Yesterday was Day 11 of my Century Training Plan and consisted of the same workout as Day 10 which was 1.5 hours overall endurance with 4×8 intervals stuck in there. I was looking forward to trying the intervals again since Day 10s intervals were interrupted with road side assistance. I was thrilled to find no flat when I opened my trunk. I did patch the tube I took from Fernando after I helped him so I would have a spare. I still need to pick up some more CO2 when I get a chance.

Since I wasn’t starting until 6:30 PM I shortened my warm up to 15 minutes and then rolled right into the first eight minute interval. I started it on what I consider one of the toughest portions of the White Rock Lake loop which probably wasn’t a smart idea and probably should have waited a few minutes until I was passed it. Why this one section is tough on me I’m not sure. It is slightly uphill but I think it may be steeper/longer than it looks. I pushed through it and finished the first interval but a little slower than I wanted.

Eight minutes of spinning at a lower speed followed with another eight minute interval on its heals. I repeated this cycle until I had completed four eight minute (4×8) intervals. For the third and fourth intervals I actually picked my speed up quite a bit because I felt like I could. I didn’t have any problems maintaining 18-19.5 mph on those intervals. It wasn’t easy though. By the fourth interval I was really feeling it in my legs and felt it all over this morning. I’m guessing that means I’ve pushed myself a little further than normal which is a good thing.

Here are the numbers (these are very close estimates since I dropped my computer and dislodged the battery thus wiping out all my data…bummer):

Total Distance: 27 miles
Total Time: 1h:50m (15 minute warm up and 5 minute cool down)
Avg MPH: 14.7 Total (13.7 for 15 minute warm up and 15.7 for 1.5 hour intervals/endurance/cool down)

Overall I’d say that’s a good ride for me.

I won’t be able to ride the 30 minute recovery ride scheduled for today due to traveling out of town but I do have a 3 hour endurance ride scheduled for Saturday and a 1.5 hour ride on Sunday. My next post will probably be on Sunday since I’ll be without Internet access.

What a wacky ride today. It all started when I opened my trunk to pull my bike out (I’d really like to get a roof rack some day).

I immediately discovered my front tire flat. This is probably the third front flat in as many weeks so I was getting frustrated. Each time I carefully inspected the tire at the location of the hole to find nothing even though the hole seemed to be forming in the same spot each time. I took a look at the rim and discovered the rim tape worn in that area and now think that the tube may have gotten the hole from a spoke hole edge. I had some electrical tape in my trunk so I ran some around the inside of the rim over the existing tape. We’ll see how that goes. Next time I’m at the bike shop I’ll pick up some new rim tape. Remember the two new tubes I bought the other day? I just used one.

After this delay I finally got started and everything went good for the warm up. It was hot again but didn’t seem too bad. The wind was blowing pretty good though which wasn’t cool. After the warm up I had a 1.5 overall endurance ride scheduled with 4×8 intervals. The plan was to ride 8 minutes at 17 mph followed by 8 minutes at 13 mph (15 mph average) and repeat four times. Everything went good until about halfway through my second interval.

As I come around a corner I see a guy on the side of the road with his bike upside down. I ask if he needs anything and he says a pump. I stop to help but after using a CO2, my pump, and having another cyclist stop and use CO2, we were unable to inflate his tire. The other guy that stopped and I think the tube he put in was bad. Even if it was good it wouldn’t have lasted long because his tire sidewall was basically shredded from age. It looked like he hadn’t ridden the bike in a while. I let him borrow my phone to call is girlfriend and then I moved on and finished my second interval.

With Day 9 comes the second week of cycling in the century training plan. Yesterday was a rest day so I was chomping at the bits to get out and ride. I wasn’t looking forward to the heat and wind though.

Yesterday’s ride is the same as Day 2 which is one hour at endurance pace (15 mph for me). Throw in my warm up and I was looking at about 1.5 hours on the bike which isn’t bad. I arrived at my normal parking area and put my bike together. As I was putting on my gear I realized I had forgotten my gloves. After Sunday evenings Day 7 ride I had hand washed them so they would dry over the rest day but forgot them when I left the house today. Normally I would have been upset but I looked at it as an opportunity to get some sun on the back of my hands. Right now I’ve got this tan oval on the back of my hand where the hole is on my gloves. I don’t remember the last time I had ridden without gloves so it took some getting used to. Can’t really say that I enjoyed it though. Gotta remember them today.

I started out with my normal 30 minute warm up and took it kinda slow at first because it was hot out. The high for the day was 102F with the heat index a little higher. What made it worse though was the wind. Wow it was blowing hard at times. The weather channel said it was 10-20 mph and there were a couple times I bet it was gusting over 20 mph. Once the warm up was done I settled into 15 mph and kept that pace pretty good for most of the hour. I dropped a little on a couple of the hills but gained it back on the downhill side.

