Monthly Archives: July 2011

2nd place is no better than 5th

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Way way way back in the day, when I was a junior racer (15-18 years old), there was a family from the midwest that dominated bike racing- the Stetinas. Dale & Wayne, I believe (Dale is now a stock broker, and his brother Wayne a high-up person at Shimano bicycle components). They used to arrive at races in a huge motorhome, and their father was legendary for badgering other racers as well as his own kids. At one point one of his sons had “only” come in 2nd place, and Roy Stetina, “proud” papa, was heard to tell him “2nd place is no better than 5th!” That was the shot heard ’round the world; from then on, the standing joke, if you were 5th in a race, was to ask to trade prizes with 2nd place because, after all, it was no better than 5th.

I bring this up because today, in the final sprint, I didn’t have what it took. I just couldn’t close the gap in time to Chris. Maybe I wasn’t pushing a high-enough gear, maybe I should have sat down sooner, not really sure. Or maybe I just wasn’t strong enough. Chris later said that another 10 feet and I would have had it, and that’s when the “2nd place is no better than 5th” line came back to me. It didn’t matter that George and Kevin and John and whomever else were back there. What mattered was that Chris won and I lost (as seen in the short video).

Regarding the other 25 miles of the ride, it was yet another beautiful morning, third day in a row of riding for myself and Kevin as we prepare for France (we leave a week from Thursday). For reasons not explained or easily understood, we had an exceptionally-easy, dare I say lazy pace up the first half of the hill until something finally triggered Chris to start pushing the pace, at which several riders went forward (Chris, Jim, John, George & Todd) and several others backward (myself, Kevin, Eric and Terry). People may have expected heroics (again) from Kevin, but we had decided beforehand to take it a bit easier and try to avoid him having a seizure (thankfully, he didn’t).

I did ask Kevin tonight if he was in a good position to see Dad lose the sprint. He was. Now trying to figure out if it’s good that he was up there, or bad that he saw me fail. :-)

 

Course complete. You win!

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Time for an “ugly” ride, something not terribly long but far more challenging than the mere mileage or climbing would indicate. So last night, with Kevin’s help, I put together an “ugly” ride. Something tough to do on a warm/hot day (it was just under 100 much of the ride). Something I could program into the Garmin ahead of time so I would be less tempted to modify things along the way.

Today’s “ugly” ride had us going up Page Mill (Kevin’s idea) to Skyline, south on Skyline to 9 (and south on Skyline is so much tougher than going north, even though the elevation change isn’t much different), lunch at Mr. Mustard, then down 9, up & over Eden & Pierce to Los Altos, then a different sort loop through the Foothills, different in that I discovered new forms of torture on a hot day. I’ll post more details tomorrow.

Oh, the title. At the end of the ride Kevin’s computer flashed “Course complete. You win!”, apparently a message that we beat the time estimate. Rest assured, we were in fact beat by the end of this ride!

Duplicating fit on two bikes

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Today’s ride was the first test of our Bike Friday’s for the upcoming trip to France (July 14th). My experience commuting with my Bike Friday has shown me that something wasn’t quite right with the fit; I was having some hamstring issues that would normally indicate a seat too high, but that wasn’t the case. So I went through the process below, and what an amazing difference it made! I’ll try to get some graphics up soon. –Mike–

Part 1: Duplicating riding position on both bikes- I’ve been commuting to work & back on my own Bike Friday for quite some time now, but really hadn’t felt like my position was fully dialed in, so Saturday I had both my Madone and the Bike Friday at the shop and did full centerlines on the Madone (upon which I am extremely comfortable) and the Bike Friday. Complicating things a bit are the different pedals used on each, with Speedplay Zeroes on the Madone and Shimano SPDs on the Bike Friday. As I’ve become overly sensitive to even millimeter differences in seat height, I couldn’t just measure distance from seat to pedal, but had to take into account the differences the pedal platforms make. In the end this wasn’t difficult; I just attached shoes to each and measured my Madone from the inside of the shoe (at the insole) to the seat. And then duplicated it on the Bike Friday, taking into account a bit more sag in the Bike Friday’s more-padded saddle.

So, if you want to duplicate positioning on your bikes, here are the relevant things to measure, starting with the bike that fits best-

  • Top of saddle to inside of shoe insole, measured in line with the seat tube and the spot on the inside of the shoe exactly over the pedal spindle, with the crank also in line with the set tube.
  • Saddle setback. For this you need the bike on level ground. Drop a line from the tip of the saddle and measure exactly how far behind the bottom bracket center it falls. This is a really important measurement if you want two bikes to feel the same.
  • Nose of saddle to center of handlebar (where the stem clamps it).
  • The difference between the top of the saddle & ground, and the top of the handlebar & ground.

Beyond that you have to take into account different handlebar reach (how far forward the bar extends; in nearly every case, less is better with modern brake/shifter levers) and differences in saddle shape. In some cases it will make sense to not “play around” with the saddle much and just install identical saddles on each bike. With handlebars, you can measure the forward reach and make sure they’re similar.

That’s about it. Do this carefully and you’ll be amazed at the results.

 

First pre-France test of Bike Fridays

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It was meant to be a longer ride, but that wasn’t the fault of our Bike Fridays. The plan was initially Woodside, Old LaHonda, Pescadero, loop down to Gazos Creek and back to Pescadero, north on Stage and back via Tunitas. Due to the warm weather we decided to drop the Gazos Creek section, but more pruning was soon to come.

