At some point somewhere in the vast world of the Internet someone said "Anyone could be a Cat 1 if they had the time and energy to train right."
Or stated in a different way - "You can train yourself to be a great rider". If you're not a Cat 1 you're just training wrong. You need to train better, commit more time, etc etc etc.
Hm.
I would disagree. In fact, the evidence I see seems to refute that quite clearly. If it were true, all these extremely dedicated amateur racers would be lining up at the Tour. Or perhaps a smaller race - the Philly race. There's no questioning the serious attitude hundreds or thousands of racers use to approach their racing. In a world that rewards effort, they should all be Cat 1s.
But this is not the case.
It's because genetics is the only way you have a chance of being a pro. Genetics decides whether or not you have the potential. It's up to you to decide what to do with it. Who knows, maybe my genetic make up ideally suits me for Judo or barrel rolling or eating hotdogs. I don't know how well I'd do in those other things but I know that as a bike racer, well, I'm not ideally suited for what I would consider to be "normal racing".
C'mon, you say, this can't be right.
Let's use a little more illustrative method of explaining what I mean. It's pretty simple.
Have you ever ridden with a Cat 1?
It's incredible how hard they can go, for how long, and not consider it a "big" effort. In my better days I'd test in the mid 60s to low 70s in primitive (but run by medical students) VO2 max tests. My hematocrit has been as high as 49.x% naturally. In leadout situations (group sprint rides at SUNY Purchase NY) I'd regularly hit 46 mph (along with one or two other guys). I managed a 7 mile time trial at 25.5 mph but that was the best I could do. My high school afternoons were spent riding, my college schedule (for four years) and my job (at a shop) for 7 years was based around my racing.
And the closest I came to being a Category 1 racer was when I declined an offer to upgrade to Cat 2. At the time I felt that my second place that day in a Cat 2-3 race wasn't worth it because the field consisted of about 15 racers due to terrible weather. If I could place in a bigger race, I'd be worthy.
I struggled to try and peak higher and raced pretty consistently for the next three or four years, placing regularly but never really making a big impression required to upgrade.
The best I could hope for in a Cat 1-3 race was perhaps a place. I got 6th or something once, and another time crashed while sitting perhaps 5th or 6th with 3 turns to go, but that's about it. I'd be turning myself inside out to maintain my position and my friend (a Pro at the time) would glide by, mouth closed, 53x12, and just roll away from me.
That particular memory is particularly striking. He rolled to the front of the field and right past it, soloing off on his own and winning by a couple minutes. He had no teammates to block for him, no break companions to share the work. He single handedly held off a Pro-3 field for some insane amount of time, 30 or 40 minutes. I didn't even know he'd gone off the front so I didn't help, and there were a lot of guys really anxious to catch him.
He's a supremely talented rider who started about when I did - at about age 12 or 13. He went to a Junior training camp in Colorado around that age (which I never did - because I never stood out like he did). One of his "camp mates" may ring a bell for you racing fans out there - Christian Vandevelde, the CSC racer going to Slipstream.
And as a pro? Well, let's put it this way - Vandevelde's gotten a lot more press than my friend.
I'm not dissing him. In fact, I've always been a great fan of his racing, crossing my fingers for him when he went to Europe, going to Philly when he raced there to cheer for him. But when it came down to crunch time, when the contracts were handed out, there were other racers out there who were better.
Genetically I'm perfect to be a Cat 3 flat or slightly rolling course racer - hills that you can power over but don't require to actually settle into a climbing rhythm. This means I can use my power to get over the hill, force others to eat wind (and therefore keep the pace down), and my aerobic system is never taxed to failure. Then I can use my sprint to place.
On the other hand I've never finished a road race with the main field, even when I weighed 112 lbs. Yet at that weight I could still outsprint most anyone at the SUNY Purchase sprints - and that included a whole lot of Cat 2s and even Cat 1s. Genetically, it seems, I was built to sprint on bikes.
There's talent and there's talent. When I was a Junior there was this kid George who raced a lot of the races I did. He was from NY, tall, lanky, who attacked at the gun and rode away from the field, usually with his brother Richard. They'd cross the line hand in hand after lapping the field or something. No one could touch him, no one. It was incredibly demoralizing to see him warming up before a race. I would start hoping they get away early so the field would ease up quickly - if they didn't get away early, the pace was totally insane until they finally got away.
I suppose that at the same time it couldn't have been very exciting for him to win so easily. It didn't surprise me to learn he'd gotten chosen for the National team in his late teens. I was thrilled to see him on TV in the Tour du Pont. And now, in the eve of his career, he's recently signed for the entity now know as High Road Sports. He moved further south at some point but his name is still recognizable.
Hincapie.
The fact that most racers are 3s and 4s is no coincidence. With luck, some talent, you can get to 2s. But to get to a 1? That's no easy matter. In fact, it used to be that you had to have someone at USA Cycling's headquarters to approve your upgrade to Category 1.
So what makes a good racer a good racer? Can you measure something and see if you have it? Maybe your kid, or little sister, or someone else still growing?
There are a lot of things you can measure out relating to cycling performace. Heart rate, for example. But a low resting rate or a high max has no correlation to how you'll do as a racer.
Maybe hematocrit, or hemoglobin levels. If all you needed was a 49% hematocrit or a 16 hemoglobin, I'd be a pro. So that's out.
How about VO2 max, the amount of oxygen you can consume over a given amount of time? Using up x amount of oxygen will correlate to y amount of energy released. It seems pretty accurate for seeing how hard someone can work but it doesn't take into account weight. Close but no cigar.
Power? Crank the wattage and you'll be a pro, right? Well, not really. My high wattage sprint is barely able to break into the top 10 of a Cat 3 race. It ignores weight. But power is related to your potential as a cyclist though - it's one of two factors. So put that one down in your notebook.
The missing factor - weight.
Ultimately it all comes down to sustainable power and rider weight.
If you can sustain 400 watts indefinitely, you'll be a very good time trialer, a good workhorse, maybe a teammate that can drag the field along and keep a break in check.
If you can do that and weigh less than 150 pounds, well now. You are pro material.
Hit those mountainous climbs hard and you'll be at the front of a very, very elite field. No matter what the big guys try to do, if you're a 400w rider who weighs less than 150 pounds, you can dictate the pace on the big climbs. You could be anyone, no license, just out for a Sunday ride, but if ride at 400 watts and aren't very heavy, the simple fact is that there are very few people in the world that can keep up with you. Performance doesn't listen to your category, your VO2 max, your blood make up. High wattage in a lightweight package equals "strong rider".
Period.
That, unfortunately, takes a genetic foundation. Your building is limited to the strength of the foundation. You can't build the Empire State Building on top of a foundation designed for a 2500 square foot colonial. You need floors and floors of pillars and stuff below the ground to support the immense weight above it. Without the proper foundation, you won't be able to build a large structure.
Without genetics on your side, a racer will not be able to progress into the Pro ranks. It simply will not happen.
Therefore genetics > effort.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Monday, December 03, 2007
Life - So You Want to go into the Bike Biz?
So you want to live the bike shop dream? Wrench fancy bikes, have all sorts of goodies on display, talk to folks about how great this or that bike is all day? A wonderful life, right? In fact, I bet some of you would take this over sitting on the couch and having a beer.
If this was a movie, that's when you'd hear the "Screeeeeeeech" and everything skidding to a halt.
So, let me ask you again. Think a Clint Eastwood voice.
"You want to live the bike shop dream?"
Keep your day job.
Okay, that might be a bit harsh. But, in all seriousness, things aren't that easy in the bike biz. So here's how you figure out if you really want to do it. And you'll get some side benefits while you're at it.
First, call your favorite shop or two and ask if they want FREE help on the evenings and weekends. Free? That'll be you.
What's in it for you? In return you're requesting severe discounts on some items (think of some big ticket items you want to buy if you need to justify this free work). You will buy them from the shop. The discounts will not affect the shop bottom line - it might even help them by getting them free shipping on an order (or upgrade to expedited shipping, etc). Keep your day job, keep your almost free medical insurance, don't worry about someone suing you, don't worry about paying rent and utilities for the shop, and don't worry about some punk trying to steal things from you. Live the bike shop dream at the peak hours, help your shop out, and let them help you.
If, after a month or three of this, you still think it's cool, then start thinking about it seriously. You need a lot of cash to get a shop going so figure out how you'll get it - figure $100k would be good, more would be better. Right now I figure you need about $500-750k in cash. Know about business, accounting, and some of the basic laws of business in your state. That handles the financial stuff.
After that, it's straight forward - a bunch of money for rent/deposit, utilities, a nice aluminum bat to fend off yellow pages salespeople, and figure out some way of getting really smart and overqualified kids/students to work way below their payscale so they can be around bikes. Get credit lines with vendors and pay your bills on time (most shops don't - 80% or so, according to one industry number I saw).
Consider this too.
Are you the person that everyone, and I mean everyone, goes to for bike/accessory advice? This might even include people who are in the industry. Every shop needs a someone like that, a Guru if you will, and if you're not it, it'll cost a lot of money/favors/etc to get one that isn't lying through his teeth or has no clue what he's talking about.
A bike shop is simply a method to earn money. If you think that's the best way to earn money, then it's all good. If you love cycling and sharing your enthusiasm for cycling, post a lot of stuff on a forum or two, perhaps run a team or a race or a club or all of that, and volunteer at a shop you really like.
And earn your money elsewhere.
What's a bike shop cost, say to buy a shop? I've heard as little as $15k for a shop that had virtually no business in a small town that still has a hard time supporting an independent bike shop. One guy I know spent $350k starting up his shop and earned back $70k a year (and he was a business man first, a cyclist second). He left the business to return to the financial world and never looked back.
If you're buying a shop, I'd expect at least $100-120k for a shop which includes perhaps $50-70k in all sorts of inventory. Tooling and display stuff (slatwall, bike racks, slatwall hooks, lights, register, etc) alone is probably $10-12k wholesale per shop (meaning new - you could get it less used but that would take forever).
So some factors:
1. Gross income
2. Net income
3. Seasonality
4. Territories
5. Overall market
1. Gross income - the magic number for a shop with, say, a $7-8k monthly lease is to hit about $500-600k/year gross. Include payroll, utilities (electric - try air conditioning bills in the summer, heat, phone), insurance (liability, medical for the employees and yourself), web expenses, the chunk that Visa and Mastercard take out. There's more but I think that's the main stuff. I think at that rate it's $15-20k costs per month, and to make $20k, you need to sell about $50-60k of product (33-40% margin). That's every month, and in this area, with the lows each night for the next four nights to hit 19 degrees F (-7 deg C), well, you can imagine that folks aren't lined up the door thinking about doing a 5 hour ride.
2. Net income - 5% margin is considered pretty good for the owner. $500k = $25k for you. Again, you have to hit the magic number first, then it's gravy. For example, if you sell $50k of product in a month, you cover your $20k expenses. If you sell another $50k, you still have a $20k margin - but you've paid for all your fixed costs. So the $20k margin? It's yours. Minus the taxes and stuff.
3. Seasonality - In Oct, Jan, and Feb, shops in the area can do as little as $15k/month gross. You make all your money from March till August. September is like you dropped into a ditch. Think Hincapie at Paris Roubaix. December when you try to chase back on - it can save you or break you. Catch on and you're good till the sprint. I mean Spring. Don't, and, well, hopefully you have a really big rainy day fund. That $20k in expenses happens every month, whether or not there's good weather out there.
4. Territories. Territories go hand in hand with big vendors (bike companies). Bike companies try and limit the number of shops opening up in a particular area - it wouldn't do two neighboring shops any good if they both carried the same lines. Most vendors will extend you their lines to you if they're there there for the previous owners.
Hey I used all three "their/they're/there" in one sentence! Some English person verify it's okay, please.
Word games aside, to get a credit line, you have to put something up. Like in poker. "Ante up!". What do you have that's worth at least $50-100k? Hm, let me think. If you're driving a Ferrari or that sweet McLaren SLR I saw back in September you probably don't need a bike shop to buy things for your cycling habit. So let's think of what normal people have that's worth that much.
I got it.
Your house.
Sobering, isn't it. Usually a getting a credit line means putting a personal guarantee on that amount. In these financially shaky days I don't think companies take no for an answer. So you've just entered a big game of poker. Win, you get a 30% discount on that sweet set of carbon fiber wheels. Lose? You move out of your house. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Think about that.
4a. Related to territories is the internet. If you don't have an internet presence, you'll get hurt at some level. You'll still get bread/butter customers but not the enthusiasts. If you have an active forum or participate in one of the bigger forums out there, you can build a reputation for yourself. You need to be there at 1 AM for the guy just jonesing to buy something, and if he hits your site and all it says is your hours and what brands you carry, you're not feeding his habit. There are a couple sites and features I've seen that allow your site to cater to such an enthusiast, all while you're asleep at home. Or, if things are busy, wrenching away in the back room at 2 AM.
You're not supposed to sell over the internet but my last bike was an internet bike. The listing stated "Used" but it was simply built up and then packed up. It's less used than a new bike in a bike shop - I don't think they test rode it more than a hundred yards. You can use this tactic to increase your volume by blowing out bikes at discounts. Volume helps you with your discount level, free shipping, etc. It may not make you money but it might help you save money. You know what freight is on a 200 bike order? Say you ordered an extra 50 bikes and blew them all out - and in return you saved a few grand in shipping? It might be worth it.
5. Overall market - how is retail? Are people buying bikes? Helmets? Is riding popular? Can you get into schools and stuff and do helmet talks, safety talks, maybe "sponsor" the police department? Whatever it is, you need a market. If the town is not buying a lot, then you're done.
5a. Who are your competitors? In the area I know best, there's a family shop, a super big outdoors shop, a high end road shop, and a ski shop that sells bike shop bikes. Who are they aiming at? Where are the holes? In war, you don't attack the enemy's strongpoints - you attack where they're weak and outflank them. The bike business is the same - if someone has a particular market, you need to be in a slightly different one.
Some things on the bike industry:
1. No one has money in the business except the vendors so they're the ones who need to extend credit to the shops. Think about it this way - you think you're in a position to finance Trek? If you are, you won't need a shop - you could just buy your own bike company. Apparently, at some point, 80% of shops pay 30 days late or later. Vendors share this info with each other (except Specialized) and if you get on someone's bad side, you'll find doors closed everywhere. They actually have an industry credit meeting prior to the Interbike tradeshow. It's not official but they apparently spend a day or two comparing notes on good and bad shops. I don't know if they still do this but they definitely did this before.
2. Since everything is bought on credit, the vendor encourages you to pay earlier. Typically there's a discount if you do COD (and everyone will force you to do that for a bit). Maybe 2%. The larger your order, the more extended the terms. Cannondale, about 10 years ago, would ship in September and the payment due date would be March. They gave you 9% discount if you paid in Sept or something, and like 7% for Oct. By Feb it was 1%. And if you got more than, say, $100k, you got free shipping. By doing this they tie up your money so you can't buy as many Specializeds or Treks. I'm sure everyone is doing the same thing now.
