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Today was about distance. Not about how far I rode but how far away I could get in the limited time I have. As measured on a stick I was no farther away than most any other ride. As measured in the psyche, I was years and half a consciousness away. I left the phone at home; just dead weight. It wasn't about sore, red and stinging eyes or a mind foggy from lack of sleep. It wasn't about speed. Speed doesn't matter. It wasn't about heart rates. Heart rates don't matter. It wasn't about pedaling. Pedaling doesn't matter. Maybe it was about lyrics.
The lyrics seemed to matter. It wasn't about the bike, though the bike always takes me farther away than would a car, or a walk or even a plane. It was also about the cold. An icy, cutting 55°; a number which lied about the sensations on the skin. Bundled four layers deep, the stinging bite still came through as did the chill. What penetrated most were the lyrics; the same lyrics, over and over... and over. There was no destination. In reality, there has never been a destination. Just a mindless and continuous painful turning of the pedals... always turning the pedals. Maybe they need to stop.
SETUP
Bike: GT ZR-1.0
Departure: 11:21:22
HRM Duration: 1:22:57.7
THE DATA:
Distance: 25.61 miles
Average Speed: 18.67 mph
Duration: 1:22:18
Maximum Speed: 34.2 mph
Odometer: 19642.5 miles
Climb Timer: 8:02.9
Climb Distance: 1.76
Climb Avg Speed: 13.1
Climb Max Speed: 18.8
HEART RATES:
In Zone: 68:12, 163
Above Zone: 08:11, 177
Below Zone: 06:34, 144
Heart Rate Recovery: 01:11
High: 178
Low: 114
Avg: 163
CHECKPOINTS:
Bridgeport Bridge: 08:06
Oak Creek Valley Road: 26:10
Page Springs Road: 32:57
Pass above Page Springs Road: 37:48
Turn above Dry Creek Bridge: 45:19
Is there anything more lame than posting song lyrics? Probably not.
Around 55°, overcast, wet and a bit chilly. Not the ride I expected at all. I felt like my heart was in better control than in other recent rides and even felt like I was holding better average speeds. But at the turn it was obvious that I wasn't making good time. I hoped the change in direction would be more favorable with the wind but even that didn't pan out. I headed back holding 28 mph but that quickly dropped to 24 mph and then peaked under 35 mph at the fastest point in the ride. Coming back on a long gradual descent I was holding 28.5 as a semi-truck pulling a backhoe on a flatbed passed. I watched as the speed ticked up 28.9... 29.3... 29.5... 29.7 with no change in pedaling force. Then it started back down as I reached the base of the incline. The winds weren't bad and with as little as I've been on the bike, spending 76% of the ride in my target range wasn't bad. Unfortunately, with 20% of the ride spent above my target range and only 3% below, there was little opportunity to rest and recover. Still, this ride didn't wring me out the way the first two or three of the year did. There is a big difference between being tired and feeling the heart and lungs hit total exhaustion.
I had hoped for results more like what I experienced on the 16th (shown in red here).
This shows the heart rate data from Jan 15th (Green), Jan 16th (Red) and Jan 22 (Blue).
But instead my heart was showing numbers closer to my ride on the 15th (shown in green).
It's easy to see that my ride on the 16th was much better with lower overall heart rates and less distinct peaks. It's also easy to see how similar this ride was to that on the 15th by looking at the graphs above.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is more dismal than today. Hopefully, I'll be of the mind and mood to wriggle into the necessary layers to get back on the bike and demonstrate a bit of insistence that will help the heart and lungs adapt more fully to what I expect.
Two stages after Armstrong set the bar on Hautecam the race headed up the slopes of Mont Ventoux, (rhymes with "haunt lawn-dew"). This famous climb is marked by the bare top of a mountain which is often compared to the moon. Four-hundred years ago trees were cleared from the top of the mountain to build ships and the ecology never recovered. The top of the mountain is as barren today as is a moon-scape. It's also marked by a memorial to Tommy Simpson who pedaled himself to his death on this climb during the 1965 Tour de France.
Pantani launched an attack and neither Armstrong nor Ullrich responded. A climbing specialist with the Kelme team (Santiago Botero), attempted to hold Pantani's wheel but was dropped and left in no-man's-land between the cluster of elite cyclists behind and the onslaught-attack of Pantani ahead. Armstrong will blow past him like a bullet on his way to reeling in Pantani.
