New Things Under the Sun

Please excuse the poor quality photo. The white patch in the tire with the black dot on the middle is a cut in the tread, the white being the tire casing and the black dot, the inner tube peeking through. Obviously, this is not a stable situation.

As I have previously posted, I believe there is value in periodically revisiting equipment reviews; it is often how a piece of equipment performs over time that determines its value. I have done this in the past for tires and my Garmin Edge 500 cycle computer and decided to do it again.

Garmin Edge 500

I have posted on this product several times since I first purchased it at the end of 2012, most recently in this post. My two major complaints about this product are that it occasionally loses data from a ride and that the strap for the heart rate monitor stops working after a few months. The data loss problem persists, it has gotten no better and no worse and I am living with it. This amounts to losing one ride every few months when I am riding about 5 days a week. Since the Garmin Edge 500 is no longer sold (the current model is the 520, two models newer) I am not sure this is still relevant, though I would be curious if newer models still have this problem. As to the strap problem, I have tried a variety of solutions. About two years ago, I tried replacing the "premium" heart rate monitor with the much cheaper "classic" monitor. The classic monitor is an integrated unit with the strap, you cannot replace just the strap, you have to replace the whole thing. On the other hand, the classic monitor costs about $25, whereas just the replacement strap for the premium monitor costs $35. (The premium monitor plus strap costs $60.) Appearances and advertising notwithstanding, the classic strap is every bit as comfortable as the premium strap. But the most important difference is longevity. The premium strap fails after about three months. After two years of use, the classic strap is still working. The classic strap has been discontinued by Garmin and I don't know what I will do if the one I have fails. Given the sad state of obsolescence that characterizes my Garmin, this will be the last time I review it.

Tires

In the six years I have had my Surly Crosscheck, I have tried seven different sets of tires. (I have not worn them all out, see below.) The tires I have used are as follows:

Tire	Width	Comment
Ritchey SpeedMax Comp	32	Original tires. Knobby. Not fun to ride.
Unknown	28	"Fine"
Specialized Armadillo	28	"Fine"
Grand Bois Extra Léger	32	Wonderful feel. Fast? Prone to flats.
Schwalbe Marathon Plus	28	Clunky and squirrelly. Hard to mount. No Flats!
Clement Strada LGG	28	Felt fast. Insecure when wet. Wore out quickly.
Schwalbe Marathon Plus	32	Rides fine, mounts fine, feels secure. No Flats?

My wife and I purchased matching Surly Crosschecks at the beginning of 2010 and they came with the Ritchey tires. I replaced mine almost immediately because I did not like the way they looked or the way they rode. My wife, who purchased her bike at the same time, wore hers out and then started using mine, until she switched to Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires to reduce the number of flats she was getting. I have no memory or record of what kind of tires the bike shop put on my bike except that they were skinnier than the Richies and had a slick (non-knobby) tread. They worked fine and I rode them for two years until they wore out. The shop then put on similar Specialized Armadillo tires, which again worked fine. For my second Brevet which I rode in May of 2013, I temporarily replaced the Specialized tires with the Grand Bois Extra Léger which randonneuring experts promised would be faster and more comfortable, especially in the somewhat fatter 32 mm width which I got. I have never been able to document that the Grand Bois ride faster than any other tire (and I have tested them fairly carefully under controlled conditions), but they sure feel better than anything else I have ever ridden. After the brevet, I put the Armadillos back on to "save" the Grand Bois for special occasions. When the Armadillos finally wore out, I replaced them with Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires because I read somewhere they were "rugged", and worry free appealed to me. Because I wanted "skinny" tires, I bought them in the 28 mm width. They were very hard to mount and did not have a nice feel on the road; they felt both slow and insecure when cornering. Nonetheless, they virtually never got flats, so I learned to forgive their sins. I probably would still be riding these tires, but my wife got tired of getting flats, I wanted to try some different tires, so I put my old 28 mm Marathon Plus tires on her bike, and decided it was foolish to keep saving the Grand Bois tires, so put those on mine. My wife had come to love her 32 mm tires and was somewhat concerned about riding 28 mm tires so I promised her that if she liked them, I would get her new ones in a 32 mm width. Within the first month of having the Grand Bois tires on my bike, I got two flats. At the same time, Lovely Bicycle reviewed Clement Strada LGG tires which she promised had a nice ride and which were flat resistant, so I bought those to replace the flat-prone Grand Bois. At first, I liked these very much, but shortly after I put them on, was riding on wet roads and fell. For the next six months, I didn't fall again, but often felt like I was about to fall, a very unpleasant sensation. On the other hand, I did not get any flats. Then, almost miraculously, the Clements started feeling more secure, presumably because they had "worn in" a bit. However, at the same time, I started getting flats. Not all that many, maybe one every three months or so, but I did find it demoralizing. Soon, I noticed a cut in the back tire which rendered it unusable. So what to do? These tires had lasted about half as long as I was used to, and I didn't like either the crashes at the beginning of their life nor the flats at the end. On the other hand, they felt almost as nice to ride as the Grand Bois and at their worst, flatted less. Nonetheless, I decided that the morale benefits of no flats outweighed a nice ride (plus, I still have the Grand Bois any time I want to ride them) so went back to the tried and true Marathon Plus. I got this set in the 32 mm width with the idea that I might swap with my wife so she could have the wider tires she wanted, but for a variety of reasons put them on my bike first. They have only been on a few months, but I have the following preliminary observations: 1) No flats yet. 2) These mounted much easier than my first set. Is this luck of the draw, has Schwalbe improved their product, or does the width make a difference? I have no idea. 3) Visibly, their width is barely distinguishable from the 28 mm Marathon Plus's on my wife's bike. When she saw them, she lost all interest in swapping tires with me. 4) They seem to handle, well, "fine". Nothing special, but not bad. We'll see about the flats, stay tuned.

