01.23.2012 | 12:13 pm
A “I Found Myself Unable to Shut Up” Note from Fatty: Last night I was the second guest on TourChats (the first guest was Tara McCormick, the 16-yo woman who just went pro w/ team Exergy Twenty12). My part starts about twenty minutes into the show, and then goes for more than an hour. While talking, I — several times — found myself going on and on and on, and I’d be thinking to myself, “You’ve answered the question! Shut up now!” But I didn’t. I just kept going, often answering the question twice more, with slightly different wording.
And with that recommendation, how could you not want to go listen to — and watch — the exciting replay?
Introduction
Bicycle technology and culture are evolving at a breakneck pace. Sadly, the English language has not kept up.
Today, I do my small part to rectify this problem. Or rather, I continue to do my now less-small (but still small) part to rectify this problem
Let’s begin. Already.
Tightenoia
[tite-uh-noi-uh] (noun) – A mental condition prevalent among home mechanics, and becoming increasingly prevalent with the widespread adoption of carbon frames and components among cycing enthusiasts.
Tightenoia is the condition of having the two following contradictory beliefs, simultaneously:
- If I DO NOT tighten this bolt a little bit more, it will not be tight enough, the component (e.g., a seatpost clamp, brake lever, stem) will slip when I ride, and the results will be catastrophic.
- If I DO tighten this bolt any more, it will be overtightened. The bolt will shear, the component I am tightening will crack, and I will be forced to go to the bike shop and make up yet another story about how this happened due to something other than my own incompetence.
Tightenoia is unique among phobias in that one of your simultaneous, mutually-exclusive fears is almost always correct, and the one that is correct is always the one that you think is incorrect.
And don’t go trying to solve the problem by doing the thing (i.e., tightening vs. not tightening) you think you shouldn’t do, because that means you’ve changed your mind and now the thing you thought you shouldn’t do is now the thing you think you should do, which means the thing you thought you should do but now think you shouldn’t do is the thing that you should do.
And so forth.
SCI
[ess-see-eye] (acronym, noun) – SCI is an acronym for Soiled Chamois Index, a 1 – 10 scale indicating how frightening the event you just now avoided was, with 1 representing “just frightening enough that your sphincter clenched up” and 10 representing “so incredibly frightening that your sphincter clenched, unclenched, your bowels evacuated, you re-clenched, you passed out, woke up briefly, pooped again, and then re-fainted.”
Do not use number 10 lightly.
Sample events and their location on the SCI scale include:
- SCI Level 1: While descending a fast, twisty piece of singletrack, you come around a bend to discover you are about to hit a hiker coming up the other direction. You brake hard, swerve, and successfully avoid the hiker, and even manage to say “Have a good hike” after you get around him or her.
- SCI Level 5: Your downtube breaks as you descend a road at approximately 40mph. You manage to stop, but you are shaking so hard you cannot stand for several minutes, and you very nearly throw up.
- SCI Level 10: Honestly, I have no experience with SCI Level 10 events, and I hope not to. If you’ve got one, please describe it in the comments.
SSD
[ess-ess-dee] (acronym, noun) – SSD is an acronym for Seasonal Stupidity Disorder (not Solid State Drives, nor Social Security Disability). This mental condition manifests itself throughout the year in people affected by this disorder through constant complaining about the current season, and always wishing it were some other season. Typically, the symptomatic complaints will be as follows:
- During Winter: “I am so sick of riding on the rollers, and bundling up for an outside ride generates tons of laundry. Plus, with all those layers of clothes, you pretty much have none of the sense of freedom I usually associate with riding a bike. I wish it were spring.”
- During Spring: “I swear, if it’s not raining, it’s muddy. Or if you go out on the road, there’s still all that sand on the shoulder and your bike gets all gritty and coated with worms and crud. And then you go out and it’s all cold and wet, but then halfway through the ride the sun comes out and you’ve got way too much on. And then once you shed all your clothes, it gets cold and windy and rainy again. I wish summer would get here.”
