I thought I rode hard during my lunch hour last week...

... and then I dug these up on youtube from the 1987 TdF:





yeah, when you need supplemental oxygen, and can't stand up on our own, well, I reckon that means you laid down a maximal effort.

Something to think about when comparing race efforts to training efforts, and the definition of "maximal" vs "kinda hard".

Those tours, and the CBS weekly coverage in the late 80's, hooked me on the sport...

JF-Bernard and the Ventoux - with Phil's call "how high, how far, how fast" stays with me to this day...

Which Race was Harder...

...according to the SuperComputer?

the race depicted by the histogram data in the top row here (2008 M35+ San Marcos Grand Prix):



or the bottom row (2006 cat 3 San Marcos Grand Prix)??

Same scales for both, so no weirdness there! :-)

TRIMPS

It's been a long time since I've fired up the ol' TRIMPS software.

alas, the results for 2008 to date are the same as the last time I did this exercise(this plot was created by allowing the TRIMPS model to vary all 6 model parameters to best fit my performance data):



The wiggly lines contain little to no practically usable information, it seems. I reckon there's quite a bit of truth in what Kirk likes to say: "There's no real benefit to pinning a single number on the deal".

My Lunch hour ride today...

...bonus points for those that can decipher the 3-d histograms below (they are the same plot, just from different perspectives)!






ooooh - look at the pretty colors! :-)

I haven't fired up this matlab script in awhile, but when I do, I find that it's a pretty descriptive way to discover the "gold" in my srm files.

From the looks of it, it seems that I can do about 13+ minutes @ 6+W/kg in 70-80 second chunks in around 40 minutes.

Leipheimer's thoughts on the tour...

...since he's not there...

here he is guaranteeing more victories for Contador in the future:



and on whether or not he'll be watching the tour this year:



Here's what Levi did yesterday morning, when all his euro-dawg buds were throwin' down in letour:

cascade classic TT

d'oh! he would have put 10 minutes on me!

Nice to see lots of familiar names on that TT result sheet - BTR folks and many lswt.com folks too!

Supple?

A couple of quick shots of three tires hanging from my garage door opener track.

Lots of folks talk about tires being supple, and how this "supple-ness" can be a good indicator of tires with low rolling resistance.

Based on this supple-ness deal, which one of the tires above, would have the _worst_ rolling resistance?

Well, I dorked around in the garage this morning with my new toy (an IR, fixed emissivity non-contact temperature sensor) and measured those tires for rolling resistance and also how much they heated up during the testing.

Turns out that the caveman approach of flexing/bending the tire in your hands is a pretty good indicator of suppleness and rolling resistance - at least at a macro-scale!

Here's a link to some #'s for those inclined:

linky-link

Last Races for a bit...

I woke up last Saturday thinking I'd go for a nice stroll up Couser Canyon and have a relaxing afternoon of rest prior to toein' the line at the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix on Sunday.

Well, I did give it a go up the Couser climb (this is where I do all my 20 mp type efforts) in the morning and began to enjoy the afternoon. As I was checkin' things out on socalcycling.com, I remember that the Green Trolley Crit was happening that afternoon - and my addiction to racing and wanting to support the local racing scene kicked in. So, I hopped in the truck and b-lined it down to the start.

Super small field, maybe 35 guys at the start of the M35+ race? Not more than 10 minutes into the thing I worked my way backwards from where I was and noticed that there was only 8 of us left... WTF? Not quite sure how that happened... Karl Bordine put in a couple of attacks and everyone jumped on his wheel... Then he dropped out -> maybe just getting some openers in???

Anyway, here's the SRM screenshot:




started to feel it near the end, and pretty much spent all my fun tickets jumping on Peter Anderson's wheel with a lap to go... Dude, I'm totally awesome, I picked up a 7th place finish...





...out of a group of 8!!! LOL! :-)



Loaded up the camry and made the long haul on Sunday morning bright and early to hit the MBGP.com.

I sucked wheel for pretty much the whole thing and was never pressed. A break darn near stayed away on that sucker! But they got swallowed up on the last lap or so. Coming into the last corner I had to punch it across a big ol' gap that opened up for some reason - latched onto what was probably 10th wheel coming out of the corner, but really didn't have anything left to drive it to the line. So, I just went as hard as I could and got passed by a half dozen or so guys and wound up 16th...

Funny, that's the same spot I was last year, but I definitely had a different way of getting it! Last year, I think I went from 25th wheel to 16th out of the last corner.

and the screenshot:




Maybe next year, I'll manage to come out of the last corner in the top 3 and still have something left in the tank. Yeah, that's the ticket. ;-)