Discuss : Contemporary Body Culture In Cycling

Anthropology of sport is an emerging research area for Dr. Brian Joseph Gilley of the University of Vermont. His research narrows in on the ways body culture in professional road cycling articulates with transnational sporting tradition and business. In particular, he is concentrating on the surveillance of bodily movement (inspired by the work of Henning Eichberg, a famous cultural sociologist) by the cycling sports industry. This research includes investigations into the ways cyclists manage their bodies and the ways specific forms of bodily movement are endorsed by the cycling sports industry (fortunately or unfortunately).

Attached below are 4 pages from a paper of Dr. Gilley's focusing in on the culture of the cycling sport. Titled Cyclist Subjectivity: Corporeal Management And The Inscription Of Suffering, it suggests that to deconstruct cycling discourse is to reveal the mechanisms of an unquestioned set of values governing individual bodies. Dr. Gilley seeks to answer where these values came from and highlights a picture for us where the political economy of cycling and techniques of corporeal management are all surrounded on one thing - the individual cyclist's body.

After you have finished reading, you can engage in a discussion here with me on issues of the body culture in our sport. This is an interesting topic and some questions ring in my mind for you people across the world. Questions such as the following :

Has our "established" values and systems of cycling body culture (that you see on TV, read about, or hear from other people) forced you to do some things with your body that you would otherwise not have done had you not been a cyclist?

Have you been pressured to dope? Have you starved yourself or lost an unhealthy amount of weight to stay with the weekend group ride or gain that addition in your power to weight ratio? Have you lost out in a relationship where your partner wouldn't accept you spending so much time and energy training, and on top of it all, looking gaunt and weary in parties and other social events because of this training? Do you think there's a stigma in your country or culture around "thin" because "thin" is considered inferior? Have you lost a job because your boss thought you look unhealthy and not suited for the task and you reached that state due to your cycling activities? Are you always in the widely popular mindset of "ride strong, ride fast, take risks" that you get yourself involved in unnecessary crashes and injuries which, of course, risk your health?

C'mon, let's talk! Anything is possible on this blog!

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ADDITIONAL READING :

Overemphasizing Power To Weight Ratio

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The "Dominant Left Theory" In Bicycling Crashes

This blog brings you new perspectives and interesting ideas in cycling, without any charge. You may pay me back through your continued interest.

Some months back while visiting a good friend of mine, I happened to grab a vintage cycling book off his shelf and flip across its pages. I like the smell of old books. Its like battery acid for the mind of a book enthusiast, just stimulating. In one of its uneventful pages simply titled Appendix, I came across the following words. Read carefully, as the author comes across as completely assured of what he's about to theorize. I'll tell you who wrote this at the end of the quote.

"If you been riding long enough to have some falls, I'll bet that almost every injury has been on the left side of your body. How do I know this? Because its the same for me and many other riders. If you want to find an old bike racer, look for a guy with scars on his left elbow. There seems to be a physiological reason for this and it is very interesting, though it hasn't been formally documented as far as I know. It has to do with the location of the heart, the body's primary organ.

As we know, the heart is to the left of the center in the chest. When the body loses equilibrium, it has a strong tendency to fall toward the heart side. This also explains why most riders find it easier to corner to the left than to the right. And it's why track races go counterclockwise so that all turning is to the left. The reason it feels more natural is that the distance from the heart to the ground is less when turning left than when turning right. Even though track riders often do fall on their right side, this doesn't disprove the theory. It just points out the bike's tendency to slide down the banking.

Cozy Beehive edition of original illustration by Grid Designs

What is the practical value of all this? For one thing it means you may need more practice cornering to the right before it feels as natural as cornering to the left. It may also be wise to wear a protective pad on your left elbow in criteriums, especially if you've injured it before. Should you crash there is a better than even chance you'll land on it again. Keep this "left side" theory in mind and you may find other ways to use it for your benefit. "

The author of those words, documented in the 1985 classic Bicycle Road Racing, was none other than the Polish coach, Eddie B (also known as the father of modern American cycling). Being one of the most respected coaches in history, you'd think he'd make sense with his ideas.

This one is particularly interesting as he's stating that "almost every" injury is to the left side of the body because the body (if you consider it to be an inverted pendulum while on a bike) has a directional falling bias. It is also stated that because this "falling" is easier to the left than the right, cornering towards the left side is as well. Therefore, velodromes are run anticlockwise.

Today, you readers can be fellow mythbusters. I did my part, analyzing some 10-15 real world videos of bicycle crashes. I found no correlations with the statement above and all crashes highly depended on riding conditions. I also counted all my scars and there are more to the right side than the left. I don't believe gravity has a preference for this side or that side.....unless you can take a fresh cadaver, cut the flesh into two equal halves and find out that one side weighs more than the other. Are any of you active in criminal investigations? This whole thing begs me to ask : what side is a dead body more likely to fall towards? (If you have murdered someone, are in jail and use an iPhone to read my blog, let me know....)

