Stronger, Fitter, Faster

Stronger

Twelve years behind a desk does things to your body. For the first time in ten years I've started hitting a gym 3x a week but that doesn't mean I can muster too many pushups just yet.

Fitter

Lose a serious amount of weight. This is definitely key to making everything else work, so I'll be focusing on dropping pounds to get not only into a healthy range of BMI, but to also increase my endurance and fitness.

NAHBS 2009

I really wanted to go to Indy this weekend to catch the North American Handmade Bike Show. I attended last year in Portland and was amazed by the craftsmanship and design.

This year I'll be watching the NAHBS tag on flickr closely and remotely living vicariously through the photographs. One of these days I'll finally plunk down some money for a brilliantly painted and equipped rando/touring rig like this one pictured here.

Posted on February 27, 2009 in gadgets/bikes | Comments (0)

Tour of California

A few thoughts about the Tour of California:

• I'm amazed that the weather in Oregon is better than the weather in Northern California. I did a three hour ride on Sunday and got a bit of road spray on me, but no rain, while the ToC racers were drenched all day on the way to Santa Rosa. I rode yesterday under cloudy skies while the racers got drenched. I think it's about the same temp today where I live as where they are racing.
• The OUCH team pictured above is sponsored by tire maker Maxxis, but they don't make tubular tires, so the entire team runs clinchers with Maxxis treads (note the aluminum rims on both riders). Clincher rims are usually a couple hundred grams heavier than their tubular equivalents and in a sport where every ounce and advantage matters, I'm kind of surprised they don't run a competitor's tubular tires rebranded as Maxxis.
• The Versus TV coverage has been pretty bad. Given that the network is sort of a catch-all for oddball sports, cycling is pretty far down the list of important sports to the station. Monday's slower rainy stage was only about 2/3 done when my TiVo'd time slot was up (had to read the results online instead of watching them), so I adjusted recordings to add an extra hour to the Versus time slot for a stage. Yesterday they cut off the last 30-40minutes of racing (including an exciting bunch sprint ending) to show a hockey game, which my TiVo dutifully recorded an hour of. The online live coverage is really good, so that makes it better, but it sucks that they can't bring an exciting race to the airwaves properly.

Posted on February 18, 2009 in racing | Comments (0)

Tearing and rebuilding

Getting back into the gym this week after a month long hiatus, I'm reminded of the last time I went to a gym regularly back in the late 90s. After a few months of dutifully lifting weights three times a week, I hit a lull in my enthusiasm for it because I felt like I was merely tearing my muscles up every other day, and recuperating when I wasn't working out. I was always sore and never felt satisfied or good about the work I was doing. I did very monotonous and repetitive routines and simply added weight each week to measure my progress.

Luckily this time around I have a trainer and he changes things up week to week and we barely focus on weight (I don't actually even know how much I'm lifting or pushing most times -- we just talk in relative terms of harder or easier). The difference between having a trainer varying workouts versus following a list exactly every day in the gym is night and day. I'm satisfyingly exhausted at the end of each workout and while I might be a bit sore during the in between days (not so sore I can't get hours of riding in), it's nothing like the robotic routine of tear, rebuild, tear, rebuild.

I never thought I'd say it, but I actually like working out now.

Posted on February 14, 2009 in gym | Comments (0)

The dangers of being a roadie

When I was younger, the biggest danger of riding a bike was mostly about what I felt like attempting to do ("he's gonna jump it!!!") or if something happened while riding (like a crank arm breaking in the middle of a trick), but as I get older and ride mostly on public roads, the biggest danger is quickly becoming cars and trucks I share the road with.

Of course, it's not all cars and all trucks, it's mostly the one in ten thousand assholes that feel bicycles should not be traveling on roads, should not be in the flow of traffic, and should not cause them to slow down while they pass you. It happens every spring when the normally vacant farm roads I ride on become crowded on the first sunny weekend. You'll get someone yelling as they pass, or purposely making their truck backfire just as they go by. Sometimes, you get something even worse.

Sunday was something worse. A friend and I were at the tail end of a 90 minute easy ride, and we were riding side-by-side on an uncrowded road outside of town. A few people had passed that day, but this time it was out of the blue, and very close. Usually that's just a sign of a driver being inconsiderate and considering this was not only a full sized truck, but a dually my first thought was he was making a simple mistake concerning how wide the back end of his truck was relative to us riding.

