Brevet Attempts: Two Successes, Two Failures

Once again, I am attempting to leaven a dry and picture-less blog post with irrelevant pictures. For this post, I selected some pictures of my participation in bike races in 1968, an upbeat topic to balance the downbeat topic of this post. I have been unable to reconstruct what race this picture shows, but I am the rider half-off the picture to the left in white with blue and red trim, version 2.0 of the Modesto Roadmen jersey. I am riding the Hetchins I purchased for my bike tour of Europe during the summer of 1967, repurposed for racing.

Last week, I abandoned my fourth brevet attempt. To date, attempts one and three succeeded, two and four failed. In both 2012 and 2013 I successfully prepared for a brevet in May, but then failed when I attempted to prepare for a second brevet in November. (All four attempts were for 200K brevets.) The two obvious and related questions are why did attempts two and four fail, and what do these failures suggest for the future?

For those new to this blog, a brevet is a non-competitive challenge ride conducted under the rules of randonneuring as sanctioned nationally by Randonneurs USA (RUSA) and internationally by Audax Club Parisien (APC). RUSA's FAQ on their website is an excellent first introduction to this sport. A 200K brevet is 200 kilometers or 124 miles long, must be completed in 13½ hours, and is the shortest of the sanctioned brevets. The most common lengths for brevets are 200, 300, 400, 600, and 1200 km. People who are good at this will do many brevets over the course of a year, typically one each month, a 200K/300K/400K/600K series each year, and may also do multiple 1200K brevets in a year, so what I am attempting is nothing exceptional to say the least.

What background to I have coming into randonneuring? From the ages of 14 through 21 I was a fairly serious cyclist, a less serious but regular cyclist from 21 to 30, and then from 30 to 60, essentially quit cycling and exercised sporadically at best. In 2008 I restarted cycling, became more serious by 2010, and since 2012 have been trying to break into the sport of randonneuring. This blog was created to document that attempt.

This is the start of a criterium held in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa in 1968. I can barely be seen just under the tree in the left ⅓ of the picture. Much more interesting is the gentleman officiating the race in a spiffy panama hat, at the far right of the picture. That would be the great Wally Gilbert, one of the top officials of the Northern California race scene and a great friend of the Modesto Roadmen. He and Bob Tetzlaff, a top level racer of the day, took us under their wing and got us signed up as an ABLA sanctioned club.

Why Did My Last Brevet Attempt Fail?

I have yet to start a brevet and fail to finish. When I say a brevet attempts failed, I mean that I was unable to complete the training regimen I designed to prepare for that brevet and so never registered for the event. Although I have varied my training for each of my four attempts, all four attempts required that I complete a series of weekly long rides of increasing length leading up to a ride of at least 90 miles before the brevet. In both failed attempts, I completed an 80 mile ride but was unable to complete a 90 mile ride. I do not know with certainty (and probably cannot know with certainty) why my last brevet attempt failed; there may, in fact, be a combination of reasons. However, I can suggest some possible reasons for this failure (hypotheses) and suggest which of these I find intuitively more likely.

In thinking about all the possible causes for this failure, the obvious first possibility to consider is that I lacked the will to succeed, that I gave up. There are many discussions on randonneuring websites of people who have or have not completed brevets provided as morality tales on how important it is not to give up too easily. Every ride will contain some moments that are easy and fun and some that are unpleasant indeed. If one abandons an attempt at the first sign of unpleasantness, one will miss out on the satisfaction of completing a ride, that satisfaction making the suffering along the way worthwhile. That said, both times I abandoned my 90 mile training ride, I did so in response to another shibboleth; "listen to your body". Both times my body was telling me it was exhausted; not that I couldn't finish the ride, but that it would cost me dearly to do so, leaving me weaker rather than stronger. If I were riding in a brevet, especially one that was important to me, I might push on with the understanding would make up for it later with a long rest before resuming training. However, feeling that way while training is a clear message to me that the time for a rest is now, not later. So for the moment at least, I will reject the hypothesis that I failed due to not trying hard enough.

That's me, front and center, in my Modesto Roadmen jersey, leading the pack in the 1968 Santa Cruz bike race. I remember this course well, it was one of the nicer courses. It did consist of multiple laps, but they were long laps which headed out into the country and then back through town. Parts of the course were along the ocean, and as you can see from the stairs in the center of the picture, the course was quite hilly.

Another hypothesis is that my failures are the result of illness, either something as benign as a mild infection or perhaps something more serious. I consider this hypothesis rather unlikely, and in any case, I'm about to have my annual physical so worrying about it would be a waste of time.

The two related hypotheses I think are most worth exploring are 1) that I am training incorrectly or 2) that more than one brevet a year is currently beyond my capabilities. These hypotheses are related because if more than one brevet a year is beyond my capabilities, then almost by definition, attempting to train for more than one brevet a year is training incorrectly. The training plans I am following are very conventional and are similar to those recommended by a number of coaches; I have not yet seen an actual coach recommend a significantly easier plan for training for a 100 mile or 200 kilometer ride than what I am doing. (The training needed to complete these two distances is generally considered to be similar.) That said, training plans need to be individualized, and not everyone can complete every training plan; the fact that I cannot complete a training plan generally recognized as necessary for a 200 kilometer ride more than once in a year suggests that as the (current) limit of my abilities.

