sjh - mountain biking linux geek spice - mtb / linux / canberra / cycling / etc

Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
About

email: sjh@svana.org

web: http://svana.org/sjh

Other online diaries:

Aaron Broughton,
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Allan Bontjer,
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Anthony Towns,
Chris Yeoh,
Jeremy Kerr,
Martijn van Oosterhout,
Michael Carden,
Michael Davies,
Michael Still,
Rusty Russell,
Tim Potter,
Tony Breeds,

Links:

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Fri, 05 Mar 2010

Oh how I wish we could distill context in text more easily - 15:47
This will be so much more amusing for people who know Mikal and those who know what TSG (where I work) is like.

There seem to be increasing numbers of students on campus playing some weird Zombie game. This year a lot are getting more and more extravagant nerf war accessories to it seems. Anyway not long after Mikal returned to Canberra last year after living in the US for a while he walked into TSG one day exclaiming with shock "There are nerds on campus!".

Though today he is noticing the nerf accessories almost make him want to go shopping for some himself, what with his military hardware fetish, also commenting that there are "dirty dirty nerds" appearing all over campus and suggesting some attempt should be made to out nerd them, maybe with a tux doll canon or something.

[/amusing] link

10 MTB Tips - 11:10
Last year I saw a list of Joss Wheedon's top 10 writing tips and then last week there was a surge of top 10 writers tips with The Guardian publishing quite a few in two articles (Neil offered up his there for example). All of these are full of good information and a lot of it can apply to other disciplines. However looking for something to write about here I am obviously not qualified to offer up writing tips. I thought I would make an effort on some mountain biking tips, as I have been doing a bit more coaching (CORC Junior Program) recently I have been thinking more about some of this stuff.

  1. Relax, this is really a critical element when it comes to any sort of cycling. Recently I heard one of my stretching instructors telling everyone listening that if you look at Lance Armstrong on a bike he really is as relaxed as possible on the bike. The same definitely applies to mountain biking. Hold your position well with core strength but keep your body and notably arms and legs relaxed and loose. You need to control the bike but let the bike flow under you while you can focus on riding. The more tense you are the more energy you waste and the more you may get bounced around by the terrain. The more relaxed you are on the bike the better you can handle surprises in terrain, a rock garden or some other obstacle around a corner that you were not expecting, if you are relaxed on the bike you should flow over terrain more smoothly.

  2. Look up, especially in mountain biking, but also to some extent in all riding you need to be aware of things out around you, the faster you are going the further ahead you should be looking. In a bunch ride on the road or riding in a race or with a group of people through single track do not only focus on the wheel in front of you. Stay aware of things all around you, focus as far as you can up the single track and continually look for lines and terrain details. Sure you can watch the rider in front, if they are a better rider than you seeing what lines they use is a boon. However you also want to be looking ahead and know what is coming up as far ahead as you can. There is no need to look right in front of your bike at the ground and obstacles you are about to ride over, if you have already seen it the brain is really amazing at keeping track of details like that.

  3. Have fun, I think this one may even be in the wrong place, it really should be first, not obviously a skill, however you should try to ensure you love your riding and are having fun doing it. If you are not having fun you will not have the motivation to do it well. Try not to get stuck in a rut, even with a training plan try to ensure when you are on the bike you are enjoying it. The more fun you have riding bikes the more you will want to do it. This is one of the things I get upset about when I see some coaches pushing juniors to ride (often in road coaching) so much they begin to hate the sport. You really want to ensure kids grow up thinking everything about cycling is fun, it will motivate them to stick with it. If you push them so hard and they have no time to have fun both on the bike and in other aspects of life they will not stick with the sport, no matter how talented or gifted they are.

  4. Practice, this is not something you have to go and do separately, however the more you muck around practicing your skills while riding the better those skills will be. When riding muck around, pull hops and jumps over anything and everything. Look for unusual lines and try to nail them, if you are riding along a fire trail don't just sit there and pedal, look around and see if there are things you can do to hone your skills and then do them. The best riders I know or know of all do this when they are out riding. DeathMarch, Morgs, Mal, Shane, Wiggy, Paul Rowney, etc. When you ride with them outside of races they are all pulling wheelies, jumping over things, taking unusual lines, taking alternate tracks, jumping up and down gutters, analysing terrain for lines and trying different and unusual things out. This constant improvement of skills while out riding for the fun of it helps a great deal, you hone your abilities and find new ways of doing things you can use later on.

