One day I'll fold all of my bike sites into one location

Yes, one day. Maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, for those new to addicted2wheels.com here's a summary guide.....

Where you are now is my main focus - bikes, bike racing and physiological stuff. However you could click away madly and find....

• Bike racing for almost anyone, which is helpfully easy to understand and full of pics
• Dopage du Jour, my almost chronologically obsessive documentation of doping stuff
• Bike racing - the penultimate guide, for a homestyle pudding of info on my way of training and racing
• and my old, old stuff at gtveloce.com, including the gallery and my extensive collection of essays on racing and training.

Cheers for now, Rob.

Browse these cycling and power links

• A great place to start... Machinehead Software. Power calculator is here but there's lots of great stuff
• This looks interesting... a running-based anaerobic sprint test... not exactly cycling but interesting, and a useful way to calculate power over a 35m run... annoying yellow advert takes the eye, too. Uuuugh. Aaahh but it links to this Wingate test... all is not lost. Not a bad site, actually, full of info. Like this chart on "Percentile norms for Relative Peak Power for active young adults" - especially interesting, if you happen to have a power meter handy! An average sort of club racer, IMHO, would fall into the 90th percentile, surely? Having said that I'm neither young nor average (who is?) and I go right off the scale... remembering this is PEAK power, not sustained... and I'm not particularly overweight (nor skinny).

	Male	Female
%Rank	Watts.Kg	Watts.Kg
90	10.89	9.02
80	10.39	8.83
70	10.20	8.53
60	9.80	8.14
50	9.22	7.65
40	8.92	6.96
30	8.53	6.86
20	8.24	6.57
10	7.06	5.98

Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989

• And this...from the same link: "Percentile norms for Peak Power for active young adults":

	Male	Female
%Rank	Watts	Watts
90	822	560
80	777	527
70	757	505
60	721	480
50	689	449
40	671	432
30	656	399
20	618	376
10	570	353

Maud, P.J., and Schultz B.B: 1989

Looks like they surveyed some pretty average active people... perhaps non cyclists?

• How about the Human Powered Vehicle association?
  
• Or look at this technical exercise in analysing the forces at work on a bike.
  
• Or this interesting exercise by FLAcyclist in comparing the power required to overcome a hilly bike course vs a less hilly but longer one...
  
• And Analytic Cycling is a treasure trove that will have you staring at the computer for hours... STOP IT! Go outside and ride!
  

• Still here? Ok, how about Aerodynamics for cycling?
  
• If you are getting into the maths, try this Human Power eJournal for size.
  
• And last but not least the informative guys at CyclingPeaks software discuss reading and comparing power outputs at different durations.

ibike - part 5 - the fun begins

OK, so now I'm getting into it. It's addictive. I'm a data junkie and it's making me get out on the bike and ride, just to see what it looks like when I sprint, chase a car or climb a hill. Then I want to compare sprints, compare hills... goddamn it, I wish I had one 20 years ago! (But they didn't exist at this price, of course.)

That's the good side of the ibike - real data that makes sense. You've got to set it up right and do the coast-down test properly, as per spec, and make sure the battery is delivering the goods. But once done it's great. Of course today I punctured and swapped front wheels, but because it's just a magnetic pickup there was no sweat. I could even swap bikes as I've got a spare mount and pickup already on bike number 2. So I think ibike is still looking like a pretty good thing.

Bad news? It goes a bit screwy if you watch the Wattage display too much (it seems to jump around constantly, especially on the flat, only settling down when efforts are made, in a sprint or in a climb) - but when you download to the PC the odd figures seem to have disappeared and clarity returns. And the peak figures on the LCD don't always match the data logged. The battery seems to play a part in this, as does road surface - bumps and corners definitely throw it off.

