Yes, I race my bike...but nothing like those guys!

    So, I fell in love with bike racing in the summer of 1987 when an Irishman named Stephen Roche won the grand tour called Le Tour de France by only forty seconds.  Those who are not familiar with grand tour professional bike racing, there are three grand tours from May until September.  Those races include: the Giro de Italia; Tour de France; and Vuelta a Espana.  All of them last three weeks and cover over 2,300 miles.  Each day is about 110 miles of racing but can be as long as 160 miles.    Usually, the racers get two off days but even those days you gotta ride.  The big one is the Tour de France.  It's a like the Super Bowl of cycling.

    The tour is big-time! Each day is called a "stage."  Most of the stages are mass starts.  This means that all the racers line up start together and race from point A and race to point B. Sometimes the mass start stages are on flat courses and other  (usually fewer) are climb courses.  On flat days, the race will boil down to a 400 meter sprint.  At the end, 95% of the racers that started will finish together.  This makes for spectacular crashes.  The sprinters get up to 40+ mph.  Here is a YouTube video to give you an idea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpzlzwMXQw8.  You can see that this stuff is fast and crazy. 

    Climb stages include  small climbs and some epic climbs. Here is a link from VeloNews to one of the epic climbs where the racers climb the famous Col du Tourmalet http://velonews.competitor.com/2010/06/tour-de-france/2010-tour-de-france-stage-profile-map-gallery_123604/attachment/tdf09_profil_et1-2d-copie-6  The final climb is just over twelve miles and it averages 7% gradient, which is pretty steep for such a long long climb.   The climb stages usually end up with no more than three to four racers fighting it out to the last meter.  Most climbs have descents that go very fast.  It's not unusual to see speeds get up to 65 mph.  There have been some tragic crashes in the Tour's history.  Most are epic crashes.  Here is one of Austin's own Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour de France where he did a little off-roading.  Sorry about the ad at the end of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haEbtHiUcBc .  

    The last type of stage in the grand tour is the time trial.  There is an individual time trial and a team time trial.  In both forms of time trialing, you race from point A to point B as fast as you can.  The team time trial is rarely used so I'll talk about the individual (ITT)  from this point forward. The time trial is often called the "race of truth." It's just you against the clock.  The intensity of this race is unreal and difficult to explain unless you've done one.  Here is another YouTube video of the 2003 ITT.  It's ten minutes long but really only watch the first part (50 seconds).  The look on their faces is real. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwhKLxdkEX4 The idea behind the time trial is to push yourself to the limit and keep it there until the finish.  It is very painful - both mentally and physically.  The distances range from five mile to over thirty miles.  Most Tour de France racers can average 28-31 mph.  That is beyond fast.

    I don't race like these guys.  Most of us doing amateur races regionally and/or nationally don't race like this.  In the America, amateur bike racers do three types of races and they are: one day road races, which are similar to a single stage in the Tour de France; time trials; and criteriums.  We also do stage races but our stage races are usually no longer than three stages.  Mostly, we do one day road races ranging from 30 to 65 miles.  But most of the races we do are called criterium  (crit) races.  Crits are not determined by distance but rather by time. They take place on a short course ranging from 0.7 miles to 1.2 miles.  In other words, we go around a short course over and over for 40 minutes and up to 75 minutes.  We only know that we're about to finish when the officials show laps to go cards.  They usually start showing us lap cards with five laps to go.  They are usually very spectator friendly and very fast!  Here is yet another YouTube video shot by KGS Bikes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wFAatckleA&feature=fvsr with a helmet cam on one of the racers.  This race is a weekly race series here in Austin called the Driveway Series.   These races are very fun and sometimes involve smarts as well as fitness.  Most crits are on technical courses and can have tight 90 degree turns, short steep climbs, etc.  Becoming a good crit racer or "critter" takes some time for most.  Average speed for the entire race hover in the 25.5 mph, so these are not slow.  The nice thing about crits is it takes all shapes and sizes.  They're not like climb races that require you to be 125 pounds to survive.  Most great critters are big sprinters, which I am not.   Nonetheless, they are so fun.  

    I got my race license in 1994.  Yes, you have to have a USA Cycling racing license to race bikes.  The good thing is there is no test to get one.  In 1994, I entered two road races and a three day stage race two in Louisiana and one in Texas.  Long story short - I got dropped like a rock in each one.  I got discouraged and stopped racing my bike and picked up triathlons.  I enjoyed that for years but was missing something.  With college and then law school I rode off and on for seven years. But in 2008, I lined up for my own comback.  I raced in the 2008 Houston Grand Crit and did pretty good.  I didn't place but I held on to the pack and finished in the sprint group.  I was very excited and there began my true addiction to racing my bike. 

