Short ride with strong E wind. I cut it short because I have a lot to do today. I felt OK. Some cloud cover. It was not too warm except for a mile or two coming west on Amboy at about wind speed with the sun fully out. The humidity is high for this place almost 50%.
Good ride. Almost no breeze and very modest temperatures. It makes it nice. I stopped for a "natural" break on Goodwin and a guy on a Yamaha 1200cc Super Tenere stopped to check on me. He was just coming back from a 6,000 mile ride and it made me long for a motorcycle again. Bike worked OK. After I turned off Adobe I was only overtaken by 2 motorcycles all the way to my airport rest stop. 62 Was pretty heavy though.
Good ride! Moderate temperatures. Pretty stiff (5-10) E wind to Goodwin where it became SE. New PR on climb from Airport Drive to Pinto Mountain Rd! Good even if wind assisted. My old personal best has stood for over a year and was no doubt a wind baby too. A decent E wind is rare on that stretch. Usually it is a hard slog uphill into a NW wind although lately there have been some very light E/SE days. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever better the old mark which I think was 12.3 MPH. I pushed it hard today but was not certain I had improved until I got home and uploaded the ride.
Visited with 2 guys from LA at the airport who were waiting to see if the glider bunch was going to show up so they could fly. One gave me a cold Pierre. Good!
Friday evening I sat down and adjusted the drive train as best as I could get it. I had doing a ride yesterday in mind but the wind was just too nasty all day. The bike shifted much better today and although it is not perfect it may be about as good as it will get given the component mix especially the cheap shifters.
I will get in perhaps 2 more rides before Robert picks me up Friday to drive to North Carolina. I still have not decided if I will take a bike or not. I would like to take the Dahon folder but I cannot afford to buy the proper $190 Samsonite suitcase to fly it home in at this time. I may take it and risk flying it home in a cardboard bike box.
I am eliminating the weather gadget from this blog because it always shows the current day and unless I delete it from older posts they stack up at the top of thee blog when it is displayed.
I cut it short today. Last night at 10:30 I discovered I had made the rare mistake of not taking my pills in the morning, including my BP med. I decided to skip the others and take the BP only. Not the best plan. It is a diuretic and I had to get up three times between 2:00 and 8:00 to pee big time. On the bright side my weight looked respectable when I got up at 8:00. The other result of taking the stuff at night seems to be that my heart did not want to go at all today. The rate was only 95 after 2 miles and it took 6 miles to get up into the 70% zone (105+). The only reason the average is 105 is that I lost the HR data (stepped too far from the bike for too long) at about the half way point where I took the above picture and it stayed up a bit the second half. I did not take this morning's BP pill until I got home from the ride. There was also an ugly 5-10 E wind for the duration.
As an aside, just barely visible through the bush to the right of the street sign pole in the picture above is Dick Dale's house. He is a 50's rock musician who is credited with being the father of Surf Music. His most famous piece if titled "Miserlou" and got a second wind when it was used in the movie "Pulp Fiction". He is in his 70s and still tours. His house and "Airpark" are labeled clearly on Google Maps.
Yesterday afternoon it started raining at 14:05. I noted the time and expected it to last the usual 15-20 minutes but it came down very hard for 45 minutes and continued to sprinkle for another 5-10 minutes. Some hail and intense wind came mixed with the rain part of the time. I have never seen hail here before. The temperature dropped from 101 to 91 in the first few minutes then after about 20 minutes stood at 81. It popped back to 85 almost a soon as the rain stopped. Pretty impressive!
The power went out after the rain and stayed out until 17:00. I expected to find some of the roads in bad shape today but apparently it only rained over the RV park. This is the reverse of what has often happened in the past when it has rained heavily 2-4 miles to the NE and hardly at all here.
This is the second rain which left water inside the trailer door. I do not know if it came from the door or around the swamp cooler. I could make a better baffle for the cooler. The one I have is made of Masonite and does not suffer water well. It swells up and warps and pulls away from the window. My floor is cheap composite material and does not handle water well either.
I put a new chain on the road bike and adjusted the drive train yesterday. I rode it around the park and it is shifting much better although I noticed today that there are still some issues with the front derailleur.
