Race Chronicles 02-99

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Race Chronicles: Fellini; Aristotle; Protractors and Implosions

by Bill Stone

As you know Fellini’s classic La Dolce Vita was filmed in the vicinity of the Via Veneto in Roma. In one of the famous scenes the young sybarites are occupying the elegant staircase at the rear of the Excelsior Hotel. You can stand at the bottom of the staircase and look up five flights and see people looking down. However, this is not a story about art. The staircase has this incredible banister. Dennis is standing on the fourth floor waiting for the elevator. European elevators are not very large and two American Tourists on a reward trip for selling cosmetics for fat people squeeze on in front of Dennis. This leaves a line of about ten more of these folks. Naturally, it is suggested that Dennis use the banister. He forgets to exit at the landing before the final turn to the ground floor. Instead he picks up speed, flies off the end and crashes into the cosmetics’ couple who are already besides themselves because the Italians don’t serve biscuits and gravy or pitchers of diet coke at the breakfast buffet. Dennis using all his Italian says scusi and hustles out the door and scams away on a tour bus full of insurance salesmen’s spouses. It takes four of us to lift Tammy Faye and Jim and two employees to clean the make up off the carpet. Just the start of another perfect day in Italy.

These training camp reports generally contain diaries extolling the great routes, epic adventures, local characters and the life affirming values that are forged in the cauldron of shared pain and sacrifice. At the Chronicles a summary will have to suffice. The climbs were harder than anything you have ever ridden. The roads were perfect. The local citizens all stood outside their homes, stores, cars, restaurants, and businesses and waved flags as we passed. They invited us into their homes for lunch and sent us on our way with flagons of local Chianti pressed from grapes that were only handled by olive eyed maidens. All the local riders wore colorful team gear and asked "Tu sai Lance Armstrong o Bobbe Julich." The ephemeral presence of Coppi pushed us up the twenty- percent grades of the Madonna Ghisallo. It’s not EPO that leveled this climb for Bugno, Faresin, and Tafi. The descents were all at seventy miles an hour and we passed cars and motorcycles on the inside of every curve.

This training report has no doubt convinced you to travel to Italy. Thus, a few travel tips you won’t read in the travel books. When you make plane reservations insist upon an aisle seat. If you cannot get one stay home. Carry every piece of luggage you own on the plane. In fact break your bike down into parts and shove it in an overhead bin. If someone’s bag is in your way throw it in the aisle and tell whoever complains that you only have two bags and it is important that you not wait for your luggage at the airport. Also, make sure you wear a sweatsuit that falls down when you stand up to get candy bars out of your suitcase. Under no circumstance should you fly into or out of Heathrow Airport. This is not a joke. If you do fly out of Heathrow or any English airport add two days to your vacation. This will cover you for the two flights you miss as you wait four hours to clear security. Suggest you go to Zurich.

Do not rent a car. Cars will not put you in control. If you are stupid enough to rent a car then you must drive like a European. This means you have to stay to the right and if someone comes up behind and flashes their lights move over NOW. This is not van country which is to say that Europeans do not believe they are deputized to slow down traffic. Oh yes you are also permitted to pass cyclists without honking your horn, slowing down, screaming or throwing things. You will also have to parallel park so women cannot rent cars.

It is much more preferable to take the train. In the guidebooks and on the internet you will read that you must only take certain designated trains and must pay a supplement when travelling with a bike. Don’t believe this. Pay for a ticket and throw your bike box on the train. The controllare (conductor) may come by and ask what you are doing. Pretend you don’t have a clue what he is saying. Just shrug your shoulders and say "Mi dispiace. Non parlo Italiane." He or she will accept your apology and pitiful condition and move on. A side note. You will get no consideration if you dress like you are going to an IU game. Tank tops and topsiders don’t engender favors.

Oh yes, trains don’t stop for long periods of time. The train station in Como is not very big. We fell asleep on the trip from Zurich and awoke as the train stopped. We got one bike and one bag off before the train took off. On Dennis’ first day in Italy he is on the train to Milano without a ticket and not knowing the name of our hotel in Como. Normally, this would be a concern what with Dennis being a chemistry student; however, he has also read Trainspotting so he knows something about trains or is on heroin. Whatever, he arrives back in Como three hours later with a bottle of wine and the phone number of girl with whom he shared half the wine.

