Low-Key Hillclimb #1 in the bag: 8 more to go

Low-Key Hillclimb #1, Montebello Road, went exceptionally smoothly yesterday. It's always a huge relief to get #1 out of the way.

finish line
at the finish line with volunteers; Han Wen photo

Low-Key runs on a volunteer coordinator model. However, I always take the first climb. That's not because I'm the best coordinator (I'm not) but because I want to establish that I'm willing to do my share. This year I'm also coordinating week 2, Sierra Road. Week 3, Page Mill, is still open. I hope to get a volunteer for that so I can ride it myself, not losing too much fitness this month...

There's always a few issues. This time I tried a new, for me, timing method which is to use the Ultrachron app for the Android iPhone as our back-up timing. Primary is Howard Kveck on his manual stop-watch.

Problem is while in principle the Ultrachron app does what you need, the touch screen gets in the way, and too often I'd accidentally kick it into timer mode, losing lap times. But fortunately Howard was on top of his game, and we got a great set of results.

Another issue is not everyone crossing the finish line is in the Low-Key Hillclimb. The roads are open to anyone, cars or bikes, and Montebello Road is a popular target. So while the Low-Keyers all had stickers on their forks, when things got crowded, this still created confusion.

But still, results went relatively quickly, the weather was great, car traffic was very light, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Next in the series in Sierra Road. Hopefully the rains forecast for this week blow through in time for clean and dry roads by next Saturday.

Then Page Mill.... as I noted, no volunteers yet for Page. Every other week has a very capable volunteer coordinator lined up. So if anyone's interested in Page Mill, please let me know!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marin Avenue (Berkeley)

Image
On Saturday, I got an email from Tim telling letting me know that Murphy's Spring Classics was going to start up Marin Ave. I'd missed that. Murphy announces his courses the day before, and indeed it was already well into the night before when the course announcement went out. I'd skipped over the details, jumping straight to middle and end games. Marin? I laughed at the irony, because not long before when he'd told me he was choosing to repeat the Nifty Twn Fifty which we'd done together last year versus selecting Murphy Mack's Stage Mullett two-day, I responded I didn't think I had it in me to ride Marin Ave two years in succession. Well, so much for that. I was committed, so I went downstairs to swap my 11-26 cassette for my Recon 12-27. The name is easily overlooked: "Marin Ave" fails to strike the same impression as, for example, "Redwood Gulch" or "China Grade". But among those in the know, Marin Ave is infamous i...
Read more

hummingbird feeder physics

Image
I couldn't figure out how the hummingbird feeder worked. Why didn't it overflow? Forces need to balance, of course. Neglecting surface tension, there liquid level is higher in the inner reservoir than in the feeding chamber, so there must be a corresponding pressure difference. Suppose the pressure in the inner chamber were zero. Then the column height difference would need to be atmospheric pressure / (density of liquid × gravity). But this is over 9 meters! Obviously the height difference is only approximately 1% of this. So the pressure difference inside versus outside is only approximately 1%. The inside is only slightly below atmosphere. So air is getting in. How? Does it diffuse through the liquid? If this were the dominant mechanism, it wouldn't take long for the pressure inside to go from 99% to 99.3%, for example, which should be plenty to push the column of liquid down in the inside chamber and thus push liquid out through the holes. It would over...
Read more

Gallium Pro geometry

Image
On Caltrain yesterday, I was surprised to see among the usual set of commuting bikes a SRAM Red-equipped Argon Gallium Pro. The bike immediately stole your attention. The design was one which has been trending: clear-coated carbon with plenty of text detail so the viewer is sure to realize he's gazing upon the result of advanced, proprietary engineering and not at yet another paint job on the same old OEM frames being pumped out of the same old Taiwanese factories. But it worked: the bottom bracket area was huge, the downtube a large-diameter "inverted Kamm tail" design seemingly designed to maximize wind resistance, the top tube a broad, eccentric shape which screamed "vertically compliant yet torsionally stiff". All it lacked were the pencil-think seat stays Cervelo popularized, but this was a machine designed for stiffness over anything else. It seemed dramatic overkill, since the bike was small (the Argon "XS" I suspect). There wasn't muc...
Read more