I passed a snake on the edge of the pavement on Valle Vista today. From his size and the "S" configuration he was lounging in I took him to be a sidewinder. I circled back to look and he was a cute pink snake of some variety, not a pit viper. It is just as well because I went by a few inches from his head and a frightened sidewinder might have taken a shot at my leg. I wonder if he was pink because he had just changed his skin?
Heat bothered me more than usual. Legs were mush perhaps from regular walking I have been doing. It will get better.
Yesterday morning I took the road and tour bikes outside and washed and Pedro'd and waxed the chain on both. They needed it badly. The tour bike had not been cleaned up since I started for Texas on it in February.
Bike is still not shifting well (note clean cassette and chain in pic). Chain came off big ring again. I am guessing that when I yanked it off during sprint last week it tweaked a few things, front and back. I messed with rear adjustment on the ride to little avail. I will try to motivate myself to sit down and adjust it all in the house. Adjusting one of these puppies is a series of compromises. You fix one issue and it causes another to pop up.
Got passed by 2 bikers today, both Marine types. First was a young guy in a Radio Shack jersey who blew by me going about 25 on a little plateau on 62 when I was going about 15. I think he is the same guy who blew my doors off on Amboy Road two days ago. By the time I topped the next little summit he was out of sight, dropping into town. The second was an older guy (50-60ish) who passed me on Utah. I have not seen any Marines out riding for quite awhile. It is a good thing. You never know when you might have to grab a bike and chase down an insurgent.
The wind was E going out Valley Vista and Amboy and definitely at the airport (see windsock pic). Once again when I topped the saddle into town the became NE. Strange.
I had no ambition for the first 15 miles today. It took 5 KM to get to 70% HR and I had to fight to keep it there at least to the airport. On the ride I decided my experiment with using metric units was making no sense. It only complicates something that could be relatively simple. At the Park HQ stop I decided to change the phone Strava app from metric to English. Bad idea! I assumed that since units are primarily a display item they could change on the fly. Unfortunately Strava did not agree and the change stopped the ride. I started the thing up again but when I got home I lost the second part of the ride due to some upload glitch although I did get the distance and average speed. Oh well. I also fat fingered my HRM and lost the stats for that too (twice, at the park then again at home). The numbers here are derived by adding the two rides together and using observed HRs and so on. It is mostly just vanity stuff anyway. I will live.
It was a decent morning. The temps were reasonable an there was some cloud cover which reduced the direct sunlight to some degree. The bike is shifting very badly. Had a mild tailwind back to town, always a good thing. I need to get off my duff and clean it up and tweak it.
A warm ride. Once again I had trouble getting myself moving and the heat bothered me more than usual. I may not have been sufficiently hydrated when I left home. On the positive side the wind was very mild and mostly from the north. All and all it is a beautiful day. The forecast is for 106 today. I registered 107 yesterday. The airport which I have on the blog is a bit higher and usually a bit cooler. The other option is the Marine Base which is a bit lower and out in the sand dunes and usually reading too high for my place.
The bike is not shifting well. Part of it is because the chain and all are filthy and I have been too lazy to clean it up and part of it seems to be that the new stand I keep the bike on may be messing with the rear shift cable housing in some way. I adjusted the stand so I can set the bike on it closer to the front which will hopefully prevent any further issues. I need to clean the drive train and and adjust the shifting and hope that takes care of it.
A decent morning ride. Very light N to NE breeze. Reasonable temps. What a difference physically from the ride Monday evening though. Monday I had my heart in the target zone inside of the first Km. Today it took 2 KM and 5-6 Km before I was able to comfortably hold it there. I am definitely a evening/night person. My oldest daughter tells me, "We all are!" and it seems true. Once I got going today it was not bad but I just did not have the moxie I had Monday. Of course I could be hungover from the pint of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Peppermint Crunch I ate yesterday afternoon.
HRM: I am impressed with how rapidly my heart function is improving in the few rides I have taken with the new HRM. The first couple of rides it was a chore to get to and hold 70% now 70 is no problem and I am often in the 80% range. Today I even went over into the 90% on two short hills. I am not sure what my "real" maximum heart rate is. I played with the tests given in the manual that came with the HRM and it seems to indicates numbers that are way beyond what my old ticker will do, 160-175 BPM. For now I am using the famous 220 minus one's age formula which conveniently gives me a max of 150. This gives: 70%=105, 80%=120 and 90%=135. Easy math. I have the HRM set to alarm below 105 and above 135. If I keep improving at the current rate I will have to bump the 135 up to 150. My buddy Doug routinely does rides at 165-185 BPM. He is 25 years younger than I and much more of an athlete. Supposedly the 70 to 80% range promotes fat metabolism and 80% aerobic condition. At the rate I am improving it will not be long before it will not be easy to stay below 80%.
