A Big Game Run Amok

My plan was to once again (for the third consecutive year) participate in the Le Tour Challenge, a crazy online virtual challenge where those of us with Tour de France fantasies can compare stats and compete for prizes and points on a leaderboard. It's far from scientific, but it has been a kickass challenge to force myself to ride for virtually every day in the glorious month of July, then collapse on the couch with a giant bowl of Kashi Go Lean (best cereal ever invented) and blueberries (best fruit ever invented) and watch the day's stage of the real Tour.

The plan started to go south last Tuesday when some of us fools got caught out in a torrential storm during the Tuesday Night Races. I've never cycled through such a heavy downpour and the lightning was a bit too exciting for my tastes. I also knew that my hard-working Garmin Edge 205 would be suffering as well. I've logged over 10,000 miles with my Garmin since ordering it in the spring of 2009, and starting last year it started to crash after riding in the prolonged rain.

The day after the deluge it was functioning fine, but the day after, I started it up and then it would automatically stop. I kept having to press the start button to get it going again. I put it in a plastic bag with some rice to dry it out (advice from tech support at Garmin), but things only got gradually worse as the week went on.

Le Tour Challenge 2011, Stage 1

To fully participate in the Le Tour Challenge and have your rides ranked, you have to submit data from a GPS device like a Garmin or a smartphone. So yesterday I rode a pleasant 58 miles, mostly with Dave, around Genoa, Lansing and Salmon Creek, and the Garmin started crashing on my repeatedly. I remembered how to reset it, but every time I reset, I lost some miles and the average speed and calorie estimates got totally messed up. I submitted my data and emailed tech support at MapMyRide, asking them to ignore my average speed data, which evidently they do anyway. The worst part about this was getting distracted from an otherwise nice ride.

I was hoping that another night in the rice bag would get my trusty Garmin back to working order, but I was sadly mistaken. I headed out for a moderate ride, meandering up through Cayuga Heights, then through Cornell campus and off to the familiar Ringwood, Midline and Ellis Hollow/Ellis Hollow Creek route. I really felt like a fool as I stopped or slowed down at least 14 times to reset the damn computer. I realized fully for the first time that my frustrations in my quest for data was completely ruining my cycling experience. I was far from being in the moment as I kept my eye on the odometer to see if it would once again lock up. 

Why was I doing this? What really was the point of participating in this virtual challenge anyway? And why do I feel the need to log every single cycling mile and compare the stats with the previous year or week or whatever? Well, if you know me at all, you know that I tend to be obsessive and I take my addiction very seriously. It seems that the older I get, the better I get at following obsessions to their logical conclusions. I'm not interested in changing this undeniably annoying personality quirk, since I honestly believe that it's O.K. or even fantastic to embrace your obsessions as long as you pick the right ones. However, I feel like this one particular activity is actually not worth the stress and frustration. Why do I really care how far up the leaderboard I go? In the first year I won a heartrate cycling meter, so there is the allure of winning stuff and the recognition that I could do pretty well when competing with thousands of others around the world. However, I don't think it's worth getting worked up over anymore. I remember last July I was pushing so hard through the month that I was actually greatly relieved when the event was over. I was really strong by the time August rolled around, but I think I can ride just as much and have more fun if I lay off a little and just ride for fun. Maybe my Garmin issues are a happy accident that led me to a helpful realization. 

I'm still leaving the Garmin in a rice bag overnight, however...

Le Tour Challenge Recap

This year's MapMyRide/Le Tour Challenge competition was a memorable experience and certainly a high point of my summer. Thousands of people around the world took part and were encouraged to ride every stage day of this year's Tour de France and submit their gps data to compete for stage points. Only verifiable (gps) data was considered for stage points, but I suppose someone could mount their Garmin unit on a moped and fake it!

Obviously not everyone took this very seriously, but there were a bunch of us submitting rides almost every day of the Tour. I did this event last year and was the lucky winner of a Polar unit with heartrate and cadence. While I was dreaming of winning something fabulous like a new bike, a carbon wheelset, or a trip to France, my primary goal this year was to get as high up the leaderboard as possible, and while I didn't win anything, I'm pretty pleased with my results.

