Orny's Cycling Journal

You’re drafting a buddy. He’s fighting against the wind, but you’re getting so much benefit from being in his slipstream that you don’t even need to pedal.

But you keep turning the pedals over, even if it means having to apply your brake at the same time. Why?

Because you know how annoying it is to be on the front, straining against the wind, but hear the ticking of the ratchet in the other riders’ freewheels as the freeloaders coast behind you.

A considerate cyclist prefers to simultaneously brake and pedal, rather than taunt the guy who’s kind enough to go to the front and pull into the wind.

There’s an article in the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of Bicycling magazine that makes an interesting point about bike facilities: basically, they aren’t.

As a beginning rider, Colin McEnroe took up the challenge of writing a column about his experiences with the sport as he ramped up over time.

It took him less than a year to conclude the following:

I’ve also acquired a set of mixed feelings about bike trails and lanes. The latter are strewn with piles of syringes, spent bazooka shells, and the carcasses of elves murdered by Sauron; you’re always about 30 yards from something you’ll have to swerve into traffic to avoid. Bike trails, meanwhile, are full of cyclists doing stupid things, like towing three skateboarders while wearing earbuds with Neutral Milk Hotel cranked up to 11. From a certain perspective, the worst place to ride a bike is any place with “bike” in its name.

I have to say that I concur with this sad state of affairs.

Boston and many of the surrounding towns have done a great job adding bike lanes. The difficulty is that they’re usually placed directly against parallel-parked cars: smack in the door zone, the most dangerous place on the road. The good news is that the number of cars and trucks that double-park often forces riders out of the bike lanes and thus out of the door zone, as well. And don’t get me started on the one foot wide “bike lane” that used to be the shoulder of Enneking Parkway.

Eastern Massachusetts is blessed with a wonderful collection of paved bike paths. The problem here comes from overuse. We have to share the path with oblivious walkers, joggers training for the Boston Marathon, sunbathing Boston University students, residents running their dogs off-leash, rogue Dept. of Conservation and Recreation maintenance trucks, kids playing ball, swerving skaters, and unsteady neophyte cyclists. Not that these things are bad; they just make our “bike paths” the most dangerous place one could possibly ride.

I’ve also heard some advocates preaching the panacea of “cycle tracks”: dedicated lanes between parked cars and the sidewalk, away from traffic. It sounds like a wonderful idea until you realize that it’ll be in the passenger door zone, with a curb that prevents cyclists from swerving to avoid a door. Never mind the fact that such a constrained space cannot simultaneously serve people who ride at speeds that vary from 3 to 30 mph.

This is why McEnroe’s column got a nod and a resigned sigh from me. Here in Boston, we’ve recently been given the mandate to create all kinds of bike facilities, but in the end none of them are of much value to cyclists. In fact, most of them present more frequent dangers to us than doing what we are legally expected to do: ride conscientiously in the standard roadway facility.

If the uselessness of dedicated bike facilities is obvious to even a first-year rider like McEnroe, that raises a lot of questions about the inappropriate projects that bicycle advocates have wasted our political capital on.

It’s been a while, but I thought I’d do a quick writeup of the ride I did the day after Thanksgiving, since it was kind of memorable in its own way.

One of the things I wanted to do was test my Garmin Edge 800 GPS cyclocomputer, since it had been acting up since my last big ride, six weeks earlier. I’d given it a complete hard reset, but frustratingly, it wasn’t any better. It’s great when it works, but that’s only about 80 percent of the time. And for $700, I think it’s reasonable to expect better reliability.

Still, with the temperature in the mid-50s, I moseyed out Mass Ave. all the way to Lexington, because I wanted to pick up a Lexington Minuteman newspaper. Johnny H, one of my longtime riding buddies, had posted that he’d seen my photo in it, so I had to check that out firsthand.

After wandering around town a bit, I spotted a handful of cyclists pulling up to a coffee shop, and discovered that one of them was another old friend, Joy. I spoke to her briefly, then stepped inside a CVS and picked up a paper.

I came back out and parked myself on a bench with Joy and her friends while I leafed through the paper until I found the photo of me; the same picture that had graced the Pan-Mass Challenge home page for three months filled a quarter of the second page of the sports section. It was the focus of a thank-you message to PMC riders, although I’m still not sure whether it was from the paper, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Jimmy Fund, or the PMC itself!

And if that ad appeared in a local paper in Lexington, it might well have also been placed in other town papers, although I haven’t gotten any information from the inquiries I’ve sent.

I said goodbye to Joy and rode down Waltham Street to Waltham (my first time down that road), and pulled into my riding buddy Jay’s driveway. I called him on my cell to ask whether he was home, and to open his back door for me. Since I hadn’t seen Jay in months, I figured this would be a good time to deliver something I’d been saving for him: a pair of size 12 PMC-branded flip-flops that I’d grabbed for him at PMC headquarters when I was there to pick up this year’s Heavy Hitter premium (a backpack). He was properly surprised and pleased, which was gratifying, and we chatted briefly.

From Waltham I took Linden Street and Waverly Oaks (another road I traveled for the first time) into Belmont, where I stopped at Belmont Wheelworks, arguably the best-stocked bike shop in eastern Mass. I was surprised to find it very quiet on the infamous “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving. I hadn’t brought a shopping list, but I did wind up walking out with two new tires, since my old ones were wearing out, and my preferred tires (Michelin Lithion IIs with blue sidewalls) are hard to find. So that was good, too.

As I approached Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, I had a brainstorm. I was only a couple blocks from Fastachi, a local nut roastery. Normally I wouldn’t stop, but since I was running errands I’d brought my bike locks, and it was Thanksgiving, so why not? I walked away with a mess of freshly-roasted cashews, hazelnuts, roasted corn, and some New Zealish licorice. Oh yeah, and some chocolate-covered caramels, too!

I hopped back on the bike, but hadn’t gone a quarter mile when I felt the tell-tale squidginess of a flat rear tire. Perfect! I popped the wheel off and removed the inner tube. Out of habit, I did what you’re supposed to do, which is run your hands around the inner surface of the tire to see if you can feel what might have caused the puncture, although usually there’s nothing to find, since I typically get pinch-flats. But this time I discovered an inch-long nail that had gone straight through the tire and into the tube. Glad I bothered to inspect the tire!

I installed my backup tube with the speed that comes from practice, and used my wonderful frame pump to fill it up to 100 PSI before mounting up and lumbering home, my bag filled to bursting with two bike locks, two new tires, a newspaper, a huge bag of roasted nut goodies, and a punctured inner tube.

It hadn’t been a particularly long or fast ride, but even despite the flat it was just a nice day on the bike, which was doubly good after a very discouraging Quad ride the week before.

Last year’s summary concluded with the assertion that 2010 was probably my best year on the bike, and that it would be all downhill from there.

Well, so far I’ve been right. After riding 5,000 miles last year, this year I could only muster 3,000. Much of that reduction was due to my rejoining the work force.

On the other hand, 925 of this year’s miles came from 40 22-mile round trip commutes to Quincy. The unfortunate part is that I really can’t do my commute safely in the dark, so it’s only a five-month affair from April to September.

Despite doing 40 percent fewer miles, I still did seven centuries this summer (only one less than last year’s eight), and brought my total 11-year mileage up to 36,500. I especially enjoyed my second Outriders and Hub on Wheels rides, and sort of enjoyed riding Jay Peak (despite the rain), but was discouraged by both the CRW’s Climb to the Clouds and the Flattest Century.

This was the year that my road bike—the Plastic Bullet—finally passed my old hybrid in terms of mileage. That’s a nice accomplishment, but it also means the Bullet’s getting old. It has a bunch of dings from careless mechanics and car racks, and a worrisome crack we discovered near the bottom bracket. She may not have much more than a year or two left in her.

