Road to Roubaix

When I heard the other day that Lance Armstrong plans to come out of retirement, I yawned. Somebody please wake me if the Texan ever pulls on his big-boy shorts and enters the Paris-Roubaix, the most exciting seven hours in all of cycling--and one of the many tough races Lance never entered. Yeah, okay, winning the Tour de France is a pretty big deal, let alone winning it seven times. I just think it's a shame that here in America, "bike race" means Tour de France and only Tour de France, even though the Paris-Roubaix packs more thrills into a single daylong race than the Tour delivers in three weeks of cycling.

Lance's intrepid teammate (and my favorite cyclist) George Hincapie, who took second place at Paris-Roubaix 2005, shares this perspective: "It's the hardest one-day race on the calendar. I kind of feel the same after a Tour de France, after three weeks of racing, I feel the same after doing a one-day at the Paris-Roubaix."

A couple of months ago I preordered a DVD of Road to Roubaix, a new documentary about the race. My Number One Son, who helped organize this year's Bicycle Film Festival in Chicago, got to see the film there in August, but my DVD didn't arrive until yesterday afternoon. Believe me, it was worth the wait.

If you're at all interested in cycling, don't miss this beautiful film. It truly captures the spirit of the world's toughest bicycle race.

Here's the trailer:



You can order the DVD here.

Match sprint cycling: Like watching paint dry?

Maybe I need to get out more, but I found myself highly entertained by this video of two guys on bikes doing nothing for about four and a half minutes. Seriously. Last night my Number One Son, who rides fixed-gear bikes in downtown Chicago for everyday transportation and who goes to the track on weekends to race, e-mailed a link to this video of his favorite track cycling event, the match sprint:



I'm guessing most of you didn't watch it all the way to the end. You got bored with all that "grandstanding" and clicked off. But that wasn't grandstanding. It was a fierce psychological battle, and I was riveted. Who would be the first to crack? Who would give up and start pedaling? And weren't their legs killing them? (A fixed-gear bike has no brakes, so the rider must keep tension on the pedals to hold the bike still--otherwise, it could go backwards, and the race would have to be restarted.)

You see, it's the man who loses the draw who takes first position on the track. He doesn't want to be first because the guy behind him will have the advantage. (It's easier to beat somebody you can see just in front of you than it is to beat somebody behind you who might surprise you at any moment with a burst of speed.) So the lead guy rides as slowly as he can, even stopping his bike (doing a "track stand") in an attempt to force the other guy into the lead. Here's a very short video that explains things better:



When my kid comes home from Chicago, he always brings his bike, and I make him entertain me by doing track stands and other tricks in our driveway. So this morning I was reminded of something I posted back in 2005. Here's that entry in its entirety:


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Last night I was banging away at the final final draft (this time I mean it) of a romance novel when I got a breathless e-mail from Number One Son with a subject line that read, "No-handed track stand!" There was a file attached, and the message read, simply:

Image - me teetering two feet away from a 20-foot drop into Lake Michigan. I'm *too* awesome!

Only another mom will understand with what trepidation I opened and viewed the file:



I am supposed to thank Carlos Cabalu for allowing me to post this shot and I would, because it's quite a nice photo, really, with the blue, blue water and the pink evening sky, but Carlos, what were you thinking? Instead of reaching for your camera, dude, why didn't you yell at my son to move away from the edge?

For those of you who are wondering what a no-handed track stand is, I will explain that my kid was balancing on an unmoving bike. He can do that for about thirty seconds before the bike falls over and he does a trick called a horizontal trackstand, which is not something he likes to brag about being able to perform.

Number Two Son has given me quite a few scares, too, mostly by dangling off the sides of mountains. It's a wonder I have any hair left.

In the manuscript I'm finishing (still finishing) right now, the story's hero is a nut who does extreme sports. Ask me, just ask me where that idea came from.

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That book, of course, was A Season of Forgiveness, which was released in October of 2007.

Now I'm going to give both of those match sprint videos another look before I make a midmorning pot of tea and get back to my writing.