Stage 1 – 72 mile road race
10, 6, 4 second time bonuses for 1st, 2nd, 3rd place

The road race course is an 18 mile course that we would complete 4 times. It features some hills but none of them steep or long enough to break races apart, and lots of trees that keep you in the shade most of the time. Most of the road surface is beautifully smooth, with one small section of some of the worst chipseal I’ve ever been on. This would be the longest road race I had ever done and I was a bit worried about it. The plan was just to hang in and get a pack finish and stay as fresh as possible for the TT.

Early on the pace was very slow, which was a relief for me. I just sat in the back since we had a small field, and getting stuck wasn't much of a concern. I noticed some of the strong 787 riders, Caleb Husley and Robbie Chrisman back there biding their time as well. I knew this meant they would be planning to strike later. On lap 2 some action began as a Nick Lopez rider made a big attack and got quite a large gap. I have seen stage races end before they even began in this way before, so I worked my way up to the front and did a little attack to help draw him back and instigate a chase. This worked beautifully and soon we had everyone back in the fold, and I went to the back again to conserve energy.

Lap three is when 787 began to make some moves and I knew they were dangerous so I got up there with them. A group of 4 or 5 of us had some little gaps going on the peleton, and were working in a nice paceline for a while but we didn’t manage to make anything stick. These efforts wore me out quite a bit, and I made the mistake of being a bit too far back in the closing miles of the final lap. A group of four got away, containing both Caleb and Robbie of 787, as well as Alchemy racer Mitchell Sides, and a rider from Dallas Bike Works. I realized that the group had a member of almost every major team present and nobody was chasing, a dangerous situation. So I worked up to the front, dropped into the invisible aerobars and pulled for about 2 minutes at 350 watts to bring the escapees a bit closer. Every time I looked back 787′s Robby Keterhagen was on my wheel, who I knew wouldn’t pull through to help chase down team mates, a smart tactical move by him. I was on my own! Eventually people came around to start contesting the field sprint and we finished only 9 seconds behind the winner Robbie Chrisman.

Time Trial – 5.5 miles

The time trial course was a really great one. We had a wonderfully designed start ramp sponsored by Cobb Cycling. I hear it was designed by a BMX racer, and the expert curvature meant a nice smooth transition from ramp to road. The course shared some of the same route as the road race course, with some nice twisty sections where you could just barely stay in the aerobars and carve through the corners at full power – lots of fun! The roads were also perfectly smooth the whole way.

I had aims to win the TT, and was interested to see how I would perform now that I was back on my own bike, a Cervelo P3. For the previous stage races this season I had been on a borrowed P5 from Austin Tri-Cyclist and put up some great results: (9th at the hilly mineral wells TT, 7th at Fayetteville) and though I didn’t think that the bike had that much to do with it, I did worry! I have a nice setup on my P3 though, with trick TriRig brakes and View-Speed Skewers, and HED Jet clincher wheels. I expected to do well.

I set a power goal of 320 watts for the TT, going a little harder on uphills and a little easier on downhills. I base my power goals on previous bests for similar durations, pretty much ignoring the fact that the road race beforehand should tire you out, and try to do it anyway. I set off down the ramp with a short burst of power then settled into the 320 watt range. I work hard to keep my head low, and arms and shoulders as narrow as possible the whole time. I also try to take the turns as fast as possible, as every second counts. Every little uphill I push hard, and every downhill I ease up but never allow myself to coast or go super easy. Coming around the final corner I see the finish line cones in the distance and ignore the power meter and just give everything. Final time: 12:04, 319 watts, 2nd place! I was now 3rd in GC 5 seconds behind 2nd place Caleb Husley. It took a long time for me to breathe normally again after this, a solid effort that was the best I could do. Robbie Chrisman bested me by 6 seconds on his first TT bike ride ever. Beast!

Criterium – 50 minutes around Tyler Junior College
5/3/1 second time bonuses for mid race Hot Spot Prime
10/6/4 second time bonuses for race finish

This was a nice course as well, with plenty of turns and a pretty tough hill up to the start/finish line that would punish us lap after lap, since nearly every lap had a prime.