So today's question : Is there biologically any reason behind the supposed tendencies to fall towards the left side, or is it just a subconscious reflex action to protect your derailleur and chainring from getting damaged? Ah. Think about that one for the weekend.




ADDITIONAL READING :

We Might As Well Crash

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Efficiency In Inefficiency

Cycling is said to be an efficient mode of transport, when compared to running or driving a motor vehicle. Agreed. Mile for mile, far lesser calories and energy is spent, far lesser pollution emitted. But might that idea topple upside down when the road heads uphill?

When road grade rises, there is a seesaw effect in the amount of resistance wind and gravity play. Wind drag now goes down resisting less, and gravity comes up slowing you considerably. All that matters now is how much weight you carry and what gearing you have on the bike. The same gearing that perhaps tripled your speed output on a given rotational crank input on flats will plunge on a steep climb. If you choose to go with a lower gearing, your speed drops. So there is an apparent tradeoff there.

But it stands out, I guess, that one of the obvious elements of cycling athleticism - this notion of how good a cyclist someone is - is by assessing how well they can climb steep roads. Some of us may have this thinking that we're a real cyclist if we climb, and climb steep. I think there's a certain attractiveness in this tiring act. It gives one a sense of accomplishment, and sets a certain level of worth among the people he or she rides with. Bragging rights, yeah that's what it is. Besides, there's always a great view or a downhill to be earned at the other end, isn't there?

Top races in the world are most often won on the steep climbs, when a competitor can easily put time on his rivals. Stars who often showoff their talent on the climbs gets us all motivated to climb, and do it without getting off the bike. Getting off the bike and walking is somehow regarded shameful, powerless. You're no good. You aren't born to do it. Now where a cyclist does show mettle and talent on high gradient climbs, I think more can be said about his physiology and mental faculties than about the efficiency of his activity.

Its interesting that throngs of cycling fans line up steep cobbled roads and alpine climbs in Europe to see their favorite hero drag along the climb at close to walking speeds. Say one casual observer stepped back for a moment and asked : 'How efficient is cycling uphill compared to doing the same on flatland?', what do you think he'd tell himself?

I think the above observer could determine that this cyclist, riding past him on such a steep hill at 3mph, heaving from side to side zigzagging across the road like a detracked choo-choo train, will be more efficient if he got off his bike and pushed it uphill. There's no shame in this. Its just the clever thing to do, for this observer could jog up faster than the cyclist dragging along uphill! I would think much lesser energy is wasted simply caressing the ground with your feet than having to go through the complex motion of pedaling in circles with a chain and derailleur system that ultimately transmits some power to the rear wheel after losses through friction and deformation of rubber tires.

But sporting activity wouldn't have that, would it? Its not considered sporting otherwise. There might be booing from the crowd. There's no athleticism is walking your bike uphill...c'mon now. You're a sissy. You lack mental prowess.

Cycling does have its inefficiencies (perhaps that is why our early ancestors didn't swim out of the ocean carrying bikes to land). But it is the level of efficiency inherent in the cyclist which he applies to get past the natural inefficiencies that come into play in this mechanical activity that ultimately determines his outcome in a race, a training goal or the worthiness and respect he has among his peers. But I'm not the guy is the white lab coat so I can't credibly tell you where this bodily efficiency lies or how to attain it.

ADDITIONAL READING

Transport Efficiency

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Safety Moment : Crashing 60m Into A Ravine

During today's stage 8 of the Giro d'Italia, a Spanish racing cyclist by the name of Pedro Horrilo lost control of his bike on the descent of the Culmine di San Pietro (Summit of St. Peter). The poor man went off the road and feel straight into a ravine. Doctors report he is in an induced coma and on a respirator, with multiple fractured ribs, fractured leg, a broken kneecap, a perforated lung and head trauma. The descent of the Culmine is a very technical one. According to paramedics, he fell more than 60 metres down the ravine before being airlifted by helicopter to a nearby hospital in Bergamo. The summit of St. Peter is a pass at 1258 m altitude in the municipality of Cassina Valsassina. In the past this crossing was used by shepherds in the Val Taleggio to conduct trade relations.


To see an example of what this rider may have faced, here's a video from another race last year.



I'm not terribly thrilled to know that mega bike races such as the Giro, for entertainment purposes or otherwise, have to design courses in such a way that riders face such life threatening situations. Pedro is 6ft tall, and sitting on a big bike like that high above the ground, the railings by the side of the road are too short to offer any protection. This is almost like going to war. There is no guarantee that you'll get back in one piece to your family.

So what is the limit for race organizers? When does it get a little bit too much to bear? Feel free to discuss.



Note : All Photos Courtesy Of Roberto Bettini.

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What Is Your Pedaling Style And Technique?

Readers, let's talk pedaling in this post. It would be great to have all your input as comments.

