Record for this year so far on the commute to work. Last year top time was 17.something – I’ll keep trying to notch it up this year – see if I can have a 19mph ride before the summer is over. Of course, a lot of it has to do with timing of the lights.
Blog
Saddle Update – Specialized Toupe
I’m feeling pretty good about the new saddle. Probably three hundred miles on it or so now, including a couple of long rides.
Clearly, the butt is building new tough spots to correspond to this new saddle, and that’s never fun. But comfort-wise and pressure-wise, I think that this saddle is doing very well.
I like it.
The first long ride I used shorts with a really great insert, and used chamois cream to be safe. All was good. This weekend I did a long ride using shorts with a minimal chamois that had been conditioned a week ago. Clear difference, and the sore spots are clearly more evident with the more minimalist chamois, but I’m confident that this will pass as the spots toughen up. This morning I rode to work 25 miles on a cold morning with no conditioner on the minimal chamois, and surely felt the spots from yesterday, but again, these spots are going to toughen up.
My opinion of the saddle is getting better.
UPDATE: October/2010: After riding the saddle all summer, including 700 miles across Colorado and Kansas in July, I have a mixed opinion. For rides around town, I really do like the saddle. I’ve become accustomed to it, and it seems that I “fit” it well. However, I just don’t think this saddle is well-suited to long-distance riding. I think the saddle-sores I developed on the 700 mile trip were partially due to the saddle. I’d recommend this saddle to an around-town rider, but not to a long-distance rider.
Can Neil Keep Up With Dave?
OK, I’m now far enough into the training year to start wondering if I can somehow get to a fitness level that will be somewhat close to Dave’s level. Dave is doing lots of running this spring, and I think that he has races in early May and sometime in June. We talked about doing some training rides together in May – we’ll see if that happens and how well I can do with him. The one thing that could work against Dave is that in doing all the training for the run, he has really had zero time for bike training. So I might have the advantage of bike-specific training, but always seem to have the disadvantage of an overall fitness level that is never close to Dave’s.
Fitness is such an unforgiving judge. Each year I get older, it takes longer to achieve fitness and it leaves sooner. And there are no shortcuts. It has to be built layer by layer, workout by workout, week by week.
It will be interesting to see how the difference in our fitness routine plays out when it comes time for the ride in July. I continue to feel confident that the ride will be fun, and that I will be able to maintain high mileage while having fun.
Next weekend should be some early indicator as to whether Dave will spend much time waiting for me on the ride…
Snow and saddles
For the last few days as we have had nice weather, I’ve been thinking about how nice it is for the plants to get a real spring this year – one where they aren’t demolished by a late April or early May snow that makes them burn lots of energy starting over. How nice it is to see healthy plants exploding from the ground in April.
Then, woke up to snow this morning. Not a lot yet, but you never know. If it doesn’t pile up too much, and the temp doesn’t drop too far into the 20’s, most of them should be OK.
It makes me appreciate the resiliency of the plants that survive here, and their ability to face each new spring with fervor, with no idea what will happen. They just keep moving forward, growing, blooming, expanding.
And then my thoughts fall back to the new saddle that I put on my bike last weekend. The old saddle worked OK, though I knew that it wasn’t the greatest design around for keeping pressure off of critical nerve areas and certainly lacked comfort after many hours in it. But I never thought about it – just kept riding it because it’s what I know.
A saddle is such a personal thing, isn’t it? Each year I go through the process of getting the sit-bones broken in to the saddle. There is predictability to the saddle, the pain it causes, and how it fits. It might not be perfect, but I know it, and know how it fits. Recently someone asked me about my saddle, and my response was the same as it always is: “Sure the saddle isn’t perfect – it’s a pain in the ass after enough hours in it – but I know how it is going to feel and how we react to one another.”
But I made the leap last weekend and bought a new one. Now I have to go through the pain of breaking it in to my butt, and breaking my butt in to it.
It’s new and unknown. A little scary, a little exciting.
As I begin the journey through the middle years of life, I realize that there are many aspects of my life that are like this. There may be some comfortable things that are not necessarily the healthiest for me – some habits that I need to change, maybe some different perspectives that I need to gain.
But like the plants that grow here on the high plains, I need to have the courage to keep growing and blooming, and not be overly concerned about the weather that might surprise me next week.
Back in the routine
Spent a week in CA, and then a week fishing in Kansas, and am now back in the training routine. Felt pretty strong on the commute yesterday – held 12 mph up the CC hill.
Dave got his bike out last weekend for the first ride. I really have to work hard to try and stay in the same fitness ballpark with him. He is only a few years younger, but all of his running keeps him pretty strong year-round, and he and Karen are doing lots of running this year.
