Positive Energy

I've made a pretty conscious effort this year to make a move towards a more positive mental energy state... Yeah, all the numbers/smart guys out there will scoff at this - but hey, that's cool, I can respect that perspective.

Often times, though (I'm human, right?), it becomes difficult to ignore all the "forum" threads that get forwarded to me by friends of the BTR cause.

Recently, I was pointed over to a bunch of questionable threads on a popular triathlon forum. I glanced at them a bit, and quickly recognized the MO of some familiar internet forum-ites. My recommendation to the owner of that popular triathlon site would be to whip out the "BAN" feature of his forum software package - it might be painful at first, but in the long term, it will save him and his readers a lot of mental fun tickets.

I administer a forum on BTR:

http://forum.biketechreview.com

and in the three years or so of running that section of the BTR site, I've only had to ban one individual:

http://forum.biketechreview.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=278&p=2953&hilit=height%2Fforearm#p2953

Lots of talk of "ethics" of science/scientists and whatnot over there on that triathlon site...

So, what's y'alls opinions on the ethics of when a person signs an non-disclosure agreement regarding wind tunnel testing and then goes and blabs about what was covered in that non-disclosure agreement all over the internets???

OK, I cracked on the whole negative thing... Please forgive me, I'm human, after all...

Anyway, on to more positive things...

I did the double at Dana Point this past weekend! That race is really cool - pretty funny to hear Floyd co-announcing the race. I about crapped when I was on the start line for the M35+ race and Floyd's co-announcer made some comment about running afoul of the rules (nothing associated with the currrent state of Floyd's legal affairs...) Floyd didn't skip a beat and kept ringin' the bell about In n out burgers and adult beverages.

35+ race was a mixed bag for me. I was a bit sketched out, this being my first mass start race since being taken out at Barrio Logan in the 3's race. Really nervous prior to the race and the night before. The whole crashing thing sucks, but, there's something about bike racing that brings me back - I think it's the hope that the strongest guy in the field won't win on the day!

;-)

LOL!

Felt good and was never in difficulty in the 35+ race - course was less technical than last year, and didn't seem quite as fast. There was a huge crash in the back half of the field in the last third of the race (I didn't hear it, and didn't even realize what was going on until one lap later when there was chaos with folks standing in the road telling us to stop...). I had to swerve to miss the big pool of blood in the road surrounding the person sprawled out - I hope things looked worse than they actually were, but I'm afraid that that wasn't the case. My thoughts go out to all involved in that incident. Really makes me think hard about the whole deal - lots of folks around me talked about sitting things out after having seen what went down, and I imagine some did. Really bad scene from my perspective.

They actually stopped the race twice - once to get the folks off the course to the inside, and then again to let the ambulance/stretcher exit to the outside of the course.

There was a break up the road at the time of the crash - I was eyeballin the gap with the SRM and had it at 15 -ish seconds for the first stoppage, then had it at <10 seconds at the second stoppage. Problem was, that after the second restart, the officials gave the break a good 20 seconds head start and then only gave the field 4 or 5 laps to finish the race. Needless to say, the break stayed clear.

I overcame some fears and gave it a go in the finale, though, my lack of mixin' it up on the crit scene in the past month left me a bit short in the end. Wound up top 25.

Took an hour break soakin' up the sun, then gave it another go in the 30+ race. I tailgunned that sucker for a good 40 minutes. Damn, that race felt faster than the 35+ deal! Lots of action in this race and it was strung out for the majority. Pretty amazing to see Karl Bordine ride away from that field in the last couple laps - unbelievable. Everyone knew what he was going to do, and then, when he did it, no one could do anything about it.

Again, I nicked a top 25 in this race - just didn't have the top end for the last few laps. These races seemed really fast for me! Never "comfortable" in the 30+ race, that's for sure...

Got a nice shout out from who I think was "Marco" on my "regain feeling in my legs after going as hard as I could in the last 500m" lap. Marco, was that you???

This coming weekend I'll try to get back on the positive track and improve the crit finish skillz at the CBR state crit champs here in Chula Vista.

See you out there - peace,

-kraig

Flanders and Catastrophic Wheel Failure

I was catching up on some of the spring classics the other morning, and mozy-d on over to


http://www.cycling.tv/


and watched the highlights of the tour of flanders. Oh, that's a bike race!

