I’ve been biking across the country through the deep south. A lot of interesting folks, rural areas, and good food. But the one thing that gets at me is the heat. 95* today, and a bit humid too. Heading into Texas from here in Louisiana and Mississippi where it should actually be cooler. More@ thewirldofbcor.blogspot.com

Big ups to everyone who rode the Greylock TT this weekend. Here’s the deal:

– Amy Levine ’14 won her age group
– Erik Levinsohn ’12 won third overall and third in his age group
– Cecelia Davis-Hayes ’11 won second overall for women and first for her age group

For full results, check out BikeReg.

We’re going to Utah!

When most sporting events begin, you often have a pretty good sense of who is going to come out on top. Put my poor Detroit Lions against the New England Patriots and you can be pretty assured that the pats will win handily. The same goes for basketball, soccer, and even other endurance sports, like running. Given a list of teams or athletes and their respective records or PRs, you can usually make a really good educated guess of who will end up winning.

I would argue that this is less true in cycling. One big reason why is luck.

I raced the Topsfield Circuit Race earlier this week. About 35 or 40 miles in, I got a flat on my back tire, and was forced to stop, switch in a new wheel, and then attempt to catch the main field. Unfortuantely, when the main field is moving at 26-28 miles per hour, there’s not much hope for catching back on. I might as well have been riding on a flat tire.

I’ve been pretty lucky for the most part. This is the first race I’ve flatted in and I didn’t have any chance of contending for the win anyhow. But this danger always exists. You can do everything right, be the fittest rider, and still come up short. Take, for example, David Millar in the 2003 TdF prologue. He threw his chain and lost the prologue by less than a second. Had he not had a mechanical, he would have won easily.

Technology is making luck less and less a part of cycling. Wheels and tubes are becoming increasingly puncture-resistant. Electronic derailleurs are making shifting faster and more precise. Stiffer and stronger components mean that you’re less likely to have your front crack during a hair-raising descent. At the same time, technology has found yet found a solution to the hapless racer who can’t handle his bike to save his life and takes down half the field. Until this problem is solved, luck will always play a big role in deciding who finishes first (or, really, who finishes at all).

I think it was Clint Eastwood, one of my heroes, who best explained how luck works, so I won’t try to improve on his quite compelling argument. I’ll just say that you already have enough to worry about- your competitors, the pothole just in front of you, and the epic climb just up the road. Don’t bother worrying about the things that are out of your control.

Inspired by John’s update, I thought it was worthwhile to keep the blog rolling.

“Fun” with power meters!

One of the good (bad?) things about cycling is that it’s so hard to get a completely quantitative measure for your fitness. Track athletes can trade 400 splits, swimmers can brag about their 200 fly time, and rowers can gauge their fitness by … er… whatever crew people actually do. Cycling is different. It’s a lot less clear exactly where your fitness is in comparison to others because of the huge number of variables that influence performance (terrain, quality of road, tire pressure, hydration/nutrition, restedness, and whether or not you gave an arm and a leg just to buy that Zipp wheelset that looks so damn good). In short, it’s not easy to see exactly where you stand.

I’ve been using a heart rate monitor for a couple years now. While it’s certainly more useful than just going by RPE alone, in actuality it tells you nothing about how powerful you are. I just borrowed my dad’s Power Tap, which is a wheel that has a power meter built into the rear hub. In two days, I’ll be doing a 40-minute all-out time trial to see actually how much wattage I can produce. The prospect is at the same time terrifying and exciting. In all, it’s pretty cool to be told by a computer where exactly you stand.

On a (barely) related note, I just might start calling the ark the “wattage cottage.” Yeah, I know I’ll probably be the only one. That’s okay. I’m used to that.

Why would anyone want to bike up Mount Greylock?

I actually don’t have a good answer to that question, but if you’re reading this then chances are you also have a distorted sense of what counts as “fun.” Therefore, you should all register for the Greylock Hillclimb. I’m missing convocation to go, so “doing schoolwork” or “studying” are poor excuses (as always).

Not to be trumped by John, here are some more awesome cycling videos.

1) An amazing save

2) The only thing more awesome than racing up a 3000 ft. mountain? Racing down a 5000 ft. mountain…
without roads.