Okay, I'm Tired Now

A couple of days ago I did close to 25 miles by accident. Today I decided to do 25 on purpose. My route, an out and back, was not exactly well chosen, but it put me back on roads that I used to ride regularly. It was not well chosen because, while it has a few nasty little hills on the way out, the worst hills are all in the last four miles on the way home. Or maybe that means it was well chosen.  You might as well save the best for when you're tiredest, right?

I decided to push the pace some and hit a few of the early hills hard. You know, for me, I mean. Back when I used to ride this route, I had a turn around point at ten miles. I found myself coming up on that turn around point and realized that I was feeling great and was amazed at how quickly I had gotten there! Then I realized that I didn't quite remember the route accurately and that turn around point was still at least 3 miles away. What a downer.

Then I came to the town of Eureka. I love the signs in that town, because it looks like the people who live there are so happy to find everything. Eureka! City Limits....Eureka! Church!.....Eureka! School...

More hills. You have to understand that I climb hills in exactly the same way that a hippopotamus walks a tight rope.

Actually, I'm not sure what that means. It kind of sounded better in my head.

What I'm saying is that I really need to work on going uphill.  Today gave me plenty of practice.  I did not excel.

I saw two nice dogs. What made them nice was that one of them ignored me completely and the other one simply watched me ride by with a little doggy grin on its face.

I found myself at times cruising at the sort of speeds the bike club used to ride at.  I didn't stay at those speeds for a particularly long time, mind you, but I was there for a little while.

Here's how swamped in lactic acid I was at one point. I had to stop at an intersection and wait for some cars to go by. About a second after I turned the corner I glanced at my computer and saw the number 28. "Wow! Am I going 28 mph?!" One second after being at a complete stop? "Oh, maybe my top speed so far is 28 mph..." No. That was my cadence. I had, after all, just gotten moving again.  Shake your head and move on.

Oh, here's a thing not to do:

I was riding up a long hill. Near the top of the hill, the road forks. If you continue straight, you go uphill more and then quickly around a blind curve. If you go left and take the fork, you go even more sharply uphill. I wanted to go left. There was a car coming up fast behind me at 55 mph. It didn't seem like stopping in front of the car was the ideal thing to do, so I pulled off and let if pass. The only problem now was that I needed to take the fork quickly so that some car coming around the blind curve didn't have the chance to T-bone me. I had one foot clipped in. I hit the the pedal with the other foot and clipped in, and then I stood up and dig in hard to get a quick burst of speed, which was when I found out that my second foot hadn't actually clipped in. It slid off the pedal with results that were...let's say unpleasant and let it go at that. It probably wouldn't have been that bad if I hadn't immediately repeated the performance with similar results.

So, back to those last four miles I mentioned. I wallowed gracelessly up the hills for two miles. Then I get a mile of only slightly up, so I decided to hurt myself some more by picking up the pace.. The last mile has a beautiful down hill - big chain ring, dig in, then comes an unpleasant uphill and the ride is over.  I'm trying to make sure that I finish these rides strong, which is not something I am known for.

This is probably the most miles I've put on the bike in any 3 day period since I got back on it, and I managed to beat my target time for this ride.

I guess it's time to raise my goals again.

Nice.

Going Out of my Way

Today was a day of people encounters.

To the guy in the white pickup truck who thought it would be fun to lean out the window and shriek at me as the truck passed me:  Since I couldn’t actually understand anything you said, I’ve decided that it was something along the lines of:  “You are the epitome of cycling perfection.  I wish I could be just like you.”

To the person who shouted”  “WOOOOOOOOOOO!  You go!” as I rode past your house:  You actually sounded kind of sarcastic to me, but I’ll take your words at face value.  Thank you very much.

To the lady in the van who stared right at me as she pulled out in front of me and cut me off:  Since this is a family blog, I will restrict myself to saying that you are a boo-boo head and let it go at that.

To the boy sitting beside the lady in the van who was clearly pointing me out and remonstrating with the driver:  I like you.  If that was your mother, I’m sorry she’s a boo-boo head, but I won’t hold it against you.  Have a nice day.