The horn blast dispelled any notions it was an oversight or mistake. What seemed inconsiderate just turned into something aggressive and unruly. My first reaction to things like this is to throw up a hand to say "Hey! What the hell, dude?!" and my friend's first reaction was to throw his hand up, and motion it backwards. This set the driver off as we saw him slam on his brakes. Jeez, what the hell is this guy doing. Immediately, the reverse lights came on and a three ton dually truck is barreling towards us on a public road, backwards towards us. What. The. Fuck. Not wanting to get run over, I moved off to the side of the road and my friend did the same, riding right up to the side of the truck.

What follows was a flurry of swearing from the driver: "Motherfuckers... get out of my way.... motherfucking... didn't you see me coming... motherfucking faggots!" while my friend is yelling "Do you know what the law is? Do you know what the law is?" and after a few seconds I get my wits and start taking my phone out to shoot a picture of his license plate but after the "faggots!" hangs in the air, he slams the truck into drive and storms off.

When I got home 15 minutes later I threw on some sweats and drove around town to see if I could spot the truck and get the plate number, but after hitting the local hardware, farm, and grocery stores, I came up empty.

It sucks that this is supposed to become normal, and has become somewhat normal, happening once or twice a year both when I ride alone and in groups. Given that I'm riding thousands of miles on bike lane-free farm roads, there's no way to know when the next jerk is going to brush too close next to me, blaring the horn and who knows what this guy will do the next time he encounters some cyclists. It sucks that this happens to everyone, all the way up to Lance Armstrong (who has been hit by drivers at least a couple times).

My wife has always bugged me to get an ID bracelet for these kinds of worst-case scenarios. I find the idea kind of macabre, basically making my own toe tag for when I die, but I'll probably end up getting one soon.

Posted on February 9, 2009 in stories | Comments (2)

Pairing a Garmin 705 with a powertap ant+sport hub

After a few weeks of waiting, my ant+sport upgrade for a 2008 Powertap SL hub came in and Seth and I applied the patch and got the green light. I couldn't seem to pair it with my Garmin 705 bike computer though, until I followed these steps:

• Check that your Garmin has the latest firmware version (2.6 currently)
• Update your bike profile by pressing Menu > Settings > Profile & Zones > Bike Profile > Check the "Power Box" button
• To pair the PowerTap to the Garmin, press Menu > Settings > ANT+Sport > Accessories > Select "Yes" for Power Meter Present? Spin the wheel for at least 30 seconds just as you do this to ensure the hub is transmitting.
• Select "Restart Scan" which will take you back to the ANT+Sport screen under Accessories where a "Power Meter Detected" message will be displayed (eventually, after 20-30 seconds) when the Garmin detects the PowerTap.

The secret seemed to be clicking off the power box button and making sure the back wheel was spinning (hold the front brake, take the rear off the ground and give it a good tug on the cranks). Before I did this, the "Restart Scan" button seemed to do nothing but kick me back to the ant+sport menu.

I took a quick spin and the data looks pretty accurate. I'll now have good deep data for my rides and I'm looking forward to seeing how they play out.

Posted on February 4, 2009 in gadgets/bikes | Comments (0)

Riding in Kona, Hawaii

Riding the queen k highway, originally uploaded by mathowie.

About a year ago I started planning a winter vacation, with two weeks in Hawaii. Originally, I never intended to do much riding while there, but as the date drew closer, I started to do a little research. It all started with Lance Armstrong getting on twitter a couple months ago, then endlessly gushing about riding on the big island near Kona. He posted notes and photos from rides and a few weeks later Bike Hugger was there as well and published a handy guide to riding there.

Weighing the options

Bringing my own bike over seemed like an expensive option, with a bike box going for about $300 and airlines charging anywhere from $50-100 each way to transport a bike. Shipping a bike to the big island was about $200 each way, and shops generally wanted about $50 to reassemble and repack on each end.

Finally I looked into renting bikes but talked to a handful of shops and didn't think they'd have much to offer. A few days into the trip my wife noticed I was lethargic and complaining of stiff muscles and suggested checking for bike rentals again to stretch out and get some exercise. 

Thanks to a recommendation from Byron at Bikehugger, I ended up at Bike Works, which had a wonderful carbon/dura-ace Cannondale in 63cm that fit better than my personal Cervelo (it had a nice long head tube that positioned the bars just perfectly). The staff were responsive, helpful, and knowledgeable. Other shops I interacted with either didn't give much information over email or seemed kind of wishy-washy. I ended up renting the bike for a full week and it came in under $250 for this high-end bike (two friends that joined me on the trip got a nice high end Cervelo and a mid-range Cannondale).

