Bunch Sprint Win!

The Bicycle Racing

After my success in the club road race championships, I got a the flu one weekend, and a virus the next, so my next race was the club time trial championship on the 1st of June. The last time I had ridden a time trial, I was uncomfortable on the time trial handlebars, and I was unsure about how much of a difference they would make, so I didn't put them on for this time trial. The course was 3 laps of the Kooragang circuit; just over 21kms. I was happy with my pacing (my average heart rate was about 90% of my maximum heart rate), my lap times were reasonably even (0:11:44, 0:11:53, 0:11:32) for a total time of 0:35:09. This time yielded me a very inconspicuous 10th out of 13.

The next  weekend it was back to my favourite race format, a scratch race. Racing was combined with Hunter District, so I was looking forward to a healthy sized field. I was excited about racing a scratch race again, but nervous because I didn't know whether my performance in the time trial reflected a drop in fitness from being sick, or just that I was a poor time trialist.



The race was over 5 laps of the Kooragang circuit. My plan was to stay at the back of the bunch for the first 4 laps, and see how things were looking at the start of the last lap. The breakaways that looked serious were early in the race (lap 2?), so I didn't expect them to stay out for the whole race.

There is one rider in the bunch, named Anthony (I think!), who has in the past made a solo breakaway at the turnaround (about 4km from the finish) and held out to the finish. I moved up through the group before the turnaround, in case Anthony was the one to follow, but perhaps a few people had the same idea. He did have a bit of a go, but was well covered by a few of the other riders.

After that possible breakaway was resolved, I did my best to inconspicuously drift back through the group to get into position during Woodchip Straight for a sprint finish. The group was slowing down and bunching up, so it was looking good. Once we entered the finishing straight Anthony sprinted again, and me, having previously been out-gunned by his aerobic fitness, thought, "Watch out! Better follow that!"

Talking to Anthony afterwards he said, "I was going for the Masters' finish line [a different finish line about 500m up the road from our finish line], and forgot it was a Kooragang race." Following this faux pas, left me in not a bad position, but maybe a little further forward than would have been ideal. Anthony faded, and then that left me behind Dave and Darren. Dave had a short turn at the front of the lead-out train, and then pulled over. Darren had a more solid turn at the front, and then we got to the trees and it was time to go!

I accelerated as hard as I could. There was only one rider in front of me and I was catching him (in the black and green 'CHEEKY' kit in the video). I thought that I had probably shaken off any riders following me through the 'traffic'. I gave it everything, and my legs were doing the usual burning thing. I was just about to sit down in the saddle again, and I heard some aero wheels coming up on my right, and somebody else shouting/grunting right behind me! I stayed out of the saddle a little bit longer! My legs were getting wobbly! I held onto the win, just across the line.

Looking back at the video, I am surprised I held on to win. I hadn't shaken anybody off at all! Lincoln (red helmet, black and white kit) had stayed on my wheel the whole way from half way down Woodchip Straight! Greg Tolhurst (I think, white helmet and red and white jersey) was making fast ground down the right (left-of-frame), and Ben Sparkes (white helmet, red, white, and blue jersey) only just didn't pass between myself and Lincoln. Final places were me 1st, Lincoln Latunin 2nd, and Ben Sparkes 3rd.

The Video Processing

If you think the above video is shaky, have a look at the original!



I stabilised it using a Linux Command-Line program named 'Melt', following this tutorial. My analysis command was

melt Finish.MP4 -filter videostab2 shakiness=10 smoothing=10 maxshift=-1 maxangle=-1 crop=1 -consumer xml:Finish3.xml all=1 real_time=-2

This created an 'analysis' file, that has the processing parameters and transforms listed in it. I manually increased the smoothing parameter in this file to 20 (and renamed it Finish4.xml), because this parameter is used in the 2nd step, which actually applies the transforms. This means it, and some other parameters, can be changed without needing to redo the analysis and just redo the transformation step. My transform command was

melt Finish4.xml -audio-track Finish.MP4 -consumer avformat:FinishStable4.mp4 vcodec=libx264 b=5000k acodec=aac ab=128k tune=film preset=slow

The videostab2 filter is based (I think) on this work, and you can read more there.

Kooragang 2013 Road Championships

Saturday the 27th of April 2013 was the Kooragang Club Championships road race. The Club Championship is comprised of a road race, a time trial, and a criterium.

