Other

Looks like one of my photos made it to the final cut. Head over to Facebook and click 'like' on my photo to get the DLV on the front page of the 2012 ATRA booklet:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150539610359667&set=a.10150539...

I found a set of silver allen wrenches in a blue case. I'll bring them to pursuit night if anyone is missing a set.

This is the restaruant I was talking about:

http://www.sashimb.com/

It's about a 20 minute drive (not factoring in LA traffic) from the Home Depot Center.

Try the Crispy Rice and Spicy Tuna.

Have fun.

Chris

I've gotta say it again; what a great time I've had this season! Incredible fun and tough competition.

I want to remind all of us of the devoted group of people who were out there each week making this fun so accessible: Jeff Hopkins, Pete Antonvich, Brian Sullivan, Bill Thomsen, John Dowd, Steve Hill, Tim Gallagher, and Lee Childers. Like all of you, I want to thank all of the folks who made this happen week after week. What an extremely professional and generous group!

So once again, here’s what I propose that each of us do to acknowledge how important the DLV is to each of us and to celebrate the end of the 2011 season.

NO MATTER HOW MUCH OR HOW MODEST, TAKE ONE WEEK’S BEER MONEY, OR WHAT YOU’D SPEND AT STARBUCKS, OR SUBWAY, OR THE BIKE SHOP AND GO OVER TO THE DLV ONLINE STORE AND MAKE THAT MONEY A DONATION TO DLV!

We’ll let the BLL help one more kid and give another vote of thanks to those who worked so hard for us.

When I crashed on Sunday, my computer appears to have popped off my bike and disappeared.

If anybody found/has it, let me know. It's a white Specialized, somewhere in between turns 1 and 2.

Thanks,

Tim

Steve is still willing to do a little tubular tire info session next sprint night 6-14 if enough people are interested. Speak up if you are.

Did anyone find a 51 chainring from a Sram Omnium crankset at the track? I seem to have misplaced it during the Keirin on Saturday.

The pacelines have been relatively safe and smooth so far this year, so it's time to introduce some intermediate paceline techniques. These hold on the road and on the track, so it should be useful for everybody.

Lesson 0: Recap
These are all the things you should already know how to do/be doing:

• Ride a straight line
• Don't accelerate or decelerate (hard) when you get on the front (unless you are trying to attack/drop people)
• Don't stare at the back wheel of the rider ahead of you -- it's much better to look at their front hub
• If a gap opens, close it smoothly and gently, don't just stomp on the pedals to close it then stomp on the brakes to slow down

These are all things that should have been taught already as beginner pacelining. Be sure to master these techniques!

Lesson 1: How to Correctly Slow Down
We've all been in a paceline and either people ahead are slowing or you're going to fast and will run into the back of the person ahead of you. On the road, many riders will simply tap the brakes. They carry this onto the track and do a little leg-lock thing to slow down a little bit. These are bad bad bad practices.

The correct way to slow down in a paceline is to move out of the paceline slightly so that you are now in the wind. On the track, you move up-track gently until you are no longer in the draft and just let the extra drag slow you down, then gently drop back in.

This way, there's no accelerating/decelerating that causes problems for people behind you. It helps eliminate that yo-yo effect that gets worse as you get further back.

Lesson 2: (Almost) Always Follow the Leader
The leader isn't the person on the front of the paceline here, but the person in front of you. I qualify this with always because there are two instances when you shouldn't follow them:

Before I start, a disclaimer is in order. Everything here is based on my opinion and what I've learned. It may not be entirely correct, people like Lee can provide more information on why the body does what it does.

Introduction
At the last sprint night, somebody asked Steve how to improve the 200m time. The response was to go faster. Which is entirely correct -- to improve the time, one has to go faster. The more subtle question is how does that happen. The bottom line on going faster is to increase power (and technique, which you do just by doing more of them, and that's a subject for another post).

More Power to the Engines!
The key to going faster is to increase your power. Why? Your legs push the bike forward against the "drag." Here we will just loosely define drag as both aerodynamic in nature (which, in reality, can be split also into skin friction and separation/turbulence drag, something that is another topic) and friction with the track and bike. Without drag, you would only need power to accelerate to speed, once at speed you can hold it without any force/effort (Newton's first law).

However, because of these drag forces, the rider has to continuously apply power to the pedals. So, the more power one has, the more drag one can overcome. And the more drag one can overcome, the faster one goes.

Somehow, I managed to lose a single shoe. Think it may have escaped my car in the parking lot or jumped out of my bag in the infield.

If found, please call 404-803-2342 or email 53eleven@gmail.com

Thanks!
Chaz