Big Dairy Afternoon

No, I didn't gorge myself at Cayuga Lake Creamery, taking on their intimidating but delicious 50 flavor challenge. I left that task in the capable hands of one of my library colleagues. Instead, I headed to the land of big dairy, namely 20 miles north of Ithaca, around King Ferry, Genoa and Venice. This area reminds me so much of midwestern farming towns, with feed stores, silos, large open pastures and chip seal roads. It was a very sleepy Saturday in dairy country, with next to no traffic and nobody outside. It felt more like a Sunday than a Saturday.

Yesterday was somewhat raw, with temperatures starting out in the upper-40s, then gradually cooling down as I made my way to Terpening Corners and beyond. My heart rate was unusually high during the Remington/Sunset climb, probably due to the fact that this was my first ride in a week, and I was fighting off a virus. However, by the time I got to the hillclimb out of Lansing toward King Ferry, I was feeling pretty strong. This was an illusion, of course, as I had a massive tailwind all the way past King Ferry to Ledyard. Of course, this meant that I had to face a wicked headwind on the homestretch back toward Lansing and all the way down 34B to Ithaca, and I was certainly feeling it when I got home. This was my longest ride of the season, and I'm looking forward to ramping up the distances in the coming weeks.

Stats:

Distance: 44.83 miles

Avg. speed: 18.1 mph

Vertical ascent: 2367 ft.

Avg. heart rate: 147 bpm

Calories burned: 2525 kcal

Max. speed: 44.1 mph

Time: 2:29:02

I bought a pair of Pearl Izumi windblocker gloves yesterday at my LBS that slip over the regular summer bike gloves. This is an excellent alternative to padded full-finger cold weather bike gloves, which are twice the price. By the time I climbed the second hill out of Lansing, my hands were so toasty that I had to take them off.

While I was at the LBS, I noticed an absurd product that served as a reminder that there is no end to the development of niche market products. It's called the gel-bot from Hydrapak, and no, it's not a gelatinous robot. It's a 2-in-1 water/gel bottle that allegedly allows easy consumption of a gel without having to struggle with opening the gel pack and suffer from dreaded sticky finger syndrome. While this $16 item gets some decent reviews online, it's RIDICULOUS! I imagine the thinking of a triathlete who imagines that they might gain a five second advantage by not having to unzip a gel pack while racing. The product must be finding its market, since gel-bots have been selling for almost five years, evidently.

Halloween Ride

Who'd have thought such opportunities would present themselves? No jacket on Halloween with dry roads and dramatic skies. Wind speeds were around 15 mph up in Lansing. Intense tailwind on the climb all the way to Searles Rd. had me sailing up Triphammer and than POW! What a brutal headwind for the return trip.

As a data-obsessed cyclist just starting my heart rate monitoring adventure, I was quite amazed at how much a headwind adds to the heartrate, even when I was struggling to go faster than 14 mph on a relatively flat road. Having this data is most helpful, and lessens the frustration of pedaling hard and not going very far. At least I have concrete proof that I'm working hard.

Data for today's ride: 19.6 miles, 147 avg. BPM, 19.2 mph. Odometer for the year: 2670 mi.

Reality is sinking in that this is probably the last week of road riding for the year, but at this point I feel very fortunate that the season has lasted so long. Some lingering questions: When will next season begin? What kind of pedals will I buy? Ultegra/105s or Look Keo? I have all winter to figure that one out.

The picture is from the Library of Congress' American Memory Project:

Bike racer, Carl Stockholm Stockholm sitting on a bicycle in front of a light-colored backdrop in a room. 1929. Photograph. Chicago History Museum, Chicago. Http://memory.loc.gov. Library of Congress. Web. 31 Oct. 2009.

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.