SpokEasy

May 2019

Matters of the Heart

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What matters of the heart? We\’re talking about cycling; not the dating scene. Well, when it comes to \”training\”, maybe I need to pay more attention to advice like this. My Garmin lets me see how much time I spent in which heart rate zones on any ride. All very well; but how do I sort out what it all means? Heart rate, I suspect, is rather like speed in that it can vary according to conditions. Riding against the wind is going to result in a higher heart rate than riding on a day when it\’s dead calm. For that reason, I find it hard to judge from my day-to-day rides whether my heart rate is indicating improved fitness. I do suspect that I need to make more efforts to get my HR into its maximum range if I\’m serious about increasing my cruising speed. And if I can improve my pace, I can cover more miles in X amount of time. I\’m rather time-crunched, after all. There is one thing I notice: riding up the access ramp to the MRT used to send my HR into the max range. Now it doesn\’t, so I guess I\’ve gotten somewhere. But it still feels hard. Since we\’re talking about matters of the heart, maybe I need to take to heart Greg LeMond\’s comment: \”It doesn\’t get easier, you just get faster.\”        

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Un-Sunday Ride

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Un-Sunday Ride Today I did an UN-Sunday ride! Sunday is my usual long-ride day. As a rule, Saturday is for going to get groceries; and the time for other errands. It’s also the time to rest up for the Sunday long ride. This weekend I switched my schedule around, and did a longish, un-Sunday ride today. The forecast for tomorrow isn’t looking too good. Ergo I rode today. I decided not to try pushing myself. My legs still feel heavy and tired, possibly from day before yesterday’s hard efforts. Does this mean I made them too hard? I found Propel at the supermarket this morning, in pre-mixed in bottles. I thought it would be nice to have a break from Zym, and I got some Propel to take along on today’s ride. I prefer having the powder, though. It’s very easy to take along one or two of the packets. The grocery run was less than six miles; but all the same I wasn’t about to make a full-length “Sunday” ride. There was the leg fatigue. There was also the wind. You guessed it — it was a headwind on the way back home. I rode out to my usual pit-stop place; then came back. There were some pretty fierce gusts; and the wind seemed to be strengthening. I checked a weather site after I was home; and it showed the wind had been 13-15 mph. Half an hour later, the same site showed wind at 18 mph; and gusts up to 26 mph. I’m glad I got home when I did.

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Tending Bar?

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Sometimes preparing for a bicycle ride makes me feel that I\’m tending bar. I have to prepare take-along hydration. What to drink while cycling? For me, the shortest ride means bringing along a bottle of water; even two bottles if it\’s hot. For my weekly long ride, I use the Camel-Bak for my main water supply. Just in case the Camel-Bak runs too low, I bring an extra bottle of water in the seat tube\’s bottle cage. For long rides, water alone is unlikely to suffice; especially when the weather is hot. The array of drinks out there for hydration, energy, and so on, is bewildering. Maybe this will help with tending bar! My go-to product is Zym Berry. I like to start a ride of several hours with Zym because it contains caffeine. When the weather gets warm enough that I go through electrolyte drink faster, I pack along Nuun tablets. If the Zym runs out and I still have a ways to ride, I can drop a Nuun tablet into the spare water bottle. I\’m not sure I\’ve tried any carbohydrate sports drinks. I get the impression that they\’re best reserved for very long sessions in the saddle, when on-the-roll eating will be difficult. I may not need carb drinks unless I get into riding centuries or other long events on a regular basis; say, at least once a month. Anyway, I rather subscribe to the water-in-the-bottle, food-in-the-pocket philosophy.

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Eating Again!

