Category Archives: Cycling

My legs are aching right now from the ride I went on this morning. I’ve ridden the last three days in a row, which is part of the problem; I ride that frequently quite often, but not when the series of days begins with a race, which happened on Tuesday. I also rode hard today. I didn’t plan on it — this is one of those days I thought I would take it easy — but my legs had other ideas. They just took off up the hills, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I don’t really know if the kind of riding I’m doing — the types of rides, the frequency, the intensity — is what I need to be doing; I’ve got The Cyclist’s Training Bible and I sort of follow it, but its training plans are so super-complicated, it just isn’t realistic, and I don’t stick with it. I could do it if I had all the time in the world and the weather were always great. As that’s not the case, I try to follow its general principles and kind of make it up from there.

What I need — but probably won’t have unless I’m willing to pay for it, which right now I’m not — is a personal coach, someone who could help me figure out how to train most efficiently given the time and terrain and weather I deal with. Someone who could help me figure out what my strengths and weaknesses are and how to train to maximize or overcome them.

Anyway, something’s going right, because I had another good race on Tuesday. This one was faster than last week, about 24.5 mph, and longer, about 52 minutes. And again, I stayed with the pack the whole time, climbing up the last hill with everybody else. What was different this week was that the pack was bigger and the riding wasn’t as smooth. I’m not used to riding in a really large pack (for me, that would be anything over 50 people), and I got a little freaked out by the crowd and the closeness of the other riders. This meant I rode toward the back of the pack a little more than I should have — it’s much harder to ride in the back where there’s a lot of slowing down and speeding up instead of a steady pace, and where the squirrely riders hang out. Next week I will try to ride near the front a little more.

I just checked the last time I rode in a race, and it was April 1st. I hadn’t realized it was quite so long ago. The Tuesday night race series began tonight — it will run through the beginning of September, so I have the luxury of a local race once a week for the next four months. These aren’t “official” races, not USCF ones, but I don’t really care about that — I’m just happy to have a race to ride in.

I had no idea how I would do tonight. As I’ve written about recently, I haven’t ridden all that much in the few weeks, so I was unsure of my fitness level. And these races are hard — there are only two groups of riders, the A group and the B group, when usually with bigger races there are 6 or 7 groups, or something like that. What this means is that I ride with fast people. I ride with Hobgoblin, in fact. I rode in this series last summer, and did okay — sometimes I could stay with the pack and sometimes I couldn’t.

So, this afternoon before the race, Hobgoblin and I went through our litany of excuses — I’m tired, my head hurts, my stomach hurts, I don’t feel like racing, I’m too stressed about school, etc., etc. I really, truly didn’t feel like racing. But I’ve learned by now that if I don’t race, I usually regret it, so I forced myself to put on my cycling clothes and ride over to the course. One of the first things that happened when we got there was that it started raining. Perfect, right? We hung out under a small tent until it let up a little bit, and then it was time to start warming up.

Once we started riding, I settled into it pretty well. I forgot about the headache and the stress. I spent the whole race hoping I could hang on another lap, but the thing is, I always did end up hanging on, and I ended up staying with the pack right through the final sprint. All 23 laps, 45 minutes, 18 miles or so of the race. This is still relatively unusual for me, and so it’s quite a pleasure to be with the pack as they head up the hill for the last time and then to do a cool-down lap with the group, talking over how things went. One of the highlights of the race was catching up to Hobgoblin and riding next to him for a minute or two, talking a bit about how the race was going. Most of the time, though, I could see him up at the front, pushing the pace.

So I feel like I’m back into racing after a month off; I’m pleased because I’ve got a bit of confidence back and I won’t dread next week’s race quite as much.

Last week the races were cancelled because of a snowstorm, but today the weather was much better, although the race course was damp and covered in sand and grit. But we had no snow and no ice like two weeks ago when the race got delayed because the roads were so dangerous. Spring is really on the way!