<present-continuous>

The weather is good, the field a little small. I've spent most of the race hiding at the back of the pack, waiting for my moment. This time last lap, with about one and a half laps, or 10km, a breakaway formed. With less than 4km to the finish, and the breakaway still about 200m in front, it is time to get serious.

We will probably catch the breakaway, and I want the bunch to finish together (favours a sprinter), so I'll do my bit at the front of the bunch. We'll get organised, get the pace-line going, catch the breakaway for sure. [1:00] I've got to keep a straight face though, someone else can follow Kim through [wearing the Kooragang club time trial kit, riding the white Giant bike]. Hang on, where are they? They're not being cagey, they've got nothing left, and Kim is my ride to the breakaway!

[1:10] Kim and me, we'll catch the bunch, I'll do my bit, he's been working hard, looks a bit puffed. Nope, he doesn't want a rest. Oh well, I'll follow him. [2:00] Bunch is back together, we'll probably get the breakaway on the finishing straight. Big bunch sprint. [2:25] Wait, where'd they all go? Maybe they won't catch the breakaway.

Oh well, we're looking good. [2:55] Craig's fallen off the back off the breakaway, Kim's run out of steam. [3:00] Got the breakaway. Quick check, no the bunch is not going to steam roll us. I'll just sit here until we're close enough for a non-stop sprint to the finish. Big pole...wait. Carpark entry...wait. Carpark exit...wait. Northern end of the carpark? Alright, let's do it. I'll go down the left so there's not so much room to draft in the lee from the Easterly breeze. One. Two. Three. Toast.

Perhaps I should've left it a bit longer, I can't keep this up. Sit down, keep aero, try to keep the speed up. I can't hear anything. I should check to make sure nobody is going to roll me on the line. Nuh, plenty of space. That looks like it.

</present-continuous>

It was an interesting race. If the group of three remaining in the breakaway didn't get caught by the bunch, that is unusual. Usually the group either gets caught or doesn't, not gets caught by a few and not the bunch. I say 'if' because I just double checked the results on the club website, and they are not what I remember them to be. So I'm not sure what happened there.

You can see in the video, at about 3:10, in the distant background, someone swings way out right (left of frame), presumably sprinting. There's a bit more commotion (again, only faintly visible in the background) at 3:39, so maybe a sprint did catch the breakaway. I'll have to check.

I owe a big thanks to Kim for helping me catch the breakaway. Thanks mate! Congratulations to the breakaway riders too. It was pretty impressive staying out for ~10km. I thought they were going to get caught for sure.

Now, I've just got to watch out for a reputation as a wheel-sucker. It is a race after all though.

How to True a Wheel in 40 Seconds

There is a big-ish race coming up this weekend: The Orica Kermesse. It's a NSW Cycling state event (I think), which means that there will be a bigger crowd than the usual weekend club racing, and the race is a little bit longer (56km instead of the usual 35 - 42 km).

I didn't know what a Kermesse was at the start of this year. Here is the wikipedia Kermesse article. Sadly our track is not as glamorous as the wikipedia article suggests. Instead of starting and finishing in the centre of town, we are going to be riding around and around a heavy industrial estate.

So with a big race coming up and all, I wanted to make sure that my bike was in tip-top condition. Wish me luck! I'll probably be back with more stories after the race!

Mitchell Park Sunrise

I went for a ride and filmed the sunrise at Mitchell Park, Merewether, NSW. It turns out Mitchell Park has a velodrome (I think): it is not banked, but it is 300m long, and it has a "sprinter's lane" marked around the last 200 metres.

The footage isn't brilliant, but not horrific either. The camera I used was a GoPro, which has a wide-angle lens, so the detail in the background got lost. Next time I would concentrate a bit more on interest in the foreground. Perhaps this could be achieved by not having the action run perpendicular to the field of view, so that subjects don't zoom across the frame so quickly.

It has been fun playing around with editing timelapse videos. I managed to get Kdenlive to work for me long enough to do a video for my dad's 60th birthday. However, trying to anything a little more creative or complicated, gets pretty tedious pretty quickly between the crashes and glitches. I'm still undecided.

Wednesday Morning Farms Ride

A friend of mine recently decided to get up every day at 5am for 30 days, and he invited people to join him. You can follow his reflections and efforts here. It has been fun to have this connection between us, even though he's in Canada and I'm in Australia. I've been using the extra time in the mornings to go riding. This is a ride that I go on sometimes:

You can see the details of my performance on strava.