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

It's time once again for the Low-Key Hillclimbs , and this will be the 20th anniversary of the first edition, when Kevin Winterfield and I brashly organized a series of 12 consecutive weekly climbs extending from October through almost Christmas. And the amazing thing is we pulled it off. I'm less brash now but I don't need to be: I have fantastic support in putting the series on and so far we've had minimal interference. It's really been a wonderful thing. I've got some decent fitness this year after having ridden SuperTour, organized by Sid and Linda Fuhrer, then raced the Mt. Tam Hill Climb and the Fremont Peak Hill Climb. For the first time in years I've actually been focusing on training instead of riding, and it's helped, starting with the fantastic dose of base I got from SuperTour. My time at Fremont Peak wasn't what I wanted, although I rode fairly well at Mt. Tam the week before. It was particularly hot at Fremont Peak so that took ...

Recently I became interested in Jobst Brandt's climbing-descending algorithm for the Avocet 50. Jobst died recently, and I think it's safe to say the man was absolutely brilliant. Among his many contributions to cycling is the Avocet 50 altimeter climbing-descending algorithm, which has been the "gold standard" for determining total climbing on routes. For many years it was the most reliable determination of what a cyclist would consider "climbing", filtering out small altitude fluctuations which could easily be due to "measurement noise". But to compare Jobst's algorithm to mine I needed hill profiles. So I wrote a little code to make random hill profiles. But it gave unrealistic results: rounded profiles, where the hills were more like sine waves than jagged peaks. This wasn't too surprising because the algorithm I used was simple: generate random-normal distributed altitude points then convolve the resulting profile with a well-be...

Thanksgiving marked the ninth and final climb in the 2014 Low-Key Hillclimbs. And as it has been every year we've done the series, Thanksgiving marked the longest "single" climb we do, Mount Hamilton Road. Single climb is in quotes because John Summerson has asserted that Hamilton isn't a single climb, but rather three. And indeed the descents are considerable. But with a net elevation difference of 1161 meters and total climbing of 1340 meters, that's an "altitude efficiency" of 86.6%, so it is considerably more up than down. A series of three equal climbs separated by two descents to the original elevation would be an efficiency of only 33.3%. I began my day in San Jose, having stayed with a friend, and a weather check showed the temperature in the city was 44F but at the summit, at 7 am or so, it was already 62F. So it was unusually warm, a common trend this year. Despite this I wore a wool baselayer in addition to knee warmers, shorts, and a s...

Love-hate: my relationship with a mountain bike and Low-Key Hillclimbs. Low-Key Hillclimbs is a series of 9 climbs each year, on Saturdays from the beginning of October through Thanksgiving, with the final of the 9 on Thanksgiving itself. When we started the series, part of my vision was that we'd use it as a showcase for the variety of climbs in the Bay Area. Back then, in the mid-1990's, racers typically used a low gear of 39-25 or even 39-23. This tended to make the spicier climbs the Bay Area had on offer a bit more of a painful experience than many would prefer. Thus it was usually same-old-same-old: climb Old La Honda, climb Kings, climb Highway 9, West Alpine, Tunitas. But other truly differentiating options went neglected. So the goal was to broaden people's scope: cover the 2-dimensional space of duration and steepness with a combination of short and long, gradual and steep. In addition to making it more interesting for riders, it would make the competition m...

Low-Key Hillclimbs week 7, San Bruno Mountain East, was a great success. This was the second climb this year for which we applied for, paid for, and received a permit for riding on roads which passed through parks. In this case Radio Road goes from Guadalupe Canyon Parkway (a 4-lane eyesore scarring San Bruno Mountain from the days when the goal was to completely cover the mountain with housing developments, a goal which has at least partially succeeded, but the road is still way overbuilt) up to the radio towers at the top of the mountain. The road is very lightly used, because not only is the park remarkably lightly used (diminished by too much of the mountains taken up by sprawled housing) but the parking is at the bottom of Radio Road. We were bypassing this parking area by going from westbound Guadalupe, through a fire access gate, directly to Radio on the northern side rather than take the route cars would follow, which is to cross Guadalupe, enter Radio on the southern side,...

As we descended back to the Peets Coffee which marked the start of the week 4 Low-Key Hillclimb route, Rich Hill said to me: "has Low-Key ever done a day with 4800 feet of climbing before?" I paused. Hamilton? Not quite, only 4400. Diablo? Not close. Portola Valley Hills last year? No -- less than 3000 total feet. What about weeks with optional extra climbs, like the Diabolical Double or the Lomas-Marin Ave combo? No and no. "I don't think so. No -- I'm pretty sure not," I replied. I felt good about this, because after 6 intense efforts up climbs with vertical gain from 476 to 764 vertical feet, I was cooked. Details of the route are here . Paul McKenzie designed a route of absolute brilliance, tying together a combination of classic and obscure climbs in the maze-like Berkeley-Oakland-Hills with a minimum of overhead. Of those 4800 vertical feet, 3825 were against the clock, 975 part of the untimed transitions (still timed, actually, but with ...

For Low-Key Hillclimbs I have a mass-adjusted climbing score, which is based on the product of the rider mass and the rate of vertical ascent. This isn't a power calculation, but is related to power, and the units differ from power only by a factor of the gravitiational acceleration, which is roughly constant. The natural units of mass for international sports is kilograms, but this is the United States, and people here are more accustomed to dealing in pound-equivalents (pounds formally being a unit of force or weight, not mass). So rather than require riders to calculate their mass in kg, which they may be less likely to recall than their weight in pounds, I default to having them enter pounds, with an optional unit specification which can allow for other units (I presently support pounds, kilograms, stone for my Britophiles, and slugs to be pedantic). But people mess up. One friend specified his mass as "10 stone 8 pounds", a mixed unit I can't handle (my parser...

