Backwards

What's wrong with this picture? The rider is riding the Rice Track clockwise, that's what! Compare it to this picture from an earlier post:

I have the strong impression that my cycling record keeping was less reliable at the beginning of my restart than it is now. When I look back at my records from 2009, for example, I feel like there were a lot of rides that never got recorded. The upshot is that, although the first record I have of a ride on the Rice Track is in August of 2011, I am pretty sure that my first ride was in 2008 or 2009. I have this vague memory of wondering what the right direction to ride was, or if it mattered. I think I decided on counter-clockwise because that is what I saw another rider doing, but whether that was my first ride or later, I cannot recall. In any case, for at least four years, and probably a lot longer, I have been riding regularly on the Rice Track, and I had never seen anyone ride it clockwise. Until a few days ago.

Back when I first started riding the Rice Track, it was very lightly used; I would usually ride it alone. Over time, usage seems to have increased. It is still not at all busy, but more often than not, I encounter other riders. Also, usage on weekends is heavier than weekdays. All of that said, when I went out to the track last Saturday, given that I was arriving at 6:30 am, I assumed I would be the only rider out there. As I approached the track, I saw that was not to be. I first saw the other riders from afar, and assumed that my perspective was off. Although it seemed that they were riding clockwise, I assumed I must be confusing the far side of the track rather with the near. But as I drew closer, the terrible truth forced itself upon me; there were three riders on the track going around the wrong way! I hesitated for a moment, but quickly realized that trying to ride "against the flow" was madness, I simply had to join the crowd.

Circling the track the wrong way was remarkably disorienting. It also made me feel guilty and unclean. Often, I will be the "last rider left standing" on the track as most other riders seem to have shorter workouts than I do, so I schemed to reverse directions once the other riders left, but fate decreed otherwise. My hopes rose as first one rider left, and then another. The third rider, however, seemed to be as diligent as I, and kept circling. As he past me (most riders on the Rice Track pass me), I asked him "Why are we going around the track the wrong way?" "Well, that's the way they were riding when I got here" he replied. "In five years, I have never seen this happen" I said. "I have, once before" said he. Since it seemed he was sticking around, I figured that the next time he passed me, I would suggest a direction reversal, but then a revealing event happened: another rider joined us, and we were stuck once again. Clearly, once a direction is set, it will be maintained so long as new riders join the group quickly enough to prevent the track from ever being empty. Once again, three riders circled the track in the wrong direction, any opportunity for a correction was lost. Shortly after, yet another joined. The most recent joinee seemed particularly disoriented by the wrong way cycling, but after weaving around in the center of the track for a while, she gave in and joined the clockwise procession. One left and then there were three, and soon it was time for me to leave as well. As I was exiting the track, one of the remaining two chose to leave at the same time, so I stopped him, took a few pictures, and then as the last rider on the track (pictured at the top of the post) came around, we yelled at her: "The track is all yours. You can turn around now." And she did. Order was restored at last.

It is well known that I am compulsive. Is there any reason for me to think that my counter-clockwise preference is any different from my insistence that all dairy be on one shelf in our refrigerator or that coffee cups need to be arranged by color? I did some research, and the results were suggestive but not definitive. The Rice Track is not a velodrome (it has no banking on the corners) but I felt that if velodromes mandated counter-clockwise cycling, then I could argue that the Rice Track should be the same. The Wikipedia article on velodromes does not mention a required direction, nor does the UCI rules on track cycling. However, Google searching turned up the websites of velodrome after velodrome, all of them stating that riding was restricted to a counter-clockwise direction. So there.

Training or Exercise?

My wife and I at the start of the 2014 Tour de Pink. We definitely plan to ride the Tour de Pink again this year, which will make five years in a row.

This blog has a number of recurring themes. I talk about the effect of different training plans on my ability to cycle, the effect of my age on my ability to cycle, the effect of my genes on my ability to cycle, and on the impact of life events on my ability to cycle. Unfortunately, another life event has impacted me within the last couple of months. There is no way to avoid this impact, but I do get to decide how I manage it. Specifically, the beneficial effects of cycling on my mental and physical health makes me determined to continue my cycling.

So, what kind of cycling will I be doing? In my last post, I discussed some of the ways in which cycling can be used. It can be simple transportation, like when my wife bicycles work. It can be exercise, done primarily for its health benefits. It can be an outdoor recreation, a way to enjoy a beautiful day and beautiful scenery. Or (as I focused on in my last post), it can be a sport, where one competes against other cyclists, themselves, or some other challenge. A person who pursues cycling as a sport will usually spend most of their time, not in the sport itself, but training for that sport. I confess that most of my recent cycling has looked a lot like exercise. However, as beneficial as these rides are for my health, I like to think that I am really training. Why do I care? I care because when I think about my rides this way, I enjoy them more and am much more likely to continue them. That, however, begs the question: training how, and for what?

The last time I posted on training was last summer, about 10 months ago (with an update a month later). At that time, I was exploring a new approach to preparing for a 200K brevet. The backbone of this approach is a MAF Test, a 45 minute ride on the Rice Bike Track done at moderate effort (Heart Rate Zone 2.) This is supplemented by faster, harder rides (such as intervals, done in Heart Rate zones 4 and 5) when I am feeling strong and rest days when I am feeling tired. I never ride more than 6 days a week, and try to make 1 to 2 of my weekly rides a faster ride. I take longer rides, up to 50 miles, when opportunity presents itself.