Credit TXBRA and Andy Hollinger

My goal in the crit was just to hold onto 3rd in GC. Alchemy’s Mitchell Sides was only 9 seconds back in 4th place and could overtake me with time bonuses. I wasn’t entirely sure if I would try for the mid race time bonus or save my energy for the race finish. However when they announced the hot spot lap I just happened to be in a good spot, about 4th wheel, so decided I would give everything to get it. I made sure to hold my position the whole lap. The final turn before the start/finish line is preceded by a long, fast downhill. I had found that by tucking super low I could coast all the way down, conserve my energy, then bomb into the turn. I stood to start attacking up the hill a little too soon, before I was done turning, and nearly self-crashed myself when a wheel came off the ground. After this brief delay I went full gas. 787′s Robbie Chrisman was next to me giving it everything to protect his lead and team mate Caleb’s 2nd place. We went head to head to the line, and I got him by just a few inches. The sprint power peaked at 1,400 watts and I average 1,150 watts for 12 seconds. This left Robbie and I with a sizeable gap on the rest of the field, but I was too shattered to even pedal hardly, averaging just 92 watts for the next 40 seconds!

Once the field caught back on I just sat in and tried to not get dropped for the rest of the race, knowing that 3rd place was secure. I didn’t realize it at the time but the hot spot bonus had tied me for 2nd place in GC! In the final lap AustinBike’s Patrick Hallet got away solo, and I was a bit worried as I wasn’t sure where he was in GC. Then I saw 787 was at the front and knew they wouldn’t let him get away. Sure enough they reeled him in and I just followed what was left of the field as hard as I could to make sure there were no time gaps at the finish.

In the end the 2nd place tie in GC was resolved by adding in the hundredths of a second from the time trial, which gave me 2nd place by just 0.03 seconds. Every second counts!

Full results here

My name is Julie Leth. I’m a 20-year-old road and track rider from Denmark, and a part of the British team: “The Breast Cancer Care Cycling Team“. At the moment I’m staying in Austin, and last weekend I was lucky to get to do two races as a guest rider for The Ghisallo Foundation. I raced in Walburg and Pace Bend. It was the first races of my road season, so I was excited to get going again. I love the excitement of being in a race, and really couldn’t wait to get started. I had never ridden a race in an America before, so I had no idea how the races would develop, and how the level would be. It kinda made the whole thing even more exciting since I had no idea what to expect.

The Walburg race was a rather boring race, where nothing exciting happened. There were some attacks, but we ended up in a sprint. I managed to get 3rd in the uphill sprint. The race Sunday was held in the beautiful surroundings at Lake Travis, the sun was shining, and it was perfect weather for a bike race. It seemed like a lot of the girls were sick of the way the Walburg race developed, it was simply too slow and too boring. This resulted in a better and harder race. As soon as we started, attacks started going, and the entire race was greatly affected by them. A three-woman break stayed away. I was a part of a second break, and won the sprint in that group. I really enjoyed that race. I love it when we show that women’s fields aren’t just a coffee break, but that we do put on a good show. I really enjoyed competing, and even though these races are very different from the races in Holland they were really good training since I tend to push myself even harder.

All in all I just enjoyed being back on the road and competing again, and I can’t wait to get going again this weekend. I also enjoyed racing in the warm Texas weather, cause even though it was a bit cold when we started racing Saturday, I know that it was way warmer than what my team mates were struggling with, at the same time in Belgium. They did a race where a girl’s eyeball froze. Seriously didn’t even know that was possible. Gotta admit I was glad I was racing here, so I didn’t end up with a frozen eyeball myself.

A pretty full weekend for this early in the season but how better to test your fitness (and what it will be like in the CAT3 field this season) than going all in. Two days of racing with a 45 min crit and 7 mile hilly TT on Saturday followed by a 2 lap 50 mile road race, with a KOM point on lap 2, on Sunday.

Crit
Technical course, a bit bumpy. Probably a good course to try to get away on, as Brendan Sharpe did in cat 2. Being my first cat 3 race though I just sat in and tail gunned the whole thing. Power file is kind of hilarious, 800 watts, coast, 800 watts, coast, over and over. Normalized power of 250 watts for 45 minutes. Easy. But then I didn’t do anything. Race was nice and safe, no crashes. Next time I need to grow a pair and get up in the mix and actually race. Temps were about 30 degrees at start. Good on us for not crashing even though our hands were numb and not working.

TT
I got to use a cheat code thanks to Don Ruthven at Austin Tri-Cyclist who loaned me his personal P5 for the time trial. I set up the fit coordinates identical to my P3 so that it would be guaranteed comfy. My power meter wheel broke a spoke somewhere during or before the crit, so I had to pace the old fashioned way. On the bright side my backup disc-cover wheel was a LOT lighter and this TT was super hilly. Tons of experience at the Mopac TT was a help here as the distance was similar and I had a good idea how to pace it by feel.

