Spinning at Now Sports

Time again to find ways to stay on the bike indoors. The guys at work head to Now Sport at noon for some spinning. Now Sport has a nice new area set up for spinning and they very generously let us come over and use it all winter. They also have a trainer attached to a computer for doing virtual rides on a computer. I usually don't bother because I can do it at night at home just as easily. However it is nice to mix it up as well as hang out with other riders instead just being alone in the basement. Here is Frankster riding in the new workout area. That's his new bike that he has on layaway at Now until next season. Nice bike.



The bikes on the wall are owned by people that elect to store them at Now for the winter. That way they don't have to carry them in, I did. Plus it probably makes the spouse happier not having them in the basement.




Just like last year I participated in their virtual time trail. The contest runs the whole month and as of this post I was in 2nd place - of two people that have done the ride. But the first place guy is very fast and he's beating me by only 15 seconds. So I wasn't too disappointed. Here you can see me set up on the Trax training and the route I'm riding on the TV screen.

BSC at the dome

Boston Scientific sponsors Gopher sports which is great. As a part of that sponsorship they get a certain amount of advertising at events. Last month I was asked by HR if I might be interesting in creating animation for use at the Gopher football games at the Metrodome. Hell yeah!

This is a still from the animation. Click on it to see the full resolution version. Be ready to scroll!



Right off I hit on the idea of the long strip being a blood vessel so I thought blood cells would make a neat backdrop to the text and logo treatments. I also tried more 3D cells but the more graphic cells looked better and didn't screen blood!

The display it would play on is one of those wrap around LED displays between upper and lower desks. I've usually seen them as continuous bands all the way around but the dome display was just stand alone with the bizarre resolution of 2400 by 40 pixels. By contrast, a TV is generally speaking 640 by 480 pixels. The whole piece only 17 seconds long and designed to loop for as long as they play it during breaks in the action. Its so wide that it's hard to put onto the blog. But is you want to see it, right click on this link and down load it. Then play it in Quicktime.

Here is a photo at the dome. The animation is the blue strip in the middle and just peeking in on the right.



OK, so I have to come clean on the photo. It's a fake. I couldn't find anyone to take a photo at a game so with a little help from some nameless Gopher fan on Flickr, I was able to find a random game photo. It nicely shows the display - just not the right message. No problem. Here's how I did it. Click on the images for a zoom in.

Here is the orginal. With a little color and contrast adjustment.



I saved one frame (this one) from the animation. Then scaled it down and warped it slightly to the curve of the stands. I was kinda luck that it's mostly flat to the camera so I didn't have to correct for perspective.



The new display does not look like its lit up so I had to add some glare and boost the saturation.



Much better. I also added subtle things like noise to the new elements and grunged up the edges. The CG elements were too perfect.

Bicycle Planet

On this planet, unlike this planet, the inhabitants have made a clearing for cyclocross racing.

This was made in Photoshop from a whole bunch of shots at the Afton Alps Cyclocross race. Normal photos can be found on Flickr.

Bike Race Dogs

I've been out to a couple bike races taking photos. I have photos from the Ham Lake Cyclocross race here, and yesterdays Afton Alps race here.

It occurred to me as I processed through yesterdays photos that I often end up with a really nice shot of someones dog. I don't know these dogs or their owners.

My photo tip to take away from this is that; even if you are somewhere to specially shoot subject A, always have an open eye to subject B, C, or D. They might end up more interesting then what you thought you were there to photograph in the first place.

UND Hockey Verses Mankato

My good friends and neighbors Hal Propp and his son Connor invited me along to a Sioux hockey game in Mankato. Hal is a UND alum like me. The Mavericks have a really good team this year and had already beaten UND on Friday night. The Sioux looked a bit sloppy to start with but came alive in the 3rd period to win 4-3. Winning goal was scored with only 8 seconds on the clock. Ended up being a fun game. We had a ball.



