SpokEasy

April 2019

Day 30

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It\’s Day 30 of Love to Ride! I hope I\’ll be able to log rides for the Challenge tomorrow, even though the Challenge ends today. Usually I don\’t do an evening ride, but today I did. Getting in my last licks, you see. It\’s Day 30, after all! So ends the month-long Love to Ride challenge. I routinely log my rides even when there isn’t a Challenge in progress, which is how I found out about the April Challenge. I must admit that I’m ready for a bit of a rest now, but I can’t skip riding to work too much if I have any hopes of earning the Super Commuter badge this year. To get it, you must ride to work 200 times within the year; and I’m already behind. I missed too many days earlier this year. My profile shows that I’m 21% there; and 21% of 200 is 42, right? So I still have 158 days to go. While I’d like to get the badge, it looks like my earning it this year is out of reach. There are going to be days when riding to work is impractical; there will be holidays; and probably a vacation. Maybe I\’d do better at bicycling to work regularly if I lived farther away. I was browsing the Love to Ride site today, and I believe there\’s another Challenge coming in September. So let\’s stay in shape and be ready for it!

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The Internal Flame

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What\’s the internal flame? It\’s called metabolism! They say that your metabolism pretty much grinds to a halt – that is, burns next to no calories – when you sit for a long time. I can believe that. At work I usually get up about every 20 minutes; but at home I’m all too often sitting for prolonged periods, especially while working on blogs! I get to feeling rather dazed; and when I do get up, I feel tired and sluggish. Cycling can build muscle; and muscle supposedly uses more calories than fat tissue, even at rest. Cycling can also help with weight loss, and build muscle at the same time. Any exercise, in fact, helps to build muscle. They say that vigorous exercise keeps your metabolism hiked up for a long time after you end your bike ride, your run, or whatever. And when you do have to sit for a long time — FIDGET! Forget what your mother always said about \”Don\’t fidget!\” Squirm around on the chair. Jiggle your heels. Shift your legs around. It helps to keep the internal flame of metabolism from going out.

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Day 29

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Gosh, it\’s Day 29 of Love to Ride! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up and sign up for Love to Ride! Only one more day left to log your 10-minute (or longer) ride. Don\’t miss out! Today I skipped the road bike, although I rode in to work. I had another physical therapy session this morning, and to top it off, for some reason I couldn\’t sleep last night. It looks like the weather will cooperate. Rain isn\’t expected. I wish the wind would be calmer. Ten to 15 mph is enough to be a hassle. But it\’s not as bad as winds of 20 mph! Soon I\’ll be able to put away the leg warmers and cycling jackets until Fall. My pesky nose won\’t run as much now that the weather is warmer. It drove me crazy all Winter! Soon we\’ll have something else: overnight low temperatures around 80 degrees! Every year, after several months of that, I\’m longing for it to cool off. I, who most of my life have felt the cold easily! I\’m never satisfied, am I? Meanwhile, let\’s make good use of Day 29.

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How, Indeed?

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How, indeed, do pro cyclists get so fast? An easy answer is that they start young. They have what it takes to make a professional cyclist: the genetics that allow them to develop the muscle and cardiovascular system needed; the mindset; the opportunities to race and train; access to good equipment. Most of us will never reach pro levels, but we can still work to go faster. I must be lazy, because after six or seven years I still have not gotten my cruising pace up to 15 mph. I think I shy away from the inevitable discomfort of the work required to get faster! Maybe I don\’t do enough of my on-bike force-development exercises. In addition, I ride in the morning before going to work, and don\’t want to wear myself out too much. During my long weekend ride, I don\’t want to burn out miles from home. For very short stretches I can get up as fast as 25.5 mph (that\’s with a stiff tailwind!). Rolling along at 15 mph for hours is still a ways off. Here\’s the thing about speed, though: it can easily be affected by factors beyond the rider\’s control.  How, indeed, can we know whether we\’re improving as cyclists? That\’s why some coaches recommend training with a power meter. X watts is X watts, regardless of your forward speed (or lack thereof). Dental bills and other unexpected expenses have kept me from buying a power meter, so I\’ll keep doing what I\’ve been doing to try to improve my pace. One day, I hope, there\’ll be a breakthrough.

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Haunting Sights?

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The haunting sights are becoming only too common. What rider hasn\’t seen a ghost bike? Those sad, white-painted bicycles mark a tragic encounter between bicycle and motor vehicle. Naturally my home town has its share of ghost bikes. Not long ago one appeared on the route I take to my bike shop. A bit ironic, that. I didn\’t realize that ghost bikes had been around for so long. The complement of ghost bikes is, I suppose, the annual Ride of Silence. I took part in that ride years ago, when it left from the local park. Then the ride switched its venue to another park that\’s about six miles away. To get there I\’d be riding a route that I don\’t often use. On the way there, I would have to deal with rush-hour traffic. I\’d be riding home in the dark afterwards. I\’m used to riding in the dark, but not alongside traffic. So I paid little attention to the Ride of Silence for a long time. Happily, this year\’s Ride of Silence leaves from the nearby park again. Fortunately nobody I\’ve ever known has been killed while riding a bicycle, but a friend was hit by a pickup truck last Fall while cycling. Maybe I can do the Ride of Silence this year, for him. I\’ll be able to ride home from that park with minimal contact with motor traffic. Avoiding traffic while I ride? Maybe I\’m a scaredy-cat, but as I\’ve said, these haunting sights are only too numerous; and I don\’t want the next ghost bike to be for me.

