Orny's Cycling Journal

This is the time of year when cyclists go batshit crazy. When you’ve been locked indoors for five months since your last decent ride and realize that—despite the piles of snow on the ground—your first century of the year is less than 12 weeks away.

In the summer, when long, beautiful rides are plentiful, it’s harder to see, but during the endless New England winters, the parallels between cycling and addiction are painfully obvious.

For me, the symptoms of withdrawal start benignly enough, with occasional visits to ride websites to find the dates of next year’s events. The only clues that something might be out of place are that these visits begin in November, they’re compulsive and increasingly frequent, and they’re followed by angry outbursts when I learn that the new dates *still* haven’t been published yet!!! How am I supposed to make meticulous detailed plans with my buddies if they don’t publish the dates, even though the rides might still be ten months away!?!?

My other symptom is a desperate quest for a substitute for my regular cycling fix. However, as every cyclist knows, the bliss of a long ride has to be experienced directly; it’s not something you can capture in written or spoken words.

Yet trapped indoors by the ice and snow, that’s the best substitute I can think of. So I spend long hours online, trying to find a blog or writer who has been able to distill and eloquently communicate the essence of the ride.

But it’s a futile search that always ends in disappointment; there is simply no substitute for the fusion of man and machine, feeling the wind of one’s passage, and the sense of gliding through life’s amazing skies, rivers, woods, and mountains.

As the cruel weeks and months pass, the quest becomes ever more desperate.

You anxiously await the arrival of your monthly cycling magazines, but many of them also go into hibernation, at best printing a single combined January/February issue at the point when hope is most desperately needed.

You start looking over old YouTube videos of you and your buddies’ rides. Even the really horrible, low-res ones from 2005.

Then you start doing really crazy things, like digging one of your favorite cycling caps out of the closet and wearing it around the house in vain. If you’re lucky, you have enough shame to prevent you from wearing it outside the house…

Or watching cycling-related anime series. For those of you who find yourselves in such desperate straits, there’s Over Drive and Yowamushi Pedal.

And your legs start getting really itchy. That might be because they haven’t been used since September, or it might be because you haven’t shaved them since then. You now have regular-Joe leg hair, and you have to really look to find last year’s tan lines. Is February too early to start shaving them again?

And then comes the final, humiliating, ultimate admission of your addiction: you find yourself thinking longingly about working out on the indoor trainer.

Heaven forbid any of us should ever reach such abject depths of despair!

Over the past few months, I’ve been re-reading my back catalog of cycling magazines, pulling out points that I thought were worth remembering and/or sharing. This final post contains all the stuff that didn’t fit the other categories, like travel, humor, and so forth.

• The French-speaking Caribbean island of Guadeloupe is a great spring training cycling destination.
• Elite pros often say that New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington is tougher than the Alpe d’Huez. It’s 7.6 miles with 2.6 miles being dirt, and an average incline of 12 percent. Long stretches are 18 percent, and it maxes out at 22 percent. Average wind speed is 35 MPH, and for decades it was also the site of the highest wind speed ever recorded on Earth. The course record is a blistering 9.6 MPH. The road is only open to cyclists on two days each year, and many makes of cars are not allowed on the mountain at all because of known weaknesses (mostly insufficient brakes).
• Due to physiological differences, women tend to have an advantage on hill climbs, due to their leg strength and lower weight. They also excel at ultra endurance events due to their larger fat stores to power long aerobic efforts. Their lower center of gravity also helps with bike handling. Men, due to their overall strength and fast-twitch muscle fibers, typically outperform women in sprints, on the flats, in time trials and sprints.
• When buying a new helmet or sunglasses, always test the combination, to ensure that the helmet and sunglasses fit well together and don’t interfere with one another.
• Foam plumbing insulation, which comes pre-sliced lengthwise, is the perfect material for protecting frame tubes when packing your bike.
• If you commute often, don’t lug your bike locks back and forth with you. Just leave them conveniently attached to the bike rack at work.
• It’s really, really bad form to wear pro or team kit if you’re not being paid to wear it. If you are stupid enough to wear team kit, you’d damned well better be able to put the hammer down, or people will look at you as a complete poser.
• On any ride where time matters, be sure to keep your rest breaks as short as possible. Remember this adage: “Going is faster than stopping.”
• The cyclist’s idea of a love triangle: me, my significant other, and my bike.
• Remember not to violate DuPont’s Law: the cool factor of Lycra is inversely proportional to the wearer’s distance from the bike.
• Those of you who use compressed CO2 cartridges to fill your tires should remember that carbon dioxide is 52 percent heavier than air. And that’s rotating weight, which is going to slow you down.