I had some trouble bring my camera into the arena. At the entrance the security guard asked me if I was a photographer. "Well, no, I'm not a professional if that's what you mean". It was the 20-200 pro-grade lens that drew her attention. I didn't argue, much, and headed back to the car. On the way I passed the front doors to the arena so I figured, what the hell, why not try here.

I passed right through with the camera right over my shoulder. I guess I found the 'camera' entrance. Wink wink. I didn't want to push my luck so I stayed in my seat in the far corner where all the North Dakota fans were. It limited my view but it was better then the view from the car if I got caught.

More photos on Flickr

Oseola Duathlon Photo

A nice shot from a Milwaukee photographer covering the race a few weeks back. Still waiting for the digital copy I ordered 2 weeks ago. Maybe me posting a hacked screen snap will draw his attention.

There are a few things that make it a great photo; The dynamic angle of the body as I'm about to turn is almost perfect. The dark defocused background really makes me and the bike standout. No sunglasses! You can actually recognize who the person is. Some of it's luck but a good photographer makes a certain amount of their luck happen by thinking ahead and being prepared. Nice job Fuad. Full disclosure; I did do a small bit of color and exposure correction on the screen snap I took from his race gallery.

This shot is just as I was heading out on the bike leg. The pylon in the left corner was only about 3 feet from the curb that we had to stay between. It was very tight.

Boston Scientifc Bike Club

During the week I try to get out for a ride with the guys at work. Around 11:30 a random bunch of people get together for a 20-22 mile ride through the northern suburbs of St Paul. We gather in the parking lot after changing into our gear in the company locker rooms. It's usually a very strong group and it's always fun. Some of us have been riding together at noon for years. Today we had a larger group of 8 people.



On this day I decided to take along my Canon G9 and try my hand at riding and shooting. A feat that can be a bit unnerving. I mostly just shot away without spending to much time thinking about it. Better to watch the road and my mates with at least one eye.



This video is of the hill on Snail Lake Road. It's the last hard stretch before we cool down on the last mile back to work. Most of the time we treat it like the end of a race. Either we stay together as if we were a team trying to launch someone to the top, or it's everyone for themselves.



I have a lot more photos on Flickr. The loop we take, which we call the northern loop, takes us up into White Bear Lake then loops back through North Oaks. It's a really nice urban ride that takes us around a few lakes, along a golf course, and some nice long stretches to really hammer on. Here is the map of our route.





View Larger Map

New Bike

I bought a new road bike!

Some time this Summer I decided that I was going to buy a new bike next year. I figured that gave me 6 to 9 months to look around and make some decisions on what I wanted.

The issue was accelerated for me when the right shifter on my Bianchi seized up. The mechanic told me it was a replace, not repair. Not good news but seeing as it was Fall and I would probably ride my Cervelo time trial bike on the trainer this winter - not a complete tragedy.

One day while I was at Now Sport, sponsor of my triathlon team, the owner, Paul, told me he had a used bike of the type I had my eye on. He let me take it for a few days, actually 4 days over a weekend. Now that is customer service. No money down or deposit. I just walked out.

The neat thing about the bike is that it was ridden for the Summer by a guy named Tim Mulrooney, Timmer to the racing community. Timmer was a sponsored rider on the Now Sport team. See, when you are really good you get bikes from your sponsor to ride. He went on to be the Rider of the Year (ROY) for the top division in Minnesota. The dude it fast. Here is a photo of Tim on the bike.


Photo from http://nowbikes-fitness.com/

So I bought!

It's a Litespeed Icon with Shimano Dura Ace components. It's made of Titanium. I haven't been on it more then a few times since I was getting ready for the 2 duathlons. But I hope to get some nice rides before it gets too cold.

