Mouscardes - a one bullring town!

A story of a couple of kiwi cyclists racing the etape de tour in France 2008.

We get to the Pyrenees mountains and after some seriously good map reading we find our ‘place to stay’ now this is a uniquely kiwi term, in fact the whole ‘staying’ situation is oddly kiwi, so loose and informal. No other country does the informal hospitality like us. We are staying with Jay, neither Andrew or I know Jay and he doesn’t know us. Jay is a friend of Glen’s, who is a friend of Nigel’s who is a friend of mine! We are hoping that he is a nice bloke, and I guess he is hoping we are nice blokes too!

It sort of always works out, when we kiwis travel the world we tend to look out for one another, besides when there is only 4 million of us it is not too onerous, like I said it is a kiwi thing, as kiwis we don’t do 7 degrees of separation, we’re lucky if we do 2 degrees! 

Jay has lived in France for the last 15 years, he is from Petone, I am from Wainuiomata, we probably drank at the same pub as young men, he came to France to play rugby I came to France to ride bikes.

Mouscardes is Jay’s village it is made up of 6 houses and a bullring! Now you have to admit that is cool, having your own bullring.

The satnav had long since given up but we find Jay’s ‘house’ eventually. Actually it isn’t Jay’s house it’s Manu’s (Emmanuel’s) and it isn’t a house it’s a bloody great mansion. The house is extraordinary, beautifully restored, we meet Jay, he is an ex-Petone rugby player who made his way to the UK, then France to play rugby, he is Manu’s flatmate. Manu is a farmer whose family have owned the farm and house for generations. Manu farms dairy and kiwifruit, he spent some time in New Zealand learning the kiwifruit trade. Manu’s girlfriend and her son as well as a huge pitbull dog complete the household.

So here we are in deepest rural France and we get down to a classic kiwi BBQ – half a 44-gallon drum is the actual BBQ - not 1 hour after arriving.

Andrew owns a company that makes the worlds best domestic coffee machines www.rocket-espresso.it so good coffee is his thing, Jay offers Andrew a ‘special’ coffee which he accepts, only to receive a large mug of the instant stuff, the look on Andrew’s face was priceless!

Stuff Reviewed: San Marco Magma Titanox 245

Beautiful seat, probably not for clydesdales
By Nigel Dalton


Most people seem to find a seat that fits their bum and stick with it for life. If there were seat tribes, I am a Selle Italia Flite Titanium tribal elder, having had one of the very first of these aerospace looking devices in New Zealand in the 1990s. So it was with trepidation that I mounted the San Marco Magma to my Cannondale. This could mean serious pain in the arse, despite its obvious beauty.

I had already tried the world's saddle du jour - the Fizik Arione. No luck - as much as I yearned to have this new projectile design on my bike, there was no denying the sit bones. Being 100kg probably was the fatal flaw - putting the 'flex' in wingflex like the designers never anticipated.

The beautiful white leather Magma saddle arrived by post with a note from the R+R Director Sportif saying 'that blue piece of shit on your bike must go - happy birthday!' I'd recently submitted a polite request to the Style Council at R+R for some fettling of the new Cannondale System 6, already lurid in Team Liquigas's phosphorescent green and black.

Delighted to join the ranks of europhiles with their white seats, it was quickly fitted. San Marco holds great reverence for me in the history of cycling. When Slim once sold me his red Guercuiotti it came with his trademark San Marco Rolls, an impossibly uncomfortable platform that only 50,000km of hard riding would break in properly. Rolls feature on 2 of my restored bikes - a Merckx and a Bianchi.

I noted the Magma to be quite a sophisticated piece of engineering - the '2-4-5' after the name refers to the width of the sit-bones and general scale of the seat. It goes up to 255, but in all my time I've not seen one of those actually for sale. And to my delight the flat platform was at least as good as the long-used Flites.

And so I was happy camper #1, until about 500km worth of Melburnian flat-land later there was the hugest cracking sound accompanied by a distinct sagging feeling, and assuming I'd managed to do the unthinkable (break a Campy Record carbon seat post) Glen and I ground to a halt in West Williamstown.

