Digital Training

The network of linked in computers we call Skynet, or the internet, or whatever it is has brought forth a brave new world of profound ways to waste time at work and ignore loved ones at home. Facebook and Twitter get a lot of attention, as they well deserve for their great contributions to society, but for cyclists, who are known to ignore work and family obligations at a varsity level, innovations in technology have created a whole new sphere of bike geekdom to take us away from the world we live in. Social Training Sites: Mapmyride, Wahoo Fitness, iFitness, and many others have created digital venues to record training data and release it onto the web for the world to see, and no doubt fawn over, as they should, right?

My favorite of these sites, and the most controversial, is Strava.com. Strava uses the GPS on your Garmin or Smartphone to track your ride for distance, speed, route, elevation, power output, and calories burned -with the acute level of accuracy one can expect from a free application downloaded from the air. All the Social Training apps mentioned above collect data through cell phone tower data and Ant+ connections, but what sets Strava apart is its timed segments feature. A Strava user can designate any stretch or road, path, or alley as a digital racetrack, invisible to everyone but the computer. All users speed and time is recorded and then people are ranked the on the segment leader board, with filters for age, sex, and weight. 

BikesnobNYC has this to say: Cycling American Style is about the pursuit of glory, whether that glory is the glory of unassailable smugness, or it is the glory of defeating your fellow cyclists in the rigors of competition. Of course, sometimes it can be hard to find a fellow cyclist to defeat, which is why we now have Strava. Or as he would call it, digital Cat 6 commuter racing.

He's right, and for the sake of example let me put basement roll-playing games on blast. Our society and popular culture disparages the players of Dungeons and Dragons for laying waste to imaginary rivals on a fictional world because it isn’t real, it’s a way to escape the world and take refuge in the imagination of a small group of fellow outcasts. This is no different from your everyday group ride, where we all slap on the spandex and sprint for that county line with our buddies. But like regular bike racing is as harmless and fun to the inner group as Dungeons and Dragons, so do they both have an evil twin on the internet. World of Warcraft, the real-time online D&D is famous for ruining lives: many a thesis has gone unwritten, many a social event has been missed, even children have gone unfed in more than one notable case. Unlike the real world where you’re monitored by your compatriots, the internet offers instant satisfaction and constant stimulation. The people of Strava will keep pushing themselves harder and harder until either they’ve won King of the Mountain on every strip or they’ve died trying.

As I look at people's times on the various Strava segments of Chicago I am astounded by the speeds that people reach. Here's an example: a 2.3-mile stretch of the Lakefront Path is currently held with a time of 5:47. This particular stretch goes along the crowded North Ave and Ohio St beaches, past the tourist laden Navy Pier, across the gauntlet of steel girders on the bridge-walk above the Chicago River, and into Millennium Park on a path too skinny to drive a garbage truck on - and the reigning king of the mountain averaged 24.3 miles per hour, a speed that cars on the adjacent Lake Shore Drive have trouble reaching some days.

I see this type of thing a lot in Chicago, especially on the Lakefront Path. People are so focus on achieving their personal best that they forget they're on a public trail, shared with children and beach goers and bike commuters -and none of these people are interested in being a party to your little game, especially not as obstacles.

So lets have our esoteric competitions and may the best bike win, but please keep the public out of it and remember to yield to non-competitive traffic. 

Shop in Chicago on one of the most highly contested stretches of
Milwaukee  Ave.