I finally had a few minutes yesterday to get out on the bike. If you were watching my twitter account you noticed that I had every intention of going out on the MTB. I decided instead to take to the road. It has been a while since I have ridden the Allez, and I really wanted to spin in the open air for once, instead of in my living room. Also, because of my riding on the trainer, I wanted to see if I could ride at a consistent cadence. This is something I never used to be able to monitor, but when I got the new bike it came with a computer that shows cadence.
I had been training at a cadence of 85 to 95 or so, and this is what I decided to ride at yesterday. I rode from my house over to Paris Mt. State park, which is about an 9 mi ride, then up the Hincapie challenge to the turnaround and back home. Riding at this higher cadence was a very odd experience. I liked spinning, fast and smooth, and it was kinda fun to be changing gears much more often in order to keep the cadence steady. But, it is an uncomfortable pace. I have found that I MTB at a very slow cadence. This transition may be difficult to make. Is it necessary?
1. How long should I plan for each workout?
2. Should I base my workout on cadence, or distance traveled?
3. How important is it for me to stay in true riding position/form?
4. Will this actually make me a better rider, or just a guy who sweats a lot while watching TV in the living room
Any insights?
I have found over the last few months, that I don't need a full bike rack all of the time. While it is nice to be able to haul four bikes down the road, I rarely actually do it. This is a picture of me and Daylia in front of my 4-bike Reese bike rack.
I like the Reese rack, because it has an easy locking system, bolts into place to reduce vibrating and shaking, has a sturdy structure, clamps the bikes down tightly, and allows me to tow a trailer even with 4 bikes in place. However, it does not allow my rear hatch to swing open even if there is not a bike in place, without pulling out a pin and swinging it down and out of the way. My wife is now pregnant with our 3rd child, so the task of moving it out of the way has become a cumbersome.
Also, I have found that my rack has clotheslines a number of people as they walk around the rear of my vehicle. It is just not what you are prepared for when rounding the back of a car. (Although it is good for a few laughs)
I worked for a while on my new rack, which holds 1 bike and does not interfere with the rear hatch. I took the idea from my friend Mark Pittman who made a similar looking rack for his Suzuki.
As you can see if you look at the pics, the design is very simple. I did need to angle the fork mounts slightly to allow room for the handlebars at the rear window. Aligning them exactly perpendicular to the crosspiece left my handlebars bumping into the glass as I went along.
I was able to build the entire rack with parts off of an old roof rack I had laying around, and about 4 bucks in nuts and bolts to hold it together. But if you were to start from scratch I think you could build a similar rack for around $35. And I still am able to pull a trailer at the same time!
Check out the pics and ask any questions you might have. I would love to answer them!
I have to give the disclaimer immediately, that this video is not of me. It is done by Jonathan Pait, someone I only loosely know through the blog world, and is a contributor to the Greenville News.
I have ridden at Paris Mountain a number of times at night. However, i have never been fortunate enough to have a light with me. Usually I have overestimated my own riding speed, and bit off more than I could chew, or pinched a flat mid-ride, which forced me to come home after dark. Nonetheless, these guys look like they are having fun, and I hope to give night riding a try in the near future...wanna join me?
I rode in this road race for the first time last Saturday. It was sponsored by http://www.swoutfitters.com/ , a really sweet Christian camp that is impacting this generation for Christ. The race was part of a fundraiser day for the camp, so I took a few of our guys from http://www.ridgestudents.ridgeviewchurch.net/ and let them experience all the cool recs that the camp has to offer. But, in order to come out for all the fun in the afternoon, they had to volunteer during the bike race in the morning.
One of my high school students, Andrew, decided he wanted to ride in the race with me. He is in great shape, is a cross country runner, and a fantastic MTBer. But he had never done a road race. He borrowed Erin's bike, and signed up for the 55 mile race that I was doing. The race is in it's 4th year, so they are still working out a number of bugs in the organization of the event that could really make this race do well. The 55 mile race only had 8 people sign up for it, while the 21 miler and the 40 mile sprint relay were much better attended. For some reason no one wants to ride a bike for 55 miles. I wonder why?
The course started out with a 2 mile fast downhill, followed by a 3 mile fast paced section with small rolling hills, and nice smooth road surface. I took off pretty fast, averaging somewhere between 20 - 25 mph for the first 5 miles. I glanced back to see that Andrew had dropped off from the pace, and knowing it would be a long day, and that there was no reason to make him suffer so early, I eased off until he caught back up to me.
We had been warned at the beginning of the race that the final 5 miles would be torture. However, very little had been said to us about miles 5-15. It was ridiculous. The climb was a continuous grade for all of 10 miles. It took us all of an hour an 15 minutes to complete - How miserable!
Then we got to take a fun 6-8 mile decent into the Nantahala river gorge which made the previously horrible climb almost worth it. Somewhere in the fast downhill, my sunglasses flew off and disintegrated into a thousand tiny pieces. There goes 10 bucks down the drain.
Climbing out of Natahala was painful again, but this time traffic had become an issue. We were on 19, which is the main drag through the gorge, so the hill was less difficult to climb, but cars were not as friendly as one might hope, and made this part of the ride stressful.
Andrew and I made our own pit stop at a gas station for a power bar, because we were both feeling very weak. Snowbird provided a number of water stations, but we really needed some bananas, apples, or granola bars... our fuel tanks were empty. I chose the Cliff bar, and he chose the Powerbar...I made the right choice. BTW it was funny to see people's looks when we walked in with tight shorts, jerseys and numbers on. They acted like we had beamed in from our alien spacecraft!
Next we headed on to Andrews, NC. The race course took us through a very beautiful valley alongside of a small airport. Getting down and around this airstrip took much longer than I would have liked. Andrew was really hurting now, unable to put any power behind the pedals, so instead of making time up on the flat section of the race we ended up losing more ground. Nonetheless, we circled the airstrip, and came to Fairview Rd followed closely by Pisgah Rd, the final climb of the day.
All the hype over this climb was not worth it. We were expecting a series of switchbacks like the ones on the Hincapie challenge at Paris Mountain. This climb had a few, but really was not nearly as difficult as the earlier climb in the race. We made it to the last water station, where the girl told us we had 1 mile to go... she lied. There was about 2.5 -3 remaining. Distances driven in a car should never be taken for granted. We agreed to race it out to the finish, and I beat Andrew to the line by about 1:30, and we came in 4th and 5th place just under the four hour mark. I was really proud of Andrew for a great effort his first time out.
So I found out a few days ago about the paris mountain downhill race! The Greenville News did a great article on this weekends festivities.
Now if you will click on the small picture link for the race pic/vid site, you will notice these guys floating over the same rock with brilliance and ease. they look so peacful don't they? Aren't they looking like it is a bunch of fun?
