People Who Have Inspired Us: Redmond Cycling Club

When I interviewed Roger Baumann for the René Herse book, he told me: “In Paris, there was this club of older riders, the Audax-Club Parisien. [...] They did great rides in the mountains [...] They were a leading light in the sport. They created many events: Paris-Brest-Paris, Flèche Vélocio…”

When I moved to Seattle in 1992, I learned of a such a club here, the Redmond Cycling Club. They did great rides in the mountains. Their motto was: “Where ‘hill’ isn’t a four-letter word.” I was racing on the university cycling team, and my teammates told me about this amazing event, the Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day (RAMROD). I entered it and tasted the great joy of riding long distances in the mountains. I also met the people behind the ride, and was taken in by their passion for the sport.

I learned that the Redmond Cycling Club organized other, even more amazing rides: Cannonball and S2S. These races went from Seattle to Spokane, non-stop, for 275 miles, which seemed like a huge distance, and a challenge too enticing to ignore. Both became annual events for me.

I enjoyed the events themselves, but even more the friendships with the riders from the Redmond Cycling Club. Arriving in Spokane after 16 mostly solitary hours on the road to the cheer of my friends, who were having a picnic at the finish line, was very special indeed. Driving back from Spokane, there were animated conversations on many topics, and we always stopped for lunch at a great restaurant they had discovered years ago. Time and again, they pointed out wonderful backroads and said: “You should explore those some day.” They had ridden on most of them.

When I wanted to ride a tandem in the cross-state races, club members lent me their personal, prized machines for several attempts. They even provided car-based support, so we could be competitive. (They were going to the finish anyhow, so as long as we were in the lead, we would have support.)

I still have a vivid memory of Pat Marek scanning the horizon of eastern Washington’s wide-open plains with his binoculars, to see how far ahead we were of other riders. As we approached, he handed us water bottles and food, then waited until he could see the next rider on the horizon. He noted how far behind they were – he had taken our time at the same spot – then drove ahead and stopped by the roadside, giving us an update on our position together with more food and water. Alas, we never managed to realize his dream of a tandem winning the cross-state races outright. Once the tandem actually did arrive first, albeit minus its stoker…

The Redmond Cycling Club also sent riders to Paris-Brest-Paris and organized the qualifying brevets every four years, long before RUSA and SIR existed. I joined the Redmond Cycling Club just as the riders from the 1995 PBP came back and received a hero’s welcome. That was the first time I heard about PBP, which was virtually unknown in the U.S. back then. Four years later, I was one of the riders who went to Paris, buoyed by the advice from the fellow club members who had gone before me.

These older riders of the Redmond Cycling Club were great mentors in my “formative” years. Their friendship and encouragement allowed me to spread my wings and start exploring cycling off the beaten path. I owe them very much, and I recall our rides together with great fondness.

RAMROD still exists (albeit not as a timed event). Cannonball and S2S are still organized by the Redmond Cycling Club every year. Click on the links for more information.

Getting Your Bike Ready for Randonneuring

A number of readers have asked about randonneuring, and more specifically, about which bike is best to get started with randonneuring.

I recommend that you gradually ease into long-distance riding, and also incrementally change your equipment as you gain more experience. You don’t need to buy brand-new equipment before riding your first brevet, nor do you want to!

With each brevet distance discussed below, I suggest making one relatively simple modification to your bike. Focus on training and on your enjoyment of the ride!

100 km Populaire: Cue Sheet Holder

For a 100 km Populaire, any bike will do. You don’t even need to be a member of Randonneurs USA or a local club. Just show up (with a bike and a helmet), and ride. One thing that will come in handy and doesn’t cost a lot is a cue sheet holder.

Having your cue sheet in front of you and easy to read at all times is the best way to avoid getting lost. It also will improve your finishing time more than any other component, because you won’t need to slow down or stop while you fumble with a sweat-soaked cue sheet (or a ziploc bag) that you retrieve from your jersey pocket.

