Rockets to Sprockets

It's on like Donkey Kong

2012-01-13T09:13:00.004-05:00

Awe Yeah:

Just like the original Panther kit with white shorts, we'll have passion in our pants and won't be afraid to show it

Also our new sponsor Bonktown is making us take a free lap every 5 laps so we can change our kits and promote a new product that's at least 50% off.

Good think I don't have vertigo

2011-12-22T14:25:00.001-05:00

+1 for RJD2

+a billion for not dying while riding this trail:

Nothing like a Mountain Descent to get you Going

2011-12-14T08:54:00.003-05:00

I just saw this on CyclingTips best of 2011 list.

You can always read results from CyclingNews or the like describing how some rider put time in on the descent, but to know what masterful descending is watch this video from the final stage of the Tour de Suisse.

Put it in full screen and enjoy

The On Season

2011-11-29T19:25:00.010-05:00

Obviously there really isn't too much going on in the off season for most cyclists. In fact, a lot of cyclists get so bored and unnerved by not having an outlet for their pent up energy they invented a totally made up sport involving bikes:

I'm not hating on CX (too much). But for a sport where guys are usually dressed up as girls, most of the spectators and competitors are drunk, and the longest event is only 60 minutes, some people (masters) take it a little too seriously.

I am guilty of buying into CX pretty much every year for the past 3 years, doing about 4 races then deciding I hate life, then likewise selling off all my CX crap.

Not this year, I've been saving my glorious CX performances for the OVCX finale here in Cincy this weekend (maybe...depends how friday night goes).

There are some updates on the team front though. If you've been following the world of P-R-O cycling (that's cap's lock bitch), you will have noticed that we are no longer the p/b Competitive Cyclist team. Since Competitive Cyclist has now been bought out by the company known as Backcountry.com it has taken over the Real Cyclist P-R-O sponsorship. As a result of these connections that we made being sponsored by Competitive Cyclist, we are now sponsored by the Real Cyclist outlet Bonktown.com....

This is getting more confusing than a southern family tree...so I'll make a family tree to describe what the heck is going on.

Like I said we really love our cousins.

Anyway so officially (off the record of course), we're now sponsored by Panther and BonkTown. What is bonktown you ask. Well besides the city of my residence for next season given my current training, BonkTown is a one deal at a time website where they blow out cycling gear for super cheap, similar to ChainLove (for MTB), SteepandCheap (outdoorsy stuff), WhiskeyMilitia (Hipster crap). If any of you know my shopping habits you'll know I'm a pretty compulsive shopper to all these websites (most of my clothes come from the WhiskeyMilitia).

This new sponsorship brings along with it new goodies we're getting. We'll no longer be rocking the Canyons (that's resevered for the big boys on the CC pro team...good luck finding parts for your bike Paco), we're getting brand new whips:

Wait that's not the right one...Ok so google search for Orca bikes isn't working out for me right now, We're getting ORBEA Orca's next year.

So yup we'll be basque-ing in the glory of expediting all our competitors to BonkTown next year.

Get it?

Anyway the reason why it's now the "on" season this year is that I've been busy training, not for some made up discipline of cycling, but a made up obstacle course race.

You may have heard of similar mud runs or warrior dash's. This was like all those but longer and harder (no that's what I said....wait). We were even given reminders mid-course of how much wimpy-er those other events were with signs like "You've just completed a Warrior Dash, now 6 more miles"

Let me back up a bit, I signed up for this nonsense like 3 whole months ago. If I had had the mindset I would have saved my money and spent it on alcohol. A co-worker and I registered up with another Purdue Cyclist and a bunch of folks that were part of the Northwestern Cycling Team.

The basic set up was this: 12 miles, 4000 participants, and 20 some obstacles (which was a total lie). The reason the twenty obstacles was a bit of a lie was that the biggest challenge of the event was not any of the obstacles, but the cold. Our team, the Mudder-Nauts (which turned into Butter-Nauts, then just Blhaaahahdhsd) spent a whopping 4 hours navigating the course. For late November it was a mild 55 overcast day, but even though I am a heat transfer engineer, I seemed to forget how much heat is transferred out of your body when your soaking wet for 4 hours.

Literally only the third obstacle was the infamous Chernoblyl Jacuzzi. The Jacuzzi was a 20 foot pool filled with chest high ice water that had several boards you had to swim under. This was by far the most difficult single obstacle. Once jumping into the ice water it isn't TOO TOO bad (not really) since you're in total and complete shock. I jumped in with a teammate but we both bottle-necked at the ladder exit, after him screaming "FUCKING GET OUT". Once in the open air drenched in ice water I had a new appreciation for how calm Bear Grylls is whenever he jumps in arctic water.

My brain shut off, my teammate ran down the ramp on the backside tripping himself to faceplant in the mud. I didn't even notice, I was just screaming all out sprinting as fast as I could to get away from the icy awfulness.

From that point on in the ToughMudder we were soaking wet, every obstacle it seemed was separated from the next by a lake we'd have to swim through or freezing stream we had to ford (yes, we all got dysentery and died). There were 30 foot high piles of hay we had to crawl over, rows of logs to scramble over, several barbed wire sand crawls, and then of course this guy:

Yeah a 20 foot jump into frigid cold lake, that was for some unexplained reason red. The second pic is right after I chickened out on my cannonball. The best part about this obstacle were the rescue coast guard guys at the end making sure no one drowned. They were wearing full arctic ocean rescue gear pulling a bunch of idiots out of the water wearing t-shirts and shorts.

After that particular obstacle we still had like 6 miles. My favorite obstacle was just before the finish after 3.5 hours of soaking wet misery they had a mystery obstacle, which involved 4 inches of ice water, you had to crawl through...see you had to crawl because 4 inches above the ice water were electrified wired. It was a good experience, getting electrocuted isn't like getting buzzzzzed, it's more like someone kicking you in the head, then you trying to stand up and a bunch of people kicking you in the back (trust me on this one).

Oh and this was just before I partially dislocated my arm:

Ah good times

We're really not that deep

2011-11-15T15:35:00.002-05:00

I know this has been floating around the internet for a while now, but I think it pretty much sums up every relationship I've ever had (along with every other cyclist)

Changwon Criterium

2011-10-26T20:57:00.006-04:00

This past week I flew out to South Korea for the Changwon Amateur World Championship. I'm not sure this particular World Championship was any sort of sanctioned world's (they couldn't provide insurance and no licenses were required), but they paid my way out there and the race had $13,500 of prize money, so it certainly had enough money for an Amateur World Championship.

I took off work for a few days and flew out Wednesday morning. After traveling most of the day I got into Korea on Thursday afternoon. I meet up with Derek and stayed at his place in Yangji. We went for a short ride around his home town during the day on Friday before having a duck dinner at a place that was supposedly famous for it's duck:

Yeah wood floors and a greenhouse covered in a tarp is a fancy restaurant in Korea (reservation only).

We took Derek's Musso SUV Saturday morning in a cross country trip down to Changwon. Since Korea is a little smaller than Indiana, a cross country trip entails only 4 hours of driving.

After a few days in a totally foreign country we arrived in Changwon to a very familiar scene. I even had to pay 30,000 Won (~$30) to register.

The only difference was no one was speaking English.

Derek signing in at the most legit race sign in I've ever done.

It was raining all day going into the race and stayed wet through the Korean Criterium Championship that preceded our race. There were a few other Americans flown out for the race besides myself. As we watched numerous crashes on the 2.5 km course with only 2 corners we were all worrying a bit about having to fly home oozing with road rash.

Thankfully the rain cleared just before our own race started. The field was about 100 guys that were mostly Koreans. There was a handful of Americans, Europeans, and a team from Japan. A large contingent were also foreigners living in Korea. The race start had much more theatrics than the usual American race, a lot of yelling and fireworks going off at the start. The race began with 2 neutral laps before the racing began in earnest.

The race contained 4 mid race primes every 5 laps for $500 each. I figured if I got one I would break even in terms of paying for food and other incidentals for the trip. When we hit four laps in things were together I decided to go for it. Coming out of the last corner there was a good 600 meters to the finish, making it super easy to jump too early. I followed a guy with legs the size of tree trunks (later learned he was training to become a pro Keirin racer). We got a good gap, but I was patient and able to sprint around him for the second prime. As the race rolled on it became pretty clear nothing was really going to get away. With all of the $13k prize money going to the top 3 there was a lot of incentive to keep things together.

Things played out pretty much as I thought, no one getting a bigger gap than a few seconds. The second prime was taken by a guy solo off the front. By lap 14 things were getting a little strung out, I followed some attacks going into the prime lap. When I heard the bell things were broken up enough to provide the perfect opportunity to attack. I got away solo to take the third prime. After this one I sat up to wait for the field.

The race laps counted down. At the last prime I tried to lead Derek out but he had spent the entire previous lap off the front trying to break away.

The last five laps things were getting nervous. I committed myself to staying at the front despite having to use a little extra energy. I even chased down a leadout that had turned into a breakaway going into the bell lap.

Coming into the last corner I was sitting on the front just riding tempo, knowing that getting boxed in by a swarm would be the end of my race. I waited until a few riders from the Storck group attacked on the inside going into the last corner. I jumped across the road into 3rd wheel. Fortunately the Korean's aren't quite as cut-throat when it comes to wheel stealing as Americans. I went through the last corner 3rd wheel.

Chuck Hutchenson an American rider from the Armed Forces team was second wheel and attacked pretty much right out of the corner. I immediately jumped on his wheel. After a few seconds I glanced back...we had a HUGE gap. He motioned me to pull through, knowing it would be tough for the field to catch us I pulled through pretty easy baiting him to open up the sprint first, he did. I got up onto his wheel and from that point on the slingshot was engaged, and you don't mess with the slingshot:

Not a bad pay day either:

On Sunday we spent the day touring around some coastal cities near Changwon before heading back up to Seoul.

My flight Monday was in the afternoon so I immediately started my offseason by going for a trail run in the loop behind Derek's village that went through a Buddhist Temple and up to the top of a mountain.

Bike Racing in Korea

2011-10-20T20:59:00.002-04:00

So I'm racing my bike in Korea this Saturday night. I got into Korea last night and I'm staying with my old roommate Derek Laan who I visited back in January.

Why racing in Korea? Well first of all the race organizers are paying the way for a bunch of Amateur racers to come out here to do there race, plus I had a bunch of Vacation days I needed to use before the year is up.

The race itself is titled "Amateur Criterium World Championship" which probably carries about as much meaning as any ABR world championship. It's funny that it's the Criterium championship because the course is nothing like an actual criterium:

It's part of the EcoMobility and World Bike Fest in Changwon on the southern coast of South Korea.

Should be a good time, I fly back on Monday. I'll post some updates on how the race went.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

2011-10-12T15:13:00.001-04:00

Why oh why would anyone make something so utterly terrible:

Another reason not to go to Africa

2011-10-10T13:04:00.002-04:00

Sometimes when in Africa you have to ride with total dicks who don't like to share the road.

Bike Art

2011-10-05T10:26:00.002-04:00

Found this on the interwebs, SRAM gave a bunch of artists a box of parts and told them to make some awesome stuff to auction off for World Bicycle Relief. It's pretty cool:

I'm buying one an parting it out on eBay.
There's more too

What's Going On?

2011-10-02T20:57:00.009-04:00

What’s going on? A lot of stuff since the last blog post but nothing really bike racing related. First of all:

Yeah, that's right. I bought a motorcycle. It’s a 1976 Honda CJ 360 T and it is by at least $100 the cheapest bike I’ve ever bought. It's a good little bike, but it needs some lovin'. It works about 1000 times better now than when I bought it after I changed the clutch cable, oil, and oil filter. Now after I throw some aero bars and dimpled tires on this bad boy I’ll be dominating the NRC circuit. Mancebo, you’ve been warned! After all those RealCyclist dorks stole our product sponsorship. I wouldn’t even want to be on a team that couldn’t come up with a creative name: Real Cyclist….Competitive Cyclists, I’m pretty sure we’re all Really Competitive Cyclists (it’s because we’re racing bikes).

In general I’ve been getting a good fill on my fossil fuel racing on lately. For one work lunch we all went go-karting (yes, again). Although this time they were legit go-karts that were fast enough to make you want to pee your pants when you hit the accelerator (Urine’s sterile, I’m sure the seats are now cleaner than they were). We sit in cubicles all day long, we need some release. I’m currently working on a midsize engine (think 737) calculating thermal expansion of the parts during takeoff and landing. The thing is jet engines move A LOT. My job is to make sure that the seals between the rotating parts (the rotor) and the stationary parts (the stator) do not rub TOO much. Think of it, some super lightweight skeleton structure spins up to 1000 rpm and several thousand degrees in a matter of seconds, these parts like to rub and grind each other more than Guido’s at a dance club.

In bike racing:

I also got the results of my VO2/Threshold test that took place at the OSU COSI lab.
Drum-roll:

VO2 Max: 78.8
Threshold: 301 watts

I mean damn, I always figured to be a rider with shitty power numbers I’m even impressed by this. According to the free Coggan power profile excel spreadsheet; I pretty much have identical power numbers to the “Cat 3 with an Amazing Sprint”.

Here’s my actual one:

So it’s well established that 1: I should be a terrible elite bike racer and 2: I clearly need to be pounding the Pizza and Beer more in order to better my Power to Weight ratio. Since my weight will be much higher I won’t have to worry about the other multiplier: Power (mostly because that involves training).

But no really I’ll probably get a coach next year, not to tell me how to train (I know, hide in the woods and take naps after eating $5 hot and ready pizzas). But to keep me focused or something, you know someone to hold me accountable.

My parents also visited this weekend, my Dad picked up his road bike and we went for his first road bike ride together.

I also did my first cyclocross race today, which was terrible...more to come

Out of control

2011-09-25T21:08:00.002-04:00

The whole victory salute thing is really getting out of hand here:

Next year's worlds headline:
"All 150 riders crash as 149 arms go up in disgust with losing"

I am Champion of the Sunflowers

2011-09-13T17:25:00.004-04:00

Yes I in fact am. Last Friday was the Milford Sunflower Classic located in Milford, OH. The course on paper looked really tame, just a standard 6 corner "L" shaped crit with what the flyer described as a "slight" hill. First of all the hill proved way more than slight, second the straight just before the finishing stretch was a 100 meters of roughly 20% descent. It was a little sketchy at first glance, but with only 30 riders in the race it proved to be a really fun race.

It was a pretty local field of riders in attendance. In an effort to get some good training in before Univest I rode my bike to work, then rode from work to the race in Milford taking a slightly indirect route through the very hilly Indian Hill region to the race itself. By the time I got to the race venue I already had over 30 miles on the day.

The race, being a small field on a tough course, was going to do nothing but split up. I watched most the moves, and finally when things started breaking up bridged up to Jeff Pendlebury from Cleveland Clinic and Brad Schaffer of Nuvo. We worked really well together and lapped the field in about a half hour. I attacked through the field, but mostly because the lead moto had nearly caused an accident for the 3rd time and I was trying to catch him to tell him to get way in front of us (apparently a bike with a mechanical motor is faster uphill than a bike with a human motor). Anyway after some hand gesturing by most of the breakaway he got the message (although crashed into a sign on the last lap).

Things were pretty chill in the field until 2 to go when Jeff attacked pretty hard, I was caught in a little of a poor location and honestly mistook him for one of the 5 other RGF riders at first. I followed him just catching him the last lap's climb. I attacked going into the downhill corners knowing whoever went through those first always had a bit of an advantage. I came out first with a bit of a gap and opened it up for the finish.

As I said I raced with power. I'm learning as I go along that my power numbers are not at all very impressive:

What ever, still won

Anyway on to the VO2 Max Test, which literally took place here:

That's not me, but replace that treadmill with me, on my bike, hooked up to a trainer, with a giant respirator attached to my head. And a bunch of a little kids staring in at me in the tights.

After a pretty leisurely 15 min warm up it was on to the test, which has to somehow be incorporated into a on-bike workout because it was the hardest thing I've done in a while and left my legs ruined for the rest of the day. It started off at 100 watt's, no biggie.

Then ever minute the resistance would be increased by 25 watts. Since the resistance went up all you had to do was ride the same cadence. After a few minutes I was at 375 wattage, which is apparently a shit load. 400 was the last minute I could complete and I totally blew up at 425. Apparently I topped off at 79.something ml*kg/sec. Most importantly according to this totally random chart I found online I didn't get girl'd.

I don't get an official printout of my score until I go back and do a 10 mile TT, so I'm thinking when I get back my test guy will be all like "oh JK I just wanted to make sure you came back you really just had a 40, you better get back to eating more Pizza and PopTarts for your super-taper technique".

The Gateway Goblet

2011-09-08T20:52:00.005-04:00

So after it's been a full year of racing for the Panther squad I finally was able to race with the full team. Imagine having 5 whole teammates to cover moves and get into breaks, it really beats doing it all yourself.

Usually the labor day weekend consists of heading up to the Detroit area for the big money Tour di Via Italia, which the team I've been on has podium-ed at every edition. Unfortunately after something like a 50 year run the race was canceled. So instead of heading north I went west to St. Louis for the Gateway Cup.

Gateway was a series of 4 criteriums starting Friday night running through Monday. I missed Friday night's race due to work, but drove up with Erik Hamilton on Saturday morning. We were running super late thanks to a late start on my part and terrible traffic around Bloomington, but with a little NASCAR skills I got up my sleeve we made up the 2 hours we needed to get there in time. After a strong storm blew through the womens race was delayed and we even had an extra half hour.

Saturday's race was about a gigantic 4 corner crit with 4 lane roads all the way around. It was a total NASCAR track (those two months in the south really rubbed off on me). Believe it or not there can be races that are super fast but super easy at the same time. Sitting in the field you could click along like an easy ride, but as soon as you hit the wind your quickly realized the speed in the field was like 30 mph at it's slowest. People pretty much continuously smashed themselves to try and make the race hard but I'm sure every single one of the 130 riders was totally fresh at the finish. I even went on the attack a few times but we never really got anywhere.

At one point the Panther boys had just about the most legit leadout ever seen...for a prime. A full 5 person leadout for me to get a $200 prime. I got the prime, and we damn near split the field in the process: the counter attack took a few solid laps to bring back. Anyway the sprint was super chaotic as expected, Hamilton went off the front solo with a few laps to go so we kind of chilled with our lead-out and had to fight the swarms. I can break down every meter, but the gist is that we got jumped on the second to last straight. I had a leaf in my cassette which prevented me using my 11-12-or-13 gears so basically coasted from the last corner to the finish (still in 17th!) Ryan A ended up 6th place, and Ryan K was 12th.

Sunday's race was "The Hill" which had a smaller hill than the previous day's race. It was another 4 corner ordeal that would probably end with a 400 meter downhill sprint to the finish at probably 90 mph. We decided to try and just follow attacks for the race since it was likely nothing would get away. So of course, the one time I attack I got into a breakaway, but I obviously wasn't too happy with it:

Anyway we had 2 Mercy guys and me in a group of 4, not very good odds considering there were a few P-R-O's (you read right, those are capital letters) in the field. So we got brought back after 5 laps, but then the race announcer called a prime...which was pretty shitty of him in my opinion so I decided to go for it. I followed Alder Martz's attack up the hill, tailed by Brad Huff and Nick Frey. Huff went for the prime on the downhill but I was on his wheel the whole way and was able to get around him. When we got around the first 2 corners the field was GONE, so we kept it rolling. For the next 30 minutes we had just about the most perfect rotation in the history of breakaways. We didn't utter a single word except for when Brad Huff got a flat tire, then it was back to norm. No one broke the rotation until the last lap, even though we had a good 20 seconds on the field going into the final. Brad Huff lead out the sprint, I thought I had a good jump, came around Huff, but Alder was just too fast and inched up on my left and got me by a wheel's length.

Most of the team left Monday to do the Debates-Devos Criterium up in Michigan. Ryan K got taken out by some dubious racing on Sunday's final lap and broke his bike, so salvaged his losses and went home as well. That left Erik and I for what was supposedly the hardest race of the weekend. A 1.77 mile course with something like 10 turns I thought it would suit my technical riding, plus Erik was feeling good for the day so I thought our chances were pretty good.

