Finally: footage from an event I did with Grant Achatz of Alinea, as well as an interview we did outside the kitchen is up at Wired.com.
For layout nerds: The Grid System looks to collect information on designing on a grid.
Garmin Data for Bay Area Super Prestige #3, Sierra Point
Race three of the Bay Area Super Prestige series yesterday at Sierra Point in Brisbane: A couple of things made this race different from the rest of the series. First, it was a night race for the fast folks, like the A men and women. What that meant was that instead of the typical very, very early start time for my C race, we went off at 2 in the afternoon. Also, we've been having the most amazing heatwave here in the Bay Area, so it was sunny and in the 80s when we took the start.
The course during warmups seemed fun -- lots of twisting and turning to try and squeeze a long enough course into the area allotted for it. One set of four barriers, and a decision to be made after the barriers: remount immediately, or run up the first half of a two-level hill before the remount. And also two sharp little hills that were rideable if you didn't have traffic or anyone in your way, but if there was some mishap, you'd never make it. The other main challenge were the ruts. In some places, the course was very, very rough, and the ruts ran directly across some of the turns.
On my warmup laps, I felt OK, and was excited about the race. I'd been fighting off a cold all week; Paige has been coughing and stuffed up, but all I had was a sore throat. But that had seemed to fade away, and even though I'd done little training the past week, I was cautiously optimistic.
At the line, I got my call up just at Kristen and the girls arrived to cheer me on (the other huge benefit of a reasonable start time). Very nice to be ready for the start, and seeing nothing but a race course ahead, rather than a couple of dozen riders.
The whistle blows, we all clip in, and gun it for the first corner. Things are fine for the first half lap, but my heart rate is completely pegged. We come to the first of those two little hills, and a guy stalls out just ahead of me. I unclip, dash to the top, try and get the groove back.
I need to punch it immediately, get back up with the leaders. My whole plan is to stay in contact. I ask my legs for a little snap, a burst to get things rolling.
There's nothing there.
Turns out that it just isn't my day. Don't know if it was the cold or something else, but I'm just not sharp. It's both fitness -- I'm slowly getting passed by people -- and also mental. I never really put together a good lap with good flow to it. I either struggle up one of the little hills, or get really bounced around by the ruts, or just can't power out of the corners to get up to speed.
At one point, I get a little tangled with a guy on a decent, and my chain drops. I spend 10 seconds dealing with it, and watch five guys pass.
The rest of the race is an exercise in suffering, and damage control. By the last lap, I'm in a nice little race with a guy, who passes me on the second to last straight, but I force him wide on the final turn, lining up the sprint.
Crang! My chain snaps, dropping to the pavement. I coast over the line, in 23rd place for the day.
Kristen, the girls, and our friend Randy came back to the Team Oakland tent to hang out, drink a beer (well, not the kids), and eat sausages. It was just really excellent to have a little cheering section, especially when I was hurting so much near the end of the race. Later, I ran down to the SRAM tent, where the super-cool techs there replace my chain, which was awesome. Thanks, SRAM!
Oddly, the 23rd place was actually good enough to raise my standing in the overall series to 8th, although I'm going to miss the next race at Golden Gate Park, so that's immaterial. But it was another great learning experience. I felt just totally dead after the race last night, much worse than I've felt the past few races, which tells me that I was definitely not my best.
I also felt pretty beaten up, with all the ruts. I was talking to Kristen last night, and it seems clear to me that one of my big things I need to do in the off-season is get much more comfortable off-road. I should trade road rides for base for mountain bike rides, just to I get more acclimated to it.
One other thing that was cool is that Travis Ma, the guy I've found myself racing against in the past couple of races, finished 5th on the night, which is an awesome finish for him, and puts him way up to fourth in the standings.
Garmin Data for LARPD #6 Cross Race Hopped back in the Jetta Racing-mobile this past weekend to go to Livermore, where there's a fun series of races on Saturdays. I've been toying with the idea of upgrading in categories after my two good races in the Bay Area Super Prestige series, but I stuck with the Men's C race for a couple of reasons. First, it's early in the morning, which meant I'd be home to hang out with Kristen and the kids earlier, and also, I was hoping for a high placing.
