Chicago Crit. No excuses.

Come out and watch the most spectacular bike race in Chicago this season: the Chicago Criterium. Click on the link to see the schedule of races. This is the first time the city puts on this particular race, and who knows if they'll ever do it again.

When: This Sunday
Where: Grant Park (the finish line is on Columbus, right by Buckingham Fountain)
Who: The very best from the Chicago cycling scene and beyond. (Including Team Tati. Advice: Watch the clockwork orange at their best in the men's 4 race. I believe Liz will be racing in the women's 4 too.)

And if this doesn't convince you, this will: Jumbotron. That's right. The city is installing a giant screen for your viewing pleasure. Watch the riders sprint, bridge, corner and suffer to the max, in the maximum possible size.

Aside from the finish line area, I would recommend turns 2 (Michigan Av with Jackson) and 4 (Columbus with Balbo) for spectators. Watch cyclists take those downhill turns screaming fast, and probably some live crash porn. The hard kind. (Hopefully none of us Tatitos/UCVCers will star in that movie.)

This Sunday in Chicagoland

Enjoy a beautiful day of bicycle racing this Sunday (July 20). Evanston is putting on its annual Northwestern Healthcare Grand Prix, part of the prestigious International Cycling Classic/Superweek series.

The organizers have put together an excellent website, including a guide on how to watch a criterium race. The course is smack in the middle of town, so you'll have plenty of coffee shops and outdoor seating to enjoy the festivities in comfort. (Leave the sweating and puffing to the racers...)

I would say that this is one of the two big events within rideable distance of Hyde Park this summer, so don't miss it! (The other one is the Chicago Criterium, on July 27.)

The morning and early afternoon will see the lower category races. Tati will be present at the Men's Cat 4/5 race at 9:00am, with its trio of creamsicles Liam, Dan and Bernard, provided that the former two recover from their recent injuries (I am not ok yet). (Warning: the race might be delayed a few minutes.) Then the duo of tangerines Carly and Liz will make their appearance at 1:00pm in the women's 3/4 race. I presume that our stars Devon and Aspen will be there too, albeit in Get a Grip colors. And we might even have one or two guys racing for UCVC. Cheer for them all.

There will be some sort of concert/dancing with live music at 3.00pm, kids races also at 3.00pm, and the pro races after 4.00pm.

Misc

As its title suggests, "Training and Racing with a Power Meter" is a training guide for wattheads. People familiar with the book tell me, however, that it's a good read for the workouts, even if you don't have a power meter. Only $14 on Amazon.

Hat tip to Tim H., who swears by Fausto Coppi that this book is better than the Training Bible.

* * *

After riding the Panaracer Ribmos for a while (ok, only two days), I confirmed my suspicions: these are not tires for racing bikes. It's not just the weight, it's that they feel very different from regular road tires. I knew they would offer very high rolling resistance and poor acceleration--that's to be expected. What makes them unacceptable for me is the uncomfortable sensation they provide when leaning into a turn: the transition from the center to the side of the tire is sharp and unexpected. This is perhaps due to a big change in the thickness of the tire or in the composition of the rubber, or perhaps to the "pointy" shape of the cross-section, I'm not sure.

There's no point in training on a tire that doesn't corner at all like racing tires do. They might perform better with slightly wider rims, but I'm not sure. If you get lots of flats or absolutely hate ever having a flat, stick with Schwalbe Stelvio Plus. They offer superb protection without sacrificing as much in terms of performance as the Panaracers do. Reserve the Ribmo's for your commuter bike.

Regarding racing tires, Dan may have found the optimal combination of speed, grip, and puncture protection. He set up his bike with a Schwalbe Ultremo in the front, for speed and unparalleled grip among clinchers, and a Panaracer Extreme Duro in the back, for better puncture protection while keeping weight and grip within acceptable limits. Maybe he can share his impressions (or maybe I will, since I've copied his setup).

	Weight (g)	Price
Panaracer Ribmo	360	~$30
Schwalbe Stelvio Plus	310	~$42
Schwalbe Ultremo	190	~$45
Panaracer Extreme Duro	240	~$26

Le Tour live and free (in English)

http://www.justin.tv/giac2007

UPDATE (7/22/2007): the link no longer works, at least today. I read on steephill.tv that ASO, the Tour organizers, forced steephill to remove their link to justin.tv, because it's unofficial streaming of the Eurosport broadcast.