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Eating again! That\’s something I do only too often, even when I know I\’m not truly hungry. My sweet tooth is no help. The argument over what and when cyclists should eat seems endless. Or possibly even whether they should eat! By that I mean fasted riding. I\’m extremely wary of trying fasted it. Supposedly it trains the body to be a better fat burner. Sure, I\’d like to be a better fat burner; who wouldn\’t? I don\’t have anybody to monitor me during such training, however, so perhaps I should leave fasted riding to cyclists in serious training. I\’d say that, if you do want to try it, be sure to bring along something to eat in case you feel the bonk coming on. That\’s why I keep several GU-Gels with me whenever I ride, even if it\’s only the commute between home and work. I don\’t need anybody to tell me that I don\’t need to eat like a pro rider doing a multi-day stage race. If I tried, I\’d gain weight like a house afire. It is often said that Tour de France riders burn 5000-8000 calories per stage. That\’s about what I need over two, three, or even four days! Yes, I like to try recipes from The Feed Zone Cookbook, but I don\’t need to eat as much of such foods as I would if I trained and raced like a pro. In the end, it comes down to common sense; the good old Do What Works For You. And now, if you\’ll excuse me, it\’s time for me to be eating again.

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Ride of Silence

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Ride of Silence Ride of Silence is an annual commemoration of those who have been killed or badly injured while riding their bicycles on the roads. Quite likely there are ghost bikes around your home town. These sad memorials mark spots where riders have met their deaths on the road. A friend of  mine was injured late last year when a pickup truck struck him while he was bicycling. I’m glad to be able to report that he’s recovering; and that his family won’t have the sad duty of putting up a ghost bike for him. Today, May 15, the local Ride of Silence took place. The ride began at 7 pm or a little after. It was shorter than I expected; less than 8 miles. On the way home afterwards, my headlight died. I wish I had thought to take a spare with me. We riders all wore black armbands. Our pace was slow; about 6-7 mph. I used the hybrid, because my road bike feels too unsteady at low speeds. It didn’t help that I’m unused to riding near other cyclists. While we were waiting to start the ride, I had to keep moving because somebody’s “fragrance” was bothering my sinuses. That “stuff” made me feel almost sick! This is why I don’t do group rides much. A filter mask is too smothery to wear while cycling. Our pace was slow, but irregular. I had to keep shifting between the first and second cogs; and when I was on cog #2 I kept hearing a lot of clattering. I guess it didn’t realize that it was a ride of silence.    

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Way Down upon …

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Way Down Upon… Way down upon the … no, not the Swanee River; even though the way “soigneur” is typically pronounced sounds a lot like it. “Swannies” are the unsung heroes of pro cycling. They put in long hours, and are the “jacks of all trades”. Or the “janes of all trades”. I feel tired just thinking about it. Swannies give massages at the end of the day. How much physical strength is needed to do even one massage? How long does it take? And to give massages to several cyclists, one after the other? I suspect that the stamina demanded must be great.  Swannies go grocery shopping for the team. Sometimes they buy out a store’s entire stock of an item, because they don’t know when they might be able to buy it again. Swannies are expected to drive. That’s not for me! I haven’t driven a car for over 16 years. I don’t feel up to driving even a comparatively small van; and a team bus? No; the job of swannie is definitely not for me!  I don’t envy swannies having to hand out musettes to riders whizzing past at breakneck speed. That must require nerves of steel, on the part of both riders and swannies. Nor do I envy swannies the task of laundering all that sweaty kit each night. If the day was rainy and wet, all those jerseys, socks, and so on, might be muddy as well as wet. It sounds less than pleasant, to put it mildly. A swannee’s day might run from 6 am to 10 pm. Early to rise, and late to bed. It’s a job I’m not eager to take on. I’d rather go way down upon the Swanee River, and relax.

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More Than Just Legs

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More Than Just Legs Cycling is about more than just legs. From browsing through Feed Zone cookbooks; and web sites such as this, I’m aware of the phenomenon called “flavor fatigue”. Flavor fatigue is real. After several hours of pedaling, my stomach starts to feel uncomfortable. I don’t want to eat any more. It’s amazing how tiresome a Clif Bar is when I eat 1/8 of a bar every 15 minutes, and it’s the same flavor every bite! But if I still have more than a very few miles to go, I need to keep fueling; even if I’m tired of eating.  If this happens to me on a ride of 50 miles or so, at a moderate (pokey?) pace of 12-13 mph, what must it be like for, let’s say, a Tour de France rider? They say that those guys burn up to 8000 calories per stage! They ride much faster than I can, and increased intensity increases stomach discomfort. (Hence the need to train your gut.) Yet the pro tour rider has to keep fueling and hydrating. They say that eating enough during a prolonged stage race is akin to force feeding. The teams’ chefs have quite a job finding a way to keep the peloton properly fed while providing enough variety to stave off flavor fatigue. I try not to bring along exactly the same foods on every long ride; and I usually have at least two flavors of GU-Gel on hand. It helps prevent boredom — I mean, flavor fatigue. Because as I know, cycling is about more than just legs.  

