Wait, I wasn't already on vacation?

I know it's hard to believe, but I'm actually in school right now. Like, I spend about 20 hours a week in a classroom learning French and European culture stuff and do a little bit of homework too. But, this week and next I am on vacation. I'm taking the opportunity to do a little bit of traveling around Europe, so I'll be off the bike for about 10 days but that's the price you pay to see the world. I'm jetting off to London tomorrow and from there it'll be Amsterdam and then Berlin. Quality Eurotrippin'.

My vacation started on Friday though and I've been taking this first part of it to cram in the miles before I go. That's a valid form of training, right? I did a nice long team ride and some beautiful spins on my own as well. The team ride was mostly without incident, until some dude crashed on one of the corners in a little village and snapped his rear derailleur off. Ouch! The bike was fine though, that's why they make the hangers out of aluminum. Easily replaced and then your good as new. Oh, the rider was okay as well.

Man down! Also, is it fucked up that after this happened the first thing I thought was, "I should get a picture for the blog?"

The best part of my week was probably this killer long ride I went on on Monday though. I headed East into Germany in search of the little range of hills there that offered about as much elevation gain as I could find in the area. My regular readers will probably know what I'm going to say next. I got hella lost. You can see that ride on Strava and it looks pretty silly, it's basically a big loop with little spines coming off all over of roads I started to take but than realized they weren't going where I wanted. Navigating is a bitch man, I need one of those fancy ass bike computers that tells me where to go. "Uphill!" it would say and point me towards the sky.

Das Rhine

Honestly, it probably wouldn't help though. The "bike paths" here are usually pretty poorly marked and I doubt they would even be on the digital maps. A lot of times they will be just dirt or gravel. In fact, I'm pretty sure I figured out how the sport of cyclocross was invented, but here they just call it winter training. It's partially due to my sense of direction often leading me towards the edges of cliffs, but I usually find myself riding onto unfinished roads, through construction sites (seriously, half this damn country is under construction), or on trails through the woods. I've just given up trying to avoid it and write it off as some quality bike handling practice, but man am I gonna need a new chain when I get back stateside.

Das Flatland

Anyway, yeah German excursion. I eventually found some real pretty vinyard hills. None of them were more than 1,000 feet, so I don't want to call them mountains, but it was really nice to get a chance to do some climbing. I live next to the Rhine and pretty much everything around here is flatland. It was a beautiful day too, which made the five hour ride a breeze. It was really the sort of thing I'd been praying for these past couple weeks of consistant shitty weather. Midway through I even stopped and grabbed a slice of pie and a coffee from a little bakery in the country. Sun, hills, and pie? Now that's my kinda vacation.

Das Fuel

Cheers folks, I'll see you after the break. And remember: Live to ride. Ride to live.
@upwardprogress
Kyle McCall

Bonus !  Want to see some more pics? Check out this album.
Probably be posting some more there during my travels, so check back often.

You Must Believe in Spring

Things have been trucking along nicely this past week, but I'm getting damn tired of the snow and ice. It's pretty and all, but it's a pain to ride in. Sometimes I actually miss the rain! This past weekend the clouds parted for just long enough to thaw the frozen crust on the land. Both Saturday and Sunday had beautiful afternoons. Saturday I set off on my own, but some group ride swept up shortly into my ride and I decided to hop on. Why not? I'm here to meet people after all. It was a slower paced ride than the other ones I've gone with, but the riders were a nice group of older club guys who still set a decent pace. I'm really impressed with all of the teams and clubs here, there are just tons of groups riding around. Sunday I met up with my usual team for a quality long ride, but nothing crazy this weekend. I just appreciated the breaks of sun I was able to get and some quality long rides.

