Route-08Aug10

Route-08Aug10, originally uploaded by Watson House.

Today I did a bit of exploring and tried a new route (on ridewithgps here). It was pouring rain and I got lost a couple of times but the Mango was great.
Avg Speed: 14.7 (blech)
Distance: 42.3 miles
Elevation Gain: +1769ft

I ended up using both the foam cover and my STP jacket on this ride. I didn't expect it to be so wet and chilly.

Here is my slideshow of pictures from the ride:

New Routes

Tomorrow I am going to try a new route. The route above is a 60 miler that goes up to Snohomish, over to Monroe, through Duvall and then to Carnation and back to Woodinville.

I loaded it into my Garmin and will see how the navigation works out.

Training for the STP on my Raptobike

I am riding my Raptobike every day and have been since the beginning of May. At this point the Raptobike has over 1300miles (~ 2100km) on it. It is a wonderful bike and rock steady at speed. The bike has been very reliable and has had no flats or issues. I can ride no handed at speeds >20mph without trouble, lower speeds require some finesse.

The training for the STP is going well. I put in 200 miles the week of the STP and have been riding 26 miles per commute day. Weekends I ride farther if I can fit it in or just ride 28 miles or so. This coming weekend I will be riding with SIR on the 100k populaire in West Seattle.

I am very excited, everything is coming together and my fitness and performance is just getting better and better. I will soon have to take a week off just before the STP but right now I feel strong. My climbing on the bike is a large area of improvement lately and if I can get that to match speeds of uprights (DFs) then I am going to be consistently faster then uprights. Because on the flats or downhill I can really put out pain for any upright trying to keep up. Downhill particularly is where I pass pacelines and TT riders. On the flats I just play hound to pacelines rabbit.

All in all it is a lot of fun.

Solstice Day activities

Today Kristin and I are running lots of errands so I won't be riding until later in the day. I think I will do the Lake Washington Loop even though the Summer Solstice Parade will be going on in Fremont. If it slows me down, too bad, it should provide some scenery.

Flying Wheels

I rode the Flying Wheels ride organized by Cascade Cycle club today. It was a beautiful day and I loved it. Here is a quote from my Flickr photo set for the ride.

Flying Wheels summer century ride organized by Cascades Cycle club. A nice 99 mile route. I averaged 15.4 mph and finished in 6h:25m. Elapsed time was 7h:35m, so I was off the bike for an 1h:10m. The ride was wonderful and very scenic. Cascade did an amazing job. My mileage was a bit higher than most as I followed some non-affiliated riders off the course.

The scenery was wonderful and the ride was hillier than I expected. Having 3000 other people riding with you does push the pace a bit though. I was faster than I have ever been on a long ride. And 4500ft of climbing is nothing to sneeze at. Here is the Garmin data from the ride. The first lap is the ride to the start and I really didn't push on it at all. The second lap is the ride itself.

Flying Wheels is tomorrow

Flying Wheels is tomorrow. I am pretty excited. It is all I can think about right now. This will be my first organized Century ride. My goal is to finish before 5pm. I will be skipping most of the rest stops and eating my own food and water. I will be looking for refills of my water and use of the loo at some of the stops.

Soon I will know how I do. I just want Saturday morning to arrive.

The Joys of Analysis

I was looking at my garmin data from a few months ago and comparing some of the same rides I did recently. In particular I was looking at rides of the Lake Washington Loop from March 21 and the same ride on June 7th.

March 21, 2009:


June 7 2009:


I am surprised how much lower my speed was in March. A full 2mph slower average. My heartrate was lower on June 7th as well and I spent more time in zone 2. The massive difference in elapsed time is evident as well. I am also interested in how much time I spent in the three lower speed zones.

Zone	March 21	June 7th
Speed zone one is 1->4mph	.4 miles	.2 miles
Speed zone two is 4->8mph	5.3 miles	3.7 miles
Speed zone three is 8->12mph	9.4 miles	4.6 miles

Basically I went slow during climbing for half the distance in June that I did in March. Compared to March I am pretty darn fast climbing. I didn't make it up solely by being faster in the flats, nope, I was able to climb faster as well.

This is great stuff and very cool data. Especially since it makes me feel strong. I need to work harder but I am very glad to see that I am surpassing my late March ability. That was the period where I was riding pretty well on the Corsa, so the Raptobike is comparing well, as is the engine.

We did it, the Lake Washington Ride in 3h:54m elapsed time.

DKW and I did it. We did our 50 mile ride in 3h:54m with an average speed of 14.3mph and time on bike of 3h:25m. That means were were 29 minutes off the bike which is 9 minutes more than I wanted but given the extra stop at Leschi Starbucks, perfect. If we can manage this on the STP we should get to Longview in 11h:25m elapsed time assuming a 15mph average for the less hilly route. If we average 14.3 mph we will be done in 12h which is perfectly respectable. This is assuming 150 miles to Longview which is an estimate. Day 2 is short and we should be done early.

