Strange Encounters - When Cowell Met Bean

As a cyclist, I spend hours on end alone with my thoughts daily. My mind wanders into the deepest realms of thought in an attempt to block out the wind that batters my face. Everybody has their own ways to keep themselves occupied on lonely four hour training spins in the barren bóthairíns of rural Ireland. I personally let my mind take over, only breaking the ongoing train of thought to make a turn, or if a lorry barrels up behind me and scares me more than a dog on Halloween. It will also serve the purpose of diversifying this blog from total cycling. The latest thought that my brain has conjured up and has been simmering in my skull with the past while is this: What would the X-FACTOR be like, if Mr. Bean auditioned? 

Bean left his small flat in London and pulled out onto the road, heading towards the famous O2 Arena, but not before cutting off his arch-nemesis, the blue Reliant Robin, although he was completely oblivious to the fact. He signed his name on the audition list. His signature was more like a squiggle with a badly drawn 'B' being the dominant letter. He mumbled something to the man behind the audition sheet desk, sounding like a 'thank you' but at the same time being completely indecipherable. 

Inside the arena the capacity audience was beside itself, all hoping that this time they would see the revelation of the day, a true favourite for the competition. Simon Cowell and his crew have just given an unarguable 'No' to the last twelve hopefuls as they battled their way through everything from Dolly Parton to 80s Power Ballads. Louis Walsh has already exhausted his resources of '__________!The crowd loved you!' or '___________ you're a natural born-performer.' 

Bean is currently backstage, with 'The Countdown Man', who gives the auditions the final countdown until they walk out on stage. He hands Bean the microphone and he starts giggling uncontrollably with joy and excitement. His laugh is infectious and sounds like he's choking on a bag of "C's." He mimes as if he were to sing into the microphone, playing with 'The Countdown Man'. He holds the mic up and steadily brings his head nearer to it, shaking it as he does it, and softly grunting in his trademark miming style. 

After 'The Countdown Man' has humoured this child stuck in a man's body, he counts him down from three and escorts him to the stage. He walks on as of his shoelaces were tied together, taking very short steps all the while looking up and around him at the bright multicoloured lights and the multi-thousand crowd in the stands. Hie eyes then fix on the four people who possess the power to send him to stardom. Their eyes reciprocate and fix back on him, as he is the first audition ever in the many years that the show has been running to carry a bag onstage with him. He slowly and inquisitively approaches the big red 'X' on the stage floor. He stares at it until it is directly underneath him and places his feet the same distance apart from the centre of the 'X', just as a child would. 

Simon begins to speak, 'Hello what's your na...'. Bean holds up a finger and turns his head away to his mysterious bag. From which he produces a small, three-legged stool and places it, with a pat, over the 'X'. He then turns away again and produces his faithful teddy and his own personal stool too. Once again he turns away to his bag and out comes a large 'Sony' radio/CD player. He unrolls the black plug and outstretches it to its limit. It's no where near long enough to reach the backstage plug. Bean is stumped, he sticks his index finger into his front tooth and stares into space, deep in thought. An epiphanic moment occurs when he realises that the extension lead he has in his 'Mary Poppins' bag might just extend the plug. He goes backstage, unplugs the first plug he sees and in goes his home-brought plug. The whole stage descends in darkness, he has unplugged the stage lighting. Stumped once again he tries, tries, tries again as pandemonium ensues throughout the arena until finally he finds a plug which seemingly does nothing. 

 - You may be thinking that the producers of 'X FACTOR' would never let an audition mess around with their plugs, but the crowd are loving this man's antics and they don't even know his name. He's already a star and he hasn't uttered a note - 

