Aerolites, the struggle

Kind of appropriate. Struggling with Aerolite pedals. If it wasn't a struggle to set them up or to walk around on their cleats, we'd all be riding Aerolites. Well, I think a bit of float would help the cause too.

Yesterday I spent a couple hours grinding and filing various pieces of plastic to try and make myself an Aerolite cleat mount for a Sidi shoe. I started out with some polycarbonate but then found four Sidi SPD (i.e. the mountain bike SPD) adapters in my shoe bin. I decided to use them as the base and grind away the little cleat protecting ridges.

My goal is to use the adapter plate to get myself about 5-10 mm of shoe height. In this day and age of "reducing the foot to pedal axle distance", what possesses me to raise my foot higher? It's fit. I want to increase the delta between my seat height and bar height by 5-10 mm (more if possible). This is part of my plan to return my bike position to my "fit" days. It involves trying to either jack up my seat or dropping my stem. When I gained weight during 2000-2003, I ended up so heavy my belly hit my legs when I pedaled. You know you're heavy when that's happening. I had to raise the bars to clear my stomach. Now that I'm getting a bit better again, I'm looking to return to that blazing Cat 3 form I had back in the day. hahahaha.

(Just to clarify, I'm still a Cat 3)

Since I can't jack up the seat (seat-pedal height is correct) the reasonable alternative is to drop my stem. But it's already down low, it's a 73 degree stem, and I don't feel like milling my headtube like I did on my first Cannondale (to increase the headtube angle, if you can believe that). A deeper drop bar would work but there are none with a crit bend upper, so I'm stuck with my current bars (and they're not shallow at least).

Using a shorter crank would do it - I dropped my seat 5 mm when I put my 175's on. As I used to run 170's, I could go back to them and raise my seat 5 mm. Get more pedal speed, lose some power. I've debated this internally ever since I went to 175's and have decided that for now I'll stay with 175's. My rational is that BMX guys use super long cranks for good acceleration and they can spin pretty quickly. I haven't broken 250 rpm with 175's but I've gotten within a few rpms of that, and my max on 170 mm cranks is 286 rpm, so I'm close enough. I use the 175mm leverage on short power hills and since they're all over the crits I do, I want to keep them.

Changing pedals would do it, if the pedals were taller. Aerolites are not tall. But an adapter plate would add the height I want. And it would drop some absurd amount of weight. Even with plates etc, the pedals should be about 100-120 grams for the pair.

Anyway, with all this in mind, I've been trying to get my Aerolites back into working order.

I ended up covering a bit of my very cluttered garage with plastic shavings and got pretty good at milling with the Dremel. When I went to put on the cleat, I found that Aerolite made another boo-boo - the "SPD" holes are spaced a little too far apart. The screws don't fit squarely, and if it was a regular cleat, it wouldn't be a big deal. But the screw juts out into the actual pedal body and will muck it up. I tried different things - like other Sidis, various combinations of putting in the screws at the same time, but nothing worked.

For now, my Aerolite project is on hold. I'll probably pick it up Saturday as tomorrow is my finacee's birthday.

Sprinting - Tilting your bike, Part 2

I was thinking about what I wrote yesterday on sprinting and tilting the bike, and I thought of one more factor. This is the "pedal" lever point. When a rider pushes down on the pedal, they are pushing down on an off-center lever, i.e. the crank arm. Since the rider is balancing on a two-wheeled vehicle, it's important to maintain balance while pushing down on this off-center lever.

I'm fortunate enough to have a head-on shot of picture of a particular sprinter - me! When I examine it, it seems that it's not just my bars which determine how much the bike tilts. It's also the pedal position. The bars actually line up above the pedal and the wheel. Makes sense right - otherwise if you push down really hard on the pedal, you'll just flop over. After all, you're balancing on a two wheeled thing which wants to fall over if you push on it sideways.

Okay, the picture is in a newspaper. And no matter what I do, without a scanner, it's sort of hard to get into "internet" form. The copier just isn't cutting it. And the archives cost money to enter. I'll have to scan it at home and post it later.

So I need to clear out some wheelsets...

I was downstairs with my camera and started taking pictures of the various wheels laying around the basement.

The first batch ended up by my weight bench:

It consists of a TriSpoke (two sets of axles, front and rear, sitting in my toolbox), an old Zipp 340 (probably not good), a desperate spare for my mountain bike, some misc wheel, and a couple tires.

