A “Hi, I’m Back” Note from Fatty: I loved my Spring Break. I rode a lot, and I’ve got a lot of fun new stuff to talk about. That said, I’m — once again — working on very little sleep today, due to some pressing family stuff. So: today’s post won’t be as riotously hilarious as it might otherwise be. But if you’ll stick with it, you’ll find it does include a rather awesome new video I finished assembling last week.
There’s no reason in the world why cyclists should choose to be either strictly mountain bikers or road cyclists (or track cyclists, or cyclocrossers, or downhillers, or BMX-ers).
Don’t be one or the other. Be both.
Or all twelve. Or — to be more realistic — as many as you have money, time and inclination for. As near as I can tell, there are no bad forms of cycling.
That said, if there must be a debate about which, between road and mountain biking, is the more awesome, mountain bikers do have a compelling argument worth making (and please note that I’m saying “compelling,” not “conclusive” or “winning”):
When you’re mountain biking, you have the choice of ridingtechnicaltrail, or riding trail with greatflow.
For those not really familiar with these terms, “technical” trail is stuff with lots of obstacles and features that demand focus and attention. Roots. Tight turns. Ledges and drops. Trail with “flow,” on the other hand, tends to have terrain changes that happen more slowly, often with beautiful scenery that lets you get immersed in the ride.
Technical trail is intense, challenging you and leaving you exhausted and happy at the end of the ride. Flowing trail is more mellow and leaves you…exhausted and happy at the end of the ride.
And having that option — flow or technical — is magnificent.
The difference in kinds of mountain biking trails came to mind strongly the weekend before last when Lisa and I were in St. George. On one side of the road is Gooseberry, justifiably famous as one of the best technical trails in America.
On the other side of the road is Little Creek, which is far less famous than its neighbor, but is — in my opinion — every bit as fantastic of trail as Gooseberry.
Because Little Creek has incredible flow. It’s a good-sized loop with a number of beautiful add-on detour trails. All with incredible views, winding singletrack and rolling sandstone.
I think Lisa, Kenny, Heather, Bob (not this one), Brad (not this one), and Dwight would all agree: you’d be hard-pressed to pick a better place to kick off your mountain biking season.
We rode for five hours — all five of which I recorded on helmetcam. For your convenience, however, I have condensed it into the following three minute video.
Seriously, there’s no good argument to not be both a mountain and road cyclist. And if you are a pure roadie, I’d like to suggest that a flowing trail like Little Creek makes an excellent case for checking out a bike with fat tires.
After work today, The Runner and I are headed to Saint George. We are going there to road bike and mountain bike a lot, and even to run a little bit.
Mostly, though, we are going there because we are sick of wearing tights.
The Anti-Tights Manifesto
It has been a long, cold winter, and I am sick of it (including the fact that it snowed here most of yesterday and continues to flurry today).
Sure, I’ve actually gotten out on my bike quite a bit, but only because I have been willing to layer up. Shorts. Wool base layer. Long sleeve jersey. Jacket. Beanie. Thinsulate gloves under heavy gloves. Wool socks. Neoprene shoe covers.
And, of course, tights.
How I have grown to hate wearing tights.
Oh, I know I shouldn’t. I should be grateful for tights, and the way they make it possible for me to go out riding even when it’s ridiculously cold out. And the truth is, a good modern pair of tights — like my Bontrager RL Windfronts (full disclosure: I paid retail for these at a local bike shop — no blog-related hijynx here) — allow me to even be reasonably comfortable.
But I still hate wearing tights.
Oh, I’m fine with them at the beginning of the winter. I even like the feeling that I’m somehow cheating the winter.
But as the winter drags on, the tights come to represent the defeat of one of the things I love the very most about road cycling: the feeling of flight.
If you love road riding, you know what I mean.
When you’re wearing nothing but shorts, a jersey, and low-cut socks, riding a road bike feels as close to flying as you can while still being on the ground. You’re incredibly light. Your clothes are so thin and close-fitting that they may as well not be there. You feel the wind on your arms, face and legs (one of the top three reasons to shave your legs, by the way).
With tights on, all of that’s gone. You’re warm, sure, but your isolated from the air around you. You’re riding, sure, but every turn of the cranks is just a little more binding, a little less free, than it is in the Summer.
And while the weight gain that comes with tights (and everything else, but I choose to pick on tights) is honestly not all that much, it’s enough. You feel heavier. Sluggish.
It’s better than not being on a bike at all. But if I were to create a spectrum with riding rollers at one end and riding in shorts, no socks, and a sleeveless jersey at the other, riding in tights would be distressingly close to riding the rollers.
