Wear yer contacts!

My lack  of hard rides told today.  But I get ahead of myself.

I set out reasonably early this morning intending to ride a route I had built on Ridedog.com, printed out and loaded into my Garmin.  The first part was a road I’m quite familiar with up until I took a right turn onto Rogers Road.  Then I needed to rely on the Garmin.

Unfortunately, I no longer can read the tiny little cues as to turns without giving my eyes some aid!  How sad is that.  So I took a right rather than a left.  Or vice versa. 

But I had a lovely ride, riding some areas remarkably close to home thaat I neither ridden or driven before.   Just not the roads I had planned necessarily.

Gorgeous morning, not too terribly hot.

Time to end the pity party

I’ve been a sorry so-and-so lately.

Admittedly business is crappy and my checking account shows it.  Personal plans seem to always go awry.  I knocked a cup of coffee all over my favorite pair of white pants yesterday.  I really haven’t ridden in nearly a month.

But it is time to hoist my self up by the little clicky straps on my cycling shoes.

I woke up about an hour early this morning and thought about going out for an early ride, but didn’t.  But the hour before dawn is a good time for reading other’s blogs.

Reading about problems that are really serious make mine seem a bit trivial.

So I’ve started by commuting in this morning.  It’s really humid!

I’m also going to email a couple of folks about riding, one of whom has had a rougher time than I ever thought about.

And I am going to work on cleaning off my desk; which is actually an excellent way to get some work done.

Send cheer my way!

Routes

Blogging.  Brought to you by my new Acer Netbook!!!

Often, when thinking about a new route, or wanting to upload a charity ride route to my Garmin, I need a website that fills that bill.

I originally started out with Routeslips.  It was absorbed by MapMyRide which was okay at first. But as time has passed and it has tried to become more than it was originally intended, it has become, well, junky. I still use it on occasion to find other routes, but no longer enjoy using it to design my own.

So a couple of weeks ago, after a bit of googling, I found RideDog. It’s a pretty new site. But it has a nice, clean interface without a lot of spammy stuff covering the map. I’ve used it to map a new course and download it directly to my 305. Make sure you download the communicator plugin from the Garmin website first.

The only downside is that it’s so new that there aren’t many routes to peruse.

So get on there and design some new routes for me to check out!!

Susan Nelson, dod 8/5/09

Win Susan

Name this post

traininAnother weekend has come and gone.  One with the most nearly perfect July weather in recorded history.  I had no compunction about heading out for a ride in the middle of the day as temps were in the 70s rather than the usual 90s.

It was a short pace ride that I spent most of gunning around town.  The sun was hidden for most of the ride.  I had a decent average speed for an in-town ride.  Cadence was somewhat lacking though.

I’m considering bumping up tomorrow’s pace ride to today, and Wednesday’s brisk ride to tomorrow as thunder boomers are predicted for Wednesday.  Today is supposed to be a rest-or-easy day.

I’ve been thinking about how to handle future Wednesday brisk rides as they get longer.  I have a regular route that I could incorporate a loop into and use that as an interval.  It’s about a two mile loop and I could alternate hammering and soft-pedaling as that day gets progressively longer.

Meantime, I’m still playing with Sporttracks and will probably stick with it.  The only info I seem to be missing is average and max grade.  I also occasionally want to know the grade on a specific hill.  But that information is not as necessary to me and there are other ways to check out the gradient of a specific hill.

Happy Monday!

This is July?

I wore lightweight arm warmers for the first part of my ride this morning!  In July.  In Tennessee.  Unheard of.

Lovely ride this morning.  I headed west, straight out Hwy 70 to Hwy 109, then cut off to Old Laguardo Rd.  That is a lovely old stretch of road.

At one point I looked up the little hill I was starting to climb and saw waht I thought was a escaped calf standing in the road.  It was a big, brown dog who took some exception at my presence.  Even though the owner came out and tried to fetch her, she continued to object.  It took a few minutes to extricate myself from that.

The rest of the ride was uneventful, but pleasant.  I did turn left once when I should have turned right, but that just added a mile or so.

I got in all of my scheduled mileage at a decent average speed.  My cadence wasn’t what I really would have liked, but it was a very rolling course.

On related fronts, I’ve been using a Garmin Edge 305 as my cyclometer for about 3 years.  I’ve been happy with it and with MotionBased, the site to which you uploaded your info.  But Garmin is phasing out MB in favor of Garmin Connect.  I just do not like that site’s layout, and it is missing metrics I want.  So I’m trying out Sporttracks. I think I’m happy with it and if you use any kind of GPS gadget to track your rides, runs, etc., I suggest you give it a look.