Oh well... You can still see live video from Eurosport. Go here, scroll down to "Le Direct: Live Video" and click on the Eurosport video link.

Fun rides

Recreational riders, here are two websites with calendars of rides (some centuries, but also some longer and shorter ones):
-Mike's Illinois Bicycle Rides (rides in IL)
-Midwest Bike Rides (rides in IL, IN, WI, MN, IA, MO, OH and MI)

Tires and caps

Some of you know about my unshakable devotion to Schwalbe Stelvio Plus, the most durable, puncture-resistant road tires I've ever used. (The Plus is important; regular Stelvios are a completely different breed of tire.)

Now that my current pair is begging for retirement, I've found out that they're out of stock. Apparently, those lazy Germans don't produce them fast enough... Still, if you can find them, BUY THEM. But if you can't, Panaracer is coming to the rescue with their own version of an ultra-strong road tire: the RiBmo (hat tip to J/Tati).

I'll write up my impressions as soon as I get my hands on them and use them for a while. For now, their "facebook profile" is rather unattractive. Panaracer seems to be marketing it as an unashamedly strong, urban tire, with a deeply marked tread pattern and all. (Schwalbe tried to disguise the sturdiness of its little beasts by putting very shallow tread patterns on them and calling them "race tires.") Plus, the Ribmo's only come on 25c or wider--the Stelvio Plus are 23's, althought they look more like 25's. The weight of both Panaracers and Schwalbes is around 340g.

Yes, I know, I know: in a world of ceramic bearings and titanium derailleurs, a tire that weighs more than your iPod is completely unacceptable. But Stelvio Plus tires are meant to be for training and commuting in urban settings. (And by the way, Schwalbe claims that the Ultremos are as puncture-resistant as the Stelvio Pluses, at almost a third of their weight. In my experience, that is absolutely false.)

If you stick to the lakefront path you probably don't need Ribmos or Stelvio Pluses. But city streets in the south seem to be covered by a blanket of glass, nails, metal shards and what not, and rare is the day when one person or another in my training group doesn't get a flat... Plus, I believe the old-fashioned theory that training on heavy, slow components makes you stronger...

* * *

Today Carly was wearing the most stylish, well-fitting cycling cap I've seen in recent eons. She had it custom-made (no wonder) at little-package.com, a one-woman operation in Portland, OR. You'll have quite a few decisions to make before you place an order: style, fabric, ribbon and size, at least. As for me, I think I will order a "Carly special" (black, cotton twill, with two asymmetrical orange stripes). Enjoy.

Dauphiné Libéré on TV

Click here to watch the Dauphiné Libéré, live and free (in Danish).

"The Climb"

I'm glad somebody mentioned this blog: "The Climb," the account of a regular dude's quest to complete a mountain stage of "le Tour." (Hat tip to Thomas Sutton.)
Looks kind of entertaining.

Matteson is back

Just in case you don't read CBR (and everyone should), the Matteson crits are back this Tuesday. Free entry to everyone who shows up early to sweep the course this week!

(I wrote about the Matteson practice crits before here.)

The race site has been under construction recently and the South Chicago Wheelmen folks have had to put the event on hold for a coupl' weeks. It looks like there's gonna be a narrow window of three weeks during which it'll be possible to hold the event again. Thanks to SCW for putting on these races!!

A grain of salt in your sports drinks

From the New York Times (hat tip to James Forester).

Filip Kwiatkowski for The New York Times

Real Thought for Food for Long Workouts

By GINA KOLATA

DR. MARK TARNOPOLSKY, a muscle physiology researcher at McMaster University in Canada and a physician, knows all about the exhortations by supplement makers and many nutritionists on what to eat and when to eat it for optimal performance.

The idea is that you are supposed to consume carbohydrates and proteins in a magical four-to-one ratio during endurance events like a long run or bike ride, and right after. The belief is that such nutritional diligence will improve your performance and speed your recovery.

Dr. Tarnopolsky, a 45-year-old trail runner and adventure racer, might be expected to seize upon the nutritional advice. (He won the Ontario trail running series in 2004, 2005 and 2006.)

