Why is Cycling Not that Popular

I was templating about the popularity of the sport I love so much. One of the frustrating things about the sport is lack of coverage. True, there is the weekly coverage of Cyclism Sundays, which is good, but in comparison to other sports, it’s considered a novelty, something less popular than bass fishing (borrowed that line from RedRider … hehehe).

Yes, there is the typical coverage on ESPN of the 4 major sports, then stock car racing (NASCAR), then Poker … Poker???? Is that really more exciting than seeing world class athletes racing through the streets of Europe? I mean, look at the physique of some of these poker players. For once, I can say I’m more physically fit that some of these contestants.

Then, there’s what I consider the second tier sports, and those are gymnastics, figure skating, golf, and tennis. Those are represented pretty regularly. I would then stick the multi-stage cycling road race in that category.

Now take a look at track cycling … now there is a sport that should be popular, shouldn’t it? Look at the logistics of covering this event. You have a stadium already built, and all you have to do is pay a little fee (much less than say basketball or football). Plus, you don’t have a bad seat in the house. With road racing, you only get to see the racers once … you get there, wait for about 1-2 hours, and they pass by you in 5 seconds, then go home. With track racing, you could be there the whole day, and see all of them. Plus, you can see more tactics. So why is this not covered at all on tv? We have to wait once every 4 years for it to come.

Anyhow, what brought this on was the fact that we have an American World Champion in Individual Pursuit … Taylor Phinney. Did anyone know that the World Championships were taking place, and that an American got top honors in one of the races?

My main beef is that track cycling can be so exciting from a spectator perspective. A lot of people are shocked when they watch the tour pass by their city, and suddenly they pass by, and say “is that it?”. Track racing should be more popular, but the main question is, why isn’t it? You can even see a crash, which will wake the fans up (not that it’s a good thing)

Even with Lance coming back, cycling hasn’t really taken off in popularity. I still see it less popular than poker or tennis. If I asked someone on the streets, who would they rather see … Lance or Phelps? Most likely, the answer would be Phelps.

Time to HTFU

Ever since I returned from the Tour of Ca, I just haven’t been able to put any miles in. They have been short 30-40 milers, and with Davis coming up in May, and with the gorgeous weather this weekend, I needed to HTFU, and get in a bunch of miles in.

So Saturday, we started from SF, at Sports Basement, by Crissy Fields, onto Marshall Wall, which is in the North Bay, past Nicasio, over to Tomales Bay, then back. With very little base miles, I figure I would be in for a load of pain … doing 100 miles after doing only 30 miles? WTF … am I crazy … yes.

I knew this would be an endurance exercise, so when Ramon, Ben, and Donnie pushed the pace a little bit, I just let them go. Besides, they’d be waiting for us anyways. That plan worked, for awhile at least. I didn’t push it going up Camino Alto, and I didn’t push it too much going up and over Sir Francis Drake.

As usual, we made our typical stop at Nicasio, before heading over to the Cheese Factory. I was the last one to make it to Nicasio, so was this an omen?

Refueled, then onto Cheese Factory, then onto Marshall Wall. I started to feel a little weak climbing Marshall Wall, and that’s expected … it is after all, a hill, and is after all, a wall!

After finally making it up and over the wall, we head south towards Pt. Reyes. It couldn’t come soon enough … started to bonk a few miles before reaching Pt. Reyes. This is where my lack of endurance lately catches up with me. It hit me hard, to the point where just pedaling was difficult. When we finally got to Pt. Reyes, I quickly got my Turkey sandwich, got a Mocha Frappacino … mmmmm, and just tried to gather as much energy as I could. I also downed whatever e-pills and advil I had.

This helped, but it was still a struggle for me making it back. Every little hill was difficult. The hill coming out of Sausalito over to the GG bridge was just sinister and evil. I did make it back, but I had no energy at all.

So with all this, I was glad to see the Slowpoke ride is on Sunday. I figured this would be a great recovery ride, right? Well, true, it is a slowpoke ride … but that doesn’t mean it’s all flat … and it wasn’t. I still didn’t have any energy, and struggling up the other side of Pig Farm Hill, became a chore.

There was a good side to this … since there were some who were not as strong, it did give me some time to rest and recuperate. So yes, there were hills, but at least they weren’t the hardcore pace that Ramon would set …

Now all I gotta do is rest my weary limbs .. work day tomorrow, so it will at least give me some time to rest. I don’t think I’ll ride in tomorrow, but may be at it again on Tuesday. My forced PTO begins Wednesday, and not sure yet if I’ll be driving down to LA this coming weekend, or the weekend after that.

More pics:
Saturday’s Marshall Wall
Sunday’s Slowpoke Ride #3

I’m so out of shape …

… ever since the Tour of California, I haven’t really been putting on the miles. Most mileage I’ve had since then is probably 30-40 miles, and none of it is really challenging. I guess those two weeks off turned me into a slug. I’ve started to feel myself gaining weight, but I am not about to weigh myself … I might commit hari kari.