  5. Fitness helps, I know this sounds like a well duh! sort of statement, however it goes further. The fitter you are the more energy you can spare for your brain to focus on riding and lines and position. When I raced back in the mid 90s as a junior I remember noticing how I slowed down so much after my first lap and kept slowing down. It was as if I no longer had technical skill at times. It sounds boring but if you can get out there and do a lot of km on the road and interval work and other things that improve fitness it will help your mountain biking a lot as you will not be using all your energy just to keep pushing the pedals.

  6. Stay of the brakes and flow, tests on the Sydney Olympic course with the AIS mtb team and more recently with the elite level XC riders back up this, the idea of maintaining flow and staying off the brakes to conserve energy. Hooking up power meters and GPS and HRM and all that to mountain bikers and then getting data from them as they ride around a course. The faster riders often seem to be slower through some sections and yet come out in front. This is largely due to holding their speed, they know what speed they can take into corners and maintain that, they do not sprint between each corner, slam on the brakes, sprint out of it to the next corner and so on. Instead they hold a speed that will get them through the corners and break minimally at all times. The difference in energy used when you focus on cornering well without touching the brakes and have no need to sprint up to speed again is immense. After all using the brakes is just going to slow you down.

  7. Cross train and don't get bored, this ties in to having fun out there exercising and to the fact that fitness helps a lot. I am sure some people can still have fun when only doing one sort of riding and nothing else and still enjoy it. However variety helps a lot I think, try other cycling disciplines (road for fitness, downhill for skills maybe. bmx or 4X for skills and sprints) and even try other sports (I run and kayak and swim a lot too) and if you are not having fun with them maybe try doing them in groups or try other sports that you can find ways to do that you find fun. Weather is not always suited to getting on the bike, so you could go for a run or swim in the rain. Kayaking, swimming and indoor rock climbing use some other part of the body than the legs, also mountain biking does require upper body strength and control so keeping the upper body toned helps. Doing different sports (if you have time) gives you something else to focus on and often makes you keener to get back to the mountain bike.

  8. Race, whatever your cycling discipline you will find racing is different to just heading out for ride. If you race mountain bikes against people faster than you trying to keep up with them is good practice, also you will see them doing things you may not have realised worked or were possible and you can try them out. Also just about everyone will go harder and put more effort into racing than into training. You want to keep up, your competitive spirit kicks in and you push yourself harder. One example I often tell people is that I do a kayak session with friends most weeks, we head out for an hour or so and my HR almost never goes above 135. Through summer I do a 10 km paddling time trial with a local club and my HR average for the whole 50 minutes is over 160. Even when I feel like I am putting in efforts outside of a race I seem to not be going anywhere near as hard as in the race. Also in mountain biking being surrounded by people faster and slower than you helps a great deal in getting used to passing and being passed on single track and in other areas.

  9. Speed confidence and trusting the bike, a lot of this comes from experience, however it is often worth pushing yourself a bit. Generally our bikes can ride somewhere far faster and better than our brains will let us. If you can begin to overcome that and simply let the bike go at speed you often find everything turns out well. The faster you go over rough terrain or rocks the less they will affect you and the quicker you will get past them. When it is muddy or sandy trying to control the bike may cause more problems than simply balancing, holding on and going with the flow of the track, you can still apply pressure and get the tyres to bite where you see the track can help and when you need to, however staying upright and going with the flow helps a great deal. When approaching anything on the trail you really want to try to get in the head space of relaxing and having a go, once you have ridden it you know you can. If you do not try you will never get over it. You may surprise yourself.

  10. Ride lots, another well duh one maybe and everyone is time poor in the modern world, but the more time you spend on the bike out there mountain biking the better you will become. So long as you have the time and are enjoying riding make an effort to get out there lots and your skills will show improvement. This is very similar to some of the writers hints, they say write lots and you will get better, they are on to something there.

