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That Fickle Wind

03.17.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 4 Comments

I always look forward to Spring Break. Often, I’m out of town, but this year I had plans to stay home and do a lot of riding. But we had to run up to Dallas Tuesday and Wednesday, which put a hole in those plans. This morning, I was ready to get out and put down some miles.

I haven’t had a lot of decent mileage rides yet this year. Time seems to get in the way, and I usually can’t find more than an hour and a half for the bike. That’s good for about 20-25 miles — a nice ride, but not what I’ve been looking for.

So today, I was ready. Pat would be at some business appointments around town, and I had the morning to myself. It was an almost perfect day: overcast, in the upper 60s, but with a brisk cool wind that forced me to put on my arm warmers for comfort.

I decided to head for a favorite destination of mine — the little town of Creedmoor, southeast of Austin. With the wind blowing from the southeast, I knew I would struggle heading out — but I would have a nice tailwind heading back.

Mostly, when I ride to Creedmoor, it’s on Sunday mornings when the traffic is almost nonexistent. Today, I had to contend with lots of trucks. Mostly, they were pretty good. They gave me room on the right, and often waited behind me if the road was narrow.

I didn’t break any speed records getting to Creedmoor, but I wasn’t trying to, and the wind wasn’t helping. We always stop at a gas station/convenience store to fill water bottles and take a break, and I did this time, too. The few people going into and out of the store were friendly, and almost every one of them had a pleasant, “Good mornin’.”

I finished a Clif Bar, and got back on the bike. The ride back was going to be a good one. Right off the bat, the farm-to-market road I was on pointed down, and with the wind at my back, I easily topped 30 mph, just coasting along. It happened again a few minutes later on another northbound road. And that would be the last time on this ride that the wind would be my friend.

Going west on a narrow country road, I felt a strong cross wind. If the wind was continuing from the southeast, it should have pushed me along, not hindered me. Clearly, it was now coming straight from  the south. I couldn’t depend on that helping tailwind.

I reached a built-up intersection, and saw from the flags flying from some buildings that my suspicions were correct. The wind had shifted. But it had shifted to more than south. Now, it was blowing from the southwest. It would be more or less in my face most of the way home.

As I pedaled, I shifted my left hand to near the center of my bar, and grabbed my water bottle with my right. I nearly fell over. A gust of wind got the bike, and pushed it toward the curb. I got it back under control, but knew I would have to pay attention from here on out.

So it was a bit of a slog. I still got in more miles than I’d done so far this year, so that was good. But it occurred to me that I can’t remember a ride where one leg was so much better because of a helping wind. I’m sure the wind god is saying, “Here comes the Bike Noob — let’s get ‘im.”

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Categories // Rides Tags // wind

That Wind Effect

02.20.2011 by Ray Niekamp // 7 Comments

My wife and I headed out for a relatively short ride this afternoon. The wind blew briskly from the south, between 10-15 mph. We decided to head for the Veloway, which is partially shielded from the wind by trees.

But it was shielded only some of the time. On one straightaway stretch, we rode directly into the wind. “Wow!” exclaimed my wife. “It’s like someone put the brakes on.”

It was challenging to pedal into the wind. In some spots, I coasted to let Pat catch up to me, and when I came out from behind a sheltering clump of trees, I could feel the resistance. Speed dropped immediately by couple miles an hour.

“This has gotta be good for me,” said Pat, trying to find the bright spot. “I bet I’m burning more calories fighting this wind.”

Well, as it turns out, there is a plethora of material online concerning cycling and wind. One of the cooler tools I ran into is a calculator that can tell you how much power you need to put out to maintain a constant speed if the wind and other variables change. Here’s a look:

Let’s say you want to maintain a speed of 15 mph on a flat course. That pesky wind is blowing at 15 mph also, and you weigh 200 pounds (I wish!). You need to put out 317 watts to maintain your speed, which will burn 4.5 calories per minute.

If only one of those figures changes – let’s say the wind falls to 10 mph, the change is remarkable:

Now you only need to pump out 183 watts, and burn 2.6 calories per minute.

Now these conditions are very artificial. If I added in a grade of any kind, that would have an effect, too. But I just wanted to see what the wind would do to a rider – not hills. We already know hills are tough.

