Lunch Rush

My ride to work this morning was uneventful, though I felt like Travis "Taxi Driver" Bickle when I got up this morning.

No more apple fritters. No more bad food. No more flat bike trails. From now on, you commute via side streets with hills twice a day to build up muscle and put in 50 minutes on the indoor trainer every night to burn off fat. No more excuses. Every muscle must be tight.

I didn't take any of that advice. (I also didn't shave my hair into a mohawk or kill anyone, so there's a positive side to this.) I took the trails: I didn't want to be kept waiting for traffic if it started raining on me.

There is something awesome about escaping the office over lunch to get a ride in. Even more awesome is when it just finished raining and the resident smokers are standing under a shelter recommending that you to keep dry. Bah. It won't matter, I'm going to need a towel when I'm done anyways.

I threw some feelers in my facebook and google talk statuses for some riding buddies, but nobody said "I'm in", so I went alone and turned it into an intervals workout.

Why intervals? Commuting on Lincoln's trails is great, but it's led me down the path (no pun intended) of mediocrity. A good fix for this is a workout on the highways.

I got four 3-minute intervals at 85% max hr in during the 39 minutes in the saddle this noon hour.

Interval training involves pushing harder than normal for short periods of time and then lightening up for an equal amount of time and repeating. The goal is to raise your body's efficiency at a given level of effort, so the same effort results in more work accomplished.

Going 11-14mph on the highway during recovery periods is the toughest part. The only reason to go that slow during my rest periods is manufactured by my desire to improve my overall speed and stamina: I don't see two walkers walking side by side chit chatting about vacations they recently took while a hipster on a 1970s steel bike converted to a fixed gear and no brakes is barrelling down from the other direction and I have no choice but to squeeze a brake lever to make sure we're all upright when we pass.

No, only need to go that slow so my heart rate can drop back down to 70% of maximum within 3 minutes, only to ramp it back up to 85%.

 When I was done with my workout, I thought about how I rode that same stretch a whole lot faster last week when I just had fun with it, when I completely avoided my heart rate and just went with the flow. I felt like Luke Skywalker: Ben Kenobi was telling me to turn off my target computer and ride with The Force.

Instead I chose to listen to Han Solo: "ancient weapons and hokey religions are no match for a tuned cardiovascular system at your side."

I felt great after my little jaunt. I was slightly disappointed. Maybe I didn't push hard enough. And then it hit me at 2:15: my legs were on fire.

Mission: Accomplished.

My ride home was painful. What normally takes 20-22 minutes took 35. My legs still hurt as I type this tonight.

I'm driving tomorrow.

24.3 miles today.

Three useless factoids about bicycling.

This kinda reads like a car-hate post. It's not. I like cars. Wife and I have two of them, in fact.


I would rather ride a bike. This is a glimpse into what I think about while riding.

Did you know:

The automobile didn't pave the roads, the bicycle did.

There weren't many cars around in 1880. That's the year the Good Roads Movement got it's start.

Folks had bicycles. They wanted to ride them. They weren't content with riding on the sidewalks in front of shops or on horseshit covered cobblestone streets or even muddy backwaters that stunk to high hell every time it rained. 

Kinda like this, but all over the place.

Something had to be done, and the League of American Wheelmen worked to make it happen.

Still don't believe me? How about the father of the modern American road, Horatio Earle. He's the first Transportation Director for the State of Michigan. In his 1929 Autobiography, he states:


"I often hear now-a-days, the automobile instigated good roads; that the automobile is the parent of good roads. Well, the truth is, the bicycle is the father of the good roads movement in this country."


Think about that the next time you want to yell at a cyclist for adding 13 precious seconds to your commute by riding in the street.

Bicycles beat the pants off a Hybrid when it comes to efficiency.

A 175lb cyclist burns about 500 calories when travelling 15 miles in one hour.

Considering that a gallon of gasoline contains roughly 31,000 calories, it's safe to say that a bicycle gets about 900 miles to the gallon.

 

Switching from a Toyota Highlander to a Toyota Prius would cut your fuel consumption in half. For comparison, leaving the Prius in the driveway and taking a bicycle would slash your overall calorie consumption by 92%. 

 

Put that in your glass and sniff it.

 

Considering that almost all cars sold in America are most efficient at 65mph, it stands to reason you save even more fuel by cycling to the neighborhood park instead of driving half a mile at an average of 15mph. (To be fair, the Prius is most efficient at 5mph and below, when it drains the battery pack instead of burning gasoline.)

 

Cyclists have always been hated by non-cyclists.

A google search of the NYT's archives from the 1890s reveals endless articls about the SCORCHER: A Cyclist who rides fast and rides hard. The name Scorcher itself conjures up a vision of a dragon-man who burns everything in sight, caring not for the world around him.

When I first heard "Scorcher", I thought of Trogdor.

All kidding aside, pedaling recklessly through populated areas did, and still will result in death. The NYT was all too eager to point this out. Repeatedly. Some of them even dropped dead. Whatever sold the papers, I guess.

 

The articles about the Scorcher read like articles about teenagers and dangerous roads and fast cars. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Dodged the rain.

We had a flash flood watch last night. It was supposed to rain a good bit today.

Fortunately neither happened. This afternoon's cloudless skies and upper 70s temps were awesome. Almost too awesome: the paths were so packed I couldn't pass walkers at some points.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one using the trails.

14.1 dry, shared miles.

To the gal driving the black Pontiac...

I've blogged about this before. 

I guess it bears repeating.

Rock Island is probably the most traveled trail in Lincoln. The intersection at Essex Road (the first street intersection north of Old Cheney) is a source of much frustration for me. Today I let it get the best of me.

