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

Onward from Ghisallo.... After climbing to the church, spending plenty of time at the church and at the adjacent museum, then enjoying a delicious panini & frizzante lunch at the cafe, I was ready for more. Most riders consider the church to the the finish of the climbing, but really it's just the first course. A narrower, steeper, yet still excellently paved road continues upward, to San Primo. Just follow the sign... You can see the data from my ride on Strava . As of now, I'm the only one to have loaded data for the segment (which I defined) which extends from the junction at the Madonna to the Y-junction at San Primo. I initially continued from here left onto a dirt road, which led me to this sign: Beyond here the road became too rough for comfort with my 23 mm tires. The profile to this point: The dirt is just the final few hundred meters. Using the Low-Key hill ranking index, the full profile comes out at 103 on the Old La Honda = 100 point scale. ...

After I'd reached Madonna del Ghisallo and visited the absolutely incredible church and museum, I saw some riders emerging from another building. Ah, that must be the bar and cafe, I realized, which was soon confirmed. What a difference between the US and Italy, that in any local snack bar you can get something as sublime as a delicious panini made with fresh bread, formaggio, lattuga, pomodori, and with Gazzetta dello Sport as a side: Let's take a closer look at what Gazzetta highlighted in that article, on Mosquera's dramatic stage win at Bola Del Mundo in stage 19 of the Vuelta a España : Wow -- a VAM of 1800 meters/hour for the final 3 km of a brutal climb three weeks into a stage race. But the roundness of that number immediately rang suspicious... Consider first the quoted stats: 12% average for 3 km. That's 360 meters. So how long does it take to climb 360 meters at a VAM of 1800? Simple: 1/5 of an hour = 12 minutes. But it says it took 12:53...

I was in Italy for a bit over a week and brought my trusty Ritchey Breakaway. I really love that bike, steel frame and all. It's relatively bomb-proof, packs nicely into its near-regulation-sized travel case, and rides really well. It's no weenie @ 17.5 lb or so with clinchers and first-generation SRAM Rival, but then again 17.5 lb ain't so bad either. I wouldn't use it for a hillclimb time trial, but it's certainly a race-worthy bike. So my first target was the legendary Ghisallo climb from Bellagio on Lake Como. The Ghisallo ends at the Madonna del Ghisallo, the internationally famous church dedicated to cyclists. The climbing actually begins deep in the center of Bellagio. However, here's where I consider the true climb to start, at the 9 km to go sign at the traffic circle (below this traffic is too heavy): the start of the climb proper From this point, here's the route profile, riding along the main road as opposed to the alternate back-ro...

Every once in awhile I get fiesty and feel the impulse to fire off a letter to the editor of a local paper. Back in the day, this required actually printing (or before that, typing or writing) an email, finding an envelope and stamp, and deliberately mailing it. These days, however, it's click-click-click,CLICK, and you've fired off your reactionary diatribe to take its place in the ever-increasing annuls of journalism. Anyway, returning from the Fremont Peak Hillclimb yesterday, my ride made an unfortunate choice of taking 101 north, and I forgot to check 511 for traffic conditions. Due to a horrific accident on the road 7 hours prior, traffic was appalling, and we sat in walking-pace congestion for at least 45 minutes. This partially inspired my response to the Palo Alto Daily Post 's latest editorial blasting high speed rail. Here's my letter: The 13 September Post editorial, Take a Stand, warned against how high speed rail could "devastate the city ...

Sunday is the second annual Fremont Peak Hillclimb . Last year I couldn't make it for some silly reason, then Mt Tam was canceled, so no Mt Tam for me. This year Mt Tam is back , but I'll be traveling with family in Italy, so will miss out there. But I will be at Fremont Peak Last year I posted a route profile for the climb, which is intriguing: Fremont Peak from San Juan Baptista ( Motionbased:mooseman ) Here's the grade extracted from that profile, which I've convolved with a Gaussian of standard deviation 100 meters, to keep the numbers significant: Fremont Peak from San Juan Baptista ( Motionbased:mooseman ) So it pokes its nose above 10% for a bit, but nothing super-steep here. I find the suffering really kicks in over 12% if I'm over-geared, over 15% pretty much whatever my gear. It should be fun. As an aside, normally I don't bring any metrology with me on hillclimbs except perhaps a wristwatch to judge pacing. But this time I'm...

French mountain bike cross-country racer Julian Absalon had the amazing ability to deliver the goods when it counted most. He won the 2004 Olympic mountain bike cross-country race in Athens, Greece, an amazing four consecutive world championships from 2004 to 2007, then repeated as Olympic champion in 2008 in Beijing, China. Each of these wins was on a 26-inch hard-tail mountain bike. But at the World Championships in 2008, there was what appeared to be a breakthrough. Swiss Christophe Sauser won the cross-country worlds on a pre-production 2009 Specialized Epic dual-suspension bike. It seemed perhaps the dual-suspension bike had finally come of age: a new era of dominance was about to begin. Sauser wins in 2008 on Specialized Epic dual-suspension 26 incher Indeed, in 2009 Matt Pochacha, then of VeloNews, claimed "The 26-inch wheeled hardtail mountain bike is, indeed, dead," where he tested a 26-inch wheeled hardtail, a 29-inch wheeled hardtail, and a 26-inch wh...

Last two times, I discussed an article in Bicycle Quarterly which described how low-trail bikes should perform better in cross-winds. I showed that this is true for two effects from the sidewind, one that a bike leaning into a side-wind will tend to steer into the wind if it has positive trail, and the other that a sudden gust will cause a reaction force on the front wheel that will tend to rotate the wheel. Actually, these two effects are really the same, one the steady-state effect, the other a short-term effect. But what the article missed was that the sudden gust is also going to tend to blow the bike over in the direction of the wind, so an effect which causes the bike to suddenly steer away from the wind can compensate for this. But there's another effect. Everyone knows that a deep-dish rim is often less stable than a shallow rim, or even that bladed spokes may be less stable than round ones. This is due to the direct force of the wind on the front wheel, although t...

The description I gave last time was only part of the story described in Bicycle Quarterly and Tony Foale . Suppose I'm riding along when a cross-wind strikes. It will apply a force to the rider, to the frame, to the rear wheel, and to the front wheel. The last time I dealt with the force as a whole, which causes the bike to lean, and the lean induces the front wheel to turn proportionate to the lean. But there's an additional factor. Okay, several, but there's only space to describe two of them in this post. In the last analysis, I assumed a steady wind. But assume instead the wind strikes suddenly from the side. In this case, the bike is starting vertical: not leaned over. But the wind hits and suddenly it's pushing against the rider + bike. Without friction, the bike would accelerate sideways in response to this force, wheels and all. But there is friction: the tires grip the road, the and consistent with Newton's Third, the ground pushes ...