than expected to actually get her into the snowsuit and then be able to properly tighten up her carseat, so we missed the start of the womens' and juniors' race (we knew it would be too long a day for Chloe if we'd even tried to watch the U23 race).

First thing we noticed when we arrived was that the course had changed a bit from last year, and even included a sandpit - through the playground! I thought perhaps this was the Canadian way (ie. low-cost when cyclocross isn't exactly the #1 sporting event around) but found out later that there's actually a new UCI rule preventing "artificial" sandpits from being incorporated into cyclocross courses.

So, after watching a few laps at the sandpit, we headed for the finish line in time to see Kris Dahl (Team Alberta) win the Junior mens' race, and Alison Sydor (Rocky Mountain-Maxxis) win the womens'. Sydor, at age 42, is apparently the first Canadian to have won national titles in the 3 disciplines of MTB, road and cyclo-cross (though Christian Meier had previously won in 3 different disciplines: road, track and cyclo-cross).
Finish line (not many people there during the actual race as there were more exciting spots to watch - but definitely far fewer this year due to the weather)

Canadian Junior mens' champ Kris Dahl

Canadian Womens' champ Alison Sydor

Junior Mens' podium

Womens' podium - Pepper Harlton (2nd), Alison Sydor (1st), Natasha Elliott (3rd)
(note that defending womens' champ Wendy Simms did not compete this year as she recently had a baby).

Then we watched the start of the elite mens' race before going inside the clubhouse to warm up (our aging concrete velodrome is in this park so there is a cycling club's clubhouse next to it - proposal to replace the velodrome with an indoor one is currently stalled mostly due to NIMBY syndrome but that's another story).


We then alternated between warming up in the clubhouse (for Chloe's benefit) and watching near the other new and exciting course feature this year - a flyover scaffolding-ramp (our more limited mobility meant we couldn't go to our favourite up and down section from last year). Defending champion Geoff Kabush

Slippery corner where there was a lot of congestion on the first lap (and apparently crashes in previous races on the first lap as well).

Eventual repeat champion Geoff Kabush

Kabush being interviewed by Canadian Cyclist (I recognized the interviewer's voice from other video interviews on their site)

Elite Mens' podium - Derrick St. John (2nd), Geoff Kabush (1st), Aaron Schooler (3rd)

And then we went straight home to warm up. Chloe did very well, initially she fell asleep but then she was looking around and didn't seem to complain about the cold at all. The cold weather made taking photos a lot more difficult - had to pull off the glove to press the camera button and it wasn't very comfortable!

Tour of California February 2009 - better late than never!

Back in February 2007, this race was the first bike race we'd ever been to, and it made us even more excited about our then-upcoming trip to the Tour de France in July 2007. This year, while we planned a vacation to the Bay Area during the week of the race, the race was not at all our main focus - I'm expecting a baby in May, so this was pretty much our last chance for a vacation before our lives change drastically, and being six months' pregnant doesn't really allow for a lot of race-chasing and autograph-seeking, etc. We had a few ideas about possible race-watching opportunities depending on how the rest of our schedule turned out, but it seemed as though the race start in San Jose for stage 3 would be our best bet (seeing as we already had tickets for the Edmonton Oilers versus San Jose Sharks hockey game that night in San Jose).

As it turned out, the weather over the first part of the week was not great, to say the least. The thought of standing around waiting for a stage start in cold rainy weather wasn't particularly appealing, particularly since we knew that the riders weren't exactly going to be waiting around outside mingling with fans prior to the race if the weather was awful. And we would have had to get up and leave rather early (for a vacation) for the 1-hour drive from my brother's place in the East Bay area to San Jose. But then, looking more closely at the race profile, we realized that one of the sprint points was outside of Livermore, a lot closer than San Jose so we'd have more time to get there. So, that became our goal.

