GamJams.net: Where Mid-Atlantic bike racers roll

GamJams Tech: Jim McNeely's Giant TCR 2

(ed note: Normally I write GamJams tech myself, based loosely on some commentary provided to me by the bikes' owners, my inherent knowledge of bicycle componentry, and fiction artistic license. This week is different. I asked Jim McNeely, AKA The Unholy Rouleur, to give me the skinny on why he rides what he rides. My thinking is that there are some big guys out there who might leapfrog some poor equipment choices because of Jim's wisdom and experience. Jim didn't send me some crib notes or bullet points. He sent me what comes out when The Unholy Rouleur sits down to write - narratives made epic not by length alone, but from the soul breathed into them. Now I could go ahead and edit it. And as a Cat 3 with a functional threshold power that looks more like a respectable bowling score than a testament of formidable power, I could get on the phone with Fabian Cancellara and give him some Time Trialing pointers. Both seem an egregious waste of time. So here's Jim's bike, in Jim's words.)

Jim McNeely's Giant TCR 2

Mike thought some of you would find my gear choices interesting.  I'm a big boy who rides okay for a middle aged beginner with a classic linebacker's build.  I am 5'11", around 250 pounds in the best form I've achieved so far (last year in 'cross season), 10 pounds up on that right now and hoping to get down into the low 230 range prior to cross season.  My athletic background includes nearly two decades of playing rugby and powerlifting.  I'm not Bryan Vaughn strong but for power training phreaks , I was throwing CP 20 of 370 watts last year with typical 5 second power a shade under 1600.  I break things.   

Bike - Giant TCR 2, carbon fiber.  I bought this after busting my aluminum Giant OCR's frame at the Baker Park Crit in a high speed crash.  I'd heard a lot of stuff about how big guys shouldn't ride carbon, but I've found that to be crap, taking the plunge after Jon Seibold of Family Bikes in Crofton convinced me that the TCR could take it.  I have around 8,000 hard miles on the OCR and it's holding up well.  The advantage of carbon is it's easier on my 40 year-old back; in spite of the aggressive position it is more comfortable over a long day than more upright bikes.  The carbon frame also has a little flex, and wheels seem to hold up better, though I'm not thrilled with the bottom bracket shell flexing when I sprint or really mash hard on hills. If I stay Giant the next bike will be the TCR Team, with the reinforced Ulrich bottom bracket shell.  The bike handles perfectly - it is responsive without being twitchy, planted without being sluggish.

Rear wheel - Powertap Pro 32 hole, on a Velocity Deep Vee.  The 'Vee is the gold standard for durable road wheels - and I've destroyed supposedly bulletproof Open Pros and the like.  I went with the PT Pro because 150 grams of rotating weight close to the axis is kind of irrelevant for somebody my size.... I have roughly 10 hours a week to train and can't afford to be inefficient in my training, so it's me, Powertap, and Hunter Allen.  Gatorskin tires for general riding, training or racing; Vredestein Fortezzas for serious racing.  The Gators' are very long lasting and offer good traction except in the wet, and the Vredesteins offer exceptional ride quality.

Front wheel - Velocity Fusion, Ultegra hub.  Matches the Deep Vee for appearance pretty much.  It's as strong as I need a front wheel to be, aero, and a bit lighter than the Deep Vee.

Brakes - Shimano 105.  They came with the bike and frankly the 2006 105 brakes stop better than the 2005 Ultegra brakes on my other bike.  I've done "stoppies" inadvertently.

Drivetrain & STI's - Ultegra.  Ultegra is a little heavier than Dura Ace, but it's pretty stout, and I can't tell the difference in shifting except on the front derailer, and I don't much like to ride in races where the small ring is going to be needed.  A man's gotta know his own limitations.  Ultegra chain.

Cranks - Ultegra.  This is the tough choice for me.  I've shredded square taper Truvativ cranks at the bottom bracket, and busted the big rings on a Truvativ Rouleur and a Race Face Roadrace crankset.  After getting shrapnel in my leg from the Truvativ, I went with the Ultegra on the advice of Coppi prez Art Mitchell, who has similar ring-bending problems with everything up to and including Dura Ace.  I haven't regretted the choice, it's held up fine.  Jon scared me up an FSA big ring that looks like a track ring and we salvaged the Truvativ crankset, but I am always a little apprehensive when sprinting on it.  Race Face?  They weren't responsive to my attempts to write them to complain, though they kindly put me on their marketing spam email list.  I think I threw the crankset out in the end. They should probably stick to making mountain biking clothing.

Seat - stock carbon fiber seatpost, Fi Zik Arione.  I do really badly on traditional-shaped "pan" type saddles, but longer saddles that are "crowned" just disappear, and the Arione is perfect for me.  The best part about the Arione is I busted the first one and they replaced it under warranty.  This one is now 2 years old and going strong.  Word of warning - you'll either love or hate this saddle, there's no middle ground.

