Roubaix: Harder Than Jens

Jens does not shower here

It is no secret within the walls of Chez Lazlo that the Bomber loves herself as much of the Jens Voigt as she can get. Point of fact, I too invoke the Name of the Jens in those desperate moments when my lesser self whispers it might be ok to give up and let the group go up the road without me. Without fail, the inner Jens commands "Shut up legs!" and the legs, they shut up. We can be hard because there is something harder than us: Jens. Nothing is harder than Jens.

Or so we thought.

In the months before our Belgian adventure, among the most frequent topics during our ritual drinking of the coffees in the pre-dawn darkness was how great it would, nee (that's "no" in Flemish...don't say I can't immerse myself in other cultures), WILL be to meet Jens Voigt. Despite years of watching the Ronde and Roubaix, it never dawned on us that we never saw Jens in those races. They are the hardest races on the calendar, of course Jens does those races! We assumed the biggest problem Jens had with the Ronde and Roubaix was gaining an unwanted kilo or two from snacking on the cobblestones themselves.

Jens does not ride here

Though the shock has irretrievably obscured my memory of the moment it happened, I know that soon after joining the Peter and Lisa Show, one of us girlishly exclaimed how exciting it would be to actually MEET JENS VOIGT. I think it was the Bomber that did that. I'm pretty sure, anyway. Yet no sooner did those words sing out than Lisa blithely replied there would be no Jens Among The Cobbles because these races were...Too Hard. Jens, she said, did not like the cobbles. As my friend Lon radioed when his helicopter came under friendly fire during a rescue mission in one of our country's many nation building exercises, "What the fuck? Over."

I would be lying if I said we did not consider abandoning our Belgian adventure before it began, though likely for different reasons. The Bomber was crushed that she might never get to meet Jens, nor would she see him ride again (she almost tore a finger off ringing a cowbell when she saw him lead the first group up Mt. Palomar in the Tour of California). I, on the other hand, was frightened to the point of paralysis by the thought of riding something that Jens considered too hard. Of course your vicarious lives would be less rich had we abandoned in that moment of weakness, and as you now know we pressed on, on into the cobbles, to discover what made the hardest man in the pro peloton stay south of Paris during the first weeks of April each year.

Know this: Jens Voigt is no dummy

They look like headstones on a grave, don't they? A great big two to three kilometer grave. By the way, that's Colin peeing in the background. For a former semi-pro rugby player - in Australia no less - the guy had to stop to pee more than an Australian semi-pro rugby player. And as long as I am digressing, we started the day in Tournai, which boasts a cathedral and pretty damn impressive semi-cathedral all in the same square.

Not the cathedral. This is where we stayed in Tournai. Unlike the Cathedral of Tournai, beer is served here. Hence a picture of the hotel, and no picture of the cathedral.

Word is Tournai was a major pilgrimage destination back in the day. Still is, as a matter of fact. Only now - and this is "true" in the more commonly accepted definition of the term than is usually employed here in the YSCX blogiverse - it is a primary destination for ginormously be-boobed Brazilian transvestites and their, um, I don't know, guys who hang out with ginourmously be-boobed Brazilian transvestites. Which is one of those facts that would have served the aforementioned Colin in very good stead had he been aware of it when he leapt from the van to photograph a "woman" whose be-boobs were each the size of TWO (count 'em) TWO Roubaix cobbles. (No photos from us because we are classy, classy people.)

See how I brought that back around like I did? Clever, yes? Perhaps maybe I don't have to work for a living so much anymore and can live a life of leisure like Kevin and Sarah pretty soon maybe. Just get paid for writing down the words in a particular order. Nice, that.

Belgium, as you may know, recently set the record for going the longest period of time without a government. This is not so surprising once you have ridden from one town, where everyone speaks Flemish (and very good English) and the road signage is likewise Flemish, to another town less than 10 km away, in the Walloon region, where everyone speaks French (and only French). Yet there is one constant throughout Belgium (perhaps it will one day serve as the foundation for a new government), the roads are immacualtely clean. Coming from the land of shattered 40 ounce malt liquor bottles, I was overjoyed to discover there was no need to dodge anything on the roads. Except the cobbles, road furniture, tractors, cow shit and curbs. But no broken glass! Heaven indeed!

