Sprinter della Casa

Life - A Bit Busy

2012-02-16T09:20:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been a bit busy.

Typically, before I do a long trainer session, the Missus asks me to tuck her in. For us that means I keep her and the cats company until she drifts off. At some point I sneak out of bed or she reminds me drowsily that I need to train that night. Either way the result is the same - I head downstairs and do said trainer session, lasting, at times, a few hours or more.

Anyway, on more nights nowadays than before, I'll get into bed to keep the Missus company and I'll end up falling asleep. My eyes feel heavy, my whole body just drowned in exhaustion.

The other night it was Bourne Supremacy (I think), the book version, not the movie. I started reading the very short first paragraph, maybe four lines or so. Just after 8 PM, maybe 8:10.

I got halfway through the first sentence a few times before I accepted the inevitable. I turned to my side.

"I don't think I'm going to make it on the bike tonight."

The Missus opened an eye and looked. I could tell that she concurred.

Then suddenly I was moving boxes, another thing I seem to be doing a lot lately. This box was really wide, and I worried about squeezing through a narrow hallway without having to turn sideways. The box fit perfectly though, narrowing a bit as I walked into said hallway.

Narrowing?

Then I went through the doorway and saw the Missus sitting at a desk.

"Honey?"

I looked at her.

"Honey?"

She looked at me. I could see her mouth moving but I couldn't make out the words.

"Honey? You need to get up for work."

I opened my eyes.

I was in bed.

It was after 7:30 in the morning. Jason Bourne sat on the nightstand, forgotten, unread.

I mentally chalked up the day before as a rest day.

Wednesday is my day off. With temperatures expected in the mid 40s, I hoped to get out on the bike, wearing 3/4 shorts (as the Brits call knickers since, to them, knickers are "panties"). First I had to visit the vet (with Estelle, our last addition), then head south to IKEA to pick up some furniture for the 3rd bedroom. After that I could go do a ride.

I got out on the bike, finally, at about 3 PM, at the peak temperatures for the day, the upper 40s. I'd scrambled around a bit trying to decide what to wear. Two or three long sleeve tops plus a vest? One long sleeve base plus a jacket? One short sleeve and two long sleeve plus a vest?

I settled on a long sleeve base plus the jacket. Plus the 3/4 shorts, some booties ("Endura" ones I wore in Maine), a Jamoca around my neck, and a PI skull hat thing.

After some debate I decided to use the SRM heart rate (for recording purposes), leaving just speed and cadence to the Sportsiiiis. With the SRM going full bore, all batteries good and the wiring harness 100%, I wanted to record what I could.

The helmet with the helmet cam went on next, and finally the PI gloves I got at the Expo Wheelmen shop, Manchester Cycle.

I'd recently bumped the saddle up a few mm, totally a good 5 mm or so compared to, say, the last race I did in 2011. It felt a lot better on the trainer (as it usually does) but I'd be curious as far as my body's response to the change. I'd be especially aware of cramps, strains, worrying stuff like that.

I could tell my saddle was higher as soon as I got going. My legs felt like they dropped just a touch more, but nowhere near a "stretch" kind of feeling. I still had plenty of room to drop my heel - I wasn't going crazy with the height - but I still had a bit more of a "over the bars" feeling.

The FSA bars felt a bit foreign to me, still, the reach okay but the slightly wider bars (1 cm wider at 42 cm c-c instead of 41 cm c-c) and much higher drops (about 2 cm higher) really makes a difference. The bars felt enormous when I climbed out of our complex, and the drops felt really high when I descended out of our little village.

I headed out on my standard hour long Quarry Road loop. Almost immediately I saw a guy going the other way. He looked like someone more serious than not as he had a mish-mash of kit stuff on. Racers tend to put on whatever they have, whether they match or not, and this guy, although I didn't get a good look at him, he looked fluent.

He didn't acknowledge my wave so I figured he was in la-la land or he had just finished some interval or something.

A minute later I heard shifting behind me. I turned and voila, the mish-mash kit guy was behind me. Now that he was closer I recognized him right away - Jeff, the owner of Central Wheel.

After exchanging greetings we rode in silence for about a minute. Then he piped up.

"I'm just catching my breath after chasing you."

I grinned. And we started talking.

He's the one that first showed me the FSA bars. I actually bought them from his shop on the sly, without him knowing I walked in the shop, thereby skipping the awkward process of arguing that I shouldn't get a courtesy discount. Meaning I think I shouldn't but that shops seem to want to extend me one.

Anyway we talked about general stuff, with some bike racing bits thrown in there. He admitted to me that he'd scrambled to find enough kit for the ride, hence his jumbled up kit. He even had cross or mountain bike shoes and pedals on his Look road bike.

Interestingly enough I rode the section of road with him faster than I ever have while Strava knew about it - I set a PR for that section while talking with Jeff, flying along at a spectacular 15.9 mph.

He headed back to his shop while I headed back home. I slowed considerably on the way back, not really comfortable on the bike. The bars were way too high for sure - I decided at some point on the way back that I'd have to swap bars and sacrifice the brand new tape. I made a small note to see if the crit bend bars would feel a lot less rigid, but I seemed to focus on the fact that I'd be stripping off barely used white tape. I need to get over that and remember that fit is more important.

I tried to do my sprint loop but a massive head/crosswind put a damper on that idea. I blew up almost immediately, rolling through my Strava sprint segment at a whopping 20 mph.

I rolled back up the hill to the complex, not even willing to stand up to speed up.

I flew down into the complex, around the tricky turn onto my road. I had a familiar though as I carved the turn there - at some point I want to make a clip showing good and bad lines through that turn. It's a great turn for practicing good cornering lines since it punishes you severely for turning in too early.

With that I rolled into and up my driveway, hopping off the bike, and walking up the walkway to the front door.

I still had daylight out but I needed to end my ride early. I felt my body getting cold out there and my pedals weren't turning easily. I knew I was tired but I didn't realize just how tired I was until later in the evening, when, at about 9 PM, I called it a night.

Helmet Cam - 2011 Tour of Somerville Cat 2

2012-02-12T08:02:00.002-05:00

Another clip from the summer, this of the 2011 Tour of Somerville Cat 2 race. This race left me with mixed feelings - it was faster than the Cat 3 race I did there in the prior year, so that's good. I put down less power than when I raced the Cat 3s, so that was kind of good. No one I knew got terribly hurt, so, again, that's good.

But I was struggling to stay in the field. I was less fit, hence the lower power average. That's not good. I never saw the front or even close to the front of the field. That's not good. I got caught behind what seems like a careless crash. That's not good. Even after the crash, when I perhaps should have had the umph to go, I had nothing. My legs went numb and I went off the back.

Not so good.

But still, it was an illustration of what can happen in a race. And for me it was another year at Somerville. When I think of the first Cat 3 race I did there just a few years ago, struggling at the back for about ten laps, then exploding myself trying to move up just a little bit, I've come a long way.

Here's the 2011 Tour of Somerville, Cat 2 race, as I saw it. I hope you enjoy my somewhat leisurely race.

Training - Fluid Position

2012-02-11T12:51:00.003-05:00

I have to admit that I've been doing a few trainer rides a week. With no SoCal training trip, no trip to Florida like in December 2009, I'm lacking some of my mega-hour training weeks.

So, in desperation, I'm trying to replicate some semblance of those rides here at home, on the trainer.

Okay, I admit I also rode outside, twice even, but the cold really zapped me. Both times I cut my planned rides short (by an hour), and both times I was a total wreck for hours after the ride.

Those rides reminded me why I like training out in SoCal - riding in 40 or 50 deg F warmer temperatures really makes a difference.

At any rate, I realized I do something through the season, something that I knew I did, but I never really made it "official" by writing it down.

It has to do with fitness, speed, and saddle height.

This is how it works. There are three seasons in my year, the Early, the Mid, and the Off.

Early Season

I tend to be unfit. I can't make repeated efforts - one short jump will force me to recover for the next 20 minutes. I lack speed because I lack power. I mean, yes, I can pedal fast but I get winded. I can push a big gear but I blow up.

What I do is I start making up for this lack of fitness by raising my saddle a bit. It allows me to rotate over the saddle just a touch, flattening my somewhat weak back, settling me in nicely in the drops, and giving me a more TT-oriented position. This gives me a bit more top end speed, at the cost of some longer duration power.

Mid Season

Now I'm getting better on the bike. I feel pretty fit. I want to make a few efforts in the race, beyond just sitting on wheels. My torso is pretty strong again, and my legs are strong enough to stress my abs. In fact, when I do a hard sprint, my abs are the most sore muscles afterwards.

At this point I have much more power in my legs, and I want to take advantage of that. I drop my saddle, a millimeter here, a millimeter there. I typically drop it a full 5-7 mm by the end of the season. This gives me a much longer power stroke because I can pull back and up so much harder.

The speed remains because I have the power. Now I don't have to sacrifice power to get some top end speed.

Off Season

As the season rolls off the calender, I really back off on the intensity. My rides might be faster than a vacationer riding to the news stand for a paper, but not by much. I usually wear cooler weather gear, tights and knickers, and feel a bit constricted when doing so. The lower saddle position works well, giving me more room to move around and such.

I don't do much adjustment at that point, but my saddle stays at the lower position.

So what's all this mean?

Right now it's early season. I managed to "re-discover" raising my saddle in the last couple weeks, first tentatively raising my saddle about 2 mm. I did some longer trainer rides at that position and it worked well. I felt like I wanted to raise it just a bit more, so that's what I did - for another 3 mm worth.

That was last night. And it felt awesome. I felt much better in the drops, much more comfortable, my legs moved freely, and I didn't have any telltale back-of-knee pain indicating that I went too far.

It might have helped that I wore my 2012 kit for the first time - shorts, jersey, wind vest, socks (which aren't new to me), even my cap. I felt vaguely BMC-ish, with its the red/black scheme, but it's all good. Maybe it was watching BMC in the 2011 Tour, I don't know.

And in case you were wondering if you read right, yes, I wore my wind vest while on the trainer.

I have a fan, yes, but I was feeling a bit chilled, and the best combination of warmth and coolness was to have the fan on low with the vest on top of everything else. My arms and legs cooled me off but my torso stayed warm.

I think my saddle is about as high as it can get so any gains from here will have to be gotten the good old fashioned way - I'll have to earn it.

Training - Outside Ride, Sprints

2012-02-08T16:07:00.001-05:00

I started my Wednesday with a trip to the Missus's, helping move some stuff in her office. Then came the great part - going to the team's bike shop Manchester Cycle to pick up my 2012 kit. I'd ordered three jerseys and three bib shorts. As I already have a 2012 wind vest, jacket, arm warmers, and shoe covers, I'm pretty set for the year.

No long sleeve jersey, you point out, accurately.

Well, since the sleeves are black, any black sleeve baselayer works. I have three, well, two really, with one baselayer so faded that it's more gray than black. I forgive it though - it's been my favorite baselayer since I bought it back in the early 90s.

While I was there I bought some new winter gloves, thinking that this would prompt me to magically find the other half of my favorite winter glove. Alas, this wasn't the case, but the gloves may be good anyway. They have some rubber grippers strategically placed all over the gripping surfaces, making me hope that in the wet they'll let me grip the bars.

Not that I'm planning on any cold, wet rides, but you never know.

I also bought a new floor pump, a $29.99 Bontrager Charger pump. I lent out my backup pump to my sister in law, not realizing that my primary pump had gone AWOL. I decided that it'd be okay to buy another pump, one from this decade. As a bonus it has a base that won't gouge everything softer than tungsten.

I headed back, first stopping to get my scanner back from photographer Corey. She'd borrowed the scanner a while back. She returned it just as I lent it to her, and as a bonus she offered to sign a pin-up calender photographed by her and, for at least one month, starring her. It's nice, I recommend it.

And yes, the Missus saw it.

All this led to the planned "ride du jour", the second outdoor ride in a while, and the first where I specifically planned on doing a sprint or three. I prepped my bike, dragging it off the trainer in the basement, through the narrow bike room door, down the hall, up the stairs, 180 in the hallway, down the next hallway, left into the living room area.

(You can see why maybe I ride indoors when the bike's already on the trainer.)

I got my new pump, clipped off the tag, and pumped up the tires. I should point out that I'm very particular about my floor pumps. This one worked great.

What's great? No drama.

That's the way, uh huh uh huh I like it uh huh uh huh.

Yep.

I kitted up with my team jacket, a windproof set of bib tights, two long sleeve jerseys (one thin baselayer, one thick jersey), wool socks, booties, the new winter gloves, a neck warmer, and a skull cap. I managed to squeeze my helmet on, and set off.

Oh, and before that I got all my electronics in order. I must resemble a guided missile cruiser, emitting electronic traffic like crazy.

First Strava. I remembered to turn it on, and I let it search for a GPS signal while I got everything else ready. For some reason it takes the DroidX a few tries to find a usable set of signals.

Next I made sure my heart rate strap was working. I decided to use the SRM heart rate - this would record things for posterity sake. And so I could see peaks and such. I got the SRM head unit, plugged the harness into it, waking it up, and voila, I was alive.

Finally I got the Sportsiiiis on, the heads up LED light system. I set brightness at 200 (for outdoors, even though it was clouding up), volume 7 (max), voice every 5 minutes (so it doesn't interrupt me too much), and LED blinking at 1 second intervals (still haven't figured out what that means).

I already paired it with the wheel/cadence sensor, but I'd done it without the computer. I could set the wheel circumference on the computer - it was off by a bit. I uploaded the new settings, removed it from the cable, powered it on, and, bingo, it found my bike (2 rooms away), and the LED started blinking.

New floor pump, new gloves, scanner, helmet cam.

The Sportsiiiis is that little black thing by the gloves, the LED bit looks like the end of a zip tie.

When I retrieved my phone (by the front window), Strava was happy with the GPS signal. I hit start, put it in my pocket, grabbed my bike, and headed out.

Jeepers. All that and I still hadn't pedaled the bike yet.

I climbed up out of our complex, a minute climb that makes me work hard. I noticed that the bar/stem combo seems a lot more rigid. It might be the long time off the bike (every ride outside feels great) or the bar/stem is more rigid. I'll have to see.

One of my goals was to check the drops, make sure that the higher position lets me sprint normally. The hill wasn't the place to check, but for now I filed away the thought, "this seems more rigid. Is it me or is it really more rigid?"

I set off down a short, shallow descent (I hate these - I go about 28 mph if I coast so I feel like nothing's happening), then the hard left

In the turn I realized, wow, the bars are high (meaning the drops). I reached the turn out point.

I jumped.

I realized I felt pretty constricted with all the clothing I had on. My extra weight didn't help, but, man, it felt like I could barely move. I wasn't sure if maybe I'd have to raise the bars. After some depressing thoughts like that I realized, right, I'm wearing three long sleeve things, all fitted to me like I was wearing just one.

I did notice the drops were higher. I mean, yeah, I knew that because I measured it, but they felt really high. Cornering went okay but I felt like I was way too high up, way too far back. I felt like I had no weight on the front wheel. Yet another thing I need to think about.

My plan was to do my Quarry Road loop, about an hour of riding, then do a short triangular one right near my house. The short loop has a nice sprint spot in it, now memorialized in Strava as the Terry's Plain Sprint.

Last summer, seeing if I still had it, I ripped out a few 38-39 mph sprints. These are pitiful, to be honest, but at least I felt like I was flying.

I warmed up to the sprinting idea by chasing a schoolbus that passed slowly by me. I jumped hard, immediately realizing I was way over-geared, managed to get up to some kind of speed (later I realized it was all of 33 mph), and then blew up spectacularly after about 15 or 20 seconds of "all out" pedaling.

Yikes.

It just got worse when I hit my sprint loop. I jumped hard, the bars a bit high but definitely doable, getting into a good rhythm, not shifting up and overgearing, instead staying in a nice gear, good effort.

Ms Sportsiiiis cheerfully told me in her Australian accent that I'd just hit 31 mph.

Yeah? Well thanks for nothin'.

The jump really chilled me. The speed, as slow as it was, forced air through every gap in my sieve-like winter gear - down my neck, around my wrists, even just below the jacket waistband. Every bit of sweat I had got chilled hard.

Almost shivering I slowed. I soft pedaled until I made it to the next intersection, went right, and thought about the next right, the one that would put me back on the sprint loop.

I looked as the road approached.

Right? Or left?

Sprint? Or home?

The road arrived.

I went left.

Home.

Helmet Cam - 2011 Keith Berger Criterium

2012-02-07T19:50:00.002-05:00

The Keith Berger Criterium in East Hartford, CT, back from June 2011.

There's a bit more critique in this one than normal. I don't do well but it's a race I really enjoy doing.

Racing - Avoiding Crashes

2012-02-02T20:58:00.001-05:00

Someone on BikeForums posted a great question the other day - how do the rest of us avoid crashes?

I never thought much about what I do to avoid crashes. I tend to focus more on skills of the rider, less on the environment. This means focusing on things like practicing touching wheels, bumping, cornering properly, braking, and, while on group rides, riding with strangers whose skill levels vary greatly.

One generalization I'll make is that the racers that avoid crits tend to be less adept at pack handling skills. Yes, they're very strong, usually much stronger than an average crit racer. But strength doesn't make a skilled bike racer, skills make a skilled bike racer. Avoiding time to practice this skill means you can't develop it. This is why a high level non-cyclist athlete (like a runner) would have to start as an entry level racer. It's not fitness in question, it's skill.

Criteriums offer the chance to practice the same corner again and again. I can watch different racers take the same turn, and it'll become obvious pretty quickly who's cornering well and who isn't. I'll avoid the ones that make me uncomfortable and follow the ones who demonstrate, if inadvertently, their skill at riding.

At any rate the BF member posted some of the following things he does to avoid crashes. It's a good list of standard things to do, i.e. the foundation for a set of guidelines.

1) I avoid being in the middle of the pack, instead opting to be on the edges. This gives me more of an 'out' if something happens. Sometimes this leaves you in the wind a little more (or a lot in a cross wind).

2) I try to stay to the front of the pack if possible. Not always easy with the way the pack moves.

3) If I can't be near the front, I stay near the rear. Staying in the rear takes a lot more effort, but lets me see things happen well before I usually get to them.

4) Stay to the inside of as many turns as possible. When someone falls in a turn, they slide to the outside. Staying inside means less likelihood of someone taking you out (but increases the accordion effect if you're not near the front).

Of interest to me was point 3, staying near the rear. I spent a bit of time working on a yet-unpublished clip of the 2011 Tour of Somerville Cat 2 race, and there's one crash where I was far enough behind where I could safely make a sweeping move to get around the crash. One rider slows me up a bit (he was just getting around the crash himself) but you can clearly see that I pass something like 1/3 of the field in my move.

Once the original post person ("original poster" or OP) put up his question, someone replied with a good but non-specific response.

...experience helps, a lot. Just like car driving experience... you develop a sixth sense that something is not right, and take evasive action before the actual wreck even gets started.

That, of course, got me thinking again. "Sixth sense" can be just a well-trained response. For example, blind people have claimed to be able to feel walls from a couple feet away. Their skin tingles and they turn away. Under normal situations the blind people so affected seem to be able to back up this claim. However, when the folks running the experiment put ear protection on the same blind people (ear muffs), the now-deaf people slammed into the walls.

What happened?

The blind people heard minor differences in the echo of sound of whatever they and others were doing (footsteps, breathing, etc) and instinctively turned away from the wall. The skin tingling was a conditioned response to this stimuli (or rather to this different stimuli).

What was really happening is that the blind people heard different levels of echoes and they developed responses based on this.

Likewise a sixth sense for avoiding crashes is more about being able to read the riders around you, body language, faces, pedaling style, group riding style/skills, etc.

Other than a mechanical (unclipped sprinting out of a turn) and having a guy swerve across my front wheel intentionally, as far as crashing in a race, I haven't crashed since the early 90s. I've gone off course, slowed, stopped, etc, but not crashed.

(And to be totally honest, I've unclipped probably 10 times in that time period without crashing so that one crash was kind of my fault).

I think there are two things that make the nebulous stuff, the sixth sense stuff - reading others' body language and technical practice.

Reading others typically means making a quick judgment on whether I'll trust someone or not. I'll use prior experience in addition ("profiling"), so maybe a rider is smooth but I know that they make abrupt path changes, therefore I'll adjust for that. I've sat 1-2-3" off of a non-racer's wheel, someone I don't know, on a shop group ride, simply because everything about their riding announced to me that it'd be safe.

There are racers who've been in pelotons with me for literally 20 or more years - I trust them implicitly, understanding that even if they make an error they're equipped with the skills to help make it through the incident.

I'll also not-trust a rider and back off another rider for any number of reasons. I avoid squirrely riders, even working hard to get ahead of them. Ironically I usually think that seeing someone follow someone else too closely is a red flag - if I see someone too close and they don't look super savvy, I avoid the cone area behind them where the mayhem will occur when they crash.

"Super savvy" - ever seen a master at something? Musician, martial arts, car driver, bike rider? They have a quiet, steady confidence, very fluent, automatically do things that others have to concentrate on doing. Those are the riders you want to follow.

Rough pedaling style is a big sign. Not necessarily a particular cadence either, although more high cadence riders scare me than low cadence ones because it's harder to control a bucking bike at high cadence. Solo type riders seem to focus on cadence quite a bit, and they're also typically less comfortable in a field.

Poor form means the rider will be tired, i.e. they either normally have good form and are now exhausted (I fall in that category often) or they have poor form overall (some may claim that also applies to me).

Tired riders make mistakes, that's all there is to it.

I take my own experience into account. When I'm totally on the limit I get dizzy if I look around too quickly. I don't think it's just me - I just watched a Het Volk where a tired rider looks back in the final sprint, brushes someone, and falls over. Julian Dean once led out Hushovd for a Tour stage sprint, turned back, and fell over. It happens. So when I see a rider who looks like they're on the limit, ragged pedaling, eyes kind of glazed over, not looking around much, I figure they're at that dizzy stage.

Guys who turn in too early are scared of turns. That's a huge warning flag and it runs across all levels of the sport. To wit - watch any Tour mountain stage and you'll see some very strong racers who can't corner well. I totally avoid the early turners, or stay inside of them on the exit because they'll go wide. When things are moving right along in single or double file, cornering well usually means turning in later than earlier.

Those that turn in early by themselves, not following the field, they're especially dangerous. They're turning in early because they're scared - they don't trust the field to stay upright. But by turning in early they're setting themselves up to exit wide, right into the field, not the best way to make friends in the pack.

Of course, after they take out a bunch of the field, they'll probably pick themselves up and say, "Yeah, man, no one knows how to corner. The whole field ran into me."

It reminds me of the joke where an elderly wife calls her elderly husband.
"Honey, you should watch out. The radio is saying that there's a guy driving the wrong way on the Interstate."
"One guy? What do they mean one guy?! Everyone is driving the wrong way on the Interstate!"

Don't be that guy.

Anywho...

In SoCal one year, on some winding descent I'd never been on before (Lilac? near the Lawrence Welk place), I started it near the back of about a 20 or 30 rider group. I only stopped blasting by riders because I got to the lead rider of the group. Since I didn't know where we were going I just followed him. Later my friend overheard some comment like "That guy from Connecticut knows how to descend." No, I wanted to say, that's not right.

I know how to corner, therefore I can descend.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: I'm extremely risk averse.

That's why I do criteriums.

It seems illogical but it really isn't.

(Of course the fact that I can't climb or time trial helps in making this decision. If I could just drop everyone I'd do road races all the time.)

Based on some of that nebulous stuff, I feel much more comfortable in a criterium than a road race. I see more poor riding in road races than in crits, probably because a lot of guys who don't like crits don't like them because they don't handle their bikes well/properly in a group.

Road races also hit much higher speeds, regularly hitting 55-60-65 mph on descents in my personal experience. Crashing at that speed could be life changing; even a minor problem could be beyond a good bike handler's capabilities.

Therefore it makes sense that I stay with the slow crits, where we rarely exceed 40 mph and normally ride 25-35 mph on the straights. It's easier to read people when they take the same turn a few times; within a few laps I'm comfortable with who I'm comfortable with, and I already have flags on the riders I don't want to be near.

It's an interesting question, asked by someone who's consciously made moves to try and reduce risk. Ultimately the rider needs experience and knowledge to reduce the chances of crashing - experience as far as reading riders, groups, and making judgment calls, and knowledge in skills, tactics, and applying them both appropriately.

Training - Outside (Bars, Sportsiiiis, Cold)

2012-01-30T23:59:00.000-05:00

I'll do a short recap of my first training ride outside since Thanksgiving. Let's just say it was an all morning affair just to get on the bike. It took for freakin' ever to get ready, if I do say so myself. Here's what I did:

1. Cut the new bars, wrap them. I already sliced my knee/quad open on the bars while on the trainer - I usually cut about 1.5" of the end of the bars off, and these new ones were still pristine (albeit with a bit of blood on the right side). Therefore I cut about 1.5" off of each end, after I found my good hacksaw and replaced the blade in it with a nice, new, sharp blade. Filed the sawed ends smooth after the cuts. Then I taped them, a hurried job with a brand of tape I haven't used before. They'll probably look horrible in a week.

2. Spend time gathering rarely used cold weather gear - I pointed out to the Missus that other than Thanksgiving this is really the first time since the 2011 Bethel that I've looked at this stuff. Usually I do this prior to the trip to SoCal so to do this at home, with the pressure of an impending ride, was a new thing for me (at least since 2004). I have to admit I couldn't find one of my favorite winter gloves (I found one side, not the other) so I grabbed the warmest looking gloves I could find. I did find tights, a base layer, and booties. One of the new sets of booties I bought (because I wouldn't be going to SoCal I figured I should have 3 or 4 sets of booties) doesn't work with my shoes so I had to revert to my trusty SideTraks. I remembered to put the Sportsiiiis Ant+ heart rate strap under all that. I'd wear my new Expo jacket on top of everything.

3. Get all the various electronic devices set up. For me this includes a helmet cam, Sportsiiiis (now anyway), SRM, and phone. I forgot to start Strava on the phone but I carry it for calls and such (in SoCal I also carry it for its maps/GPS).

4. Pump up tires. I harp on tire pressure all the time, to the point where I lent out my one known-location floor pump to my sister-in-law. Therefore I used a frame pump to pump up the tires (luckily I know where both my primary and backup frame pump are located).

5. Test garage door opener. As part of the house fix up stuff, I'd recently replaced the broken outside garage door keypad. I also got a third clicker for the cars, knowing I wanted one but not remembering why. I remembered why today - it's much easier to have a clicker on the bike than to tap on the keypad or turn a key in a door. Not so much right now but during mosquito season it's critical. I tested the clicker, which worked just a few days ago. No dice. What the heck? Got keys instead, double checked I had them before pulling the door closed behind me. Then remembered the outside keypad is working, so I could get in that way if I had to. Plus, at 30 degrees, there ain't no mosquitoes out there.

6. Get out on the road. What a production!

I realized a few things right away. First, the bar wrap made the FSA Wing Compact bars look huge. I realize now that guys like Cavendish may not have two layers of tape on their bars, just one fat layer on one fat bar. This isn't a bad thing - I alternate between preferring a thin bar (think almost-not-there Benotto tape) and a thick one (thick cork tape or thick padded fake cork tape).

Second, riding the cold requires proper attire. At 30 degrees F (give or take), and wind gusts of up to 30 mph, a pair of NON-windproof fleece gloves don't do a lot for my hands. I really need to find my windproof thin winter gloves. The Missus (later, after the ride) generously offered up her Lobster gloves, and I'll probably take her up on that.

In addition a neck warmer is critical in cold weather. My exposed neck felt cold and stiff right away. The Verge Warsaw jacket, with just one long sleeve base layer, was okay. I'd have preferred another layer as well when the wind blew, but otherwise I felt fine.

Third, starting with a short, shallow descent really took the heat away from my body. I was pretty numb with cold within minutes of the start of my ride. I warmed up a bit later but I was never comfortable. In a race I'd have been warm, but on a 15-16 mph ride, not so much.

This would mark the first outdoors ride with the Sportsiiiis. I had previously set the talking voice (the pleasant robotic Austrialian ? accented female, who I have not named yet) to speak a little less frequently. I upped her volume to 7 (max) - in the basement I could barely hear her at 5, over the powerful fan and the TV blaring Het Volk or something.

I also changed the heart rate zones to "training" mode, which illustrated to me why you can save different profiles - I'd definitely differentiate (and save appropriately different settings for) between training, racing, time trialing, "tests", and other modes. I'd initially set the zones to a typical race type thing, but when I got on the trainer I was going way too easy to trigger anything but the lowest two LEDs. A much less optimistic zonage let me experience the different LEDs lighting up without risking cardiac arrest.

Cardiac arrest, I should point out, is well below the 40 bpm minimum I set to start the LEDs blinking, and that would deprive me of seeing an LED blink. Not acceptable.

Speaking of which... Sunday I'd found the bright LEDs a bit distracting at level 200 (on their scale, but my setting) so I set them to 50 or so for the outside ride. In a dimly lit basement 50 works fine. In bright sunshine, at noon, 50 was way too dim. I think outside riding needs about a 200 or so. Night riding would be more like 25. As I try the Sportsiiiis out more I'll let you guys know.

I also reduced LED blinkage from every half second to every 5 or something. That's not enough for me, I want feedback. After the ride I changed it back to every half second or so.

My outside ride was also the first with the FSA Compact bars (Wing version) with a -17 degree 130 mm 3T Team stem. The first impression I got was, wow, this cockpit is light! I knew objectively that it actually weighs within 20 grams of the bar/stem I removed, so it's not any lighter. The front end of the bike, with my regular HED Bastogne clincher wheels, did feel really light though. Then I realized, oh, right, I haven't lifted the front of the bike since, oh, October, when I did Pedal 4 Paws.

So, yeah, when you first pick up a bike in months, it feels light, especially when it's not connected to a massive trainer.

Next impression - the bars felt pretty rigid. I don't have another bike set up with a Ritchey/crit-bar set up for side-by-side comparison, but, yeah, the bars felt rigid. At the bottom of the opening descent there's a good left, and the bike tracked nicely through it, the bars really conveying "feel" if you will.

Later, when I did a "blast into a corner and sprint out of it" move (on my favorite right bend on my Quarry Road loop), the bars really felt more efficient. Very rigid under pressure, allowing me to rock the bike more precisely than I remember.

Unfortunately, the bars also felt too high. Not in the tops, they felt fine there, but in the drops. Interestingly enough I realized that in the tops the bars were further out, since they centered on the 130 mm stem's bar clamp. Since I just made the move from a 120 mm stem, the tops were 10 cm further out. They felt great.

The hoods felt okay too, being about the same reach as on my original set up on the orange Tsunami. A little higher, yes, but about the same reach.

The drops, though, felt much higher than before. I felt like I was sprinting on the hoods, not the drops. Being bent over a bit more really helps in an out-of-saddle sprint. Consider when you pick something up by a handle - it's easier to pick it up if your arms aren't bent. In other words you're not picking up a heavy suitcase with your arm bent, you pick it up with the arm relatively straight. This uses your torso to anchor your body.

Next, when you need to lift the suitcase higher than "arm dangling" height, you basically do a curl, bending your arm up about 90 degrees.

When I sprint out of the saddle, I'm doing sort of that, arm almost fully extended when the bar is low, arm curled when the bar is high.

I'm willing to try something new though. I noted in the 2011 Tour (I watched the 7 DVDs in the 12 hour pack already) that Cavendish sprints with his arms bent/curled the whole time. He doesn't extend his arms much. I'm not sure if I can do that too, but I'll try it. If it gets more more power, so be it. If it gets me more speed (it seems like it should be more aero), so be it.

I need to test this concept on some rides, comparing it to past numbers. I have to admit that my first instinct is to "fix" this higher drop position by getting a lower stem. This may mean a -25 degree stem (right now the level-to-the-ground -17 degree stem is too high) in a 140 mm length (since the angle will shorten the effective reach). I don't know if such an animal exists.

During the ride I remembered Strava, so at a stop light, when I stopped (no turn on red), I turned it on. My ride, therefore, seems a bit odd, a one way ride.

Of course as soon as I turned it on and started going west, the wind hit me hard. 30 mph gusts, and they were coming from the west. I realized a while back in Vegas that I really like hammering in crosswinds, at least on my own. Today my south/north legs had me traversing some major crosswind action so it was fun. I felt like I was in Belgium for the classics or something.