He plugs the lead into the socket, and walks, bent over with the cable reel inches above the ground as he gets ever closer to the CD player plug. All the while this is happening the judges emotions are a cocktail of laughter and shock, they have never seen an audition as haphazard ever before, and the crowd are loving it too. Finally he is ready. He sits on his three-prong stool and crosses his left leg over his right. His left tweed-pant trouser leg lifts up to reveal a white ankle and a black sock that elastic has forgotten. Simon Cowell now speaks - 'Hello, what's your name?' He replies 'Bean..', as if someone was pinching his Adam's Apple and as if his cheeks were duct-taped to the back of his head. 'And where are you from?' Bean gestures with his right hand in a circular motion, mumbling and grunting softly at the same time, as if to say 'Here'. 'And are you going to sing for us today?' He nods his head and laughs uncontrollably *hoch*och*och*och*och*. He wishes him luck and although his face shows no emotion (probably because of botox) inside he's dancing. He knows that money will be made regardless of if this 'Bean' chap goes through or not. Bean bends down and presses play on his 'Sony' CD player. It rustled into life with ABBA's famous "Does Your Mother Know' track, Bean bursts into a half-dance, keeping his upper arms rigid but leaving his lowers loose. The flail about uncontrollably and he jumps and wiggles his way around on the spot. He opens his mouth to sing the opening line 'You're so hot, teasing me...' but the words just won't come out. Eminem wrote about this sort of thing. He looks to the stage hand and taps furiously at his throat, as if he were choking. He finally realises that it's his microphone that has let him down and then taps that furiously, giving his throat a rest. He then resorts to banging it off his hand and even using it like a hammer on the stage floor. He's now panicking and slips off his shoe and starts beating the microphone with it. Amidst the rapturous laughter of the audience all that can be heard is the faint tapping of leather sole on a microphone. He then runs to his teddy, and rips his miniature microphone from his clutches and attempts to use that instead. Still nothing. Simon has finally had enough and calls it a day for Bean. Bean hears that Simon's microphone works and chicken-runs it down the stage steps to Simon's microphone and jumps towards it, completely misses it. All that is heard is an ABBA/Bean doppler effect - "Does Your Mother Know  That You're Out?"  Bean's crashing to the ground is muffled by the standing ovation and applause of the crowd, he gets up and fixes his clothes that are now all twisted and wrinkled. He pulls up the sock that elastic forgot and clambers his way up the stage steps and makes his way again over to the large 'X' at centre stage. He rarely speaks, although in this case he doesn't need to. His eyes say more than is necessary in these circumstances. They seem to say 'Well?' 

Unfortunately it's four "No's" for Mr. Bean, mainly because it is in fact a singing competition and Bean sang very little over the course of his long audition, apart from his big finale. But Britain's Got Talent is always another option for Bean, but that's another blog.

(And Rowan, if you're reading this, please go audition at once)

Seán.

Kingdom of Heaven

After a week of tanning and training, it's pretty safe to say that every racer in Ireland was looking forward to the end of the week when they could extensively pin on their numbers, break out their 50mm tubular race wheels and allow others to inflict pain on them, like a bad training partner. This weekends race took place in Tralee in the Kingdom of Kerry. Taking full advantage of our new team car, we left for Kerry at 8 o'clock. The chat was plentiful in the Laguna with our DS for the day Gerry Hawkins at the wheel, and once we mastered the strangely confusing radio in the Renault, he turned into a reincarnated version of Gerry Ryan. The chat was mainly, unfortunately, about drugs in sport that has our sport in a choke hold by the media, made worse only by the news of Tyson Gay's doping news. Strangely, the sun did not break the seal of the clouds and the temperature scale hovered around the 17 degree mark. Usually this would be considered quite toasty for Ireland but after the past week's weather, we've all become greedy. Although warm, it was breezy and overcast so arm-warmers were my choice, unlike almost everyone else in the race. The three combined packs rolled out of the Manor West Hotel car park at 11:45 to ride the 7km to the start line. The roll-out was much faster than the roll-outs we were used to after a week in the Junior Tour. In the Junior Tour we would roll out at 10 -12 miles per hour, in Tralee we were four abreast at 20 miles per hour. You could tell that it had been a hot week, as every single overly-hydrated rider took a cheeky toilet break before the start. The Cat. 1 race started at 12:15, with two Czech Republic bound junior riders taking part as final preparation, Junior Tour star Dunbar, and fresh from injury Danny Bruton. 

