BBC Racer

Bike Path Worlds Dilemma Solved!

Offseason. The time when all of your type A traits conspire against you. It’s all good during the race season. Dial into that internal motivation to get up a bit earlier, push a little harder, compete a bit more aggressively in order to achieve results.

Now that it’s time to go slow on the bike, the type-A-ness can be a liability.

All of this is a long winded way of saying that the other week I did a piss poor job of riding within zone. It wasn’t my fault though. There were recreational riders on the road everywhere. Following my every turn even. And worst of all, whenever they passed me, (always on hills) they invariably gave me ‘the look’

as they dropped their mighty 240 watt hammers in the decisive move to clinch victory in the Bike Path Worlds. Now pride goeth before a fall, but succumbing to pride also insures you will not get dropped.

So a few times last week when confronted with these “races” I smashed my mightier 250 watt hammer into the road and vanquished all challengers. Soloing to victory and exulting in well-taken wins that justified the years of sacrifice and miles in the saddle, pedaling my supremacy one revolution at a….Whew, sorry, I mean I just crested the highway overpasses a few bike lengths ahead of my…vanquished foes who cracked under the pressure of my searing attacks.

Anyway. During the times when I stuck to plan and rode in zone 1 and zone 2 I got to thinking that I need to protect me from myself if I’m to make it through the base miles. Then the wheels started turning and I figured I’m not the only cyclist who succumbs to the reptilian brain and instinctively responds to challenges on the road.

The solution is quite simple. If you can take pride out of the equation, then you can ignore the compulsion to compete on the bike path.

When you ride, nobody knows that you are just recovering or riding base unless you tell everyone who passes you (I’ve seen it done, IT WASN’T ME!). Until now. Rather than solve problems that you didn’t know you had like Interbike vendors or Sky Mall catalogs, I’ve developed a solution for a real problem. I give you the Bike Ride Announcing Gizmo (B.R.A.G.).

This is just a prototype but once it is cut down to bicycle appropriate dimensions it will be ready to ship. The B.R.A.G. is versatile, suitable for many situations and it’s modular.

Included messages are:

- Active recovery day
- I climbed yesterday
- ___ miles into my ride (Elite version automatically updates from bike computer)
- Not to exceed ____ watts
- “A” race in ___ days

You can order the optional expansion pack that includes:

- I podiumed yesterday
- I’m a cat ___ racer
- I started my season late
- PR for this climb ___ (Elite version only)

Or you can order blank “lapcards” ™ and write in your own messages.

Now since honesty is a one way street, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t post announcements like “hammering” or “going for it” lest you get dropped.

I love the sport, but I also have to pay the bills. Now I can do the finance thing, but marketing for my new venture is out of the comfort zone. So I turned to the new founts of irrefutable wisdom that any learned high schooler depends on: google, wikipedia and youtube. I found an excellent primer on marketing by Ali G and see that my product has a potential market of at least 8.572 billion people.

For those weight weenies on the bleeding edge of technology, there is a digital version, the Elite Model, that will plug into your Di2 battery and scroll any messages from your other devices on the Ant + network at user selected intervals.

The analog version will be ready Q1 2010. Lest you call it vapoware, the Elite also has a release date, Q3 2010, give or take 5 years.

The following chart should help in deciding between the two models:

Even with access to the internet, layovers aren’t any better…