On Bicycles, and.... what else is there?

I had a really solid sprint workout today, extending my maximum recorded power to 749 watts on sprint #4. Then 737 watts on sprint #5 was my second best. So maybe my recent series of sprint workouts is paying off. With this ride, I closed off what's been a very mixed month. On the surface, with the exception of today's ride, it's been discouraging. I was 73rd in the Menlo Grand Prix, never a factor. I've never once this month felt strong on climbs. I got dumped from my one and only Spectrum Ride (okay, I ran 12.3 miles the day before). I did manage to hang with the main group over Canada College on a Thursday Noon Ride, but on a Tue Nooner, I was overwhelmed before I dropped off to do my assigned sprints (I'd done a long run two days before). I've not done a single ride this month much over 45 miles. So when things don't seem to be going so well, it's nice to look at some data. Here's my maximal power curves for the month (before and after t...

Last Friday, I needed a break. I decided to work from home, but I honestly wasn't getting much work done. Burning it at three ends. I was tired. Tyler Phinney was going to be riding the kilometer at Worlds . I checked CyclingFans for on-line coverage, and found a link to Justin.tv . Bingo. I tuned in to some French coverage just a few riders before Phinney clipped in. The best time so far: an insane 1:00.666 by German Stefan Nimke. Mini-Phinney riding the kilometer like a mini-pursuit ( VeloNews ) Phinney was behind his pace at 200 meters. These guys generally rip out killer standing 200's at the start of a kilo, but Tyler's just not that sort of a rider, especially at 18 years old. But once he was up to speed.... he lost a small bit of time next check, then actually began to gain some back. He crossed the finish in an amazing 1:01:611. Wow! Second place! One rider after another came to the start, bettered Nimke's opening 200 meter time, but then faded badl...

Today's workout was a recovery ride with two high cadence drills, each consisting of the following: 5 min @ 100 rpm 4 min @ 105 rpm 3 min @ 110 rpm 2 min @ 115 rpm 1 min @ 120 rpm Obviously this suggests the need for a cadence monitor. As I mentioned in my last post, the Powertap does make an attempt at cadence by monitoring the periodicity of the torque measured at the rear hub, expecting to see torque fluctuate as first one foot then the other foot moves between the downstroke. However this doesn't work as nicely as a good old-fashioned magnetic reed switch mounted to a chainstay to pick up the field from a magnet taped to a crank arm, and Saris will even sell you one for $50. For moderate cadence, the Powertap's scheme works okay, but for spinning drills, it tends to get confused and underestimate. But even at moderate cadence, the number fluctuates, such that trying to maintain cadence by watching the number isn't very productive. Smoothing helps reduce the fl...

This week, an embellishment on last week's Z3 climbing: Z3 with 30 seconds at Z4 every two minutes, to get my body accustomed to being in Z4. A better approach to my noon ride "Z4 and blow" paradigm of a few weeks ago. Here's the plot. The intervals on the climbs are fairly obvious. The bottom of Alpine is a gradual grade to flat, so for the first 8 minutes of that climb I tried to just keep it Z3, introducing the Z4 component when the climb proper kicked in. Power over time for the ride. I focus on on the climbs in the next plot. Here instead of ride time, the x-axis is the time within the interval. I did a fairly good job, it seems, of boosting the power up into Z4 during the final 30 seconds of each. There's no smoothing on these values, and point-to-point powertap samples jump around a lot due to differences in pedal stroke phase. Power over interval time for the major climbs. At Old La Honda Road, Coach Dan recommended doing that climb big gear, low ca...

A friend was visiting town and wanted to do yoga yesterday in lieu of our planned hike in the Marin Headlands. Too windy, she said, which I'd thought was a bit strange from someone who lives in Seattle. But yoga was fine. It'd been months since I'd attended my previous class, at World Gym at 16th and De Haro. The classes at World Gym are surprisingly good considering its reputation for a muscle-bound clientèle, but I wanted to take her to the a place with more of that distinctive yoga ambiance. I had a long-neglected gift certificate to Yoga Tree , so it was time to check it out. As our 11 am Vinyasa session was about to begin, the instructor declared we had "the perfect number" of students. "Plenty of room to walk up and down the aisles," he gleefully observed. I glanced around; the place was packed -- it had to be close to its 60-student capacity. Hopefully I wouldn't topple over on any of the balancings, initiating a domino-like chain...

