VeloNews Calls the Bike Industry's BB30 Bluff!

Thanks to my awesome Sister, I have an annual subscription to the cycling magazine VeloNews. Cycling media in general is pretty terrible - races are covered (or not covered) seemingly on whim and the actual race coverage usually omits key details and knowledgeable descriptions of how races actually play out; "gear reviews" are obviously slanted by ad sales; all things Lance are glorified and magnified to a ridiculous degree. I read it anyway, of course, because I like bikes and bike races and bike parts and I like to look at the pretty pictures. And every once in a while there is a worthwhile article such as this month's article on whether or not BB30 is actually a better technology (sandwiched, of course, between an article on "Lance's Entourage" (I kid you not) and a-pay-to-play cross bike shootout).

After about 100 (edit: actually ~50) years of reliance on the square taper bottom bracket, the last 20 years of cycling tech are littered with obsolete bottom bracket standards that have come and gone as new "better" technology is developed. First we had Octalink splined internal bottom brackets, followed by ISIS splined internal bottom brackets, followed by the external bottom brackets introduced by Shimano with Dura-Ace 7800 in 2003 which have been adopted throughout the industry and remained the standard since their introduction. Indeed, Shimano continues to use their external BB standard in the 2009-released DA7900 so it appears they are sticking with their guns for at least this generation of components. I'm not a true cycling historian so I'm sure there were some steps in between and other technologies before Octalink of which I am not aware, but the fact of the matter is that the bike industry loves to come out with "game changing" technology every few years to make sure you really do need that new bike or gruppo you've been lusting after. Can you say designed obsolescence?

BB30 has been gaining steam ever since its introduction by Cannondale several years ago. It's now gone mainstream and many bike companies are making BB30 frames and SRAM, FSA, Zipp, and many other companies are making BB30 cranks to fit these frames. The basic idea is that you take the bearings, make them a little bigger and put them inside the frame. You also make the spindle larger (30mm) and aluminum. By making these changes you supposedly arrive at a lighter, stiffer, and narrower crank/bottom bracket setup.

Unlike so many other grandiose component claims, Velonews actually put these claims to the test by comparing the weight, stiffness, and width of FSA K-Force Mega-Exo/BB30 and SRAM Red GXP/BB30 cranks, some of the only cranks that are available in both versions. The results:

Weight
FSA: BB30 30g lighter
SRAM: BB30 20g lighter

Stiffness
FSA: BB30 0.5% stiffer
SRAM: BB30 0.7% stiffer

Q-Factor
FSA: 149 vs. 146mm
SRAM: 145 vs 144mm

So, for these cranks, BB30 is slightly lighter but virtually no different when it comes to stiffness or Q-factor. Hooray for VeloNews! Given how sycophantic this publication and the cycling media in general usually are towards equipment "reviews" we finally have someone taking an objective look at this "great" new technology and calling it out for what it is: a gimmick.

It is really striking, however, how these companies have taken this technology with some amount of potential and done nothing with it except hype it up. They brought it to market for the sole purpose of making you buy something new. The cynic in me looks at BB30 cranks, 1-1/2" fork crowns, and integrated seat posts and sees cheap gimmicks designed to move units and kill the secondary market. I would love to be proved wrong, but it looks like the industry has at least in this case failed once again to produce substantive change.

I've had some knee troubles the last couple years which I solved in part by using much narrower cranks: Dura-Ace 7400 with a Phil Wood square-taper BB, Q-Factor 135mm vs. standard Dura-Ace 7800 Q-Factor of 147mm. While searching for this setup, I was astounded at the lack of information in the marketplace about crank Q-Factor. It is not published by the manufacturers and you have to search pretty hard to find it on the websites of tinkering types who have measured it themselves.

It's clear that BB30 could provide an opportunity to finally start making narrow crank setups possible again, but crank manufacturers have squandered this chance. People need different stance widths, yet there are no options for people to get different width cranks. Of course, you can always make your stance wider through pedal washers and other adapters. This is easy. Given a crank, however, you can't make your stance any narrower. So why not make the default narrower (which was supposed to be part of the whole point of BB30 anyway) with allowances to increase stance width using the same washers and adapters fitters are already using to increase stance width in cases where it is necessary?