Today’s race was one of my best; I felt calm going into it, I had just the right amount of time to warm up, I felt a little anxious, as I suppose I must in order to get the energy up to do well, but I wasn’t really nervous. And after we started, I had no problem staying with the pack; in fact, I think because of the dampness of the roads and the sand and grit, the pack moved very slowly at the beginning. We were testing the roads, seeing how safe everything felt. And it didn’t feel terribly safe, actually — as we rounded the corner to head into the backstretch on the first lap, we nearly ran into a flock of turkeys, maybe a dozen or so, that decided to cross the road just at that moment. We managed to slow down enough and yell loud enough so they moved out of the way in time. That could have been a gruesome scene — what would it look like if a pack of cyclists ran over a flock of turkeys? I don’t want to know.

After the first few laps, things sped up a bit, but I had no trouble keeping up, and in fact, as the race went on, I found myself up close to the front fairly often. Someone in front of me would begin to slow down, and I would ride around him and speed up to catch another wheel and stay in the middle of the action. This is something I need to do more often; I tend to hang out in the back of the pack, but often it’s harder to ride back there, as there is a lot of slowing down and speeding up in the back that can sap your energy.

As we crossed the start/finish line at the beginning of the last lap, I thought to myself that I’d done an unusually good job of staying with the pack and that if I fell behind at this point it wouldn’t matter a whole lot — no point in killing myself — but I heard the Hobgoblin yelling, telling me to work my way up to the front so I could get myself in a good position for the final sprint, and I thought, eh, why not. So I worked hard on the last lap, moved up a bit, and was with the pack on the final hill — something that almost never happens to me. Almost always at this point if I’m still in the race, I’m slowing down, falling behind, treating the last lap as a cool-down.

The only bad part of the race happened on the last lap at the bottom of the hill that leads to the finish line — I heard some yelling, saw a body flying, and felt the pack swerve to the left to avoid a fallen bicycle. One of my teammates had crashed, jostled by another rider — he was fine although after the race I saw his front wheel was now pointing in the wrong direction.

I was a bit shaken by the crash, but the rest of pack was rushing on ahead, so I kept going up the hill to the finish, doing a sprint of sorts — I was tired enough by that point I’m not sure I was really going all that fast — but I ended up finishing in 14th place, the first time I’ve ever gotten a place of any sort at this race series (my best ever was a 13th place finish last summer in a different race). When they post results shortly after the race, they list the top 20, so I got to see my name up there.

This isn’t an impressive result, by any means, but for me it’s pretty cool. It means I’m improving — I never got close to doing this well last year — and improvement is all I’m looking for.

And I must say I have the awesomest teammates — even though three of them had gotten 4th, 5th, and 10th place, they seemed more pleased about my finish than they did about theirs.

Today’s race was odd. The oddness started while I was on my way over to the course; it’s only about two miles over there, so I rode my bike to do some warming up on the way. As I went around a very sharp corner near my house, I crashed. I was riding along fine, and next thing I knew, I’d hit the pavement. I was fine and got up immediately, looking around furtively to see who’d noticed me being an idiot. The only spectator I saw was a guy in a pick-up truck who slowed down to see if I was okay, but as I was so quickly back on my feet, he took off again.

I couldn’t figure out why it happened, except that I’d taken a sharp corner too fast. As my only injury was a scrape on my elbow and a bruise on my hip, I got back on the bike and continued on to the course. I considered not telling anybody and saving a little face. As I rode, I thought to myself, “you don’t deserve to be on a bike, much less race on one!”

But when I got to the course I figured out what the problem was. Black ice. This was odd because the temperature back at home was in the mid-30s, and it hadn’t occurred to me that the roads could be icy when the temperature is above freezing. But the course was covered in black ice too. I felt a little less like an idiot, although I probably still looked like one to the guy in the pick-up. I decided that the crash would actually make a good story, a nice illustration of how awful the roads were.

Because of the ice, the race was delayed an hour and a half, so I ended up spending almost two hours warming up and then waiting, warming up and then waiting, while the race officials figured out what to do. They did a little sweeping and scraping, but mostly they just waited until the sun got high enough to melt everything.

