To New York and Back

Andrew and I went for another training ride.  Today we went on the ride that we had meant to last time, which was start of similarly to what Tom, Andrew, and I did on our first training ride and just keep going north.

Almost 17 miles into our ride, we crossed the Connecticut-New York state line.  Neither Andrew nor I had ever crossed a state line on bicycle, so that was kind of a cool milestone.  It would have been quite a bit cooler if we actually knew where the state line was.  On the way back to Connecticut, we saw a sign saying we were entering New Canaan, Connecticut, but I still don't know if this is the state line or not.

Just before the state line and then again just before we turned around, an "experienced gentleman" on a road bike stopped to make sure that we were o.k. (we were just taking a map/Gatorade break).  It's nice to see people out there with a sense of community who do look after their fellow bikers.  Both this gentleman as well as another guy (this one inside a BMW SUV who rolled down his window at a stoplight) asked me how I liked riding my Sofrider.  Maybe we'll start seeing more recumbent bicycles (or even Cruzbikes) out here soon.

The total ride was just over 40 miles and we averaged 12.5 mph.Both of us felt much better at the end of this than at the end of our 32 mile ride last week (where we averaged just under 12 mph).  Last weeks ride felt hillier (although we gained more elevation this ride by about 500 feet), but we did a much better job  eating as well as we each had a bottle Gatorade.  And I did considerably better post ride this time than last week as well.  Very promising, indeed.

Like last week most of the ride was on streets that were not empty, but traffic was generally quite reasonable.  There were several very nice descents, including a nice long one where I managed to hit 39.5 mph.(!)  I almost certainly would have hit 40 mph, except that there was a stop sign at the bottom that I had to stop for.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

Again similar to last week, the nice rural scenery is quite nice.  On the way up, we saw a humongous wild turkey.  We didn't stop to take a picture of it, but last week Andrew saw a turkey on his way into work and did stop and take a picture:

Quite impressive birds, aren't they.

The Biggest Hill I Ever Saw

Andrew and I went for another training ride today.  We kind of had a route in mind, but we decided to start by going a different way and ended up gong a completely different route.  We did just over 32 miles averaging just under 12 miles per hour (almost a mile per hour faster than our last, shorter ride).

I'm not very good at climbing, but at least I recognize this.  So when we had choices to make, I'm glad to say that we never chose to avoid a hill.  (After today, I'm willing to believe that will change...)  We were about 21 miles into our ride when we crested a hill and saw what was before us.  I was a bit ahead of Andrew, so he just heard "Holy S..t!" before he saw it.  Andrew climbs better than I do, but he looked at that hill and suggested that we go another way.   "Nah.. Let's go for it."

The hill turned out to be about 80 feet of elevation in a tenth of a mile. The highest I saw my Garmin quote was an 18% grade.  And I even made it up the steepest parts.  Early on, I found that if I sat back, my front wheel would slip.  So I had to pull myself up with the handle bars for more aggressive climbing.  And I made it 3/4s of the way up before I just couldn't go any further.  It's possible that I would have tried a bit longer if my feet weren't clipped  into the pedals, but it's also likely I wouldn't have gotten as far as I did without them being clipped in, so I won't blame that.  And I was tired enough even after resting for a couple minutes that I didn't think I'd be able to start on that slope.  So, with Andrew at my side (he made it up to the top of the hill, parked his bike, and walked back down to make sure I was o.k.), I walked it up the last quarter of the biggest hill I ever saw.

(The picture really doesn't do this hill justice, but look how small the car is on top of the hill compared to the cars at the bottom.  When I went back to take this picture and was trying to drive up the hill in my car, it wouldn't go up in third gear and I had to downshift to second.)

I'm sure I've probably seen bigger slopes for longer distances at some point in my life, but I can't actually remember any and I've certainly never tried to get up them under human power before.

It did take me a few hours to recover from this ride.  I did drink (almost) enough although we probably didn't consume enough calories.  After a couple glasses of orange juice, a glass of milk, and a few ibuprofen, I'm feeling pretty good (although I think I'm driving to work tomorrow).  The climbs (more than 1500 feet) were hard, but except for the big hill, quite manageable.  And there were some very nice descents - one road had a 35 mph speed limit and I maxed out at 35.1(so I was technically speeding!) and the route had much less traffic than the last route we tried. It was a good ride and assuming my recovery keeps going, I'll be ready for more next week!