That's all a really want, the sun. Spring is only a couple of months away. I can almost taste it! There is a girl on my program here who hails from Southern California and we talked about the weather. She says she doesn't really like the weather there, "it's too sunny all the time." This is a sentiment I've heard echoed by other SoCalites, believe it or not. I think they just get engorged on Vitamin D and can't handle anymore after a certain point. As an native Oregonian, however  I am habitually Vitamin D deficient and so have a fetishistic love for the sun. That's probably one of my favorite things about Oregon in fact: what a bunch of sun worshipping hippies we are. There's the slightest cloud break and people start playing ultimate Frisbee, having vegan picnics, and walking their labradoodles. Yes, it's as Bill Evans always said, You Must Believe in Spring.

This weekend. Real perdy.

Today. Also perdy, but less fun for riding.

Oh, My Portland

There is this magical effect that has been prevalent in my life whenever I travel that I call the "Portland Curse." Basically, the curse is that wherever I go the Portland weather follows me. I can travel to San Francisco and it'll rain. I went to Nice in the French Riviera and it rained. Whether it's Germany, Israel, or Hawaii in the summer, even if it's supposed to be blue skies, it'll start raining when I get there. So it's been pretty rainy in Strasbourg because it's in Northern France and it rains here all the damn time. But today I was reminded of the Curse in a uniquely charming way.

The infamous David Guettler of River City Bicycles generously sent me one of their kits to enable the looking pro and as well as spreading the love of this awesome shop to Europe. Pretty cool deal. And a fine looking kit of I don't say so myself:

So, the first thing I did this morning after I got it was the same thing I do every morning: I went for a ride. It was beautiful out, a veritable rarity in Strasbourg. I did some jumps, worked on the leg speed, and spun down the canal. A real nice ride. Then, after about an hour, the clouds started to roll in. Damnit, I thought to myself, there's a lot of white on this kit. The sky opened up and it didn't just rain, it started to freakin' hail! Luckily I was wearing an RCB cap too, which I flipped down to semi-protect my face from the icy bullets hitting me in the face at 50km/h.

I felt so at home. I had already turned around at this point and threw in some impromptu threshold work to keep the blood flowing and get out of the freezing rain quicker, but it wasn't an all bad experience. I was actually kept pretty warm and dry thanks to the weather resistant fabrics of that fancy new jersey (as a side note, this is perhaps the only construction of a sentence where the word "fancy" can appropriately be placed adjacent to the words "new jersey"). After I got home was a little dismayed at the dirt soaked into my new duds, especially the white leggings. But, they rinsed clean real nice with just a little bit of dish soap, so they will be looking fresh to rep this weekend on the team ride. It's all in a days work. And you gotta love the work.

A little on the bike vanity. You can see how sunny it was when I left the house.

Disclaimer: This blog is not sponsored by River City Bicycles, Castelli, or the State of New Jersey. I just think they do/make great things. Except the State of New Jersey.

Kyle McCall

@upwardprogress

Motorpacing

The pros do it, so it must be good.
Motorpacing, the practice of a single or group of cyclists drafting a motorized vehicle, such as a car, motorcycle, or scooter. It's a great way to simulate the high speeds and varying paces of a race in addition to allowing a coach to have a more hands on interaction with his riders during their training. For this Saturdays ride I joined up with team Eckwersheim again. They brought about 20 of their riders and the team coach, who was in their team car (I know, what?).

So, needless to say, it was pretty badass. We met the coach out near a little commercial area that was pretty light use. For our main workout we were going to ride a ~5km loop with him motorpacing us from the team car. Well, a recurring theme with my experiences with the Euro cyclists is that nothing is ever that simple. The ride evolved very much like a race. From the start we were tucked behind the car going nearly 40km/h (25mph) and the pace rarely dipped below there. On one particularly open flat stretch of the road, that brutal pace was matched with a strong headwind so if I got even slightly out of the draft I could feel myself being torn away from the group. The challenge wasn't in staying inside the constantly rotating echelons on the flats though, but keeping the bunch together out of the turns. Our route cornered through a couple of round abouts where the pace car would shoot out like a criterium racer. Pummeling winds were followed by explosive sprints in a constant battle to keep in the group behind the car. 