The next are just around the corner:
This bunch is a bit esoteric. There are some Spinergy Rev-X's, all damaged to some extent. Some FIR wheels on DA hubs, a Zipp 440 (I want to rebuild it on a real hub and get rid of the junky Zipp hub), and a whole lot of rims and wheels. There is a 40H rim in there as well as a single wheelchair wheel. Go figure. Oh, that white can at the bottom of the picture is Atomic Balm, the best warming rub I've ever used. And you might spot the burnt out Cycle Ops Electronic trainer in back there.

The next batch was used to hold up an extension cord:
There's a Spinergy wheel in there and some misc wheels including my first every front "race" wheel - a high flange Suzue hub with a Mavic clincher rim - was it a G40? The one before the MA40. My mountain bike's front wheel is to the right (the whole bike is there, but that's for a different post).

Then in the open, the "real wheels":
This is my real set of TriSpokes, tubulars, the rear with a flat. Also in there is a single FIR rimmed wheel - a sometimes spare. I'll use the TriSpokes in flat races with high speeds after I replace the tires on them - Prospect Park (NYC) is a good course for them as well as Ninigret Park in RI.

The last set is my "I really need to fix these" wheels:
My Reynolds carbon wheels are in there - after a couple years, I popped a spoke. Since I'm a believer in spokes going in bunches, I'm relacing both front and rear wheels. They are my absolute favorite wheels and I think they're worth about 20 feet in my most sprinted course - the Bethel Spring Series. In there too are two Eurus wheels, both of which are dented.

Ones you don't see - a pair of FIR wheels (Campy hubs) ready for some long training rides (32H, box section, blue for fastness), the Eurus on my bike right now, and, if you count the tandem's wheels, the tandem's wheels.

With the season fast approaching (my Florida training trip is coming up in a couple weeks) it's time to get things rolling.

Heh.

So to speak.

Sprinting - Tilting your bike (goes for climbing too)

This is from cyclingforums.com (which I posted). It's been cleaned up a bit for the blog.

As a rider with shorter legs who loves sprinting (say, like Abdujaporov), i.e. not like Cipo or Boonen or those tall guys, I always wondered why Abdu got such a raw deal on "throwing his bike around". I thought he rocked his bike a normal amount.

I *don't* have any scientific proof to back this up but this is my theory:

1. A rider can exert more force downward with their legs than their total body weight. I just saw a clip on YouTube of a guy doing 2300 lbs on the leg sled thing - eight times. He's a big guy but way less than 2300 lbs (he also squated 800 lbs, watching the bar flex like a wet noodle was incredible)
2. In order to exert more downward force than your body weight, you need to pull up on the corresponding side of the handlebar. For example, to push down on the right pedal with, say, 300 lbs of force, you need to pull up with 300-(your body weight) amount of force.
3. The most efficient way to exert that amount of force is to lift straight up. If you lift at an angle, you have to do more work to get the resultant "X" lbs of upwards force.
4. In order to make the lift angle perpendicular, the rider needs to move the part of the handlebar where it is being held to the same vertical plane as the pedal.
5. Since the pedal is anywhere from 7-10 cm off of center and the bar is anywhere from 20-23 cm off center, the bars need to be moved "inward", i.e. closer to center.
6. To move the bars inward, you can lift or drop the bar. Lifting the bar is easier since you're already exerting a lifting motion. If you drop the bar, your downward pedaling force will exacerbate your bike flopping onto its side.
7. Depending on your bar to pedal height difference, it will require a different amount of tilt to line the bar up with the pedal. A shorter frame will be tilted much more, a taller frame not as much, even taking into account wider bars on the taller frame.

This last thing is why I don't think Abdu was tilting his bike excessively. He was tilting his (very small) bike enough to line up his drops and his pedals, relatively speaking. Okay, he ran into that Coke Can in Paris, but Wilfred Nelison ran into the cop and no one pointed that out if the cop wasn't there, the Belgian would have hit the barriers sticking out about 5-10 feet past the cop.

Some heretical evidence (kind of like Christopher Columbus noting that the masts of ships drop down, not shrink into the distance - no proof per se but he thought the world was round based on that.... or was that more elementary school propaganda?) - when you get out of the saddle on the trainer, you move your upper body side to side.

Well I should say that *I* do this. I theorize that I do this is to get my weight over the pedal. To paraphrase a particular saying, "If the pedal can't come to me, I'll go to the pedal." On the road I don't move my body over like that too much unless I'm goofing off, pedaling really slowly, or totally blown. This is also a typical thing to see on the road, even in the saddle - the "rolling shoulders" thing that points out when a rider is vulnerable to attack. The rider is simply moving more of their weight to the downstroke side of the bike. This lets them put a slight bit more pressure downwards without too much upper body work.