There are other BB30 cranks on the market, however, so it is possible that some of these cranks could have relatively narrow Q-Factor and higher stiffness. I'd like to see a full test of all these cranks and compare it to, say, the Dura-Ace 7900 crank. Since it appears Shimano has no plans of adopting the BB30 standard in the near future, it would be really interesting to see how these cranks all stack up against one another. Until I get a crank testing setup in my basement, I guess I'll have to wait.

The collarbone/shoulder saga

I promised to write more about the collarbone break but I don't want to dwell on it too much. The way it broke, close to the shoulder and in a couple of pieces, put it at a high risk for not healing back together properly, so I went in for surgery two days after my crash on Monday the 5th. The surgery took about twice as long (three hours) as they anticipated because it turned out I had also separated the AC joint, not too surprising given how far out my collarbone broke. So they had to fix that in addition to putting in the plate and screws to hold my collarbone together.

The injuries give me a little more insight into what happened in the crash, as I don't remember very much after a certain point. I was on a ride with the team and after riding the tiger mountain loop, we had just gotten back onto the Issaquah-Hobart road heading into Issaquah. The group got a little separated at the stop sign and I was in the second group of four guys with Bing, Alan, and Jake V. We were doing a little rotation, going pretty fast around 30mph and catching back up with the group in front. I was at the back behind Bing and all of a sudden he hit a huge rock in the road - his hands slipped and his chest fell onto his bars and he lost control of his bike. As he started falling I moved to go around him on the left. I was almost clear when some part of his bike or body hit me - after that I don't remember anything until I hit the ground harder than I ever have before and saw some stars. I got up and got myself and my bike off the road but right away I could tell there was something wrong with my shoulder. It didn't hurt that bad but I couldn't really move my arm and a bone in my shoulder area was sticking up where it shouldn't have been. After figuring out that I was hurt pretty seriously and not able to ride home I got a ride from a really nice guy who happened to see the crash and stopped to see if we were all right. Unfortunately I didn't get his name or contact info as he was really nice to stop and give me a ride to the hospital in Issaquah - I wasn't hurt badly enough to go in an ambulence and the ride from this guy was probably quicker anyway.

The location of the break and the AC separation, along with an almost complete lack of road rash and cracked helmet indicate that I pretty much landed directly on my shoulder and head. Bing apparently remembers sticking his leg in my front wheel as I almost got around him, which means I probably just did an endo at 30mph and landed right on my shoulder and head.

This crash brings to six the number of times I've hit the ground this season, which is way too many. After crashing in the Ballard crit in 2005, I didn't crash again until Ballard of last year. For a while there I thought I was just good at avoiding crashes, but it turns out I was just really lucky. This year I was really unlucky.

Most of the other crashes this year weren't very big deals, and I could ride again quickly after them. With this one I've already been off the bike for two weeks and it put a huge wrench in my plans to go to Hawaii and New Zealand. I keep thinking about all the little things I could have done to avoid the crash. I almost flew to Hawaii early. I almost did a ride by myself instead of doing the team ride (which I practically never do anyway), and I actually missed the team ride by 10 minutes and didn't catch them until they were on the other side of the south end. Even when I did catch them, they were stopped at the bathroom and I could have just kept riding by myself. But you never really know when something like this is going to happen, obviously, so you can't dwell on what you could have done to avoid it. The only real way to avoid any chance of crashing is to stop riding bikes, and that's obviously something I'm not going to do!

Good job Rhae on a great race in Hawaii!

Bad Times

So I broke my collar bone today on the team training ride. Now, I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure those pieces are supposed to be connected. Major bummer. On the plus side I have another XRay to add to my collection of pictures of my leg bones from my running days. More to come when I get better at 1-handed typing.