Armstrong watched his main rival, Jan Ullrich, looking for signs of weakness. When he sensed that Ullrich was tapped, he launched his attack and headed up the road with his sights set on El Pirata (Marco Pantani, AKA: "The Pirate").
Armstrong claimed that he struck a bargain with Pantani on the way up the climb; he would help Pantani and give him the stage win if Pantani would help him reach the top faster, putting him closer to the overall win of the Tour de France. Unless one has ridden some distance on a bike and felt the effect of riding behind another cyclist, it's hard to understand how one cyclist can actually help another. Many numbers have been generated in an attempt to explain how cutting through the air in front of another cyclist can reduce the energy needed by the cyclist in the rear to push through the wind. The numbers I've seen range from 40% to over 70% and in my limited experience riding in groups, I can attest that riding behind another cyclist is dramatically easier than riding alone or in front.
After this stage Pantani and Armstrong had different recollections of the circumstances leading to the stage outcome. Armstrong said that he had offered the stage win to Pantani in exchange for help getting to the top faster. Pantani stated that he and Armstrong raced for the stage win and Armstrong wasn't able to take it away. Following this difference of recalled circumstances, Armstrong took to calling Pantani "Elefantino", a nickname referring to his rather prominent ears.
The overall grade is around 7.6% but it sometimes presents riders with a 10% grade and ends the rider's suffering with a grade which climbs vertically at 10.4% of the rate at which it moves forward.
I'm writing this on January 22, a mere two hours into the day which will mark Armstrong's third day back into professional cycling in the Tour Down-Under. At the end of the second day, he's ranked 45th in the general classification and I'm not looking for any spectacular showing from him, even through to the end of this 6-day stage race. This is a measuring device for Armstrong -- a way to determine where his level of fitness falls compared with that of the other professional riders on the circuit. The only way we'll see an attempt at an overall win is if it practically falls in Armstrong's lap. Aside from that, it's nothing more than part of the training strategy for the up-coming Giro d'Italia and the ultimate event in the world of cycling, the Tour de France.
If you like the strategy of chess, the endurance of an Ironman and the mind-blowing power exhibited in top-fuel drag racing, the Tour de France is your pinnacle of sporting events.
So many people don't appreciate that to win a race, you must first loose several. If you wish to dominate, then you choose what you will compete for.
One simply cannot be everything to everyone. Armstrong has proven both of these points time and time again.
Armstrong, Hautecam - 2000
17:46 Jan 20 2009 Times Read: 673
When Armstrong won the Tour de France in 1999 it was seen as highly unexpected by many of the fans and pros alike. The response from many was that the winners of the 1997 and 1998 Tours weren't present in 1999 so there was a lot of speculation about Armstrong's ability (or inability), to win against the top cyclists in the tour.
French newspapers carried a great deal of commentary and speculation from the likes of Marco Pantani who won in 1998 and Jan Ullrich who had won in 1997 after finishing second behind his team leader his first time out in 1996. They both vowed to show Armstrong that his 1999 win was a fluke and due primarily to their absence from the '99 Tour.
During the first nine flat stages, little happened among Armstrong, Pantani, Ullrich and Alex Zulle (who had been breathing down Armstrong's neck throughout the 1999 Tour). In the tenth stage, with one rider over 10-minutes ahead of the main pack and a second group about 2½-minutes ahead, Pantani suddenly broke away trailing Zulle and Armstrong closely behind him. Ullrich appeared completely unable to respond.
At this time, Marco Pantani was considered to be the best climber in the current peloton of cycling. Armstrong was known to be strong in the mountains, but wasn't really considered to be a top-ranking climber. When Pantani broke from the pack, Zulle was glued to his back wheel and then jumped ahead of Pantani leaving Armstrong third in their small group. A minute later, Armstrong passed them both leaving Zulle gasping just to stay on his bike and Pantani attempting to carry out his vow to show Armstrong what a real contender can do. This is what happened.
Armstrong put over 6-minutes between himself and his two main rivals. Pantani later stated that in all his years of cycling, he'd never seen anyone do anything the likes of what Armstrong had just done. Allex Zulle appeared to have lost all hope and Ullrich was practically out of contention for the race. In an interview immediately after the race, Armstrong remarked; "Not to say that this was revenge but I heard the things that were being said last year and I... I thought a little bit about that today."
