exit17

They keep (or, maybe they just had one but my memory is bad and I think they had more) having workshops and seminars about how to manage millennials at work – aka “break these kids spirits and fit them into the corporate form”.

This came up in a meeting with my team at work, and my boss (or someone) pointed out that it’s silly that corporate is trying to make the new workforce fit what it needs, instead of adapting to what the workforce has to offer. Though it is good for people to get a little more “corporate” as they become adults…I’d also argue that some corporate mentalities are just there because “it’s how we do things”.

It’s also funny that the office “problems” with millennials – always expecting praise, everyone gets a trophy, etc – are a product of the way they were raised, how society at that time said they should be raised. And that parenting/societal mindset was created by the same generation of the corporate leadership. So when higher-ups are all “friggin millennials! what the crap!”, do they not realize it’s basically their kids that they are hiring, kids who are a result of the parenting strategies of the previous 25 or so years? (obviously they don’t)

[obligatory snapchat/emoji “joke” that i’ve made a thousand times]

Because the weather is shit and my legs are shit and I want to un-shit them before I race Sunday, I’ve ridden the trainer at work for the last two days. I did this a lot over the winter, too.

Anyway, it wasn’t until today that I realized the trainer is pretty quiet (compared to the general din of the fitness center TVs blaring HGTV show designed to trick people into buying homes to keep their advertisers in business why yes this is a tin foil hat), so when I am flogging myself during some interval, sweating all over the fucking place and trying to pull in air through my big dumb mouth, people probably just think “damn, that guy sure looks like he’s dying but he’s just…pedaling a bike…inside…okay”

For some reason today (well, tonight, for like fifteen minutes) I had this grand plan of nuking this website and making a new one to reflect the different person I am right now – a person whose web publishing activity has changed almost as much due life circumstances as changes in web 2.0 internet technologies (tcp/ip, nasdaq, intel, http, ram, itt tech, etc).

So my plan involved some new site and some other such shit, and in this fifteen minute fantasy I though I’d share with the world all of the things that I’ve found interesting in the one year I’ve just spent hanging out with a new human being, and the very special anger I have towards basically everything and every one, and maybe some stuff about bike racing because that’s why so many of you are here (anyone here? maybe? fuck it, I don’t need an audience to shout nonsense, I will yell nonsense into the void goddamnit).

Tomorrow will be the 30th anniversary of my mother squeezing me out of her vagina, which means tonight is the last night of my 20s, which also means today I reflected on the experiences of my 20s, which is the decade that modern Americans have crazy growth and go from idiotic post-teens to idiotic proto-adults. The early parts of this decade of existence were focused mostly on consuming alcohol and ignoring responsibilities, the middle part on learning how to not be an asshole, and the last part on saddling myself with responsibilities and trying to keep it together.

I didn’t remember what I did on my 20th birthday, so I checked an old localhost.sql file for this site (a back up from before I nuked the database because also in this decade I learned how to be a web developer – thanks coffee and Google and Colin) and there was nothing. But in my Lightroom library (migrated from iPhoto because iPhoto didn’t like the 25,000+ photos I had) I found photos of hanging out with high school friends, so that is what apparently happened.

I also had some grand idea to tie this all in to technology, and to this screenshot of Flickr, but I’m tired so I’m not going to try. Figure out some connection yourself.

Raika lives with Amanda’s mom, and the photos from July 13 were from three days or so before the 200 On 100, which was also the same day that I sold my car and became a member of a one car couple. Which lasted until this summer.

I’m not getting at anything here, sorry if you were expecting that.

I did fix it so I can post to this from my phone, so, um, hoooray? But it’s still on a site that I’m hosting so when I stop paying the bill BOOM everything is gone.

I’m talking an awful lot about the production of having a website right now, huh? I’ve had a website since 2002, I’M KIND OF A BIG DEAL. Pretty sure I wrote my website address in people’s yearbooks in high school – and that site still exists, with a link to this one, so perhaps Jenna Robb will find me and we WILL BE FRIENDS!!!!

I love this.

I’ve started reading “Hark, a vagrant” after having followed Kate Beaton on Twitter for a while (she is at her best when she as at home in the Maritimes writing quick comics about her family), and it’s totally super.