What Strava doesn't show is just how exhausted I felt when I got back. I had to leave for a doctor's appointment within 13 minutes of getting home so I had very little time to rest and recover. A quick (hot) shower, a change of clothes, and I rushed off, telling myself that I could put away the clothing strewn on the floor and the bike by the front door when I got back. I could feel my eyes getting heavy even as I drove, and the chill just would not leave my body.

In the doctor's office, in the exam room, I actually dozed off. Someone had to tap my shoulder to wake me.

When I got back home, I got into bed, no memory of taking my shoes off or going up the stairs, and definitely no action on putting away clothing and bike.

The Missus woke me up when she got home (the garage door opening woke me up, to be precise). Hal was sleeping under the comforter to my left, Bella lay between my knees, and both jumped out to go see who was coming into the house.

The Missus came upstairs and grinned when she saw just how wiped out I looked. She went back downstairs and prepped some food. Once I managed to get myself out of bed, we went out to eat (prepped food would be done later). When we got home I told the Missus that there was no way I'd be able to paint trim in the third bedroom.

Instead, I went to bed, the Missus joining me. Bella curled up between my legs as she usually does, and Hal curled up under the comforter next to me. Tiger, Mike, and Lilly joined us (Riley is too shy, and Tiger is too curious about Estelle so she hangs out downstairs).

At some point in the evening I looked at the Missus.

"Riding outside really wiped me out."

The Missus just grinned back at me. I couldn't have stated something more obvious, not with my windburnt cheeks, droopy eyes, cold fingers, and glazed 1000 yard stare.

I continued.

"Maybe I should ride outside more. I have the mounts for the Down Low Glows, I have a good head light, the blinkie tail light, and I could ride the mountain bike. I feel safe with the Down Low Glows and it's not that much colder at night than it was today. This way I could fall asleep earlier at night."

"Hey, that would be nice!" replied the Missus.

Hm hm hm. It's supposed to be in the 30s Wednesday night.

Equipment - Sportsiiii

2012-01-29T23:40:00.001-05:00

So I'm a bit late in my initial ride with the Sportsiiiis. I have to admit that it was all my fault. Jazzed by the idea of having the LEDs, I decided that I'd make some other changes to my data collecting on the bike. For me that meant replacing the SRM wire, the one that picks up speed from one bit and power and cadence from the other.

It's the latter that concerned me, with power and cadence not working. It's actually been on the blink since sometime last year, and with the season as dismal as my 2011, I had no motivation to replace it.

Seeing as all it took was a few LEDs to motivate me, you can see just what I thought of my 2011 bike season.

At any rate, I spent a bit of time trying to get the Sportsiiiis to work, assuming (like a guy), without reading up on how these things work (like a guy), that the Sportsiiiis would just pick up the nearest heart rate strap.

It does.

But you need to tell it to do so. (For those of you who have Ant+ devices, you'll know what I'm talking about. For the rest of you, keep reading.)

Ant+ is like Bluetooth. Since it's a common protocol/language, it needs to mate with its sensors, otherwise you'll be getting all sorts of weird readings in the pack as it reads everyone's heart rate and such. I didn't figure that out on the first night. Oblivious, I waited for the Sportsiiiis to find the strap, not realizing that the Sportsiiiis was waiting for me to tell it to find the strap.

On the good side of things I managed to replace the SRM wire, immediately rewarded with power and cadence. So my crank battery is fine (and my soldering of said battery). I guess this means I should buy a couple extra harnesses for the SRM - it was really nice to see numbers on the whole screen. It's also an encouraging factor as far as soldering my second SRM head (PCV) battery (my other cranks still have juice).

At any rate the availability of power and cadence really motivated me and I ended up doing 2.5 hours on the trainer. This translates to a bit more time, since I spent a good 1.5 hours setting up the SRM and trying to set up the Sportsiiiis. Combined with a trip upstairs to the bathroom I actually spent more like 4 or 5 hours with the bike.

That was Friday night, going into Saturday morning.

Saturday, after work, I was absolutely dead with fatigue. When I got home I managed to eat (the Missus cooked up some really awesome food), then prepared for a full night's sleep by taking a three hour nap. After said nap, another quick bite to eat, and I went to sleep for real, getting up a good 10 hours later.

All this recovery meant no bike stuff, no Sportsiiiis, no nothing, not even a dream.

That brings us to today, Sunday.

We've been frantically working on the house, trying to get it done before Bethel. "Done" means getting the previously vacant third bedroom fixed up (floor, trim, paint, then move furniture into it), getting a futon for the den (for overnight guests), and doing some basic clean up stuff. Typically it's spring time work, but with Bethel in the spring, our spring time falls in January and February.

A full Sunday of working on the third bedroom meant we finished the trim by about 5:30 PM. Some paint for the same (that's the plan tomorrow) and we can clean up and start moving stuff in.

Trim before caulking, picture taken this morning.

This left me the evening to fiddle with the Sportsiiiis and play with the SRM once again.

I charged the Sportsiiiis.
You can see my heart rate zones in the background.

The red LEDs means it's still charging - they kind of roll, like Knight Rider's (I didn't know there was a new one!) car's eyes, or a Ceylon from Battlestar Galactica. When the first two LEDs are green you're good to go.

First, mount the mount on the glasses.

Since I don't have cycling-only glasses, I decided to just mount them on my regular glasses.

Next the Sportsiiiis
The red round thing is a speaker

They slide on. I advise that you slide the unit on and off the mount a few times to loosen it up; new, out of the box, it was really tight - I practically broke my glasses sliding the unit on.

With the knowledge that I had to sync the heart rate strap to the Sportsiiiis, I allowed them to talk to each other. I immediately got a nice blinking LED (I wore the strap while I did this) and the "female" voice told me my heart rate. You can choose male or female - I figured guys listen to female voices better, at least that's what they found with fighter pilots, so female it was.

"Below target. 51 BPM."

Hey now, she talks!

I wore the Sportsiiiis as I ate, fiddled with the bike, and did the (seven) litter boxes. The voice kept telling me I was below target. I surprised myself by jacking the heart rate up to 79 just by bounding up the stairs, and dropping it just as quickly while standing at the counter waiting for my toast.

When I first put them on.
You can see the speaker pointing at the ear.

The unit is super light, almost unnoticeable, and they definitely fade into the background. I inadvertently hit the side of the unit when adjusting my glasses and such.

After a bit of time on the trainer
The red LED is very visible in my field of vision

You can see I'm in the first zone, below 113 bpm. I chose that heart rate, btw, because that's when my reverse beat reverses, i.e. it fixes itself. Below this I have some weird "heart attack" EKG, above this it seems normal. I learned that I don't ride that hard on the trainer, never exceeding 140 bpm tonight.

The Sportsiiiis have four functions: power, heart rate, cadence, and speed. You select them by double tapping the Sportsiiiis (it has a g-force meter type thing in it so you just tap the side). A single tap tells the voice to talk (exact value at the time).

There's a button for system type functions, like changing between run and bike, turning the gizmo on or off, and, get this, finding a heart rate strap (or power meter or cadence sensor or speed sensor). It takes a just-right touch to hit the button so it's something you want to get done before you get on the bike. Once on the bike, the tapping function works fine.

On the bike the Sportsiiiis worked great. They blinked red and orange (I need to drop all my zones down so I can see the different LEDs light up - I only got out of the low red zone for a bit). I could see them blink, although it's hard to tell the orange from red.

I spent a bit of time fiddling with the LED arm, the bendable thing that needs to sit under my glasses. I tried it in front, below, and behind. In front was a bit much, distracting me. Behind was nice except it hit my face. Below the frame worked well.

I realized that sliding the Sportsiiiis forward and backward on my glasses allowed me to fine tune where the LEDs sat under the lens. By sliding them far enough back, I could keep the low range red LED way out to the side. The closer in the LEDs got (regardless of whether I could tell the orange from the red), the higher the value.

I set the Sportsiiiis to talk to me every minute, but that seems a bit much. In fact, if I had a second Ant+ device, I'd leave it to talk to me every hour or something and just glance at the other device. As it is I'll probably set it to every 5 minutes or so. In a mass start race, where I'm in a field, knowing my heart rate (or speed or cadence) really doesn't matter. In a time trial or a climb it's more critical, and I could see reducing the interval to a minimum. It's like have a director sportif yelling in your ear.

Ultimately, for me, in a race, I think that I'd want to have the Sportsiiiis on cadence. My main goal would be to jump at a good cadence, optimizing my sprint.

The rest of it is gravy, really, at least for a mass start racer. Speed may be fun but knowing how fast you're going doesn't really change things. Power, in a mass start race, is kind of useless, at least at the moment. You have to follow moves, and it takes what it takes. Heart rate falls under that category also; if you have to peg your heart rate to stay in the race, you have to peg your heart rate.

I think for a time trial type person or a duathlete a Sportsiiiis make huge sense. Competitors needs to stay in a narrow band of optimal effort (power, heart rate, and therefore cadence, resulting in some particular speed), and the Sportsiiiis LEDs work perfectly for that.

I was thinking that for me a second Sportsiiiis would be good, on the other side of my glasses. I'd set a second one to probably heart rate as a primary reading.

With two Sportsiiiis I could set different types of values. For example, if I was off the front, I'd be in time trial mode, and I could have settings such that I could keep track of power and cadence, trying to keep both in the green. Knowing my zones I could really pinpoint a sweet spot range to optimize my time off the front. This would work for a climb or some other "non-SprinterDellaCasa" kind of effort. If I went into a race knowing I'd be working for others, I could set these non-SDC zones a bit higher, for chase and leadout type functions.

Otherwise, for me, I would have the two set for personal alert settings, power for one, heart rate for the other. I tend to be a bit too enthusiastic early in races, when it's easy to zing the wattage meter up into the 1000-1200 range without trying. Usually these zings aren't of any use, and in the past some of these transgressions have cost me any chance of doing well in a race. An LED reminder not to rev too hard would be good.

Then, with ten laps to go, I'd double tap the two Sportsiiiis to set them to my preferred mode and prepare for the sprint.

I hope that I can get outside and try this out, maybe tomorrow. I have to cut down my bars (I've already cut my knee to the point it bled), wrap them in tape, and pump up my tires. With a bit of outside time, with wind blowing past my ear, more distractions than just the TV, the Sportsiiiis will get a real workout (on heart rate only, at least until the speed/cadence sensor arrives).

Equipment - 4iii Sportsiiiis

2012-01-26T22:08:00.005-05:00

One of the things I saw way back when, in the 2010 Interbike show, was a new, still developing product by a new, still growing company named 4iiii. I put the picture of part of the interview here - a bit when one of the guys had some humorous problems trying to say something in front of the camera.

I alluded to the fact that I felt it the product of the year, but I never expanded on that thought. I didn't want to talk about some product that couldn't deliver, that didn't deliver, and then try and backpedal and say, "Well, I thought it was for real" and all that.

(And I know that I'm going to catch some good natured flak for that, but so be it.)

Well, today, in the mail, I found a box addressed to me.

The SDC nominated 2010 Product of the Year, the one that I never disclosed, had arrived!

Now, before I get into this thing, let me review some things I've learned about myself in the last few years of racing.

1. If my average wattage goes over 200 watts for a race, I usually don't have a sprint. I can't psyche myself out because I don't scroll through the numbers while I race - I only have second by second power readings available, and even then, I barely look at the computer while I race.

2. If my heart rate is over 168 or so when I launch a sprint, it's below par. Significantly below par. At 170-172 bpm, which is about my redline, I have no sprint - it's hard for me to even get out of the saddle. However, at 164 bpm, I have a ferocious sprint.

3. When I jump at about 95 rpm, I have the best peak power number. If I can stay in that range, by shifting whenever I get out of it, I can sustain a very high number much longer than normal.

I got all of these numbers by analyzing the power data the SRM gave me through the download. I didn't look at the computer while I was doing jumps or sprints or at the bell or whatever. I can't - I'd crash or something.

The only way that I could get this kind of data was by recording and reviewing my performance on the bike.

Let me say that again.

The only way that I could get this kind of data was by recording and reviewing my performance on the bike.

In an unfortunate coincidence, I can't use the data I got either, not easily.

And because that's important, let me say that again.

I can't use the data I got either, not easily.

It's hard to focus on the SRM screen, read my HR, read my cadence, all while barreling down the second last straight, while jumping out of a turn, while trying to surf the pack just right.

Ideally I'd have a system where I could have some way of telling me I'm at, just below, or just above my ideal points, without forcing me to look anywhere but where I want to look.

Let's get think about this. I can manipulate some factors, others I can't. Ultimately, average power is average power. I can't help it if I had to put down serious power to stay on wheels. Trust me, I'm not making attacks when I'm dying just staying on wheels - I don't flagrantly blast away at my reserves, not if I'm trying to do well in a race.

Another factor - my heart rate. I can somewhat take control of that. In the lead out in the final 2010 race, the Francis J Clarke race, my heart rate dropped 5 bpm during the lead out.

It dropped 5 bpm.

Heart rate is something where I can trade a few spots for a few bpm, with the idea that I should be able to get back those spots, with interest, in the sprint.

This means knowing my current heart rate is important.

The third factor - cadence, or how fast I'm pedaling at the moment.

This one is huge for me, just huge. I see, in different experiments, pretty consistent evidence that I lose as much as 200-300 watts when I veer away from my ideal cadence. Seeing as my race-end sprints tend to peak at only 1100-1200 watts, losing 200-300 watts is huge.

If I can jump at my ideal cadence, I should be able to stay much closer to my typical race ending 1200 watt jump.

If I'm really good, I may be able to rip out a training ride kind of sprint, one that bumps up that 1200 watts by at least 20%-25%. I haven't done that in a race ever so that's a pipe dream, but still, I can dream.

I'm putting things in terms of myself, in the descriptions above, but I can't imagine that I'm very different from an average regular racer. We all have our optimal power bands, our best cadence, our sweet spot heart rate. For me, I look for what I just described. Others may look for other things. A time trial kind of rider may focus on a narrow band of power output; a climber may focus on a similarly narrow band of power, or of heart rate.

We all have our sweet spots and we all need to be able to instantly and safely check them.

So what's all this got to do with the Product of the Year award, a belated year and change later?

4iiii came out with the product that accomplishes just that - it safely and instantly tells you if you're in your own sweet spot.

I talked with the folks at 4iiii at length in 2010, and a little less at length in 2011. The latter year was more interesting, with more off-the-floor talks, and an attempt at getting together to ride (I couldn't make the ride, and from what I could gather they'd be hammering anyway, something I don't do well except in a race).

The girls at 4iiiis.

I call them the girls with all due respect. They were a good hearted bunch for sure. One is the wife of their spokesperson Ian, and all of them are athletes. They also took their "booth girl" duties seriously but with a grain of salt, enjoying the camaraderie with the people interested in the product (the girls use them), while at the same time understanding that some of the guys at the booth had no idea what a Sportsiiii was, and never would, and didn't care.

The show booth glasses, with a Sportsiiiis mounted to a pair of sunglasses.

The heart rate broadcaster is on the right, the speed/cadence on the left.

Ultimately, although we kept in touch, I still had reservations on how this product would work (and if it would work at all). This is why I never put up a post about the product - I didn't want to be talking about a dream.

I wanted to talk about reality.

Well, reality landed in the mailbox today.

Inside the box.

This is a Sportsiiii with HR.

(Disclaimer - I'm getting this as a tester so I didn't buy it. But I'm going to test the heck out of it, believe me.)

The packaging is light and simple. The device itself weighs next to nothing. It charges up pretty quickly - by the time I got the software loaded and going, it was pretty well charged. Once I started playing with the settings, it was done, fully charged. Not much to charge; I'll be curious what the battery life is on the thing.

(Cue the wistful "well it would have been great to use in SoCal on a Palomar attack, with 6 or more hours continuous use to fully test the Sportsiiii".)

The lower back of the unit.

The round thing is a little speaker. If you want to know exactly what's going on, the Sportsiiii tells you. The red thing is, um, some red thing. I just looked it up. It's actually a touch sensitive power/function button. There's a black cap over the micro-USB port.

Micro-USB port open.

You can see the stuff that came with it in the background. Two mounts for glasses, so you can mount the thing on two glasses. A heart rate strap. Micro-USB adapter. A small quick start manual.

And that's it.

Because of a number of reasons, the first ride of the unit won't be until tomorrow, and it'll be on the trainer. But for now, with the setup and all, we can see some of the features.

We'll start with my focus, the heart rate and cadence things.

(With no Ant+ Sport power meter on my bike, I can't take advantage of power. As it is I need to get a cadence/speed pickup to broadcast that info to the Sportsiiii. Out of the box, with no Ant+ Sport pickups on the bike, I can only use heart rate.)

Picture of HR screen

Note the full charge indicator in the lower left, the big green battery. Note also the big yellow button "Ready to Upload". This uploads the settings into the Sportsiiii.

In this shot I've focused on my peak HR zones, the spots where I want to be just before a sprint. The green LED tells me I'm in the right zone (156 to 162 bpm, ideally just at or below 156), the yellows to either side alert me that I'm a bit out of it, either with more reserves (to the left) or going into the red zone (literally, as the LEDs move to the right).

The reason the interface has those music-print like lines across the screen is you can tune (pun intended) the LED colors to your preferences. So, for example, if I want the first two or three LEDs to light red, I just click and drag the musical notes to the red bar. After the settings upload, the appropriate LEDs will light red, not yellow or orange or green.

Incredibly, with the click and drag interface, I can make one bpm adjustments to the ranges. It's that sensitive. For a time trial type rider this would be incredibly valuable.

Cadence screenshot

Here I've adjusted the cadence range to a very minute, very fine range. The green LED will light when I'm between 92 and 95 RPM. The yellow before will stay lit in the 85-92 rpm range, prompting me to shift up. The yellow after will light from 96 to 100 rpm, warning me I'm starting to stray out of my optimal range.

Going into the sprint I want to see green in front of me. I'll shift as soon as I see red, then keep going.

If this sounds like it looks like the F1 steering wheels, with their LED shift lights that light up just before you need to shift, you're right. This is exactly what they were thinking when they made this set up. An intuitive, never have to look closely, no numbers reading, no focusing, just catch the color out of the corner of your eye.

For the rest of it I'm not as concerned. I know that my best time trailing and FTP type efforts happen at 111 rpm, so I set the red LED to go off at that point.

I expect that for most of a race I'd be in the upper yellow or orange zone, between 96 and 110 rpm.

For a hillier ride or a hilly crit, I could change this to focus a bit on a lower rpm range. This would let me focus on not bogging down too much on a power climb.

So, at this point, just before I use the unit, I'm going to sign off.

Sorry.

Tune in tomorrow for a ride report.

Equipment - Stem

2012-01-25T23:57:00.005-05:00

One centimeter.

That's what I needed when I put on the new FSA Compact bars on the black Tsunami.

All the thought that went into figuring out a nice top tube length (so that I'd use a 120 mm stem with my bars - I feel that's about the ideal stem length for a standard bar so a rider will weight the front wheel enough), agonizing decisions made after painstaking calculations and geometry stuff, that all went away when I stuck the FSA bars onto the bike.

Suddenly the bike was too short.

I mean, I knew that going in, when I bought the bars. I knew they'd be shorter, that they didn't reach as far. That's the point with the compact bar, they're shorter in reach and shallower in depth.

Compact, in other words.

I bought them anyway because of two reasons.

One, I realized (and I haven't admitted to anyone until now) that when I finally got my black Tsunami frame, the 120 mm stem I had wasn't a 120 mm stem - it was a 110 mm stem.

Horrors.

Let me rewind. In 2011, building up the black Tsunami, I bought a stem for it. My goal was to have two identical bikes, two bikes where I could hop off of one, hop on the other, and all the contact points would be identical. I'd grab the bars instinctively, drop my foot, the pedal would be there, and when I sat down it'd feel like I was on the other bike, right down to the millimeter.

With that in mind, I bought a few stems for the two bikes. The original one, a WCS superlight Ritchey unit, was getting a bit old, and I was worried that it'd eventually fail. Therefore I ordered two or three similar 120 mm Ritchey stems (when I commit to something, I really commit), just in a slightly heavier model.

(I think I have three since I have two in boxes. Or do I have one? I don't remember and don't feel like looking.)

I pulled the first stem out of the box and thought, "Oh, they put a 130 mm stem in the 120 mm box."

The other ones seemed just as long.

So I measured it with a spoke ruler. Then with a tape measure. Then measured it again.

I looked at the old ("weathered"?) WCS stem, the one that was supposed to be a 120 mm stem. It measured 110 mm.

Looked at the new, unstressed, clean, and 10 mm longer stems.

Thought about all those super fast descents I wanted to do while I was in SoCal (because that's where I received the frame). Thought of the switchbacks, the penalty for a failed stem.

I put the new, unstressed, clean, and 10 mm longer stem on the bike.

And I went out on a long, long ride.

I have to admit that it felt okay, a bit stretched out. Long, yes, but okay.

I let the stem thing kind of slip to the back of my mind as the year started. It wasn't a good year on the bike, with a lot of my races lasting just 15 or 20 minutes. I won't blame it on the longer stem, but there were times when I thought it'd have been nice to have the bars just a touch closer.

Therefore the FSA Compact bar kind of made sense. Shorter reach, closer drops.

But they brought the bars back a good 20 mm, a lot more than the 10 mm I wanted.

I should point out that the FSA Compacts are the first 31.8 mm bars I bought on purpose. The 31.8 mm refers to the diameter of the center part of the bar - my regular bars are skinnier at 26.0 mm. All my regular stems are 26.0 mm clamp.

So why did I buy the 31.8 mm bar? Because that's the only diameter it comes in, and I already have a stem.

Let me explain.

The only bike we have here with 31.8 mm bars is our tandem. And would you believe this, I even bought a 130 mm stem for it (the tandem doesn't have a custom top tube and the 130 mm was the longest stem I could find at the time). I didn't really like the bars already on the tandem though, and I didn't want to buy a 31.8 mm bar as I'm kind of opposed to them in principle. I thought that one day I'll just put one of my regular bars on it and a 120 mm stem.

All this meant that for about 3 years, that 130 mm 31.8 mm clamp stem has been laying around the basement doing nothing.

I thought of that stem when I bought the FSAs. A brand new, very nice 130 mm reach stem that is 10 mm longer than my current stem, combined with 20 mm shorter reach bars, means a 10 mm shorter reach.

That's what I wanted.

When I finally put the FSA Compacts on the bike, I grabbed the for-the-tandem stem (I can't believe I knew where it was), put it on the bar...

Looked at it.

"That 130 mm stem looks a lot like a 120 mm stem."

And, lo and behold, it measured 120 mm.

Fricken frack.

Today I got a 3T something Team stem, a nice one. -17 degree angle (with a 73 degree head tube angle it is horizontal), 130 mm reach (for real), and it even matches the 3T Team fork on the bike.

3T stem on the newer Mac.
Them be Ti bolts.

The stem swap took about a minute. I didn't realize just how nice of a stem I'd bought for the tandem until I realized that both stems have titanium bolts.

Because, you know, they make such a difference.

They actually do, seriously. The biggest thing is that they don't corrode. Titanium doesn't oxidize like some of the more common metals. I mean, yes, it oxidizes, and when it does it's bad news if the titanium is holding your bars on your bike, but it doesn't oxidize under normal conditions.

(When it oxidizes it turns into a pure white powder. You probably have titanium oxide all over the inside of your house - it's used in virtually all white paint; it's the white pigment. My dad told me this when I was a kid. He revealed to me that he was involved in a project where they isolate titanium. Having just read about F-15 fighter jets and their titanium make up, I thought, "Boy, my dad helps make F-15s!". So I asked him what they did with the titanium. "They burn it and make it into a white powder. It's used to make white paint. It's very valuable." That's when I realized that adults were crazy. Hey, at least any white paint on the F-15 probably had titanium oxide pigment.)

White letters - I wonder if there's titanium oxide in them.
The bottles are empties. There's a whole slew of them.
The stem cap bolt is not titanium. It rusts.

When I finished the FSAs were a centimeter further away from the saddle.

My bike is dirty but you can get a sense of the stem's height relative to the front brake.
I'm still debating if I will keep the housing behind the bar.
Note the Nokon segments go all the way to the lever - no cheater spiral housing used (Nokon includes spiral stuff for under the tape).

I threw a leg over the bike (it's on a trainer), sat on the saddle, clipped in, and hunkered down on the drops.

Beautiful.

One centimeter.

Who'da thunk it.

Training - No SoCal

2012-01-23T23:24:00.000-05:00

Today I got a wistful text from my SoCal training host.

Kind of coincidental since I've been thinking about the SoCal training camp too, the ones in the past. If I were going this year I'd be leaving shortly, maybe next Wednesday, with a return February 6th.

I didn't have to look up the date for that Monday. Nope, I know it'd be the 6th because I got an email reminding me that the Red Trolley registration is still open for the February 5th race. I knew that I'd have raced Sunday and therefore I'd be flying back Monday.

Work my way back schedule-wise from that return trip and next Wednesday would have been go-day. The Missus would have halfheartedly complained about waking up so early to drive me to the airport, or the fact that I wouldn't be around to share in the household chores.

She'd skip the part about doing a project on her own (like the bedroom the last time, or the bathroom before that), or visiting with friends, or just plain hanging out.

We talked every day of each trip. Inevitably, within a day or two, she'd report that Bella (our extremely affectionate curious adventurous female cat) was curling up with her, or that Tiger was snuggling up on her lap.

Or, more likely, that it snowed heavily for the first time, and she had to shovel. This seemed to happen every year for a while.

I don't think she'll miss shoveling, or doing (her own) projects on her own. But I think that taking a break from me wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

There are other things about the SoCal trip that I'll miss this year too.

My host, of course. He's the one responsible for this whole blog, for motivating me. He's been an inadvertent life coach for me, giving me gentle nudges in directions he felt would work well for me.

Last fall I had an epiphany about myself, a real significant thought. I shared it with the Missus who expressed support (she's very good about that). I confided in my host who, at some point in the discussion, pointed out "Yeah, remember I mentioned that to you like four years ago?"

You did?

Yeah, he did. My huge epiphany about myself was something he'd been trying to tell me for a while.

People that know you that well are good hard to find and, realistically, even harder to keep around. It's easy to be friends with someone you don't really know. It's harder to be friends when you know their limitations, their defects.

I should point out that as much as we're good friends, my SoCal training camp host isn't just one person, it's a whole family, with his wife and two kids a huge part of the picture. Having been doing these "training camps" since 2004, I've watched the two kids grow up from infants to, well, walking and talking people.

Young people, okay, but still people.

I learned a lot about kids by watching them. Every year I'd offer to babysit a night so my hosts can enjoy an evening out themselves. Sometimes they take me up on it, sometimes not. I learned on those nights, solo with the kids, responsible for their children.

When their daughter was really young I was babysitting her pretty regularly. I remember we watched Nemo so many times I was watching the extra boring parts of the bonus features, like the chalk drawing proposal clip when they first presented the film outline to investors (or whoever). The mines resembled balloons drawn by a kid; the sub wasn't much better.

"Why are we watching this? I want to watch the real Nemo."
"Okay, let's just finish this one first."
Pout. "Okay."
I look over at her. Wait a half minute. "Hey, it's done. Let's watch the real Nemo now."
"Yay!"

Thirty seconds later.

"Do you want to play the Princess (board) game?" (or whatever - I think those with kids will understand).

The wife ("hostess" made me think of a Twinkie) is just as much part of the trip too. She's a former racer (got her Cat 2 upgrade when she was something like 8 months pregnant - but by then she'd stopped racing). Over the years we've bonded. It's kind of like what happens when you ride four or five hours with someone - there's a bond there that you can't get just hanging out, even if sometimes you don't talk that much.

Now that I think of it she's one of very few female friends I have on my own, meaning the Missus really doesn't know her. Pretty much everyone else I know also knows the Missus pretty well - it's what being with the Missus for the last ten or so years will do, assimilate friendships.

I actually do more training rides with the wife than with the host, although in hours they may be the same since I typically get to do lunch hour rides with her. With him I'll do just a ride or two on the weekend but they'll be a multi-hour jaunts, with the Tour of Palm Springs being a notable exception (the three of us rode for 4 or 5 hours under the hot sun).

I run errands and such with her (and/or him), picking up groceries, the kids, whatever. Whenever my hosts try and get me one of their cars (so I can run errands - this hasn't happened in a few years), I end up driving her somewhere and then taking her car for the day.

With my hosts we've taken field trips, mainly instate, once out of state. We visited Mexico, the first time I'd been in a non-first world country, where dirt roads outnumbered paved ones, and where I started getting an appreciation for rules and regulations (and following them) when building roads and bridges and sidewalks and such.

It was such a powerful experience that I tell people about it somewhat regularly, and I was talking about it just recently.

Over a number of SoCal training trips I've had a bunch of interesting experiences on the bike too. I mean, hey, it's a training camp for me, right?

Mainly I had a bunch of pro sitings, either riders riding (Chris Horner, twice, and a few other slightly lower level pros), in races (Andy Schleck winning a stage in Tour of California), or even in team presentations. I got to meet some of the Jelly Belly pros at said presentation and even got to shake hands with some of the Jelly Belly staff.

One little quirk of mine is that I've made it a point on my easy training rides to zip by the GIA (the folks that rate diamonds) office in the area, an office conspicuous only because of the heavy steel fencing and gated entryways surrounding the parking lot. The whole diamond thing holds a certain level of mystique for me, and seeing where they do... whatever they do, well, I always look over at the place. I'm sure that I'm on their security system now, "the guy on the bike that always slows and looks over at the parking lot, he seems to ride by a lot in late January and early February".

I always, always troll the PCH (aka Pacific Coast Highway, or Route 1), the "easy" road around here. It follows the beach so it's relatively flat ("relative" being the operative term). There isn't a lot of beach "viewing" since, first, it's usually cold for SoCal, and second, the beach is usually a hundred feet down and fifty feet over from the road (so people look like they're little ants). It's more about riding along with the ocean to one side, the wind coming from that same side, and debating whether I should shift into an easier gear or not.

I enjoy taking in the easier riding on the PCH, the typical sidewind (I never get sidewinds here at home), and enjoying the fact that I can roll along with barely a stop for an hour or so. I'm surprised at first, then not, at all the riders on the road. It's usually midday when I'm riding (after the morning clouds burns off) so everyone I see is either doing a lunch ride or not working during the day.

It helps that I don't have an ego on the road, at least not with other cyclists. I may pace off of them, even join a small group (I actually don't remember doing that but I would if I could), but mainly I'm there to ride at my pace.

If that pace, drafting, gets me with a group that passes me, then fine. But if I have to up the tempo much at all, I'll let whoever pass and drop me. Often I'll see the rider discretely check back to see if I'm still there; regardless of their attitude, it's interesting to people watch the riders.

Other times I've caught up with riders, then hung back a bit while I tried to decide whether I should pass them or not. Passing a rider indecisively is a faux pas, kind of like when a car pulls out to pass you and only gets its bumper ahead of you before reducing its speed to yours.

Likewise, if you pass someone on the PCH, you need to pass them. No dilly dallying around. No cheating either because if you slow a bit after 20 minutes, that rider you passed may come zipping by - there are a lot of riders that will ride an hour or two in one direction. There's no "pass then ease" stuff here.

I usually turn inland only for my Palomar attempts; otherwise I get lost and I don't have an easy reference point ("go to the PCH and turn north" is my default route home, and that doesn't work when I'm inland in Escondido). On unsuccessful attempts I turn around before the climb, usually a little less than two hours inland. When I make it I ride a couple hours to get to the base of the climb, spend about two more hours climbing, then returning home in just two and a half hours.

Yes, the two hour climb takes me just over 30 minutes to descend.

My fastest Palomar ride is a bit shorter than that by about 15 minutes, not very fast by any means, but nonetheless I feel it the next day. I'm usually pretty wasted when I get back, sometimes late enough that the whole family is anxiously awaiting my return.

Having said that, it's amazing how much I can ride each day and how hard I can ride when I do ride when all I have to do is ride. I usually start off with a 4 or so hour ride the first day I get there, then I settle in with a bunch of 3 hour rides (PCH loop), some 4 or 5 hour ones (Torrey Pines), and then the Palomar ones (6 or more hours).