With all that, it’s a wonder the race went decently. I didn’t do as well as I did last week, dropping off the pack a little earlier, but the race was faster this time around, and I think all that warming up and waiting actually tired me out a bit. Mostly I’m grateful I didn’t have another embarrassing meeting with the pavement.  There were no crashes in my race, or the Hobgoblin’s, right after mine.

Although I never like crashing, if I have to crash, this is exactly how I’d like it to happen.

My first bike race of the season didn’t suck! Woo-hoo! That’s really all I ask.

I ended up finishing the race, which is a big improvement on last year’s first race, and I stayed with the main pack up until the last 2 laps (out of 17 or 18 laps, I’m not sure). At that point somebody decided to sprint off the front, the pack surged forward to catch him, and I couldn’t keep up. I might have stayed with them, but I was on the wheel of a guy who couldn’t keep the pace, and when I went around him to try to catch up, I hit a head wind and couldn’t do it.

But going into the race, I had no idea whatsoever what I’d be able to do. Last year for my first few races, I didn’t finish, or I finished so far off the back of the pack that it hardly counted as a finish. I’ve done a lot more riding this year than last, so I thought I might do better, but I had no real idea how much training the other riders have been doing or who most of the other riders would be.

So I went into it hoping just to hang on as long as I could. When I’d ridden a couple of laps without feeling like I was going to die or throw up, I relaxed a bit and thought I might be able to do okay. After that, I told myself to try to hang on for five more minutes — just five! — and after that I told myself to hang on another five minutes, and another, up until the end (the whole thing was about 40 minutes). At that point, many of the guys in the pack still had energy left to sprint, but I most definitely did not, so I wasn’t surprised they left me behind. And there were a bunch of guys who fell behind much earlier than I did — I don’t like to have that competitive attitude, but — it’s really nice to be faster than at least a few people.

It was a cold day, although not colder than one might expect in early March, low 30s in the morning. But it felt much colder than that when I finished my race and stayed to cheer on the Hobgoblin and other teammates. Clouds blew in and covered the sun and the wind picked up, and I stood there shivering, wearing the Hobgoblin’s jacket, wishing it were spring. I like watching bike races, but I’ll like it more when it’s warm.

Oooh — one of my teammates just sent me an email telling me I rode a good race today!  My teammates are awesome.

I got home just a little while ago from a 37-mile bike ride that felt like it was at least 50.  It was a good ride, just very hilly and therefore slow, and I was convinced at one point that I was lost, and so I spent at least 20-30 minutes in a panic, certain I would have to turn around and retrace my route, which would involve climbing up more hills.  I didn’t, thank heavens — I eventually came to a place I recognized and realized I was on the right route all along.  But that kind of experience makes a ride feel much longer.

The race season begins next Sunday, and I have no idea how ready I am.  I’ve been riding regularly through the winter, but not terribly intensely — which I think is how I should be riding; the intensity can come later.  The problem is that the race season here begins ridiculously early.  I’m torn between wanting to be ready for the first race so I don’t embarrass myself horribly, and worrying about working so hard I get burnt out.  If I ride too intensely now, I won’t leave myself enough room to add intensity later.  But if I don’t ride intensely now, I’m running the risk of not having enough strength to finish the first races.

I rode with my cycling club yesterday; they were practicing race tactics to get ready for next week, doing things like working together to catch a sprinter who’s made a break from the pack.  I didn’t actually directly participate in these drills, as I’m not strong enough; I just rode at the back of the pack, trying my best to stay with everybody.  This could be an indication that I’m not ready to race, but it was a mixed group — some beginners and some more advanced riders (categories 4 and 5) — and so I still don’t know how I match up against riders in my category.  There were other guys who looked about as tired as I was.

