Our Thursday

Tag: chile

  • Noviciado Bike Race, Santiago Chile

    Noviciado Bike Race, Santiago Chile

    Five years ago I was in Santiago Chile pretending to race my bicycle. I wrote about my first experience then, which involved a much steeper learning curve than I experienced today. None the less, I feel compelled to document how today came to pass so I may help future racers and my own shitty memory.

    Where to get the Information

    So first thing is to be friends with the facebook person/page https://www.facebook.com/canadelaciclismo.santiago . They seem to do most of the communication through facebook although they have a website but it does not seem to be updated as often.

    While you are at it, you can befriend https://www.facebook.com/ciclismo.amcla which is the other organized racing I hear about but have not participated in. Maybe it will come in the summer? Additionally, the following page seems to be trying to represent the Chilean cycling scene so it’s worth a check every now and then, http://www.ciclismolaboral.cl/category/competencias/ . It included a slightly more helpful instruction set for today’s race.

    I was sent the following post to instruct me on the winter cycling season for the Canadela association.

    So, I am now living in an enormous city with a shit load of little towns all around. And this is all the information I get for the whole winter. If you google map Cerro Navia you get a highlighted area of maybe 15 square kilometers. Fortunately, Canadela is on top of it and sent out this post a few days ago.

    Don’t worry about the Spanish. Basically it says, the start is at the corner of Las Torres and J.J. Perez, it’s gonna be neutralized until Noviciado and the finish is in an industrial area. $8 entry and start time is at 9:30am for the first category.

    OK, so even in California, cycle racing maps are notoriously shitty. It seems that all bike races are limited to about 18 words to describe how to arrive to a point in the middle of no where where you will likely not have cell phone reception. If you look through the comments of the post above, you can see me begging for someone to confirm the start (partida) on a google map, which no one did. Eventually I was able to confirm it to be here which is about 4km from where I am staying, nice.

    Race Summary

    IMG_20150816_093317I woke up at 7am to bake the bread I prepared the night before. I ate three eggs on top of it, it was lovely. I left at 9:15am and got there at 9:25am. My race was not to start for another 70 minutes and it was like 5 degrees celsius. Fortunately the Morris Family was still making a killing selling coffee and snacks to these races! These guys took me in like a son 5 years ago, and became my cycling family. Took me to races. Made fun of my Spanish. Gave me a jersey. Drove me to all the races. Gave me free food and coffee. So I fought off the cold with some banter and a coffee this morning.

    There are five categories you can race and there is really no qualifications for any of them as far as I can tell other than age.

    1. Debutantes: first timers, youth.
    2. Dorados, Super Masters and Women: the best of the old guys
    3. Senior B and Master
    4. Senior A
    5. Adult A and everything else: my group, the good group

    You will see all types of bikes at this race but for the most part, people got them well tuned and looking clean. A lot of no-name wheel manufacturers with a few that got their hands on some expensive brands. Almost no tubulars since the roads are pretty crap. Teams do not seem to be as big of a focus as they are back home, but indeed there are many of them.

    PANO_20150816_101037
    From the start line as one of the masters groups was starting.

    The race was set for 80km. They explained the directions to us but I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about as the announcer would say things on the microphone to everyone like “… so you know that little town with speed bumps, you’ll do a u-turn there, and then when you get to the highway, you’ll do a few turns and then you’re at the finish line.” Not ideal for me but it’s all I had. The race started with 10km of neutral riding out to the country. Once we were set free an attack went off from the get go and the pace picked up.

    Attacks were often and with passion and seemed to make sense. The roads were long and straight and slightly windy so it was difficult to get a big gap. The group in general seemed fit and my presumption that they were in winter mode meant fuck-all. Initially I planned to sit in and conserve. But where’s the fun in that? I attacked at 10km, 30km, 40km, 60km, and a few more times as we got to the pointy end of the stick.

    I was happy with all my attacks until the end. I was able to fend off the group for a few kilometers each time and by the end of the race, I was getting whistles as I would jump away. But then things got messy. As we hit the 75km I was sitting in the top 5 letting a team do the work. I heard them and others talking and lead myself to believe that we had 1km to go. So when someone jumped, I followed him and we got a gap. I told him I would help him win if he got me to the finish line and then we turned what I thought was the last curve, and saw just more straight road. He told me we still had 5km to go. So I let the peloton catch us. This same sequence happened again with, what I was told, still 2km to go.

    We hit the airport, did a few curves and were sprinting for the finish. I rolled in with the back of the sprint fighting off a cramp. The 80km race was more like 84. But I guess if they can put on the flyer a city name as the starting point, they can round to whatever the fuck they want for the distance.

    10km to get home and a nice pork chop lunch with the family. Great day of cycling.

