Brentani’s Cycling Blog

Today was the third iteration of the Sunday hill ride. (Or really the second…last week barely counts.) We did the same route we did 3 weeks ago with Graham, Isaac and Andy. Today it was Nathan, Aaron and Andy, who was sporting his brand-spanking-new-sub-16-pound-full-campy-record cervelo. It was all Nathan today. He won every climb except Mountaindale (we took the Walter Carey approach this time), and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t contesting that one. I was second on all but Mountaindale, which I won. However, Andy did remarkably well, and I was in  danger of losing to him on just about every climb. Aaron, I think, was just along for the ride and took it easy on most of the hills. I really need to remember to bring my camera on this route sometime so I can grab a picture of a sign on Breakneck Hill road (a hill we descend) that reads “8% next 7 miles”…I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be a decimal in front of the 7 (and even then, that hill might max out at 8%, but it’s not a consistent 8%), since descending 7 miles at 8% would probably put you a couple thousand feet below sea level.

I was in Connecticut for the annual pumpkin carving party at Carrie’s parents house Saturday, so I brought the bike and took it for a quick jaunt down to Hubbard Park in Meriden to do some hill repeats on West Peak. (You may remember that I rode up it back in May.) This time I drove right to the park, and did a few hill repeats. First time up, I rode straight up to the top of West Peak. According to Doug Jansen’s Hill Browser (note: for full functionality, you need to use a PC and Internet Explorer), the hill is 1.69 miles, with an average gradient of 6.64%. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. If you look at Doug’s route, it starts at the eastern side of the reservoir. This includes about .2 miles of flat or near flat as you ride along the reservoir, followed by another .2 miles of easy climbing. This may maximize vertical gain, but it distorts the difficulty of the climb, which feels much harder than 6.64%. The toughest section is from the where the road curves to the left, up until the fork for East Peak and Castle Craig. (To maximize the vertical gain, follow the lost cars to the left up to the top of West Peak. There isn’t much to see there, except for confused drivers wondering where the Castle is.) Anyway, from the curve to the fork is .91 miles, at an average gradient of 8.5%, making it just slightly easier than Blue Hill, and just slightly longer. After the fork, you get a couple sections of easy gradient to recover. With that section included, the whole climb is about 1.31 miles at 7.6%.

After my first time up West Peak, on my way back down I took the road to East Peak and Castle Craig. This is the nicest stretch of road in the park, with great views on either side of the road (and steep drop-offs, but nothing too scary). There are a couple steep sections on the road, but nothing that would present much trouble given that you get some flat and downhill sections to catch your breath. The Castle is definitely worth a stop, however. Unlike the top of West Peak, from East Peak, you get great views in all directions. It was only when I came out of the woods that I realized that there were pretty massive winds. I wanted to take a picture of my bike leaning against the tower, but there was almost nowhere I could lean it where there weren’t huge gusts of wind threatening to send it flying. I’m just thankful for the tree-cover on most of the climb, because the wind direction was such that had the trees not been there I would have been climbing into a 30+ mph wind the whole way up. Anyway, I went up another 2 times before I got worried I was about to get caught in a downpour, which didn’t in fact arrive until much later…

Anyway, thanks to my new pocket-sized camera, here are some shots of the castle:

