A Bad Decision

Saturday I was scheduled to be at Winter Youth Conference with the kids from the ward. The site was about an hour from here, and offered two ride opportunities with unique characteristics to choose between. Ride 1-To the top of Mt. Cheaha (the highest point in Alabama) and back. Lots and lots of climbing on steep grades. Ride 2-The Chief Ladiga Trail...a Rails to Trails project that extends nearly to the state border shared with Georgia (later this spring the final 8 miles of the trail will be complete, connecting the CLT with the Silver Comet Trail which will enable a rider to go from Jacksonville, AL to Atlanta and back).

Unfortunately, late Friday night, I chose a third option, no ride. I just decided it would be too much hassle to load all my bike stuff on the car and haul it for an hour, not really knowing what the opportunity to ride might be.

Shortly after arriving at the conference site, a friend from another ward in the stake (Bishop F) arrived with his bike on top of his car. He dropped the kids off and went to ride the CLT.

Now I'm kicking myself because it's been two weeks since I've ridden and I'm going crazy. The weather is colder than normal and so if I'm to get any riding in this week, it'll be on the rollers. Meanwhile, Saturday, which was a nice day, was wasted.

Bummer.

The Windeater

Yesterday Jeff was still in town thanks to the storms in the Midwest that kept him from leaving for home. So we hooked up and did another ride. The weather wasn't as nice as Saturday, in fact, it threatened to rain all morning, but a ride under threatening skies is better than no ride at all.

Leaving Indian Springs, we swung past Doug's house and the three of us headed down Cahaba Valley Road toward Leeds. Along the way, the discussion went like this:

Jeff: So, where are we going to ride?
Me: I don't care, as long as it's flat today, I'm feeling a bit worn out.
Doug: I'd kinda like to keep it flat too.
Jeff: So, why don't we go over Hugh Daniels Drive then past Shoal Creek and then over 25, back down 119 and then home.
Me: Why don't you go up Hugh Daniels Drive, turn around, and come back to the bottom and meet us there. Then we can just do Jeff's suggestion in reverse.
Doug: That sounds good.
Jeff: I'll just skip going up HDD and stay with you guys.

Now, a note about Hugh Daniels. Hugh Daniels was a sadist. His road climbs over Double Oak Mountain (mountains such as they are in the south) in a stair step fashion, climb for 1/4 mile at 12-14%, then level off for a bit, then climb another 1/4 mile at 14-15%, then level off for a bit, then repeat and repeat until you reach the top. This doesn't sound too bad when you see that there are little sections, maybe 2/10's of a mile long that are "level". But "level" is compared to what you have been climbing, and in this case, "level" is still a 8-10% grade.

Jeff knows that I hate (in fact, while I don't like the word "Hate", it isn't a strong enough word to describe my deep utter loathing for Hugh Daniels Drive) this climb. He always suckers me into riding it, then he goes home and yuks it up with his wife about how he got me again.

So as we approach the beginning of Hugh Daniels Drive, Jeff turns onto it, and Doug follows him. Now you might be saying, "what a fool you are, TKP, for following them when the plan was to skip it and go the other way". I'd have to agree, but you see, I knew all along that there was no way we weren't going to be riding up this beast. I knew it Sunday evening when Jeff called and said he wanted to ride. There was no way he was going to drive back to Tulsa without having ridden his favorite hill. So, like the sucker that I am, I followed them. Yes it hurt. No, I didn't enjoy climbing it any more than ever before. I dislike this climb as much as I ever did. So, yes, I'm a fool. But you do what you have to do.

We then climbed back over Double Oak Mountain on 25, then turned and found that they'd repaved my favorite road in all of Birmingham, Bailey Road. This road climbs up over a little ridge seperating Cahaba Valley and Sicard Hollow, and is windy and twisty and turny and just a lot lot lot of fun. Unfortunately, I haven't ridden it in at least 2 years because the surface was just so beat up and nasty. So that was fun, riding one of my favorite roads all nice and smooth with fresh pavement.

Turning back the way we came to head home the wind picked up significantly as the forecasted storm front began moving into our area. As a side note, the Matabele tribe (Africa) used the phrase "Eat the Wind" as a war cry, and their warriors were appropriately known as "Windeaters". Luckily for us (Doug and I), Jeff is a wind-eater, having lived and ridden in the land of never ending wind (Tulsa) for the past two years. This meant that all Doug and I had to do was settle in behind Jeff, and let him knock a hole in the wind for us to move through. A theory that works exceptionally well when the pulling rider (Jeff in this case) can move through a headwind at 20+ mph. Hey, I can't do it, so I might as well let him pull. :)

All in all, it was a good ride, my legs were sore, but I remembered to eat before leaving home and I drank and fed myself consistently along the ride, so I never had any impending energy problems. I was slower climbing the hills than I wanted to be, but it's early in the season, and if I start putting in the effort, the vertical velocity will return.

As I loaded my bike on the car to drive home, the first raindrop fell and it rained the remainder of the day. I'm glad I got a ride in.

Shorts and Short Sleeves in January

Yesterday Jeff Mills was in town (technically he's still in town today, but we're not riding today) and we hooked up and went riding. Jeff showed up at my house a few minutes earlier than I was expecting him and so I neglected to eat breakfast, a mistake that would haunt me later. We left the BBC and headed for the hills of Mountain Brook. There were about 15 of us at the start, but the group whittled itself down as we climbed Dell, then Smyer, then Old Brook Trail. Eventually there were 8 of us left.