The race log/schedule suggested the racers would get to the sprint point by about 1:30 pm or later. We got to Livermore and had a bit of difficulty trying to find where exactly the sprint point was - we did find the race route, but no indication where the sprint would be (or else we were already past it at that point). It was almost 12:30 pm, so we went for lunch first then came back towards the route - the roads had already been blocked off, so we ended up at a corner past the sprint point (with a convenient parking lot for a park and school nearby). There were some people starting to gather, and best yet, it had stopped raining! Before any of the race came through, it appeared as if many of the classes at the nearby school came out to watch as well.

Pretty soon, a Livestrong van pulled up and they started handing out yellow Livestrong chalk and Lance posters. Ed got busy writing on the road with the chalk, not an approved Livestrong message but appreciated by PdC'ers...

And underneath, one for the DPF'ers out there:

I was monitoring the race progress on my Blackberry via the CN ticker; overall race leader Levi Leipheimer had apparently crashed before the sprint and we weren't sure if he would have caught up by the time he got to us. There was a breakaway of 4 riders, and before they arrived there were several rounds of CHP and other police and official vehicles. It was useful that they had one race vehicle giving some updates over a loudspeaker to the crowd. And then the break was there: Bauke Mollema (Rabobank), Brad White (OUCH-Maxxis), Jeff Louder (BMC Racing) and Brian Vandborg (Liquigas).

A few minutes later, the peloton came through (Levi had apparently caught up by then but we couldn't really see him) - Ed put his camera on auto-repeat shooting, which means then later you get to try to figure out who exactly you have photos of. You can't really see any of the race numbers because of the angle and all the rain jackets, so resorting to face recognition (and other characteristics such as Lance rides a different coloured bike than the rest of his team):

Chris Horner 3rd from left at the front, in black, with Lance Armstrong (yellow and black helmet) just behind:

Lance Armstrong at the far left (and Mark Cavendish further back, 2nd from the right):

Mark Cavendish on the left not looking too happy(#22), and I think George Hincapie 3rd from the left:

Peloton rounding the corner:

And then it was all over. In case there was any doubt that the publicity for the race was entirely based on Lance Armstrong, here's a photo of one of the banners in downtown San Jose that we saw later that day, as well as one of the billboard on top of Niketown on Union Square in San Francisco.


(at some point, Ed will probably get around to posting all of our vacation pics at the usual smugmug location...)

Olympics catch-up - miscellaneous articles and stuff.

report from Michael Barry about the mens' RR, where he finished 9th.

NYT reporter rents and rides bikes through Beijing with pro riders Jason McCartney and Michael Barry.

After working hard to help Mick Rogers finish 6th in the Olympic RR, and then coming 5th in the time trial, Cadel Evans revealed that his injury after the Tour de France was actually a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his knee. Luckily as cyclists don't need the stability and pivoting ability you'd need for volleyball, skiing, or similar, he won't need surgery. There was then some confusion about his condition, with the Vuelta organizers announcing he was racing in the Vuelta and rumours that he was named to the Silence-Lotto team for the Vuelta - almost seemed as if the communication between Evans' people and his team was lacking somewhat. Now again, he's been named to the long list team for the World Championships - maybe the Australian team managers know that he's recovering well even though all the prior announcements suggested he was out for the season.

And, an interview with Svein Tuft after he came 7th in the Olympic time trial.

(now I can try to keep more up-to-date with posting articles I found interesting).

Canadian Olympian Svein Tuft

Cool biographical article about Tuft, who rides for the Canadian Symmetrics team ... all his bike touring (with his dog in a trailer behind) in his late teens, even to Alaska and back; and some of his experiences as a pro rider.

“As humans we’ve gotten so far from what we were supposed to do that we’re always searching for something that makes us real again, that gives us that feeling of doing what we’re meant to do. For me, bike racing is that.”

Books and reading about cycling

A few years ago, I read Michael Barry's book "Inside the Postal Bus" and really enjoyed it. IMO, Barry is an excellent writer - instead of just writing about race or training details, or a few humourous anecdotes, he manages to capture the spirit of a race or of cycling in general with his diary entries and columns for his own site and others (Pedal, Velonews, even the New York Times)- he is even poetic at times. And better yet, he's a Canadian - I'm still disappointed he didn't make it to the Tour de France this year (he's still recovering his form after a serious bout of pneumonia last year, so hopefully next year he'll finally get to the Tour), but I'll be cheering for him in the Olympics next month!