Basically, what I'm wondering is what each of your pedaling techniques are like. What do you think of when you pedal? Is there a rhythm you follow? Do you count in your mind? Do you sync it with your favorite musical tune that's stuck in your head? Technically, do you believe there is something in your pedaling style that makes it efficient? Did someone teach you this style, telling you that its better? Do you follow a book? Or do you plainly just don't give a damn?

David Kina is a Cat 3 road racer from East Aurora, NY. He's also good friend of mine and wrote me a small thesis on his pedaling style, which you can read below. My response comes after his writeup and it gets really interesting towards the end!!

Oh...and don't forget to share your feelings and thoughts on your personal pedaling style!!

HOW DAVE PEDALS - THE EDDIE BORYSEWICZ TECHNIQUE

Ron,

Here is a topic that I think would be great for your blog because I want to learn about other rider's pedaling techniques. Perhaps you could have some physics analysis to add to this topic? I want to know what other racers do because my riding may not be fast but there are many faster riders who may have better hints.

When I first started racing in 2005 I was known for time trialing, breaking away, and chasing in a pursuit or time trial style (I still do favor this type of riding as I broke away in a local training crit and won last year, and I was congratulated on my pursuit abilities at a track). In 2005, I used some pedaling technique advice from an old school coach Eddie Borysewicz. He said in his book to do a soft pedal revolution per leg every 5 pedal strokes. So pedal stroke 1 right leg, 2 left, 3 right, 4 left, 5 rest right, 1 left, 2 right, 3 left, 4 right, 5 rest left. 5 is an odd number of pedal strokes so a racer rests the right leg every 10 pedal strokes and the left leg gets to rest every other 10 pedal strokes. This coach (along with a coaching book of yours that I read in Tim's van in 2007 on the way to Philly also advises using a rhythmic resting technique) says that this amount of rest adds up.

Borysewicz gives some reasoning behind this according to bio-mechanics.The tension of muscles from pedaling causes blood to be restricted to muscles. Hence, relieving that tension for every 5th pedal stroke allows more blood flow to the resting leg.

Borysewicz also said that Jaques Anquetil and other professionals used this technique.

From left - 'Eddie B' and Greg Lemond (Photo Courtesy : Mitchell Clinton)

From my experiences, this pedaling can be tough to learn. I can only count some much to 5 before I start getting bored and need to listen to some music or think about other stuff. So this rhythm needs to become automatic. I have had success with this in the past. The best music that matches this rhythm is Take Five by the Dave Brubeck quartet (shown at the end of post) since the meter is in 5/4.

I have told another racing friend that I used this technique and they did not seem to quite understand that a constant rpm would be used. They asked other racers that have been around for awhile and did not seem to get any indication that this is a popular thing to do. Perhaps this does not seem practical because the 5th pedal strokes are basically like "dead zones" in a pedal stroke and all the rave is to eliminate those?

Note that I don't use this on any uphill where I would be going slower than about 15-20 miles per hour. I do follow this technique only at speeds faster than 20 mph on flats.


- DAVE KINA

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Dave Kina's musical recommendation to follow Eddie B's pedaling technique

MY RESPONSE :

DEAR DAVE,

Bicycle pedaling motion is an example of what is known in physics as periodic or simple harmonic motion (SHM).


If your preferred cadence is 97 revolutions per minute, you pedal 97/60 = 1.61 revolutions / sec.

Frequency (f) is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. Here, your frequency = 1.61 revolutions /sec.

Time period (T) is the duration (in seconds) of one cycle in a repeating event, so it is the reciprocal of frequency. T = 1/1.61 = 0.62 seconds / revolution.

Suppose you followed Eddie B's technique of pedaling by starting out with the left leg, then your left leg rests on every odd stroke divisible by 5 and your right leg rests on every even stroke divisible by 10 (if you started with right, just turn this rule around).

97 RPM (of a single crank) has 194 total pedal strokes (of both cranks). So after 194 pedal strokes and 1 min duration :

Total Time Of Rest To Left Leg = (1+[(185-5)/10]) x 0.62 secs = 11.78 seconds
Total Time Of Rest To Right Leg = (190/10) x 0.62 secs = 11.78 seconds

NOTE : We added a "1" to the equation for the left leg because the left leg rests once in the first 5 pedal strokes. From then on, it rests for every 10th stroke. 185 is the last multiple of 5 before 194 where a left leg rested. We subtract 5 from it because we already accounted for the first 5 pedal strokes by adding the "1" in the beginning.

You can find out the total time of rest for any nth pedal stroke by writing a small and neat computer program through some logic. Writing that logic is upto the programmer to make the best use of computer resources to yield an answer in the shortest time. That discussion is for another time.

Getting back to the problem, if you rode a 25 mile flat course (40K) at an average speed of 25 miles/hour, your time taken to complete it is 1 hour = 60 minutes. Total pedal strokes = 194 x 60 = 11640.