After I kind of max out the fatigue meter (it usually takes a week), where I'm feeling this general overall fatigue, I find that the legs can still keep turning over. They just go, as sore or as tired as they felt when I first got up. After an hour or so of riding they start coming around, loosening up, willing to work, able to suffer. Even after a Palomar day I can get on the bike, roll out, and after a short warm up (in my SoCal world that's about an hour) my legs start coming around.

Yes, I can feel the empty pit called my stomach, still hollering for more supplies. Yes, I may be a bit tender when I first sit down (it's usually a two- or three-sit day, where it takes two or three tries to sit down comfortably). Yes, I can't make huge efforts like I could the day before.

But no, it's not terrible being on the bike.

It's about then, a week into the trip, that I start feeling like a pro. Every day I'm shufflin'... Um, wait... pedalin'.

Seriously, though, I get into this routine. Wake up. Cook some food (which might involve putting cereal into a bowl and pouring milk over it). Eat. Eat some more. Figure out the weather for the day - the temps can go up and down 30 or 40 deg F depending on where I go. Figure out kit stuff for said temps. Gather supplies, jam them into pockets and such, do a final debate on vest, long sleeve jersey, and if I should also carry a rain jacket.

Head out, legs stiff. Lactic asid before I get a hundred yards away.

"Am I crazy to set out on a 6 hour ride?"

Keep going. And going. And going.

Hunker down in the drops, back nicely stretched, legs whirling fluently, arms relaxed. Sun beaming down on me, warm air flowing past my skin. A salt crystal on my skin. The familiar resistance from the pedals.

Totally in the groove.

Kind of like that.

Of course there are those bits that I won't miss.

It seems like I get sick almost every time I go out there. I try and budget sick time in my trip, so a 10 day trip means 2 or 3 sick-ish days. I think I went for 20-odd days one year, and I was sick for 4 or 5 of them.

Another thing is rain. One year I think it rained 14 days, a record. Landslides everywhere, flooding, mud, everything. Even the climb up Palomar was closed (I rode past the DOT signs). I seem to bring the New England moisture with me out west. Next drought, just call me over.

I also stress a bit over the actual traveling. I don't mind flying but it's a bit nerve wracking to give my bike to the luggage folks, regardless of how well I packed it.

I usually put off taking the bike out of the bag for a week or so, and I avoid packing the bike until the last moment before I leave. Packing for the trip alone can be stressful since I try and bring backups for backups, even with all the bike shops and grocery stores in SoCal (many more than in CT).

I was looking through my SoCal bag just the other night (it's a green duffle bag) and saw a few dropouts, a bundle of tubes (after installing a few tires, giving a few away, I still had about 8 tubes left). I also saw a slew of cables, cable housing, the extra Sidi shoes I carry with me, a few sets of cleats, and a few chains (the latter which I bought while I was out there).

For the last couple years I brought two sets of wheels too, not relying on my hosts' slew of wheelsets for spares.

All that makes for packing and unpacking something I end up avoiding.

Since it's hard to ride all day, every day, I usually get a lot of stuff done while I'm there. I work on various projects, the main one being the Bethel Spring Series. I realized the other day that I rely on some of that SoCal downtime to get Bethel stuff done, calls and website and spreadsheet stuff.

This year I won't be going, the first off year since 2004. It's all good, the reasons and all, but still, I'll miss it.

And yes it's made me wistful too.

Equipment - Tsunami (Orange) Updates

2012-01-21T11:53:00.005-05:00

I got word that the frame that I (finally) sent out arrived at Tsunami central, out in the warm Arizona. I wanted to do this ever since I first rolled up a hill on the black Tsunami, with its ultra short 39 cm chainstays.

Geometry-wise the two frames are otherwise identical, with the same reach and such. But with the orange bike I found the rear tire chattering when powering through even regular 90 degree turns, and sharper ones sometimes became a bit "interesting".

The rear wheel didn't have enough traction because of the unusually long front end, determined by the long top tube and steep seat tube angle (which in turn were determined by my long torso and short quads respectively). The combination of sticking the front wheel out an extra 5 or 6 cm meant that I unweighted the rear wheel a bunch, enough so that normal pedaling through a turn resulted in the tire losing traction.

I contacted the builder Joseph about altering the orange Tsunami. To his credit he didn't say "just buy another frame"; instead he said he'd work with the existing frame.

(On a side note I didn't think the frame very saleable because of its odd geometry and the fact that anyone that fit it would have the same problem with the back tire skittering around in turns.)

With some idea of my requirements (I train on a 23c tire, I want minimal tire clearance, and aesthetics is a non-issue), Joseph demurred on any plans of action until he had the frame in his hands.

He did point out that he wouldn't be repainting the frame. This meant I need to figure out a solution to the finish thing - I'll probably take the easy way out and spray the rear triangle black. If he has to heat treat the whole frame, I'll paint the whole frame black. If I get ambitious I may try and recreate the candy orange, but from previous experience I know that only automotive paint comes out looking real good, and I don't do that stuff.

Since I'd partially built the orange frame as a spare, it wasn't a matter of just tossing the frame in a box. I got lazy and left the "disassemble the frame" task for another week, another month, and finally, when it came to "another year", I drew the line.

I spent all of 30 minutes disassembling the frame (including removing the fork), boxed it up, and sent it out. I was amazed at how much I beat it up - one fall at 30 mph (dent in top tube) and a slew of packing-chips, where a cassette or some other edge thing jammed into the frame.

And once again I taught myself that waiting to do something doesn't accomplish much.

This time I have no sketches, no unusual ideas; it's just shortening the stays.

Of course I didn't think of what needed to be done. I defined the goal ("shorten the stays as much as possible"). Joseph came up with the plan.

This communication worked well.

Oftentimes, at work, I'll have someone describe exactly what they think they want to get. When I delve a bit into their project goals, it sometimes becomes painfully apparent that they need something totally different. Think of it in bike terms.

"Hi, I think I need a new chain."
"Okay, let me write up a work order. What's happening with the bike?"
"Well, it shifts into the spokes."
"Um... when you ride the bike does it feel like it's skipping gears at all?"
"No."
"How old is the bike?"
"Couple months."
"It may not be a chain. It might be just an adjustment."
"Really? I figured it needed a chain."

This is where a self-diagnosis (chain goes into spokes) and troubleshooting (needs chain), communicated well (I need a chain), could be totally inaccurate.

Likewise I could have asked Joseph to execute step-by-step instructions, steps that I think he'd need to take to shorten the stays.

And what would have happened is that I'd have ended up with a frame where the rear wheel wouldn't fit.

Because when the stays get shortened, the rear brake bridge would end up too close to the wheel.

So the plan of action, as Joseph let me know, is to cut off the seat stays completely, cut the end of the chainstay off, reset the chainstay (i.e. bend it a bit), and weld on new seat stays, a brake bridge, and dropouts.

At some point I'll be getting back my frame, trimmed down a bit. And hopefully I'll be able to do it some justice.

Training - Fit and Thoughts

2012-01-18T23:59:00.000-05:00

I've felt a need to push on some house stuff in the past few months - I might have mentioned trying to get some flooring done upstairs (hallway and a bedroom), some painting and trim stuff (that same bedroom), and some general clearing up. We recently got a futon for our den, a room really meant to be a master bedroom suite on the first floor. This means we can now have sleepover guests who don't have to bring their own beds with them.

One thing that kind of scares me is electricity. I don't understand it much, I don't know a volt from a watt from an amp from an ohm (but I know amps hurt). Our house came with a bunch of "distressed" exterior light fixtures. Not in a decorative good way, more like in a "it's almost 30 years old" way.

We wanted to replace those fixtures as one of the many things we wanted to get done around the house. Today I got them done, with the help of a handyman. He's a friendly customer of the store - we chat about life and stuff, and he greets me with "How's my favorite Sith?" from Robot Chicken's hilarious Star Wars skit.

(You really gotta watch that. It's the best. I'll even wait.)

Okay, now that you've watched it...

Anyway the Handyman came over and I helped him put up these fixtures the Missus and I picked out. Although one didn't work out (we picked one that hung down and we need one that points up), we got three exterior and two interior light fixtures replaced.

The new light fixture above the garage door.
Handyman did that on his own, I just handed him a few bits while he was on the ladder.

As a bonus I now know how to replace the three that desperately need replacing in the basement.

After some dinner and having the Missus smile at the new fixtures, I headed down into the basement for a planned two hour trainer ride. That's been my regular ride now. Two weeks ago I felt hard pressed to get to the 60 minute mark. It's amazing what totally nonstructured training (JRA or "Just Riding Along") will do for one's legs.

Now the 2:00 mark arrives pretty quickly, and I've had to force myself to climb off the bike, sometimes cheating and riding as long as 2:15 or 2:30.

As usual I've been using the winter to experiment with stuff on the bike, trying out whatever new things I've thought of over the last year. This year it's bars, stems (because a different reach bar needs a different length stem), and thoughts on mounting the SRM in a more secure way.

Experimenting with FSA Compact bars, therefore no tape.

You can see the Mavic 350 bars (silver) on the floor, still on the stem. I've been using those bars since 1997 when I got them on closeout. I have two of them (all they had left) and swap back and forth. The others bars are 3ttt Gimondi (crit) bend bars too - those are heat treated aluminum, sort of brownish in color, and a good deal lighter than the Mavic bars. The big floor fan ("high velocity") is essential for trainer work.

Incidentally I bought a thermometer/humidity thing a few weeks ago. I found that during a trainer ride I heat up the bike room (and the attached furnace room) from about 63 degrees to almost 70 degrees, and the humidity rises from the mid 40s to about 50%. Pretty cool, right?

Tonight I watched the last DVD of the 2011 Tour as an hors d'oeuvres. I noticed a twinge in my left knee, just under the knee cap. I remembered that I dropped my saddle a bit late last summer, a bit of desperation as I tried to find power somewhere, anywhere. I knew I'd be stressed my knee a bit more but I wasn't putting enough power down to hurt myself.

I guess now I'm hurting myself.

I grabbed a 4 mm allen wrench and raised the saddle back up the 2 mm I'd dropped it - luckily I had a tail light clamp in place as a reference point the whole season so I knew exactly how much to raise it.

I decided to really cheat on my ride and do an extra bit, whatever the movie Red took (a John Malkovich thing - not exactly a good trainer movie). That ended up giving me a total of 3:33 on the trainer (pedaling time), which probably took me close to 4 hours to accomplish.

I totally forgot about my knee twinge - the 2 mm saddle height bump was enough to erase it the twinge from my world. And, as a bonus, I spent most of the movie Red in the big ring, an untouchable chainring two weeks ago.

When I climbed off the bike I walked over to the laptop. Ironically someone emailed me with a fit question, asking about fit and such.

I thought about what just happened to me on the trainer, with my knee twinging then not. I thought about the fact that I really can't do any leg weight lifting type exercises because my very fragile knees start hurting like mad. Yet I can jump really hard in a big gear and not feel a bit of (joint) pain.

I thought of riders I've fit in the past, maybe not necessarily "the best" fit, but good fits for sure. One rider liked his fit so much he reverted to that bike from his next two (sponsored) bikes, literally giving up superior equipment for a superior fit. He couldn't replicate the position on his next two bikes so he rode his old one, the one I set up for him.

Does that make me a fit expert?

Not really.

But I understand some basic concepts with fit. Ultimately there's such a variety of fit philosophies that it comes down to selecting one person and trusting them.

I think that constantly changing position in radical manners is the worst thing to do, it's like chasing the stock market. I'm a firm believer that your body needs to adapt to a position, and that it's critical to listen to your body's feedback. Your fit can be a bit low, a bit high, a bit wide, a bit narrow; whatever it is, if you ride that set up for a bit (2-3-4 months minimum) then you can think about what changes you need to make.

So, as an example, I rode 175mm cranks for literally 4 or 5 months in the winter before deciding that they were good for me (and I was very carefully honing my saddle height and set back while I was doing this). I did much of this riding on the trainer, where I could make small adjustments and see what effect it had on my comfort.

By the spring, and after a SoCal training camp, I arrived at a small range of saddle heights that work for me, about +/- 2 or 3 mm total. When I'm weaker or very sore I tend to lower my saddle (to get more oomph through the bottom of the stroke or to spare my sore hamstrings from extending as much), when I'm feeling a bit more ambitious I raise it a touch.

As I mentioned above, tonight I had noticed my left knee twinging a bit, under the kneecap. It's a sign the saddle is too low (or that I'm pushing down at the bottom of the pedal stroke). I had lowered the saddle a few mm late last season. Therefore tonight I figured I should raise the saddle back the 2mm I lowered it late 2011; this would help extend my knee a bit and relieve the pressure pulling my kneecap into my knee. Although I noticed a slight reach down to the pedals after I got back on the bike, I was okay with it within a few minutes, and I could roll a bigger than normal gear for the next 90 minutes.

What's cool is that I actually forgot my knee had been hurting until I read the fit question email - therefore my knee didn't hurt the rest of the ride.

I started getting a bit tired at the 3:30 mark, but my knees feel fine, my Achilles good, and my groin muscles (one isn't attached well to the pelvis and hasn't been for 15 or 20 years) were okay.

A little salt on the 2012 Expo cap.
(It's from more than just one ride.)

Now for some food so I don't bonk in my sleep.

(As a side note if you feel sore under your knee cap your saddle is probably low; if it's painful at the back of the knee, or you get some Achilles stress or frequent calf cramps, your saddle is probably a bit high.)

Training - Working on Descending

2012-01-16T07:13:00.000-05:00

The other day I read an article where Andy Schleck says he doesn't feel like "working on descending" is a good thing.

To quote:

Schleck explained that he had already begun efforts to tweak his time trial position, but he was less enthusiastic about working on his descending, in spite of his travails on the road to Gap and Pinerolo last July.

"I don't really know how you should train descents. I think that it's a little too dangerous to train on," he said.

I'm actually a bit shocked at this statement.

See, descending is free. It doesn't even require getting on a bike, at least not any more than what a pro regularly does for training and racing.

Descending is about cornering.

If you corner poorly you'll descend poorly, I guarantee it, especially on descents like those that affected Andy in 2011.

You can work on cornering whenever. In fact, I got some cornering lessons hammered into my head playing one of the versions of Gran Turismo. Early apexes kill you there, as does less smooth driving.

Andy could work on his descending after dinner, when he's resting, legs elevated, in the comfort of his house (or hotel).

Cornering takes no fitness. In fact I stand by my much earlier post about letting bike racers use other vehicles to practice cornering. Go karts, cars, even boats, they all teach you how to corner.

Really there's just one thing that virtually all racers need to work on - late apexes. That's a cornering line where you wait a long time ("late") before cutting in to the apex of the turn ("apex").

I know I've said it before, but it's one of those things that needs repeating:

Work on late apexes.

All the time.

This means take late apexes every time you go drive your car, whether it's to work or to pick up some much needed milk (or whatever).

Every entrance ramp, every exit ramp, every right turn, every left turn, they're all opportunities for you to work on late apexes.

Heck, I have three opportunities to work on late apexes after I've turned into my housing complex, in about 30 or 45 seconds of driving. My 3 mile commute on quiet country roads, with just a half dozen turns, gives me about 12-15 turns and curves to practice late apexes.

Do I focus on driving?

Yes.

Do I focus on cornering well?

Yes.

Should you?

Well, let's put it this way. If you go hot into a turn, do you want to decrease the chances of hitting the deck? Do you want to decrease the chances of wrecking your car?

Then your answer is yes.

And if you're unable to do so because you can't focus, then put down the food, get off the phone, stop fiddling with the music, and ask your passenger to "zip it for a bit".

When you're cornering at the limit (usually inadvertently, like in rain or snow), a late apex can literally be a life-saver. Late apexes give you more of an out, they give you the most room to maneuver once you realize you've underestimated the turn.

You can always attack yourself out of a late apex - it'll slow you down a touch if done over aggressively - but you'll be upright to do a surge.

I've been sitting on the trainer regularly, watching first the 2006 Tour (the Floyd fiasco), then the 2007 Tour (the Rasmussen fiasco) and now working my way through most of a 12 hour set of the 2011 Tour (the Schleck fiasco if you will).

The 2006 Tour illustrated just how poorly Rasmussen cornered - when Floyd spent the day off the front, Rasmussen was cornering so poorly that he totally disrupted the beautiful arcs of the peloton in a tight series of switchbacks, the overhead view from the helicopter.

He couldn't have messed it up worse if he tried.

Now we're seeing a similar pattern emerge from Andy Schleck. His descending performances are second to everyone. He spends so much time and energy working on taking time on the climbs but he gives all that hard work back, hand over fist, on the way down the other side of the mountain.

Only when he had a teammate guiding him, in a small group, did he descend anywhere near normal.

(And I can't imagine what his director was yelling in his ear on that one descent; it might have been more detailed navigation than a rally car navigator talking to his driver.)

If he's going to lose a minute on a short descent (like he did on one stage of the 2011 Tour), he should lessen his focus on climbing well. After all, if he's just going to give it back then he might as well focus on something more productive. All those training camps, all that reconning on the mountains, it's a waste of time if he doesn't figure out how to descend, and, in doing so, figure out how to corner.

Instead he can work on something else, like his time trialing.

Oh, wait, that doesn't work either.

Because, as you may have realized, in time trials you still go around turns.

Right.

Promoting - Finish Line Camera Thoughts

2012-01-09T16:02:00.004-05:00

With more emphasis on USAC license points in recent years, and with points counting down more than 6 or 7 or 10 places (which is what they used to do), I want to pick more finishers at Bethel this year.

It's only fair after all. Racers need to show placings, more so than before. For example, in 2011 a Cat 5 only had to start 10 races to upgrade to Cat 4. In 2012 a similar Cat 5 has to finish 10 races to get that same Cat 4 upgrade.

Finish.

Not start.

I need to be able to prove that someone finished, or that someone didn't finish.

Video is good for proof.

Unfortunately my current finish line camera system isn't great for that, and that means I need to redo the finish line rig for 2012. This means replacing our high quality albeit regular resolution Canon GL2 camcorder and our TiVO unit with a more modern and hopefully easier to use system.

In 2011 we experimented with a parallel camera set up, using an iPhone feeding into an iMac. We found that the higher resolution iPhone (not sure what it was but an iPhone 3 doesn't go much over 640x480) allowed us to read the numbers better, but the faster frame rate of the Canon let us see which tire crossed the line first.

For 2012 I want to combine the two things, the readable numbers and the higher frame rate.

(Keep in mind that these are low-buck alternatives to the real deal, a slit-lens setup that takes really cool stretched out pictures.)

Therefore we have two parts to the finish line setup - the camera and the "viewer" (the computer).

First, the camera.

I was thinking of using Contour+ exclusively, two of them. I like them because of a number of reasons:
1. I can use a Bluetooth phone to aim them (I have one, and the laptops have Bluetooth). I can review footage via USB or HDMI cables.
2. They're relatively shockproof (all three camcorders I've used in prior years have taken 10 foot falls with some serious consequences, but I'm using a ContourHD that took a tumble at 30 mph with no problem).
3. They're easily waterproofed, an important point at Bethel when it can be raining quite hard.
4. They're very light, allowing us to secure them with less sandbags or whatever.
5. They shoot at 720p at 60 frames per second (fps), or as I'll put it 720@60fps. I can pick out license plate numbers with this setup so it's pretty good.

But then a helper (who had the iPhone+iMac at Bethel in 2011) pointed out that 1080@60fps would be better for capturing numbers. Since that's true I realized that I may have to use a camcorder for number reading and a second camera for tire placing. For the latter I'll stick with a Contour+ (or two), with the Contour+'s Bluetooth capability a big must (I need to aim them easily).

Second, the "viewer".

Apple offers iMovie with all their systems, and Quicktime is usually the application of choice for HD type clips. Both applications are easy and intuitive to use. Both are free with a Mac. And both are applications I know how to use.

It makes sense for someone like me (not an expert at video stuff) to get a Mac for a finish line clip viewer.

This means my camera setup (either two Contour+ or an HD camcorder with a Contour+ or two) will feed into either an iMac (not mine but one of the helpers owns one and we used it last year) or a MacBook I just purchased (has Firewire).

Regardless we'll review finish line footage on whatever Mac. With 2 or 3 cameras I hope to have some overlap in actual pictures so we have better granularity.

What's this all cost?

iMac - $1000 or so, refurb from Apple. I was worried about portability (it takes just one drop to wreck a hard drive) so I decided against this, even though the iMacs offered a much more powerful computer for the money (it include the monitor for one thing).

MacBook - about $1400-1700 refub from Apple. I just got one for a bit under $1700. I figure I'll drop it a couple times a year, and a laptop is designed for that, kind of.

Contour+ - $500 retail (street price). If 720@60fps works I'll get at least one of these, preferably two.

ContourHD - about $150-200 retail. I own two of these (although I paid a lot more). I've done all my post February 2010 helmet cam clips on them (at least through 2011).

1080@60fps HD camcorder - $625 retail. If I need 1080@60fps, I have to get one of these.

Right now my plan is to:

1. Test the ContourHD (720@60fps) and see if I can read numbers at some reasonable speed (40 mph). I'll also test at 1080@30fps to see if the number clarity is better. Since I have two ContourHDs I'll have one at each setting, both recording the same car going by, so it's a more consistent test.

2A. If 720@60fps works then I'll get two Contour+ and two waterproof covers for them.

2B. If I need 1080 for clarity but 60 fps for granularity then I'll get the HD camcorder. I'll probably get one Contour+ for secondary granularity, to try and get close finishes (read the number on the 1080, check position on the 720). I want the Contour+ for the Bluetooth and HDMI capability, which the regular Contour does not have.

Either way I'll be buying either one or two Contour+ and maybe one HD camcorder. I'll get the appropriate cables and then we'll be ready to pick a lot of finish places at Bethel.

Ironically the Contour+ has a wider-angle lens than the regular ContourHD. I actually don't like the wider angle lens so the Contour+ won't be a new helmet cam for me. I'm sure I'll try it but as a straight out helmet cam, no. As a bike mounted one, maybe.

I'll try and have some pictures of the tests and I'll post my findings in a later post.

Training - Group Ride Factors

2012-01-07T15:27:00.004-05:00

Someone on a smaller bike forum asked a question about group rides, specifically asking how to keep a ride going. This meant asking the forum what they felt made a group ride good.

That got the thought particles flowing in my head.

I did a group ride around here at a now-closed LBS simply because I could get there on time. It was a sub-10 minute drive there, 15 minute ride, and I'd get there just as they rolled out (6 pm start, I get out of work at 5:30 at earliest).

The ride included new riders and a very few experienced ones. We rarely had more than one or two racers out of 15-20 (and I was the best racer on paper - Cat 2 or 3 - but definitely not the strongest by far).

The rides were low key, meaning I got only somewhat shelled (few minutes for a short climb), and I did a lot of bridging type work (chasing back on). Although it was a slow-ish group ride for a "racer", it worked for me.

My team has a lot of group rides which are one rush-hour zone away from me (i.e. I need to drive 35-40 min but most of it includes rush hour traffic - traveling through Hartford - so it may take an hour or more to drive). Combined with the fact that they start before or just as I get out of work and it's game over for those rides.

If a ride is too hard I won't do it, just because it's too hard. 21-22-23 mph kills me. I may consider a "fast" ride if it's flatter (easier to sit in at speed), big group (easier to sit in), or on a Sunday (replaces a race).

(I should point out that some of the faster racer-type group rides regularly average 23-25+ mph, and some have gone in the high 20s or low 30s for considerable distances.)

Since I don't have a training schedule I treat group rides as hard rides. I use them as part of my "many hard days in a row" weekly schedule, i.e. Sun-Mon-Tue(-Wed) hard, easy Sat, repeat. Group rides used to happen Mon/Wed from the shop, although I sometimes raced Wed instead.

The best, most cohesive group rides I've done have had insane discipline, consisted of riders who subscribed to said discipline, and was merciless with rules enforcement.

The rules had to do with traffic laws for the most part. So, for example, you stop at every stop. You don't turn right if it says no turn on red. You ride single file as soon as someone yells car back.

You need a patron of sorts to enforce this.

You also need someone to set the expectation that this will happen (the patron usually says this).

Finally you need to enforce this ferociously. "What, you can't ride closer than 3 feet to the curb? You don't know how to ride a bike?" with every single other rider glaring at the guy who refused to move over when someone yelled "Car back!".

Have you ever been on a group ride where a rider dangles out in the middle of the lane? Did anyone yell at said rider? It's frustrating when that happens, right? Then the car honks at you because you're part of the group.

When things get too bunched up (and spread across the road) someone has to drill it to stretch it back out. Although I was usually too weak to do it, I'd murmur to a trusted teammate to go hard. Same effect. Single file. Car goes by. All good.

A good ride must have regroup points (end of each long road? at major intersections? etc). The exceptions are the huge ones, the non-organized ones, like Gimbles in NY.

On any smaller ride there should be no one left behind, no matter what. If someone is weak, you need to inspire them. "You don't look good, do you feel okay? You don't? Okay, you're now Fausto Coppi when he had that stomach bug. Guys, we need to bring him back alive. Pull on the flats, we gotta go easy on the hills, and kill it on the downhills. You, you don't pull, ever. We'll get you back."

That last bit is what happened on my pre-wedding rehearsal dinner ride. We were late, I blew up, and three guys (2 former leadout guys, 1 former pro) dragged me back home.

I like:
- Regroupments. I hate riding home alone.
- Good discipline. I hate being part of a group that propagates the cyclists' bad stereotype.
- Respect for one another. Strong riders pull more, esp on flats and downhills. Weaker riders can sit on, pull a bit on hills (sets tempo). No one complains about someone not doing work; everyone does what they can.
- Group members that subscribe to the above things. These can be taught/inspired.

I hate:
- Peeing contests, so to speak. Attacking up hills after sitting in on the flats/downhills. Or not sitting up after an attack.
- Regroupments that are only 30 seconds long.
- Semi-regroupments at 15 mph. "Oh, they'll catch up". No they won't.
- Poor lane/bike discipline. Blocking traffic, running lights/signs, etc. Don't destroy my reputation because you are. Exceptions - if I'm on another group's huge ride (Gimbles).

Life - Stuff For Bike Racing

2012-01-06T12:20:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was nice to me in a few different ways.

First off a package showed up at work. The coworker that brought in the packages from the back grinned and looked at me.

"I guess you'll be busy for the next few hours?"

He was holding a box from Apple.

Yes, the new finish line camera computer had arrived.

I realized I was getting old when I thought, "Oh, man, what a pain, I have to set this thing up" instead of "Cool! A new computer that I get to set up!"

I guess it's like bike stuff. I get something and just think that it's going to be a pain, not that I just got some cool new bike stuff.

So, yeah, I haven't even opened the box yet. But I'm happy to have received it.

Ultimately though this will be the finish line camera computer, able to record and play back video quickly. My goals for Bethel include putting up a much more comprehensive results page and this is part of the deal (I have to capture all numbers quickly and efficiently). The Firewire port (lacking on my current Mac) and HDMI port (for a bigger monitor/TV) will help us accomplish that.

(The camera part is still TBD, but I know that our current camera is not HD and therefore will not get numbers as well as a full blown HD camera.)

Due to some issues with my registration laptop, it's possible that we'll be going all Mac for the race - the old MacBook may become the registration computer.

(Eventually I'll have a separate post for Bethel new-stuff for 2012.)

Later in the day, when the boss came back from the post office, she gave me a small cardboard box. I read the mailing label.

"World Cycling Productions"

Yes! My DVDs arrived.

(There is an issue where they didn't take off shipping and stuff but I'll deal with that later. And if someone is buying a LOT of DVDs - which is recommended when you buy from WCP - contact me for a code.)

Nice!
The MacBook is in the box underneath the DVDs.

Again, since I'm old, I haven't opened a single DVD.

Not a single one!

I selected the DVDs because I didn't remember most of the races (the play by play bit and in many cases who won). I did remember the '94 Paris Roubaix, almost virtually play by play, but it's so epic I wanted it on DVD.

The 2011 Tour, well, I thought it was a great race so I wanted it.

Although I didn't open up any of the new DVDs, I did do a trainer ride yesterday while watching DVD#2 in the 12 hours of the 2008 Giro (Contador on the beach one). When I finish that up I'll put in some of the new ones.

Oh, speaking of which, we went shopping for a DVD player just recently. Some of my DVDs weren't loading properly in my bike room DVD players (there are 5 in there now). They'd play fine upstairs so I knew it was a hardware issue.

A new, inexpensive Sony DVD player and I was back in business. Three DVD players to go on free cycle. And one combo unit (DVD/VCR) which I'll keep (it plays some DVDs consistently).

These have been some recent "things to do" on my list.

I have two more immediate projects. One is sending my orange Tsunami back to Tsunami Bikes to have the rear chainstays shortened. The frame's been sitting here and I just need to pack it up and send it out. I think I've mentioned it here before - it's still in the "to be done" category.

The goal is to get the bike to handle a bit more neutrally. When I spec'ed out the very long frame, I didn't realize it would unweight the rear so much. As a result of the unusually forward weight distribution, the rear would skitter in any sharp turn under power. The black Tsunami, with a similar forward stance but just 39 cm stays (normal is 40.5 cm), stays firmly planted in the exact same corners.

Therefore I want 39 cm stays (or as close to that as possible) on the orange frame.

The other is doing a "rocking" conversion to a CycleOps trainer, which I don't think I've written about here. I have a third CycleOps "frame" (everything but the resistance unit) and I'm going to have a friend weld some plates to make it into something that I can rock (tilt).

I'm going to give this guy the CycleOps frame, a big piece of steel (it weighs about 50 pounds), and some cardboard templates to copy. He'll cut them (plasma or bandsaw), weld them, and we'll see what happens.

I'll use wood for cross beams and forward beams. The trainer will require cross beams since I'll eliminate the two fold down legs, and it'll need forward beams since the bike will otherwise twist the stand forward (like the stand wants to do a forward roll). I'll use wood because we have some at home but also I don't want to ask my friend to weld a gazillion things.

Finally, although it happened the day before yesterday, I also got some bars - FSA Compact Wings. I got them from an LBS that's not quite so nearby but on the way home from running to/from Bethel. The owner, Jeff, uses the FSA Compacts, so I decided I'd give them a shot.

The bars may supplant the crit bend bars I so adore, with their forearm-saving forward curve. Pretty much all regular bars hit my forearm when sprinting. If the FSA Compacts don't, I've found a new bar (and I'll post some info on them).

And, yes, because I'm getting old, I haven't touched the bars since I got home. They're still sitting in their minimal packaging. I'm psyched to have them. Not psyched to fit them to the bike.

Hey, look, at least I brought them downstairs to the bike room.

Racing - Judgment and Skills

2012-01-02T22:43:00.004-05:00

Off the cuff thing I wrote in response to teaching judgment.

One of the things about judgment is that although one can teach a particular reaction to a situation (interpreted as "teach judgment") it's very difficult to teach how to arrive at the decision to react in such a manner (actually teaching judgment). It's possible to memorize a lot of different situations (i.e. become a chess computer where the computer can map a matrix of moves to the nth degree) but it's virtually impossible to map out every situation possible.

It's why some people are good trouble shooters and some are not - it requires a particular skill to troubleshoot. One can learn and become experienced at it (by experiencing the same situations repeatedly) but it's hard to teach the actual process of troubleshooting, at least for me. It seems logical and straightforward but to many people it seems mysterious and mystical.

Yes, there are basics in cycling, and I think it's possible to teach some of that. For example, although it usually isn't ideal for shelter (here's where that "every situation" comes into play - is shelter the most important thing in your world at this second), it's usually a bit easier to find a way out of a crashing field when your front wheel is overlapped (fore/aft, not necessarily next to) to the outside of the rider in front of you.

In other words, if you're on the right side of the group, your front wheel should follow a path just to the right of the wheel in front of you. It might be half an inch to the right, maybe a few inches, maybe a foot (that's where judgement or a slew of mapped situations comes into play). Fore/aft your tire may be a few inches behind the tire in front of you, maybe a few feet, maybe 20 or 30 feet, maybe even a few inches in front of it (i.e. overlapped).

