Tuesday February 16, 2010

It’s not often that I get to say to say, “The the world’s best (insert blank here) just showed up at my door.”

Let’s try it out and you’ll see what I mean:

“The world’s best internet bill just showed up at my door.” Nope. They’re all the same and they all suck.

“The world’s best Netflix movie just showed up at my door.” No again. I already have Underworld on DVD, thank you very much.

Let’s try one more. “The world’s best Girl Scout Cookies just showed up at my door.” This one might be true, because any given Thin Mint is the world’s best Thin Mint up until that point. Alright, that’s a bit of a stretch.

So, the other day when a big box of Yokozuna Reaction cable sets showed up at my door, I proudly walked back inside and when I was asked what was in the box I proudly and confidently said, “The world’s best cables!”

Yokozuna’s star has been on the rise for the past couple years or so because they did something really smart: They made the smartest, simplest and best-working bicycle cable systems on the market – cables, that when paired with today’s highly precise shifters and derailleurs take, mechanical shifting and braking performance to its apex.

There are three simple yet effective features that derive this performance benefit:

1) Compression-free housing. When housing don’t compress or flex in and out, all the energy of your shifting or braking effort gets transmitted to the derailleur or the brake caliper – no energy loss in the housing means more direct action and better performance.

2) Stainless steel cables. Yokozuna doesn’t bother coating lower quality cables with various slippery chemical coatings. Instead, they just use a high grade and tightly-wound stainless steel cable for strength and durability.

3) Jet-Lubed housings. This is Yokozuna’s name to describe the fact that their cables come out of the box already 100% infused with their special lubricant – that means the entire length of every piece of housing they supply comes impregnated with lubricant – not just the ends.

Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed – they come in white. Can’t wait to see these on the team bikes. Stay tuned.

  Friday February 5, 2010

We are lucky to continue on with our relationship with Ridley Bicycles into the road season. The Damocles is not our official team bike. Rather, we have special editions of the Ridley Helium coming to us in a few weeks. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, a couple riders on the team have decided to pick up some other Ridley models in anticipation of the coming season: Dedicated training bikes, TT bikes, etc. I grabbed myself a Damocles, which Kyle aptly describes as “the ultimate Joe Racer bike” due to its relatively low cost but incredibly impressive performance and international race resume. This bike has the same geometry as the helium, which means once I get the team-issue bike I’ll be able to seamlessly switch back and forth without an adjustment period.

The Damocles appealed to me because it’s the rough-and-tumble bike from the Ridley line-up and seemed like a perfect bike to handle many training miles on the rough New England roads and would be a good option for traveling as well, given its traditional seatpost design. This is the workhorse of the Ridley line. Think of it as the road-going version of the X-Fire cross bike, meaning it isn’t the lightest bike, and doesn’t have a ton of flashy marketing features, rather it’s just extremely functional, rides well and will take a ton of abuse.

This bike will bear most of my mileage this year. I built it with a SRAM Force group, Bontrager Race Lite wheels, 3T Rotundo Pro bar and Arx Pro stem, Bontrager Race X Lite seatpost, Maxxis Detonator clincher tires and Fizik Aliante Gamma saddle with matching Fizik perforated bar tape.

  Thursday January 28, 2010

I have a tough time really bringing the focus to a dedicated training schedule in January, especially when the snow if flying and the temps are low. The trainer? Not for me – not at all. It’s a tough thing to get the appropriate base training mileage and at the same time not do so much that come the distant August/September races one isn’t completely burned out, mentally or physically.

So, for me, January training is all about the fun – comradeship, scenery, the occasional Kobe beef hotdog and the more-than-occasional coffee break. Thankfully, I have a team that’s willing to help me with all those things.

Last weekend we put in some serious miles in the cold. All team rides are good, but this one was special because it was the first time Colin Murphy was sporting the full Embrocation team livery. It’s something I’ve been eagerly anticipating for quite some time.

My decision to get Colin on the team was justified yet again when at the top of the Oak Hill descent, Colin pulled up next to me and inquired whether or not my camera was running. “Of course.” I answered.