So I decided to take advantage of some of the daylight while we have it, took off from the house at 5 pm (I should be able to complete Montebello and back before dark). Just in case I am too slow, I decided to carry my small blinkers (not my big heavy Niterider HID). It’s lucky that I did bring it, because as I got back, I did need those blinkers.

I knew I was going to be slow, but I made a mistake … went out too aggressive at the bottom of the hill. I guess all this time off really slowed me down. By the time I got to the top, almost 1 hour had passed by. Ugh … I was averaging about 52-55 minutes, but now it’s 60 minutes.

I made another mistake … the day before, I worked out in the gym for the first time in a while … and yes, worked out too hard. The very next morning, my mid-section on my back was a little sore. That is not a good thing to have when on a bike. So that meant skipping my morning commute. I was tired of getting everything prepared the first thing at 4:45 am anyways, so it was okay for me to skip riding in.

This is the problem I’ve always had … with the thought in my mind that I am out of shape, I try to make it up too quickly … Doh! Feel like slapping myself silly … I should know better than that. What can I say .. I’m one of those idiotic cyclists mentioned in ME’s blog

Now I did stop to take a few pictures while on my way up to the top, but I cannot, with conscience, attribute the time to the few times I stopped to take a few pictures. Besides, most of the pictures were while I was coming down the hill.

Taking pictures with a compact camera near dusk is tricky. Your eye sees a beautiful shot, but then when you take it, it has a much different appearance. I had to crop the hell out of the above shot, and needed to “photoshop” the hell out of this. I used Gimp (open source, non-paying application, similar to photoshop), and had to darken this quite a bit, and turn the contrast way up. Still, the photo doesn’t do justice to the beauty out there just before sunset.

I’ve always liked taking pictures with the sun in the background, with a dark foreground accentuating the fact that the sun is going down. This is still not quite what I had in mind, but hey, ya gotta start somewhere.

More pics here.

Twitter 101

Anyone else notices that “Social Networking” is THE buzz word these days … it used to be that IM was the way to go (i.e. Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, Communicator, etc …). But lately, I’ve noticed there is an even greater abundance of tools, like this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Forums! No wonder I’m getting fat lately, and probably no social life … if you discount the virtual social life here on the Internet.

I started looking at Twitter, and yes, you can send your tweets through the website http://twitter.com …. but that’s just the start.

Let me list the ways you can tweet:

Web … http://twitter.com
Tweetdeck – application that lets you group by replies, searches, direct messages. This even gives you notification when a new tweet arrives
Tweettree – will sort tweets by conversations, which is pretty cool.
Twitterberry – twitter client on blackberry
Twitterfeed – takes blog entries and feeds them into twitter
Twitterfon – twitter client on iphone and ipod touch
Twitterfox – firefox extension with twitter notifications
Tweetie – another client on iphone … this one claims to be “full fledged” client
Twitterrific – client specifically designed for the Mac
Outtwit – twitter on Outlook client
Mobile web – using phone web browser client

I never realized there was so many ways to access twitter. And then, there is tweetlist and tweetmeme, which lists the top daily tweet links … tweetlater, allows you to schedule when you want to tweet, instead of right away … twitterfall gives you tweets of the most popular topics … dang!!!! I think I need a class on using Twitter.

I use TweetDeck primarily … I like the notification, and that you can group your contacts, and the tweets can be organized by groups … but one big drawback with TweetDeck is the lack of conversations. Everyone keeps telling me that you can use the search function in TweetDeck, but I don’t want to see every single friggin’ thread for a particular user … I just want to see the conversation thread. Now, Tweettree is a nice way of doing this, but I want the flexibility that TweetDeck gives me. Tweettree and TweetDeck should merge its features together.

Confused yet?

Fargo Hill – One for the Gladiators

Today, the LA Wheelmen had their annual Fargo Hill climb challenge. For those that don’t know, Fargo Hill is the steepest climb in LA. It is ridiculously steep … 33%. That’s right, 33%.

This goes on all day, but we, or the ringleader, decided to get there early, because a bunch of other bike clubs will make this their destination, and could get pretty crazy and busy there. It was good, as we got to see a Penny Farthing, a really interesting tricked out tandem (with ultra low gears), and lots of enthusiasm from knowledgeable cyclists, who know how difficult this is.

Pictures don’t really tell you how steep this climb is … but maybe this one will help?

And yes, we did have a Penny Farthing attempt to climb this hill, but only made it 1/3 of the way … but he later hopped on his mountain bike, and climbed this straight up .. no tacking.

More pics at http://spingineer.smugmug.com/gallery/7608806_kyvtb/1/491980524_jq5YB. This was a lot of fun, even though I didn’t get a really big workout.

