Cycling

Mike continues to float through the Iditarod Trail, passing two towns and riding over 60 miles today (and the day is not done yet!). I knew that the trail alternates between wind blasted coastal lands and sea ice, but I did not realize, until watching Mike’s SPOT points today, just how far from land the trail actually is. It’s also interesting that his path mirrors the coastline, at least as shown by google maps. It almost makes me question the accuracy of the SPOT points.

Today was the most consistently fast day of the trip yet. Almost as if Mike simply stopped less, though it could simply be consistent conditions. I have one theory regarding the stopping less — camera battery rationing. Mike’s camera is relatively knew to him, and I think he had only burned through one set of batteries (4xAA) before the trip. He didn’t have a good concept of how long a set lasts, so I think there’s a good chance he’s running out, especially given his blossoming photo geekery of late. It would lead to less stopping to set up shots, for sure.

Someone in the comments asked about Mike’s base weight, without food and fuel. I don’t have that answer, but we can estimate what his bike weighs now, at the end of day 19.

5.25 oz of fuel burned per day = ~100 oz
3000 calories of freeze dried food per day = ~456 oz

In the “head food” department, he wrote:

I’ve got 5# of Mike and Ike’s, 5# of Trader Joes peanut butter cups, 36 Nestle Crunch Bars, 2lbs of Fritos concentrate, and 27 Clif Builders Bars. I’ve also got ~6 ounces of dried/roasted seaweed (that’s a LOT of seaweed!) and ~4lbs of trail mix, consisting of Trader Joes dark and milk chocolate covered raisins, plain M & M’s, and Peanut M & M’s. When you think about junk food cravings, and how they can add up over three+ weeks, my stash of ‘head food’ is pretty inadequate. I guess I have some faith that I also have a stash of mental strength that can get me through the low points better than processed white sugar.

That’s about 24 pounds, and it’s probably safe to say that the majority of it is gone. I’m sure he is rationing some of the best bits (if he isn’t sick of it all, who knows!). But let’s say only 5 pounds of head food remain.

All together, I estimate his bike is well over 50 pounds (54 or so) lighter than when he started. There’s something almost civilized about a bike that weighs less than 100 pounds, perhaps for the first time all trip. But it is hard to say if the difference is really that noticeable. 50 pounds is a huge difference, but the weight has only slowly been coming off, and fatigue is setting in at perhaps an even quicker pace. I know from my experience backpacking and bikepacking that it’s really hard to notice weight lost to food or fuel, though my experience only goes to ~8 days between resupply. With the flotation factor of riding a loaded bike through snow, perhaps the difference is indeed perceptible, both by Mike and by us through SPOT points and his upward trend in overall speed.

On the engine side of things, Mike started at 177 pounds, and if his estimate of 1+ pound loss per day is accurate, he is sitting comfortably (!) in the 150’s now. He actually estimated that he might be losing closer to 2 pounds per day towards the end of the trip. That’s ridiculously light, and inevitably a large portion of that spent weight is muscle, not fat.

He just rounded the corner in the Koyuk, and is back on land, heading west… to Nome. 170 miles to go. At present pace, we might see a finish on Sunday night, March 21st.

Trinity St. Paul’s United Church
Sunday April 11th
13:00
427 Bloor Street West

Info

Bike Valet Service and free small bike repairs
courtesy of the Bike Pirates.

It’s fascinating what you can learn from the cycling community.

Last week, I was battling a painful bout of gout in my left knee. I couldn’t bend the knee without it hurting, and I walked with a pronounced limp.

That’s all in the past now. A steroid injection into the knee and some time on the bike has done wonders. I’m walking normally again. The more time I ride, the better the knee feels.

But while I was laid up, I got lots of interesting advice. One item didn’t apply to my gout, but it’s interesting enough that I’m going to look into it anyway. It’s called the Kneesaver.

The idea behind the Kneesaver is simple. It’s an extension to the pedal axle, just 20, 25 or 30 mm long. The company says that added width to the pedal (what it calls the “Q factor”) can reduce or eliminate pain in the hip, knee, ankle or foot.

The Kneesavers web site (www.kneesaver.net) has testimonials from satisfied users, but I put more stock in the unsolicited testimonials from riders in my club whose experience I respect.

One said he bought them to help alleviate pain in his hip that came on after a crash.  Not only did the pain go away, he said, but his knees felt younger, too (he’s in his upper 50s). When he started riding his “rain bike” during colder winter weather, the hip pain came back. He moved the Kneesavers over to his rain bike, and the pain went away. “A wider stance on the pedals will more closely approximate your ‘at rest’ standing position and that’s where you will have the most comfortable knee rotation,” he said.  ”It’s an old guy thing.” He was so happy with his experience that he’s buying another set for his wife.