Short version, it wasn't quite in the cards. On the first lap of the course, in a section through one of the sandy rodeo pits, a rider fell directly in front of me. I had no time to react, and ran into him, and our bikes got tangled together, with my left brake lever getting tangled in his rear wheel.
It took us what felt like an eternity to get them pulled apart, as riders steadily passed us. Once the bikes were finally free, I hopped back on, only to discover that my chain had jammed as well. That probably took another ten seconds to sort out.
Looking at the Garmin data, I'd estimate that I lost 20 seconds or so, and probably 15 places in the field.
The rest of the race was spent trying to get back those positions, trying to chase people down. It was a very fun and challenging course, with lots and lots of twists and turns -- the downside of that is that there weren't a lot of places to really drop the hammer and try and gain big time. I think that I'm still better at power output than I am at bike handling, so some of my skills at this point might have been neutralized.
Ended up 11th, which felt like a let down. Crashes are just part of racing, but it's hard to have your race completely turned on its head by something you had nothing to do with. What I am happy about it how I handled it during the race, just trying to get the speed back up and get toward the front.
After the race, I found the rider who had taken me down. I'm not sure exactly what I expected...maybe a "Hey man, sorry about that." I know that during the heat of racing that sort of apology isn't going to happen, but afterward, I thought he might have that to say. I think I'd say that to someone, at least.
In any event, he didn't.
I don't know what to think of that. It comes off as a little bit of a dick move to me, but maybe I'm just being naive or overly-sensitive. Any thoughts from more experienced racers?
So now I'm focused on this weekend's BASP race at Sierra Point. My math after the Candlestick race was correct: I'm in 10th place for the series in the Men's C category, which I think will mean a call up to the front row at the start. I still think I should probably upgrade categories, but the thought of a call-up is too much to refuse.
One thing for locals: this is a night race, with the last few categories running under the lights. But what that means for us slow guys is that we'll be racing at 2 PM, rather than our typical 8:30 AM. Come hang out -- it's supposed to be a beautiful day on Saturday. I'll be the guy in the Team Oakland kit.
Garmin Connect data for Bay Area Super Prestige #2, Candlestick Point As I've gone through this first season of cyclocross racing, I've discovered various things about myself, and the sport, that I need to understand and work on. My lack of off-road riding experience has lead to a couple of hard crashes, and a set of ribs that's still a little sore over six weeks after I dinged them up. Poor warm-ups and not fighting for a good start position has left me in the middle or at the back of the pack at the start of the race, causing me to drop time and positions that I just can't make up in a short cross race.
This past weekend, at Candlestick Point, I resolved to change those things that I could. Coming of 21st place in the first Bay Area Super Prestige Race, I felt like I would be competitive if I just got everything lined up right. The race was on Sunday morning; Saturday all day, we got the first big rainstorm of the year here in San Francisco. So we'd have a nice muddy race -- "real" cross conditions, which I found myself excited about. Back in my younger days, I liked racing in tough conditions, so hoped it would give me a mental advantage.
Got to the course at 7 AM for my 8:30 race, and got onto my bike to check out the course. It was a super fun layout -- lots of tight turns, little hills that you could either run or ride, one big runup, a couple of sets of barriers, some fast pavement sections. The rain had left it very muddy and soft in places, but really, just a blast.
Registered, and then my teammate Jeff was super excellent enough to put my bike on a stationary trainer so I could get a good cardio warmup in without slogging through the mud on the course. Morgan and Lauren got there with the Team Oakland tent at about 8:10, right as it started to pour again. My awesome teammates set up the tent, and then scooted it right over me, so I could keep warming up underneath it. Finished the warmup at 8:20, and then headed right to the line so I could get a good position for the start.
The whistle blew, and we were off. I was about 15th into the first corner, and started working my way up. On the first two laps, there was a rider in front of me who kept trying to ride up the slick hills before stalling out half way up each time, and then blocking the path.
