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

For the first time this year since I started my blog in 2008, total posts have dropped. Here's a plot of the rate of net posts during the year since 2008, when Cara convinced me to start the blog: I started a bit slowly this year, then rallied, catching my 2010 schedule. But then I started losing ground, finishing in a dead heat with 2009. So what happened? The answer is I started riding more. This is evident from the plot on my Strava page . Barely surviving through April, then my hours start to take off in May. Normal commute means I am in the train around 100 minutes with my laptop. SF2G means I leave home early, then have only my cell phone for my train ride home. More riding = less posting. And that is a very good thing. Here's another look at my SF2G schedule. I counted the number of Strava activities I had with SF2G in the title. Before the period of the plot I didn't have GPS so I'd need to check my old training logs. I may have been occasional...

This weekend I was in Philadelphia for the first time since I was a small child, visiting Cara's family. The house was only a mile from the Philadelphia Art Museum, and that got me very excited. Sure, we went to the museum (or rather the Perelman Building extension: a fascinating exhibition of Zaha Hadid's architecture ), which was nice, but arguably far more famous than the museum itself is the steps leading to the front door of the main building, for these were the steps Rocky Balboa used to prove his fitness in Rocky , the Best Picture Acadamy Award winner of 1976. Here's a link to a YouTube version of the inspirational scene. You know you like it! As I began the short run to the museum, I readied myself for the ridicule of bystanders. Here would be an adult living out a scene of a 35-year-old film: Heh! Look at that bozo! "Go Rocky!" Heh. First, the statue. I had to take a photo. There's a long story on the statue, which was commissioned for R...

It is traditional that the top 3 men, top 3 women, top 3 juniors, and the Endurance Award winner of the Low-Key Hillclimb series are all awarded a free spot in Pen Velo's long-running San Bruno Hill Climb , held every year on Jan 1. I finished 4th, just out of the "money". But yesterday I signed up anyway, paying the entry fee: it's not often I have fitness and opportunity this time of year to do the climb. The USA Cycling page has it listed as a "time trial", but that's incorrect. It's a mass-start race, riders starting in waves from the base of Guadalupe Canyon Road near Bayshore, climbing to the "saddle point" marking the top of Guadalupe. Then from there it's a sharp right into the state park, down a short descent past the ranger kiosk, an immediate right turn over rough pavement a short straight, another right, pass back under Guadalupe Canyon, then the narrow, sometimes rough climb to the summit. Here's the profile: ...

I'm very excited about the 2012 North American Handbuilt Bicycle Show in the first weekend in March. (I was tempted to ride the Death Valley Double Century, but the two conflict.... Death Valley can wait.) Fairwheel Bikes , which has been stealing a lot of attention from the big boys at Interbike the past few years with their ultra-light project bikes, is delivering a new project to the show: "Project Right". I just came across this today, having seen their latest blog update . Here's the frame: Check that out: the left side of the rear triangle is completely missing, and there's no seat stays. This is really only an incremental change from the trend taken by Cervelo and Pinarello. Cervelo reduced the seat stays to mere formalities to provide vertical compliance, while Pinarello has been a leader (in marketing at least) in focusing material on the right chainstay, since that's the side where force is transmitted via the drivetrain. Here's the Ce...

I had a good year at the Low-Key Hillclimbs this year. Often by the time October rolls around fatigue from the year is starting to kick it. Last year I came into the series fairly fresh and fit, but then started a new job and my fitness went straight downhill from week 3 (my first) onward. I finally started exercising at a reasonable rate again in April this year, a mixture of running and some cycling (mostly long commutes to work), and surprised myself with a sub-1:31 half marathon in August: I considered that good given my lack of formal running background. So I knew I had some fitness but wasn't sure about how I'd do on the bike. I did a few climbs of Diablo before the series, just to get some climbing legs, and was surprised my times weren't so bad. But for the Low-Keys, you've got to be better than "not so bad". Everyone seems to raise their game for the series. But despite my worries I did pretty well. So as the series wound down, Tim Clark a...

Here's a good story: from the excellent StreetsBlog San Francisco, What's the Hold Up for Van Ness BRT? . San Francisco has no meaningful intra-city subway, and most of the street car lines were ripped out early in the 20th century. Street cars were mostly privately owned, and they couldn't compete with the massive public support provided to car infrastructure under political pressure from the car companies. So en masse, street lines were paved over, except for a skeletal few: there's a few key MUNI lines, and a few cable car lines which cater to tourists. BART runs through downtown, but just makes a few stops in the city, designed primarily to connect San Francisco to the East Bay. It's original goal of surrounding the Bay was gutted by first Santa Clara County opting out in 1957, then San Mateo County in 1961, each preferring to focus on expressways; Marin dropped out soon after [ Wikipedia ] (what an unbelievable tragedy). So San Francisco is stuck with bus...