I spent a reasonable amount of time in heart rate zone 2. Pushing that to zone 3 will increase my average speed a chunk, though I was very strong at the finish today. The timing really worked for me.

Lake Washington Loop ride goal

Lake Washington Loop ride summary, originally uploaded by Watson House.

Tomorrow DKW and I plan on doing the Lake Washington Loop in 4 hours elapsed time. I think we can do it but I believe we will be pushing ourselves. Lets see how it goes.

Ride with COGS

I rode out from Kirkland to Gas Works Park to ride with the COGS to Alki Beach. It was a blast. I haven't ridden the raptobike with an organized group of upright roadies before. This route was not very hilly and I found it easy to stick with the pack. The group was advertised as Moderate pace (15-18mph) but for much of the ride it was Brisk or 18-20mph.

I really enjoyed this ride and adding my 40 miles to it proved excellent training. The COGS really kept my heart rate up there and I got quite the workout. When I got home after riding 70 miles and 2400ft of climbing I had an average speed of 14mph. I am very pleased with this as it is nearly a 1mph improvement of my normal speed.

Fun Training loop

Today I did my 5 mile speed loop twice for training. It has been a while since I used this loop but I was pleased to see my speed was up compared to the last time. I hit 49.5 mph on the downhill section, the raptobike really moves when you let it. I am noticing that I could use more top end gearing, 109 gear inches is a bit low. Maybe later I will get a larger front ring for the Raptobike.

14.5 mph average including the hills and traffic. I can deal with that, it needs work but it is a good point to be at right now, more than enough for the stp.

Power computations

A fellow recumbent rider passed onto me some of the formulas used to compute power output. His formula's figure in rolling resistance, cda, % grade as well as weight of the bike and rider. I find the data very interesting. It seems while climbing I generally put out about 180-200 watts of power and when the grade gets steep I am forced to push it to 300 watts or so. This matches my power on the flats, I put out about 180 watts when going 21mph and push it up to 308 watts when hammering it at 27.9 mph. By the way it will take me 376 watts to hit 30.45 mph, a worthy goal for this weekend.

I am very pleased with these computations as it puts me in range of your basic athletic rider, 200 watts. Training can only increase my output.

Some highlights from the spreadsheet, results of this are metric because doing physics in imperial measurements is silly.

Flying Wheels - registration

I just signed up for the Flying Wheels Summer Century ride. This is held on June 13th this year and is considered an excellent training ride for the STP. There are approximately five hills on the Century route and it is considered about 4000 ft of climbing. I believe that this will be easier than my homemade century route but we will see, the farther east you go the more you see hills.

First Century - 105 mile day.

This will be a brief post as I am a bit tired. I did my first 105 mile ride on the raptobike. Roughly 5000 ft of climbing and an average speed of 13.5 mph. It was a great ride with Sudha (sic) and DKW. Sudha did the first loop of 50 and DKW and I did two loops with a bit of an extension for 105 miles. I also ran into Doncl at Leschi Market with his M5 TiCA, he rode with us for 18 miles or so.

I am tired but I don't hurt. The only part of me that hurt on the ride was my feet and it was minor. I didn't drink enough from mile 75 onward and bonked a bit on the final climb up Juanita Dr heading south. We were 7h:47min on the bike and we were off the bike for 2h:03min. There is room for improvement but it was an excellent trial run and I feel great about the ride.

I also received an inspiration for the Raptobike's name, White Rabbit. I was riding ahead of Sudha and DKW for the first loop, I felt a bit like a rabbit running before greyhounds, hence the name. I like it as it will be easy to come up with graphics for the tailbox that go with the theme, and it is nicely delusional and implies speed.

Random thought and progress on goals.

Today I noticed that I am now wearing at least one medium shirt. I am finally starting to shed the large sized clothes. I am still XL in athletic fit cycle jerseys but cyclists are the most weight obsessed athletes anyway. The last few days I overate but it is nice to see that my belly at least seems to be shrinking.

I haven't made any real progress on my randonneuring goals but there are some summer 200k routes coming up and I will schedule one of them. I needed more time than I thought to get into century shape and wasn't ready for the March 200k run by SIR. This weekend DKW and I will be doing 120 miles. Our plan is 2 laps around the Lake Washington Loop route both with an extension over to Marymoor and using the 520 trail to get back to the loop trail. Our estimate is 120 miles but we haven't ridden it this way and I suspect that our estimate of 60miles/lap is high. I'll bet it drops down to 110 miles give or take.

Miles and miles of riding has been helping my weight, it provides a nice buffer zone when I go off my diet. I haven't had any real swings in my weight and I attribute that to the riding. I also want to remember to do a bit of maintenance to the bike tonight, I had the chain slip off since it is a bit loose after the switch to a 13T cog. I am going to remove a link which should tighten it up a bit, I might remove two but if I do, it will be one at a time.

I also updated the blog to have links to my Flickr photostream. I have been taking more pictures and Kristin and I just ordered a new camera since the old canon we have is starting to fail. I have completely made the switch to Flickr and now use Picasa only for derivative or copied photos.

