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Streaming the Giro, the Future is coming fast

I've been waking up in the mornings and watching live streaming video of the Giro d'Italia. www.steephill.tv/giro-d-italia/#live has video and other links as well as a cool little page that lets you choose your video and audio sources and also pulls in some informative flash graphics of the leading groups, race radio and a map. I listen to the Italians, the only English commentary, from Eurosport, sucks. Meanwhile the excellent Phil Ligget, Paul Sherwin + Bob Roll are only semi-employed with a Sunday only gig. I've got one browser window open with the steephill.tv and another with the Velonews and/or Cyclingnews live updates. I am also checking my email, maybe reading an article from the New York Times and working at the same time while I eat breakfast. I contrast this with watching it on a big screen, engrossed in it 100% with all the nuance as the the story is spun and the drama builds. A few years ago I watched the Giro, now I multitask it. The future is here and its not exactly an improvement.

Sometimes when I go on a ride, I think it'll be good to have the fit bike legs because one day it might be a necessity. I've been reading stuff like this when it seemed way out there. The future is hitting us in the face. Is the cheaply fueled joyride that is the American lifestyle starting its death throes? With gas about hitting $4/gal and going higher I'm wondering if things are going to get ugly. I've decided to get panniers and bike to the Farmer's Market this Summer. From my house that's about 25 miles, some of my neighbors might not be as adaptable.

1st Time in Years--Mt Bachelor Positives

I used to be much more the downhill skier than cyclist. I have gravitated to cycling over the years. There's many reasons for that but one is what a disappointing experience I have often had skiing because of terrible job they do running Mt Bachelor. Over the last several years Mt Bachelor has not operated with the idea that the paying customers get there at opening so you should have the lifts open for them. After a snowstorm, and powder snow--when I prefer to ski--they typically would work on the lifts to get them running after opening. I have often joked that you cannot expect them to deal with snow, they are only a ski resort. All too often prime terrain with great snow conditions has not been available, virtually making the ski area a minor bunny hill ski area. To be fair they have had some difficult rime ice freezing on the chairs, but they have been so lackadaisical and not on top of it that it's hard to cut them any slack. Almost everyone blamed the parent corp., Pwdr. Pwdr was only interesed in squeezing every dime of profit out of Mt Bachelor and strangled their operating budgets. Now a new corporate operator at Pwdr has chopped the heads off 4 department heads, including the top guy saying that change cannot come with the entrenched culture. He also said this:

"Lift operations will change, if they have to run a chairlift all night so it will run in the morning, theyâll do that"

That is sweet music to my ears!

And that's just gravy, what I am really stoked about is the new terain they opened this year. Mt Bachelor extended the cat track at the bottom of the mountain all the way around the east side. It dumps you by the Sunshine Chair. On a spring skiing day I did Sunshine-Summit lift "laps" in 20 minutes. In comparison Northwest-Summit lift "laps" take 45 minutes. There are acres of new stuff below the Cow's face run and you no longer have to traverse out of it to get back to a lift. There will be endless stashes here on powder days.

But the best thing about this are the runs...or might I even call them chutes, that are now accesible on the far east/southeast side of Cow's Face. These runs are not as steep as runs in the Cirque, but they are as steep as anything else on the Mountain. Unlike the Cirque these runs maintain their pitch pretty much the whole way down. I'm guessing maybe as much as 2000 feet! These are some of the longest, steepest runs on Mt Bachelor. These are nothing that will thrill people from Jackson Hole, but for Bachelor it great to have something new like this.

Paris-Roubaix Central Oregon Style

What a great cycling day Sunday was. I rode the Central Oregon facsimile of Paris-Roubaix, Webcyclery's Spring Classic Ride, then I'd be able to watch Paris-Roubaix on the TV...oh well it didn't quite work out like that. When I went to set up the dvr the night before I discovered they won't be televising it until the following Sunday--Lame! So I woke up and followed the live reports on Velonews and Cyclingnews.

It's great to follow what is probably the most renown and hardest one day race in the sport of cycling and then experience a lot of the same elements in a ride. We don't have cobblestone roads here, but we do have gravel ones. The Webcyclery ride has numerous stretches of gravel just like Paris-Roubaix has the pavÃ¨. For the first half the ride the group stays pretty much intact, but then, like the Paris-Roubaix the ride becomes a scramble and breaks up into smaller groups winging it home, led by the strong. Riding the gravel is sketchy, I almost dished my front wheel a couple of times, but the ride is no "hell of the north" like Paris-Roubaix being that its only 40 miles(in great weather this year) as opposed to about 160 for the real deal.

About half the riders, incl. myself, ride their road bikes, while half have cyclecross setups or at least tires. When I got back and checked out the tires of those who got back first the ratio was the same, suggesting that what you lose on the gravel you gain on the road or vice versa.