Again, no scientific proof (watts or pounds or whatever) but after a lot of racing, a lot of sprinting, watching a lot of tapes, and studying optimizing sprinting for a very long time, this is what I think is happening.

Cycle Ops screeching again

My Cycle Ops screech fix was short lived. This morning's short session heralded a return to the screeching. So it's something else - the flywheel is a couple millimeters away from the roller holder so it's not hitting anything. It might be a bearing or the roller hitting something.

On a positive note, I now have my Giant TCR Carbon on the trainer now. Although most of it is identical to my Aluminum TCR (seatpost, seat, bars, stem, Ergo levers, pedals, all components except brakes virtually identical), there is one key difference. Okay, two. One is the carbon frame (vs aluminum). The other is that the carbon has my precious Record cranks and BB. They're the old fashioned kind, not the new Torque things. (I use the same wheels, tires, cassette so those are constant.)

Compared to the Centaur cranks on the AL bike, the Records are a LOT nicer. Beefier chainrings, stiffer crank arms, better shifting (maybe due to newer chainrings). The bike is a lot more responsive, even on the trainer. And it's a lot lighter - I noticed this when wheeling the different bikes in and out of my basement bike room.

Anyway, as my trip to FL is coming up in 9 days, I want to finish the Aerolite-Sidi shoe setup so I can test them for a few hours before the trip.

So I guess I'll deal with the screeching for now.

Aerolites, history and pics

So as promised, I'm putting up some pictures of my Aerolites. Actually of my shoes with Aerolite cleats. There were a couple more shoes but I must have tossed them.


The first shoe is a classic. (Please no comments about the shoe laces - remember, we're talking about the Pastel 80's and Miami Vice and all that.) Duegi 101's - wood soled shoes with a leather top. Talk about natural materials. First I used their normal cleat and toe clips and toe straps. I never resorted to nailing them down, the single bolt worked fine. But when the Aerolites showed up, I had to adapt.

You can see the strap that I put in place. Initially I simply wrapped it around my foot. You notice that all shoes have their straps at an angle? It's because having them straight up and down doesn't work. In those days, the industry assumed that laces allow for "fine tuning" tightness while the strap is for holding the foot in general.

Mostly the shoes had laces with some sort of leather cover held down by velco, kind of like the first Lake shoes out there. The leather cover stretched and made the shoes feel really sloppy. This gave clipless pedals a bad name so it took a couple years for people to make the switch.

This is what I did:
I put the straps in place but could not figure out a way to anchor them. I thought about super glue (onto a leather covered sole, no good), sewing it with my tubular tire repair kit (have you seen the size of those needles?), but nothing worked. Finally, in frustration, I put ShoeGoo down and held the straps in place with thumbtacks. And guess what? They held.

The cleats were easy, I simply mounted them so the back edge of the red Aerolite cleat lined up with the original cleat marks (from the pedal cage). The axle lined up perfectly. The wood screws provided with the pedals dug in perfectly into the hardwood sole.

There was no float since that was an unknown concept. The Time guy still worked for Look (before he broke away to make the "float" pedal come to life).

Eventually shoes went the way of shorts - away from natural materials and migrating towards petroleum based products. Duegi was on the outs so I went with Diadora. By then Aerolite came with Look bolt pattern adapters. They had one fatal flaw - the adapters placed the cleat about 20 mm too far back.

To remedy this, I drilled holes in the shoe about 20 mm in front of the regular Look mounting nutserts (? not sure what they're called but they are a threaded insert so you can drill out a shoe and put in mounting inserts). They came with Look pedals since, back then, most shoes didn't have the Look bolt pattern.

The end result:

You can see how far forward the cleat sits - it's because it's centered around the axle, not offset like most cleats. I drilled out three sets of shoes over the years, and each time I prayed there were no spring steel plates in the sole to deflect my drill bit. There never was.

The last shoe represents the beginning of the end for Aerolite. Instead working on things like perfecting their cleat setup, making it easy to install/remove Aerolites (it required a 5/16" allen key), or sponsor some racers, they tried to branch off into shoes. Their shoes were innovative - carbon and kevlar sole, predrilled for Aerolites, and super light.


