Vanity Check

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm using the Strava app on my iPhone to track my rides and post the GPS data to the Strava website.  Strava has been a huge motivation for me from a training standpoint because it allows me to compare a few key things about my riding habits and ability:

1. How often and how many miles I ride compared to other riders.
2. How fast I am able to complete "segments" compared to other riders.

And this was really the main point of my Measuring Stick post on February 28, 2012 - trying to figure out how I measure up to other riders. 

But to expand on this a little more, segments are created by Strava users.  They are just "segments" of a longer overall ride that somone tracked with their GPS.  Most often they are tough climbing sections but they can really be anything - downhill runs, long segments of many miles, whatever.  Then, as other riders ride the segment as part of their ride one day - and post their GPS data to Strava - their name will be shown in a list for the segment with a numeric ranking based on their elapsed time.

So the other day I saw a friend of mine get a KOM, (King of the Mountain or fastest time), for a particular segment.  Hey, that's cool.  Go, Shane, go.  Well, I hadn't ridden that segment with my Strava app so I decided to get out there and give it a try - see if I could ride it faster than Shane.  I had the day off today so I did a 25 mile training ride and headed for the "David English Trail" segment early in the ride while my legs were relatively fresh.  I hammered it with all I had and then went on with my ride.  I wouldn't know how I did until I was done with the whole ride and uploaded.  I could have stopped on the trail, ended the ride, uploaded it, etc. but it wasn't that important to me.  Or so I thought.

When I got done with my ride and my bike was loaded on the Jeep I sat in the parking lot at the trail head doing the final edits on my iPhone to upload the ride.  When it was all done I noticed there were no "Achievements".  "That's impossible", I thought.  I had to have at least clocked a top 10 or something...I was hammering up that hill!  Well, to make a long story short, I had clocked the fastest time on the David English segment but Strava was not showing my achievment!  It was some kind of glitch.  Strava is like a Facebook News Feed...it shows your ride along with all the other rides posted by people you are "following" and people that are "following" you.  Well, there was my ride at the top of the feed but no achievements.  And I was a little surprised at how disappointed I was.  I guess I thought I loved the app because it allowed me to see how I measured up but apparently I also love the app because I get to show off my achievements.  Here's what I mean:

On these rides you can see that the Strava feed shares my "Achievements" with the world. 

But on my ride today....no achievements!  So sad. (With sarcasm.)

So, other than the few of you that read this blog, I Guess I will be the only one that ever knows about my KOM!  Oh well, one thing is for sure.  I had a totally gnarly ride today...dude.

Ramble On

Last night my wife Jenny and I went to see Van Halen at the Wells Fargo arena in Philadelphia.  This is the fourth (or fifth?) time I'm seen Van Halen over the past twenty some years and Eddie rocked this one better than ever.  Just awesome.  And with David Lee Roth fronting the band again...even better.  The opening act was Kool and the Gang.  Yeah, I know...."wha?"  But to me it makes sense.  Still odd, but makes sense.  Three other friends scored tickets as well and they all said the same thing, "my wife is totally excited about Kool and the Gang".  Kool and the Gang is pretty cool no matter what music you like so this was a win win.  Good night out.

Discovering Iron Hill
So what does this have to do with mountain biking?  Well, I used the late night out as an excuse to burn a vacation day on Tuesday and do a little mountain biking.  The plan was to learn the 2011 mountain bike race course at Iron Hill Park in Newark, DE in hopes that the 2012 race course would be similar and give me a little experience.  Problem is I had never ridden any of the trails so I would need to navigate myself around with a GPS map of the race course that I found on the internet.  The last few times I did something like this (learn a new trail system) it was a pain for a couple reasons.

1. I am using an iPhone as my GPS tracking device.  It's cold weather season so I am wearing long fingered gloves and every time I stop to check the map I have to take off one of my gloves to navigate the touch screen.
2. I don't have a handlebar mount for my iPhone so I have to stop and pull it out of my pocket.

Unfortunately I only solved for the first issue for the ride today and the ride today was yet another reminder that getting the GPS on the bars will be a huge help.

Here is the GPS course I was following for my ride today:

Iron Hill MASS Race Course 2011 at EveryTrail


Here's the course I plotted as I got lost every five minutes (need that bar mount!).  I ended up cutting a tire after 1 1/2 laps so I will need to finish this discovery another day - I had a few wrong turns on the first lap.
Discovering Iron Hill at EveryTrail


Hi Tech Gloves
When I was in the bike shop the other day I spied a pair of riding gloves that had a conductive patch sewn into the index finger of each hand - specifically for navigating touch screen mobile devices.  The pair I bought was made by Cannondale and the product name was simple "Classic Long Glove".  I paid $25.00 for the gloves.  They run small so I ended up buying a size XL and there still a bit small.  (I usually where size Large).  While the gloves worked great for navigating the touch screen I didn't like them from a comfort standpoint.  They had stitching on the top across the knuckles in just the wrong spot and it was very uncomfortable.  I think there may have been a defect in the left glove because the stitching looked bigger and it was only uncomfortable on the left hand.  These are also the first pair of biking gloves that didn't have a velcro strap to tighten at the wrist and, consequently, they kept riding up toward my palm.  Not good.  And finally, by the end of the ride the stitching that held the conductive fabric on the right finger had come undone and was flapping loose on one side.  So, in my opinion, epic fail on the Cannondale gloves.  Good idea poorly executed I guess.  Here's a graphic and link for the gloves from the Cannondale website.  I would post a photo of mine but they are getting washed.  They were on a gnarly ride...dude.

