Category Archives: Cycling

January: a perfect time to ride outside

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I took my bike into work this week. I’ve only done one ride, but I have another planned for tomorrow. And by “planned,” I mean “not planned at all.” But that is for after I write this blog post.

The roads up in Salmon Creek are great. Lots of country roads with little or no traffic. The drivers seem polite — far from the homicidal maniacs I seem to encounter when I ride near my house in Clackamas county.

I found one little hill, but no sustained climbs. But I’ll keep searching. The Vancouver Bike Club seems to have several routes up in my area there, so there’s bound to be something. And if my climbing resolution doesn’t work out, well, I guess I’ll survive.

But it was so nice to ride outside! I have done maybe five outdoor training rides since I took the job at ITI. The rest of my training has been on a spin bike in a dark room, or on the trainer in the garage. While there’s a certain amount of suffering that helps my racing, it really started to lose its appeal. Now the trick will be putting together a route that can handle training intensities, but I think that should be easy in the lightly populated areas I saw on my Monday ride.

The other thing That has opened up in terms of training is that Chris and I are racing to 175 lbs. We both weigh about the same: between 195 and 200. It’s exciting and it has revealed to me that I am a fairly competitive person.

For example, I started thinking about where I carry most of my weight: my upper body. I have a gut to be sure, but I have flabby arms and a lot of fat on my chest and back. Yet my training plan was focused on my cycling needs. “Was.”

I think I am now going to emphasize, in addition to my hard riding (more on that later), push-ups, pull-ups, core, and a bit of swimming. The push-ups will be the big change: I am going to try to really squeeze them in in the morning and evening along with all the other stuff I do. When I was in ROTC, I improved my push-up score quickly with relatively short workouts in my dorm. It was just a matter of doing them. No space required. Tonight I just stripped off my dress shirt and knocked out 5 sets of 10 push-ups.

The pull ups will mostly be geared to keep my shoulders healthy. I already have started focusing on core and balance work at the gym.

Finding time to swim will be a challenge, though. I am assuming I won’t get many weekend rides. I am hoping to try to get a gym workout on the weekend if I take Lo to the daycare there. But I might need to let the New Year’s Resolution rush subside.

But honestly, if I can do three lunch rides, two gym workouts, pushups in the off hours, and eat a bit lighter, I will be so far ahead of the game.

And I’ll crush Chris.

Short Track Mountain Bike: Training for Cyclocross

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I’ve been riding Short Track Mountain Bike the last several weeks to train for ‘cross. I figured it’d be a good way to squeeze the competitive gland, get in a hard workout, and improve my bike handling. It has been all that.

The first race was awful. The course has a lot of loose dirt on it, much like the CCX course at Sherwood that I disliked so much. And my balance was crazy — not left and right balance, but fore and aft. I’ve discovered recently how important it is to think as much about weighting yourself front and back in the corners. Also, the course was super rutted, and I stupidly ran my tires with too much pressure. I didn’t rattle my teeth out, but I did get 58th out of 70. Ouch.

Since then, it’s gotten a little better each week. My placings have gone:

  • 58
  • 50
  • 42
  • 34

I’ve learned to push as hard as I dare early on, because my bike handling gets more confident as the race goes on. And also, the first lap is impossible to make up any time. I’ve learned to trust the bike a little more, and that running my tires at 50 PSI won’t cause an instant pinch flat (but will reduce the fatigue in my arms and jaw). Next year I might invest in either a mountain bike, or maybe at least some fatter tires. Ha!

Anyway, tonight is the last night. I’m sure it’ll be competitive, and I don’t know if I’ll improve this last night because I’m still sore from a workout I did last week. But it’s been a blast, and I feel totally ready for ‘cross season to start.

Cyclocross, season 1

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Just finished with the weekend I wanted when I first considered cyclocross: Halloween weekend. And it did not disappoint.

Mud, cowbells, cheering, beer, friends.

I raced pretty bad both days, but Saturday I was in the middle of a cold. Can’t recommend that — it was like breathing through a straw.

Sunday I felt better and I raced better, if a bit over-cautious. I want to work on my cornering in the next two weeks — those were the places that had me losing time.

Anyway. We hung out with some new friends, got muddy, got a little drunk, picked up a few new scars, and had a blast.

Hooky

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Played hooky from work a while back to take a long ride. Was one of my best days ever.

Sunny and hot. Went up and over Turner and Mountain roads, then had my first battle with Pete’s Mountain road. Hard. Steep. Plus I was running very low on water, and all the mega-mansions up there have gates. So no illicit tapping of the garden faucet for me.

Anyway, it was abou a five hour ride. Epic. Hilly. Hot. I’m still slightly sunburned on my arm. It’s a scar I’ll wear with pleasure.

Since then, I haven’t ridden much. But I have been swimming. That has been marvelous as well, if only because Portland has been in the middle of a Global Warming inspired heat wave. And our AC is dead.

If there’s one thing I need to work back into the rotation, it’s hitting the gym. My shoulders and back have been bothering me, and the cure is quite obvious.

But I have one more day of swimming ahead of me: tonight, I’m swimming up at Klineline Pond in Vancouver. My first open water swim in a while. With luck, it’ll be fun. Without any luck at all, it should be nice and cool!