The incident wasn't without precedent - riding with Glen on one visit to Melbourne we'd been far up the Maribyrnong River when I'd injudiciously forgotten to lift off the saddle for a speed hump and snapped the brand new Giant hire bike's Taiwanese carbon post. Long ride home standing up, and some explaining to do to the good people at Bike Now.

You don't really appreciate how much your seat contributes to your riding until you have to do 20km home with no platform to support you. The Magma had busted right through the middle.

The Wellington LBS did the decent thing and sought a warranty replacement, which was duly despatched. Scuttlebut on the net suggests I'm not the only rider to suffer a Magma meltdown, and I'll be philosophical when it inevitably happens again. The replacement sadly was black, so has to go ... though, I do wonder what the R+R Style Council would say about some white lever hoods over black tape?

Review Score:

Function: 5+ (8 while it works, 0 when it doesn't)
Form: 10 (sexy, plus bonus points for not hanging with the crowds of Fizik Freds either)
Price: 3 North of $240 RRP is a shocking amount of money to pay for a saddle, but I may be being over-harsh here as you don't see anything much under $200 in the desirable classes of Fizik or Selle Italia these days.

The Gallic Shrug – the essence of France

A story of a couple of kiwi cyclists racing the etape de tour in France 2008.

It’s been 25 years since I last lived in France, back then I got to know and love the place and after 6 months I had mastered the most important French cultural lesson of all - the ‘Gallic shrug’. This can only be learnt properly if you are living in the country, as a tourist you can have a Gallic shrug experience such as – “…non monsieur, the hotel room you booked from New Zealand is no longer available (Gallic shrug), we have no other rooms (Gallic shrug), non there are no other rooms in the town (Gallic shrug), and I cannot help you further (Gallic shrug), please leave (Gallic shrug)…”

This experience is what France is famous for, but to deploy the shrug you have to live there. A couple of kiwis have explained it quite well in a video on Lonely Planet's travel site.

Once the shrug is learned, the situation changes completely, the shrugger knows that the shruggee will not be put off and so miraculously finds your room reservation. So I dusted off the shrug but the language was lost in my brain somewhere, this was somewhat of a concern for me as we drove into France, Andrew had taken care of the Italian language (after a fashion), it was now my turn to take care of the French language – remembering more than a word or two would help – I was hoping the language would magically pop back into my head but every last vowel and syllable had disappeared.

Driving across the south of France was spectacular for sure, bloody awful cities like Nice stuffed into narrow valleys between huge gnarly mountains.

We needed lunch and rather than stopping in one of the autoroute café’s we went for the real deal, lunch in a small French village. Les Baux was the smallest town we could find on the map, no-one was likely to speak English, Andrew was confident I could manage any language issues - it would be the real deal. We got off the autoroute and quickly found our small and peaceful Provencal village. It was peaceful alright, just the one café open, full of workmen and locals having their 3 hour lunch, perfect!

The café owner was big sweaty and hairy and the husband was much the same, I ordered lunch using my best sign language, my actual French language still non-existent. The food was great in the most basic French working class way, Jambon sandwich (ham roll) for me, steak and chips for Andrew. A glass of local red wine for effect.

An aged English speaking French biker and his 14 year old girlfriend were summoned to assist with our next food/wine ordering efforts, more food and more wine arrived - things could not get any better.

My friend Nigel works for Lonely Planet. We often talk about travel – what is travel really all about? Why travel at all nowadays? You can Google Street-view anywhere, find reviews on any venue in the world, YouTube a video of everything, so why go to the trouble and discomfort of actually traveling yourself?

In my view travel is less about visiting ruins or old castles (although that is still good) but it’s about having the chance to experience how your fellow man lives in a completely different country. That is the ‘real’ travel experience, you get to compare and contrast his life with your own.

That afternoon at the café in the small town of Les Baux, eating the simple food, talking to the local people, all done slowly in ‘local’ time, it was brilliant, it was one of my favourite travel experiences ever.

Why are rental cars always crap?

I pick up the rental car from the airport, a truly terrible Saab estate, how is it possible in today’s world to make such a bad car? At least it is a diesel and cheap to run.

