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By admin, September 7, 2008 7:03 pm

by Stephen Herrick

Here’s a good one to amaze your friends at rest stops

Kneel down next to your bike on level ground, and hold it upright. Turn the cranks so that the pedal on your side is at the very bottom (6 o’clock) position. Of course, the pedal on the opposite side is at the highest 12 o’clock position. Grab the pedal on your side.

Now you’re going to gently pull straight back on the pedal, (towards the rear of the bike,) but before you do, ask yourself these two questions: Which way will the pedals rotate, and in what direction will the bicycle move?

Of course, pulling back on the pedal at it’s lowest position should rotate the cranks in the normal forward pedaling motion, sending the bike forward, right? Try it, you might be surprised.

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By admin, September 9, 2007 8:41 pm

Don Cartwright, Mike Hrast and Kitty Goursolle have qualified for Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) by each completing the required full Brevet series (200k, 300k, 400k and 600k). If all goes as planned, they will be at the start in Paris on August 20th. For those unfamiliar with PBP, here is an excerpt from the Web site of Randonneurs USA describing this epic cycling event.

First run in 1891, the 1200-kilometer Paris-Brest-Paris, or “PBP” as it is commonly called, is a grueling test of human endurance and cycling ability. Organized every four years by the host Audax Club Parisien, the Paris-Brest-Paris Randonneurs is the oldest bicycling event still run on a regular basis on the open road. Beginning on the southern side of the French capital, it travels west 600 kilometers to the port city of Brest on the Atlantic Ocean and returns along the same route. Today’s randonneur cyclists, while no longer riding the primitive machines used a hundred years ago over dirt roads or cobblestones, still have to face up to rough weather, endless hills, and pedaling around the clock. A 90-hour time limit ensures that only the hardiest randonneurs earn the prestigious PBP finisher’s medal and have their name entered into the event’s “Great Book” along with every other finisher going back to the very first PBP. To become a PBP ancien (or ancienne for the ladies) is to join a very elite group of cyclists who have successfully endured this mighty challenge. No longer a contest for professional racing cyclists (whose entry is now forbidden), PBP evolved into a timed randonnée or brevet for hard-riding amateurs during the middle part of the 20th century. The event is held in August every four years.

Inspired? Well here’s a recap of Don and Mike’s 400k qualifier that might serve as a reality check. Personally, I’m wondering if they might need some support staff at the finish? I’m sure I could find something to do in Paris during the nearly 4 days they’ll be out riding!

by Donald Cartwright

Yes it rained in the North Bay. But the “OH CRAP” moments started Friday night at the motel where Mike & I were staying. Laying out the riding gear for the 400K I found that I forgot to pack my knee warmers. “OH CRAP” #1. That meant not wearing my wool argyles. Not the fashion statement I wanted to make riding with calf covering socks, bare knees & lower thighs, and then shorts.

Up at 4AM and a look at the window found no rain and dry concrete. Maybe the day wouldn’t be so bad after all. On the drive from Vacaville (couldn’t get a room in Davis do to something called Picnic Day, the 63rd annual) to Davis the dry road started to get wetter. The dry start for the ride was out the window (out of the sky ?). “OH CRAP” #2. For the 300K there were about 200 riders. For this wet start it was down to 94 starters. Having ridden up with my Diablo contingent I didn’t have to circle the parking lot.

On the flat run along Putah Creek Rd. and Pleasants Valley Rd. the speed of the pack was 15 to 16 mph with burst up to 19 to 20 mph. On the 300K the speed of the pack was 20 to 21 mph. Oh what fun riding in the rain, and some rider’s rooster tail, can be. After riding through Fairfield it was up through Wooden Valley and up Hwy 121 to Moscowite Corner & Hwy 128. The 2nd Control Point (the 1st is the start), mile 67.3/Kilometer 108.4, is at Capell Valley School. Having pulled away from Mike on the climbs I had an extra 5 to 10 minutes I used to try and get my wet gloves off so I wouldn’t get my Brevet card wet. With a run of 4 hours to this stop we were on pace to wrap the ride up in 18 hours. Mike laughed that off.