Edit: I forgot to mention that I tried to do a sprint for the first time today. I was on Valley Vista on a mildly downhill stretch. I don't know if I had a tailwind but at least there was no headwind. I planned to try 30 seconds of all out effort in lieu of Lance's recommended 1 minute. I cranked it up and found I was on the wrong chain ring. When I tried to shift up I over shifted and the chain came off the outside of the big ring. That ended that. I stopped and put it back on and tried again. I held it for about 25 seconds. I did not register the speed or HR but I was huffing and puffing at the end. I will try more of this. I am out to improve my condition for touring and to lose some lard. So far so good.
Good ride! I felt good! I had a nice nap beforehand. Plenty of fluids. New front tire. No wind. Reasonable temperatures. The only problem is that somehow I stopped Strava when I put the phone back in my pocket after taking some pics at the airport so I only have Strave map and stats to the airport. I have pieced together the whole ride by combining Strava with my bike computer numbers.
I put a new front tire on today. I bought a pair about 2 years ago. I put one on the back and rode it until it blew out near Tara's house in LA a couple of days before Xmas last year. I went to the local Performance and got a very nice $40 house brand tire on sale for a bit over half price which I am still running. In the process of mounting the new tire today I pinched the new tube I put in Saturday. I put my last new long valve tube in and patched an old one for a backup. I will stop in JT and get some new ones tomorrow. I do not trust patched 23mm tubes. I may carry a short valve tube and valve extender instead. I am pretty sure I still have some. I forgot about that option.
Just did some checking and I bought new tire set in January of 2012 and the rear blew out in December, after about 11 months. Not so good. The Performance rear tire I am running now has a bit less than 8 months on it. So far it looks good but this indicates it may be worth a few more dollars to buy better tires. The cheapies (IRC) are 2 of $30. The Performance looks to have many miles left on it. One factor may be that in 2012 most of my miles were on the road bike and this year I did substantial miles on the touring bike so the new tire has not had as much use and abuse.Some evening when I am up to it I will see hat kind of mileage I am getting on the IRCs.
The HRM definitely causes me to push more. I worked hard to stay above 70% today and made it except for a few seconds and on the two brief stops I made. My weight seems to have dropped 2-4 pounds in the last two day, rather abruptly but that is how it works for me. Plateau, drop, gain, drop, gain, drop, plateau, repeat.
I put my decent Night Rider light on but made it home before it got seriously dark.
Nice day. East Wind. TWC said it would be 9. My estimate is 5-10 MPH (8-16 KPH). It was pretty consistent all the way around. I did not feel energetic today and the heat bothered me some in spite of sunscreen. I did not sleep well last night. Dozed off about 1:00, got up at 3:00, back to bed at 6:00, up at 10:00. Ugh!
I hit something right at intersection at SE corner of Lucky Park and the front either went flat or was going there and I had not noticed. I thought it was a blowout but found only a thorn sticking through tire and liner. I have used 2 1/2 rear tires while running this one. Probably time to change. I have a spare on hand. I am down to my last spare tube. Sadly I have to have long valve tubes for the deep wheels which means no dirt cheap generic tubes. The silver lining was that I had a nice picnic table in the shade to change the tube on.
The glider concession was active at the airport today.
Edit: I forgot to mention that my right arm ached from the shoulder through the wrist and hand for the first 14 miles. I fear I am creeping closer to Carpel Tunnel trouble due to 9 1/2 years of excessive mouse use. I need to find a way to back off a bit. Maybe use the tablet more.
Good ride! Not too hot and a very light mostly S breeze. The new HRM seems to read somewhat lower than the old one at least at the higher end. It appears to record 10-15 few BPM. More observation is in order. It is hard to take one's pulse to calibrate the thing while riding up a hill huffing and puffing. I will say the the old one seemed consistent with my buddy Doug's version on his Garmin GPS bike computer.
