John Cobb Research Blog

This past week I went to the wind tunnel with the Source Endurance group out of Austin, Tx. We had 5 riders that were all trying to improve their TT skills, I think we helped most of them. Another interesting thing going on was that one of the racers was writing a new Fluid Dynamics program and was using his bike and wheels as a model. The rider on the left is Brett Faulk out of Houston, he runs a shop there, Sugarbikes, he had done a pretty good job of setting himself up already. We did test several things and in Brett’s case, because of his flat bike and shoulder shape, he was fastest with the helmet “tail down”.  Another rider that I’m going to show for example, had the more common “B” style or rounded back and he was measureably faster with his head aimed down. It is hard to see down the road this way, so we tested several helmets  and found one that was equal but allowed him to see further ahead, that should be better. We also did some testing for the never ending question of, where should I place my water bottles?  We had a cool situation where we had two riders with the same bike, the riders were of very different size as far as leg shape goes.  So, two 54 Cervelo P3c’s, the thinner legged rider was faster with a round frame mounted bottle, we tried aero bottles and no bottles, the thicker legged rider was faster with no bottles??  I will continue testing.   I made some headway on my newest seat, it still has a few rough edges. This week, it’s back to more running and swimming, I finally ran about a half mile during the 4 mile run Thursday that felt a little bit fast, maybe there is hope.

One of the problems with Off Road running is that it can lead to Off Road biking. I had not ridden my Mountain bike for several years and was pretty happy with that. Unfortunately, I’ve wanted to develope a new Mountain bike seat so that sort of led me to having to ride off road some more.  My training podna’ Robert, had never ridden off road at all, so we borrowed him a bike and went to the woods. I really had forgotten just how retarded you can be in the woods. I had a great time watching Robert fall while learning to do switchbacks. I think I have also come up with a great saddle idea so I’ll continue working on with that.   I have continued with the trail running, I asked several coaches I was with at the Slowtwitch camp this past week, how to get my running better.  They all suggested that I do trail running, so I guess I will continue that a little longer.  I have assymbled a group to suffer with me, as long as you’re on the trail it’s pretty good, running across this pipe can be a lot more challenging and you easily can get wet feet from this adventure. Ginger is getting better, I don’t think there are Alligators in the water.  Earlier in the week I was in California at the November Slowtwitch Camp.  This is a 3 day event I go to, I teach the attendees about bike aerodynamics and positioning.  There are usually 12 -15 people there and it is always fun.  The campers learn about the dynamics of setting up a good rider position for triathlons, there are many hours spent learning how to figure the right size frame for a rider, many hours spent learning how to communicate and in the end, most people come away with a good knowledge base of TT positioning. One of the most valuable things that happens at the camp is the “dinner time” discussions.  By dinner time, every one is tired but also wanting to have more discussions about business, races, people, economy, etc. It’s has always proven to be a great time to get some good ideas about the pulse of the bike business in different parts of the U.S. and abroad.

Ahhh, Halloween, that crazy night that we all live for. Now that I’ve been through a few of those events, it’s always interesting to reflect on them. For years we lived in an area where we had no Trick or Treaters, it felt strange, now we live where there are many, many kids that come around, it’s better to have the kids. It’s fun to watch the little ones all dressed up, being prodded along by the very watchfull parents, I don’t think there was a single case of bad candy in our neighborhood. Now the real problem with Halloween is that if there is any of that candy left over… well, the last kid got a good bag full of stuff so that I wouldn’t get tempted this year.

I did some real Daniel Boone type work this week, we cleared a trail for running around this lake.   My training partner, Robert had a tractor that we hauled out to the woods to use for filling in a creek crossing and some heavy brush mowing. Our newly converted trail runner, James, had come along for the heavy lifting and chain saw work,  I believe I was in charge of thinking about why I was doing this, trail running is hard after all. We had done a 5 mile run the day before around the lake and at about mile .1 we decided that some trail work would be needed.  There is a deep mental illness that comes along with training with other people, you end up doing things that you just wouldn’t do normally. That first happened to me a long time ago, early 1980’s  with my buddy Greg that now lives in Hawaii, he and Larry Thompson would drag me into all kinds of crazy things. It is fun though, so I suppose that is why we keep doing these things.  Saturday I did some good positioning work on a fellow from Houston, Steve needs to go a couple of minutes faster for the age group nationals so I worked with him on pedaling technique, aero thinking and  more general suffering. This week, I’m off to California for a Slowtwitch Camp. These are up in the mountains, east of L.A. might be cold at night but I always get to meet some new intesting people.