They also had an innovative heel strap which allowed you to really snug up the shoe. Due to the strap angles and placement, the rest of the shoe was not really necessary - sort of like a sandal. So a minimalist rip-stop mesh covered your foot. Note that the outer edge is a bit damaged on my shoe? I had a pretty bad crash and scraped the shoe on the ground. My foot ended up getting badly scraped up. I learned then that the "thick and unnecessary" uppers of a shoe do more than just support your foot - they also protect them.

I think they would have worked but innovative design doesn't mean the shoe is comfortable. Somehow the things didn't fit very well - the sole was too flat and had no support. It's too bad because it was about 10 years ahead of its time.

As I've mentioned before, I'm working on setting up some Aerolites on some new Sidis. But today has been a dismal failure so far. I thought I'd rout the polycarbonate plate but the plate simply starts to melt. So I will have to put the project on hold until I get a jewelers saw or something similar so I can cut the plate up.

Cycle-Ops Fluid Trainer How to - screeching sound fix

So for a while my Cycle-Ops fluid trainer has been emitting a horrendous screeching sound. I occasionally tighten the end nut holding on the flywheel:
and it seems to help but today I decided to take a closer look at the situation.

Armed with my trusty LED headlight as a flashlight (it's in that picture just under my hand), I took the flywheel off and actually studied it, instead of just wiping it off and putting it back on.

What I found is that there was probably a spacer missing from the trainer, one that would sit between the flywheel and the plastic stuff holding the roller bearing in place. Since that plastic was made with the "harder than aluminum" Campy Ergo cable housing stuff, it actually ground away at the flywheel:
(note the inside of the flywheel - the dark bits on the thin reinforcing walls coming out from the center are where the matte silver finish was ground off).

I checked the flywheel and the damage wasn't bad. I checked the plastic bits and they were untouched. I walked around my cluttered bike room with the flywheel, trying to find a washer or spacer that would sit properly against the cartridge bearing center but not rub the dustcap. I found that the roller shaft was the same diameter as a rear axle. So I grabbed a rear axle spacer (painted yellow from back in the day of having too much time to fiddle with my bike) and put it on:

slipped the flywheel back on, and tightened everything up.

Presto! Smooth flywheel! And quietness.

I celebrated by riding for an hour and a half while watching Floyd in all sorts of trouble that day in the mountains.

WADA ya want Dick Pound

heh just finished the Wired article.

I didn't know he was a swimmer (and a decent one it seems).

Also I didn't know he was Canadian.

And I didn't know he was Ben Johnson's lawyer in the '88 Olympics.

At the same time, I did learn more about him.

Primarily he seems to be a conflicted individual. The article makes it sound like he's trying to make up for the Ben Johnson thing - that a lot of athletes dope and when asked they lie. This makes it just impossible for him to hold his tongue.

Okay, sometimes I have that problem too, but I might murmur something to a confidant, not blurt it out to a news crew or a journalist.

One surprising thing - he doesn't blame doping for his team's 4th place at the Olympics.

Anyway I thought it was good reading. For those of you (like me) who didn't want to churn through all the articles about Dick Pound, debating his goodness or badness endlessly, this is a good one.

Interview with Citizen Dick; Rants and Awards

A couple of interesting posts before the long weekend that I found while bouncing around the bike blogging world and internet this morning:

From the sidebar over at Rant Your Head Off:

If you’re old enough to remember the 1980s, perhaps you remember the song The Politics of Dancing by Reflex. Change the word “dancing” to “doping” in the song, and it takes on a whole new meaning.

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Wired Magazine has an interview with Dick Pound of WADA in their January 2007 issue and on their website entitled, "The Righteous Fury of Dick Pound". Living up to his reputation, Mr. Pound provides some choice quotes - especially at the the very end of the article. RYHF from above has an interesting post on the article and someone posted an equally interesting comment to the post/article. (Scroll down to "Irony, Thy Name is Dick")

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VeloNews has been announcing the winners of their annual awards and they have a story about their 2006 International Cyclist of the Year, Alessandro Valverde. Two things caught my eye in the story: the first is how they [correctly] describe him as a "climber/sprinter" - two terms that are not usually used to describe the same rider [Right, Aki?]. The second is that they label his new home a "Euro-style McMansion" I guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear that Europe has upscale cookie-cutter housing tracts like we do, but I am. I wonder if theirs are beige stucco, too, and have bloated euphemistic names like "Kensington Estates" and "The Manor at Horizon Crest Meadows" (For an interesting (and funny) read on this non-sequiteur topic, check this blog out). I can only imagine how the Spanish versions of these would read. Anyone like to take a stab?

Happy New Year!