So, by this time of the year, if it’s even remotely close to warm enough, I leave the tights off for the ride. Even though my legs immediately feel the painful bite of the wind, I’m glad to feel that bite.
How to Control the Weather
As I believe I’ve mentioned, we’re headed to St. George for the weekend. Through some magic of Utah-ness, this three hour drive practically guarantees a 15-degree-warmer climate.
And I have not packed tights. Nor has The Runner.
We are absolutely committed to a weekend of sun. Of riding in shorts. Sans tights.
It’s April. Time for some warm days.
Tights are not an option.
PS: Next week is Spring Break for my kids. I’m going to take a break from this blog for that week too, to spend more time with them, as well as to hopefully finish a blog-related project I’ve been working on for months. I’ll be back April 12.
The first is no surprise to anyone who’s been following my blog for a good long time: my blog is five years old today. Which means that — at an average of four posts per week, each an average of two typewritten pages long, I have now written approximately 2080 pages for this blog.
Even when you factor in the fact that only 4% of it is any good, that’s still 83 pages of stuff worth reading.
Which, I guess, is not all that much good stuff to write over the course of four years.
Suddenly, I’m finding myself wishing I hadn’t done that particular bit of math.
Luckily for me, there are some other people who haven’t done that math either, because they probably would have reconsidered and then I wouldn’t be able to reveal my second big piece of news, which I — for contractual reasons that will shortly become clear — am going to simply reprint in its entirety below:
Competitor Group Announces Acquisition of FatCyclist.com Includes Rights to Back Catalog, Future Content
The Competitor Group (CGI), the leading media and event company in the endurance sports industry, today announced the acquisition of FatCyclist.com, expanding and solidifying its cycling and triathalon coverage into the rapidly emerging and hotly competitive “online sport satire” arena.
Mitch Thrower, New Media Officer for The Competitor Group, said, “We are pleased today to bring Elden “Fatty” Nelson on board to our increasingly rich and diverse publishing properties. With his large repository of existing content and the moderate likelihood that he will continue — occasionally at least — to write something of at least mediocre entertainment value about cycling or triathalons, we figured we’d better scoop him up before Bicycling magazine did.”
Nelson — or “Fatty” as he likes to call himself in order to give a patina of likeability to what would otherwise be a fairly unlikeable person — will primarily retain the duties he has already given himself — e.g., write his blog, with some posts being re-published in the online versions of VeloNews and Triathalete Magazine.
There will be some differences, however.
“First, we will be un-revealing Fatty’s name,” said Thrower. “With the recent revelation of the name of another cycling blogger nobody had previously heard of, we think it would be wise if we can get everyone to forget the name of the author of FatCyclist.com. To that purpose, we have a group of editors currently scrubbing his site of his name and image, replacing them with circumlocutory remarks and photos of Elvis during his fat years.”
“After everyone’s forgotten who Nelson is — in a couple weeks, we estimate — we’ll shock the world by revealing that Fatty is actually Elden Nelson. And thousands of people will be excited to know that someone they’ve never heard of is in fact someone they’ve never heard of.”
“This will be somehow meaningful,” said Thrower.
The scrubbing of Nelson’s identity, however, will not be the only change to the blog.
“We’re adding a new tagline to Nelson’s blog,” asserted Thrower. “Something like, ‘He’s like BikeSnobNYC, but he’s from Utah!’ Or maybe ‘He’s like BikeSnobNYC, but we promise he won’t say anything our advertisers don’t want him to!’ Our agency creatives are still working on it.”
“Have you seen those drawings he does of crazy ranting cyclists where their jerseys fit so tight that their bellies show?” continued Thrower. “Those crack me up!”
Nelson’s duties will also be expanded into occasional non-fatcyclist.com publishing events. When, for example, Lennard Zinn takes his once-every-seven-years vacation, Nelson will assume his responsibilities.
“Zinn has done a fantastic job of singlehandedly writing the entirety of VeloNews for the past two years,” said Thrower. “Sadly, he has slept an average of 0.001 hours per night during this period, and is beginning to hallucinate badly. We believe that Nelson, as one of three people in the world capable of turning out an entire magazine’s-worth of content in a month, can take his place.”
“We fully anticipate a serious drop in the quality of our technical content, but we figure that if we only do this once every seven years or so people will forgive us. Plus we’ll extend the useful life of Lennard Zinn by an estimated fourteen years.”
As a member of CGI, FatCyclist.com will have access to its deep editorial resources, and will benefit accordingly. Readers will have access to up-to-the-minute race results for both road cycling and their favorite triathalon events. There will also be many, many pictures of bicycles. And of professional cyclists riding bicycles.