However, the Paris-Roubaix happens in France. What with the EU making the border guards that barely glanced up from their newspapers and coffees as we rode by something less than superfluous (just plain fluous?), here's how to tell you are now cycling in France: broken glass. Seems we share something besides a fondness for fraternite, egalite and liberty (the iPad does not do accent marks so I must revert to my native language) the tossing of glass containers from speeding vehicles. If only the dirtbag rednecks around here knew they were chanelling their inner Frenchman whenever they launch one of their dead soldiers into the bike lane with the sort of glottal burble that passes for laughter in the stagnant backwaters of the gene pool. So after 40 kilometers of dodging deconstructed wine bottles, we (unlike Jens) were quite happy to see this:


Our ride began with Sector 16: the Forest of Arenberg. In a rare serious moment I will note that after you have ridden in this region you become less inclined to describe the race through the Forest of Arenberg as "scenes of carnage" because you see more than a few of these along the way:



Meanwhile, back in the Forest...


...we discovered French cobbles are not "cobbles" in the Belgian sense of the word, that is, carefully hewn stones arranged purposefully into a roadway. French cobbles are huge square rocks shoved in the dirt so tractors don't get stuck in the mud. Furthermore, exactly as it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly, it is impossible to ride a bicycle over the "cobbled" "roads" of Northern France. So, to get from here (Paris...yes, yes, Compienge) to there:


...the velodrome in Roubaix, via bicycle, you must:

(1) hit the cobbles at full gas:


...(2) keep your hands on the tops and understand that you will probably not be able to shift gears because the handlebar will not be where you left it when you try to put your hand back:


...and (3) do not think about what you are doing, because it's not actually possible.

A much more sensible way to get across the cobbles. If you value good sense, I suppose.

Roubaix turns the cycling paradigm upside down. Usually, those who are less susceptible to gravity's pull float away from those of us with a more intimate connection to Newton's claim to fame as we grapple with upturned roads. Not Roubaix, though. Here, the name of the game is keeping the rear wheel on the ground. Persons of insufficient heft suddenly discover gaps opening in front of them, where once they only opened behind, as their bikes spend more time in the air than, well, not in the air. As an aside, I hereby extend an invitation to Seamus to accompany me back to this wonderful place for 100 kilometers of payback.

Needless to say, I enjoyed myself immensely. Like the Twilight Zone episode in which the hideously disfigured boy is taken to the planet of hideously disfigured peope where he is considered beautiful, I delighted as the strong and speedy, but tragically skinny, riders of our tour were bounced from my wheel, never to be seen again until an hour after my own arrival in Roubaix.


Ah yes, but what of the Bomber? Due to her ripping fitness, the Bomber's power was as up as her weight was down. The last time I saw the Bomber on the day she had rolled through Arenberg like a true Rouleur:


As I counted down the Sectors, however, I spared a thought or two for the beating these roads were giving the Bomber. As always, though, the Bomber lived up to her billing as tough and fast. And tough. Reports were given to me at checkpoints along the way that the Bomber was killing the cobbles, counting them down with a huge smile on her face. So it was with equal surprise that I met her group on its arrival at the velodrome, each of us asking the other, "Where the hell is the Bomber?"

To answer that question, we need to return to Sector Four. Literally.

Sector Four, the Carrefour de l'Arbre.

Once a slaughterhouse, now a cafe open only on the weekend of the race, Sector Four is brutally difficult. Race winning attacks are launched here. Of course, although the race leader is the first cyclist on the road, all he needs to do is follow the batallion of motos and cars to find his way to Sector Three, and so on all the way to Roubaix. The Bomber did not have this luxury, and as a result, missed the turn for Sector Three, and described a large arc aaaaaaalllllllllll the way back to the beginning of Sector Six. Admittedly, the Bomber was daunted to find herself every bit of 25 kilometers BEHIND the the point at which she left the course. Only after several helpful Frenchmen attempted to direct her back to the Carrefour de l'Arbre - and the Bomber inexplicably chose not to knock on the door of Team Sky's bus - did she cross paths with one of Her Majesty's subjects (Dave from England) who guided her towards Roubaix until the intrepid Eric found her and rode her to the finish (by this time my legs were cramping at the mere thought of a bicycle). And so, though belated, the Bomber triumphed over 110 MILES of the Paris-Roubaix parcours:

Also pictured is the insufficiently Anglican-named "Dave" who will forever be fondly remembered within YSCX. As Nigel.

