2012 Biking and Running Events

At the beginning of 2012, I have scribbled some biking race names and dates on a large sticky note. This is an online version of that list, since the glue on the piece of paper is not holding very well and I am sure the note will get lost soon. It is by no means a "race calendar" or a list of races I am planning to attend, rather a reminder of how many cool events there are nearby and one could register for some, assuming the legs feel good, the race hasn't sold out etc, etc....

April 14-15     Santa Cruz mountain bike festival

April 15     Napa Valley Dirt Classic

April 19-22     Sea Otter Classic

April 22     San Luis Obispo Marathon 

April 28     Garda Sympatex MTB marathon, Rive del Garda, Italy (I'm registered)

May 5     Tour of the unknown coast century (rode it in 2010, absolutely scenic and challenging road century, but I will be in Europe this year)

May 5     Boggs 8-hour (Bikemonkey event, another scheduling conflict, bummer, as I heard this one is beautiful)

May 13-15     Tour of California (not riding, going to watch it!)

May 15-30     A placeholder for a road trip with John?

May 19     Weaverville 6 hrs (Team Bigfoot)

June 2     SoNoMas

June 8-10     Hammerstein 8/24

June 16     Tahoe 4/8 hrs 

July 22     Tahoe Trail 100 (60mi)

July 28     Arcata 6/12 hrs

August 18     Annadel XC race

August 25     Kirkwood 9-5

September 1     Kirkwood 6 hrs Enduro

September 4     Kauai Marathon

September 29     Levi Leipheimer's Gran Fondo

October 6     Whiskeytown 9-5

October 14     Sugar Pine 50 miler

October 21     TBF Racing 50 miles at Folsom Lake

Spring Break on the Divide

Spring break means a chance to experience winter and go skiing, since the signs of spring have been all around us since about the end of January here in Northern California. This March, in a strange whirlwind of events and news (mostly bad ones), we ended up in Keystone, CO.

It was Rocky Mountains skiing in style: we were upgraded to a 2-bedroom condo which could have easily accommodated six people and received discounted lift tickets from organizers of a conference I was attending. The weather was perfect, slopes nicely groomed, despite a general lack of snow, beer was OK, just the food, like in all American ski resorts really sucked.

We skied at Keystone, Breck and A-Basin (picture above), which I liked the most. On the way back to Denver, we drove over the Loveland Pass and the Continental Divide. Just running across the highway at 12,000 ft made me gasp for breath. I can hardly imagine riding a fully loaded bike up the pass during the GDR race, yet every year, many hardcore bikers accomplish that. Perhaps one day.... with spring here, it is time to get on the bike again.

Roads, paths, doubletrack and singletracks

In my last post I described a tire swap among two of our bikes. My universal bike, the Motobecane 29er Ti hardtail, now looks almost aggressive with those knobby Specialized Captain Control 2.0 tires. In between rainy Saturday and rain in the forecast for Monday, Sunday was the day to test the new rubber, with pressure set at ~ 38 psi.

My ride started on paved streets through Belmont and continued on the pawed Sawyer Camp trail all the way north to San Bruno. A short ride on Skyline and Sneath Lane took me to the entrance to Sneath trail and the climb to the San Francisco discovery site. Up to here, all pavement.

I did not feel any increase in rolling resistance, but then the trail was so busy with runners and people walking that I had to ride slowly most of the way. From the top of Sweney Ridge, Baquiano dirt trail starts as a jeep road but quickly turns into singletrack switchbacks descending to Fassler Avenue in Pacifica. Here, the tires felt very grippy and cushy, but then the surface was wet and tacky from the rain on previous day.

In Pacifica, the surf was up and the ocean water was busy with black neoprene. The coastal bike trail led me to the famous Taco Bell place at the beach, from where I took town streets to Old San Pedro Mountain road.

The climb up felt easy, muddy spots changed to crumbled pavement and to sandy spots. At the intersection with Montara Mt. trail, I pointed my bike away from the mountain summit (obscured by clouds)

and descended down towards the Montara Beach.

On the way down, the tires again felt super supple, hooking up really well in lose, sandy corners which I took at perhaps more speed than I should. The trail surface is rough, old broken pavement in many places, but I did not experience any of that locked front suspension feeling I had on my Bolinas ridge ride.
Once on Highway 1, I had to put up with car traffic and exhaust fumes for several miles, where, just past the Half Moon Bay airport, I entered a bike path along the coast and the state beach. There is a nice paved bike path, but in parallel, there were two dirt tracks: one very muddy and eroded for equestrians, and another, smooth and undulating one for mountain bikes! I followed the bike path, missing the whole busy town of Half Moon Bay and looking at waves crashing on the shore. The trail ended almost exactly at Higgins Purisima road, which I took back east, towards the mountains. Higgins Purisima is a steep climb. I was getting tired and did not really think about rolling resistance or gears I was using.
All those thoughts quickly reentered my mind as I finally passed through the Purisima Creek Redwoods preserve gate and entered the Whittemore Gulch singletrack.

