Spring is for Bonking

Could it be that spring is finally coming to Seattle? I went for a 200k training ride on Saturday and was only rained on for about five minutes out of the eight hours I was out riding. I don't usually do such long training rides, but I'm still not quite as fit as I should be at this point in the season, so I decided to punish myself a little with a fast and hilly 200k. No pain, no gain, and all that, ya know.

Most of the ride went well. I felt great for the first 100k or so as I rode over some of my favorite cycling roads: up to Snohomish, Dubuque Rd, Old Pipeline Rd, Ben Howard Rd, High Bridge Rd... I hit a little slump around Carnation, but a quick stop for some real food and a cup of joe got me rolling again.

I was still maybe an hour away from home when I ate my last shot block. There were plenty of places I could have stopped to grab a candy bar or something, but even though I knew "the fuel light would be flashing" by the time I got home, I figured I could make it without food, so I kept going. Then as I rolled through Montlake, I came upon this:

It was opening day of yachting season in Seattle so the Montlake bridge was up to let the parade of yachts through. The police officers standing there said it would probably be about 20 minutes before they'd lower the bridge. It was warm and sunny and there were lots of people milling around to watch so I just sat down and waited.

When you've been riding hard for nearly eight hours straight, your body doesn't just suddenly stop burning fuel the second you get off the bike. I don't completely understand the physiology, but I know from experience that it takes at least an hour or so for your metabolism settle back to normal. I hadn't really counted on this when I did the whole flashing-fuel-light/coast-in-on-fumes calculation. So when the bridge finally opened--and I spent another ten minutes working my way through crowds of pedestrians--I started pedaling the last two or three miles for home, and suddenly I BONKED.

I thought I had experienced a bonk before. Apparently not. This was like nothing I've ever felt. I was seeing spots, I had tunnel vision, my head was spinning, my legs felt like they were made of clay... The last mile to home (all up hill of course) was at a snail's pace.

As soon as I got home, I shoveled in a huge mountain of leftover pasta and flopped on the bed. Slowly I started feeling human again. It was about 45 minutes before I had enough energy to take a shower.

While bonking isn't much fun, I think this was probably a good learning experience for me. It reminded me of an episode of Car Talk I heard a while back. One of Tom and Ray's callers explained that the first thing he does whenever he gets a new car is put a can of gas in the trunk and then go run it out of gas. This is so he knows exactly how low the gas guage goes before the car is really empty. Yes, Tom and Ray made a lot of fun of the guy.

Coming up next weekend: Baker Lake 400k. It's been a long time since I've done that kind of distance...

Risk of Cycling: Broken Arm

After six weeks of feeling pretty pessimistic or at least anxious about my hopes for riding PBP this summer, things are looking decidedly up. My cast came off last Wednesday. Initially I was pretty concerned about the soreness and lack of mobility in my wrist, but day-by-day it's getting better. It's far from back to normal, but it's improving enough that it seems conceivable that it could be 100% by the time PBP rolls around.

I asked my Dr. when he thought I might be able to get back on a bike, and he tilted his head in a doctorly way and said, "let's see how it feels in a couple of weeks." Then I told him that I rode 300k last Saturday. I got the tilted head look again, plus a doctorly furrowed brow. Then I said, "Look... I'm going to start riding right away. So what are the risks?" We talked about risks for a while and basically it came down to this: The greatest risk is that I'll crash and re-break my arm. I pointed out that every time I go for a ride there's a risk that I'll crash and break something. My good Dr. didn't really have an argument for that, and more or less agreed that I might as well start riding right away.

I felt good enough on Friday to ride to work as a little test. The test went well so I decided to push it a little harder and went for a ride around Lake Washington this morning. My wrist definitely felt every bump in the road, but I finished the 50 mile ride feeling like I could keep going. A good sign. I was careful to take it easy on the ride and never really put a lot of stress on my wrist. Actually I sort of had no choice other than to take it easy since I seem to have lost some fitness over the past month and a half (anybody seen it?). Luckily PBP is still over four months away. That should be plenty of time to get back in shape assuming I don't crash and break something (which, as my doctor pointed out, is a risk faced when riding a bike).

