Spring is Fickle

Yesterday and the day before we were basking in temperatures in the 60s, so it felt like cruel and unusual punishment to be back in the 40s with overcast skies and blustery winds. This made motivation especially hard, but it was well worth it. I took a new figure 8 route on familiar roads to get my distance up to the mid 30s. This was my first time on Ringwood coming from Ellis Hollow Creek Rd. and my first time on Snyder Hill Rd.

Who cares about the weather? Bring it on!

Finally More Le Tour Stage Points

Ringwood climb, 2 X

While the Tour de France cylists endured their last day in the Pyrenées, ending their final mountain stage by climbing up the brutal Col du Tourmalet, I sought out my own toughest stage, desperately seeking more stage points in an all-out effort to solidify my 17th position in the Le Tour Challenge. After a rest day, I was feeling strong, and the conditions were ideal, with low humidity, temps in the upper 70s and a nice breeze. In fact, I hadn't felt so strong in weeks—the cumulative effects of weeks of hard riding in high heat and humidity has started to pay dividends.

Yesterday I started with the familiar quick exit out of Ithaca, heading up Remington to Triphammer, then Triphammer Extension, Asbury and Benson to Lansing. I was looking for extra miles as well as extra climbing, so I decided to do the Ringwood climb twice, once from each direction. After climbing Ringwood from Rt. 13, I headed down Midline to Rt. 79, then back up Ellis Hollow to attack Ringwood from the south. After the second Ringwood climb I was still feeling good, and I was joined by a friendly competitive cyclist who joined me for most of the return trip up Snyder Hill Rd.

Without a doubt, this was my favorite ride in a long while, and I came home feeling very hopeful about gaining Le Tour stage points and solidifying my position. Sure enough, when I refreshed the leader board this morning, I was thrilled to learn that my ride earned me 14 place and 12 stage points. While I may end up dropping a few overall positions in the next few days, it looks like I'm safely going to remain in 2nd place overall in my age category. While my hopes of winning merchandise are fading, this has been a great experience. The Le Tour Challenge is a terrific motivational game, at least for me.

Stats:

Distance: 49.45 miles

Avg. speed: 19.1 mph

Vertical ascent: 3391 ft.

Calories burned: 3499 kcal

Max. speed: 39.5 mph

Time: 2 hours, 35 minutes

Moving Up Again in Le Tour Challenge

With only five stages remaining in The Tour, things are heating up both in the Pyrenées and among participants in the Le Tour Challenge. While I'm still pulling for Andy Schleck, things aren't looking too good after yesterday's chaingate. Contador's decision to attack certainly caused a great debate among the riders as well as the viewing public and punditry. I don't have a strong opinion on this one, but it's clear that this will cheapen a presumed Contador victory.

Meanwhile in the Le Tour Challenge, it has been sad to see Jeff K slip in the overall standings, down to third. I was really hoping that someone in my age bracket would win it all, but still, he really represented us 40-something riders well and can still move up in the ranks.

In my last blog entry on 7/15, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in 15th place overall after a long, hard Yellow Barn Road climb. At that point I assumed that I'd be slowly moving down the leader board through the rest of the last week. I took a break day on Sunday while a bunch of weekend warriors fought hard for stage points. I was quite surprised to learn that I only lost one position as a result of my rest day, and I was emboldened to fight to move up a few spots during the week. I looked at typical winning weekday stats and realized that there is a lot to be gained by riding hard during the week and riding easier on weekends. Sure enough, I'm back up to 15th overall, and looking for more points through the week.

Yesterday I did my typical Lansing Ringwood Midline Snyder Hill loop with an added couple of twists in order to get good vertical stats and keep my speeds up high. I added an extra loop of Thomas Rd and around to Ellis Hollow Rd., and also added some extra flats at the end, down Aurora to Cayuga. I believe that these add-ons resulted in getting me further up in the standings, and today I'll be scrambling for a few more points. Also, hopefully I'll be doing another 80 mile ride before the weekend in my desperate last efforts to move further up the standings. While this is a blast, I'm really looking forward to a break in the action after the weekend!

In the Throes of the Le Tour Challenge

I don't really know why I'm so obsessed with the Le Tour Challenge, but it probably has something to do with my love of analyzing cycling data and my desire to move up the leaderboard. For the uninitiated, participants ride during as many stage days of the Tour de France, then upload their ride data from their GPS devices. Your data only counts if it comes from a GPS device, which is only fair, and then your data is compared with data from all other participants, as well as the Tour cyclists.

