We need a few of these on campus for all the commuter bikes.

The stories of the last weekend are worth mentioning… I wound up bleeding from both hands, one elbow, a knee and an ankle on Sunday afternoon after crashing the Surly on Sunday afternoon on Scona Hill. I was also successful in a culinary experiment on Saturday evening.

Saturday’s accomplishments involved hitting the pool for a few length, spending far too long in the lab preparing a deposition chamber and making a half dozen loaves of bread. I had a giant Yam sitting around since Thanksgiving that hadn’t been eaten yet and I decided that because it was mostly carbs I would try and put it into a few loaves of bread as an experiment. It turned out fantastic and although not every potato bread I’ve ever eaten has been good this one is actually great. I’ll admit it doesn’t do so well with just a bit of jam aboard for a ride but cheese, a fried egg (well three fried eggs, it’s not worth frying eggs unless I’m going to eat three), peanut butter, and plain toast with butter are all good ways to go. We’ll see what becomes of this new adventure, I’ve been making bread on a nearly weekly basis for the last year and besides using the water from boiled potatoes I haven’t actually tried very seriously the option of using potato starch as a considerable ingredient in the mix. The basic idea was dice up the yam into small bits and then enough water to cover and nuke it until it starts to mush up. I then pureed the yam and used that slime/slop along with some more water to get the temperature right to proof the yeast. I typically use molasses for simple sugars in the bread but used demerara sugar instead so the yam flavor didn’t get overpowered. A cup of wheat germ spread over 6 loaves and then flour, mostly keynote 39 and not so much whole wheat because I wasn’t sure if the dough was going to be excessively crummy due to the potatoes which I think is one of the main beef’s I’ve had with other potato breads I’ve eaten in the past.

So… On to the story about the wipeout. Cyclocross provincial championships were happening at Gold-Bar Park out on the east end of Edmonton. Dave, one of the other bike coaches from the University of Alberta Triathlon club was racing as well as a bunch of others that I know via the cycling grapevine. The elite race was set to go at 1 pm so we rolled out from my place around noon to head over there. The sun was shining as we cruised along Saskatchewan drive, Neil was rocking the Surly Cross Check and I was riding my Surly Steamroller which now has winter tyres and my winter gear on. I was blasting out a stupid cadence of 120-125 revs per minute (38-39.5 kph) as Neil tucked in behind for the draft. I think we were both quite enjoying the view over the river valley which is mostly brown now, the leaves are for the most part all gone. We’re ready for winter here. So we get to the end of the road and turn left down Scona Hill. The downhill means that my cadence is really going nuts and I was easily over 45 kph (around 145 cadence and could have been upwards to 155rpm: 49 kph). So, those kinds of speeds on the fixed gear are a real hoot but they do mean I’m at the limit and Neil and his gears are still going to get away from me. I clock 60 kph down that hill all the time on my tri-bike and am incapable of spinning the 190 rpm it would take to do that on the fixie. So now Neil is out front of me, a bit to the left as we come to the place where Connors Hill Road merges with Scona and there are some serious lane bumps due to heavy trucks and a few potholes here to boot. Suddenly Neil is on the ground and his bike is in my half of the lane. I ride right over his front wheel as I unclip from my pedals and wind up on my hands and knees after kinda jumping over my bike which manages to tangle with Neil’s as it goes past. I’m quickly up from the pavement and grab the two bikes which are caught in a loving embrace and jump over the guard rail onto the grass. Neil is also on the grass and we share a few seconds of “whoa” and “oh shit” and “dude!” before sending the cars away that had stopped with overweight women hanging out of the windows offering to call the ambulance. I only convince the one to leave by showing her my cell phone. A car full of friends from triathlon club also manages to drive by while we stand over the guard rail and I wave them on. Giffin is recruited via cell phone to come pick us up with the jeep. Neil’s front wheel did a less spectacular version of the potato chip bend that I did in August but it looks like it’ll need to be replaced. His brake lever was upside down. My stem is a bit off center and the bar tape that was already hurting is really shredded now.

