Weekend ride reports...

[Kevan]

The Golden Apple ride was awesome! Temps at the start were brisk, out came the arm and leg warmers, vests, and full finger gloves for everyone. By 10am, the sun had burned off the fog that was hanging over the reservoirs and everyone started peeling. Absolutely a perfect day for hundreds, maybe even thousands to take over the roads; I could tell the car drivers' patience was being tested.

So our group headed out hard and we reached the 60 mile rest stop with an 18 mile average, it was everything I could do to take in the beautiful morning pounding over hill and dale. After the 60 miles the climbing really started getting repetitive and my legs were toast. Rather than face that 20 mile death march back to the start I went off course and found a corner my wife knew how to get to and had her sag my sorry butt home.

The nap was wonderful.

[C5 Snowboarder]

Did not ride my Legend..rode a golf cart instead, screwed up the starting hole with 3 over par, next hole 2 over par, settled down and finished 18 holes with 10 over par. To bad I got off to such a bad start - could have finshed high up on the tournament. :beer:

[Steevo]

Lurker Steevo here. I'll second that on the day. Beautiful weather and great riding. It was brisk at the beginning, but by mid morning the jacket was gone. Rode the fifty with friends from work who pushed me all day to maintain an average speed above my norm. Good, satisfied, tired feeling at the end. I also agree on the motorists' patience - it was tested - and they failed. Many were in way too much of a hurry on a Sunday morning. Oh well.

Also saw my first Hors Categorie in person today.

[dauwhe]

I love this time of year--it's finally much cooler. Nothing like a crisp fall day, bright sunshine, armwarmers and kneewarmers...

Saturday: 61 miles in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts, including the (in)famous East Hawley Road. It's about a 3.5 mile climb; I bet the last mile is always above 10%.

Sunday: 51 miles on Local "B" club ride, flat. It was fun riding at a more modest pace and stopping for ice cream! It's also fun to pull for ten miles at a stretch, rather than hanging on the back for dear life. And I got to chat with local forumite BHL, who rode with us halfway before going off in search of hills.

Dave

[Ginger]

Saturday:
80 mile ride with my buddy Dave (he lurks here)
WHERE'S MY GLOBAL WARMING. It was 42 degrees when we started at 8:30am, and it was 57 degrees when we got home at 4 (yes...slow..stopped for lunch and at a couple different bike shops) knickers, wool long sleeved underlayer, wool short sleeved jersey, and a windbreaker and wool socks. Unfortunately, short fingered gloves.


First we did some miles on a rail trail with crushed limestone, then we did dirt roads and two track. Stopped at a new to us bike shop and chatted with a couple guys who had ridden the trail as far as they could, but evidently it didn't go through. We'll see. Part of it is paved - dead grade /or a bit of a headwind. First stop Romeo and breakfast/lunch. Part of it is ready to be paved, so perhaps 8-10 miles covered with pea gravel....with a nifty freeway crossing. A few views from the trail:
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2068.jpg
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2070.jpg

I suspect they were blocking the trail so no one tried to ride their horse over the bridge. Cyclocross practice anyone?
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2062.jpg
and no, I don't think it's as stupid as climbing over a live train.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2065.jpg

We made it all the way to Richmond and took the obligatory "we made it!" pics then went and visited the local bike shop. Sadly the local coffee shop was closed.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2073.jpg
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2075.jpg

Then we rode dirt roads back.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2076.jpg
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2082.jpg
My quads and knees are SO sore.
Usually I leave my saddle alone during a ride like that. My back was giving me so much trouble and my foot was so numb (bulging discs on those nerves) that I stopped and leveled the saddle on the way back. Moved it back a mm or three too. ...and my back became immediately sore (I expected that) but my foot wasn't as numb and I felt better on the bike overall.
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2060.jpg
Forgot my endurolytes.


