work blows...

...me outside.

This is last week, Feb 15th, after the big snow:


Rode five miles to the base of the canyon, skined up...


...then made my way up here:


Fresh tracks on the AT. (It wasn't that great.)

Actually, snow conditions were horrid. After the initial 4-5 inches of snow it warmed up a bit and what came next coated everything with a kind of free-on-impact rain/snow mix. So, you have to imagine this...


...as not pretty fresh snow with some tracks through it, but frozen white ice as hard as sculpture.

Later that week I tried to ride for a while on top of the snow's frozen crust. It worked okay...until my front wheel broke through the crust and I face-planted over the handlebars. That was the end of that.

As for riding with skis on my back... I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty hardcore riding through town with that get-up. But it was also windy, so besides nearly freezing my nads off (external genitalia...who came up with this stuff?) I was predictably, and dangerously, blown about the road. Especially when crossing freeway overpasses and that sort of thing...experiences which left me thinking the whole thing maybe wasn't such a good idea.

modeling the new kit

dee-lite-full

Today I rode, on my road bike, outside, for the first time since January 16th. That's a whopping 35 days.

Since January 16th I've spent 17 hrs and 22 minutes on the trainer plus 19 hrs and 13 minutes on the mountain bike. Those mountain hours have been and are enjoyable, but at heart I'm really a roadie, and today was a beautiful day to be on the road--

Temperatures topped 40 degrees for the first time since probably I last rode on the road, some wind, but not too bad, and just the right clothing choices to stay warm, dry, and comfortable. It all made for a delightful way to spend a couple hours of my day.

Dee-lite-full.

cold moutain riding II

There's no better way to end a rest week than with a 5.5 hr, flirt-with-hypothermia, cold mountain ride, minus the flirt-with-hypothermia part, and probably the 5.5 hr component as well.

Last Saturday's failure to make it all the way to Mt. Holly Springs has been gnawing at me all week. So with temperatures still in the 20s (I don't think it's been above 30 degrees in south-central PA for 10-14 days) I decided I'd give the ride another go.

This time I made it, but it turned out to be a rather looong ride; 61 miles in 5:33 with likely something between 3500 and 4500 feet of climbing. Plus I wasn't making tracks through fresh snow the whole way, which made the riding generally faster, but less idyllic. Descending on the south slopes, where the dirt roads were mostly clear, was certainly faster and safer, but descending on the north facing slopes (where the snow was compacted into road-width sheet of ice) was decidedly hairy.

In Mt. Holly Springs I stopped at this little Chinese restaurant to refuel on a shrimp & cashews dish with steamed white rice. Yummy. I was soaked from the effort to get there, so while I was waiting for my food I excused myself to the bathroom and changed my base layer. Afterwards, I spread out all the other stuff--hats, gloves, jacket--on chair backs to dry a bit while I was eating, but of course that wasn't near long enough to have made any real difference, and by time I began to pack on the layers again I realized I was in for an extremely wet, cold, and generally miserably ride back.

And then it came to me, this:


I got my change in quarters and followed the nice Chinese lady's directions (across the street) to Dolly's Wash House. I felt like a character in a TV commercial (absent an encounter with a beautiful woman) as I stripped down and threw all my wet stuff in the dryer. Even my socks.


(Can you see my eerie reflection in the window?)

Despite feeling a little uncomfortable with the looks I was getting from the crowd of motley middle-aged on-lookers, the kind of people frequenting a laundry mat in rural Pennsylvania outpost of a town on a Saturday afternoon, the idea proved a stroke of genius and I was feeling rather proud of myself. In less than 10 minutes I was dressed in dry, warm (if not clean) gear and on the road again.

The ride back was uneventful, only tremendously long. When back in Ship I was riding in the dark.

...

In other news, the new Vandy kits are in, and mine came in the mail Friday. (Thanks, Josh.) They are really pretty fantastic. Easily the best looking kit I've ridden in.