To the three scary looking dogs I saw standing at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere watching me like I was a carry-out dinner that had been delivered to their doorstep while the ringing of distant banjos filled the air:  Thank you for simply staring at me as I rode past you and not actually chasing and devouring me.  I appreciate it.

I have been back on the bike for only a few weeks now, and circumstances kept me off of the bike for a week.  Not a good scenario.  In case you’re wondering, when you take a week off after only being back on the bike for a few weeks, you suffer.

My legs asked me what the heck I thought I was doing.  They told me that the week off had convinced them that I hadn’t really been serious about getting back on the bike and they threatened to go on strike, but, after a while, they decided to play along and pedal after all.

The sky was a mass of dark clouds, and it was definitely windy – one of those annoying winds that swirls around, changes direction, changes speeds and makes it very difficult to fall into any kind of a rhythm, and it looked like rain – but I decided to do 20 miles anyway.

Then, about 6 miles in, I hit the detour sign.  The road I wanted to go down was not only blocked by barricades, it had been torn up.  I wasn't feeling any cyclocross urges, so I turned around and tried to make up a new 20 mile route on the spur of the moment.  Good thing my computer's working again.

I had two target ride times in mind:  one which would let me shrug my shoulders and say, "Yeah, that's alright," and one which would make me say, "Woohoo!  I did it!"  As I was nearing the end of the ride I looked at the time on my computer.  Remember that time that would make me say, "That's alright"?  Well, I was 9 minutes slower than that!  Booooooo!  Then I checked my distance.  Whoops.  My 20 mile ride was actually a little over 24 miles.Wait a minute.  That means I have to recalculate my target times, and that means, "Woohoo!  I did it!"

Excellent.

I Wanna...

We took a family trip to Grandfather Mountain, which is the finish line for the Bridge to Bridge Incredible Cycling Challenge which, if you don’t know about it, is a ride of about 102 miles beginning in Lenoir, NC and ending up near the Mile High Swinging Bridge at the top of Grandfather.  I rode Bridge to Bridge in 2005, so this was a chance for me to bore my entire family to tears by recounting my adventure.  I like to think that I didn’t actually bore anyone to tears, but I have a feeling my family would disagree with me on that one.  (I know that I didn't bore my daughter.  She couldn't hear me over the sound of her iPod.)

One really fun thing about the trip was that I could see how I used to ride, and it helped fire me up to ride more and better now.  One bad thing about the trip was that I didn’t have a bicycle with me.  (It isn’t much of a family trip if part of the family is off wreaking havoc on himself on a bicycle for hours (or, given my current state of fitness, minutes) instead of hanging out with the family.

I have to admit that I watched cyclists riding up and down the mountain with a measure of envy.  I spotted one guy at the gates to the park straddling his bike and leaning heavily in his handlebars.  I saw a couple who had stopped partway up a climb and didn’t envy them the prospect of getting moving again.  I also saw one guy sitting on the grass rubbing his legs with his bike lying beside him.

In other words, these people were suffering.  When I did Bridge to Bridge, I suffered.  I can remember at least some of the pain (though I suspect that I've blocked some of it out!), but here I am longing to ride those roads again.  What’s wrong with me?

Well, I’m a cyclist, that’s what.  Of course, that doesn’t actually answer the question.  If I were to actually describe the effort it took me to get up that mountain, and assuming that the person I was talking to didn’t either

(a) fall asleep or

(b) beat me into silence just to make it stop

but actually listened and the, at the end of it, asked me why I did it, what would I say?

I don’t  know. 

Because I wanted to.  Because, in some bizarre way, I enjoyed it.  Because I needed it.  Because it’s there.  Because it’s therapeutic.  Because of the great feeling of the pain stopping when I got to the top.  Because it means I’m alive.  Because I like the T-shirt.

Because I am secretly Jeff the Cyclist?

 

(Click on the comic to see the whole thing.)

Hmm...

You know, it's kind of cold, cloudy and wet today, but I think I'll go for a ride.

Cough Cough

Oh, no ride followed by no ride followed by no ride.  This is bad.  This is how the time off the bike started in the first place, isn’t it?

Okay, so the first day of no ride was a planned rest day.  I’m good with that.  Physiologically you have to have rest days to build up some muscle (in my case not a whole lot of muscle), to allow your body to consolidate the effects of your exercise, and to catch up on that last season of Dr. Who.  All good.

