Here.We.Go!

I'm nervous like in only few occasions in my life. The preparation over the whole year, the sacrifices, the small victories along the way, the many doubts - can I handle the wind and that descent? will I manage to keep it together and not break down? just how strong is everyone else? - everything goes to the line in just a few hours.

Yesterday, a German team including a friend and fellow racer Lasse Ibert won the epic Race Across America (RAAM). A few hours later, Giulio reached a fine 9th place in the German championships, with three other former teammates also in the top 9. Now it's my turn, and I have a weird mix of anticipation, excitement, and fear, rushing through me as I watch the first blue-skied sunrise since arriving in Brazil a few days ago.

Agi, I'm sorry I'm not there for your birthday. To all my friends and family, both here and back in Germany - I hope we can catch up for the time I've disappeared due to all those crazy training commitments. And yet, this all was only possible because all of you somehow understood and supported me along the way - in all forms possible. I have a debt of gratitude that no performance I'll be capable of delivering today will every pay off.

Here we go. Let's burn.

The Loneliness of the Middle-Ranking Cyclist

The journey is the destination is surely one of the most widely explored clichés in this blog. But that is only because, true enough, it holds for the greater part of my endeavours. There are a few lofty goals looming ahead on the horizon, and I was considering holding this post back until past those milestones, but alas!, getting there is what makes it for a compelling story. So there. After over two months of racing, I can confidently say I never took a season so seriously. A six-pack of good German beer wouldn't usually last for a week in my fridge. Now, as I began drafting this piece, I drank the last survivor from a pack bought somewhere early last month. On the other hand, I now know, almost by heart, every option of alcohol-free beer there is in the local Getränkemarkt. Not that I believe a beer or a glass of wine would spoil the whole preparation, but, befitting the "marginal gains" approach, it seems somehow the right thing - together with slightly less sugar here, a bit more attention to the vitamins and minerals there, besides, of course, every little watt that can be saved in our set-up. But, as usual, I digress.

Some weeks ago, racing in a windy, wet, and hilly race close to Stuttgart, I got dropped after not many kilometres. I spent some time fruitlessly chasing the decimated field, then joined the gruppetto, which didn't seem much interested in working to make the time cut - an abandon ensued. I drove the odd 300km back home in a contemplative mood, wondering, as usual, what made one leave the warmth of a cosy bed so early in a holiday for such a punishing experience. The answer came less than a week later, as I put in a good performance in my first criterium of the season and, surprisingly, took the win by a slim margin over a fairly strong field. Yay! My victory upgraded me to an Elite 'A' license, the highest amateur category, and as such, I am now terminally precluded from starting any race which doesn't have on its starting line a wealth of current, aspiring, or former, professionals. Small fish in the big pond, one more time.

The springtime march continued. In spite of having spent most of the preceding weeks without a time-trial machine, and only having assembled my new Speed Concept a few days before the event, I still managed a fine 6th place in the open Bavarian championships in early May, less than a minute off the mark set by winner Felix Spensberger; teammate Giulio came in 3rd place, missing the top spot for just over 15s - tight indeed. Performances the following weeks were hampered by mechanicals and plain bad luck - I dropped my chain just before the deciding breakaway went in one race, and ripped a derailleur cable in another, being forced to finish using nothing but my 12 gear. Still, the experience with the team was always most enjoyable, and I wrapped the first racing block feeling confident of my form curve trending upwards. Followed by ten days training at altitude (with blood tests afterwards indicating I've hit an all-time hematocrit high), I've entered my taper phase in what I believe is the best condition I've ever attained. While I wouldn't pose a danger to Tony or Fabian were I fortunate enough to face them, the numbers from the last simulated time-trials assure me that, if I don't screw up catastrophically, I could be up for something...