One benefit of wage slavery is that I had the disposable income to replace and upgrade a whole bunch of equipment this year, including a new helmet, new SPD cycling sandals, a body composition bathroom scale, and a major overhaul of the entire bike. I replaced my rear wheel (again) after discovering large cracks in the rim. But most noteworthy was my purchase of a Garmin Edge 800 GPS/cyclocomputer, which I’ve enjoyed immensely (when it works properly).

This was a year of superlative highs and lows for my Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride. The Dana-Farber’s new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care opened, and I attended the dedication of the PMC Plaza that comprises the building’s main entrance, and also went to the Heavy Hitter banquet for the first time. But several of my riding buddies—Paul and Lynda and Noah—didn’t ride this year. My buddy Jay rode for the first time, but I only got to ride with him for 6 out of 192 miles. One first-time rider thought enough of my web posts to express his thanks while we rode through the hills of Truro; but when I got to Provincetown, I discovered that a spiteful volunteer had stripped ten years of souvenir PMC luggage tags from my bag. I rode in record form, but had to dodge sprinkles most of the weekend. I came close to raising $10,000 this year, but was unable to convince people to pony up the last $295 I needed. As I said, highs and lows.

It’s also worth noting a few things that happened online in 2011. I had a health and fitness question answered in RoadBikeRider magazine; I completely revised my cycling charts and statistics page; and I published a 10-part series of hints and tips for PMC riders.

But most noteworthy was that a photo of me leading a paceline was the largest picture on the PMC’s home page for months after the ride. It was an excellent shot, and I was deeply honored and delighted to be featured on the same page as Lance Armstrong, Senator John Kerry, and PMC founder Billy Starr. Truly something I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and a good way to cap a mixed year.

Now, at the end of the 2011 season, I find myself tired and frustrated. My performance has declined a lot this year, and some of my favorite rides were difficult slogs. I tried to keep up with my younger riding buddies, but pretty much rode all alone through every organized ride this year. Maybe my frustration will go away over the off-season, and I’ll wake up next spring with renewed desire, but right now it feels like I just need some time off the bike. I can’t say yet whether that’s four months off the bike or fourteen; we’ll just have to see when we get there.

I do know that I’m not likely to do Climb to the Clouds or Flattest Century next year. I’m more interested in riding for fun again. Perhaps doing some different events will renew my interest, although that means selling my buddies on the idea or somehow finding my own transportation to those events.

If I do ride, I’ve got three significant milestones coming up. Assuming it holds together, I should pass 20,000 miles on the Plastic Bullet, which is quite a nice accomplishment. And if I somehow put 3,500 miles down next year, I will break 40,000 miles since I took cycling up again back in 2000. That would be nice, but right now hitting stretch mileage goals is at the absolute bottom of my priority list. And of course there’s my 12th Pan-Mass Challenge, where I’ll surpass $75,000 in lifetime fundraising for cancer research.

But now that the season’s over, I’m done pushing myself. I’ll ride a few miles if and when I feel like it, and spend the next four months thinking about next spring, coming up with new rides and new ways to enjoy time in the saddle.

Time for an update on all the news since the PMC.

First was Jay’s annual Labor Day BBQ and ride up Mount Wachusett (GPS log). The ride was pretty fun; after the hill climb, we rode out to Comet Pond and back, but we didn’t stop because Jay was (as usual) stressed to get home before his party guests started arriving. The downside was that I started feeling horribly sick toward the end of the day, which was made all the worse because I was dependent on Jay for a ride home.

The following weekend was the Flattest Century, down in southeastern Mass. While okay, it’s never been my favorite ride, and this year it was made worse because I was sick again: this time *before* the ride. Despite a completely emptied stomach, I managed to finish the ride (GPS log), but it was a titanic struggle. Like CttC, I’m not sure whether I’ll be back for this one next year or not.

Then came Hub on Wheels, the city of Boston’s big organized ride. The weather was almost perfect for this 50-mile ride (GPS log). I only wish some of my friends would come out for this one, since it covers a lot of the parts of Boston that I love riding in, and most of my buddies never ride in town.

And a week after that was my final big ride of the year: a 115-mile jaunt with Paul and Noah that began in Wellesley, then ran southwest into Rhode Island, then crossed over into Connecticut before returning home again (GPS log). The upside was that I realized two longstanding desires: to do my first tri-state ride, and to visit the place known as Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. The downside was that we had sporadic rain, and my GPS ran out of juice toward the end and stopped recording data. But overall it was a good way to get in the mileage I needed to close the year.

Details of that can wait, as I’ll do a whole separate post summarizing my 2010-2011 season.

One odd thing was how the last two rides ended. After Hub on Wheels, I came home, passed out on the bed for about an hour, then got up and went into the living room. I was doing something at my desk when I heard the characteristic sudden hiss of an inner tube bursting. When I investigated, I found a puncture near the valve stem. Thankfully, it hadn’t let go during the ride, but waited until just afterward, while the bike was just sitting idly in my apartment.

Then, after our tri-state ride I loaded my bike onto Noah’s car and we set out toward Boston. We hadn’t left the parking lot when we heard that same noise. Another tube burst, and again it was at the valve stem (although my rear tire, rather than the front). And again, it was just after I’d finished an important ride, when the bike wasn’t being used or even touched. Ironically, only five minutes earlier Paul had observed that we’d gotten through a 115-mile ride without anyone flatting…

So that’s how the last bit of summer trickled away. Stay tuned for my end of season summary coming up next!

Some interesting stuff that shouldn’t wait for the release of my 2011 PMC ride report.

First and most importantly is that the PMC home page features a photo of me putting the hammer down during last weekend’s Pan-Mass Challenge. I was absolutely floored, because in a field of 5,200 riders it’s rare enough to have one’s picture taken, much less selected for inclusion in the post-ride photo montage!

On top of that, there are so many things about that photo that blow me away. It’s actually a good picture of me, wearing this year’s event jersey. And the jersey’s properly zipped up, a pro move that I teased my buddy Noah about a couple weeks ago. It’s a picture of intensity, with a pained grimace on the guy behind me. I’m down in the drops, leading a paceline, both of which are somewhat rare events. I didn’t even think I’d seen any event photographers on the course! If you look carefully, you’ll notice that it’s the biggest photo in the whole collage, and I’m given more prominent placement and a larger picture than Lance Armstrong and Senator John Kerry! And damn if I don’t have nice legs, too!

So yeah, when my buddy Dave Long pointed that out, I pretty much flipped my shit. Huge moment of pride, excitement, and amusement. Hopefully I’ll be able to obtain the original.

Next items are a couple of new purchases.

The first is a replacement rim for my rear wheel. Two days before the PMC, I found cracks in the rim of the Ksyrium SL that I run. So at the last second, I went to Back Bay Bikes and one of the mechanics let me borrow one of his (personal) wheels to ride the PMC with. I guess that deserves a paragraph in and of itself.

But a few days ago I got my rebuilt Ksyrium back. You might remember that I had a warranty replacement of that wheel two years ago. While they would have done a second replacement, the wheel was two months out of warranty, so I had to foot the bill to repair it. But now she’s back and hopefully will last. I wish I knew why I’m so tough on rear wheels, tho; I’ve destroyed two Ultegra and two Ksyrium SL rear wheels.

I also received the new Shimano cycling sandals I’d ordered. I’ve used two identical pairs of sandals since I started riding back in 2000, and I wore them into the ground because they don’t make that model anymore. However, one of them literally fell apart after this year’s Climb to the Clouds, so I ordered a pair of Shimano’s current model: SH-SD66.