There would be no respite though and the pace just got faster and faster. Eventually, coming around a corner, I couldn't grab back on and got spat out the back. Fortunately I wasn't the only one who got dropped, so me and another team mate trucked on along the loop, waiting for the car to come back around. After a few minutes we I could see it coming around a corner and down a long straightaway toward us. We built up speed, preparing to jump onto the back of the pack. I gritted my teeth with the effort as the group thundered along side of us. Like jumping onto a freight train, I hurled myself up and into the draft. But the pace continued to quicken and my legs were considerably drained. After a few more minutes of sprints and turns the team car unforgivingly rolled over my legs. Metaphorically speaking. That is to so, I felt like my guns had been crushed and I simply could not hang on any longer. 

As the train thundered away down the tracks I was actually relieved to see a dozen or so riders – more than half the group – scattered around the road within a kilometer or so of me. The sight of others alone or in small groups around the loop told me I wasn't the only one who's legs had given out on them. It wasn't long after that point that we all regrouped back together and rode the loop a couple more times at a well earned relaxed pace. I talked with some of the other guys about are high intensity workout.

"Yeah, it was fast," a team member said to me, "I've never done that before."

Oh yeah? For some reason I had assumed this was the reg, but it was some great threshold work either way. The rest of the day was pretty moderate riding around the area and then back into town. Overall, it was a great day for cycling: forging new friendships and elite fitness. That's what I do.

-Kyle McCall

@upwardprogress

Team Eckwersheim, lookin' Pro

Pleasant Introductions

So, my goal for this weekend was to get out into the community here in Strasbourg and dip a toe into what the cycling scene was like. I had found out about a ride on Saturday at 2 from a dude I passed while riding around, so that seemed like a grand place to start. I was pretty unsure of what to expect from this, first off I was a little disarmed by the fact that it started at 2. In the States, at least most organized rides I've heard of start at 10 or 11 at the latest. So, I figured this would probably be some kinda laid back afternoon spin sorta deal. Worked for me, I just wanted to meet some people.

Ladies and gentleman, never assume.


I decided to get some miles in before the ride, because starting at 2 it probably wouldn't be that long. So, I set out and spun around with about an hour on the clock before meeting up with the group. When I finally did head over to where they were meeting, a good sized pack had started to build up. We set out with maybe two dozen riders. This is in part due to the way cycling in Europe is organized. Unlike the smaller teams in the US, which are focused primarily as a racing team, Velo Clubs in France and elsewhere can be large, 50 people up to even 200, and based out of a city or region. The largest club in this area, for example, has 100 members and is "owned" by the small village of Eckwersheim outside of Strasbourg.


We set out at a decent pace and I did my best to chat up some of the local roulers. Unfortunately, my French failed me a bit on the roads, where wind, navigation, and riding a bike made my basic language skills a bit strained. I did my best to introduce myself though and make a positive impression. The real way to show myself as a rider though would be to take some hefty pulls. The pace quickened as the ride got underway, passing through some beautiful countryside and winding through beautiful roads I would never have been able to find on my own. I took my turn in the front a few times, gunning it out at the fast pace that had been set. Soon, we had gone far enough west that we were in the mountainous region away form the city. The group broke apart on the climbs, but I managed to sit up near the front groups for the first couple hills.


Then, as we approached are biggest climb a few guys shot out from the back, breaking away form the main group struggling up the incline. I jumped, trying to grab the wheel of the escaping lead group. I hit it hard, but at this point I had spread myself too thin with my pre-ride and ego-proving pulls. They slipped away up the hill, but I did stay with a secondary break which sweeped me up on the way up the climb. I could feel myself fading though and honestly had no idea how long this ride was going to be at this point. It was certainly a lot faster then I had expected.


At the bottom of the hill, the group recongealed and began to head back toward the East. Shortly into are return, one of the guys told me the group tends to pick up near the end and into town. I felt like it had picked up a bit already. But, as we winded back through the small towns there was a moment when the hammer dropped, like we were going into the end of a race, and the pack jumped forward. This wasn't your usual Saturday no-drop ride, no sir. I did my best to hold the wheels infront of me, but at this point was just spent. I had ridden for longer then I expected and had burnt too many matchs pulling and sprinting the hills, not to mention the hour I'd done before even meeting these guys. I watched the group pull away down the road and just hoped I would be able to find my way home.