Where to ride

Since I stayed along Alii Drive, the sort of main drag of Kailua-Kona, I started all my rides there, but quickly ended up riding up and down the Queen K highway, which happens to be the same route that Ironman Triatheletes take every fall, so it's smooth, safe, and fast (when you're not riding into a stiff headwind). I frequently saw other cyclists and about half of them were riding pretty crazy ~$10k time trial machines. I typically rode some hills along Alii Dr., then I'd go for 30-60min north and ride back home. The first day the wind wasn't too bad, but subsequent rides were often pushing only 13mph into the wind on the way to the Kona Airport, then cruising in the 25-27mph range all the way home. I didn't get a chance to climb any volcanoes nor did I get to hit the big Saturday morning group ride (my main server was hacked just as I was waking up to get ready for the ride), but overall, I'd say for riding a road bike in Hawaii, the big island area around Kona has plenty to offer, and it doesn't hurt that it was sunny and 80F every single day I was there for two weeks.

Posted on February 2, 2009 in travel | Comments (1)

Acheiving a milestone

Thanks to the short nature of the racing I'll be doing later this year (every race is less than an hour) I thankfully won't be expected to do the Lance Armstrong style 6-8 hour daily training rides all Spring. But early on my coach said I would have to eventually work up to a regular midweek 3 hour training ride.

It sounds pretty tame as I've done 6-8 hour rides on Cycle Oregon and in the Portland Century, but it's actually pretty hard to do a 45-50 mile ride by yourself near your home with regularity. It requires the following things to go right:

• Safe: off major highways, with as little traffic as possible
• Nearby: I could ride to Portland and halfway back, but if something went wrong, it'd take an hour to get a ride home at least
• Not boring: Doing a ten mile loop near your home five times is ridiculously boring
• Refuelling spot: ideally, a small store to get water/snacks would be handy

Yesterday I rode into town to run an errand, headed back out on my normal ~32 mile loop, but I added a 10 mile hillclimb loop. By the end, it was 47 miles and took three hours to complete, but I was never more than 10-15 miles from my house if anything went wrong. Additionally, I forgot to grab my tube/CO₂/lever repair bag and I didn't take any food with me after eating a big breakfast. I dressed warmly since it was about 42F and my two bottles (one water, one tea) lasted for the full trip. It was the longest solo ride I've done and I (luckily) made it back with zero tools, food, or support (the refueling spot I use in the summer is closed for winter).

Overall, I'm happy to have conquered this milestone in just the first two weeks of the year -- it's something I was worried about planning and wondering if I could do it week after week by myself, but now that I've done it, it'll be mentally much easier to do in the future.

Posted on January 15, 2009 in training | Comments (7)

"Being a bike racer in Oregon is like being a mouse in a cheese factory"

The organization that puts together all the bike racing in Oregon (OBRA) had their annual awards banquet the other night and played this four minute video showing highlights from mountain bike, track, criterium, cyclocross, and road races over the course of 2008.

Something to watch for: around 2:30 is one of the most spectacular crashes I've ever seen in a velodrome. Someone goes down near the top and their rear wheel disc becomes a ramp for the person crashing behind them.

OBRA Banquet Video 2008 from Pat Gerke on Vimeo.

Posted on January 12, 2009 in oregon | Comments (4)

One of the last photos of my flatland bike

Thanksgiving 2006, a friend stopped by to do an interview of me and took some shots around the house, but when she spotted my old trick bike she insisted I pull it out and do something, and this was about the most photographically impressive thing I could think to try.

Posted on January 9, 2009 | Comments (0)

Real stories versus "real" stories

I'm about to go on vacation and I've been picking up a bunch of cycling books, each about an epic journey somewhere. Last night I cheated a bit and started reading one impressive sounding book before the vacation even started and I quickly realized they're hard to read. Depending on the rider-slash-writer, the recounting of a day's ride can include several pages of wandering thoughts about the protagonist's role in the world before ever divulging details of actual honest-to-goodness ride information.

Maybe I'm a literalist, but the most interesting stories from the road are light on flowery details of personal psychology explorations in a riders head and instead tell you about the road conditions, how bad the wind was, how many miles you covered in how many hours, and who you met along the ride.

I realized I might just be leaving a stack of cycling journey books behind when I always end up riveted to my seat while reading tour diaries at a place like the Crazy Guy On A Bike community. If you don't know anyone using that system, try looking for your hometown or current trip in progress from the front page. I found a random guy that rode from the Oregon coast, through my town, and then all the way to New Hampshire over the course of several months with daily updates, photos, and stories.

I had no idea who the person was before I started reading but after a few entries I wished I could have bought him dinner when he passed through my town or rode along with him for a day. Oh, and I started reading his tour story right before bed and it wasn't until he was halfway across Ohio in the stories that I noticed it was 2am and I should really get to sleep.

Posted on January 8, 2009 in stories | Comments (2)

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