Sprinting - Throwing your bike

Throwing your bike

This is not where you toss your bike in disgust after a poor performance. For bike tosses, please refer to Greg Lemond (tossing his road bike in the Tour but I don't have a link yet) or Bjarne Riis (tossing a time trial bike in the Tour). If you insist on throwing your bike, be very careful as it is hard on your back. Lemond's story is amusing now although it was probably pretty frustrating back then. He hurt his finger in a crash and could barely pull the front brake lever. This caused him to brake more with the rear wheel. Eventually, with aggressive braking locking up the rear wheel, the tire blew. With no teammates nearby, he actually tried to fix the tire, or so it seems in photos (he's holding a tool of some sort and the tire is partially off the rim), and in disgust threw either the wheel or the bike off to the side of the road. This hurt his back and he had to nurse that for a bit. I believe he still won the Tour - and I'm pretty sure it was 1990 since he was in the World Championship jersey.

Anyway, back in the present...

I love sprinting. One of the things that amazes me is the number of racers strong enough to get to the line at the front but not knowledgeable enough to throw their bike. It's common to see someone lose 2-3-4 places because of a dismal or missing bike throw. In one particular Tour de Michigan sprint (in Lansing), the field was lined up curb to curb and the front row was going dog slow due to a head wind. But due to the width of the road, no one could pass the front ten riders. As one of about 10 racers stuck in the second row, I alternately pedaled, coasted, braked, and then pedaled again. We were totally stuck behind the front row of racers. At the line I agressively threw my bike forward in between two racers in the front row. My front wheel ended up by their cranks, pedals, and downtubes. My place? 11th. Someone in the same row as me probably got 20th. Big difference.

You may say, "Well I'm not a pro", or "It isn't really important". Okay that's fine. But if you're at the front, you've put in a good race to end up there. It would be good to finish off that effort.

In sprinting, throwing your bike is completely different from a "bike toss". It refers to pushing your bike forward relative to your body. Remember, the rules of cycling state that you finish when the front tire breaks the finish line's vertical plane (Rule 1N1). If you can push the bike forward a bit, you'll finish a little quicker.

The reason why throwing your bike forward works is you weigh a lot more than your bike. For example, if you have a 20 lbs bike and you weigh 160lbs, you weigh eight times the bike. Any movement you make with the bike will be resisted by your body. For example, if you shove the bike forward 8 inches, your body will move back 1 inch. This nets you a 7 inch forward movement. If you're side by side with someone and fighting for every inch, a good bike throw could net you 12-18 inches. This is more than half a wheel, and if you're scrabbling for an inch or two, you really have to take advantage of that 12-18 inches.

Throwing the bike is simple. You start by holding the drops and sprinting out of the saddle. When you are very close to the line (about 10 feet or whenever your feet are parallel to the ground), extend your arms and legs forward. This forces your butt to go behind the seat, almost to the point where you are sitting on your rear tire. Your stomach/chest will almost be on the seat.

You can practice this in slow motion. Use your cycling shoes, your bike - it might on on a easy training ride or while you wait for people to catch up to you after a stoplight or pee-stop. You should be standing up, rocking the bike back and forth like your sprinting. Pick a line (shadow, crack in road, whatever) and make that your goal. As you approach it, extend your arms forward. Your legs will naturally level with one foot forward. If you don't slide your butt off the back of the seat, you won't be able to extend all the way. So slide your butt off the seat till the front wheel is barely weighted. Your forward leg should be virtually straight and your arms should be totally straight. Your stomach/chest will end up on the seat. If you aren't careful, you'll just fall off the back of the bike.

The wrong way to throw your bike is to simply extend your arms without moving your butt off the saddle. All this does is hunch your back. Your bike can't move forward because you're still sitting on it. A similar mistake is to simply stand up without sliding the seat forward. If you simply stand up, you're not pushing your bike forward, you're simply moving your body up.

Revisiting that picture at the beginning of the blog, you'll see that my competitor, Morgan, has moved his body up more than back. This caused his bike to maintain its position relative to his bike/body unit. In contrast, I've move my butt completely off the seat and came close to sitting on the rear wheel. My legs aren't level because I was desperately pedaling as I threw the bike. My arms were so extended I briefly lost my grip on the right side of the bar and careened to the left curb just after the line.

The kicker with that particular sprint is that I was going slower than Morgan right before the line. I was in the process of losing the race when I started my bike throw. I simply threw my bike quickly and used up what momentum I had to shove it forward. I was passed about a foot after the line, but it was okay. The throw was enough to win the sprint, the race, and the Series.