Our race started in quick succession after a small mix-up with lead car. A new race with a new course was always going to have a downside for the first lap, the racing was slow as no-one knew the hill and was confident about burning the candle too early. We rolled up the hill the first time and barring one or two small attacks it was very controlled. the wind was over our left shoulder so naturally the bunch hugged the ditches to try and gain an aerodynamic advantage over their rivals. The bunch remained very controlled and steady for the remainder of the lap. The second time up the hill was much more heated as riders now knew the full lap and knew how to ride to their strengths. Once again nothing stuck on the hill but it did put a bit of a sting in the pack's legs. Once we took our second left after the hill, we were into the wind. An Usher guy attacked out of the bend, I moved over to get into the slipstream and before I knew it we had a gap, I rolled through and gave him a turn and we were soon joined by Gary MacDonald of VisitNenagh DMG, Cathal O'Donovan of Blarney CC and fellow provincial team-mate Stephen Shanahan riding for Limerick CC. The Usher instigator was blown out the back and we established a 20 second gap before you could say 'doping'. Our little quartet rode well together, all doing equal turns. I was happy with the group, especially because O'Donovan was a sizeable chap, like yours truly, and I could get a nice draft in behind him. As the break rolled through I knew if we could get to the bottom of the climb in front of the bunch then it would be the four of us that would fight for the spoils. We did, and the next lap around, with 3 to go, we had a 1:30 advantage over the bunch.It was with 2 laps to go that I decided to start the charge,as our advantage over the bunch was big, but if we started attacking each other instead of riding, and the bunch started riding instead of attacking each other it would have been curtains. As we swung left at the first roundabout heading back to the start line, I launched my first attack up the drag, in an effort to hurt others' legs. I hoped that they'd chase me because I did not want to be on my own for another 2 laps, all I wanted to do was sap their legs. They all responded bar one, and then there were three of us. I dropped my second hurting bomb 1km from the top of the climb, we were still all together. Our advantage over the bunch was still at 1:45. 

The hardest part of the course was, in my opinion anyway, the rough back-road into the wind, so what better place to attack? If you're hurting, imagine what they're feeling. Stephen Shanahan was looking strong, and was itching to respond to all my attacks. I needed to kill his legs if I was to have a chance in the sprint against him. I was sitting third in line, upped my gearing and attacked. Like a hawk he turned around, I eased up when I got alongside him, and then went again. Once again we went back to doing our turns, the wind had picked up over the last few laps too. I positioned myself in second wheel going into the second last roundabout, sat on until O'Donovan had done a considerable turn on the drag and then attacked him. Shanahan responded strongly and held my wheel up over the top. I sat up and soft-tapped on the front all the way into the last roundabout. We now had just over 2km to go. I banked the bike right over into the tight left-hand roundabout and then flicked off right and eased off the gas. My two breakaway compatriots sat in my wheel. Shanahan came up alongside me, I braked and dropped back onto his wheel, third wheel, pole position for the sprint. We were now almost track standing on the road. If this was a Tour stage, it would have been pretty exciting to watch. We rolled up the hill, staying on top of our gears but never for a moment doing more than we needed. If the cranks were made of glass we wouldn't have broken them. At this stage I was settled into leaving the race decide itself in a 3-man sprint. I was still in pole position and now getting my mentality right to win a sprint, a first for me. "Come on Seán, you're gonna win this. You ARE gonna win this. You're like the Juggernaut, once you go, no-one is gonna stop you, no-one is gonna get in your way." I tried to get into a Cavendish-like mentality. I was feeling confident. With 500m to go Shanahan was keeping a sharp eye on me. The beauty of using Sram groupsets is that you can pull the shifter back to make it easier to up your gearing in a gallop to the checkered flag. Another use for this, I realised, is that you can pull back the shifter and then release it, as the shifter whacks off the brake lever it makes a noise akin to changing gear. *THWACK*THWACK*. This worked a treat and put the cat among the pigeons. It panicked the others with Shanahan flicking his head around every 3 seconds, expecting an imminent attack. O'Donovan opened it up, Shanahan responded with 200m to go and then I kicked hard around him. It wasn't until 50m to go that I realised it was mine, and it was the greatest feeling in the world. It was as though all the hours labour in the winter, and all the time I've had my ass handed to me and came in from training with a vile hatred of stairs were all worthwhile. What made it all the more sweeter was that after a putrid first half of the season, I finally hit some smooth form. 

Here's a nice shot of our breakaway trio

As it stands now, there is a whole new world of possibilities for the rest of the season. Sitting in the front seat of the car on the way home, one of the many benefits to being tall is you get a great seat in the car, I looked back at the race, and looked ahead to the next. I'd be lying if I said I'm not looking to repeat the success.

Here's hoping,

Seán.

