Tuesday Night Competitive Ride: A New Chapter

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...

Hunkered Down

Snow is in the air! Now that I'm hunkered down and all set up for spinning in the basement with my trusty trainer, let the snow fly, I say. The big challenge now is to keep up the schedule of indoor biking workouts three times weekly through the winter. This is unchartered territory for me, as I've never maintained an indoor training schedule of any kind before. It's so much harder to get motivated to ride with a trainer than to ride on on the road. How do professional athletes do it?

One of the obvious reasons that I slowly gained weight through my 30s and 40s and had such a hard time losing weight is my strong aversion to exercise. For my whole life I've held stubbornly to my position that exercise for exercise sake is just plain boring and that I'll never do that. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it. I've been able to hold true to this mindset all through this year of substantial weight loss and improved fitness by doing a Wii Fit workout almost daily since February in addition to road biking all summer. For those of you who haven't experienced the magic of Wii Fit, you have so much fun working out that you don't resent it. I've never been into gaming, but I can do Wii Fit for an hour or more without getting bored, and the cumulative effect is incredibly beneficial. The Wii Fit experience is data driven, and I've written in prior posts about my obsession with gathering and analyzing data from my rides. Wii Fit Plus improves tremendously on an already fantastic product, with lots of new fun activities like Island Cycling, Obstacle Course, Birds-Eye Bullseye, Skateboarding, Boxing, and Snowball Fight. In addition, it tracks an estimate of calories burned, and analyzing the graph of your weight loss is very motivating.

So why am I rethinking my anti-exercise stance? Wii Fit alone will not keep me in shape over the winter months, given the limited amount of time I have set aside to work out. That leaves the bike trainer, not the most fun thing in the world, so it means...gulp...exercise for exercise sake. Yikes! Can I succeed? I'm definitely motivated, so hopefully that will make all the difference.

Ask any cyclist who has tried riding on even the best trainer—it's a pale substitute to the euphoria of road biking. It's a good workout but you have to work hard on making the environment comfortable and find distractions that work for you. I get bored quickly with my music mixes, so I have to keep on top of this issue and make a few new playlists in anticipation of my next workouts. It's all about mind games, but there's no doubt that my positive state of mind, thanks to many months of intense aerobic workouts, will contribute greatly to the success of this workout strategy.

Big Dairies & King Ferry

As the king of hyperbole, I won't shy away from describing this ride as absolutely euphoric. It's November 15th here in Ithaca, and the high temperature on my ride was 67 degrees! Riding without a jacket in mid-November is most bizarre, but I'm most grateful to the cycling goddess for arranging such ideal conditions and facilitating the further extension of an already long season.

Today I passed the 2800 mile mark for the season—I carefully chose a route that would get me there, and since I haven't been up along the lake to the King Ferry area in a while, I chose that route. This was my first time on Ledyard Rd., and it is the perfect choice for heading east and turning back to Ithaca.

I'm so glad that I decided to bring the camera today. Usually I am reluctant to bring the camera along, since I am trying to get maximum miles in during my allotted cycling time, but today I had the luxury of some extra time.

As you can see, I saw some very noisy wild turkeys on Remington Rd., just a couple hundred feet from Boynton Middle School. The sun was only with me for the first half hour, then the skies darkened and I thought perhaps I'd encounter rain, but it just stayed overcast for the rest of the trip. With all of the trees bare, it was a great day to get shots of the lake in the distance, as well as old barns and some beautiful homes.

This route takes you through some very big dairy operations around King Ferry, Genoa, Venice and East Lansing, and I tried to imagine what the old farming days were like in this area. There are a few remnants from those days, but now, the only shiny and new-looking farms are huge, sprawling dairies. It's so sad that family farming is the exception, not the rule.

Drivers seemed to be less attentive toward cyclists now that it's mid-November, and on a couple of occasions, drivers almost turned into me while I was in an intersection. Good practice for the lungs (I don't shy away from shouting at drivers) and for the evil-eye-darting-glance, but moments like those are most unwelcome. Us cyclists aren't asking for much, just a little attention. Put those damn cell phones away, people, and watch the road!

You can also see that I was all about the data today. Regular odometer, heartrate cyclocomputer and GPS, not to mention the camera. I know that it seems like overkill, but I won't be using the heartrate unit as an odometer. I've read that it can easily get reset by accident, and I want a reliable odometer to keep track of my road miles. Furthermore, my basic meter has a thermometer, which is pretty handy. Still, I can't wait to get a new Garmin Edge with cadence, like a Garmin Edge 405 or 605. That way I can ditch the Polar unit and have my heartrate data integrated into my speed and elevation data. This will allow me to see how my heartrate changes during specific climbs. This would be very valuable information for training purposes. Too bad I'd have to shell out around $400...I'd much rather spend it on a new wheelset or something.

Speaking of heartrate information, I hit a max of 170 at the top of Ridge Rd. in Lansing. That was pretty cool. I averaged 144 BPM for 2 1/2 hours, which feels pretty damn good. I don't think that downhill skiing will come anywhere close. Sure, cross-country skiing would be similar, but I probably won't have many opportunities this winter. Who knows...snowshoeing might be a good middle ground.

My favorite part of today's ride was Gulf Rd. in Lansing. There's a short, steep climb where Gulf meets Conlon Rd., and it's a real pedal stomping heart pounding affair. That turn onto Conlon Rd. is so gratifying.

See the ride on Everytrail

Here's the data:

Distance: 46.13 miles

Elapsed time: 2 hours, 30 min.

Avg. speed: 18.5 mph

Max. speed: 46 mph (heading east on Ledyard toward 34)

Vertical ascent: 2566 ft.