Season Review

Discuss.



Also, Puget Power spotted on my friend Julie's blog... she has some good Interbike footage as well.

Vegas baby! USA Crits Finals, Las Vegas

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Vegas for the USA Crits Finals, held in conjunction with the Interbike trade show. The crit was at 9:30 at night so I flew in from San Diego a little before noon and was greeted by the usual staggering heat of the desert. This was my second visit to Vegas and I am continually astounded that the place still exists; a city built on a lie in a place unsuitable for human habitation. It's jammed with a bunch of fat people milling around pretending to have fun in huge fake buildings designed with various ways of separating you from your money. I can't believe anybody still gets taken by this immense scam. We've visited lots of vapid locations (mostly suburbs) for racing this year but I think Vegas takes the cake for the Most Vapid City in the U.S.

After taking a shuttle to the hotel and putting my bike together, I stopped by the Interbike trade show for a little while. The last time I went to the Show was in 2006, so I was actually excited to check out some new stuff this year. My enthusiasm lasted about 30 seconds, though, when I realized there wasn't actually anything new to see - thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, all of the new products had already been described and photographed in detail before I saw them in person. There is some actual business that gets done at the show, as shops meet with vendors and suppliers to write orders for the upcoming year, but like Vegas itself the show seems to be largely an anachronism that I am also surprised continues to exist.

Adrian and I rolled out for the crit a little after 8:00 and were treated to the surreal experience of riding a bike down the strip at night. We managed to find our way to the Mandalay Bay, but couldn't find the actual location of the crit, so we wandered around for a while, Adrian choosing to ride/walk through the majority of the hotel/casino in full kit. We finally made it to the large parking lot where the crit was being held, but more drama ensued when our DS Joe got stuck in traffic with Adrian's race wheels and a new buckle for my shoe (which I broke in one of my falls at Univest). Joe arrived about five minutes before the start and we got everything squared away despite our moment of panic.
I had great position for the start of the race but I slid back a little at first because I had no idea where I was going and the first few laps were extremely hectic. Because the course was just in a parking lot, it was delineated simply by a complete set of barriers and at night it was difficult to see where exactly the course was going. So for the first few laps I just sat back and followed wheels to figure out where in the heck we were going. The course was basically all turning - the finishing straight was only about 100m long, followed by a left turn, 50m straight, left turn, 50 m straight, left turn into a long sweeping right turn, left turn, left turn, left turn, 100m downhill straight into the final sweeping left turn into the finishing straight. There was very little pedaling each lap and most of the race consisted of sprinting and diving into turns.

The race has a reputation for being super sketchy and while the crashes started on the first lap and didn't stop until the race was over, the race itself didn't feel overly sketchy. I got the hang of most of the corners right away and you could take everything for the most part pedaling and at full speed. Most of the guys crashing seemed to just lose their concentration for a minute, because the turning was basically constant you had to be constantly on the ball. A lot of guys got dropped or pulled the pin during the first 20 minutes and while I thought I was in the middle of the pack, I looked back and found myself at the back. I went into tailgun mode for a while, letting little gaps open on the straights and taking the corners a little hotter, which is overall easier to do then riding right on the wheel, but guys who were drifting back kept getting in front of me and then shelling themselves, which was pretty annoying. So then I started trying to move up but although I was taking the corners hot enough when I could take my own line, I couldn't quite do it when I was trying to move up around guys. I can't really make any excuses because Adrian was back almost as far as I was and moved back up to the front with ease, but I kept trying to move up and just couldn't get it done. However with my crash fest at Univest and skittish riding at Tx Tough, I was pretty happy just to hang in there.

On the last couple of laps there were a bunch of crashes, some gaps opened up in the field and I ended up coming in a little off the back in 38th out of 100-some starters. I'm definitely not satisfied with a result like that but all things considered I made some progress back from the last couple of races and it's good to end the season on an improving note. In the USA Crits overall I came in at 69th out of 365 and HB finished 16th out of 145 teams. Adrian had another great ride at Vegas for 2nd, so our team result is mostly on the back of his great results, but the way the points are structured I was able to contribute a bit to that as well.