    I now race from January to October.  We are lucky here in Texas to have the weather to do that.  I've had pretty good results in the past two and a half years but continue to learn every time I line up and race.  Sometimes it's something as simple as always pack you bike shoes before a race or you'll have to squeeze into your wife's bike shoes.  Racing my bike has allowed me to meet really great friends.  At this time of the year, we are all patiently waiting for the 2011 racing schedule to start planning.  It's like mom and dad giving you a list of toys and saying here pick some but not all. 

Driveway race Ardie and me up the corkscrew hurting.

Robert and me warming up before the Driveway

    As the new schedule arrives I will list the races I plan on doing and then report on the race.  Should be a great season.  I have some shots of this year's racing. 

Individual Time Trial Tour de Gruene

Trailer Food is okay in ATX!

  When I was a prosecutor in Houston, one of my duties was to address food trailers within the city limits of Houston. What I really meant to say was that I went after mobile food trailers for city code and health code violations.  At the time, the Mayor was really going after these mobile food trailers for probable political reasons.  Here in ATX they're everywhere and I love them!  And most importantly, no body is trying to shut them down.

   We're not talking about your simple taco truck or hot-dog cart.  This stuff is high rent food.  Places that have Asian/Mexican fusion, Thai/Cajun mix, vegetarian, everything you can think of.  We even found great beignets about 500 miles west of Cafe Du Monde.  Here is a link to the ones around the city.  http://austinfoodcarts.com/

   One of the ones I recommend is called A Touch of Fire.  It is a Thai and Asian place on Barton Springs Blvd close to Auditorium Shores.  I ordered the Pad Thai Chicken and it was really good. My friend Oscar, of http://atxfoodreview.wordpress.com/ ate Osmo's a Cajun/Italian place. 

    This past weekend, my wife Sandi, Robert http://robert-cycling.blogspot.com/, and two other non-blogging friends went to the http://www.gypsypicnic.com/ at Auditorium Shores to see what good trailer food we could find. This was the first annual trailer food festival.  There was thirty plus food trailers.  We went about 3:30 pm thinking we'd find few people in lines considering it was way past lunch-time.  WRONG!  Rumor has it that the organizers planned on 7000 people but got 20,000.00 +.  By the time we got there trailers had run out of food.  Lines were going everywhere.  I'd find what appeared to be the end of a line and asked that person which trailer this lined belonged to and every time it was a trailer way off in another direction.  Lines wrapped around other lines.  The average wait time in was estimated to be one hour.  It was a sea of people...hungry people. Next year they should move this sucker to Zilker park, which makes for more room and maybe more trailers.  We waited in line for about 45 minutes for what we think was Kate's (southern/Louisiana cook'n).  Can't tell you how it was because we left. We still had what appeared to be another hour to wait in line.  Could no longer wait and had to eat.  Hahahaha!  Next year!!

    Food Trailer Gods, please forgive me for my past sins.  I love food trailers now.

So, I'm going to be a dad! Scary stuff.

    So, this is an exciting and scary time for me.  I found out on Monday that my wife, Sandi, and I are having a little girl.  She's coming to this world mid April.  I guess I should say a little about me and my little world.   I grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana and moved to Texas to finish school and start life.  I married my best friend and we now live in Austin, Texas (ATX), the best place on earth IMHO. 

    Both Sandi and I are in our late 30's and are having our first child. Sandi works for one of the big accounting firms as a consultant.  She's on the road most of the time so I get to have the bachelor lifestyle during the week...you know beer and cereal, washing colors with whites resulting in pink under clothes.  I am a government lawyer and represent the State of Texas.  I am proud of the work I do and I love the work and the people I work with. 

    When I'm not working, I'm riding my bike.  I love riding my bike.  I race most of the year.  I've been riding for a really long time but have only been racing in earnest for the past two years.  I have been lucky enough to join the best team in the state called North West Cycling Club (NWCC). NWCC is based out of Houston.  It has a rich history with over 400 club rider members and 30 or so racers.  For the first year, it was just Sandi and me in ATX NWCC pod.  Now, we have five more ATX NWCC racers.  The season won't officially start until January 2011 but we've already started with great results.

    With this blog, I want to keep record of life here in ATX for my daughter-wow, that was really odd to say and write.  I plan on reviewing rides, products, food, and life. 

   Here is our daughter.  I can't wait to meet her.  God, please don't let me screw this up.