hamster

So how many calories was that total, not counting fluid?

BTW, 1200 calories in 24 pounds (50 calories per pound)? You'd have to make an effort to go that low. If you have 24 oz bottles and do 1 scoop of Heed per bottle, that's 67 calories per pound. With smaller bottles or more than one scoop per bottle, you get to 100+ calories/pound easy.

I had about 1000 calories of gels, 1200 calories of powders and one small sandwich in 10.5 hours and did 4500 kJ of work.

jmX

220C from Gel, 200C from blueberry muffin, 150C from a tiny bit of subway sandwich, 200C from shot bloks, and 130C from 1/3rd a cup of ramen.

For drink, I started with 500C worth of skratch labs in my camelbak (100oz), and 100C in my single bottle. I used 5 dixie cup servings of heed the rest of the day, as I mostly just drank pure water the 2nd half of the race (heed mix in the bottle, water in the camelbak), except for the redbull. So that's what...1200'ish in liquid and 1000'ish in solid?

Sunday I had a brisket sandwich w/large fries for breakfast, 1/2 lb of lasagna for lunch, and chinese food and 6 cream cheese stuffed fried jalapenos for dinner. Delicious!

anotherbrian

hamster, jmX, thanks for introducing yourselves. I've had a lot more fun doing doubles since I started meeting folks and seeing them over again. Different paces, highs/lows of the day makes it impractical to ride in a group on these things, but seeing someone I recognize occasionally does raise the spirits.

jmX, as one with an 8yo and 5yo (so prob started riding doubles when the kids were 3 and 1), I'd warn you to stay far away from the kids in the weeks leading up to the double. I've probably ridden more doubles sick with a cold or the flu than I have healthy. My youngest had something in the week prior to Death Valley and I'm amazed I didn't pick it up ... his older brother has it now so I'll probably get it.

I'm sorry to hear you didn't finish the double hamster, but check with Kermit about volunteering for the Dead of Winter and riding the other day. I heard from a friend up here that there might be room for the volunteers. This spring I rode Devil Mountain in one of my perpetually sick states ... I should have stayed home in bed instead of traveling to the start and being up at 5am. Throughout the day I kept on trudging along in miserable shape until I finally decided to bail at Sunol (182mi). I could have finished the ride fine, but decided the DNF would be far more memorable than the check mark of doing another double. I won't do a ride now unless it is fun (it can be hard, I just want it to be fun).

jmX

I hear ya. What's worse is that I have other peoples kids at my house during the day to all share the same nanny, so my livingroom is a daycare 3 days a week. It's a disease factory and my youngest makes sure to share with the whole family.

Anyway I lucked out and got sick 14 days before the double, and was over it about 3 days before the double (at which point I was washing my hands 15 times a day and dodging sneezes and coughs at home). The upside was I got down to 158lbs, which is my target weight.

jmX

Me on the way out to badwater on the day before the DVDouble (friends Iphone):


Zabriskie Point, just a few minutes from Furnace Creek (Canon w/Tokina 16-24mm lens):


From just off my patio at the Furnace Creek Ranch (Canon w/Tokina 16-24mm on my equatorial mount):

Lesper4

love those shots!

jsigone

pretty nice for the short exposure length. Which mount do you use? Alignment looks pretty spot on w/ some hint of lens distortions in the corners

jmX

The coma in the corners is especially awful because the lens was out of focus and the corner coma seems to exponentially increase as you go out of focus. I should have spent another 10 seconds focusing, but I didn't, and thus I have a blurry photo and bloated stars. For "deep space" (ie, 400-500mm+) shots I use a physical coma corrector lens and the shots come out pretty nice.

The mount was a celestron AS-GT, my CGEM weighs too much for me to haul out to death valley for one shot. I think it's 90 lbs all in. I'll have to go out there one weekend when I'm not killing myself on a bicycle and take some more shots.

jsigone

I run the same ASGT5 w/ a 6" F4.8 mak-newt (Levy Comet hunter) on top..I'd like a new mount but bike parts seems to be in higher priority

M16 19x5min Ha by jsigone, on Flickr


Horsehead Nebula Ha 9x5min by jsigone, on Flickr

jmX

Nice looking shots. You get the O3 and SII filters yet or just the Ha? I got a set 4 years ago right before I had kids, and haven't been able to use them since. Maybe once day. I'm impressed you can shoot at that focal length on that mount, pretty cool.

I put a few of my shots from 2009 up on my old photoblog thing, all taken with a Canon DSLR: https://jmx.ls1howto.com





Hard to take a whole night off these days so I've moved on to cycling for now. I just dig out a mount and a camera w/lens these days a few times a year to remember the good ol' days.

jsigone

nice and dusty Orion!! I hear ya about the kiddos, had one in Jan and I think I got out twice since. That Eagle was from one of those night, was good to know I didn't forget everything I have Ha and RGB filters. No SII and OIII yet...I need a mount before I can get those filters. When I moved from Canon to CCD, the chip is allot smaller and equal to looking at 100% zoom of the canon FOV. Problem I had with the canon was thermal limits (noise) in our local temps.

