First Day at Nats

It was a long day.

I had our two girls at home with me (school didn't start until today), plus I had two neighbor kids, whose parents were in the same situation as us. And two dogs. I was trying to work at home, and it was actually happening. But then I found out that I had to pick up my race number for masters national championships several hours earlier than I had expected, and it takes about an hour and a half to get to the track from my house.

So, do I drive to Colorado Springs from Denver with all four kids (and dogs?), get my number, come home, drop the neighbor kids off as scheduled, then drive back to the Springs and pretend to race? Or do I take the neighbor kids with me, and bring them home with my kids at nearly 9:00 PM (and surprising their parents)? It's the day before the first day of school for all the kids, you see.

I must have good karma or sumpin. About 45 minutes before I am having to start driving, I got included on an email thread. The officials have run out of blanks for their starter pistols. All stores in Colorado Springs are out of stock. Only one place in Denver can be found to have the ammunition, and it's 10 minutes from my house.

I immediately cut a deal: I'll get your ammo, and you let me pick up my race number at my convenience. Everyone is happy. I don't have to drive to the Springs twice. Neighbor kids' parents don't have A Situation. Sun comes out. Birds were singing. (Well, that's not true. We had a lightning storm in Denver, and the Springs were clouding over. But you get the idea. Maybe the birds was tinnitus.)

The kids got lunch, saw a movie, went on an ice cream run. We finally dropped the neighbor kids off as scheduled, and all of us (including dogs) went to Colorado Springs. Kimberly wasn't entirely happy that I brought the dogs, but they gave the girls something to do, so it all worked out.

We had a rain delay, but it cleared up into nice race conditions, and I rode well. Bolstered my credentials a bit. I got to sleep not too late; I get to work on time the next day. Everything is back on schedule, unless it rains again. Right now, it's lookin' good for Friday. I am confident, reasonably well-rested and motivated. It's a good place to be. (Too bad I can't get that nagging problem fixed at work....)

Oh, there's one more piece. When I got to the track to pick up my number, I was reading over the forms I had to sign. USA Cycling prints the stuff out based on this automated system that supplies my license number, address and stuff. They got the wrong Ken Rodriguez. We breed like flies. Interestingly, I have found this imposter in the USAC database of results. He's just a few years younger than me, and a roadie, the traitor. He lives in the town where I grew up. I moved away when I went off to kollidge, over thirty years ago, well before I ever got a racing license. I think he's assumed my identity for some reason.

Anyway, the form I had to sign was all wrong. Cue the bureaucratic Keystone cop routine. It all got straightened out, but I was unflappable at that point. I had been through the fire already, and was hardened.

AND ANOTHER THING. My shockingly expensive power meter gizmo that records how hard I'm pushing the pedals died at the last minute. Luckily, my coach had a shockingly expensive spare gizmo.

I'm telling you, I must have some good karma from somewhere. I think I'm burning through it pretty fast, though.

Live A Life

A friend of mine, Joe, recently had an accident and injury. As I write this, it has just happened and we don't know the long-term effects, but they may be significant. I am hoping for the best.

But this reminds me that our lives are fragile. We can be changed forever in an instant. Or changed slowly by something over which we have no control. There really isn't any way to protect ourselves from this because this is simply how the world is. Nor should we even try to do so, because all that would mean is that the we'd make ourselves prisoners, and what would be the point of that?

I ride a bicycle a lot. Many of my friends do the same, and many ride much more than I do. Yes, this means that we expose ourselves to more risk, but we do so knowingly, or at least we pretend we know. But of course, anyone who lives is susceptible to having some sort of life-changing event that they don't want. Anyone can get sick or hit by a car, or know someone who does. We can't completely shelter ourselves from danger.

What we can do is live our lives. We can love ourselves and those around us. If we enjoy this world even with all its faults, then we can work to make it more enjoyable for those around us.

There really doesn't seem to be a lot more than that. Maybe someone knows more, but I think that, if you start with loving yourself and do things that truly make you happy (you know what I'm talking about), then you can start to do the same for others around you. Family, friends. You start with those closest and branch out. Eventually you have made a positive difference in a world that really needs this sort of thing.

No, I Don't Like Car Crashes

(Updated at the end with pictures of the car.)

Holy cats. Friday the 13th began early for us.

I was turning left on a green arrow and someone ran the red light coming toward me. T-boned me good, and we spun about three quarters of the way around. It's not easy to make a big minivan do that. There was a truck behind me at the light who had to have seen the whole thing, and I saw him drive away after the accident. I hope he gets a flat tire.

I was bringing Isabella and Francesca home from an appointment. (Francesca has been in a medical study since she was a baby and she gives blood every once in a while.) We were about a half mile from the hospital where we had the appointment, when we got slammed.

My Toyota minivan got hit about a foot behind where Francesca was sitting, and her door got pretty well mangled. A few windows got blown out in the process. The other car (also a minivan) had an entire family in it, complete with dog. The other driver got a ticket for running the red light. Thank goodness the police had that detail covered.

