Tactics - Struggling With Peak Speeds

Peak speeds. One racer, after my leadout on Tuesday, said something about how fast Cat 3s can go. Really, though, anyone can do it. I'm no pro and in fact a strong Cat 2 could do what I did for many laps at a time. So what's the secret?

There are a few things you want to think about, to execute. I alluded to the possibility of a fifth post but I incorporated two things into this post, position/aero and peak speed workouts.

Position

First is your position on your bike. If you look at a picture of a Cat 5 race you'll see a lot of racers up high, hands on the hoods, torsos upright, racers that look like parachutes.

Then look at a pro race, or even a reasonable Cat 3 race. You'll see racers much lower, much more aerodynamic.

2012 Keith Berger Crit, Cat 3 race, from my post here.

The above picture is a nice example of some random corner in a random crit. The Expo rider to my right is a former New England Crit Champion (I was in that race and he and his leadout man just rode away from the front of the field, super impressive). He's been racing for eons. The rider in front of him is also a long time racer, I think he won the Cat 1-2 Killington Stage Race one year (and he's won all sorts of minor races). Both are on the drops, in total control, low on the bike, aero, efficient, and comfortable.

(I thought of putting a Cat 5 picture up but I think that a racer would take it personally if it was them, and every picture of a Cat 5 race out there are pictures of racers who are people. Therefore I avoided putting up a Cat 5 example picture.)

Low Position

That lower position isn't only more aerodynamic, it's more powerful. Think about how you pedal when you're climbing a hard hill. You lean forward, your nose to the stem. You're doing this instinctively because by leaning forward you can recruit more of your major muscle groups.

The same "lower position" obviously happens on flatter roads. By leaning forward more you recruit those same muscles, increasing power, but now there's the added benefit of aerodynamics on the typically-higher flat road speeds.

Last Tuesday I did a big effort on the last lap. I averaged about 450 watts for about a minute. The power level is in the realm of possibility of many of the riders in the race. You may be able to do it for 20 or 30 seconds but if you can do that then the power is there. More importantly that means the speed is there also.

By getting aero you gain more power and you reduce the power required to go fast.

One major aero rule - an angled surface, like an angled forearm or an angled bike tube, is LESS aero than a similar shaped vertical surface, like a vertical forearm or a vertical bike tube. This is why TT bikes have vertical seat posts - it's more aero than having a 75 degree seat post (or whatever non-90 degree angle).

Likewise it's more aero to have your upper arms vertical and your forearms parallel than to have your whole arm at an angle. Finally, relating to your bike on a Tuesday Night Race, a bottle in your seat tube cage is more aero (vertical) than the same bottle in your downtube bottle cage (not vertical).

Now I'm not saying you should be sitting upright so your torso presents a vertical surface, but if you're down low, you're struggling, and you have a choice of hand positions or bottle positions then you can make a more educated choice.

With that in mind let's move on.

Position Basics

Some position basics:
1. The most aero position is where you have your forearms parallel to the ground, which usually means the hoods. However your drops give you more control. If you're in the field then you want to be in the drops to retain more control. If you're at the front, if you're willing to gamble your collarbone that nothing will happen for a bit, then the hoods are fine.

Note: since it's a gamble to be on the hoods I prefer to be on the tops. Much of my riding is either on the tops or the drops, even in races, except when climbing. The tops offer no illusion of braking ability so it's a more honest position. It's a real gamble to ride on the tops in the field, but that's what you're doing, in a sense, when you're on the hoods in the field. Either way it's a gamble. I tend to gamble on the tops more than most people. I can ride on the hoods, I've ridden a lot on the hoods over the years, but the drops are my safe choice.

Note: in a related safety related thing I always wear long fingered gloves. It took one fall for me to skin my finger tips before I wore them all the time. Any glove helps absorb the scrubbing energy of pavement, but those with finger tips will save your finger tips.

2. Elbows in. There's no reason to have your elbows splayed out like chicken wings. You'll see some sprinters do it in the sprint but even they tend to keep their elbows out of the wind. One of the most amateur things you'll see in the lower category races are elbows out.

3. Knees in. Unless you have a physical problem (typically a hip problem), there's no reason to have your knees splayed out like chicken… wings. Their knees don't splay out so anyway...

4. No hip rocking. It's easier getting low when your saddle is a bunch higher than your bars. However your saddle-pedal relationship is sacred. You need to make changes relating to aero/position up front. Raising your saddle and making your hips rock is not the way to get more aero. When you fit a bike you start at the cranks/BB, go up to the saddle, then forward to the bars. If you need to change your torso angle etc without major changes then you need to do it using the front end of the bike.

There's a great piece on position, equipment, and aero drag somewhere, and for the life of me I can't find it. Basically someone did a test on a rider (I think a pro rider, and I think it was on a track). They had the rider use different positions and different equipment, from riding a road bike on the tops with a road helmet to the other extreme of riding a TT bike on TT bars with every aero bit of clothing available. Each set up had a power number next to it, telling you what sort of power you needed to put down to go a given speed (40 kph? 45 kph?). The numbers fell dramatically, from something like 400w to somewhere in the 290w range. That's huge, and it drops the power numbers from pro-level to Cat 3 level (and I daresay a lot of Cat 4s and 5s as well).

*edit - I sort of found it thanks to Mike R in Texas - it's in the German magazine Tour and it's from 2006 or 2007. The pertinent stuff is below and I can't find the original page/link for credit:

They put Uwe Peschel on a normal bike:

Needed Watts for Speed = 45 km/h :

Stevens San Remo bike with normal handlebar 465 Watts needed to go 45 km/h

Same bike Hands down the drops: 406 watts needed

Same bike Easton Aeroforce bar: 369 Watts

Same bike Triathlon position (5.5 cm lower bar, saddle forwards): 360 Watts

Same bike Triathlon position (5.5 cm lower bar, saddle forwards) and

carbon Tri spoke wheels front and rear: 345 Watt

Cervelo + Tri spoke front 328 Watts

Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel : 320

Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel +Giro helmet: 317

Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel +Giro helmet + speed suit: 307

Cervelo + Tri spoke front + disk rear wheel +Giro helmet + speed suit +

saddle 3 cm further back: 293 Watts

What I found interesting is that if you skip the major illegal-for-mass-start stuff (TT bars, aero helmet) you end up with a substantial amount of potential aero savings simply by changing position, using aero wheels, and using a few select pieces of cycle wear. This means that you can realize significant savings on your road bike when you compare a "not very low" position to a more aero position. In fact, by going to the drops the power requirement drops almost 60 watts, or about 13%! It's the largest savings of all the possible ones, and obviously it's cheap because it's free.

By the time you get to the bottom of the list he's down below 300 watts to hold 28 mph. That's closer to a mortal wattage.

In a related thing there was some article (that I really can't find) about Colby Pearce. He's a compact rider, a former domestic pro in the US. His claim to fame was his extraordinary time trial efforts. He wasn't that powerful for a pro - he could put down 311 watts for an hour for real - but he held the US hour record at 50.191 kph or 31.3 mph (that's when he did the 311 watts for an hour).

You'd think that going 31+ mph would take massive wattage but he did it at a touch over 300 watts. That's a very sane number, something that some Cat 3s could probably hold. The trick was his aero-ness, if you will. Holding 311 watts is one thing. Holding 31.3 mph is another. To put it in perspective he spun a 55x14 at about 100 rpm for that hour.

Also if you read some of the articles carefully about this or that aero bike, you'll see that the front-facing products (bars, head tube, front wheel, front brake) make the most aero difference. In fact I saw an interesting tidbit when Bontrager introduced their aero drop bar - the bike they showcased (a Trek 7-Series Madone) was supposed to save you something like 120 seconds over a 40 km time trial but the bars alone were responsible for 23 of those seconds (drag reduction 14g). The integrated brakes saved a bit more, 16g of drag, and the frame 60g. Although I don't fit a Madone, although I don't have a bike that can take an integrated brake fork like that, I can install a Race Lite Aero bar. I haven't, but it's a thought.

A final thought on aero stuff - if you want to use just one aero wheel, a front one gets you more aero benefits. However most aero wheels compromise your bike's handling a bit, so you have to think about that. I used to race with a front Tri-Spoke (aka HED3), a front wheel that's acknowledged implicitly to be the fastest front wheel you can get, at least based on all the Tour riders that use them in time trials even if they're not sponsored by either Specialized (the original wheel rights owner) or HED (the current wheel rights holder). My rear wheel was a plain spoked non-aero wheel for a year or two, the only 10 speed wheel I owned at the time.

