Tag Archives: cycling

Trans Pyrenees 2016 – The Route

So here we go, it is less than a month till the cycling highlight of this year, an epic, self-supported duo-ride across the Pyrenees from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic coast. The idea came up on a training ride with Willem the past summer, more-or-less simultaneously, but I think Willem was the one who said it out loud first (I will make sure to remind him if necessary while we both suffer pedalling up on one of the numerous steep climbs).

This post is about the planned route itself. I have designed the trajectory of the different stages mostly using the Global Heatmap of Strava and Google Street View on RouteYou (since the Route builder in Strava itself is horrible, it does not have Street View integrated into it, and the elevation gain is typically overestimated). Then I have used the exported .gpx files to make my own overview maps and elevation profiles with my custom-made python scripts ;) The main challenge of the planning was finding a balance between different factors, such as: crossing the Pyrenees over the highest number of epic climbs and cols, but without making unnecessary loops to keep the total distance (and the number of necessary days) at a reasonable level, plus preferably take low-traffic roads, and start and finish the day at locations where we can get a proper hotel for the night. This resulted in a preliminary plan, that was changed slightly when we booked all the hotels (a few start/finish villages were moved up/down along the route). This is how the final route was born before the end of January.

This is a total of 9 stages, 924 km, and 17635 metres of elevation gain over 22 cols (or 23, depending on how you count it). An overview of the elevation profile of the whole route can be seen below. (The climb categories were calculated following the discussion presented here.)

Now here is a detailed overview of the planned stages with distances, elevation gains, maps, profiles, and a list of cols for each day:

June 3: Driving to Toulouse.
June 4: On the morning we bike to the train station from the hotel, and take the train to Narbonne, where it all begins.
Stage 1) Narbonne – Perpignan: 91 km | 518 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Col de Feuilla [250 m] Cat 4
June 5:
Stage 2) Perpignan – Campdevanol: 122 km | 1757 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Coll de Llauro [380 m] Cat 4
– Col d’Ares [1513 m] Cat 1
June 6:
Stage 3) Campdevanol – La Seu d’Urgell: 110 km | 1854 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Coll de Merolla [1090 m] Cat 3
– Coll de Josa [1620 m] Cat 2
– Coll de la Trava [1480 m] Cat 3
June 7:
Stage 4) La Seu d’Urgell – Vielha: 124 km | 2499 m+ (Map / Profile)
– El Canto [1720 m] Cat 1
– Port de la Bonaigua [2072 m] Cat 1
June 8:
Stage 5) Vielha – Cadéac: 82 km | 2190 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Col du Portillon [1293 m] Cat 2
– Col de Peyresourde [1569 m] Cat 1
– Col de Val Louron-Azet [1580 m] Cat 1
June 9:
Stage 6) Cadéac – Argelès-Gazost: 82 km | 2034 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Col d’Aspin [1489 m] Cat 1
– Col du Tourmalet [2115 m] HC
June 10:
Stage 7) Argelès-Gazost – Arette: 92 km | 2248 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Col du Soulor [1474 m] & Col d’Aubisque [1709 m] Cat 1 (small downhill in between)
– Col de Marie-Blanque [1035 m] Cat 2
June 11:
Stage 8) Arette – Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port ♛: 134 km | 3412 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Col de la Pierre St Martin [1766 m] HC
– Laza [1129 m] Cat 3
– Port de Larrau [1578 m] Cat 1
– Col de Bagargi [1327 m] Cat 1
– Col de Burdincurucheta [1135 m] Cat 3
June 12:
Stage 9) Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port – Biarritz: 87 km | 1123 m+ (Map / Profile)
– Col d’Ispeguy [672 m] Cat 2
– Col d’Otxondo [602 m] Cat 3
After the ride, we drive with a rental car to Toulouse, then bike or walk to the hotel where we left our car (as the drop-off for the rental car will be at the airport too), and drive to another hotel for the night.
June 13: Driving home from Toulouse.

