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

Dutch Lotto is replacing Belkin as the title sponsor of that team next year. I threw this together during some way too crowded Caltrain commutes. Not too creative. It's using the Pro Cycling Manager kit template. The design's been iterated since I first posted this, and is looking more and more like Pantani-vintage Mercato Uno...

Set-up As I rode my Ritchey Breakaway, with its mix of SRAM Rival, Force, and Red components, to Bespoke Cycles in San Francisco I felt a bit of a fraud. It was Parlee demo week at the shop, part of Parlee's program to publicize its new aero bike, the ESX ( web page ). More info is in this RoadCycling review . Designed by Parlee, the frame is built in Taiwan, sold with frame, fork, seatpost, and direct-mount brakes for $5400. That's a lot, making this particular slot in the demo schedule, the weekly Bespoke shop ride, a potentially valuable one for both Parlee and Bespoke Cycles. But it didn't seem probable I was going to buy it. True, nobody had ever asked me if I was planning to buy the bike, but there's surely some moral obligation to have some minimum intent to do so. As I pedaled my Ritchey through the nearly empty San Francisco streets for the 8 am meeting at the shop, however, I wondered what fraction of high-end bike purchases went to those who had be...

It's been commonly recognized that European cycling was deeply contaminated by oxygen-vector doping from approximately 1993 until the CERA test became available in 2008 and the biological passport screening started in 2009 . However, many considered the United States domestic scene to be clean. After all, there was less money to be made in the sport and therefore the investment of oxygen boosters wasn't worth it, people argued. That naive view has long since been disproven. But the issue came up again as VeloNews just published an interview with Will Frischkorn , who's been considered a member of the "lost generation" of talented riders unable to make the jump to Europe because of an unwillingness to embrace the dark side. A key quote: But Frischkorn suggests that there were also several other American riders who decided to take a different direction. He cites some well-known riders who were utilizing EPO programs during the Saturn years (he joined Saturn in...

Andrew Coggan published the following data on Twitter, showing a cyclist's power-duration data from two separate years: In the above, FTP is power which can be sustained for 1 hour. FRC is "functional reserve capacity" which represents how much work over FTP can be done. I've never myself tried to extract that, but it's a nice concept: similar to anaerobic work capacity in the critical power model. I extracted the data as best I could from the plot using PlotDigitzer, then fit my 4-parameter model using an envelope fit: The philosophy on the envelope fit is that only a limited number of durations represent a rider's best effort; most durations are part of longer efforts and so are sub-optimal for that particularly time duration. The fit only has validity if there are actually as many quality efforts as there are parameters in the model. So a 4-parameter model requires at least 4 quality efforts. The philosophy on the mean fit is to treat all duratio...

The past weeks have been dominated by priorities other than cycling or running -- the occasional ride, including a few in the gorgeous Amalfi Coast of Italy, but a lot of moving to a new neighborhood in San Francisco, travel, recovering from jet lag, and solving problems at work. So after resolving to "make time" for yesterday's Noon Ride Old La Honda, my rational expectations, my self-assessment of fitness, were low. Indeed, after having missed the Red Kite Patterson Pass Time Trial the weekend prior, an event I normally would have been excited about especially since it had a 3-4 master's category in which I'd have the reasonable hope of getting a top 3, I wasn't too disappointed. I'd not even looked at the racing schedule. I don't believe in racing without proper preparation. Long rides? Nope. Interval sessions? Not unless you count one ride in Amalfi. Extended climbs? Virtually none. At least my weight was fairly good, within 1 kg of my ...

I went to Italy. It was fun. The espresso was good. After connecting through Zurich airport, then over-nighting in Rome, we took the Trena Italia "Frescia Rossa", which stopped only at Naples en route to Salerno. From there we waited an hour for a close-to-one-hour bus to Amalfi, and from there waited another 20 minutes or so for a bus to Praiano, our destination. The more typically recommended route would have probably been faster: the Frescia Rossa to Naples, then transfer to a local train to Sorrento, then a one-hour bus to Praiano. But better still would have been a ferry from Naples to Positano, and a much shorter bus segment from there to Praiano, although this may have involved more hauling of bike boxes. I had my Ritchey Breakaway and Cara my old Bike Friday Pocket Rocket, which I stopped using much in 2008 when I got the Ritchey. The Pocket Rocket is still a better choice on really short trips where the longer assembly-disassembly time of the Ritchey, along w...

In this Coordinator's Choice era of Low-Key Hillclimbs the balance of the schedule is left more to chance than to any grand plan. In this case, a few late-game changes in venue resulted in a schedule which is rather heavy at the top end. And as far as I'm concerned, that's fine: it's good to mix things up. One of these is week 6's Hicks Mt Umunhum. We've done this climb before. The first time was in 1996 when we started well ahead of the creek marking the steep climb of Hicks, then climbed up to the gate on what was then known, at least according to Peterson and Kluge , as Loma Almaden Road. I think now, however, a more common name is Mount Umunhum Road. In any case, we returned in 2008 , starting at the base of the Hicks climb, ending again at the gate. Thanks to the excellent work by coordinator Will Van Kaenel, however, this year we go beyond the gate to the white line marking the beginning of what may be the beginning of private property. Honestly...