I had been pretty busy this past week, I’m working on a new web site with my niece Audrey, in Shreveport. She has a web/tech business and can say all those fancy internet words that I seem to forget. On thursday, I suffered through a 1 hr. run with Ginger and Robert, their ears probably suffered more than anything else. One of my bike riding buddies, “James, 65+ yrs. old” has decided to run with us some. He suffered real well on Thursday, so on Friday we did a little practice tri, 1 hr. swim, 25mi. bike, 2mi. run and James went the distance with us, except for that swimming part.   On Saturday I went to Ft. Worth to give a couple of talks.  I started at Colonel’s Bike shop, I worked with Brent, a new Pro Triathlete that Doug and the boy’s at Colonel’s are sponsoring this year. Colonel’s is building quite the reputation as a good place to go for bike fitting, I was there to explain the “short crank” thinking and to take a look at Brent. I’m starting to have more and more people take the plunge on the short cranks and it really is working. Then I went to talk to a newly formed bike club “Empi” that is made up of a bunch of Physical Therapist and orthopedic doctors.  That was fun except that they could ask really hard questions. We had about 15 riders bring in their bikes and we looked at the positions and discussed the causes and how to solve some basic issue for clients. A great group but it was a very long day.  This week I will continue on some new seat molds, I’ll try to take some photo’s.

I had it going on this past week, did some good training, got a box of goodies in from Taiwan, rode on some flat ground for a change and visited some old friends down south. Ohh, Ginger just interupted me with fresh home made chocolate chip cookies, I’ll have to get my Ice cream balanced just right for this… Anyway, my buddy Robert and I went to the running track this week, searching for my lost speed. It looks like it is going to stay lost a little longer, my mind keeps thinking it’s 30 but the legs and heart seem to be in disagreement at this time. Ginger and I went to Shreveport on Friday, so on Saturday morning we met up with some old riding buddies from the Shreveport bike club. Marion and Nona had done the Toyota Grand Prix Triatlon with me a couple of weeks ago,  a picture of my plaque [very tacky] is  on the right, maybe the high point of my triathlon career though. We rode about 35 miles and my rich cousin’ Larry even went with us the whole way. It was flat, the weather was just perfect and it was flat. We had a great time, loaded up the car and drove to Lafayette for a suprise birthday party for my friend  Mark Miller.  Now, Miller is a legend in the south, he races a lot of tri’s, he has a nice bike shop and he knows just about everybody down that way. Through some miracle, his wife Michelle pulled it off and he was actually caught suprised for the party, we had a good time. We got back home on Sunday to get ready for another week. If any of you know a quick cure for my slow running don’t hesitate to chip in here, I’m going back to the track on Tuesday and continue my search. Robert is of no help, he run’s 6:30 miles so as he laps me he seems to snicker and say those ugly things like “good effort”, Duhh

 I’ve heard about the Texas State Fair forever, I’ve heard about how it takes several days to do it right, I’ve heard about the car show, I’ve heard about the rides, I’ve heard about the crowds, I’ve heard about all the food, so we loaded up and went for the adventure.  I didn’t really get it at first, I mean, I’ve been to the Louisiana State Fair, that took about  30 minutes to encompass so what could be that much different here. Well, it did take a solid 10 hour day to see some of it and there were a lot of people. I was there about 15 minutes before I had my first Corn Dog, it seems that Corn dog’s are what you eat there, of course you have to back that up with lot’s of Ice Cream, by night fall I was dizzy from the sugar rush. Did I mention that there are a lot of people there, it was like being in China, shoulder to shoulder people, all day long. Then we wandered over to the petting zoo. It was full of all sorts of exotic animals from around the globe, they all seemed to speak the same language as far as getting a snack, the Ostriches were almost deadly in their skills at snaring a snack. Oh, we hadn’t eaten in about 5 minutes, so we had fried bacon, corn dogs, funnel cake, other things you probably wouldn’t try on a normal day, it was all good at the State Fair though.  Then, it was on to the car shows and yes, there were a lot of cars. There was a small motorcycle display with a few of the world famous “Martin Bros.” custom choppers there, these are $100,000.00 choppers that you can’t ride anywhere, I didn’t get that at all. A lot of cars though, it was kinda’ neat to have all the brands parked side by side, much better than cruising the dealers on the Loop.  We walked some more, I’m pretty sure we did a solid marathon, maybe a little more, I was beat. We ate some more cause we were going to need more strength to make it through the parade. About 7pm the crowds started staking out their areas for viewing the parade. This must go back to the pioneer Homesteading days or something but these people were serious about their parade viewing. A bunch of huge horses came through, followed by bands and floats, it was very pretty. There was a “light Show” that followed but I was done, it was going to be about another 10k to get to the car and I was completely beat. Maybe another corn dog or Ice Cream would have gotten me through it but I didn’t think so. The Fair was a lot like a triathlon, they are always much better the day after the race.  It was big, I don’t think it can be done properly in just one day and there were a lot of people there.

   I have a big bike week ahead, I’m designing a new seat that I think will help with some comfort issues. I’ll be pouring some molds and making several base samples to carve on, I’ll try to take some pictures. More training is ahead, the winter Duathlon season is coming and when you get to be a fine tuned athlete like me…… well I’ll just keep training.