You may also be thinking “Hey Ryan, this seems like a thing that you should be posting on your Tumblr!” (no, you are most certainly not thinking this, because who the hell thinks “this guy is posting this content on the wrong media platform”), that is because I think my Tumblr is cursed.

(Updated with info on veteran racers)

Sunday morning, I shouted this out into the void of Twitter:

I wonder how many of the Cat 5s at Battenkill race multiple times/year or go on to upgrade to Cat 4 or 3? Or is it their only race?

— ryank (@ryantkelly) April 6, 2014

And with the magic of pyquery and putting additional loads on the road-results servers, I have somewhat of an answer!

I looked at the 2013 edition of the race. I basically grabbed the rider profile URL, and then grabbed the rider’s race history by year, and dumped that into a .csv file. It looked something like this:

I wanted to see how many people were first time riders at Battenkill in 2013, and how many of them went on to race in 2013 and/or 2014.

(alternate version of the sentence above: A CYCLIST WHO LIKES EXCEL CHECKED OUT THE RACE HISTORY FOR THE TOUR OF THE BATTENKILL. WHAT HE DID NEXT WILL MAKE A FRIGGIN RAINBOW LAUNCH OUT OF YOUR SKULL)

I didn’t look at who upgraded, because that might take more time? Or something. But I guess I could. I was primarily focused with what first-time racers did in the rest of 2013 and in 2014. I looked at race results as far back as 2008 to determine who was “new” to bike racing.

2013 New Cat 5s:

• Total Cat 5s: 584
• Cat 5s whose first race was Battenkill: 212 (36% of total)

What those new 2013 Cat 5s did afterwards:

• Did a non-Battenkill race: 89 (15% of total, 42% of new riders)
• Only raced Battenkill :  123 (21% of total, 58% of new riders)
• Raced something in 2014: 107 (18% of total, 50% of new riders)
• Only did Battenkill in 2014:  69 (11% of total, 32% of new riders, 64% of those who only did Battenkill in 2013) (GIANT FRIGGIN ASTERISK – it’s early April, so I’ll check back later and see what happens with this)

What about “veteran” Cat 5s (people who had raced once before) in 2013?

Requested by “someone”

• Veteran racers: 372 (64% of total)
• Did a non-Battenkill race: 244 (42% of total, 66% of vets)
• Only raced Battenkill: 128 (22% of total, 34% of vets)
• Raced in 2014: 190 (33% of total, 51% of vets)

Veterans + Noobs in 2013:

• Did a non-Battenkill race: 333 (57% of total)
• Only raced Battenkill: 251 (43% of total)
• Raced in 2014: 297 (51% of total)

2014 Cat 5s:

• Total Cat 5s: 602
• Cat 5s whose first race was Battenkill: 223 (37% of total)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN???

For 58% of the new Cat 5s in the 2013 race, Battenkill was their only race of the year (or, at least, the only race of the year that was on road-results, which is  kind enough to include most things that have results posted – training races, gran fondos, that sort of thing. So lots o’ events).

In 2013, that’s 123 Cat 5s that did one event and then hung up their license for the rest of the year. If were promoting an event and I wanted a ton of Cat 5s – or at least one race-field worth – I’d figure out how to reach out to those 123 dudes that didn’t race again. Get a booth in the expo area, have an airplane flying over the course towing a banner…something.

On the other side of the coin, maybe it’s good that 42% of first-timers went on to another race in 2013? I don’t know what the attrition rate of newcomers to cycling is, and where this falls in comparison to that.

Also, even though the 2014 cycling season is still very young in the Northeast, 50% of those people who were new to racing went on to do some race in 2014 – and it wasn’t limited to just Battenkill (64% just did Battenkill). Though it is clearly a majority.

It’s also interesting how close the percentages of new Cat 5s are between 2013 and 2014.

And over a third of the Cat 5 field was totally new to bike racing! That’s pretty cool, actually. Battenkill is an interesting event that scratches an itch that a lot of people have, and apparently it’s compelling enough to get so many new people out racing their bike.

So, to answer my question – roughly 50% of Cat 5s do other races.

UPDATE!!!!!!

I was asked to look at non-newbies who raced (which you’ll see the data on above).

