So as I mentioned previously I did a lot of riding last week. I rode every day from Saturday November 6 (63km) though until (and including) Saturday November 13, 85km. My shortest day was November 6 at 63km, my longest was Sunday the 7'th at 125km. The total distance was 674km in eight days, which does not sound all that impressive I suppose, except, pulling eight consecutive rides in November, and averaging almost 85km/day this time of year is something that is worthy of a blog post.
My ride on Saturday (November 13, 85km) was a strange one. First it was not raining, just very misty, foggy one might say. But from the house the road looked dry and visibility was pretty good to a few hundred meters so I figured I'd be fine for a ride. Then I hit the road and almost immediately visibility dropped to under 50m. Having ridden every single day for the previous week I was feeling pretty enfeebled and with the lousy visibility I was seriously tempted to just abort and head home, but, I soldiered on. As I rode North the fog started to lift and with the clearing of the sky my head cleared as well and I started to really enjoy the ride. Car drivers were bizarrely exceedingly courteous and frankly the ride up Royal York was little more than a big love feast. Not that I mind, I wish more drivers would behave the same way around cyclists as the motorists on Royal York.
I rode east across Steeles for a while, Steeles is a lot better ever since the city resurfaced almost the entire length of the road, except just past every major intersection the right lane is undergoing road work for about ten meters. I wish they would hurry that road work up, there is nothing worse than being squeezed into a tight lane with cars that are in the post red light rush to the next red.
In frustration I gave up on Steeles and took a side road just east of Bathurst. Just after the turn a blue hatchback Mazda with an empty bike rack passed me. (No big deal so far. ) Then without signalling or looking the Mazda made a right turn at an intersection (no stop required) and had it not been for decent reflexes and outstanding brakes (thank goodness for Malcolm Munroe and Shimano Dura-Ace) I would have been either t-boned or plowed into the Mazda. I yelled at the driver, something along the lines of questioning his intelligence and some other choice expressions and continued on my way. A block later I encountered the Mazda again and the driver tried to engage me in some sort of conversation, now talking to someone who nearly kills me is not my idea of a good time. I tried to get away as fast as I could. (It took a few tries, but eventually I managed to escape the idiot in the blue Mazda.) Irony, besides the bike rack, he was wearing some sort of high-tech long sleeve jersey, like he had just done some outdoors activity, maybe he was going to reprimand me for riding?
Thanks go the mist at the start of the ride Jordan was covered in mud by the time I got her home. I am doing another one of my uber cleaning jobs on her - good timing, I am on call this week and cannot go for a ride.
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Monday, November 15, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
On Riding, A Report
I am swamped at work. But at least I have managed to squeeze a few good rides in, as I mentioned earlier, Saturday was a 63km day, Sunday was 125km, Monday was only 78km, but Tuesday was 80, then Wednesday was 84 and Thursday was 79, I suspect Friday will be about 100km, to make a nice even 609km... I guess I better do 101km today... or maybe 191? Oh 750 is a nice round number, 241km? Damn shame I have to work today.
Anyway back to the treadmill.
Anyway back to the treadmill.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
On Good Long Rides
In my last post from Thursday (November 4) I noted that I planed to do core exercises. Then that annoying concept, the thing I do to pay for the house and food, and critically bike and related accessories, you know, the eight hours a day (well more like ten hours a day) five (six) days a week? Starts with a J... like Job... yes that's it my day job, it got in the way. Well as much as it could my job got in the way, but I my little diesel conspired to get me back on the saddle, the starter motor on my diesel car is dying.
Now granted in an ordinary gas car it is possible to get the engine rolling without a starter motor, just park on some flat ground and push the car until its rolling fast enough and jump behind the wheel. Diesel's are a little more difficult, because the engine has no spark plugs, ignition is achieved by knocking, so it takes a lot more torque to roll the engine over. I did take the car to my neighborhood mechanic and while replacing the starter is not the hardest job ever, sourcing a starter motor for a nine model-year-old small diesel engine quite possibly is.