I've played on group rides (with riders I only vaguely know but who I judge to be good riders) where I try and get my front tire between the derailleur cable and spokes of the rider in front of me. Go to your bike and look at where that is - it's directly behind the cassette of your bike. It's a very narrow spot with very little "out" (escape route).

I've scared myself, yes, but never fallen doing this. And, no, I don't tell the rider in front what I'm doing.

I have fallen when my front wheel meets another object - twice in the last decade when I ran into someone (he braked hard just after sprinting) and once when someone intentionally swerved across my wheel at 30 mph (the resulting crash took out much of the 20 riders in the race).

I've also (while intentionally sitting too close to a wheel) hit rear axles and cassettes so hard that once the impact lifted my rear tire off the road (I had greasy tooth marks on my front tire) and once I rubbed the left bit of my teammates rear axle shiny clear of finish with my front tire.

I also drilled incessantly for a school year on touching wheels, refreshing my skills inadvertently several times since then.

Of course if you want shelter and you are willing to take a risk, you can follow a line slightly to the left of the rider in front of you (if you're on the right side of the field). Assuming that the wind is head on or from the right, that there's no one in that spot, etc etc etc. Again, more judgment or a lot of memorization of situational reaction tables.

I'm not a very good mapper, a very good rote reaction kind of person, not very good with "situational reaction tables". When I find myself in a new situation (and I find myself in new situations all the time, even after riding competitively as a hobby for 2/3 of my life), I rapidly cycle through possible scenarios before I select one.

Yes, I have default outs.

Yes I make wrong choices.

But I don't go around with a play by play book in my head for more than a few scenarios - I adjust for each situation based on a myriad of basic rules. That's judgment and that's hard to teach.

One thing that works well is to think critically all the time, not just on the bike.

I find it great mental exercise to think as a cyclist while driving. That doesn't mean drafting trucks and such (judgment!) but it means I figure out that the wind's from the right (or left), that I don't "overlap wheels" (don't sit in a blind spot of another vehicle), that I hold my line (stay in my lane), take good cornering lines (generally speaking a late apex - cornering lines is always a judgment thing based on situation), when to ease off the gas or brake to drive most efficiently (kind of like sitting in a pack of riders - don't brake hard, don't nail the gas while in the pack).

I watch other riders drive and I'm shocked at how poorly they drive. They apex early, cutting over the yellow line in curves and on left turns. They brake harder than necessary from too high a speed, then can't accelerate early because they took the wrong line. They sit in another car's blind spot. They sit on the windward side of traffic when it's very gusty. They block their own sight lines. They follow too closely. They don't look far enough up the road. They focus on what's just in front of the car, not what's ahead of it. They don't see or react to red lights until they're too close to react smoothly. Etc etc etc.

Drive like you want to ride, and ride like you want others to drive. For driving the most basic thing is to be legal (judgmentally speaking, else everyone going 56 in a 55 zone would get a ticket) and safe (to you and others). After that comes "practice".

When you ride do you consider what would happen if a car came around the corner behind you a bit fast and eased off the gas to slow down? In slippery conditions, with a car with worn or lower traction rear tires (like they have snow tires in front but not in the back and it's cold out) or a lighter rear end (front wheel drive car), a car can start to spin in this situation. It's possible that they'll inadvertently strike you.

This is one scenario. A limited one. One that doesn't deserve a mention in a book about riding in general.

But it's a scenario, it's possible, and the potential for disaster, although minor, exists.

So, along those lines, have you ever yelled at the group in low visibility and damp but not raining conditions to keep further right because you're in the middle of a long sweeping right bend in a place where traffic habitually drives 45-50 mph?

I have.

The group consisted of mainly very good friends, we were on a training ride, and I felt extrmely worried that a car would come barreling around the bend, ease up hard, lose traction in the rear, and spin into us, knocking us over like bowling pins.

I yelled at everyone to move over more, to hug the curb.

They looked at me, a bit irritated, and moved over a bit.

The next car around the bend was a Saturn sedan driving a bit fast but it went wide instead of slowing - we were lucky there was no oncoming traffic.

That was in 1997 and I remember it like it was yesterday.

As far as crashes, yes, they happen. Yes racers crash. Yes pros crash, a frightening amount actually. I've raced up to 50-55 times a year for the last 25 years or so, usually 30-40 races, and since the early 90s I've only crashed 3 times.

I hate crashing.

I'm extremely risk averse.

I drive like an old man sometimes because I'm risk averse.

I drive a bit faster sometimes because I consider all the factors (legal judgment, safety of others, etc) and decide that there is very little risk if I do so. I ride like I drive. I'm very risk averse. I hate contact of any kind, just abhor it, except in some very limited situations (judgment again). I don't push, shove, anything. I can if I had to, and I have when others have slammed into me, but I'm strictly defensive there.

It's important to have good judgment.

You can watch helmet cam clips and decide if someone on the screen made a good move or bad move, and what you'd have done in the same situation. You can watch pro races and watch where people get into trouble (crash) and where they don't ("wow look at that move!"). You can talk to cyclists, listen for good stories, look for those riders that seem to be quietly fluent at riding.

It's important to have good riding skills.

You can learn this by devouring everything written about cycling, by taking clinics offered by teams/clubs/etc, and by practicing what you can practice when you can practice.

Combined you'll be set for a long period of safe yet exciting riding.

Enjoy.

Life - Home Work, Team Meeting, Promoting

2011-12-29T23:27:00.001-05:00

There are cycling goals and there are just goals.

We're busy working on the house, basically doing maintenance and slight updates throughout the house. Our goals include updating the exterior lights, put in new flooring upstairs, put new paint in a couple rooms, complete a still-unused room upstairs, furnish the den (which is really a master bedroom suite with its own bathroom) into something more like an extra bedroom/guestroom, stuff like that.

(I also have this fantasy goal of putting in a floor splitting up our 2+ story high garage, one ideal for a bike workshop, slot car track setup, and whatever other space-eating hobby I might have. But this is a super long term goal.)

With the power outage in the Halloweeen storm I also need to get my act together on using our transfer switch. Instead of an extension cord into the house (and directly plugging in the fridge, microwave, and a few lights, not back-feeding the house), I need to put the correct generator back on the deck, use the new twist-lock cable to feed the secondary panel in the basement, and have a fully functional backup for the house.

In that little week-long HTFU experience, we also put in a window pellet stove, replacing a wall-mounted air conditioning unit we used for all of about 2 seconds (we tried said AC unit when we first moved in, it blew out leaves and debris, and I shut it off as fast as I could). It heats the house so well that we can't leave it on overnight. Although the fire department checked it out, it's still a bit precariously installed. We need to fix it in place, make it a bit more permanent.

Bella likes warm spots.
(She also camps out in front of the humidifier, which blows warm air.)

Recently SOC came over and helped out with installing flooring in that second upstairs bedroom. The Missus and I had struggled through finishing the hallway - it was quite exhausting for the both of us. She called in reinforcements and SOC and Mrs SOC responded.

It worked out well - I'd been thinking about this whole downgrade thing, about what makes racing fun, and I got to talk about it all with SOC. I basically left him stranded in 2011 when I upgraded out of the 3s - we rarely raced together, and when we did, it was so infrequent that we didn't work well together like we did the prior year. I hope that in 2012 we return to that fluency we had when we raced together in all our races.

Mrs SOC and the Missus caught up on all the news too. They made a supply run to pick up more flooring, and with the additional supplies SOC and I were able to finish up the second bedroom.

Last corner of flooring done, thanks to an emergency run by the Missuses (sp?).

Then it was off to the team meeting.

This was Expo's first meeting since the Salvage Cross race so it became as much a wrap up meeting of 2011 as well as a kick off meeting of 2012.

Teams vary so much in structure, goals, and formality that I've been working on a post trying to summarize the basic teams I've seen, but with Expo the structure's been simplified a bit from prior years.

This doesn't mean the team structure is worse, or that the team is suffering at all. In fact, I'd argue the team is stronger than ever.

I think it helps that our illustrious leader, David H, has gathered a good group of people. I had made an observation at the 'cross race about Expo - it seemed that we had a LOT of people there helping out.

At some point I turned to SOC and vocalized a thought that had just solidified in my head.

"You know how every club has one or two people who do everything? You know, the ones that do the clothing and get the sponsors and whatever? Like if they left the club would kind of fall apart? Well, I think that Expo is made up of all those doers. We're a club of doers. Even I feel like I don't do that much compared to other members, and I've felt in other clubs that I'm the only one doing anything."

I paused, thinking this one through.

"It's not how you motivate club members; it's how you select them. And David got together a good group of people."

I thought about it a bit more. It's possible that if David disappeared that the club would fall flat on its face, but I think that the people here are such that the club would still continue on.

Knowing that Expo has about 60 members, I was curious about how many showed up to help out. And, in fact, David revealed during the meeting that there were over 40 members present and helping.

Pretty cool.

We tried on fitting kits for the 2012 Expo kits, to be made by Verge (a favorite of mine). I reluctantly ordered size L jerseys, not size M, and size M shorts (which is what I've always worn for Verge).

I want to be down to about 160 when Bethel starts, but I hate building expectations. Therefore I ordered a kit for a 170-180 lbs me.

Sigh.

It's been a sprint to the end of December. With holidays, family stuff, some final bike race business stuff (called taxes), and trying to stay in touch with friends, our dance card has been very full.

The Missus and I will be traveling tomorrow to meet with our friends that help make Bethel the fun race it has become; we'll be discussing the 2012 Series. We want to go over procedures, we'll work on the finish line camera rig, and we'll brainstorm to see if there's anything we need to change for the 2012 Series.

Although this is the first time we're having such a formal meeting (normally it's been some emails and such), I guess this is one of those things that help make a good race a good race. There's a lot of thought, a bit of planning, and a core of people who give the event a solid foundation.

It's up to the racers to support the race; they should support it only if they think it's good.

9 weeks to the Bethel Spring Series. Can you believe it?

Yeah, I can't either.

Racing - Revised 2012 Goals

2011-12-28T09:42:00.001-05:00

So the last few months have let me think about racing in 2012, specifically think about how to structure the year mentally. Usually I start off with a bang after a steady diet of JRA rides on the trainer. In December I'll start on some harder trainer rides, really bumping up the volume and intensity. This leads to a long, hard training camp in SoCal where I try and do 30 hours in a week.

This sets me up for a decent Bethel Spring Series, whose races end mid-April. A break for a bit (usually another trip out West, this time to Vegas, with the Missus's company), some training, and then I ramp up again for June and July.

After that it's all gravy, I usually realize too late that I'm honing some good form, and I try and take advantage of whatever legs I have before the season ends.

In 2012 it'll be a bit different.

For various reasons I won't be making either trip, to SoCal or Vegas. This means a loss of some serious training hours in January and February. It means a loss of another short training camp in April.

It means a loss of a lot of training time.

In addition I'm heavier than I want to be right now. I was pushing upwards of 180 lbs just a few weeks ago. With some help, advice, and some motivation, I'm trimming down just a bit, but my 160 lbs goal seems pretty far away. We'll see how it goes but my best case scenario at this point is to be 160 lbs.

(To put it in perspective, in 2010 I hit Bethel at about 155-158 lbs. In 2009 I was floating around at about 185-200 lbs.)

With the lack of early season mega-miles, a bit of weight to lose (and the inability to do massive miles when dieting), I need to push back my initial goal a bit back. Okay, fine, I want to be good at Bethel, but when I'm missing a third or more hours of training, it'll be hard to be as good as I want to be.

On the other hand, the team has really evolved in the last few months. A number of members have upgraded, racers who I admit are in superior fitness relative to me. One actually rode me off his wheel when he tried to lead me out - he was that much stronger than me.

Along with this a couple of guys have joined the team, reinforcing the strength we have with some long time experience and racing savvy. One of the new members is a guy that I've wanted to race with for literally 10 years or more. For whatever reason we could never get on the same team when we were both on form (we got on the same team one year but he was away most of that year due to work).

I've changed my goals from outright racing goals (i.e. placings, wins, etc) to something a bit more abstract - have more fun.

What is fun?

Ah, now we're getting into the core of things. I race bikes because it's fun. There's something engaging about the whole process, the equipment, the training (however much I don't like structured training), riding in a group, and, of course, racing.

I can do most of the above on my own, poring over wheels and cranks and bars and stems, going out on training rides. I need others to be able to ride in a group (obviously), and it takes more to do an actual race.

Group riding is just that, riding with a group. It's pretty straightforward, and with a good group of riders, it's pretty low key, even if it's a hard ride.

Racing, that's a whole different creature.

I can race as an individual. I did for many years, with teammates in just occasional races here and there. It's kind of like playing the violin (or any musical instrument) - I can practice and play on my own.

It gets exponentially better when you play the violin as part of a group. The give and take, the coordination, the shared goal, it all makes it all that much more exciting when playing in a group.

An orchestra is kind of like doing a mass group ride. There's a lot of people, some that you don't even know, but you all coalesce and make music together. Of course you share a bit more with your immediate neighbors, playing the same notes as you (at least in the violin section you hope you're playing about the same note).

Then, at appropriate and gratifying times, you'll hear a response from the viola or cello or bass or horns or flutes or even the timpanies (drums).

It's that give and take that's so special, so satisfying.

Problem in an orchestra is that it's pretty diverse, at least in a student one. Some of the kids are musical prodigies, Cat 1s or even pros if you will. Others are there because their parents think it's good for college apps or just to get them out of the house. Those are the Cat 5 musicians.

It can get frustrating when some of the kids don't live up to even a minimal expectation. Although the really big players tend to be good (you can't be a bad timpanist and survive more than a week), it's pretty bad when the folks around you are screeching their violins or otherwise detracting from the experience.

In music there's something a bit more intimate, a bit better - the quartet.

In a quartet there's usually two violins (first and second), a viola (a deeper violin), and a cello. Usually the musicians have complimenting skill sets, but at a level about equal to the others. If a first violin requires exquisite finger and bow work, that musician could be considered the sprinter. The cello player would then be more like the time trial guy, the super domestique.

(Ironically, with regards to playing the violin, I'm more a stayer than a sprinter.)

With a cohesive and intimate group, a quartet can produce wonderful music.

Expo Wheelmen, in a sense, is becoming that quartet, just with a lot more than four riders.

See, what makes racing really fun, what makes it so effervescent, so transient, is teamwork. I can go out and rip out a sprint or two in training, or motorpace a truck or go bombing down a hill.

But I can't do a 3 rider leadout to an imaginary line, not without two other riders.

It's possible to simulate such a thing on a group ride, but the group ride is like the orchestra - you can't have a consistent level of quality. Sometimes I'm the hammer, but other times I'm the nail.

With a good team, with a certain level of consistency, with a broad array of abilities, teamwork suddenly becomes incredibly satisfying.

And it all goes away as soon as the effort ends - that's the transience.

It's hard to describe the joy I feel when a team comes together. It's motivating, it's energizing, it's incredibly pain-numbing. As part of the team I can't sit up because if I do I sit up on everyone, not just myself. I've dug harder than I ever have when working for someone else.

There's only one problem with this whole scenario, as it applies to me.

See, at the end of 2010 I upgraded to Cat 2, and there's only one other Cat 2 on the team, and although he's a great rider and all, we don't do the same races, and when we do, he's at such a higher level than me that I can't help him and he can't help me.

Heck, I struggle to hang on when he's loafing along.

I also realized (knew?) that although I earned my Cat 2 upgrade, I'm not really a full fledged Cat 2. I can't climb as well as many Cat 5s, I time trial about as bad as possible, and I can't even hang with guys when I'm sitting on their wheels.

In other words I can't do a lot of Cat 2 races because, frankly, I'm not good enough. I get shelled in Cat 3 road races; I get shelled by the 4s and the 5s that follow behind. I do well to time trial with a Cat 4, but I lose minutes in a 7 mile time trial to the Cat 2s.

My upgrade was a sniper type upgrade - I hit my target in a very narrow, very accurate way. In those races I excelled. In any other application I was out of my league.

Expo Wheelmen, on the other hand, has a whole slew of Cat 3s. We have two very savvy guys joining us from another team. We have a bunch of 4s upgrading to 3s (okay, they already have). And we didn't lose any of our 2011 Cat 3s. I think we have close to a dozen active participating Cat 3s, guys that I saw almost every week during the summer, guys that understand the concept of teamwork, guys that can race as the protected or the protector.

Guys that I want to race with. But I can't because I'm a Cat 2. On paper anyway.

My path, then, becomes very clear.

Downgrade to Cat 3.

Join the boys on the team. Race together, an exquisite balance of strengths, leveraging off of one another's strengths, motivating each other beyond our normal limits.

And have a whole lotta fun in 2012.

Racing - Kit Time, Again

2011-12-26T21:53:00.000-05:00

It's winter time here in New England, and if you're on a cycling team, it means one thing.

Kit time.

Okay, so it means other things too, trainers, snow, booties, gloves, studded snow tires, and other unpleasantness.

For me, though, kit time is a love-hate thing. I love new kits. I hate dishing out for them.

I've never been one to get free kits, and any "free" kits I've gotten have cost more than the kit itself. For example I have a great kit from a team in Pennsylvania, a team the co-promoter of Bethel raced with for many years. We donated thousands of dollars to their national level Junior and Women's program.

The last year we gave them money, they gave me a jersey and shorts. I joked with the co-promoter that this was a "several" thousand dollar pair of shorts and jersey.

"Free" kits aren't that free.

I do get some actually free jerseys every now and then, from all sorts of sources. The Missus had one for me. A good friend has plied me with a few. I got one for promoting a race for a collegiate team (a team jersey - if you ever see me in it you'll know it for two reasons; first, I weighed about 150 lbs when I helped them, and second, I never went to Yale).

Okay, so that last one wasn't free.

But you get my drift. Kits cost money. Kits are great.

Since I try and wear my team kit whenever I go out, I buy 2-3-4-5 pairs of shorts at a time, a similar jersey count, and I usually get a wind vest, long sleeve jersey, and a jacket.

The "deluxe" purchases would include knickers and any detail stuff, shoe covers, gloves, hats, stuff like that.

For 2012 my kit will be a much simplified Expo kit, a retro kit if you will. It'll be missing a lot of the commercialism of the 2010-2011 kits. The team's goal is to have a long term kit, a kit that doesn't change constantly, a kit that one will wear until it actually starts to get a bit worn.

What this means is that my 2010-2011 kit is about to be outdated. It consists of about 6 or 7 bibs, 5 or 6 ss jerseys, 1 ss jersey, 2 vests (well 1 vest, I just gave one away), 1 jacket, 2 sets arm warmers, 2 sets leg warmers, some other stuff.

My 2012 kit so far is jacket, wind vest, arm warmers, shoe covers, hats. It covers some basics (jacket, vest) and some deluxe stuff (everything else). The team hasn't ordered any jersey/short stuff yet; that's scheduled for our just finished team meeting, and it's basically shorts and jerseys.

My order tonight? 3 jerseys, 3 pairs of shorts.

Maybe later I'll get a long sleeve jersey. Knickers would be a dream.

But that's it. I'm set for 2012, at least as far as the kit goes. The team has gone with Verge, a clothing company I really like. They help out with the Bethel Spring Series (they do the Leaders Jerseys) but more importantly they've shown up for Sweep Day even though their schedule prevented them from doing a single race.

That's grassroots support.

Since I usually wear Verge knickers, I have a bunch of them anyway, so I'll be okay for the spring races in 2012.

At some point soon, when we have our kits, I'll post pictures and stuff.

For now though I'm going to bed.

I have to admit that I've been a bit remiss in posting regularly. I have several 2/3 written posts, a bunch of ideas with framework, and a whole lot of posts waiting for the right time. To put it in perspective I have 163 posts in draft form.

I know, even I can't believe that.

I hope to get them out a bit more regularly going forward.

Onward!

Promoting - Salvage Cross 2012 Pictures

2011-12-11T09:19:00.002-05:00

(This post regarding the Salvage Cross race)

When you're just working registration, you have more time to snap pics. No changing for the race, no pumping up tires, none of that. Just hang out, register people, do paperwork, and take pictures.

It helps too that your phone takes good pictures. These are all off my DroidX.

Registration. I forgot what it's like to do registration outside.
At the Bethel Spring Series we are lucky to have Navone Studios and indoor registration.

Some notes:
1. Laptop with all important race spreadsheet.
2. Printer
3. Numbers, sorted by race.
4. Dayquil for a sick me.
5. Folders for release forms and One Day licenses.
6. Wireless Broadband MiFi modem somewhere there.
7. Heater.

Secret to staying warm - jet heater thing.
Bonus: we didn't melt anything.

Red RC truck, used to "Mars Rover" under the building where I work (I wanted to see where the cats who live there go), brought along for some reason. Equipped with a ContourHD camera and a NiteRider MiniNewt light. Ended up amusing two kids all day.

Promoter parking area. The red car is mine.
Pick up is SOC's.

Illustrious Expo team captain David H on a course marking fixing mission.

The wind picked up significantly during the day, ripping tape off the marking stakes. It also moved the tent, whipping up images of rolling 20x20 tent (with 2" wide posts), wrecking cars, bikes, and impaling specators and racers alike. Luckily the folks that set it up staked it well and although it groaned and slid and protested, it never went anywhere.

Chilly. Women and 4s did the first race at 11 AM.
Other fields raced at noon and 1 PM. Very simple schedule.

Lining up.
Yellow ribbon is to keep racers from joining the line from the side, i.e. "cutting in front of others".

Barrel O'Heat.
We played Hobo and stood around the thing. Now I understand why hobos do that.
Note singed grass around barrel.

Inside.
At the end of the day someone dumped all the wood in there. It got really hot!

During the day the grass near the air intake hole caught fire.

Woman pokes her head in the registration tent.
"Um, the grass around the barrel is on fire."
I jumped up and poked my head out.
Cliff was there dumping water on the grass.
I walked back to registration and got back to work.

Expo Dog.

This is new from Verge, the dog sweater. No, I'm just kidding. It's really an XS women's jersey. No, I'm just kidding. It just happened to be a skull and crossbones dog sweater.

I finally got to drive my car into the tent.

I did this when we started packing up. It certainly beat walking back and forth 50 feet in the cold. Red RC truck - I have to download the footage off the camera.

I have to admit that I really like my car. It's full of pep, gets great mileage, and lets me play rally driver now and then.

The tent as it started to come down.
Fortunately for me they politely waited until I moved my car out.

Breaking down the tent.

Not quite the EZ-Up that Carpe Diem Racing has but still pretty quick.
It was a 20x20 tent when up and very, very sturdy.

Kurt poses with some 2012 Expo kit.

Course marking stuff, gathered and being put away.

Another view.

We borrowed a bunch of stakes from one club, a bunch from another.
Eastern Bloc had the green ones. I forget who owned the others.

They had a lot of them though.

Hay bales.

End of day club raffle.

After we were all packed away, David held an end of day, volunteers eligible raffle. He gave away some cool stuff.

Not everyone won, but, unusually, I was one of them - I scored some Verge socks, size M. My size and my favorite clothing company. Yay!

Promoting - Salvage Cross 2011

2011-12-10T22:50:00.000-05:00

(I should point out that I'm not the promoter of Salvage Cross, I just helped with the registration bit of it. But since I only helped with the promoting part, I can't call this a "racing" or "training" post.)

I had quite the eventful week leading up to the first Expo Cross race, Salvage Cross 2011. First off, by Monday, I was getting sick, spending a lot of time at work allowing others to get things first. Tuesday I got flattened by said sickness, not remembering much except first waking up at 11 AM. Wednesday I had to make it to a pretty-much-non-changeable appointment, forcing me to drive about 4 hours, napping there before heading back.

I'd planned on updating the spreadsheet for the race Wednesday, but being sick and having to drive so much, I didn't do anything at all.

Thursday, the day registration closed, I was still delirious with fatigue, aches, but, according to the Missus, a breaking fever (I felt cold the whole day in a hoodie, sweats, and with the pellet stove cranked).

I managed to get some stuff done for the race, staying up long enough to download and updated the spreadsheet. I thanked my lucky stars that there were only four races, and I basically passed out as soon as I emailed it to Jon, the Salvage Cross promoter.

Friday, because I was asking for Saturday off, I felt I had to get to work. I loaded up on Dayquil and headed in, bundled up like it was freezing out.

Halfway through the day the Missus showed up. She was sick and going home.

Oops. My bad.

I managed to make it through the day and went to bed prepared for a not-so-early wake up call. As walking wounded (i.e. sick) and just there for registration, I didn't have to be onsite until 9 AM.

I threw some stuff in the car in preparation for the race, pens, pins, tape, binders, cash drawer, printer, some stuff that I wasn't sure if I needed but it'd be good to have. Normally the Missus would be coming with me but she was getting into the cold I still had so she stayed in bed.

I got in touch with SOC, my fellow registration person; he told me he'd be a bit late, 9:15 AM. I told him I'd get there just before - my GPS was telling me 9:05, and it's pretty accurate.

Saturday morning meant little traffic so I made good time, getting to my GPS point by 9:02.

Problem was that the cross road didn't show up on the car's nav system. I pulled over, checked the DroidX (normally acting as a dashcam), and saw I was a minute or so away from the course. I turned into the parking lot, someone flying up the road behind me.

SOC.

We parked in the "promoters'" area. SOC and I greeted each other and I laughed.

"When I told you I'd be there just before you, I didn't mean 10 feet in front of you, I meant 10 minutes. You must have made good time."

Well, that and without GPS stuff he didn't have quite the same pinpoint ETA either.

We brought everything in the car to the registration table, including, I have to admit, the little red RC truck with the helmet cam and NiteRider light on it. I figured I could take a few 4" off the ground type of shots with it.

Jon had figured I'd just bring everything I needed, so he hadn't brought anything other than power and tables. I thanked my instincts in bringing everything, and in short order we had things set up and running.

A young'un and his new friend promptly borrowed the RC truck and ran it around for pretty much 2 or 3 hours. I'm curious what the cam captured as the young'un was savvy enough to turn it on and off.

It was nice to have something for them to do (he didn't have a bike), and it was nice to see kids who had both respect for the people and things around them but still managed to have fun and explore and experiment.

Reminded me of myself when I was a kid.

Of course I spent most of the time doing registration, and I started remembering a lot of things that I'd forgotten I forgot.

I forgot how much laser printers steam in cold weather, and in the 30-odd degree weather the printer steamed a lot.

I also forgot what it's like to type when my fingers were numb with cold. It's been only two years with Navone Studios (now also a bakery), and it's been a few years since I had to really man registration at Bethel. How easy it is to forget pain.

I also haven't done the minute-to-minute registration stuff in a while, so I was relearning that too. It's something I think about when people compliment the Bethel Spring Series. I appreciate it, yes, and I am very proud of the Series, yes, but I think that we have a slightly unfair advantage - we get to practice 6 times a year. Most promoters only get one or two days of practice a year, and by the time they've figured things out, it's been a year and they forgot what they figured out.

By holding 6 (and 7 for many years) races a year, we get to practice the registration/day-of-race bit a bit more than others, and we have motivation to streamline our process. Our goal is to have paperwork essentially done by the time the last race starts (except for the last race's placings).

I have to say that we basically succeeded. By the time the Open Men's race started, we were starting to gather all the packets for the officials (fee schedule, start lists, results, one days, release forms, whatever).

At about this time I started finding detail type errors in my Thursday night edited-while-groggy-on-Dayquil-or-Nyquil spreadsheet, little things. One Day license totals didn't match (spreadsheet cell error). USAC results didn't populate properly (ditto). The places didn't auto-populate properly (ditto).

SOC and I started fumbling a bit until a knight in shining armor showed up.

The Missus.

Okay, she was in a black jacket, coughing a bit, but she saved the day. Having run registration for a few years (that's why I was so rusty with it), she knew immediately what we needed to get done. Zip, zap, and bang we were all set, literally within a few minutes of her arrival.

So cool.

I told SOC that most officials hate the bit after the race, where they count One Day forms, figure out how many racers raced, this fee, that fee, exclusions, exceptions, results, start lists, all that. It could take an hour or two just for the paperwork; I know because it used to be like that at Bethel.

Now, with the spreadsheets originally created by Gene P (and slowly honed by me), we were done before the official even walked over to the tent.

I took extreme liberties in the breakdown part of the day, only packing away the registration stuff (and literally driving my car into the heated tent to save walking out in the cold).

Then I took pictures.

I skipped the cross-required beer, partook in the post-race-volunteer-raffle (won some socks!), and set off with the Missus for some well deserved rest.

I have to admit that cross doesn't really do it for me. I admired Jon's bike, with its low pressure bouncy tires, and I think it'd be fun to carve a few corners, but the actual races looked like death marches, like a hill climb laid flat.

But working registration, that was fine. I contributed in the area of my expertise, I could help carry some of the stress that Jon had to carry as a promoter, and I had the equipment to do it.

Next year I hope that we can hold it again, maybe a bit earlier (the original date was Oct 30th, but we got stormed out).

Whenever we do it though, I want to help out again.

Hopefully I won't be sick.

(I have to offload pictures off the cam and the DroidX so I'll post those later.)

Story - Kind Soul

2011-12-08T22:04:00.001-05:00

One of my first "big" races was the Worchester Polytech Institute crit (pronounced "wooster" or, more simply, "WPI"). Like many collegiate crits, it featured a wall of a climb up to the finish.

I was in my lightweight phase, running stupid light stuff, pushing limits even for a barely 112 pound racer (my weight at the end of my UCONN days). For that day I selected my piece de resistance, a delectable 28 hole 17 mm "aero" rim (in the days when a 20mm or so high rim was aero), shod with an equally tiny 17 mm Panaracer tubular.

Those tubulars deserve a post in themselves. They resembled a slightly oversize ball point pen when inflated, rode like one, and, because of its nylon casing, seemed completely bullet proof.

Because the tire's miniscule dimensions scared me, I always inflated them to 140 psi, the most I could get out of my pump, and only with someone else's assistance.

(Because, would you believe this, at about 120 psi I couldn't push down on the pump anymore - instead I was lifting myself off the ground!)

With some just as crazy rear wheel (I'm guessing I'd have run my trusty Ambrosio Crono tubular with a matching Panaracer 19 or 20 mm 200g kevlar belted tubular, my favorite set up for a while), I lined up a bit late, in the last row of something like 125 racers.

Cocky beyond belief, I joked and smirked and hid my anxiety until the race started. I looked at my many watches on my wrists (I wore 2 for a while, 5 towards the end of my collegiate career) and, once the whistle blew starting the race, counted thirteen seconds before the riders around me started to move.

With little reason to scramble into the pedals (toe clips and straps, my trusty Gipiemme half axle pedals), I leisurely clocked the time, clipped in, and started rolling away from the line.

Immediately I changed gears mentally. I knew that on a tight, twisting course, with a monster wall, there'd be massive splits in the group. This meant working as hard as I could to get towards the front of the group, about to where I could literally see the front racers. For me that meant getting into about the top 30, maybe top 25.

With a hundred and twenty odd riders ahead of me, I had a lot of passing to do.

I gritted my teeth, pedaled deep into the turns, jumped just as hard out of them, spun up my uber-light tubulars, thanked heaven to Betsy that I had the 17 mm 140 gram front tire, that I had an equally effective 200 gram rear tire, both shod on stupid light rims. The bike responded beautifully - I'd make it to the front or break my wheels trying.

The hill presented the biggest challenge and, ultimately, the biggest advantage. Halfway up the hill the road had a huge pothole, about three feet wide, maybe a foot deep, and about two or three feet long. On a descent the hole would flip a rider right over his bars. On this climb it presented what amounted to be a "no-ride" zone.

There was a nicely placed pedestrian bridge just over it, giving the lucky two dozen up there a great view of the carnage below.

Racers scrambled up the sides of the pothole each lap, wiggling and balancing to try and keep from falling in.

As they flowed around it, the hole created a natural breakwater, a natural flow of racers around said hole. It started maybe forty feet before the hole, as riders tried to move up until the last second, then ended in the twenty or so feet after, when they riders at the edge thankfully moved back into some sort of spacing and order.

That first lap I scrambled with the best of them, balancing precariously at the edge of the hole, my tires literally an inch from dropping into a guaranteed crash.

The next lap, a bit more tired, I left it late, and ended up faced with a decision: brake hard and try and move over, or try and get some speed up and see if I could ride through the round trench in front of me.