From there it was North along Hwy 128 past Lake Hennessey (the location of the 1st or 2nd stop on the Tour of the Napa Valley) and a right turn onto the Silverado Trail to Calistoga and “OH CRAP” #3. In Calistoga there was supposed to be a right turn on Washington St. and into Control #3. However I swear that Washington St, didn’t have a street sign. On our 2nd ride through town Mike found Washington and we rolled into the Control at mile 96.3/Kilometer 155. With it being still cold and damp I had a hot cup of noodle and chocolate chip cookies. Mike had a sandwich and some cocoa. Nothing like good eats for Lunch.

Next stop, Geyserville, Control Point #4, and the turn around point. Leaving Calistoga the weather started to clear and out came the sun. And the wind. After 20 miles of sun and blow drying by the wind it was time to take off the reflective vest and rain coat. At the Control Point we both put on dry socks to keep our feet happy. On the way back the head wind turned into a welcomed tail wind. Rolling into Calistoga we could see that the clouds had returned. One of the sag drivers, Lee Mitchel, let us know that it was raining hard on Cardiac.

Leaving Calistoga we hooked up with a Steve Berry Special, a tandem. We rolled down the Silverado Trail at 25 mph until we hit a roller or little hill and the tandem’s speed would drop very quickly. When the tandem got a flat we found out why. Holding the back end of the tandem you could feel that they must have 40 pounds in the bag they had on their rack. Turning off of the Trail and heading back up Hwy 128 to the Control Point at the Lake Berryessa Dam I decided to leave the tandem and climb on my own. About 7 miles up the road the rain returned so it was a quick stop to put on the rain coat. Another 10 miles down the road it was another quick stop to put on the reflective vest and turn on my lights

Hitting the backside of the Cardiac climb there were several areas where the rain had caused lots of rock slides onto the road. On one I passed a Highway Patrol Officer kicking the bigger rocks off the road. I thanked him on my way by and he said “Your welcome”. He must have thought what the hell are cyclists doing out here. Rolling down the front side of Cardiac I hit rock pretty hard, “OH CRAP” #4, and had to pull to the side of the road to check the tire for any cuts. The rim had a good dent but the tire was still good. Slower speed down hill was the practice from that point on.

Rolling into the Control Point at the dam a lady came out of the dark and asked me if I had lost a water bottle. I thought she was talking about the cut down bottle I use to carry clothing in. Looking down I noticed that she was right. Must have been that damn rock. She quickly got me an Arrowhead water bottle with a sports top that I could use for the rest of the ride. That Davis Club is great on support. I parked the bike and waited for Mike to roll in. The rain was coming to a stop as I waited under the tent. They were offering those large black garbage bags to wear to keep the rain off. I grab one and stuck it under my damp thermal vest to keep the cold off my chest . Next was another cup of noodles and peanut butter sandwiches. I wasn’t getting colder but I wasn’t getting warmer either. When Mike rolled in I thought I might as well put on my dry arm warmers. That helped warm me up.

With Mike ready to roll it was on to Vacaville and our Receipt Control Point at a 7-11. Having studied the map they gave us along with the written directions I knew the 7-11 was on the left side of the street. Or so I thought. After riding 3/4 of the way across Vacaville Mike finally spotted a 7-11 on the left. I let him go inside while I watched the bikes. The location just didn’t feel right so I read the directions, “OH CRAP” #5. I went in and told Mike but he was already in line with his hot chocolate & banana. Mike came out and tossed the hot chocolate and it was back the way we came to get to the correct 7-11. Rolling out of the correct 7-11 we were feeling confident as we would be returning on roads we had done on the earlier Brevets.

As we rolled along Allendale Rd. we came to a T intersection with Meridian Rd. Mike calls out with authority “Right Turn” and on down Meridian we went, and on and on. It was “OH CRAP” #6 when we came to the Freeway (almost back to Vacaville). Reviewing the directions under a street light we found it should have been a LEFT turn, thanks Mike.