All of these pictures will be taken by Graham Watson, who has not slept once in the last nine years.
Finally, Nelson will have the responsibility of writing all new April Fools posts for VeloNews. “We’re very serious cycling journalists, and it’s not easy for us to be funny,” said Thrower. Just check out our pathetic offerings for today. A bike touring site? ASO bought by Disneyland? Contador having a repetitive stress injury due to doing that fingerbang thing all the time? We’re pretty sure Nelson can do better than that,” said Thrower. “And besides, Bike Snob turned us down.”
When reached for comment, Patrick O’Grady said, “Bluster bluster cantankerous blustery outrage,” predictably.
About The Competitor Group
Competitor Group, Inc. (CGI), headquartered in San Diego, CA, is the leading media and event entertainment company dedicated to the endurance sports industry of running, cycling and triathlons. CGI is comprised of the following brands: Competitor Publishing, Elite Racing, Inside Triathlon, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series, Triathlete Magazine, VeloNews and VeloPress. CGI owns and operates 25 national events delivering more than 250,000 professional and amateur participants in 2009. CGI publishes four magazine titles with a combined monthly circulation of approximately 650,000 and plans to launch an endurance community web presence under competitor.com in Q2 2009. Further information about Competitor and its media properties can be found at www.competitor.com.
I can hardly wait to start my new life as a CGI-branded blogger!
Winter is almost over, and I find myself surprised to note that the bike racing season is upon me. I need to lose some weight, and pronto.
Fortunately, I already know what to do: surf the web.
Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, famous cyclists like myself — and, probably, ordinary people like yourself — can quickly and easily lose those extra pounds we picked up over the Winter (of 2004).
All you need to do is learn one (or it may be three) simple, ancient secret tips and a few surprising fat-burning foods, and your weight problems will disappear forever.
Luckily, while these secrets are in fact very very secret, you can unlock their mysteries if you are wise enough to click pretty much any ad on any site (including, to my joy, mine) on the web.
But there’s a problem: the holders of these secrets don’t want to open the doors of flat bellies and eliminating junk food cravings for nothing. No sir. They want money. Which just seems mean.
So, out of spite, I have never clicked on any of these ads. Or if I have, I’m going to pretend like I haven’t, because it seems like they mostly just want me to start buying pills from them, eat a lot of acai berries, and then never ever ever ever leave their website, to the point that they’ll use lots of extremely evil Javascript to keep me there.
Luckily for me, these ads are chock-full of information I can use even if I never click on the ads themselves. And it costs me nothing to investigate, speculate and prognosticate.
No charge. Because I love you.
How to Get a Tiny Belly
Every cyclist would like a tiny belly. And that’s why I was happy to see this ad:
This ad intrigued and excited me for a number of reasons:
I’m excited by the fact that it only takes a single trick to get a tiny belly, though I confess concern at the potentially subjective word “tiny.” What I’d really like is to have no belly at all. Will that require a second trick?
I’m intrigued by the fact that this tip is both old and weird. I like weird and old things. One may even suggest, should one be so inclined, that I am a weird and old thing. I worry, however, about how weird this tip is. For example, while it would be weird for me to have to eat less and exercise more, I think I could cope with that. On the other hand, if the weird old tip were that I have to begin eating a cubic foot of human hair each day, I think I would try to find a tip that is moderately less weird.
I’m curious why this is sometimes referred to as a “trick,” and sometimes as a “tip.” Which is it? Or is it one of each? Because if it’s one of each, it just may be too much to soak in.
The left breast of the woman in the illustration is defying gravity to an absurd, almost spiteful, degree. Do you suppose the weird old tip will help me defy gravity? Because that would help my climbing a lot.
I’m skeptical of the word “bit.” Cut down a bit of my belly? Is that bit measured by weight, or by volume? I’m ok with either, but I’d just like to know. Also, which bit? And is the “cut” in “Cut down” literal? Because I’m just not ready for do-it-yourself liposuction.
Mom’s Secret Diet Exposed
Really, the picture in this ad says it all.
Or at least it says a lot of things. Specifically, it says that this diet is mostly about sucking in your gut for “after” pictures, a technique I wholeheartedly endorse.
But it tells us more. So much more.
It tells us that Mom is going to be angry. Somewhere out there, there’s a person who found out about his Mom’s secret diet. And now he’s gone and exposed it. Well, mister, has it occurred to you that your Mom kept it a secret for a reason? And that maybe she doesn’t appreciate you spreading her secret all over the Internet? Jerk.