Two of my all time favs from my canon XS, HaRGB blends...all imaged taken from my backyard in Escondido, haven't made it to the desert for an AP night yet

HaRGB M8 Lagoon Nebula 185min Final by jsigone, on Flickr


Ha-HaR-GB IC 1396 with Canon by jsigone, on Flickr

TrojanHorse

Good grief fellas, those are awesome.

Did you get the IR filter removed from your body or is that with a straight up consumer DSLR? I think Canon is actually selling an "a" version of one of their bodies right now. I think it's the 60Da. My previous attempts at star photography has pretty much stunk and I can only see 3 stars from my back yard anyway.

jsigone

I did surgery one mine and took the IR filter out, took about 1hr to do. Used an Astronomiks CLS-CCD light pollution filter w/ a built in higher spectrum IR filter in it as well. Without the IR, bright stars would bloat with refractors and lens, but mirror scopes like SCT/Newts don't have that problem. Living in Socal, a LP filter is needed anyways to shoot past a minute or so.

The 60Da is a pretty nice camera, just expensive for what it is. For that price you can have a nice one shot color CCD camera w/ tec cooling and never have to take darks again. But 60Da is aimed for those that worry about warranties on their toys and is a final solution....til you get past 8min exposure times...than you have to figure out how to cool the chip or you get allot of noise. Goes back to wishing having a tec cooled CCD for the same dollar

jmX

My shots are all with stock cameras. The death valley ones I posted are full frame 6D, and the galaxy and nebula were with a crop 50D. I've since removed the factory filter and replaced it with an IR filter but haven't really noticed a huge change. If I had time to use my filters I'm sure it'd finally pay off. Anyway, the stock cameras can take decent shots (in cool weather) and still be usable as a regular camera.

PS, nice lagoon and elephants trunk jsigone! I have very similar shots....such fantastic things up in the night sky.

jmX

Looks like I placed 17th of 142, and Brian got 2nd!

The winner was a female, 28 minutes ahead of Brian (on a faired recumbent bike) and 30 minutes ahead of the first male non-faired bike. Wow. She was moving.

anotherbrian

Hey hey hey, there is no categorization on the ride. I was on a bike. :-)

Congrats to you. You came in to Scotty's Castle ~5min behind me ... while I was giving up time on the climbs, I was absolutely flying everywhere else, and I didn't think anyone had a chance to keep up. By that point in the ride we were deep into the wave 0 riders (remembering the count, I think there were only 15 ahead of me when I left Scotty's, though some were fast wave 1's) without any of the benefits that the more organized wave 0 pacelines had.

And after seeing your ride on Strava, and how similar our power data was, I suddenly got the idea that I could be fast on an aero-clipped roadbike as well, even if I am 20lbs heavier. A Roubaix'ish bike has been at the top of the list for awhile, so maybe it'll be next year.

I think the lead rider was working with others at least as far as the return to Scotty's. As I approached US-95, the first riders I came to were 4mi out from the turn-around and in groups of two. By the time I left the turn-around there were 9 ahead of me, I think I picked off two on the way to Scotty's, must have hopped over a few at Scotty's, was passed by two at Ubehebe as I was getting blown around, then passed five on the way to Daylight Pass.

At Daylight Pass Rd I knew I was very close to the front and I decided if I was going to lose time it would be on the climb and not in the rest stop, so rode through. Two miles up Daylight I was passed by 248, and he gave me some encouraging words (I was cranking along at 4-5mph). I noticed he was wave 1, and while I could have sped up (up to this point I was trying to maintain a consistent 75% MHR, and ignoring my power) to match his pace, all I had to do was stay within 10 minutes to keep the place. Eventually I got to the top and he was still there, but the next instant I looked he was gone. I've got to believe if you're riding 9k ft doubles with mid-11 times, you're racing them, so I didn't waste any time at the top, zipped the fairing up, and very very gingerly descended. Last year I bombed the descent in the dark, but this time it felt like it went on forever. Back on the main road I tried to up the effort, but every couple minutes I'd catch someones taillight only to discover it wasn't 248. That went on and on almost to the finish, when I was finally within sight of who I thought must be 248, and I stopped to put my lights on (it was dark, and I didn't want to risk rolling through the finish without lights). Seven agonizing minutes (tip: don't wait until you can't see to try to find your lights) later I had them on and finished the last ~2 miles.

When I finished the time keepers announced I was the first recumbent finisher, and I said "ya ya ya, but I'm wave two ... where am I overall?" and they said with the 10 minute adjustment, I was ahead of the two riders who came in 7 minutes before. "Does that mean I'm first overall?!?", and the answer was no, she (pointing over to a occupied chair) came in at 10:59.

Super happy with the result, especially given it was at a leisurely pace. I know in the F508 they track bike categories, so my time for this double would probably be ho-hum (Tim Woudenberg has ridden the same bike as I was riding in F508 in ~32 hours), but as long as they aren't categorizing I'll take the time without the asterisk. I'm seriously thinking about riding the spring route with a goal to do a sub-10 hour double; if I could soft pedal to the start of the climb, ride at LTHR all the way up, and not crash on the descent, I think I should be able to do it.

anotherbrian

As a non-astro photographer, those are amazing.

