Blog | geodee | Page 2

Guelph Lake II race report

Posted on September 21, 2011 by geodee

Because of my foot, this year I’ve only been able to do relays, swim/bikes, or just DNFing full triathlons. I’ve had some great races, but it’s been frustrating and anti-climactic to get to the end of a race and just hand in or give away my timing chip. I finish my race, then hang around for everyone else to finish.

Two weeks before the Guelph Lake II try-a-tri, I successfully did a couple trial runs which didn’t even hurt my injury. There was a lot of pain in other places, but I was able to run 2k without the telltale pain that I was making my injury worse. I had to go for it so I could finally finish a race this year.

The morning of the race I tried to find time to pick up a non-fat latte to alternate between drinking it and my three scoops of Perpetuem, but I forgot my race belt, and had to turn back home. Then I left again, and realized I forgot my bike shoes.

For the third race in a row this made things pretty tight for getting registered in time. Considering the 1:30 start, I thought I’d have more than enough time to watch a bit of the sprint. That didn’t happen.

After registering, setting up transition, and warming up, I strapped my video camera to my head and hung around for the start of the race. I was in the third wave, and I was feeling super confident about rocking the swim. I was fully expecting to come out of the water in the top three, maybe even higher. Once the horn blew I ran like mad.

I got in a few dolphin dives, and sprinted for the first 50m or so. I was leading the race until I realized that there was no way I could keep up that pace for 400m. I also didn’t know if I was going the right way, since there was a kayak in front of me with people hanging off it. I hesitated, then two guys passed me. One of them hit me in the face. The rest of the swim was pretty long.

Here’s the hit to the face.

I still ended up getting out of the water in fourth place. I had an amazing T1, passed three guys, and started the ride in first place in my age group!

This wasn’t a bad bike, but it wasn’t particularly good either. I managed to hold on to the lead up until the turnaround, when the leader caught me and passed. I tried to hold on to him as long as I could, but my heart rate was soaring. Every time I checked it was in the mid- to high-180 range. I tried to let off a bit to give myself some time to recover, but I was feeling too inspired to let go. I kept pushing.

During one of my heart rate checks I ended up dropping my Garmin. I hadn’t mounted it to the bike, so when I reached to grab it out of my pocket it just flew out. Looking back at the video it looks like I only lost 30 seconds and one place. But in a try-a-tri 30 seconds is a hell of a lot of time.

Coming around the final turn I got cocky and jumped a speed bump. I dropped my chain. I spent about a minute trying to finesse it back on. I debated coasting the rest of the way in, but I managed to get it back on with barely enough time to take my feet out of my shoes. I lost another place there.

I came into T2 in fourth place, but I completely rocked it. I had an amazing flying dismount, had no problems finding my rack space, pulling off my helmet and throwing on my shoes. I left T2 in third place. I still felt pretty good. My heart rate was still super high, and for me on the run it only gets higher.

I tried running the entire distance, but I wasn’t able to keep it up. I walked up the first hill, and the rest of the time was spent walk/running.

I still had a few great games of leapfrog. I was running more or less the same pace as the guy who ended up in seventh place. He had passed me a couple times, but about 700m or so from the finish I went for it. I passed him and a swack of other people and finished up really strong. I could hear someone yelling “don’t let him catch you!”

He didn’t catch me. If you listen closely you can actually hear it in the video.

My heart rate during the final sprint was topped out at 200 bpm. It has never been that high, even when I tried a max HR test a few years ago. I’m almost surprised I lived through it.

All in all it was a great race, and I not only am I glad I actually managed to finish the race, but I’m ecstatic that I ended up in 6th place—even if it was just a try-a-tri. I learned a lot about how important pacing is (even in a race this distance), the importance of transitions, and what mental errors to try and avoid. It actually played a big role in how successful I ended up being two weeks later at the Syracuse Half-Ironman.

Posted in Blog, Fitness | 6 Comments

You can’t win them all, but sometimes you can still sneak in late goal

Posted on August 29, 2011 by geodee

The lead story for September’s Graphic Arts Magazine issue is a preview of GRAPH EXPO in Chicago next month. We’ll be bringing this issue down to the show, and hopefully some people will find value in using it as a guide. The tagline for the show is Embrace Technology.

The marketing material for the show displays that quite literally.

I wanted to take the embrace a step further. How good of an embrace can a handshake be? After the initial rush of ideas, I decided to get my insipiration from two album covers. Have I mentioned how much I’m still loving the Washed Out album?

