My epic failure ride.

A cycling career is a series of experiments. Some things work and some things don't. After many saddles I found the one that works with my bum is a Silverado by WTB. There's others out there I'd like to try, but I don't have the money to test saddles.

One experiment I've been trying recently is riding in plain clothes. Or rather, not lycra and such. It's worked out perfect on my short jaunt to work and on some half hour to hour rides. I've even gone so far as to put flat pedals on my commuter and wear my comfy shoes. No more clackity clackity walking into work.

So this particular experiment went too far on today's ride. The plan was to meet at Ryan F's house, ride to the Wabash trailhead, take that down to Malvern, then ride home. I hadn't really thought it out, but that was going to equal about 75 miles or so. Ryan said it would be a nice mellow ride. So I figured, what the hey. I'll go in near plain clothes, flat pedals, and comfy shoes. Maybe I'll discover that my cold feet issues can be solved this way (that issue is a whole post unto itself).

I met Ryan, we get going, and I feel pretty good. It was mid 30s at the start with a brisk Northish wind, so it was at our backs or sides most of the way. Well after an hour, my toes did their normal winter going numb thing. The only way I can avoid that is to use those chemical toe warmer deals. I got some hints from Ryan and Mr. Bixby that I may try on future long rides.

After we met up with Martin and Tom at the Wabash trailhead, we headed South west with a nice tailwind. After a couple miles, Tom all of a sudden realized that he didn't have his cycling glasses on to protect his contact covered eyes from cold wind and trail debris. He said we could keep going and he'd catch up after going back to the car, but I figured I'd offer my cycling glasses as I had my regular glasses to use. So that worked out fine. We kept right on trucking.

As we kept going Ryan and I would creep off the front sometimes as we were both feeling pretty good. I had forgotten how far Malvern was, though. It's 22 miles down the trail. We left the trailhead at 9:10 and pulled into the C and A cafe at 10:35, just in time to miss breakfast. DOH!! So that was another failure. Martin had wanted to leave the trailhead by 8am, but that would have meant Ryan and I leaving mid-town when it was barely light at 7am and colder still.

Anywho, we ate some great food and Ryan, being the lightest dressed of all of us, decided he needed to get going pretty fast on the return trip to warm up. I felt like going hard too so I went with him. This meant we bid farewell to Tom and Martin at Malvern. This is also the first apology I'm announcing publicly to Tom because I sorta needed my sunglasses back as I didn't see a way for us to cross paths again soon before I'd need to use them. So he had to ride all the way back into a 20ish mph headwind with no eye protection. Tom, I'm very sorry for not thinking that through. I owe you a beer or a beverage of your choice.

Ryan and I got going pretty darn fast. Too fast for my stomach and tired quads to handle. See, when you ride flat pedals, pretty much the only part of your pedal rotation getting any power is the down stroke. I've heard from various places that you don't really pull up on the backside of your stroke as much as you unweight your non power phase. This proved wrong in my case. So after a while of hammering into the wind, uphill, with no blood in my legs due to the digestion of food, I had to back it off. From there on, it was a steady decline into the worst thing a cyclist can do to end a ride - call for an early pick up. Yup, that is the 2nd and consequently 3rd apologies I owe. Ryan, I'm so sorry to turn what could have been a great epic ride into a horrible epic failure by having you call your dad to pick us up at the Wabash Trailhead. And Doug (Ryan's dad) I'm sorry we had you drive over to come pick us up. It was pretty much my complaining (and snail like pace) that led Ryan to call you.

So that's pretty much it. NEVER EVER EVER go for a ride over an hour on flat pedals. Especially if food is involved that will take away the blood you will need to keep your quad only pedal strokes going.

I think I'm going to take a nap now.

Here's an oldie but goodie

Unfortunately this holds true for some cyclists on paved trails too. There's just a mentality of, "I'm going faster and am more important, so get out my way," that happens among some.

Treat others as I'd like to be treated is my rule.

By the way, anyone have any riding plans this weekend? Post em if ya got em!

Anyone not going to Lincoln this weekend?