From there it was a pretty normal ride back to the finish. That is if you consider finishing at 1:30 in the morning normal. 19.5 hours for 263 miles (should have been 250). Then it was a nice snack of chocolate chip cookie smeared with peanut butter. Oh what we won’t do for Paris.

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By admin, September 7, 2007 8:50 pm

by Stephen Herrick

The end of Daylight Savings, and the beginning of dark by 5 o’clock is enough to make any cyclist trade in their Gatorade for a bottle of scotch, but we just might have a way to take the sting out of it. June and I, and another friend took off last Sunday and drove up 101 to Windsor for a ride through some of the premier vineyards in Sonoma County. The leaves were turning their fall colors, the weather was crisp, but not too cold, and the countryside was absolutely gorgeous. I’m from New England, and believe me, I’m not easily impressed with fall foliage unless it’s truly something special. We had such a good time that we have decided to make it an annual event on the Sunday when the clocks “fall behind.”

We started out on Old Redwood Highway just north of Santa Rosa, and climbed up Chalk Hill. (A piece of cake when you’re not coming at it from the opposite direction after 80 or 100 miles on the Wine Country Century!) Then out the back roads to Geyserville, where the local schools were putting on a Fall Colors Festival with antique classic cars, barbeques, and a chicken-poop lottery. We had lunch, and then crossed over Highway 101 and headed back on West Dry Creek, and Westside roads. A quick stop at a couple of wineries, (it is the end of the season after all,) over the Wohler Bridge, and we returned to Windsor. A nice paced metric century with just over 2000 feet of climbing, and of course, the spectacular scenery. We modified it a bit, but a full description of the basic ride can be found on the Santa Rosa Cycling Club’s website at http://www.srcc.com, under “10 Great Rides,” “Alexander Valley and Russian river Valley.”

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By admin, September 7, 2007 6:41 pm

by Stephen Herrick

Suppose a Diablo Cyclist wanted to train hard enough that he/she could start at a point exactly 15 miles from the summit of Mt Hamilton (say at Amy’s Rancheria,) ride to the top, and then return exactly the same way and have an average speed of 15 miles per hour upon his return.

He/she goes out as hard as he can, and checks his cyclometer as he makes the turn at the observatory before heading back down. He’s got an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour so far.

At what average speed will he need to ride the descent back to the start in order to finish with his target goal of 15 miles per hour for the compete out-and-back?

Well, it’s a trick question really. He can’t get his average up to 15 miles per hour unless he can teleport instantaneously back to the start.

Here’s the deal. Average speed is determined by the distance you travel, divided by (per) the time you take to do it. However, if you average ½ of your target speed over ½ of your distance, you use up all the time you’ve allotted yourself to complete the entire trip already.

Plug in some numbers, and it gets easier to see. It’s exactly 15 miles from the start to the summit, so an out and back would be a total of 30 miles. If you want to finish the whole round trip with an average speed of 15 miles per hour, you have to complete the ride in 2 hours. But if you average 7.5 miles per hour for the first 15 miles, then you’ve already taken two hours!

Or, for the mathematically inclined, d (distance) / t (time) = v (velocity or average speed)
Flip that around you get, d/v=t.
But, 1/2d / 1/2v also = t.

Try something actually doable for all you daredevil descenders. Say you start at the same point 15 miles from the top, and you’ve got the same goal of 15 mph average, so you have 2 hours to complete the ride. You check your cyclometer at the top and you’ve got a respectable 10 miles per hour.

Okay, it took you one and ½ hours to climb to the summit (15 miles at 10 miles per hour, congratulations.) Now you’ve got to make the return 15-mile trip in ½ hour. That requires an average speed of 30 miles per hour. Watch it on the hairpins!

But say you get to the top and you’ve got an average of 8 miles per hour. Well, riding 15 miles at 8 mph means it took you 1 hour, 52 minutes, and 30 seconds to get there. Remember, to average 15 mph you have to complete the trip in 2 hours, so now you have only 7 and ½ minutes left to get down. Let’s see, 7.5 minutes to go 15 miles would require an average speed of 2 miles per minute, or 120 mph! I don’t think you’re going to make it.