When I emailed the rest of the crew at the magazine, this is how I pitched it (somewhat tongue-in-cheek).

This is a powerful cover, because it combines the disturbing feeling you got when you found the secret cache of your parents’ anniversary cards, with the idea of hooking up with a robot, all set to a Chicago skyline. Plus it’s extra creepy, because WTH is sexy about printing?

Let’s just say I was asked to come up with some alternative ideas—specifically to come up with one that used a supplied generic show floor shot.

I kept trying with variations on my theme, revising and cleaning up—hoping that I’d get the go-ahead on one of them. Unfortunately I couldn’t win, and we ended up going with a variation on the trade show floor cover.

It was the right decision, but despite the fun involved I was still a little disappointed. Maybe I couldn’t get the cover I wanted for the magazine, but I was still able to sneak in a little win.

Posted in Blog, Creative | 3 Comments

Last weekend’s training

Posted on August 26, 2011 by geodee

Last week was my longest training week since July 09, when I had just completed my 322k+ Hairshirt ride. The next month I started learning how to swim, so really this was my longest triathlon training week ever.

It started off with a 2.15k Wilcox swim with E man. It was his first 2k outdoor swim, and he did a great job. He’s going to be racing in the Toronto Island Triathlon this Sunday, and he’s been spending a lot of time in the pool. It’s really been showing. Last year we were only able to get to the first buoy (about 200m out) before having to turn around.

It took us 56:51, but that included a lot of stopping and hanging out—my moving time was 41:26. I even got a nice sprint in for the last 230m.

From the lake we met up with L and did a couple laps of Holland Landing. 45.25k in 1:55—sometimes I love social rides.

The next morning was not a social ride at all. 100k from the city out to Ajax and back. This was where I shot the video for my last post. 3:56 isn’t very fast at all compared to my shorter distance races (averaging 25.4 km/h), but I’m okay with that. It was more of a matter of getting the distance in, not injuring myself, and trying to figure out pacing for Syracuse. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

I wasn’t concentrating on heart rate very much. I’m trying to dial myself into the 145 range for these distances, but I only ended up down at 136. I want to blame the missing morning coffee. My average heart rate went up 4 bpm after I had it, but my average speed also dropped 0.9 km/h (however being an out-and-back ride, there was a lot more climbing on the way home).

One of the great things about having the camera on all the time is the random stills. There was the couple doing Tai Chi by the beach.

The bridge connecting toronto to Pickering

No need to explain.

It’s okay, I’m safe here. Only “cyclists” have to dismount.

I’ve got dozens of smiling and waving runners and cyclists. Early risers are the friendliest bunch.

I was feeling great by the time I got home. My injury hasn’t been bothering me much, and I was full of confidence. So I figured why not try going for a really short run. I can concentrate on form, thereby avoiding using my injured tendon as much as possible. I know what signs to look out for now. I was just going to go to the longest street in the world and back (about one mile), but once I started I just kept going along my original running route.

I can run again. I only did about 2.15k (same as the swim from Saturday), but my pace was actually faster than it had ever been! My GPS deleted the exact run info, but I noticed I did it in about 11:30 before it was erased. That’s in the 5:25 range!

Since then my tibialis anteriors (both of them) have been sore. They’re about at the point where I think I can do it again (five days later). I’m okay with that. Shin splints I can work around. I don’t know if I really want to do the math on this but if I can increase my mileage 5% a week, I should be doing a marathon in no time, right? Almost? 61 weeks, plus 25% for recovery is 76 weeks. About a year and a half. Wow.

It’s not that I’m already looking for short cuts, but I’m sure that you can’t really start with one run a week. So if it takes me three months to get up to four 2.5k runs a week, I’ll be starting at 10k a week. That’s workable. Then it’s 30 weeks, plus the 12 it took to get there, plus the 8 for recovery, then we’re only looking at 50 weeks total.

There’s a possibility that I’ll be ready for a fall marathon next year. If I can do that then there’s no reason I can’t do a late spring / early summer ironman the year after. All based off one eleven minute run. My fingers are crossed.

Of course all these plans can change. My MRI is this weekend, and I’ll be finding out the full extent of my injury. Surgery might cut a bit into those plans. BAH!

Posted in Blog, Fitness | 2 Comments

3 hours in the life of a cyclist. This is what my Sunday morning looked like.

Posted on August 22, 2011 by geodee

Trying out my camera on the first 75k of a 100k bike this past weekend. The mount was slipping a lot, but it was still a gorgeous ride.