The Lincoln Cyclocross races are this weekend. If you're fit, go race them. If you want entertainment, go watch them. I think this may be my first year of not attending them. After sucking at racing them (even at my fastest) I would either volunteer, officiate, or just show up to the Lincoln races. Hooligan hill is a good time. Lots of shenanigans going on there. I am not proud to say that I've snatched taped dollar bills from the crotcheral regions of spectators/donators in past races. But after being lapped a few times by the leaders, I didn't care anymore.

So, if you aren't going to join the festivities in Lincoln and want to put in some road/gravel/whatever miles, let me know.

It was fun, is the ride report.

So after failing to read my blog Sunday morning, (sorry bout that Jim and Mark) a group of 6 peeps met up at Scooters for some adventurous times. That's the largest we've had in a while. Which was good since the biting North wind was not fun to battle against.

We headed over the Bob bridge just like last week and instead of hitting the Wabash right away, we took Mark's suggested Woodbine Drive route. This was after Bryan and Jim both had to head home. So then there was 4.

Woodbine Drive was an amazing hill. According to Google, it's a mile and a half climb - a nice steady grinder. I predict future visits to the bluffs. Too bad you usually have to ride along busy roads to get to some of these climbs.

Anywho, the route Mark picked dropped us off right by Dumfries on the Wabash, then we headed around Council Bluffs to ride the Northeast wind home. It was only a total of 47 miles, but with the climbing, it seemed like more. Plus my feet were pretty much frozen blocks of ice by the end. That part was also not so fun.

Thuper Thunday

Scooters at 63rd and Center is the meeting place.

1pm is the meeting time.

3 hours is the ride time (roughly)

Mellow to moderate is the pace.

I will be there is the correct response.

Weekend?

So anybody got anything on tap for the weekend (other than Cranksgiving)?

For Saturday:
Here
For Sunday:
Post up, we'll get something going... weather's going to be iffy so maybe a good day for some gravel?

One hundred and eleventy

After uploading my many commutes and few group rides since I bought the Garmin Edge 205, I have raised $111 for the Rails to Trails Concervancy on behalf of Trek. All possible through the Plus 3 Network website. They have really streamlined the uploading process to make it easier and since I commute to work everyday, I have a lot of files to upload. I wait till my Garmin is low on battery and recharge it through the PC's USB line after inputting all my data.

I got used to this after training for racing. Back then, I had the Polar 725 connected to it's power sensor dealy. The software that comes with Polar is awesome and I sometimes wish I still had the power data. It probably wasn't very accurate, but at least it let me know when I was really on the rivet. I remember ramping it up to around 320 watts for time trials and loving the burn for an hour. But not much more. Ah, those were the days. To be in shape again...

Eleven Eight O Nine

Sunday Ride Details are below... I may or may not be in attendance but I'll be there in spirit at the very least (which means I'll be sleeping in if I don't show)
Place: Scooters @ 120th and Blondo Street
Time: 9 AM Central Standard Time
Duration: 3 Hours
Pace: In the words of one confirmed participant "steady" so I'd say not super easy but its pretty well assured nobody will get dropped.

That is all.

Update on Weekend rides.

Mr. Miles, Randell and I are leaving from my place at 8am to meet up with the Rafal group down at Scooters by 8:30. We'll then ride with them (unless they take off without us) and take the Wabash as far as time will allow. We will probably not do the gravel road route that Rafal has planned.

So that's Saturday. Anyone got plans for Sunday? Post em if ya got em!

Wabash Saturday... 11/7/2009

I am taking the cross bike out on the Wabash Saturday, but you can probably do it on the road bike without a problem. Pace should be pretty relaxed (175-200W with no surges over 250W) for me so I can't think anybody will get dropped. If you want to go faster I'll probably Venga, Venga, Venga but I will let you ride me off your wheel and I will not care. Strictly headed out there for base miles as its that time of the year.

Time: 9AM
Place: Council Bluffs Wabash Trailhead
Duration: 3ish hours of riding

Cold turkey

When I got into cycling, I was bombarded with a new lifestyle. My new friends quenched their thirst with liquids I said I'd never imbibe. When they wanted to get going, they'd order up a coffee. When they wanted to stop and relax, they'd down a beer (or 2, or 3..).