Thanks to a call up I started at the front and tried to stay up front knowing that things would be getting ugly behind. I must have been a little too far up because I ended up in ANOTHER breakaway and this time I was definitely the wrong guy to be in the move. Here's the HR file

I know it's not a real 'Power' file but I added about what I thought my power output was for the race. Based on my off the cuff normalized power calculation I probably had about 5734.1 watts of normalized power (JJ said he only averaged 310 for the races.....pfffffffffffffffff weak)

I think my real problem was the fact that our 6 person rotation had me pulling through after David Williams of Bissell and Jonathan Jacob from NUVO. Apparently pulling through after the guy who got 10th at US Pro TT and the guy who won the Elite TT title isn't too good for the legs. If I was thinking I would have tried to shift it up, or take shorter pulls than the soft ball ones I was already taking. But my brain wasn't really getting enough O2, as evident by the fact that after one of my pulls I full-on plowed into a shrub that was hanging into the course.

That was even a couple laps before I got dropped, I started sitting on, but that just really made things worse since I had to accelerate with every guy getting onto the back of the train. With 2 to go I had a full on nuclear detonation when the first acceleration came. I managed to hold off the field that was 30 seconds back for a full half lap. I was pedaling the squarest squares you've ever seen. The 15 person chase group just blew past me like I was standing still. I even almost got caught by the field that was another half lap (three quarters of a mile) behind. I still finished 20th and made a whole $15! Erik got crashed out in the final lap by another airhead dive-bombing a corner. Needless to say it was a bad day.

What's next?

Univest baby

Not Sure What's More Awesome

2011-09-07T10:22:00.003-04:00

Danny Hart's world championship winning run, making everyone else look silly, or the announcers:

D-U-M That spells stupid

2011-08-23T21:07:00.009-04:00

It's been a while since I've had at technical rant on this blog about bicycles. Most of the wind has been taken out my negative drag sail-like wheels due to the fact that we're now sponsored by said dimpled company, plus they have gotten a little more scientific it seems. The rest of the wind has been taken out by all the techno bable going on at the 9-5. But fear not since most of my job involves Excel spreadsheets and simple arithmetic I'm ready for some real Engineering bull shit.

So, on to another pet peeve I've had concerning the bike industry. Particularly the lack of communication between the MTB world and Road world.

No I'm not talking about the most stupid recent fad:

Ok so there are a few things terrible fad-dy things about this bike, first stupidly large headtube (they're called spacers dumb-ass, learn to use them), but I'm talking about road bike disc brakes. Get it through your thick little heads: BRAKING POWER IS LIMITED BY TIRE TRACTION. You'll be locking up this bad boy so much on wet descents, you might as well just be doing this sick fixie skid down the mountain. Given the fred-tastic nature of this bike's headtube and disc brakes, the only wet or dry road it'll ever see is the garage floor.

What I'd really like to tackle is the road industries terrible misunderstanding on how or why suspension works (which the MTB guys have totally figured out, probably borrowing knowledge from motocross). This lack of understanding has produced a few terrible bikes, like this:

I'll admit this is well done and an interesting new idea to tackle a familiar problem: how to transfer the load of rider and pedals to the wheel. The bike's mission is to absorb bumps and smooth out the ride, the problem is one of those pesky laws of thermodynamics, that energy cannot be destroyed (or is that Rebecca Black's music, I can't remember). Anyway the problem is really encapsulated in this video:

They wizened up and used some pretty generic looking FEA system to show how springy their bike is.

The problem with these guys and the rest of the bike industry is they're treating the bike frame as a static system with the axles being fixed. This is exactly the problem, when was the last time you were riding along and looked down at the axles of your wheels and saw them just rolling along perfectly smooth...NEVER. This is because of the nature of the roads we ride on; which we cannot change, are usually a shitty mess of potholes and broken pavement (if you live outside the midwest...you'll just have to trust us that there are shitty roads out there).

Back to the second law of thermo, when you ride this bike over the shitty roads it does a great job of absorbing the energy, but it does a terrible job of DISSIPATING that energy. A singular bump that you ride over will get absorbed by the bike and just get transmitted right through the saddle, although in a slightly slower fashion than a stiffer bike. And that's the problem bikes need to be modeled as dynamic systems that can move rather than fixed system. For instance let's pretend you ride up a curb, which is represented below by the stepped black line and your saddle (the important part in the circle bike's case) is the red.

Mountain bikers long ago figured if you just put a spring on a bike, you're going to be bouncing all over the place unless you have something to dissipate the energy into another form that isn't kinetic energy. Usually suspension dampers convert this kinetic energy into heat, but you could turn it into sound, charge a battery for your bicycle speakers, maybe pump some water to a higher location. Regardless of where it goes, if it isn't dissipated from kinetic energy within the structure of the bike, it's going into your butt (oh yeah!)

When a nice damping device is applied you get a lot less overshoot and a system something like this:

The problem with road bikes is that they're usually pretty minimalist systems that don't lend themselves weight or stiffness wise to a full blown suspension system. What you really need to make a realistic road bike that can not only be fast and light but also absorb bumps is some type of damping within a system. In fact it would be great if there was some kind of magic material that just naturally had something of a high Viscous Damping Ratio, but was still lightweight and stiff.

Hmmmmm

Yeah

COMPOSITES!

You'll notice composite is only at 0.002 at worst vs. 0.001, this may not seem like much but it means that carbon dampens any movements twice as much as steel (and all other metals). There are a lot of very complicated types of damping that can happen in materials, but I don't really understand them so I'm just going to go ahead and ignore the complicated stuff. Plus I think we've reached the point of diminishing returns in terms of this blog's length vs. fidelity of crap I'm talking about.

So it turns out the cycling industry has already fixed the problem of damping out frame deflection without really even knowing it, that 'smooth' feeling you get from carbon fiber is really due to the damping properties of composites. It also explains why steel bikes are typically so much more noodle-y than modern race bikes. In order to absorb the bumps, they have to be weak enough to move around a lot. However, with the shaping capabilities of carbon, you can configure the bike to have strength where you need it (gigantic steerer tubes and BB) and weakness where you also need it (seat stays).

You could almost realistically build a very comfy and stiff bike without seat stays and just a really stiff downtube....

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the worlds absolute, without a doubt, perfect bicycle:

J....K

The downtube should really be more like a torque tube but I think at this point in my blog post I'm so off point I'm just going to say that's it.

I gotta say though this is one of the great things about the bike industry, they've been around, largely unchanged for the past 100 years. Yet people are still trying innovative and unique ideas, although sometimes not well thought out, to tackle problems that have already been solved. It gives bikes character and the initiative is defiantly lacking in a lot of other design industry that have a lot of heritage...maybe like another 100 year old industry where you build propulsion devices, you know for things that fly, possibly airplanes. While most the idea's are goofy one-of designs that never really do what they were created to do, every once in a while some new guy will come along without any preconceived notions and be all like "why don't we try doing it this way" and the industry will be changed for ever...too bad we all just like playing with shiny things.

*If I'm wrong on any of this stuff just let me know. I'm not pretending to be correct, or to have correct grammar, or spelling, or sentence structure, or logical arguments.

Late August Racing

2011-08-22T21:53:00.002-04:00

If you follow racing in the midwest I'm sure you heard about the chaotic weekend of racing in Indy last weekend.

If not I'll give you the brief summary. The Mass Ave Criterium in Downtown Indy was a pretty fun race last year where we went 2/3. We were hoping to improve on that performance a little. The triangle shaped course had two pretty tight hairpins. With all the accelerations coming out of the hairpins the race was pretty consistently hard. The field was quite a bit stronger this year than last with a good number of pro riders, all the midwest teams, and a few guys from California Giant Strawberry. The race split up quickly last year, but with the faster guys things really stuck together. When laps finally started counting down the field had dwindled to about 30 guys. With 10 to go a group of 4 went off the front with Kirk, Eric Young from Bissell and two others. It was about this time the sky turned black. We heard of inclement weather coming in and talks of possibly shorting the race given sever weather conditions. The nasty/dangerous stuff was really rolling in with 8 to go. I attacked thinking I didn't want any part of being in a field when they shorten the race. My bet turned out to be spot on, a trash can blew into the course just as I attacked splitting the field. I caught up to Weston Luzzader just as they called 1 lap to go. With barriers, dirt, caution tape, and generally everything not bolted down flying everywhere, I just kinda rode in for 6th place behind Weston.

The Fishers crit NW of Indy the next day was a pretty low key event. About 25 starters with a windy technical course everything blew apart. David Williams from Bissell and JJ from Nuvo got away and there was no chance of bringing them back. I attacked a few times but the California guys in the field didn't feel like working. So we 10 man field sprinted. I thought I had a clear line into the last corner but a California guy dove on my inside, then once realizing he totally overcooked the corner, took me to the curb. Oh well

In other news the job continues to go well and I'm continuously impressed with the riding around here in Cincinnati, you could litteraly do a hill repeat every day for a week without riding more than 20 miles or riding the same hill twice. I'm also keeping up with the bike commuting, perhaps even more than I should. Once I got over the whole waking up a half hour earlier, I'm really starting to dread the days I force myself to take off and drive into work, It's the two worst 20 minutes of my day.

Racing definitely is winding down, although there are still a few weekends in the works. Since Via Italia isn't happening this year I guess I'll be waiting till 2012 to make it two wins there, instead the 4 race serries in St. Louis "Gateway Cup" will take care of my labor day. This weekend I'm still in the air between going back home for the downtown Birmingham crit or this Red River Gorge Stage Race in Chatanooga TN (which has a ton of money). Then possibly Univest if we can get in and the Cap city Crit on Oct. 2 (super late! I'll be in CX shape by then...which is drinking shape)

Another Great Danny MacAskill vid

2011-08-16T10:36:00.001-04:00

Another great visually stunning video from Danny MacAskill.

How to build a custom Steel Bike

2011-08-11T11:38:00.003-04:00

This video pretty much walks you through the steps. Just think somewhere in a nondescript factory some underprivileged children are probably doing just the same thing for $1 an hour (their tiny hands make it easier to get the welding torch in small spaces). Any cynicism aside this is pretty cool and a well done video to boot!

FROM STEEL: The Making of a Soulcraft from michael evans on Vimeo.

So where do I live now?

2011-08-09T21:26:00.003-04:00

It's been a while and a few hectic weeks here. In case you haven't gotten the story from me here's how things have been going down for me the past few weeks.

About a month ago we got word down in Greenville that shit was going down and all of our contracts for our Aero group got canceled. At first we thought it was just temporary, but it quickly became apparent that there would be no work for the majority of us working down there. We had the option of going to work in East Hartford CT or Cincinnati, OH. I chose Cinci since it was much closer to home (which is sounding like the right choice, East Hartford sounds like not a great town).

So three weeks ago our company brought us up for a week to scout out the Natti and find a place to live. I decided to drive up myself to go to a family wedding the weekend before the week in Ohio. Once we started working I got together with two other of my co-workers and we found a house together in East Wallnut Hill, which is roughly in-between Hyde Park and Mt. Adams (both very cool neighborhoods). After our week in Cincinnait, we had to go back down to Greenville to gather our belongings and get something of a work week done (nothing got done). We got everything packed up into a Budget truck and headed up to Cincinnati the next Saturday. We moved all our stuff in on Saturday and went to work that next Monday (I think that's the 25th we're at now).

The first weekend I went up to Lakewood OH and Milford MI for a few crits that went really well as evidence here:

And here:
I wrote a more detailed report for the Panther website that you should check out if you want more info. I should start figuring out some Mark Cavendish victory salutes if I keep the streak up

Anyway the chaos has somewhat subsided for now. I drove up to Chicago for Tour of Elk Grove but missed my start on Saturday due to a faulty website (believe it or not this is the first time I've ever missed a race).

It was a really frustrating weekend for a good number of reasons. It's a bad sign when the best part of a race weekend is going to a Carnival to see the worlds best cover band.

One especially tough part of the move has been the commute. In Greenville I was only a few minutes from work, but here it's a 20-30 minute drive. The hour of driving was really killing me. Instead of reducing my training volume like most normal people would probably do, I just rode till 9 pm most nights then made dinner and went right to bed, which as you can imagine sucked a whole lot.

So the obvious solution is to commute by bicycle to work. This required quite a bit of planning. First there's nothing of showers at our office, so we had to get a membership at a racquet club next to the office. This worked out well, since all my roommates got a family membership and we got a killer deal. Second there is literally nowhere to lock up a bike, thankfully my bosses are cool with me keeping my bike in my cube (which is huge), when the weather turns foul that'll be a whole other challenge to tackle another time.

So today was my first day of riding to work, and it went great. Even though I was pretty well prepared I was more nervous riding to work than I am before a lot of races. Regardless at 7:30 am today I rolled out into the unknown world of bike commuting.

The route to work is great considering it spans most of the metro-Cincinnati area. It goes through a parkway near Xavier University campus, then by a Jim Bean factory, then there's an entire 5 mile stretch with not a single stop sign or traffic light. All in all it was 12 miles this morning and took 40 minutes.

Now time for a little score keeping (I've been doing a lot of excel at work lately, I'm in the mood). Per day I normally drive an entire hour to and from work. Today I essentially took all that time and put it into riding, since it only takes me 40-45 minutes to ride to work I tacked on only an additional 30 minutes to my daily commute. I can discount my showering in the gym since I shower in the mornings anyway, plus what ever time I'd spend getting kitted up in the afternoon would take place anyway, so why not do it at 5 when I get out of work.

Ok, so I've only done this one day, but today went great, I rode more after dropping my clothes off at home, and had 3 hours of riding in by 7:30.

Now it's all a matter of self discipline.....which I have none

I've Found a House!!!

2011-07-15T17:00:00.003-04:00

So I'm looking for some housing down in the Cincinnati area, mostly searching on Craigslist. Trust me you can find some great deals on cragslist. I'm rooming with a few co-workers from the Greenville fallout, and luckly we've found a great place to live, heres an exerpt from the email I got. Dont' worry I didn't let such a great deal pass me up, I just responded along with a money order for $900:

From: Hjsz, Jurc hjszjurc@yahoo.com
To: Chris Uberti

Hi,

Thanks for emailing me regarding the house is still available, but presently I'm on business trip to West Africa. I bid for a portion of petroleum land sometimes ago in West Africa and fortunately I won, so I have to move quickly down to Africa to have my company set up. I came over here with my wife, we both bought the house when we got married. As soon as we settle down here I had a thought of selling the house, so I have to look for an agent and getting one we strike a deal but later my wife advised me on selling the house. I reasoned with her and accepted her advice. So I contacted the agent back and requested for my keys and documents. Later we decided to have the house rent out, we would have given the same agent this job also but the truth of the matter is that the agent would want to handle it professionally and the occupant may not be able to reason along with him later and moresome I do not have anyone in the area I can leave the keys behind with so that is why I posted ad myself. If you notice, you will discover that the price we are offering is far below standard price and I this is enough for you to know that we are not after the rental fee but the absolute care for the property. I know there is no way I can be sure that you are the right person to live in the house because we won't be able to see physical before sending you the keys and the documents to occupy the space. The house is available for as long as you want and if you drive by the house you may see a sign there, you have nothing to worry about it belongs to my previous agent so you have absolutely nothing to worry about and you don't have to call them because they do not have access to the house anymore.

Please if you are ready now to occupy the house kindly provide the information below for record purpose

PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF
Full Name__________________________________________________ Home Phone ( ) ________________________
Date of Birth_________________________________
Other Phone ( ) ___________________
Current Address_______________________________Apt#________ City__________________ State______ Zip________
Reasons for Leaving____________________________Rent $__________Phone ( ) ____________________________
Are you married____________________________
How many people will be living in the house____________________________
Do you have a pet____________________________
Do you have a car____________________________
Occupation____________________________
Move In Date____________________________
How long you intend staying____________
REFERENCES ___________________________
Your pictures if available_______

P.S: YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO VIEW THE INTERIOR PART OF THE HOUSE BECAUSE I HAVE THE KEYS HERE WITH ME YOU ONLY VIEW IT FROM THE OUTSIDE.

You can reach me on +2348136816795 OR 0112348136816795.

Thanks.

Best Regards.

Two Races and A Life Update (Again?!)

2011-06-27T21:58:00.002-04:00

So the boring stuff first: Bike Racing!!

Actually my trip up to America's Daryland was pretty cool and probably one of the better race weekends I've had this year (in terms of fun-ness, not quite results). Flying up to the Milwaukee airport was no problem with the bike, I even managed to dodge the bicycle overcharge fee on the way up only having to pay for oversize luggage ($40 less than bicycle).

Giro d'Grafton was Saturday's race which was part of the USA Crit's series, which meant extra $ and prestege. 150 dudes lined up for the 90 minute crit on a hilly fairly technical course. I had mentally readied myself for something along the lines of Speed Week which took place earlier this year in the deep south, but this race was a bit different. Grafton was lacking some of the firepower of UHC, which meant a crit that wasn't quite as fast, and therefore not quite as strung out. Because of this the pack was pretty large and dangerous for the duration of the race. Like I said there weren't many instances of difficulty during the race, I went for a prime mid race and got it, then tried my best to be up front to watch for moves going from the favorites like Johnny Cantwell and Bahatti.
There were a few promising moves but nothing stuck. Eventually a 6-ish group of relative dark horses got away. I made a solo attempt to bridge across by the time I knew what had happened, and got within 9 seconds, but couldn't quite close down the final bit. I drifted back to the pack to sort it out in the field sprint. The sprint was WAY sketchy and I decided to save some skin and ride in 27th (which was still in the money!)

Sunday's Waukeshaw Crit was a pretty technical course. I wasn't feeling to hot in the first half of the race due to a downtown Milwaukee street festival we decided to attend the night before that involved more than a few drinks and plenty of good times and music. Towards the end though I was getting my legs under me. I followed a small group with 10 to go up the road just before a prime was called. I attacked from the group for the prime, but no one followed. So I took the prime then kept on riding out to a surprisingly large gap. I had dreams of glory for a whole 3 laps before being caught. I managed to slip back in pretty far up in the field after that and held on for 15th in the field sprint.

Monday's Road Race in Greenbush, WI was just plain hard. It reminded me why road racing is fun, real attacks, attrition, and riding till your extremities go numb. For the first three laps it was constant attacking until two small groups formed up the road. After a quick breather, which opened up the two minute gap, which held constant the entire race, the peleton rode pretty defensively to keep things together not wanting to miss out on that crucial bridge move. I made a few attacks, but was feeling pretty fried by the end of the race and just rolled in the field sprint (which by then consisted of less than 20 guys).

On the way back home to Greenville, my airplane broke. Our Auxilury Power Unit failed and we had to board another plane. I would have missed my connecting flight, so me and a few other people all going to Greenville spent the night at the airport Holiday Inn in Milwaukee. We didn't get into the hotel till 10 and had to eat at the bar (the wings were good though). On the bright side, even though I didn't pay ANYTHING for my bike to get checked on the way back to G-Ville, they refunded my $60 I didn't give them, AND I convinced the baggage check lady at my morning flight the next day that I had a presentation in that gigantic box (hint: it pays, just this one time, to look preppy)

This past weekend was the USACycling Nationals. I had a pretty bad weekend of racing for being "peaked". Friday's crit was pretty straight forward: 4 corners not a hill in sight. However the 98 degree heat took it's usual toll on me, and I was unable to really race. I wasn't the only one suffering, out of over 150 starters, only 61 finished, which is an absolutely ridiculous rate of attrition considering the relative ease of the course.

Anyway I hung out in Augusta GA Saturday to give feed's up to the U23 guys, Hogan from ABD and Mac from Panther. This was the most productive day of the weekend since I got some serious work done on my tan.

Sunday's Road Race was set to be a total slug fest. 102 miles in the 98 degree humid heat, 218 guys, 1000 feet of climbing per 14 mile lap, and it was nationals. Unfortunately my own race didn't quite make it that far. After two laps of relatively defensive racing, I was feeling really good considering the heat. After some instruction and help from everyone feeding, I was trying all the cooling techniques that Ben Damhoff and Hogan from ABD had told me about. Before I really just kinda turned my nose up at all the guys dumping a ton of water on themselves and using the ice socks, thinking they were wimps and I just had a problem with heat. Turns out these techniques are a HUGE benefit. After three laps I was feeling great, I had gone through a ton of water and 2 ice socks, but wasn't feeling anything close to my normal over heated self. Unfortunately, after three laps, I also nailed a large pothole on the fastest and most difficult section of the course causing me to flat.