Speaking of the breeze, it shifted from due N to due E to due S in a 30 second period while I was standing and watching the sock at the airport.
I ordered an inexpensive Timex Heart Rate Monitor a few days ago and it came this afternoon. I picked a "used" one from Amazon and it came looking new in an unopened box. This is probably because this is not the "Personal HRM" Mentioned on the Timex web site, it lacks the timer and stop watch functions, and when the original purchaser saw what it was he probably sent it directly back. My gain as I got it for $25 instead of $44 for a "new" one and it has all the functionality I need and appears to work well. I went in another $12 and got a bike mount for it. Other than the price a real advantage of this one is that since it is not tied to a bike computer I can use it on all my bikes and for any other training I happen to do. Ideally I would have a Bluetooth version that would talk to the Strava bicycle app I run on my phone but that is an $85 investment which I am not prepared to make at this time.
The wind was consistently SW on this ride and I would guess between 5-10 MPH all the way around. This gave me a nice run east and north but a rather nasty go south and west. I actually prefer a westerly wind (if it has to be windy) as it gives me a boost early in the ride when I am not warmed up. By the time I get to the hard part, coming back to the west into the wind I am pretty well steamed up and ready and able to grind it out upslope and all.
I left a bit late and the sun went down about the time I got to the airport with 8 miles to go. I got almost back to town before it was really dark.
A first: I passed a sidewinder basking on the shoulder on Highway 62 about a mile east of Utah Trail. I was running my small battery operated light on strobe. It was dark enough that I did not see him/her until my font wheel was just about on him/her. Fortunately he/she was on the traffic side of the fog line and I was on the shoulder side so I did not hit it although I did go by at 6-8", a bit close. He/she did hiss and rattle but by the time she got her wits together enough to do so I was far enough past to not be concerned. I have often wondered how such an encounter would go in the dark, especially if the snake was directly in my path. I always wonder if they could strike me while under my wheels. I am not anxious to find out more than I learned this evening. I think I will take a better light the next time I go out late.
In spite of my remarks a few days ago I went out in the noon sun. It was "only" 97 when I started and the forecast was for no 100 until 2:00. I also slathered on the sunscreen which I am sure helped.
I got about a mile out and realized I had left my 24 oz bottle of Fizz water on the counter. Fortunately I had put a 21 oz bottle in my jersey pocket to augment the 2 24 oz bottles I intended to carry on the frame. I decided to go for it with 45 oz instead of the intended 69 oz. I had taken 24 oz. of plain water before leaving the house. I did not feel a lack of liquid on the ride although I would have consumed more if I had had it.
Had a brisk E wind out to the airport. While I was standing at the airport it shifted to due S but fortunately moved back to SE to help me over the hump back to town. As is often the case when I came down the hill to Utah Trail and town the wind became a strong SW. I do not understand the wind patterns here. Very often the wind is blowing from a different direction at any point I go to a few miles from my home.
Cadence: I have not had cadence readout on my computer since September of 2012. I got it going again and this is the first ride with it.
Heart Rate: The HR sensor quit in June of 2012. I just stopped worrying about it but now I find myself wanting it again. I have been fooling with it for a few days and finally got the computer to recognize and register the strap early this AM. It still would not display a pulse but I wore it anyway today and after leaving the airport I noticed it was displaying a number that looked believable. It was intermittently on and off but I believe the average number is close enough to be useful to see how I am doing.
My HR was in the high 140s coming up the grade from the airport. That is probably 10 BPM higher than I was recording in the past but I have noticed that high temps add beats. The average cadence number is 4-5 RPM higher than last year which is a good sign because for me it takes more aerobic capacity to run a higher cadence. This implies that my aerobic condition has improved over the past year even though my average speed has diminished. Long bouts of high cadence low speed riding are often a requirement on tour so I am headed in the right direction.
A much more pleasant ride in the relative cool of the evening, even with nasty SW wind. Used Biologic seat from Dahon. It worked well. I tried WTB seat from Fuji mountain bike two days ago and it did not work well at all. It is decent on the Fuji but does not work on this bike.
The sun set near the airport adn I did the last 3-4 miles in the dark. The LEDs on the safety vest would not stay on although they seem OK here at home. More experimentation is in order.
