The Whale Shark is the biggest nonmammalian vertebrate* on the planet, rivaling the dinosaurs for size. How do you feed yourself when you’re that huge without loading up on carbs all the time? Easy, you swim around with your mouth wide open for 22 hours a day and hope enough food swims in there to take the edge off the hunger pangs. Cyclists face a metaphorically similar challenge when it comes to loading up the lungs with enough air to support our ravenous hunger for more V.
While the civilized person doesn’t normally wander about with their jaw agape as though missing a chromosome, the Velominatus – the most civilized of Cyclists – always rides with a slack jaw. Better for gulping down air while helping yourself to heaping portions of The V.
The sad reality is that when riding uphill, one can either suffer or one can climb off. There is nothing in the middle, no Option C. There may be some (perceived) degree of control over how intense the suffering is, but one of the most important discoveries a Cyclist will ever make is that riding uphill at a moderate pace is almost as hard as riding uphill à bloc. The question becomes one of sustainment of the effort; how much oxygen can be supplied to the blood so the muscles can keep firing. The answer is that you can be as strong as Hercules but if you don’t concentrate on your breathing to get as much air into the lungs as possible, it won’t be very long before Scotty is calling up from the engine room with some bleak news.
Enter the Whale Shark breathing technique: open you mouth wide, and hoover up as much air as possible as you make your way uphill. Ullrich was a champion of this approach, dropping the jaw like the loader on a tractor, cramming air down the hatch and into the furnace. His fellow countryman Tony Martin has taken over the mantle with possibly the most realistic Whaleshark impersonation I’ve ever seen. But this is a technique as old as the sport itself; even the most casual browsing of a photo archive will show riders from all eras riding with their mouths hanging wide open.
The idea here is improve your breathing while avoiding looking like a yawning chimp. Here are a few pointers.
[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/frank@velominati.com/Whale Shark/”/]
*Nonmammalian vertebrate? Do we need that distinction? Are there any competing nonmammalian invertebrates? I’d hate to run into a 21 metric ton bug.
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Loving the subtle bands on the seat tube (can that thing even be called a seat tube?) and I realize he's going FSA but that just looks wrong.
Kinda like Peter Sagan's escape velocity tuck....
no...
...exactly like Peter Sagan's tuck.
@DerHoggz
An Omega, a modern take on the classic Delta: A tunnel-tested centrepull brake. Smaller and sleeker than the Hooker and Delta aero-brakes, and this one actually brakes! Cable pulls a wedge that pushes the arms onto the rim. If I had a cable-hanger (or rather, a less-integrated bike that accepted one) I could run a bare cable from the stem for extra sleekness.
@tessar
Sounds like a Delta, which does actually brake as well...its just that they were a massive pain in the ass to adjust right. But if they were, they worked fantastically well.
Even for people who couldn't get them adjusted right, they worked fine so long as they didn't like stopping.
Think of Deltas as binary; they worked or they didn't, not really anything material in between.
@DeKerr
Less subtle but still rad as shit. Aside from the horrible bibs.
@frank
The Deltas were the inspiration, according to the engineer behind them. These, though, are stupid-easy to adjust: There's a 2.5mm allen bolt on each arm that allows independent adjustment, so brake adjustment is even easier than with a conventional brake.
Confidis are using them front and rear on their Look TT rigs at the TdF, and Orbea specced these on their new Ordu.
I have Deltas on my Tommasini. I've been building up the courage to recable them for a few years now. Mine work well in the drops, but are a tough pull from the top. Maybe I just should have requested bigger hands? Can't decide if I want to give it a go, or leave it to the LBS. Have talked to the owner/mechanic and he's excited to work on them, as he hasn't seen many.
I swapped out some FSA cantilevers on my CX bike for some TRP cx-specific brakes and WOW, I'm a v-brake convert. With the silky smooth pull of Red shifters, damn, the breaking is nice.
Oh, and I'd also say I'm a SRAM convert. Been riding my CX bike on the road a bit this summer and the shifting is great. I just think the constant shifting of cross was making me dislike Red shifters. But, as I've only ever ridden SRAM for cross, maybe I'm just seeing that off road shifting, in muddy conditions, etc. takes more skill/thinking than a casual rode shift on a predictable surface on a riding loop I know well.
@frank Yes, waaaaaaaaay less subtle. Fortunately I don't think there's any chance of Her Panzerwagen turning into the Rainbow Turd.
And how the fuck does he do that with his neck?!? The wattage coming out of that photo is making my eyes water.
@VeloVita
This picture is a classic example of what separates we mere motrals from the pros. I think if 99% of us even tried this, we'd be calling 911 after we picked up our shattered teeth from the roadside.
Did Tony Panzerwagen change bikes or just rear wheels during the TT? If he punctured, his winning margin would have been ever greater than if he hadn't.
The whale shark a la Jens.
@wiscot It's certainly a different bike to the one in Franks photo above. Whether the two photos are from the same race is questionable. If yes, he also ditched his shades.