“You’re going to want to get this, then,” he replied. Colin always wants to push hard. It’s great.

Oak Hill Descent from EmbroJames on Vimeo.

This is a hill we normally go up. In fact, stay tuned for a TT up this road, coming your way sometime in the near future.

When we’re not bombing down hills, we have to keep this winter training thing interesting. Enter the road bunny hop. How bad-ass is this?

Bunnyhop Speedbumps from EmbroJames on Vimeo.

Ok. Not bad-ass at all. Not even a little bit. But good high-five action there.

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More this weekend, I’m sure. And stay tuned for updates on team equipment and sponsors in the coming weeks. It’s going to be good.

  Thursday January 21, 2010

Cyclocross isn’t over in Europe and we have one eye turned toward the upcoming worlds, especially because local racer and friend of Embrocation, Mo Bruno-Roy will be racing in her first world championships. Good luck, Mo.

Stateside, we’re entirely focused on the build-up to road season and things are looking good. Our team is bigger than last year and incredibly focused on the upcoming season. We have an impressive line-up of sponsors including Ridley, SRAM, Bontrager, Challenge, Fizik and Yokozuna. Much, much more to come on all this stuff when equipment starts showing up.

In the meantime, it’s riding in the cold… Winter is in full effect here in the northeast and so is the early season training. Some of us endure cold in greater levels than others. Yesterday I got an email from Cory, who lives in upstate New York – I mean practically Canada. Here’s what he said:

Today I gave mother nature the finger and went outside for a tempo ride on the rolling country backroads of Watertown New York. For those of you not in the know, which is everyone but James, (and he was in the Albany area, which is summer year ‘round compared to where I sit on these winter days) the winters make it tough, at times, to get any reasonable training in until about March. So after an early day at work I came home with the attitude of “hey, the wind isn’t whipping off the lake today, fuck the trainer, I am soooo going outside – it’s above 25 degrees”. I hit the road, and after a near-death experience leaving my driveway, I was off. It wasn’t long before Mrs. nature tried to bring me down but I stayed true to my plan. Here are some pics from a pretty typical day this time of year. Great day.

Good for you, Cory. We’re hitting it hard here in New England this weekend and I’ll send some footage your way…

Thanks for reading.

James

  Friday December 18, 2009

Jeremy is still waxing poetic about cyclocross season out in the west coast, having just attended the extravaganza that is Nationals. Over on the east coast, I’ve moved past cross and am firmly ensconced in planning for road season. It’s going to be the first FULL season fielding the Embrocation Cycling Journal team and I’m greatly excited about all the goings on and the possibilities of the season to come.

But, time for one more look back at the cross season before I completely focus my gaze forward. Peter Bradshaw did a good job at capturing and editing the two races at Sterling, MA this year. There’s some good footage of a fast race with great weather.

2009 Bay State Cyclocross Sterling, MA from Peter Bradshaw on Vimeo.

Now, onto the road side of things. It’s all coming together now. Bikes are ordered, parts are ordered, kits are coming and I’m getting psyched.

In the coming weeks we’ll be bringing our team fans more information about our team sponsors and equipment, but here’s a little look at how the team is shaping up for this coming season.

For starters our roster has taken final form as well with all riders from last year coming back and we’ve added two racers to the road squad:

Steve “Franny” Francisco has been a friend of mine and Jeremy’s for quite a few years now. For a couple years in a row Steve and I were friendly competitors on the local road scene, one of us always beating the other by half a wheel. I came to know him as good racer with keen tactical sense who took a great deal of joy in races whether or not he had a good result. Steve is also a member of the Rapha Continental team along with Jeremy and Pierre.

Off the bike, Franny is the CEO of JDK Design, a design and marketing firm based in Burlington, VT. They’re a company full of young, talented designers who have come up with some of the best marketing campaigns around, including the Will You Make the Leap? campaign for SRAM’s road parts. Good stuff; good marketing; Franny at the helm.