I was never able to ride that brevet, not because there was anything wrong with my training, but because life events got in the way. Rather than ride a brevet, I had to fly to California to help out my Dad. That was the first of three such trips, trips which interfered with any attempt to ride subsequent brevets and which thoroughly disrupted my training. As a result, I do not know if this new approach to training would have prepared me for a brevet or not. And it seems unlikely that I will be able to attempt a brevet any time soon. Despite all that, I have continued with more or less the same training schedule. Although I was never able to test this schedule against a brevet, other evidence suggests that it is a good schedule to keep me ready for whatever riding opportunities present themselves. Firstly, when I have attempted rides in the 40 to 60 mile range, I have been able to complete them comfortably, with the feeling like I could have easily ridden longer. Secondly, the MAF test, my most common ride, is both a training ride and a metric of fitness. The fitness score from that test is the speed I can ride without exceeding heart rate zone 2. In the past, the only times I have been able to exceed a speed of 16 mph in that test has been when I have successfully prepared for a brevet. Using my current training plan, I have often exceeded 16 mph, and in fact set a personal best of 16.9 mph. Thus, for now, I will continue with this plan.

Tires

Recently, Bike Snob reviewed a bicycle he had for three years, making the case that it is absurd to review a bicycle you have just started riding. I tried to quote his rationale, but could not extract anything short and pithy from his post. You should read Bike Snob yourself in all his charming verbosity. As it happens, I totally agree with him on this subject. It is so frustrating to read product reviews, knowing that one of the most important differences between different products is how they holds up over time, and seeing that all the reviews were written days after purchase, discussing how quick the shipping was and how pretty the product looked out of the box. My approach to this problem is to return to the same product over time, in this case, tires.

The last time I posted about tires was about a year and a half ago. I tires I talked about were Ritchey SpeedMax Comp, Specialized Armadillo, Grand Bois Extra Léger, and Schwalbe Marathon Plus'. The Ritcheys were the original tires that came on our Surly Crosschecks. They are 32mm wide tires with a knobby tread. The Armadillos are smooth tread, 28mm wide tires that my LBS put on my bike when I didn't like the Ritcheys. The Grand Bois were tires recommended for randonneuring by the experienced randonneur's at Compass Bicycles. They are 32mm wide, run at lower pressure than the Armadillos, have very thin walls which it is claimed results in lower rolling resistance, and are quite expensive. I used them for my second brevet, liked the way they rode very much, but then took them off the bike to "save" them, as they were expensive and seemed fragile. I purchased the Marathons as high reliability tires to replace the Armadillos when they wore out. At the time, I said I didn't like their handling very much but said "perhaps I will never get another flat and that advantage will trump everything." That is pretty much been my experience over the last year and a half. During the 14 months these tires were on my bike, I had one flat, resulting from running over a nail, a hazard so severe it would have caused a flat in an automobile tire. At that point, my wife was tired of all the flats she was getting with her Ritcheys, so I put my Marathons on her bike and the Grand Bois tires on mine, to try to get some use out of them and to try out them as every day tires. Just like me, my wife didn't like the Marathons at first because of their handling and harsh ride, but has had no flats with them, and now will not give them up. I, on the other hand, have replaced the Grand Bois tires after having three flats in as many months. Perhaps this is not such a bad record, but for me, the demotivation of that many flats is much greater than the motivation I got from the nice ride of the tires.

Fortuitously, it was at just about this time that Lovely Bicycle reviewed a tire that seemed like just what I needed: the  Clement Strada LGG. These are road tires, and the widest they come is 28mm, so that's what I got. She promised a tire that resisted flats and handled well. Only time will tell how flat resistant they are; I have had no flats but have only been using them for a month and a half. As to their handling, my first impressions were very favorable; I liked them much better than the Marathons. And then I crashed. I was entering the Rice Bike Track after some rain and the track was still damp. As I turned onto the track, my tires slipped out from under me with no warning. I was not badly hurt and continued with my planned ride, but I was nervous the whole time and felt like the tires were not secure. Most of the blame for my fall has to be placed on the track. It was recently resurfaced and probably still had an oil residue on it. That, plus the dampness, is a problematic combination, and I have seen other riders (presumably using other tires) crashing there under these conditions. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the tires whatsoever, but I am going to always wonder, would I have fallen with different tires? Some months from now, I will post an update on these tires, particularly their resistance to flats.

Garmin 500 Cycle Computer

I have posted several times on this computer, most recently, here. This is an update on two issues I have been following; lost data and the durability of the strap associated with its heart rate monitor. From the very beginning, I had trouble with the Garmin loosing the occasional ride. I would come home, connect the Garmin to my computer, and the Garmin software would claim there was no new ride. If I look on the Garmin's file system, there is a file for that day, but it is extremely short and presumably corrupted. When this first happened, I thought it might be the result of keeping too much data on the Garmin or over-using the lap button. Since then, I have been diligent about removing data from the Garmin promptly. Although I use the lap button for my interval workouts, I have not noticed that I loose data more often on days that I use the lap button than on days that I do not. In fact, I went many months with no data loss and thought the problem was solved. And then, a few weeks ago, for no reason I could figure, I lost a ride. It occurred to me that this might be a problem that Garmin had solved in a software update, so updated the software on my Garmin to the latest version, and the next day, lost another ride. Since then, no rides have been lost. I have resigned myself to the belief that occasional data loss is simply a problem with this device, and there is nothing to be done about it.

