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Disappointment at the Mt Diablo Valley Challenge – Failure to Break 1 Hour

I didn’t do it. My 2024 time from last weekend was 1 minute faster than my time from 2023. Excuses first, it came down to not sleeping enough. I slept with my toddler son to help him sleep but when he woke up before 12AM, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got between 1 and 3 hours of sleep and was awake at least from 2AM for an 8:25AM race start.

I was pretty dejected during the ride as I started to fade knowing that this was the second straight year that I should have beat 1 hour for the race. In 2023, I had two straight low-sleep nights leading into the Challenge; I had done a 100 mile Gran Fondo the day prior at my highest ever 5 hr+ power.

As I now write this over 24 hours after the race, I am feeling OK about things. I am not sure I want to do the event again, but I do want to prove myself on the climb and I could do that any time I feel ready, for free.

  • The starting temperature over the weekend was about 10F higher than last year’s, close to 70F. Northern California is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures hitting 100F during the afternoons where I live. I didn’t feel overheated during the climb but…
  • My strategy to not have water bottles didn’t go well. I had practiced high intensity rides without water for over an hour in warmer-than-race-day temperatures at home, and did just fine. However, within 10 minutes of the ride, my throat was feeling super dry. It might have been particles in the air or related to the heat wave – someone said we had forest fire conditions of heat and dry air. Next time, I’ll just bring a water bottle.
  • I hit my max heart rate thresholds quite quickly – I was basically there immediately starting the ride instead of 20-30 minutes into it as I had hoped. I assume my lack of sleep was the big factor there.
  • I took beet root in the days leading to the ride to help with time to exertion but I don’t know what impact it had. Beet root is quite expensive in juice form, but I found gummies that are relatively affordable – just $20 for a month’s supply at Costco.
  • I lost 5 pounds or so during the final month and I may have lost some power in the process. I didn’t record my full ride correctly so I am unable to compare the last two year’s rides correctly but overall it’s clear I did less power than the previous year but went faster due to less weight on the bike and body.

Moving Forward

  • Whether I compete next year or not, I want to focus on losing weight while maintaining current power levels. This means getting down to 140 pounds from my current 146. My power goal would be 255 watts at 4w/kg. I lost a pound a week in the month before the event, and will try to get to 140 by Christmas. My process is sustainable, it is about having self-discipline and tracking myself so I stay on track.
  • This type of power/weight ratio would get me up Alpe Du Zwift in 50 minutes. This would give me unwavering confidence that I could beat the 1 hr mark for Mt. Diablo.
  • I’ve been having issues with my left foot on my bike setup. I plan to have a bike fit and/or custom insoles fitted to see if that can help with the pressure and pain around the foot.
  • I don’t have wishes for the bike. I am now using Dura Ace 9150/9170 parts for the derailleurs and brakes and my original Ultegra 8170 shifters on DI2 11 speed electronic shifting. I have a low weight ZTTO 11-34 cassette and I use Dura Ace 50/34 chainrings with Shimano 105 160mm crankarms. I am on a Fizik Adaptive 3D printed R1 saddle which is about 190G.

What to do about AI Nudes?

I recently listed to this podcast from the Wall Streeet Journal, Teens Are Falling Victim to AI Fake Nudes: “Last fall, nude photos of a 14-year-old student started spreading around her high school. But they weren’t real… they’d been created with AI. WSJ’s Julie Jargon breaks down how fake photos like these are a growing trend among teens and why it’s difficult to deal with.”

This part of the ordeal stood out for me:

Elliston Berry: I did. I had a couple classes with him in eighth grade, but he was a classmate and we were mutuals on social media. I didn’t see him as a threat. It was really shocking knowing that he did this because he was a peer, he was a classmate.

Jessica Mendoza: The school district declined to comment about the enrollment status of the teenager who made the photos. The local district attorney said he couldn’t give specifics because the student was a minor, but that the boy was sanctioned within the juvenile justice system. Meanwhile, Elliston’s mom Anna decided to take some steps on her own. Could you walk me through your decision to come forward publicly and talk about this?

The offending student was ultimately suspended but his identity was not revealed to the victims. A big part of the WSJ story is what do to in these cases? It’s clearly wrong, but what does it fit under? I assume schools are afraid of legal liability coming from both sides.