In my next post, I will discuss recent changes I have made in my training, why I made them, what they tell me about my ability to go beyond one brevet a year, and where I might go from here.

To Patch or Not To Patch? That Is the Question.

Tubes with punctures, waiting to be patched

Early in my zombie-esque return to cycling, I was riding with my older son, a very accomplished cyclist, and he managed to surprise me. We were having something of a bad luck ride with lots of flat tires and he noticed a patch on one of my inner tubes. "That explains it," sez he, "patching tubes never works. You need a new tube." Both of my sons are very wise and I always listen to them carefully when they offer me advice. In this case, however, I was inclined to disagree based on both theoretical and experiential grounds. But as I said, I take them very seriously so I did some online research. As it turns out, the question of whether to patch bicycle tubes is quite controversial. Here is one example of a blog post followed by a discussion on this topic:

An extract from the Bike Noob Blog. I truncated the post and moved up a couple of illustrative comments.

Having given this topic serious reconsideration, I still come down in favor of patching. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I worked in a bike shop back in the 1960s. My boss and mentor, who I refer to as BB, firmly maintained that a properly applied patch was at least as strong as the original tube, an assertion I have seen repeated by other experts. That is my theoretical basis for patching tubes. Experientially, I don't know that I have ever seen a patch that I applied properly fail; the patched tube my son disdained was loosing air from a new hole some distance from any previous patch. That said, I both have had patches fail and chosen to discard tubes, and I thought I would add my experiences to the online dialogue on this topic.

A few months ago, I was doing my Braes Bayou ride when I encountered a former colleague sidelined by a flat tire. He was riding the old 27x1¼" tires with shraeder valves, whereas I was riding 700C tires with presta valves, so I was unable to offer him my spare tube, but I did offer to help him patch his tube so he could continue his ride to work rather than walk his bike home. The problematic word was "help." Presumably because he was embarrassed at needing my assistance, he insisted this be a collaborative project and so the patch was not applied with the care I believe is necessary for reliability. Consistent with that, when I spoke with him later, I found that the patch had failed (but not before getting him to work). Even when I am patching my own tube, I don't feel I can do as good a job by the side of the road as I can in my garage, so I always carry a spare tube (typically multiply-patched) as well as a patch kit. If I have a single flat, I replace the tube and patch the old one when I get home; the patch kit I carry covers the rare, multi-flat ride. If I am on a more serious ride (such as a brevet) I will carry two tubes to further reduce the need for roadside patching.

An example of a patch kit I carry. From top to bottom, left to right are Instructions, the box everything fits into, a tube of rubber cement, a grey piece of tubing of unknown function, sandpaper, and a collection of patches.

Implicit in the above is that if patching is to be successful, it must be done correctly. There are many descriptions of how to patch a tube by people much more expert than me, and in general, I find the instructions that come with many patch kits pretty accurate, so I won't try to repeat these instructions in detail, but just emphasize a few key points:

1. Use only bicycle tire tools to remove the tire from the rim so you can remove the tube. These tools have been designed not to damage the tube, something that is all too likely if you use a screwdriver or other makeshift tool. (This caution applies if you are patching OR replacing a tube.)
2. Somehow note or mark the tube and tire so that, once you find the hole in the tube, you can inspect the tire in that spot to find and remove what caused the hole. (Note that it is easy to flip the tube so that the tube and tire no longer align.) You actually want to carefully and thoroughly run your fingers along the entire inside of the tire looking for problems, but you want to concentrate on where the hole was. Often, the object will have fallen out so you never will be able to find it, but you want to be completely sure that is the case, because if you leave it in, you will get another flat.  This is probably the most troublesome step, in my experience, and once again, this is necessary whether you patch your tube or replace it.
3. Once you have removed the tube, carefully inflate it until it starts to swell a bit. Then, inspect it by running your hand over its surface or by running the tube next to your cheek (which is more sensitive than your hand) or by immersing it in water to find where the air is coming out. If you use water, carefully and thoroughly dry the tube. Mark the site of the hole, it will be difficult to find later.
4. Use sandpaper to thoroughly abrade a region around the hole larger than a patch. Apparently, bicycle tubes are produced by injection molding which causes two problems for patchers, a release agent used on the mold is left on the tube which will prevent the patch from adhering and the mold leaves seams which can prevent the patch from fully contacting the tube. There may be other reasons for abrading as well, and apparently it is important to keep the abraded site free of contaminants such as finger grease; don't touch the abraded spot. I find that it is impossible to remove the seams completely with sandpaper, but that the patches are flexible enough to work anyway. Some experts advise using a razorblade or X Acto knife to cut off the seam, others find this results in cutting holes in the tube. Because I feel like I would be in the latter camp, I have never tried this approach.
5. Apply enough rubber cement to cover the abraded area. Let the cement dry completely. I think not doing this is the most common mistake people make because it is counter-intuitive, and it is my impression that not letting the rubber cement dry completely will almost always result in a failed patch. It only takes a few minutes for the glue to dry, but do be sure it is completely dry by touching it around the outer edges (away from where the patch will be) to make sure it is not still sticky.
6. Carefully apply the patch centered over the hole. The dried rubber cement is now a contact adhesive, so you will only have once chance to get this right, the patch cannot be moved.

