There isn’t a lot about a climb several kilometers long ending in a sustained 20% cobbled gradient that communicates ‘Attack’ and/or ‘Respond’. Certainly not when it comes after 240 kilometers with only 20 left to race. Nope, I’ve double-checked the calibration and used a control-case: the only reading I’m getting on the Pain Gauge is the…
Author: frank
The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking.
As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it.
Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen.
Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.
It’s referred to as the Hell of the North not for the misery the race causes on its riders, but for the landscape the route carries the riders through. Terrible, unimaginable things have happend there. Napoleon’s troops marched those lands, falling by the thousands at the bayonet and cannonball. More recently, the First World War took place there,…
It hasn't always been this way, where we thoughtlessly disembogue 140 characters or less in messages sent into a medium where our crimes against language, spelling and grammar will live for ever. There was a time when we wrote letters. These letters were carefully composed and penned onto thick, quality parchment paper and sealed in…
I peer into my V-Pint, seeking out the V-Cog in its base as the hoppy taste of a local IPA washes over my tongue and begins its work. I breathe out slowly, basking in the sense of satisfaction that can only come from knowing you’ve done just enough to avoid failure. That’s right, fellow Velominati; we’ve launched…
I would have put this under the new “Belgian Affirmations” category, but was overcome with fear that King Kelly would hunt me down and strangle me with his death stare for the crime of suggesting he wants to be anything other than Irish. It is said that some people ride the cobbles with greater ease…
Andrei Tchmil got so tired of the palpable disappointment of not being Belgian that he decided to become one. Envision the world the way you want it to be, then make it so. People are cynical when I talk about Belgium. They think I’m only Belgian on paper. That is not true. Yes, I was…
No double wraps of bar tape. No arm warmers or bandages for an injured left arm; just some wrappings borrowed from an Egyptian mummy he sent back to the underworld earlier in the morning. Nothing special for Roger on a typical race day in Hell. Just unmeasurably enormous helpings of Rule #5. The most remarkable thing about this…
We spend a small enormity of time waiting. We wait for lights to turn green. We wait for riders to arrive to the ride. We wait for riding partners to finish repairing a flat or mechanical. Due to various practical considerations including the perceived notion that armchairs don’t stuff well into jersey pockets, we generally find ourselves…
Fitness. The rhythm, the feeling of precision in our movement, the sensations of The Ride. The temptation of knowing we might in some way control our suffering even as we push harder in spite of the searing pain in our legs and lungs. The notion that through suffering, we might learn something rudimentary about ourselves – that we might…
The corollary of Rule #12 is that one focusses the bulk of their energies on upgrading Bike #1 with the result that upgraded gear typically cascades down to Bike #2 and on down through Bike #n. This is The Way of Things; Bike #1 gains the most, but in the end, they all benefit as upgrades trickle through the…
Seattle Cogal 2011
CogalsOn October 15, 2011, a select team of Velominati gathered in Langley on Whidbey Island to go for a ride together. These gatherings, referred to as Cogals, are a key component of the vision of Velominati, to bring the community from the Interwebs into the reality of The Ride. After all, we are Cyclists and…
I can’t understand the American obsession with finger food in general and sliders in particular. Finger food, in its strict interpretation, should be food for your fingers, not food which is eaten with one’s fingers. While “finger food” is inaccurate as a generality, sliders are basically just hamburgers that never got the Rule #5 Talk….
Evolution is a slow, gradual process, punctuated by sudden change. For the first 80 years of our sport, riders rode contra la montre on their regular road bikes. For certain, the bikes were carefully cleaned and tuned to remove all possible resistance, but these were their standard, daily machines. Then, in a span of barely ten years came the…
This photo of Phil Anderson’s genuine surprise at the gap between himself and the guy who won at losing reminds me of a story my dad tells of a crewmate from his boat at Laga. My dad was the stroke in a boatful of guys who went on to the compete in several World Championships…
Hardly a bike can pass through my gaze without invoking a visceral reaction; admiration for a well-manicured machine regardless of it’s discipline, delight at a vintage gem or a diamond in the rough, anger at an owner who has neglected a beautiful machine, horror at an abomination of sensibility and taste. When I see these…
As I sat down to write this article, I noticed that the battery on my laptop needed charging. I stood to reach for the charger, picked it up, and then watched helplessly as it slipped from my hand and pin-balled off every possible surface between my hand and the floor. I then muttered something that…
Whenever The Keepers disappear a bit and our postings become sporadic and pointed, you can bet we’re either out riding our bikes or we’ve been busy working away at new features for the site. We have a number of features in various states of completion, and we’ll be rolling them out over the course of the next…
One of the most magnificent things about Cycling is that not only does it represent different things to different people, it represents different things on different days. Some days, it’s training – a means to an end. Other days, it’s the culmination of a body of work; rather than a means to an end, it…
A mechanical of any kind thrusts a professional cyclist into a kind of paradoxical isolation; swarmed by cars and motorcycles, yet they are often left alone to find their way back to the peloton by their own strength. But this isn’t their first rodeo, and these aren’t cowboys. Put it in the Big Ring, set the…
One score and seven years ago, I first swung my leg over my bike with a specific training objective in mind. I was 7 going on 8 years old and already behind me lay the days of the bicycle representing freedom from the claustrophobic confines of “walking-distance” and before me lay the unexplored world of La…