Over the past few months, I’ve been re-reading my back catalog of cycling magazines, pulling out points that I thought were worth remembering and/or sharing. Installment number three contains all kinds of crazy health and nutrition advice.

• The average person has a resting heart rate of 60-80 beats per minute, with the average at 72. Trained cyclists' are usually lower, due to the cardiac fitness that comes with training. It is not unusual for conditioned athletes to get below 50 BPM. Elite cyclists have the lowest resting heart rates ever observed. Although I've only just started this year's training, my RHR this morning was 57 BPM.
• If you keep wounds somewhat moist, rather than letting them dry, they are less likely to scab over and develop scars.
• Cyclists are at high risk of repetitive stress injuries to the knees, specifically chondromalacia, osteoarthritis, IT band syndrome, and patellofemoral pain syndrome. Most of these can be prevented by proper bike fitting, spinning rather than mashing, and having an adequate training base for the workload. Icing the knee is usually beneficial, but do not ice for more than 20 minutes.
• Endurance cycling has been linked with bone loss tending toward osteopenia and osteoporosis, since it is non-weight bearing and copious amounts of calcium can be lost through sweat. A cyclist can lose 200mg of calcium (the amount in a cup of milk) in just one hour of riding. A 7-hour century can cost a rider 1400mg, which is more than the US daily recommended intake. A cyclist training 12 hours a week loses 2440mg per week, which can add up year after year. This is compounded because dietary calcium is not readily absorbed, and kidney stones can form on an intake of as little as 2500mg per day. Absorption is improved by vitamin D and by taking calcium in gradually throughout the day. Calcium citrate is a preferred supplement to calcium carbonate. Stay far away from carbonated sodas, because the phosphoric acid leaches calcium from the bloodstream and bones.
• It is suggested that potatoes be stored in the refrigerator, and that root vegetables like carrots and beets can be stored in the pantry.
• A cyclist can burn in excess of 4,500 kilocalories riding a century at 15 mph. That's the caloric equivalent of four pints of Haagen Dazs ice cream.
• Frozen concentrated orange juice usually has significantly more vitamin C per cup than the not-from-concentrate "fresh" juices. Unfrozen, both types lose 2 percent of their vitamin C per day. If you like spicy food, note that hot peppers have 350 percent more vitamin C by weight than oranges.
• Roasted peanuts have more antioxidants than strawberries, apples, and many other fruits.
• Your body can only process about 60g of carbohydrate per hour, so ingesting more will only lead to digestive upset and delayed flushing of the stomach.
• Some popular junk foods fuel the body just as well as sports bars and gels. Good examples include waffles, bagels, graham crackers, vanilla wafers, salted cashews, and Payday candy bars. A quarter cup of raisins has 31g of carbohydrate, plus potassium which assists in muscle contractions. Fig Newtons are particularly good, two of them providing 22g of carb, 1g of fiber, plus potassium, iron, and calcium. Animal crackers can provide 46g of carb plus calcium. Gummi bears are easy to carry and pack 34g of carb plus protein. Pop Tarts provide 39g of carb, and Twizzlers have more carb per calorie than energy gels. Rice Krispies Treats are a great energy bar you can make at home.
• Similarly, for recovery, sugary kids' cereals are just as good as expensive sports recovery drinks, with the same balance of 70 percent carbs and 15 percent protein. Suggested brands: Cheerios, Froot Loops, Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries, and Frosted Flakes. Another optimal post-workout recovery drink is fat free chocolate milk.
• The “pez” in Pez candies is short for the German word “pfefferminz”, or “peppermint”, their original flavor. Originally marketed as a health food and an aid to smoking cessation, the trademark Pez dispensers were designed to mimic cigarette lighters.