I drive back to Slim's house in Crema with the aid of his sat nav, that is a marvellous invention, almost completely takes away the anxiety of driving in unfamiliar places.

We load the car up and as usual leave 3 hours later than we hoped to. Slim does his best to pick up time, he has assimilated into the Italian culture well judging by the state of his driving, 100% Italian attack mode everywhere. We decide to make for San Remo on the Italian Riviera. 180kmph get us there quite quickly, the last 40km are on the most extraordinary roads I have ever travelled on. Down from the mountains to the coast, it would seem the road engineers were in fact just doing this roading job in between building Grand Prix tracks! Twisty, tunnels, viaducts... it had it all, absolutely stunning, the poor old Saab just couldn’t cope.

San Remo is the finish town of one of cycling’s most famous races – Milan San Remo. San Remo is stunning in a eurotrash type way. We stay at the ‘Imperial Hotel’, Winston Churchill’s favourite. It obviously is exactly the same condition as when Winston stayed there, but it’s fabulous in a grand and shabby way.

We do what every cyclist should do when they are San Remo, which is to ride the last 30km of the Milan San Remo race route. We ride through the town dodging scooters and rush hour traffic and ride along the coast. We get to a small town called Cipressa, we do a u-turn and we are now on the race route of MSR, we turn up the Cipresa climb, its long and surprisingly steep, it doesn’t look that way on TV, I feel awful and climb slowly, over cooked it yesterday. The descent is incredible the road is super fast, like a piece of spaghetti through onto the hillside.

Back onto the coast road we quickly get to the Poggio hill, it is surprising how flat and how short it is. There is loads of cycling star names painted on the road – including Pantani’s. I stop to take a few shots feeling like a bloody cycling tourist but I’ll get over it.

I take the shot of Pantani’s name not because I like or admire the guy – he was a cheat. But it seems right to see his name here.

The climb even goes downhill in areas, but kicks up near the top. Slim has long since disappeared he’s doing his best impression of a MSR race winner. We stop at the cross roads at the top of the hill and take photos. The Poggio decent is even better that the Cipressa’s, it would require real skill and nerve to go down this fast. The descent drops you into the middle of San Remo, for a few seconds I imagine myself soloing into the town to take the victory. It has been a great ride.

The Crema 'training' ride

One day I am training solo in 6 layers with gloves and booties and the next day its 120 guys in the bunch, I am in shorts, jersey and its 35c! That is what you get when you travel exactly half way round the world I guess.

Slim (Andrew) and I ride through a maze of flat roads to meet up with the race – I mean training ride. It is typical Italian affair, everyone is super relaxed, lots of talking, lots of shiny bikes, lots of guys looking a million dollars. The leaders of the ‘training ride’ know Andrew, having the two of us their raises a few eyebrows. We get going, zigzagging through the countryside, I quickly lose all sense of direction, it’s hot, it is fast there is no wind and there are no landmarks like hills to key off so getting lost is very easy. I feel okay considering I have just spent 35hours travelling.

Everyone is on sparkling bikes wearing the coolest kit, blinged to the max. What is unusual is the amount of American bikes being ridden, Cannondale and Specialised are the most common bikes here, I guess they sponsor a couple of Italian pro teams and the punters want to ride what Bettini rides.

Andrew and I have a few goes at getting up the road but nothing was going anywhere and when I did get up the road solo, I had no idea where to go so staying in the bunch was the smartest option. We picked up more and more guys and the last 20km was like a race-sized peleton with 120 or more guys there. Moving up in the bunch constantly bought me back to racing the European way. Most of the skill of racing in Europe is positioning yourself in the peleton, at home a big field is 60! I vividly remember my first race in France with 200 starters.

I attacked near the end of the ride on the only ‘hill’ got caught a few kilometres later, Slim came past and yelled ‘2km’ which seemed to be about right as it was pretty quick and guys where attacking and then blowing up everywhere. That was enough heroics for me I sat in the first 10 until the finish, Sim meanwhile was lining himself up for the sprint, I think he snagged a 3rd. The sprint signalled the end of the ride but not the speed, the warm down was run off at 45kmph! It must be hot because even the locals looked cooked, a few litres of water later I felt fine.

