SpokEasy

May 2019

Get Ready!

BACK ISSUES /

TTime to get ready! Preparing for the Sunday morning long ride can feel like getting ready for a major trek, especially in hot weather. I\’ll need electrolyte drink. I fix it the evening before, so it can  be thoroughly chilled. It tastes better cold, but unfortunately it won\’t stay cold for long! I prep my recovery drink, too but usually I wait until morning to prep my ride food. Sadly, Sierra Trail Mix Clif Bars don\’t seem to exist any more. I have to turn to other varieties, such as White Chocolate Macadamia Nut; or I take along other things to eat. When I\’ll be out for much over one hour, I use the Camel-Bak. Even in cold weather, hydration is important. When it\’s hot, having enough fluid along is even more important. Perhaps you\’ve noticed that riding for three or four hours with a heavy hydration system on your back leaves you feeling like something is pressing on you between the shoulder blades; even long after you\’ve finished your ride and put the Camel-Bak away until next week. I used to have that problem. Exercises can help with that. An exercise similar to Prone Lateral Raise has strengthened those muscles enough that I can take that weight on my back much more comfortably. Part of the prep is checking the weather forecast. It will be clear tomorrow, but hot. I wish there were a ride prep I could do to keep the temperature down! All I can do is to get ready for a hot ride.

Get Ready! Read More »

Enjoy While It\’s Here

BACK ISSUES /

Enjoy while it\’s here! It\’s a three-day weekend! It would be nice if I could get away and ride through a landscape like this one! So far the weather is cooperating rather well. True, it\’s hot (85 degrees at 11:45 am), but it isn\’t raining and the wind isn\’t bad. In fact, the wind feels good if I\’m not trying to ride against it! As I was on the way home from the salvage store, I was working against the breeze. (So what else is new?) Six to eight mph doesn\’t sound like much of a wind, but I was hauling the trailer again. I\’m using it more than I did in the past because 1) those make-your-own-grab-bags are quite bulky; and 2) now that the weather is getting hot, I want a small cooler for such items as bologna. The only one I have is double-six-pack size, and it takes up most of the space in one of my panniers. Tomorrow it will get up to about 90 degrees; wind 5-10 mph. I\’d better get used to starting my Sunday long rides earlier, so I can be back home before the heat gets really bad. I\’m thinking about doing 40 miles or so tomorrow. I\’m also toying with the idea of getting a pair of sun sleeves. If they keep me a bit cooler and mean I need to use less sunblock, they\’ll be worth it. By Thursday we\’ll have a chance of showers and T-storms. We\’ve got good weather now, so let\’s enjoy while it\’s here.

Enjoy While It\’s Here Read More »

Playing Favorites

BACK ISSUES /

Playing favorites in typically viewed with disdain. For instance, the advice goes that a parent shouldn\’t favor one child over another. When the Tour de France is on, it can be very difficult to keep from playing favorites. Who’s your favorite pro rider? If I actually have a favorite, it’s Nairo Quintana.  He caught my attention the year he won the white jersey in the Tour de France, and was in second place overall. Gosh, was that 2015? To me it seems like year before last. I think I’m drawn to watching him because he, like me, is “little”. True, he has six inches over me when it comes to height, but he’s been described as “diminutive” often enough. Seeing how he can climb, though, I’ll bet his power-to-weight ratio is off the charts. While we\’re talking about \”favs\”, don\’t we all have a route that we\’d rather ride than any other that we know? Give me the local segment of the MRT. I don\’t have to ride alongside traffic! The drawback is that I\’m on top of the levee, and that can get tough when there\’s a strong wind. How about your favorite \”ride\” food? I\’m a bit undecided there. I\’ve tried a lot of different things, including rice cakes a la Feed Zone. Some things, while I like them, don\’t have enough \”oomph\” for long-ride snacks, so I know it\’s important to choose your on-bike food wisely. The list of favorites could go on indefinitely: favorite jersey, favorite chain lube — even a favorite pair of socks!