This in itself was not a problem, I've had flats before and chased back on, 3 times in NRC races even. The problem here was the wheel change. If you know me, I hope you know that I hate to make excuses, I know that really I'm the only one to blame whenever a race doesn't go my way and am probably too hard on myself sometimes. But in this instance, I was totally taken out of the race by a bad neutral wheel change. I've always had good experiences with the neutral support in the past so when I got my flat I stood back and let the mechanic work, but as precious seconds ticked by I started getting pretty frustrated as he just kept on slamming the spare wheel into the dropout complaining "The spacing's different!!" After a small outbreak of frustration on my part I got between him on the bike and unscrewed the QR and was on my way.

By this point the caravan was long gone. I made my chase, riding my eyeballs out to catch back on. I even made it into the caravan at one point but was physically stopped when the entire caravan stopped in the neutural feed zone to take on neutural bottles to feed their riders. I slammed into the back into one of the team cars, then nearly got hit again by an ambulance that didn't need water and was still driving.

After this I was pretty much done. I rolled in to watch the finish.

Needless to say a really shitty weekend of racing.

My own personal soap opera continued today at work. A company we do contract work for is consolidating big time. Since their guys get priority over contractors, a lot of our work is getting nixed.

What does this mean for me? If I want to keep my job I'm going to be moving.

For Sure

So long Greenville, I'm going to either East Hartford, CT or Cincinnati, OH.

I'm not so bummed about doing something new at work, and actually think it's pretty exciting. I'm just frustrated that I just moved down here, and really like it.

I like the area a lot. There's tons of stuff to do, there's mountains, and the city is cool. And I'm finally starting to meet people and make friends.

Now I have to move (in 2-3 weeks) to another place where I know almost no one and go through the past 6 weeks again.

Dear cyclists and or 20-somethings of either Cincinnati or East Hartford. I ride bikes and am not a psycho, lets be friends.

First Races of the South

2011-06-06T23:05:00.007-04:00

Time to double up on some race reporting action. There’s been a whole mess of racing going on the past two weekends including the first two races that I have EVER just spectated at.

My first race as a working stiff was the High Point twilight Criterium in North Carolina. It started Friday night at 9 so I got my car all packed up on Thursday night ready to go straight from work, that way I’d have plenty of time to get there and warm up. I got out of work at 4:30 and hit the road to High Point, ideally a two and a half hour drive. Halfway between Spartainburg and Charlotte I stopped for gas and a Subway dinner, then as soon as I got back on the highway I hit a gigantic traffic jam.

No problem, I thought, I have plenty of time since I left early. After about 30 minutes I had gone roughly a mile and spotted a news helicopter circling at least a mile a head. The situation looked bleak, I spied an exit to the middle of nowhere a quarter mile up the road so I cut across the stopped traffic and drove up the shoulder. My planned detour took me a good three miles down the highway before getting back on. By this point I was sweating a few bullets as my ETA crept closer and closer to 9, so I was driving, well, a little fast. I came upon a pickup frontage road that was going well under the speed limit and clearly rubbernecking at the accident on the highway (a rolled semi and several ruined cars). As the frontage road crossed a single lane wooden bridge the driver of the truck slammed on the breaks in the middle of the bridge which was wide enough for his car alone. To my horror a large shirtless old man, with foot long white hair covering every inch of his totally sun burnt chest and back. I was panicked, “Oh god, I’ve only been in the South two weeks and I’m already in a Deliverance scenario.” That was a worse case scenario; he might have just had a gun. Anyway with my path blocked he walked up to my car yelling something about what the speed limit was and how if I kept on tailgating him I’d own his bumper. I just said “yes sir” and hoped he would just walk away. After some lecturing and me looking very sorry with a few “yes sir won’t happen again”, he sauntered back to his car satisfied he taught me a thing or two. He pulled off the road just past the bridge, and I gassed it and didn’t look back.

By that point my ETA was about 40 minutes before the start, not too bad if I didn’t hit any more slow downs, but of course I did. Just past Charlotte I ran into another shirtless southern tradition: NASCAR. Little did I know, the Charlotte NASCAR race took place that weekend and the track was right on my route to High Point causing another mass of stopped traffic. This time I really panicked, I was already late and had already been driving for 3 hours; I was now on a mission to make it to the race. I routed a detour around the traffic with the handy Google maps traffic function. This re route was longer, at 20 miles, but funny enough it took me right in front of the Charlotte NASCAR track, where a giant mass of humanity, RV’s, Tents, and Budwiser had amassed. Fortunately I had entered the back way to the track and was now headed back to the highway opposite the gigantic mass of traffic.

From that point onward I was clear of traffic and it was a game of making the ETA on the GPS go backwards in time. I finally got there with 20 minutes to spare before race time, I even got a 5 minute warm up in.

After such a hectic drive over I was really amped up and raced pretty well. Since the race started at 9 it was pitch black the entire time, and the back of the course was really dark with no street lights at all, however the finishing stretch went through a covered bus terminal which was brightly lit with a block party and a ton of live music, it was a really awesome course. The mile long course also had a pretty decent amount of climbing per lap, so the field got whittled down pretty quickly after the start. With a pretty technical course and a 300 m climb out of the last corner to the finish the course was really perfect for me. A large breakaway/field split rolled off midway through the race that was pretty well represented with 3 Mountain Khaki riders an RGF rider and a smattering of others. I attacked to bridge across after it was pretty clear the field wasn’t going anywhere. Another Mountain Khaki rider tagged along for the ride up, and of course attacked me when we were about 5 seconds off the back. I made it across after a lap so I wasn’t too worried. From then on out it was team MTN Khakis against everyone else, they would send a guy up the road and everyone else would pretty much take turns following. Going into the final lap a MTN Khaki guy got a pretty good gap on our group, the RGF rider, who was pretty much going one speed the entire breakaway, kept on diligently working even on the last lap. We all queued up behind him going into the last corner. The MTN Khakis had a good 50 m coming around to the final stretch. I was sitting 3^rd wheel and started my sprint right out of the corner to try and catch him. Lucky for me he looked like he was totally blown and I had enough room for a victory salute (he still finished 2^nd).

I headed back to G-Ville to watch the US Pro TT, which was cool but kinda boring to watch.

Sunday I raced the South Caroline State RR. It was 92 miles in the 95 degree humid heat. I’m not much a heat of summer racer, so I suffered pretty good. On a side note, regardless of what your silly thermometers say, racing and riding in the humidity is WAY worse than the dry Tucson heat, I think it was best surmised by the opinion of one recumbent rider I met in Tucson. When I asked him about the whole riding at 5 am thing he said, “Yeah they’re a bunch of wimps, sure it’s hot, I just bring a camelback and drink a lot of water.”

Hear that, you Tucson guys were getting dissed by a ‘bent rider.

Anyway back in the RR, Kelly Benefits showed up to the race to do their opening efforts for the next days US Pro road race. This meant for the first laps they would take turns doing about 10 minutes of tempo on the front of the field before all dropping out en masse at lap 4. This left things in a state of disorganization: there was a solo rider 7 minutes ahead of the field, followed by 6 chasers who had their own two KBS riders abandon.

By the time I had realized what happened I was on the wrong end of everything, I attacked for a lap of 15 miles but got caught by a field that only numbered six (after 50 some starters). It was over, I stayed in and did a few more efforts in the last laps to finish things out and get some good hot miles in for the Nationals RR next month.

On Monday I met up with fellow Purdue Alum Stephen Sehr who's riding like 4000 miles across America this summer to watch the finish of the US Pro Road Race. It was even hotter today, I was pouring sweat just standing around, and the state of the field showed the heat. By the end of the race the field of 100 some riders was totally decimated. I took this vid of the finish from the last corner, it's a great quality on my iPhone, but as soon as I uploaded it, it turned to crap

And yes I know I called it...wrong, thanks one commentor

On to the People's Community Bank Omnium. This was a medium sized 2 day 3 day stage race. It consisted of a RR, TT, and finally Crit. What wasn't standard was the fact that the 55 mile RR ended in a 7 mile climb

Because of this, and the decent tailwind prevalent the entire route out to the climb, the RR Saturday morning started off really relaxed and stayed that way until the base of the climb. There were a few crashes, more than should be in any road race, but the group made it to the base of the climb in mostly one piece. Once we started climbing the climbers started hitting it and the group totally shattered by mile 2 of the climb. It became painfully apparent how much of a climber I am not. I was able to stay with the front group perhaps longer than I should through maybe top end power, then got dropped and passed by a good number of people before settling in with my appropriate group. From there it was a totally relentless 5 miles of climbing at 6% to the finish. If you've never done a 7 mile climb with a 6% average in a race, which I'm pretty sure 99% of people haven't, let me tell you. It's really hard to stay with the group, but pretty much the outcome of the race will remain unchanged by any amount of suffering you do, somewhat like a TT. I garuntee that if the climb had ended after 2 miles, the results would have been identical as they were at the end of the 7 mile climb. Anyway I suffered my way through it and finished 24th out of 70 some starters. The stage was won by Scott Stewart from TT1 who was only training for the Tour of Switzerland.

The afternoon was a short 3 mile time trial. Luckly it was short and I suffered through it. I would have skipped it but in order to qualify for the omnium you needed to register for all three events.

The way the omnium was scored only 12 people from the RR and 10 from the TT scored any points. That way at most, there'd be only 22 people with any points going into the crit (where only 15 finishers recieved points). This meant that potentially any single decent result would produce a good overall.

So since I scored zero points in the first two stages the Crit was my last chance. It was a very techincal 8 corner 1 km crit with some funky brick pavement in a few of the corners. I lined up at the back, so when the start came it took me a few laps to get settled into the front of the field. The winning breakaway however rolled off the front on the second lap. There were definately some teams underrepresented in the breakaway, but in a course that was whiplashing any rider outside the top 10 to death, it was difficult to mount a chase. I worked a bit with the RealCyclist team (who had 2 riders) and a smattering of others. We wern't able to close the gap below 30 seconds, and the Hincapie Development team, which was the only team consistently at the front of the field, had a rider up the road.

It came down to a field sprint, I was sititng a few wheels back in good position but got swarmed by a few guys with 2 corners to go. I surged back up to 4th wheel by the final corner, but finished 3rd in the field for 6th place in the race.

With my points from the 6th place I placed 8th overall in the omnium.

Welcome to G-Ville

2011-05-29T21:24:00.004-04:00

So the first week of full time employment is finally complete. Don’t be too alarmed though, my first week tasks consisted of mostly setting up my email account and mapping network drives. I’m already off to a good start as I tied the record for fastest setup of an email account (3 days!). The norm is something on the order of one or two weeks to finally get access to your own email. I suppose it might have something to do with proprietary export controlled data. That was my second “action item”, to read a bunch of documents about what an “export” actually is. By the way if you’re not in the corporate world, difficult terms like “action items” seem like a foreign language at first (it means an item you take action on…to do). Anyway you wouldn’t believe the kind of stifling restrictions that are placed on the content of my work. Not only cant I discuss gas turbine engines with foreign countries like Iran, but if I travel abroad I’m expected to keep my work laptop within my control at all times. They’ve obviously made a terrible mistake in hiring me, I’m not James Bond here, and I don’t know if I can handle this kind of Top Secret operation here.

Anyways I got moved into my apartment for the most part, I don’t have a TV, a couch, any chairs, or table. But I have a bed and a washer and dryer, so I’m pretty set now. I even got internet yesterday, so the apt is pretty deluxe.

The complex has a pool and hot tub.
Just sayin’

When I first got here and started riding I was pretty let down. It seemed like all the roads I was riding were really heavily trafficked and hard to follow (name and direction changes are very frequent on local roads).

Turns out my entire riding philosophy has to be adjusted to Upstate Carolina. Back in Wild West of Tucson, there were a total of about 4 roads you could ride on, all of which were shit. Before that in Lafayette you literally couldn’t get lost on the infinite grid of farm roads.

Since all the roads twist and turn all over the place, and frequently T into other cross roads, you need to take on a totally new method of riding in Greenville. Fortunately the result is awesome. The method is going wherever the hell you feel like going and you will 99.9% end up on a road that is awesome. As long as you know which direction you’re going and which direction you need to go (thank you Garmin GPS), you can take any road you see that doesn’t have a dead end sign and it’ll twist, turn, swoop around until it ends, then you take another awesome road. Every road is literally smooth as butter and absolutely beautiful, especially out towards the mountains.

This past Sunday I even skipped a race to just go riding, I drove up towards Table Top Rock and road the local big climb in the area Caesars Head. I started off towards the climb on a pretty main road just north of Pumpkinville (look it up it real), then decided it was slightly too busy, and took off on some totally random side road. The random side road was perfect blacktop with a canopy of trees that twisted through the forest following a river.

It’s cheesy but I’m pretty sure I was a little caught up in the whole “training” thing in Tucson and forgot how much fun riding bikes could be. Trust me I can go on, the entire ride I was thinking about one-liners I could throw up on the blog or twitter to show my enthusiasm for the riding here. The only people I know here so far, my co-workers, don’t really appreciate my tangents about the riding here and I’m pretty sure have learned to stop asking me how I like it here.

This Saturday I rode my bike out to the US Pro TT course to check out some of the action. I gotta say I was pretty disappointed about the lame-ness of the course, which went on some business roads behind a bunch of hotels. They had to do like 4 laps or something like that, which included about 5 trips through round abouts per lap. It is a TT and people like their TT's boring I guess. None the less, it was cool to go and check out the atmosphere and hear David Towel get super excited about a race I wasn't in. There were actually a ton of spectators around the start finishing area, and probably enough digital SLR cameras to out value the bikes present at the race. I snapped a few pictures with my own fancy camera...which I can submerge in water, take that digital SLR's.

Next Year I'll do it fo sho

2011-05-10T09:19:00.003-04:00

Assuming it's not UCI

Check out this awesome video from the Tour of Battenkill and Panther teammate Ryan Aitcheson tearing it up at the front of the field

Tour of the Battenkill Pro/1 Race 2011 from Tim Eck on Vimeo.

Just got back home to Michigan, I'm sorting through all my crap before moving back down to Greenville.

End of Tour of the Gila

2011-05-03T01:21:00.008-04:00

After a pretty rough first two stages I was looking forward to getting some rest in the TT and the Crit. I had my Franken bike TT set up going, but it turned out not to be the most helpful. The strong cross winds that plagued the Gila last year were starting to act up again on the day of the TT. The morning started out decently calm, but the winds rose steadily throughout the day. I haven’t put too much time on the TT bike so was pretty unsure on the bike handling in the cross winds. I was also pretty fried from the two days before so took the TT pretty easily in mostly the tempo zone, so finished pretty far down. The course started out with a 3 mile climb up to Little Burro Pass then descended a mile followed by a few rolling hills to the turnaround. On the way back to the finish the descent had a pretty stiff tailwind and for the second time in my racing career I spun out the 53x11, not that I was too upset about coasting for a good mile.

The Cat 2’s and Elite Women had it a little rougher. The winds were pretty brutal leading to a good deal of riders getting physically blown off the course in the cross winds and making a trip to the hospital

I was looking foreword to the crit after getting schooled for the past three days. The crit is in downtown Silver City which looks like a city frozen in time, most of the buildings reminiscent of a 50’s western town. The 4 corner 1 mile course had some pretty steep kickers of climbs on the back side. My past experiences with NRC crits had been pretty rough. At Nature Valley last year I never could even see the front of the pack up the road, and the Presbyterian Hospital Charlotte crit ended in one of the more terrifying crashes I’ve been involved in. So I was pretty happy with my ability to actually move up to the front of the pack and even throw in a few attacks to stick it to the pros. Unfortunately with a 150 guys in the field there are plenty guys to cover weak attacks from the amateurs like me. My sole moment of glory came where I attacked with 10 laps to go, I bridged up to the break on the climb (the whole 5 second gap) and brought the entire with me. After that the altitude got to me and I was fried.

You might have heard of the whole lap counting fiasco, I wasn’t too affected since I was sitting in the back by that point but it was still slightly confusing. Someone had flipped the lap counter a little too far and showed 1 to go when there was really two to go. A lot of guys got a little confused by this, but there wasn’t a bell, the announcers didn’t say anything about it being the final lap, and at the top of the hill on the backside nearly every person was holding a single finger up for one to go. It was pretty hard to miss.

After the crit it was down to the Queen stage: The Gila Monster. It totaled 106 miles and 9600’ of climbing. With 5 KOM points and pretty much constant climbing and descending at altitudes reaching 7800’, it was damn hard. Not to mention the race started out REALLY fast. In the first hour the race averaged nearly 29 mph with 1500’ of climbing.

It was pretty rolling in the first hour, and I learned the beauty of sag climbing. It’s surprisingly easy to pick your way back through a pack of 150 guys on a descent while recovering for the next mile stretch of uphill. This got me through the first set of climbing, unfortunately when we got to the flat-ish valley section of the race, the field split up from some stiff cross winds. I ended up on the wrong side of the split again with a groupetto that chased for a good 15 minutes, the ref’s weren’t letting the caravan ride next to us (so we couldn’t draft the cars), so we were just dying in no-mans land with the tail of the field in sight. I jumped on the tail of a Hotel San Jose rider that was going back up from getting a feed and got back into the field just before we went over the continental divide for the first time. It was a pretty easy gradual descent for 12 miles before the first Cliff Dwellings climb. Everyone was cramming the food and liquids before the next round of climbing hit us.

A right hander put us right onto the climb up to the Cliff Dwellings. This 6 mile climb stair stepped up pitches as high as 10%. I made it about a mile into the climb before I was out the back of the group and my race was over at mile 54. From there I made it over the cliff dwellings climb with a small group of 10 guys. It was a little easier in the group off the back, but not a whole lot. A few overly enthusiastic guys were setting a pretty stiff tempo going back to the finish. I made it over the big cliff dwelling climb but was really staring to hurt on the finishing climb up to Palos Altos thanks to the single speed diesel rider setting the tempo at the front. I tailed off the back of the group and rode the last 15 miles with another Garmin development rider.

These were some pretty slow and miserable miles, but after 4:50 I finally finished the Gila Monster.

Gila was a great race, the courses were amazing, it had about as much climbing as any amateur can hope to do, and really just professionally promoted event. That being said it was a totally different monster than anything back east. I’ve done Joe Martin, Fitchburg, Nature Valley and no other race had the sheer difficulty and attrition that Gila had (89 finishers out of 150 starters). The climbs are long and there isn’t much recovery, plus the altitude really knocks your fitness down a whole level if you’re not properly prepared for it.

In the end I finished 27 minutes off the lead of Mancebo.

Big thanks again to the guys at Landis. They really gave us the professional treatment at the races so we could focus 100% on the races at hand

After Gila finished up we took off with all our belongings for SpeedWeek in South Carolina. At about 900 miles into the drive we just got across Texas.

The air feels thick compared to Silver City (probably it’s all mental) and the legs are tired. It’ll be a few easy days before I race again in Walterboro, SC. I made it through The Tour of the Gila, hopefully my fitness did as well.

Tour the Gila pt 1

2011-04-28T19:51:00.004-04:00

So I’ve been slacking a little bit on the race reports. Two weeks ago I did the Old Pueblo Grand Prix. A cool little crit in downtown Tucson, one of the best promoted races I’ve done so far in Arizona. Not to mention there was $12,000 of prize money, unfortunately I had some repertory infection acting up and was feeling pretty shitty. I managed to hang on for 12th in a pretty uneventful race, so I’ll just leave you with some videos of the gnarly crashing going on in the races.

Last weekend was the Focus Crit in Phoenix. It was a pretty typical AZ crit, abandoned office park with pristine concrete.

It was super windy so the small race totally exploded. The highlight of my race was when I was caught between the breakaway and what was left of the field and the announcer said he’d give me $50 if I caught the breakaway in 5 laps…I did it in 2. I took the field sprint in the end for 2nd place.

On to the Gila!
The Landis-Trek team based out of Phoenix asked me to guest ride for them after one of their riders crashed pretty bad last week. I was originally just going to go out and ride solo for Panther but riding for the Landis guys has been a huge help in terms of support. Having people in the feed zone on a 94 mile day is priceless, not to mention a ride back from that same 94 mile point to point race is a big help as well.

We just finished up our second day of the Tour of the Gila. Yesterday was the 94 mile stage to Mogollian (ghost town). The race was pretty flat and tame for the first 88 miles. There was a few field splits going on caused by some pretty sudden gusts of cross winds, although nothing compared to what it sounded like last year. I got caught on the wrong side of the second field split the second time round and we formed an echelon to chase. I narrowly avoided a big crash in our echelon that was probably a result of people riding cross eyed. Our group caught back on pretty quickly and it was back in the pack till the finish. There were a few pretty nasty isolated crashes going into the finishing climb, but luckily nothing that happened in front of me.