Calories burned: 2431

Avg. BPM: 144

Anatomy of an Ithaca Ride

Now that I'm transitioning (reluctantly) to the off-season, I thought it would be fun to study the anatomy of one of my favorite rides, Ithaca - Lansing - Dryden - Yellow Barn Rd. - Ellis Hollow - Brooktondale - Ithaca.

What's not to love about this ride? There are plenty of challenges, exceptionally scenery, very light traffic on most roads, and the roads with traffic have wide and well-paved shoulders. I think that the best aspect is the climbs and where they occur along the way. I'll isolate out the biggest and most memorable individual climbs and focus on the specific challenges, as well as my state of mind as I'm climbing.

Remington is the best way to escape the flats of Ithaca. As you can see, it's the second-steepest climb of the trip, second only to Ringwood. The climb up to Sunset, then up to Cayuga Heights, is almost exactly 400 ft. in just over 1 mile. The road is nothing short of perfect, with smooth pavement, little-to-no traffic, and lots of twists and turns. It's best to stand on the pedals right away for the first 100 yards at least, until the first slight leveling off. When you're standing on the pedals, it's nice to have the entire lane to yourself, and drivers will always give you plenty of clearance. This is a popular road for cycling and walking, and pedestrians always seem to outnumber drivers. The challenge of this initial climb is counterbalanced by the fact that I typically have fresh legs at this point. I tend to stand two or three more times on the way up to Sunset, and alway on the last turn leading up to Sunset. After a very brief respite, there's another steep, short climb up to Cayuga Heights Rd. which involves standing and gets my BPM up into the 160s. Then, after crossing Rt. 13, there's a short, moderate descent before the easier Oakcrest climb up to Triphammer.

After this intense beginning, Triphammer up to Lansing is a much less intensive endeavor. The grade is in the 3-5% realm, as opposed to 8-10% for the first part. Triphammer may be a bit boring, but there are great views of Cayuga Lake as you climb. At this point, I'm starting to feel in the groove, and there are some stretches where I'm standing on and off and getting upwards of 25 mph heading toward Terpening Corners. The total ascent for this stretch is a little over 200 ft., so there are lots of sprinting opportunities here. I usually reach Terpening Corners at around the 28 minute point in my ride, and I can gauge my energy level or the effect of the wind when the numbers are different.

Triphammer flattens out for a stretch, and then as you head west toward Dryden the road gets gradually steeper, but is almost completely devoid of traffic. This is beautiful farm country, and while the roads aren't great (chip seal), it doesn't much matter. This part of the ride is quietly contemplative, and my worries and daily concerns are slowly diminishing, replaced by inane musings. I often fixate on little details, like decorations on houses, what it would cost to heat a house up on these hills, country vs. city living, etc. This is the most comforting part of the ride.

After the descent into Dryden, there's a nice plateau that takes you into Freeville, which serves as the rest before the insane ascent of the day, Yellow Barn Rd. This is a great place to fuel up with a gel or a power bar, and you really need it. With 800 ft. of climbing over less than 4 miles, this is a ridiculously tough challenge. The other alternative is to take Ringwood Rd., which is 600 ft. spread over a similar distance. This is a deceiving climb, since the road twists and turns, and you can't get a good read on how long and how steep it truly is. And it just keeps going and going until you think you can't climb anymore.

After the ascent, my legs are rubber for a while, but then there's this incredible downhill that takes you all the way through Ellis Hollow and down into Brooktondale. The ride is essentially over, save for the obligatory last push into Ithaca. At this point I'm elated, exhausted and feeling triumphant.

This loop has so much variety and character, with discrete sections, well-timed climbs, great scenery and just the right distance for this much elevation climb. I think that taking the loop counter-clockwise would be a bit easier, so that's something to explore for next season.

Forever Young

As an adult cyclist, every now and then I feel a bit self-conscious, riding with my tight-fitting fancypants gear on roads with drivers tucked in nicely in their cars. What are they thinking about these encounters? Are they mildly annoyed that they have to slow down for a little while and cautiously pass at the first opportunity, or are they simply amused at our peculiar costumes and mucus clearing methodology (don't ask)? I wonder, if they aren't adult cyclists, do these encounters stir some deep-rooted childhood memories of terrorizing the neighborhood on their chopper and performing dangerous stunts like standing on the banana seat as if it were a skateboard?

I can usually tell who's a cyclist (or cyclist sympathizer) and who isn't by how they pass me. Sympathizers usually go the extreme giving lots of room while passing, often crossing the meridian, and waiting very patiently. The alternative can be pretty damn scary. I've had too many close calls over the years with the oblivious, the angry, the distracted, and the purposefully indifferent, those who don't want to give more leeway than the law allows as a matter of principal.

As a young cyclist, I was pretty oblivious to my surroundings, but now I ride with a finely tuned sense of all potential hazards, including deer. (I've had an increasing number of encounters with deer of late, particularly on one section of Oakcrest and on Remington and Sunset.) As a child, I felt impervious to danger; as an adult, I feel on guard at all times, which is why I really like my Remington escape route [Remington must be the subject of a future entry].

Today I've been musing about why cycling is so appealing to me, and I think it's all about savoring and holding on to my childhood. So much of life gets complicated and conflicted, as we start swimming upstream, having kids, see our parents turn elderly, and started contemplating our own mortality. Maybe I'm just in denial, looking for ways to keep my young in body and in spirit, but I really don't think it's that self-conscious a decision. I just bike because it's more fun than just about anything. But maybe what makes cycling that much more joyful is the flood of positive childhood memories that it prompts. With all of the endorphins flowing, I tend to concentrate on the happier memories, and I often puzzle through what I did wrong in past encounters and life situations. I wonder if it's a coincidence that my best bicycle year in the late '80s is also the year that I've reconnected with so many childhood (and young adult) friends and acquaintances?