SpokEasy

January 2022

Cold Thoughts

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Cold Thoughts I get cold thoughts as soon as the temperature starts to edge below 70 degrees. It’s no wonder: I don’t have central climate control; and it gets chilly in here! I spend a lot of time parked in front of my electric heater. Unfortunately that hikes up my power bill! The chill makes me sluggish; and it seems to take much longer to get ready for a ride on such mornings. Perhaps it does! When it’s hot, I don’t have to pull on leg warmers, double socks, and so on. But if running in cold weather has its upside, so does cycling. If nothing else, I feel good that I rode when I get home after a frigid trip. Of course we cold-weather cyclists have to be mindful of layering; and don’t forget the individual cold-tolerance factor. What some people think “isn’t that cold” is too cold for me! If you’ll be riding for hours in freezing temperatures, some special gear is in order. You can get insulating covers for your Camel-Bak drinking tube; and if insulated bottles keep liquids cool longer on hot days, I expect they’d keep liquids warm for longer in the cold. Cold thoughts for me include those warming packs. How did I get along before I had them? Maybe I should tuck some of them into my socks, just above my shoes; then my feet might not get as cold. To give my arms extra warmth, I use the sleeve part of an old cycling jacket. (The zipper went bad, so the jacket itself was useless). No matter how I dress for a cold ride, though, nothing keeps my nose from running like crazy. Would a balaclava help? Or would it be a glorified handkerchief? I Felt the Chill I had more cold thoughts this morning when I went out to ride. It was slightly warmer than the previous few days; and I decided I didn’t need an additional layer over my leg warmers. Wrong decision. As soon as I got outside, my legs felt cold. They didn’t warm up until I had ridden 8 miles or so; and I was chilly in general. There was some fog here and there; and dampness doesn’t help to keep me warm. Maybe the reason I feel tired and sluggish this time of year is that it’s chilly indoors, too. I guess I’m cold-blooded!

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Tradeoff

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Tradeoff There’s a tradeoff involved if I want to visit the salvage store on Saturday; but still want to get fresh produce. It means I must make a weekday morning grocery run in lieu of my usual jaunt on the road bike. It’s rather a nuisance, because I have to be at work at 8:00 am; and thus must head for the store at 5:30 am! How much easier it was when work-from-home was in effect! Today I made the tradeoff. I didn’t get veggies, except for an onion; but I  wanted bananas and grapes. Bananas are quite a go-to food for cyclists; and I like to have one with peanut butter before a ride. Another pre-ride favorite is frozen grapes with peanut butter. Grapes are also good with – if you can believe it – hummus. So hummus was on my list this morning. I got some yogurt; and looked for kitchen matches. Apparently they’re very popular now, because the store was out of them. The employee whom I asked, said I was the third person who was looking for matches! I’m sure the store has some sports bars; but I didn’t have time to hunt for them. That’s the drawback to squeezing in a grocery-shopping ride before I go to work: it has to be a quick trip. I have to know exactly what I want; where to find it; and I can’t buy too many things. The more I buy, the longer I’ll be in the store; and I don’t want to be late for work. I got home about 6:40 am; and that was enough time to put away the groceries and get ready to ride to work. Alas for my diet, I didn’t get around to fixing a lunch last night; and this morning there wasn’t time. “Lunch” today was a Clif Builder’s Protein bar and pretzels! How’s that for good nutrition?

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Double Duty

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I like things that can do double duty; or even triple duty! Multi-use items mean that I have fewer things to clutter up my space; and I spend less, too. It sounds like a Multi Tool; and yes, I have something like this one in my road bike\’s under-saddle pack. Sometimes I find double duty when I least expect it. As an example, BBH includes a formula for waterless wax polish. Years ago I whipped up a batch, and tried it on a wooden bookcase; and I discovered that the stuff is great as hand cream. It\’s quite easy to make, too; and a small batch lasts all Winter, because a little goes a long way. I have no real drinking glasses; but I do have a mug. A mug works just as well as a glass; and it can tolerate hot drinks as well as cold ones. If I really want a drinking glass, I use a 12 ounce Mason jar. The jars have lids, so I can use them to store food, too. Double duty yet again! I often get more than one use out of things by repurposing them. I use an old peanut butter jar as my change-catcher; and I keep some old hand cream that I use to lube the trailer hitch. An old pair of half-fingered cycling gloves keeps my hands warm when it\’s chilly at work. My hybrid is multi-use, for sure. It\’s transportation with a built-in exercise machine; and at the same time, it can carry loads for me. I\’ve got a \”stuff\” problem; and I need to eke out double (or triple, quadruple, etc.) duty with as many items as possible!

