Note: I want to publicly thank everyone who supported my STP effort this year. My team, my support crew, my friends and my family. Without you guys I'd be nothing. I do plan to blog about the experience but unfortunately personal stuff is getting in the way. Oh you say "well Steve you had time to write this fine post!" - to that I say - I wrote the bulk of this post almost two weeks ago. So there.
My friend John has an interesting yet painful post talking about big guy discrimination over at his blog. Here is a snippet:
...now that I'm actually INTO cycling, I visit bike shops quite often. And every single f-ing time, I don't get any service. I mean a sales person will walk right by me, give me the obligatory "hey" nod and walk up to the guy that came in behind me and say "Can I help you with something?"
I said painful above for a reason. It is painful because I realized that it is true. I, too am a Big Guy™ and while I was reading John's post I realized that I have probably been discriminated against as well. Why did it take reading his post to realize this? Good question. See I've always been heavy (husky, big, thick... all nice was to say fat) my Mom says that when I was little I was skinny - hmmm - she also says that I had light hair at some point. I have yet to see a photographic evidence of either a skinny or a blonde baby Steve! (Love you Mom!). I have a lingering memory of buying "Husky" Toughskins jeans from Sears. I must have been 4 or 5. Yeah, seriously. Sad, huh?
Where am I going with this? Well up until I read John's post I guess I assumed that all bike shops offered crappy customer service. Really. I never once thought that it was because I was considerably larger than the average cyclist. Never crossed my mind. There are a few of reasons for this, I guess.
- I have never been skinny enough to elicit a positive customer service response from a bike shop. In other words - I have nothing to compare my poor experiences with.
- I am a very trusting guy. I just assume that if I get bad service that everyone gets bad service.
- I don't really like people much. I mean I have an awesome set of friends that I enjoy hanging out with but in general I'm anti-social. Give me a computer over a human any day! ;-) I guess subconsciously I have assumed that this is in part why I don't get good customer service at certain places (bike shops, sports stores and the like) - that I am, in some way, a bad customer from the moment I walk in the door. Hell,I may very well exude an aura of "don't talk to me. I hate people." Yet when I consider experiences at places that thrive on fat people (restaurants, ice cream shops, movie theaters, video game stores) I have to conclude that I must not be as anti-social as I think I am. I'd have to say that (on average) I receive great customer services in fat-friendly establishments.
I the past year I've ridden over 1000 miles including over a month of injuries that prevented me from riding at all. Yes I know that you hardcore cyclists ride 1000 or more per month but my point here is that I ride way more than the average Joe Sixpack. I've spent well North of $5000 on cycling products including a new bike for me, a new bike for my son Derek, a trailer for Zoe and many, many extras. I have over $3000 worth of cycling purchases in the budget over the next six months. 
I am still big at 260 pounds. You might even say HUGE by cyclist standards but damnit - I ride and I spend a lot of money! Treat me with respect! I'll never be freakishly skinny like Michael Rasmussen (pictured at right). I don't want to be that skinny. Rasmussen is just gross... but I guess that's what it takes to win the Polka Dot Jersey in the TdF (as I write this he is wearing the Maillot Jaune in the 2007 TdF) and win the Mountain Bike World Championship.
I have one final rant about cycling and Big Guy Discrimination. Cycling Jerseys. Yeah - you big guys know what I'm talking about. Apparently cycling jerseys are made for Rasmussen-like, freakishly skinny, 98-pound weaklings who probably starve themselves and have never lifted anything heavier than their 11 pound bikes. Sure Rasmussen has all the glory, fame, money and hot women but I'm guessing I could curl the guy! Yes I could stand to lose 40 pounds but at 220 I'll probably still wear a 3X cycling jersey. And before you, dear reader, laugh at 260 pound body you must understand that the first place most most jerseys don't fit is around my biceps. For the record, my biceps are not fat.
I visited MapMyRide several months ago while looking for good GPS/cycling mashups. Back then I remember thinking that there was promise. I ultimately decided on Gmap Podometer for my map making needs - which is basically limited to bicycling routes. Looks like MapMyRide has gone through a major upgrade into the Web 2.0 world. Wow have they changed! Yesterday Lifehacker had a post about the new mapmyride.com so I went to take a look. I see awesome stuff just perusing the menus. Tons of promise here. MotionBased, you have a serious competitor. Competition is good! If I had one piece of advice for the MapMyRide folks - cut down on the amount of advertising. I can handle one ad or maybe two on a page but it looks like there is the potential to see four or five per page with their design. Yuk. Free is good... too many ads is bad.
What the cycling community really needs is a maps mashup using only bike paths and/or suggested bike routes (like roads with wide shoulders and/or little traffic). I've searched and could not find anything that fit this bill. I can't imagine that someone has not started (or completed) a project of this sort. Does anyone know of such an application?
Links to trail / cycling / fitness maps mashups:
- gmap-podometer.com - nothing special. You can draw a route on the map and get a few stats about it. Mapping a long ride can take 100s of clicks on a map.
- mapmyride.com (mapmytri.com, mapmyrun.com etc.) Looks like this may be the new leader based on a quick glance. As of this afternoon the site is too slow to use.
- motionbased.com (I am a paid subscriber here). Made specifically to interface with Garmin GPS devices. Some good tools. I wish they were quicker in releasing new features.
- bicycleclimbs.com - awesome site to get data on cycling climbs. The downside is that there are not that many areas serviced.
