Pedaling Zen

Lots of Riding, and Thoughts on Gear

2012-02-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of riding, and have racked up 725 miles for Dec and Jan, in part because I'm trying to get 100 miles in reliably, every week. The weather has been dry, but I've also been relentlessly working wheel, tire, handlebar, saddle, and lighting issues, and because I can ride dark safely after dark with the 5 Point lighting system.

I'm working on a post about riding in the dark and cold of winter, but had to relegate it to a draft after finding my thoughts a bit muddled last week, so that will be coming sometime in the next few weeks, but not just yet.

Also available in BLUE and PURPLE

I picked up a tiny AAA Fenix E05 R2 flashlight to light the Garmin and thermometer at night, and I'm amazed by this little light. The size of my little finger, it drains an AAA cell in 3:30, but cranks out 27 ANSI-certified lumens with a lens that makes a perfect pool of light from 1-80 ft. I can read my wristwatch at arms length 50 ft away. Stunning.

The best place to mount it for lighting the cockpit turned out to be the front of my helmet - so it's Velcro-ed there, and is doing a credible job as my forward, white helmet light. It's a "be seen", not a "see" light in that mode (except for the many steel posts where roads cross the ARPT where it makes their reflective tape really come to life) but weighs .39oz, lights my hands for signaling, and generally brightens up night riding a lot by keeping my hands and cockpit lit.

No matter where I look, it's just magically lit. Drinking fountains, bathroom doors, front gate lock, front door lock, gearing, AND, hands-free lighting for fixing a flat tire in the dark.

After 1:30 the light was turning a little yellow Friday night, so I decided to try swapping a AAA eneloop NiMh (it's optimized for NiMh, but will work fine with Alkaline too) cell from my old PB SuperBlinky taillight before it got too drained. It worked fine, and I discovered that the Ultegra 6700 shifters work great for prying open the taillight's body to get to the batteries. (no coin required)

While I intended to use the E05 solely as a utility keychain light, because of it's incredible performance, it's rubbing up against a lot of other uses, while having a little less battery life than I'd like. First and foremost, is being a real "see" helmet headlight. The perfect light for all of the above roles is probably the Fenix LD10. It isn't enough headlight alone (except as a fail-over light), but great for filling in the dark spots going through turns.

Note the discrepancy between claimed max output between Fenix's website and Amazon's ad. The technology is advancing very quickly, but not enough to change my evaluation, or RX uses for this light.

My PB 1W Blazer headlight, with an excellent lens, is 70 lumens, but the Fenix L10 is smaller, 1/4th the weight, more aerodynamic, and should easily outperform it on for a couple of hours on high.

Settings are low (9 lumens), which runs for up to 34 hours on a single AA battery; medium (50 lumens, 6 hours); high (105 lumens, 2.2 hours); and turbo (132 lumens, 1.5 hours). Plenty of lighting options, and I like the SOS setting. On low or med it would make a great cockpit light for even the longest winter rides, and an excellent go-to light on double centuries.

For an excellent Double Century light, check out the Fenix (pronounced Phoenix) TK15, which runs on 1 rechargeable 18650 LION cell, OR, 2 CR123 cells available at Bertha-N-Bubba's Bait shoppe anywhere in the northern hemisphere.

Power options include CR123 AND 4,000 mAh LION cells. State of the art

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I wore my new Voler Artico FS bib tights Friday night, and they are excellent above the waist, and OK below the knee. The chamois is excellent too, but the fabric on the upper legs, especially over the top of the quads and thighs, is pathetic.Not even a little bit wind resistant. The new Voler tights have remedied this problem, but at $185, not an option. After using a discount code, I paid $108 for these, including postage.

I have a standard test for a fabric's ability to stop wind - I hold it to my mouth and try to blow through it. Unlike, for example, the PI Barrier Fleece around the face on my PI balaclava, which I cannot blow through at all (like Saran Wrap), the Voler fabric I can blow right through. This, once again, turned out to be a perfect predictor - unfortunately.

Above the waist the bib fleece extends up to my naval in front, and all the way up to my neck in back. It's close to an additional base layer above the waist, and prevents "frozen belly". I really appreciate the extra protection in front. All-in-all though, a major disappointment, and a head-scratcher too. Why make a bib whose upper is too warm to ride above the 50's, and whose leg protection is inadequate below 60? Hard to understand.

Once home, with shoes and clothes still on, I tried slipping my PI leg warmers over the top of the tights. That worked very well, even over shoes, and the reflective piping on the 10" zippers will be welcome too. Fortunately, the PI leg warmers have sticky grippers on both the inside and outside up top, so they can be pulled all the way up to the crotch and stay there.

This would make the bib tights very versatile for cold morning starts, especially with a SS jersey and arm warmers up top, but that's not why I bought them. I don't want bib tights that are only warm down to 55F in calm conditions, and 60 in windy conditions. I wanted protection down to the 38-40F range. Will keep looking until I find something that meets this requirement.

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I wore the new PI Barrier XL vest alone tonight. It doesn't seal very well at the armpits, which I hated early, but appreciated once I got warmed up and wanted to vent some heat. It does flap ( a HUGE source of aerodynamic drag) a bit in the wind, but I bought it XL to fit over my black Columbia Titanium jacket with pit-zips - not exactly Hi-Viz by itself - so am happy with the size. I know I have broad shoulders, but would it kill PI to make the arms an inch longer over the shoulders?

I wish someone would just make a 1" zipper strip that zips into your existing zipper and adds another 1" of girth. Perfect way to adjust the size of a vest or jacket for different layering schemes. DUH!

In part because of the cold, and in part because my glutes and quads are still kind of sore, my hams were taking a beating tonight, and my left one, under the knee, was threatening to cramp. I wish I'd had the leg warmers along to see if temp was the problem.

I turned on all my lights at WBP - everything up brighter than everything else - and had cars nearly running into each other head-on to give me my lane. Nice! That's how it's supposed to work. I am going to replace the PB SuperBlinky with the new Turbo version though, as the lens body on the Turbo is more translucent than clear, and when on in constant mode, the entire body of the light glows red. Not so with the older version, which offers almost no side visibility. $25.

Wordless Wednesday

2012-01-24T23:08:00.000-08:00

I've been riding in some pretty cold, and at times, dreary conditions, so I'm sure many are wondering why I bother. In part it's because I see people 20 yrs older than I am having to give up their mobility, and that prospect urges me on. In part, it's because to control BP I have to ride on a regular schedule. In part it's the fun of meeting the unique challenges attendant with riding in the cold, but mostly, it's because it's quiet, peaceful, and beautiful - even gorgeous - out there. Here's a sample of what I get to take in almost every day out there riding on the ARPT.

Techie Tuesday: The Limits of Layering

2012-01-17T02:20:00.000-08:00

I've come to really like chocolate. It has a rich, creamy, earthy taste, is a tremendous antioxidant, lowers your blood pressure, and makes pretty brain chemistry - but it's no substitute for sex. In the same way, there are many things to love about layering, but it's no substitute for warm, heavy clothing when you're out in the cold, and need it bad.

Reason enough to ride in the cold

Layering's strength is flexibility, and where temps and power changes are extreme, it's the dominate consideration. The drawback is bunching, overlapping layers at the waist, legs, arms, stowage for items peeled off, and total system protection levels. Arm and leg warmers you can fold up and stow in shells are perfect for early rides that start in the cold, or late day rides that finish in the cold - provided 2 layers and shells can provided enough protection.

It got down to 22 degrees here the other night, and riding the next day temps dropped from 52 to 40 in half an hour, with the bulk of the ride done at 38-40 degrees. That's well beyond a LS jersey, and arm and leg warmers with knee socks and shoe covers. Even with a BMI of 28, that's beyond 2 layers of vest shells too. It's also too cold for a micro-fleece balaclavas. Time to bring out the big guns!

Industrial strength head protection. The Barrier fabric around the face is not just wind-resistant, it's air-tight. You can't blow through it no matter how red-faced you're willing to get.

Barrier up front to prevent wind-induced brain-freeze, PRO thermal fabric behind for max insulation. Wear over clear glasses stems to keep the wind out from under the balaclava.

3 lenses in the box. Go with the clear. Great coverage, sheds winds well, and seals well against the PI headbands. Cleverly, the frame is cut away on the outside right above your pupils to keep from blocking your view when down in the drops (or aerobars)

Mountain Hardwear Super Power 1/2 Zip Fleece. Polartec® PowerDry® XDye Fleece - 336 grams H-E-A-V-Y

Nice reflective details on the shoulders - shoulders that will keep yours warm

Marmot Powerstretch fleece is 200 weight powerstretch all the way through. Mine's labelled REI, and has neck fleece thick enough to keep yours from freezing. 227 grams.

The PI Barrier Headband keeps your clear glasses in place without letting air under the PI Barrier Balaclava. Still better if PI would put stem holes in their Balaclava, but as it is, the extra protection is a nice bonus to this work-around.

The Marmot Powerstretch fleece is a THICK base layer, and has a very thick collar. No back pockets makes it much easier to tuck into tights, and a single base layer wicks much better than 2 thinner, unconnected layers. If it gets any colder, I'll have to spring for the Mountain Hardwear SuperPower fleece with glove-enveloping sleeves.

PI Barrier Convertible Vest providing wind protection, and enough venting to keep you dry inside.

If it had arrived in time, I would have worn my new PI Barrier Vest under the convertible one. The inner shell layer, zipped down 6-8 inches provides protection on the shoulders, while acting as a diffuser to vent without cold-spots.

High-Viz wind-proof, water-resistant

I ordered the vest a size larger, in part so I can stack the vests, and in part to leave room for my Columbia Ballistic II Fleece Jacket, which provides more insulation, and wind protection too.

Perfect outer layer, or middle layer with vest over it. leaving pit zips open to breathe. Mine's 6 yrs old and in perfect condition.

It seals out the wind, but with pit zips and a vest, you can still dump a lot of heat when climbing or if the day warms up. Hand pockets and another Napoleon pocket help store leg warmers and cell phones if the day warms up after an early start
.

PS: It appears that Columbia has changed the pit zips to under-arm vents. Since the new under-arm venting would be entirely covered by a vest, the jacket is no longer a good layering piece. It is still a good outer layer, but be sure to buy a color with good visibility for use in that role.

Techie Tuesday: Michelin vs Conti Update

2012-01-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

I did this review back in August, and since then have settled on Michelin Pro 3 Race in front, and Michelin Pro Optimum in back. Being of German heritage, I was expecting Conti to really impress. Instead they were a huge disappointment. The Optimum tires, by contrast, continue to impress me, and it's hard for me to imagine how the rear version could be improved on. It's as close to perfection in back as the Pro 3 Race is in front.

My search for a better rear tire was launched by my skidding through, and ruining, a brand new Pro 3 Race in back - the 2nd in about 1 month's time - so I am pleased to report that the Optimum(rear) is almost impossible to skid, and seems pretty impervious to tire cap wear on the rare occasion when it happens. The tire is just crazy sticky, and will actually reintroduce you to your back brake.

Surprisingly, since the rear tire is optimized for braking and driving wear, as well as bearing the extra weight of riders in upright positions, the tire is very stable and sticky in turns. This is probably due to the 25mm size, which is the only size it comes in. In technical conditions, and especially with sand, stones, small twigs, or leaves going through the many tight turns of the ARPT, the back wheel stays planted so much better I can carry more speed through the turn, so the 25mm size makes me faster. Instead of hopping all over the place, it just sucks up the debris and keeps you locked into your line.

The Gatorskins are so harsh in comparison, that you have to run them below 80psi to match the supple ride of the Pro Optimum(rear) at 110psi. (the pressure limit) The larger, 25mm tire holds more air, and this means it goes flat sitting around the house much slower. Rolling resistance is not as pressure sensitive either. I especially liked this on the one occasion I had a flat, as my little hand pump has a hard time going beyond 80psi. (the reason I will never run Vredestein tires)

My concern with the 25mm width, was wind and rolling resistance. In the rear, at least, I cannot detect any additional wind drag, and the rolling resistance is either the same, or on old, rough chip-seal roads, less. The bigger tire just floats over pebbly surfaces better. I haven't tried the Optimum(front), but suspect it would offer a smoother ride, better grip and more wind drag than the Pro 3 Race. I think Michelin should conduct and publish tests to make this determination. It would help them sell sets instead of just rear Optimum tires.

If I do the Davis Double this year, it will be on an Optimum(front) tire, as the bigger tires just do a better job of sucking up road vibrations, and I'd expect the Optimum to offer a little more puncture resistance, just because there is less surface pressure on any given surface point on larger tires. The Pro Optimum are in Michelin's top of the line Pro series, so they give you the best possible performance. They're the perfect Century tire.

I have only had 1 flat on the Optimum(rear), and that was after goat-heads, thorns, and broken glass all coming at me in a single 3-mile section. I feel very confident the Optimum(rear) are as puncture resistant as Gatorskins, and in every other way, far superior.

I've never given it much thought before, but I think this tire helps reduce rear tire slippage, especially when climbing steep grades. (you have to reset your cyclocomputer for the larger diameter) Even after resetting my cyclocomputer, my rides are still just a bit shorter because of reduced slippage. This is most noticeable when really flying down the bike trail, pushing 300+ watts through turns, or just flat out on straightaways. It's worth about a half a tooth on the rear cassette.

The only downside I've seen to the larger diameter is some pitting on my SRAM Force rear brake because the tire surface is much closer to the brake's bridge area in the middle. I don't blame Michelin for this, as it's a SRAM QA problem. The clear plastic protection film on the brake just wore off under constant sand spray and cleaning with Turtle Wax car shampoo.

I have ~ 1,500 miles on the Optimum(rear) and it has a definite flat spot on the tread cap, but it hasn't impaired the tire's performance in any way. I'm guessing it will go 2,500 miles, and wear in lock-step with the Pro 3 Race up front. That feature alone is worth switching tires for. For me, the two best features, in order, are the phenomenal braking grip, and planted-like-glued stability in turns.

Techie Tuesday: Optimal Lighting for Cycling Safety

2012-01-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I put some ideas together about what a good lighting system should do for cyclists. That work I called G.I.T. Lit. It doesn't describe a lighting system, but rather, the criteria any good lighting system has to meet. It's a meta-level lighting RX.

Over the last 3-4 months I've had occasion to work out the details of a real-world system I think satisfies these requirements, because of the way motorists respond to it, and that's the only criteria that counts. This 5-point lighting system will allow you to ride a road bike in urban or rural environments, at up to 25mph solo, without issue - faster if riding in a pace-line.

To understand better why 5 lights are needed, check out this YouTube video that demonstrates the eye's blindspot, the way the brain attempts to work around it, and keep this in mind when maneuvering in traffic at night. You have to give motorists the tools they need to be a good partner in safety.

1st, and most obvious, is the handlebar headlight, which is the foundation for any good lighting system. This light has to light the road far enough ahead so you don't overrun your headlights, even during club sprints.

Its beam must also be wide enough to light both sides of a bike trail, pick up garbage cans left in bicycle lanes, and light both white lines on common 2-lane roads. It's also crucial to pick up the glowing eyes of deer and other large game in time to avoid hitting them. They're completely unpredictable, so hitting the brakes is the best defense.

The primary headlight should have several power settings, so light can be maximized where needed, and minimized when battery life becomes important, or riding in pace-lines at night. It should also have a flash or strobe mode, critical when cycling just before sunset, or just after sunrise, when motorists are looking into the sun. Motorists behind you will also notice the flash of reflective signs, strobing in your headlight, up to a mile ahead at night.

The MagicShine 900 lumen lights meet these requirements, especially with a special wide lens I've been using. It's also proving very reliable, which is critically important for primary lighting like this. It's reasonably priced, and the separate lighthead is light enough to carry a spare needed. It allows many battery pack options, with many different mountings, and allows you to swap out a fresh pack quickly and easily.

If it's not 1,000+ lumens, or very close, you're just wasting your money, as those are "be seen", not "see" lights. They're dangerous, and motorists hate them because they're dangerous - because it's too much sustained workload, coming at them too fast. It's their opinion that counts, because your safety depends on them being able to notice, identify and track you quickly, and easily. (G.I.T lit) When they're happy, waving, honking and giving you the thumbs up, you have a great system. Until then, keep improving your lighting.

Any lighting is better than no lighting, but you're being foolish taking these kinds of risks when you can get a 900 lumen MagicShine for $90 from Amazon. I now have 2 full systems and a spare lighthead, and all of that cost me less than $250 delivered to my door. Have you priced a trip to the ER lately?

2nd, you need a helmet headlight with most of the same features. You need a helmet headlight to see through turns, up and down hills, and to "flash" motorists poking out of driveways, intersections, or looking into the sun. It goes where you're looking, not where your bike is pointing. The more twisty and hilly the road, the more critical this 2nd white light becomes. It's also a great "good citizen" light on night club rides, where it's used to light obstacles, signs, and riders under threat, whose clothing comes alive when bathed by bright light.

Helmet lighting is particularly important in getting noticed by drivers of high-profile vehicles, like SUVs, trucks, and heavy equipment. Because the drivers are sitting up so high, they can, will, and do look right over the top of bike mounted lighting. Sitting up and looking right at them until they respond is the only way to stay safe.

Watch for brake lights. That's the response that tells you the motorist is paying attention, and nothing short of that. My headlight has enough back-scatter to light the back of my gloves, and PI is now selling neon green Cyclone gloves. Sometimes waving your hand will get someone's attention when all else fails.

3rd, you need a powerful, flashing rear light that motorists can pick up from a long way off. This is the Grab light for motorists approaching from behind. To make this light as bright as possible, the light is focused into a very narrow beam, and it gets noticed because flashing lights work with the very primitive part of the brain, going all the way back to dinosaurs, that sense changes first and foremost. The Planet Bike Super Blinky Turbo is excellent here.

4th, you need a similar light, facing backwards, that does NOT flash, but is in Constant mode. This light's purpose is to make Tracking easy. Flashing, and even strobing lights, are almost impossible to track in the complexity of urban light-scapes. Even in my 20s, I found it almost impossible to track aircraft over LA at night, even with powerful strobe lights. So do commercial pilots, which is why most large aircraft now light the tail of the plane in bright, white lights, AND open all the windows in the passenger compartment with the cabin lights on.

As the saddle bag mount is often 8-12" higher, it's at motorists eye level, doesn't require them to look down and back up to drive, mount #4 here - but zip-tie the clip shut so it can't fall off as it will get bounced around quite a bit back there. The PB Turbo's opaque body lights up all over when in Constant Mode, and because it's unobscured from the side by legs, motorist can see it when overtaking you too.

I have settled on the Planet Bike Superflash Turbo for both #3, and #4 - which are mounted on the seatpost and saddlebag respectively. It has one primary, high-power LED emitter, with a high quality narrow-beam lens, two additional LEDs with a wider spread below, and an opaque body. The PB's flash pattern is simply spectacular. I really wish they'd patent it and then put it in the public domain. It would quickly become a standard that motorists would identify with cyclists.

It's counter-intuitive, but you need more powerful lighting in urban areas where there's much more lighting for motorists to contend with. Take note the next time you're out driving near dusk. It's almost overwhelming. More is more here.

I really thought I had my lighting down with this 4-light system - until I had a very close call with a SUV. He looked right over the top of me as I was making a L-hand turn from a busy 4-lane street with a protected turn lane, onto a 2 lane street with a protected L-hand turn and protected right hand turn lane leading into a bus stop lane. He almost ran right over me!

I had also read just a week before that motorists tend to lose sight of those narrow beams when overtaking cyclists, and have been running them over at the last moment. This led to some head-scratching, and eventually, the realization that a 5th light, one with 180 degrees of light, with a flash, should be mounted on the back (or top) of the helmet, facing backwards, but shining brightly to the sides, at motorists eye level, even if riding in high-profile vehicles.

As luck would have it, the Blackburn MARS 3.0 (and sadly, NOT the newer 4.0) satisfied all of these requirements with a staggering 7 LED lights, red to the back, and amber to the sides, and with a mount that puts it a full 3" behind the helmet, so it can easily be seen for almost 270 degrees. Paired with the front helmet light, this provides a full-height 360 degrees of coverage with white forward, amber to the sides, and red lights to the rear.

The only caveat is the Blackburn slip-in mounts are not compatible with Planet Bike's. Unforgivable they can't work that out. Those 3 rear lights should work as backups for each other in a pinch. We, as consumers, should write nasty-grams to both companies until this is resolved.

I would add only one thing to these 5 lights - neon green outer clothing with well-designed reflective piping. While REFLECTORS WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT KEEP YOU SAFE, piping really helps motorists Identify you as a cyclists. Neon green because when headlights, or fellow rider's lights hit you, you'll light up like a Christmas tree, and neon green because it's become the unofficial safety color of cycling. I think 100 of 100 motorists will tell you exactly that.

I'm careful to say "well planned", because I have seen some extensively piped clothing that makes you look like a monster from a bad SciFi movie, and while very distracting, still didn't silhouette the rider well. If I hadn't seen it myself I'd have said that's impossible, but it made it clear that slathering a bunch of reflective tape on your clothes isn't automatically going to make you easy to recognize.

I keep stressing fast identification as a cyclist because the driver, almost instantly, then knows what to expect from you and your bike. They know you aren't going to be blowing past them and changing lanes like a motorcycle (which have headlights, but not elevated, and never flashing red lights), and aren't going to take 20 seconds to cross the road like a ped, and aren't another car with a bad headlight.

Identifying you cuts their stress level in half immediately, and that makes them better decision makers, more level-headed, and grateful to you that you're meeting them half-way in trying to keep everyone safe and whole.

Case in point. After mounting light #5 I was flying down a shallow -3% grade, and got passed by a Quad-Cab dualie F-350 towing a BobCat on a 30ft Low-Boy. He gave me the full 8ft of lane when passing, watched me in his huge West Coast rear-view mirrors for clearance as he pulled back in, and gave me a big "thumbs up" as he got back into the power and went flying down the road. Now THAT'S a great feeling!!!

PS: The helmet headlight causes a lot of neck strain for me, due mostly to craning my neck to point the light where I want it, so I have been riding without it, using my handlebar MagicShine in flashing mode near dusk on city streets to Grab motorists attention. It's passable, but not as good as having a few hundred lumens up on the helmet. Don't skimp on the other lights. It's just too dangerous.

Partially as compensation, I have ordered a small, single AAA-cell Fenix E05-R2 light I plan on wearing on the backside of my L glove to help with hand signaling, Garmin reading, and flat fixes after dark. Stay tuned for results.

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Techie Tuesday: PI Barrier Balaclava

2011-12-27T03:10:00.000-08:00

I normally save Techie Tuesdays for wrenching stuff, but given the amount of heat that can be lost through the head, the one extremity your body can't cut off blood flow to (although I've heard people say things at times that makes me wonder if they were the exception), a review of a balaclava seems worthy of an exception.

Sunset on the ARPT near Hagen Park, Christmas Day, 2011

Fish Hatchery outlet at Hazel Ave Bridge, just below Nimbus Dam, looking downstream

I've done 3 rides for about 100 miles now using this balaclava, and think I made a good choice. Until the sun goes down, this, in conjunction with my PI headband, works great, and I thought this combo was bombproof, but that was until the sun went down.

Once the sun starts to set, temperatures drop like a stone, and the coldest air settles down in draws along the river within minutes. It's hard to believe how cold the air can get in spots, until you encounter it. I am just a tiny bit disappointed to have to report that the back of my head and neck were getting a little cold in what was probably 35-38 degree weather.

Nimbus Dam on the ARPT near Hazel Ave. This dam forms Lake Natomas and is well served by the Aquatic Center in the background to the right. If you're a competitive rower, you know this lake and facility well.

If it would fit under the very snug balaclava, the PI Barrier Skull Cap would offer the extra protection I'd need, but since there are no sizing options on either of these, it's a hard sell.

Although I generally hand wash my riding clothes, the amount of laundry on my last ride just became overwhelming, so I machine washed all of it. The dryer shrunk this substantially,perhaps 3/4" - in height, but AFAICT, not in diameter.

As it comes out of the package, the amount of material in front is very generous, and that in back about right, but once shrunk, the back is too short. It will cover when you can get out of the cold and rearrange all of your layering pieces for best fit, but after riding for an hour, and turning your head from side to side, it tends to leave a gap in the back.

The very generous length in front is greatly appreciated when the weather is warmer, or you're climbing, and need all of your layers wide open. This allows plenty of cold, dry air into your chest, and through your layers, to dry them and cool, while still protecting your neck.

I agree that the fit is tight, and I have a small head, but it does tend to loosen up a bit after wearing and laundering it a few times. They probably need 3 sizes though, as I got a compression headache wearing it around the house for an hour when I first got it in the mail.

I also noticed that once heat dried, the barrier fabric on the forehead is totally, and completely windproof. I held it over my mouth and cannot blow air through the fabric at all. I mean, it's like Saran wrap, and that's great. Well done PI!

It's not that thick, so it might not be the warmest insulator, but for the forehead I have the headband too, as it has holes for my clear riding glasses - something this balaclava should have too, as the stems on glasses create little air scoops where they go under headgear, which freezes your temples unless you have stem holes.

The new Barrier Headband doesn't seem to have stem holes, but is likely your best bet for holding your glasses in place anyway. Get the Barrier not the Transfer headband. You want the outermost layer to be windproof, or it's just a waste of cloth. Pull it down in back until your helmet band is resting on top of it. That seems to seal the wind out better.

