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Isn’t it strange how a bicycle — a machine made up of hollow tubes, rubber tires, a chain, and gears — has the ability to cause swooning and lascivious thoughts. And dreams of sprinting from behind a leadout for the finish line or enduring a long slog of a climb for the reward of a descent at speed. Cars and automobilia have the same effect — the E30 BMW M3 or Lancia Delta S4 Group B rally car causes motorheads, at least those like me who love boxy sports cars from the 1980s — to perspire and dream of speeding through a curvy road in autumn, the leaves gold and red and the sunroof (if equipped) open.

But a car, like a bike, is only a tool. And like a tool, it can be misused. My grandfather’s toolshed is filled with implements older than his 85 years, all worn with age and use, but all perfectly still suited for the tasks that they were intended. The BMW M3 that deserves a driver who’ll spin the engine up to its rev limiter on occasion and who will test the tires through an ess-curve is misused if its used as a beater, covered in dents with rusty rocker panels and an engine with an intermittent miss. Same too with the bicycle — a skipping derailleur, a worn chain, tires cut — contribute to the complete machine’s losing its mechanical magic. Just as there’s few things in motoring as fine as a well-executed heel-toe downshift, there’s nothing finer than the metallic clunk of a Campagnolo drivetrain dropping into its next cog, or the raspy whispering snick of the Shimano drivetrain humming along.

Keeping your tools in good working condition should be a paramount concern. However, this is not a call for overjudicious cleaning and maintenance. A bike looks good with some grease on the chainring, it looks good with the residue of a rainy ride on its downtube. So too does the car — an immaculate car is an unused car. Some wear on the edge of the clutch pedal, a leather gearshift and boot worn from a thousand forceful grabs of the hand, a few rock chips on the front airdam from a late-night screamer down a dark road. These are the indications of a well-used and properly-used tool.

And while all machines worth lusting after are also worth lots, it’s best to use these machines as they were intended. Ride that DeRosa SLX with C-Record; drive that BMW M3. Exercise reasonable care. By no means am I urging on abusive practices — unnecessarily driving a RWD car of which only a thousand exist in a driving snowstorm, or riding a valuable (not the same as expensive) bike to the bar for a night of drinking — are unfitting, unbecoming, and bad practices.

Some of us have gotten it in our heads that riding ought to be a daily activity. We live and breathe the sport of cycling - the rationale that every day must spend some time in saddle is an easy jump to make.

The recovery ride follows the day of intervals; the long Sunday slog to the far reaches of the county is followed by a compulsion to ride the bike the following day for half hour, just to open the legs up. The pro rider in the middle of a three week grand tour doesn’t take a day off the bike, even on rest days, because of the potential loss of the fine sheen of fitness. For all us normal human beings, time away from the bike is good time spent.

A day off the bike is another 45 minutes in bed. A day off the bike is a post-work slice of pizza and round of beers, untrampled with the urge to hurry home and get in kit before the sun sets. A day off the bike is a chance to finally finish the New York Review of Books on the train ride home, tired legs healing from the previous day’s efforts.

A day off the bike is reason more to get on the bike the following day. Because while taking a day off is good for the legs, it’s even better for the mind. Good weather in areas where weather is dicier creates an urge to take advantage of the sun and dry roads. As an example, the Midwestern climate, as pleasant as it is from May to October, can border on hellish during the bleak days of February. The rider from such a clime has in the back of her head that six months from the golden beauty of a July day, lays frozen roads, crusted with slush and rimed with salt.

So the prospect of a day off seems like a bad idea: “I’ll just ride to the store. I’ll just do a short recovery ride. Just 45 minutes. That’s all.” Resist that temptation, go for a walk, eat an ice cream cone, and for once, be lazy.

Then go like the dickens the next day.

For some, a tire is a personal choice, while for others, it’s whatever they can find cheapest and run till it dies. For me, a tire should be a balance of things driven my your first priority - rolling resistance, tackiness (or how grippy it is), cornering ability, durability or flat protection. 

Flat protection is my number one priority in a tire, followed by durability and then feel. Actually, all the factors listed above are important — it’s just the order of which is more important than the other. Flats are a scourge and a ride-killer. No one wants to repair a tire far from home nor do they want to be brought down in a race by a “Pfft…”

A good tire is a tire that you don’t think about. One that keeps on truckin’ but that you trust and need not worry about. For the past six years, I’ve placed that trust in Continental’s Gatorksin. It has the order of factors that I’m looking for in a tire. The flat protection, the durability, the tackiness (some find Gatorskins a bit too grippy) and the feel. The other tires riders place in a similar category are Schwalbe’s Marathon, Specialized’s Armadillo and Vittoria’s Randonneur. I’ve not tried the Marathon but the other two I have and while they provide excellent flat protection, their feel and rolling resistance count them out for me. They feel, dead. 

Perhaps paying compliments to a tire may seem silly but it only occurred to me the other day that I hadn’t had to think about my tires in a long while. Say thanks.