Up until the rest stop, I rode with the group, it was a good pace, but nothing I had hurt myself to get. On the stretches of gravel I stayed at the back and played it safe, reminding myself to keep the front wheel pointed straight. As we'd get back on the pavement I'd have some ground to make up and did. The gravel just before the rest stop starts to string out the group, but the stop comes before the elastic breaks. When I got there I remarked, "not bad for a Spanish climber." That's how I see myself as a rider. I can do big climbs and get distances pretty good but flat fast rides are for the Classics or "Strongman" type of rider.

Why do climbers get dropped by strongman types on climbs? Ironic, huh? Tom Boonen, the strongman winner of Paris-Roubaix led some charges over the shorter punchy climbs in the Ronde van Vlaanderen dropping numerous climber types, who were there to fill out their team rosters. These Riders will daylight Boonen over the big climbs in the Tour. Its the same reason I get dropped on the rollers on Alfalfa Rd. coming back into town or the climb on Fryear Rd. The climber types are running so hard on the flats that they don't have any reserve left to dig into to get the climbs.

After the break we did a few miles that hurt a bit because of the way the wind was hitting. Then we turned on to the longest hardest segment of gravel on the ride and it climbed the whole way. It didn't seem steep but I was in my lowest gear. My tire was slipping as much as it was grabbing. I was losing touch with the group and the ride was spreading like a non-cycling middle age man's belly. I was all over the place trying to get the best line. I was on the left side of the road and a car was approaching. I went way over and got bogged down in some sugar. Foot down and all momentum lost, now I was way back. As I got to the pavement, I was all by myself, into the wind and could see only a few riders at least 1/4 mile ahead.

I passed Dan Wolnick on the side of the road with a flat. This ride even had it's George Hincapie counterpart. Hincapie is always one of the favorites in Roubaix, but falls victim to bad luck. This year he lost all chance with a flat at a crucial time. Dan was in the front group of 3 last year in this ride and was looking to be there this year too but the Webcyclery's Spring Classic doesn't have a team car for you to get you a 15 second wheel change. Reportedly the same same thing happened to Dan 2 years ago too.

I put my head down and caught the the riders ahead surprisingly quick. I rested in the back for awhile, then went to the front and caught another group, rested and then went to the front and got another group. I was feeling good and I have a new frame and wheel set and was enjoying putting them through their paces. We had a group of half a dozen or something and I pulled almost the whole time. I finally rode them all off my wheel...eh, or I missed a turn. Anyhow, I was solo for the last mile and got back on a somewhat circuitous route.

Paris-Roubaix on TV Today not Next Sunday!

It's Tuesday as I write this and Paris-Roubaix is now available over the net via bit torrent. Check out this web page, www.mininova.org/search/cycling%20-recycling/0. Every major race shows up there. One of the reasons I pay so much for cable TV is to watch cycling. But Versus is not delivering. Roubaix on a week after it happens, no Giro, no Vuelta. Mountain Biking does not get any TV as far as I know.

The announcers, Ligget, Scherwin and Roll are great and there is the possibility of high definition broadcasts in the future. The commentary of the bit torrent videos are mostly in Dutch and getting anything in hi-def from bit torrent is impractical because of the humongous file sizes. After all we are only in the second rate USA, its not like we are in Japan or Northern Europe where internet connections are much faster and cheaper.

This all suggests how TV as we know it could splinter apart. Of course it won't because most people will settle for what they are given, the status quo, baseball, basketball and golf. Its the same thing for me in Politics, I am neither Republican or Democrat. For Sports and Politics I can only find my place on the internet.

Most people in Bend have Bend Broadband to connect to the Internet. It is a decently fast connection(for the USA at least) and coming this summer they have announced they are upgrading their system doubling bandwidth. Right now most people have a 4mb/second download speed. In reality it is up to a 4mb/second download speed. Ostensibly I have a 2mb/second download speed(go here to measure your connection speed). When they upgrade to up to 8mb/second will I get 4mb/second? We'll have to wait and see. It's great we customers are getting more bandwidth, but what sucks as part of the package is that they are measuring and limiting how much bandwidth you consume each month. Its now very possible you can do away with traditional TV and supplant the same content from bit torrent and Youtube. To do this you would most likely be downloading much more than your 10 gigabyte limit and incurring extra charges. For instance if you downloaded the Paris-Roubaix video, it's 1.3 gigabytes alone. The etiquette of bit torrent is that you upload as much as you download. It works by a peer to peer delivery. What you upload gets counted too, so this would add up to 2.6 gigabytes. You wouldn't even be able to download 4 of these shows. That's not even considering all the other stuff you download. Does this look like Bendbroadband is protecting their cable TV franchise? Is there a conflict of interest? I am certainly wary. Bendbroadband is offering 2 other tiers of service. For $8 more a month you get twice as much bandwidth(I will be interested in measuring it though) and a 30 gigabyte limit. I will probably go to this tier and this may be reasonable, but I hope we haven't started on a slippery slope. Technology is changing and offering something better. Cable TV is mostly a wasteland that I and others have to pay for, for the few things we like. I hope Cable TV does not go to war against its customers like the record companies did after technology outstripped their business model for the sake their own entitled and selfish profit. Cable TV can use a good blasting apart by the internet. Where the pieces fall back together is something the cable companies can deal with if they are smart. Customers are the ones who need a better deal. In these cynical and jaded times in the USA though I am afraid what happens is what business wants to happen, irregardless of merit.

