Feeling Good!

 

 

For some reason, I can’t seem to pull back from the edge of over-doing it the past couple of months.  My morning commutes have been characterized by thigh burning double climbs through Southern Hills followed by extended routes giving me an hour of cycling before I hit the office, all at a pace that is nearing anaerobic.  My evening commutes typically consist of putting my head down, my hands on the drops, and plowing into the wind.  My average speeds are consistently running between 16.5 and 17 mph through town.  More telling is the mileage I’m racking up.  In April it was 837 miles, May was 823 miles, and June will end with 815-825 miles.

At times, my legs have felt kind of heavy, but the endorphin rush I get from hard exercise keeps spurring me on.  It feels good!  I don’t want to stop or slow down!

But…I’m taking the weekend off.  Have a good one!

God bless…

TW

 

 

 

Fixed it…

 

 

Well, after 14,000 plus miles, I’ve finally resolved the braking problems on my Surly.  I replaced the brake cable hanger pictured above (too long stock hanger) and the straddle cable (too short workaround) with a shorter hanger and an appropriately sized straddle cable.

While I had things apart, the bike also got a new rear brake cable and bar wrap.   After a single commute on the new setup, I think I can say the bike is finally braking the way it is supposed to. I can’t believe I let it go this long…

God bless…

TW

 

 

So Close!

See that badge above?  It’s from the latest Strava Challenge I completed.

The idea was to ride 30 hours between June 8th and the 23rd.  See my number?

I missed it by 7 freaking minutes and 2 stinking seconds!  Can you believe that?

I thought I had it made.  I felt like I was looking good going into the century ride on Saturday, but who would have guessed we would PR it?

I can take solace though, that I think I really got 30 hours.

See the triangle on the map above?  That’s my commute on the Friday before our century.  The triangle is there because I forgot to start my Garmin on the way home from work.

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t count unless it’s in the Garmin, but that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.  It took me 7 minutes and 4 seconds to  remember to start the clock ticking that afternoon!

God bless…

TW

Tour De Corn

 

I distinctly remember thinking, “I know we’re going to regret this tail wind later”.  We were having fun, having ridden 40ish miles at the time, but the heat and wind were both rising….

We had planned for several weeks to go down to East Prairie, Mo for the Tour de Corn.  It’s a ride I had heard a lot about, and given the right conditions is a great ride for tandems.

With over 1,000 riders registered, I expected the start to be pretty congested but they had riders line up according to the route people were riding so it didn’t seem as bad as I expected.  Since we were riding the 100 mile route, we ended up pretty close to the front, and even though we kind of loafed at the beginning talking with a couple of tandem teams, we didn’t feel like we were riding in a huge pack for very long.

There is no doubt, we were riding in the corner of the state where big farming is the way of life.  That translates to pool table flat!  Wheat, corn, soybeans, potatoes and even rice fields were on both sides of us most of the day.

It was so flat out there that we only climbed a total of 541 feet in 102 miles.  Most of that was because we kissed the edge of the Mississippi river at one point and had to ride out of the little bit of the valley coming back.

We had heard that the Tour de Corn had some awesome rest stops, and that was mostly true.

Most of the rest stops were sponsored and manned by local church groups, and they put a lot of effort into it.  I think we had huge, homemade cookies of nearly every variety at nearly every stop!   One even had homemade protein bars that were wonderful!

And, it wouldn’t be the Tour de Corn without corn on the cob!

Talk about good stuff – sweet corn!  Although I’ve gotta admit I’ve never had corn on the cob before 8:30 in the morning!

With a nice tailwind for the first 61 miles, we were rolling pretty fast.  As we approached the first rest stop, Pam looked back and saw a pretty fast paceline ripping along behind us.  When we’re on the tandem and rolling like that on some of these big rides, we have a tendency to pick up a lot of wheel suckers.  That wouldn’t be so bad if we could rotate in and out and share pulls, but what usually happens is that we pull a big long while, then rotate to the back where we can’t match their accelerations or hit a hill and get dropped.  Because of that, we’ve seen it as a challenge to not let them catch us for the past couple of years, so we dropped the hammer and really started flying by cyclists for a few minutes.  I’m telling you, we dropped them good and it felt great!

