Thinking about Bikes and Bike News

Lots of stuff going on in the cycling world these days. Some good local action too as the Amgen Tour of California sped through town earlier this week. So I thought I'd tap out some thoughts on both the national and international cycling news as well as my own personal cycling news.

Dry Creek Road in Auburn, CA

So today I had the fortunate opportunity to ride with no time constraints. My wife took the kids down to the grandparents in the bay area for a few days during Spring Break. After I got them all packed up and sent them on their way, I ate some lunch then saddled up for a nice long ride. It's mostly the same route that I've done before but with a bit more climbing on some new roads that I've never been on before. The weather looked kinda sketchy, but the roads were dry. It was colder for late March due to the storms passing through. I put on more clothes than necessary, including my wind jacket, but I'm glad I did. As I got up into the hills of Auburn, the temperature really dropped. I was constantly zipping and unzipping my wind jacket and jersey all day to regulate my temp. In the end it all worked out great. I think what I need it one of those ultralight compact rain shells that you can stuff in a jersey pocket. Then if it does start to rain, you can pull it out and put it on.

Overall a great route. Not sure I'll ride on the new roads again. Joeger Rd, Dry Creek Rd and Bowman Rd all have a decent amount of traffic on them. Also I notice that riding during the week there just seems to be a lot more cars on the road in general. Guess that makes sense, and why we most often ride early on the weekends when most people are still in bed or at church.

Let me just say that riding almost 60 miles by yourself it a lot harder that riding 60 miles in a group. There is no hiding from the wind and there is no drafting. By about mile 50, my legs were cooked. I just shut it down at that point and tried to spin my way home.

Now I've had a nice hot shower, a recovery drink, and a super carne asada burrito from Rudy's. Life is good. I will sleep well tonight!

Below is my Garmin Connect map and details from the ride. I was a bit irritated with my Garmin Edge 500 today. As I got to the top of Baxter Grade I tried to hit the lap button to mark a lap so that I could later see how fast (or slow..) I just did the climb. The unit wasn't responding and seemed to have just crashed. I pulled over and after pushing a few buttons at the same time it rebooted and started working again. Looks like there is a firmware update that I need to install, so I hope that fixes it.

The Fat Cyclist at Team Radio Shack Training Camp

These are some great videos. Truly amazing what was accomplished by The Fat Cyclist in such a short time. Very inspiring!

Part I



Part II



Part III



Finale

An Assortment of Bicycling Goodness

Here's a bunch of links I've had in drafts for a little while now so I thought I'd mash them all together into one linky pile of cycling awesomeness. Enjoy!

Josh Hadar - Hadar Metal Design

PedalPower+ charges cyclists' phones, GPS, iPods

Singletracks - a very strong collection of trails across the entire country. Good info.

BikeMapDude - need a trail map for places in California? Check this site out. I was able to download a free PDF trail map of Nisene Marks and the Soquel Demo Forest for signing up to be on his email list. The maps are aces!

Bike Party: Beach Blanket Bike Along - "See, in theory, Critical Mass ought to be a fun bunch of people showing that you can commute just as effectively as drivers. But, at least in San Francisco, it's just a bunch of ass-clowns. And if you hurt any number of my favorite San Francisco residents while they are commuting via public transit because you *have* to ride on the sidewalk to show how macho you are, you are not my bicyclist brother and I wish nothing more than you get the world's worst saddle sore the next day."

Gyrobike gyroscopic training wheels help kids learn to ride and features an internal spinning disk that helps stabilize the bike, reducing wobbles and slowing falls.

Reflective Roadway Tape Lights Your Bike Day or Night for Cheap [DIY]

1986 Tour de France - Profile of 7-11 Team

This is a great old school video of the 7-11 cycling team in the 1986 Tour de France. Riders like Bob Roll, Chris Carmichael, Davis Phinney and Eric Heiden. They really paved the way for American cycling.

Excellent Cycling Photo Tips

Cyclelicio.us puts together a really good and useful set of tips and tricks to get the most compelling and pleasing photographs of cyclists.

Summarized here (and expanded upon there), they are:
Get close to the action.
Focus on the face.
Depth of field.
Avoid downhills and straightaways.
Know your autofocus and sensor lag.
Freeze the action.
Composition.
Finally, STAY OUT OF THE WAY!

