The radar looked clear and the Weather Channel had dropped the chance of rain down to the single digits, so we left the ride on for 8am Sunday. We had a wonderful 47-mile route planned. I was a little skeptical about the mileage as we’d ridden 51 the day before and my legs were feeling it a little bit, though they did get into the game around four miles in.
Two miles after that, it started spritzing on us. It looked bad, but almost like it would at least stop raining. The rain intensified and soaked us over the next eight miles.
After six of those, I called it and asked to head home. My wife, much to my surprise, hesitated but relented. We stopped at the church in Lennon to use the cycling club’s portable facilities in the parking lot and I fired down a banana. The pastor, a cycling friend, came out to greet us in the misting rain.
The rain stopped when he was almost to us, all the way at the back of the parking lot… and, let’s just say, attitudes warmed with the weather. It hadn’t been a cold, nasty rain. It was a warm, gentle drenching. After the stop we rolled out and talk of a ride extension commenced. I was ready to go home and said so, but I could hear the disappointment in my wife’s voice as she accepted going home, so I offered a compromise. The compromise added about eight miles and would have us rolling home on her favorite stretch of road with a nice tailwind.
We’d taken it easy for much of the ride, eating headwind and rain the whole way, so neither of us was in much of a hurry. Until we got to Ray Road. My wife’s favorite stretch of road. It was all hands on deck, and we hit the afterburner. The tailwind push was awesome and we put the power down as the Garmin alarm for the segment hit the screen. Within the first mile I was looking down at the computer to see how far we had left. I was giving it everything I had, grinding on the pedals for every bit of speed I could get out of the Rolf wheels. We were up by six seconds on our PR but the KOM was slipping at a rate of a few seconds per mile. I was so tempted to ease up, but I wanted my wife to get the best time she could, so I kept it going, trying to balance effort with the amount of time we had left.
We crossed the segment finish down just 16 seconds from the KOM of 28-mph with a 26.5-mph effort and a third place overall finish. My wife got the QOM.
The last five miles were easy, too. I was hammered from the effort and I didn’t have any more “want to”. We’d gone from a 16-mph average to a 17.2 in just a few miles and I didn’t see any reason to take that number up.
My wife and I have done it all. Road pedals (Look), mountain pedals (Shimano)… well, not all, but we’ve ridden quite a few different sets of pedals. Last year I picked up two pair of cheap knock-off pedals designed after Shimano’s SPDs… and they were light. Almost as light as the top grade Shimano XTR mountain bike pedals. And they were just $26 a pair. Unfortunately, as bike rules go, you can have it cheap, light, and sturdy. Now, pick two.
Our tandem is astonishingly light and exceptionally sturdy. Cheap, it most definitely was not…
I picked cheap and light. Sturdy they were not. Mine has developed a click to it that is due to the spindle being loose and I wanted to replace them before something really bad started happening.
For the next set of pedals, we were sticking with the SPDs from Shimano, and two-sided for easy clipping in on the tandem, but I also wanted something with a frame in the event we were at a campsite and wanted to ride to get ice cream or to the campground store in normal street shoes (it happens shockingly a lot – well, maybe not so shockingly). Mountain bike pedals are the best for tandem cycling, as far as I’m concerned. Not as sexy as road bike pedals, but the recessed cleats and double-sided pedals make clipping in together a snap. Literally.
I went to work and almost went big for the XT set… the XTR pedals, at $180 a set, were simply too much… but I opted for the base PD-ME700 base line pedal. Just a 100 gram weight penalty and half the price at just $65 a pair.
My wife, in the face of a 50+ mile planned ride yesterday, said no to the new pedals, but I slapped my set on without hesitation… and they’re beautiful. The extra platform distributes the force applied to the pedals fantastically. I was astonishingly fresh after 45-miles, enough I would have been happy had we another 15 or 20-miles to go (though I was thankful when we were on the homestretch with 51-miles).
I set my wife’s crank up after the ride. She needs to feel the improvement. I know she’ll be over the moon as I am about the new pedals.
So, there you have it. Whether you opt to save a third of a pound on the XT model, or go whole hog and blow almost $400 on two pair to save another whopping 100 grams for the XTRs, the PD-line of mountain bike pedals for the tandem are absolutely fantastic. I’ll take the extra weight for that amount of comfort, any day of the week and twice on Sunday. They’re that good.