You can guess my choice.

I punched it, tugged hard on the bars, and sailed the front wheel over the hole.

The rear didn't fair as well and it definitely had some terra firma contact as bike and rider passed over the hole.

I accelerated angrily away from the pothole, angry at myself for subjecting the bike to abuse and angry for putting myself in a poor tactical position.

The furious pedal strokes also tested the rear tire's integrity - a pinch flat, however unlikely, would show itself as a softening tire, one easily discerned by an angrily stomping pedal stroke. There were other tests too, but for the first four or five pedal strokes that's what I focused on.

As the racers around me adjusted their trajectory, an unexpected person filling in the reunification of the two peloton halves, I realized that my rear tire was fine.

No lumps indicating a bent rim. No squishiness from a partially deflated tire. No wiggliness from a broken spoke.

I'd just learned my new line up the hill.

Relieved a bit, and, I have to admit, tiring rapidly, I took it easier in the multitude of corners through the course, saving up my energy for another run at the pothole.

The next lap I launched myself at the pothole like there was no tomorrow.

Again, my front wheel cleared, my rear wheel caught.

Again nothing happened.

Again I moved up, a lot, maybe ten, maybe 15 spots.

For a few laps I kept this up, forcing the issue, passing more and more tired racers, defeat on their faces, blasting my bike through this trench of a pothole.

Provoked, motivated, I sensed the end of the opening battle, the time to ease a bit, gather my thoughts, and figure out what to do next.

Somewhere in there, in the frantic movement to the front, accelerating out of yet another hard turn, the UCONN cycling team coach (a Cat 3 but a very savvy one - I hear he's a 2 out in SoCal now), went by the wrong way, backwards, fading hard after staying at the front for a while.

He yelled at me.

"Stay up there! Don't get dropped!"

I looked at him sideways. Don't get dropped? I can see the front, there were maybe 25 guys in front of me, a good hundred behind.

Don't get dropped?

I looked down, looking for the wheel behind me.

Nothing.

I looked back.

Open road.

Okay, my coach was back there, so were a few other riders, but all had the same look on their faces.

This was it. I'd made the front selection.

In one of the first Winning Magazines ever, there's a beautiful picture of a field blown apart by severe crosswinds, the picture taken from one of the first following vehicles. You can see the progression of the groups to the front, smaller and smaller, and, imaginably, faster and faster.

The caption read something unfriendly, like "A peloton of losers that will never see the front."

I hated reading that because it stung. It stung because, for those guys, those pros, it was true. The race was over for them and nothing short of time travel would make it better. It stung because it often applied to me.

Not today.

Today I was in the peloton at the front.

I wasn't a loser.

The group attacked itself over and over again, always on the hill, usually towards the top. The best time to attack is at the top of the hill, when everyone mentally eased up, when everyone's legs are fried from sprinting up the stupid hill.

I cursed under my breath each time but found somewhere the energy to keep going.

Our group shrank. 25 became 20. 20 became 15. And 15 became 13.

I started thinking of the win.

I knew I could sprint okay - I'd just learned that in the last few races, where I'd won two (the prior fall) and got second a couple times.

I knew the course now, even though I saw it mainly from an eye-at-stem-level viewpoint.

And I knew I could get up that hill pretty quickly.

The bell rang for a prime. Here was a chance to test my tactics for the finish. I didn't want to be quite first through the turn but I wanted to close to the front.

I don't remember the lap but I jumped out of the last turn about third, sprinting against just one guy, the other guy, the leadout one, dropping away quickly.

Now, I should point out that cash prizes had just been outlawed at collegiate races. The powers that be decided that money on the line was uncollegiate-like (think of football and such) and therefore illegal. Primes were a different matter - cash, money, dollars, it was all okay.

So when they rang the bell for a prime, at least that collegiate season, the racers perked up.

Sprinting up the hill I'd taken the front, knew I had the front, but had started going deep into the red.

Another guy sprinted next to me, thrashing, looking not so great, but gaining on me.

I looked at him. Looked down.

If I didn't finish off the sprint, I'd lose whatever money, ten bucks or something, a pizza and then some. If I did finish off the sprint, I'd be really vulnerable to a counterattack for a good lap or so.

I looked over.

I punched the pedals again.

Won the sprint.

A guy who had introduced himself to me at the line rolled up next to me. In fact I believe he led us out.

"You win the prime?" he asked, eyes wide with excitement.

"Yeah," I muttered, blown to pieces and hoping for a reprieve.

"That's so cool!"

And then bam, he took off.

I looked up like "Wtf is he doing?"

I still remember the sight. Him red faced with effort, looking like he was about to explode, but then launching up the right side, his skinny legs putting down an unbelievable amount of power, like he hadn't turned a pedal all day.

The others raced after him.

The prime loser and me looked at each other, both giving up, both having burnt all our matches for the now-stupid prime.

We joined the peloton of losers. I'm pretty sure he dropped me, but I caught someone that had a flat or crashed or both.

I don't remember much of the race after that, just time trialing on my own, descending well, trying to sprint up the climb, and getting lapped by the solo leader.

I ended up 12th or 13th.

The guy who won was the guy that was so psyched for my prime win. He didn't attack me on purpose; he attacked because he was so psyched for me he had to release that energy somehow.

He had just become a Cat 3, like me, and shortly thereafter a Cat 2, not like me.

He was a Kind Soul, a solid, solid Cat 2, old school, always worked hard, tried to go for the big wins, never let the success go to his head.

At races he always greeted me with his wry grin, cheerful, asking how I was, how my season was going, stuff like that. He never seemed dour, never upset, always happy to be there.

Yet, on the bike, he could destroy fields with his legs.

I remembered one of the last July 4th Middletown Crits, the one down Main Street, the epitome of what a crit should be - major holiday, big wide main street closed down, and a field of good racers hacking away at each other.

At some point he launched a bit move. The others looked at him, hoping he'd blow himself up. But he trundled on, power from his tall lanky legs, bike pounding relentlessly on the rough tarmac.

Lap after lap, under a hot sun, he stretched out his lead, this in the days before EPO, before HGH, before the internet. Honest racing, strong racing, where talent and training determined your place.

And he thundered on. You could hear the tires thrumming on the pavement as he screamed by us. I remember thinking, "How can he put out so much power, lap after lap? I could do that for maybe half a lap, then I'd be done."

He soloed in for a grand win, the best way to win, a spectacular ride on a spectacular day out of a spectacular field.

His races weren't always so nice.

On a different day, an industrial park race, one no longer held, he was away with one other guy. They worked hard together but the other guy, he had the favor of the announcer. He had been a hotshot Junior, he'd been at all the camps, he had what it took in the area. Kind Soul, as good as he was, raced for a rival team, a rival sponsor, and, well, frankly, he had a poor sprint.

It didn't look good for Kind Soul, but we were all rooting for him, me and all of my friends. We respected the other guy, sure, but we desperately wanted Kind Soul to win.

The last lap came; one of the two would win. The other guy was always a bit iffy but always really, really strong, one of the strongest in the area, and we waited for the fireworks.

The two rounded the first bend, disappearing from view. We all turned to look down to the other end of the straight, even though it'd take them a good minute to appear.

We all waited, me and my friends rooting for the Kind Soul.

"He has to attack out of a turn."
"No, the other guy can jump harder."
"Maybe he can double jump him, a fake then a real one."
"I dunno, maybe after a long break he's strong enough to sprint."

We talked a race worth of "what ifs" and then we saw a rider appear.

It was the other guy. He rolled into view, not really pedaling hard, rolled up to the line, winner, arms in the air, kind of casual about it.

We all looked in puzzlement.

Then our friend Kind Soul rolled around, obviously scraped up from a crash, poorly hidden tears streaking his face.

The winner was laughing, said that the other guy just fell over.

There were some angry words spoken but nothing came of it. The race results stood.

I asked Kind Soul much, much later, years later, what happened.

He told me that on the backstretch the winner guy jerked his bike sideways, slamming the winner guy's rear wheel basically through Kind Soul's front wheel.

Kind Soul hit the deck hard.

Winner guy looked back and made some comment about learning to ride the bike (or some such nonsense), then scampered off happily to take his win.

Kind Soul managed to remount his bike and take second; the two had that much of a lead over the field.

I asked him why he didn't protest. Apparently he did, but the officials and announcer were sort of like teammates and coach of the winner guy, and there were no witnesses that weren't in their camp.

Therefore there was no incident, there was no contact.

The winner guy is now a respected coach in the area. He still races. He's way stronger than me but I always keep an eye out on him when he's in the same field as me. You never know when a person reverts to their old self.

As for Kind Soul, he moved back to the Midwest, where he apparently lived before his time on the East Coast. I found him when he found my blog. He blogs too, infrequently, but mainly about his son and his son's racing. I'm glad to say that they seem to be doing fine.

(I won't link to his blog unless he okays it; I still have to ask him.)

Life - Sick

2011-12-06T18:11:00.002-05:00

I'm sick.

I even got the flu shot (at least a month ago I think).

The thing about being sick is that I never remembered feeling this bad.

I mean, I remember remembering that I didn't remember feeling this bad, but I didn't remember the actual feeling that I remembered not remembering.

Does that make sense?

Suffice it to say that I'm in la-la land and totally unproductive.

Which, I suppose, is why they call it a sick day.

Racing - 2012 Goals

2011-12-05T12:28:00.007-05:00

(Lifted pretty much verbatim from a lengthy post on SocialCyclists.org.)

My 2011 season was a wash.

My main problem was not having a goal early on (intentionally), which meant no real training over the winter, which meant a very low fitness level going into March. It was so low that my normal "use races for training" didn't work because I couldn't hang in the races long enough to get good training. As a 3 I was doing the 3-4 race (1+ hour) at Bethel, then the P123 race (1.5+ hours). As a 2 I couldn't finish the P123 by itself.

The Missus even commented on my lack of fitness relating to lack of goals relating to lack of training. One of my friends calls his wife "The Coach"; I used to laugh inside at this, but now it's sort of turned that way for me. Since my training most affects the Missus (through time spent away from her), if she says I ought to train more then I ought to train more.

I suppose that if I was single I'd be training/racing more; I'm not so I don't. It's not a bad thing, it's just the way things work. I'm not single because there is significant time I'd rather be with the person with whom I'm not single (the Missus) rather than on my own. That the Missus enjoys the racing scene helps; that she understands my need to race helps too; and that she understands my disappointment when I don't race up to my expectations, well, that really helps.

For 2012 I have a very simple short term goal: to arrive in March in race trim.

It's all or nothing. I don't want to aim at June or July or some abstract warm sunny time in the far future. I want to focus on the grey, dingy, flahuten March in Connecticut weather. I want to be flying by then, lean, relatively fit, and hungry to race.

Once that happens, all bets are off; the rest of the season hinges on what happens in March. In 2011 I had a poor March, which meant I had a poor April. That led to a poor May, albeit with a few flashes of form. With no solid base the flashes flashed, my body went back to its unconditioned self, and I had a poor June. And July. And August.

I don't want to do that again.

I want to start with a good base and let things go from there; if things go well I can always find a goal for May or June or July or whatever, it's getting to March in race trim that counts. "Race trim" means losing weight, maintaining my bike equipment, and doing some training.

Curiously enough, once I had this goal (it only really solidified a few nights ago while on the trainer), the things I had to do to accomplish said goal suddenly sharpened in focus. It became very clear what I should work on and what I can let go. It comes down to a few things.

Weight

In 2010 I was 155 lbs at the first race at Bethel; right now I'm working to stay under 180. I gain weight quickly. I used to lose it quickly too, but that went away when I got "older". In my early-mid 30s I lost without dieting 20+ lbs in one very active February. Now weight I gain sticks around. I need to focus on diet for the next 2-3 months. Once I start losing weight it becomes very exciting for me - it's easier and easier for me to watch what I eat because I can see the results of my prior efforts.

Equipment

I neglected my equipment in 2011. I'm not talking just handlebar tape or cable ends; I'm talking replacing two SRM wiring harnesses, a set of SRM batteries, two sets of BB30 bearings, shortening the stays on the orange Tsunami, gluing up new race tires, sorting my gear bag (kit, accessories). All this needs to be done by March 2012. Other than new kit I have no necessary purchases - I have all my race wheels, training wheels, race and training tires, chains, cassettes, etc. I even have spare derailleurs for groups I don't use (SRAM).

Pet Project

(This is kind of like extra credit - not really required, but ends up a huge time suck.)

Each year I have a pet project. For two years it's been whatever new bike equipment (2010 = Tsunami/HEDS, 2011=TsunamiTwo). 2012's pet project will be adapting a Cycleops trainer stand (I have 3 stands, 2 resistance units) into a Rock N Roll type pivoting unit. A friend who welds will help me with this. I want to use that to turn my trainer stuff up one notch. I haven't ever been able to do all out sprints on the trainer; I hope this allows me to do something like that.

My first step will be to create some patterns for the steel plate. The second step will involve giving my friend Mark a big steel plate and the patterns. He'll cut, weld, and return a franken-trainer. This ought to be good.

A secondary project will be experimenting with FSA Compact bars. I'll use them to build up the Orange bike when I get it back. If that works then I have a lot of options as far as bars go. Right now I have a very precious stash of crit-bend bars but I'm starting to run low.

The third one will be the stay-shortening on the orange Tsunami, but to me that's more like a build project, not anything unusual.

Training

The Missus has been reminding me to train. This is a good thing as a lot of time I feel guilty training, not because of anything she says but because of how I feel about what I should be doing. The big change for 2012 will be no California trip in late January. This means no 10-12 completely dedicated, pro-style training camp days. I normally did 3 hour rides consistently, with some 6 hour rides thrown in there (and some corresponding 0-1 hour rest days). I'll try and replicate something like that here, depending on how things go. I hope to turn four travel days (2 actual traveling; 2 packing/unpacking) into training days - that's the only way I can turn this into a "better" training camp.

Depending on the weather I will train outside a bit more. It burns more fuel, gives me a more natural pedaling action (i.e. I can stand), and on the mountain bike it's both slow (warm) and never ending (I have to pedal everywhere as it doesn't coast well). I relearned all this when I went for a mtb on the road in Maine.

Other Stuff

There's a promoting aspect to my season too. I hope to bring off another successful Bethel Spring Series, more of which I'll post about later; suffice it to say that it's my only "must accomplish" goal of the year. I'd like to do a bit more on this side of cycling, but for now that's just dreams and wishes. I put it this way in a forum thread somewhere - I don't want to announce things when I'm planting seeds; I'd rather wait until I'm harvesting.

We'll see how it goes.

Training - In Maine, In Snow, On a MTB

2011-11-27T20:06:00.000-05:00

A few things I relearned Friday:
1. "1/2 inch down and 1 inch over" doesn't necessarily mean it's just a few miles.
2. Android GPS Google Maps doesn't have scale. In other words, it's impossible to tell what "1/2 inch down" means.
3. If the town where you started riding suddenly disappeared from the map, it's a hint that the scale has just gotten to "you should zoom in now".
4. If it takes over 1.5 hours to ride the 1 inch to the left, the 1 inch up and 1/2 inch over will take another 2.5 hours or so. If you have 1.5 hours of daylight left this is a problem.
5. The mountain bike is a bit slower than the road bike.
6. When I realize I've hit the wall and call the Missus, and she's trying to call you at the same time because she realized I've hit the wall...

A corollary:
I have a great Missus. She eliminated the "2 hours of daylight I didn't have" quandary by driving out and picking me up.

All these significant statements requires some explanation.

First off, yes, like the title says, we were in Maine. We were visiting the Missus's Mom and Bob, up at their palatial digs in rugged LL Bean part of Maine. We're not talking the quaint "let's go shopping at the mall" Maine, or the "Let's camp out for Black Friday" Maine.

We're talking the rough and tumble, shoo the chickens out of the way when you walk out the door, the "Can you move the .410 slugs so I can put down the coffee?", the "Are the guns away?" kind of Maine.

Yeah.

That kind of Maine.

It all started on Wednesday when we set out for the drive. It's not bad if you're just going to Portland, but to get to, um, "that" part of Maine, at least the wimpy bit of the rough Maine (I'm too wimpy for the really rough bits of Maine, where breakfast is what you shot that morning), well, Portland is just past halfway there.

Of course another tough storm threatened the area, the Maine area in particular. Down here it was supposed to rain three inches. Up there?

It was bad enough that even the tough Mainers closed down a lot of stuff. We joked that they'd think it was just a dusting, but when Mainers close down schools, for the whole day, by 7 AM, you know it's serious.

And how did we know they were closing schools by 7 AM?

Because, believe it or not, we hit Portland at about that time. That means we left at, right, about 3:30 AM.

Laden with supplies (okay, maybe not, but we felt like we should bring flour and other things that the supply wagons brought to the wild west outposts), we had set off at oh-dark-o'clock.

With the Red Car II shod with brand new aged (I'll explain at some point; suffice it to say that car tires are marked with their manufacture date) snow tires, we made great time in the heavy rain that accompanied us from home. I only felt the tires do a little "wha?" twice, and that was in a row, two stripes of water running across the highway, while doing the "speed limit plus ten" speed.

In Portland we optimistically called the Maine Outpost to report that we'd just gotten past the halfway point, that we'd be seeing them, based on the scarily accurate GPS, about 9:42 AM.

(We fudged - we'd make a couple pee stops so we said it would be more like 10-10:15 AM).

Then reality struck.

Or rather, the rain changed into sleet.

"I don't think that's rain anymore."
"What? No, that's rain."
"Look. It's splattering when it hits the windshield."
"Oh. Look. It's starting to stick."

In about 4 minutes we called the Outpost back.

"We're gonna be a bit late. It's all snow now. No, really. The trees are white! I know, I can't believe it either. I think we should be there at noon maybe."

(GPS was already wondering who the wimp was behind the wheel - it was me - and our ETA quickly flew forward into the 11 o'clock ETA range.)

Snow.

We passed a lot of spun out cars, a couple spun out trucks, and plodded our way north.

After almost 12 hours, sometime after 2 PM, we arrived, tired and a bit stunned, at the Outpost.

"You're the first ones here. The others should be here at 9 or 10 tonight."

I promptly took a nap.

I woke up to the sound of talking, headed down for some family time, and at some point called it a night.

The next day dawned bright and clear, the storm a memory past. I checked out the situation with the cars a bit closer.

Snow tires, outside side out, performed wonderfully.

The newly mounted snow tires (Pirelli Sottozero 240s, 225/45-17), after just 6 or so miles of test driving around town on Tuesday, made the half day trip north easily the following day.

You get an idea of the amount of snow we encountered, about 6 hours of steady storm.
On a related note I wonder how the Maine police deal with bank robbers in the winter. No visible plates.

I gathered myself inside and got some coffee from the Missus. My eyes caught something holiday-red sitting on the shelf. When I inquired, I got the answer.

".410 slugs. Less recoil than the 30-06."

Sigh. Such beautiful holiday decorations.

A more business-like item, the aforementioned 30-06. I think there were two in the house.

I headed out of the house to play with some of the kids, guinea hens scrambling out of the way.

Guinea hens.
They look like chickens Darth Vader would raise.

The guinea hens had been roosting outside, refusing the heated shelter on offer just a few yards away. Maybe the more normal looking chickens made them self conscious, I don't know, but for whatever reason the grey hens were outside the whole time.

The standard morning routine for some of the guys (equipped with snow gear) was to gather hunting sticks (aka rifles) and head out.

"I'll be back."

They're return a few hours later, empty-handed. I think hunting is more like fishing, it's really a time to hang out, talk, and trudge around in the woods for a while. It's kind of like going for a long training ride with a couple friends - there's some unspoken communication, a bonding if you will, without much official or measurable transactions.

Trudging back.

Ultimately, through all of this tough living, I went for a ride. I brought my mountain bike, thinking it'd be the appropriate one. I figured that at worst I could venture down some half frozen logging trail, follow some deer, something like that.

Best would be a road ride.

I should point out that although I like this bike, I haven't maintained it much. It still has a broken spoke in the rear wheel (I got it like that, maybe 8 or 10 years ago?). It still has just one usable chainring, the big one; the other two are too bent. The brakes are pretty worn. The front shock is useless, fully compressing almost immediately. The tires have steel beads so they weigh about 1.5 pounds each.

But the bike has its strengths too. It has a set of widely spaced gears (usually too much of a jump at one time, but I could live with that) so I can ride around with just that one chainring. It has my absolute favorite seat for a mountain bike, the old Concorde-like nose WTB saddle. I put full fenders on at some point which are great for inclement conditions.

I hadn't ridden it in so long that before I put the bike in the car I pumped up the tires, just in case they were bad. The Missus had to remind me to toss some pedals on the thing - I'd stolen them off the mtb to equip some other thing, and now they had to go back (Look Keo Classics - road pedals).

At the time I also tossed in my totally full gear bag, with everything and everything in it. I wanted to be prepared.

Luckily for me, the weather turned around and cleared up nicely for Friday, the day after the big feast. 40-something degrees, sunny, and not that windy.

Fully fueled from a huge dinner ("I've never seen you eat that much"), a few glances at a map online (in the house we had just one computer that was internet browsable, with a couple very slow-connection smartphones), and I set out for what I hoped would be a 2 hour ride. I wanted to get a bit fatigued, get that "hey I feel good" feeling, then ride that out until I faded. Such a ride would usually take me 1.5-2 hours for the first part, transition to the second part, then do another 1.5-2 hours before I faded.

The last time I did a ride outside I rode with a teammate, a good two hour ride. I got to the point where my legs just started to come around when we finished up; this time I wanted to push through that barrier.

With just a two or so hour ride ahead I decided to skip any food or water. My last ride I skipped both and it had lasted two hours. After much more food, a lot more rest, I figured that I'd be safe without food/water for a two hour ride.

I set off, ominously almost falling in the deep snow in the driveway, but okay once I got on the drying pavement.

Kind of dry pavement. It got better.

The first few slush ridged made me thankful for my full fenders, a mod I made a few years ago when I rode a few times outside in inclement weather. The tires gave that reassuring SUV feel, letting me daydream until I ran off the road a few times.

I headed southeast on 170, aiming to make a left on a Molly-something road, then a right at a T, then a right onto 169, then a right back onto 170.

Route 170. Slushy snow and an occasional logging truck going 60 mph.

After a bit I came to basically a T intersection, Routes 170 and 6. Glancing at my smartphone (GPS working fine but no signal for phone use), I saw that my short jaunt had taken me about 1/2" down the map on the phone screen. If I went right on Route 6 I'd have about an inch to get to Route 2. Another inch took me north on 2 until 170, and less than half inch brought me home.

In my somewhat befuddled state, I forgot that the stretch on 170 from 2 to home was almost 9 miles.

Which meant that the bit on 6 would be close to 20.

Totally oblivious to this, I took the right on 6 and headed west.

I noticed the wind right away. I thought about a post on BikeForums, someone asking what to do when faced with a headwind.

"Tough it out," I thought back then.

I did what I thought I should. I toughed it out.

Wind means windmills. Or rather windmills mean wind.
Note the nice condition shoulder.

I did have a glimmer of hope - if the wind didn't change, the slightly left headwind would turn into a tailwind on Route 2. That meant some nice riding for the inch up Route 2.

It took me about a minute longer to grasp the other course difference. Unlike the flat-rolling 170, Route 6 did a lot of up and down. I learned after the ride that the locals call it the Airplane Road because you feel like you're in an airplane constantly climbing or descending.

For a guy on a mountain bike, this was the Purgatory. The road tested me. I slogged over the hills, trying not to gear down too much. I found my second set of legs and started pushing hard (for me). I knew that I had to get to Route 2, then to Route 170, all before about 3:30 PM. I'd left past 11:30 AM, so I had only 4 hours total, and... well, I realized that I was going to be out for a bit more than 2 hours.

The sun looked threateningly low in the horizon, and Route 6 just would not end. This hill, that curve, another descent, and yet another climb, and still no signs of an impending intersection with Route 2.

At some point something twanged and pinged on the rear wheel. I looked down and the 31 spoke wheel, already a bit wobbly, looked positively pear shaped. I could hear some clinking and plunking but since nothing seemed to be failing more, I kept going.

Eventually those noises went away.

(And to be totally honest I never checked what happened. Whatever happened is still like that.)

I started thinking about when I'd have to call the Missus. I realized at about this time (when I had a lot of alone time to think about things) that I had about 9 miles to go on just 170 alone, and I also realized that when we drove up Route 2 to 170 that it took us an hour or so.

This meant that the inch on Route 2 was probably 20 miles, which made the inch on Route 6 another 20 miles.

20 miles which for me on a mountain bike would be about 1:30 by itself. Another 1:30 for Route 2, and 45 minutes of panic-stricken riding would get me to home base.

With the sun so low, I mentally moved my panic-stricken riding ahead of schedule. I'd race for the 2/170 intersection and hopefully meet help there.

I turned onto Route 2. The wind shifted as I hoped, pushing me along. I tickled my top gear, the much flatter terrain really helping.

Then, riding along next to some railroad tracks, my legs suddenly switched off. I struggled just to turn over the pedals.

I was cooked and I knew it. I think you could have heard my legs explode about 20 miles away, it was that bad.

I pulled over. I'd have to ask the Missus to not only drive all the way down 170 but also south on 2. I was a long way away from 2, probably a half inch, so about 18 miles of driving, half hour or so.

When I unlocked my phone I saw that I had absolutely no signal.

In situations like this you can't complain, you can't argue, you can't do anything but harden up and keep going.

I wasn't going to go stupid though, I got going while I thought about things. I'd push forward on this flatter section until I could see more of the surrounding hills. If a cellphone tower sat on such a hill, I could get a signal.

No dice.

My next thought was to get to the top of a small rise. Cell towers work on line of sight so a hilltop would be the best bet for a good signal.

I crawled to the top of the next climb, stopped, and checked the phone.

2 bars.

I rang the Outpost.

On the first ring the Missus picked up.

"You're alive."
"Yeah. Um, can you pick me up?"

I told her where I was, and we both figured it'd be about 17 miles to get to me.

I didn't realize but the Missus could drive about 50-60 mph the whole way, as the speed limits were that high, even on secondary roads.

I set out again, the thought of help sapping any remaining strength from my legs.

I rolled up the biggest hill on Route 2, passing a house surrounded by kids standing around drinking beer.

I looked over at them.

They looked at me.

I'm sure we both thought the same thing.

"Thanksgiving, and you're doing that?"

I didn't make it much further until, to my surprise, I saw the Red Car flying towards me, the front end wiggling as the Missus threw out the anchors.

(Okay, that wasn't accurate, but she did slow might fast, and my mind did see the front end shuddering as if under massive braking. Plus a hatch driving in snowy conditions screams "Rally!" to me and rally cars wiggle under braking.)

I tossed the bike in the back, jumped in the car, and the Missus expertly K-turned and started hauling north on 2.

"I tried to call you about 10 minutes before you called the house. I figured you'd be running out of gas."
"Oh. I tried to call you 10 minutes before but I didn't have a signal."

I thought about that for a moment.

"Waitaminute. You called me when I was trying to call you because you thought that that's when I'd be blown?"
"Yeah," she grinned. "I'm good aren't I?"

Heh.

We flew home, the Red Car acting just like a rally car on the potholed and dirt covered roads. Okay, the Missus acting like a rally driver, driving along the backroads to the Outpost at top speed.

Once at home I had to share my adventures with the group (12 of us there at the Outpost). The locals (Mom and Bob) filled me in on the details. I'd ridden just under 50 miles on the mountain bike, some hilly stuff, some flatter stuff.

My "one inch" on Route 6 was about 20 miles. The bit down 170 to 6 was almost 13. I rode 11 miles up 2 before I faded hard, and another 4 before the Missus got me. It was 16 miles back to the Outpost.

I staggered around a bit once at the Outpost. The Missus whipped up a plate of awesome, which I downed in about 5 minutes; an hour later I joined everyone for dinner.

And in the middle of the night I got up, starving, and ate cookies, bread, muffins, and drank Coke, juice, and water.

Incredibly, the next day, the day we headed back, I felt fine. No sore legs, a bit fatigued, but otherwise totally recovered.

The Missus asked me how I felt.

"Tired. But if this was California, I'd be doing it again today."

We both grinned.

For us, though, it was time to get home. We did the return trip a bit quicker, stopping to visit the Maine brother and his family. Finally we arrived, well into the night, but with enough time to spot some of the mischief our cats had accomplished during our absence.

I heard the Missus in the kitchen.

"Someone left little tooth marks in the sweet potatoes."

Riley's curiosity teeth marks. She loves sweet orange things.

At least we won't have to poke holes in them.

Training - It's Off Season Alright!

2011-11-19T21:01:00.003-05:00

I read a very nice post the other day in Bike Forums. There's a thread on training and such, another one on miscellaneous stuff ("My Twitter Feed"), and a couple more that kind of blend in together in my head. At any rate, after some atrociously pitiful riding on the trainer, I posted something to the effect of "I could finally use something harder than the small ring 23T."

Another member replied "You must have some serious tension on that thing."

Unfortunately, I don't. And that's where this post is heading.

I've been struggling with even the lowest level of training, trying to get the legs to turn over. It feels like I'm "anti-doping" - I have close to zero energy, zero motivation. I explained earlier that I tried to set some lower expectations in 2011, and that this lack of goals led to a lack of motivation, leading to a complete lack of results.

With the help and encouragement of the Missus, I'm trying to get back on track. I've laid off a bit on the bike, fine, but I'm starting to ride it again. I even rode outside recently (it was a nice day), but my planned two hour ride lasted only a bit more than half that, my body exhausted.

It's not like I've been eating just Twinkies and Coke; I've been eating somewhat normally, some food good for me, a little bit that's not that good for me.

I admit I don't sleep enough, probably, but I'm not sleeping any less than I did a few years ago.

My training, though, feels uninspired. I'm not sure what it is, what's changed.

Sometimes I wonder, am I burnt out?

I don't think so. I love riding fast, I love diving into corners, I love the acceleration when I jump.

I think that I'm suffering from "good form withdrawal".

2010 was an absolute banner year. I had some disappointments for sure - I rarely finished a Tuesday Rent race, I had some abysmal Sunday races (especially towards the end, like Fall River), but overall I had a season to die for, at least to me. I rode well in races I normally don't finish, did well in a race with a big to me hill (New London), and did enormous amounts of work in races where I worked for teammates or, in one case, to stay out of danger.

I think I fell into a false sense of security. If nothing changed, I'd be like that for 2011, even with no goals and such. Trouble was that this, of course, isn't the case. Form comes with work, and great form is not only a function of great work, it's also a time-limited commodity - no one can maintain a peak indefinitely.

I spiraled downward in 2011, a few ill-timed illnesses really zapping me in the off season (I was fortunate in the prior 2009-2010 off season). The lower fitness meant I couldn't complete races in the spring, losing me even more training time. This led to a lot of DNFs in the late spring, making me lose even more potential fitness training.

It finished with a weak summer, DNFs all over, and even when I could finish, I had no "moments", no bits in races where I could make huge efforts and recover like it was nothing.

I never earned any form.

When I climbed back on the bike in October I wasn't thinking of doing much. Trainer rides to me consist of spinning the small ring to get started, churning the big ring once I feel warm. I so rarely use my lowest gears that I usually have to stop and adjust my derailleur when I go out to California - the first half mile climb usually forces me into my bottom gear, a 39x25, and I'd hear the derailleur pinging away at the spokes.

"Right," I think, "I haven't used that gear since... I don't remember when."

I'd climb off the bike, tighten the limit screw a bit (sometimes a lot), and it'd be good until the following year.

Well, last month I realized that the low gear (a 44x25 right now, only because the only non-worn rings I had left were a 55x44 combo meant for the tandem) was about the only gear I could turn.

I spent the whole hour turning the 44x25, and suffering doing it.

After a few rides I felt it possible to turn the 44x23.

One cog to the right.

Of course I'd clack away at the shifter, tossing the chain into a huge gear like the 19 or 17, but after 10 or 20 seconds, when my legs started to feel numb, when my breathing got uncomfortably rapid, I'd shift back into the 23.

I found myself doing mini intervals, going hard in the 17 or 19, recovering in the 23 or 25.

IN THE SMALL RING!

Yeah, it was bad. It is bad.