The Cortland Hurl is the only significant climb on the SF2G Bayway route. According to Strava, it gains 25 meters in 400 meters, an average grade of 6.3%, although the grade is non-uniform. It starts out fairly gradual, then steepens, then gets gradual again towards the top. I like to make a good effort here when I'm feeling good during morning commutes. Typically I'm behind at the top of the steep bit, but I tend to do fairly well on the final gradual portion. If I'm having a good day, depending on who's there and how they're riding, I have a chance to be first to the top. I've not ridden with a power meter for a year now. I sort of lost interest: I just like riding my bike and I don't care what the power meter data are, so why carry around a heavy, expensive Powertap wheel? Strava gives me a fairly good idea how I'm doing with its segment timings. However, in addition to speed numbers Strava also produces power estimates. In fact, it will u...

As always happens in fall, the Low-Key Hillclimbs have taken up a large chunk of my time, leaving less time for blog posts. But it was worth it: the series was an unqualified success, with every climb coming off well, the last few finding valuable seams in the weather. At Hamilton riders experienced moderate rain on the descent, and for some towards the end of the climb, but it was warm enough that the long descent was still tolerable in the wet. One aspect of the series worthy of revision, however, is the scoring system. Never before were artifacts in the median-time-normalized scoring more obvious. So for 2012, I am finally overcoming inertia and changing from the median-based scoring we've essentially used since 2006. I've described in preceding posts a scheme to calculate a reference "effective" time for each climb. With this scheme, instead of taking a median each week, we take a geometric mean where effective times for riders (adjusted for male, female, h...

In two previous posts, I described an attempt to revise the scoring code for the Low-Key Hillclimbs. The scoring has placed a priority on simplicity. At first, we normalized times to the fastest man and woman each week. But then everyone's score was exceptionally sensitive to the fastest rider. Then I switched to using the median time for normalization, first separately for men and women, then using combing them with an empirically determined conversion factor for women. But while median is less sensitive to any single individual showing up, nevertheless the most challenging climbs tend to attract fewer beginner riders, deflating the scores for these weeks. So the alternative approach is to iteratively rate each climb using a reference time based on the rating of riders who show up, and assign each rider a rating based on the reference times (and their results) of the climbs they do. A concern about this approach is that if I use all available information equally, I re-rate ...

I seem to have debugged the new Low-Key Hillclimbs scoring algorithm, so tested it on 2011 data for the completed first six weeks. Recall the method is to calculate a rider's rating (not used for overall rankings) based on the natural logarithm of the ratio of his time each week to that climb's reference time. Meanwhile the climb's reference time is calculated as the average the natural logs of the times of the riders in the climb, subtracting their ratings. These "averages" are weighted by heuristic statistical weights which assign more importance to riders who did more climbs, and to a lesser extent to climbs with more riders. Each of these factors depends on the others, so the solution is done self-consistently until it converges, in this case until the sum of the squares of the reference times changes by less than 10 -6 seconds 2 . This took 8 iterations in my test. To avoid contaminating the results I check for annotations that a rider has experienc...

The whole key to comparing scores from week-to-week is to come up with a set of reference times for each week. Then the rider's score is 100 × this reference time / the rider's time, where times have first been adjusted if the rider is a woman or a hybrid-electric rider. Presently this reference time is the time of the median rider finishing the climb that week. But if riders who would normally finish in more than the median time don't show up one week, for example Mix Canyon Road, everyone there gets a lower than normal score. That's not fair. So instead we can do an iterative calculation. Iterative calculations are nice because you can simplify a complicated problem by converting it into a series of simpler problem. The solution of each depends on the solution of every other. But if you solve them in series, then solve them again, then again, eventually you approach the self-consistent solution which you would have gotten with a single solution of the full, un...

The San Francisco mayor's election was yesterday, and it looks like Ed Lee won it with around 30% of eligible voters voting. Quoting the San Francisco Examiner, referencing critics: "...the career bureaucrat would be nothing more than a shill for powerful City Hall insiders. Lee also was dogged by accusations of voter manipulation by an independent expenditure committee that supported the mayor and other backers laundering campaign donations, which prompted a District Attorney’s Office investigation..." He attracted a huge number of donations, driving up the amount the city needed to pay in public financing. His donations were largely from out-of-city donors, many laundered through low-income workers to circumvent the $500 donation limit. Then there were the nominally unaffiliated supporters, for example those who produced and distributed free copies of the book of his life story. Meanwhile, he violated the law by refusing the disclose details of public contacts wi...

