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Doing Everything Wrong

11.26.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

Maybe it was Thanksgiving.  Yeah, that’s it.  I took several days off the bike as we went out of town to visit my sister-in-law for Turkey Day.  Now, that’s not unusual — the several days off the bike part, that is — because lately I’ve been taking several days off the bike each week because of the earlier onset of darkness and work obligations.

However, when we got back to town this afternoon, Pat wanted to get in a short ride.  The clock was approaching 4:30, so we wouldn’t have more than an hour of daylight, and she wanted to swing by a nearby post office to drop an important check in the mail.

The temperature hovered around 54ºF (12ºC), which isn’t far from our recent averages for this time of year.  We scrambled into bike clothes that had worked for us before in this temperature.  Well, actually, we departed a little from what we usually wear.  Pat pulled on her armwarmers, but although she got a windbreaker out of the closet, she decided to leave it lying on a chair.  I wanted to wear a base layer, but also wanted to save what appeared to be the only clean one for tomorrow’s ride, so I wore a summer weight short sleeved jersey under a nice long sleeved jersey.

I searched and searched, but couldn’t find my sunglasses.  I finally decided to skip them, since the sun would be at our backs for the return leg of our ride, and it would be getting dusky anyway.

We headed out, and in minutes realized we had both made mistakes.  Pat wished she had worn her windbreaker.  I wished I had worn a baselayer, a wind vest, and arm warmers.  We were both chilly.  Luckily, the wind was calm.

We got to the post office just in time to meet the departing mail truck, and Pat left the check with the driver.  We headed out on a favorite short neighborhood route, but to get there had to ride a fairly busy connecting road.  The good part is, it was slightly downhill, so we made good time.  The bad part is, by riding relatively fast, the cold penetrated our trunks.  We both started complaining about the chill.  We kept going, though.

We turned a corner, and I realized why I had been uneasy about not searching harder for my sunglasses.  Our route took us directly into the setting sun, which shone at a low angle directly into our faces.  It was blinding.  I rode much of the outbound leg looking down, just a few feet in front of my front wheel.

We got to the turnaround and headed back.  Again, the route was a slight downhill, and we made good time — but we also absorbed a lot of cold air.  I stopped to wait for Pat at a stoplight, and felt a wave of warmth spread across my torso and legs.  It was because I wasn’t cutting the air with the moving bike.  At rest, we were fine.  Moving, we were uncomfortably cold.

On my home computer, I keep a list of cool weather clothing combinations that work for me under a variety of different cool weather conditions.  As soon as we finished our chilly ride, I called it up, wondering where the problem could have been.  After all, I had ridden a number of times this fall in temperatures in the low to mid 50s, and never had I felt this uncomfortable.

Duh.  I turns out I completely misjudged what I needed to wear for today’s conditions.  I needed arm warmers and a wind vest — just as I had determined while riding.  The clothing combination I wore today was good for temperatures 10 degrees higher than we had.

Readers sometimes ask me why I call this blog Bike Noob, when I’ve been riding for several years.  As long as I keep screwing up my rides like I did today — I still consider myself a noob.

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Categories // Equipment Tags // clothing

Let’s Ban All Drivers From the Roads!

11.23.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

It was Friday evening rush hour.  I was driving home from a full day at work, and was just as glad as everyone else on the road to get a jump on the weekend.

Friday evenings have some weird effect on drivers.  Here’s what I saw just a few blocks from my house:

I turned onto a residential street, and noticed a Saturn sedan on my tail.  I recognized it by sight; it lives two blocks from me.  The high school aged girl driving it was obviously impatient with my speed on the street — I was going 30 in a 30 mph zone. She tailgated me closely. At a fork in the road, I went right. She went left.  I knew our two roads would converge again in moments.  When they did, at a 4-way stop, I was on the right, so had the right of way at the stop sign.  She came up on the left, and tried to jump out ahead of me. I wouldn’t let her, and took my rightful turn.  I’m sure she’ll make a note of my car in her s__t list, after I held her up from getting home by … oh, I dunno … maybe five seconds.