Looking good so far—my Monday Cayuga Lake loop had me in 4th place overall for the stage and 9th overall, but now that my distances are more modest, I'm moving down in the standings a bit. Battling the high heat and humidity has been a bit of a challenge, but for some reason, the last two days have been really strong, and I've been able to stay hydrated throughout.  Yesterday was a typical Lansing loop, while today I took on Ringwood Rd. and Snyder Hill Rd. Surprisingly, both of those hill climbs were perfectly manageable, thanks largely to the shade from the forested land on the bulk of the steepest portions. I hope to ride almost every stage this year and take rest days during the Tour rest days, but we'll see.

Wednesday, Stage 4 Data

Thursday, Stage 5 Data

Velo Tantra

In my early-to-mid 20s, I studied a form of Tantra Yoga, which involved spending significant time meditating, doing yoga, and generally immersing myself in activities that helped to calm some inner demons. Suffice it to say that I had some fairly significant issues to work out, as many of us do in that awkward transitional period leading up to (relatively) mature adulthood, and this practice was most helpful.

I don't regret for a moment all of the time and energy I invested in this practice. I attended numerous meditation retreats and seriously contemplated a more intensive exploration of this particular school of Tantra yoga, though ultimately I retreated rather than attempt to accept a guru as the manifestation of god on earth. Unwilling to suspend disbelief, I abandoned my practice entirely, while knowing full well that there's so much to gain from the practice, and devotion to a spiritual leader is not a prerequisite to personal spiritual growth. Punk rock, media arts and other earthly distractions kept me sufficiently engaged, and when I began re-exploring cycle touring in a big way, meditation and yoga were barely on my radar.

On my deeply satisfying solo bike excursion today up to Lansing, then onto the familiar Ringwood, Midline and Snyder Hill Rd. route, I had no mechanical distractions and experienced relatively little suffering, so I started contemplating the relationship between meditation and solo cycling. There are some striking similarities between the two activities. At the start of the first climbs of the day, my worries start to recede like a slow-moving stream, replaced with thoughts about how smooth my pedal stroke is (needs improvement) and how strong I feel today (pretty strong, actually). Soon, the stream becomes a fast-flowing river with the occasional waterfall as I pound my way up Ringwood and later Snyder Hill.

Meditation is all about emptying the mind, and while cycling does require constant focus on road conditions, traffic, hydration, nutrition, and the condition of your equipment, this relatively simply and narrow range of focus becomes fairly routinized. On solo rides, it doesn't take long for me to find relatively mental clarity and emptiness, and just as with meditation, the long-term benefits are very noticeable.

I'm learning that solo rides are an essential part of my cycling practice, and while group rides and races are  incredibly challenging, rewarding and fun, my solo cycling is my meditation.

Soaking, Windy, Gritty and Great

It's never easy to hop on the bike and head out on a ride when it's rainy and windy, but this one felt necessary, as it's my last chance for a long training ride before Sunday's Lakefest Race in Whitney Point.  Lots of Ithaca riders heading to this one, so it should be a friendly event and a good time.

Tonight's ride felt pretty utilitarian until I reached Ellis Hollow Creek Road. Finally, after getting away from traffic (which is unpleasant and a little intimidating in the wet) and loose gravel, the rain tapered off and the familiar and comforting rolling hills lulled me into a meditative state. The Ringwood climb just keeps getting better, and I barely noticed my freezing feet.

The good thing about working hard in the rain is that after a while you don't even notice it, you're generally warm enough even when it's in the 50s, and you don't have to worry about getting dehydrated. Of course, the down side is that when you return, your bike is gritty as are your clothes. I had the customary rings of grit around the my ankles and socks from all of the road junk getting thrown off of the drivetrain. Rides like this necessitate a complete cleaning and degrease, and tonight I adjusted the rear derailleur and brake cables and even trued the rear wheel, yet another meditative practice that yielded great results. Hopefully that will resolve the cursed chain-jumping-whilst-mashing-the-pedals-on-big-hills syndrome. I've done so much micro adjustments, so tonight I started from scratch and carefully adjusted the derailleur  to hopefully resolve the problem for good. The're are few things in the realm of cycling that are more frustrating than being inadvertently shifted to a higher gear in the midst of an intensive climb, and it really throws your concentration, confidence and timing.

Today I topped 1700 miles for the year, which started in early March. Vertical elevation thus far this year is just under 95,000 ft., and according to Garmin's questionable caloric data, I've burned around 105,000 calories in the last 3 months! No wonder I keep shedding pounds...

