July 22 - SCCA Autocross

10.5 Hrs and the TDF...

Great looking full moon this past Saturday evening...


Training: Last week I ended up with about 10.5 hours, 1 Wed, 2 Thurs, 1 Fri, 4 Sat and 2.5 Sunday. With the last 2.5 being the best since I almost got the position figured out on my 650 Optimo...

After getting beat to death on Thursday (and having no d@mn good reason why!!!), I finally figured out on Friday and Saturday and Sunday, that my seat was too high and too far forward. Absolutely no good for climbing and just terrible for the "boys." So painful, it was, that can you imagine clamping your b@lls between two pieces of wood and trying to sleep at nite???

By Sunday though...things (power and sleep) seem to be getting back to normal...

TDF: Today it's Mayo...tomorrow...CONTADOR?????
What a "maybe" sham!!!!! The latest word is that Contador may be implicated in the same controversy that took out Tyler and Ulrich and all those other rider linked to "Operación Puerto." How much can the sport take?

Cantador is a young guy and hopefully he's not involved, but, the initials "A.C." have been popping up in the investigations...

Climbing w/ Cambio Gang Pt. 2

What a difference a week makes...

After probably this year's best climbing session last week...I got totally trashed today by Tino, and David and Mark and the rest of the Cambio gang. Even with my new "650 secret weapon" (more on that later)...I still couldn't keep up with those guys. And Mark was really dishing it out today as my legs feel pretty blasted out now...

Well of course, I can't blame the new weapon...so...it MUST have been the positioning as I still have not got the position dialed 100% yet like my Look. I lowered the seat a little and it felt a little better.

Then at times...it felt like my brakes were rubbing - I even loosened my brakes up to make sure. Or...maybe suffering in that hot office last week finally caught up with me this week...who the hell knows!!! I guess if I had my power meter...yada yada yada...

Since I'm training old school style...I just gotta keep the faith...I'll feel better this weekend...

TDF - 2007

Wow!!!

Things have been dropping at this year's Tour and it ain't Marble Man's jewels!!!

After all that excitement with Vino's mountian stage win, and the heavy weight bout between Discover and Rasmussen last night and the night before...talk about popping all the fans' bubbles. With the parity in this year's tour, you would think that all the riders were "clean," HA...FAT CHANCE!!!

What a bummer for all the riders in contention.....if Rabobank was going to pull Rasmussen for missing those pre-race tests, they should have done it BEFORE the start of the race.

Talk about BULL...I think that if anyone is caught doping, they should be banned for life. That would be the only way to clean up cycling and all other professional sports!!!

Wet Climbing With The Cambio Gang...

Getting out of the hot office and onto the WET roads this afternoon was a great way to work off all the stress from that sweat box office...

I'm trying to get in as much ride time this week...since I have an autocross on Sunday...

This past Tuesday I did 2+ hours (was totally shot from the weekends 7 hours) and yesterday I did 1 hour (felt little better).

Today I did a HARD and WET 2 hour climing ride with 6 of the Cambio gang. First up was Halawa Heights which I probably haven't climbed in 2 years or so, then next was the longer and steeper and harder Aiea Heights which I probably haven't climbed in 10 years or so. Both were really hard...

Then for good measure, we pretty much drilled it all the way back to lagoon and did 2 laps for good measure...hard again...

So now I've got 5 hours.....and planning to get in more this weekend prior to Sundays car race...

クール ビズ Cool Biz Hawaiian Style!!!

90 Degreeeesss....in the shade.......
Toooo Hot....in the shade.....






In Japan, they have a yearly program in the summer called Cool Biz to help reduce electricity costs during the summer. From what I've heard, this mainly means turning down the AC and not wearing suits.



Well...this past Tuesday, at Kapolei Hale, the City implemented a new program called Broke Biz (ブローク　ビズ). What this consisted of is a BROKEN AC unit, a building with NO WINDOWS, and a so far...3 days hotter than hell!!! with more to come tomorrow...



Ways to keep cool in a building NOT designed to have NO AC:

• Use a hand fan.
• Buy electric fans for almost everyone.
• Open every door in the building to the outside.
• Turn off all the lights.

• Buy popsicles for everyone.
• Buy 7-eleven slurpees.
• Wear short pants.
• Wear tee-shirts.
• Wear tank tops.
• Wear slippers.
• Then today, I even went so far to buy 6 blocks of ice!!!!!

Here's one of the blocks doing its thing...

This is my block after a couple of hours...

92 Degrees @ 3:30pm with one hour to go...only a pan of luke warm water...

:-(

11hr Week and Watching the Tour

Riding: This was the biggest riding week for me this whole year...I think. Sans powertap, I haven't been logging my rides on the computer like I used too. I think I did about 11 hours this week with the longer rides being 2hrs on Thursday, 4hrs yesterday, and 3hrs today.

And getting in that 4hrs in yesterday's weather meant that I had to ride on some wet and dirty roads on Tantalus...so, I decided to rewarded myself with this super tasty Sizziling Fajita at Chili's in Waikele:


STEAK AND PORTOBELLO SIZZILING FAJITA: Tender, juicy grilled steak basted with chimichurri (cilantro, garlic & lime) sauce and topped with a grilled, marinated Portobello mushroom and pico de gallo. Served sizzling with onions and bell peppers.$18.99


TDF - I've also been following pretty much every stage to the 2007 TDF. Today's stage must have been super hard...I heard that there was a huge surge in the peleton after the lead riders got sight of this crazed fan's backside...thank goodness he wasn't running backwards with that "marblebag" else I'm sure he would have caused a crash...

