13 posts tagged “map my ride”

I intended to run yesterday.  Really, I did.  But I hosted a happy hour fundraiser on Thursday, and my cycling friends who showed up conspired against me.  Even the runner.  They had been discussing the Lake Barcroft loop - a popular mid-week training ride, and decided on the spur of the moment to plan a ride for the next day because one (the runner) was a "Barcroft virgin."  I'd never done that ride either as it's virtually impossible to get to Arlington by six o'clock on a weekday.  And since it's a ride I can do literally from my door, it didn't take much convincing.  We weren't meeting until noon, and I briefly entertained the notion that I could get my run in early before the ride.  Then I stayed out until after midnight.  So that plan got all shot to hell.

Well, Barcroft lived up to its billing, with several nice rolling hills balancing out a somewhat convoluted cue sheet.  And I wasn't feeling especially guilty about skipping my run until I showed up this morning for the forty mile pie ride.  I had been planning on doing this ride for the last week, since we didn't have an official training run today.  But at least five people asked me "Aren't you supposed to be running?"
 
So on this day noted for bold proclamations of freedom and liberty, I hereby declare independence from my bike until October.  That's not to say I won't be riding at all.  (I've already been cleared by my running coaches to ride on Sundays for the next six weeks or so.)  What I mean is: yesterday was the last time that, when confronted with the choice to run or ride, I will opt to ride.  I will be free from my bike.  Sort of.  As I write this, the Tour de France is on in the background.  I still get to ride vicariously.

At last night's pre-ride dinner, the final speaker was an Acute Myeloid Leukemia survivor from central Texas.  He opened his remarks with a phrase his chapter likes: Ride like it means something.  Because it does.  The 1650 Team In Training cyclists who rode around Lake Tahoe today collectively raised $6.8 million for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  The ride is almost incidental.  But that doesn't mean I'm not unbelievably proud to have done it again.

Here it is - the last map for a while.  It's a good one though.  I saved the best for last.

I'm beginning to think that 2009 might actually be my year.  Aside from all the other great stuff that happened, my decision to finally buy the new bike I've wanted for so long has turned out to be one of the best things I've done since I bought my old bike.  This training season has been one of the most fun - if not the most fun - of the ten century rides I've done with Team In Training.  (And that in spite of all the miserable weather.)  I'm a little sad it's coming to an end.

In a week, I'll be out in California.  I put my sweet baby on a truck tomorrow.  But today there was time for one last ride.  Our official training ended last week with our ninety-three mile sufferfest, but I organized a short and easy ride down to the beach.  Seven or eight of us set out on a "leisurely" pace, and we ended up crushing it.  Today was the fastest I've ridden all season.  Let's hope the rest of the summer goes the same way.  That would make the marathon training a breeze.

In case yinz hadn't noticed, there's an icon in the upper right corner of every ride map I've posted that says "View Elevation."  Clicking on that icon opens the map in a new window (or tab) which also has a box that shows how just much climbing is involved with that particular ride.  I'd invite you now to click on the elevation profile for the map embedded below.  Go ahead, I'll wait....

We decided this year to re-cue the ninety mile route we've done in the past because that one is two loops of fifty and forty miles.  We end up back at the start (and finish) in between, and it's all too tempting to hop in the car and leave after the brutality of Mt. Weather, which is the large spike you see about fifteen miles into the ride.  Yesterday was the first time I've done this particular route, but I've been on all of these roads many times before.  This version is no less unpleasant.
 
I've been looking forward/dreading this ride for the few weeks since the Naked Mountain ride kicked my ass so bad.  But I've been pushing myself in my training over the past few weeks, and yesterday was to be the real test of how well that worked.  I'm quite pleased today, despite how much I suffered yesterday.  The thing is: the suffering is in no small part my own fault.   I kicked ass on the tough climbs in the early part of the ride, but I waited too long to refuel.  I didn't eat anything until our first official pit - twenty-nine miles into the ride.  We had a water stop at about twenty miles, but we just refilled our bottles and kept riding.  I should have eaten one of the bananas I was carrying when we left there.  I eat on my bike all the time, but it didn't occur to me yesterday because I had such a strong start.  So I fucked up.  And I paid for it.  Miles forty-five through seventy were brutal until the food I ate too late finally kicked in.  On the upside, at least my gimpy ankle turned out to be a complete non-issue.
 
Two weeks from today, I'll be riding around the lake for the fifth time.  After yesterday - despite everything - I'm feeling pretty good about how that's gonna go.

We dodged a bullet yesterday.  The seven o'clock forecast showed a sixty percent chance of rain.  I was sure I was going to get wet.  But aside from a little mist and a few spitting drops, it was a dry ride.  And actually the weather was quite pleasant for those of us who don't mind not seeing the sun.  It was humid, sure, but starting out it was cool with a nice breeze.  I managed to finish before it got hot and humid.