To the gal driving the black Pontiac who stopped to wait for me at the bike trail/street intersection at Rock Island and Essex Road at about 5:15pm today: Sorry I flipped you off.

A word of advice: just drive. We cyclists are expected, nay REQUIRED to stop there. When motorists stop to wave me through, I feel like the universe is all out of whack.

I know you waved me through. I know you think you were being nice.

Just drive.

I was already waiting for the SUV coming from the right. There isn't enough room for your car, the SUV and my bicycle.

Just drive.

My hands were off the bars. My left foot was on the ground. I was expecting you to just drive.

There was a car pulling up behind you when I decided to leave. In an effort to keep them from getting angry with me and bicyclists in general, I pedaled through the intersection in front of you.

Maybe I should have reached over and grabbed the stop sign post. That's worked to diffuse these situations in the past with a laugh from both parties.

Maybe I shouldn't have given you my best impression of a "gangsta glare" as I passed. Maybe I should have listened to what you actually said as I pedaled away instead of just flipping you off.

I heard what you said after the fact. I realized then that I goofed and probably made us cyclists all look even more like jerks.

But I was legally obligated to stop at the street intersection. It's for everyone's safety that the cyclist stops. We are the slower traffic intersecting with a higher speed intersection.

So just drive.

Let me let you in on a little secret: We know you're there. We can hear you. I guarantee you that we see you before you see us.

If we didn't, your cars would be wearing us as hood ornaments.

And that would suck for both of us.

So just drive.

I didn't drive, so I can't do that... or can I?

Today I biked to work.

I learned from twitter that today is National Donut Day. In celebration, Lamar's Donuts was giving away free donuts. Too bad I didn't drive. I haven't had a donut in a long time, and one just sounds fantastic today. I'll have to remember to drive next year.

Wait. Since when do I need a car to score a free donut?

After wolfing down my lunch I pedaled on trails and a maze of residential streets and came upon road construction at 48th and Pioneers, leading to an empty parking lot in front of Lamar's.

No line.

Score.

And the lady behind the counter told me the truck just dropped off a fresh load, so my free donut was 30 minutes or less out of the fryer.

Double score.

I should quit while I'm ahead. Or not.

I was planning on going to Kirk's Brew tomorrow for some mead-making supplies. (I need to make mead for Mead Day. My supply of fermented honey is getting low.)

I had planned on taking the car.

I rode the bike for a donut over my lunch break, why cant I ride the bike for homebrew on the way home from work? It was only 3 more miles. I have a backpack and a small soft-sided lunch cooler with a half-melted ice pack to keep my gourmet yeast fresh for the ride home. I wasn't taking home heavy cans of malt extract or sacks of grains. This trip was for yeast, yeast nutrient, gypsum and some spices. About 1/2 pound of material total.

Just because I don't have my car doesn't mean I'm grounded.

23.9 ungrounded miles.

It's bright, I forgot my sunglasses. Hit it.

I rode to work today on the trails.

Over lunch I decided to take a ride. I've often thought about doing this, today I just manned up and did it. I saved a route on ridewithgps a long time ago and pulled it up at 11 or so this morning and thought:

It's 10.2 miles from work to Saltillo Road and back. I am about to eat a frozen Stromboli and drink some water. It's bright. I forgot my sunglasses. Hit it.

I rode it in 35 minutes and some change. Average speed of 17.8mph, max speed of 31.7mph. I also discovered that time trial bars are very unstable at 25mph. I need to get more experience on them.

I very much prefer to ride on highway shoulders in remote areas, because you never lose momentum from stop signs or dog walkers or joggers or rollerbladers. You just keep going. It is the greatest feeling in the world to just keep riding. Your worries just melt away.

I saw four others out on bikes in the same area at the same time. I feel like I just got let into a secret society of folks who know exactly how to escape the daily grind.

I saw several dozen cyclists on the trails after work today. Maybe a hundred. Such glorious weather. Such calm winds. Such a great day to ride. I love late spring in the Midwest.

I know I won't be singing the same tune in August.

Total of 24.42 miles today.

Absense makes the quads grow fonder and shrink in size

I haven't commuted on my bike since last Wednesday. It's been busy in my neck of the woods. I've driven my "kid taxi" for the last week.

My younger brother and his family came to visit for the weekend. I haven't seen him since his wedding in 2004. 

We went for a ride Saturday. I let him set the pace since he's not a cyclist. 14.8 miles, 1hr 33 minutes. I almost don't consider that a ride so much as a farmer-tan session. You'd think we rode through Death Valley after seeing his red face and sweat soaked shirt. When my sister in law saw us she asked me what I did to him. I replied "Nothing I wouldn't ordinarily do to myself."

I really wanted to point out the fitness levels he had attained in high school and how the mighty have fallen, but I decided to leave well enough alone.

He also told me how uncomfortable the seat was. Judging by the look on his face and the tone in his voice, the level of discomfort is somewhere between being placed in an Iron Maiden and being drawn and quartered. As a result he did much of the ride out of the seat. He called it "riding BMX style". I had a bit of a flashback to our childhood, imagining him on his old chrome Schwinn Predator BMX riding through the streets and parks of West Omaha...

Meh, I have no idea what he's talking about. I find the Body Geometry line of saddles from Specialized to be far more comfortable than the "this is what one's first night in prison must be like" Vetta saddle I had on my old all-aluminum Cannondale.

But what's on my mind ain't how comfortable the seat is on my current bikes compared to bikes past, it's the t-minus 24 days and counting before the Cornhusker State Games Time Trial scheduled for June 26. I'll have more posts on my prior (and kinda embarassing) experiences in this event later.

One step at a time. Tomorrow I get back in the saddle again with the commute.