A marked hole in a tube about to be patched next to the permanent, silver Sharpie, my favorite tool for marking holes.

Not only do I wait until I get home to patch my tubes, I find it is more efficient to do a bunch of them at one time, so I let them pile up and keep a stock of patched tubes to replace those which are newly punctured. The little patch kits, like that shown above, are great as a backup to be carried on rides, but are frustratingly inefficient in the assembly line I use; they contain very few patches, the kit runs out of patches before the rubber cement is exhausted, and with the cost of the box, etc., they end up being fairly expensive per patch. Thus, I was very excited to discover that I could purchase patches in bulk packages of 100. However, I still needed the rest of the kit. I went to a teachers' supply store and picked up an old fashioned bottle of rubber cement and cut a few squares from ordinary workshop sandpaper I had lying around. Here is my production line patch kit:

Interestingly, the bulk patches I purchased are labelled "cold patch." The obvious contrast is to a "hot patch" which I remember from my youth in the 1960s. Hot patches used heat to vulcanize them to the tube being repaired rather than rubber cement. The bike shop where I worked had an electric device which clamped the patch to the tube and then heated it to create a bond. This device was too expensive for teenage riders like me, but later I found consumer grade hot patch kits at Western Auto that contained a simple, mechanical clamp and patches that consisted of a rubber patch attached to a small metal container containing a flammable compound. To use these, you clamped the patch where it was wanted, lit the compound, waited for it to burn out and cool, removed the clamp, and peeled the metal container off the tube leaving the patch. Apparently these have been taken off the consumer market, at least in the United States, due to the noxious fumes they generated and/or other safety considerations. There are contemporary alternatives to the rubber cement patches as well. The first are patches that use chemical vulcanization, apparently using an alternative to rubber cement which uses a different chemistry. I have no experience with these, but the few comments about them I read either compare them unfavorably to hot patches (by retrogrouches) or else argue that they are vastly superior to the rubber cement-based patches I use. The second are glueless patches which have adhesive on the back like tape. I have not tried these either, nor am I likely to. Virtually all the comments about them are negative. My guess is that a lot of people who believe that tube patching isn't reliable have experience with these patches. Apparently, they may not even be marketed as permanent patches, but rather just a way to get home.

Despite my best attempts to do patching correctly, there are times when I do get repetitive flats. Is my son right about patching being unreliable? I do not think so. Usually when I have a flat that will not go away, it is from one of two causes:

1. The object that caused the flat was still in the tire and I missed it.
2. The tube has gone bad. This usually happens around the valve stem, and usually I can identify this problem before trying to patch the tube.

People who choose not to patch tubes throw them away at the first puncture, of course. Those who do patch sometimes have limits on how many times they will patch a tube (see, for example, the first comment in the Bike Noob blog at the top of this post.) Because I believe properly applied patches in no way reduce the reliability of a tube, I do not ever discard tubes because they have too many patches. The times I discard tubes are when they have gone bad, as described above, or if they have a slow leak that I cannot find. (I am actually suspicious that slow leaks often represent a tube gone bad rather than a really small puncture.)  Up until now, I have not paid much attention to the brand or quality of tubes I buy. I pick up whatever the bike shop carries, or if I am placing a mail order for something else, whatever the mail order place is selling. I don't recall ever have been given a choice at either bike shop or mail order vendor between higher or lower quality tubes. Recently, I noted that Compass Bike Shop (a local bike shop if you live in Seattle, but a mail order vendor for me) is pushing expensive tubes from Schwalbe, a well-regarded manufacturer of high end bicycle tires with the claim that they are less likely to go bad. I am currently a bit low on tubes and so am tempted to order some of these. They are definitely more expensive than the tubes I have been buying and if they turn out to be less prone to going bad, this will make the economics of patching even more compelling.

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MAF Test Results

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results as measured by MAF tests; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph.

I will be discussing my training results in detail in a future post. In my current training regimen, I am only doing one MAF test a week. Thus, there is not a lot new on the MAF test front since last week. That said, I continue to be perplexed by what is (not) happening with my MAF test results.

The Back Roads Century

The Back Roads Century is one of the premier cycling events in the mid-Atlantic region, and is also considered one of the most beautiful rides in America. - The Back Roads Century Website.

My wife and I frequently travel to Washington, D.C. on business, and because our son and daughter-in-law live there, we try to see them when we do. When we told them we would like to see them the weekend of September 22, they suggested that we ride the "Back Roads Century" together. Unfortunately, my wife could not because it conflicted with her business meeting, but the remaining three of us did.

Thank YOU, Potomac Peddlers, organizers of this ride! Unfortunately, I did not think to get a screenshot of the website until the event was over, but I think it still captures the beauty of the venue and professionalism of the event.