As we were pulling into the 61 mile rest stop in the little town of Commerce, I felt just a twinge of a cramp in my right quad.  By that time, it was starting to get hot…my Garmin was showing 95 degrees, and I sweat so much that it’s hard to stay ahead of it.  I had been drinking Powerade at every stop, but when I saw cups of pickle juice at this one, I bit the bullet and drank one in addition to the Powerade.  I hate that stuff, but I’ve got to admit it does help!

From that point, however, I think both of us would have been happy to have been done, and from the looks on the faces around us, so would most of the other riders.  It was hot.  The wind was in our face the rest of the day, and it just felt like it was sucking the life out of us.  I’ve mentioned it before, but that tandem will just whip you in a strong wind.  Here’s what it did to us on Saturday:

Splits 1, 2, 3, and half of split 4 were with the tail wind.  The second half of 4, 5, 6, & 7 were into the wind.

By the time we turned into the wind, it was also interesting that nobody passed us the rest of the day.   I guess we were delayed just enough at that 61 mile rest stop while Pam washed some of the road grime off and reapplied sunscreen that everyone faster than us got out ahead of us.  It sure was strange.  We passed several riders, but a lot of the time we felt like we were riding alone.

From that point on, we also noticed a definite lack of enthusiasm at the rest stops on the part of both the volunteers and riders.  The heat was continuing to rise, and I heard at least three groups that were throwing in the towel at various points.

We enjoyed riding through the town of Charleston.  The rest stop there was at the old Victorian house pictured above.  Strangely, there were no volunteers.  Cookies and Powerade were on the front porch along with bags for trash, but it was a help yourself kind of deal.  As we left, though, the route took us through a pretty neat section of town filled with lots of cool looking old houses.

As we left town, I noticed our riding time and began thinking we had a shot at a 6 hour century.  We had never ridden one that fast on the tandem, but as agonizingly slow as it seemed we were plodding into the wind it looked like it might be pretty tight.  I switched my Garmin to different screen so I wouldn’t be focused on that goal, but that carrot did offer a reason to keep grinding out the miles.  You can see from the splits above that we finished the ride in 6 hours and 21 seconds, but our actual Century Time was 5:53.  Pretty cool!

We were looking for the final rest stop of the day at around 93 miles when Pam hollered, “Something’s poking my butt!”  Sure enough, one of the struts on our rack had snapped and was sticking up.  I forced it around toward the rear and we rattled on to the finish with it that way.

After the rack excitement, I failed to drink my last Powerade at that rest stop, and it came back to bite me.  By that time, I had already downed 6 and I just couldn’t stomach the idea of one more.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, we hadn’t ridden a mile when the cramps came back!  Dang it anyway!  I checked the thermometer…it read 105 at that point, but I think that was from heat radiating off the pavement.  We went into survival mode, which consists of a standing pedal every few minutes.  I’ve found that I’m prone to cramping on those long tandem rides anyway because the bulk of our riding is seated and it just keeps pulling those muscles the same way all day.  My theory is that by standing, the muscle groups in my quads and hamstrings get used and pulled in different directions, which is what you want to do when you’re cramping.  In any case, it worked for us.

We pulled into town at 2:45 to find the parking lots looking a lot more empty than when we left.  We presumed that the bulk of the riders had ridden the shorter distances, and at that point we were kind of wishing we had as well!

Overall, it was a good ride.  Pam did an awesome job stoking and hung in there like a trooper when things got kind of tough.  I’m proud of our time and can’t say enough good things about the first several rest stops.

You can click the map above for the full GPS track.

God bless…

TW

Dodging the Flood

Saturday dawned a beautiful morning that would fail to foretell how quickly and badly the weather around here can change for the worse.  Depending on which reports you listen to, Springfield experienced 9-10 inches of rain in just a couple of hours, but more about that later.

We were planning to ride a pretty long route, so I had e-mailed Mike the map of our route and told him that if he missed a turn this week (he has a history of that, you know) he would be on his own.  His response to that was to bring his own old-school GPS!  I guess it worked, because he managed to stay with us the entire time!

We departed Battlefield promptly at 6:30 AM, and picked up two additional riders just outside Republic for part of the trip.

David, wearing the blue jersey in the picture above, is a friend of Mike’s from church.  He rode with us through Billings and part way to Halltown before he peeled off to his house near the intersection of Highways PP and TT northwest of Republic.