In 2017, I wrote a blog post here during the Me Too environment. It talked about something that I did in my high school days that wasn’t meant to hurt anyone. It was more about wanting to get attention. I don’t know if this is the case for the offender, but I can imagine it starting off that way.

And so when everything is preoccupied about legal liability or political correctness, I think we lose sight of what could generally be considered “right.” The offender invaded the girls’ privacy in a way by creating AI nudes and yet his own identity is protected by the “system”. There isn’t this ability to have the person meet the girls, learn about the pain he causes and apologize (if he felt it was appropriate) or explain himself. I feel a big part of navigating life is understanding the real impact on people. If you fire someone, don’t source it to HR. If you break up with someone, don’t text and ghost them. Take the responsibility, as painful as it is. In today’s world, it feels quite easy to do whatever you want and ignore that responsibility. I can send a Tweet threatening to kill someone for example, or say all sorts of things online that I would never do in front of that person. I don’t learn to understand the impact of those actions on the person receiving them.

Just because the offender in the case was suspended doesn’t mean they really get it. And isn’t the purpose of punishment to help us improve?

Here’s an excerpt from that blog post I wrote years ago, which is no longer public:

I have my own story of guilt: 20 years ago in high school, I was going online during the starting days of the internet, the time when people started transitioning away from AOL and finding the internet: Yahoo, Google, Excite. E-Mail was a miracle. This was Web 1.0, the early days of Geocities, where anyone could create his own website and show off a cool animated “hits” counter to show off the number of page visits.

As many teenage boys do, I gawked at the attractive girls in my classes. I had an idea of naming the most attractive girls in my year and putting it on a website for everyone to see.

I learned basic HTML, scanned photos from my yearbook and put it up. Scraping emails from group threads among classmates, I executed my first example of spam / mass emailing / grassroots marketing. I didn’t ask permission from any of the girls, being scared of them (never had I talked to most of them) and their possible responses, yet still wanted the site out there, getting attention.

As that was, perhaps it wasn’t so bad and I started to get some hits. I can’t remember all the details at this point, but I’m sure I continued working on the site, seeing how I could adjust things. Some friends of mine gave feedback, and this is where I made the wrong decision.

A friend mentioned (paraphrased) that one girl had a physical feature that would be great for oral sex. I don’t think I really knew what that meant, but I thought, hey, more content, and something to put on the website.

And so I did. I remember showing the website to my dad at this point, and he made a very astute comment (as usual) that I should reconsider putting comments like that on the website.

But I wanted the attention, I wanted people to visit the site and have a reaction (even though I truly feared a negative one), so I kept it. A few days later, some anonymous students had a negative reaction to the site and I was actually harassed (pretty stressful for my teenage self) for it. I do not know if they were doing so in defense of one of the girls, or some other reason. It does not matter.

I clearly put my need for attention over something that was not nice to put in full public view. It could have affected one of the girls negatively, and it was a form of harassment.

As I reflect upon this over 25 years later, I could say putting yearbook photos on a website isn’t that big of a deal compared to creating AI nudes. One is porn! Attached to a 14 year old. But we live in different times. In my day, internet porn wasn’t readily available. Sex and violence in film and TV was extremely tame compared to today’s standards. I’m not saying that AI nudes are ok, I’m saying that the thresholds of acceptability are moving extremely fast. If you can download an app to make a nude, it’s suggesting that these are becoming everyday things. And I think there has to be some context around that.

If I were in high school today, would the equivalent of scanning yearbook photos and making a basic website of them in the past be the equivalent of today’s AI nudes? I hope not, and maybe it’s not the equivalent today, but what if it is in 5 years or 10 years?

The Worst 2nd Place Zwift Race Result Ever

3 years ago, I finished third on a Zwift group ride. Yes, it was a group ride and not a race, but nearly 200 people participated so I felt it was a good result. I never did so well again until a few days ago.

I finished 2nd place in my group (B), 3rd overall in a field of 20. I should be thrilled, but ZwiftPower only recognized 6 total competitors and in my group I finished last. Thus I didn’t even get positive ranking points.

So still waiting on my first true podium finish and good result.