This year I rode in 19 of the 21 stage days (all solo rides, squeezing my expeditions between family obligations and work), and finished in 10th place overall and 2nd place in the 46-50 age category, accumulating 103 stage points. My highest stage ranking was 4th, a lap around Cayuga Lake in ridiculously high humidity and temperature in the mid 90s. (Stage winners get 25 points.) MapMyRide kept tidy track of my stats, comparing them to the pros in the Tour. I averaged around 19.8 mph over the 678 miles, which obviously pales in comparison to the ridiculous 24.7 mph pace of Contador over 2260 miles and an unfathomable 428,000 ft. of ascent!

My Stats:
Stages Completed 19 (between 7/3 and 7/25)
Total Distance: 677.87 mi
Total Time: 34 hours, 18 minutes
Total Ascent: 29,518 ft

Alberto Contador's Stats:
Stages Completed 21
Total Distance: 2260.34 mi
Total Time: 91 hours 30 minutes
Total Ascent: 428,182 ft

I tried hard to mix it up, taking on the hills during the mountain stages and looking for flatter, faster routes for the sprint stages, since it seems to matter—I don't know if they're relying exclusively on software or if there's a human element used to determine stage rankings, but hills mattered a lot more on the mountain stages and much less on the flat stages. Distance always mattered, so if you took a long ride at a brisk pace, you stood a good chance of winning points. I visited Ringwood and Snyder Hill a bunch of times, suffered through a Yellow Barn climb, rode around Cayuga Lake, and even climbed Bear Mountain on a family trip to Putnam County.

Here are three of my favorite rides over the last three weeks:

Cold Spring/Bear Mountain

Cayuga Lake

Lansing/Yellow Barn/Willseyville

Ringwood twice/Snyder Hill

Now that the exhausting Le Tour Challenge adventure is over, I no longer feel the need to push as hard. After a rest day, I've been back on the bike, looking for hills that I haven't climbed yet and enough miles to make my goal of 3,000 miles before the end of July. With 3 days and 25 miles to go, it'll be an easy goal. Then hopefully, coming in later August, I'll be doing some riding in the Adirondacks and Vermont. Perhaps the 5 finger lakes goal will slip by the wayside for this year...too much time away from the boys.

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!

Moving Up the Leaderboard...By Accident

At this stage in the Le Tour Challenge, I fully expected to continue my slow slide down the leaderboard, but I was buoyed by the news that as of this morning I'm now ranked 15th overall out of over 1600 participants, and 2nd in my age category. Woo hoo! I'm delighted to be the Alberto Contador to Jeff K's Andy Schleck. This all came about as a result of an error in calculating yesterday's route, combined with a last-minute decision to climb the nasty Yellow Barn Road.

Yellow Barn never seems to get any easier, no matter how many times I take it on. It's a very deceiving climb, since it takes you on a number of turns in which the road ahead is shielded from view by the Yellow Barn Forest. My trusty Garmin tells me the real truth, as I watch the altitude and curse my way up to 1800 ft. Then I think about the climbs that those poor souls in France are experiencing, and it's all put back into perspective. The truth is that like most crazed cyclists, I really do love the struggle, and the there are few purer, more simpler pleasures than cresting the last part of the hill and switching back into the big chainring for the rewarding descent.

As you can see by this screenshot, Yellow Barn is over 700 ft. of climbing stretched over two miles, with sections of 12-16% grade. I sometimes wish there were more rural climbs in our area that were much longer at a consistent 6-8% grade but not quite as steep, but you have to take what you get. I'm hardly complaining though, since I believe that we have some of the greatest cycling roads in the northeast.

I'm working at Ithaca College all week, so I've been looking for fun roundabout ways of getting there. For yesterdays mini-epic ride, I totally miscalculated how many miles it would take to add on the Brooktondale-Willseyville-Danby-IC portion of the ride, and my total was just under 50 miles. The good news was that the mysterious MapMyRide/Le Tour Challenge software liked my combination of distance, average speed, vertical ascent and climb categories.  Interestingly, the software automatically assesses and categorizes the biggest climbs, calling the initial Remington/Oakcrest climb Cat 4 and Yellow Barn a Cat 3. I'm guessing that Connecticut Hill might be a Cat 2, but I'm not trying that one anytime soon.

Today I took Ringwood Rd. from the Ellis Hollow side, and I just can't get enough of that buttery smooth new asphalt. There was a light mist for the bulk of the ride, which was just a perfect treat and antidote to the humidity.