Very good stuff indeed!

Short Tour Wrap Before Bed

Grady and I, along with thousands of others, braved the cold, wind and rain today to enjoy the Amgen Tour of California as it made its way from Sausalito down to Santa Cruz. Fearing missing the excitement, we got out onto Empire Grade above UCSC by around 11:30 this morning.

And waited. It rained for an hour or so. Then stopped and we waited some more. And then it rained some more.

Every once in a while an Amgen festooned vehicle would come tearing by, lights flashing, horn honking and everyone along our little stretch of the road, all twenty or thirty of us, would get up, get ready and then get disappointed.

The cyclists ended up starting to come through at about a quarter to two. We were smart and I'd turned the Escape around to face the oncoming riders so that we could effectively camp out in the back hatch with it open to avoid most of the rain. And Grady and I played games together, ate snacks, told jokes and took pictures of other stuff while we waited. Grady also had fun kicking gravel into the rain runoff, so much so that he's probably ruined his new(ish) shoes.

When the cyclists did come ripping through, they were proceeded by support cars, police cars, motorcycle cops and photographers on the backs of other motorcycles. And they blazed through even though we were at the top of a pretty good sized hill.

As they tore by, I snapped pictures, shot video from a tripod on the deck in the back of the car and made sure Grady didn't go wandering out into traffic. I had both my big-boy camera, the Canon XTi, and my new SX110. I think I may have ended up opting for the 110 to replace my SD1100 because of today and the desire to zoom in.

Either way, I got some good photos, including Lance!, shot some good video footage and had a good time spending so much time alone with Grady.

My favorite (and recorded) moment occurred after the first big peleton can ripping through with all of its support cars and excitement. Grady appears on the far right of the video, watching, smiling and digging it. After the last car goes by, he turns towards the camera and says, not once but twice, "That was awesome, poppa!"

And it was awesome.

Here's my photo set from the day. I'll probably add a few more as we move forward. I'm currently working on getting the videos converted into a more usable format.

Polar S725 - Battery Replacement

I have a love hate relationship with my Polar S725 cycling computer and heart rate monitor. Overall it's been a great product, but there
have been a few times which I've though about chucking it in the
river. The first problem appeared not long after I first installed it
on my bike. The heart rate readings would jump from normal all the
way up to 200-225 bpm. If my heart was beating that fast there would
be serious problems.. This problem seemed to go away all by itself,
or was caused by some sort of interference in my neighborhood. Who
knows maybe there was some old guy sending high frequency RF signals
into space trying to make contact with aliens?

The second problem was the speedometer. My bike originally had ITM
wing shaped handlebars to which the Polar handlebar mount did not fit
very well. So I purchased a small Velcro strap device that would
allow you to mount the Polar watch unit on the stem instead of the
handlebars. This worked ok, and was a good solution for getting the
watch unit off the bars, but that's when the speedometer readings
started getting wacky. It seems the signal would drop off, and I'd
have no data for speed / distance for much of a ride. I'm a bit of a
techno geek so I love to analyze the numbers after each ride. With
half of the data missing it was almost useless. I contacted Polar and
they recommended I move the watch unit back onto the handlebars. By
using the stem mount there was enough interference between the speed
sensor mounted on the right fork blade and the watch unit that was
causing the erratic readings. So I got some extra long zip ties and
somehow got the Polar watch mount to work on my wing shaped bars. It
wasn't the best, but it worked. I had to push the mount really close
to the stem and somehow use two different length zip ties. The other
change I made was to the speed sensor. I did a bit of research and
found out that you can increase the signal strength by switching a
jumper (similar to a hard drive jumper) on the circuit board. So, I
opened up the speed sensor with a long very small screw driver,
replaced the battery, and switched the jumper. Voila. My speed
sensor has been rock solid ever since. The only drawback to this was
that sometimes when I'd ride alongside my buddy who also had a Polar,
my speed signal would interrupt his and his watch would pause. That's
not a problem any more because he lost his Polar head unit on the
Leesville Gap Road Race last year. Now he has a PowerTap SL 2.4
wireless, nice!

