Archive for the 'Cycling' Category

I am not Lance Armstrong

Published by
Brent
March 2, 2009 in Cycling, New Media and Social Networks. 4 Comments

Mashable, one of the web’s top tech and social media blogs ran a post by Chris Spagnuolo this past week titled Pro Cycling on Twitter: 48 People Who Aren’t Lance Armstrong, and guess who was #43?

43. @bikeride: Brent Soderberg from BikeRide.com provides live race updates and news about bicycling events and cycling in general.

I don’t know how much I contribute to the world of pro cycling, but I was also responsible for setting up the @espn_cycling feed (#36) when I worked at ESPN, and I also originally registered the @velonews account (#34) and had it updating with their RSS feed until recently when VeloNews took over managing the account. So, I guess I can take some credit for getting the world of cycling using the service.

I am not Lance Lance Armstrong, but I have taken his photo.

I am not Lance Lance Armstrong, but I have taken his photo.

It is really pretty amazing to see how the world of pro cycling, and the bike industry has adopted the use of Twitter in the past few months. I’ve had a Twitter account for nearly 2 years now, and there have been some others within the cycling world who have been using Twitter for a long time, but after the biggest name in the sport, Lance Armstrong, became a power user of the micro blogging service (he now has over 200,000 followers), it really took off in the pro cycling world.

In response to the Mashable post, Joel Price, who works in new media for the San Diego Chargers tweeted “Twitter is saving professional Cycling … other sports should take notice”. And then after Scott Zagarino replied the “You’d think other sports would get the hint?”, Joel replied ” some will, mainstream sports will treat it more like a broadcast medium and miss the point. At least at first.”

This has been my experience working within the mainstream sports media. When a new medium comes along the first response is to try to figure out how to spam the service with content instead of understanding what social media is. Social Media’s power is in joining the conversation, not interupting the conversation.

Why has pro cycling done such a great job of adopting Twitter? I think one reason is that compared to “stadium” sports, pro cycling is a “mobile” sport that takes place out on the open roads, and a service like Twitter that can easily be updated from mobile devices seems like a perfect fit for telling part of the story.

This was evident in the recent Amgen Tour of California stage race. The first few days of the race when weather caused issues for live TV coverage, Twitter users were being kept more up to date on what was happening in the race than the television announcers on Versus. Team managers, mechanics, and staff were tweeting race updates from the team cars, and fans were taking and posting Twitpics from the side of the road.

Can other sports benefit from Twitter? Absolutely. The NBA’s Shaquille O’Neal has more followers than Lance Armstrong (it is close), and you can follow ESPN, or many teams like the San Diego Chargers (thanks to Joel). The biggest power of twitter, and other social media tools, is the ability to connect directly to the people who are interested in what you are doing (including fans, and potential customers), and have a conversation with them.

I still think there is something unique to the sport of pro cycling with competitions that last multiple days, in places all over the world, where you can’t get the whole story from television, and that makes a medium like Twitter more suited to it. Also, major American sports are used to being covered by all the mainstream media, while cycling being more of a niche sport is more open to alternative forms of media to promote itself.

Also See
Carton Reid maintains a list of Bike Trade Tweeters
CyclingUSA Blog: My new blog on American Pro Cycling

Map My Ride Mashup

Published by
Brent
April 13, 2007 in Cycling. 5 Comments

I just found a site that is a Google Maps mashup for saving your bike route maps called MapMyRide.com. It is a lot like Gmap Pedometer that I have used before, but you can see other people’s saved maps, find saved maps near you, or just share your maps with friends. I was thinking about building this exact same thing for bikeride.com. A kind of social networking around ride routes, training logs, and events. I think this site is pretty good. I’m sure I will use it if I don’t build something on my own. My profile is here. One thing they don’t have is an RSS feed for my created maps They do have an RSS feed for your rides, so I will add that to this blog.

What I Did This Summer

Published by
Brent
August 22, 2006 in Cycling and Vacation. 0 Comments

I have neglected this blog over the summer, but I have just added a new theme for the design, and I now hope to keep this more up to date. With this blog my goal will be to post comments about new web related features I am working on, and new things I am learning related to web development. I’m sure I will still post cycling related comments, and ride reports as well since cycling is my other passion in life, but I plan to keep most of my cycling related content on my site BikeRide.com.

In my last post I talked about the New York City Triathlon. It was fun to go and stay in the city, but the logistics of getting registered, and getting my bike to the transition area was a little stressful. It turned out to be a fun event. At the last minute I decided to go all out and use my disk wheel on my bike to get every aero advantage I could. The course suited me, and I had the fasted bike split of the relay teams. My team ended up finishing 3rd of the mixed relays. My Photos …

Riding around Mt RainierAfter New York, I went out to visit friends and family in my home town of Seattle. While I was there I went to an event at the Marymoor Velodrome, rode my bike 150 miles around Mount Rainier in one day, and went for a hike in the Cascades to an abandoned mining town called Monty Christo. I also drove to Spokane to visit family, and stopped at the Seattle Seahawks training camp.