Total Time Of Rest To Left Leg = 11.78 seconds rest/minute x 60 minutes = 706.8 seconds/hr
Total Time Of Rest To Right Leg = 11.78 seconds rest/ minute x 60 minutes = 706.8 seconds/hr

All in all, you rest each leg 706.8 seconds/hr or 11.78 minutes/hr in the 40K TT. That's a total of 23.56 minutes/hr of leg rest!! If this is the case, Eddie B is a genius. But you'll have to perform this like a flawless robot to get it exactly right.

I doubt any human can achieve this ideally, since the body cannot calibrate alternating "rest" to this exactness for 1 hour. I don't believe the human muscle, the human brain and the various motor neurons in the nervous system can allow for this.

If one were to study your muscle activation patterns using Electromyography (EMG), would your resting leg on every 10th stroke be "really" resting? Will the muscle cells of the resting leg give out zero action potential readings during circular movement? Or is this 'resting leg' technique just a perception of rest? If the resting leg muscles are really being activated as shown by EMG, that would mean that calcium ions are interacting with the myofibrils of the muscle fiber to induce contraction via sliding filament mechanism. This process uses ATP which is the cellular energy currency in the human body. This would then mean that the muscle is not in a state of energy balance at all as it is producing net ATP to give this "oomph" to the muscle. Hence it is not technically at "rest". [See : Exercise Physiology : Basis Of Human Movement In Health and Disease by Stanley P. Brown, Wayne C. Miller and Jane M. Eason]

Something to think about....

Eddie also mentioned that Jacques Anquetil used this technique. Let's say I'm not ready to believe it for now. :)




ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

What Muscles Are You Using To Pedal?
Cycling Biomechanics : CONI Manual
Myth And Science In Cycling : Crank Length And Pedaling Technique (University of Utah)

* * *

Safety Moment : Downhill Cycling Accident Causes Death

Brace yourselves. Only this blog will be completely transparent to you and show you how an accident, human error or faulty design in cycling can hamper your health and put you in serious danger, sometimes even resulting in death.

This one culminated in a loss of life. Sadly. This story comes to you thanks to an email to me a couple of days back from a reader in Taiwan.

The victim was a 72 year old rider. He was riding with four of his friends on a local road in Taiwan on 2/28/2009. The section of that road was a gentle downhill, and not much wide with little traffic. The bike was a BMC road model ( I don't recognize it. An SL01 Racer?). So it seems no one really observed what happened. The rider in question may have strayed away from the group by dashing out in front, but from the fact that we know his age, I hinge on the assumption that he may have been left behind by the group.

Now, there was an impact. With what, how and why, no one knows for sure. Though the victim wore a helmet, his face hit the tarmac and his chest was struck by the stem. Later in hospital, he breathed his last.

Trusting that the information given to me is true, below is the scene of the crash. The blood on the road is likely to be the cyclist's.


And here is the observation of the transmission chain (Campagnolo) from the victim's bike :


Notice carefully that the chain appears to be jammed. On the front side, the chain appears to have slipped from the big chainring. On the rear, it is tangled onto the derailleur and the latter is also in a very atypical/extreme position.

What may have happened was the derailleur and chain jammed, stopping the rear wheel at once and throwing the rider off his bike. This comes from primary observations. Did something get stuck in his derailleur causing this? Was the chain too short such that when the chain was shifted onto the biggest sprocket in the rear (combined with big chainring in front), the derailleur ran out of travel and the entire setup jammed? Could it have been that in this situation, the rider went into panic mode and somehow made up his mind that gripping both brakes as hard as he can to stop the bike would be the solution and that eventually caused the crash? It is also not known whether there was an obstruction in the road, an animal that came in the way or the probability of a hit-and-run case from a reckless motorist.

Put on your thinking caps here and lets do a brainstorm. We will try and come to a reasonable conclusion about what exactly happened and also how it could be avoided. That this cyclist eventually died should ring some alarms in everyone's mind who comes across this story.

* * *

On Reaching Dizzying Heights In Bicycle-Vehicle Collisions

"If a car traveling at 46.5 kph hits a cyclist, the force of impact would be sufficient to send the cyclist up to the thirteenth floor of a building."

- Traffico, a journal by the Directorate General of Traffic of the Spanish Ministry Of The Interior

I happened to come across this quote on some helmet advocacy website a few days back. I forgot to bookmark the darn site but had copy pasted this statement exactly as it was into a word file on my computer. Anyway, I was struck and bothered by such a bold claim. While it sounds scary, is there any real truth in it? 46.5 kph is around 29mph, which is a low speed for a vehicle. Despite this, the momentum of the vehicle is a hell of a lot considering its high mass with respect to the cyclist. So can the momentum transfer in the above collision really rocket the cyclist up to as high as thirteen floors before crashing to the ground? If such were the case, the cyclist could be in serious condition, even dead.

If you know your college physics, the topics to recall would be Newton's laws, impact and momentum transfer, conservation of energy, collisions and projectile motion. But hold on. Its a tricky challenge. There are many variables to consider : the masses of the three bodies, height of the cyclist, the gradient of the road, point on the vehicle first struck, orientation of the bicyclist before impact, the launch angle, coefficients of restitution and friction, and victim's behavior post impact (wrap, vault, forward projection, somersault etc).