Climbing on the Commute

Today I did my 23 mile morning commute version with DKW. We had a bit of a headwind (13mph) but it was a good ride. One of the things I have noticed is that I have more reserves now. While crossing a flat bridge in Kenmore in front of traffic I pushed to 27mph, I normally hit 20mph here but now that level of recruitment is putting out more power. There were a number of intersections where I pushed through at 12mph on an 8% grade as well. I really like this, I am feeling stronger and I can push when I need to. I now push myself when nearing the crest of hills which is very new to me, I used to rest and crest at 4mph, now I crest at 10mph or so.

I like that I have these reserves as well, it makes me feel safer. When I need to I can recruit more power and pass obstacles or get out of the way of traffic. This is one of the benefits of my training. I am very glad to be riding with DKW as well since it motivates me and we compete on the ride. Plus it is nice to be able to talk to someone and share the observations of the ride. For instance the rain forecast today really cut down the number of cycle commuters and joggers we saw on the trial. I saw three or so more roosters, I think the family who keeps the chickens near the Sammamish river trail must have gotten more chickens. We saw some goslings with their mother geese as well. And two rabbits were brave enough to cross the trail in front of us today.

I love my long version of the ride to work, it is a much nicer day when I start with 23 miles of scenery.

Strength

Today on my commute I was noticing how I use higher gears on the climbs to work. I get to the top and feel better and more in control as well. I am very pleased as climbing is the only real obstacle to long distances. As I gain strength for climbing I can take longer rides, see more scenery and go to more interesting places. I want to ride over some of the nearby mountain passes and go to Eastern Washington this year. I think it will be beautiful as well as an accomplishment.

All in all I am feeling very happy about my training. I will log 300 miles this month and have broken the 100 miles per week boundary as well. I am feeling great and shedding pounds as well. STP here I come!

90 Mile Weekend

I rode 90 miles this weekend. This is a new milestone for me as I rode both Saturday and Sunday. I am feeling good about the rides and my condition afterword. Neither Saturday or Sunday wiped me out.

Saturday I rode 50 miles with Russell. We did the Lake Washington Loop; it was 40 degrees F and raining the entire time. Even with the crappy weather and trying to stay warm in it, the ride was great. I was on the bike four hours and 12 minutes or so, which isn't bad at all. Russell is a pleasure to ride with and we had fun. Sunday I had plans to meet some co-workers at Marymoor to ride the West Sammamish River trail. The weather was perfect, 50 degrees (F) and sunny. David joined me though our other co-worker canceled. Still the ride was excellent, we did 38 miles in under three hours.

Both days were nice, I always indulge in the sights and people watch while riding. The scenery is great in both cases and we passed more people than passed us. Especially on Sunday, because on Saturday we didn't see many people to pass or be passed by. In both cases I was happy, riding makes me smile and I love to do it. Seeing all the diversity of Seattle and enjoying the sights and smells of Lake Washington is very enjoyable. I am very glad that I let cycling take such a large part of my life again, because it has made me happier. When I was playing computer games to pass the time, I was not happy. The contrast is huge, and I am glad to be healthier and happier now.

216

I finally got past my plateau and dropped 5 pounds this last week. I think the changes in my diet coupled with riding 100 miles last week pushed me past this boundary. Additionally I am feeling faster and more capable on the bike. Saturday's ride showed me that I can do decent road miles and not fear hills. This is a good thing, I have a history of fearing hills that limits my training. I need to get over it and ride hilly routes more often. The more I do them the easier they are. In fact none of the hills on Saturday made me cry, I was able to spin my way up them all, and in some cases I sprinted to hit them hard and rolled over the little ones.

I am working on my diet more this week since I want to keep my mileage roughly the same during the work week. The weekend will most likely be used as two 30 mile routes, one each day. I want to start riding distances on both Saturday and Sunday to get ready for the STP. Not every weekend but I think this weekend will be a good start for it.

Training Thoughts

I feel like I finally have the Corsa dialed in. I rode 54 miles yesterday and 100 miles for the week. I had no problems with pain or numbness the whole week. The only issue I had was some muscle tightness and that is all an issue of stretching and fitness not fit. No joint agony, no tendons pain, no foot cramps, this is good news. I can now focus on my pedal stroke, on distance and on speed.

Russell said that I seem stronger than 2 weeks ago after our trip around Lake Washington yesterday. I know that I felt stronger, I have been taking most hills in gears above my granny gear and am slowly increasing my climbing speed. Climbing is a recumbents weak spot as well as my own. Like most weak spots, improvements in it come fast for comparatively little investments. I feel that if I get my climbing ability to the point that I don't fear 10,000 ft climbs on a 125 mile route than the entire US will open up to me. So by working on climbs I can expand the territory that I ride in quite a bit. Considering how amazing the views around Lake Washington are, I have been limiting my enjoyment by repeating the same rides over and over. I want to explore more. Russell did me a huge favor by suggesting the Lake Washington loop.