With 6 miles to go we made a right turn and it was all uphill to the finish. There was a mile of short steep (10% climbing) followed by a pretty shallow plateau. I stayed in contact with the main group through the first steep section then got dropped as we crested onto the shallow plateau. There was a mile of false flat where we almost caught back on then it was straight up the last 3 miles to the finish. I just rode my own race from there on out to roll in a little over 4 minutes off the winner: Paco Mancebo from RealCyclist.

A quick word about altitude: it sucks. Its effects might be slightly exacerbated by being a little sick, but racing at 7000 ft is damn hard. You don’t notice it just walking around or sitting in a field that’s just cruising along, but as soon as I hit any climbs and go into the red zone there is no recovery for me. My heart rate is no where near what it normally is, I can put in about 5 minutes of hard effort then blow sky high.

And that’s exactly what happened in Stage 2. The second stage, called the “Inner Loop” made a 80 mile circuit around the Gila Forest. The tough thing about this stage is that at mile 6 there is a Sprint point, followed immediately by climbing/rolling terrain up to a KOM point, followed immediately by the most technical descent of the race. So the race starts out more like a Crit than anything else. My legs felt like crap as soon as I woke up so I knew it was going to be a fun day.

I made it through the first bit of the climb but couldn’t recover enough on the smallish descent before the final push to Palos Altos (KOM). I got gapped out with a bunch of other riders. Fortunately we were able to chase back on through the very technical descent off the Wolf Mesa. The descent itself wasn’t very technical, just a few tight steep switchbacks, but my group was doing most of it through the caravan of cars, which meant we had about the width of a bike path to work with on the descent.

We caught back on at the bottom of the descent, but someone forgot how to corner and opened up a large gap on like 20 guys that had to be closed again. Finally around mile 38 we caught back on. Fortunately, after a pretty gradual climb up to the continental divide it was all downhill to the finish. Unfortunately there was one last KOM climb before the finish at mile 62. If it was just one 2 mile stretch of climbing I’d be ok, but the climb went up 2 miles, then descended a mile, then went up another few miles to the KOM point, before rolling back into town.

I was hanging on to the coat tails of the group, but holding on none the less, until a Rio Grande guy sitting in front of me swung right abruptly and took out my front wheel. Luckily we were only doing about 10 mph and I managed to unclip and keep from crashing, but the group was long gone by that point. I rolled in the last 10 miles of the race solo in the caravan, which I still have not been able to figure out the protocol of how to ride in. Can I draft the cars when I get dropped, which side of the road am I supposed to ride on when I’m passing them, when their passing me, and most importantly can I draft the cars when I get dropped.

However hardest race of the day goes to Ben Damhoff, who double flatted before the first climb (@ mile 7) and had to chase the entire 80 mile race to catch back on. He got his TT practice in today so the 16 mile TT tomorrow should seem like a piece of cake.

All I can say is that I can’t wait for the crit, and to get down to sea level.

I don’t even want to talk about Sunday yet.

It's official I'm officially really joining the Real Ass World

2011-04-22T23:29:00.008-04:00

Yup, you have heard me right. Yes way, Hell has frozen over, Pigs are in orbit, It has happened in a Million years, I now officially have a job.

Alright so this has been in the works for some time now, and I've pretty much told everybody by now except for maybe my blog which was feeling a little left out (I've been seeing other blogs). I was in Greenville, SC for an on site interview last January, but a little over a week ago I got all the papers signed and payroll stuff taken care of. I will be moving to Greenville, SC and starting the job May 16th.

These coming weeks will be the criss cross tour of America for me. This Tuesday we leave Tucson for good and head to Silver City, NM for the SRAM Tour of the Gila. After 5 days of the toughest stage racing in America, it's clear across the country for another week long race series SpeedWeek (which I hear is like Superweek, but faster and with more crashes, if that's at all possible). SpeedWeek is pretty central to the Greenville area, and since most of the crits are twilight or night time crits, I'll be able to do some apartment hunting during the days. Little do they know it yet but I'll also be recruiting the people I'm staying with there to help me move in, haha. After SpeedWeek is over on Sunday, it's back to Indiana to drop off Joey, then back up to Michigan for a week. I'll get all my crap packed up there, hit up the Tour of Washtenaw (followed by a shower and some traditional send off Coney Island), then head back down to Greenville for good. All in all this trip will constitute 3,500 miles of driving and cross 13 states at least once.

Don't be fooled, this is an actual job, not the kind of job I'm used to. A full time job where you get there at 9 am and leave at 5 pm (that's 8 whole hours!)

Let me point out some other important differences between this job and job's I've had in the past.

Past Jobs New Job

Attire Greased clothing Polos

Tasks Fixing bikes Building Jet Engines

Schedule Whenever you 9 - 5

wana come in man

Vacation Just let us know a 2 weeks, give a week of notice

day ahead of time

Benefits Discounted Bike Parts Dental

Salary Bike Parts Wheelbarrows of scrillas

(compared to my current income of $0 a month)

A lot of people worry how a full time job will affect their cycling performance. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep things balanced.

So I'll be trading in my Canyon for something a little more my new speed. If anyone wants a sweet bike and set of zipps just let me know, I'll take a trade for some pocket protectors or ties (only with sweet graphics like pianos or cartoon characters).

Ok, so that's a slight exaggeration (not about the pocket protectors and ties though). I'm still going to race. A whole new region of racing awaits my domination. Not to mention that Greenville, SC is the home of American superstar cyclist George Hincapie, so I'm sure we'll be training together all the time.

Even better is that I'll be down there just in time for Pro US Nationals (in Greenville). I'll be able to do some serious spectating (beer drinking) and cheering (screaming jiberish while running next to the pack up hill with my shirt, and possibly pants, off).

However if any Pro teams out there need a guest rider I know a guy who's willing to give up all that weekend of drinking and yelling at you to race with you! I'm even a cheap date since I'll be living in Greenville, and you can even stay at my apartment for free (unless you're Bissell, then you have to vacuum my floors).

To be serious for a moment. I have been working at the whole cycling thing for a while, and it seems like while things aren't quite stalled yet, it's pretty hard to make it as a amateur level cyclist. Trust me when I say I spent some time hemming and hawing about whether or not to take the job. I love spending my summers couch surfing and waking up every day with a McDonalds Big Breakfast before getting kitted up to bump shoulders at the day's crit. This isn't going to end by any stretch, I just won't be able to spend weeks on end doing Superweek crits in Milwaulkee. The fact of the matter is once September hits what would I do? (Not Cyclocross) I could have headed back to graduate school at either USC or Huntsville Alabama, but this job is pretty much as ideal in every way as I can imagine. It's in a great location, it's doing something that not only I studied in school but want to focus on, and it's a small company which is something I'm pretty keen on (even though I've only had one real engineering job). The benefits kinda sorta greatly outweigh the negatives of not being able to race my bike all summer long.

My one major regret is that I won't be able to race as much with my team as I'd like to. With the bulk of the Panther team in Indiana and Michigan, it'll be tough to make it to the big team races, but I'll put in the effort. Fortunately though, Greenville is really well located for a bunch of big races. Speedweek obviously, but Elite Nationals are only an hour and a half away now. Plus a few of the late season NRC Crits are in pretty easy striking distance as well.

Eh we'll see how it goes, and I'll try to keep the blog updated through out the whole next month of madness.

Kitted out like a Boss

2011-04-13T23:18:00.010-04:00

In the process of the past few weeks we've received nearly all our equipment for the upcoming season from Panther pb Competitive Cyclist. So it's time for another in depth analysis of our equipment.

Alright so the in-depth analysis will not poses the same depth as last years article, mainly because there is no major classic on the horizon. You see, since being out west I've turned into a regular Lance Armstrong GC rider after winning the prestigious Colossal Cave Stage Race. After a grueling 2 days of racing on Go-Kart tracks and windswept roads of Tucson, I feel transformed. Fueled by my diet of only carrots and celery, I've dropped my weight and body fat to about 1% and feel ready to tackle more stage races:

Anyway I'm getting off topic. Back to the not so in-depth analysis, which is not entirely true. There is one aspect of my new Canyon bike that I've contemplated for some time...What is this hole for? (a question I commonly ask)

Here's the bike in it's glorious entirety. Notice if you will that you've probably never seen a Canyon bike before in America unless it was under Panther rider. There is good reason for this, Canyon's aren't sold in America. You can't get one, don't even try. Just gaze at it's awesomeness in incredible envy:

Alright you might be able to get one through Competitive Cyclist, but only if you're really cool.

Weighing in at a blistering 15.08 lbs, which is probably 23.5 kg based on my calculations for all you Euro's out there, this bike is nice, I mean really nice. I'm not going to lie it's probably by far the best bike the world in it's short 10,000 year history has ever created It's supple on the order of feeling like you always have a rear flat tire thanks to the hair thin seat stays, and super stiff up front thanks to the ridiculously large downtube, and 1.5 - 1.25 in steerer tube. Yes the increased diameter of the steerer tube makes the front end incredibly stiff, it also makes it impossible to find a stem with a 1.25 diameter. Don't worry the correct size stem is on it's way direct from Germany, in the meantime I was able to fab my own stem out of a Specialized stem with some of the tastiest shims ever made.

With all these design changed made to the bike I was pretty curious why they didn't go with the BB30 in the BB department.

My own theory is that Omega Pharma Lotto (one of the only other teams cool enough to ride Canyon's) rides Crapangolo, who doesn't yet make a BB30. Don't worry they will, resistance is futile. Don't worry any stiffness lost on this inferior BB deisng is more than made up by the bling-ing Zipp bottle cages, who's bling-ness is shown by my own gang sign:

Another feature you may or may not have noticed on our bike is a brand of wheels that I have smashed several times on this blog(with the notable exception of the 2009 season for some odd reason). However, again for some unexplainable reason, Zipp has totally redeemed itself to me. We've been supplied with the new 404 Firecrest rim shape for this season. But for reals, Zipp did something that the whole bike industry should have done long ago: use some computational fluid dynamics to figure out what's the best rim shape (OMG NO WAAAY). The results are pretty legit, and wheels have performed pretty well in the cross winds so far...I mean I DID win the Colossal Cave Stage Race on the Zipps.

But it still has dimples.

We also received our kits finally which look, I'm going to warn you, pretty sexy.

Yeah I'm pretty dorky, but lets be honest, the only way it could be sexier is if it involved some sort of bear rug:

Unfortunately the whole bear rug wouldn't interface too well with a bike saddle I don't think.

Colossal Cave Stage Race and Hiking

2011-04-03T23:30:00.005-04:00

Last week Joey and I hiked to the highest peak in southern Arizona: Mt. Wrightson. Mt. Wrightson formed at least 10,000 years ago as part of the Santa Rita mountain chain when the dinosaurs decided to build a big mountain so they could see the Sea of Cortez without having to walk 200 miles. Although back then it was the Sea of our Conquering Warlord Littlefoot.

But really it was a volcano or something like that back in the day. Anyway we decided to do this hike on our 'easy' day, however it turns out a 5 hour hike up to 10,000 feet isn't too easy. The trail started out pretty sheltered at 5,400 feet hiking through the big Pondorosa Pine forest, then it cleared out for final few miles into pretty open rock faces scared by a forest fire.

The trail was wickedly steep for nearly all of it's 5 miles. It only leveled out at two saddles that connected a few of the peaks.

It was a pretty cool hike getting to the top. Once at the top there was a whole congregation of people chilling, we sat down with our Subway BLT and had lunch and talked to some of the other hikers. One of the guys was really, I mean really into watching the crows flying around the mountaintop (not making any of this up)

"Man it's like watching an airshow up here."

"What I wouldn't give to trade places with a Crow for half an hour."

"Look Bill, I found two more flying around"

I told him about some sparrows I saw flying around horseshoe bend and his head just about exploded.

"What? Sparrows! Bill this kid said he saw Sparrows, that's awesome"

Joey had to show some skin for all the nice retired ladies on the trail.

Anyway since Redlands was all filled up and too good for the Trek-Landis team I stayed local and did the Colossal Cave Stage Race here in Tucson. Pretty much your typical 2 day three stage race. TT Saturday morning, which I sucked it up in as ususal, Go-Kart track crit Sunday afternoon. Then 80 mile RR Sunday. The only downside was there were only 12 guys registered to race.

The upside was I won 2/3 races plus the overall. In the Go-Kart track crit I broke away and soloed for most of the race by out-cornering the field.

By Sunday I was one point out of the overall. I attacked a few times but mostly spent the race chasing down the other two guys in the top three. By the end of the race only three of us were left at the front of the race after 3 hours of some pretty brutal 20 mph winds. It came down to a sprint where I edged out Nick from Landis (who was leading in the points by 2) by just a wheel length. It was the first ride on all the new equipment: Zipp Wheels and Canyon bike. It all performed really well and I'm looking forward to putting it to some good use in bigger races.

Tour of Arizona

2011-04-02T12:51:00.010-04:00

Psyche! There isn't one.

But since I'm on perpetual vacation here in Arizona I decided last week to road trip around and see the rest of the wonderful state before I leave. I was sure Arizona had a lot more to offer than just desert and cacti.

My childhood friend Lizzy came to visit form Michigan and also wanted to see the wonders of amAZing Arizona. We were slightly let down in the fact that Arizona is pretty much all desert. We started on Monday heading up through Pheonix then East to Tortilla Flats through some pretty awesome park area.

We were unfortunately driving through the single rainy day in Arizona history which made Superstition Mountain look like Sauron's castle, it's just missing the giant flaming eye.

After a brief stop to admire a ghost town/tourist trap, we headed out east on the ApacheTrail

It was a beautiful area, and the road was awesome, definitely worth a trip back to hit up on a road bike. Then the road turned to dirt for a full 22 miles. I was pretty skeptical of my own cars abilities at first but after seeing a few retiree's in their boat sized caddies' going the opposite direction...well I couldn't be shown up by the elderly.

So for about an hour I was tearing up the road rally car style, and by tearing up the road I mean babying my car along the super rough road at a blistering 20 mph. It was quite the scenic drive, including a stretch of super rough one lane road called Fish Creek Hill which used to be a dirt race course, some plaque they had said only like 20 people died racing up it. That's pretty weak if you ask me, if you're not crashing you're not going fast enough.

Anyway after a pretty laborious hour of driving we finally made it to the Rosevelt Dam! Wohoo!

That night we made it all the way to the Wigwam motel in Holbrook, AZ.

Yes finally I fulfilled my lifelong dream of living in a tepee. Given these tepee's were made of concrete and had cable television, I'm still counting it as my Native American experience. Actually my Native American experience was just beginning as pretty much the entirety of the next two days were spent in the Navajo nation. But before the whole Navajo bit, we went to the petrified national forest.

Let me tell you my thoughts on the petrified national forest: it sucks. Really don't bother going out of your way, even the 30 mile drive through the park was too much for me. It's pretty much just boring grassland with some old logs scattered around. Plus if all you want to do is see some petrified wood, any gift shop within a half hour has plenty of petrified wood made into cheesy folk art for $1000 or more.

So after that disappointing experience I had high hopes for our next stop Canyon de Chelly which was supposed to be a beautiful canyon with a lot of Navajo ruins, AND was the place where the last Navajo that hadn't surrendered to America were slaughtered (history is fun!).

The canyon was actually really beautiful, and there was a cool hike that we did down into the canyon to check out some of the Navajo ruins. We also experienced some of our first Indiana culture, which is pretty much selling as much crap to tourists as possible. Canyon de Chelly is one of the few national parks owned by the Indians, so the base of the canyon is actually private land. This means that pretty much EVERYWHERE in the Navajo nation parks there will be people set up with folding tables selling Indian crafts.

They even have Indian sweatshops where they force ancient Indian Grandma's to make rugs all day

Ok so it's not a sweatshop, but a rug of this size will cost upward of $2000. And for good reason, after watching her for a few minutes I got the impression that this is incredibly complicated to do these rugs by hand and take a long time.

Anyway on to the next attraction...well we didn't make it to the next attraction that day. So we stopped and got some Indian food: Fry Bread. Fry bread I guess is just dough deep fried in lard, which is delicious. Lizzy is below demonstrating the proper way to eat Fry Bread: soak it in Honey

And also a Navajo taco, which is nothing like a taco, just fry bread with a bunch of taco ingredients on top.

Monument Valley was the next stop. I tried hitting up some MTB'ing but since it's all Navajo land there aren't any trails anywhere in the park (which is all private land again).

What no trails?

Pretty beautiful

This is where Eminem grew up, and he was Navajo in case you didn't know.

Yeah had to shoot some banditos off a ridge, no big deal. Thanks to my trusty steed "Lightning" at 28 years of age, he can still get me to the action.

After all this we went to the Glen Canyon Dam:

Dam!

Then it was off to horseshoe bend, a really awesome section of the river that is a half mile from the highway.

Then we went to the Grand Canyon...which had snow. Wait I thought this was the desert what the hell is snow doing here.

The Grand Canyon had some interesting ads running on their buses, but they know best so I've been trying to follow their advice as best as possible since I got back.

After the Grand Canyon we drove back down through Flagstaff, then Sedona, then back through Phoenix to Tucson on Thursday.

The next day we went to the San Xavier mission, which was way cooler than the Petrified National Forest.

Come to think of it every park I've ever been to is way cooler than the Petrified National Forest.

So the moral of the whole trip I guess is don't go to the Petrified National Forest.

I learned a lot.

Mo' Pheonix Crits

2011-03-29T23:31:00.005-04:00

A few pretty low key couple of crits this weekend up in the city of Phoenix. First was the San Tan Criterium. Since the San Dimas Race was drawing a lot of the big guns from Arizona these crits were pretty small. Saturday's was a pretty fun course, 8 corners but super wide so not all that technical. I attacked a few laps in for a prime, I got a pretty good gap and kept thing rolling in sudo-recovery mode. The breakaway came up to me and I tagged on to the back. The group wasn't working well together due to the large size, but after a few attacks and a few shed riders our 6 man group started working well together. It was pretty boring till the end after that. I positioned myself a little poorly in the final corner and ended up 3rd. Even though the results put me at 6th, I'm pretty sure this photo evidence of the finish might count:

It was also pretty windy:

Sunday's course was a little more suited to AZ crit racing style: a big oval with only two corners over a km. It was wide open and fast, which meant nothing got away the entire race. Fortunately the racing was still pretty aggressive. The race eased up in the last 15 minutes which gave everyone a chance to catch their breath and start the swarming conveyor belt (sprint up the side to just behind whatever the leadout is, sit up to recover, drift back in the pack as more people swarm in-front of you...repeat). In one of the swarms I got a rear derailleur through my front wheel with 4 laps to go. I thought I had broke a spoke and was a little sketched out to do anything in the sprint.

Turns out that crit sprinting skills are something that can get rusty, I definitely need to work on my positioning skills before heading back east for serious crit racing.

Tucson Bicycle Classic

2011-03-26T12:58:00.005-04:00

It was the nice local stage race known as TBC this past weekend in downtown Tucson. It was the standard format TT Friday, Road Race Saturday, and Circuit race on Sunday.

I've never been much of a time trialist but the race's course was a local loop just 4 miles from our house in Tucson. I figured I'd have to have a good shot since I've ridden the course about 20 times. So for a warm up I headed over Gates Pass to the course and got ready to smash it. I was sandwiched between two of the fastest TT guys in the race, mostly Phil Zajicek started a minute behind me. My goal for the day was to not get passed by Flying Phil. I felt like I was going along pretty well, as I came into the final two hills before the finish I felt my pacing was good. I hit it pretty hard up the first then descended to get ready to really sprint up the last. I saw the crest of the hill with a few photographers and assumed it was the finish line so put my head down and gave it everything I had. When I saw the photographers out of the corners of my eyes I peeked out from my tuck and.....NOTHING. I forgot that there was another small dip before the last kicker to the finish, I still had at least a third of a mile. I was so blown I had to coast down the little dip before finishing. Here I am in the process of blowing sky high:

Needless to say I lost a wee bit of time there and was 45 seconds behind the leader...who was Phil (didn't pass me though).

Saturday's Road Race stage was pretty boring. The course wasn't really tough, and the one climb that made things a little hard was followed by a 5 mile gradual downhill that could kill any breakaway. I tried a few moves on the second and third lap of 4, but in a stage race where the top 20 are separated by something like 10 seconds, there's some pretty negative racing going on. I sat to wait for the finish, but after 2 REALLY close calls as a result of lap traffic and people just forgetting how to ride their bikes I sat up and rode in with the pack.

