your daily bicycle log

Rode without arm warmers today. Commuted 40+ miles on Wednesday so I could do a shorter ride today, as well - nice to have my whole afternoon free, tbh.

"my" local canyon is such an overcrowded shitshow at this point that there were 4 police cruisers handing out tix to cyclists up and down a 10k stretch. over 20 years i've watched it go from a 1.5 lane seldom travelled goatpath to a 3 lane highway with continual bike and car traffic (over 1000 bikes/day on weekends). i don't really care so much about the traffic, but i'm sad because i think sooner or later, this bike route is going away, and theyre not building any more mountain roads.

Wait you think they won't allow bikes any more? Isn't that the opposite of how things are going most places?

they can't expand the road anymore afaict, and the residential population above the canyon has really increased in the last 15 years. it's not a suburb, it's a car based exurb. i don't see how they are gonna limit local car traffic. who knows though? this is the road where this happened last year to a guy i raced with in the 90s:

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/11/bike_rage_byron_nix_herbert_hoover_grandson.php

i will not claim that i don't see cyclists do pretty thoughtless/oblivious/inconvenient things on that road.

how are they limiting motor vehicle traffic out there?

Bay area you mean? Dunno about outside SF, but here they're just gradually reducing parking spaces afaik. There's talk of expanding the subway and limiting car traffic on some roads but I haven't seen any action.

It's hard to build here so total populations isn't rising much. Of course, that means anyone who doesn't make six figures is getting fucked ...

*population

sorry I'm on an Untappd binge

Did a group commute today. Fast - I got dropped a little over halfway. The group was really a small set of really fast guys and a larger set of people just hanging on. If I had been smart and stuck with the second group, instead of trying to take pulls when I was almost redlining in the draft, I probably would have made it. Also need to get better about grabbing the back of a fast paceline when I'm spent. Anyway, fun!

Oh yah and this was a little over 40 miles, super flat.

That sounds fun, I wish I had a commute like that.

Also need to get better about grabbing the back of a fast paceline when I'm spent.

Yeah, my solitary experience of a two-up time trial largely consisted of me pulling off the front and completely failing to get onto the wheel of my partner who would then drop me by two hundred yards before realising I wasn't there.

Well that's a hard situation (especially if your partner surges when you pull off, maybe?) It should be easier for me because there's a relatively long paceline which should give me time to match speed.

WENT MOUNTAIN BIKING IN COPPER HARBOR

SO GNARLY

srsly "the flow" might be the best thing I've ever ridden

Really lovely post rain ride this evening, 50km in a little over 2 hrs with over 900m of climbing

http://app.strava.com/activities/61314240

I've been taking advantage of an unusually light workload and nipping out for a bike ride nearly every day recently. I'm absolutely flying at the moment, I feel so fit. Got a course PB last night in the Hog Hill 10s, just been a nabbed a strava KOM this afternoon, it's all good.

enjoy, you earned it

today's pulls courtesy of a white-haired, middle-aged Irishman who would pull at 24mph for a while, drop back for a couple minutes, seemingly spent, then start pulling again.

I bought a helmet cam and started recording my afternoon commutes for the lolz, because I got sick of every cycling article in the local paper being met by a chorus of "goddamned red light running cyclists why can't they follow rules" crap. Behold some of the stupidest behavior I have ever seen, yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGdylGnjWVQ

Was there a red light?

Nope. He tried to pull into the bike lane - which is a violation of state law here - so I honked at him, and he drove forward and just sat at the green light, then made that illegal lane change when the bus behind me honked. The stupid thing is that there's a parking lot on his right.

I got thoroughly drenched last night, biblical deluge and I avoided the straightest way home because I didn't fancy going over one of the highest hills around with lightening cracking all around.

Blimey, not only did I smash one of my two strava goals (short climb behind the zoo) I smashed it by 18s better than the goal and 37s better than my previous best. Strava says 370W I'm not sure where it came from unless their EPO and testosterone in Trader Joe's Cinnamon and Raisin Bagels.

Nice. Get me one of those bagels.

Failed at my other goal for this month, not enough bagels. Still had a great ride today.

I also sold my full size crank this week, not going back I don't think. Got an SRAM red one to seal the deal.

