Saturday, February 17, 2007

Sunny Santa Barbara Saturday!

This post has nothing to do with the title, other than it is 82 degrees outside without a cloud anywhere to be seen. Mostly I just like using alliterations with the day of the week...


Carnac the Magnificent???


What do the following nine people have in common?

Cody O'Reilly, Tom Anhalt, Lindsay Blount, Craig Zimmerman, Aram Dellalian, Michael Johnson, Steve Strickler, Ivan Dominguez, and Ken Hansen.

The've all been mentioned on the pages of this blog and subsequently gone on to win a race in the first few weeks of the 2007 bike-racing season!

Who will be next???




Pro Team Spotting

In the last two months, riders from all the following teams spent at least some time riding the roads of Santa Barbara:

Discovery Channel, Credit Agricole, Gerolsteiner, Healthnet, Slipstream/Chipotle, and BMC. Last year we also had CSC, but this year they're up in NorCal before the ToC.

Pretty cool, eh!?


Aching Erker

Send positive thoughts about healing up toward Portland where Jake's been struggling with a knee problem that has kept him off the bike for nearly a month! I suggested he try running, which would either: (A) balance out his leg muscles and pull everything back in order; or (B) give him so many new aches and pains that he won't even notice the knee trouble.


TT Torture

I swear it seems like I go slower on my TT bike than on my road bike. Is that possible? Will spending enough time on the thing help? Is my position just terrible? Or, most likely of all, is it a huge mental weakness?

This is my current position:


Please let me know if something looks horribly wrong!

Pine Flat RR

Heading out the door now to meet up with a motley crew heading over to Fresno for the Pine Flat RR. It would have been nice to hit Cantua Creek RR on the way, but the logistics just didn't seem sensible. Choices were, leave SB at 3:30 in the AM, or spend the night in Coalinga.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK..first off. How'd Pine Flat go?

Second, I've got LOTS of suggestions for the TT position.

1. Why is your seat so damned forward? You've got one of the lowest positions in your normal road "drops" position I've seen. Why not start there? Start with your road seat position and THEN set your bars. Go ride hard and see what it *feels* like you should do with your seat.

2. Get an aero helmet. You can borrow my LG Chrono if you'd like. Studies have shown that an aero helmet can save as much time (or more) as putting on a deep front and a disc.

3. Your forearms shouldn't be angled down. They should be either level or just *slightly* angled up.

4. Are you worried about UCI requirements? If not, we could do some things with your arms. In fact, I'd bet you could come up and forward with your arms quite a bit and still be within the UCI 75cm limit. The advantage of doing that is it allows you to "shrug" easier and tuck your head below the top of your back. A lot of aero positioning is reducing frontal area.

I can show you some interesting pics from my experiments last year that would illustrate some of what I'm talking about above.

Give me free rein and we'll do the Marco Fanelli aero makeover...of course, then you'll start kicking my ass on the TT (which you should anyway) ;-)

Marco Fanelli said...

Thanks Tom! I will most definitely take advantage of any help you want to offer. I must admit that my current position is somewhat due to the equipment I have available (i.e., a particular stem length/drop, etc.) as opposed to any careful analysis! I like your idea of starting with the road seat position, and then trying to get the front end to accommodate that. I'll do a bit of tweaking before tomorrow's ride, and then pick your brain some more...