The other problem I had with the Garmin is that the strap that I wear around my chest to measure heart rate would stop working after a few months. This occurred both with the original Garmin strap as well as a replacement strap from Polar, which the sages of the Internet assured me would solve this problem. The original Garmin strap stopped working after three months, the Polar, after four. In my frustration, I started using an inexpensive, stand-alone Polar heart rate monitor. It was not as full featured and useful as the Garmin but it worked flawlessly for 12 months. Garmin makes two different kinds of heart rate monitors, an expensive one (which I had been using) with a soft, comfortable looking strap, and a cheap one, with a stiff, uncomfortable-looking strap. The strap on my stand-alone Polar was the stiff, uncomfortable-looking kind. What I noticed was two things:
1) It may have looked uncomfortable, but it was just as comfortable to wear as the expensive Garmin.
2) It kept working much longer, for 12 months. It was still working at that point, but I went back to using the Garmin. I have every reason to believe it would have kept working much longer.

Thus, ten months ago, I decided to try the cheap Garmin heart rate monitor. It proved to be as comfortable as the stand-alone Polar, and in fact as comfortable as the expensive Garmin monitor, and has worked without a hitch for these last 10 months. Even if it were to fail tomorrow, I would, at this point, just purchase another one. That said, I have every expectation it has a lot more life in it. Problem solved. My very strong recommendation to all Garmin users is to purchase the inexpensive heart rate monitor; the more expensive model is less good.

Is Cycling a Sport?

A medal awarded for successfully completing a 200K brevet.

Are cyclists athletes? Bike Snob, perhaps my favorite cycling blogger, thinks not:
"...on giving Freds the athlete thing, absolutely not.  I refuse to call them athletes ... They're (though I really should say "we're," since I too am a Fred) are not really athletes.  What they're doing is working out, or exercising.  They're athletes like the people you see sweating away in the window at Equinox are athletes.  If a cyclist who's participating in an amateur bike race is an athlete then when I'm defrosting a Trader Joe's pizza I'm a chef."

To clarify, Bike Snob uses the word "Fred" a bit differently than others in the cycling community. Most people use the word "Fred" to refer to a particularly unskilled cyclist or a cyclist who owns much more expensive equipment than is justified by their skill level. Bike Snob uses the word Fred to refer to almost all amateur bicycle racers, perhaps because he believes one or both of the previous definitions apply to them, or perhaps just to be funny. Is Bike Snob correct, do amateur bicycle racers fail to qualify as athletes? To decide what I thought about the issue, I read the Wikipedia Page on Athlete. Wikipedia says that an athlete is a participant in a sport. By this definition, all bicycle racers are athletes. Bike Snob, on the other hand, uses the definition from Merriam Webster:

athlete noun ath·lete \ˈath-ˌlēt, ÷ˈa-thə-ˌlēt\ : a person who is trained in or good at sports, games, or exercises that require physical skill and strength

Depending on what standards one chooses to use for "trained in" and "good at", one can define athlete in a wide range of different ways. Even discounting humorous usage, Bike Snob is as entitled to his definition of "athlete" as anyone else is to theirs. For reasons that may become apparent below, I choose to use a broader definition of the word athlete which essentially ignores judgements as to degree of training and skill level, and by my definition, amateur bicycle racers are athletes. How about other cyclists? For me, that depends on if cycling other than racing is a sport, which brings me to the title of this post.

As much as I enjoy Bike Snob, I really don't care if his definition of athlete and mine are the same or not. What I do care about is coming up with definitions of words (e.g. athlete) that I feel comfortable defending and which work well in the context of my blog. But why? There are two reasons:

1. One of the reasons I enjoy writing for this blog is that it allows me to practice my writing skills. This includes the precise use of words. 
2. I have been struggling with defining what kind of cycling I would like to do. Should I try to be a randonneur? A club cyclist? Are there other alternatives? Of course, I do not need to define things to do them, but I do believe that finding the words that accurately describe these different kinds of cycling helps me to think about them more productively.

Resolving the definition "athlete" to my satisfaction was relatively straightforward; an athlete is any participant in a sport. Defining the word "sport" proved to be much more interesting.

Summarizing the many definitions that have been given for "sport", there appear to be two to three components that are used to classify an activity as a sport. First, a sport is physical. Second, a sport involves competition. And perhaps third, a sport is done for the fun of the activity, not for some other reason. Clearly, amateur bicycle racing is a sport; it is physical, it involves competition, and it is done for the fun of it. Does the third criterion mean that professional bicycle racing is not a sport, since it is done primarily for the money rather than fun? My intuition says that professional bicycle racing is a sport; a professional sport. In general, I think a professional sport is defined as the professionalization of a physical competition which, in a non-professional setting, is done for fun.

How about downhill bicycle racing? This is not a competition about which rider is physically stronger and although based on speed, the speed is provided by gravity, not rider muscle. I have never participated in downhill bicycle racing or anything like it so I do not speak from knowledge, much less experience, but I will nonetheless opine that downhill bicycle racing is a sport. The physical aspect of sport does not consist of strength only, but includes physical skill, dexterity, etc., clearly the factors that determine which downhill racer will win.

