A Sprint, Followed by a Time Trial

XC mountain bike racing sounds like fun. Why not try? There are races practically year-round nearby so it makes a nice off-season training event. There was a series of three races this Fall known as the "SoCal Triple Crown Challenge". I thought I'd be sandbagging as a beginner, since I'd done lots of road racing and felt I was quite fit. Turns out sandbagging is the norm, the guy who won the series had over twenty MTB races under his belt and handed me my ass two out of three times. It made me wonder if there was any order in NORBA, but I suspect that mountain bikers generally are not big on rules - which makes sense. It's an odd undertaking, and the MTB crowd is more focussed on things like fun and adventure over results or racking up mileage. This is a good thing.

Since I've found that I'm not good at working on blog posts over a period of time (usually I just forget I started writing) I'll break down the races in other entries. Here are some general observations:

• The groups I started with ranged in size from seven to over a hundred. The promoters would decide between starting all Beginners (now Cat 3) together or dividing them by age category as well. Can't say I had a preference, but I did best when we all went from the gate together. My crit training came in handy, it could be some competitors were a mite nervous elbow-to-elbow going full blast.
• As a practical matter, these are time trials. You finish in a chute and I worried that things would get a little testy going into the last 400m or so. This never happened to me, even while trying to hold on to second place in the points series with the guy in third 20 meters behind in the last race.
• Skill and prep count big-time. In my first race I fell down fairly hard once and threw a chain getting third. Stayed upright for the entire race second time out and won it. Then got tangled up multiple times on the last and most difficult course, barely holding fourth. It's really hard to go downhill either chasing or being chased.
• Lots of waiting around. After a crit I would cool off for twenty minutes, go to the car and have a snack and then have a look at results. Since the MTB promoters are posting everyone's time for the course, things just take longer. Count on having lunch (or brunch) post race and hanging out with friends for over an hour or two.

Double Fun

I was remiss in not reporting my impressions of the Eastern Sierra Double Century, a Planet Ultra product. It was like riding a hard century. Then an easy one, with lunch in between. All of this with generally beautiful scenery throughout, something that the Mammoth area pretty much guarantees. Describing any double century as "easy" would be a little weird, since my butt hurt for about 130 miles of it. Luckily, the pain didn't get any worse after about mile 90, although it worried me. I used Descente Strata shorts and lots of Assos chamois creme and still got some chafing. I think bibs would have been better, since the chafing was not really in the crotch so much as toward the outer edge of the chamois in the back. I've now invested in the bib version of these shorts to minimize chafing by limiting movement of the chamois relative to my body.

The link in the first line of this blog entry points to a complete description of the ride, so I'll assume the reader knows how to use this interweb thingie and I'll just give some impressions:

• $80 is a lot of money for a ride. On the other hand, a $40 century isn't considered unreasonable these days and it's not like there's any economy of scale. Planet Ultra is clearly a business, and that has its pluses and minuses.
• The rest stops (known as "checkpoints" in planet ultra lingo) were well stocked with provisions and workers. The food I needed to carry at the start was enough calories to get me to the first rest stop at around the 30 mile mark. Lunch at Mono Lake was sumptuous and well placed at the 110 mile mark. This ride featured "Bonkbreaker" energy bars - well cubes really they are very compact and tasty.
• Regarding shorts, since I am posting this way after the fact I can now report that I've found the right ones for me. As you probably know this varies from person to person, but for me it's the Pearl Izumi's with the Pro 3D pad in bib form from now on, or until PI changes the design (sigh!). Just FYI the most experienced riders tend to use use Assos.
• I hadn't ridden over 90 miles on a single day for the previous six months. My training averaged about fourteen hours per week, with a lot of interval work. I did make a point of doing two 90 mile rides with 10,000' of climbing at altitude in the month prior to the event though. My wife says Lon Haldemann told her that "If you can go hard, you can go long" so do yourself a favor and include some high-intensity work while training.