Lending even more credibility to the worth of Kneesavers is a comment from another club member, who happens to be a physician. He also complained of hip pain after long bike rides. “What put me onto it was I noticed that long rides on our tandem didn’t give me this problem,” he said, “so when I checked I discovered that the Q on the tandem was an estimated 30% wider–because they use a MTB crankset (MTB cranksets have a significantly wider Q). When I measured my ’standing Q’ it was 10cm wider than my road bike, so I increased it the minimum.”

One thing to watch for if using pedal extenders is the increased possibility of “pedal strike” in corners. You can’t lean the bike as far without the pedal hitting the ground. But since we’re supposed to corner with the inside pedal up, that shouldn’t be a problem.

This post is not to be considered an endorsement for Kneesavers. I haven’t tried them yet.  But I’m not getting any younger, and anything that keeps me going in comfort is worth a look.

Filed under: Accessories, Injury Tagged: Accessories, Injury, knee, pain

Mike passed a serious milestone today at around 1pm Alaska Daylight time. The town of Unalakleet marks the furthest point he has reached on any of his self-supported iditarod trips. 800 miles in and on day 18, this has been an incredible trip thus far.

You have to know that his thoughts were focused on the demoralized state he was in when he called it quits.

He wrote in 2008,

Standing on that teeny little rise, looking across the drifted slab of ice at Unk, I confess to feeling little other than relief. It was finally, blessedly over. Less than a mile to walk until I could lean the bike against a structure, any structure, then walk inside to feel genuine heat. And minutes after that I’d be eating food. Glorious, hot, real food in any quantity I desired.

Weeks ago I’d guarded against this temptation with the simple knowledge that to step inside of any building, to take any sort of outside support at all would be a failure of the objective, followed by the need to start all over a year later. Looking back at the failure of the tent poles, the contaminated stove fuel, the poor assumptions on food quantity and type, the disintegrating tires and lately the seized bottom bracket made it clear that I needed to come back regardless. Too many mistakes. Too much unfinished.

It’s now looking likely that there will be no unfinished business this year. He’s obviously corrected many, if not all, of the mistakes of the previous years. Things are going very well.

Still, the first paragraph of the quote above gives a good glimpse into what his mental state must be right now. The yearning for warm places and hot food. For shelter and safety. I can only imagine how strong that pull is.

There’s no speculation involved in the satisfaction he must feel in reaching Unalakleet ready for more. His SPOT points indicate he didn’t even slow down and give so much as a longing glance at the buildings there. He is now some 30 miles north of Unalakleet and still ticking off the miles under good conditions.

If he maintains this pace he will finish in under 22 days, well under the food/fuel margin.

–Scott Morris

Continued from Part IV

The following correspondence completed my interview of Jobst Brandt. In this final section, I asked him what his opinions were behind being famously anti-helmet. I also dug a little deep into the criticisms of his book by experts in the bicycling field and asked him what he thought about some of them.

In the end, I must say it was a pleasure chatting with him. Certainly, a few rapid fire Q&A’s will not do justice in coming to understand the kaleidoscope of his bicycling philosophy. So I’m grateful to him for being the patient customer he was for this small period of time and co-operating with me in this wonderful idea.

31. What is your stance on one of the longest running debates in cycling? Pro helmet or anti helmet and why? For sometime now, people have been saying that helmets are inadequate because they do not protect against twisting forces. These days, helmet manufacturers are actively pursuing the design of “anti-rotational helmets”. For instance, LAZER helmet has an interesting video and the host is Dr. Ken Phillips who gives an overview of the research he has been doing in helmet safety. Can this appease the complainers?

JB : That is a classic of missing the point, to just look at motorcycle helmets and see what is needed and useful, something that is not applicable to bicycling for the size weight and lack of cooling. If you look at current helmets, they are a thin mesh of Styrofoam with no structural integrity. The LAZER project is barking up more religious belief trees. The video is a great sham.

I avoid helmet discussions because they are a religious belief. There are no realistic tests and all the people I know who crashed with one received severe head injuries as bad as if they had no helmet – usually skull fractures in the face. In contrast, I and my fellow riders have crashed often and not gotten head injuries other than a scrape that drew a bit of blood.

As I pointed out, Muhammad Ali’s glove has far more cushioning than a bicycle helmet, yet it was possible with a mass far less than a human skull for him to deliver knockout punches, protection against which the bicycle helmet is touted.

32. Interesting. You always have some strong reasons behind certain viewpoints, such as the one against helmets. My readers and I were also fascinated by your rationale for choosing yellow paint on your bicycles.

JB : I suppose I’m less fashionable than most people, but I think good fashion is also the most useful design, something we don’t see much these days, primarily in the cars and houses we build. The boom-box in cars is a great example of this. Most cars have four exhaust pipes and a lot of other non functional features as it looks and sounds different. Bicycle helmets are a strong fashion statement with their blowing flame shapes like hot rod cars.