So on to the fun.. the screenshot on the left shows power in blue and bike speed in green. You can see steady state on the left, then I accelerate to catch a slow-moving Toyota 'Landbruiser' that pulled out in front of me. You see both power and speed rise as I chase, peaking at around 865W and 45kmh or so; then as I get into the draft speed stays up (for a while, I didn't stay on as there's a nasty climb around the corner and I'm not that fit!) whilst power falls off sharply. The ibike seems to handle 'sucking wheels' pretty well. You can see that power falls away rapidly to zero until I hit the climb and have to get pedalling again. Speed falls away too and you can see me approach 300W on the lower part of the 10% climb (the bump on the right).

The next sreenshot shows a zoom-in on that power peak. You can see the effort to accelerate, the speed rising and then the power clearly falls off as I get into the draft, despite speed continuing to rise. In fact the car eventually accelerated, having suddenly realised that the rider they pulled out in front off at that T-junction was still there... and I let him go, as you see the speed dropping again. Wow.

Even better, the power breakdown (the colored box centre-screen) shows what was happening at the point where the cursor sits... all of that green in the pie chart is acceleration. The cursor itself is the black vertical line right on the power peak. So it all makes sense. When I move the cursor into the 'draft zone' the proportions all change... as you'd hope.

Bottom line? It works!

ibike - part 4 - the software install

Well the software looked good enough sitting on the CD-ROM, and it seemed to install on my PC OK - and I followed the instructions - but it failed to find the USB driver first up. I followed the instructions again, went through the whole install and once again it failed to find the driver. So I went manual in control panel and found the driver had indeed installed correctly on my hard drive, it's just that the "automatic, preferred" search doesn't look there... of course. Wonder if this happens to everyone? Anyway, it really does extract and copy it to your ibike program folder, so a bit of searching will find it. It's just a manual approach is needed when 'auto' fails. Once loaded it all worked.

The software is simple. Connect, download all or some files... ooops, it crashed. And the ibike itself froze. OK, this has only happened once, but again I followed instructions, restarted the software and took the battery out of the ibike. I popped the battery back in and it fired up again and has worked flawlessly since. In fact it works better now than before. The battery started life reading 2.80V and fell to 2.70V during the 2nd ride, before recovering to 2.78V. However after refitting (and perhaps putting the cover back on a bit tighter?) it reads 2.82V pre-ride and hasn't fallen below 2.77V. The instructions say to get a new battery if it falls below 2.75V before a ride. Perhaps my first-day glitches were battery related?

Anyway, back to the software. It's good enough. It loads up the whole ride as a .CSV file and you can 'play' with power, wind speed, elevation, slope and bike speed for starters. You basically can graph it as you like it, including looking at neat breakdowns of acceleration, hill and friction readings at any point in the ride. And you can probably read and modify it in any spreadsheet, too, given that it's saved as a .CSV (but I haven't tried - yet). It's simple, but does the job for a data junkie like me. It's strange though that the ibike itself displays slightly different maximum values than that logged in the data file. That aside, overall it's what I expected.

ibike - part 3 - the 'coast' setup

Right, so it's mounted and ready to go. We have total weight, it's leveled (so it can tell if it's climbing or descending) and it seems to be sensing wind speed OK. Now we need to calculate the aerodynamic drag and the friction between road and tyre. Now we can estimate this pretty well, but the "coast" test will actually time your deceleration run - ie measure the drag induced by you and your bike on the road. So out we went, ibike and I, on our Look KG76 for test number 1.

It's harder to find a flat, smooth quarter-mile of road than you'd think. Slightly uphill is good, downhill is bad, bad, bad as it distorts the results. So naturally I chose a road that looked flat-to-uphill but actually wasn't, so I got some fantastic results. Fantastic as in no way could it be real.

Look at this: 1459W, man! Beat that!

Oh well, back to the "coast" test. In fact I kept finding roads with dips, declines, potholes, corners and really smooth fast bits. Which raised a question or 2 in my mind. Like how accurate is it when road conditions vary? And how is it calculating wind speed, let alone direction? I guess it's a straight subtraction of total airflow "in" minus forward velocity, and angle isn't relevant, but the final figures look odd... anyway, wind aside, if I calibrate on a smooth fast road presumably I'll get errors unless I only ride on that exact same smooth fast road... so are the errors small enough that it won't matter? Or when I get to new territory should I re-calibrate?


