Great training rides today in anticipation of Hollenbeck's Spring Classic Road Race on Sunday. My average speeds continue to go up, thanks to less wreckless climbing. I've had a tendency to stand a bit too much on the climbs, and the Tuesday night informal races have been quite useful in helping me to improve my technique. When you study a number of strong riders ahead of you, it's hard not to analyze individual styles and learn from others.
My after-school ride up to Lansing and returning via Gulf and Conlon gave me almost exactly the distance and the vertical ascent of Sunday's race, and in spite of some brisk winds, I managed to average 20.4, a personal best for that loop.
Two more training rides before Sunday...can't wait!
I drove out to Virgil this afternoon, feeling very businesslike about previewing the Hollenbeck's Spring Classic course. It was a stellar weather day, partly sunny with highs in the mid 60s. The ride gave me a pretty good sense of how to approach the course on race day—specifically where to push and where to conserve energy, and how many false summits there are on the biggest climb before I really hit the top. All systems go. I felt strong, and I was fairly well prepared for the course, thanks to many trips up Remington, Ringwood, Cascadilla Park, Yellow Barn and others. Once you complete the Parker St. climb at the 6.5 mile mark, there is no significant climb remaining, except for the 1/4 mile stretch at 17.5 miles on Babcock Hollow Rd. that is around a 15% grade. After that, it's a swift push to the finish. I averaged 20.7 mph over the 22 mile course.
I've been studying the elevation profile and even drove the course once, but it's so much different when you ride it. The roads that I worried about were no longer a concern, the climbs were suddenly very real and therefore less intimidating, and it turns out to be a really beautiful loop. There was even a little bit of snow left on top of Greek Peak, which is a bit hard to fathom.
After the ride I did a quick hillclimb up Van Donsel Rd., which takes you up 600 ft. in 2 miles to just above Greek Peak. Nice way to round out a scouting mission.
Damn, that felt good! Feeling kinda twitchy tonight. My first time racing (albeit unofficially), and while I certainly made some rookie mistakes (early attack where I paid the price), this was more fun than should be allowed. Nice bunch of folks, too. Got dropped on Coddington on the first lap and just couldn't quite catch back up. Sure is hard to catch a paceline, but I learned my lesson on the second, more civilized, lap. I was able to keep with the paceline all the way around and felt more energized at the end than I did halfway through. Now I'm certainly looking forward to Hollenbeck's Classic on May 2nd. Whatever happens, I don't care now. If I get dropped, I'll just ride my best pace.
Chilly, windy day in the low 40s with mixed precip. in the higher elevations. This was one tough ride, and in spite of how silly those booties look, I think I'll need invest in some for such days. The rest of my body was cozy, while my left foot was frozen solid. Why just the left? Gail's theory is that it had to do with wind direction...good guess.
This was only my second time climbing Ringwood from the Ellis Hollow side, and it's quite a challenge, particularly the last two climbs. Feeling good now, though it was really hard to get out of the door.
Day one of the revised roundabout commute, a.k.a. morning training ride. I had been taking Cascadilla Park Rd., the prettiest street in Ithaca, then up through the cemetery and through the Cornell campus to Pleasant Grove, then to Community Corners, Hanshaw to Warren, then down Dart, Oakcrest, and finally Remington to the high school, but there were two problems with this route:
The climb through campus after the climb up Cascadilla was just a bit more than I wanted to tackle first thing.
There's significant traffic on campus that slow me down.
So as you can see by the map, I altered my route and avoided campus altogether. The ride through Cayuga Heights is much more chill, the climbs are more humanely distributed, and the overall distance and vertical ascent are almost identical.
Looking forward to the Tuesday night competitive ride and the Hollenbeck's Spring Classic Road Race is only two weeks away! Hopefully I can ride the course on a training ride next weekend.
What have I been waiting for? I've never done a competitive group ride in the area, and honestly, I think I've avoided participating for fear of completely humiliating myself. Pathetic, yes, but at least I'm being honest. So I headed up to East Hill and joined a very nice bunch of people for the unaffiliated Tuesday Night Competitive Ride.
For the first ten minutes I was all nerves, but when I realized that I could hold my own with the group, I had more fun than I could have imagined having on a group ride. The best part was the return trip and the climb up Snyder Hill Rd. It was hard to believe how fresh my legs felt right to the end, and now I'm hooked and flying high, looking forward with great anticipation to next week's ride and perhaps even racing in the Hollenbecks Spring Classic in Virgil. This could be the start of something great...