WE-EkEND

That should be sung.

Nice rides this week though I had to bail on last night’s scheduled ride.

Tuesday was a pace ride.  The problem there is I have not established what I need or want my pace to be.  So I end up being mashier than I really want to be on a longer ride.

Wednesday was scheduled as ‘brisk’.  As there was a big storm coming in and visible on the horizon, I was definitely brisk.  Of course then the stupid storm went around us.

I was scheduled for another pace ride last night.  But Wednesday night, Thursday morning, I didn’t sleep.  Well maybe about 3-3.5 hours all told.  My legs were twitchy, which they are anyway but riding makes it worse.  I also drank too much iced tea for supper.  So I was awake.

So last night I crashed out.  Figuratively speaking.

On the twitchy legs front, in the weekly Road Bike Rider Newsletter, they discussed Lance wearing compression stockings off the bike.  Despite the possible pitiful old lady look, I decided to investigate.  I actually found some less-expensive ones, in black, that come up over the knee.  They are ribbed and actually look kinda hot.  I will contemplate pictures.  They feel pretty good.

First Training ride

I got in my first tiny training ride last night.  It was designated an easy ride as it was on a Monday.

Basically my schedule calls for pace rides on Tuesday and Thursday, brisk (hammering) rides for Wednesday, Saturday is where I build distance and endurance, Monday is easy or rest, Sunday is recovery, Friday is rest.

I use my cadence sensor and HRM to judge those things. 

I had to replace the battery in the cadence sensor.  I couldn’t get it to work for last night’s ride and thought maybe the sensor was cooked.  But after the ride, I took it off, fiddled around with it and got it working.

Pace ride tonight.

Today is the start day

… that I officially begin to build miles to ride a century in September.

Mondays are a pretty easy day, so I’ll just have a short ride scheduled for this evening.  In fact, I’ll probably ride further (or is it farther) than the massive 6 miles required by the schedule.  As the rides get longer on weekends, Mondays turn into a rest day in the future.

This past weekend, I just played around.  Saturday, before riding, I ran out to a yard sale that listed a road bike.  It was already gone when I got there.  I have visions of finding some perfect lugged steel someday.

I also saw lots of riders scattered out on the roads, all ages, genders, and abilities.  One woman riding out in the country had to be 70 easily.  Since I get closer to that age every day, I find that vastly encouraging.

I changed and rode as soon as I got home.  The legs didn’t feel their perkiest.  Probably because I picked a ridiculously hilly route.  One hill I’ve never been able to finish off.  It goes straight up right after a left turn, in the range of 13-15%.  So I don’t even get a running start at it.  I did finish off one that went to 13.8%.

I didn’t ride yesterday as I stopped by a friend’s house.  Ended up being fed and learning a funny domino game which we spent the afternoon on.  Storms came by the time I got home.  But that’s OK.

Hullo

I haven’t been posting much lately because, let’s face it, I’m lazy.

My long weekend was nice enough, though bicycle plans went askew.  They skewed all over.

Friday was to be the day we rode the train into Nashville, then pedaled back to Lebanon.  Megan arrived at my house in plenty of time for us to ride over to the station and load the bikes onto the train.  I was walking out the door when, all at the same time, I realized I had only one glove in my hand and Meg broke the valve on her rear tire tire while pumping it up.

I suggested she put her bike back on her Jeep, drive over and she could switch the tube on the train.  I’m trying to figure out where my glove is.  She trying to find her CO2 cartridges (I’m not sure why they aren’t in her saddle bag; otherwise what’s the point.)

I grabbed the other, less liked pair of gloves.  She stands in the garage and vents a minute.  We are running out of time.  The train NEVER leaves late.  That’s when we give up on the train ride idea and decide to ride locally.

That’s also when I realize something is sorta shading my right eye.  It’s the missing glove.  It’s in my helmet which is on my head.

Afterward, we had a nice ride.

For Saturday and Sunday, I decided to watch the Tour in the mornings and ride in the afternoon.  So both of those rides were stormed out.

So instead I cleaned the Giant.  Really, really clean.  Use a Q-Tip clean.  Use a rag between each and every cog on the rear cassette clean.  Then my new tires came in yesterday.  So even though I’ve just replaced the back one, I shined up the front.  It now looks clean.  Really clean. If I ever get around to replacing that dirty tape, it will again be the most beautiful bike in the whole world.

Really.