Sadly, Pantani dropped out of the race after 16-stages and never returned to cycling. He was found dead in a motel room at the age of 35. Jose Maria-Jimenez was also found dead within a year or two of this race. The man who barely held his lead and won the stage 41-seconds ahead of Armstrong was left in a coma by a careless driver just months after this race and his brother, with whom he was riding, did not survive the accident.
You should see the crowd on the road before the riders reach the last few kilometers where they're barricaded. The lead riders are riding almost blindly into a sea of people which parts only feet in front of their tire as they ride. Fans want to reach out and touch the riders as they pass, pour water on them during the hotter stages and sometimes boo riders they dislike. Eddie Merckx might well have been the first rider to win six Tours except for a fan on the road who delivered a sharp punch to his liver on a mountain stage as he tried to ride past.
Nearly Invisible but Huge!
21:33 Jan 16 2009 Times Read: 696
While a cursory glance at the raw numbers might lead to the conclusion that this ride was much like that of yesterday, today's ride was actually far, far better. A close look shows that my heart rates are starting to come back under control. That leaves me feeling stronger and in control of when and where I exert while just two rides ago I was at the complete mercy of run-away heart rates. A full 11% of this ride came in under my minimum target heart-rate. That means that over a tenth of this ride allowed me to recover -- it was rest time while riding. Only 17% of the time was spent above the 175 bpm mark. Compare that to 32% of yesterday's ride above the upper limit and only 2% below the lower target limit.
The results were blatant and obvious while on the bike. I was still tired but I did eat a meal last night. That wasn't, however, all I had and the rest resulted in a headache that persists even now. I'm not someone who tends to get headaches. I perhaps suffer from one to four a year. This one left me half-blinded for about half an hour and yet, for reasons I won't explain, I had one of the better nights of the past two years.
A sharp (and interested), eye will note that while the overall duration for today's ride was 13-seconds longer than yesterday, the average speed was 0.1 mph faster. The difference is explained by the overall distance -- 25.60 miles, verses 25.40. Today was substantially windier than yesterday. Had it not been for that extra wind I'm guessing I would have finished two to three minutes faster today.
I managed to eat a little the night before and had two slices of toast with margarine and jam before getting on the bike. I washed the toast down with several ounces of Gatorade. Eating food two meals in a row is a rather strange experience after more than a week of living mostly on the contents of aluminum cans. The weight loss should benefit my climbing.
I was okay when I first got on the bike and focused on not peaking my heart rate right out of the gate. By the time I had 5-miles behind me I was focusing on keeping that wad of bread down. It felt like a tight ball in the pit of my stomach but I knew without the calories, I'd bonk again before making it half way back. All in all, considering how long I'd been off the bike and that I've only managed one ride per week for the past 3-weeks, it was better than I'd hoped.
Sometimes the mental processes can get a little sluggish when there just aren't enough calories or oxygen to feed the muscles and the brain. That's what happened with my climb which usually measures out at 1.76 miles. Today I thought I was in the stopwatch mode and instead I was in the regular timer mode. So when I stopped the clock on my climb, it stopped the overall clock instead. By the time I discovered my mistake, I'd ridden an extra 0.16 miles.
Coming back I was watching the timer and noting that I was markedly behind where I needed to be as I came up on the 1-hour point. At 56-minutes I still had half of a 1-mile climb, the short descent into the next valley and up to the top of the next hill. Coming over the tops of the hills exposed me more to the slight winds so I was looking at being at least a full minute behind. When I reached my 1-hour mark, I glanced at the clock and found that I was only 7-seconds over the mark. Still, I was already doing everything I could do so there was no renewed burst of energy or increase of effort but the ride, considering everything, wasn't all that bad.
This is one of the scenes Joli mentioned in her comments on my last entry. As usual, she's absolutely correct. The previous video gives only a sample of what Armstrong has done. This video is from two years prior and again outlines his amazing abilities.
Setting the Stage
Armstrong is having a horrendous day. He's lost communication with his team car and every time the camera is on him, he's clearly suffering at the back of the main pack. Jan Ullrich (Yawn Ul·rik) is his major challenger and an amazing cyclist. He sees that Armstrong is having a bad day and prompts his team members to help him take every second possible out of Lance. Then it happens...