The moral of the story is; you can almost never recover your average speed after climbing up a long hill merely by descending the other side.

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By admin, August 9, 2007 9:01 pm

by Kitty Goursolle

Paris-Brest-Paris is 1225 km long, or about 760 miles. 90 hours are allowed to complete it. There’s about 35,000 ft of climbing, all in smaller hills and rollers. It’s death (to your legs) by 1000 cuts!  But the huge number (5200) of participants and the enthusiastic support of the French people give PBP a special spirit found nowhere else. The long periods of rain this year made it the most difficult PBP since 1957. The usual finishing percent is about 88%, but for 2007, only about 70% of the starters were able to finish.

Thanks go to Mike Hrast who gave me the idea to do PBP in 2005. He also convinced Don Cartwright to go as well.  The three of us did a lot of long rides to get ready, but there really is no one way to train for such an event. It’s understood that a rider attempting PBP will do lots of miles and will be able to survive tough conditions. The mind is just as important as the body in an event this long. Thankfully, I was able to remain confident, optimistic and in good humor throughout.

Before I started, I had planned how far I’d ride before sleeping. I had a time goal of 86 hours and a general idea of how to pace each segment of the ride. I didn’t try so much to ride fast, but instead made an effort to ride as efficiently as possible, and above all, not to waste time in the controls. It went pretty much as planned, but I had to skimp on sleep the last night out to finish with a comfortable margin of about 3 hours. What actually happened was that I rode 280 miles in the first segment, then slept for 3 hours, followed by 200 miles and another 3 hour sleep, then 140 miles and 1.5 hours of sleep, followed by the last 140 miles to the finish. The wet roads and poor visibility slowed everybody down. I finished in 86:40, very close to my goal time of 86 hours. But I gave up about 2 hours of sleep on my last night to do it. I slept just enough to stay safe on the bike and avoid hallucinations!

There were some frightening and painful moments. I saw a pair of riders ahead of me skid and crash on some wet,oily pavement. I was sure I’d be next, but something saved me. It took a while to relax again after that. Later on, the constant dampness took its toll– I was getting a bad case of “immersion foot”. It looked awful, and felt like my feet were on fire!  I had to stop often to change socks and tried my best to keep my feet dried off. The other difficult times were the early morning hours after dawn. The short sleeps were finally catching up with me and I knew that if I were to get off the bike and rest, I would be out like a light and probably not wake up for hours. So I pushed myself through it, with lots of help from the riders and the wonderful French people all along the route who gave out coffee, cake, water, and snacks, and most of all, their encouragement. “Bon Courage!” “C’est une femme! Elle est belle!” really worked like a charm to boost my spirits. Translation: Good Courage! That’s a woman! She’s cute!

My best moments were arriving at Brest, the halfway point, and knowing that I was doing fine and would finish PBP on time.  I loved climbing Roc-Trevezel and reaching the “top” of PBP, with a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside and drafting a wonderfully fast California tandem from the top of the Roc all the way to Brest, setting a blistering pace in some of the few sunny hours of the whole ride. I finally found my legs on the 3rd rainy afternoon and attacked the rolling hills on the way back to Paris with great delight. It was great fun talking (in my high school French) to the many people who waited along the route and slapping five with the kids. Finally, I was rolling to the finish, cheered on by big crowds, and feeling so happy that I thought my heart might burst.

It’s not about the bike, according to Lance, but just in case anyone is curious, I rode my 8-year old Litespeed Ultimate that you see me on rain or shine.  The “naked” bike is 17.5 lbs. Wheels are Mavic Open Pro’s built on Ultegra hubs, 32 spokes, 3 cross,  tires are Conti 4000’s , size 25, inflated  to 90-95 psi. Bombproof! (I think!)  Brooks B-17 seat with cut out done by Sella Anatomica. I still added a gel pad to it after the 2nd day. Drive train: Dura-Ace cassette 12-27, FSA triple crank 50/39/28. I could crawl up anything with ease in these gears.  For PBP, you must have a bike that is totally reliable, comfortable, and proven. I wore shimano mountain bike shoes mated with speedplay frog pedals. The mtb shoes and pedals didn’t slow me down at all and were great for walking in—thanks to Mark and Amy Able for this idea! I saw plenty of tired PBP riders falling down slippery stone stairs or on wet floors in their road cleats…pity.