Post-race with our DS Joe, Adrian, and Bing our sponsorship-guy extraordinaire

With a 630AM flight the next morning, I hustled back to the hotel and got my bike packed in record time:

Then we were about to party like it was 1999 but we remembered that we were in Vegas and it was lame. So we all went to get dinner and Adrian broke his sugar-free diet with a healthy portion of berry waffles and LOTS of syrup. Yes, it was dinner, but it was also after 1AM so technically the morning so breakfast food was ok.


I was full from the couple of bottles of Hammer RecoverMErite I had right after the race so I had to save the granola I ordered for the morning. This is what $7 of granola looks like:

Fremont Peak Hill Climb & California Travel Extravaganza

Following the TX Tough crit in Dallas I flew to San Francisco to do a couple of local Norcal races en route to San Diego to hang out with Rhae, who was there doing some Kona prep training. The logistics of getting from the airport to the races turned out to be a little more complicated than I anticipated, and I had to skip the road race I had planned for Saturday and just do the Fremont Peak Hill Climb on Sunday.

The climb is 10 miles long with ~2400 ft of climbing, and I found the following graphic of the climb on the ncnca.org message board today - I wish I had seen this before I did the race because it would have been pretty useful to know:

I had read the description of the course on the race website but all I could remember was that it was pretty flat until the middle, where it got steeper. Then I thought I remembered it saying that after a few miles of steep climbing it leveled out again and was pretty flat for the finish, but this obviously wasn't the case.

Since I've never really raced in Norcal I wasn't sure who to watch so I just tried to sit on wheels as far to the front of the group as I could. My plan was to sit on until Mile 5 or so and then start attacking, depending on how things looked at that point. The first mile was pretty flat and fast, with a few guys willing to work. They kept working and there were a few attacks but everything was still together after the first few miles. It started to get steeper around the 5-mile mark as promised but again things were sticking together and nobody was making any huge moves. I didn't think the steep part was going to last for too much longer, so I put in a little dig to see what would happen. After giving it a little bit of stick I looked back and things were starting to break up a little but there were some guys with me so I sat back to see what they would do.

Just then it got WAY steeper and we came out onto an exposed section where it felt 100 degrees hotter. One of the guys went to the front and dropped the hammer - I stayed with him for a couple of minutes but then I completely blew up and could not stay with it. I was going as hard as I could but getting dropped so I just tried to limit my losses and keep the pedals turning over. I felt like I was going to explode and it was so steep in parts that I was actually worried I was going to fall over. That went on for a while, up the next couple miles of super steep switchbacks and I kept wondering when it was going to level off. I was riding in 3rd place on the road for a while when the lead masters and cat 3 guys caught me (they had started with us because the fields were combined at the start due to small field sizes). I was pretty blown so I just sat on most of the way and took one or two pulls as we caught 2nd place on the road with about a mile and a half to go to the finish.

By that time it was clear we weren't going to catch the leader so I just sat on with the sprint in mind. A little lame, but I feel pretty good about my sprint against guys of similar climbing ability and there was no danger of getting caught from behind. There was a bit of a downhill with about a mile to go and then it was just slightly uphill from there to the finish. For some reason I was under the impression that the road was going to open up and we would be able to see the finish from some distance off, but the 1k, 200m, and finally 100m to go signs all passed by with nothing but twisting mountain road and scraggly pine trees in front of us. I was pissed that I hadn't been patient enough earlier by attacking when I should have waited longer, so I wanted to leave the sprint to the last minute. We came around a corner and all of a sudden the finish line was right there - I had waited far too long but opened up my sprint from third wheel anyway. I closed pretty fast but couldn't get back on the guy who took second and ended up third on the day.