Pat Griskus Olympic Triathlon

Published by
Brent
June 23, 2006 in Cycling. 0 Comments

12665-061-006fLast weekend I did the bike leg of a triathlon with a Relay team from ESPN. I did a triathlon relay about 15 years ago, so this was my first step into the triathlon world in a long time. I didn’t know what to expect, but I ended up doing a pretty good bike time considering the hilly course. Our team finished 2nd out of 8 mixed relay teams. My bike split was the best of the relay teams, and about 8th best of everyone in the race. I will be doing another relay at the New York Triathlon in July. that course will be more flat, but will have many more participants.

Race Report

Photos

Ride Report: Bash Bish 200K

Published by
Brent
May 29, 2006 in Cycling. 0 Comments

DSC04583

This past Saturday I planned and lead a 125 mile ride with my cycling club. We met in Collinsville at 7 am. I made up the route and tried to string together some of the roads from some of my favorite rides I have done in the past. We headed over the Nepaug Dam, then took lots of backroads to Winchester Center and Norfolk. Scott and Pat suggested an alternate route to avoid the super steep Burr Mountain Road. Randy got a late start, and caught us on the way to Norfolk.

At Norfolk we took Mountain Road. I had scouted out this road earlier in the year. There are some dirt sections, but it was hard packed and smooth for the most part, so it was passable on skinny tires. The road passed the edge of the Canaan Resevoir which is very scenic, and on the other side of Canaan Mountain there is a fun downhill past a dairy farm.

When I was planning out the ride, I saw a road called Cobble Road. To me that didn’t sound very smooth, so my original plan was to go farther to connect to route 63. When we got to Cobble Road, I could see that it was paved, so I lead the group right onto the road, but just after the turn, there was a sign that said “Road Closed.”

I was about to have the group turn around, but there were a few chants of “I’m sure we can get through”, so we headed down the road. Soon we could see that water was over the road. Scott lead the way, and made it around a few puddles, but the water got deeper, and soon he had no choice but to go through about a foot of water. After a few of us had ridden through, there was no going back. Water was above the botton bracket on the bike, and we all had wet shoes after the crossing.

There was a short hill before connecting to Route 63. We were only on Route 63 for a mile or so before turning onto Music Mountian Road. I had first discovered this road on a fall drive a couple of years ago, and ridden it in the opposite direction last year. Music Mountain is a gradual climb, and a very nice backroad. Just after passing a waterfall, we made the turn on Cream Hill Road. This hill is longer and steeper than I had remembered, but the climb is rewarded by a fun descent. I saw some other cyclists heading the opposite direction.

We made a stop at the West Cornwall Store to refuel and fill water bottles. Coleman found an unopened Bud Light outside the store, so Scott drank some of it. Beer has lots of carbs … right? We set off again across the covered bridge, and started climbing again on the way to Sharon, CT. This was another scenic section of road that crosses the Appalachian Trail. In Sharon we cut across Lovers Lane, a dirt road that connected to Route 361, and headed north to Millerton, New York. We crossed route 44 and continued on some more scenic quiet roads. I saw more cyclists out enjoying these great roads and nice weather.

We connected with Route 22, but I saw that there is a rail trail that we could have taken to Taconic State park, and that would have been a little better way to go. Route 22 has a good shoulder, but more traffic.

We stopped at the Depot Deli across from Taconic State Park. It was a good place to stop for lunch. There are picnic tables outside. The Deli is right at the end of the rail trail, and there is a bicycle shop across the street. I got a turkey sandwich and topped off my water bottles.

We left the Deli and started the climb to Bash Bish Falls back over into Massachusetts. This is a very steep climb that I had done last year on the Berkshire 300K. We all made it up the climb and regrouped at the top.

After a fun downhill, we cut over to Route 7, but then missed a turn. Don’t trust Google Maps. They had the wrong name for a road, so we went too far on route 7 which was super busy with Memorial Day traffic. After a couple of miles we figured we had gone too far, so we turned around and backtracked. We turned on Maple Avenue and headed toward Mill River. I bonked at about the 80 mile mark, and fell behind the group. I just wanted to pull over and take a nap. I made it to the Mill River store, where we made our final stop. After a couple of ice cream sandwiches, I got my blood sugar level up, and I felt better.

There were two other cycle tourist at the store with fully loaded panniers doing a weekend trip. This is a really great area for bicycle touring. I struggled up the climb out of Mill River and back route 183 to Connecticut. After getting back into Connecticut the road has a lot of gradual downhill, so I recovered and feld better on the final miles down Sandy Brook, to Riverton, and back to home.

This was a really challenging route, but it was very scenic on backroads with very little traffic. It was a great group of people to spend the day with exporing the countryside. Eleven of of finished the ride.

With stops it took us about 9:30 with about 8:00 of actual time on the bike. I hope to make this ride an annual event.

The Map and Route sheet below have been updated after the ride.

Route Map

Route Sheet

Photos

Close to a win in club Time Trial race

Published by
Brent
May 12, 2006 in Cycling. 0 Comments

I finished 2nd in my club’s first time trial of the year. I did the 8 mile course in 18:45. That is about 1:20 better than I did last year at this time, and only about 20 seconds off my fastest time.