Race Report: Oseola Duathon

This duathlon was in Oseola, WS about 35 miles from home along the Minnesota Wisconsin board. I really beautiful area with rolling hills. Nice to look at, not so nice it bike on - more on that later. The distances were 3 mile run, 22 mile bike, 1 mile run. Usually the runs are the same distance but the longer bike followed by a quick run would be good for me.

I had to get up at 5:30am to get there and get set up by the 8:30 start. Way to early for a Sunday morning. I always pack everything up the night before so a) I don't have to pack in the morning, b) I don't forget anything or at the very least have the whole night to think what I haven't packed. We didn't have any milk for cereal so I had a hot dog!

At the race they had everyone preassigned to a rack spot. WTF? I always rack close to the exit but this time I was about half way back. So it wasn't terrible. The other bad thing was that the racks were set up in a grass/sand area of a park. Walking and rolling the bike covered them in sand. Not good.

The start was in 5 waves with me in the 4th wave. The first 3 miles went without much excitement. I was running well. Unlike last weekend we had to pass a ton of slower runners from the first 3 waves.

I transitioned fine, opting to carry my bike out instead of rolling it so as to keep the tires clean of sand. They sent us out out onto highway 35 that had a narrow shoulder. They had a lot of pylons that were only getting in way as I passed more and more people. I had to stay sharp not to hit one. It was far easier, and safer, to just ride out in the road lane. After 3 miles we turned off the highway. It's at this point that the race got interesting. We were into the hills.

I had seen the altitude profile on their website. I knew what to expect - sorta. The first climb would be the toughest with some nice descents after them. So I stayed aero and hit them hard. At the top of one I was caught by a guy. He said "this is not very fun!". He was right. I put him behind me after another mile or two.

More hills, more descent. Some at up to 40mphs! According to my GPS I was nearing 18 of the 20 miles so I started to add a bit of effort. Then I saw a big sign saying - 15 miles. Huh? Oops, I forgot that my GPS had recorded the first 3 mile run. Lucky for me the last 5 miles were mostly down hill so I was in good shape and really flying. Caught a few more people in the last 5 miles.

The second run was only 1 miles. I scanned the transition area and could only see maybe 10 bikes. Excellent. I run out with a guy on my heels. I stayed ahead of him for most of the run but he caught me as we neared the park and the finish. He jokes with me about finishing together and I asked if we should hold hands across the finish line. But he sprinted away in the final 100 yards. No problem, I noticed he was in the first wave. In race time I was actually 3 minutes ahead of him.

I was 10th overall. 1st in my age division. My bike time, which is always the most important for me, was good enough for 8th fastest. A very nice finish to my 2008 racing season.

Here is my surprising large and slightly cheesy trophy.

Race Report: Fall Classic Duathlon

Finally, a race other then just time trialing. This is the exact same coarse I've done several times including last Spring. It was a beautiful Fall morning for a race. As I racked my bike in the transition area I noticed that the transition area was about half the size as in the spring. I guess a lot of people were done with multisport racing for the year. I'm just starting!

The race started out fast with me being in the leading pack but sadly watching the others pulling away fast. It was hard to concentrate on my own pace instead of trying to pace with them. I'm just not a fast runner. After the first 3 miles I figured I was in about 18th place which I was happy with. 

I had a little problem with mounting my bike but basically the transition to the bike went smooth and fast. Out on the bike course I was able to catch 5 people in the first 3 miles which contains the mostly challegening hills of the whole 13 miles. It took a while to get comfortable as my legs were still feeling the 3 mile run. But by about midway I felt like I was up to speed. I caught a few more people that I knew were going to be reeling me in on the last run. I needed to add a lot of time on them.  By the time I got back to the transition area I was able to see the race leader heading out on the run. That meant he was only about 3-5 minutes ahead of me. Believe it or not I considered that great. See, the guy is a friend of mine as well as teamate on the Now Sport triathlon team. It also meant that I had pulled myself up to 5th or 6th place. Cool. I think I said "Hey Derrick" as we passed. Like we just happened to passing on the street.