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Warm Ups

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Warm ups sound like something you wear while you get your muscles prepared for ballet class; or to stretch before a strenuous bicycle ride. But warm ups can come after a ride, too! What I mean is hot chocolate. Our crazy weather seesaws back and forth between a high of 80 degrees one day; to temperatures down to 40 during the ensuing night. Sunday afternoon and night was just such an occasion. Then last night, it fell to the mid- 40s again; and the chill factor early this morning was 41 degrees. Of course that meant a chilly ride! I try to save the warming packs for times when the temperature is below 40; but a chill factor like today\’s warrants using them, too. When I get home after a ride in such conditions, of course I\’m cold; and a mug of hot chocolate is great as warm ups. The catch is, I don\’t have time for it when I have to eat quickly; and then leave for work. The first hot chocolate I found at the salvage store was actually Keurig pods, which I didn\’t notice until I was back home. I don\’t have a Keurig; but that didn\’t deter me. I just put the contents of a pod into a mug; added hot water; and let the chocolate dissolve. It worked fine! I\’m not sure a Keurig would make much sense for me, anyway. I\’m not a coffee drinker; and never was. I begged a taste of coffee when I was about six; and I was off of that beverage for life! Perhaps ironically, I love to smell roasting coffee beans and brewing coffee. I felt very sluggish this morning; and maybe I needed some warm ups after the ride!

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Skinny Obese?

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Am I skinny obese? Since September 2020 I\’ve lost about 23 pounds; and for me, that\’s a significant amount of weight. Even so, \”skinny obese\” began nagging at my mind after I watched this video. Cycling, and watching my diet, should do a lot to keep my weight in check; but it appears that weight and BMI aren\’t the whole picture. Now I wonder whether I actually am carrying around excessive body fat. For those who want to lose weight by cycling, there\’s this book: It includes several inspiring stories of people who lost weight in the triple digits by riding a bicycle. I\’m sure it wasn\’t easy for them; but they did it! Also included are some off-bike exercises to help tone and strengthen the upper body and core; and others to improve flexibility. There are several different cycling workout programs, according to how much weight a person wants to lose; and one for staying fit for life. Frame size, aka physical build, is discussed as well; and mention is made of the \”apple versus pear\” aspect of body fat. What can I do to reduce my body fat? I don\’t need to lose much more weight, if any; but maybe I need to push myself to ride harder for farther distances. I don\’t necessarily mean HIIT; but working for 16-17 mph, instead of 15 mph, might do me a lot of good. There\’s something in this book about the balanced plate; and eating \”active calories\” rather than \”couch potato calories\”. I need to work harder at avoiding the latter, because I don\’t want to be skinny obese!

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The Trouble With Forecasts

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The trouble with forecasts is, they\’re often too variable. I can check two different sites to see what the weather will be like; and one prediction often looks much more dire than the other. Last night, the NOAA site said that today\’s rain and T-storms were most likely in the afternoon. A second weather site predicted scattered T-storms from 6:00 onwards. I didn\’t know what to believe! It had me on tenterhooks, wondering whether I\’d get to ride today. I half-expected to wake to pouring rain and thunder. At 7:30 am the sun was dodging in and out, but it didn\’t look like it would rain soon; so I went out to ride. To my surprise, it was foggy! It wasn\’t cold; but temperatures in the low 70s are cool enough for me to want leg warmers and a lightweight skull cap. They say it\’s better to be slightly under-dressed than to dress too warmly; but I don\’t care. I\’d rather be a bit too warm! After a while the fog burned off; but the sun kept going behind the clouds. I decided it was probably better to shorten my ride; and I put in only 29 miles. That\’s far less than the 40 miles I had planned to do! The wind was pesky today; and there evidently were some spotty showers around. On the way home, I rode through several places where the bike path was wet. They weren\’t wet when I passed those areas on the way out! I got home about 10:15; and two hours later I was still waiting for it to start storming. That\’s the trouble with forecasts: they often provoke me to borrow trouble!

