They've Gotta Start 'Em Young

Yesterday, Chris Froome won the Tour de France two years after he won it for the first time.  He deserves all of the accolades he receives.  Anyone who can finish the Tour is at least a world-class rider; anyone who can win it is among the sport’s greats.  And when a cyclist wins the Tour more than once, it’s hard not to compare him with the sport’s immortals.




He is 30  years old.  When Bradley Wiggins won three years ago, he was 32.  And, even though Lance Armstrong’s wins have been vacated, I will include him in this comparison:  He was a few weeks short of 28 when he wore the maillot jaune in Paris for the first time.

Now, every woman of a certain age has said, “Age is just a number!”  (I’m guilty as charged!)  In some contexts, it’s true.  However, the age at which a cyclist wins his first Tour—or, for that matter, at which he or she achieves his or her first victories or high placements—seems to have a lot to do with whether said cyclists becomes one of the dominant riders of an era—or of the history of the sport.

I couldn’t help but to notice that Bernard Hinault was 23 when he won his first Tour in 1978.  Eddy Mercx’s first victory in the race came at age 24 in 1969.  Other cyclists won major stage races and classics when they were in their early 20’s, and were winning (or at least finishing among the top riders) in professional and amateur races before that.

 

Eddy Mercx in 1969

 

Actually, riders like Mercx, Hinault, Coppi and other greats from the past were competing in lots of races at such early ages.  (As great as they were, they won about one out of every five races they entered during their careers.)  That gave them the opportunity to learn how to ride a variety of different races.  When they won, it helped them to build their reputations, which would lead to contracts with major teams that had the resources to help them elevate their riding.

 

By the time Coppi, Jacques Anquetil Mercx and Hinault won their first major races, they had already entered more races than most, if not any, of today’s riders will participate in during their entire careers.  And, as I’ve said in my earlier post, in riding (and sometimes winning) a variety of races, they developed a range of skills—mental as well as physical—on which they could draw throughout their careers.  As a writer, I liken them to a writer who reads and writes in a variety of different genres when he or she is young and develops a diverse repertoire before entering the apex of his or her career.

Bernard Hinault in 1978

To be fair, cyclists today can’t be blamed for starting later than their counterparts in earlier generations.  When Anquetil and even Hinault were competing, it wasn’t unusual for a young man to leave school at 14 or 16, depending on which country he called home, and start working.  Part of the reason was that jobs and apprenticeships were available; another reason was that those young men were working to help support their families, whether in a factory or on the farm.

Cyclists of the past usually came from the class of young men I’ve just described:  one that is disappearing.  Young people in western European countries, like their counterparts in North America and Asia, are staying in school longer.  Given that few colleges and universities have cycling programs, many would-be racers find it difficult to keep up their training—especially in the absence of support from a team or club—at the same time they’re studying.

That means that cyclists aren’t starting or resuming their careers until they’re just about the age at which Hinault and Mercx won the Tour for the first time.  They therefore have fewer years in which to compete, let alone amass victories, never mind to test their mettle in a variety of different kinds of races.  Mercx retired from the sport at 33, which is actually fairly late for an elite cyclists.  At that time, he’d been racing professionally for 17 years: more than half of his life.  (In contrast, Froome didn't turn professional until he was 22.)Few, if any, of today’s cyclists will have such long careers—and thus less of an opportunity to become the dominant rider Mercx was.  

A Path Of Learning

 No, it’s not rust:

and it’s not a “fade” paint job

(although, if I do say so myself, it goes rather nicely with the toestraps, saddle and straps and trim on the bags)

and it’s not an attempt to out-hipster the hipsters 

That reddish-brown “mist” you see is dirt.  Not sooty, dirty city dirt.  No, it comes from soil:

Specifically, it’s the residue of a trail—one I hadn’t ridden in more than thirty years.

When I was a Rutgers student, I used to pedal along the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath.  Connecting the two rivers in its name, it opened in 1834.