- During Summer: “It’s too hot to ride today. Really, Autumn is the best time of year to ride is Autumn. The days are cooler, there’s still plenty of light, and the leaves are so beautiful.”
- During Autumn: “I’m so burned out on riding. Honestly, I’m looking forward to just doing some spinning on the rollers and catching up with my NetFlix queue.”
This disorder should not be confused with CAWD (Complaining About Winter Disorder) which is actually not a disorder at all, but is a sign of being a normal person.
Comments (33)
01.19.2012 | 10:51 am
A Note from Fatty: This Sunday at 9PM ET / 6PM PT, I’ll be one of the guests on TourChats. The other guest is Tara McCormick, the 16-year-old sensation who’s already gone pro, riding for Team Exergy Twenty12 this upcoming season. Frankly, I’m a lot more interested in Tara’s story than mine, so I’ll be showing up mostly to see what she has to say.
Anyway, it’ll be live, and there will be both audio and moving pictures, as well as textual chatification.
I’ll talk about myself, in a way that is both heartfelt and compelling, without being pretentious or self-aggrandizing.
So please, mark your calendars: Sunday, January 22, 9PM ET / 6PM PT. See you there. (Although actually I won’t see you there. You’ll see me. It doesn’t go both ways. So it’s kind of like television. Or a creepy peep show.)
I will bring props. And I’ll might give some stuff away.
3 Words All Cyclists Must Know
Before I begin, I have a confession to make: I briefly considered titling this post “Terms of Engearment.” And then I remembered: puns are the lowest form of humor. So I changed the title to something more hyperbolic, but completely pun-free.
You’re welcome.
And now, let’s make with the defining.
(This, by the way, is the shortest introduction I have ever written on my blog.)
Snotulum
[snot-juh-luhm] (noun) – The mucousy, sweaty viscous goop (usually 0.5 – 2.5 inches in length) that dangles from the tip of your nose, swinging side to side in time with your cadence as you ride.
Generally, a snotulum forms when you climb on cold days. The outside temperature causes your nose to run, while your effort causes you to sweat. The two substances meet at the tip of your nose, resulting in a mixture ideally suited to hang from the tip of your nose.
The snotulum has several interesting characteristics. First, depending on the ratio of snot to sweat, the snotulum may be anywhere betweeen half an inch and 2.5 inches in length, with unconfirmed reports of snotulae (plural of snotulum) reaching lengths of up to eight inches.
Next, the snotulum, regardless of its consistency, has the ability to dangle indefinitely. Once it reaches its optimal length, it will swing — some say “hypnotically,” while others say “repulsively” — for hours or until you finally wipe it on your glove, thus totally grossing yourself out.
Finally, the swinging of the snotulum has the interesting characteristic of constantly moving into and out of your direct vision, thus drawing attention to itself multiple times per minute.
Interesting snotulum trivia: If you try to shake a snotulum off or blow vigorously through your nose, it will instead swing around and stick to the side of your face.
Whinner
[win-r] (noun) – A person who, upon not making it to the top of a podium for a given event, begins a campaign to rectify the huge injustice he has experienced. This campaign may take several forms:
- Discrediting the course: Explaining what was wrong with the course, from poor marking to poor opportunities to pass to bad course conditions. A whinner is not required to account for the fact that all other competitors dealt with the same course.
- Blaming the competitors: Explaining how other competitors would not yield, or perhaps cut the whinner off, or maybe even had the audacity to fall. If it weren’t for other racers being so discourteous as to actually exist, the whinner most certainly would have won.
There are actually two levels of whinners. The first — and most common — is the whinner who explains why he should have whun (the verb form of whinner is “whin,” with “whun” being the past-tense form) to friends, family, co-workers, and miscellaneous passers-by.
The second type of whinner is the racer who actually takes his case to the race director. This person is called a “true whinner.”