I don't think my legs have been sore from riding a bike (immediately) in years and years. Even doing interval workouts didn't make them sore like this.

and my face is windburned.
BOOOOO

but today I went out and did a hilly (for MI) 30
http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p139/Gingerbike/ToRichmondwithDave9_15_07/IMG_2089.jpg

[Fixed]

chees i wish i lived up north florida wall to wall asphalt temps in the 90's alot of bad drivers ..sound like a place to vacation?
cheers :beer:


rode 3 hours sat fixed
2 hours sun fixed all city riding

[Sandy]

Saturday- I rode to a club ride start. It was an easy short 24 miles. Prior to the ride I had decided to ride additional miles after the ride. I met Spectrum Bob and rode maybe 12 miles with him. Rode easy in a mostly flat area, but did pick a few steep hills to climb- Did total of 75 miles. Most that I have done in many years.

Sunday- Was going to do the club metric or 50 mile ride, but didn't want to stay away from my wife that long. So I did a relatively easy 36 mile ride. Unfortunately, I got my fatigued/drained feeling at about mile 25. Bummer. I was fine the last few rides.

This coming week, I have decided (just decided during this post) to start doing a bunch of hilly rides, so that I can improve. Smiley, anytime please. Time to either really improve or stagnate. I am down 30 pounds since the latter part of June and 45 from my outageous high of the year when I stopped cyling for 4 months.


Sandy

[Ginger]

Saturday- I rode to a club ride start. It was an easy short 24 miles. Prior to the ride I had decided to ride additional miles after the ride. I met Spectrum Bob and rode maybe 12 miles with him. Rode easy in a mostly flat area, but did pick a few steep hills to climb- Did total of 75 miles. Most that I have done in many years.

Sunday- Was going to do the club metric or 50 mile ride, but didn't want to stay away from my wife that long. So I did a relatively easy 36 mile ride. Unfortunately, I got my fatigued/drained feeling at about mile 25. Bummer. I was fine the last few rides.

This coming week, I have decided (just decided during this post) to start doing a bunch of hilly rides, so that I can improve. Smiley, anytime please. Time to either really improve or stagnate. I am down 30 pounds since the latter part of June and 45 from my outageous high of the year when I stopped cyling for 4 months.


Sandy
Yay Sandy! You've come such a long way kiddo!

[Elefantino]

Friday: The initial ride by my newly clipless wife, for whom I bought Speedplay light actions. Thirty miles of flats, mostly meandering, with me telling her to constantly clip out and in so she could practice.

Saturday: 34-mile club ride. Anne rode the first half with the girls. Me and a couple of boys took advantage of a slight tail wind to kick it up to 24-25. On the way back, I was cruising along with Anne and the girls when a two guys and a tandem and a couple of their racer friends gave me an "on your left" and whooshed past. I jumped their wheels and hung for a while but didn't have much left for 25 steady, so I stopped to look for my lung. Girls came up soon, laughing.

Cycling is humbling.

[BoulderGeek]

I have no one to ride with.

I took my first mountain bike ride in four months. Went up to Heil Ranch, off of Lefthand Canyon in Boulder. Had a nice pause at the top. But, then I had to bust a nut to move out of there when lightning and rain rolled in. Got drenched and muddy trying to make a break for lower elevations in the storm.

Kept true to my guns on not touching the front brake on the muddy and slick rocks. I had no helmet, because my lid is still with my travel bike in Lake Como (need to call about that). So, I was a bit concerned about splitting my skull open.

Cold, wet, muddy and draining. But, heck, it was good fun, and I had a car at the bottom to get me out of the storm.

I have a heavy mountain bike, but it sure tracks well. One might even say that it planes.

[Sandy]

Yay Sandy! You've come such a long way kiddo!

Thanks! You really are a supportive lady and I genuinely appreciate it. Now I have to lose 10 more pounds and start to really push myself going on hilly and faster rides.

Thanks again for your kindness.

You look great! Wondrful photos. I am sure that the first half of your 80 miles was much more difficult than my easy and relatively flat 75 miles!


Sandy

[justinf]

Trail riding at the National Whitewater Park outside of Charlotte today. 75 degrees and sunny, awesome trails, great company (2 ladyfriend triathlete/yogi types, and they rocked).

This place is amazing: http://www.usnwc.org/

I'm getting way into this rigid singlespeed 29er thing too. Fast, simple, challenging and filled with attitude. I like it.