I’m tired of the cycling helmet debate that isn’t a debate.
The first thing I’ll say is, in my own opinion, a cycling helmet should never be the business of a government agency, local, state, or in the case of the US federal, or otherwise. Seems like governments have enough trouble balancing a checkbook, lately. They don’t need any more confusion than that right now.
The second thing I’ll say is, in my own humble opinion, a helmet isn’t necessarily for every ride. If I’m out riding the back dirt roads with my daughter, or by myself, I think I can do without – or at least I did when I bounced better as a younger man. A person has to take that into account.
Now, with that out of the way, if you missed it, Gordon Ramsey loves cycling and had a crash with a car. After which, as one would expect, he heaped quite a bit of praise on his Specialized Prevail helmet for saving his life. A helmet has saved the melons of five or six of my friends, one of them six or seven times. I love cycling helmets for that.
As one would assume, whenever someone thanks a helmet for saving their melon, the comments go nuts. And this is what I hate about the BS in the helmet debates:
“You’re likely to find data that says wearing a helmet makes riders seem less human to drivers. You’re also likely to find a study or two saying that a helmet-wearing cyclist might have a higher rate of falls than non-wearers. Time and again, vocal cyclists say that requiring a helmet while riding a bicycle actively dissuades folks from riding a bicycle rather than driving a car.”
This isn’t wrong, but it is. And the way this gets framed, as if helmets contribute to accidents is simply poorly thought out. Helmets are worn by people who ride in riskier situations, so naturally helmet use and accidents correlate. To explain, for the cheap seats; I ride in a group, a manner that is inherently dangerous, so I wear a helmet. Riding in a peloton, without a helmet, is crazy. It is crazy because if one person makes a little mistake, I may not be able to react fast enough to not crash. Therefore, a helmet is a wise option between my skull and the ground. By the way, a skull has the consistency and resistance of a cantaloupe or watermelon when it hits the ground. Now, maybe you’re okay with the odds you won’t fall when you’re out for a daily jaunt around the block.
The chance you’re crashing on that daily around the block is slim to nil. The chance of a crash in a peloton of cyclists sprinting for a City Limits sign is considerably greater. Worse, the damage inflicted in a crash at 30 to 35-mph would be significantly worse without a helmet betwixt one’s melon and the asphalt. And that’s the point of a helmet.
Now, here’s the crazy part; I’d ride the same way if helmets were outlawed. Riding with friends is simply too much fun. I wonder what the data would say if nobody was allowed to wear a helmet in a club ride scenario! Let’s just say fatalities and vegetative state accidents for the helmetless would go up exponentially.
Which is why we wear helmets when we ride with friends… and most times. It’s like a Second Amendment discussion. Better to have one and not need it, than need one and not have it. I’d carry a cop everywhere I went, but they’re so damned heavy!
Every year, the struggle is the same, though this year has been a little tougher/longer than usual; the first heatwave of the summer shows up, and I struggle for a day or two to get acclimatized. There’s nothing new this year, it just that it took a little longer. Longer than I’d like.
I was tempted to just keep it indoors yesterday. It was hot, yet again, and we were going to have a family dinner… so I had an excuse. I wanted to get over the heat, though – I’ve historically done very well in hot weather, so I readied my Trek and headed out the front door.
It threatened to rain in the first few miles, but cleared up and the sun came back out to bake me as I rode along… but I didn’t suffer like I had the last three days. I wasn’t fast by any stretch, but I felt more like me; like I wanted more miles. Sadly, no time for that, so I marched it home, took a shower and got dinner ready.
Dinner was lovely, then some euchre with our daughter and her boyfriend, followed by glorious sleep. I crashed hard about 8:30 and by 9 I was looking at my eyelids. It was fantastic.
I’ve got some maintenance things to take care of this weekend on the tandem, but all is looking well for our first road trip of the year, coming up… and the camper is amazing and ready to go!