Interesting whinner triva: The best and simplest way to silence a whinner is to tell him that he is in fact, a whinner. This is due to the fortuitous coincidence that “winner” and “whinner” sound exactly the same. Thus, a friend can react to a whinner by saying, “Yeah, you totally whun that race. You were robbed.” Similarly, a race director can appease a whinner by saying, “You are absolutely the true whinner today.”
Cleatastrophe
[klee-ta-struh-fee] (noun) – The terrifying and usually painful moment when a clipless pedal releases the cleat, allowing all kinds of horrible things to ensue.
Cleatastrophes generally happen for the following reasons:
- Pedal Strike: Many MTB pedal systems (Eggbeaters, mainly) have the cleat engagement mechanism engineered so that the part holding onto your shoe is connected to the part facing the ground. This is fine unless you do something stupid like ride your mountain bike in the mountains, in which case you may at some point go over a rock or log or something, striking the bottom of your pedal forcefully on said rock. At which point the pedal will release its hold on the cleat, allowing your foot freedom with a suddenness that is only matched by its unwantedness.
- Ancient Cleats: If you let your cleats wear long enough, your pedal won’t have anything to hold onto. So, you know, it might not be the worst idea in the world to take a look at the bottom of your shoe once in a while. Trust me on this. I know.
- No Reason Whatsoever: Sometimes — generally in the worst place possible, your pedal will release your shoe for no reason at all.
The causes of cleatastrophes are not as important as the most common locations of cleatastrophes, which include:
- While going over rocks and logs: See reason 1, above, to understand the causality here, but also note that when a cleat comes out while you’re partway up a technical move, the timing for this cleatastrophe always feels exceptionally poor.
- While standing and climbing: Generally happening on grades of 8% and greater, cleatastrophes while doing a standing climb on a road bike inevitably lead to the rider striking his stem with his kneecap with enough force to shatter whichever is softer (generally the kneecap).
- Anywhere else: Sometimes you’ll have a cleatastrophe for no reason whatsoever. This generally results in swerving, sticking ones leg out at a comical angle while you try to regain your balance. Oh, and also it usually results crashing and serious injury.
Interesting cleatastrophe trivia: Of the people who at one point rode with Crank Brothers Egg Beaters pedals but no longer ride with Egg Beaters pedals, the cleatastrophe is the cause of switching to a different kind of pedals for 98% of this group.
The other 2% didn’t actually switch; they simply had such a terrifying cleatastrophe that they have given cycling up entirely.
Comments (34)
01.17.2012 | 1:49 pm
I am probably the most knowledgable person about training for bicycle fitness on my street, and quite possibly in the town of Alpine, UT (population 10,181).
Or at least the Northwest quadrant of Alpine.
Regardless, I know an awful lot about the correct way to train to be an incredibly fit cyclist. Which, when contraposed with the 15-30 pounds I constantly lose, then gain, then lose, then gain (I’m currently at what I hope is the top of a “gain” cycle, for what it’s worth) I do not find even a little bit ironic.
Anyways.
Because of my astonishing breadth and depth of bike-training expertise, I frequently get email from people hoping they can get training advice, without having to pay for it. Like I’m some kind of Chris-Carmichael-on-the-cheap or something.
For example, I recently received the following:
Dear Fatty,
I am trying to become the fastest guy in my cycling group. For some reason, however, I just can’t seem to do it. I ride and I ride and I ride, but I just can’t seem to beat the fastest guys in the big climbs or in the designated signpost sprints in the weekly group rides.
I eat well, so I know that’s not the problem. I have a very expensive bike which I keep clean and well-lubricated, so that can’t be it. And I ride up to fourteen hours per day, each and every day, always at maximum effort, so I think I’m doing OK there, too.
I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong! Please help me.
Best Regards,
Duane
Oh Duane. You’re missing the key ingredient in cycling training. All those 14-hour days in the saddle aren’t going to do you any good at all if you never take the time to rest up. The most important thing a cyclist can do to become stronger and faster is to do recovery rides.
