SpokEasy

SpokEasy

Author name: CAL

Pain Cave Again

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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.

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Will I Remember?

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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.

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Doggone It!

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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.

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Ooh, ooh, OUCH!

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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!      

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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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