One of the issues with each layer having a fleece collar, is they wad up behind your neck, and make it nearly impossible to hold your head up when riding. This causes painful neck strain, and headaches.

Since the balaclava typically goes under your base layer behind your neck, why not use the barrier windproof fabric, which is also thinner, to insure a deep, last ditch zone of wind protection running from your head, down your neck and well down your back? Less neck strain and the security of knowing bare skin isn't going to be exposed on the back of the neck. Make it slightly longer than the front, with the shoulders cut away. This would protect your neck no matter how much opening and closing of front zippers.

I expected, being a garment for very active users, that the mouth area would have to breathe well, unlike those neoprene ski mask things. PI has done a great job in making the fabric covering the mouth breathe well. In very cold weather, the moisture in your breath will freeze in the fabric, and form an ice dam. When inhaling, this wet, 32 degree surface warms and moistens your breath before you inhale. It will keep your lungs from getting burned in very cold, dry conditions.

Also, as expected, the mouthpiece pulls down under the chin easily, and stays put well without pulling the forehead down - even when using a PI headband. If they made this in sizes I'd get the middle size and buy their barrier cap to use when riding after sunset.

For better visibility on those night rides, a reflective stripe in the middle of the barrier fabric that protects the cheekbones and forehead really is needed. Everything else is going to be covered by your helmet, but that area is well exposed.

With cheap, powerful lights, like the MagicShine lights, my clubs are doing a lot of night rides, and I also routinely ride solo, finishing the last half of the ride after dark, where temps often drop 10-15 degrees in half an hour or so, especially along the river where cold, heavy, air settles in draws. 50 degrees turns into 35 in less than 10 miles.

It's essential to get your clothing right, and have a good warmth reserve in case you crash, and EMS is an hour or more away. A convertible vest with zip on sleeves and SpaceBlanket foil blanket are as important as your cell phone when riding alone. Shivering with cracked or broken ribs is excruciating.

Keep working your clothing problem until you have enough tools to go properly dressed in all conditions. It's NOT necessary to endure discomfort when riding in the cold. Keep at it until you aren't.

Joy to the Whirlled

2011-12-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

Coming back from Folsom and extending down to William Pond Park, I was struck by how much easier it seemed last night. The same 32 miles and 2,050 feet, but not distracted by a million nagging thoughts. It's that time of year. Easy to be distracted and stressed out. What a difference a little Zen makes.

Cold tonight, and it was almost dark by the time I made it up to Folsom, but the paint of the setting sun on the river was breathtaking. Wish I'd had the camera along. I added another, slightly oversize vest tonight. This one has a mesh back above the kidneys, so the smaller PI vest under it doesn't vent in the same place. This makes the inner vest something of a diffuser when left zipped down 4-5 inches. I adjust the outer vest for temp and effort. A nice trick.

Good news. I'm almost certain the creaking isn't in the headset. I have tic in the front wheel, and, maybe a creak in the BB, but can't make the headset creak at home, no matter how hard I torque it, and I torqued it a LOT. The wheel tic is probably sand inside the rim, but I'm going to repack the front hub as well, because I bought new balls to do that and have been looking for an excuse to do so.

I am starting to think I wasted my money going with Cane Creek when it looks like I could have gotten the same thing directly from Taiwan from the people who probably are making Cane Creek's stuff - Token. See for yourself.

Is Cane Creek just another marketing department farming out production to Taiwan? If so I'd rather just buy direct for 30% of the CC price. If Boeing can fab in the Carolinas, why can't CC?.

Saw a 250 lb buck who looked at me with total disregard as I closed in with my lights on. Rabbits running in front of me the whole 7 miles downstream from Sunrise to WPB. Some Wiley Coyote is going to make a meal of them if they keep doing that.

I've seen that happen on group rides, though sometimes the rabbit makes it across the trail before we get there and the coyote doesn't, and the rabbit is long gone by the time 4-5 of us pass. One of the beauties of the ARPT. I also like that it never stops changing with the seasons.

There is still lots of green grass growing under the dead brush, and the deer and white flies know exactly where the warm air is, and where the cold air settles. BTW, if camping, just on the high water side of a dam is a nice warm place to camp, because the cold air goes over the dam and settles down in the river bottom. 20 ft uphill, against a sun-baked south rock face, with some tree coverage is even better.

I had a little company last night for a few miles, which is really rare this time of year. His gloves were about to fall out of his jersey, so I hammered and and bridged up so I could give him an FYI. His toes were freezing, so I told him about the SpaceBlanket fix - which I used to keep my neck warm tonight, and it worked wonders.

I'm spending lots of time in the drops, and really like the new bars now that I've got the bottoms of the drops pushed forward so much. Makes the brake blocks a much more comfortable perch too. With all my clothing wadded up in the back of my neck, riding in aerobars causes a lot of neck strain.

All in all, this ride seemed a lot easier tonight, and no hesitation at Sunrise in extending the ride. The new lens is working great. It keeps growing on me. The best $5 I ever spent.

Techie Tuesday: Pt II - Headset R&R on Specialized '06 Roubaix Elite

2011-12-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

Note: This is part II of a 2 part series. Part I can be found here.

The Cane Creek 110 IS41 stainless steel headset arrived last week, and I set about installing it, but it didn't fit, at least not until I got real creative, and reused the OEM crown race as a top bearing spacer. Before I forget, it looks like Universal refunded my return, so kudos for them.

Red and black and rock solid for 110 years. Note the very tiny gap between the headtube face and the bearing cap. The hint of blue between is the bearing cap's rubber seal, and seals the headset bearings from the weather.

I hope Google finds this pair of posts noteworthy, and thousands of owners with AheadSet, or MindSet, or whatever headsets, can do this without the gut-wrenching fear of destroying their frames I endured.

My gut tells me it will be mostly professional mechanics that end up using these two posts, and that is why I took the trouble to take so many photos. Many of the details will not mean much unless you're neck deep in fear and uncertainty, and then they'll be priceless.

If your bike is a year old or more, and you have one of these non-standard headsets, I would strongly recommend you replace it with a standard Cane Creek, system (Cane Creek AKA Dia Comp, invented the Integrated System ~ 20 yrs ago).

You can go top of the line with the 110, like I did, and get a 110 yr guarantee, but the 40-series I started with is also perfectly acceptable, and may well last the life of the bike for those putting 2-3,000 miles per year on their bikes.

An important physical difference between the 40 and 110 bearings, is the entire depth of the 110 bearing is full diameter, whereas the 40 bearings are smaller in diameter after 3-4mms. The 110 bearings are therefore much less likely to ovalize in the headset.

The longer you wait, the greater the chance that parts and mechanics are going to be unavailable to fix your headset. (assuming you can't get a standard replacement headset to work, or you need some OEM part to make the new system work properly)

My go-to mechanic, Eddy at MadCat, a very wrench-centric shop, had only seen one other headset like mine, and that was on a mtb. Time will eventually paint you into a corner, and force you to abandon your frame. Don't let that happen.

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As soon as I got the bike home from the shop, I cleaned the headtube thoroughly with 99% rubbing alcohol, and studied the old and new systems to make sure I understood how they worked, and fit together. I also inspected the 45 degree flanges milled into the aluminum., bonded sub-structures.

When I got the new CC 110 headset, it was immediately obvious that the crown race was not going to fit my carbon fork. I was pretty disgusted that the bottom of the steering tube, right above the crown-race bulged area, wasn't even fully epoxied. Some of the carbon weave was exposed. That's one of the most critical areas in the fork, so that's an inexcusable lapse in QA, and a serious safety issue. Nevertheless, I had to find a way to reduce the diameter from 30.10 to 30.00 mm.

I bought a set of assorted 3M Wet Or Dry sandpaper at the autoparts store, cut a 4x8" sheet of 320 grit into 8mm strips 8" long, wet them, and worked my way around the fork, turning it about 30 degrees on each turn, while sawing the sandpaper back and forth to engage 3 sides at once. I paid special attention to a very rough area that looked like it had been cut with a crown race tool meant for metal steering tubes. Another serious flaw in the OEM fork.

After 2-3 times around the steering tube base, stopping each time to slip the new CC crown race down to check the fit, I was getting pretty close. The crown race would rock back and forth over the high points, so I made marks on the steering tube with a grease pencil and focused on those. (99% alcohol removes the grease pencil markings)

I was able to get the crown race down to within ~ 3mm by pulling it down with my finger tips, and knew I was getting close. You need a very snug fit, but can't risk bending the race, as it is very thin on the CC system.

About that time I noticed the very bottom of the steering tube, where the base of the race would engage it, was a bit wider, and tapered slightly. Sandpaper just doesn't have enough structure to make a nice, clean 90 degree interface between the top of the fork and the bottom of the steering tube.

After some head-scratching, I decided to use a high quality, diamond impregnated finger-nail file, and carefully work my way around the base of the tube. That worked very nicely, and after a final light sanding, I did one last trial fit, and decided I was close enough that I could get the crown race to seat very snugly, and all the way down - although you never really know until you try it.

If you have an extra $13, I would suggest ordering an extra crown race with the headset. It's always a lifesaver to have an extra, and I wouldn't have wanted to have waited another week for parts.

As it was, even without grease, the crown race seated perfectly, and the "machining" of the steering tube with 320 grit wet or dry, left a very smooth finish. I never did use the 400, 600 or 800 grit included in the assorted package.

You never want to take too much off the steering tube, and have a loose fit. There's no good way to recover from that. You've just ruined the fork. In that situation you could try using some silicon caulk, but really, you've ruined the fork. With the crown race in place, I trial fit the bearing in the headtube, and checked the seal. PERFECTION!

The bearing facing looks pretty rough, like a file was used on it, but it doesn't affect the function. I am going to send this pic to Cane Creek though and ask them if it's been used or this is factory spec.

Topside assembly with OEM crown race retasked as a spacer

Side view of topside assembly with the OEM crown race showing under the top bearing. Note that the 110 series bearings are the full diameter for their entire depth. The 40 series are not.

45 degree bevel on OEM crown race, and 30mm ID make it a perfect spacer, and saved me from having to reface 5-6mm off the top face. Smooth as glass when installed.

When compressing, align the two splits

Split realigned under compression when fully assembled by rotating the top cap 180 degrees

Even while trial fitting the bottom bearing, it was clear the top bearing was going to seat far too low to keep the lip seal on the bearing top cap from betting smashed against the top face of the headtube - and by 5-6mm. My heart sank. Was this even going to work?

After greasing the top of the steering tube, I slid the top cover down, careful to not damage the internal O-ring seal, and confirmed my suspicion. (CC's O-ring seal is VERY tight. Grease and then wipe dry with alcohol before clamping the stem down)

One option was to have the top of the headtube refaced. I check, and the Part Tool facing tool was $450. It was 10:00 at night, and I really didn't want to drag the bike down to a shop and hope they knew what they were doing. I also had no good way to know now much I needed to machine the headtube down, and it should be fit to less than a half a millimeter, as the shims are 0.25mm each, and there is only room for 2-3 on top of the compression ring.

Frantic, I looked around for anything I had in my parts bin that might work, and then looked in the project tray I'd put the old headset parts in. The OEM split crown race looked promising. It SHOULD be the right dimensions, the right angles, and hopefully, enough material to take up the extra space. It worked!

As you can see in the pics, it's pretty beat up, and I have ordered an FSA Orbit replacement crown race, but flipping that crown race upside down and placing it over the compression ring works great. It might even add some strength to the headset in the process.

I initially aligned the split gaps on the compression ring and OEM race, so they would compress together, and not gouge each other, pushing their edges together when compressing. Once on the bike, I used my hand's thumbweb area to rotate the loosely compressed headset cover/bearing cap 180 degrees. When I pulled the headset apart after a short 20 mi ride, they were still on opposite sides, as you can see in the photo. This is probably the strongest, and best centered arrangement, so I recommend it.

I tightened the compression cap down hard to really compress the stack, making sure the crown race, bearings, compression ring, and OEM race were all fully seated. Having a bunch of extra spacers meant I could do a lot of the trial fitting without messing with the stem and bars. Nice tip. Unfortunately, the lip seal was too tight against the top headtube face, so I needed to figure out how to use the 0.25mm shims I'd bought.

Taking the whole assembly apart again, I "peeled" the compression ring out of it's captive groove, machined into the bearing cap assembly, added 2 stainless shims, and reinstalled the compression ring. Reassembled. Too much. I could see daylight between the face and the seal. Disassemble, remove compression ring, remove 1 shim, replace compression ring, reassemble. PERFECTION!

I used a small pair of side-cutters/wire dykes to remove the compression ring, grasping the edge of the split, but did leave a small engraving on it, so a high quality pliers would have been better. A nose pliers will not work. Too flexible and not enough leverage. I didn't make a video of that, but maybe I'll remember when the new FSA Orbit crown race arrives and I have to pull the whole top end apart again.

Zero stack height, InterLok to flat surface, brass ring adapter. It allows Cane Ceek 110 series headsets to interface directly with the bottom of any standard stem. My personal RX would be to buy some insurance and top that off with a 0.25mm or 0.50 stainless steel shim/spacer. These shims are meant to be used inside the bearing cap to raise it enough that the rubber lip seal just touches the headtube face - without any daylight showing between them.

CC brass interface spacer in place in an InterLok nylon spacer

This simulates the top of the bearing cap on a 110 system, brass ring and stainless shim in place, ready to interface with bottom of handlebar stem. An intriguing idea is to use this setup, but replace the brass ring with an O-ring to get a primary weather seal right at the bottom of the stem's cut, which will leak water like a sieve in the rain.

Nylon spacer, stainless steel shim, and brass interface ring.

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Having been through all of this, I have to say, while integrated headsets are a clean solution, Chris King has made some very good points as to the folly that motivated this design. External bearing cups are just better. Period. They ensure that whatever happens to a headset, the frame is never in jeopardy.

Of all the integrated designs, I think the ZeroSet is the best, as the top of the bearing cap also comprises the sealing surface on top of the headtube. It means you won't need to reface your headtube to get a perfectly smooth and flat sealing surface. My frame, unfortunately, needs some smoothing out, as I'm sure, most IS style frames do over time.

Cane Creek ZeroStack - AKA ZeroSet. The press-in steel insert extends over the top of the headtube's face, adding strength and a perfect lip-seal mating surface

I'm also going to write Ceradyne ceramics, and suggest they manufacture the inserts that receive the sealed bearings, which are bonded to the carbon headtube, out of ceramic. They make almost all of the body armor used by the DOD, all of the helicopter, and most of the vehicle armor as well.

Chris King's very real concern, is the back and forth rocking of a headset can ovalize these inserts, commonly made of aluminum, until the sealed bearings start to rock back and forth in the frame - rendering it useless.

Titanium diboride ceramic is about the same weight as aluminum, but is tougher than tungsten, and about any other substance on Earth. It might cost a frame maker $50-$100, but would make integrated headsets light, and bombproof.

My OEM press-in bearings used a deep penetrating insert, which fit into, and past, the 45 degree bearing support flange to prevent ovalizing of the aluminum bonded sub-structures. That was a good decision. Having no effective seals, unforgivable. I never rode in the rain because I knew the headset wasn't sealed, and look how utterly destroyed the headset was anyway.

I'm a lot less impressed with Specialized as a brand, because they are doing far too many things, in headsets, and bottom brackets, that make their bikes hard to service - IE: disposable. It's also worth pointing out that upright "comfort bikes", with long steering tubes, and lots of spacers, place a lot of extra strain on the headtube, and headset bearings.

Asked for a RX for a new $2,500 bike last week, I recommended a Motobecane mail order special. Until you get above $4k, I just don't think the name brands are buying you much, and the prices are almost double. A name brand should buy you dependable, reliable QA, and so far, I haven't seen that.
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Deadlines and Commitments

2011-11-30T00:20:00.000-08:00

As is usual this time of year, parcel deliveries slow to a crawl. No headset or BB replacement parts yet, but the new front derailleur is here and ready to go, Universal Bikes issued the return authorization, and I have shipped the part back for a refund.

By the time I pull the crank to replace the BB, with the fork, headset, brakes and chain off, there's not going to be much left of my bike but parts. I was cleaning the brakes with hot water and Simple Green, and noticed the back SRAM Force brake has a clear coating on it - which has almost completely come off on mine. More troublesome, the center of the brake is obviously pitted, and right in the area of maximum stress.

Pitting in the center of the brake bridge

Clear, plastic coating protecting the aluminum structure is long gone.

I assume this is from sand and sweat? At any rate, the brake is now on it's way to failure. Metal cracks always start in pits, and propagate from pit to pit to complete failure. Aluminum is pretty susceptible to chemical erosion, but still, I must have some pretty harsh sweat! It may not fail for years, or it may fail the next time I grab the brake hard, or it may fail tomorrow.

The clear plastic coating also incorporates the brake's Force logo

These SRAM Force brakes are wonderful, and have performed flawlessly, but come spring, I will be looking for a sale, and will replace them, or at least, the rear brake. The front brake is in perfect condition. I'm really kind of shocked I'm having a problem after less than 4 years. The brakes were the very first thing I upgraded on the bike, but still, shocking.

MagicShine MJ-808E over MJ-808. I prefer the SSC P7 emitter's bluer 900 lumen light on the bottom to the yellowish hue of the 1000 lumen, CREE XM-L emitter. I think the CREE holds a narrower beam though, and may penetrate fog better, so am going to leave it up on the helmet for now.

I was tempted to do my video for what will now be an upcoming Techie Tuesday piece on optimal lighting, but since I haven't even done one ride with the dual MagicShine lights, it would have been premature. I bought both of these lights from GeoMan. The batteries are state-of-the-art, made in Germany, or now, the US.

The 6,000mAh battery packs I ordered are made from Panasonic's very best 3100mAh LION cells. If you can even find them on the web, they're around $25. That makes GeoMan's $85 price a real bargain. I want the best possible power-to-weight ratio, and these deliver in spades.

I'm also impressed that GeoMan only rates these packs at 6000, even though they are clearly 6200. Here's a real American entrepreneur who sucked it up and scrambled for a top-notch battery pack builder when MagicShine's standard packs were catching fire.

You can buy MagicShine from Amazon now, but they're still selling the pyrotechnic battery packs, and have added nothing. GeoMan spent 2 yrs listening to his customers and scrambling to get things right. That's worth supporting. GeoMan is offering a 20% discount until December 5th, so an easy decision at the moment.

I got a cool $5 lens that does, indeed, spread the beam out horizontally, but haven't had it out on the trail, so will need to gain some experience with it too before commenting. The same lens technology would make a perfect side lens for a 270% rear lighting system up on the helmet.

Lots of good ideas, so why can't someone put them all together? Anyone know a company that can make a taillight to my specifications and mass produce it?

Winter Wrenching Daze

2011-11-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

These cold, gray, overcast skies are the perfect time to lose motivation to ride, but doing my annual maintenance on the bike always motivates me. I also like riding in the cold once I get out there and get warmed up, so all I really need is a reason to get out there.

With the cold night riding I've been doing, especially with SBH, I broke down and bought some "cheap" PI, Barrier Lite shoe covers to wear over my SpaceBlanket foot warmers. They look great, but the SpaceBlanket is doing all the work.

Very shiny, but with the bold, and hi-viz graphics, you don't have to guess about which is R and which L. Touted as being water repellant, rain shy, or perhaps, just scream in muted tones when attacked by raindrops.

The new 6703 front derailleur I ordered at Performance Bike Shop on the 8th, finally arrived yesterday, so I drove over and picked it up. Not sure if I save much on shipping, as gas is pretty expensive too, so may be doing most of my shopping on Amazon.com in the future.

They are building new warehouses like mad, and happy to say, many things that were sourced from 3rd parties, are now shipping from Amazon proper - which still has better quality, return, and shipping policies than most 3rd parties.

As for PBS, 20 days to ship a derailleur? Are you kidding me? Also sick of "sales" where the prices are all jacked up at 11:45 the night before. A sleazy way to do biz, and the prices never quite return to prior levels after the sale.

I'm spoiled by my SRAM chains having quick links, so I was a little miffed I had to get my chain tool out to break the DuraAce chain in order to get the old derailleur off last night (and now can't find the special case-hardened pins back, arrgghh).

I took the opportunity to clean the chain in a half dozen rounds of Simple Green and hot water in a heavy glass jar, very well shaken. I broke the first jar, probably because I didn't have distilled water to work with, and the hot water was a little too hot, but, in the end, I was able to clean it pretty thoroughly.

DuraAce chain. Extensive machining, but crap metalurgy

While the shifting performance of the DuraAce chain is excellent, all of the machining on it makes it hard to clean, but more disturbing, was the corrosion on the chain. It looks like the zink-alloy plating is thin, and is peeling off. Because the Shimano drive train shifts so well, this chain hasn't spent any time "trawling" or grinding, so the level of wear is hard to understand.

The chain uses hollow pins, which I like, as they hold a small oil reserve, which keeps the chain from squeaking for much longer. Ditto for the SRAM hollow pin chains. I'm going to take a fresh look at the SRAM chain, and will probably go with that next time. It's more expensive, but I hope it will wear better, and since worn chains prematurely wear cassettes and chainrings, it's important to run the best possible chain.

I also noticed that the DuraAce chain has 4, count them, 4 different varieties of links, and I was only looking at the outside of the female plates (DuraAce chain has an inside surface and an outside surface for better shifting, in addition to the inside and outside, or male and female links all chains have).

Maybe after the earthquake Shimano is, or was, scraping the bottom of the barrel to find links, but this is not a great confidence builder. I'm also going to take another look at the Wipperman stainless chain. Stainless 300 should be 2-3X harder than 4130 CroMo, which I assume is what Shimano is using. BTW, I went with DuraAce instead of Ultegra because I heard nothing but bad about Ultegra durability.

Some American company should OWN the chain biz. We have the raw materials, technology, market size, and distribution system to beat any and all competitors. Hard to understand why the industry is so dominated by foreign parts. At least Wheelsmith is still making spokes here. Now if they would just make the butts taper instead of ramp. Eddy won't even use the WS 14/17 spokes on 3-cross spoking. Too many failures on the hub side where the spokes have to bend around each other sharply.

I will also be replacing my FSA Gossamer bottom bracket as soon as it, and the tool to install it, arrive in the mail. With the drive train so pulled apart I'm going to start with it completely clean, so will be pulling the cassette apart and cleaning that too. I'll either just use a clean rag or Simple Green and an electric brush. I'd normally replace the balls and repack the bearings on the wheels too, but I just did that two months ago, so will wait til spring for that, although my mtb hubs could benefit from new G10 balls.

In the meantime, I have been setting up my SS conversion to ride at night, which means putting together another saddle bag, adding lights, a Garmin mount, and finding a strap-on water bottle cage. A key element for a seat bag is a good alloy shank bit driver, and some high quality hex bits in 2.5,4,5,6, Phillips #1, and flat #4. The bits go in the hollowed out handle. I add a 1/4" ratcheting open-end wrench for torquing on things like chainring bolts, and have a complete toolkit that is lighter and much more flexible than those grotesque multi-tools.


Made in tool heaven. AKA Germany

A key part of this one was the Wiha bits I bought. Made in Germany, and the official tools of BMW and Mercedes shop mechanics, the quality is phenomenal. They come in a nice plastic case, which is why I bought a 2nd set for wrenching at home. If I'm going to hump this stuff over 4,000 miles and 250,000ft every year, I want it to be absolutely reliable.

I've also been looking for a high quality 1/4" ratchet, and found Grainger is selling Proto tools, now owned by the Stanley cheap Chinese crap tool importers. The Proto ratchet is about $45, made in America, and will outlast me.

Proto J4749XL - 1/4" Drive Standard Length Full-Polish Ratchet

Why spend this kind of money on tools? Because life is too short to work with crap tools. They slow you down, waste your time, are frustrating to use, and when tools fail you, it's always at the worst possible moment, and often there are no good alternatives.

My father had about $65,000 in tools at one time, and started buying Snap-On, MAC, and Proto when his impact wrenches started shattering Sears Craftsman sockets left and right. Although guaranteed, he got tired of spending an hour a day driving to Sears and back to replace tools. Even though his tools were over 30 yrs old, they still brought about 60% of their replacement cost at auction. If you have kids, good tools make a wonderful, enduring legacy you can pass on. Besides, guys don't do jewelry, they do tools.

Also worth mentioning, my 2nd MagicShine showed up, and I put it up on my helmet the same day. I also found a nice lens that is supposed to spread the beam on the handlebar light out horizontally, but not waste light shining up into space. It was a $5 purchase, so we'll see how that goes, but I expect to have animals coming back out of hibernation riding with 2,000 lumens and 3 taillights. Now if it would just warm up a bit....

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Techie Tuesday: Pt I - Headset R&R on Specialized '06 Roubaix Elite

2011-11-23T00:31:00.000-08:00

This is part 1 of a 2-part series. Part II can be found here.

I knew I was a little over-due pulling the fork off and inspecting, and maybe packing the headset, but WOW, I never expected to find it packed with mud and growing mold. It's probably been 3 yrs since I pulled the fork, but I do look at the headset every time I have the spacer stack off, or mount new bars.

The headset came out in pieces, although the stock FSA headset is a total POS, there are no replaceable parts, and repacking didn't seem to help at all, so if you have an early Roubaix, or some of the mid-2000 Specialized MTBs, just expect this is what you'll find, and have the parts there to do the R-n-R.