Physicists and engineers across the world have come up with all sorts of equations to study vehicle-pedestrian collisions. They're interested in things such as - how one can devise a good comprehensive mathematical model that will approximate well the speed with which the vehicle first impacted the victim, or what the total throw distance of the victim would be given other data, or would the model ultimately validate real world behavior - questions of that nature. Such models could then be incorporated into manuals and computer tools that could be used by police officers and forensic investigators to catch criminals and help serve justice.

Example of a Post Impact Scheme Adopted By Bogdanovic and Batista, 2004

In America, most commercial buildings are 10 feet in height per floor : 8 feet head room, 1 foot above drop ceiling (pipes, electrical, etc.), and 1 foot for infrastructure (beams & support structures). Can a cyclist rocket to 130 feet in the air upon a collision? We may never know exactly, because not a single bit of data is provided by Traffico other than the car's speed at impact which is given to be 46.5kph=29mph.

Lets make an effort to find out.



1. LOOKING AT VIDEOS


Forget the theoretical part for a moment. Lets look at a couple of real collision videos involving a two wheeler and a car.

Here's a guy on a bicycle getting hit by a car. The latter was decelerating hard after the driver spotted the rider coming into his view but it was too late to stop an impact. Note how the right corner of the car impacts the cyclist first. The rider then hits the windshield and bounces off it before falling onto the road on the right side.



The victim is pretty lucky. He just gets up and immediately starts yelling his frustrations. I'm so surprised he didn't smash his head onto the ground. But hey, neither did he fly any higher than the car itself. Just a few feet. The car itself could have been doing 15 or 20 mph before impact.

Here's another video. This time, its a vehicle colliding with a motorcyclist who fled a red light only to meet his deadly fate.



If it had been a bicycle in the video, which is much lighter than a motorbike, it would have been thrown off a farther distance. The car was moving much faster than the first video. It could well have been doing 35 or 40mph before coming to an abrupt stop after the collision. The airbags must have surely deployed since the driver appears disoriented. The motorcyclist is shown spinning in the air at a stomach sickening angle before landing onto the hood of the car and bouncing off it straight onto the road, right in front of the stopped vehicle. Its anyone's guess how many bones he could have broken that day.

And finally, here's a simulation of a car-bicyclist collision. It was done by Crash Teams, the largest crash reconstruction company in the world.




All three of these videos don't show the cyclist being propelled to dizzying heights after the collision. At least not thirteen storeys high.



2. FIELD EXPERIMENTS

Jim Green is a triathlete and Professional Engineer with over 20 years of experience in reconstructing bicycle accidents. In the 19th chapter of his book "Bicycle Accident Reconstruction For The Forensic Engineer", a table of vehicle-bicycle collision data is presented to us. The analysis was done on the field by Rusty Haight and Jerry Eubanks who set up an experiment in which different kinds of motor vehicles were used to strike an exemplar bicycle with a dummy cyclist at various speeds.

Here's the field data that shows the linear throw distance of the dummy cyclist after impact.

Determination of the throw distance of a bicycle and cyclist at various impact speeds

I have highlighted some rows of data for cars close to 29mph. For example, a 1979 Honda Accord hitting the dummy cyclist at almost 27 mph in a 60 degree orientation would throw the rider some 58 feet. Although the field experiment did not measure for the maximum height of the cyclist in the air, I highly doubt that the dummy really went as high as thirteen floors for a throw distance of 58 feet. I don't believe that's what the researchers really observed.



3. PROJECTILE MOTION

Coming back to physics, the cyclist on impact would be a projectile because his motion is only governed by gravity. But can we use the equations from projectile motion to find out what his height achieved could be in an ideal case scenario?

Lets use some simple assumptions like the following before any calculations :

a) the cyclist is a particle of mass 70kg
b) the head-on collision is elastic
c) the bike is immediately separated from under him after impact
d) the cyclist hits the windshield and is launched forward at an angle
e) during the collision between him and the car, there is zero effect on the velocity of the car itself due to its very high mass and that all the car's impact velocity is transferred to him
f) the car comes to a complete stop just after impact, leaving the cyclist with the forward motion velocity
g) there isn't much deformation to the car, or injuries to the cyclist AT impact and the co-efficient of restitution is essentially at or very close to 1.
9) the analysis is strictly restricted to a two dimensional plane, with no regard for the z dimension.

Using the equations for a projectile, we can apply a simple applet to solve for height.

For head-on elastic collisions, the velocities of the car and cyclist would be :



Assume the car has mass m1=2000kg, and the cyclist has mass m2=70kg.

v(car) = 13m/s (46.5kph, given by Traffico).

So, v(cyclist) = 25.12 m/s.


According to the equation for maximum height in a trajectory, we find that range is shortest and peak height is maximum when the launch angle is exactly 90 degrees with respect to the horizontal. This is because sin(90) = 1.