I'll be flying to Brazil for the National Championships tomorrow, excited by the perspective of what lies ahead. But, looking back - all the way to the first training rides in Brazil over the New Year, through the long base kilometres around Lake Starnberg or lonely trainer rides over the winter, the Toscana training camp, the assembling of a new bike, the races, numerous discussions on equipment choices, physiology, aerodynamics and tactics, the week in the mountains, and now the final finishing touches leading up to my trip - I can already be certain that this - the whole process of getting me there - was the most important part of all. Thank you, folks, for the incredible ride!

Easter Troll

It's Easter Friday, a holiday as usual, and I wondered why, contrary to many other holidays, there were no races today. (I am indeed racing a circuit race tomorrow in Saxony, and a road race on Monday close to Stuttgart). I found out that, in particular here in Bavaria, but also throughout Germany, certain organized events are prohibited on particular "silent holidays", which include Easter and All Saint's day. O-K... That'd be medievally bizarre enough, but it gets worse. A few years ago, a petition took place against this moratorium, only to be denied by a court, which cited the "great importance deserved by the required constitutional protection of Sundays and public holidays" when announcing its verdict. Wait, what?

For the sake of trolling, let's suppose that an arbitrary new religion - remember, freedom of religion is guaranteed by article 4 of the Constitution ("Fundamental Law") - also has a holiday that, by virtue of an equally arbitrary calculation based on moon phases and what not, happens to fall on the same day of this Christian Easter thing. Furthermore, for the sake of this argument, this religion enjoys having its major events celebrated by, oh, having its followers get drunk and dance naked around bonfires. Or, simply, by holding a bike race (the Gods were cyclists in previous lives, who knows for sure?), with the ensuing awards ceremony providing enough music, food and drinks to guarantee the physical and spiritual well-being of all its participants. Given that those are perfectly fine activities any other day of the year, wouldn't the Constitution, as it stands, be inhibiting the exercise of such a religious freedom?
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At any rate, the Easter Bunny brought me chocolates. Nham :)

March Marches

Ever since my first year in Germany, back in 2004, the month of March has had a little tradition of being particularly hectic. The winter/springtime transition marks a shift from training to racing regimes; the longer days typically motivate a change in the daily schedules; and most importantly, it's somehow the time when all sorts of different trips, conferences and visits take place.

I already noted this phenomenon back in 2009, with "Quase uma tradição" ("Almost a tradition"), which was reinforced in 2010 with "Packing - or the Whiskas Lifestyle, yet again". In 2011 I had Agnes over for her first visit to Erlangen, followed immediately by my trip to Brazil for Benjamin and Ana's wedding, followed straight out of the plane in Frankfurt to Dresden for yet another presentation in the Spring Meeting of the German Physical Society.

And it being 2012, and this being March, another round was indeed on order. The month began in Tuscany, where Team Magnesium Pur was holding its pre-season training camp. A week of long rides with Ivo, Giulio, Maxi and Lorenz served to solidify the necessary endurance base for the first part of the season. Back in Erlangen, my dad, who was in Hannover for CeBit, came to visit the following weekend, before I took off, with Nadja and my bike in the trunk, for my umpf-th time in that dreaded conference. We were hosted in Stuttgart by a friendly Brazilian couple, who somehow tolerated a complete stranger bringing in a bike and home trainer for three days away from home. Barely had I came back, and Agnes found out there was a window for her to get away from Waterloo; two days later I was picking her up in the airport in Nürnberg. Between work, training rides and lazy evenings, it seemed as if she had never left. Springtime bliss, updated for 2012.
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March wouldn't be complete without the season opener in Zusmarshausen, to where I drove with Agnes this past Saturday. Woke up on Sunday feeling tip-top, the team being in high spirits, the equipment and training condition all dialed in - and yet, we plain simply just missed the boat, watching (or better yet, not watching!) Eric Hoffmann and Helmut Trettwer ride away for a Baier 1-2. Duh. Still, out of the pursuit led by Giulio, Philipp managed to score a fine 10th place, which led me to conclude that if, when we screw up, we still manage to put a man inside the top 10, then things can only get better.
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Brought Agnes to the airport earlier this morning, and drove straight to the office, to find, in my desk, the latest version of my paper draft dripping red with Peter's corrections - including correcting the mistakes I made when (supposedly) addressing the previously noted issues (i.e., correcting the correction of the correction). That addressed, I left campus noting that it was over 7pm, and the sun still shone; but, arriving home to an empty apartment, realized it's not Summer just yet.