The final circuit races was again 2 miles from our house so we were able to do the P-R-O thing and ride to the course. The 6 mile circuit had a pretty difficult climb in it that would probably wear down the field. A breakaway got away after a really hard first lap, I decided to stay put knowing that the hill would wear down everyone. I waited until the last lap as the field was getting more and more strung out on the climb. The final time up I followed an attack from Phil Zajicek and Eric Marcotte and the group got a good 20 second gap on the field. Unfortunately, RealCyclist was riding for stage wins and chased us down in the last few miles. I got back into the pack but was feeling a little sketched out from the finish the previous day so tried one final attack once we got onto the finish straight but my legs were pretty shot so I finished with the pack.

This weekend are some local crits up in Pheonix that will probably feature everyone from Arizona who forgot to register for San Dimas early (like me).

1 Month Left in Tucson

2011-03-17T17:19:00.002-04:00

So it's a little over one Month but whose counting. The week before Tour of the Gila (which is apparently not pronounced GEE-La) will be spent packing up and possibly altitude training in my state of the art altitude tent. By then though I'll be just about ready to leave this state, as nice as the weather is it's hard doing nothing here but riding, plus all the races only give prize money to GC and I'm not quite a GC rider. I tried to get into the Redlands Bicycle Classic with the Landis/Trek team but the team didn't make the cut, which is unfortunate because I counted on doing Redlands instead of San Dimas Stage race the weekend before, which is now totally filled up. Instead I'll be stuck in Tucson doing some pretty mediocre crits.

The Canyon Bike has been built but the 1.25" steerer tube is proving quite the obstacle as we all got the wrong size stems, and nobody has even really heard of that size steerer tube. It's looking like a Specialized stem with a thinner shim will resolve the issue, but void the warranty....oh well.

In better news the cycling community comes through again, this time I was able to help out a fellow rider. On the Tuesday morning group ride I meet a guy from the Bell's MTB team who was literally living out of his van in Tucson between US CUP races. We got to talking and I offered him our couch, so now we have an awesome new 10 day roommate.

By the old axiom that anything is awesome if it's in slow motion, this is definitely awesome^2:

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Tumacacori Road Race

2011-03-07T11:31:00.001-05:00

Sunday was the Tumacacori Road Race, which had been proclaimed as one of the hardest courses in Arizona. Oddly enough the 6 mile circuit involved none of the long high grinders of climbs you would associate with Arizona. Instead the course featured a 2 mile stretch of stair stepping climbs, each step pitching up to over 10% for something like 300-500 meters. So the course was remarkably like a Midwestern course, and when an AZ vet asked me with a bit of pride how Tumacacori stacked up, I had to let him down gently that it was something I was pretty familiar with.

On to race action, everything I heard was that this was going to be a race of attrition. The unknown factors of the race were the Mexican racers. Tumacacori is about 10 miles north of the US-Mexican border town of Nogales, so the race attracted a good number of international racers. Two things I noticed about the Mexican racers, first that they could put in some serious attacks uphill while breathing through their noses, and second that they can’t corner if their life depended on it.

On the docket were 12 laps of the 6 mile course, a total of 72 miles. Each lap had about 450 ft of climbing all mostly localized in the one stretch of stair stepping climbs. The first lap was surprisingly hard and the pack got strung out a pretty good amount on the descent. However it wasn’t until lap 4 that the race really started to blow up. After some hard attacks from the big Mexican team a group began to form on the climb. I just missed the split and spent the rest of the lap chasing on with a Landis and Mexican rider. We caught back on just at the base of the climb on lap 5 which is when the winning break established itself. I was too gassed from chasing to immediately follow the move so settled into the chase group.

We’d never see the five breakaway riders again. My own group started off with 20 riders, and even though we never were riding that hard on the flats or descents our group was whittled down to 6 riders by the finish. Down to the last lap there were a few attacks, but after 11 trips up the climb everyone was a little too tired to put in serious attacks so it came down to the sprint. Eric Marcotte from Pista Palace, who’s a pretty strong sprinter, was in our group so I stuck to his wheel in the finish. I was cramping up too badly to do anything but stay in the draft and finished 7th in the end.

Riding a Mountain Bike Again

2011-03-03T20:59:00.005-05:00

Yup I'm hitting the dirt again. If you're a true mountain biker you know this really means watching a bunch of video's of OTHER people mountain biking. Here are some of the latest vid's:

Then there's this little tidbit of a video which proves how, unlike road racing event's, you can pretty much pick up a mountain bike race and put it anywhere and it's sweet. In fact the more poorly thought out and dangerous the course is the better in the world of MTB'ing. I will also fully admit that if I rolled up to any of those drops, I'd definitely have to change my bibs.

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

Although don't get me wrong not all roadies are not without bike skillz:

I'm sure that mechanic is like "You Idiot! I just spent 3 hours re-gluing and truing your shitty Bontrager wheel!"

Anyways in other news if you're worried about the national deficit affected by the ridiculous DoD spending or big brother America being able to kill anyone in the world within about 10 minutes of thinking they want that person dead...well, you should be!

The extremely mysterious X-37B is launching into space again for a 270 day mission, which in the world of reusable spacecraft (i.e. The space shuttle since it's the only one), this is extremely long. Take your own guess at what this thing is doing in orbit for nearly a year because this thing is pretty secret. Ok so it's probably not launching kinetic bombs or anything. My own theory is that it's replacing the shuttle in it's capacity to deploy and return Government satellites in a non public or fiery reentry style (STS-39 and STS-51)

Don't worry though since launching a Delta V is such a public matter you can follow updates here. Once it's in orbit thought, it'll do all the talking to martins it wants to without us even knowing...oooh noo.

Callville Bay Stage Race

2011-03-01T23:51:00.004-05:00

My first big stage race of the year took place this past weekend outside of Las Vegas, NV in the Lake Mead recreation area. The Callville Bay Classic has historically attracted a small number of professional teams to the race, this year was no exception. The entire Exergy Pro Cycling team was just coming of their training camp, last years NRC champion Luis Amaran and Tyler Wren from Jamis, and a smattering of solo riders from other pro teams. The race format was 50 mile road race, 4 mile TT, 82 mile Road Race, and finally a Crit. All the races also started and finished within the Callville Bay Marina, which made it pretty easy to travel to and from.

Thursday’s opening road race started off surprisingly easy for such a short course. However once the field made the turn around on the out-and-back everyone’s legs were warmed up and ready to race. A combination of big rolling hills with 10 mph cross wind made for some really tough gutter racing. I made a few attacks early on but quickly decided to sit in and follow wheels as the intensity would be way over my head this early in the season. This turned out to be the right decision as the race only got harder as we approached the finish, causing a field split a few miles before the line. I managed to tag on to the tail end of the front pack for the finish.

Friday’s TT was very short and nearly all a gradual uphill. The race again started at the marina and climbed the access road until it reached the road that circled Lake Mead. Due to some unseasonable weather in Las Vegas the entire course enjoyed a strong tailwind. Winning times for the course were a whole minute faster than last year. TT’s have never been my strength, but the races out west are forcing me to at least figure out how to ride them. I managed to make it into the first page of the results at 40th, which I was more than happy with considering I haven’t done a single workout over endurance pace yet this year.

Saturday’s Queen stage was under threat of rain all week. I considered my Midwestern upbringing as preparation enough for any 45 degree rainy weather I could encounter and foolishly wore only a base layer, arm warmers, and knee warmers. The race itself was incredibly predictable; since Exergy had a rider way ahead in the GC they set a moderate tempo after an early break had established itself. I was cold but warm enough through most of the race. What I had not anticipated nor encountered in the Midwest are real descents in the cold. After crossing a plateau 45 miles into the stage the course took 5 miles to descend back to the valley floor. These 10 minutes were possibly the most miserable minutes I can think of on a bike. As we coasted down, all head I had accumulated from working hard escaped me through the 30 mph wind and rain/spray. By the time we finished the descent I was in a full body uncontrollable shiver, my legs so frozen that at the first sign of life in the field I was immediately dropped. After this I tried chasing for another 5 miles but just could not warm up again. I decided my race was over and abandoned in the feed zone.

No matter what the circumstances are, as soon as you pull out of a race you will regret it. This was definitely true for me, and the only way I can give the situation a silver lining is to use my personal disappointment as motivation in future races and training to not drop out or quit a workout.

Since I had dropped out I wasn’t able to race the Crit which most likely would have been my strongest result. Instead I did a 2 hr tempo ride around the Lake Mead recreation area and enjoyed some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever had a chance to ride a bike through.
The climb up from Lake Mead, notice how they don't use paint on their roads in Nevada, just stupid reflectors in the middle of the road which turn into a nightmare when you're gutter racing.
Check out the large version of this picture. You can see the road climb over a few hills about 3 miles in the distance, this is just after descending the plateau into a valley flanked by small mountain ridges on either side.

It's Hard to Rest in the Sun

2011-02-21T23:23:00.004-05:00

This Monday marked the beginning of my first rest week in sunny Tucson, my last rest week being in South Korea. After only a few days I'm finding it pretty difficult to take it easy when every day is is 70 degrees and sunny. So far I've spent my 'rest' days either Mountain Biking or hiking in local Tucson Mountain park which is located 5 miles west of our house in Tucson. It's a little hard to resist, hiking in the south west is no longer just a walk through the woods. Today in 3 hours I parked at a pull-off just past the Gate's pass decent at about 2900 ft and hiked up what I think is Bren mt. at 3988 ft. There was also a good amount of getting lost as there is a network of trails criss crossing the Tucson Mountain Park. Anyway I eventually navigated myself to the top and had some lunch and took some panoramas:
Looking West out Ajo Hwy toward Kitt Peak.
Back east looking at Tucson, Mt. Lemmon in mid-left

This weekend was not without racing either. I kitted up for a one hour crit up in Phoenix. The Sun Devil crit was a pretty small race with ~20 riders but well run by the ASU cycling/tri club. I missed the winning break but broke away with a Landis rider from the ten man field.

This weekend is the Callville Bay Classic. The race is pretty unique in that every day starts and finishes in Callville Bay, a marina of Lake Mead (reservoir of the Hoover Dam). Even the crit is held within the marina, albeit in a parking lot. It should be a pretty cool race as it'll draw riders from both Arizona, So-Cal, a few pro guys, and the very interesting Alexi Grewal.

Straight Dope

2011-02-16T01:10:00.008-05:00

So much has happened in the world of competitive Doping in the past few weeks. Mostly the clearing of Alberto Contador. I'm sure everyone has their two cents on the situation and wants to cash in their pennies about contaminated meat. However what would be more impressive if everyone just let it go. There are endless conspiracy theories that could be listed off concerning Contador but the fact of the matter is that Contador was tried in the courts and found innocent. None of us couch-side commentators will know the case as intimation as those who made the decision regarding Contadors future. Ultimately we have to place our faith in the decisions made by the courts and UCI because if we don't cycling will become an endless rabbit hole of rumors and conspiracies.

Just look at the recent developments of Lance. Not only is the most recent investigation concerned with events that took place over ten years ago, but the whole reason for the renewed interest is because of a now totally irrelevant and discredited rider that everyone seems to want to see the last of (except for apparently the cycling media).

So what should happen? Some say to solve the issue in the sport we should legalize EPO, Blood Doping, amphetamines, bicycle motors, the whole shebang. This idea is completely retarded. I'd say it's equivalent to strapping rocket engines to NASCAR's; it slightly violates the the fundamental principals of the sport.

What should happen is that we all should collectively just move on. Contador is innocent, Lance probably doped but it was 12 years ago when everyone else did so let it go, Floyd is now a nobody and should stop getting interviews where he says totally bat shit crazy stuff, and most importantly: we should all get back to watching good clean bike racing. As much as anti-doping champions like Jonathan Vaughters wouldn't like to tell their sponsors; cheating will always be a part of cycling as with every other sport on the face of the earth. We will never rid the sport completely, so instead of focusing the entire energy of the sport on it, doping should be dealt with in a consistent and concise matter without so much fanfare. Most other sports do just this and as a result don't have the sort of mass cheating scandals found in cycling.

That's why above all else I want to see riders like Vinokourov, Basso, and Di Luca succeed. They were all caught, served their punishment, cooperated with the UCI without publicly outing everyone they knew, and have returned to the top tier of the sport. Di Luca even signed with Katusha for no pay until he proved he could succeed without cheating. They're not dopers, they're world class riders that were part of a previous generation of cyclists where doping was commonplace. They also didn't draw out their doping scandal into years of name dropping and supposed childhood drama's that lead them to cheating.

Some assume that being caught doping is indicative of a rider's moral fiber and they will never be clean. This plain false. However if a rider that's been been caught doping returns to the sport and immediately gives himself kidney failure by re-infusing blood he stored in his own refrigerator, he's probably a bad person...and very dumb.

So can we all just please get back to what we love most, watching riders suffer and ride till their eyeballs pop out all for a chance to obtain glory atop the podium?

Back to Some Good Ole American Bike Racing

2011-02-16T00:44:00.003-05:00

Back in america for the past two and a half weeks and it's been a bit of a whirlwind of activity for me. I took on a handful of tutoring students here in Arizona with mostly good results. I say mostly because one of my students was apparently not very happy with her tutelage. After an hour and half session where she seemed pretty pissed off in general about being forced to take freshman Calculus, I thought I had shown her some of the mysteries of derivatives and she didn't indicate any confusion. I was very wrong, the next day I received an angry phone call from her father, who was paying the bills, saying that his daughter was more utterly lost after my 1.5 hr session than at the beginning of the semester. Oh well, one refund and lost student later, everyone else I'm tutoring seems pretty happy.

Tutoring, by the way, is by far the best profession for any aspiring cyclist, ski bum, or person generally avoiding the real world. The pay is good for the limited hour and most people are pretty flexible in their schedules. The only catch seems to be that you have to have some math heavy degree, as everyone I'm currently tutoring is in Calc I or Calc II.

But my training has begun in earnest since Korea with a good block of base miles. I've hit up a few races in the past few weeks but don't have anything of the top end speed that I had last year. Most of my sprints have been spent in the draft of some Arizonian who's had more than 0 sprint workouts this year.

This past weekend's race was the strangely overrated Valley of the Sun Stage race. For having 800 participants and large entry fee, it's a remarkably average race. For $120 you get a TT, RR, and Crit (Tour of the Gila is $150 for 5 stages in one of the most scenic parts of the country). The TT is an out and back with a whole 1 turn, the RR is a 14 mile loop with 2 miles of climbing and 12 miles of descending, and the Crit...well the Crit is good.

What really rubbed me the wrong way about the race was the fact that our road race got totally neutralized with 5 km to go to the finish. We had lapped the 3's earlier in the final lap, made our final turn for the finishing climb, and began ramping up speed for the finish when the ref pulled in-front of the field in his pompous Prius. Slamming on his brakes he instructed us to allow the 3's to finish without us interfering. We slowed to less than 10 mph and waited, waited, and waited. Ten minutes later the first of the three's finally passed us followed by the rest of the field. The ref let us restart with a whole 1000 meters to the finish, no one in the field was keen on doing an uphill kilo so we rolled into the finish at group ride pace.

I have two major problems with this whole situation. First of all the 3's would have never caught us. Regardless of the fact that the leaders in our own race were nearly 10 minutes up on the field, the 3's were over a half a mile behind our field when we were told to slow down. Secondly it is not our job as riders to ensure we don't interfere with other fields, it is the job of the referee's. We pay entry fee's so that the refs can be paid to bring their fancy cameras to sort out finishing order. Also apparently the P/1 race has been neutralized in the PAST FEW YEARS, meaning the organizers of the race need to change the starting format by either making the lap longer or changing the way in which the fields start so there isn't so much interference (our P/1 field lapped every other pack except the 2's).

Moral of the story? Never going to do Valley of the Sun again.

However Panther teammate Ryan Cross came down for the race so it was cool to get some company in the races instead of rolling solo like most of the races this spring.

Forgive my rant, I was looking forward to my first legit hilltop finish.

Last Korea Post

2011-02-06T23:46:00.004-05:00

My last few days in Korea were a whirlwind of activity. After we got back from our ski trip we went for one of the many hikes that were within a 5 minute drive of Derek’s house. We hiked up to what was known as Pig’s Gulch. As legend goes a pig climbed up the mountain and got himself stuck in a small space in the rocky outcrop on top of the mountain. A prince had to go up the mountain and rescue the pig and…..well that’s where Derek’s Korean failed us in reading the legend at the start of the hike.

It was a relatively short hike to the top, where we immediately hopped the fence to scramble over some rocks. Even though there were some metal hand hold’s installed or scrambling was made legitimately dangerous by the all the snow making the hand and foot holds pretty slick. Fortunately neither of us fell to our death and we made it to the pig’s gulch, where we hopped another fence and climbed through the gulch and almost got stuck ourselves.

After that it was off to lunch for Duck with Derek’s co-teacher, which was delicious and again cooked on a large central cook top.

Later that day we agreed to meet with a Korean who was studying for the GMAT with Derek. He took us out to eat in Icheon which is known for its rice. As Derek explained it the Korean version of George Washington only ate rice from Icheon, so we had to get rice. After dinner we went out for some Korean pizza and beer. As American as this may sound I still felt very much like I was in Korea. The Korean pizza was a little foreign, first the toppings were chicken and potato, and second there was no sauce. Additionally instead of the mixed nuts you would expect to have with beer we had a type of dried squid jerky which the old Korean dudes absolutely loved.

Friday started out with more skiing in the Yangji Pines ski resort.

That night we planned on heading out to Hongdae which is the clubbing area in Seoul. In order to replenish our man energy after a tough day of skiing Derek needed some boshintang, literally “invigorating soup”.

What soup could possibly give guy energy you ask? None other than dog soup. Yes fluffy, spot, Lassie, Beethoven, Balto, Snoopy, and Wishbone are all crying at my terrible act. I only really felt bad during the first few bites thinking of my poor dog Charlie and what he would taste like.

Then as my stomach rumbled again and I thought ahead to the prospect of staying up all night in Seoul, I dove in. The meat itself wasn’t too bad, neither was the dog stomach that was in the soup. If you’re wondering, it’s a dark meat (reddish brown in color), a little gamey and a little like lamb.

After we replenished our energy we headed downtown to meet up with some of Derek’s friends where he ate again at a meat buffet. The buffet served raw meat that we had to cook in the middle of the table. Thankfully the girls with us knew a lot more about how to cook the stuff and we didn’t have to risk food poisoning.

After that we went to what I thought was a bar….but really more a private room to eat and drink in.

We ended up in one of the clubs and it was freaking packed, there were lasers everywhere, and we got to drink Bud Light out of bottles….it was awesome.

After the club we went to a singing room or norebang. These are private Karaoke rooms where you can make a fool in front of your friends instead of the whole bar like America.

On Saturday we went to Wolmi Island which is a big boardwalk and amusement park area; think Jersey Shore without all the sleazy clubs or Guido’s. We rode what has to be the most dangerous park ride ever thought of.

Everyone sits in the circle of the “Disco” ride without seatbelts and the operator spins it around really fast and bounces it in an attempt to get people to fall down or create couples by literally smashing a boy and girl together.

After the “Disco” ride we got some local seafood, again cooked in the middle of the table.

On our last day we meet up with Derek’s girlfriend to go to see some street markets in Seoul, get some souvenirs, and see the Korean War museum. The Korean War museum was the place I saw the most Americans outside of the airport. The museum itself was pretty powerful reminder that only 60 years prior the entire country had been pretty much consumed by war, but was able to recover in a relatively short time to become the country it is today.

I was sad to say goodby to the country. I took one last shower/tooth brush/toilet combo shower in Derek’s all-in-one bathroom then said good bye and took the bus to the airport.

It was a great time overall, I couldn’t have even begun to figure out the bus maps without Derek, who was a great tour guide on top of all else. I definitely meet a lot of great people too that hopefully I’ll get a chance to see again sometime in Korea, America or otherwise.

Korean Ski Trip

2011-01-31T19:02:00.008-05:00

After a few days of Seoul touring we had enough big city life and ventured into the country on a traditional Korean road trip. We first spent two days in Phoenix Park in Korea (or as it is pronounced in Korean: Poenixu Paku as it is pretty common in the country to Korean-ify English terms which American’s should be pretty familiar with). The skiing there was pretty awesome, as the only two times I’d been skiing prior was at Perfect North in Cincinnati and the literal garbage dump of Alpine Valley in the Metro-Detroit area. We had a good time hitting the slopes and playing up my foreigner card to try and get free refills of coke.

