I didn’t get up this morning at 5:00 due to not getting to bed early enough last night. I did manage to squeeze in a ride before taking my wife out of town for a pre-surgery doctor’s visit. Because of the time of day, and increased traffic, I opted to ride around my neighborhood instead. So, I got the bike ready and headed out.

After my first loop I discovered that one lap was equal to .65 miles. Almost exactly 1 K. Cool. The route reminded me of a little criterium course hence the title. I took it pretty easy for the first five or six laps. There was almost no traffic so I was able to really hammer it in the turns and work on my cornering skills. With the route I was riding, see below, there are only two significant 90 degree turns and the rest is either straightaway or sweeping turns. A couple of the laps I opened it up a little bit by shifting to the big chain ring and pushing a little harder. When recovering, instead of shifting back to the small chain ring, I just shifted to a bigger cog. I felt that I should start riding in the big chain ring more so I left it there.

I did have one moment of excitement. One one of the laps I pushed it, I shifted in front of my house, dropped into the drops and cranked it. By the end of the street I was going 21+ (I know…ludicrous speed) and setup for the right-hand turn. I carried the turn wide and noticed a minivan coming down the street. I had plenty of room and moved back over onto my side. That’s when I saw it. Crossing the street in front of me was a 3 foot long black snake. He was crossing from the lake on the right side of the road to a wooded area on the left. I moved further right to clear the snake. As I approach the snake the minivan spooks it and it performs a u-turn right at me. It then notices me and starts to freak out. I went by it pretty fast but I swear it raised up and tried to strike at me. I could be mistaken. Anyway, I made it by with no problems. Wheew!

Here’s the map of the Neighborhood Criterium.

I did notice a problem that I’m starting to have that I experienced today and last Saturday. I sweat a lot and am starting to experience some problems with sweat dripping into my eyes and causing some burning. Do any of you guys/gals have any solutions to this?

Today’s ride was just over 11 miles.

It’s 5:00 AM again and the alarm is blaring. I probably should have went to bed earlier last night. Whatever. I resist the temptation to hit the snooze button (actually, I accidentally hit the off button instead of snooze) and crawled out of bed. I was out the door quick this morning.

Once outside I immediately noticed the humidity. There was a little fog as well. The streets were wet in spots from a thunderstorm last night. The moon was low in the east (barely above the treeline) and looked like a fingernail. Pretty cool. See the kind of stuff you miss when you sleep in? I reset my bike computer, crawled on the Cannondale, and rolled out of the driveway.

To say that I was uncomfortable would be an understatement. I could tell I had had way too much time off the bike because I was really feeling yesterday’s ride. Especially in my rear. That could be because of one of two reasons. First, it was unaccustomed to this abuse after the layoff, and second, it could be because of the shorts I was wearing. I had on a cheap pair of Nashbar shorts that don’t have very good padding. I really need to throw them out. I’m not saying all of Nashbar’s stuff is bad because my favorite set of bibs are Nashbar brand and they’re great. You just have to be careful with the chamois insert. The shorts I wore today are nothing more than some padding sewn into the crotch of the shorts. My bibs use the Trico Sports gel chamois which is much better. I know there’s better stuff out there but I can’t afford dropping a ton of cash on bibs. I’m making due with what I have.

Anyway, as I rode I was able to work out some of the kinks but the thing that really started to bother me was my triceps. They were pretty sore about half-way through.

As I pulled up to the intersection near my house, it was nice to see the school bus on my right (in the lane going straight), and the truck behind me (in the left turn lane with me), stay several feet behind me to give me room. I appreciated that. I’m always uncomfortable at this intersection and they made it easier for me today.

That’s about it. A nice simple ride of 13 miles in 58:30. Again, nothing hard while I’m re-acclimatizing to riding.

I saw no other cyclists today and only a couple of runners.