[Tom]

You're doing great and are inspiring. Keep it going, man!

Sat: After the rain blew through, the winds blew in. Headed over to Mariaville for 50 up on the hills. It was clear and kind of warm and windy in the valley, it was raining still on the hills colder and very windy. It was a cool example of orographic rain - the wind hit the ridge, everything went up condensed and fell. Saw a very neat little turtle in the road - long neck, long pointy tail, little shell about 2-3 inches across. I helped him to the other side even though there was little traffic and he'd probably have been fine. I wished I had a camera because I would have liked to take some pics of where I ride. It was a beautiful day where it wasn't raining,

Sun.: Lake Desolation and back, NWS said I'd have a tail wind on the way home but they lied. I worked hard and went slow. It was a nice day, though. Yesterday it felt as if late summer had gone and early fall had arrived.

[stevep]

looks like a fun ride.
nice fall ride.]

[davids]

Let's see...

Last Sunday was the century. So, I slept in Monday. Tuesday it rained, for the first time in over a month. No ride.

Wednesday: I had an early meeting, so only had time for an hour-long loop. I rode solo, and did 18 miles in just over an hour, coming home along Quincy Shore Drive in rush-hour traffic. Still, a nice ride.

Thursday: I was the only one who showed up for our group ride. After conferring with myself, I did ride #3 out of our playbook - South on Truman Parkway, and then loops through the Blue Hills, totalling about 26 miles. As I climbed a road into the hills, I passed a woman out for her morning walk. It took a moment to register - She's a mom of a new classmate of my daughter's - I'd met her for the first time two nights earlier. Boston's just a big small town...

Saturday: I rode with a friend and his brother (up from CT for the Sox-Yankees game.) We waited for the rain to end, and finally got impatient and headed out in a drizzle. My friend flatted, his first with his new 7801 SL tubeless rims. We limped over to another friend's house, wet and cold, where four of us proceeded to break 3 tire irons trying to get the tire off. The bike went into a car, his brother and I back on our bikes, and we headed off to International Bike Center for some knowledgeable help. It turns out you have to break the bead (the tire seats very firmly) before levering the tire off. He then got a dose of Stan's sealant, and we were finally on our way.

The weather had improved, but we were running short of time. So, after meandering through our first hour on the road, we hammered for the second through Dedham and Dover. 31 miles door-to-door, and lots of drama.

Sunday: I joined a good friend who I hadn't ridden with in almost a year (I got to hear some new variations of the jokes about my purple-accented Love #3, these involving Sen. Craig) and 4-5 others, for a couple of relaxed hours south of Boston. It was clear and crisp and aside from a few bursts of speed, the pace was easy. A lovely 36 miles to end the week...

[1centaur]

"It turns out you have to break the bead (the tire seats very firmly) before levering the tire off."

For my non-mechanical mind, could you translate "break the bead" for me? My first thought was that getting a lever under the bead to lever it off would break the contact enough but you must mean something else.

[davids]

"It turns out you have to break the bead (the tire seats very firmly) before levering the tire off."

For my non-mechanical mind, could you translate "break the bead" for me? My first thought was that getting a lever under the bead to lever it off would break the contact enough but you must mean something else.
First, a caveat - This was described to me, I didn't do it myself.

It's my understanding that with the tubeless system there's an airtight bead with a rectangular cross-section, "deeper" than your normal clincher. In order to remove the tire from the rim, you need to first push the deeper bead out of its seat. Once it's unseated, you can work the edge of the tire over the rim.