Posted in Blog, Fitness | 1 Comment

3.8 km L.O.S.T. Race report: last weekend’s time got smoked

Posted on August 13, 2011 by geodee

Melanie Price’s completion of her 42 km Lake Ontario crossing yesterday morning in Coronation Park must have been fresh on my mind, because that’s where I drove to first this morning. It was about ten minutes out from the race start, so I got to pass the exit point of our swim. The 4 km felt like a really long drive. By the time I got there, conditions were absolutely perfect. You couldn’t have asked for a better morning for the start of the fourth annual L.O.S.T. Race.

Registration was quick, got a water bottle, and…

…numbers on the hands. I got a power of two!

Rob Kent with the pre-race meeting.

This time I actually remembered the Vaseline and applied it generously to my shoulders and jawline.

I managed to snag a photo with Melanie Price. She looked so fresh I would have no idea she just spent over 18 hours swimming yesterday. YESTERDAY! She’s my new hero.

The race its self was great for me. Since the last two weekends I’ve been going sans-wetsuit, I figured it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to put it on for this. I was going to debate whether I’d enter the naked class or not on the way down, but since I forgot my wetsuit anyway that decision was made for me. I’m glad it worked out that way.

The start was pretty relaxed. No pushing and shoving, and there were no restrictions on drafting. I didn’t find many people to draft behind, but when I did it was a welcome relief. I set the auto-lap timer on my GPS for 500m this time, which is probably the ideal distance for me. Since I swim near 2:00, that makes it very simple when the beep goes off. If I’m right on 10 minutes I’m right on pace. It worked perfectly.

I started off fairly easily, and tried a few different things out. This time I kicked MUCH more. It felt right, and I could feel my feet wanting to come out of the water. It might not have helped much with propulsion, but I was much flatter. I credit the one swim I had during the week. Last Wednesday I made it in to an early-morning session with Ayesha, and it helped me find my form again. At the beginning of the session I was struggling to push 2:00, and by the end I was doing solid 1:50s. Still slower than the 1:42s I was hitting at my peak earlier this year, but for one hour that’s a great improvement.

Sighting was a little tough, but checking out the GPS track it looks like I was actually really straight!

My 500m splits worked out really well. Every time the lap timer went off it looked like I was getting faster and faster. I lost a bit of time by stopping to check my watch, but it was well worth the help it provided with pacing. I think we had a bit of a current helping us. It felt much faster than usual. My splits broke down like this:

1: 9:57 (1:59 per 100)
2: 9:52 (1:58)
3: 9:57 (1:59)
4: 9:28 (1:53)
5: 9:27 (1:53)
6: 9:16 (1:51)
7: 9:04 (1:48)
8: 5:15 (1:45 (over 300m))

For the last 700 m I was experimenting with a totally different breathing pattern that I picked up by watching someone as she was completing the 10k race last week. She was taking two breaths on the same side, then took three strokes and took two breaths on the other side. Every second or third sequence of three strokes she would sight. When I watched her she looked very mechanical and structured, so it appealed to me. It worked awesomely for me. I was in need of more air because of all the extra kicking I was doing, and that definitely supplied it. It was a bit harder to maintain a straight line, but I think with a bit more practice it might be a good strategy for me. Considering my last splits I think it’s something worth exploring!

My final (official) time of 1:12:25 may be slightly misleading though. Aside from the perceived current pushing us ahead, I think my sighting was a little too good. I may have cut the course slightly short, by swimming directly to the pier instead of following the shoreline. There were a few times one of the kayaks was nudging me over toward the shore. I definitely stayed inside where she was pointing, but… When I overlapped my GPS track with a straight line in Google Earth, it showed that the actual distance I covered was 3.7 km. Not a huge difference, but I technically still haven’t completed a full Ironman distance swim.

This was a super fun event with a huge turnout. For the final results and a full writeup, check out the latest post on the L.O.S.T site. I’m going to join them as soon as I can, they really seem like a great bunch of people to swim with. Two of the people I spoke to often come from Barrie and Ottawa to swim with these guys. I need to HTFU with the drive—it’s really only a half hour from downtown. Even Wilcox and Musselman Lake take that long.

After the race I got a ride back to the car from Steve, who I had just met on the way to pick up our bags. He was at the event last week and entered the 10k race. He wasn’t able to finish it before the thunder (he was only 1000m from the finish), but I learned a lot about some of the swims he’s been doing this year, and what he has planned in the future. He’s been doing a lot of swimming in the NYC area, and this year he’s going to swim from New Jersey to Manhattan. Awesome. He went from not being able to swim not so long ago to this.