Although billed as a century, five routes of different lengths were offered: 25, 30, 50, 65, and 100 miles. All routes started and finished in the charming town of Berryville, in the northwest corner of Virginia. We opted for the 65 mile metric century:

There were 2,300 riders who attended this year's Back Roads Century, enough to nearly overwhelm the small town of Berryville. The morning of the event, highways leading into Berryville were backed up for miles with cars waiting to get into the parking. During the event, bicycles so crowded the roads that it was difficult for cars to pass. But all of this was managed with competence and grace by the volunteers and, in the end, rather than being a minus, this all contributed to the excitement.

The rest stops provided all the usual amenities, but in addition provided touches well above and beyond the usual. Case in point, the medieval musical group at our first rest stop at Burwell-Morgan Mill:

One special feature of the rest stops was that, in addition to the usual water, gatorade, bananas, oranges, and peanut butter sandwiches, some rest stops featured a unique snack specialty such as tomato sandwiches or Italian ices. The Burwell-Morgan Mill rest stop featured "fresh boiled potatoes:"

Both my son and daughter in law work in the government, and while at the first rest stop, they ran into a colleague of theirs, a completely unexpected but delightful encounter. He was also doing the 65 mile route, so the four of us chose to finish the ride together. As expected, my son and daughter-in-law had a lot in common with him and so the three of them had a lot to talk about. Less expected, so did I.  He had recently been high up in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House and I am a scientist. Not surprisingly, given where we met, he also turned out to be an avid cyclist. Between the two, he and I had plenty to talk about. To complete the participant pictures, I have added two more photographs which include me and my daughter in law.

Top, a friend of my son and daughter-in-law we met on the ride standing next to my son. Bottom left, my daughter in law and son. Bottom right, me and my son, wearing the matching Raulston Strokers jerseys he designed and had made.

The Fairview Church rest stop was roughly the half way point as well as the geographical high point of our ride. It featured food and drink, bicycle repair, and bathrooms; everything a cyclist en route could want. Depending on their very different speeds, cyclists came in and out over many hours. Furthermore, this particular rest stop was only used by those following the 65 mile route. Nonetheless, this moment in time snapshot suggests how busy it was and by implication the magnitude of the Back Roads Century.

Last, but certainly not least, is a photograph of the bike I rode. As usual, I rented this bike from the Big Wheel Bike Shop in Arlington, Virginia. The last time I got a bike from them, both the saddle and the handlebar height were a wee bit aggressive for my aging body. I had been reading on the Rivendell Bike Shop website about why I might want my handlebars high and how to achieve that. For the bikes Rivendell designs and sells, the answer is to get a larger frame size than normal. When I reserved my bike, I tried that strategy; I ordered a 54 cm frame rather than my usual 52. When I walked into the shop, the staff took one look at me and said "This is not happening, the bike you reserved is to big for you!" I explained my thinking and they explained that modern frames are not designed that way; a larger frame would have exactly the opposite effect of what I wanted. Not only did they give me a properly sized frame after I had ordered the wrong one, the bike they gave me was a better model than what I had paid for. As for the saddle, I brought my own well-broken in Brooks B17.

Although I managed to miss both of the life-defining cultural events of my youth, the Woodstock and Altamont music festivals, within the narrower world of cycling, I was fortunate enough to have attended three runnings of the Great Western Bike Rally. I feel like the Back Roads Century is on that scale, a significant event in the cycling world. I am so pleased that my son and daughter-in-law suggested we attend, and as a result, that I was able to experience this unique event. I would strongly recommend the Back Roads Century to any of you who might have the opportunity attend; you will not feel like your weekend was wasted.

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MAF Test Results

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph.

The plateau in my results continues, and as it does so, becomes more perplexing. I will be discussing this along with other training results in a future post.

Tour de Pink 2013

A few weeks ago, my wife and I rode in our third Tour de Pink. This charity ride raises money to provide mammograms for women who could not otherwise afford them, detecting breast cancer while it still can be cured. Both the entry fee as well as the donations riders are required to raise work to this admirable end.

We rode the Tour de Pink in 2011 before I started this blog, so it never got posted. We rode 47 miles that year. The ride in 2012 was interrupted by the death of a close friend, and the post I did on that ride was more about cycling around the ebb and flow of life than the ride itself, a 12 mile ride being all the situation would allow. This year, we rode 63 miles, a lifetime record for my wife. To catch up a bit, here are pictures of us from the last three years:

My wife, me, and our friend SN, at the 2011 Tour de Pink

Me and my wife at the 2012 Tour de Pink

Me and my wife at the 2013 Tour de Pink

The ride started at 7 am, dawn at this time of year in Texas. The start and finish were at the Texas A&M University Prairie View campus, about an hour northwest of Houston. There were lots of decoration and enthusiastic students cheering us on:

We rode our usual Surly Crosschecks, me with my big bag on the back to haul anything either of us might need along the way. I like propping the bikes up against each other like this, it saves finding a fence or other object against which to lean them or laying them flat on the ground, which I find kind of creepy.