There was mud. Lots of it. First, it was the nice kind of mud, loam mixed with redwood needles, beautiful. The first very steep climb starts right at the bottom of the valley. I did OK there, spinning the granny, perched at the tip of my saddle and the tires not slipping once. But then, the yellow clay mud section of the trail came and my wheels suddenly looked twice as big and felt ten times heavier. Rear wheel started to spin through as I applied power to the pedals, but to my surprise, the tires shed mud and cleaned themselves pretty quickly. It was  hard climbing, this trail is tough to climb when dry on the 29er with its tall gearing (28T cassette) and I ended up walking one super steep section at the top. On the switchbacks, I had no problem maintaining traction. Overall, I have to say, if I rode there with the Kenda Small Block eight tires, I would have ended up walking most of it, I'm sure.

The rest of my 60+ mile ride was roads, the tires were mud free after a few hundred yards on pavement, but most of that mud ended up on my face and butt. At the end of my ride, there was a bit more of trail riding from Canada Rd home, as shown on the Garmin track.

Winter Bike Projects

The saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" holds true in many situations. However, I am a scientist and I like to tinker with stuff to see if my ideas would improve things, or just because I am curious to see what happens. In science experiments, the success rate is really low, perhaps 10%. In technology and engineering, such as bicycles, I tend to believe success rate must be higher, because smart people have figured it out already. But if they really did, wouldn't the saying above always apply?
So the changes I did to three of our bikes described below may seem like unnecessary, but they have a certain logic which I will try to explain.

Part I: Mojo 2x9
Of course, we all know that the new Shimano and SRAM 2x10 drivetrains are all the rage these days. Interestingly, the mainstream technology spurs ideas like a 1x9 or 1x10, all based on the question: "how many gears do we really need on mountain bikes?". I know, some people would say "just one", I have been through that phase before....
I asked myself this question: how many gears of my standard 3x9 setup (11-32 cassette and 22/32/44 triple) do I really use? Riding around the Bay Area on some really steep hills both up and down, one would think I used the full range. In reality, it is more like this: on steep climbs, I tend to ride 22/32 or 22/30, then shift to 32/30 - 28 etc. as the terrain becomes more rolling. In the middle chain ring, I tend to use the low gear half of the cassette. When spinning out on downhills, I shift the 44 chainring way before reaching the tall gears just because it is way fewer shifts and the chain bounces less at 44.
So using the Bike Gears iPhone app, I figured that changing to a 2x9 setup, using an 11-34 cassette and 24+38 chainrings would yield gear range quite close to what I have now. The lowest gear would be tiny harder (1.373m of development vs 1.337m) and I would lose more at the high end (6.719m vs 7.780m), but then how often does one ride at 44/11?
Here is the solution:
Rear:

• SRAM PG980 9-speed (11-34) cassette
• SRAM X-9 long cage derailleur

Front:

• Shimano XT cranks
• Blackspire 24 and 38T chainrings mounted to 64mm BCD position (24T) and the middle        104mm position (38T)
• Shimano XT front derailleur locked by the limit screw in the middle position
• SRAM PC-991 chain

OK, so everything is in place, it shifts beautifully on the work stand and in the parking lot test. The next test, of course, will be climbing and descending on trails. Stay tuned for a ride report.

So this takes me to the Part II of the project: Marketa's Specialized Myka Expert bike is really heavy for a women's bike. What makes the Specialized product managers think women need bikes heavier than guys'? So one way to make it lighter (after researching some of its components weights online) would be to swap the Alivio crankset / front derailleur and the cassette for XT-grade components. See? If I really like my 2x9 setup on the Mojo, the next logical upgrade would be going full 2x10 SRAM X0, thus all the 9-speed components from the Mojo would end up on the Myka.
But the best place to start saving weight is wheels and tires. That's where the 3rd bike (my Motobecane Phantom Pro 29er) comes into play. This bike comes equipped with pretty lightweight Vuelta XRP SL wheelset and I have been using Kenda SB8 tires pumped up to 50psi for commuting to work on pavement. These tires perform really well on dry dirt in loose and dusty conditions and have a low rolling resistance. Front wheel with tire, skewer and a large 180mm rotor weighs 1800g:

The Myka uses Specialized own Stout hubs laced to some Alex sturdy looking rims, but with nicely color coordinated green anodized spoke nipples. With Specialized Captain Control 29x2.0 2Bliss ready tires it weighed 2150g:

 OK, so I was not ready to swap the whole wheels just yet, but thought that swapping the tires would give the Myka an advantage of ~ 200 grams less and lots less rolling resistance. My 29er would be OK with heavier tires - I will just pedal harder on my commutes and have more tire tread for wet trails in the winter.