Pinning Your Number

The racers that know me joke about how many pins I use on my numbers but there's a reason. I read somewhere (again, I don't have a link) about how much drag a flapping number generates. It's huge.

More importantly it's absolutely and totally preventable.

You know how I keep harping about using the drops? It's so that you can reduce the chances of losing control of your bike, at least compared to being on the hoods or the tops. If you know that in, say, every 1000 times you have to brake hard on the hoods you'll crash five times and but you'll crash only once on the drops, why wouldn't you just use the drops all the time?

Likewise if you know that your flapping number is worth 20 watts or whatever, then why don't you take care in pinning your number? It's free power and it's available every single time you pin your number on.

My number from last Tuesday.

I pin the number on the jersey while it's flat on the ground (or the grass in this case). Start at one corner (I like to use the spot where the pocket and side panel intersect, in this case the lower left part of the number). Starting at that point I know my number will be visible to the sides as well as from above.

I then work my way along the edge (lower edge for me). I start adding pins in the middle, to keep the number from ballooning out. I put those in the black part of the number so they don't screw up any kind of finish line camera.

Finally I finish with a row of pins at the top.

You'll notice that one pin ripped, probably while I was getting the jersey on.

As a promoter I bring my own pins, sometimes a box of them (1440 pins when the box is new). Since I'm using my own pins I don't have to worry about taking a lot of pins from the promoter, plus I reuse the pins. The trick is to keep them dry so if my jersey is wet I immediately unpin the thing. Rusty pins ruin your jersey so toss them in the metal recycling bin before you resort to using them for some reason.

Other Clothing

Although not a factor in most summer races, if you're wearing some cold weather gear - a vest, a jacket, stuff like that - make sure it's not flapping around. You give away power hand over fist when you do stuff like that.

At the 2014 Bethel Spring Series I wore a jacket in the first race. Not a big deal I thought, it's cold and I want to be warm. I noticed a lot of other racers used jerseys and vests. Then I saw a picture of myself with the jacket on. It had flattened out in front, turning into a huge wall of fabric.

I decided that I had to avoid wearing the jacket. It fit a bit loose and I needed something a bit more snug. I decided to wear a rain shell under a long sleeve jersey. That handled the wind (brutal when it's cold) and the long sleeve jersey snugged everything up. I raced warm and a bit more aero from then on. I happened to do a bit better but I think there were so many other factors that I can't give credit to my slightly more aero clothing.

Note: Motion attracts attention like nothing else, at least for humans. Humans see motion, color, then shape. Therefore when I train out on the road I try to use my blinky tail lights (mine have a super bright LED in the middle), I try to ride properly, and, if the weather is under, say, 70 degrees F, I wear a vest. I don't zip it up until I actually need it, which is more like the 50 degree F range, but I wear it if I can bear it. It flaps nicely in the breeze and helps attract motorists' attention. I got this tip via a motorcycle and bike riding EMT/fireman who once had an absent minded driver (he was thinking of his tennis game, this in the age before cell phones and such) ram full speed into a fire truck parked next to a burning house, firemen all around, and hoses and such leading to the burning house. I figure the flapping vest helps me train a bit harder even in my "always low always aero always riding in the same position as I race" training rides.

Um, Power?

Okay, so that's all great you say but you were going to tell me about how to go really fast, how to deal with peak speeds. What about power and all that? I mean, don't I have to pedal the bike in some special hard way to go fast, to hit those peak speeds?

No.

Okay, yes, you do, but it's a pretty straightforward process, at least it seems to be based on the feedback I've gotten on my technique detailed below. Basically you can do it now, it's just that you haven't practiced, you haven't done it fresh, so you don't know you can do it. Remember the power number I rattled off somewhere before? 450 watts. Everyone can go 450 watts, it's just a matter of how long you can go at 450 watts. For me it's about a minute. For Taylor Phinney he can do more (488 watts) for a touch over 12 minutes. Whatever it is for you, that's what I did to go "really fast" that last lap of the Tuesday race last week. You can hit that power and more and often it requires no actual training, just some practice when you're fresh.

It sounds a bit odd but it actually takes practice to sprint really fast. If you don't believe me then try sprinting when you're descending at 45 or 50 mph. It's really hard to apply power to the pedals at that speed without losing control of the bike. Likewise if you're used to topping out at 35 mph then responding to a 40 mph tailwind attack will take you into foreign territory. You need to familiarize yourself with those speeds so that they are at least familiar to you if not second nature.

The basic idea goes as follows:
1. Determine your Maximum Optimal Sprint Speed. I'll explain in a bit but basically this is the fastest you can go on a flat road in optimal conditions.
2. Compare your MOSS to various race pace numbers. I'll rattle some off to help you out. Average speed, 25 mph. Attack speeds, 28-32 mph. Normal fast sprint speeds 36-40 mph. Very fast sprint speeds 40-44 mph. I'm not going to go into the hyper fast sprints that you see on training rides, which can exceed that 44 mph mark.
3. See where your MOSS lines up. Ideally your MOSS will be in the normal sprint speed range, 36-40 mph. If it's below 32 mph then you need to work on it.

The problem is if your MOSS is low, like 30 mph. This puts your optimal max speed within a normal attack speed, a speed that even I can keep up for a lap at the Rent. That means that if someone attacks hard you'll struggle to stay on the wheels.

Your goal is to increase your MOSS as much as possible.

For more on MOSS go here. I explain how to find your MOSS and how to train it.

For inspiration here's a video that I put together from a bunch of training rides while out in SoCal in Jan/Feb of 2011. It includes two MOSS efforts, both about 49 mph:


(Tip: for YouTube videos embedded in the post you can click on the YouTube logo to view it on YouTube. It's bigger and you can see more. I've reduced the embedded size to fit smaller browsers so it's not great to watch the clip in embedded form.)

More Power Stuff?

No, no more training stuff. For most riders they already have the ability to deal with peak speeds. They sabotage themselves without realizing it and end up getting shelled when they could have stayed in the field.

Remember the prior posts, some of the points made there.

First, don't work unless you need to work. If you do a massive 25 mph pull for a few laps, great, but when you pull off and someone attacks at 32 mph, will you be able to follow? If the answer is no then you shouldn't do that 25 mph pull.

Increase the attack speed to 35 mph. Will you be able to follow?

Next, if you can't follow at 32 mph attack, what do you do? Do you pummel yourself at 28 mph, losing ground at 4 mph, hoping the attacker blows up? No, you don't, unless you're one of the last few to react. If you're already spent then you need to rely on others to close the gap for you. It's not always about you.

Of course if it's a teammate then you absolutely do not respond, unless the teammate is your leadout man. Normally if it's a teammate attacking then you ease if you're at the front. You ONLY follow another non-teammate's wheel. If another teammate follows the first one to jump then you wait again. You want to have one teammate go with each counter, with any well placed teammates at the front acting as deadweight at the front of the field.

On the other hand if you look around and see that everyone else is looking around then maybe you'll need to work. Or maybe the attacker will blow up. Whatever happens it's good - you're thinking about it instead of responding like a robot.

Example of Fit + Tactics as Relating To The Rent

So does this all work? Well, I can't make it work every time but I do have an sample size = 1 experiment from the past.

A friend and now-teammate of mine (I refer to him as SOC in the blog, but most of you who race in the area know who he is) had hit a plateau at the B races at the Rent a few years ago. An obviously strong rider, he had trouble doing well at the B race. He got second a bunch of times but couldn't quite win. Until he asked for help I didn't offer it (because that's the way I was taught to do things), but when he asked I think he got a lot more than he realized. I casually mentioned that I might want to change his position a bit. I had some tactical advice as well, but that would follow the fit part of things - without the fit he'd be wasting a lot of energy.

Fit Changes

So we made a major, major change in his fit. We raised his saddle 17 mm, moved it forward 10 mm. We dropped his stem 25 mm (a full inch!) and installed a 12 cm -10? degree stem to replace his 10 cm -6? degree stem. I'm not sure of the angles, I'm pretty sure I was just looking for the longest, lowest stem we had in the pile of "borrowed take-off stems" from the local shop.

Those are some massive, massive changes, and in fact I played it a bit conservative because they were already getting so big. I think I vocalized the fact that I wanted to try a 13 cm or even a 14 cm stem (-17 degree), and if I didn't I was thinking it quietly.

We arrived at the fit just like any other fit - start with the saddle position, finish with the bar position.

I didn't want to change his saddle height much because it would screw up his legs, and by July he had a bunch of miles on his legs. I don't think we changed the height, we just moved the saddle around the arc of the circle defined by his saddle-to-BB distance. This keeps the saddle height the same (as far as the legs are concerned) but rotates the pelvis forward. I think we flattened his saddle out a bit, it might have pointed down more at the beginning. With the saddle position now set we could work on the front end.