My first time in Death Valley was when I was ~12yo. My dad who was a career photographer/videographer for the Federal Gov't spent every night doing bulb exposures with his SLR's and a medium format camera, trying to get the perfect star trails. At least one of the mornings he woke up too late to close the shutters. He passed away in September, and I've inherited his collection of Panasonic m4/3's cameras. They take amazing photos and weigh a fraction of my 5D2, but they have so many gee-whiz menu functions I can barely figure out how to use them ... one feature is a built in time-lapse that I guess is capable of merging the exposures to do the star trails without overheating sensors or over-exposing for long shutters. I meant to take the camera to take some night sky pics in memory of him, but settled for sleeping under the sky instead. I do wish I'd taken it now.

hamster

I saw her - she had almost exactly the same bike as you, I actually thought it was yours (black Specialized with Zipp wheels and aero bars).

I'm 4th out of 16 in the 144 category.

jmX

I'm surprised you consider it to be a leisurely pace. What the heck is your FTP? Our average HR's were nearly the same, my max bpm is 185 or so, is yours similar? For a double it seems like 75% ftp is where I like to target when pedaling, and then all the zeros bring the actual average way down. It 'feels' leisurely for the first 5-6 hours, but by the end it's almost too much to sustain.

Anyway, I was pretty darn comfy on my Roubaix with aerobars. If you do go down that road, make sure you can get as agressive as you want on that bike as it has a huge head tube. I'm 6'1" and have to ride a 56.5cm Roubaix, -17 degree 120mm stem, and have aerobars where the pads sit right on the bar (as I mentioned earlier). I don't think I'd want to go lower for a 12 hour day, so it worked out (just barely) for me. For others, it might not be workable for a fast position.

Even on my Shiv I run a -28 degree stem, no spacers, and the same aerobars with pads basically right on the bars. I can only hold that position for 3 hours tho. What's odd is that I cant even get within 6 inches of touching my toes....very inflexible.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading your race report. Great job on the ride.

anotherbrian

I'm 300W +/-. I'm ~10W higher on a road bike than the recumbents, I believe because I can use more muscles (not limited to the seated position), though it could be due to drivetrain/seat flex losses as well (I'm using Powertap's). My max HR is 197 though I haven't hit it in the last year; I do find my LTHR is lower on the recumbent than the road bike, again because I think I'm using fewer muscles.

"Leisurely" is when I don't need to focus on maintaining power/speed. I find I soft pedal a lot on the recumbents, and I seem to put my best efforts in on the road bike in groups (the recumbents are too fast/not good fit for road bike group rides). I think the "Sector 4" (US 95 to Scotty's) is prob the best example of the speed/effort differential (I rode the brakes down the descent, so definitely didn't make time there). The streamlined bike is way faster than my unfaired recumbent, and the unfaired bike is probably equivalent to a well sorted out TT bike:
streamlined: 23.1m/h 142bpm 122W 1:07:18
aerobars?: 19.6m/h 153bpm 155W 1:19:19

I rode my road bike (~22lbs Ritchey Break-Away) on the Mt. Tam Double, and while I was definitely quicker on the climbs, fighting the wind all day (compared to what I would have done on the recumbent) was really hard ... that's what got me thinking that aerobars would have been nice.

I doubt I'll make a habit of riding the streamlined bike on doubles (besides the spring DVD if I think I can do a sub-10 hour with it). I don't need that easy of a ride and it was a lot more work/hassle to take than a regular bike/recumbent. On the other hand, finishing in 12 hours is a lot more appealing than 15+!

jmX

Oh 300W? Nice, ok, yeah you were going pretty leisurely. You'll need to train on the roadbike in the aerobar position to make close to the same wattage (I train in aerobars about 50% of the time), but after a few months it'll probably be within 5% of your upright road position power.

I still wonder if there will be a spring double, considering 50mi of the course right now is closed. I assume we'll hear an update soon from Adventure Corps. I'm 90% in for it. Wonder if I could do a double on the Shiv and how much I'd hate my life

anotherbrian

You're right, that'd make a difference. This was my second time doing the fall route, and I thought it was more scenic than the spring. I did enjoy the views on the descent back to the valley in the spring, but other than that it seemed much more monotonous than the fall route. I've heard other people say the spring route was more scenic though, so maybe I was just looking the wrong way.

I look at TT bikes and just can't imagine ... though I've got to think resting on forearms would be more comfortable than riding in the drops all day. If you say the Roubaix required a 120mm stem to get comfortable at 6'1", I know what to do with my old-skool MTB stems!

200miler

For all concerned, Badwater Road is open, as of last Friday 11/1, from CA190 in Furnace Creek, to CA127, 1 mile north of Shoshone. There are a couple of unpaved sections [hard-packed gravel] on the west flank of Jubilee due to washouts. Funding for repaving is up in the air.
YMMV
-dg

Lesper4

Does this effect the Spring Double, registration opens today.

jmX

?? The death valley double registration opens Dec 1st according to the website.