This became progressively more frustrating, and finally I shouted out, "Come on, dude!" Apparently, this pissed him off, as he said, "Then pass me, Mr. Bike Cop." So, I did. I guess I feel a little bad about it, but it was just really, really maddening.
With my way clear, I worked up through the field, until I came across Travis Ma, who I had raced against on the last lap at Mclaren Park -- apparently, we're pretty damn evenly matched. I pulled up on him, we said hello to each other, and then set about our race. I went ahead of him and led through most of the second to last lap, feeling pretty good. But after we took the bell for the final lap, he went out ahead of me, and I started to struggle to close the gap.
On the final time up the muddy run-up, Travis did a great job remounting his bike and getting right back up to speed. I had a bad remount, landing a little more squarely on the guy parts than I would have liked, and it resulted in a 20 meter gap. Try as I might on the last bits of the course, I couldn't close it down, and he ended up beating me by 10 seconds.
That's the bad news. The great news was my 8th place finish, under a minute off the winner's time.
What's more, by my math, I think I might be 10th overall in the series after this race, which is pretty damn cool, too. It might even mean a call-up, so I can start on the front row of the next race in two weeks.
Looking at the lap times from my Garmin, I'm shocked at how consistent they were -- the first lap was different, and the other four are all within nine seconds of one another. So that good start was key, as it kept me from giving up a lot of time in traffic like I did at Mclaren.
I'm really happy about how cross season is going so far -- learning lots and lots each time I go out and race, and feeling like it's starting to pay off in good results. Now, of course, I'm torn. Part of me feels like I should go ahead and upgrade to the 35+ B race, where I'd get hammered, while part of me wants to do a couple more C races and see if I can get up in the mix for the podium.
After the race, cleaned up as best I could, and then hung out with my Team Oakland crew, doing hand-ups of water for them in the race, and enjoying a sausage and beer.
Cross, it should be said, is just silly, silly fun.
1) Flew to NYC to host a discussion between Chef Grant Achatz and former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold at the New York Public Library. Wired co-sponsored the event, timed to the publication of the Alinea cookbook, which is available for your holiday gift-giving pleasure at Amazon, or at your local bookstore. 2) Looked out into the audience to see a cross-section of the New York foodarati: Tim and Nina Zagat, Jeffery Steingarten, April Bloomfield, Alex and Aki from Ideas in Food, Ed Levine from Serious Eats, and Ruth Reichl.
3) Had a great conversation on stage with Grant and Nathan about cooking, philosophy, and why New York is a tough town for avant garde chefs. Ed Levine called it "a lively, informative, and, as you can imagine, extremely heady panel." Woo! You can listen to our discussion right now; I'm told that video will be available on iTunes before too long.
4) Went out to dinner at WD~50 with Grant and Nathan, Steingarten and Reichl, and some other friends and family of all. 14 courses and many glasses of wine later, we rolled out at about 1:30 AM, having had not only a lovely meal, but a rollicking good time. At one point, I called Kristen to say good night, and told her that she'd never believe who I was sitting next to at dinner: Ruth Reichl. "What are you doing on the phone with me," Kristen said. "Get back in there!"
5) Woke up just hours later to get on a plane home, where I got to see my wonderful wife and two little girls.
It really was just a spectacular couple of days, the sort of experience that you'll never forget. I've been lucky in my career to work with and meet some pretty amazing folks, but this really will go down as one of the highlights.
Garmin Connect data for raceGoogle Earth KML file for race
Given a day to digest it, I'm feeling good about this race. Not super-amazing, give-me-a-high-five great, but good. Solid.
There were some key things that led to this good feeling. First and foremost, I kept myself upright throughout the race, an accomplishment that was all the more notable due to what was an extremely bumpy course. There were two descents on the backside of the course that were just dirt single-track, heavily rutted. The second one was particularly brutal, as the bottom of the decent was a 100-degree left turn straight uphill onto a paved climb. One of my teammates took a crack at a visual description of the course. That is dead on for me.
I was actually glad to hear that everyone else thought the course was as rough as I did -- I'm still at that point where I'm not sure about my opinions as I'm just six races into my career. The fact that these experienced racers were bitching as much as I was felt oddly validating.
