GamJams.net: Where Mid-Atlantic bike racers roll

The Most Fashionable People in the Peloton

The Most Fashionable People in the Peloton this season will be:

David Kirkpatrick, NCVC
Jeff Anderson, HPC/List
Todd Bickling, Bike Doctor
Jay Ulfelder, Artemis
Sue Estes, HPC/List
Brad Davis
Scott Cernich, Route 1 Velo / Capitol Hill Bikes
Clarence Dillon
Walter Tyree, Squadra Coppi / IM Saab

How come? On account of they'll be sporting brand new GamJams Water Bottles this season, thanks to their contributions to the GamJams Best Training Music Ever playlist. Final days are today and tomorrow, so if you want to pony up 3 songs, you'll get a bottle too, and also contribute to the playlist that might raise some funds for Junior Development (and give us all some new music to slog away to in our basements and garages).

Details and instructions here. Go now please. If you don't participate I can only assume you don't want a GamJams water bottle, and that hurts my feelings.

60 Tons of Bike Racing Emissions

Funga has asked me to operate GamJams as Carbon Neutral.

More importantly, he's outlined some of the calculations used by Clean Currents to make the 2007 DrinkMore Grand Prix of Silver Spring a Carbon Neutral event. According to his calculations, 33.3K miles traveled by car by the racers at Silver Spring are offset by 25K kw hours of Renewable Energy Currents (RECs). I'm going to assume that's a linear calculation. That is, the ratio of 33.3K : 25K, or 1.33 : 1 works at any amount of miles traveled.

Here then is how GamJams would approach Carbon Neutral:

• The entire GamJams.net corporate body traveled by car to about 20 races last season, at approximately 1500 miles.
• 1500 miles is offset by 1128 kw houts of RECs.
• 1128 kw hours of RECs = 1.128 RECs.
• 1 REC costs about $8.
• So for me to race Carbon Neutral last year, I would personally have had to purchased $9.02 worth of RECs.
• And in doing so, I would have saved offset about 18 pounds of CO2.

Adam asks any race organizer interested in making their event Carbon Neutral to contact him.

I'll go the other route. Let's assume I race more than the average licensed racer, and travel 50% further over the course of the year. For a point of reference, then, let's say that the average racer travels 1000 miles per season by car to races. There are about 3000 of us in the Mid-Atlantic alone (DE, MD, DC, VA, WVA). That's 3 million miles traveled by car for races, give or take a few hundred thousand.

For $6 each, we can offset the 126K pounds - over 60 tons - of CO2 we generate in pursuit of this "green" lifestyle and activity.

Crazy that we generate so much waste just to race our bikes, isn't it?
Crazier still that's it's so cheap and easy to shrink our footprint considerably.

And the Peloton Grows

I've looked around at some of the other racing hotbeds in the country, and from what I can tell the Mid-Atlantic region has the highest number of bloggers-per-racer-capita in the nation. And like Lance Armstrong off the front near the end of the 1993 World Championships, we're standing on the pedals and stretching our lead even further. So please welcome the following racers to the cycling blogosphere. I'll be tracking them closely and if anyone makes a move that ought to be followed, listen for the "hey ho" from here:

• I'm sure you've seen Funga on group rides out of Silver Spring and Bethesda, and you've probably also seen him on TV. But have you ever seen him with a moustache that looks designed to pair perfectly with a Penny Farthing?
• Sergio Donuts. Nope. Buffalo Wing McCallister. Uh-uh. Jalapeno Popper Portelli. Still not right. You might think that a cyclist who gives himself a moniker alluding to greasy fried food would make him sound slow. You would be wrong, provided that the greasy fried food is Belgian. Ladies and gents, Johnny Frites.
• Say Hell Yes found some vintage vinyl at his parents' house. He ought to talk to Johnny Frites about borrowing his new Christmas present.
• Ribbed on GamJams previously as #8 in the top 10 Local Racers' Names, Don't Train Like Me astutely points out that "the off season is no longer the off season."
• Technically, Swans of the Road barely qualifies as a racer, having a single time trial under her belt. But her blog is about "My journey as I transition from a bike rider to a cyclist." And by cyclist she naturally means a competitive one. Good reading, and an objective certainly aligned with GamJams.

So there they are. Be nice to the new kids.

Getting Official in 2008

It's 2008, and after a year at this it's time to get official. Behold, the new GamJams logo, official inasmuch as it was created by a professional designer (who I expect I'll have to pay actual money to), and not something cobbled together with shareware, as had been used previously:

You'll see it littered all over the site shortly. I hope you like it. I did this for you.

A note on the colors - black and white. Believe it or not, I thought about this for a long time and this seemingly noncommittal color scheme is actually quite deliberate. Black is the color you get when you combine all other colors, and white is actually the absence of color, connoting neutrality. The color choice underscores GamJams' mission of supporting all local clubs. Which also means that should the need arise, any club's colors can be appropriated, thusly:

That's what the GamJams logo might look like on the Artemis jersey or tattooed on Evelyn's bicep, for example. And as it turns out, the GamJams logo WILL be on the Artemis jersey this year, as GamJams is the Official Media Sponsor of Artemis Racing. The nut of the agreement is that GamJams will lend media in support of Artemis' various initiatives, largely to help Artemis acquire, retain and increase commitments from team sponsors. We're actually a pretty powerful community to support, we bike racers, but sponsors don't always see the return on their investments. I think this mostly because existing sponsorship programs can fall a little short, and not because we're a bad investment. In fact, pretty regularly I get emails from racers asking for a referrals to professionals and businesses who support cycling, as they'd rather give their business (personal or business) to the folks who are investing in us. So we're here and looking for the sponsors who support us, and the sponsors are out looking for us, like two ships in the night.