Playing Favorites Read More »

Not the Best Idea

BACK ISSUES /

It\’s not the best idea to wear yourself out on the bike, is it? I was brought up with the \”Use it up, wear it out, make it do\” mantra. My mother lived through the Great Depression, and believed very much in that. I still will wear my blouses until they\’re threadbare. I often find it hard to throw things away, even when I don\’t have anywhere to keep them! When it comes to our bodies, however, we need to re-think such advice. For example, how many pedal strokes do we take during a long ride? Let\’s say I average 80 rpm during a ride that lasts 3:48:55. Round it up to three hours, forty-nine minutes, or 229 minutes. That\’s 18,320 pedal strokes. Double that for a hypothetical century, and we\’re talking about the knees doing a lot of repetitive motion. Nobody wants worn-out knees, or worn-out any body part. How can we prevent those dreaded overuse injuries? There\’s plenty of advice out there. Regarding the knees, exercises to strengthen the supporting muscles are helpful. When I first got going on two wheels, I\’d go sway-backed after 15-20 minutes of riding. Exercises to strengthen the core muscles got rid of that. It seems that every cycling book includes something about off-bike exercises: The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling; and Get Fast! are but two examples. Build up distance slowly; do those off-bike exercises to strengthen the \”supporting cast\”. Letting those muscles remain weak is not the best idea.

Not the Best Idea Read More »

Choose Your Weapon

BACK ISSUES /

Choose your weapon! Keeping a bicycle in good working order does seem rather like a duel, doesn\’t it? A duel with the elements, that is. The frame gets splattered with gritty mud during a wet ride. The chain ends up a mess, too. After tires, they say, the bicycle\’s biggest maintenance problem is its chain. It needs to be cleaned and dried after a wet ride. It needs lube! So, choose your weapon! But there are so many different types of lube! Which  one is best for my chain? Wet lube year-round would seem a good choice for me. Our average annual rainfall is 60 inches. On the other hand, we\’ll get long dry spells now and then; and during those times a dry lube would be better, I guess. I\’ve taken to using a self-cleaning lube. It\’s easier, and a little less messy. I\’m not splashing dirty, sudsy, oily water around. I also don\’t have to worry about proper disposal of that dirty water. As to getting excess lube off the chain, I\’m never sure I\’m doing it right. I think I\’m overly concerned that I\’ll get too much lube off the chain. If I have to handle the chain, such as if it comes off the small ring, my hands get black with oil. Yet a dry chain isn\’t the best idea, either. I\’ll keep dueling with it. Maybe one day I\’ll figure it out.

Choose Your Weapon Read More »

Inch by Inch?

BACK ISSUES /

Am I progressing merely inch by inch? Or even as quickly as that? Often enough I\’ve complained that my overall pace doesn\’t seem to be improving any too fast. For years I\’ve had \”increase my pace to 15 mph\” as a goal; and haven\’t attained it yet. Well, let me stop and think a minute. Yes, I\’m still unable to cruise at 15 mph for several hours; but I\’m also better at going 15 mph for several miles. Time was when reaching 15 mph at all was very hard, even when I had a stiff tailwind! Last Saturday I rode home 14.5 miles against a wind of 13-15 mph. My average speed over those miles was 9.45 mph, which seems awfully slow. On second thought, such a wind used to push me back to a lower speed than that! Last Tuesday I decided to see whether I could get up to 20 mph. I didn\’t only get there; I sustained it for a full minute! I even hit a peak speed of 21+ mph. The flip side of increasing my pace, I suppose, is being able to go for a recovery ride and stay in heart rate Zone 1. It used to be very hard to stay in Zone 1; lately I\’ve been on easy rides and stayed below Zone 1! My Garmin lets me keep tabs on myself as I ride. Adding it all up, it looks like I might be getting somewhere, even if I\’m merely plodding along inch by inch.  