For reasons I am not at liberty to discuss, I don't know when (or even if) I will be able to ride another brevet. If I did, would I put the Grand Bois tires back on, or would I ride it with my Marathon Plus tires? I think I would go with Marathon Plus. Although I love the feel of the Grand Bois, I hate worrying about flats. Yes, yes, I have read all the articles saying that I should simply get fast at repairing flats, they are inevitable and no big deal. "You should be able to repair a flat in 10 minutes" say the experts. Well maybe. I have a great deal of experience repairing flats as it happens, and have no objection to doing so at home, but despite all that experience, I do not like doing it on the road. Part of the reason is that I believe it is important to do it right and find that hard to do sitting in the dirt by the side of the road without access to my bike stand. One common problem that occurs when fixing flats is that the object that caused the flat may remain in the tire, and no sooner does one hit the road than one has another flat - from the same object! To avoid that, I find I have to take my time inspecting the tire and to inspect it in very good light. So what does this old man fussiness cost me? Again, I have not been able to measure the speed improvement I get when riding Grand Bois tires compared to Marathon Plus, but based on my attempts to do so, I find it hard to believe that it amounts to more than 0.2 miles per hour. My last (and longest) brevet was 130 miles long. Over 130 miles, 0.2 miles per hour amounts to a 12 minute slower finish. If I have one flat, and if I managed to fix it in an unrealistic 10 minutes, then I have only saved 2 minutes on the ride. On the other hand, I would expect to average fewer than one flat per brevet, and there is the fun factor to consider, but still, all things considered, the Marathon Plus tires come out ahead for me.

Tour de Pink

Every year since 2011, my wife and I have ridden the Tour de Pink. It has become the centerpiece of our cycling life together. Thus, it was with great sadness that I read the email from the organizers saying that last year's 2015 Tour de Pink was the last there would ever be, there will never be another. It seems that the plethora of breast cancer charities had doomed this ride. I discovered this ride back before I retired, and every year since 2011 had tried to ride it with some of my old colleagues. For one reason or another, it never happened, and now it never will. In my old age, the list of things I will never do again is getting longer and longer. Add one more to that list.

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The title of this post is a reference to the famous line from Ecclesiastes 1:9: "There is no new thing under the sun." It is just a different way to say "update", a word which I feel is both overused and off-putting.

Not Riding Around the Sea of Galilee

Our family recently took a trip to Israel. In addition to seeing the usual sites, my older son, who organized the trip, had the idea that we should bicycle around the Sea of Galilee. This "sea" is actually a lake, also known as Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias (among other names.) It is famous among Christians as a site where many of the important events in Jesus' life took place, lending significant cultural color to the ride. This ride, about 35 miles long, was recommended to my older son by a friend of his who had ridden it a few years before, and gets good reviews on travel websites. Four of us decided to "attempt" this ride; me, my wife, my older son, and my younger son. I put the word "attempt" in quotes as none of us had any doubt but that the attempt would be successful; the distance was short enough that my wife, the weakest rider in the group, should have been able to complete it with no problem. Hah!

The four of us, me, my wife, my older son, and my younger son, in front of the hostel where we rented the bikes.

The travel websites described a traffic-free bike path that covered about 70% of the distance around the lake, with the remaining 30% being ridden on the road, and promised many places where bicycles could be rented. When we arrived in Tiberias, the largest city on the lake, we easily found a bicycle rental place, picked up four rather old and beat-up mountain bikes (all they had), purchased a trail map, and asked the guy who rented us the bikes about the trail. "Just ride down to the lake" he said, "follow the lake, no problem. But be sure to ride it clockwise!" Wrong in every respect, as it happened; he either didn't know what he was talking about and/or didn't care. We did look at the map before we left, and it did show a path along the lake. Getting to the lake was a bit more of a challenge than expected, compounded by completely wrong directions given by various people along the way; it seems Israelis love giving advice whether or not they know anything about the subject at hand. Despite that, we eventually found our way to the lake, and rather than a bicycle path, found beaches, hotels, fast food stalls, boat rentals, and the like. We did our best, travelling on streets and sidewalks next to the lake, until these all led us unavoidably back onto the main highway. That highway features high speed traffic heavy on the trucks, so that riding on it was not entirely pleasant and we kept looking for the promised path.

Eventually my older son found a path which seemed to match what the bike rental guy had told us to expect. It was clearly a designated path, with color coded trail markers. Once we got on it, however, we found it to be more of a hiking than a biking path. Some parts of it were OK, basically dirt roads, but other parts had impassible obstacles (at least to mountain bike novices like us) or loose dirt and sand which brought us to a complete stop, forcing us to walk the bikes. With practice, I got to where I could power my way through these stretches, but only at great expenditure of energy. My wife never could make it through them. Thus, a small number of miles ended up taking us way more hours than we had budgeted and left us a lot more tired than expected. At this point, the path ended. It is possible that, as before, we would be able to rejoin it after a brief ride on the highway. However, the day was already very hot and we were getting tired, so we finally did what we should have done much earlier, we looked at the map carefully. When we did so, we found that there was a completely different path around the lake, one which appeared to be the designated bike path all the travel websites had been talking about. In complete conflict with what the bike renter had told us, this path was some distance from the lake, up in the surrounding hills. To get to it from where we rented the bikes, we would have ridden, not towards but away from the lake, up into the surrounding hills. Realizing this, we crossed the highway, headed off through some farms into the hills, and after a bit of searching, found this other path, also well marked and color coded.

A portion of the map whose cover is at the top of the post. If you look just below the green number 1, you can see a blue highlighted route. That is what we think the correct bike route is. The red line along the shore is the highway which most people ride. Near the top of the picture, just to the left of the highway, you can just see a dotted route. That is the hiking trail on which we attempted to bike.

This was the moment of truth. So far, we had only completed an insignificant fraction of the distance around the lake. Should we turn right, and continue the journey, or turn left, and head back home with our tails between our legs? We chose the latter. Although some of us may have made it around, it was unlikely, given the heat and our exhaustion, that all four of us could. As fate would have it, this new trail was much better than the old; although dirt, it was hard packed and lacked the "beyond technical" features of our previous route. Would we have been able to complete the ride had we taken this path in the first place? This is uncertain at best. The main problem was that this trail travels some distance from the lake and weaves back and forth much more than the highway, so the 35 mile trip around the lake on the highway turns into an 88 mile trip around the lake on the trail. In the second place, even high quality dirt roads are more tiring to ride than pavement. Thirdly, being up in the hills, this route would have inevitably involved significant climbing. We were, however, able manage to drag ourselves home by refueling along the way with many glasses of the delicious, mint-rich Israeli lemonade.

Here we are, stopped by loose dirt and sand.

When we got back, my older son immediately emailed his friend, asking him to comment on our difficulties. His reply: "I rode the highway, dude." Riding the highway would have been somewhat unpleasant and perhaps even a bit dangerous due to the traffic, but on a road bike, the ride would have been the piece of cake we had anticipated, especially if we had started at dawn to avoid some of the heat and traffic. In my judgement, the inner route where we started riding is not a usable bike trail. The little we rode of the outer ride through the hills seemed doable but is very long and may contain unexpected challenges.