A final note. Always buy first class train tickets. On our first trip to Italy darling wife handled the travel arrangements and decided it would be nice to share train rides with the locals. As you know all Europeans smoke and all second class train cars smell like the insides of a Camaro. You don’t need to know the rest of it. Just accept that it is similar to travelling to India. A lot of people do it once.

The only real Italian you need to know is "dove il bagno" and don’t pass up a chance to use the bagno.

As for rooms never stay in anything below a three star hotel. This is not optional. If you want real air conditioning you must stay in a four or five star hotel and even in four star hotels a fan blowing over an ice cube might pass and even that might be turned off at night. ASK.

Back to the trip. Arrive in Firenze and go through the taxi ordeal. Here you are with bike boxes and two of them will simply not fit in the small station wagon cabs. You know this but do not try to tell this to guy helping you with your luggage or the cab driver. (Oh yes at the train stations you can get help hauling your luggage. In Rome the train left on a different binario (track). The gentleman whom we had paid to help came running up the track where we were standing and directed us to the right track. After ten minutes of pondering and much hand wringing the taxi guys will advise that you need two cabs. Thank them for solving the dilemma and don’t get in the way as they load the cycles. At your hotel the doorman will take your bike and store it and bring it to you when you ride. Give him a tip.

Back to the trip. Dennis has a graduate student friend whom races for Illinois. She has a brother who is spending a semester in Florence. She and her parents came to visit and Dennis advised that we had to act like adults. We are going to a restaurant suggested by the university student concierge at their hotel. We cross the Arno and wander around until father suggests that the son ask for directions. Unfortunately, young Beaver doesn’t speak Italian. Dennis says to keep quiet, as we don’t want to traumatize the boy. Sneak off and ask directions and then suggest that perhaps the ristorante is around the corner. Turns out the place is college bar. Traveled thousands of miles to eat in Broad Ripple. Japanese waiter speaks broken Italian and no English. Attempts to order wine are fruitless. Here we are in the middle of Chianti country and this place only serves Gallo in a box. This makes Dennis very happy, as he doesn’t really trust any beverage that does not have a twist top. Anyway, young son waves away the wine even though Dad says it’s okay. Meanwhile his fellow American classmates are throwing up at the adjoining table after drinking shots of grappa. They send two shots over to their friend and Dennis takes them off his hands. Mrs. Cleaver congratulates Beaver on his maturity and they engage in a half-hour discussion about the aberrant behavior of his friends and the cuisine deficiency of Italian meals served without butter and blue cheese dressing. Ask Jr. why he came to Italy and he advises that it is not Colgate and that really is a good answer. Father shakes his head in despair and un-screws another box. At this point the Italian kids ask the table to share some reefer. At this point mom and dad are no doubt ready to morph backward to their sixties personas; however, explain that they are American drug agents and the table clears quickly. Of course, this will no doubt ruin the rest of junior’s semester. All in all a great evening.

More travel tales next week.

Because Italy is just across the Adriatic from Greece it is essential that Aristotle be worked into this Chronicle. As you know Aristotle was a practical philosopher and wrote a lot about medicine. It was his observation that health and disease were a result of the presence or absence of four types of bile, black, white, green and yellow. (May be wrong on the colors but you get the point.) Now, we know from riding in the winter that Aristotle was on to something. However, the real point is that Aristotle was explaining things to the best that existing knowledge permitted, and in the context of then known science he was correct. Were he alive today he would no doubt update his opinions and explanations. Not so for contemporary medical philosopher and chiro-quack Phil Maffetone. Several years ago he wrote an article in Velonews about chemical injuries and a couple of issues ago a re-packaged version was printed. Basically, Maffey’s scientific explanation for cycling related injury is that cycling is stressful and that this stress causes the adrenal glands to put out whatever they put out. The body keeps asking for more and more of this stuff and eventually not enough can be produced and then the adrenal addicted athlete gets sick and can’t go fast and either quits or dies. Oh yes, during this overtraining your body doesn’t handle sugar well which further exacerbates the descent.

Now, it is true that there is some relationship between adrenaline and sugar uptake. When you become scared or excited adrenaline is released and the presence of adrenaline causes insulin to be released. This is so sugar can be made available to the muscles so that you can react to the exciting event. When the event passes your blood sugar levels go back to normal. For example it is well known that when a drunk driver sees police lights he gets a shot of adrenaline and he actually becomes momentarily sober. However, you only have so much adrenaline and the sobriety quickly passes. There is no debate that adrenaline is powerful stuff; however it is nonsense to suggest that the release of adrenaline causes blood sugar problems and injury.