More veteran riders did a non-Battenkill race in 2013 than new riders (66% vs 42%), and adding veterans into the mix certainly raised the percentage of riders who did a non-Battenkill event in 2013 (57%).

Even still, in 2013, there were 128 veteran racers who only raced Battenkill! So, yeah, spending money on that airplane towing a banner for your team isn’t that terrible of an idea.

Ten years ago today, I did my first road bike race – which I consider to be the first race I did, despite the two terrible mountain bike races I did in the fall of 2003.

I missed out on the first ECCC weekend at Rutgers, so my first race was at Penn State. This was also when I first developed my general hatred for Pennsylvania, a hatred that would only grow stronger as I spent several weekends driving a billion friggin hours to and from bike races in the land of Erica Allar.

Anyway, at my first road race ever, it was really cold (and, as we were going to Florida next, my idiot 18 year old brain only packed for warm Florida – not frigid Pennsylvania). The hillclimb TT was shortened because there was too much snow at the top. I don’t remember anything about the crit.

I do, though, vividly remember the circut race. Matt Piotrowski, then a junior (I think?), and now a coworker of mine, gave me a congratulatory pat on the back towards the end of the race. What he didn’t realize, though, was that I was on the brink of exploding.

Right after he patted me on the back, I got dropped.

So, with that, let’s look at what my first road racing weekend was like! Maybe later in this here post I’ll wax nostalgic about all the great things that cycling has done for me in the last ten years – or I’ll just go off on a tangent about dicks.

Thanks to the wonder of archive.org, here are the results.

ITT

Men D                               31 Starters       4.8 Miles, 1100'ITT Pts.
1       686 Zach        Via         UNH               21:31.18        11
2       633 Edward      Naughton    UNH               22:44.88        9
3       654 David       Maitlin     Penn State        23:17.92        7
4       684 Joshua      Kissinger   UNH               24:29.33        6
5       634 Drew        Szeliga     UNH               24:43.91        5
6       682 Matt        Piotrowski  UNH               24:46.97        4
7       630 Nathaniel   Brahms      Harvard           24:57.36        3
8       607 Stewart     Ellis       Harvard           24:59.05        2
9       679 Ander       Kazmerski   Rochester         25:06.55        1
10      627 Nathaniel   Craig       Harvard           25:13.62
11      683 Gerald      Obey        UNH               25:21.13
12      687 Ryan        Kelly       UNH               25:26.22
13      672 Max         Rietmann    Cornell           25:29.85
14      631 Jonathan    Tan         Yale              26:01.96
15      677 Peter       Nix         Rochester         26:06.27
16      632 Blake       Holt        UNH               26:14.68
17      660 Mike        Garvey      Penn State        26:16.29
18      656 Heinz JurgenPunge       Rutgers           26:26.30
19      619 Stephen     Maxwell     Harvard           26:28.83
20      655 David       Miller      Cornell           26:34.18
21      601 Pieter      Van Lieu    UMass             26:36.95
22      635 Ricky       Silver      Skidmore          27:05.24
23      661 John        Cawthorne   Penn State        27:11.22
24      662 Aaron       Nathan      Cornell           27:18.26
25      678 Brian       Anderson    Rochester         27:19.36
26      623 Nicholas    Qiang       MIT               27:40.60
27      689 James       Miller      Cornell           27:44.43
28      690 Ryan        van Hoff    Dartmouth         27:54.41
29      681 Jonathan    Rupp        Cornell           28:09.10
30      688 John        St. Onge    UNH               28:59.74
31      680 Andrew      Potter      Cornell           30:38.18

(full results)

A fun thing to do here is guess “Who won a collegiate hill climb TT in 2004?” SPOILER: Mike Barton. It was Mike Barton. Duh.

Another  fun thing to play is a game of “Who is still racing?” Nice to see Cosmo turning in a SOLID mid-field finish in the Bs.

