Insert Witty Title...

Not really all that much going on in my cycling world these days. I rode on Sunday with a friend who is fairly new to road biking. He hung in there pretty well considering it was a pretty demanding ride and I rode at a moderate pace for the majority of it.

He did take a couple of nasty spills. The first was pretty much my fault. We were talking about pedals and he said his were too large (they're a set of double sided entry SPDs) I unclipped out of one of mine which are Time ATACs (mountain bike pedals) and asked if they were any larger...he looked down and ended up turning into the curb that was to his right...down he went...not too hard though, he made a nice landing.

The second spill was a good deal harder. We were coming down a steep decent that curves to the left. He was only using his rear brake to slow down which caused his tire to slip when he was going around the curve. I yelled "FRONT BRAKE! FRONT BRAKE!" but I'm sure he was already in a pretty panicked state and his rear wheel slid out from under him. Sending him down onto the pavement and then into the very well kept cushy lawn adjacent to the curb which he some how cleared or rolled over. He was a little banged up but was able to continue after a little bit of a break. The home owner came out and talked to us for a while. Apparently it happens every couple of weeks. He let us refill our water after making sure he was o.k. and we continued on our way.

Other than that I did a 42 mile ride on Saturday with the Austin Cycling Association. The ride is called the Sprinkle Sprint and it's a nice country ride with rolling hills. I did the ride once before and managed to get 5 flats the last time! Thankfully I didn't get any flats on this ride but I did stop to help a fellow rider that got a flat. I happened to meet up with a couple of guys I've ridden with on the last ride out there. One of them was the guy that helped me when I got all of the flats last time.

That's about it for me. Hope everyone that wanted a Fat Cyclist Jersey got one before they all sold out! I managed to get one...although it's a L rather than an XL, hope it fits!

J

Bike to Work Day?

I've been reading about bike to work day/week in other areas of the country being a pretty big success. Maybe it's because my route to work doesn't take me through downtown...but the Austin bike to work day seemed rather dismal. Even though I don't go into downtown I do hit some pretty major arteries. I think I saw less cyclists out today then I normally do...and the weather was perfect!

Generally I leave fairly early but today I decided to leave a little later and hit one of the breakfast stops along the way, I also thought I would run into more cyclists and even kept my camera out "just in case." The stop pulled me about 4 miles from my normal route but the weather was beautiful and adding a couple more miles never hurts :) Plus I happened to meet up with a co-worker who was also cycling to work (he and I are 2 or the 3 regulars that bike to work.) Anyways we headed south down Shoal Creek to the Far West pedestrian bridge. This was one of two breakfast stations that wasn't packed into downtown. I believe there were about 12 stations...most of which were in a 6 block radius from the center...and while I realize that this is probably the prime "normal" bike commute area it left the vast majority of Austin uncovered...

O.k., 6 blocks is probably cutting the area down smaller than it really is...but here's the actual map...

View Larger Map

So we rode by the stop at about 8:15...I figured they would have had someone there by 7:00 or 7:30 since people usually need to be at work between 8:30 and 9:00, but no luck...no one there at 8:15, not even a table...there was a sign informing us that there was going to be a breakfast stop there...but I didn't bother to read all of it. Since we were riding to work we just kept going and got to work a little earlier than expected.

Unfortunately the lack or riders also persisted on the way home...and the aggressiveness of drivers was up about 38%. One guy almost ran a red light (after he came to a complete stop!) when we crossed an intersection in front of him...then blasted his horn and proceeded to yell obscenities at us and gesture wildly. Per my normal lapse in judgment in these situations I gave him the single finger wave and pointed to his (still) red stop light. This elicited additional gestures and more honking...we continued on our way.

What's odd is that I'm normally an extremely calm person...even while driving I usually just take it easy and blow stuff off. However this seems to change when I'm riding. It's not that I immediately become aggressive...it's more like I become super defensive...which I guess is good...aside from the flipping off drivers thing when they almost hit me...meh.

Anyways I hope you rode to work today and I hope you saw more cyclists than I did and that the drivers were considerably better mannered.

J

Commuting Without Showers

With the rise of gas prices I've noticed a couple more people riding their bikes to work...or the ones that would occasionally ride, riding more often. This seems to be a national trend and if you do a little searching you can find a fair amount of news articles on the subject. And those are just a couple of things that popped up...

So maybe you've reached your breaking point and you're contemplating riding to work. Maybe you're already doing it. Either way, here are some tips that will hopefully help you get to work not smelling like you just finished the Tour de France!

These tips are aimed at commuters without showers at their place of work.