Stem/Bar - Easton EA 50.  I'm not thrilled with this stem; I can loosen the bars when sprinting or bunny hopping downed riders.  I'm switching over to an FSA Wing Pro (aluminum) in a week or so.  I'll look for a four bolt stem when I get a bike fit.  My other bike has an Easton EA 70 Wing, the aluminum model.  That is a great handlebar.  I'm not a carbon bar kind of guy.

Bling - Serfas carbon bottle cages.  Every other upgrade to this bike was a utility purchase, and I thought these were just luxury items.  Then I put them on and realized they work really, really well, better than standard cages.  Plus they're lighter than air.

 

Toolkit:  This matters because I break stuff regularly on rides.  Tube (in a sock, to prevent rubbing/puncture); Microflate head with two 16 gram threaded CO2 cartridges - small and efficient; Spin Doctor multitool with chain breaker which saves me every three months; Park spoke wrench (you know why); valve extender; stamped metal 4 way wrench; Skabs (not shown); Performance Hurricane HP Micro - a *great* multistage pump, actually reliably gets you to high pressure in 30 strokes or so; and a Soma steel core tire iron, because a steel core tire iron won't shatter in the cold and leave you stranded with a tight, flat Gatorskin stuck on a tight Deep Vee 5 miles from home on a 20 degree day when you're sweating and hypothermic.  Don't ask.

Philosophy: A brief aside so you get my perspective.  As a young soldier going on deployments I carried some blingy expensive tactical knives at first - muy macho, plus you need a sharp knife all the time camping.  I also carried a little cheap jackknife I'd picked up in the military clothing sales store as an afterthought.  Yet over and over again I found myself using that simple stainless $5 Army issue engineer's knife with a blade, screwdriver and marlin spike, and leaving the marquis brand knives packed away.  No bling, just a big sack full of Git 'er Done!  I pay for my own gear and look at a race bike the same way.  I adore this bike but it's a racing and training bike, a utility vehicle, a racing tool.  When it breaks in a crash, or wears out, I wont cry but will buy a new one, no big deal.  The running gear is either stock kit that has proved reliable (stem excluded, and it's going soon) or aftermarket kit that has held up to a beating, and it's good enough.  Could I bling up with some SRAM or Dura Ace?  Sure, but would it make the bike run better?  Probably not enough for me to notice, and it would cost twice as much to replace when the inevitable happens.  Some day, I'll have a nice Independent Fabrication and I maybe will bling that bike out.  But not this bike, it's a high utility knife, all function, which is how I like it.

Haymarket Bicycles p/b Function Drinks announces 2008 Sponsors. GamJams is one of 'em.

It's easy to forget that Haymarket Bicycles just opened last season. In almost no time at all, they've immersed themselves pretty deeply into the regional racing scene, fielding a small but aggressive team and even producing a Cross race in year 1.

2008 brings some changes to Haymarket Bicycles, all of them good. In addition to a roster even deeper with talent, the team has landed a slate of new sponsors, including title benefactor Function Drinks. If you haven't yet seen Function Drinks, you will - they're a fortified water drink formulated for various, um, Functions. One is Shock Sports, created by smart people in lab coats to accelerate recovery after muscle-ripping efforts. Drop a few bottles in your reusable bag next time you're at Whole Foods or Target, where it's available. Or watch for the Function Folks at a race near you soon.

There are a bunch of other sponsors as well, but I'll let the press release below do the talking. Before that though, here's a couple thousand more words:

This is how the Marketing Department says it:

HAYMARKET, VA-  Haymarket Bicycles Racing is pleased to announce its slate of sponsors for the 2008 cycling season, including some of the top names in the industry, new names that are sure to generate a buzz, and local companies who share the community-minded focus of Haymarket Bicycles.

Function Drinks will serve as the team’s presenting sponsor, and both racers and Function representatives are excited about this new partnership.  Function Drinks brings cutting-edge science to a line of all-natural physician-developed beverages, formulated to address needs ranging from energy to recovery, immune system support to stress relief.  Company representatives plans to be in attendance at several major races this season, distributing samples and information about the products. 

Haymarket Physical Therapy & Chiropractic is another of the team’s major sponsors this year, and serves as a one-stop shop for wellness in Northern Virginia.  HPTC’s skilled staff offers leading-edge treatments in physical therapy, athletic training, and sports chiropractic medicine, ensuring lasting pain relief, and helping to prevent injury recurrence. 

Raleigh Bicycles is a name that’s been known in the industry for decades, and probably one many remember from childhood.  Raleigh is becoming an important player among competitive cyclists once again, and Haymarket Bicycles will be helping the company prove its new carbon frame this season, the same frame on which the Interbike Industry Cup was claimed for Raleigh this year.