Any time you change anything related to the contact points between you and the bike—hands, shoes, or seat—you risk screwing things up. I’ve only taken a couple rides, but so far they feel good. The most noticeable change is that the soles are stiffer, which is good, since I could feel exactly where the cleat was on my old sandals. Of course, it remains to be seen whether that stiffness is permanent or just a factor of the shoes being new, but I’m hopeful enough to retire the old ones and order a second pair to keep in rotation.

Final item is an interesting article about what it takes to be a pro cyclist, and how integral suffering is to cycling, whether one be a pro or just a neighborhood speedster. You might be interested in the whole article, but here are a couple choice citations that resonated with me:

Everything about cycling is contained in that gesture, including its reigning truism: to race bicycles is to drink greedily from a bottomless chalice of agony. The sport and its heroes are only knowable, and then just barely, once you come to understand that suffering is cycling’s currency. And what that currency buys is the occasional—the very, very occasional—moment of exquisite glory.

The first thing you notice about professional cyclists is that, with few exceptions, they appear to live their internal lives in a heavily padlocked tomb of mental anguish. They are at once astonishingly young and improbably ancient, a result of the fact that they are paid for their agony. They are modern-day ascetics, working in the open-air monastery of the mountains of Europe, with helmets as tonsures, spandex as robes.

There is thus a detachment in their manner that suggests the real world—our world—exists to them only as storybook legend, trapped as they are in another realm, with no corollaries, no points of contact, no common ground. They experience their lives through the tiny aperture of cycling; the aperture is so small because the light is so fierce. They have felt and done things on the farthest shore of the possible.

The reward for being the best isn’t that one takes *less* pain; rather that one is able to absorb *more*. The nature of this process is revealed at the precise instant that we come to know ourselves completely: we learn how far we can push ourselves, and the true mettle of our character. But that knowledge isn’t properly intelligible, nor is it transferable. To mangle Laurie Anderson’s aphorism, writing about cycling’s meta-state is like dancing about architecture. It is a private knowledge, forged in pain’s stables, and belongs to men who are not served by articulating it.

There’s no outward sign that [the cyclist] is one of the best athletes on earth. If you came across him shopping for a Billy bookcase at IKEA, you’d assume he had just returned from an island survival challenge, which he lost. Badly.

Right now my life consists of work, cycling, fundraising, and occasional sleep, so my periodic updates this time of year tend to cover a lot of ground… like this one, which covers the past month.

July was a memorable month, but not for good reasons. Although I usually spend most of the Fourth of July holiday on the bike, with one of those days comprising a century ride, this year a terrible cold hit me Friday afternoon and kept me housebound the entire holiday weekend. Pure suckage!

The next weekend I had to go up to Maine, and convinced myself that I could get some training in by riding the 70 miles from Portland to Augusta. That ride wound up being really difficult, thanks to my lingering illness, a 25-35 mph headwind that hadn’t been forecast, and a mile-long section of muddy dirt road up and over a big hill in Sabbatus. But at least I managed to get some time in the saddle…

Which I needed, because the weekend after that was the CRW’s Climb to the Clouds, a very hilly century that goes up Mt. Wachusett, and is a traditional warmup for the Pan-Mass Challenge.

So CttC was just brutal. Combine my reduced training this year with oppressively humid 96-degree blazing sun and the CRW’s extremely limited idea of what constitutes a supported ride, and you can begin to imagine how difficult it was. Thankfully, I can say that my age wasn’t a factor, as my three buddies (all 17+ years younger) also concluded that they never wanted to do that ride again.

The ironic thing is that I spent half the day hammering, thinking I was chasing them, when actually I was ahead of them. Although I let them go ahead after the first 10 miles, they stopped at a water stop I skipped. I was surprised to see them ride past me in Princeton, where I stopped but they did not. So I got back on the bike and chased, unknowingly passing them *again* when they stopped at a convenience store. So I beat them over the mountain, and they only caught up with me after I’d spent 20 minutes at the next water stop, 53 miles in.

And as I predicted last year, the summit road was closed to us for the third year in a row, which was disappointing.

Toward the end of the ride, I was nauseous and unsafely overheated, and kept pouring water over my head to cool off. I stopped at the little Chinese grocery in West Concord and picked up their last two bottles of water, only to discover on gulping it down that it was seltzer! I sipped what my stomach could tolerate and poured the rest over my head and limped to the finish, where I pretty much just collapsed. But not before getting shit from the ride organizers for asking if I could have some ice. I was too destroyed to muster any argument when the guys decided to go home early rather than take the traditional postride dip in Walden Pond.

Definitely one of my worst days on the bike. There damned well better be some training benefit, after all that suffering!

And to make matters worse, my brand new $700 bike computer / GPS failed to record the quarter of the ride that included Mt. Wachusett and the following descent (GPS data). I had already left its heart rate monitor at home, because it had been malfunctioning. At least Garmin is replacing the HRM strap; hopefully the new one will last longer than the first one.

And then yesterday Boston tied the second hottest temperature ever recorded in the city’s 140 years of keeping records. Thinking I couldn’t get into much trouble in just one hour, I biked home from work in 103°F / 40°C heat. Against a convection oven-like 25 mph headwind, over three sections of stripped/grooved pavement along one of Boston’s biggest and fastest 6-lane arterials, and then stupidly up and over Dorchester Heights, just for fun.

That kind of heat will raise your heart rate 10 bpm no matter what you’re doing, and by the time I was done my heart was pounding and I was feeling very lightheaded. Kinda scary! Hopefully this stretch of intense heat will break and the weather will be more forgiving for the upcoming PMC ride!

And that brings me around to the tiny list of positive things that happened this month. First, Garmin did replace my problem HRM strap, and the new one seems to be functioning well; tho I probably will use it sparingly until PMC weekend.

Second, a question I’d sent in to the RoadBikeRider online magazine was published this week. The question was about how to fit a cooldown, stretching, shower, and recovery meal all into the half hour after stopping that is the optimal window for those activities. You can see the full question and RBR’s response here.

And, finally, the news that really matters: PMC fundraising. Once I finally started getting fundraising letters out, the money came in quite readily. I’ve surpassed the minimum and made the Heavy Hitter level for the sixth year in a row, and have settled at $7,200 for the moment, which is quite satisfactory, although there’ll be additional donations coming in over the next month or two.

Naturally, if you haven’t made your donation yet, please do so here.

And PMC weekend is only two weeks away. I’d normally be excited, but after the difficulties of the Maine ride and CttC and this brutal heat, I’m a little gun-shy about looking forward to riding. It hasn’t been a great year for any of my cycling buddies; just ask Lynda, who canceled her plans to do the epic 745-mile PBP ride; or Paul, who bought a pricey new bike only to have Jay destroy it by driving his truck over it on the way to the 150-mile Harpoon B2B ride that was supposed to be the highlight of his season.

The bad juju is in full force this year.

So we’ll see. There’s two more weekends before the PMC, and I don’t have anything special planned for them. Hopefully there’ll be a couple Quad rides and some hill repeats in there, and then a relaxing, rewarding PMC ride once the calendar turns to August.

Hopefully…

This is the tenth and final installment of my series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

Remember that the full list of posts is permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

So far we've covered registration, fundraising, training, packing, and riding... All that's left is what to do once the event is over: Post-Ride.

