Another Weekend Recap
Goddamn power went out this morning which isn't a big deal but I was never able to get a good cup of coffee. I had to resort to the hand grinder which is fine but then boiling the water on the stove and something wasn't right. Water temperature or grind size got all fucked up and both cups were so bad I just tossed them. Yeah I'm a coffee elitist. So I'm sitting on the train and I have to piss like mad and I didn't even drink any caffeine to get here and now I'm starting to get hungry.
Moving on. It seems I have soooo many more readers than I previously thought (5 instead of 2?) so I guess I'll have to make this blog a hair more entertaining while still leaving some semblance of a record as to how my riding went in the event I do actually want to look back and learn something from it. Like they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to have large breasted women flash you all day.
I suppose I need more pictures too because people like pictures. Note how society these days does poorly when there are no pictures. Instruction manuals are a perfect example. In fact it's so bad now that this sample more or less summarizes the state of our collective attention span:
On a related note that's the kind of crap instruction the GPS unit came with. You can tell it's just one of the developers who got coerced into writing it. I know since I've written the same exact kind of garbage in the past for technical manuals. It couldn't be any less helpful, really. Anyway I hope to cover the Garmin Edge 205 details in tomorrow's post. Today is the weekend recap.
Saturday went fairly well, coming in at the expected 85 miles in about 5:25 of rolling time. Total vertical was more than expected at 7200. It doesn't get much more hilly than that. Here's the link and profile. Really dig the elevation profile for this one:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2974953
Got out the door with no problem and was actually early to Albert's house. Rolled over to Chester and stopped at a Quick Check while I pissed behind the Chester Mall. Got slightly lost going to Terren's house in Califon but I know the area and all road lead to Rome out there so we made it and found an insane hill in the process. Thankfully we went down it.
Terren wasn't there or was sleeping or hiding or maybe walking the dogs. It was like 8:15 in the morning and both cars were there but no sign of him. I just stole some atrocious tasting water from the hose, pissed behind the shed, and took off. That's all well and good anyway since more people time would have led to more stopping time, something I piled up at Albert's house since I was early and he wasn't ready yet.
We climbed up out of Califon and took a hard right on Califon-Cokesbury Road which is a bitch of a climb. That's when Albert suggested my 42-25 climbing gear might be a bit aggressive, or idiotic may have been the word, I forget. My pushing big gears on the climbs may be part of why I cramp. I have a mental block with using the small chain ring which is probably silly. Shortly after, my left hamstring started twitching as we climbed up and out of Lebanon towards the reservoir.
So I need to pick a bit of a lighter gear and start spinning up these hills and see how that goes. I tried it for the rest of the ride and it seemed fine. On the far side of Round Valley there's a brutal climb on Stanton Mountain Road and I lumbered up it without any more cramp warnings, so that's good.
After that we rolled through Whitehouse Station and stopped again for water. We were probably both starting to dehydrate by then since neither of us were pissing anymore and we were probably sweating less. Well I know Albert was since he was dripping sweat when we had started and wasn't by the time we got to the general store.
After that it was flat through the horse fields of Lamington which sucks the life out of you when the sun is that bright. I threw in one last climb through The Hills which I did to see how my legs would feel after a long ride. All in all felt really good considering. Having said that I was happy to be done and ideas of tacking on miles just to hit 6 hours or 100 miles seemed dumbed than climbing in a 42-25.
As much as riding solo sucks on a big ride like that I don't think it's possible to get my own pace riding with anyone, at least not Albert. He blazes up every hill as fast as he can which just sets the wrong pace for what I'm trying to do. The idea is to get done with the ride and not be grateful to be done. So in that respect the ride was a bit of a failure because if I couldn't have kept riding much longer Saturday. It's impossible to "ride your own ride" when you go with someone else and thus hard to really dial in everything you need to. So I think my next biggie will be solo.
When I got home I was 4 pounds off my start weight and eating was slightly difficult. So I was dehydrated for sure. It took about 4 hours of down time to snap out of it then I was fine. I drank 6 water bottles in 6 hours of real time which apparently isn't enough. I need to creep up to the 32 oz per hour realm on my rides I think.
Dropped the mountain bike off at the shop Saturday and after I listed everything that needs to be looked at there was nothing left of the bike. Well, my handlebars and grips are fine. Other than that just about everything needs attention. Hey I ride hard these days. That's why I bought that bike right?
Sunday was a shorter ride to the in-laws to get the car which I left there Saturday. There were 2 big fat hills of note with the last momma being Union Hill Rd. Link and elevation profile. The last big spike is Union Hill Rd:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2987750
And that's the weekend. This post is way too long already so I'll cut it off now. I don't want to kill any of my new readers with boredom.