That is it for now. In the next post I will go over the gear we are taking with us, with a detailed description of each piece we will/might need on the road.

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The year (2015) in cycling (and other sports)

2015 was quite an amazing year on the bike. I have never ridden so much, so far, so long, and with so much elevation gain before. The main themes of the year were definitely epic (solo) rides and new roads. I have ridden also much more alone, because this year I did not join WTCOOL anymore. This is likely to change again next year as I have recently joined Squadra Tornado, a more racing oriented team. The past two months I have already ridden with them on Saturdays. Besides these trainings, I did most of my rides solo in this year’s interbellum, or with Willem, who joined me quite a few times.

Memorable events from 2015 (before we jump into the raw numbers and figures):

I spent February working and cycling in Santa Barbara (Southern California, USA), and thanks to the warm and dry weather (similar to an average May/June in Belgium, but without the rain), in just 3 weeks I biked enough to make this month my 2nd best month ever on the bike (and my best month in sports if you add the three 10k runs I did before and after all the cycling).
I bought a new road bike, a Canyon Ultimate CF SL 9.0 Di2. Since the beginning of March, I have ridden almost 9500 km with it, and I am extremely happy with the purchase. It’s a beautiful machine.
I started to use a power meter on the bike, and although I would not go for the same Garmin Vector system again (because now there are better options in this fast evolving and still very young sector), I am happy to learn from all the data I record with it. (So now I know that I sprint quite good but my functional threshold power kinda sucks.)
I did many epic rides, some alone, some with a few other guys, and one in a larger group to the coast and back just like last year. This Heverlee – Knokke – Heverlee ride was my longest ride ever with 333 km thanks to the small extra I did at the end (which made some people question my sanity). Other memorable epic days mostly on new roads include: a solo century around Santa Barbara with summer temperatures, an epic climb, and 5 bottles of water; a 223 km ride to Geraardsbergen in a company of six; 173 km of climbing through the Province of Namur with Willem over 2500 metres of elevation gain, a masterpiece of route-planning; Catching the Tour de France in Namur with Willem, not an extreme long ride, but very nice route, and just a day after coming home from observing on La Palma, so I totally died by the end; a 202 km solo over the Mur of Huy and the Citadel of Namur (a ride of total mental madness); and nicely fitting into the list of epic rides to epic climbs, a 210 km solo to Valkenburg (Cauberg) and back. In total I had 5 rides over 200 km, and 11 rides that qualify as at least a century (100+ miles).
I have finished one very special challenge on Strava, the Rapha Festive 500, that challenges participants to ride 500 km on the eight days between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Normally we go to Hungary for Christmas, but this year we stayed in Belgium, so I thought I would give it a try. Although I got soaked twice, and almost blown off the road by the crazy wind a few times, I managed to complete the challenge with 6 rides in 7 days. The fact that the average temperature was more typical for April than December helped a lot of course ;) Thanks to the weather conditions and this challenge, I closed off December with 1095 km on the bike. That’s insane for a winter month (in Belgium, not in Southern California), and it is more than I biked in the previous 5 Decembers, combined.

And then the raw numbers for my cycling – without the daily commutes of course – in 2015:

Total distance: 11326 km
Total elevation gain: 70307 m
Total time: 400h 17m
Activity count: 140
Average speed: 28.3 km/h
Average heart rate: 152.6 bpm (max: 193 bpm)
Average cadence: 91 rpm

And here are the figures, coming up first the maps of cycling in Belgium, with a zoom in to the area around Leuven to show my most taken loops more clearly, and also a map of the biking I did around Santa Barbara.

Then here are the charts of the yearly progress in terms of distance and elevation gain, followed by – in both cases – a calendar view of the same metrics. (Figures from VeloViewer.)

Then here is a figure from Golden Cheetah showing my Performance Management Chart since I have a power meter.

Then here I my statistics grouped by the 4 bikes I have ridden this year.