So I chose to retest a few times (OK, about 5 times) and compare. Firstly the ibike captured the whole thing, despite my many, many retests - which is good - and secondly I never again got the sort of fantastic result I got with the first coast test. Instead of 1459W I was now in the region of 600-1000W tops (I was getting tired, too, after countless sprints!!). So which 'coastdown' is correct? Hmmm.

Now if you look at the screenshot on the left (of the ibike software) you will see a few strange things. Firstly it shows maximum Watts on this same ride as 1495, yet the LCD display showed a maximum of 1459! Oddly similar but dyslexically different. On the right of the pic you will see the figures for a precise moment in my ride. Using those figures (28kmh wind speed, 8.9% slope etc) you could indeed calculate that a 72 kg rider at 47.5kmh on that slope is indeed putting out about 2100W, not the 'fantastic' figure of 1459/95. But to me, fallible old me, I could have sworn the road was (a) almost flat and (b) that there was little if any wind.

If you take me at my word, that it was a flat road with nil wind then Kreuzotter calculates it as 715W. I'm happy with that. So - assuming a multiply-by-2 glitch occurred - there's an error of more than a percent or 2, isn't there? Hence my scepticism and need to rerun this "coastdown" test until it checks out against 'expectations'. Or am I too harsh? Did the mostly flat road dip and climb suddenly for an instant, or did I pull up on the bars, lifting the front wheel a tad (I was sprinting, after all)... and maybe the wind suddenly gusted? No, I reckon it was a glitch.

So, I think I've got the "coast" test figured out and I'll keep it "as is" for now until I see questionable figures. Certainly my max power figures have come back to earth. Some doubt remains over what happens if you ride very different terrain, but it's easy enough to re-do the coast setup if on super-smooth or super-rough road. Perhaps do the coast test just before a race on a new circuit? Certainly do it if you swap bikes, but that's a test I'm going to do later, just to see what the diffence may be... I suspect it'll be neglible, though, unless my race wheels really are that much better!

ibike - part 2 - mounting it on the bike and setup

No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely 'rock-solid' on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It's easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks.




Mounted it looks like this...










And the mounting itself looks like this....





All in all - dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular 'wired' bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it's easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.

Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the 'turn 180' exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate - hey I was only out by 10m!).

All up - simple and quick.

ibike - part 1 - the purchase experience

OK, so I chose the ibike.

The first hassle was the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can't login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the 'log-in' option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 'tabs' to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs... they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)

Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the 'tracking' option didn't work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with 'Velocomp' written on the box... hmmm. Go figure.

The box looks like this:

Which is fine, although for around $A600 it's a trifle underwhelming. Still, it's the technology we are buying, isn't it?








And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):



It's showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.














And then I mounted it on the bike... well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.

More soon!

Power to the people - power meters for serious cycling

When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.

In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle 'computer', although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out BikeBrain for example)

Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go 'ah, look at that average' after a hard crit.

The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go 'wow, that was a tough ride'.

Which brings me to my newest desire: power measurement. Up to now I've calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit. SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options - the German HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don't offer download, so it would be a 'write down later' sort of thing - like back to the 80s.

The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end 'real' power meters. I also looked at GPS units like Garmin's and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.

Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces - wind, friction and inclination - and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren't good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the "coasting" test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).

I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the "buy" button in the ibike website. I'll tell you more later...

Quite a result - Milano-San Remo

Oscar the cat pounces - again! But this time a clear winner. Nice result for the Aussies, too, with 3 out of the top five - just no 1st place - yet.

Results from Cyclingnews.com - click to read their story...
1 Oscar Freire (Spa) Rabobank 6.43.59 (43.665 km/h)
2 Allan Davis (Aus) Discovery Channel
3 Tom Boonen (Bel) Quickstep-Innergetic
4 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Predictor-Lotto
5 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Team CSC
6 Erik Zabel (Ger) Milram
7 Gabriele Balducci (Ita) Acqua & Sapone-Caffè Mokambo
8 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) Milram
9 Vicente Reynes (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne
10 Robert Hunter (RSA) Barloworld

vote4cycling in NSW Elections 2007

Aquatinting - what does this mean?