At this point, I would briefly diverge and note there is considerable support for definitions of sport that do not meet the physical criterion. SportAccord, a major international association of sports associations includes five mental sports, including chess. Automobile racing is often considered a sport. I do not deny that the physical demands on racing car drivers is considerable, but I do not believe that the drivers' physical condition is what typically determines the outcome of a race; rather, that outcome is determined by the automobile. While I would never quarrel with fans or participants of these competitions over these definitions of "sport", for myself, I feel more comfortable retaining the "physical" part of the sport definition. Fortunately, this question does not affect what I write for this blog, since all forms of cycling are clearly physical.

In the examples of automobile racing or chess, the main thing they have in common with sports like running or football is competition. What then do we make of a bicycling activity like randonneuring, which claims to be so fiercely non-competitive that the finishers in an event are listed not in the order of finish, but alphabetically? Can you imagine the gold, silver, and bronze metals in olympic randonneuring going to those whose last names happen to occur near the start of the phone book? And yet, I am going to claim that in my mind at least, randonneuring is a sport. For those that don't know, randonneuring is a cycling activity in which riders attempt to finish long bike rides, most commonly 200, 300, 400, 600, or 1200 kilometers in length, within fixed, fairly generous time limits (13.5, 20, 27, 40, or 90 hours, respectively.) It is definitely physical and definitely done for the fun of it, and I claim that although riders are not competing against each other, they are competing against themselves to see if they can complete the distance. Randonneuring even awards medals, as seen in the photo at the top of this post.

How about bicycle commuting? Of course, there are cases where a racer or a randonneur commutes to work by bicycle to get some extra training miles in, in which case I claim that the main thing is the racing or the randonneuring, but how about someone whose main reason for bicycle commuting is to get to work? In my mind, that may be very admirable and wise, but it is not a sport. It is physical, but even stretching a point, there is no competition, and as I have set up the scenario, the motivation is not to have fun (as fun as the commute might happen to be) but to get to work.

Now for some harder cases: club riding, charity riding, and bicycle touring. The attribute of a sport that seems to be missing in these three cases is the element of competition, arguably the most defining characteristic of a sport. In preparation to diving into these questions, let me once again branch outside of cycling. This next quote comes from the Wikipedia page on Competition:
"Athletes, besides competing against other humans, also compete against nature in sports such as whitewater kayaking or mountaineering, where the goal is to reach a destination, with only natural barriers impeding the process."
Let me pair this with a quote from a tweet from the Adventure Cycling Association, a promotor of bicycle touring, about one of their tours:
"First (short) day on the #transamtrail with @thejchap up to afton before the assault on skyline drive tomorrow #mikeheadswest"
Anyone who has done serious bicycle touring knows it can be a challenge, but is it a competition? Although I definitely agree there is room for difference of opinion here, my intuition and experience says yes. In the second quote, I see competition against "skyline drive."

Charity riding is like touring in that one competes against the course, and in addition, most charity rides have variable distances, so one competes against oneself in terms of "I rode 40 miles last year, can I ride 60 this year?" Interestingly, club riding was the most difficult for me to classify. Because of the bikes used, clothing worn, and general attitude of the rides, it is looks a lot like bicycle racing, and so looks much like a sport. But is it? Some clubs are USA Cycling-affiliated racing clubs, so that club rides are training rides for the sport of bicycle racing, but many such clubs are not so affiliated and their members never participate in a race. One might argue that, like touring or charity riding, riders compete against the course or themselves, but since club rides tend to cover the same courses week after week, year after year, where's the competition? Is it the sprinting for city limit signs? Is it having trouble keeping up with a fellow rider one week, but leaving them in the dust the following week? Upon reflection, I think it is these things and more. In my mind, club riding is definitely a sport. What do you think?

Ken Kifer Revisited

When I first returned to cycling 6 years ago, I was confused by how much cycling had changed during the 35 years I had been away. I spent a lot of time on the Internet trying to get back up to speed, and one of the more helpful sites I came across was that of Ken Kifer. I rather bonded to the author in the course of reading his site, and was heartbroken to later read that what I was looking at was not a live site, but an homage; Ken Kifer was killed by a drunk driver in 2003. Copies of Ken's site are maintain in two places:

• The US
• Denmark

Some compare Ken Kifer to Sheldon Brown, and the parallels are strong. Both were passionate bicycling advocates with strong opinions and a burning need to share those opinions. Both were early publishers on the World Wide Web. And sadly, both authors died before my return to cycling, Sheldon in 2008 and Ken in 2003. While these similarities clearly put them into the same category ("apples to apples"), these two historic icons of the biking community are, in my opinion, very different in detail. Many of the differences between them are subjective, so everything in the following list is just my opinion:

• Sheldon Brown wrote an encyclopedia. Ken Kifer wrote an advice book based on his personal experiences. Without Sheldon, our ability to work with bicycles, especially older bicycles, would be much poorer. Ken Kifer's contributions are more difficult to quantitate, though perhaps no less valuable.
• When I change my beliefs as a result of using Sheldon Brown's site, it will most likely be because my understanding of the facts have changed. If I change my beliefs as a result of using Ken Kifer's site, it will most likely because my interpretation of the facts has changed.
• Their writing styles are very different. I claim that, given a paragraph or so of writing from either one, I could identify whether it came from Ken or Sheldon with reasonable accuracy. 

