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The Gear
By David Teall
 I needed a new, old-style bottom-bracket
to maintain my obsolete friction-shift drivetrain in working order. It was either that, or
buy one of the new low profile bottom-brackets and everything else I'd need for the
conversion to 8-speed, 130-millimeter rear spacing, indexed derailleur,
finger-touch-at-the-brake-lever shifting. I was at a bike shop that could order me an
old-style bottom-bracket. I decided that would be plan B. The aforementioned conversion
would be plan Z.
I started driving home the back way,
taking roads I more frequently pedal. A stiff breeze blew across newly harvested fields,
ushering in the season. An occasional hardwood grove, a few scattered farm buildings, a
far-off water tower, and a distant grain elevator were the only obstacles to a horizontal horizon. It was ironic that marketing
geniuses and engineered obsolescence had forced me to even contemplate the purchase of an
16-speed component group here, where the land is so flat that 10 speeds are superfluous!
Here, on the same roads Gary Fixed-Gear Dauer and his merry band of direct drive Wheelmen
once trained in the off-season. What, I thought, would Dauer (who left the sport about the
time rear dropouts were expanded to accept 6-speed spacing) think of this?
Gary Dauer was one of the original
Wheelmen. Even though he abandoned the sport in the early 80's, his legacy lives on. He
did, in fact, race and win federation time trials in a fixed gear. Legend now has it that
Gary also rode a fixed gear in federation mass-start races. I'm not sure about that.
The first time I saw Gary at a
federation race he was sitting on the tailgate of his 68 Datsun pickup lacing up his
shoes. Full beard, bushy black hair, and the ubiquitous white Campagnolo cap worn brim
back, he was wearing the yellow, black, and white Paramount jersey that matched his
Schwinn Paramount road bike, a chameleon-like machine that could appear fixed-gear or with
derailleurs, fendered, and either with or without racks. I walked over to his bike and
instantly noticed the elegant simplicity of a chain run around a single chainwheel and
rear cog. When I naively asked if he was going to race in a fixed gear, Gary peered at me
over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, reached down to touch the crankarm with his index
finger, and sent the crankset spinning--WHIZZzzzz-z-z... a single freewheel.
Gary believed in the gear. Not for
its simplicity and elegance alone, nor solely for its significant weight savings (though
Gary was a charter member of that crazed pre-aerodynamic cult that drilled holes in
everything until their precious bicycle components looked like Swiss cheese). Nor was it
merely a bold statement of cycling prowess, though it did add to Gary's presence in the
peloton and has certainly helped maintain the growing Dauer legend. No; Gary believed--not
in a single gear--but in the gear. He was convinced that no matter how a race played out,
tactically or dramatically, sooner or later his success would come down to how well he
could turn the crankset he had just playfully sent spinning. He had demonstrated time and
again in club races the ability to sit up and spin in the wake of big gear mashers.
Eventually the 53x14's would bog down; and then, as soon as the sprinters were badly
positioned at the front, Gary would attack. Alone. In the gear.
Gary, like many early Wheelmen, made
the weekly trip up I-75 to Exit 59, Eight Mile to Mound, Mound to Outer Drive and the
entrance of Derby Hill, a Detroit City Park with a soapbox derby hill and an asymmetrical
260-some-meter cement bicycle track. Dorais Velodrome, where every fair-weather Tuesday
night Mike Walden, owner of Mike Walden's Continental Bike Shop and head coach of the
Wolverines, led his charges in a tightly orchestrated, precisely calculated speed workout.
This is where Gary and the rest (author included) got the gear.
Getting the gear was not a matter of
stumbling into a comfortable gear that worked for you after a few Tuesdays of trial and
error at Dorais and then calling it your own. Walden selected the gear for you--that is if
you were worthy of selection. You needed to show some promise first, catch Mike's
attention. Then, when and if he tapped your shoulder, it became a rite of passage. Mike
had noticed. You had arrived.
It started with a gear roll-out.