Going for the 1 Hour mark at the 2024 Mt. Diablo Challenge

A couple of weeks ago, I raced the Mt. Diablo Challenge for the first time. I finished:

I finished in the top 27% overall and top 23% in my age group doing 233 watts, about 3.45 w/kg. However, I don’t have any doubt I can finish in one hour with possibly a top ten finish. Before I talk about why, here are my impressions of the event:

  • Mt. Diablo is a well known San Francisco Bay Area Climb. But most of my riding has been in the South Bay (Mountain View to Morgan Hill) and Sacramento. It was my first time riding this famed climb.
  • Driving into the parking lot at 7:30AM reminded me of when car enthusiasts get together to show off their cars. Even though I’ve been to plenty of mass rider events, I felt such a strong concentration of “Wow, that’s a $10K bike! There’s another…and another”
  • The view going up and down was great. I really enjoyed the descent, riding with a hundred other people down the road, just awesome views and a happy feeling traveling with so many people. I don’t do a lot of social riding, and even then I’m not a talker, but just being with so many people not needing to talk fulfilled my togetherness quota for the year. As you near the finish line, those who finished before you are waiting to urge you in the final (super steep) section. That’s me below watching (yes, eyes are closed) the people climb up.

Now here’s why I am confident about achieving the 1 hour mark (you get a special shirt for it too!) next year:

  • I participated in the Sacramento Century (100 miles but less than 1000 feet climbing) the day before. While my IF (intensity factor) was a relatively conservative .64, this turned out to be my highest all time power for the 5hr 10 minute ride. My back was hurting during the ride and my legs were a bit worn even after the night’s sleep. Clearly, I didn’t come in fresh. I thought I’d warm up and feel good after starting the ride, especially with a boost from caffeine, but I felt the effects of the previous day throughout and I started losing a lot of power in the second half of the climb.
  • Why was I silly enough to schedule two events like this back to back? I actually didn’t know they were back to back until about a month prior – I had already been signed up for a few months at that point. I would have preferred to do Mt. Diablo first, but that wasn’t up to me. I decided to keep the century ride because I thought my pace would be casual enough so I’d be ok for the race. I knew there was a risk but I just wanted to keep both events since I’d never done either before.
  • The week before the race I had done 269 watts over 28 minutes on a simulated Zwift climb. People like to say FPT power is the theoretical max 1 hour power someone can produce. If you don’t want to do a hour hour test, they’ll take 95% of a 20 minute test. Using that 28 minute power, my FTP should have been at least 255 watts. My guess is that I am closer to 260 watts. This is BestBikeSplit’s guess for what I could do at that rate. Looking at this year’s results, top ten finishers are right below the one hour mark.

My own tips for next year’s race:

  • I’m not doing 100 miles the day before the event. Complete rest at least 4 days before the event, focusing on good sleep.
  • I didn’t understand the bathroom situation so I waited in a long line where I picked up my packet. A few miles away at the race start, there are plenty of bathrooms. No more stress next time.
  • I’m taking off all my bottle cages and not bringing water. I brought one water bottle this time, but I didn’t need it, and it’s really hard to go all out and drink without losing momentum. I’ll drink during the drive over and then pee at the race start. That’s a saving of at least 1.5 pounds, almost 10% of my bike’s weight.
  • I’m not sure how far I want to go weight weenie, but I could also go with thinner tires. I went with 25mm/32mm front/rear since that’s just my normal setup, but I could see myself going 25mm/25mm just for the mental benefit. I’m curious about this cassette to save another .2 pounds, but I think that’s overkill and I’m worried about its reliability.
  • I am highly dependent on my Halo headband to absorb sweat and like an idiot, I forgot mine in the car. I was already miles away going to the race start when I realized this. Since the morning was cool (around 55F), I didn’t get affected by sweat too much, but it was definitely a mental stress and I did have to handle it a few times. Again, when you’re going full out for an hour, every little distraction can kill momentum.
  • I didn’t use sunglasses to avoid sweat and visibility issues (and a little weight) and that was the right decision. I was good with my clothing choice, and didn’t use gloves.
  • I had two caffeine bars (around 160mg total) but I think one would have been fine as I don’t consume caffeine often. I’ll test this a bit over the next year.
  • Training – I’ll work on 1 hr climbing over the next year and if I’m consistent I think I could gain up to 10 more watts (4% increase) and lose 2kg. The power gain is fairly modest.