If the weather is good this weekend, I’ll do my first climbing of the season. If it isn’t, I’ll just stick to the flat loops – maybe go south and do some Black Forest riding for a change…
TJ Quote about debt
“And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
— Thomas Jefferson
70 miles starting to feel better
The loop again yesterday.
70 miles is starting to feel pretty normal now. I pressed hard a couple times in early sprint efforts, then was up against threshold for the last couple of hours. Felt really fine at the end.
Very little knee pain this time, but that odd little cramping thing on the outside of my right foot was happening again. Gotta figure that one out.
So, I understand that the Milan – San Remo is just shy of 200 miles, and that the winner did it in a little over 6 hours. OK, that gives me something to keep in mind as we attempt our double-c on the first day of our DANROPE ride this year…
Post Snow and Bailout Gears
Looped around Denver yesterday.
Once again, made me realize how lucky I am to live in a community that provides the sort of bike access that Denver does. Even though we got a couple of feet of snow last week in a couple different storms, the bike path was pretty busy. Amazing how well used that recreation infrastructure is.
Since the wind was supposed to turn around to the north, I didn’t want to take the ride down toward the Springs and have to fight a north wind coming home. But as it turned out, it didn’t turn until very late, so I could have done that ride. I had wanted to shy away from the bike path, because I expected there to be snow and ice at the edge of a lot of the underpasses like last week. But it was a bonus that there were very few spots with snow and ice.
Lunch at Confluence Park was just incredible really. Sunny and warm, lots of people watching, it was all I could do to get back on the bike and ride the last 40 miles home.
I’ve now done 2 rides on the new 7900 stuff. I have to say that the gearing with the compact and the 11-28 seems about ideal for me. I won’t know until I start climbing about the climbing gears, but I’ve got to believe that I’ll be able to hold that 28 tooth bailout gear in my pocket for that little extra sense of security on the long and steep ones – probably rarely use it but enjoy it just for the sense of security that it gives me. Funny how that works – when you’ve got that bailout gear in the back of your mind, it seems to help you exert even more and keep the effort and pace up even higher – knowing that if you really blew up, you could drop down into that tiny little thing and recover.
The Season’s First Long Ride
Last week I got 2 days of commuting in. That’s about 45 miles RT on each of those days. While that’s an OK day total, it’s not breaking the hind-end into many hours on the bike. I consider 4 hours sort of a milestone to get across to call it a long ride – one that is callousing up the sit-bones. I’m hoping to keep up something like that pace of commuting for the next many months – twice a week as an average.
But the real work of long base miles has to happen on the weekends, and this weekend I got my first longer ride in. Just shy of 70 miles takes me on a loop around Denver, from Parker to Chatfield, then downtown, and back along Cherry Creek to Parker. My best time for that loop is a little under 3.5 hours – averaging a little over 20 mph. That’s in a state of good fitness for me.
Saturday, for this ride, I needed to wait until about 10 to start, to let the temp get up to 40. That way, I can do the ride with a ls jersey and a windbreaker. Unfortunately, this meant that my timing of the loop, and the timing of the wind shifts during the day, would have me facing the wind for most of the ride. And in fact, this is exactly what happened.
That’s OK though – I enjoyed the extra workout. And the big bonus for me was meeting my daughter downtown and having a nice lunch with her. It was a beautiful day. Total elapsed time was a little over 6 hours. Average speed 13.6 MPH. The new computer is nice, as it let me see that the total climbing for this ride is just under 2000′. I have always assumed that it was half that, since I start at 6000′, then fall to about 5000′, then climb back up. Just goes to show that the little ups and downs of a ride that feels pretty flat can add up more than you think.
Now, the forecast for this week sounds pretty iffy – I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
Still working on coming up with a name for the big ride this summer.
Dave And Neil’s Epic Ride (DANER?)
The February Tease
February, cold and snowy. Again.
Usually in February we have a few days where the weather gets very spring-like, but it looks like we’ll get through this one without that little gift.
Not a big deal really, but it’s funny how missing that little teaser in February makes us all feel so tired of the snow and the winter. Worse, March and April are the snowy months, so it could get lots worse before it gets better.
Of course, I selfishly want the warm dry weather for training, as the snow and cold make it hard to spend much time on the bicycle. But its more than that really.
Like a dance, where you move close to intimate contact, but are held at bay, providing the jolt of excitement at feeling a tease of what might come later, but not quite touching it. In the same way, that little February tease always brings me quite close to the wonderful feelings of Spring that are just around the corner, but I can’t quite touch…
Fingers crossed for just a couple days…