Since we assumed that the cyclist hits the windshield, lets give him a launch angle of 80 degrees. Solving :

With air resistance factored in, the cyclist would make a 30.82 m max height, or 101 ft. Add the height of the car's impact point to this figure and it still gives us something under 105 feet. This height, given such idealistic assumptions we made earlier, is still lower than 13 floors. In America, commercial buildings are usually 10 feet in height per storey. 13 floors would be about 130-140 feet. Hence, in the real world, one probably cannot come close to anywhere this high. Real world videos or simulation show us different and complicated outcomes. There usually isn't a good bounce between the car and the victim just after collision. Moreover, kinetic energies could be absorbed in the collision as heat, light, or deformation energy and the neither does the cyclist and the bike follow ballistic trajectories like a cannon. Lets remember that the cyclist sits on a bike and that fact coupled with how he impacts the car are very likely to influence how far or high he's thrown. Hence, I cannot validate the calculations above for real world observations. I may believe it if you're talking about a collision on the surface of the moon where the acceleration due to gravity is 1/6th that of the earth. Or if we're talking not about a human cyclist, but a ping-pong ball.

CONCLUSIONS

The idea that a cyclist will launch as high as 13 storeys seems like a wonderfully wacky proposition. I support the wearing of helmets for protection but don't support the spreading of false information by agencies in putting together a helmet wearing agenda.

As an end note, I just thought of something in my hindsight. Maybe Traffico is right. What if, in Spain, the 13th floor of a building is considered so unlucky that there is no 13th floor at all in its elevator's options.

What Traffico then must have actually meant through their quote is : You're one unlucky bastard to be hit by a moving car at 46.5kph!



Concluding video presentation : James Green, PE discusses bicycle accident scene investigation from the perspective of a forensics engineer.

Vote For Cozy Beehive & Give Me Your Feedback

1. VOTE : It has come to my attention that somehow I made it as finalist for Best Sports Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Classic regression to the mean says that next year, I might not be so lucky in cutting it. Voting has begun. Note that you can vote every 24 hours until January 13, 10pm. If you have a one or two quick minutes and you like what I'm doing, click here to cast your vote. If you don't, who cares.


2. FEEDBACK : I would like to now consider this blog like a control mechanism with closed loop feedback. I manage the blog and write content, but without feedback, I wouldn't be able to steer the blog in a direction that earns more readership from around the world. So before moving forward with posts, I would like to engage you to tell me a few things from any of the following such as :

1) What do you hate, like, or love about this blog?

2) How are colors, fonts, themes and backgrounds on this blog doing for your ocular pleasure? Do you rub your teary eye to see things? Do you wear an eye patch to read Cozy Beehive?

3) Quick to load on your browser, or slow?

4) How do you rate my content, where B=Balls, C=Cute, G for General, PG for Parental Guidance and S for Screwed Up? Any other letters, and abuses are not recommended but neither are comments blocked or banned for your total writing freedom.

5) What topics have you liked, and what more do you like me to blog about?


You can comment below this post and one or two sentences are sufficient, really. Thank You!

A Cycling Enthusiast Among 9/11 Victims

I was on Liberty Street in Manhattan the other day.

It is the location for the Tribute WTC Visitor Center where personal stories, artifacts and images from the disaster are on display. The quietness in the room is striking, as visitors look at photos of victims, messages from children, and objects taken from the actual scene. The melancholy tune playing in the background of the Center might just make you break down, even if you knew none of the victims personally.

Now on one corner of the Center, there are these two big walls with well over a thousand photos of 9/11 victims. I can't count them. Its innumerable. Most of them are nameless smiling faces and so many are simply revealing what each one enjoyed doing in their lives, just like the most of us.



A visitor, like me, could spend well over 10 minutes just standing there scanning these photos. They are overwhelming, yes. But could it be possible that you could spot someone you knew, perhaps even remotely? Could you identify someone's photo and relate their life with yours, and appreciate that life is not guaranteed? Or its meaning? Well, you wouldn't know that until you stood there and kept looking.

Which is what I did.

Now on this little corner, on the first wall (of two), there's a photo of a young female.


She appears to be in a Giro bicycle helmet.

On closer inspection, she's looks to be in a cycling jersey as well.


What struck me most was this smile. Just a full blown, innocent, 100 watt smile while perhaps enjoying the simple pleasure of being on a bicycle. Or whatever it was that she was doing when this photograph was taken.

But a nameless face, in the end.

Now that I have gotten to this point of actually taking this photo and displaying it here, curiosity compels me to dig a tad deeper. I don't know if it'll make a difference to anyone at the end of the day, but should we leave such an assemblage of pictures just to sit there on a wall in some museum?

Who was this person? What was her name? And what did she like doing in her life? If its not getting too privy into the life of the deceased, pray tell us some more. If anyone can help out in identifying this 9/11 victim, do post a good comment.

