I’m not even talking about all the pseudo-asthmatics out there, vaping their way to better breathing. My breathing is just fine. It’s my little citron sized heart that is slowing me down. Is there a street-legal injection or vacuum pump for heart enlargement, or a trip to a doctor in the Congo that would transplant a badass Mandrill heart for me? That would have to improve my uphill sprint. The transplant shouldn’t be illegal; possibly unwise- but not illegal. I digress.
We can’t all do up a block of training on Tenerife so I rely on un caffé, an espresso. This is legal doping at its finest. One can do it in public. There is no shame attached to drinking an espresso with your teammates before a ride. Faema, a company that Eddy Merckx rode for is still in business, in the espresso business. It’s sort of like Amgen, a producer of EPO sponsoring the Tour of California. The UCI limit is 12 micrograms per ml in urine which is a lot of espresso, like ten of them. That much espresso would just make one a wild slavering beast (a mandrill for instance) who would burn very brightly and then be found trembling in a ditch when the lights went out. I’m sure there are some kermis racers who get all jacked on coffee and burn up the course. That might be the only way to actually dope with caffeine; a race that only lasts an hour and never slows down.
If I enjoy a pre-ride espresso, am I doping or am I just feeding my caffeine monkey (or mandrill) that rides on my back and needs to be serviced? It’s not effective doping if you dope every day of the year, just to get to nine AM, is it? My dose is just to get me back up to baseline functionality. I can’t even tolerate much caffeine in the middle of a long hot ride. After dosing mid-ride, I get a very uncomfortable hypo-glycemic out-of-body experience and my brain detaches. My brain and eyeballs floats above and I can see that poor suffering bastard down below, with the pre-adolescent sized heart, barely in control of his bike.
I will, on occasion, do a morning ride sans caffé. Some rides start too early in the morning for me to even think about brewing up and sometimes the ride’s terminus is a café so I hold off. It is never good. A long climb without coffee is much less fun than a long climb with a little caffeine pumping around the nervous system. That small does of caffeine makes the sweating, front wheel staring, and bartape chewing so much more fun and interesting. A jour sans (coffee) is no fun unless one is into a ride so exciting and exhausting (and that started before sunrise) that the lack of buzz is completely unnoticed. Espresso and climbing go well together. Is that why the Colombians are excellent climbers? Espresso and cycling are a good match, like cycling and beer. I’m not saying one needs to develop a coffee or drinking habit to be a cyclist. If you already have them, chapeau, here is a sport that embraces both, completely.
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@Owen No, just the bike. He'd shave his head to be more aero, stop drinking mountain dew because the 1 pound will make him 3 seconds slower, and stop the video gaming because his wrists hurt like hell from spending 10 hrs on the bike every weekend.
Just saying. .......
It took me a while to develop a taste for coffee, and a holiday in Italy to realise that I didn't like it because the vast majority of coffee is shit. Instant? Shit. Enormo-buckets of American 'coffee*'? Shit. It tastes like boiled puddle and I can't stand it. The Italians on the other hand are all over it; milky coffee only in the morning, espressi thereafter, always beautifully made. Try ordering a latte in the afternoon in Italy and see the filthy look you get.
An investment was made in a decent coffee machine when I got home and two years later I'm not going back. The finesse and adjustment required to get the best out of it remind me of bike maintenance; none of this button pressing / capsule loading chicanery here. Just the ticket for sorting me out for a day out on the roads and there's no shortage of takers for post ride espressi at our little domestic cafe.
*The coffee vendors at Camp Leatherneck in the middle of the Afghan red desert will sell you a truly ridiculous size cup of coffee with an extra quadruple espresso added if you so wish. It tastes like they drained it from the sump of a Hummer, truly fucking terrifying stuff, and probably an explanation for why some people over there seem a little highly strung. And that's just the ones who fly a desk.
@Fausto
Capsule and pad systems are insane once you look at what it costs for the actual coffee by weight. I buy nice beans and the same people who look at me like I'm crazy to buy 'expensive' coffee go and buy masses of packaging and a bit of powder without batting an eyelid.