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Day 28

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Wow, it\’s already Day 28 of Love to Ride! Today I kept feeling rather like this snail, even though I averaged 13.2 mph. I pushed for 50 miles, and at about mile 32 I suddenly began to feel worn out. I didn\’t get a second wind until about mile 46. Maybe I needed to eat more. I brought along two fig bars, a small Init bar (similar to the Kind bar), and a Clif bar. I try to take a bite (e.g. one-quarter of a fig bar, 1/8 of a Clif bar) every 15 minutes. But is that enough? I\’ve never been sure. I know I shouldn\’t need to eat as much on the bike as a pro tour rider, but that\’s all. When I\’m doing a long ride, I often eat a GU-Gel when I stop for a break. Maybe I needed more electrolyte drink? By the time I had ridden about 35 miles, I began to wish for something salty. I\’ve tried Combos as ride food, but have found that they\’re a bit too dry/crumbly. They also lack \”oomph\”. Or was bumping the mileage up from 44.6 to 50 a bit too much? I didn\’t think so, but was I wrong? No eagle sighting today, but I saw a white heron. And some eastern kingbirds. I nearly always see something interesting. Wondering what it might be keeps me riding, through Day 28 and beyond!

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Response Time

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Is your response time short, or long? Well, I hope I never need such a response as a medical helicopter! There\’s also the speed of the body\’s response to training. Some people respond quickly to the training load. Others need more time. This is mentioned in The Cyclist\’s Training Bible. It says that the speed of your body\’s response is likely mainly genetic, and that you can\’t change it. This is why training must be tailored to the individual. A program that works great for another cyclist might see me sidelined for weeks with an overuse injury. As the Training Bible puts it, \”What is an easy day for one rider may be a race effort for another.\” What I\’d like to know for sure is whether I\’m a fast responder, or a slow responder. On the face of it, it appears to be the latter. Those on-bike \”force\” efforts that I began doing eight or ten months before last November\’s Tour de Cure only seemed to start taking effect since Tour de Cure! On the other hand, maybe I simply didn\’t work hard enough, often enough at those force intervals. If I had a coach to egg me on, my response time might be faster.

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Day 27

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Day 27 of Love to Ride! How time flies. Just a few more days left, but it\’s not too late to sign up and log your rides! This morning I hitched up the trailer and rode to the salvage store.  I got a pretty good haul for under $29; all this stuff plus a loaf of bread. If only this pic showed the things better! Sometimes, as today, the store has special sales, with the stuff outdoors. It\’s lucky I had the trailer! The trailer, in fact, is good for any trip to the salvage store. I never know when I might run across good stuff. There were six-packs of those ramen noodles-in-a-cup. While they aren\’t heavy, they\’re bulky. If I\’d had only the bike trunk and panniers, I couldn\’t have brought them home because they\’d have taken up too much space. Naturally I headed for the make-your-own-grab-bag bins once I got inside the store; and made up a small grab bag, and a large one. I try to pack my grab bags so as to get in as many things as possible. I brought home an assortment of candy bars, cookies, and things I can use for on-bike food. All for eight bucks 🙂 I found a can of Progresso® soup for 97 cents. The store is beginning to stock little fresh produce, and I got a couple of zucchini and some red onions. I\’m in the mood for Simple Biryani! (See The Feed Zone Cookbook, pg. 224). And so forth. I can get pretty boring with my litany of bargains from the salvage store, so I\’d better stop now, and think about tomorrow\’s ride. After all, Love to Ride isn\’t over yet; it\’s only Day 27!

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Home Base?

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Home base is a good place to reach, right? In baseball, it certainly is! But is there a \”home base\” for cyclists? If you read about cyclist\’s training, you\’ll find a lot of emphasis on the importance of base training: build up your strength and endurance with long, steady rides before starting to work on intensity. I can understand this advice for new cyclists. If uou try to \”put down the hammer\” before you\’ve developed sufficient strength, it\’s too much strain on the area around the knees. I remember my first efforts to ride on the big ring. I couldn\’t do it for more than a few seconds because of the strain on my legs, both muscles and knee joints. It also seems reasonable to me for a cyclist to build up gradually after time off the bike. That would be especially important if the off-time were due to injury or illness. Naturally, not everyone shares that view. Those fellows might be addressing pro cyclists and serious riders who aren\’t pros. Such riders likely will still have a fairly high level of fitness even after off-time. I guess it\’s all relative. My fitness level is certainly higher than it was when I first started riding that tricycle, but compared to even an amateur-level racer, I\’m an absolute weakling. Maybe I need to return to my home base for more training.

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Day 26

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Love to Ride, Day 26! It just keeps rolling along. This morning, however, I had to skip the jaunt on the road bike. I had a physical therapy session at 7:30 am; and trying to go riding first would have been cutting the time too close. If you haven\’t signed up for the Love to Ride April challenge, you\’ve still got four days. Just sign up; do a ride of 10 minutes,;and log it on the site. There\’s no need to try to knock out 50 miles unless you want to. It looks like there will be almost no wind over the weekend.  Hooray! On the way home today, I had just gotten across a railway crossing when the signal bell began clanging. I saw the train approaching from my left, meaning it was headed the same way I was. It was frustrating to discover that the next mile was to be against a headwind, and I hoped to beat the train to the crossing I use to get home. I hadn\’t seen that the \”train\” was but five or six cars long. If I had, I wouldn\’t have bothered to try staying ahead of it.  At one point, it started blaring its horn when it was right alongside of me. OUCH!!! What a way to end Day 26 — or any day!

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