The Sensa Sensations

This year's Junior Tour marked my return to racing after the exams, barring one wet day down in Cobh. I was set to don the red,black and white of Team Munster Sensa 2. Munster fielded fifteen riders from regions that exceeded the Munster province herself. When riding for Munster, under the scrutiny of Dan Curtin, everyone adopts a Cork accent for the duration of the race. First rider off in the time-trial was at seven o'clock sharp, followed by the rest at one minute intervals. I was off the start line at 7:06pm, being chased by the Australian American Circuit Race Champion Owen Gillott. I was really up for the time-trial and had set my expectations high at a top five on the stage. Those expectations were shattered in the first 500 metres of the event. The first kilometre of the time-trial brought us out of town onto a really good main road, but the traffic in the town was too heavy on a wet and windy night, and I got held up by two cars in the space of 300 metres. I rather impolitely asked the drivers of those cars to get a move on but by then the damage was done. Even with the time loss I pulled it together enough to grab eleventh place, thirty seconds of the stage winner Mark Downey. On the plus side I had good power in my legs so my confidence was high for the rest of the week. 

We were staying in a beautiful hotel roughly ten kilometres from Race HQ complete with a pool and games room which we all made good use of over the course of the week.  It was late by then time we got to bed that night after our showers, massages and dinners. I was rooming with my former team-mate Cian Dwyer, Comeragh rider Conor Trihy and Mark "The Biafran" O'Callaghan from Limerick. It was there that I found out that the word "room-mate" translates to "shower gel stealer" in Dungarvan-ese. Cian claimed that his routine is to go asleep at ten o'clock every night, although I saw no proof whatsoever of this at any time. Breakfast was at 8:30am where we were greeted by a feast of cereals, breads, croissants and cooked breakfasts. The look of shock on peoples faces when I went up for some egg and toast after my second bowl of Weetabix dissipated gradually as the week went on. 

Stage 2 was overcast, but warmer than most people figured. Arm-warmers were being rolled down throughout the entire bunch after the first KoH. This stage provided plenty of chances to test out the climbing legs, which were much better than I expected. Downey and the NRPT's maillot jaune came under threat very early on as Eddie Dunbar wasted little time in making his intentions known and lit the afterburners and rocketed up the road with Dylan O'Brien and a Frenchman in tow. They maintained their gap on the leg-sapping back roads but when the race aimed for home on an exposed main road the gap plummeted. The last 15km were very hard, with a strong cross-headwind punching the bunch in the face. I, like many others contemplated having a bite at the cherry but nobody was getting an inch, Dylan Foley was marking everything just as all his own moves were being marked all day. Fellow Munster rider guesting for Team Sensa Jack Sadler showed supreme power, nouse and engine to take the stage while sprinting in the saddle. Nobody could match his in-saddle cadence or flat-out power in the last 200 metres. It was then recovery time, get the legs in the best condition as is possible for the next morning. And boy would we need it! The Cliff's of Moher 4 kilometre KoH was a dark moment in my life. Looking at the profile the day beforehand it looked like a climber's climb, but in reality it was two power climbs stuck together, steep at the bottom for about 1.5km and draggy for the remainder. By the top, I must've looked like Andrei Greipel's doppelganger. Stage 3 in my opinion was the hardest stage of this year's race, although the Stena Line Irish Team might have something to say about that. There wasn't a single let up in pace all day and you had to fight for your position all the time. I have never seen so many steep ramp ups on a single piece of road. They say Scandinavians always make the best rally drivers because of their roads mirroring rally conditions, why aren't there any rally drivers hailing from Co. Clare? 

As the week progressed, our hotel room became the haven for massages. Fourteen tight and crampy teenagers would pile in and literally turn our room into downtown Baghdad. The scenes inside the room were like something from a Christy Moore song, and would definitely rival Orica Green-Edge's Backstage Pass videos. I would like to publicly apologize to our physio for the scenes and conversations he was put through. I hope you aren't too scarred, kind Sir. The race for the dinner table in the evening was hotter than the race for the finish line. All because of one reason, the bread rolls. Whoever got there first benefited hugely from an abundance of rolls from the surrounding tables, if you were sneaky enough. Obviously, were caught by one of the waiters, who then told us that if we wanted more that we should just ask. This opened the floodgates. We applied his rule to every aspect of the dinner. Each and every one of us put on out best Oliver Twist impression and would be a shoe-in for the part in a play - "Please Sir, can I have some more?" 