"Forget that gear chart," Mike would say. "Not accurate enough." He
wasn't kidding. He and his top riders sometimes selected and fine-tune perfected the gear
through changes in tire profile. Regular gear adjustments, as anybody who visited the
infield during a busy track event knew, were made using a 5-millimeter hex wrench and a
chainwheel key, not with a rear cog remover. Once Mike was satisfied with the initial gear
choice, precisely measured in feet and inches, he walked you through your approach to step
two: a flying kilo attempt. It had to be all-out, everything you had, or it wouldn't be an
accurate measure. "Don't waste time and energy with a big windup, stay at the very
top, get it rolling, and use the banking." Since Dorais was not a 333-meter track and
the kilo start was in the middle of turn four, you had to begin your descent in turn two
and be half-way to the bottom by turn three. Walden would stand in the infield near the
homestretch, watch every stroke, raise the stopwatch to eye-level each lap, call out
splits, shout out encouragement, take notes, and when it was over, walk away like Lou
Holtz after an Air Force touchdown. There would be a handful of these rituals before the
start of the regular Tuesday night workout. Walden wouldn't say anything about any of them
until the end of the night. Then you could wait in line, watch the sun set, and hear what
the coach of champions had to say.
The regular workouts began with the
same format every Tuesday. Everybody got off their bikes and formed a circle in the
infield grass. Walden would have one of his lieutenants enter the ring of cyclists and
lead about 10 minutes worth of calisthenics, isometrics, and stretches. Then everybody
mounted up for the warmup. Walden believed that if you weren't riding at race pace, then
you were wasting your time. His on-the-bike warmup was no exception. Once everybody got
clipped in, cinched up, and rolling in a single-file formation behind the lieutenant at
the bottom of the track, Walden got out his battery-powered megaphone and commanded
everyone to accelerate in unison. The idea was to accelerate up to race pace for 60
seconds, back off for 30 seconds, and repeat that sequence three times without breaking
formation. The problem was that the lieutenant's pace was an all-out sprint for some, and
Walden's vision of a warmup with the precision of a military march was never realized, at
least not in my presence.
As soon as the warmup was over, we
all lined up at the start/finish line, newcomers up front. Time for some schooling, Bike
Handling 201. Walden's favorite lesson was on the difference between "steering"
and "turning." You must steer up the track, that is you have to twist the
handlebars as if you were steering a 4-wheeler and keep your bike as upright as possible.
If you don't learn to steer up the track, you risk dragging your right pedal in the
concrete, the obvious consequence of which a gregarious Walden described in graphic
detail. Mike would look over the ranks to see if any of the newcomers required further
indoctrination into the subtleties of negotiating the steep banking. Once he was satisfied
that everyone was ready to fly solo above the white line, he sent us off rolling at the
bottom a in single file, two bike-lengths apart. Then the lieutenant would lead everybody
in something like a snake dance, up and down the track, while Walden barked at us through
the megaphone: "Steer up! Turn down! Maintain two bike-lengths! Steer up! Turn down!
Steer up! Turn down!" After a few laps the lieutenant would lay down a more difficult
path for all to follow, nearly straight up, and then back down the steepest parts of the
track. When the snake dance was finished we were told to bunch up for the start of the
miss-and-out.
Since attendance for each rider
enrolled in Walden's "program" was mandatory, and most everyone who donned a
Wolverine Schwinn jersey at the races showed up anyway, the miss-and-out was usually long,
intense, and, in my opinion, worth the 70-mile drive by itself. There were on occasions a
few surprises, but usually the miss-and-out came down to the same handful of riders, with
all previously excused riders watching the outcome. The miss-and-out marked the end of the
regular program. What we did from there depended on the season and specific needs of
individual riders. The optional workout had to meet one criterion: speed. There were
handicaps, team pursuits, madisons, point races, match sprints, and I don't remember what
all else. When your group was done, you got off the track. Walden would not allow any
rolling around, and he would chase anybody off the track who wanted to log in a few miles
at the end of the night. On-the-track had to be a mind-set; remember, you're in the gear.
Besides, it's time to talk to the coach.