Even though I had been dropped, I kept on the gas. I saw another rider fall from the group put my last hard effort into catching his wheel. We rode on together, chasing after the pack which was by now out of sight. I was still straining though and could feel my skinny little bodies blood sugar dropping fast as I tried to focus on keeping behind the guy infront of me who would hopefully be able to help me find my home. But I was zoning out on the bike at this point and when the road snaked to the left a bit I ran right into the curb. I flipped off of the bike, tumbling down into a patch of dirt that was thankfully on the side of the road. My bike had deflected off and continued a few feet down the road without me before lazily tipping over onto its side. I got up, a bit dazed, but more awake now. I was OK. The guy I was trailing noticed and stopped. I did a quick check of my ride and was amazed to see everything was fine on it as well. It was one of those stupid silly crashes that only happens near the end of a ride, but luckily everything was OK. I got back up and mentally slapped myself. Keep going, your almost home.

Well, not really. We met up with a third chap and the three of us, all a little warn, rode the rest of the way into town, but it was a surprisingly long distance yet. I managed to chat with this guy a little though thanks to our smaller group size. We got back into town pretty late, the sun was just setting. I rolled the rest of the way home with the thoughts of a grand feast on my mind. The day ended up being 80 miles in four and a half hours. A bit more then I had planned.


The guy who I had ridden the last leg of back into town invited me to go out with him again tomorrow though. He was part of the Eckwersheim team and he said it would be a ride with those guys. Some more decent base millage, but not as fast as today. I was glad to have gotten the invite and so, tired as I was, I gladly accepted. We would meet Sunday at 9:45. A more reasonable time too.

Settling In

Well folks, here I am. I'm settling into Strasbourg and have been spinning around getting a feel for the city. It's real perdy here, although a little flat in comparison to Oregon. In the course of my spins ran into a couple different people around the area to ride with and am going to try to hook up with a big group ride tomorrow. I only got some vague French directions to where and when, so I'm not totally sure about it, but I'll see if I can't find 'em. Not to mention this area is damn confusing. Like all of Europe, the road layout is the same as it was five-hundred years ago so nothing is on a grid and roads twist and turn and change directions. I'm starting to get some idea of my way around, but I'm usually lost for a portion of every ride.

The past couple weeks have been a little hectic training wise, what with all the travel and adjusting and stuff putting me a bit off "the plan" but that's how it goes sometimes. Since I've started working with structured training, I definitely find myself overwhelmed sometimes. For all the times when I was working on my own and felt lost for what to do to improve, there are times working with a coach that I feel confined and want to just spin my own way. Everything needs a little bit of perspective sometimes. A step back and a view of the simple beauty of flying across the Earth that riding a bike is all about in the end. That grande ronde where you aren't counting your watts or miles and are just racing to catch the horizon. That's why I ride. That's what a change of scenery has helped me realize.

On My Way

Well world, I'm on my way to France. I leave today. It's a weird deal, I don't feel like I can properly imagine the adventure ahead of me in the next six months. I know it's gonna be good though. On my way out I've stopped in New York to stay with the fam here. I briefly unpacked the bike to go for a ride around New York and I must say, it was underwhelming. The Strava pages for Brooklyn segments like Prospect Park are crammed with fast times, so clearly their are strong riders who live around here. I mean, it's New York. Everyone lives here! But, it seems like it would be hard to go on a long ride amongst the traffic and stop lights. Anyone have any experience with big city riding? The great thing about Portland is that even from the heart of the city you are a stones throw away from the boonies. Strasbourg is an even smaller city with plenty of open roads around it, although it's pretty flat, and I'm looking forward to rolling around there.

Speaking of which, travelling with a bike case is a little ridiculous. I feel like I'm dragging around the monolith from 2001 a Space Odyssey.