Here's a trail shot of my handlebars modeling the vest:

the 5th down

Since you can hardly not talk about the Super Bowl today, I'd like to share my favorite post-Super Bowl analysis/read/whatever--Virginia Heffernan's (isn't that the surname of the couple on King of Queens? is that intentional irony?) contribution to the The 5th Down.

Read it here. (Remember to start from the bottom.)

I read stuff like this and come to two realizations: (1) I'm a terrible writer and (2) I'm not even B-level culturally savvy enough to appreciate how clever this girl is.

It's a long way between Cumberland Co., PA and NYC, NY.

there used to be a post here

It had pictures. I hope it comes back.


(It did.)

cold moutain riding

The weather yesterday looked to be cold. It turned out to be. Here are yesterday's actual temps in the valley:

That's right, at 11am it was 24 degrees, with a wind chill that made it feel like eight. Ah yeah, time to go riding.

So I left my house a little before 10am and headed up towards the mountains. I battled the wind for about five miles, then got to the mouth of the canyon (Means Hollow) and started up the snow-packed dirt road...up, up, up about 1200 ft to Ridge Road, which looked like this:

Twelve hundred feet is my estimate. Shippensburg, PA is listed at 656 feet above sea level. The Birch Run Shelter on the Appalachian Trail, which one passes just a stone's throw away on Ridge Road, is 1795 feet above sea level, according to this site, and I'm fairly confident that Ridge Road, at it's highest point, sits a bit above the shelter. (Of course, the road doesn't just go straight up, so to get up 1200' you end up climbing quite a bit more.)

Here's the bike:


Me:


After the climb I rode several miles north on Ridge Road along the spine of South Mountain, planning to make my way as for as Mt. Holly Springs for lunch. Those mountain roads are tricky though, and I ended up making a wrong turn that brought me down to Pine Grove Furnace State Park (about 850' above sea level), which wasn't really where I wanted to be.

From there I considered taking route 233 north until I could get back on track, but the road was still icy/snow-packed on the shoulders, and there was enough traffic that I was made nervous by that combination of circumstances. Also, I'd already been out an hour and 54 minutes; making Mt Holly Springs by the route I had planned would take at least another hour, maybe more.

Also, my feet were cold! One of the most significant problems with cold weather riding is the negative energy transfer from your warm feet to the ice-cold metal pedals and crank arms. I was wearing two pairs of neoprene booties--enough to warm my feet right up when I got off the bike and danced around a bit--but booties don't insulate against the shoe-pedal contact point. I haven't figured out how to solve this problem yet.

Anyway, from Pine Grove Furnace I climbed back up to Ridge Road, then back to the Baltimore Road intersection (about 1900'). From there I opted to take a different route home, riding east on Baltimore (crossing the AT again) about a mile to Big Flat, where I caught Birch Run Road all the way down to Chambersburg Reservoir (about 1000'). Birch Run had been heavily traveled by both snowmobiles and four-wheelers, but I didn't see any out while I was on the road.

From the reservoir, I begin climbing back over the ridge again, but once more took a wrong turn and ended up climbing probably 200 - 300' feet more than I needed to, about 800' in total.

Finally back to the valley, though even at this point I took several wrong turns, on purpose this time, thinking I had found new, less traveled, more fun routes to make it back down. These efforts proved fruitless, and only resulted in my having to climb several more hundred feet as well as having to do quite a bit of walking.

Val took a couple of picture when I got home:


Including one showcasing the salt stains on my butt--tell-tell signs of a good long bike ride.


Total ride time: 4:55:23

Total miles: 51.3

Total climbing: 3500-4000'

Number of mud splats on goggles: 22

deathly hallows

July 21st.

You heard it here first. (Maybe.)

the monkey wrench gang...

...may finally make it to the big screen, or so reports the Deseret News.

Let's cross our fingers.

...

