Vinnie Tortorich

I was 18 years old and a freshman on a Division I college football team. There’s only so many of these Division I schools in the country. So you have thousands and thousands of high schools that feed to these Division I schools. They get the best of the best. To be honest, I don’t know why I was chosen. Being that age and hanging around athletes who are so much better than you, fitting in is important. I watched the guys in the upper classes with a keen eye. I didn’t want to stand out unless it was for what I did on the football field. As I watched their habits, I noted they were no different than me. What am I referring to? Superstitions.

The guy to the right of me would knock on his locker three times before he opened it – every time. The guy to the left of me sat in his locker and tore athletic tape into strips, meticulously taping one finger to the other. It’s a practice players generally use when a finger is broken. This guy’s finger was no longer broken, but he continued the practice. I was no different. I had my own share of behaviors. For instance, there was a cleat company called Spot Bilt. I would never wears those shoes. When I was 13, I wore those and broke my femur in three places. I wore a body cast in bed for eight weeks. It couldn’t have been because I was playing a brutal sport. It had to be the curse of the new shoes.

Another one of my superstitions was in my senior year of high school. After we won our first game that season, I forgot to bring my practice uniform home to wash it. The soiled clothes had to be the good luck. We went 9-0 that year, only losing the last game. I never washed my uniform. It was so filthy that it could almost stand up by itself. It stunk like you wouldn’t believe. Yet I wore it every day to practice like a badge of honor. Smell or not, we were winning games. I told you that to tell you this. I later learned that no matter how many times you wash lycra, it still smells. Why? The fiber somehow hangs on to bacteria, and it never gets washed all out. I know many hardcore cyclists and triathletes who throw out lycra shorts, polyester cycling jerseys and women’s jog bras just because it smells. These products still have plenty of life left. This is expensive stuff we are just throwing away. I figured out a cure for this years ago. It could possibly save you hundreds of dollars a year. I use a product not meant for athletes at all to remedy the problem of smelly lycra. It’s actually a pet product meant to take the urine smell out of carpets and rugs where dogs may have had accidents. The product is called Nature’s Miracle.

There are two ways to use it. The first and most effective way is to get a three to five gallon container or bucket, and pour a gallon of Nature’s Miracle in. If you have a small amount of lycra to cure, just dump it into the gallon of solution and let it sit for 24 hours. If you have a larger volume of lycra, you can add a half gallon of water and let it sit 24 hours. After this period ends, wash as usual. Problem solved. The second solution is to dump two cups of Nature’s Miracle into each wash along with normal detergent. Just be aware that this process can become expensive. Keep in mind, if you’re not being invited to Saturday group rides anymore, you may want to pick up some Nature’s Miracle at the local pet store.

As any reader of my blog knows, I’ve just spent the past weekend crewing for a buddy of mine in an ultra bicycle race in Utah. The race is called the Hoodoo 500. It’s put on by Planet Ultra, which is owned by my friend Debbie Bowling. She’s been in and around the ultra game for years. She knows how to put on a world-class event.

For those of you in my reading audience who are not familiar with ultra-style events, let me give you a quick explanation. Ultra means any running or cycling event that goes beyond what any sane person would do.

I’m a fan of this type of athleticism. I compete as often as possible in these events. When I’m not competing, I try to contribute by crewing for a friend in the event. Again, for the uninitiated, these events go on for way past 24 hours in most cases. It’s necessary for a cyclist or runner to have a chase vehicle with crew members who can hand food and water as the participant runs or cycles.

So that’s what I spent my time doing this weekend, crewing for my friend David Holt in southern Utah.

I told you that to tell you this. The Planet Ultra Hoodoo 500 offers plenty to love. You can sign up for it close to the event time. In some races, you must put up your money and sign up several months ahead of time, not knowing if you will even be available at the time.

The event also has a unique voyager class. This is a solo division, but the rider has no crew following and must fend for themselves.

One of the things most people love about this event is that the pre-race meeting the night before is very short. I timed the event from when Debbie said her first words until she concluded with, “I hope everyone has a good race.” It lasted 19 minutes. This allowed racers and crew to put the final preparations together. We also had a good night of sleep before the race started Saturday morning.

As you can imagine, the race course was absolutely beautiful and scenic, offering mountains, bluffs and hoodoos. The scenery is so amazing, cameras never seem to fully capture it.

I love this race and may be back as a crew member or competitor in the near future.

Now for the bad. The only words I can come up with are bad ass. And by that, I mean David Holt, Joel Sothern and Dave Elsberry. Let me explain what these three men did. David Holt, my good friend who I was crewing for, won the event out-right. At 58, he didn’t just win his age group. He beat kids half his age. Joel Sothern, 53, won the Voyager class out-right, beating people half his age. And Dave Elsberry, 59, came in third place, behind Holt. These men prove that age does not matter.