Le Tour Challenge, Stage 9 (7/13)

Le Tour Challenge, Stage 10 (7/14)

Rest Day Relief

It's a rest day in the Tour de France, which mercifully also means a rest day for me in the Le Tour Challenge. Yesterday was the worst day for Lance in any tour since '99, with three crashes, one of them at the worst possible time. This happened just before the hardest climb of the day, just before heading up the Col de la Ramaz, and he was moving at around 40 mph when he clipped a pedal and went down hard. It wasn't surprising that he bonked after that, initially reaching the tail end of the peleton with the help of Brajkovic and Horner and others, but before long the group split apart, and there were some awfully grim looking teammates slogging it out for the rest of the stage. Those sure are the breaks, though now Lance gets to do something uncharacteristic and ride hard in support of Levi Leipheimer, and move him up in the GC standings. While I'd love to see Levi win a Tour, I don't see it happening. I'm rooting for Andy Schleck all the way, who has been riding a sensational tour, and seems to have Contador's number.

While Lance is diving down the leaderboard, I'm slowly slipping down the Le Tour Challenge leaderboard, though it's not at all surprising. If I could find the time to ride 80+ miles every day, things would be a little different, but I'm pretty pleased to be in third overall in my age category and 22nd overall. My last two rides have been utilitarian, and I've been trying to squeeze as much climbing out of the limited time available.

Yesterday I headed up Remington and Oakcrest, then headed straight toward the airport, slicing off a bunch of miles to get to Ringwood fast. The weather was spectacular, cool with low humidity when I left before 6:30. I saw something like 20 rabbits, as well as around a dozen deer. Those critters are fairly unpredictable, and with the recent bike/deer accident in mind, I'm very cautious in those circumstances.

On Saturday, I did something a bit unusual for me, changing my route at random and taking a road I've never climbed before. After climbing up Renwick and Wycoff to quickly get up to the Cornell campus, I took the familiar Game Farm/Ellis Hollow Creek route to get to the newly resurfaced Ringwood Rd. Wow, what a difference smooth asphalt makes on a climb. The roads were still wet after the welcome Friday night rainfall, and the water was beading off of the smooth surface. After turning south on Midline, I turned left on Irish Settlement road, a road that I've been on in the car before, but for some reason never tackled on the bike. Irish Settlement takes you right to the heart of Hammond Hill, a fantastic locale for nordic skiing. I took Irish Settlement all the way to Yellow Barn Rd., then meandered back via Triphammer and East Shore Dr. for that welcome long shallow descent.

The team covering the Tour on Versus have been talking a lot about the impact heat and humidity on riders during the climbs, and it's so true—taking on a big hill with cooler temps and low humidity puts you in a completely different mindset, and you feel so much stronger and more optimistic as you reach the final climb.

Stage 7 of Le Tour Challenge

Stage 8 of Le Tour Challenge

Early Morning Le Tour Challenge Ride

So today, owing to various scheduling conflicts, I had to squeeze my Le Tour Challenge ride into the early morning. It wasn't easy to leave the house at 5:45, but it sure was worth it. After a week of intense heat and humidity, today we should finally get a break, with some thunderstorms, followed by cooler temps. Starting a ride this early meant that I avoided the worst heat of the day, as well as minor traffic woes, and it sure was a terrific way to jump start the old kicker. It made me think about all those hockey players who get out there at insane o'clock to get some rink time.

With limited time, I took on a familiar Lansing Route, and noticed to my dismay that my average speed when I reached the corner of Oakcrest and Triphammer was below 16 mph. It's usually just over 16, so I knew I had to make up some speed on the rolling hills heading to Terpening Corners. After pushing hard for the next 5 miles, I was feeling stronger than ever, and even a substantial headwind on the return trip didn't dampen my spirit.


I'm currently ranked 17th overall in the Le Tour Challenge, though who knows how that ranking will change as the Tour goes into the mountains. I vaguely recall that all these crazy Colorado cyclists start to really move up the rankings, as vertical ascent stats are taken more into consideration. It's really a fun game, and a great way to stay continuously motivated.












My love letter to the Saab driver that I encountered yesterday:


To the long-hair Saab-driving 20-something dude on Snyder Hill Rd.: I am very sorry to have cost you upwards of 15 seconds on your difficult commute to Cornell this morning. Also, I deeply regret causing you the stress of forcing you to extend your hand so forcefully on wheel in order to honk. Also, hopefully you didn't hyper-extend your right arm as you positioned it to flip me off. For a moment there, I totally forgot about the third-class status assigned to cyclists riding on Ithaca's lightly travelled rural roads.

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