From cyclingnews.com:

The first priority for a training camp, aside from handing out the new equipment, is aquatinting the new riders - whether they be new to the team, or new to professional cycling as a whole.

Now we all make mistakes, especially when writing under pressure, but what exactly is aquatinting? Do all the riders get spray-painted in blue? Does it have a performance-enhancing quality? Is it cooler to ride with an aqua tint? Should it be banned?

Tour of California - wrap up

It was pretty good, actually. Levi fought off all challengers, especially Voigt, to win overall. CSC won heaps of stages and lots of Aussies won both stages and intermediates as well. Read the CN coverage here.

Cali Tour 2007 - sprinters on form

A few interesting things to look at after 2 satges of the Tour of California. Firstly the win by Rabobank's Graeme Brown, carrying on from late last season; and JJ Haedo picking up with where he left off as well. Brown had to prove himslef last year in to to stay with Rabo - even McEwen couldn't do that, you'll recall - whereas JJ was looking to move to a bigger team. Which he did. So this win is a payback to CSC for their trust.

It's early season, too, so we shouldn't get too excited, but we have a few Aussies up front and the big sprinters are showing their wheels as well. But not (yet) winning: Hushovd 3rd, Davis 4th.

Otherwise, it's interesting to see Leipheimer in the lead overall and back with his old team, Discovery.

Some technical stuff about frame design

All of this talk about spooky handling makes me want to discuss rake and angles. I bet you want to too. Sure, you say.

So what is it and what does it matter? Well think of your standard triangular frame. Ditch the wheels, just look at the frame. A steep head or seat angle simply means a larger number - say 72 instead of 71 degrees. If that's hard to imagine just think 'straight up' would be 90 degrees or perpendicular to the road. So a slacker angle is just another way of saying it's a smaller number. So 71 is slacker than 72 or 73, say. And a slack seat tube produces a 'laid back' or comfy bike. Your typical Euro road frame is slack, like a Look, or a LeMond (yeah, yeah, he's a Yank, but he's in the 'comfy' zone of frame design).

But that's not all. Frame designers have to consider trail, caster, center of gravity and wheelbase, amongst many other things. You may like to refer to my automotive handling guide for some more definitions and explanations (cars are just 2 bikes lashed together side-by-side after all).

Anyway, caster is like what you see on shopping trolley wheels - those wheels are even called casters. They clearly point backwards and if by chance they point forwards when you push on the trolley they swing around to point back again. This effect is called self-steering and the effect is called caster. The amount of caster you have is measured as trail. Ahhhh, now that's a bike term.

So if you draw one line down the center of your steerer tube until it intersects the ground and then drop a vertical line from your front hub to the ground, the two lines hit the ground in different places. The difference is measured as the trail, and more trail the greater the caster effect. In other words the greater the self-steering effect and thus the more stable the bike. The opposite applies, of course, in that as you reduce trail the bike becomes progressively less stable and less likely to self-steer. It becomes twitchier, or more responsive if you like. Now zero trail would be a real handful; and if you go beyond that you'd have the bike from hell.

Now a track bike must have great stability, as you don't want it to twitch in the middle of a fast pack of riders during a full-on sprint; and a road bike will want some stability too, but a criterium bike will want more responsiveness. So changing the trail is how you go about altering your bike's handling. By changing the forks (easiest way) or by changing the steerer tube angle.

You get it? Combinations of head angle and fork rake will alter your responsiveness. But wait, there's more. You are the biggest mass on a bike - by far. And where you put your weight matters a lot. If your position is rearwards then your weight will be rearwards, too. Less weight on the front wheel will lighten your steering and make it feel "twitchy" but possibly increase the understeer as well (so you'll feel as though you are drifting wide in corners). You'll find your front wheel lifting off the deck when you sprint, too.