Over the past few months, I’ve been re-reading my back catalog of cycling magazines, pulling out points that I thought were worth remembering and/or sharing. I’m publishing my findings in five installments. I’ll start you off easy with this first installment, which contains a handful of interesting historical factoids.

• At the time of their invention in the late 19th century, bicycles were true state of the art technology. Important inventions such as the pneumatic tire and ball bearings were originally discovered while searching for ways to improve early bicycles.
• It is a common misperception that the invention of the automobile was what prompted America to improve its mostly dirt and mud road system. However, it was the League of American Wheelmen—an organization of bicyclists—who founded the Good Roads Movement in 1880, and who led the group for its first twenty-five years. Ironically, although automobile drivers benefited tremendously from this effort, today’s drivers sneer at cyclists, who have to fight (legally and sometimes physically) for the right to use the very roads they created.
• In similar vein, recall that the Wright Brothers used their bicycle shop to generate the capital to build the first flying machine, using bike parts from the shop and mechanical skills they’d gained in producing bikes. One of the bike shop employees even built their first aircraft engine. Despite the bicycle’s contribution to early aviation, today’s airlines require cyclists to pay a surcharge of as much as $175 each way to transport a properly packed bicycle.
• The bicycle was also an important factor in female emancipation and the suffrage movement, because it gave women freedom of travel. The bike also prompted the development of bloomers, driving the first nail in the coffin of restrictive dress such as corsets and ankle-length skirts. Susan B. Anthony stated in 1896: “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel… the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” And Frances Willard of the WCTU praised cycling in a book entitled, “How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle”.
• In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and was attended by Dr. Paul Dudley White of Roxbury, Harvard, and MGH. Dr. White, a cycling advocate himself, prescribed bicycling for its cardiovascular benefits. The 17-mile Charles River bike path in Boston is named in his honor.
• Speaking of Boston, our first bike club, the Massachusetts Bicycle Club, was founded in 1879. Five years later, they built their headquarters at 152 Newbury Street. The building is located directly across the street from my condo and now houses the Snowden International School.
• Finally, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s political career began in 1978 when he proposed a bike path in Lake Champlain, Vermont.

Although we’re still in February, there’s actually a heck of a lot to report.

For the past two months, I’ve been training exclusively indoors, thanks to the resistance trainer I mentioned borrowing from a friend. It’s given me the most regular winter workouts I’ve had since I started riding.

I’ve used a number of videos to drive my training. Three are Spinervals fitness and climbing workouts, and one is a basic workout from Charmichael Training Systems. All of those are from professional trainers. I also have three more from the Sufferfest, which is just some guy who sets current and classic pro bike racing footage to pop music from the 80s and 90s.

These are all interval workouts, so they’re shorter (45-60 minutes) but much more intense than my usual road rides. They emphasize strength through high resistance training and low-resistance, high cadence spinning.

I’ve been training every other day, which has been a bit much for my knees, but not too bad. So far the numbers add up to 27 sessions totaling 22 hours and a bit over 300 “miles” on the trainer.

Today I put all that indoor effort to the test with my first lengthy outdoor ride of the year. The temperature was unseasonably in the upper 50s, although the wind was crazy: 32 mph sustained, with 45 mph gusts!