So my car is at the mechanic, and the days while cold are sunny and dry. As if I needed another reason not to drive, Lesley was sent to Ottawa by her job, (yes I officially hate all day jobs!) Lesley decided to drive her truck... land yacht... big black gas guzzling behemoth.
So Saturday I rode, only 63km - but then I did only drive about 15km, Sunday I rode, 125km then Lesley wanted to get some lunch and instead of using a sesnible mode of transportation we drove to lunch, another 10km. Yesterday I rode to work and then drove the car to the mechanic (78km by bike and 2km by car). Today I expect to ride about 80km (to and from work) and, well, cannot drive at all. Of course that leaves, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which luckily, the weather is looking good. So I guess I'm stuck riding, oh the humanity!
Actually I do want to mention the 125km I did on Sunday. Now I admit, by my standards 125km is nothing special, but this ride sure was, the route is below. From around Dufferin and Teston all the way back to King Vaughan was nothing but rollers, some rather steep. At one point on Jane Street there was a nice tail wind with a fairly steep decesent and I was hammering away in the 53/11 or maybe 53/12 when some car whips past me, now I was doing 64.5km/h (by the GPS) and it is a 70km/h zone, but if that car passed me at anything less than 30km/h I ought to retake physics 121. But other than some really bad drivers, this was a wonderful route and left me with the really nice pain. I hope the weather is nice so I can ride this thing again this Sunday.
And here is a group photo, from Keele, just south of Kettleby.
Now granted in an ordinary gas car it is possible to get the engine rolling without a starter motor, just park on some flat ground and push the car until its rolling fast enough and jump behind the wheel. Diesel's are a little more difficult, because the engine has no spark plugs, ignition is achieved by knocking, so it takes a lot more torque to roll the engine over. I did take the car to my neighborhood mechanic and while replacing the starter is not the hardest job ever, sourcing a starter motor for a nine model-year-old small diesel engine quite possibly is.
So my car is at the mechanic, and the days while cold are sunny and dry. As if I needed another reason not to drive, Lesley was sent to Ottawa by her job, (yes I officially hate all day jobs!) Lesley decided to drive her truck... land yacht... big black gas guzzling behemoth.
So Saturday I rode, only 63km - but then I did only drive about 15km, Sunday I rode, 125km then Lesley wanted to get some lunch and instead of using a sesnible mode of transportation we drove to lunch, another 10km. Yesterday I rode to work and then drove the car to the mechanic (78km by bike and 2km by car). Today I expect to ride about 80km (to and from work) and, well, cannot drive at all. Of course that leaves, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, which luckily, the weather is looking good. So I guess I'm stuck riding, oh the humanity!
Actually I do want to mention the 125km I did on Sunday. Now I admit, by my standards 125km is nothing special, but this ride sure was, the route is below. From around Dufferin and Teston all the way back to King Vaughan was nothing but rollers, some rather steep. At one point on Jane Street there was a nice tail wind with a fairly steep decesent and I was hammering away in the 53/11 or maybe 53/12 when some car whips past me, now I was doing 64.5km/h (by the GPS) and it is a 70km/h zone, but if that car passed me at anything less than 30km/h I ought to retake physics 121. But other than some really bad drivers, this was a wonderful route and left me with the really nice pain. I hope the weather is nice so I can ride this thing again this Sunday.
And here is a group photo, from Keele, just south of Kettleby.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
On Flatting
Tuesday November 2 was a bad day. Any day when a bunch of angry lunatics wins elections is a bad day. Tuesday was especially bad because my back tyre ripped wide open on Brimley road between Eglinton Ave. and Danforth Road.
So for anyone who might happen across this blog who is new here, I'm what might be called a lunatic myself, as in I am crazy about riding, my bike that is. Anyway I use clincher tyres, (tyres or tires that have an inner tube), as opposed to tubular (tube is sewn up inside the tyre) or tubeless (tyre has no tube and is glued to the wheel, like that of a car tyre).