The reverse is true, too. More weight over the front wheel will give you extra bite, so you'll track truer and feel more stable. You can easily test this out by shifting your weight around as you ride, or by altering your position. Raising your center of gravity - by raising the handlebars and/or saddle will also change the relationship between you and the bike and make for increased instability. Bear in mind that a long stem will also give you a spooky 'floppy' feeling when riding out of the saddle... so that's another complication!

All told, it's the combination of all of these factors that make you feel comfortable with a bike. And the longer and more often you ride the more you'll sub-consciously adapt to it by simply adjusting how you move your weight around on the bike. Trouble is that you may adjust yourself into a bad position that robs you of comfort and power. Which leads into the black art of position.

Another cycling website

I guess you can't have enough, can you?? Cyclesportnews.com. Hmmm, bit similar to another site's name, but anyway, worth a look. The product reviews are a bit scant on critique.

Tour of Siam - Aussies 1st and 3rd

Tour of Siam - win overall for Jai Crawford, team win by the Giant ART team. Will Ford was 3rd; Phil Thuaux finished 24th overall, by the way. CN report here.

More on spooky handling

Thinking about that spooky-handling high-end bike...

I rode my wife's track bike last Sunday and had to stop and ponder what the heck was coming loose after less than a lap. I felt unstable, wobbly, like it was about to go out of control. Nothing was loose, so I persisted and got used to it. The difference in 'handling' was all in my position. I was slightly lower and more forward than on my bike. I couldn't get out of the saddle at all - it felt like I would fall if I did. To fix this 'handling' problem would involve firstly raising the saddle and secondly pushing it back, or perhaps changing the stem length. And testing it after every alteration, one change at a time.

My wife is entirely happy with her track bike as it is set up and it looked OK to me as well, with my short legs and all, but shifting my weight forward even slightly changed the whole feel of the thing. My point is that spooky handling can be a combination of many things, not just wheels or frame but position as well. Stem length is a big one in my book, and look at how you are distributing your weight overall, between front and rear.

Just a thought.

Some more about wheels... and airflow

My friend, he with the Six13 and Lapierre, went on to say, "Yeah, but the more I thought about the test (see my previous post) the more I question the relevance. Most of the top tyres and almost all of the aero tyres were tubulars. How would the stiffness compare on the equivalent clincher? You can get clincher Ritchey WCS carbons for instance. They didn't use that many top end clinchers in the end, I would've liked to have seen Easton's top clincher in there."

To which I would say that clinchers are by design not as stiff, certainly laterally but in every way, as a tubular (ie glue on) rim, whether made of carbon or not. It's stiff by design, being a closed loop, whereas a U-shaped rim can bend more easily.

Undaunted, he went on: "What has me thinking is the front to rear stiffness difference in the Campy Eurus. I do talk about the freaky handling of the Lap, but maybe it was the wheels?"

Which had me thinking about my old Campag 24 spokers. Light, great for climbing, but hopeless in corners. Just too soft laterally (it felt it was laced with spaghetti spokes, cooked ones). Sometimes a bit more weight (as in more spokes) is worth it - again it's horses for courses.

My friend also commented that "the R560 Shimano does pretty well, considering it's their 105 spec wheel. Just shows how far Shimano have come with their wheels and they definately are the best value wheel on the market at the moment."

Probably a good call. I still like Mavics. Those sealed bearings last a long time (mine have lasted 16 years without a failure, and with minimal maintenance).

He also "thought the 50kph (test) was a bit extreme, but I did like that they tested a variety of angles, something that you question when you see the Cervelo Soloist design... surely it can't be that good at anything except straight on (ish)?" Of course on a bike you tend to go forward (hopefully!) so you are always penetrating the air straight on, so the Soloist does make sense. It also has a greater side profile surface area so maybe it is susceptible to crosswinds, but I have trouble in 40-60knot crosswinds on my regular bikes, so maybe it's just a matter of degree?

Frames, wheels, handling - a conversation of sorts

A friend started a conversation about wheels. It all starts here with a whinge about the handling of his Lapierre.... but becomes more of a question of wheels and tyres than frames and angles. So what matters most?