Concerning the social aspects, as I have already mentioned, this year I did many more solo rides compared to 2014. Out of the 140 activities, only 29 were not solo rides, and out of these only 19 were rides where I was riding with more than one person. When I was not alone I rode most often with Willem, on a total of 24 rides (a sum of 79 hours).

I did not want to put it on the list of memorable events, but this year I started using Rapha products. They are on the more expensive side, but the quality and the service is so good, the bibs are so comfortable, and the design is so clean and stylish, that it is totally worth it. I even tested their free repair service and it has exceeded my expectations (big time). So, if anyone needs a present idea for me, Rapha vouchers are always highly appreciated ;)

I have also ran 401 km this year (with quite some trail running on La Palma), and did some hiking with Clio, so at the end I had a total activity time of 451 hours (up from 350 hours in 2014). I am fully satisfied with that, and I am happy with all the achievements (see list of Strava challenges completed below) along the way.

I always wanted to have one year when I bike more than 10000 km, so now that I have achieved that, my goal for 2016 is more about quality, and not about quantity. I hope that in 2016 I will have even more self-supported epic rides, some good structured trainings, and maybe even a few races. The most important goal is to have fun on the bike :)

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Panning photography: Eneco Tour 2015 – Stage 4 (ITT)

There are only two (not one day) UCI WorldTour-races (the highest level cycling events) between the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España, first the Tour de Pologne, then the Eneco Tour. The latter goes through Belgium and the Netherlands, so it is not too difficult to go and watch a stage. The last time I took pictures on a cycling race was back in 2010 during the first stages of the Tour de France, so I was happy to go along with Nadia to watch the individual time trial (ITT) of this year’s Eneco Tour just over the border in Hoogerheide, and try my luck in panning photography.

We parked in the neighbouring village towards the southern sections of the 13.9 km long course, so we had no problem with the crowds around the start and finish area in Hoogerheide, and after a short walk, we managed to find a nice section to watch the race. From a photographer’s point of view, we had to be standing on the right side of the cyclists, so the pictures show the chainrings and the derailleurs, and also preferably in the shade, since colours are nicer there when the Sun is high up in the sky. After finding a suitable spot, we just had to wait for the 152 cyclists to pass one-by-one, which took three hours.

I was typically using a focal length of 105 mm (to isolate the cyclists from the background better, and to achieve a sense of speed without the need for too long exposure times), f/7.1 (not wide open at f/4, so a slight focusing error will not produce a totally out-of-focus image), an exposure time of 1/200 seconds, while the ISO was left at auto. Since I always use RAW, white balance and other settings were not taken care of on the spot, only during post-processing. I was shooting in burst mode, which is 4.5 frames/second on the Canon EOS 6D (compared to my more sport-photography oriented old 7D with 8 frames/seconds), using the central autofocus point only, and AI Servo tracking autofocus. The idea of panning photography is to follow the subject while shooting, this way even with relatively longer exposure times, you can keep the subject more-or-less sharp, while the background gets blurred from the motion of the tracked subject in the foreground. The difficulty is tracking the subject: 1) the tracking speed during the approach of the cyclist changes as the subject gets closer to you (think of standing at the side of a road and looking towards a car approaching towards you, while the car is still far, you don’t have to turn your head much, but while it passes in front of you, you will need to turn your head very quickly to follow through). 2) The cyclists were riding at 50 km/h, and I was standing only 5-10 metres away, so the tracking speed was really high when they passed. Even with an exposure time of 1/200 seconds, the cyclists have covered 7 cm during one exposure. For the image to be sharp, you need to track this movement with a half pixel accuracy. 3) The focus distance changes also very quickly as the cyclist approaches, which is very difficult to deal with for the autofocus system. I have taken more than 400 pictures during the stage, and almost 100 of these turned out to be technically all right (acceptably sharp). I would say that 65% of the bad pictures resulted from the tracking autofocus loosing the cyclist, while 35% from me not being able to track the movement precisely enough. Below you can find a small selection of the nicer images. It was a very nice experience, I am glad Nadia (and Clio) convinced me to go.

