re: Cycling

Picture(s) of the Day: Showdown

Photo: Copyright 2009, Mark Adkison/Hors Categorie Photography/All rights reserved.

I'm on the Davis Bike Club email list. Sometimes I get messages from a guy named Mark Adkison. Not sure whether photographing racing cyclists is his day job or the one he does for love in his spare time. He's very good, and he's got a little business going called Hors Categorie Photography. Every once in a while, he posts a message to the Davis list about some new group of photos he's just published. I remember lots of shooting he's done of the Tours of California.

Today he sent a note about a master's road race up in Davis. I browsed just one of the albums, from Lap 3 of the race. I found myself captivated: First, by the pictures of the small peloton in the Central Valley winter fog. Second, because flipping through the pictures in sequence really tells a story: you see the guys trying to make their moves, and you see the ones coming through for their turns to pull (the guy above is a case in point; he he keeps reappearing in the front, then rolling off; he's working for someone in that pack, I think, though I can't tell who). I don't know a single one of the racers, but the shots really put me there. Check out the full gallery.

(And thanks to Mark for permission to post the picture above.)

Don't

Don't go out for your first real bike ride in months and try to go hard. Just don't do it.

But if you do, don't let your heart rate go into the red zone. Red zone meaning you're not sure whether you're heart's really supposed to beat that fast.

But if you do find yourself looking at that high heart rate, don't engage in hijinks like trying to show the other guys how fast you can go -- even for just a couple minutes, which is really all your atrophied legs have in them.

But if you do start showing off, don't let anyone talk you into taking the hard climb back home when there's an easier one you know you really should take.

But if you do let reason be overruled, don't ride out ahead of the other guys, even if you're telling them you're just warming up for the hard part of the climb (note: it's all hard).

But if you do go off the front a little, don't lose track of where your friends are. They might take a turn you weren't expecting.

But if you do get separated, don't waste a lot of time looking for them, and don't hesitate to take easy bail-out route back home you had in mind instead of trying to push yourself up the wall in front of you.

But if you do look for them, and if you do try the wall, don't get off your bike, whatever you do.

But if the damned hill is just too hard for you in your broken-down state -- OK, get off. And if you do, take a look around at all the stuff you'd miss if you were just grinding your way up the grade. When you get back on your bike, and finally hit the top of the hill, you'll be amazed that you ever thought it was hard. Don't tell anyone it was.

berkeley, east bay