Sorry, Francois

Okay, if I'm going to blog I need to do it daily. I let things slip and missed a comment from I nice person named Francois inre the Polar iRDA interface. The answer is I never even suspected the CS600 would work with the old interface so I didn't even try at the time. Polar is a very frustrating company. They tease you. First they offer power monitoring for about half the price of any real competitor (notwithstanding the latest from iBike, I'll believe it when I see it) but then you find the IR interface is an extra $50. The installation involves wanting to grow an additional appendage and then it drops out seemingly at random during use. When this happens I stop and move the pickup unit a couple of millimeters (really!) and we're back online. The AAA batteries in the power unit seem to last a random amount of time, sometimes as little as 60 hours (vs the published 300 or so). But then they include some cool software which does almost everything you want.
In spite of all this I found myself defending the Polar in a class my coach was giving on using power measurement to reach training goals. In his opinion the Polar was marginal. This was based on the fact that most of his clients who tried the Polar later switched to the more expensive PowerTap or SRM and I was the only person who made the Polar work consistently. He related that there were numerous complaints about the PowerTap, especially the wired one. It appeared the SRM was pretty trouble free, but that may be due to the maintenance being handled by team mechanics or household servants.
I guess everyone lives somewhere on the "Frustration-Money Curve". The more money you have, the less frustraion you need to bear up with (unless acquiring the money is frustrating - which brings up a different discussion). For me, there were two sound reasons that the other systems seemed crazy. First, you could buy an additional bike for the price of either one. Second, hubs and cranks wear out - I like the "no moving parts" feature.

Ya Pays Yer Money

I recently was offered a deal on a Specialized Tarmac Pro frame at a cost "too low to print". Seriously, bike shop owners would hunt down the distributor making this offer to some local racers. Below dealer cost. I thought long and hard, decided I was going to do it and then added up all the attendant expenses and backed out. It wasn't that the frame isn't worth it in some sense, but that the word "worth" is what's up for grabs here. In the end I didn't want to be riding something I'll cry about when I lay it down.
Further proving my cheapness, I'm going to experiment with Microshift shifter/deraileur system. I also got a Shimano R700 crank (supposedly DA quality) for cheap. My wife has Shimano 10sp equipment already and an extra cassette from an upgrade so this conversion is going to be under $350. So expect an installation review in a week or so.

Crits: Industrial or Festival?

I've been bad about blogging. I could say I've been busy, but the that was the case when I was doing it weekly. It boils down to this: You aren't interested in what my heartrate was while hammering during some age-group crit. Or in what place I got. Maybe if my racing was going better, I'd blog more. It's actually not that bad. I'm in the mix, racing and not just hanging on and that's what matters for me. For the reader I'll try to offer insights which make racing easier, safer and more fun. After racing about 500 miles of crits, circuits and GPs this season there are things about the courses and promoters you should know.

For me crits break down into "festival" and "industrial". The festival events (think Manhattan Beach GP) close major downtown streets and are generally put on by clubs with municipal cooperation or even enthusiastic support. Parking is always a huge pain. Bike clubs tend to put on one or two events a year so the person on the other side of the registration table is frequently an unpaid volunteer. Be early. REALLY EARLY! These are great if you want people to see you race. Onlookers want to know how fast you go, how much the bike costs and so on. There are nice cafes close by. Clean restrooms. Big value primes. If you want to see people and be seen these are great.

Industrial park crits can be club events, but you usually deal with the same small subset of promoters. I know some of them on a first-name basis. The sign on the table that says "Pre-Registered Racers" really means it. You give them your name and category and in ten seconds you have a number in your hand. Sometimes there's an extra local waiver to sign, depending on the venue. The primes are always pretty much the same with the same sponsors. Parking is free and plentiful (at least during age-group races, I generally leave before the Pros roll). The only people you might impress are close family members and your competition. The promoters know that if you don't like the racing you won't be back. Usually there's some sort of points series spanning a number of races to encourage repeat business. These are all good things as far as I'm concerned.

Some tips:

• Pre-register. It saves money and line-standing. Also it commits you to something so you're less likely to bag it come race day.
• Use this form when you enter USCF races so you don't have to fill it out on race day. It's a fill-in PDF widget, so you can complete it in Adobe Reader, print it out, sign and mail it in as your entry (usually).
• Scope the venue out if possible, riding the course with some teammates is ideal.

Bride of Frankenbike

I keep going around in circles, well rectangles actually. SoCal must be the epicenter of the criterium. I count forty-two crits, GPs and circuit races on the SCNCA calendar this year. The distinction between those forms is pretty arbitrary, Bicycle John's "Grand Prix" is on a 1km four-corner nearly flat course while several criteriums are more complicated, with more than four corners and some short hills.

