Three Unions and a Windsor 2008

The club held a ride today for the 4th of July. We did another variation of Three Unions and a Windsor.  This is a popular ride mostly through Carrol County. I have done it several times before and I think I do a different variation each time.

This was my 49th ride of the year, and I am over 200 miles ahead of my pace from last year. However, I am not riding as well. We did the same ride last year on the 4th. I was a bit slower this year, only averaging 14.2 mph for the 43+ miles and I did 15 mph last year.

YTD:

All the Hills That I can Handle

I only got in ten miles of riding last week due to family and work commitments as well as regular thunderstorms, so I was looking forward to today’s ride. I had originally planned to do this ride at the end of June, so I planned an early start of 8:30 AM to beat the heat. It turned out that even though the ride was much earlier in the month than originally planned, it still was not early enough to beat the heat. George’s computer was registering 99º F regularly on the second half of the ride.

George showed me this route a couple of years ago, but he has not lead the ride yet. He wouldn’t even need to write a cue sheet.  In a fit of desperation rather than inspiration, I named it Jefferson-Adamstown-Buckystown. I should have named it All the Hills That Mike Can Handle.

Colm, Doug, George, Jeff, Joyce, Martha, Ray, and I were ready to go at 8:20 AM, but we waited until 8:30 AM hoping a few more people might show up. When no one did, we took off and headed south on Ballenger Creek until we reached Capstine Road. We then turned back to the north on Capstine Road. This part of the ride has big loops to pile up a few miles while people warm up. Like we needed to warm up today. On Capstine we ran into Chuck who showed up a few minutes after we left and figured out how to run into us without chasing us. Chuck rides those roads regularly, and he knows his way around.

The group stayed pretty tightly packed until we started the climb on Jefferson Pike going into Jefferson. At this point  we spread out a bit. I pulled a Big Brown at the Belmont and watched the pack go by me.  Marlu Ridge went by uneventfully. We climbed up slowly, not appreciating the scenery fully, and then raced down the other side.

We stopped to regroup at Lily Pons and Park Mills and a young couple on some nice shiny new Jamis bikes stopped and asked us about the hill on Park Mills. We told them it was steep but manageable.  We left them thinking about and did not see them again until we were all sitting in front of the Flint Hill General Store at the top of the hill taking a refreshment break. It took them a long time to make it up the hill, but they seemed less bedraggled than we were when they did reach the top. Maybe those new bikes have a great-granny gear.

This ride always seems to fall apart at the end. The finish is close enough to town that many folks just head directly home instead of returning to the ride start. Last year we had people breaking off at several different points, and I lost track of who was still returning the start. We lost track of Chuck last year and only figured out he made it back when we discovered his truck was gone. This year I stayed at the back of pack, so if anyone had a breakdown I would know it.  Although Chuck and I did take a shortcut at the last mile, so we could avoid the last little hill. I had had enough of hills at that point, and it was getting hotter.

The temperatures were higher than ideal, but everyone seemed to handle them well. On the two mile ride home from the ride starting point, I was really starting to feel the sun roasting me. I am glad we finished when we did.

 

New Climbing Data from Mapmyride.com

I am leading a ride tomorrow that has three good size hills. It is challenging for some of the regular C riders from the club but doable, and that is the description I have had to fall back on. I have been interested in quantfiying it better for my own benefit at least, if not the rest of the club. I am one of the more numerically inclined members.

When I mapped on routeslip.com, the program reported that it had about 1900 ft of climbing over the 36 miles of the route, but none of the three climbs seemed to be more than 300 feet high.  It seemed odd that we would do 1000 feet of climbing when we felt we were on the flats.  The other two mapping services, gmap pedometer and mapmyride.com that I use do not report the total distance climbed.  However, I discovered today that mapmyride would dump a comma separated values file with distance and the elevation.