So the Bomber took her lap on the Velodrome's (surprisingly steep) turns:



Then, like so many of the hardest cyclists in history before her, the Bomber hit the showers:

A place Jens does not go.

Frank Lazlo

Ronde and Ronde: The Sportive-ing Life

Apologies for the delay in presenting this post. Though you all have done a fine job of keeping your barely-controllable desire for vicarious access to the amazing Belgian adventures of Frank Lazlo and The Bomber under control (so much so that one might otherwise wonder if you are even aware we went anywhere), other matters impressed themselves on my life to the point I could not maintain the pace of my daily recaps. Particularly, I came down with the predictable (if, according to KFO, medically impossible) post-trip illness, at the same time I was forced to match wits with a lizard that took up residence in our sofa while we were out of town (my dogged pursuit of the reptile coupled with The Bomber's lightning-quick reflexes carried the day. Eventually.)

And so. We pick up the tale as we set out to do what we came to do: ride the cobbled climbs of Flanders.




I know. Can we really be THAT handsome a couple?!? Should the good people of the Rapha Bicycle-Oriented Clothing Company need roving ambassadors to quite literally pedal their wares, we hereby zip up our gilets and toss our birettas into the ring.

We were led onto Flanders' cobbled climbs by no less than Eric DeClerq, verteran of 12 years with the Belgian professional squad Collstrop, having raced the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, Paris-Roubaix, and many other Classics and Semi-classics during that time. The Bomber, needless to say, was more than a little excited to be following Eric down the same roads he raced on:




The object of the day's game was to ride many of the climbs used in the Tour of Flanders the day before the cyclosportive event, during which there would be approximately 19,785 more riders on the course. Among the other groups who had the same idea were the squads of Liquigas, Lampre, Astana, Radio Shack, and Landbouwkreidit (Sven Nys rode right by me! ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!). We started the day on the Oude Kwaremont, where the Bomber was politely asked to move aside by Peter Sagan of Liquigas, only to have the Liquigas team car lose traction on the steep and wet cobbles and come to a complete stop, thus screwing pretty much everyone's attempt at the climb.




The sharp eyed among you will note that is not the Oude Kwaremont, but is instead the significantly steeper Koppenberg. We were stopped here too, this time by the ambulance you can see in the background that came to rescue a cyclist who managed to fall and break his hip. While riding uphill. Flanders cobbles are like that: hard and polished. And hard. Steep too:




From here, however, our successes would mount, as we cleaned the Taienberg, Molenberg, Paterberg (only the Bomber managed this one, as I was thwarted by a balky drivetrain at the bottom and a Belgian's bottom at the top), as well as the less well-known but equally challenging downhill stretch of pave known as the Lippenhouvenstraat. Here, the Bomber makes the hard left at the top of the Paterberg, which is every bit as steep as its more famous cousin, the Koppenberg.




And here, Eric explains that I am somewhere behind the group because every bolt in my bike, and my eyeballs, have been rattled from their respective moorings and I will be delayed until everything is returned to its anatomically appropriate place. Meanwhile, the guys in the group are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that the Bomber stayed firmly planted in the middle of the group across the cobbles.




Everyone has they own kind of motivation, and the Bomber's success was due in no small part to the fact the ride ended at the Ronde Van Vlaanderen Museum in Oudenaarde, which has a cafe. In Belgium, coffee is served without fail on a silver tray, accompanied by at least one biscuit or other sweet. Properly.




Meanwhile I took in the sights, which for me involved being photographed with every Belgian and Flandrian flag I could find, because I am cheesy.




