On Rides, short and long

This past weekend was the Victoria Day long weekend. I had hoped to do club rides on Saturday and Sunday and a long ride Monday. Now my original plan for Monday was Forks of the Credit, but it turned out there was construction out there so instead my revised route called for a Lake Simcoe Monday. Then it turned out that it was going to rain on Monday and Sunday so I moved Lake Simcoe to Saturday.

I strongly suspect, well I know actually, because I kept moving the dates around a lot of the guys could not come out. In the end I did the full 180km by myself. Not that I minded, I took my iPod and listened to Trance for six and a half hours, turns out Trance is great music to train to.

Sometimes you get a really good song with a tail wind and suddenly you feel like the greatest thing on Earth. Such a thing happened as I was working my way east from Leslie Street to Warden at 19'th Ave. I had to climb the highway 404 overpass and the sun hit me head on with green fields all around and not a car in sight. I cannot describe what a wonderful feeling it was. It was a glorious ride, although I did push myself too hard, my stops were very short, just refills and quick washroom breaks, then back on the saddle. By the time I got home I was hurting. I did stop to take a few pictures.



On account of bad weather predictions, though the weather's been pretty good, I've been spending my time on the beater bike, which is actually a really good way to train. Holy smoke it hurts going anywhere at all! I do a couple one hour rides full out on the beater I'd clobber everyone at an ITT on Alex (my ITT bike). Anyway this morning I was just on my morning ride to work, on the beater, in the rain. And at a red light a group rolls past me (they were going North, I had to turn but there was no right turns on red), once the light changes I see red and hammer and catch up with them pretty quick. Turns out they were the Morning Glory group out for, a wet ride I guess. Then I discover why I hate group rides in the rain. I have fenders they have pretty Cervelo's, mostly Cervelo's (will not rant... will NOT say anything bad about Cervelo... must... resist urge!)

I tried to drop off their back, but despite the fact that I have office cloths and my lunch in my backpack, and am on a 25-30 year-old steel beater with a busted 6600 Ultegra groupset I still get to the front of their pelaton. (At least I did not give them rooster tails!) I guess they were out for a long ride and wanted to save their strength, mind you it is Thursday, don't they have to work? Maybe their rides don't work well in the rain, or maybe the machine needs a better engine? Sorry, I should not talk like that. :)

On Riding and Rain

I’ve done quite a bit of riding lately. Of course on account of the fact that my job is much closer to home, distance is shorter, but I am trying to make up for it by doing things faster and with more hills. Most days I now cover Cosburn from Donlands to Woodbine, or even further, faster than the cars do. (It helps that I have a bike lane and the cars have traffic – of course I have the same 40km/h speed limit they… disobey, and I often have a head wind – when I go east, go figure!)

Anyway I have done a bunch of hill climbing and a few club rides since my last post, one of the club rides involves a nice little climb on Brimely road. It turns out the hill (which we do repeats on), is about 890m (at least the loop I do). It starts at 88m above sea level and I turn and do it again at 160m above sea level, so it averages around 8%, but is in places as gentle as 4% and at other times is 13%.

Thursday evenings we have a little ride up and down the hill. I set a modest goal for myself, after all, it is only mid-May, I decided I would do four repeats of the hill, some guys did three, some did six. One person, a new guy, got to the bottom and from what I understand he basically just went up a little bit, turned around and went back down. Most of the guys were done and the new guy was still at the bottom. I still had plenty left in the tank and in my legs so I went back down the hill and rode up with the new guy. Mostly trying to encourage him as we rode. Towards the two thirds mark, the hill leveled off from 13% to 4 or 5%. I got back into the saddle (obviously at 13% I’m not going to be sitting all that much, I am no Alberto Contador). As the hill became more level I pushed the new guy, steadily, for about 150m (or about 500 feet). It is a nice feeling when you can, well frankly rescue someone, from the bottom of the hill.

The following week it rained almost continuously from, well Friday afternoon until Thursday morning. Although the grass and the trees are mostly green as a result of all this damned rain (more expected over the coming long weekend) the rain is getting to me. But at least I can now ride to work in the rain, I use the beater bike, something I could not do when I worked 25km from home. Tomorrow, Saturday, is supposed to be a nice day, so I am going to ride up to Lake Simcoe. I doubt anyone will come with, so I may need to charge up my iPod, oh well, at least I will get one good ride in before the rain that is predicted to ruin Sunday and Monday.

On Flats and Other Things

I know, I have not posted much lately, sorry. Things have been crazy.

Obviously the whole move nonsense is far from finished. It turns out the imbecile I bought the house from lied in the listing of the house, the driveway is not legal and I got a parking ticket for using it. (I've had to get an on street permit, thank goodness it's a quiet street that people don't generally park on.)