I read the data into a spreadsheet and wrote some functions to calculate the distance climbed and the distance descended. The points are 0.07 miles apart. The points along the map that I selected were not that close, so the program is collecting data along the route between my points. When I analyzed the data I found that I had climbed 1347 feet and I had descended 1367 feet. Since the ride ends back at the start the those two distances should be the same. Therefore there is a systematic uncertainity of at least 1% in the method. That is not too bad.

Big, Beautiful Ride

The club had a 67 mile ride today. They called it a metric century, but it is almost 5 longer than a metric century. I call it a fat metric. When I arrived at the start and saw who was there I was worried. He’s faster than me, she’s faster then me, he’s a bit faster than me, he’s a lot faster then me. I was worried that I would be lost in the dust by the 10 mile mark. It turned quite a bit different.

We started fairly slow. I guess everyone was just trying to loosen up. When we arrived at the first rest stop at 27.5 miles, I had averaged 13.7 mph riding in the middle of the pack. I had expected this group to be faster. When we arrived at the lunch stop at 35.7 miles, I was up to 14.1 mph. The riding had been fairly flat so far, but I knew that the rest of the ride was hillier. We made a third stop at the 54 mile point and I had a 14.5 mph average, and by the end my average was 14.6 mph.

I was pleased how it went overall. The weather was great. It was my longest ride of the year so far, and I did it at a healthy pace. I was tired at the end, but not in pain.

YTD: 956.2 miles

Ride of Silence

The Ride of Silence is an international memorial for cyclists who have been killed on the road. The Frederick Pedalers sponsors a ride in Frederick. I have missed the ride the last two years. I was out of town one year, and I went to the wrong start another year. Tonight I made it to the ride.

The weather looked bad when I got home from work. I checked the radar and it looked like it would clear up for awhile before more rain would come through. The ride is relatively slow about 1-12 mph and short about 10 miles, so I was able to use my old bike. It is heavy and I am slower on it, but it is better in the rain.

It was sunny when we left although the road was wet. One problem was my brakes squeal when wet. We are trying to ride silently and I squealed at each stop. We made it about half way around our route and the weather changed. It got very dark and it drizzled for about the last three miles of the ride.

YTD: 850.0 miles

Serious Cycling Geekery

Being a physicist I have a tendency to try and measure things. I have been tracking the mileage that my car gets since I bought it in 2003. I keep logs of cycling mileage. I know how many times I ride a year and my average distance for each ride, my average speed etc. If I had a GPS based cycling computer I could use Ascent software to get really serious in analyzing my stats.

Weekend Riding

I did 66.6 miles this weekend after my shutout last weekend. I am glad I got out twice this weekend. I am planning to do a metric century next weekend, and my longest ride this year is 48 miles.

YTD: 840.2 miles

Another New Look at Familiar Territory

Many Frederick Pedaler rides go through one or more of the three covered bridges in Frederick County. Today’s ride like last week’s went through all three, but it still managed to hit roads I have not yet been on in my three years of riding with the Pedalers. I have never ridden Bennie Duncan Road, Hoover’s Mill Road, or Frushhour Road before, and we hit sections of Detour Road, Graceham Road, and Apples Church Road that I have never ridden. It was a very enjoyable 46 miles.

YTD: 721.2 miles

One Third of the Year Done

With the end of April, we move into the heart of the cycling season. I have had a fairly good start to the year with 647 miles on 26 rides. That is 349 miles ahead of my pace for last year and over 400 miles ahead of 2006. I had a very good April with 327 miles.

I ended the month with a club ride. Five of us went on Wednesday night and the strong riders decided we had not been doing enough hills. We did short and very steep as well as long and getting steeper as you go up. I had to dismount twice. My climbing needs work.

YTD: 651.1 miles

Lance Armstrong Theme for iGoogle

I use iGoogle for my home page and I discovered that Google has added a slew of new themes. I had been using an astronomy theme, but today I found a Lance Armstrong theme at http://www.google.com/help/ig/art/gallery.html.