The inaugural hill ride went off today, and i have to say, it was quite fun. Graham, Isaac and Andy all showed up. Graham is something of a known quantity, coming off a summer in Colorado, finishing very strongly on the hill at Jamestown, and generally being a pretty good climber. I’ve ridden with Andy enough to know - no disrespect - hills aren’t exactly his forte, but he’s a good sport about it. I’ve ridden with Isaac one other time back in May, when Radu gave me a thorough thrashing. That time he showed himself to be very strong, and finished solidly in third on (i think) just about every climb of the day. So here’s how it went down today (we’ll get to the tally afterwords. 1. Limerock - Graham put in a pretty tough pace the whole way up, into a head wind. I was hesitant to attack, because I figured he was holding back, but with the wind, I think he was feeling the pressure, so I was able to come around just before the top to take the KOM points (10). Isaac was third. 2. Cullen Hill Road - Graham and Isaac were both riding conservatively at the bottom. Andy gave it everything he had, and we all wisely decided not to follow. He cracked and I decided to have a go. I opened up a pretty decent lead, which I was able to protect to the top. Isaac finished strongly and I could see him making up ground, but it wasn’t enough. (30 more points for me) 3. Wilbur - No chance for me on this one. Graham set a really tough pace and I lost his wheel. I was still hurting from Cullen, so I was unable to grab Isaac’s wheel when he came by. Graham easily took that one (30 pts) followed by Isaac and then me. 4. Capron - Graham started things off again, but this time I had his wheel. Just before the top of the first section I attacked and opened up a gap. I kept a hard enough pace over the flat section to keep my lead. Then a car pulled out in front of me. It shouldn’t have been a problem. But the driver was like 1000 years old, so they pulled into the road and pretty much just stopped. No problem, I’ll just go around on the right. But because the driver was 1000 years old, he decided to pull over into the shoulder and run me off the road, so I had to come to a complete stop. Meanwhile Graham passed the old fart on the left and was first to the top. Graham graciously gave me the win (which is fair since I don’t think there was any chance he was catching me without the intervention of the driver), but we could also neutralize the hill. (We’ll just have to see what the tally says, and whether I can win without it!) So either another 20 points for me, or none for anyone. 5. Burlingame - let’s just say this wasn’t my best result. Isaac took it, after we had dropped Graham, who easily passed me in the last section after I cracked. 6. Mountaindale - That bottom section is really steep! I decided my best bet was to give it everything I had there. By the top of the steep section I had a sizable lead, but not enough to relax. I kept my pace up to 15mph-ish, but saw it keep dropping as I approached the final kick-up. Isaac was coming fast and I felt like crap. I hit the crest with about 10 meters on Isaac, but I was barely moving. Another 20 meters of climbing and he would have had me. 7. Whipple - I tried “the old Cadel Evans.” I sat on Graham’s wheel for the first section. Then Isaac came by on the left and I hopped over to his wheel. I should have stuck to the plan, but I decided to try to come around and ride Isaac off my wheel. I barely had my front wheel past his when I felt my legs cramping and gave up. I did manage to hold off Graham.

So, to the tally. Based on wins, I won with 3 (or 4 with Capron), Isaac was second with 2, Graham third with 1. KOM points (for first places only): I had 10 (Limerock) + 30 (Cullen) 20 (Mountaindale) = 60.  Isaac had 30 (Burlingame) + 20 (Whipple) = 50. and Graham had 30 for Wilbur.

Things get a bit more interesting if you start trying to figure 2nd’s and 3rd’s. I had been thinking that with fewer than 5 riders or so, it’s pretty silly to keep track of anything but wins. But since we were all pretty evenly matched, it makes more sense. I never really though about how to assign points for 2nd, but here’s a consideration: 2nd place on a 30 pt climb has to be worth less than 1st on a 20 pt climb (so it can’t go 30-20-10), but it has to be enough to not to be completely negligible. Maybe the following: 30pt climbs: 30-15-7, 20pt climbs: 20-10-5, 10pt climbs: 10-5-2. That makes each place worth about 1/2 of the place above it. By that scale, today I would have 84, Graham would have 69, and Isaac would have 92. I’m a little bit ok with that, even though I had the most 1st places, since Isaac was probably the most consistent. Plus if you add Capron, then I would have 104, Isaac 97, and Graham 74.

So even though this probably won’t count as part of the series, I’ll just go ahead and award myself the victory. Anyone else want to dispute my logic?

Tomorrow will be the first of what I hope will be a regular Sunday morning ride. We’re doing this route tomorrow, which will be the default route for this ride. Instead of finishing up Jenckes as the map shows, we might do Bowen instead (but Google Maps doesn’t let you route up Bowen, since technically it’s a dead-end street.) Let me know if you’re coming! We meet at De Pasquale Square at 9:00. We also pass Jaswell’s farm on Swan St., so bring a couple bucks if you’re interested in grabbing a quick pastry and cider. (Unfortunately, they don’t have the cinnamon donuts we used to get at the Dexter Cider Mill. so sad.)

Only my second non-hillclimb race this year, I went down to Jamestown to race in celebration of Rhode Island’s favorite perpetrator of genocide (I would have preferred Heinrich Himmler or Pol Pot, but I guess Columbus will have to do). We had an incredibly large Refunds Now team. Out of 75 riders, we had 11. Unfortunately, we didn’t really have anyone who was a clear winner. To make things extra fun, I was racing with the rear wheel from the Gazelle. Yesterday after an easy ride, Aaron and I decided to do a couple laps on Blackstone Blvd. Just as we started an interval and I put some pressure on the drive train, I heard a horrible snap, followed by some clanking. A spoke on the rear wheel popped out, and the wheel was completely out of true. I was going to try to ride it slowly home, but I couldn’t coast without the chain skipping on the cogs. So Aaron, who fortunately lives only a couple blocks away, drove me home. Once home I swapped the cassette from the ritchey wheel onto the gazelle’s wheel an everything seemed to work fine.