3. Problem is most vendors manufacture based on pre-season orders because those are guaranteed sales. If you're Cannondale and you got a 10,000 total preseason order of SuperSix bikes, will you make 50,000? Probably not. It makes more sense for them to make something close to that number. Good for them. But say you can't keep them in stock and you want another 50 of them. Cannondale may not have anymore. Now you're stuck. You can trade with other shops but courtesy, at least back then, is you pay 5 or 10% for their "stocking" expenses, plus assembly if they assembled it already.
4. Pay - I'm not sure what pay is in different areas but one shop I know, at its peak, got the owner $60-70k/year. He sold the shop and went back to managing a hedge fund - he said he made as much in the fund in a month as he did in the shop in a year. I would expect less than that number - maybe $50k. Remember, if you pay yourself $1k/week, you need to sell about $3k/week just for your pay (not including the 7.68% social security, med insurance, liability, etc etc). If you hire a good manager ($40k ought to do it, you're looking at $800/wk or $2400 in sales per week to pay for the guy.
5. Tooling etc - If you buy a shop it'll have most of it. Otherwise you'll have to buy everything. It'll run you maybe $10k, maybe more. In addition you'll have to get new tools as they come out, suspension, fork, BB tools, cassette tools, chain, etc. Tools inevitably go missing or wear out or break so you'll be replacing them along the way.
6. You need a good service manager - one that keeps things in order, can run the repairs (triage, etc), doesn't overbook, etc. Now and then you get into the "We need to pull a late night" but it shouldn't be all the time.
7. Sales - if you base it on commission, you can pay people for performance. In general it'll be hard to find people for the floor or for mechanical work. I think kids in high school will want $10/hour. College maybe $12-14/hour. Plus the discount (always paid in full, or they work toward it - better if they pay for it, less cash out of your pocket).
8. Guru - all shops need a guru. Here's the scene. Someone comes in and asks "Hey, how do I replace the whatzit in the whosit? I bought the bike back in 1974." Then the kids grin and say "Hey Guru, can you help us out here?" And the Guru shows up. You need that guy, whoever it is. Guru will probably be your store manager too, sales and service.
9. You can't buy just one Zipp wheel. I think minimum buy in for 2007 was $10k in wheels. A lot of "cool" companies are like that - high buy ins. So those carbon wheels you wanted to buy for yourself? They'll cost you $10k up front. I can buy them a set for a little less than that.
10. There are internet only companies out there. They sell at wholesale to the retail. It's harder to support but for commodities (i.e. generic superlight carbon frame, generic aero wheels, etc) they will dig into a shop's margin.
What I've told people in the past is that if you want to be in the bike biz, get the money for the shop. Put it in the bank. Then volunteer at a shop you like on evenings and weekends. Ask for an employee discount but otherwise no pay. The shops are dying for evening and weekend help.
Employee discount doesn't hurt anyone, and if you can make yourself useful selling helmets or bikes or just shooting the breeze with someone on the floor (which frees up the other guys to do repairs, build, etc), you'll do the shop good. You keep your real job, you don't worry about liability or health or rent or upcoming bills, and you still get to live the bike shop dream.
I had people like what I just described at my shop. One guy in particular loved bikes, did IT, and I paid him to work evenings and weekends - he even opened the shop for me on Sundays in my burnt out days. I also had a kid who I didn't want to pay because money was too tight and I couldn't justify paying him over his learning curve months. His parents liked me so much though that they paid him to work for me. I also asked for help from the team that I sponsored - and on some days I'd have 8 or 9 guys talking about roof racks, helmets, pumps, bottle cages, and why the funny shorts are so comfy to customers all day. It was fun but I lost 10 years of "real life salary" doing it.
Bike shops are hard. But if you make it work, there's a reward.
At the end of a long day, we'd shut the doors, the lock echoing across the suddenly empty shop. We'd pull our bikes off the floor (employee bikes sit out there to prove we sell what we ride), fiddle with them just a bit, kit up, and go for a kick ass ride.
If this was a movie, that's when you'd hear the "Screeeeeeeech" and everything skidding to a halt.
So, let me ask you again. Think a Clint Eastwood voice.
"You want to live the bike shop dream?"
Keep your day job.
Okay, that might be a bit harsh. But, in all seriousness, things aren't that easy in the bike biz. So here's how you figure out if you really want to do it. And you'll get some side benefits while you're at it.
First, call your favorite shop or two and ask if they want FREE help on the evenings and weekends. Free? That'll be you.
What's in it for you? In return you're requesting severe discounts on some items (think of some big ticket items you want to buy if you need to justify this free work). You will buy them from the shop. The discounts will not affect the shop bottom line - it might even help them by getting them free shipping on an order (or upgrade to expedited shipping, etc). Keep your day job, keep your almost free medical insurance, don't worry about someone suing you, don't worry about paying rent and utilities for the shop, and don't worry about some punk trying to steal things from you. Live the bike shop dream at the peak hours, help your shop out, and let them help you.
If, after a month or three of this, you still think it's cool, then start thinking about it seriously. You need a lot of cash to get a shop going so figure out how you'll get it - figure $100k would be good, more would be better. Right now I figure you need about $500-750k in cash. Know about business, accounting, and some of the basic laws of business in your state. That handles the financial stuff.
After that, it's straight forward - a bunch of money for rent/deposit, utilities, a nice aluminum bat to fend off yellow pages salespeople, and figure out some way of getting really smart and overqualified kids/students to work way below their payscale so they can be around bikes. Get credit lines with vendors and pay your bills on time (most shops don't - 80% or so, according to one industry number I saw).
Consider this too.
Are you the person that everyone, and I mean everyone, goes to for bike/accessory advice? This might even include people who are in the industry. Every shop needs a someone like that, a Guru if you will, and if you're not it, it'll cost a lot of money/favors/etc to get one that isn't lying through his teeth or has no clue what he's talking about.
A bike shop is simply a method to earn money. If you think that's the best way to earn money, then it's all good. If you love cycling and sharing your enthusiasm for cycling, post a lot of stuff on a forum or two, perhaps run a team or a race or a club or all of that, and volunteer at a shop you really like.
And earn your money elsewhere.
What's a bike shop cost, say to buy a shop? I've heard as little as $15k for a shop that had virtually no business in a small town that still has a hard time supporting an independent bike shop. One guy I know spent $350k starting up his shop and earned back $70k a year (and he was a business man first, a cyclist second). He left the business to return to the financial world and never looked back.
If you're buying a shop, I'd expect at least $100-120k for a shop which includes perhaps $50-70k in all sorts of inventory. Tooling and display stuff (slatwall, bike racks, slatwall hooks, lights, register, etc) alone is probably $10-12k wholesale per shop (meaning new - you could get it less used but that would take forever).
So some factors:
1. Gross income
2. Net income
3. Seasonality
4. Territories
5. Overall market
1. Gross income - the magic number for a shop with, say, a $7-8k monthly lease is to hit about $500-600k/year gross. Include payroll, utilities (electric - try air conditioning bills in the summer, heat, phone), insurance (liability, medical for the employees and yourself), web expenses, the chunk that Visa and Mastercard take out. There's more but I think that's the main stuff. I think at that rate it's $15-20k costs per month, and to make $20k, you need to sell about $50-60k of product (33-40% margin). That's every month, and in this area, with the lows each night for the next four nights to hit 19 degrees F (-7 deg C), well, you can imagine that folks aren't lined up the door thinking about doing a 5 hour ride.
2. Net income - 5% margin is considered pretty good for the owner. $500k = $25k for you. Again, you have to hit the magic number first, then it's gravy. For example, if you sell $50k of product in a month, you cover your $20k expenses. If you sell another $50k, you still have a $20k margin - but you've paid for all your fixed costs. So the $20k margin? It's yours. Minus the taxes and stuff.
3. Seasonality - In Oct, Jan, and Feb, shops in the area can do as little as $15k/month gross. You make all your money from March till August. September is like you dropped into a ditch. Think Hincapie at Paris Roubaix. December when you try to chase back on - it can save you or break you. Catch on and you're good till the sprint. I mean Spring. Don't, and, well, hopefully you have a really big rainy day fund. That $20k in expenses happens every month, whether or not there's good weather out there.
4. Territories. Territories go hand in hand with big vendors (bike companies). Bike companies try and limit the number of shops opening up in a particular area - it wouldn't do two neighboring shops any good if they both carried the same lines. Most vendors will extend you their lines to you if they're there there for the previous owners.
Hey I used all three "their/they're/there" in one sentence! Some English person verify it's okay, please.
Word games aside, to get a credit line, you have to put something up. Like in poker. "Ante up!". What do you have that's worth at least $50-100k? Hm, let me think. If you're driving a Ferrari or that sweet McLaren SLR I saw back in September you probably don't need a bike shop to buy things for your cycling habit. So let's think of what normal people have that's worth that much.
I got it.
Your house.
Sobering, isn't it. Usually a getting a credit line means putting a personal guarantee on that amount. In these financially shaky days I don't think companies take no for an answer. So you've just entered a big game of poker. Win, you get a 30% discount on that sweet set of carbon fiber wheels. Lose? You move out of your house. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Think about that.
4a. Related to territories is the internet. If you don't have an internet presence, you'll get hurt at some level. You'll still get bread/butter customers but not the enthusiasts. If you have an active forum or participate in one of the bigger forums out there, you can build a reputation for yourself. You need to be there at 1 AM for the guy just jonesing to buy something, and if he hits your site and all it says is your hours and what brands you carry, you're not feeding his habit. There are a couple sites and features I've seen that allow your site to cater to such an enthusiast, all while you're asleep at home. Or, if things are busy, wrenching away in the back room at 2 AM.
You're not supposed to sell over the internet but my last bike was an internet bike. The listing stated "Used" but it was simply built up and then packed up. It's less used than a new bike in a bike shop - I don't think they test rode it more than a hundred yards. You can use this tactic to increase your volume by blowing out bikes at discounts. Volume helps you with your discount level, free shipping, etc. It may not make you money but it might help you save money. You know what freight is on a 200 bike order? Say you ordered an extra 50 bikes and blew them all out - and in return you saved a few grand in shipping? It might be worth it.
5. Overall market - how is retail? Are people buying bikes? Helmets? Is riding popular? Can you get into schools and stuff and do helmet talks, safety talks, maybe "sponsor" the police department? Whatever it is, you need a market. If the town is not buying a lot, then you're done.
5a. Who are your competitors? In the area I know best, there's a family shop, a super big outdoors shop, a high end road shop, and a ski shop that sells bike shop bikes. Who are they aiming at? Where are the holes? In war, you don't attack the enemy's strongpoints - you attack where they're weak and outflank them. The bike business is the same - if someone has a particular market, you need to be in a slightly different one.
Some things on the bike industry:
1. No one has money in the business except the vendors so they're the ones who need to extend credit to the shops. Think about it this way - you think you're in a position to finance Trek? If you are, you won't need a shop - you could just buy your own bike company. Apparently, at some point, 80% of shops pay 30 days late or later. Vendors share this info with each other (except Specialized) and if you get on someone's bad side, you'll find doors closed everywhere. They actually have an industry credit meeting prior to the Interbike tradeshow. It's not official but they apparently spend a day or two comparing notes on good and bad shops. I don't know if they still do this but they definitely did this before.
2. Since everything is bought on credit, the vendor encourages you to pay earlier. Typically there's a discount if you do COD (and everyone will force you to do that for a bit). Maybe 2%. The larger your order, the more extended the terms. Cannondale, about 10 years ago, would ship in September and the payment due date would be March. They gave you 9% discount if you paid in Sept or something, and like 7% for Oct. By Feb it was 1%. And if you got more than, say, $100k, you got free shipping. By doing this they tie up your money so you can't buy as many Specializeds or Treks. I'm sure everyone is doing the same thing now.
3. Problem is most vendors manufacture based on pre-season orders because those are guaranteed sales. If you're Cannondale and you got a 10,000 total preseason order of SuperSix bikes, will you make 50,000? Probably not. It makes more sense for them to make something close to that number. Good for them. But say you can't keep them in stock and you want another 50 of them. Cannondale may not have anymore. Now you're stuck. You can trade with other shops but courtesy, at least back then, is you pay 5 or 10% for their "stocking" expenses, plus assembly if they assembled it already.
4. Pay - I'm not sure what pay is in different areas but one shop I know, at its peak, got the owner $60-70k/year. He sold the shop and went back to managing a hedge fund - he said he made as much in the fund in a month as he did in the shop in a year. I would expect less than that number - maybe $50k. Remember, if you pay yourself $1k/week, you need to sell about $3k/week just for your pay (not including the 7.68% social security, med insurance, liability, etc etc). If you hire a good manager ($40k ought to do it, you're looking at $800/wk or $2400 in sales per week to pay for the guy.
5. Tooling etc - If you buy a shop it'll have most of it. Otherwise you'll have to buy everything. It'll run you maybe $10k, maybe more. In addition you'll have to get new tools as they come out, suspension, fork, BB tools, cassette tools, chain, etc. Tools inevitably go missing or wear out or break so you'll be replacing them along the way.
6. You need a good service manager - one that keeps things in order, can run the repairs (triage, etc), doesn't overbook, etc. Now and then you get into the "We need to pull a late night" but it shouldn't be all the time.
7. Sales - if you base it on commission, you can pay people for performance. In general it'll be hard to find people for the floor or for mechanical work. I think kids in high school will want $10/hour. College maybe $12-14/hour. Plus the discount (always paid in full, or they work toward it - better if they pay for it, less cash out of your pocket).
8. Guru - all shops need a guru. Here's the scene. Someone comes in and asks "Hey, how do I replace the whatzit in the whosit? I bought the bike back in 1974." Then the kids grin and say "Hey Guru, can you help us out here?" And the Guru shows up. You need that guy, whoever it is. Guru will probably be your store manager too, sales and service.
9. You can't buy just one Zipp wheel. I think minimum buy in for 2007 was $10k in wheels. A lot of "cool" companies are like that - high buy ins. So those carbon wheels you wanted to buy for yourself? They'll cost you $10k up front. I can buy them a set for a little less than that.
10. There are internet only companies out there. They sell at wholesale to the retail. It's harder to support but for commodities (i.e. generic superlight carbon frame, generic aero wheels, etc) they will dig into a shop's margin.
What I've told people in the past is that if you want to be in the bike biz, get the money for the shop. Put it in the bank. Then volunteer at a shop you like on evenings and weekends. Ask for an employee discount but otherwise no pay. The shops are dying for evening and weekend help.
Employee discount doesn't hurt anyone, and if you can make yourself useful selling helmets or bikes or just shooting the breeze with someone on the floor (which frees up the other guys to do repairs, build, etc), you'll do the shop good. You keep your real job, you don't worry about liability or health or rent or upcoming bills, and you still get to live the bike shop dream.