Before this chat I was thinking about only entering the 5k swim in Welland next year. Now I’m thinking 10k might not be out of reach at all. Today I felt like I could have gone forever. Maybe I actually can! With 10k open water swim being in the Olympics it’s actually quite an approachable distance. Almost like the swimming equivalent of a marathon.

Posted in Blog, Fitness | Tagged racing, speedos | 3 Comments

Welland MSO Open Water Swim race report

Posted on August 8, 2011 by geodee

After yesterday’s epic 101k loop of the Muskoka half-iron course I felt like I could use a day to recover. So I packed my speedos and headed down to Welland for the Under the Four Bridges MSO Open Water Provincial Championship race. Well at least I got to sleep in a bit, since it was an 11:30 start.

Because last week’s outer ear infection hasn’t completely cleared up yet, I brought an ear plug for the right side. On the drive down I tried a test fit, but I couldn’t make a seal. Heating it up on the windshield heater vent worked surprisingly well—not unlike what I imagine a hot ear waxing might feel like.

I got there just in time for the start of the 10k race.

Someone was actually crazy enough to attempt the entire race doing butterfly.

I picked up my race package, and packaged my other package into my butter speedo. It’s getting close to retirement for this one. I do feel slightly awkward around little kids. The hot pink swim cap didn’t help either (second pink cap in a row)!

We boarded the bus for the pre-race meeting, then were driven to the start 3km out. I was surprised to hear that there is no drafting or contact allowed.

The entrance into the canal.

As I was setting my auto lap settings on my GPS, I overheard someone asking if a stroke timer would be allowed in the race. It clicks or beeps every 1.3 seconds so that the swimmer could keep steady. The official radio’d the question in and it was okay’d. I asked him if GPSes would be allowed, and he “doubted” it.

I’m sure I could have made an argument that it’s not really an aid during the race, particularly if I hadn’t set the auto lap. But there’s really no harm in just swimming for the sake of swimming. Someone involved with the event said the third bridge we went under was about 1 km away from the finish, so I’d just pull a split off that. Watches were still allowed, so why not?

My race was pretty good. A little slow, but good. I wasn’t there to sprint, I just wanted to finish relatively strongly. I passed a few people in the beginning and then for the next hour I was all alone. I passed time by switching from my usual bilateral breathing to a different count (I’m not sure what it’s called, but it’s three strokes breathing every second stroke, then five strokes without breathing). It was fun to play around a bit and see how my body would respond. I played around with head positioning, twisting my mouth. It was just relaxed and fun.

Under the second bridge I made a mental note that I was around 34 minutes, and I hit the third bridge at exactly 40 minutes. If the third bridge was 1k from the finish that would have meant that I was on track for a 1 hour finish (at 2:00/100m). I used that info to calculate the approximate distance I was from the finish, so at 52 minutes I knew that I was exactly 400m away. It looked a little bit further, but I picked up my pace anyway.

When I finshed the race I checked my watch and saw that I finished in 1:09. Where did the extra nine minutes come from? A quick gmap-pedometer revealed that the bridge was actually 1.2 k from the finish. That sprint that I thought was 400m from the finish was actually more like 700m. It makes sense why I ran out of steam earlier than I would have liked.

Here you can see the marks on the front of my shoulders from my stubble rubbing it. I forgot to bring vaseline to prevent that. What you probably can’t see in this picture is the irritation from the level #1 armpit trim. Mental note for next time—that’s too short!

I was still a little disappointed with a finish of 2:20/100m. I know I’ve never done that distance before, and I’m really happy about that, but I was hoping to get under 2:00. That’s a big difference. Last weekend I was swimming at 2:00 naked, so I should have been able to keep in that range. So I’m really not sure why. Plus without the GPS track I can’t see how bad my navigation was (although it was a very easy course to sight, being right in the canal). At least it’s a good prep for next weekend’s 3.8k L.O.S.T. race.

About ten minutes after I finished my swim there were reports of thunder on the other end. They ended up pulling everyone in, then the wind picked up and it started pouring. If you can’t tell, hot pink was the theme for the day. Here I am hanging out with Ken, who was first place in my class and the overall winner of the 3k race.

I think about half the 10k racers finished, but none of the 5k swimmers were able to before being pulled. Standing in front of me in the last picture was a woman who was pulled from the 10k when she was only 500m from the finish.

Here’s Ken accepting his award…

…and me in second place with my medal!