I was lucky, AFAICT, there is no permanent damage, but there might have been. The upper bearing cap seal on the FSA was just shot. Leaking like a sieve, and I never ride in rain intentionally.

Surprisingly, there weren't any good pics of the Cane Creek bearings out there on the web, so I took some. More Google hits for me. This is not actually the headset I will be using, because this is a Campy-style IS42, which is the size my last mechanic said I needed back in '09. Wrong again. I needed an IS41, just like Cane Creek's headset finder program said I needed. Other than the OD of the bearings, the IS41, and IS42 are identical.

Park Tools head cup remover - the RT-1

With the addition of the required 2.5mm finishing spacer between the top of the bearing cap and the bottom of the stem, the 15mm stack height of the high model was too much, so I changed my order to a short, 9mm stack. That opened the door to upgrade to the Cane Cane Creek 110 series, garanteed for 110 years. In the words of Danny DiVito, "Now THAT oughta do it!". Twice the price, but stainless steel and supposedly, bullet-proof, and I NEVER want to find this surprise again.

The removal of the press-in bearing cups - YES, they DO come out, and as one unit - was done by my go-to mechanic at MadCat Bikes on Marconi, Eddy. While I would suggest using the Park Tool fluted headset tool to knock out the old press-in FSA headset, Eddy used a lot of patience and a screwdriver.

I think this was primarily because neither of us knew if the press-in was supposed to come out, or whether it was bonded into the headtube, or if the upper cup came out and was just butted against the lower press-in, or whether they were all one assembly (bingo).

You can see that at some point in time someone tried to separate the top and bottom part of the press-in with a screwdriver or ice-pick. It's all one assembly buddy. No upper and lower parts to the press-in. Perhaps Calistoga Bike Shop was bending the truth a little selling me the bike as NIB.

Rusty cups. Not a horse race for chestnut bays, just thoroughly shot races.

The FSA press-ins, showing the tapered leading edge and compression holes - or whatever those holes are supposed to do.

Eddy left a few tool marks on the upper, leading edge, but you really have to look to see them. The ratty pry marks happended while my bike was supposedly NIB up at Calistoga Bike Shop

As you can see, the relief groove is desceptive, but NO, this is all one piece, not a seperate upper cup and supporting press-in

A doom with a view

The two press-in cups sitting on a mirror for optimal lighting. It doesn't get worse than this and still turn.

My lower headset as a garden

Potatoes anyone?

Lower headset growing mold. Yeah, I'm just loving this R&R

OK, they're a bit rough, but hey, what's not to like?

The solution. Unfortunately I got the the wrong size, and it's too tall too.

Upside down view of a Cane Creek 40 Series IS42 carbon tall

Upside down, so that's the crown race you're looking at on top in brass. Gotta love those beautiful lip seals Cane Creek uses.

Trial assembly on a chunk of CroMo steering tube from my mtb. Note the male bottomed, flush topped, 2.5mm finishing spacer that mates with the InterLok machining in the top of the upper bearing cap. They come in 5 colors. None in the package from Universal cycles though, but Cane Creek sent me one for free in the mail and even paid the postage. Now THAT's customer service.

InterLok machining detail showing top of carbon bearing cap, and 2.5 mm alloy finishing spacer

The 2.5mm finishing spacer is turned upside down to show how its machined surface mates with the top of the bearing cap. A nce view of the O-ring weather seal in light blue here. Just my opinion, but EVERY single spacer in a stack should have such an O-ring. Water running down into bearings is nothing but BAD.

Bottom and top bearing are identical, except for being flipped over so the two 45 degree angles face each other

Close-up of the top cap, its O-ring seal, lip seal, and brass shim. I ordered a pack of 10 .25mm shims which are needed to get the lip seal perfectly positioned to seal onto the face of the headtube. I might have to reface the headtube though, as it is somehow a bit chewed. I will try polishing it with 600 -> 1,500 wet or dry sandpaper.

Close-up of crown race and bottom end of the headset assembly

Eddy told me his first taps with the screwdriver were meant to turn the press-in to break it loose, and I asked him to support the face of the headtube with a wooden block to prevent the bonded aluminum sub-assembly the press-ins press into from separating, or delaminating from the carbon part of the headtube.

I still need to clean the inside of the headtube a little better, and then do some trial fitting when the new parts arrive from Universal Cycles. Right now I am waiting for them to issue a return authorization, and still have both headsets on my charge card until I get it. Not my fav situation to be in, but I want to get this thing done.

I also ordered a new BB for my FSA Gossomer crank, now that I know what stellar quality seals FSA has. More blog fodder to add to this PART A installment of remove and replace an FSA mindset headset. It also just made sense because I got $10 off the shipping of a $42 part by including it this order.

Bottom line, Universal Bikes is either going to get glowing reviews or a battery acid spew. Fingers crossed, I look forward to a glowing review.

Dog Days of Winter

2011-11-19T15:04:00.000-08:00

Salmon fishing the American River. Taken from the Watt Ave Bridge while scouting a new ride.

For cyclists, it's not the summer, but the winter when we have those dog days with nothing to do, and too little time to do it. I can't believe it's been 10 days since my last post, but for me, there has been a LOT going on. On tap for Techie Tuesday is everything you'll ever need to know to replace (or re-grease) your headset. Sometime soon a very detailed special on optimal bicycle lighting for seeing and being seen.

I'm sitting here, right now, waiting for my riding clothes to dry, and that reminded me that there is a better, and much more energy efficient way to dry clothes than crank up the heat and turn up the ceiling fan. Centrifugal dryers, like this one, sold by Amazon for $179, may be the perfect Christmas gift for an athletic family.

These leave no minerals, nor detergents behind, and require only a few minutes of finish drying to get completely dry. They also make your clothes last a LOT longer because they don't cook, stretch, tear, chafe, cut, or infuse them with residual dryer sheet oils.

Rain is on the way, and it has been getting cold, especially on the night rides I have been doing, so the volume of clothing has really spiked. I almost NEVER wash my cycling clothes in a washer, preferring to take them into the shower with me and wash them in anti-bacterial soap in the tub with the help of a strong shower spray.

When I get home from a ride, I don't always want to jump right in the shower, but don't want the clothes to mildew either. I either hang them to dry, or a great trick, and one that will leave your clothes sterile, is to run 4-5 inches of cold water in the tub, and then add a shot glass of bleach.

If it's hot, or you're tired, this allows you to shower and not have to deal with laundry right away. It's also very effective at removing salt from a chamois after a long summer ride.

OXO 1/4 cup measuring cup. Super-accurate angled scales in ounces, tablespoons, and cups. A nice conversation piece for a bartender too

I checked, and the shot glass I use to measure bleach holds the standard 1.5 oz, or 3 tblspns. The standard fabric sensitivity test is 2 tblspns in a quarter cup of water applied to an inside seam for 1 minute and blotted dry. The usual laundry doze is 16 oz in a standard load, which is about 10 gallons of water. I think 4-5" in a tub is 10-12 gallons, so I'm using less than 10% of the usual laundry dose.

BE CAREFUL. You're trying to make swimming pool water, not kill Anthrax. You can leave your clothes to soak this way for days if you want to, but I usually want them done the next morning when I shower. This treatment is especially great for a thick chamois, which can start to host some nasty bacteria after awhile.

High tech shells have very fragile coatings which shouldn't even see harsh detergents, should never, ever see the inside of a commercial washing machine or dryer, and should not be wrung in any way, shape or form as it will form creases which will displace the coating.

Short of a centrifugal dryer, laying synthetic clothes out flat on a thick towel, rolling the towel up, and twisting it to wring a little, works pretty well. Then just hang under a ceiling fan, or furnace vent, and let air dry.

My long sleeve PI jersey is circa fall 2007, and except for the tear over my shoulder from when I crashed and broke my collarbone, it's only showing wear at the sleeve ends. I like my clothes being available, clean, sterile, durable, and not ruined by someone else's dryer sheet residue.

Techie Tuesday: R&R Handlebars

2011-11-09T01:20:00.000-08:00

The old ones (Performance Bike Shop Forte') broke under the Syntace C3 aerobar clamps. Hope the new ones (Ritchey SuperLogic Evo Carbon) won't. PBS stood by their Satisfaction Guarantee, so aside from all the labor, only a $60 hit to my pocketbook. Nothing wrong with the Forte' bars for normal use, but not up to aerobars.

PBS's house brand bars Forte was bucking under the aerobar clamps

Brake cables run in the bar's cable hides, and shifter cables run along backside of bar. Each cable was trial fitted, taped into place using 3M electrical tape, and then function tested before any bar tape was applied.

L and R brake cable swapped so front brake and 10-gears are in my right hand. Shifter cables also swapped and then crossed under the downtube. This gives the rear deraulleur cable a straight path from headtube to end of chainstay.

MagicShine mount attaches along side of the stem. Yeah, there's a LOT going on here. Old bars had cables threaded through them, so every last cable had to be unthreaded. The brakes and drivetrain then had to be readjusted after installation. What a massive PITA.

Another angle

Pretty clean. The cables are trimmed to within a mm of their lives. I doubt I can flip the stem without recabling at this point, but I loathe messy cabling and the drag it creates. MagicShine is ~ right in front of toptube and battery pack strapped to top of toptube.

Clean cockpit. Slip the Garmin into it's mount and we're wheels-up in 30 seconds.

Not wanting to take any chances on the new bars, I used the same trick on the aeorbars I used on my perpetually sliding Easton seatpost - I shimmed the clamps with 1500 Wet-or-Dry sandpaper, turning the grit side to the main bars. This dramatically reduces the amount of clamping pressure needed to keep the aerobars from moving. I especially like that this also comprises a compressible shim, so the take-up on the tightening is more gradual, and easier to judge.

The spray bottle hanging off the left handlebar is to keep the bike from tipping over when standing straight up so I can even up the aerobars. Nice trick. When you get aerobars where you want them, roll the bike into a doorway, place a level across the ends, and mark their height. No matter what happens with handlebars and stems, it makes a great starting point for adjusting the aerobars.

I rode the bike up to Beals Point a couple of nights ago, and am very happy with the bars. The aren't noodley like the Forte, but are still soaking up a lot of road chop. The reach is perfect, but the drop is a lot less, and I need to push the drops forward and out to get more room in the cockpit. With aerobars, you seldom need deep drops, but a middle position is nice for climbing into a wind in a position where you can still breathe well.

Change in the Weather

2011-11-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

The first real chill of the season rolled in last night. I beat the storm by a few hours to get in my first ride in almost 2 weeks. Speaking of a change in the weather, the Occupy Wall St people in Oakland shut down the port yesterday, the 5th largest in the US. Everyone of those shipping containers represents thousands of US jobs gone to China. I wish them luck, and since CCR was a Bay Area band I thought this video doubly appropriate.

I did a very hard ride up to the Rescue Firestation on the 16th last month, and between the dehydration, and getting a bit too Paleo on my recovery meals, I had a long flair-up of diverticulitis. My usual ride time is around 4:15, although I have some old pre-Garmin stats from April, 2009 done in 3:35.

That's not quite apples-to-apples though, as shut-off times at stops are a little different, so I was really happy when my first long ride of the year came in at 3:45 for 60 miles and 5,200ft of climbing. (RideWithGPS's mapping service still doesn't know about the Folsom Lake Crossing Bridge, so adds 300ft erroneously) I was able to get the whole ride in with the Garmin set to 1-second update mode, so trust this is my best, most accurate trace ever.

Rescue Firestation ride. A horned devil of a climbing route. Throw in a climb over the ElDorado Hills and you get a real ball-buster I call "The Grim Reaper"

My time to RFS was withing seconds of my usual time, but the time on the return leg averaged over 4mph faster. I think I'm capable of breaking 3:30 on this ride, but have yet to do so. Failing to carbo load properly the night before, I was pretty sluggish for the first 20 miles or so. Reason for hope!

This was the first long ride away from the city since my crash, and it went quite well, but I seem to have cracked a rib or something after hitting a really savage bump that's developed on the ARPT descending from Beals. My PBS Forte' carbon bars also buckled under the aerobars, and my main bars rotated down about 35 degrees.

That said, it was thrilling to get back out there last night, and since my new bars showed up this morning, I'll be wrenching while it's raining. I went with the Ritchey SuperLogic Evo bars from Excel Sports, as they are advertised as sturdy enough to support clip-on aerobars. Techie Tuesday fodder for sure.

I'm enjoying reading Friel's Paleo Diet for Athletes, but it is disappointing in places in its lack of rigor. There's a lot of good info on sports nutrition, and even some great recipes, but I'm having trouble eating that much meat and giving up milk. His argument against dairy is just pathetic, and I luvs my milk (although I am drinking 2% now to get more fat in my diet).

With the cool weather, it's a great day to make a big pot of chili. Using what I learned from Friel, I am using grass-fed beef, buffalo, and 99% lean ground turkey breast. Turkey breast has almost no fat, is a higher quality protein than chicken or fish (although fish as other properties that make it preferable), and is about $6 a pound.

I'll have to try my microwaved bell pepper, red onion and ruby red grapefruit juice marinated chicken breast with cranberry juice and turkey breast substituted. I'll use lots of good, healthy olive oil when reducing the veggies. A great way to swap healthy oil for animal fat.

Hope you are all coping well, and enjoying the change in the weather.
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Techie Tuesday: G.I.T Lit for Saftey

2011-10-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

I continue to use, and refine my G.I.T Lit lighting system, and have added a much more powerful light to my helmet after a SUV looked right over the top of me, and pulled out into an intersection I was making a left-hand turn through. That's the Universe giving you a warning shot across the bow. Ignore such warnings at your own peril. You often don't get a 2nd chance on those.

At the end of the day, what makes any system a success is the way motorists react to you. I almost always get 5 ft, and many times, as much room as a small car now. What makes the addition of this Blackburn MARS 3.0 light so effective, is it's made to provide good lighting as motorists close and pass.

Taillights with very narrow beams are exactly what you want for the "G" in G.I.T - to Grab motorists attention from a long way off, and for that I just upgraded my half watt Planet Bike Superflash to a 1 watt Superflash Turbo, and it's a substantial upgrade. In fairness, the Blackburn MARS 4.0 looks comparable. The mounting bracket slots aren't compatible though, so it was easier for me to stick with PB.

As drivers close to within 100 yards, they start to fall out of the field of view of those very narrow beams, and cyclists are getting hit in spite of having bright taillights because the motorists lose sight of them as they come along side to pass. The MARS 3.0 was designed to eliminate this lighting system weakness.

I left the optic fiber ribbon on the helmet, but turned it forward so it silhouettes the helmet, thus addressing the "I" in G.I.T Lit - IDENTIFY. With both the helmet lights flashing in synch, and with the PB Superflash Turbo flashing it's own separate and distinct pattern, and the MagicShine lighting the road and front of the bike, it's obvious from the way motorists are reacting that they understand within a second or two that they are looking at a bicycle.

This lighting system has produced a bigger change in motorists behavior than anything since wearing a helmet and Spandex shorts back in the late 1970s. When Quad-Cab diesel dualies towing backhoes are leaving 8-10 feet when passing, and watching in their mirrors before pulling back into your lane, you've got yourself one hell of a lighting system.

A jersey or jacket with reflective piping would only add to that, but at this point, it's really unnecessary. This system IDs you as a bicycle almost instantly, so motorists know what to expect from you, and how they might need to react. You can almost hear the sigh of relief as they pass. Lots of friendly waves, smiles and curiosity. They really don't want to run you over on the way home, and they seem to genuinely appreciate how easy this system makes their job.

Spongy rubber strip rolled up and wrapped in electrical tape, and a wooden dowel. No beauty awards, but very, very effective and helps keep the front of my helmet up in the bargain!

I have tried to show the details of how I mounted the Blackburn MARS 3.0 light ($17)on my helmet, but all helmets are different, so be gentle so as not to damage your helmet, and expect to use some trial-and-error to get a good mount. You may also like the MARS 4.0, but it relies on only 2 LEDs, so not sure that's the best choice.

Mount the light facing straight back. As you lower your head, down in the drops (or aerobars), you're still be looking straight ahead, so the helmet's always going to be level. Your neck makes the adjustment for you.

When you turn your head to clear a turn, or look at a driveway, a helmet light queues motorists about your intentions, and the ribbon's silhouetting really improves this feature of helmet-mounted lighting. Just remember, you can always turn your head sideways to make the helmet more visible to oncoming traffic, or cars coming out of driveways. It works like magic!

The metal pin shown here allows you to turn the light slightly towards the driver. A good idea IMHO.

Like all taillights, the light slips right out of the mount for turning on or replacing batteries, although I can turn this one on without stopping or removing just by reaching back and pressing the button twice (1st press is solid, unlike the PB, which is flash) to get it into flash 1 mode (there's also a flash-2 mode), which is in perfect synch for the PB optic fiber ribbon.

Light turned slightly towards motorists so they don't lose sight of me while passing. The Blackburn MARS 3.0 light is engineered for 180 degrees of visibility, but mounted this far back, provides at least 220 degrees, and can almost be seen from head-on.

Do yourself a huge favor, and order some Sanyo eneloop NiMH rechargeable batteries. They don't self-discharge like regular NiMH, so if you don't use the light for a month or 6, no problem, the batteries will still work just fine for 150 hours or more. It really sucks to go for a ride after a week or two of foul weather, only to discover that all of your carefully planned lighting is DEAD.

Techie Tuesday: Drivetrain Maintenance

2011-10-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

After a rather nasty mis-shift, I've been trying to work a gremlin out of my drive train. I started by inspecting the chainrings and cassette gears for broken or bent teeth. I couldn't find any, so next I looked at the derailleurs, shifters and cables. I then inspected the frame route for the front derailleur cable, and found a problem.

Where the front derailleur cable comes through the frame there is a hole. Pretty stupid design, as it should clearly be a mtb style rubber seal, but there it is, and it was filthy and packed with sand, dirt and sticky dried oil and Gatorade.

Here's a nice video showing how to clean that hole and the thru-frame cable guide.

You should also clean the guides for both the front and rear derailleurs that run under the bottom bracket, as being at the bottom of the frame, they get fouled by Gatorade that spills on the frame and runs downhill.

Chain on biggest rings, shifters positioned to relax cables for max slack, makes for easy cleaning of BB cable guides. Note pedal tether to prevent shifting.

This is a big problem area, and monthly cleaning and oiling will make your shifting fingers much happier. A toothbrush is a great tool for cleaning the BB routes, as is a good terrycloth hand towel on the tip of a straight-bladed screwdriver.

Techie Tuesday: Single Speed Conversion

2011-10-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit at a loss at to what to do with my old friend, the Nishiki Competition I bought while attending UC Berkeley in the spring of 1980 at the Missing Link (the shop is still open btw, and being run as a Co-Op) I have so many wonderful memories attached to this bike, but without downtube braze-ons for shifters, nor water bottle bosses, bringing it up to modern bike standards is difficult, and, seems somewhat unnatural. Better to have it a vintage bike with vintage equipment.

Me & Tea & Nishiki, halfway up Monitor Pass, circa 1982

After following a single speed bike from the Aquatic Center up to Folsom, and hanging onto his wheel with considerable effort, we had a very productive conversation about what his conversion entailed. All of those missing frame bits my bike doesn't have, he had to cut off, and mine does have the all-important horizontal rear dropouts, so important for adjusting chain tension.

Nice, clean look. SunTour Supurbee brakes are an exact Campy copy circa 1985. Cleaned, treated with Naval Jelly to arrest rust, and all steel parts treated in hard parifin wax and Canola oil at ~ 400 for 20 minutes. Bontrager brake pads were the only ones that fit.

Excess Technologies California freewheel, SunTour horizontal dropouts, and donor mtb skewer with toothy surface to keep the axle planted under load

Ofmega sealed bearing hubs by Campy, circa 1985, Wipperman 3/32nds stainless chain, and perfectly straight chainline between 120mm dropouts. The latter makes replacement skewers hard to come by.

Pristine Campy 52T big ring, turned inside-out and moved to the inside postion on the Sugino SuperMighty 135 BCD, 5-bolt crank. Very rare SPD aero racing pedals.

Big ring clearance is only ~ 4mm. Tight, but makes for a wonderfully tight chainline.

Just love the clean look, and tight chainline. Still have all the original decals intact

Zip ties covered with vinyl tubing do a great job holding the bottle cage in place with the help of a strip of sticky rubber from a tail light mounting kit.

Street legal with cage and borrowed saddle bag. Just love the very clean, track bike lines on this. Handbuilt, 36 spoke wheels feature Mavic rims and Ofmega hubs. Campy BB, Omas alloy headset, and Laprade seatpost. Rear brake cable housing clamped to toptube using vinyl-coated zip ties.

Last week it was raining, and a perfect opportunity to pull the trigger on a SS conversion, so after mulling it over for days, I got out the wrenches just after midnight, and stripped all the gearing off, sans the 6-speed Regina freewheel, which I didn't have the tool for.

The next day I went to MadCat on Marconi, and had them pull the freewheel off, check the sealed bearings on the Ofmega hubs (made by Campy in 1985), and mount an Excess Technologies California 19T freewheel. The bearings were in perfect condition, and I chose the freewheel because it felt smooth, and was chromed head-to-toe on the outside - important for a foul weather bike.

Carmichael Cycles had the special shorter crank arm bolts needed for running just 1 chainring, took the 42T inner ring off, moved the pristine 52T Campy big ring inside, and flipped the face to the inside to match the stub bolts. The crank is a Sugino SuperMighty, an exact replica of a Campy Record crank of the same vintage, and has 135 BCD rings, as expected. If the 52T hadn't been so pristine, and if Campy 135 BCD weren't so expensive, I probably would have gone with the usual 46T or 48T front ring.

As Sheldon Brown's site mentions, moving a full-sized big-ring to the inside position isn't always possible, because the chainring will often hit the chainstay. In my case I have about 4mm of clearance, and that is very close, but enough. It's important to keep in mind that static clearance isn't the litmus test. Go mash up some hills and make sure the frame flex isn't going to allow the chainring to rub.

You'll also need to extract, or cut the crank arm chain block pin off of the chainring, as it will be turned towards the frame once flipped around. In my case, turning it round and round with a small ViceGrips did the trick nicely, but I was a bit disappointed that the beautiful Campagnolo stamp on the face of the ring ended up turned in, and is now only visible from the "ugly" side of the bike.

With the crank all set up, and the rear wheel adorned with the new freewheel, I moved the micro-adjusters all the way back in the rear dropouts and started cutting chain. Without a derailleur you have to get the chain length almost perfect, and 19/52 is a little hard to fit to my bike's chainstay length. I cut the chain a half-dozen times, and ended up with kind of a half-link by using the Wipperman quick link to bridge between 2 male ends.

The Wipperman chain is 3/32", and once I settle on the gearing, I'm going to switch to a Wipperman Inox 1/8" chain. It's stronger, new, and the extra width should allow sand and grit to fall off the drivetrain, extending its life.

I used vinyl tubing encased zip ties to lash a waterbottle onto the downtube, and pulled the saddle bag off my Roubaix, and headed out the door for a short 15 mile ride. There are a lot of roller between me and the ARPT, some with grades of 7-8%. Coming back from WBP though, there is one short hill that is just over 9% grade. I was worried about that, and found a longer, flatter route just in case. I'd ridden the detour in 52/16 gearing, so knew I had a good out if I needed it.

The ride to the ARPT was a lot of fun. I worked a little harder, but loved the sound of the freewheel whirring away on the downhills, and got a good glute workout, standing and mashing up hills. The 57cm frame has a lot more cockpit room than my 54cm Roubaix, and that is definitely helpful when climbing out of the saddle.

Once on the bike trail I started ramping up the spin. Nothing intentional, it just happened, and soon I was spinning close to 90 rpms. Next thing I knew I was into a headwind, and down in the drops to shed some wind. Nice! The 52/19 was just perfect for the climb over the WBP bridge, and after pulling my bottle and taking a long draw of GatorAid I felt strong heading home.

Approaching the decision point, I decided to turn right and try mashing up Sara Court's 9% grade. With fresh legs under me if I couldn't do it now, I sure wouldn't be able to do it when tired. I got a little run at it and just managed to mash up to the top, impressed at how stiff the frame was. Stiffer than I remembered it being.

Coming home on California, with its badly broken and mangled surface, I was also surprised that the fork soaked up bumps so well - better than my carbon bike I think. I must be due entirely to the extra weight, as that fully-sloping crown is very stiff.

I have ordered a freewheel removal tool and a 17T freewheel, bought a new bottle cage, and need to repack and tighten the bottom bracket, but all in all, this was an easy conversion. I am looking at fenders and moving the Roubaix's pedals over, so still a few details to attend to, but this really makes the most of this bike. It's clean frame, horizontal dropouts, and low end Tange 4130 CroMo tubing just make this conversion feel so right. Riding this bike again is just pure joy. So many memories we've shared together ride with us.

Techie Tuesday: The Emergence of the Electric Bike

2011-10-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

Looking around for after-market batteries for my new MagicShine, as a 2nd 7.4v pack seems like a good investment, I noticed that Shimano has pushed their DuraAce Di2 electronic shifters down to the Ultegra 6770 level, and the price is ~ $1,500 street.