And yes, Mediterraneans and coffee. I well remember sitting in a piazza on a beautiful off-season day near the Med when the older American couple at the next table order two coffees (directly in English without any attempt at reference to a phrasebook, naturally). When the waiter duly brought two espressos*, the indignant reply came quickly: "No, no, no; we want two normal, American coffees!" Cue stifled guffaws at my table and much eye-rolling and expressive shrugging from the staff once the message had been understood.
* Don't come with 'espressi'. I'm talking English here.
I like the look of enlightenment on people's faces when they try decent coffee rather than the usual rubbish that's so prevalent on the high street. I'm definitely still learning, but I can still make a reasonable cup of all the usual espresso-based drinks, and it's nice to tempt people away from their usual coffee with or without a splosh of flat, cold milk. Espresso is definitely an acquired taste but it really helps if you get the grind, tamp and temperature right so it doesn't taste burnt.
As for your American tourists, I'd act surprised if it'd help... To be fair they're led astray by the global coffee chains making it acceptable to peddle a vat of something brown at the same temperature as the surface of the sun as coffee. Nothing wrong with using the correct plural for espresso either - I think of it as adhering to the same rule as using the correct name for bike races rather than the foreign approximation.
Fuck Gianni, what is it with your pieces? I always find myself actually reading them! Nicely done, again!
And you phrase, "un jour sans" needs to be added to the lexicon in some way, shape or form. Beautiful three word combo that evokes so much more!
There is a lot of good sense being talked here about espresso. Let me add a thing about "coffee"--the kind one can and should drink in a porcelain "coffee cup."
It doesn't have to suck.
Especially not at home, where you have control over the process. I will pass over the absolute requirement for a decent burr grinder. Everyone knows about that. I want to correct a potential misconception, that roasting one's own beans is a fussy, inconvenient, unnecessary hobbyist approach to making coffee.
With a simple, relatively inexpensive roasting device (there are several) and a bit of experimentation with beans and roast times, you can make better coffee than you can get almost anywhere in public (outside Portland, I mean). I spend roughly twenty minutes every three days or so roasting, and I fill our home with a delicious aroma of roasting coffee beans. And I save us 40USD per month on beans. And we drink fabulous coffee.
I find it charming how many dopey people now walk around with Sippy Cups for Adults so they can have coffee on hand while driving, pushing the little fuck in a stroller, walking the dog, cruising around town in Crocs/finger shoes.
The only thing more idiotic than a regular Sippy Cup is a Sippy Cup that has been made to look like a cardboard Sippy Cup to Go. I can't figure out who the fuck would buy one of those. "For the coffee drinker who just wants to look like they hate Mother Earth and despite an entire cabinet of mugs, and those 18 reusable, insulated mugs they've gotten from the boss for doing a good job each year, but actually wants to drink from a newly purchased reusable Sippy Cup."
Maybe nut jobs who don't want to look like environmentally conscious pussies, but actually do care enough to use a reusable cup. Goddamn, talk about a beautiful target audience.
@Buck Rogers
"un jour sans" might already be in the lexicon and I wish it was my phrase. Those darn French, they coined that a long time ago. Hey, I'm happy you read the post, I keep 'em short and no big words, just for you.
@Ron
Nice wee rant there Ron. I used to go to spin classes on a Saturday morning (during the winter, naturally) at the Y. When ladies started coming with travel mugs of coffee I knew it was time for a home trainer. Oh, and they also brought their gobs - blah, blah,, blah. "Oh, I went to the gym this morning" I can hear them proudly proclaim upon returning home. "I can now eat an entire bag of chips and a large soda because I deserve it." No, you went to the gym, went through the motions of exercising, and have given yourself an erroneous sense of accomplishment.
Oh and how do people function when they have their coffee sippy cup in one hand and their i-pacifier in the other?
@PeakInTwoYears
+1 on the coffee bean roasting, me too, for my espresso machine. I can make better espresso than most of the places on the island for much less money. Green beans are only $5-$6 a pound. I am too lazy to brew beer anymore though, I'll pay for that. And I work on my own bike so one has to pick their battles.