I transitioned to my running shoes smoothing but I was not striding well. I was now paying for that extra effort on the bike. I was quickly caught by a couple guys then later on by 2 more. They just sprinted by with nothing I could do. Frustrating. By the last half mile I was completely alone on the park path. It a weird feeling to be by yourself like that in a race. It's always better to have someone to pace against even if they are creaming you.

I sprinted in alone for a 1:18 finish.

I finished 9th overall and was 1st in the mens 40-49. I turned in the the fastest bike time of the race, beating the overall winner by over a minute (he was the second fastest). That's great and all but both his running times were 4 minutes faster then me! Wow. A good race for me however I actually was faster on this course in the spring. I was hoping to better that mark.

Clearly I need to work on my running this winter. Which is fine because I really enjoy running more then biking. How ironic is that.

Here is a photo of my teammates in the race, Derrick Podratz (overall winner), Mike Davis, and me. Derrick will be heading to Italy to compete in the Duathlon World Championship. He's wearing his USA team jersey. All three of us won our catagories so we're holding up our gold metals.

26.11 mph

photo taken by Clifton Hull.

The final Withrow time trail of the year was a good one. I recorded my best time ever on the course (30:51) but also my fastest ever average speed in any race - 26.11 mph!

The last race was also the largest of the year. Almost 90 riders. My result was good enough for 5th place which I was more then happy with considering the company of the 4 ahead of me. The interesting observation of the top 10 finishers is that only 2 of them were younger then 40. The fastest rider turned 40 this year and one of the top 5 is over 50! FYI I am 43

Take that you whipper snappers!

Little League All-star Game

My one and only nephew, Mathew, was named to the Farmington All-star team. I made sure to get to the game. It started out looking like a blow out by the other team. Something like 8-0 after the 2nd inning. It was painful. But then Farmington started to come back and they were holding on defensively. Truth be told I was not convinced. But I'll be damned if in the last inning, as the sun was already fading on the horizon, Farmington was only down 1 run. Matt was up to the plate with 2 outs, and 2 on the bases. We could barely see the ball and just knew they were going to call the game soon. My sister was freaking out and wishing that it wasn't Matt that had to face this pressure. She had to walk away.



Whack!! He hit the ball just fair enough to get to first and drive in the tying run. It was then that the coaches decided to call the game. A tie was a perfect end to that All-star game. It turned out to be a really fun game. My nephew played really well and I was very proud of him. Let's hope he has a better career in baseball then his uncle.

A tip To All Rebel Fighters

The best time to make your escape from stormtroopers is when someone asks to take their pictures. They can't resist hamming it up for the camera. Simply bust free of their grip and sock them with a upper cross. Works every time.




More stormtroopers photos and other pics from Siggraph are on Flicker. Siggraph is the big annual conference for all things computer graphics. On Thursday night they had a special showing of the new Star Wars: Clone Wars movie.

Star Wars Exhibit

The Science Museum of Minnesota is hosting an exhibit of props and costumes from the Lucasfilm's archives. Linda and I took in the exhibit on a early Saturday morning in the hopes of avoiding the crowds. It worked. They add some displays about real robots, etc.. to rationalize the inclusion in a science museum. Whatever - its Star Wars!



My favorites were from the orginal 3 movies. Sure I have a 30 year connection to those movies, but really I thought the models were more interest. I could see a lot of the hand of the artist in the creation of the models. By the time the final 3 films came around, manufacturing processes like vacuum forming and stereolithography made creating spaceships of any shape and concept cheap and easy. In the 70s they mostly used plastic airplane and tank models in a process called kit bashing. So if you get a chance to looking really closely to the Millineum Falcon you can prehaps recognize a part from your favorite model.



It was on the Falcon that I made my favorite discovery. Right at the very front of the right side loading arm (yes, I know what it is) is a tiny Champion spark plug stick! Awesome! Who knew Han Solo used Champion.