I tried to keep the power up on the downhills but twice I ran out of gear at 53×11 and coasted on the big downhills for a few seconds. A 55T front chainring would be a help here. I stayed in the aerobars the whole time save for a couple surges on the final climb where I got out of the saddle. Hit the steep uphill finish line feeling shattered in 19:32. 9th place in my first cat3 TT which I was pretty happy with. I was even happier when I saw that my time would have decisively won the TTs in cat 4, cat 5 and 35+ cat 4/5, something I never quite managed last year. Training had paid off, and the P5 was legit. Stable on the 40+mph descents and solid on the steep climbs.

Road Race
Not much accomplished here except that I learned some things. Race was easy until about the 3/4 point, after the KOM on lap 2, on a long false flat with nasty chip seal, the race went from volume 4 to volume 11. I latched on to the attacking group and held on for a few minutes but eventually gave up, stupid. I needed to just hang in another minute till the end of the false flat and would have ended up with a decent result. Lessons learned, need more mental toughness, maybe a bit more fitness, and maybe a bit less pointless work early in the race. Good news is I did not feel completely out of my league in the threes, but I definitely can’t be pointlessly playing around up front on lap 1 in the threes either.

Full results are available here: http://www.teambicyclesinc.org/MWTT09.htm

Currently the SE section of the Boggy Creek Greenbelt Trail ends at the Connoly-Gurerro Senior Activity Center and transitions onto the sidewalk between the parking lot on one side and the activity center, playground, and Rosewood Zaragosa Heath Center on the other. This sidewalk is used by elderly and/or mobility challenged individuals, children at play and other pedestrians. Users which are exiting their cars or the parking lot generally do not expect bicycles on what seems like a private walkway for the centers and typically do not check both directions prior to entering the shared sidewalk.

Due to the construction at Connoly-Guerro this above mentioned route has been closed which has caused the creation of a rider and jogger created trail, due to repeated use, along the outer edge of the parking lot. It exits onto Webberville via a pre-existing vehicle width curb cut and also has improved visibility when entering Webberville due to a wide length of no-parking along the curbside edge. So, not only does this remove a usage conflict between trail users (cyclists, joggers, walker, dogs on leash, etc) and more traditional sidewalk users and children accessing the playground, it creates a safer transition for cyclists onto Webberville due to both increased line of sight (currently limited due to parked cars) and separation from the parking lot exits which they also are on the wrong side of (input rather than output).

Were the trail to visibly exit the park at the non-sidewalk/parking lot based, it would be possible to install signage of the existence of the trail which at this time is a bit hidden unless you already know it exists on the far side of the divided parking lot. It would also tie the trail into the existing art/landscaping installation along Webberville.

Below is an overhead image with both the current route (yellow) and the proposed permanent (decomposed granite) and user created route (green) along with the no-parking and parking zones at the “trail head”. There are also a number of site level images showing each of the existing routes. This isn’t an official Ghisallo Foundation project yet as the Parks and Rec Department is still reviewing the proposal, but should they view it favorably, we will pursue it in 2013 and work with other stake holders such as the Rosewood Neighborhood Contact Team and the Friends of Boggy Creek Greenbelt, Rosewood, group who have adopted the park, to ensure it is a success.

This project was initiated as a way to beautify the LAB 4th St/I-35 Underpass and add a recognizable identity to the site in addition to presenting a uniform appearance. This in turn will lead to the site being viewed as a used space and will assist in reducing it being an attractive nuisance as a trash collector, a visual eyesore, and reduce the time that is required to maintain the site. The section is one of the main East-West bike routes across and a non-street based connector across the I-35 corridor. Its heavy usage and high visibility makes it a perfect candidate for visual improvements.

To read more about the projects and for more pictures, check out the project’s page here: LAB 4th St/I-35 Underpass Landscaping

In January 2009, The City of Austin released the Austin 2009 Master Bicycle Plan Update (the Plan) to provide a holistic and practical approach to improving the environment of cycling in Austin in order to “transform Austin into a world-class bicycling city.” At the time of the Plan’s release, cycling as a transportation mode for journey-to-work trips (JTW) was a paltry 0.96 percent. The Plan’s main objectives were to get more people cycling and to make them safe while they cycle. Additionally, one specific objective of the Plan is to increase cycling’s modal share of JTW trips from one percent to two percent by the year 2015.

The 2011 American Community Survey (ACS), an ongoing survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, was recently released and estimated that cycling in Austin as a modal share for JTW trips has reached two percent, three years ahead of the City’s schedule.

