Gear Ratios

I’m overdue for an update on the past few weeks: the Zelzate Cross, a trip to Germany, a visit from Mindi’s parents, a visit from our friend Kelly, and a snowstorm, among the other adventures we’ve had. I’ll try to post an update soon (although you can check out photos from many of these by clicking on the links above.)

But it’s Thanksgiving, and, despite the fact that nobody here in Belgium knows about or celebrates it, it feels a lot like the Thanksgivings I remember as a kid. The weather is cool and gray, I’m wrapping up my last day of work of the week, getting excited about the big meal and a weekend with friends and family. In a little while I’ll rush home, try to pick up the last few things at the store, and then head off for some celebrating with Kelly and Mindi.

The snow the other day reminded me of a particular Thanksgiving when I was probably around 9 or 10 and it snowed in South Orange, NJ, where we spent Thanksgiving with my Aunt Jean and Uncle Bill for many years. It was such a thrill, this early season snow, and I remember spending hours playing with my sisters in the snow. Later in the afternoon Bill took us for a walk at the South Mountain Reservation, where we looked at the view of the city — you could see the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center sparkle in the late afternoon sun — and then looked at deer tracks in the snow. It didn’t snow much on Thanksgiving again, but that walk on the mountain became a tradition that spanned many years, and was one of the things that made Thanksgiving one of my favorite holidays through the years.

We don’t have any mountains here in Brussels, but tomorrow we’ll go walk in the Bois de la Cambre to commemorate the old tradition. Then it’s home to make turkey and stuffing and Uncle Bill’s famous cranberry relish. We’ll watch the Lions and, if we manage to stay up, the Cowboys. (Alas, the Eagles play at 2:00 in the morning here!) I’m excited — even in Belgium, it’s Thanksgiving.

Zegelsem was a race of extremes. It was one of the most challenging races I’ve ridden in a long time — due mostly to deep, sticky mud over most of the course — but it was also one of the prettiest courses I’ve ever raced on. Maybe Gloucester, by the water, or the Downeast Cyclocross at Pineland Farms can compare, but not many courses, especially in the US, offer as nice a setting as Zegelsem did.

I’m not kidding about how pretty this course was.

The course covered two sides of the road just outside the little village of Zegelsem, and was built up on a hillside, so you could look up from the course and survey the low rolling hills of the Flemish farmland that surrounded the town. It was the kind of view you just don’t get very often back home. Unfortunately for me, there were more immediate problems, namely: mud.

The race started on the road at the bottom of the hill, towards the center of town. Once again I started in the back — as I suspect I will for the rest of the season, since they seem intent on not awarding me points for overall series standing. After a quick climb to spread us out, we made a hard right up onto the course and into the biggest and deepest of the mud pits on the course. I don’t think of myself as a great rider in the mud, but as soon as we left the road I passed probably 10 people, who, apparently, had no clue whatsoever about how to ride in mud. (Kind of a surprise, given that this is Belgium, where it’s mud season all year!) While they ground away in too high gears, basically going nowhere, I gunned it in a lower gear, spun fast, and ride right through.

Out of the mud the course made a quick left around the visvijvers (fishpond) and up some stairs. Then back into the mud, through a couple of technical turns and ups and downs, then climbed a couple hundred meter hill, where I was able to put some more distance into my competitors. Then it was across a farm field and down a really steep and muddy hill in to yet more mud, some of which was unrideable. And that was just the first half of the course. Across the street was a real maze of course tape, and a fantastic view of the countryside.

The maze of course tape

After things sort of settled out, I realized I was actually in very good position (for me, anyway) and was moving well clear of everybody I had passed in the mud. Up ahead was my nemesis from the past few races, Kris Maes, but every time I started to close the gap to him, he’d open it back up on the more technical sections of the course. Shades of the race in Zingem, where the same thing happened. After the first couple of laps, not much happened, nobody passed me, I passed nobody, and just rode hard and practiced handling skills in bad conditions, which, I suspect, I’ll need for the rest of the season. Usually I’m not all that happy to be lapped, but this time it was almost a relief to be finished with the race, which was very, very painful. Plus I got to go to the pits and wash my bike before the hour-long line formed.

End results were some of the best I’ve had this season, and I didn’t feel like I gave it 100% either. So I’m pretty happy — hopefully I start to turn it on just in time for December and January, which are the months that count the most here anyway.

As an added bonus, today was a really nice, if extremely windy, day, so I had a chance to do a really nice 50 &nbsp km loop that I just dreamed up in the farms to the west of the city. Yet more really beautiful country. And, even though I was probably not more than a short ride outside of downtown Brussels, I was just surrounded by green, rolling fields for almost the whole ride. AndI get Monday and Tuesday off as well! This weekend’s a winner!

Photos of the race and beautiful countryside around it are here. And don’t forget to check out our expedition to Jeu de Balle from a couple of weeks ago while you’re there.