How did we mess up this ride so badly? In the first place, I believe that if I don't occasionally underestimate a ride, I am not being adventurous enough in my ride selection. In the second place, we all had a lovely time, saw the Sea of Galilee from an interesting perspective, and got plenty of exercise. Having said all these things, here are what I think to be the reasons:

1. We unknowingly conflated the advice of my son's friend and the travel websites so as to apply the friends endorsement not the the roads on which he rode, but on trails.
2. The travel websites seemed more informative than they were. They implied, at least to us, an easy to find, unambiguous, trail system. In fact, the trail system required some significant detective work to use, something which we were lulled into not doing.
3. The guy who rented us the bikes did us a huge disservice by confidently and insistently giving us advice that could not have been more wrong in every way. Because we believed his advice, we did not do our own due diligence.
4. None of us are experienced mountain bikers. It is my impression that mountain biking is considerably more difficult per mile than road biking. Because we did not have mountain biking experience, we did not correct for that difficulty.

If we had not made these mistakes, I am not sure what we would have done. We certainly would not have attempted 88 miles on dirt roads with the group we had. If we had studied the map ourselves, would we have nonetheless attempted the inner route? I would like to think we would not have, the map never suggested it as a viable route. Might we have attempted the roads? Perhaps. My son's friend rode them successfully, and there are lots of blog posts and the like on the internet of people doing so. And that makes an interesting point. The bike trail everyone raves about is not really an alternative to the road, but an entirely different ride; much longer, and much farther away from the lake. One can debate the relative virtues of lake vistas from the hills vs riding along the lakeshore, but one cannot say they are the same thing. To be perfectly honest, I suspect if we knew then what we know now, we might have never attempted the ride, and so perhaps we were well served by our ignorance.

I am going to try an experiment with this post, I am going to try including a movie. Here is the our group, heading down the trail:

Intervals and Common Sense

The 1969 Great Western Bike Rally, a celebration of moderate exercise.

"There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth." - Marie Curie

In my last post, I was a sadistic scientist. There were reasons I for that, but in this post, I'd like to take a more constructive, common-sense approach to understanding the relationship between different kinds of exercise and long term health. Specifically, I would like to address the following questions:

1. How sure are we that exercise improves long term health?
2. Is VO₂max a good biomarker for the impact of exercise on long term health?
3. Do the short term impacts of different exercise plans on VO₂max accurately predict their long term impacts on VO₂max?
4. What is the value of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)?

Last Time on the Zombie Cyclist:

In my last post, I discussed an excellent paper (Gillen et al.) which argued that three 20 second sprints produces the same long term health benefits as 45 minutes of moderate intensity cycling. I used that post to illustrate the limitations that go with a biomarker study (a study where you investigate not what you are interested in, but something easier to measure that you believe is linked to what you are interested in.) In the case of Gillen et al., what they were interested in were the relative long term health benefits of different exercise regimens. Unfortunately, these take decades to measure, so what they studied instead was the effect of different exercise regimens on VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and the mitochondrial content of muscle. They examined changes in these three different factors produced by 12 weeks carrying out one of three different exercise plans. The three plans were no exercise (the control group), 45 minutes of moderate intensity cycling done three times a week, and three workouts a week built around three 20 second "all out" sprints. Both exercise groups improved by about the same amount, leading them to conclude that the much shorter sprint workout was as good as the longer moderate exercise workout. At the end of that post, I stated that, based on rigorous scientific criteria, I found the paper interesting but not entirely convincing. As a scientist, my formal reservations about the conclusions of Gillen et al. were two-fold:
1) The three biomarkers chosen have not been demonstrated to be reliable proxies for long term health.
2) It has not been demonstrated that the results observed after 8 and 16 weeks of exercise will continue for the decades relevant to long term health.

My intuition tells me that the biomarkers chosen probably are a good stand-in for whatever effects of exercise contribute to long term health. However, I am less certain that the benefits of Gillen et al.'s specific exercise plans will continue long term. As I will argue below, I personally think more varied exercise plans might a be better long term plan.

Does Exercise Improve Long Term Health?

The influence of exercise on longevity and health has been extensively studied and the benefits appear to be substantial. Men in their 50's have a 42% chance of living to 85 if they exercise regularly compared to 23% if they don't. (For comparison, the numbers for not smoking are 37% vs 18% if you do and of not being obese are 35% vs 13% if you are.) Yes, yes, we have all heard about the curmudgeon who never exercises and drinks a quart of whisky and smokes two packs of cigarettes a day and is 97 years old; it can be done, 18% is not 0%. But there is no escaping the fact that your odds are a lot better if you take care of yourself. Such studies are (almost?) always observational, and so there is the theoretical possibility that the people who choose to exercise make that choice because they are different to begin with, that it is this pre-existing difference that is responsible for their longevity, and that they would have lived to a ripe old age even if they had not exercised. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Some people are healthier than others for a whole range of reasons. Healthier people live longer and feel better. Because they feel better, they might be more likely to exercise. This kind of ambiguity is present in all observational studies. That duly noted, I think the benefits of exercise are broadly accepted nonetheless, and that this acceptance is due to the large number of studies that have been done, the consistency of all the evidence, the substantial size of the effect, and the intrinsic plausibility of the conclusion. Thus, I will answer this question with a strong YES.

Is VO₂max a Good Biomarker for Exercise?

VO₂max varies enormously between people, but most of this difference is genetic. No matter how much you exercise, you can never catch up with someone who has "good genes." (The good news is that VO₂max is not the most important determinant of who is a fast cyclist, and the parameters that are, are more trainable.)

Most studies of exercise and aging work by assembling a group of people, determining how much they exercise, and then revisiting them some years later to see if they are still alive. There are two ways that "how much they exercise" is commonly determined. The first is to ask people. This is unreliable because people may not accurately remember or they may exaggerate. To get around these problems, the other way is to measure how much they have been exercising by measuring their VO₂max. Because VO₂max does increase with exercise, people who exercise will, on the average, have a higher VO₂max. But this is only true on the average. Because VO₂max is determined more by genetics than exercise, many people who exercise will have lower values for VO₂max than many people who do not. However, since the whole study is based on statistics, the group who has a higher average VO₂max will, on the average, have exercised more. The fact that VO₂max does work as a stand-in for exercise despite the problem of genetic variability raises an interesting question; what if what is important for longevity is VO₂max, not exercise? Because exercise increases VO₂max, it will increase longevity, but will people who inherit a high VO₂max but do not exercise live longer or shorter lives than those who exercise but have genetically low VO₂max? I don't know the answer to this question, nor do I even know if the answer is known.

