We have moved!

The UCVC blog has moved here. Please keep visiting us! Don't forget to update your RSS feed.

Thanks Saris!

After coming off of a strong 2007 season, the UCVC had its eyes set on another successful season for 2008.  The club attracted a record number of 90 members this year, ranging from elite racers to newbie’s having recently acquired road bikes.  The enthusiasm and skills of our racing members promised a successful season ahead for the collegiate racing team.

The biggest obstacle that we face at the University of Chicago is the endless winter that begins as early as October and can last well into April. A good 6 months of icy bike paths and frigid temps is enough to wipe out early season enthusiasm that forms under the sunny skies and beautiful weather of September.  In the past, group rides fizzled out as temperatures became unbearable and our riders were left to figure out how to stay in shape and get ready for the first collegiate races on their own. 

Luckily, this year we had a generous Saris Sponsorship to help us form team indoor training sessions.  With a fleet of Fluid2 Trainers and Aluminum Rollers, UCVC indoor training sessions began!  For some it was their first indoor riding experience on trainers, and for many it was their first attempt at rollers (which aren’t as hard as they look).  Often riding inside can be a gloomy winter experience, but being able to ride together with teammates made for fun times.

Winter training helped the team come together and kept the enthusiasm for racing high throughout the winter.  We had a record 9 riders come out to the first race in March, with 5 racers competing in their first ever road race!  We even came home from the weekend with two 1^st place finishes and a 3^rd and a 4^th.  (Thanks to the Saris racks, we were able to easily transport the bikes to all our races!)  The success continued throughout the season for our racers, with 23 top-five finishes overall.  The strong results were enough for our team to win the D2 MWCCC Championship!  In addition, we had one rider win the women’s D2 MWCCC Championship and sent 3 riders to nationals. 

All of our Collegiate National Participants spent the season training on Cyclops Powertaps.  For Aspen Gorry and Carly Schuster, it was their first time competing at Nationals.  Devon Haskell returned after finishing 4^th overall at last year’s nationals.  This year she came in 4^th in the criterium and won the road race.  Her placings earned her the Omnium National Championship! 

Overall, UCVC has had their best year to date.  Thanks again for the Saris sponsorship.  The quality trainers, high-tech power taps, and easy to use racks certainly helped us in our successful season.

UCVC gives their pre-race prediction as they warm up on Cyclops Fluid Trainers

Saris trainers are great for warming up on cold days...

... and for downtown crits when there are no good roads to warm up on...

Thanks Saris!!

Lights, Lamps, and Shorter Days

Heya folks! As you all know, the days are getting rather short, and I think this week may be the last that super early into work will allow for ride time afterwads... or at least daylight ride time. I am thinking that as long as the roads are dry and temperatures not too unreasonable, a nighttime ride wouldn't be the worst thing. Do any of you have suggestions on lamps, headlight, and lights? I don't want to break the bank. I do want to be safe!

Also, a friend recently wrote of another woman in her cyclocross race, 'She was living in the cottage of wattage.' I really liked that term.

Guest Speakers

Last night I attended a meeting of CU's cycling team as I recently discovered I am allowed to race in the conference season in the Rocky Mountain region. The team's size is huge, which is really cool to see, and they have regular Monday night meetings. They often line up 'guest speakers' for these meetings, people who agree to come in and talk to the team about different cycling-related subjects from bike fits and physical therapy to nutrition to competing internationally. Boulder is an easy area to find such people, certainly, but this idea struck me as something cool for the good ol' UCVC to consider. I bet there are UCVC'ers who know people who would want to do this, and it never hurts to ask someone. I know J. is running a series of workshops for beginners and has done a ton for cycling in Hyde Park, and this could be another way to increase knowledge and enthusiasm about cycling.