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Look, I’m as excited as the next guy about the news about Barack Obama (and, in all seriousness, look for a post about this soon), but for now I think we can all agree that it doesn’t get much better than this:

Let’s just get this out of the way, ok? Bredene was one of the weirdest races I’ve ever done.

First, it was in a trailer park. It was a nice trailer park, more geared to the vacationers who stay while visiting the beach just across Bredene’s main street, but there’s still something weird about weaving around people’s trailers in a cross race. About 20% of the course was road, and all that road was back and forth around people’s little front yards. Make a mistake and you were going to end up in their birdbath.

Warming up amidst the trailers.

The other interesting feature of the race was a brief ride through a building — a garage-like structure, which housed both registration and the main refreshment area. It wouldn’t have been particularly bad, except that the door heading in was only wide enough for one person, and the floor was as slick as ice. They put a couple of rugs down to help with that, but getting to them, especially in traffic, was still a treacherous situation.

Racing indoors, briefly.

The race itself went pretty well for me. I had poor position at the start, as usual, since they steadfastly refuse to award me points for quality finishes here, meaning I got called up pretty much last. I also didn’t have much chance to warm-up or preview the course, because we spent about 90 minutes in a traffic jam on the way to the race, and only arrived with about 45 to spare for me to get ready. So I suffered badly for the first lap before my legs opened up and I started moving up.

The course featured one fairly technical run-up over a giant mound of mud. A lot of people rode it, but I had some trouble with it on the early laps and decided to play it safe and run, which turned out to be much faster than riding it anyway. I was pretty much in last place after one lap, but I just buckled down and started to work on picking people off. It was slow progress on a pancake flat course. Any course that doesn’t have any climbing is always kind of a challenge for me to do well on.

But I ground away, pulling people back one-by-one. I’m starting to get to know the competition pretty well, because I’ve been picking off the same guys race after race, finishing sandwiched between Kris Maes and Bjorn De Meulemeester for the second time in two weeks. Kris doesn’t speak much English, so my efforts to congratulate him on solid races have been pretty futile, but Bjorn does, and we had a nice little chat together after the race. It looks like we’ll be racing each other quite a bit this season.

Anyway, in the end I think I wound up around 35th or so. I went in and handed over my number, got my €5 for the finish, and headed out of the park. I felt pretty good, actually, so to celebrate Mindi and I picked up a bunch of piping hot frites and headed over for a nice walk by the North Sea before heading home. All in all, I’d say, a successful day, as is any day that involves fries and mayo.

Kite flying on the beach.

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Before I get to writing about the rather strange race in Bredene last weekend, I want to offer a brief review of DZ Nuts Chamois Cream, a relatively new product developed by Garmin-Chipotle rider David Zabriskie.

First, I realize chamois creams are not for everyone. In fact, until a few years ago, I never used it myself. But then the UNH cycling team decided to order some shorts with stitching in all the wrong places and I started having, um, comfort issues with my shorts. So I started using chamois cream, which made a huge difference and now, even though I don’t have those uncomfortable shorts anymore, I’m not going back. I’ve tried a bunch of different creams, actually, and somewhat surprisingly, until now, the best results have actually come from two products originally designed for dairy farmers to use with milking equipment. The first is Bag Balm and the second is Udderly Smooth, which you can buy at Trader Joes in a big container for like $5. (Word on the street is that Udderly Smooth is actually selling a dedicated chamois cream now, but I haven’t tried it.)

Anyway, let me just cut to the chase: DZ Nuts, despite its very non-serious name and marketing, is a serious product and a major upgrade over anything I’ve tried. It contains Tea Tree Oil, Evodia, and Masterwort. I have no idea what any of those are, actually, but they seem to work: the stuff has a nice, cool, soothing sensation when you put it on, and it lasts the whole ride (unlike some other chamois creams that break down too quickly for long rides). I’m not going to claim that it has changed my life, but it’s definitely a better product than the alternatives I’ve tried. Which, at $22 for a 4 oz bottle, it had better be.

DZ Nuts and the wink-wink nudge-nudge instructions on the box.

One of the really nice things about DZ Nuts is that they’ve committed to an as-organic-as-possible, as-fair-trade-as-possible product. They don’t use petroleum or animal derived products. They don’t use a long list of mysteriously named chemicals (although, to be fair, they do use an equally mysterious list of chemicals). So you can use the stuff and feel reasonably good about it, even if you’re vegan or whatever (I guess I fall into the whatever category, just desiring stuff I can feel ok about using). Whatever your position on this, I think that making a serious effort to be environmentally and socially conscious is commendable, and it makes me more inclined to spend the extra dollars for their relatively premium product.

Bottom line: DZ Nuts is an excellent new chamois cream and is worth the slightly high price for anybody who wants to properly protect their sensitive nether regions on the bike. For a very detailed review you can visit Fat Cyclist.