I had people like what I just described at my shop. One guy in particular loved bikes, did IT, and I paid him to work evenings and weekends - he even opened the shop for me on Sundays in my burnt out days. I also had a kid who I didn't want to pay because money was too tight and I couldn't justify paying him over his learning curve months. His parents liked me so much though that they paid him to work for me. I also asked for help from the team that I sponsored - and on some days I'd have 8 or 9 guys talking about roof racks, helmets, pumps, bottle cages, and why the funny shorts are so comfy to customers all day. It was fun but I lost 10 years of "real life salary" doing it.
Bike shops are hard. But if you make it work, there's a reward.
At the end of a long day, we'd shut the doors, the lock echoing across the suddenly empty shop. We'd pull our bikes off the floor (employee bikes sit out there to prove we sell what we ride), fiddle with them just a bit, kit up, and go for a kick ass ride.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Bethel Spring Series - Technology
I've threatened to try and improve both the racer and promoter experience at the Bethel Spring Series. One of the things which really impressed me last year was Jonathan Adler's "live" updates during the torrential downpour on April 15th. Until recently such a thing would have been close to impossible, if only because there was only a very weak cell signal in the area. In 2007 we were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the course and found ourselves with a strong cell signal. I figure someone finally sold out and let the carriers put a bazillion antennas on their property nearby.
For the racers, this means a few things. Probably the most important thing - your cell phones work! So if you need to call home to report that you just won, feel free. Or, if things didn't go so well for you, well, the phones will work then too. And for those who have broadband air cards (that's what we call them at work - I don't know what they're supposed to be called), you can browse the 'Net while you're waiting for your race, so if you're leaving home while one of the Classics is just getting started, you may be able to follow along on your laptop at the race course.
For the promoters, the air card means something completely different - a way to update the website with results while still at the race.
Okay, that isn't really that innovative. I mean the big boys like Cyclingnews or Velonews do it all the time. But for the promoters, especially the one that does the results, it's very significant because it allows the results guy to post results while at the race. This saves said guy from having to type things up after returning home.
Since said guy is moi, this is a significant development.
I alluded to this card idea already so it's sort of old hat. The air card idea had a catch though - such an air card is useless without a computer that can utilize it. I briefly contemplated setting up a rig so I could carry my desktop in the van - a mini office if you will. But such a thing is a bit difficult to set-up, especially in our space limited van. Plus desktops aren't designed to be moved around a lot so they're not quite as receptive to bouncing around in a van. Laptops get abusive testing - dropped from a desk, coffee poured onto its keyboard, screen jabbed by an errant pen. Their hard drives are more shock resistant, just like the rest of the chassis/components, and it won't mind a bit of moisture. Desktops were good for desks.
I rapidly concluded that I need to buy a laptop for this work (brilliant, right?). A few factors helped in coming to this decision. First, I've been eyeing newer laptops since I resurrected an old 700 MHz (yes, 0.7 GHz) laptop, building it with a reasonable hard drive, 500 MB of RAM, and XP. It works fine if you don't mind waiting for type to appear, the cursor to move, and can view things in something like 256k colors. 10 years ago this thing would have been worth a fortune. Now it's barely able to browse the web (I disable Java to help it along - it's that bad). So I knew that a new laptop was sort of necessary. I placed a "perceived" value on such a laptop - a figure that I felt a laptop should cost. My number ended up at the $1000 range.
Second, this is the pre-Christmas "blow out sale" time. With retailers anxious that people are more worried about their mortgages than their gift-shopping, they've been slashing prices and trying to draw shoppers in, even before Thanksgiving ended - to open from 9 PM to midnight on Thanksgiving evening, that's desperate. To think that I was considering going out there, well, I won't comment on that. I did wake up at 4 AM the next morning to drive to Warwick, RI (and no, I wasn't staying at home, so it wasn't that far) to buy a $450 or $500 laptop. At half my perceived value, this was worth a shot. I got there before the 5 AM opening time and found myself in a packed parking lot with at least a hundred people in line. So much for that idea. I resigned myself to spending in the $650-$700 range and bought what seems to be a nice HP with all sorts of cool features. The two important features: a big screen for registration and the ability to edit html using NVU. Other significant features include video editing CPU power (possibly for finishline camera use), built in wireless (so the air card can use the single PCMCIA slot), and two hard drive bays (so I can eventually run a mirrored disk setup).
Note: Although the laptop came with Vista, it may or may not stay. I may be converting the old laptop to a much more CPU friendly Linux operating system, possibly one that doesn't require a hard drive, freeing up the XP Pro license currently running on it for this new HP (and the harddrive for a second drive on the HP). Although eventually I'd like to run Linux for everything, the reality is that I'm used to XP and don't want to make things more difficult for me. The goal, after all, is to make things easier.
Third, I could do a post on the laptop.
Okay, I'm just kidding.
Seriously though, there's an element of "this is work" or "this is play" when I'm editing or working on Bethel stuff on either my personal or work computers. By isolating a single computer for Bethel (and I've decided to expand that to "Bike Stuff"), the laptop will be my go to machine whenever I need to do work on the site.
There are other advantages for using just the laptop for bike stuff. With my home computers (two which I actively use), my work computer (yes, I edited pages on that), and a sorry attempt at editing pages on the old laptop, I always ran the risk of not updating the correct version of the page. By using a dedicated computer for Bethel, I didn't have to worry about version control for the web pages.
In the past I've updated a page, uploaded it, and then realized I uploaded a modified old page - so the uploaded page was a mix of regressive and progressive information. Not only that but the only version of the original page was sitting on a computer 50 miles away, so I had to recreate the page (or wait till I got to the other computer - home or office) until I fixed things.
When I updated a page incorrectly while in California... well, let me just say that I was extremely unhappy. With the laptop being the sole source of page editing, I know that when I update a page, it really is updated. Since I usually travel to do a spring training camp or two, having a decent laptop will enable me to get things done while recovering from my latest ride.
Part of the laptop's duty will be blog posting too, so this is the first post from the new laptop. Cool, eh?
I've been thinking of more things for Bethel as well. In fact, in a sleepless (most-of-the) night, I ended up scrawling ideas and plans across eleven (!) pages of paper. Even for Mister List-Maker, that's a lot of stuff. Realistically one or two pages will become reality, but if they do, it's a page or two of things which will make the Bethel Spring Series experience a better one for everyone there, both us as the promoters and you as the racers.
And ultimately, that's my goal.
For the racers, this means a few things. Probably the most important thing - your cell phones work! So if you need to call home to report that you just won, feel free. Or, if things didn't go so well for you, well, the phones will work then too. And for those who have broadband air cards (that's what we call them at work - I don't know what they're supposed to be called), you can browse the 'Net while you're waiting for your race, so if you're leaving home while one of the Classics is just getting started, you may be able to follow along on your laptop at the race course.
For the promoters, the air card means something completely different - a way to update the website with results while still at the race.
Okay, that isn't really that innovative. I mean the big boys like Cyclingnews or Velonews do it all the time. But for the promoters, especially the one that does the results, it's very significant because it allows the results guy to post results while at the race. This saves said guy from having to type things up after returning home.
Since said guy is moi, this is a significant development.
I alluded to this card idea already so it's sort of old hat. The air card idea had a catch though - such an air card is useless without a computer that can utilize it. I briefly contemplated setting up a rig so I could carry my desktop in the van - a mini office if you will. But such a thing is a bit difficult to set-up, especially in our space limited van. Plus desktops aren't designed to be moved around a lot so they're not quite as receptive to bouncing around in a van. Laptops get abusive testing - dropped from a desk, coffee poured onto its keyboard, screen jabbed by an errant pen. Their hard drives are more shock resistant, just like the rest of the chassis/components, and it won't mind a bit of moisture. Desktops were good for desks.
I rapidly concluded that I need to buy a laptop for this work (brilliant, right?). A few factors helped in coming to this decision. First, I've been eyeing newer laptops since I resurrected an old 700 MHz (yes, 0.7 GHz) laptop, building it with a reasonable hard drive, 500 MB of RAM, and XP. It works fine if you don't mind waiting for type to appear, the cursor to move, and can view things in something like 256k colors. 10 years ago this thing would have been worth a fortune. Now it's barely able to browse the web (I disable Java to help it along - it's that bad). So I knew that a new laptop was sort of necessary. I placed a "perceived" value on such a laptop - a figure that I felt a laptop should cost. My number ended up at the $1000 range.
Second, this is the pre-Christmas "blow out sale" time. With retailers anxious that people are more worried about their mortgages than their gift-shopping, they've been slashing prices and trying to draw shoppers in, even before Thanksgiving ended - to open from 9 PM to midnight on Thanksgiving evening, that's desperate. To think that I was considering going out there, well, I won't comment on that. I did wake up at 4 AM the next morning to drive to Warwick, RI (and no, I wasn't staying at home, so it wasn't that far) to buy a $450 or $500 laptop. At half my perceived value, this was worth a shot. I got there before the 5 AM opening time and found myself in a packed parking lot with at least a hundred people in line. So much for that idea. I resigned myself to spending in the $650-$700 range and bought what seems to be a nice HP with all sorts of cool features. The two important features: a big screen for registration and the ability to edit html using NVU. Other significant features include video editing CPU power (possibly for finishline camera use), built in wireless (so the air card can use the single PCMCIA slot), and two hard drive bays (so I can eventually run a mirrored disk setup).
Note: Although the laptop came with Vista, it may or may not stay. I may be converting the old laptop to a much more CPU friendly Linux operating system, possibly one that doesn't require a hard drive, freeing up the XP Pro license currently running on it for this new HP (and the harddrive for a second drive on the HP). Although eventually I'd like to run Linux for everything, the reality is that I'm used to XP and don't want to make things more difficult for me. The goal, after all, is to make things easier.
Third, I could do a post on the laptop.
Okay, I'm just kidding.
Seriously though, there's an element of "this is work" or "this is play" when I'm editing or working on Bethel stuff on either my personal or work computers. By isolating a single computer for Bethel (and I've decided to expand that to "Bike Stuff"), the laptop will be my go to machine whenever I need to do work on the site.
There are other advantages for using just the laptop for bike stuff. With my home computers (two which I actively use), my work computer (yes, I edited pages on that), and a sorry attempt at editing pages on the old laptop, I always ran the risk of not updating the correct version of the page. By using a dedicated computer for Bethel, I didn't have to worry about version control for the web pages.
In the past I've updated a page, uploaded it, and then realized I uploaded a modified old page - so the uploaded page was a mix of regressive and progressive information. Not only that but the only version of the original page was sitting on a computer 50 miles away, so I had to recreate the page (or wait till I got to the other computer - home or office) until I fixed things.
When I updated a page incorrectly while in California... well, let me just say that I was extremely unhappy. With the laptop being the sole source of page editing, I know that when I update a page, it really is updated. Since I usually travel to do a spring training camp or two, having a decent laptop will enable me to get things done while recovering from my latest ride.
Part of the laptop's duty will be blog posting too, so this is the first post from the new laptop. Cool, eh?
I've been thinking of more things for Bethel as well. In fact, in a sleepless (most-of-the) night, I ended up scrawling ideas and plans across eleven (!) pages of paper. Even for Mister List-Maker, that's a lot of stuff. Realistically one or two pages will become reality, but if they do, it's a page or two of things which will make the Bethel Spring Series experience a better one for everyone there, both us as the promoters and you as the racers.
And ultimately, that's my goal.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Racing - 2008 Bethel Spring Series Prelim
When there is an event, perhaps a race, which seems to be a fixture in the sport, it's easy to forget that there are individuals behind it. The Bethel Spring Series is one such event. I recently found fliers from 1993, and based on the info on the fliers, it might have been 1992 that the Series first started. I'm not sure, actually, and it bugs me a bit not knowing for sure. Regardless, except for the first year (when I simply helped out), the Bethel Spring Series has been one of my annual personal focal points. Every year, every spring, I know that there will be hundreds of racers looking to get off the trainer and onto the road. The Bethel Spring Series allows them to do this.
And I feel responsible to make it happen.
However, because the race relies on a couple individuals, there are human-type factors which affect the race. For many years I dreaded the first four months of the year because I felt obligated to hold the Series. I persevered because, well, it's like bike racing. When you're groveling in the field and things don't look too good, you don't just sit up and say "I'm done with it."
Actually, you might, but then that's a sign that perhaps you should take a break.
Usually, we'll grovel either until we finally get sawed off the back or the bell rings and signals just a few more minutes of hurt. Of course for me, the bell infuses my body with new found reserves, but that's a different topic altogether. After the race we cool down, change, go home, and try and figure out a way to reduce the hurt for the next race.
The Series groveling (promoting it, not the bike bit) stopped a few years ago. The bike bit still hurts and I haven't been able to finish a Pro-1-2-3 race in what seems like forever. But from the promoting side I've somehow regained a sense of purpose and motivation. It's not clear why but it just happened. Like when you're groveling and suddenly your legs start coming around, suddenly I've become more motivated to do the Series.
That's not to say that it was an easy process, even in the last seven months when, technically, the Series was done for the year. Since the 2007 Bethel Series ended, a lot of things have happened in my life.
2007 was the year I got married. In and of itself that's not a big factor since the missus is supportive of the Series, but the process took some energy - planning, ceremony, etc. The most significant thing relating to the Series is that I used a lot of my annual vacation time to do wedding and honeymoon stuff. I just checked and my normal 15-17 vacation days of training time in Jan and Feb have been reduced to just 8 days. That doesn't give me a lot of time to do massive hours in those two months leading up to the Series.
We also live about 90 minutes away from the course, and we used to live about 30 minutes away. We used to have all our stuff ready to go at our house - that's no longer the case. Because the weather may be completely different where we live, we don't want to risk parking the van here and then not being able to get to the race. This means we have to park the van local to the Series location and leave it there during the week.
Finally, even as the 2007 Series happened, we were in the process of prepping our house for sale. It went to a very nice couple in late August, we moved up north, and now we're in the process of finding a house for ourselves. Again, another thing to disrupt what used to be a relatively static and predictable schedule (as a side note, I lived in my previous house for over 14 years - so moving was a big shock for me).
Nonetheless, "it's about that time of year again", as Wendy says at the Bethel Selectman's office. We've started the process for holding the Series in 2008.
We'll be going for the Sundays in March, minus March 23 Easter, and two, if not three Sundays in April.
Our categories will remain the same - Cat 5s (two races), Cat 4s, M40/Jr, Women, Cat 3-4s, and Pro-1-2-3s.
We'll be giving out prizes like normal. Last year was $8000 in cash - this year we'll be doing something similar. The prizes start at about $1000 per week, grow to at least $1500 per week, and we give something like $1500 for the best overall racers.
A significant change the racers will see is the start times published for each race, a huge break from tradition. We've almost never done that, but since it's the #1 reason for calls and emails, I've decided to implement start times. Now everyone can call and email to see if we're on time.
Any other changes will be aimed at making it easier to set up and break down the race stuff. Ideally I'd like to have a better way of sweeping the course since that takes a ton of time and energy. I'm working on that, but if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!
The single biggest change in 2008 though should be invisible to the racers. I've decided that after volunteering my time and energy for 15 years that, in 2008, I'll be earning money from the Series. Not any prize money I might win but an actual "promoter's" fee if you will. I talked about this with a few people and as one pointed out, "Everyone thinks you make money from the race so you might as well."