Crit

Men D                           38 Starters       Crit PoiSprint Points
1   686 Zach        Via         UNH               12      8
2   682 Matt        Piotrowski  UNH               9       5
3   619 Stephen     Maxwell     Harvard           7       1
4   683 Gerald      Obey        UNH               6
5   607 Stewart     Ellis       Harvard           5       1
6   691 Regi        EndriukaitisDrexel            4       2
7   611 Justin      Kline       Drexel            3
8   630 Nathaniel   Brahms      Harvard           2       5
9   653 Eric        Miller      Penn State        1
10  621 Abe         Gissen      Tufts
11  633 Edward      Naughton    UNH
12  634 Drew        Szeliga     UNH
13  687 Ryan        Kelly       UNH
14  662 Aaron       Nathan      Cornell
15  672 Max         Rietmann    Cornell
16  692 Richard     Katz        Columbia
17  679 Ander       Kazmerski   Rochester
18  641 Jon         Menzin      Columbia          pulled & placed
19  623 Nicholas    Qiang       MIT
20  620 Matt        Dysart      Tufts
21  660 Mike        Garvey      Penn State
22  677 Peter       Nix         Rochester
23  678 Brian       Anderson    Rochester
24  689 James       Miller      Cornell
25  690 Ryan        van Hoff    Dartmouth
26  694 Noah        Ashbaugh    Penn State
27  601 Pieter      Van Lieu    UMass
28  654 David       Maitlin     Penn State
29  684 Joshua      Kissinger   UNH
30  635 Ricky       Silver      Skidmore
31  658 Karan       Gill        Penn State
32  631 Jonathan    Tan         Yale
33  661 John        Cawthorne   Penn State
34  610 Michael     Ondik       Drexel
35  671 Timothy     Reissman    Cornell
dnf 627 Nathaniel   Craig       Harvard
dnf 688 John        St. Onge    UNH
dnf 693 Steven      Place       Drexel

(full results)

I didn’t get pulled NOR DID I CRASH in my first crit. I got that going for me.

Hey, who won the Men’s A crit? (Mike Barton. It was Mike Barton). Also featured in the Men’s A crit was Joe Kopena.

And Cosmo was in a break that lapped the field in the B race.

Circuit Race

Men D                           42 Starters       18 Miles  RR Pts.
1   686 Zach        Via         UNH               51:28     20
2   653 Eric        Miller      Penn State        at 1:20   16
3   654 David       Maitlin     Penn State                  12
4   611 Justin      Kline       Drexel            1:23      8
5   692 Richard     Katz        Columbia                    5
6   691 Regi        EndriukaitisDrexel                      4
7   696 Keith       Kirkwood    Delaware          1:30      3
8   683 Gerald      Obey        UNH                         2
9   697 John        Kirkwood    Delaware                    1
10  630 Nathaniel   Brahms      Harvard
11  621 Abe         Gissen      Tufts
12  619 Stephen     Maxwell     Harvard
13  682 Matt        Piotrowski  UNH               1:45
14  687 Ryan        Kelly       UNH               1:50
15  607 Stewart     Ellis       Harvard           2:00
16  631 Jonathan    Tan         Yale              3:00
17  634 Drew        Szeliga     UNH               3:10
18  695 Adam        Cohen       Skidmore
19  633 Edward      Naughton    UNH               pulled & placed
20  620 Matt        Dysart      Tufts
21  684 Joshua      Kissinger   UNH
22  658 Karan       Gill        Penn State
23  645 Andrew      Webster     Delaware
24  677 Peter       Nix         Rochester
25  656 Heinz JurgenPunge       Rutgers
26  635 Ricky       Silver      Skidmore
27  671 Timothy     Reissman    Cornell
28  641 Jon         Menzin      Columbia
29  693 Steven      Place       Drexel
30  694 Noah        Ashbaugh    Penn State
31  601 Pieter      Van Lieu    UMass
32  679 Ander       Kazmerski   Rochester
33  690 Ryan        van Hoff    Dartmouth
34  610 Michael     Ondik       Drexel
35  678 Brian       Anderson    Rochester
36  688 John        St. Onge    UNH
37  655 David       Miller      Cornell
38  627 Nathaniel   Craig       Harvard
dnf 623 Nicholas    Qiang       MIT
dnf 643 Steven      Anton       Delaware
dnf 660 Mike        Garvey      Penn State
dnf 661 John        Cawthorne   Penn State

(full results)

Hrm. I finished ONE MINUTE AND FIFTY SECONDS DOWN in an EIGHTEEN MILE CIRCUIT RACE. WHAT. If I remember correctly, there was some sort of wall-ish climb there or something. I have no idea what the course was. Because it was 10 years ago. And I got dropped. In my third race ever.