A few nights ago I got on the trainer. I felt pretty good and ventured into "the right range", the harder gears.

I could turn them.

I counted from the 11, incredulous.

11, 12, 13, 14, 15.... I'm in the 15? Lemme count again.

Sure enough, I could turn the 15 over, some effort, but nothing killing me like before.

I rolled along, happy with my bump in form.

I only have speed right now, my SRM harness a mess, my HR straps dead. I figure I'll fix them at some point, but right now the only thing I have is speed.

And the speed, as they say, "She is slow."

My October speeds sound like Tour mountain stage speeds, when they're climbing the early unimportant mountains.

From the middle of October:
13.6 mph
12.6 mph
13.1 mph
13.6 mph

A month later, I was a bit better:
13.8 mph

Then, Wednesday November 16th:
14.4 mph

(November 18th was 13.7 mph)

Wow. I broke 14 mph.

It's a sad triumph, truthfully. But for me it's okay. It's acceptable. I'm seeing an upward trend in speed.

I read today that Thomas Dekker will be racing with Garmin-Cervelo for 2012. He was suspended a couple years ago for blood manipulating (I can't remember if it was EPO or blood itself, but that's irrelevant). Jonathan Vaughters, a strident anti-doper, signed Dekker regardless.

Vaughters said something interesting. He said that as Dekker got stronger, his blood values shouldn't change. That's the sign of a strong racer getting fit naturally.

What Vaughters also revealed is that Garmin-Cervelo has been testing Dekker monthly for 18 months!

Now, I don't get to test my blood every month, but I know that right now I'm bad.

When I read that bit on Dekker, I realized that that's what I wanted to do:

I want to get stronger while my blood stays the same.

Vaughters was saying that good training makes the body better. It says so much in so little. It encompasses weight and FTP and power and endurance and resiliency and handling and cornering and so many things.

I know I'll never be a ProTour racer. I'm not going to earn myself a contract to earn money to race. But I'd like to be a bit more than I am now, to fulfill a bit more of my own potential.

I'm starting to think of ways to attain this goal.

I bought some more cold weather gear, in preparation for a California-less January and February. I've figured out how to recharge the headlight I bought from a local bike shop (I charged it once, used it once, then we used it when we lost power during the Halloween storm).

I even bought non-ventilated insoles, meant to help retain heat in the shoes in cold weather riding.

I have to get some work done on the bikes too. I want to send back the orange Tsunami to get the stays shortened - I still have to box the frame. I need to fix the wiring harness for the SRM, get some new batteries for the HR straps.

I have to glue some tubulars onto my Stingers.

I want to clean up my bike room a bit, maybe even paint it, do the trim (it's a very roughly finished basement room).

I want to be better than I am now.

Training - 15 mph and a Coupla Trucks

2011-11-10T20:28:00.003-05:00

It seems that when I start thinking "trucks" they appear. I had a very non-eventful ride on my day off, going out at the peak of temperatures, warm enough that I never wore my vest. I had on shorts, a short sleeve and long sleeve jersey, a cap under the helmet, and that's it.

No gloves (couldn't find them), no booties, no neck thing, not even Atomic Balm (I just slathered a thin layer of Vaseline on my legs to dull any biting wind).

I told the Missus I'd be out for two hours, and, honestly, my intent was to do two hours of riding. A savage wind slowed me on the way out (south), draining any reserves I'd thought about saving for the second loop. The tailwind helped, but only barely, and after doing just 7/8 of my Quarry Road loop I was pretty tweaked. My arms, shoulders, legs, they all felt really tired.

Entering town from the south.

The broken trees seem appropriate for the town that suffered almost the longest through the Halloween storm. I had to skirt a lot of branches and such sticking out into the road a bit, not a problem for cars in the travel lane but a minor one for us cyclists on the shoulder.

As I headed into town I saw a nice dump truck pull out in front of me. Heavily laden, it'd have slow acceleration, the multiple wheels offered a great draft, and the solid squareness would offer a nice platform to push off of if I got too close.

(Not that I've ever touched a truck I was drafting, this is a "just in case" scenario.)

Backing off a bit.

I accelerated a bit too hard when I caught up to it and had to back off. Just like in a pack I moved into the wind to slow myself down, then as the truck rolled by me, I tucked back in. In the picture above I'm letting the truck roll past and I'm just starting to move in behind it.

With a 30-35 mph speed limit on the road, and some traffic, it wasn't super fast, but it was fun, let me spin out my legs a bit, and the FedEx guy (who delivers to the store) honked his horn and waved.

I eventually passed the truck at a light, knowing I'd have no chance of catching it when it went past me. The act of passing a stopped "draft potential truck" is an acknowledgement that the draft ain't happening. If I stop behind a draft potential truck then I'm looking for some speed.

Because of the wind and the foreign feeling of being on the road, I felt really fatigued even before the truck. Now, with another loop ahead of me, and an hour on my legs (the loop is 48 minutes when I'm good), I decided to call it a day and head home.

Just before I made the right onto 315 I looked back and saw the most tantalizing sight - another truck, an 18 wheeler (well, 14 wheeler, but it had a long trailer). I signaled that I was going straight, rolled through the green light, and waited.

When the truck went by I jumped hard.

Again, with the truck's limited speed (35 zone, but with traffic), I overshot. I eased, tucked back in, and had some fun.

Moving back.

More settled.

As soon as I blew up I slowed, let traffic by, and turned around.

The final climb, up 315, is my Poggio, the climb before the finishing descent. Normally I roll the big ring up the thing. If I'm feeling good, it's a 53x14 all the way to the stop sign. Not as good, the 53x15, and do the last 30 meters in the 19 or so.

I was really not good at all. I started in the 44x19, went about 1/3 of the way up, then slowed dramatically, struggling to get to the stop sign without going so slow that cars a quarter mile away would get there the same time as me.

Strava has me doing the loop at 16 mph, which is about an average ride for me. I don't know how guys do 20 mph - I rarely break 20 mph on a training ride, but some guys, they can plug along at 21-23 mph all day.

The Missus called when it got a bit darker out. Surprised to reach me, she asked what happened. I told her about the ride, complained that I'm so slow, that I have no power, no strength. I told her how I used to do these super long rides to Kent (from Ridgefield) with John S, before we went to Belgium.

I thought about that for a moment, thought of the time frame.

"I think that was in 1991, so that was 20 years ago."

Holy smokes. That long ago?!

The Missus grinned.

"You know, you ought to think about maybe training with someone in the area, do some of these rides with someone."

I thought about it.

You know, she's right.

So for any of you in the area, Wednesdays and Sundays, time is kind of open, and also evenings (possibly), although those would be more Rails to Trails rides with lights. I'm thinking of riding just the mountain bike (on the road) for now, force myself to pedal more, coast less.

16 mph would be on the fast side, 14 mph on the slow.

Wait, with someone else helping, maybe 16 mph would be average. 18 mph would be fast. 1-3 hours.

I read somewhere that Zone 2 is 70% of your FTP, so my Zone 2 is about 140 watts. I'll push though and do 150 or 160 watts, if that means having a riding partner. Remember, 200 watts is really, really hard for me, as hard as the hardest summer races I've done in the last two years.

Anybody out there want to ride with me?

Helmet Cam - 2011 SoCal Training Camp Hacking Around

2011-11-07T11:48:00.006-05:00

I've been fooling around with a few clips, trying to figure out how to finalize them. You know, a long time ago, in English classes, the teachers drilled this concept of a "theme" into my head. First the theme, then the writing.

I hated themes.

But, as time went by, I got used to themes. Kind of like coffee and asparagus, I started liking them as I got older. See, themes tie a work together. Random writing isn't really good unless you want random writing. Random clips, too, don't grab attention, not in the way a clip with a theme collars you.

So, for me, a clip has to have a theme, a concept, some idea or thought I want to get across to the viewer (which, believe it or not, is first me, second everyone else - I make these clips for me).

Once I have a theme the clip pops up shortly after. It's a work of inspiration - most clips get done in a couple days of inspired editing (along with some missed training, missed sleep, and missed time with the Missus).

The race clips are a bit lost right now, with not much direction in any kind of a storyline. A clip that has me just riding around... that's not so interesting. My races, if you've ever watched me race, are usually pretty boring because I sit in most of the time, gritting my teeth, hanging on for dear life.

That stuff doesn't translate well into helmet cam clips.

I had some other clips, those of descents and such, stuff from training rides. My friend Rich tried to do a "how to" bit (how to wipe your tires) but when I tried to aim the camera with my head I aimed it too low. If you want to see a clip of someone's wheels and tires it'd be good, but if you wanted to see how to wipe a tire off while you're riding, not so much.

I've been importing a lot of clips into iMovie, a process which takes a long time for each 3.67 GB helmet cam file. After finishing a slew of them, I started creating projects (i.e. clips) using the imported files, framing out thoughts (themes) using bits of clips to trigger memories or ideas.

Of course some inspiration hit me when I started viewing some of the imported movies, with all sorts of memories triggered by the clips. Cars I'd forgotten about, ride events that escaped me, all restored in vivid, living color.

One result of some of this importing is the following clip, one I kind of threw together as a kaleidoscope of my 2011 SoCal training camp. Although it started as a "How To Trackstand" clip, some other bits I found looking for trackstands made me grin. I found a few things I liked, took some stuff from other projects that wouldn't play out thematically quite right (yet), and tossed in some some random stuff, the stuff that made me smile.

I put those all in a "training camp recap" clip, below. I hope you enjoy it.

Training - A Few Picture Thoughts

2011-10-26T15:08:00.006-04:00

Here in town the most important road has to be Route 10/202. Not only is the town hall, the main fire department, the main post office, and pretty much every store in town on or next to it, it also gives the residents just one of a few avenues of escape from this very hemmed in (since it's in a valley) town.

The town thinks it important enough that it commissioned a study to set out a plan for long term development of said road. You can find the study here, but the bit that's significant, at least to me, is the cover.

Yeah, that's me in that second-left picture.

When I first saw this (because I took some interest in this, being a resident and all), I joked that I'd go look for the helmet cam clip containing the shot. I ride with the helmet cam pretty much all the time, I archive all the rides, and it'd just be a matter of finding the ride.

Based on the picture, I could narrow it down to a fall season ride. The long sleeve jersey indicates some chill, but the shorts tell me it's at least 50 degrees F. The booties put the temperature at about that point, 50 or 55 degrees. I figure I had Atomic Balm on, so I'd be okay down to 45 if I was riding hard, about 50 or 55 if I was going easier. Since it's training I would guess easier.

The route would have to take me through the center of town, going the "wrong" way for my standard Quarry Road loop (normally I head north on 10/202, in the picture I'm heading south). This meant I'd have to look for a non-Quarry Road clip.

Since I've only archived the last two years of rides, I wouldn't have much to search. But, as you might have guessed, I never got around to searching. Heck, I haven't put together a lot of clips or anything.

Today, with a bit of free time on my hands, I decided to import a bunch of files into iMovie (on the Mac). Each file takes a couple hours to import (and it blows up into a huge set of files) and I had maybe 20 or 30 files in mind. I figured I'd import a few of them today, mainly random training ones where something interesting happens - a fun descent, a hard turn or two, a visible trackstand (meaning a setting sun behind my back), or, my favorite, drafting something at speed.

At first it was easy. Clips from Interbike. My training camps in SoCal. A Vegas bit or two.

Then I started looking closer to home. I wanted to capture my last turn on each ride, a very tricky, super late apex corner, at the bottom of a short but kind of steep descent. I wanted to find my bear clip, the snake clip, the turkey clip.

And, of course, I wanted to find my drafting clips.

Well I had one Bushy Hill loop that had enough drafting that I labeled it "20101019_BushyHill-LotsOfDrafting" (the numbers standar for 2010, October, 19th). I reviewed the clip in Quicktime, which is a very "high level" thing, i.e. even little movements of the movie cursor makes the thing jump a minute forward or back. I recalled the ride as I watched the draft part - I'd caught up to some landscaping trucks after a mile or two of riding (they ended up stopped at a light), then proceeded to draft the second truck for a good mile or so.

I liked the clip so decided to import it.

Booyah!

Then, like I did each time I started importing a clip today, I went upstairs to get more chores done.

When it finished importing, I used iMovie to check it out. This is much more low-level, where I can literally move the cursor a second at a time, but I can move the cursor as fast as I want.

I went looking for the green truck but as I zipped by the bit on Route 10...

Something looked familiar.

I went back.

Now, keep in mind that I didn't have the Route 10 Study in mind. I didn't have the pdf file up, I wasn't looking for the study picture.

But I did remember some parts of the picture - a dark red tree (I think), a patched bit of pavement, and a somewhat quiet Route 10. I also remembered that I was on the hoods, not the drops, so I was going very slow, maybe looking around at something.

In my clip, as I rolled past the just-completed new fire station, I took a good look at it (hey, it was my tax dollars at work). Part of the fire station included redoing some pavement, and the shoulder ended up patched for a bit.

I found the original clip in Quicktime (which is when I realized it was the LotsOfDrafting clip), realized that I'd inadvertently scrolled right past the Route 10 bit, went back to the iMovie imported clip, and reviewed it a bit closer.

I also took the time to start opening the Route 10 study presentation, a pdf document, to check out the actual picture. As the document loaded, I found my Route 10 spot in iMovie.

I checked the picture, and sure enough, there was a patch on the road, the dark red tree, and, a key item, a 30 mph speed limit sign.

My view at that moment.
Okay, it's just before because the speed limit sign would have been out of view when they took the picture.

I found that bit in the clip, checked the now-loaded study presentation pdf file, and watched the next few seconds.

I figured that the picture taker was in a car - I didn't pass anyone standing on the sidewalk holding a camera, and the angle of the shot implies a picture taken from a passenger side seat, kind of low actually (not a truck or a tall SUV or a platform etc).

Sure enough, after I went by the 30 mph speed limit sign, a white hybrid rolled by.

The guy in the passenger seat still has the camera up.

I noticed the logo on the car matched the one in the presentation cover.

So, mystery solved. Or curiosity satisfied.

Of course that still leaves me with another 10 or 15 files to import, and at 1-3.67 GB each (and the biggest ones taking 2+ hours to import), there's still a bit of work left before I can start putting together some clips.

I'll make no promises so I won't have to tell any lies - I have no idea when I'll have the next clip together.

But hey, I'm making progress.

Now I gotta hit the trainer for a bit.

Promoting - Silk City Cross Race (Final Week)

2011-10-24T22:09:00.002-04:00

So, I just got back from our usually-monthly team meeting, one about the Silk City Cross race.

The fact that we have a meeting is kind of unusual for a cycling team. That we have them more than once or twice a year is even more unusual. And finally, the fact that we have an agenda for each meeting, that's just astounding.

We used to have monthly meetings last year, and I made all but the ones where I was away (SoCal and Vegas). This year we skipped a month or two here and there, but pretty much had a solid schedule for much of the year.

Note: I should point out that I'm just a member of the team. I'm not an officer, not anything more than an involved member.

What's amazing to me is the level of participation from the members of said team. Yes, there's always one or two people who do a lot of the work, but I think that for the upcoming Silk City Cross race, we have a solid 5 people sharing board level responsibilities at the race, meaning each one took such a significant part of the race that the event would be hard pressed to go on without each one's help.

Not just that, there's a good dozen or two who will be working hard just below that. We're not talking just one or two races of work, we're talking helping set up on Saturday, working the day Sunday, and helping break down after everything finishes Sunday afternoon.

Last Wednesday I spent some time talking with Jon, one of the race instigators (meaning he instigated the birth of the event). I'd spent a bit of time just before gathering stuff we needed at the event - generators (that involved a drive down to my dad's), tables, cords, radios, numbers, pins, some other stuff.

He came by the house and we loaded up his car, then talked over and hashed out some stuff on registration and USAC procedures and such. He brought me up to speed regarding some of the unique cross racing things, like staging by rankings and such.

Sunday I gathered some stuff when I finally retrieved the van from Bethel. After a brief scare ("Uh, honey, you have a yellow jacket following you"), we got the van back to the house. I'm happy to report that the FOUR wasp nests are all inert, nary a wasp buzzing around after I parked.

Our van retrieval got delayed a bit when the storage bay's door disintegrated (rotted wood). We waited a few weeks until they replaced the door - I didn't want to empty the bay out on the door-replacement-day and chance getting everything soaked in a poorly timed rainstorm.

I actually emptied the bay last Wednesday, before I met with Jon. After he left, I went and retrieved our new keys, put the red Honda back in, and locked it up. Feeling much more secure (the old door literally had inches-wide gaps across the bottom panel), I felt comfortable putting valuables back in the bay.

Once we had the door in place it took just four days (Sunday) to get the van back home. Fortunately it cooperated, starting immediately, stopping just fine (after rubbing some rust off the brakes), and handling normally. Even heavily laden it drove fine, shocks okay, tires good, various ball joints seemingly happy. At home we unloaded most of its contents and socked them securely away, behind the fresh, new, locking door.

Now it's the final week before the race. Did you ever wonder what "helping just a bit" involves for a helper at a relatively small 'cross race? I can tell you that from last Sunday to race day (this coming Sunday), it's pretty busy.

Monday

Today, Monday, I spent some time working on the spreadsheet, the one we'll use for registration. I don't know 'cross racing from Cross pens, but I do have an idea on how to do a registration table. Therefore the powers that be put me in sort-of-charge of registration, at least setting it up. Any mistakes are mine. Any good ideas, you can give the powers-that-be the credit.

Of course we had the meeting. Jon and I hashed out some of the registration details, both in the meeting (I shot down a later pre-reg closing date - so it's my fault it closes Thursday at 9 PM) as well as afterward.

When I got home I brought up the spreadsheet, fixed a few things I saw right away, realized I had to change some other things (but they'd take some time), and emailed the sheet, as it exists now, to Jon. This would let him get an idea of what we'll have on race day - a solid spreadsheet that allows the promoter to spend as little time as possible dealing with paperwork.

At that I downloaded the current pre-reg list, using the ranking sorting, something I never did before. It seemed manageable; I decided to focus on cleaning up the spreadsheet, ultimately putting it aside for Tuesday or even Wednesday evening.

Tuesday

I'll be doing more spreadsheet work, finalizing the changes I need to make for the Silk City race. More categories, more places for results, neaten up some formatting from the original spreadsheet (a Bethel Spring Series one).

Wednesday

Unfortunately I'll be out the whole day. I had to write off Wednesday as far as Silk City Cross goes.

Thursday

Thursday starts the final push for registration. When registration closes Thursday at 9 PM (per my extremely firm request), I'll start downloading data, testing with "real data" to make sure things will be okay. As I just mentioned before I tested earlier tonight and it was fine, but when it's for real, well, it's for real.

In the software world they say that the final test is User Testing - it's when it's actually released as a final product. No amount of testing will stress software as much as the actual users, and no amount of testing will stress the various formulas in the spreadsheet as much as a slew of real data.

Friday

I've set aside this day for emergency spreadsheet work and potentially packing up the car for Sunday.

Saturday

Unfortunately I'm booked solid on this day, literally from 8 AM to midnight-ish. I won't be doing a single Silk City Cross related thing all day. There's a slight chance I'll pack the car Saturday after work, if I haven't already done it Friday.

Sunday

The day. I have to be at the race at 7:30 AM.

It'll be a busy week for sure, but one that should be really productive. I don't know when I'll post next, but I hope that I see you at the race.

Linky, one final time.

Silk City Cross race.

Be there!

Training - A Trainer Ride

2011-10-20T23:55:00.004-04:00

Tonight I climbed on the trainer, not knowing exactly how I'd be riding. To my surprise I've managed to get on the bike pretty consistently, doing 5 hours in four days, taking Wednesday day off (the Missus and I went out for dinner), then getting back on tonight for what I thought would be an hour ride.

I took the time to adjust the tension on the CycleOps - the trainer was clicking a lot, making a lot of noise, and I wasn't sure what was causing it. I suspected too high roller pressure. I unscrewed one turn, re-clamped it (it's one of those quick-release type tension adjuster - fold the knob in to lock), got on the bike and Hey! No more clicking!

I had a DVD of an old movie I wanted to watch, Wild Geese. It's a favorite movie of mine, at least back in the day. I wasn't sure what it'd be like now but I wanted to watch it. I added it to our Netflix queue and bumped it to the top.

But I couldn't put it in the DVD player - I still had the 5th DVD of the 2006 Tour in the DVD player.

Now, with all this doping and such, the 2006 Tour may seem a bit odd to be a favorite of mine, but it is. It's hard to forget that Landis had doped but I'm also in the mindset that he wasn't the only one. To me it seems semi-fair, at least at the top of the classification.

Although he seems pretty strong, he also has his weak points.

I also like studying race tapes, watching them over and over, finding little gems in the randomness of race coverage. For example, I found that Cadel Evans seemed to be the only one seeking shelter from the wind on some of the exposed climbs. Sastre rode in the wind, as did Kloden. Who knows how much energy they wasted doing that, energy they could have used later in the stage, later in the race.

I watch pack formation carefully, looking at wind cues like flags, banners, and dust/debris. I look and see who sought shelter, who rode in the wind. I figure the shelter seekers are racing smart and are possibly more clean than the ones in the wind (excepting the guys assigned to be in the wind).

Watching some of my much older race tapes, from the mid-90s, it's amazing how uncaring the dopers raced. They'd launch attacks whimsically, attacking at odd places where the others could respond. They rode in the wind. They rode at the front.

They rode like dopes.

But they could, because they had unimaginable power and endurance, because they were doped.

Anyway, watching these races can be educational as well as fun, so I watch them.

The 5th DVD has both parts of Landis - it has the end of Stage 16, when he totally crumbles, and most of Stage 17, when he made that improbable comeback.

Stage 16 is interesting to watch, even for a guy that really doesn't climb that well. What's most fascinating is the absolutely terrible cornering by Michael Rasmussen. I study him as an example of what not to do.

Unfortunately Levi is in the same boat. He, too, exhibits scared cornering, giving away a whole lot of time on a descent after working hard to get clear of the field.

I wonder if those guys work on their cornering at all, or if they're oblivious to the fact that they're giving away a lot of training, a lot of effort, a lot of themselves, when they corner poorly.

This Tour DVD prompted my prior post. Watching Levi work so hard to build a lead, then to throw it all away... all that training, all that recon work, all that climbing, all for nothing, just because he descended so poorly. It seems like such a waste.

What's also interesting (and I saw this tonight, not Wednesday night) is that the big field, in Stage 17, chasing Landis, splits in two on a series of switchbacks. It's a crazy descent with super tight switchbacks, maybe 7 or 8 in a row, very close together. You can see one rider in the center of the field, turning in way early, going slow, and riders behind crowding him in frustration.

It's the first time I noticed the split, after watching the DVD probably a dozen times over.

I'm sure it was Rasmussen - he was the worst cornerer of the bunch, and he was in the Polka Dot jersey (appears white on the TV). I didn't rewind and review, but watching the poor cornering was enough.

Levi, to his credit, hung out at the back, and yes, there were gaps in front of him.

I'm amazed that even in the field, with other guys in front of them, that these guys can't corner. Just follow the guy in front - they're not necessarily super great at cornering, but they're better than nothing.

Cornering works a bit like drafting too. Once you lose your "cornering guide", i.e. you let the gap open up, you lose that guiding thing. A poor cornering racer will end up on his own, woefully wobbling from one bend to another, just like a racer that is out of the draft will go slower on his own.

Terrible.

Anyway, with Stage 16 and 17 on the DVD already loaded in the player, I decided I'd watch the rest of the DVD before loading up Wild Geese.

What I didn't realize is that I'd just started the DVD; I had 90 minutes left on it. I rode and drank water and rode and drank water. The DVD kept going.

I took a break to go pee. When I walked out the trainer room (I keep the door closed so cats don't get in - whirling spokes and cats don't mix well), Bella ran over, her tail curled into a corkscrew (she does this when she's really happy), trembling with excitement. She followed me up to the bathroom, waited, then followed me back down. When she realized I was going back into the bike room she stopped, tail still curled, but pausing at the beginning of the short hallway to the bike room.

I closed the door behind me, got back on the bike, got rolling again, and thought about stuff. My pedal stroke. Powering through whatever I could of the circle.

I watched Landis pedal fast and slow, corner well, and make up a lot of time on the field. I have no problem with his cornering - in fact, I think it's a huge reason why he stayed away on that Stage 17. He could also load up on ice cold water all day, and when it's 104 deg F in the valleys, that's pretty significant.

My legs felt pretty good, tired but good. The fatigue felt vaguely comforting, like getting on the bike on the fifth day of my SoCal training camp, or on a Wednesday after racing Sunday, doing a group ride Monday, and racing Tuesday.

Not that I just did four hard rides in a row, but my legs felt only slightly recovered from my efforts Sunday through Wednesday.

When the DVD finally ended I loaded up Wild Geese. I forgot that this was a movie with a plot, so I suffered through about 30 minutes of plot stuff (okay, one grenade, a couple gun shots) before my tired cramping legs convinced me to climb off the bike.

I walked out the door, this time for the last time tonight, and Bella came running over, tail curled and trembling again.

I brought out the SRM PCV (cyclocomputer), to download data. I knew I had a few hours on there; it holds about 6. I checked it out. HR belt is starting to go, so HR is sporadic. My powermeter pick up is a bit damaged from shipping and such, so power and cadence don't show up.

I just have speed.

But if I can get power to work for a bit, I can map speed and power and HR and get an idea of what I did on the bike. With my tension adjustment, I need to remap the three so no extrapolated data tonight.

Just pedaling.

A little over two hours.

Bella stood next to me, back arched, tail curled, looking back over her shoulder. If a cat could flirt, she was flirting. If I didn't scritch her back quick enough she'd stand up on her hind legs, paw me gently on the leg (claws visible but not extended too much), and try and get me to scritch her.

When I do (and I do), she'd lower herself back to the floor, then try and stand up to meet my hand halfway, doing a kind of porpoise arc dive thing.

As soon as I stopped scritching she'd stand next to me, look over her shoulder, then stand up and paw at me. If she was pawing my knee she'd carefully retract her claws. My bike shorts? She's grab them with her claws, just a bit. She knows the difference between the two, and knows that clothing is okay, skin is not.

Since her claws felt a bit grabby on my knee, I picked her up, clipped her nails, and put her back down.

This dampened her enthusiasm for scritching so she retreated to her cat bed, conveniently located two feet from the chair where I type on the laptop.

I went back to Bike Forums, to moving files into WKO+ from the SRM software, to checking email. I thought about some of the conversations I had today, at the local shop, at work, with the Missus, on the phone.

I heard Bella sighing softly in her sleep. Or snoring, depending on the noise.

When I go upstairs Bella will follow. I'll take a quick shower, rinsing off the salt and sweat, warming up a bit with the hot water.

Bella will wait just outside the bathroom, trotting in when I grab the towel, knowing she'll snag a scritch or two before I leave.

We'll walk upstairs quietly, my feet dragging on the floor, feeling for furry tails and bodies, not wanting to inadvertently step on a cat. They trust us so much they don't get out of the way when we're going up or down the stairs, or walking down a dark-to-us hallway. I usually toe aside a few cats - Mike (body or tail), Lilly (body), Estelle (body), Hal (body).

Riley is the shy one, she'll dash off when I'm six feet away from her, unless she's tired and sitting on a high spot. Then she'll watch me with her sleepy eyes as I walk past her.

I choose to walk around the bed; climbing over the sleeping Missus wouldn't go over well. Bella takes the shortcut, trotting happily across the bed. I'll slowly sink into bed, the weight lifting from my back, from my shoulders.

Rest.

When I get settled, Bella will paw gently at the top of the covers, waiting for me and/or the groggy Missus to pick up the comforter so Bella can peer under the edge. She'll carefully venture in, making sure there's no Tiger or Hal already under there, carefully step on my left thigh, step in the small area under my right knee, walk around in a circle, then put her paws over my left leg and lay across it, her chest on my leg.

She may suckle her cat bed under the blanket ("Mommy!" the Missus will say for her), a habit she started a while ago. I think we captured her a bit early and she bonded with the bed she slept on with her brother and sister. She has a very wide tongue so she makes a lot of smacking noise, but it's all good.

Each night I briefly worry what we'll do when she wears out the bed. She may want it in ten or fifteen years. Will the bed last that long?

Then I remember my own security blanket. When it finally disappeared, I was okay. Bella will miss her Mommy Cat Bed but she'll be okay.

Or, if she's not in the mood for Mommy Cat Bed, she'll just curl up between my knees, bumping up against my thighs and calves, under the comforter, and go to sleep, sighing and snoring occasionally as she does.

At some point in the night she'll suddenly dart off, so quickly that sometimes I'm not sure she left. I'll reach down and feel the warm spot where she'd been laying, but where she no longer lay.

I'll slowly straighten out my fatigued legs, letting the warmth soak into my hamstrings, feeling the pleasant soreness permeating my quads, my hamstrings, my legs. My back will relax, the relief spreading throughout my body.

I'll drift off, sometimes so quickly I don't remember, other times waiting for fatigue to overwhelm me.

You know, it's a hard life, but someone's got to live it.

How To - Lazy Steering

2011-10-17T21:19:00.001-04:00

Today, going to work, I watched the various people drive by me, usually going the other way, sometimes those either in front or just behind me.

And, as usual, I watched them go over the yellow line, drift into the other lane (sometimes that was my lane, if they were driving towards me), and do all sorts of stuff that, in a different context, could have gotten them pulled over for distracted or DUI.

Yet somehow this behavior is common and, if the number of people doing it is any indication, accepted.

What is it?

I call it "Lazy Steering".

For whatever reason drivers don't like to turn their steering wheel more than about 90 degrees. It's probably closer to about 75 or 80 degrees, but my point is the part about not wanting to turn the wheel much.

A lot of cars will make it around a curve or a turn without violating this "lazy" rule, but only if you turn in early.

Real early.

I watch drivers cut over the yellow line 10 or 15 or even 20 feet before the end of said line, cutting into the other lane, driving through the intersection, then bisecting the next yellow line 10 or 15 or 20 feet beyond its start point.

If there were cars in the oncoming lanes, they'd have plowed through maybe the driver's side seat, maybe the center console, and possibly even the passenger seat.

Instead, because there's no car, it's okay to cut through the other side's lane.

It's easy for these drivers to fall into this habit - I'll watch one driver consistently cut through the other side of the road to make turns, curves, and such.

It's also easy to simply remain a good driver, without this habit. On a different day I'll follow a driver who just as consistently does NOT cut through the other side of the road to make the exact same turns, curves, and such.

And I'll think, "Wow, this driver actually pays attention. The driver knows how to drive. This driver deserves my respect."

I even asked a coworker if she'd been driving at such and such time in the morning on such and such road.

"Why is that? I think I was at home."
"Oh. I thought I was behind you and I was thinking 'Wow, I think this is L. She drives sooo well. I totally underestimated her. She's perfect, a model driver, knows all the cornering lines, pays attention, flawless driver. Incredible.'"

Pause.

"I think that was me," grinning.

So there are the good drivers out there, but they rarely make it on our radar. It's the ones that forget to turn their lights on when it's grey or raining, the ones that don't signal, the ones that Lazy Steer that catch our attention.

So what's the big deal?

The problem pops up when something different happens on the other side of the road from the Lazy Steerer, like there's a car or truck on the other side of the road.

I'll watch the Lazy Steerers jerk their vehicle back into their own lane (the proper one), then dance delicately with the shoulder as they deal with this brazen interloper, this intruder in their morning commute.

Okay, to them it's delicately dancing with the shoulder. To me they're 3 feet away from the edge of the road, a foot from the white line even, and they have plenty of space.

But the Lazy Steerers don't know this because, get this, they never really learned where the right side of their car sits. They cut so many corners that they no longer know.

Lazy Steerers reinforce poor cornering habits until it becomes second nature to them. Making a left turn? Start it as soon as you can see the road. Don't worry about the yellow line you're crossing. Don't worry that you'll hit the next yellow line almost perpendicularly. Just turn the wheel, a little less than a quarter turn, and wait for the car to rotate a bit.

So what's that got to do with cycling?

Everything.

There's only one thing you get for free on a bicycle - cornering.