Walden loved to talk cycling so much that he couldn't talk about a rider's flying kilo
without telling at least one anecdote along the way about how Roger Young once did this or
the time when Jeff Pierce did that. He had dozens of 'em--anecdotes and champion
riders--right up through Frankie Andreau, who, by the way, grew up at Dorais starting out
on a 24-inch-wheel track bike. I remember waiting patiently through all the parley for my
turn with coach. "What did you think of my kilo, Mike?" I finally got to ask.
Let me see you on your bike,"
Mike said. "You two, hold Teall up." Mike instructed two ward and backwards for
the Walden eye. He had me stop at the very bottom of my stroke. Then he grabbed a frame
pump, balanced the pump head between his middle finger and thumb with the pump centered
behind my kneecap, and used it as a makeshift plum bob to make some eye-ball measurement
of I don't know what. "Move your seat rails back an inch and a half." I did so.
Then we repeated the process. "That's better," Mike said.
Fine, I thought, he moved my seat. Does this make my flying kilo null and void? Will I
have to wait 'til next week to hear about my gear?
"What about my kilo,
Mike?" I asked. "What about my gear?"
"Too small, you're just
spinning. There's no rhythm, no push; it's all spin. You need to put your ass into
it!" By the time he finished, that big bear-of-a-man was really yelling at me. I felt
like crawling across the track and hiding in the weeds behind the top of turn two. Then
Mike changed to a more conciliatory tone. "Come back next week with four to six more
inches and we'll have another look."
Finding the gear, I would later learn, would be an unending quest. When I returned to the
track each Tuesday for more of Walden's wisdom, rhythm became correlative to the gear. In
rhythm while in the gear equaled maximum effort. You had to be going all out in the gear
and in rhythm. I never really got there. "Too small a gear" was a constant
criticism I received from Mike. I guess I never did put enough "ass into it."
By allowing Dauer, Mark Tyson, Chuck
Conner, and the rest to take part in Wolverine workouts and thereby sharing his abundant
knowledge of the sport, Walden gave the fledgling MVW a foundation based on sound training
principles. The early MVW propaganda listed Dauer and Conner as Amateur Bicycle League of
America coaches (the ABLA was then the governing body of competitive cycling in The United
States). Without a track in our backyard, it may have been difficult the founding fathers
to use the WSC as an archetype. Some of their original tenants do, however, appear to be
based on the gear. The Equinox and Aprils were fixed-gear events through the 70's,
awarding prizes only to the top direct-drive finishers. (Derailleurs could beg for soup
and hot chocolate.) Fixed-gear off-season training was nearly universal right up to the
early 80's. And there was a 76-inch gear limit for the first two Thursday night races of
the season and a knee-busting 81-inch limit for races three and four. The early season
gear limits gradually lost support when the old guard faded away. They died at the annual
meeting for the '83 season in spite of my valiant defense.
As years went by and a few new MVW
faces started making the drive north, Walden got into a habit of "reminding" us
what a privilege it was for us to take part in what was after all a Wolverine Schwinn Club
event. Several years later (1988 to be exact) that "reminder" became an
ultimatum, after which John Walter and I, diehard trackies that we were, sojourned a
season with the WSC. I can't blame Mike. The track was a precious resource, a gift from
the Chrysler Corporation built on land it donated adjacent to its gigantic Mound Road
Assembly Plant. It's been 5 years since I was last at Dorais. The track was in pretty bad
shape then, blacktop patches, broken glass, weeds were taking over the infield. There were
no longer any MVW trackies driving to Detroit or Northbrook, Illinois of Tuesdays and
Kenosha, Wisconsin or Indianapolis on Fridays. Nor has there been any since. Sadder still,
Mike Walden passed away last year.
My back-way drive home changed from
desolate farm country to scattered single-family dwellings, newly planted on the edges of
fields. These gave way to full-blown subdivisions and golf-course condos. It was highway
the rest of the way home. About that bottom-bracket I was so desperate to find: come to
think about it, there's no real rush. It's the off season. I still got my fixed-gear bike.
Next
12/28/09
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