Toguri Training

If the first race of the Quebec racing season is a jittery twitch-session on the windy farm roads of Ste-Martine, the second race is a short, relatively safe criterium just outside of Montreal, in Brossard. Racers do clockwise laps around a five-corner, 1.8 km course that is shaped like an upside down sock with the toe cut off. The start/finish is on the bottom of the sock, near the heal.

If this imagery is confusing, here’s a map

The crit is a relatively cozy affair, except for the third turn. It is off-camber, which means as riders turn right, the slope of the road banks from right to left, forcing their bikes to drift wide. To complicate things further, you drift from a wider road into a more narrow road while turning. For the most part this if fine, but I’ve seen riders “space out”–literally lose their sense of position in space–while drifting. They become sock zombies capable of thick, living-dead violence:

Or they over-correct their steering as the road narrows and create a sock of horrors:

One year, the time trialing PHENOM, Michel Brazeau, attacked into the third corner.

Awesome Time Trialist Michel Brazeau frolicking in Cuba ©2010 Michel Brazeau

Fabio frolicking because he is always frolicking in a composed way. He could TT if he wanted to, but he does not want to TT. He wants to frolick–with you.

Fabio the Miniature Horse frolicking. Also potentially good at shorter TTs

Brazeau attacked into the third corner, but he crashed. Amazingly, he jumped up so fast that he was able to stand in the middle of the road as the peloton whipped around both sides of him and through the corner. I don’t know how he did it, but there was magic at work. Out of my periphery,  he looked like this:

Lucky compression socks with TT shoe covers save the day!

So Brossard is mostly safe, but a little bit dicey. This year the forecast for rain scared many riders away. As it turned out however, the rains stayed away.

One of the most impressive races of the day took place in the women’s field. Two juniors, including the incredible Adriane Provost (Saputo), jumped into the break with four Senior racers led by Audrey Lemieux (Specialized-Mazda).

Audrey Lemieux powering the break. ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

The break maintained a 50-sec gap for most of the race until Lex Albrecht (Cascades) and Veronique Labonté (Nanoblur) started what seemed like a doomed effort to bridge.

"This bridge is taking FOREVER!!" ©2010 Antoine Becotte

Each lap they crawled a second or two closer to the break, but seemed to lack the decisive power to get the job done as the timed race was running down. Attacks in the break, however, slowed the pace during the final laps, and the bridging duo not only closed the gap but won the sprint, with the fast-finishing Albrecht edging Labonté for the top step on the podium. Sarah Coney (Stevens) finished third.

©2010 Antoine Bécotte

As the break slashed across the line, Toguri Training’s Michelle Paiement (Stevens) attacked the field and finished solo, 3 seconds in front of the bunch.

Michelle Paiement launching a last lap attack to finish ahead of the bunch in 7th place. ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

Other notable performances by Toguri Training athletes included that by Frederique Fenneteau (Rio Tinto/Martin Swiss), who completed her first ever crit. After doing WAY to much work in and out of corners, Fred finished with the bunch and claimed 3rd overall amongst the Masters.

"Closing all these small gaps is killing my legs" ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

Max Joly Smith (Rocky Mountain) provided the most impressive ride of the day amongst my clients. An early break of 9 or 10 riders escaped the Cat 1 field. It was comprised of all the usual suspects: Hugo Houle and Jean-Sébastien Perron (Garneau); Kevin Lacombe and Guillaume Boivin (SPIDERTECH); Jean-François Laroche (Régis); Arnaud Papillon (Nativo), etc. Over 2 laps, Max bridged up with William Goodfellow (Bikereg.com) and another rider in tow. In the end, repeated attacks saw Houle and Lacombe slip off the front to finish first and second.

Lacombe, Houle, Goodfellow and Joly Smith. Lacombe: "There are four of us in this photo, but only one person is listening closely to how I want this race to end!" ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

Perron would elude the rest for third, while Laroche outsprinted those left behind for fourth.

Perron listening to his watch/video/phone: "Ok ok, Monsieur Bécotte!! I promise I'll attack after the start/finish!" ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

Max finished just behind Laroche for fifth, or for what we call… a place on the “chubby podium”–that excess area just to the sides of the steps for medal winners:

From L to R: Laroche, Lacombe, Houle, Perron, Joly Smith ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

Good work Max. After a fast day of racing, it was time to leave Brossard and put on some compression socks.

Congratulations to all Toguri Training racers for surviving the spills and thrills of Ste Martine! And yes, we had both spills and thrills. In other words, the season has begun! There were, however, a few special rides that should be mentioned…

Congratulations to Fred Fenneteau for winning the first bike race she ever did! On a hot sunny day, Fred rode at the front of the women’s peloton for most of the race and crossed the line first in the Maitre E category. She raced well and she finished well. Not bad for a rider who loves her duck confit and wine!! Now about that yellow helmet…

"Fudge!" ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

"If they gave me champagne, I wouldn't share a drop!" ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

Robert Ralph jammed across the line in 6th place (Cat 3), but I have to admit I was more happy that he was constantly in the right spot to get shelter from the wind and to jump into the action.