Teams are a big part of this ride. In fact, in Houston's Texas Medical Center (the largest medical center in the world), a number of teams form just for this ride. The jerseys my wife and I are wearing (shown above) are for one such team, that for Houston's University of Texas Medical School. The riders below are one of the larger such teams, that from Methodist Hospital's Cancer Center:

Pink is the color of this ride, as reflected in the balloon-based sign announcing one of the rest stops:

The picture below shows one of the rest stops (called "Pit Stops" by the organizers) which are found every 10 miles or so along the route. Besides the usual bananas, oranges, and PB&J, his one featured fresh cooked mini-sausages - yum!

Almost certainly the biggest challenge for the Tour de Pink is the heat. To help combat that, all of the rest stops featured bandanas soaking in ice water. You take one out of the ice water, put it around your neck, and off you go to the next pit stop.

Another feature of the "pit stops" is bicycle repair stations manned by the local bicycle shops (LBSs). This one is run by "my" LBP, West End Bikes:

The next picture is of rider wearing one of the iced-bandanas, perusing a copy of the route map, with special attention directed toward the difference between "You Are Here" and "Finish." The various routes have stayed the same for at least the last three years, and last year I posted a scan of the route map.

And finally, the one feature no pit stop can do without, especially for us older riders:

My wife was very well prepared for this ride, the longest bike ride of her life but no preparation can completely protect you from heat. Wisely, she has decided to cap future rides at 60-some miles, but to train for speed so that she can finish before it gets too hot. All and all, a truly wonderful experience, thanks to the organizers' enthusiasm and preparedness. Thanks, gang!

MAF Test Results

I have no new MAF test results since my last post, so there is nothing to report this week.

Training Programs Compared

In previous posts, I have described five books on training I have used:

1. "The Big Book of Endurance Training" by Phillip Maffetone
2. "Total Heart Rate Training" by Joe Friel
3. "Cycling Past 50" by Joe Friel
4. "The Complete Book of Long Distance Cycling" by Edmond Burke and Ed Pavelka
5. "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach

All these books contain good advice on training for long bicycle rides, my area of interest. The reason I read all five of them (and that I plan to continue reading books on training) was (is) to compare what they say, and from this comparison, craft a personal training plan. The last three of these books each contain a complete training plan for preparing to ride a "century", a 100 mile bike ride. Because this ride is reasonably close to the 200 kilometer (200K, equal to 124 mile) rides I have been attempting, these plans were of particular interest to me. Although I had previously read and compared these plans generally, when I attempted a detailed, ride by ride comparison, I realized this would take some work. Thus, I thought sharing the results of this effort might be worth a post. As always, this post is not and cannot be a substitute for the books on which it is based. If you find any of these training plans of interest and want to follow them, you should get ahold of a copy of the book(s) containing them.

What did I do to compare these plans?  In the first place, each book presented its plans in a different format; I needed to reformat all of them to make them visually and directly comparable. Also, some of the plans include the opportunity for customization. In order to facilitate comparison, I needed to make some reasonable customization choices which, insofar as possible, were similar between the plans. A final issue, one deserving of more comment, is that some plans indicate ride length in miles and others in hours.

Miles vs Hours

In later part of this post,  I will show visualizations of all the different training plans in which I have converted them to use miles rather than hours to facilitate comparison, but in this section, I would like to pontificate a bit on the intrinsic advantages of miles vs hours in these particular training plans.

The more obvious and traditional way of indicating ride length is in miles. What would be the reason for indicating ride length in hours? The reason given is that it accounts for differences in ride difficulty; 50 miles on flat roads on a windless day is a very different workout than 50 miles in the mountains, for example. The saying goes "our body knows hours, not miles." If you specify a training ride as 50 miles, it might be harder or easier depending on conditions. If you specify a training ride as three hours, conditions will have less of an impact.

The above concept makes sense to me, and I can see how using hours to standardize training could be beneficial. However, in the context of training for a ride of a specific distance such as a century or a 200K brevet, it seems to me that using hours creates more problems than it solves. I have two reasons for saying that:

1. Different Riders Ride at Different Speeds. A rule of thumb I have encountered over and over in my reading is that when training for a century, your longest training ride should be between 66 and 75 miles. If this is the goal and if the length of training rides are given in hours, there is an assumption as to how fast you are riding. Joe Friel's century training plan has as its longest training ride a 4½ hour ride. Putting this together with the need to ride 66 to 75 miles, Joe Friel is assuming you are riding between 14.7 and 16.7 miles per hour, not unreasonable but faster than I can consistently ride a 66 or 75 mile ride, much less a century. Hughes and Kehlenbach, on the other hand, give you a choice between a longest ride of 5¼ or 6½ hours, which translates to speeds of between 10.2 and 14.3 miles per hour, more similar to the speed I ride. (For comparison, one needs to average 9.2 miles per hour to complete a 200K brevet within the 13.5 hour time limit to get official credit for the event.)
2. Different Century Rides are Ridden at Different Speeds. All things being equal, a hilly century ride will take the same rider longer to complete than a flat century ride. Thus, the hillier century will be more of a challenge and require more hours of training to prepare for. (Ironically, this is exactly the reverse of the rationale for expressing training rides in hours in the first place!) If training rides are given in miles (not hours) and If training is done on the same kind of terrain as the century, then a rider who successfully completes this plan will be prepared for the relevant century, as flat and easy or hilly and hard as it might be - the difference in terrain of the training ride compensates for the difference in difficulty of the century rides. Of course, finding suitable terrain close to home can be a problem, one with which those of us training in the pancake flat environs of Houston are most familiar. That said, I have not found anyone who claims to have a conversion factor for how many flat miles you need to ride to prepare for how many hilly miles, assuming that is even possible.