    Here’s the Strava with no specific start or stop to the race. Power meter battery has been dead for a few days so need to replace that.

  • 9 Things I Hate About Walking

    9 Things I Hate About Walking

    There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am, by far and away, the fastest walker in Santiago. And to take advantage of my obligatory and permanent label of “ignorant gringo”, I will conclude that a Chilean walker is no different than any other Latino walker. Thus making me the fastest walker in all of South America… fact. So what could I hate about walking when I am the clear champion of the southern hemisphere and no one should be able to stop me? Well many things, and it is my innate ability to overcome these problems that got me where I am today. If you are a slow or bad walker, or what I like to call a “slawker”, you may never have thought of any of these things because you are dead smack in the middle of doing these things… all the time.

    1) Turning your head more than 15 degrees to either side.

    If you are walking straight forward, and you turn your head more than 15 degrees to either side, you better divert your course in that direction or you have just become a slawker. Without a clear field of view in front of you, you cannot be expected to walk without causing chaos.

    2) Taking a slow slant across the sidewalk to get to the other side without looking

    This is the most efficient way to fuck over the most people in the most amount of time making you the most hated person on the sidewalk. You are not in an inner tube laying on your back, with a bag of beer attached to you cooling in the water, as you kick lazily and flap idioticly with your hands to cross a slow moving current. You are in the middle of a high speed sidewalk so you better know exactly when you are to get off, and make it happen with precision and hastiness.

    3) Fail to move a shoulder or turn your body as people approach you when there is not much room.

    You are a fucking dick. Have common courtesy for your fellow species. There is no reason you should feel that you are more important than another walker so that you should never have to turn your body or bow your shoulder to let someone fit through a gap. Nor are you the better person to turn and look back at the person who just bumped you. Douche bag.

    4) Stopping on a staircase

    This is never acceptable, never. It is tiring enough climbing a staircase and it sure as hell is frustrating enough to put both my feet on the same stair as I mentally urge you to walk faster. But when you ignore my mental urgings and stop, and I ram my head into your jello butt that had me hypnotized just enough to slow my reactions down, it makes me want to throw my shoe at you. If you dropped something, forget about it. If you forgot something behind, you will need to use the designated stairs for going down. If you are tired, sack up and get on with it before I push you over.

    5) Walking four people wide

    Firstly, if I am one of the four, I hate this situation because I cannot hear what the hell is going on. But imagine the 80 meter queue of people behind you and your arm linked friends. Are you playing red rover red rover? Are you trying out for that burlesque dance with the high kicking legs? Are you stopping a crowd as they riot around you? Unless you are doing any of these things, immediately deconstruct your wall of in-passe, and go down to two by two. You will be a lot happier as well as the released flow of people going past you.

    6) Wildly flailing your arms as if you have a mental disorder

    Maybe more common in South America, especially Argentina. But to think it’s just a “thing that happens” as you back hand slap someone to your side as they are trying to pass you, is just plain wrong, and you are two steps closer to being a salted slug of the earth.

    7) Gazing up, browsing around, and looking at this and that

    Sudden stops will ruin governments, computers, machinery, and it sure as hell will destroy a sidewalk. When you decide to gander at that cute top or new computer game, you just unleashed chaos and that ain’t cool in my book. Be courteous and look to the side or behind you before making drastic decisions on the sidewalk. But this would break rule one, so even better if you feel uncomfortable breaking rule one, is to put a hand out to the side pointing down and shout out “Slowing!!”

    8) Choosing the far left door when you have to turn right or vice versa

    Try and think ahead more than five seconds. There are a lot of doors because likely there are a lot of people using them. It is not cool to leave a door and immediately run into your perpendicular adventure that should have nothing to do with me.

    9) Not staying to the side on an escalator if you are not walking.

    Why? Do you really need a sign every few meters going up to tell you to do this? Just because we are getting a free vertical lift doesn’t mean I am not going to take advantage of the opportunity to feel like I am walking super extra fast.

    For sure at some point I have committed some of these errors, but I learned. I learned from my mistakes and saw the misery I caused and I aim to never do them again. Unless you are old, a young child, mentally or physically handicapped, or drunk, you have no excuse to repetitively commit the errors above.

    Now don’t get me wrong… I once ordered 25 guys to walk with with an italian walk whenever they saw me or one of my 50 fraternity bothers. An italian walk consists of your hands clasped behind your back, you lean back like you are almost about to lean on something, and walk slowly like there is nothing in the world you are trying to get to. I can appreciate the joy of life and the things there are to see while walking slow. But in general I am an efficiency walker, that’s why I have a motorcycle that takes me around at 175mph and many bicycles that are far more efficient than a car.

    I hope I pop into your head the next time someone runs into you on the sidewalk and gives you a look like “gawwd, who the fuck is this slawker?”