Moving on. It seems I have soooo many more readers than I previously thought (5 instead of 2?) so I guess I'll have to make this blog a hair more entertaining while still leaving some semblance of a record as to how my riding went in the event I do actually want to look back and learn something from it. Like they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to have large breasted women flash you all day.
I suppose I need more pictures too because people like pictures. Note how society these days does poorly when there are no pictures. Instruction manuals are a perfect example. In fact it's so bad now that this sample more or less summarizes the state of our collective attention span:
On a related note that's the kind of crap instruction the GPS unit came with. You can tell it's just one of the developers who got coerced into writing it. I know since I've written the same exact kind of garbage in the past for technical manuals. It couldn't be any less helpful, really. Anyway I hope to cover the Garmin Edge 205 details in tomorrow's post. Today is the weekend recap.
Saturday went fairly well, coming in at the expected 85 miles in about 5:25 of rolling time. Total vertical was more than expected at 7200. It doesn't get much more hilly than that. Here's the link and profile. Really dig the elevation profile for this one:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2974953
Got out the door with no problem and was actually early to Albert's house. Rolled over to Chester and stopped at a Quick Check while I pissed behind the Chester Mall. Got slightly lost going to Terren's house in Califon but I know the area and all road lead to Rome out there so we made it and found an insane hill in the process. Thankfully we went down it.
Terren wasn't there or was sleeping or hiding or maybe walking the dogs. It was like 8:15 in the morning and both cars were there but no sign of him. I just stole some atrocious tasting water from the hose, pissed behind the shed, and took off. That's all well and good anyway since more people time would have led to more stopping time, something I piled up at Albert's house since I was early and he wasn't ready yet.
We climbed up out of Califon and took a hard right on Califon-Cokesbury Road which is a bitch of a climb. That's when Albert suggested my 42-25 climbing gear might be a bit aggressive, or idiotic may have been the word, I forget. My pushing big gears on the climbs may be part of why I cramp. I have a mental block with using the small chain ring which is probably silly. Shortly after, my left hamstring started twitching as we climbed up and out of Lebanon towards the reservoir.
So I need to pick a bit of a lighter gear and start spinning up these hills and see how that goes. I tried it for the rest of the ride and it seemed fine. On the far side of Round Valley there's a brutal climb on Stanton Mountain Road and I lumbered up it without any more cramp warnings, so that's good.
After that we rolled through Whitehouse Station and stopped again for water. We were probably both starting to dehydrate by then since neither of us were pissing anymore and we were probably sweating less. Well I know Albert was since he was dripping sweat when we had started and wasn't by the time we got to the general store.
After that it was flat through the horse fields of Lamington which sucks the life out of you when the sun is that bright. I threw in one last climb through The Hills which I did to see how my legs would feel after a long ride. All in all felt really good considering. Having said that I was happy to be done and ideas of tacking on miles just to hit 6 hours or 100 miles seemed dumbed than climbing in a 42-25.
As much as riding solo sucks on a big ride like that I don't think it's possible to get my own pace riding with anyone, at least not Albert. He blazes up every hill as fast as he can which just sets the wrong pace for what I'm trying to do. The idea is to get done with the ride and not be grateful to be done. So in that respect the ride was a bit of a failure because if I couldn't have kept riding much longer Saturday. It's impossible to "ride your own ride" when you go with someone else and thus hard to really dial in everything you need to. So I think my next biggie will be solo.
When I got home I was 4 pounds off my start weight and eating was slightly difficult. So I was dehydrated for sure. It took about 4 hours of down time to snap out of it then I was fine. I drank 6 water bottles in 6 hours of real time which apparently isn't enough. I need to creep up to the 32 oz per hour realm on my rides I think.
Dropped the mountain bike off at the shop Saturday and after I listed everything that needs to be looked at there was nothing left of the bike. Well, my handlebars and grips are fine. Other than that just about everything needs attention. Hey I ride hard these days. That's why I bought that bike right?
Sunday was a shorter ride to the in-laws to get the car which I left there Saturday. There were 2 big fat hills of note with the last momma being Union Hill Rd. Link and elevation profile. The last big spike is Union Hill Rd:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2987750
And that's the weekend. This post is way too long already so I'll cut it off now. I don't want to kill any of my new readers with boredom.
1 Comments:
At 2:51 PM,
Unknown said…
Sorry Norm, I was still asleep. I was expecting you around 9. All the same, I was surprised the dogs didn't hear you knocking, that probably would have gotten me up.
Thanks for the homemade Gatorade reply. I made a truly awful concoction yesterday (I ran out of the powdered stuff I took with me back from the days of Normandy Rd).
Where do you get powdered Gatorade? My crappy supermarket doesn't carry it.
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