ride joe ride

Alright, no matter what anybody tells you: I didn’t get lost on the midway during Monsters this weekend. The guy three wheels up from me decided to turn into the wheel pit (no, I don’t think he needed a wheel), one guy started to follow and then there was some cussing and squealing of brakes. I swerved off the course to avoid crashing.

And that’s how the 5’s rolled at Monsters: kinda nervous with lots of brake grabbing. By the time I looped back out, the break I had been in was gone and I latched on to the chase group 20 seconds or so back. At that point we could have seriously caught back up. One guy was trying to organize an echelon, which was quite nice of him. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to work very hard and it became apparent that we were not going to catch up. The idea of bridging up was not sounding so good, so I cast about for something else to entertain myself with.

Luckily, fellow UCVCer Ari was in the pack and we quickly set about scheming. We decided that one of us ought to be afforded the distinction of having finished somewhat ahead of the group we were in. We decided it would be him. We sucked wheels near the back of the group and plotted the location of our attack. The plan was for me to lead him out just after the second turn on the last lap and pull him until I blew up. Other than me almost dropping him when I jumped, it worked very well. We got away without any of the guys coming along, and he got his solo finish well clear of our group. Most importantly, we were entertained.

As you’ll read elsewhere, there were some pretty serious crashes — the word at this point seems to be that everyone injured is doing well. I spent lots of the day marshaling the first corner with Allison, so I got to see more rider to ground contact than I would have liked. Despite the ambulance visits and the resulting skewed time tables, Jesse, Dan and all the UCVC volunteers pulled off an amazingly well run event that was very much to the club’s credit. Good job guys. I shot lots of photos, edited them and then accidentally deleted the folder in which they resided. I have most of them still on a card, but it’ll be another day before I post them. I’ve posted some photos from the race here.

For me, Monsters marked the end of the spring training periodization cycle, so after some easy riding this week (including a weekend in Arkansas) it’s back to the build phase next week. VO2 intervals! To keep things interesting, I’m making some changes in the power metric system I use. More on that soon.

Also, I haven’t made a follow-up iBike post, and that is on it’s way as well. The bottom line, though is: I have a nice Powertap system available for sale if anyone is interested.

I remember when Sony stopped making the Cleo, their cool Palm OS running PDAs. Actually, they didn’t stop making them. They just stopped selling them in the US, and I remember reading that they pulled them because so many were returned as defective when they weren’t. Americans, it seems, didn’t want to read the instruction manuals and mistook complexity for faultiness. This has always seemed like a cardinal sin to me — wherever it appears in life.

The iBike has intrigued me since I first read about it — it’s another, and somewhat maligned, device used to measure power. It uses a very different method of measuring than either the Powertap or SRM. I am not going to even attempt to describe what it’s up to: if you haven’t heard of it and are interested, you should check out the iBike site.

So when I learned that friend and teammate Eric had one of the first generation iBikes that wasn’t being used, the thought sorta stuck in my mind. Why would I even want to mess with this thing? I have a Powertap (okay two) and it takes only a minute or two of web searching to find someone complaining about how the iBike can’t possibly work/doesn’t work/is vaporware etc.

I like gadgets. I like comparing numbers. I like rooting for the underdog. I used an Apple Newton Messagepad for several (okay many) years after Steve axed them. What if, like the Newton, the iBike was that crazy device that really was awesome but nobody was paying attention?

Besides, do you know how much lighter an iBike is than a Powertap wheel?

After Eric graciously lent me the iBike last week, I installed it with a moderate amount of annoyance. Then I attempted to calibrate it, also with a moderate amount of annoyance. Then I used it for two days and — this will shock you I am sure — it didn’t produce results anywhere nearly in line with the Powertap. This annoyed me. The supplied crank magnet was horrible, and on the second ride it fell off. I took the iBike off and boxed it back up.

In a moment of clarity the next day, I realized that I’d never really done a proper calibration and I was looking a whole lot like the Cleo owner who gives up when he realizes that using the device requires an hour of invested time. I decided that if anybody (remember the Newton) could make this thing give accurate results it would probably be me, so I might as well try properly.