33. One of my final questions to you concerns your book The Bicycle Wheel. Can you briefly run us through why you had this work published? Was it out of a strong desire to fill, perhaps a void, in the understanding of the wheel? Or did someone solicit you to write it?

JB : No one solicited anything, with nothing being known about the subject and with the total faith in bicycle mechanics to be doing the build and repair the best way possible. As I mentioned, there was much doubt when the book came out, even from some stodgy engineering professors who felt passed over by a mere bicyclist.

34. The reviews of your book are varied. I believe there are quite a number of people who think that you’ve done a great service in writing this, others think you’re plainly against modern bicycle wheels and expected something more in a book that is titled “The Bicycle Wheel”.

JB : The reviews I read gave the impression that I explained about what people want to find… a justification of their expensive “modern” wheels. Meanwhile, the essence of how wheels work and how to build durable ones hasn’t changed. It is the website folk who are testy and nasty as thy look for justification of their expensive, unreliable and non metallic wheels, something they don’t find in my book. Their criticism is similar to the bicycle helmet advocates who attack anyone who doesn’t wear a helmet when bicycling. If you watch rec.bicycles.tech you may have seen the videos and stories of collapsing and disintegrating “modern” wheels in racing and touring. I don’t want to write a justification of these wheels and dilute the essence of what makes reliable wheels.

35. What about other, more notable critics? Did you ever have a chance to look over John S. Allen’s review of your book on Amazon? Mr. Allen is a technical bicycling consultant with an engineering degree from MIT. He’s an expert witness and has authored multiple books on bicycles, commuting and repair.

For your convenience, I’ll bring that snippet to you. Mr. Allen wrote the following on Amazon back in June, 2005 :

“There is one serious error in Brandt’s book, and I am astonished that it has not been corrected through 3 editions. A graph, on page 39 in the 3rd edition, shows the change in spoke tension with lateral loading of the rim. The left spokes are shown to go into compression. They can’t, as they simply flex once they are slack. It might also be asked whether this graph reflects the influence of spokes that are differently stressed as the load is applied at the bottom of the wheel. To do so would require a more complicated mathematical model than I think Brandt was able to command.

I also disagree with Brandt’s advice to tension spokes until the rim begins to deform. It can then deform further due to increased stresses during riding, and loosen the spokes. I have seen a new wheel which failed after a few miles for this reason. Spokes should be tight, but should leave a margin of safety. If the rim deforms before the spokes reach their optimum range of tension, then they are too thick for it, or it is too weak for them.

I would really like to see this book updated with today’s more sophisticated finite-element analysis, including analysis of stresses in the novel low spoke-count wheels. But for people who are willing to build conventional wheels — the better choice anyway for most cyclists — this book is a valuable and fairly comprehensive reference. “

Your thoughts?

JB : I recall that item from years ago. I explained that the graph mentioned actually plotted spoke tension of left and right spokes independently and then superimposed the two graphs because they use the same axes, but both do not do what is shown. In fact, part of the continuous curves show spoke compression that does not occur. The purpose was to show the response of spokes to side loads rather than to follow them to the limits evaluated.

I explain clearly in the book that when deformation occurs, the wheel is too tight but that there is no permanent damage that cannot be recovered by reducing tension. It is a method of finding the upper limit without a having a tensiometer.

I found much of his criticism in the same vein as I have heard all along. No one ever wrote about this subject (hence the name of the book) and when some technically minded folk see the book, they feel cheated for not having had the first stone to throw in this forum. They don’t say what they would have written or explain what their perception of the stress/strain graphs would have been. They just say what I wrote is mostly wrong and let it ride there. I don’t feel compelled to respond to these complaints because they are largely baseless.

As you see, Allen believes the current wheels are “today’s more sophisticated FEA” as though mathematics had changed. That’s a shot in the dark because it doesn’t explain what would be different and why. That is because there is no difference other than the software being more available than when I did the analysis. The results would not be any different.

The book has been reviewed by enough engineering experts to make me sure the analysis is correct. As I said, the critiques are sniping because the implied other solution, the “correct” one is not shown. The reader is left to wonder what the implied correct solution is.

I included reference to Prof. Karl Wiedemer’s analysis (Cologne Tech, Germany) in the bibliography. He wrote his finite element work at the same time I wrote the book, and have a pre-print of his technical publication. I also visited him in his home in Siegen and gave him a copy of my book about which we talked at length.

This graph on page 39 of the book The Bicycle Wheel was critiqued by John S. Allen, a consultant and expert witness in bicycle accident lawsuits. These curves show change in spoke tension and the force required to displace the rim and cause these tension changes. Courtesy : Jobst Brandt.

An excerpt from Page 37 of his book on bicycle wheel stiffness should leave some of you with something basic to think about.