I first read Ken's site a number of years ago, so what makes me write a blog post about it now? Perhaps that is the wrong question; I have not blogged about Ken Kifer before, he is worth blogging about, and now is as good a time as any. That said, two things happened recently that caused me to write this post:

1. I had lost track of Ken's website. Among the posters I follow on Tumblr is oldbikesbelong, a bike shop in St. Louis that specializes in restored classic bikes. A few weeks ago, one of the bikes they offered caught my eye, a Schwinn Voyager, a Japanese-built Schwinn touring bike, so I did some research. It turns out that Ken Kifer was particularly fond of this bike, so my research lead back to his site. Having re-found it, it made it possible for me to blog about it.
2. When I looked at the site years ago, I was most interested in what Ken had to say about desirable bikes and bicycle touring and ignored a lot of the other topics he covered. Since then, I have become much more interested in training and nutrition, and so having re-found the site, read more of what Ken had to say about a wider range of topics. Coincidentally, Grant Pedersen, one of the most authoritative contemporary voices in cycling, has just published a new book on these topics¹, and the contrast between Ken's opinions and Grant's opinions is striking indeed! Thus, I had more to talk about than when I first encountered the site.

Ken Kifer stopped contributing to his website 12 years ago, when he was killed. Is this site still interesting today, or is it merely an historical curiosity? I maintain it is still interesting today. It is probably not the first cycling website I would recommend to a new cyclist, but I think a connoisseur of cycling, someone who enjoys reading what the web has to offer about their chose sport, would do well to give this site a look.

I might worry that my love for Ken's site might be "just me", but there is widespread homage to Ken on the web; I am not alone. That said, it is me expressing this high opinion of Ken, and here are some of the many things I found helpful or soul satisfying on Ken's site:

• Old bikes are worth riding, they are often better than new bikes which change as much in response to fashion as they do to technological progress.
• On the other hand, old bikes are not always worth fixing up.
• What makes one bike good and another less good are not always obvious differences in specifications. Characteristics which feel glaringly obvious when you ride a bike can be difficult to explain.
• Riding long hours at low speed can be good for you.
• Current fads in nutrition can be bad for you.
• More cycling paths may not be the best way to make cycling practical, safe, and fun.
• In planning how to live your life, think carefully about your definition of success. The definitions and goals that are assumed by the majority may well be tragically wrong. Specifically, keeping in close contact with nature is valuable.

I can't think of a case where Ken ever told me something I did not know, but what he did do was help me sort through my confusion and gave me moral support when I found myself marching to the beat of a different drummer. Who am I to question a cycling great like Grant Pederson? Yet, when he councils "Eat Bacon, Don't Jog²" I beg to differ, and Ken supports me in that. But all of that is beside the point. The reason I suggest you might want to read Ken's website is not very much about the content of the site, but but very much about the art; Ken's voice. Give his website a look, and if the spirit moves you, let me know what you think in the comments to this post.

---

1) I have read the teaser material on the book that Amazon makes available, but I have not yet read Grant's book, so will (mostly) refrain commenting on it until I have done so. That said, the teaser material, plus what Grant discusses on these topics in his previous book, "Just Ride", was enough to increase my interest in Ken's take on nutrition and exercise.

2) Firstly, this is the title of Grant's new book, and at great peril, I infer the contents from this title. If, when I read the book, I find that inference to be incorrect, I will correct myself on this blog. Secondly, I make an obvious generalization; that this book is not about bacon and jogging only, but a high fat diet and aerobic exercise more generally. For me, the title might be "Eat Steak, Don't Bicycle."

The Houston Bike Club

The home page of the Houston Bike Club website

I have been on three rides with the Houston Bike Club (HBC), my wife, two. In their ride FAQ, HBC says:

The HBC has a variety of rides. The most common are the countryside rides where we ride on country roads well outside the city. We also have EZ rides which are slow paced social rides in town. There is a group named the Dirty Dozen who ride a century (100 miles) once a month. Orientation rides are for new members and beginners.

The first ride we did with the HBC, which my wife and I did together, was an "Orientation ride." We both found it very easy, too easy to be worth the long drive to get to it. I did the second HBC ride by myself, one of their "countryside rides." My plan was to ride with the slow group, to see if it might be something my wife could enjoy, but in my confusion, I ended up with the fast group, a group too fast for me. Both the good and the bad news was that a couple of the riders from that group stayed with me which got me home but also made me feel bad that I had "spoiled their ride". They were very friendly and gracious and never suggested I had done so, but I knew anyway. That experience was sufficiently discouraging that it was almost four years before we tried again. Recently, however, my wife has been more daring and enthusiastic about bicycling and suggested we give the HBC another try. So, a couple of weeks ago, we showed up in Columbia, Texas for their 37 mile Columbia to Fayetteville ride:

The HBC map handed out at the beginning of the ride.

By now, I have become fairly familiar with the roads this ride traversed. My second HBC ride was from New Ulm to Fayetteville, and covered many of the same roads. A few years back, my wife and I did a ride with our son and daughter-in-law that started in Columbus and went to Freisburg, a very similar route. Most recently, the last 200K brevet I rode included these roads exactly. Thus, I knew about the rolling hills on this course, but somehow I failed to put two and two together and consider what effect this might have on my wife.