My most recent headache with this Polar S725 was downloading the data
from the wrist unit to the PC. Polar uses an infrared interface from
the watch unit to the PC. In my case, I have the Polar USB IRDA
receiver. This has been a bit finicky at times. Getting the watch
lined up just right so the infrared signal transmits successfully
seems to be key. When the watch memory was full I would download the
data. Over time this became more and more of a problem. The watch
didn't seem to be sending the signal to the PC, or the transmission
would start then just stop about 1/2 way through. I finally figured
out that you can send one file at a time to the PC, but this was a bit
more time consuming. I finally contacted Polar regarding this issue.
They seemed to know right away that this was a sign that the battery
needed to be replaced in my wrist unit. I'd had this S725 for about
2.5 years now and this was the original battery. The documentation
states that the battery should last 1.5 - 2 years under normal use.
So I figured it was time to send it in for a battery replacement.
Polar recommends that you send the watch in to an authorized service
center. So I boxed up my wrist unit, heart rate monitor strap &
transmitter and sent it off. I got it back in about 7-10 days as
promised. They replaced the battery in both the wrist unit and the
heart rate transmitter, and sold me a new strap as well. Much to my
surprise the data on the watch was still there when I got it back.
This worked out good as I was able to test the infrared download
immediately. It worked perfectly. So, if you are having trouble with
your infrared connection, it's time to replace your battery, no doubt.
It would be cool if the wrist unit has some sort of low battery
warning indicator to warn you it was time to replace it. Other than
the infrared downloading, everything else worked just fine.

One other note, though not a problem, to be aware of. I recently
added the cadence sensor to my bike to record my pedal rpm's. This
was an easy install and works great. The one thing to be aware of is
that since the wrist unit is now recording one more piece of data,
your memory will fill up faster. You will have to download the data
more frequently. I think this is actually good, since you are more
likely to remember each ride or workout you've done. If you wait to
long to download the data you're likely to forget, now where did I
ride on 10/23/2007? Another good reason to keep a cycling diary!

I've been very happy with Polar's customer service. They generally
respond to email inquires in 1-2 days. So far their help has been
very good and solved my problems. My one wish is that they would use
a standard USB hard wired connection instead of the funky infrared
wireless for downloading data.

tags: polar hrm s725 heart rate monitor cycling computer speedometer
cadence sensor

New Cycling Blogs I'm Reading

I just added the following sites to my iGoogle page. There are some great articles in there. Check them out!

http://www.thefredcast.com/
http://www.the-spokesmen.com/
http://thebikelab.com/
http://quickrelease.tv/
http://www.cyclelicio.us/
http://www.bikebiz.com/
http://masiguy.blogspot.com/

Lab Rat for a Day

A couple of weeks ago (before I got sick), I spent an afternoon at the
UC Davis Sports Medicine Clinic. The purpose of my visit was mainly
for a professional bike fitting and pedal stroke analysis. Since I
was feeling really good at the time I also decided to do a V02max
test.

I always felt my road bike fit me pretty well, but really wanted a
good fitting just to be sure. Since I spend so much more time on my
road bike these days, I felt it was a worthwhile investment. Prior to
this my bike fitting measurements were based on the on-line calculator
at CompetitiveCyclist.com. As it turns out the on-line calculator was
pretty darn accurate in my case. The only thing the fitting
specialist changed was my stem length and rise, or drop in my case.
My original stem was 110mm with an 8 degree rise. My new stem is 90mm
with -8 degree drop. With the sloping top tube of my bike the stem is
almost parallel with that. This was the one area of the original self
bike fit that I kinda ignored. I never really measured the saddle to
handlebar drop and the reach etc. I'll have to go back and review the
numbers from the on-line fitting and see how close they match up with
my new numbers. More details on the fitting later.

The session started off much like a physical exam would. Height,
weight, temperature, blood pressure etc. Then it got more
interesting. They hooked up little sensors all over my body and did
an EKG. Next they did a caliper based body fat analysis and a few
other measurements. After they had all these figures and I filled out
the standard medical questions I was seen by a real Sports Medicine
doctor. They just want to determine you are healthy and in good
enough shape to even attempt the V02max test. Everything checked out
ok and I was ready to begin the indoor suffering of the V02max test!