Colin Holmes Murphy has been a staple of the Boston area racing scene for some years now. As a long-time member of the Garneau, later Kenda/Raleigh, later Kenda/Spooky team, Colin has a good deal of experience racing in elite road races across the northeast. He’s a highly committed racer who’s known affectionately for his fondness of the stationary trainer and his low alcohol tolerance. We’ve all enjoyed racing against Colin the past couple years, but I’m sure we’ll all far prefer racing with him this next year.

So, two new riders plus Ridley coming back on board as a road bike sponsor, International Bicycle Centers coming on as a hugely helpful retail sponsor, Giordana clothing, SRAM component groups, and Bontrager wheel systems we’re looking like we’re going to be pretty hooked up for the coming year, stay tuned.

  Tuesday December 15, 2009

Tuesday 8th: The Flight Out
Arrived in Bend, Oregon after a 12hr trip. Why is it that the cheaper the airfare the more circuitous the route? How do airlines make any money flying me from Boston to Dallas, Dallas to Portland, Portland to Redmond? Maybe it is just their way of punishing cheap travelers. The plane from Dallas to Portland was packed with soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of them had been traveling for 60 hours straight. They were in high spirits, nearing home after their tours, and spent a lot of time apologizing to fellow travelers for the way they smelled. Really, I had nothing to complain about.

Wednesday the 9th: Good Exposure
After crashing on a friend’s couch for the night, I awoke to find Bend in the throes of a deep cold snap: highs in the low teens, nighttime lows well below zero, five inches of firm and Styrofoamie snow on the ground. I rode down to registration to grab my race packet and then pre-ride the course. As luck would have it, a news crew for KOHD Portland was setting up as I left registration. Being the only fool to ride to registration in the cold, the newswoman must have decided I was just the sort of psycho for an interview. Proudly donned the Rapha jacket for the camera. Answered her questions about what is cyclocross and why would people want to do something like this, much less travel across country to compete. Must have said something interesting, as I heard later that the segment ran at 5 and 6pm that night. Good exposure for the journal.

Wednesday the 9th: Pre-Ride
The pre-ride was an eye-opener. After a long drag race up pavement, the course turned left and up a short grass rise, and then snaked through what can best be described as an industrial back lot, with lots of bumps, rocks, and sweeping turns. The course then crossed the main drag and wound around the Deschutes brewery. This section had more traditional grassy terrain, with several tricky off-camber sections, a set of barriers by the beer tent, and a long stair climb. The stairs were super slick with snow and ice, and since the approach was from an angle people were eating it hard on the first few steps. (Thankfully the course designers nailed down some tar shingles for traction before racing began the next day.) The final feature on the course was a steep run/ride up behind the brewery. A sharp left turn at the bottom of the climb kept people from carrying much speed into the hill. With all the snow the hill was unrideable, but I had hopes that as the course burned in the snow would be scraped off before my race the following day. If not, the off-camber and slightly-downhill remount at the top of the climb was going to get hectic tomorrow.

For a sense of what the course looked like, here is a video of the first lap.

Thursday the 10th: The Call-Ups

The temps came up slightly, with lows around zero and highs around twenty degrees. As I had hoped, by the end of the day the course had been cleared of most of the snow, leaving icy grass and ground exposed. Still really slippery, but at least we were doing more riding than sledding. Today I raced the Masters 40-45 B race. Some said there were 191 entrants, but I think it was closer to 160.
Call ups were a fiasco. I don’t know if you recall, but back in the early fall USA cycling and Sportsbase totally screwed the East coast with their registration procedure. As riders would be called to the line according to the order in which they registered, those who were fast with the keyboard and registered on-line first would be lined up first. So, the night before a big Verge race last fall, I hauled myself out of bed at 11:55pm to register for nationals. The clock strikes midnight, I push “register,” and what happens? The website crashes because so many other riders were doing just the same. And of course, for those on the West Coast it was only 9pm. They had plenty of time to get their beauty rest. Frustrated, I tried and tried again for over an hour, with no luck. I dozed off, only to wake with a start at 4am and finally register successfully. By then well over ninety people had gotten in ahead of me.

