Being a D*ck

I've twice now bragged on myself under the guise of being surprised at how the bike leg of a triathlon went.  Needing a new excuse, here's braggadocio disguised as a confession of d*ckiness.

Nation's Triathlon is a huge olympic-distance race held entirely in the urban core of DC.  As many as 4000 participants all find themselves riding their bikes over a 40K course at roughly the same time.  The number was closer to 3000 this year, but the course had two loops -- thus, there could have been as many as 1500 per loop, or 100+ cyclists per mile of road.  The numbers don't stack up that badly, because there is a drawn out time trial start.  Although I did not start until 90 minutes after the first wave, some swimmers did not exit the water until I had finished riding.  Nonetheless, it's a crowded mess.  Most of the participants are just out to have a good time -- riding along, chatting with friends, sitting up straight and enjoying the sun, what-have-you.

Even worse, each loop had two stretches of no-pass-zone that ran for ~1/4 mile.  For a mile or better in total I cruised in a line behind whoever decided "no pass" meant "no exertion" and held the rest of us up.

Combine that with my newfound taste for treating the crank-arms on my ride as if they had kicked my cat and you have a recipe for unpleasantness.  Riding a triathlon bike leg has become an exercise in seeing pavement ahead of me and being really, really pissed that it isn't yet behind me.

The good is that with one exception, a really nice guy from Alexandria who finished one place ahead of me in the 40-44 age group, nobody passed me.  I've been running triathlon since 1986 and that's never happened.  The bad is that nearly everybody I passed, which seemingly amounted to most of the 3000 strong race field, suffered verbal abuse I'd like to think one might reserve for Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, or Kim Jong Il.  And the ugly:  "Get the f*ck out out of the left lane" might have been one of my gentler warnings.

I'd like to be of two minds about this.  On the one hand, we frequently celebrate competitors who are so vigorous that they are perceived as jerks by the competition.  Trash talk has its place and can be effective.  So I'm vaguely pleased that I can get over the inclination to be laid back and supportive in order to be competitive.  It is a new thing for me.

But the justification doesn't work.  The victims ended up being Joe and Sally who were out enjoying their day in the sun.  My competition, it turned out, was comprised primarily of participants in the elite wave who were off the bike and running before I even entered the water.  The one guy in my age group who passed me?  When I got him back on the run, we chatted amiably before he fell off pace.  Trash talk isn't helping my competitive circumstance.  It's just unloading my suffering on the world.

I'm enjoying kicking a little a*s in this year's races.  But I'm not sure it's worth the cost.

A History of Fixies

Sometime in law school the blue Cannondale became S__'s, then Sam's.  It is now the wise old man of the Huffman Bicycle Club collection, pictured to the right after some botox injections and skin tightening.  I managed to putz through the following five or six years with only a low-rent Novara mountain bike to my name; the Novara became a commuting rig until I sold it out the back door for $100 after a bad rebuild job in which I attempted to make it single-speed.

My return to cycling was on a fixed gear -- the IRO Jamie Roy, built on a factory-second frameset I bought from this brand new frame-builder based out of Brooklyn for less than $100.  (Sad to see IRO discontinued the aluminum Jamie Roy, but the steel Mark V framesets are on fire-sale!)  Here's one built up in a very different configuration from my own, but you can see the frame.  Not a bad-looking ride.

From Sheldon Brown's website.

I raced the IRO in my first attempt at an IDT, the Great Floridian in 2006.  Bad idea.  The Great Floridian is run in what may be the only part of central Florida that is not pancake flat, and I actually walked the bike up one climb.  Interestingly or otherwise, that ride was my longest ever on any bike, to say nothing of a fixie.  It was also a wicked hot day, with temps exceeding 100.  I required a solid seven hours for the bike leg and quit after one mile on the run.  At some point I sold the IRO for $300, not a great price but not bad after the use it had given me.