I promise I won't rape the Series of its normal prize money, its reasonable entry fees, or its generosity to those that help out (marshals, sweepers, registration folk). I have taken a step to stop sponsoring an unrelated team in a different state - over the years we've given them a lot of money, probably enough to pay for an entry level Pro racing for a local Pro team.
Since I live so far away I've already started planning logistics for the travel - a primary and backup place to park the van, equipment storage, etc. And the promotion process will now include a three or even four hour drive on Saturday - pick up two guys who help out with the race, then drive them to the Series area Saturday afternoon/evening. And after the race on Sunday, we'll drive the van back to one of our parking spots, switch to a car, and drive home. Our helpers will get rides back from others in case you were wondering.
Related to the driving logistics, I also hope to have an air card (broadband Internet access) at Bethel, allowing us to make almost-live updates as the day progresses. This will benefit the racers because we'll be able to update the race results immediately. It will also save me from three to five hours of work updating the site - with the long drive ahead of us each Sunday afternoon, it would be better to have all the updates virtually done before we even left the course. I've been unwilling to change the format of the results page prior to this, but if I can upload pages directly out of our spreadsheet based results page, I'll sacrifice the integrity of the page design and do it.
I've finally made good on my promise of buying a couple UPSs (uninterruptible power supply) for both registration and the finishline camera. If our generator goes offline for a bit we'll still be able to work as normal. I'm also working on getting better finish line results so we can go deeper into each field. I'm not sure if it'll work out but I'd like to offer that to the racers.
The co-promoter Gene P will be working behind the scenes as normal for 2008. In fact we've already started making arrangements for the upcoming races. And the missus will be there too, helping out when possible. Since she's in the accounting world, tax season is her peak year - and the Series happens to take place in the seven weeks before the annual April 15 deadline.
So with this, I hope that you're all out there planning your assault on the 2008 racing season. And I hope that you'll make the Bethel Spring Series a part of that plan.
And I feel responsible to make it happen.
However, because the race relies on a couple individuals, there are human-type factors which affect the race. For many years I dreaded the first four months of the year because I felt obligated to hold the Series. I persevered because, well, it's like bike racing. When you're groveling in the field and things don't look too good, you don't just sit up and say "I'm done with it."
Actually, you might, but then that's a sign that perhaps you should take a break.
Usually, we'll grovel either until we finally get sawed off the back or the bell rings and signals just a few more minutes of hurt. Of course for me, the bell infuses my body with new found reserves, but that's a different topic altogether. After the race we cool down, change, go home, and try and figure out a way to reduce the hurt for the next race.
The Series groveling (promoting it, not the bike bit) stopped a few years ago. The bike bit still hurts and I haven't been able to finish a Pro-1-2-3 race in what seems like forever. But from the promoting side I've somehow regained a sense of purpose and motivation. It's not clear why but it just happened. Like when you're groveling and suddenly your legs start coming around, suddenly I've become more motivated to do the Series.
That's not to say that it was an easy process, even in the last seven months when, technically, the Series was done for the year. Since the 2007 Bethel Series ended, a lot of things have happened in my life.
2007 was the year I got married. In and of itself that's not a big factor since the missus is supportive of the Series, but the process took some energy - planning, ceremony, etc. The most significant thing relating to the Series is that I used a lot of my annual vacation time to do wedding and honeymoon stuff. I just checked and my normal 15-17 vacation days of training time in Jan and Feb have been reduced to just 8 days. That doesn't give me a lot of time to do massive hours in those two months leading up to the Series.
We also live about 90 minutes away from the course, and we used to live about 30 minutes away. We used to have all our stuff ready to go at our house - that's no longer the case. Because the weather may be completely different where we live, we don't want to risk parking the van here and then not being able to get to the race. This means we have to park the van local to the Series location and leave it there during the week.
Finally, even as the 2007 Series happened, we were in the process of prepping our house for sale. It went to a very nice couple in late August, we moved up north, and now we're in the process of finding a house for ourselves. Again, another thing to disrupt what used to be a relatively static and predictable schedule (as a side note, I lived in my previous house for over 14 years - so moving was a big shock for me).
Nonetheless, "it's about that time of year again", as Wendy says at the Bethel Selectman's office. We've started the process for holding the Series in 2008.
We'll be going for the Sundays in March, minus March 23 Easter, and two, if not three Sundays in April.
Our categories will remain the same - Cat 5s (two races), Cat 4s, M40/Jr, Women, Cat 3-4s, and Pro-1-2-3s.
We'll be giving out prizes like normal. Last year was $8000 in cash - this year we'll be doing something similar. The prizes start at about $1000 per week, grow to at least $1500 per week, and we give something like $1500 for the best overall racers.
A significant change the racers will see is the start times published for each race, a huge break from tradition. We've almost never done that, but since it's the #1 reason for calls and emails, I've decided to implement start times. Now everyone can call and email to see if we're on time.
Any other changes will be aimed at making it easier to set up and break down the race stuff. Ideally I'd like to have a better way of sweeping the course since that takes a ton of time and energy. I'm working on that, but if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!
The single biggest change in 2008 though should be invisible to the racers. I've decided that after volunteering my time and energy for 15 years that, in 2008, I'll be earning money from the Series. Not any prize money I might win but an actual "promoter's" fee if you will. I talked about this with a few people and as one pointed out, "Everyone thinks you make money from the race so you might as well."
I promise I won't rape the Series of its normal prize money, its reasonable entry fees, or its generosity to those that help out (marshals, sweepers, registration folk). I have taken a step to stop sponsoring an unrelated team in a different state - over the years we've given them a lot of money, probably enough to pay for an entry level Pro racing for a local Pro team.
Since I live so far away I've already started planning logistics for the travel - a primary and backup place to park the van, equipment storage, etc. And the promotion process will now include a three or even four hour drive on Saturday - pick up two guys who help out with the race, then drive them to the Series area Saturday afternoon/evening. And after the race on Sunday, we'll drive the van back to one of our parking spots, switch to a car, and drive home. Our helpers will get rides back from others in case you were wondering.
Related to the driving logistics, I also hope to have an air card (broadband Internet access) at Bethel, allowing us to make almost-live updates as the day progresses. This will benefit the racers because we'll be able to update the race results immediately. It will also save me from three to five hours of work updating the site - with the long drive ahead of us each Sunday afternoon, it would be better to have all the updates virtually done before we even left the course. I've been unwilling to change the format of the results page prior to this, but if I can upload pages directly out of our spreadsheet based results page, I'll sacrifice the integrity of the page design and do it.
I've finally made good on my promise of buying a couple UPSs (uninterruptible power supply) for both registration and the finishline camera. If our generator goes offline for a bit we'll still be able to work as normal. I'm also working on getting better finish line results so we can go deeper into each field. I'm not sure if it'll work out but I'd like to offer that to the racers.
The co-promoter Gene P will be working behind the scenes as normal for 2008. In fact we've already started making arrangements for the upcoming races. And the missus will be there too, helping out when possible. Since she's in the accounting world, tax season is her peak year - and the Series happens to take place in the seven weeks before the annual April 15 deadline.
So with this, I hope that you're all out there planning your assault on the 2008 racing season. And I hope that you'll make the Bethel Spring Series a part of that plan.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Helmet Cam - Optimized (or not)
I uploaded some optimized clips (they were in YouTube's ideal format) and although the uploads took less time, the clips looked about the same. So although I put a few out there, I'm not going to convert any more clips at this point. In the future I'll upload the optimized versions if only to cut my upload time by 50% or more (they are 30-50 MB versus 98-100 MB). But the quality, unfortunately, is no better than my un-optimized clips.
Someone asked me recently if I'll be doing more clips. I have a couple I want to work on (one from 2006, two from 2007) but I haven't been motivated to alot the necessary time to finish them. On average I'd say the clips represent about 2, maybe 3 long nights of work - 8 to 12 hours. Until I end up with a lot of time to focus on such things, I need to let them be.
In 2008 I hope to be more active in the race scene and hope to have a corresponding increase in both the number of clips as well as the variety of routes - races, group rides, and perhaps a couple Summer Street sprint type things. I'd really like to get a Gimbles or two on tape. A true night ride clip would be good too - urban riding with lots of traffic, motorpacing off of unsuspecting buses, trucks, and cars.
For those CompuTrainer users out there, I hope to have the clips available through ErgVideo, a place that sells clips with power data so you can "ride along" with the helmet cam wearer. When I make new clips available, if enough people ask, I think they'd be willing to purchase clips from me (hint hint). I only have one clip with power available and that is the prematurely ended 2007 Nutmeg State Games (when I go off road in the sprint). They sell DVD quality full length clips so you won't experience the fuzziness of YouTube.
Someone asked me recently if I'll be doing more clips. I have a couple I want to work on (one from 2006, two from 2007) but I haven't been motivated to alot the necessary time to finish them. On average I'd say the clips represent about 2, maybe 3 long nights of work - 8 to 12 hours. Until I end up with a lot of time to focus on such things, I need to let them be.
In 2008 I hope to be more active in the race scene and hope to have a corresponding increase in both the number of clips as well as the variety of routes - races, group rides, and perhaps a couple Summer Street sprint type things. I'd really like to get a Gimbles or two on tape. A true night ride clip would be good too - urban riding with lots of traffic, motorpacing off of unsuspecting buses, trucks, and cars.
For those CompuTrainer users out there, I hope to have the clips available through ErgVideo, a place that sells clips with power data so you can "ride along" with the helmet cam wearer. When I make new clips available, if enough people ask, I think they'd be willing to purchase clips from me (hint hint). I only have one clip with power available and that is the prematurely ended 2007 Nutmeg State Games (when I go off road in the sprint). They sell DVD quality full length clips so you won't experience the fuzziness of YouTube.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Doping - Purge?
Recently I had a very short email exchange with someone I honestly don't know very well. He's a long time cyclist, a long time racer, and someone who's involved in the sport, at least at the fringes, at the pro level.
He was wondering out loud if the sponsors of the sport will flee from the doping darkness permeating the sport. Of course, with the recent news, he mentioned the whole T-Mobile pulling out of the sport thing.
Now that in itself is an interesting move (T-Mobile's, not my friend's).
Previous sponsors caught up in major doping scandals have found that, for better or for worse, such enormous scandals work to their favor. After all, we don't talk about "Willy Voet's stop at the border", we talk about the "Festina Affair". Likewise, when people talk about the Floyd fiasco, it's hard not to think about Phonak.
What the heck is a Phonak anyway?
Well, according to Andy Rihs, a lot more people know who Phonak is, in part because of the doping scandals surrounding the team.
Is he upset?
Well, look here. He looks quite happy to me. I'd be "eagerly awaiting" the release of a book if the title included my company's name!
So T-Mobile is pulling out of cycling. So is Adidas. What does this mean?
It means that the two companies ended up in a win-win situation if they followed the course of action, and they would have been in a lose-lose situation if they did not.
Let's look at what would have happened if they stayed the course.
First off, we'd get sick and tired of hearing about T-Mobile stating that it's good that another ex-racer admitted doping, but that "Bob Stapleton is not of that era and we believe in him." They'd sort of gloss over the various details that are bound to come out - financial records, DNA matches, and all sorts of paper trails linking rider after rider to nefarious doctors and clinics. They no longer support that, even though they might have, at some level, in prior years.
This leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. Look, if you heard that there might be some e-coli tainted beef out there, would you go out and order your steak "rare" like normal? No, that would be a bit risky. Hearing "T-Mobile" next to words like "strongly deny" or the weaker "we stand by the team" just doesn't make you feel too good about buying a new T-Mobile phone. Okay, so the phone won't kill you, so it's a bad analogy. But if you were holding T-Mobile phone in one hand and some competitor's in another, and the two phones were virtually identical, you might select the T-Mobile phone because you're a pro-cycling fan.
Anyway, how do you fix that bad taste in your mouth thing? Back on steak, if you then heard that some previously-unknown-to-you beef company recalled some zillion pounds of Angus, well, you'd feel comfortable that, say, in a week, the steak sitting in front of you, still mooing, is not going to kill you.
Similarly, T-Mobile has "recalled" its sponsorship. It's pulling out. They no longer have to have some poor administrative assistant reviewing all the news releases containing the words "doping" and "T-Mobile". If someone calls T-Mobile and asks, "What are you planning on doing in response to the latest allegations by your ex-racer Singing Canary?", the T-Mobile doping damage control person can confidently say, "Well, T-Mobile is completely against doping in sport. It is unethical and we do not condone it. In fact, we have pulled all our cycling sponsorship so our stance cannot be misinterpreted."
The caller would probably say, "Thank you" and hang up. There's no story there. So the caller will say something like "The T-Mobile dope scandal continued today as Messr S Canary and S Pigeon testified today in court about the doping scandal that rocked the cycling world over 5 years ago in 2007".
And for the next 10 or 20 or 50 years, whenever we talk about the "huge doping scandals in bike racing", we'll talk about T-Mobile, Festina, and Phonak.
Well, less of Phonak I think. Not too many people remember the Polka Dot Jersey Rodolfo Massi, racing for Casino (who?), getting kicked out of the Tour while leading the King of the Mountains competition. Those same people probably don't remember a short version of Ivan Drago on that team - one platinum blonde racing machine named Alexander Vinokourov. You know him better as the guy who has such big thighs that they contain two types of blood.
Nor will race pundits harp on TVM or Lampre or Fasso Bortolo or... maybe I should just link to the list of teams around between 1992 or so and now.
In an old issue of VeloNews, probably in the 1991-1992 era, Allan Peiper (of Peugeot, Panasonic, and Tulip fame, and more recently of Davitamon-Lotto and the now defunct T-Mobile squad) was talking about the differences between the stars and the watercarriers. Although he was probably talking about some base level of "ability", I think his example illuminated what was happening in the peloton. Some were charging. Some were not.
At the time heart rate monitors were sort of new so everyone talked about heart rates the way they talk about wattage today. Peiper was riding along in the field, working somewhat intently, his HRM showing 160 or so BPM. A rider who Lemond called Capuccino rode up next to him and asked what Peipers HRM showed. Peiper replied and asked what the Coffee Man had displaying.
98 BPM.
Wow. Apparently he doesn't drink that caffeinated stuff. Or for that matter, he isn't pedaling his bike - when I'm sitting at a light I'm at 98 BPM. I could understand the heart rate difference if I was the one riding in Peiper's place in the Tour. But to have two very strong pros riding at such incredibly different levels? I'll leave it to you to figure that one out. Oh, wait, I don't have to - Chiappucci got caught using EPO and also got kicked off the Italian team with a high hematocrit. His response?
"The mentality of the sport has changed."
Not "I didn't dope". Not "No way no how I never did EPO". Or "Oh me oh my stick a needle in my eye."
I'm getting loopy.