That’s the jist of it, Neil’s bike fit in the jeep and mine didn’t really fit so I used some hockey tape from the back seat to tape closed the missing patch of skin on my left palm and started to head home. After a bit of backtracking I realized I didn’t actually need to go home as the pressure on my hand from the hockey tape was helping a lot so I turned again and continued on to the cyclocross race which I had missed the start of. It was great fun and we got to watch a few guys go head over heels trying to cross the sand trap. Aaron cleaned up in the race and won by a good margin, Jon was really fried at the finish and had come sixth, Dave had won his category earlier in the day and Bridget had come second. I am borderline convinced to race next season, it looks like a load of fun, I’m just not sure what equipment I’m going to have to use. Riding the sport category on my fixie is an option but I’m not sure how good of an option it is. That’s part cyclocross and part horsing around in a field, The other options however aren’t very cheap at all.

I made a tyre swap on my fixed gear commuting bike yesterday in preparation for winter which is due to arrive any day now. Autumn is still cruising along in Edmonton but the leaves are mostly gone and we’ll have to give up on pretending that it’s still fall when things turn white.

I swapped my old chain off for a new one as I had stretched the old one by 3.5% or so. If you’re not familiar the rule of thumb is that you’re supposed to replace it around 1% I think. An eighth of an inch over a foot. 1/(8*12)~1% it was making quite a bt of noise due to being too long and not fitting well on the front chainring. I also slapped on the winter tyres which are 34mm front and 36 mm rear. I’ve a sweet c-cross front tyre that runs between 60 and 90 psi with loads of little knobbies. It’s quite fun and at 80 psi makes a sweet hum as I fly down the pavement. I also swapped gears for winter and am running 48×20 instead of 48×17 which was my summertime gear.

I also caught wind of a funny product out of Denmark to make cyclists appear a bit more fashionable. I would wear one if I had it but I don’t think a third helmet acquisition is necessary in 2008, plus I’m sure they’re not cheap.

Other news is that I’ve been in the pool 3 days in a row totaling up to 5 kms which is pretty amazing progress for the shoulder. It’s nice and tired after about 30-40 minutes in the pool. I skip doing the physio exercises when I’ve swum, I think it can only take one workout a day.

I passed the threshold of 100 hours of logged exercise for 2008 during the bike ride on Saturday afternoon. What does that mean? Well, nothing at all. Other useless stats I know about the last 5 months:

• I haven’t been on Cross country skis for 78 days.
• I am “twenty meters” short of logging 300 kms on my fixed gear bike since Christmas.
• I’ve ridden 953.65 kms on my bike since the handlebar swap, 650.32 of which has been outside on pavement.
• I’m embarrassed about how little I actual rode my rollers this past year, please don’t calculate how little that actually was. On a brighter note, I did pass all my classes as a result.
• Swimming accounts for only 2.66% of my time spent exercising in 2008!

All kinds of useless facts like that can be logged on the website I’ve been using to keep track of my training this season. I decided around November that I’d benefit from keeping track of these things. I sorted through about a half-dozen websites that do this for you before settling on which one I was going to use. It’s kinda like a marriage, once you commit to one you’ve gotta stick with it, even if it turns out to have a few flaws it’s way more work to go and start out with a new one. All the time investment in the system warrants continued commitment to it. So, just like choosing a wife (because I am very well experienced in that department – ha!) I auditioned a few for about a week and tested out all of their different features. I settled on using a website called Tri-Fuel which allows me to give my own “definitions” to a bunch of sports and then log things under each one. I decided that the top three characteristics I was looking for in a partner were: simplicity of use, flexibility and ability to extract statistics. I needed something that would allow me to fill out the “time” and “sport” of one workout and leave everything else blank if I didn’t know it because half the time I don’t really care that much about heart rates etc. I also needed something that would allow me to log fixed gear bicycling separately from freewheel cycling. That’s not a feature that is as universal as you might think unfortunately.

So, I’m using this website: www.trifuel.com/log/ to track stuff. If you’re looking for one, I would recommend using the tri-fuel training log to anyone who is interested in logging aerobic fitness, it would be brutal if you wanted to keep track of weights etc but it was never designed for that so it’s no surprise that it wouldn’t work well.