- OTHERS. These look mostly running centric. I have not used any of these:
- runningahead.com
- walkjogrun.net
- favoriterun.com
I know I didn't start out cycling with a helmet - back in the day (late 70s through most of the 80s) most kids didn't wear helmets. To make matters worse all the cool road racers just wore those little paper-fabric caps. I did, too. Of course there was the time in 8th grade where I had to spend a couple/few days in the hospital after a pretty bad crash on my BMX bike. I flew over my handlebars, down an embankment of about 10 feet and landed on my head, or so I'm told as I still have no memory of the events. I wore a helmet (full-face even!) for a couple months after that - then reverted to my bare headed state. Idiot, I was. 
Yesterday team IbuproFUN (yeah that is the name, that I love BTW, someone came up with for our STP team. It was either that or Axles of Evil. How do the creative-types do it?) was set to do a quick-paced ride from Kent to Flaming Geyser State Park and back. A ride of about 40 miles where we were targeting a 2 hour time. Yeah - time to get serious with our teamwork and pace line techniques!
Any of you who've ridden the Interurban Trail south from Kent know about the two railroad crossings. They are extremely dangerous when wet and usually a significant annoyance when dry. What makes these crossings so bad is that the trail makes an s-curve type of jog in order to cross the tracks at a manageable angle (see picture at right). This makes crossing the tracks a bit tough. I can see why the designers / engineers decided on this option versus a shallow track crossing angle. Makes sense. Sort of. I forgot to mention that there is a slight rise (or dip depending on direction) of 6 to 10 feet or so as you cross the tracks. This makes navigating the tracks at high speeds somewhat precarious. Sharp corners, railroad tracks, and a good sized drop can really screw up your day. During the past year of semi-regular riding I've often thought that when I go down with my new bike for the first time it will be at one of these crossings.
You don't have to be a genius to see where this is going. High-speed ride, a big build-up of how dangerous these track crossings are. You guess it, Einstein, one of our team members went down HARD on the second of the two crossings. The first is pictured on the right with a yellow line on the trail. I'm an artist, aren't I? Don't answer that. In Google maps there is a train crossing the second, fateful crossing, what are the odds, eh? It basically looks the same... just mirror-imaged. He was leading the pace line at about 19.5 MPH (so says my GPS data from the ride - view at MotionBased) I was fourth in line and number three had, in anticipation of the tracks, let a gap open up between her and number two. I was intently watching number two's back tire when I heard a very loud SMACK/CRUNCH. I looked up to see that number one was on the ground. No one else in the group went down. I'll always wonder if it was luck or skill that allowed the rest of the team to avoid the rider on the ground. This could have easily turned into a pile of seven bikes and riders. Easily.
At first glance he looked okay. No ass-cheek hanging out of his lycra. No blood dripping from anywhere. I was amazed - he looked almost completely unhurt. There was a minor abrasion near his right elbow. I've had worse rug burns. I was seriously dumbfounded. I knew that I had I heard a serious impact. Then we noticed that his helmet was cracked. Well maybe cracked is not the right term. Cracked does not convey the amount of damage that was done to his helmet. This is tough to explain because the helmet was actually still in the shape of a helmet but the back was was utterly destroyed. Apparently Captain Crunch (as he is now known) landed on the BACK of his head (helmet) first. You know this is a truly dangerous little section of trail when you can, while traveling forward at nearly 20 miles per hour, land on the back of your melon. I'll try to snap a picture of the helmet and post it to here when I can.
Thank science and engineering for modern helmets! I know if my 1985 paper-thin-hat wearing self ever went down like my buddy did yesterday I wouldn't be typing this right now. Guaranteed.
After a few minutes of swearing, exclaiming, head-scratching and reconnoitering we decided to push on. After all this was was our second to last team ride before the big event. A few miles down the trail it became painfully apparent that Captain Crunch (CC for short) had a concussion. He could not remember what day it was nor where we were headed (he planned the ride!) nor what had happened. We decided, as a team to ride back to our starting point and let CC go home and take it easy. My wife taxied CC home from out starting point and the rest of us continued our ride.
With CC safely at home we were able to settle back into a rhythm and the rest of the ride was a huge success. I'd like to point out that when all cylinders were firing (like from mile 35-40) were we able to manage > 20 MPH average. Way to go team! With about a mile to go Kevin decided to sprint it out and I decided to follow. We both tanked, hard. It was fun while it lasted but once back at the parking lot we both agreed that we went for it way too early. Of course I still had to ride up the hill to my house. Ouch. Here are the ride details (click the map for more from MotionBased.com):
Total Time: 3:36:21
Moving Time: 2:40:03
Distance: 42.08 miles
Moving Speed: 15.8 avg. -- 26.0 max.
Elevation Gain (ft): +1,216 / -858
I also did a nice leisurely ride with Derek and Zoe. It was an awesome way to kill time between dinner and darkness (for fireworks) on Independence Day (US). I think this will become a tradition. We rode a touch over 11 miles on the Green River Trail. Derek is a serious trooper! I'll point you to the last mile where we averaged almost 12 MPH and hit a top speed of 18 MPH all after already riding 10 miles. Oh yeah - Derek was on his mountain bike. Way to go kid! I'm impressed!
Total Time: 1:09:58
Moving Time: 1:06:28
Distance: 11.06 miles
Moving Speed: 10.0 avg. -- 23.2 max.
Elevation Gain (ft): +197 / -197
So all-in-all not a bad holiday! Almost four hours in the saddle and 53 miles ridden. I feel great today! Bring on the weekend!