Now one might think that with a ripped tyre it would still be possible to ride home, since the tube did not rip, except, when the tyre rips what happens is, the metal threads inside the tyre are now exposed and the tube is bulging around them, although come to think of it, even a clean rip the tube would still fail. If a person is ever bored on a rainy Saturday afternoon, take a cheap road bike tube and try to inflate it to 40 psi. Now normally road bikes should run at about 90 to 120 psi (sometimes even as high as 140psi), but if one were to inflate a free tube to 40psi, well it would not work, the tube would explode.
What happens is, inside the tyre the tube has no room to expand so the air simply becomes more dense and the tyre feels harder. But in the open the tube expands and expands, so that the equivalent of 40psi of air pressure makes the tube rather large and then kaboom. Well when a tyre rips, suddenly there is all kinds of space for a tube to expand into and kaboom. What I find really annoying, this particular ripped tyre had all of about 500km on it. All but the very thinnest racing tyres (of which this was not) should last 2000km, this was the second failure of that tyre too, the previous failure was at about 30km of use.
Anyway that failure seemed like a good invitation to stop riding and recover, in five days I commuted to work three days (so about 80km a day on Friday, Monday and Tuesday) and did two days of intense club rides (Saturday and Sunday). I think a couple days off is very much necessary, that said I think I'm going to do some core training, it will probably help.
So for anyone who might happen across this blog who is new here, I'm what might be called a lunatic myself, as in I am crazy about riding, my bike that is. Anyway I use clincher tyres, (tyres or tires that have an inner tube), as opposed to tubular (tube is sewn up inside the tyre) or tubeless (tyre has no tube and is glued to the wheel, like that of a car tyre).
Now one might think that with a ripped tyre it would still be possible to ride home, since the tube did not rip, except, when the tyre rips what happens is, the metal threads inside the tyre are now exposed and the tube is bulging around them, although come to think of it, even a clean rip the tube would still fail. If a person is ever bored on a rainy Saturday afternoon, take a cheap road bike tube and try to inflate it to 40 psi. Now normally road bikes should run at about 90 to 120 psi (sometimes even as high as 140psi), but if one were to inflate a free tube to 40psi, well it would not work, the tube would explode.
What happens is, inside the tyre the tube has no room to expand so the air simply becomes more dense and the tyre feels harder. But in the open the tube expands and expands, so that the equivalent of 40psi of air pressure makes the tube rather large and then kaboom. Well when a tyre rips, suddenly there is all kinds of space for a tube to expand into and kaboom. What I find really annoying, this particular ripped tyre had all of about 500km on it. All but the very thinnest racing tyres (of which this was not) should last 2000km, this was the second failure of that tyre too, the previous failure was at about 30km of use.
Anyway that failure seemed like a good invitation to stop riding and recover, in five days I commuted to work three days (so about 80km a day on Friday, Monday and Tuesday) and did two days of intense club rides (Saturday and Sunday). I think a couple days off is very much necessary, that said I think I'm going to do some core training, it will probably help.
Monday, November 1, 2010
On Weekend Rides and Hurting
Over last week I did not have a chance to ride after Monday. Monday morning it was raining so I drove to work, in the evening it was nice and Lesley was jet lagged (she just got back from visiting her parents) so I went for a ride and blew a flat on the Royal York overpass over the Gardiner Expressway. Shortly after I replaced my inner tube my old manager/director gave me a call and asked me to look at a network configuration if I had a second. (Funny thing about blowing a flat, you loose interest in the actual ride after flatting, well it's not so much a loss of interest as a fear that the replacement tube will fail too.)
Anyway Toronto was hit by a weather "bomb" yes that's a real meteorological term, although it conjures up images of blizzards and hurricane force winds with intense rains, it was more of a weather dud. Listening to the radio and hearing predictions of 90km/h winds I figured, better to be in a big steel tub than on a tiny little carbon fibre work of art. As a result I did not ride Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
Friday I had a chance in the evening to extend my ride, so I did exactly that, and my total distance, about 30km to work and 73km home. Then Saturday a bunch of us in the Beaches Club went up to Stouffville, and a few of the guys must have had their Wheaties that morning because they left the rest of us in about six different kinds of pain, it was a good leg burner of a day.
