Spring Cycling Adventures

Here's a compilation of some of the high points of the last three weeks of cycling adventures. Waited too long to get this all up here so I'm going minimal on the descriptions of the rides and letting the photos tell the stories. (Skip to a gallery of all of the photos)

First, I got around to migrating the winter service course back out of the basement and into the garage.

A winter's worth of neglect.

From 2013 Spring Cycling Adventures

Now we're looking shipshape!

From 2013 Spring Cycling Adventures

In preparation for the upcoming road/CX combo rides I was planning to do, I got in a decent training ride that included a run down this railway line from Wayland to Weston.

From 2013 Spring Cycling Adventures

Next up, a 40 mile loop, the Ride Studio Café: Diverged ride, which took us on many roads and trails in Lexington, Belmont, Arlington, and Wincester. We got lost A LOT but had a ton of fun.

A Year Later: Best Solo Ride Ever

One year ago today, I did my most memorable solo ride, from home to Boston and back.

What is different about this year? Well, first of all, the weather has not been nearly so compliant. Right now there's still snow on the ground (had some flurries last night) and I've been happy when it gets all the way up to 40ºF.

On the WAY upside, I am in much better shape than I was at this time last year. My piriformis has not been bothering me at all and despite the excess of trainer workouts, my attitude is good. Here's to hoping the weather improves soon!

Sit Down Already!

Another big-ish ride last weekend which, as the numbers tell it, was pretty close to the one the week before in terms of total effort and intensity, but very different in how things played out.

Mostly.

You'll notice that although the distance is about the same, we put in an additional 2k ft of climbing. Another difference, not apparent from the Strava numbers is that this was a no-drop ride. We'd hit the climbs pretty hard and regroup at the top while last week, it was an every-man-for-himself situation for most of the ride.

So a continuous, but not all-out effort over a long period of time versus shorter, but more intense applications of power with recovery in between.

There were two factors this week that found me draining my tank sooner than I would have otherwise:

1) As is my all to frequent habit, the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the ride, I went at the climbs way too hard. Hey, I felt great, my bike felt fast, I wasn't cold to the core – it's hard for me to hold back that enthusiasm for longer rides. Gotta work on reigning in the horses.

2) I spent way too much time out of the saddle. I know, I know, I know.

Then I ran across this blog post over at Wattbike.com: Power behind the Tour: Climbing.

So what happens when a rider gets out of the saddle, well, I jumped on my Wattbike this morning and did some out of the saddle efforts.  First thing to notice is that it is very difficult to maintain a smooth application of power, which inevitably results in an increased heart rate (my heart rate jumped by 20bpm whilst my speed only rose by 2kph - we can safely say that it was not worth the effort!).  A lot of force needs to be put down the front end of the pedal stroke to maintain momentum and the consistently good pedal technique is all but lost, this is true for the majority of the riders. The physiological cost of this is an increased heart rate which subsequently leads to an increase in the production of lactate and ultimately the rider having to slow to recover.

I think the two following images do a pretty good job of demonstrating this physiological cost:

Power through the pedal stroke while seated. (Wattbike.com image)

Power through the pedal stroke while standing (Wattbike.com image)

What I have to remember is that if I stand on a climb, just because it feels like I am working harder (and I am working harder), that does not translate into increased climbing speed of any significance.

It also means that I am burning matches that I could have used elsewhere in the ride. It's also silly for me not to take advantage of the trainer work I've been doing all winter spinning a higher cadence (100-105 instead of 95-100 rpm) while applying more power: it's made to order for climbing.

This is not to say that I won't EVER stand while climbing – there may be a breakaway forming that I need to catch or the climb is so long that I need to use other muscles for a while – I just need to do it less than I do now.

Wrenching Your Own Bike: Torque

Here's a great primer from Jay Seiter of Pedro's on why setting certain fasteners to the proper torque specs, especially on a carbon bike, is critically important:

As a human powered vehicle, the weight of a bicycle is a major contributor to performance. This requires engineers to push the limits of each material and design they choose. The engineer must factor in material properties, part shape, riding conditions, product life, and more. [...] While carbon fiber allows for more optimal design and provides a far higher strength to weight ratio compared to steel and aluminum, it is also more susceptible to crushing and cracking when improperly set up. Simply put, the margin for error is much smaller. For this reason, using a torque wrench has become essential.

Read the whole interview at Pink Bike.

I keep 3 different torque wrenches on hand: the first is a 30+ year old S-K beam type wrench that is dedicated to torquing down my bottom bracket and my cassette. I bought it way back when I had a motorcycle. It's long beam allowed me to ease up to the required torque nicely. Being a 1/2" drive wrench, my Pedro's External BB socket and the 1" socket for my Park Cassette Lockring Tool go right on.

The big advantage of a beam type torque wrench is that they are very stable. If you are a little rough with it and bend the needle away from zero, you can simply bend it back - it's the main beam of the tool that is the part that is calibrated. Now, that's not saying I think it would still be accurate if you drove over it with your car, but it does not require the care of a click wrench.