Peiper, in an interview I can't find but it was in a British cycling magazine that interviewed current and retired Austrialian pros, said that he wishes he had doped. He came very close to winning a classic here and there but never got one. He knew others doped and they won. He stayed the high road. But, thinking back on it, he felt that given the chance, he'd dope to get a win or two. It's got to be depressing when you're training and racing and you're in really good form and humming along at 160 something BPM and then another guy rides up and he's literally at the same heart rate as when you first threw your leg over the bike. Think about that for a sec. I thought that interview was very illuminating.
Anyway, back to T-Mobile and their win win situation. Their team's unusual practices might have hurt the individuals themselves - I mean, look at the individual's situations - constantly called to come into court, hounded by the press, rejected by their formerly adoring fans. But T-Mobile will benefit from this for an eternity.
Well, my eternity.
I figure when I die, people will still know of T-Mobile because of doping, even if the company isn't around anymore. So is that a bad thing for T-Mobile?
The guy who exchanged emails with me wondered out loud (in text) if sponsors will flee the cycling market.
I told him I thought not.
I think certain sponsors are committed no matter what happens with the sport. For example, Nike will sponsor stadium sport stars until who knows when, ditto Oakley, ditto AMF or whoever makes basketballs and stuff like that. There are cycling equivalents. Of course Shimano and Campagnolo and SRAM will sponsors teams until there's no more bikes in the world. But what of non-cycling companies? Depending on their market and their home country, I think there are similarly positioned non-cycling specific companies who will stay the course. For example, Rabobank will be there forever - to sponsor a cycling team in Holland is like sponsoring the Bulls in Chicago, it will always, always work. Another sponsor would be...
Hm. I can't think of any more off the top of my head.
That puts us into more troubled waters. In the less cycling oriented countries, I think there will be a big shakeup. The purge I think will occur from within, from the cycling community, not from the sponsors. Yes the sponsors will demand clean cycling, but if racers are so afraid of getting caught that they stop doping, well, then they'll probably stop doping. A long time sponsor has a harder time in front of them (i.e. T-Mobile). A new sponsor will be better off (SlipStream) because there's that "childhood innocence" thing - they haven't been corrupted.
(With the last word unsaid - "Yet".)
A Cat 1 in the NY area was caught recently using some anti-something drug (whenever it's not testosterone or steroids, I figure it's a masking/related drug). He won Masters Nationals (the points race) this year, a month after his positive. Apparently there wasn't testing at Masters Nationals because nothing came up there. With this blemished track record in mind, it would make sense to test at the 2008 Masters Nationals. And if there was testing done then, well, I think not too many people would be blatantly juiced up in 2009. When it stops happening at the lower amateur levels, it'll be easier to stop it at the pro levels. Less places to test, to experiment, to corrupt. And if you have regression testing at an amateur level, well, we have 60,000 racers who have a racing license - there ought to be plenty for labs to practice on in that bunch.
The testing has to be reliable though. I think that it'll be absolutely necessary to have transparent doping procedures, even if that means having 3 labs test a single sample. Data should be shared or certain parameters revealed to the public (hemoglobin, hematocrit, for example) even if the test is negative.
Storing samples for future tests should become a standard thing, especially when taken during a non-competition time. Training camps for example might be a good time for a tester might take three times the normal sample in order to store two of them. Future results (for those cynics like me) should be pretty interesting. If a test for HGH does pop up, I have a feeling a lot of riders would be caught out if subjected to regressive testing.
Speaking of HGH, other things I think ought to be public are head circumferences as well as hand and foot "print volume" - some measure of the size of the hand or foot. These are measurements affected by long term HGH use. Such measurements, if they suddenly increase, should pin point an athlete for sample saving and close testing.
For pro cycling, the question really is whether or not the sponsors will stand for the current behavior. It's clear that they won't. However, it's just as clear that sponsors are interested in clean teams, or at least teams that appear clean.
So, no, there won't be a purge any time soon.
He was wondering out loud if the sponsors of the sport will flee from the doping darkness permeating the sport. Of course, with the recent news, he mentioned the whole T-Mobile pulling out of the sport thing.
Now that in itself is an interesting move (T-Mobile's, not my friend's).
Previous sponsors caught up in major doping scandals have found that, for better or for worse, such enormous scandals work to their favor. After all, we don't talk about "Willy Voet's stop at the border", we talk about the "Festina Affair". Likewise, when people talk about the Floyd fiasco, it's hard not to think about Phonak.
What the heck is a Phonak anyway?
Well, according to Andy Rihs, a lot more people know who Phonak is, in part because of the doping scandals surrounding the team.
Is he upset?
Well, look here. He looks quite happy to me. I'd be "eagerly awaiting" the release of a book if the title included my company's name!
So T-Mobile is pulling out of cycling. So is Adidas. What does this mean?
It means that the two companies ended up in a win-win situation if they followed the course of action, and they would have been in a lose-lose situation if they did not.
Let's look at what would have happened if they stayed the course.
First off, we'd get sick and tired of hearing about T-Mobile stating that it's good that another ex-racer admitted doping, but that "Bob Stapleton is not of that era and we believe in him." They'd sort of gloss over the various details that are bound to come out - financial records, DNA matches, and all sorts of paper trails linking rider after rider to nefarious doctors and clinics. They no longer support that, even though they might have, at some level, in prior years.
This leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. Look, if you heard that there might be some e-coli tainted beef out there, would you go out and order your steak "rare" like normal? No, that would be a bit risky. Hearing "T-Mobile" next to words like "strongly deny" or the weaker "we stand by the team" just doesn't make you feel too good about buying a new T-Mobile phone. Okay, so the phone won't kill you, so it's a bad analogy. But if you were holding T-Mobile phone in one hand and some competitor's in another, and the two phones were virtually identical, you might select the T-Mobile phone because you're a pro-cycling fan.
Anyway, how do you fix that bad taste in your mouth thing? Back on steak, if you then heard that some previously-unknown-to-you beef company recalled some zillion pounds of Angus, well, you'd feel comfortable that, say, in a week, the steak sitting in front of you, still mooing, is not going to kill you.
Similarly, T-Mobile has "recalled" its sponsorship. It's pulling out. They no longer have to have some poor administrative assistant reviewing all the news releases containing the words "doping" and "T-Mobile". If someone calls T-Mobile and asks, "What are you planning on doing in response to the latest allegations by your ex-racer Singing Canary?", the T-Mobile doping damage control person can confidently say, "Well, T-Mobile is completely against doping in sport. It is unethical and we do not condone it. In fact, we have pulled all our cycling sponsorship so our stance cannot be misinterpreted."
The caller would probably say, "Thank you" and hang up. There's no story there. So the caller will say something like "The T-Mobile dope scandal continued today as Messr S Canary and S Pigeon testified today in court about the doping scandal that rocked the cycling world over 5 years ago in 2007".
And for the next 10 or 20 or 50 years, whenever we talk about the "huge doping scandals in bike racing", we'll talk about T-Mobile, Festina, and Phonak.
Well, less of Phonak I think. Not too many people remember the Polka Dot Jersey Rodolfo Massi, racing for Casino (who?), getting kicked out of the Tour while leading the King of the Mountains competition. Those same people probably don't remember a short version of Ivan Drago on that team - one platinum blonde racing machine named Alexander Vinokourov. You know him better as the guy who has such big thighs that they contain two types of blood.
Nor will race pundits harp on TVM or Lampre or Fasso Bortolo or... maybe I should just link to the list of teams around between 1992 or so and now.
In an old issue of VeloNews, probably in the 1991-1992 era, Allan Peiper (of Peugeot, Panasonic, and Tulip fame, and more recently of Davitamon-Lotto and the now defunct T-Mobile squad) was talking about the differences between the stars and the watercarriers. Although he was probably talking about some base level of "ability", I think his example illuminated what was happening in the peloton. Some were charging. Some were not.
At the time heart rate monitors were sort of new so everyone talked about heart rates the way they talk about wattage today. Peiper was riding along in the field, working somewhat intently, his HRM showing 160 or so BPM. A rider who Lemond called Capuccino rode up next to him and asked what Peipers HRM showed. Peiper replied and asked what the Coffee Man had displaying.
98 BPM.
Wow. Apparently he doesn't drink that caffeinated stuff. Or for that matter, he isn't pedaling his bike - when I'm sitting at a light I'm at 98 BPM. I could understand the heart rate difference if I was the one riding in Peiper's place in the Tour. But to have two very strong pros riding at such incredibly different levels? I'll leave it to you to figure that one out. Oh, wait, I don't have to - Chiappucci got caught using EPO and also got kicked off the Italian team with a high hematocrit. His response?
"The mentality of the sport has changed."
Not "I didn't dope". Not "No way no how I never did EPO". Or "Oh me oh my stick a needle in my eye."
I'm getting loopy.
Peiper, in an interview I can't find but it was in a British cycling magazine that interviewed current and retired Austrialian pros, said that he wishes he had doped. He came very close to winning a classic here and there but never got one. He knew others doped and they won. He stayed the high road. But, thinking back on it, he felt that given the chance, he'd dope to get a win or two. It's got to be depressing when you're training and racing and you're in really good form and humming along at 160 something BPM and then another guy rides up and he's literally at the same heart rate as when you first threw your leg over the bike. Think about that for a sec. I thought that interview was very illuminating.
Anyway, back to T-Mobile and their win win situation. Their team's unusual practices might have hurt the individuals themselves - I mean, look at the individual's situations - constantly called to come into court, hounded by the press, rejected by their formerly adoring fans. But T-Mobile will benefit from this for an eternity.
Well, my eternity.
I figure when I die, people will still know of T-Mobile because of doping, even if the company isn't around anymore. So is that a bad thing for T-Mobile?
The guy who exchanged emails with me wondered out loud (in text) if sponsors will flee the cycling market.
I told him I thought not.
I think certain sponsors are committed no matter what happens with the sport. For example, Nike will sponsor stadium sport stars until who knows when, ditto Oakley, ditto AMF or whoever makes basketballs and stuff like that. There are cycling equivalents. Of course Shimano and Campagnolo and SRAM will sponsors teams until there's no more bikes in the world. But what of non-cycling companies? Depending on their market and their home country, I think there are similarly positioned non-cycling specific companies who will stay the course. For example, Rabobank will be there forever - to sponsor a cycling team in Holland is like sponsoring the Bulls in Chicago, it will always, always work. Another sponsor would be...
Hm. I can't think of any more off the top of my head.
That puts us into more troubled waters. In the less cycling oriented countries, I think there will be a big shakeup. The purge I think will occur from within, from the cycling community, not from the sponsors. Yes the sponsors will demand clean cycling, but if racers are so afraid of getting caught that they stop doping, well, then they'll probably stop doping. A long time sponsor has a harder time in front of them (i.e. T-Mobile). A new sponsor will be better off (SlipStream) because there's that "childhood innocence" thing - they haven't been corrupted.
(With the last word unsaid - "Yet".)
A Cat 1 in the NY area was caught recently using some anti-something drug (whenever it's not testosterone or steroids, I figure it's a masking/related drug). He won Masters Nationals (the points race) this year, a month after his positive. Apparently there wasn't testing at Masters Nationals because nothing came up there. With this blemished track record in mind, it would make sense to test at the 2008 Masters Nationals. And if there was testing done then, well, I think not too many people would be blatantly juiced up in 2009. When it stops happening at the lower amateur levels, it'll be easier to stop it at the pro levels. Less places to test, to experiment, to corrupt. And if you have regression testing at an amateur level, well, we have 60,000 racers who have a racing license - there ought to be plenty for labs to practice on in that bunch.
The testing has to be reliable though. I think that it'll be absolutely necessary to have transparent doping procedures, even if that means having 3 labs test a single sample. Data should be shared or certain parameters revealed to the public (hemoglobin, hematocrit, for example) even if the test is negative.
Storing samples for future tests should become a standard thing, especially when taken during a non-competition time. Training camps for example might be a good time for a tester might take three times the normal sample in order to store two of them. Future results (for those cynics like me) should be pretty interesting. If a test for HGH does pop up, I have a feeling a lot of riders would be caught out if subjected to regressive testing.
Speaking of HGH, other things I think ought to be public are head circumferences as well as hand and foot "print volume" - some measure of the size of the hand or foot. These are measurements affected by long term HGH use. Such measurements, if they suddenly increase, should pin point an athlete for sample saving and close testing.
For pro cycling, the question really is whether or not the sponsors will stand for the current behavior. It's clear that they won't. However, it's just as clear that sponsors are interested in clean teams, or at least teams that appear clean.
So, no, there won't be a purge any time soon.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Story - 2:1 - Dirty Sprinting
When you get a small breakaway group that contains two racers from a particular team, you'll hear the announcers talk about how the two teammates "have the advantage". They're supposed to attack in turn, forcing the others to chase, while the other teammate sits in. Ideally one teammate time trials away, the other sits on the chasers till the sprint and then gets second.
In reality it's much less straightforward.
If the two teammates are not that strong, the others will easily outmaneuver them. For example, if the two teammates are big strong Cancellera type guys and there's a 10k climb before the finish, well, it's pretty clear that the two big guys aren't going to make it over the top. Likewise, if you have two domestiques in a break with a powerful all around team leader like a Museeuw (who has no teammates around him), it's unlikely that the domestiques will be able to out-power the stronger racer.
The "advantage" also varies with different size breaks. If a team has four racers in a break, that sounds great, right? What if the break had 25 total racers? Good but not so great. If the break had five racers? Excellent numbers. Well, for the four teammates. Not promising for their single opponent.
So if you have two teammates, both national team racers, in a break with one amateur racing for a local team, what would happen?
Such a scenario played out at a small criterium in Stirling, NJ. A GS Mengoni racer, a NY local, provoked a move that drew out two racers from a high powered field. Since the race was held in Team Navigator's backyard, it was surprising that no Nav riders made it up. But the fact that they weren't up there meant one thing.
The three riders in the break were strong.
The two other racers in the break? Teammates from a foreign (but English speaking) country's national track team. Obviously, if they represented their country, they were solid, strong riders. The Mengoni racer would eventually turn pro with the 7-Up team, so he too was a strong rider. The three of them set about solidifying their lead until it was apparent that no one could bridge up.
As the laps wound down, the three racers started taking the edge off their pulls. The race seemed wrapped up and they needed to focus on the podium order. I found it surprising that the Mengoni rider kept working hard, never slacking on a pull (at least not so I could tell). Out numbered two to one, it seemed like he could plead "team tactics" and skip a pull or two. Everyone knows that the textbook says the two teammates should take turns attacking, and everyone waited for the attacks to start.
Surprisingly, although the three racers made a few feints at each other, they seemed resigned to working out the race in the last lap. The three of them took the bell, in this order: Trackie1, Mengoni, Trackie2. Only four turns separated them from the finish, and they flew into the first turn at full bore.
Since it's a slight downhill approach into a pretty narrow turn, the three rode through in single file. With time and distance rapidly running, Trackie2 launched a ferocious attack from the back as soon as the road straightened out. As a trackie, he had a good jump and got a bit of a gap right away. The Mengoni rider countered, as he had to, with Trackie1 on his wheel, as expected.