So might his colleague, Stuart Phillips, a 41-year-old associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster who played rugby for Canada?s national team and now plays it for fun. He also runs, lifts weights and studies nutrition and performance.

In fact, neither researcher regularly uses energy drinks or energy bars. They just drink water, and eat real food. Dr. Tarnopolsky drinks fruit juice; Dr. Phillips eats fruit. And neither one feels a need to ingest a special combination of protein and carbohydrates within a short window of time, a few hours after exercising.

There are grains of truth to the nutrition advice, they and other experts say. But, as so often happens in sports, those grains of truth have been expanded into dictums and have formed the basis for an entire industry in ?recovery? products.

They line the shelves of specialty sports stores and supermarkets with names like Accelerade drink, Endurox R4 powder, PowerBar Recovery bar.

?It does seem to me that as a group, athletes are particularly gullible,? said Michael Rennie, a physiologist at the University of Nottingham in England who studies muscle metabolism.

The idea that what you eat and when you eat it will make a big difference in your performance and recovery ?is wishful thinking,? said Dr. Rennie, a 61-year-old who was a competitive swimmer and also used to play water polo and rugby.

Here is what is known about proteins, carbohydrates and performance.

During exercise, muscles stop the biochemical reactions used to maintain themselves such as replacing and resynthesizing the proteins needed for day to day activities. It?s not that exercise is damaging your muscles; it?s that they halt the maintenance process until exercise is over.

To do this maintenance, muscles must make protein, and to do so they need to absorb amino acids, the constituent parts of proteins, from the blood. Just after exercise, perhaps for a period no longer than a couple of hours, the protein-building processes of muscle cells are especially receptive to amino acids. That means that if you consume protein, your muscles will use it to quickly replenish proteins that were not made during exercise.

But muscles don?t need much protein, researchers say. Twenty grams is as much as a 176-pound man?s muscles can take. Women, who are smaller and have smaller muscles even compared to their body sizes, need less.

Dr. Rennie said that 10 to 15 grams of protein is probably adequate for any adult. And you don?t need a special drink or energy bar to get it. One egg has 6 grams of protein. Two ounces of chicken has more than 12 grams.

Muscles also need to replenish glycogen, their fuel supply, after a long exercise session ? two hours of running, for example. For that they need carbohydrates. Muscle cells are especially efficient in absorbing carbohydrates from the blood just after exercise.

Once again, muscles don?t need much; about one gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight is plenty, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. He weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 pounds, which means he would need 70 grams of carbohydrates, or say, 27 ounces of fruit juice, he said.

Asker Jeukendrup, a 38-year-old 14-time Ironman-distance finisher who is an exercise physiologist and nutritionist at the University of Birmingham in England said the fastest glycogen replacement takes place in the four hours after exercise. Even so, most athletes need not worry.

?Most athletes will have at least 24 hours to recover,? Dr. Jeukendrup said. ?We really are talking about a group of extremely elite sports people who train twice a day.? For them, he said, it can be necessary to rapidly replenish muscle glycogen.

The American College of Sports Medicine, in a position paper written by leading experts, reported that athletes who take a day or two to rest or do less-intense workouts between vigorous sessions can pretty much ignore the carbohydrate-timing advice.

The group wrote that for these athletes, ?when sufficient carbohydrate is provided over a 24-hour period, the timing of intake does not appear to affect the amount of glycogen stored.?

For protein, it is not clear what the window is. Some studies concluded it was less than two hours, others said three hours, and some failed to find a window at all.

Dr. Rennie and his colleagues, writing in Annual Reviews of Physiology, concluded that ?a possible ?golden period? ? for getting amino acids into muscles ?remains a speculative, no matter how attractive, the concept.?

Although studies by Dr. Jeukendrup and several others have shown that consuming protein after exercise speeds up muscle protein synthesis, no one has shown that that translates into improved performance. The reason, Dr. Jeukendrup said, is that effects on performance, if they occur, won?t happen immediately. They can take 6 to 10 weeks of training. That makes it very hard to design and carry out studies to see if athletes really do improve if they consume protein after they exercise.

?You?d have to control everything, what they do, how they train, and also their carbohydrate and protein intake,? Dr. Jeukendrup said. ?Those studies become almost impossible to do.?