We drove the hour from Houston to Columbus and showed up in plenty of time for the 8:30 am start. There were about 15 riders there from the HBC, about the same as the last time I rode with them. Although the average age of the riders might have been a bit younger than my wife and I, it would not be by much; we were definitely in the same demographic as the HBC riders. This time, I was quite careful to make sure we ended up with the slow group. As it turns out, the "slow group" is the wives; the husbands ride fast and long, the wives ride separately, slower and shorter. I can see how this division might arise organically and naturally, and I can see how it might work for this obviously tight-knit group, but it did make me feel a bit out of place in the slow group. That was somewhat ameliorated by the fact that I was obviously there to "take care of my wife", but made me wonder how this would work out in the long term. When we discussed joining the club, my wife and I wondered if we might form the nucleus of a new, even slower group. From our charity rides, we know there is a big chunk of cyclists like us, slower than the HBC, but are unaware of any clubs that are "our speed." Could the HBC become that club by including a new subgroup? Having seen how close the group is, and how well they have worked out their logistics to suit themselves, I wonder if that is possible. So, as we headed out of town, I was very curious to see if my wife would be able to keep up.

The slow group consisted of four women from the HBC and my wife and I. Normally I council my wife to start slow; I find that starting too fast can be disproportionately tiring. Given that the goal of this ride was to determine if this was the club for us, in this case, I suggested she push herself to keep with the group. At first, she was able to do that, but with each rolling hill, she found it harder, and by the time we got to Fayetteville, the other riders were almost out of sight. Once in Fayetteville (a beautiful Texas country town, complete with an antique sale on the town green), the group did not seem inclined to hang out for long, so after a bathroom break and a chance to eat the peanut butter sandwiches we had brought with us, it was time to head back. There was no hope of keeping with the group on that return trip, we were on our own from the git-go. As the ride continued, my wife became so exhausted that I began to worry about her. As we nervously traversed the narrow and heavily travelled bridge back into Columbus, I sadly concluded that the results of this "experiment" were clear; this was not the group for us, we had to keep looking to find our club.

When we got back to where we had all parked our cars, I was surprised to see that most of the group were still packing up for the drive home. In some of their literature, there was talk of a lunch at the end of their rides. I suppose it was possible that they all went to lunch as we were dragging ourselves back into town, but that seems unlikely; as slow as we were, I doubt that there was time for a lunch between when the rest of the group got back and when we did. It seems more likely that we were not as far behind as it seemed.

On the drive home, my wife was shocked and horrified by the conclusion to which I had come, vis a vis our place in the HBC. "I had fun!" she said. "I want to do this again!" Is that possible? A flatter route would have been easier, and there are many flatter routes on the HBC calendar. The ride certainly would have been easier on a tandem, should we ever get it together to purchase one. Although I have expressed pessimism about how much my wife and I can improve our cycling speed or endurance, perhaps there is some room for improvement there as well. Perhaps it is possible.

Finally, I would like to compare the different kinds of group riding experiences we have had over the years. The first group ride in which we participated was our vacation in Maine with the bicycle tour organizers, Summer Feet. We picked their easiest ride, and found that we were among the slower riders, but certainly not the slowest, and had no difficulty completing the rides in a timely fashion. When we ride the Tour de Pink or the MS150 training rides, we are again among the slower riders but not the slowest. At the beginning of the ride, it seems that everyone is passing us, but by the end of the ride, we are passing some of those same riders who had passed us earlier. I have ridden twice with my high school bicycling buddy, Paul, in Modesto California. The second time, we rode with some of his friends from the Stanislaus County Bicycle Club. They reminded me a lot of the men of the Houston Bicycle Club. They were older (like me) but rode much faster than I do. The style of riding seemed to be a series of races from rest stop to rest stop. When I ride with the Houston Randonneurs (HR), there are often times when I cannot keep up or when I am towards the back of the group, but the style of riding is very different. The second ride I did with them, we all stayed together for the first 45 miles, and it was a most enjoyable ride with lots of friendly conversation. Towards the middle of that stretch, we happened to bump into a group from the Houston Bike Club. One of their members was quite chatty and rode along with us. At one point, he suggested we all stop together and socialize, but then his face fell. "Oh that's right" he said, "you folks never stop." To me, that is the big difference. Rather than race from rest stop to rest stop, randonneurs just roll out the miles, mile after mile, with rest stops few and far between. I strongly prefer the randonneuring style of riding, which is why I am so sad I have not been able to participate in randonneuring as much as I would like.

And then there is the bikes. On my second ride with the Houston Bike Club, one of the other riders looked at my bike and commented "That's a nice touring bike you have." (In fact, it is not a touring bike at all. It is a low end, somewhat ad-hoc randonneuse.) Although the remark was friendly, I somehow felt bad. On both country rides I have been on with the HBC, most or all of the other riders were on carbon fiber racing bikes with skinny tires and narrow-range gears that probably cost 3-5 times as much as my Surly. A close friend of mine, who also favors this kind of bike and who knows me well enough to be blunt, tells me plaintively "David, you can afford a good bike! Lift mine! Lift yours! Don't you feel the difference?" He cannot conceive that there may be reasons I have the bike that I do; that I might prefer it to one like his. The Houston Randonneurs sport a much more eclectic mix of bikes than the HBC. Again, mine is probably the least expensive out there, but on a Houston Randonneurs ride, I see plenty of frames made of steel or titanium and fewer made of carbon. Gear ranges are wide, fenders are not uncommon, nor are leather saddles, and many bikes sport relatively fat tires. The charity rides we have participated in exhibit an even broader range of bikes. On these rides, the distribution of bikes seems to be bimodal, with one group of riders on the carbon fiber racing bikes, and another group riding anything and everything from mountain bikes to cruisers to classic steel framed bikes from the 1960's, 70's, and 80's.

