Can You Beat My Score?

I saw this game over on Bike Jax and took the challenge. I beat Bike Jax by 13.9 meters. My score is in the screenshot to the right. Give it a try and post your score.
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Setting Goals for Improved Bicycle Riding

Do you know where you’re going with your bicycle riding? Do you know what your current mileage is and how much you’re planning to ride this year? Do you have a target weight? How do you plan each bike ride you do? Do you roll out of the driveway knowing what the plan is for that ride or do you decide when your tires hit the pavement? Are you planning on riding in an upcoming charity event or race? If so, what’s your finish expectations? In short, do you have a goal, or goals, to accomplish what you want to do on your bicycle? If not, you dramatically increase your chances of failing or not performing as well as you wanted to.

Why do we have goals?

We set goals in order to achieve something important. Goals are our recognition of a problem, or opportunity, and serve as a target for us to focus on. Without goals we risk wandering aimlessly in our bicycle riding. Setting goals requires that we establish our baseline and determine where we want to be in the future. Setting goals puts the proverbial carrot out in front and keeps us moving towards the completion of that goal.

A goal properly set is halfway reached.
-Abraham Lincoln

Defining your goals

There are several factors that must be taken into account when you want to define your goals.

1. Where are you now? You have to have a starting point which means you need to make an assessment of your current situation. If you’re looking to lose weight you need your current weight. If you’re looking to improve your health see your doctor and get a complete checkup. If you’re looking to improve your riding record your most recent workout data to set as a baseline. Only by knowing where you are now can you plot a course to get where you want to be.
2. Where do you want to be? Do you know where you want to be with your bicycle riding, weight, or overall fitness? If you don’t, you need to figure it out. Do you want to ride a certain number of miles per week, month, or year? Do you want to drop a specific number of minutes off your weekday loop or commute time? Do you have a target weight you want to be at? Do you need to drop your cholesterol, blood pressure, or resting heart rate? Do you want to complete your first century ride or compete in a race next year? These are the types of questions you need to answer before you can figure out where you want to be.
3. How do you measure your progress? In order to determine if your bike rides are doing you any good you have to determine how you’re going to measure your progress towards your goals. Setting a goal and not measuring your progress leaves you wondering if you’ll ever achieve the results you wanted. So, how do you measure your progress? Some are:
   • Going to your doctor and getting your blood work checked periodically.
   • Measure and record your resting heart rate when you wake up each morning.
   • Use a bicycle computer to track your ride statistics (mileage, average speed, heart rate, etc.)
   • Weigh yourself periodically.
   • Are you able to keep pace on the group ride?

   These are just a few ideas and I’m sure you can think of others.

4. How do you get to your goal? This is where the rubber meets the road. Literally. If you want to improve your bike riding, fitness, or health, you have to define, specifically, the action required to get there. For example, if you want to put in 5000 training miles this year you need to determine the number of miles you need to ride per month and per week. In this example, you’ll need to put in approximately 417 miles per month or 104 miles per week to achieve that goal. You’ll need to measure your progress periodically to ensure your on track to meet that 2000 training miles goal. If you find yourself trailing behind you’ll need to re-adjust your plan (increase the daily/monthly mileage) to achieve your goal.

SMART Goals

SMART is a common method used to help in defining goals. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measureable
• Action-Oriented
• Realistic (yet challenging)
• Time-defined

1. Specific and Measureable. Your goals must be specific and you must have a way to measure them. If you simply say to yourself, “I’m going to ride my bike more this year” what do you think the chances of you actually following through on that are? How would you know if you were riding more than last year? It would be better to write your goal as, “Increase my training mileage this year by 30 miles per week.”
2. Action-Oriented. How are you going to increase your mileage by 30 miles per week? Expand your goal by defining exactly how your going to do it. How about, “I will increase my training mileage this year by 30 miles per week by commuting to work one more day per week”, or, “by increasing my Saturday training ride to 50 miles”, or, “by participating in the Monday night group ride at the local bike shop.” Writing your goal this way reminds you exactly how you were going to achieve it.
3. Realistic and Time Defined. You’ve got to look at your goal and make sure that it’s both realistic and can be achieved in the time you allot for yourself. If you’ve only been putting in 500 training miles per year how realistic do you think it is to set a goal to ride 5000 training miles the next year? Not very. You have to make an honest assessment of your abilities and use that to help set your goal. Additionally, you’ll need to propose a realistic time scale to accomplish the goal. If you’re looking to lose fifty pounds and give yourself twelve weeks to do it you’re setting yourself up to fail. Healthy weight-loss is 1 to 2 pounds per week which means a fifty pound loss should take, at a minimum, 25 weeks to accomplish.

Write your goals down

Can you remember everything without writing it down? I know I can’t. That’s one reason to write your goals down. Another is that writing your biking goals down allows you to refer to them often as a motivational tool to keep moving towards that goal. Another is that being able to refer to your written goals allows you to make modifications if necessary. You can’t make modifications if you can’t remember what you were trying to achieve. Written goals help hold you accountable as well. Put your goals on the mirror so you see them every morning when you get up. Share your goals with your spouse, friend, or riding buddy. If you’re comfortable doing it, you can blog about your goals as well. Sharing your goals lets others know what’s important to you and perhaps they can help you achieve them. Who knows, maybe they have goals of their own that you can help them with.