About a half-hour into the endurance portion I saw a young woman sitting on the curb with her bike laying next to her. I watched two guys ahead of me look her way and ride past without saying a word. I always make it a point to ask folks if they need anything when I see them stopped or it’s obvious they’re having trouble. So, as always, I asked her if everything was OK and she said something about her chain as I went by. I stopped and took a quick look. Her chain had come off probably from shifting while coming up the hill she was stopped on. It took less than a minute to fix and she was on her way. It always feels good to help folks out like that.

After getting back on my bike I completed the remainder of my endurance ride with no issues.

Here are the numbers:

Total Time: 1:36:47 (30 min warm up; 1 hr endurance; 6 min cool down)
Distance: 23.20
Avg MPH: 14.3 (includes warm up and cool down)

I’m writing this on Wednesday so I can tell you that I felt sore this morning from the ride. Not sure why as I didn’t think it was overly strenuous. It could be lack of sleep. I’m notorious for going to sleep at midnight and only getting six hours in. I know that’s not enough and I need to do better.

This post has been brewing for a while and I’ve talked myself into writing it and not writing it several times. Am I bitter? Probably. Frustrated? Certainly. If you’re one of those cyclists that has bottomless pockets or an unlimited cycling budget you may want to skip this one.

Any hobby has its expenses. If you like to knit then you have to pay for yarn and needles. If you enjoy scrapbooking then you have to pay for paper, stamps and stickers. Cycling is no different. If you want to enjoy the sport of cycling you have to maintain you bike which costs money. Cycling clothes cost money. Bicycles cost money. And so on. Cycling is just like any other hobby we have. It costs money. But does it cost too much?

Road Bikes

Let’s talk about bicycles first. Are there affordable bicycles out there? Sure, if you start with the low-end beginner road bikes, you can find a bike or two for right around $1000 that may suit your needs. On the other end of the spectrum you have the new Madone 6.9 that’ll set you back $8600 for the basic version. Throw in upgrades and custom paint and you can get it up to $14000 ($8600 sounds like a real bargain now). Custom road bikes can be even more.

I don’t know about you but the planet I live on would call $1000 for a road bike expensive. Am I out of touch? Maybe but in my book $1000 is a lot of money. I couldn’t fathom paying $8600 for a bike. Who would actually go out and pay that for a bicycle anyway? Not anybody I know. I’m sure some of you know people who would pay that for a bike but is it a bike they’ll actually use for the purpose it was designed for?

Regardless of what kind of road bike it is I think the prices have just gone through the roof. Having to drop $1000 to $3000 on a new bike is ridiculous. Has the technology advanced so far that the research and development costs are driving up the end price? Perhaps but I also think the bicycle companies are taking advantage of cyclists with large mark ups.

Cycling Clothing

I’m a cyclist who owns just a few pieces of actual cycling clothing (four to be exact). And they aren’t even name brand bibs or jerseys. If you want name brand, or top of the line, expect to pay out of your proverbial arse for it. $80-130 jerseys. $150-$200 bibs. I talked the other day about how I was looking for a sleeveless jersey and was shocked when I found out one I was looking at cost a $100 at one of the local bike shops. Come on! It doesn’t even have sleeves for crying out loud!

There is cheaper cycling clothing out there but I hear that you do get what you pay for with regards to cycling clothing. I wouldn’t know if the expensive stuff is any more comfortable or not but I’ve been told it is. But is it so comfortable that it should require you to take out a second-mortgage to totally outfit yourself for spring, summer, fall and winter riding? Are cycling companies just like the department stores that mark up clothes 200-300% and take advantage of the shoppers? I would say yes.

Cycling Accessories/Maintenance

This is the low-hanging fruit of the cycling hobby that can really start to add up. $200 carbon shoes and handle bars. $1000 sets of wheels. $300 GPS enabled computers. $100 saddles. $1000 (and more) component groups. And the list just goes on and on and on.

I guess the real question is how serious are we with this hobby/sport we call cycling? Are we serious enough to blindly fork out thousands of dollars on bikes, clothes and accessories so we can have the latest and greatest designs or technology? Do we have unlimited funds where we can simply pay whatever the cycling companies want for their products? Are we willing to pay anything so we can fit into “the group” on the next ride?

Some people are perfectly happy to pay these prices and do. I can’t and won’t but that still doesn’t mean that the prices the cycling companies are charging aren’t inflated and ridiculous.

