Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer

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Item # VL-30172  ISBN: 9781934030172




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A bike race is like a chess game, a boxing match, and a stampede disguised as a sport, encompassed by a lifestyle, and surrounded by a community on a never-ending road trip to the brink of bankruptcy.

Bike racing? if you want to understand the complexities of this sport, you could pore through a small library on the equipment, training, strategy, race formats, and lifestyle.

Or you can read Roadie.

The world of bike racing reaches well beyon July's race for the yellow jersey. Whether you just watch the Tour or know a Roadie racing in a local criterium, this book unlocks the magic and explains the devotion of racing's faithful participants.

With a keen sense of humor and a lifetime of experience, veteran race announcer Jamie Smith explains every neurotic habit and obsessive practice in this strange and wonderful sport.

You will learn how a Roadie prepares and trains for a race, find out how to identify tactics while standing curbside, discover the importance of drafting and teamwork, decode different race formats such as crits and time trials, and come to appreciate the great lengths to which a true Roadie will go to compete for a modest prize.

More and more of us succumb to the allure of a shiny new road bike every year, and some of us even entertain the idea of entering a race for the first time. Roadie will make a convert of anyone who harbors even the most remote curiosity about the beautiful, engrossing, and extraordinary tough sport that is bicycle racing.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• A Taste of the Good Life
• Riders Ready
• The Bike
• The Lifestyle
• The Training Ride
• Nutrition and the Bonk
• Classroom Sessions
• Drafting and the Breakaway
• The Sprint, the Solo, the
  Combine, and Others
• Crashes
• Supporting Roles
• Race Day
• The System
• Our Sponsors
• Riders Ready
• The Criterium
• The Road Race
• The Individual Time Trial
• The Stage Race
• Podium Finish
• Epilogue

About the Authors

Jamie Smith has announced races in 38 states for audiences ranging from 300,000 spectators in Richmond, VA, to 12 people and 4 head of cattle in Lake Placid, NY (all in the same week). He has devoted the better part of his life to explaining the race action to the friends and families of Roadies everywhere—when he is not racing himself, that is. He lives in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

Illustrator Jef Mallett is the creator of the comic strip Frazz, which is nationally syndicated in 150 newspapers. An avid cyclist and frequent triathlete, Mallett is a columnist for Inside Triathlon and a regular contributor to Velo News.

Roadie: The Misunderstood World of a Bike Racer