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Archives for August 2012

Getting to 3,000

08.16.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 7 Comments

Since I posted on Twitter the other day that I’ve now passed the 3,000 mile mark for 2012, I’ve had some inquiries from Bike Noob readers about my mileage goals. Had I planned at the beginning of the year to ride 3,000, 4,000, or 5,000 miles?

Actually, no. My high mileage year is just happening. I just ride.

Now, it’s not quite that simple. I was helped by the fact that as an academic, I get the first 2 1/2 weeks of January off. That let me rack up well over 400 miles in a month when lots of folks are cocooned in front of their fireplaces with steaming cups of hot chocolate.

In May, spring semester ends, and I could start riding more often for the next four weeks. I pedaled more than 550 miles that month — my highest monthly total ever.

But I think the main thing that helped me get as many miles as I have is following a more or less regular riding schedule. here’s how mine usually shakes out:

I ride Tuesday evening, for the shortest mileage of the week. Often, I’ll do fast laps around the Veloway. Sometimes, I’ll opt for easy laps instead. In either case, I’ll wind up with only 15-18 miles. I don’t often ride on Wednesdays or Thursdays, because I’m on campus later those days. Friday, I usually ride 20 miles; Saturday, 27-29 miles; and on Sunday, it’s the club ride. That could mean a distance of anywhere from 30-60 miles, most often 35-45. That routine gets me in the neighborhood of 100 miles a week on a regular basis. Heck, I should be riding 5,200 miles a year at that rate.

Of course, that won’t happen. Shorter days and colder weather in the winter months means I cut back on my weekly totals. I’ve ridden a 4,000-mile year only once, in 2010. It looks like I’ll do it again this year.

That pales next to the mileage totals some of my fellow club members post. Several are over 5,000 miles for the year already. Of course, they ride 30-40 miles on weekday evenings, and both of their weekend rides are long — anywhere from 60-100 miles.

Well, I don’t even have any desire to churn out that many miles. If anything, rather than piling up my mileage totals, I should concentrate on getting better. There’s lots of room for improvement. I could be faster; I need to build my endurance; I ought to spend more time riding hills than I do.

What I’ll probably be doing is the same old thing I’ve been doing all along. Just riding.

But I did some figuring the other day, and calculated that if I keep up my 100-mile weeks for the rest of the year, I have a good shot at reaching 5,000. Hmmmmm……

 

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Categories // Records & stats, training Tags // mileage

The Measure Of A Ride

08.14.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

Guest poster Jeff Hemmel finds that sometimes, the ride’s the thing.

On the final Saturday of July, on a day that reversed this summer’s trend toward warm and sunny and threw a curveball of grey skies and the ever-present threat of rain, I competed in my second-ever bicycle race. Longtime readers may remember I did my first-ever bicycle race at this same event one year ago. The fact that I ended up surprisingly vying for that win, while taking my age group title, guaranteed two things. One, that I’d come back for more this year, and two, that I’d probably take things a little more seriously this time around.

No, I didn’t go crazy with some dedicated race program. But I did become a little more serious in my preparation in the weeks leading up to the event. Thanks to input from a racer friend, once casual rides now included sprint intervals. Moments of quad-burning exhaustion were followed by the newfound knowledge that lactic-acid-combating enzymes would now be going to work full bore to ease subsequent efforts. And my climb up the Category 4 hill that leads back to my family’s spot on an Adirondack lake became an obsession not with the scenery, but instead with being a Strava “King of the Mountain.”

The work paid off. I ended up repeating as age-group champion in that race, as well as losing a somewhat heartbreaking sprint for the overall by a mere eight-tenths of a second. I also realized the sprint training and Strava KOM attempts had made me a much stronger overall rider. Average speeds crept up, hills went by quicker, and I just felt stronger.

The catch? Transitioning from that competitive mindset proved a little more difficult than I imagined, especially after a pair of far more serious, competitive types took two of my prized KOMs. Suddenly I viewed my precious last days in the Adirondacks as not opportunities to enjoy the area, but rapidly dwindling time to take back two relatively insignificant titles. I targeted the last day of our stay to go out and take back what was once mine.

But a funny thing happened as I pedaled out on that final ride. While my mind may have been into the task, my heart wasn’t playing along. Riding past lakes and up and down the rolling hills, I found I just wanted to take it all in. I found I wanted to measure my last ride of the season not by statistics, but something far less analytical.