(Keep in mind that since we didn't really change the saddle position it wouldn't really affect his leg muscles. There'd be soreness from the other changes but the legs would mostly be the same, except for the heavier emphasis on the glutes and related muscles. This means that any prior training would be applicable.)

For me the goal was to extend the reach so he'd have more weight on his arms while still allowing him to breathe and see normally. It wasn't just "slam the stem" - we actually thought about the changes. He felt comfortable, albeit a bit low, and once he started pedaling he had decent weight distribution between the saddle, bars, and pedals.

The lower and more forward bar position would increase stability in the turns by weighting the front end more. It did slow the bike's turning at walking pace, like if you were turning around on a sidewalk, but once you get over about 12-15 mph the front end of the bike feels super stable. The heaviness of the slow steering so unnerved him that he almost turned around halfway down his 50 foot driveway, but with my encouragement he kept going.

The lower and more forward position also enabled him to recruit more muscles, especially his glutes. This in turn allowed him to exert more power to the pedals.

Finally the longer and more forward position gave him a much lower profile, improving his aerodynamics.

I'm sure that with more fine tuning we could make even more improvements but at that time it seemed like enough.

For the fit I only drew on my past experience, feedback from the rider (before, during and after the fit, the latter in case there were any major problems with the position), and the available parts we had with us. We didn't have any longer stems, no -17 degree stems (zero rise), etc, so we did what we could do given the ingredients we had in front of us.

Tactical Advice

The other thing I told him was that he shouldn't be attacking willy nilly all race long. It's a rehash of some of the stuff in the earlier posts of this set. Sure, he could do the odd move here and there, but if he wanted to win then he needed to learn how to win. I told him to sit and wait and build reserves for the finish. Follow wheels, make sure to keep gaps closed, and meter his efforts. His fitness would get him to the finish, his hopefully improved power bump him up a bit, his better aero let him be more efficient, and finally the better weight distribution on the bike would make it easier on him in the turns. However he had to execute in order to win.

During the course of the next few weeks he raved about his new position. He had more power, more speed, and he felt the bike was more stable in the corners.

So how did it work out?

Result Of The Fit and Advice

The first race out he won the B race.

He won the next B race.

He got 3rd at a very tough weekend race. (When we raced it together as Cat 3s in 2010 he got 2nd and I was almost dead last, and that was the year I upgraded to Cat 2).

He won the next B race. And he finished the A race, which for me is always a challenge, even in the aforementioned 2010 season.

In years after that there was one thing that stood out in particular - He had a sudden flat (tubular tire) in Turn One at the Rent. He'd just bridged to a break so he was probably going about 28-30 mph. Not only did he not go down but he rode for a bit, confirmed he had a flat tire, and then finally stopped on his own. Yes he was on the drops. I have it on helmet cam somewhere but it was so undramatic I haven't even bothered getting a still of the incident.

Also, in 2010, he won an A race outright, something I've never done.

He is still using the same position.

Conclusion

So that's my bit on approaching the Tuesday races at the Rent for a newer racer in the B races. You should struggle the almighty struggle to stay in the field. You have to think a bit about drafting efficiently. You need to think about cornering properly, safely and efficiently in the field. You need to do some exploration of your maximum optimum speed. You should give yourself an honest fit appraisal ("an honest, no BS assessment," to quote some movie whose title/story/theme/etc that I can't remember now.. this inability to remember things is really bugging me).

In 4-6 races you should see a dramatic improvement in your performance. You should be analyzing your races more closely. If you get shelled then you need to think about why you got shelled. It's not just "I blew up". It might be something like "I wasn't on a wheel going into the headwind for 5 laps and I had to sprint for 100 meters every time we exited that turn." With that kind of analysis you can think about how to improve.

Even if you don't get shelled, if you didn't win or didn't help a teammate win then there's room for improvement. Think about where you made mistakes. Did you leave gaps in certain turns? Did you stay left when the wind was from the left, even though you had room to move right? Did you do a hard pull without saving anything as a reserve and then watch the winning move go up the road after you pulled off?

Unfortunately if everyone applies themselves then the races will become that much faster, that much smoother, and perhaps a little bit harder, so when you chase improvements you'll be chasing a moving target.

Ultimately, though, all this results in you being a better, more capable racer. It requires no extra training, save a few efforts to determine your max speed. I haven't said a word about hours per week, about wattage or intervals or cadence or gearing or anything else relating to training. It's partially because I don't know about all that stuff, at least not well enough to talk about it to anyone. But it doesn't matter anyway because you already do all that. Now you can apply all that precious work to your racing more efficiently, more effectively.

The beauty of bike racing is that you can always strive to race better. Our fitness and preparation vary throughout the years, changing year by year, month by month, sometimes week by week. Work, family, school, personal stuff, it can all take a toll on your bike racing. However, once you're at the race and you've pinned a number on and you're lined up at the start then it's time to race bikes. You don't have to worry about anything else. You have what you have, based on your fitness level and experience. You can't change your training now. You also can't dictate what you do in the race - it's not like everyone is going to ease up so you can go 180 watts for the race. When you finally clip in as the race starts it's up to you to go and make the most of it, whatever that might mean to you.

Final inspirational video for you:

The above video includes someone leaving a gap, watching SOC attack and letting others work, following a counter (and then getting countered hard), ending up in the 3rd group, getting gapped off the back of that group, watching the 3rd group catch the 2nd group, team attack, catching the break, lots of attacks/chases, hanging onto wheels, and a field sprint.

(Disclaimer/note: I am putting these posts up in response to some internal requests from individual riders for advice etc. I am not singling out any particular rider or their request, and this advice works for all racers. In fact I'd claim that these pieces offer universal advice for all new mass start bike racers.)

Equipment - Radical Steelman Stem On Bike

A few people have asked me what my stem looks like on the bike. I posted a pretty distorted picture that really makes the stem look ridiculous so I wanted to post something a little bit better.

The distorted picture, a still off the helmet cam; the stem was unpainted at that point.

When you look at that picture it looks like the drops end up below the 60mm fairing of the front wheel. The saddle looks like it's a good foot up in the air (I guess my National Lampoon style taillights don't help either). Although I have some saddle-bar drop the picture makes it look just a little bit ridiculous.

Therefore I lugged the camera down to the basement take a more reasonable picture.

The now-painted stem on the bike, in the trainer room.

I took the picture kneeling, hiding myself from the camera by placing myself behind the head tube of the bike (meaning so I don't appear in the mirror, or the flash in the mirror doesn't drown out the bike). The drops are shown a little more accurately in terms of relative drop.

Of course my kneeling position makes the saddle look like it's pointing up but trust me, it's not. It's level with a little dip in the middle. However the saddle doesn't look like it's towering over the bike like it does in the first picture.

The drops end up in the same spot as they were before, about next to the tire. Due to the compact bars, with their 3 cm shorter reach and 3 cm less drop (meaning it's 3 cm higher), I commissioned Steelman Bikes to make me a stem that would situate the drops properly.

They did and it does.

Yesterday I went on an Expo ride and the unstoppable Heavy D had his helmet cam on. I grabbed a couple stills from there to illustrate that my position on the bike isn't nutty as the stem makes it look.

In the paceline. I'm on the right, in case you didn't realize.

(still from a clip by Heavy D)

I admit I do have a flatter back than many riders out there, but it's because my back hurts if I ride in a more upright position. Another Expo rider, chatting with me on the roll out, theorized that the longer, lower position would reduce the load on my back by transferring it a bit to my hands. That makes sense. My back is definitely my weak point and it can be almost crippling at times. Riding on the drops is almost like therapy for me, easing the discomfort and making things much more manageable as far as my back goes.

Of course it doesn't hurt that it's aerodynamic or anything, but if my back forced me to sit upright that's what I'd be doing instead.

Making an effort following a hard working Jeff.

(still from a clip by Heavy D)

My position isn't radical at all. My arms are a bit bent but the low drops isn't meant to give me straight arms or bent arms or anything like that. It's meant to give me a good position when I'm out of the saddle and my only contact points are the pedals and the drops. I need the drops to be low enough that I can pull up on them and so that the front wheel gets a bit of weight on it. With higher bars (by 3 cm) the front end got really skittery, making the bike hard to control in sprints. My short legs determine the bar height, not any need for mucho drop.

Unfortunately I was behind Heavy D when I made my rare jump efforts on the group ride so there's no shots of me actually going hard out of the saddle from that ride.