My bike was set up on a CompuTrainer which was hooked up to a computer
to record everything and so the technician can make the wattage
adjustments on the fly. I got on my bike and did a good solid 15
minute warm up with a couple of big sprint outs to really get the
blood pumping and the legs thoroughly warmed up. Next I was told to
take my last drink of water as I would not be able to drink during the
duration of the test. The test would start out with relatively easy
pedaling, and then the wattage would be increased to a higher level
every 2 minutes. This would continue until the test was over or until
my numbers plateau or until I called it quits. On the window on front
of you is a chart with the different levels of RPE, rate of perceived
exertion. 1 was easy - no effort, 2 was minimal effort. As the scale
started to reach 6,7,8 it went something like strong, very strong, and
finally 10 was maximum effort, i.e. you're done! The technician
informed me that the 6,7 & 8 zones would sneak up on my rather
quickly. She was right. Before the test actually started you also
get to put on what is essentially like a regulator for scuba diving to
breathe into and they also put a plastic pinch on your nose, so you
can only breathe out of your mouth.

As the test started it went exactly as the chart stated. I could
barely feel the wattage increase for the first few stages. Since you
have the breathing tube in your mouth and cannot speak you signal to
the technician with your fingers the RPE. The hardest part for a
while was just breathing only through my mouth. My throat got dry
very quickly and I tried not to focus on that and just continue to
hammer out a smooth tempo. Finally I could start to feel the
resistance increases. Up through level 5 I felt really good, plenty
of lung capacity; legs were starting to work noticeable harder. As
she mentioned earlier I think my RPE went from 5 to 7.5 or even 8 very
quickly. A few more minutes at this level with strong words of
encouragement and then I was done. My numbers had started to plateau
which is a signal you've reached your max. I don't recall exactly how
long the test took, maybe 15-20 minutes though. I was worked by the
end. She asked me at the end of the test if it was my legs that were
out of gas or was I out of breath. It was definitely my legs.

After the test was over I did a 10 minute warm down on the
CompuTrainer and gulped down a bottle of water. Meanwhile the
technicians were taking the measurements from my bike and applying
them to the Serotta Size Cycle.

When I finished my warm down they quickly switched my pedals over to
the Size Cycle. When I jumped on it and started pedaling The Size
Cycle now felt exactly like my existing bike setup. This Size Cycle
has an SRM power meter on the cranks to measure the power and
efficiency of your pedal stroke. The rear wheel was also hooked up to
another CompuTrainer so they could change resistance remotely while
monitoring data on the computer. I pedaled for about 15 more minutes
as the technician increased and decreased the resistance a few times
then walked all around to view my position from all angles.

As I mentioned earlier the only thing he changed was the handlebar
drop and reach. My shoulders were kinda scrunched up as I rode, and I
had always noticed this when I ride as well. I always had to tell
myself to drop my shoulders. With a few quick adjustments on the Size
Cycle I was now in a much more comfortable position. The one other
change I forgot to mention was that he put a small wedge underneath my
right cleat. I think with my knee injury a few years ago I had been
babying the right leg. There was a bit more power being generated by
my left leg which indicated this. He noticed my right knee was
pointing slightly inward towards the frame. One small plastic wedge
and now my knees are parallel.

So what's the point of all this and what did I learn? Well, #1 I
learned that I am no Lance Armstrong. My V02max was 56.1 mL/kg/min.
Lance's measured somewhere between 70-80. My power at V02max was 310
watts. Since I don't have a power meter, yet ;-) I now have specific
target heart rate zones I can train in. Overall he said I'm in very
good shape for my age group and with the right training I should be
able to be competitive in Masters 4/5 races if I wanted to. He also
put together a 1 month training plan based on the limited time I have
available to train with work, family etc.

Overall it was a good experience and I would recommend the UC Davis
Sports Medicine Clinic to anyone interested in taking their cycling up
to the next level or just getting a proper bicycle fit.

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/sportsmedicine/

Amgen Tour of California TV Schedule

Posted here: http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/race-live/tv-schedule.html - it's on VERUS, formerly OLN. I plan to attend the Prologue in San Francisco and the finish of Stage #2 in Sacramento. The rest of it will be picked up on my good friend Tivo!