I’ll have more specifics as I ride it in different conditions– especially a few interval sessions. For now I can say that the calibration process, if followed properly, makes a huge difference in accuracy. The few rides I’ve done with both iBike and Powertap showed average wattage variance between Powertap and iBike of less than 10 watts. This is a first generation unit, and by all accounts they have improved vastly in the following two iterations, so I’d say that’s pretty good. I’ll post some ride files showing the comparisons.

Could this thing cause me to dump the Powertap? I’ll keep you updated.

Driving to the race in Vernon Hills this weekend, I had a big epiphany about why I race and how it all fits into the scheme of life etc etc. I’d consumed a truckload of coffee and was listening to highly motivational music, though, so I’m not sure how appropriate it would have been had I remembered it. Fortunately (for you) by the end of the race I’d utterly forgotten it. This was not because my race, as a entity itself, was especially exciting — we spent an awful lot of time riding around at a conversational pace — but because I both won my first tangible athletic prize and crashed for the first time in the same race. Allow me to elaborate. (It shouldn’t be tough considering you may have actually spent time reading about me riding a trainer while watching movies if you’ve spent any time reading this blog.)

Okay so, on the third or fourth lap, I got a bit antsy sitting in and decided to make my way up front and see why we were going so slow. There was a guy off the front by a few bike lengths so I rode up behind him and yelled “let’s go.” He was smart and indicated that if we were going it was going to be me to be who was going to be doing the work.

If you’re reading along and are not familiar with racing tactics, please realize that this is not how breaks are supposed to work. This dude and I were dangling about 40 feet off the front of the peloton working out who was going to pull for our little breakaway. Sad. Anyway, I didn’t feel like sitting in, so I pulled for a bit. Then he pulled for a bit. This wasn’t a breakaway, mind you, we were just sorta hanging out a bit in front of the group but since we were going about 18 mph, it didn’t make that big of a difference.

As we came through the start, I heard the announcer call a prime for the next lap. I realized that hanging off the front of the pack was not the best place to start trying to win the prime, but I figured I’d give it a shot anyway so I buried it. The guy I’d been off the front with hung for a bit and eventually faded back into the pack. By the time I came through the penultimate corner, I looked over my shoulder and realized I had a pretty big gap on the field — big enough that I didn’t think anyone could reasonably come across (though someone did try according to fellow Tatitos.) When this sunk into my somewhat oxygen-deprived brain, I have to say it was a pretty awesome feeling. Hearing the dude calling the race over the loudspeaker announce “#720, Joe Kallo, takes the prime easily” was also pretty gratifying.

I shoulda really laid it down at that point since I wasn’t feeling gassed. I doubt I could have stayed away, but at some point the field would have had to decide to let me win or pick it up a bit. But sitting in suddenly sounded like a good idea so I sank back into the pack over the next lap. Somebody asked me a lap or two later if we’d caught my teammate who was off the front. I grinned.

Okay so that was the prime. The crash came in the same penultimate corner where I’d had my revelation earlier in the race. Basically everyone was getting excited for the sprint and the dudes in front of me overshot the corner or were pushed into it. One jumped the curb and the other went down, and I t-boned him and rolled off my bike onto the median. I felt kinda bad as I was all sorts of ramped up for the sprint. When I went down I went into cross mode: I was on my feet in 2 seconds and was about to ride away before remembering that this was asphalt and people actually get hurt when they crash. I looked over my shoulder and asked if everyone was okay. They were (or said they were) so I rolled away to see that Damon Nelson, the most inspirational cross sideline shouter in the world, had turned around to make sure we were okay. You rock Damon. Of course the field had ridden away, so no sprint for us.

So my first ever athletic prize won? It was so utterly perfect that I am going to violate my “no photos on the blog” rule for the first time and show you what could be an argument for the inherent order of the universe:

That’s right, a bottle of Italian wine. Utter genius.