Derek also perfected his ski jumping skills:

Probably most importantly on Monday night I was schooled on the etiquette of Korean drinking which is unbelievably complicated. It could easily take an entire blog post to detail, but let’s just say I was well schooled that night.

The second day of skiing was only a half day. After skiing we dragged our half dead bodies into the car and drove to the Eastern Ocean. When we got there we ate some raw fish and shot off fireworks into the ocean on what was possibly the coldest night of all time. It didn’t help the crappy lighter we had didn’t really work.

The next day we woke up for our DMZ tour day. However first we drove around the coast to see some of the seaside cliffs that spot the eastern coast. We hopped the fence and climbed around some of the cliffs before heading to Yongyong (check??) where we got breakfast and checked out the fish market, which is filled with things that look totally un-appetizing.
Then it was to the DMZ! First of all, apparently Americans love touring the DMZ way more than Korean’s do. Second of all, the eastern portion of the DMZ is situated in the most naturally beautiful regions of Korea. We drove through (look up name of park), which is the Rocky Mountains of Korea just before entering the Punch Bowl which is a famous battlefield of the Korean war. We first got a tour of the 4th tunnel. Discovered in 1990, the 4th tunnel was the North’s most recent attempt to infiltrate South Korea by digging underneath the DMZ. The South discovered the tunnel and drilled a counter hole to stop the advance of the North, when discovered the North claimed they had been mining and ventured too far. Apparently some bomb sniffing dog found some TNT in the tunnel and saved the lives of 11 soldiers, so they were really lathering on the love for the dog in the tunnel tour. The tour guide talked about the dog, who was apparently promoted to Lieutenant in the Korean army, for about 20 minutes.

After the tour we toured the museum there and watched an informational video. While watching the video about 100 Korean soldiers queued up behind us to watch the video. It’s a weird feeling being a few white guys watching a video with a whole standing army behind you, anyway Danny dropped the ball on getting a picture with all of them, but I won’t hold it against him, but we did get a picture with our tour guide.
After the tunnel tour we went to the top of one of the mountains to see an observation post. On the observation post you can easily see across the 1 km wide DMZ into North Korea. It was a pretty impressive experience to look across the DMZ and see North Korean bunkers. We of course took a picture where we weren’t supposed to, and were all about to shit our pants in the picture since we heard someone coming up the stairs.
After a final expansive look at the punch bowl and almost barreling through an Army gate due to Derek overheating the breaks on his car, we finally headed back to the city.
That’s probably enough for this blog post. I’m on the Airplane back to America now and should probably get back to watching Man vs. Food and remembering all the things that make America great.

Korea pt. 1

2011-01-26T21:41:00.003-05:00

My Korean trip started last Thursday at 4 am. I arrived at the Tucson airport an hour and a half before my flight like a good traveler. Little did I know that the US Airways ticket counter didn’t open until 5:10 am, and couldn’t check in until just before my flight. From there it was a short flight to Phoenix, then over the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas to San Francisco. When I arrived in SFO, I only had one hour to walk/run about a mile to the International gate, check in, and go through international security. I got to the gate panting just as boarding was starting for the 747. I didn’t need to rush however, as boarding for the world first true Jumbo Jet took over an hour. It’s hard to imagine how large the aircraft really is until you spend five minutes walking to your seat at the back of the airplane past rows of 11 seats and two aisles. The 12 hour flight actually went by relatively quickly with the help of such great movies as, “Eat, Pray, Love” and “You Again” (my personal favorite). Actually the best part of the flight was the meals. Three full meals in addition to all the free pop to steal in the rear galley near the bathrooms.

Once in Korea Derek said it would just be a simple matter of catching a bus to Yongin. All I had to do was buy a bus ticket to a place I had never even heard of and was pronouncing terribly wrong, board a bus that lacked any English signage, and then ride it two hours into the ‘country’. However, the Korean idea of 'out in the boonies' is very different than in America. If America is the country of wide open spaces, Korea is the country of high rise apartment complexes...everywhere. When the bus stopped at the Yongin terminal I honestly though I had made a huge mistake, the area resembled more of a large city downtown the size of Indianapolis than anything remotely rural. Fortunately I didn’t screw up the bus and met up with Derek. We went to a blue collar Korean BBQ restaurant. Korean BBQ involves cooking your own food on a stone heated by gas burner. In America this would be an exotic $40 meal, but in Korea it’s pretty common and costs about $5. All of us arm wrestled the owner for Cokes, then went back to Derek’s hometown of Yongji for some drinks and lessons in the very foreign Korean culture of drinking.

The next two days we spent seeing some of the sights in Seoul. The sightseeing involved hours of bus and subway riding and about five meals a day. We met up with a bunch of Derek’s friends each day to see the sights. Seoul and Korea in general is filled with tightly packed mountains and several of these are within the city limits of Seoul itself. It should be noted that in Korea a city is similar to a county in America, so the city of Seoul contains many city centers that are known by their own independent names. On Saturday night we took a bus to the top of one of the mountains in Seoul to get a vantage of the city. The mountain is the romantic spot of the city and it’s tradition to take your girlfriend up there and put a lock on the railing to symbolize your never ending love or something like that. You’re even supposed to take the lock down if you break up so I don’t think this tradition would catch on in America since all the locks would have to be cut off at some point and it would end up just being a guard rail.

On Sunday we toured the Korean national palace that was inhabited by those ruling Korea until the mid 90’s.
Derek and I are both the year of the rabbit (1987), which is a whopping 25 in Korean age.
REPRESENT

The actual presidential palace was situated right behind the old palace and was known as the “Blue House”.
I have a lot more blogging to do about this trip as we just got back from a big ski/DMZ trip so look forward to some blogging in the next few days.

I'm in Tucson and I'm not Homeless

2011-01-18T22:06:00.006-05:00

So we arrived in Tucson this past Sunday after a long day of driving and nearly hitting a coyote while driving through the White Sands Missile Range (aka, Between White Sands and Roswell American Rocketry was born).

On Monday it was our mission to find a place to live. The first apartment we looked at we had been corresponding with for some time and were pretty certain it would work out from the sounds of things...until we arrived. Not only did the apartment sit directly on the busiest road in Tucson, but there would be a 4 day period of background/credit checks before we could move in, we went to Starbucks to reevaluate our options. Little did I know that this Starbucks was the epicenter of P-R-O ness in the Tucson area. It reeked of guys lounging in their kits sipping on their cafe. In addition to all the young bike hobo's we also met up the legendary Grey Wolf:

His bike was pretty pimped out, and the guy actually seemed generally nice and down to earth (even though he was wearing his bibs over his HTC kit customized with iron on wolf logo's).
After some calling around we eventually did find some places to go check out. We had an hour to kill so we chilled in a park by the school. Oddly enough there were a few real homeless people also hanging out at the park, so this was hopefully the only 2 hours of homelessness I'll have in my life. Anyway we found a really sweet housing owned by just two guys that ran the photo studio next to the house. I'm coming to realize that it's nearly always better to rent from an individual rather than a large cooperation. Instead of background checks and grace periods, we signed a security deposit and moved in immediately. The place is fully furnished (pots pans, beds, sheets, towels, utensils, food, and 12 cans of BEER!!!!!!) and huge. So if any y'all Midwesterners want a midwinter break in Tucson, just let me know and I'm sure we can get you a futon, or loft above my bed (lucky you).

After getting settled in we hit up Gates Pass for a good 1 hr ride. Today we woke up at the literal crack of dawn for the TUESDAY MORNING RIDE. If you're wondering why it's in all caps, it's because we have heard through the cycling community that this is THE hard ride for the week. The ride met at Starbucks at 7:30am and took off with 30 some people. However as the pack found it's way down to Ajo Highway every single convenience store and gas station contributed a handful of riders to the growing pack, by the time we turned right onto Ajo there had to be at least 50 guys and gals riding together.

Ajo was also when the ride turned into a all out race. Riders started attacking all out up Ajo and before long we were doing 30 mph. I cannot stress enough how much this was like an actual race, there were attacks, counter attacks, people almost getting hit by cars, breakaways, and a lot of people getting dropped. I dropped from the group after about 20 minutes of really fast riding before the group started climbing up the back side of Gates Pass. You can see the entirety of the climb from the bottom, and by the time I had reached the bottom with a few other riders we could see a few guys at the front followed by literally dozens of people strewn along the entire 2 mile length of the climb. It's easy to see how you can get really into these rides and overcook yourself.

I also have to comment that Tucson is really starting to grown on me. The area near the college has a ton of cool resaturates and shops and there is a mindboggling number of people on bikes.

Last but not least, the Panther kits for the 2011 season, which don't need much explanation:

Life Update

2011-01-16T20:53:00.010-05:00

A good life update blog post is in order. Not because anything big has changed, but because I’m having something of a life adventure this year without responsibilities of school or a job. So I feel like it’d be fun to keep a journal type of blog during the next few months of my nomadic lifestyle for others and myself to go back to read.

First, I’ve finally completed my applications to graduate school and those are now out of my control. I’ve applied to USC (California), Purdue, U of Michigan, Huntsville Alabama, and Colorado State. It should be a good few weeks before I hear back from these programs. Not to mention the amount of paperwork required for grad school is a whole order of magnitude larger than the amount required to apply to undergraduate school. Only after submitting my application did I find out about several documents to submit that I had not even come across in the whole month I was working on the applications.

Secondly is this “job” I was checking out. This past Thursday I was in Greenville, SC interviewing for a job with an engineering company that works closely with gas turbines. I had an initial phone interview earlier this December that I thought I totally bombed, however they called me back next week and set up an on-site interview. The interview went really well, at least that’s what I was told after knocking out all the technical questions they asked me. It seemed like a great atmosphere to work in since the project they got would be concerned with all different types of computational fluid analysis involved in turbine engines. Also, all the people working there were pretty young and recent college graduates. I have to say that if they offered me a job I might have to take it. First the work the company does is actual aerospace engineering, which is a prospect I had long since resigned myself to giving up in the job search department. Second, the breadth and type of work they do would give me a great base of knowledge that I could use and apply to pretty much anything involved in aircraft or spacecraft. Not to mention in my few hours there Greenville seemed like a great city for not only living, but riding too (I’ll get to ride with George Hincapie sooooo much).

On to the really important stuff: cycling. I was, for a while, entertaining the idea of transferring to other teams to ride for next season. However in the end Panther was still the best team to ride for. All the guys on the team are great and the organizational side of the team has to be one of the best run in the world of amateur cycling teams. Part of my decision to ride for Panther involved the idea to go train in Tucson for the winter months, Panther has been enormously supportive of my plan to go south for training which I can't be happy enough about.

This is a pretty common pipe dream for aspiring cyclists, go to Tucson ride with all the P-R-O’s and make the connections to get on a pro team for the next season. My own personal goals aren't so team centric for next year, all I really want to do this season is to train hard and race the shit out of this season, then go to grad school or get a real job...and if going pro works out it works out.

Anyway, after some hiccups involving me rear-ending a giant SUV in my little Mazda I’m finally driving down to Arizona as I speak…or um write.

We just stopped in Roswell New Mexico and are now driving through some of the mountains in the southern region of the state. We did visit the UFO museum/research center. The museum itself was somewhat of a let down, most of the exhibits consisted of newspaper clippings about the crashed aliens and poorly taken pictures of the site. However there was one good exhibit:

The entire highlight of the stop was going to the ‘Spaceport’ gift shop where we were greeted by the cashier with a Vulcan peace sign and the phrase “Welcome Humans”…now that’s more what I’m talking about.

Other than that stop our trip thus far has been pretty uneventful, we stopped in Shamrock Texas last night and did the most boring ride of my life in the morning which consisted of us riding 10 miles up US 83 and back again, although I did take the town sign sprints for both Twitty and Shamrock since Joey was busy picking cotton up off the side of the road.
Our bathroom also had a telephone in it which is awesome!. It allowed me to make all the important cycling team related calls I need to from complete comfort and serentity

Back to the life update. We’re tentatively arriving in Tucson tonight and tomorrow looking at a house to sublease two rooms. Yes, we’re technically homeless right now. The set up would be pretty nice, it’s close to campus and their waving January’s rent since we’re moving in half way through the month.

This lack of January’s rent is particularly perfect for me since as soon as we get there I’m leaving for a week to go to South Korea (don’t worry it’s a rest week). A college friend, Derek Laan, has been living there for the past year teaching English. It’ll be a good trip, we’re planning on skiing, seeing a bunch of Korea, and the DMZ where hopefully the foreigners don’t confuse me for a movie star again: I’m much more comfortable with Phil Liggett hitting on me than Kim Jon IlExpect some good blogging from that week.

After I’m back from Korea it’s on to some hard core training. What kind of training you might ask? Well aside from my patented Super Taper (I can coach you in the dark arts of the Super Taper for the low fee of $200/month, Pizza is included!), I just plan on riding a whole ass load of base miles and racing into shape. There is no shortage of early season races going on in Tucson.

I've noticed a few of my contemporaries have been soliciting donations on their blogs to pursue their cycling dreams. I would do this, but I'm actually pretty set in terms of housing, travel, food, etc.....

However,

If you would like to contribute to my "Beer and Strippers Fund", or BSF fund for short, then you are in luck! Here is the donate button. I will only accept $1 donations since it's easier to pay for lap dances that way. What will you get out of it you ask? I will send you a personal email describing exactly where I put your good $1 to use, and you get the wholesome knowledge that you're putting a nice young lady through school at University of Arizona.

Oh yeah by the way, in case you were wondering the forecast for Tucson for the next three days are as follows:

Monday: 76 Sunny

Tuesday: 76 Sunny

Wednesday: 72 Partly Sunny (this will be rough)

How to make the Dorkiest thing ever look awesome

2011-01-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Slow-Mo, and Epic Music

This is Amazing

2010-12-16T23:08:00.002-05:00

Possibly the two coolest things on earth combined to one:

This guy gets pwned though

Lego StarCraft - Buzz

First launch of "Private" spacecraft

2010-12-08T12:19:00.006-05:00

Space X literally JUST launched their Dragon capsule in a demonstration of their ability to fulfill their contract to resupply the ISS and take the place of the Space Shuttle. The military aspect of the space shuttle's ability to return satellites and bomb ZE RUSSIANS will be fulfilled by the mysterious X-37, which has been very hush hush and just returned from it's first mission where it spent SEVEN MONTHS in orbit. The general skeptical consensus is that it will loiter in orbit with the ability to deliver kinetic weapons to anyplace on earth with in a very short time span.

Back to SpaceX which is such a big deal since it was founded privately by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. So if a "private" company is fulfilling a government contract with government oversight at a government launch facility, is it really private? I fail to see the real difference between SpaceX and companies like Lockheed and Boeing, both of which have been making launch systems and ICBMs for years. Since SpaceX is not a publicly traded company yet, it's a lot easier for it to to give a big FU to government contracts. The main 'private' argument that SpaceX really has going for it is the lack of bureaucracy associated with government or public corporations, we'll see what happens when their first rocket explodes, which will happen at some point.

Anyway here's the launch:

Now it'll be really interesting to see what what kind of contracts SpaceX will go after once they perfect their launch vehicles.

More Explosions!

2010-12-07T00:03:00.003-05:00

From back in the day before anyone really had any idea what was going on and could spend millions on computer models. Back then was them good old days of trial and error, plus a USSR space race budget, hopefully America will feel threatened by the Chinese space presence soon.

Oh yeah, I forgot Craigslist is shady

2010-12-01T14:55:00.002-05:00

I put my CX bike up for sale on craigslist a few days ago and got an email recently from "King Bill" which is as follows:

Hi,
Thanks for the prompt response. I'm glad to hear from you. Am
currently not in the

state right now and am buying the bike for my son as a birthday gift.
Am okay with the price and the condition. I live in North Hills, CA. I
will like to let you know that the payment will be a certified check
so in view of this, i will like you to email me all the necessary
information needed to send the certified check to you. Regarding the
shipping, i have a personal shipper agent that takes good care of my
consignments and ship them to there various destination .So my
shipping agent will be at your place to do the pick up soon as the
payment is received by you. The certified check will be in your name
to make it easier for you to cash and as soon as you receive the
certified check, i will like you to cash it, deduct your money and
send the remaining balance to my shipping agent so that he can contact
you immediately for the pick up arrangement at your place.

So here are the information needed for the payment to be mail out asap.

(1) Full Name
(2) Mailing address, Apt number
(3) your direct telephone number
(4) acceptance of my offer
(5)Final asking price
(6)Contact E mail address

Hope to hear from you immediately.
NB:I will be paying you additional $30 if you can keep the item for me.

Regards,
King Bill.

I've never been scammed before, I feel honored.

Oh Shit!

2010-11-30T20:51:00.002-05:00

Well I'm busy working on grad school applications, I'm a slow worker that is easily distracted by the likes of this video, so be distracted with me.

Holy Shit Monkey

2010-11-17T23:15:00.002-05:00

Not only is this just about the most amazing riding, but the camera work is absolutely sick.

This is how I feel this time of year

2010-11-12T07:42:00.001-05:00

Minus all the bling

Iceman

2010-11-08T17:57:00.004-05:00

So this video's been passing through Iceman racers like wildfire, mostly because it's awesome. Mostly consists of on bike footage from Jeremiah Bishop:

Visit cyclingdirt.org for more Videos

My own Iceman did not go all that hot. I went for the hole shot, which as dirty as that sounds really just means the first one in....the single track. Unfortunately 2 months of no training doesn't properly prepare one for a 30+ mph MTB sprint.

After about 5 miles of recovering from my early race sprint, I settled into a really good pace (as in not DFL). Things were going great until about the halfway point where the trail got muddier than...well....it was pretty muddy. I started getting all kinds of chain-suck, probably due to the lack of chain lube, and broke my chain with about 12 miles to go. Without a power-link I preceded to run exactly 1.34 miles with my now 40 pound bike, until a very nice racer gave me his power link, and was able to finish the race.

Here's another vid from earlier in the day to contrast the conditions from 9 am to 2:30 pm (forgive the terrible music)

(VeloEpic.com) Iceman Cometh 2010 from VeloEpic on Vimeo.

Kammwhat?

2010-11-02T20:40:00.004-04:00

The cycling industry likes to pride itself in being cutting edge when it comes to Aerodynamics. For many companies this sense of elite technology is what moves their goods. This is a slight exaggeration of the truth, the cutting edge that bikes ride on is more like the edge of a dull plastic butter knife. What's worst about Aerodynamics in the bike industry, aside from producing some really dumb bikes:

is that it seems like research for bike aerodynamics is done completely backwards. For instance; in most industries that deal with aerodynamics (or any other technical designing), trade studies are first completed, followed by the creation of an initial design based on already proven knowledge. Computer models then run simulations on the design producing data to help optimize the initial design. Then finally, after several design iterations based on computer and analytical analysis, the wind tunnel is used as a proof of concept, since very complex fluid phenomenon cannot be modeled in the computer.

The cycling industry seems to work in reverse. Go on any website and look for some claims of aerodynamic advantage that are backed by any research or legitimate science and you will be looking for a long time. More likely you'll find something like this, from a Purdue Cycling Club alumni I might add, that makes the design process sound like it STARTS in the wind tunnel and is more like the process of sticking random shit in a wind tunnel (check out 0:50).

Speaking of Purdue Alumni taking over the bike industry, check this out:

Greg is such a Boss. Anyway the point I'm getting as is that when bike companies allocate their R&D funds (which I imagine is way smaller than their marketing budget), it seems like they just blow it all renting a wind tunnel for a day.

What would be more efficient (and cheaper to everybody), would be to do a little research. It's no secret, except to bicycle manufacturers, that low speed fluid dynamics has been figured out for the past half century. There is a wealth of information and papers published on the subject. So instead spending all their time and money of re-discovering some great aerodynamic phenomenon for reducing drag that was actually used before WWII, they could instead learn about it when they complete their trade studies. That would allow them to figure out better designs to test in the first place, and possibly cut their wind tunnel time dramatically (which is VERY expensive).

Here's a great example of a Aero tidbit of info that cyclist have just seemed to discover: the Kamm effect. It's basically a very simple bit of optimizing the already very aerodynamic teardrop shape. Developed in the 30's, the basic idea is to chop off the end of the teardrop at 50% of the maximum thickness. This will produce a relatively small increase in the drag, but reduce a large amount of the surface area (and thus material which = WEIGHT). It was originally applied to cars

This design concept lead to some pretty iconic cars including the original Ford GT and this classic '62 Ferrari.