Day two of no riding was simply the result of too many other things to do.  I’m okay with that.  It happens.  Band practice, household chores, running errands, and so on. 

Day three of no riding was supposed to be a long (well, longish) ride day.  For various reasons that ride had to be in the morning, and that morning I woke up to find myself in a cloud.  I’m not implying anything about my mental state.  I mean that the whole area was saturated with fog.

Ride in the heat?  Okay.  Not fun, but okay.   Of course, there was that one time I almost got heat stroke. But that’s a whole other post.

Ride in the cold?  Sure.  I have the gear for that.  It’s always hard to get motivated, but after a few minutes on the bike, it’s fine.

Ride in the rain?  Not my favorite thing to do, but I’ve don’t it often enough.  It isn’t that bad.  Don’t ride with your mouth open unless you’re at the front of the pace line, but, other than, okay.

Ride in the fog?

No.

That’s death waiting to happen, in my opinion.  I mean, I really wanted to ride, but, no.    I suppose I might have said something like, “I’m dying for a ride,” but this would be more like, “I’m riding to die.”  No, thank you.

So, in place of not doing that stupid thing, I did a different stupid thing the following day.

I woke up with a sore throat and general malaise.  Fortunately, I was able to go into work a few hours later than usual, so, of course, I drank plenty of fluids, got some rest…well, sort of.  I did drink plenty of fluids, but I did kind of sneak in a little ride.  Should a person who isn’t feeling ride go out on a ride?  Of course not.  Did that sensible knowledge stop me?  Of course not.

See, there’s weather ahead:

As the cold front marches toward the Eastern seaboard, a band of rain and thunderstorms along the front is expected to intensify Monday afternoon as strong low-level winds overspread the region and the storms move into an environment with high dewpoints (atmospheric moisture). This combination will be favorable for damaging wind gusts to develop with some of these storms. An embedded spin-up tornado cannot be ruled out in this situation.

That all sounds very complicated, but I pretty much got that I’m not going to be able to ride later today, and maybe not tomorrow, either, and, given the few days just past, that’s a lot of days with no riding.  So I rode.

Sick or not, I didn’t think it was a big deal.  Eleven and a half miles.  Of course, the wind was blowing 11 mph (an interesting coincidence) which made it a little more of a big deal than I had planned.  Being sick, I thought I would take it nice and easy, not stress myself.  I really don’t know what happened those last four miles…my legs were starting to feel good, so I starting pushing it a little bit.  Then, with only a mile to go I was moving along pretty nicely, and then it occurred to me that I really hadn’t made any use of the big chain ring since my bike had been tuned up, and, obviously I needed to rectify that – after all, you have to check to make sure that everything is working properly -  so I picked up the pace a bit more, and the, by my standards, I was really flying (for a bit)…and then I was home and tireder and sicker and sore throatier.

But I did get a ride in.  You know how it is.  I haven’t been back on the bike very long, so what if I have to skip a couple of days, and then I have to skip a couple more, and then I haven’t been on the bike in a week, and then I haven’t been on the bike in two weeks…no, we’re not going there again.

So I rode sick.  Don’t do that, by the way.  It’s probably not a very good idea.

But, I did get a ride in.

Woo-hoo!

My bike was talking to me.  It was saying, “Ride me, ride me…”

You see, Steve had tuned it up for me, cleaned it, adjusted the handlebars, everything.  “Ride me, ride me…”  The last thing he said to me before I wheeled the bike out of the shop was, “Keep riding.”  Now that’s good advice, and my bike definitely concurred.

Oh, and it was  well tuned up.  The shifting was smooth as silk, but the brakes were tight, everything was excellent.  I knew that within the first twenty feet.  Twenty feet, I might add, which my computer actually recorded!  That’s better than a bonus sock any day.  (0kay, that was a pretty obscure TV show reference right there.  You get extra points if you recognize it without any help from your friend the interwebnetthingy.)

Now, of course, I had my chance to compare technologies. 

My way of keeping track of solo rides when my computer wasn’t doing its thing:  look up a route on the interwebnetthingy and note the distance the mapping program claimed.  Carry a stopwatch on the ride to keep track of the time.

