Strava lament

My KOM up Dyer's Pass on the South Island of New Zealand was crushed "yesterday"... I put "yesterday" in quotes because it's hard to figure out precisely what it means that many time zones away, especially with the date line:

The horror... the horror...

With my light bike, with fresher legs, with a better warm-up, I know I could have gone faster. But a full minute faster? Or rather -- 61 seconds faster?

That's the way Strava is. With exponentially increasing user base, records don't usually last long. In the San Francisco Bay area, things are hitting the linear growth regime, but elsewhere, the market penetration is still much smaller. Every week, more people are going to be posting rides, more climbs are going to be ridden hard, and KOMs come and all-to-quickly go.

I'd love to go back -- it was a great trip, and I miss the great riding there, even if I am appreciating with renewed freshness the riding here in the San Francisco area where I live and ride.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post-Election Day

Image
Well, The People have spoken. Smart Voter has some really nice results listings. A few comments on proposition results : 13 passed. I suspect a lot of remods are now going to be classified as "earthquake safety upgrades". Seems like an accounting nightmare. Oh, well. 14 passed. There is hope for the Republican Party! This may be the end of the socially radical wing of the "conservatives" (cough!). Katherine Roberts has pointed out there's nothing conservative about the right-wing. Moderate Republicans, like Tom Campbell (who polled ahead of Carly Fiorina only among "liberal" Republicans in California, but would have gotten my vote as a Democrat) will have a chance. And fiscally irresponsible Democrats like Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi will face more competition. All good. But that in the primary that each voter gets only one vote brings up some interesting game theory questions. For example, consider the Senate race. Suppose I support
Read more

Proposed update to the 1-second gap rule: 3-second gap

It's been a long time since I've done a post here, mainly because I've been working from home a lot, and the loss of my mind-numbing Caltrain commute means loss of blogging time. But I'm compelled to break the silence, at least briefly, to propose a change to the UCI cycling rules... Here's a video of the final km of stage 4 of the Tour Down Under this year . It was a twisty-curvy run to the finish, riders strung out in a single line, the sprinters and "puncheurs" at the front, the climbers drifting further back. Results are on CyclingNews . You can't directly see it from the video but Richie Port (BMC) let a gap open in front of him, that gap according to the finish line timing exceeding the 1 second threshold of the UCI rules (general regulations) : 1.2.107 When several riders finish in a group, all riders in the same groupe shall be credited with the same time. If there is a difference of one second or more between the back of the back wheel o
Read more

Marin Avenue (Berkeley)

Image
On Saturday, I got an email from Tim telling letting me know that Murphy's Spring Classics was going to start up Marin Ave. I'd missed that. Murphy announces his courses the day before, and indeed it was already well into the night before when the course announcement went out. I'd skipped over the details, jumping straight to middle and end games. Marin? I laughed at the irony, because not long before when he'd told me he was choosing to repeat the Nifty Twn Fifty which we'd done together last year versus selecting Murphy Mack's Stage Mullett two-day, I responded I didn't think I had it in me to ride Marin Ave two years in succession. Well, so much for that. I was committed, so I went downstairs to swap my 11-26 cassette for my Recon 12-27. The name is easily overlooked: "Marin Ave" fails to strike the same impression as, for example, "Redwood Gulch" or "China Grade". But among those in the know, Marin Ave is infamous i
Read more