Stuff Reviewed: Continental GP4000S

Great tyre, shame about the fit.
by Nigel Dalton

It's hard to love a tyre after a frustrating 60 minutes spent vandalising a precious Campy neutron rim to wrestle one on. But 3 months after this purchase, and one further puncture (split valve seat - aaahhh!) I'm getting there.

Make no mistake - for tyre wear, stickiness, speed, ride quality, all the usual tyre characteristics, this is my top tyre choice. Getting it on and off my Campy rims? Give me a sandpaper chammy to ride any day.

Now first things first - yes, I finish with the valve. A habit of a lifetime, for which I've copped plenty of good-natured 'advice' from experts and I will still argue my point that it enables you to push the tube up and away from the rim should you be reduced to using a lever for the last few inches. Try that on the other side.

Picture 1 shows the result of the first 30 minutes of effort - hands only, having stretched the carcase like an old-school tubular as much as I could. It is nowhere near done. The next picture in the series represents a further 15 minutes effort, but it shows so little progress I've left it out. The next picture here is actually Picture 3 in the series!

Nothing to do but call NZ and the R+R helpline. 15 years ago I can recall actually abandoning in disgust a marriage of a Campy rim and a Conti tyre, and receiving the wisdom of ages that the Germans and Italians really just don't get along.

This time having parted with 22 quid each to Ribble and having drooled over how damn fine-looking these tyres are, I am not giving up!

All the time I am wrestling these things onto the rim, I am thinking one thing - what do I do on the road, knackered from the ride and needing the strength of Atlas to get it off, let alone back on again?

Robbo comes to the rescue with key tip number 1 - which to be fair I should have remembered from the motorcycling world where tyre changing involves huge levers and rack-like devices. Put some detergent on the bead!!

This one trick gets me to photo #3 featured above. It might not look like much, but it's a moon-shot away from the first result.

Thanks to some painful thumb dislocations while mountain-bike racing on filthy North Island mud-baths in the 1990s (temporary clicked in and out I'm pleased to report, but turning me into a grip-shift devotee instantly), I am very wary of using these digits to put tyres on these days. After 55 minutes of thumbs on these tyres I have used every trick I know - it now has to be the thing every cyclist dreads, the tyre lever to finish.

The yellow Topeak lightweight jobs fail instantly. It's down to the trusted Park Tools, and with a grimace the bead pops over the rim with a crack that sounds like a rifle. A neighbourly head pokes over the fence immediately - "you ok?" she asks. "Dunno yet" I respond - "if she doesn't pump up first time, I'll probably be quite ill indeed..."

Review Score:

Function: 6+ (10 on the road, 1 point for ease of assembly)
Form: 10 (big white type, minimalist black tread, little wear holes like a race motorcycle tyre, phwoarr...)
Price: 10 but only if you buy on the net. Expect to pay 3+ times the 22GBP I bought them for if you shop in a Melbourne bike shop.

Postscript: a blown valve seat forced the reluctant tester to have to remove the front tyre again 3 months after the initial fitting, and it was easier the 2nd time. The author is still puzzling over the right container to carry dishwashing liquid on the road however...

Crema, Italy

Woke up at 7.00am to a huge thunderstorm, cooler than the 35c+ heat of last night, so promptly rolled over and went back to sleep in what would have to be the smallest hotel bed I have ever slept in. I felt kinda like a Goldie Locks and the 3 bears, but it was comfortable enough.

9.45am and the room cleaner wakes me up by letting herself into the room, I guess seeing a sleeping near naked pale white man sent her away pretty quickly. Down to a late breakfast which the hotel rustled up for me, I had forgotten that an Italian breakfast consists of coffee and cakes, which sounds like the most perfect breakfast - as long as you are not a diabetic like I am. I did find some of the strange euro packaged hard toast bread slices, they weren’t too sweet but taste like cardboard.