This is where I leave out the fact that there were only two competitors in my class, which really is too bad. The distances might be a little longer than most triathlons, but it’s a really nice, laid back event. There’s no pushing and shoving at the start (in fact contact is not allowed at all), the course is well marked, the water is warm, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to go home with hardware (if you care for it). I’ll definitely be coming back next year.

Posted in Blog, Fitness | Tagged race, speedos, swim | 1 Comment

A 1.86 k swim race and what over 40 km of self-powered travel over water in a weekend looks like

Posted on August 2, 2011 by geodee

This weekend was a total convergence of awesome. B and S invited me up to B’s cottage in Honey Harbour for the long weekend. There was also a swim race at Kempenfest on Saturday that coach Ayesha told us about. I wanted to do both, but I didn’t want to bother B to have to boat me back to shore early on Saturday morning, only to pick me up again on Saturday afternoon. I considered borrowing their canoe, but without knowing the condition of everything I didn’t want to take a chance.

When B and S were driving up on Friday, I got a message from S about the kayak rental place along the way. I’ve been meaning to rent from them again for ages, so I gave them a call and reserved my fibreglass sea kayak for the weekend. Perfect.

Saturday morning I woke up super early and got my swim and cottage gear together, packing as light as possible. Unfortunately I had to include a MacBook Air so I could get some work done at the cottage [ugh]. The registration form said that marshal was at 9:00, and the race started at 10:00. I wasn’t sure what marshall was. I figured it was a pre-race meeting that we all had to be there for. Since I was worried about traffic (which there was a surprising amount of), I ended up getting to the race site at 8:30, even after making a few pit stops. It just gave me a lot of time to warm up, and make a half-dozen trips to the car to drop off whatever I wasn’t using. I had time to set my Garmin to auto-lap every 100m, so I could keep track on course, and when Ayesha showed up I got to see her warm-up routine.

Soundtrack: Sam Roberts – Without a Map

The race its self was pretty fun. It was a diamond-shaped course, which was supposedly 500m between buoys. At the first buoy I realized that my sighting was actually pretty decent. My Garmin signalled 500m when I was just about 10m from the buoy. A lot of the swimmers seemed to be relatively unfamiliar with open water. There were a lot of swimmers who were zig zagging right in front of me. I’d draft one for a while, then they’d veer sharp the the right or left. I’d keep straight, then they’d pass right across from me in the other direction. I tried one of coach Kelvin’s rear-sighting techniques to make sure I hadn’t veered too far off-course, and I felt a lot more confident about where I was heading.

I passed the second buoy before my Garmin signalled 1000m. I was sure I must have missed a beep in some traffic, so I didn’t worry much about it. But when I rounded the third buoy I knew something was up. Around this point I felt like I was picking up the pace, but looking at the stats now, it looks like I actually slowed down a bit. The first quarter was fairly hard, the second and third were slower and more consistent, but the fourth… well I must have been fairly tired. Maybe sloppy. I was having trouble sighting, since I didn’t know exactly what I was aiming for on shore, so I think that had some to do with it. The last 150m were gold though. I actually picked up the pace and finished up strong.

On the map below you can see where the lap marker went off for me, and how the diamond shaped course was a bit truncated by the furthest buoy being too far toward the shore.

I wasn’t suprised that Ayesha finished third overall and first in her division, but I was very surprised that I got third in mine. I’m pretty sure it’s because there weren’t a whole lot of “seniors” (aged 25-39) there, because I don’t think a 2:03 pace is really worthy of a podium, but I’ll take it! It was pretty awesome to look at the plaques of past race winners to see Ayesha’s name there in 2008 too. It looks like to win I’ll have to shave about 10 minutes off my time, which might be a bit of a stretch, but I’ve got a long winter of training ahead of me, so you never know!

After a quick stop by MEC for a dry sack to make sure my MacBook didn’t drown, I picked up the kayak from Swift. Made it to the marina, dropped it off in the water, parked the car, and I was off to the cottage.

B’s family’s cottage is the perfect cottage in the perfect area. As always there was a great group of friends there, and what more can you say?After dropping off my gear I went for another swim, recovery drinks, waited a bit, had a couple Guinness (they’re technically light beers, so it’s totally fine), and passed out on the kitchen table. It was a long day.

The next morning I went for a 13k kayak trip around the area, including a stop at Beausoleil Island. It wasn’t too busy when I started, but by noon the boat traffic was in full force. There was one channel which had a lot of yachts going through. I wanted to avoid it the next day, but I got a little carried away.

