Taken today on the bridge in the middle of this Google Map view.
Archive for the ‘Cycling’ Category
South Boulder Creek from Walker Ranch Loop
Friday, May 6th, 2011Betasso Preserve
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
Taken yesterday on the Betasso Link Trail to the Betasso Preserve above Boulder at about 2000m/6600ft. The CU Campus is visible in the gap at the bottom of the canyon. The horizontal color gradient is due to different exposures & white balances for the individual pictures that make up the panorama. I could probably fix it, but it’s OK. As always, click above to enbiggen. Here’s the GPS track of the ride.
What Earning a PhD Does to Physical Activity
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Above is a plot showing how many hours I have logged on my Garmin GPS devices since I got my first one in April 2005. This is mostly cycling, but also walking, running and some hiking. However, this is not a true measure of my physical activity over this period because it is missing data. Up to late 2007, I was active on the velodrome, and I didn’t bother using my GPS there. In the last year, I’ve tried to walk to school more often, and for the most part I haven’t used my Garmin on those walks. But it does capture the majority of my physical activity, which is road and mountain biking, where I always use a GPS.
In green I’ve over-plotted a linear fit to the data. I have chosen a linear fit as it shows the overall trend in the clearest way possible. For some reason, June 2006 shows zero hours, which I believe to be wrong. I can’t believe I did nothing at all during any summer month in 2006. Therefore, for purposes of the fit, I have given that month the average hours of the four bracketing months.
Even knowing that lots of data is missing from both the front- and back-ends of the figure, it is still clear what the overall trend was. Down – down significantly from nearly 30 hours a month five years ago to just above 10. There of course is a great variability from month to month, but the fit shows clearly the overall trend of what trying to finish graduate school does to physical activity.
I find the lack of patterns interesting. Some years, I really struggled to stay active during the late fall, which makes a certain amount of sense when weather and schoolwork is factored in. However, other years it apparently didn’t affect me at all. The bounce in hours since October 2010 makes sense because that’s when I graduated, but the two months in 2010 with 25+ hours is confusing. I can’t remember how I achieved that!
Nerd time: I made the figure in Python using matplotlib and numpy. Excel is for suckers!
15 Minutes From My Front Door By Bicycle
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
Not too shabby! Beyond this are sustained 10%+ grades on Sunshine Canyon. Ouch!
Flatirons Vista
Saturday, December 11th, 2010Here are some pictures I took on my mountain bike ride on Thursday, two days ago, from the Flatirons Vista Trails south of Boulder. The trails are decent single track that is just a bit more bumpy than I like (this kind of bumpy is not the same as technical, it’s just annoying). If I had a full-suspension bike I would probably not find the bumpiness so grating. Indeed, most of the riders I saw on the trails had a full-suspension bike.
The weather lately has been dry and mild, as the photos show. The autumn precipitation so far in Boulder is well below seasonal averages. In contrast, apparently the high mountains have been dumped with snow all fall. I guess I brought some San Diego with me to Boulder.