But you’re not alone in your confusion. As it turns out, very few cyclists know when they should do a recovery ride, nor how they should do a recovery ride.
Luckily for all of you, I have studied the science and art (yes, art!) of recovery rides extensively, and am happy to — at no cost to you. Although would be nice if you bought a copy of my book (available now in paper and Kindle versions at a discounted price! Buy three today!!!).
When To Do A Recovery Ride
Many top experts are very strong proponents of recovery rides, including Joe Friel, probably, because he seems to be in favor of pretty much everything.
The real question is when should you do a recovery ride?
While some recognized experts say you should do a recovery ride the day following a periodized interval session — whatever that is — the fact is the determining factor of when you should do a recovery ride is very simple indeed.
Scenario 1: Suppose you’re out riding. You’ve planned to do a big climb, followed by another big climb, followed by a long flat into a headwind, followed by a big climb.
The problem is, you’re not having fun. And the near future doesn’t look promising, fun-wise, either.
The solution? declare a recovery ride, perhaps to a nearby store where one can purchase a recovery beverage and perhaps a recovery burrito.
Scenario 2: You’re out riding, feeling good. Feeling strong. Feeling like you’ve got good power and that perhaps you are the strongest cyclist in the Northwest quadrant of Alpine, UT.
And then you get passed.
This, my friend, is because — although perhaps you did not realize it until just this moment — you are on a recovery ride. And it’s probably a really good idea to let the guy who just passed you know this fact, so they don’t have the misperception that they passed you because they’re faster than you.
I recommend, saying loudly (due to the doppler effect and wind and stuff), “Don’t you just hate recovery rides?”
Scenario 3: You go out to the garage, and your bike has a flat. You fix it, only to find that you didn’t do a very good job, because the new tube also goes flat. You go back inside.
Congratulations. You just did a recovery ride.
Except the “ride” part, of course.
How To Do A Recovery Ride
As important as when you do a recovery ride is how. Simply follow these steps:
- Start out the ride nice and easy, with the intention of never getting your heart rate above 120. If your resting heart rate is above 120, you may need to modify this number.
- As you ride, your legs will feel better and you’ll start enjoying yourself, and you’ll want to go faster. Resist this urge. You’re not riding your bike for fun, darn it! Bikes are for training and racing and crushing the opposition.
- At some point, you’ll see another cyclist up ahead. You’ll be tempted to step up your pace and catch this other cyclist, especially since your legs are feeling good and fresh. Resist this urge!
- Ah, screw it. Go ahead and chase that other cyclist down.
Oh, and when you catch that other cyclist, be sure to let him or her know that you’re on a recovery ride.
Happy Recovering,
The Fat Cyclist
Comments (27)
01.16.2012 | 11:06 am
Really, I meant to black my blog out today, in opposition to SOPA. It was totally going to look like this:
Click to enlarge image for greater detail
And then I realized that there were two very important problems with this plan, which I shall list below:
- I’m kinda hoping for a lot of traffic this month, because Competitive Cyclist is doing a little bit of a trial balloon on my blog, seeing whether it’s worth it to advertise here. I’d kinda like that answer to come out “yes.” Totally killing ads for a day wouldn’t exactly serve my purposes, and in fact would be at least mildly ironic. (Bonus challenge for motivated readers: try real hard to see if you can find a Competitive Cyclist ad on my site. I know, it’s not easy.)
- The odds are very good that if I somehow managed to black out my site today, I’d never figure out how to get it un-blacked out tomorrow.
- Like BSNYC, I haven’t exactly spent a ton of time researching SOPA / PIPA, and so am not really all that prepared to march in a virtual picket line.
- It’s just too bold a stance to take. My neck out-sticking is pretty much limited to telling people that it’s nice to be nice. Which was pretty darn out-there, I realize.