So what are my wife and I to do? The HBC are "Roadies" as defined by Bike Snob. I am more of a "Retrogrouch", and in this matter (and this matter only), my wife follows my lead. We will always be a little self-conscious about our bikes in this group and they will always be too fast for us. Even if we get a tandem, we could only keep up with the wives, which is fine for my wife, but makes me feel like a bit of an interloper. What about my simpatico buddies in the Houston Randonneurs? Even on a tandem, even attempting only the shortest, 200K/125 mile rides, the HR is almost certainly too much for my wife. (It might be too much for me.) Charity rides are great and I suspect they will always be part of our mix, perhaps an increasing part, but they are somewhat seasonal, quite crowded (thousands of riders compared to the 10 to 15 riders on an HBC or HR ride) and tend to use the same roads over and over. We are still playing it by ear and will just have to figure this out as we go.

The No Bluebonnet Express

My wife on the left and me on the right. This picture was taken by the ride organizers

at the end of the ride.

As the regular reader of this blog knows, I have been wondering if I should replace randonneuring with something else as my Fun Bike Ride^®. I will not get enough exercise if all I do is fun rides, my morning laps at the Rice Bike Track are a boring necessity, but I do want to get in as many fun rides as possible. Mostly, these rides are their own reward, but in addition, they provide the motivation to keep me going on my daily exercise routine. I am very glad that I participated in 200K brevets in 2012 and 2013, I found them exciting, motivating, and fun. I particularly enjoyed getting to know a few of the Texas randonneurs. I haven't officially abandoned randonneuring, and in fact I really thought I might be attempting a 200K brevet with the Houston Randonneurs this April. I was particularly looking forward to trying a different way to prepare for this ride. However, it seems unlikely I will make this attempt, and I am not sure when I might next consider another one. Some of the reasons for that decision are a concern that a 200K ride might be just a bit too much for my aged body, a sense of "been there, done that" combined with a belief that a 200K brevet is probably the maximum I can do, and the responsibility of caring for my aging Dad. All of that said, probably the biggest single thing that is preventing me from attempting a brevet this April is my wife's increasing enthusiasm for cycling. If I attempt a brevet, that is a weekend I don't ride with her. So, probably no brevet (by myself¹) in April, but two exceptionally fun rides with my wife in March; the Blue Bonnet Express, described here, and a ride with the Houston Bicycle Club which I will describe in a future post.

The Bluebonnet Express is one of the oldest bike rides in the Houston area; this year's event was the 26th running. It is organized by Houston's Northwest Cycling Club. The MS150, a charity ride supporting the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, is probably the premier cycling event on the Houston cycling calendar. The Bluebonnet express is one of a series of recommended training rides for the MS150, and so attracted 2,600 riders. The MS150 is held in April, and there are 38 training rides, one or two each weekend, starting the previous October. This cycle of training rides has taken on a life of its own, such that 4 of the "training" rides are held after the MS150! From my perspective, these training rides make excellent fun rides on their own.

The Bluebonnet Express offers routes varying from 25 to 75 miles in length. The map above shows the longer routes. We opted for the 45 mile distance. This ride takes place in the same part of Texas as the Tour de Pink; the roads in red are shared between these two rides.

So what did we think of the Bluebonnet Express? In summary, we loved it! We definitely plan to include MS150 training rides in our future schedule. In case it is not obvious, a bluebonnet is a wildflower, the state flower of Texas. The emergence of bluebonnets each spring is a big event. Many families take their annual family portrait midst the bluebonnets. When the first bluebonnets emerge depends on the weather that year and on microclimate; bluebonnets will emerge at different times in different parts of the state. Thus, when planning an annual bike ride, there is an element of chance; one cannot know of certain that the bluebonnets will be out on the day of the ride. We were hopeful, because a week or so before the ride, bluebonnets started appearing around Houston. Sadly, the ride was located in a cooler microclimate and on the day of the ride, nary a bluebonnet was to be seen. Nonetheless, the weather was just about perfect, the organizers and fellow riders were fun and friendly, and the rest stops sponsored by the Kroger grocery store chain provided welcome bathrooms, drinks, and snacks. As I have mentioned before, my wife and I are somewhat nervous riders, so the security in numbers from all the other riders along with the police support at busy intersections made the ride a lot more fun for us. We also enjoyed being introduced to some beautiful, quiet country roads that were new to us. This ride as about twice the number of participants as the Tour de Pink, the charity ride we have participated in four times before, and the difference was noticeable. There were so many riders that in spots (especially at the start) the roads were more crowded than we might have wished:

The tables offering food and drinks are hidden behind the crowd.