With the course reconnoitered, we were ready to ride it at Belgian sportive pace in the largest cyclosportive event in the world (non fact-checked version), the Ronde Van Vlaanderen Cyclosportive. On the day we did it, there were a record 19,800 participants. That is a lot of people to put on a 140 kilometer stretch of sidewalk.




I have read in other corners of the interwebs that the Ronde sportive event was a bloc with squirrelly riders. Statistically speaking, if you have 20,000 cyclists on the same roads at the same time, there will be a few tweakers in the mix, but our experience was quite different. The vast majority rode extremely well, lines were held, wheels were not overlapped and the rubber side stayed down. Again, not an easy task when pretty much all of the 135 kilometers we rode looked like this:




As in the Ronde itself, the Sportive is defined by the climbs, and the Belgians turn out to watch the amateurs suffer. Throughout the day I was able to track the Bomber's progress by the sound of the crowds on the climbs when she passed. In five plus hours of riding, I saw three women other than the Bomber, so this was a rare sight indeed:




Props to the Belgian men for being surprisingly good sports while they were repeatedly subjected to this sort of treatment, much to the spectators' vocal delight:




That's the Bomber cleaning the inside line at the top of the Kappelmuur, which runs somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 percent. On cobbles. A more accurrate depiction of exactly how hard this stretch of cobbles is looks like this:




The Belgians love a good pain face, as it happens. So while my popularity did not approach the Bomber's, by the end of the day I knew how to say "That guy is going to need an ambulance" in Flemish.

After the Bosberg, it is a false flat downhill with a slight tailwind into the finish at Ninove. Ride that section and you know why Boonen was never going to catch Cancellara in the 2010 Ronde. And somewhere in Flanders there's a group of middle age men in black kit with a big Z on the back wondering why the hell they weren't able to catch some chick in a red jersey on the same stretch of road. Of course they did not see the Bomber tuck in among the team cars for a 25 mph rest in the outskirts of Ninove, nor did they see the impressive job done by her faithful domestique in the closing kilometers. Which, in the interest of full disclosure, is where I finally caught her. Having spent a little too long on the back of the group of Masters cyclists in their fetching black on black with added black accented kits wondering when they would take up the chase, I was - as Phil and Paul might say - caught out when I finally realized The Bomber would take top honors if I did not put my own nose in the wind. So chase I did, and thanks to the several thousand rolling obstacles in the road, I was finally able to latch on to the Bomber's wheel in time to roll under the red kite.




The Ronde Sportive is one hell of a hard ride. The last 50 kilometers are one berg after another with precious little time to recover in between. Still, I don't know when we have had more fun riding, which is all the more surprising given that we usually seek out the most deserted roads we can find and here found ourselves in the largest rolling crowd we have ever seen or heard tell of. It is a rare thing that an event like this lives up to all the expectations you pile on it during the months of preparation, but the Ronde Sportive certainly did that.



Frank Lazlo

Lost in Translation: Riding on the sidewalk to Eddy's house

Generally speaking, other people are just fine with me as long as they keep their distance, the exception being if they are on a bike in front of me on a bike and thus serving the useful purpose of sheltering me from the wind. Put simply, people are ok by me - as fairings. Though the Bomber has a much higher tolerance for people who are not on bicycles, she prefers they keep their distance when astride a bicycle. It is a measure of our willingness to leap into the unknown and embrace new experiences that I would be around people after they got off their bikes and the Bomber would be around them while on bikes. It turns out pretty much everyone in our group was delightful, and we thoroughly enjoyed their company.







The fact that we immensely enjoyed the company of others both on and off the bike should not be taken as license for any of you to try to get me (in particular) to do anything else new and different. Seriously, just keep your distance and everything will be cool.

So on our first day in Belgium we set off with more than a dozen of our new friends to shake out the cobwebs that gathered on our trip eastward, with the ostensible destination of the Eddy Merckx bicycle factory, in Meise, nearby to the YSCX Mobile HQ (Velo Classic Tours Edition), in Mechelen.




A word about riding in Belgium: smaller. Road? Think driveway, then think half your driveway. Bike path? Think sidewalk, and not the big downtown version, the two-person sized neightborhood version. And if there is a bike path, you better be on it because there is another word about riding in Belgium: huge. Tractor? Think semi. Trailer full of cow manure? Think motorhome full of fertilizer. April in Belgium? Fertilizing season.