Gorgeous sunshine as England basks in a heatwave, banishing the bleak memories of last year's summer of eternal rain. I pootled down to Hyde Park, passed many a happy hour doing family things (mostly paddling in the Diana thing) and checking the TDF madness on twitter, then pootled back: car-free wide open spaces on Consitution Hill and The Mall, maybe I should head into town more often on a Sunday. As I entered Leyton on the final stretch of my ride I hit a 1-mile long flat strava segment and spontaneously decided to go for it. My previous best was 21.9mph, today I was going hard for a while and glanced down at my computer and saw I was doing >30mph. I knew I was going well so dug in and kept it up as best I could (though it meant I was a gasping freak by the time I hit the traffic lights at the far end) - got Strava KOM by 1 second, average speed 28.5 mph.

Was on Holiday in Montreal, great city for biking around in. Used a combination of Bixi share bikes and rented a road bike for a day. Road bike was fun but a pretty cheap aluminium frame with a savagely boneshaking ride.

I've done over 200 miles in the last 6 days and it's been over 30C every time.

Dunwich Dynamo survived. Awful, wonderful experience. It took me 12 hours, overtaken by every fucker on the road, but I got there and I only fell off once despite my chain coming off repeatedly. \o/

https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/994860_10151792934734104_1796150932_n.jpg

Respect - well done

Thank you!

missed this, but that's great! also i like the color of your bike, i had a steel one mostly that color long ago, miss it.

something magical happened with my pedal stroke yesterday

Strava Heatmap!
http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.html?id=ad13e8823b9f320ed1815e260c641212141df37c
Those are all my rides in the period of just over 1 year since I joined Strava. Well, except for the little local commute type things that I didn't upload and anything in the 'exclusion zone' around my flat.

me tooooo

http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.html?id=6f8ad5aaa0d92cd1fc474a56149c7ea7c723f140

Cool

http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.html?id=a6523179dfbe076c6cc5e1b845e7c511b0d53f62

Ha! Those straight grid American roads. You've got a ride in the middle of nowhere, from nowhere to nowhere, that consists solely of two straight lines at right angles to each other.

yeah that, and the other weird griddy nowhere to nowhere track to the north east are tt race courses out on the high plains.

That must be pretty handy actually - I'm guessing there's next to no traffic and the road is dead straight and flat. How do you turn around though? In Britain the vast majority of courses would have a roundabout at the halfway point where you do a 360-degree turn, the rest would consist of a loop with several left hand turns.

'round the cone 180. this years course/weather was awesome. the previous course (the one shaped like an "L") was p. hilly. and there's not a tree for 30 miles, it can be WINDY.

don't know if i told the story here but this year at state champs i was getting passed like an f'ing stop sign, just awful. finally, finally i caught somebody. he passed me back, and i was like REALLY? and passed him back after being sure i could do it. just then we approached a marshalled turnaround. as we slowed he shouted to the marshall "FUCK THIS, AIN'T TURNING. I'M QUITTING."

http://raceshape.com/heatmap/

the universal heatmap is fascinating--where EVERYBODY rides. read about it on dcrainmaker, but never checked it out til now.

http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.html?id=da3db43a377c5c2a13581f02b0c9c6b7271ea5ae

xp - the UK appears to be the centre of the universe according to that link

I'm really liking the global heatmap, with my impending move to melbourne it is helping me plot where to ride.

Heatmap is way too cool. Fun to find random little criterium courses in the middle of nowhere. Here is mine:

http://x.raceshape.com/heatmap/view.html?id=0b59e63a0eba094d3a08cab5916b54a24f74e20a

it's so cool to see how people navigate to ride. i've only ever been to sd once for 5 days (no riding), and downtown and sunset/ocean beach (esp ocean beach) seemed pretty bike...dangerous? like not bike hostile but challenging. anyway, what a great app.

Btw you cant leave for oz, Usa needs u ed.

Is anyone on this thread from Glasgow and has initials DH? Such a person has suddenly started following me on Strava. I don't have a problem with that, but I have no idea who it is.

From memory there are at least two Glaswegians on this board and the mysterious DH is also following Ed, so I've followed you back (whoever you are).

DH is cozen.