The cue sheet holder in the photo above is part of a handlebar bag, but you can get them separately. They clip on to your handlebars and brake or shifter cables.

200 km: Luggage

Most brevets start very early, and you’ll wear layers of clothes during the morning chill. As the day warms up (hopefully!), you will want to take off layers and put them somewhere. In most cases, you’ll also need a rain jacket. I also suggest you carry the food you’ll eat during the ride, so you’ll save valuable time that you’d otherwise spend shopping.

A backpack is a poor solution for carrying weight for long distances, as it puts the load on your back. Much better to have your bike carry the weight. The easiest solution is an under-seat bag, like a Carradice. It straps onto (almost) any bike without much ado, and it’s impact on the bike’s handling is felt only when you ride out of the saddle. The main drawback is that you have to stop to access your luggage.

A handlebar bag (above) is tempting, because it combines cue sheet holder and luggage. It also keeps your luggage accessible while riding. And it does not affect your bike’s handling like a saddlebag – provided your bike’s geometry is suitable for carrying a front load. Unfortunately, most production bikes sold today have geometries that are not ideal for handlebar bags.

300 km: Tires

While most riders can “wing it” for 200 km (125 miles), a 300 km brevet represents more of a challenge. Due to the time limits, you have to maintain the same average speed as for the “200″, but for 50% longer!

This is a good time to invest in your bike’s performance (and comfort) by getting some supple, fast-rolling tires. Compared to all other changes you can make to improve your bike’s speed, reducing rolling resistance makes the biggest difference. The differences between tires are huge. A puncture-resistant “touring” tire can have more than twice the rolling resistance of a supple high-performance tire. (By contrast, a set of aero wheels reduces your wind resistance by only 2-3%.)

Tires represent a trade-off: You gain a lot in speed and comfort, but you give up a little in puncture protection. However, you can improve your puncture resistance by running wider tires (if they fit your bike). Run at lower pressures, wider tires don’t puncture as easily…

Unless you have multiple punctures during each brevet, you will save significant time with supple, fast tires. Bicycle Quarterly’s tests of tire resistance found that the slowest tires rolled a full 15-20% slower at average randonneuring speeds than the fastest ones. Where you’d go 25 km/h on the slowest tires, you’d roll at 29 km/h on the fastest, with the same power output. During a 300 km brevet, this would take more than 2 hours off your time – time you can spent resting and taking it easy if you feel like it, without worrying whether you will make the next control before the cutoff.

For the 300 km brevet, you’ll also need lights. You’ll probably only use them for a short period of time. If you don’t already have lights, I suggest borrowing a friend’s clip-on headlight and taillight. Just make sure they are fully charged! A reflective vest and ankleband should be in every cyclist’s wardrobe anyhow.

400 km: Lights

Unless you are a very speedy rider, you will spend considerable time in the dark during the 400 km brevet. By now, you’ll know whether randonneuring is something you want to pursue, and so getting a good lighting system is a sound investment. While some randonneurs still use battery-powered lights, the majority prefer generator hubs. Not only is it nice to have lights at any time, without worrying about battery run time, but the beam patterns of the best generator-powered headlights are much better than those of battery-powered lights.

You’ll need a new front wheel built up for the generator hub, which increases the cost a bit. On the plus side, the wheel can be moved to a new bike if you get a purpose-built bike for randonneuring later on. Generator hubs also retain their value if you ever decide to sell it, unlike battery-powered systems that have a limited lifetime until the batteries no longer hold a charge.

600 km: Wheels

For the 600 km brevet, reliability is key. You’ll be riding at night, and the last thing you need is a break-down miles from nowhere. As you ride more, it’s likely that your wheels are nearing the end of their service life. A good set of hand-built wheels features more even spoke tension and proper stress relieving. This keeps them true much longer, and avoids breaking spokes – something that is almost inevitable on machine-built wheels.