It was in the Belgian style that we rode bar to bar on sidewalks covered in cow shit at 20 miles per hour, dodging the traffic furniture (big flower boxes in the middle of the road) Belgians love to drop in the road every three kilometers or so. Factor in cross winds, drainage ditches dropping immediately from the side of the "bike path" and you quickly come to understand why Belgians are such badass bike handlers. The lame ones are dead.




So why, you are likely wondering, am I regaling you with tales of manure-laden sidealks, narrow city streets and huge farm machinery rather than interesting photos of the inner workings of the factory that makes some of the most storied bikes by the greatest cyclist to have ever turned a pedal in anger? Yes, well, it turns out the Eddy may still live here but he sure don't work here any more.




That is one disappointed Bomber. Still, valuable lessons were learned about the Belgian aversion to straight, uncluttered roads, and their indifference to cyclists peeing in the ditch by the side of the road, both of which would serve us well in the significantly more interesting days to come.

Frank Lazlo

Back from Belgium

The Bomber and I have returned from Belgium, which looks like this:




And this:




Where they take cycling and public art very, um, seriously:




Where the food is really, really good (even without the mayonnaise and
butter and butter and mayonnaise):




Where they make beer. Lots and lots of pretty damn good beer:




And where chocolate is not used as a substitute for sex, it's the same thing:




They also know a thing or two about the riding of the bicycle on roads both paved and cobbled:




Even if I do not (turns out it works better if the bike is under you):




Once we have unpacked, collected our thoughts, and sorted our photos, I will put up some pictures accompanied by words to tell you about what we got up to.

Frank Lazlo

The National

Last year there was a cyclocross racing event held in Bend Oregon United States of America for the purpose of declaring some cyclocross racers better than other cyclocross racers at cyclocross racing. The better cyclocross racers selected by that process are not pictured here. It was cold, wet, frozen, snowy, muddy, sunny, bright, dark, windy and some word that means deep soggy leg sapping grass that makes you want to hit the guy next to you who knows the secret of riding through it because that's why he's passing you. Maybe the French have a word for it, like they do for every other cycling concept. I suspect it is a vowel-intensive, diphthong-laden term. In the American language, we will call it bullshit, because that is what it was. Also, rainbows. The rainbows were nice.

YSCX Mobile Tentquarters was established at the lowest point on Pro Row. We know this because when the frozen ground thawed, the ice floes flowed directly into our tent. Like so:




This is what happens when we are not allowed to use our best and only cyclocross skill - finding the best spot on the course for the tentquarters - and are instead assigned a spot on a grid. That said, the guys from Enduro Bearings set up next to us could not have been better neighbors (unless judged by KFO's standards, in which case their failure to design, manufacture and give us free Campagnolo-compatible ceramic bearings was a gauche faux pas of the deep soggy leg sapping mudgrass variety). Thanks to the good folks at Enduro Bearings, we were not forced to rely on the restaurant-style space heater Kevin stole from some unguarded patio dining area on the way home from the dinner at which he was reminded his one and only job was to get a space heater for the tent. Behold the fruits of Kevin's labors:




And if it looks like it isn't working, that's because it's not. So get out there and buy Enduro Bearings - because their space heater worked.

And now we will review the YSCX Nationals That Was on the YSCX Scale of Spectacularity, from leastest to mostest.

Least Spectacular: Frank Lazlo and the Perils of Having Standards

There was something about the time I spent on the bike that week that told me, in no uncertain terms, I was doing it wrong. KFO hardly needed to confirm that fact for me. But she did:




I believe I mentioned in a past post that without standards we would have nothing to fall short of, which is how I spent the non-beer drinking portion of The Nationals. I ocurred to me during the 347th meter of the race, as I was flying over the handlebars after having been forced into a course marker by a clever competitor intent on proving something, I'm sure, that I had not crashed once this season, an oversight I would address repeatedly in my two days on the course. My train of thought was derailed by the remaining two-thirds of the field electing not to avoid either me or my bike, probably due to the better traction to be had by running me over than in attempting to ride through the frozen mud bog in which I landed. Ever game, once the entire field made its way over me I gave chase and inserted myself into the mix where I belonged:




I believe the gentleman behind me spotted me somewhere in the range of 75 pounds, and then passed me on the run up. It was that kind of week for me.