Pulling a Trail-A-Bike

Today, Kate and I went for a ride with the monkeys.  Instead of putting both kids in the trailer and having me pull it, Kate suggested that I pull our daughter on the trail-a-bike and she'd pull our son.  She's been riding trail-a-bikes in one form or another since she was 3 1/2 years old, so she knew what to do.  But it was the first time I tried it with the Sofrider.

I can definitely tell that my center of mass is lower down and therefore it takes more effort for me to counter-balance her movements.  But after a minute, it was just like I was used to doing on my upright bike.

After riding 8 1/2 miles, both my wife and daughter survived quite well.  It was a good start to the spring riding season for us.

As far as yesterday's tune-up went, the bike was definitely riding better with the exception of the rear derailleur which still needs some tweaking.

More Training and a Tune-up

Yesterday, I went for a 24 mile ride with Andrew (we're training for the Bloomin' Metric Century).  According to our training schedule we were supposed to only do 17 miles, but since we did 21 last time, it just didn't seem right to do less this time.

This ride felt a lot harder than the last long ride.  Our average speed was just a little bit slower (just under 11 instead of just over 11 mph), but between the hills, the fact I didn't drink coffee before the ride, or because I had done a "hard" 14 miles the day before (averaging over 13 mph which is fast for me), I suppose this isn't to surprising.  (Boy! I'm good at coming up with excuses!).  It was a good ride with a very little off-roading (well, a mud path with some hills and some roots) as well as some gravel paths.  There was one gravel hill that I didn't make it up.  If I weren't clipped in, I might have tried a little bit harder, but I chickened out 10 feet from the top.

I'm just shy (less than 2 miles) of 400 miles on the Sofrider.  During the ride with Andrew, one of the bolts holding the rack to the frame came out.  I replaced it tonight (also adding lock-tight so that hopefully I won't have this problem in the future) and tightened all bolts on the rack.  I also adjusted the front and rear brakes as well as the front and real derailleurs.  I also found out one of the nuts holding the top of the seat had fallen off, so I replaced (and lock-tighted) that nut as well.

I'm not (yet?) as good at climbing big hills (my Garmin claimed one hill was 13% when I looked) as Andrew on his regular (diamond frame or DF), but I have no problem on the smaller hills and the flats.  On the big downhills, I'm regularly hitting just over 30 mph, so I'm making up for the slow climbs by being able to come down the hills faster (but still safely).

I'm still very much enjoying this new bike and as far as clipping in to the pedals goes, I wish I had done that sooner.

First Training Ride for the Bloomin' Century

Today I went out with my friends Andrew and Tom for a "long" ride.  According to our training schedule, it was supposed to be 15 miles.  We ended up going for just over 21 miles (except for Tom who probably did closer to 29).

It was a little bit slower than what I've done on shorter rides, but that's almost certainly a good thing.  I have lots of evidence suggesting that I'm not great a pacing myself for a longer ride.  I still had more energy by the time I made it home (although the last two hills I climbed did take quite a bit out.

The Camelbak Unbottle that I have attached with straps to the back seat of my bike works quite well.  Since I have been used to smaller rides, I'm trying to get used to drinking before I get too thirsty.

Overall, I've ridden just under 350 miles on my Sofrider.  As you can see below, I've been riding pretty consistently this last month and have been steadily improving.  I am finding the clipless pedals to be very useful and the Sofrider to be what I had hoped it would be.  Onward and upward!

"I'm Biking in the Rain, Just Biking in the Rain..."

The radar looked iffy, but to me it looked like there was a break in the rain, so I took a chance and went out.  I think I would have been fine, but my friend Tom called me back just after I left and told me he didn't want to join me because it was raining at his house.  (I'm sure that if he didn't call, it never would have rained on my route.).  I told him that it wasn't raining where I was and then I kept going.

When I started the ride, I was wearing my Canary Yellow Canary rain jacket.  Errr, my Canary Canary Yellow rain jacket..  (My Canary brand rain jacket that is canary yellow; boy that was harder than it should have been). After about 20 minutes and 3 miles into the ride, it was starting to rain pretty hard, so I pulled over an put on my rain pants.