Friday's Noon Ride seemed fast to me. The nice thing about power data is they allow one to put a quantitative validation on such qualitative assessments. One of my favorite ways of looking at ride data are maximal power curves. These are the maximum average power recorded during the ride over intervals of various duration. Here I compare average powers over four rides: three noon rides and the Menlo Park Grand Prix criterium, for durations from 0.05 minutes (3 seconds) up to an hour: Maximal power curves for two Friday Noon Rides, a Thursday Noon Ride, and the Menlo Park Grand Prix. FTP estimated from the Menlo Park Grand Prix normalized power is also shown, along with a curve using the Critical Power model for AWC/CP = 40 seconds with this FTP value. On the plot, I point out a key feature of that Thursday ride: the hard effort of the Canadã College loop , which is a pair of climbs separated by the descent. Note the peak average power increases with increasing time for a bi...

Two good things today.... One, I got in an 11.6 mile run, my first serious run since the trail run two weeks ago. The descent through Huddart Park took its toll, and I spent two weeks focused on cycling, stretching, and core strength work. It's important to me to maintain some running fitness through the summer. This will give me a big head start in my goal of qualifying for Boston , maybe at Sacramento in December, right before IEDM , which I often attend. But additionally I think running is good cross-training for riding, improving muscular balance, bone strength, and core integrity. Running also increases my focus on relaxation and posture, focuses which can be beneficially translated to riding. For example, relaxing my shoulders on the bike drops my head, which lowers wind resistance. And I think the body just works better when it's relaxed than when it's tense. Running has helped me realize just how much I tend to tense up my shoulders and neck. As if that w...

Wed I blew it. But Thursday I was serious. Coach Dan again said Z3, so it'd be Z3. The goal: ride segments of Z3 approximately 10 to 20 minutes long. But first, I'd just "warm up" with the start of the Noon Ride. Nothing hard. Just "sit in". Nice and easy. Trust me. Really. Fortunately, I finished patching my GoldenCheetah command line utilities, so I'm awash in data once again: Ride data from Thursday, with power zones (estimated from Menlo Park normalized power) indicated on right Okay, so much for "nice and easy". I tried, really I did. When the group got strung out turning onto Albion due to a pesky car (who's the guy responsible for getting the road closure?), I cashed in what position chips I had to drift to the back of the pack, reducing the compression interval. A bit later, the crew turned off for some Z6 action on the Canada College loop. I split off, going out and back on Canada Road instead. Histogram of data, sh...

I managed to port Ned Harding's Golden Cheetah patch for the new Powertap raw data format over to the command line utilities I prefer using, and finally got the chance to look at the numbers from my recent rides. A comparison: the Menlo Park Grand Prix to the Wednesday Noon Ride.... Powertap data, Menlo GP and OLH. PDF version also available . Interesting results. First of all, I simply didn't think I could produce that sort of power this year. Average power of 271 watts is bigger than what I've managed on any of my climbs of Old La Honda so far. And average power doesn't tell the whole story: normalized power gives higher weight to power above the mean than to power below the mean. It attempts to describe an "effective power": the constant power which could be produced with comparable effort. The number for the criterium was 289 watts for close to 38 minutes. That's almost as good as my best normalized power last year (291 watts) up Old La Honda...

Powertap's gone ANT+ Sport. So when I sent Saris my previous head unit for replacement when it magically stopped functioning, they send me one with ANT+ Sport enabled firmware. All good: the firmware is still compatible with old hubs. But when I cranked up my venerable GoldenCheetah ptdl and ptunpk command line utilities to download and decode the data, they spit it back out. Saris had changed the "raw" file format. I reported this to the GoldenCheetah user's list . Curiously, my report was the same day Ned Harding reported the same problem (this time in the context of a Windows version of the code. Windows is a virus my system doesn't have: I run Ubuntu 8.10. One month until 9.04 ! Hold you're breath. There's always issues with "upgrades".). The same day, Ned was able to reverse engineer the new binary format, and posted a patch. Wow. I consider myself a coding hack, but when guys who really know what they're doing show their ...