Migration and Another Attempt

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I migrated the old blog over to WordPress from Blogger. Nothing against Blogger, but I really like my WordPress iPhone app. And what I say about training is not terribly verbose, most of the time.

Amanda and I have been swimming for the past two months or so. Maybe even a little more. It’s been great to swim, and while I can’t say I’ve lost any weight, it’s made me feel a little better about things.

I’ve also been doing the occasional trip to the gym. Mostly I’ve been doing that to keep my shoulders from being injured from all the swimming. It seems to’ve worked thus far.

Today, I got back on my bike for the first time in a while. I may try to commute by bike a few times in the next few weeks. We’ll see.

Three things have been going really poorly lately. My food choices are attrocious. I’ve been tossing and turning at night way more than in the past. And work’s been stressful. Possibly more stressful than normal. I’m going to try to get the food thing on track this week too — little changes mostly — and hope that the work thing works itself out.

As for the sleep problems? I don’t know what I can do. Probably my first step should be to cut waaaay the hell back on caffeine. I’ll start there today and see how it goes. Maybe I’ll try the doctor at the end of the month if things don’t sort themselves out.

Yeah. That should work out REALLY well. I’ll make three major lifestyle changes in one week. I feel EXTREMELY confident that they’ll all stick. Ha!

Check-in with Mike

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Mike, my cycling coach, dropped me a line last night, asking how things were going. Here’s my reply:

1. Yep, I registered for the Harvest Century last night. I’m in.

2. I didn’t know a few of the exercises, even after looking them up. Are they in the training videos on your site? Specifically the

  • Medicine Ball Extension/Flexion
  • Floor / Physioball T
  • The Triangle
  • Active standing Psoas Stretch

I think the reason I was so sore after the demo workout was because I didn’t get myself well warmed up. Since then, I’ve been doing a better warm-up and I have not been (very) sore from the exercises.

3. I am feeling OK. I had a great, long ride Saturday and follwed it up Sunday with… almost nothing. I let myself get so overcommtted to other things Sunday that I only got an hour in on the trainer last night. I am one of those unfortunate people who only seems to learn by making mistakes, so I guess I learned that I need to do a better job of scheduling myself and my social commitments.

4. Energy and recovery both seem to be doing OK. We’ll see how this week goes leading up to the Century. I felt AMAZING on Saturday, but if you look at the workouts I did last week, it was likely because I didn’t do any hard efforts other than off-the-bike work.

5. Diet. Ugh. I have been eating OK, but not really keeping track. Too many bad lunches, though. Most breakfasts and dinners are fairly healthy, if the portions are maybe out of whack. I’ll try to start tracking that better this week, again.

-Thom

Finding a Cycling Team: Location, Location, Location

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Rode with my cycling coach Mike Manning yesterday at lunch from downtown Portland. At one point, he asked if I’d gone to any of the Meet the Team rides through OBRA. Being unattached or without a team in cycling is fine if you’re Lance. I’m clearly not, so Mike’s been gently pushing to get me with some people.

The “Meet the Team” rides start mostly downtown. But none of the regular team rides start remotely near our house in deep SE. And with just one car, I can’t monopolize it on the weekends to drive to Hillsboro or Beavertron or whereever. And unless I want to add 20 miles to every group ride I go on (I don’t), I’m out of luck.

A while back, I shot an email to the OBRA list. I got one semi-legit reply, which was for a vegan, organic triathlon team. Which is somewhat ironic because I’ve been considering getting back into the pool and focusing on triathlon to help strip off some upper-body weight.

Finding a team in cycling has been one of the most frustrating aspects of the sport. In swimming, which is my native sport, teams fall all over themselves to make new swimmers welcome. They encourage them to come out, try to be social, organize car pools, the whole shebang.

In cycling, the indifference to new members is shocking to me. You ask, and you get shrugs. You volunteer, and you get blown-off.

I had one outstanding experience when I first started with Veloshop, in that the Calver brothers (now with GSC United way the hell out in Beaverton) were some of the most welcoming, nice, encouraging people I’d ever met. They have a passion for the sport that completely infects new riders. But then, a few months later, the damn team kicked them off. I couldn’t even tell you why, because it was so bizarre.

Anyway, Mike off-handedly mentioned that he might put together a CycleOne kit to promote his cycling coach biz around the Portland area. I told him I’d wear it. And though it might not be a “team” in the strictest sense, I would certainly use it as an excuse to organize rides out here in SE.

Fitting training into a grown-up life

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It is funny how something like work and life can really kick your ass around. I had another great week of riding last week, but this week has been filled with one crazy surprise after another at work.Enough so that I’ve been distracted, and irritated. Worse, I have been off the bike except yesterday when Amanda and I toodled over to watch the Vaux swifts.

Ultimately, I came to some (hopefully) healthy resolutions about work. With at least a plan, it should make work-life more stable, or at least easier to not get whipped around and knocked off the bike.

One thing that gives me confidence is that I have a good cycling coach. I know that he is pulling for me, and that he will help me find a way to use cycling as a positive force in my life.

I sent him a whiny email, and he said replied along the lines of “Don’t beat yourself up. Get out there when you can and enjoy every pedal stroke and breath of fresh air.”

Great guy, that Mike Manning.

Sent from my iPhone