Things that sound good in theory

Before I get to the meat of the post, I thought I'd post one of my favorite pictures I've taken lately. It was Sunday morning's mountain bike excursion. If this doesn't look close to perfection to you, I suggest you need a new outlook on things!



Now for the rest of the story. I broke free from work a shade after 4 hell bent on making it down to PRC's last Ritual Ride of the year. I'd also made up my mind to head from the end of that ride down to Giff's in Valley Junction to meet the guys for tacos and beer. After that, I'd saunter my way back home for a shower and passing out in bed. It sounded like a great plan. Actually in most ways it was. However, I learned a good lesson that things don't always go together no matter how good they might be individually.

The Ritual Ride was good and 1 loop was plenty for this out of shape guy. I hooked up with Lou for an extra mile in Water Works on the way out which put us about a 1/2 mile behind the main pack as we hit the road. Of course it was no issue for him to bridge the gap, but it took me about half the lap before I could latch back on. We worked some hills and I got a chance to chat with Kelli about her mountain bike aspirations... I split off as we hit 63rd and made my way towards sweet refreshment in the form of cheap tacos and beer.

My gluttony got the best of me as I ordered 2 tacos and washed them down with a couple tall boys of Old Style. All told, I was still out of there for $10. I hung out with the muddy yet happy taco riders and sat in on the CITA meeting. At this point I was fat and happy, but I still had 8 miles to roll back home in the dark. We left as a group, but split up shortly after hitting Grand leaving me to wind my way home alone. No biggie as I was outfitted with a blinky and headlight.

After hitting the Grand hill and trying to keep the pace a little above a slog, my stomach and legs started to rebell. I eased my way on home which involved a couple more decent climbs, but thankfully some descent as well. Once home, I pretty much lapsed into a lactic coma as I collapsed on the couch for a bit. I headed to the showers where my dinner choices began to make me rethink my decision of going for a 1 to 1 ratio of tacos to beer. I opted to head to bed as quickly as possible to hopefully avoid any more discomfort by sleeping it off.

My lovely wife comes home and finds me in bed and decides to proposition me. As my grumblings hadn't passed quite yet, we opted for door number 2 which was to see if she could arouse me out of a sound sleep when she was ready to come to bed. Somewhere around the stroke of midnight, I was awakened in what can only be described as the best way possible. However, I was still suffering somewhat so I soldiered on the best I could. What's a guy to do?! After fulfilling my "obligation" I was back to bed.

So to recap- Ritual Riding- good, Tacos and Beer- good (in moderation), being woken up to perform sexual acrobatics at midnight- good. Toss everything together and mix them up and you've got a recipe for feeling out of it, seating through the night, and the expected result of eating tacos and drinking cheap beer... Not quite the perfect mix of activities, but I'd still rate the night a success.

Ritual or Tacos?

Man, it was a tough decision last night. With the weather being great for a change, both the Ritual ride and Taco ride were in full swing last night. The Taco ride is still suffering a bit from the flooding shutting down a number of trails, but there are still some ridable pieces out there. Considering it has been a couple weeks since I've put in anything close to resembling a hard effort, I figured I probably wasn't in shape to stick with the A group for the Ritual Ride, but it would at least offer the opportunity to bloew the cobwebs out.

I shucked out of work a shade after 4 and scooted home (literally). A few more indecisive moments were spent when Miranda informed me her plans for the evening had fallen through. I offered up to go out to dinner and do something with her, but she opted to lock herself in the office and work on updating some new products for the store. I decided to head to down Ritual ride and took off on the road bike.

I got a nice warm up on the way down and then pretty much cooled off by the time we took off from the cafe. We did a pretty slow roll out as a group down Fleur and worked our way over to Brown's Woods Drive. Donny had told us that once we crossed 63rd, we could stretch our legs out so I followed that advice and hit the gas a little harder. I looked back and for some reason I was off the front by a pretty good margin. I figured the pack would reel me in shortly so I just stayed on it and got the heart rate pumping. Donny finally pulled me pack as we made the turn down past Orilla and had me jump on his wheel as a few other riders pulled up as well. I'm sure they were taking it easy, but it still felt good to go out strong for a little while.

I chased them through the first lap and fell off at the soccer hill. By the end of the second lap I was pretty well spent and rolled up around 5th to the starting point of the loop where everyone was sitting. I'd bounced my heart rate up to the 194 range a few times and was feeling it so the break was great. On top of that as soon as we rolled out it felt like the AC was turned on. I split off from the group and headed down 63rd where I was met by the only asshole of the night. He laid on the horn and gave me the universal signal for WTF as he drove by even though he never had to slow down to get around me. Apparently changing lanes is too much of a hassle for some people to have to go through without getting upset.