Unspeakable: legibility, the sum of all fears, and the Yay! philosophy

Or, "On a (not-entirely) self-balancing mechanism towards the implementation of an always-Yay! lifestyle"

My postings seem to follow in bursts. Minus the retrospective entry, it's been almost two months since the last one. And while I'd like to find myself writing more, I think it's rightly so: First, the blog is a hobby, a therapy of sorts, and as such, adding any sort of pressure to post regularly would defeat the idea. Second, coming up with a post I'm happy with can take time; sometimes I'll start a sketch, and let the idea mature over the course of many a month - until something happens which provides the necessary spark to go ahead. Besides this one now reaching the press, there are three other drafts sitting in the "unpublished" folder waiting for completion.

This observation serves as the connecting point for me to discuss consistency, continuity, or the absence thereof. Those familiar with this blog will find this subject somewhat recurring - indeed, from 2009, "The First Year of the rest of my life" and last year's "Euphoria, Delusion, and sudden rushes of perspective" discussed some of these oscillations, but I think there's more. I hinted this in the previous post: "those far more abstract things", "the subtle lacks of coherence": the journey without apparent legibility. While I firmly believe the alignment of one's lifestyle to his or her beliefs, goals and purposes to be a major key in reaching fulfilment - in all levels -, still, there is something to those departures we - willingly or not - take from our intended path. I now hold that embracing and accepting these deviations is an even more fundamental component that we must acquiesce to. Life will throw opportunities, temptations, misfortunes and force change of plans that must all somehow be worked into the script. Having a clearly defined view of one's goals should help one steer a fairly steady course, but still, a willingness to come to terms with the unexpected seems required if one is to truly find peace in him- or herself.

David Wong worded the above slightly differently in "How 'The Karate Kid' Ruined The Modern World". I may debate some of his conclusions, but the fact is that our lives don't follow a Hollywoodian storytelling narrative. We'll start from the bottom, failing most of the time, learn, do a little better, fail again, improve, trip over ourselves, and maybe, just maybe, eventually reach somewhere - perhaps only to fall again, or discover it was not where we originally intended to go, etc. As always, it's about journey - however tortuous it can be.

(Besides the Karate Kid piece, I was partly inspired by "A Big Little Idea Called Legibility", which you may find worth a read.)

A number of examples can illustrate this - the absolutely anti-climatic developments in doctoral research and the slips in my training regimen being two I'm most familiar with, but I could also mention the erratic ebb and flow of people, interests and commitments, all of which would make any movie or literature critic wonder why exactly that particular scene or chapter was included, if our narrative was to be filmed or published. Fortunately for the audience, or maybe not, most likely it won't. But this begs the question central to this post - how many biographies, in an attempt to make the story legible, ended up missing those seemingly irrelevant side stories which were, actually, fundamental in shaping the character's outcome?

At any rate, and onto those far more abstract things I've encountered throughout the last year - I figured how important technique was, and found out I had very little of it. I formulated a theory on how our strengths cause some of our weaknesses, my aerobic engine relating to my poor handling skills, and my supposed ease to learn abstract physical theories responsible for my complete disregard for proper schooling in more elaborate methods. I contemplated aiming higher than ever before, and found myself, more often than not, bitterly brought down to earth by my own limitations. I had to deal with some of the skeletons in my closet, and let some of them go, as I ventured into the hitherto unsailed waters of living with someone. I had to face, for the first time, the idea of losing one of my parents, as a tumour diagnostic emerged, and felt the joyful relief of being shared successively more positive test results. I realized that - still a child, student, son - I'm somehow a "grown-up", and, facing the end of my Ph.D., have to find a way to figure what comes next.