One of the things I've done to make it easier to get back on the road is, I installed some clip-on aerobars on my bike. The aerobars allow me to take weight off my wrist and put it all on my forearms. I never really thought of myself as an aerobar bar person before. I usually think of colorful lycra and funny helmets when I think of aerobars, you know? But I have to admit that they work quite well once you get used to them. I doubt if I could have done the 50 mile ride this morning without them. So, I guess I'll just try to ignore the cognitive dissonance of aerobars on a 1982 Trek with a Brooks saddle and fenders, and keep using them until my wrist is back in shape.

Geeking the Numbers: PBP Training Plan

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'm putting together a highly scientific, NASA-approved training plan to try to get my aging carcass in shape for this summer's attempt at the Charly Miller Society. To be honest, it's not really NASA-approved. No men in short-sleeved white dress shirts in Texas or Florida have even looked at it. Yet. And while it may be scientific, I don't really fully understand the science. I just stole a lot of the ideas from others who I'm hoping understand the scientific part better than I do.

Really, all I've done is read a bunch of what other people have to say about training for ultra cycling events and then I mixed it all together in my osterizer of a brain, and I drew a pretty picture.

The basic idea is that beginning in a couple weeks I'll start doing some interval and hill training in addition to my usual daily commute, and my weekend rides will start getting a bit longer and more intense. The intervals will start off pretty easy but they will slowly ramp up in intensity until late July when I'll be doing things that will literally make my head spin.

What are intervals? Basically they are periods of intense activity alternating with periods of recovery. The idea is that you can train at higher levels for greater lengths of time if you break it into small intervals and allow yourself to recover between the intervals. It obviously works well because intervals have been integral to professional athletes' training plans for many years.

On paper it all looks simple and easy and great fun. Of course if it was really that easy we'd all be like Alberto Contador except that most of us wouldn't test positive for clenbuterol.

The Joys of Not Training

As I mentioned a few days ago, I've been putting together a serious racer-boy type training plan to get myself into shape for PBP in August. I'm still researching and figuring out the details, but I have enough figured out to know that it's a little too early for me to be ramping up the hard training yet. The serious training will start in about three weeks. From then until the beginning of August, almost all of my rides will be with a purpose.

So, in the meantime I'm appreciating the fact that I can just go for a bike ride on a beautiful sunny Sunday and ride for the love of riding (and eating of course). I can even stop by the lake for a snack (careful to not let those waterfowl get any of my Fig Newton crumbs) and enjoy the view without paying attention to interval schedules and heart rate monitors.

Training with a Capital T

I've never really trained for a randonneuring event before... Well, that's not exactly true. I should say, I've never used a well thought-out structured training plan of any kind. I commute to work by bicycle nearly every day year-round, and I find time for a ride of some kind on most weekends. That all amounts to a decent amount of riding in a year and a lot of "normal" people might call that training. But, that's not really Training (with a capital T); it's what serious cyclists call "junk miles." Sort of the Doritos and Cheese Whiz of cycling.

Real Training involves a mix of specific kinds of riding (intervals, hill climbing, long steady distance, etc.) according a schedule, which alternately stresses your body and then allows it to recover, and then stresses it some more. Done correctly it increases the strength and efficiency of your muscles, the potential of your body to store carbohydrates (a.k.a. fuel), your body's ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles, and its ability to convert stored fat into energy. The schedule is one of the most important aspects of a real training program as it attempts to get your performance to a peak at a specific time, which hopefully coincides with the event for which you're training.

I guess that's a long drawn out way of saying, training makes you faster. Hopefully.

With a concrete yet very "stretchy" goal for PBP, I've decided I need to take training a little more seriously this year. As it stands now, I know next to nothing about real training. But luckily I know how to use one of those interweb search engine thingies (JumpStation is my favorite) and there seems to be an enormous load of information available out there for free (and probably worth every penny).

But don't worry, I'll resist any urges to turn this into one of those training blogs. I've read of few of those and while they sometimes provide some useful information, they are BORING (unlike this blog).

And for those of you who landed here because you were searching for good detailed training information, you may want to go back to JumpStation and try again. I'll probably talk a little about things I learn about training over the coming weeks that are interesting or amusing, but I won't attempt to provide yet another authoritative source of endurance training info. Like I said, there's already an enormous load of that available.