The scientific community believes that the important variable is exercise with VO₂max being a biomarker for exercise, so for the remainder of this post, let's assume that is correct. What this may mean is that someone who inherits a high VO₂max does not live longer as a result. This then begs the question, does the VO₂max you get from high intensity interval training get you the same benefit as the VO₂max you get from exercising at a more moderate level for a longer time? Without being the least bit sadistic, I am at least somewhat skeptical that it does. Does that mean Gillen et al. is wrong, or at least unreliable? One of the most important ways scientists avoid being mislead is to look at the same question as many ways as possible, and that is one of several reasons I like Gillen et al.; they did look at the effect of HIIT on VO₂max but they also looked at the effect of HIIT on muscle mitochondria and on glucose tolerance. It is much less likely that they were mislead by all three of these biomarkers than by any one, making me significantly more enthusiastic about Gillen et al.'s conclusions.

Am I Sold on HIIT?

Yes and no. When I first started thinking about training five years ago, I was skeptical of the value of any kind of brisk training, intervals included. I now believe intervals, and short, fast (high intensity) intervals in particular are good for health and will improve my performance in most kinds of rides (group rides, long rides, etc.) Even five years ago, I rode intervals now and then because pretty much all training programs included them, but I was unenthusiastic and often skipped them. Going forward, I am going to make a real effort to include at least one set of intervals every week. Further, I had been favoring longer intervals and longer kinds of brisk rides (30 minute time trials) believing they were better for building endurance. I am now going to include shorter, faster intervals. A few weeks ago, for the first time, I tried 20 second intervals as describing in Gillen et al. and found I reached heart rates significantly higher than I usually do. I had been skeptical that such a short interval would last long enough to bring up my heart rate, but it turns out I was wrong.

So that is the yes part, what about the no? I am not prepared to replace all my other riding with high intensity intervals. Even if all I was interested in was health I would not do so. I believe that the mechanism by which exercise improves health is complex and that our understanding has just scratched the surface of that complexity. The exercise community has embraced the value of a diverse exercise program for millennia, and although I will always follow science when it successfully overturns tradition, I don't think the weight of scientific evidence about exercise and health is sufficient to do that here.

Conclusions

1. "The exercise program that you do is always superior to the one you don't do." - my younger son
2. If I were betting on the long term prospects of folks who do a small amount of very high intensity exercise versus a group that follows a more conventional moderate exercise program, I'm not sure how I would bet, but I definitely would bet against a third group that did no exercise at all.
3. If there was a fourth group who mixed it up, did some long, slow bike rides, did some sprints, lifted some weights, and did some yoga, I would bet on them over any of the above three groups.
4. I am who I am. I am probably not going to lift weights. I am definitely not going to do yoga. But I do plan to mix up my cycling; to ride long when I can, to ride intervals when I am inspired, and to keep doing 45 minute rides at a moderate level of intensity when I can think of nothing better to do. Do I think this is optimum? Nope. Do I think it is better than nothing? Yep. Do I think I will actually do it? I hope so.

Interval Training and Biomarkers

Bill Parsons winning the 1967 Nevada City Bike Race. I think this counts as an all-out sprint.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has been all the rage for some time now, promising a large increase in fitness for a small amount of time. A recent publication¹ supporting this promise has gotten a lot of press over the last few days, primarily because it claims to be one of the more rigorous studies on this topic. The authors argue in this publication that three 20 second sprints provide the same health benefits as 45 minutes of moderate effort cycling; I could obtain all the benefits of my MAF Test workout in one minute!

That is an overstatement, of course. The HIIT workout needs to include the two minute recovery time between the 20 second intervals as well as the five minutes of warmup and cool down it shares with the moderate intensity workout. In total, the HIIT workout takes 10 minutes, the moderate intensity workout, 50 minutes. And of course there is other fixed overhead that further diminishes the difference; the time required to get to and from the workout, to dress for cycling, to shower afterwards, etc. When you factor in that the 45 minutes of moderate effort are rather pleasant whereas the 60 seconds of intervals are sheer agony, the choice between the two workouts may not be as clear as it first seems.

All of that aside, I'd like to focus in on what I see as the core issue; has this study really demonstrated that a workout centered on three 20 second intervals provides the same long term health benefits as a workout centered on 45 minutes of moderate effort? How to evaluate these kinds of studies has been a recurring theme on this blog. I have previously noted, for example, that a single study, or even a series of studies from a single research group, needs to be interpreted with caution. At best, this recent study is just one more brick in the wall. I have also discussed the problems with observational studies. If the authors of the study had compared athletes who, on their own, had chosen a HIIT workout to those who, on their own, had chosen a more conventional, moderate exercise workout, their conclusions would be weakened by an alternative explanation; that preexisting differences between the two groups might explain any difference observed. For example, people who are naturally more athletic and as a result have better long term health prospects might be more attracted to HIIT, whereas those less gifted by nature might choose the comfortable workout. But the authors of this study avoided that problem by utilizing the gold standard² for this kind of study, a randomized trial. To be able to do so, however, they were forced to create a different set of problems for themselves. To make a randomized trial possible, they could not measure long term health, which is what they were really interested in, but instead had to measure a proxy. This kind of proxy is known as a biomarker³.

What the authors of this study are really interested in knowing is if HIIT provides the same increase in lifespan and improvement in health as the conventionally-recommended 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise. However, to answer that question directly in the context of a randomized trial, they would have needed to persuade people to follow assigned, rigid exercise protocols, either HIIT or moderate exercise based on the flip of a coin and to stick to these protocols for the rest of their lives. This would never happen, and even if it did, results of the study would only become available after decades. So, instead of studying what they are really interested in, the authors chose to study something they could measure quickly which they believe correlates with a long and healthy life, a biomarker. Persuading volunteers to follow a randomized exercise protocol for 12 weeks is a lot easier than persuading them to follow it for 40 years. Thus, instead of measuring lifespan, lifetime incidence of diabetes, and heart disease, they measured VO₂max⁴, body weight, percent body fat, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria⁵.

Why did they measure these particular things? Firstly, body weight and percent body fat are not related to the conclusions of this study, but I thought they would be of interest so included these results. Secondly, the reason exercise improves lifespan and long term health is currently not known. What is known is that exercise also affects VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria. Are these other effects the reason exercise affects long term health? It is plausible that they might, but this hypothesis remains to be tested.  So what are VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria?

