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

The New York Times recently did a wonderful story about how European cities are not only directing resources towards improving access for cyclists and pedestrians, but are actively trying to retard the flow of motor vehicle traffic in order to promote cycling, walking, and public transit (which is often rail or priority-access bus lines). The text of the article was quite positive: streets for people, not for cars (which contain people, but are typically around 95% car, only 5% human), although the title was arguably directed at a motor-centric audience... a later opinion piece referred to this as "the windshield view". In any case, what Europe realizes is a priority on infrastructure for individual-passenger motor vehicle and infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians is to a large degree mutually exclusive. I have experienced this first hand since I began working in Mountain View, CA, from my previous job in Palo Alto just to the north. There's a striking transi...

SB910, the proposed 3-foot space requirement for motor vehicles passing cyclists, has now been amended . Now it's looking to me really good. The earliest version of the bill was full of flaws, for example a requirement cars pass cyclists to he left (how does that work on Page in San Francisco, where the bike lane is on the left side of a one-way road?). Until the latest revision, there was an exemption allowed if the vehicle was no faster than 15 mph faster than the bike. The implication was speed differential matters. Speed is what matters, not differential. A major problem with the speed differential is it would have taken the teeth from the bill. All you'd need to say to defend yourself against evidence you'd passed to closely to a cyclist whom you'd hit is that your speed was only 15 mph greater. It would have been very hard to prove this was not the case. Thus we'd be back to the status quo that it would need to be established the pass was unsafe. ...

This morning a head-to-head competition.... I had 8 minutes to catch Caltrain 206. Plenty of time, but no time to waste. I got my bike in the garage, turned on the Garmin, left the garage, shut the automatic door, then pulled my Android phone from my pocket, brought up the Strava app, and hit new ride. Ten precious seconds later GPS signal was acquired and I quickly hit go. I clipped in and was off to the station. Twice per block I checked the status of the Garmin. As I've noted, this is a GPS-challenged environment, and the Garmin doesn't like it. For the first three blocks the progress bar moved steadily to the right. Then it retreated a bit. Then it regained some of its previous progress... where it stalled. I was doing well. Traffic was extremely light at 6:05 am, so my quest for scientific fairness wasn't placing too great a burden on my survival chances. The train station is just south of 4th Street. When I reached 7th Street I missed the light. I ...

Recently I've been testing the new Android Strava app . My preferred method of recording ride or run GPS data has been the Garmin Edge 500. On the bike, I use the usual mount which I attach to my stem. For running I got a Forerunner wrist strap which works great: the Edge 500 and the Forerunner share the same strap. But when the Strava app for Android app was released I was pretty excited. I'd read and heard hints and rumors of real-time features, perhaps for example instant notification of KOM rankings results while on the bike. But, alas, nothing so spectacular. The app reports speed, distance, and time of exercise, then allows the user to upload the ride to Strava. Once uploaded, a limited resolution map of the activity can be viewed along with rankings on matched segments (once the servers have had adequate time to process the data, less than a minute). So it seemed as if I'd have little use for it. But I decided to give it a try anyway. And I was pleasan...

I felt confident going into the Zombie Runner Half-Marathon last Saturday. Under advice from a friend I'd pre-run the course the Sunday before, and I was immediately really glad I had. Navigation was far from trivial, and having worked these potential snafu hotspots out already, I could focus my attention on running and less on orienteering. The only question was speed. I'd done very little approximating "speed work" this year, and with my run-specific training consisting of an average one run per week, I wasn't sure how I'd handle the increased pace that race day invariably inspires. Conditions were essentially perfect at the start line adjacent to Crissy Field as Wendell gave the starting line instructions. The course was simple, he said: just stay on Coastal Trail. But I realized from last week's preview run it wasn't that simple. One point of clarification: I asked whether we were going through the low-headroom tunnel at the top of the s...

The second worst offender in the little investigation I did last post was the "INTEGRATE Performance Fitness OLH Climb". Integrate is a fitness studio in Mountain View so I suspect they did a time trial there to test client fitness. But while the West Alpine climb which resulted in the 48 second error is a bit tricker to debug, this one is fairly clear. Old La Honda starts with a bridge crossing and finishes 5.2 km later at a stop sign immediately before a ridge road which contains high speed car and motorcycle traffic. While a full stop honestly isn't critical here, at least some attention past the sign is necessary. And it's common for riders to stop past the sign on the dirt shoulder. With manual timing, you start your climb at the bridge (I use the trailing edge) and finish when your front tire crosses the perpendicular line passing through the stop sign. It's all very precise. But nothing about commercial GPS is "very precise". As I...

DC Rainmaker recently did an interesting study of the accuracy of GPS units. He mounted eight different GPS computers on the handle of surveyer's measurement wheel then walked, ran, or rode various courses, comparing the measured results ( Part 1 , Part 2 ). The GPS units tended to disagree on how far he'd gone, although usually the results were consistent with the claimed positional accuracy of the units. I suggested he use the data to test Strava reproducibility in segment timing. No luck there, but I did find that a friend of mine has been in the habit of riding with a Garmin Edge 500 mounted alongside a Garmin Edge 800 on his rides. We have a mutual friend who works for Garmin, so he's doing this to compare the two. I asked him for data from three of his rides. I then created two new accounts on Strava and uploaded the data from his Edge 500 into one, and from the Edge 800 into the other. The new accounts are necessary because Strava rejects what appear to b...