Now everyone reads the same "How to Race" textbooks and these three weren't any different. The expected order would be for Trackie2 to attack first. Then Mengoni would bridge, dragging along a relatively rested Trackie1. Then Trackie1 would launch a leg withering attack, with an exhausted Mengoni unable to respond.
The Mengoni rider knew the textbook too. So although he bridged to the powerful Trackie2, he did so while keeping an eye on Trackie1. In fact, even though Trackie2 was doing his utmost to get away, the Mengoni rider bridged without going into the red. Although that in itself is amazing, it gets better.
He reconnected towards the end of the backstretch, just short of turn 3. Predictably, by the book, Trackie1 launched an even more ferocious attack, blasting through the turn and sprinting away down the third stretch. And although the Mengoni rider had just made a tremendous 35 mph effort down a somewhat windy stretch of road, he had left just enough in the tank to respond to just such a move.
To both Trackie1 and Trackie2's surprise, the Mengoni rider immediately bolted off after the relatively fresh and rapidly disappearing Trackie1. The Mengoni rider bridged just before turn 4, the last turn of the course. Trackie2, who had thought his work was done, somehow dug deep enough to latch onto the flying Mengoni wheel, and held the caboose position through that last turn.
At this point, Trackie1 was pretty spent - he thought his initial attack would seal the deal and he'd just motor to the finish. With the Mengoni rider on this wheel though things weren't the way the two teammates expected. In fact, only a few hundred meters from the line, they were in the same order as they were at the bell - Trackie1, Mengoni, Trackie2.
Except now they were all breathing hard.
The trio streamed out of the last turn, Trackie1 opening up the rockets to lead out the other two - and with the Mengoni rider in second spot, Trackie1 could pull off whenever, put the Mengoni racer into the wind, and force the Mengoni rider to give Trackie2 an armchair ride to the finish.
The two track riders also knew class when they saw it. And though they might have underestimated him at the bell, they'd learned a lot in that last 3/4 of a lap. They knew the Mengoni rider was stronger than that.
They needed to dig deep into the playbook.
Way deep.
In fact, they pulled out the other playbook. The black one. The "Do Not Open Except in Case of Emergency" one.
And they went down the scenarios until they found the one. "Two teammates, allegedly very strong, allegedly very good sprinters, find themselves in a break with a guy who allegedly doesn't sprint but seems to sprint as well as the strong sprinting teammates and responds to multiple attacks with scary efficiency".
The book called for plan DZ-015.
And so they executed.
Trackie1 sprinted ferociously out of the last turn, leading out the Mengoni rider and Trackie2, who was now the undisputed leader of the two track teammates. Trackie1 wrenched at the bike like he was trying to rip it to pieces, accelerating well into the red zone. The Mengoni rider, know he'd be dumped into the wind a little too far out from the line, stuck to him like limpet mine, ready to go for a long, drawn out sprint.
That's when Trackie1 slammed on the brakes.
Now, normally, locking up your rear wheel at something like 40 mph isn't a good idea. It's especially unsafe when there's a guy sprinting like mad about 12 inches behind you.
But if your teammate, a further five feet back, knows what's about to happen, well, slamming on your brakes at 40 mph might actually be a pretty good idea.
If you ride dirty.
The Mengoni rider expected a lot of things, maybe a chop, a closed door, a skipped wheel, but not something quite so blatant and obvious. He also slammed his brakes on, barely avoiding the skidding sprinter, skidding to one side of Trackie1. And he knew what was coming next.
Trackie2, going like he was shot out of a cannon, on the other side of Trackie1.
Just because you know something is going to happen doesn't mean you're going to be able to anything about it. And with 200 meters to go, watching your newest arch nemesis sprint away from you while you're still on the brakes trying to avoid your newest nemesis's teammate slithering around the road in front of you... well, it presents a bleak picture.
The Mengoni rider, though, was furious, and fury, fury is a fuel. Somehow he found the energy to jump again. Trackie1 was done, cooked, but even he knew trouble when he saw it - and the fire in the Mengoni rider's eyes meant trouble. He screamed a warning to his teammate.
The Mengoni rider smiled at this point of the story. He said that when Trackie2 turned around and found the Mengoni rider rocketing towards him, even after all the shazzam they put him through, Trackie2's eyes widened in fear. To see him scared like that made it all worth it.
Trackie2 turned back around and sprinted like his life depended on it, because, at some level, it probably did.
And although the sprint was close, they didn't need a camera to decide. Trackie2 had won the race. With no protest lodged the result stood.
I asked the Mengoni rider why he didn't protest. He said that it didn't matter, second was fine. Eventually, he said, those riders would pay the price. But not here, not now. They'd be riding nervous and scared for a while. Because, as good bike handlers as they might be, he showed them that he could hold his own against them. They knew they rode dirty, and therefore they knew to expect something like that back at them. And when it came down to the wild and crazy mass field sprints, who know what would happen.
I never heard of those national team track riders again but the Mengoni rider went on to sign with 7-Up and rode pro for a few seasons. He never lost sight of his roots and would always say hi whenever I saw him, even at the big races. He'd even tell me that he heard me cheering at such and such a race. It's incredible that he remembers, first because there are lots of people, and second, because he made the effort to remember and tell me.
What's most surprising about the story is the Mengoni rider told me the story about 30 minutes after the race finished.
They'd crossed the line, he'd done whatever (flicked them off, yelled at them, something), rode back to his car, and changed. And when he stepped out of the car, he was the same old smiling self. He told me this story like it had happened years ago. If it was me I'd still be shaking with the adrenaline. Him? Sipping whatever drink and talking and laughing like he was talking about a movie.
There's class in a racer. It's hard to define, but probably the most illustrative example would be the mythical old time coach/soigneur squeezing a rider's leg and immediately proclaiming him to be the next great racer, just from the "feel" of the rider's muscles.
And then there's class as a person.
This Mengoni racer, he had both.
In reality it's much less straightforward.
If the two teammates are not that strong, the others will easily outmaneuver them. For example, if the two teammates are big strong Cancellera type guys and there's a 10k climb before the finish, well, it's pretty clear that the two big guys aren't going to make it over the top. Likewise, if you have two domestiques in a break with a powerful all around team leader like a Museeuw (who has no teammates around him), it's unlikely that the domestiques will be able to out-power the stronger racer.
The "advantage" also varies with different size breaks. If a team has four racers in a break, that sounds great, right? What if the break had 25 total racers? Good but not so great. If the break had five racers? Excellent numbers. Well, for the four teammates. Not promising for their single opponent.
So if you have two teammates, both national team racers, in a break with one amateur racing for a local team, what would happen?
Such a scenario played out at a small criterium in Stirling, NJ. A GS Mengoni racer, a NY local, provoked a move that drew out two racers from a high powered field. Since the race was held in Team Navigator's backyard, it was surprising that no Nav riders made it up. But the fact that they weren't up there meant one thing.
The three riders in the break were strong.
The two other racers in the break? Teammates from a foreign (but English speaking) country's national track team. Obviously, if they represented their country, they were solid, strong riders. The Mengoni racer would eventually turn pro with the 7-Up team, so he too was a strong rider. The three of them set about solidifying their lead until it was apparent that no one could bridge up.
As the laps wound down, the three racers started taking the edge off their pulls. The race seemed wrapped up and they needed to focus on the podium order. I found it surprising that the Mengoni rider kept working hard, never slacking on a pull (at least not so I could tell). Out numbered two to one, it seemed like he could plead "team tactics" and skip a pull or two. Everyone knows that the textbook says the two teammates should take turns attacking, and everyone waited for the attacks to start.
Surprisingly, although the three racers made a few feints at each other, they seemed resigned to working out the race in the last lap. The three of them took the bell, in this order: Trackie1, Mengoni, Trackie2. Only four turns separated them from the finish, and they flew into the first turn at full bore.
Since it's a slight downhill approach into a pretty narrow turn, the three rode through in single file. With time and distance rapidly running, Trackie2 launched a ferocious attack from the back as soon as the road straightened out. As a trackie, he had a good jump and got a bit of a gap right away. The Mengoni rider countered, as he had to, with Trackie1 on his wheel, as expected.
Now everyone reads the same "How to Race" textbooks and these three weren't any different. The expected order would be for Trackie2 to attack first. Then Mengoni would bridge, dragging along a relatively rested Trackie1. Then Trackie1 would launch a leg withering attack, with an exhausted Mengoni unable to respond.
The Mengoni rider knew the textbook too. So although he bridged to the powerful Trackie2, he did so while keeping an eye on Trackie1. In fact, even though Trackie2 was doing his utmost to get away, the Mengoni rider bridged without going into the red. Although that in itself is amazing, it gets better.
He reconnected towards the end of the backstretch, just short of turn 3. Predictably, by the book, Trackie1 launched an even more ferocious attack, blasting through the turn and sprinting away down the third stretch. And although the Mengoni rider had just made a tremendous 35 mph effort down a somewhat windy stretch of road, he had left just enough in the tank to respond to just such a move.
To both Trackie1 and Trackie2's surprise, the Mengoni rider immediately bolted off after the relatively fresh and rapidly disappearing Trackie1. The Mengoni rider bridged just before turn 4, the last turn of the course. Trackie2, who had thought his work was done, somehow dug deep enough to latch onto the flying Mengoni wheel, and held the caboose position through that last turn.
At this point, Trackie1 was pretty spent - he thought his initial attack would seal the deal and he'd just motor to the finish. With the Mengoni rider on this wheel though things weren't the way the two teammates expected. In fact, only a few hundred meters from the line, they were in the same order as they were at the bell - Trackie1, Mengoni, Trackie2.
Except now they were all breathing hard.
The trio streamed out of the last turn, Trackie1 opening up the rockets to lead out the other two - and with the Mengoni rider in second spot, Trackie1 could pull off whenever, put the Mengoni racer into the wind, and force the Mengoni rider to give Trackie2 an armchair ride to the finish.
The two track riders also knew class when they saw it. And though they might have underestimated him at the bell, they'd learned a lot in that last 3/4 of a lap. They knew the Mengoni rider was stronger than that.
They needed to dig deep into the playbook.
Way deep.
In fact, they pulled out the other playbook. The black one. The "Do Not Open Except in Case of Emergency" one.
And they went down the scenarios until they found the one. "Two teammates, allegedly very strong, allegedly very good sprinters, find themselves in a break with a guy who allegedly doesn't sprint but seems to sprint as well as the strong sprinting teammates and responds to multiple attacks with scary efficiency".
The book called for plan DZ-015.
And so they executed.
Trackie1 sprinted ferociously out of the last turn, leading out the Mengoni rider and Trackie2, who was now the undisputed leader of the two track teammates. Trackie1 wrenched at the bike like he was trying to rip it to pieces, accelerating well into the red zone. The Mengoni rider, know he'd be dumped into the wind a little too far out from the line, stuck to him like limpet mine, ready to go for a long, drawn out sprint.
That's when Trackie1 slammed on the brakes.
Now, normally, locking up your rear wheel at something like 40 mph isn't a good idea. It's especially unsafe when there's a guy sprinting like mad about 12 inches behind you.
But if your teammate, a further five feet back, knows what's about to happen, well, slamming on your brakes at 40 mph might actually be a pretty good idea.
If you ride dirty.
The Mengoni rider expected a lot of things, maybe a chop, a closed door, a skipped wheel, but not something quite so blatant and obvious. He also slammed his brakes on, barely avoiding the skidding sprinter, skidding to one side of Trackie1. And he knew what was coming next.
Trackie2, going like he was shot out of a cannon, on the other side of Trackie1.
Just because you know something is going to happen doesn't mean you're going to be able to anything about it. And with 200 meters to go, watching your newest arch nemesis sprint away from you while you're still on the brakes trying to avoid your newest nemesis's teammate slithering around the road in front of you... well, it presents a bleak picture.
The Mengoni rider, though, was furious, and fury, fury is a fuel. Somehow he found the energy to jump again. Trackie1 was done, cooked, but even he knew trouble when he saw it - and the fire in the Mengoni rider's eyes meant trouble. He screamed a warning to his teammate.
The Mengoni rider smiled at this point of the story. He said that when Trackie2 turned around and found the Mengoni rider rocketing towards him, even after all the shazzam they put him through, Trackie2's eyes widened in fear. To see him scared like that made it all worth it.
Trackie2 turned back around and sprinted like his life depended on it, because, at some level, it probably did.
And although the sprint was close, they didn't need a camera to decide. Trackie2 had won the race. With no protest lodged the result stood.
I asked the Mengoni rider why he didn't protest. He said that it didn't matter, second was fine. Eventually, he said, those riders would pay the price. But not here, not now. They'd be riding nervous and scared for a while. Because, as good bike handlers as they might be, he showed them that he could hold his own against them. They knew they rode dirty, and therefore they knew to expect something like that back at them. And when it came down to the wild and crazy mass field sprints, who know what would happen.
I never heard of those national team track riders again but the Mengoni rider went on to sign with 7-Up and rode pro for a few seasons. He never lost sight of his roots and would always say hi whenever I saw him, even at the big races. He'd even tell me that he heard me cheering at such and such a race. It's incredible that he remembers, first because there are lots of people, and second, because he made the effort to remember and tell me.
What's most surprising about the story is the Mengoni rider told me the story about 30 minutes after the race finished.
They'd crossed the line, he'd done whatever (flicked them off, yelled at them, something), rode back to his car, and changed. And when he stepped out of the car, he was the same old smiling self. He told me this story like it had happened years ago. If it was me I'd still be shaking with the adrenaline. Him? Sipping whatever drink and talking and laughing like he was talking about a movie.
There's class in a racer. It's hard to define, but probably the most illustrative example would be the mythical old time coach/soigneur squeezing a rider's leg and immediately proclaiming him to be the next great racer, just from the "feel" of the rider's muscles.
And then there's class as a person.
This Mengoni racer, he had both.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Review - Cannondale SI SRM cranks - Mechanicals
The Cannondale I bought had one feature in particular in which I was interested - the Cannondale SI version of the SRM crankset.
Three things differentiate this crankset from other non-Cannondale cranks.
First, it has an oversize BB30 bottom bracket. The BB refers to the fact that it's a bottom bracket. The 30 refers to the internal diameter of the bearings. A previously proprietary design, Cannondale has released specs for use by other companies - an open source design if you will. As someone that works with open source software (linux and putty among other things), it's refreshing to see a good design shared with others.
The whole oversized-bearing concept isn't new - the standard 68mm shell will accept outboard bearings with much larger than current outboard mounted 24mm I.D. (internal diameter) bearings. Placing the bearings outside the bottom bracket shell has its disadvantages, the primary one being the fact that the bearings are so far apart from left to right. The crankarms have to be further apart too, or designed carefully to keep them relatively narrow. One thing that kept me away from Shimano, FSA, and related cranksets are their relatively wide Q-factors, the distance between the pedals left-to-right. Campy has consistently kept their Q-factor relatively small and Cannondale's SI cranksets follow a similar philosophy.