Who won the Men’s A race?

It was Mike Barton.

Anyway. That was the first race. Then I went to Florida, crashed and broke my frame (which I found out later and raced Beanpot and UVM on a borrowed cross bike), and gave myself a knee wound that is still a nasty scar to this day because I continued to crash on it, never letting it heal.

You may also notice in the results is one Drew Szeliga, co-founder of the Drew and Ryan Announcing Experience. We’re still BEST FRIENDS.

Bike racing has brought me MANY BEST FRIENDS. Oddly enough, Cosmo and I could have had several more years of BEST FRIENDSHIP had we hung out at Penn State that first weekend, but, it was not to be.

Bike racing (and riding, which is required for the continuation of my mediocre results) has brought me/led me to/enabled the following things (that I am thinking of off the top of my head):

• Fitness, and an ass that just won’t quit.
  • Possible immortality, due to fitness.
• From collegiate cycling, an ability to race on little sleep and junk calories (Pop Tarts).
• My wife and our currently unborn child (as we met at a UNH cycling team potluck that I went to, with no food, when I was one year out of college).
  • This child will LITERALLY owe it’s existence to cycling.
• One internship at a trade magazine publisher in Oxford, CT (as I met the owner on a group ride. I did not drop him.)
  • Tip, kids – don’t always try to drop everyone, as they may end up offering you an internship.
• My career (tipped to me via Josh Austin/John Healy, both of whom I knew through cycling).
• Most of my friends (as noted above).
  • As a result, the improvement of my job skillz (thanks Colin).
• Caffeine addiction.
• The development and refinement of thousands of complicated dick/poop jokes.
• Probably skin cancer on my nose.
• Ownership of one car for quite a while, thus enabling me to be a pompous dick about carbon footprints.
  • Yes, I understand the carbon footprint of a supply chain that brings me a bike and components from China. Shut up.

I could really dig deep into this list (bike racing led to my job which led to destroying my eyes from looking at a computer screen which led to me getting glasses and thus looking sexier), but you get the idea.

Bike racing may seem like a totally silly hobby (silly by some metrics, but those are the same metrics that consider golf to be a totally reasonable hobby), but bike racing is like some sort of parasite that infects your body and directs you down a path towards health and awesome decisions and, if you’re lucky, an uncanny ability to find a dick joke in every sentence.

Go figure, I rode my bike a bunch in 2013. This post is inherently conceited, and there’s not really anyway around that when writing a blog post talking about how much bicycle riding one did in a calendar year.

Anyway.

COMMUTING!

One number that is interesting to me and, PERHAPS, interesting to other people: miles commuted, and miles commuted’s best friend – dollars saved. This is interesting because bicycle riding and racing is an expensive hobby, and I try to “offset” this expense by riding to work and continuing our adventure as a one-car household. If I wasn’t riding to work, we’d have to have a second car, and that would cost valuable dollars. Also I hate cars.

In all honesty, my primary motivation for bike commuting is not to save money. It’s just an added benefit, and one that I can use in finance negotiations with Amanda to argue for #carbonwheels (hahaha j/k #aluminumwheelsforever).

5482 miles commuted. I rode my bike to/from work 145 times, and rode to or from work (one direction) 33 times. This is also why my Strava page is boring as hell.

I calculate my milage at $.55/mile, and along with tolls, I “saved” (saved is in quotes because it’s not like money fell out of my butt every time I completed a bike commute) $3,152. Which actually more than offset my bicycle riding/racing expenses for 2013!

So, if you are trying to motivate yourself to ride to work, consider this fact.

GENERAL BIKE RIDING!

I rode my bicycle over 10,000 miles (550 hours) for the first time ever (10,093 miles, actually). This was something I was actually trying to do (sort of), because we have a base 10 counting system so 10,000 miles is somehow important in my brain.

Also I probably won’t get a chance to ride this much once there is a small human living in my house, requiring attention and additional financial resources.

THAT’S REALLY IT.

Yeah, that’s about it. Hooray.