If you live in a rainy climate, fenders also are a good idea. Riding with a wet behind all day is bad enough. Add to that the cold temperatures you are likely to encounter at night, and it takes most of the fun out of randonneuring.

1200 km: Handlebars

Having completed a 600 km brevet, you are becoming a seasoned randonneur. Now is the time to focus on preventing overuse injuries and improving your comfort on the bike. One key part are your handlebars. Many riders experience numb hands during long rides. Don’t ignore this – it’s a sign of nerve damage that may become irreversible.

Your hands don’t need to suffer on the bike. In a previous post, I talked about how to prevent numb hands. Handlebar shapes are crucial. Your bars should support your hands well and not put pressure on your nerves. Getting new handlebars is most likely the biggest change you can make to improve your long-distance comfort.

Year 2 or 3: New Bike?

Once you have been riding long distances for a season or two, you’ll know the limitations of your existing bike, and you’ll have a good idea what you really want in a randonneur bike.

Step back and assess the situation. Is it worth spending money trying to improve your existing bike by, for example, adding a front rack and handlebar bag? Maybe re-rake the fork to make the front-end geometry optimized for a front load? Convert the bike to 650B so you can run wider tires? It all can be done, but it also might make sense to start over, and get a purpose-built randonneur bike that is optimized in every way, including frame geometry, tubing choices, tire size, racks, etc.

If you chose to get a new bike, by now you’ll know what you want in a bike. You’ll have optimized the fit of your current bike and thus have a good starting point so that the new bike fits you well. In any case, you’ll have enjoyed a few seasons of wonderful riding without breaking the bank!

For more information on randonneur brevets near you, check out the Randonneurs USA web site.

Grant Petersen’s Review of the Rene Herse Book

When somebody says nice things about your work, it’s always a good feeling. When that person is a mentor who has been a great influence, it’s even more meaningful. So when Grant Petersen reviewed our new book so positively and insightfully, it really made my day. It is great that he liked the book, but I am even more honored that he understood the idea behind it, and that he thinks we have achieved what we set out to do. Thank you, Grant!

You’ll also want to read his blug to hear his unique voice and enjoy his sense of humor: Read the review here…

Fake Metal vs. Honest Plastic

Few taillights available today complement the aesthetics of a classic randonneur bike, where you want to see finely detailed components, typically in metal. Most modern lights are chunky black plastic, but one succeeds in being more understated: Busch & Müller’s Seculite Plus (above). So Compass Bicycles decided to sell that light.

The Seculite Plus is made from plastic. It is available in three finishes: The basic version is black plastic (above left). The “matte silver” finish retains the pebbly surface of the basic black version, but it appears to be coated with aluminum. The “polished silver” version is somewhat shinier (above right).

When ordering a light, it is easy to assume that the “polished silver” version would be a good fit for a classic bike. After all, racks usually are chrome-plated, and aluminum fenders are polished. However, I find the “polished silver” version the least appealing of them all. I don’t like it when manufacturers try to make plastic look like metal, and it is not always a success.

If I were to choose one of these lights, I would pick the basic black version. It’s honest about what it is: a plastic light. The “matte silver” color looks acceptable, too, and would be my second choice. In any case, we’ve stopped selling the “polished silver” version.

We would welcome a new product, if someone would make it: a nice, well-made generator-powered taillight.

Pricing a Book

In the past few weeks, we have received many e-mails from readers of our new René Herse book. All messages were positive. Many readers wrote that the book greatly exceeded their expectations.

I appreciate the feedback, and I am delighted that our readers are so happy. After all, few people take the time to write about something they buy, so when you get dozens of e-mails with only a couple of hundred books sold, it’s a good sign.

Readers love the wonderful photos and stories. The René Herse archives are amazing – I was blown away as well when I first saw them. But something inside me still wonders why the book exceeded so many people’s expectations. What did they expect, if not an amazing book? Perhaps the answer lies in the price: $86 is a lot of money in absolute terms, but it’s very little for a book like this.