You may notice that I have a saddle bag on my bike. I normally carry stuff in my pockets but with a limited amount of pocket real estate on my jacket (one huge pocket, one key pocket), plus the fact that the stuff was moving around too much on me in Florida, pushed me to use my saddle bag again. It's nice - no worrying about it, not as much weight bouncing around in my pocket, and easy access (I tightened a bottle screw just before we rolled out).

So that's the bike. I need to get a second stem for my other bike, so that I have two bikes with the same set up. There are other maintenance things I need to do, mainly gluing tires, but for this year that's the only significant change I'll make as far as the bikes go.

Equipment - Aero Benefits

In the past I've extolled the virtues of aero road bikes. I felt convinced that aero road bikes would sweep the peloton. In a few years I expected everyone to be using frames with internal cable routing, somewhat built-in stems, and integrated brakes.

I went as far as to order a frame from Tsunami Bikes that I thought would fulfill some of the things I thought important. I couldn't get integrated brakes on my budget, nor could I get some cool faired stem-fork deal, but I could do a few things.

First I got narrow tubing. I later realized that I have such a small frame that the tubing really wouldn't make that much difference but if I was going to get an aero frame I wanted the tubing to be narrow.

Second I got a rear wheel cutout. It may not make a huge difference with a direct headwind - in fact I highly doubt it - but it should make for a better sail in a crosswind. I figured that in a cross tailwind it'd be even better. As a bonus I could get really short chainstays because I wouldn't be limited to what room the tube left the rear tire.

Thirdly I got internal cable routing. I dealt with such things enough in the bike shop days so routing cables and such isn't such a pain (although I probably wouldn't have agreed with you the first time I installed a front derailleur cable. The shifter cables travel through the downtube and the rear brake through the top tube. I had no "through fork" method for doing the front brake cable (like for BMX bikes) so that cable hangs out in the breeze.

(I have to admit the main reason I got internal cables is that it's much, much, much easier to clean. I read somewhere that a foot of exposed cable housing costs about one watt. With my very small frame I have maybe 2 watts of drag due to cable housing. That's not a lot. If I had a 35 inch inseam I might have approached things a bit differently.)

Fourth I got an integrated seat post (or ISP). I knew and forgot that BH bikes "invented" it. I think it has its place but what I have is more of a style thing. I think that a shaped ISP has its place, able to significantly reduce shock while presenting a minimal profile to the wind. My ISP does neither but it looks cool so I did it.

Finally I had the frame built with only secondary consideration for the water bottles. I knew that my frame thoughts gave me only "fine" benefits. This is significant so I'll explain why.

In the early aero days things were so conservative that a 16 mm tall rim was considered "aero". Seriously! Nowadays a 32 mm rim would be called "really conservative". When disk wheels and then tall profile rims burst onto the scene they gave tremendous benefits over things like a 16 mm tall "aero" wheel. You could save many minutes in a 40 km TT by using a true aero wheel like a Specialized TriSpoke (with HED selling the wheel, with a slightly modified rear hub, as the HED3)

I call that a "coarse benefit". What's the point of quibbling over a second or two when you can save 4 or 5 minutes? Suddenly aero brake cables (some were still being routed up in the air) seemed kind of minor. Aero wheels would make a huge difference.

I realized this a long time ago and used the TriSpokes in races where I expected the pace to be flat out all the time. In tight crits I would use my normal superlight 28 spoke 280/330g tubulars, but by the mid 90s I had a slew of aero wheels at my disposal - the TriSpokes, Zipp 440s (pre-404s), Zipp 340s (pre-340s), Spinergy Rev-Xs, a rear disk wheel (17 mm wide rim prototype and extremely light), Campy Ventos (all aluminum rim aero wheels - they were tanks), and finally my first aero wheelset, the 16 mm tall Araya ADX-4s.

Not everyone seemed so openminded, especially at the pro level. That held true for a long time. Even in the mid-90s most pros didn't use significantly aero wheels. Spinergy made some inroads with the Mapei, Rabobank, and Polti teams, with some very, very good riders on the wheels. Next to those wheels the relatively primitive, full aluminum Campy wheels looked heavy and outdated.

Then Mavic hit the pro ranks with the Cosmic. Aero wheels were still not totally accepted but some of the better Classics racers used the Cosmics to great effect. Well that and doping apparently, but still, if they were all doping then the aero wheels would help make a difference.

Finally Zipp hit the big time with CSC. After a year or two of disasters (wheels breaking on the cobbles usually) Zipp could boast some major tough victories on their wheels.

Now everyone uses aero wheels. Not only that, everyone uses pretty tall aero wheels. A lot of riders use rims initially meant for time trials in road races - the 80 and 90 mm tall rims.

That's great except for one thing - now everyone had to have aero wheels just to be even with the others. This means that any benefit from one wheelset to another, if they're both aero, will be minute. The very coarse benefits of aero wheels, the minutes saved per hour, have now become, between similar aero wheels, mere seconds.

Now the benefits are "fine benefits", minute ones. Got it? Good.


So what's that got to do with aero road frames?

Well, aero road frames, at least ones reasonably well designed, offer a small benefit over non-aero frames. Within the aero frame market though the differences are barely measurable. Velonews found less than 10 g difference in drag, about 10 watts worth, spread across four frames (if my word problem logic skills are correct - 4.3 g spread for the 2nd - 4th frames, 5 g spread from 1st to 2nd frame.) They claim a 20 watt difference from their control bike, a wide tubed Masi with Cosmic wheels.

The benefit seems pretty small when you stick a rider on the bike, a computer on the bars or stem, and, wait for it, waterbottles on the downtube and seat tube. Suddenly you get a whole bunch of things that coarsely affect drag. Yes, a seat tube bottle has been show to be more aero than not having one at all, but if you have a rear wheel cutout and a very aero rear wheel, I think that a bottle won't help much.

Regardless it's beyond dispute that a bottle on the downtube really screws up the aerodynamics. Cervelo, in their top of the line time trial frames, integrated a bottle into the frame shape, essentially proving that sticking a bottle on the seat tube is not the ideal solution for frame aerodynamics.

Therefore, although I detailed all sorts of things I did on my aero frame, they were all "fine" benefits. Minute. Probably not measurable.

Except for the bottles.

I decided that I'd race with no bottles at all. Instead I'd use a CamelBak for that year (2011). I figured that the little hump on my back would help with aerodynamics, filling in the space behind my helmet, and the bare frame would be more efficient slicing through the wind.

I hoped for a somewhat coarse reduction in drag. Not a lot, not the 2 or 3 mph that I see at high speed with aero wheels, but maybe just enough to save me 5 or 10 or 15 watts average in a race.

My "aero" frame. Note no bottles - that was my "coarse" benefit.

The thing I wanted to do was to reduce my average wattage just enough to give me a sprint. All too often I'd waste myself in a race just hanging on for dear life. I'd get to the finish having averaged 190 or 200 watts and have absolutely nothing left.

On the other hand if I finish the race with an average wattage under 180 I've usually done quite well for myself. Under 170 and I probably did really well.

My goal was to bring the 190 watt races into the 180 watt range. This would allow me to contest the sprint and get a place.

Pause for a bit to catch your breath.

(Jeopardy theme song)

Okay, let's keep going.

Today I realized something. All this is "fine" benefit stuff. The bottle idea was a more significant fine benefit but it was still a fine benefit. I realized this because of a couple things.

First, I've noticed a lot, and I mean a lot of racers who look like they're on a 3 speed bike when they're in a race. They're up in the air, they're on the hoods, they look like they're rolling down the boardwalk to pick up the Sunday paper. I almost always hold my tongue when I see this because I was told a long time ago not to offer advice but to wait for someone to ask for it. People who spontaneously gave advice usually didn't get received well since the advisee wasn't necessarily ready to hear said advice. The problem with the 3 speed position is that it's really upright and catches a lot of wind. It's not aero, and it's way worse than having a non-aero frame. You can't buy your way out of an inefficient position, not with wheels or a frame or anything. It's just bad.

Second, the riders I fit have done well. I have never had the opportunity to fit someone using a powermeter but I did fit a few riders using a trainer to make sure I was in the realm of reality. The racers I fit showed immediate improvement. My fits tend to be the same kind of thing. I couldn't describe it technically but I always found I did the same thing for each rider - extend them, drop the bars, usually raise and move the saddle forward. Basically they went from looking like a rider going to pick up the Sunday paper to a rider that looked like a racer.

I knew each rider would be better but I couldn't tell you why.

Now I can, for a couple reasons.