On those rough sections, I spent a lot of time thinking about relaxing my upper body, and letting the bike just roll, and that made a big difference. The other thing that really helped was racing on tubulars for the first time. I was able to run them at a low enough pressure (35 PSI) that the tires could soak up a lot of the bumps, and leave me much more rooted to the ground. I don't think I'll ever race on clinchers again, as you just need too much air to avoid pinch flats.
I started about the middle of the pack in the Men's C race. With 78 competitors, that was way, way too far back. I failed to get to the line early enough to insure I was closer to the front, and that was a big mistake. The course only ran about 300 yards to a huge dirt run-up, and I was probably 35th when we hit it. And by that point, the race is gone from you, especially when all the singletrack on the backside of the course made it so hard to pass people. On the first lap, I actually came to a complete stop, as the rider in front of me took his time rolling onto the decent.
The long paved climb on the back was the focus of much complaint, but given my climbing chops, it was the best place on the course for me to pass people. I'd pick off five or six riders a lap on the climb, and then we'd all stay in basically the same order until the climb the next lap.
Over the course of the race, a guy from Peninsula Velo and I had a good little battle. He'd pass me, get a little gap. I'd chase him down, put a gap on him. It was really fun to be out competing in that way. On the final lap, I had a little lead, but he did a better remount after the last barriers, got the inside line on me. We hammered down the finishing straight, and he pipped me right on the line, by about 2 inches.
I finished 21st. Or as I'm choosing to think of it, in the top third of my race.
After the race I shook hands with my adversary, and we talked about how much fun the battle had been. And it was fun, even though I felt like I had been pounded by a hammer all over my body.
Looking at my lap data, my first lap was my slowest, by almost 30 seconds. That's the traffic jam on the singletrack. The last lap was the fastest, which was a little surprise to me, but the effort of the racing for position would have done that. The other laps were shockingly consistent, within seven second of each other.
But if you do some wish fulfillment, and wonder what would have happened if I could have done each of the five laps as fast as my best...that time would have been good enough for the top ten.
Of course, I probably couldn't have done that, even with a better start. But if my first lap could have been the same as my consistent times, I could have been 15th.
So, the focus next time? Keep working on technical skills and warmup. And get to the start line earlier, so I don't lose the race before it starts.
After the race, had a good time hanging out with teammates, watching them race and chatting about the day. Next time, I'm hoping to stick around long enough for a sausage....
Forgot to post a link here to my report on the Cross Vegas race:
Tuesday night, rumors began to swirl that Lance Armstrong, as part of his comeback to competitive cycling, would race at Cross Vegas. Having resigned myself to not racing and then feeling crummy, I suddenly decided that I had to try and race, if for no other reason than riding on the same course a couple of hours before Armstrong, not to mention a field of the best cross racers in the US. After I decided to do the race, my wife Kristen said to me, "You're smiling now," which made me realize it was the right call.
That's how I found myself in a field of 100 cycling industry folks on Wednesday night, sweat rolling down my back after my warmup laps in 90 degree heat, getting ready to ride a cross race in front of 2,000 or so spectators. (By the time the elite race started, there were nearly 10,000 fans there).
This past weekend, I rode in a long-running, top-secret cyclocross race series, known only to a chosen few as dfL. A hundred or more crazy 'cross racers gathered in a park in San Francisco to bang around a makeshift race course, drink some beer, oh, and cross dress. (You can read more about dfL from the excellent folks at Cyclocross Magazine.) It was a fun day out, especially since Kristen, Kate, and Paige made it over to cheer me on. There's something unbearably wonderful about your three-year-old holding a sign that says "Go Daddy Go!" to motivate you as your heart rate is pegged well over your anaerobic threshold. Especially when you're wearing a pink dress.
The course was really challenging, especially since it was the third and final race of the series, and the course had sprouted some pretty deep ruts and holes. Just riding along would beat you up, and I had to constantly fight the urge to grip more tightly. It's one of those great Zen contradictions of riding off-road--you need to relax and loosen your grip when things get rough, letting the bike go where it wants to.