GamJams.net has quickly established itself as the premiere source for cycling news and information in the Mid-Atlantic.  With a focus on fostering awareness of, and support for, the cycling community, GamJams.net continues to create valuable opportunities for racers at all levels, as well as for the organizations that support amateur racing.

Other Haymarket Bicycles sponsors include Tifosi Optics, makers of technologically-advanced eyewear for athletes, performance audio equipment manufacturer JBL, global commercial contractors DPR Construction, and the renowned health and fitness experts at World Gym. 

Other local sponsors include Northern Virginia’s paving experts, Superior Paving, and Tullio Engineering.

The team is run by Haymarket Bicycles owners Jared Nieters and Curtis Prosser.  Haymarket Bicycles is a community-owned, community-oriented bike shop in downtown Haymarket, dedicated to serving the needs of all cyclists—from recreational riders to expert racers.  For more information about the team or the shop, go to www.haymarketbicycles.com, or call (703) 754-1911.

GamJams Tech: Jared Nieters' 2008 Raleigh Competition

The last time you saw a Raleigh moving fast, it was probably beneath John Tomac and on dirt. Unless of course you've been doing some of the Haymarket Bicycles group rides early this season. For 2008 the team has elected to go with a Raleigh fleet. That's no small vote of confidence for the veteran manufacturer, given the other lines that Haymarket carries and that the team could have chosen (including Trek, Blue, Orbea, Kuota, Kestrel). Jared explained to me that Raleigh is hoping to make a big splash among serious cyclists once again. As a Raleigh dealer, obviously Jared has some incentive in seeing them succeed. But as an elite racer and the manager of an ambitious team, he's also not about to throw his leg over anything he thinks won't help the team achieve their goals for the year.

As I was unfamiliar with the Raleigh, Jared clued me in that in many ways it's comparable to the Scott CR-1. OK, what he said was "It's basically a Scott CR-1." Normally no manufacturer likes to be defined around a competitor's brand, but given Scott's ascension over the past few years to the pinnacle of weight-weeniedom in road frames, my guess is that Raleigh won't balk at the comparison.

The frame is, naturally, full carbon and weighs in under 1 KG. The seat tube has an aero profile that improves flow over the rear wheel. Perhaps more importantly, the graphics and lines are slammin - connoting more Trek and Blue than what we may all remember about Raleigh. I wish they would have kept the head badge, though.

Can't miss those hoops, right? So I'll talk about them next. They're the bomb-proof Mavic Cosmics, which the team uses for training and racing. For verticaler courses like Battenkill-Roubaix and The Tour of Virginia, the squad will switch to Mavic R-Sys wheels. At some point this year though, the team will be trying out Reynolds DV-46 carbon wheels. Is Reynolds the new Zipp? Seems like they're showing up in more places than Michael Caine.

Jared's bike is outfitted with Dura-Ace, right down to the Dura-Ace SRM crankset, which allows him to create AND measure formidable power simultaneously. That's versatility.

The lone exception to the Dura-Ace monopoly on the bike are the Cane Creek SL brakes, which Jared says are lighter and less expensive than Dura-Ace. But he swapped the DA pads back in because they provide a better bite.

My favorite component on his bike are his handlebars, or what he calls his mini-drops. He runs Bontrager Fit VR bars. They're marketed as women's bars, but are available with a 31.8mm clamp and up to a 44cm width, so they'll hold up to just about anything and anyone (at least I hope so - mine just came in). What's unique about them is that the reach is only 70mm (compared to 80-85mm for most bars) and the drop a super shallow 120mm (vs 140mm - 150mm for others). This allows Jared to ride his drops more comfortably and more frequently, and also gives him freedom to position his brake and shift levers optimally for riding on the hoods, and still have easy access when in the drops.

Now if you know Jared, you know he's a small guy. But before you dismiss the mini-drops as a superfluous modification to your own rig, you might want to ask Tom Zirbel, who is about 6'4" and 195 lbs, if his were at all helpful in his 20-mile solo break at the end of the final stage of the ATOC. I'm just sayin', maybe Jared's onto something.

Know of another bike that wants to be profiled in GamJams Tech? Do tell.

On Equal Pay, and the Creation of Media

There's a meme spreading across the internet on the topic of Equal Pay for Women, kicked off by an interview with Georgia Gould on VeloNews.com and bolstered by an online petition directed to the UCI which has collected some 2000 signatures so far. Several local folks have chimed in on it, including the thought-provoking (read as 'provocative') Unholy Rouleur, who challenges a blanket pay parity policy based on race registration ecomonics, and Karen Got Wheels, who proposes that prize money be eliminated from most fields because even when you win in the lower cats, you still lose money. So what's the point? (An excellent point, Karen.)
 