First, I read somewhere that Michele Ferrari told Armstrong to raise his saddle 2 mm, in order to flatten his back a bit. I thought, okay, come on, 2 mm, that's nothing, that won't do a thing for your back.

Then I remembered that when I put the 170 mm cranks on my bike and raise my saddle 5 mm, it feels like a new bike. I'm much lower in front, my back is that much more comfortable, and I can roll along just a touch easier. I never really quantified it so I just dismissed it as a minor benefit to 170s (and it was a reason I tried sticking with the 170s for a year, then for a summer, before finally giving up and going back to the 175s. The position was great but the long crankarms were an even more coarse benefit.)

Second I had a chance to sort of quantify why the 170s felt better. I saw this site today, for the first time. Don't mind the 1995 graphics. What's important is the link to "Real Customers, Real Results + Improvements". Take a look at what the riders look like before and after. Before - they look like what I described above - a rider on a 3 speed.

Okay, maybe not that bad, but look at any random picture of you (meaning you, the reader) in some random ride/race this year. Look at the picture with a discerning eye. Look at your back, look at its angle toward the lower back area. See how your hips are sitting on the bike.

Now look at the "after" pictures on that site. See how low their torsos are? See how their arms extend forward? See how their hips are angled forward on the saddle a bit?

They look pro now. It's not just a look though. Look at the numbers, how much wattage they're saving, how much faster they can go. It's incredible, the changes. Even an experienced racer saw a huge improvement in performance. Body positioning gives you a tremendous benefit - it is the biggest of the coarse benefits.

Finally, I saw some article somewhere (forgive me for not linking, I've followed so many links recently I have no idea where this was) where someone gave the benefits of a time trial frame, helmet, and wheels. The main benefit came from the frame but not because of the frame itself but because of the position.

Aha!

This is where all this starts to come together. I know that I know how to fit a rider, within reason. I couldn't even describe what I was trying to do, I just did it. Now I know that I fit a rider in order to tilt their hips forward, let them open up their hip angle, get their back more flat, drop their shoulders and arms, and get their head tucked in a bit more. The pictures from that wind tunnel site really illustrate the kind of results I would go for when I fit someone.

Next, the wind tunnel site quantified for me the savings on the position. They even comment somewhere that aero helmets are aero helmets, probably like aero wheels are like aero wheels. Get something in the right family and they're really close to one another.

At the same time the site illustrated to me that aero frames aren't where it's at. Aero frames may help incrementally but without a good rider position the frame won't be significant. In fact it's probably more important to get aero wheels, maybe some other aero stuff - flattened bar tops, even more aero shoes - before the aero frame becomes important.

So it's position. And position, for most of us, is pretty easy to adjust.

For me, not so much. I have limiters - I have short legs so my preference for 175s means I end up with my saddle back just a touch more than I prefer. I end up with my hips tilted up just a touch more than I prefer. And therefore my back isn't quite as flat as I like.

(I should point out I have a bad back and the flat back really feels comfortable. The other week I got on the bike specifically to help my back, it was really hurting for a few days. The ride really helped it feel better, and I was on the drops virtually the whole time. Another thing for people to open their minds to - the idea that a flat back could be more comfortable than one that's elevated a bit.)

I have been thinking of a third Tsunami, primarily to explore the use of compact drop bars. I really like the FSA Compacts but they're 3 cm shorter in reach and 2 cm shorter in drop. To fit me properly I'd need a 15 cm stem (not happening) which drops 2 cm (especially like that). A longer frame by say 2 cm (and a 13 cm stem instead of a 12 cm, to keep weight over the front wheel) would be good.

The drop presents a problem. The headtube is already as short as possible. With the Chris King InSet headset I could drop the stack height just a bit but I'd want to drop it about 2.5 cm, 2 cm for the bars and at least 0.5 cm for the cranks (since I like it when the saddle is 5 mm higher). The only way to get this extra drop is to raise the rest of the bike, i.e. the bottom bracket. That's not ideal but it would definitely work. A track stem would give me about 1 cm drop.

It's definitely just a gleam in my eye but the idea with this third evolution frame would be to hone body position. It's not as important to have an aero frame (especially for a frame with a 9.5 cm headtube) but having my body position adjusted a bit would really help.

Because on my bike now even I look a bit like I'm out for a stroll to pick up the Sunday paper.

How To - Position Changes

I've posted about how your optimal position is fluid - it's not a static thing, it moves around a bit. I shuffle my saddle position around a bit, mainly trying to optimize for whatever batch of races is coming up. For my A races I have the saddle a bit higher, for ultimate speed, and for the others I'll sometimes go lower. In the off season I almost always lower my saddle, partially to allow for the extra thickness of tights, but also because my pedaling needs change from rapid changes of pace to a more steady drawn out kind of thing. Think doing a 7 corner crits in the summer versus a two hour climb in the off season.

So saddle position isn't always constant. This holds true even for experienced pros.

I suppose one could make the argument that the pros have different positions on their time trial bikes versus their regular ones. For example you never see a team mechanic sawing the nose off of a regular road bike, but there are a lot of "modified" saddles on time trial rigs. Time trials favor a more forward position for all sorts of reasons. It's the position I adapt for my road bike when I'm approaching an A race because I can't take advantage of the sustained power a lower saddle gives the rider.

Even if you ignore the time trial bikes, pros will still change their position.

Bernard Hinault, towards the end of his career (he announced he'd retire when he was 32 and he did), fitted a one cm longer stem (and I think he dropped it a centimeter too) and went out and soloed to victory shortly thereafter in that year's Tour of Lombardia.

I posted in a thread about pro race predictions and confidently stated that we wouldn't be seeing Boonen at the top of any results sheets this year. What I didn't know was that he was changing in his approach to the year.

Significantly, at least in my eyes, he made some relatively radical position changes.

In fact he made a number of changes to his set up going into 2012. His saddle position went up a centimeter, he went with two centimeter narrower bars, his brake levers appear noticeably lower than in prior seasons (not "jacked" like before), and he, well, he did well for himself.

In fact he won four major one day races, two in field sprints, one in a three up sprint, and one solo.

He's won in every scenario possible. Okay, except when there are longer climbs. The short, punchy climbs are fine, the longer ones, not so much.

As I read about Boonen's latest victory, over and over and over and over, I kept thinking that I need to bake a cake that says "My Words" on it and eat it, because of my failed prediction that we wouldn't see Boonen win anything. He's basically won everything so far, about the most opposite of my prediction.

(Someone suggested making cupcakes as I'll have to make so many of these cakes. Thanks for the help.)

I'd beg forgiveness in my wildly wrong predictions. Had I known he was tuning his position, I might have predicted differently.

Now the other prediction I had was that Levi would win the Tour.

We'll see how that goes. I just hope that he fiddled with his position for 2012 also.

Equipment - Stem

One centimeter.

That's what I needed when I put on the new FSA Compact bars on the black Tsunami.

All the thought that went into figuring out a nice top tube length (so that I'd use a 120 mm stem with my bars - I feel that's about the ideal stem length for a standard bar so a rider will weight the front wheel enough), agonizing decisions made after painstaking calculations and geometry stuff, that all went away when I stuck the FSA bars onto the bike.

Suddenly the bike was too short.

I mean, I knew that going in, when I bought the bars. I knew they'd be shorter, that they didn't reach as far. That's the point with the compact bar, they're shorter in reach and shallower in depth.

Compact, in other words.

I bought them anyway because of two reasons.

One, I realized (and I haven't admitted to anyone until now) that when I finally got my black Tsunami frame, the 120 mm stem I had wasn't a 120 mm stem - it was a 110 mm stem.

Horrors.

Let me rewind. In 2011, building up the black Tsunami, I bought a stem for it. My goal was to have two identical bikes, two bikes where I could hop off of one, hop on the other, and all the contact points would be identical. I'd grab the bars instinctively, drop my foot, the pedal would be there, and when I sat down it'd feel like I was on the other bike, right down to the millimeter.

With that in mind, I bought a few stems for the two bikes. The original one, a WCS superlight Ritchey unit, was getting a bit old, and I was worried that it'd eventually fail. Therefore I ordered two or three similar 120 mm Ritchey stems (when I commit to something, I really commit), just in a slightly heavier model.

(I think I have three since I have two in boxes. Or do I have one? I don't remember and don't feel like looking.)

I pulled the first stem out of the box and thought, "Oh, they put a 130 mm stem in the 120 mm box."

The other ones seemed just as long.

So I measured it with a spoke ruler. Then with a tape measure. Then measured it again.

I looked at the old ("weathered"?) WCS stem, the one that was supposed to be a 120 mm stem. It measured 110 mm.