• VO₂max is the maximum rate at which a particular person can use oxygen during intense exercise. Typically, VO₂max increases with exercise. When VO₂max is increased due to moderate aerobic exercise, at least part of this increase in VO₂max is due to increased heart capacity. It is not yet known if increases in VO₂max are always accompanied by increased heart capacity; it is possible that HIIT increases VO₂max without increasing heart capacity, for example.
• Glucose, like most chemicals, is normally maintained at a fixed level in the blood. If one increases blood glucose, either by eating or (as in the case of this study) by having glucose injected, glucose will rise but then eventually return to normal levels. Glucose tolerance is a measure of how quickly a person can return elevated blood glucose to normal levels. Glucose tolerance has been shown to be a strong predictor for adult onset diabetes. 
• Muscles can generate the energy they need either aerobically (by using oxygen) or anaerobically (without using oxygen.) To use oxygen, muscles use their mitochondria. For fuel, they can use glucose or fat. One effect of moderate aerobic exercise is to switch muscles from being more anaerobic, glucose-based to more aerobic, fat-based, and this switch is accompanied by an increase in the number of mitochondria in muscles. It is thought that using oxygen and using fatty acids are a sign of fitness and good health, but this is still speculative. It is also thought that when muscles use oxygen, they contribute to improved glucose tolerance. If this latter speculation turns out to be true, it may be that glucose tolerance and muscle mitochondria are not independent, but rather that increased muscle mitochondria causes an increase in glucose tolerance. This would mean that these apparently different measurements may, in fact, be measuring the same thing.

So, at long last, what was the result of this study⁶? The study involved three groups of men, with 6 to 10 men in each group. All the men were between 19 and 35 years of age, were not doing any exercise, and were overweight. One group was the control, they didn't do anything. One group rode three MAF tests a week, 45 minutes of cycling at moderate effort. One group rode three sets of intervals a week, where the exercise part of each set consisted of three 20 second sprints, riding as fast as possible. At the end of 12 weeks, none of the three groups had lost any weight. As expected, the no exercise group had about the same percent body fat as they did at the beginning. However, both exercise groups had a significant⁷ decrease in percent body fat; they had not lost weight, but they had converted fat to muscle. Similarly, the no exercise group had no change in VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria, but both exercise groups had similar increases in VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria. The conclusion the authors drew from this study is that HIIT provides the same benefits as moderate exercise in much less time.

Am I convinced that HIIT provides as much benefit as moderate exercise in extending longevity and improving health? Not yet. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great study, I think that it adds a lot to our understanding of how different kinds of exercise affect the body, and that it makes a strong argument for the benefits of HIIT. I also would not argue with anyone who, based on current evidence, decided to build their weekly exercise plan around HIIT rather than moderate exercise. Not being convinced that this hypothesis is true is not at all the same as being convinced that it is false; rather, I remain to be convinced one way or another. The reason I am not convinced is two-fold. In the first place, I am not convinced that changes in VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria are the only reasons exercise improves long term health. It is highly probable that they contribute, but the extent of that contribution remains to be demonstrated. In the second place, I am not convinced that HIIT and moderate exercise have the same long term effects on these variables. After twelve weeks, HIIT and moderate exercise produce the same changes in VO₂max, glucose tolerance, and muscle mitochondria, but would these changes be equally maintained if the experiment were extended to a year or ten years? This is the problem with biomarker studies, they are only as good as their biomarker, and judging the relevance of a biomarker is a research project all of its own.

So is there no hope, is it never possible to know anything? Not at all! True, science never gives us absolute certainty, but as more and more evidence is collected, it is possible to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt. When one group publishes a biomarker study demonstrating the value of HIIT, we note this results with interest but also with skepticism. When a second group comes to the same conclusion using an observational study, our interest goes up and our skepticism down. As more and more experiments reach the same conclusion, each done independently by different groups of scientists, each looking at the same question from different angles, using different techniques, we become more and more confident of that conclusion. Next post I will take a broader view of this topic and share my intuitions. Stay tuned.

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1) "Twelve Weeks of Sprint Interval Training Improves Indices of Cardiometabolic Health Similar to Traditional Endurance Training despite a Five-Fold Lower Exercise Volume and Time Commitment" by Jenna B. Gillen, Brian J. Martin, Martin J. MacInnis, Lauren E. Skelly, Mark A. Tarnopolsky, Martin J. Gibala of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada published in the April 26, 2016 issue of PLOS ONE (DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0154075) 
2) Actually, the gold standard would have been a double blinded, randomized trial, but blinding is impossible in this case, so I will use this term to indicate they did the best that was possible.
3) The National Institutes of Health defines a biomarker as “a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention.”
4) What they actually measured was VO₂peak rather than the more familiar VO₂max, but the two are equivalent for the purposes of this blog post.
5) To determine the number of mitochondria, they measured the level of two enzymes in leg muscle - citrate synthetase and hydroxyacyl CoA dehydrogenase.
6) Read the actual article to get a definitive explanation of how they did their study and what the results were. What I present here is a simplified summary and may contain errors that I introduced.
7) I use the word "significant" in this post to mean two different things; both must be true before I will use the word significant. First, statistical analysis must demonstrate that any difference seen is unlikely to be due to random chance. Second, the difference has to "matter". That is, if a decrease in body fat is seen, the amount of that decrease must be enough that the medical community believes it would contribute to better health.

The Moaning and the Groaning of the Bells

Extra, extra, Bike Snob's latest book just dropped! I wrote a full review of it on Amazon, but very briefly, it was a joy to read due primarily to Bike Snob's charming style. It is not my favorite of his four books, but neither is it my least favorite. I mention it here for one reason and one reason only: to my horror and disappointment, I discovered that Bike Snob likes bells.

Bells? What bells? Who cares about bells and why? I care specifically about bicycle bells, and I care about them only when I ride on one of Houston's wonderful multi-use paths (MUPs). About a year ago I described how the conflict between pedestrian and cycling users of these paths has driven my wife and I off of one of our favorite paths, that through Terry Hershey Park. There are many sources of conflict between pedestrians and cyclists, some of which I described in my Terry Hershey post, but in this post, I would like to focus on one; the desire of (some) pedestrians to be warned before being passed by a cyclist and the utility of bells for that purpose.

There are a whole range of situations that arise on MUPs where a warning might be called for. A faster cyclist might be passing a slower cyclist. Cyclists will almost always be moving faster than pedestrians and thus on a busy path will be passing them constantly. Some pedestrians will be solo and experienced, running or walking in a straight line to the right of the path. Some will be couples or groups who span the entire trail. Although the rule for all path users is to stay on the right side of the trail, some pedestrians don't realize this and walk to the left as they would on the roadway. Sometimes runners or walkers will reach their halfway point, and without thinking to look, quickly turn around, going from one side of the trail to another, creating the possibility that they will step directly into the path of a cyclist. Walkers with dogs present a particular challenge as the dogs will go back and forth across the trail with their leash presenting a continuous barrier between them and their owner. Some pedestrians are listening to music with headphones and thus cannot hear a warning, some pedestrians are pushing strollers, some do not speak nor understand English, and so on and so on.