As you see above, the Vuelta+Captain combo comes out at ~ 1875g and the Specialized+Kenda combo at 2000g. Given the +/- 100g accuracy of the scale, looks like about 200 grams (both front and rear) moved from the Myka to the Motobecane, as predicted based on published tire weights.
But the real test would be in real world conditions. First chance to test the 29er "new" tires presented itself the very next day.

The Irisin Scare

Jan's B-Log was intended to mean Bicycling-Log, but since I am a biotechnologist, I think it is OK to change subjects from time to time, so this post has a Bio-Log-y theme. But as you will see, it is bicycling related, or more generally, exercise related.

A couple of weeks ago, a paper in the journal Nature has described a discovery of a new peptide hormone, called Irisin: Boström, P.; Wu, J.; Jedrychowski, M. P.; Korde, A.; Ye, L.; Lo, J. C.; Rasbach, K. A.; Boström, E. A. et al. (2012). "A PGC1-α-dependent myokine that drives brown-fat-like development of white fat and thermogenesis". Nature.
You can read more about Irisin here, here, and here, but the long and complicated biology story is that this hormone is induced by exercise, triggers browning of fat tissue, and elevated blood levels of this peptide promote energy expenditure even in absence of movement or food intake. The authors suggest that this molecule could be prepared as a theraputic for metabolic disease and improvement of glucose homeostasis (states typically leading to type 2 diabetes).

This breakthrough publication reminded me of one day in 1996 when my boss and I drove to Vienna to hear a lecture by Jeffrey Friedman, who discovered the hormone leptin in 1994 at the Rockefeller University. Leptin was thought to be THE cure for obesity, mainly based on the fact that mice lacking a gene for this hormone, so called Ob-/Ob- mice eat voraciously and quickly become morbidly obese.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fatmouse.jpg

After the Vienna trip and talk, I spent two years preparing antibodies against the leptin peptide. As it turned out, mice are not little men and the leptin story proved much more complicated than thought at that time, thus no miracle obesity pill resulted.
There is also a business part to this story: the biotech / pharma giant Amgen paid $20 million to Rockefeller U. for drug rights on leptin. And there is a company called Ember Therapeutics who got $34 million of venture capital to turn Irisin into a drug.
I am not against turning scientific discoveries into medicines, that's what pays my salary and allows me to ride nice bikes. But I do not believe it is possible to take large amounts of energy (food) in and then get rid of it by taking a pill, without our body burning or lighting up or something like that. And I also think that the cure for type two diabetes already exists: every doctor will tell you that diet and exercise will lead to improvement in at least 90% of diabetics. But it is the HARD way and nobody wants to go that route. Wait a sec, nobody, really? On my weekend bike rides and runs, as well as during commuting to work by bike, I see plenty of people who would not exchange their way of staying healthy and having fun for any pill. I am also sure all of us would prefer the side effects of running or biking (blisters, sore muscles and bruished shins) over the yet unknown side effects of Irisin.
And just imagine how many new trails could be built with $54 million....

Point-to-point on the Peninsula

Most bike rides and runs people do are probably loops, which makes perfect sense. Point-to-point routes are difficult, usually require two cars or a drop-off or a pickup. When I used to do XC MTB races in Connecticut, I did not enjoy riding course laps too much. That is also why I really like stage races or events, where the route is different each day.
Living in the Bay Area allows us to vary our running or biking routes a lot, both my wife and I really like the fact that we can leave our house on bikes or on foot and come back many hours later. But if you look on the map of trails and preserves along the Peninsula, it is clear that long point to point routes are possible. So to change things a bit on this ridiculously warm and sunny January weekend, we tested how far our wheels or legs would take us.
My first test: mountain biking from a far point home. Starting point: Steven's Canyon county park, intersection of Steven's Canyon and Pierce roads. Target destination: Old Post on Tripp Rd in Woodside. I did not plan the route exactly trail by trail, hoping I would choose what felt best along the way. After a warmup on Steven's Canyon road, I continued on the trail uphill, took Grizzly Flat trail to Skyline, where I found the Ridge Trail closed. A hundred yards or so along Skyline to the north allowed me to join the Ridge trail north with no closures. This is the route I have ridden so many times, Ridge Trail, Chestnut trail, swing through the Christmas tree farm to Horseshoe Lake. There I found the White Oaks trail closed, which was a real bummer. My original rough plan was to connect to Alpine trail and Peter's Creek, thus avoiding the grueling climb up towards Russian Ridge. Left with no choice, I made it over the ridge to Alpine Pond but Ancient Oaks trail was a reward for this climb. Continuing along the Ridge Trail all the way up north to Rapley Ranch road spits you on the Skyline Highway at the Fogarty Winery, with no legal trails until Skeggs.
I cursed the San Mateo Parks and recreation while I pedaled on Rt 35 towards Bear Gulch Rd (west). San Mateo county is notoriously known for their anti-biking policies, similarly to towns of Woodside and Portola Valley, which would be a topic on its own for another blog post.
Finally, probably the best singletrack of Skeggs, Blue Blossom Trail! I almost forgot I had to dig myself up from the ravine, but was rudely reminded of that on Gordon Mill trail. At this point, it was clear to me that riding more trails through Skeggs and connecting to Purisima Creek was too ambitious, as the temperature was dropping and I was cold, hungry and pretty spent. Back to the asphalt on 35 and downhill on Kings Mt Rd to the meeting point, where I arrived frozen to the bone (and this was a 66F "winter" day).