[/mtb] link

Wed, 03 Mar 2010

Some comments on a book - 14:53
Back in December I ordered a copy of a book I wanted to read, the shop I ordered it from (local) never managed to get it from the distributors, why I have no idea. Eventually I got sick of waiting and on Friday wandered in to the Co Op Bookshop on campus and bought a copy they had on the shelf. The book is Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I finished reading it last night.

In the past I have avoided really talking much about my dietary choices. I choose to remain a Vegan as I am convinced it reduces the environmental footprint of my diet as much as possible. In the book he uses figures suggesting it is less than 1/7th the environmental footprint of omnivorous diets. I try to put to the back of my mind (as Foer describes it learned forgetfulness) how animals are treated in the modern world to provide the increasing meat craving the world seems to have. Reading the book is a stark reminder of how disgusting and horrible factory farming is, not just for the animals but also for the environment anywhere near factory farms.

In the hope that the book was somewhat US centric and maybe the Australian food industry was not so bad yet I spent around 2 minutes googling and reading and rather quickly learnt that pigs, poultry and to a large extent other meat animals in Australia are factory farmed to a similar extent. Another glaring point he makes is that the increase in waistlines and meat consumption widens the global poverty gap more every year, or more obviously the starving from the obese all around the world.

Foer points out again and again how we have a picture in our heads of farming and animal agriculture where the farmer knows all their stock by sight and farms according to traditional images of farming, this simply is not the case anymore around the world, less than 1% of consumed animal product in the western comes from non factory farming environments (and other parts of the world are trying to play catch up). I do not have the book with me at work just now as I write this so can not refer to it just now but it is definitely a reminder to me that I should be happy with my own dietary choices.

[/leisure/food] link

Tue, 02 Mar 2010

More Mont awesomeness - 14:17

New and Old Zing Vests (fullsize) 		By far one of my favourite pieces of clothing is my Mont Zing Vest, I bought my first back in March 2006, then it was shredded in a crash in April 2008, I had however bought a second vest at that point, in yellow. Most cycling vests have mesh backs, I dislike these as I wear my vest to paddle and a waterproof back is great paddling. Also for warmth year round in all manner of activities (running, rogaines, etc) the lack of mesh is a bonus I think.

Due to the fact I use the vest so often through the colder months it is often damp or wet when I want to use it (soaking from paddling to ride home in winter, or from wearing for a run to get home), thus I was keen to get a few more. Mont are a great company and Dave has been very nice to me in the past. They had run out of Zing vests in my size and I had been asking Dave when I would be able to buy two more for a while. He had some ready for the yearly sale that is on next week and told me to come visit. However he had only had yellow vests made, which I was keen to buy another one of, I was however hoping for some colour variety. Dave then offered to make a few out of whatever colour Hydronaute ultra they had in the factory. Sure it is not pink but I am definitely partial to purple too so I was excited to be able to get two brand new vests in purple.

Did the Ainslie run up at lunch today, was letting my HR creep above 180 and then remembered I should not be going too hard so backed it off to 176 or so for the rest of the run up. Still did 15:16 which I thought was alright.

[/mtb/gear] link

Mon, 01 Mar 2010

A race surprise and helmets - 17:12
So I will be once more competing in the Jindabyne Multisport race as a solo this coming weekend. This is one of my favourite races on the calendar. I competed solo the last two years (2009, 2008) and in teams previously (2007, 2006). So there was a CORC 3 hour mountain bike race on at Sparrow on Saturday afternoon. I thought it would be a good idea to do it and have a last good hit out on the mountain bike before Jindabyne.

For the rest of this week I will not be doing any training efforts over an hour and not much hard stuff, especially later in the week. I have to admit I have been focusing on getting my bike form back to some reasonable level the last few months, maybe something approaching the bike form I had back in 2004 (before I did so much paddling, running and swimming as well as riding). I must say though I never expected this sort of result. At the race on Saturday I finished 10th overall, with 328 people competing, taking into account the teams around 280 people on track. I was racing on my single speed, so I won the single speed category (largely because Chris was having some mechanicals due to being silly enough to make a major change to his bike the day before) and was only beaten by some strong teams and some solos. I was only 1 minute behind Bleeksie and his team mate for example. Riding 8 laps, which it seems only around 20 people managed to complete.