"The Alps"

For the month of April I wasn't able to do any of the organized SiR rides, so to keep my R-12 going I decided to ride a permanent. I picked the toughest route I could find since one of my new year's resolutions was to spend less time on the bike, but to make it count when I do ride. As far as I know, the toughest 200k permanent is #517, The Alps (sort of a presumptuous name for ride the goes through towns like Auburn and Hobart). It packs 10,000 feet of climbing into 200 km, without ever going over 1200 feet above sea level. The route starts in Redmond and meanders around South King County, hitting every good climb it can find. It's a little like a bad action film with a bunch of chases and fights and shoot outs, but not much of a plot to string them together.

My aim was to start at 7:00am at the Whole Foods in Redmond. I got there a bit late so didn't get on the road until about 10 after. A minute or so after getting on the road I realized one of my brakes was rubbing, so I had to stop and adjust it a bit. So, a couple blocks into the ride and it was already 7:15.

The ride follows the west side of Lake Sammamish to Eastgate, climbs up to the top of Summerset, then heads down toward Issaquah, and climbs up Cougar Mtn on "Zoo Hill."


Route Map

In my brief Randonneuring history I've heard many stories about other Randonneurs struggling to make the control cutoff times. Apparently I was just dealt a pretty good genetic hand when it comes to cycling, because it's never been a concern for me at all. I've never even really had to think about it. So it was a bit of a shock on this ride when I was approaching the second control near the top of Zoo Hill and realized I was going to be pretty close to the control cutoff. The combination of the late start, stopping to adjust the brakes, two big climbs already, a couple of minor navigational mistakes, and the control being only a few miles into the ride so I hadn't had much of a chance to build up a buffer all meant I was starting up zoo hill with 30 minutes to make the second control. I assumed the control was at the top of the climb, and the climb up Zoo Hill usually takes me about 20 minutes. But since this was the second of 10 big climbs on a 200k ride, I wasn't heading up the hill as fast as I usually do. If I kept my conservative pace, I realized I'd probably make the top of the hill about three to five minutes before the cutoff. But what if I got a flat tire? What if there was road construction up ahead that held me up for a few minutes? I'd be cutting it very close. For the first time in my Rando career, I was actually worried about making a cutoff. I decided to resist the temptation to pick up the pace, and just hope for the best.

Did I mention that the navigation part of Randonneuring is not one of my greatest strengths? So it turns out that the control is actually only about 2/3rds of the way up the climb, so I got there with several minutes to spare. But still it was by far the closest I've ever been to the cutoff. And you know, it was actually kind of fun having that pressure for a few minutes. Not sure I want to always ride with that kind of pressure, but a little bit of it is fun.

From Cougar Mtn the route continues south toward Auburn, climbing every hill it can find along the way. The Alps is one of those routes that makes you a slave to the route sheet. You rarely ride more than a mile or two without making a turn, and the turns aren't all that obvious. If you aren't paying close attention to your route sheet, you'll get lost for sure. Navigation has never been my strong suit in Randonneuring even on the simpler routes.

And to make matters worse, while studying the route sheet somewhere south of Cougar Mtn I realized that when I printed it, any of the cues that had instructions with more than one line got cut off. All I could see was the bottom line. So an instruction like, "Turn right to stay on 196th. DO NOT continue straight onto Sweeney Rd." Showed on my cue sheet as simply, "straight onto Sweeney Rd." "Hmm, this could cause problems," I thought. Sure enough, I missed a turn or two but figured it out fairly quickly just because I was familiar with some of the roads and knew where I was headed more or less. But eventually I found myself hopelessly off course with no clear idea of where I went wrong or how to get back on course. I scratched my helmet for a couple minutes and then decided to use a life line. I called Sarah and asked for help.

At first I spent a lot of time whining and complaining to her about how lame I was for printing the route sheet without noticing the formatting problem. Then we spent a few minutes trying to figure out where I was. Then she tried to figure out a route to get me to where I needed to be, but that got far too complicated, so I decided I just need to backtrack about four miles to where I went off course. Throughout this conversation I kept thinking this route sheet mess was too complicated and I should just bail on the ride (DNF??). Then she found a copy of the route sheet on my computer and read me all of the instructions that got cut off on my version. I took notes and scribbled all over my copy. All of this took over a half hour or more, and once again I started worrying about whether I would be able to make the next control on time. Luckily I had built up a decent time buffer so it looked like, assuming I could get back on course AND I didn't get lost again, I should be able to make the next control with 15 - 20 minutes to spare.