As a media sponsor, GamJams will be working with Artemis to help their sponsors reach more of the audience they signed on to reach in the first place. And we'll be doing it in innovative ways, that add value to this community instead of exploiting it (as advertising occasionally does).

Remember that neutrality part about the white bits in the logo? Artemis isn't the only team GamJams will work with. In fact, I'm interested in supporting as many teams as possible in the same way. If your club is also interested in signing GamJams as a Media Sponsor, let's talk.

And finally, while we're on the topic of Official, we need more. Officials, that is. Jim Patton, MABRA Officials Coordinator, pointed out that the next clinic for Entry Level Officials (ie, people who are not yet but would like to become Officials - including Motor Refs) is on February 2 at the Crofton, MD Library. If you race 30 times a year, maybe becoming an official at this stage isn't right for you. But I bet you can think of 2 people who might be interested. So please just mention it to 2 people you wouldn't mind seeing out at the course on race day this season. Info on coaching is here on the USA Cycling site, and interested folks should contact Jim Patton. If you don't know how to reach Jim, email me and I'll send his contact info.

 

Put GamJams.net on your site

So let's say you just finished an intense off-road training ride with a vicious downhill, leaving your fingers cramped from heavy braking and your forearms sore from the white-knuckle ride. Or you spent 3 hours getting tough by training outside in the cold rain and sleet, leaving you numb from pinkies to piggies. Maybe you just got home from a super technical crit, which had your hands working as furiously over your STI levers as Little Richard's on the piano during a caffeinated rendition of "Good Golly Miss Molly."

Either way, your hands are limp and lifeless. You really want to check out GamJams.net, but you Just. Can't. Click. Another. Link.

Now you can put GamJams.net right on your own website - your blog, your My Yahoo! or Google homepage, your MySpace profile - anywhere you'll have easy access to it or want to share all that is GamJams with your own audience.

Introducing the GamJams.net Headline Widget, which looks like this:



You like? Installing it is easy - just click on the button below and you're on your way.


It may not make you fast, but it will keep you better informed about who is.

Don't Tell ANY Cat 4s About This

I learned a fool-proof trick racing crits with the Cat 4s last season - whenever in doubt, follow the wheels with the PowerTap hubs on them. If you can, anyway. I haven't seen any stats, but my guess is that people who train and race with power are 39% more likely to finish in the top 10 than folks who don't. Which makes me 39% more likely to finish in the top 11 if I pick the right wheel.

So here's your chance. This weekend, for the price of a pair of ti quick-release skewers, you can spend a whole day learning about Training with Power with Hunter Allen, founder of Peaks Coaching Group and the guy who pretty much wrote the book on training and racing with a power meter. It's called Training and Racing with a Power Meter. And since it's a full day of race-specific learning, it counts as a workout.

I started training with power and working with BJ Basham at Peaks Coaching Group last season, and I highly recommend both. Except to the rest of the Cat 4s.

Out with the Old, in with the, um, Gently Used

The 10th Annual STOP, SWAP and SAVE is coming up next weekend - Sunday February 4th from 9am to 2pm at the Danielle Shipley Arena in Westminster. Actually, a lot of the stuff there is new, in various stages of bargaindom.

Pre-reg is through Active.com (natch) and is only $5.

They're expecting 300 vendors and 4000 attendees. And even if you're not a vendor, you can still sell your bike there - they've got a designated space for that on the show floor. See the FAQs for details.

What if my only black pants are made by Pearl Izumi?

Evelyn Egizi, team director at Artemis (my team), sent out an announcement of an actual event that cyclists should find delightful, even though they're strongly discouraged from bringing a bicycle with them. It's:

The Bike Ball - A Winter Cycling Formal

The event is sponsored by Proteus Bikes and Coppi's Organic Restaurant (two Artemis sponsors as well), and is designed to raise funds to offset the production costs of "The New Woman: Annie Londonderry Kopchovksy," a documentary film about a pioneering Jewish immigrant who, in 1895, became the first woman to cycle around the world. (www.spokeswomanproductions.com)

When: Saturday February 3rd
When (the other when): 8pm
Where: Proteus Bicycles, 9217 Baltimore Blvd, College Park, MD
Wear: Formal attire suggested
What's the damage: $35 in advance, $45 at the door
What else: Live music by Mostly Monkee and a GW a capella group

For ADVANCE TICKETS, please write a check for $35 to:
Film/Video Arts (with "The New Woman" in the memo line.)
The checks can sent to:
Gillian Klempner
Spokeswoman Productions
1651 Lamont Street, NW #3A
Washington, DC, 20010.

Gillian is also your go-to with any other questions: email her or call 202-841-2574.