Searching For Hills and Some History

I’ll try to keep this short, but yesterday I went for my long ride of the week with a 40 miler out to Fort Ben. I was in search of hills, and in Indianapolis the bluffs along the White River and Fall Creek provide some opportunities, although you have to specifically search for these “climbs.” As the Strava track depicts, I made several detours to track down certain hills. Thanks to Strava, I have been able to zero in on hills with the highest elevation gain for my rides. Only problem is I’m not sure how accurate the GPS track is on my phone. I think the tracking uses a library of topographical information to estimate the climb and is not as accurate as if I was using a dedicated Garmin (or other GPS unit) with an altimeter. Sometimes I feel like I climb endless hills only to arrive home find that Strava says I climbed all of 900 feet. Times like these I feel jealous of my fellow riders from southern Indiana who only have to walk out their front doors to find hilly country.

On the way back home I swung over by Crown Hill Cemetery, which I frequent quite often due to it being less than one mile from my home and possessing a few hills.  While there I did some hill repeats on Crown Hill proper, which depending on your route up, has between 80 and 90 feet of elevation gain.

For anyone visiting Indianapolis I would recommend swinging by Crown Hill. It is one of the largest cemeteries in the country and provides a quiet park like atmosphere, complete with herds of deer, a large network of nicely paved roads for riding or walking, and art installations throughout. Plus, the view from the top of Crown Hill is fantastic:

And not to be morbid, but the gentleman whose tomb possesses this prime real estate in Indianapolis is Indiana’s own, author and poet James Whitcomb Riley.

You can’t see it from this photo, but there are usually several bouquets of flowers as well as dozens of pennies left on the grave. I think the pennies relate to how a statue of Riley constructed in his hometown of Greenfield was paid for by donations of pennies from school children all over the United States.

History lesson aside, this week’s weather is supposed to turn to crap rather quickly with rain and then snow for the next few days. Today is beautiful, but thanks to the ride yesterday, my commutes will be easy. I’m eyeing early Saturday for a possible snow ride at Fort Ben. I haven’t been on a trail in a few weeks and this road and greenway riding is getting a little old. Although I will be careful with any ice covered log crossings…

Pot Luck Post: Many Topics, No Clear Purpose

This past week’s training was somewhat abbreviated as I was out of town Friday and Saturday visiting family. I did do some intervals earlier it the week and got out to do some very solid hill repeats on Thursday night. Saturday I went for a two mile run which turned out to be a bad idea as I was aching badly afterwards. Aside from that, on Sunday I went for a long ride out to the eastside via the Fall Creek Trail, with some emphasis on long race pace riding intervals and then some hill out at Skiles Test Park. On the way back I tossed in a nice sand pit thanks to a recent flood.

Lots of sand. And a blurry picture. Stupid Droid camera.

I should have taken the line to the left. Instead I took the road less traveled and tried to pioneer my own line which got me about ¾ of the way through before I lost momentum. Not long after the sand pit I’m presented with this very informative sign which I always get a kick out of:

Whew. Glad for the heads up as I would have totally missed that looming overpass.

In other news my primary bike received a new rear shifter in time for Sunday’s ride. Installation was easy and a few turns of the barrel adjuster and I was off. When I returned home I found that one of my dogs had expressed his displeasure with SRAM by tearing apart the enclosed directions booklet and spreading the remains all around the living room. My fault for leaving the box on the edge of the coffee table. Strange how the box itself was ignored...

                                                            The guilty one is on the left.

In race news, it appears the Sub9 Death March will be out this year as my partner from last year will not be throwing his helmet into the ring for this iteration.  I don’t think he had a good time riding to Callahan Cemetery last year (the only checkpoint that is only accessible by trail) and I doubt it being a mandatory stop this year would do much to encourage an encore of 2012. I’m toying with the idea of going down and just riding it solo as training for the Barry Roubaix. I know several teams who are going so it might be cool to hang out afterwards. I would even be willing to pay a partial entry fee for access to the Qdoba burrito bar!