Instead of pushing the bearings outside the shell, Cannondale incorporates oversized bearings by stretching the bottom bracket shell itself. This is nothing new - Cannondale was the first to use a huge headset bearing, they use the widest (and single tube) suspension fork leg, and they first appeared on the map by mass producing oversized aluminum framesets. At any rate, 30mm I.D. bearings sit inside a much bigger than normal bottom bracket shell. With the outside-to-outside measurement the standard 68mm (instead of 90mm), it is a narrower design, more efficient due to the shorter bottom bracket axle, and gives the crankarm designer leeway to stiffen up the cranks laterally.
So my new Cannondale has such a bottom bracket shell and a corresponding oversized-bearing bottom bracket. The latter is nice because it uses a large diameter hollow aluminum axle - light and stiff. The short axle focuses leg power closer to the center plane of the bike. And the simple design (pressed in bearings) means less parts and a cleaner install. Sort of like integrated headsets versus the cup and cone ones - it's much easier now with the integrated headsets (no complex tools necessary). The integrated bottom bracket is similar, except that to replace the bearings (when was the last time I wore out a bottom bracket?) you need to press the new ones back into place. Cannondale has conveniently included the tools for doing this, so no worries on my part.
The second difference is the Cannondale specific Hollowgram SI (System Integrated) crankarms. Although the bottom bracket shell is an open standard, Cannondale has their own thoughts on what cranks should connect to the bottom bracket. Currently Specialized has a BB30 crank/BB combo, and a few other companies too, but nothing too widespread. Cannondale's cranks are hollow aluminum, extremely stiff, and very light. They are a modern version of the Pong cranks from way back when. They are among the lightest and stiffest cranks out there. With a standard width bottom bracket, the crank can be a little wider to make for a very laterally stiff arm. In addition the crank can follow the chainstay profile to give maximum clearance for the rider's shoe (and booties - but more on that later).
The final significant difference in the crank contains the proprietary SRM chainring spider, the force measuring setup which first widely appeared under Greg Lemond. The original power measuring system, the SRM measures the twisting forces between the bottom bracket axle and the chainrings. Because both left and right arms exert force on the axle, the SRM measures power from both legs. (I mention this because the Ergometer only measures the difference between the right and left leg.) The spider normally adds some weight, but the SI crankset allows the crankset to come out at something like 657 grams whereas the other "light" SRMs (Dura Ace, FSA) are more like 800 grams, with the standard one weighing in at about the same weight. Remember my way of measuring weight? Every 45 grams is 0.1 pounds - and this means the SI SRMs are about 150 grams, or 0.3 pounds, lighter than other SRMs. Not bad for just the cranks, right?
The SI SRM has a nice stiff bottom bracket, a narrow Q factor, and works in the efficiently stiff SystemSix frameset I've wanted to use. Great! So how are the cranks?
Ah, well. Hm. Let me go over what I found in my limited testing so far.
The shifting seems fine, but new chainrings always seem fine for the first few thousand miles. So that's sort of a wash. Appearance wise I'm not a fan of the black rings - I prefer the chiseled look of the Campy Record rings I have on my Primary Giant. Perhaps at some point I'll swap out the rings. Till then though, I'll suffer along. I'm also keeping the original KMC chain. It's quiet enough but my peace of mind is asking me to install a Campy 10s chain. I'll wait till the sand is off the roads and do the chain, perhaps the chainrings. Of course if I'm my normal self, the chain won't happen till spring of 2009 and the chainrings only when they wear out.
The cranks seem very stiff but it's hard to quantify since the cranks sit on a much stiffer frame. Regardless, I did notice that while sitting on the trainer (same rear skewer, same wheels, same tires), the bottom bracket shell barely moves on the Cannondale but sways noticeably with the Giant TCR carbon (I'd estimate the visible movement as Giant = 10-15 mm and Cannondale = 5 mm) . The Giant's Record chainrings therefore move a bit too, but there is a chainring "sway" (a left right movement as you pedal) which is noticeably separate from the BB sway. The sway is about 2-5 mm relative to the bottom bracket shell. The SI has almost neither - perhaps a 1-2 mm chainring sway to accompany that 5 mm or less bottom bracket sway. However, since chainring sways also develop over a couple thousand miles of riding, I'll have to reserve judgement on that.
I should point out that the cranks are shorter than my Records - I've returned to 170s after about five or so years on 175 mm cranks. I've been rethinking the long crank theory - I think that it's a good thing for someone who is short on fitness (relatively speaking) but, just like a long stroke engine loses ability to rev as highly as a short stroke engine, I am starting to think that short crankarms allow a rider to reach higher top speeds.
This upcoming season will be an experiment of sorts - I feel comfy on both 175s and 170s and I want to see if a shorter crank will help when I'm fit. As part of my "controlled" experiment, I want to measure my output differences between the carbon Giant TCR with 175s and the SystemSix with the 170mm SI cranks. I'll be doing this (hopefully soon) on a friend's Computrainer, a device which will allow me to swap bikes quickly without too much fuss, all while keeping the cranks, pedals, and bike intact.
A significant difference with the shorter cranks is that I found that my comfy "loafing along" cadence immediately shot up about 10-15 rpms, from about 85-90 rpms to about 100-105 rpms. I also found that my legs remembered the 170mm radius pedal circle - I felt immediately comfortable spinning the cranks around. This remained especially true when cresting short hills - I experienced the "rev-up" feeling as my cadence increased over the top of the hill. With long cranks my preference was to shift into a higher gear, but with short cranks, revving up a bit was fine. It's almost as if long cranks encourage me to be lazy (i.e. shift instead of pedal faster) whereas the shorter cranks encourage me to pedal.
The short cranks means that my legs make smaller circles. This means, significantly, that my legs don't come up as high. Therefore my legs don't intrude into my torso territory quite as noticeably as they do with the 175s. This in turn means that I can hold a lower, flatter position on the bike. In addition the SystemSix (52 cm size) has a one centimeter shorter headtube than the S sized Giant TCR, allowing me to drop the bars by about the same amount. With more drop, a higher seat height, and less thigh intrusion into my torso, my position is much flatter. So much so that my back has noticed the radical change - and I've had to start doing some exercises to accommodate its complaining. With more hours on the bike I hope to be able to turn this aerodynamic improvement into better overall performance. The flatter back also recruits more glutes and hamstrings - so I hope that I'll develop more power too. More aero, more power. Good stuff.
My sprint remains a mystery as I have some winter bars on the bike (wide with an ergo drop position) and I can't sprint to save my life with ergo bars. I'll have to wait and see how it goes when I swap back to my non-ergo crit bars. I hope that the shorter cranks will allow me to turn the pedals over faster in a sprint. Although my leverage has suffered (about 3% less), I'm hoping that my 10-15% increase in cadence will help compensate for that. In other words, if I apply 3% less power but I can pedal much faster (up to 120 rpms for a sprint), I hope that the higher revs will allow me to exert as much or more power relative to a lower rpm, high leverage sprint. My body is not great with sustained power (we're talking sustained over 1/3 of a circle with a 175 mm radius), but quick, short bursts work perfectly for me. I hope the shorter cranks, with their smaller 170 mm pedaling radius, will allow me to find that top speed power, power that I can't even contemplate reaching with the longer cranks turning their wider, lazier circles.
As far as the nitty gritty goes, the cranks did require a few re-torques after I put the bike together. I'd strongly recommend carrying an 8mm allen wrench the first few times you ride these things, or, preferably, ride the trainer for an hour or two with your toolkit nearby.
On a negative note - the nice silver finish is actually painted on the crankarm, and even only 6 hours of booties rubbing the arm slightly has already damaged the finish. I don't have big feet - size 41s - and my shoes, although close in to the cranks, normally don't cause such damage to a Campy crank for a year or two. Nevertheless the Cannondale SIs are irrevocably scarred in less than half a dozen hours of riding. Unfortunate.
This ends my mechanical review of the Cannondale SI SRM cranks. When I have enough experience with the SRM and its software, that review will follow. And when I have more of a feel for the SystemSix frame, fork, and how that rides, I'll post a more comprehensive review of that as well. The components, in case you didn't know, are the ubiquitous Record stuff. I have virtually identical components on my other two bikes and, well, there isn't much to say there. It simply works.
With such an investment in my bike, additional investments in related gear (some of which I'll review later), and some (obsessive?) thinking about factors which affect my racing, it's obvious that I'm looking to regain some of that "incredible but lost" 1992 form. The first step was getting some mechanical help (it has a psychological effect too) in the form of lighter and stiffer equipment. This is done. The next steps are as follows (and in no particular order): increase overall strength and conditioning; optimize balance of aerodynamics and weight in wheelset/s; optimize position on bike.
I hope to utilize the SRM a little more than the PowerTap, not because it's "better" or "different" but simply because I've never done any steady training with the PowerTap. My January and February training accounts for a huge portion of my annual hours on the saddle, and with the SRM, I'll be able to measure progress a little more accurately.
I plan to review some other equipment for my "strength and conditioning" phase, and I'll be commenting on my wheelset and rider position thoughts, explorations, and findings.
2008 awaits :)
Three things differentiate this crankset from other non-Cannondale cranks.
First, it has an oversize BB30 bottom bracket. The BB refers to the fact that it's a bottom bracket. The 30 refers to the internal diameter of the bearings. A previously proprietary design, Cannondale has released specs for use by other companies - an open source design if you will. As someone that works with open source software (linux and putty among other things), it's refreshing to see a good design shared with others.
The whole oversized-bearing concept isn't new - the standard 68mm shell will accept outboard bearings with much larger than current outboard mounted 24mm I.D. (internal diameter) bearings. Placing the bearings outside the bottom bracket shell has its disadvantages, the primary one being the fact that the bearings are so far apart from left to right. The crankarms have to be further apart too, or designed carefully to keep them relatively narrow. One thing that kept me away from Shimano, FSA, and related cranksets are their relatively wide Q-factors, the distance between the pedals left-to-right. Campy has consistently kept their Q-factor relatively small and Cannondale's SI cranksets follow a similar philosophy.
Instead of pushing the bearings outside the shell, Cannondale incorporates oversized bearings by stretching the bottom bracket shell itself. This is nothing new - Cannondale was the first to use a huge headset bearing, they use the widest (and single tube) suspension fork leg, and they first appeared on the map by mass producing oversized aluminum framesets. At any rate, 30mm I.D. bearings sit inside a much bigger than normal bottom bracket shell. With the outside-to-outside measurement the standard 68mm (instead of 90mm), it is a narrower design, more efficient due to the shorter bottom bracket axle, and gives the crankarm designer leeway to stiffen up the cranks laterally.
So my new Cannondale has such a bottom bracket shell and a corresponding oversized-bearing bottom bracket. The latter is nice because it uses a large diameter hollow aluminum axle - light and stiff. The short axle focuses leg power closer to the center plane of the bike. And the simple design (pressed in bearings) means less parts and a cleaner install. Sort of like integrated headsets versus the cup and cone ones - it's much easier now with the integrated headsets (no complex tools necessary). The integrated bottom bracket is similar, except that to replace the bearings (when was the last time I wore out a bottom bracket?) you need to press the new ones back into place. Cannondale has conveniently included the tools for doing this, so no worries on my part.
The second difference is the Cannondale specific Hollowgram SI (System Integrated) crankarms. Although the bottom bracket shell is an open standard, Cannondale has their own thoughts on what cranks should connect to the bottom bracket. Currently Specialized has a BB30 crank/BB combo, and a few other companies too, but nothing too widespread. Cannondale's cranks are hollow aluminum, extremely stiff, and very light. They are a modern version of the Pong cranks from way back when. They are among the lightest and stiffest cranks out there. With a standard width bottom bracket, the crank can be a little wider to make for a very laterally stiff arm. In addition the crank can follow the chainstay profile to give maximum clearance for the rider's shoe (and booties - but more on that later).
The final significant difference in the crank contains the proprietary SRM chainring spider, the force measuring setup which first widely appeared under Greg Lemond. The original power measuring system, the SRM measures the twisting forces between the bottom bracket axle and the chainrings. Because both left and right arms exert force on the axle, the SRM measures power from both legs. (I mention this because the Ergometer only measures the difference between the right and left leg.) The spider normally adds some weight, but the SI crankset allows the crankset to come out at something like 657 grams whereas the other "light" SRMs (Dura Ace, FSA) are more like 800 grams, with the standard one weighing in at about the same weight. Remember my way of measuring weight? Every 45 grams is 0.1 pounds - and this means the SI SRMs are about 150 grams, or 0.3 pounds, lighter than other SRMs. Not bad for just the cranks, right?
The SI SRM has a nice stiff bottom bracket, a narrow Q factor, and works in the efficiently stiff SystemSix frameset I've wanted to use. Great! So how are the cranks?
Ah, well. Hm. Let me go over what I found in my limited testing so far.
The shifting seems fine, but new chainrings always seem fine for the first few thousand miles. So that's sort of a wash. Appearance wise I'm not a fan of the black rings - I prefer the chiseled look of the Campy Record rings I have on my Primary Giant. Perhaps at some point I'll swap out the rings. Till then though, I'll suffer along. I'm also keeping the original KMC chain. It's quiet enough but my peace of mind is asking me to install a Campy 10s chain. I'll wait till the sand is off the roads and do the chain, perhaps the chainrings. Of course if I'm my normal self, the chain won't happen till spring of 2009 and the chainrings only when they wear out.
The cranks seem very stiff but it's hard to quantify since the cranks sit on a much stiffer frame. Regardless, I did notice that while sitting on the trainer (same rear skewer, same wheels, same tires), the bottom bracket shell barely moves on the Cannondale but sways noticeably with the Giant TCR carbon (I'd estimate the visible movement as Giant = 10-15 mm and Cannondale = 5 mm) . The Giant's Record chainrings therefore move a bit too, but there is a chainring "sway" (a left right movement as you pedal) which is noticeably separate from the BB sway. The sway is about 2-5 mm relative to the bottom bracket shell. The SI has almost neither - perhaps a 1-2 mm chainring sway to accompany that 5 mm or less bottom bracket sway. However, since chainring sways also develop over a couple thousand miles of riding, I'll have to reserve judgement on that.
I should point out that the cranks are shorter than my Records - I've returned to 170s after about five or so years on 175 mm cranks. I've been rethinking the long crank theory - I think that it's a good thing for someone who is short on fitness (relatively speaking) but, just like a long stroke engine loses ability to rev as highly as a short stroke engine, I am starting to think that short crankarms allow a rider to reach higher top speeds.
This upcoming season will be an experiment of sorts - I feel comfy on both 175s and 170s and I want to see if a shorter crank will help when I'm fit. As part of my "controlled" experiment, I want to measure my output differences between the carbon Giant TCR with 175s and the SystemSix with the 170mm SI cranks. I'll be doing this (hopefully soon) on a friend's Computrainer, a device which will allow me to swap bikes quickly without too much fuss, all while keeping the cranks, pedals, and bike intact.
