Not the GOAT (Yet)

At this point, I think we can safely say Tadej Pogačar has entered the conversation as one of the greats. Today he completed yet another long solo breakaway to win his second consecutive world championship.

There are plenty of people who have already crowned him the GOAT, but that is crazy. Merckx racked up an astounding 525 wins, exactly five times as many as Pogačar's 105. This recency bias is pretty normal, though.

In baseball, players from more recent times are often celebrated as better than the old timers even if the numbers don't support it. I have heard baseball pundits say, "Ruth played against farmers and plumbers." Sure, the game was different in Ruth's time, which makes direct comparisons difficult, but he absolutely dominated his era and literally changed the way the game was played. In 1920, when Ruth hit 54 home runs, he was the first player in MLB history to reach THIRTY home runs. The next best player that year was George Sisler with only 19 home runs.

Many say Ruth couldn't hit in this era. Maybe. To be truthful, few players can hit in this era. Pitching has never been better. However, if you insist on making this comparison, you have to acknowledge that Ruth rolled out of bed, often hung over (or still drunk) from the night before, and still dominated. Because he could. Why live like a monk when you can eat and drink whatever you want, stay out all night, yet still be great?

In this era the expectations would require Ruth to be in the weight room, eating sensibly and making curfew. And I have little doubt given these modern requirements of the game, he would compete and perhaps even be a dominant force in this era.

Which brings us to the ridiculous notion that Merckx could not compete in this era. Similar views as with Ruth have been voiced: "Eddy raced against farmers and plumbers." Again, give him modern training and nutrition practices, and a carbon fiber super bike, and Eddy would be just fine. Those 525 wins didn't happen by accident.

Even though Pogačar just turned 27, he will never come close to matching Merckx's win total. I think even reaching 200 wins is a stretch. Because today you MUST live like a monk to compete with all the other monks. Eventually this will become too much for him, and I believe he will likely retire quite young.

When he does retire, and the dust settles, maybe we can return to this GOAT talk. For now I will simply appreciate Pogačar, and marvel at the beauty and audaciousness of his long attacks. Like many things in life, like my own individual cycling mortality, I will enjoy it now while it lasts.

Later.

Pelagic Passage

We go to Monterey so often, I am running out of synonyms for "ocean" to use for titles.

Another trip to the coast in the books.

We drank beer:

Walked around and took pictures of stuff:

Had coffee:

Rode along the ocean:

Had more beer:

Had more coffee at a French bakery:

Dealt with a proliferation of every one of these things on the trails:

Saw some otters up close right near shore:

More sightseeing:

And even more beer:

Not pictured: way too much remote interaction with our Nevada real estate agent as we navigated a weird sale. Otherwise, we had a really good time.

Later.

Gravel King

After the success of setting up my very old Mavic wheels tubeless by utilizing Schrader valves, I decided to replace my tires. This was long overdue as they were over seven years old and the rear was pretty bald.

I chose Panaracer GravelKing SS tires mostly because I got them for a song on clearance. I went with the 43mm width, a 3mm increase over my old 40mm tires.

The first GravelKing fit very loosely on the front Mavic rim. I could not get the tire to seat. I ordered more rim tape and started adding layers. Still loose. At four layers of tape I resorted to using an inner tube to at least get one side of the tire seated. Then I pulled the tube, reinstalled the valve and tried again. After a lot of soapy water, profanity and wrestling I finally managed to get it seated with the compressor.

The rear wheel was impossible even with SEVEN layers of rim tape. The bead was ridiculously loose. I finally resorted to fishing my old Teravail front tire out of the trash. Of course it seated right up even though it was over seven years old.

I rode the bike a few times in this configuration, frustrated that I couldn't use both new tires. When I returned home after one ride, I eyed my son's mountain bike hanging in the garage. It's the only other bike left with quick release wheels. Surely the Velocity Blunt 35 rims were too wide for gravel tires, right? To the internet!

The Velocity rims are 35mm external with a 31mm internal width. After consulting various charts and gravel web sites, I determined that 31mm was just on the edge of acceptable for a 43mm tire. I decided to give it a shot.

The tires were still a pain in the ass to seat on the Velocity rims, but at least not impossible. I thought that the tires would look ridiculous on the wide mountain bike rims, but they look pretty normal.

Clearance is a bit tight on the fork, but there's plenty of room in back. At most I think I could run a 45mm up front.

After a few rides, here are my thoughts: wide rims are awesome.

My sample size is still very small, but still, I really don't see any reason to use anything but the widest possible rim on a gravel bike. The change is that dramatic. Going from 19mm to 31mm completely changes how the bike behaves.

With the old rims I was running 43/45 (front/back) PSI just to keep the tires from squirming too much in the corners. When climbing out of the saddle I could still feel the front tire folding over, which was annoying.

Now with the same tires I am at 38/40 and I could probably go even lower. The ride is so much smoother with the added air volume and lower pressure. Cornering is confidence-inspiring with the larger contact patch and no tire squirm. I didn't feel any discernable difference in straight-line speed with the wider rims.

There is a 80 gram weight penalty per rim, and I can feel that a little. It works out to about one-third of a pound of rotating weight, and it's noticeable when climbing or accelerating.

It's been an interesting experiment and another example of how the learning never stops in this weird sport, even if you've been at it for over four decades.

Later.

Vibes

We experienced some coastal vibes on our ride yesterday. Every once in a while the marine layer finds its way deep into the Sacramento Valley in the summer. I did not hate the cool start to the morning.

It definitely made me yearn for the coast a bit. Maybe we should do that.

Later.