There's another economical aspect to consider as well. The entire bike racing economy is based on Events, and the Event Business is driven by Sponsorship. In my real life I'm in the Event Business. I know of what I speak.

When in need of guidance, seek out oracles. In many cases it's Google. It others it's that guy in the cube by the server room with 3 laptops on his desk. In the case of Event Sponsorship, the oracle is NASCAR. Nobody understands sponsorship like that organization, and no sponsors get more for their money than NASCAR sponsors. There are a dozen reasons for this - not the least of which is that getting a foot in the door of NASCAR stills sets sponsors back 7 digits or more. If you have to pony up that kind of coin for some media, you're going to get exceptionally smart on how to make the most of it. And that's the great irony of the Event business - the more you're able to charge for sponsorship, the more work sponsors must put into it themselves, and the more sponsors rely on themselves - not the event - to optimize their investment.

Who the GamJams.net Ambassadors are, and what's in it for you

A couple of weeks ago I announced the formation of the GamJams.net Ambassadors - a virtual team of cyclists who maintain racing blogs or journals. The 'Ambassador' part comes in the way they represent their respective teams through their blogs, which GamJams.net links to frequently, and also in the way they'll represent GamJams.net sponsors to their teams.

But the other thing they'll be doing is representing the interests of all area cyclists to the sponsors. I'm hoping that sponsors will see the value in getting behind a team of the 25+ most recognized and influential cyclists in the region, and see the wisdom of sponsoring racers who create their own media, instead of perpetuating the 'win at all costs' environment inevitable when sponsor satisfaction is linked solely to podium finishes. Finding equipment or nutrition or services sponsors who want to offer discounted product to these folks, in exchange for them using the stuff on group rides and races, and writing about it on their blogs, shouldn't be too challenging. If sponsors will do as much for 25 people on the same team, they certainly ought to do it for 25 people across almost as many teams, whose blogs are collectively read by pretty much every licensed racer in the region.

But the objective is not simply to lavish swag on the people who entertain all of us with their feats of literary strength. That's part of it, to be sure. GamJams.net works because they do, and I want to create a model that is sustainable and continues to grow.

But in addition, I want to parlay their visibility and work into something that benefits everyone. (Because without all of you reading their stuff, there's no 'audience' for sponsors to try and reach.) So in order for sponsors to work with the Ambassadors, they must also support local cycling in another way - either by offering a promotion of some sort to everyone who reads GamJams.net, or by underwriting the creation of some new content on the site, or sponsoring a local race or series, or buying bagels for everyone after the 8:30am ride. Something that benefits all of us, not just those of us racers who blog (and bloggers who race).

I hope it'll work. I think cycling is stronger than ever, but marketing through professional cycling today promises more risk than reward. If ever there were a time to pour resources into grass roots racing, it's now.

Anyhoo, here's the team. Many you know; some you may just be discovering. But you'll here lots more from them in the upcoming season. I've also got them all linked over on the right hand side, so you can jump there from here whenever you want. (And it's not too late to join if you're so inclined. Drop me a note if you've got questions.)

Welcome, Ambassadors. And thanks.

 

2008 GamJams.net Ambassadors:

Beth Mason, C3-Sollay.com
Beth's Blog

Evan Ellicott, n-tieractive/Bike Doctor
Indy's Small World

Kyle Jones, Evolution Cycling
Pedal'n Around

Mike May, Artemis
GamJams.net

Darren Biggs, DCMTB / City Bikes
The Bike and More

Bryan Vaughan, Artemis
Bryan's Racing Blog

Bryan Burns, Haymarket Bicycles
On Cycling

James McNeely, Squadra Coppi
Unholy Rouleur

Joshua Goyet, Virginia Beach Wheelmen
FireBike

Liz Schleeper, Tripower Cycling Club
bikevoice

Albe Rodenas, All About Bikes Racing,
N Plus One

Kevin Horvath, Tri-Power
k-blogg

Karen Hanson, Contes/Cycor
Karengotwheels

David Kirkpatrick, NCVC
The Flamenco Chuckwagon

Kevin Stapleton, Racing Union
Kmax Trax

Brian Fouche, AVC
racing and all that other stuff

Mike Gnatek, Evolution Cycling
Velo-Fish

Jared Nieters, Haymarket Bicycles
El Dolor

Tyler Karnes, Hincapie Development Team
The Blog of Tyler

Terry Anderson, Haymarket Bicycles
TerribleCyclist

Pete Custer, Whole Wheel Velo Club
Pete Rides Bikes

Judd Walencikowski, team n-tieractive/Bike Doctor
layzeesusan

Walter Tyree, Squadra Coppi
Battoowoo Greekgreek

Jay Moglia, Route 1 Velo
The Journal of Raw Talent

Scott Moore, JRVS / Casey Auto Group
Bacon and Raisins

Robb Hampton, team n-tieractive/Bike Doctor
thewrob