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Archives for January 2014

Bicycle Touring, Anyone?

01.07.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

With the deep freeze settling over the country, conditions are not suited for bike riding. Even here in Central Texas, we’ve been waking up to temps down around 19 degrees (-7C), and for awhile it was very windy. Biking was the farthest thing from my mind, as I shrugged on an extra layer of clothing, just to stay warm indoors.

So to pass the time, I sat with my iPad and surfed around some cycling sites. One of my favorites to while away the hours is Crazy Guy on a Bike. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a site for touring cyclists to post accounts of their rides. The site has been online since about 2000, and has amassed an amazing amount of touring cyclist journals, as well as articles, reviews, forums and comments.

Some of the journals recount trips I have trouble even imagining — like going around the world by bike, or just biking through exotic locales on the other side of the globe. Others are more mundane — S24O trips to nearby woods (S24O stands for sub-24-hour overnight. Bike somewhere a few hours away, camp for the night, go home the next day). Of course, I wanted to see what people were doing in Texas, and there are plenty of stories of Southern Tier trips across the U.S. that pass through the Lone Star state, as well as others who go from south to north, or who just spend a few days touring a section of the state.

Stopping for the night at a state park campground.
Stopping for the night at a state park campground. (Click pictures to enlarge.)

The same is true of all states. I grew up in Illinois, lived for a long time in Minnesota, and worked for awhile in Wisconsin. All kinds of adventures take place in those areas. I especially enjoyed reading the journal of a fellow who rode around Lake Superior, then back through Wisconsin to Minnesota — a pedaling duplicate of a car trip I took with my son when he was 11 years old. The cyclist took pretty much the same route, and stayed in several of the same places we did. Now, my appetite is whetted to hit the road myself.

Gazing at bluffs along the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.
Gazing at bluffs along the Mississippi River in Wisconsin.

One thing is holding me back. I don’t have a touring bike. It’s true, you can go cross-country on most anything, but a bike built for the purpose will give the best results. The usual suspects are well-represented in these stories: Surly Long Haul Truckers, Trek 520s, Windsor Tourists — but you’ll also find a lot of hybrid bikes and recumbents. Many of them pull small trailers.

A Surly Long Haul Trucker, fully loaded for a tour.
A Surly Long Haul Trucker, fully loaded for a tour.

I won’t be buying a touring bike any time soon. And frankly, I’ve done my share of camping, and I’m not a fan. But there’s a nice alternative that I might take up without a special bike and a heavy load. It’s called “credit card touring.”

Just hop on your bike, ride to a destination, and instead of camping, stay in a motel. Eat at restaurants, instead of cooking freeze-dried glop over a balky camp stove. The price mounts up fast, but that’s why we create budgets, right?

I don’t know if it will happen. We’re doing a big vacation this summer to celebrate a major anniversary, so all of our discretionary income is spoken for. But toward fall, when things are back to normal, I just might hit the back roads around here, and see sights off the beaten track for a few days.

 

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // touring

Rediscovering Zone 2

01.05.2014 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

Took a ride with a friend the other day. It wasn’t meant to be anything big, just using streets in our neighborhood, catching up about Christmas and whatnot, and just enjoying our time out. The day was on the chilly side, but sunny. The wind was there, but wasn’t a factor.

As we left one subdivision to enter another, I glanced down at my bike computer. It was blank. I had forgotten to start it when we began our ride after meeting up at a local coffee house. My computer will go to sleep if it’s idle for five minutes, and I have to click a button to make sure it starts registering when I start up again.

At first, I was angry at myself — I’ve made that mistake before. But then, I looked back at our ride up to that point, and decided I really didn’t need the computer’s data for the day anyway. We had covered about eight miles by then, and I know our average speed was probably in the 12 mph area. I wasn’t working any harder than I do when I ride with my wife. I was in Zone 2.

Zone 2 is familiar to riders who use heart rate monitors. It describes the space between 70-85 percent of maximum heart rate. Three years ago, I was in a riding clinic where we were ordered to ride only in Zone 2. The coach said that since we weren’t training for any races, but were just building a base, this was the kind of riding we should be doing during the winter months anyway. Besides, Zone 2 is where your body learns to burn fat.

We were out for about an hour and a half — 20 miles, give or take. During that whole time, the only effort we put out was on the few short uphills we encountered. In fact, my friend suggested we attack some hills, since our riding had been — well — boring up until that point. But on the hills, she decided it was time to end the ride and head home, so we didn’t even get in any meaningful hill work.

But that evening, I could tell I had done some good riding. My weight was down a bit, I didn’t feel bloated after dinner, and I was ready for a good night’s deep sleep. Zone 2 might not test your abilities as a cyclist, but it does good things for your future riding. I enjoyed it so much, I’m going to make a real effort to spend most of my winter in Zone 2. Or at least the next two months’ worth.

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Categories // training Tags // training, zone 2

Wide Tires

01.02.2014 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

Jan Heine, the publisher of Bicycle Quarterly, has a blog called Off the Beaten Track. In his current post, he discusses a favorite subject of his: wider tires. The question is, how wide is too wide?

Heine has done research into tire width and performance. “It’s a well-established fact,” he writes, “that wider tires roll faster than narrow ones.”

These Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires come in sizes from 25mm to 45mm.
These Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires come in sizes from 25mm to 45mm.

When comparing 21 mm tires to 23s and 25s, he found the 25 mm tires are fastest of that group. Going up in size, he compared 26, 29 and 31 mm tires on a super-smooth asphalt road, and found no difference in their performance. The 31 mm tires were no faster than the 25s, but they weren’t slower, either. On rougher roads, the wider tires rolled faster.

There has to be a point at which the width of tires becomes a hindrance. If so, Heine hasn’t found one up to 42 mm tires, which he informally compared to 25s, and found the wider tires ran just as fast. Even 42s don’t appear to be too wide, he says. And wider tires than that just won’t fit most bikes.

So, if wide tires roll as fast, or sometimes, faster than narrower tires, why don’t more cyclists use them? They’ve got advantages besides speed. They give a smoother ride. They use lower pressures, so can resist flats better. They’re safer, because they’re less likely to be caught in a crack or a railroad track. And because they handle rough roads better, they might even encourage cyclists to ride roads that might be avoided with narrow, high pressure tires.

I run 25 mm tires on my bike. I prefer them to the 23s I used to run, mainly because they’re a little more comfortable. I inflate the front tire to around 95 psi, and the rear tire to a bit over 100. They are noticeably cushier than the 23s I had, which had much higher pressures.

I’d love to try wider tires, but the fork of my road bike is narrow at the top, and the 25s are probably the widest tires I can fit. As I look ahead to what my next bike might be (not that I’ll be buying a new bike anytime soon), I think I’ll find something that can take wider tires.

How about you? Do you run tires wider than, say, 25mm? How do you like them? Would you recommend them to other riders? Where is the advantage — speed, comfort, or flat resistance?

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Categories // tires Tags // tires

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