I got a new job, its not a problem with the old job but the new role, is, I think, a step in a better direction. I can take the subway to work, it's only 10km away - so I can ride even on the beater Coppi to work. And the role is itself a promotion, even if the pay is slightly lower. (I save so much on the commute, I'll suck up the slight loss of income.)

Of course all of this means that I have not had much time to write lately. Well actually, part of it is also a case of, hmmm, weather's starting to turn, I could stay home and write blog posts or...!

So I had a flat on a Wednesday evening joy ride. I was on Queens Quay on the way home, east bound, when not for the first time I noticed the ride quality was suddenly pretty lousy. Queens Quay as a westbound road is bad, but usable, for the eastbound cyclist, take another road! Maybe Bathurst to Front and across Front Street?

Thursday was hill climbing night with the club. It was very nice, I kept my pace down on the first climb and on the second climb I kept it steady, on the third climb a bunch of guys, not in the club came out and did their first climb, they passed me, but then just a few meters later, I passed them. On my fourth climb they managed to pass me again but I had to save up enough to do all the other 'tour of Scarbrough' stuff we had planned.

We rode over to Meadowcliffe Dr., there is a short hill, perhaps 30 or 40 meters long and maybe 18% at it's steepest. As the guys got to the hill, I was a little behind, having down-shifted to early, I yelled out, "anyone who climbs the hill in the saddle gets a cookie!" I did not part with any Fudgee-Ohs last night. Then again, I did not earn one either.

Still I did pretty well and had enough gas left in the tanks to really hammer it home.

On Weekday Rides

I have done an awful lot of rides since I last wrote. I have been busy, what can I say? Mind you busy riding, rather than writing about them, not such a bad thing. Anyway Sunday April 10, it was supposed to rain, then it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. So I went out for a morning ride with the BCC. One of the guys in the club flatted and a few of us stuck around while the rest of the club continued on. As it turned out, I was probably the weakest of the bunch who stayed to help with the tyre repair. It's not every mechanical I get to say, it was great, we screamed up Warden at about 40km/h. Then Jeff Norman, who must know roads in Toronto better than most people know the back of their hands, took us on a lovely little underpass to the Don Valley Parkway, we wound up meeting up with the main body of the group only a few kilometers from the site of the mechanical.

The club ride continued north and sure enough, when at about 40km from home it started raining. By the time I got home everything was soaking wet. Naturally in the afternoon it was warm, bright and sunny. So I spent much of the following week cleaning Jordan. That said, by Thursday night I had ridden over 500km since April 1. The season may just be starting, but things are ramping up pretty quickly now.

Here is a new rule, no looking at bicycling related websites, I drool, it is not healthy. And parking my ride at my desk at the office, not much better frankly! I keep turning and admiring. Sure she's pretty and all, but I don't see her enough on the uber long 300km rides? Well I only see her top tube bars and front wheel tyre and spokes. But apparently I don't see enough, because when at the office I keep turning and looking at my ride like she was a work of art. Then again, look at the bike or look out the window at a suburban wasteland, difficult decision.

On Weekend Rides

I do not have my GPS with me now, so no statistics. But I do recall that on Friday evening I rebuilt Jordan, well actually the rebuild was a week long affair culminating in Malcom from Biseagal tightening the cables up and adjusting the gearing. Now I should add here that when I rebuilt Jordan I put new levers, derailleurs and logically cables on her so that when the gears started misbehaving on the Saturday morning ride, I just assumed there was some seriously ugly cable stretch going on. So Saturday just before noon I rode back to Malcom, right after the ride, and asked him to have a look.

I should probably insert here the part where I confess to having taken apart my crankset about a dozen or so times in the past to clean it.

Returning to my story, Malcom has a quick look at my sweet little ride and I end up taking a Taxi home. Below are some pictures of my 39 chain ring. (It is a good thing I had a spare crankset at home. Yes I really do keep an emergency 53/39 crankset!)

The next day Ian Wilcox and I went for a little ride, well actually the whole Beaches Cycling Club went for a ride, but Ian and I went further. It was a beautiful route. We went up Leslie, but I did not feel like riding through New Market so at Vandorf we went east to Warden and along Vivian. Then to avoid yet more busy roads we took 9'th line south all the way from Vivian, it was wonderful, hardly a car, a bunch of joggers and an occasional walker. It was riding, the way riding a bike is supposed to be. By the time I got home I was in all kinds of pain and loving every bit of it. I should go on more rides like that. Anyway here is a route, very much worth doing again, or possibly (since Warden is a very quiet road early in the morning on weekends) just take Warden north right from the beginning.