A Distingerated Bicycle Helmet

Thanks to Sandra from Australia (of Competitive Cycling fame) for sending me an image of a helmet involved in a crash. Its branded Tioga. Her friend was descending from Mt. Coot-tha when the person took a bad spill that ended up putting some serious cuts and bruises to the face and breaking a couple of vertebrates as well.

The lid is completely destroyed. Whether a helmet saves your life or not may be still moot, but keep staring at the picture above. 

What do you think? Did it do its "as designed job"? Does it look too fragile? Perhaps one of the commentators, Richard Keatinge, from my "How a Bicycle Helmet Works" post will be very interested in this image. Comment away.

Are Bicycle Businesses Heading To Potential Turmoil? Your Say

Some months ago, (and perhaps still now) one of the buzzwords bringing good fortune in the bicycle industry was 'high gas prices'. While the automobile industry was faring badly, the bicycle business was booming. Most prayed for lower gas prices, but the diametrically opposite people in the bicycle business secretly wished that it kept increasing. That seems like a cunning way of thinking, but in the end, business is business.

Now a bigger calamity might put all that to rest. Of course, you all know what I'm talking about! Just open the front pages of your newspaper.

But there could be a fair share of you who are still clueless about the breadth and depth of this huge financial mess. For the uninitiated in financial knowledge, just read this funny Subprime Primer put in simple stick figure terms.

Getting back, in the midst of such an issue of global proportions, I find it awful that very few in online bicycling circles (that includes publications, websites and blogs) are talking about the more pressing current state of affairs. Let's put Interbike 2008, Lance Armstrong and Britney Spears aside for a moment here.

The cold fact is that like all businesses, the cycling trade also depends upon such a thing as credit. And when credit stops flowing from markets, to banks, to businesses and to consumers, almost everything begins slowly heading downhill.

Now I'm not involved in the bicycling trade in any major way. Strictly speaking, I'm an outsider and that's the way I like to stay for now. But I did manage to chalk out a schematic of how money and goods and services flow in the bicycle business.

If you find anything out of place or not making sense, please feel free to correct me.

My Simple Schematic on How the Global Bicycle Trade Works

I'm not going to go into immense detail on every aspect shown in the graphic above. But just check out the overwhelming role that credit plays, not just in business but also in our personal lives.

Since the credit markets are at great distress, I see a lot of weaker brand names and small businesses having the possibility of being affected.

And the other funny thing is .... oil prices are falling as well, not rising.

I understand there'll be a good percentage of readers here closely associated with the bicycling industry. Here are some questions from me to you and to all in general to ponder over, discuss and intelligently comment on.

I think most of the questions, if not all, will be put forth from the perspective of those at the lower end of the supply chain. Bear with me on the train of thoughts.



How do you foresee the impact on the bicycling industry because of the global financial turmoil?

1. Will brick and mortar bike shops make enough money to sustain themselves? Will we see a lot of bikes selling for cheap just to get rid of excess inventory? And with lesser access to credit in order to get new line of bikes in, are we going to see some unusually empty bike shop floors early next year together with dwindling shoppers?

2. Will big brand names cut on the variety of lines of bicycles they offer to the public?

3. And what about the average consumer who won't be able to get a loan or credit with the same ease as in the past? With his buying power decreasing, what will the demand for bicycles be in the coming months? Don't you think the consumer mindset will be to hold onto money in these tough financial times? Shouldn't bicycle design itself change and strive to keep costs down instead of pushing for the high end bike sales.

4. And how on earth could we solve this? What can and should change in the way retail business is conducted today? Should the industry target more newcomers to cycling, as opposed to the ones who already have 400 bikes in the garage? Should bike shops focus more on service as opposed to emphasizing the selling of goods to make the margins? Should they charge higher prices on those services? And how will that decision affect the customer as a result.

5. Finally, as far as smaller brand names are concerned, how will they fare? Are consolidations of smaller bicycle companies by the bigger ones be the answer to saving them from possible collapse? The issue is in keeping the industry going, and maintaining people's jobs in these tough times.



Update : Oct 30,2008

Bruce Hildenbrand over at Active talks about Teamwork in the bicycle industry.

Thanks also to Bike Hugger for this video called Economy, Bike Industry. It looks like people are going to bring out more bikes from the garage to the shop for tuneups as the economy slumps.

Delta 7 Iso Truss Bicycle Design Still Falling Short?

Early this year, I had written a post on the Isotruss bike frame from a strictly structural and engineering point of view. Read it here if you haven't.

While it was not known then how exactly the folks behind the bike would manufacture it and bring down the costs, we now know that they have taken many streamlining steps in both their manufacturing and management areas.

However, while all this has served to get all the production inhouse, giving the ability to lower costs, control quality more and produce a higher number of frames per year, they still haven't tackled some of the issues everyone has been talking about ever since the news of this design hit the media.

For example, apart from "the cheesgrater" and the "mobile geological reservoir" that people have been naming it, I see two other disadvantages that may or may not seem obvious.

Where can a rider fit his water bottle cages? Is this bike the "Hydration Killer"? And what about the sharp edges of the isotruss structure that could potentially hurt a user during use?