The first item to note about today’s ride is the value of my indoor training. The wind may have thrown me off, but I really felt strong throughout the first hour of the ride. The indoor training has clearly paid off in terms of strength. I didn’t suck too much aerobically, either. What I lacked was stamina, both for long, sustained anaerobic efforts, and over time once the ride extended into a second and third hour. But overall I think the trainer has really helped. I have to say, tho, it felt *very* strange when I first got on the bike outside and it actually moved forward underneath me, rather than staying stationary! It actually took me a couple miles to feel comfortable on the bike again.

The other thing to note was the route I took, which was a slightly different 36-mile loop, but one that was pretty scenic and provided quite a challenging workout. Basically, Minuteman path out to Arlington Center, up the east side of the Mystic Lakes on Mystic Valley Parkway, up Washington in Winchester, over godawful Blueberry Hill and across to 3A and back down the west side of the lakes to Arlington Center.

From there, I made quick stops at both old and new Quad Cycles bike shops. Quad is in the process of moving from its old store in Arlington Heights (1346 Mass Ave) about a mile down to Brattle Square (1043 Mass Ave). It’ll be interesting to see the new place once it’s fully set up and stocked.

I took the painfully long hill on Park Ave up to the water tower, and from there took unfamiliar (and more hilly!) roads (mostly Common Street) through Belmont to Watertown Square. After a very quick snack at the Watertown Dam, I followed the river home via Charles River Road, Greenough, and the PDW bike path.

And, finally, I should note that the PMC has begun using the Intarwebs a bit more. There’s now a PMC Twitter and a PMC Blog, which is celebrating the 30th anniversary ride by summarizing each year with a post every Monday. Look for my rides—which started in 2001—to start appearing at the beginning of June.

We’re two weeks into March, and I’ve only biked 38 miles this year. That’s because work sent me to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, at the beginning of January, and I’ve barely been back since. In theory spending the winter on a tropical island should allow me to train more, but the roads here are impractically narrow and the drivers are insane. So no riding; this is the longest time I’ve been off the bike since I took it up seven and a half years ago.

However, one thing I’ve decided while down here is to buy a folding bike for travel. Full-size bikes are a pain to bring on trips, but a folder that fits into a standard airline suitcase should work nicely. So I’ve ordered a custom-made Bike Friday Pocket Rocket, which should be on its way to me in a month or two. Now that I’m travelling more, I’m looking forward to being able to bring my bike with. I’ll certainly need to take every opportunity to train, since it doesn’t look like I’m going to be in Boston much at all this year.

Another thing I’ve done is pick up the domain www.PMCrider.com, which I’ve pointed at my cycling page. But more importantly, I’ve also created the subdomain ornoth.PMCrider.com, which points directly at my PMC rider page. This makes it easy to point people at my rider page. I can also create additional subdomains for anyone who wants a URL of the form: ridername.PMCrider.com. How cool is that?

Sadly, that’s all the cycling news I’ve got. Hopefully that’ll change, but 2008 isn’t shaping up to be a very good year so far.

After my 38-mile ride to Nahant, the hamstring tendons behind my knees really bothered me (the first time that's ever happened), so I took it easy for a few days. However, today was the start of Massachusetts Bike Week, and this is the first year I've been free to participate, so I went to the opening day ceremonies down at Franklin Park. I participated in two group rides, both approximately 18 miles, and both focusing on doing the tallest and steepest hills in Boston. By the end of the day, I'd climbed 17 hills, cycling 50 miles through a lot of new territory in Mattapan, Roslindale, Hyde Park, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, South Boston, and Roxbury. Specific hills included Wellington Hill, Mount Hope, Metropolitan Hill, Monterrey Hill, Bearberry Hill, Bellevue Hill (the highest point in Boston), Peak Hill, Peters Hill, Bussey Hill, Green Hill, Popes Hill, Mount Ida, Savin Hill, Telegraph Hill/Dorchester Heights, and Parker Hill. After that, I rode out to MassArt to see their "Pedal-In Film Fest". Even though I took it easy to baby them, my knees are again in pain, and I'll take a few days again to rest up.