The two other wrenches are click types, both of them 3/8" Craftsman wrenches, one with a lower range (25-250 in-lbs or 2.98-28.2 N-m) that handles low torque duties such as the pinch bolts on my non-drive side crank and handlebar stem bolts. The other one (10-75 ft-lbs or 13.5-101.6 N-m) handles torquing that is too much for the small one to handle and offers precision the beam wrench cannot provide - this one is almost exclusively used on my car.

One big advantage of the click type torque wrenches over the bar type is that when you have to achieve a high torque, sometimes you have to position your body to pull on the wrench in such a way that you can't see the needle and the gauge. This is especially true when you are working on your car and you are under there with your hands and the wrench deep in the workings of your car. You just feel the click through your hand when the set torque is reached.. However, more care is required in their use and storage as the Jay said in his interview with Pink Bike.

Riding Outside Again!

After putting in over 260 outdoor miles in January, I had NONE in February, so joining up with a nice sized contingent of MRC members plus one 545 Velo pal on Saturday for a longish ride was quite nice.




The way the ride came off was awkward in more than a few ways: the start time was changed, the route was not well planned or known, the level of effort targeted by the person who posted the ride was overridden by the majority of the participants and lastly, I got shelled about halfway through.

Nevertheless, it was great to find out if all those hours on the trainer, using TrainerRoad workouts, had a positive effect on my performance. Net result: mixed.

On the upside, I was able to sustain a 30 minute effort at 92% FT – not from the beginning of the ride, but STARTING 24 miles in. Of course, I had the help of a large paceline which consisted of a lot of Cat 3 and 4 racers who did nearly all of the work up front to get me to that point.

It was at the end of that stretch, leading up into Carlisle along a series of short, punchy rollers (on a route called, "The Monster Bullet Train") that I hit a (the) wall. Bleh.

After a few minutes of deliberation, we stuck together as a group, but I thought the writing was on the wall. A little while later, recovered, I hit my best 5 min power for the ride heading up Nagog Hill. I don't know where THAT came from. Still: I was last up by a long way and a few minutes later, I thought I had been dropped for good.

I was fine with that: everyone else was in the groove and I knew my way back so I pedaled on, planning to continue for as long as I could at tempo.

No sooner did I start scrounging my "mental radio" for a song to help me soldier on, than I was overtaken by one of our group who was inadvertently left behind after dropping something he wanted to retrieve. Yay: company!

We met back up with the group at a coffee stop in Concord center and I was able to keep up the rest of the way back to Berlin.

So, what is the missing piece of the puzzle, looking at my fitness/training at this point? The usual: climbing.

If I'm not able to get outside and do the real thing, I need to figure out how to properly simulate climbing on the trainer. Also, I need to mix tempo efforts with climbing: all the TrainerRoad workouts give you really easy rest intervals, I should just do tempo during those perhaps.

Bike Chains - How It's Made

I thought my daughter made me watch every one of these last year when she discovered "How It's Made" but I never saw this one before.

(via The Two Johns Podcast)

There are two kinds of #HTFU: 1) starting when you don’t want to2) not stopping when you want to
— Russ Campbell (@rusto88) February 24, 2013

Side Work

Noticed that I logged 263 road miles (in addition to many hours on the trainer) in the month of January and ABSOLUTELY NONE so far in February. This is due to a combination of the weather (blizzard of '13, rain), a death in the family and ensuing travel involved, and illness (nasty cold had me knocked out for 5 days).

Meanwhile, I did manage to do a long overdue refresh of the Minuteman Road Club website. Nothing special, moved everything over to WordPress to make it easier to take over should I no longer be webmaster there: 

Favorite part is the right sidebar area that has tabbed feeds from Strava, Twitter, Road Results and Cross Results.

USA Cycling Adds New Cat 5 to Cyclocross

via cxhairs.com:

1E6: Category 5 established for men in cyclo-cross and upgrade system changed to resemble the road more. There will be voluntary upgrades and mandatory upgrades based on points. Cat 5 to Cat 4 upgrade by experience only.

More here: http://www.cxhairs.com/2013/01/23/cat-5-in-cross-its-here/

This presents interesting problems for race promoters to sort out:

• the race day would potentially get longer with an extra field, thus more costly (officials, EMT, site fees)
• rolling the new 5's in with the 4's might mean an unmanageable number of racers on the course
• dealing with yet ANOTHER disparity between men's and women's races (no Cat 5 has been established for women)

Lucky that the announcement came about as far away from the start of the cross season as it could so that promoters can figure out what they will have to do.

Food

My on-the-go, on-the-road job as a photographer provides many benefits to the bike riding/racing portion of my life but the variability/unpredictability also leads to many, MANY poor choices when I find myself out longer than expected and oh SO hungry.

Why doesn't Whole Foods have a goddam salad bar drive through?