So, what is Dr. Maffetone’s suggestion for avoiding these chemical injuries. You guessed it; train the Maffetone way. What way is that? You can buy his program. The Chronicle budget won’t permit this. Instead, the Chronicle research staff visited Borders and purchased a grande expresso and two chocolate bars. Ten minutes later Training the Maffetone Way or whatever had been read. Save yourself the trouble. Basically, the good doctor says that you must train at a certain heartrate for certain periods of time. Sound familiar? What is different is how he determines this heartrate and here is where he becomes very scientific. He starts with the premise that 180 beats per minute is the ideal starting place for training. Now, this may or may not be someone’s maximum heart rate; but it is the Maffetone determined maximum heart rate. He arrived at this point from experience which is to say he offers no scientific reason for this 180 figure. Then he adjusts this optimal heart rate downward depending upon whether a client has had a cold or some other disease within their lifetime. For example he says you drop five or ten beats per cold in the last year. (Might be off on these figures as was in a hurry to read the new Hustler issue in which Larry outed the congressmen.) Now, think about this for a minute. All of us in the midwest know that Dave Mercer has at least twenty colds, flues, euro-virues, whey attacks, and other maladies too numerous to count every Season. Even people in San Diego know people like Dave. Anyway, using Dr. Maffetone’s method Dave would have like a negative 50 maximum heartrate. He would have to train in a coffin and in the absence of sunlight and religious symbols. The beauty of the training plan is that you never have to go fast and he markets his scheme on the promise that the best way to go fast is to go slow because you won’t overtrain and use up all your adrenaline. Actually, the author has been accused by Shake of using this plan for years. It obviously hasn’t worked. Well enough for today about the good doctor. Next week we promise to address the glycemic index matter.

Linda has advised that there were races in March. Good. Hope everyone had fun. The only races seen were Paris Nice and Tirreno Adriatico. Upon returning from rides there was daily live coverage of each race on Eurosport and RAI3. In the next to last stage of Tirreno there was a great crash. Baldato lead out the sprint. About fifty meters from the finish he was about to be passed on the right by Zabel so he moved right. Cippo was about to pass both of them on the right. When Baldato hooked Zabel, Zabel moved right and ran into Chippolini who hit the barrier. All three fell down and Zabel’s bike flew in the air to his left and hit another guy just minding his own business. The perplexed innocent guy and villain Baldato broke their clavicles. Meanwhile the network showed the crash about a hundred times. It was clearly Baldato’s move that caused the problem. However, upon returning home read an American internet account claiming that Chippolini caused the crash because there was no way Zabel and Baldato could have felt him moving up on their right; the premise apparently being that unless a rider can feel you moving up he can deviate from his sprint lane. Guess, Chippolini forgot to say "in Sua destra", but even if he did how was he to know whether Zabel spoke Italian or perhaps it’s illegal to sprint on a German’s right unless you speak German.

In Paris Nice the next to last stage finished at the top of a twenty-kilometer climb. There was a break of about seven including race winner Boogerd. Richard Virenque sat at the back and with about two kilometers to go attacked. Boogerd caught him and then VDB attacked and rode away and Virenque was second. The next hour was spent extolling the greatness of Virenque and the mistreatment he was being forced to endure. You will not stop the use of drugs in cycle racing.

Okay, some comments on American races. Grant was in California and did well in the Wine Country and San Diego races. He also got to hang out with the pro Shakes. Jonas Carney won the wine country crit in the fastest race in history and Canadian Shake Wolberg would have won the wine country road race except he didn’t. Shake got to ride up a mountain in San Diego and he got caught in the remnants of the blizzard that killed the Donner party and he had to eat his flat tire and ride home on a sled. Then he raced to a military base with John Howard with whom he once raced over the Notch in Vermont on bikes without gears. Anyway, they are both at the Legends of Cycling Race in Alabama this weekend and if it didn’t get snowed out a report will no doubt be forthcoming along with Shake’s yearly chastisement for not going to this shrine.