Back in May during the Giro, the book "The Giro d'Italia: Coppi versus Bartali at the 1949 Tour of Italy" was highly recommended at Podium Cafe. I found that our library had one copy in the system, so I put a hold on it and picked it up in early June. The author, Buzzati, was an Italian writer who worked as a journalist on the 1949 Giro, writing daily columns about the race at a time when fans either watched along the side of the road, listened on radio, or read the next day's paper for updates on the race. Again, I found the writing to be quite poetic and captured the spirit inherent in the race ... not just basic details, but stories about a lesser racer who goes on a breakaway so that his mamma will be proud when she watches in the finishing stadium, or about those who come in so far after the maximum time that all the trappings of the race have already been taken down, or about the scenes of post-WW2 Italy they were racing through, or about the epic battle won in the end by Coppi. Again, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to other cycling fans.

The spectators...do they not perceive in the extraordinary abilities of the two men ... the presence of something mysterious, sacred, a kind of grace, the sign of a supernatural authority? And this may explain the immense attraction of sport. This would justify what otherwise would seem absurd: to wit, that reasonable, well-educated people can lose their heads and get upset and scream over a football player or a cyclist. But there are those who will say: But isn't it frightening that the modern world gives vent to its secret charge of mysticism in the terraces of a stadium? Isn't it humiliating? It is difficult to answer, to be sure. It may be, however, that sports fanaticism, with all its extravagance, is a lot less vulgar than it seems at first glance. (p 60)

Does something as crazy and preposterous as the Giro d'Italia by bicycle serve a purpose, then? Of course it does: it's one of the last meccas of the imagination, a stronghold of romanticism, beseiged by the gloomy forces of progress, and it refuses to surrender. (p 185)

The following seems fitting on this second rest day of the 2008 Tour de France, with 2 mountainous days in the Alps to come starting tomorrow (and with Oscar Pereiro's crash over a guardrail down to the road below fresh in their minds still):

Tonight, those peaks, arrogant and threatening, loom over the sleeping racers: visions of horrendous precipices, roads that make the blood run cold, without guardrails, and carved out of solid rock; and a monster follows them as they struggle up the slopes above the abyss, and salvation is up at the top, where there is a passage between the cliffs, where one never arrives. (p 105)

And then there's the Tour. I've just started reading "The Tour de France: A Cultural History" by Christopher S. Thompson, which so far seems quite interesting - since being at the Tour last year I've been somewhat fascinated by how much of a cultural event the Tour is rather than just a sporting one. Particularly when there are positive doping tests coming out and unknowing North American journalists seem to think that the Tour should just be shut down - that's never going to happen because it isn't just about the race, it's so much more than that. Which is essentially what I wrote last year in this article once I came back from France. I'll post more about this book once I've read more than the first chapter ;-).

Tour de France Art

I posted at Podium Cafe about 2 recent art exhibits that we went to see, featuring paintings depicting the 2005 Tour de France. Here are a few photos: us with one of the paintings at the AGA, the photo on Toti's business card, a photo from the original AGA description of the exhibit, and the newspaper clipping of yesterday's article.

Another year, another Tour de France

but we're not there in France this year :-(. Which is too bad, because my favourite rider is one of the favourites to win this year (Cadel Evans), and there's a Canadian in the race for the first time in over 10 years (Ryder Hesjedal of the Garmin-Chipotle team).

As for my own riding, I had major unexpected surgery in March, and really I'm only just now starting to get back on track regarding cycling - no way I'd be riding up Alpe d'Huez anytime soon.

So, instead, I'm always finding articles and bits about cycling and my favourite riders that I want to share, sometimes I do that on various internet cycling forums - but I thought perhaps I'd share various links here as well. We'll see how long I actually keep this up ...