Riding out of town

The thing about a year-long goal like Brenda’s 5,000-miler is that it can tend to get goofed up if you get out of a routine.  (That’s what prompted me to think about the “…and still staying sane” part of this blog.)  We like cycling a lot.  But that’s not all we like to do.  We also like camping, and kayaking, and traveling, and going to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, and spending weekends away, and stuff like that.  I think that people who meet a 5,000-mile cycling goal (or at least those who easily meet it) often don’t do much else that year.  But we’ve got plans to still do other stuff too.

Like this weekend for example—we’re planning on taking our little teardrop camper over to the beach on Friday, and spend Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night incognito.  So here’s the question:  do we take the bikes or not?  (Actually, we’ve even thought about taking both the bikes and our tandem kayak.)  Taking the bikes on out-of-town weekend trips is fun because you get to ride in new areas and on roads you’ve never ridden on before.  But sometimes taking the bikes on out-of-town weekend trips is kind of scary because you have to ride in new areas and on roads you’ve never ridden on before.  I’ve done a lot of out-of-town event rides, so I’m pretty much used to it by now.  But on those rides, somebody else has (at least theoretically) done a lot of research to find bike-friendly roads.  When we do it by ourselves we’re on the hook for finding our own places to ride.

Now, this is one of the good things about local cycling clubs—if you can hook up with one of them, you can often join them on one of their regular rides.  I’ve done this before on a trip to Gainesville to visit my parents.  This works out really well because somebody else has already done the research, and you get to ride with a group.  The trick is you have to make sure your ability matches up with the group's ability.  When I rode in Gainesville I found a B group, and I hung with them for most of the ride, but got dropped about 5 miles from the end.  (Good thing I had a map, so I could find my way back to the car.)

So I think we’ll take the bikes, but we’ll have to see if we’ll be able to hook up with a good C group over there.  If not, we’ll just have to see what we can do.  Either way it’ll be alright—we’ll be able to ride with each other, and that’s what counts!

Statistics time

Two months into it.  One sixth down.  16.7 %.  (Yeah, I know there is one more day in February this year, but Brenda doesn’t have any plans to ride tomorrow, so it looks today was the end of this riding month.)

So here’s where she stands—1,154 miles, or 23%.  Not bad… 23% of the miles in less than 17% of the time.  February actually turned out to be a pretty good month.  She rode 14 days in January and 15 days in February.  Here’s the breakdown:

January: 

-  14 rides

-  553 total miles

-  Average 39.5 miles per ride

-  Longest ride, 60 miles

-  Shortest ride, 24 miles

-  Average speed, 14.7 mph

-  Fastest speed, 16.1 mph

-  Slowest speed, 13.9 mph

February:

-  15 rides

-  601 total miles

-  Average 40.0 miles per ride

-  Longest ride, 65 miles

-  Shortest ride, 25 miles

-  Average speed, 14.9 mph

-  Fastest speed, 16.3 mph

-  Slowest speed, 14.1 mph

She’s making progress on all counts!  I remember last summer when she started, it was a big deal to get out to the 24- or 25-mile mark.  Now she considers anything under 30 to be a short ride.  She’s deliberately not really working on speed right now, and I’ve encouraged her that she doesn’t have to.  Unless you’re a racer (and we’re not) speed doesn’t really matter just as long as you can keep up with, and pull from time to time, the group you want to ride with.  I keep track of average speed because I think it’s a real good indicator of the “strength” of a ride (that is, how strong we felt on it.)  But if she's anything like me, she won’t have to work on speed—her average speed will just naturally go up as she gets in more and more miles.

So now it’s on to March and the 25% mark.  We’d like for this to be a good month because it’s in April that she starts teaching her swim lessons, and then she won’t have time for the weekday morning rides.  Let’s see what we can work out to take their place…

Road or trail?

On several occasions in this blog about riding on roads, I’ve mentioned something about riding on trails.  I understand this may have some readers wondering, “What’s up with that—I thought road riders didn’t like to take their bikes off road?”  Well, that’s right… we don’t.  But we’ve got two kinds of trails around here. 