Finally, in the past year, the Kammback has made it's way into the cycling industry in the form of helmets from not only Giro, but also Louis Garneau:

This is a good concept for helmets in particular. Most likely the design concept came from the idea that most TT guys will ride head down, and having a huge teardrop shape sticking up in the air is bad for drag.

The design is also making it into bike design with Scott, who apparently uses full aircraft wind tunnels for their tests. They've incorporated the idea into their new F01 bike for 2011

More importantly they've hit the nail on the head for why this type of design is important:

"achieve aerodynamic performance with a light and stiff profile"

By reducing the long tear drop tail of most aero frames you gain a few key benefits. Not only does this reduce a lot of weight, but it also makes the tubing closer to circular, which is much more structurally sound. Finally this chopping of the tail will reduce poor performance that a lot of aero bikes have in cross winds.

As with most other disciplines of designs, the name of the game is optimization. By giving up a little aero performance, the bike (or helmet) can have great gains in other design areas.

Anyway this is all just the opinions of someone who has never actually worked in the bike industry...so Zipp, I know I've insulted you in the past, but if you give me a job I'll take it all back.

Washington DC Rally

2010-11-01T23:03:00.007-04:00

This weekend I went with my Brother and a few of his friends to the Rally 4 Sanity in Washington DC.

We got in on Friday and immediately went to the mall via DC metro to walk around and see some of the memorials.

The rally itself was on Saturday at noon. Before we even were able to buy tickets to take the metro to go to the rally we ran into some large crows (buying tickets for the metro). After a half hour wait to get into the metro station, we all packed into the train and got really comfortable.

Once off the train we walked down Pennsylvania Ave. to the rally itself, the entire road was closed off and there were literally people everywhere. We arrived at the mall to a sea of people packed tightly to see and hear. There were people climbing trees, lampposts, news vans, and even porta potty's in order to get a better glimpse (people were using them too at the same time).

As impressive as the crowd was the rally itself was somewhat of a little bit of a let down. If you watched it on TV it was something similar to a 3 hour long Daily Show and Colbert Report. It was a bit of a shame given the massive potential and captive 200,00+ audience.

However, at the end Jon Stewart gave a great speech that was pretty apolitical. Instead he focused his critisims on the "the country’s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator" stating that the news media "did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder", which sums up the speech pretty well.

Enjoy some Pic's from the weekend:

Kam

2010-10-27T16:58:00.011-04:00

The cycling industry likes to pride itself in being cutting edge when it comes to Aerodynamics. This is just flat out false, but for many companies this sense of elite technology is what moves their goods. What I dislike most about the application of Aerodynamics in the bike industry, aside from producing some really dumb bikes,

is that it seems like research for bike aerodynamics is done completely backwards. For instance; in most industries that deal with aerodynamics (or any other technical designing), trade studies are first completed, followed by the creation of an initial design based on already proven knowledge. Computer models then run simulations on the design producing data to help optimize the initial design. Then finally, after several design iterations based on computer and analytical analysis, the wind tunnel is used as a proof of concept since very complex fluid phenomenon cannot be modeled in the computer.

Speaking of Purdue Alumni taking over the bike industry, check this out:

What would be more efficient (and thus cheaper to everybody), would be to do a little research. It's no secret, except to bicycle manufacturers, that low speed fluid dynamics has been figured out for the past half century. There is a wealth of information and papers published on the subject. So instead spending all their time and money of re-discovering some great aerodynamic phenomenon for reducing drag that was actually used before WWII, they could instead learn about when they complete their trade studies. That would allow them to figure out better designs to test in the first place, and possibly cutting their wind tunnel time (which is VERY expensive).

This design concept lead to some pretty iconic cars including the original Ford GT and this classic '62 Ferrari.

Finally, in the past year, the Kammback has made it's way into the cycling industry in the form of helmets from not only Giro, but also Louis Garneau:

The design is also making it into bike design with Scott, who apparently uses full aircraft wind tunnels for their tests. They've incorporated the idea into their new F01 bike for 2011

More importantly they've hit the nail on the head for why this type of design is important:

"achieve aerodynamic performance with a light and stiff profile"

As with most other disciplines of designs, the name of the game is optimization. By giving up a little aero performance, the bike (or helmet) can have great gains in other design areas.

Anyway this is all just the opinions of someone who has never actually worked in the bike industry...so Zipp, I know I've insulted you in the past, but if you give me a job I'll take it all back.

Cross and a 29r

2010-10-25T20:38:00.004-04:00

Cross race #3 of the year in the bag. Race went well until I flatted halfway through the 2.3 mile course and got passed by nearly everyone, except an Alan Antonuk, who also flatter earlier. I managed to pass enough people to end up back in 4th by the end (out of 10). Can't complain since I got to race my bike through what is apparently one of the most haunted sites in Michigan.

Looks pretty haunted.

I also got a chance to ride the brand spanking 5 year old 29r I just bought for Iceman coming up in two weekends.

A few things I've noticed about the big wheels.

-Wide handlebars are a must, or your arms and shoulders are going to be really freaking tired

-Everyone says that 29r's roll over bumps making riding easier...this isn't so noticeable. What is noticeable is the fact that a 29r does NOT slow down. It just keeps on going even with hydraulic disc brakes.

-Riding a 29r is like driving a big boat, through a bog, without a rudder, in a hurricane

-With a 29r you don't really worry about micro-managing your steering inputs, just point the front wheel and let the bike do the rest, and if the bike wants to run into a tree you damn well better let it.

-29r's are really slow to get up to speed, there's good reason why all the skinny world cup XC guys all still ride 26 in wheel bikes

This is only after the first ride with skinny handlebars on a pretty twisty trail (Maybury), so the jury is still out.

In the meantime enjoy this obscure ridiculously catchy and weird song that I've successfully lodged into at least two people heads (it's from the Nike World Cup commercial, but live)

CX this weekend

2010-10-22T18:20:00.004-04:00

I hate cyclocross, if it were up to me, every barrier on earth would be thrown into a massive bonfire, and all the roadies and mountain bikers would sit in a circle and rejoice about never being forced to run with their bikes ever again (running in MTB races is not "forced" per say, but more something that indicates you don't have the technical skills to shred the gnar). There would be no more rat mazes of caution tape, or needless wooden structures with steps on one side and a ramp on the other...most normal people call that a slide.

That said, every year I get sucked in. Yeah sure driving 4 hours so I can wrestle into my skin-suit to race for one whole hour, without water, will be totally awesome. In reality the reason is friendship...not that that's where you forge new ones, but that's where the only one's I have exist.

Being a racer entails that, outside of the months of September - February, you do not know of the phenomenon most normal people know as the weekend. These 'weekends' are the times when people congregate, drink, do a variety of fun activities, but mostly hang out with friends.

In my own personal experience, when I entered college, I immediately joined the cycling team. This meant that, for the past 5 years, nearly all weekends were spent with other cyclists. The more weekends you spend cycling, the more cyclist friends you have, the more your social circle looks like a incestuous family.

Not that this is a bad thing, but it just means that in the months from October - November hanging out with friends usually means jumping over barriers.

Anyway I've also been willfully applying for real jobs, which hasn't been going well. As with most recent college grads I'm also looking into graduate schools for Engineering, including:

Purdue

Michigan State

Arizona

and finally University of Huntsville Alabama.

If I got in there I would sell my iPod...I'd really only need one song (I think you know the one):

Joking aside, Huntsville has a sweet propulsion program as it is the home of the Redstone Arsenal which was the once home of Werhner von Braun and entire US space propulsion program (so they get a lot of gov. funding)

However after all the hating I've been doing on CX, there is a cool race this weekend in Detroit's historic civil war fort (or some war...it's just old):

What did they think would happen?

2010-09-26T22:45:00.001-04:00

I've Lost My Engineering Skillz!

2010-09-17T14:28:00.002-04:00

I've apparently completely forgotten how to be an Engineer. In my last post about climbing Haleakela I screwed up the Drag calculation.

The advisor for the Purdue cycling club is a Professor in Physics and happened to stumble accross my blog about calculating power and pointed out the error I made.

I stated earlier that Drag has a square relation to velocity. This is still true, what I forgot to factor is that Drag is a measure of Force and not Power. This is easily solved as one of the methods of calculating power is by multiplying Force and Velocity.

This means that the Drag component of my power requirements do not have a square relation to velocity, but a cubed relationship.

Power(from Drag) ~ velocity^3

Earlier I stated that my Drag would have been 64% of Ryder's, but with this new relationship it would actually be 50.9%. This further means that my portion of Power to counteract drag would have only been 12.3% of my overall output.

New average Wattage:

224.6 Watts

Thanks Prof. Hirsch

Man I really want to buy tires now

2010-09-15T09:06:00.001-04:00

Apparently this commercial is old as dirt (1 year) but I just saw it for the first time last week:

Maui Pt. 2

2010-09-11T22:05:00.006-04:00

The volcano of Haleakala, at 10,000 ft and 36 miles it's one long ass climb. I'll just keep it short. In a nut shell: there was a lot of mind numbingly long climbing.

You almost have to start the climb early in the morning. The Trade Winds (whatever those are) are blowing a ton of warm air over the island this time of year, which means in the morning all the mountains start pretty clear, but by mid day they act as a conducting rod for clouds and rainfall. So unless you want to be swimming down the descent you have to start early. My parents dropped me off in the morning and were going to pick me up midway down to head back to the hotel. They also meet me at the top to see the Volcanic crater.

Once I got above 9000 ft people driving by would start slowing down and yelling out their car windows. One Asian tour bus pulled a long side and was taking a bunch of pictures.

So here are a bunch of pictures, and then I'll geek out.

Long way to go from here

This is just about the hardest part of the climb, there are a gazillion switchbacks (Actually 23) before you even enter the park. And while most of the 36 miles is a manageable 5% or so, this few miles is like 7%.

Alright time go geek out.

A lot of people have power meters on their bicycles to measure how much power their putting through the pedals in order to measure their training. In leu of that I'm going to be doing some dimensional analysis to derive out my average wattage for the climb. Here is the Garmin info (unfortunately I forgot to turn on the stupid thing until I stopped for the first time)

More specifically here's the info from the climb specifically (All in all I think it took me about 3 hours and 15 minutes with stops):

So first I'll calculate the amount of watt's I was putting out assuming a 3:15:00 climb of 10,000.

Given values are:

Weight: 150 lbs + 20 lbs (bike+water) = 77.1 kg

Height: 10,000 ft = 3048 m

Power is simply the amount of Work done/time

Work in this case will be calculated amount of Potential Energy change over the ride in Joules.

(Delta) U = mass * g * (delta) h

2305 (kJ) = 77.1(kg) * 9.81(m/s^2) * 3048 (m)

Then Power (neglecting any wind or bike+road resistance, and slowing down) is:

Power = (Delta)U / time (s)

197.0 (W) = 2,305,400 (J) / 11,700 (s)

Now it's time to really stretch out some assumptions.

By comparison when Ryder Hesjedal did his Haleakela ride he finished in 2:32:51.

His power meter recorded an average 349 Watts. He is slightly heaver (160 lbs) but was using a nice Felt which probably weight 16 lbs, for a total weight of 176 lbs (79.8 kg).

Using the same dimensional analysis I used on my ascent his power output that went directly to climbing would be:

260 Watts

Meaning on average only 74.5% of his total energy output went to climbing the mountain, the rest was sucked up by wind and road resistance.

To calibrate my wattage I'll neglect rolling resistance, since it's usually pretty tiny, and focus on wind resistance. Drag has a squared relationship to velocity, D~v^2.

Ryder's average ascent speed was 13.9 mph, while mine was about 11.1 mph.

This means that based on the square relation of air velocity alone my drag should be about 64% of Ryder's, meaning that I used more like 16.3 % of my total energy to fight the wind and 84.7% to climb.

That would bump me up to 235.4 Watts for the climb

But that is not all, I am a lot smaller than him 5'10" to 6'2". Which means he had a bigger sail. Form drag, or the amount of drag generated by an objects shape or size is a direct relationship to Drag. So assuming height is a good indicator of sail like ness, I have probably 94.6% the drag coefficient he does, further lowering my portion of Drag to 15.4% of my total power output

Bringing me back down a tick.

Final Estimated Wattage (using a hole mess of assumptions, which is how most Rockets are really built):

232.86 Watts

Not bad for a vacation ride

Sandwich Islands

2010-09-06T23:07:00.010-04:00

Just back from Hawaii and the beautiful island of Maui. Spent most of the time on the beach working on my tan, swimming with sea turtles (and in one case a reef Shark, which freaked me out after watching an entire week of Shark Week).

I also managed to find a way to work some bicycling on the island. I got set up with West Maui cycles to rent a bike for a few days of our trip. The guys at the shop were pretty lame, not talkative and in pretty sour moods. I mean you live on an island paradise with perfect weather year round and work at a bike shop...what else could you really want from life. Not only that, but when I asked them to swap out stems (since customers weren't allowed to touch bikes and tools at the same time), it only took them half an hour to figure out how to re-assemble the headset with a stem that had a shorter stack height (hint: add one more spacer)

Anyway the rental bike was a Cannondale Super Six with Ultegra and the whole BB30 thing going. Needless to say that bike was absolutely sick, light, and super stiff.

So Maui, the island, is composed of of two dormant volcanic mountains, with an isthmus connecting the two.

I didn't know what the hell an isthmus was either....apparently its some flat land connecting to larger land masses, like volcanoes.

Anyway my first big ride of the island adventure was around the mountain on West Maui, which was about 60 miles. I thought, no biggie, I'm a Cat. 1, I can get it done in like 3 hours.

I was oh so wrong, I started from our Hotel in Kaanapali and went north. The first 5 miles were deceptively flat, then boom a 300 ft climb, which is big when things come to the Midwest.

The road continued rolling along up to the rocky northern of the island coast of west Maui. Once on the north side the coast line became jagged cliffs. This meant that when the road came to each bay, it would descend into the bay, then climb back out...at something like 12% for a mile. After a brief respite the road would dip into another bay.

The road in the distance in the picture above was the doosie of the day at well over 17% for like a mile, ugh.

I was still in pretty good spirits, and my nose was not yet sun burnt. Then I noticed a sign: State Highway Ends. The road was generally alright after the sign, a little more rough but nothing too bad. The road then took another right hander down into a bay containing the extraordinarily remote town of Old Kahakuloa. At this point about 1.5 lanes of the two lane road disappeared, leaving something of a bike path that was barely wide enough for a single car.

This was also the beginning of the largest climb on the ride, a brutal 1000 ft climb that stair stepped over the course of 5 miles.

As I crested the climb, the fruits of the 1000 ft climb became apparent. The first was the reintroduction of state highway and butter smooth pavement descent, the second was a great view of Kahului (the large town of Maui) and the mountain of Haleakela.

I was pretty smoked by this point. But after the descent I was treated to some of the characteristic Trade Winds that came out of the north and pushed me back at 40 mph most of the way back.

This was a very very Epic ride, nearly as epic as the ride up Haleakela: which requires a blog post for itself, later.

Mountain Biking?

2010-08-23T11:09:00.003-04:00

Yup built up the ole mountain bike this past week and hit up the trails for the fist time since Iceman. It was pretty embarrassing let me tell you.

Luckily I have my own custom head badge to remind me why I ride.

Tour of the Gaslight was this weekend also in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is something to get used to coming back to Michigan racing, it's pretty defensive racing. Vince and I were the only Panther representatives at the race. There was a promising move midway through after a prime, but was brought back. A counter attack of just two riders got away and stayed clear through the end of the race. I played the sprint a little wrong and ended up 6th place.

Any way it's the end of the season, I'm in about my 8th stage of being over cooked from racing, and I leave tomorrow morning for Maui, Hawaii.

It's definitely time for a bit of a break, besides I need to be fresh to win some cash money at Tour di Via Italia on Labor Day weekend.

10 Million Views, You've probably seen it

2010-08-20T23:43:00.005-04:00

Unfortunately this was probably all too much like what the brainstorming session for the BP engineers was like.

That'll teach those lousy BP engineers not to do their fully Life Cycle Analysis.

3 Laps of the Charlotte Crit and Indy

2010-08-19T11:14:00.003-04:00

As you may have heard Charlotte was not kind to the Panther team. After only 10 hours of driving (each way!) and setting ourselves up in a nice hotel, most of us only got to race three laps.

The course was like a large dumbbell, 1.5 miles long in total with two long straightaways that each ended in super tight four corner sections. But the tight four corners on each end was not where our team met our demise. Instead it was on the finishing straight, just 3 laps in. A couple of P-R-O's were jockeying for position up at the front of the race (because we all know lap 3 is the most crucial) and took each other down. A bike went ricocheting across the road from one barrier to another, taking the entire field going 35 mph down. The crash was so universal that there was essentially a dam of broken bikes and broken riders blocking the entirety of the road.

The number of broken Zipp wheels and bloodied faces was pretty impressive. The joke going around was that all of the $50,000 of prize money for this crit might just be able to cover all the broken bike parts from the crash.

Personally for the Panther's we broke two bikes. I did a 30 mph endo that resulted in just a bit of road rash. Anyway, so much for that weekend.

Last weekend were a few low key crits in Downtown Indy.On Saturday all 3 of us got into a 12 man break that quickly lapped the field. It was a pretty standard run into the finish after that. We didn't quite get it lined up and Eric Young attacked on the back side on the last lap and got a gap. I rolled in just in front of Kirk for 2nd and 3rd, Ryan was also up there 6th.

Sunday was super hot, I made it into a 4 person group with Eric Young,
Jon Jacob and Greg Strock that lapped the field. In the final laps we started attacking again and split the field down to just 7. Jonathan Jacob attacked and got a gap with 1.5 laps to go, Greg Strock jumped right away and I got on his wheel. I took a pull but Greg didn't pull
through after that claiming "JJ deserves this one", so I pulled the last lap so Eric wouldn't catch us and got beat in the sprint ending up 3rd. I never knew bike racing was such a gentleman's sport, I guess the end of the season burn out hits everyone differently.

Elk Grove: Best Race in Elk Grove

2010-08-03T19:11:00.003-04:00

Elk Grove, home of the most ridiculously large prize list is a staple of every Mid-West racers calender. I agree with most that the course MIGHT be improved, but you cant deny first the large prize list, lack of Pro's in the 1/2 category, and great involvement from the people in the Village of Elk Grove.

This race doesn't suit me particularly well, I'm not one for a lot of accelerations (180 degree turns) or bumping and grinding. That being said my personal races went a lot better than the last years where I missed the break on the first day an finished in the last money spot, and didn't even place on the second day.

On Saturday Panther was doing a great job of leading out, but I got boxed off the lead out train which disrupted some of the teams plans.

Sunday went a little better. It was difficult to get organized in such a hectic race, but Paul, Ryan and I got together on the last lap and kept it together. But our position out of the last corner didn't improve much and we finished 6th, 7th, and 8th. At least we had some team unity going across the finish.

Anyway it's wise to put mediocre performances behind you and move on to the next big thing. Which is the Charlotte Criterium this Saturday. With it's 1.1 ranking on the NRC calender and $50,000 in prize money for the Pro's it shouldn't be too difficult. The winner of the race gets $12,500, so I'll probably be throwing some 22's on my Mazda after this weekend is over.

Presbyterian Hospital Criterium from Michael Desmond on Vimeo.

Probably more exciting than me winning $12,000 this weekend, most likely, is the fact that at the end of August I'm going to Hawaii with my family. Specifically to the island of Maui for some serious beach time, swimming, luau-ing, pineapple eating, and riding up the longest climb in the world (I think?) Mt. Haleakala.

The climb starts off in the town of Paia and climbs up over 10,000 feet over 36 miles. There is a yearly race up to the summit Cycle to the Sun which costs a whopping $200! They don't even let you ride down either while the race is going on. Lame

Or I can just pay $50 and ride down the mountain on a Cruiser bike in a full face helmet. They say there's a good chance for broken bone, facial injury, or death? Sounds like my kind of ride

Mid-season Break

2010-07-29T16:56:00.003-04:00

There comes a point in every cyclists season where they crack. The load becomes too much and they no longer have the mental stamina to do it week in and week out. Their performance is lacking, and they're really just half there. They begin to despise the thing they love and eventually just give up. Yes I'm talking about the mid-season burnout, from blogging.