   It may just be the right time to finally turn into a Pro Triathlete. I started my triathlon comeback way back in May, it was time to get serious about my racing and training. Along the way I got a new ride, Cento, my Italian mistress that proved hard to tame, but as we continued to date she slowly came to reward me and make me happy, she was a good girl this last Sunday. My training buddy Robert and I decided to enter the Toyota Grand Prix Triathlon in Dallas, a good idea on the surface but from  somewhere those people found some badass hills and wind to make it a challenging day.  I had made good plans, this was a point to point race so it required two seperate transition areas, it was different.  On Saturday we had to rack our bikes out at Joe Pool Lake where the swim and bike start would be, then during the race you rode into downtown Dallas and transitioned to the run at the American Airlines Center. Sunday started early, 5am, we had to be at the AA center to set out our running gear in the middle of a parking lot, then get on a bus and do a 45 minute ride to the lake and get our swim bike transition set, it was cold, we had no spare clothes, it was cold. This was all good except that when I was getting dressed that morning, 4:30am, the draw string in my tri shorts broke and they wouldn’t stay up and I had a big problem. I decided to do the race in a pair of running shorts that I had with me, turns out that was a little painful. The race organizers did such a huge job with all of this, by the time we finished they had moved everything from the lake to the run transition so all your gear was there, it was awsome.  The bike leg went 25 miles from south of Arlington, all the way to downtown Dallas, they had to close a bunch of major roads and there were cones and police at every intersection, it was just great.  At the finish my friend Jordan Rapp aka. Rappstar, a real pro came to congratulate me, he had a good race and I warned him to start looking over his shoulder. Unbelievably, I finished 3rd in my age group, I got a plaque and there were even more than three people in my age group so that was kinda’ special.  Every now and then the Triathlon Gods throw down a little scrap, just so you can justify the training. I’d like to thank my “team”, Ginger, Robert, James and Dave, their willingness to hear my complaining has been a big help.     Earlier in the week I had gone to a fun night of Slot car racing, I had not run my cars in a couple of weeks and I had a new racer that needed testing. It’s the green car in the bad picture, it was fast. This track is about 70′ long with several hard corners, my new racer did this in 3.8seconds and you can barely see the thing, it was fast. We had a great night of races and I should be able to run again in a couple of weeks. It’s a good diversion from the bike training.

Heeeyyyy….. That’s how it starts. Ginger and I were invited to an evening with Henry Winkler, you know, The Fonz ! It was fun, we were able to sit at his table and ask the usual dumb questions, he was very nice and he gave a great talk on dyslexia and how we need to work with it. He told some funny stories but said that his leather jacket was in the Smithsonian, so I couldn’t borrow it. The next morning we were off to Vegas and you know, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Well, not quite, I wandered the isles looking at all the new shiny products, it was nice.  I had to go to the Wilier Booth to visit with the press and answer questions about the TT bike, it has been a great success for Willier this year. Vegas is so accomadating sometimes, there was a reflection from the lights coming off my balding and shiny head so they had this hottie holding up some paper to block the lights, it almost worked.  The current head of Wilier was there from Italy, I caught Enricou in a light moment. It was a long day of seemingly endless walking and wandering, my feet hurt, my knees hurt and I was seriously down on nurishment. I left the show a little early because Ginger and I were going to a very special treat that evening, we went to the show Love, a Beatles song fest. There were some very talented athletes in that show, the special effects were sort of like the things we have going on here at the house in the evenings, you know, trampelines, Roller Blades, rope climbing… rightttt.  And then, my final photo as proof that I finished my Rose City Triathlon event. It was a great race and the local club did a tremendus job, this weekend I’m off to Dallas to do the Toyota Grand Prix triathlon, by golly I may just turn pro.

So, the Rose City Triathlon finally got to happen, no Huricanes, no heat waves, just  great weather and good times. I had set this race as my prime target race,  to help me return to training and get back in a little better shape. It’s been a long and occasionally ugly road, I had great support from my friends and Ginger, they put up with my whining and complaining and I want to thank all of them. The local triathlon club, East Texas Triathletes just did an outstanding job at hosting a first time triathlon, it was encredible how well these people did and I am very proud of our local club for this.  There was the usual pre race trash talking, there was some good racing and I finished and was able to talk afterwards. I actually had a good race, my running still has a long way to go but I was 17 minutes faster than my race in Jefferson and can see that I might someday get back to a competitive speed. Thanks again to everyone that put’s up with me.

    On Thursday I had gone to Mooresville, North Carolina, to visit the A2 wind tunnel there. I have been working on a new helmet design and it was time to test the final prototype before production begins. I had never been to this tunnel, they have only been testing bikes for a couple of years. It was a very good experience and I plan to go back, the staff is very bike knowledgeable and helpful. This is a tunnel designed for race cars but they have built some fixtures that let the bikes go in it. I had a couple of volunteers, Chris Olsen and Herbert Krabel came to be my test subjects, we ran about a zillion test and I think there will be some new speed coming soon.  The only real problem I had with this testing was that my training buddy Robert, who went to see all of this,  and I, had to fly back from Charolette on Friday night so I didn’t get home till midnight. My race morning came pretty early but I suppose that’s just part of the racing adventure.