So, when I showed up for staging on Thursday I was not optimistic about my placing. But wouldn’t you know it, the officials had another surprise. Instead of staging us by number, as expected, they staged us, wait for it…, RANDOMLY! They held up numbered cards, and once the last digit of your race number came up, you could line up. But I should not complain, because as luck would have it, I got a fourth row call up, which was pretty good considering we had 191 entrants. I think only 160 riders actually lined up.

Thursday the 10th: Go Time
The gun went off and I was able to work my way pretty quickly into the top 20. With a few more laps I was in the low teens. I did have one spectacular crash, where my front wheel slipped in a turn and I took out two wooden posts. Landed on my back, with my bike flying over me. I thought I had skewered myself, and judging by the gasp from the crowd, others did too. Lost a few places, but recovered quickly and got them back within a lap.

At that point the racing really started, as the guys around me were about my level. I was especially hounded by a Specialized rider in red. We traded places several times, reeling in a few more riders as we fought. With about two laps to go the sun dipped below the horizon. Bend is in the high desert, so the temps suddenly dropped. Within one lap sections that had once been wet and tacky suddenly glazed over with ice. About the same time the sun went down we began catching the slower riders at the back of the field. Officials said they were pulling lapped riders, but I guess that never happened. So with all the ice and the traffic the last few laps were pretty exciting. Lots of two-wheel drifting with the inner leg out for stability. Mr. Specialized and I were just killing each other. As we caught more and more riders, we took turns slipping around the slower traffic and then attacking, trying to drop the other amid the clutter of riders. But to no avail. Neither would give and we went into the last lap with him in the lead.

With about a half lap to go I passed him though some slick sweeping turns and opened up about a ten-meter gap. He closed that down to a few bike lengths on the grassy sections, and we hit the final ride/run up with me in the lead. I was able to ride the hill, but he ran it, so as he took the time to remount and coast down the back side, I could hit the gas. And that made the difference. I crossed the line about twenty meters ahead of him. Took 9th place.

If you have raced cross you know that every race is really a race between you and the riders around you. For Mr. Specialized and me, it was the World Championships.

Luckily, a few shots (photo 1, photo 2) of the race made it up on Cycling News. Many thanks to my friend Bill Hurley for posting one of them.

The guy who won the race was a Cat 1 riding for the SRAM factory team. Almost all of the others in front of me were Cat 2s. Sandbaggers.

Surprisingly, only a few of them would go on to race the open Masters 40-45 on Saturday. Sandbaggers and wimps. The SRAM rider would place 5th on Saturday ( Roger Aspholm took 12th).

Friday the 11th: A Day Off with my Bro

A day off to hang out with my brother and some other friends. We checked out Sasha White’s exhibit of amazingly beautiful Vanilla bikes. Those bikes have all kinds of style. I also got to meet Jeremy, the creative genius behind the Embrocation Cycling Journal and my title sponsor, and admire the new Vanilla kit that he designed. Also super stylin’. Checked out the PDX Cross photography exhibit and got to speak with photographers Mike Davis and Thorsten Kjellstrand. PDX contributed some amazing photos for Volume 3 of the Journal, and were great folks to boot. They took some amazing images through the weekend, including a few of me going fast and suffering hard (more on that later). Check out their site. It is worth the time. And, as luck would have it, an editor for Travel Oregon magazine asked for an interview. Must be the Rapha jacket. Not sure when that article will run, but I will keep an eye out for it.

Saturday the 12th: National Championships

My call up for the big day was not so lucky as the B race. Order was determined by number this time, so I was mid pack in a field of about 160. Surprisingly, officials did not first call up riders who had placed well last year, so I am sure Curtis and others were a little frustrated. The gun went off and within twenty meters some poor soul went into the fencing and busted his collarbone. I got around the crash safely and stepped on the gas. The course had softened a bit, and several of the sketchy corners had become more positive. Spent the entire race picking through the field, not really racing as much as chasing rabbits. With such a large field, it is hard to get to a place where you really feel you are in your element and really competing. After 45 minutes my time was up and 41st was as good as I was going to do. A little frustrating, but I am satisfied with the effort.