The Juice

Meltdown

I got back to my mountain biking ways a couple of weekends ago at the Palos Meltdown out in the forest preserves west of town on top of the Manhattan Project detritus. Hosted by CAMBR, the great guys who keep Palos well-kept, and a shop called Richard's Bicycles out in Palos Heights. I haven't raced mtb in 4 years, so I went out to try and get back into the groove of mtb racing, which pretty much means dealing with pain for the duration of the race. At the sport class call-up I Lined up in front sporting my trusty Schlitz jersey, sprinted like hell to get into the single track in 5th position, and then settled in to dealing with the pain for the next 1.25 hours. Passed a couple of guys and was rolling with XXX'er Greg Heck (who's hosting the Jackson Park X race this Sunday) and we worked our way through the 20-29 field that had started 2 minutes ahead. He was on a rigid 29'er which turned out to be a great choice for this course. On the big grass sections he steadily pulled away and I dug deep to catch him again on the technical backside. Unfortunately, as soon as I made contact cramps set in, and it was all damage control until the finish. I held off a hard-charging Guinness rider and ended up with 2nd place in the 30-39 age goup - not bad for the first race back. I rolled around easy to get the cramps out, congratulated the other guys from my mtb posse and promptly went to get a hamburger and coke with my wife. I was gone eating when they did the awards ceremony, but when I got back they took my picture alone on the podium (above). Kinda like the Flemish saying, "no one else in the picture"... but not really. Nice crowd, great promoters, good times. 

UCVC: First Forays into the Chicago Cyclocross Cup

In honor of this weekend's opening of the Chicago Cyclocross Cup, I am posting photos featuring Thomas Berube, Andrew Nicholson, Pat Kelly, and Jon Tenney from the first UCVC team forays into cyclocross . If you look closely you will find proof that the Ironman will make me skinny, that the XXX-Athletico jersey have improved greatly over the years, cross can be raced with a 3,000-pound mountain bike, and Thomas was, in fact, a racer.

All of the pictures were taken during the 2003-04 season, which I believe was the first season of the Chicago Cup. The first four were taken at the Wheeling race with the remainder taken at Jackson Park. Tenney and Berube had matching bicycles courtesy of Get A Grip Cycles and Cannondale.

Make Sure to Train This Winter

Don't end up like these guys (or me). They would not be good at pedaling a bike. Maybe they could eat the tires.

Result of the sox poll

Assuming that the price of the socks is between $10 and $15, how many pairs of socks would you buy? Total votes: 30

• One pair of each kind: 14 (47%)
  

• Two pairs of each kind: 2 (7%)
  

• Three pairs in total: 5 (17%)
  

• Four pairs in total: 3 (10%)
  

• Five pairs in total: 0 (0%)
  

• More than five pairs: 0 (0%)
  

• Just one pair: 4 (13%)
  

• No socks at all: 2 (7%)
  

Which kind of sock would you prefer? Total votes: 31

• Tall socks (4''): 10 (32%)
  

• Crew socks (2''): 18 (58%)
  

• I would buy both: 3 (10%)

The poll is now closed.

Sox poll

IMPORTANT!! I (Francisco) changed the poll, because the first time I forgot to include some relevant options. You should vote again, if you did it before Friday 8/29 7:00 AM. The poll has been reset. Sorry about the changes.

The club is making custom socks and we'd like to know your opinion before we order. The socks are made by DeFeet and customized with the school's and/or club's colors and logos. We will have two designs available, both cool-looking, but different. They're not male- or female-specific. The socks can be used for running or other sports too.

Please don't vote more than once. If you have any questions, please ask Devon or Carly. Thanks.

The poll is now closed.

Holding Down the Fort

Whilst the youngster racers have flown the UCVC coop for the summer, it should be known that long (and not so long) time members Eric Norstrom, Tim Belton, Thomas Bérubé, Rob Fairbanks, Suchandra Thapa, and Jeff Norris have all been doing their share of riding and racing in the maroon this season. Eric has been posting solid M4 and Masters crits & road races. Tim can be seen on the path at all hours, mondo 53x11. Thomas has been doing his usual brevet madness. Rob posed as and injured Francisco at the Chicago Crit! Suchandra has jumped headlong into M5 racing solo style. And Jeff has posted respectable results in this, his first real season of racing.

I'm sure that there are others out there, too.

Cross Is Here!

The collegiate cross schedule has been posted. Here are the races:

Nov 1/2: Mizzou

Nov 8/9: Michigan Tech

Nov 15/16: Purdue

Nov 22/23: Lindsey Wilson

Dec 14: Nationals in Kansas City

For more collegiate racing info, sign up for the Midwest Collegiate Cycling Conference (MWCCC) group at http://groups.google.com/group/mwccc

Yay for Cross!!!

