Stagnation is one of my greatest fears; the feeling that I am not learning anything or not making gains in performance ranks above fear of death and public speaking. As such, it should be of no surprise that setting and tracking personal records is important to mark my improvements. With my weight loss, I have a big excel file that lists my weight for the past five hundred or so days. With my personal records on specific courses I am a bit more loose, but they are on my mind as I ride through them, regardless of whether or not I am having a go.

Last week, on 26 August 2010 I left the house on what would turn out to be an awesome ride. At the time, of course, I didn’t really know what pace I was going to keep – I just needed to relieve some stress and energy built up from work. At my first main road I made the turn as a truck was coming my direction and was able to slip into the gigantic draft and go ~38 for roughly one mile. It was awesome to say the least, but I eventually had to make a turn and was forced to back off.

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Just some sunset photos from my trip to the Adirondacks. Hope you enjoy!

The first thing you’ll notice when cycling in the Adirondacks is that everything is big. Lakes are big, mountains are really big and even the roads are big (that is a good thing). Even the distances between towns is big. So when planning a route, you really have to pay attention to how much climbing you will have to endure. The image floating off to the right there is of me during my last ride this year. The mountain in the back is Whiteface which summits around 4500 feet. While I didn’t (and couldn’t) go to the top, as I went past it I had to climb roughly 1500 feet to a peak around 2500 feet. And that was just to get to the base of the toll road that takes you to the top!

That ride (yesterday) covered roughly 66 miles and nearly 5000 feet of climbing. No simple task for a guy who is more Texas Longhorn than mountain goat. I got it done in just over four hours, and learned a few things along the way.

1. Roads in the ADKs are wiide and have almost no tree cover. Result? My arms are burnt (a bit, I had a tan already). So wear sunscreen or arm "coolers"
2. While roads in the ADKs are wide, so are big trucks. Stay to the right as much as possible to avoid the wash.
3. Enjoy the flat and downhill sections of your ride. Breath them in and don’t fret the speed. The climbing is where you gain (or lose) massive time.
4. Bring lots of water. I never ran out because I had three bottles, but because towns are spaced out you could run into issues if you aren’t prepared.
5. Small cameras are the bee’s knees. The ADKs are beautiful and you’ll want to remember your ride, even if it makes for an embarrassingly funny story.

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A quick update of FGF with a bump to version 0.1.3.0 on the core libraries and the inclusion of a license. I have decided to go with the MIT License because I want to enable developers to use FGF for their commercial projects and enable redistribution. The only thing I ask is that if you do make an improvement or a fix, consider sending the changes to me so that I may improve the original codebase.

The new release includes the first version of the new XML serialization classes and numerous fixes. The License is included with the following downloads.

There is no way around it: crashing sucks. Besides the psychological effects of going down, the physical implications of a crash can seriously disrupt any momentum you have. For many cyclists that hit the pavement, crashing will mean at the least a broken collarbone. Add to that the financial impact of destroying wheels, bikes, helmets and tearing of clothes and the sum is clear. No matter what way you look at it, crashing sucks.

My story begins nearly two weeks ago. The roll off of the Category 4/5 Pinecone Road Race was without incident. The course is a flat 10 mile loop with five right hand turns – easy enough for those who have ridden in serious groups before. Through the first turn I chose an inside line knowing that there would be a sand trap of sorts. By putting myself through the dangerous part of the turn I insured that no one could come on the inside of me and wreck the group. If I went down, I could only blame myself.

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Korkboard has been updated to version 1.1.0.0 after a couple changes and fixes. If you have already installed Korkboard, it will check for the update next time you run it. It will install the update the next (next) time it is run. If you do not have Korkboard, you can download it for free!

