Mad skills

Spring! Return of the after-work rides

Finally!  The after-work riding season is back!

This past winter was the toughest I’ve ever seen for hitting the trails.  I really enjoyed the crazy weather, but the trails were always either soaking wet or covered by snow.  I only had one weekend with no plans and dry trails.  Spinning classes and road biking kept me from wasting away to nothing, but I’ve been dreaming of spring.  Now the weather is perfect and daylights savings time – combined with the fact that the sun is going down later and later – has finally made it possible to ride after work.

I’ve learned that packing correctly for the evening ride is key.  Forgetting some things, such as sunglasses or a pre-ride snack, will make your ride suck.  But forgetting other things (shoes, pump, helmet) are show-stoppers.  It usually takes me a few times to get it right.  Today I’ve loaded up a gym bag with everything I think I might need so I can be out the door and on my way to the trails as early as possible.  It includes:

• Technical shirt
• Biking shorts
• Gloves
• Helmet
• Two pairs of white socks  - the extra pair is in case a buddy needs a pair
• Sunglasses
• Water bottle
• Pre and post-ride supplements – currently I’m all about L-Arginine with Ornithine and L-Glutamine
• Ibuprofen
• Bike tools – some of these I bring on the ride, others I just leave in the car
• Tube repair kit – I have a nifty little pack under my seat containing everything I should need to fix a flat
• Floor pump – I leave this in the car
• Banana – to carb-up on the drive to the trail
• T-shirt and baseball cap for the ride home – I hate stopping at the store on the way home just as the sweat on my technical shirt starts to ferment.
• Deodorant (see above)
• Camelback – if it’s warm I’ll bring the reservoir.  If it’s cool out, I’ll leave the reservoir and use my water bottle.  The backpack part of the camelback is great for carrying tools, extra layers and my cell phone.
• Headlamp – in case some kind of bike issue keeps me on the trail longer than expected.  Riding in complete darkness on technical trails is no fun.

The sunlight lasts later now that it’s spring, but it still gets dark pretty early.  It’s important to pick your trail wisely and make sure you’re able to make your way back if you’re stuck on the trail when it gets dark.  It’s also good to know exactly when the sun is setting, have a good feel for how long it’ll stay light enough after sunset to ride under the tree canopy, and have a good idea of how long you’ll be on the trail.

A good resource I’ve found for this time of the year is sunrise/sunset charts.  Here is the one I like to use:

You have to adjust the chart for daylight savings time, and know how to read military time, but it’s a great tool to use when planning your evening ride.  It’s also great to print off and have at your desk during the middle of winter when the sun sets at 4:30, so you can daydream about the day when you’ll be able to ride after work.

El Camino del Rey

Crazy!

Winter

Off-season training is difficult this year. Every wish I made as a kid for snow cancellations is finally being answered. The roads are slushy and the trails are pulling double-duty as a beautiful winter wonderland. I’ve been spending some quality time in the toasty gym – working on swimming and strength while putting in time on the treadmill and in spinning classes. But I really want to hit the trails.

The National Duathon Championship is just around the corner and nothing can prepare me like riding and running on the trails. Conditioning in spinning class is great, but it doesn’t get me ready for the tough, technical climbs or the subtleties of the course. I won’t feel ready until I can ride the actual course on my actual bike with ease – without the motivating music, 5-minute cool-down and hot instructor. But, for now, I’m at the mercy of this crazy winter weather. Maybe I can improvise a hill training program workout using a sled for the downhills.

More Barefoot Running Science

I found this video by following a link from the Harvard University Skeletal Biology Lab site for Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Application to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footware.  It’s a very interesting site.

Kenyan Bike Mechanic

Built to Run

One of the things that energizes and reassures me on a long trail run is thinking that us humans are built to run.  Our bipedal locomotion strategy is unique in the animal world.  We can also breath independently of our stride and we sweat more than any other animal.  We’re built to run long distances.   This video pretty much explains why:

This hunting technique allowed us to feed ourselves in the prehistoric world without claws, strength or sharp teeth.  I find it amazing.

Jason Clary bombing down hills

This is just insane.  It looks like a lot of fun though.  He probably goes through three rear tires a day.

Kunstrad EM 2009 Carla und Henriette Hochdorfe

This is pretty crazy:

The music is horrible.  So, just like watching Kelly Ripa on TV, this is way better with the audio muted.

First Road Bike

Back in the 80’s my dad bought two Schwinn Sprint 10-speeds.  One was for him and the other was for me.  They were heavy beasts by today’s standards.

I found a picture of one online at OTSG:

Both bikes were identical so we were never really sure which one we were riding.  We lived in the very hilly city of Roanoke, Virginia at the time.  My father loved riding around the city to take pictures of downtown scenes and homeless people.  I loved just taking off in whatever direction to explore.

Not too long after we got them I left one of the bikes on the front porch overnight and it got stolen.  We lived in a pretty bad neighborhood so it was a stupid mistake. I just forgot it was still out there.  My dad was pretty upset and just let me have the one that was left.  To this day I feel bad about it.  But I still loved the bike he gave me.

I can’t even guess how many miles I put on that bike.  I owned it for years and I rode it consistently.  School was boring, but the classes would fly by as I looked out the window and daydreamed about riding when I got home.  When I would get upset or stressed I would jump on the bike and pedal as fast as I could until the stress melted away.  There was something about burning legs, wind in my face and the landscape zipping by that would make my junior high school stresses seem trivial.

Spending time on my bike got me in touch with the changing seasons and gave me an intimate relationship with the city around me.  In Roanoke I climbed Mill Mountain many times to look at the star and the view and, more importantly, to come hauling ass back down the mountain.  I took countless spills, got good at fixing flats and probably had the hardest calves of anyone my age.  At the end of junior high school I moved to Maryland.  Finding friends at first was pretty hard so I spent a lot of time riding the B&A trail.

My bike met its end when I was in high school.  I mortally wounded it by putting pegs on the back axle.  At the time it seemed like a great idea.  The bike was significantly faster than anyone’s BMX bike, so adding pegs meant that me and a friend could ride forever, taking turns either standing or pedaling.  However, the axle ends weren’t long enough to support the pegs.  The pegs kept falling off under our weight and ended up stripping the axle ends down to rounded nubs.  While this alone wasn’t the bike’s undoing, it was the start of ever-worsening issues with the bike.

The rear derailleur was kept in place by tightening the bolt on the axle (probably not the best design).  After damaging the axle I eventually had to change a flat rear tire.  Normally I just held the derailleur in place while I tightened the bolt on to the axle.  But with the axle damaged, the derailleur would eventually slip out of place by the time I got the bolt tightened enough.  I would work at it until I got it all tightened down, but it was tougher every time.  Once it was really out of position so, to compensate, I made the huge mistake of blindly adjusting some of the screws on the rear derailleur and it was never quite right again.

At the time we had very little money so taking the bike to the shop was never even considered as an option.  So I would sit in front of our apartment building with a pair of vice grips and a screw driver trying to keep this thing from falling apart.  Eventually the axle got so stripped that I couldn’t get it back together.  That was when I realized that I had lost the battle.

I kept the bike when we moved and put its dismembered carcass in the basement with hopes of one day having the means to fix it.  A year or so later it was sitting by the curb.  I don’t know if someone rescued it or if it got picked up by the garbage truck, but I like to imagine that someone found it and had the money to get it back up and running.

As I get back in to road biking I think about this bike fondly.  I’m sure it weighed 5 times what my current bike weighs, but I doubt I will ever have as much fun riding my new bike as I did riding my Schwinn Sprint.