Low-Key Hillclimbs week 1 is done, and it's the first time Montebello was coordinated by someone other than Kevin Winterfield or me. Huge thanks to James Porter for taking the controls while I'm away from home and getting the series off to a successful start! We had an issue with water: surprisingly, 450 ml/rider wasn't enough at the end of a climb for which the median climbing time is well under 1 hour. But otherwise the day wasa big win. A big feature this year was the unusual (by historical standards) heat: the temperature was as high as 95F/35C for the day. This isn't especially hot, but it is by San Francisco Bay area standards, where the ocean breezes and the bay tend to maintain moderate temperatures year-round. Inland, at the central coast, things heat up. Bill Bushnell photo With Low-Key Hillclimbs, week 1 is the anchor. It's almost always Montebello Road (1998 excepted), and thus provides a certain standard for comparison for year-to-year. Rider...

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...

One day until my 50 km race... After my 12 day out-of-action following my oral surgery, then 4 days of running, then a last-week taper, I feel woefully fat and out of shape, and indeed I'm a solid 2 kg over my cycling "race weight". Some of this is probably leg muscle from running: my legs are looking a bit bigger. But that's not all of it. I definitely need to lose that weight before the Diablo hillclimb on 11 May. As a distraction, some sticker design revisions. First, I updated the square design to provide two options, one with a smaller cyclist, steeper hill, and squarer aspect. Then that freed room on the 2.13 inch by 2.75 inch template for a text sticker then additionally a cyclist-only sticker. Then a design for a circular sticker. The black border is not part of the sticker. The "sky" is transparent: for some reason I'm not able here to use my usual trick of putting a colored table behind the transparent image to change the backgroun...

I'm working on a possible sticker design for Low-Key Hillclimbs. Here's the design. It has a transparent region so it's important it has decent contrast against any color bike. So I preview some colors here (if the backgrounds don't work, check this link ). Maybe I can get these printed up by Sticker Guy or someone similar. The smallest size StickerGuy sells are 2.75 inches by 2.13 inches. But I could always do 4 stickers on one die. Then I'd have 1.375 inches by 1.13 inches, plus a margin, getting the printed area down to something more suitable for a down-tube. So here's how that would look:

Working from home today due to a follow-up appointment with the oral surgeon, I was pleasantly surprised by FedEx which delivered my Low-Key Hillclimbs kit. And I was very pleased with the result! Here, for reference, was my post on the design. Here's a brief photograph, taken by Bryn Dole, who also ordered one: Compare and contrast with the preview: It came out pretty much exactly as expected, with one small detail: I implemented a drop shadow as a translucent black layer, which forms grey on white but darkens other colors. Somehow that came out as grey on colors as well. But it still works. It's a very minor detail. Also, the green on the front extends a bit higher than I'd anticipated. But the rest of the design came out extremely well. And the fit: perfect. It's a lightweight jersey which fits me snugly, perfectly suited for hillclimbs (okay, perhaps a skin suit would be better for hillclimbs, but this is still excellent). And the pockets are a ni...

In January I summarized jersey designs I've done for Pro Cycling Manager , a video game where players manage pro cycling teams made up of real-world riders, who in virtual form are supposed to ride similarly to their flesh-and-blood counterparts. I've never played the game, but I like using the model for visualizing cycling jersey designs. I was so happy with Jakroo going live with the Low-Key jersey design , a jersey something I've thought about doing the whole history of Low-Key Hillclimbs . We actually had a leader's jersey in 1996, but it wasn't a full design: Well, I had jersey design stuck in my mind, and during a few Caltrain commutes I couldn't put it aside as abruptly as I'd have liked. I stumbled across a this jersey contest on the Pro Cycling Manager forum. For the January contest I figured I'd enter the Low-Key design. After all, I liked it. I thought the color balance was good: black, but with complementary blue and green highlig...

After preliminary designs, previews, rider surveys, design submission, multiple iterations of vendor designs, the new Low-Key Hillclimbs jersey is finally ready to order . I went with Jakroo, who did the WeightWeenies kit I really like. They have high quality stuff, ship directly to individuals, and have no minimums. Here's the design: I went with their top-of-the-line garments, including the "Tour" jersey with its "slim fit" option which fits me better than any other jersey I've tried. Indeed the Jakroo fit options are the best I've seen, with men's and women's, a range of sizes, and three fit styles. It's always a small risk trying a new jersey maker but I was super-happy with taking that risk in ordering the Weight Weenies jersey. I had 20 people respond that they wanted to buy a jersey, 19 of those wanting the full kit. Now that it's time to put down the money it will be interesting to see how many follow through. But a...

This whole jersey design thing is addictive. I've really got to move on... but at least Team Low-Key is ready for greatness:

I was working on a jersey design for Low-Key Hillclimbs using a mixture of template files which correspond to pieces of fabric. The templates are good because they have a roughly 1:1 correspondence to fabric area and are thus a good reference for the jersey art department to render final artwork which will be printed on actual fabric. I used a combination of templates: a jersey template from Voler and a shorts template from Jakroo . I really like Jakroo since they have good quality stuff available in a great range of sizes with pricing which forgiving to low-quantity orders. Indeed their small "slim-cut" jersey fits me great: no excess but comfortable, exactly what you want for a racing jersey where "excess" equals needless wind resistance. Additionally, unlike Voler's version, I find the pockets a useful size. I love my Jakroo WeightWeenies kit I received as a gift. Here's some designs I came up with for Low-Key (the kit info page is here ). I d...