My first foray into drinking was after a race weekend down in Kansas City. It was Fred, his daughter, Ryan Legg, Jon Randell, and Megan Hottman. I think those were all who were in attendance. I'm not saying I blacked out or anything, that was just 4 or 5 years ago, so my memory is fuzzy. Anyway, we stopped at a steakhouse (see, I can't remember which one) to refuel and celebrate the weekend. Ryan knew that I was a lightweight, so he used his race winnings and ordered me up a huge Margarita that was REALLY strong. Getting that buzzed was a new experience for me. Everything was quieter and I felt kinda numb. So of course I had to announce this new discovery to everyone. Instead of saying something like, "Wow, the affects of alcohol have dimmed some of my senses," I blurted out, "Hey guys, look, I can't feel my face," as I pulled on my cheek and pushed on my nose. This was apparently quite hilarious to everyone.

I don't think I've gotten that buzzed since then, but I have taken to drinking beer. The main reason younger people drink beer is to get hammered. I never wanted to get past the buzzed sensation, so cheap crappy beer has never been my thing. I do, however, like the taste of a couple dark lagers. Sam Adams Black Lager and New Belgium's 1554 are a couple of my favorites. But at $7-$8 for 6 drinks, I couldn't keep that in my new aggressive debt defeating budget. I tried the $6 Michelob Porter Beer, but that was still $1 per day I was drinking it. By the way, I only drank 1 per day. Two beers just seemed crazy to me.

So I have cut out the beer. I don't really miss it, but I may drink one every now and then for special occasions.

Next up on the chopping block - coffee. I know some of you are gasping right now. "But Mike, how can you give up coffee?" Easy, stop drinking it. Today is the first day of none whatsoever. I'm not feeling it yet, but I've also sipped some Mt. Dew throughout the day. The main reason for giving up coffee is because it's too is expensive and I never really liked the taste. It was something I drank just for the caffeine. I know you can go cheap with Folgers made at home etc, but I'm the only one at home that drinks coffee. So making sure we have filters, going through the process of making it and all that for just me seems a little too much. Plus, I'm lazy and since we meet at coffee shops for our rides, I just order there. So that's at least $1.50 if not $4 as I like the foo-foo drinks. If I didn't depend on the hit of caffeine to get me going, the money and starting from a coffee shop would not be needed.

So if you've been keeping track, I had been spending anywhere from $1 to $6 A DAY on liquids. There's a water faucet down the hall from my desk and my water bill at home is taken care of by the landlord. Why am I spending money on flavored water again??

From here on, I'm cutting out the unnecessary drinks to save money. I don't need it. It's an expenditure of which cutting out will show great returns. Like I said before, I may, occasionally enjoy a brew for a celebration, or have a coffee if I go out to a big family breakfast, but the daily consumption must stop. If I ever really want to get out of debt and get on with life, I have to strip my budget of frivolous spending.

Ok, now that the declaration has been made, let's discuss the weekend. 3 day weekend!! WOO HOO!! The wife is going on a trip early Friday AM so I took that day off to take her to the airport. I'll probably finish up some bike work that needs to be done the rest of the day, then head over to Randells house to help him setup a home network. YAY New toys to play with!!

So that's pretty much Friday. Saturday is completely up in the air. I do need to come up with some sort of costume for a Halloween party I'm attending Saturday night, but other than that, I'm free if anyone would like to head out for a ride.

Sunday, I need to be home around noon so I can pick the wife up from the airport. So an early morning ride would be best. Right now, it's looking to be around 37 degrees with a below 10 mph South wind at daybreak. Daybreak being 8am. If we want to meet somewhere at 9am and get a few hours in, that would be awesome. If you have rights to post on this blog and want to suggest something, post away. My cold turkey haze induced run-on could stand to be shuffled down the list...

Any Sunday ride plans?

I know Mr. Miles is out of town, but if anyone else wants to get something together, let me know where and when.

Sprint finish on every training ride?

A new article from The New York Times suggests that cooling down has absolutely no benefit for moderate athletes. Now us higher trained cyclists could risk getting dizzy from blood pooling in our legs if we just come to a complete stop after a our last sprint of a workout. But otherwise, there's no physiological benefit of the 5-10 minutes cool down process.