We're coming down to the end of the season here and while a "W" continues to elude me I'm still riding a whole lot better than I was at the beginning of the season. I made some pretty big errors at Fremont Peak (attacking too early, waiting too long to open the sprint), but the guys who beat me were stronger and played their cards right so I can't make excuses. I can only learn from what I did wrong and add that to the fire for the next race.

Numbers:
Total race: 10 mi in 41:23, 4.62 w/kg
Last 4 miles: 22 min @ 5.19 w/kg
Peak 20 min = 5.27 w/kg (ties season and all-time PB)
Key moment - attack, then trying to follow the winner's attack: two 4-minute sections at ~6.1 w/kg separated by a minute.

Next race: USA Crits Final in Las Vegas on Thursday Night. This will be my last road race in the US of the 2009 season.

Texas Tough Crit

After Univest I flew to Dallas with Adrian to race the Texas Tough crit, part of the USA Crits Series like the Athens crit we did way back in April. After my crash festival of a weekend at Univest I was looking to turn things around and finish out the season on a high note with crits at Dallas and the USA Crits Final in Vegas.

It rained off an on over the couple of days leading up to race day and while it looked promising for the first half of the day the sky opened up and started pouring a couple hours before race time. The course was located in a swank, newly-redeveloped area of downtown right next to the American Airlines arena where the hockey and basketball teams play and it was one of the best-presented races we've done this season. There was a huge crowd despite the weather and like Univest they had a helicopter and several ground-based cameras to broadcast the race onto several jumbotron monitors mounted in the plaza next to the race. The course itself was a pretty straightforward rectangle with two long, wide straightaways connected by short transitions featuring wide turns at corners one and two and tight turns at corners three and four, where the course funneled down to a narrow one-lane road.

Here's a video from last year, the course and location were the same- they obviously had better weather, but we had much better crowds this year:


For the first time at a national-level crit this season I was able to snag a good starting position despite the two uber-sketchy neutral laps we did right before the real start. The race wasn't super fast right from the gun and at first I was feeling pretty good. Then after about five laps things got a lot faster and I could not get myself to go around the corners fast enough. After dumping it twice last weekend in the rain I have a severe case of terrible bike handling, mostly due to the nature of the crashes. In both cases last weekend I lost traction with no warning and I have yet to re-develop a good feel for how much I can safely push the bike. It's pretty frustrating and while at the time I felt like I was pushing the envelope as far as I could, it wasn't far enough because plenty of guys were cornering faster than I was. It's completely between the ears and when it gets in there it's hard to get out. The only way to get it out is to race as much as you can and push the envelope a little bit at a time when you are out training.

I got shuffled towards the back and at first I was doing ok by letting a little gap open up through the corner and then closing it down once I got back onto the straightaway. While this required a little more effort than taking the corners the right way, I felt fine doing it and wasn't in any real difficulty until guys started getting shelled. Apparently guys were getting shelled from the first lap and after a while I found myself far enough back that guys were getting shelled in front of me and I had to come around them. This was also working out fine for a while, until some guys four or five guys in front of me got gapped off and weren't closing it down. By the time I went around it was too late and the gap was too big - I got about halfway across before my lack of cornering prowess combined with closing gaps all evening got the better of me and I got gapped off for good with about 30 minutes to go in the race.

Floyd Landis was the last guy in the pack at this point and I remember thinking that Floyd was for sure not going to get dropped and if I could just make it back up to his wheel I would be ok. For about a lap I held it even but just couldn't close it down despite my best efforts to convince myself that I could take the corners that little bit faster without hitting the pavement.

On the plus side Adrian killed it again, spending the whole race off the front in every break of consequence, scooping up several lucrative primes including the $2500 gambler's prime with one lap to go, and finishing 4th on the line. You can read his report here.

Univest Grand Prix - Doylestown Crit and Wrap-up

We wrapped up the Univest GP on Sunday with a 50-mile crit in Dolyestown. The sun came out for a welcome change from the constant rain of the previous two days. At first I wasn't planning on racing the crit because I was pretty banged up physically and mentally from hitting the ground twice in two days. It's important to get back on the horse and race again as soon as you can after crashing, but I wasn't sure if I could even pedal the bike based on how bad my hip was hurting after the crash on Saturday.