In road cycling, the small breakaway is often such a futile, yet admirable, expenditure of energy. Three guys, dangling off the front, giving their all to stay away from the pack, and despite all the sideline cheering and encouraging, are often snapped back up just in time for a field sprint.

The Super Tempo admires deeply those brave souls that risk blowing up and ending their race early in an ill-fated breakaway attempt. And if a rider can make it stick, well, all the better. Cycling’s a sport for risktakers and impulses. And if there’s anything riskier than entering into a race, it’s trying to be the first one across the line by will of a solo or small break effort.

So it was last night I found myself at race three of the well-run Soldier Field Cycling summer series. Spectating and cheering on teammates from the HACT. A good friend of The Super Tempo, Mike Hemme of Courage, spied me by the rails watching the end of the women’s race and asked for some tips to winning a crit. Seems he was interested in putting in a 35 minute hard time-trial type workout and decided to have fun in a criterium. The advice I gave was, “Line up at the front. Go off from the gun; pretend it’s a cyclocross race. If anyone joins up, work with them, but shake off the weak and laggards.”

Hemme’s what we modestly call a strong rider. A Cat. 2 in CX, expert MTB racer, and sport MTB national champion a few years back. But, he’s a 5 on the road, like so many other strong dirt-oriented riders we know. He’s good enough to be sponsored by the Courage squad, but he’s one of the nicer guys I know, so that may have something to do with it.

After an introduction from John Vande Velde, father of Christian, the race was off. And Hemme was off the front, sprinting as if in a ‘cross competition. And that’s where he stayed, joined by several other riders after a few laps, and the incomparable Lou Kuhn a few laps after that. And after several dozen circuits of the course, Hemme came across the line first. An impressive effort and one that is definitely Super Tempo worthy.

Hats off, sir.

“Well, doh!” you might say. There is a discipline one must adhere to, to generate the results you desire. You can train on your own, as many do, reading books and articles from the internet educating yourself on various methods and regimens. At some point however, this can only yield so many results, especially if you’ve never trained with a coach before or are blindly groping in the dark through a process of trial and error trying to find the light switch to brighten up your performance on the  bike.

Coaching comes in different forms now. In the past, this was a much more direct, physical and almost intimate form — the coach was someone you saw face-to-face and who was physically present. With the way technology has progressed and the increasing connectivity that we have to each other, coaching now comes in different forms: a website where workouts are laid out for the week, daily emails to let you know what your workout for the day is, a phone call or two.

Training with a coach makes you accountable. Someone is now watching and watching closely. There are the days when you don’t want to get up and do the day’s work. The coach, while not physically present, is there on your right shoulder beckoning you on in spirit. Get up, get on the bike, do it. 

A good coach may be hard to find. More than being results driven, you want to find a coach that you agree with as a person. The training is besides the point, that’s just work that has to be done. At the core, you need to find a coach you like, and most importantly, a coach you trust. You are putting your body and mind into the hands of another who will shape you. The coach understands your goals and how to achieve based on the way you life your life. A good coach gets you to train smarter with the time you do have — maximum results from minimum time in the saddle.

Knowing that you trust your coach and don’t want to let them down, you get up in the mornings and get the job done.

Cycling is a frustrating sport for so many reasons:

1. The equipment is expensive and fragile. Wheels go out of true, computers break, chains wear out and replacing it all when it’s broken costs a large amount of money. Cycling in America is a rich person’s sport, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

2. Being fast enough to be competitive takes a huge amount of time and dedication, or barring a surfeit of time, painful, structured intervals. Regularly riding 20 hours a week or doing intervals up and down the bike path at 6 a.m. isn’t the most sublime of cycling experiences.

3. From January to November (or March to December if you’re a ‘crosser), our loved ones and non-cycling friends take a backseat to the demands of the bike. Our early morning or evening training sessions, rooms piled high with frames and wheels, dripping lycra hanging from the showerhead, and weekends spent driving 600 miles roundtrip in pursuit of nothing more than bragging rights take a toll.

4. Traveling with bike is a hassle. A duffle full of clothing and spares, a greasy, bulky machine. The runner with his shoes and shorts doesn’t realize how good he has it.

And so on and on.

But the satisfaction and reward of looking back after a hard, long pull into the wind and seeing your riding partners sitting up, shattered, or outsprinting the rest of your breakaway group for the finish, or carving a perfect descent make up for all the annoyances, the horn honks, the angry boyfriends and girlfriends, and depleted bank accounts.

Because no matter how much we tell ourselves and each other how much we hate this sport, more often than not, we crave the moment we roll out the door for the ride.

In a word, hills.

That is what has changed in my riding since moving to the west coast. No longer do I have the flatlands of the midwest to contend with, where being challenged meant time trial efforts, lengthy intervals, using the wind to simulate hills or playing dodge the rollerblader or runner.

Here, the terrain provides the stimuli.

So far, so good. I wake up in the mornings and am jazzed to just ride, let alone train around here. There is a common portion of the route but at the end of a few miles, there are options. Climb a bit and across the big red bridge into Marin. And from there, more options. Up into the headlands, or down into Sausalito, on to Fairfax or Tiburon.