Looked at the new, unstressed, clean, and 10 mm longer stems.

Thought about all those super fast descents I wanted to do while I was in SoCal (because that's where I received the frame). Thought of the switchbacks, the penalty for a failed stem.

I put the new, unstressed, clean, and 10 mm longer stem on the bike.

And I went out on a long, long ride.

I have to admit that it felt okay, a bit stretched out. Long, yes, but okay.

I let the stem thing kind of slip to the back of my mind as the year started. It wasn't a good year on the bike, with a lot of my races lasting just 15 or 20 minutes. I won't blame it on the longer stem, but there were times when I thought it'd have been nice to have the bars just a touch closer.

Therefore the FSA Compact bar kind of made sense. Shorter reach, closer drops.

But they brought the bars back a good 20 mm, a lot more than the 10 mm I wanted.

I should point out that the FSA Compacts are the first 31.8 mm bars I bought on purpose. The 31.8 mm refers to the diameter of the center part of the bar - my regular bars are skinnier at 26.0 mm. All my regular stems are 26.0 mm clamp.

So why did I buy the 31.8 mm bar? Because that's the only diameter it comes in, and I already have a stem.

Let me explain.

The only bike we have here with 31.8 mm bars is our tandem. And would you believe this, I even bought a 130 mm stem for it (the tandem doesn't have a custom top tube and the 130 mm was the longest stem I could find at the time). I didn't really like the bars already on the tandem though, and I didn't want to buy a 31.8 mm bar as I'm kind of opposed to them in principle. I thought that one day I'll just put one of my regular bars on it and a 120 mm stem.

All this meant that for about 3 years, that 130 mm 31.8 mm clamp stem has been laying around the basement doing nothing.

I thought of that stem when I bought the FSAs. A brand new, very nice 130 mm reach stem that is 10 mm longer than my current stem, combined with 20 mm shorter reach bars, means a 10 mm shorter reach.

That's what I wanted.

When I finally put the FSA Compacts on the bike, I grabbed the for-the-tandem stem (I can't believe I knew where it was), put it on the bar...

Looked at it.

"That 130 mm stem looks a lot like a 120 mm stem."

And, lo and behold, it measured 120 mm.

Fricken frack.

Today I got a 3T something Team stem, a nice one. -17 degree angle (with a 73 degree head tube angle it is horizontal), 130 mm reach (for real), and it even matches the 3T Team fork on the bike.

3T stem on the newer Mac.
Them be Ti bolts.

The stem swap took about a minute. I didn't realize just how nice of a stem I'd bought for the tandem until I realized that both stems have titanium bolts.

Because, you know, they make such a difference.

They actually do, seriously. The biggest thing is that they don't corrode. Titanium doesn't oxidize like some of the more common metals. I mean, yes, it oxidizes, and when it does it's bad news if the titanium is holding your bars on your bike, but it doesn't oxidize under normal conditions.

(When it oxidizes it turns into a pure white powder. You probably have titanium oxide all over the inside of your house - it's used in virtually all white paint; it's the white pigment. My dad told me this when I was a kid. He revealed to me that he was involved in a project where they isolate titanium. Having just read about F-15 fighter jets and their titanium make up, I thought, "Boy, my dad helps make F-15s!". So I asked him what they did with the titanium. "They burn it and make it into a white powder. It's used to make white paint. It's very valuable." That's when I realized that adults were crazy. Hey, at least any white paint on the F-15 probably had titanium oxide pigment.)

White letters - I wonder if there's titanium oxide in them.
The bottles are empties. There's a whole slew of them.
The stem cap bolt is not titanium. It rusts.

When I finished the FSAs were a centimeter further away from the saddle.

My bike is dirty but you can get a sense of the stem's height relative to the front brake.
I'm still debating if I will keep the housing behind the bar.
Note the Nokon segments go all the way to the lever - no cheater spiral housing used (Nokon includes spiral stuff for under the tape).

I threw a leg over the bike (it's on a trainer), sat on the saddle, clipped in, and hunkered down on the drops.

Beautiful.

One centimeter.

Who'da thunk it.

Racing - Tuesday Night and Short Cranks

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have conclusive data on fit, power, aerodynamics, and other things which can be scientifically measured. Okay, I have the SRM, a heart rate monitor, and I can see speeds and cadence. Not much else. And I probably don't use the tools as well as they could be used - for me it's just looking at numbers and seeing if I can get a few of them higher than before.

The problem with measuring scientifically, or at least in a repeatable manner, is that sometimes the measurements are made in such a way that the data ends up being irrelevant to the goal.

My blue car came with suspension braces and the marketing material boasted about how its stiff chassis. If the chassis was so stiff, why the suspension brace? How would you test such a thing?

Well, one owner (not me) did some suspension work and forgot to tighten the bolts on one side of his suspension brace. He found that whenever he went around a corner he'd hear a set of clunks. Ends up that his brace was clunking against the bolts. This indicates that there was enough chassis flex to move the brace a bit, and, consequently, if you tightened the brace down, it would help resist that movement.

So, likewise, I've been sort of experimenting, somewhat involuntarily, with different length cranks. After about 20 years using 167.5 mm or "normal" 170 mm cranks, I made the move to 175 mm cranks. I did so because the cranks gave me much more power, and, with a rider that had a significantly reduced fitness level, better top speed and mid-power "oomph".

I used the long cranks successfully, winning my first races in a long time, even earning medals (at least one of each color I think) in the Cat 3 CT Crit championships. But as I gained fitness I found myself wishing for shorter, faster cranks. I wasn't sure if sacrificing the ability to roll huge gears over medium hills would be worth any potential speed, but I decided to take the gamble.

I got some 170 mm cranks.

Problem was that these weren't just "cranks", they were part of my SRM. Changing them would cost, nowadays, upwards of $2500 (used) to almost $4000 (new).

There was no going back.

Unless... I used my old bike. Or the tandem. Or the mountain bike. Or the spin bike. All of them have 175s on them, and I don't feel like swapping them out. Well, my wallet doesn't feel like swapping them out.

So, recently, when I busted a spoke in my Reynolds clinchers, I moved my whole night riding rig over to the Giant (with 175 mm cranks) and went riding on the group ride.

I got killed.

I mean I couldn't go fast if my life depended on it. I felt like someone had put superglue in my bottom bracket bearings. It felt horrible.

Fine, my bike weighs 26 pounds or so, fine, it doesn't have fancy shmancy wheels, but still, this was a bit ridiculous. Ends up my seat was too high so I dropped it some. That helped. But I still felt dog slow.

I don't have any computer on it though so although I felt slow, I didn't know if I was slow. Ends up that slow on that bike is pretty fast - I did my Quarry Road loop pretty quickly on the "slow" Giant when it didn't feel very fast.

This brings us to the East Hartford Tuesday night races. I went back again yesterday, August 19th, bringing the Cannondale with its short cranks and tubular tires. I tried to warm up a lot because I wasn't used to the cranks. Coincidentally the last ride on the Cannondale was the prior week's race, and I hadn't downloaded the SRM data for either one. I'd get to see two races at once later that night!

I did some jumps in my warm up, trying to get my legs used to the 1 cm smaller circles. I felt fine on the bike though, a little more "spinny", a little more fluent. Felt fast in the tailwind, felt slow in the headwind. I had to work kind of hard to go more than 15 mph in the headwind and I started dreading the race. Small fields, no hiding, lots of wind.

A fellow racer, he of the "We Chase Blue" team, merged into the warmup loop. We've gotten to chatting while we spin around, but for this particular loop I wanted to do a big jump - I'd spent the last two loops steeling myself for this effort. So the first words out of my mouth were me saying that I had to jump.

"This isn't personal but I need to do a jump."

He laughed, I jumped.

We rolled around after, talked about his last race, a gear problem he had last Tuesday (fixed now), stuff like that. We went and watched SOC win his race, attacking the break and rolling in about 10 meters in front of the next guy.

Then we raced. I had a lot of fun going through the corners. Cornering in groups is something I don't do frequently, and I got to the point where I was pulling next to riders, looking over their lower back, and sighting down the exit of the turn by doing that. I experimented with cornering hard, once going over the manhole cover (both tires slipped sideways - better to go inside or outside), going wide a lot (fine), going inside (fine), and pedaling a lot (fine, but maybe I should have rested my legs instead).

Except for one guy who seemed to have a hard time cornering (he'd turn in early, swing wide, and didn't weight the front enough to prevent the "wide" bit) who almost ran me into the curb twice, it was good. Some other guy seemed to be dizzy and almost took himself out twice, but I can't really complain about that since I almost took out he of We Chase Blue on the warm down lap doing exactly the same thing, my bars swinging left somewhat spontaneously as I lost all sense of balance.