I expect a lot of flak from this post but I really don’t care. I would like your opinion on the subject though. Do others feel the same way or am I’m a minority in this line of thinking and should just get out of the sport of cycling right now.

Today marks the official start of Week 2 of my Century Training Series where I’m documenting my efforts to train for my first century ride in late September 2009. Because today is a scheduled rest day, I’ll use it to conduct a re-cap of Week 1. Here’s a link to the Century Training Plan I’m following.

Week 1 started off rather easy with a one hour endurance ride scheduled for Tuesday. I actually thought this might be too easy for me but I did it anyway and completed it with no problems. On Wednesday I had to skip an interval workout because of a late afternoon thunderstorm. Thursday, Saturday and Sunday saw me ride per the century training plan. As the week went on I found the rides getting a little tougher as the required time at endurance pace was lengthened with it topping out at two hours on Saturday. In a few weeks I’ll be doing Saturday rides of three to four hours in length which kind of blows my mind right now.

Here’s a recap of my cycling numbers from last week as well as today’s measurements:

Total Riding Time: 7h:24m
Total Miles: 109.3

Neck: 17.25 in
Chest: 46 in
Left Bicep: 14.5 in
Right Bicep: 14.5 in
Waist: 47.5 in
Left Thigh: 29 in
Right Thigh: 27.5 in
Left Calf: 18.75 in
Right Calf: 18.25 in

A look at the numbers

The total mileage of 109.3 miles is the most I’ve ridden in a week since I did a cycling fundraiser from Connecticut to Ohio over 15 years ago. If I hadn’t had to skip Wednesday because of the thunderstorm I would have probably been around 140 for the week. I think that’s pretty impressive for a guy that’s 80+ pounds overweight. My weekly time in the saddle and mileage should only increase from here and peak about three weeks before my century before it tapers down.

My measurements, for the most part, were unchanged. I’ve always carried around extra weight and being in the military it was always a problem for me. I came to dread the ‘rope and choke’ as we called it. They subtract your neck circumference from your waist circumference to get a number (the smaller the number the better). This number is then looked up on a chart and for your corresponding height you get a percentage of body fat. Not the most accurate system in the world but that’s how they do it. I was always right on the border…and sometimes over. The thing with taking the neck and waist measurements is that many people who are trying to lose weight actually get worse before they get better. The reason is because the first place you lose anything is in your neck with your waist the last place. With your neck shrinking, and your waist staying the same, the resulting difference is a higher number therefore a higher percentage body fat. Not until you start losing the belly fat and love handles do you see decreases in body fat by the way the military measure you.

All that said, my numbers this week are reflective of the shrinking neck syndrome. I lost a little in the neck with most everything else staying the same but I did lose some in the calves too. This is only a week of keeping track so I’m not expecting to see huge changes and neither should you if you’re doing something similar. It takes time to see those numbers go down. The biggest thing is to not get frustrated if you don’t see immediate changes.

Some lessons learned

1. Hydrate. With the daytime temperatures here in Texas hovering near 100F everyday it’s very important to stay hydrated. This includes drinking water throughout the day, while on the bike and after riding. I’ve got on the bike covered but need to concentrate more on the other two especially post-ride.
2. Eat properly. I’m still struggling with this. I’m eating much better than I used to but I’m struggling with variation in my diet (chicken and tuna does get a little old) and timing of eating. Before Saturday’s ride I didn’t eat breakfast and I think it hurt my performance during the ride. You have to make sure you’re fueled to ride and re-fueled post-ride.
3. Ride early. With the temps high it’s important for me to ride early on Saturday to avoid late morning high temperatures. I got started late on Saturday and I paid for it with sweltering heat by the time I finished at 11:30.

A look at Week 2

Because I started my century training plan two weeks early I’ll go ahead with Week 2 this week and then fall back to Week 1 to start again. I did it this way to make sure I get into the training plan with no problems and can implement a couple other things into it before actually starting the 10-week plan. Week 2 will see an increase in time in the saddle of about 1.5-2 hours total with Saturday’s ride coming in at three hours of endurance riding. Should be a lot of fun as I’ll be up in Oklahoma where the area I ride is more hills than flat.

Today marks the end of my first week of training for my first century and I’m glad tomorrow is a rest day. I’ve ridden more miles this week than I have in over 15 years (I’ll post my week 1 mileage tomorrow).

Today was a 1.5 hour endurance pace ride and I waited until this evening to do it because tomorrow is a rest day. I arrived at White Rock Lake at about 6 PM but ended up having to fix a flat on my front wheel before I could even start. Very frustrating. The tube was one that I had patched before so I should have expected it. I put in my last new tube which means I need to hit the bike shop tomorrow to pick up a couple. Another good reason it’s a rest day tomorrow.