So what is a cyclist to do? I claim there is no clear or obvious answer, other than to use common sense and to worry about avoiding accidents rather than affixing blame. The question is, how best to do that? There is no doubt that an auditory warning sometimes is helpful. Personally, I use a verbal warning, usually "On your left!" (followed by "Thank You!" as I pass.) In response, some pedestrians yell at me for not warning them (even though I just did), some calmly wave over their shoulder, indicating that they heard and that it is safe to pass (and even respond with an answering "Thank YOU!"), some panic, rushing back and forth across the trail or leaving the trail entirely (not the desired goal at all), and those with headphones don't hear me at all. Is substituting a bell for the verbal signal the answer? Some say yes. The argument goes  "that older folks [for example] often can’t hear verbal cues, such as 'on your right!', and that it takes them longer to process the meaning of verbal input. A bell, however, is easily heard and automatically interpreted."

This is Bike Snob's position:
Let's say you want to pass a group of pedestrians walking three abreast. Well, you could shout, "On your left!" thus consigning yourself to the ranks of all the other impatient doofuses zigzagging through the crowded spaces and otherwise annoying people. Or you could emit a delightful Zen-like chime from the bell on your handlebars...
So an actual human voice is annoying, and a mechanical, metallic bell is Zen-like? I suppose you also prefer making love to a robot, Mr. Snob. I beg to differ.

A contrary point of view is the following:
Personally, whether I am on my bike or on foot, I don't like bells. I can never get past the undertone of reprimand. The Highway Code says car horns should only be used 'to warn other road users of your presence'; and bells are to 'let [road users] know you are there when necessary'. Yeah yeah. The fact is that car horns don't say "Ahem...", they say "Oi, dickhead!", and for many pedestrians, bells do too.

I agree with the contrarian, I find bells startling and off-putting, thus the Edgar Allen Poe quote I used as my title. Since I hate being the target of bells, I don't feel I should use one. This is all in the context of lots of opinions and few facts. If it were clearly documented that bells were a significantly better warning signal than calling out "On your left," I would switch. But as best I can tell, nobody knows what is most effective. In fact, sometimes I actively choose to provide no auditory warning at all. The reason is that it is my experience that just about as many people are startled by any kind of auditory warning as are startled by being passed silently. If there is plenty of room to pass, if the person I am passing is to the right of the trail and seems like they are maintaining a straight line, then I will sometimes decide that passing silently is the best choice for everyone. I am much more likely to provide a warning to an older walker than to a younger runner. In all cases, I slow, have options in mind (e.g. going off trail) should the pedestrian dart into my path, etc. In short, I use common sense. But again, should it be demonstrated that always providing a warning had a statistically better outcome I would do so, but to the best of my knowledge, such a demonstration does not exist.

This post was inspired by reading a number of cycling articles, including Bike Snob's latest book, that argue bells are preferable to verbal warnings. Because my intuition differs so sharply from this assertion, I was moved to do some research, and then to post my own perspective. That said, I feel like perfecting auditory warnings is far from the biggest priority in improving the experience for both cyclists and pedestrians on MUPs; I think user education has a much greater potential. To date, it seems to me that what educational efforts there are, are almost all directed at cyclists. I admit to being biased, but I feel like pedestrians could use some education as well. But that is a topic for another post.

Bike Share

One of City of Boston's Bike Share Stations

I have been trying to consistently ride 400 miles a month, and had succeeded for the past six months, but will not reach that goal in April. One big reason is a ten day trip to Boston. Although I was able to do almost no cycling on that trip, the one ride I did, though a mere three miles, allowed me to try Bike Share for the first time. Just outside our hotel was a Bike Share station, I had a free morning, so walked over to it with some trepidation, carefully read the directions, inserted my credit card, and the next thing I knew, I was going for a ride. The process looked like this:

The way bike share works pretty much everywhere is that you have to be a member to use the bikes, but once you are a member, you can use the bikes for free as many times as you want. On the other hand, you can only use a bike for a short period of time before you are charged a usage fee. In Boston, that period of time is 30 minutes. To facilitate the use of bicycles by out-of-towners like me, it is possible to purchase a one day membership. So, the first receipt above, for $6, is for a one day membership. Then, being a member, I requested a bike. The system gives me a number, shown on the second "receipt", which I used to unlock a bike. I now had 30 minutes to use it for free before I would be charged a user fee. As can be seen on the third receipt, I returned the bike after 24 minutes, and was charged nothing. During those 24 minutes, I rode a grand total of 3 miles, as shown on the map below:

The above map was generated by Map Pedometer. The blue balloons labelled with "1", "2", and "3" are mile markers. the red balloon marks the Bike Share station where I began and ended my ride. The yellow balloon marks a shopping area I had visited the day before.

What did I think of my ride? The bike was clunky and slow, not any bike I would ever purchase for myself. On the other hand, I had walked a small part of this route the day before, and the difference in convenience between walking and biking was night and day; riding was much faster and much less tiring. The day before, I had needed to visit a bank to get cash and a liquor store to pick up wine I was contributing to a group dinner that night. There was a bike share station right near the bank, so what I should have done in retrospect was to pick up a bike, ride it to the bike share near the bank, turn in the bike (so I was no longer responsible for it being stolen and was not at risk of exceeding my 30 minutes,) do my business, pick up a bike at that same station and ride it back to the station near my hotel. That is how bike share is meant to be used. Had I had time to visit some sites in downtown Boston, I could have similarly used Bike Share to get to and from those sites.

