12 Hour preview

Last weekend was the June edition of the 12 Hours of Temecula. A race report is on the way, but here's some background.

The 12 Hour format asks a simple question: How many laps of a short (~1 hr) course can you complete in 12 hours? The competition is broken into solo (aka hardcore or insane) riders and teams of 2, 3, 4, or 5 riders. Mike and I compete in the 2 person open category as Team Sherpa Dog. We usually trade off every other lap, ie, one of us rides a single lap and then the other person goes out. During our off time, Diana cleans up the bike, gets us fed, and makes sure we're back at the transition zone on time for the next exchange.

The 2 person category is both interesting and horrible.

race bike: arrival and setup

The RIP9 has been a good bike for exploring world of xc and enduro races. But it's a lot of bike for most of those courses, and I got interested in having a light, hardtail, 29er. After considering a few options, I settled on the Motobecane Team Fly29er: <24 lbs, titanium frame, Reba Race fork (100mm), and quality components (full specs). It's available as direct order only, which is a little nerve-wracking but an incredible deal.

I swapped a few things:

• Thompson seatpost for OEM Ritchey post (too short)
• 90mm FSA stem for OEM 115mm Ritchey stem
• QR seatpost clamp for stock non-QR clamp
• FSA SL-K bar (660mm wide carbon bar w/ slight rise) for OEM 570mm wide Al Ritchey bar - ridiculously narrow, I think my road bars are wider.
• Stans wheelset (front: 355 Race w/ AC hub, rear: Flow w/ Hadley hub) from OEM Vuelta wheelset

The bike arrived just after we left for a long weekend out of town (a neighbor accepted delivery). Oh, the waiting.... The bike was well packed and arrived in good shape. The welds were neat.

Though well packed and fully assembled, it needed some work. The cranks, BB, and steerer had not been greased. Mike tuned it up:

As equipped (for now):

Cancellara vindicated by video analysis

If you watched any of the spring classics this year, you saw incredible performances by Fabian Cancellara, including a few stunning attacks. Apparently there has been speculation that he used some sort of seat post-embedded electric motor.

Were Cancellara's decisive accelerations even humanly possible? How much power did he generate when he hammered the field at Paris-Roubaix?

Physics to the rescue! (Don't get to say that often enough.) The link takes you to an excellent post at Cozy Beehive where video analysis is used to determine Cancellara's speed, acceleration, and power output. There's also a clip of the race in case you missed it. For the sort attention set: the analysis suggests his move required over 1000 Watts during the attack. Humanly possible, but incredible.