Book pricing is a tricky thing, because when the book gets printed, you pay mostly for the setup fee. After that, it costs less and less to keep the presses running longer to print a higher quantity, thus lowering the per-unit cost.

This gives publishers two choices: You can print a lot of books, so you are able to sell them at a low price. The downside is that you need to sell many books to break even on the project. For specialized titles, it’s safer to print very few and sell them at a much higher price. After all, you know that some readers will buy the book almost at any price, and that way, you will break even once you have sold only a few hundred books.

As an example, take a beautiful book on the early days of Porsche published last year (top of this post). Many books have been published about Porsche, but this isn’t your standard, casual overview. It is a carefully researched book by one of the best authors in the field. It includes specially commissioned studio photos. With 356 pages in a format of 10.5 inches square, it’s almost as big as our René Herse book. The publisher priced the book at $ 120. The first printing is already sold out, barely three months after it appeared. This indicates that the publisher underestimated the interest in this topic, but it also means that they already have recovered their investment.

I have more than a passing interest in car design and history, even if I rarely drive a car. I am tempted by this book, since the Porsche/Cisitalia/Dusio Bicycles connection has intrigued me for a long time. But $ 120 makes me hesitate. At 2/3 that price, I would have bought the book as soon as it came out.

Above is another “specialized” title about the Group B rally cars of the 1980s. It’s a lavish book, 1000 pages in two volumes, written and published by the expert on the subject, photographer Reinhard Klein. The price? 995 Euros. That’s a little over $1300. No wonder the book is limited to 500 copies. Perhaps more surprisingly, over 400 already have been sold. Good for Mr. Klein, but too bad for me, who cannot afford his book.

René Herse could be considered a “specialized” topic as well. The average cyclist doesn’t recognize the name, and our book never will become a blockbuster. On the other hand, there are quite a few fervent fans of the “Magician of Levallois.” For them, the book would be a “must-have” at almost any price. Unlike Porsche or rally cars, there isn’t anything else published on the subject. If there ever was a title that lent itself to a high price, this is it.

So why didn’t we price the book high? The reason for keeping our books affordable is simple: The story of René Herse and his riders is so wonderful that I want to share it with as many people as possible. The very reasonably price of René Herse allows the book to have an impact far beyond the collectors and connoisseurs. That way, it can inspire current and future generations of cyclists. That is my passion and true goal for writing these books.

For true aficionados, we offer the “Limited Edition” with a beautiful slipcase and four  ready-to-frame art prints of unpublished photos from the René Herse archives.

Click here for more information about either edition of the René Herse book.

Grand Bois Extra Leger in All-Black

The black Cyprès Extra Léger 700C x 32 mm tires are in stock now.

Our first run of 700C x 32 mm Grand Bois Cyprès Extra Léger tires sold out within a month. The reason is not just higher-than-anticipated demand, but lower-than-ordered deliveries. The super-supple casings of the Extra Léger tires are difficult to make, and even more difficult to work into tires. When Panaracer made the Extra Léger tires for Grand Bois, the reject rate was higher than anticipated, and they couldn’t make as many tires as ordered…

The tan casing was made specially for Grand Bois, so they couldn’t just make more. However, Panaracer uses a black version of the same casing in their professional-grade tubular tires. We asked whether we could get more Extra Léger 700C x 32 mm tires with that all-black casing. While I understand Grand Bois’ preference for tan sidewalls (which also make it easier to find the causes of punctures on the inside of the tire), I do find the all-black quite attractive as well.

One question with a tire that light and supple is how durable it will be. The tread is the same material and thickness as that of the standard Grand Bois tires, so it should last as well. I have ridden a set of 700C prototypes for a year now, with no problems, and not even a flat tire. Flat tires are rare and random, so it’s impossible to say whether these tires are more or less flat-resistant than the standard model.