Just as an example (or a technology demo), here is one shot with a longer exposure time of 1/60 of a second (so the cyclist travelled 23 cm during the exposure). It is borderline impossible to follow such fast and extensive movement with a much better precision, so I am quite happy with this image too, even though I only tried one series with this setting, because the success rate was clearly lower compared to 1/200 seconds… Actually, you can see that a few cogs towards the top of the front chainring are perfectly sharp, meaning that I followed the movement of that part precisely.

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February in California

Being an astronomer means that I get to travel far away from home for work at least on a few occasions every year. It might be an observing run (working during the night in the control room of a huge telescope, most likely on a deserted mountain far from civilisation, under the bright Milky Way), a conference (where I present my work and mingle), or a collaboration. This time I spent a full month in the USA participating in the Galactic Archaeology and Precision Stellar Astrophysics program at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (University of California, Santa Barbara). Since I planned this month to be half work, half cycling, I did not take a camera with me, so I don’t have any quality pictures to show, only a collage of photos taken with my phone. My sincere apologies for that…

I arrived in Santa Barbara (or more precisely, Goleta, right in between the city and the campus) after 1+11 hours of flying (with Air New Zealand across the Atlantic Ocean, spent mostly catching up with editing my pictures from our holidays, and watching a few movies), an overnight stay in an airport hotel in Los Angeles, and a 2.5 hour bus ride. It was the afternoon of the Super Bowl (so later I could go shopping to an empty supermarket), a beautiful sunny day with 21°C. Also, I turned 30 on that day. I rented a quite spacious house with two other scientists, where I had my private room and bathroom. Two hours after my arrival I already had a rental beach cruiser bicycle (delivered to my door), I had filled up my cereal supplies for the mornings, and I had everything unpacked. For the rest of the afternoon my only goal was to stay awake until as late as possible, which was not so easy since I had moved 9 time zones to the West earlier. Any case, I had to adjust fast, as the next day was already a working day…

During the first week of my stay I attended the conference The Milky Way and its Stars: Stellar Astrophysics, Galactic Archaeology, and Stellar Populations. My daily commute was a 20 minute bike ride in the sunshine (or morning fog), passing by a nature reserve with lots of birds right before the last kilometre, which led under huge palm trees along the coast. The conference was a mix of stellar and galactic talks, much broader than the ones I had attended before, which helped to see the importance of seismic studies from yet another angle. I also gave a talk with the title Calibrating the stellar structure and evolution models of massive stars with asteroseismology.

I spent the next three weeks with training on a rental racing bike in the mornings and the weekends, and working at the KITP during the day. I have to say that at least partly thanks to the nice weather and the amount of cycling I managed to do, I was also very motivated at work, so even though I had not so much time left after all the different meeting and working group discussions, I got lots of things done. I did my first refereeing, I wrote and submitted a paper (which is almost accepted by now) and a proposal, etc. So I was very productive :)

And now about that cycling. Besides the cruiser that I used for commuting, I also rented a racing bike for three weeks starting from the Saturday after the conference. It was a Trek Domane 5.9 equipped with Shimano Ultega Di2. My initial goal for these three weeks was to bike 1000 km, but it became clear to me quite quickly that I could easily go beyond this, thus I adjusted my goal and aimed to complete all Strava challenges for February (1250 km cycling, at least 150 km in one ride, and 28000 feet of climbing).

I rode every day except for Mondays (as a rest day was definitely necessary), typically for two hours in the mornings (getting up every day at 6, biking 7-9), then I did longer rides over the weekends. I have ridden through the morning fog and in the heat of the afternoon sun, in 4°C and 29°C, from sea level to 1200 metres, along the coast and around the small valleys. The list of rides also includes a real epic Century (a ride of 100 miles). Both the roads and the view were really great, and the car drivers payed attention to the cyclists (I was only pissed off once by someone passing by me way too close).