I replaced it with an el cheapo Motobecane Messenger, purchased for $250 off of eBay.  Mine was orange rather than blue.  Not an unattractive bike at all.

$300 shipped at Bikesdirect!  Only $500 more will make it ridable!

That supple steel-framed bike rode nicely, but the build was atrocious.  Its most glorious outing was a trip from Starbucks at Old Georgetown and Democracy to Pennsylvania and back, with Sam aboard, on another perilously hot day.  That 200K permanent -- the now defunct Mason-Dixon Permanent -- took us 12.5 hours, which included an hour napping in the shade at the 150K point and at least 10 stops for Sam to tighten the spokes.  On one stretch I drafted while Sam spun that bike to 28 mph while rolling through the century mark.

I recently sold the Messenger, much improved over its original build, for $300 to a really earnest young hipster, whose girlfriend confessed that they had just moved from Atlanta and were really looking forward to riding in DC.  By that I gather she actually meant "in" DC, rather than from DC to quieter places.  To each his own.

I'm now without a fixie.  For which reason this wheelset is being built by Ron at Whitemountainwheels as I write:

				Total		Total
	Weight (ea)	Price (ea)	#	Weight(g)		Price
Front
Sapim CX-Ray (silver)	4.6	$2.69	24	110.4		$64.56
Al Nipple (blue)	0.35	$0.35	24	8.4		$8.40
ENO front (black) bolt-on	260	$129.00	1	260		$129.00
Kinlin XC279 (black)	490	$69.00	1	490		$69.00
				Build		$50.00
				868.8		$320.96
Rear
Sapim CX-Ray (silver)	4.6	$2.69	14	64.4		$37.66
Sapim CX-Ray (silver)	4.6	$2.69	14	64.4		$37.66
Al Nipple (blue)	0.35	$0.35	28	9.8		$9.80
ENO standard fixed (black), bolt-on, 130mm	270	$159.00	1	270		$159.00
Kinlin XC279 (black)	490	$69.00	1	490		$69.00
				Build		$50.00
				898.6		$363.12
			Total	1767.4		$684.08

The Cervelo P2SL (right) is the sacrificial lamb for this new ride.  More to come.

Salsa Warbird

I'm enjoying my approximately bi-weekly drool-fest over bikes that I will probably never own.  Here's a bike built for long distances on rough roads.  By that I mean it appears to be a touring-geometry titanium road bike with clearance up to 38c.

Picture cribbed from the Treefortbikes.com blog.

I'm ambivalent about disc brakes on a road bike, but I can see the attraction if you anticipate lots of gunk flying while you ride.  I also think that long red rear brake cable is a neat-looking effect.

I like that Salsa correctly sees titanium as something other than race-bike material.  Even Salsa's primary road frame -- the Collosal -- can run 28c tires.  If I buy titanium I will most definitely not be running 23c tires on it.  The leading makers -- Lynsky, Seven, Litespeed, Moots -- don't seem to understand that reality.  Even Habanero, my instinctive first choice for a new frameset, is not making big tire frames, so far as I can tell.

Straving

As usual, I'm discovering internet stuff after it's past its prime, and recently that's been Strava. I've long been annoyed that Garmin Connect really hasn't improved at all over the last 7 years, aside from a minor facelift during the MotionBased to Connect conversion. Strava seems to be a nice super-set of Garmin Connect features. And it's the first example I've seen of integrating "social" features into a website without being totally annoying or over-bearing.

So of course the first thing to do was to import all my old Garmin Connect activities. One of the really nice features of Strava is that it makes it really easy to define "segments" that you ride often, and use them to measure performance improvements. I used to do this with Garmin Connect by eye-balling the graphs, and making my own spreadsheets. Strava is a huge improvement in this regard.

My first attempt at this was the upper section of Pumpkin Ridge, a small local hill. The upper portion (which I picked because there are two lower portions, so excluding those gives me more data) is about 700 feet over 4.9 miles.