Since I have set up a charging station now right next to my bike, so I can plug in and charge the Garmin and the MagicShine, I was immediately curious as to what voltage the LION battery was that powers Shimano's shifters.

Electraglide in Grey

The Di2 system uses the same 7.4 volt standard as the MagicShine, and most other lights high-powered too I might add. That's nice, because the rather small Shimano battery lasts for hundreds of hours, so its not very power hungry, and with the same voltage, a stub with a Y connector to the MagicShine's battery would make the Shimano one redundant, and save some weight and drag.

Why would you want electronic shifting? Because indexed front derailleurs are a PITA. For every rear chain position there is a different front chain position, and a different shifting strategy depending on where you are and where you are going. The control inputs are also just taps, and you can tap through 10 gears in back without any delay or hesitation, and the front derailleur takes care of itself.

This still leaves me with 2 AAA cells for the Planet Bike SuperFlash taillight, which I will be upgrading to SuperFlash Turbo. (I had to offset 2ft to the side and 4ft back to keep from getting blinded.by Steve's Thursday night. So much for the uber great tandem draft), and 2 AAs for the Planet Bike 1W Blaze in front. (could you PLEASE, make these all AA cells?)

Currently, the MagicShine runs on 7.4V, the Garmin on the 5.0V USB standard, and the other two lights on 3.0Vs. This is a mess. What is needed is an on-bike converter that uses clear, flat, urethane ribbon cables that have a Post-It Pads sticky glue and flat silver ribbon wire connecting everything with a pronged battery pack connector system that allows you to connect multiple packs together depending on power requirements. Obviously, this power management system should also charge everything from a single wall charger.

Looking at the emergence of the quad-bulb lights up front, and the effect of a 29.6v, 8-cell LION system in chopping the wire size to 1/4th of it's current size, I think bikes should, and probably will follow the example of aircraft, and develop higher voltage, lower current power systems.

Now if someone would just develop an on-bike generator that wasn't the size and weight of a cheap 11-36 mtb cassette....

Rest & Recovery

2011-10-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

Co-Motion Macchiato. Built for pure speed, it omits the center bracing tube, and features a belt Captain's drive.

After Sister Heat (love child of Father Time and Mother Nature) took most of the summer off, she made a saucy appearance last week, with temps in the high 90s, but it's been cooling off dramatically now, with highs in the 70s, and rain on the way for Tuesday if the weather guessers are to be believed.

After a smoking fast Tuesday night ride with SBH, just 2 days after a 50 miler 2 weeks ago Sunday, I found myself awash in fatigue. When it lasted more than 3 days I knew something more was going on. In part that was due to a rare flair-up of diverticulitis, but it was more than that too. When fatigue goes on for days, it's heart fatigue, and the cure for that is Co-Enzyme Q10.

It was first synthesized in Japan in the early 50s, and has been used as part of standard therapy for heart attack victims there ever since. Incredibly effective for tired muscles, and no muscle works harder than the heart, thus any deficit in the body's naturally synthesized Co-Q10 is felt first in the heart. Burning the candle at both ends writing software for Wall St took a lot out of me, and a real toll on my heart, but 400-600mg of Co-Q10 restores vitality in days, and 1-200mg per day maintains it. I'd stopped taking it altogether about a year ago, and won't do that again.

I was hoping after a week I could do the Tuesday night ride again, but wasn't feeling chipper at all. By the time Thurs rolled around though, I had been taking 400-600mg of Co-Q10 for 5 days, and was raring to go. The Thurs night rides are usually pretty leisurely, and only 20-30 miles, but since I rode to the start, this one was 42 miles and change.

As it was, Steve had his Co-Motion tandem out, and after getting passed by a fast peleton, he decided to push the pace, with me right on his wheel. They didn't stay ahead of us long, as we bridged up within a half mile, and eventually, passed them pushing into a 10mph headwind. Advantage tandem!

Co-Motion Supremo

That set the tone for the whole ride though. The Garmin reported 20.25 mph for 27 miles at 147.5 BPM (89% max HR) for 1:25:11, so basically an hour and 25 minute TT at ~ 90% of max cranking out 280 watts. About 12 miles of that was done before dark at an average speed of 21.6. The rest of the ride possible because of the myriad of lights we had on the bikes allowing me to ride 2 hrs after full darkness.

I might remount my MagicShine to the right side of the handlebars though, swapping its position with the Planet Bike 1W Blaze, as I had to offset 2 ft and back 4ft to keep my light on the trail surface, and not all the reflective stuff on Steve's tandem. This gave Steve a solid fix on the trail so he could freelance his helmet light to see around corners or into deer saturated grasses. His taillight was also blinding me when directly behind, so after dark, I wasn't able to draft effectively.

I felt fantastic once home, and really great the next day, a little tired the 2nd day, but still enough energy to stay up late reading Joe Friel's Paleo Diet for Athletes, which I highly recommend. It's much better than I expected, as he spends more time on the science than he has in any other of his books. I'm still wanting to do my favorite 65mi ride to the Rescue Fire Station, and was hoping to do that today, but I was up babysitting a pot roast until 2:00 AM last night - something I haven't made in 20 yrs at least, but good Paleo nutrition.

I was going to do the Rescue ride today, but with rain on the way I need to fix my car windows instead. Plastic gears on electric windows get old and brittle, and are kind of a bitch to fix (unless you like your arms cut up by sharp sheet metal edges) but not all that hard either.

It's also becoming clear to me that when you CAN ride all year around in an accommodating climate, it's important to take some planned time off from time to time. Since I'm not training for events, there are no built-in rest periods, so I am learning to make some to allow me to recover. Living and learning.

I think I'll head up to Beals later and do something I've never done before - take pictures of the sun setting on the lake an hour from home. Really like my new MagicShine light.

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C3 Aerobars Plus MagicShine

2011-09-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

After a year of doing without, and making some very good rationalizations (like why do I need to ride at night, when I have all day to ride?), I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a MagicShine 900 lumen light with a 6Ah LION battery pack, helmet mount, and carbon fiber drop mount.

Planet Bike 1W Blaze and MagicShine 900

I decided to keep the Planet Bike Blazer 1W light on the bars until I'm sure the MagicShine is reliable, but as it turned out, having two is pretty useful anyway as the strobing Blazer marks me as a cyclist and not a motorcycle.

I also decided not to mount the light on my helmet, although that may change, I am still concerned about early reports that these lights were emitting so much radio frequency noise they were shutting down people's Garmins, and presumably, cooking their brains ala cell phones. I detected no problems with my Garmin, and it's mounted 5" away, but still being cautious.

(The evidence is very clear, although the cell phone mfgs are doing every last thing to suppress the studies, cell phones cause brain cancer when held against your head, so use a WIRED headset and don't end up a statistic. The last study I saw published came out of Scandinavia and was a 10yr study based on only a half-hour a day's use. That study showed a 6X increase in brain cancer ONLY on the side the user held the phone, and directly adjacent the ear.)

I wasn't sure if the drop mount, which clamps around the bar right next to the stem, has a 3" arm, and then a stub 1" round carbon tube about 2" long, would drop enough or be strong enough to hold the light in a stable way. It did, and I didn't even need to wrap the provided 3" rubber shim around the stub to get the light to mount firmly enough to prevent slippage.

Battery strapped on top of the top tube, resting on some foam shelf-liner. Nice cockpit view and the light isn't shining in my face.

I decided to just put the light right in front of the top tube, forward enough to not interfere with the cables with the handlebars turned in any direction. That turned out to be perfect. It stays cool, lights well, doesn't blind me with back-scatter, and seems about as aerodynamic a position as possible.

I could move it off to the right, as I am somewhat tempted to do, but as it is, the 6" of separation between the MagicShine and Blaze make the Blaze's strobe mode more visible. Otherwise it would just get lost in the flood of MagicShine light.

I went riding with a couple of friends from the Sacramento Bike Hikers Tuesday night, and they had their MagicShines helmet mounted so they could turn their heads and focus the light through turns and around riders ahead. Especially when I was in the middle, and offset 2ft to the right, this worked out very well.

My light provided constant illumination of the bike trail which allowed them to free-lance their helmet lights without losing sight of the trial's surface. Very nice for avoiding snakes. Counting 2 Blazes and 3 MagicShines we had over 3,000 lumens of white light ahead, and 7 tail lights behind mounted from mid-seatstay to helmet level. We were a flying Christmas Tree!

With the 3 of us riding together I was completely comfortable riding flat out - up to 25mph - with that amount of light. Riding home alone from the meetup site, the light was comfortable up to ~ 20mph. Facing into streetlight going down a long hill I hit the brakes lightly to keep my speed down.

If I want to ride alone I will need more light to ride flat-out. The 4-LED MagicShine MS-872 Quad XP-G lighthead provides a perfect solution. It can be mounted on the drop stub, and my existing spot light moved to my helmet. With 1600 lumens it provides a full-width beam that lights the entire lane for at least 150ft - about 4 seconds at 25mph.

MagicShine MS-872 Quad XP-G Light employing 4 CREE LEDs

If you've studied the power consumption curves of LEDs you'll have noticed that as you push them harder and harder to get more light out of a single bulb, 2-3X as much power is dissipated as heat. Thus, one of the really great advantages of having 4 bulbs is that even on med-hi, it still puts out 900 lumens, and does so very efficiently. Good thing I got the big battery pack, as cranking out 2,500 lumens does take a toll on batteries, even LION batteries.

We had a lot of fun flying down the ARPT Tuesday night, and collected up a dozen or so riders who were riding with little or no light. By sharing the wealth of light, we collected a substantial paceline on the way from Sunrise to WBP, and at an average speed of 20.4mph.

Enjoying My Damned Hard Riding

2011-09-20T02:39:00.000-07:00

I've been putting in a lot of miles, pretty much sticking to my 100 mile weeks, and am just enjoying the ride - having my gear dialed in well - finally.

I did a really wonderful ride last Tuesday evening with SBH, although it turned out to be just myself and the ride leader. I had made rice and left the stove on, so asked if we could swing by my house for a minute. That kind of set the spirit of adventure for the evening, and I ended up kind of co-leading the ride, showing her a bunch of new roads in my hood.

I took up the lead shortly after we left Sunrise on the ARPT, after stopping for a few minutes to take in a breathtaking sunset, and suck down some Gatorade. It was still warm well into dark. I spotted a fast pair way up ahead, and decided to challenge myself to try to catch them, as I started to really get my legs under me.

It was a 2 mile sprint, ramping up steadily from ~22 to a peak of 27.3 mph. She was right on my wheel. Very impressive. I got us to within 50 yards when we got jammed by slow traffic and failing light. I pulled a bottle, and we turned on our lights while "coasting" down to 22 mph. Spent from pulling at such high speeds, I hung on for dear life for the next few miles as she put on her own display of speed.

We caught a rider shortly after WBP who had no light, so we drafted her with me on the right, and Shon on the left. My Bike Planet 1W Bazer just barely filled in the shadow from Shon's MagicShine, but except for a half dozen snakes we didn't see until right on them, the light was good enough for Shon and I to average 20mph from Sunrise to CSUS ~ 12 miles. With all of the dips, rises and hairpin turns, that's very good speed, and excellent speed at night.

Yesterday I needed a 50 mile ride to make my 100mi/week goal, and managed to do so in spite of running a gauntlet of skateboarders, clueless riders withe zero situational awareness riding with headphones and earbuds, a 5 yr old on training wheels towed by her dad and slingshotted across the trail as we approached a turn, and peds walking 4 abreast with a belligerent attitude behind a blind hairpin turn with oncoming traffic. You name it, the stupidity was there.

To make matters worse, they haven't caught the arsonist on the ARPT, and he, or another arsonist burned a house a block down from me Sat night. I stopped at Riverbend Park and talked to a fire crew refilling their truck. They told me the neighbors along the ARPT are talking about setting up sniper hides to shoot the arsonist. No way that's going to end well. I hope they catch the guy soon though. He's burning a lot of nursery trees and tying up 10s of thousands of $$$ in fire fighting resources.

After putting it off for a whole year, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a MagicShine 900 for myself. I'm also going to get a 2-3 watt rear red light, and mount my existing tail light on the back of my helmet. That should allow me to ride flat out after dark. With wx in the 90's again this week (near 100 tomorrow) riding at night is just too much fun to give up.

Interestingly, I got back from that smoking fast 34 mi Tuesday night ride and realized all I'd had to eat all day was a cup of sugared coffee and one slice of whole wheat bread. Eating more fat is not only suppressing hunger, helping me to lose weight, but appears to already be making my muscles more insulin sensitive, and eager to burn fatty acids for fuel. I went through 2 Gatorade bottles on the ride, but that was it. On my 50mi ride yesterday, 2 bottles and 1 PowerBar. About 700 calories in total.

My blog on eating fat last week has had a profound impact on my view of carbs. They're great for ride fuel, and for recovery, and perhaps spiking blood sugar just as a ride starts, but otherwise, glucose is a toxin that has to be very tightly managed. Better to eat fat. I am so much less hungry too.

The sensation isn't the 3-alarm fire of hypoglycemia it has always been in the past. Eating is something that can be done anytime in the next few hours, not a plunge into irritability and brain freeze. Nice too that shunning carbs, except as ride fuel, actually makes them more effective in that role!

Techie Tuesday - Optimal Wheel Spoking

2011-09-12T23:56:00.000-07:00

This is a post I have wanted to do for months and months, and never seemed to find the time. I was motivated to do the post now because disk brakes are taking off for Cyclo-Cross racing, and Johan Bruyneel has been calling for at least rear disk brakes being used in the TDF to cut down on crashes caused by carbon wheel lockups. I happen to agree there.

While a rear-only disk wheel will not impact road wheels that much, front and back disk wheels would make radial spoked wheels disappear in a heartbeat. It would also introduce all of the torque-bearing considerations to the front wheel as are present in rear wheels.

Mid-1980s 36 hole low-flange hub with very little tear-out protection. Even laced 3X, the spokes have a significant concave path across the wheel. Note that on all 3X lacing, adjacent spokes pull in the opposite direction, offsetting each other's stresses on the flange.

Mid-1980s rear low-flange hub. The larger flange, relative to the front hub, creates a flatter, more optimal spoke path across the wheel.

Ultegra 6700 32 hole low-flange front hub laced 2X. The spoke path is even more concave than the 36 hole 3X spoking above. Better than radial, and with extra material to prevent tearout, it nevertheless is NOT warranted for radial spoking.

Ultegra 6700 32 hole low-flange rear hub laced 3X. Spoke path is very close to straight across. If they're ever made available in Ultegra 6700, 28 hole hubs should produce optimal 3X spoking.

Mavic Aksium: Drive-side spokes run perfectly straight across the wheel, the optimal 90-degree pulling angle for a torque-bearing spoke, from LR corner to UL corner here. Well done.

Mavic Ksyrium: A tribute to pig-headed stupidity and marketing arrogance. The beautiful convex spoke path on the non-drive side is completely negated by the use of radial drive-side spoking. The decision to use aluminum spokes, with no fatigue limit, guarantees failure.

These two wheels, identical in all other respects, show the difference a larger diameter rim makes on spoke path. As you can see, the 29r (~700c rim) spoke path isn't quite as optimal against tear-out as the 26r's is, although both are very good.

WTB Mtb 26r: Convex spoke path on 3X spoking, from LL to middle R on drive side and LL to UR on disk brake side here.

WTB Mtb 29r: Slight concave path from LL to UR on drive side, and LR to UL on brake side here.

The 24 hole drilling and 3X spoking creates straight-across path on the drive side. Uses a Hi/Lo flange strategy to make the wheel respond more symmetrically

A few notes on ferrous (steel) and non-ferrous (aluminum) metals. The curves look like this. Note that 6061-T6 fatigues down to only 10% of original strength with symmetrical, oscillating, mean-zero stresses, and to only 4% with maximum asymmetrical stresses.

This textbook on metal fatigue spells it out much more starkly - non ferrous metals have no real fatigue limit. They fatigue to zero strength. Still think those Ksyrium spokes broke because you abused them?

As I remarked on before, drive-side spokes are tightened to about twice the tension of those on the non-drive side in an attempt to shore up the drive side's lateral strength. There are several strategies available to mitigate the resultant asymmetrical way the wheel responds to axial and lateral loads. In general, the goal is to have the spokes of the two sides yield equally with any applied stress, such that the effect on rim movement and deflection is symmetrical.

Radial spoking on the ND. This shortens its spokes, making them less elastic. Ironic that NDS radial lacing is used by mfgs who lace the front wheel radially to make it stiffer. The NDS is already too stiff visa-vie the drive side. It also makes for a harsher ride, and precludes it from bearing any torque.
Use of a larger flange on the drive side. This moves the spoke bed outward, improving its angle, and can be helpful. It also bears torque better. It will also improve the spoke path, shorten those spokes, and thereby, stiffen them.
Low (or very low) flange on the NDS. Effectively moves the spoke bed inward, and lengthens the spokes. Most helpful when combined with 3X lacing and thinner spokes to increase elasticity.
Using more spokes on the drive side. This is rare, but it has the potential to soften up the NDS so the wheel responds more symmetrically to loads. One interesting option here is to use radial lacing and only populate every other hole. Fewer spokes would be more aerodynamic.
Heavier gauge spokes on the drive side. This was my personal choice, as I used 14/15 on the drive side, and 14/17 on the NDS. This makes for a rock solid wheel that is also supple.
Using a smaller freehub body, as found on Hope and Chris King single-speed hubs, and mount only 6-7 gears of a cassette. You'll have fewer gears, but a much stronger wheel. This idea is getting some traction in the mtb community. With a triple crank adequate gears are still available.
Off-center spoke drilling. Velocity's O/C rims can move the spoke bed over 4mm. It should help, especially if combined with other strategies. This directly attacks the problems of dishing a wheel.
Move the NDS flange inward. Disk brake rear wheels do this routinely. It usually results in a wheel that is laterally weak on both sides. Measure the flange to flange distance and buy accordingly. Wider is better.
Use heavier spokes only where they are pulling torque. These would be trailing spokes on the drive side, and with disk brakes, leading spokes on the NDS. With caliper brakes and 28 hole drilling, only 7 spokes would have to be 14/15, all the other spokes could be 14/17. This should keep spoke weight to ~ 100 grams.

White Industries H3 road hub with titanium freehub body. 252 grams. Note the hi/lo flange strategy.

Tune MAG 150 weights only 150 grams. Note straight-pull zero-flange on NDS and large flange on drive side.

The Making of A Mature Cyclist

2011-09-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

I went on a really fun group ride last night with the Sacramento Bike Hikers (SBH), and as the Tuesday night rides are usually blistering fast group rides with 20+ riders riding in a well-oiled paceline, that would have been the perfect seque into this blog post.

Alas, there were only 6 of us, and that turned out to be even more to my liking, even if not providing the perfect setup for this post. Three of us broke away and established a nice speed group - some of our group were recovering from a long, hard ride the day before - averaging 21+ on the bike trail. Tons of fun, and smiles around, but waited up for the rest of the group back at the parking lot to say our goodbyes and thank yous.

This post on paceline etiquette has been making a huge splash, and not a moment too soon either. After my crash I have a much better appreciation of how serious biking accidents really are. A bad one will end your cycling, and a really bad one, your life. If you aren't happy with the level of paceline competence in your club, speak up! If things don't change, change clubs, or use http://www.meetup.com/about/ to start your own.

This article, published by Active.com, is a tour 'de force of what NOT to do in a paceline. Instead, it describes almost perfectly how to behave if you want to be widely known as the group asshole. Seriously, who was the editor that approved this atrocity?

First, when riding in a paceline, and for the most part, that is what riding in a peloton is for most of us club riders, you can't ride up front if you're in a paceline. You ride in your position, which rotates forward until it's your turn to pull, and then you drop off sharply on the left and soft peddle until you get to within a few bike lengths of the back, before putting some power down so you don't fall off the back and have to bridge up.

Second, hide your suffering? Why are you suffering? The whole point of paceline riding is the group can ride faster without any suffering. Unless you are new to the group, or coming back from a long layoff, you shouldn't be suffering. Do your suffering solo, and use your HR monitor to execute a well thought-out plan, but don't turn a club ride into a race.

Work smart? Are you kidding me? Be magnanimous. If you want to do a little suffering, do it to benefit the group. If you're the strongest rider, or strong at the moment, then pull a little longer, or when turning into a headwind, and enjoy the adulation of your group for being a generous, giving strongman who is always willing to share the wealth to benefit others. Sooner or later you'll get sick, or crash, or suffer joint pain and you'll be coming back from a long layoff. Imagine how many favors you'll have to call on then.

Did the guy that wrote #10, read, let alone write, #9. Don't suck wheel, but suck wheel as long as possible to win the sprint? What sprint? After everyone else rode for the benefit of the group all day, they aren't going to appreciate you saving all of your energy to humiliate them in the last half mile. When riding into the parking lot, EVERYONE should be in exactly the same position they were all day in the paceline.

This article, by contrast, is dead on the mark. I am coping it here because things on the web have a way of going **poof**, and this is just too good to ever get lost.

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Although cycling has its benefits and is relaxing and fun, it’s always more pleasurable to ride with someone than to ride alone. However, riding with someone or riding in a group requires adherence to certain rules. It also requires skills that may take a little practice before mixing it up with the local club.

No one likes a squirrel in the pack so I thought I’d outline several common sense "rules" of etiquette to follow when we are out there enjoying the scenery with a group of friends. These "rules" will increase your enjoyment and safety whether you are just putzing along or if you are hammering in a fast paced training ride. You surely don’t want to peel yourself off the pavement or cause someone else to be seriously injured by displaying poor riding habits. With this in mind, lets discuss some important issues!

