Saturday, April 28, 2007

Race #11 Colavita TT #2

I'll have to wait until the official times are posted until I know what it was, but it was close to the time I had last month. Due to Scott Spees not being there I improved one place to 2nd. Won a silver medal and some pasta.

Monday update - I beat my previous time by all of 3 seconds. 30 minutes, 28 seconds.

The headwind going out was depressing and near demoralizing. I found myself in my 21 gear (lowest on the cassette, but still on the bi ring) doing 18mph at one point. Ouch! Coming back was nice and fun where I hit 34mph on one stretch with the tailwind.

It looks like next week the pain really starts as I head to Monrovia for a 40k test run. Double ouch!

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Race #10, Vandervort's Corner

Too much like every other road race this year so far. However, this was my first race with the powertap. Now I know exactly how much energy I waste (and it's a ton)

Next up is the 2nd Greenville TT of the year.

Friday, April 20, 2007

My bike


Here it is! Just installed is the new back wheel (American Classic Sprint 350), Powertap and my time trial front wheel (HED Alps).

Monday, April 16, 2007

A little different

Owning my own design service business has opened my eyes even wider than I thought they could be. Back in my heyday of being a "CAD drafter" I took pride in that my projects were done on time, with as few billable hours possible. It was a contest for a few of us old schoolers to see how few hours it would take us to complete a full set of construction drawings. Every now and then, we would have to work in someone else's drawing and 99.9% of the time it would be EXACTLY how I would have drawn it.

It seems that a shift happened in the last several years. Good drafting practices are the exception now. More often, it's up to engineers to "lower" themselves to drafter status and the end result is (usually) shoddy work. Why do Pipeworks when you can just draw it by hand, take 10x longer to do it, and have the data be "dumb", when you can just bill the client for the length of time it takes? Sorry if you don't know what my reference to Pipeworks means, it's a Land Desktop application to draw storm or sanitary pipes in a plan & profile sheet.

That's just one of many examples of what happens when people simply don't care about the work. Pride in having your drawing correct and to standard is gone. CEO's and Presidents have a misconception that a $10/hr employee will either care about his job or produce good work just to avoid paying a more experienced drafter $20/hr+. What they fail to realize is if a $10/hr clock watcher takes 10x longer to do the work, the budget goes out the window.

It seems pretty simple to me sitting over here. Is there something I'm missing?

Race #9 Deer Creek

It was windy, ok? At one point after getting dropped I was pushing as hard as I could only to see 10mph on the computer. Stupid computer!

Big ups to Alex for taking the cat 3 win!

Monday, April 2, 2007

Ohio Cup races announced


http://ohiocycling.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=12


I'm looking at the Masters 3/4/5 races as I'm certainly not ready for the 1/2/3. Hopefully this goes well for the newly formed Ohio Cycling Association.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Race #8 OVR Lynchburg

Today saw one of our guys hit the pavement hard in the 1/2/3's. Racing in the rain on a curving course with 40 people in one 12 foot lane scares me. There, I said it. I gave up. Luckily, no cramping!