That ride did give me an opportunity to experience a bit of Boston's bike infrastructure. At the end of my epic ride, I accidentally got on some rather busy streets with no bike infrastructure, a survivable but not particularly pleasant experience, but for the bulk of the ride I was on dedicated bike lanes, with short stretches of "shared" lanes. This is what the bike lane looked like:

In Houston, I have opined that so-called "shared" lanes are pretty much useless. Somehow they seemed slightly less useless in Boston, perhaps because they clearly served a bridge function. Drivers were used to the dedicated bike lane, so when they see the shared lane, they saw it as a part of the same infrastructure, a more difficult stretch where more caution is required, but a place where bicycles clearly have a place. Adding to this is the street sign stating that bicycles may use the full lane. This is the more modern, clearer version of "Share the Lane" or "Bicycle Route", one which I feel is a huge improvement and would love to see in Houston. The sign can be seen in the upper right corner of the picture below:

In addition to visiting Boston, we visited Montréal on this trip. Montréal also has a bike share program, but we did not have the opportunity to try it. We did, however, get to see a bit of Montréal's bike infrastructure as well as evidence of the toughness of its cycling community. Although our trip took place in April, we experienced late season snowstorms in Both Boston and Montréal. My last two pictures show a protected bike lane in Montréal and a hardy cyclist using the same mid-snowstorm:

So what do I think about all of this? What relevance does it have to my cycling, to cycling in Houston? Houston just finished its first protected bike lane downtown, but I have yet to try it. Similarly, Houston has a Bike Share program which I have also yet to try. I definitely have plans to try both of these, and will describe my experiences here when I do. However, if I try Houston's Bike Share, I expect it to be just an experiment, I have yet to imagine a scenario in which Houston Bike Share would be useful to me. One obvious reason for that is there is neither a bike share station close to my home nor is there one near any place I go routinely. Our Bike Share system is expanding, will that expansion make it useful to me? I am skeptical that it will. It turns out that the lack of stations is a red herring; the reasons I don't use bike share have little or nothing to do with the location of the stations. Rather, the reasons I am unlikely to use Bike Share are pretty much the same as the reasons I do little utility cycling in general, why all my cycling is recreational. I have attempted utility cycling. I have done some grocery shopping by bike, and when I have needed to go into Texas Medical Center where I volunteer, I have tried biking there as well. In both cases, after having experimented with biking, I have returned to using my car. Interestingly, my wife routinely commutes to work in the very same Texas Medical Center by bicycle. What makes the difference? It all comes down to routine and details. Because my wife commutes every single day, she has been able to develop a routine that works for her. On the flip side, the cost of commuting by car every day is substantial, giving her strong motivation for cycling. Because she is commuting first thing in the morning, the sweltering Houston heat is less of a factor. In terms of details, she has the good fortune of not sweating very much, and where she would have to park is rather inconvenient. For me, I average two trips to the Medical Center a month, so the $10 I pay each time for parking is less of an issue, where I park is very close to where I could leave my bicycle, and I go later in the day which, combined with my tendency to sweat profusely, creates social issues. In terms of groceries, I tend to shop as rarely as possible and then I stock up, purchasing many more groceries than I could carry by bike. Thus, utility cycling just doesn't work for me, and nothing about Bike Share would change that.

Interestingly, I have direct experience as to how things might be different. Thirty eight years ago, my wife and I did not yet have children and had just moved into a new apartment. We had a very old car which we rarely used, so when it stopped running, we never got around to fixing it. A couple of years later when we purchased our first home, got ready to start a family, and began serious commuting, we paid to have that old car towed away and purchased two new VW Rabbits. However, for those few years, we managed completely without a car. My wife walked to work, and I bicycled. When I needed groceries, I walked to a nearby market. We never actively decided to live without a car, it just happened. Under the pressure of two intense careers, the car just didn't make sense. I could imagine if we lived in downtown Houston where a car was more trouble and where running errands and commuting were more convenient, we might decide to live without a car, and Bike Share might become an important part of getting around. Similarly, protected bike lanes might make downtown cycling acceptably safe. Bike Share might not work for me today, but that does not mean it is not useful to people in different circumstances. The steady deployment of Bike Share and its heavy use where it is deployed suggest that this is the case. In any case, I am glad I got to give it a try, and look forward to trying our home town version, even if just to satisfy my curiousity.

Shootout at the Bluebonnet Express

My wife and I have been unable to participate in our favorite group rides lately. (In a recent post, "reasons" for missing these rides were not explained.) However, shortly after this year's Bluebonnet Express, reports began to filter in from the Critical Mass group on Facebook which suggested we may have been lucky to have missed this one. Apparently, the local Sheriff had turned on the cyclists, targeting them in a ticketing campaign. Of course, things rarely are as bad as the worst rumors from the most opinionated observers might suggest, and most events can be viewed from a variety of perspectives, leading to different narratives. We were not there and so I cannot provide any direct observations, but I have been following the story carefully and have come to some conclusions. I think there was a real backlash of the sheriff's department against the ride, I think that despite the complexity of the situation, this backlash was fundamentally unfair to the cyclists affected, but that said, I think the issues that triggered this backlash are worthy of careful consideration by the cycling community.

Background

I have previously posted on the Bluebonnet Express, but I want to describe some relevant details that I had not previously covered. There are about a 2,200 riders on the ride. It has an "at will" start (each rider leaves when they are ready, there is no mass start) which helps distribute the riders along the road, but nonetheless, a lot of riders end up clumping together at various points along the route. Many are there with friends with whom they enjoy riding side by side and chatting. Riders ride at very different speeds which leads to a lot of passing. This can cause cyclists to sometimes "take the lane" in its entirety. Some roads have nice, wide paved shoulders, some have no shoulders at all. Where there are shoulders, some cyclists prefer to stay out of the lane entirely and ride on the shoulder, others prefer to ride in the lane. Rumble strips impact this decision. Speed limits vary, some being over 60 mph. Honestly, we cyclists do not like to stop for stop signs; it is harder to come to a full stop and restart on a bicycle than it is in a car. On the other hand, bicycles are less dangerous than cars and move more slowly such that it is very possible for a cyclist to slow down as they approach a stop sign, look carefully, stop if necessary, and roll on through if it is safe to do so. This is why the State of Idaho developed special rules for cyclists. To accommodate this, the ride organizers had hired off-duty sheriffs to man intersections, controlling traffic and waving cyclists through. Shouldn't cyclists obey the law? Why should participants in the Bluebonnet Express get special treatment at intersections? I will return to these points later in the post. For now, I just wanted to set the stage.

What Happened

A total of 25 to 30 cyclists were ticketed during the 2016 Bluebonnet Express, just over 1% of the riders. Tickets were given for riding more than two abreast, impeding traffic, and running stop signs. To avoid getting bogged down in the intricacies of Texas State Law as it pertains to bicycles, I will concentrate on the stop sign violations, which are pretty black and white. Or are they? Consider that off-duty sheriffs in uniform were at some intersections waving cyclists through stop signs. At other intersections, on-duty sheriffs in the same uniform were waiting at stop signs, but instead of waving cyclists through, they ticketed cyclists for not coming to a complete stop. Some of the riders so ticketed threatened to fight their ticket on the basis that it represented entrapment; that the presence of sheriffs at earlier intersections had sent the message that, for this ride, stop signs were not being enforced. When you combine that with the much murkier law around riding abreast and impeding traffic, you can see that this could be turned into a field day for the legal profession, an outcome nobody wants (except perhaps for the lawyers.)