A half hour later, I was making a run for take-out food.  At a stoplight, I was in the right lane, a big black Tahoe or something on my left.  I guess the driver was trying to signal me at the light, but because we were side-by-side, I didn’t see her wave at me, or see her turn signal.The Tahoe must have needed to make a right turn real bad, because when the light changed, the driver jumped ahead, shot me a dirty look, signaled her turn, and nearly cut me off.  I eased up and let her go. Then, just as she reached the street where she was going to turn, she had second thoughts.  She signaled left, swerved into the left lane, then shot across to a left turn lane at the next corner, and did a U-turn.

Both these incidents happened in less time than it takes to read about them.  I just shrugged my shoulders and mentioned to my wife when I got home that drivers were a bit loony tonight.  That was it.

Now suppose those two drivers were on bikes instead of behind the wheels of cars?

When bikes jump in front of cars at stop signs, motorists get pissed.  When cyclists drive erratically, motorists write to the newspaper, or call the local talk show blowhard, and bitch about those rotten bikers and how they all oughta get off their bikes and drive cars the way God intended.

Now suppose every time a biker experiences bad driving by a motorist, he or she writes the same newspaper or calls the same talk show?

Nah. Their letters wouldn’t be published, and the call screener wouldn’t let ’em on the air.

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // car vs. bike, road rage

Training With a Group

11.21.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

Saturday morning, in what is truly a departure for me and my style of riding, I signed up for a training workshop.  It was going to take place near my house, so it was convenient, and it was going to do hills, which I need lots of help on.  So I rolled out of my driveway at 8:30 and 15 minutes later was with a group of like-minded cyclists near the Austin Veloway, waiting for the fun to begin.

Waiting to get started.

Austin Cycle Camp is putting on free workshops every Saturday in November.  I missed the first two, because of lousy planning on my part, and was anxious to see what these 90-minute sessions involved.  In all, 26 people showed up.  The AC2 (Austin Cycle Camp) coaches divided us into two groups, and explained what was in store for us.

My group started with long hills.  Actually, just one long hill, and it just happened to be one with which I am intimately familiar, since it’s part of the Mopac route I ride all the time.  The hill is about three-tenths of a mile long, not too steep, but it can kick a cyclist’s butt.  Coach Trey told us we were to pick a base cadence and maintain it all the way to the top.  Okay, not too tough.  I figured I could hold 80 rpm easily enough.

Not so easy.  About 100 yards from the top, I fell to about 77, and just couldn’t get it any higher.  I cruised around a corner to regroup with Trey and some of the other cyclists.  He told us to do it again — three times in all — and increase our cadence each time.

When we regrouped after the third climb, everyone was glad of the chance for a breather.  The other group had been working on short, steep hills, and they joined us so we could switch places and coaches.

Now, Coach Dave took us a short distance away, down an easy hill to a turnaround, where we stopped to hear what he had planned for us. It was all about cadence again, but this time, we were to start in a low, comfortable gear and ride that same gear to the top.  Looking back at the hill we had just come down, I wasn’t impressed. It was nowhere near the really steep hills Austin is famous for.  But Dave said this exercise would be a good training session.

Okay, quick pedal to the top, turn around, come back down.  Now, he said, do the hill one gear higher.  And each time, we had to shift up one more gear.  Six times in all. Then he had us do the last climb out of the saddle.

I don’t think anyone was beaten by the drills.  As one rider noticed, “Nobody threw up.” But I found them to be very useful. These are streets right in my neighborhood, and the session gave me several ideas for making my rides around here more challenging.  I already do hill repeats just a few blocks from where our workout was — but I’ll be doing them differently from now on, shifting up each time, maintaining cadence.  It’s a more structured kind of training than I usually go in for, but I know it’ll help.  And there’s one more free clinic to go this month — I’ll be there next Saturday.

 

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Categories // training Tags // coaching, training

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