I probably should have worn my full-finger gloves instead of just regular bike gloves as it was only in the 50s (Fahrenheit; ~ 10 C) when I left.  The cold rain didn't make that any better.  But the rain suit did a good job of keeping me mostly dry.  And I had no problem climbing 10% grades with very wet pavement (I believe that some of the smaller distances had bigger grades, but that's the maximum I see on my route).  This was definitely not the best ride I've ever been on, but given the weather, it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Since I bought this bike, I've put on (just under) 290 miles in just over a month and a week.  I'm still very much enjoying this bike (even in the rain).

Jumbo Shrimp, Cafeteria Food, and... Clipless Pedals?

Ever since I can remember, I have had toe clips installed on my pedals (since at least before I was a teenager).  The first bike where this wasn't true is my folding bike (and only because it had folding pedals onto which I couldn't install toe clips).  So while I'm not used to having my first firmly attached to the pedals, I am used to a certain amount of control that you don't get on platform pedals with nothing else.

When I installed the new crankset on my Sofrider, I also installed dual-sided pedals.  One side is your standard platform pedal that you can use with any shoes.  The other side are for use with SPD cleats.  Pedals like this are called clipless pedals because they do not have toe clips.  While I completely understand that, I find it one of biking's big ironies that one clips into clipless pedals ("I clipped into my clipless pedals to go down to eat jumbo shrimp and other inedible cafeteria food.").

I've had the pedals, the cleats, and even the special shoes (to which one attaches the cleats) since well before I put the new crank on my bike.  But it wasn't until today that I tried riding a bike using them.  I'm very happy to report that everything went very well and I had no problems!

Somebody on the 'Bent Riders Online forum basically suggested that before riding clipped in, to find a pole to grab onto and practice repeatedly clipping into and out of the pedals (you remove your shoe from the pedal by twisting your heal outwards).  I did that last night.  At first, I had such a hard time clipping into the pedals, I took one of my shoes off and just clipped it into the pedal a few times. After that, I spent about 20 minutes sitting on my bike, holding a pole in my garage repeatedly clipping into and out of the pedals.

The general idea is that before starting, you clip in one foot (always my right foot) before taking the other foot off of the ground.  The hard part is getting the second foot clipped in.  It turns out (as I found out this morning) that it is actually easier to do this pedaling than it is holding a pole in ones garage.

On my way to work, I got a twig stuck in my wheel.  I thought that I might have a flat, so I downshifted, unclipped, and stopped.  After I removed the stick, I even managed to start back up on a hill of about 5% incline without falling over.  Not too shabby.

The biggest advantage of clipping into pedals (and some extent, toe clips) is that in addition to propelling the bicycle by pushing on the pedals, you can now also propel the bike by pulling on the pedals.  One thing I learned today (and, well, this is pretty obvious), after spending years of pedaling without being firmly attached to the pedals, I'm very used to pushing on the pedals and not at all used to pulling on them.  I can do it, and it helps me pick up speed a lot, but it doesn't yet feel very natural and I can't do it for very long.

The other big difference is that now that my feet are attached to the pedals, I feel much more in control when I'm spinning - pedaling at a high cadence or RPM.  Without clipping in, I find that I feel like the bike gets out of control at a high spinning rate.  With the pedals, everything is much smoother.  Very nice.  This is probably obvious and I was hoping that something like this would happen, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how big an effect it is.

More Miles, More Smiles

I rode six out of the last seven days; I took Wednesday off to give my legs a rest.  The weather here has been very good (if not a bit cold some of the mornings), so I haven't yet had to ride in the rain.

I put on just over 57 miles this last week (almost exactly split between commuting and pleasure riding).  About a third of the way into my ride today, I saw two fully spandexed riders in my mirror as I was on a long, shallow climb.  I managed to keep them behind me for five minutes as I kicked it up a notch, but they did eventually overtake me (they of course were very friendly and probably didn't even realize that I was a huffin' and puffin' to keep them from passing me).  After making it up this hill and weaving around a bit, the route today had over a solid mile with a nice decent on a very smooth mode without a lot of traffic.  Since I mostly paid for that decent up front, it was quite a bit of fun and it's a route I'll ride again.

I'm very happy with both the Sofrider bike and the modifications I've made to it (the triple crank and adjustable stem).  The front wheel developed a pinging sound this week that I eventually traced down to two loose spokes today. I'm still working out the kinks of attaching the pannier securely, but hopefully I'll have an update soon as to how I solved that issue.