There is only one thing to do when you reach that mid-season blogging burn out point, you have to take some time off. Just stay away from the blog, don't think about it. Sure you can use some forms of mass media, update your Facebook status every once in a while, maybe even tweet about what your eating or how you're looking forward to going to sleep, movie, meet friends, or other complete another mundane task. But mainly you'll want to stay away from the heavy lifting of sitting down in front of your laptop and doing a real blog entry.

Sure your numbers might drop a little. You might lose a follower, if you have any, and might just lose that bit of snap...of coming up with witty blog posts without sitting and thinking about it for three hours.

In the end though, you'll be better for it. You'll have time to come up with some new material, maybe even get a race result or two to blog about, or even just watched enough of Le Tour to become a cynical fan of the Pro Tour. You're blogs will be better, you might just enjoy it a little again and remember why you type out a few paragraphs for your 8 readers to skim through.

Hey, since the last post I've even got some results.

A bunch of top 10's at Superweek which has always been one of my favorite 17 days of racing since the days of the Turin/Barker+Nestor Squad way back in 2008

Regardless of the mediocre payout (assuming no bounced checks), multitude of crashes, and general disarray, there's nothing that makes you feel more like you're in the big leagues than doing 100 km of racing against some of the guys that do it for a living.

On top of all that I ended up the 4th place in the Amateur competition, one spot out of $100!

I've reached my limit of concentration for now, about 10 minutes. Now that I'm refreshed from my blogging break, there will be more updates to come.

Tour of Lawrence

2010-07-06T20:51:00.006-04:00

Before I get to any overly detailed race review of the Tour of Lawrence. Just a word about the whiny riders of Le Tour.

This year's tour is the 100th anniversary of the addition of the Pyrenees. Not unlike that tour 100 years ago the organizers added whole new type of racing to the tour: the high and largely undeveloped mountains of the Pyrenees. The riders bitched and moaned about how tour organizers were trying to 'kill' them...please. Now the Pyrenees are are an integral part of the tour that add excitement and have the most insane fans, thank you crazy basque people.This year, now that all those Spanish mountain roads are paved and wimpy, tour organizers decided to throw in some "classics" stage. In particular stage 2 and stage 3. Stage 2 is similar to those hilly northern classics like L-B-L, and stage 3 went over the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix. Anyway after a few crashes in stage 2 the riders decided they didn't want to risk their lives in finish and decided to neutralize the sprint, weak sauce, clearly Fabian's never been to SuperWeek.

On that note, the whole reason for everyone crashing in stage 2 was that a moto went down and leaked a bunch of oil on a downhill. This is funny because, not a few months ago all the riders were up in arms about the UCI starting to ban race radios. Their main complaint was that race radios are used to notify riders of potential road hazards like, oh I duno...I giant Mario Kart type oil slick in the middle of the road. Its so ironic I'm not even going to make fun of all these whiny pro's.

Anyway on to some race results:

Tour of Lawrence, I was flying solo for this one. I was worried about this at first, but the P/1/2 fields were pretty small. Mostly it was just team Hotel San Jose, that Trek VW team and Mercy in attendance. The road race course wove around the campus of the University of Kansas. The course was sweet, two long climbs and a bunch of twisty decent dictated the four mile circuit. Unfortunately it was raining hard and the roads were very slick. There was a large pile up in the first half mile of the race on a straight downhill section. I managed to weave my way around everyone sprawled across the road and dudes putting out the tripod in the turns. I channeled my Purdue Regional crit cornering skills and attacked and put nearly a minute into the field. As the course dried up we were brought back by what was left of the field, about 12 guys. We dicked around for a little while until 4 to go. I attacked on one of the uphills by a group of drunk KU students that were cheering for me because I gave them a thumbs up while I was in the breakaway after they offered me a free beer.

I spent a lap alone until Adam Bergman bridged up and we were riding really hard but were caught with 1 to go by three riders. There were some little attacks but it came down to the final uphill sprint, I had nothing left in the tank and ended up 4th.

Sunday was a repeat of the 2008 Collegiate Nationals Criterium course. However there was more rain. Another wet day, and I knew Hotel San Jose would be riding for Josh Carter. So I sat in and spent most of the day in my Endurance zone. With a few laps to go I took off my glasses that were fogging up pretty bad. Then it started raining, so I pretty much couldn't see at all. I got a little sketched out with the whole wet roads and not being able to see so got caught out a little far back in the sprint and ended up 12th.

Happy 4th!

2010-07-05T01:01:00.001-04:00

Yeah, America!

Oh yeah I should have written a post or something for last weekends race in Cinncinati....which I did, but it's not on this site, it's here: POST

Ohio Weekend

2010-06-25T11:14:00.007-04:00

In honor of spending my weekend in Ohio here's a video from The Black Keys, the best thing to come out of Ohio since....well....um....not much good comes out of Ohio:

So CX bikes need Disc Brakes?

2010-06-22T11:11:00.005-04:00

Tell this guy he needs more stopping power:

If you have not heard, the UCI will let everyone use disc brakes on their CX bikes, but has reduced the legal size of tires....this means more stopping power and less traction, another good idea from the very intelligent UCI

NVGP FINAL!

2010-06-22T00:21:00.005-04:00

Sunday was the final day of the Nature Valley Grand Prix, the infamous Stillwater Criterium. At 1.4 miles some promoters might consider this a very long circuit race and not give free laps…..MELON CITY…..but fortunately they DID give free laps which helped my race immensely.

We packed up all out belongings from our very awesome host housing/race support/local guide/general cool guy Kevin Schaeffer and headed out to Stillwater, which is a half hour east of the twin cities and on the way home.

First of all, the Nature Valley race likes to pride itself on owning America’s HARDEST criterium of all time end all be all, they think of it like the final sword duel in Highlander. It is by far NOT the hardest crit, which is a pretty hard metric to measure.

The course starts off at the bottom of THE hill, which is a less than quarter mile pitch that ramps up around 20%. The course then hangs quick left followed by a right hander to ascend further up a false flat. Two more right-handers send the riders down the long descent towards the start with a few turns but nothing technical.

If you’re curious why it isn’t the hardest crit let me give some examples. First example: Snake Alley, MUCH harder course with a very technical climb and technical downhill. Second: The Joe Martin final crit, much bigger hill (but not technical), and very dangerous/technical downhill.

That being said, this crit had probably the most and loudest spectators of any race I’ve personally been in. People lined the hill several deep, creeping into the road, making you feel like your riding in Le Tour as you grind up the hill in your 39x25. It was an amazing experience.

As with any technical crit, the most of the bumping came as riders lined up at the start line while the announcers called up 20 some riders. I somehow managed to roll up to the start from the wrong direction and was in the last row, which turned out to be the best thing since sliced bread.

The announcer counted down, and the race was off with enough nervous riding to cause a crash in the first 10 meters, which is exactly what happened. Two riders ahead of me, two guys tangled and went down, I did a sort of summersault and ended up on top of two other guys. I couldn’t get myself untangled from my bike and other riders until someone simply picked me up around my middle and pulled me off the pile. After checking the bike I lined up along the barricades with the 20 some riders taking their free lap preparing to jump back in.

When the field came around the ref waved us in, AT THE FRONT! By the time I got up to speed, which is pretty slow on a 20% grade, I was a mere 30 riders back. I wouldn’t say it was smooth sailing from then on, but being in the field ahead of the vortex of riders dropping off the back helped immensely, I was able to recover on the descent and even move up in the corners. I saw Paul and Ryan both several times looking good in the field.

However my good luck was not to last long, with 5 to go Jamis got to the front and really started turning the screws on the false flat after the hill, which was normally pretty tame earlier in the race. Because of this the next time up the hill I was gapped and that was pretty much all she wrote. I rode in with a few other amateur guys, and did the final trip up the hill in the big ring…just for good measure (the finish was at the top of the hill).

The course did do quite a number on the field though. Of the 130 some riders that started the race, 15 or so did not make the time cut (completing 5 laps without being lapped by field) and less than 50 managed to complete the full 20 laps. I managed to slot in 34^th, a mere 2 minutes behind the leaders, which catapulted me from the 80’s in the GC to 53^rd!

Paul lost the Amateur jersey to Chris Winn of team Rio Grand, who had a great ride, and Dan was the only other Panther to finish the 20 laps.

After grabbing some showers at the local sports club and some Mexican food we headed back to our neck of the woods.

NVGP #3 (actually stage 4 and 6)

2010-06-20T00:19:00.008-04:00

Last night was a late night, which will sometimes happen when your
race doesn't start untill 7:45 in the evening and wraps up after the
sun goes down.

Yesterday we had a 'day-out' in Minneapolis. We woke up to tour QBP.

If you've never worked at a bike shop let me fill you in, most likely

everything you've ever bought from a bike shop comes through the
distributor QBP. So we set up a tour of their state of the art and
environmentally friendly warehouse. The two guys I was with, Dan and
Noah, who are both major bike shop geeks, and were really digging the
whole distribution process blah blah blah. They do ship out 8,000
orders per day which is pretty impressive and only have something like
40 some errors per 100,000 line items. I was just digging all the gobs
of sweet bike components everywhere, plus the QBP wheel lacing guy and
tensioning machine, which was pretty sweet also. Tom Boonen apparently owes his rainbow stripes to the distribution practices of QBP.

The pro wheel lacer guy that laces all the wheels you buy from Quality, he did a demo for us, took him about 30 seconds to do a 32 spoke 3x pattern.
Team of wheel true-ers.
Want a Powertap?

Next on the agenda was the Mall of America...not all that impressive,
just saying.

Last on our tour we stopped off at one of the local shops in Minneapolis called
1on1. This shop was really sweet. Its half coffee shop, half bike
shop, and the lower half is a bike scrap yard. It's hard to describe
the amount off cool, old, beat up crap that was in their basement.
Noah walked away with a pair of Ambrosio tubular rims, and we had a
coffee at their shop to celebrate our find.
Welcome to One-on-One!Old school suicide shifter where you had to reach down behind you to your seat tube pull a lever in order to shift.

The basement of old goods.
No idea what kind of shifter this is but it requires two cables to pull the derailleur up and down the dual railing.

Finally we did have to race. Friday was the Minneapolis Uptown
criterium. Uptown is the trendy neighborhood of Minneapolis, complete
with hipster gangs rolling around. The atmosphere at this race was
very cool, the entire 6 corner mile long course was completely lined
with people, even 10 deep along the finishing straight. It was a huge
event.

I did not make the same mistake I had made in the first crit, I got to
the start early and started mid pack. That coupled with a pretty wide
open course helped my own start. I even managed to keep the front of
the pack within sight during the first half of the race. Considering
how my previous crit went, this was quite an accomplishment. One of my
fellow collegiate racers, Rob Bush of Marion University, was
completely tearing it up at the front, attacking for pretty much the
majority of the crit.

I got a little too comfortable at the front and drifted back to the
vortex of the second half of the field; where any attempt to move up
would drain you to the point that you'd get passed by a ton of people
trying to recover.

I finished the race at the back again, but it was a good experience
and a lot of fun with the huge crowds.
This dude built a vehicle that is powered by doing an elliptical machine type motion, he was riding around at the race.
The Minneapolis skyline while riding the pedestrian only 'Million Dollar Bridge', fortunately this one didn't fall into the river while we were going across it.

Saturday was the big road race that was supposed to shake everything
up and split the fields to pieces. The day started in Menomonie
Wisconson, and did a large 85 mile loop around the county, hitting
four categorized climbs with a few more thrown in that were big enough
to hurt pretty good.

The plan for the day was to attack from the gun to try to get into the
breakaway to get some representation in the race. I did my best to
follow moves from the bigger teams, but the race started with a tail
wind and was really fast so it was difficult for a move to get away. I
followed a handful of attacks, finally in the run into the first big
climb I got away with an 8 person group with a bunch of teams
represented. However what could have been a promising breakaway was
killed by one of the Jelly Belly riders and an Austrailian form UHC
complaining to each other about who was pulling more, while another
amateur from Hagens Bergman, and Jake Rytlewski, and I were doing a
good portion of the pulling.

Even though this was one of the hardest 15 minutes I've ridden in a
few months, a few Jamis riders bridged up to our move and that pretty
much killed any chance we had of staying away.

Thankfully we were caught right before the first KOH point, so I had
plenty of recovery time. When we got over the climb I nearly got
dropped after getting slowed up by a crash in the feed zone. I caught
back on and was pretty much completely fried by mile 35, it was going
to be a long day. Three more big KOH points were ahead, along with a
handful more of medium sized climbs. All the climbs that they found
out in Wisconson seemed to ride the same, start of pretty easy at
about 5% for the first half mile to mile, then ramp up to nearly 20%
by the end.

From then on in it was the normal shennaningans of a 150 person Pro/1
field. The final climb before the finish was followed by some false
flat and cross winds, which really gave a chance for the big guns to
actually start racing. It was pretty hard for a while, but the field
all came back together when we went into the finishing circuits.
The finishing circuits were in town at 3 miles a piece, with 18 turns
per circuit! The circuit hit up just about every single street in this
little town, including the worlds most uneven and bumpy street.

Because of my earlier fiascos off the front earlier in the race I was
popped pretty quickly in the circuits.

Tomorrow is the Stillwater criterium, supposedly the hardest crit in
the nation. I’ll find out tomorrow if this is just a way to scare
racers and make the race sound cool.

NVGP #2...the weather gods hate us!

2010-06-18T01:01:00.002-04:00

Stage two of the Nature Valley Grand Prix was supposed to be a 66 mile road race starting and ending in the town of Cannon Falls south of Minneapolis.

Our day started out pretty lazy. The host housing that we had with Ken Schaffer is really sweet, and his place has a pool. So...being that the race started at 5 pm a few teammates and I, Noah Singer and Dan Campbell, decided to spend our free time working on our tans and lounging by the pool for most of the day. I know; the life of a bike racer is tough. We even had to wait an hour before the pool was open, and were left only with a hot tub for the time being.

The nice weather was pretty short lived; on the drive to Cannon Falls the skies turned dark and the winds kicked up to 20 mph out of the south. At the start everyone was talking of the impending gutter riding and field split.

The course was laid out in a lollipop, out and back with a loop at the end. The first few miles were into the wind and were very sketchy and nervous. The pack was about 15 riders wide at the front, and everyone was jockeying for position for when we had to make the left hand turn and start hitting the cross wind. I managed to stay pretty close to the front, and when the left hand turn came it was gutter city. It was a very windy race; gusts were pushing riders around who were sitting mid-pack, usually a place very sheltered.

A few attacks and rolling hills later I followed a move and found myself off the front of the pack at the Nature Valley Grand Prix, with a gap! Along with a few other amateurs and a Kenda rider, we built up a decent gap and made the left hand turn into the tail wind section of the loop.

Then one of the moto refs rolled up along side our group: “We’re turning around due to weather.” This seemed pretty unfair, the one time I managed to get off the front of the biggest race of the year, and the weather gods seem to intervene. But sure enough when we turned around to look, the entire pack was sitting idle at the intersection we had just turned at.

Rolling back to the pack, we found out the race had been completely canceled. There was a general sense of confusion about what to do as 150 cyclists, along with their caravan, sat idle in the middle of the road. Finally it was decided to turn the race into a large group ride back into town. All the while the South American’s and Canadians were looking at the low hanging dark clouds looming closer and closer and getting vocally worried.

So the pack slowly managed to start rolling back with the winds to Cannon Falls. However, the next thing we knew it every team van was rolling up to the field and the P-R-O’s were darting out of our massive group ride to hide in the shelter of the team vans. This reduced the size of our field by half, leaving only the amateur racers to pace back into the storm behind police escort.

When we reached the finish town, every part of the Nature Valley Grand Prix had been already disassembled and packed up, as if we had missed the race. We met up and piled back into the cars for Minneapolis.

The one bright side of finishing the race early was that we got to watch the NBA finals.

So another crit in downtown Minneapolis is scheduled for tomorrow, hopefully we’ll have some better luck there.

Nature Valley Grand Prix, Pt. 1

2010-06-17T01:10:00.003-04:00

Today was the start of the Nature Valley Grand Prix, which if you don't know is only the most coolest bike race in all of America.

We got into Minneapolis on Tuesday and were able to take a ride around, visiting some local sites like the campus of the University of Minnesota, and a local training crit that was home to the famous ‘Ninja Prime’s”. A Ninja Prime involves a guitarist at the start line, who will jam out on the guitar every once in a while, whoever is at the front of the field when the guitarist plays wins a prime. Also, if you have never been to the ‘twin cities’ they really are just two cities next to each other, which means really a lot of urban sprawl, enough to rival Chicago. So basically so far I have no idea why Bicycling named this as the no. 1 city for cycling; there's a lot of traffic everywhere, a lot of urban sprawl....however there does seem to be a lot of cyclist here.

The race opened up with an individual time trial, that ran along one of the rivers through town then climbed out of the river valley for a little under a mile. The climb wasn’t too tough, but hard enough that after 5 miles of flat TT effort you had to drop it into the little ring. I tried to pace myself and think I did a little too good of a job and got caught by Jake Rytlewski (who started 30 seconds behind me) right after the turn around. In the end I finished with a time of 14’22”, which was good enough for 80’s, respectable enough. More importantly, Paul Martin, who is our team director, came in at 21^st in the time trial which put him in the lead for the best Amateur jersey.

The second stage was a downtown criterium in the eastern of the twin cities. The course was a 6 corner affair at just over a mile. However nearly all the pavement on the corners were in terrible condition, and the final corner was one of two hairpins…on brick. Needless to say it was going to be a rough race. I missed the boat getting to the start on time, so had to start in the back. Once the race got underway Kelly Benefits, who had the lead with Zwizanski, set tempo at the front and kept the race pretty constant. In the back of the field, where I was sitting, it was yo-yo city. Every hairpin turn was an exercise of burning through brake pad to about 20 mph then sprinting all out up to around 35 mph before the next corner. Every move up I made was followed by 10 guys diving past in a corner while I was recovering.

At 11 to go there was a sprint, and from then on we were on the gas. The lead out trains started setting up and racing got fast enough to start opening up gaps in the field. On the last lap I was about 15 riders behind a gap that opened up. Paul stayed in the lead of the Amateur competition and Ryan Knapp was our best finisher at 29^th today.

Tomorrow is a RR in Cannon Falls, MN. Only 60 some miles, however the Weather channel is telling us 20 mph winds with gusts up to 35, plus thunderstorms with hail. Should be a fun day.

I just want everyone who reads this blog to know

2010-06-02T21:18:00.003-04:00

The second most 'googled' term that brings people to this blog, behind my name, is 'mullets'.

Interesting...

Also I raced this past Monday in Quad cities. Quad cities was the final day of the Memorial day series of races along the Mississippi river. The criterium is a pinched figure 8, meaning it's just like a figure 8 but without crossing itself. This meant 8 turns in roughly 1 km, with 50 laps in the race, that's 400 turns in the race. The course is also, quite wide, so the 120 man field has no problem screaming through the corners 10 wide or so.

Needless to say it's quite the technical crit, with a good share of bumping and grinding. The race itself is quite aggressive and hard to break away, partly because of the intermediate sprints that the race puts on starting half way through. I tried to stay relaxed and conserve my energy in the race, I planned on going for the intermediate sprints, but after totally getting caught too far back for the first I gave up on that and focused on the finish.

After all the sprints had wrapped up, the sprinter's teams gave attackers a bit more of a leash and groups started yo-yoing of the front. We had a couple good moves. Greg put in a good attack with Adam Bergman, the duo who had won the previous year's race. But the pack recognized the danger of their move and people tried to bridge up, thus bringing the pack with them. With about 10 to go I ended up in too big of a group that wasn't really working well together, I rolled off the front solo from that group for a lap...which was surprisingly easy to stay away considering a lone rider could pedal through every corner without the interference of 100 guys swarming around.

I was caught with about 5 to go and jumped into the top 10 of the field. Paul Martin jumped about this point with Eric Marcotte, another dangerous move, but they never gained more than 10 seconds. Going into the last lap just about every lead out train had exploded and Paul had been towed back in. The race was really for the second to last corner, as teams with sprinters in tow, swarmed forward. I was a little to far up in the field and couldn't elbow my way onto a lead out train, but managed to squeeze into some spots on the last two corners, going into the finishing straight in the top ten. But the winner was already too far a ahead and I only managed to pass a few blown leadout riders to end up 7th.