December 30, 2009
Brian Ignatin - Pineville, Pennsylvania
Hands and feet? Honestly, I cannot remember because they have long succumbed to frostbite and fallen off.
Brian, it took me a really long time but eventually I wised up and fled the cold weather. This is one question that I have absolutely no answer for. I have tried any number of different kinds of shoe covers (aka booties) and gloves of every shape, kind, color and construction, to absolutely no avail. Yes, there are a ton of outstanding glove and shoe cover option available now but, for the most part, keeping your feet and hands warm has a lot to do with your own hands and feet.
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December 21, 2009
Dan Johnson - Missouri
My name is Joe and I have a shoe problem. I think you might even refer to it as flat-out craziness. I have owned (bought and been given) more cycling shoes than I can remember. I have filed, cut, heated, bent, sawed, glued and otherwise mutilated them in, pretty much, every way imaginable -- shoe mania. Imelda Marcos had nothing on me.
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December 17, 2009
Recently, it has become my habit to scan various cycling media outlets several times each day in hopes of finding news. In this era of reading the news as it is happening, the race to get a story up on the web is just about as intense as the racing itself. It is fun for me to watch the chips fall, if you will, and to see what country or language will break the story first.
Tuesday, as I glanced at the headlines on various different sites I came up with a story about riders from the
Omega Pharma – Lotto team crashing during their training camp, which is happening Spain, as we speak.
Yesterday,
I read another story about a rider from Liquigas who crashed while training and suffered a double collarbone fracture.
Let me summarize here for a second – professional bike racers are crashing during training rides. Ladies and gentlemen, I need your help to figure out what exactly is going on here? Have the world’s best bike riders forgotten how to ride their bikes?
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December 14, 2009
David A - Portland, Oregon
It’s funny, but actually didn’t know what “Belgian Kneewarmers” referred to until about a year ago. I guess it might be, perhaps, that as I was in the habit of putting on one or another type of embrocation gunk on the knees and legs, and that everyone else was doing the same thing, I never knew there was an American term for it.
Yes, for those of you who have never been in a dressing room immediately prior to a Belgian kermis, classic, semi-classic, or cyclocross race … the air becomes thick with the fragrance of at least a dozen different analgesic ointments. Some of these are familiar smells – a lot like that Ben Gay smell you got when you went to visit your grandparents. Some of them, on the other hand, are like nothing you have smelled before – and quite possibly could be some sort of cross between a freaky hillbilly poultice and a high desert meth lab.
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December 11, 2009
On
my Versus column Wednesday I wrote about the International Olympic Committee’s decision to turn track cycling upside down at the 2012 Olympic games. The UCI really didn’t help matters much either. As I stewed in velodrome juices over the course of the last couple of days, I felt the need to hit the subject again … here.
It seems that the heart of the matter stems from the fact that the IOC wants equality between events for men and women. At the 2008 games in Beijing, for instance, there were 7 events for men and 3 events for women. It seems that the IOC has demanded 5 events each. Additionally, the IOC has argued that the events excluded do not make for good TV coverage.
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December 9, 2009
Neal L - Minneapolis, Minnesota
Sorry for the delay getting your question answered, Neal, but since I know what the weather is like in the Twin Cities right now, I doubt you're going to be getting out on any long rides on the road for at least a couple of months yet.
Since we - make that
you are in the midst of some cold weather there, let's go ahead and talk about winter training for a bit. I am giving away a tiny bit from the new book,
Come & Gone, now, but after just one year of riding mountain bikes around lakes
Harriet, Calhoun and Isles, as well as weekly snowmobile trail rides from Chaska to Belle Plaine and back during the bitter winter, I was completely destroyed.
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