Just Ride

Well, I took a month off after the DRR 400km. The knee found a new way to complain. I've slowly been building back up. I've even managed a 100km and a 200km. So, in some sense, I'm back to where I was. I've been using flat pedals during the recovery. Cheap ones. They're great. Perhaps they are these, I'm not exactly sure, but it's close:

http://www.wellgo.com.tw/p-image/C136.jpg

This has allowed the foot to take whatever position is needed for me not to notice knees and ankles. It's working. I also have metal pedals; but, the plastic provides better traction with my shoes. As a nice side effect, I don't have to have an extra pair of shoes at work to change into after biking in.

I had been using speedplay frogs, and will probably continue to try to do so. But, will build up slowly on those as well.

2010 Statistics

2010 is over. The year in training went well. Below are two views: one shows distance-per-year in kilometers, recorded since 2002. The other shows total recored hours exercised per year since 2002. Note that the stats for 2002 are incomplete - the statistics start when I acquired The Finest Technology that 2002 Had to Offer. Anyway, a pretty good year. I hope that 2011 allows me to set personal bests in distance, by a factor of 1.5.

Distance - fourth best year ever, in total distance.

Time - second best year ever, in total time. I record non-cycling time, and I am even slower than in 2003 - hence the discrepancy between the rankings in time and distance.

Jan 1, 2011 Ride - It was cold

This post is mostly about the clothing worn to deal with the temperatures. A little background:

Marcello has organized two first-of-the-season rides in Oregon. The weather looked good for the first of these - clear and cold with no precipitation in sight. I 'needed' a ride for January to make progress on my R-12 attempt. The route was nice. An out-and-back from Hillsboro to Dallas, OR. So, I made the attempt. Finished the ride fine. But, the temperatures were colder than I normally ride.

So, here's what I wore. It worked. Starting at the top:

• Helmet cover - water proof - but I wore if for the wind protection and an extra layer up top. Had to take it off once it got dark - so I could use the headlamp that attaches to the helmet.
• Head-sweat - I wear this year-round for bicycling
• Head band to cover the ears

• REI brand base-layer t-shirt. Long sleeve. It comes up and covers most of my neck - and seems to do a good job of wicking and keeping me warm.
• Oregon Randonneurs wool long sleeve jersey. It's the red one.
• For 2/3 of the ride I wore a standard issue yellow cycling wind breaker. Took it off at the half-way point as I was breaking a sweat, it was the warmest part of the day, and I wanted to dry out before we lost the daylight.

• Standard issue cycle shorts
• Knee warmers
• A very old, garish, pair of tights from Primal Wear. They do a good job of blocking wind, and the keep the knee warmers in place - but have limited insulation. The combination of these w/ the knee warmers is good starting at around 50F.

• Liner socks (from hiking)
• Wool socks - for cross country skiing. They came up to the bottom of the knee - adding some insulation below the knee warmers and perhaps adding some compression on the muscles below the knee.
• Standard issue cycling shoes (mountain bike)
• Gore shoe covers. These were pricey; but, they have been worth it - a significant upgrade in warmth and dryness over the previous.

Finally:

I used two sets of gloves during the ride. On the 'out' part of the ride, I used an old set of dense-fleece ski gloves (a nice gift about a decade ago from one of my brothers). They were a little soggy from sweat at the half-way mark, so I switched them out for a wool combination: smart-wool liner gloves inside REI's nubby-palmed wool gloves. These worked fine, and might have worked the entire ride.

The above kept me warm enough. If it had been raining, that wouldn't have worked. I would have switched to a water-proof outer layer and lightened up on the other clothing.

Now - for the ride part. It was good-to-great. Here are the heart-rate traces that go with the exertions:

Out: Hillsboro-Dayton-Dallas, with a stop in Dayton at a very nicely ran convenience store. Worked hard the whole way. We tended to have a tail-wind - my ride time for this leg was about 4:30.



Back: I stopped to have hot chocolate and chat with Marcello. Then another stop in Dayton. The tail-wind was now a head-wind. The exertion falls off at the end as I'm winding through the neighborhoods and focused on navigation, as opposed to just pedaling hard.



The complete set of pictures, such as they are, are available here.

Finally finally: for food I had some simple sandwiches made from Safeway's finest cheap French rolls. Some had cheese and some had salami. I also had a cashew/raisin mix from home, and 2 Lara bars. Two bottles of Heed - went with Coffee (from the excellent convenience store in Dayton), hot chocolate, and NUUN-in-water. Also - Marcello had supplies on the road. I had 6 cookies. No food issues. The cashews worked, again. Had them towards the end of the ride.