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

Since the Woodside Ramble 50 km, my focus has shifted to cycling, and with that I've been riding to work more, riding home from work more, and if not riding full distance at least trying to ride to/from Palo Alto, Menlo Park, or even Redwood City rather than riding the train all the way between San Francisco and Mountain View. Less time on the train = less blogging. Here's a plot of riding distance per week since the Woodside race: There's a steady upward progression except for a week where I suffered from cold and/or allergies. That was, coincidentally, the week leading up to the Diablo Time Trial, so a bit of a taper made sense then anyway. That race went rather well relative to my modest expectations (at least my legs felt good) so the reduced distance paid off. Yesterday I did a double Diablo day. Riding that second Diablo is more a psychological barrier than a physical one. Diablo is a long effort, and it's easy to lose motivation during the long effort. ...

At the end of 2012, I extrapolated a future schedule of blog posting which would gradually reduce the posting rate . This made sense, as I would have fewer subjects to write about, and I'd move on to spending more time doing other things. Then, at the end of 2013, I failed to follow this decreasing trajectory . It was a strong year, tied for the second most ever. Now this year I've had four consecutive months of at least 20 posts. Prior to 2014, I'd done that only 3 times. As a result, this year has been my greatest posting rate ever for the first 1/3rd of the year: This is obviously unsustainable, and frankly, slightly disturbing. But I supposed it's a positive thing that I keep getting ideas to post here.

It was suggested I make a post of posts with the most pave views. Easily enough done... rank Entry 1 Scott releases 2014 Addict Ultra Limited: World's ... Apr 1, 2013, 3 comments 2 Cervelo R5-CA geometry Mar 16, 2011 3 Strava Suffer Score decoded Aug 9, 2011, 32 comments 4 Tour test of "aero" mass-start frames Feb 7, 2011, 15 comments 5 Scott Foil wind tunnel test of aero mass-start fra... Apr 16, 2011 6 Berner 15-T derailleur pulley upgrade: an analytic... Aug 2, 2010, 6 comments 7 VeloNews aero wheel ranking formula Jul 29, 2010, 4 comments 8 Power comparison: Vector vs Powertap vs Quarq Aug 11, 2013, 5 comments 9 Garmin Vector released: L-R power balance comparis... Aug 9, 2013, 3 comments 10 Chris Horner on Sierra Road: power, speed, and equ... May 23, 2011, 13 comments The most popular was an April Fools joke w...

As the year ends, it's time to check on my post rate for 2013... I plot the accumulated posts per year by month: 2013 is a purple line. There's a weak period following my injury in June, but then I had a burst of inspiration, and I ended up right up there with 2009 and 2011. 2010 was the most productive year, whereas 2012 was a slow year. Here's the totals by year, along with a trend line I established last year, as well as a revised trend line: 2013 was tied with 2009 for 2nd most after 2010, while 2011 was only one post less for 3rd. I recovered from the reducing post trajectory I seemed to be following last year. The new fit uses a somewhat different formula consisting of two components: a hyperbolic tangent for the upward transient followed by an exponential decay. My 2012 formula uses a linear ramp for the upward transient, but hyperbolic transient is better, as it saturates: posts = 169.2 tanh [ 1.13 ( year - 2007.89 ) ] exp [ -0.063 ( year - 2007.89 ) ]...

Many commercial blogs post year-end summaries as a way to boost hits. This blog is non-commercial so I can't be bothered with year-end summaries. But it is a good opportunity to see how my year-end flurry of posts affected my posting statistics. First, an update of my posts per month. Here's the plot. I had a weak period for much of the year but had a nice come-back in October through year-end: Next, I plot the total posts per year: After I started posting in 2008, early enthusiasm caused a peak in 2010 followed by a two-year decline. This pattern is fairly common, I find. I did a numerical fit using the following formula: posts/year = 190.1 (year - 2007.89) exp[(2008 − year) / 2.078] This seems to do a good job of capturing the trend. To stay on the trend line I need around 88 posts for 2013.

This year I went through a bit of a slump in posting to this blog: I was involved in a coding project which in the end turned out to be essentially unsuccessful since I had issues with dealing with the Strava API I was unable to resolve, and other priorities took over. In any case, I still had things I wanted to say here, so went back to posting after the slump. Here's my accumulated posts each year, by month, since I started way back in 2008: I'm never sure for how long I'll go on with this, but I find it personally valuable to go back and see what my perceptions and feelings were at various points in the past. For example, 2008 was when I first started running after a long, long delay, and I like going back and reading race reports I posted then. Or I refer to equations I derived relating factors such as mass, aerodynamics, and rolling resistance to cycling speed. I'll stick to it to some degree as long as I find it valuable. Facebook and Twitter, which have ...