Our DS Joe convinced me to give it a go, and I decided that I would see how I felt on the short warmup ride from our host house in Souderton to Doylestown. My hip didn't hurt too bad and although I was sore all over I figured I'd give the race a shot. The course was long for a crit at 1.4-miles with eight turns, not super technical but a couple of the turns were a little tight.
I was a little tentative at the start but after a few laps I got in the swing of things and felt pretty good for most of the race. My main goal was to get back to the point where I could actually race my bike without throwing myself on the ground; mission accomplished. It ended up being a fun race and a good way to end a disappointing weekend. I started fairly far back but was able to move myself up as the race went on, riding pretty comfortably in mid pack for the majority of the race. Daifuku and Adrian were tailgunning behind Bobby Lea (apparently an expert tailgunner) towards the end and I joined them for a few laps but although I was feeling a lot better handling my bike then I did at the start of the race I couldn't get around the corners quite fast enough to effectively tailgun. So I went back up for a few laps and then pulled the pin at 5 to go because I didn't feel like taking my chances in the final. It wasn't the hardest crit I've ever done (we only averaged 26.8) but I didn't eat nearly enough and was pretty spent by the end of the day.

Adrian continued his fine riding from throughout the weekend with 7th in the Crit, and if you watch the road race here:

http://tiny.cc/Bf3g9

You can see a lot of footage of him in the main breakaway of the day starting about halfway through the coverage (around 1:10 or so I think).

I also managed to get myself on TV in the early part of the RR when I was attacking, just fast forward to 50:30:
My main goal with this whole bike racing gig has been to get myself on TV at least once, so I can pretty much quit now feeling totally fulfilled.

More great footage from the RR includes the "mass crash" during the neutral rollout, which I avoided by starting at the front for once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExubrV3hSo4
I've always maintained that Neutral rollouts are the most dangerous part of any race and I'm not sure why they are still included in any races, but this was by far the worst crash I've seen in a neutral section.

Univest Grand Prix - Stage 2 Souderton RR

On the plus side, I think I figured out why I crashed yesterday. On the minus side, I crashed again today.

Not a good day on the bike. I don't really feel like talking about it but I don't want this to be a fair-weather blog where you only hear about the good times. So here's what it's like to have a(nother) bad day at a UCI stage race. On tap was a 100-mile hilly road race, comprising a 60-mile loop around Souderton and then 40 miles on a 3.5-mile circuit back in town. It was raining again and the roads were super slick all day, but it was much warmer than yesterday. There was a huge crash at the back of the pack during the neutral rollout so we had to stop for about 20 minutes before the race even started, but eventually we got under way again and it was game on with constant attacking for the first 30 miles.

A break usually goes away in this race and it was my job along with Nick and Chris to look for the moves early. Sam and Phil were to stay with Adrian and get him to the circuits in the best position possible. I got in the mix following several moves and doing a little attacking myself in the first 20 miles before it got hilly. Nothing was really sticking and I was starting to shell myself so I took a little breather and then started to move up as we got closer to the KOM climbs, which started around the 30 mile mark. Just as I was starting to move back up some guy crashed right in front of me on a fast downhill turn. I was on the inside and he was sliding to the outside so I was going to avoid him but just on reflex I grabbed a little too much rear brake and immediately hit the ground. I launched both water bottles and my sunglasses and I hit my head pretty hard at some point because my helmet is cracked all the way through on the left side. I got up and my bike looked okay - I was about to get back on it and keep going when my left hip and elbow started hurting really bad, so I decided to go to the side of the road and make sure I was ok before getting back on the bike.

I was ok so I started riding again but there was no hope of getting back into the race. I rode with Phil for another ten miles to the feed zone, where we caught a ride back to Souderton with some nice people from the BikeReg team.

At this point I don't think I'm going to be racing tomorrow and am looking forward to putting this weekend behind me.