It's the only thing I know of where I should be able to equal many of the good pros, even the ProTour pros. I may not be able to outsprint anyone at the end of a 200 km race, I certainly can't out-climb any of them for more than 10 seconds, but give me a hard switchback and I'll blow through it with the best of them.

Cornering takes no fitness.

All it takes is practice.

And if you corner with any sense of awareness, you'll know that the absolute unforgiveable sin in cornering is the early apex.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, like if you're trying to control the front of the race. But if you're just riding on a training ride, if you're descending down any hill with sharp turns, if you're approaching any hard turn, then the early apex is almost always the worst choice in the world.

But in virtually all normal cornering situations, the early apex is the worst thing you can do in a corner.

And guess what?

The early apex is the same thing as what you get when you Lazy Steer.

Now we've come full circle.

Are you a Lazy Steerer?

If you answer yes, then think about the next questions:

Do you feel kind of uncomfortable in crits? On screaming descents?

Do you find yourself on the wrong side of the yellow line sometimes, inadvertently, staring at a vehicle grille in the face?

Guess what?

Your driving habits are affecting your cycling habits.

Your poor cornering skills in the car are transferring to your cycling skills.

There's a good part of this whole thing though - you can start working on your cornering right now, whatever day this is, whatever season, whenever you're going to do your next race, you can work on your cornering starting the next time you have to drive your car anywhere.

All you have to do is to stop with the Lazy Steering.

Learn to turn the wheel more than 90 degrees when you make a left turn. It's not hard, really.

Don't go over any yellow lines when you go through curves or turns (except if you need to give room to a cyclist or something like that, of course). Wait until your front tires pass the end of the yellow line before even initiating a turn. Steer such that you clear all yellow line paint in the road you're turning into, then straighten out such that you're centered in the lane, not touching yellow or white.

Pretty easy right?

It should be. You should have a couple feet on either side of your vehicle, no matter how big it is, unless you drive an 18 wheeler. Because most roads in the US are designed for at least some 18 wheeler traffic.

If you're not driving an 18 wheeler you don't have an excuse.

Likewise, think about this even for curves in the road. When you enter such a curve, like an exit or entrance ramp, start a bit wide. Wait before you turn in. Then turn in so you apex (are closest you'll get to the inside edge) about 2/3 of the way through the turn.

It's not hard.

Now reward yourself.

Accelerate once you apex, whether you're making a left turn or driving through a curve.

Feel the exhilaration of being able to accelerate at whatever rate you want without worrying about the car sliding into the guardrail or jersey barrier or the bushes next to the road.

See, a Late Apex gives you the best line for acceleration out of the turn. It's your reward for turning the wheel just a touch more than 75 or 80 degrees.

Check it out, you'll see.

Right near the front of the group, with two turns to go.

Blasting fearlessly and fluently through to the final straight, no early apex, no hesitation, cornering instincts properly honed by a whole winter of cornering drills, drills you did every single time you drove your car.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Training - Spin Ups

2011-10-07T23:00:00.001-04:00

I realized the other day that my season, as I defined it in the WKO+ training program (where I log my power files), ends at the end of September. That means that October 1 is the beginning of my 2012 season.

Of course by the time I realized this little tidbit October 1 had already passed me by. Nonetheless I decided that I should start thinking about the 2012 season.

First off, I contacted the town of Bethel. I've been speaking to the same lady there for something like 18 years, and she remembers me when I call each fall. I asked for permission to use the course for six weeks in 2012, the idea being that the Bethel Spring Series will happen on those days. I sent her a letter, noting the dates, the arrangements, everything that the town asked for a long time ago. It wasn't much but without the town's permission there is no race.

Of course there's a lot of work going forward but that's the first step.

Second, I decided I had to ride more. I wanted to do a few things this winter, stuff I mentioned before. I also wanted to get some more track bike fluency, since I'm pretty much a novice on the thing. I want to ride the track bike on the rollers, to learn form, and on the trainer, to gain strength.

I even want to have a welder friend modify my trainer so that I can rock on it, tilt the bike left/right. I thought of this a couple years ago but didn't have a welder who could do the work (although someone offered me use of their welder). Now I know someone who may be able to run a plasma cutter down a few lines, then a torch to weld them into new things.

That's all in the unplanned future though.

Since my track bike was in pieces, I figured I could ride my spin bike tonight.

And this is where my training started for 2012.

Whenever I get the itch to ride the spin bike during the season, I force myself to back off. See, every time I ride the thing, I like to do spin ups (pedal as fast as possible, ideally for 15 seconds, usually for more like 6-8 seconds). There isn't much else to do on a bike where the saddle height isn't quite right, the cranks are really wide, and the bars are U shaped bend 7/8" chrome steel. So all I do are spin ups.

Sounds easy, right?

Well, yes, they're kind of easy to do.

It's the four days afterwards that feel painful. My inner thighs, my hamstrings, my thighs, my calves even, they all feel like someone smashed them gently with a sledgehammer. I struggle to walk. I walk stiff-legged down stairs. And on a bike I struggle with the most minor efforts, my legs screaming in protest when I try to make them pedal.

Knowing this it's only natural that when I get that urge to rip out a few 240 rpm spin ups in the middle of the season, I resist. The problem is that if I get so sore from doing 20 or 30 seconds of effort, it means that those muscles aren't conditioned, they aren't trained.

It means there's untapped potential in my legs.

This potential is really untapped - the muscles are barely developed, they're weak, they can't contribute a lot, and they get absolutely demolished in 30 seconds.

That's pretty serious.

If I have this untapped potential in my legs, and I'm suffering like a dog in the races, then I should try and tap this potential.

Since my first race won't be for months, I have plenty of time to recover from some spin ups. Therefore I kitted up, slipped on my track Sidis (they're my old shoes with my old cleats on them - my track bike, and my spin bike, wear my old SPD-R pedals), and hopped on the spin bike.

Oh, I forgot. First, on the spin bike, I mounted a Bontrager cyclocomputer I bought through Manchester Cycle, sponsor of Expo Wheelmen. It displays cadence, the only metric of value on the spin bike. Well that and time, but the cadence is key. Since I'm just turning over a flywheel the speed doesn't matter, just cadence.

I warmed up, the spin bike making the reassuring noisy drivetrain noises, a very unsophisticated 1/8" chain (BMX) pulled by an unsophisticated steel plate chainring and tugging on an equally unsophisticated 20 pound or so flywheel.

After warming up a bit I gripped the bottom bar (no dropped bars - that's on the "welder to do" list), gritted my teeth, and wound up the gear.

When I hit about 230 rpm I realized that I hadn't done this in a while and please don't let my legs get uncoordinated and lock up and throw me off the bike across the room.

With the flywheel buzzing I fought to bring down the rpms. Once I dropped below about 180 rpm I mentally relaxed, knowing that I wouldn't rip apart my knees on the bike, nor go head first into the TV screen in front of me.

I thought about track riding, the powerful acceleration needed to start the single speed bike, the jumps in the match sprint from low speeds, all these things that ought to play in my favor. You'd think, right, me, with the jump. Well, when I watch track vids, I realize that in the world of track sprinting, I'm not one of the good ones, and in fact I'd be hard pressed to stay with pretty much anyone I see sprinting on tape.

I decided that once I got drop bars on the spin bike that I'd work on doing high friction, high inertia accelerations, mimicking the effort needed to get going from a dead stop. I suppose I could do them on the track bike on the trainer, but the initial jolt, that initial punch you need to get the bike going, that would just slip the tire on the trainer, and the itty bitty aluminum flywheel is nothing compared to the massive flywheel on the spin bike.

Hm.

Maybe I need to add 10 or 20 pounds of weight to the track wheel. Maybe another welder-to-do thing.

While I thought about all this stuff I sat on the spin bike, spinning. I watched the cyclocomputer's cadence numbers slowly dwindle down. It started at 110 rpm, comfy, spinning, no biggie. Then I noticed some 98 rpm stuff. Then, after watching bits of the 2006 Tour, I was in the 80 rpm range.

Time to crank it up, time to punch it.

Bam. I nail it, accelerating as hard as I can. I learn new muscles, react instantly to new inputs, my body twisting and turning and adapting as my legs blew through 150 rpm, 200 rpm, and up into the 230 rpm range, each range a different harmonic for my body, a different style of pedaling.

232 rpm, like last time.

I overspun this time, the resistance a bit too low, and frantically cranked the knob down to help slow down the flywheel, all while my legs whirred furiously at over 200 rpms.

Note to self: too much resistance is better than too little.

After some cooling down I climbed off the bike. My two sprints had bathed me in sweat; the easy spinning between was good, but I could feel my muscles protesting already.

I grabbed my pjs off the floor. I usually sat in front of the computer while I cool down, then shower, then climb into bed.

Bella came over, her tail bent at the tip, her "tell" that she was excited. Her tail trembled a bit, revealing her joy, and she started purring loudly.

I checked BikeForums. My email. Bike news, for the bazillionth time. Thought about doing a post. Belle rubbed up against my calves the whole time, arching up on her hind legs so she could rub her head against my legs.

It's hard typing and such when you're petting a cat.

Finally Bella curled up in a big cat bed sitting on the floor next to me, content, purring.

Tiger showed up, put his front paws on my legs, then jumped up in my lap.

I pushed the chair back to give him room. He curled up on my lap, purring. When I started scritching his neck, his tongue came out, an automatic reaction of his. Then, after a bit, he slowly dropped down to the floor and sauntered away.

I thought about the cyclocomputer and the spin bike. The computer has no max cadence but it has max speed. Regardless of the "speed" of the bike, I could hook up the speed to the cranks. I could get a relative reading for a given rpm, i.e. 100 rpm is 20 mph. Then I could check max speed after each spin up, which in turn would give me max rpm.

Then I wouldn't have to spin up while staring at the cyclocomputer.

Yay.

I'll have to fix that up next time, figure out a wheel circumference that works. I can't pick up off the flywheel because the cable doesn't reach that way, so I'll have to pick up off the cranks.

Cooled off, and with this cyclocomputer puzzle figured out, I got up. Bella stayed put in her cat bed, although she'd be upstairs in a few minutes. Tiger bounded ahead of me, running to his stick (with a string on it), wanting to play. The other cats romped around, each wanting something. Water from a faucet, a scritch, a treat, attention.

It was dark and quiet. I drank water because I never drink enough. I showered briefly, rinsing the spin bike efforts away. Fresh, clean, pleasantly fatigued, I walked slowly to the next upstairs, to the bedrooms. I climbed into bed, the Missus long asleep.

I lay down, my legs already protesting, my eyes heavy with fatigue. Thoughts swirled through my head.

I have a lot of work to do for this next year.

Training - What To Do In The Winter?

2011-10-06T20:58:00.003-04:00

So with the 2011 over for me, what can I do about 2012?

Well, there's a lot.

Now, if I were a relatively inexperienced racer, I'd really focus on getting into the whole scene. I learned the most from a select few individuals, hanging out with them after work, talking about bikes (this long before internet or chats - if you wanted to talk to someone, you either grabbed a landline phone or you met with them in person).

The biggest shortfall I had in the first five or six years as a racer was my inability to ride comfortably in a group. That may surprise a few folks out there because nowadays I feel at home in a group pretty much instantly. Back then, though, it took literally weeks or months of riding and racing before I felt like I was "in the groove".

The first couple years it never did, but by the third year I'd gotten that feeling of "wow, I know how to dive into that turn in the middle of the group!" by the time July or August rolled around.

The next year I had that epiphany again, and the following year I started looking for it.

A few years later it showed up in May, perhaps the year after in April.

Then one miraculous year I threw my leg over my bike in February, rolled out with the group, and immediately started playing chicken with the rear wheel in front of me, diving into the turns marking the start of the Shartkozawa Classic.

I'd arrived.

So if I were a new rider, what would I do?

If there's any way you can hang out with other racers that would really help. Group rides are key, not just for learning how to ride in a group but for the wisdom the veterans unknowingly pass on to their less experienced peers.

Okay, sometimes they know they're handing out a trick or tip ("Try a higher gear and reduce your cadence a bit, it'll allow you to respond to attacks better"), sometimes they jam it down your throat ("Dude, shift up or you'll get shelled when everyone goes for the town line!"), but sometimes it's just casual or accidental ("Try the 53x15 instead of the 21").

A lot of winter group rides are mellow, slower, more double-paceline-and-talk kind of rides, with a couple jumps thrown in for good measure. Even harder group rides will start and finish with a chat-time kind of thing, where guys catch up with the latest gossip, check out whatever new carbon part someone has on their bike, etc.

These kind of non-competitive periods can unearth a lot of gems, produce motivation, and foster friendships that can last decades.

Friendship and camaraderie can help direct your next season. It makes it much easier to go to a race if you have a car pool friend, a friendly face in the pack. Training with such a rider can motivate you to work on stuff you don't work on, or push you to new limits.

I know that training with John prior to our brief trip to Belgium was really eye opening for me. I learned I could ride for 5 or 6 hours and actually go really hard at the end of the ride. I also learned I could withstand some serious hours on the bike without collapsing.

Friendships or just allies, your winter training partner/s may be able to act as a buffer in your forgetful moments, like when you're at your first race in 2012 and you realize you forgot your pump or helmet or front wheel or something.

It also helps in that you can integrate with others formally, maybe join a club. You can ride tactically with a friend in a race, even if you have different jerseys on, but it's much more fun to race together on the same team. I know I've offered and received help from friendly non-teammates over the years, sometimes quite substantial efforts. As rewarding as those moments might have been, they're much more satisfying when it's all teammates working together.

The worst thing you can do is to train solo over the winter, at least as a new racer. You'll be very strong but you won't know how to direct that strength in an actual race.

For more experienced racers, the winter is a bit different.

I count myself as one of those more experienced riders (I think I can, with 2012 being my... get this ... 30th season of racing!!). For those with a few less years of racing, the acid test is if you can dive confidently into a turn in a packed crit within 30 seconds of the first race of the season... if the answer is yes, you're experienced.

If that's the case, riding solo can actually help quite a bit, especially for those of you fortunate enough to be strong on the bike. I know my best years came after a long winter of discontent, of pushing, of worrying, of thinking I wasn't doing enough. I came out of those winters with a huge base, a huge foundation - I could race and train and race and train and I just kept building and building.

For me it was like eating a great diet. By itself it didn't do much, no bursts of energy, no super quick muscle recovery, just good solid nutrition.

Then, when I started demanding more from my body, it had the reserves, the supplies, the foundation to respond.

Not really scientific, my training, not by any means, but it worked. Would it have been better if I'd trained scientifically?

I don't think so, at least not for me.

I can't push hard, not in training, not for long, so the pressure of having to go harder because the computer is telling me to go harder... that's not good for me.

My worst winter was one where I spent endless time on the wind trainer, doing intervals, pushing as hard as I could. I learned to hate 20 minute efforts, completing only a handful I ever started. I hated 60 second intervals almost as much, giving up after getting just a few done.

I tried to jam more training into less time; what I got was a weak foundation, lots of sugary power, but nothing of substance. When I needed more it never happened. My body, build on Cracker Jacks and chocolate, collapsed when I tried to push up a level.

No matter how you train over the winter, you can always work on a few things - technical stuff, stuff that is 100% technique and 0% training.

For me, that's always fun (and sometimes a bit adventurous).

I want to learn how to bunny hop higher. I watched my first cross race since about 1990 or so - amazing bunny hops, they really impressed me. On a related but separate note I'd like to learn how to do a wheelie on a road bike. I haven't managed either in all the winters I've tried these, partially due to fear, partially due to not knowing how to do it.

I also want to work on a few more basic things. One is cornering better - cornering is the key to safe riding as well as fast descending.

People think I descend well, but I really don't - I descend well because I'm cornering better than they corner. Yet I figure I'm cornering at about 70% of what I should be able to do; this means I lose a LOT of distance in turns and such. Descents with turns really emphasize cornering skills; most crits really let you get away with poor to mediocre cornering. Like I said before, I consider myself decent at cornering but not good. I want to fix that.

I also want to learn to optimize my braking - my new-to-me driveway isn't flat so I haven't been doing "stoppies", where I come to a stop with back wheel in the air.

In the old house I had a short downhill leading to a flat driveway, meaning I'd arrive in the driveway going 20-25 mph. I'd hit the brakes hard, intentionally focusing more on the front one (because that's the one that stops you most).

At some point I'd lift the rear wheel off the ground, making the front brake (and the front wheel) my only connection to controlling the bike. By using the front brake and weight transfer I'd life the rear wheel about 10-15 feet from the garage door - then try and stop an inch or so from the door, or tap it lightly if I felt adventurous.

I did that at the end of pretty much every ride I did for about 15 years, until about 2005. Now, with no "built in" practice like that, I feel a bit uncomfortable doing stoppies the few times I've done them this summer. this lack of practice/drills/etc hurt my confidence on the bike. To fix it I need to ramp up my skill drills.

Of course there's also the bicycle aspect of racing. Every year my equipment starts fresh, clean, well adjusted, everything just so. As the summer wears on the bike also deteriorates. Bearing start to wear, drive train stuff, things get dirty.

Over the past few years I've let a lot of stuff go. My orange Tsunami is waiting patiently to go back to its creator, an appointment to shorten up the chainstays outstanding. I never rebuilt that Tsunami after building up the black one. In 2012 I'd like to have two operating bikes, a primary and a spare.

My SRM situation is a bit lean too. I have one working spider (cranks or the PowerMeter), one working head (PowerControl V, or PCV); I own another spider and another head, both with dead batteries. Ideally the second set would be working and installed in the second Tsunami. I have to make this happen.

For this winter my main equipment experiment will be with bars - I really want to try the FSA Compacts, see how they match up with my sprinting style. If they work it'll be great, it'll really open up bar options to me. I think they have slightly shorter reach too, so I can play a bit with more or less weight on the front wheel (based on having my weight more or less forward).

I also need to glue new tires onto my trusty HED Stinger6 race wheels. I finally wore through the rear tire, flatting it at the last race of the year. The front is okay but showing some age. I figure that it'll be a good track tire, if I ever return to the track, so I'll remove and save it. I have some new, slightly wider 23mm Bontrager tubular tires (6 of them actually) waiting for the Stingers, so I'll be gluing up some tires over this winter. I have no idea how these tires will work so it should be interesting.

Finally, with a team that's close by, I want to see if I can get in some fun group rides. Although not as much a fan of night riding as before (at least not in this area), Expo does some evening (and rapidly becoming night) rides on the rail trails. I hope to catch some of them, to glean knowledge from others and to share what I can with them. It helps, too, to build camaraderie, as I mentioned before.

And, of course, it'll help me build a solid base, one that stays solid even when I start piling on stress, miles, and ask it to do even more than ever. That kind of steady state, all winter riding really put me into the best shape of my life. Even if I don't reach that peak again, I'd like to do better than I did in 2011.

Therefore it's what I have to do.

Racing - 2011 Season

2011-10-05T22:09:00.003-04:00

I didn't know it when I started it but the August 24th Ninigret would be the last race of my 2011 season. I figured I had one more Rent to go but with the flooding Irene brought that was a totally different thing altogether.

This summer I never really got going, new bike notwithstanding. My biggest problem was trying not to get too psyched up for the season. As a new Cat 2, with stuff happening off the bike, I wasn't sure what I'd be able to do bike-wise. It'd have been great to slay all as a newly minted (but old on the bike) Cat 2 but that wasn't the case.

Early on I tried to control my enthusiasm by intentionally making myself ineligible for my normal season targets - the Bethel Spring Series and the CT State Championships. The former had only one race I could enter, the P123s. I didn't meet the age requirement for Masters and there were no other races at Bethel I could enter.

(And it's a big reason why I declined to drop the M45+ to M40+, despite a few vocal requests to do just that, because if I dropped the age I'd have a goal - to win the M40+ race.)

Without an early season goal to drive my training, my winter ended up blah, my spring blah, and my summer blah. Usually I can get on the trainer and hammer away for a while, my energy level surging and ebbing just like it does on a regular ride. Sometimes I'll do some timed efforts (I hate them), usually I'll ride hard like whatever DVD I'm watching. A pro race tends to have a few hard bits and a really hard finale. My own DVD (I put it together from my helmet cam clips) is nicely segmented into 10 minute efforts, with the one 15 minute race from the last Rent in 2010.

The key here is "Usually".

In previous winters I could do pretty serious efforts on the trainer, averaging 160+ bpm, bumping up to a high-for-me 165-168, sometimes even seeing 170 bpm. And I could do it again and again, revving the ol' engine up, stomping on the throttle.

Then, for the long days, I'd pop in a DVD.

Or two.

Or even three.

I did a few (just a few) 5+ hour trainer sessions in the last few years, climbing off the bike tired and sore, just like I'd ridden... 5+ hours.

On the other hand, last winter I could barely turn the pedals. No goals in March meant no motivation in December. I didn't have that inner drive that I normally have at that time of year. Instead of being anxious to ride, instead of making time to ride, I skipped trainer sessions. I wasn't thinking of races or racing when I got on the trainer - I was thinking of the movie in front of me or focusing on how many minutes I'd been riding or the stuff I had to do when I got off the bike.

This was one of those times that "Life in General" took some precedence over "Bike Racing". Whatever happened on the bike, stuff off the bike was going fine. It's the bike stuff that suffered.

When I went to California I was unfit. I got sick. I had about three good days there, and one of them was a rest day, another was a race day, and the third was a crammed to the hilt ride, a Palomar attack.

I returned home not much more fit than when I left, gaining weight all the time, at least ten pounds over my early 2010 weight, no miles on my legs, no cycle of fatigue from which I could recover.

My racing at Bethel went poorly. In 2010 I could do the 3-4 race, try and win, then enter the P123 race and virtually do the whole race. Twice I stopped to check on riders in late race crashes, and once I sat up on the last lap, soft pedaled up the hill, and sat and talked with some friends... about 20 feet before the line, so I never finished (doh!). Instead of doing 2.5 hours of racing each Sunday, I was getting in as little as 15 minutes of racing, maybe 30 minutes.

This eroded my already weak base.

Early season races ended early for me; I rarely made an hour in a crit. The Tuesday night races started ending earlier and earlier as my lack of form and lack of motivation encouraged me to sit up after just 15 or 20 minutes of racing.

With no base I had no foundation, and my season went down the tubes.

I had sparks of form, in Somerville (a Cat 2 only race no less), in one (just one) Tuesday Night race, and at the Keith Berger Crit.

Other than that, I had nothing. Nada. Zip zilch zero.

And, as a final kick in the butt, my blogging suffered too.

I realized, to my horror, that I haven't even done 100 posts this year. It's 80-something right now, an abysmal number, less than one post every three days. I thought doing two posts every three days was reasonable, and if I could get into the mid 20s every month that was good. That's been my goal, about 22-24 posts a month, or about how many days a full time person works in that month.

My low number means my 2011 blog post total, at this time, represents less than four months worth of goal posts. That's a problem when it's the tenth month of the year.

Anyway, that's the gist of my season. Not much racing, not much writing.

What will change for 2012?

Honestly, I don't know.

I hope that things change. I want them to change.

I'm still working on the Life part of me. The bike is important, of course, and even the Missus has been pushing me to train just a bit more. If I'm a bit more fit it's more enjoyable to race and I actually get a workout each race day. But Life is important too, and I've been a bit stagnant there.

Obviously I want to be more competitive on the bike. When I'm not fit then racing is just plain hard (with no reward at the end of the effort), I race for 15 minutes instead of 60, and I'm disappointed in myself for not living up to my own expectations.

Part of my 2012 goals will be to be good enough to live up to my own minimal expectations. I can define them pretty readily.

First I want to be able to participate in all flat races where there are fewer ex-pros than Cat 2s. When I say "participate" I mean I can chase or bridge or even attack, and I have some semblance of a chance of doing a sprint. Even if I'm dying at the back I'm okay if I can move up for the sprint. But to sit at the back dying and then come off on the last lap, or worse, get shelled before the end of the race... that's not participating.

Second I'd like to be able to race where I make efforts, harder than not, without getting myself shelled. It's no fun to do a race where my average wattage is about 275, my peak wattage is about 600, and I get shelled in 15 minutes (because, by definition of FTP, if I'm averaging 275 watts, my fuse runs out long before 20 minutes).

I like the spiky races where I see a lot of 800-1000 watt spikes, a lot of coasting or easy riding, and although my average may be 200 watts or less, my race ends up being at least an hour long. I don't feel like a racer just motoring along at a steady pace - I feel more like a racer when I'm out of the saddle and feeling my legs work my bike over.

Third I really want to win a field sprint. I haven't done that this year at all, and I was never close, even in a training race. To outsprint a field, even if there's a break or something, there's a special feeling there.

Fourth, if at all possible, I'd like to get back on the track. I want to do some 100% sprints, 100% efforts, and I feel that I work hardest on the track. I think it's the short attention span that does it - 25 second laps instead of 120 second laps.

Of course I also want to hold a good Bethel Spring Series. That work already started for me, with town permission and sponsorship things to do this month. I have ideas to improve the races there, improve the benefits to the racers, and improve the quality of racing in Connecticut (and surrounding areas, where ever the racers at the Bethel Spring Series race).

I have some ideas for other venues, i.e. other races. These are new ventures, not on the calender at this time.

One is on a venue that virtually no one knows about.

Another is a venue that has some history but I hope that it works out.

Both require a lot of work, much more so than Bethel. As they mature I'll share them with you all (of course), but in their nascent stages it's probably best that I keep things quiet. If anything goes wrong I'd rather face the failure privately.

There's also talk of a third event where I'd be helping more than running, but that's kind of on "let's think about it for a moment" for now.

(This doesn't include the 'cross race that Expo Wheelmen is holding October 30th in Manchester, CT, where I'll be helping with registration. It should be a hoot so please show up and join the fun!)

My ultimate goal is to increase race days in the area, specifically crit days (versus road races or time trials). Expo Wheelmen holds a time trial series in the summer. Road races... right now road races are a bit much for me.

I vocalized a very ambitious goal back in the early 90s - I wanted to bring 20 days of racing to Connecticut in a year. I had no idea how I'd do it, no inkling even, but I declared that to the people around me. I may not make it to 20 days ever, but I hope that 2012 allows me to bring you more than the six days at Bethel.

2011 may not have been the roaring success of 2010 but it wasn't bad at all. Maybe a "bridging" year for me, or a growing one. Whatever the nice word for it, it was a poor racing one but a good one otherwise.

I'm looking forward to a fresh 2012 season, full of motivation, full of expectations, full of life. I have a feeling it'll be a good one so don't go anywhere.

Pedal For Paws - 2012

2011-10-01T18:55:00.008-04:00

For myself and the Missus, Pedal for Paws, a ride to benefit the Forgotten Felines cat shelter in CT, is not quite the undertaking it is for the folks that really run it, SOC and Mrs SOC. Nonetheless it's still something.

It started some time after the Bethel Spring Series, when Carpe Diem Racing took out a permit for a charity ride. With that done the ride became official, at least on paper.

Then it was up to Mr and Mrs SOC to get together the majority of stuff, getting permission from towns, setting up rest stops (and getting permission from landowners there), and refining the 2010 route just a bit.

(Let me pause here because this is basically a 6 month job, getting everything set up, so kudos to them.)

For me, except for some odds and ends, it became more real when we headed down to Bethel a week ago to pick up generators, tables, cones, cables, and some other stuff we needed for the event.

Thursday we gathered some more stuff from inside the house, the laptop for registration, printer, cables for both, some giveaways, the MiFi wireless card, papers, stuff like that. We packed virtually all of it away in the car, along with the stuff we picked up in Bethel.

I also packed my bike, spare wheels, a lot of Expo kit (in case someone needed to borrow jerseys, rain jacket, vest, etc), and clothing for a couple days, including, for the first time, a change of work clothes (I'd drive back to work after the ride). The Missus packed clothing and such too, but no bike for her on this trip.

Friday the Missus left work early to head down to the shore to deal with pre-reg, forms, and to help with all the last minute things the ride needed. I would head down separately, after work; I needed to take the second car because I had to leave right after I finished the ride so I could get back to work by 1 PM.

It helped too that not everything would fit in one car.

Friday night the four of us (the two SOCs, the Missus, and me) had dinner then checked out the course (dropping the two Missus's off when we went by Chez SOC).

I have this theory on charity and other self-guided rides. I don't worry much about finishing a ride - it's just a matter of "keep pedaling". I do get worried about getting lost or missing a turn. I can't think of a worse thing than riding aimlessly in some area you don't know, not knowing where you'll end up, how long it'll be before you see your car, wondering if you'll bonk, hoping you don't get a flat, etc etc etc.

It's horrible.

Of course the "I'm lost" worry builds up. You don't just suddenly freak out and panic, thinking you just got lost. First you have doubts, little creeping doubts.

"Was that road back there the turn?"
"I hope I'm not climbing this hill for nothing."
"I hope I don't have to climb back up this descent."

The doubts grow in strength, multiplying.

"I haven't seen a route arrow in a while."
"The cue sheet said left on East Street from North Street, but I don't even know if I'm on North Street!"

"I haven't seen any other riders for a while now."
"Heck, I haven't even seen a tire track in the sand on the shoulder."

Finally I think I'm totally lost. I stop. I check the cue sheet for clues on where I went wrong. I pull out a map (if I have one).

When I think of things like this I think of this book about Paris-Dakar, about an ad exec and his girlfriend who tries the world's most well known difficult rally ever.

(They're sponsored by Perdue which means "lost" in French, their vehicle - a Mercedes Gendelwagen - had "Fresh Young Chicken" on the sides of it, and the girlfriend was a model/photographer who everyone looked at right after they read "Fresh Young Chicken"... the whole thing didn't seem destined for success.)

Anyway, Paris-Dakar gives route info without maps. Part of the route included going through some wadi in the desert. A wadi typically brings to mind a little chasm in the rock, place where the SAS would hide during the day while running around behind the lines in the Desert War.

The ad exec/rally-racer looked in vain for a particular wadi noted on the route notes, driving back and forth along a vast flatland, an hour or two each way, trying to figure out where this chasm lay.

Well, a wadi is technically a gorge of some kind.

And in this case the chasm was a few hundred kilometers wide.

The ad exec and his girlfriend, in their Perdue/Lost Mercedes, drove back and forth within the wadi.

They didn't make the time cut that evening and they were out of the race.

See? Their Stress-O-Meter was on high for a while, they didn't have any signs, and they ended up lost.

Back in the self-guided ride thing, a lot of times I'll have stopped to check my bearings while still on the route - like the wadi thing, I just didn't know I was supposed to be on this road for 45 minutes of riding.

So SOC came up with this idea of an SDC-Stress-O-Meter, one that starts beeping as the route becomes less sure, hills pop up, and a lot of intersections go by with no reassuring "yep, you're going the right way" signs.

I guess there are a few spots where my Stress-O-Meter starts to register:

1. Any major intersection where I may miss a turn

2. After any turn, in case I turned incorrectly

3. As I start a long-looking descent or ascent, because I don't want to turn around

4. Any time I've been riding for a while, say more than 5 minutes, with no signs

Based on my Stress-O-Meter, along with a reality-check limit of signs (because each one takes time and energy to make, and each one takes time and energy to put up), the SOCs and another guy (Clark) marked the route.

I was coming in, that evening, as the Stress Test.

To make it even more of a test, I'd drive the course, with SOC as my wingman.

The twists and turns that make the ride so fun also made driving fun too, with a worried sounding Mrs SOC (I was driving her car, for the first time in my life), caution me on some of the pending bumps and such. It kind of reminded me of US style rally racing, where the driver isn't supposed to know the route before the race.

Suffice it to say that we never had any "events", and my Stress-O-Meter only protested loudly twice, both times fixed with signs. We found a couple crooked signs, a few missing ones, but otherwise we were good to go.

Saturday morning we got up early enough that it was dark out (how quickly the seasons change!). The Missus had made 4 servings of steel cut oat meal the day before (instead of making 40 servings like last year before we realized in our bleary eyed state that we were reading the cooking chart sideways). With that, some coffee, and a final packing of the car, we headed out.

A few of the Forgotten Felines folks beat us to the start and we quickly unpacked and set up. Quickly because rain would fall in spurts, fizzling out after a few minutes, then starting again.

I set up the generator, computer, and printer, remembering to turn the vent to "On", the choke to "Run", and the eco-throttle to "On". The backup generator stayed in the car, but the gas can (a real easy to use and No-Spill CARB version) hung out nearby.