Inch by Inch? Read More »

Pain Cave Again

BACK ISSUES /

The pain cave might not be so bad if only it had a view like this one. I don\’t see how anyone can disagree with the fact that indoor cycling means zero risk of being hit by a car, barring an extremely freakish accident. You hear now and then of a car leaving the roadway and bashing its way through the wall of someone\’s home. But for the sake of argument, let\’s say that it won\’t happen. Yes, indoor cycling does away with traffic signals, stop signs, and having to dodge potholes. Want climbing? Use the trainer\’s climbing block! It can let you choose your \”grade\”, depending on how hard a workout you want. It doesn\’t have to be raining for your bicycle to get quite mucky. If the ground is wet from recent rain, or even heavy fog, I get home with a mud-spattered bike, which I find quite annoying. \”Ride\” indoors and you\’ll at least avoid that. I\’m completely ignorant of Zwift and other such applications, and I\’ll let them be. I\’m quite content with my Garmin. As to the cons of indoor riding — yes, it\’s monotonous in the extreme. Time crawls. If I do hard efforts, the whole place shakes and rattles. But as the article says, it\’s better than no ride at all.

Pain Cave Again Read More »

Will I Remember?

BACK ISSUES /

Will I remember this, or not? I\’m not the greatest at mechanical things to begin with. I recently had the rear derailer on my hybrid replaced. I had started having problems with the shifting. When I tried to shift from the biggest cog (#1) to the second biggest (#2), it didn\’t feel like I was in second gear. I kept hearing odd, clicking sounds. After at least a minute, the bike might actually shift. Keep that up too long, and I\’m liable to wear out the cassette! After work I stopped by the bike shop. They showed me how to adjust the rear derailer. There\’s a kind of elongated knob where the cable goes into the handlebars. I think I see it in this pic. Look carefully at this right-hand brake lever; see that dark-colored thing? It\’s just above a similar-shaped knob that\’s silver/white. If I\’m having trouble shifting to smaller cogs (i.e. harder gears), turn that knob away from the saddle. Don\’t do much at one time; not even a full turn. If shifting from small cogs back to larger ones is a problem, do the opposite. Will I remember that? I hope that my having composed this blog will help.

Will I Remember? Read More »

Doggone It!

BACK ISSUES /

Doggone it! There\’s that mutt again! Oh, that hair-raising moment while cycling when we realize that a dog is chasing us! I find it very unsettling, especially when the dog in question is not only running after me, but growling. There\’s one street where a particular dog would chase me if I rode past; and to make it more worrisome, that mutt seemed to be going right for my front wheel, as if it knew that that was a sure way to bring me down! I\’d like to know why that dog\’s owner didn\’t do more to keep it in the yard. I took to avoiding that street if possible. But what if you can\’t avoid a certain route if you\’re to ride, and there\’s always Dog Trouble along the way? If possible, sprint to get well ahead of the dog. Shout things such as NO! BACK! STAY! BAD DOG!!! It\’s true that you do need to be able to ride fast. One time I was up to 15 mph, and that nuisance dog was still keeping up with me. Squirting the dog with water, or spraying it with pepper, are possibilities; but you need to be very sure of your bike-handling skills before trying these things. You don\’t want to lose your balance and fall, or swerve into the path of a car, because you\’re trying to fend off a canine attacker. If a dog is a persistent problem, report it to the authorities. Doggone it, no dog should be running loose in the first place. It\’s dangerous to the dog and to us.

Doggone It! Read More »

Ooh, ooh, OUCH!

BACK ISSUES /

I had the idea that \”pain cave\” meant the state you’re in during prolonged, hard efforts: legs burning, heart pounding through your ribs, lungs gasping for air. More specifically, I was thinking of such efforts done outdoors. Actually it seems that “pain cave” means an indoor room in which to do these exhausting workouts! I\’ll have to do without such a pain cave. I have a trainer, but reserve it for days when conditions outdoors are truly terrible. Besides, let\’s face it, pedaling away while my bike is hooked into that trainer is very much a pain in the neck. For me, setting up a pain cave would be impractical in any case. I don\’t have a room I can reserve exclusively for the purpose. I can\’t afford to buy more equipment. \”Riding\” in the trainer gets noisy, and that\’s not so good when you live in an apartment. I\’ve seen mention of an indoor-trainer system that lets you see the \”course\” you\’re following on your TV screen. I don\’t have a TV, so I\’ll have to skip that. It sounds good, though. It would ease some of the monotony of indoor \”riding\”, when time seems to stand still. That, I think, is the biggest \”pain\” of all!      

Ooh, ooh, OUCH! Read More »