I couldn't bring myself to get out of the house at 8:20 a.m. this morning to do the 9 a.m. ride that meets in Medford every Sunday.  Why exactly this ride meets at 9 a.m., even when the temperatures will be much more conducive to riding -- or doing anything outdoors other than ice-fishing -- a bit later, I don't know.

A few of my cycling buddies have another reason for avoiding these meet-in-Medford rides.  Some of those that live in other parts of the valley, like my retro-grouch friend Craig (I mean that in a good way) dislike Medford, with its pawn shops, its planning department's apparent syncopahtia towards all things big box, and its not always so enlightened drivers.  So for Craig to ride into Medford, just to ride out of Medford, on his day off from work (he works in Medford); well it just isn't gonna happen.

But I'll stand up for Medford's charm.  Whether you're an anthropologist of bike path hoboism, or a student of early 1970s Bauhaus-meets-strip-mall architecture, Medford is not without its distinct points of interest.

One of those is the man dress up like Uncle Sam who delivers donuts to the bike shop where I work every tax season.  I'm sure to see him again soon.  But what a surprise I got this morning when logging onto the Mail Tribune website, I learned that he is not just a donut distrubuting tax guy, he's a former pro athlete.

Medford is the sort of town where even better-than-average high school athletes earn themselves nicknames for life and have their exploits retold for generations by high school gym teachers and janitors and even mayors.  As for pro athletes, since the lumberjack games pro league officially folded, there have been precious few from Medford.  Alas.  Not that there are none.  There is Bob Walcott, there was the other pitcher, the one who was in the Baltimore Orioles farm system and died an untimely young death, and then there is the young power forward playing for the Duke Blue Devils (whom I understand aren't strictly professional, though I know plenty of pro cyclists who would love to receive that sort of material support for their work and also have the opprtunity to ply their trade on national television).

In summary, Medford never forgets its pro athletes.  Here's the article:

Time Honored

There are training rides that invoke an irrational sense of fear leading up them. Upon reflection, most cyclists know that there is nothing to fear about riding. Hard work goes hand-in-hand with racing and most of us welcome the low-level suffering/extacy that training brings. Regardless, to borrow from Bill Bryson, the prospect of a day with 4 trips up a steep 9-10 minute hill fills me with fucking dread.

Today was that day and upon reflection, the dread was unwarranted, as always. Cady Road is hard—I can count on one hand the number of times I've reached the summit and couldn't be heard saying “bloody hell” or something else not suitable for this blog. The thing is, it's hard work, nothing worse. After a few minutes you get into a rhythm, in January you might be a little slower than you'd prefer, but you get to the top, do it over again and eventually finish your set. A single day like this isn't going to make or break a season from a physiological perspective, but I think that it does good things psychologically—it certainly puts these little irrational fears in their place. Ask me again next Saturday.

Fall and early winter—despite the wet, gravel covered roads—can be a surprisingly pleasant time of year to ride. After 9 months of (generally) structured training, a few months of “whatever the hell I feel like” can be pretty nice.

All of that has to come to an eventual end... and the reintroduction to structure begins today. For me, last year was a little too haphazard - focussed early in the year, but it gradually degraded into a pattern of just riding followed by a frantic attempt to gain fitness at the last minute before an important race. I'm hoping that my lack of results last year will add some motivation to adhere to the plan.

Tonight I have a hot date with the trainer. I'll spin, nice and easy, for 30 minutes. This will be my first ride of the new year, unless you count test rides at the bike shop, which I don't.

Tomorrow, I plan to travel to Redding, CA for a cyclocross race. The weather there is expected to be 50-something degrees, Fahrenheit -- some 20 degrees warmer than the Rogue Valley. January should be base miles season forme. But with the high temperature tomorrow around 35 degrees, I just can't see myself doing much more pedalling than I'll do in a'cross race.

Plus, after a week of watching Euro 'cross racing with my nephew Zach, I'm still motivated for it.

My step-father Fred was telling me this morning about the book I bought for him for Christmas, and which he is now reading. It's called "The Piano Shop on the West Bank." The book is a non-fictional account of the author's efforts to procure a piano from an old, musty piano shop in Paris. The proprietor repeatedly tells him he has nothing for him, despite the fact that there is a huge backroom to the shop, which is presumably full of pianos in various degrees of restoration.

Eventually, the author learns that the proprietor will invite him to the backroom only if he has a recommendation from an existing customer. He gets this restoration, and finally begins the process of buying a used, restored baby grand piano.

The lesson in this is that a true craftsman, an artisan, takes pride in his work. One has little interest in performing their best work on a piano that will serve merely as furniture. Likewise, a bicycle mechanic (that's me) who is charged with working on cheap bikes will view such bikes as joyless toil. The joy is in working on bikes for cyclists who will appreciate good equipment and skilled work.

As a wheelbuilder, this is the sort of customer I value and seek. It's increasingly difficult to find cyclists who know and appreciate the differences between a cheap wheel and a high-quality, custom-built wheel. There's another thing, and that is the fact that good cyclists, and smart people, are turning to mass-produced carbon wheels. They're not necessarily light. They're not necessarily durable. But they're more aerodynamic than a 32-spoke box-section wheel. And they're carbon -- surely this is their primary selling point. But they have no life. And their aerodynamic advantage is negligible compared with the drag created by the rider and the bike. Wouldn't one opt for many times more durability over a negligible aerodynamic advantage if it weren't for all the propoganda one sees in VeloNews, Cycle Sport, and all the other cycling magazines?