Anyway, I'm sitting here in what used to be a haunt where I have often gorged on all sorts of obscenities, patting myself on the back for ordering a tomato/cucumber salad instead of the other, less honorable choices on the menu.

On Winter Base Miles

What is it about putting in long miles on icy cold winter days that makes them so satisfying? Is it the unhurried pace? Knowing that you are doing something even most other cyclists would look at you a bit crookedly for?

Fenders. A kind gesture not only for you but also for your buddies.

Up A Notch.

Did a 20 minute FTP test today (self administered via TrainerRoad on my Kurt Kinetic Road trainer). Bumped FTP up to 249 watts from 242 and LTHR to 158 bpm from 152.

Of course, the question is: could I have gone harder? Here's the tale of the tape:

I can honestly say that I don't know. You can see how I ramped it up a bit there towards the end, but it was agony. I do know it was a good thing nobody was home at the time, I was making quite a racket between breathing hard and gasping loudly.

Starting The Year Out Right: New Year's Day Ride

Now, I'm no hard man like some others I know who commute long miles all winter long, regardless of the weather. But occasionally, I overcome my tendency towards la dolce vita and do what I otherwise would think is a little nuts.

And so, with surprisingly very little prodding (or sleep), I took a mostly easy-paced ride with Gary yesterday. Temp was in the low 30's F, wind seemed to be out of the southwest at 10-15mph giving a nice wind chill of about 19ºF.

Filling in the (HUGE) Gaps - 2012 Wrap Up

Been quite a while since I threw anything up here so I figured I'd give a go at slapping together, in (few) words and (lots of) pictures, a rough summary of what I've done since April. I'm piecing this together through a combination of a review of my cycling log and the photos taken.

Sunday Random Bike Pic

, originally uploaded by rusto.

Sunday Random Bike Pic

Agostino Iacurci [via Unurth]

Instagramapalooza/Boston Solo Omloop

Pre-ride

So, this past Thursday's ride was one I've been thinking about doing for some time. Nearly all of the rides I've done have involved heading west and south of here or driving somewhere else altogether to ride. And I've never taken my bike into Boston.

A good deal of the people I follow on Twitter live in Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, etc. and I get to read about their adventures, exploits, near-misses and derring-do on a daily basis. Add to that reading about Geoff's long solo ride from Providence to Boston in January plus my frustration at multitudes of missed photo ops because I was in my car rushing through Boston from one place to another.

All that was swirling around in my head along with my desire to do a long ride that was more about enjoyment than fitness/training.

I made a few attempts to get a course into my Garmin, but neither MapMyRide nor BikeRouteToaster were up to the task. MMR gave me a decent plot but the exported gpx was refused by Garmin Training Center. BRT would not let me choose "bike" as the travel method and so would not plot any of the route on to the paths along the Charles River.

After the fourth failed attempt to export a route, I felt like I knew it pretty well anyways. The only doubtful part was getting across from Charlestown to Boston, but if I had to go back out via the Gilmore Bridge, that would be ok. The only other requirement I had for the route was to hit a few of the big climbs that I was aware of inside of Rte. 128: Park Ave. in Arlington, Summit in Brookline and Prospect Park in Waltham. Blue Hills would have to wait for another time.

Is it good? Darn tootin'!

Hill Repeats With John

Up and down some hills with John R yesterday. He was crushing them. They were crushing me. A few photos to follow...

Work for the "Funemployed"

Today was one of those days to really appreciate the free-lance life: weather predicted to be outstanding plus no pressing deadlines meant that I could accept an invitation for some late-morning MTB action and forget life's troubles for a while.

10:30 a.m. and the boys from Boston come rolling up to the parking lot at Russell Mill Town Forest in Chelmsford. NEMBA has been working with the Town of Chelmsford to improve the trails for mountain biking. This would be the first NEMBA maintained trail set that I've ever ridden.

Damn, that thing is CLEAN!

Dave, Joel (both Minuteman Road Club) and Abel (Hup) pile out of Dave's car and start gearing up for the ride. It was already at least 70ºF out, no wind and just a couple of clouds in the sky. Perfect for playing hookie...

Too Long, Too Hard, Too Soon

Yeah, it says "There are no achievements on this ride." but that doesn't include two: I put in 60 miles and made it home under my own power (barely). But I definitely bit off more than I could chew.

This was a two-part ride.

Part 1 - Rode out from home to the Atkinson Pool in Sudbury, thinking that I'd merely be riding through after the folks that were going to meet me there decided on a later start. Turns out, there WAS someone there waiting to ride.

Enter young Ace (his real name!) and his dad. Ace, all of 15 years old, introduced himself as a budding racer/triathlete and had been lurking the MRC boards for a year or so. He was on his dad's Marinoni (vintage mid '80's?). Seemed like the only modern amenities were the Speedplay pedals.

After introductions and enough conversation with me that his dad was assured I was not an axe murderer (or worse), we set out.