Lastly, I can add to my list of new items. Last week I jumped into the world of carbon. No, not a new frame. Instead a carbon fork:

I had been toying with the idea of a rigid fork for my 29er for some time, considering the amount of greenway and bike trail riding I do during the winter. Might save the Reba from breaking down at some point if it could stay in my warm basement during those rides. I had my eye on the Niner carbon forks, since they are just downright good looking. However, their price tag was not. I’d also been looking at the White Brothers Rock Solid, which seemed to have decent reviews, and in build photos looked good. I found one online last week for a very low price, and jumped on it. It seems to be about half the weight of the Reba so the front end of the bike should be lighter. I plan to use this for training and the BR. I think it might also work on some of the smoother local singletrack such as Town Run or Logansport’s France Park. I could also use it for any cyclocross races I happen to find myself in.

Bike Bucket Panniers for All

 

This post is nothing but a shameless plug, although it is for a good cause. I’m a member of a local bicycle advocacy group called IndyCog, a fact I likely have mentioned before.

Well, one of my roles with this group is to run their Bike Bucket Program, which involves building and selling panniers made from re-purposed Kitty Litter buckets.  This program is dual purposed: first, we use it as community outreach to encourage people to use their bikes to commute to work or to run every day errands. Second, it is a fundraising effort for IndyCog, although I tend to think purpose #1 usually seems to take priority over #2.  

 

Anyway, I hold workshops throughout the year where a person can build their own set of buckets. I also sell pre-made sets of buckets at various local events and on the IndyCog website. As luck would have it, the first workshop of 2013 will take place this coming Saturday at A1 Cylcery on the west side of Indianapolis. Full details may be found here.

While perhaps somewhat odd looking, the buckets are actually quite durable and functional. They attach securely via rubber covered j-hooks and a bungee retaining cable to a rear bike rack. I have been using my set for three years with no problems through all sorts of weather and have carried everything from my work clothes to files for work.  A friend of mine actually used his for several bike packing trips. Yellow not your color? Well take heart, we also have green.

Bike Bucket Panniers in action: This morning on the Monon Trail.

I’m not sure where the people who glance at this blog live, but if you are in the Indy area Saturday and would like to get into bike commuting while supporting cycling in Indianapolis, Bike Buckets are a great first step.

New Bike Related Stuff

Training isn’t exactly exciting right now since it is difficult to make ride reports interesting when all the rides involve long stretches of pavement. Unless you count as interesting the perfectly good clothing iron that was sitting neatly in the middle of a bike path I was on today. But aside from the random household appliances, the only noteworthy event has been the recent purchase of some cycling related items courtesy of a few Christmas gift cards.

First up, is an insulated water bottle from Polar Bottles. After several weeks of my water bottles freezing 30 minutes into a ride, I decided to try an insulated bottle from REI. Of course, as soon as I purchase this, the temps range above freezing. We’ll see how it works later. 

Second are a few Hammer Heed packets.

I received a sample of Melon flavor Heed at the Gravel Grovel in November. Not willing to risk a adding a new nutrition element just before the race, I stowed it away for later. I’m somewhat old fashioned in that I usually just use Gatorade in addition to water on my rides and races. However, I had read some decent things about Heed, namely its cramp preventing ability. I finally tried the sample last week during a 35 mile training ride over to Fort Ben to see how my body handled it. If there were….negative results, I was still close enough to home that I could limp back or call my wife for a quick rescue. Luckily I experienced no ill effects. The flavor of the Heed is not all that great, as it tastes rather thin (if that makes sense). And, like all energy supplements I have used, I can’t really tell if there if there is any impact on my performance. However, the ride went very well and I felt good and stayed strong throughout the ride, including hill repeats, so that justified the purchase of two more flavors, Strawberry and Lemon Lime, also from REI.

Lastly is the really fun stuff: a new set of Continental Cyclocross tires for the Barry Roubaix. And yes, that is the actual name of the tire. Not terribly inventive!

 

My recent Youtube recon of the BR suggests that aside from some dirt and sand double track, the majority of the course is fairly well packed dirt and gravel road.  I had been using Kenda Kross Supremes (700 x 35) for my attempts at cyclocross, as well as at the Gravel Grovel. I've also been using these for some pavement riding of late.