Sunday the Beaches club had their end of season ride, what end of season? There's no snow, and even if there were, end of season... humph, end of rear, as in my rear end, ride in the snow! Anyway the BCC end of season featured a drive out to scenic Dundas Ontario, a nice warm up of 90km followed by a lunch and then a drive home. Now I'm sorry but if I cover 73km on my (albeit extended) commute home and over 100km on a regular working day, I'll be damned if I am going to drive over 100km just to ride 90km, unless said ride were a race, but as it's a social ride, uhm, save the diesel, ride to the ride.
I suspect I sound like a pompous jerk, but I'm sorry, driving a bike somewhere, sort of strikes me of asking a fish if he'd like some water to drink. Bikes are, to my thinking, the best and most decent way to get around, using a car to drive a bike that is in good repair is... unethical and immoral. (Driving a bike to a shop to get repaired, that is a different matter entirely - of course - but even better, driving to the shop buying tools and fixing the bike at home yourself is even better still.)
Anyway a couple guys had a similar opinion, well actually I think they just did not want to spend several hours driving, and sitting in traffic, just to do a three hour ride. So we did our own little ride, it hurt, in a really, and I do mean really, good way. There were 14% hill climbs, there were 55km/h (sustained) descents, there were head winds and tail winds. There was even, shudder, snow, but it did not accumulate. It was a really good ride, it even featured a coffee stop, but while I confess from the front door of my house I did not ride Jordan, I did mount the saddle as soon as I had walked her to the street, and again while I did dismount, before I got home, that was because I had to open the garden gate to get into the front yard. In short, total distance on Jordan 129km, total distance walking or driving the bike: less than 20m, or less than 0.001% of the distance covered.
Anyway here is a very nice, car free, route, very much worth doing again.
Anyway Toronto was hit by a weather "bomb" yes that's a real meteorological term, although it conjures up images of blizzards and hurricane force winds with intense rains, it was more of a weather dud. Listening to the radio and hearing predictions of 90km/h winds I figured, better to be in a big steel tub than on a tiny little carbon fibre work of art. As a result I did not ride Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
Friday I had a chance in the evening to extend my ride, so I did exactly that, and my total distance, about 30km to work and 73km home. Then Saturday a bunch of us in the Beaches Club went up to Stouffville, and a few of the guys must have had their Wheaties that morning because they left the rest of us in about six different kinds of pain, it was a good leg burner of a day.
Sunday the Beaches club had their end of season ride, what end of season? There's no snow, and even if there were, end of season... humph, end of rear, as in my rear end, ride in the snow! Anyway the BCC end of season featured a drive out to scenic Dundas Ontario, a nice warm up of 90km followed by a lunch and then a drive home. Now I'm sorry but if I cover 73km on my (albeit extended) commute home and over 100km on a regular working day, I'll be damned if I am going to drive over 100km just to ride 90km, unless said ride were a race, but as it's a social ride, uhm, save the diesel, ride to the ride.
I suspect I sound like a pompous jerk, but I'm sorry, driving a bike somewhere, sort of strikes me of asking a fish if he'd like some water to drink. Bikes are, to my thinking, the best and most decent way to get around, using a car to drive a bike that is in good repair is... unethical and immoral. (Driving a bike to a shop to get repaired, that is a different matter entirely - of course - but even better, driving to the shop buying tools and fixing the bike at home yourself is even better still.)
Anyway a couple guys had a similar opinion, well actually I think they just did not want to spend several hours driving, and sitting in traffic, just to do a three hour ride. So we did our own little ride, it hurt, in a really, and I do mean really, good way. There were 14% hill climbs, there were 55km/h (sustained) descents, there were head winds and tail winds. There was even, shudder, snow, but it did not accumulate. It was a really good ride, it even featured a coffee stop, but while I confess from the front door of my house I did not ride Jordan, I did mount the saddle as soon as I had walked her to the street, and again while I did dismount, before I got home, that was because I had to open the garden gate to get into the front yard. In short, total distance on Jordan 129km, total distance walking or driving the bike: less than 20m, or less than 0.001% of the distance covered.
Anyway here is a very nice, car free, route, very much worth doing again.
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