Heading east on Sicard Hollow, I felt the initial bonk halfway up the first hill. I lost contact with the group, but caught back on at the foot of the second hill. The pace up this hill was more than my nutritionally challenged legs could manage and I bonked hard. By the time I crested the hill, there was nobody left in sight. I gritted my teeth and struck out to just make it to the end of the road, 6-7 miles distant, where we had agreed to regroup. Eventually I caught sight of Jeff, who noticed I was leading from the rear and dropped back to assist me. With his Tulsa-trained wind breaking skills, I was able to suck wheel, and remember to begin eating some Hammer Gel and eventually we caught back up to the group. The Hammer Gel was taking effect and I began to feel pretty good, as we continued up and over the rollers. Jeff rolled off the front on his own, and we let him go, as we were running 25 mph and didn't feel much like going harder. But from the back came the triathlete of the group (doesn't every group in Birmingham have a triahtlete?), training for Ironman Brazil, flying past us. I looked at Doug Daughetee to see if we were going to give it a go...and he was already gone. I responded as best as I could and got on Doug's wheel. We caught the Ironman but could only hold on as we began the last mile of Rex Lake Road and passed Jeff at 34 mph.

At the Chevron mini-mart where we were re-grouping, I grabbed a banana, and a powerbar to try and bolster my efforts to fight back the bonk that would surely be coming if I let up at all.

Leaving the mini-mart, we headed back west toward Birmingham, and then turned north toward Trussville on Floyd Bradford road. I love this road. It rolls and is very very fast, especially with a group to share the pulling load. I struggled at times to keep up on some of the harder rollers as my legs were starting to feel the effects of earlier bonk and I was fighting that "cramping" feeling. On Queenstown road (after a tough climb), again, it is very fast, but at the end Queenstown, it has a set of descending 90 degree turns that are just as fun as anything you can imagine...

Unfortunately, the farther we went (but at least closer to the end) the more my legs began cramping, until riding up at short climb near the end I had to stop pedaling for a minute to let the cramp seizing my upper thigh subside.

Clearly my big mistake was not eating before riding, but it's easy to lose the good habits you build on long rides (eating and drinking frequently, eating before leaving, etc) when you spend months where your primary riding experiences are only 30-40 minutes long.

On a positive note, I had a great time riding with Jeff and Doug, and the weather couldn't have been nicer. The 14th of January. We had no winter clothes on at all, no tights, no wind vests, no long fingered gloves, no warm under-layers. It was 72 degrees. It's tough to top a day like that.

On the other hand, I've obviously got a bit of work to do before June.

My date with destiny

Okay, that's probably just a little dramatic, but hey, it got you to read didn't it?

June 16, 2007. Tellico Plains, Tennessee. The Cherohala Challenge. My goal? 7 hours or better.

Now that it's in writing, I'm committed. (Heck, I've even been known to write down, as goals, stuff that I've already done, just to have accomplishments written down...so take that for what it's worth).

My rollers are calling me..."...come let us hurt you, we'll make you strong, we'll make you efficient."

That's nice, but I'm really just hoping you'll make me faster. Because if I'm going to finish CC in under 7, I'm going to have to fly on the 40 miles before the climbing starts, and still have strength left for the other 75 miles.

Training in earnest starts yesterday.

A Most Dangerous Christmas Gift

Rollers.

My mother gave me, for Christmas, a gift card to Performancebike.com and I spent it buying rollers. Since I chose what I spent it for, I can't blame the end result on her, and that's okay, because I'll happily give her (and my wife who chipped in the balance that the card didn't cover) the credit when my balance is top notch and my spin as smooth and efficient as a RR engine.

Yeah, that's a bit over the top, but you know what I mean.

In the interim however, there's this problem of learning to ride them properly. Once I got the rollers assembled, I threw my bike on and gave them a try. Ooops! I knew what to expect, and yet, I was still surprised to find myself sideways within one half second. Using the beam support post in the garage, I was able to spend 5 minutes (dressed in jeans and a t-shirt) trying to get the feel of them. It didn't happen, and I was no closer to riding without holding onto support than I was before I got on.

The next day I decided to give it another try, this time following a Saturday club ride. I got home put the bike up on the rollers and immediately was hugging that support post with both arms as I began to shoot straight off the side. So maybe trying to learn rollers after being fatigued isn't such a good idea either.

Monday morning seemed cold and wet-ish outside...the perfect day to learn to ride my new rollers! I set them up, this time in a doorway, put a water bottle on my bike (prematurely feeling a bit cocky that I was going to need that fluid after mastering this new skill), and mounted up.

Boom! Left shoulder straight into the door jamb. But I'm still up and turning the cranks. Slam! Right shoulder bumps the other side of the door opening, and richocets me straight back over to that left side again, which is still smarting from the bump it received 1.5 seconds ago.

So I swallowed my pride and decided to start over, this time holding on with one hand until I could ride relatively straight. This was mildly successful at first...but I was still moving around too much, so I concentrated on smoothing out my pedal stroke. This brought a much quicker improvement and emboldened, I let go of the door jamb to put both hands on the bars. This also was accomplished with the bike only moving to the edge of the rollers, and not off of them completely.

Now I was feeling really smug and decided to try for that water bottle.

I should have been wearing a helmet, because it wasn't my shoulder that struck the door jamb this time. But...I kept upright and got things back under control. At this point, I'd been riding about 5 minutes. Leaving the water alone, I decided that I'd do 30 minutes and just concentrate on spinning smoothly and looking ahead instead of down. I made it through the rest of the ride with only one further incident and came away feeling pretty good, and looking forward to the next opportunity to spend some time with my new toy. A busy schedule kept Tuesday out of the mix, yesterday I opted to ride to work and back, taking advantage of the good weather. But today is drizzly and cold. The perfect weather to spend the evening with a Tour DVD and my bike.

I can't wait to get home.