There were not few nights when one, or all, of these thoughts attempted to creep in. And yet, just as we know that the sun will rise again, I established that, all come and go as it may, still and nevertheless, the future will be awesome - and it just takes getting there. The conclusion, obviously enough, has been here for ages. By now, most of you know my status line by heart.

Yay!, always.

Singular. And prime.

"Odd" ("ímpar"), in Portuguese, not only describes "odd" as in "uneven", but also - the translation I choose to title this post - "singular" - which to me has a much more appealing sound. Plain "odd" reminds me of "strange", typically in less-than-complimentary ways - absolutely not what I want to use here.

Exactly as I said just over a year ago, 2011 kept true to the crescendo all past years have been building upon. Not only all the new destinations, friendships, adventures and results - both in Cycling as in Physics - brought novel and superlative experiences: the year was a fantastic one precisely for those far more abstract things which didn't make the list below. 2011 taught me to appreciate the subtle lacks of coherence, and made me understand what self-confidence really means. It showed me I could truly embrace Yay! as a lifestyle.

While those more impalpable concepts will be subject of future posts, I leave you now with 100 of those moments which could be grasped, in one way or another, through a photograph or image of some sort, in my Picasa gallery of the year:

Two-thousand, eleven.

By the way, the 305th prime number.

On Speed Machines and Time Concepts

A few months ago, Cervélo landed a magnificent marketing coup when Craig 'Crowie' Alexander, until then sponsored by Spanish bike manufacturer Orbea, showed up to race the Half-Ironman Championships with an unbranded P4. He went on to win the race, and the interwebs were ablaze with rumours surrounding his equipment change. Orbeas, which I'll group together with most Italian manufacturers, do look the part, but are typically not believed to be particularly fast designs - a reputation that better befits technically-oriented brands, to which Cervélo is almost a synonym, but which also includes names such as Trek, Scott, BMC, Felt or Specialized - so it was not surprising he'd pick a supposedly much faster frame for one of the most important races of the year. But he didn't race on a Speed Concept or on a Plasma. He didn't pick a Time Machine, nor a Felt DA. Not even a Shiv from the Big S, which turned out to become his sponsor, announced only a few weeks after his 70.3 win. No, he was on a P4, the distinctive downtube features clearly giving away a product from a certain Ontario-based design office...

Now, without a doubt, all recent designs from any of those in the latter list are fast, as in wind-tunnel fast. Their relative ordering is disputable and depends on a number of not-so-well-agreed-upon criteria (just a few days ago, I was reading yet another interesting discussion on this topic on Slowtwitch), but it's undeniable that the proper engine is capable of winning aboard any of those überbikes. Nevertheless, it's still interesting to note that, whenever someone fast is paying for their own bike (or rebadging their sponsors'), they somehow tend to end up with, yes, a Cervélo.

That all said, and while still a fan of their products, I am genuinely considering other options for my next time-trial machine. I currently ride a P2C, which is no slouch by itself, but the bike has had its years - and if I am to put down so much on the line for that one ride in the summer, I want to have access to all the help I can afford. Now, I'm sure that a P4 - or even a well-set P3, for that matter - wouldn't be, just as I argued above, a sub-par performer, but it's got some features missing that I'd really like addressed before committing myself to a new ride. It's precisely the process of electing a new successor that motivates the writing of this post, but I'll get to that in a moment.

First, as most of you already know, I'm switching teams for the next season, joining the fine folks of Magnesium Pur in idyllic Upper Bavaria. Regardless of the other sporting reasons that motivated my move, one major selling point was the team's fascination with all technical aspects of cycling, and in particular, aerodynamics. Wind tunnels tests, airflow simulations, detailed studies on skinsuit design, you name it - a typical team gathering will have bike geeks fervourously discussing airfoil shapes and wheel test results published in the latest issue of Tour. Befitting this level of attention, the team is heading towards a stance of independency with regards to its equipment suppliers. While at first glance one could expect that our performances would warrant sponsorship from different cycling-related brands, this approach is not entirely unreasonable: if we accept that different races have different material needs, and that the best equipment is not always provided by the same company, then remaining "independent" can actually be an asset, enabling team members to cherry-pick components according to their own criteria.