There are the off-road trails that the mountain bikers use.  But then there are also the trails that are part of the Rails-to-Trails efforts.  I’m not sure if this is nation-wide, or if it’s something that they’re just doing here in Florida, but here’s what they’ve done.  There are a lot of old, abandoned railroad tracks around.  Somebody got the great idea to rip out the rails and the ties, and then pave the surface with asphalt.  The result is a “road” about 10 feet wide, on which no motor vehicles are allowed.  How cool is that?  Of course, like anything else, trails have a good side and a not-so-good side.  The good side is that you can ride for miles and miles without having to pat attention to a single car.  The not-so-good side is that everybody likes the trails.  So even though you don’t have any cars to deal with, you do have to pay attention to things like joggers, people walking their dogs, squirrels taunting the dogs because apparently they know the dogs are on leashes, roller bladers, little kids chasing things, people pushing strollers, and various other people who may or may not realize the implications of 10 or 15 cyclists riding toward them at 15-18 mph. 

Some people in our group prefer riding on the trails to riding on roads.  For others, it’s just the opposite.  My roots are strictly on the roads, but Brenda has kind of grown up with this group that is about half and half.  So I’m getting used to riding on the trails.  They’re not so bad, really—you do have to go a lot slower on the trails than you can on a road.  But I’m getting used to it—in fact there is one section of trail that Brenda and I have come to appreciate enough that we are starting to work it into our default ride.  It’s just another aspect of the variety that we both so appreciate about cycling.  And who doesn’t love a little variety every now and then?

Don't spit like a girl

Road riding, like most things I suppose, has a certain etiquette associated with it.  There are some things that are acceptable, and some things that, no matter what group you’re riding with, will probably be considered non-preferred.  Of course two of the most important are: no snot rockets at the front of the line, and don’t spit like a girl. 

On long rides, and especially early in the morning, it’s not uncommon for one’s nose to sooner or later start dripping like a faucet.  Thankfully, cycling gloves are usually made with a terry cloth section around the thumb that works real well for wiping sweat or whatever else might need to be wiped from time to time.  But every now and then the only thing that really works is holding a finger on one nostril and blowing a good shot out of the other.  The only thing is… please wait till you’re at the back of the line for this.  As helpful as this procedure is for the shooter, it’s usually that annoying for the next two or three people in the line. 

Now sometimes it’s not so much that your nose gets too wet, it’s that your mouth gets too dry.  And what is it about this that so often makes people want to spit?  I’ve ridden entire century rides without ever having an irresistible urge to spit.  But apparently this is one thing that hits different people differently because I’ve also been on rides where sooner or later somebody feels a need to spit in very dramatic fashion.  Ok, fine.  Go ahead and spit.  Just don’t spit like a girl.  You know—make it a good clean shot out to the side.  None of that spraying stuff that ends up going as far back as it does out.  Yuck. 

In fact, that’s another thing that is probably better left until you’re in the back of the line.  And actually, that’s one of the good things about being in back.  You can kind of do your own thing when you’re in the back.  Eat, drink, look around, adjust things…  Yeah, sometimes that’s the best place to be.

Windy but good

We finished a good, strong 49-mile ride this morning in spite of a very stiff wind.  The club had planned a ride out toward Altamonte Springs today using a couple of roads (including North Street) that are typically kind of notorious for traffic.  As soon as I saw the map for this ride (earlier in the week) my first thought was “I don’t know about that—that road is very much a 1-out-of-3 road.”  Yeah, the road surface may be good, but there is absolutely no shoulder, and even early on a Saturday morning I was pretty sure there would be way more traffic than would be safe.  So Brenda and I said starting about Tuesday that we weren’t going to do that ride.  Several other people felt the same way, but in the end, only Brenda & I, and one other guy opted for something safer.

The three of us left from the same shopping center parking lot that the rest of the group would leave from, but we left about a half hour ahead of them.  We went out on some very familiar roads, going in the exact opposite direction—out toward Oviedo.  There was a very strong wind out of the north for most of the day, but otherwise the weather was pretty nice.  Temperatures were in the low 60s, and it was a little bit cloudy, but not rain clouds, and we had some sun too.  We went out with no specific plan in mind—we just wanted to stay on roads that we were familiar with and felt safe on.  At about the 18-mile mark we pulled into a coffee shop with outdoor tables and sat and talked about it for awhile.  This is one of the really fun things about non-club rides—you get to go out and just kind of make it up as you go along.  After awhile we decided on a route, and headed back out. 