Backyard Beauties

Sorry, I'm talking about flowers!

Linda has done a great job this year whipping the yard back into shape after 2 years of minimal effort while she was in grad school. It's really paying off with all sorts of blooms. I don't always know the names of them. As the sun sets in the evening we get a great shot of the golden hour of which I've been trying to take advantage. The light hits the flowers just perfectly. While I have done some color adjustments in Adobe Lightroom, really, the colors were pretty spectacular right out of the camera. I shot everything from a tripod at fairly low speeds - 1/60th of a second and less.

Now that doesn't mean I didn't play around with the photos! The lead photo was heavily manipulated to get the strange moody look. The orginal is basically like the one here.

Here are a few more but there are more on my Flickr webpage.

Race Report: Withrow TT & More

Since my last race report in May I've done 5 time trials. 4 on the 13.4 mile loop of Withrow and 1 7 mile TT at Black Dog in Egan. My last comment was how my first TT of the year was at that point already faster then any in 2007 and that I hoped it would bode well for 2008. I was right.

So far I've had a great Summer of racing. At almost every TT I've been able to better the last time. I finally have been able to average more then 25 mph and even came within 6 seconds of 26mph last week at Withrow. That is averaging 1.5 mph faster then last year. That's pretty good. The thing to remember about bike riding is that the faster you go over about 18-20mph, the more air resistance works against you. And it's exponental so the resistance goes up more and more.

If I had to come up with a reason why this year is going so well I would say it might be a few things. One, I'm much more comfortable (and thereby ride stronger) on my Cervelo TT bike over last year. I spend the entire winter pedaling it on the trainer in the basement. Two, I bought an aero helmet! Not sure that this is a big contributor but they say it's as good as getting aero wheels. Looks cool either way. Three, after attending the aero clinic in May I've really concentrating on applying what I learned to stay aerodynamic. The biggest gain is probably in staying aero while climbing hills.

Here we are lining up for the start of the time trail. That's me in the middle grinning for no apparent reason. Lining up next to me on the left is Anne Hed (wife of aero wheel master Steven Hed.) Behind me is Dave Holden (super fast triathlete, Hawaiian Ironman vet) and Derick Podratz (another fast triathlete who will be heading to Italy for the World Duathlon Championship).

Summer 2008

summer2008-15
Originally uploaded by robbiehalvorson

Dog days of Summer have set in. It's getting hot in Minnesota and Sammy here has the right idea. Sammy is my Sister Dawn's pet beagle. We spent the 4th of July with her family as well as our folks.

Historical Crap#2: Surfing UND

In the spring of 1987 I was itching to get out my windsurf so on a warmish afternoon I launched my rig on the English Coulee that winds through the campus of the University of North Dakota.. I've always wondered what motivated them to used the term coulee and not the more obvious creek. There was just barely enough wind to move along a short stretch of the creek, but it didn't matter really. It was just something that a college student would do. The fact that it had never been done made it all that much more enticing.



It wasn't an accident that a photographer from the Grand Forks Herald was there. My friends called the paper ahead of time. But we never thought I would be front page news.

At that time in my life I was huge into the surfer lifestyle which was a bit of a stretch for a boy raised in North Dakota. But never the less I had the surfer look which in the 80's meant loud neon colors. Dude! Plus, my surfboards were always on top of my truck all Summer long so people would know I was a surfer. This was right about the time that the movie 'North Beach' came out starring my new friend Laird Hamilton.

HIstorical Crap #1: Vintage Video Games

For a long time I've been meaning to go through some very old boxes. As my wife can attest to, I'm a pack rat. I could argue that I'm nostalgic and a collector - but Linda is probably more right then I am. As I go through these boxes I plan to photograph and share some of my favorite things or those with stories. We'll call it The Historical Blog Archive of Robbie's Crap. Or simply Historical Crap.

