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

The most excellent Inner Ring blog recently posted statistics on World Tour and Pro Continental professional cycling wins so far in 2015: the link is here . These numbers have come into focus due to Tinkoff-Saxo's owner, Alexei Tinkoff, sacking long-time team manager Bjarne Riis. Bjarne has been managing the team, and its predecessors, since it was founded as Team CSC in 2000. Cycling is novel relative to most team sports in that there's no definitive overall standing. The UCI repeatedly cooks up various rankings but these are always consigned to the depths of trivia: it's a sport which is very much in the moment, who wins the race today, with certain races mattering more than others. So on what's important and what's not as important is more a matter of consensus than anything else. No two people will fully agree, except perhaps those who think the Tour is the only game in town. And those "fans" are generally derided by the "purists". I...

On March 2nd Charles Vincent, 66 years old, was riding his bike at the intersection of 14th and Folsom in San Francisco when he was killed by a car driver who was observed by multiple witnesses to have run a red light. Despite this, no charges are being filed. According to the story on Streetsblog, SFPD Explains: Driver Won’t Be Charged for Killing Cyclist at 14th & Folsom , a witness also had Vincent riding through a red light in his direction, and so the collision occurred when both people had reds. "The DA is not gonna charge that person with a crime because there’s a contributory factor" according to SFPD. This is an interesting spin on the law with which I'd not formerly been aware. If someone is in violation of code, it's sanctionable to kill them with your own violation? Curious. Rewind to the Chris Bucchere case .... Chris rode his bike at approximately 31 mph through the intersection of Castro and Mission, hitting and killing a Sacha Hui, a pede...

I posted my predictions for Milan San Remo yesterday . I was really looking forward to this race, perhaps more than any other of the Monuments. This morning I watched Milan San Remo in two parts. First I watched a feed from steephill.tv until 34 km to go. At that point the riders had finished with Capo Berta and the Cipressa was looming. I left then do to a ride and when I returned watched first one video of the Cipressa and then another of the final 10 km including Poggio. There were small gaps between what I saw live and the first of these videos, and another gap (the Cipressa descent) between the two videos. But despite the gaps I really enjoyed watching the race. I have to say I was pleased with how my picks did. I was all over Cavendish because I thought his team support (especially Kwiatkowski, and Stybar) was so strong and he's a proven rider who has come into the early season relatively fit. Well, stuff doesn't always go as planned, and first Cavendish threw h...

Milan-San Remo is the longest of the classics, in many way a throw-back to the old days where lack of television coverage meant speed and intensity was hard to convey, and lacking that, race organizers had to impress the fans with sheer magnitude: of rugged riders riding superhuman distances over impossible terrain. The thing is until the 1960's Milan-San Remo wasn't particular long by professional standards. It's held fairly close over its history to its present distance of 293 km (1 km shorter than 2014). Here's the course distance from two sources: http://www.milansanremo.co.uk/ through 2009, and http://cyclingnews.com since 2010: The iconic Poggio was added in 1960 to reduce the finishing pack, an inland deviation which increased the distance from 281 km to 288 km. Then in 1982 the Cipressa increased the distance to 294 km to make the end game even harder. Le Manie was added to further increase the attrition in 2008. This last climb was removed in 2014 and ...

It's just been reported SRAM is coming out with a 1×11 road system . This is hardly unexpected: they've already done this for mountain bikes and cyclocross. Single chainring road? Are you crazy? Hardly. First, I have several friends who like riding around the San Francisco Bay area on not just single front, but single rear as well. Fine-tuned gear ratios are somewhat over-rated. But in a race situation, this wouldn't do. Only 11 cogs? That compares to, for example, 20 gears on a 2×10, right? The jumps will be almost twice as big (10 gaps compared to 19). But this isn't how it works. On a front derailleur system, you tend to shift the front, select gears from the option for that chainring. You only shift the front to shift the range of available gears, not to fine-tune a gear. Using the front to fine-tune a gear ratio used to happen, way back when when people ran 5 or 6 tooth cogs in the rear, and then mostly for bike touring where taking the time for a...

This year I decided to dip my toes in the brevet pool. Back now further in time than seems real, in the late 1990's I began a Hill Country Randonneurs brevet series hosted by Russell Hahn and John Fusselman out of Austin Texas. I didn't ride these bacause of embracing any sort of randonneuring culture. It was more an interest in the ultra culture, a culture I'd experienced with Nick Gerlach's excellent Texas Hell Week, which I first attended in 1997 when I was at Stanford, then later on a more limited basis when I lived in Austin from late 1997 to 2000. In California, we had our double centuries: fully supported 200 mile events where all you had to do was carry two water bottles and enough food for at most 40 miles. Davis Double, for example, had 11 rest stops, more than one every 20 miles. That could easily be ridden skipping every other rest stop with just two bottles and a bar or two in the pocket. They're about the riding, little else. It's an intoxi...