“Stiffness, in its various forms, is a subject often discussed by bicyclists with a regard to components as well as frames. Stiff wheels are often mentioned with approval. However, it should be noted that a bicycle wheel is so rigid that its elasticity is not discernible because the tires, handlebar, stem, frame and saddle have a much greater combined elasticity. Therefore, the differences between well constructed wheels are imperceptible to a rider. The “liveliness” attributed to “stiff” wheels is an acoustic phenomenon caused largely by lightweight tires at high pressure and tight spokes with a high resonant frequency. This mechanical resonance can be heard, and possibly felt in the handlebars, but it is not related to the wheel stiffness.

Stiffness is a measure of how hard it is to deflect the wheel, or more precisely, the ratio of load to displacement. Stiffness is not strength. For example, Plaster of Paris is stiff, but not very strong. Since wheel stiffness is so often discussed, the various aspects of stiffness are treated here in more detail than they deserve. Wheel strength, and not stiffness, is the important consideration. If the wheel is strong enough for its intended use, then it is more than adequately stiff.

The terms “stiffness” and “rigidity” are often used when people talk about bicycles. Unless these terms are defined, they are just as vague as the even more popular catchall term “responsiveness”. These technical-sounding words can be misleading. Stiffness alone is not the ultimate measure of a good wheel, but rather the balance of stiffness and strength that enables it to carry loads and withstand shocks. “

CONNECTED READINGS :

Jobst Brandt : Part I
Jobst Brandt : Part II
Jobst Brandt : Part III
Jobst Brandt : Part IV
Jobst Brandt : Part V

With Daylight Savings Time come and gone, Mike seems to be traveling later into the night. He was still pedaling strong at 11 p.m. Tuesday. I wonder if he noticed — or cared — about the time change. Obviously, it doesn’t really matter to him. He probably rises with the sun and pedals until he’s ready to crash, the same that anyone would do when their sole occupation is forward motion.

This close to the spring equinox, he’s enjoying roughly 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. Temperatures were near zero and east winds would be generally favorable, and it seems Mike moved at a steady fast clip throughout today despite the upward sloping terrain out of Kaltag. The trail between Kaltag and Unalakleet is known as “the portage” because it traverses between two bodies of water — the Yukon in the east and the Bering Sea to the west. Once he reaches Unalakleet, he Mike will be on the Bering Sea (sometimes literally) all the way to Nome. Out there, the wind blows hard and always, but it will be relatively new terrain to him, a region he hasn’t traveled through since the last time he rode to Nome. (2001?) He had only about 20 more miles to ride to the coast as of 11 p.m.

— J.H.

From the Bloor Cycle Catalogue 1984. Bloor Street is for Bicycles!

this thursday, march 18th, at 6pm there is an event to raise money and support for rex burkholder for president of metro in portland, oregon. it is at the grochau cellars at 2621 nw 30th ave. across from portland brewing. tickets are and available here.

rally the troops to come out, have a little wine and spirits, throw your ticket into the raffle for a bike, two season passes for cross crusade and rub elbows with some big names in the portland bike scene who are all lining up to help rex get elected. rex started the bicycle transportation alliance back in the day to get the bicycle lobby into the mix of state and city politics.

now that portland is such a big bike city, we need someone to lead the charge to keep portland growing in the right direction for cyclists and sustainable development. if anyone has ridden out towards north plains or forest grove in the last 3 years, you have noticed the roads have gotten wider and the traffic faster. be a part of what will continue to make portland one of the greatest cities for cycling and let’s get rex elected.

A Bike Noob reader who prefers to remain anonymous emailed me with a gripe the other day:

“As a daily bicycle commuter, I don’t ride on weekends. On Saturday and Sunday morning I decided to do some trail maintenance. I spent about an hour cleaning two of the bike lanes I ride in north Austin. Attached are the images of what I picked up. About 10 pounds of nails, screws, bolts, wood, chain, car parts and many pieces of lane reflectors. Any one of these items could cause a crash.”

My correspondent encourages us all to spend some time cleaning the bike lanes or roads that we ride. In addition to the trash pickup, he also cuts tree limbs that hang into the bike lane and sweeps up loose gravel.  Best time to do this kind of work: early on Sunday morning, he says, because traffic is light.

Wow. I must say, bike lane cleanup is not something I’ve ever done. Occasionally, I’ll stop to pick up a piece of metal and toss it off the road, but nothing organized like our friend. And yet, I think we can all say that this kind of cleanup is something that needs to be done. If we wait for the city street sweepers to do it, we’ll be waiting for months.

Do you, or your bike club, or just a group of like-minded bikers do any organized cleanup of bike lanes in your area? Share your stories.

Filed under: Community, Safety Tagged: road cleanup

CyclingMagazine.ca » Keir Plaice