Last year's Menlo Park Grand Prix , 35+ 3-4: my goal was to finish in the pack. 3 laps to go, I flatted, and with the pit closed that put an end to achieving that goal. Close? Horseshoes and hand grenades. I then entered the 35+ 1-2-3 race as a second chance and got dropped when I made a bonehead error: thinking the " pssst-pssst-pssst " I heard was my tire losing air, when it was the guy next to me... I stopped, then when I realized my goof I couldn't regain the pack. But even though I knew I'd come close to my goal in that first race, I also knew I'd ridden badly. Too many times I'd found myself tailgunning, riding at the back of the pack. Call it CIC: " C rit I nferiority C omplex ". I don't belong there. Pardon me for getting in your way. I'll just hide back here, out of trouble, where it's "safe". Warming up at Menlo Park ( Jeff Remer ) This year, a new team , a new goal. Finishing in the pack wasn't enough. I had t...

I did the Passion Trail Bikes demo today.... a 2008 Santa Cruz Blur XC (not the 2009 carbon fiber version), with the lower-end component spec (for example, the Fox rear shock had no lockout). 2008 Blur XC The bike was fine, although I preferred the ride of the Specialized Epic Carbon I rode there last fall. The Specialized had more of a hardtail feel on the climbs, while the Blur XC had a softer feel. But the problem today had nothing to do with subtle differences between VPP and Horst-link rear suspensions. Nor was the problem really the engine. The problem was with the control systems. When riding up a steep mountain trail in Belmont's Waterdog Park, on numerous occasions I'd face a sharp, rutted switchback turn.... and bail. Or a steep drop-off on a descent.... and bail. Or a tight downhill switchback with a steep slope immediately beyond the edge of the trail.... and bail. Then face clipping back into my Speedplay Frog pedals, which aren't the easiest pedal to se...

Caltrain just shifted their southbound weekend schedule by 15 minutes to allow extra time for nocturnal track work . Caltrain weekend service is a long, sorry tale. For two years weekend trains were canceled altogether for track upgrades, replaced by a limited-stop " RRX " bus which kept up with the previous local-stop schedule to the stops it served. This included a brutal round-trip crawl between 101 and Palo Alto transit center. With track work completed, Caltrain patted itself heartily upon its back by returning weekend rail, presenting three schedule options to public comment. There were plans A, B, and C (PDF schedules linked to page no longer available). Under A, the train would stop at approximately 2/3 of the stations, every hour. Under B, they would stop at every 2/3 of the stations, but some of these stations would be served every hour, others every hour. The final plan, C, and the one I vocally opposed, was to stop at every station, every hour. Obviously...

Rendering of high speed rail car passing electrified Caltrain along Brisbane Lagoon I just fired off a letter to the editor of the Palo Alto Daily News . A loud vocal objection has been voiced to the impact high speed rail will have on quality of life. However, the proposed alternative is always that the would-be passengers will stay peacefully at home. To the contrary, if they aren't on the train, they'll be flying or driving. Flying requires valuable land for airport expansion, and more planes roaring overhead. More cars on the road? 101 and 280 are incredibly disruptive on communities, on local access, on noise, on air quality, on public safety, and on aesthetics. I experience this every day, living close to 101 and 280. I far, far prefer investment in rail to dumping more precious resources into inefficient automobile or air infrastructure. Transportation investment is always a matter of damage mitigation, whether it is in walking or cycling trails or in projects o...

Yesterday was my second trail run: the EnviroSports Huddart Park "half-marathon" . It was my first EnviroSports event. I'd thought Pacific Coast Trail Runs, the promoter of my first run (also at Huddart, in December) was low-key.... When Dave of EnviroSports announced that if we took time to admire the view, we should record how long we did so and it would be deducted from our official time, I was impressed! And earlier, when I'd asked how we check-in at the turn-around, I was told it was "sort of on the honor system". This trail running thing is cool. The profile was simple: up for 6 miles, down for 6 miles. Not quite a "half-marathon", after all, according to the official course profile . My new shoes, post-race I had new shoes for this one: New Balance 790 lightweight neutral strike trail shoes. I love these shoes, and was lucky to grab them, as they've been discontinued: apparently lightweight trail runners are not in demand. Chi Ru...