Not counting the two training weeks on Mallorca, the week of the 16th of February with its 512.9 km was my best week on the bike. In total, February with 1361 km was my 4th best month, but since I had quite some elevation gain (14885 m), and all my rides were solo rides, I was a bit slower than usual, which means that looking at the duration, this month was my 2nd best with 53h 21m, and if you add the time I spent running to this (three 10k runs, on the last day of my stay almost breaking my 5k and 10k PR), then it turns out that February was my most sporty month ever with 55h 53m. That’s not bad (ok, that’s simply awesome), especially given that all this cycling was done in 3 weeks instead of a full month.

I was very tired at the end, but also very happy that my stay in California worked out so well, both for science and my fitness level. I also lost ~2 kg thanks to the amount of exercise (even with all the pizza and pasta I ate), so I am now at a very good 70.5 kg. I would be surprised if I managed to have a more hardcore month of training after this in 2015, but you never know ;)

My new power meter tells me that I still ‘suck’ (although on the first rides that was partly due to the massive jet lag I had), so there is plenty of room for improvement… But again, it’s only the beginning of the cycling season. And for that, I am doing better than before. And the new bike is also perfect :)

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The year (2014) in sports

2014 was a great year, not only because of the nice holidays we had (which I still need to blog about…), or the papers I published, but also because I did more sports than any year before (a total of 350 hours of cycling, running, and a tiny bit of hiking). Before jumping into numbers and figures, let me review the main events.

Cycling: First of all, I bought a mountain bike – which was even stolen and found once since then (thanks again to the police and the people who spotted the suspicious activity) -, but so far I have not ridden it as much as I planned to (only 261 km in 7 rides). But it is very nice to ride through the forest with it, so I am happy with the purchase in any case.

On the road bike, I had my longest ride ever (both distance and duration wise with 313 km in 10h 34m, see it on Strava for more), riding from home to the Belgian coast and back with several members of WTCOOL. Luckily, the route was totally flat… It was a great day, and we even had energy for a sprint along the channel around the 300 km mark. Crazy times :) I also had my heaviest week on the bike thanks to the holidays (a.k.a. training camp) on Mallorca with 962 kilometres, 9939 meters of elevation gain, and 34h 52m in the saddle, which meant that at the end of the week I was in the top 10 of Belgian Strava users! This of course made April my best month ever too (1532 km, 11371 m+, 53h 53m). Later through the year I participated in the 24 hours of Zolder (138 kilometres with a nearly 40 km/h average speed) and had a few nice organised rides in the Ardennes too (e.g., see picture above), with great company. All in all, this year saw me transforming from a lonely cyclist to a social cyclist. I still do solo rides, but it happens more and more often that I have someone else to ride with even at random times.

And then for the raw numbers:

Total distance: 8663 km
Total elevation gain: 45737 m
Total time: 301h 15m
Activity count: 108
Average speed: 28.8 km/h
Average heart rate: 152.5 bpm (max: 195 bpm)
Average cadence: 91 rpm

Here is a distribution of biking activities through the past years:

Of course the speed is pulled down a little by the mountain bike rides, but I am not making a full table for all activities here. Also it is clear that leading up to Mallorca I did a lot of training, then took it easier afterwards, and there is a big gap visible in May, since while I was observing in Chile, I did not do any sports… Looking at the geographical distribution, besides Belgium I also biked in Spain (Mallorca), and for a few kilometres in Holland. Here are the covered roads (zoomable version on Strava):

Running: This is the first time I am writing about running beyond simply mentioning it (if I remember correctly), but by now I can not avoid admitting it, that I am getting more and more fond of it. I never really liked running, and before I picked it up as cross training for the winter at the beginning of 2013, I actually literally hated it. I have never had trouble running after the ball (I played handball for three years during high school, than a few years of floorball during my University studies and the beginning of my PhD), but running just for the running itself was really never my thing. I remember participating in an organised run (probably 2 kilometers or even less) around the age 6 (and I guess that was my parents’ idea), but that was it. I always hated the yearly two Cooper tests (running for 12 minutes) in school, and in general, I never understood how can anyone enjoy this…