In nature, if you can't do what it takes to survive, you die, your genes are eliminated from the pool, and someone else takes your place. Maybe what takes your place is better, maybe not. But if not, it will also die, be eliminated, until eventually something able to do what it takes comes along and so, by this process, things generally improve over time. This is my theory of voting. Rule #1: if the incumbent isn't doing a good job, vote them out. So often in elections I hear about the "lesser of two evils". "I don't like the incumbent XXX, but he's better than YYY." Sorry: the rule of natural selection says I vote XXX out of office anyway. Maybe YYY is even worse. But then I vote YYY out at the first opportunity. Eventually corrupt and unqualified candidates will stop running. Eventually you get someone good in office. But if you vote "lesser of two evils", things will never change. You'll always have candidates who suck...

Low-Key scoring has gone through various phases. In the 1990's, we scored based on fastest rider. The fastest man and the fastest women each week would score 100. Those slower would score based on the percentage of the fastest rider's score. This was super-simple, but when an exceptionally fast rider would show up, everyone else would score lower than normal. Additionally, this was frustrating for the fastest rider (typically Tracy Colwell among the men), since no matter how hard he or she pushed himself, the result would be the same 100 points. So with Low-Key 2.0 in 2006, we switched to using the median rider (again treatng men and women separately). The median is much less sensitive to whether a particular individual shows up or not, so scores were now more stable. However, there was still an issue with women, and most especially with our hybrid-electric division, since smaller turnouts in these again made the score sensitive to who showed up. So in 2010 I updated t...

approaching the Low-Key finish (Cara Coburn photo) Yesterday I rode the Diabolical Duo at Mount Vaca. First: Mix Canyon Road. Coordinator Barry Burr did an excellent job organizing this one, definitely the "road trip" ride for many in the 2011 Low-Key Hillclimb schedule. For my car pool it wasn't a big deal: one hour from San Francisco, even stopping for gas. Rides like Alba Road, Bonny Doon, Henry Coe, Jamison Creek Road, and Hicks Road we've done in the past are all substantially further, with plenty more of comparable distance. But most of our riders live closer to San Jose than to San Francisco, and for them the trip was further. But even from San Jose this trip was worth it. A big part of it was our Strava event: The Diabolical Duo . The Low-Key Hillclimb covered just the first part of this: to complete the Duo, riders needed to also climb nearby Gates Canyon Road. Inspiration for the Duo event came from The Toughest Ascent Blog . I won't even t...

The 2011 Low-Key Hillclimbs are over the hump, with 5 of the 9 scheduled events in the bag. Each one has had near-perfect weather, with warm sunshine without being hot. It's been supernatural, almost. Week 1 is always stressful: after a long "off-seson", Low-Key returns to Montebello Road. I traditionally coordinate this one, more to take responsibility for the outcome rather than due to being qualified. Honestly, organization is not my strong point, and every year something gets overlooked. But I've had excellent assistance from Howard Kveck these past few years, and he helps keep things in shape when I stumble. Sometimes there's a bit of next-day revision needed on the results based on email feedback, but in the end we typically get them fairly good. This year things went even smoother than normal. Week 2 : a late swap with Barry Burr for week 6 (more on that) had me coordinating Sierra Road, as well. Biggest trick on Sierra Road is the start, which ...

The 8 November election in San Francisco will have 16 candidates contesting the mayor's position. The city will, for the first time, use instant runoff voting for the city-wide mayor's election, avoiding the need for people to cast multiple ballots in the likely scenario that no candidate would get at least 50% of the votes. Instant runoff works by creating virtual "rounds" of voting. Voters get a number of votes on their ballot. They list their first choice, then their second, then their third for the mayor's position. In principle there could be enough votes to rank all candidates (one less than the number of candidates), or more if you want room for write-in candidates. First, all candidates receiving at least one first-place vote are ranked, and the one (or multiple) candidates receiving the least number of votes are eliminated (assuming there's at least one candidate left). Ballots which had an eliminated candidate as a first choice have lower-rank...

I've been following the mayor's campaign as I've been able, and these look to be the candidates who will get my three votes: First is David Chiu. I wrote about him yesterday, about his ride on SF2G. David's been on my virtual ballot all along, either first or second. I don't think we agree on much on the proposition ballot, to be honest. I take a fairly hard line on bonds, while he was a principal supporter behind Prop B (street maintenance bond). So I asked him about this directly at the Potrero Hill street festival, noting that my "undergraduate-level economics" tells me funding ongoing maintenance with debt is a bad idea. He agreed, but claimed our present situation is an exceptional emergency, and the bond is needed to avoid much higher costs down-stream. I still question the city's discipline to remedy the revenue imbalance when bonds are provided as a cop-out, but I respect his response. We clearly disagree on Prop D, public employees fu...