As usual, I was the only woman in the group; there is at least one other woman in my club who races (and maybe more, depending on whether a couple new people decide to give it a try), but she doesn’t train with the guys much.  There will be a women’s race next week, but I’m not going to ride in it — the women’s race is usually very fast because women of all levels ride in it, whereas the men’s race I’ll ride in is limited mostly to newbies, and so a bit slower.  That was a lesson I learned very well last year.

So who knows.  I’ll give it my best shot next week, but if I don’t do well, that will be okay, because it’s the beginning of the season and I have plenty of time to get myself into shape for races later on.

And the real truth of the matter is that I race because I like riding and I want a challenge.  I don’t care much how well I do.

I have a national USCF (United States Cycling Federation) ranking! All you need to do to get one, actually, is to ride in a USCF race and finish it, so it’s not like it’s a big deal, but I was pleased to realize that someone is keeping track of my performances and that I’m not dead last in my category. Many race organizers report their results to the USCF, which then uses a complicated formula to give all finishers a certain number of points (this is based on your place in the finish, the number of riders in a race, your age group and probably other things too) and then you get ranked along with other riders in your category. So my ranking isn’t based on how I compete against all other women, but against all other category 4 women (beginners).

And you’d like to know what my national ranking is? I’m 132 out of 225 in road races and 145 out of 195 in criteriums. Woo-hoo! This is based on only three races, actually; I guess they only count races where you ride with your gender and category, and most of my races last year were with men. The USCF website has my results in these three races (results which I’d pretty much forgotten about): 22nd and 33rd in the road races and 13th in the criterium.

The website gives even more information though; here are the various ways they break it down for road races (I’m giving away my age here!):

And here are the stats for criteriums:

#1 in my zip code! — and probably the only one. What these stats conveniently leave out is how many people I’m competing against in each of these categories. Oh, this makes me laugh. So, okay — I have lots of room for improvement. But that’s a good thing, because it won’t be so impossibly hard to move up in the overall rankings this year. And maybe I’ll manage to stay #1 in my zip code.

After weeks and weeks of ridiculously warm winter weather, it’s finally gotten cold around here, so I’ve had the chance to go riding in below-freezing weather. This is the first year I’ve ridden regularly throughout the winter, and I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in for a January. I owe my ability to ride in freezing weather to L.L. Bean’s Wicked Good Toe Warmers, inserts you can place between your sock and the shoe, made of all-natural something or other, and let me tell you — they are wicked good. For some reason I simply can’t keep my toes warm without them. I can wear layer upon layer of socks and layer upon layer of shoe covers and my toes still get numb and painful after about 30 minutes. The Hobgoblin has this problem with his hands, but my hands are fine, and his toes are fine. I don’t get why this is.

The first time I used the toe warmers was on a 3-hour-long ride, and they felt heavenly; simply keeping my toes warm kept me happy the whole time. Now that my toes are warm, I don’t have much trouble riding in temperatures as low as 20 degrees. Below 20 degrees, it would be hard to keep the rest of my body warm — at that point, I feel like I’m working just as hard to stay warm as I am to ride my bike; my mind turns inward, and I have trouble paying attention to the road because I’m busy monitoring how cold I am.

Besides the temperature, the main problems with winter riding are snow and wind. Snow hasn’t a problem so far this year, but even when we get some, the roads tend to clear out and dry up pretty quickly, so even a big storm will only keep my off the bike a few days. I think the wind is more of a problem — partly because of the wind chill and partly because I don’t want to get knocked over, especially not into oncoming traffic.

So far I’ve managed to ride four or five times a week, and I’ve only ridden indoors on the trainer once, and that was because of the wind. It was actually a beautiful day out, sunny and clear, but there were gusts of 50 mph according to the weather reports, and I did not one of those to hit me sideways.

One other problem with winter riding — if it’s below freezing, it’s only a matter of time before my water bottles freeze. The Hobgoblin and I rode for 2 1/2 hours last Sunday, and I couldn’t drink for the last hour because my bottle got clogged with ice. This wasn’t too much of a problem because I don’t sweat much when it’s so cold and so don’t get dehydrated quite as easily, but still, it’s not a particularly good thing.