Garmin released its Edge 500 head unit at around the same time as CycleOps released its Joule. Each of these was an ANT+ Sport compliant head unit which could read power data from compliant power meters like the Quarq and PowerTap. However, otherwise they almost couldn't be more different. The Joule's focus was on functionality. Power users like to analyze their data, CycleOps reasoned, so we're going to give the user as many options as we can fit to crunch power numbers and even do history analysis. This sounded good, but the head unit is the wrong tool for this job. Riders would upload their data at the end of the ride anyway, for example with Golden Cheetah or WKO, then may be from there to a web site like Training Peaks. So the result was a heavy, bulky, and expensive head unit which sold like coldcakes. And despite all the cost and complexity the unit lacked GPS. Why burden a head unit designed for a power meter with GPS? The Wattage List old-guarde esche...

Not too much I can add to this... a spectacular demonstration of countersteering and trusting the traction of your tires by Damiano Cunego (and to a lesser extent Peter Sagan) in today's Tour de Suisse stage: Oh yeah, and the scenery is gorgeous, as well. It's definitely worth bringing this up in YouTube to increase the video size.

Despite swearing off the Golden Gate Bridge last week after a harrowing experience crossing the bridge on the eastern "pedestrian" path, the western path shut down due to "seismic retrofits", I did it again today. Tired from my run yesterday, I needed motivation to ride, and the Mission Cycling ride is a local option to get me out the door. There were only four of us at the cafe where the ride meets on Sundays at 10 am, and since the hills providing the preferred southern routes were fogged in on this chilly morning, the default took asserted its inertial self and we found our handlebars pointing the way to Marin. One reason group rides are so popular is they relieve one of the burden of thinking. Arguably the chilly, foggy morning deterred some would-be-bridge crossers, and while the way out was very slow, it wasn't too bad. The way back, however, is where chaos bloomed: by the afternoon the sun had come out and that sent the tourists. At one point I w...

Last week I registered for the Coastal Trail Runs San Francisco Half-Marathon , part of the Zombie Runner series. This race happens to follow virtually all of the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon run course, plus more. The notable difference, it appears, is the Coastal Trail Runs race avoids the famous Baker Beach sand ladder . Here's the official route map: So after riding my bike to Sports Basement / Presidio , I locked my bike on their rack, changed to my running shoes, transferred my Garmin 500 to my wrist strap, stored my cycling shoes and jacket in my backpack, and checked the pack in the store. Sports Basement is an excellent hub for activities. So I was ready to set out. The map had been unclear and I'd assumed the paved loop around Marina Green came first. In fact, when I later checked this course description , I discovered it had been last. My legs were still feeling the 30 km run I'd done a week ago : that had been a bit over my head. So I starte...

The weather cooperated on Sunday morning as the feared thunderstorms never materialized. I thus put on my cycling clothes and rolled down Potrero Hill to begin my ride to the Marina to watch the triathlon. The island. From EscapeFromAlcatraz2011 I arrived at 7:10 am, well before the 7:30 am start. Alcatraz island was visible through the slightly misty air. There was plenty of activity in the water, small craft to guide the swimmers through the strong current. It was definitely an exciting time: within a short time I knew that thousands of participants would bravely jump into the freezing Bay and begin swimming towards the shore more than a mile distant. I wondered if any had ever bailed out when crunch time came. The bike: no problem. The run: no problem. The swim: I couldn't imagine swimming in such cold open water that far. I'd be lucky to be able to breathe again after the thermal shock of plunging into the icey waters. Wet suits can only do so much... Es...

After the storm passed through on Saturday, I decided to get a run in as it was 10 days since my last one. So I set off on my usual route the Embarcadero (after stopping to watch the Giants game for a bit), Fort Mason, and Marina Green. I'd planned on coming back on Filbert or maybe Lyon. But approaching the Green I passed first one then another rider on time trial frames with numbers markered on their calves. No doubt about it, there was a triathlon in town. I came across the Expo in the Green itself. I had to stop to check it out. Trithletes were everywhere. I hoped nobody confused me for one. I'm a cyclist, not a triathlete. Sure, I've been running a lot lately, but there's a big difference between someone who mixes running with cyclist and a "multisport athlete". It goes way beyond the time period which expires between the activities; it's a deeply cultural difference. Trek Speed Concept time trial frame: the head tube almost disappears ...

After watching Escape from Alcatraz triathlon (epic, epic, epic) I joined up with what portion of the Mission Cycling ride didn't flee south today and headed into Marin for a Paradise Loop. I wanted to work the kinks out of my legs after an over-enthusiastic 30 km road run yesterday. But to get into and out of Marin, we had to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. Little did we know what horrors awaited... Starting May 31, the Golden Gate Transportation District shut down the western cycling path on the bridge for seismic retrofit work . As a result, cyclists must now share the eastern path with pedestrians for close to four months, the season of peak use of the bridge by both pedestrians and cyclists. The timing couldn't be any worse. I remember the first time I ever crossed the western path. It was quite a shock, leaving me with a survivors rush. But over time I got to know the western path, became familiar with the order behind the seeming randomness, and it be...