Not terrible, I'm glad I was able to get my hands on a solid bike case, but yeah a little bit of a ridiculous piece of luggage. Now I just gotta haul the damn thing back to JFK, fly to Frankfurt, take a bus to Strasbourg, and get to my host family's home. An Odyssey if there ever was one. 

Anyway, I'm off. See you on the other side.

The Ice Man Cometh

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. Reader warning: that's because nothing interesting has happened. Nah, but I finished up my semester at school, had some crazy times with finals, and in the mess of all this stress gained a new appreciation for indoor training. It's just so much more time efficient to hop on the indoor trainer and crank out a quick workout then to ride outside. Still, if I lived in Wisconsin or somewhere I had to ride indoors three months of the year I'd probably go insane. I spent some quality time with Graeme Street from Cyclo-Club. They were recommended to me by my coach Josh Liberles and have a vast store of indoor trainer workout videos as well as core and flexibility work. They even have some P90X style training plans called Cyclo90 for you unlucky sons-of-bitches who do live in Wisconsin that are basically all inclusive 90 day training plans based around videos of Graeme Street talking you through workouts. 

So, I've been doing some relaxing, drinking some delicious winter beers, and logging plenty of base training miles. Basically, preparing for my trip abroad and taking some much needed relaxation time. The riding has been good at times, tough at others. This time of year it can be a challenge to get your ass out the door and even once your riding it can be tough to crank up the intensity when it's pouring rain and cold. But it's all part of what it means to be a cyclist. Sure there are summer century and fair weather riders, but the Spring races demand us to throw on a rain coat and brave the cold. It's this aptitude for making ourselves uncomfortable on a daily basis that make us better people in addition to better cyclists. How many times in life do we have to "ride in the rain?" To buckle down and harden up and grind through with something even when we would rather warm are toes by the fire with a nice hot tody? But after a three hours of hard riding in the rain, you will appreciate that warm fire and hot tody way more then the other guy, I guarantee it. It's the contrasts that give life pizzazz. The dark spots that make the lights pop. So, to beat the winter blues and make your smile brighter, give yourself a reason to be happy. Make yourself suffer.

Kyle

For further great writing on these subjects, look here and here. Gotta love the Velominati.

Nothing in Life is True

It’s always been a point of pride of mine to maintain all of my own equipment. I don’t hold anything against the cyclist who takes his bike into a shop, but I’ve personally always drawn a sort of zen pleasure out of bike maintenance. So, when I decided to purchase a new ride this fall, that made the decision to build it myself an easy one. I’d never assembled a bike from parts before, so it was a fun and educational experience. Everything when pretty well to plan and after a bit of fiddling around the bike has turned out great. Then, when I decided to move into training with a power meter the choice was clear: for my budget and the experience, I would buy a used powertap hub and rebuild my wheel around it.

First, I purchased the spokes and nipples from the lovely Sellwood Cycles, who helped make sure I had the right lengths. Next, I read Sheldon Brown’s excellent article on wheel building. To make sure I had the whole process straight, I probably read that page top-to-bottom three or four times. In middle school, my shop teacher always used to say, “measure twice cut once,” a philosophy that saves the mindful craftsmen many a head slapping “dough!” moment. Even if it takes you longer to complete your project, it won’t take as much time as if you had to take it apart and do it over again.

I took my time, about three hours of it, but I managed to get everything woven together. The tensioning of the wheel was actually most difficult, but even that didn’t go too bad. I took it out for a quick spin and was pleased that it stayed together. Of course, I took it back down to Sellwood a few days later and they gave it some fine truing and brought the spoke tension up a little bit, but overall it was a successful endeavor. If you plan on investing in a new wheel set, take a look at the custom built route. It was fun gives you another level of intimacy with your machine. Know the bike. Know your body. Know victory!
P.S. I like the guy in the background of that image who looks like he's just pumped to be finishing. That's always pretty dope too!

Watt's up, World?

I just got back from my threshold test at C-Velo. I can tell because my fingers moan at the effort of typing an email. Shut up fingers. It went well.