It’s weird that of all meals breakfast is so different from one culture to the next, the Dutch eat cheese and meat, the Brits do bacon and eggs, New Zealander’s do Weetbix, the Italians cake, why the difference? I did notice the ubiquitous Corn Flakes on the menu – even in Italy.

I set about unpacking the bike. After doing the bike mechanic thing I walked through the old part of Crema, to meet Andrew’s wife Nicki at a café. I found a money machine nestled amongst 16th century architecture. Here I am using the same cash card that I use in New Zealand and instantly getting Euros from the money machine – small stuff like that is amazing, no traveller’s cheques nothing, card in - money out, anywhere or almost in the world. In theory it means you could travel the world with just a cash card – think about it, that’s cool!

Coffee and Panini with Nicki, it’s too hot to sit outside and do the Italian outdoor eating thing so inside with the air con whirring away. Nicki offers to take me on a ride into the country on their terribly cool ‘town bikes’ complete with Brooks saddle and cane baskets.

I spot a Martini Rossi livered Lancia Integrale, a car that I have always lusted after, I have to stop and take a photo of it – my sad 80’s car buff is alive and well. 

I have the digital camera with me and am determined to take tonnes of photos, I have been a crap tourist in the past, the places I have been to and have no record of is tragic, maybe it is an age thing I regret not having any visible record of those experiences.

The countryside around Crema is flat as a pancake with lush green cornfields and tiny villages dotted about the place. We get back in time to relax and prepare for the Crema evening ‘training’ ride, it is also 30c+!

New Zealand is a long way from anywhere

Any trip from New Zealand to anywhere else in the world is a big one, when you are situated on the edge of the globe it takes forever to get anywhere.

Departure day arrives I wake up to a severely stormy Sunday, it was so bad it was a little alarming. Flights were being cancelled, the wind was gusting to 120kmph and it was only 3 degrees!

It was with some relief I got on my local flight to Auckland and gritted my teeth for the international flight experience. The whole customs pre-flight checking process is now a right pain-in-the-arse, everyone is so terrified that they will be falsely accused as a bomber, so the experience is a tense one. As a result getting on the plane and flying is now such a relief that the flight is relatively pleasant.

Unfortunately we had to stop in LA. US airports have a unique smell, a combination of toilet disinfectant and stuffiness. The US customs process has always been unfriendly but they have now upped the ante to down right hostile, here we were as transit passengers and yet we had to endure retinal scans, finger printing and intense scrutiny from non-English speaking angry as hell passport control guys. We are transit passengers, it is not like we want to visit the States at all, oh well may be it’s just LA.

London.
The new terminal5 at Heathrow is fantastic; when the Brits do something well they do it brilliantly. Whenever I am in Britain I feel connected to the centre of the world, it’s vibrant, energetic and a totally cool place.

The Brits truly value design, god is in the details in Britain, the signage is designed beautifully, the packaging of products is beautiful, the newspapers are a joy to look at and read. Everything has an inspired quality – except for the food and coffee – I guess you can’t have everything. And hey and I am only in the airport!

Milan.
Italy, I hadn’t been to the place for 25 years, but it is exactly as I remember it, a combination of style, chintz, chaos and organization.

Linate airport and 38c! A little different from the 3c day that I had left back home.
When you travel half way round the world to ride a bike race what do you need most? Your bike, I waited and waited.

I was looking forward to seeing Andrew again and finally beginning the holiday.

But supposedly the bike was coming on the next flight, yeah right! It did, I couldn’t believe it!

Finally we had Andrews Mini loaded to the gunnels with a huge bikebox and were driving to Andrew’s new hometown of Crema on a beautiful 30C Italian summer evening.

I’m loving this holiday already!

How to train for an etape

I have a whole bunch of people that rely on me, I try to mentor and support each and every one of them. As business people one of the most satisfying things we do is give our senior clients all the support they need. So who supports me? Aside from my wife, that would be no one, I don’t even think about it.

Craig Upton is great friend and a great coach, we know each other so well for the remote communication to work. What I wasn’t expecting was the support that I received from him. Whatever I did was always okay with him. I suddenly had someone who was with me, all of the time, all of the way, at the same time there was always a sense of honesty, if I was crap he said so, but being crap at that time was okay, we’d be better tomorrow.

