Where I've Been This Year

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

Data driven cycling with GPS and Google Earth

In the spring of '09 when I finally bought my new road bike, I also budgeted for some cool accessories. The coolest one by far was a Garmin Edge 205. This handy little unit has fundamentally changed the way I ride and where I ride. It has also become the catalyst for reflecting on my rides with friends and total strangers via online social networking tools (Facebook and Twitter) and online route sharing sites such as Everytrail.com and Mapmyride.com. I also import all of my rides into Google Earth, which lets me do a virtual flyover or tour of my ride.

The Garmin Edge 205 is the entry level bike GPS unit. While its capabilities are limited in comparison with to pricier models, it was more than sufficient for my needs. While the main function for car GPS units is to keep from getting lost and find the fastest way to a specific locale, I use my Garmin to monitor my speed, distance, average speed, calories burned, and most importantly, my altitude, percentage of grade on my climbs, and my cumulative vertical feet climbed.

My Garmin accompanied me on most of my rides this year, and really gave each ride a life of its own. Sometimes I would bring a small camera along as well. My typical post-ride routine is to download my GPS data, then use an online converter tool provided linked off of Everytrail.com to convert the file into KMZ format. Then I upload my ride to Everytrail, write up a description, add pictures if available (sometimes I add screen shots from Google Earth), then share the ride with my Facebook and Twitter friends. After that, I upload the KMZ file to Google Earth and view the flyover (tour). I have also started posting videos of my Google Earth tours with narration to YouTube.



Why do all of this? I actually love it, and it allows me to connect riding with other activites that I'm interested, such as blogging, mapping and video editing. I get a chance to reflect on the ride, study my data, try to beat my best average speed on a given ride, and study the maps to look at new possibilities for routes. This has all made me a better cyclist, without a doubt.

This summer I participated in the Le Tour Challenge, an event sponsored by MapMyRide and others. I rode every day that I could that coincided with a Tour de France stage, then uploaded my ride data to MapMyRide. I could see how my data compared with other participating cyclists as well as the Tour cyclists. I ended up with some pretty satisfying results, which drove me to ride even harder. I also won a really nice Polar cyclocomputer with heartrate monitor, which brings me to thoughts about what I'll do with this in the future.

While I like the Polar cyclocomputer's heartrate monitoring function, and really see the value of assessing heartrate data, it seems silly for me to ride with two separate devices (GPS and Polar). It would be hard to justify this, but an upgrade to an Edge 305 (or better) would allow me to capture heartrate data and eliminate the need for the Polar unit. Also, the heartrate data could automatically be added to the Everytrail posts.

I loved watching all of my rides accumulate in Google Earth—it provided very tangible evidence of my progress, and prompted me to explore areas less traveled. In the spring I'll hide all of my rides in Google Earth and repopulate the map all over again.