Looking at the data is revealing, for a couple reasons.

First, there's a big gap of about 2 years where I didn't ride it at all. Which means I really didn't ride at all. There's also a big drop from 2007/2008 to 2009, and then another big drop in 2013. It is, however, gratifying that with a solid month of riding under my belt, my times are once again reaching where they used to be.

The other route I ride often is a round trip from North Plains to Dairy Creek, a 20 mile out-and-back with around 600 feet of elevation gain (and loss!).

Those results are looking a little less cheery

Though in fairness I haven't really done an 'all out' effort on this route in a while. Regardless, the ease of comparing segments across rides is awesome.

The "social" aspect (I hate that word) is pretty cool, though it could also be depressing. Generally I've found myself right near the bottom 50% on climbs of any note (I suppose I could claim to be right near the top 50%!) with just a couple forays into the top 30%. On descents, it's quite the opposite -- I'm generally in the top 5 out of hundreds of riders, and there are a couple notable drops where I've got a considerable lead on everyone else. Girth giveth and it taketh away.

The mobile apps are pretty awesome. More than once I've forgotten to bring my garmin along, and used my cellphone instead. The results are, as far as I can tell, just as good as if I'd used a proper GPS.

For now I'm uploading to both Connect and Strava, because with the new web uploaders, there's really no effort involved. But my guess is that I'll soon be using Strava only.

F100 -- Updated

UPDATE with a few notes about the first ride:

I couldn't sleep, so I read a few chapters of a recent Le Carre novel waiting for a little bit of light and headed out for 30 miles up the Monon Trail and out 56th Avenue here in Indianapolis.  This was the first ride on the newly built F100.  (It turned out, by the way, that I was a little overeager on getting out the door.  I rode a good 45 minutes in too-dark-to-be-riding-without-lights conditions.  Thankfully I had a taillight to alert cars, but dodging bike commuters on the Monon was a little dicey.)

Summary: this is a really nice riding frame.  The build needs a slight bit of refining to be perfect.

First realization:  the fact that the tires fit when first mounted does not mean they will fit when filled to pressure.  The front spins fine at my usual pressure (80 psi for balloons like these).  The rear does not spin at 90 psi, but a short deflating burst -- maybe down to 85 -- was sufficient to get it moving.  Unfortunately, that does not bode well when the wheels lose trueness.

The fit is just slightly off for me. I have a 110 mm stem and could use a 120.  It's comfortable but a little compressed for my liking.  I will move the saddle back and hope that accomplishes the goal.

I failed to compress the headset bearings into the head-tube, so there's a little more play and rattling there than would be ideal.  Lacking the proper tool, I hope the shop down the street will do that for not too much money.

The pedals -- Keo 2 Max rather than my normal Keo Classics -- work fine, with a caveat:  they have this neat feature that they stay level when you unclip.  That's great unless you are accustomed to flipping them upright with your toe on the way to clipping in, as I am.  I found myself flipping them upside-down!

This is officially my lightest bike, based on the ever-reliable pick it up and see how it feels test.  The carbon P2 loses out likely as a result of the excessive weight in the front-end from the bar system.  The weight is noticeable on the constant starts from a stop one does riding the Monon in rush hour.  Stop, wait for cars, sprint back up to speed, and stop again.  It's a nice-feeling bike out of the saddle, with about the right amount of flex characteristics to be comfortable and the right stiffness to feel snappy.

It is a very comfortable ride.  Can't say whether that's the frame, the all-carbon fork, or just the saddle and fat tires.  But it's on par with the Gunnar in terms of the apparent all-day comfort.  I must say that I'm very eager to find out!