CX and other blogging continued elsewhere

I am continuing the series of Cyclocross 101 posts on my own cycling blog, Morning Roll, which I just started. In fact, from now on I'll do all my cycloblogging there, except for posts where I specifically write about UCVC, which will remain here. I have also copied all my previous Vélo Café posts to the new blog.

I encourage everyone to keep visiting, posting stuff, and writing comments on UC Vélo Café, and also to visit Morning Roll and to leave comments there too.

Question About Switchbacks

The point of this is not to rub in that I live in the best place for riding. It's a real question, and it could affect parts of my road racing. When a road is really steep, say 14-20%, for a while, is it better to ride a switchback on the inside, which is shorter in distance but steeper in grade, or outside? Or does it even matter?

On a slight aside, have you guys ever heard of the term 'paper boy weave'? I hadn't until this spring, and I totally had to bust it out yesterday, even with a 27 on my back.

Crosstube

Once you're done watching all the great how-to videos Francisco has been posting, you may want to head over to Crosstube to see the techniques in action. I was making a list of the watchable (and it takes more than bad 80's hair band music to make them unwatchable) 'cross videos I could find on Youtube when I stumbled on Crosstube -- it is essentially just that kind of list nicely divided into categories etc.

Al Stern Road Race 2004

A picture of three (Kent, Eric, and Jon) of the six cat fours who raced that day. We thought that we were awesome, but we actually sucked.
Mark Edele who now teaches at the University of Perth, Australia. Mark's bike was a piece of garbage, and we kept hoping that he would ride it into the lake and be forced to buy a new one. Debbie MacDougall, the first female member of the UCVC to race her bike. She would later marry Mark and move to Australia with him.

Andrew, now teaching in one of the SUNY schools, Ben, who does mathematics research for some slimey, money-grubbing hedge fund, and big-headed Sam Yount, who probably still lives off his parents. In 2004, Sam was trying to be a professional triathlete so he went running after his category 3 race.
Although we look like tools in these photos, Andrew and I actually came in second in the Ironman Triathlon Collegiate National Championships later that year.

Do bike lanes increase pollution?

The argument is that bike lanes reduce the space available to cars, contribute to traffic congestion, and therefore cause more idling and more pollution. Obviously, the answer to this question depends on:
a) Whether bike lanes decrease the number of cars in the street
b) Whether they increase the CO2 emissions of the remaining cars (via reduced speed)

I don't take a stand on the issue, but I found it stimulating to read and think about it, in today's Wall Street Journal (I'm not sure whether the link will remain ungated, so I'm pasting the whole article below).

San Francisco Ponders:
Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution?

City Backpedals on a Cycling Plan
After Mr. Anderson Goes to Court

By PHRED DVORAK
August 20, 2008; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO -- New York is wooing cyclists with chartreuse bike lanes. Chicago is spending nearly $1 million for double-decker bicycle parking.

San Francisco can't even install new bike racks.

Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That's put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report.

Cyclists say the irony is killing them -- literally. At least four bikers have died and hundreds more have been injured in San Francisco since mid-2006, when Mr. Anderson helped convince a judge to halt implementation of a massive pro-bike plan.(It's unclear whether the plan's execution could have prevented the accidents.) In the past year, bike advocates have demonstrated outside City Hall, pushed the city to challenge the plan's freeze in court and proposed putting the whole mess to local voters. Nothing worked.

"We're the ones keeping emissions from the air!" shouted Leah Shahum, executive director of the 10,000-strong San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, at a July 21 protest.

Mr. Anderson disagrees. Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It's an "attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy," he wrote in his blog this month.

Mr. Anderson's fight underscores the tensions that can circulate as urban cycling, bolstered by environmental awareness and high gasoline prices, takes off across the U.S. New York City, where the number of commuter cyclists is estimated to have jumped 77% between 2000 and 2007, is adding new bike lanes despite some motorist backlash. Chicago recently elected to kick cars off stretches of big roads on two Sundays this year.

Famously progressive, San Francisco is known for being one of the most pro-bike cities in the U.S., offering more than 200 miles of lanes and requiring that big garages offer bike parking. It is also known for characters like Mr. Anderson.

A tall, serious man with a grizzled gray beard, Mr. Anderson spent 13 months in a California federal prison for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War. He later penned pieces for the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a muckraking Northern California weekly owned by his brother that's known for its savage prose and pranks.