1) Wear synthetic fabrics or wool...cotton is a no-no. Really this depends on the length of your commute and how much you sweat. My commute is about 7 miles, with some pretty good hills...and I sweat a lot. Plus Austin is pretty humid and hot. Add those things up and I often arrive to work looking like I just got out of the shower! I always wear an Under Armour type compression shirt with another wicking shirt on top of it. The Under Armour keeps the sweat off of me and the other shirt helps to dissipate it completely. Both of them are usually pretty wet when I get to work. Thankfully they are both completely dry within 30 minutes! You won't get that from cotton.

2) Take a small towel along with you. This one is pretty big...and is really in a tie for number 1. Once you get to work you'll need to finish drying off. I usually keep a couple of bamboo towels at work for those days I forget. They're really small and cost about $1. I picked mine up at Performance Bike shop here in Austin. I don't usually rely on the Go! Towel...it's more of a last ditch effort to dry off...it's fairly small (wash cloth sized) but it absorbs a good amount of water. I generally take a hand towel with me which is small enough to pack into my bag and big enough to dry off with.

(Go! Towel and size reference)

3) Change clothes in the right "order." I don't know about you but my legs don't really sweat from riding. There will be some moisture but the majority of it comes from my torso. With this in mind my shirt is the first thing off and last thing on. Give your body some time to cool down and towel off while you're putting on your shoes, socks, jeans, etc.

4) Have a place where your clothes can dry. Not completely necessary...but it's nice to have dry clothes for at least the beginning of the ride home :-) Here's my setup that I've been using the last couple of days. Nothing fancy, just 3 hangers. The fan also helps to pull air across them...and no, they don't smell like sweat...which is why you want to get synthetic antibacterial fabrics rather than something like cotton. Both the shirts and my bandanna dry in about 30 minutes. As I mentioned my legs don't sweat much...so I just throw my shorts in my bag.

(a corner of my desk at work)

5) Leave what you can at work. Not really dependent on having a shower or not. I leave a pair of shoes in my desk and my u-lock locked up to the bike rack. Those 2 things alone drop a good amount of weight and space out of my pack. Although if you ride with "normal" shoes then this isn't so much of an issue.

6) Use the right pack for you. This one is pretty much all personal preference, but I feel it's worth mentioning. In the cooler months I use a messenger bag, let's face it...messenger bags just look sexy, plain and simple, and I believe it is our duty to make commuting by bike look sexy and fun...because it is sexy and fun! However during the hotter months I use a single pannier. Getting the messenger off my back in the hot months helps to cut down on a lot of sweat. It might not look as sexy but ironically I've gotten more yells when I have the pannier on than with the messenger. Granted the "more" is really only one and it was some guy going into a bike shop that yelled "Nice pannier" but that's more than I ever got with the messenger :-)

7) Get a fan for your desk. No matter how much you dry off in the bathroom you're still going to be sweating for a little bit. Dry off the best you can and go sit at your desk with your fan on low or high if need be. 5 minutes later get up and grab you some coffee...chances are you'll be more than awake from the ride though! You can also get creative and affix a paper airplane made out of post-it notes to your fan so that it will fly when the fan is on ... see in above image.

I have to say even without showers I have a pretty conducive environment for biking to work. Unfortunately there are only a handful of us that do ride...one of them is a VP though. I've never received any bad comments about riding to work, and my boss's boss has even said that I should bring my bike indoors...although where it's at outside is extremely secure...and getting it to my desk would be a royal pain! Still, the offer means a lot. One other guy in my department rides and we talk more because of it...granted a lot of it is bike talk, but some collaboration gets done there too that would otherwise not happen.

Happy commuting...and have a great bike month!
J

Armadillo Classic 105 Mile Route - I Did It!

Thanks to Mike for the Certificate :-)


Exhausted is one of the many words that can be used to describe how I feel right now.

It all started at 7:00 this morning when I sprung from my bed realizing that I if I didn't hurry I would miss the 8:00 start. I set 2 alarm clocks but managed to set one incorrectly and to not turn the other one on. My day was off to a rough start...thankfully I realized long ago that I'm not great about getting up when my alarm goes off (or doesn't) so I packed everything into the car last night. All I had to do was throw on some cycling clothes (that I had laid out) and brush my teeth and I was ready to go.