I achieved my goal of completing the entire ride without using my easier chainring, though it hurt.  A lot.  The toughest hill on this ride is about three miles from the finish, and there is no good way to get around it.  Thankfully, the latent achiness in my quads I'd been ignoring all season (which made itself known after my run on Thursday morning) had mostly subsided by yesterday morning.  I felt great almost all day.  I'm now wondering if my issues on the Naked Mountain ride weren't caused more by nutrition than a lack of gears.  I'd been struggling with the food in the support car all season.  (We always seemed to run out of bananas, bagels are too heavy, and the peanut butter and cheese crackers are unappetizing.)  In the two weeks I've been carrying my own food (bananas and Uncrustables and - yesterday - beef jerky), I've had much more energy.  I felt so good yesterday that I even passed on the pie at the last stop.  Of course, that could also be three months of riding finally catching up to me.

I'd hoped to carry my camera with me yesterday, because I've never really captured the essence of this lovely ride.  But given the potential for wet conditions, I opted to pass.  Maybe it's just as well, as a bridge closing forced a detour around one of my favorite parts of the ride.  We still made it to the beach though, so all was not lost.  The rest isn't so bad either - though I still can't prove it.  You'll just have to trust me.

I don't normally write about my mid-week rides, because what's the point?  A fifteen to twenty mile ride is barely getting started.  But I had a terrific ride after work today that dovetails nicely with last Saturday's outing.  Long story short: I may have turned the corner - at least mentally - about the lack of gears on my new bike.  There's a hill on MacArthur Boulevard in Potomac, MD that starts at the Old Angler's Inn and winds its way up along the edge of Great Falls Park.  This hill has not been easy for me in the past.  Tonight I flew (so to speak) up it in my big ring, meaning I had gears to spare.  My legs were cashed after more than one long ride earlier in the season, but maybe all that hard work is starting to pay off.  Saturday is the much-beloved Beach and Pie ride.  My goal is to ride all eighty miles in the big ring.  It won't be easy, but I damn sure will earn that pie.  And sno-cone.  And post-ride cheeseburger.

One of the reasons it took me so long - almost three years - to buy a new bike is that I was concerned about losing some gears.  Without getting too technical, my old bike had three chainrings on the crankset and my new bike has two.  My new crankset is "compact," and the number of teeth on these two rings basically split the difference between those on the three rings on my old bike.  This helps with smoother shifting, but what it ultimately means is that I would lose a gear or two at either end of the range.  I wouldn't be able get into quite as high a gear when flying down a hill or with the wind, and I wouldn't be able to shift into as easy a gear - the so-called "granny gear" - as I previously could when struggling up a tough hill.  Or, at least, so I thought.

I haven't yet acquired my svelte marathoner's body, so it was the second of the above scenarios that most concerned me.  But whenever I brought it up while bike shopping, the clerk at the bike shop - every bike shop - assured me that a compact double was virtually identical to a triple ring and that I would barely notice a difference.  Well, not to be too blunt, but they all lied.  I was looking forward to last week's ride as a litmus test of how I would handle a tough hill with the new bike, and the answer is: not as well as I'd hoped.

We were supposed to ride on Skyline Drive yesterday, but because it was such a challenging ride (more challenging than we need to do to be ready to ride around Lake Tahoe, frankly), an alternate option was made available.  I said I was doing the alternate because driving all the way out to Front Royal would conflict with the DC Rollergirls Championship bout later that evening, but really it's because 6,500' of climbing doesn't sound the least bit fun.

That said, I set a goal of completing the entirety of yesterday's ride in the more difficult of my two rings - which I achieved.  I'd planned to kick off my marathon training today with a twenty minute run.  That will be happening tomorrow.

The less said about today's ride, the better.  We did my favorite training ride, but it's my favorite mostly because it kicks my ass so bad.  It's safe to say I have a love/hate relationship with these particular roads.  Today, I love to hate them.

This was another new ride for me, and now I wonder why I've never done it before.  I guess it's because it starts so effing far away.  It was a beautiful and mostly flat sixty-three miles that wandered up to and through the Gettysburg National Battlefield.  I felt great until about the last ten miles when the wind picked up and shifted so that I was riding directly into it.  Still, I don't feel completely spent today like I did last week, which is nice.

I wish I could think of something more interesting to say.  This could be the most boring post I've ever written.

Man, I am Wiped. Out.  It's been one long-ass day.  I'm so worn out right now that I took the trolley home from the Metro station when I went to drop off the Zipcar.  My ride today was way out in Berryville, and I'm not going to tell you what ungodly hour I got out of bed in order to make it out there by quarter to eight.  And on top of the early start, I was riding near the back of the group, which is always more tiring.  It's a little counterintuitive.  Yes, I was riding more slowly than I could have, but I was on the bike significantly longer than I really needed to be.  At least it was a much better day for a ride than last week, as you can probably tell by the photo above.

I was supposed to go to the roller derby this evening with Dabysan, CarrieNation, and Curlysalamander, but I had to cancel when I realized I was going to get home after the bout had already started.  It's probably for the best, anyway.  My team - the mighty Cherry Blossom Bombshells - is facing CarrieNation's team - the lowly Scare Force One - and Ms. Nation tends to get a little, shall we say.... temperamental when Scare Force loses.  It's kind of unpleasant to be around.  So my revised plan is to park myself on the couch, try to find a shitty Adam Sandler movie on TBS, and fall asleep until, oh, about Tuesday.