The handling comment was: "Generally speaking though, I'm very happy with the new rig (a Cannondale Six13). It's very quick and nice and stable. It's much more evenly balanced, whilst the Lap was very rear heavy... or maybe front light? Either way, it (the Lapierre) didn't fill me with a great deal of confidence."

Sounds like understeer? Could be tyres. Or geometry. My old Saronni (Colnago) track bike runs wide when sprinting on low-banked tracks, but is fine on steep banking. Horses for courses.

Then he shows me this interesting link to a pretty comprehensive wheel test. Have a good look. Wow. Pretty impressive, eh?

Whilst I'm not sure I ride "power on" at 50kmh very often, it's nice to know all these tested wheels are better than a 36-spoker at doing just that - if only by 15-30W! If I was a TTer I'd be going Zipp, but I guess I knew that already. Ksyriums would be a bad choice in a TT or a fast breakaway, at least above 40kmh. I wonder what the power loss is like significantly below 50kmh - negligible, I suspect. And what forks did they use in the test, if any? You'd imagine an aero fork would smooth the flow. And tyres? There's probably a good compromise here but I don't think I can pick it... although they reckon the Shimano is good all round. I guess as they say, it depends on the "domain" you need to use the wheels in... TT, crit, road, training, a combo of events etc etc. And how much $$ you have!!

Tour Down Under result

Just finished watching the TDU on TV. It was McEwen, Renshaw (against the barriers, protesting - but why go there??) and Davis in the final stage. Martin Elmiger from AG2R takes the overall win in the 9th Tour Down Under by just three seconds, his sprinting making the diff.

Team T-Mobile 2007

Clean-rider philosophy aside (good though that is) T-Mobile has one hell of a good squad this year. Both male and female teams are packed with talent. With tour-riders and TTers like Rogers and Gonchar, sprinters like Ciolek... it's a big, strong team. The women's team is also impressive with riders like Wood, Rhodes, Arndt... wow. Also interesting is the new management and support staff like Alan Peiper. Pencil T-Mobile in for some success in '07.

Thought about pedals lately?

Apart from small differences between brands like Look and Time and a somewhat bigger gap to Speedplay and Keywin, pedals are pedals. The bigger choices are between clipless and clip and strap, and cleat forward vs cleat back; all have fundamental influences upon how you pedal and the efficiency obtained. So how about this: a side-mounted pedal system. The makers claim a 3-4% biomechanical efficiency improvement, which is nothing to sneeze at... although it removes all chance of riding in sneakers, doesn't it?

Adcock Park records updated

Folks, I have updated the CCCC Adcock park track records. Via Paul Craft. So blame him for any errors!

An old fashioned story of drug cheating

Interesting story at Cyclingnews.com of a rider (Rachel Dard, by name) caught out in several ways - back in the old days- 1976 in fact. He was apparently cheating by doping, then cheating the test by swapping urine, then cheating by pressuring the doctor to let him off by destroying his report. Upon realising he hadn't completed the job thoroughly enough he chased said doctor and pressured him again to destroy the empty vials, only to come undone when the doctor finally spilled the beans anyway. Now one must wonder exactly how many got away with it. Plenty, one suspects. But these were days before EPO, so we are talking (presumably) of steroids, cortisone and amphetamines.

Not good, certainly, and even in the amateur ranks it was common enough to know of this sort of thing. Drinks that were "special" and only for a given rider - laced with brandy or whatever alcohol they preferred, to be used prior to the sprint... although what effect that may have had is difficult to judge - maybe the effect was in their head? Or bananas with amphetamines for that lift you need, or think you need, just before a sprint or major climb. And the ever-present No-doze tabs. It can't have been just me hearing these stories, or watching riders throwing tantrums when they got the "wrong" banana... can it?

Cronulla capers - racing in the Shire

I've always liked Cronulla - wide streets, endless beaches... and the ferry to Bundeena. The fact that it's almost on a peninsula - surrounded on 3 sides by water - Botany Bay, Port Hacking and the Pacific Ocean - has arguably preserved its charm, high rise blemishes not withstanding. Strangely it has a heavy rail line (which replaced the old steam tram, but I guess that's another story) a bit of a luxury for such a small pocket of Sydney. It's a great place to hold a bike race. And so they did.