• Write up a ride report when you're done. Not only will it preserve your memories of the ride, but it'll be of interest to your sponsors and other riders.
• Send a post-ride update to all your sponsors, letting them know how it went, what it was like, and that you might be asking for another donation next year...
• Be sure to look for yourself in the official event photos, which appear on the PMC website incrementally over the weeks that follow the ride.
• Also look for yourself in event photos posted to the pan_mass group on Flickr, and add your own photos to the collection!
• Post your photos to Flickr, videos to YouTube, etc., and tag them PMC, panmass, or something similar so that other interested folks can find them.
• Keep fundraising! You've got until October to chase down those people who promised a donation but haven't done so yet. Send out one final reminder as the fundraising deadline approaches.
• To cap the year, consider attending the check presentation ceremony, which usually takes place just after Thanksgiving.
• Around the end of the year, enjoy your copy of the annual PMC Yearbook, and share the link to the online PDF with your sponsors.
• Turn around and start all over again with the "Registration" section, because it's time to reserve your hotel room(s) for next year's ride!

My third century of the year was actually a double metric: the 130-mile Outriders ride from Boston to Provincetown.

I started pretty promptly at 6am and rolled out with the second group out of the chute. I hung with them for the first 30 miles, even taking a pull or two, but decided after the first water stop in Halifax to let them go and set my own pace.

For the next 100 miles, I solo’ed the whole ride, virtually never seeing another rider except one or two at water stops. The cloudy and damp conditions we started in gave way to hot, direct sunshine shortly before I hit the Sagamore Bridge in Sandwich, and beat down pretty hard at times during the 70-mile haul down the cape.

My legs lasted pretty well until Yarmouth, about 80 miles in. From there on it was a slog. Delirium set in about the time I reached Wellfleet; when I turned onto Long Pond Road, which kicked off a final 30 miles spent reciting “Oh Long John” to myself. At the time, it seemed to capture my situation very eloquently. I’d later end the day with a reprise when the return ferry docked in Boston: Oh Long Wharf!

Despite really struggling the last 30 miles, no one passed me except for two guys who skipped the final water stop while I was resting there. In the end, I arrived at 3pm and was the 12th finisher out of nearly 200 starters! And despite riding solo, by keeping my rest breaks short I cut a whole hour and a half off of last year’s ride.

Finishing that early left me five and a half hours until the ferry ride home. First I went down to the harbor and washed some of the sweat, sunblock, and road grime off. Then, having expended over 5,000 kCal, I had a big postride meal at Bayside Betsy’s. I returned to the finishing area to watch stragglers come in, and helped pack up the tents, chairs, and other supplies. Then, after a quick side trip to a convenience store, I was off to the ferry.

Overall, it was a nice day, even if I didn’t have any of my buddies to share the ride with. The huge miles of solo riding really took a lot out of me, and it took a couple days to recuperate. But it was nice to be one of the first to finish what will probably be my longest one-day ride of the year, and it was awesome being back on the cape again. I look forward to hitting Provincetown again in six weeks when I finish my eleventh Pan-Mass Challenge.

Here’s the GPS log.

This is the next to last posting in my series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

Having just returned from the Outriders ride from Boston to Provincetown, it seems appropriate that today I'm going to talk about the second half of the PMC, which covers much of the same territory: Sunday: Bourne to Provincetown!

• Sunday, wear whatever jersey you want. If you're riding with a team, they usually wear their team jerseys on Sunday. I usually wear the jersey from my first PMC.
• There's no organized start on Sunday; plan to leave MMA around 5am.
• Don't believe anyone who thinks that Cape Cod if flat. There are hills. You'll see. Especially Provincetown, Truro, and the Route 6 Service Road in Sandwich, which has rollers you'll want to shoot over, if you can.
• There are usually ice pops at the Brewster (Nickerson State Park) water stop.
• After you leave Wellfleet, expect a brutal headwind on Route 6 all the way to Provincetown. If there's no wind on Route 6, don't worry: you'll run into it when you turn back from Race Point. It's nice to merge in with a paceline for those segments.
• Don't be fooled when you see the Pilgrim Monument and the "Entering Provincetown" sign. There's still several more miles as you loop out to Race Point and back into town.
• When you make the turn at Race Point, zip up your jersey and keep your eyes peeled for the event photographers!
• When parking in the bike line at Provincetown, sling your bike over onto the far side of the fence to avoid having it buried beneath other bikes or having to park at the way far end of the bike line. Loop your handlebars over the fence to make sure it doesn't fall down the other side!
• If you're meeting someone in Provincetown, make sure they're on the road early. Route 6 backs up something fierce on Sunday.
• Be warned that Provincetown has notoriously bad cell phone coverage.
• Don't bring soap into the showers at Provincetown; they provide special biodegradable soaps, since the showers run off into the harbor.
• You can wade in the ocean near the causeway behind the bike line in Provincetown, if you want to cool off.

Look for my tenth and final posting next week, when I share my experience on what you want to do post-ride!

Well, May’s rain finally ended, and the season’s upon us, so it’s time to get you caught up on every little thing.

First off is a happy update to my cycling website—specifically the Charts & Statistics page. Instead of a long page full of static images, now it’s all interactive and prettified. Check it out, it’s very cool.

It’s also much easier for me to maintain, since it’s updated automagically, but that’s not anything you care about.

Another big piece of news is that I managed to sneak into one of the most memorable events in the Pan-Mass Challenge’s history: the dedication of the PMC Plaza which fronts the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care. Rather than dive into that here, I’ll point you to the article in my main journal for a full writeup and pictures.

Aside from that, we been riding! In addition to the regular commuting, I completed my second century of the year. Like the first, it was a regular weekend Quad ride that I extended past all normal dimensions. This one went out to Framingham to stop by my buddy Paul’s housewarming.

The other big ride I’ve done was an epic excursion up to Vermont with my buddy Jay. We rode a great 70-mile loop over and back the gigantic Jay Peak (no relation), which in pro cycling terms means two Category 2 climbs.

Jay captured a lot of the action in his blog post, which I strongly encourage you to read, but I want to underscore a few things he passed over. First is my GPS data; check it out, if only for the ride elevation profile! I don’t think he captured how ridiculously high/long the ascents were, or how much the rain/cold sucked. He didn’t mention his flatting a tire, or our quick trip to the bank, or the fact that we were both sleep- and food-deprived at the start. And I think he overlooked my glorious post-ride hot tub dip and our Thai food extravaganza that followed. It was indeed an epic trip!

And I should note that another milestone occurred during that ride: the Plastic Bullet’s odometer tripped 16,793. That means it has finally surpassed my old Devinci hybrid as the bike I’ve ridden the most. Chapeau to both of my reliable old steeds.

In the way of a preview, on Saturday is another of my major rides: Outriders. I’ll be pedaling my way from Boston down to Cape Cod and out to Provincetown, then taking the ferry back. At 130 miles, that will almost certainly be the longest one-day ride I’ll do all year. I’m really looking forward to it, even though my riding buddies will all be elsewhere that day.

You might note the lack of any mention of PMC fundraising; that’s because I haven’t even started yet. The one thing I can say is that I did finally complete my 2011 fundraising video, which I hope you’ll peruse. That frees me to start sending out emails; look for yours to appear soon, or get a jump on me by bringing your underutilized credit card to http://ornoth.PMCrider.com/

This week, the rubber hits the road in my series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

I've spent the past seven weeks talking about everything you need to think about before the ride... Now let's talk about the first segment of the ride itself: Saturday: Sturbridge to Bourne!