If you follow me on Strava, you’ve noticed a pattern in how I’m posting my short weekday afternoon rides of late… it’s all about the heat. As Walter Matthau’s “Max” sang in Grumpy Old Men, “We’re havin’ a heat wave, a tropical heat wave”. It wasn’t really tropical, though. Until today, the humidity was down around 60%. Not quite the “dry heat” they talk about in Arizona, but it isn’t horribly oppressive, either.
I’ve gone out three times in a row with temps over 90° (32 C) when I walk out the door. I feel good and strong for about six or seven miles, usually carrying near a 20-mph average, but it goes downhill quickly after that. I should be cleaning my bike with a squeegee when I get back.
This is a yearly thing, though usually there’s a little more time involved this year than in the past. Normally, it’ll take a couple of days and I’m good to go. Unfortunately, I’m not as skinny as I once was and the extra BBQ is taking a toll. That hasn’t deterred me, though. I’m still going out every day and will continue to until I break through this.
My wife and I had a great weekend on the tandem. Two rides, 98-miles, and averages at 18.5-mph with big groups each day. We were in-sync to a point I can’t remember having such an enjoyable time on the tandem in a big group. It was perfect weather, too. Mid-50s to start, then warming into the low 70s. Two 50-mile rides in a row, at that pace, was a big deal for us.
We have a little bit of a noise problem, however. I’ve also wanted to reroute the cables since we brought the bike home, and being Father’s Day and having all of my normal chores done, I took to tinkering. I don’t know if it’ll be any quieter, but the shifting is vastly improved. The tech at the shop who built our tandem, crossed the cables on the down tube rather than the bottom tube. The cables just barely touched the paint, so I’d had helicopter tape between the cables and the frame since day one… and I just didn’t like looking at that tape anymore.
Then for the heat acclimatization; it’s nasty hot this week. In the 90s. My wife had no desire to ride yesterday, so when I got home, I got the bike ready and went out for a short ride to get used to the heat. I didn’t get used to the heat. Holy moly, it was hot. I cleaned up after, and we ate dinner… and that led me to truing my first wheel.
My wife had noticed a serious wobble in the rear wheel while I was working on the cables Sunday, and that had to be tended to. In true Rolf fashion, we’d been cruising around without problem for a couple of weeks on two broken spokes. I swear, those wheels are bomb-proof. I love Rolf wheels. Anyway, when the local shop closed, the owner gave me one of his truing stands. It’s a nice one. The Pro Park Tool stand weighs at least 20 pounds, and I bought a spoke kit for each of the tandem wheelsets when we bought the bike, so fixing a couple of broken spokes didn’t even require a trip to the bike shop.
I replaced the spokes and trued the wheel on my new stand. Let me just tell you, working on a stand is a whole lot easier than trying to true a wheel using the brake calipers as a guide!
*I should add, I am the opposite of “good” at truing wheels.
We rolled out to a perfect morning. A mild breeze, abundant sunshine, cool but glorious temperature (54 and rising [12 C])… and we had a bit of an adventure in the works; a route I can’t remember ever having done. We had a decent group of eight for the start that ballooned to eleven before we were six miles in.
Jess and I were in a zone. We were about perfectly matched on the tandem. We’ve done well for quite some time, but this was some kind of next-level cycling. We were laughing and ribbing friends, along with taking some ribbing ourselves, and simply having an awesome time of it.
And that’s when I got to thinking about how fortunate we are to have the group of friends we do. We crunched out the miles and had our laughs, from start to finish it was as close to a perfect cycling experience as I can remember. The pace wasn’t too hot or cool. The quips were fast and witty. And the weather, well into perfect room temperature just a few miles into the ride, was perfect.
I’ve done a lot of fun things, from golf to running, but cycling with friends is simply good times and noodle salad. Literally, as good as it gets. I don’t think I stopped smiling all day long.
When I got home from work yesterday, I was faced with a dilemma; I really wanted to ride but I knew my legs were smoked. I’d hammered them over the last week, and as nice as it was outside, I needed to rest them. My wife was working – from home, but working away. Well, being indoors simply wasn’t going to do. Then I looked over at my wife’s Assenmacher… it needed some cleaning. In fact, I was pretty sure it needed some drivetrain cleaning and lubing as well. She doesn’t ride the bike much, but it’d been a while. Then I thought about my Venge. That hadn’t gotten a good once-over since last fall. Same idea, though; I don’t ride it much. I had my “something to do”.