This is obviously great news, showing that the City’s objectives laid out in the Plan are having quantifiable results with more people utilizing the enhanced connectivity the increasing mileage of and improvement to bike lanes are providing. What should be noted is that these figures only show the number of trips taken by bicycle as the trip pertains to traveling to and from work. Without getting into the more complex discussion of multi-destination trip chains, such as home – school escort trip – work – gym – shopping – school return escort trip – home, I feel the discussion should be focused more on total travel behavior, rather than just JTW.

The National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), conducted by the US Census Bureau, estimates that only 15 percent of trips are JTW trips, with roughly 85 percent of people’s trips being for other activities in their daily lives – go to the store, go to school, go to the gym, or go out for social activities with families and friends. So while a focus on a modal shift from other methods of transportation to cycling is a valiant goal, the discussion and focus should be on increasing people’s usage of cycling as a transportation mode for more of their daily trips, not just the singular JTW.

Bike Austin picked up on this topic in its blog post reporting the two percent JTW figure back in October 2012. In the short post, Bike Austin noted that the JTW figure “does not include trips from home to school, trips for errands, trips to family and friends, bike-bus or bike-rail trips to work where the bus or rail portion is longer than the bike ride, trips to work where the commuter uses another mode at least three days each week, trips during the workday, and any other trips other than home-to-work-to-home trips.” If one looks at the situation optimistically and recognizes the limitations of the ACS figures, one could say that cycling holds a modal share of greater than two percent for Austin residents when going about their daily lives.

This is where the NHTS comes into play. The survey takes a much more detailed look at the travel behavior of American households and provides a more holistic view of modal splits between transportation options. The next NHTS is not scheduled to be completed until 2015, which is the goal date of Austin’s plans to increase cycling as a mode of transportation. With it’s release, a better picture of where Austin stands in terms of bicycle usage as a mode of transportation will be possible.

At the end of the day, the ACS figures show promising results of the City’s efforts to provide greater access to safe and effective cycling infrastructure, but more can be done. In my view, setting a goal of increasing cycling’s JTW modal share from one to two percent in six years is, while definitely an achievable goal, a bit conservative. With bold and strong cycling initiatives being launched in many cities across the U.S. and the world – from launching bike share programs to reclaiming vehicle lanes for cycling and pedestrianization in urban areas – some cities are calling for and creating a cycling revolution. Austin, along with so many cities everywhere, encounters significant levels of congestion on its roadways. Thinking differently about travel to encourage a shift away from the private car, smoothing traffic flow, creating a cycling revolution, and making walking count will help the environment, encourage activities that benefit the public’s health, and reduce congestion. So congratulations are in order for the City of Austin and the improvements and progress made thus far. But this should just be the beginning. In order to truly enhance cycling and expand the cycling community, bigger goals and larger projects should be envisioned and implemented. Instead of a one percent increase in JTW trips, why not make the goal to increase cycling’s overall modal split to five percent by 2020? Or 2030? It will take time, planning, and working extensively with stakeholders, but in order for Austin to become a “world-class bicycling city” bold goals and objectives are in order.

We can also help inspect, repair, and replace damaged or compromised (missing hardware, etc) racks which have been previously installed. We are aware of a number of racks in the Downtown area which were either mis-installed by 3rd party contractors and/or have been the target of theft attempts. We are here to help get these up to spec.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us at parking@ghisallo.org!

(click for a larger version)

The Rosewood Neighborhood, the target area of the census. (click for a larger view)

Since 2011, the Ghisallo Foundation has been growing its programs and services offered within Austin. Many of these focus on East Austin communities involving Martin Middle School and the Boys and Girls Club East Campus, as well as pop-up events such as Bike Rodeos and Bike Valets for events like Cinema East. To help develop a deeper understanding of this community’s overall bicycle ownership, usage, needs and interests, we approached the City of Austin’s Health and Human Services Department and were awarded a mini-grant to help us gather information to provide a useful snapshot of the Rosewood Neighborhood.

With the funding in place and an initial survey compiled, we approached a number of graduate students and professors at the University of Texas Health and Science Center to review our survey for structural issues, question format, and reliability. They were able to provide valuable comments and suggestions which resulted in a well structured and targeted survey, and we would like to thank Charles Shumate, Kimberlty Wilson, Xiaofen Keating, Eileen Nehme, Elizabeth Korinek, Meredith Hodgkinson, and others for helping us edit and fine tune the survey’s questions.