That said, I am a fast learner, and — trying to do my civic duty and whatnot — have spent about fifteen minutes on the web trying to figure out what SOPA / PIPA mean.
SOPA
First off, I learned that SOPA stands for “Stop Online Piracy Act.” Which sounds good, because we all like to act like we don’t steal music off the web, except for when we talk with other people who steal music off the web, in which circumstances we tend to brag about how much music we’ve stolen off the web.
Except me, by the way. I haven’t stolen a single song off the web, ever. At least, not since Napster went under.
Anyways, the problem with SOPA is that it’s too expansive. It overshoots piracy and lands in the realm of censorship. And as a guy who goes out of his way to make it easy to communicate (I leave my commenting system totally open), that feels manifestly uncool.
PIPA
PIPA on the other hand, isn’t even an acronym. It’s just a silly sound. OK, that’s not true. PIPA stands for Protect IP Act. Here, “IP” stands for “Internet Protocol.” Honestly, I didn’t even know Internet Protocols were under attack, so I don’t know what the big deal is here.
OK, fine. “IP” in this instance probably stands for “Intellectual Property.” And PIPA actually stands for Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (really!), which means that whoever created this bill put a whole bunch of words together that don’t make any sense at all in the order they’re in, hoping nobody would notice and would just call the act “PROTECT IP.”
Of course, that acronym only works if you’re friends with the guy who created the bill and place the space where he wanted. Otherwise you could call it “PROTEC TIP,” which makes it sound like a badly-named brand of condom. Which is actually pretty metaphorically accurate.
So which is worse, “PROTEC TIP” or “PIPA?” You’ll have to decide for yourself.
Call To Action
Here’s what to do: go to Google’s SOPA/PIPA landing page and sign the petition, because — as you know — petitions pretty much always work.
Or better yet, you could actually contact your representatives. Wikipedia has a nice tool to help you find out who they are and how to contact them, accessible right from their home page.
Thank you. Oh, and just for fun, here’s that black square again.
Comments (38)
01.16.2012 | 8:59 am
A “Buy Something Good, Do Something Good” Note from Fatty: My friends at Twin Six are doing their part in the fight to improve the lives of those living with cancer. 50% of all sales today will be donated to LiveStrong. Not half the profits, not half of everything over a certain point, half of all sales. Which — just for example — means if you buy their extremely cool-looking Yellow Cabby jersey for $75, LiveStrong gets $37.50. That’s awesome.
Or maybe if you wanted to pick up some Fat Cyclist gear — a hoodie, say, or a t-shirt. Half your purchase would go to LiveStrong. That seems decidedly appropriate, doesn’t it?
And hey, if you don’t know what you want just yet, you could buy a T6 Gift Certificate today, and half of that money goes to LiveStrong.
Could the Twin Six guys be any more awesome? No. No they could not.
(The one-day promotion is now over; thanks everyone who bought stuff!)
MoRaTraG Must Be Stopped
I consider myself a fair man. A tolerant man. Even a good-natured man. If you were to meet me on the street, you might — as we held a pleasant conversation and I pretended to be interested in what you have to say — think to yourself, “Why, this beloved, award-winning, book-authoring, Internet celebrity cycling megastar is just a normal guy who is interested in what I have to say!”
Which is just precious of you. Really.
With my “niceness” credentials thus unimpeachably established, I would like to now state that there is an organization that makes me furious. I start thinking about this organization, and my blood boils and I see red. My blood pressure surges. Sometimes I get pounding headaches.
My goiter throbs. Occasionally, I pass out. Frankly, I’m feeling a little bit dizzy right now.
There. I just took a pill. It should help me settle down in a moment.
[Ten minutes elapse]
OK, I’m fine now. I can continzhurrrrr.
[98 minutes elapse]
I’m awake again. (Note to self: adjust dosage.) Where was I?