Sunday the 16th: Watching the Pros and Saying Goodbye
Chris, Jason and I watched with male and female pros compete on Sunday. It was great to see Tim Johnson take home the win. It was even better to spend more quality time with my brother. He and Jason competed this weekend as well, and both fought hard in their races. In the end the racing was great, but I wish I had more time with these boys.

  Tuesday December 8, 2009

Winter has arrived, for sure…
The venue for NBX Cross in Warwick, RI is one of the most scenic of the season: Pine woods, seashore, single track, beach runs. Did I mention it was on the seashore? That also means windy and cold, especially this past weekend when winter weather actually arrived.

Challenging weather aside, it was a great weekend for the team with two podiums and Cary securing his second place overall in the Verge series – quite a feat.

The Rapha Softshells were a perfect piece of gear for the cold, rainy weather on Saturday.

It was also a day for plenty of embrocation.

The race starts in a cold, windy rain.

Cary leads a small group on the road section, under the bridge.

James over the barriers.

Cary chasing the front of the race.

Eventual winner Colin Murphy (future Embrocation rider) leads James through the long sand run.

Kyle keeps the suffer face on in the sand.

Cary on the chase…

and again…

Cary slots in for second place on the day.

Bradshaw had a great start to the race on Saturday.

PVB follows close behind.

Pete Rubijono has a run-in with a stake on one of the many 180 degree turns.

But gets right back on terms to ride well with Dan Action throughout the race.

Race over, Cary now gives his all in supporting his teammates on the course.

And shows support for teammate PVB in another way.

2nd place on the day, just behind future teammate Colin Murphy.

Cary also takes second podium spot in the Verge series overall.

Elite Verge Series winner Dan Timmerman admires Cary’s podium shoes and Embrocation socks.

  Friday December 4, 2009

Our previous post on Sterling had to be pulled because the sizing on some of the photos was creating havoc on the website. They’ll be posted again later on. I love getting emails asking me “where did the latest team posting go?” This makes me feel like I’m doing something right with the whole team thing…

Anyway, on to Sterling Day 2. The blustery Saturday had given way to a sunny and seasonably warm Sunday with minimal wind. As is typical of the two day Verge races, the course had changed on the second day as well. While it shared many aspects in common with the previous day, Sunday’s course was more technical in nature – sharper corners and more of them, technical approaches to barriers and run-ups and a challenging off-camber downhill section into a 90 degree turn that caused more than a few slide-outs. Still a fast course, but better for technically proficient riders with the ability to accelerate quickly and repeatedly.

Also, it seems our custom here at Team Embrocation is to always have a better Sunday session, like Saturday was a warm-up.

In the Cat 3 race, Morrison took his second victory in as many days. Despite an early race crash, James was able to find his way back up to the front of the race and attacked out of the lead group of 3 into the final series of turns to take the win. Meanwhile, Cary crashed a few times and broke his front wheel but still managed to come in 12th on the day, limiting his losses to Verge leader Colin Huston and keeping himself in the running for the overall Verge leadership.

In the elite women’s race, Perri had one of her better performances of the year and raced with consistent strength and keen presence of mind the entire time to slot in at 9th place only a short distance behind some of the fastest women in the world.

The ride of the day came from Pete Bradshaw in the elite men’s race. It’s been a roller-coaster season for Mr. Bradshaw with some rough times early in the season. In recent weeks, though, Bradshaw seems to have found his legs.

On Sunday he earned his first UCI point by finishing 10th after a long and difficult battle against many of the best riders around, including Al Donahue and Manny Goguen and was able to finish just behind Luke Keough and Dylan McNicholas.

Pete Smith and PBV also raced in the elite men’s field and represented well. Pete finishing 18th on the day with a solid ride.

Good race and good performances all around. Everyone is looking forward to the finale of the Verge series races this weekend in Warwick, RI.

And one more thing. Boom:

Here’s our boy Eric tackling the run-up at the Northampton race early last month. Photo by Kevin Gutting from the Daily Hampshire Gazette.