Pat has trouble with hills. But even though the wind today was challenging for her, she accepted it more readily than climbing. By the way, one figure I’ve seen says each 5 mph of wind is equivalent to a 1 percent grade. So a 20 mph wind is like riding up a 4 percent hill.

“Man, I feel good!” she said when we pulled up to the house. She always feels better at the end of a ride, but today she felt like she had really had a workout. And she had.

(Calculator from Science of Cycling: Aerodynamics and Wind Resistance. www.exploratorium.edu/cycling/aerodynamics1.html

The Cycling Performance Tips site also has a nice page on “Riding Into a Headwind.” http://www.cptips.com/windrde.htm)

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Categories // Odds 'n ends Tags // calories, wind

Old Lessons, Learned Anew

01.24.2010 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

A very tough club ride today. Tough for me, anyway. The A group was going on a “reverse” dam loop, which would take them through some hilly neighborhoods. After last weekend’s short ride, where I did well on some hills, I figured it would be fun for the B’s to follow the A’s for part of their route, but turnaround early for a 33-mile ride. Seemed great in theory, but when we got out on the road, the going was tough. I relearned some old lessons today:

The Wind is Not Your Friend

Lots of riders would disagree. Treat the wind like hills, they’d say. Then you can get a hill workout even on the flats. Nuh-uh, not today. The wind was blowing briskly from the west-northwest, and was forecast to pick up throughout the morning. Temp was 52℉ (11℃), but most of us dressed for colder conditions.

About six miles into the ride, we’re on Barton Creek Blvd., a wide, smooth road running through a ritzy neighborhood. The road rises, falls, twists and turns over the hilly terrain. We had been riding against the wind up to this point, which was hard enough, but now the wind got stronger — 25 mph, gusting to 36, according to various weather sites after the fact. The wind grabbed the front wheel, and if you weren’t fully concentrating, could easily have knocked the bike over. As it was, it was hard to hold the line through the curves. An aero position didn’t seem to help much, and I rode the brakes through a particularly fast downhill section.

Later in the ride, I was on the shoulder of an expressway, crossing a bridge over a wooded valley. The wind grabbed the bike, and pushed it into the traffic lane — this on a road where the speed limit is 65 mph, and never observed. Yipes! I must have avoided being hit by a car, because I’m here writing this.

To get better on hills — ride hills!

Last week, we rode a somewhat hilly route. It was shorter than usual, because we had new riders along who weren’t ready for the grades. I felt good — I even attacked a hill that had given me trouble in the past.

So when planning the ride for today, I thought hills would be a nice addition. I started second guessing myself once I hit Barton Creek Blvd., because the A peloton was nowhere in sight. They do hilly routes all the time. But I made good progress against the wind, except for the aforementioned gust problems. At the end of the boulevard is “Hail Mary Hill.” It curves up toward a stoplight at a major highway, and we all stop to rest in a church parking lot. (The church is a Presbyterian church, and Presbyterians don’t say Hail Marys — but I get a kick out of the name coined by one of our club members, so I’m sticking with it. If you want to discuss the finer points of theology, I’m sure there are other blogs for that.)

Anyhow, halfway up the hill, I knew I was in trouble. I was in my 34 x 28 granny gear, trying to turn the pedals easily and “walk” the bike up the steep incline. I did it last summer, but today it felt as though my heart would explode right out of my chest. I think I had the strength in my thighs to keep going, but I had to stop. I walked the bike the rest of the way up.

Disheartening, because I know I can climb this thing. But I haven’t done it since September, and I haven’t been working hill repeats into my regular weekday rides during the winter months. That may have to  change. I was able to climb this same hill in September because I had done more rides with decent hills in them.

The quickest way to lighten your bike is to lighten yourself

I said I would get serious about losing weight this year. I’ve dropped three pounds since New Year’s Day, but that can be made up just by drinking lots of water. I think one of the reasons I had trouble on Hail Mary Hill is that I’m about 10 pounds heavier than I was in September.

It’s my usual winter weight gain, but it’s gotta stop. My wife is a fan of the Weight Watchers points system, and today we’ll be charting how many points I’ve been accounting for with my eating habits, and how they’ll have to change to get me to where I want to be. Meanwhile, every time I encounter a hill, I’ll envision myself climbing it with a bag of charcoal strapped around my waist. If I can lose the bag of charcoal, I should be in good shape. Stay tuned.

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Categories // Rides Tags // hills, Rides, weight, wind

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