I arrived at the venue around 7:40...rushed to get my bike ready to go and hoped that I threw everything into my jersey that I needed...I called up Mike to let him know I had arrived and he met me in the parking lot...from there we headed to the start. The picture below gives a pretty good indication of what the start looked like...there were over 1000 riders at the event (not all of them started with us) since we were doing the 105 mile route we were allowed to head out before groups doing less miles.
Another shot off to the left once we got our place in line.
We started around 8:05. Working our way through the group was fairly difficult for the first 10 or so miles. The group was massive but we finally settled into an area less and less people. Each rest stop caused some of the crowd to disperse and once we hit "Dillo Door" which is the 30 mile checkpoint for the 80 and 105 mile routes things had really started to clear out.

Somewhere after the 30 mile mark I took these pictures. Still overcast...awwwww.
Picture of Mike.
Things were going relatively well until the 50 mile mark. The sun finally burned off the clouds so now we had wind, hills, and the heat to deal with. At some point I managed to lose Mike...I had picked up some speed going down a hill (he usually out climbs me so this is how I keep up) and he got a flat...I didn't realize he wasn't back there until a couple of miles later. We didn't meet back up until the 80 mile mark. After the 65 mile rest stop I started feeling a bonk coming on and immediately pulled off to the side, ate a Clif Bar, drank some fluids and relaxed for a little while...after about 5 minutes I had recovered and headed out again. This happened again at about the 75 mile mark...however this time I took considerably more time as I found it very difficult to eat anything ... eventually I started back and made it to the 80 mile rest stop where I stayed for about 30 minutes eating a good amount of food trying to get my energy level back up. I never fully recovered...but I was able to keep up enough energy to finish the ride. Even if that meant stopping at every rest stop from 80 onward.

Many areas on the ride were very lonely...I spent a couple of hours riding with no one in site.
Finally I made it back to where we started from. It made for a fairly long day but thankfully I had no equipment failures (even though sometimes I was hoping for something to give me a break!) This was my largest ride I have ever been in and my first Century ever! Austin Cycling Association did an EXCELLENT job organizing the course and making sure everything was well marked...lots of food/water/Gatorade at the rest stops and a lot of fun people. Speaking of which there were a couple of groups from Team In Training that were out there. They were a lot of fun and I think if I ever decide to do a large out of town event I'll be going with Team In Training.

Also check Bike Noob for a shot of Mike and I.

J

Armadillo Classic Routes

I picked up my Armadillo Hill Country Classic packet today. The shirt and bag are both pretty nice. It also came with some pony tail holders which I'm sure will go to my wife or to some of my cycling friends...I won't be using them :)

I did take some time to map out the 105 mile course. I was planning on putting in the water stations but MapMyRide was angering me (as it easily does) so I stopped before I had to put my fist through my monitor.

So here's the 105 mile route:

And the 61 mile route:

I didn't bother mapping out the 78 mile route...but it's exactly like the 105 mile route except that it doesn't do the loop north of Burnet...

Also today I headed over and picked up a new cycling jersey that was on clearance :) as well as another set of cycling shorts since my current pair is getting a little worn.
I figure the Caribou Coffee jersey is appropriate since I enjoy their coffee and anyone that knows me knows I'm some what of a coffee fiend...it would be my energy drink of choice except that it dehydrates you and provides nothing good except for caffeine...which I do enjoy :) Also I like the design...which is important.

I'm also looking for a small/medium sized handlebar bag to carry some bananas, Clif Bars, camera and other odds and ends in for the ride...unfortunately it's proving fairly difficult to find anything that is either small enough or that isn't over $60! Hopefully I'll be able to hit a bike store or two tomorrow during lunch. I also need to take one of my spare wheels over to the shop to get trued.

I'm really looking forward to the Armadillo Classic...if you couldn't tell!

J

A post of posts

I don't really have any news from today...so I'm just going to ramble on for a little while...I'm not really sure how this is going to be different from any other day :)

Armadillo Classic
So the Armadillo Classic is this Saturday. Mike as well as the Bike Noob are going to be out there. For me this will be my first "major" ride or at least the first large ride that requires an entry fee. I've participated in group rides before (usually 20+ people) but nothing in the 1000+ range! There are a multitude of options as far as length; everything from 15 to 105 miles is pretty much covered and I would like to do something that is 60+ miles. Mike is contemplating doing the entire 105...which I would love to do, but that's a good deal farther than I've ever gone in a single sitting and I'm a little worried that I won't be able to complete it. Even so I'm still contemplating it since we will have SAG support...although I would really rather not take advantage of it!