All in all a fun day. But.
But.
But I took a pretty hard fall headed to one of the logs we needed to hurdle. My handlebars hit me hard in the left side, just under the ribs. I finished the race, but definitely notices that it was a little difficult to breathe deeply, and when I lifted the bike over obstacles, I felt a tugging on my left side.
Apparently, adrenaline was carrying me through. Because my ribs hurt like hell now. I've been icing them, going to see my chiropractor, trying to take it easy.
What's really frustrating is that I'm supposed to race in Cross Vegas tomorrow night, a big race that I've been excited about for two months. And I just don't think I can ride that way tomorrow with my ribs like this.
Which has left me really frustrated, and disappointed. I just want to go out and race and have fun and compete, and not have these setbacks. Because physically they're annoying, but mentally, I'm proving to be a little bit of a wuss.
One of our local grocery stores is completely insane. Here's the LA Times on Berkeley Bowl.
I can't even get into the constant stream of (at best) half-truths coming out of the McCain campaign, which is a real disappointment to me as someone who at least used to respect McCain. (Richard Cohen, a former McCain cheerleader, outlines his disappointment in a great column in the Washington Post.) But I had to point this out -- one of those moments where you realize that McCain's biggest argument is sometimes with himself. Here's how he's talked about regulation in the economy over the past two days:
- Deregulation: McCain issued a statement Monday morning saying that “we cannot tolerate a system that handicaps our markets and our banks.”
- Regulation: McCain’s campaign then put out an ad calling for “tougher rules on Wall Street.”
- Deregulation: This morning, on NBC’s Today Show, McCain said, “Of course, I don’t like excessive and unnecessary government regulation.”
- Regulation: Then, on CBS’s The Early Show, McCain said, “Do I believe in excess government regulation? Yes.”
- Both: On CNBC’s Squawk Box, McCain said, “We don’t want to burden average citizens with over-regulation and government bureaucracy…And I’m proud to be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, who said, ‘unfettered capitalism leads to corruption,’ and we’ve got to fix this.”
For future reference: WordPress Developer’s Toolbox from Smashing Magazine.
Update: Here's the GPS data from the race -- the first two laps are real data, you can see on the third where I flatted and started walking back. The cyclocross season kicked off today with a race at Robertson Park in Livermore. We're in the midst of a heatwave in the Bay Area, so when I arrived at the site this morning at 7:45 AM, it was already pushing 75 degrees. By the time of my 9 AM race, it was in the 80s -- I can't even imagine how hot it was when the good racers went after 11.
I went in to the race not really having any idea what to expect. I've been training pretty hard, and feel like I'm much more fit than I've been in years, but it's never the same as actually competing. If you had told me that I'd go out there and get crushed, I would have believed it; if you told me that I'd win, I guess I would have believed that too.
The reality was somewhere in between.
The course was fun, a good mix of grass, dirt trails, some loose wood chip covered paths, and some pavement. There were just two dismounts -- a set of barriers before a hill that turned it into a run up, and three downed logs on a dirt trail.
I got in what I thought was a good warmup, a few laps of recon on the course, and then some sprints on the road. But as the race started, I found that I wasn't quite ready to really hammer right from the gun. I need to get in more work before the race starts, especially since the first lap or two of a cross race is so, so important.
At the first turn, I was probably 15th or so, and eating a ton of dust on the dry, hot day. After that first turn was one of the wood chip paths, which were hard going, as they were very loose and the bike wanted to go every which way underneath you. I kept applying the pressure as best I could, and after that section, and the first pass through the grass section and the first runup, I was picking off riders, and had moved up into the top ten.
Then, there was a long flat dirt section, where I found that I was able to ride hard and pass people while still recovering. That's a great sign, I think, that the interval training has really enhanced my ability to recover at a high workload.
We came to the downed logs, and I did just a horrible, rushed dismount, and fell. I've got a pretty gnarly road rash (dirt rash?) on my left calf, and a big ol' scrape on my ass. Just very frustrating, as I know I need to get better technique working, and generally felt OK with that today. Practice is the only way to get better, I guess.