A PBP bike has to carry some essential items, so I rode with a Bento Box on the top tube and in back, Mark’s rack from Rivendell and a Carradice Cadet seat bag. I carried a large size waterbottle filled with dry Cytomax, a pound of Perpetium, and two gel bottles (about 8 oz).of Hammergel. I was motivated to eat these things up and lighten my load, plus I was able to skip quite a few long lines at the controls by eating my own food. I carried an extra pair of socks and shorts, which I changed every 200 km or so. I had three spare tubes, a crank bros. mini tool, a set of derailleur cables, tire irons, zip ties, chain lube, a seatpost collar and binder bolt. With all of that, my 17.5 lb. bike was closer to 26 lbs., but that wasn’t a bad for a PBP. I never had any mechanical problems or flats, and I was sure to wipe down and re-lube the chain every night. Very important things stayed in a pouch that hung around my neck. They were my money (200 euros), and the PBP plastic ID and brevet card. If the brevet card is lost, you might as well quit, since without it, you have no proof that you have completed the route. I did not carry a wallet or my passport, but I did have my Calif. driver’s licence and medical insurance card in the neck pouch.

I wore wool jerseys throughout PBP, and usually needed a layer of long underwear under that for the colder hours of nighttime. All the colorful lightweight jerseys I hoped to wear stayed in the drop bag!  I wore the usual bike shorts and leg warmers, with wool socks and shoe covers during the rain, plus Rainlegs and a rain jacket. A Headsweats hat with a large brim went under my helmet.  This was big help in keeping the rain off of my glasses. I got a new pair of Rudy Project  prescription flip-up glasses and had very little trouble with them fogging, a big plus for me after some very miserable times with fogged glasses last winter. My hands were happy in gloves with gel padding, liner gloves, and gore tex overmitts for the rain.  I carried extra socks and shorts to change into, and if the weather got better, the outerwear layer would go into the Carradice bag in back. (That didn’t happen very often.)

I said before that it wasn’t possible to “train” for PBP, but this is what I did and what worked for me. Since the fall of 2004, I’ve been riding to work most days and tend to average about 120 commute miles a week, plus another 80—120 miles on weekends doing club rides, or organized centuries or double centuries.  I usually have about 8,000–12,000 ft of climbing in a week.  In 2006, I rode around 12,000 miles, and in 2005, about 10,000 miles.  I allowed myself two years to build up to a 1200 k distance. In 05, I rode about 6 double centuries, including the Calif. Triple Crown stage race, 10 solo centuries, and did about 8,000 miles for the year. In ’06 I did a brevet series, the Cascade 1200, 6 double centuries, the stage race, plus about 20 solo centuries. This year, 2007 was the PBP year so I did a 1000k, the PBP qualifying brevet series of 200-300-400-600 km rides, and 8 double centuries leading up to PBP. Included were about four rides that were longer than 20 hours each, all of which involved going overnight without sleeping. I raced in the California triple crown stage race too. These doubles were great training for putting both speed and distance together.  The frosting on the cake was winning the women’s division of the stage race for the 2nd time in 3 years! (As before, some really fast women didn’t show up!)

The year’s best “dress rehearsals” for PBP were: Riding the Portland to Glacier 1000 k and limiting my sleep each night to under 4 hours, and second, riding my Fleche team’s 24 hour route in about 21 hours, and following this up with a 3 hour sleep and then a solo 140 miles. The toughest rides to finish were two of the shortest—a 200k in 06 and a 300k in 07 as both had over 10 hours of continuous rain, in January and February on California’s North Coast. Add a headwind, darkness and complete solitude to the pouring rain and you have found the perfect training environment for this year’s PBP.

I had so much “fun” in 2007 that I’ve already begun to make plans for the next PBP in 2011. I hope someone who reads this will think, “If she can do it, so can I!”  It was the ride of a lifetime, and an experience well worth the effort involved.