Well, I did make it to the Green Valley Meat and Minimart with plenty of time to spare. (Note to self: Need to go back there sometime in a car. It's a strange and fascinating store.) After the Meat and Minimart, I had nearly 10 miles of flat riding trough the Green River Valley that gave me a good time buffer for the rest of the ride. I didn't have to worry about cutoff times from there on out.


Elevation Profile

The rest of the ride was far less eventful. I stayed on course and rode up and down hills and just kept turning the cranks. I saw some good riding roads that I had never been on before, like Issaquah - Fall City Rd (the old part after it leaves suburbia), and climbed some great hills I've never climbed before, like Lake Alice Rd with a fairly long stretch of >15% grade.

I was good and tired by the time I finally rolled back into the Whole Foods parking lot in Redmond. The ride took me 11 hours 18 minutes which is by far the longest I've ever taken to finish a 200k. But I figure if I could subtract about an hour for the late start, getting lost, and whining on the phone to Sarah I'd end up with a respectable time.

The Alps is a really nice route, but I definitely am no fan of routes that have cue sheets that are longer than my arm. I'll have to ride it again, now that I know the route, so I can just enjoy the ride and look away from my cue sheet once in a while.

Cougars and Rabbits

One of my riding goals for this year is to spend less time riding. That's going to be a challenge since I'm planning to ride in the PBP in 2011 and the more official ACP sanctioned miles (kilometers actually) I ride, the better my chances are of getting into the PBP. So I'm trying to maximize the official Rando rides I do while minimizing the unofficial training rides. But it's tough to do those long brevets without any training so my strategy is to make the training rides short but intense.

Yesterday I did one of those short but intense training rides. It was about 50 miles with 3,450' of climbing. That works out to about 69' per mile. Anything over about 55' per mile is what I would call "hilly" and makes for a good workout. Here's what the elevation profile looks like:

I rode from home out toward Issaquah to the base of Cougar Mtn, rode up and over Cougar Mtn, and then did a quick loop around Mercer Island on my way home.

On my way around the Mercer Island loop, I came up behind a guy in full team kit. I saw him look over his shoulder and see me when I was about 100 ft back. There's nothing better to keep you hammering on the pedals than having a rabbit to chase down. Even better when they know you're chasing them and they want to make a race of it. As soon as he saw me, he picked up the pace some so I was no longer gaining on him. So I picked up the pace a notch. It took me about 5 minutes, but finally I closed that 100 ft between the two of us and immediately passed him. If it were really a race, I would have sat on his rear wheel for a while to rest a bit before attacking, but I was out more for exercise than the race so I just kept hammering past him. So of course he grabbed my rear wheel and hung there for a couple minutes and then passed me. I let him get ahead a bit and then chased him down again. We traded places a couple more times before finishing the loop. Each time one passed the other, we gave a friendly nod and a smile. I'm not sure about him, but by the time I finished the Mercer Island loop I was pretty gassed, but it was a lot of fun.

I'm Back!

Sorry, my blog has been down for a while. And some of my old posts are gone. Call it technical difficulties… Anyway, I didn't quit riding while that was going on so I'll probably do a few posts over the next couple days to catch y'all up.

First, some thoughts about my riding in the past year. I’ve been keeping a log of my cycling over the past couple of years. It’s nothing too fancy, just an Excel spreadsheet with the date, miles, time and a brief description of my rides. I’m pretty religious about entering every ride, unless it’s a quick trip to the grocery store or a ride around the block with Adam on the trail-a-bike. I realize I’m a little late for the whole year-end recap thing, but like I said, I’m doing some catch up blogging here. So, here’s what my year of cycling looked like in summary:

I rode on at least 248 days in 2009. In total, I covered about 8,018 miles which is 2/3rds of what the average American drives in a year. I drive a lot less than the average American, so I’m guessing I racked up more bike miles than car miles last year. (Maybe I should keep track of car miles next year so I can compare.)

About 3,383 miles (42% of the total) were covered in my daily commute to and from work, or running errands on the way. I went into the office about 230 times during the year and 192 of those commutes were by bicycle. The rest were using public transportation.