Be Predictable—This may be the most important rule (even for solo riding) and it involves every aspect of riding from changing positions in the group to following the traffic rules. You might say that all the other rules support this one. Smooth predictable riding isn’t just a matter of style...here the word survival comes to mind! If unpredictability is the only predictable part of your riding style, you are a hazard to yourself and everyone else who has the misfortune to ride with you. Have you ever been on a ride where the group stops at an intersection and people scatter all over the lane? Some going through on the wrong side of the road and others turning left from the right side? Some running the stop sign and others doing it right? It’s confusing and irritating to drivers of vehicles as they approach a situation where cyclists are going in all different directions or just blowing through stops! Part of being predictable is riding within the rules of the road as a vehicle. Groups should maintain integrity when approaching intersections. That means staying in the correct lane, stopping together, and starting together as traffic allows. It goes without saying that if we demand the right to ride on the road, then we must be willing to ride responsibly...especially as a group.
Don’t Overlap Wheels—This habit will get you in real trouble. This is a good way to test your ability to do cartwheels if you don't adhere to this rule. Some people do it from lack of concentration, others may just not know any better, but sooner or later they'll crash. There is no recovery from a front wheel deflection. All it takes is for the person in front to move sideways a few inches...if someone is overlapping his wheel, that someone will go down along with practically everyone who is behind him. Many times the person in front can recover, but not the people behind.
Be Steady—This includes speed and line. If the person behind you fails to adhere to #2, you will contribute to a crash if you wallow around all over the road. When everyone is working for the group, maintain a steady speed as you go to the front. Ever notice how easy it is to ride behind some folks? If you take note of their riding style you’ll probably notice they don’t yo-yo around in the pack. They are rock steady. When they take the lead, they don't accelerate. If they are strong enough to accelerate the group, they do it after the previous pull has rejoined the rear of the group and then only gradually so as to not string out the pack. When they are leading, they ride a straight line and their speed will be constant with the conditions. What a joy to ride with someone like this. Sometimes steady doesn’t just mean speed. It means steady pressure on the pedals…uphill or downhill, headwind or tailwind. When you are following someone like this, life is good! When they are following, they don’t make sudden moves or they know how to control their spacing by using their body position instead of using the brakes. Sudden braking will set off general alarms from everyone in the rear and make you very unpopular. If you do use the brakes, feather the front brake only and keep pedaling against the resistance. This allows you to moderate your speed without disturbing trailing riders
Announce Hazards—When you are in the lead, you are responsible for the safety of everyone behind you. You will become very unpopular very quickly if people behind you keep bouncing off of potholes, running over rocks, or reacting to unsafe traffic situations that you fail to point out. You need to be very vocal when approaching intersections, slowing, stopping, or turning and all actions should be smooth and deliberate. Sudden, unannounced actions will throw terror into any peloton. Riders in the pack should relay these warnings to the rear. When you are following, announce oncoming traffic from the rear…in this case others should relay this info toward the front.
Signal—Signaling lets everyone (vehicles and riders) know your intentions…remember #1? This makes you predictable. Also, it’s a good idea to make eye contact with oncoming traffic at intersections. One note here, use your right arm straight out to signal a right turn. It’s uncool to stick out your left bent arm to signal a right turn; more importantly, it’s impracticable and ineffective. In a big group combine this with a loud vocal warning of your intentions.
Don’t Fixate—If you are staring at something (i.e., the wheel in front of you), eventually you’ll hit it! When you walk in a crowd, you don’t stare at the back of the person in front of you…so you shouldn’t ride like that either. Learn to be comfortable looking around or through the riders ahead of you. This will allow you to see things that are developing in front of the group. With a little practice you will be able to "sense" how far you are off the wheel in front of you.
Stay Off Aero Bars—This shouldn’t require much discussion. They are much too unstable to be used in a group ride. Plus, you don't need to be on aero bars if you are in a pack as you will receive more aerodynamic effect from the other riders anyway. Maybe...one exception…when you are at the front pulling you can get away with it, but never, never, never when you are within the group or following a wheel. I know there are some people, usually triathletes, who are more comfortable on the bars. But, sooner or later, steering with your elbows in a group will add new meaning to the term "lunch on the road." Plus, it really tics off those behind you when you go down in a pack! Use aero bars for what they are meant for...solo fast riding.
Don’t Leave Stragglers— If you get separated at intersections, as a matter of courtesy, the lead group should soft pedal until the rest have rejoined. Another note here is that if you are the one who will be caught by the light, don't run the red light to maintain contact. If they don't wait for you to catch up, you may not want to be riding with them anyway. Also as a courtesy to those who may not be able to stay with the group, the pack should wait at certain points along the route to regroup. Especially, at turn points and if the stragglers don’t know the route. Now obviously this is not applicable during a race but we're not talking about a race...No one should be left alone on a group ride. If you don't adhere to this rule, your "group" will get smaller each week until you're riding solo.
Know Your Limitations—If you’re not strong enough or too tired to take a turn at the front, stay near the back and let the stronger cyclists pull in front of you instead of making them go to the back of the line. Unless they are a complete...well you know...they will appreciate that more than having to get past you to get back to the front. Plus, it strokes the animal's ego as you admit that he/she is the stronger rider. Another point here, don’t pull at the front faster and longer than you have energy to get back in at the rear (Remember, your "pull" isn't over until you do). I've seen this scenario many times, it comes "biker wannabe's" time to take his/her pull and the pace is getting up there. The thoughts running through his/her mind is, "I need to show these guys that I can pull 2 mph faster than everyone else has been pulling." They go to the front and hammer. Legs begin to burn after a monumental pull...now it's time to pull over and let some "lesser" rider take a turn. Well, the "lesser" biker is all refreshed after tagging on a wheel and is ready to punch it up another notch. It's bye-bye to the first rider as he/she gets blown off the back...toast! Testosterone and ego is a volatile mix (even for you females) and it can get you dropped in a heartbeat.
Change Positions Correctly—A common beginner faux pas is to stop pedaling just before pulling off the front. This creates an accordion effect toward the rear. Keep a steady pressure on the pedals until you have cleared the front. After pulling off, soft pedal and let the group pull through. As the last couple riders are passing through, begin to apply more pressure to smoothly take your position at the rear. If you don’t time it correctly, you’ll create a gap and have to sprint to get back on. A technique used to reenter the line is to move your bike sideways first then your body. Try it. It will feel awkward at first, but it is the safest way to move within a group. It's just a small subtle move not an exaggerated one. If you lean your body first and misjudge the speed or the person in front of you slows down, you’ll touch wheels and be leaning the wrong way…bad situation! If you move the bike first, you will have a chance to pull it back.
Climbing—Ever been behind someone when they stood up going up hill and all of a sudden you were all over them? If you need to stand, shift up a gear to compensate for the slower cadence and stand up smoothly keeping a steady pressure on the pedals. This will keep you from moving backward relative to the rider behind you. Apply the opposite technique when changing to a sitting position. Downshift and keep a steady pressure on the pedals to avoid abrupt changes in speed. It takes a little practice, but your riding buddies will be glad you spent the time learning how to do it right.
Descending—The leader must overcome a much greater wind resistance as the speed increases. If you are leading, keep pedaling. If you don’t, everyone behind you will eat your lunch. Riders to the rear will accelerate faster downhill as drafting becomes more effective at the higher speeds. If you are following, back off a couple of bike lengths to compensate for the greater affects of drafting. If you are closing on the rider in front, sit up and let the wind slow you or use light braking to maintain spacing, but in both cases you should keep pedaling against the resistance. Keeping your legs moving not only makes it easier to keep the spacing, but also helps the legs get rid of the acid build up from the previous climb.
Relax—This one is really important. It will allow you to be smooth and responsive. You can bet that if you see someone who is riding a straight line and is very steady, he/she is relaxed on the bike. It not only saves energy, but it makes bike handling much more effective. Anytime you are riding in close proximity of other riders there's always the chance that you may come into contact. If you have tense arms and get bumped from the side, the shock will go directly to the front wheel and you will swerve, possibly lose control, and possibly cause a massive pile up. If you are relaxed, it's much easier to absorb the bump without losing control. A good exercise is to go to a grassy field (which is softer than pavement if you fall) with a friend and ride slowly side by side. Relax your arms and lightly bump each other using your relaxed elbows to absorb the (light) impact. You will become familiar with how to safely recover from that type of contact. It may save you some road rash someday.

You might be labeled a "Fred" if you wear clothing that doesn’t match or you still use clip pedals and downtube shifters, but you can still be a valued member of the group if you practice good, safe riding techniques. Riding in a group can be fun and exhilarating…it can also be safe if everyone knows and follows the rules. Happy cycling. Mike

On the issue of aerobars, use them wisely. If it's your turn to pull and the only way you can keep pace is by using them, I think you'll find everyone will be OK with you dropping down into the aerobars, as long as you call out debris loudly and ride VERY smoothly. No sudden speed changes, or erratic maneuvers. Stay in the center of the bike lane, or on the white line if on a road.

Don't use aerobars to increase the pace, or otherwise "show up" others in the paceline. When down in aerobars your draft is not as long or hearty as when riding up on the blocks, so the guy right behind you is working harder than he otherwise would. If you can arrange it, make sure that guy is the strongest, or one of the strongest riders. He will then ride up on the blocks to the great relief of everyone behind you, and will be a big strong rider who will nevertheless appreciate the somewhat diminished draft you are providing. You'll essentially be splitting the load of the locomotive position between you, which is just fine in strong headwinds.

Be attuned to when the peloton might transition from a headwind to a crosswind. If you don't slow the pace, the peloton will explode as the group's draft will largely disappear, and tired or weaker riders will not be able to keep pace.

I have switched to a 25mm Michelin Pro Optimum rear tire. The Pro Optimum is a dedicated front and rear tire set. The front optimized for braking and cornering (very sticky), and the rear for putting down power and puncture resistance (thick and tough crown rubber). A benefit of running the 25mm in back is really great braking performance from the back wheel. Having it be so effective, but still not skid, makes for smooth leads with gradual speed changes.

Don't ride in aerobars unless you are way off the back and trying to bridge up, or up front with no one in front of you for 30+ feet. The C3 Syntace bars, with brakes swapped, and left arm normally planted, is quicker to the brakes and more stable than down in the drops, but those you ride with will never believe this, and will not appreciate any riding in aerobars when in a paceline. Be cool. Trust is the glue that makes a paceline work.

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Fat Metabolism for Better Health

2011-08-31T02:24:00.000-07:00

After summarizing years of research into carbohydrate structure and metabolism, I had occasion to turn back to fat metabolism this week after running into a very knowledgeable Paleo enthusiast.

I discovered a couple of interesting branches of research on the Google Safaris that followed. One suggests that it is not caloric restriction in general that promotes longevity, but restriction of protein, and the other, restriction of carbohydrate. Both of these findings have been published in just the last 5 years.

What was more interesting to me though, was to understand how fat, or fatty acids in particular - as opposed to the glycerol that's also part of triglycerides - is actually metabolized by cells (Cellular Uptake of Fatty Acids), both adipose cells that store fat, and muscle cells that power the large skeletal muscles, through a pathway that requires zero insulin.

Also of interest is that 18 of the 20 amino acids in proteins can be converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis, and are the major source of energy in large skeletal muscles when catabolic muscle destruction takes place. When you eat too much protein, or incomplete protein, it's burned as carbs. By contrast, only the glycerin part of triglycerides can be converted to glucose.

Here's the exciting thing for cyclists and other endurance athletes. Fatty acids, which supply up to half of total energy needed for endurance athletes, have a completely separate, and parallel metabolic pathway from glucose, and can transition through the cell wall and into the cell mitochondria WITHOUT the aid of insulin. The implications of this are so far-reaching that I am still coming to grips with it. But already a few things are clear.

First, super-surges in strength almost certainly occur when energy demands are fed both through fatty acids AND high glucose levels while insulin levels are very high. This condition would occur after 5-10 minutes of relative rest, say to 50-60% of max HR, when liver glycogen, and ride fuel digestion products, have been added together to create high blood glucose levels, and then the 6-minute insulin release cycle starts by dumping huge amounts of insulin into the blood. If this were to occur when maximal fatty acids are available to the muscle cell, and sufficient oxygen is available, the muscle cells have as much fuel and oxidizer as they can ever hope to use.

Second, this explains why so many are suffering with metabolic syndrome, obesity, and type II diabetes. When you eat either carbs, or protein (via gluconeogenesis) your body cannot immediately use, you use the carbohydrate, small intestine, insulin pathway to fuel the cell's mitochondria. Worse, there is some good evidence from research at UCSF that insulin is the primary cause of aging via the "Grim Reaper" gene.

When you eat, or use fat stored in adipose tissue, only the small percentage of the triglycerides that is glycerol can be converted to glucose, and digested via the aqueous environment of the small intestine. Almost all of the energy in fat, in the form of fatty acids, is digested into the bloodstream by the liver with the help of bile salts, and those fatty acids are available to the cell directly, in a completely separate pathway, where insulin plays no role. Fatty acids are always a ready fuel, ready to go, delivered by their own private digestion pathway, and they never become toxic like glucose does in hyperglycemia.

Since the energy density of fatty acids is much greater than glucose, and elevated fatty acid levels are not toxic like glucose, the fat-based energy cycle doesn't have to be as tightly controlled as the glucose-based cycle. The glucose-based cycle is regulated against excess by adipose tissue mopping up glucose when there is no immediate demand from muscle, so sedentary consumption of carbs must result in storing fat to prevent hyperglycemia. The required speed of adipose mitigation of glucose levels depends of the GI of the carb.

By contrast the liver digests fat into the bloodstream, pulls it back out when VLDLs get too high, can convert stored glycogen into glucose, can convert fat's glycerin to glucose, and can absorb up to 2,000 calories worth of glucose in the form of glycogen. In short, it's a much more complete and flexible organ for regulating energy levels than is the pancreas, but you have to give it some fat to work with.

The push to move people to high carb, low fat diets has led us to run almost an entirely insulin-driven metabolism, both for powering muscle, and for storing fat. This is in contrast to our historical diet of mostly fat and protein driven diets. As a result our pancreases are dangerously overworked for most of our lives, are failing in many people, and the muscle and fat cells in our bodies are forced to consume glucose and insulin instead of primarily fatty acids - with only small amounts of glucose from liver glycogen, converted amino acids, and glycerine to support exclusively glucose-fueled organs like the brain. Wild swings in energy levels has created an epidemic of ADD, ADHD, and other behavioral problems in the "bargain".

In short, we're trying to run a marathon on one leg! It just doesn't work.

I'm always cautious when incorporating new information in my daily life, but I have been eating more omelets and have switched from skim milk to 1%. The effect on hunger is amazing. Tentatively, I intend to save carbs to fuel rides, and move more and more towards fat as part of the nutrient rich diet that I eat off the bike, sans carbo loading, and recovery.

On a personal note, I'm just stunned at the utter stupidity of the nutritionists who suggested this, or somehow believed a low fat diet was going to work out well. As Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology in this excellent video shows, there were some strong dissenters from the stampede to carbs and away from fats.

When the entire population of the US is 25lbs heavier than they were 25 yrs ago, and we have an epidemic of childhood obesity in 6 month old children, it's hard to argue that obesity is caused by lazy slobs who just can't be bothered to get off their butts and exercise. Something more profound is going on, and this video lays it out pretty well.

Give your pancreas a rest. Eat some fat, and live a longer and healthier life.

Odds & Ends

2011-08-26T17:09:00.000-07:00

First, I want to give a big shout-out to my friend Robin Blackburn who will be putting 9 months of training to good use this weekend competing in the IM Kentucky. For all of us who Father Time has robbed of that ability, get some for us too Robin!

Second, I wanted to give an update on my tire experiments after a few hundred miles. I have settled on Michelin again, because the sidewalls are just so much more robust than Conti tires, even the Gatorskin. I am now running my standard, long time favorite Pro3 Race 23mm tires in front, and Michelin Pro Optimum 25mm in the rear after skidding through 2 Pro3 Races in back in 6 weeks after single 10-15 ft skids.

The Pro Optimum don't roll quite as well as the Pro3 Race, but I can't notice any difference in wind drag. I'm not sure the Optimum roll any slower than a Pro3 25mm would either. What I get in return is a tougher tire (I did have a thorn flat, but the thorn forests go on for a thousand yards in places these days, and those dry thorns are hella hard) that is very hard to skid, AND stays hooked up extremely well in turns.

We have a lot of sharp hairpin turns along the SE side of Lake Natomas, and I am starting to trust the Pro Optimum tire now to stay hooked up even over light sand and gravel. The result is less braking and faster overall lap times. The ride is also better over large road cracks and medium stones, and pinch flats less likely. They also don't leak down as fast, having more internal volume than 23mm tires do.

The Gatorskin AKA Ultra Gatorskin tire isn't as bad as my 1st impression, because once the rather extensive pips wore off the crown the tire settled down a lot and stopped hopping all over the trail and looking for reasons to break loose in turns. It might have more puncture resistance than the Pro Optimum too, but the sidewalls are just too fragile to be safe when riding long distances. I don't want to spend 2-3 hours riding home praying some make-shift boot is going to hold. The Optimum's ride is much less harsh, and much more skid resistant.

The Pro3 Optimum tires are a dedicated front and back tire set, which Michelin claims will wear about the same number of miles. I've been so happy with the rear tire, I am tempted to try the front tire too now. At 25mm It might push more wind, a big consideration up front (irrelevant in back), but I am thinking it will likely have a softer ride, and I am on the cusp of being able to ride 100% of the time on the hoods now, after going to carbon bars, and getting the seat dialed in.

-----

I had an epiphany when looking for some detail on carbohydrate, and then water digestion. It's pretty clear that your body can absorb a maxed out carb-water mixture, like Gatorade's 6% solution, faster than it can digest the carbs in this mixture on hot days. This is because both the large intestine, and the small intestine can digest water, but only the small intestine is capable of digesting carbs.

No matter what the source of carbs, when the mix of carbs and water in the small intestine exceeds some threshold level, the mix, carbs and all, is swept into your large intestine where the remainder of the water is absorbed very efficiently. Unfortunately, the undigested carbs can no longer be digested by you, but are instead fermented by bacteria in your large intestine (colon). The required intestinal micro-structure, nor amylase to break down carbs, are anywhere to be found in your colon. The bacteria's fermentation creates the gas and bloating we all know and hate.

Even with your entire GI track working at max capacity, your ability to sweat still exceeds your digestion rate. If this disparity persists, your body will take water from inter-cellular, intra-cellular, and finally, blood, to make up the difference.

As your body pulls water out of your blood, reducing blood volume, it puts a tremendous strain on your heart and cardio system to maintain adequate blood pressure. At some point near death, your body will attempt prevent unconsciousness by closing off your capillaries to maintain blood pressure, causing your skin to go dry and your core temps to soar. This condition is known as heat stroke.

To prevent internal organ damage, and even death, you must cool the body in a way that does NOT depend on sweating. Immersion in water, and ingesting cold water is about as good as it gets. Having someone hose you down until your body temp is below 100F is great, pouring water down your back and over your head good, and/or a sock full of ice around your neck and between your legs a potential life saver. Rehydrate as rapidly as possible by ingesting huge quantities of sodium and water. It's impossible for you to absorb water without sodium. Manage accordingly.

Nunn and water, especially distilled water, is an excellent electrolyte protocol. Distilled water, having zero osmotic pressure, will support the maximum rate of sodium and water digestion - the sodium absorption required to maintain an isotonic electrolyte balance as new water is absorbed into the bloodstream.

Therefore, the limitation on athletic performance on hot days is neither muscle endurance, VO2max, forestalling glycogen depletion, nor even electrolyte management, but your ability to digest water fast enough to keep up with requirements for sweating sufficient to keep your core body temps under control while avoiding dehydration.

All of this is again raising the question in my mind as to whether synthetic fibers, which transport, but do not absorb water, are a major contributor to dehydration on hot days. Cotton and/or linen blends may well manage available digested water more effectively.

This speculation is informed by many studies that show that while men sweat more than women, women are less susceptible to dehydration and heat stroke on endurance events precisely because they sweat less.

Experimental Ride Fuel

2011-08-15T00:19:00.000-07:00

I have made it no secret that I am very impressed with Nishiki brand sushi rice, prepared with sugar while fluffing, as the ultimate ride fuel. I have been looking for a better way to carry it with me on rides though.

I had an epiphany tonight, and decided to try grinding up the cooked rice, as grinding up the dry rice and then cooking it didn't work at all. I think this is going to work. I'll use a Hammer flask to hold the gel, just like Hammer Perpetuem - a product I won't use because it contains carnosine, a snake oil from the Area 51 of nutrition.

Carnosine might work, it might work great, it might also leave your body in ruins. I'm not getting paid a boat load of money to ride, so I'd like to stick to food that's proven beneficial to mankind for a few tens of thousands of years.

I used a wand mixer and my stainless steel Starbucks cup, but think something larger is needed. I also was using 5-day old refrigerated rice, which was a bit dry and hard. In my next attempt I will grind the rice while it is still warm and soft.

I may add a little more sugar, and even try adding some coffee, as the rice I used today, while it tastes nice and sweet eating whole, tasted a lot more earthy once ground and in the flask. A good thing maybe, as on long events all those commercial ride fuels start to taste sickly sweet.

If you want to add a powerful, natural antioxidant to this rice, add acai powder or juice. I experimented with it quite a bit a few years ago, and it works. It does tend to bring on sudden cramps when you run out of it, but since it's been used for thousands of years by natives in the Amazon, I think it's fundamentally safe. The cramping may well be due to the increidble levels of strength and energy it supports. Wow, what a ride!

I have two goals in making my own ride fuel. The 1st, is to reduce its cost. Second, a friend challenged me a couple of years ago to find natural foods to use as ride fuel, as he was increasingly concerned with dangerous ingredients, mystery ingredients, and outrageous lies of all sorts made by sports nutrition companies. ( EFS, for example, claims sucrose (table sugar) and dextrose, a synonym for glucose, are complex carbs. A flat out outrageous lie, as a 10 second Google Safari will reveal.)

I could, of course, just order a 50lb bag of maltodextrin from GPC in Mollines, Iowa, but there's nothing natural about corn flour that's been treated with enzymes and then cooked in high heat to break the complex carbs down into something technically not sugar, but very close. As we've seen with HFCS, these seemingly harmless chemical changes can have some nasty and unexpected side-effects.

For pre-ride fueling and on ride fueling, the rice allows me to go as hard as I like and never get indigestion, cramps, or bloating. Pretty great stuff!

Schleck-Band

2011-08-08T22:20:00.000-07:00

Do you wear a sweat cap when you ride, but wish there were a lighter, smaller, better breathing option that would still keep the sweat off your glasses and out of your eyes? Me too!

Sweat band inspired by Andy Schleck

My 1-size-fits-all-the-budget-we-have Halo sweat cap has a nice rubber strip that runs across the forehead, and does a good job of forcing the sweat that gets channeled from the Gishallo helmet's sweat pads to run down the sides of my face, not all over my glasses The problem is, it doesn't breathe as well as my hair, and it's too large, so it, my helmet straps, and sunglass stems all conspire to make my scalp break out above my ears.

I had a moment of inspiration, and created the Schleck-Band. It's shown here as Frank, although Andy's brilliance can be seen in the foreground. It's a piece of cotton string that is tied behind my head, just like a normal Cadel Evans sized one. It really works too!

There's a Thor Hushovd version too, but it's made of 10mm steel cable. ;)

Isn't tongue-in-cheek fun?

Michelin vs Conti Tires

2011-08-05T02:00:00.000-07:00

Tired of twice ruining a Pro3 Race Michelin tire on the back wheel from a short skid avoiding a clueless pedestrian on the ARPT (We need a new rule making it legal to Tazer clueless peds who walk 4-5 abreast across the Sunrise foot bridge. It's a bridge, not your living room!) I decided it was time to stop running the same tire out back as up front. After all, they do completely different jobs.

I started by removing the Pro3 Race from the front and mounting a Conti GP4000s in front, and UltraGatorskin in back. (now renamed just Gatorskin). It seemed like a good place to apply sticky and tough respectively.

I flatted about 2 blocks from home when the GP4000s blew completely off the rim on one side. After a little head-scratching, I think that's because Conti tires, and especially the GP4000s, are kind of greasy when new. A tip about mounting new tires. Rub the sidewalls around on a dusty carpet or use some talc to mop up some of the oil.

A couple of days later, while doing routine maintenance, I happened to be looking at the rim and noticed the sidewall of the GP4000s was punctured, and the tube was coming through in a half-dozen places. I'm also disturbed that the GP4000s tires have no structure. They look like a sausage, or balloon, with no discernible sidewall or crown shape. They also turned out to be pretty bouncy at pressure, and gave a harsher, and less predictable ride than my Pro3 Race had. I returned them to Performance Bike Shop for a refund.

Remounting the Pro3 Race in front, I rode with that in front and the Gatorskins (folding, Kevlar bead, of course) in back. The Gatorskins were incredibly harsh, very twitchy, and when rolling over small twigs, pebbles, or cracks caused by erupting roots under the ARPT asphalt, they hopped all over the place. It really killed my speed coming home on the SE side of Lake Natoma, which has lots of twisting, hilly turns. I just didn't trust that I could lean into a turn and know where I'd come out of it with the back end hopping all over the place.

I've put about 150 miles on the Gatorskins now, and after the center dipples wore off, AND I let the pressure leak down to 80 psi, they are reasonably stable, but obviously, at that pressure they are a bit of a drag on performance. While, perhaps, a little tougher than the GP4000s sidewalls, the Gatorskin sidewalls don't inspire much confidence either. The tread seems pretty stout, but the sidewalls are thin and don't seem to have anything offering sidewall protection comparable to the Pro3 Race - which I've flatted on 6-8 times on crushed rock without issue.

I just got through mounting a new Pro3 Race on the front, and a Michelin Krylion on the back. I also have a new Pro Optimum rear tire. They only come in 25mm, but are a set with a dedicated rear and front tire. I was able to buy the rear separately, but having only one tube that will fit a 25mm, I decided to try the Krylion first.

One of the riders at SBHs claims to get ~ 3,700 miles on the rear and 6,700 up front with the Krylions, so I'm really hoping the Krylion in back and Pro3 Race in front will make an excellent combo, well matched for mileage. (It appears Michelin hasn't decided how to spell Krylion - or Krylon - who knows)

At this early juncture I have only one observation. If you're riding Conti tires, there's a much more compliant, supple ride, with better grip and sidewall protection waiting for you on a Michelin tire.

UPDATE: 8/5/2011

Michelin Krylion tires on the back roll a little slower than the Pro3 Race, and about the same as Gatorskins at full pressure, but without the lumber-wagon ride at full pressure. Feel is like the Gatorskins at around 85psi, but impressively stable, even while still being broken in. They also went on the rim easier than the Pro3 Race, as Michelin continues to tighten up the bead on the Pro3 based on the last 3 sets I've used.

Krylions are a tad bit harsher ride than the Pro3 Race, but not objectionable. Fairly supple, they ballistically ejected a stone to the side of the road when I rolled over it at ~ 25mph, but the back wheel stayed pretty well planted. They are narrower than the Gatorskins, and slice through the wind better. Both the Krylion and Pro3 Race are exactly 23mm by my digital caliper. Both were run at 115psi tonight.

I've also become aware that when riding in aerobars, tires that guarantee you a sure line when you initiate a turn are much more important. You just don't have the margin for error in aerobars that you do riding up the blocks. You also don't want blowouts or pinch-flats in front, and with a lot less weight on the rear tire, it has to be supple or it's going to be moving around all over the place, which is completely unnerving.

I'm going to do one more ride on the Krylions, and then try the Pro Optimum. I just have a hunch they are going to feel a lot like the Pro3 Race tire, but with just a tiny bit more wind drag at high speeds. I read an online review of a guy who put the Optimums on his TT bike and beat his prior 40km time by 3 minutes. Part of that may have been improved training, but he didn't think the Optimums slowed him down at all. We shall see.

Optimal Size and Structure of Sports Carbohydrate

2011-08-02T02:09:00.001-07:00

Like many amateur athletes, when I took up cycling again 3 years ago after a long hiatus, I came to the sport with a lot of poorly-informed ideas about sports nutrition, and specifically, what the characteristics of optimal sports carbohydrates were, and how they are digested and used in the human body.

While omitting oceans of details in writing this, I will attempt to illuminate the most relevant points, while avoiding overwhelming you with detail. This often-promised post has taken so long to write, because this is such a difficult balancing act to achieve.

Before we go any further, lets make this page a lot more readable and agree on an abbreviation for saccharides, or glucose units. Lets abbreviate that as GU.

Length and Branching of Carbohydrates

If you're old enough to consume carbohydrate as alcohol, then your mother probably warned you to avoid sugar, and stick to complex carbs like bread, rice, pasta, and potato. That advice is well-intentioned, but misinformed (So long as you are burning that sugar. Otherwise stay away from fructose and sucrose). All carbohydrate ultimately is digested into simple sugars, and then into the stuff that's flowing through your veins - glucose.