anyway, back to Jamestown. I tried to stay out of trouble for most of the first lap. When we hit the hill (probably 1/2 mile at 5 or 6 percent, top .6 miles from the finish) I got a decent test of my form. Unfortunately, there were a couple of badly placed cars parked on the side of the road, so every time I thought I could sneak up on the right side (I felt like I could probably climb the hill faster than most of the field at that point) I’d see a car in front of me and was boxed in. In any case I felt very comfortable and was hopeful about my chances on the hill next time around. I really didn’t get myself into any better position the next lap, and was stuck on the inside. I risked the shoulder once or twice to make up a few spots, but the cars were still there and it made things quite difficult. As I was squeezing in to avoid the first car, I felt the guy behind me (on the right, not the person I was squeezing into…) touch my wheel and then crash hard into the car. I felt a bit bad, but hey, how could you not know there was a car there?? once things started thinning out a bit, I finally had some space to start rolling. I flew past a large percentage of the group, but was still a little late to catch the front group that had formed. They were probably about 50 meters in front at the top of the hill, but I couldn’t bridge once the road started going down hill. I’m pretty happy with my result anyway, since I had little to no expectations, but I’m also a little disappointed I couldn’t get myself into a better position for the final climb, since I’m pretty sure I climbed as well as anybody in the field once I had escaped the clusterfuck - except maybe teammate Graham, who went over the top with a sizable lead over the hill, only to be nipped 50 meters before the line. (it’s a tough race for a climber, since the hill isn’t hard enough to really damage the non-climbers and it’s a long fast 1/2 mile from the top to the finishing line.)

That’s exactly a minute faster than my previous best time for the hill climbing circuit (the old one, not the expanded one with Capron, Burlingame, etc.) Of course that’s not the whole story: the other time I was holding back on the first lap in preparation to give it everything on the second lap, which I never did, instead opting to do the east side hill loop. But today’s time could have been much better if I hadn’t had abnormally bad luck making some of my turns - I lost close to a minute waiting to turn onto Great Road from 123, another 30 seconds or so waiting for the light at 116 and probably a minute waiting to cross RT 7 on Harris. I can’t say for sure that I didn’t lose time in those spots (or other spots) on my previous runs, but today definitely seemed worse than normal.

doing the loop with an eye to overall time is a bit of a weird experience for me. If I ride at my own pace, I tend to take it easy on the flats and descents and punch it on the hills. Or, if I ride it with others, I try to duck out of the wind and recover as much as possible so that I can have as much energy as possible for the climbs. Today, I wanted to put down as good a time as possible in those in-between sections to allow myself a buffer in my average speed when I hit the climbs. The end result was that I climbed all of the climbs a bit slower than I would under other circumstances. The only exceptions were the two easy climbs (not even rated on my hills page) on Dexter Rock and 116. I usually shift into the little ring for those, but today I was able to power through them in the big ring. The question of course is whether I would have done better by arriving at the climbs with a slightly lower average speed but better legs to sprint up the hills? I’d also be very curious to see how a different type of rider would handle the same course. My guess is that even though there’s a lot of climbing, Gewilli would very easily ride the non-climbing and descending parts quick enough to post a much better time for the circuit.

OK, here’s the deal. With this new baby, I can only get out for a regular ride every so often. Once Carrie goes back to work, Thursdays will be good, since Grandma Best will be baby-sitting that day. I really want to get a regular climbing workout started for the Brown/Refunds Now group. I think that picking a regular day to have a hill-ride is the way to go. Unfortunately, Thursdays don’t seem to be very good, which leaves the weekends. The Brown Tim Horton’s ride is a saturday morning tradition, so I don’t want to step on that…which leaves sunday mornings. The advantage to Sundays is that we can also yell “c’est dimanche!!” at rude cars a la my old riding companion Samir Kelada (Hey samir, if you’re googling yourself, why not drop me a line?)  Time will likely be 9:00 AM, though I’ll still have to negotiate that with Carrie.