I had breakfast with all three of them this morning. I think Joel and I will start training together. I hope so, he seems like a pretty cool guy.

Now for the ugly. From what I can tell, the people of Utah, for the most part, are idiots. At the very least, they hate cyclists.

They all seem to drive big pickup trucks with diesel engines. They will purposely pull up to a cyclist, let off of the pedal and then punch it to blow a cloud of diesel smoke at the cyclist. They all seem to get as close as they can to the cyclists to let them know they’re not welcome. And then the oddest thing I’ve ever seen, they actually sit on their horns when driving in the opposite direction to let cyclists know they’re not happy to see them.

Then again, I would be pissed off too if I knew I was headed home to eight wives.

I grew up in a painfully middle-class family. Both of my parents were school teachers. Getting a good education and going off to college meant everything to them. So I obliged. Sometimes I think education is the worst thing that ever happened to me. But I digress.

I went to a much better school than I could have ever afforded. Generally, kids who come from middle income families go to state universities. In my case, that would have meant LSU. But I had a talent that colleges love. I had the ability to find and catch the guy with the football in his hand and annihilate him. Therefore, I got a scholarship to Tulane University.

Once I graduated from Tulane with a degree in education, I found myself smack dab in the middle of downtown New Orleans, the home of some very wealthy, blue-blood oil money types. It was back in the day before every soccer mommy who dropped their kids off at preschool and needed something to do during the day set out to be a personal trainer. Back then, trainers were few and far between. I guess you can say I was in the first group of fitness trainers.

I learned a lot from these folks. They taught me about the finer things in life. I went to operas, symphonies, art exhibits, fine restaurants and even traveled with them.

I learned something else from them. When you have money and leisure time, you don’t like to wait for anything. You want things to happen instantly. That’s where I first came up with the term Diet Coke Diet.

I’m not talking about the stuff sold by Coca-Cola. I’m talking about the white powder that shows up in a little baggy. Some of these socialites who wore a size 2 wanted to wear a size 1. If they wore a 1, they wanted to wear a 0. Hell, why work for it when you can just shove a little coke up your nose.They would do this all day, until they needed to sleep. Then they had a drug for that. So it was a vicious cycle.

I hate to sound like Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane but c’mon!

I told you that to tell you this. There’s another coke out there. A coke that probably does more harm, and it’s not a white powder, it’s a dark liquid. I’m talking about Diet Coke and Coke Zero. By the way, I don’t know the difference between the two.

Here’s what I do know. When my clients ask if they have to stop drinking diet soft drinks, I say yes. They think this is not fair. What do you mean not fair? What about before Coke was invented? You think the people in the 1800s said it was unfair it wasn’t invented yet? The point is, you don’t need it to live.

The bigger point is not how bad this product is. It’s the fact that some people think if you drink it in diet form it’s alright for you. So they drink more of it.

I had a theory about diet soft drinks back in the 1980s. Artificial sweeteners can be thrown into the same group. In your liver, it will react to it the same way it reacts to sugar. It can and will cause a glycogen spike. In the 1980s I had no way of substantiating this because I’m not biochemist.

In recent years, I’ve read many articles that agree with my old theory. Not only are diet soft drinks bad for you, these products can aid in keeping you fat. If you need suggestions on beverages to drink, try black coffee. If you have a hypertension or high blood pressure problem, you may want to stay away from it. But in that case, you’d want to stay away from Diet Coke also. Try fresh brewed tea. Before you ask me if black, green or white are OK, I’ll tell you now that they’re all fine. And then there’s my favorite: water.

I make this point with my clients all the time. Everybody wants to know the one thing they can eat or drink with total impunity. It doesn’t exist. Enjoy life.

About two weeks ago I took a mini vacation. It was three days with my friend David, his wife, Susan, and my girlfriend, Serena. The time off meant a lot to me. I’ve literally been working seven days straight since the beginning of the year. When Serena and her daughter took their real vacation to Maine, I had too much work going on to just walk away.

My vacation was going to include running, cycling, hiking and as many massages and cheeseburgers I could fit in. It was all going great until the second day.

I was cruising down St. Mary’s Road. There was about a six percent grade going downhill. Cyclists can easily pick up 40-45 mile an hour pace there. It was a short tunnel, and as I approached it, I realized what I had already known from all the time I spent skiing up there. No matter how close I got to the wall of the tunnel, there would be very little bailout room if a car came to close.