Lance moves to the front, takes a look back, and attacks. To "attack" in cycling, just means to put your all into riding away from a group and ride away is exactly what Lance does. He rides away from the group, away from his own team-mates and away with the race. At the top of the mountain as he crosses the finish line, he's almost 2-minutes ahead of the man who had hoped to be taking time away from Lance that day.
Lance held this pace mile after mile, all the way to the finish at the top.
Let's watch.
Obviously, Lance was bluffing and managed to convince Jan Ullrich, the commentators, his own team manager and most of the racers that he was barely able to stay with the main pack. Then he exploded to the front, caught an early break-away rider who had been 5-minutes ahead, and stormed to the top to take the win.
A bit about the route
This piece of cycling history occurred on l'Alpe d'Huez. "Huez" is a little ski-resort nestled in the top of the peaks. The road to the top has become a hallmark of cycling and is known as the mountain of Huez, "l'Alpe d'Huez", to the French. The grades fluctuate but average about 8.5%. Sections a full kilometer long weigh-in at an 11% grade. For those not familiar with what that means, an 11% grade gains 11-feet of elevation for every 100-feet of forward progress. If that doesn't sound like a lot, consider that in America, interstates can't have grades of more than 6% because many trucks would simply never be able to climb at such angles.
This route is 14-kilometers (about 9-miles), long, and if you manage to cycle to the top, you can fill out a certificate with the date, your name and the time it took you to complete the ascent. The road is a series of 21-hairpin turns, each marked by a plaque numbered backward from the bottom to tell cyclists how many more turns they must complete before reaching the top.
Listen to the commentators. Paul Sherwood comments, "you have to be so strong to attack from the front", and he's right. That's something you simply don't do. You want to launch your attack from behind other cyclists so that by the time you pass them, you've already gained speed and they're left trying to play catch-up. When you attack from the front, you let them know exactly what you're doing, and exactly when you're doing it. Lance moves right up in front of them, looks back as if to say, "Here we go", and takes off leaving them with no answer -- no answer at all except, "see you at the top".
This is a stage from his third straight win of the Tour de France.
I think that might have been, "I stop gaining ground
Every time I look around
But everywhere you are
I'll be under you
I swear it wasn't fair
You left me there
But anywhere you are
I'll be under you". Perhaps even more meaningful now than it was then.
Every Intention of Being Back in 2009!
10:13 Jan 12 2009 Times Read: 766
This is what one determined man can do to the finest cyclists in the world, even after recovering from cancer when doctors gave him a 20-50% chance of surviving.
Have no time or interest in a bike race? How about watching the guy in the lead crash and take down the guy behind him?
He plans to be back in 2009. I'm going to be willing him to win. He makes me ashamed of every time I've avoided the chance to ride with some lame excuse about the weather, the wind or feeling depressed.
(Tomorrow my excuse will be the dehydration, the sour stomach and the lack of sleep that comes with a night of seeking to be "comfortably numb" through ethanol.)
Man, oh man oh man. I have an ongoing love/hate relationship with this footage. I know that musette is coming and I get so tense...then the frigging pedal, but Rubierra and Lance busting ass to the lead again, seeing Tyler Hamilton and Ullrich right there - that's no slouch pack he dominates. Nothing short of epic. You should post the Beloki crash...that was intense, too. And you know I love the Pantani/Lance climbs...and remember the Lance lookback...Ullrich losing ground rapidly?
You ready for 2009 Mont Ventoux, BAYBEE?! WOOH!
"The hardest approach (starting from Bedoin) is the classic route taken in the Tour de France. The final climb of the 2009 race, the Tour de France may likely be won or lost on Mont Ventoux.
Climbing the three paved approaches to Ventoux in one day allows one to join Les Cinglés du Mont Ventoux. The distinction of "Galérien du Ventoux" (roughly translated, "slave of Ventoux") is bestowed to those who climb Ventoux via each of these four routes, including the Massif des Cèdres, a dirt road climb."
B - O - N - K ! !
06:53 Jan 09 2009 Times Read: 793
I hadn't eaten anything yesterday so despite an anxious bundle of nerves in my gut, I tried to eat before the ride. I managed to get two pieces of bread down along with a bit of margarine (about 320 calories for a 900-calorie ride). Obviously, my body didn't do a very good job of converting that to energy. I felt a little tapped within the first 5 or 6 miles but it was mostly the last 8-miles where it was devastatingly obvious that I'd bonked. My triceps ached constantly just from holding my arms on the bars -- that deep down, lactic-acid crushed feeling in the muscles. Nothing left in the legs, breathing was a nauseating effort.
