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E-bikes have taken over Europe
 

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

9/11/18 11:45 AM

E-bikes have taken over Europe

Well, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, anyway. We're presently touring those three countries, seeing lots and lots of other cyclists, and apart from roadies out training, I would say that e-bikes are about half of the bikes that we see. Lots of retired couples tootling around on them. They would certainly make the steep hills around here easier.

The weather has been essentially perfect since we started - a couple of days where the rain skirted around us, but we haven't needed raincoats yet, and the temperatures have been in the low/mid 20s (Celcius) every day.

<a href='https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipM1uqGrGFF566vQYWXXL0UYKd6YRTn3EIlgRmBeQ2AWEhp33xEodmK-j3ybGMobxQ?key=YVhSb0c0Y29WRU9lUXYyWFpGbzl1WTQ2eGM3NjRR&source=ctrlq.org'><img src='https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fFdksmxDzOVtyv9RT5sDtW12D7S62W_Jw1No9GTrH5kbyK4pILZZjjjNHQ-w6Yo3BU4eLfCnYBPo9WtJKcrA668wX_SmyK4ea72StMRbOKNoXm9P1NT2smgmsmIX2tQKA_gI2A7OLw=w1200' /></a>


Last edited by Nick Payne on 10/13/18 1:43 PM; edited 1 time in total

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

9/28/18 12:08 PM

Well, we've made it to Innsbruck to watch the world road championships. Very impressive rides from the young Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel in the junior TT and RR. In the TT, over only 27km he won by a minute and a half from 2nd place, and in the RR he crashed, had to wait for a wheel change, chased back, dropped everyone on the climb, and won on his own by about the same minute and a half. Little wonder he's going straight from the juniors to the Worldtour with the Quickstep team next year.

We walked down the Höll climb yesterday (final climb and coup de grace for the elite mens RR). Quite a number of riders were tackling it, and they were all either zig-zagging across the road in an attempt to keep going or had had to stop. I decided to have a crack at it on my touring bike this morning, which has a much lower gear, and managed to grovel to the top. The average gradient over the three kilometres is only 11.4%, but it starts off fairly easily and then gets steeper and steeper towards the top, with a maximum gradient of 28%.

The Pros will be tackling the climb with 250km and over 4000m of climbing already in their legs, and I reckon that some of the riders not at the pointy end will be walking it towards the top.

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

9/28/18 12:55 PM

cool

Coup de grace sounds like a good description (though not entirely sure about the mercy part....)

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daddy-o
Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 3307
Location: Springfield

9/28/18 1:45 PM

Thanks for the scouting report.

British odds makers chart from 25+ books. They take the field to about 120 deep.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

9/28/18 4:34 PM

Keep em coming...

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henoch
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 1690

9/28/18 7:43 PM

28% Holy Moly!!
Based on that I can see lots of DNF's guys that are off the back with a couple laps to go won't even bother finishing.
I wonder what gearing those guys will use.

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

9/30/18 12:02 AM

Nibali said he would probably be using a 36t chainring and 32t cassette for his gearing on that final climb.

We rode around the short lap yesterday morning. It's no walk in the park, particularly as they ride it seven times - the main climb each lap is about 8km long with ~450m of vertical ascent. The descent off it is pretty good - gets up to about 11% in places with lots of high speed sweeping curves where a good descender can make a gap. The Swiss rider who won the U23 RR did so by getting away on the descent and maintaining his gap to the finish.

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

9/30/18 9:11 AM

Gearing

Haha not to compare myself to Nibali, but on D2R2 up to 27% I used 30x32. Of course @27 I was going 2 mph with a cadence of about 30....

The super steep section doesn't look too long, so I'm guessing the good climbers could punch it pretty good with 36x30. Interesting to see how that climb plays into the finish.

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KerryIrons
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 3234
Location: Midland, MI

9/30/18 10:07 AM

ski slope

IIRC many years ago Ski magazine did a compilation article about "expert runs" and their criteria was a 30% slope with more than XX feet of drop for the run. So a 28% climb would just fall short of the steepness requirement for an expert ski run. I'm definitely walking up that.

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

9/30/18 1:12 PM

Some good photos from the various events at https://www.innsbruck-tirol2018.com/en/photos/ . The KRONE ride to Höll was the competitive amateurs grovel
up Höll yesterday morning. And I noticed on the TV coverage of the elite mens RR this afternoon that some of the riders who finished top ten were having to zig-zag up the hill also.

We took the cable car up to the top of Hafelekarspitze a few days ago, and saw warning signs at one of the cable stations warning of 70% ski slopes with danger of death...