So I slowed my bike to about 25 as I entered. As I heard a car coming up behind me, I squeezed even tighter against the wall.

The white Ford Expedition that passed me about a second later came so close that if I or the driver flinched at any moment I would have been crushed between the behemoth of a vehicle and the wall of the tunnel.

As the three-plus ton vehicle went passed me, I read the license plate. It said “Papa Ryd.” I continued down the mountain following the vehicle into town.

When I got to Mammoth, appearing in the passenger window was an older gentleman. He was close to 70 years old, and was with his wife and several friends.

I quickly changed my attitude and realized the old man probably didn’t see me in the tunnel. I then headed toward the condo.

Not long after, a white flash flew in front of me. It was Papa Ryd again. He turned to nab a parking spot for the Bluesapalooza festival that was going on.

Papa’s exploits caused me to have to do a front wheel stand on my bike to stop in time and avoid hitting his vehicle in a T-bone fashion. That same move a week earlier by a different motorist and different cyclist put my friend in the hospital with a broken hip and elbow. I simply got lucky.

I then pulled around to the passenger side as the party exited the Expedition. I mentioned to him that he almost killed me twice within the last five minutes.

This old geezer replied, and I quote (his words, not mine), “Fuck you, I was trying to hit you, you asshole.”

I replied, “You may be right. I may be an asshole. But why did you try to hit me?”

He said it was because my presence on the road was illegal.

I told you that to tell you this. What Papa Ryd was referring to is the fact that Mammoth has a pedestrian trail that parallels the road I was on. That road is meant for cyclists, joggers, walkers, skaters and other non-motorized vehicles.

Generally, faster cyclists won’t take those trails because they’re littered with kids weaving in and out. It would be unsafe to go 40-plus miles an hour in those conditions.

The point is this: Even though a bike path may be provided, it doesn’t make the road illegal to ride on. I have news for Papa Ryd and every other jerk who ever tried to hit me or any other cyclist in the name of teaching us a lesson: Bicycles have been around a lot longer than cars. Get over yourself.

As for how my conversation ended with Papa Ryd, I just turned and rode away. Let’s face it, you can’t teach an old jackass new tricks.

A few days ago I was riding bikes with my buddy Steve, and we got into a conversation about the most grueling sporting event on the planet.

We threw things out like climbing Mount Everest and such. Let’s face it, people have made it to the top of that peak with one leg and blind. Some have gotten to the top and skied down to the bottom.

Not to water down these accomplishments, but I know climbers who are not even as good as I am make it. And trust me, I’m not a great climber.

We tossed around Charlie Engel and the Running the Sahara film. That certainly was no easy feat.

We also threw out the adventure race Raid Gauloises. This list went on and on.

At the end of the day, we decided that the toughest event on the planet was the RAAM, which stands for Race Across America.

Why did we decide this was the grand daddy of all races? Competitors come from around the world to race across the continent of North America, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic (roughly 3,000 miles), in a non-stop race.

The competitors generally stay on the bikes 22 out of every 24 hours. They sleep for two hours and get right back on the bike. The winner is sure to come in within nine days. There is a 12-day cut-off. The pace and the lack of sleep is maddening.

I told you that to tell you this. Earlier this week I wrote a blog about my close friend and fellow competitor David Holt. As a matter of fact, I will be crewing for him in a 500-mile race in Utah known as the Hoodoo 500.

You can keep track of us on this Web site where I will be blogging (VinnieBlog.com) and tweeting (twitter.com/VinnieTortorich) as much as I can, though my first priority will be keeping David on the road.

I crewed for David two years ago in the Race Across America (RAMM), where he suffered one of his few DNFs (did not finish).

I had never seen a person so prepared for a race. Something that had never happened before, happened around the 600-mile mark. David started to get saddle sores. He was basically wearing the skin from his body.

It was my job, being one of his closer friends on the crew, to dress these injuries.

The first time, they didn’t look so bad. But I also realized that he had 2,400 more miles to finish. I wondered how we would get him there.

One of my ideas was to put two pairs of shorts on him, something I had done myself in 24-hour mountain bike racing when a similar problem happened. Let’s face it, finishing a 24-hour race is a lot easier than finishing a nine or ten day race.

The second time I dressed his sores, he had two silver-dollar round spots of skin, as if someone sanded right through it. I no longer wondered how David would make it to the finish line. I wondered how he could make it another mile, or even a pedal stroke. I watched him go another 200 miles (the next 11 hours), mostly standing up off the saddle to pedal.