Different Kinds of Training Rides

In general, the training plans discussed here consist of four kinds of training rides:

1. The Long Ride
2. The Pace Ride
3. The Fast Ride
4. The Recovery Ride

At the beginning of the training period, the long ride starts at a distance you can already ride and over the course of the weeks of training increases in length to 66 to 75 miles to prepare you for the 100 miles of a century. It is ridden at the same speed as the century ride, and is a kind of rehearsal of that ride during which you try the food, clothing, and equipment you intend to use. Most people cannot do more than one of these per week without exhausting themselves. (If you are using a heart rate monitor or other means to define training zones, this ride is done in Zone 2. See this post for a discussion of training zones.)

The Pace Ride is a shorter version of the long ride, ridden at the same speed or perhaps slightly faster. Although you cannot do more than one long ride per week, one ride per week is not enough to get you ready for a century. Inclusion of this shorter ride helps bridge that gap. (If you are using a heart rate monitor or other means to define training zones, this ride is done in Zone 2.)

The Fast Ride is done to build up your speed. This is the most variable of the training rides plan to plan, even comparing different plans from the same book. That said, one of the more common kinds of Fast Ride is intervals; you might ride as fast as you can for one minute and then one minute very slowly to recover, repeating this cycle 5 to 10 times. (If you are using a heart rate monitor or other means to define training zones, intervals are done in Zone 4 or 5 and the rest period in Zone 1.)

As is oft noted, Fitness = Stress + Recovery. The three previous rides stress the body to provide that part of fitness equation. Days that you don't ride provide recovery, but so does the Recovery Ride. The theory is that easy riding actually helps the recovery process above and beyond doing nothing, a process known as active recovery. Also, if I am understanding what I am reading correctly, these rides also contribute to fitness directly. (If you are using a heart rate monitor or other means to define training zones, this ride is done in Zone 1.)

Training Plan Conversion and Presentation

1. As noted above, the distance of all rides and all plans were "normalized" by converting ride lengths expressed in hours to ride lengths expressed in miles. 
2. Different kinds of rides are ridden at different speeds, so I used my average speed for that kind of ride to make the conversion. I rounded the mileage pretty freely to get even numbers.
3. Because the speed Joe Friel assumes for his plan is so much faster than I ride, I used a conversion factor based on this difference to increase the length of the rides in his plan. 
4. Each of the three books on which this post is based provides more than one training regimen. For example, different plans might include one for a first century, one for a fast century, one for a rider more fit at the beginning of the regimen or one for a rider who is less fit. With one exception (noted below), I used the easiest plan.
5. Some plans specify that certain kinds of rides are done on specific days of the week, whereas others allow the rider to vary this to some extent. Where I could, I adjusted the plans to put similar rides on similar days of the week, but did not move rides that had been specified by the plan.
6. I assumed that I was doing a weekly training ride of 35 to 40 miles before I started each plan and deleted any early the weeks of training that involved training rides shorter than that. Thus, some of the plans are truncated.
7. The tables below have days of the week (Monday through Sunday) along the top of the table and the weeks of training along the side. For each day, the length of the ride in miles is given and the kind of ride is indicated with a color code: Yellow = Long, Blue = Pace, Red = Fast, Green = Recovery. Optional rides are shown in lighter color.

The Training Plans

Color Code for Ride Types

Overall, I find the four training plans shown below to be fairly similar:

• All of them have at least one rest day each week. 
• All of them have one long ride per week which, in general, gets longer each week. 
• All of them include one fast ride each week. 

The differences between the plans are discussed below.

The training plan from "The Complete Book of Long Distance Cycling"by Edmond Burke and Ed Pavelka

When I started preparing for my first 200K brevet in May of 2012, I based my training on the plan above, from "The Complete Book of Long Distance Cycling" by Edmond Burke and Ed Pavelka. In retrospect, this turned out to be the most difficult of all the plans. (There is actually an additional, harder plan in this book.) It contains three Pace rides a week. It has no recovery weeks. Although this plan does include a taper week at the end, the long ride was the same length during the taper week as the week before. Contrast this to the other three plans where the long ride during the taper week is much shorter than the previous week. The Burke and Pavelka plan includes six rides a week, the most of any of the four plans.

The 8 week training plan from "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach. The Recovery Ride on Thursday is shown in a lighter color because it is optional.

The plan shown above is from "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach, the 8 week plan for those who are generally fit when they start. This plan is much gentler than the previous plan by Burke and Pavelka. The rate of increase of long rides is faster in the Hughes and Kehlenbach plan it is true, but that is in part due to a recovery week inserted at Week 4. In addition, Hughes and Kehlenbach have 1 Pace ride a week rather than 3, 3 to 5 total rides a week rather than 6, and includes more recovery rides.