 

As I mentioned in my Gravel Grovel race report, I was not happy with how the Kendas worked on chunky gravel and I missed the volume of my normal mountain tires. For the BR I wanted something that was smaller than my 2.1 inch Maxxis Ignitor tire, and larger than the Kendas, while still providing decent grip if needed.

Online reviews suggested these are fairly decent rolling tires, despite their knobs. I got a set of 700 x 42 (1.6 inch width) which I see as a compromise size between the Kendas and my normal tires. Hopefully the 42's will provide some volume to smooth out any gravel and be able to handle the BR sand and dirt doubletrack.  The tires look good and might also work for any MTB short track racing I do this year as well.

Outside the new items, training is going well. My ride yesterday started  with me feeling downright crappy, but after about 10 miles I started feeling much stronger (maybe the Heed?) and it turned into a decent training ride. Unfortunately during my hill repeats in Crown Hill Cemetery (including the 90 foot Crown Hill climb, which for Indy is quite high) my rear shifter broke. The front still worked and I was in a mid-range gear so I was able to still finish the workout, but the verdict on the shifter (an X-7) is still out. If I can’t fix it I will try to find a replacement (probably X-9) on ebay.

Long rambling post about January training

While perhaps wordy, and lacking photos, a training update post is upon us. My first month of “official” training is complete and I have a few reflections. Initially I would note that my fitness seems fairly good from the start. After the Gravel Grovel in November I didn’t do much, besides a “for fun” cross race in early December and then I just commuted and went on few recreational trail rides. However, I feel like I still have a decent base to work with.

With that being said, most of January was spent on easy riding during the week on my commutes. I tried to extend the rides as many times as possible in order to get in extra base miles. The past week and a half I started doing some supplementary evening rides after I get home around the Butler campus and Canal Towpath to get some hill repeats in and just add some additional riding. On the weekends I have been doing longer endurance rides, usually Saturday, with higher intensity efforts interspersed throughout, on both pavement and trail. Sunday is a more relaxed and shorter ride.

I have gone on several snow trail rides in the past week two weeks. While the mileage has been limited, (usually 10-15 miles max.) the time investment has been fairly high, and sometimes I wonder if I could get more benefit from riding a trainer. However, the trail rides have not been easy, as each one has been done in the snow or extremely low temperatures. A ride I went on Martin Luther King Day morning (see last post), while only 11 miles, was done during heavy snow fall, on a snow covered trail, at 13 degrees, and on my single speed (actually all recent trail/snow rides have been on the single speed). All of these factors combined for a very hard work out and I felt appropriately beat afterwards. Although note to self, be careful crossing off camber logs which are covered in snow. I had a less than graceful ending on one log.

This last week I also experimented with some intervals on my commute. My commute is either by bike lane or greenways and I’d like to perfect a system of getting an efficient workout in during this time since this accounts for a good chunk of my on bike time.  I plan on experimenting with different workouts to see what works best for these rides. One of my most used routes home is the Monon Trail, a local greenway. The trail has several long sections without road crossings that I thought would work for intervals (plus the part I ride home has little to no bike or pedestrian traffic). I wanted to experiment with 2 minute intervals and found it worked well, although once I got up to speed the time needed to traverse the sections were more in the range of 1 minute. I did four of these and felt quite tired afterwards and actually ached a bit in the morning. Sources I have read suggest longer intervals first, with a build up to the shorter, punchier intervals. Another greenway route I use which is slightly longer than the Monon allows me to do longer intervals but even these will not be longer than 2-3 minutes. Unfortunately, with the compromises due to work I think my commute intervals will have to be of the rather short variety, while I will try to include  some higher intensity periods to my endurance rides on the weekends.

Anyway, entering February, I am looking to further my endurance, while also incorporating more speed workouts in my commutes, at least twice a week.

In terms of races/rides, I’m still on the fence for the Sub 9 Death March. My partner from last year is not doing it this time around which leaves me a bit high and dry. Still, it would be a good prep ride for the Barry Roubaix so I am considering riding it solo for training/fun purposes, and taking the DQ. Plus the ride has increased the number of checkpoints which make the whole route planning aspect that much more fun. Otherwise, the first race is the BR. I think I will be able to handle the Michigan terrain well enough, but the registration numbers are currently pushing 2,500. This is going to be one crowded field.