As a followup to my post last week on Setting Goals, I thought it was time that I established my 2008 goal. I know, it’s already August but I failed to set proper goals back when I started and I thought I should go ahead and do it now. I started in April and rode between April and June. During that time period I managed to ride 300 miles. I felt better physically and my clothes were fitting better every week. Once July rolled around my riding came to an abrupt stop due to a couple of injuries that have kept me off the bike for more than a month. The progress I had made from April to June was good considering I was just basically out riding with no set purpose but with the time off the bike recently I have basically destroyed the fitness and gains that I had made. Because of that, I’m going to start my 2008 over again here in August and use the rest of the year to get myself ready for 2009.

When I attended Officer Candidate School back in 1996, the Drill Instructors had us on a rigorous training plan that was very well planned out. By doing that, they knew what days were long distance running days, which ones were sprint days, and so on. At the end of the 13-week school I had lost over 30 pounds and reduced my 1.5 mile run time by over 3 minutes. If it worked for me running (which I can’t do anymore due to ankle problems) why won’t it work for cycling? Because of that, I believe that I would benefit from following a regimented bicycle training program to help me build my fitness and lose weight. So, for the past week I’ve been developing a schedule to improve my cycling fitness. I knew several things going in:

• I knew what I was capable of riding per week based on my bike riding earlier in the year.
• I knew what my normal weekday mileage was for my morning bicycle ride.
• I knew I was basically starting over again and needed to build my fitness base back up.

Armed with this information, I designed a small spreadsheet that displays some mileage totals based on the number of weekdays I ride and how far I ride on Saturday. Sunday will always be a rest day. The result is this table.

The number of weekdays I ride (3, 4 or 5) are in the first column, the second column is the distance of my morning ride (13 miles), and the remaining four columns are what my weekly mileage would be if I did a 30, 40, 50, or 60 mile Saturday ride. For example, if I ride my bike 3 weekdays, plus 40 miles on Saturday, my mileage for that week would be 79 miles. The color coding will make sense in a minute.

The next thing I did was determine how many weeks were left in the year (18 full weeks) and determine on what days I would ride my bike and how far. I again went to Excel and developed the table below:

The weeks until the end of the year are listed in the first column with the total mileage for that week in the third column. The next seven columns are the days of the week and how far I will ride on each day for the given week. The days I ride are easily adjusted due to inclement weather, lack of sleep, etc. The key, for me, is getting the required mileage in each week. You’ll see in the weekly mileage column (column 3), that I started at 69 miles for my starting mileage for the week of 25-Aug. I knew going in that I’m capable of doing that so it’s a good starting point. You’ll notice that the 69 cell is shaded a light blue. That corresponds to the light blue shaded 69 in the top table. This means I’m supposed to ride my bicycle on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (three weekdays) at 13 miles in the morning and ride 30 miles on Saturday for a weekly total of 69 miles.

When determining how much I would ride each week, I tried to follow the rule of not increasing my mileage more than 10%-12% each week. In my plan I decided to do that for each three-week period and for the most part I did. The only thing that bothers me is the Saturday miles. I’m not going to have a problem riding 30 or 40 miles but getting up to 50 and 60 miles on Saturday, with only short 13 mile rides on the weekdays has me a little concerned. I’m hoping my plan to be in each “phase” for three weeks will help with that.

Finally, you’ll see that there’s a red line after the week of 6-Oct. That line splits my base fitness and interval training phases as seen in the last column. Cycling Performance Tips says that you should have a solid aerobic base of 500 miles of steady pedaling before adding intervals to a cycling training plan so as to prevent injury. Even though I have already ridden 300 miles earlier in the year I decided to follow this rule in my new program. Why? Because, let’s face it, I’m overweight and not ready for intervals yet. After finishing the week of 6-Oct I will have accumulated 526 miles of base fitness. As I get closer to the interval phase I’ll make another post on my plan for the intervals.

If I follow my plan as it’s set, I’ll ride 1,608 miles between today and 26-Dec. This should get me in good shape, help me lose some weight, help me get into some of my smaller clothes, and prepare me for some hard training in early 2009 so I can do some local rides or charity events.

Well, that’s it. I started the plan this morning with my 13-mile ride on Bike Ride 26. I’m in no way a trainer, or accomplished cyclist, so I’d like to hear your opinions and/or recommendations.

