Is this still the off season for the people of the North? I hope so. I know it’s -34 fahrenheit where Marko lives so he is only riding three times a week to prepare for the Keepers Tour. It seems @souleur has a little holiday guilt and now that those damn holidays are behind us it’s time to think about the cycling season ahead.
Yours in Cycling, Gianni
The season has passed that all cyclists are cautious about. That time of year where food is abundant, and for most of us, we are in a respite as well. This calculates into a caloric excess. And we must admit, we cannot avoid it. Tis the season as we say. At work, our partners and colleagues bring in food and drink to enjoy. Our families make coveted goodies and neighbors even send treats over to express gratitude and friendship. To fully reject these things would indeed be the highest order of an asshole, yet to fully accept it is to throw away our many months of riding and training; at least that is for us north-of-the-equator types. Nonetheless, this time of year we do our best to be friendly and gracious to our friends and family even if that means eating that extra piece of pumpkin pie.
Brothers and Sisters, we must be careful. As cyclists, we know the price we pay for such friendly behavior. Because lurking in the shadows of our get togethers and parties is the man with the hammer. I know, you may not have realized this, but it is an observation I have recently made. We have indeed become familiar with him in seasons past when he visits us as the uninvited guest of our friendly bike rides. But now in the off season, the man with the hammer’s love of being the peeping Tom is in full swing. See, for now, the man with the hammer is taking notes on all of our indiscretions, each and every single one. He has a flawless memory bank and each and every thing we indulge at this time of year is officially on the record. Sure, it’s just a piece of pie, but each goodie we take in, it will be required of us one day. See, for the man with the hammer, it’s a special day he looks forward to and it’s called payback day. He’s a bored lunatic who has nothing more to do than inflict loads of hatred upon us. In fact there is nothing that he relishes in more than to take advantage of us at that perfect moment, when you are bleeding out your eyeballs, you are gasping for a short breath of air and this fifty pound monkey jumps on your back. For some, he rarely pays a visit because they are very, very disciplined. For those like myself, he visits often and repeatedly and in heavy doses. Because of his regularly scheduled appointments, I have become more familiar with him and I take note of his characteristics, his virtue, his habits. And the more I learn of him, the more he reminds me of Jack Torrance in the Shining, BAMM, there he is and boy is he ever-present and somebody is gonna pay because he is all about the bat-shit-craziness.
Yes, it’s that special day when you resume your training. That day becomes the day we recognize our sins of the past. It may be the hill repeats, it may be that perfect stretch of road that we find ourselves doing max intervals in V-locus fashion, it may be that long steady climb; but whatever it is we all will come to that pivotal point that we crawl before the alter of the man with the hammer and pay penance for the luxuries of the holiday season. The man with the hammer recalls each and every one of our sins as he checks them off one by one. He calls us to atone and inflicts loads of V commensurate our just deserts. Sadly, some will be discouraged, but for us Keepers of the highest order, we understand this is required. We understand and accept the pain, the suffering, and that atonement is called for. What the man with the hammer doesn’t get, is when we actually sit down at the table like gentlepeople, sit, talk and take account of all that we have done, we then ask for more pain, another pounding, a repeated mashing to make us hard as nails. Because that is exactly what we realize we need in order to become better. The problem is the man with the hammer isn’t interested a conversation and he isn’t a gentleman.
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View Comments
@Marcus
You're not claiming that you didn't realize they were sheep, tho? That would decimate half the discussions!
@strathlubnaig
Wait, you're still talking about blowjobs, right?
@graham d.m. +1 man, I am doing the long slow cardio, and given its january, I am just 2 weeks away from peaking and that is plenty of time to make the break
@xyxax : dude, that Ritte is religous! Being my race girl is Ridley, there is something deeply embedded in my soul that is Belgian, and seeing that Ritte makes me think about moonlighting more for bike parts/frames
However, you picture something deeply disturbing that I am trying to reconcile in the deepest sulci of my mind. Can you even picture something Belgian without the blue? I mean, black and white only in the second pic, albeit, it is smoking fast just sitting still, and as we say, black and white in cycling is fast and the proper colors. I suppose it can be right, but I would have to go with blue in the inner fork, and striped down the top tuber. Love the Ritte stuff.
And i ride pinarello and bianchi's too, which is right in May when the maglia rosa is up or for the Prima-vera
@ChrisO
this is exactly right, and what i have been doing, which so far has been working
Admittedly, I haven't knelt to the alter yet to have the man with the Hammer pop me in the back of my head, but will as the temp migrate up ~70 here. Will do the first race in febuary completely green, as everyone does, and build from there. Intervals, repeats, in heavy doses
@Frank
I am encountering a strange bug where AA posts are being routed to the Velominati site.
@xyxax
That's a lot of money for a Pedal Force frameset with a nice paint job.
@Souleur
Ritte brand is as Belgian as those two Americans guys who are behind it.
@Mikel Pearce
Agreed.And it is always everybody else's fault not his.He is slower than many young upcoming sprinters and he can't stand it so he always tries to find something or somebody to blame for his lack of top speed.
@razmaspaz
Did you mean this? Very American asshat attitude.To be honest I was surprised too.Even living in Gent didn't help him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMeMr1pzGcA
@TommyTubolare
Ha! I wondered when that was going to come up! PF model CG1 ISP for 1/3 the price. The Bosberg was also a PF frame. The chump factor of paying for paint/brand gives me great pause, but I just need the delusion for now to get through the winter.
@xyxax
This again.
its a funny thing, isn't it.
Ritte has a business model where they have contracted with a Chinese or Taiwanese frame manufacturer to supply catalogue frames that they then have dreamed up a marketing angle and created quite a attractive livery. From what I have read, they are continuing to develop other products with other manufacturers to expand their offer.
The catch is that being a catalogue frame, astute observers note that the same frame can be had for much less. This, from what I understand has led to some Internet commentators to suggest that the Ritte guys are "douches" or whatever other pejorative names you creative Americans can come up with.
The point is this; the Bosberg is an attractive package in my opinion. I probably wouldn't go there because I'm happy with what I've got but livery is very important to how people pereceive the desirability of bikes.
Take Baum for example. We all salivate over the beauty of those frames. They are desirable. Why?
The paint, mostly, and the lines of the frames. Only the owners can tell you how they ride, and in my opinion, that is subjective at best.