My wife bicycles to work, I ride in with her and do a training ride, and then each weekend we try to do one or two fun rides. In the past, most of these have used three or four standard routes, which I confess was starting to get boring. Each year, we have participated in the Tour de Pink. For my wife to be able to complete the 63 miles or that ride, we have to do some targeted training. For the Bluebonnet express, we did no training at all, deciding to go at the last minute. We were definitely tired by the end, and this was our only ride of the weekend, but our ability to complete it was never in question. The weekend after this ride, we went on a Houston Bicycle Club Ride, a very different (but also good) experience and the subject of a future post. One disadvantage of both of these rides is that it is about an hour by car to get to the start, meaning that it is more of a production to participate and that we have to get out of bed earlier than we might like. Going forward, we will have to decide on a mix of the same old/same old local rides, club rides like the Houston Bike Club ride, and charity rides like the Bluebonnet Express. I am very curious to see what we end up doing.

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1) An interesting question is if my wife and I could complete a 200K brevet on a tandem. (She probably could not complete one on a solo bike.)

To BART and Back

The Pittsburg stop of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. The BART sign (with the "ba" logo) is on the right side of the picture, a train extends from that sign to the left, and the station itself extends from the center of the picture to the left.

Goals are wonderful things, even if they are pointless. They inspire me and give me enthusiasm and energy. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the public transportation system is named BART, an acronym for Bay Area Rapid Transit. My parents' house in Brentwood is at the outer limits of the Bay Area, past the last BART stop. Bicycles are allowed on BART trains, and I had always wondered if it would be practical to bicycle from the last BART station in Pittsburg, California, to my parents' house in Brentwood. Mom is no longer with us and Dad has moved to an assisted living facility, but he still owns the house and that is where I stay when I go to California to help with his care, as I did again last week. I have previously blogged about the Sand Creek Trail and the de Anza trail, and how the closing of a gap in the de Anza trail finally allowed me to bicycle from Brentwood to Pittsburg. The branch of the trail I took did not allow me to make it all the way to the BART station but examination of maps upon my return gave me an idea for a branch that might. Last week, I was able to explore that branch, made it to the Pittsburg BART station, resulting in the 45 mile ride mapped below:

Click on map to see a larger version

So, in theory, I could bring a bicycle on the airplane, reassemble it at the Oakland Airport, take it with me on BART, getting off at the end of the line in Pittsburg, and then bicycle to Dad's house. Demonstrating the feasibility of the last leg of that plan gave me a lot of motivation and a very fun ride but it is not a plan I am likely to execute. And, having had the fun of proving the point, I have to say that the trail through Pittsburg in not very attractive. It is very urban with not much scenery, there is a lot of broken glass on the trail, it has a lot of grade crossings, and the last and probably the least of my objections is that it has a bizarre geography. I guess that part of California is highly gullied and that means that the trail contains a large number of very steep downhills immediately followed by very steep uphills. The total elevation change is not much, maybe 20 or 30 feet, but I cannot overstate the steepness. The change from downhill to uphill at the bottom is so acute that I found it difficult to execute the usual strategy of using the speed gained on the downhill to make it most of the way up the next hill, to do so felt like riding over a rather nasty pothole at the bottom. As a result, I tended to brake on the downhill, leaving me with little momentum and a brief but bitter struggle to get up the other side. Normally, I love hills, but these were no fun at all. Somehow, my photographs do a terrible job of capturing hills, but here is my best effort:

I was feeling strong on this ride, so I kept up a pretty brisk pace. That plus the 45 miles, more than I have been riding recently, left me pretty tired so I took the next day off. Even so, I was looking for a shorter (not to mention a prettier) ride the day after that, so I rode the Marsh Creek and Big Break trails, about 22 miles out and back. As I had remembered, I found it to be a much nicer ride! I did a little exploring and stopped off at Big Break Regional Shoreline, a park I had ridden by many times but never visited, and I was entranced! To quote the park's website, "Big Break Regional Shoreline is a part of the great 1150-square-mile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The water flowing past Big Break through the Sacramento and San Joaquin-the State's two greatest rivers-drains half of California and creates the largest estuarine environment on the Pacific coast." The park gets its name from a break in the levies which occurred in 1928 and which flooded a large asparagus farm, now a permanent bay off the San Joaquin river and site of this park. The nicest thing about the park is that it provides a place to experience the delta, including a pier that can be used both for fishing or for simply soaking in the delta experience:

A particularly nice feature of the park is an interactive map of the delta, made out of concrete and set into the ground. Water can be poured onto the map to show how water flows in the delta. I have added a red arrow to the following picture to indicate the location of the park; San Francisco Bay is off of the lower right corner of this picture:

I am honestly surprised that I ended up writing yet another blog post about trails near my dad's house. Upon reflection, I think the reason I did so is that finding and using these trails was neither easy, obvious, nor quick. Because I learned about these trails over many rides, they featured featured in several blog posts. A summary of what I have learned is that some trails are dramatically nicer than others, these trails can take you to unexpected places, and finding one's way on these trails is not trivial. I am pretty sure that there are people out there who would appreciate the information I have accumulated, but I am also sure that the vast majority of these people will never see this blog. Besides, a blog post is not the best format for sharing this kind of information. My subjective impressions of which trails are nicer or less nice come across fine, but what doesn't fit is a list of confusing intersections, ways around gaps, and a list of trails and where they do (and do not) go. I would have loved to have this information when I started using these trails, and I searched for it diligently but without success. It's not that there is nothing out there, but that nothing out there was quite what I was looking for. I have contributed in a small way to making this situation better by submitting corrections to the bike route information on Google Maps, but I feel like I would like to do more. This is something I plan to think about going forward. If I have any inspirations, I will share them here. Stay tuned.