Stage 4, the Queen Stage. The stage that would test the will, the legs and the mettle of each and every rider in the bunch. With six categorized climbs on the already undulating roads leading out of Ennis this was D-Day. The ranked category one climb of Castle Hill was feared by most in the bunch and with there never having been an 80 kilo mountain goat before in the history of cycling it was imperative that I got up the road beforehand, and plus it would be nice to get into a break again after a long spell away. A move slipped away containing riders from the NRPT and Stena Ireland, it looked like a good move so I jumped when they had forty seconds on the bunch. A bloke from De Ver Cycles came across to me and we eventually got across to the break group. He wasn't too keen on doing long turns which meant it took us a while to get across. We got across just before the descent into The Burren, I probably should have sat on at the back but the descent was a fast one and I like descending. I was hitting 40-45 miles per hour on the descent, and then sat on like a good lad. The break worked well together and were soon joined by Cian Dwyer and the Green Jersey on the shoulders Harry Franklin of De Ver Cycles. Munster now had three riders in the fifteen man move, Cian, Jason Prendergast and I. We had nearly two minutes at the bottom of Castle Hill and little over thirty seconds at the top. Apparently some Frenchie just lifted going up there. From what I could see the French riders were immune to gravity. They could float up the hills, much to my dismay. But on the downhills their lack of gravity bit them back, and that's where I'd come flying past. The pace that Foley and Fallon set in the final ten kilometre run-in was vastly impressive. We were at 35-40 miles per hour, so Omega Pharma Quick-Step if you guys are reading this, these are Cavendish's next lead-out men. And then to top it all off, when I crossed the line with more grey hairs than I started with that morning, I heard that Jack had won. A climber's stage! Pretty impressive man.

Stage 5 was the easiest on paper, so I and my fatiguing legs were almost looking forward to it. But nothing is ever as simple as it seems in the world of Seán Hahessy. It's not uncommon to develop a sore in a stage race, what is uncommon is to develop multiple sores making finding a comfortable spot in the saddle damn near impossible. Eventually, about 20 miles in, it numbed and I could sort of enjoy racing. A tyre blowout soon put that enjoyment out the back and in the cars. After I was paced back on, I found it very hard to move up the bunch, we were on narrow roads all day and the bunch spread out and filled every inch of free road. To add insult to injury, the sterling job that Foley did on the front all day was made harder by a crash in the final four kilometres, he rolled seven feet and came to a halt in a farmer's yard. There was no aspect of this race that could be deemed easy. He rolled home over four minutes down and had lost his high GC placing. Gillott won the stage with Downey in second, the finishing roads were narrow and the last twenty kilometres were as sketchy as novice artist's sketchpad. 

Stage 6, the final assault. The day when Eddie Dunbar and Dan Curtin's hours of labour paid off. And what better way to do it only by kicking everbody's ass when they were already well and truly kicked. The stage finished in Cratloe, which in Irish means "skeleton", which is interesting enough considering the climb was called Gallow's Hill, but before I had time to ponder this thought the final climb hoved into view and my heart-rate skyrocketed. The climb itself was long but it didn't take long to cover the ground. I was losing ground on the steeper bits but when the gradient plateau'd a little I was able to stick it in the big ring and let rip. I can't really remember the last 200 metres of the climb as I was so focussed on holding the wheel in front of me. We all gathered in a local farmyard which had been turned into a makeshift car park. It was a good thing it was a farmyard, because I had just calved. In the end I dropped one place to joint ninth overall and young rider Stephen Shanahan moved up one into sixth place. 



When I arrived home hours later I found out that Andy Murray had won Wimbledon, just as Dan Curtin predicted earlier that week. And that put things in perspective for me anyway, Dan Curtin is very rarely wrong, he has the great ability to foresee greatness in people. And this week I got a masterclass in his teaching methods.

I'd like to thank everyone who poured their heart into this giant team, every one of us appreciated it and couldn't have done it without you. It is a bit cliché to say that the number of people I wish to thank is too numerous, but it's true. There were so many people that made my life easier before, during and after the Junior Tour. Thank you one and all.

Happy trails,

Seán.