So, so far my experiment with winter riding has gone quite well, but as this isn’t exactly a normal winter, I don’t really know what it’s like. Would I ride this regularly if temperatures were closer to average and we had more snow? I don’t know, but I hope I would.

I’m going to do pretty much nothing today — the dishes and the laundry at most, but otherwise I’ll read books and read blogs and watch movies. It’s such a nice day for doing nothing too, since it’s rainy outside.

I went on a marvelous bike ride yesterday (which put me at 3,707 miles for the year, my most ever). My cycling club organized a group ride and about 40 people showed up. We went on a loop that was partly familiar to me but also went on some new roads and it added up to about 52 miles. What I liked about it was that everyone stayed together for most of it, and when we split apart about 10 miles from the end it was intentional rather than a matter of some people not being able to keep up with the others. And we kept a reasonable pace — no hammering off the front and no showing off, although I think that was partly because our club leader made sure the people at the front didn’t start going too fast. I like it when a group can stick together so the ride is less a crazy free-for-all and more of a group effort.

I don’t do group rides all that often because they are sometimes too fast; I’m not sure I’ll find people who ride at my pace when I show up, and there’s nothing worse than being the only one holding a group up. But this one was perfect — a very nice way to end the year.

Have a great New Year’s day everybody, and I’ll be back tomorrow with something about books. Now I’m off to catch up on blog reading and to finish Footsteps.

This year has brought almost as many changes in my cycling as it has in my reading — this is the year I began racing, right about the time I began blogging, in fact, which, I suppose is what inspired the name of this blog, even though I write about reading much more than riding. I’m already gearing up to train for this coming season, which makes it a good time to look back to last year’s season, I suppose. My racing results were mixed, but I’m happy I began racing and pleased at the progress I made.

My very first race I stayed with the pack about 5 minutes and then I dropped off the back as they were going just way too fast. I remember my heartrate was up above 180 and I felt like I was going to get sick. I’m not sure I ever felt so bad on a bike before. But it really does take a while to get used to riding that hard — I often got dropped in races after that, but it happened later and later in the race until finally I was able to stay with the pack until the very end. Well, in some races, that is.

I learned a lot about what kind of rider I am — at least for now, I’m much better at criteriums, the shorter, more intense races where you do laps of a mile or less over and over, than I am at road races. In the road races I did, I’d get left behind on the hills pretty quickly. One thing I need to work on this year is becoming a better hill climber. I do think the endurance road races require takes a while to build up, so I’m hoping I’ll improve at these, but I think I might be built more like a sprinter than an endurance rider or hill climber. I tend to put on big muscles that can generate some power — and I’m most definitely not the skinny type that can fly up the hills seemingly effortlessly.

I learned a lot about riding in a pack too. I’ve talked to a number of women this fall who are interested in racing but who talk about being afraid of riding with a large group of people, and it is a little scary. There’s nothing like riding at 25 or 30 miles an hour in a group of 30 or 40 or 50 people packed closely together. But you do get used to it; it just takes a little practice. I still need to build up some confidence in my ability to do it, and I need to work on things like riding around corners fast, but I’ve learned that these are things I can work on.

The hardest thing about racing, I think, is showing up the first time. I do sympathize with those women I talk to who are interested in trying it but still fearful and uncertain. That’s exactly how I felt last year. But once you get the courage up to give it a try, you realize that you can do it and there are things you can work on to get better and it’s not as impossibly hard as it once seemed.

So this fall and winter I’ve been trying to take my training more seriously than I have in the past. I still wonder about myself if I’m not the type who enjoys the training part more than the racing. Last summer I started to feel burnt out with racing, but I was still interested in going out to ride on my own. But I think since it was my first season, feeling burnt out is understandable, especially since I spent so much time riding with people who were noticeably stronger than me. I got tired of working so hard to keep up with a pack of people who could leave me behind easily if they really wanted to. I’m very curious to see what happens to me next year, how much I change, or don’t change, how much better I get.