It tells us that Mom is going to be really angry. Not only is this guy telling everyone his Mom’s secret, but he’s putting out before-and-after pictures of her stomach, complete with a white arrow in the second photograph that may as well be captioned, “Here’s where it’s obvious she’s sucking her gut in.”
It tells us that Mom is going to be really outrageously angry. I know most mothers are sensitive about their age, so to call this rule she followed “ancient” seems just a bit callous. And also, getting all specific about how much she lost — 21% body fat — is going to make her ashamed to show up at the next meeting of her Bridge club. I can just imagine one of her friends saying, “Oh, Agnes, I didn’t know you had 21% body fat to lose! And you’re so good at sucking in your stomach!”
I guarantee you: someone’s going to be getting a talking to when his Mom sees this ad.
Almost Too Much Information
Really, I just want a single really old tip that will help me lose my belly fat. And so I very nearly panicked when I saw this ad:
Three tips to lose my stomach fat? (I’m just glad they’re all weird, otherwise I would have a hard time accepting them as legitimate.) Another trick (or is it a tip?) to eliminate my junk food cravings? And then FIVE surprising fat-burning foods?
TMI, guys. Tee. Em. Eye. I just can’t wrap my head around what appears to be a grand total of nine fat-reducing ideas in a single ad.
But I’m willing to take a shot.
Three weird tips to lose your stomach fat: I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that these tips are:
Never eat anything but rice cakes and styrofoam.
Inject battery acid into any place where you suspect you might have stomach fat.
Relocate to the moon.
One Trick to Eliminate Junk Food Cravings: This one’s really almost too easy. To eliminate junk food cravings, just keep eating junk food. All the time. Whenever you feel even a teensy urge to eat junk food, seek it out immediately. By never letting a mild interest in food escalate to actual hunger before you rush off to the nearest 7-11, you are guaranteed to never have junk food cravings.
Five Surprising Fat-Burning Foods: Here are five foods that you would be surprised to find are fat-burning. I know I’d certainly be surprised.
Giant Toblerone Bars
Cheese Fondue
Double-Stuf Oreos
Cheesecake
Fiberglass
PS: I have one additional weird tip you might want to try out, just in case these ones don’t work out: Ride your bike a lot, and stop eating before you’re full.
PPS: I know, that was two tips. That’s what made it so weird.
People often ask me, “Elden, how do you find time to write your blog every day? Especially since you are very handsome and famous and have several hundred 8×10 glossy photos to be autographed and mailed out each day.”
Well, what they actually say is, “You have waaaay too much time on your hands,” but I am quite sure that what they really mean is what I have written in the above paragraph.
So: Let me give you a little peek into the very chic and glamourous life I lead, which will also serve to explain why I am writing this post today.
When I Write
What many people don’t realize is that — even though I am very famous and beloved by millions (or, possibly, by fifteen people who clear their cache and reload the page quite frequently — I don’t pay much attention to stats), I still have a full-time job.
That’s right, the blog does not make enough money for me to live on. However, it now pays for my monthly electric bill and my internet service, so things are looking up.
So I generally have two opportunities to write during the day. The first comes early in the morning — I get up around five or so, and work on this blog ’til 6:30, at which point it’s time for me to get the kids moving and off to school.
Sometimes I’ve finished writing my post for the day, sometimes I haven’t — in fact, sometimes I’ve barely started, re-started, discarded the re-start, and then gone back to my original idea or resorted to working on an abandoned post I had given up on during a previous writing session.
If I haven’t finished writing, I have a second chance: lunch hour, during work.
I also generally have a third chance: I can write instead of ride, during whatever riding window I have available during the day (this window is different on different days). But I do not like to use this third chance; if I choose to write about riding instead of getting out and riding, something feels seriously messed up with my priorities.
My Surprisingly Glamourous Life
Today, though, things didn’t go so perfectly for my blog. I had a 5:30am meeting, wherein I mostly listened to other people talk about a position I might be suited for in the newly-acquired company.
Since I hope to remain employed, I found this discussion deeply interesting.
That pretty much took care of my early morning writing time.
Then, upon waking, one of the twins told me she was sick, complaining of a headache and a cough. And she had a fever. Since these are the identical symptoms two of my other kids have — within the past couple weeks — started with a day or two before being diagnosed with Strep, I connected the dots and kept her home, setting up a doctor appointment during my lunch hour for a Strep test.
She does not, by the way, have Strep. Instead, she has what I like to call “a common cold.”
There. Just like that. My two chances to write. Gone.
Almost as if I were subject to the normal interruptions and problems of you normal people.
PS: I did find fifteen minutes to write this whiney little post, though, didn’t I?