I managed to speed on my bike along three stretches of road that had different speed limits today. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite eclipse 80 kilometers per hour along the other stretch of road: I only made it to 74 kph. I’m sorry, I promise to do better next time. I wouldn’t want to set a really tough top-speed for the season so early in the year that I can’t break it for the next 3 months, that would just be disappointing. Anyhow, I clocked 38 kph through a playground zone, 53 kph along a minor road, and 67 through a 60 zone without even pedaling, just placed my chin on the handlebars and went for it after 50 kph.

I also rode the bike with any amount of weight in the front bag for the first time today, probably 2kgs: a litre of water, some snacks, tools, gloves and jacket. It certainly handles differently with weight up front. I spent a while getting used to the straight fork of the cervelo compared with the fixed gear steamroller but I don’t notice it anymore, I assume it’ll be the same thing with weight in the bag, a bit of getting used to and then no problem at all.

Video Log #4

Video Log #1

Riding the fixed gear has been a bit of an adventure since the snow really started accumulating this past weekend. Some insane lockups have had me scaring myself at points. It’s really be an interesting challenge to ride fixed gear in the snow, typically there has always been some brute force involved with riding bikes in snow, and often spinning out just goes with the territory. That’s not been the case riding fixie to the same extent, if I spin out I’m going to be in rough shape and likely will have to step off a pedal. Instead I’m very aware of weight distribution and power application as I negotiate curbs, snowbanks, icy patches and death cookies. There’s a heightened awareness of how tight I’m pulling corners as all chances to slip out will likely grant you the opportunity to slide. If I thought I was learning to think in advance of where I planned to go just by riding fixed during the summer, winter fixie riding has really done some re-teaching of that concept.

I’m suprised how well the $6 tyres I bought are working out, I’m running them with low pressure, especially the front, which is on a free wheel/rim that I’m not particularily concerned about denting. I don’t believe the progression to spikes is going to be necessary this winter with the short commute I’m doing.

I just finished getting appropriate bindings mounted on the skis my Dad picked up in Calgary for cheap so that they match the boots I got a month ago here in Edmonton. Less than perfect communication meant that we had to deal with the less than perfect situation brought on by the incompatibility of SNS and NNN binding styles. At any rate there’s a match now and I’m excited to get out on the snow to do some classic skiing this winter. The river valley trails are going to see some use from me this winter as I’ve got a lot of preparation to do in advance of the Birkebeiner race in early February. The number of people who I’ve found that have equipment and would like to get out on the trails is awesome. A couple triathlon club people and a few people I know through IVCF. It should be a good opportunity to get out and spend some time developing a skill I haven’t really used since I started the downhill skiing era in grade 5.

Made the conversion of my Fixed gear today… for the most part. I finally got ahold of some presta tubes that fit the tyres I got. I got Schraeder originally because no 38 mm tubes were in stock… but of course they don’t fit through the rim. I’ve got things in line now and the fatties are ready to ride! I also flipped the stem upside down, it’s a steep one and with the fork having a much more considerable rake than my tri bike I didn’t really realize how much higher I could put the bars. They’re good though, really upright for riding.

I unfortunately had to swap the gear back for the 17 tooth. My chain is just a couple links short of what I need to fit it on the 20 tooth cog. That’s OK for now I suppose but I’ll need to get some chain links to fix that problem before it gets really icy.

Giffin, Neil and I headed out to the edmonton velodrome this evening with three others guys from the University of Alberta Outdoors club. It was a great time. Everyone was on fixed gears. There were some 11 and 12 year old girls there who could teach us a thing or two. Bikes with brakes were not allowed on the track (I needed to remove mine if I wanted to ride it instead of the bikes they had for loan). A couple photos:

More…

I did a number of flying 200’s (200 meters with a rolling start) and my best time was 15.3 seconds. That’s 47 kilometers per hour on my fixed gear, a 48×17 ratio. That means that I averaged a cadence of 126! for the 200 my speed was certainly limited by my gear ratio but I don’t know how much quicker I could have been. I also did a kilometer standing start, time was 1:31 that’s a speed of 39.6 kilometers per hour. Cadence of 106, I don’t think that my gear ratio really limited my speed for this one, maybe the fact that I’d been horsing around all afternoon did. Lactic acid was certainly noticed after about 500-600 meters.