Running for Office

In 1995, Mr. Anderson moved to San Francisco. Working odd jobs, he twice ran for a seat on the city's Board of Supervisors, pledging to tackle homelessness and the city's "tacit PC ideology." He got 332 of 34,955 votes in 2004, his second and best try.

That year Mr. Anderson, who mostly lives off a small government stipend he receives for caring for his 92-year-old mother, also started a blog, digging into local politics with gusto. One of his first targets: the city's most ambitious bike plan to date.

Unveiled in 2004, the 527-page document was filled with maps, traffic analyses and a list of roughly 240 locations where the city hoped to make cycling easier. The plan called for more bike lanes, better bike parking and a boost in cycling to 10% of the city's total trips by 2010.

The plan irked Mr. Anderson. Having not owned a car in 20 years, he says he has had several near misses with bikers roaring through crosswalks and red lights, and sees bicycles as dangerous and impractical for car-centric American cities. Mr. Anderson was also bugged by what he describes as the holier-than-thou attitude typified by Critical Mass, a monthly gathering of bikers who coast through the city, snarling traffic for hours. "The behavior of the bike people on city streets is always annoying," he says. "This 'Get out of my way, I'm not burning fossil fuels.' "

Going to Court

In February 2005, Mr. Anderson showed up at a planning commission meeting. If San Francisco was going to take away parking spaces and car lanes, he argued, it had better do an environmental-impact review first. When the Board of Supervisors voted to skip the review, Mr. Anderson sued in state court, enlisting his friend Mary Miles, a former postal worker, cartoonist and Anderson Valley Advertiser colleague.

Rhonda Winter/San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

San Francisco cyclists protest bike-plan delays in front of City Hall.

Ms. Miles, who was admitted to the California bar in 2004 at age 57, proved a pugnacious litigator. She sought to kill the initial brief from San Francisco's lawyers after it exceeded the accepted length by a page. She objected when the city attorney described Mr. Anderson's advocacy group, the Coalition for Adequate Review, as CAR in their documents. (It's C-FAR.) She also convinced the court to review key planning documents over the city's objections.

Slow Pedaling

In November 2006, a California Superior Court judge rejected San Francisco's contention that it didn't need an environmental review and ordered San Francisco to stop all bike-plan activity until it completed the review.

Since then, San Francisco has pedaled very slowly. City planners say they're being extra careful with their environmental study, in hopes that Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles won't challenge it. Planners don't expect the study will be done for another year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Anderson and Ms. Miles have teamed up to oppose a plan to put high-rises and additional housing in a nearby neighborhood. He continues to blog from his apartment in an old Victorian home. "Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings -- because they are politically motivated to do so," he wrote in a May 21 post.

"In case anyone doubted that you were a wingnut, this statement pretty much sums things up!" one commenter retorted.

Mr. Anderson is running for supervisor again this November -- around the time the city will unveil the first draft of its bike-plan environmental review. He's already pondering a challenge of the review.

Write to Phred Dvorak at phred.dvorak@wsj.com

CX 101 on video: Off-the-bike skills II

1) How to go through barriers in a CX race (by Mickey Denoncourt)

(Velonews.tv has its own video on going through barriers, but as of the time of writing this post, I couldn't play it. Maybe you'll have better luck: How to get through barriers. Click on the "how-to" tab. You'll find this video near the end of the list.)


2) How to run in sand in CX racing (by Mickey Denoncourt)

CX 101 on video: Off-the-bike skills I

So you have dismounted and need to carry your bike: How do you lift it? How do you carry it? How do you drop it back on the ground?

1) How to carry and shoulder your 'cross bike. (Again, click on the "how-to" tab and scroll down to the end of the list of videos.) From VeloNews.

2) How to carry a cyclocross bike on a shallow run. (By Mickey Denoncourt.)

3) How to shoulder a cyclocross bike for a steep run. (Also by Mickey Denoncourt.)

Points rides-Classification as of August 16

	GC (top 15) - August 9	Points	Miles
1	Elisabet	63	480
2	Joe	51	465
3	Jeremy	47	340
4	Francisco	36	275
5	Andreas	31	290
6	Dan	28	205
7	Bernard	26	190
8	Mickey	26	240
9	Jesse	24	120
10	Sarah	23	155
11	Araba	23	120
12	Joel	22	205
13	Philippe	22	205
14	Jonathan	19	85
15	Suchandra	19	85