The next two laps, I rode well, passing more riders. A couple of people were way off the front of the race, then another pair of riders, and then me and another guy. So I was in a fight for fifth place, and feeling like I had a real shot at that. I was feeling OK, especially on the dirt sections. The grass really grabs your wheels and adds a ton of effort to riding, so I was trying to get through those and then recover on the other sections.
With a lap and a half to go, we came to those downed logs. I dismounted and immediately heard the air going out of my rear tire -- a flat.
I shouted some very angry words. The wheel pit was about 300 meters or so up the course, but by the time I could have run there, I would have been way out of the race. Plus, I didn't have any spares stowed there.
So, I slowly walked the bike back to the car, cursing my luck. Several of my teammates checked in with me to see what had happened, and I thought that it had been something on the course, like a thorn. I didn't feel the rim bottom out (I was running about 33 PSI), which could have caused a pinch flat.
When I got home, I got the tube out, and there it was, the telltale two-hole pattern of a pinch flat. So, there's one lesson learned -- I either needed a little more tire pressure, or a little smoother technique. Or a little of both.
Overall, my fitness was pretty decent, but I'm disappointed in my skills, and crushed that I didn't get a chance to finish the race strong, and maybe notch a top-five performance. Plus, my leg hurts.
Things to work on: better warmup. Dismounts and mounts. Hitting it harder at the start. Bike handling skills. Getting tire pressures right. Keeping my mental focus.
On October 29, 2008, Wired and the New York Public Library will host an event called The Cutting Edge: Tales from the Culinary Frontier.
James Beard-award winning chef Grant Achatz and sous vide guru Nathan Myhrvold will explore the ways that science and technology are transforming our notions of food. Using new tools and techniques, top chefs are creating dishes that range from the simply delicious to the otherworldly, challenging both the mind and palate. Kitchens, once the home of stoves, food processors and not much else, are becoming more like laboratories, stocked with centrifuges and canisters of liquid nitrogen.
Grant Achatz is the chef and owner of Alinea restaurant in Chicago. Nathan Myhrvold is the CEO of Intellectual Ventures and former CTO of Microsoft.
I'll be moderating the discussion, which should be terrific. I've written about both of these guys for Wired, and can't wait to get them together.
Michael Ruhlman writes about the Alinea book, which is out October 15. He wrote an essay for it, along with Jeffery Steingarten, Michael Nagrant, and little old me. I got my copy last week, and it's astonishing. Just really beyond words.
At $31.50 on Amazon, it's an insane bargain.
So, for the folks who are saying things like this, from the Washington Post:
"I hate Obama so much that I'm going to devote as much time to McCain as I did to Hillary," said Adita Blanco, a Democrat from Edward, Okla., who has never voted for a Republican. "Obama has nothing. He has no experience. The Democratic Party doesn't care about us. You couldn't treat [Clinton] any worse."
Adita Blanco, I respectfully submit that you're an idiot. You supported Clinton, and you're a Democrat, but you're going to work for McCain, who opposes abortion rights, supports increasing our oil drilling, and thinks the economy is fundamentally sound?
Really?
See, this sort of short-sighted worldview is why we lost two elections to George Bush. You don't see the Republicans involved in this sort of intra-party battle, because they're smart enough or disciplined enough to realize that a member of their party is likely a better choice for them, even if they supported someone else in the primary. I don't hear Mike Huckabee's voters acting like they're owed something for coming in second.
I thought Hillary's speech last night was terrific, and I have a lot of admiration for her. But she lost. You want to be mad at someone? Be mad at her, and the campaign she ran. This was her nomination to lose, and she lost it.
I know, I know, this is easy for me to say as 1) a man, and 2) an Obama supporter. But I have this uneasy feeling that we're about to enter the same looking glass world we were in in 2000, when a bunch of potential Democratic voters looked at Bush and Gore, decided that there wasn't much of a difference between them, and then voted for Ralph Freakin' Nader.
Think that mattered? I do. So let's not make the same mistake out of some sense of grievance. Please.
College football season is just a few weeks away. Here's where to see your favorite team on TV.