Pasadena does have hills …

… yes, we do. You all thought LA was flat and has no hills … well, as a former Pasadena resident, let me show you.

If you haven’t ridden around the Rose Bowl area, YOU SHOULD!!!! True, it’s not Palomar, and it’s not like Mt. Diablo, but it has its own characteristics. You could easily start off anywhere in the Rose Bowl, and just doing laps, you get a nice 3.1 mile loop out of it … and it’s not all entirely flat either.

On the first bend, you can go up a hill to what I call the “mezzanine” of the Arroyo Seco. So if you use this option, you can do laps by including this ramp up the hill, then come down and continue your interval. And what does this ramp look like? Well, here it is once you get to the top:

From here, you have many options. My favorite, and some other local SoCal’ers may agree with me, is St. Katherine, or what we used to call “the girl’s school” … it’s actually Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy, but that’s not as catchy.

Before getting to St. Katherine, you have to climb Inverness, which is short, but it has some steep sections in it.

After a short left turn, it’s more climbing. What’s nice about this climb is that it is not crowded, and not much traffic that comes up here. Also, not many riders think of this place as a destination for their workout … and even if you do find some, they are knowledgeable enough, and physically fit enough to know how to act on the road.

The destination is not far away, as you can see the white buildings on the other side of the ridge … you are almost there.

One final push, then what do you know … the road levels off a little bit, and here you are at Flintridge Sacred Hearts Academy.

Oh, but wait … off to the left … there’s yet another hill. Let’s see where that takes us. It’s Wendover, and it goes up maybe another 300 feet, then descends down. Okay, so it’s not too bad … hang a left on St. Augustine, and you get a hair-raising steep downhill descent. My thought when I was descending this was “I’m glad I am descending, not climbing this”. One comment I heard about climbing this was “painful”. Well, the picture doesn’t tell a thousand words … you’d have to do it yourself.

After a screaming descent, hang a left, then you reach the summit to where the Pasadena Arts College is. Normally, the hills are brown, but after all the rains, they are green. I just had to take this.

After doing this, you can head back into the Rose Bowl. So what’s my point? My point is, there are hills in Pasadena … and I haven’t even told you about Patrician Way, La Loma, and San Rafael. So if you want some climbing, and are on a short time crunch, try St. Katherine. I’ve already made a couple of converts … are you next???

SJC is great … even with all the delays

SJC is one of the few airports that provide free wi-fi access for those nerds who bring laptops with them on their flight. Most airports (like Burbank, LAX) offer wi-fi, but charge $7/hour. No friggin’ way!!!!

For those airports that do offer free wi-fi, it’s cool … but most of them don’t have enough power outlets for you to plug in to, and most of the time, you have to sit in a chair, put your laptop on your lap, and just work with what little space you have … but in SJC, you have laptop workspaces … they actually built benches for you to sit at, and work on your laptop on a table! Gee, what a concept. And each workspace has two power outlets, and even a pair of USB power outlets! But then again, SJC is in geek central, Silicon Valley … I’m convinced now … this is the center of the Universe!

Just found out my flight is delayed … oooh, surprise! I’m sitting here about 20 feet from the customer service guy at Southwest, and the poor guy has to explain to everyone else that the flight is delayed. What’s worse is when one of his other colleague may be giving wrong info, and he gets the stink-eye from other customers. Being in Customer Service, I really know what he’s going through, and I can’t put blame on him. I know what it’s like being the guy everyone wants to complain to. I just had to tell him I know how it feels … it kinda brought a smile to his face.

It doesn’t help to get upset anyhow … just accept it. He did mention in the PA system that another Burbank flight is leaving out of gate 2 (I’m waiting at gate 9), which leaves in 20 minutes, and we could be on stand-by. I had no inkling to go over there, and all of a sudden, I see a swarm of people racing across to gate 2.

Even if I wanted to go to Gate 2, everyone else had a head start, so I decided to stay put. Besides, I’m in no hurry. I know I’ll get to Burbank some time tonight!

Another Day at the Races

Ok, I still have not chilled out from the Tour … and Sunday, there was the Tri-Flow Grand Prix held in Menlo Park. Since I didn’t get a chance to take many pictures, I was going to take a few today.

Today, Monday, is my birthday … woohoo. But on Sunday, I kinda neglected to tell anyone it was my birthday … and Michael (mellum76) found out, and wanted to do a combined Tri-Flow Grand Prix viewing and birthday celebration in my honor … wow, I was flattered.

There were a few NorCal BF’ers in the race … Tim (Bottlerocket), Henry (blastradius), and Pete (taxi777) …. however, Pete had a little logistics issue which he will tell you in his blog … I won’t go into that. Only non-racing BF’ers to show up there was me, and Michael.

