Brentani’s Cycling Blog

Here’s a bit of nostalgia from back in the day (1997 Liege-Bastogne-Liege). This is the finale of what must be the best performance I’ve ever seen in a single day’s race. To get the whole feel for this, you need to know what happened preceding this clip. Bartoli (then number 3 in the UCI rankings) broke away with Alex Zülle (number 2) and Laurent Jalabert (number 1). Jalabert and Zülle were both on the same team. Conventional wisdom dictates that Bartoli would get his ass handed to him. Zülle and Jalabert, like good textbook racers, started trading attacks. Zülle would go, Jalabert would sit up and make Bartoli chase, and when they caught up, Jalabert would attack, and so on. But then Bartoli started attacking as soon as they caught up with the attacker, and that strategy eventually broke Zülle. Going into the last kilometer, Bartoli looks back at Jalabert, gradually increases his tempo and rides Jalabert off of his wheel.

I did the first part of the following route today with Graham. We did it as an out-and-back ride up to the Gillette Stadium. It also features Graham’s ingenious route to avoid the Henderson Bridge by going through Pawtucket. Anyway, the route up there is pretty nice (though 152 and 123 are a bit heavily trafficked – I’m hoping to revise the route after I do it a couple more times and find some nice bypasses.) I realized when we got up to Foxboro that we must be pretty close to the Diamond Hill area, which I know pretty well. So I just combined the two routes to make a nice loop. It’s very flat for the first half, but you have to contend with Tower Hill Road on the way back. I think this one may become a regular:

http://veloroutes.org/bikemaps/?route=5902

I did the euro loop today. I revised the route just slightly. (See it here.) It is now about 1 mile shorter but includes all the same climbs, and a little bit less riding on 123, which is not a terribly fun road. I was pretty happy with my time: I finished in 57 minutes on the nose, with the computer showing an average speed of 18.4 miles per hour. (and the 57 minutes includes stopping briefly before Cullen Hill to answer a phone call.) This route should be a pretty good test of my form, so I’ll post my times whenever I do it. (and this is probably only of interest to me, but this seems like as good a place to keep track of it as any.)

I needed a reason to write a post today, and I still had quite a bit of energy in my legs after an easy ride this morning. So I thought I’d finish up with an east side hill. I really wanted to give Bowen a crack, but I was still hesitant about the cobbles and wondered if they would ruin my nice new wheels. (They are pretty light, after all.) I decided to ride up the first section of Bowen and then see how I felt before either continuing to the cobbles, or heading up Benefit for Jenckes. When I hit Benefit, I decided to go for it. The first section was tough but it didn’t take too much out of me. And, picking a good line onto the cobbles wasn’t as difficult coming across Benefit as it is turning onto Bowen from Benefit. Props to my campy drive-train as shifting down into 34-25 wasn’t too difficult, even with all the bumps. (I wanted to be sure I was in 34-25 before I hit the 30% section on the sidewalk.) Amazingly, I was able to accelerate when I got to the sidewalk. I noticed this feature on Monadnock as well, but in 34-25 even when the road is ridiculously steep, my problem is not in turning the pedals. (On Monadnock I was able to turn the crank, it was just my breathing, and my heart-rate that was failing me. Whereas Radu complained that the steepest parts of Monadnock put him in the unenviable position of having to muscle the crank, or fall over sideways.) On Bowen, I was fresh enough that I was able to keep my cadence going and get up to Pratt without too much trouble. I recovered nicely on the false flats on Pratt, and the final section of Jenckes wasn’t too horrible. All around, a good test of the new bike. And the Ritchey Protocol wheels are still true after taking a beating on the cobbles.