I have both single speed and multi-speed bikes. I generally do my commute on the single speed, but sometimes ride that one on recreational rides too. Overall, 3,922 of my total miles (49%) were on a single speed or fixed gear bike.

Of my recreational rides, 25 were between 50 and 100 miles in length and 15 were over 100 miles. How long was my longest ride? It sort of depends on how you define “ride.” I did two 600k brevets both of which extended over more than a day, so I’m not sure whether to count each of them as one ride or more. Both were somewhere around 380 miles and I completed the first one in 28:50 and the second in 33:45. My greatest distance covered in 24 hours was a little over 300 miles covered between 6 am on June 13th and 6 am on the 14th on the first 600k brevet.

Okay, here’s the statistic that makes me feel a little bit sick: I spent over 533 hours riding a bike last year. Whoa, that’s a lot of hours. That’s 22 days on a bike. In my defense, remember that about 2/3rds of that was time spent commuting to and from work, and my commute doesn’t take much longer by bike than it does by bus. Still that leaves 180 hours last year that I could have spent curing cancer or inventing a better mousetrap or something more useful. Did I mention that one of my resolutions for the new year is to spend less time bicycling?

Permanently Lame

I tried to ride my first permanent this past weekend but due to poor planning, and poorer execution it just wasn't to be. For the non-randonneurs (hi mom!), a permanent is basically a brevet without all the planning and hoopla. You can ride a permanent by yourself or with others. You just tell the official permanent coordinators what route you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and then they send you the brevet card and off you go. You record the ride in the brevet card and send it in to be blessed by the Pope or whoever it is who blesses such things, and you get credit just like any organized brevet. And what do you do with that "credit" that you get? Um, I'm still trying to figure that out.

Anyway, I had planned to join a few other SIR members for the Three Rivers Cruise on Saturday at 7:00am. The TRC is a 200km route from Arlington that goes through Darrington, Marblemount, Concrete, Sedro Wooley and ends back in Arlington. I've heard it's a very pretty route and fairly flat the whole way.

Well, I slept too long and didn't have my stuff together in advance, so I scrambled around in the morning trying to get my gear together, my water bottles and tires filled, etc. I headed out the door about 15 minutes late and then half way to Arlington realized that I had forgotten the directions to the ride start and some other key pieces of equipment. So after some cursing, I turned around and headed for home.

But, with nice weather and permission from the family to go for a long ride, I figured I couldn't completely waste the opportunity. After a cup of coffee at home I headed out for one of my favorite routes. It's a route I've done several times and it never gets old. I rode up the Burke Gilman trail to Woodinville, then up back roads to Snohomish. A little north of Snohomish I picked up Dubuque Rd which connects with Old Pipeline Rd and took me all the way to Sultan. From Sultan there's another nice little country road called Ben Howard Rd that gets me back to Monroe. Then it's familiar roads to Woodinville and home on the BG trail.

Here's a little stretch of the Burke Gilman trail:



The whole ride is just over a hundred miles and spends very little time on busy roads.



The weather was cool and beautiful, the trees were turning all those great Pottery Barn colors and lamas were friendly.



It just doesn't get any better than that. I also found some interesting road side debris. Somewhere along Dubuque Rd there was a big pile of vinyl coated canvas in primary colors that I'm pretty sure was a deflated bouncy house. Adam would have been thrilled if I could have figured out a way to carry that home.

Somewhere Bollenbough Hill Rd...

Pre-Blog Ride Reports - Feb '09

Originally emailed on Feb 7, 2009, at 9:46 PM, under the subject, Put a fork in February - Ride Report

Today the God of weather smiled upon me and allowed a fantastic February day for the second installment of my Century a Month in 2009 bid, aka CAM09. I decided to try a 200k this time to make sure I'm ready for the first SIR 200k brevet coming up in March. I mean, how much harder than a century can a 200k be, right? About 1/4 harder, it turns out.

Temp at the start was about 38 degrees and the sky was cloudy. The sun broke through just before noon and the second half of the ride was under sunny skies with the temp in the mid 40s. Perfect.