ORIGINAL POST:

Neuvation has been in a sell-off on the old framesets so I ordered a F100 for $250 ($327 shipped).  This is Neuvation's original aluminum frame that for years has been discussed as a black-label Cervelo Soloist; the closest John Neugent will get is to say (paraphrase) "this is built in a factory to which a top frame-maker sent engineers to perfect the design and manufacture process for the frame".  But the geometry is spot on and the semi-aero tubing looks about right -- and, in contrast with the over-branded Cervelo rides, this frame is an elegant, sleek, discreetly branded black number.  I'm also happy with a larger frame.  Less stuff sticking out to make it fit my long legs.  Neuvation included its full carbon fork with the purchase.

Stealth frame.

I was torn as to what to do with it -- build cheap and sell; build cheap and ride hard; build cheap and keep -- note that building anything but cheap was never an option! -- but one day I received my 28c Schwalbe Ultremo ZXs from Merlin, mounted them on the Hed Belgium rims, and put them on the bike on a whim.  And it was beautiful.  (Or so I thought.)

The tires cleared -- not by much, but they cleared.

At about that same time Merlin had a fire sale on Shimano 105 groupsets, so I bought this one for $417 shipped.  I'm an Ultegra snob and have been in danger of becoming a Dura-Ace snob, so it was gratifying to see that this was as pretty a set as any I've ridden.

105 Groupset.  Who needs high dollar options?

I've been wanting to build with some accent colors for a while.  I had always envisioned I'd do so on the Gunnar or on a new titanium frame, but this was the one I was building.  Though I'm usually an afficionado of blue accents, for some reason red seemed right to me.

OK, so the pedals are a little mis-matched!

I found chainring bolts (A2Z brand), a seatpost clamp (Hope -- coloring is slightly off, but it works); titanium skewers (A2Z again), bottle cage bolts (not sure, but A2Z is a good guess) and a top-cap (A2Z).  I had the red spacers from years back.  Had I my druthers I'd be using a red headset and external bearings, but those are a tad dear for plain baubles.

Cage bolts.

The accent also works because it matches the coloration on the Ultremos.  Of course, now I'm locked into that particular brand of rubber, but one could choose worse.

Hope clamp is slightly mis-colored.

I picked up the mid-range WTB Rocket V saddle -- Comp or Pro, I'm not sure which.  It's not the lightest number, but at 260 grams of proven comfort for $40, I'm not turning up my nose.  I had installed TRP carbon brake calipers on a vain whim, but they didn't clear the tires.  (Recall that the tires are my primary reason for finishing this bike!)
Red bar tape would have been too much and it didn't quite match anyway.  To my view the only obvious change going forward is to find red cable ends somewhere. I'm torn as to whether I mount stubby aero-bars.  Probably not.

Nice that Deda also goes shiny black with red accents.

 P__ asked me what I paid for it.  Adding up the incremental expense -- the parts I would not own if I hadn't been building this bike -- I think it comes to between $800 and $1000.  The wheels are a ~$1100 set (including powertap) custom built by Neuvation, but I owned those already.  Bar, stem, post, saddle, and groupset were all pretty cut rate; the 28c Schwalbe tires were $48 per.  Maybe $50-$75 in rubies.

On order is a Zefal HPZ-2 frame pump.  That should be the right size for a left seat-stay mount.  Then I have some tuning to do before taking it to the road.  My hope is that this serves nicely on some fall-time 200Ks.  Here's the view from the cockpit.

And from further back in the pace-line.

Unpacking the bike leg

Between being beaten silly while choking on water and suffering through your feet pounding tarmac, triathlon offers an opportunity to glide over ground as fast as your legs will push you and your steed will break wind.  I'm not a big triathlon cyclist -- only once to date (Great Illini, 2008) has my bike split been my most competitive of the three events -- but I do like an opportunity to hammer with impunity without regard to stoplights, cars, or the need to dismount for food or drink.