Contest over at Fat Cyclist

I discovered Fat Cyclist about a week ago and have really enjoyed reading some of the great stuff over there. Today Fatty announced a cool little contest where you enter to win some DZNuts Chamois Cream, a DZNuts tshirt, or a DZNuts flexfit cap. Also on the list of prizes is a box of Jelly Belly Sports Beans.

What do you have to do? Help design a tattoo for one of his friends named Kenny. If you can photoshop something that’s great. If not, just describe what you think might be a good bicycling tattoo.

The full list of prizes and rules is available in the post here.

My submission is to the right and was accompanied with the following text:

“There I was…rolling down the trail when I come across two dudes taking pictures of themselves in their form fitting hot pants. The guy pictured below had some weird lookin’ jailhouse tat that said, “Fat Cyclist Forever” written across a red heart decorated with roses. I’m guessing the flames represented burning desire for this Fat Cyclist dude. I don’t know who Fat Cyclist is. Maybe it was his Daddy in the big house. What really did it for me, though, was what he was yelling. He’s standing there trying to pull off his best Arnold impression yelling, “Take a picture of DZNuts!”

Realizing there were two of them and one of me, I quickly snapped this pic and took off before I became another tragic victim of tough love.”

There you have it. Good Luck!

Batten down the hatches; Fay’s coming!

Well, I had hoped we would avoid the worst of this storm but it looks like that won’t be the case. This thing has taken one of the screwiest paths up through Florida and looks to hit Jacksonville right in the grill. They’ve already canceled school for the kids for the next two days. I’ll be going to work tomorrow.

Alas, it looks like I won’t be riding tomorrow. If I did, I might end up like this guy. He’s let the whole extreme sports thing to go his head and affect his judgment. What an idiot.

Ride 25: New beginnings on the bicycle

After my open letter yesterday, today started my new beginning - I was going to start riding again today. It’s been about a month and a half since my crash back on Ride 23 and the effects of that debacle are long gone. I didn’t have high expectations today and just wanted to get the ride/mileage in. That said, I went to bed at 10…and didn’t fall to sleep until 12. Go figure.

The alarm went off at 5:00 AM and I hit the snooze. A couple minutes later I rolled out of bed and got ready. I was worried about it raining this morning because we had had a light rain most of the night. When I opened the garage door it wasn’t raining but it was overcast. The roads were wet and looked slick. All of this, combined with my recollection of the crash, didn’t give me a warm fuzzy but I was determined to ride. Throughout the ride I did get sprinkled on here and there but nothing major. I took all the turns slowly in fear of my bike coming out from under me. I wasn’t going to let the fact that I had new tires on get the best of me.

I got out of my neighborhood and onto my main straightaway without any problems. I could tell pretty quickly that I hadn’t ridden in 6 weeks. My hands, legs, and rear-end became uncomfortable way too fast. It was from non-use and I was paying for my laziness. Do you remember that great golf movie Tin Cup? Remember that scene where Tin Cup and Romeo are on the driving range at the U.S. Open and Tin Cup says, “My swing feels like an unfolded lawn chair!” Well, that’s I felt on the bike this morning. Not to mention I felt like I was sitting on top of a 2×4. I was paying for not riding and I knew it. All I wanted to do was get the mileage in to start creating a new baseline in my fitness. I’m hoping it won’t take me long to get back into the swing of things. Pardon the pun.

I saw a few folks this morning; a couple of runners and one cyclist who was out in front of me. All I could see was the flashing red tail light and I eventually lost that. He either dusted me completely or pulled off ahead of me. I’d like to think it was the later.

I think the one thing that bothered me the most was having to get through the intersection at the end of my ride. Up to this point I avoided this intersection by taking the sidewalk and using the cross walk but the crash back on Ride 23 has convinced me to stay off the sidewalk. I shouldn’t be there anyway. I pulled up to the intersection and it wasn’t too busy. There was one car ahead of me in the turn lane. The light turns green and the guy just sits there. I give him a second or two and he doesn’t budge. I start to go around him, he’s looking down at something, looks up, I slow down, and he takes off. I follow around behind him in the outside lane of a dual turn lane. I make it through just fine. What I don’t like about the intersection isn’t necessarily the traffic. It’s not being able to quickly clip-in to get going. I can’t do it every single time without fail and it slows me down and increases the amount of time I’m in the intersection as a target of opportunity. I guess it’ll come with time but if anybody knows some surefire strategies for clipping in easier/faster I’m all ears. Two minutes later I’m back home and have completed my ride. 13 miles in 50 minutes. Not spectacular but I was just trying to get the mileage in.

I’m not sure how much more riding I’m going to get in this week. If you been watching the weather you’ve probably heard of Tropical Storm Fay that’s headed towards Florida. It’s expected to become a hurricane soon and run up the west side of Florida and move over Jacksonville (where I live) mid-week. Lots of rain expected. You can see the expected track in the pic to the right.

In light of the rain, numbness, and lack of fitness, it was good to be riding again.

New word: Road Slag - similar to welding slag, this is the asphalt droppings left on the side of the road (the exact place we ride) that forms a ridge, or mountain, of asphalt waiting to catch the inattentive bicyclist unaware and either throws them to the ground in a heap of flesh and metal or scaring them half-to-death by bouncing and jerking the handlebars around until you almost lose grip.

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