Two Commutes, Two Rides, Two Flats

I ridden my bike in twice since Monday.  Tuesday went pretty much like Monday.  On Friday, I took a lap around work so that my distance home was 6 miles instead of 3.  The pannier likes to try and fall off sometimes, but I think I have a fix for that (more on that in a future post).

On Saturday, I went for a 17 mile ride.  My garmin claims I had a moving average of 13.3 mph, but I'm not sure I believe it was that high. My ride length is starting to progress nicely.

Today, I put my two little monkeys in the trailer and went for a ride.

The trailer is a little bit too small for the two of them which can lead to some, errr..., arguments between the two, but they usually have a good time.  Giving them snacks and water bottles can help a lot.

About half way into the ride (4 miles out of 8.5), I notice my bike wasn't riding well at all.  I stopped and looked at the trailer wheels which were both fine.  I then notice my rear tire was completely flat.  Since I had a spare tube, I didn't bother looking for the leak and just put in a new tube (it probably took 20 minutes total - maybe a little less).

When I was pulling into my driveway, I realized my front wheel was flat as well.  I went to REI and bought two new tubes as well as Slime tire liners.  I've heard mixed things about these, but I thought I'd give them a try. I've got the liner installed on the front wheel, two spare tubes in my trunk back, and I'm ready to ride to work tomorrow.

New Crankset Installed!

I received the larger bottom bracket today and was able to install it using a hair dryer!  (And a bottom bracket socket.)  With the new, wider bottom bracket, it was easy to put on the new triple crankset adjust the front derailleur so it can shift for all three rings.  


For those wondering, the hair dryer was for warming the frame around the bottom bracket.  They first recommended a heat gun, but then pointed out that a hair dryer works as well.  I also installed an adjustable stem.  Pictures coming soon.


For those fellow Sofriders out there, I used Alivio M411 Hybrid Crankset (Black 170mm X 48/38/28) with BB-UN26 cartridge BB, JIS - 68x123mm bottom bracket.

Almost Installed New Crank

I was hoping tonight's blog post would be titled something closer to Great New Crank.  Unfortunately, it was not meant to be.

I bought a Shimano Alivio M411 triple crank which has a 48T large chain ring (like what is currently on the Sofrider) and a 26T small one (compared to the 34T).  I received a bike toolkit yesterday, so tonight was a good time to try and change the crank.

Taking the old crank off was pretty easy (with the crank pulling tool).

And it was very easy to get the new crank on:

The problem is that the new crank is too close to the frame and the front derailleur can't shift the chain into the  granny gear.  I put the original crankset back on and ordered a wider bottom bracket that will hopefully fix the problem.  Stay tuned!

First Time Commuting by Bicycle

Today was the first day I commuted to my "new" job by bicycle (and by new I mean I've only been there for about 9 months).  I only live 3 miles away and if it weren't for the hills, it would be almost too easy.  It takes under 15 minutes if I push it hard and which is exactly what I did since it was really quite cold this morning (about 20° F) and I wanted to get warm.

There are showers at work, so I can just shower there instead of at home.  I bought a pannier to attach to the side of my rack to carry my work cloths.  So far, everything is working out pretty well and biking instead of driving doesn't seem that much more difficult.  I found that I actually had a lot more energy this morning than a usual Monday morning.

A friend of mine Avneet was nice enough to take this picture when I was on my way home.  This is me in full battle gear (except for my helmet which I did put on before riding home).

On a different note, today I learned that one can load GPX files up to one's Garmin Activities account. GPX files are a general format for GPS tracking software (such as MyTracks for Android which is free and very useful).  This is very useful for people who already have a Garmin sports GPS so now I can put all of my tracks in the same place.  Even if you don't own a Garmin device, you can still get a free account and keep track of your progress, so everybody with a smart phone and GPS should be good to go.  Once uploaded to this website, it's easy to share any rides you want with other people (this one is from yesterday).

First Pictures

Since I've been asked for pictures, here are two.  I'm sure more will come as time moves on.

The rack on the bike is a Delta seatpost rack with pannier support.  I like the rack, but it won't allow me to attach my daughter's Trek tag-along bike at the same time, so I'll probably switch it out for a standard rack.