There is no mechanism in digestion to absorb any carbohydrate other than glucose into the bloodstream. ALL carbohydrate is reduced to glucose for digestion. Carbohydrate that cannot be reduced to glucose for absorption by the small intestine is either fermented by bacteria in the large intestine, producing heat and gas, or is excreted as waste.

The rate at which this occurs, if it occurs at all, is measured by the glycemic index (GI), and is NOT determined by the size of the glucose polymer you are ingesting, simple or complex. I say if at all, because cellulose and inulin, and for some people, lactose, is not digestible.

Glycemic Index of common sugars

It's also important to understand that your sense of sweetness doesn't indicate anything useful about how suitable a particular kind of carb is for sports nutrition. In fact, some carbs that taste rather sweet, like the inulin in bananas, cannot be digested by humans, and serve only to feed bacteria in your large intestine, creating gas and bloating. Sweetness is also NOT correlated with speed of digestion, as the GI of various sugars makes obvious, but does indicate when the GU count is getting down into sugar's range..

The glycemic index of anything ingested is established by the simplest of tests. Healthy humans are fed the test food, and then have their blood glucose levels measured every 15 minutes, usually for 3 hours. You can easily perform you own glycemic index tests for the modest cost of a blood glucose tester. The result is a graph like this.

Venous and Capillary Blood Glucose levels after ingesting 5 different grains

The much lower peak, and longer tail of the left graph is the result of insulin's effect on skeletal muscle's rapid uptake and metabolism of blood glucose. In creating this graph pair, I took great care to insure the Y (vertical) axis were the same. By following the colored lines at 60 and 90 minutes you can get a feel for how dramatic these differences are.

Carbohydrates known as sugars are typically either mono or disaccharides, having 1, or 2 GUs respectively. There are also trisaccharides, with 3 GUs, which you need Bean-O to digest, oligosaccharides with 3-10 GUs, maltodextrins with 5-33 GUs, amylose with 300-3,000 GUs, glycogen with 30,000 GUs, and anylopectin with up to 2 million GUs. Plant starch is either amylose, or amylopectin.

Amylose: Short, slow, and unbranched

Masterpiece of branched carbs, glycogen, containing ~ 30,000 GUs branched every 8-12 units

Amylopectin's massive 2 million GUs branched every 15-30 units.

Glycogen is often referred to as "animal starch" because it has a very similar chemical structure to the huge amylopectin glucose polymer in plants. It's shorter, having fewer GUs, but is more branched, and that branching turns out to be the 800lb gorilla in the room sports nutrition mfgs don't seem to want to discuss.

Human Metabolism of Carbohydrates

Digestion of carbohydrates takes place in the mouth, duodenum, and about the first 40cm of the small intestine. Except for alcohol, the stomach is incapable of absorbing anything, and for the most part, is a special-purpose organ for breaking down proteins - especially meats - and it's polar opposite Ph balance arrests digestion begun in the mouth.

The polymers of carbohydrate present in starch and complex sugars are first attacked by salivary amylase in the mouth. Interestingly, the sweetness of certain grains, like waxy rice, is due to some of the starch being broken down into small enough polymers to be perceived as sweet.

Maltodextrin commonly used in sports nutrition tend to have a DE of 9, where glucose is 100, so a GU of 100/9, or ~ 11. It is fairly easy to reduce that to glucose and maltose. The same is true for waxy rice's "grape cluster" structure getting cleaved off the "vine" and attacked.

This brings up an important point. There are basically 2 kinds of amylase. One kind attacks ONLY the branches of glucose polymers, and one ONLY attacks the ends. There isn't much for the latter to do with something like amylose, which accounts for it's much lower GI. Both amylases attack at random locations, but in highly branched polymers, breaking a single branch connector exposes dozens of ends. By contrast, breaking a linear polymer exposes only 2 ends.

This simple idea is why branching is much more important than polymer length in creating the high GI carbohydrates for optimal sports performance. (as a point of interest, the very best high explosives have this same, very complex branching structure, but with many oxygen atoms bound into the molecule, so that both the fuel and oxidizer are present in close proximity in explosives)

Intestinal villi's brush border has a surface area equal to a small 2 bdrm apt

Let's come at this conclusion from the other end. Since all carbohydrate digestion finally reduces glucose polymers to single glucose molecules, why not just ingest glucose. How can you beat that?

Well, first, you can beat that. Maltose, a disaccharide, has a GI of 105, higher than glucose's reference GI of 100. So do certain types of rice, potato, and dates, where certain varieties approach a GI of 140. This clearly indicates that the intestinal brush border is capable of simultaneously reducing glucose polymers, and absorbing the resulting glucose monomers. But for athletes, the real answer is HEAT.

Sugars are NOT very energy dense. Imagine how much straw you'd have to burn to keep warm in a really cold climate. Straw burns very fast, but it doesn't produce much heat. You could also burn balsa wood, spruce, pine, douglas fir, fruit wood, or oak. You still might not care what you burn if you had an unlimited supply to feed the fire, but you don't.

Sugar, like salt, increases osmotic pressure (as much as 300 psi) as more of it is added to liquids like Gatorade. Increase the strength to get more fuel, and the osmotic pressure becomes so great your small intestine can no longer pump salt and glucose into your blood, so it passes undigested into your colon, where bacteria are eagerly awaiting their next meal. The by-product of that bacterial digestion is gas, and it's attendant bloating. This limits the amount of sugar to about a 6% solution - exactly what Gatorade has.

When it gets hot, things go from bad to worse fast, because your body has to keep your core cool, and to do that it has to open your capillaries and start devoting a lot of small intestinal surface area to absorbing water to support sweating. This has 2 negative impacts.

First, it starves your digestive tract for blood, so even if your intestine hasn't shut down, there just isn't enough blood to properly absorb the glucose from the intestine. Second, at some point, your small intestine can no longer absorb enough water to support sweating. Not to worry, your large intestine (colon) is not only ready to absorb more water, it's actually more efficient at it, BUT, if any carbs get past your small intestine, they just feed those gas-producing bacteria, NOT you.

Initially, you can dilute your Gatorade mix, which is what I do, but in doing so, you have to add back electrolytes and carbs to make up for the dilution. There are lots of good electrolyte solutions out there, but that doesn't help make up for the lost carbs.With intense sweating though, only salt and pure water will prevent gas and bloating. The body's water absorption rate is the limiting factor for sports performance in intense heat.

What's needed to prevent glycogen depletion is a denser fuel with a much lower osmotic pressure than sugar. Say hello to starch, or some derivative of it, like maltodextrin, with a GI of 105. While salt greatly enhances the rate of water absorption, with intense heat, carbs have to be consumed at 75% of max HR or less to reduce sweating. Salt, water, then food.

Knowing what you do now about the structure of carbohydrates, you'll be looking for a carbohydrate with a structure like liver or muscle glycogen. Highly branched, and very densely packed. Obviously, amylopectin meets this criteria, and accounts for the large difference in GIs amongst rice varieties with high and low percentages of amylose.

Maltodextrin squeaks by because it has ~ 11GUs, and a much lower osmotic pressure than sugar. It doesn't leave much for the end-breaking amylase to do though, relying solely on linear polymer reduction. I'm guessing, but I think all that type-specific unemployed amylase becomes part of the problem.

High amylose starch is necessarily low amylopectin. All starch is one or the other. The former has GIs in the 60s, and the latter in the high 80s. In fact, short-grain waxy rice has zero, or very near zero amylose, and certain varieties have a GI of over 130. (item #293)

Relatively small amounts of fuels this dense will supply as much glucose as a balanced attack by all varieties of human amylase can sustain, and the intestinal brush border can absorb. It can do so with NO osmotic pressure problems. This is like burning 400 yr old English Oak.

Glycemic Index and Insulin Index of Selected Rices

We're not quite done with our story though. Look back up to the two GI graphs. One for venous, and one for capillary glucose. Remember the huge difference in those levels is due entirely to the effect of insulin on large skeletal muscles. Now look at the insulin index of Waxy Rice above. Even though the GI of waxy rice is lower than Pelde white rice, the insulin index is a staggering 22 points higher! (we might also suspect that such a high level of insulin is lowering the observed GI by increasing the rate at which measurable glucose is being metabolized out of the blood)

Have you ever had a 15-20 minute interval where your strength was super-human? We've all seen these displays by professional athletes. They're the stuff of legend. I'm speculating here, but I think those incredible moments of strength are due to a convergence of high blood glucose and high insulin levels. The pancreas does not release insulin on a continuous basis. It's released at approximately 6 minute intervals, or shorter intervals in highly trained athletes. After this flood of insulin is released into the blood, it's monitored for depletion. For athletes, carbs that induce a larger release of insulin are better carbs.

In summary, looking at the GI of many foods, it seems clear to me that the gains made by sports nutrition companies in "predigesting" starch carbohydrate into shorter, linear glucose polymers (maltodextrin and brown rice syrup), has reached a plateau. It looks like the way forward is to find varieties of rice, or perhaps other starchy grains, which naturally have very high GIs, investigate their branching structures, and cross breed or genetically engineer "super fuels" - which may have GIs close to 150, and provoke intense insulin responses. Such a break-through is more likely to come from Monsanto than Hammer, as the research effort will surely be large and expensive.

Ironically, this investigation has already begun, but it's focused in the opposite direction - to find or create lower GI grains to address the obesity epidemic. The table above was taken from such a study. It may seem a frivolous endeavor to find a "super fuel", but imagine the benefit for infantry to have a fuel that will stave off glycogen depletion from sunrise to sunset on the longest day. It, of course, is also of great interest to those of us who compete against time and reason to find satisfaction and glory.

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Aerodynamic Waterbottle Positioning.

2011-07-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

As some of you might recall, I have lowered my downtube waterbottle cage by mounting the top hole in the cage on the bottom frame hole, and zip-tying the bottom of the cage to the frame. So is it really faster? The Cervelo engineers think so.

Check out this picture of Thor Hushvod's S5 Cervelo. The downtube has an extra waterbottle hole (braze-on?, are you kidding me? What a misnomer!!!) below the top 2 just to allow the cage to be moved down if using only one bottle.

I have a Profile Designs seat rack for 2 extra bottles, so I have removed the seat tube bottle cage. (more aero btw, than the downtube bottle in its normal position)

Check it out.

If an S5 rider is only using one water bottle cage, Cervélo found it was much faster when mounted lower on the down tube. That's what that third braze-on is for.

Yes, I have a "princess and the pea" feel for a bike, but IMHO, this made more difference than the last 10mm of handlebar drop. The reason is simple.

The air up top is still pretty clean, even behind the headtube, but down near the crank it is hopelessly burbled up, so might as well jam the bottle in there. In its usual position it destroys the clean airflow up top.

I was up after midnight last night working on my Opus Magnum of ride fuel, so not forgotten, just a really tough post to write. Oceans and oceans of data, most of it very interesting to me personally, but overwhelming too, so I am having to make hundreds and hundreds of decisions about what to leave out , and what to put in.

I've made a LOT of progress though. After 12 hrs maxing out 3 computers here I have the carbohydrate structure part pretty much done. Now for the human body's digestion part, and then some discussion. 40% done? Man, I'm tired. Going for a ride tonight!

Techie Tuesday - Microsoft Ate my Homework

2011-07-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

Lots of computer problems here this week, so not wanting to invite marauding hordes of malware into my life, I am tending to LOTS of system software issues at the moment.

What's on tap for next week though is really special. It's a presentation on the length and structure of carbohydrates. Carbohydrate glucose polymers go from a length of 1 (glucose) to a length of over 2 million (cotton, and some very special ride fuel). Shorter is better, right? That's what the people selling brown rice syrup and maltodextrin keep telling us. Are they wrong? If so, why?

Why isn't pure glucose the ultimate ride fuel? and how can anything have a glycemic index higher than pure glucose? Things worth knowing. I'll also explain the science behind the glycemic index, which is so much in the news these days, and deserves to be.

I know I've promised this before, but small libraries have been written on this subject, and it's the "science", bold or implied, behind millions of advertising dollars. All of this makes it very difficult to put in an intuitive presentation format. As my father used to say, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right". So be it.

See you all next week.

Wheel Lust

2011-07-17T10:04:00.000-07:00

It took me 3 days to recover from that really hard ride on Monday morning, and the fatigue was just crushing. Riding with the slow group, I am just bored silly, so I really want to be able to ride with the fast group and NOT end up crushed for days.

I bought my OpenPro/Shimano 6700 wheels for durability, and love them for that, but pushing 32 spokes front and back on a shallow rim is adding a lot of work. Added to a right bundle branch block, which makes the left and right side of my heart beat more and more out of synch as my pulse rate goes up, it adds up to me needing a more slippery front wheel.

By the time the air gets to the back wheel it's so hopelessly broken up that aero rear wheels aren't very effective - especially on a non-aero frame. For the front wheel however, in nice clean air, it's very effective. To make wheels more aero you need fewer, aero spokes, and 30mm or more of rim depth.

I've been looking at wheels from 30mm to 80mm, and given I don't have a spare front wheel yet, think the Mavic Cosmic Elite might just do the trick. At around $200 it should make just enough difference on the flats to keep me safe and sane.

Of course, if I had more money to play with, I'd opt for the Cosmic Carbone SL, but at almost $600 I'd need more of a reason than 5-7 BPM on club rides to justify the expense. Still, when my lottery ticket wins, I'm there! (SRAM also makes interesting S60 60mm and S80 80mm offerings, but they are heavier and more expensive)

5-7 BPM may not seem like much, but it would drop me down out of Zone 5, and I know from a lot of experience, that staying in Zone 5 for more than a few minutes dramatically adds to my recovery time. Of course, I could just ask the guys to slow down... like THAT's going to happen.

River of Time

2011-07-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

Things change. Tires, bar tape, bike clubs, and pro riders. I've been riding 100 mile weeks again, and more of it with a bike club than in 2 years now. Lance Armstrong was in Davis last weekend in support of that city's LiveStrong fundraising ride. First time since the ATOC in 2009. My friend Jodi was there and really psyched!

Jens Voigt in perfect climbing form. One of the true giants of the sport.

It's mid-July, and the Tour de'France is in full swing. I was so looking forward to the RadioShack team crushing the Pyrenees and hoping Chris Horner would have an epic tour and maybe win it all. Their luck has just been atrocious though, so I find myself rooting for Big George and Cadel Evans' BMC team, and hoping they can punish the wheel-sucking Schleck-Tard team, and put Contador to rest.

I will really miss George Hincapie and Kloden when they retire. True hard men of the sport. I think this photo of Klodi says it all. If we'e talking about the greats, I just have to mention Jens Voigt as well. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying Thor Hushovd's reign at the top, and Cav's peevishly quick smile when winning.

Andreas Klöden : Hard man

I had a really wonderful ride on the 4th of July with the Sacramento Bike Hikers, was able to ride near the front on both legs of the roughly out and back route, and really enjoyed the company, route and pace.

On Monday we did a breakfast ride, and it was so cool I wore arm warmers both ways. Some good climbing, including Iron Point Rd, and some of the bike paths and neighborhoods where the views are magnificent and the houses are paid for by Intel stock options..

The Tourmalet circa 1937

On the way home we averaged a bit over 20mph for about 12 miles heading into a 8-12mph breeze, and I put my aerobars to good use pulling a fast group of 5 into the wind in the most exposed area of the bike trail. I got some compliments on that pull, and was a bit puzzled by that until I looked at the Garmin trace. Instead of a spiky saw-tooth my pull was nice and even.

I had to dig really deep after 2.5 hours of riding to keep the hammer down, but was very happy my legs felt so strong so late in the ride. Also nice that we started 10 minutes behind the main group of 30 riders and passed them doing about 23 mph on a long straight stretch.

I'm still a little tired though from that one, as I did about 45 minutes above LT, and 30 minutes of that at better than 90% of max HR. I think next time I'll stay with the peleton on the way out, and hammer home. Mostly though, SBHs are about riding. Just putting in a lot of miles, and not gear, or egos (well, not too much, anyway). They also put on their annual picnic last weekend and I met a lot of my FB friends in person for the 1st time.

So what happened to my old bike club, Hammerin Wheels? Not really sure, but they seem to have imploded. Not many rides and all very poorly attended. I put a lot of time and effort into teaching members there about gear and nutrition, so as sour as the vibe got to be there, I'm a little sad to see it come to this.

A couple of panic stops (idiot peds on the ARPT) ripped through the tread, and by the end of our speed run Monday, the chords were showing through on my back tire. I used up a gift card at Amazon, and dividends at Performance Bike shop, and put Conti GP 4000s on the front, and when they arrive, Ultra Gatorskins on the back.

If I am still getting flats in back I may move up to the Gatorskin Hardshells. I like the pointed crown on the GP 4000s better than the Michelin Pro3 Race I've been running for 3 yrs now. Very sticky rubber too. Like super glue sticky. Will have to see how they perform.

Conti has an asymmetrical Attack/Force tire combo with a 22mm in front and a 24mm in back, with construction tweaked for turning and pushing respectively, and it got me to wondering how much sense running identical tires front and back really makes. I think I may have flatted once in 3 years in front, and 2-3 dozen times in back. I also can wear through at least 3 back tires before the front goes, so I'm going to try tailoring the tires to the task and see how that works.

As expected, I have had to move the shifters enough to require retaping the bars, and after going from blue sidewalls to black on the tires, I want more viz than royal blue and black dapple provides, so I am going back to blazing Ferrari Red. The Black & Blue tape was Profile Designs, and it has no sticky on the back. Weird, but it did allow me to move the tape up a bit to follow the shifters.

The red tape is a new up-scale tape from Performance, which admittedly is a little like saying upscale Yugo, but I ride in the aerobars so much the bar tape isn't that critical. (although I am riding on the blocks a lot more now riding with the SBH, so wrist swelling is an issue again) At any rate, it seems worth a try, and I like the fog-horn subtlety of all that red up front.

Oh, I am absolutely swimming in my new PI Elite In-R-Cool shorts. I got back from the ride on the 4th of July and had to pull them up over my naval to get them fully stretched out. I don't know if they've stretched or not, but they are causing my back muscles to cramp that far up on my kidneys. (aside from being completely ridiculous) I've received a very strong recommendation for Assos bib shorts, so I'll try those after returning the PI shorts.

Finally, it looks like the Specialized Avatar Gel seat has done the trick. Yea!

Descending the Tourmalet at 60+ mph. God's roller coaster!

So that's where I'm at, rowing along on my river of time. Keeping at it. Staying healthy. Learning, and stopping to smell the rubber along the way.

Fastener DuJour - the Visclamp

2011-07-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday America! Love your spacious skies, purple mountain's majesty, fruited plains, and amber waves of grain. So much so that I've been backpacking, camping, bike hiking and snow-camping in them for about 40 years now, so imagine my surprise to learn the even Google, the keeper of all knowledge, doesn't know what a visclamp is! :-O

I happen to have a few, left to me by my old friends Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone. In service to all mankind, or at least the part of mankind that still fiddles with tents and tarps, here is a picture of a visclamp.

Alas, there appear to be none available anymore, at any price. If you have any, NEVER lend them out. You'll NEVER get them back. EVER. They sprout legs and crawl off in ways that would challenge the creativity of a small army of Hollywood script writers.

Proof-of-life photo of a pair of visclamps who floundered en'route to the Ark

The ball is pushed up through the fabric and the large hole, and then the clamp is slid along its rails until the ball is over the small hole, whereupon the guy line is routed through the large hole and wala, instant movable grommet. Think "super-duty garter belt fastener". (they're still making those)

They're absolutely bomb-proof fasteners, and will hang on to fabric or random places on tents with crazy tenacity. There are some plastic do-dads that attempt to do the same job, and if you're lucky enough to always be latching onto ripstop nylon, or some other crazy tough fabric, they'll do. But in high winds and thin sheets, these babies are the only option.

Quick Nutrition on Hot Days

2011-06-28T16:55:00.000-07:00

Microwaved Pepper Chicken Breast

Here's a quick, nutritious meal you can make on a hot day without heating up the whole house. It's packed with easy to digest protein, antioxidants, vitamin C, calcium, slow carbs, smells wonderful cooking, and tastes great. Don't be surprised if you find yourself doing a "re-do" as you may start craving a 2nd helping.

The grapefruit juice tastes great, adds acid to help digest minerals, adds vitamin C, and starts the digestion of the meat for you, so it hits hungry legs FAST!

Ingredients:

Half a red onion, diced
One fresh red or yellow bell pepper (or frozen mix is great)
One chicken breast marinaded in Ruby Red Grapefruit juice for 1-10 days
2 tablespoons of Ruby Red grapefruit juice
1/3 rd cup of Craisins (cranberry 'raisins')
Olive or Canola oil (critical for generating heat in microwave)
Salt

Pour 1 tablespoon oil in bottom of Pyrex dish. Lay chicken breast smooth side down in the bottom of the dish. Add 2-3 tablespoons of fresh Ruby Red Grapefruit juice. Smother with mixed onions, bell peppers, and Craisins. Sprinkle with salt. (If the rough side is down the chicken breast will trap steam and explode your dinner all over the inside of the microwave. Don't ask....)

Microwave loosely covered dish 12-15 minutes. My baked potato setting works great on my microwave. Cook until reduced enough that the onions or peppers start to caramelize a little. Chicken breasts are usually 1/2 to 3/4 of a pound, so about 40-65 grams of protein. Great with milk, and dark chocolate for dessert.

PS:
If you hate chopping onions, there's a 'new' way that's safer and without tears. Cut the onion in half top to bottom. Using the root to hold the onion together, slice off the top and then cut down through the onion in a fan pattern without cutting all the way back to root.

Finally, slice the onion from the top down towards the root in 1/4 inch slices. The rings of the onion will create the phantom 3rd cut to create perfect diced onions. They also keep longer sliced this way, if you decide to pre-slice an onion or 2 and store in the fridge in some Tupperware.

Techie Tuesday - Prepping for Long Miles

2011-06-28T16:12:00.000-07:00

Lake near top of Ebbet's Pass. June 11th, 2011.

It's raining here again today, perhaps as much as a half an inch. Wow, really? In late June? Unheard of! Likely this still frozen lake will get another foot of snow tonight. Wow!

I've been ramping up my mileage again, with a goal of 100 miles per week, every week, week in and week out. Recovery time can make this difficult sometimes, so I've yet to hit 400 miles in a month, but I managed to get in 137 miles last week, in spite of 100+ heat on Tuesday.

When I start riding 100+ miles (and climbing 7,500+) I start to notice little things that become more important.

Getting my clothes washed so they're clean, dry, and ready the next day
Keeping the drivetrain properly cleaned and lubed
Inspecting the rear tire before I'm riding on thread-bare tires
Making those little adjustments that irk me on the ride, but I forget once home (a note pad, voice message or email to yourself also works well)
Cleaning the bike and wheels before totally filthy
Having pre and post-ride food prepped and stocked. Rice, potatoes and milk respectively in my case
Having spare stocks of Gatorade, PowerBars, electrolytes in the cupboard
Keeping waterbottles clean, sterile and in the fridge if filled
Having meals, especially protein rich meals, prepped or at least stocked
Having spare tires and wheels on hand
Having plenty of spare inner-tubes, and patch kits on hand
Remembering to patch or replace the tube in my saddle bag
Keeping fresh or freshly charged batteries in my lights
Recharging the Garmin after each ride, and deleting old rides from it
Keeping my activities uploaded to the computer and tracking my progress.
Remembering to stop and smell the roses when serendipity happens

The biggest challenge seems to be updating my grocery list and making small adjustments to the bike. Since I'm still dialing in my seat choice, and seat position, I've ended up making adjustments in the field of late. I'm still tweaking the shifter position, handlebars and aerobars too as longer miles aggravate my wrist pain.

Specialized Avatar Gel Saddle. My next iteration in the search.

Spares, in general, just become so much more important when doing serious training. Sure, you can run to the bike shop for something you need, but there goes your training window for the day. When you're at the bike shop pick up some extra tubes and patch kits, and maybe some more ride fuel.

Serious training is much more of a logistics battle than recreational riding. It's an unwelcome distraction to have to break your routine, or from you planned training because of poor planning and preparation. Fortunately, a few lists can make things very manageable.

Techie Tuesday - SWF Hydration

2011-06-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

I found this incredible product. You just add water, and **poof**, instant single, white, female. Sadly, NOT true!

We have been having a heat wave here though - 103 in the shade. Kind of late, but otherwise the expected heat after months of cool, rainy weather that characterized the Amgen Tour of California. So now I am on the prowl for SWF - but not the kind you'd expect. In this case S.W.F is an acronym for

Salt
Water
Food

... which is the sequence, and priority of consumption to keep hydrated, fed, and prevent cramping, and nausea.

Salt, or more specifically, sodium, is needed to transport water (study the animation and read the remarks) into your blood, generate thirst, and is necessary in the small intestine to enable transport of glucose from the intestinal brush border into the bloodstream.

In addition, salt must be added to digested water to maintain the isotonic salinity of the blood, which just happens to be identical to seawater. Supporting glucose transfer doesn't use up sodium, but maintaining isotonic electrolyte levels in your blood does. Africans, and their descendants, are genetically predisposed to hang onto sodium tenaciously. It leads to might higher rates of hypertension, but on hot days, the brothers have an advantage!