The 16 week training plan from "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach, truncated to 13 weeks by removal of the first three weeks of the plan.

The plan shown above is also from "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach. This is the 16 week plan (which I truncated to 13 weeks) for those who feel like they need more time to build fitness. The reason I included it is because it is closer in length to the next plan, from "Cycling Past 50" by Joe Friel. Thus, I will discuss it below, along with the Friel plan.

The training plan from "Cycling Past 50" by Joe Friel

The final plan shown above is from "Cycling Past 50" by Joe Friel, and is the longest even after I truncated it. What makes Joe Friel's plan so long is that it is based on a four week cycle where every fourth week is a recovery week; Hughes and Kehlenbach include only one recovery week in thirteen weeks. Friel increases the long ride for the first three weeks of the cycle, but then drops it dramatically during the fourth week to allow for recovery. In the next cycle, he does not pick up where he left off like Hughes and Kehlenbach, but almost starts over. Week 1 of the second four week cycle starts at the same mileage as Week 2 of the first four week cycle; you only progress 1 week every 4 weeks. Other than that, Friel's plan is similar to Hughes and Kehlenbach, it involves four or five rides a week, and one to two recovery rides every week.

Conclusions

• By chance, the first training plan I tried happened to be a rather intense one. Every rider is different, of course, but because of this choice, I may well have started out with a training plan that is too exhausting for my 64 year old body. 
• Every single one of these plans includes a weekly Fast Ride. A Fast Ride as part of a training plan for endurance cycling never made sense to me, so I had not been doing one. However, the near universality of this in training regimens is making me reconsider.

What I have been experimenting with over the last few weeks is to include a Fast Ride each week, reduce the number of Pace Rides to one per week, and add one or two Active Recovery rides each week. In the next few weeks, I plan a post describing in more detail these and other changes I have made to my training.

Final Thoughts

With luck, all the above may become moot. A goal of mine is to reach a steady state level of fitness where I no longer need to train specifically for a 200K brevet. Rather, I hope to be able to comfortably ride a 200K brevet every month. As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the attractions of "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach is that it provides a training plan for doing just that, and here it is:

Training plan from "Distance Cycling" by John Hughes and Dan Kehlenbach. This plan is for riding a 200K brevet every month and repeats every four weeks. Week 3 can be deleted or duplicated as needed when brevets are more or less than four weeks apart. The monthly 200K (124 mile) ride reduces the need for long rides during the intervening weeks.

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MAF Test Results

Apologies for the grey background. This seems to be a recent Blogger bug :-(

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my MAF test results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph. The plateau in performance continues. I have nothing new to say about it yet, but hope to comment on both the plateau and the role of MAF tests going forward in a future post on training.

Support your LBS or DIY?

West End Bike Shop, where I purchased my Surly Crosscheck and have repairs done that I do not do myself

When I was a young cyclist back in the '60s, one of the jobs I held was working in a Local Bike Shop (LBS). Over time, the owner of the shop (referred to here as BB) became a friend and a supporter of my bike club, the Modesto Roadmen. Thus, the oft-heard admonition to "Support your LBS" has special meaning to me. The issue of supporting your LBS seems to be an obligatory topic for cycling bloggers who are required to make a plea for that position while explaining and justifying their own personal practices, almost always some sort of compromise. I regret being part of that parade, but there were things I wanted to say which I hope are at least somewhat personal to me, so here is my version of that post.

Some of the well known and oft discussed reasons given for supporting your LBS are:

1. If I don't support my LBS, it won't be there when I need it.
2. Because I have less experience than the LBS, by using them, I make sure I purchase the correct products and that repairs are done properly.
3. My LBS is a center for bike culture and, as a tax paying business, a powerful advocate for cyclists with local governments and thus deserves my support.
4. It is better to purchase from local businesses rather than from national or international sources (e.g. most online sources) because so doing means that money spent stays in the community.

Daniel Boone Bike Shop, who restored my Bianchi Specialissima

Even while I was a LBS employee, I (and the rest of the Modesto Roadmen) often purchased our bike supplies from places other than BB's Bike Shop and rather than bringing our bikes to him, did most of our own repairs. I never got the impression that BB was unhappy about this; he knew where his money was made and it wasn't on us pre-1970 racers, it was on the neighborhood kids. He stocked what they wanted, not what we wanted, so when we went elsewhere for our tubular tires it was because he couldn't make money selling them in our relatively small town. As for our Do It Yourself (DYI) repairs, I got the very clear message that BB, who was an old school mechanic before "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" celebrated the concept, agreed that our taking responsibility for our bikes was a Good Thing.

My situation today is different than it was in the 60s. Houston, Texas, is very much a big city, cycling has gone mainstream, most of the local bike shops carry a wide selection of high end bike components, and as an adult cyclist, I am no longer a fringe rider of little economic interest but smack in the middle of of the shops' core demographic. Still, I often work on my own bike, and the reason why is the topic of this post.