Now it was great to get live TV coverage - but as usual we had ill-timed ad breaks when riders went away, and when we came back to the action we got a long interview with a rugby league coach. Oh well.

Great, dominating ride by Kate Nicols to win the women's crit. As for the elite male racing, it was great to see Rabo's Brown win and Disco's White making impressive attacks... but it had a feel to it, somewhat akin to "off season" or "staged". Now it may have been absolutely legit, but firstly we saw McEwen go away in a break and then get caught (so the public got to see the road sprinter in action); followed by a successful break and a home-town win (just!) by the pro sprinter. Hmmm. Local boy Whitey was 3rd. Hmmm. Now I'm convinced the locals were indeed trying - no question about it (great rides by local crit specialists Jose Rodriguez and Peter McDonald, btw) - but the pros were taking it a bit easy, surely? I have seen similar local crit fields blown apart (and lapped) by just one pro on his "off season" break... but who would profit from seeing that under the gaze of the crowds and TV cameras? No-one one, really. The pros want to put on a show - that's their job - and don't want to crush the locals just for the sake of it. And that's exactly what we got. It was great to watch, anyway.

That crash in Surfers

When Astana rider Davis went down 5 metres shy of getting on the back of the breakaway, 2 things happened. 1, an opportunity was lost and hard work was wasted. And 2, they were relegated to the chase bunch (ie the peleton). Now from Davis and company's viewpoint it was unfair. 5m is hardly a gap at all and for riders of this caliber they would have made it across, for sure. So morally they expected to join the break after the lap out (which they duly did, but got pulled out by race officals). Now I can see their point - a crash is a race incident deserving of lap-out consideration; but equally they should have taken due care to negotiate the corner without incident, just like the breakaway did. After all, if that breakaway was able to make the corner safely at similar pace then maybe they should also expect not to be penalised for their skill in doing so.

Now it may have been a mechanical incident that brought Davis down, but it didn't look mechanical. And why didn't the chasers simply pass Davis and continue the chase? I can understand Davis taking a lap out and (in theory) rejoining the chase bunch, but what about Brown and co? I'm not sure what held them up (did they all fall, or have 'mechanicals'?) but by taking a lap out and they rejoining the breakaway that they had nearly caught seems a bit rich. 5m is still 5m guys. Now if it had been a club race we'd just get up and chase again. Or did I miss something?

Neil Stephens on an Aussie Pro team

Cyclingnews has another good interview with Neil Stephens, Aussie bike legend. I don't know Neil personally although I've ridden with him a couple of times - in a large bunch! I do know a man who claims to have helped the Stephens brothers off to their start in bike racing back in Canberra (and yes I believe him); and I also know about the Rookwood cemetery training loop, so there's scope for scandal there surely?

Maybe not. Point is that someone got Neil on a bike, riding, then racing, then winning. You and I know that winning - or at least having a sniff - is enough motivation to train and train some more. Neil's never shirked training. For me it was gentle persistence by the then Randwick Botany club president (thanks Col) that finally got me racing. Sometimes it takes some nudging. Neil surely had a host of other, different factors that got him going and kept him going. And now he's 'putting back' into the sport. I'm not a great fan of nationalism, indeed it's high on my list of the cheap tricks and bread and circuses used by politicians and power brokers to distract us from thinking straight, but I can see the excitement that will surround any 'national' team entering the pro peleton, be it Kazahk or Aussie. Anything that gets what amounts to an alternative sport (an alternative to footy and cricket!)'out there' in public view is good. If not great.

Catchup on some news

Where do I start? CN has reported that Tyler Hamilton has signed (maybe at Tinkoff?) and expects to race in 2007. CN also reports that Riis has laid down the law on doing at CSC. And it's been widely reported that Aussie rider and stair-climber Paul Crake has broken some vertebrae in NZ. And the FRF boys are racing in Hainan with Josh Marden taking a stage. Did I mention Basso went to Discovery?