• Riders are asked to wear the official event jersey on Saturday.
• Bring arm warmers for Saturday morning. It's often cold at 5am, even in August. You can strip them off later.
• In the morning, do a couple laps around the parking lot before you line up for the start, just to check your tire pressure, brakes, and gears.
• Unless you're a very slow rider, line up in the fast group at Sturbridge. So many people fill that group from the back that anyone in the other two groups automatically winds up at the very tail end of the ride amongst the slowest riders.
• Don't sweat the ride route. It'll be thoroughly marked, there'll be lots of other riders, and there'll be lots of volunteers guiding the way. You shouldn't need any maps.
• Don't sweat the hills. Yeah there are some, but if you've done hill training, you'll be fine. The miles are more strenuous than the hills.
• Watch out for the route merge just before the Dighton lunch stop; it's really dangerous.
• If you're curious about what your century time might be, the Wareham stop is almost exactly 100 miles from the Sturbridge start.
• The final leg of Saturday's ride, from Wareham to Bourne, is only 8 miles. But riders are tired and it can be both congested and commercial, so be extra careful on this segment.
• When you arrive at the finish, get your luggage and go straight to the showers, then quickly to the massage tent. Neglect this rule and you won't get any massage.
• Even if you get a late massage appointment, you can sit in a "standby" area and take any tables that are still open after the scheduled riders for that period are accommodated.
• You can wade in the ocean behind the dorms at MMA, if you want to cool off. Or perhaps "freeze off" is a more accurate term.
• The tugboat dock, next to the canal, is one of the more quiet and peaceful spots to relax at MMA.
• If you're riding with a team, official photographers take team and Living Proof portraits Saturday afternoon at MMA near the flagpole by the canal.

Next week I'll go over the second half of the ride, as we follow Sunday's route from Bourne to Provincetown.

It's June, so it's time to start getting serious about the Pan-Mass Challenge. So we get down to business in this week's posting in my series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

Now it's time for the nitty-gritty, as I share some of the secrets I consider absolutely essential for a happy ride, and let you know what I do: During the Ride!

• Consider involving your sponsors during the ride by posting text, photos, video, or audio to sites like Twitter, a blog, Facebook, or location-based services like FourSquare and Gowalla.
• Getting ahead of the main pack of riders makes the ride a lot less crowded and stressful. Skipping the first water stop or taking only a short time, particularly at the lunch stop, are the best ways to make ground on other riders.
• Start eating and drinking immediately, to stay ahead of your body's needs. Drink at least one bottle of Gatorade between each water stop.
• Don't ride so hard that you are panting. Your stamina will last much longer if you stick to a strictly moderate pace. The less energy you expend at the start, the more you'll have left at the end.
• If you have practiced it, draft other riders. This can save you 25 percent of your energy. Just be very careful, and let them know you're there.
• Be businesslike at the water stops, and keep those stops brief. Finishing quickly means shorter lines for showers, massages, and food then you get to Bourne.
• There are often volunteers giving basic massages near the medical tent at many of the water stops.
• Enjoy the cheers of the spectators. How often do you get cheered on by crowds like that, after all?
• Take notes about things that go especially well or poorly, so that you can mention them to the event planners when they ask for post-ride feedback. If your phone or camera has a voice recorder function, that's a great way to note things as they happen, so you don't forget.

Next week I look at everything you need to know to get from Sturbridge to Bourne!

Today may be a holiday, but there are no holidays in my ten-part weekly series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week I help you plan what to bring, so you don't forget something essential to your ride: Packing!

• Make a packing list, and keep updating it after every ride, so that you have a reliable checklist of things to bring. This is just as useful for other travel and cycling events as for the PMC.
• When packing, put things in separate bags based on where you're going to need them: e.g. one bag to bring to the Sturbridge hotel room, another for things you'll need on the bike Saturday, one with what you'll need at Bourne, on the bike Sunday, at the Provincetown finish, etc. Plastic grocery bags (doubled) work well for this purpose. Make sure they're clearly labeled, so you can grab and go!
• The PMC has a bag drop that'll transport your bags from the start to Bourne, and then to the finish. Use it! Be sure to pack street clothes, shower supplies, and comfortable shoes! And use a distinctive, highly-visible bag that you'll be able to pick out in a huge luggage pile.
• Because there are plenty of water stops, you actually don't have to carry much during the ride. A seat bag with basic repair and first aid kits is sufficient, plus water/Gatorade and a tiny bit of emergency food. Don't overdo it!
• Bring a pocket camera and use it. Something small enough to fit in your cycling jersey pockets, that you can whip out and use quickly. If you're going to take pictures from the saddle, get lots of practice first, and be aware of other riders around you!
• It's very handy to write the distances to the water stops on a piece of cloth tape on your bike's top tube. And the major hills, too. That way you'll know what's coming up next. Estimated arrival times are good, as well. And maybe something inspirational. This is what the pros do at races.
• When preparing the food you'll carry on the bike, consider pre-unwrapping it and cutting it into bite-sized pieces for ease of use. But learn from my experience: don't put unwrapped donuts in your jersey pockets!

Next week's topic: What to do during the ride.

This week is the halfway point in my ten-part weekly series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week we look at the things you need to do leading up to the event: Pre-Ride Prep!

• Bring your bike into the shop for a tune-up 1-2 months before the ride. Not last minute.
• Avoid making any major changes to the bike or its fit in the final weeks before the ride.
• Taper your training the week before the ride. Do at most a couple *very* easy rides, just to keep your legs loose. It's nice to start the PMC well rested, with peak fitness and replenished desire to spend time in the saddle.
• Be sure to get plenty of sleep the days before the ride.
• Drink lots of water in the 48 hours before the ride, right up to the start. Start the ride a bit overhydrated.
• Clean and lube your bike and do a short, very easy shakedown cruise the day before the ride, just to make sure everything works and is ready to go.
• While you should eat well, you really don't need to overeat before the ride. Just be sure to eat something lowfat and low-fiber the morning of the ride, preferably an hour or two before the start.
• Some people make it a true pan-Massachusetts ride by riding from the NY border to Sturbridge on the Friday before the official ride. If you want to do this, do serious hill training, and contact one of those groups to ride with.
• When you check in to the event, immediately run to the restroom and try on your event jersey (and shorts, if applicable) to be sure they fit (sizing can change from year to year). If you need to exchange them, you can do so right there at registration.
• Catch the opening ceremonies Friday evening. Really. Usually Billy also gives a speech before the cameras go on-air. If you can't get into the (sweltering) auditorium, it's simulcast in an overflow tent behind the hotel, and on live television, as well.

Next week's topic: Packing.

Please come to Boston for the springtime? Not bluddy likely!

Back on April 13th I said that spring was late in coming, but that cycling season had finally begun. I was wrong. Basically, that was the only nice day we've had all year.

It's currently May 21th, and it's 52 degrees and overcast, which is as good as it's been for a long time. We just finished Bay State Bike Week, and it has been rainy and cold for more than a month. Needless to say, the 2011 cycling season has pretty much been a washout so far.

The first major ride of the year—the CRW Spring Century—was supposedly held last Sunday. With rain on the forecast, I opted to forego even registering for it.

However, since Saturday was only a cold and misty day, I decided I'd extend my usual weekend Quad ride to a full century. Jay accompanied me as we did the regular "Quad long" ride, then did the full Curve Street and Strawberry Hill routes backwards, then I did the Mystic Valley Parkway. By the end, I was completely used up, but then that was the whole point, knowing that I wasn't going to be able to ride for another 40 days and 40 nights. Overall, I'm glad I did it, even if it was cold, overcast, painful, and only my 5th ride of the year that was greater than 30 miles. GPS log here.

And that's all she wrote in terms of riding news. The rest is mostly retail therapy...

The two highlights of which are a workstand and a vest. The vest is just this mesh carrier for... Well, I guess it's easiest just to show you. This is what I'm talking about. It's kinda like a four-foot blinking glow-stick, which should prove useful for bike commuting. Not exactly stylin', but quite functional.

