Absurd Weight Savings

I've been spending too much brainpower lately thinking about all of the ridiculous optimizations I can make for this Sunday's hill climb time trial (HCTT). At about 181 lbs these days, I need every advantage I can get. Here are a few of my silly ideas.

• Weigh all of my rideable socks, and wear the lightest pair.
• Possibly forego the heart rate monitor.
• Weigh the skin suit, a jersey, and my shorts, and pick the lightest setup.
• Pin my number on with only four safety pins, and/or make a minimalist frame number.
• Remove water bottle cage bolts and headset top cap.
• Use my Zipp 404s (lightest wheels I have) with the lightest skewers I have.
• Remove springs from skewers.
  
• Fill tires with helium.
• Clean the bike - dirt is heavy.
  
• Forego sunglasses and gloves. (I don't use chammy cream, bit I would forego that, too.)
  
• Remove front derailleur and just rock the small ring (probably not happening).
• Diet aggressively this week to get the weight down.
• Warm up with too many layers to shed as much water weight as possible.
• Use lightest possible computer. Does the Quark work with the PowerTap head? It should.
• Use the Roubaix instead of the Aloha for the weekend? It might be lighter.

I don't think I'll do all of these, but I'm always thinking.

Pre-Race Conspiring: Delaware Race Weekend

It looks like six hours of driving will lead to quite a race weekend in Newark, DE.


Oh hell. My first Men's A race is this monstrosity. We get to do this loop four times, just barely escaping the definition of a "circuit race" and making this a "road race". A 68-mile race is going to make this a war of attrition. The rider who has the best sprint after being in the saddle for about 2h30m is going to win. I'm going to try to ride smart: save energy, stay fueled, hide from the wind. My goal is to chase down exactly one attack: the one which forms the race-winning breakaway.


This here is the Delaware "lollipop" time trial course in all its glory. Time trialing is my strength, so I'll be looking for a strong performance here. Aero equipment is legal in the A's. All of that climbing makes me really wonder what the ideal combination of equipment is for this course. My tri-spoke is lighter than my disc, so the tri-spoke may very well make an appearance this weekend! Sometimes, having more equipment options is a curse. Aero or weight? That is the question. I need to pull out the scale.

When the Delaware folks said that this crit was on a new part of campus, they meant it. Of the major mapping solutions, only Google Maps knew about these roads - and even then, only the big ones. Using my usual trickery, I was able to re-create the roads very nicely in Topo. This looks like a very fast course, with an acute bend left at the bottom of a hill and an uphill finish. Hopefully this will be a course where individual strength and technique is enough to escape the pack.

With that said, who are the riders to watch? Anyone whose time beat mine in the Rutgers ITT is definitely someone to watch. That would be Josh Lipka (UNH blue, 153), Nick Frey (Princeton orange, 169), and Dan Cassidy (UVM yellow, 100). Points leader Eric Schlidge (Dartmouth green, 173) and strong finisher Thomas Coupe (UNH, 186), as well as Alex Bremer (Columbia blue, 161) are on the list as well. Of course, at this level it's anyone's race, but I'll be watching UVM and UNH closely for obvious team tactics.

Semper Conspirus: Part II

I've been riding since about as long as I can remember. This is the earliest photo of me on a bicycle that I can find, which was taken in late 1989. I would have been just about four. This is awfully good cornering form for someone who just learned to ride a two wheeler: note that I'm countersteering, and that my inside leg is cocked into the turn.

Semper Conspirus

"Coronthica Cyclery" is the name of the bicycle shop that has lived in my bedroom or apartment since I was sixteen or so, and I started doing my own high-level bicycle work due to a limited budget. The logo is a track sprinter, with two disc wheels, chasing a bird, the "pace vehicle".

The Coronthica Cyclery motto of semper conspirus was contrived by myself and Mike Short in the summer of 2005, on a ride from Seattle, WA to San Francisco, CA. Semper conspirus is pretend-Latin for "always conspiring", and I think this describes bicycling very well.

In a sense, road racing, training, and riding in general requires one to always be conspiring. I know I spend a huge amount of my time riding, thinking about riding, thinking about things I can tweak or buy to go faster, and thinking about my overall training plan. I've set up RSS feeds for interesting potential purchases on eBay and Craigslist, so I can get to things faster. I've read a whole bunch about riding. I keep ride logs. I eat properly. I have a long term plan.

Conspiring is all about working with friends, and with teammates. It's also about working alone, and always keeping a level head about things, before, during, and after races. It's about planning, patience, and being crafty. The next time that you see me on the road, riding, realize that hundreds, if not thousands, of hours have been devoted to tweaking, fiddling, analyzing, thinking, and optimizing to get me where I am, and that the process never stops.

This blog is one of the many things that helps me conspire.