A blurry photo of me with about a mile to go
Here is a blurry photo of me in the race. Jim Thompson has more photos posted. Results are here …

Shelburne Falls 200K

Published by
Brent
May 3, 2006 in Cycling. 0 Comments

Brent

Last Sunday, April 30th, I rode the Shelburne Falls 200K. It was a great ride up into Vermont and back. See my photos or ride log entry.

Bike Commuting

Published by
Brent
March 10, 2006 in Cycling. 0 Comments

We finally had some warm weather here in New England. It was over 60 degrees today, and that has me getting ready to start commuting to work by bicycle. I found another Google maps mashup site where you can plot your routes on a map and it will tell you the milliage. It is at http://www.gmap-pedometer.com.

Here a link to a map of my regular bike route to the Worldwide Leader in Sports. It is about a 16.5 mile one way trip.

I have been playing a lot with the Google Maps API over the last couple of weeks, and I plan to incorporate this type of mapping into BikeRide.com soon.

Cycling is still a fringe sport in the United States

Published by
Brent
March 2, 2006 in Cycling and Tour of California. 0 Comments

Last week was arguably the biggest cycling race in the United States in a long time. The Amgen Tour of California was an eight-day stage race from the Bay Area to L.A. and it involved some of the biggest names in the sport (minus the retired Lance Armstrong), and attracted 8 of the top cycling teams from Europe. As a cycling fan this was validation of how far this sport has come in America. From watching the television coverage on ESPN2 and reading about the race, it looked like the crowds were huge. Tour organizers estimated 1.3 million spectators for the week.

It was also clear how far cycling still has to go before the mainstream sports media pays attention. It can be pretty frustrating to be a cycling fan and also work at the “worldwide leader in sports.” Even thought the race had nightly recaps on ESPN2 (evidently the ToC paid for the air time), I mentioned the race to some of the editorial staff at ESPN.com, and they didn’t know anything about the race, and pretty much blew off a suggestion that it deserved some attention.

Sure enough, no headlines about the race ever made it to the front page of ESPN.com, but there was plenty of attention given to the Bassmaster fishing tournament, and a lost dog from the Westminister dog show made headline news. News that Lance Armstrong would be hosting the ESPY’s made the front page headlines, so I guess news about a retired cyclist hosting an awards show is appearantly bigger news than anything about his sport’s biggest event in the United States. On ESPN.com cycling is burried on the site in an automated news wire, which probably wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t set it up.

Surely USA Today, America’s newspaper would devote some coverage to this event. After all they do a nice job with the Tour de France. Nope! There was one paragraph buried in the back of the sports section after the final stage.

A search of Google News showed that this event got mostly regional coverage from California Newspaper web sites, but there were a couple of good articles on the New York Times by long time cycling columnist and author Samuel Abt. Of the mainstream sports sites, I didn’t see anything about the race on FoxSports.com (and they are run out of L.A.), but SI.com had it right (Tour of California proves cycling is gaining U.S. fans).

For the mainstream sports media, Lance Armstrong is still the face of cycling in this country, and beyond his story of cancer survivor turned Tour de France champion they will never be any more interested in learning anything more about the sport. I’m sure there are many sports columnists that are glad to see Lance retire so the can ignore the Tour de France.

The good news is that this year’s Tour of California is a start, and the buzz around this race can only grow based on the success of the first year. If Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, or one of the other talented Americans can pull off a great result in the Tour de France, maybe the race will gain more national attention next year. I’d curious to see what the TV ratings were, and if the powers that be at ESPN are interested airing any more cycling coverage.

That leads me to another point. I know a lot of cycling fans love Bob Roll, and Paul Sherwin, but I don’t think a spaztic like Roll and the curious British-centric comments from Sherwin help bring in any new American fans. Surely there has to be better American TV personalies to cover cycling. Sherwin continually misidentifies riders. Saul Raisin was off the front, and Sherwin was identifying him as some french guy. Raisin is one of the upcoming American stars who is pretty easy to identify because of his hunchback style on the bike. For as many races as these guys cover it is just surprising at how much they miss.

I guess if I really cared about what the mainstream sports media thought, I wouldn’t follow cycling in the first place, but this is a great sport, and it is exciting that races like the Tour of California and Tour de Georgia give American fans a chance to see some of the greatest names in the sport racing in America.

About Brent

I have been a Web Developer since the early '90s working on some of the highest traffic sites on the internet such as MSN.com and ESPN.com. Since 2007 I have been using Ruby on Rails while working for Sports Technologies, a small internet company in Connecticut, developing features for FanNation.com and Fantasy Sports applications for Sports Illustrated.

I am interested in all things related to Social Media, User Experience, and creating great Web Applications.

I am a Cycling enthusiast who raced competitively for many years, and still try to get out and ride as much as I can. I created the site BikeRide.com and have developed some other cycling related sites in the past.

I am a husband, and the father of two girls. I grew up in western Washington, but now live in Connecticut.