I'm about two months into my training regime for cyclocross, most of which has consisted of my interval training classes at Endurance PTC in San Francisco at lunch. While those classes have been awesome, and I'm definitely a much stronger rider than I was 60 days ago, the one things the classes lack is volume. It's very intense training, but I don't have a huge aerobic base built up. So what's a cyclist pressed for time to do? Two weeks before the century, I did a 40-mile ride. The next weekend, I did a 60 miler--the longest ride I had done in a year. I figured that if I could ride 40, then 60, I could find some way to gut out a 100-mile ride. Even one that featured about 8,000 feet of climbing.
This is the sort of thing that passes for "logic" when you're a cyclist.
The good news was twofold. First, I had a wonderful time with the group of us that did the ride together from Wired. Any time you're out on a bike is fun, in my eyes, but it's so much more fun to ride with other people you like. So that was a real bonus, to get to spend the time riding with my friends from the office. A big shout out to Wired Deputy Editor Thomas Goetz, who goaded us into do the century.
The other good news was that I felt, on the whole, pretty good on this ride. Given that it was nearly twice as long as any other ride I've done in, oh, two years, that's encouraging for the racing season, which is looming just a month or so away.
There were two stretches of the ride that were pretty tough. After we turned toward Valley Ford, there was a series of three short, steep climbs that really sapped my energy. Thankfully, after that, we arrived at a rest stop where I could wolf down a ton of calories--a skill that I've been working on.
And then after a lovely stop in Petaluma, there was a rolling section of road with a headwind, culminating in Red Hill. a climb that shoots up about 8 percent over the course of a mile or so, and coming as it did at the end of a long day, it was a killer. I focused on one of the techniques that we work on in class, trying to transfer every bit of energy in our bodies to the pedals, and stomped my way up the hill. At the top, there was a mini-rest area, where I drank two completely wonderful, ice-cold Dixie cups of water.
The rest of the ride was a breeze, literally, as the wind we'd been fighting became a tailwind which helped blow us home.
Two days later, I'm feeling good. I did my Endurance class today, and actually felt shockingly strong, like my legs have adapted to the stress that I'm putting them through. In the next week or so, I'll go through my performance testing again, and that should be an interesting window onto how far I've come, and what I still need to do.
(Cross-posted from Wired.com. See all of my Bike Geek posts there.)
Nullsoft's tethering app for the iPhone is a little light on documentation: here's a couple of walkthroughs.
I've got a post up at Wired.com talking about some of the new generation of carbon bikes that try to combine performance and comfort:
When I first raced bikes back in the dark ages, the pinnacle of the bike makers art was the handmade Italian steel frame, built up with Campagnolo components. This was the era of unindexed downtube shifters, gluing on tubular tires, non-aero brake levers. A great steel bike like a Colnago would tip the scales at 22 pounds or so, and come with gearing so steep that just climbing my driveway was a significant effort.
We've come a long way. My bike now, with absolutely no effort spent in cutting weight, tips the scales at a hair under 16 pounds, and the gearing reflects a much more realistic version of my fitness. The components shift with a speed and precision that I could have only dreamt about as a skinny junior racer. And while the ride of tubular tires still surpasses anything else out there, clinchers are more than good enough for what I do.
But there's one area where those Italian bikes still shine compared with today's superbikes -- handling and comfort. There's an organic feel to a steel bike that's hard to replicate in carbon fiber, although the road feel of carbon bikes just keeps improving.
The handling is a different story. Those 80s steel bikes were stable and predictable, made for the long haul. Most high-end bike today have a racing geometry, one that's much steeper and quicker handling that those older bikes. Most of us don't need a bike tuned like a Formula 1 car; we need a bike that's stiff and fast, but one that doesn't require too much physical or mental energy to keep pointed where we want it.
I've written about Specialized and their Roubaix model before; it was really a bike that changed the industry when it first came out. Over the past couple of months, I've had the chance to ride two other wonderful bikes that also look to combine race-level performance with increased stablity and comfort: the Cervelo RS and the Felt Z15.
You can check out the entire post at Wired.com, as well as all my Bike Geek posts.