Since we were on our Bike Fridays and not our lighter-weight and more-responsive Trek carbon bikes, I knew we’d be climbing Old LaHonda a bit slower than Kevin’s recent and rapidly-improving times, but the presence of large numbers of rabbits (cyclists ahead of us) and the fear of being passed by dogs (cyclists behind) was propelling Kevin strongly; so strongly in fact that, at the half-way point, he was slightly ahead of his best time ever (23:24). But literally within 20 feet of the top he had one of his more-significant seizures, causing great concern among the many cyclists who traditionally assemble at the top of the climb. I let them know he’d be fine in just a couple of minutes, but it’s got to be an odd thing for someone not familiar with epilepsy to see a cyclist struggle to get off his bike and then stagger around a bit before collapsing to the ground. Me? Old stuff. I know he’ll be fine shortly, and just make sure he gets laid gently on the ground (although today I couldn’t get to him in time).

Kevin sitting in the window at the San Gregorio General Store, talking with Dario (friend & customer)

Riders approaching Highway 1 on Stage Road, just north of San Gregorio

Within a couple of minutes he was mostly fine, but had lost his desire to keep going. I knew this was temporary so we moved on, but by the time we got to La Honda I decided we’d alter the ride a bit more and drop the Pescadero loop in favor of a slightly-shorter Los Lobitos addition. Given a bit more time (and, ironically, a bit of climbing), Kevin would have been fine with the original plan, and in fact by San Gregorio he was feeling very good.

Heading north on Highway 1

Kevin on the easy part of Los Lobitos; looking across the ravine you can see the hard part.

We fueled up with a Coke and Clif Bar and then set out to tame Stage Road, Los Lobitos and Tunitas Creek. While it had been getting quite toasty on the bay side of the mountain (and in the picture showing riders climbing Stage Road, you can see it’s rather heat-hazy up on Skyline in the distance), it was a very comfortable mid-70s on the coast. Dario, a customer we came across at San Gregorio General Store, rode with us as far as Los Lobitos and then continued on to Half Moon Bay (where he’d be eating lunch before turning back and doing Higgins Purissima and then Tunitas). Los Lobitos is one of those roads that starts out deceptively-easy and fun, and then turns into a pretty nasty, steep climb that winds around and eventually connects with Tunitas a few miles in from the coast.

The "other side" of Los Lobitos, seen in the prior photo

By this time Kevin was back to his old self again, riding strongly on the steepest sections and taking advantage of his superior lungs. Hearing Dad’s lungs noisily trying to snag spare oxygen seems to make him climb even faster. That’s OK, I still have more power in my legs; I just have to use them wisely, knowing that a sustained effort is going to put me into oxygen debt that I won’t quickly recover from.

Los Lobitos was the one piece of road we saw no other cyclists on. Actually, we did come across one cyclists, riding in the opposite direction, but no rabbits, no dogs.

Kevin riding up Tunitas Creek, clearly working it hard

Tunitas Creek? Same as it ever was. Steep, creek still running (surprisingly strongly), and today, so many cyclists on it you’d think there was an organized ride going on. Kevin kept a strong pace the whole way up the hill, clearly enjoying the fact that his current level of fitness allows him to pass so many others on the climbs these days. We did adopt a mellower pace on the flatter section up on top.

If we’d known how hot it was going to get as we descended back into Woodside, we might have spent more time on the coast! By the time we got home we felt like we’d had a far tougher ride than the 46 miles indicated, but the ride’s main mission, proving that the Bike Fridays were ready to tackle France in less than two weeks, was accomplished. The time I spent Saturday getting it set up identically to my Madone paid off very well. Now if I could just fix Kevin’s epilepsy as easily as I can deal with bike problems. –Mike–

 

It’s time to ride. What more can I say?

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We’ve earned mornings like this. Mid to upper 50s, clear skies, dry roads. The type of morning you don’t mind waking up a bit early for. The main question, for me, is whether I can keep up with Kevin today.

Pretty large group; Kevin (my son, not the pilot), Todd (former Chain Reaction employee and now internist at Palo Alto Medical Clinic, specializing in Sports Medecine… could come in handy!), Eric, Marcus, Terry, Millo (who joined us up on top), Jan, and one more I think (Karen). I thought we were going to take it relatively-easy up the hill, and for the first 30 or so feet, we did. Then Todd went to the front and just sort of casually picked up the pace, such that my planned 9 minute time to the park entrance became 7:45. Hate that. Kevin was just behind me, but that was to be an anomoly as he tends to get stronger as the climb goes on.

In the middle of the climb I was having a bit of fun riding between Kevin and Bruno, back & forth a couple of times, not sure how long I could keep that up. At the wide-open section Kevin began to seriously pull ahead, such that I had to go back into Levi mode and gradually start to claw my way back up to him. Unfortunately, as soon as he got maybe 50 meters or so ahead, I watched as he went in an instant from full-power to dismounting the bike and went into a 3-minute-long seizure (very long for Kevin). Darn, as it was looking like he was going to get another sub-27 time. As he came out of it he started almost instinctively climbing back on his bike, almost before the seizure had completely gone away, but in moments he was back riding, nearly full-throttle. In the end his time was around 32 minutes, which just a few weeks ago would have been a typical time for him.

Left-to-right, a piece of Millo, Kevin, Terry (background), Todd & Bruno

We had a nice & uneventful ride across Skyline and down 84 to west-side Old LaHonda, followed by a quick ride back up to Skyline. Kevin did fine the rest of the way, but wasn’t quite up to speed after skipping Tuesday’s ride.

Tomorrow Kevin rides with his cousin Ed, a sort of make-up ride for Tuesday, followed by rides on Sunday & Monday (and of course the regular Tuesday ride) designed to get us used to riding tough circuits several days in a row.