Since the vast majority happen on the flat with really long runs into awesomely fast sprints, it occurred to me that using my nice road bike for this is a little like drag racing with a Ferrari. You might do well, but if something goes wrong the repair bill would be a lot higher than it would be for a Mustang. Also there's lots of stuff on the Ferrari you'll never use. So why not re-think what we're doing here? A few observations:

I know that for a sprint I'd like to reach 35MPH+ and do it somewhere between 120-140RPM. I figure 53x15. In that gear you're turning 90RPM at 25MPH (typical pack speed) and 141RPM at 39MPH. Second point, the front brake is critical and the rear is only useful for scrubbing off a little speed while moving in a straight line. Third, who cares if the bike weighs 14 pounds or 18, as long as it jumps when you put the hammer down?

So here's the non-existant "Criterium Assault Vehicle" in a nutshell:

• cheap track bike frame, or road frame and single-ator
• track crank with 3/32", 53T ring
• AC Racing 15T 3/32 freewheel
• 3/23" chain with master link
• track bike rear wheel
• front wheel built on disc brake hub
• one good quality hydraulic disc brake (front)
• one rim brake
• winwood cross fork

The rest of it's going to be more or less normal. The disc brake really completes the fantasy here. Hydraulic disc action is vastly more linear and powerful than any rim brake. The real huge problem with my idea is the fork. There may be other carbon fiber crossbike forks with disc tabs, but they're all going to have some design characteristics in common. The rake is 45mm which is going to make the average road bike (with steeper frame angles and 40mm rake) have more trail and become generally more squirrely. (If you don't believe me, have a look at this. Given that the article was recommended by the late, great Sheldon Brown, I believe it.) The fork coupled with a track frame would be even weirder.

So maybe just a track bike with brakes. That setup would have the advantage of looking great, but I'm sure somebody's done it already. I guess what I miss is a time in the past when people would just try oddball stuff to see how it worked out. C'est la vie!

Sharing Routes Using That Internet Thingie

When I started in with my GPS I had a plan to record rides and upload them to Google Earth to share with others. For a variety of reasons, mainly that the damn thing would drop out under trees or just randomly, this didn't work all that great. The Garmin ETrex Vista is better for following routes than creating them. There are a number of websites which allow you to create routes and share them with your friends (or your enemies, up to you). Here's a quick review:

www.gmap-pedometer.com
This is a basic tool which allows you to double click on route points on Google Maps and it traces your progress. There are mileage markers, an elevation profile and map, satellite, hybrid (map overlaid on satellite view) and topographic views. You save the route and Google gives you a link to it. On the downside, if you aren't using Explorer on XP then kooky things can happen. Also, lockups are not unusual. This basic tool is what lies beneath every other one I've found except one.

www.toporoute.com
Very new, and will probably improve. This is a frontend for gmap-pedometer which adds a really cool feature, "Follow Road". While this is turned on you just click points along the route you are recording and the program fills in the interim points. On the basic pedometer, it's purely "connect the dots". Downside: this feature does occasional screwy things, you'll know when you see it. Ironically, the "topo" view isn't there!

www.mapmyride.com
This is probably the oldest frontend for the pedometer and has the most features (including "Follow Roads") and routes . You'll find thousands of rides in the database. Downside: very commercial, map is somewhat small because of all the extraneous stuff on the screen.

www.bikely.com
Fairly new and quite international, and necessary if you're going to be doing brevets in the San Diego area. Downside: not that many routes saved (as yet, that'll change) and you must get a free account to make any significant use of it.

www.runningmap.com
Obviously made for the runner, the only one not using Google. Last I looked it had not road following feature and was limited to 500 points, but if the gmap-pedometer site is locking up your computer this may be useful. A nice point, when you browse to a point on the elevation graph and click it lights up on the map. Every point has a distance from the start, so it's easy to calculate slopes between any two of them.

www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx
This isn't a mapping site, but has a java widget that convert gmap data to gpx format. REALLY COOL! This means you can map out a route on the pedometer, converts (a little clunky, you cut and paste the text it makes) and upload to Google Earth. Makes you wonder why Google doesn't incorporate it.

