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

On July 12 I rode up Kansas Street on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, as someone else asked me to generate data for a segment there since my HTC Incredible phone has relatively good accuracy here. So I did that, and after defining the segment, I had the KOM. Not too surprising, since typically if any other Strava users had made a hard effort between the same two end-points they probably would have created the segment earlier. Here's that ride . As you can see, I was lucky to have beaten out Steve Smith's effort from May. He'd done a San Francisco climb-fest and had done Kansas only one second slower. The issue on that ride was in addition to the Kansas climb Strava also gave me credit for Rhode Island , one block over. I had two KOMs, one block apart, from the same ride. So yesterday since I ended up at the 4th and King Caltrain with my small backpack and no laptop, I decided to try and validate my Rhode Island "KOM". I wasn't quite sure where the...

This year the Tour de France climbed L'Alpe d'Huez , the " Old La Honda " of the Tour. The "official" climbs is 13.8 km long according to Wikipedia , and gains 1099 meters according to Strava , an average grade of 7.96% (the GPS recorded distance depends on trajectory through the switchbacks, for example, and in any case GPS isn't that accurate on distance along curvy routes). It was climbed during the Tour de France stage 19 this year. The climb was complicated by riders arriving at the start in small groups. Timing thus needed to consider the finishing time, well documented by the race, but also the starting time. According to Wikipedia : Since 1999 photo-finish has been used from 14 km. Other times have been taken 13.8 km from the summit, which is the start of the climb. Others have been taken from the junction 700m from the start. The following times were posted as "official" by the Inner Ring on Twitter: I assume these are ...

My first 30 km trail running race of the year was yesterday: the Coastal Trail Runs Golden Gate . The Marin Headlands provided for a gorgeous course, with four big climbs and one little climb at the end, along with miscellaneous rollers liberally sprinkled between the major bumps. On Tue I had gotten stung by a bee while riding to work through Palo Alto. My face swelled up within an hour, but I got it under control with ice. When I awoke on Wed, however, the swelling was back in force, and Wed and Thu the allergic reaction left me fatigued. I felt a bit better on Friday, still a bit tired but not 100%. My lip was still puffy when I awoke early on Saturday, but otherwise I felt much better. I'd not run at all in a week and a half, but at least I'd gotten in some decent cycling through that Tuesday commute. In April I'd done 26 km and 27 km training runs on many of the same trails used in the race, then on July 5 I did a strong 29 km run there . With the improve...

In its live coverage of stage 18 of the Tour de France today, CyclingNews posted the following update: 17:35:28 CEST Andy Schleck powers under the red kite, with his grimace beginning to curl into a grim. Over 60km off the front for the Luxembourger. 17:35:56 CEST Schleck has a shade under 3 minutes over Evans, but 3:30 over Contador. 17:36:34 CEST Pierre Rolland sets the pace for Voeckler. The Frenchman is battling to hold on to his yellow jersey here. 17:36:58 CEST Voeckler needs to close the gap to 2:35 to hold the yellow jersey. 17:37:24 CEST Evans and Voeckler lead the yellow jersey group in pursuit of Schleck. 17:38:19 CEST Schleck appears to have slowed in the final kilometre, his efforts have finally begun to tell in this steep upper section of the climb. He should take yellow by a handful of seconds, but it might be close. When it was all done , despite being dropped by several of the riders in his group, Voeckler managed to close the gap to 2:21, saving his ye...

A lot has been said and written about Voeckler's remarkable climb to Plateau de Beille in stage 14 of this year's Tour. Voeckler had an advantage of 1:49 over second-place Fränk Schleck, 2:06 over Cadel Evans, and 2:18 over Fränk's brother and teammate Andy Schleck. Due to time and fitness lost in a crash, race favorite Alberto Contador was 4 minutes down. Any of these riders were considered a threat to overtake Voeckler, although the consensus most likely scenario was Voeckler would limit his time losses and hold onto the yellow jersey by maybe 30 seconds. Strava KOM: around a half-hour slower than Voeckler's time. Yet it's safe to say it was a shock to almost everyone when Voeckler not only held on to his lead over all other contendors for the yellow, but was a primary activist in chasing down attacks. I'd have expected Voeckler, by any reasonable measure outmatched in that group, to take a very conservative approach to the climb, following the smooth...

The Specialized Venge made its debut at Milan San Remo this year, and it couldn't have gone any better for the Morgan Hill company, as Matt Goss, a relative underdog, won the race. Move on the Tour de France, and with aerodynamically optimized mass-start road frames more popular than ever, Mark Cavendish has pulled out two impressive sprint victories on the bike in a first week notably unfavorable to sprinters. Last year when HTC was sponsored by Scott instead of Specialized, Cavendish rejected his Scott Foil (then F01) in favor of his tried-and-true super-beefed-up Addict, so once again this looks good for Specialized. Venge spotted at Mike's Bikes in San Francisco But the frame is only a relatively small part of the aerodynamic picture. Far more important is body position. So here's photos of Cavendish during his two victories this year... first stage 5: CyclingNews Then stage 7: CyclingNews These photos aren't cherry-picked: they're the first...

San Francisco has posted a survey on preferences for bike lanes on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park. The candidates are independent bike lanes in the direction of traffic flow on each side of the street or adjacent bike lanes in each direction on one side of the street. In each case the lanes would be 6.5 feet wide with the buffer at least 5 feet wide. Vehicle parking, where present, would be outside the bike lanes (further from the curb). Here's the configuration with bike lanes on each side. The schematic shows car parking on one side of the street. In other sections of the road there would be insufficient room for any parking, and the buffers would be wider: Here's a schematic of the configuration with the lanes on the same side, in the case where car parking is on the same side as the lanes (the parking could also be on the opposite curb): The San Francisco Bike Coalition has promoted the one-sided configuration. They publish artists renderings of cheerful cycl...