A significant difference with the shorter cranks is that I found that my comfy "loafing along" cadence immediately shot up about 10-15 rpms, from about 85-90 rpms to about 100-105 rpms. I also found that my legs remembered the 170mm radius pedal circle - I felt immediately comfortable spinning the cranks around. This remained especially true when cresting short hills - I experienced the "rev-up" feeling as my cadence increased over the top of the hill. With long cranks my preference was to shift into a higher gear, but with short cranks, revving up a bit was fine. It's almost as if long cranks encourage me to be lazy (i.e. shift instead of pedal faster) whereas the shorter cranks encourage me to pedal.
The short cranks means that my legs make smaller circles. This means, significantly, that my legs don't come up as high. Therefore my legs don't intrude into my torso territory quite as noticeably as they do with the 175s. This in turn means that I can hold a lower, flatter position on the bike. In addition the SystemSix (52 cm size) has a one centimeter shorter headtube than the S sized Giant TCR, allowing me to drop the bars by about the same amount. With more drop, a higher seat height, and less thigh intrusion into my torso, my position is much flatter. So much so that my back has noticed the radical change - and I've had to start doing some exercises to accommodate its complaining. With more hours on the bike I hope to be able to turn this aerodynamic improvement into better overall performance. The flatter back also recruits more glutes and hamstrings - so I hope that I'll develop more power too. More aero, more power. Good stuff.
My sprint remains a mystery as I have some winter bars on the bike (wide with an ergo drop position) and I can't sprint to save my life with ergo bars. I'll have to wait and see how it goes when I swap back to my non-ergo crit bars. I hope that the shorter cranks will allow me to turn the pedals over faster in a sprint. Although my leverage has suffered (about 3% less), I'm hoping that my 10-15% increase in cadence will help compensate for that. In other words, if I apply 3% less power but I can pedal much faster (up to 120 rpms for a sprint), I hope that the higher revs will allow me to exert as much or more power relative to a lower rpm, high leverage sprint. My body is not great with sustained power (we're talking sustained over 1/3 of a circle with a 175 mm radius), but quick, short bursts work perfectly for me. I hope the shorter cranks, with their smaller 170 mm pedaling radius, will allow me to find that top speed power, power that I can't even contemplate reaching with the longer cranks turning their wider, lazier circles.
As far as the nitty gritty goes, the cranks did require a few re-torques after I put the bike together. I'd strongly recommend carrying an 8mm allen wrench the first few times you ride these things, or, preferably, ride the trainer for an hour or two with your toolkit nearby.
On a negative note - the nice silver finish is actually painted on the crankarm, and even only 6 hours of booties rubbing the arm slightly has already damaged the finish. I don't have big feet - size 41s - and my shoes, although close in to the cranks, normally don't cause such damage to a Campy crank for a year or two. Nevertheless the Cannondale SIs are irrevocably scarred in less than half a dozen hours of riding. Unfortunate.
This ends my mechanical review of the Cannondale SI SRM cranks. When I have enough experience with the SRM and its software, that review will follow. And when I have more of a feel for the SystemSix frame, fork, and how that rides, I'll post a more comprehensive review of that as well. The components, in case you didn't know, are the ubiquitous Record stuff. I have virtually identical components on my other two bikes and, well, there isn't much to say there. It simply works.
With such an investment in my bike, additional investments in related gear (some of which I'll review later), and some (obsessive?) thinking about factors which affect my racing, it's obvious that I'm looking to regain some of that "incredible but lost" 1992 form. The first step was getting some mechanical help (it has a psychological effect too) in the form of lighter and stiffer equipment. This is done. The next steps are as follows (and in no particular order): increase overall strength and conditioning; optimize balance of aerodynamics and weight in wheelset/s; optimize position on bike.
I hope to utilize the SRM a little more than the PowerTap, not because it's "better" or "different" but simply because I've never done any steady training with the PowerTap. My January and February training accounts for a huge portion of my annual hours on the saddle, and with the SRM, I'll be able to measure progress a little more accurately.
I plan to review some other equipment for my "strength and conditioning" phase, and I'll be commenting on my wheelset and rider position thoughts, explorations, and findings.
2008 awaits :)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Review - Prelim Cannondale SystemSix, Fizik seat
I rode four hours this weekend. Okay, so it was four hours over two days. Well, about 15 minutes short of that. But it was still a significant amount of riding. I did sort of the same loop - headed up north, went up this particularly daunting climb ("Mountain Road"), then headed back down to the apartment. Saturday I headed immediately back at the end of the intimidatingly named road; today I wandered a bit before heading south.
In my wandering (I went about 1/2 mile the other way) I actually found myself on the Barkhamsted Reservoir Road Race course - recently reincarnated as the Tokeneke Road Race. It's a hilly course, not one for me. The last time I raced it I almost got lapped by the break - and that's on a 20-odd mile lap! The race was the site for my favorite wheel change ever, and I try to help out the new promoters when I can.
Anyway, my meandering brought me to a familiar looking intersection (although I'd last raced it about 15 years ago) and after pedaling a bit, I passed the big field where the racers parked. Nowadays there's a paved area as the new promoters moved the start/finish to line up with a building instead of a field.
Progress.
What's been nice is that although my rides left me a bit tired ("zombie-like" might be appropriate), I felt completely recovered the next day. Blame the HGH I just started on, or... oh, wait, I forgot, I don't take that stuff. Whatever the reason, I've been recovering nicely. Granted, I'm not going really hard - over the two days I struggled to maintain over 200 watts even on the flats.
There are some familiar sensations, those "getting back into the groove" things. A stiff neck that's gradually getting a little less "cricked", an equally stiff back that's slowly stretching out (now I can ride the drops somewhat comfortably), and legs which seem to have remembered how to pedal.
I've actually put about 8 hours total on my new bike - the Cannondale SystemSix Liquigas Team Replica thing I got a short time ago. I installed a different bar/stem combo, wrapped it with tape, and stuck my blue FiR Zenith slash Campy Centaur wheels on there. I didn't bother moving the magnet to the sensor side on the front wheel until Saturday so I didn't know my speed till then. And it seems that the heartrate strap went AWOL so I haven't gotten a beat off of the SRM.
So how's the bike so far?
First off, I should point out that I did two rides on the trainer, sort of the "shake down cruises" to get any settling components settled. The cranks (Cannondale Hollowgram cranks using the now-public BB30 standard) settled a lot - I was glad I could sit on the trainer and stare at the chainrings while I pedalled.
I re-routed the derailleur cables, letting the front derailleur cable enter the right cable housing stop, the rear cable go to the left. Then I criss-crossed them under the downtube to line them up with the correct derailleur. This makes for a more graceful housing arc and a less stressed set of derailleur cable housing. I've done this since the 90s sometime and it works well.
I set off on my first "outside" ride, a double of the familiar one-hour flat loop, always in cell phone range, no super tricky descents, and basically all flat roads, a rarity in this region.
I noticed the light feeling front end immediately when I first starting assembling the bike, but I thought it might be me being excited about the bike. However, when I traveled around with the fork (to get it cut down), I realized how insanely light the fork felt. Apparently this isn't an unusually light fork - so I can't imagine anything lighter. So with this psychological factor in mind, I tried to make myself forget the light front end.
I couldn't.
50 meters from the driveway I have our now-familiar traffic light. I rocketed away from said traffic light, shifting up, rocking the bike. It felt immensely more responsive and I quickly over-accelerated past 30 mph. I promptly exploded and sat down to spin the pedals a bit. The frame felt wonderfully responsive. No perceived BB flex, no crank mushiness, and the front end damped vibrations nicely.
On the other hand, I had no idea if the "aero" seatstays were doing anything aero, and the extremely wide top tube let my inner quads rub if I felt like it. I love the big, chunky head tube with the relatively dinky stem sticking out from it. I remember this image from the Road Bike Action which "reviewed" HealthNet's SystemSix bikes - I thought the bike looked massively cool, rock solid, fast, and very "pro".
Well, except for the STI levers. But I could live with that.
When I stood to ride up about the longest incline on the loop, I initially over-threw the bike side to side, it felt so light. I had to adjust - sort of the same way I adjust when I slap on the Reynolds DV46s, except today I still had the stand by FiR Zeniths with their 500 gram (facetiously) wire bead Schwable Blizzard tires. I have no idea what a Blizzard tire does but I can imagine one thing you don't want it to do - have a flat during a Blizzard. So far, the tires have been solidly reliable, with the emphasis on "solid".
Other than the cranks and the frame/fork, the bike had only one other "different" component from my Primary Giant - the Fizik (I'm not even trying all their accents and stuff) Arione seat. It's a seat I've maligned frequently offline and I even offered it up for sale before I sat on it. But a trusty friend suggested trying it out - he'd heard some rave reviews and as he knows a lot of bike people, if they give rave personal reviews, well, it was worth checking out.
Plus it came in matching colors. I had to try it.
With about 8 hours on the seat, I'll admit it. It's not bad. I don't remember if my tights (Nalini, both windstopper and not) have any unusual padding but I do know that, due to my "trainer" training, I tend not to stand up too much. Plus I'm heavier than I used to be so it's not efficient to stand up. So I've sat on that saddle for about 7.9 hours - and I'm no more uncomfortable than I normally am after a few week layoff. In fact, I felt more comfy than normal. I felt zero discomfort on the day after a 2 hour ride - usually I feel a twinge when I first sit down.
In addition, the seat really does have a long "sitter" area. I can slide pretty far back to power up some of the annoying climbs in the area, but it's not a big deal to move forward something like 5, maybe 8 centimeters to get a bit more on top of the pedals. I really like this feature and it's now become a pre-requisite for any seat I try.
The cranks are the most different aspect of the componentry, but they will have to wait until I get some more data and experience. So far though, the two big changes - the frameset and the saddle - have both worked out well. I just have to see how this translates into sprinting up to some familiar finish lines.
In my wandering (I went about 1/2 mile the other way) I actually found myself on the Barkhamsted Reservoir Road Race course - recently reincarnated as the Tokeneke Road Race. It's a hilly course, not one for me. The last time I raced it I almost got lapped by the break - and that's on a 20-odd mile lap! The race was the site for my favorite wheel change ever, and I try to help out the new promoters when I can.
Anyway, my meandering brought me to a familiar looking intersection (although I'd last raced it about 15 years ago) and after pedaling a bit, I passed the big field where the racers parked. Nowadays there's a paved area as the new promoters moved the start/finish to line up with a building instead of a field.
Progress.
What's been nice is that although my rides left me a bit tired ("zombie-like" might be appropriate), I felt completely recovered the next day. Blame the HGH I just started on, or... oh, wait, I forgot, I don't take that stuff. Whatever the reason, I've been recovering nicely. Granted, I'm not going really hard - over the two days I struggled to maintain over 200 watts even on the flats.
There are some familiar sensations, those "getting back into the groove" things. A stiff neck that's gradually getting a little less "cricked", an equally stiff back that's slowly stretching out (now I can ride the drops somewhat comfortably), and legs which seem to have remembered how to pedal.
I've actually put about 8 hours total on my new bike - the Cannondale SystemSix Liquigas Team Replica thing I got a short time ago. I installed a different bar/stem combo, wrapped it with tape, and stuck my blue FiR Zenith slash Campy Centaur wheels on there. I didn't bother moving the magnet to the sensor side on the front wheel until Saturday so I didn't know my speed till then. And it seems that the heartrate strap went AWOL so I haven't gotten a beat off of the SRM.
So how's the bike so far?
First off, I should point out that I did two rides on the trainer, sort of the "shake down cruises" to get any settling components settled. The cranks (Cannondale Hollowgram cranks using the now-public BB30 standard) settled a lot - I was glad I could sit on the trainer and stare at the chainrings while I pedalled.
I re-routed the derailleur cables, letting the front derailleur cable enter the right cable housing stop, the rear cable go to the left. Then I criss-crossed them under the downtube to line them up with the correct derailleur. This makes for a more graceful housing arc and a less stressed set of derailleur cable housing. I've done this since the 90s sometime and it works well.
I set off on my first "outside" ride, a double of the familiar one-hour flat loop, always in cell phone range, no super tricky descents, and basically all flat roads, a rarity in this region.
I noticed the light feeling front end immediately when I first starting assembling the bike, but I thought it might be me being excited about the bike. However, when I traveled around with the fork (to get it cut down), I realized how insanely light the fork felt. Apparently this isn't an unusually light fork - so I can't imagine anything lighter. So with this psychological factor in mind, I tried to make myself forget the light front end.
I couldn't.
50 meters from the driveway I have our now-familiar traffic light. I rocketed away from said traffic light, shifting up, rocking the bike. It felt immensely more responsive and I quickly over-accelerated past 30 mph. I promptly exploded and sat down to spin the pedals a bit. The frame felt wonderfully responsive. No perceived BB flex, no crank mushiness, and the front end damped vibrations nicely.
On the other hand, I had no idea if the "aero" seatstays were doing anything aero, and the extremely wide top tube let my inner quads rub if I felt like it. I love the big, chunky head tube with the relatively dinky stem sticking out from it. I remember this image from the Road Bike Action which "reviewed" HealthNet's SystemSix bikes - I thought the bike looked massively cool, rock solid, fast, and very "pro".
Well, except for the STI levers. But I could live with that.
When I stood to ride up about the longest incline on the loop, I initially over-threw the bike side to side, it felt so light. I had to adjust - sort of the same way I adjust when I slap on the Reynolds DV46s, except today I still had the stand by FiR Zeniths with their 500 gram (facetiously) wire bead Schwable Blizzard tires. I have no idea what a Blizzard tire does but I can imagine one thing you don't want it to do - have a flat during a Blizzard. So far, the tires have been solidly reliable, with the emphasis on "solid".
Other than the cranks and the frame/fork, the bike had only one other "different" component from my Primary Giant - the Fizik (I'm not even trying all their accents and stuff) Arione seat. It's a seat I've maligned frequently offline and I even offered it up for sale before I sat on it. But a trusty friend suggested trying it out - he'd heard some rave reviews and as he knows a lot of bike people, if they give rave personal reviews, well, it was worth checking out.
Plus it came in matching colors. I had to try it.
With about 8 hours on the seat, I'll admit it. It's not bad. I don't remember if my tights (Nalini, both windstopper and not) have any unusual padding but I do know that, due to my "trainer" training, I tend not to stand up too much. Plus I'm heavier than I used to be so it's not efficient to stand up. So I've sat on that saddle for about 7.9 hours - and I'm no more uncomfortable than I normally am after a few week layoff. In fact, I felt more comfy than normal. I felt zero discomfort on the day after a 2 hour ride - usually I feel a twinge when I first sit down.
In addition, the seat really does have a long "sitter" area. I can slide pretty far back to power up some of the annoying climbs in the area, but it's not a big deal to move forward something like 5, maybe 8 centimeters to get a bit more on top of the pedals. I really like this feature and it's now become a pre-requisite for any seat I try.
The cranks are the most different aspect of the componentry, but they will have to wait until I get some more data and experience. So far though, the two big changes - the frameset and the saddle - have both worked out well. I just have to see how this translates into sprinting up to some familiar finish lines.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Centerport Cycles Scrapbook
I thought this was worth a post in itself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