The somewhat partial yet important shielding effect from splashing water of a solid seat tube, top tube and down tube iseffectively eliminated. This can be a problem, while riding in rain since the rider is now subjected to a new stream of attacking water in the directions shown above. You can't tell someone not to ride in the rain either.

Many new bicycle manufacturers getting into the cycling scene think being "light weight", "super-strong" and seeming "fast" are everything.

While those are important, a lot of them do miss on function, the aesthetics, the overall riding experience and most importantly, customer satisfaction.

With so many companies in cycling competing with each other for customers, if one of them effectively fail to address these issues, they are in danger of easily losing to someone else. The customer is everything! Ignoring that aspect is a trade off you can't afford to make.

If anyone from Delta 7 is reading this, like you did on my previous post, you're most welcome to post some comments as to how you're going to tackle each of the issues. Where is the frame 'skin' that you've been talking about? Is that an add-on or are you not considering its possibility any longer?




Update : There were mentions of glue-on water bottle bosses in the comments to this post. A reader alerted me to a closeup picture where you can see this.

So here it is :

Close up view (via Bike Rumor)

Update (10/3/2008) :

Cozy Beehive reader Jon commented that during his test ride on the Arantix Mountain Bike at this year's Interbike, he found the ride performance only so-so compared to equally priced MTB models. But another interesting comment from him was that he found the seatstay-seat tube junction was so "huge" that it was hitting his legs on "almost every pedal stroke".

Courtesy : Acidinmyleg's Photostream (Notice the water bottle cage, pretty impressive 'glue on' bosses)

Looks like this is something Delta 7 has to sort out - yet another bone in its throat on the MTB side.


UPDATE (10/3/2008) : I just wanted to let you all know that during the outdoor demo of this year's Interbike, there were multiple failures on some of the Isotruss demo bikes!! Here's the confession from Delta 7 (via reader comments on Bike Rumor) :

" Unfortunately there were two failures during the demonstration at Bootleg Canyon. The batch of bikes made specifically for the event had an epoxy failure and the head lug disconnected (came apart) from the IsoTruss tubing. Complete analysis is still being worked on. The company went to great lengths to gather a few bikes from previous production runs to have available for the demonstration. "

Additionally, also see a related post from Bike Magic.

Olympics Games Or Gene Games? Repoxygen

This may interest the likes of Cycling Fans Anonymous.

Courtesy : Science News

Repoxygen is the tradename for a type of gene therapy that induces controlled release of erythropoietin (EPO) in response to low oxygen concentration. It is has been developed by Oxford Biomedica to treat anaemia. It has been developed in mice, is still in preclinical development and has not been extensively tested in humans [Wikipedia].

What could this mean for cycling?

Sorry for the bad scan job. I was sitting in a public library while reading the latest copy of Science News, and the lighting was not the best. Alternatively, you can read the electronic article here [Finding The Golden Genes, Patrick Barry, Aug 13 2008].







Basically, using hormones and other drugs to get dope into your system could be a thing of the past. Repoxygen, although hard to obtain, uses the natural abilities of a virus to deliver a therapeutic gene to an anemic patient's DNA. That gene will have the encoded protein, erythropoetin in it. Since this gene is similar to the patient's original gene, the 'camaflouging' is hard to detect.

Endurance can also be boosted by a gene encoding a protein called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR-delta) . The scanned article as shown above, referring to studies done by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, states :

"Mice engineered to have extra copies of this gene hopped onto a treadmill and, without ever having trained, ran about twice as fast as the unaltered mice. The extra PPAR-Delta improved the ability of the mice's muscles to use fat molecules for energy, and it shifted the animal's ratio of muscle fiber types from fast twitch toward slow twitch fibers - a change that would improve muscle endurance in people as well."

As far as I have learnt in biology, fiber ratios are genetically determined. But this form of gene quirk can blow all that out of the water. Now you may not even need to exercise to up your performance.

The dark question lurks : Are any athletes using repoxygen at the Olympics?

Standard for Climbing Bragging Rights

I dont have time for a big post today but there was another interesting question I wanted to put forth here tonight.

I bet you readers have done some amazing things on the bicycle in your lives.

Taking into consideration your experience and the regional influence, what is your standard for climbing bragging rights? And is there an ultimate universal standard at all? I wouldn't know.

For example, very recently, I was told it was the 2% rule. Which means for every 10 miles you go in horizontal distance, the vertical has to be 1000 feet in climbing. So 30 miles equates to 3000 feet, 100 miles equates to 10000 feet of climbing and so on.

That sounds a little low to me, and I guess I could break that with a 10 mile ride with 1000 feet of climbing every day?!! And a bike messenger somewhere in the Alps (say) breaks the rule with a pretty solid margin on any short jolly ride to the grocery store. :)

Well, I'm not sure whether there are grocery stores near the Alpine passes but thats another matter. So anyway, Will, Don etc...what are your thoughts?