The trail wasn’t, of course, wasn’t used for cycling, running or hiking in those days.  If someone had the leisure time for such things, he or she wasn’t doing them:  Aerobic fitness wasn’t, shall we say, terribly fashionable among the gentry.  And anyone who worked along the canal, or in the industries that sent barges down its waters, didn’t have the time or energy for such things at the end of the day.

In fact, people didn’t use the path.  Rather, horses and mules trod it when they pulled the barges and boats that carried coal from Pennsylvania to New York City.

Believe it or not, there were actually industries, including manufacturing and bottling, along the canal’s shores.  They have long ceased operations, as the canal itself did in 1932, forty years after it last turned a profit.

Today the only watercraft one sees are canoes and kayaks, which can be rented at several points along the way.  On the path itself, people walk dogs and themselves—and pedal bicycles.

Before yesterday, I hadn’t ridden the towpath in more than thirty years.  When I was riding it fairly regularly, I barreled along on ten-speeds that are now considered “retro” or “classic”.  Sometimes I’d ride my racing bike on the road—one lane in each direction, no shoulder-- that skirted the canal’s shore.

The towpath and its surroundings don’t seem to have changed much since then.  The only difference I could see between yesterday and those long-ago rides (when I was a Rutgers student) were the canoes and kayaks, and the stations that rented them.  Back in the day, most people in the area hadn’t heard of kayaks and anyone who paddled a canoe was plying his (just about all were male) craft elsewhere.

All right, I noticed a couple of differences.  Somehow it seemed more even more relaxing—in a Zen sort of way—than I remembered it.  Perhaps that has as much to do with me, if I do say so myself, as it does with the path. 

Also, I think I saw more cyclists on the towpath than I saw in all of the rides I did along it back in the day.  They were all riding mountain bikes:  a genre of velocipedes unknown outside of northern California, northern New England and parts of Colorado when I was living and studying “on the banks of the ol’ Raritan”. 

I had to get off my bike and tiptoe over this part, just like I did back in the day.  Everyone else—even those who rode extra-wide tire as well as full-suspension—did the same.  They also hopped and skipped across a couple of other stretches, where stone slopes were constructed to conduct water between the canal and the river. 

Riding the towpath wasn’t part of my original plan, if I had any.  I rode to Liberty Tower, took the PATH train to Newark and started pedaling as soon as I emerged from that city’s Penn Station.  I headed south and west, more or less on the route I took to Somerville on past rides.  I wasn’t thinking about Somerville, but in Cranford (about twenty kilometers from Newark), the sun opened its face and the breeze whispered as thin clouds stuttered across the sky:

How can anyone not ride in such conditions?  So I kept going and I found myself floating on the bow of a ship from which I heard a the call to ride and ride some more:

As I pedaled up the inclines and down the slopes, I though of boats raised and lowered in locks.  Maybe that’s the reason I rode toward the canal.

Whatever I exerted in pedaling along the towpath and  on it, It was more effortless, I’m sure, than any voyage taken by those barges and boats that plied the canal—or the steps taken by the animals that towed them, or the men who raised and lowered the barges and boats. 

One reason is that Vera—my twenty one-year-old Miss Mercian—seemed to just glide over everything.  I mentioned the part where everyone had to dismount.  Well, on two other stretches, cyclists on mountain bikes dismounted—and I didn’t.  Vera—shod with 700X32 Continental Gator Skin tires—stood her ground, skipped or glided, as necessary, over red dirt, gravel and cobblestones.  In fact, she seemed even more comfortable—even happy—on this trail than in or on any other place or surface on which I’d ridden her. Perhaps I’ve found her true niche.

As for me:  I was able to experience a ride from my youth without any of the anger, frustration or sorrow (much of it for myself) I carried in my youth.  Even with two bags—and, lets say, the weight and hormones my body didn’t have in my youth, the ride seemed even more effortless than it did when I was in better physical condition.

On my way back, a dog crossed into my path.  Back in the days, I would have cursed the dog—and the woman who walked her.  But I stopped and stroked the dog, who licked my hand.  The woman apologized.  “It’s OK,” I demurred. 

 

A man—her husband, I presume--followed with another dog. He echoed her apology;  I repeated my deflection of it.  He stretched out his hand.  “Can I offer these as penance?”

