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Archives for September 2008

We got da funk

09.18.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 6 Comments

My apologies to George Clinton. But I’ve been overcome with a deep funk in the past two days, and it’s not good for my biking.

There’s no good reason for it. The weather couldn’t be better. We even turned off our air conditioning yesterday for the first time all summer. Work is going reasonably well — at least there are no crises to deal with. On the domestic scene, all is okay — a little extra paperwork details to attend to, and we’re tearing our hair out over a computer problem. None of these should affect my biking.

But something is. I fully intended to ride when I got home today. Never did. Something else always seemed to come up, and next thing I knew, it was 7 o’clock, and daylight was running out.

Recently, my wife and I saw “Gone With the Wind” on the big screen in an old restored movie palace. I feel a bit like Scarlet O’Hara: “Fiddle-dee-dee. Tomorrow is another day.”

A biking day.

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Categories // Uncategorized Tags // funk

I feel the need — for speed

09.16.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

I’m not a fast cyclist. That’s why I ride with the B riders in my club — we just can’t maintain the 18+ mph pace the A riders typically set on our Sunday morning rides. I enjoy going fast, but the descents that let me do that don’t come along all that often. Besides, right now, I’m training for endurance, not speed.

But this evening was different. I hit the Veloway for my usual Tuesday night ride. (Unrelated aside: Road Rash, a blog on the Austin American-Statesman site, did a piece on the Veloway recently. Here’s the link.) My plan for the ride was to hammer the uphills, which are gentle, but still make you work. I would back off on the downhills and flats.

I got through the first mile, which includes one of those uphill stretches, and then hit a fast downhill. I was moving at a good clip, so I decided not to ease off to ride the descent easily. Instead, I kept up the power, and pedaled hard for the first lap (3.1 miles). I finished the lap in just about 10 minutes, 20 or 30 seconds faster than my usual time around the course.

I slowed to an easy spin to get out my water bottle and take a drink. Two cyclists flew past me, one after the other. I put the bottle back in its cage. What the hey — the chase was on!

I figured I’d try to match their pace, which seemed faster than mine on the lap I’d just completed. It looked like they were going to match each other’s pace, without racing. I became third in line. The guy in the Slipstream jersey passed the guy in the Airborne jersey, and I followed. Airborne shot me a look of disdain. We went up the one steep hill on the Veloway, then hit a fast flat section. Our speed was 24 mph. I usually ride 20-21 through here.

Then, my least favorite part of the loop — a curvy incline that scrubs off your speed quickly. I tried to match the pedal strokes of Slipstream, and kept it in the 15 mph range. Usually I slip to 12 here.

On the last section of the course, I passed Slipstream. The ess curve, then the end. I slowed to take another drink. Slipstream went by — his pace hadn’t slowed a bit. Then Airborne passed, looking straight ahead. What the hey — here we go again!

There’s no point in relating a turn-by-turn account of the next lap — or the one after. I never passed those two guys again, but I did stay close. I finished four laps around the Veloway, and figured I’d try to maintain my speed on the three-mile ride home.

Total distance: 17.76 miles. Avg. speed: 17.65 mph (Yes, it took me 22 seconds longer than an hour to complete the ride). Fastest average speed ever for a ride of an hour or longer. Pretty wimpy for the A riders out there, but by keeping up a decent pace through the entire ride — without tiring — I was breaking new ground for me. I’m looking forward to trying this kind of ride again — sometime.

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Categories // Rides, training Tags // Rides, speed, training, Veloway

An almost perfect ride

09.14.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

One of the benefits of being missed by a hurricane is the next day’s weather. The overnight low was only 64 — and I woke up to a day that was perfect for biking.

I had decided to skip the usual Sunday club ride, because they were going on a hill-climbing excursion. Instead, several members were planning to ride near Dripping Springs, which you’ll recall is one of my favorite places to ride around here.

I was at the appointed meeting place first, and had everything I needed — except my water bottles. I had put them in the freezer at home, and forgot them this morning. But Pippa came to the rescue. She had two extras, filled up and in an insulated carrier, so they were still cold. I don’t know why she carries two extra filled water bottles, but I’m glad she does.

Debra and her husband Russ, the other two riders, do this route at least once a week, since they live close by. We opted for the 40-mile route, which would take me much farther south onto roads that I haven’t ridden before.

Debra leads Pippa and Russ around a bend.

It’s a great route. The narrow and sometimes bumpy country roads have little motor vehicle traffic on Sunday mornings, and most of the drivers even smile and wave. Small ranches line the roads, and some have longhorn cattle in the pastures. There are hills — but this is the Texas Hill Country after all. When we hit the turnaround point at about 20 miles, I was still fresh. We had tackled the hills with élan, and enjoyed some nice downhills, which allowed us to rest on the pedals. Even my cantankerous toe wasn’t bothering me.

We backtracked from the turnaround for about half the way, and I realized why the route had seemed so perfect — it was a lot more downhill on the way out than on the way back. We were climbing the hills we coasted down, which didn’t seem like they had much slope on the way out, and to compound our problem, we found we were now heading directly into the wind. It couldn’t have been much more than 10 mph, but we felt its effects.

Pippa and Debra head up a small hill.

Our average speeds plummeted as we struggled up hill after hill. Mostly, they weren’t all that tough, but we weren’t in the attacking mode anymore. A nice curvy descent a few miles before the end of the route restored some pep to our step, so the ride ended with everyone feeling exhilarated.

Debra pulls into a shady spot where we all decided to take a breather.

The temperature was still in the 80s when we finished. A cold front is supposed to come thru tonight, and is expected to bring more tolerable daytime readings (around here, anything below 90 is “tolerable”). I can’t wait.

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Categories // Rides Tags // Dripping Springs, hills, Rides

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