My route took me through the standard list of backwater, white trash, hick towns in King and Snohomish counties. I passed through Woodinville, Snohomish, Arlington, Granite Falls, Sultan, Monroe, Duvall, Woodinville again, and then back to my own backwater, white trash, hick town neighborhood of Ravenna.

Here are some highlights:

Fales Rd between Woodinville and Snohomish. Obviously I need more practice taking pictures while riding since the focus sucks.


The trusty steed in downtown Snohomish looking down at the Snohomish river, which incidentally seems to flood every year, and still people insist on living on it's shores. Kind of like those folks who choose to live in trailer parks in the midwest even though they know it's just a matter of time before a tornado gets them.


Ah, the fabulous Centennial trail. A little boring, but a great way to get in twenty easy miles.


A barn between Arlington and Granite Falls that didn't fare well in the big snow storm last December. Incidentally, there is still snow along side the road in the shady spots in this neck of the woods, presumably left over from December's big dump.


Old Pipeline Rd between Granite Falls and Sultan. This is my new favorite cycling road. I saw about four cars in ten miles on this road, but plenty of big rollers, some with 10% grades.


Once again, the velo striking a pose in front of the Sultan Red Apple Market. Stopped in here for a couple of those Starbucks super sweet espresso in a can drinks. Those drinks may quite possibly be the perfect cycling fuel. Caffeine + Sugar = Vroom!

Also note the hillybilly saddle bag. It's a repurposed military surplus bag that is actually quite useful on these long rides. It easily holds my rain coat, a few Clif Bars, my wallet, phone, spare tube, and tools.


The home stretch! The bumpy Burke G trail near Lake City.

A bit more than the 200k I'd planned but with such a beautiful day, why not?

Ride Stats:
Distance = 133.7 miles (215 kilometers)
Riding Time = 8h 10m
Elapsed Time = 9h 20m
Total Climbing = 5,602'
Ibuprophen Consumed = 400 mgs (50% decrease compared to Jan century!)

Pre-Blog Ride Reports - Jan '09

Originally emailed on January 10, 2009 5:57:36 PM under the subject, One down, eleven to go - Ride Report

I set myself a cycling goal this year to do a century ride in every calendar month of 2009. And as if doing a century in January isn't punishment enough, I decided to do my first century of the year on my single speed Bianchi. I'm running a 46t chainring with an 18t freewheel cog in the back. For perspective, this gearing is basically equivalent to putting your chain on the small ring in the front and smack-dab in the middle of the cluster in the back (assuming you have a standard 53/39 double crank with a 11-23 cluster), and then wrapping duct tape all around your shifters so you can't mess with them for the rest of the day. In the flats it's a decent gear for spinning along comfortably at about 16 mph. But as we've all known since Columbus failed to fall off the edge in 1492, the world is not flat. I spin out at about 24 mph on the downhills, and have to stand up and grunt a lot if the uphills exceed about a 3% grade.

My route was pretty convoluted, part loop and part out and back. Most of my favorite routes for long rides are currently under water due to all the flooding we've been having. So I got a little creative. I started at 6:30am so I could get home at a reasonable hour and still have time to hang out with the family. Of course that meant I was riding in the dark for about the first hour. Starting from home, I went around Lake Washington counter clockwise as far as Kenmore, about 3/4 of the way around. From Kenmore I headed east and then north and then east again and south and west and then north (did you follow that?). My route took me through Woodinville, Maltby (wherever the hell that is), Paradise Lake, Novelty Hill, Redmond, Issaquah, Renton again and finally home.

Temperature was in the low 40s and it rained on and off the whole way. But I was dressed right, so I was pretty comfortable. Overall it was a fun way to spend an ugly day. I definitely didn't set any speed records. As a matter of fact, it was by far the slowest century I've ever ridden. I mostly blame that on the single speed, though it's possible the engine was partly at fault. Choosing the gearing on a single speed or fixed gear bike is an exercise in compromise at best. You give up speed on the flats and downhills in order to have a low enough gear to survive the uphills. After today's ride, I'm thinking I compromised a little too much on the low side. The hills were all manageable, but I could never do any better than about 16 - 17mph on the flats.

Ok, so that's my story. Who wants to join me for the February century? ;)

Steve

Ride Stats
Miles = 108.5
Ride Time = 7:28
Elapsed Time = ~8 hours
Ibuprophen Consumed = 800mgs