We had a great ride, and Brenda had some really strong, 17 mph pulls against a very stiff cross-wind toward the end of the ride.  I love being able to bail out of the lead and know that she is not only comfortable with, but fully capable of taking over.  (In fact I think she even picked up our pace a little.)  When we got back to the start-finish parking lot, the other group was there.  I was curious to find out what they thought about riding down North Street, and out under I-4 on 434.  Before I even got a chance to ask, they jumped all over it—“We’ll never do this ride again!”  Ok…I had a feeling that was going to be the case.  I’m glad we went out on our own.  Bike clubs are a great thing, and I’m a big fan of clubs in general and this one in particular.  But you still have to use your own judgment.  

What about Lance?

What’s all this stuff about professional bike racers and drugs, anyway?  Sometimes it seems that professional cycling is even worse than professional baseball.  One winner after another has been accused of doping, and even Lance Armstrong’s name has been mentioned.  Is Lance a doper?  I don’t know; I like to think not.  Yes, I know it takes an immense amount of physical strength to do what he’s done.  But I also know that you can have all the physical strength in the world and still not be able to do what he’s done, because it also takes quick thinking, spur-of-the-moment strategy, and real high-end overall physical & mental health.  And I also know that he’s successfully passed more drug tests than most professional athletes will ever take. 

This issue bugs me.  Clearly some professional cyclists are dopers.  They’ve been busted.  They failed the tests.  And why did they do that?  Did they think they weren’t going to get caught?  But even if they hadn’t gotten caught, don’t they have any conscience?  Would they really have thought of their “victory” as a real victory?   How phony is that?  Could you really walk around as though you were the winner of something if you knew you had to do something that you had to hide in order to win it?  Ok, so some of them take the Barry Bonds approach—“I didn’t know he was injecting me with steroids, he told me it was flaxseed oil.”  Oh come on.  I think you’d be better off waving your hand like Obi-wan Kenobi and saying, “There are no drugs here.” 

Yes, this issue bugs me.  And I think that, as much as the dopers are hurting themselves, they’re hurting the sport much more.  They cheapen their wins, and they cheapen themselves.  But here’s the thing:  I still like cycling.  And I still like watching the Tour de France on TV.  It’s fun watching them make their breakaways, and watching the peloton reel the attackers back in.  It’s fun doing the same things on our group rides (only of course on a much, much slower scale). 

Part of me says that somebody really needs to get to the bottom of this and find a way to end it.  But another part of me recognizes the impossibility of that ever happening, so I just say those guys can dope all they want—it’s not going to lessen my enjoyment of the sport.  I say let’s ride!

17 riders, 6 flat tires

Yikes!  What a day.  This was the usual Thursday morning, 46-mile ride, on familiar roads with familiar people, but there was a pretty fierce rain storm last night, with a lot of wind.  That combination tends to put a lot of stuff in the roads, and especially on the trails, all of which makes for an increased opportunity for flats.  And even without big weather, sometimes flat tires seem to come in waves.  I’ve ridden whole summers in big groups with no flat tires.  Then there are times like this.  A guy in our group had a flat tire about 3 weekends ago, then Brenda had hers 2 weekends ago, then a guy had a flat tire last weekend, and then it all went nuts today.

Tires can get cut so easily out there on these roads, especially in our section.  Whatever garbage there is on a road sooner or later ends up over on the side, right where we ride.  Glass, screws, chunks of sheet metal, car parts, dead animals, various unidentified sharp things—it’s all there, just waiting to stick right up into the first tire that rolls by.  And sometimes flats can be kind of tricky because it’s surprising how little a thing can poke a hole in a tube.  So if you get a flat tire you have to not only put in a new tube (please—forget about trying to patch a tube) you also have to run you finger around the inside of the tire feeling for sharp stuff.  Whatever stuck into that tube might still be in the tire, and if it is, you can count on your new tube going flat in just a few miles.  If you find something sharp in the tire, that’s a good thing (even though the way you probably found it was by it poking a hole in your finger just like it did the tube.)  If you don’t find anything sharp in the tire, then you’re kind of guessing that whatever caused the flat is gone now.  (And you may or may not be right.) 

Then when you get everything all set with the new tube and you’re ready to put the tire back on the rim you still have to be careful.  That tube is going to get inflated to over 100 psi, so there is a lot of pressure in there.  If you’re not careful, it’s easy to get part of that tube pinched in between the tire and the rim, or sometimes a part of the tube can even kind of get kind of folded up on itself, and if either of those things happens, your new tube will last anywhere from about 30 seconds to maybe one or two miles at the most.

So they got all the flats fixed, except for the last one—it was so close to the end of the ride that instead of fixing it, the guy just gave his car keys to one of the other riders and said, “Come back and get me”.  Sometimes it’s just about getting back home.