If you decide to forego the bridge, you can climb into the hills in the Presidio and up and up and up. Down a bit, and into Sea Cliff where the mansions and money live. The Mexican gardeners lined up on both sides with their trucks about to start their day. I nod as I grunt up the climb and to the top. 

Like the slowness of creation and quickness of destruction, the lengthy climb is rewarded by a fast descent and the smell of the ocean is ripe and welcome. It reveals itself around the curve and invigorates you briefly before you head into the park surrounded by greenery. 

There are moments where enjoying the sights actually warrant usage. 

After riding solo for most of the ride, you are joined by others. Commuters, messengers and riders like you, riding hard, riding tempo.

Justin Spinelli, proprietor of Svelte Cycles, at the young age of 30, almost 31, has lived The Super Tempo lifestyle since taking up the sport of cycling as a teen. Natural talent led him to a career first with the NECSA/Richard Sachs squad, then Team Mercury, once a powerhouse in the US criterium circuit (this writer remembers seeing Floyd Landis and the rest of the Mercury team tearing up the Ault Park Crit Series back in the late ’90s.)

Eventually landing on the legendary Saeco team based in Italy, Spinelli raced the Giro d’Italia at the age of 22, before coming home to Navigators, where he raced for a bit before burning out and quitting cyclist in lieu of finishing a degree in industrial design. We’ve all been to that dark place where we’ve contemplated quitting bikes, but if we do, we come back and so did Spinelli, who is now racing ‘cross with Richard Sachs and road with Kelly Benefit Strategies.

Pez Cycling News has an outright fascinating profile of Justin, detailing in his words his trip from amateur to pro, to retired racer, and back. While most of us have no realistic aspirations of entry into the pro peloton, we dream of what it must be like to racing in a field of 200, streaking toward Paris or Rome at 35 MPH. We buy the bikes, wear the kit, train and race so that we see what we’re made up of, and see how we stack up against our peers and friends. Casual enthusiast to Cat. 1, we’re all entranced with the machinery of cycling and know full well how bad a steep grade hurts.

Reading ride reports from Spinelli’s blog shows that he knows the way of The Super Tempo. This one from a trip with the Rapha Continental boys shows he can rides with as much passion for the purity of the sport as he does for the fire of competition.

People tend to think of sponsors as just names and indecipherable logos that adorn a team’s kit from a distance never to be seen unless a racer has their podium photo finish.

Sponsors are a lot more than just organizations, businesses or individuals that seek to gain some sort of marketing exposure — these are people who believe in cycling, as a sport and as an endeavour that is healthy and good for a person. I truly do believe that at its essence, this is what a sponsorship is about and vice versa — the team believes in the product that they’re displaying and wearing, day in and day out. 

Sure, at the Pro team level, riders and racers may not care as much about who the sponsors are as opposed to a monetary value but there are plenty of domestic teams who are backed by people who think gosh, cycling is good.

At the end of 2006, I helped start a small cycling team alongside some of the best people one could ask for. They know who they are. Together, we ventured forth and garnered sponsors — local small businesses whose product we liked and thought might be interested in sponsoring a small local cycling team. Surprisingly, we found that most, if not all, were amenable and signed on. It’s a commitment that not many would back given cycling is still an odd child in the grand scheme of American sport.

The team is moving ever forward, backed by the same sponsors and with new ones for 2008. This is commitment.

A dear comrade, Mr. Ben Popper, who races for HRS-Rock Lobster, recently posted a photo of a care package that Paul Sadoff, owner and operator of Rock Lobster sent him. It’s from a new sponsor, Bob’s Red Mill (whose products are ace). Of the photo, Mr. Jonathan Fairman — whose attitude I’m fond of — racer and co-operator of Courage, posted the following:

I love to see companies like Bob’s Red Mill get involved in cycling. We should all make note of such a commitment to our sport when we make purchasing decision. Also, never be afraid to contact a company and thank them for supporting cycling. Between the economy and the general public’s take on the state of cycling it is not an easy to bring in outside sponsors. Eat up! 

This is what we’re talking about when we talk about sponsorship.

Today it finally felt like summer while out on the training ride. A stop to stretch at the turnaround point and sweat poured out from under my cycling cap onto my shoes and into my eyes. Sand and dead gnats clinged to my calves and I reminded myself that my legs were due for a shave.

Here in the Midwest, we have three months of the heat until the kneewarmers and serious embrocation come out. A short window of time to get a nice cyclist’s tan, the mark of pride that separates us from the sad folks who choose not to cycle.

Sometimes these summer mornings have a slight chill to them, cool enough to necessitate arm warmers, but not enough to cover the knees. Those days call for a lighter coat of embrocation, without the capsican and heat, that an icy day spent racing ‘cross or doing base miles demands. Mad Alchemy in tandem with Embrocation Cycling Journal has just come out with Mangocation. It’s summer love in a jar that keeps the skin supple and provides a modicum of protection from the elements.

I think I’m in need of a jar.