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Feeling Adventurous?

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Sometimes I think it would be wonderful to go on a long bicycle trip. Do you, but you don\’t know how to start planning? I don\’t either, so here\’s some advice to get us going. I haven\’t read it all yet, but at first glance it reminds me of Adventure Cycling, with different \”flavors\” of bicycle touring. If I were to do such a tour, would I need to buy a touring bicycle? And more panniers? And camping equipment? Where would I go? Which part of the country? If I headed for the mountains, I hope I could start from a low-altitude area, and adjust to the increasing altitude as I go. I\’d need some super-low climbing gears, I\’ll bet! Would this 44x32x22 do? Or maybe I could follow a nice, flat coastal route? I\’ve thought that, if I want to ride centuries, the Seagull Century might be a good one, supposing I could get to Maryland. I\’ve heard that the route is flat, but unfortunately tends to be windy. Maybe a ride through the prairies? Would it be possible pedal alongside the Mississippi River all the way to its source in Minnesota? Sounds like the sky\’s the limit. Incidentally, isn\’t it a pity there\’s no constellation Bicyclus up there with Taurus, Orion, etc.?

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Butterflies?

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Why do people talk about \”butterflies in your stomach\” when the thyroid gland (shaped like a butterfly) is in the neck? An under-active thyroid gland is no joke. Hypothyroidism causes constant fatigue; sluggishness; weight gain; and more. Over the years I\’ve been told both that I\’m hypothyroid, and that my thyroid is normal. Which is it? For almost 14 years I dragged along, horribly exhausted and unable to sleep. Focusing my mind was a brutal effort. I was criticized at work for being below par. Naturally the constant feeling that I had an anesthetic hangover made me question how my thyroid gland was doing. Blood tests for thyroid function, done fairly early in that miserable period, were \”normal\”; and I got so everlastingly sick and tired of being told that my problem was \”mental\”. It was only after all those years that a doctor ordered an overnight sleep study; and guess what? I have a sleep disorder! I wish somebody had done that study years earlier. I could have been spared a lot of misery. Yet some thyroid-panel tests have shown my \”numbers\” to be a bit on the low side. One doctor says that that might be explained by small variations from one lab to another. Years ago I saw one doctor who did think I was hypothyroid, because my temperature was running low. But was my thermometer accurate? We need our thyroid glands to be \”up to speed\” so we can function in daily life, and on the bicycle. It\’s amazing how important that small gland is. As for butterflies, I prefer the ones that I see on flowers.

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Sunday UN-ride

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Today was Sunday UN-ride. That\’s right, I skipped the ride today — although I didn\’t spend it idling in a rocking chair, either, and of course it isn\’t Christmas. I wanted a few things from the drug store, and considered riding there so I\’d get in one mile, anyway. But I\’d heard heavy rain at about 5:20 am, and the drug store is in a strip mall located between two streets that flood quickly when it rains hard. So I walked over there. Sure enough, both of those streets were still lakes! After I demolished the pint of ice cream I bought, I decided to get to work on a set of storage shelves I have in my back room. It took about three hours to finish what looked like a small job! I dread the day when I\’ll be moving out of here. I\’ll need at least a week just to sort through everything. The shelves needed to be cleaned; I had to sort through more stuff than I\’d realized I had accumulated; I did some consolidating; and I moved the shelves to another spot in the room before I re-loaded them. Along the way I noticed that I do not need to have done a 3-4 hour bicycle ride to have orthostatic hypotension kick in. As all too often happens, the forecast turned out to be boy-who-cried-wolf. So it was Sunday UN-ride, but maybe I can ride tomorrow morning.

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