He had just picked the blackberries.  I don’t remember anything that tasted so good.

What We Learn About Our Bikes, And Ourselves

This post will be short.  It will also be a bit of a prologue or teaser for another post, which may appear tomorrow.  If not, you'll see it very soon.

No, I'm not going to make any dramatic announcements about life-altering events.  And I'm not going to confess any deceptions or misperceptions I might have perpetrated.

Instead, I'm going to ask a question that will be a basis of that post:  Have you ever, in the course of a ride, discovered something you didn't expect about the bike you were riding, or some part or accessory on it?  

From Bike Yogi

That surprise could be a positive or negative one, or simply a fact.  That is something that happened on a ride I took today. Don't worry:  The bike, and I are fine.  Actually, we're doing quite well.

Also, you might want to think about something unexpected you learned about yourself on a ride.  That, in a way, will also be included in the post that's coming.

I hope you've done some great, or simply pleasurable riding, this weekend.  And, if you haven't, I hope something that you've simply had a fine time.

I Tried To Be Graceful. Spoiler: He Was Gracious.

The last time I rode to Connecticut, I made a wisecrack about how the Swiss boarding schools might still be teaching good manners after all.  Well, I saw evidence of that today when—you guessed it—I rode to Connecticut.

I was riding—coasting, actually—down the same street that prompted my quip.   Although there wasn’t a street fair, a lot of people were there, shopping in the boutiques—and walking around with the frappucinos they got in Starbuck’s. (I guess the coffee purveyor is the street’s concession to mass market!)  Even though I was controlling myself, I was going at a pretty good clip, as the street slopes downward.

Sign on a shared path in Perth, Australia.  Photo by Jo Beeson.  From ABC News Australia.

A man stepped into the street, his back turned to me.  He was talking to a woman who I assume is his wife.  Both were dressed in a similar sort of high-dollar casual way.  As they talked, they stepped into the street.  The woman, a step or two behind him, tried to pull him back.  I rang my bell and shouted non-obscenities. (I guess I was trying to show that you don’t have to go to a Swiss boarding school to learn good manners!)  I couldn’t steer out of his path, as not more than the thickness of my glove separated me from a line of cars descending to my left. 

I hit my brakes—and him.  Well, not quite hit:  It was more than a graze, but I careened off his rear left side.  He staggered a couple of steps but didn’t fall.  I stopped.

Before I could ask whether he was OK, he intoned, “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”  I meant it.  It’s the sort of street lots of people cross without looking, and the drivers seem to anticipate it. If I could have steered out of his way, I would have.  It’s useless, really, to scream at pedestrians in such a place.

“I’m really, really sorry.”

“Are you OK?” I finally asked.

I took off my sunglasses.  He looked into my eyes. I waited for him to cross.  He flicked his right hand.  “After you,” he said with a deferential smile.

“Have a good day,” I said.

“Likewise.”

They really do teach good manners in Swiss boarding schools—or Deerfield or Andover or Groton or wherever he went to school. Or maybe he’s just a gentle, polite man.  Whatever the case, I really couldn’t be angry.  And, to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to be: It was a beautiful day and I was having a great ride.

Riding And Working

Whenever I ride along the Brooklyn waterfront--especially in Red Hook or near Bush Terminal--I can shed a tear or two as I'm opening my wings.   At least, that's how it feels sometimes.  It's the joy of victory twinged with a little bit of sadness and guilt.

The views along those stretches of New York Harbor are always awe-inspiring, and not only because of the Statue of Liberty or the lower Manhattan skyline.  No matter how many towers are built along the shorelines, they are exactly that:  shorelines, which means that they can never fit into a grid pattern; they can only disrupt or stop it.  And whoever or whatever comes or goes, lives go on.  

For that is what those waterfronts have always represented to me:  lives.  Sure, the promenades and picnic fields built over the old piers are pleasant places to walk one's dog or hang out with friends and loved ones--or to bicycle.  But nearly anyone who goes to the waterfront now has never worked on the docks, on the piers.  Those who work in the concession stands or clean the paths or fields don't work on the waterfront; they work for companies in faraway places that contract with the city's Parks Department.  