[weisan]

Kinda rushed out the door on Friday noon to drive up to West Texas with a couple of friends, took us about 8 hours including a stopover for dinner at Fort Stockton, which is about an hour away from the final destination: Fort Davis. Checked into our hotel around 9 pm. Here's a daytime shot of where we stayed, Harvard Hotel at downtown Fort Davis.

http://alicehui.com/serotta/davis_mtns_2007/davis_mtns_2007_3.jpg

Sat. morning, went out and rode what some would consider "the most beautiful ride in Texas" -- the scenic loop, a 75-miles route that goes around the Davis Mountains. Word must have got out, there was a much larger turnout than last year, they estimated around 400 cyclists showed up for the supported ride. They ran out of food at a few of the rest stops. I always enjoyed out in the mountains but this year my climbing suffered big time because of enduring lower back pain, slogged through the ride nevertheless.
Get to try out the DKS on the 45mph descent from the McDonald Observatory. You want the honest goodness answer? I couldn't really tell a difference between the way it descends compared to the legend which I rode on the same route two years ago...maybe I never push it to its limit, when the speed hits above 45, my natural instinct of self-preservation would kick in, and I would sit up or hit the brakes to slow down. :D Anyhoo...that does not negate the fact that the Hors is a fun bike to ride on for this year, no complaints whatsoever...hey, I am out in the mountains, what more can I ask!?

I chose to concentrate more on the ride on Sat. so didn't bring the camera, and no pictures taken. The most fun I had was screamin' down a 5-mile stretch of gradual downhill trading pulls and drafts with my triathlete pal David maintaining speed above 35 mph throughout, I am pretty sure our power wattage was meagre aided largely by gravity, but that was a blast! I went out later in the afternoon and did another 20 miles of "recovery". On Sunday morning, there was an official 7-mile hillclimb that starts around 9 am. I rode from the hotel to the startpoint which added another 8 or 9 miles. I missed the start by about 2 minutes and did a bit of chasing before I caught up with my friend Rick. Boy, oh boy, talk' about complete engine room shutdown. I thought Saturday was bad, but Sunday was monumental. My back finally gave up, and I could hardly turn the cranks. Rick knew I am far better climber than he is but when he saw me riding alongside with him, buried my heads down and just barely hangin' on, he knew something is seriously wrong. I did not give up, determined to push through the pain and survive until the very end before I turned around and made the descent on my own back to the hotel. Whew! That was heck of a painful experience, probably foolish too. Anyway, I think the fact that I had a rough night on Friday was the start of all these. I don't sleep well outside of my own bed. Without proper sleep, the back would kill me the next day, kinda ignored the discomfort during the Sat. ride 'coz I don't want to miss the big show event and upon the second day, it was basically game over.

Oh well, it was a nice weekend trip, good company of friends, we had a lot of good theological discussion along the long drive, iron sharpenin' iron. encouraging one another. It was very profitable, everyone came out of it better equipped and strengthened in our faith.

I apologized for the lousy pics, these were taken with my phone camera on the way down the descent from the observatory. I have better ones taken in the last trip almost two years ago if anyone is interested (http://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?t=12563)

Here's the Hors Cat on its first maiden mountain descent
http://alicehui.com/serotta/davis_mtns_2007/davis_mtns_2007_2.jpg

And the road down to the foot
http://alicehui.com/serotta/davis_mtns_2007/davis_mtns_2007.jpg

Overall, rode about 130 miles on the weekend in perfect weather conditions (clear sky, low 80s) with about 8,000 feet of climbin' which is modest by any standards, but that's just the way it is here in Texas. :D

Cheers!

weisan

[Jack Brunk]

Furnace Creek 508 training both days. My legs are numb.

[SimonC]

Saturday - just around town running errands on and off the bike.

Sunday - rode from home in West London across town and out East into Essex. The weather was lovely - just warm enough for short sleeves, and sunny. Did a lovely 60-mile one way route on small country lanes before jumping on a train back into town to get back for lunch at my mother-in-law's. Rode home from there and the wind had picked up - had a vicious headwind all the way home.

[sspielman]

On saturday, the Forum's own Len J. and I headed out to do a century that was being held in our backyard. The remains of tropical storm Humberto had passed through overnight, and we started the ride in clouds, drizzle and on wet roads. As we headed out further on the peninsula, we could see blue skies over the Chesapeake headed our way...along with the ubiquitous wind...In the end it was the first autumn ride.....perfect cycling weather...and a chance to ride 100 miles in our own backyard with somebody else providing liquid and food along the way. By the way, anybody who hasn't had a chance to ride with Len needs to do so...this dude is "long term cycling"...