Well I hope that performance helps me on the bike legs, I definitely am hoping to take 30 or 40 minutes off the time for the long bike leg at Jindabyne for the last two years, something closer to 2h30m again would be good.

As for helmets, my good helmet for 2 years now has been a rather neat Giro Animas with hot pink flames. However Giro has discontinued that model and also no longer makes the E2 which was my previous favourite model of helmet. None of the current helmets released by Giro have such a good colour scheme (in my opinion), if I happened to break my current helmet I would have to get something boring. However I have noticed a shop over in the US has Animas in stock still in pink, I am sorely tempted to buy two more (they have them really cheap) so I have a stock pile of helmets just in case. I wonder if this is being silly. When I have some more spare money (new bike just having been purchased on its way here now) I may have to stockpile helmets...

[/mtb/events] link

Wed, 24 Feb 2010

More on the google search mechanism - 16:32
An interesting article (I think linked from BoingBoing) today on Wired by Steven Levy. This is about some more insights into how Google refines its search algorithms all the time. A lot of this makes sense, things like improving it so changes are easier to incorporate, there are some interesting insights about research into sentence structure and trying to work out what people searching want (computers are bad at this).

I liked the story about dog and puppy searches and people looking for hot dogs, someone should make a t-shirt, Google: No longer boiling puppies since 2002. Or something. It is also interesting to think they use all incoming searches as some form of testing or control for other tests. The scale of the operation and being able to respond fast is still the most impressive thing about it I think. Also the internal best of search ideas conference and meetings sound like an interesting way to get ideas working. Also everything has to be backed up with results to show it improves things.

On a side note, Kate and Ruth are awesome, listening to their cover of the Dylan song Let Me Die In My Footsteps and I am reminded how good they are together singing.

[/comp] link

Tue, 23 Feb 2010

Ski Everest - 17:10
I was interested to see on kottke today something about a documentary about a guy who skied Mt Everest. Yuichiro Miura is the person in question, the documentary The Man Who Skied Down Everest was the first sports film ever to win an Oscar for best documentary. Though he did not ski from the summit he did ski around 2000 metres down one face of it, almost killing himself in the process. The article linked from the first wikipedia link above about the God Father of Extreme skiing is an interesting read.

I was fascinated to see he has since climbed everest another two times at the age of 70 and 75, he hopes to climb to the summit again at 80 in 2013.

[/various] link

Thu, 21 Jan 2010

Midnight Espresso is awesome - 17:39
Tony had been telling me for a while that he was really looking forward to returning to Wellington to go to Midnight Espresso, his favourite cafe in a town which is famous for a good cafe culture, he also hinted I may like it a lot. There does not appear to be a website, however details are on a few review sites.

I am impressed, though not vegetarian only they do have an extensive Vegetarian (and Vegan friendly) menu with some great food. All the cakes they have for sale are Vegan and their coffee is indeed excellent. This cafe is almost worth the trip to Wellington alone. If you are anywhere near Cuba street, or really I think if you are any where near New Zealand pop on over and visit this cafe. Maybe it is because I do not have the variety of Veggie friendly places to eat that is found in Melbourne, or maybe it is because this is a great place to hang out. Anyway with the fun mountain biking and linux.conf.au here this week it would be silly not to come and now I know of another good reason to visit Wellington. Thanks Tony.

[/lca] link

Wed, 20 Jan 2010

My notes from the first day of lca (Miniconf day 1) - 22:22
I have written 34 pages of notes (in the a5 conference notebook) in the three days (2 days miniconfs, 1 day main conference) so far, however as my hand writing closely resembles and encryption standard I had better get them transcribed into the computer reasonably soon (before I completely forget how to decipher what I scrawled on paper). So I have just typed up the notes I took (9 a5 pages worth of my hand writing) from the first day of lca (miniconf day 1) and put it here in plain text.