As such, sodium, typically as sodium chloride (table salt), or sodium citrate (typical source in sports concoctions), is the foundation for proper hydration, which in turn is the foundation for proper nutrition. You will need between 400 and 1,200mg per hour, and maybe more, to keep up with losses on hot days. That's between 1/6th and 1/2 of a teaspoon. Easy numbers to remember, as you will burn 400-1,200 calories per hour to fuel your ride. Happy coincidence, and nothing more.

Sodium and water, as well as all the high GI ride fuels you eat during cycling events, are processed in about the first 40cm of the small intestine - at least if all goes well. When things don't go well, food and water are swept past the absorption/diffusion zone in the small intestine and into the large intestine where bacteria await their next meal, which they will ferment, causing nausea, gas, bloating and cramping. Worse, you'll be feeling weak at the same time because you don't have enough sodium to get water and glucose into your bloodstream.

The good news is - with one caveat - that your large intestine will absorb almost any water it is presented with, and it's more efficient at absorbing water than the small intestine. The caveat is, while the large intestine can absorb water, and some sodium at the same time, it is also tasked with ridding your body of a lot of toxic substances, some of which are minerals, and lack of water and some fresh fiber makes simultaneously absorbing sodium and dumping toxic minerals very difficult.

A little pre-ride planning can be very helpful in this regard, as squeaky clean bowels, with a little fresh fiber thrown in from say, fruit, will make your event ride go well, while stale poo will be full of toxins that will tend to get reabsorbed. In essence, fiber in your bowels will act as a sponge saturated with toxins that will poison you each time you hydrate.

I have endured this condition on several occasions and it absolutely saps your strength and makes you feel sick, weak, and lethargic, just when you expect you should be feeling strong. The RX is to eat enough healthy fiber on the ride to get clean FAST. Your energy will improve almost immediately.

A great practical remedy is to drink 8-16 oz of premium prune/plum juice after your evening meal the night before the ride. Not only will you start the day clean, but prune juice is packed with good minerals and a whopping 41mg of quality carbs per serving. During the ride things like watermelon, strawberries, and grapes, will keep things moving in a good direction. Citrucel and FiberCon also work, and will NOT ferment, but have no antioxidants. Still, a good thing to have in your arsenal.

Cliff Bars are a god-awful synthetic concoction masquerading as something 'natural'. They contain lots of brown rice syrup, a completely man-made substance that breaks down brown rice flour with heat, and enzymes from bacteria, to 'predigest' the rice for you in much the same way corn flour is turned into maltodextrin. More to the point, it is spiked with inulin to provide fiber.

Inulin is a creamy substance food mfgs love because the tongue perceives it as sweet and creamy, but it has no oil. It's fiber that's made from chicory, is IMPOSSIBLE for human beings to digest, but ferments very quickly in the large intestine. In short, it is the perfect recipe for massive doses of gas and bloating. Fruit fiber is the best, and mother nature has provided huge amounts in yummy packages, usually attendant with lots of antioxidants, so stick to fruit.

While we are slaying sacred cows, Hammer Endurolytes have so little sodium in them (40mg) that you'd have to ingest 59 of them just to meet your normal daily requirement of 2,360mg. Given that they have 330% of your RDA of vitamin B6 per casual, you'd be ingesting toxic amounts of of B6 in doing so.

I'm going to list the sodium content of some common sports concoctions below, but before I do I want to hit the SWF order again. A nice, even, steady, constant flow of sodium into your system lays a very solid foundation for the same in your hydration and nutrition.

For this reason I highly recommend time-released salt tablets. My favorite is ThermoTabs, and I have been using them for over 30 years. 1-2 an hour will keep you on a nice even keel. As always, your kidneys will filter out any excess.

On that note, there's a very practical way to determine how much sodium to ingest, increase the rate of ingestion until your kidneys start to hurt (low-mid back pain), and then back off a bit. The entire surface of your skin acts like a 3rd kidney, so excess salt is very quickly (15-30 minutes) removed.

Be aware that things like Gatorade have sodium, sugar and water together, which is fine until you have to ingest so much Gatorade to satisfy your water and sodium requirements that your small intestine can't digest the sugar fast enough to keep it out of your large intestine. The usual remedy, watering it down, deprives you of the sodium you need, so either add something like PowerBar Electrolytes to your mix, or take 1-3 ThermoTabs per hour.

Don't try to increase the strength of your Gatorade mix to get more sodium. It's not just salt that increases osmotic pressure. Sugar is used in canning fruit for exactly the same reason salt is used to cure meat - they both create high osmotic pressures to extract water. Your GI tract cannot work against this kind of pressure, and when osmotic pressures get high enough, water will actually be drawn out of your blood and into your gut. Very, very bad.

The remedy for avoiding high osmotic pressure due to excessive sugar, is to substitute starch, or it's chemically altered cousin, maltodextrin. (GU, Perpetuem, 50lb bags of the stuff from GPC in Iowa) In my experience short-grain, waxy Sushi rice will best any of these, and contains only small amounts of sugar if made as usual.

You should always monitor the color of your urine, but know that simply being able to urinate is not a reliable indicator that you're properly hydrated. If you're very low on sodium, your body will be forced to excrete water to keep you from going into a state of hyponatremia (low sodium). Thus, it's possible to be dehydrated, but still be urinating.

With intense heat, it's not VO2max, or muscular endurance, or glycogen depletion that limits athletic performance, its your body's ability to digest water fast enough to prevent dehydration causing the body to hoard the last of its water to maintain blood volume by arresting sweating, and closing capillaries, which leads to very high core temps, internal organ failure, brain damage, heart attack, and death.

The best way to recover from impending heat stroke is to cool the body without requiring sweating. This means pouring water down your back, over your head, or immersing yourself in water. Ice packs can help, as can cold drinks. Packing your thighs with ice is very good. Fans won't help. You've stopped sweating, so they won't help unless you have external water sources to power evaporative cooling.

The bottom line for sodium, is it's almost impossible to get too much, and very easy to get too little. More is almost always better. Salt, Water, Food.

Morton's Salt: 590 mg per 1/4 tsp serving. 491 servings per $0.99 box
1 sausage link: 500-600mg
1 serving spaghetti sauce: 400-500mg
Nuun 1 tablet serving 360mg (with an awkward 16oz of water)
Succeed S-Caps: 341mg per capsule
Gatorade powdered mix: 338 mg per 24oz cycling waterbottle or 450mg per 32oz quart
Powerbar Electrolytes: 260mg per foil stick
ThermoTabs: 180mg per time-released tablet
2 tsp salsa: 110mg
2 tsp peanut butter: 90mg
Hammer Endurolytes: 40mg per capsule (lick your finger and poke a salted tray. Just as effective)

First 100-mile 'Week'

2011-06-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

For the first time this year, I've managed to put in 100 miles in 7 days. The perpetual rain finally stopped last Tuesday, so I joined a club ride on their Beal's Pt Sprint ride, from the Fish Hatchery up to Beal's Pt. This was pretty much my bread and butter Beal's ride - except for the pace - since I rode to the start.

When I got there a few of the riders I knew were riding slow laps of the parking lot to warm up, which I didn't need to do, but it was nice to catch up with them. As the minutes ticked by we picked up riders, some who just happened by, and some, like me, were there on purpose. Few of the HWs rides have been well-attended this year, so everyone was pleasantly surprised that we headed out with ~ 14 riders.

Once we crossed under Hazel Ave on the newly reopened underpass loop, we headed up over the bridge and then down the 'chute' for the dam. On the ride briefing, Jeff had recommended we wait till around the dam before putting the hammer down, so when nobody seemed to want the lead I thought it might be a slow sprint ride.

NOT! We got 500 yards past the dam and the group started to get organized. I started passing riders as we had a pretty good tail-wind, and 23 mph just wasn't that hard. I ended up near the front of the 'fast' group of 5, and checking the Garmin trace when home, we averaged 22.7 on the 3.5 mile false-flat from there to the Negro Bar.

We did the flat stretch along Lake Natoma between 30 & 31mph, and I averaged 155bpm on that leg. The approach climb up onto the plateau of Negro Bar pushed me right to red-line for the first time, as the kites blew past me. I grabbed my waterbottle and tried to get some hydration, wind, and ride fuel in me for the main Beal's climb, now 1 mile ahead.

I regained contact with the kites, much to my surprise, but they dropped me a 1,000 yards into the climb where the 5-7% grade starts. Since I usually rest and hydrate at Negro bar when riding solo, I knew my HR was going to soar on the climb. I averaged 96% of max HR for the 14:22 it took to get to the top, and finished the last 100 yards at 102% of max.

Jeff, the owner of HWs had been laying back, saving himself for the climb, and though I held him off on the bottom part, just before we went under the bridge he and Julie went by me. Blowing hard I dropped into the aerobars and put down a few meager watts on the shallow downgrade heading under the Johnny Cash Bridge, and caught their wheel.

I stayed right on their wheel until the 9-10% kicker on the last 400 yards. Jeff was climbing out of the saddle, and started to drop Julie and I. 200 yards from the top I dropped Julie and hammered for all I was worth. I got within about 10 yards of Jeff, but couldn't catch him. I rolled past him, and as I looked back he was ballistically puking his lunch all over the road. I rolled into the concessions area gassed, but smiling, and saw the kites were dismounted and sucking hard on waterbottles.

After a break we headed across the parking lot, and back down the hill. I moved to the front, as I go downhill like a rocket, and didn't want to be riding my brakes the whole way. I picked up another rider going back under the bridge, and made a very fast technical descent, dropping him on the Oak Hill exit straight before the steepest, most technical (really broken up surface due to tree roots) stretch.

I dropped into the aerobars and tried to catch my breath as I rounded the last bend and headed down the straight stretch for Folsom. I stomped the hill leading out of the bottom between the bridges, and felt OK, but my legs didn't have their usual snap, so I eased off a bit, and tried to get my HR back into zone 4.

I stayed in front of the entire group for 5.5 miles, but the peleton caught me on the one good hill coming back. We were only 2.5 miles from the dam, but heading into the wind, I didn't want to have to ride solo. I was lucky in that there were a few weak climbers at the back, and I had saved just enough to catch their wheel.

The peleton was pretty ratty by this time, and not calling traffic, so as my wind came back I stared barking out 'bike ups' and the group seemed to collectively understand we were once again a cohesive unit. With rotations at the front, and some strong pulls by a few of the riders we managed 21 mph back to the dam. I was surprised to look back when climbing up onto the bridge to see our 14 man group had swollen to about 25. With a headwind, nobody wanted to ride alone!

I ended up on Jeff's wheel, and with faster traffic behind, and a nice gap ahead of me heading under the Hazel Ave Bridge, I decided to pass him. Yes, it was a bit of guilty pleasure, but I gave him plenty of time to step up the pace, so a righteous move. A split second later a squirrel darted across the trail, right between my wheels, and I actually felt my back wheel break loose for an instant as I ran over his tail. Jeff caught up to me and said "man, you're the luckiest guy alive!". I was leaning into the turn pretty good when it happened, so he was right!

When I got home and uploaded the Garmin I knew I was going to be tired the next day. A full 30 minutes in Zone 5, and HR averaging 87% of max, with the 102% kicker. I also averaged 263 watts, just 3 short of my PB when hopped up on Claritin, and that in spite of lolling around the parking lot doing circles in Zone 2. If I could figure out how to remove that segment, I'm sure this would be a new PB wattage.

My BP after a cool shower was in the 100/55 range, and HR around 95, so I should have taken a salt tablet, but have been wanting to ditch my BP meds, so I decided with (finally) sunny weather in the forecast I would just use that as a running start towards kicking the habit.

Long story short, I was horribly fatigued the next 2 days, sleeping most of the day. With low sodium comes low blood volume, and that creates a lot of extra work for a tired heart trying to maintain adequate blood pressure and flow. The next day it all went awry, and I ended up at a clinic with BP of 180/118. By the time the doc came in and took my BP, it was down to 160/105, but he still wanted to send me to the ER. I talked him out of it, but my headache and light headedness told me the same thing - even if I hadn't had a cuff at home.

24 hrs later I went for a flat ride down to Sac State (CSUS), up to Hazel, and then back home. I would sprint and then fade, not being able to settle on a pace. When I got home I realized I was over-medicated and lacking sodium. This is a very good simulation of high heat. I took a ThermoTab (time-released salt), waited for my BP to get back into the 130/75 range, and went to sleep. I took more med in the morning, and things started to settle down nicely.

Yesterday I did the identical route, this time without accidentally turning off the Garmin in the middle of the ride, and things went a lot better, even though the heat was a factor early in the ride. I took a ThermoTab again after my shower, and then a med before bed, and was in great shape this morning.

I think going that hard is not good training for me. It creates lingering fatigue, but I'd have to ride in the morning, away from the heat of the day to make a good call on that. I followed a big brick from CSUS back to WBP last night, and averaged 22.0 on the blocks the whole time. I'm riding in peletons a lot more these days, and am working on more speed up on the blocks. I thanked my locomotive as I peeled off.

Just as I pulled over at the drinking fountain at WBP, a group of 4 riders pulled up on 80's vintage steel bikes. One of those bikes was a Gitane! My first 10 speed bike was a Gitane, so I was thrilled to see one again in real life. We talked a lot about restoring old bikes, and local bike clubs they might be interested in. I met them 45 minutes later coming back towards them from Hazel. They were all smiles as I waved and gave them a shout. Hope I see them out there again soon!

.

Saddle - Chamois Matching

2011-05-27T02:27:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I recently changed my saddle, twice in fact, but except for the height of the mounting rails, the last two saddles were the same. My previous saddle was solid in the middle, with a gel center that was ever so slightly concave in the perineum area. My new saddle, a Specialized Romin Elite, has a long hollow channel running much of the length of the saddle.

A petite channel keeps the saddle centered well on solid center saddles

My favorite go-to shorts, the Novara Gel shorts pictured above, have a fantastic gel pad in the chamois, but the transition off the gel pad onto the perimeter padding is rather 'sharp' and abrupt, right were my new saddle widens out. The Romin also is rather flat, having almost no side at all, but the side it does have is quite hard. The result is the chamois's sharp edge crosses the saddle's edge right where my femoral artery rubs against the seat. As a result of a lot of irritation, I have been developing a small cyst next to the artery.

The solution was to find either a different saddle or a different pair of shorts, but some combination that works well together. I've taken some photos of the chamois, because chamois was the solution in my case, and because the saddle has solved other problems for me, like better support for riding in the drops and aerobars, and ventilation.

Lacking support to keep the 2 sides apart, this is a chamois only the Marquios De Sade could love

The key difference between these Pearl Izumi chamois is the small center line of padding that occupies the void in saddles with hollow centers. The chamois with white padding on orange is missing this, and either one side or the other is guaranteed to drop into such a hollow. It's also designed to rip out your pubic hairs in the most painful possible way, but that's due to the holes.

A padded center rib that soaks into the void in hollow center saddles keeps these well planted under you

The blue and grey chamois is very similar to the 1-piece orange chamois on my new shorts. The transition on this cheaper, PI Attack short is actually a bit more gradual because the stitching compresses it, but it holds heat and is more vulnerable to tearing. It did make an excellent short to take for a trial run - once I remembered I owned it. Based on it's excellent performance, I bought the more expensive PI Elite In-R-Cool short on the right.

The shorts have other features I like besides the chamois, like longer legs, better venting, and special fibers that wick heat away, but the chamois might actually be a little thinner.

This trend, to have higher end shorts with thinner chamois is rather maddening, and I assume it's due to stronger riders supporting more of their body weight on their feet, and therefore, less on their butts. Whatever the reason, it sure would be nice to have a high end short with a really impenetrable chamois that won't pinch flat, even on a double century.

2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 7 & Final Results

2011-05-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

Teamwork as smooth as cream cheese. Epic!

Chris likes a little stubble to protect his face too

As expected, the Mt Hamilton stage pretty much determined the pecking order for the rest of the tour. You never know until it's over, crashes and illness can take their toll, and change the outcome in an instant, but in this case, Mt Hamilton ranked the field for Mt Baldy, and the leading teams became even more dominant.

It was good to see Chris so happy, euphoric even. Finally the respect he deserves. I hope he kicks Contador's ass in the TDF this year. I look forward to seeing more of young riders like Matt Busche, from the great state of New Mexico, in future tours. He was amaing at the top of Mt Baldy.

Schleck's performance was a little surprising, but he is on a comeback, and prepping for the TDF, or that's his story, and he's sticking to it. The rider that was unexpectedly impressive for me was Ryder Heshedal. I was also surprised that Garmin did so little of the work at the front in the San Gabriel Mountains, but then RadioShack had the strength and depth to just go hammer it the whole stage, and Garmin just wasn't able to respond.

The oldest guy to finish the race won it. Big props for Chris Horner!!!

I do hope we will see another Tahoe stage, weather not withstanding, and with the suggested team TT from Carson City, Nevada to Incline Village. Team TTs are getting really rare, and they are one of my favorites. Especially as a first stage, they give the team a great opportunity to work together and gel. It's snowing up in Tahoe as I'm typing this, so an alternate is definitely needed.

While RadioShack pretty much owned the race, I hope the Amgen Tour will continue to give new riders an opening into the sport. Like the US Open, those opportunities are absolutely necessary if the sport is to continue to flourish, and we love watching them grow up right here in the most beautiful country in the world, the Golden State of California!

2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 6

2011-05-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

Congrats to Dave Z on winning the TT, and setting a new course record in the process, although as Leipheimer pointed out, that was almost a certainty when running in May instead of February. I assume he was talking about thinner, warmer air being easier to push aside, but maybe also stripped out of all that extra winter gear.

Really sorry for Levi that he didn't win today, but I have to say, I really hate his form. It seems to work for him, but jeeze it's ugly. I think the high aerobar position is not his favorite, but the only one left to him by the UCI as his preferred one they outlawed. Frankly, the TT is one area I think there are too many rules. Better to let people ride anything they want, any way they want.

I think Chris Horner is saving his legs for the Queen Stage tomorrow - by far the toughest stage in the history of the Amgen Tour, and likely the ruin of many of the smaller teams. As of yesterday's start, only 6 of 144 riders had left the race, although Thor Hushovd abandoned the race yesterday. I don't have a count, but yesterday's stage, being so long, and with a surprising 12,000+ ft of climbing, probably took it's toll.

By contrast, I expect many, many riders will blow up and abandon the race on the course tomorrow - perhaps as much as a third of the field. I'll be watching George Hincapie closely, as he did very well in the San Gabriel Mtns last year, and but for a lot of guys tail-gunning him over the last 30km, might have finished on the podium. Also a good indicator of how much he's got left for another TDF.

I was a little surprised to see Dave Z's leg come out wide and grab some air going through a turn. That seems a pretty serious form break, but I wasn't on the bike, so maybe a split-second balance thing. In general I've worked very hard to immediately, and reflexively bring my right knee to the bar as soon as I stop pedaling. It makes a big difference in drag on a compact frame, helps control the bike when coming off or transitioning to the aerobars, and protects my knees in tight corners.

I've been wracking my brain to find a good alternative to a Tahoe stage should bad weather become an issue in the future. I think I've hit on one. A 30mi/48km Team TT from Carson City, NV to Alpine Village, Ca. Not only does the 1,500 ft drop in elevation eliminate snow, but the Sierra Mountains protect the eastern desert from rain and winds that can reach close to 100mph over the passes. The mile high altitude will also allow the riders to put their high-altitude training to good use.

Since all of our big winter storms swirl up from the south, the SSE winds will be headwinds for the riders, so the strongest teams, with the best form, will come out on top. It would establish a valid pecking order for the teams and riders for the rest of the tour, and allow riders in difficulty to drop out of the paceline near the end. (teams only need to finish with 5 riders)

Given how close the course is to Tahoe, just over Kingsbury Grade from South Lake Tahoe, this should keep logistics manageable and provide for some sponsor alternatives. I'm going to suggest it to the Amgen people, and hope they'll give it serious consideration.

Looking forward to tomorrow's massive Queen Stage, and expect Radio Shack will let Garmin do a lot of the work early, as Garmin has 3 guys near the top in the GC.

2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 5

2011-05-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

It looks like the early start will have them off under sunny skies, with some big, puffy clouds overhead. The wind is mostly a crosswind that will push them along a bit - very welcome I'm sure for riders with tired legs after yesterday's hard ride.

I don't have personal knowledge of this route, so will be a spectator along with everyone else today. The course looks very flat, except for the final, short climb, so I expect the sprint teams will do well. Thor Hushovd is near the top of the GC, and this stage will suit him well, so I expect he will be near the front a lot.

I'm guessing RadioShack will be happy to have other teams do the work at the front today, until the final KOM climb, and then they'll be in front protecting Horner and Leipheimer's 1, 2 GC positions. The scenery should be spectacular, and ride generally a fast, easy one.

Overall, today will be about recovery before the TT in Solvang, and the massive Queen Stage in the San Gabriel Mountains. I expect the minor teams will want to break away to get in the spotlight, but will get reeled in handily 10-15km before the final KOM, and dropped decisively there to keep the climbing teams' big gains yesterday intact.

2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 4

2011-05-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

They've pushed the start time back from 10:15 to 11:45, and should therefore be starting under sunny skies and on dry-ish roads after a thorough soaking rain last night. Winds are from the W and SW at around 10mph today, and generally crosswinds for the long stretch heading south on Mines Rd and San Antonio Rd.

I covered the main climb on this stage in some detail here, so will not elaborate further, except to say Mt Hamilton is a bitch of a climb with horrible, asphalt washboard road that will have your Garmin reporting grades for 14,16 and up to 24% right at the top. Temps will be mid-50s at the top of Hamilton, and its eastern face will be sunny, protected from the wind, and fairly warm.

Expect to see a lot of clothing being stripped off on the long descent to the base of Hamilton from the junction of San Antonio Rd and Del Puerto Canyon Rd, which took the riders into Patterson last year after their climb up Mines Rd.

This is THE stage to sort out the overall standings in Northern California. Piety Monday's stage wasn't run in reverse, which would have made it an epic uphill battle, but yesterday's stage into a fierce headwind all day turned out to be a worthy test, so fatigue will be a factor today.

Great times for European sports fans, as I watched Dirk Nowitzki play the closest thing to a perfect basketball game I've seen in almost 30 years. Really, and truly a fantastic, perhaps once in a lifetime performance.

I kind of enjoyed the poor-man's live blogging from the comments section below yesterday, so think I'll get me a big cup of coffee and have another go at that in a few minutes.

Post Script: An emotional day for Andy Schleck, as his teammate Wouter Weylandt was laid to rest in Belgium today. 2,000 friends, family and fans paid their respects. Schleck was reportedly in tears at the start. A fitting tribute to life cut tragically short.

Congratulations to Chris Horner, and Levi Leipheimer, who now hold 1st and 2nd place in the general category. They worked their butts off, as did all of the RadioShack squad, so deserved it. Rumor was Lance Armstrong was in the crowd watching..

2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 3

2011-05-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

Well, they're off, under cloudy skies in a spitting rain. This would normally be a very fast course, but they are headed right into the teeth of steady 15-18mph winds, gusting to 30mph. They'll be coming within 10 miles of Carmichael in an hour or so, and the winds here are in the 15-18mph range here at 11:00AM. It's not raining here, but the roads are wet from intermittent rain overnight.

This will likely be the first day of real racing, as the riders are anxious to put some time into the Peleton after two frustrating days. There's already a 7-rider breakaway group off the front, and the SRAM neutral support cars just went ahead of the Peleton. With the wind, they'll have to work well together, or get swallowed up again by the Peleton.

The wind is supposed to shift from SSE to SSW until about Sacramento, and then will be due south heading into Modesto. The course is roughly due south, and after Sacramento, in pretty exposed flat country. The E part of the SSE here in California comes from the giant Pacific storm's swirls being pushed east as they rub up against the Sierra mountains coming up from Southern California. The course, being at the feet of those mountains, is going to bear the brunt of those winds.

The scenery should be spectacular, especially around Camanche Reservoir where the route will be familiar with anyone who's ridden the Sacramento Bike Hiker's annual Party Pardee 100k ride. Before this storm system rolled in, we had 246% of our normal annual rainfall here in Northern California, so lush and green doesn't even begin to cover it.

Enjoy the coverage on The Shack Tracker starting at 1:15.

PS: I'm doing a poor-man's live blog via the comments, as they are time-stamped. Enjoy!

2011 Amgen Tour - Stage 2 Start

2011-05-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

Good news from the Amgen Tour. The start is being moved from Tahoe to Nevada City, California, and start time moved back to 12:15. A couple of pics I borrowed from VeloNews shows why. Let's hope there's an alternative stage planned whenever there's a Tahoe stage on the agenda in the future.

Btw, VeloNews reported that 6 motorcycles went down scouting the course. I've crawled over these passes a few times trying to get to a ski resort in the thick of the storm. The stretch pictured above, right behind a snowplow spreading sand, in a truck with meaty mud and snows, and we barely made it to South Lake Tahoe.

I sure wish they'd done this stage yesterday, with a start in Sacramento, turning stage #2 into a slow, safe, epic climbing stage, ending at the top of Donner Pass. Maybe the Amgen Tour should just commit to a Sacramento start each and every year to anchor the event.

In any event, it's sunny here in Sacramento, so if the weather hold, it should be a pretty day of mostly dry weather. Kudos to the Amgen guys for finally getting ahead of things a bit. It might still be pretty windy, but this is an almost completely downhill stage, so I doubt it will matter.