Haven't read The Monkey Wrench Gang? Here's a snapshot (or three) from abbeyweb.net:

observations of the heart

Yesterday's workout called for five six-minute tempo intervals with two-minute recoveries (I cheated and allowed myself three-minute recoveries). As will likely be plain from the following figure, I did this workout on the trainer.

(red = heart rate; pink = power; green = cadence)

The interesting thing here, to me, is the interplay between time and heart rate over the course of the workout. Notice in the first interval I kept my power output around 270 to 280 watts, and my heart rate at the beginning of the interval abruptly rises to about 155 bpm, then slowly, and linearly, rises to about 170 bpm by the end of the effort.

In the next interval my power output is roughly the same, but my heart rate during this period moves from about 165 bpm to about 172 or 173 bpm.

Over the course of all five intervals this trend continues. In fact, my effort seems to flag in terms of power output, but my average heart rate over each six-minute period rises with each subsequent effort, topping out eventually at 183 bpm.

It doesn't take a power meter to notice this--I observed the same phenomenon last spring when doing intervals aided only by a heart rate monitor--but the graph does illustrate the point rather starkly.

You may also notice from the figure that (1) during the three-minute periods between intervals my recovery heart rate rises steadily--between the first and second effort it dropped to 125 bpm, but between the fourth and fifth it dropped to only about 138 bpm--and (2) in the recovery period after all intervals my average power output is lower than it was during warm-up, but my heart rate is higher.

An additional point worth making is that the third & fourth intervals felt much easier than the first two (though looking at the graph now I see that I apparently didn't work as hard on the fourth interval, so there's that).

So...it seems that that the body (or at least the heart) has to work harder to do the same amount of work later in a workout than it does earlier in a workout. That part seems intuitive.

However, if my perceived exertion is lower after a couple of warm-up intervals, that suggests that while my body has to work harder to do the same amount of work, under certain circumstances, my body feels better when it's working harder than it does at the beginning of a workout when the actual stress on my body (in terms of heart rate) is lower.

From that observation I suppose we can conclude that warm-up--an intense, race-pace kind of warm-up--is a good thing. But there's a balance. Do too much of a warm-up, of course, and you'll have no more juice for the real deal.

Anyway, there's nothing earth shattering here. The real lesson, or question, perhaps, is why does it take spending over a grand on a bunch of fancy shmiz to convince yourself of what you already knew?

the deed is done

It's something of a personal ritual; a kind of commitment ceremony.

Every year I hesitate, and wait, and balk, and delay. I generally run through a laundry list of 'what ifs' and put it off until the last possible moment. Not this year.



This year I did it in January. A new personal record.

depressing

At least for riding it's depressing. I may have to shift my training focus from the bike to skis.

In fact, that reminds me of one of my great fantasies. I've done a bit of skiing--telemark, backcountry skiing--and I've done plenty of long approaches, but always by foot, ski, or some combination thereof...never by bike. So how cool would it be to begin your approach from your house, on your bike, ride however far over and up to where you dismount, slap on your climbing skins, then continue your approach on skis?

How cool? Very cool.

There's not enough snow around here to do any real backcountry work, but there are resort hills to be poached. There's one about 20 miles from my house. If it's not too windy (riding a bike with a big ole pack and skis strapped on in the wind might very well spell death), I may give it a try this week. Care to join me?

awesome

Cyclocross Worlds.

regina spektor

Last Saturday Val and I went to see:


We're not really the cool kids, but we really liked. Well, maybe me more than Val, but I've a super soft spot for the powerful female voice...and I really love that spunky girl-power lyric.

For me, it was a Sara McLachlan voice with an Ani Difranco wit.

Listen here. As with all the best artists, way better live...


(I should mention that before Saturday I hadn't heard more than a few seconds of her stuff. A friend--Greg--invited us to come, and even paid for it[!], how could we refuse? But it was a way good show. Totally exceeded my expectations.)

Art Buchwald Dies at 81

Read the obituary.

To be serious--too serious--is a kind of illness. One with which I'm too often afflicted.