The ride there was short and barely a warm-up, maybe 15 minutes down the graveyard from Lewis & Clark. I got there with plenty of time for the ruggedly handsome Brad Winn to set me up on a bike and get me up to speed on the way things were gonna go. My classmates arrived and we started off with a quick warm-up, maybe 10 minutes real easy like. Armed with a watts meter for the first time, I can now tell you “real easy like”=about 70 watts. Brad came around and wrote down all our names, ages, and weights while we got the blood flowing. Next, we did a quick latter interval to get an idea of what to aim for in the 20min TT effort. My bike was having some issues during this, so I moved to a different one in the middle of the test. Perhaps this caused the start of my troubles. I lost the data on my lower rungs, but I hit ~270 watts in the second to last rung and maxed out at ~330 two minutes into the end. OK, there's my ballpark. A different dude with shiny gray hair came around and wrote down all our numbers, watts and heart rates and such. We took another quick sesh of real easy like before the main event.

As the TT approached, Brad loaded in the Sufferfest Cycling video of the 2011 World Time-Trial Championships and announced there would be a cash prize of ten Big Ones for the rider who achieved the highest power to weight ratio that evening. The Doctor Will Bar was present, and upped the ante to include one whole box of his finest bars. It's on. I had a goal in my mind. I wanted to do 300 watts. My legs were a little tired from the previous effort, but I believed I had it in me.

Brad, with his perfectly maintained five o'clock shadow, hit play on the tape and the effort began. He had just gotten through telling us about pacing so I started off at about 250 watts. My cadence quickly got away from me though and before I knew it that number was rising. 100 rpm. 290 watts. I was feeling good. Tony Martin’s legs pumped in accordance with mine as he rode his TT on the screen projected in front of me. I could taste victory.

But, I'd gone out to hot. By the 10-minute mark my legs were screaming for mercy. My cadence started to drop so I twisted the resistance knob and struggled to hold onto 240 watts.

"Brad," I gasped for air, "help me." He was off doing something important, but in that moment of suffering I could hear the voice of the Cycling God echoing behind me.

"Dig deeper," it said.

            I dug. I upped the cadence, cranked the knob and brought my watts back above my interval average. I just had to hold it here; I was more then half way done. The time ticked past and I imagined myself soloing into victory alongside Martin in that world championship victory. The seconds ticked by during those final five minutes of distilled brutality. I held. Smashing the lap button on the computer, I sat up in my saddle and the world began to spin. I knew I hadn’t ridden as strong as I’d hoped, but I had given all I could. Shiny gray haired guy came around and collected all our numbers again and went to compare them while we did some well earned real easy like, which now had somehow dropped to 6 watts. He looked at my interval numbers and my average wattage over twenty minutes was 269.

            “Huh, I’d pegged you for 300,” he said. My legs hurt even more.

            He compared the numbers and with my slight frame of 150 pounds I had won the competition, but it was a bitter victory. Brad handed me the two five-dollar bills and Will the box of his Bars, but I still felt empty inside. It was an emptiness even fibrous bars and the money for a twelve pack of Session ales couldn’t fill. I had wanted to break 300 watts and I was over 10% short. I packed up all my things and got on my bike for the ride home, up the Riverview Cemetery. It was surprisingly easy spinning up the hill. Damn, I could have used that energy in the test. But, it was my first threshold effort and in the end I gained something much more important than any prize. I found a new goal. Next time, Brad, I will break 300. Next time.

Introductions

On January the 17th I will fly from America to France, where I will remain for six months. I'm going as part of a study abroad program for my college under the pretenses of learning the language and exposing myself to the culture of France. Although I will be doing both of these things, what they don't know is I'm really going to France to ride my bike. From the city of Strasbourg I will be right on the borders of France, Germany, and Belgium, a prime location for riding and a short train ride away from the best of the Spring Classics. The idea of this blog is to chronicle my time there and as it relates to cycling and the general culture. It's sure to be an exciting journey, so check back often.