Archie McNally Fitzgibbons reports that the Florida race season is going well. He was third in I, II race to Brian Walton and would have beaten him had he not been out the night before with Connie Garcia. (By the way Laurence Sanders died and there will be no more Archie McNally books, however, Fitz reports that there will always be a Pelican Club.) Apparently, Mr. Walton rode the Master’s race before the I, II event and had a flat or something before the end and despite not getting a free lap almost caught his two break away companions before the end. Now, this is fine, but at last check pros were not supposed to ride Master’s events. Got to check this out with new USCF Regional Rep.

Puck Whitlock has raced several Tim Tyler races and stands around the top ten in the Cat II overall. He insisted we go to Purdue on a rainy cold day. Typical trip with Joe. Left late and drove ninety through construction zones. Arrived to find that rain and blood delayed everything. Had been assured that this was not typical Purdue course with 180 turns around a Boilermaker clown. No, it was worse. This course went uphill and into a formula one lap through a hundred meter section of the Stadium parking lot. After the requisite 180 turn it was down hill around a sweeping turn and then left up the hill. All this in less than a kilometer. Dennis advised that the entire College A field had fallen down. Watched the women’s A race of about ten ladies including about 6 from Ameritech and two Child Molesters. On the first lap a Phone Girl and a Hoosier fell down in the turn. The USCF official raced to scene and dropped cigarette ash on the Hoosier girl’s mangled arm. That it was hanging at a right angle suggested it might have been broken. The race went on and a Phone Lady won and one of the female Pedophiles was in the chase group and former Puck Mercer finished in the money. Had read in Velonews about the horrible state of women’s racing. Well, at this race the Phone Girls under the management of Little Smack were all riding new carbon Treks and the Pedophiles were on new Giants. All this and they don’t even have to know how to turn.

Did not start the men’s race, as no doubt would have been dropped in the first lap. There was a crash on the first lap. Puck Whitlock sprinted the first lap and dropped half the field. He also led the second lap. He was in the field for one more lap and then was dropped. Explained to him about the limited amount of adrenaline that can be produced.

The lone Mongoose guy beat the Child Molesters. Got lost leaving Lafayette so Joe cut through a construction zone and then explained to off duty Trooper that he really didn’t mean to make him put on his brakes.

Finally, raced at Marion College. Was dropped after ten minutes. Eventually waited for field and was dropped for good with fifteen minutes left. Fortunately, had worked all week at remembering excuses that were shared among the other shamed racers. First race, just wanted to see how it would go, don’t want to get sick from working to hard; been working too much; tired from plane travel; asthma etc. It was good to be in midseason excuse form. Puck Whitlock finished but don’t know where. A Mongoose guy won. By the way the official did an excellent job and he promised to quit smoking when school ended.

At the beginning of the year one of the head Handjobs advised that they were going to take on the Marsupials at every race. At Marion there were two Surgeons in the field and no money though Brooks did ride well. We’ll keep score here at the Chronicles.

By the way one of the head Handjobs tried to get a position with the Marsupials. Is there some team dissension? We’ll keep you posted.

Was planning to stay longer in Europe but wife advised that the first issue of the new USCF Publication had arrived and just couldn’t wait to get home and read it. Apparently, the USCF is now user friendly. So, to test this out Puck Enmark emailed the Regional Rep and asked why his license always comes back unattached. You will recall that for the past two years the Pucks have been trying to get stickers. So, he’s advised to send in the license with a stamped envelope and in few weeks he might get it back. Meanwhile he can buy one-day licenses and race Cat V. So, the USCF makes a mistake and a member has to pay for it to be corrected. Just imagine if this was a non-service oriented organization. Next week the Chronicles will look at the Marx Brothers who run this operation.

Before departing Italy darling wife advised she needed a new handbag. Explained to her that there was a shortage of leather and that the Japanese had purchased all the good stuff. Explained that this shortage was related to mad cow disease and the EEC’s bias against American feed cattle that were fed growth hormone that was only permitted to be used in Italy by athletes. Wife advised to look harder and not to return without leather goods. So, it was off to the Fendi and Trussardi. Arrived home after ten-hour plane ride and was met with message to buy cokes and clean out the litter box. It’s always good to come home.

Make application now for next year’s Puck Tuscan Training Camp. If you don’t do it next year you’ll be a year older and still not have done it. (Skiers know I stole that line from Warren Miller.)

Oh yes next week we’ll also talk about why racers fall down in cross winds. There is still time to send in your answers.

Don’t blow your nose in the middle of the pack.

Billy