Anyway, during the race, I saw something I hadn't seen before - and that was a Saunier Duval rider (announcer said is was Gomez Marchante, but not sure if it was...) going au bloc with his head down and drilling a curb perpendicularly.

The resulting carnage was painful to watch - though, shockingly, it seems as if the rider made it through the ordeal in one piece.

The same couldn't be said for his wheel, nor his fork:

higher res here.

It looks like the fork legs de-bonded from the crown, eh? (Any better pictures/video on the net than the original cycling.tv stuff?) Lucky that no-one impaled themelves on those fork legs - but it's a good thing that the wheel passed the UCI safety tests, huh?

Say, in this case when the fork legs debond from the crown and the rim collapses, exposing sharp serrated edges, would this mean that the wheel fails the requirements of UCI rule 1.3.018:

1.3.018 :
Wheels of the bicycle may vary in diameter between 70 cm maximum
and 55 cm minimum, including the tyre. For the cyclo-cross bicycle the width
of the tyre shall not exceed 35 mm and it may not incorporate any form of
spike or stud.

For massed start road races and cyclo-cross races only wheel
designs granted prior approval by the UCI may be used. Wheels will have
minimum 12 spokes; spokes can be round, flattened or oval, asfar as no
dimension of their sections exceeds 10 mm. In order to be granted approval
wheels must have passed a rupture test as prescribed by the UCI in a
laboratory approved by the UCI. The test results must show that the rupture
characteristics obtained are compatible with those resulting from an
impact sustained during normal use of the wheel. The following criteria must be
fulfilled:

· On impact, no element of the wheel may become detached and be
expelled outwards.
· The rupture must not present any shattered or broken off elements, or any sharp or serrated surfaces that could harm the user, other riders and/or spectators.
· The rupture characteristics must not cause the hub to become separated from the rim in such a way that the wheel becomes detached from the forks.

Without prejudice to the tests imposed by the laws, regulations or customs, standard (traditional) wheels are exempted from the rupture test referred to above. A traditional wheel is deemed to be a wheel with at least 16 metal spokes; the spokes may be round, flat or oval, provided that no dimension of their cross sections exceeds 2.4 mm; the section of the rim must not exceed 2.5 cm on each side.

What is your take? It becomes hard to interpret what the "wheel" is and what the "fork" is in this case - ya know, the fork being in multiple bits and all. :-)

I always kind of wondered what would be the consequences when a bike racer hit an obstacle that reproduced wheel failure modes created by the UCI safety tests. I speculated what would happen when something like this happened when I wrote the UCI and Me article for bike.com years ago.

Now, it looks like we know for sure what happens. When will we see safety tests for forks - it looks like in the Flanders incident, the fork was the weakest link - but really, would the consequences change in this instance? I reckon not - the bike is going to go flying with all of its sharp and dangerous edges, and the rider is going to hit the deck. Not much one can do when drilling a curb perpendicularly at 45-50 kph.

I've seen wheels get destroyed like what I saw on the cycling.tv footage - folded in rim, discontinous, not ridable. I saw destruction like that during my days at brand-S in the bike biz many moons ago - I reckon we catastrophically destroyed hundreds of wheels on a test fixture we nicknamed the "bonk" fixture... cuz we'd "bonk" rigidly constrained wheels with this massive pendulum.

ahh, those were the days! I get a kick out of breaking things like that. Is that normal? ;-)

Multi-tasking=ADD=Evil

Some think that multi-tasking is a talent to be admired and pursued.

Personally, I think it's evil:

I should really be working/focusing on something more important than this - but damn, the Eagles just might pull this one off!

;-)

Ok, Which one of you Cervelo Worshipper's Wrote this Letter to Abby?

This Blog has some pretty consistently "out there" commentary, and this one is par for the course:

http://www.howtoavoidthebummerlife.com/weblog/archives/2007/08/yep.html

That link is rated pg-13, BTW - though, it might be worse than that since I'm not a member of the MPAA or anything and I don't have kids...

Though, now that I think about it... I have watched the first two episodes of "the power of ten" on TV the last two nights and got a few questions exactly right, so, yeah, I pretty much have my finger on the pulse of popular "uhmerikuhn" opinion... ;-)

YMMV.