Yesterday I averaged 22.1 (22.4 if you believe the official results, but I think the course was ~3/4 mile short) over a modestly hilly -- very hilly by time trial standards -- 90K bike leg in the hills around Gilford, New Hampshire.  I am pretty sure I set a PR for the 40K as well, averaging around 22.7 to that point.  A better measure, from my perspective, is that I was right about 19' slower than one of the top American pro men on the same course on the same day.  That's definitely something I've never done before.

A side note:  it is more than perverse that I'm having modest success at the one thing I have committed to put to the side for the near future -- in favor of other types of events in which I have not been enjoying success.

Here's what I'm trying to sort out:  for the second time this year (and I hope not the last!) my riding in a triathlon has been well beyond my expectations.  What is working for me this year?  Can I replicate it?

(1) the ride.  Once a top choice for pro triathletes racing Kona, my P2 is a pedestrian rig in today's world of uber-steeds.  The Ultegra groupset came on the Cervelo Dual that I bought in 2008.  I transferred it to the P2SL when the Dual developed a crack in a weld -- and transferred it to the new P2 frameset last August in Boulder.  Yes, that's a recently substituted Sram Rival crankset (170 mm), though finished with Red 52-36 chainrings.  The wheels are a low-budget item from Merlin Cycles, made by the Dutch manufacturer Sensa Bikes, which only cost me $650 shipped.  They are nicely spec'd with Sapim CX-Ray spokes.  I bought them precisely because their paint job matched the bike.  The tires are Vittoria Open Corsa CX IIs, also inexpensive at Merlin, but broadly acknowledged to be the fastest rolling clincher money can buy.  They are black and red and also match the bike.  Maybe this setup can bring $2000 if sold in its current configuration.   I  think the bike is pretty sweet, but nobody's going to accuse me of going crazy on the equipment front.

(2) the gearing.  For both of this year's races I have ridden 52-36 and 11-23.  Not terribly tall, but not exactly Mountains of Misery gearing.  One thing about tall gears: maybe you burn yourself up on a climb, maybe not, but it's impossible to go too slowly.  As it stands, I think I race this set of gears in Tahoe.

(3) the position.  My stem isn't slammed, but it's only raised a centimeter.  So I'm pretty low, but I'm also comfortable.  I'm certainly not going lower.  My elbow pads are wider than past practice.  It has opened up my chest and I think allows for better breathing.

(4) the fitness.  I have maybe 3-4 weeks this year in which I haven't ridden 100+ miles, and several in which I've eclipsed the century mark by a good ways.  A fair amount of that riding is intervals or hills.  It's gotta help.

(5) the nutrition.  I'm working toward a magic middle of enough liquid and enough calories. I used diluted EFS in one bottle and diluted Gatorade in the other, with caffeinated salt stick tablets dissolved in both.  Plenty of calories, plenty of caffeine, and just enough (not too much) water.

(6) the attitude.  I'm not the baddest long distance cyclist.  I'm probably not even in the top half of badness.  But I may well be in the top 10-20 baddest taking the start at any given mid-course triathlon.  So I don't need to wait until the run to prove myself anymore.

The Northern Foothills

There's a bike path that extends north from Anchorage along the Glenn Highway as far as Eagle River. I rode it once in maybe 1984 when I was 11 and S__ had finished her first triathlon (The "Bud Light") on the Fort Rich Army Base.  I rode her bike back, maybe as far as home but my memory isn't clear on the point.

Bud Light -- that's its own blog post.  An internet search reveals nothing online about the Anchorage event, although there is some historical writing on a six-city Pacific Northwest Bud Light Triathlon Series from the mid-1980s.

Anchorage to Peters Creek -- With Some Fun In Between

On Sunday, July 28, I decided to explore some pavement I didn't know or didn't know well, so I joined the Coastal Trail (again -- maybe my sixth foray out there for this Alaska trip!) at Westchester Lagoon and pointed north.  The trail has been redone from Westchester to downtown and is beautiful smooth black pavement.  I pedaled past the Comfort Inn of BWR notoriety and out the Ship Creek trail, judging my direction by going opposite the BWR arrows Damon had followed home earlier that week.