I did focus on staying on the drops, my hands a bit uncomfortable but my back and neck fine - although I started getting dizzy like I'd mentioned before. I don't stand enough on flat courses so I tried to stand a bit more than normal.

I started cramping about 25 minutes into the race, starting to regret doing that third and last jump. I tried to drink water but I had no electrolytes, no sugar. I kept at it though, as first my left calf started twinging, then my right, then, in the last five laps, my left quad started to go. I started dropping my heel to stretch out my calf, started using much bigger gears to avoid spinning, and tried not to make any unnecessary efforts.

I also kept checking my watch. When was the 45 minutes up and the lap cards out? 7:20? 7:25? It seems I was looking every lap and getting more and more impatient with the lap card folks.

Finally, at about 7:30, the cards came out. Well, I missed 5 to go, but I saw it was 4 to go. I rolled up to the We Chase Blue guy and told him I was cooked. I also rolled up to SOC and told him the same because he'd been trying to look after me in the race, and I didn't want him to be looking after me while I cramped right out of the race.

The laps wound down pretty quickly, and with two to go I was pretty far back for the group - 10 or so back in the 20 or so field. I moved up a bit, decided that my legs weren't really good for this, but the adrenaline (and the focus necessary to take all the turns smoothly and aggressively) kept me from sitting up.

But, of course, at the bell, I was sitting in the field, perhaps 10 or 15 back, and feeling like I had maybe 5 or 8 seconds of sprint in my legs. We flew through the first and second turn, a pro to my inside letting me ease ahead of him in the second turn. The field went pretty wide in the third turn (with manhole cover) and I tried to stay out of the wind by staying left, to the inside.

We passed the spot where Secondo jumped last week, then where I jumped. Guys were sort of milling around, a group of maybe five detaching slightly. I think they were the break, and although I sprinted last week and no one complained, I wasn't sure of the ettiquette of sprinting when a lap down. The left (sheltered) side was completely clear though, like five feet worth, and just screaming "Jump here! Jump here!" You know, like a little kid in gym class. "Choose me! Choose me!"

I listened to the gap, waited until I thought the line was prudently close, and sprinted into the superhighway along the left side fence. I rolled by the guys milling around in the front and rolled to the line, sitting up at some point, not throwing the bike, not doing too much. I thought I sat up well before the line but it never appeared so I think I sat up after the line.

Then, after the aforementioned almost-taking-out-We-Chase-Blue, some congratulatory words to SOC, and escaping with only two mosquito bites, we left. After we got home I downloaded the data from the two East Hartford races.

Interesting.

In my crampy 10 second sprint, I didn't break 1000 watts, essentially a moderate effort if out of the saddle. Not impressive, but at least I have a benchmark for me for a poor sprint. As a reference point I'd make the same effort when responding to P123 surges at Bethel up the hill.

I did do 1583 watts in one of my warm up sprints, my max effort ever (!!), and I did 1400+ in another one of them. The other two "sprints" were more form-sprints and I did only 800-something on one, 600-something on another, focusing on rocking the bike rather than going fast, getting ready to do the bigger efforts.

In contrast to my crampy sprint this week, last week (when I felt good in the sprint) I did a 20+ second sprint, holding 1000+ watts for 10 seconds, over 900 watts for 20 seconds, and peaking at a somewhat normal 1300 watts in the sprint. Nothing great (1450+ would be really nice) but sustaining the effort is good, and in races it seems I don't have the same peak power as I do in isolated sprints - in the past few years I haven't gotten the whole "sprint 100%" thing down in a race situation.

So, it seems that when I went and got on short cranks after being on long cranks for about 6 hours, I had much more power than normal. Is this causual? I don't know. Is it correlated? Yeah, because it happened.

But I don't know how to interpret this data.

One more week of East Hartford. Then I have to start looking for races. There are other things on the horizon as well, significant things which are not cycling related.

But tonight there's a group ride. And I'll be using the Giant with its 175s. Can't hurt for next week, right?

Racing - Fit is a Relative Thing

A while ago I did a post about how someone's ideal position changes over time, and how it's hard to nail down your current "best position". Although I used to be in a position to influence quite a number of riders' positions, that pretty much ended after the late 90s. Recently, this year, I stepped into the controversial fitting ring and put my money where my mouth was - I fit a couple riders.

One, Young Rider, did okay right after our fitting session, but a relatively horrific accident ended his season. Plus, to be fair, he was so new to the whole thing that it was hard to quantify any position change's benefits. New racers improve by huge margins, usually despite some incorrect training or position or whatever, but the simple fact of riding will improve a non-rider's riding ability pretty quickly. So I really can't take credit for any of his hard earned accomplishments.

After this slight set back (when YR crashed) I sort of stopped thinking about fit and stuff. Although the actual fit session doesn't take a lot of time, traveling to and from such fitting sessions does. With the gas prices, my former full-time cycling status, and a looming house purchase, it didn't seem like traveling all over the state to fit whoever would make sense.

SOC is a friend though, and, significantly, Mrs. SOC is a friend of the missus. So any coincidental races usually have us traveling in time to watch SOC (or staying late to do so), and we try and combine things with a dinner or something.

Now, for a slight tangent, a long, long time ago someone told me never to offer advice. Wait for the person to ask for it. Offering advice can be seen as obnoxious, overbearing, presumptuous, and a whole lot of other negative things.

Worse, if the advice is incorrect, the advisor loses all authority. Offering advice, my friend told me, is a right. It's an earned right. And you build that right, and that authority, by offering only good advice over many, many years.

I guess it's like trust. It's so hard to build up, so easy to break, and virtually impossible to restore. Offering advice is like that but there's an added element of knowledge, of experience.

With bike racing, there is a lot of unwritten knowledge, a lot of experience out there, and a lot of people who have neither and are desperate for either. New and relatively new racers are like sponges, absorbing everything around them. Problem is distinguishing between good and bad, and initially at least it's very hard to separate the two.

Unfortunately this leads to riders getting bad advice, or perhaps advice not particularly suited for them.

So, anyway, that tangent is a long way of saying something else. When I see someone with an iffy position on their bike, or one that doesn't seem to handle their bike very well, I don't say anything. I used to have to hold my tongue, when I felt like I knew everything, but now that I realize that I don't know that much, it's much easier to keep my mouth shut.

Heh.

Anyway, when I first saw SOC race, I wasn't happy with his position. But since I had no idea of his position's history, nor of any potential unusual physiological needs or problems, I didn't think too much about it.

Then, perhaps a year later, at a Tuesday night race, he asked me about his position.

Coincidentally I'd been watching the ebb and flow of the race, trying to get a feel for one of the very few new courses I've done in the last ten years. Since SOC was in there, I used him as one of my reference points. And that naturally had me studying his position.

I felt like Roger Legeay in the first Tour du Pont, tsk-tsking away at his GC leading rider, Atle Kvasvol (sp?), as Atle rode himself out of the lead in the final time trial. I watched SOC ride and wanted to reach out and start adjusting his bike right then and there.

After the race we powwowed a bit and, at some point, he asked me what I thought about his position. He felt "cramped" as he put it. In other words, he was asking for my advice.

Well now.

I went out on a limb. I told him that, yeah, I'd actually studied his position on the bike when he raced, and yeah, I thought I might be able to tweak it a bit.

I had him get some stems - since he had a 10 cm stem I asked him to find a 11, 12, and 13 cm if possible. I had 13 cm stems but with the wrong clamp diameter so that was out. We could raise his seat and I really wanted to move his seat forward. Yeah, yeah, it's a crit thing, but SOC is a crit kind of guy so it would be fine.

I met up with him, sat him on the trainer, and had him pedal a few pedal strokes. All my Tuesday Night studying came rushing back.

I steeled him for some massive changes and then proceeded to remove 2.5 cm of spacers, stick on a 12 cm stem (+2 cm), keeping it flatter (it was a +/- 10 degree stem), cranked his seat up almost 2 cm, and moved his saddle forward 1 cm.

Another person, a long time ago, told me that when you make adjustments (in this case to a race car engine) you make adjustments to the extremes, see what each extreme does, then narrow down the range until the car is good. We didn't find too many horsepower on the engine but it was fun winding up the thing to 8500 rpms to try anyway, changing various things between each howling run.

With SOC there was no dyno, no ear muffs, no Webers, but I wanted to see what the most radical change would do. So I made those changes.

And it looked.... normal.