I've seen a few car crashes, but this is the first one that I've ever been in. I hope it's my last. It is really amazing how fast things happen, and the violence is shocking. we were incredibly lucky that no one in either car was seriously hurt. The minivans did their jobs.

When the ambulance arrived, Francesca (age 6) and Isabella (age almost-10) were pretty freaked out. The paramedics were talking to them, and Francesca said something about her neck hurting. Of course, they take talk like that very seriously.

Isabella rode in the back of the ambulance with Francesca strapped to a board, while I rode in the front frantically calling Kimberly, having grabbed all our bags and jackets (and my pink floor pump!) from the wreck. I was very happy that the Aurora police officer suggested that I simply abandon the car to his care. We drove the half-mile back to the hospital and Kimberly met us there.


Several doctors and nurses later, and after some x-rays, a little medicinal macaroni and cheese, and a splash of Kung Fu Panda on the TV, we were sent home.

The girls got to bed after 11:30 PM, and are weighing the glamour of telling all their friends and teachers at school against the chance at playing hooky. Since it's the designated Valentine's Day for Denver Public Schools, I'm guessing that they'll choose that instead of doing more dangerous driving while Kimberly and I try to sort out insurance claims and so forth.

Isabella has already made it very clear that she no longer wants a Mini Cooper, no way, no how.

PS: It's now a few days past the accident. The girls seem to be managing the experience well, although both wanted to stay close to home over the long weekend. Isabella skipped a ski trip with a friend mainly because she doesn't want to be in a car if she can avoid it. Francesca held her ground on Saturday about having a day where we didn't leave the house (and both girls didn't get out of their pyjamas except to take a bath and then get right back in). They have both been great.

Kimberly and I have been running around trying to arrange our lives again. We both missed a day of work, went to the salvage yard (pix below), and got a rental car after juggling our lives and calling the insurance company multiple times. Now we have to find out the disposition of our claim, and buy a new car (unless they decide ours is fixable, which I doubt). I hope we don't lose money on this deal.

All this along with our regular full-time jobs and parental duties. At least we have cycling, which helps us stay sane even if it takes a bit more time and energy.

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Update 1: We went today and cleared the last of the miscellaneous stuff out of the minivan. Here's a couple of pix.

I really don't recall it, but apparently we took a hit on the left rear of the car. You can see in one picture below where we were hit hardest (Francesca was sitting in that seat right inside the window), but I didn't recall anything on the left side. However, there's definitely a dent on the left rear, and the fold-down seats in the back of the van no longer fit in their stowed position.

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Update 2: I wonder if I can get Kimmy to agree to this as a replacement van:

A Few Laps At The Boulder Velodrome

I was planning to follow my training plan for today, really, I was. but I let myself get talked into going to the new Boulder velodrome by David Williams. I wanted to lounge around a bit more while Kimberly and our girls are out of town, but David was not listening. So, on this beautiful day, we went to ride indoors.

First, the picture below. The track is very tight, and the geometry sometimes makes it hard to hold the line you want. There was a crash, and two riders went down. I got to witness the one in the picture actually go over the top of the railing (such as it is). It looks bad, but apparently he only hurt his elbow.

This track is not a trivial thing to ride. Understandably, the guy running it, Paul, is giving some sort of certification of fitness to ride. You can either get into an instruction session, or, if you have a track category 2 on your USAC license, you may take the fast track certification. This approach bit me a little today, as my license shows category 3, but I heartily agree with this approach especially after witnessing today's crash. (I was able to get someone he trusts to vouch for me, and also get a telephone call from an authoritative source. otherwise, I had missed today's instructional session and would have been out of luck.)

The track looks steep and scary, but the steepness is not a problem. It actually might be better if it were steeper than it is. The turns are pretty tight and the faster you go, the harder it is to hold a straight line. Also, turn 3 has this nice sort of dip that makes you feel like you're getting airborne right at a critical moment.

At speed, you have to do more countersteering than you might expect as you go into the turns, and you also have to fight the urge to relax once you have entered the turn.You have to keep driving the bike downward in order not to be tossed upward. I believe this was the problem at play in today's crash: three riders stacked up, with the bottom one lurching upward at the wrong moment. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge problem, but there's not a lot of room for error on this track. And, uh, also this track has no rail or safety net between you and The Void. (I don't know what will happen when someone goes over the railing in one of the turns on the back side.)

I rode in an 81-inch gear (48x16) and was completely happy with it. Unless you plan ahead and bring rollers, you won't get a lot of warmup. At least today, everyone seemed to want to get on and start riding fairly hard right away. So the smaller gear helped mitigate my not getting much warmup.