Sunday_April_3_Stouffville http://www.bikely.com/

And here are some pictures of me on that ride.

On Slow Recovery

Over the weekend that just ended I rode 91km on Saturday and burned about 3950 calories in just under three and a half hours (yes a somewhat pathetic average of just over 26 km/h) and on Sunday I burned just over 4100 calories on a 105km just over three and a half hour ride (about 27km/h average.)

From this we can conclude a couple things. One is I have a lot of improvement to make, but the other conclusion I draw is that I am getting my strength back. The problem I had is over the winter I had all the grief of moving and staging of the home meant I could never use the trainer. (I shoveled lots of snow, but that does not do much for the ride.)

The summary of this past winter is as follows, since January 1 anyway, I rode once in early January and then nothing until March 13 (100km), including that March 13 ride I have done 383km in just over 168 hours. Not nearly what I would do in the summer, but it is starting up again. (Also since my current chain had - as of March 12 - 3589km and the tyres were at 1695km, I need to start really thinking about a new chain and tyres.)

Anyway enough of the mechanical and statistical details. The rides, well, Saturday Evan, Ian and I rode the Mississauga Loop, I need to figure out a better return path from Evans and Royal York to Christie at Dupont (have to do the hill on Christie, have to climb that hill!) We had what I am sure all would agree was a good ride, save the wind out of the North that nearly blew us over. On the other hand that north wind carried us down Tomken at a psycho speed. I was chasing Ian at one point on a flat and I was clocking in 50km/h. Ian and Evan are clearly in better shape right now than I am. I need to build my strength back.

I also had a sort of mini-bonk, I was getting dropped and just could not keep up, I realised my body was in glyco-synthesis mode and I could not figure out why, until it dawned on me, I am not drinking water (supplemented) - too cold, and not eating. I guzzled back half my bottle and got back into form pretty quick.

We were climbing a hill and I sort of growled as I neared the top, it's a psychological thing to growl at the hills. Well at the next red light another cyclist, on a commuter comes up beside me, kind of surprised me, she was running in stealth mode and reprimanded me for growling in hear ear - I was about one and a half meters away from her when I passed. But she was being all righteous, probably because she was on a bicycle... (yes I was too, but that's hardly relevant for the righteous set!) So I apologized, the light changed and I took off with the wind overpowering her rant on the importance of eating granola whilst wearing Birkenstocks. I think the problem the righteous cyclist has is that they think that the act of riding the bike is a sort of punishment that merits righteousness, that someone would ride for pleasure means that the someone is not worthy.

Sunday we rode up to Stouffville, well actually Musselman Lake. It was wonderful. At the start of the ride there was (in no particular order) Pat, Brook, Peter, Thi, Ian, Paul M - who clobbered me the previous Sunday - and myself. Pat and Brook took a slower pace once we got out of the city and we caught up with them in Stouffville where they had short looped. Peter kept with us to Stouffville where he broke off to get home earlier. Ian Paul and Thi then proceeded to clobber Michael several times on the way around the lake as I still need to get a lot stronger. But they were nice enough to wait for me. The ride south was brutal with a near steady head wind of about 10~15km/h. Still it was a lovely route, we used 14'th Ave and Middlefield to get back into the city. Ian and I agreed that this was the best way to re-enter from the North East.

Ian and I were talking about recovery, we both knew we would need a day or two (or about a dozen for me!) off to recover. Ian was a little bothered because the weather for Monday was supposed to be nice, turns out, it's raining.

It was a good weekend and I hope to have many more this spring, summer and fall just like the one I had. Thanks guys!

On Earthquakes and Japan

Recent events in Japan have been very troubling. I was listening to the Radio and CBC had an expert on Nuclear reactors on. The expert was outlining how roughly 2% of all the workers stuck at the Fukushima plant will develop fatal cancer within, I think it was a year, as a result of their efforts. The expert went on to point out that while all the workers were sure to volunteer for such a risky role there would be no problem finding volunteers as this is Japan where society places honour in such a high regard.

I have to admit I am rather impressed, if I worked as say a Computer Network Analyst at Pickering and there was an Earthquake or some other disaster, volunteering to help out would not be high on my list of priorities, I think. I don't know, I guess I should be grateful that I am not in a position where volunteering to put my life on the line is something my job would ever require.

Anyway I happened upon this article by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It does explain a lot about why the reactor just will not shutdown. A problem I do not think the traditional Candu design has, suddenly Candu does not look so bad. Still makes me think, maybe we really do not have any long term solutions for our energy needs, maybe we will be living like we did at the turn of the nineteenth century when the oil runs out.

In the meantime I am going to donate to the Red Cross for the Japan Earthquake - it is the very least I can do.