Since it was so radical I took pictures of the original position with my cell phone because, if I screwed everything up, I wanted to be able to return him to his original position. At worst he'd be back to where he was.

SOC looked pretty skeptical with such radical changes, but he also had that glint in his eye when he climbed back on the bike. He thought it still fit relatively well but it was obviously a different creature.

My front-wheel-heavy fitting style really showed its hand when he got on the bike on his driveway. He didn't get 10 feet on the bike when he commented on the immensely heavy feeling steering the bike had suddenly sprouted. Yes, I told him, the long stem turns the bar more like a windshield wiper than a steering wheel, and your position places more weight on the bars, so your slow steering will be heavier, more awkward. But at speed, I said, it would be much more stable. After a few swoops he readily agreed.

We didn't have the right stem cap for the carbon steerer fork (we didn't cut it so the inside of the steerer, where the stem clamped, was no longer supported from the inside) so the stem wasn't on very tight. Well, tight enough to ride, but not so tight that it would crimp the fork. We still sprinted for a speed limit sign, but otherwise we took it pretty easy.

We went on what ended up being a flat 10 or 12 mile ride. Nothing really spectacular except that nothing was wrong with SOC. With such a radical position change, the fact that he was okay could be considered somwhat spectacular.

So, how did the new position work out?

Well, let's see.

On the next Tuesday Night race, he won.

The Tuesday Night series took a week off, but he returned to the next one.

He won.

Not only that, he also hung in with the P1234s till the end (second race, immediately follows the first one), the first time he did so.

Fine. Those are "just" Tuesday Night training races. So he went to a "real" race. Fall River, MA.

And he podiumed in the Cat 4 race.

Heh.

Chalk one up on the "plus" side of advice.

Life - Yehuda Moon and Your LBS

Earlier this year someone introduced me to this great strip:

Yehuda Moon

I'll give you a small tip - Yehuda is a guy's name (Moon is his last name) and he works in a bike shop named The Kickstand.

It just got started a little while ago so it'll be all of 20 minutes for you to read all the archives, 40 minutes if you have a lagging connection.

I'll wait.

Seriously, go read them. Skip a few if you like, but you'll get the general idea of the whole thing.

(Note: I wrote this a few months ago and now there is much more to the archives, so I'll forgive you if you read the strip later.)

So now I'll rehash some of my favorites without revealing them:

Gotta love the rain cape. Head wind. The newsletter. Running out of paint. Snowman. Saving money by commuting to work on a bike. The racer geeks. Durability versus speed.

The Yehuda Moon introducer is a new cyclist (1 or 2 years), a college student, and probably a typical representation of an up and coming racer.

In this era.

I say that because I didn't realize some of the implications of getting into a new sport in this age of the internet, of virtual (social) networking, of being able to draw on the expertise of thousands of people within minutes (or 0.25 seconds according to Google) for all your question needs.

You can also find really cool bike things online, like Yehuda Moon.

I hate to state the obvious but the internet flattens social and physical barriers. Perhaps the one thing it doesn't do is eliminate the need for some "schoolin' skills" like reading/writing, typing (I separate the two since I learned them separately - maybe nowadays they're one and the same), maybe some math, some rudimentary grasp of "how to research", and finally some proficiency in using a web browser. Without reading/writing and typing you're pretty much up the creek.

Since I can't write this for people who can't read, if you know of such people, encourage them to learn. I might sound facetious but I know a few adults who are or were illiterate and I'm sure there are more.

Anyway, once you have those relatively straightforward skills, you're free.

In this case a younger rider (or YR or college student - you know, someone who could literally be my kid) asked me for some innocuous advice on bike fit. He'd been posting prolifically on Bike Forums (or "BF" as the regulars call it) about fit, racing, even traveling.

The thing about the YR is that geographically he was pretty close to me, not like some of the other regulars - Texas, Australia, Europe. I'm talking YR is within 40 or 50 miles, at a nearby school.

I don't know that there are other racers on campus, but there is a local shop. YR has enough sense to maintain a relationship with one local bike shop (LBS), one that happens to be elsewhere. It's pretty far away, perhaps where his parents live, and in fact I actually have no idea where his LBS sits.

Shop relationships are good as far as I'm concerned, though, so it's good. He's working through his fit issues, trying to get his bike in racing order, and getting out there to race. This process got me thinking about the internet.

When I had been in his situation at his age, I was in what might be considered close to an informational vacuum.

My annual resources would have been the following: 19 issues of VeloNews a year, most of them in the April-August time period. 12 (?) issues of a rapidly deteriorating Winning Magazine. And sometimes, when such magazines existed, Road Bike Action or Bicycle Guide. My LBS would pass on some tidbits. My uncle sent me an Italian book on road racing. Yes, it was all in Italian, and no, I don't know a stitch of Italian.

When I first started out I had a 3 or 4 page newsletter I got from a shop that was really, really far away. It had some racing terms on it, club dues and jersey costs, and a couple ride tips. And that was it.

Of course there were the "senior" riders. They taught me a lot of what I know. In fact there were a few of them.

One was a TT god at school - his time trialing advice amounted to "Well, spin a 53x12 for 40k, you should be able to break an hour".

Another was a retired ex-pro (former domestique to Coppi apparently) whose advice I pooh-poohed as being too old and not applicable - I wish I could ride with him now.

There was an outspoken guy at my shop that pretty much said things go his way or the highway.
And, finally, after a few years, my most trusted advisor who ended up being my first ever leadout man. He gave me a lot of great advice but also inclined to withdraw if my questions didn't relate to his current situation. So if I asked him about sprinting and he had focused his whole season on climbing, I usually didn't get much. But in his role as leadout man he had a lot of great stories, advice, and helped me understand the fragile ballet performed by a cycling team in a field sprint.

That was my world.

At least I could see each person (or listen to them on the phone). I wasn't inundated with advice from strangers, nor did I have a dozen recommendations from "experts" (bike companies online etc), and finally I never felt like I was lacking in my choice of advice - a computer plotted $5k fit session wasn't in my books, but if I wanted to ask the "authorities", I felt like I had access to them (i.e. the shop guys). Now that there are such things as a $5k fit session, I imagine it'd be hard to feel a knee twinge and think, "You know, if I had this $5k fit, I probably wouldn't have this twinge."

The problem with the internet is that there are no checks and balances. On the internet everyone is an expert, no one knows what they're talking about, and inevitably someone else knows what you need to learn.

You need to go to the source at some point. In the bike shop days we fit by first taking measurements of the rider. We then checked the FitKit for general recommendations (make sure we weren't too far off). We used the pedal thing for fitting cleats. And we made our own recommendations for stem and top tube length (usually).

Ultimately it came down to fitting by eye, by rider feedback, and not much else.

So, coming from this school of thought, I volunteered to check out YR's position first hand. The first time I went to YR's dorm and watched him sit on his bike, I thought about how to put it gently. His frame seemed painfully small, but he'd been fit somehow and this is what the shop came up with. After a couple minutes of what was probably unnerving silence to him, I finally blurted out, "You need to raise your saddle like 5 centimeters."

So much for being subtle.

5 cm, it ended up, was way too much - 2 cm was more like it. But you get the point. In fit sessions millimeters dominate the discussion, not centimeters.

So, with his seat height literally 9 or 10 cm higher than mine, and a frame only 2 cm (one size) larger, a larger frame seemed in order.

We performed some checks (measuring both him and his bike, checking what going up a frame size would do) and decided, as a pair, that a larger frame (2 cm) would be beneficial.

Without this sanity check, his quest for a more comfortable, better fitting ride would have gotten stalled. A real life fit, in a couple hours, did more than days of internet researching (and smart internet researching at that - he knows of fit sites I've never seen).

I guess it comes down to this: for virtual problems (software), virtual solutions pretty much always work. But for real life problems (say a leaking pipe in under the kitchen sink), although you might get virtual solutions, ultimately you'll need to get out a real life wrench and turn some real life nut or bolt.

With bike fit it's the same thing.

At some point you'll need to get someone to eyeball you on the bike. Preferably it'll be someone with less interest in selling you a new frame and more interest in seeing you set up correctly. Such reality checks are critical when dealing with bike fit.

I'm glad that I could help out YR. We plan on going riding one day soon and maybe he'll ask me more questions. But for now, getting him to get a new frame size, I feel like I've accomplished something in this internet age.

Epilogue: Unfortunately YR had a somewhat serious spill ("It's better now, kids don't cry when they see me") shortly after I wrote this and before he got his frame. We never got our ride in, but if/when he gets back on the saddle, I'll be up for that ride.