The workstand, on the other hand, is très cool. It's been on my wish list for three or four years, and I finally had the disposable income to make it possible. The thing's actually pretty gigrontic, and should come in very handy. Very nice!

Circling back on a couple previous purchases... The Giro Ionos helmet is nice, but I'm still figuring out whether they'll work as a sunglasses holder: an important function for helmets. I love Craft shorts in general, but the new bib shorts are made of compression fabric and thus are a little tight and uncomfortable. I picked up some Lithion 2 tires, which don't have the center blue stripe that the old Lithions had, but they also don't have the flat spot in the center, so they will probably wear better. And I continue to like my Garmin Edge 800, although I've only just figured out how to do laps/splits, and have yet to try following a route/course.

Lowering my stem doesn't seem to have had any major negative effects. The 100-mile ride was a good test, and I was okay, although I did have some lingering neck pain afterward. It's not clear whether that was a result of lack of saddle time or the change in position, tho.

One event of note was last week's PMC Heavy Hitter banquet. Although I've been a Heavy Hitter for the past five years, this was the first reception I've attended, since they're usually dress-up affairs featuring hours of standing around doing nothing. The speakers were, of course, inspirational, and that was a good experience to have now, just as fundraising season begins.

And in theory I should be on the verge of starting my fundraising campaign, although I've yet to compose this year's dunning letter, and I'm easily a month behind schedule on the fundraising video I'd like to do. The interminable foul weather has complicated that enterprise, as well.

And you've surely seen the series of PMC tips I've been posting. So far the feedback has been positive, and I hope to gather a bit more attention when the series is finally completed and available for others to peruse.

I also have an impending mileage goal and some new web goodies to roll out soon, but I'll save those for later.

Number four in my weekly series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week's tips address the most important and challenging part of the ride: Fundraising.

• Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email lists: use every social networking opportunity both to get the word out and to gather names for your list of contacts.
• Use the ride as impetus to keep in touch with old friends and reconnect with former friends. One of the side benefits of fundraising is that it encourages you to reach out to people you care about at least once a year.
• Try to tailor your fundraising letters to each person. Don't just blast out one generic mass mailing. The more personal you make it, the more real it feels to people.
• Give your sponsors a reason to donate: whether it's the story of someone you know fighting cancer, a personal goal you've set for yourself, or a gift that they'll earn for making a donation of a certain amount.
• Track every interaction you have with your sponsors, and never let someone get away with saying they'd support you without coming through. Maintain a spreadsheet or database of your contacts.
• Some people feel guilty for not making a big donation, so they decide not to give anything at all, rather than something small. Find a way to make them feel that giving a small amount is better than giving nothing at all. Setting a goal of reaching a certain number of sponsors can help in this regard.
• After every donation, make sure you ask whether the sponsor's employer has a charitable matching gift program. That's free money!
• Once they've made a donation, personally and promptly thank your sponsors and continue to send them periodic updates about your ride to help them feel involved.
• Take opportunities to involve your sponsors in the ride by sending emails before and after the ride, around the fundraising deadline, and after the check presentation.

Next week's topic: Pre-Ride Prep!

This is the third post in my weekly series of hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week I address the core of your PMC prep: Training!

• Train for the ride. You'll be much happier if you do.
• Gradually increase your mileage until you're comfortable doing about 60 percent of the ride's distance. That'll build up your stamina sufficiently to complete the event without putting undue stress on your body.
• Also do a few long back-to-back rides on consecutive days, to get your body used to getting back on the bike a second day in a row.
• Pedal at low resistance and rapid cadence to save your knees. Beginners usually select a gear that's too big/hard, which can damage your knees and makes cycling more work than necessary.
• Make sure that some of your training is on big hills, which will dramatically increase your strength. Hill repeats will provide the biggest training benefit of anything you can do.
• Although hard training is the trigger that tells your body it needs to get stronger, remember that it can only get stronger while you're resting. Get plenty of it, and rest just as diligently as you train, if not more so. If you don't feel like a slacker on your recovery days, you're doing it wrong!
• Begin your season with long, easy, aerobic base miles, then, once you've achieved your basic fitness level, move on to shorter, more intense hill repeats and interval training. Don't focus your training on mileage alone, because beyond a certain point more miles yield no benefit at all.
• Don't train so much that you lose your desire to ride or your performance starts trending downward. That's called overtraining, which happens when you're not getting enough rest and letting your body recover.
• Experiment incorporating basic stretching into your pre- and post-ride routine, especially hamstrings, calves, quads, IT band, and neck.
• Wear sunblock. Serious sunblock. It's much easier to apply to shaved legs, by the way.
• Practice eating and drinking on the bike, and test the foods you plan to ingest on the ride to make sure your body will tolerate them well. Don't make significant dietary changes on the day of the event!
• Practice grabbing your water bottle with a reverse grip, with your thumb toward the bottom rather than the top. That makes it easier to squeeze the bottle and drink from the side of your mouth, so you don't have to raise your head and take your eyes off the road to drink.
• Learn how to ride comfortably in a pack with other riders. Don't let the PMC be your first group ride. This is my most important safety tip, because the first time you ride in a big pack of mixed riders can be both dangerous and harrowing.
• Postride stretching and self-massage are also great aids to recovery.
• The ideal training diet is very low in fat, very high in complex carbs, and moderate in low-fat protein (most Americans get more than enough protein, so you don't need to increase it). On the bike, even simple carbs (sugars) have a role in providing quick energy. Don't be afraid of eating, because a cyclist working hard can burn over 1,000 kcal per hour.
• The Charles River Wheelmen's seriously hilly "Climb to the Clouds" century usually happens two weeks before the PMC, and makes a great test of your readiness. If you can do CttC, the PMC will be no problem at all.

Next week's topic: Fundraising!

This is the second post in a weekly series I've begun on hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week's topic is one that everyone loves: Equipment!

• If you're riding a hybrid or mountain bike, get skinny tires. The difference in rolling resistance is very significant.
• Clipless pedals: they're also usually a good idea. Shimano mountain bike style cleats are recessed, so they're easier to walk in than traditional road cleats.
• Wear padded cycling shorts. Like all of the odd things that cyclists do (well, most of the odd things), there's a good reason why everyone wears them. Without underwear.
• Sunglasses. Use them! Riding all day in moving air dries your eyes out something fierce, and glare's no fun. And I haven't even mentioned flying insects, gravel, and branches...
• Get a water bottle with a wide mouth, so that you can stuff ice into it as well as liquid.
• You can buy insulated water bottles at your local bike shop. They're not going to perform miracles, but they're definitely worth the small extra cost.
• If you have room for two bottles, make one a sports drink and one water. You can always pour the latter over your head on a really a hot day.
• If you are prone to muscle cramps, consider bringing electrolyte pills to ingest along the way. There's no guarantee they'll work for you, but they probably can't hurt. As always, test these out on training rides before the day of the event.

Next week's topic: Training!

This is the first in a series of postings I have planned, wherein I will share hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

I will be posting one group of hints each week until I've posted all ten sections. And the full list will be permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week's topic is something you should already be on top of: Registration and Logistics.

• If you want to ride the traditional route from Sturbridge to Provincetown, sign up as soon as registration opens in January. It sells out very quickly.
• During registration, if you're in doubt about which to order, opt for the official cycling jersey rather than the tee shirt. You can always buy a tee shirt later.
• If you want to get decent rest Saturday night, plan to stay in a hotel off the MMA campus. Second choice are on-site tents. The dorms aren't very restful.
• If you do want to stay in a hotel in Sturbridge, Bourne, or Provincetown, book your rooms a year in advance. Yes, really.
• Expect nearly all the hotels on Cape Cod to have a two-night minimum.
• Try to convince your friends to ride, too. It really is a much better experience when shared.
• The usual PMC Twitter hashtag is #PMCyyyy where 'yyyy' is the current year (e.g. #PMC2011). It's interesting to monitor it to hear what other riders are up to.