Ship Creek Trail -- from the Coastal Trail to Mountain View

The Ship Creek trail threads the needle between industrial properties to the south, situated at the bottom of the bluff at the north edge of Anchorage, and Ship Creek to the north.  Across Ship Creek you see another bluff, this one "Government Hill."  Government Hill is a collection of old federal government-build homes for employees of the Alaska Engineering Commission, engaged in building railroad around the state.  The neighborhood has since become halfway posh, not a surprise with its location walking distance from downtown and its views across the Cook Inlet to Fire Island and the Alaska Range.  The trail ends by a school in Mountain View, something of a slummy neighborhood, and by going straight you quickly reach North Bragaw Road.

Aside #1:  A Google search seeking a picture of Mountain View turned up this intriguing factoid:  Mountain View is the most diverse neighborhood . . . in America!  It's also a crime-ridden 'hood; other Google results had "man kills elderly couple" and the like.

North Bragaw to Mountain View Drive and you find the Glenn Highway Bike Trail.  As described by the Arctic Bicycle Club, this runs from Muldoon Road past Eagle River -- "up to 37 miles round trip." The trail has been under construction but is rapidly coming to completion.  Much of it is beautiful riding -- flat, fast, and low traffic.

The trail passes Elmendorf Air Force Base and the Fort Richardson Army installation.  The latter is responsible for my family's being in Alaska:  Dad was posted to Fort Rich in 1970 as a lawyer in the JAG Corps.  Faced in 1973 with returning to a job in Kansas, he balked -- and the rest is history.

Elmendorf AFB

Fort Richardson

In Eagle River, the nominal end of the Glenn Highway trail, I found the Old Glenn Highway.  I didn't explore the Old Glenn Highway Driving Loop,  but after researching for this post it's high on the list for next time home.  According to one source,

The Old Glenn Highway is a delightful 19-mile country road that cuts through the heart of the original Matanuska Colony Farmlands and provides a scenic alternate route between Anchorage and Palmer, Alaska.

One wonders, after Damon's disappointment with the closing century of the BWR, whether a route through Palmer and returning to Anchorage via the Old Glenn Highway might not be a good choice for a course revision.

Aside #2:  Such a re-route, if it were undertaken, might cross from the Parks Highway to the Glenn via Hatcher Pass.  That would offer tremendous views and a final climb of some real note.

Hatcher Pass, Talkeetna Mountains, Alaska.

For a better look at Hatcher Pass, see this website for the Hatcher Pass Road Race!  Heck, who cares about the BWR?  Let's just go race 70 miles on dirt with 7500 feet of climbing!

I did follow the Old Glenn to the east of downtown Eagle River, then turned right on the Eagle River Loop Road, up a steep hill into the Chugach Foothills.  From there a left turn to the auspiciously named Skyline Drive . . . and 1500 feet of ascent over the three miles to the Mount Baldy Trailhead.

Mount Baldy, East of Eagle River, Alaska.

View from Skyline Drive.  This gate opens to undeveloped properties for sale . . .

From there?  Back down to Eagle River Loop Road and the Old Glenn Highway.  Happy not to be riding carbon rims on that descent!

And here's the great part:  the Old Glenn Highway trail continues north -- well north -- at least past the town of Chugiak (a bedroom town of Eagle River!) and Peters Creek, into a mountainside neighborhood a good 30 miles from Anchorage.  Somewhere there was Ski Road, at the top of which climb I heard a slow leak from the rear tire.  The tread on my trusty Grand Bois was worn through, but the tube was easy to patch and a boot cured the problem with the tire.

Bike Bridge over Peters Creek

Back home the direct route along the Old Glenn Highway to the Glenn Highway Trail, circling down the Coastal Trail past Valley of the Moon Park and up E Street.

68-some miles and 4200-some feet of climbing.  This ride was an A+.