Big Effort & Reward

What better way to celebrate a smooth drivetrain than with a massive ride? I had to get an early start, due to family plans, which was just as well, considering my route. Today I took on Yellow Barn Rd. from the Dryden side, a bit of a monster climb that you have to really get mentally prepared for. With over 700 vertical feet of climbing over a 2 mile stretch and a portion that exceeds 13% grade, it's best to take that one on before the heat of the day kicks in.

My preliminary plan was to do Yellow Barn, then take Midline to Rt. 79, followed by the Ellis Hollow/Ringwood climb for good measure. Climbing the bear that is Yellow Barn, I tried conserving more energy for the first part of the climb, in order to push harder on the final rises, the section that never seems to end. This strategy worked really well, and my recovery time after finishing the climb was remarkably fast.

On my way down Midline, I first entertained the notion of adding Snyder Hill to the tail end of my ride, in order to get more climbing in. After Yellow Barn, the Ringwood climb didn't seem all that strenuous, so I was raring to take on Snyder Hill when three fellow Cookies, Mark, Wayne and Matt, caught me on 79. I was disappointed that their ride didn't synchronize with mine, so I was thrilled to ride the Snyder Hill leg with those very nice gentlemen.

This ride gave me a good perspective on the year's training and how one advances through the year. Today's adventure exceeded 3500 vertical feet of climbing over a 48 miles, and I'm ready for more tomorrow. Well, just a little more...total miles for the month of May is currently 665 miles, and I have one more day to give that number a boost. My goal is to exceed 2000 miles before the end of June, which seems doable. So far I have 1450 miles logged for the year, with 84,000 vertical ft. of climbing, so this looks to be my best and biggest year of riding yet, provided I can keep up the pace. (By the way, that's the awesome Mr. Keith with his Park Chain Checker tool, the one that got me on course to a smooth drivetrain.)

Rookie Racing Revelations

What a goofy Tuesday race night, filled with confusion, an unwelcome puncture and an unexpected climb. Chaos is good for the spirit and makes you grow, so I'm certainly not complaining.

First of all, if you're a semi-serious road biker, you take really good care of your equipment and keep your drivetrain as clean and as perfectly lubed as can be. You also check for wear and tear and make sure that critical contact points (cleats, pedals, crank, etc.) are properly tightened. I've been doing what I think is a pretty good job in this department, so I've become increasingly alarmed about noises that I'm hearing while pedaling. At first I thought the issue was worn out cleats, so I replaced them, but the noise didn't go away. Next up, I checked pedal, bottom bracket and crank tightness, and yet the noise persists. Now I'm thinking that it's either the pedal bearings or the bottom bracket bearings, but in any case, it's as distressing as hearing some kind of persistent noise in your car, and a certain amount of unease has pervaded my cycling in the last week or so.

So starting out tonight's informal race, I was already thinking excessively about this problem, trying to calculate when it would be best to live without my bike for a day. (Yes, the addiction is so far advanced.) The race started off very, very slow, up Ellis Hollow Creek Road to Ringwood. I didn't understand the leisurely pace and I should have asked, but instead, I pulled ahead of the group and started making my way up Ringwood. I kept slowing down, but nobody was passing me, which was most confusing. Then, as luck would have it, I got a front puncture. I think I set a personal best for roadside tube replacement, and quickly got back on the bike. I was a tad too hasty, because after a bit of climbing I realized that I left my helmet behind! After recovering from my stupidity, I made my way up to Midline, and was delighted to see that the B group had yet to start the Midline descent.

Catching the B group was very good fortune, since I wanted to learn better race strategy, and the A group is just too challenging for me to really figure out how and when to attack. I moved my way up through the B group and was right up front with the leaders as we turned onto Rt. 79. I foolishly assumed that we would be doing the same route as the last time the Tuesday group did this route, but I was taken aback when I found that we would be looping around and doing the Ringwood climb again! Turns out that the first Ringwood climb was treated as neutral—if I had only asked, I would have managed my race strategy differently and saved more fuel for the climbs.

I got dropped by about 10 riders on the second Ringwood climb, but those of us left behind formed a very effective paceline and clawed our way back to the lead group. Finally, on the Snyder Hill return climb I somehow found an energy reserve and was able to pull past most of the B group and finish strong. What a terrific feeling to pull out a good finish after a challenging middle section.

My bike is now in the infinitely capable hands of Glenn Swan, who will surely get to the bottom of my crank noise issue. It'll be hard to live a day without my trusty bike, but I think I'll manage!