Bike Noob

Because I'm Always Learning Something New

The 14 Mile Per Hour Club

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So, here I am a couple of weeks into my easy riding phase, where I am concentrating on not pushing the speed when I’m out on rides. I’m doing it because it will allow me to rebuild my base (and easy exercise is a good way to burn fat!) and get ready for more strenuous riding in another month.

I noticed after an easy ride Saturday that I seem to be accomplishing my goal. I rode 25 miles at a whopping 13.8 mph average. Okay, there were some hills in there, and I did have to work a little harder to climb them.

But then I looked at my average speeds since the beginning of the year. On only two rides out of nine have I averaged more than 15 miles per hour.

Okay, that means I’m doing a good job at riding easy. But I’ve also noticed in the past that easy riding can lead to good average speeds. It got me to thinking — have I been losing speed over a longer period of time?

Way back when I started riding — about 2007 — my friend David observed, “You’re pretty even with me — in the 15 mile per hour club.” That seemed like a reasonable average to shoot for at the time, and since then, I’ve often gauged my rides based on whether they achieved that 15 mph average.

So I looked back at my riding stats — I enter my times on a simple spreadsheet — and came up with these numbers:

  • 2008: 15.09
  • 2009: 14.91
  • 2010: 15.06
  • 2011: 15.03
  • 2012: 14.69

Those are the average speeds of all my rides for each year. A very slight falloff in 2009, but for the most part, David is right. I’m a 15 mph rider. Until last year. That dropoff seems to be significant.

I’m trying to figure out what caused last year’s speed to fall. At first, I thought it was because I had increased the number of rides I take with my wife. These tend to be much slower than my usual pace. But a quick comparison of 2012 with 2011 and 2010 shows that i rode about the same number of rides with her each year. It also appears that my longer rides average a slightly higher overall speed.

More hills? Not so much. I do some rides that involve steep hills, but they’re mostly short. They pull down my average speed, but I’m riding about the same amount of hilly rides each year, so it’s not a big contributor to going slow.

Am I getting older and slower? Is it just a natural part of aging? Sure, I’m getting older. But several guys in my club are older than me, and they’re all a lot faster. I know there’s room for improvement on my part.

Well, I’m not going to dwell on it. I just noticed that last year, I migrated from the 15 mph club to the 14 mph club. As I said, in a month I’ll start some speed building exercises and see if they pay off. In the meantime, if anyone wants to ride slow, get in touch. It looks like I’m your guy.

Quiet Time

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We here in Central Texas have a nice advantage over many other places during the winter. It never really gets too cold to bike. Oh, we moan about chilly weather, as in the case of last Sunday’s ride, but our conditions that day would have been welcomed in, say, Iowa.

So when I got home from work today, the first thing I wanted to do was jump on the bike. It wasn’t even chilly today — 66 degrees (19C) at 4 p.m. I added a pair of arm warmers to my usual summer bike clothes, and hit the road.

I stuck to a familiar route through the neighborhood, knowing that I wouldn’t be out for much longer than an hour. Wide suburban streets with little traffic. But I didn’t feel the need to push it. Instead, I settled into an easy, steady pace, and pretty much maintained it for the entire ride.

Because even though our winter is mild, it’s still a time to relax on the bike. No need to ride as hard as possible, or to do intervals, or to maintain an average speed above a certain mark. Winter is recovery time — time to build the base for the upcoming season.

Instead of speed, I concentrated on more mundane things, like keeping a steady pedal cadence, making sure I applied even pressure to the pedals throughout the stroke (“pedaling in a circle”), and keeping my heels down on the pedals. I never breathed hard during the ride, and don’t expect to do much hard breathing for several more weeks.

At the Veloway, I passed several guys decked out in racing kit as they faffed around at the start of the track. Midway through my second lap, I  rounded a hairpin turn and saw one of them gaining on me fast. Soon, he zipped by me with a friendly “Hi!” I think he would have been glad of some company, but I just let him go (I never did figure out where his two buddies got to). I checked my watch, realized it was time to head home, and did so, getting passed in a two and a half mile stretch by three more cyclists.

A couple of years ago, I took a cycling clinic at the onset of winter, and all we did was pedal in Zone 2 (That’s slow and easy riding, where the heart rate doesn’t get elevated much). The clinic leaders explained that while it’s tempting to ride faster, we need to resist the urge for awhile, and let our bodies recover from the hard riding we’d done in the spring, summer and fall.

I wasn’t maintaining Zone 2 on this ride, because I did pedal strongly up an easy hill or two. And when I got home, with 18 miles on the computer, I was once again surprised (this shouldn’t surprise me anymore, because it happens frequently) that my average speed was 15.8 mph. Riding easy will still get you from Point A to Point B in good time.

I’m looking forward to taking it easy for another four or five weeks.

Pre-Thanksgiving Intervals

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I got home early today. The university is closed Wednesday so students can travel home for Thanksgiving, but students being students, many of them lighted out today. Heck, I’m aware of a few who took off after classes last Thursday. Anyway, with only five students showing up for my afternoon lab, and finishing their tasks within an hour, I got an early start on vacation, too.

I decided to take advantage of unseasonably warm weather to get in a bike ride. We’re traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday as well, so this will be my last chance to ride until Sunday. Before setting out, I took a few minutes to dig my headlight out of the bike stuff box and mount it on the bike. I don’t ride in the dark as a rule, but the long shadows of late afternoon make a front light as useful as a tail light.

My ride would only be about an hour, just a few laps at the Veloway. I often get over there on late Tuesday afternoons, and try to get in a little speed work. It’s the only time during the week that I really try to ride fast. Today, it occurred to me that I should try the intervals my friend Joe was doing when I ran into him a couple of weeks ago.

His intervals aren’t rigidly structured. Two minutes all out, two minutes easy. I did a warmup lap, then noted the time on my bike computer, stood on the pedals, and pushed hard.

After about a minute, I was ready for this interval to end. Not only was I going reasonably hard, but in this section of the Veloway, the track is a slight upgrade. I kept pedaling against the resistance, and finally saw two minutes click by.

Not being an experienced intervalist, I suspect I really mucked up the easy part of the ride by not riding easy enough. I caught myself powering through a curve, and reined it in. After another minute ticked off — in what seemed like a much shorter period of time — I stomped on it again.

The intervals were good. I felt powerful throughout the ride, although I’m sure I didn’t do the fast parts nearly as fast as Joe does. I know I didn’t keep up the effort as long as he does, either. Three laps on the Veloway, plus riding from and to my house, comes out to about 15 miles. I do it in less than an hour.

It was dusky enough that I could see the beam of my headlight hit the pavement ahead of me on the way home. While I’ve often stated on these pages that I’m not much for training, I also know that to get faster, you have to ride faster. I have no aspirations of joining the A ride in my club, but I’d like to be able to open it up halfway through a Sunday ride and still have some stuff in reserve for the trip home. Maybe doing this unstructured structured riding once a week will help me toward that end.

I’m also feeling a bit smug about the ride, because it left me feeling as though I can save a little space for all the food I’ll be eating over the next three or four days. My wife and I are traveling north to see our new grandchild, all of 10 weeks old — and no, I’m not taking my bike along with me, even through Minnesota is also enjoying some relatively mild weather for this time of year. Sometimes, you just have to deal with things that are more important than biking. See you Sunday!

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