When I got back I showed L’s son a bit about how to get around in the kayak, and I followed him swimming to the end of the bay. He picked it up quickly. At first I was swimming right beside him, but about 200m in he just left me behind. I thought I was supposed to be keeping an eye on him. After another homemade recovery drink (FTR, homo milk + sugar ≠ “white chocolate milk,” even if you plug your nose), I went out for another swim.

That night was a bit earlier, then I got out for another kayak. I looked on google maps for a quieter route, and found one long channel that ended near the 400. I followed it down, and it kept getting quieter and quieter. Eventually there were just two fishing boats in a small bay with a small channel back at the end. It was a small path through a marsh, but it was unbelievably quiet. No one around, just dragonflies.

Soundtrack: Radiohead – Codex

Excuse the shaking and low quality of the video. I was trying not to lose my balance swatting flies. I wasn’t sure if I could perform a self-rescue if I did manage to roll, and with no one around I was a little nervous about having to dredge through the marsh.

After that kayak excursion I did a quick wetsuit swim. I was actually pretty surprised how much faster I was in the wetsuit, and how sore my shoulders had gotten by this point. I went from about a 2:03 100m time to a quite respectible 1:48. That’s about a 15% improvement, which means I’ve got a lot of form work to do. I think I’m going to try to make a couple pool sessions before Ironman Muskoka.

Final totals for the weekend: 6800 m swim and 34 km in the kayak. Wow.

Here are a map overlay of all the swimming in the bay, and one of all the kayaking in the area. Too much awesome for one weekend.

Soundtrack for the drive home: Washed Out – Amor Fati

Posted in Blog, Fitness | Tagged cottage, kayak, music, race, swim, video | 2 Comments

A compromise for bikes and cars for Jarvis #savejarvis

Posted on July 13, 2011 by geodee

Now that I’ve calmed down a little about today’s decision on removing the bike lanes on Jarvis, maybe there is a bit of room to make everyone traveling along Jarvis happier. I regularly ride and drive along Jarvis, so while my perspective is still biased (I much prefer to be safer on the bike than faster in the car), I think I’ve got a fairly balanced view.

Driving is more efficient when there’s more room horizontally (three lanes are better than two)
In a car waiting behind left-turning traffic is annoying
Bikes need a lot of space – in the five-lane Jarvis configuration the lanes are very narrow, which makes it impossible for a car to split a lane with a cyclist
The five-lane causes more confusion that good. I don’t know how many times I’ve been legally driving in the centre lane, only to be approached head-on by someone confused or waiting to make a left turn

If you forget about opening up the centre lane completely to traffic and work on something a little closer to what you’d see on Davenport (the intersection at Bathurst is a prime example of how this would work), then I think you’ll get the best of all worlds.

Cyclists will have a protected lane when the speed differential is highest, and therefore the most vulnerable
Drivers will have a turn lane, and will always have two open lanes approaching intersections
We can all share the space approaching and going through the intersections. I mean come on. It shouldn’t be hard.

Here are some diagrams showing the differences between a five-lane, four-lane with bike path, and four-lane with sharrows through intersections with full turn lanes. All of them have the same number of cars and cyclists in the same positions. They’re all making the same turns and trying to get through the same way.

The five-lane configuration:

There’s one happy car here. Maybe closer to two, but the guy in the dark red car is a little bit annoyed because the car in the curb lane had to move into his lane a bit to avoid the cyclist. The northbound guys are both anoyed, one because of the cyclist and the other because of the left-turning car.

The four-lane with bike lane configuration:

Cyclists are doing really well and are fully protected. Great. But there are still two really annoyed cars stuck behind the left-turning cars. I understand this well because that’s usally me making the left, and it does make me uncomfortable knowing that I’m forcing people behind me to wait.

The four-lane with bike lane, turn lane, and sharrows configuration:

Almost everybody is happy here. Really, what more is there to say?

I know this might not apply to rush-hour, since I’m pretty sure at most intersections you can’t make a left turn anyway. But the option would be available to allow for left turns, and that’ll change traffic patterns all over the place. So obviously I understand that I haven’t just drawn up a few lines thinking that I’ve solved the problem.

That said, what I’ve done still isn’t any different than a room full of politicians getting together and drawing and erasing their own lines. I don’t understand how any decisions like this can be decided that way without proper consultation and planning. Maybe that should be what changes in all of this.

Posted in Blog, Creative | Tagged cycling | Leave a comment