My messy garage, my Park Tools bike stand, and my Surly undergoing the indignity of DYI

I don't DIY because I think I can do a better job than the shop, I am a fair handyman at best. Neither is money the deciding issue. The reasons I DIY are as follows:

1. Being a handyman runs in my family. Many of my relatives on both sides of my family built and fixed things. My Dad, in particular, is an excellent handyman.
2. As noted in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", there is value in having the kind of intimate relationship with your bicycle that can only come from maintaining it yourself.
3. In many ways it is more convenient to do it myself. Taking my bike to the shop and picking it up a few days later I find much more disruptive than a few hours in the garage working on the bike. This can mean I perform time critical maintenance (like changing the chain) on time when I do it myself rather than putting it off until it has been too long when I take it to the bike shop.
4. Sometimes I want to try something embarrassing that I don't feel like discussing with a LBS mechanic, like adding a rear cog a bit beyond the specs of my derailleur or adding a fork extender to raise my handlebars.
5. Randonneuring is about self sufficiency. If one's bike breaks down during a brevet, one is expected to fix it. Maintaining my bike myself when I am not under pressure gives me the familiarity and practice I might need to be able to make repairs during a brevet.

I guess I am at peace with what I do with regards to bicycle repair. I try very hard to be fair to my LBS. I don't "showroom" (look at parts in the LBS and then purchase them online.) When I want a new bike, I purchase it from my LBS. Once I decide something is a job for the LBS, I listen to their recommendations and don't quibble about price. I am currently of the opinion that what I do is, on average, fair to my LBS and the Houston cycling community but I am always open to changing my mind as new arguments or experiences require.

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For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph. This week continues the long plateau (lack of progress) seen in recent posts. Last week, I proposed two hypotheses for explaining this lack of progress:

1. The progress leading up to day 145 was due to the weekly long rides I was doing to prepare for my May brevet. When I resume such rides to prepare for a November brevet, a resumption of progress will be seen. 
2. I am training while tired, preventing progress. 

In recent weeks, I have cut back on my training for a variety of reasons, so hypothesis 2 is looking less likely. I plan to increase my training in the weeks to come which should provide the final test.

Sciatica

Illustration of how a herniated disk (shown in blue) can cause spinal nerve inflamation (shown in red). If this happens in the lower back, sciatica results. This picture courtesy of Wikipedia.

It has been almost three weeks without a blog post, and I regret that very much. There are a number of reasons, including:

• My wife and I were on vacation. We used this vacation to stay home and focus on some home improvement projects. I had hoped I would be able to continue with my posts during this vacation but...
• The post I had planned for two weeks ago, a discussion of the virtues of working on my own bicycle as opposed to having this done at my local bike shop, turned out to be harder to write than I had expected, making it impossible to complete whilst home improving and whilst suffering from...
• Sciatica.

Although I have had sciatica for couple of years now, recently it has gotten significantly worse, and the pain is sufficiently distracting as to make it difficult to focus on anything, including this blog. Besides being an excuse, my sciatica might result in part from my cycling (see below), which if true, will dramatically impact my future cycling, making it a topic for this blog.

As Wikipedia notes, sciatica is a symptom that can result from a number of diseases, it is not a disease in and of itself. The symptom of sciatica is shooting pain or numbness in the buttocks or rear of the leg caused by inflammation of the sciatic nerve. There are many diseases that can cause this inflammation, but the most common is when the disk that separates the bones of the spine herniates, causing it to pinch the sciatic nerve where it exits the spine to go into the leg (illustrated above). This herniation can itself be caused by a number of things, but in my case, the most likely cause is simply aging. Thus, it would be unfair to blame cycling for my sciatica. That said, once sciatica occurs, there are many things that can make it worse, such as poor posture, sitting incorrectly, standing too long, etc. In the best case, sciatica can be managed by over the counter pain medication and behavior changes such as sitting less, back supports, better posture, etc. I have never read that cycling aggravates sciatica, but my sciatica got dramatically worse immediately after my 200K brevet last May, a fact I noted at the time. Back then, my explanation was that this was a generalized effect of exhaustion, like the cold I got at the same time. As I have researched sciatica in order to manage it, however, another hypothesis has recommended itself, that the posture I assume when sitting on my bicycle might itself aggravate my sciatica. If this is true, what would have prevented me from noticing this immediately is that the behaviors which aggravate sciatica do not necessary hurt at the time; cycling would not need to be painful to be an aggravating factor. For example, I always feel fine while sitting, it's only later I notice my sciatica is worse. I am far from convinced this is the case for cycling, but it is one more thing I will be watching. In a week I will be riding 63 miles in the Tour de Pink, and a week after that, 65 miles in the Back Roads Century. If I notice my sciatica getting worse, I will consider cutting back on riding significantly to see if that reverses the effect. As always, I will report on progress in future posts.

Next week I plan to finally post on do it yourself bicycle repairs vs the local bike shop.

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MAF Test Results

For those new to this blog, each week I am posting an update of my training results; see my previous posts for explanations of my aerobic training program, MAF tests, and this graph.

For weeks now I have been arguing that my MAF test results had plateaued, that they were not increasing. This week's graph is certainly consistent with that, but if you squint real hard, you might imagine that the last several results have been tending upwards. That could correspond to riding some longer rides (up to 50 miles) with my wife to get her ready for the Tour de Pink. Time will tell.