With registration up and running (and the Missus at the keyboard), I kitted up, met up with the hardy band of raiders for the day (SOC, Rob from Expo, Dennis from Expo, and a local rider Bill).

The ride itself was almost anticlimactic after all the worries and stresses going into making it happen. The weather featured light rain at the start, tapering off into just "gray", and then, miraculously, turning into blue skies with sun. As soon as that happened it went to gray again, but still, it was nice to see the rays finally break through.

SOC in front of me, with Dennis in front of him.
We're on the Causeway so we have to go fast.

We went by a few police cars marshaling a different charity event, a walk. The kind officer at the intersection was pointing one way for the walkers, the other way for the "Paws" people.

Pink... princesses? A different charity event, a walkathon.
In fact there was a third event in the area on the same day.

Dennis's very polite bike - it didn't spit water at you like everyone else's.
Bill in the background.

(Note: fenders help others on wet days.)

I wasn't riding very well, suffering at best, getting shelled at worst. I didn't even contest the early town line sprints (there are probably a dozen on the 50 mile loop), knowing that any efforts now would make me pay later.

I thought of the World Championships, recently won by a certain sprinter. He sat in the whole time, let his teammates do the work, and came through at the end. Any showboating would have just hurt his chances so he did what sprinters should do, hide from the wind until 200 meters to go.

It doesn't mean it was easy, it doesn't mean he just loafed along. I know that I've been under incredible strain in some of my races, just trying to sit in, while my teammates are hammering at the front, keeping things together, chasing things down.

So in my little Walter Mitty world I thought of this ride as something like the Worlds. Okay, like the Worlds but without a field sprint at the end - my goal was to be semi-coherent towards the end of the ride, instead of a zombie like last year.

In fact, somehow, I managed to take all of maybe 30 seconds of pulls in the first 25 miles. Every time I was second in line, steeling myself for a short pull, we'd make a turn, a rider or two would flow by me, and suddenly I'd be at the back again.

At first the sprints were pretty short, just a few pedal strokes as a green town line sign appeared out of the grayness. Later, as the weather got better, the sprints got a bit more heated.

I had the additional handicap of having some idea of the course, i.e. where we'd be climbing, where we'd be stopping at the rest stops. This let me give up a bit easier, knowing the others would have a good reason to stop.

Rest stop #1. Rest stop girl demonstrating Angry Birds to Dennis.
Rob to the left, SOC to the right.

I got shelled once, really hard, on a climbing bit leading to the second stop. Then I got shelled again on a short bridge climb, then finally at the end when I simply gave up.

I did give a couple sprints a go at the end, losing one to SOC, taking a hotly contested one (four jumped for that instead of the usual two). And, I have to admit, the boys let me take two in a row near the beginning, during one of my two pulls.

I thought I heard "sandbagger" when I took one, but you never know :) Seriously, though, I realized that, okay, I'm a Cat 2, at least on paper, and I ought to ride with a little more "oomph", but right now, no, I'm a barely-Cat3 in terms of fitness, more like a Cat 4 or 5.

Towards the end of the ride I pretty much sat up, spent, tired from the ride, the late night, the early morning, and the idea that I still had to drive an hour plus back to work. SOC refused to let me finish the ride alone so he sat up too, shepherding me the final mile or so to the end.

The Missus was there, still at the registration table. Things had gone smoothly, with a day of practice (from last year) and a lighter load of registrants.

Ultimately things went well. I think we had a couple lost riders (their Stress-O-Meters must be a be more finely honed than mine, or maybe they didn't register at all), a decent turn out, and no falls.

And better yet we raised a few thousand dollars for Forgotten Felines. That's what this was all about, so that's what we wanted. In the end, that's what we got.

Training - Chasing Trucks

2011-09-28T20:27:00.010-04:00

I've been lamenting (privately until now) about the lack of motivation I've felt for training. I managed a solid three days in a row on the trainer, doing at least an hour a day. I worked first on pedal form, spinning my 23T in the small ring for 90-odd minutes.

Whenever I take a break of more than a few days off the bike I try and work on pedal form. If I do I buy myself a decent spin for a few weeks. If I don't then I slog through the gears at 70 rpm, cursing at myself for not spinning more. The more days I take off, the more I work on pedaling.

So I worked on pedal form.

Then I did that some more.

When I finally put on a heart rate strap on the third day, doing the same pedal stroke thing, I realized I'd been hammering along at the incredibly high heart rate of about 132 bpm, give or take, or about 12 or 13 mph.

I tried to go harder that third day (yesterday) but mentally I couldn't push, even with Tour DVDs, music, fan on high, ice water in the bottles, everything I could think of.

Today the Missus recommended that I go out and ride. The weather ended up very nice, overcast, not too humid, not too hot, not like the past few days.

After I installed the new clincher tires I bought (I'll have to review them later - they're the second pair I have now), got my helmet cam situated (one of my straps broke in Vegas), figured out what repair kit to bring (36 mm valve tubes, recently purchased from Manchester Cycle via Expo Wheelmen), and snagged a vest in case the "overcast" turned into "rain", I headed out the door.

I had carefully pumped up the tires to the "wide rim" recommendation of about 95/105 psi (front/rear), but the front felt very squishy in the first hard turn I took, a hard left at the bottom of a descent. I usually push it going into the turn because I have an out - if I mess up I have in front of me about 3 soccer fields worth of grass to in which to stop.

I'd joked on BikeForums that after the dismal days on the trainer I needed to go chase a truck to motivate myself. There's only one real truck chasing spot around here with some chance of even seeing a truck, and that's on the main street going through town.

First, though, I headed south on the "out" loop, back roads, recently covered by the flooding after Irene. A quick cut west on a busy road, and a minute or two later I ended up heading north, my "in" loop. A mile, maybe two, of this loop is good truck hunting territory.

I also have two other standing goals when I do this loop - the first is to hit that downhill left turn with no traffic around (and it happened today). The second is to hit a right turn with a green light and no traffic in the way. Both turns feel like a crit, pretty much the two fastest turns in the whole loop.

And cornering fast is fun.

It's disappointing when one or both turns get interrupted by oncoming traffic or a red light (no turn on red at that second turn).

Fortunately that first downhill left was clear. I had to change my line as I didn't trust the tire as I loaded it up in the turn - I had to go a bit wide, but I had plenty of room before I hit grass.

I filed this tire pressure tidbit away for future reference.

Then, out of the saddle, sprinting up the hill after the left turn (usually my peak power for the ride), the tire squished so much I actually wobbled a bit. I adjusted my out-of-saddle form a touch so I'd hold a straight line.

I believe the studies that say that lower pressures give lower rolling resistance. But I also think that lower pressures will affect traction in turns and efficiency in explosive out-of-saddle efforts. Food for thought, and if anyone wants to experiment with this theory, feel free.

The rest of the out loop is kind of boring, but suffice it to say that I could work kind of hard, I felt okay on the bike (comfort wise), and things were fine.

The only thing weird that happened is I pinched a nerve in my ring finger when I climbed a short hill on the hoods. It hurt so much I couldn't hold the bars for about a minute - the combination of the ring, the angle of the ring digging into my finger, and holding onto the hoods did something weird.

Hand recovered, I headed back north on the in loop, passing two signs that make me grin when I see them.

The first is the town line sign. It's been in place only a short time, replacing a Boy Scout looking burned letters into wood thing. Now it resembles an Inca tomb or something, a western-ized version of one anyway.

Town line sign.

Since there are no group rides that ride on this road (that I know of), I've never sprinted for this sign. The lead up to it is kind of tough though; not my kind of sprint.

LAW sign.

The second follows shortly thereafter - the League of American Wheelmen sign, proclaiming this town to be a bicycle friendly community. Apparently it's the only town in CT to get this honor.

I hit the target rich mile stretch of road, and on cue...

It went by too quickly for me to jump.
Note green lights in distance.

I looked ahead, hoping for some red lights. Alas they were all green. I hoped they'd turn red, giving me time to latch on.

Hard to see but they're all red now!

My hopes fulfilled, I started to roll. I've learned the lights a bit from driving here all the time so I knew I had about 15 seconds.

Too much gap?

The truck started to accelerate when I was still a bit far from it. I had to make an effort to get on, then again when he sped up. Luckily the speed limit is a manageable 35 mph for most of this straight, so the truck stayed just about at that speed. Combined with the fact that they just repaved the road and I felt pretty comfortable on the truck's wheel.

I could see down the road.

Anything coming from the left would hit the truck first. I could see stuff from the right. And I knew the road and could see enough to check for debris. I felt pretty safe here, more so than if I was riding on my own.

After almost a mile I eased, my legs suddenly twinging in protest. Lack of training sometimes forces me to cut fun things short.

I kept going up to that second turn, the no-turn-on-red one.

Red lights... I have time.

It's a quick green, and you can see when it'll turn green based on the turn signal for the road to the right. I eased, knowing it's a long red, but when that turn signal turned yellow I panicked for a moment. I thought I left it too far and started accelerating hard.

Sprinting for the turn before it goes yellow.

I flew into the turn, a bit cautious because of the squishy front tire. I accelerated hard, like I was attacking out of the turn. With most traffic going about 40-45 mph after the turn, I usually can't catch anything. But today, with a tailwind, I felt okay. The red Honda didn't accelerate all that briskly either.

Suddenly that red Honda, previously out of my mind as being "too far", became a goal.

Instead of easing after 10 pedal strokes or so I punched it again, going first to the shoulder to allow any really rushed drivers to pass if they wanted to pass. No one did so I checked back and started sprinting up to the red car. By now it was accelerating briskly - I thought I'd lost the opportunity.

But then it stopped accelerating.

Counting coup.

This was like counting coup, kind of like touching your enemy with a spear instead of gutting them with it. With this car tagged (not literally), I eased. My legs already hurt from the truck effort just a couple minutes before and I had a long climb up to the house.

It's a busy road so I try and ride the hill fast - I call it my Poggio, the fast climb before the finish. I can do it, on form, in a 53x14 all the way up, but sometimes I'm struggling in a 39x19. Today I was struggling, using the 15 and 14 (and the small ring) up the not-quite-half-mile climb.

At the top I slowed - there were a lot of cars at the three way stop.

I'm at the stop sign.

The two white trucks were there before me and the minivan directly in front of me stopped at the same time I did. The second white truck started going in the above picture, as he should have.

The minivan followed.

Then I went.

Because that's the way things are supposed to work in such an intersection.

He started pulling out when I was halfway through.

Tired from climbing the hill but aware that I had to clear the intersection as fast as practicable, I did a track stand until I saw the minivan move then started going. Halfway across the green Honda started to move a bit - I figured it was one of those "roll a bit while waiting" things.

He kept coming.

If I leaned down I could support myself on his bumper.

I realized he wasn't stopping. It all moved in slow motion. He wasn't gunning it per se but he was definitely going to hit my knee or foot if he didn't stop, and I wasn't moving fast enough to be able to steer left out of the way.

I briefly contemplated letting him hit me, toppling onto his hood, and letting the police in on the whole thing. I knew I was right, I knew that the impact would be light, but I also wanted to see this guy's reaction. Did he think I was wrong? Did he think he was there first? What would he say to the officer that responded to the "car hit a biker" call?

And if he lied, I'd let him lie, let him say whatever he wanted to the officer.

Then I'd show the officer the tape of the whole incident. Me stopping. The other two cars going. Then me getting hit.

In a split second I decided not to go through all that. Every time I've been in this situation (all three times) I've decided to try and not get hit. Twice I got knocked off my bike, once when someone turned right while I was next to their passenger side mirror, once when someone turned right when I was next to their front wheel.

I decided that I wouldn't get hit.

So I yelled, really loudly.

"HEY!"

And he stopped.

Then I turned and (regrettably) yelled, just as loudly, just as clearly, "What the F?!"

I saw the driver of the car behind the Honda turn and look at me in surprise. That's when I regretted yelling it.

I did what I did, and at least my first yell produced a good result - I didn't get hit, I didn't let the guy try and talk his way out of the situation, I saved the guy a big dent in his hood.

(Which reminds me I need to start tracking my diet again, but that's another post for another day.)

But I yelled something I probably shouldn't have yelled. If he hit me, okay, I'd be justified.

I headed down the steep descent to the house, the hard turn onto my road, the hard turn onto my driveway.

Toss garage door remote back in car.

Blinky off. Bike stowed. SRM off, bring helmet (and camera) inside.

Next ride outside I'll pump up the tires to "normal pressure", 110/115psi. I'll skip wearing the ring on rides even when I don't wear gloves (I thought it appropriate for me to wear the ring if I had no gloves on). I know to bring the 36mm valve "kit" for the non-aero HEDs I usually use for training.

And I'll definitely wear the helmet cam.

Racing - UCI Minimum Weight and Bicycle Technology

2011-09-21T23:54:00.005-04:00

We all know about the UCI's pretty conservative weight limit, i.e. their minimum bike weight. It's 6.8 kg, about 15 pounds, and it's based on some long past assumptions, the main one being that the standard material in a bike would be steel or aluminum. The rule came about before carbon fiber worked so well and after a few documented bike failures.

(If this was Wikipedia I'd need a "cite references" asterix here, but they mainly involved aluminum frames, typically modified by non-engineers "on-site").

Nowadays, with carbon fiber established, bikes can weigh very little. Some bike companies have released factory production bikes weighing in at just over 10 pounds, or about 4.5 to 5 kg. With such a low weight a bike like that would be illegal to use in pro races.

Incredible, right? You and I can walk into a bike shop, plunk down a credit card (with a high limit), and walk out with a bike that's so nice that it's totally illegal to race in the Tour de France.

It seems wrong that this is the case, but it is. F1 drivers don't drive econoboxes, they drive the ultimate racing macines; ProTour racers should but riding the F1 version of road bikes, but they aren't - they're riding weighed down bikes, handicapped by the rules.

With a lighter-than-allowed base bike, racers and their teams have two ways of increasing weight:
1. Add ballast
2. Add functionality

Ballast

Of course the team can add weight to the bike. Glue a big slug of lead to the seatpost and you instantly increase the weight of the bike.

Cannondale, when the weight rule first came out, made an aluminum bike that easily dipped below the weight limit. They glued weights on the bike, illustrating that functionally the bike worked fine at the lower weight (safety and reliability-wise); the weights glued to the top tube wouldn't make the frame any stronger, nor improve performance. That was Cannondale's point and they made it well.

Not very functional weight.
(Photo taken from here)

The rules didn't change though.

Of course just adding weight on a bike don't increase functionality of the bike at all. Useless weight like this doesn't make sense. If you're going to drag 6.8 kg up the climb, you might as well drag something useful.

This brings us to...

Functionality

Right now, with a relatively heavy bike required by the UCI, pro teams have the luxury of spec'ing out heavier parts. This weight can bring greater reliability, better performance (typically rigidity), and more information (powermeters integrated into bike parts).

One can improve basic performance by using slightly heavier parts. It seems almost standard for SRAM equipped teams to substitute a steel cage on the Red front derailleur and stiffer chainrings in lieu of the allegedly flexible Red ones. Both these modifications make for a more predictable front shifting setup, making for better shifting performance. Although Red is a light component group, these modifications take a tiny bit of that away.

Of course one can improve reliability and strength. Using heavier rims, bars, stem, or even a saddle can improve durability, make crashing less catastrophic, and make for a more responsive bike. Cavendish's bike is known for its extremely rigid stem, and I'm sure his bars aren't far behind.

One can improve fit too, by using heavier parts. I've seen reports of racers using aluminum crankarms instead of carbon, mainly to get unavailable lengths. If you need a 180mm crank and the carbon versions only hit 175mm, you need to use the aluminum ones. Inbetween lengths (177.5mm for example) will require the racer to do the same thing.

Finally one can improve functionality by adding parts or features. Floyd Landis used a Powertap hub, one of the first contenders to do so, in the mountains. Taller aero wheels, giving the riders an aero advantage, suddenly become possible all the time, not just when willing to exceed the minimum weight. Likewise aero road frames can be substituted for the "super light" less aero frames.

However

Of course, even with a functionally optimized bike, a bike can still dip well below the UCI limit. Both teams and manufacturers have become creative in adding weight, with reports of seat tube weights, bottom bracket slugs, and other non-functional ways of increasing weight. The UCI needs to look at a bike that has all the functional weight-adding features and still falls well below the minimum weight limit. Such a bike would be a good starting point for a new, lower minimum weight.

And, thankfully, with the rule a bit outdated, the UCI promised at some point to modify the minimum weight.

Therefore it only makes sense that both racers (i.e. their teams) and manufacturers should be planning on a new, lower minimum weight.

How does that affect us?

Let's say the UCI reduced the minimum weight to something somewhat possible, like 4.5 kg (about 10 pounds). It could be rider dependent, i.e. a percentage of the rider's weight. Such a system would need some kind of broad cutoff points so that losing 500 grams of weight doesn't means redoing the bike. In other words, for each 5 kg increment of racer weight there'd be a proportionate amount of bike weight (a 50 kg rider would be required to have a 4.5 kg bike, a 55 kg rider a 4.7 kg bike, etc).

It could also be related to frame size, so that a smaller framed bike would have a lower minimum weight. This way a bike whose saddle height and bar-saddle distance is a certain amount would have to weigh a certain amount.

To reach these lower-than-friendly weights a team would have to carefully select all its components. Tall aero wheels may not always be possible, nor an aero road frame. Perhaps the racer's favorite (but heavier) saddle will need to be replaced. And getting a heavier, stiffer frame may not be realistic.

In other words all those functional upgrades I mentioned above would have to go away. The racer would be racing a less desirable bike, at least as far as function goes.

This would force teams to actually use products that help make the racer go faster or save energy or something.

One way to deal with a much lower weight limit is to embrace innovative and idiosyncratic technology. Such technologies and ideas currently overlooked will become much more significant when the minimum weight drops significantly.

For example, in a conversation with an industry person (components) about BB30 faults, the main advantage he mentioned was weight, or lack thereof. BB30 is extremely light, rigid, and allows for weight to be used elsewhere. Studies have shown that actual crank stiffness doesn't change that much.

A drawback is that long term durability (after replacing bearings multiple times for example) is suspect, with frame shells distorting and the like.

BB30 (and the SRAM version, PressFit30 or PF30), allow the use a significantly lighter bottom bracket axle, reducing the weight of the overall crank and bottom bracket substantially, without any penalty in rigidity. I know that my crank and BB (with a powermeter in the crank) weighs about 675 grams, much less than the 800-900 gram typical weights for a normal crank and bottom bracket.

Such weight savings become significant if the weight saved allows the racer to then put on some other functionally improved parts, like a taller more aero wheel/set, a powermeter, those longer cranks, stiffer chainrings, etc.

Likewise, if the pros really require the "rigidity upgrades" to SRAM Red, then making those upgrades suddenly have a penalty. I'm sure there are racers who will sacrifice that rigidity to stay at the absolute minimum bike weight. Michael Rasmussen was known for having just one bottle cage on his bike, so he wouldn't be able to carry two - it would be too heavy.

A very low weight limit would also call out inefficient designs cranked out by various manufacturers. Cosmetic curves in frames and such would penalize the racer. Frames would become more efficient, with engineering taking a step forward, "industrial design" a step back.

We'd also see some movement off the bike for various bike things. Right now there are no minimum weights for the rider's clothing or apparel, so it may be that we'll start seeing products mounted on the rider rather than on the bike. For example, instead of powermeters in bike components, racers can use a shoe mounted version. Any weight penalties for electric shifting and other features become significant if they push the bike over the minimum weight.

So what would we see with a much lower UCI minimum weight?

1. Larger axle diameters. BB30 is great for the bottom bracket, but aluminum or carbon fiber axles in hubs saves weight too. Manufacturers will look to minimize weight by increasing axle diameters and using more exotic materials. I suspect carbon fiber axles will become the norm for the BB and maybe the hubs. The steerer tube is already carbon fiber.

2. A reduction in the cosmetic, non-functional frame features. Is having huge stays really necessary? Or a large headtube? Frame manufacturers will quickly optimize their framesets. Those that have poor design staff will end up with less-than-optimal frames.

3. Careful application of aero parts. Aero parts typically weight more than their non-aero counterparts. A tall 90mm rim weighs more than a comparable 30mm rim. Riders will have to be more careful when selecting components for a given day. Flat days will encourage more aero equipment; hilly days less.

4. Less data collecting. Powermeters add weight, and although data comes in handy, there are plenty of pro racers that race without power measuring devices on their bike. A slight (but psychological) weight penalty may be all that they need to ditch such things. Of course if the UCI starts tracking power as part of their anti-doping efforts, this would be a moot point (budget x grams for a powermeter).

5. Equipment malfunctions. Not failures, malfunctions. A less-rigid front derailleur, with a less-rigid chainring, can cause shifting malfunctions.

6. Lighter "regular" brakes. Currently the three main manufacturers have pretty normal brakes, very similar in weight and function. Innovative brakes can save dramatic amounts of weight, freeing up weight for use elsewhere.

7. Failures. Unfortunately lighter bikes, combined with the normal crashes and such, will cause more equipment failures. Although the UCI regulates some minimum strength (they test forks for example, so they don't arbitrarily fold under a rider), a bike that's been crashed may have some unpredictable failures. Hincapie's steerer tube failure is such a thing; hopefully the parts that fail will be less critical, like a rear brake or a seatpost or a saddle or something.

Although not necessarily cheap, lowering the minimum weight on bikes would encourage development of frames and components. Companies currently coasting along would be forced to start development again; companies currently exploring developmental ideas would be rewarded with a year or two head start on performance. We'll see less waste (less material used), better production (because without higher quality the lighter parts will fail), and more differentiation between bike companies.

I'm looking forward to the day the UCI lowers the minimum bike weight. The UCI will jolt the bike industry to action, making for very light, very high performance bikes.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to ride a UCI legal 10 pound bike.

Interbike 2011 - Indoor Day Three

2011-09-16T23:15:00.004-04:00

I got up a bit slower and later than the previous days. The Sinclair party tired me out a bit more than expected, and, honestly, I didn't think I'd be hitting the sack at two in the morning. Or 2:30. Or whatever time it was.

Nonetheless I roused myself out of bed around 8 AM (or was it 9?) and headed down to the show.

This guy looks like I felt.

The head above is from the SRAM pART PROJECT. SRAM gave bits and pieces to a bunch of artists. There was a rollerskating robotic Aliens/Predator kind of guy too, but I missed it. Full list here.

I tried to boost the attendee count. These are my SprinterDellaCasa mates.

Those folks above were part of the assortment of weird stuff I found in the show office. No idea where they came from but they'd sometimes disappear for a bit, returning from destinations unknown at a later point. They look more fit than I do.

A 70 tooth ring!

The largest chainring I'd ever dealt with before was a 59T, on a teammate's dad's bike. He and his son would ride up to New Hampshire from southwest Connecticut, a 19-24 hour ride (depending on wind, weather, and fitness). When the dad described the massive descents and trying to hit higher top speeds, I jokingly suggested getting a bigger gear.

I should have known better because he already got a Specialized TriSpoke wheel to increase top speed (he learned the hard way to skip the front for those gusty 55 mph descents). I happened to be looking at chainrings and spotted some oddities, like a 60T. I let it slip that these 60T monsters existed.

"A 60 tooth!?"
"Um..."
"Order me one!"
"Um..."
"When will it be in?"
"Um..."

Since I brought it up, I finally gave in. I tried to order a 60T but it was out of stock - I had to settle for a 59T.

I think I already posted these pictures but I can't remember.
These are from back in the day.

On the bike.
I think it's a 45T for the small ring, giving a 14T difference.

Anyway the large 70T ring caught my eye. I'm glad they weren't around when I had the shop - even with really aggressive gearing the small ring would have to be as big as 53T or so (for a difference of 17T between the small and large ring - it's kind of like shifting from a 53T to a 37T. To ride to New Hampshire with a 70/53 would be a bit much.

My main goal today, with not much on my agenda, was to go really fast at Circulus. They closed at noon so I had to get my act together. Unfortunately my stomach wasn't cooperating - apparently the late night at Sinclair was a bit much for my fragile (pronounced "fra-gilly") body.

Nonetheless I persevered, getting to Circulus at about 11:30 AM.

Fans.
From left (with camera at face) Kevin, Rich, Julie, and...
The guy with the white shirt, I forget his name but he's the one that convinced me to do this.

It's not bad. The surface looks slick but it's pretty grippy, treated with a secret agent that really improves traction, to the point that I was thinking of it for things like garages and other polished floor surfaces.

They even treated the concrete just inside the wood, helping those going up or down from falling when their front wheel hits the slick looking (but not) concrete.

It's the Circulus track, a small (50 foot diameter) track built by the pdw folks.

Here are some stills from the helmet cam footage I took. I didn't do any on Day Three as I'd lent out my helmet cam mount out on the evening of Day Two and hadn't retrieved it yet. But I did do some on Day Two, just slower than Day Three. Ultimately I'll have a clip together, but that's ultimately, not right now.

My view.
Actually taken on Day Two, when I was warming up to the idea of going fast.

The camera's view of the same shot (iPhone low res, from Kevin).
Again, Day Two footage, therefore I'm going pitifully slow.
I'd lean more if I were going faster.

Note that I'm going backwards. Yes, if you go backwards you help unwind the dizziness.

At least that's what I told myself.

So how does it work?

It works well. I mean, obviously, right? I'm here, writing about it. I didn't fall off the banking, even when I got going a bit faster. Here's how I got going on the thing:

First, ride around in a circle on the flat part. It takes only 4 mph to stay on the wood, 11 mph to go "fast". I'll get to the "fast" in a bit. 4 mph is not that fast so it doesn't take much to get up to speed.

Second, when you want to get on the Circulus, you need to kind of aim up it. The guy there said to do it like you're "walling" on a BMX bike. I nodded like, "Yeah, I know what you mean," but I've never done that ever. I figured it's like riding up a... wood track.

Third, once you get going on the wood, commit. It takes power to commit, at least for me on the BMX bikes. They didn't have any allen wrenches nearby (and I didn't feel like walking around to the tool booths to borrow one), so I only rode the low-seat-height BMX bikes. On those bikes it takes a lot of quads and hamstrings.

Fourth, once you want to stop, fight the "Holy smokes I'm going to crash!" vibe. Instead, coast and allow the bike to slow. I found that I'd come down off the banking a little too fast to stay on the concrete so I'd let the bike veer back into the banking, go up, then really turn a bit to come back down. By then I'd have slowed down enough to avoid going back up.

Fifth, if you want to go fast, stay below the blue line. It's not as glamourous but it's a heck of a lot faster. For a 5 lap sprint it's about 6 seconds slower if you're up the banking versus down near the floor. It helps to be able to extend your legs a bit more than I am in that picture above.

Sixth, stop after 10 laps or so. You get pretty dizzy when you stop. I found it helps to go backwards on the track for a bit (clockwise) to kind of "reset" the brain. If you've never ridden the track then do a backwards set as soon as you finish your first forwards set. This way you don't get your body hardwired to only go counterclockwise. If you keep going in just one direction, and it's easy to fall into that trap, it get to be pretty difficult to stand up without tottering like a drunk.

Speaking of which...

Seventh, and this is strictly optional, do NOT drink a lot of vodka cranberries the night before. Or tequila or rum or beer or any number of fuzzy brain drinks available around here. I set out on Day Three to do a couple flying 5 lap time trials, trying to come close to the 20.3 second time set on Day Two's competitions. When you do a hard effort, on a 50 foot wide circle, leaning at some absurd angle to the floor, on a bumpy surface, pedaling with the saddle too low, going totally anaerobic, it hurts if you've had fuzzy brain drinks in the recent past.

Although I felt pretty queasy for a bit after my first flying 5 lap effort (I mentally calculated where I had to run to get to the bathroom, or, worse, a garbage can), the feeling passed enough so I could do a second one.

Day Three footage was a bit faster but I never broke 20.3 seconds. Unfortunately I rode about a second a lap slower. I think my final two laps were much slower than my first three, due to the low pedaling position. I couldn't stand because I wasn't able to control the bike at speed while out of the saddle.

Kevin giving it a go.
He's tall enough to use the fast bikes with 700c wheels.

With Circulus on the way to Quality Bicycle Products (if your order has some weird errors in it, you may wonder if the picker just did a few laps on Circulus), I don't know when I'll be able to ride it again. But if I do, I'll know to come prepared with a few allen wrenches and a full helmet cam setup.

And, I have to admit, I got that hankering to get a BMX bike again, just to practice wheelies or walling or bunny hops. I'll probably get over it but still, I hadn't thought about that in a while.

After Circulus I had to chill a bit, literally, as I had overheated a bit. I got to talk again with some of my "IB2011" finds, the products that I figured were really cool. I'll write about them coming up, but they have to do mainly with small companies offering innovative products. With a bit of development, usually a cash injection, and a network for distribution, these products have a chance of really affecting the market. I also thought of some future trends for the industry (okay, one, for the road market), although again I'll write about them in future posts.

At 4 PM a voice came over the PA. I didn't record it, maybe I'll remember next year, but basically a female voice (IB staff) said that we'd finished up Interbike 2011. I could hear small cheers from around the hall. Small cheers because, by now, most of the vendors were close to losing their voices (like I did one year, with 15 minutes to go). Those folks must have applauded because I heard some clapping too.

All the hard work for the show management folks had finished, at least 99.9% of it. A few details, a post-show meeting or three, and that would be it. They could start thinking about and working on 2012. But, ever so briefly, they could think about relaxing just a bit. For the Interbike folks it's really hard work, putting things together for the whole year, culminating in just a few days of show, all their efforts for this one magical week in September.

Two of the Interbike ladies, Lindsay and Jenni (I hope I got that right), in the show office at the end of the day.
Those are foot massage things under their feet.

For the attendees it was like when a movie ends - the lights go on and everyone files out. All the scenes and music and parts and bikes and emotions and excitement from the show become a bit muted. Dealers stand around, blinking a bit, wondering what just happened. They could now relax with the only immediate task ahead being not to miss the flight home.

For the exhibitors it's the beginning of the final bit of the show - packing and leaving, like what race promoters do when the races finish up for the day. Having been there I know that some of the hardworking souls would be there until the wee hours of the night, working hard to pack stuff up before the show floor had to be cleared. The years I worked with an exhibitor ended up the hardest years of Interbike, and the hours following the show were the hardest of the hardest.

And, yes, I've lost my voice at Interbike, although it went with only 15 minutes to go. Dismissed for the rest of the show (all 15 minutes of it), I immediately headed over to the race DVD booth and, using hand gestures, bought a few DVDs.

When many of the lights go out you know it's done, and when that happened, we finally accepted that it was all over. As we walked out booths start coming down, revealing the mystery of the wizardry, the guts of the booth magic. It's a bit of a let down each year for me, this disassembly, at least until I worked with an exhibitor. I liked seeing the booths full and complete, nice displays and all. Seeing them start to come apart... it just meant that the show was ending.

In contrast to the Sinclair party the night before, Friday night ended up very tame. A bit exhausted, Kevin, Julie, and I went out for dinner at the Grand Lux (Venetian one, not the Palazzo one). Rich, caught up in some business, missed out on our early dinner, so we finished without him.

Kevin and I called it a night at that point. He had an early morning departure time (4 AM) to get home for real life stuff, and I had a slightly less early breakfast date. We talked about stuff, did some packing, packed away the various schwag, and texted and called and emailed friends and family.

I only had to get home to return to real life again. As magical as Interbike always is, it always has to end. Magic can't last forever because if it did it would become just "life".

Or, as the various vendors joke to each other at the show, where the incongruity of being surrounded by your passion yet working your butt off...

"So how's it going?" (preferably asked when booth is half set up or half brought down, or when it's 2 PM and the crazy busy booth has obviously kept the vendor from eating any regular food for 5 hours).

"Livin' the dream," with a big sigh.

Eyes meet. Grins all around.

"Oh, right. Livin' the dream."

Laughter.

Still, though, it is a dream. It's got to be, right?

Once again, dream or otherwise, I got to experience the magic of Interbike.

Here's to a great 2012 for all the exhibitors and attendees, to the media, and, finally, to the show management. I heard someone talk about coming back to Vegas. Therefore...

Viva Las Vegas!

Can't wait for Interbike 2012.