Cannondale Classic Long Gloves

Measuring Stick

I had only owned a mountain bike for maybe 6 months when I started wondering what it would be like to race.  How do you pass someone on narrow single track trails?  Will I even have to worry about that?  Just how fast do these guys ride anyway?  I don't have to wear tight shorts do I?

I was riding at least 3 or 4 times for every time my friends got out - mostly because I lived pretty close to the trails but also because I was really hooked on mountain biking.  As a result I was getting stronger and learning to ride a little faster.  I would climb tough hills that used to give me trouble and find myself waiting for my boys.  This got me thinking I must be ready to race - at least against other 40 year olds.  It was fall of 2010 and I decided to read up on the local mountain bike race scene and figure out what I had to do to get ready.

But as fate would have it, I wrecked my bike hard one day that fall and wound up in the hospital for the day.  I was off the bike for the whole winter healing up so racing in the spring of 2011 was not going to be an option but eventually I was healthy and ready to ride.  It was a great spring and summer for riding but a real reality check - my buddies were kicking my butt again, my strong legs and lungs were history.  Sitting around healing all winter had taken its toll.

By the end of the summer 2011 I thought I was back in form.  There was one race left in the season.  It was at the Bear Creek resort in the Pocono's.  A notoriously difficult, rocky race course that numerous riders cautioned against as a venue for a first time racer.  But I had to try and I was feeling good - I was sure I would do well but really had no idea.  I entered the Sport class and, in retrospect, I should of entered the Beginner.  The beginner course was one 7.5 mile loop and the Sport course was 2 laps for total distance of 15 miles.  (Expert would be three laps).  Fifteen miles didn't seem like much since I routinely rode 20 and 25 miles on my weekend rides.  I came in 17th out of 25 racers in my class (Sport Men 40-49).  Not exactly what I was hoping but, hey, I met some cool people along the way and now I had plenty of room to improve.

First bike race.  Basking in the glow of...well...17th place....out of 25.

So that got me thinking.  Those guys were REALLY fast.  Much faster than I thought.  I would like some way to measure my progress against these guys so I could would know how much more I need to train and also to just go in with more confidence knowing where I stand.  But how?  I could try to make friends with some fast guys and ride with them but that just hadn't happened.  So I kept training and riding and geeked out on the internet here and there and here is what I came up with:


Step 1: Find a solid GPS map of a bike race.  I was able to find this on the internet.  A racer had tracked his route in a previous race.  I was able to load this one on the EveryTrail app on my iPhone and take it out on the trail to learn the route. 

Bike Line Fair Hill Race 2009 at EveryTrail



Step 2: Come out with fresh legs and hammer out a lap.  I used the Strava app to track this ride - it has some other cool features to track other users times on marked segments like tough climbs - this loop has a climb segment called "Race Course Climb to Tunnel".  I ranked 9th out of about 25 riders that have used the Strava app to track their ride on this segment.  I rode the race loop in 38 minutes.



Step 3: See how you stack up.  Pull up an archive copy of the race results from the year before and check your time against your classification.  According to this I am sneaking up into the top 10.  This particular race has a field of 80 for this class (I'm only showing the top 30 below).

http://www.bikereg.com/Results/2011/04/10-Bike-Line-Spring-XC.asp

Division: Sport Men 40-49

Place  Name               Bib   Laps  Total    Start     Lap 1    Lap 2   

1      KEN OVERK          460   2     1:15:06  11:12:00  0:37:32  0:37:34

2      DOUGLAS SZABO      374   2     1:15:18  11:12:00  0:37:25  0:37:53

3      DEAN PIERSON       1483  2     1:15:25  11:12:00  0:37:23  0:38:02

4      PETER PHILLIPS JR. 294   2     1:15:48  11:12:00  0:37:40  0:38:08

5      SCOTT MCGILL       1444  2     1:16:01  11:12:00  0:38:06  0:37:55

6      Louren Reddick     1246  2     1:16:44  11:12:00  0:38:24  0:38:20

7      SHAUN KENNEDY      441   2     1:17:42  11:12:00  0:37:57  0:39:45

8      JOSEPH KOSA        1417  2     1:17:46  11:12:00  0:38:27  0:39:19

9      DAVID FUNK         424   2     1:18:09  11:12:00  0:38:45  0:39:24

10     SCOTT SAMOYAN      1507  2     1:18:21  11:12:00  0:38:51  0:39:30

11     DONALD DOWGIALLO   1364  2     1:18:29  11:12:00  0:38:50  0:39:39

12     Daniel Offuh       1278  2     1:18:33  11:12:00  0:38:29  0:40:04

13     TODD MELNICK       453   2     1:18:47  11:12:00  0:38:49  0:39:58

14     CHARLIE KNIGHT     222   2     1:18:56  11:12:00  0:39:23  0:39:33

15     BILL PIPES         226   2     1:18:57  11:12:00  0:39:19  0:39:38

16     MICHAEL SINKLER    230   2     1:19:25  11:12:00  0:39:18  0:40:07

17     MICHAEL BONSBY     1318  2     1:19:25  11:12:00  0:39:34  0:39:51

18     JEFF KAMMERZELT    1408  2     1:19:39  11:12:00  0:40:34  0:39:05

19     MATT BRAUN         1321  2     1:20:38  11:12:00  0:39:17  0:41:21

20     TODD SCHNEIDER     1513  2     1:21:01  11:12:00  0:38:50  0:42:11

And finally, I've continued to use Strava to track my rides and see how I stack up against other riders.  It gives me something to shoot for and I can see measurable progress.  On this ride I was second fastest of all rides tracked up a segment called "Up Five Bridges".



I will try racing again on April 22, 2012 at the Fair Hill Bike Line event - hopefully with better results than last year.  At least this time I know what I'm capable of.  Now I just need to get out there and have a gnarly ride....dude.