Alan is a colleague of mine at work.  He just recently scored a really good deal on his first road bike, and is training for a sprint triathlon.  He rode with us through Billings and out toward Halltown before heading for home when we hit Highway 174.

Both rode well given the number of miles under their wheels, and I hope they enjoyed themselves.  We enjoyed having them and are hoping they can join us again.

The turkeys were out in abundance in the early hours.  We had three separate sightings, with the best one being a big-ole bearded tom that ambled across the road right in front of us.  He was a huge sucker – probably the biggest we’ve seen this summer.

We made our first stop at 20ish miles (for us) in Billings, where we instructed the new riders on the finer points of cycling nutrition, the art of devouring Snickers bars,  and our golden rule of “Eat Early, Eat Often”.

We then turned our sights on  Halltown, enjoying the tiny bit of push from the wind at our backs.   As we headed that direction, we could see clouds building to the northeast.  They were bothersome enough that Pam asked me to look at the radar while we were stopped.  It showed a storm north of Springfield, but nothing near us.  I was a little concerned that it was tracking south and we were going to be headed east and it looked like our paths might cross before we got turned back.

Halltown was the sight of our only “OOPS” moment of the day.  I took our water bottle in to fill it, then left it on the counter after buying a Gatorade.   We didn’t miss it until we stopped again, so at that point I was just glad it was an older one that was ready to be retired and we were carrying a second one.

After meandering east to the intersection of NN and I-44, we encountered the rain I was concerned about, but we only brushed the outer edge of it and were actually stopped at the c-store there for the entire duration of the brief d0wnpour!  Talk about good timing!

At that point, we were about 46 miles into the day, but we also had to ride directly toward the storm for a couple of miles before turning back to the south.  Pam was eyeing the sky constantly and started hearing thunder to our east.  As we turned back to the south, we could tell the that it was raining seriously to our southeast, and knowing that we would be turning west in just a few miles made me hopeful that it would clear out before we made our final loop around Republic and headed for the truck.

We stayed dry through Republic, but as we kept glancing back over our shoulders, the skies kept looking more and more ominous.  I wasn’t particularly concerned about getting wet, and Pam wasn’t either, but the thunder had Pam worried.  From our location, we felt like the worst of the weather was going to be to our east, but that’s where the truck was, and we had planned our day pretty tightly, so  simply sitting somewhere to wait it out was not an option.  We had to keep riding!

In spite of all the concerns over the sky, both Pam and I were feeling pretty good on the bike and were enjoying the day.  We’re signed up for a century next weekend and the ease with we covered these 73 miles gives us a lot of confidence that we shouldn’t have any issues with the 100 miles over a lot flatter terrain next week.

Of course our day wouldn’t be complete without having to stop for at least one train, and this one west of Republic seemed to take forever to clear out of our path.  Once we cleared it, we were on our final leg back to the truck, and that’s when Pam really started getting concerned!

We were now riding straight toward the worst looking clouds, and we started seeing some pretty serious cloud to ground lightning on a regular basis.  I mean most of those lightning bolts were straight in front of us, to the point that if you followed the road to the horizon, that’s where they seemed to be making their strikes.  Once we started heading that direction, however, I started getting more and more confident that the worst of it was actually further east than our truck!  I could see the water tower at Battlefield, and as we counted down the remaining miles, I kept trying to reassure Pam that we had it made!  She, however, remained dubious.

We climbed the hill on ZZ faster than we’ve ever ridden it on the tandem, then did the same with the climb out of Wilson’s Creek.   Pam tells me she was getting motivation from the lightning, and not to expect that type of effort every ride!  From that point, it was easy and dry traveling back to the truck.  We found it’s bed about half-full of standing water.  You can’t see it very well in the picture above, but I had to stand in about an inch of water to get the bike secured for the trip home!

Our daughter had been sending Pam text updates for the last 10 miles indicating how hard it was raining in town so Pam sent her a “we’re safe and dry” message while I loaded the bike in the truck.   We hadn’t driven more than a mile before the skies opened up on us!

Here’s the map of our ride.  You can click it for the full GPS track.

God bless….

TW

Update:  When we got back to the truck, Mike decided he was close enough to a century for the day that he was going to go for it rather than accept our offer of a ride home.  He thought if he headed north he could avoid the worst of the rain.  It didn’t happen.  It sounded like he nearly got swept off his bike a couple of times before he made it home, but he did manage to get his century.