Right, I remember now. There’s an organization, my friends, pervasive to all forms of cycling, that exists for no other reason than to mess with cyclists’ minds. To make us suffer needlessly. It revels in our confusion, and celebrates our discomfort as a victory. It laughs each and every time one of us cries. This organization hates cyclist.
No, I mean the organization besides the UCI.
I am talking about, of course, the Manipulation of Roads and Trails Guild (MoRaTraG) pronounced “MORE-uh-trag”).
This covert society operates with no purpose other than messing up your expectations for a ride. It wants you to feel stronger than you actually are on one ride, thus giving you unreasonable expectations for your next ride. Then, the next time you get out on a bike – boom – you have no energy whatsoever. It wants you to feel like you’re on top of your technical game one instant, and a bumbling fool pinned beneath your bike and unable to clip out without using the Jaws of Life the moment after that.
In short, the MoRaTraG is a bunch of jerks.
Allow me to detail their various heinous activities, through the use of serious-yet-immenseley-entertaining anecdotes, each carefully crafted for you to find yourself nodding your head in agreement.
Offense 1: Trail Difficulty Revisions
When I first started mountain biking, there was an incredibly steep, technical jeep road I made my mission to conquer. Most lunch hours, I’d head out to what we called “Lower Frank” and would try – over and over – to clean that pitch. I had this idea that since I had seen Dug and Bob clean it, that until I could at least work my way up that hill I would be nothing but a hindrance to them.
After about a month, I did it. I rode up that move without putting a foot down. I was incredibly proud, and justifiably so.
Then, sometime last summer I decided to find that move and see if, now that I have more than fifteen years’-worth of riding experience, I could now clean that pitch on a singlespeed.
I wasn’t optimistic, but I thought it was worth a shot.
So I rode out to where the move should be, but I couldn’t find it. There was a jeep road there, yeah, but it was certainly not a move. It would be more of what I’d call a “short, easy climb.”
Clearly, MoRaTraG had been here. They had lessened the gradient of the climb, as well as made the embedded rocks much smaller and easier to roll over.
My pride at having conquered my first move all those years ago vanished. This thing isn’t something I could brag about. Not anymore.
Thanks a lot, MoRaTraG.
Offense 2: Early Season Gradient Revisions
MoRaTraG seems to be most active in the Winter, because when Spring returns and I get a chance to ride my favorite roads and trails for the first time in months, it’s obvious that these jokers have been hard at work, because every single climb has been jacked up.
And by “jacked up,” I mean what I say quite literally. Gradients on my rides – road and mountain — have all been increased by 30%, sometimes more. I can tell this is the case because rides that were fun and easy last autumn are now so steep they’re making my ears bleed.
I think they do it with hydraulic jacks. However it’s done, it’s just plain rude.
Offense 3: Variable Technicality
What makes me really mad, though, is the way MoRaTraG goes out and screws around with trails. Like, I’ll be out riding one of my favorite lunch ride loops — a combo of Hog Hollow and Corner Canyon – just riding along, enjoying myself.
I’ll be flying down Ghost and – for reasons only they know – MoRaTrag will have clearly been at work, cleaning up the runout following a little jump. I’ll land so nicely my confidence will go through the roof; I’ll instantly vow to hit it really hard next time (and I think we all know how that will turn out).
Then, coming down Jacob’s Ladder, I’ll be carving my way around a hairpin turn – same as I have hundreds of times – and wham. I’m on my side. No warning whatsoever. I look back and – sure enough – MoRaTrag has placed an embedded rock, smooth and flat, right in the trail. Right at the apex of the corner, where I’m most likely to slide out.
And obviously it wasn’t there before, because I’ve gone around that corner a hundred times without falling. They put that rock there recently, and they did it just to be mean.
I don’t know what it is about those guys. But they’ve got to be stopped.
PS: If you’ve ever wanted to hear me be interviewed and talk aimlessly and endlessly about whatever pops into my head, you should check out the interview I just did over at Bicycle Lab.
Comments (14)
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