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I’m Through With Centuries

08.28.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 15 Comments

Now that the Hotter ‘n Hell Hundred is done, I’ve had time to reassess my long-distance biking efforts. My conclusion: I’ve ridden my last century.

This represents a major turnaround in my thinking about cycling. When I started in mid-2007, I thought the goal would be to continually build mileage and do longer and longer rides. My first big organized ride was 50 miles, which was a major accomplishment then. It was quickly followed by a metric century, and a couple more 50s. My goal was to work my way up to an Imperial Century ride (100 miles).

I did my first one in October, 2008. In 2010, I did two of them — one on the first day of the MS 150 from Houston to Austin, the second a repeat of the 2008 ride. The Hotter ‘n Hell was my fourth.

I realized after the first one that no matter how many centuries you have under your belt, these are challenging rides. If done well, the rider will have prepared for the rides with adequate training — including building up to the 100-mile distance by working in some long rides in the month immediately before the century. And by long rides, I don’t mean 45 or 50 miles — or even 65 miles. I mean 75 or 80-mile rides.

Interval training helps, too, because when you build up your speed you’re also adding to your endurance. It’s easy to go online and find lots of training plans for century rides, both for beginners and for riders who want to finish strong — maybe post a personal best.

For others, century rides are just the beginning. The shortest distance randonneurs ride in a sanctioned brevet is 200 kilometers — about 125 miles. But they’ll do 300K rides (180 miles), 400K (250 miles), and 600K (375 miles) — all in one year. I read several randonneuring blogs, and I admire the fortitude and stick-to-it-iveness of randonneurs. But while I once thought that might be where my own cycling would be heading, I know it’s not now. The accomplishment of riding a 300K ride isn’t important enough to me.

My friend Barbara, whom I mentioned in my account of the Hotter ‘n Hell, has an ambitious goal: to ride a century in each of the 50 states. Go for it, Barbara! I won’t be joining you.

My problem is that I prefer the idea of the century ride more than the doing of the century ride. I have never yet put together a training program that really got me prepped for the ride. That meant that when I got there, I was able to finish the 100 miles, but I was worn out at the end. After the latest 100-mile extravaganza, I wondered why I did this kind of thing.

And I came to the conclusion that I don’t need to. Most of the group I participated with in the HHH last weekend did the 100 kilometer version. These folks are all experienced cyclists, and most of them have done centuries in the past. They’ve just reached that point in their cycling that four hours on the bike — the time it takes to finish a metric century at roughly a 15 mph average — is challenge enough for them. And you know what? I think that describes me, too.

So I intend to keep riding. I’ll bet I continue to put up mileage totals similar to what I’m doing this year. I’ll ride hills — I’ll even practice to get better on them. I’ll do speed work occasionally. My long weekend rides might increase their distances, and I’ll work in more in the 50-mile plus range. But from here on out, my cycling is going to be fun, not work.

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Categories // cycling Tags // century

Biking 1964

06.23.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 10 Comments

I call this blog “Bike Noob” with tongue firmly in cheek, because I doubt many of us are truly noobs on the bike. We had them as kids, didn’t we?

When I was growing up, my best friend  was a guy named Steve. He lived up at the end of our block. We did everything together, including bike riding. He recently sent me a picture he’d dug out of an old photo album. Suburban Chicago, we think about 1964.

Click to embiggen.

Yep, that’s the Noob on the left, in all of his 13-year-old geekiness. I’m perched atop a Royce-Union three-speed, what we used to call a “racer” bike, because they were so sleek and light and fast compared to…well, compared to the Huffy my friend Steve is on.

Cable routing seems to be an issue for me, although I was blithely unaware of it at the time. The prominent white cable that swoops down and back leads from the headlight to a rear wheel-mounted generator — the kind that spins against the tire sidewall to power the light. It worked great, too. That light threw a nice bright beam. The shifters were twist grip. It would be a fun bike to have today, for toodling around town.

You’ll notice Steve is no slouch either when it comes to lighting. His Huffy has dual headlamps mounted at the end of his frame tank. Very stylish, in a 1960s Detroit Iron kind of way.

Two highlights of our bicycling occur to me.

We raced. Oh, yes. We’d go over to an elementary school a couple of blocks away, and race our bikes on the asphalt playground, using the borders of the two basketball courts as our “track.” Because the space around and between the courts was pretty narrow, we had a special rule: The lead bike picks the route. You could take a Figure-8 around the courts, or a big circle. You could go clockwise or counterclockwise. This made it imperative to pass whenever possible, or you wouldn’t have any idea which way the other guy was going to turn. At least once every race, one of us would lose control and crash. Helmets? Never heard of ’em.

About this time, we also got adventurous and made regular trips to a discount department store that always had good prices on model cars and such. The store was two towns away from ours, and we charted a route through back streets and side streets, until finally coming out on a busy thorofare about a mile from the store. The trip was about five miles one way. I even recall a challenging hill on our route. We’d fly down it on the way out, but have to struggle up it, carrying our purchases, on the way back.

I never really stopped biking. Sure, there was the hiatus after getting my drivers’ license. But I had two bikes during my college years (both of which were stolen from me) that I rode to class and took on excursions out into the country on weekends. My wife got me a Raleigh ten-speed for my 30th birthday, and we did some riding on bike trails throughout our adult lives. It was only with the purchase of my current bike that I threw myself into “serious” cycling. But I’m still learning.

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Categories // Bikes, cycling Tags // 10-speed

Bikeable Roads

06.27.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 9 Comments

For the past few days, we have been on the road (in the car) to attend a reunion of sorts in Illinois. Maybe because I have not been on the bike, I’ve been noticing roads in the areas we’ve passed through, with an eye to their bikeability. And I’ve gotta say, there are some areas out there where bikers have it rough.

The thing that makes for rough biking is a lack of shoulders on roads.  Most of the roads we took were two lane, heavily trafficked, with no shoulder. I wouldn’t take a bike on them on a bet. The roads were hilly and curvy, which would have made for great riding in other circumstances. But on these roads,  cars and trucks moved at more than 55 mph, leaving little chance to react if they should suddenly come upon a bicycle.

As if to add support for this notion of unbikability, I saw only two cyclists in five days. They were a bike touring couple, loaded with panniers, slogging up a hill on a U.S. highway that did have a generous shoulder.

The areas I paid most attention to are in northwestern Arkansas and southern Illinois. Maybe there are cycling groups there, and I hope if that’s they case, they check in with some good routes in those locales.

How about where you are? Is there an overabundance of roads that are designed for motor traffic only, with no consideration of cyclists? I’ve got a few gripes about my home, Austin, Texas, but on the whole, I’ve got plenty of alternatives for riding. The places I’ve been on during this short vacation — not so much.

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Categories // cycling Tags // bike routes

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