As for the special four-to-one ratio of carbohydrates to protein, that, too, is not well established, researchers said. The idea was that you need both carbohydrates and protein consumed together because carbohydrates not only help muscles restore their glycogen but they also elicit the release of insulin. Insulin, the theory goes, helps muscles absorb amino acids.

Insulin may stimulate muscle protein synthesis in young rodents and in human cells grown in petri dishes, Dr. Rennie said. But studies in people have shown convincingly that insulin is not required for protein synthesis in adult human beings; it is amino acids that drive protein synthesis. As yet no convincing evidence exists that a special carbohydrate-to-protein ratio makes a noticeable difference in muscle protein maintenance after exercise. ?There is no magic ratio,? Dr. Jeukendrup said.

The American College of Sports Medicine is equally skeptical. ?Adding protein does not appreciably enhance glycogen repletion,? its paper states.

?Some studies suggested that adding proteins to carbohydrates during exercise can enhance performance,? Dr. Tarnopolsky said. ?Many other studies suggested it didn?t do any good.?

Even if there are effects of protein and carbohydrates, they are not important to most exercisers, these researchers say. Serious triathletes and elite runners, who work out in the morning and at night, need to eat between training sessions. But people who are running a few miles a few days a week don?t need to worry about replenishing their muscles, Dr. Phillips said.

Dr. Rennie agreed. ?If you are a superathlete, hundredths of a second matter,? he said. ?But most Joes and Janes are just kidding themselves,? he said.

Some, like Dr. Jeukendrup, say they use a commercial protein-energy drink after training hard, for convenience.

Other researchers take their own nutritional advice. Dr. Tarnopolsky has a huge glass of juice, a bagel and a small piece of meat after a two- or three-hour run. Or he might have two large pieces of toast with butter and jam and a couple of scrambled eggs. But no energy bars, no energy drinks.

Dr. Phillips might have an energy bar during a long workout. But ordinarily he does not worry about getting a special carbohydrate-to-protein mix or timing his nutrition when he exercises. Instead, Dr. Phillips said, he simply eats real food at regular meals.

Cornering: the theory

Coach Carl explains how to corner. Now go out there and do it.

Weighty issues

I've been toying with data on height and weight of professional cyclists for a while and I want to show you this graph:

Click to enlarge

Find yourself in that graph. How do you compare to the pros? (I originally put a data point representing me in the grah, but the comparison was too embarrassing, so I removed it.)

The lines show combinations of height and weight that give a constant BMI, so they are iso-BMI curves. Most pros have a BMI between 20 and 23, as you can see because most dots are between the two lines. To calculate your BMI, use this formula:

BMI = 703*(weight in pounds)/(height in inches^2)

In the metric system:

BMI = (weight in kg)/(height in meters^2)

Ladies: sorry, the graph is only for men. I don't have data on the weight and height of female riders.

Giro d'Italia Live and Free

Click here to watch the Giro d'Italia live, free. (And in Italian! How awesome is that???)

Last 2k of 17th stage

Notice how Ongarato, the Milram guy, does a lead-out only to realize that Zabel is not on his wheel. Notice also how Bettini gets squished between the pack and the outside of the last turn and how, miraculously, he doesn't crash into the fence. These guys know how to handle a bike...

Giro d`Italia 2008 - 17.Etappe
by hautacam2000

A view of the Plan de Corones course

A view of the course of the Plan de Corones time trial (gravel section only). Via steephill.tv



(The dude riding the course wears the exact same Rudy Project helmet I use.)

What to bring to a race

This is a list of things to bring to a race. It was posted originally by Charles Biro on UC Vélo Café.

-Race clothes, including shorts, jersey, skin suit, arm and leg warmers, socks, gloves, rain jacket
-warm up and cool down clothes - jacket / tights
-helmet
-shoes
-glasses
-bottles for warm up / race / post race
-food pre-race / race / post race (I always pack food because I don't want to be scrambling to find some place open when I should be warming up -- I've learned that lesson too many times.)
-HR monitor / strap / computer
-trainer (plus front wheel prop and iPod)
-license
-pump
-tools
-cash / checkbook / phone / wallet / keys
-sunscreen
-towel
-spare wheels
-race flier / map / directions

I would add

-coins (for the road tolls)
-a large bottle of water, aside from the water bottles (there's no such thing as too much extra water)
-an extra set of racing clothes
-health insurance card
-chamois cream/jelly (for those who use such things)
-sugary drink/sports recovery drink (to avoid the sugar crash at the end of the race)
-spare tubes

Movies about cycling or bicycles

Jacques Tati, in "Jour de f�te"
Here's a list of movies about cycling or bicycles. In some of them bicycles play a really secondary part (did you know that Goldeneye or Tomorrow Never Dies were movies about bicycles!?). But all the important ones are there, I think, up until 2007. I think we can consider the list comprehensive.