The brisk north winds were most intense this afternoon for my ritual Lansing after-work constitutional. Sometimes I can rationalize facing headwinds on the uphill by thinking that the impact is minimized by slower speeds and the fact that winds are tougher on the flats than on the hills in general. Not today. It was fairly brutal out there, the ride from Terpening Corners to Gulf Rd. was really dragging me down. But the good thing about facing a brisk wind head-on is the payback on the return trip, and today's tailwind was world-class! There's nothing like being pushed up hills by an invisible force.
31 miles for the day...this week has nightime temps around freezing most days and daytime highs in the high 50s and low 60s, so I won't be ditching the jacket and gloves for a while yet.
First Yellow Barn climb of the year. I like taking it on from Rt. 13, heading south, and it's by far my hardest regular climb. Today wasn't pretty, but I got the job done. I was imagining being passed by dozens of elite cyclists on the 800 ft., 2 mile climb. Today is the Paris-Roubaix race, considered one of the toughest bike races in the world, and I was imagining what it would be like to be in the mix there. I'd get flattened and publicly humiliated, so my solo cycling adventure was probably a better choice.
Since spring is exploding all over, I brought the camera to document the greening of the landscape. I never get off the bike to take pictures, which should explain the primitive framing of the shots. Garmin needs to integrate a digital camera into their next generation of cycling GPS units—I think it would sell like hotcakes. Perhaps a helmet cam would be a better idea. I'm hoping for one for my 50th.
After the Yellow Barn climb, I decided to extend the ride a little and take on another climb, so I took the Brooktondale extension off of 79 and headed up Banks Rd. to Coddington. When will I ever learn about Coddington? There was a terrible motorcycle accident on that road the other day which resulted in a fatality, and I couldn't help but think about that awful event while riding on what must be one of the most dangerous cycling roads. The road is narrow with many blind corners, huge potholes, and fairly aggressive traffic. If you look back through my entries, you'll see previous promises to avoid this road like the plague, but hopefully I will remember to avoid this until the road is resurfaced. Given the controversy regarding widening Coddington, along with the dreadful state of budgetary affairs for NY State, this probably won't be happening any time soon.
Today I felt like I really turned a corner on my season. I'm ready for some longer rides now, and I'll probably be joining the Finger Lakes Cycling Club for some of their Tuesday evening rides. Amateur racing is still a distant thought—hopefully I can find a kind soul to mentor me through the process.
Can't wait to get back on the bike after five wonderful days in NYC. In the meantime, here are some long exposure shots of the city, mostly on the subway, at Grand Central, and in the Chelsea Market.
How strange it was to be cycling with temps in the upper 80s today, an April Fool's Day joke deferred. Early this week I was riding with chilly knees with temps in the upper 30s. Kind of hard to comprehend, but I'm not complaining. It is a bit of a shock to the system, and if that weren't enough, I was fighting straight line winds in the 20+ mph range. My friend the wind practically pushed me up to Terpening Corners in Lansing, and I got there 4 minutes faster than usual. It was a two-water-bottle day, and I was parched by the time that I returned home. Lots of other cyclists on the road, but interestingly very few of them were in Lansing. For some reason, Ellis Hollow is much more popular than Lansing, Dryden and Freeville, which is just fine by me.
I was feeling pretty low energy for most of the ride, and it was a gargantuan struggle to keep the pace, especially on the Ringwood climb. This ride was my final push to ride 400 miles in my first month of the cycling season, and I'm short of that goal by just under 4 miles. I'm more than pleased with this pace, and now I can relax about being off the bike for 5 days, a well-deserved break.
Today was also the true test of my new helmet and shoes. The ventilation on the Giro Atmos is truly stunning, and there were moments on some of the climbs that I forgot I was wearing a helmet at all. The design is well worth the extra dough, though if you're looking for one of these helmets, check ebay carefully and be patient. Why pay $170 when you can get it for around $130? My Louis Garneau shoes also proved their worth. Today I finally had the opportunity to ride with the vented insoles, and I can assure all skeptics that it works as promised. The feets stayed cool throughout the ride, and meant that the old dogs didn't swell up at all.
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