Triple Bypass: the road to VQ

Well, this weekend required that I stay close to home for work reasons, so in order to get some saddle time, I strung three local rides together, each one an hour+ and each one looping back through town so I could respond to any calls from the boss.

I rode the Lev. This route has climbs all over it with grades as much as 20%, averaging 12% or so. So, off I went loaded up with some left over Halloween candybars, one Gu from the Demo Days, and 70oz in the Camelbak plus one bottle of Accelerade. I must have been feeling optimistic.

Not enough food and water. Not even enough. First of all, it was quite hot. Not sure what the deal was, but it felt way warm. So, I ended up rationing water the last hour and wishing I had a bit more food with me. I did not eat much of the Pay Day bars, slammed the Gu at the 3 hour mark, and rode on.

I had a touch of an inner thigh cramp in the right leg as I went to push a big gear on the last climb in the top of the fourth hour. Huh. Same spot it always cramps first...right there. I took the last S Caps and sucked a bit more water down, feeling my pack get reeeal light. Not much splashing around in there. My low back muscles were very flared up too. This has been more and more of an issue as of late. Not sure how to deal with that. I have been stepping up the upper body and core stuff with side plank pushups, normal planks, and V sits. Maybe I can support my low back muscles better, maybe it is just my back getting less flexible and more cranky. Not sure. Getting older kinda sucks sometimes.

Back at home, I hit the shade of the front lawn and had 3 gulps left in the hydration pack. My right thigh was trying to cramp so I got up and walked into the kitchen to make up some Fluid recovery drink. Man, that tasted good. I really underestimated water needs today.

It felt like a hard day, sitting there on the lawn. Even my upper body was feeling worked. After loading the GPS into TopoFusion, I was surprised to find it to be 30 miles and 4800' of climbing over that 4 hours of riding. I figure that Vision Quest will be twice that in nearly every way: time, gain in elevation and miles. I have some work to do and I need to pay better attention to fueling the body. Leg cramps halfway through would be bad. Leg cramps have been and perhaps always will be my cross to bear. I think I am going to get onto the road bike a bit and see if I can get more miles with less brutality to the bod. Gotta try something.

Anyway, I was toast that night. I just wanted my hammock,but I had barely an hour before I was off to errands and church stuff. No rest for the weary.

The next day was chores day. Lawns, leaves, boxes, stuff, eBay ads...phew! Ya know what? I had plenty of energy all day. I still think the Fluid stuff is magic powder. I know I would normally be lagging in energy after a drag down like the previous day.

So, next week I am headed to elevation for a good singletrack ride, unless winter says otherwise. If it does get all snowy, perhaps I will spin the road bike up one canyon or another.

It all adds up to VQ. It is good to have a goal.

How to ride harder tomorrow.

Anyone can ride hard today. Just go out and pedal like a crazyman. How fast you are is relative, but you can work hard regardless.

Now, get up the next day and do it again. What, can't do it? You are tired? Legs dead? Butt draggin'? I understand. Here is a word for ya, lesson of the day: Recovery.

The holy grail of performance enhancing products is the pill or powder that allows you to run faster, jump higher, swim deeper or pedal like the wind without working too hard for it. But, outside of the kind of drug that often leads to blood tests and congressional subpoenas, it ain't happened yet. It still takes hard work AND the right genes AND a good nutritional program, including go fast stuff like Gu, Accelerade, Hammer products, etc.

All that hard work makes ya tired and uses up the body's stores of energy in the form of calories burned, glycogen used, etc. So, the next day after a hard effort can be tough to bounce back from, especially when you are older like I am. Recovery is key, recovery being the ability to restore the bod's fuel reserves and keep on keepin' on the next day.

Now I am no sports nutrition expert, but I do know when I am tired and when I am not. 20+ years of being an athlete have required that I pay attention to how my body reacts and responds to stuff. For recovery after a ride, I have recently being using this stuff:



Yep, yummy chocolate milk. I have not won the Happy Place contest yet, but I expect to hear from the bunny any day now. Chocolate milk is actually a pretty fine recovery drink (Google it if you don't believe me) and it tastes like a hug from grandma. Hard to beat that. But it is not perfect.

Enter Fluid.



I have been reviewing this for The Bike Lab and so far it has been perfect. I will let you do your own research at the Fluid site and you can read about it for yourself, but so far I am amazed at how I feel the next day after I follow up a hard ride with a bottle of Fluid.

I want to finish the jar of Fluid before I pronounce it truly blessed, and I plan on doing some very long rides this year and next. As of right now, you could not pry the jar of seemingly magic powder out of my cycling gloved fingers.

Thoughts on a Fall Night Ride

It occurred to me as I pedaled off to do my usual Tuesday night SS loop that most sane folks are not doing this right now. It was in the low 50s, but the stiff breeze made it more like the low 40s. It was getting dark, and the cold wind out of the north was blowing tumbleweeds across the road like some old Karloff movie, the one where the werewolf meets Dracula.

I thought about this for a while, the absurdity of dressing up like this, long sleeve jersey, long baggy shell over knickers, wool socks, and leaving a nice, warm house to sweat aboard the single speed stairmaster from hell.

I checked my headlight to make sure I had a few candlepower to wash away the bogey man and turned toward a decision point. It was blowing harder now and the wind made riding a straight line down the road difficult. I was approaching a T in the road. I normally turn left up a wide canyon for a few miles and then turn right and begin the climb. A cold blast of wind had me dodging another tumbleweed while I considered turning right at the T, looking for a sheltered and much shorter ride. It made a lot of sense, you know. No one to argue with me.

Spinning my squirrel gear, I approached the T, rose out of the saddle, and turned left into the wind toward my normal route. The wind hit me full in the face, the face with a big grin on it. I reached up, turned on my headlight to ward off the werewolves, and pedaled on. No compromise for the crazy.

This is a Mud Puddle

I thought I would post a pic of a fine specimen of a mud puddle for all you So Cal readers. Chances are you have forgotten what they look like since we have had so little rain as of late. Despite the clear evidence of tracks in this puddle, showing a history of bicycle use, I do expect to have Barbara Boxer and the green patrol of California seek to make this puddle a Wild and Scenic waterway with a suitable boundary of wilderness as a buffer. So, ya better hurry if you want to see it on your bike.

Be that as it may, the rain we had this weekend was pretty amazing and the thunderstorm absolutely delightful. BIIIIGG thunder, lightning, heavy rain. Very unlike my neck of the woods, but nothing that the plains states do not see all the time. "Yawn!" Yeah, I know, but I thought it was very cool.

So today I grabbed the SS Monkey and headed out to get a ride in once the rain stopped falling. I also wanted to try the Eskar tires in some sloppy conditions. Around here, we have tons of clay in the soil. What is not clay is sand. Pretty much no loam or sloppy, slushy mud. The clay gets to be absolutely unrideable and it will pack up the tire and frame worse than a retirement home out of breakfast bran muffins. You don't want that. This climb was not too bad, having had overnight to drain a bit.



The singletrack was awesome under the damp conditions and the Eskars ate it up. Fun stuff, and the Monkey is great in the mud with all the tire clearance. SS is the ticket for this kind of ride...much less stuff to corrupt with the goo.




A mud ride is very childlike and playful in the way it feels to the soul. I had a bit of mud fly off of a spinning knobby and go directly into a nostril, not once, but twice. I mean what are the odds of that? Ya gotta laugh.