I probably should put them directly up here but am not in the mood to add html formatting to the notes at the moment. Great stuff so far, I will see if I can find time to transcribe another day or two tomorrow.

[/lca] link

Day two lca finishing off with a great ride - 06:57

Skyline ride (fullsize) 		I noticed yesterday at the finish of the miniconfs I already have 19 pages of notes written in the a5 conference notebook. I now need to find the time to put some of the notes into the computer I think.

Another great miniconf day, I really enjoyed the Weta digital high density computer room design talk. I have uploaded the photos from the ride I did around Skyline (awesome ride around the ridgelines and hills surrounding Wellington) on a Skyline MTB Ride photos page.

Oops, an update, I mentioned to a few people the gps map of the ride would be online, it is here if you wish to see it.

[/lca] link

Mon, 18 Jan 2010

Awesome New Zealand Food - 15:31

Penguino Ice Cream Cafe (fullsize) 		The friend I did my Abel Tasman kayaking trip with has said a few times he could eat himself to death here in New Zealand. I tend to agree the food here is pretty good. Today I had lunch with Stewart, Bdale, Edale, TonyB and others at Midnight Espresso, a cafe recommended by Tony, who went to high school here, he said we would like it. I did it was excellent, lots of great Vegan options including all their cakes. I will be back tomorrow (possibly missing out on variety but OMG it was good.

The photo to the left is from a Penguin themed ice cream cafe in Nelson, they had some excellent Sorbet (an award winning boysenberry and a great apple and berry for example) that I was able to eat too. I thought I should put something penguin themed in a post to the lca tag here. (they have a Penguino Crossing sign too). I hope I can find a few more really good examples of local veggie friendly food before I have to head home on Saturday morning.

[/lca] link

Abel Tasman Kayaking - 15:28

Camping Observation Beach, Abel Tasman NP (fullsize) 		Keith and I met up for a kayaking trip in Abel Tasman National Park when we were both in New Zealand. The photos are all up on my Abel Tasman Kayaking January 2010 Page

As Keith said this is something that should be on everyone's bucket list. An incredible area and some wonderful kayaking. We were thinking about it a fair bit and we both think there are other ways you can approach this trip that would be fun. Heidi told me there is an Abel Tasman marathon sometime in September, I am thinking that it would be a lot of fun to run up the track to the end in one day, get your gear dropped up there for camping along with a fast AR double kayak. The next day leave your gear there to be picked up and kayak back.

Otherwise we both think doing the track walk to the end and then kayaking back, or maybe walking in from the other end of the track and doing a remote park start for your kayak trip at Tonga Beach (this is the farthest north the rented kayaks will be dropped off) and paddle back to Marahau.

I had a lot of fun on the trip and the fact we did not have a nice fast kayak such as Matilda was not really a problem as we are on holiday and not trying to go fast or anything. I did miss Matilda a bit at times but I got over it.

[/mtb] link

Sun, 17 Jan 2010

In Wellington hanging out for lca. - 16:07

Makara Summit Weather (fullsize) 		I am in Wellington, lca is starting tomorrow, I arrived yesterday however the weather was horrible so a hung out with a friend, Bec, who is living here for a few years. We saw the Sherlock Holmes movie which was awesome. Today when I went looking for coffee I ran across Jon Oxer so we headed in for some conference supplies, breakfast, coffee etc (along with Thomas). Then I went to the rego area and found MRD, AJ and others. After registering for the conference we headed out for some lunch.

Then as the weather was better today than yesterday (no heavy horizontal rain) Bec and I went for a mountain bike ride (in the photo above I am somewhat muddy but enjoying the summit of Makara Peak mtb park). Now I am about to go find some lca ghosts, what fun.

[/lca] link

Sun, 10 Jan 2010

Rotorua Summer MTB Series - Bike Vegas - 23:28

Green Lake near Rotorua (fullsize) 		Much to my delight I found out when I arrived in Rotorua that there was a mountain bike race on this Sunday. The Bike Vegas Summer MTB Series, this is a series of 45km point to point races through the Whakarewarewa Forest where the legendary redwoods single track are.