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

10/1/18 5:46 AM

great race

I managed to stay up and watch the NBCSN coverage (most of the last 40 miles or so). Awesome.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

10/1/18 7:11 AM

>Sagan made it over the climb to Igls three times, but four proved to be too many, and with 93km to go he had to let go of the peloton. He rode to the end of the lap then abandoned the race.

Wrong day to have a bad day...

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Marc N.
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 457
Location: Israel

10/1/18 10:47 AM

Even on a good day this was not a course for him. It was if the powers that be decided someone else will win this year, so they designed a course which Sagan wouldn`t be a favorite. Having said that, it was a great race with a well deserved winner. Towards the end, the Eurosport announcers said that all race they never once mentioned Valverde, and then all of a sudden here he is. Good for him!

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henoch
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 1690

10/1/18 11:06 AM

Have it on DVR, hope to watch it tonight.
I have heard some people say that this will go down in history as one of the most exciting worlds in the last 20-30 years.

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

10/1/18 3:35 PM

Yeah

Agree with Marc, and I had the same thought about course design. I didn't see Petey even mentioned as a top pick.

Paul and Christian followed Valverde as a threat throughout.

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PLee
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 3712
Location: Brooklyn, NY

10/2/18 8:03 AM

Incredible race. And I think it was Dumoulin who I saw zigzagging up Holl.

For comparison, I looked up the grade on Fillmore Street in San Francisco - only 24%. I managed that on a borrowed mountain bike . . . barely . . . many years ago . . . and popped an unintentional wheelie on my first try . . .

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daddy-o
Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 3307
Location: Springfield

10/5/18 2:49 PM

SPOILER

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henoch
Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Posts: 1690

10/6/18 7:39 AM

Wow, Sagen sure has put on a few...

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

10/13/18 1:43 PM

Well, we've stuck the bikes back in my brother's attic in Switzerland and returned home. I went through the photos I took on the tour and put a few dozen of them in an album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/B2RriY2XXGPfh6VaA .

The images are captioned, but there's some wierd bug in Google Photos that means you usually have to waggle the mouse around in the browser window for each image to display its caption.

I took a real camera (Sony RX100 IV) with me as well as my phone, but I really only used the Sony for photographing the bike racing, where its eye level viewfinder and 16fps shooting were useful. Nearly all the rest of the photos were taken with the phone, as it's much quicker to get out and use, and the images are of reasonable quality.

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Brian Nystrom
Joined: 26 Jan 2004
Posts: 5096
Location: Nashua, NH

10/13/18 2:14 PM

I love my Sony RX100 IV! It's definitely my bike camera and I use it whenever my DSLR is too big. It's capable of really stunning images. I take occasional snapshots with my iPhone, but I prefer using a "real" camera most of the time. Perhaps I'm just a control freak.

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dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6884
Location: Maine

10/13/18 2:15 PM

Great pics

Love the ladder with handrails on the hiking trail.

Glad to hear you relied on the phone. I'm going to Antarctica in January and folks say take a fancy camera, but I'm not a photographer, and am inclined to just use a phone (probably a spare in case I drop it overboard...)

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

10/13/18 5:52 PM

The phone I used was a Pixel 2. It's the first phone I've had where I thought that the camera was good enough to substitute for a real camera in most situations. I've printed 10x8s from the phone that couldn't be distinguished from photos taken with any of my real cameras (up to APS-C sensor size). The biggest drawback of using the phone is trying to see what's on the screen if you're photographing in bright sunlight with the sun behind you.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

10/13/18 9:02 PM

"The phone I used was a Pixel 2"

XL?

How is the focal length performance? My ancient Galaxy 5 looses things you see on the screen at about 90 miles for long 'range' shots. Range as in MTN ranges...

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Nick Payne
Joined: 10 Jan 2004
Posts: 2625
Location: Canberra, Australia

10/14/18 12:52 AM

No, not the XL model, the smaller one. I don't like large phones. I think the two have identical components except for the screen size.

Not sure what you mean by the other question.

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Sparky
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 19068
Location: PDX

10/14/18 10:47 AM

My Galaxy S5 and every other phone/camera I have had simply lacks the focal length to show for example a third volcano in a 3 volcano shot here. On clear days to the eye and screen on the phone Mt Rainier [130 miles away] is in site. It is usually not in view to the eye, but on those days I'd like a pic of it. Only when I get home and look with my readers on, it is not in the pic. Beyond some aspect of the camera I guess.

I can see it in the view finder, so I assume the lens sees it.

My kid has the Pixel, the phone before the '2'. But the '2' apparently is known for awesome camera features. We have some clear days correctly. I will take that phone to my fav spot 4 mile from the house and see what it see later today.

I personally have an aversion to 750.00 or more cost on phones. I paid 100.00 for a used perfect S5. ;)

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