And so I come to my dilemma. While touted as "the world's first fully integrated...", the P4 still requires an external front brake, thus denying itself of a clean, cable-shaven front-end, and its integrated aero bottle design has been ruled illegal by our adorable friends in the UCI. I would also add to the list some compatibility issues with the wider Stinger wheels, but I'm not completely sure what the current status in the latest 2012 frames is. Maybe the new P5 will adress these issues, but as with every new design, I'm sure that will come with a significant premium.

One of the main contenders is Trek's Speed Concept. Not only did the Wisconsin company bring out a wealth of technical data in its praised white paper, Trek happens to be carried by the local shop which will support our team in 2012, and they were quick to offer us good deals on next year's models. I must admit that, at first, I hadn't given it much attention, perhaps snubbing them due to my association of that brand with certain teams and athletes. After dissecting it more thoroughly, though, I can say that their engineering folks did a commendable job. Were it not for, again, a few minor features, it would be an easy choice - the Kammtail foil shape and the smooth headtube lines yield a surprisingly attractive package. But, while perhaps its biggest selling point, some of its integration choices backfire - for me at least. Its proprietary BB90 bottom bracket standard is incompatible with my current power meter; its integrated stem give me no choice but to go with a Bontrager aerobar, and - come on, no horizontal dropouts?

And then, there's the Time Machine. OK, let's be open here: since the day when I first caught a glimpse of her - and that was back in 2004 - my heart was sold. Already then, the early model of the BMC Time Machine had innovative features which only came to be adapted by other manufacturers many years later: notice the smooth, fast-looking bayonet fork, or the integrated stem, for instance. The latest iteration - the TM01, launched just a few months ago - received raving reviews, highlighting its clean looks and integrated features. It adopts an 'open' bottom bracket standard, and its modular stem allows me to pick my choice of aerobars. And, moving away from its former custom-made sizing paradigm - bare frames were then quoted at over ten thousand dollars, trip to Switzerland for fitting not included - and now based on more traditional mold sizes, the price dropped significantly, with framesets hitting the stores for under three thousand euros. Still a truckload of money, but now one no longer has to consider selling the car...

However, and depending on how you read this, it could be a deal-breaker, BMC hasn't released a single ounce of data to support the otherwise exciting features their marketing department is so keen to highlight. Now, Cadel and Raelert are definitively not riding a machine which is putting them in a disadvantage, and I can also understand Styrell's idea that BMC operates like a F1 constructor, refraining from sharing their products' data with the competition, but still, it would be nice to know that at least one wind tunnel agrees with your investment...
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We may be on the brink of a new cold war, at least if you follow the more pessimistic analysis of what has been happening in Iran. The Euro has been hinging on the verge of collapse. Extremist right-wing groups are on the news spotlight every other day. Back in South America, a nation-wide debate is taking place over the construction of a major hydroelectric plant and the ensuing environmental consequences. With different degrees of interest, I've been following the developments in these and other equally relevant stories. But, in spite of it all, I'd rather invest my brain cycles writing about carbon fiber frames costing more than my entire savings - or the combined annual income of a small family in sub-Saharan Africa, for what it's worth.

The idea of making a bid for an Olympic spot next year has been growing on me, perhaps precisely due to its almost intangibility. As I have already noted, I have this inextricable urge to sail uncharted waters, to dare facing the risks. To go for broke. There are innumerous roadblocks and question marks which will have to be addressed, the selection of a new timed-race machine being but a small cog in a much larger wheel, even if a cog that I want to have particularly well oiled. Finding out more about the performances of my adversaries, the likely obscure selection criteria, and my own capability for pulling the ride of my life, all while somehow managing to put together a Ph.D. thesis and finding an economically-viable occupation afterwards, will surely keep my side of things very interesting for the next few months.

It may well be the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine. Yay!