2007 TDF - SWIFT SWISS and an AUSTRALIAN BAD A$S

Man...talk about EXCITING!!!

This weekend I had a chance to watch the Prologue and the 1st Stage of the 2007 Tour de France.

On Saturday CSC rider Fabian Cancellara blistered the prologue on a Cervelo P3C. Watching how he ripped the course, you could see that he was on a different level from the other riders. Since I have a Cervelo P2C...although not a P3C...it's nice to know that the Cervelo has some awesome pedigree.

On Sunday Robbie McEwen of Predictor-Lotto won an unbelievable sprint after being dropped from the main field due to a crash...just as the main field was cranking it up in the final 20k. I mean...to win a field sprint in the TDF is awesome in itself...but to chase back after a crash, and then make it to the front of 180 riders...and then to smoke the worlds best sprinters.....man...you gotta be a BAD BAD A$S!!! If you saw McEwen's sprint from the overhead, it looked like he was shot out of a slingshot as left everyone in his dust...no man had even a remote chance of beating him yesterday...

Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen were once again EXTRAORDINAIRE and MAGNIFICENT in their call of these two races. Watching the replay at night with Al Traurtwig and Bob Roll is just soooo painful. OLN/Versus...get with it and get rid of these boneheads...no wonder cycling is not popular in the USA...with these bananas commentating!

July 7th Autocross and MaxQdata Logger

Last Sunday was the 2nd race of Oahu's 2007 Autocross season and it was a virtual Miata Lovefest - with the most Miatas I've ever seen in one place. They were so many in all classes every which way you looked!!!

(thanks jon&erin for the action pics)

And...I finally got to use my MaxQdata logger "for real"...for the first time. Although it would sometimes register 40 to 60 mph without even moving...blue tooth problems???...it pretty much ran well enough to my satisfaction. Here is the plot of my final and fastest run of the day:

If you asked me what 1 lateral G felt like before, I would have no idea...but now I know. On this right hand sweeper my brother's eunos (the small red "x") was pulling almost 1 G (0.97Gs actually) steady state at almost 33mph. According to the data, the fastest speed I hit during the run was 40mph...which is surprising cause it feels a lot faster when your actually driving. The slowest speed was 22mph at 0.93Gs at the tight right hand U-turn at the bottom of the course. One some of the transitional turns, I got up to 1.05Gs, but these are not really steady state.

At almost 1G on that first right hand sweeper, the G force actually makes shifting difficult as your totally slammed against the door the second you take your hand off the steering wheel to make the 1st to 2nd shift!!!

Since the data is only logging at 5 times per second (60 hertz?), it's pretty difficult to see differences of less than 0.2 seconds...although, larger difference are very easy to see. In this plot, I overlayed my fastest run and my slowest run and this was the difference in the end:

32.945 (the blue "x") was my fastest run, versus my slowest at 34.218 (the red "x")...as you can see, I forgot to look ahead far enough ahead on the run down to the U-turn and really "altered" my line...and ran over a cone...

At the end of the day, I also did 2 fun runs in the eunos and could not better my 32.9 run...BUT, I did accomplish something I wasn't sure I could really do...I went back down to 1st gear in the bottom U-turn using the heel-toe downshift technique. I must say that doing that stuff at race speeds is MUCH easier than trying to practice at pedestrian driving speeds...I guess the synchros just don't mesh well at non-racing speeds...

During the fun runs, I also got to run my brothers 6-wagon with the data logger. With his all-season tires and stock suspension, the most Gs I could pull were 0.75 in steady state and 0.83 in the transitions, with a top speed of 36.5mph and a low speed of 20mph.

One thing good about fun runs is it gives you more seat time...and although I couldn't improve my fastest time, my brother finally got "it" on his last fun run. What he got was the looking ahead part...and he bettered his best time by over 1 second!!! Good habits to have for the next race...

RESULTS: As far as placing goes, I got dusted again by in CSP by a good 2.5 seconds by the same M3 and a MR2 that beat me last time...Results http://www.sccahawaii.org/7-1-07.pdf I'm guessing I shouldn't feel THAT bad getting beat though... since they did have the 2nd and 3rd fastest times OVERALL!!! I'll need to track how close I can get to those guys in future races...

sent to: http://www.mycarpage.blogspot.com/

Alakai - Hawaii Superferry

Alakai - Hawaii Superferry, originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

Yesterday was the 4th of July Holiday so I decided to ride over the Pali, starting very late at 3:00pm. One thing good about these types of holidays where everyone is off is that there is much less traffic than usual.

I wasn't feeling all that great so I just cruised the whole 88kms. Along the way home, I rode through Ala Moana and that place was packed like sardines...with about 40,000 people waiting for the fireworks show at night.

I also stopped to take this shot of the docked Hawaii Superferry which is suppose to start service soon between Oahu and Maui. Hopefully it will be running prior to the Cycle to the Sun race.

As you can see...it was a pretty overcast and grey looking kind of day...but the Autostich program still did a great job!