In fact, the lactic acid produced from hard exercise, which used to be considered bad for muscles, is actually a fuel that converts to glycogen for muscle's use. So doing a sprint or short interval could possibly provide your muscles with some fuel naturally instead of the need to immediately find food after a workout. I think another study should follow this up. That would be very interesting to find out that all those recovery mixes could be replaced with a simple sprint finish on every ride.

Holy soreness.

The ride: Shabbos +1. The attendees: Mr. Miles, Bryan, and Big Puma (aka Mr. Fenster). I new Bryan was going to be feeling his oats since he was running a Trek Madone finally after putzing along on a heavy steel Bianchi for a couple months. Mr. Miles always is a power rider, and then Big Puma shows up who I've heard has been putting everyone in the hurt lockers recently.

Well crap. I hadn't done a long ride in a couple weeks and my whopping 6 mile round trip commute sure isn't much to get fast from. However, I also had a secret weapon. I had been riding a heavy commuter for about 3 weeks and I showed up on my pared down racy Lemond Bike. Ha ha!!

We left the coffee shop and headed straight into the wind. Of course the speed gradually ramped up but we were civilized to each other and traded pulls. However, the ramping up was just too much after a while. Bryan was having fit/saddle issues and I sure wasn't comfortable holding 18 mph into a 15-ish mph headwind. But luckily we were near our Southernmost destiny. So we headed East to do some climbing in Bellevue. Of course the eventual serious climbing wasn't planned, but it's difficult to venture into Bellevue and not think, "I wonder how much that one crazy hill will hurt?" The first climb was a steady grinder to reach Bellevue Blvd. This thing is deceptive since it doesn't seem steep for the first couple of blocks, but then it curves to the left and goes UP. At the top of the climb, Bryan read my mind and said, "Hey, should we go climb some crazy hills?" Why yes sir, I do concur.

So we hit up Fontanelle Hills neighborhood and did a double decker climb on which Randall and I used to do competitive hill attacks. Basically, you hit the bottom of the climb, one guy leads out at a fairly fast clip, then about a third of the way from the top, the 2nd guy comes around and attacks. Whoever get's to the top first is better, er, wins that round. We would do 6 repeats of these. I think I died a little each round. But it was fun!

So our group got to the top of the double decker and promptly fell over. Well not really. Big Puma had a slow leaking flat that was needing a change, so we waited around for that. At this point, we were pretty much out of time so we headed back toward home. Of course the only way to do so was still really hilly, but we made it ok. Mr. Miles let me know in a text later that we "normalized" out to 265 watts for the ride. My guess is that means averaged 265, which seems high, but I don't train with power, so I'm probably way off. It was painful though. Even after an easy spin this morning, my legs are still all toight and sore.

More coffee please!

Weekend Plans

Now that I can breathe again after Munson's response to the cliffhanger.... I'm going to post up a weekend plan request since nobody else has. Anybody thinking about riding? We'll have 50's and sun...

To answer the Cliffhanger..

If you were at all wondering what the outcome of the car verdict was; $200 later and it's good for a while. The right tie rod was possibly the culprit of a noise that's been concerning us. We'll see if the noise comes back, but I believe it's gone. There are other issues with the car that are of concern, but that's a few thousand miles down the road.

Our car setup works for our budget at the moment. It's old, rusty, has old parts that need replacing about once a year, but still starts every time and get's us around. It's paid off, and doesn't cost much to insure or license. We live at about 60th and Center and I ride my bike a whopping 3 miles to work at 42nd and Leavenworth (UNMC), and the wife drives a whopping 2 miles to work at 84th and Center. Other than that, we go out occasionally and buy groceries. It's been 7 months since my last oil change with less than 3000 miles during that time. I know you're supposed to change every 3 months just to keep the oil fresh, but I'm cheap and lazy, otherwise I'd do it myself more consistently. Plus I like taking my car into Honda Exclusive. They are about 4 blocks from my work and are a great shop. Todd, the owner and person you usually deal with, gives you the things to worry about in order of safety. At one point a few years ago, I was looking at $900 worth of upkeep to make the car safe. He worked with me on a plan to stretch that out over a year so my wallet didn't take such a hit all at once. If you have a Honda, I highly recommend their shop.