(Click to enlarge.)

So I blazed down winding descents that followed pristine streams, and took note of the purple wildflowers that seem to line so many country roads. I stopped at the waterfall that I passed too many times this season, and noted in disappointment that a limb on a tree, the one that used to have a rope that allowed kids to swing out from the nearby hillside and splash into the waters above the falls, had broken.

I climbed a Category 4 hill to a ski resort and gazed up at the hills where I once honed my snowboarding skills, then sprinted with all I had to escape the menacing Rottweiler who chose that very moment to come hauling after me in stealth mode. I pedaled through endless fields of corn, and wondered if the crops they held were headed for the table or the gas tank, and debated the value of the dairy farms that allowed their cows to roam and graze freely versus the ones who slotted them assembly-line style into pens that passed food past their mouths while simultaneously carrying away the remnants of that feed that dropped out the other end.

I noted the peaceful deer near that watched me intently, and chuckled at the irony of the homeowner who filled his property with signs proclaiming himself to be an angry gun owner who voted, but also saw fit to populate the border of said property with cutesy little statues of bears holding fishing poles.

In short, I simply turned the pedals and enjoyed the sensations and freedom that only a bike can provide.

I can live with the fact that I’ll have to wait a year to take another shot at those KOMs, and I can live with the fact that I braked in that race’s final 90-degree corner and let five more experienced guys catch my wheel.

What I couldn’t have lived with, however, was chasing those titles… and missing out on something that could never be summed up by just a number.

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Categories // Uncategorized

Riding Alone, Riding Slow

08.12.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

I enjoy my Sunday morning club rides. It’s good to be with a group, good to see riding acquaintances, good to chit chat while riding.

I also enjoy riding alone, and do most of my riding that way.

But that creates a problem — when I ride alone, I loaf.

Take last week’s club ride as an example. By 10 miles into the ride, I was off the back of the group and riding solo. I didn’t think about my pace, but just enjoyed the route through Texas Hill Country. It wasn’t long, though, before I was caught by several clubbers who had stopped to refill water bottles at a convenience store. They breezed past me. Some of them were A riders, so no big deal there. But others were regulars in our B ride, and I knew I could keep up with them.

I picked up the pace a bit, and did just that over the next five miles or so. Coming back on the return leg, I found myself on my own again — my own fault for taking a little longer at the turnaround than the rest of the group. After pedaling alone for seven miles, I caught up to them at a convenience store, where we always take a rest stop.

“You’re doing great today, Ray!” said a couple of the riders.

“I can’t be. I’m not keeping up with you,” I replied.

“No, really — when Judy says you’re doing great, you’re doing great,” said her husband.

I went in to refill my bottles. When I came out, they were already waiting at the stoplight on the corner to ride the last 10 miles home. I sat on a curb and drank some water and ate a fig bar. That meant I’d be on my own again for the last leg of the ride. I took it easy.

Yesterday, on my regular Saturday morning route, I paid a little more attention to my progress. I climbed a favorite hill in the big ring, as I have been doing lately, and beat by previous best time by one second. Later, on a difficult stretch that looks flat but isn’t, I kept my speed at least one mph higher than I normally do. But when I finished the 28-mile route, my average speed was only 14.5 — no great shakes.

Today, the club wanted to do a hills ride. In this heat? No thanks. I went off by myself to the southeast, on a route that features some rollers, but nothing difficult. Sure enough, on the way out I did a mental assessment of how well I was doing. I was doing fine, really, in terms of riding steadily, but my average speed was on the low side again.

I  can ride well with B-level cyclists, but I have to have them nearby so I can feel challenged. It doesn’t matter if we as a group are trying to hit a certain speed, or if we’re just riding. As long as others are around, I’ll put out more effort. Once I’m by myself, my ride becomes a pootle in the park, so to speak.

The Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred is in two weeks, and I know I’ll do fine — because I’ll be in the middle of about 13,000 other riders. I won’t be lacking for inspiration to keep up the pace, and I’m looking forward to it. (Oh, by the way, I have decided that I’ll do the 100K ride instead of the 100 miles. It’ll take me about four and half hours to finish the metric century, and I think that’s plenty of time in the saddle.) But if I find myself out on a country road with no other cyclists nearby, I know my speed is going to fall off.

Do you need that feeling of being challenged by other riders, or are you capable of pushing yourself even when no one else is around?

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Categories // Rides, training Tags // avg. speed, speed

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