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

It's getting time again for me to ride my bicycle to the ballot box. As usual, California voters, especially those in San Francisco, are confronted with a broad menu of propositions. Often these propositions present challenging choices. Not this time, however. Virtually all of the measures are, to me, fairly clear-cut. First the state measures. Proposition 19 (legalize marijuana) : This is a tricky matter, since it is a violation of federal law to possess this stuff. But I'm a firm believer in the autonomy of the states, and in this instance, we flush a tragic amount of resources down the judicial toilet incarcerating poor slobs for this weed. I'm against marijuana use, but then I'm against alcohol and tobacco use as well, as we don't toss away the key for people caught with these other substances. So until we develop more creative, less expensive, more effective means to deal with marijuana abuse, the good old free market solution of taxation works fine...

Last time I wrote a bit about the Giro 2011 route, more about the qualititative than the quantitative. The Giro route just recently announced for next year is brutal, that nobody denies. The striking feature is the incredible series of mountainous stages. But how does the distance stack up? First I show data i took from CyclingNews for the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France for the last two years as well as for the announced 2011 routes. The Tour was a bit longer in 2010 than the Giro, but other than this one race, the Giro and Tour cover essentially the same amount of total ground: close to 3500 km over a three-week race. I look a bit closer at these data in the next plot. On the lateral axis is the day of the race from 1 (the first day) to 23 (the final stage). On the vertical axis is the number of km covered by the race to the end of that day. The Giro is plotted in green while the Tour is in blue. First comment: neglecting the longer Tour in 2010, the Giro has b...

The 2011 Giro d'Italia route was recently announced. I never get very excited about Grand Tour route announcements. There's pro cycling year-round to attract my attention, and fall is when I'm, at the pro level, checking out cyclocross results, while at a personal level doing my best to make the Low-Key Hillclimbs a success. In any case, it's really the riders who make the race, not the course. Whatever the route, there will be climbs, sprint stages, and time trials. The relative weight changes, but the race is really dictated by the teams and individuals who come to play. The last few years has been particularly interesting, however. For example, in 2010 the Giro visited the Strada Blanca near Siena, while the Tour de France featured a stage on some of the cobbles from Paris-Roubaix. So I admit my interest in these announcements has been perking up a bit lately. Nevertheless, I didn't think much when I heard the Giro was announcing it's route, a...

The coordinator for today's Low-Key Hillclimb made the call last night to pull the plug on today, worried about the Weather.com forecast that rain was likely. I'm a fan of the national weather service text forecasts, which are available, for example, on Weather Underground . Those had been more optimistic, that the rain would move in after our climb would have been finished, and that turned out to be the case. The roads were dry for when we would have been there. So Sierra got the axe. Ah, well, move on. Last time I introduced a new form of climb histogram plot. Here are such plots for the climbs on the Low-Key schedule for this year.. you can really tell a lot of a climb's character from these plots, I feel; they complement the profiles very nicely, and do much better than a simple plot of road grade, which tends to be too "noisy". Each plot is linked to the climb's profile page.

It occurred to me one way to compare climbs would be to compare the distribution of grades. But a simple histogram wouldn't do, for example how much of a climb is between 10% and 10.1%. What I really care about is how much of a climb is at least 10%. Then there's the question of what is meant by "how much". You could count up the distance, but for steep roads, distance isn't the real story. 100 meters of 20% road isn't half "as much" as 200 meters of 10%: they climb about the same vertical. The more relevant question is how much altitude is gained at a given grade or steeper. Then how do you assess grade? If I measure the route profile to the resolution of a pebble, then the grade may tend to be extremely high. So you need to apply numerical smoothing. So I did exactly what I did in rating climbs: Interpolate the profile to a 10 meter mesh Smooth the profile with a characteristic length of 50 meters Estimate how much time it takes ...

The day after my Ghisallo ride I did a flatter ride through Switzerland and on to Lake Maggiano (returning by car with family who'd driven out). Not much epic about that one, just plenty of gorgeous roads. But the next day got more interesting. I headed north along Como from Menaggio to Doggio for a relaxed panini lunch, then turned inland. On Google Maps it looked promising: squiggly lines, altitude contours, and a road which was defined all the way to Switzerland. But on the simpler commercial map I was using, it terminated. I was intrigued. It's too easy to stick with climbs which have been used in major European road races. Sometimes it's fun to just head out and see where the road takes you. So after lunch I found the sign marking the road and I set off: The road was in excellent condition. I'd say "surprisingly" well paved except I've come to expect excellent pavement in Europe. The road passed through Stazzona first, then Germa...

I just got a 46 tooth Stronglight CT² chainring from XXCycles . Very nice looking ring, teflon and ceramic coated for improved wear and, it is argued, lower friction. I did make a mistake of not researching the mass, however: 92.9 grams versus 78.2 grams for a lower-end, uncoated 50 tooth Stronglight ring I'd previously purchased at Bike Nüt . Had I gone there for this one (I'd been busy and getting to the shop was impractical) I'd have likely caught the problem. But while I'd hoped the smaller chainring would save mass, I didn't get the ring for mass alone (assuming one gram per tooth within a ring model, a decent approximation), and decided to use in in yesterday's Low-Key Hillclimb anyway. Why? Because the climb yesterday had an exceptionally non-uniform grade: there was going to be a lot of shifting, both front and back. Typical compact (110 mm BCD) cranksets come with a 34-tooth inner and a 50-tooth outer chainring. In fact, the much-touted...