I didn’t even get it at first, I guess I just didn’t recognise it for what it was! However I gained so much personal confidence, I was someone who was worth supporting. It didn’t occur to me that I needed support too, it is good for the soul. Who would have known training for the etape would enable that to happen.

So making the list was easy now the hard part was the training. I had bought a PowerTap power meter 6 months ago and it was finally going to get the use it was intended for. I can honestly say any powermeter is pretty much useless without a good coach who knows how to make use of it – good for bullshit sessions at the café after a ride though!

I like training but mostly I like to learn how to train better and get faster. There is nothing like learning new things about stuff you thought there was nothing more to learn about.

With my training I now had goals, objectives and structure. It is something I am very familiar with, I run an advertising consultancy that is how we work on a daily basis, it requires discipline and rigour but it pays off, we wouldn’t work in any other way.

Why are we so reluctant to do exactly that when training for a sport?

When you have goals and objectives, you have something that you can be measured against, it ups the ante, requires commitment and that is demanding, there is no hiding from the results. It is even worse when those goals are made public. To many people training without structure is fine, just don’t expect to ever go close to achieving your full potential.

The programme did change my riding dramatically I stopped riding with my normal group of guys, my training programme didn’t match theirs and I enjoyed riding alone and without the clashing of multiple ego’s. I did a lot of high intensity work, which was something I hadn’t done for years – it’s bloody unpleasant that’s why. I also had recovery days where I rode slowly – really slowly.

I trained longer and harder, it was easy to manage and easy to be motivated. I knew what I needed to do and when to do it.

Riding for hours in the rain, getting up at 5.30am in the dark for an early morning training ride was doable and perversely enjoyable. I got fitter and stronger. My programme was focussed on climbing, lots of it, so I even started to climb well!
The last few weeks before departure involved a couple of local races, I was going well, getting into the top 5. I was looking forward to the big day in France, I felt prepared.

Three weeks to go to lift off and the weather really packed up in a big way, driving rain, gale force winds and freezing cold, no problem that wasn’t going to stop me.

As I rode in the freezing rain, I thought about the problems that I may have acclimatising to the heat – little did I know…

Life's little epic, legendary moments

It is August 2007, we are in Melbourne for a brief holiday, we are staying with Nigel Dalton, a friend who also happens to be as nuts about cycling as me – he even has more bikes than I do!

Nigel and I decide a big ride in the mountains is in order, its Sunday morning and raining as we set off for a ride in the Dandenong Mountains behind Melbourne.

I had lived in Sydney for a couple of years so wasn’t expecting too much from an Australian ‘mountain’ ride, generally the typical Aussie cyclists’ idea of a mountain would easily resemble an average motorway flyover anywhere else in the world.

I was wrong, this ride was fantastic, 8km climbs, beautiful roads, we had a great days riding even if the weather was quite un-Australian like – rain and cold – an omen for the future perhaps?

Somehow this ride reignited our passion for cycling, it was challenging and adventurous just like ‘real’ cycling should be. One of those rides that become a milestone event that gets clearly etched into the memory, the details of the ride may get fuzzy but I can still feel the rain and smell the bush like it were yesterday. The experience moves from being an ordinary one into being a legendary one.

After 37 years of cycling I probably only have 5-6 rides catalogued in the memory like this one. Why do we value so called ‘authentic’ experiences so highly, maybe in our civilised, cool, calm collected world we look for adventure in any way we can. After all drinking coffee in chic cafes and shopping for stuff you don’t need eventually gets bloody boring.

Some weeks later we were both still banging on about the Dandenong ride, we both agreed we needed more rides like that, but where could we find ride that was challenging, a real adventure, an epic even?

The day after this conversation, I received a text from Nigel that would set some key events in motion. I would get motivated like I have not done so for 25 years, it would give me an excuse to do some solo world travel once again, it would enable me to ride an epic to end all epics, and it was also something an event that would save Nigel’s life.

The epic event we had ourselves booked in for was the 2008 Etape du Tour…