I pulled my stand out and set it in the driveway in the sunlight. I grabbed my bag of tools and spare parts and went to work… on my wife’s bike, first. See, I find I can lose steam when cleaning the bikes, so if I start with hers first, she’s guaranteed to get my full attention. The Assenmacher’s drivetrain was a little gunky, so a good cleaning and it was sparkling again. I wiped everything down and got the blue-glitter nail polish out (it’s almost a perfect match) and touched up a few places where the paint was chipped. I took the wheels off, cleaned the cassette, put the bike back together and it was done. It looked fantastic.
Then it was time to turn my attention to the Venge. I thought it’d be a quick job, until I got into it. The poor thing was a mess. Wheels off, chain off, upside down in the grass, I cleaned everything. Derailleurs, chain rings, the works. Then the chain, with an old toothbrush. It was gunky. Nasty, really. I couldn’t believe I let my Venge get that gnarly. I took my time and went to it… I made it look new again.
So, some interesting things I learned over cleaning the bikes this past few days (I cleaned the Trek and the tandem up days ago after damp to wet rides)
Shimano Crank on the Trek 5200; I loosened the snugging nut for the crank arm and the crank now spins super-freely after watching a clip about it on YouTube… I used to think it had to be a little more snug to keep it from creaking. I was mistaken (Shimano crankset).
Washing my wife’s Assenmacher, I couldn’t help but recognize the excellence in the Campagnolo Record 10-sp. components. They really are amazing. I spent extra time brightening them up.
My Specialized Venge was dirty. I can’t let it get like that, ever again.
CeramicSpeed bearings; my Venge’s crank bearings are CeramicSpeed. Must have been when the shop put the new bearings in for the bottom bracket (the originals were fried), they put in the good bearings (no wonder that cost so much!). With a simple spin of the crank when I don’t have a chain on there, it’ll go around several dozen times before slowing to a stop. It’s quite amazing.
The tandem is always clean and well taken care of. I’m glad to have brought the rest of the road bikes along to the party.
The weather has stabilized and the major rain is a thing of the past, even though we’re expecting storms this afternoon/evening. The weekend looks to be amazing and I’ve already got just shy of 60-miles in for the week. I’ve been on a bike every day since last Friday… 140-miles since my last day off.
These are my happy days of summer. I can relax a little bit about what I’m eating. As long as the calories out is greater than in, I’ll be good (though in my current state, I should like to keep my intake as low as possible so I can go into winter… erm… a lot thinner.
Last night’s ride was pure awesome. My wife and I took almost 50 minutes to go 12-1/2 miles.
I still love going fast. I really dig it. There’s something about a fun ride on the tandem slow enough we can have a conversation, though!
And so, with the weather turning into summer… Here. We. Go.
Jess and I were both laughing about how nervous we were before the ride. The Tennis season is done. Swimming finished just a week before tennis started. Our senior is graduated and the open house is in the rear view. Our Tuesday nights are free at last. Now, technically, we could have gone out last Tuesday, but it was hot. We didn’t want our first Tuesday night to be in a sauna – we already knew we were way out of shape, so we rode from home. Around 5:00, the bike was ready and we were loading up my wife’s SUV. We were at the start a little after 5:30.
After saying hi to friends I hadn’t seen for quite some time, we got ready and got to the line to roll. And just like that, we were hitting it. It was a mess at the start, but once we let the A Group go because one of ours had dropped, everything smoothed out and we had a fantastic ride. On the flat and downhills, my wife and I were awesome. On the ups, though, our lack of fitness showed. We took our time and did our best to catch up after the climbs. I learned a new way to climb on the tandem that appears might help us out substantially, but it’ll take some more testing… a lot more testing before I’ll write about it here.
We rolled across the finish line, the group intact, at just over a 20-mph average, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I told Jess, after we finished, that it felt like home being out on a Tuesday again.
We shook hands and caught up with friends after the ride, then went to find some food. We shared our thoughts and insights and talked about how the ride was while we ate our dinner. It was great to be back. I really missed it.
And I woke up in desperate need of a Dual Action Advil/Tylenol. Oh my.
Fit Recovery 