The Thing That Is Better Than Least Spectacular: Kevin Max

The only reason Kevin does not come in last in the YSCX Scale of Spectacularity (The Nationals Edition) is because that is exactly what he wants, and denying him the validation such an honor would give his whole "training and preparation are wrong and bad" ethic is the only way I can say I succeeded at anything that week. Plus, he was ahead of me at some point during the race so any claim to lessermost Spectacularity he might make would be hollow indeed:




Athough it would be too much to ask for an encore to last year's face-plant, it should not go unmentioned that Kevin remained drearily upright throughout the contest:




If one did not know better, one might accuse the Original Doctor Spectacular of actually trying, or worse yet, training! We here at YSCX HQ sincerely hope Kevin will renounce his clandestine training program and return to his former Spectacular ways. And we hope he returns the space heater, because we are not thieves.

Spectacular Good Humor: Seamus

I will make this short, just like Seamus's race. That's him in the mighty black and black with extra black kit, waaaaaaay over there:




Sadly, Seamus never got close enough to the camera for a worthy photo. Having discovered the French grass was unlikely to produce one of his patented race-ending flats, Seamus chose a line through a rutted muddy section that ensured a collision with course furniture of sufficient Spectacularity that his brake would arrest further spinning of his front wheel. Forever. Somehow, though, I think it might have been his plan all along to make us get up early after we were all done racing, stand around in a driving snowstorm, and cheer him as he rode by. Once. You tell me, does this look like someone preparing to do cyclobattle for 45 minutes with the best cyclobattlers this country has to offer, or is he already thinking about waffles?




Most Spectacular: The YSCXX Crew

Regular readers of this blog may recall that we here at YSCX have the best of intentions when it comes to equipment preparation, but will from time to time overlook small but key details. In Astoria, we were guilty of failing to inflate J-Green's tires properly, or at all. For The National, it was the Bomber's pedal that was overlooked, and as a result of our neglect, it stopped, well, pedaling.




Yet despite a several minute repair job involving the removal of her pedal from her shoe, reattaching it to her bike, and giving chase with a pedal that WOULD NOT MOVE, the Bomber came within seconds of finishing on the lead lap (by way of comparison, I came within three laps of finishing on the lead lap...of a six lap race). The Bomber had an amazing season all around and richly deserves the YSCX Rookie of the Year honors that I just bestowed on her by writing this sentence. While the rest of us wallowed in the mud and slogged through the French grass, the Bomber sailed through clear blue skies with rainbows in them.




Of course she slogged through the rest of it too, but it's my blog post and that is how I like to think of her race. This is how The Bomber remembers it:




And then there were the YSCXX Elites: KFO and Sarah, who very nearly won their "catch me if you can" deathmatch showdown with seven-time National champion and (now) double Worlds silver medalist Katie Compton.




Well, it wouldn't be a deathmatch without a professional wrestler, now, would it? KFC took off from the front of the pack and within a lap or two was mowing down backmarkers like suicide squirrels on the boulevard, while Sarah bravely fought a rearguard action for almost the entire race.




KFO likewise did her level best to throw as many bodies between herself and the oncoming onslaught that was Katie Fucking Compton in an effort to forestall the inevitable catch:




In a race-ending move that was equal parts clever and practical, Sarah and KFO finally let KFC catch them with a lap to go, thus allowing them to get to the bike wash area early, after which they posed for next year's edition of YSCX Training Tips and Life Lessons.




Well that does it. A sentence that can be repurposed in any number of ways. In this case, it puts the period at the end of the sentence at the end of the chapter on YSCX 2010. Stay tuned to this corner of the series of tubes for posts from the Classics of Spring in which the Bomber will meet Jens! and PhilandPaul, and we will bounce around on cobbled Belgian roads in awful weather and in so doing replenish our cylcing mojo for the cross season to come!

Until then,

Go real fast.

Frank Lazlo