I'll be adding Cycling torrents to this website!

Big Guns Blast the Early Season Century

Though I am sure a lot of cyclists did not want to take on a Century so early in the year there was a really good turnout for Hutchs' Early Season Century. Last year, the first edition of this ride, was probably the most organized ride all year. The ride mostly broke into 2 groups, that stayed together and rode at a tempo that made it helpful to get a long ride. That made sense so early year. I rode in the front group to the first rest stop. I got dropped, as did others in the last couple of miles as some of the best riders in town took it to each other to the stop. For the remainder of the ride I rode with the second group, which lagged behind only by a few minutes and still was a group of strong riders. We did split up on the climb and got shattered on the scramble home on Alfalfa, but that was all good fun if you ask me, as I survived pretty well.
This year the ride was an earlier Early Season Century--3 weeks earlier. Luckily we got some decent weather. Local pros Carl Decker and Adam Craig, yet to start their seasons, were the on ride as was Chris Sheppard. From the get go the pace of the ride was tremendous. It wasn't something I'd be able keep up for the long distance to come. At about a dozen miles in, when we hit a riser on Old Bedmond, I dropped off and gathered with a small group of riders at a comfortable pace. I watched a large 40+ riders group recede away. There's an abundance of talent in Bend. That group was probably faster than a Cat 3 race. Decker and Craig were just along for the ride, I saw them midpack. I don't think it's their style to beat up a bunch of locals. Reportedly it was ex-pro Steve Larsen and his brother who were forcing the issue.
I was in with a good group to get the ride, but not as good as last year. It was smaller and less focused. We doddered in parts and waited up often. My average speed was well over 1 mph slower this year. It ended up being 106.6 miles. I got some new light bike parts so it was fun to rip up the climb out of the Crooked River Canyon.

How does the 275m(900ft.) Prineville/Crooked River Canyon rate?

Crooked River Canyon 4.0km(2.5 miles) climb @ 6.8% grade

As I wrote about here this climb is very similar to:

Sparks Lake Climb 4.5km @ 6.0% grade
which I compared to
Alto Laza - 3.5km climb @ 6.8 % grade in last year's tdf. A 3rd Cat climb. The Crooked River Canyon climb is a solid 3rd Cat.
note: Sparks Lake isn't as steep but it's 3,000 feet higher. My numbers are the best I could figure out, but if someone could correct for greater accuracy, I welcome it.

Wet and Windy...wimpout

The turnout for Hutch's Wet and Windy 50 ride last Sunday was a wimpy 5 riders. The thin blanket of snow evidently was discouraging. I could boast of how core I was for showing, but I live a few miles out of town in the rain/snow shadow of the Sisters, there was not snow at my house. I did not consider that the ride would be canceled.

It was me, Cat 2, 19 year old phenom Carson Miller, Hutches stalwart Rick Johnson and a couple of guys from the Webcyclery team. For the first few miles we had to avoid snow on the road and spray from the wheels ahead. It soon dried up and only sprinkled infrequently. It was nothing like the sufferfest that the Tour of California riders endured a couple of days before.

It's awesome to be a Cat 2 at 19 years old. It takes years to build endurance for cycling. All those capillaries growing into the bike legs. I have seemed to notice that a good 50 year old rider will usually out ride a kid of Carson's age. We all sat on Carson's wheel. Even Rick who assumes the job of pulling in just about every ride and race he does got in line after awhile. This is how group rides stay together, the strong stay up front. This is fundamental but there are obviously a lot of riders who don't get it. Cyclists in this town of less than race quality seem to have a hard time organizing themselves.

I got my first real riding in the week before. It finally warmed and I got 120 miles in. I had gained 10 lbs. over the winter and I lost it all that week! With the start of some fitness I was ready to sit in with some good riders and push my aerobic limit. As we turned on to Powell Butte Hwy we did a few miles where my heart rate was pumping at 170. Just what I needed. We averaged almost 20 mph for the ride. A very decent Wet and Windy, you all blew it staying home!