Robert making Rio Tinto/Martin Swiss proud. ©2010 Rod Matheson

And finally, William Blackburn popped into the break in the Cat 1 race and was away for about 100km. He hung in there until the final set of attacks into the brutal headwind, but still managed to finish ninth.

William leading the break. "I feel like a Belgian champion!" ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

William coasting home with busted legs for 9th. "I admit it. I feel like a soggy Belgian waffle" ©2010 Rod Matheson

We begin with a messy ending…

I want to use the following photos as a hook. They are a series of images pulled from the tumbling airs of Ste Martine by photographer Antoine Becotte. It is the end of a race that has already been decided because outside the frame the winning break has long since crossed the finish line. So here is the question that hangs on this painful hook: what caused the accident?

All images ©2010 Antoine Bécotte

For all the European pros passionately following this blog, the well-organized Ste Martine race takes place on windswept farm roads about 35km to the south-west of Montreal. Racers do laps of a 14 km rectangular course.  Some years it is raining, some years it is freezing, and some years it is hot–but it is always windy. It is as if the wind itself shares in the turbulent excitement of the first official race on the Quebec calendar.

Even before the race began the wind swirled the smell of leg balm and the sound of nervous chatter around the parking lot. Riders fought with it as they tried to pin their race numbers onto their jerseys. They turned to face it as they clipped on their helmets. And they punctuated it as they twisted their cleats into the pedals and rode to the start. This year it would be a tailwind finish and a headwind on the long backstretch.

At the start line it was sunny, so an incredible number of riders were taking part. Because it was the season opener, there were also huge differences in fitness levels, which causes erratic riding in the peloton. There were also riders taking part in the first race of their lives. Differences in experience and bike-handling skills can also be the cause of accidents. Add some swirling winds to the equation and, well…you’ve seen the pictures.

So many causes braid themselves into the twisting body of the accident, and I am yet to mention that at least for one frame someone wasn’t looking where they were going. Sometimes, however, it seems too easy to blame the individual, especially when so many factors come into play during a sprint. Think of how many decisions and dynamic contexts have been put into play for that rider to miss the break, to be in front of some and behind others–even before he falls.

Anyone who has ridden in a peloton when the winds are swirling knows how jittery things can get. Wheels shift everywhere as spaces open and close a bit too rapidly between riders struggling to maintain their position. It’s hard to maintain a sense of the race itself as you get caught up in the spaces just in front of you. The key is to try and keep a sense of the big picture. Know where the wind is coming from and anticipate what the peloton will do as a unit. You will get boxed in. You will be forced to do more work at times than you want to, but that’s part of racing. You just don’t want to be so busy yelling at the guy in front of you that you don’t notice as the break walks away. Lots of riders told me after Ste Martine that they had no idea what had happened. It’s a common experience in racing if you’re absorbed by the little battles.

You can get lost within a small frame of vision when sprinting too. In most local races, teams lack the strength and experience to perform a proper leadout for their sprinter. So during the last kms, you get a small group of the faster riders establishing their presence at the front, and all sorts of battles behind them as other riders try to get into their draft. You also get waves of riders coming up to challenge the apex of the peloton. This is especially true when you’ve got long, tailwind run-ups to the finish line. The challenge is to anticipate and read the wave properly so you don’t get boxed in as it slaps into the side of the apex. If you do it well, you can sometimes beat sprinters who are usually faster than you.

A key skill of racing is thus to be able to read the big picture and commit to it. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, your ability to read the scene will lead you to your place on the road during the sprint at Ste Martine. You might be right. You might be misguided. You might suffer unnecessarily. You might excel. But in the end, visions of the scene will collide, merge, and spill in waves towards the finish line. On the other side of the line? That’s where the stories begin. How about this one:

During the day I watched several brutal crashes at the end of races as various categories crossed the line. I began to wonder how Ste Martine got its name. To be honest, I don’t really have a sense of the whole picture. Saint Martin is the patron saint of France and soldiers, but information about Sainte Martine is more difficult to find, and confusing, but here’s the story: During the rule of the Roman Emperor Alexander, Sainte Martine had her body gradually torn apart for refusing to offer sacrifice to idols in the Temple of Apollo, and then later, the Temple of Diana. Instead she continued to pray to Jesus Christ until her torturers were exhausted. While she prayed, an earthquake damaged the Temple of Apollo, a lion licked her wounds instead of attacking her, and winds blew out the fire upon which she was to be burned. Eventually, she met a cruel end but somehow the name of this saint of commitment and bodily sacrifice has come to mark the site upon which the cycling season officially begins in Quebec. By what route did such a name arrive on our shores? An answer to that question would surely require a sense of the big picture that exceeds my grasp. That’s like asking from where do the winds arise?