The ever-excellent Google Maps mashup Google Pedometer has recently added an “elevation” feature, allowing you not only to see how far you walked, ran, cycled, or drove, but also to see how far up and down you went along the way. You simply click the “elevation” link and it displays a scrolling iframe with your entire route plotted out as a long horizontal graph.

I did a 50-mile ride yesterday, most of which somehow ended up being in 15mph headwinds. Ouch! When I got home, I fired up the computer and plotted my course.

Here’s the best part of my ride: Immediately following the highest point of my entire route, there was a thrilling mile-long descent right down to the lowest point, a riverside pier in Alpine New Jersey. Four miles later, a steep continuous climb brought me (almost) back up again. (click below to see the whole graph).

I’ve been out of practice lately due to my workload and other lame excuses, but it was great to get out and feel the pain on such a beautiful, perfect day for cycling. And there’s something satisfying about seeing the hills displayed this way — not only does it give a real sense of accomplishment (I can pretend these are the French Alps!), but it also gives me some insight into the overall “lay of the land” for the next time I take this route. What a great tool.

UPDATE: I also made a graph of the Prospect Park loop, starting and finishing at the Grand Army Plaza entrance.

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The ads below are both for an innovative new type of bicycle, the high-end “townie”. These are bikes that are designed for everyday use by people wearing normal clothes, but unlike traditional city bikes, these townies use high-quality parts and materials, and are elegantly and stylishly designed.

When I first started seeing ads for these bikes, I thought they were uniquely American. Europe has a long tradition of everyday cycling, but they also have a long tradition of well-crafted (if somewhat dowdy) city bikes. I figured that it must be an American thing to make bikes combining style, performance, and ease. Boy was I wrong.

The ad on the left is from the US magazine Bicycling, and it is for a US company called Electra. Stylish, slick, and targeted at people who like nice bikes but who also dont want to get all geared up just to go to the store or to meet a friend for brunch.

The ad on the right, from the UK Magazine Cycling Plus, is for… BMW? Yes, BMW makes bicycles. Hot. MORE…

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Heading for the starting line.

I did my first bike race today!

Peggy and I showed up at the crack of dawn this morning at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for a 6-lap, 20 mile road race.

It was thrilling to ride with over a hundred other riders, thirty of them in my racing class (Category-5, the lowest level). Riding in such a big group of cyclists was at first a little nerve-racking — but my excitement overcame my jitters, and pretty soon I got into the groove.

It was fairly easy going at first, but after the first lap the pace picked just up a little — and suddenly I found myself struggling to keep up with the pack. MORE…

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I am going to enter some bicycle races this year.

I’m learning, however, that training to race can require a massive, life-altering level of commitment. Specifically, it requires huge amounts of time, time that a person like me might not realistically ever have. Is it possible for a business owner/entrepreneur to also be a competitive athlete? MORE…

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I bought a wind trainer about a year ago but I’ve never actually used it because I was always afraid my adventurous little cat Nike would stick her paw in my back wheel. When I noticed a neighbor was throwing out a large roll of carbon fiber, my mind clicked: Disk wheels!

So this weekend I built up a couple of wheel disks to protect Nike from whirling spokes. Don’t get me wrong here: I do not want to pretend these are real aero disk wheels. They’re just carbon-fiber-looking wheel covers for kitty-safety purposes only. The fact that they are actually made of carbon-fiber is purely superficial - I could just as well have made these out of poster board.

Construction was pretty simple. I traced a big circle slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the wheel, and a smaller circle the size of the hub diameter, plus one radial cut to “dish” the disk. Naturally, as I was building them, Nike had to stick her nose in as well.

I attached the disks to the wheels using good old fashioned gaffer’s tape, which you can kind of see through the translucent carbon fiber sheeting. Finally I cut a little notch for pumping up the tire, and viola, it’s done!

I used a spare rear wheel for this, since my intention is pretty much to use this wheel only for indoor training. We’ll see how much I actually use it.

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