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The Old Groove

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I\’m getting back into the old groove. Wednesday I returned to work; and today I rode to the salvage store. I took along the trailer; and I was glad to find that the store had the mega-packs of bathroom tissue. I found six-packs of bottled Propel. It will do as electrolyte drink for my Sunday long rides; and I thought it might be cheaper than Nuun. It is; but only by a few pennies. Oh, well. \”A penny saved is a penny earned\”, as the saying goes. Today I didn\’t do well by the grab bag. For the last few months the grab-bag bins haven\’t offered much that\’s suitable for ride food; and I got only 12 items. It wasn\’t a total loss, though. One of the items had its old price sticker on it: $2.29; and I got it for a quarter! I like getting candy bars and other snacks on the cheap. It means I can eat one bite and not feel too bad about throwing out the rest. I\’m always going to have to keep my A1c in mind; and I shouldn\’t be bringing home sugary junk food at all! But eating small amounts regularly is probably better than denying myself for weeks or months; and then bingeing. Of course there was a headwind on the way home; and that\’s the old groove, for sure. I felt terribly slow; and a 15 mph wind is harder to deal with when I\’m on the hybrid and hauling the trailer! Tomorrow? It\’s been getting more and more cloudy, and the forecast says showers are likely tomorrow; possibly even T-storms. You may be sure that I\’m not happy with such a forecast; but worrying about the weather is certainly the old groove. Day before yesterday I had a small biopsy done on my lower back; and I have two stitches. I hope the Camel-Bak won\’t rub it too much! I don\’t want to skip riding entirely, because I set myself a goal of 5000 miles this year. That isn\’t impossible, I know, because I came pretty close to it last year. All I can do is see what tomorrow brings.

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How Do You Breathe?

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How do you breathe: mouth or nose? When I’m cycling, I often wind up breathing through my mouth, thanks to my cantankerous nose. The colder the weather, the worse this problem is. That runny nose is an annoyance in itself; and breathing through my mouth so much makes me get thirsty faster! Thus I need the Camel-Bak on my Sunday long rides even if the mercury stands at the freezing point. I played a wind instrument for many years; so I guess I can say that I know something about breathing technique. Don\’t worry about \”breathing from the diaphragm\”, because the diaphragm cannot be consciously controlled. Pretend there\’s a line across you, at the point where your legs join your body. When you inhale, let yourself fill up with air down to that line. When I\’m riding hard, of course I\’m aware of my breathing; but my mind is on things other than my breathing technique. I\’m watching where I\’m going; and that\’s especially important when I\’m riding in the dark. At the same time, I\’m keeping an eye on the length of the current interval; and how fast I\’m going. Or I would be, if I could figure out how to program that Garmin. It\’s driving me bonkers. How do you breathe when something like that is wearing out your fingers and your brain? I got quite tense over it!

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Bicycle Power

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Bicycle power can do quite a lot. It lets us enjoy ourselves; and it takes us from Point A to Point B. I\’ve read of ways to hook up a bicycle to small appliances, such as blenders. But can bicycle power run a rototiller? Why am I writing about rototillers in a cycling blog? I daydream sometimes about having a garden, so I can grow some of my own food. Unfortunately, I\’m having trouble with apparent arthritis in my hands; and it\’s hard to peel the top off of a container of hummus. If a simple task like that is difficult, how could I manage gardening? Well, I can always hope. Growing my own produce, or some of it, means less reliance on supermarkets; and that\’s especially important for people who aren\’t close to a grocery store. Yesterday I watched a couple of YouTubes about food deserts; and it\’s rather scary. Sad, too. Fortunately I don\’t live in a food desert. The nearest supermarket to me is 0.8 miles away. The next closest is about 2.5 miles by my usual route; and there\’s one about 3 miles away. The salvage store is nearly 5 miles from home. These distances aren\’t a real problem as long as I can use bicycle power to get to those stores; but what if the time comes when arthritis in my hands means that I can\’t manage shifting bicycle gears? I can\’t carry much when I\’m walking; and it\’s hard dragging a big load of groceries via public transit. And no, I don\’t want to walk to the salvage store! So I hope I can continue to use bicycle power. It\’s fun (most of the time); it\’s good exercise; and it lets me bring home the groceries.

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Foiled Again

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I was foiled again this morning — by my Garmin. Since I got it about six weeks ago, I haven\’t been able to figure out how to program the display screen. I want to see what my heart rate is as I ride; and I also want to see which zone I\’m in. The bike shop, unfortunately, couldn\’t do all that much to help me. Night before last I somehow programmed a workout into the Garmin; and the usual data screen didn\’t show up for over six miles. That foiled my in-ride tracking! Last night I finally came to my senses, and hunted up an online video. I followed the steps presented for programming my Garmin, hitting the Pause button as needed; and I thought I had finally succeeded. Wrong. I think my problem now is that I\’ve somehow programmed several screens. During this morning\’s ride, all I saw were distance and time. You could say that I was foiled again. Now I\’ve got to figure out how to delete those unwanted programs! I certainly need to figure out how to get my heart rate zones into that Garmin. This morning\’s ride data showed 19+ minutes in my maximum zone; and I don\’t see how that can possibly be correct. I don\’t think spent more than a few minutes total in Zone 5. The \”calories burned\” figures that I get seem a bit too high; another possible wrinkle to iron out. Are we really better off for all this technology? As at least one source has commented, maybe athletes were better off when they relied on RPE. This kept them more in tune with what they were feeling; and how their bodies were doing. But I\’m spoiled! Adjusting to RPE alone would take some doing.

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