The last 3-miles were the most pathetic. I was simply trying to keep the bike moving forward so that I wouldn't end up lying among the beer cans and paper on the side of the road trying to digest anything left into a few calories to burn. All of my numbers, like my spirits, are appropriately dismal and I recall seeing a 186 on the heart rate monitor in the final third of the climb -- sad. The weather was okay with little in the way of breezes and temperatures held around 60°.
I would rather have your version of bonking. When I did it last it ended up in EEG's, Cat scans and all sorts of medical tests because of how it presented =/
At least now it's much more accepted and known about than when I went through the ordeal it ended up being.
Ewww, cooking a shrimp... like to eat? You do know that shrimp in a body of water serve the same purpose as a cockroach on land, right? ;-)
I think what you suffered was an electrolyte bonk, Sahariah. Mine was just a complete absence of sugar to burn in the blood-stream. I did read about a guy who tried to do an 80-mile ride when he was in no shape to do so and bonked so badly he couldn't think. He ended up trying to offer a burrito vendor his bike in trade for a burrito. He was enraged when the guy refused and couldn't see anything wrong with trading his $3,000 bike for a $0.99 burrito.
Yep... and crab are bottom feeders and the lobster's closest genealogical relative is the cockroach...
...but water bugs are so much tastier than land bugs... especially with butter and garlic... mmmmmmm....
If you don't use it, you'll lose it.
02:28 Jan 04 2009 Times Read: 820
The saying is completely true. It's been 1-day short of a full month since I last rode (December 3), and there was a week of sedentary existence prior to that ride. The results of a month of physical laziness are obvious whether one looks at average speed or at the overall time required to complete the ride.
But if one really wants to see the results in an undeniable and graphic fashion, nothing beats a quick look at what has happened to my heart rates. Some might expect heart rates to drop after a period of sedentary life but that denies physiology. As the heart strengthens it gets larger (just like any other muscle). And a larger heart pumps more blood with each beat than a smaller heart. So as the heart grows lazier/weaker, it must beat faster to provide the same amount of oxygen to working muscles.
This graph shows two rides; the one from November 22, 2008 (blue) and the one from yesterday (January 02, 2009) in red. This is what a month off the bike does. (The higher the line, the higher the heart rate.)
The cyan strip shows my target range (150-175); the upper and lower limits I try to remain between throughout a ride.
I'd been offered some encouragement just before I headed out the door and kept those words in my mind. It propelled me to 23-mph on the first flat ½-mile stretch but also brought my heart rate instantly into the 160s. The blue line from the November ride shows the more gradual rise from sub-target-range heart rates into a comfortable zone after a small climb around 9-minutes into the ride.
Displayed as a histogram with each column representing a range of 10-beats per minute, the same conclusion is obvious; the tallest columns represent 42-samples between 171 and 180 on yesterday's ride (red) and 27-samples between 161 and 170 for the November ride (blue). Just as in photography, broad humps of histogram data are usually preferable to narrow sky-scraper peaks.
For simple reference this heart rate graph is marked to show Lance Armstrong's resting heart rate (from when he was training during his seven years of Tour de France wins) which was 32-beats per minute, my average resting heart rate from when I'm riding regularly (44) and an average human resting heart rate (75). These are marked as colored lines at the bottom of the graph.
There is also a red arrow pointing down from the middle of the graph. This is the mid-point of the ride where I'm climbing a short (quarter mile) at the end of just under 2-miles of steady but gradual elevation increase, before crossing to the other side of the divided highway to head back. That little rise pushed my heart rate well above my rated maximum. The heart rate is shown digitally (187), in the small window to which the arrow points. There is one other point near the end of the ride (right side), which shows a peak of 198. That's not impossible for me, but it's likely there was some form of interference which gave the heart rate monitor a false reading.
Also note the horizontal length of the red line in comparison to the blue line. The length of the line indicates the overall time required to complete the 25.6-miles.
Here is the window with the raw data from the ride. The heart-rate numbers (right side), are color-coded. Blue indicates a number below my target-zone, black shows that I'm within my target-zone and red indicates that I'm above the target-zone.
COMMENTS
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