There are an estimated 4,400 individuals living within the Rosewood Neighborhood (1.033 sq miles). The overall goal was to directly survey households and gather survey responses representing, at a minimum, 354 or 8% of the residents. Although only a sample of the targeted population will be surveyed, it should provide a representative sample and enable current problems and barriers to bicycling – in terms of journey-to-work trips, local errand trips, and recreational trips – to be defined and future solutions and/or policies to be developed. The Rosewood Neighborhood is a perfect target neighborhood due in part to it being in central east Austin making it a highly bike-able region which also contains a Capital Metro MetroRail station, an available City of Austin Parks & Recreation activity center with associated pool, is adjacent to an Austin Community College campus, being racially diverse, containing one to two public housing complexes, and containing a higher-than-average percentage of below poverty line (relative to Austin as a whole) households. Lower-income households typically own older automobiles which are higher polluting in addition to being more at risk for lifestyle-based health issues (obesity, diabetes, etc). These two issues make lower-income households perfect candidates for policy implementations which would assist in the addition of bicycles to a household’s transportation and lifestyle (activity) choices.

The survey was grouped into a four main sections: Bike Usage Profile (ownership, ride frequency, helmet use, trip distances, etc), Bike Equipment and Storage Profile (ownership of tools, locks, etc as well as how the bicycle is stored when not in use), Bicycle Interest (in riding in general, and in specific services or clinics), and Household Profile (demographics). Households without any bike ownership were included in the survey because we wanted a general view of the neighborhood as a whole, and not owning a bicycle does not imply lack of interest in owning or riding a bicycle. A specific barrier may be in play, and removal of that barrier may enable the individual to incorporate bicycling into their lifestyle either for recreation or transportation.

At the conclusion of the survey we had met most but not all of our goals. We hit our target number of individuals (a bit over 8% at 360-370 residents) but we had a high number of households who declined to participate relative to those that did participate (114 declined vs 126 participated). What that means for us is we can’t really make blanket statements about the Rosewood Neighborhood because we can’t know why the 114 declined (no bike ownership so no interest in participating vs don’t like taking surveys vs were busy and didn’t want to take the time). Although we did not get as broad of a set of data as we had hoped due to the decline rate, we did compile a very diverse cross section of the neighborhood, which may be weighted towards cyclists in general, but also includes approximately 20% of its data from households which own zero bicycles. The data also provides detailed insight into youth ownership and ridership where youth is defined as 13 years old or younger. This age bracketing was determined more by the level of bicycle the youth rider would most likely be using rather than being the legal definition of youth (under 18 years old). Once someone has reached High School, they are probably riding what would be considered an adult level bicycle. This decision does mean that the helmet use statistics are not fully representative of all under 18 year old riders who are, by law, required to wear a helmet while riding in Austin. That said, helmet usage programs typically target Elementary and Middle School level students (3-13 years old) rather than High School (14-18 years old), and the rate of “Never” wear a helmet is consistent across both youth and adult riders, but possibly for different reasons.

The final infographic which was developed, in partnership with Bethany Bauman, can be viewed below. It is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License so feel free to redistribute it or create your own non-commercial derivative works, but you will need to keep the original attributions and share your work under the same license. We collected more data than we could distill into the final overview infographic and those additional data points may be released in another format in the future. We also hope to duplicate this effort in another Austin neighborhood in the future, possibly the Allandale Neighborhood.

An infographic of a subset of the collected data. (click to view a larger version)

Participants went home with new knowledge, confidence on doing their own basic repairs, print material covering the topics taught in class, Pedros tire levers, a patch kit, a City of Austin bike map, KIND bars and front and rear lights for their bikes.

One thing in this world that will never lose its charm is lazily browsing the aisles of a video store on a rainy afternoon. Thanks to I Luv Video, this seemingly old fashioned tradition is alive and well in Austin. Every time you set foot in their store, the televisions are humming with some evocative documentary or classic film of yesteryear. The friendly staff members are always willing to lend you a hand with finding the perfect drama or eccentric anime show, if that happens to be your thing… If you have a favorite director, favorite TV show, or just want to sift through new releases – BOOM! It’s all right there, and there’s even a smiling face waiting for you at the checkout with advice on whether the movie you are about to spend 2 hours of your life with is absolute crap (which of course it won’t be if you find it there).

As an ever increasing regular at I Luv Video, I’ve come to cherish my time spent lingering in the aisles, caressing the lightly used plastic edges and colorful jackets of each unique DVD as they whisper to my soul… So, thanks I Luv Video, for supporting this mild obsession and being our one and only friendly neighborhood video store!

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