My Excuse

I haven't been keeping up the blogging because I've been spending way too much time trying to make this crap from Polar work right. The WIND speed sensor (which doesn't measure airspeed, in case you were wondering) has an advertised battery life of 3000 hours. My new one came up 2941 hours short. I tried all kinds of things assuming it can't be dead, it's brand new for cryin' out loud. In the end I bought a new one since I didn't want to wait around for Polar to send a new one. Having two will make switching between bikes much quicker, as it came with a new CS600 mount as well.

PS: In the end I sent it back to Polar and it was returned in working condition. We'll see how it goes.

More Polar CS600 Advice

The CS600 is the follow on for the old 720/725 units. I think they still make 725s, perhaps for the running market. The coded wireless parts represent a big step forward, making the installation easier and performance almost seamless. Now for my BIG gripe. They still use an IR interface, and the one they make sucks horribly. Here's roughly the sequence of events:

11/17/07: I ride the PAA/John's Bike group ride, Burbank-Acton-Burbank (90 miles, 5h9min - my teammates like going fast and I don't like being dropped). John's had a one-day 20% off sale for PAA members and I score the complete CS600. My next easy day is Monday so...

11/19/07: I read all the instructions and find the part where Polar says something like "Oh, you wanted to USE the software, you'll need a Polar USB/IR interface!" I get one at Helen's in Arcadia, which was the closest shop to Pasadena which had one on hand. Prior to this, I hand recorded some data on the CS600 under "No Bike" to check the WIND WearLink (which worked much better than the older, non-WIND unit) so I could make sure data upload functioned. The installation of ProTrainer5 was easy, as was the transfer of my old data. There's a little weirdness: if you have old PPP data in that you create a fake "Team Member" (ProTrainer appears to be geared to use by a coach, you have a team which will be one person in most cases) add yourself, then delete the fake one.
I installed the driver for the USB/IR unit, hooked it up and....NOTHING. What followed was a classic case of modern living. We have scads of really awsome techno-gizmos which are, in a real way, dirt cheap. The problem is that the installation and use of these devices can be complicated and confusing. Here's the thing, I make my living as a computer system administrator. I deal with Windows and Linux on multiple platforms every day and what followed was difficult for me. Good luck to the typical user. In any case, after waiting more than 30 minutes for tech support we conclude that the problem MUST be in the CS600, and not the IR unit.

11/20/07: As luck would have it, my job brought me out to Burbank during the day so I stopped by John's with the idea of trading my CS600 for a good one. Just to be sure, I brought my work laptop and tested the unit John's had on hand. STILL NO DICE! So, the problem is not the CS600 unit, but the IR.

11/21/07: Just to be sure, I go into Best Buy with the CS600 and locate a demo laptop with a built in IRda device. It recognizes the CS600 as a valid device right away. During my lunchtime at work I try the Polar IRda on several computers and still nothing. Thanksgiving is coming up so I put the problem away for a while.

12/5/07: Turns out Helen's has another Polar IR device on hand. They trade me and send back the first one. The new one works, but let me make note of something: I thought I had de-installed the driver, so I went through a re-install. After I was all done with my test and went to close and detach the USB device I noticed that it was labelled "IRda #2"!

12/6/07: Normally, the install of the Polar WIND Power unit would be considered somewhat cumbersome, but compared to the crap I went through it seemed easy and wrapped up in about 30 minutes. The task was made much easier than it might have been because I've switched to the Wippermann Connex type chain which is really easy to remove and install. Compared to the wired unit that came with the 720, this was a breeze. A few notes:

• There is a typo somewhere that suggests that the IRda will work within 10cm. I think this should be 10mm!
• The CS600 mount looks flimsy to me. I've met at least one guy who had broken his, so be gentle. Careful positioning makes things go more easily.
• My previous Polar power unit didn't work properly with my original chain and that problem went away when I added 1" to it. I don't know if the new one has the same problem yet, but I'll be checking.
• At this writing the USB/IR interface doesn't have a driver for Vista. I expect this will have to change.
• I recommend installing the drivers and then rebooting your computer prior to connecting the USB/IRda interface the first time.
  
• Here's Polar's page on uploading.
  
• Check this out.