Here is a full list of the changes made since 1.0.0.4:

• Added drag and drop sorting.
• Added item pinning (will stay at the top).
• Added settings for turning off (and on) certain data formats.
• Added a “Clear Korkboard” button to clear all non-pinned and unselected items from the list
• Fixed current item selection for when items are selected outside the application
• Fixed text alignment issues in the settings page

I have also changed the download to point to the ClickOnce EXE file instead of the Application file. This should fix any issues with non-IE browsers. Thanks to Long Zheng and MetroTwit for this idea.

Korkboard is a little tool I have been developing that enables a uniform method of storing multiple items on the clipboard. When Korkboard runs, it hooks into the clipboard chain and attempts to intercept messages as you use the Copy and Cut commands. It then stores the items on its own list so that they may be retrieved at a later time. It is important to note that Korkboard does not mess with the functionality of the clipboard. If you copy an item, the clipboard works as expected without any interruption or user required interception. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

• Korkboard v1.1.0.0 (177)
• Korkboard (Zip) v1.0.0.4 (22)

Korkboard is written in WPF/.NET4 and uses ClickOnce to manage the installation and update processes.

Update: Added the Zip file for those having trouble using the ClickOnce method.

Competed in the Upper Freehold ITT (Individual Time Trial) yesterday, and came out tired, but with good data. This was my first race this season, having skipped the earlier time trials for hatred of the 50mph crosswinds that the Jersey shore can produce so early in the year. Until recently I have been doing entirely base miles (slower pace over longer distances), and over 1500 of them. I initially thought that I had good speed going into the race, but now on the other side I know it isn’t true. According to the official timing and scoring I managed a 00:30:01.77 (h:m:s) at a 22.575 average over 11.3 miles. My Garmin says otherwise and although I wasn’t using the speed sensor, I think the Garmin is a little more true to my performance.

Photo by Jan Curran

Immediately leaving the gate, I felt good and settled into a comfortable albeit fast rhythm. My heart rate, around 170bpm, was right where I wanted it. This beautiful scenario was quickly smashed when I hit the first roller which brought me into the red zone immediately. You can see from the data below that this is where my problems started.

(Click to enlarge)

Because it was the first hill and because I was able to topple it rather quickly, my body recovered once over the top. However, with each subsequent hill my HR went through the roof and then remained high. Somewhere after mile three or four I developed and odd sensation in my chest; like a grapefruit had been lodged deep within. I pressed on, but each roller really started taking its toll on me until I could barely get over them above 15 mph.

Overall, I am pleased that I got out and did another race and gave it my best shot. As for my performance, I know what I need to work on and know I need to work much harder if I expect to beat my personal best at the Kingwood TT (end of July).

If you have done any decent amount of work with the ASP.NET MVC platform, you have probably run into the following problem. You have a page where you want to update data on the server without a postback and so you whip out some fancy Javascript to send a request to the server. What happens is the response you get back is a success, and the data is updated, but subsequent requests don’t seem to be updated. This is most noticeable with partial views and content views called via the infamous “$.ajax” call. What you forgot was to make sure the browser isn’t caching the result:

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HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("cache-control", "no-cache");

Note that if you have already hit the particular view and it is cached, you can generally clear the cache by navigating to the URI of the view manually and hitting refresh.

Good day on the bike; getting 50 miles in at a good average speed for this early in the season. A little breezy and a perfect temperature due to the impending downpour. Managed to take a lot of pictures of all the spring flowers and trees in bloom. My courses have turned to pink and yellow in the past couple of weeks and fortunately the pollen doesn’t bother me too much.

This is just the beginning (facing backwards) of a long, hidden treasure in NJ. A road that creeps along a hidden lake/reservoir, waterfall and river.

This is the wide part of the river. It feeds towards the camera to the lake (behind the camera).

Daffodils (I think?) in bloom! These are everywhere along the route, giving you something to look at as you climb.

Lazy on the editing (electrical lines), I know, but pretty tree never-the-less.

Overall I am very happy with the camera so far, and very happy with my progression this year on the bike. I have lost some weight (horray!) and my power and endurance are staying pretty level. They are certainly much better than this time last year. Now, back to coding!