I had never seen such a human feat in my life. Once again, I had to dress his wounds. He was at 900 miles at this point. When I took the old bandages off, what I saw shocked me. I was looking at raw muscle fiber. It was being pulverized as if a meat clever had been taken to it. As I re-dressed the injuries, David screamed in agony. I did everything I could to fight back my own tears. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how bad it was.

David climbed back on the bike again. He went up an 11,000-foot peak, mostly out of the saddle.

We then headed into Taos, New Mexico. David was now going into what could be considered shock as the night grew colder. He shivered. We stopped and tried to give him some warm soup in the van.

Throwing everything we had over him, he couldn’t stop shivering. We couldn’t ignore the blood stains all over his shorts.

David had an ambulance ride to a hospital that night in Taos. The attending physician said had we not stopped at that point, David’s injuries could have abscessed and caused him trouble the rest of his life. Two years and tens of thousands of miles of training ended in an emergency room.

I told you all of that to tell you this. Always use a good chamois cream in your shorts. I like to do the double application, both on my skin and in the shorts. If it feels gooey and squishy going on, add a little more then you’ll know you got it right.

One of the biggest errors people make with chamois creams is they try to cheap out on it by using regular skin lubricant. Don’t do this. Use the stuff made to get the job done. Some of my favorites are Chamois Butt’r and Assos (one of my favorites but a little pricey). It’s well worth it. They add witch hazel, which adds a disinfectant quality.

I’ve also been known to use Bag Balm. My little secret is I like to use the combination of Bag Balm with other products like the aforementioned ones.

You may ask, did David have these products available to him? The answer is yes, and he used them liberally.

We all have our theories as to what went wrong. One is the day before as he rode through the desert and the heat rose over 110 degrees, we poured a lot of water down David’s back. It could have settled in his shorts and caused friction.

Another theory is the bike shop that was a partial sponsor gave him several pairs of shorts, which he washed only once and weren’t broken in.

A third theory is David lost so much weight in the last month leading up to the race, his shorts were much looser than they should have been, causing friction. My theory: It was probably a combo dish of all three.

There’s a phenomenon that happens several times a year in the Los Angeles area. It generally happens in the late fall and early spring. I’ve never taken statistics on this, but it seems to happen more in the spring, though I could be way off.

People die.

It doesn’t happen in the traditional sense, as it normally does in L.A., from a mugging, a stabbing or abduction. These deaths occur when people go hiking in the Angeles National Forest.

They’re not eaten by bears or mountain lions, which both exist in the area. They die because when they took off on their hike, it’s 90 degrees. They get lost, and before they find their way out, night falls on them, as well as extremely cold weather.

If you happen to be hiking in cotton, as most of these people usually are, then you don’t have the proper attire, and you can succumb to hypothermia. With exhaustion and dehydration, this could be deadly.

I told you that to tell you this. Back in the 1980s, I spent a lot of summers in Aspen, Colorado. I lead hikers up 12-14,000 foot peaks. Next to having enough water for hydration, the most important thing was making sure these folks had the right clothes. It’s commonly known in high-altitude hiking and mountaineering that cotton is the killer fabric.

What generally worked best back in the day was wool. It has great characteristics. If it’s next to your skin, it naturally wicks water away, keeping you warm and dry. You can actually sweat in wool over a several day period and generally not stink. The fabric doesn’t hang on to bacteria all that well. It’s my personal favorite.

I use wool arm and leg warmers on the bicycle. My favorite company is Ibex. I recommend buying from REI. My undershirts are usually a nice thin layer, generally by Ibex. Lately I’ve been loving another company called Icebreaker. Again, REI is the place to go. Both companies offer these wools in different weights.

Now for the problem with wool. Some people find that wool can be itchy on their skin. That may be true even with these brands, but they use the best quality wool they can, Merino.

If the itching won’t get you, there are other problems. It’s generally a little more expensive, and wool takes extra care. I have pieces from Ibex I have washed repeatedly for the past two years and they still hold up. The extra care is because you can’t stick it in the dryer.

The third material is polypropylene or capilene. Several companies sell this material. When I was a kid it was called polyester. But we all know you can’t charge a premium for something called polyester, so it needed a fancier name.

There’s no shortage of companies that sell these products. Some of the bigger names in the game: The North Face, Patagonia and Under Armour. I find these items to be as pricey as the wool stuff. The other problem is after several uses it hangs on to bacteria and begins to stink.

The good side is you can wash it and dry it. You can do anything you want with it. It’s made with petroleum products.

Remember, if you want to stay warm, try these products. And if you want to help keep this site up and running smoothly, shop through the vendors you find here, such as Amazon.

And if you want to save a little money, pull out that old polyester leisure suit, turn the pants into shorts, and try to convince your friends it’s the cool new look for the fall.