Now, onto more specifics. I want this to be something fun that actually encourages people to come out for a nice competitive and enjoyable ride. Something like the old “euro-tuesdays” I used to do back in Ann Arbor. (But sadly, being older, wiser, and a father…no more riding sans helmet.) I’ve picked out a standard route for the ride, which is essentially the hill climbing circuit (but in the revised version that includes Cullen Hill) expanded to include Capron, Burlingame, and Mountaindale. Here’s the new veloroutes map. The hills, in order of appearance are: Limerock, Cullen Hill, Wilbur, Capron, Burlingame, Mountaindale and Whipple. What will make this ride fun is that I will be keeping track of KOM points throughout the year. (I think that WIlbur, Burlingame, and Cullen will all be worth 20 pts for a win, Whipple, Capron, and Mountaindale 15, and Limerock 10.) I’ll also assign similar values to other climbs in the area (Jenckes 40, Bowen 50, Blue Hill 45), so there will also be other possible routes, with other possible climb combinations. And on days we’re feeling particularly ambitious, there will be field trips up to Monadnock, Wachusset, Mount Tom and other nasty New England climbs. the specifics still need to be ironed out, but I think this should be fun. And unless you hear otherwise, the first hill ride is on for this sunday at 9:00!

It had been at least 2 weeks since my last ride, but I finally made it out today for a couple hours riding east of Providence. I don’t usually go that way, but I was riding with Joey and another local rider who showed up for the ride I announced. We ended up on Hillside Ave. Considering that the rest of the terrain east of the Henderson Bridge is pancake flat, Hillside is a veritable mountain. It has two sections of relatively steep gradient. The veloroutes elevation data is completely inaccurate, so there’s no need to post the gradient map. In any case, I was happy that I still had my climbing legs in spite of the 2 week hiatus. On the first section, I kept up a decent pace and gradually winded it up until my two riding partners were both off the back. Over the top I shifted into the big ring and kept the pace high, but not too high. Joey put in a valiant effort to bridge the gap, which he did. He caught me just before the next section of hill, and attacked in his big ring. Unfortunately for him, I was feeling well-recovered from the first climb and easily jumped on his wheel, and as soon as he saw that the hill went on a little longer than he expected I kept my big gear turning to the top of the climb and dropped him again. So all in all, I’m still feeling ok about my form even though I haven’t ridden in a while. I just need to be sure to work riding into my schedule one way or another, or I’ll end up resenting the little peanut. (actually I don’t think that’s possible, he’s just so freaking cute…)

now for some gewilli-esque rambling…

My mother-in-law also alerted me to a new large hill near their house in Manchester, CT, so I may try to ride that when we go there this weekend…

Jamestown is about 1 month away…finishing in the pack seems like a healthy goal…

…and even though i said that Mount Tom was a once in a lifetime hill, I’m already feeling the itch to go hit it again. c’mon, someone has to want to do it with me…?

I’ll be regularly adding pictures of little Jude to the following address:

http://picasaweb.google.com/judeowenwetters

Since I don’t ride much anymore, I’ve been reduced to commenting on new tech stuff. good god. (I was wearing my Okemo Hill Climb shirt at the pediatrician a couple days ago and Jude’s doctor asked if I was a biker…I said “I used to be!”) But anyway, here’s a new Truvativ crank that just showed up on cyclingnews. I can’t say that I’ve read this article too carefully, but it seems like this would solve many of the problems I’ve had getting very low gearing for a race like Washington:

• should eliminate the front derailleur problem, since there isn’t one. On my gazelle setup, there are lots of problems with the derailleur. the biggest is that I can’t get the derailleur quite low enough, so the chain rubs when it is in the 24 in the front and anything smaller than about the 19. That makes for a huge jump between the lowest on the 42 (42-26, or 42 gear inches) and the highest useable on the 24 (42-19, 33 gear inches).
• should provide a nicer chainline and and have useable gears in the full range in both the 24 and the 38 (and 22/36 should be possible without much difficulty as well)
• shifting from big to little is (at least advertised to be) much easier to accomplish under pressure. so if you’re riding up a 10% gradient that suddenly kicks up to 25%, you could easily shift into the 24

potential problems:

• weight seems to be the biggest problem. at 1623g, that makes this thing almost a full kilo heavier than my slk-light. It would be pretty hard to justify adding that much weight for a hill-climb race, though I’d be able to subtract a bit of weight for the front derailleur as well.
• I’m just assuming that this would work with a road system. cranks usually seem to be pretty swappable, but I guess I’m not sure based on the review.
• the cable housing might be difficult to route, but it should probably work one way or another

in any case, if this sort of system takes off, it might be a good option down the road when the get a lighter/carbon version or something.