The first box yielded 4 electronic games from the 70s. These were some of the first hand held video games made by Mattel. Because I was a collector, wink wink, I kept the boxes that the games came in. I even found the sales slips! I did a quick look on ebay and found a ton of them for sale. The boxed ones go for a lot more then the loose ones so thank you very much to the 12 year old me. I could potentially get $100+ for at least one of them because I have all the games, boxes, manuals, and packing material in excellent condition. And yes, they are all for sale.

Mattel Electronics Football
I got the first one at the K Mart store in Grand Forks, ND. The game was huge back in 1977. Every boy either had one or spent their time begging to play their friends. I remember teachers in Jr High taking them away from us in class when we accidentally pushed a button that would made that distinctive tackle sound.



Mattel Electronics Battlestar Galactic Space Alert
Space Alert was my next favorite. It was sort of a simpler space invaders but it was still hard to play. Obviously it was the theme that hooked me since it was 1978 and I was a huge Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica fan. I remember that I ordered this from the Montgomery Wards catalog. One vintage seller on ebay is selling this for $275.



Mattel Electronics Baseball
Mattel Electronics Basketball
The other 2 games I had, baseball and basketball, were not my favorites. I believe I got them as either birthday or Christmas gifts. I played them but I just wasn't a big fan of either sport. To this day sport games aren't that interesting to me.

Aero Clinic

Early on Sunday morning I headed to Now Sports to attend a clinic sponsored by the triathlon team I joined. The subject was a talk about bike positioning and how to be aerodynamic. What I didn't know ahead of time was that it would be led by one of the world authorities on the subject, Steve Hed. That name won't mean anything to most people but you might have heard of his most famous customer and friend, Lance Armstrong. Steve and his company, HED Cycling has made aerodynamic bike wheels and parts for the top bike riders in the world. Along the way he has spent a lot of time in wind tunnels watching and learning what it takes to make the smallest hole in the wind. Pretty cool to have someone like that right here in Minnesota. And he's as nice as any Minnesotan gets. This is Steve with Amy Klosterman on her new TT bike with HED wheels and aerobars. Sweet.


Steve had Amy get on her bike and he walked through his critique and recommendations for her to become more aerodynamic. Most of this comes from how one positions the arms and upper body so you don't push a lot of air. Some of it's easy but often what is aero is not all that comfortable. It ends up becomes a balance of what can be done. Here is a closer look at the HED aero handlebars.


On of the more interesting recommendations was that climbing was the best area to try to work on to become more aero. Most people, including me, resort to standing up on the pedals to power up a hill. But if a rider could maintain the aero postion and manage the same power, that would result in the most speed. Hed designed the aerobars he sells with this in mind. His bars allow the rider to progressively move their hand position depending on the grade of the hill. The following photos illustrate these positions from flat to heavy climb.

This would be the typical aero position with hands at the ends. Note how flat Amy's upper back is.


Amy now moves her hand a bit closer to her body so that she can pull more with them for more power.


If she needs even more pulling power she can move her hand to the base of the aerobars. The HED arm pads are design to flip up to allow room for her hands on the crossbar. This position might also be used as a relax position on a longer ride where the aero position might get fatiguing.


Finally there is the wide position with the hands on the brake handles. This would be the position most similar to climbing on a standard bike. However notice how Amy still tries to stay low and aero.


As luck would have it I had my TT bike with me. One of Hed's employees, Dino, took a look at my aerodynamics as I spun on the trainer. I didn't have my biking shoes but he was still able to make some recommendation. He was telling me the same stuff that he would to top pros in wind tunnels. I felt like a ball of crumpled up wad of paper. But it was all good and definitely stuff I could incorporate. For the record here are his recommendations for me;

Seat down 1 cm.
Back position good (flat) but could be more rounded.
Chin as low as possible while looking down the road (not easy)
Knees into the top tube.
Elbows in to centerline more.
Do all these thing AND relax!