My new way of keeping track of rides:  Ride and let my bike computer worry about it.  Woo-hoo!

The interwebnetthingy mapping program claimed the route was 11.23 miles long.  My bike computer said the route was 11.28 miles long.  Well, that’s good.  What’s 0.05 miles (or, to put it another way 264 feet,  0.4 furlongs, 16 rods, 0.043 nautical miles, or, roughly speaking, 2608 attoparsecs) among friends? (Actually, some of those numbers make it seem like quite a long way, but never mind.)

The ride itself was grand, though I’m still trying to figure out how you can be riding into a headwind, make a 90-degree turn and still be riding into a headwind.  You know, I’m beginning to think there might actually be a little fitness in my legs somewhere…

March of the Machines

My compooter is compooting again!

As you may recall, or, most likely don't recall, or quite possibly, don't care...my computer would record my speed but not my distance, which was fairly annoying. The problem turned out to be, as any right thinking person would have expected, operator error. 

Yes, that's right, it was me.

It turned out that, if you press the wrong buttons too many times in a row, the computer simply gets fed up with you and decides to get back at you by ceasing to record your distance. Fortunately, when I took the bike in for a long overdue and well deserved tune-up, massage and pedicure, Steve was able to undo what I had done to the computer, and now it is suffering under the illusion that it is dealing with someone who knows what they are doing. As long as I don't get button happy again, it should keep working.

Stinky...

Oh, it was a day of smells, and I’m not talking about me, although, by the end of ride, I may have been contributing my own smell to the mix.

I set out to ride 20 miles.  At one point, riding along an empty road with no vehicles and no pedestrians in sight, I rode through a patch of air filled with the smell of cigarette smoke.  Odd.  At another point, a car with an open window passed me going in the opposite direction, and I could smell cigarette smoke again, although at least it made sense that time.  It kind of made me wonder what the inside of the car smelled like.

Twice I ran into a patch of air that smelled like decaying flesh.  I’m not making any sort of gory accusations, here, just an observation.  One of those times, I was riding over a small bridge surrounded by trees.  I am assuming that someone hit a deer or other animal and pulled if off the road out of sight but not out of smell.

I also rode past three guys who looked kind of like low tech Ghostbusters:  coveralls, backpacks, hardhats, facemasks, but no visible nuclear particle accelerators.   Judging by the smell, they were spraying pesticide or weed killer on things.

(You know, my spell checker insisted that I capitalize Ghostbusters.  I’m not sure whether I should be amazed or appalled that “Ghostbusters” is in the spell checker’s dictionary.)

But about the ride…

I looked over my last two and a half weeks – I was averaging about 60 miles a week, with my longest solo rides being 15 miles.  It’s true I had done 22 and 25 mile rides, but they were Slo’Bros rides.

(I went to the local bike shop and saw Steve, who sold me my bikes, and he said he heard I was riding again, and he mentioned the Slo’Bros – single digit miles and single digit speeds, right?  Not so far off, at that, and we do have a great time doing it.)

I love the Slo’Bros rides and am proud to be one of the founding motherfathers of the club, but, since I was alone, I was going to push myself.  I very cleverly (translation:  by total accident because I wasn’t paying enough attention) set my route up so that the last part of it had two short steep hills and one loooooooooooooooong hill.  I was not exactly burning up the road at that point.

But I finished the ride, I did it in a good time (you know, for me, I mean) and I was pretty pleased with how it went.

At one point, though, earlier in the ride, I was struggling a bit.  It was a difficult stretch of road that somehow kept getting longer.  (Okay, the school is right around this curve…no…okay, so it’s right around this curve…not yet…so it’s right around this curve…) I was a bit wrapped up in my own thoughts (i.e. suffering), when I heard a VERY loud honk of a horn followed by a yell.  It didn’t seem menacing, and, as it turned out, it wasn’t.  There was a pickup approaching in the opposite lane, and the driving was waving at me and shouting encouragement that wouldn’t have been out of place if I had been a favored TdF rider on Mont Ventoux.  It was pretty cool, actually, and it got me over the rough spot.

It's good to be riding again.