Matteson practice crits

UPDATE (5/18/2008): the practice crits are temporarily suspended due to construction work on the course. Check the website for updates.

I want to bring the Matteson practice crits to people's attention. This is a series of crits that takes place in an access road around a factory, in Matteson, IL. Matteson is about 40 minutes away from Chicago, by car. The event is held on Tuesdays at 6 pm. Check out the website.

Depending on hours of sunlight, they hold two or three crits on any given Tuesday. The first one is about 15 laps, the second one is about 40 laps, and the last one, if it's not too dark to keep riding, is either 10 or 15 laps.

They split riders into two groups, A and B. The A's start first, followed by the B's shortly after. In theory, if you're a cat4 or 5, the officials will make you do the B race. After a while, when you've proven that you are a safe and fast rider, they'll let you do the A race. (I was lucky to know someone at the event who could attest that I was strong enough to start with the A's right away, a year ago.)

Good things about the event:

a) Good atmosphere.
b) Safe course.
c) Very low racing fees.
d) Good cornering practice. Since the course has four corners, you end up doing over 200 corners in one evening.

Not-so-good things:

a) Easy corners. It's a flat rectangle with a wide road and excellent pavement. You can zoom by the corners; you don't even have to stop pedaling.
b) Riders are quite less aggressive than in a real race, because there's nothing at stake.

Something I read

I read this yesterday and I was wondering what you guys think:

When riding in a group, keep your front wheel 12 inches behind the wheel in front of you. If the gap gets narrower than six inches:

a) Soft-pedal, don't coast. If this is not enough to keep you more than six inches behind, then

b) Coast. If this is not enough, then

c) Move slightly to one side and lift your upper body, so that air resistance slows you down. But don't let your front wheel overlap with the rear wheel of the person in front of you.

Do not touch your brakes, unless it's an emergency or the group is coming to a halt.


What do you guys think?

safe bike commuting

The city of Portland, OR, is laying out "bike boxes," designated places for cyclists in front of and in full view of drivers, to wait for traffic lights to change. The boxes will be marked with signs and wide stripes alerting drivers to stop behind them at red lights. See picture. The boxes are meant to prevent ?right hook? collisions, the kind most frequently reported in Portland, in which a driver makes a right turn without seeing a cyclist who is in his path. Drivers will not be allowed to pass through the bike box to turn right on a red light.

From the New York Times:

?Ghost bikes,? riderless and painted white, were placed at two busy intersections in Portland, Ore., last October, makeshift memorials to two bicyclists killed when they were hit by trucks in accidents that month.

This spring, at those same intersections and at 12 others across the city, ?bike boxes? will be laid out on the roadway to provide a clearly designated place for cyclists, in front of and in full view of drivers, to wait for traffic lights to change. The boxes will be marked with signs and wide stripes alerting drivers to stop behind them at red lights.

Portland, which has a higher percentage of people who bike to work than any other large American city, is already considered one of the country?s most bike-friendly urban centers. But the boxes, believed to be the first such to be put to use by any city in the country, will make cyclists even safer and more comfortable on the street, biking advocates and transportation officials say.

?It?s something the city has been talking about for a long time, but these two deaths have certainly given an added sense of urgency,? said Jonathan Maus, whose bikeportland.org is a focal point for Portland cyclists. ?The community has just made it so clear that this is very important, that they?re very concerned following these fatal crashes that things need to change.?

By allowing cyclists to wait in front of motorized traffic, the bike boxes are intended chiefly to reduce the risk of ?right hook? collisions, the kind most frequently reported in Portland, in which a driver makes a right turn without seeing a cyclist who is in his path. Drivers will not be allowed to pass through the bike box to turn right on a red light, although many right hooks now occur after the light has turned green, when traffic quickly accelerates.

Read the rest here.