Next week: Equipment!

Spring came late this year, but the cycling season has finally begun.

Last weekend was my first long ride and my first Quad ride of the season. Naturally, I overdid it, doing 65 miles, which left me with a splitting headache and strained ligaments behind my right knee. On the other hand, this was the second year in a row when I led the first group of the year over the big “Dinosaur” hill.

I’ve also commuted to the new job in Quincy a couple times, and it seems okay, despite riding along two huge main arteries and through a couple highway interchanges. I’ve been making some tweaks to my route that have helped somewhat. The traffic in the morning is a lot lighter than it is coming home, too. It’s fine for now, but I don’t think I’d like to do the return commute in the dark.

And I’ve been delighted with the huge amount of maintenance I did on the bike this spring, which included lowering the stem, a complete overhaul, new chain and cassette, cables and housing, bar tape, plus new gloves, bib shorts, and helmet. After all that, the Plastic Bullet feels like a brand new bike again, despite having over 16,000 miles on it. Around Memorial Day it is going to surpass the old hybrid and become the bike I’ve ridden the farthest.

And on top of all those other things, the new Garmin Edge 800 GPS cyclocomputer warrants a paragraph of its own. The amount of information it provides is wonderful, although I face a challenge compiling it into the weekly log that I’ve maintained since October 2000. There are certainly kinks to work out, but I am definitely going to get a lot of value out of that particular upgrade.

Other than that, I’m about to kick off a ten-part series of posts about my Pan-Mass Challenge lessons learned, which I hope will be of value to other riders. And I need to start work on this year’s PMC fundraising video, and also send this year’s ride calendar out to my buddies.

Finally, things are happening, both on the road and here in the cycling blog.

It hardly seems possible, but the Plastic Bullet is definitely getting old. I’ve had it over five years and ridden it more than 16,000 miles.

The past couple years I’ve been a little hesitant to trust the bike, knowing that the wear and tear from all those miles can stress bike parts to the point of failure.

Every spring, I’ve taken the bike in for a free tune-up at my LBS. But that’s really only good for really obvious problems and making simple adjustments.

So this year I brought the bike in for a complete overhaul, where the shop spends a whole day stripping it down to the frame, cleaning and lubing everything, truing the wheels, and replacing all the parts that are prone to wear: brake pads, cables, housing, chain, and cassette.

It’s a damned pricey service, but after five years of use, the bike really needed the attention. And the expense is well worth it for the renewed peace of mind and knowing the bike’s in proper working order.

Of course, like all trips to my LBS, it wasn’t without issues. When I got home, I discovered that they hadn’t bothered tightening the stem bolts, which meant there was absolutely nothing keeping the handlebars and the front wheel pointing in the same direction. Thanks so much, guys!

They also think there might be a hairline crack in the (all carbon fiber) frame where the chainstays meet the bottom bracket. If true, that could worsen or result in a structural failure at some unspecified future date.

That’s not necessarily all bad, tho; Specialized warrantees the Plastic Bullet’s frame for life, so a failure might result in a significant discount on a brandy-new frame. But until then, be assured that I’ll be keeping an extremely watchful eye on it, because that kind of failure could be… traumatic.

The other item I want to note is that just before I brought it in for service, I flipped the stem on the bike. What that basically means is that I took apart the steering mechanism and reassembled it so that the bar is about an inch lower than it used to be. It was the first time I’d done that, and I was happy to get everything back together properly. Not being mechanically inclined, every new repair I complete provides a brief moment of pride.

Lowering the bar does a couple things. First, it makes you more aerodynamic, since you’re hunched down more, rather than sitting upright and catching wind like a sail. So that should increase my speed a tiny bit.

On the other hand, that position also puts a lot more stress on the body, especially the back, neck, hands, and wrists. In the past, I’ve used a more upright position because it’s a lot easier to tolerate for long hours in the saddle and for us older, less flexible athletes.

But my new position isn’t ridiculously aggressive; it’s just more so than I had before. And if it works especially poorly, I can always raise the bar back up… or lower it further if it works well.

The key will be seeing how my body adapts to the alteration, which I plan on monitoring throughout the spring.

Spring… I’m ready! I’m ready!

2011 marks the first year I’ve done the Charles River Wheelmen's New Years Day ride since 2005. Being cold-averse, I’ve usually skipped it, but the forecast 50-degree weather inspired me to saddle up and mosey down to the Common, despite roads wet with snow runoff and messy with sand and salt. But it having been six years since my last appearance, I had forgotten just how poorly organized it was.

For some reason, this 20-mile jaunt around town has always attracted a crowd that’s made up primarily of riders that are known as “retro-grouches”. These are usually men in their 50s and 60s who wear layer upon layer of army surplus weather gear, proudly topped off with reflective vests commonly issued to construction workers.

Retrogrouches are often devoted year-round commuters, and most will happily bend your ear for 90 minutes or more as they describe all the benefits they’ve accrued by not owning a car since 1967. Their 50-pound bikes are weighed down with handmade cardboard fenders and cargo racks comprised of plastic milk crates or cardboard fruit boxes picked out of the trash.

Not that I mind retrogrouches that much; they’re just one of many cycling subcultures, and they’re a pretty innocuous group, so long as you don’t encourage them. But when you have a retrogrouch running an organized ride… you must remember that their highest value is self-reliance, and they are going to expect complete self-reliance from everyone who attends their ride.

So with that as introduction, let’s segue into the narrative.

Before the ride, I’d visited the CRW’s web site to download a GPS tracklog of the route. Hmmm… None available. In fact, searching all the common bike mapping sites online, I couldn’t find a single tracklog anywhere.

Okay, I guess I’ll stoop to reading the annoying cue sheet, with its turn-by-turn directions, and manually convert that into a tracklog. But wait… the CRW’s website doesn’t even offer a cue sheet!

It was at this point that I remembered how often people got lost on this particular ride: something that was the central observation of my writeup of the 2005 New Years ride. Oh boy. Here we go again!

The ride begins at Park Street MBTA station, at a corner of Boston Common right by the State House. I arrived a few minutes beforehand and made sure I grabbed a cue sheet from Eric, the ride’s traditional “organizer”.

The cue sheet is a true classic of retrogrouch style. It was printed in nearly illegible type on a 9-pin dot matrix printer: a device which hasn’t been manufactured in 25 years, and which was el-cheapo technology even back then. It was subsequently duplicated by a photocopier onto thin, curling, specialized fax paper. Do you remember fax machines? Do you remember back in the olden days, when fax paper came on a roll and “plain paper faxes” were a new technological breakthrough? Yup. Say it with me: retrogrouch stylee!

Another feature of the 2011 cue sheet that is both “retro” and “grouch” is that it’s a bit out of date. Directions include going underneath Route 3 and the Central Artery, which were both demolished in 2003 (eight years ago!) as part of the Big Dig. Long-since completed Big Dig construction is mentioned four times on the cue sheet, as is the Boston Tea Party ship, which was destroyed by fire four years ago. As you might expect, the cue sheet doesn’t reflect the reconfiguration of surface streets since the completion of the Big Dig.

But that was barely the beginning, folks! While handing me my cue sheet, Eric also offered me a croissant from a big cardboard box he was carrying, proudly proclaiming that he had found them in a dumpster behind a Dunkin Donuts. He made this same offer to everyone who showed up (thankfully, I didn’t see anyone accept one) and made sure to repeat his offer when he addressed the entire crowd of riders at the start. Clearly, this was a retrogrouch alpha male in his native environment!