But really, what's the beef? The sheriff's department saw what they viewed as traffic violations, and issued citations for the same. As often happens, those ticketed begged to differ and are free to make their case in court. The beef is that the sheriff's department appeared to be gloating over the ticketing, posting a running update on citations issued on their Facebook page. At the same time, they announced that, in the future, off-duty sheriffs could not be hired to help with group bike rides. Rather than this being a simple case of enforcement of traffic laws, it seemed more like expression of anger towards cyclists.

What Really Happened

The Waller County Sheriff's Department has been remarkably transparent and frank in their discussion of this event. They could have stonewalled and stuck to their story that they were just enforcing the law. Instead, they chose to describe the chain of events leading up to their actions, implicitly admitting that there was more to it than just traffic enforcement. So here is that chain of events:

• Flooding is a fact of life in Texas; when it rains, it pours and it is not at all unusual for roads to become impassible. During the weeks leading up to the Bluebonnet Express, it had poured, closing many roads in Waller County, trapping people in their homes. 
• The Bluebonnet Express was on Sunday. By chance, there was an unrelated, large group ride on Saturday. Roads had just reopened from the flooding, folks were anxious to take care of errands that had been postponed by the floods, and found their progress impeded by large numbers of cyclists on Saturday. 
• Worse (from the residents' point of view), the Waller County Sheriff's Department seemed to be complicit in this blockade, the organizers of this ride having also hired off-duty sheriffs to control intersections. Folks complained. The Sheriff's Department does not succeed by annoying the citizens who employ them, thus the head of the department decided that these off-duty sheriffs were not doing him any good and to not allow this to happen again.
• Except that it did, the very next day. 
• One final aggravating condition in this perfect storm is that the Bluebonnet Express, like many group rides, is organized as a series of more or less concentric loops so that riders finish at the start where they left their cars and to accommodate rides of varying length. Thus, some residents found themselves (somewhat) trapped within not just one but two or three circles of cyclists, after just having gotten through the floods. In turn, they flooded the Sheriff's Department with phone calls, who felt they needed to do something, so sent out officers to enforce the law. 
• Making matters even worse, the Sheriff's Department felt blindsided. Due to the way state and local governments are organized and the way events played out, they had not been "warned" that these rides were happening and were taken by surprise.

What Does It All Mean, Mr. Zombie?

Obviously I write from the point of view of a cyclist. My first reaction when this story broke was anger at the residents of Waller County and their law enforcement division. But, as my anger faded, I tried to put this into some kind of context. As I see it, it would be easy to take this story in a lot of different directions, which, while valid, are not really relevant. Should there be special rules for cyclists and stop signs like in Idaho? Who breaks the law more often, automobile drivers or cyclists? Are traffic laws being evenly enforced, or are cyclists discriminated against? All excellent points, I have posted on some of these before and will continue to post on these issues in the future, but none of them really speak to the issue. This not the usual motorist v.s. cyclist disagreement, the problems resulted both from unusual circumstances, but more generally, because this was a large group ride. So now allow me to return to the questions from the top of this post: Shouldn't cyclists obey the law? Why should participants in the Bluebonnet Express get special treatment at intersections?

It is simply a fact: very few laws are black and white. Selective enforcement is almost universal, sometimes used as a tool of cronyism and corruption, but sometimes in the service of common sense. Being the person that I am, I wish this were not so. I wish we had fewer and more reasonable laws that were strictly and universally enforced. However, here on Planet Earth, that is not the way things work and I simply have to deal with it. So, if I barrel through an intersection, forcing drivers to screech to a halt, endangering not only myself but others as well, I fully expect a ticket. If, on the other hand, I slow to under 10 miles an hour at a quiet, high visibility intersection, look both ways, see no car in sight, and roll on through, I will feel annoyed by a legally equivalent ticket. (Of course this begs the question of why, if I was being so careful, I did not see the policeman.) If I get that ticket, I am then going to grumble about the unticketed drivers who are traveling 5 mph over the speed limit or whose tires rest on the crosswalk at a red light. I was not at the Bluebonnet Express, I did not see what happened. However, I cannot help but think that a better response to this year's problems would have been to have a realistic discussion between the Sheriff's Department and the ride organizers, followed by clear, realistic instructions to next year's participants, not just in the registration packet, not just at the starting line, but all along the road, as to what behavior must be avoided to minimize inconvenience to residents.

Are cyclists asking for special treatment? Not as I see it. Two blocks from my house is a large Catholic church. It is on one of the busiest intersections in this part of Houston. Every Sunday and every Catholic holiday, they hire off-duty police who stop traffic on these busy streets so that congregants and enter and exit the church parking lot. The same thing is done for all kinds of special events from school carnivals to yard sales and has been common practice throughout my life. I remember my father, a "by the rules" kind of guy, being furious about this. He felt that traffic laws should be followed regardless. I admired Dad greatly, but on this issue, I disagree with him; I think we need to be realistic. Having the off-duty police direct traffic for our neighborhood Catholic church simply makes a difficult situation better, a triumph of common sense. All I am asking is that large group rides be treated the same.

Epilogue

The MS 150, an annual two day group ride from Houston to Austin with 13,000 participants, is the gravitational center of cycling in my city of Houston, Texas. This event is a significant fundraiser for the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Many if not most group rides in the Houston Area are training rides for the MS 150 and many of these raise money for some charity or another. The 2016 MS 150 is scheduled to go through Waller County on April 16th. Thus, the MS 150 organizers were appropriately concerned by the events at the Bluebonnet Express (an official MS 150 training ride.) Shortly after that ride, the MS 150 organizers met with the Waller County Sheriff's department. The meeting lasted over two hours, was described as "highly productive" by the participants, and the Waller County Sheriff's department posted a summary of the meeting. To my eye, not all issues were resolved. For example, I feel that the rules for using off-duty sheriffs to manage traffic should be consistently applied, that group bike rides should not be targeted. If the local church can hire off-duty sheriffs to manage traffic, so should the organizers of the Bluebonnet Express. Nonetheless, I feel like progress is being made. Texas is a libertarian, "git 'er done and fix 'er tomorrow if'n she breaks" kind of state, so I do not expect laws to be rewritten nor major initiatives to be launched, but I do hope that the organizers of the Bluebonnet Express, the Waller County Sheriff's Department, and the people of Waller County will talk and arrive at some ways that those of us in the cycling community can have our big group rides on the beautiful country roads of Waller County without annoying the good folks who live there.