2011 Amgen Tour - Tahoe Stage

2011-05-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

This just in from the Amgen organizers.

Due to severe and unsafe weather conditions in the Lake Tahoe area, the start of Stage 1 of the 2011 Amgen Tour of California has been delayed.

If the weather improves, a shortened stage will be started at 1:15 p.m. PT. We will continue to monitor the weather conditions and state of the roads and make a final decision at noon PT, with the riders’ safety as our number one priority.

The new route will continue to take the riders from South Lake Tahoe to North Star up the west side of Lake Tahoe. The stage will be approximately 50 miles. There will be no changes to the timing or the finish line at North Star. The Lifestyle Festival at North Star will open at noon PT as scheduled with the Amgen Breakaway Mile also remaining on-schedule for 2:30 p.m. PT

This is really hard to understand. For 2 hrs of riding, where nothing will be decided, the riders have to brave freezing (literally, when considering wind chill) conditions, with possible black icing on the Emerald Bay descent? There's 3-6" of snow on the ground in Tahoe, with temps still dropping. Total lunacy running this stage today, especially after Wouter Weylandt's fatal crash in the Giro.

I thought the obvious solution was to run stage #3 today, and do the Tahoe stage on Thursday when it warms up. In essence, shuffle the order of the stages as follows.

Stage 3 today - forecast highs in low 60s with some rain
Stage 2 Monday (start in Tahoe basin)
Stage 4 Tuesday - forecast highs in low 60s with some rain
Stage 5 Wednesday - high 50s with a 20mph cross and tailwind off the Pacific to rest tired legs
Stage 1 in Tahoe Thursday in sunny, 55 degree temps

It's light out until 8:00pm, so just start the stages at noon when rain is forecast to let the air warm up a little and let the riders enjoy the cold on Stage #4 when they will be climbing. Delaying a decision until this morning made any new arrangement of stages impossible. Better yet, since they've had a week to work on a contingency plan, why not hold a TT in San Diego today under sunny skies and 65 degree temps, run stages 6, 7, and 8, and then come back to Northern California?

It's a good thing our generals don't suck this bad at decision-making. A week for contingency planning, and this is what they're going with? Thunderously stupid!!!
.

2011 Amgen Tour of California - Weather Report

2011-05-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Gulp! Uhhh, looks like the Amgen Tour of California's 10:30 AM kickoff will be in 37F temps with a 15mph wind up in Lake Tahoe this Sunday. So much for a heat concern - at least early in the race. It looks like a major storm front is moving in, so bring your winter gear. Some cold weather clothing RXs here.

In thin air, this is going to make for a very cold start. I think the key to this stage is to stay out of trouble. The roads are generally very good around Tahoe, but the wind off the lake will be brutal in places. The wind and the cold will both favor larger, heavier riders with more power and core.

The team strong men are going to be doing a lot of work on Sunday, and you may see a win by one, as the course isn't very steep. Thor Hushovd would be a good bet. Of course, I'd love to see Hincapie steal the first stage, but that'd be a real long-shot.

For the most part, the wind will either be in your face or at your back, but it is an oval course, so there should be some echelon riding, and opportunities for good tactics when turning from crosswind to headwind. Good Luck!

PS: As of 5:00AM PDT Saturday, May14th, 2011, the following weather alert was issued for Sunday, May 15th, 2011.
Windy. Snow during the morning will transition to snow showers during the afternoon. High 38F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 70%. Snow accumulations less than one inch. Winds could occasionally gust to over 40 mph.

Weather Report

2011-05-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

We've been having lots and lots of the stuff. Winds so thick with pollen it makes breathing almost impossible for those of us with allergies. I've had a mild headache, with a few glorious days of respite, for over 2 weeks now.

I got 5 miles done on my long ride Sunday, (yeah, really) and my throat swelled so closed I was gagging as I coughed uncontrollably. Weird feeling to be coughing so hard you can't catch your next breath to cough again. Maybe somebody is growing mustard gas.

The weather guessers say the weather for the Amgen Tour of California is going to be cool - NOT hot. One of us is going to be wrong, and that will probably be me. I HATE it when that happens, but thought you all should know. I sure hope so, because right now I can't train at all. I'm a prisoner in my own house, so I'd like another cool summer like last to enjoy some training time.

Time for some gym work. Ciao!

Techie Tuesday: Podium Ice Waterbottles

2011-05-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

I decided to get Tuesday out of the way early to make time for the upcoming holiday - St Insanity Day! lol

I first noticed the CamelBak bottles because of the bite valve, which self-seals when left open. It makes drinking out of a bottle much easier on really steep climbs, because you don't have to open and close the bottle, it's done automatically.

I'd also say, the valve is much softer, so a lot less chance for a fat lip, on a bad bump. At 21oz the Podium bottles are just a little smaller than the 24oz Polar bottles, but easier to squeeze (especially when cold), and once the valve opens, the squirt stream is 3-4X the volume.

I've been waiting for these Podium Ice bottles to show up at the local Performance Bike Shop, as they are listed online, and while looking in vain today for another jersey, I found them in stock. Sitting right next to these ZeroLoft insulated bottles, was another new offering from CamelBak called "The Big Chill" - a full 25oz bottle. Unfortunately, those did not use the new Aerojel insulation. (and why not ???)

I started using the CamelBak Chill bottles prepping for my 2nd, and successful attempt on Mt Hamilton as part of the Canyon Classic ride in 2009. It's also why I'm interested now, as I would like to do the unofficial "Super-Century" version of the CC, where you do the Mt Hamilton route, return to the little village of San Antonio, and then join the regular Century course where the two parted company. That should make for 11-12k of climbing and 155 miles. I only have 7 weeks to train for it though.

I currently have one bottle cage on my downtube, which I lowered one hole (the bottom hole is tied with a vinyl tube clad zip tie), and two via a Profile Designs aero bottle rack (I reviewed it extensively for Amazon). I notice it's now available in white, which I would definitely get, as it helps make you more visible at night with your taillight reflecting off of it. It might help keep the bottles cooler too. (why has no one made an insulated bottle HOLDER yet???)

Having 3 X 25oz bottles gets you into the CamelBak hydration pack range without having that weight on your back and butt all day, so this is interesting. (but, why not the best insulation ???) The shape is also more aerodynamic, and easier to pull out of the bottlecage than a Polar bottle. Anyone need some well-maintained Polar bottles?

While we're on the subject of stuff you put on your seat post, I just have to give a shout out to the gorgeous ToPeak RX BeamRack carbon fiber rack. It weights less than 13 oz, and even with the small bag mounted, weights just 32oz. It's so beautiful I just want to buy one and hang it in my living room. Tons of bag options for their slip-on mounting system too.

I'd spend the money for a good seat post though. Something like the Syntace P6 carbon fiber (sold out everywhere!), not the total POS Easton stuff I have. I can't see it in the pic below, but the photographed rack is actually mounted on a Syntace P6!

This system would make Centuries, Double Centuries, hot, thirsty summer, and cold winter ride starts SO much more manageable. Would the Profile Designs waterbottle rack fit around this? I think so on my compact frame. Those side panels unfold into full side panniers on some models. Pretty sweet system!

Oh, just to wrap up this review of seatpost mounted stuff, I'm really liking my Specialized Romin Elite Gel saddle. The extra padding of the gel is something I NEED - along with the 153 width.

100K Litmus Test

2011-05-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

I'm off on my favorite ride tomorrow, even if it is alone - the Rescue FireStation in Rescue, Ca. It's nominally 100K, but I am going to stretch it out a bit if I can on the return, with a side trip up to Beals Pt at Folsom Lake, and then down to WBP before coming home. I think that will put it in the 75 mile range.

This should make a good test of where I'm at in terms of some Centuries that are coming up. One, the Sunrise Century, in Lodi, is next weekend, so I really want to get this done. If things go well, I'll start training for the Canyon Classic 'Super Century".

Mt Hamilton again? I must be crazy!

Techie Tuesday - Ultegra 6703 Shifters & Drivetrain

2011-05-05T00:48:00.000-07:00

Amazing Shimano 12-28 Gearing

I'll come back and update this from time to time, or link this in a post if I have a lot to say after using the system for awhile, but I thought it time to give my 2nd impressions after a half-dozen rides.

First, I have always loathed the stupid cables sticking out of the sides of Shimano shifters, so one of my initial attractions to the 6700 was getting rid of shifter cables sticking out into otherwise clean air and making a mess of the bike aerodynamics before there's much chance of do anything about it.

Second, I bought my Roubaix with 9-speed gearing at a substantial discount with the intention of riding that gearing until it wore out, or something close to it. That time had come, and I wanted a 10-speed system, or Campy 11 speed. The Campy's price was just too high going forward as their cassettes are ridiculously priced. I'd also bought new rear wheels - a primary and a backup - and they were Shimano splines.

Third, the more I rode in the aerobars, the more convinced I became that Shimano's system is more precise when dropping the chain down the cassette. No way I was going to pay DuraAce prices to get that though. I also considered the Shimano 105 shifters, as they too have the new hidden shifter cables. The price difference didn't seem that much though, especially since I got all of this gear for what works out to be about 33% off at Performance Bike Shop.

I've waited about 8 months to pull the trigger on this, but when PBS opened a new store in Roseville, Ca, and offered 15% off, even on special orders, AND cash cards for old inner-tubes, lottery wheel spins, the first 100 people to show up for each of 3 days, and mentioning the bike club, I knew it was my time.

These same 3 days were also double dividend days, so that kicked in 20% on 85%, plus the cash cards. Also, PBS's prices on Shimano were already near the best to be found online, and being a member, I got free 2 day ground shipping to my front door. Pretty compelling.

Threading the cables is a bit tricky on the 6703's. The left and right shifters are threaded completely differently, as the internal mechanisms are completely different. The instructions are horrible, and I put a kink in the right shifter bad enough that I threw it away, a victim of really crap documents.

Once you figure out that you need to keep clicking the small lever that releases the cable the full 9 clicks, it's silly simple. What's described as a "view hole" is actually the hole you thread the cable through, and the extended discussion of the winding spool and cover plate are just a whole lot of mis-direction.The left shifter is pretty easy to thread too, but if you try to thread the right one the same way, you too will destroy your cable with a bad kink.

With what turned out to be $150 of dividends, I splurged on a carbon fiber set of bars with internal routing for the hidden cables - unlike my old bars. The new routing, swapped shifter cables, and swapped brake cables, convinced me to go slow and do a lot of trial fitting before I started cutting cables and cable housing.

The old bars were always a stop-gap, but since I ride in aerobars so much they were kind of irrelevant as long as I rode alone. I'm riding a lot more club rides now, so need to be on the hoods or drops, so based on a strong RX from a club rider with a severe elbow injury, I pulled the trigger. With discounts, I managed to get PBS's house-brand Forte` bars for ~$100. They felt a bit rubbery when first on the bike, but seem pretty solid when climbing out of the saddle - so far so good.

Nobody at Performance knew if those bars were rated for clamp-on aerobars, and one mechanic laughingly suggested I tighten them until the main bar cracked and then back it off a bit. We had a good laugh about that. The stem clamping area is roughed up a bit to give it some tooth. Not so the clamping area for the aerobars. I was holding my breath, and ended up doing an initial tightening at night, and then a final tightening the next afternoon.

When you go from a 9-speed system to a 10-speed, you have to toss all of your old cassettes and buy new ones. Since Shimano has abandoned the work-horse 12-27 in favor of the 11-28, targeted at compact cranks, I was SOL - or so I thought. I studied the cassette gears thoroughly and found that if I took the spidered gears from the 11-28, and put them on a 12-25 I ended up with a completely stock 11-25, and an absolutely fabulous 12-28.

Now, when I say absolutely fabulous, I mean the granularity of my 46/38/24 and 12-27 9-speed gearing, and the range of a 52/39/28 and 12-28 WITH NO 15T-17T gap - the one right in the power band. The first time out the gears were so lovely and intuitive I came home and put the gears into my gear chart. OMG, the best gears I have ever found. 12 through 17 in 1-tooth increments, and then fast ramping when you don't have time to drop the chain up front. Every time I do dump the chain up front I land on a gear so kind I wish I had selected it. Really and truly fantastic gearing.

The actual gear cogs are also much better made. They appear to be machined, and are the full thickness where they engage the freewheel hub. The CS-6500 9-speed cassettes were stamped, and therefore, pinched thin. A recipe for tearing out the splines on alloy freehubs. I am lucky to have Shimano 6700 steel freehubs though, as some of the spline engagement dogs have been removed from the middle gear cogs. Something to think about carefully if you have an alloy freehub.

I also bought a new rear derailleur, as Shimano warns that the 28T requires their new one. It's OK, works fine, is crisp, but nothing to spill a lot of electrons over.

Finally, I spent the money for a DuraAce chain, since the 9-speed chain won't cut it with the narrower spacing. It shifts like a dream, and is so gorgeous you just want to drown one in Lucite and make a paperweight out of it. I also really like the single pin connecting system, and it's easy to find on a hollow pin chain. The end of the self-guiding, solid, "bullet" link pin snaps off, so I'm sure it's case-hardened to within an inch of its life, and will therefore outlast the rest of the links.

For the first time ever, after adjusting the drivetrain on my stand, I went for a 20 mile ride and adjusted NOTHING. It was dead-solid perfect. The front derailleur now downshifts like a cannon. It's been a long time since it shifted that well. The rear shifter is almost perfect, and getting better all the time.

One thing worth mentioning. Although it added some work and worry, I crossed the cables under the downtube to get a straighter path for the rear shifter cable. It also makes the downtube slightly more aerodynamic I imagine, but that's not why I did it. It seems to be one of several things that makes for very crisp shifting, except for the transition from the 4th to 5th smallest cogs in back - but as stated, that's getting better as things settle down.

The ergonomics of the shifters are definitely better. I had a pretty bad thumb-web injury from the old shifters, and these have not aggravated that at all after the long layoff due to the collarbone break allowed a full healing.

Between that and the CF handlebars, the ride has noticeably smoothed out. I also took almost a pound of weight off the bike, and it's apparent when I pick the bike up and move it around. I think it's a bit more aerodynamic too, as the cable routing and aero shape of the bar top are keeping the airflow nice and clean.

All in I spent just under $500, the list price on the shifters alone. It was 3-days work to get everything perfect, but a truly wonderful ride I am going to thoroughly enjoy this May - Bike Month!

2011-04-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a 38 mile ride to Beals Pt, taking the long way home via WBP. It's the first 'long' ride since coming back from a broken collar bone. More miles. Yeah! (I actually feel like I've been dragged down a few miles of country washboard gravel road)

It gave me a chance to try out the new Romin Expert Gel saddle. I traded in the very sleek and light Romin SL, but I needed more padding.. More padding for the private parts. Yeah!

I've also been paying attention to how much the new Forte carbon bars are helping. Sometimes they don't seem to help at all, but other times I think my tires are flat as they damp so much road vibration. More protection for my aching wrists. Yeah!

I sent the paperwork and some $$$ to the Sacramento Bike Hikers, so soon I'll be an official member. More choice of rides. Yeah!

I'm forgetting a 'more' or two, so when I recover from being more blotto I'll come back and add those if I can remember them. More exercise-induced anaerobic brain erasure. Yeah! (I'll sleep in Zone 5 tonight)

Ironic how a post about more has such a minimalist title huh? More Hegelian Dialectic in the universe. Yeah!

There's a Billy Idol song in here somewhere... hummm, Nietzsche keen!

Hey, I get to have some fun once and awhile blogging. It's in the rulebook somewhere. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

OK, I'm done. Really. This time for sure. ;)

Techie Tuesday - The Hill & The Blow

2011-04-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

As anyone whose ever aspired to being a pilot, and taken ground school knows, wind never helps you. It always hurts you. The same is true for gravity. This is why both wind and hills slow you down. Let's look at some examples.

Assume there is a route from point A to point B that takes an hour to ride in calm conditions. Now assume there is enough of a headwind that it takes 1 hr and 59 minutes to get from A to B. How fast would you have to return from B to A to match your total ride time in calm conditions? Yeah, really, 1 minute! So what if the wind had been just a bit stronger? It would take you longer to get to B than the round trip in calm conditions.

How can this be? The wind is blowing exactly the same speed when helping you as when hurting you, so why does it slow you down so much? The answer is simple. The wind is hurting you for a lot longer than it's helping you, and the stronger it is, the more this is true.

Like wind, the force of gravity is also a constant force applied over time (you can't crank it up or down), but when climbing a hill the force of gravity is hurting you for much longer than it helps. On really steep climbs, 10X as much.

This is also why a steady diet of rollers is so exhausting. You're spending almost all of the ride time fighting against the added force of gravity. Look at a route full of rollers on a Garmin trace, and pick time as the X axis, instead of distance. It looks like a sail pattern, not a series of upside-down Vs.

NASA uses the force of gravity the same way to slingshot satellites around planets. The satellite approaches slowly, so the force of the planet's gravity has a lot of time to pull on it, but when it passes the planet, it is really moving, so it quickly escapes the pull of gravity.

In all of these cases, it's the TIME the force is applied that is key. Just thought you'd like to know.

2011 Amgen Tour of California - The Heat

2011-04-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

Minden Airport with Lake Tahoe in background to the West

I've been looking at the first 4 stages of the Amgen Tour, and nothing will be decided in the first 3. The first stage in Tahoe is at about 6,000 ft of elevation, but the next two are downhill and low altitude stages respectively, so if you've been training at altitude, it won't help much because you'll have dumped most of those red blood cells before stage #4 when the going gets tough.

Of course, there is something to be said for the cardio development that comes with high altitude training, but the trade-off is slower recovery in thin air. If you want to keep the advantage of high altitude training I have a couple of suggestions. If you want to train in the coastal range, Patterson is cheap and provides great access to stage #4 climbs.

One, you can stay in Tahoe. Think France. Expensive and snooty. Or you can go over the mountain and stay in Minden, Nevada. Think Greece. Cheap, warm, and inviting. Minden is part of the high desert that forms on the back sides of the California Sierra Mountains, and as such, has heat to rival Phoenix. (hint, runway direction will indicate prevailing wind direction any place on Earth)

The last year we had a winter like this was '05-'06, and our long, cool, wet spring turned into a week of scorching hot 112-117 degrees of heat after a whole 3 days of 'spring'. I'm going to go out on a limb and say, this year, the big surprise of the Amgen Tour will be the intense heat - especially on stage #7, the Queen Stage in the San Gabriel Mountains north of LA - but also climbing Mt Hamilton.

I DNF-ed on Hamilton in 2008 in 100+ degree heat, having burned through 3 24oz bottles and 2 donated bottles from a rider returning on the Canyon Classic's Mt Hamilton ride - an out and back. I finished with ease the next year in cool, cloudy, rainy conditions. The road to Hamilton is very sheltered from wind, the asphalt is stripped of stone and pitch black (hellishly hot in the sun), and is gooey and pulled off the roadbed, forming an asphalt washboard. You should also be very comfortable with cattle grates for this stage.

The official stage description is pretty accurate, although RideWithGPS has the grade a bit higher at 9% on average. (drag the mouse over the bottom ride profile ribbon and you can select any arbitrary segment to zoom in on) This trace was taken in '09 in 1-Second mode with the Garmin Edge 305 mounted on a carbon tube zip-tied to my aerobars. The signal strength reported on every ride by the old Garmin site was always, without exception, 'Excellent'. This is as good as it gets.

The descent from 'The Junction', where Mines Rd meets Del Puerto Canyon Rd (last year's stage #3 took this turn and descent into Patterson) is 1,000 ft, and the road is largely straight, and fast, with good surface. There are some wicked twisting descents where there will be crashes, because the surface prevents adequate braking if you're out of position, so keeping your team at the front, or at the rear might be a good strategy.

As you descend, Hamilton will loom larger and larger, and the pastures on the right side of the road will get greener and greener. There are two lakes right at the bottom of the descent. Remember those. When you pass the 2nd one, you have 5km before the start of the approach climb, and 7km before the main climb. Time to bring the team up front, putting your strongman to work, with the goal of flying past the leaders right at the crest of the approach climb. This will stretch the peleton out and give you some maneuvering room while the road is still straight and wide.

Note that this approach climb is quite steep. If your team has a big, strong rider like Thor Hushovd, or George Hincapie, I'd want him at the front, pulling the team's climbers down the backside and into the initial part of the Hamilton climb. There's an intense switch-back at mile 5.6 on the trace. Don't be out of position there, or expect to get dropped. The pack will probably shatter and fall apart right there, as there isn't much room to cut the corner.

Have your climber out in front and he'll have a good chance to lead the rest of the stage. and perhaps, the race. (Tony would find a lot of fellow countrymen at the Minden Airport, as it has the best glider conditions in the world, and attracts many German glider pilots)

For training, I've put together two training rides, one out of Minden that takes in most of The Death Ride climbs (Kit Carson on hwy 88 is left as an option), and one out of Markleeville (or Picketts Junction, where 89 Ts into 88, has a nice parking lot) that includes Kit Carson Pass, but features the fearsome Sonora Pass climb.

Sonora Pass is signed at 26% grade, and has fantastic views. Once over the west side of Monitor Pass, the approach to Sonora Pass is lots of warm to hot 5,00-6,000 ft fast flat-ish hwy 395. The top of Sonora is 9,624 ft, but it's the tight, twisting, steepness that makes it such a great training route for coastal range routes like Hamilton. We had a lot of snow this year, so it should be scouted to make sure it's open, or check the CalTrans website.

There are some mom and pop stores/gas stations along 395, so you don't really need SAG, but the shoulder is narrow iirc, and truck traffic is plentiful, though courteous. There's a USMC mountain training center just after you leave 395, before Kennedy Meadows, and before the main climb. If the road is open that far, ride down to MiWuk Village, refuel at the general store, turn around and head back.

Ebbetts Pass is also packed with tight, steep turns, has a NE exposure, a nice USFS campground with good water and bathroom facilities, and is a climb similar to Hamilton. If the pass is open, you can go all the way down to Bear Valley ski lodge. Climbing Ebbetts from the west side is part of the Death Ride, and will make a worthy addition to your training.

To all of this year's Amgen Tour competitors, I wish you the very best of luck, and hope you feel a little more at home in our beautiful state after reading this. If more competitors knew about these passes perhaps they would find their way into the race. Cheers!

This is what Hamilton looks like with 500X the power. If this looks fast to you pros, this is how you look to us mortals! :)

Time Flying - et al

2011-04-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

Lots of things flying this week. Me, the time left to file, and refile, my taxes, time to preview the Amgen Tour of California, and time to install my new Shimano Ultegra 6703 drive-train. The latter looks pretty sweet, but as usual, I will be putting it under a microscope, and I think you'll be surprised by my conclusions.

As for me flying, I went riding with the Sacramento Bike Hikers (aka SBH) on Monday evening, staging out of Gold Country shopping center, for what for them was mostly a bike trail ride. I had about half as many miles getting to and from the start from my front door, and half the climbing, so quality 'animal miles' to and from made for 31 miles.

I paired up with a fellow brick, who, it turns out, I had ridden with before, and blogged about, though anonymously. Larry said he's been off the bike about 3 months too, with family matters taking up all of his time. He's riding a gorgeous blue Orbea, and is every bit the brick I am.

It didn't take long for me to end up in front, and Larry on my wheel. Given he doesn't have aerobars, and his long layoff, he did his fair share heading down to WBP into a 10-12mph wind. We set a good solid, 18.2mph average going down, but decided not to continue down to CSUS for the bonus 10 miles as we were both tired by the time we got to WBP.

I had been passed by a lot of the 7-8 woman group (Larry and I were the token males) because I didn't recognize them, but we managed to reel in all but 'Pam'. (can't remember her name now) She was all smiles while we shot the breeze at the drinking fountain, and waited for the rest of the group to show up. She'd gotten lucky and found a good draft to suck on, answering our question about how she managed to stay ahead of two good bricks.

Turning around for home, Pam took off like a shot, and I after her, while Larry had to close up a gap. With the wind at our backs we were really flying, 21-24mph right along. Pam pulled out and I took up the lead, getting down in the aerobars. I knew I was going too hard, but was LOVING the speed - peaking at 27mph. Huge smile, as I pushed the pace, my HR strap at home, I was enjoying my 'Off The Map' time. Larry stayed with me, but Pam disappeared. (phone call as it turned out)

When Larry took the lead I was struggling to hold his wheel, but after only a mile he was spent too, so we backed it down to 15-17 and waited for Pam to catch up. She never did, but it gave us some time to chat and work on a coordinated strategy for next time we ride together - something like push hard, but when the back guy comes up, ease into the power. The effect should be like intervals with short recovery periods.

My quick and dirty look at the early stages of the Amgen Tour is that stage #4, with the grueling Mt Hamilton climb from the NE side, may very well decide the race, and at least, the race until the queen stage in the San Gabriel Mountains. For those teams looking to base out of Sacramento, Iowa Hill out of Auburn is an excellent preparatory ride, as are hill repeats of Prospector's/Marshall Grade between hwy 49 and Georgetown. The latter can easily be made to take in Salmon Falls Rd, the heart of stage #2. Both are much safer practice areas.

Well, duty calls, so gotta go, but I'm excited to be riding again, and hope Larry and I get to do some more miles together. It would be so nice to have a well-matched riding partner.