All in all it was a good ride and I managed to turn myself inside out a few times as well. I rode (an actual bike) in this morning as well. My legs were feeling it for sure as I started out, but I cruised at a pretty steady pace all the way in. That makes 3 days since I've driven my truck. I love it!

Ritual reroute

With all the rain and flooding going on, the dirt ride was out this week and probably will be for several more. Instead, I hit up the Ritual ride last night. A few of my fellow dirt riders showed up for the ride as well.
(Images stolen from Kent Carlson)


Another change due to flooding was the routing of the ride. We headed straight up Fleur and cut over on Bell before heading up Park to the trail head. We were supposed to roll up Fleur as a group, but as I cruised along at a comfortable pace I quickly moved out to the front without realizing it. I slowed back down and got to the front of the group. I don't think I heard a single horn honk at us going down Fleur which was pretty amazing as we made sure to take a full lane for our group.

A few more people met us at the trail head and I realized the dirt guys had shown up as well. Kent riding fixed on the route was pretty impressive considering the speeds we tend to carry for the front group. Speaking of front groups, I managed to keep on further than I have before and due to a small stop by the few that broke away, I managed to hook back on and finish with the front group for the first time. Usually I'm a minute or two behind.

We rolled the loop pretty quickly and headed back to Ritual Cafe where they were just closing down for the night due to being a bit understaffed. That really wasn't a bad thing as the ride numbers were way down tonight. I think a combination of the threat of rain and a some alternative options for the tri-people to do some training kept a pretty good group of people away. We hung out for a few more minutes chatting and then with a lap of thunder resonating through the buildings, I figured it was time to head for the shed.

I have noticed that with the amount of riding I'm doing going down, my knees seem to ache more. Normally, I'd figure the opposite of this, but I guess with them being stressed less often, now they ache when I do put the pressure on. I still need to double check my saddle height and make sure it's where Donny set it for me at the fitting last summer. Carbon bikes are notorious for letting the seat posts slip. I will say that everything felt really good on the bike last night. I was just feeling it and didn't overwork myself on the first half of the ride. I did manage to get my heart rate to hit 190 going up the soccer hill and didn't completely die off once we were over the top. Of course I was chasing a couple of the tri guys who I think were mostly toying with the speeds they were running while I was wide open just to hang on.

Ritual and Reward

Last night was another installment of the Ritual Ride with the PRC squad. I'm absolutely stunned at how quickly this ride has grown. I managed to make it to the first "pre-ride" and the first ride itself and the turnout has been nothing short of awesome. I think last night's count was around 55 riders total with at least 50% being women. If nothing else, this should tell you how sorely an event geared towards getting women involved in the sport has been missed in the area. The beautiful weather didn't hurt much either.

We took off a shade past 5:30 and did the usual rollout with the group splitting into A & B where the A group does an extra loop through part of Waterworks in order to keep the overall group a little spread out on the bike trail section plus keep us closer to arriving back as a single group. The A group wasn't attacking by any means, but the pace was nice and fast at 20-22 mph average for most of the ride. As per usual, once we hit the couple rollers outside of Orilla, I dropped off the back a bit and wasn't able to close back up by the time we hit the soccer hill. A couple red lights as we rolled back into town played in my favor though and eventually i caught the few riders left from the front of the group as we crossed Fleur. 34 miles on the legs and I felt pretty good when I hit home. Amazing how much easier it is to push skinny tires and a light frame after riding the mountain bike for a few days.

Today actually marks the 5th day in a row I've gotten to ride my bike. It's my 3rd commute in this week and I'm definitely starting to consider taking a more proactive approach to doing some commuting the rest of the summer. I've got about a 18-19 mile round trip depending on the detour I'm currently taking. Overall it runs about 35ish minutes on the mountain bike without pushing too hard. My biggest problem is that if I tried to ride slow enough to not sweat, it would take me almost an hour to ride in and that's too long. So, I'm set with taking baby wipe showers once I get in and just sweating it out once I get home.

I mainly rode in today to get a few shakedown miles on the mountain bike after tearing it mostly down on Tuesday night to clean and prep it for the race this weekend. The good news is that everything seemed spot on this morning with a new chain, greased and clean rear hub/axle, and a good general cleaning overall. I did find some loose spokes which I put a bit of tension back into. They were casualties of me tweaking the rear wheel during an endo this spring. The rim was tweaked just enough that we really had to tension one side and loosen the other. They apparently finished loosening on their own so I'll be keeping an eye on them in the future. I'll probably need to keep on the lookout for a good cheap wheel sometime this year and put this one into reserve.