What is immediately obvious is the improved ride. I didn’t think that the standard Grand Bois tires could be greatly improved – they already were the nicest tires you could find. However, the Extra Léger model takes it a big step further: The pavement buzz disappears almost completely, and even expansion joints between concrete road panels are hardly noticeable any longer. The great ride of the 700C x 32 mm Cyprès Extra Léger had me even wonder whether there was any advantage to using 42 mm-wide 650B tires, until I rode my bike with the Hetre Extra Lègers again. They provided the magical feeling that you sometimes get when you find a road that just has been repaved, and is as smooth as a pool table – yet I was riding on Seattle’s crumbling streets as usual.

Click here for more information on the Grand Bois Extra Léger tires.

Laws of Physics

In the last issue of Bicycle Quarterly, we compared the performance of a 17-pound titanium racing bike and of a 26-pound steel randonneur bike. We were surprised when both bikes climbed at the same speed in a set of controlled experiments. Others shared our surprise, but added: “That cannot be true. Physics require that the heavier bike climbs slower.”

Having ridden the bikes myself, I know that their performance was evenly matched. And as a scientist, I also know that this result does not contradict the laws of physics.

Our critics assume a constant power output. If we always put out 600 Watts during these climbs, then any added weight will slow us down, all other things being equal. And an extra 9 pounds is significant enough that it should be measurable. There is little disagreement on this.

And yet the two bikes did climb at the same speed, despite their different weights. It’s clear then that our power output was not constant. On one bike, we were able to put out slightly more power than on the other – just enough extra power to equalize the weight handicap.

It should not come as a surprise that one frame performed better than another. We documented the same effect in Bicycle Quarterly’s double-blind test of frame stiffness. There, we sprinted up a hill five times, side-by-side, on two bikes. The frames had different frame tubes, but otherwise, the bikes were identical. They even weighed the same.

We switched bikes after each run. We used a PowerTap to measure power output without the rider being able to see the numbers. We found that one frame consistently was faster than the other – no matter who rode it. It wasn’t for lack of trying – as most racers know, nothing makes you ride harder than another rider pulling away.

When we downloaded the numbers from the power meter, we found that our power output was higher on the faster frame – not just a little bit, but about 5% for Mark, and 2% for me. And these were relatively similar frames, both made from lightweight, standard-diameter steel tubing.

Why did we put out more power on some frames than on others? In the above-mentioned double-blind test, we found that frame stiffness and how the frame works with our pedal strokes influences our power output. Here is how we think this works: There are different factors that limit our power output on a bike. Our hearts beat at their maximum, we are gasping for air, our legs start burning…

Our absolute maximum probably is determined by our maximum heart rate. As anybody who has trained with a heart rate monitor knows, it often is impossible to reach one’s maximum heart rate. (I used to reach ultra-high heart rates during runs that I could not achieve on my bike.)

Why can’t we always reach our maximum heart rate? The limiting factor is our muscles. If the muscles aren’t able to use the oxygen our heart pumps to them, then there is no use for our hearts to beat faster. And if one bike frame leads to more rapid muscle fatigue than the other, then our power output will be lower on that frame. (In running, I may use more muscle groups, so the cumulative oxygen use is higher, hence the higher heart rate.)

This straightforward explanation does not require invalidating the laws of physics. The simple fact is that the human body is a complex machine, and doesn’t have a constant power output.

Most cyclists have experienced inexpensive bikes that simply were “dogs” and did not perform well. We often try to explain that lack of performance with extra weight or other factors, but these bikes don’t perform well even on the flats, so one has to look for other reasons. And most of these inexpensive bikes have heavy, stiff frames that may fatigue our muscles prematurely.

Now none of the titanium bikes we tested for the Winter 2012 issue of Bicycle Quarterly were “dogs.”  They all offered awesome performance and were great fun to ride, but even near the absolute top, there were some slight, but noticeable differences in how these bikes performed for us.

Further reading:

• Double-blind test of frame stiffness, with power output measurements. Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 7, No. 4.
• Bike Tests: Titanium Racing Bikes: Lynskey Helix; Seven Axiom SL. Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 11, No. 2.