That is not to say they don't work hard (for low pay).  But their work enables the leisure of others, nearly none of whom will they ever get to know.  Those who worked on the docks and in the nearby factories were working for and with other people who worked:  the people they saw all day, and sometimes at the end of the day.  They ate, drank, played ball and attended each other's (and their families') important life events.  It's hard to imagine the person making lattes in the snack bar going to the bachelorette party of someone who power-walks or takes an outdoor yoga class along the promenade.

It's still a little strange for me to be one of those people who goes to the waterfront for recreation or fitness--in my case, to ride a bicycle--after it was a place of work, and more work, for various members of my family, most of them gone now.  For that matter, the jobs or even the very work they did no longer exist:  the plant where one of my uncles made cement, the shoe factory where my mother and grandmother stitched and the old docks where two of my uncles were longshoremen--a job rendered obsolete by cranes, container ships and interstate highways.

To be sure, their work was difficult, draining and sometimes dangerous.  The pay was decent--at least for my uncles--but, really, it did not justify the risks to themselves they were expected to take.  Nobody should have to work under those conditions, or those my mother and grandmother endured.  But, at the same time, those jobs allowed people who couldn't, for whatever reasons, spend lots of time in school to make lives for themselves and, in time, to support families.  I don't think the man grilling hot dogs in the concessionaire can do that on his pay.

He, and his co-workers are probably working other jobs. And they don't have much time, or energy, for the sorts of things we do now when we visit the pier.  If he has a bike, he's probably riding it to the job and back, but not along this pier.  I'll bet he, and the woman making lattes, didn't get to see the "rainbow cloud" to the right of the Statue.

At the end of the day, they probably want to flop into a couch or bed.  I am more privileged: In the middle of a ride after work, I can enjoy the whimsy of something like this:

I imagine that the artist who created it was one of the people who, like me, cycled (or strolled or ran) along the promenade, or some path like it in his home town.  So we might say the waterfront is a place of recreation for him.  Then again, he created a public sculpture that is exhibited on the pier.  He is an artist; that is his his work.  Or is it play--recreation--for him?

I hope it's everything.  Then I will feel nothing but pleasure about it, and about having the time to ride by and see it.

Cycling Legend Attacked On NYC Street

The name looked familiar.

Someone shoved him to the ground on East 86th Street, just steps away from Gracie Mansion, the New York City Mayor's residence.

The attacker fled and hopped into a taxi.  The man suffered a broken arm and cut to his forehead.  A week later, he's in a wheelchair, still recuperating.

The man--91 years old--had gone out around 7 am last Wednesday morning to pick up a newspaper.  His attacker was, according to the police, intoxicated and "muttering gibberish" before pushing the man.

Just yesterday the man's name was released:  Fred Mengoni.  If you race, or have followed racing in the US, you have heard his name:  He has  done more than almost anyone to bring respectability, and even prestige, to American bicycle racing.

Born in the Italian Adriatic seacoast town of Alcona, Mengoni dreamed of riding in the Giro d'Italia.  He adopted what he later described as a "killer" training regimen.   Still, he came to the conclusion that he simply didn't have the talent to become a professional cyclist.

In 1957, he emigrated to the US with $50 in his pocket.  After a series of ups and downs, he invested in some run-down brownstones in then-unfashionable neighborhoods.  It paid off, leading to a prosperous real estate career.                              

 But he never forgot his love of cycling.  Nearly every day, he trained in Central Park. In 1980, he started GS Mengoni, which became one of the great teams in US bicycle racing.  Among the team's "alumni" are Steve Bauer, George Hincapie and Mike Mc Carthy.  He also became an adviser to a young rider named Greg LeMond, with whom he has had a longtime friendship.  
.

Fred Mengoni with George Hincapie.  Photo from A View From The Back

He also was instrumental in developing USPRO, which he served as president for several years before the US Cycling Federation purchased it and turned it into USA PRO.  And he holds the Mengoni Grand Prix in Central Park every year.

Let's all wish Fred Mengoni a full recovery and many more years!