I've been trying to avoid setting any goals for this weekend beyond finishing. However, I'm just too damned competitive for that idea to hold water. At least I'm going to try to set some hopefully modest goals considering my current conditioning and lack of long distance rides this year. I really would like to finish in the top half of the field which would currently mean about 30th place give or take. I'd also like to finish in under 9 hours total time out. I'm shooting to stay on the bike as much as possible and be self contained beyond a single water stop somewhere along the way. I'm carrying 70 oz of water on my back and another 24 of perpetuem fuel in my bike bottle so I figure I'll be good for 2/3 or better of the race on liquids. Obviously part of my fueling will be liquid, but I'm also planning some Clif bars, and various other goodies stuffed in somewhere. Beyond that, I'm going to try to carry a sane amount of spares and parts and keep my total pack weight under 15 pounds. We'll see how that goes. Wish me luck!

Wednesday ritual

I hit the Ritual ride again last night. It's quickly become my favorite group ride this year. There are enough people of different abilities that I can ride as hard or easy as I like and typically never end up riding alone. Someone said there were almost 50 riders last night! That's just awesome. There were also a lot more women last night making up the contingent which was also great to see.

We did our typical ride route with a split up for the faster group to do an additional loop through Water works park. That gave the other riders a chance to get out in front and have us catch back on. I think we caught them about the time we started the road portion of the loop. As usual, the two big hills created the separation again. There's one hill just before the turn off Maffit road and then another down by the soccer fields. Both are just long enough and hard enough that it really separates out the pack into a number of smaller groups. A small group rolled up to the stop light at 63rd street and took off from there to hit the bike trail again. We rolled pretty leisurely back to Ritual Cafe and waited for the rest.

Ritual graciously stayed open until 8 for our group and it was good to see people taking advantage of that fact by spending some money with those nice folks. After hanging out for about a half hour a few of us rolled up to A-Dong for a great dinner. I headed home about nine in the dark. I'm still pretty new to night riding so the novelty of it is great for me. My wife- not so much. She's definitely not happy if I'm riding in the dark. About my only thing I need to change is to pick up a stronger headlight. I'm all ready running a Planet Bike superflash on the rear, but the front light is a cheap lightweight unit that just gives me enough light to add some safety marking, but not really light the road. Another awesome Wednesday in the books!

A reminder for the few that actually read this- Race like a girl is starting tonight. I'm trying to head over early enough to help with registration, but I'll have my hands full with my daughter as well. I hope to see you there!

Ritual riding

The first official ritual ride was last night. It's set up to be a no drop, relaxed pace, semi-social type of ride. I'm happy to say for the most part it was. With the exception of only a few of us knowing the entire route and a few sprints off the front that caused some chaos, it went pretty well.

For a first ride, the attendance was awesome to see. I'd say there were a good 20+ people that showed up to ride at 5:30. A brief hello and introduction from Jane at PRC and we were off. The route was to wind down to the bike path on MLK and through Waterworks to the Great Western Trail. We headed down the trail to Orilla (Bambino's Restaurant) and jumped back on the road. A quick left out towards Maffit reservoir and into some rollers. Here's where the sprint up the big hill led to confusion. We were supposed to hang a right on 42nd and Jane even made mention of it before we started.

The sprint group headed straight towards the reservoir. A number of us made the right turn and headed down towards Walnut Woods. I thought the rest of the group was close enough coming up the hill that they saw us turn. Unfortunately, they saw the sprint group and headed out towards the lake. This led to some back tracking back up the hill from Maffit and a little lost time.

The next separation came at the climb from the soccer fields just past Walnut Woods. At least this section of road had no turns so we held up at the stoplight crossing 63rd for what we thought was the main group. About 10 of us rolled as a group from there with no sign of anyone else coming up the stretch from the soccer hill. The group headed straight down McKinley to the bike trail in lieu of cutting over to Park. I'd say this was probably the safer choice as riding a group down Park for a mile around dusk is a sketchy choice considering the attention span of the typical driver on that stretch of road. We meandered our way back downtown and hit Ritual Cafe just as they were closing up.

Most of the group had peeled off and headed their own direction at this point. I was hoping that somehow we'd gotten to the back of the pack and everyone would be waiting at the cafe. Alas, we were the first group in and a few riders trickled slowly by until the last of the sweep showed up around 20 minutes later having gone back for a single rider and waiting for a flat tire to be fixed. All in all it was successful as nobody was dropped and all made it back alive!

I was trying my best to abide by this post from Lou's blog about going easy. I didn't look at my average heart rate when I was done, but I really tried hard to keep it under 150. A few hills definitely put me closing in on 180 due to switching to an 11-23 cassette and vowing to not use my triple up front, but in all it was pretty relaxed. A couple points along the ride I was pretty amazed at my perceived effort versus the speed we were cruising along. I'm hoping that bodes well for my base mileage getting me into summer riding shape as the miles start to ramp up.