Saddles
I'm not going to rehash the excellent saddle post over at Bike Noob...but a couple of weeks ago I picked up a new saddle since my old one was torn in the wreck. I ended up getting a Specialized Avatar Gel, which is very similar to the Alias but with steel rails and therefore is a little heavier (but $30 cheaper!) While I was at the bike store one of the sales people helped "measure" me for the saddle. They have a memory foam pad that you sit on for about 30 seconds. The pad measures the distance between your sit bones then depending upon your riding position they figure out which of the saddles will work best for you...or more accurately which width of the saddles will work best. I ended up getting the 155mm one...apparently I have a big butt...or at least a large distance between my sit bones. This method is much improved over my previous saddle shopping experience where I would comb the web looking for "not bad" reviews and eventually purchase a saddle based on what others had said worked for them...which is akin to buying an article of clothing without trying it on.

I can definitely tell a big difference between this saddle and the previous 3 I have owned. The others (with the exception of one...the wrecked one) have all been too narrow. With the new saddle my sit bones hit it right where they're supposed to go and the vast majority of my weight is supported by them. This makes long days in the saddle very comfortable. On my other saddles I was always moving around trying to find the sweet spot...I don't have to search on this saddle!

Repairs
Tomorrow I need to head over to the local bike shop and get my wheels trued (the ones from the wreck.) I attempted to true them at Yellow Bike but apparently I had the jig setup wrong and they're pulled over to one side by about 1/4"...at least they're uniformly pulled over and I did a uniformly bad job...I've trued wheels before while they were on the bike, and can usually do a pretty good job. But in this case it's just worth my time and money to pay someone to fix my mistake...hopefully they won't charge me too much!

These wheels are the ones that came on my Fuji Roubiax. They're a pretty nice set of wheels and they definitely look cool with the paired spokes!

I also need to pickup another seat bag as my current one is rubbing the insides of my legs when I pedal and it's causing my shorts to get frayed!

Logging Miles
It occurred to me today that I'm a little obsessed about accurately tracking EVERY mile I ride and I've decided this activity is both ludicrous and unhealthy. For instance...today after work I cleaned up the house, made dinner, and relaxed a little while. At about 7:00 I thought to myself "I should head by the bike store and pickup some new shorts and seat bag that won't rub on my shorts." I have store credit at Performance Bike and this would be a good "excuse" to use it. Anyways as I sat there on the couch I talked myself out of it because I would "have" to get my GPS, put it out to calibrate the altimeter, put it on the bike...and eventually ride to the store. So I didn't ride because I couldn't track my miles...that's just stupid...especially since it's about 4 miles round trip! So if I'm running errands on the bike I'm no longer tracking those miles...there comes a point when technology gets in the way of the reason I ride a bike...and I found it today!

J

Ride with Friends

Christine, Eric and I headed out this morning around 9:20. I had planned a nice route for us to ride which would include a good warm up area, some hills, a nice break, and then some more hills followed by a nice downhill area all the way back home. Unfortunately we didn't get to ride the entire route due to a couple of flats...but we had a good ride!

Here's the actual path we took:

Eric and Christine are both fairly new roadies. Both of them are mountain bikers who have been riding more road and decided that bikes better suited to road riding were needed. Christine and I shopped around for a couple of weeks and found a nice deal on CraigsList that has turned out to be a very nice bike for her for just a little over $400. Eric was able to spend a little more and bought a new Scattante yesterday at Performance Bike after some thoughtful debate. Today was to be the first long break in ride for both bikes...and riders!

About .75 mile into the ride Christine suffered her first flat. She had tire irons and a patch kit but didn't have anything to inflate it. I had showed her how to change a tire while I was helping her build the bike so she was good to go in the tire fixing department. There was a fairly large nail that punctured the tube...and somehow managed to put a LOT of holes around the entry point...the tube was trashed. Since I carry C02 rather than a pump I handled the inflation since it can be touchy and rather fast! Here's a shot of Christine working her magic with the tire.

We continued on and the tire held up for a long way...about 14 miles into the ride Christine mentioned that she thought the tire felt a little low...we pulled over and sure enough it was low. I handled the flat change since we didn't have a spare tube and was able to find a small hole by the valve stem. Nothing was embedded in the tire, I couldn't even find an entry point. Maybe the tube was just bad? No clue.

We decided to take a detour and hit the bike store. I only carry 2 CO2 canisters and I had used up all of one and some of another. Eric desperately needed some gloves. Christine picked up a pump and graciously restocked my CO2.

Because of the stops we decided to cut out some of the hills as the end and just headed back. We worked on riding in a pace line and both Eric and Christine got to feel how different it is to ride in a pack vs taking the pull.

They both did really well and we're planning on riding more during the week as well.

For the route we averaged 14.1mph which is a pretty decent pace considering there are some decent hills on the route.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

J