Then, as already many times with other physical activities before (long distance hiking, cycling), technology had a big part in making up my mind. (I just need a gadget, and then everything is all right.) During the last days of 2012 I decided, that I need something to do when the weather is just too miserable and/or it is too dark to go for a safe training ride. I needed something I can still keep track of (preferably on Garmin Connect/Strava), so I pretty much ‘decided’ I would like running from then on (or that at least I would do it for the training, even if it sucks – at least it takes less time and preparation for a similar effect than cycling). I bought a running GPS (Garmin Forerunner 210), some running shoes (Nike Zoom Structure+ 16), and then I started running. I started easy, following an online training plan, building up from 5k runs (short for 5 km runs, but runners fancy the short version for some reason) towards 14k, which I managed already after a little bit more than two months. Of course I had a generally very good physical condition because of the cycling, but normally an unexperienced runner should not raise the distance so fast, because it will lead to an almost certain injury. I still did not like running that much, but it was nice to be able to do some sports even in the snow (and that winter was snowy until very late). Then as soon as the snow melted, I also pretty much stopped, except for a run here and there (Sydney, Rhodes) on conferences. I did the same during the first two months of 2014, runs between 5 and 12 kilometers (also during holidays and work in Grenoble and Geneva), but as soon as the weather turned fine for cycling, I stopped again…

I think the biggest change came this autumn, when I started running again, but this time – beyond keeping my fitness level a bit higher during the winter – with some actual goals in mind: namely, running a half marathon, and participating in the annual end of year run in Leuven. Staring from October, I was running 2-3 times a week, first on La Palma at 2300 meters, then most often at work with my colleagues, mostly through the forest, and as my body get more and more used to the running, I started actually enjoying it. Since after one point I was not constantly suffering, I got time to just enjoy being outside, a bit more like how I enjoy cycling. Running is much nicer when your mind is not too busy about dying on the spot. Of course I run for the achievements, the feeling of accomplishment, the instant nirvana which a well executed run delivers. I feel exactly as it is written/drawn in one of the great Oatmeal comics here. (Of course this stands for cycling too.) And with the fun, and a new running GPS (Garmin Forerunner 920XT), the results also came: after raising the distance week by week, I ran my first half marathon on the 27th of November through the forest with two colleagues (it took a little bit longer than two hours, since one of the others were a bit sick, and we wanted to do it together, as we did all the training together). It was a great feeling to accomplish something new. Then soon afterwards I did a solo half marathon after work into the evening with a headlamp, where I improved my time to 01:51:29 (5:17/km), which is a nice PR for the future to improve on. Then after training even during the Christmas holidays in Budapest, I participated in the first running race since that Kids Run back in the previous Millennium: I ran the 12k Eindejaarscorrida of Leuven in -4°C, and finished 597th out of the 1965 participants. Not only is this a top 1/3 finish, but I also broke all my previous best times on 1 miles, 5 kilometers, and 10 kilometers with an average pace of 4:43/km. For me, this was a really amazing result, and I was extremely happy after the finish (but during the run too). I even ran home afterwards. It was indeed a great year of sports. I hope 2015 will not disappoint either!

The raw numbers:

Total distance: 456 km
Total elevation gain: 3917 m
Total time: 41h 29m
Activity count: 49
Average pace: 5:27/km
Average heart rate: 168.9 bpm (max: 197 bpm)
Average cadence: 180 spm

PRs:

400m: 00:01:30
1/2 Mile: 00:03:27
1 km: 00:04:19
1 mile: 00:07:04
5 km: 00:23:21
10 km: 00:47:01
15 km: 01:18:14
10 mile: 01:24:15
20 km: 01:45:39
Half Marathon: 01:51:29

Activity distribution for the previous years, and the map for this year around Leuven (not showing runs outside Belgium, for that, click here):

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