kleinboogie

I wasn't sure but I've tried youtube's stabilization and it does a strange warping and cropping/zooming. It gave my videos a surreal look to it. Still an awesome video.

kleinboogie

I had a lot of trouble getting the contours stable and not be in the way. I ended up with a car window mount but it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Contour as a company went away but is back. What they do to take on gopro remains to be seen. K-edge mounts are the best. I use the bar and saddle mounts and I'll probably try the others. Great company. Gopro support on the other hand needs some work. Apparently they're here in San Diego to. Cheers

kleinboogie

Great play by play from Bahati at Brentwood.

rm -rf

Yeah, very interesting commentary.

Here's the final 15 seconds (of the uh, 2010 race...oops "Uploaded on Aug 8, 2010")

globecanvas

That's the last few seconds of the 2010 race... which was a lot sunnier than this year

kleinboogie

You racing tomorrow? I'll be there but I'm looking at covering 7 races. I may be using a tripod and remote by the end of the day. GL

UmneyDurak

Another 11th place. Leaving a wheel of a guy in pink socks was a HUGE mistake. I know he is strong, and he ended up leading the field to final sprint. Any pointers would be appreciated. Thx.

On final sprint my legs felt numb. This is not the first time this happened. Anyone else experience it? After passing a person a head of me I sat up, and missed top ten. oops.

mattm

seems like you were going backwards thru the field way too much, especially in corners. coming out of a lot of corners guys were pulling away from you consistently, that's something i would fix.

in a crit there needs to be a constant fight to move up - either pass guys or get passed.

and I wouldn't worry about following "the right wheel" or not, you should be able to move into position without relying on any one rider.

decent placing tho for how far back you were that last lap!

UmneyDurak

Well there was a crash. I took inside line as usual. Pure luck really.

I am not sure why I am loosing places going out of the corners. I want to say not enough snap in acceleration, although maybe I am just to hesitant to put more effort in to it. Will need to pay attention in next race.

So should I have I tried to move up at 2:05 mark? Looks like right after I got swamped and lost bunch of places by people moving up on the right.

mattm

Yeah if you're that far back in the pack, you need to really jump out of every corner in order to maintain position - this is one of the many bad things about the accordion effect. If you were further up in the field, the surging out of every corner is less.

As for moving up at 2:05 yes, but also before and after that - really the whole time. In order to stay up front, you need to be constantly passing people. Instead of sitting in the same spot in the pack at about 2:05, you should move around people on the straights.

Nobody is going to win a race from 20th wheel, so coming into the last few laps you need to be top 5 or so (and fighting to keep that spot). Not just coming out of the last corner but it helps a ton if you're already in the right spot when people start thinking "ok time to move up".

Also I wouldn't get too obsessed about the inside line. Sometimes there will be people in the way there and you should find a better line through.

hack

One of the things that helped me dictate my own races was to stop focusing on one wheel in particular, as matt said above. If you're working with a teammate, have a plan, and are on their wheel, then focus on that. Otherwise, I feel my results improved dramatically when I raced my own race. I would use good wheels as they became available to move up in the pack, get through a corner, or even to get led out. However, once I stopped focusing on trying to stick on a wheel for an extended duration, things got better and I felt more in control.

carpediemracing 

I agree about riding to win rather than riding to mark a wheel. In a number of races I rode to mark wheels but ended up screwing things up because I didn't make a move I normally would have if I'd been "just racing". Good wheels might be good in terms of moving up - meaning it's something like you're 20 back and you want to move up and you see a good wheel to sit on when he goes.

The other problem with a good wheel is you need to be better than that wheel, unless it's someone that is resigned to just leading out the race. To beat a Kittel or Cavendish you don't want to sit on their wheel, you need to go earlier than when they go, or you need to be better at doing what they do.

jsutkeepspining

I've always held the same advice for riders. Being in the front of the race for the first 2/3 of a crit rarely helps anything. if you can't move up in less than 4 laps (without burning many matches. you can move up in 1 if you really hit it), you're not strong enough to just sit on the front all day. Even in big fast crits moving up isn't impossible. At grandview (think we were at 28.xx mph average before the crash) i was always moving around the field. Moving up when i felt it was important, and moving back when i wanted to recover. However, it's important to be very far forward in the last lap. If i'm sitting 50th in the last lap no amount of jump could save me. 10th, i'll probbaly get 5-3rd. 5th, 3-1. 3rd wheel? a win.