After a speech in which he made sure to emphasize that he would be obeying all traffic laws and stopping and waiting at all red lights, Eric announced that he would be sweeping: intentionally being the last rider on the course, to make sure everyone finished. With a brush of his hands, he encouraged people to head out. No one moved.

He waved his hands again. Clearly that was sufficient guidance, was it not? Were these people dense? Still no one moved.

After a few awkward moments, it finally dawned on people that there was no one assigned to lead the front of the ride. Like penguins jostling one another toward the edge of an iceberg, the riders slowly made their way onto Tremont Street, with no one having any idea where they were supposed to be going.

The idea that one person could successfully conduct an organized ride is patently stupid, and doubly stupid to think they can do it from the back of a pack of a hundred riders, frequently split by red lights and traffic. At a minimum, you need ride leaders at the front and back, and it’d be nice to have a few people in the middle to take leadership of groups that get split at red lights. But no. According to the CRW, as long as you have a cue sheet, that’s all the support a “real” rider could ever want or need, right?

Have I mentioned that the route isn’t arrowed, either? Most rides, even CRW rides, have arrows spray-painted on the road surface in order to help riders navigate. But not this one. That’d take all the fun out of it!

What evolved was what has happened every year I’ve participated in this ride. People clumped together in packs, vaguely guessing where they were going, sometimes making wrong turns and back-tracking, sometimes getting halfway through a busy intersection before someone in the crowd yells “Turn here!”, invoking a sudden and dangerous swerve of the pack. It was navigation by committee, and god help the impatient riders who set off on their own, thinking they could figure it out themselves. Inevitably, they got eaten by predators and were never seen again.

It was, basically, a complete cluster, just like it is every year.

One more anecdote, just to cap things off. Each year, about one third of the riders take part in a nice little group picture, taken at Charlestown Navy Yard in front of Old Ironsides. Why only one third? Because one third of the riders got lost on course and haven’t arrived yet, and another third got there early and promptly continued on, having no knowledge of the planned group photo because it wasn’t mentioned on the cue sheet nor in the pre-ride speech.

With such negligent organization, you might think I hated the ride, but that’s really not the case. It’s easier to accept and deal with incompetence when you have come to expect it, as I have of most events run by the CRW. Although to be fair, their centuries don’t have as many lapses as the New Years ride.

And it’s hard to argue with an ambling pleasure ride around Boston on a winter’s day that reached a wonderful 54 degrees. It’ll be several months before we see those kinds of temperatures again.

I was reading an article about the Boston Marathon, where the author mentioned training via long runs, tempo runs, and fartleks.

Doubletake… Yup, fartleks.

The Wikipedia article says that’s actually Swedish for “speed play”, and describes it as long-duration, unstructured interval training that varies both speed and intensity so that it works both the aerobic and anaerobic systems. Fartleks combine tempo, sprinting, and active recovery pace work. it was designed for runners, but has been applied to numerous other sports.

But when I bring that idea to cycling, it just sounds like a good description of every club ride I’ve ever participated in, as well as most of my own solo training rides!

Fartleks are long workouts. Well, each segment of a bike ride typically exceeds 45 minutes, and there are often 4-8 segments in any given ride. On any given weekend, I’ll leave the house at first thing in the morning and spend the next 7 or 8 hours in the saddle. Cyclists are the masters of long-duration workouts.

Fartleks are unstructured workouts, varying intensity from time to time in no particular pattern. Okay. Even on solo rides, the ups and downs of the terrain create unplanned periods of varying intensity, from tempo pace on the flats to active recovery on descents to high intensity every time there’s a big hill. Or when I sprint for one of those radar speed readout signs along the side of the road! And sprints and breakaways are de rigueur for club rides, where every rider’s unspoken goal is to crush everyone else.

I’ve always resisted strict, formulaic interval training, believing that simply going out and riding hard was just as good a workout, and much better for one’s mental fortitude and well-being. The only time I do use structured intervals is during my wintertime indoor training, when ride time is shorter and there’s no terrain or stronger riders to force me to work at higher intensities.

Finding out about fartlekking merely confirms my felt sense that one should train in conditions that mimic the event(s) one plans to participate in. Train like you race, as they say.

In other words, ride your bike! Leave all that joyless, robotic interval work to others. If you spend a good percentage of your time working your aerobic base, hit some intensity (especially those hills!) to push your the anaerobic system, eat a high-quality / low fat diet, and then get adequate rest, you’re bound to improve, both within each cycling season as well as year over year.

So next year you can expect to see me fartlekking all over the place!

I know a lot of cyclists here in New England whose idea of paradise is living in a place where one can ride year-round, where training rides and centuries aren’t stopped cold by winter’s ice and snow¹.

Sure, it would be nice to have the choice of riding anytime one wants, but there are also advantages to having a limited riding season.

The easiest benefit to identify is that it provides one’s body a needed break. Training for endurance events is hard work², and it puts a lot of stress on the body. By the end of the year, I’m physically drained and my muscles and joints need a couple months of rest in order to recuperate. By springtime, I’m refreshed and can attack the new season with renewed strength. Without that enforced time-out, I’d gradually lose strength and possibly cause greater damage to my joints as a result of overtraining.

What’s true of the body is also true for the mind: after months spent highly focused and motivated, one’s interest level wanes and one longs for a break. Mentally, I need that time to rest and recuperate just as much as my body does, so that when spring comes I’m eagerly looking forward to the long hours in the saddle and painful all-out efforts that training requires³. Without any break, my desire and motivation would gradually evaporate, and my performance would follow.

I find the same is true of anything I do. Whether it’s cycling, consulting, writing, travel, my meditation practice, or even relationships, I find it difficult to sustain intensely focused interest in something for years at a time without taking some kind of break.

Besides, taking a break from cycling frees up 10-20 hours a week, which I can devote to all the things I’ve been neglecting all summer (like career, writing, travel, my meditation practice, and relationships)!

But hey, why can’t you just leave the bike in the garage for a few weeks? Who says I’m obliged to ride all year ’round just because the weather’s conducive? Actually, that’s a solution that only a non-cyclist would offer.

A cyclist knows how the dynamic works. Most cyclists are competitive⁴. Whether it’s to put the hurt into one’s buddy on a big hill, or whether it’s simply to avoid having him put that hurt on you, no cyclist wants to lose ground (fitness- and performance-wise) to his buddies. Therefore, as long as the weather’s good, there’ll be someone out there doing hill repeats or interval workouts in an effort to get a leg up on the competition. And so long as that’s true, a cyclist trying to take an unforced break will still feel a strong obligation to ride, knowing that his buddies are out there getting stronger than him because they’re out there training⁵.

So although we might dream of a utopian world where it’s always sunny and warm, I’m very happy to live in a region where nature enforces an off-season. That way I don’t have to feel guilty about hanging it up for the winter, knowing that when spring comes I’ll have renewed desire to ride and my body will be ready⁶ for the challenges I’ll undertake.

¹ Yes, one can ride year-round, even in New England. But I’ve never found true winter riding very useful endurance training. YMMV.

² Yes, one can go into an endurance event with limited training, but one must do so with limited expectations. To thrive requires training.

³ Yes, at a certain point one’s training must focus more on intervals than mindless miles, but that’s only after one has a solid number of aerobic base miles, and distance training still has some benefits even after that.

⁴ Yes, most cyclists are competitive, but there are exceptions. They have wives.

⁵ Yes, more training volume isn’t always better. You need adequate rest, too, which a structured training program will provide.

⁶ Hopefully.