Day two: with biking muscles sore, Marketa and I came up with this leapfrogging scheme: I would drive to Huddart Park, leave the car there and attempt to run trails to Wunderlich Park. She would take off from home and pound pavement (her preferred way to move in space) to Huddart. There, she picks the car and drives to Wunderlich, to check if I would appear there in some reasonable time or if the rescue squads would already be combing the woods. On paper, it looked like it would take us similar amounts of time.
The run from Huddart Park to Wunderlich is a part of the annual Woodside trail run organized by Pacific Coast Trail Runs, but of course, these tough guys run it there and back as part of their 35 and 50K courses. This run is basically a really nice uphill climb through redwoods on Crystal Springs trail, thean along the Skyline on Skyline Trail, through more redwoods, crossing Kings Mountain Road and following the ridge to Wunderlich. From there, it is 5 miles, all downhill. Looking at the map, estimated 13-14 miles. This is more than I have ever run since the 2010 Kauai Half, but with couple of recent runs around 10-11 miles, I thought this would be doable for me, especially with the easy downhill at the end. In that, I could not have been more wrong. I enjoyed the first uphill part, really loved the remote and solitary feel of the Skyline trail (despite couple of low energy / morale points), but suffered mightily on the downhill (I forgot legs are not wheels!!!). I have never experienced this much pain on a bike, I cursed myself for this idiotic idea for the whole 5mi section. Timing worked perfectly, Marketa had to wait for me about 10 minutes. Her 13 mile run was "as usual" good, no biggie for her. I ran the longest distance so far, 14.4 mi (according to my Nike watch and maps, the Garmin gadget lost his mojo before I did and somehow shortened the mileage, see below). It is now manually edited.
So overall, between Marketa's and mine routes, we covered about 56 human powered miles of the Peninsula hills. It would be nice to do it again without the need for driving!

A little bigger slice of Coe

I am a complete Coe (Henry Coe State Park) novice: I was there on my bike just once before (Oct 2, 2011). There are probably number of riders in the Bay Area who love the place, as documented by many quite well maintained singletrack trails. Then there are the Coe-nuts who ride 10K vertical, 100mile rides and attempt to climb an equivalent of Mt. Everest in a single ride.

On my first solo ride at Coe, I realized that I will have to start taking Coe in small, carefully measured doses and really think beyond the bike ride much more than any other location (weather, water, creek levels, poison oak etc.).
Today was a day which begged for another prescribed dose: sunny, bright, chilly, three days before the rains were supposed to come, and most of all, a friend willing to explore new trails.

Pavel and I started the ride at the park headquarters, enjoyed the nice flat Flat Frog (duh!) singletrack and braved the exposed and sketchy downhill on Middle Ridge.

The remains of controlled burns and many downed trees (but all removed by rangers or trail volunteers) made this trail look quite a bit different from what I remembered. After reaching the creek, we tried to avoid my last ride's mistake of following the creekside "trail" and decided to extend the loop to Jackass Ridge and Los Cruzeros. From there, we climbed the Lost Spring singletrack and descended the wide grin-inducing China Hole singletrack. But this three mile extension cost us dearly in leg power, because it added about 1500 vertical feet.

The final climb up from China Hole to Manzanita ridge was painful, despite the great views. Coe hurts, for sure. There is no other cure than a repeated, preferably larger dose (5, 6K vertical?). Let's hope for a nice dose response. Oh, as far as the popularity of Coe, we saw one other rider today in 4 hrs. Garmin track here.