Today is the day I started my new bicycling fitness plan. I haven’t posted my plan yet because I’m still writing that article. Needless to say, I took inspiration from my own goals article and developed a cycling plan that will help me accomplish 1,600 miles of bike riding before the end of 2008. But that’s another post.

Today was day 1 and it started at 5:00 AM as all my weekday rides do. I was up, dressed, and outside pretty quick this morning. I was motivated to start my new plan. The temp was fine this morning but it was a tad humid. The sky was very clear with just a sliver of moon in the East. Just to the right of the moon was the constellation Orion. Unmistakable when you know what to look for. I got off at about 5:15.

I noticed in the first mile or so that I felt really uncomfortable. I think I’m still trying to acclimatize to being back on the bike after my 1.5 month layoff. My hands felt very uncomfortable and soon my shoulders were a little sore. I felt better about three-quarters of the way through the ride (about 9 miles) which was good. It should only get better from here on out.

My overall ride was just fine. Because I’m basically starting over again, I intentionally didn’t push it at all. I wanted to say in Zone 1/2 (I’ll be talking about training zones in a future article) so I intentionally kept my pace no higher than 14 mph. This made for a pretty easy ride that wasn’t taxing on my endurance. It was basically a break-in ride. Keeping my pace this slow is very, very hard for me. I’m the type of person that feels like they have to push it hard on every ride. I’m starting to learn that that’s not the case.

I did change my route a little this morning. Normally I head out to a certain point and basically do a u-turn and head back home. On one of my previous rides I realized there may be a way for me to loop around at my turnaround point when I saw a rider who was behind me magically appear in front of me about five minutes later. The key was that he took a different route where I made the u-turn. So, this morning I decided to find that loop. I knew where the entrance was and thought I knew where the exit was and I was right. The new loop area is actually quite nice and has a bike lane too. So, it looks like I’ve made a new route for my morning rides. The only disadvantage to this route is that it cuts about four-tenths of a mile off my 13 mile route. To compensate I just took the long way around my neighborhood to my house. No problem. Here’s a map of my new route:

I saw one other rider this morning who I’ve seen before. He was walking his bike from a side road. I called out asking if he needed any help and got no response. I waived and he waived back. I’m guessing he was ok. I also saw a couple of runners I had never seen before and also saw a guy walking his two ankle biters. It was also nice to see that the bike lanes were, for the most part, clear of debris from Tropical Storm Fay.

This was a good bicycle ride and a great start to my new fitness program. Mileage was 13.06 in 59 minutes. Told you I didn’t push it.

To My Readers,

I owe you an apology. Back on April 12, 2008, I made this post. It explained why I was overweight, what I was going go do about it, and why I chose to blog about it. I realized (with some help from a couple of readers (Pete and Arlyn), as of yesterday, that I had unequivocally failed to do what I had set out to do in that post.

Why you ask? Well, there are several reasons. Sure, I burned my hand here and I crashed pretty bad back on Ride 23 but I’m over those injuries and should be riding again. The only reason that matters, though, is that I have become lazy and lost focus of what this blog, and my mission, was about. Over the last week, instead of tending to my own health and fitness by riding, I tried to turn my blog into something it isn’t – a news site for bicycling. I’m sorry.

So, where does this leave me? I’m returning to what I started this blog about. Me and my fight to improve my health through riding a bike. I’ll return to posting about my rides but I don’t want the blog to turn into a boring training diary. I’ll post on other cycling subjects from time-to-time as well as my life as it relates to cycling (i.e. bike shop visits, local cycling events, opinions, etc.). I’ll also try and post some informative articles in weight loss and fitness. I think if I return to these core areas I can not only revive Biking To Live but also revive my riding, and in turn, my health. Hopefully my two readers (I say that in jest; I may have upwards of ten!) will appreciate this and I can reach out to those in similar situations to help them.

For those of you who have visited, commented, and encouraged me to date I sincerely appreciate it.

If you have an comments, or recommendations to improve this blog, I’m all ears.

Thanks.

Bryan