Once on the track, you get a few OMG laps, and then you start noticing the sensation of speed and flying. It's really nice. Larger tracks don't give you quite this same feeling, but this track makes you pay for it by not letting you ever stop paying attention. You can't really go slow on this track, and always you are either in a turn or coming up on a turn. More than a dozen riders starts to make it feel crowded, so there's no snoozing allowed ever. Even getting off the track can feel like a challenge.

I hope that this track does well. The Boulder track is close to a huge population of competitive cyclists, so I think it will bring in many people to track racing and that can only help competition. For those who want a little more real estate to work with, there is always the USOTC track in Colorado Springs. But this gives us something to ride in the winter, and Paul has a fresh viewpoint on running things. I am curious to see what happens in the summertime.

Update: Here's a crappy cellphone video of David riding laps.

The mural is on the backside of the track (turns 2+3), and the wall with the window is on the homestretch (turns 4+1).

Turn 3 has a little hop as you enter it, which distracts you more than anything else. Keeping focussed is important, as you need to maintain the downward pressure on, or you will drift out of the sprinter's lane as you exit the next turn. You can see that happen to most of the riders, although David holds a pretty good line.

Quadrilla Mania

Francesca got more parts for her Quadrilla set. we've been spending the morning of a perfectly beautiful day inside goofing around and trying not to get into any fights.

The girls and I at a Hanukkah party.

Using The Strap-On In Public

I started cycling back in the day when toestraps were the only pedal retention system in existence. When Look came out with their clipless pedals, I saw a good thing and jumped on it. I had my shoes drilled to accept the three-hole cleats, since I could find no shoes pre-drilled. I'm old, I know.

I race at the velodrome. I rode clipless pedals there for a few years, but never felt entirely confident. I've seen people get bumped (read: slammed), and get one foot unclipped. With no freewheeling and no brakes, it takes intestinal fortitude and a bit of luck in order to stay upright. So I always thought that toestraps still had value for track riding. Additionally, I have a hard time keeping my feet from wiggling when I do a standing start in a time trial and I sometimes pop out of clipless pedals.

So I rode with toestraps on the track for the safety, but always wished that I could ride clipless pedals for the convenience (and the need for fewer pairs of shoes).

This last spring, I had a brainwave. I ride Speedplay Zero Track pedals on the road. (Even though I preferred the high retention force of my old Looks, my cleats always squeaked and drove me nuts, so I switched. The Zero's retention force barely cuts the mustard, but they're quiet and they work.) I have a pile of old junk in the bike room and cobbled together a setup that allows me to have toestraps with my Speedplays when I want them.

Here's what I did. I got an old set of cleats, including all the mounting screws, and some inserts that come with my Sidi shoes. (I don't use the inserts because they are for Look cleats.) I found some old SPD mounting inserts, cut them in half, and used them with some screws to sandwich a set of toestraps. It's harder to understand from my words than it is to examine the pictures closely.

So now this setup allows me to use toestraps with my road pedal/shoe setup, and I can take them off when I don't want to futz with toestraps. It's nice to be able to just hop on the bike, do a warmup, and then later attach the straps when I think I need them. I just clip the Strap-Ons to one side of the pedals, clip my shoes in the the other side, tighten down the straps, and go. I even use them on the road sometimes. It's nice to have the option when doing certain workouts.

It's important to note that there is no modification to the pedal or shoe, so I can use this on any bike that has a Zero pedal. My wife and I once did a workout together where we traded back and forth, with one of us resting while the other did a standing start using this setup.

There are two things that I got from sheer luck.

First, the cleat of the Strap-On does not interfere with the cleat on my shoe. There appears to be about two millimeters of clearance between the cleats sandwiching the pedal, and this allows me to unclick my shoes like normal.


Second, the Strap-On keeps my foot from clicking out of the pedal in two ways. The Speedplay cleat (in normal usage) allows the heel to move outward in order to release from the pedal. But you can't move your heel inward (toward the crank), as the cleat has a stop in that direction. The cleat in the Strap-On is upside down, and is working in a direction opposite to that of the shoe's cleat. This means that, when I move my heel outward (and the straps cause the Strap-On to move with it), the Strap-On cleat hits that stop, and it's harder for me to unclip from the pedals. Plus, the shoe's cleat cannot come up off the top of the pedal. So even when the straps aren't strangling-tight, when I move my heel back toward center, the straps pull my shoe's cleat back onto the pedal.

Theoretically, this can work with any pedal system that's two-sided. Shimano's SPD is an example. However, the design of the Speedplay cleats seems to lend itself nicely, not requiring significant modifications to any of the parts used to make the Strap-on.

Yes, there's a slight decrease in cornering clearance. On the track, I've brushed the Strap-On in the banking when doing the cat-and-mouse routine in a sprint, but it wasn't enough to cause a problem. (Colorado Springs has 33 degree banking.) But at any speed above a walking pace and on flatter tracks, I haven't noticed this problem. Of course, you can coast through turns on the road. If these weren't simply recycled parts, it would be easy to overcome this problem by designing the Strap-On with a lower profile.

Here's a couple of more pictures.