Ok, enough car talk. Man, the difference between my commuter and my fast bike is crazy. It'd be interesting to put a powermeter on both and see how much more energy I'm expending just to get up hills with an extra 10 pounds worth of bike. 10 pounds doesn't sound like much, but man it sure feels like it. Either that or I'm really losing my strength. Or my position on the 2 bikes is different enough that my muscles don't like the change. Or maybe it's all in my head???

I suppose I should post something

This last Sunday's ride was a great time. It was kinda short being it was pretty cold and Mr. Miles' bike was giving him Italian problems. Long story...

I think it's too early to be this cold, but hopefully it's a sign that the winter will be very mild. That would be awesome.

I'm on call this Saturday morning, but Sunday looks to be a nice day to ride. Last report said that it's supposed to get up to 60 degrees. That will feel awesome. Or make me sick. Drastic changes in temps generally make me feel lousy for a few days after the swing.

In non bike related news, I took my 94 Honda Civic in for an oil change and to find the cause of a bad noise it's making. If the news is real bad - as in money bad, I may just find someplace to trade it in for a newer car. I really don't want the hassle of finding a new car, and all the costs that go along with it, but I'm worried my Civic is going to nickel and dime me to death. But then again, no car payment, cheap insurance and licensing is pretty nice.

Sunday ride? Possibly indoors?

The forecast for Sunday is mid 30s and cloudy. I don't know if I'm ready to ride in that kind of weather yet. I'll have to dig out all my wintery clothes if we do head out.

Or we could all meet at someone's house and break out the race dvds? I'm up for whatever. I'd like to take a poll and see what everyone thinks. Indoor/outdoor and timeline also.

RESPOND!!!

Awesome bike race.

You must watch this video. The one thing that does bother me about it, is who won the event. Must be nice to retire from pro bike racing after being caught doping, then go on to win such an event.

Oh running, why do I ever give you up?

After a long day on Saturday officiating the Manawa Mountain bike Mayhem race, I got up early to visit the parents house and have a big family breakfast since my little brother was in town. Apparently though, no one was up and ready yet. My dad was, I guess. He went to the store to pick up food stuffs, and my mom was just waking up with coffee and the paper. Apparently, my little bro stayed up way late and drank joyously with his high school reunion attendees. But, the plan was to get up and go running around Standing Bear lake at 10am. So Clark, my little brother, got up by 9am and we both loaded up on some delicious breakfast, compliments of our great dad.

After not completely finishing our blueberry pancakes and sausage, we jetted out to Standing Bear. Clark, himself a frequent runner, had 3 other friends coming, only 1 of which ran with any consistency compared to the rest of us. So he and his running friend took off while the other 2 and I ran/walked and talked. Which was awesome! I'd forgotten about the "runner's high" that comes with pounding the pavement with your feet. I felt pretty good throughout the whole 3-4 miles (not sure about the new trail distance), but the occasional walking helped that issue I'm sure. Now I'm reinvigorated with the option of running!

I think, at first, I'll designate Mondays and Fridays as running after work days. That way I can start and end the week with some great exercise. It's fall now, and the weather's just going to get colder from here on out. Some people like to run since it's way easier to spend a half hour to an hour outside keeping warm while running compared to a few hours freezing your toes/fingers off while riding a bike. So the Shabbos (+1) rides might turn into runs eventually. Some of you might know my abhorrence of indoor training, so that will be reserved for when I get convinced (conned?) into joining a few people to do that while watching race dvds.

Going back to the Manawa Race, I really want to thank Rusty (forgot his last name) from the Velo Veloce team. He made the race run smooth for results and such. While I was busy taking down numbers and times, he would fill in the many sheets of the different races with the times I wrote down. So by the end of the race, he'd get the last few timings, plop them in the right slots, and we could post the results right away. My last mtb race, I didn't have someone doing that, so after each race was over, I'd have to fill in the blanks myself, while still keeping tabs on the Marathoners and answering questions, and starting the next races, and so on and so forth. I felt so bad holding things up at that race, but didn't even think of this method that Rusty had created. He was a real trooper even though he was going cross eyed toward the end with all the numbers he had to sort through. I also want to thank all the other people with Psycowpath and Velo Veloce for hosting a great event. I'm glad we could work together well to put on a timely, accurate event for the riders in attendance. It was a great day!