The rest of the series are 24th Jan and 14th Feb so I will obviously miss these events, I headed out to race today though and had a great time. I got to catch up with Gaz from NZO Clothing which was good as he was there racing. (and he beat my by a few minutes, way to go Gaz)

My GPS Map for the race shows where the race went, starting going the wrong way up the rock drop track and then onto many others, I can not work out the order exactly (writing this without the GPS trace in front of me right now) but remember it included Pigeon Run, Pig Track Link, Mad If You Dont, Mossy Track, around next to Green Lake (gorgeous/spectacular scenery there), No Brains, the end of Old Chevy (with the fun gap jump), Spring Roll, Sweet & Sour, Be Rude Not To, Lion Trail, Turkish Delight, Soakhole, Grinder, The Dipper, and Tahi.

I had not ridden some of the green tracks since the 2005 Moonride 12 Hour, others I probably would not have ridden if it were not for the race today and some of the tracks are the classics that should be ridden every time you come here. I had a great time and think it was an excellent race format (they had a 25 KM option also for people who did not want quite such a long race).

[/mtb/events] link

Sat, 09 Jan 2010

Rotorua mountain biking - 07:47
I know we have it good in Canberra for mountain bike trails, there are many times I think people who live in Rotorua are even better off though. In the lead up to linux.conf.au this year I am having a week and a half of play time in New Zealand before the conference. At the moment I am staying with a friend in Rotorua for a few days and we have been doing some rides the last two days.

For example I put this status update onto Facebook on Thursday night. "a-trail, tickler, frontal lobotomy, billy t, split enz, pondy downhill, pondy new, roller coaster, chop suey, corners, be rude not to, exit trail" which were the tracks I rode in this 47 km ride on Thursday. Oh so much fun to be had on the mountain bike here.

You can see the Rotorua trail map online now days at the Rotorua NZ website which is handy. I bought a copy at a bike shop the other day to get around with too. Yesterday one of the highlights was the track Old Chevy which just goes on seemingly for ever and is as awesome as any of the great tracks here.

Yesterday morning we rode into town for some shopping and on the way back my crank snapped, last time it was the left crank, this time the right crank. So I rode one legged back to the house and we then took the bike into a shop and they are putting some XT cranks on. Jen got a bunch of photos of me riding one legged as she thought it was hilarious.

I thought my riding for the day was over as the bike would take until the next morning to get fixed up (and without all my bike tools I could not just buy the part and do it myself), however the completely awesome guys at KiwiBikes next to Zippys Cafe in town just happened to have an awesome Titus hardtail demo bike they loaned me overnight so I could keep on riding. Awesome guys, great shop, and they hand build some pretty nifty bikes. Anyway some more fun to be had coming up soon.

[/mtb] link

Sydney Christmas - 07:09

Looking back toward Coogee, Bronte, Bondi, etc (fullsize) 		I spent Christmas in Sydney with Jane and other extended family (Grandma, Nick, Ashlie, Jude, Chris, Stu, Karin) at a place in Coogee. Though I had a bike with me (single speed) that was for a potential boxing day mtb ride (which I piked on due to rain). As I was so close to the coastal walking path I headed out for a run on it on Christmas morning. South from Coogee until I ran out of obvious walking path (around 4 km I think) and then back up to the other end of Bondi and back down to Coogee. No idea how far it was (maybe 16km) as my Garmin stopped working and I had sent it in for a replacement.

One of the nice things about being there over Christmas was I managed to go for a swim in the ocean every day while there. No serious swim training but it was nice to get into the salt water and do some swimming none the less.

Lots of fun was had with the family, thanks for an awesome time to all of them there.

[/various] link

Bracelet fade - 07:01

Bracelet fade evidence (fullsize) 		I commented a while ago that the new NBCF bracelets should last longer as they have a design that is less likely to break. Looks like I was right, the faded almost white bracelet in the photo has been on my wrist for most of 2009, I finally noticed a little before Christmas when I gave a new one to a friend that mine was no longer a good NBCF pink, time to put a new one on, I am not sure I can retire the faded one to my notice board at work as it is not broken.

[/various] link

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