It’s always cool to see absorb the racing environment … there is this electricity in the air when you are in the presense of extremely fit athletes (of course, I’m not talking about myself, but of everyone else).

This event featured some of Northern California’s top cycling racing talents … I didn’t know that before I went, but now I do. I met cyclicious, who has a famous blog (http://www.cyclelicio.us), who blogs anything and everything cycling. He’s also a very avid twitterer … Henry and I felt like we were in a presense of greatness.

I got there early enough to see Tim race in the Cat 5 Men’s race … that was my first time seeing a cat 5 race in person, and it didn’t look as intimidating as I thought … but then again, I wasn’t the one in the race.

I stuck around long enough to catch the women’s 1/2/3 race. This featured the best of Northern California racing. I was just taking in the moment … I was wondering why there were so many photographers taking pictures of the pack for the start …

It was a fun day, but yet another day where I did not get into any real riding done. And next week, I’m visiting dad, and the following week, I’m on call … hmmm … I really gotta get off my butt and get some hard riding in. Maybe with daylight savings time, I might get some quality miles in after work … but then again, I didn’t do anything today. I suck!

Click here for more pics

Course Marshalling still in the blood

I’ve still got the course marshalling in my blood. Pete asked me earlier if I would be interested in course marshalling for a 2.1 mile 4-man relay run at Golden Gate Park today, and I decided, why not. This involved leading and trailing the runners, almost like what the CHP’s do to lead out the pelaton, and the End of Convoy truck signifying the end of the pack.

Here’s the funny part … once I said yes, the course organizer decided they didn’t need Pete … that’s odd, especially since they had reservations about me with my bike, a folder, and not a mountain bike, which is what they highly recommend. Weird.

I know why they wanted a mountain bike … there was one part, where there was a steep pitch, and on wet grass. It was not the steepness that was the problem, but the combination of grass, steep pitch, slight mudiness, and I didn’t have knobbies on my tires. I just had slicks, and I just could not get up it. So I just had to get off, and climb the last 10 feet on my feet.

This was a lot of fun, as you had all sorts of levels. Some of these runners were amazing … they were running like gazelles, and I had to work just to get ahead of them. However, my job was to be the end of the convoy, so that the course organizers knew who the last runner was. This got kind of hairy, as the slowest runner was getting lapped. So once the slowest runner relayed it, the next runner was really fast … so fast that he passed a few other runners ahead, who were on the 2nd leg, and it was hard to determine who was the last position in the race. Eventually, I saw one runner, who was walking it, and asked if she was the 2nd or 3rd leg … she was the 2nd, so that was the new last position in the race. Everyone knew that when I passed, I was the last position, or the end of convoy.

Now, when this last runner came to the finish to relay to the next person, there was no next person to relay off to. Ooops … I think they went for a bathroom break. So this person worked so hard to get back, so as to not be so far behind, and has no one to relay off to. About 3 minutes later, the next person shows up … so not only is this team in last place, there was even more delay, due to a bathroom break.

The next runner was pretty fast, so I had to work to keep up, but I eventually did, as soon as she lost steam.

Course marshalling a run while on a bike may seem like not much work, but don’t fool yourself … it is a lot of work. Even though it was only 2.1 mile lap, and 4 laps, it felt like more work than just an 8.4 mile course … my body felt like I did a 40 mile ride. Part of this was because I was on my folder, and no clipless pedals, and the other part was that I had slick tread on my tires. The stats may not show much, but I did work my butt off today. This is the closest I have come to riding a mountain bike in the last 4 years … consensus … I’m not missing much.

Wacky PTO’s

Normally, requesting for PTO’s aren’t a big deal, right? All you do is go onto your company’s Intranet site, and request certain number of hours for PTO, and your balance would be deducted, right?

Well, with the state of the economy, the way it is, the company I work for is trying to cut cost in whichever way possible. One way is to not have people come into the office, so they decided the company will shut down the office for a week near Memorial Day, and a week near 4th of July. One problem though … we support customers, 24×7. Customer Service simply can’t shut down, because other companies are not.

So they have decided that everyone is forced … that’s right … forced to take 17 PTO days between March 1st and December 31st … of which 10 of them needs to be between March 1st and September 30th. So for those 10 days, no formal PTO form is filled out. What??? Well, HR will automatically take 10 days off of everyone, at end of September, regardless of if you took it off or not. So how will the individual keep track? I guess it’s up to the department to figure out. Good grief!

So what if you don’t have 10 or 17 days of PTO available … too bad. You will have negative PTO days. I guess this is one way they are saving money … by not paying people for PTO time. Surely they could have thought of some better way, but I guess not.

My boss has always been on my ass about taking PTO time, as I will lose it if I don’t take it. Well, I guess this is one way that he won’t have to worry about it. I’ve got a lot piled up, so it’s not such a big deal for me. Maybe I’ll sell some of my time, and make a little more money on the side?