Also umney, you seem to always dive into the corner, and break hard. This causes you to come out of the corner with both a slower speed and a big gap to the next wheel. Best option is to either stick to the wheel infront like glue (inches behind in a corner), so you can just do a minor jump to regain speed, or to let a small gap go, take the corner faster without the breaks, and reintegrate. If you do either option, you can also sling shot up a couple of spots every corner. Quit trying to be the inside line, that's how you get cut off and chopped in the middle of the pack (front 10 places is a bit different, but when you're 4 wide, inside isn't really the best option).

UmneyDurak

Thanks for replies everyone. Usually I don't concentrate on the wheel, but I know he was strong so figured he can tow me to the front.

Hmm, from my recollection I was hardly using brakes. A light application after the turn in, but I don't recall braking hard. Although adrenaline and whatnot, so recollection might be wrong. Looking at turn 1:25 I think I was actually carrying more speed through that turn then a guy to the left. He had to get out of the saddle to get a head of me after the turn.
Which corners did you see it at?

I ended up so far back not by choice. I was in top 6ish, then people started swarming around and I gradually lost spaces. Not sure how could have gained them back. Just get in to the wind and sprint? We were going at a pretty good clip at that point. Looking at that video where could I have moved up? Like I did at 0:35 (I wasn't sprinting at that point, but as an example).

hack

My super novice thoughts. ~2:05-2:10 is where you really lost it. That should be a bit of a tailwind section and you guys were starting to bunch up. COULD have been a good opportunity for you to jump around the bunched group and back into the singlefile section. The next time around ~3:10-3:15 you've already fallen off and the pace had picked up to where most were strung out and it'd be tougher to get back in to place. Notice that as you're going around the short legs of the course the guys are already making the next turn before your coming out of yours. Way too far back.

If you jumped around at 2:05 or so, then you basically have to fight like mad to hold your position through the finish.

shovelhd

In order to do what Jsut suggests, which I strongly agree with, you need to learn two skills. One, how to advance in the field from the inside, not on the edges. Two, how to defend your wheel at the front so you don't end up going backwards when it counts.

UmneyDurak

Yep you are right. Thank you for analysis. In retrospect looking at the video it is so obvious. I need to learn to read it during a race, and not the brain go blank(ish).

Thank you for clarifying. Any tips on both?

shovelhd

They have been discussed ad nauseum here. CDR has written many lengthy posts on the subject. I wrote a reply somewhere describing how to defend a wheel by using position. Dig around.

carpediemracing 

Not much time at the moment but one thing that struck me was that you seemed comfortable in close quarters in the turns. Not sure of exact gaps due to the wide angle lens etc but at least we weren't seeing 10 feet of pavement in front of the lens. It was all top of the rear brake kind of thing. To corner in parallel as you did in a number of those corners is really good.

hack

kind of a wtf moment a teammate caught on video during Dunnigan this past weekend.

Ygduf

*edit - nevermind. not who I thunk it was

hack

I think your teammate was in the 3s and in the crash with me (saw him on the ground as I was getting up). The video up there is from the 45+ race (99.9% sure that's a DeltaVelo/Michael David Winery rider in the video). I heard there was another crash in the 35+in the same spot.

hack

Pretty much an identical crash though. Just add 3-4 people landing on your teammate.

Ygduf

Yeah, I sent the link and Sean confirmed it was the same crash in the same spot, too. I guess I missed the bump there. Random.

hack

Bummer...hopefully he heals well and comes back charging next year. Not 100% sure if he is who I think he is, but if he is...he was doing a great deal of work pulling back breaks. Strong guy.