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cycling / food / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Tonight we are Mellow
17
Mar 21

Tonight we are Mellow

Tonight I had the good fortune to join a ride with the many Major Taylor bicycling clubs across the country. So I wore my Major Taylor kit.

He won the world championship in 1899, set almost three-dozen world records in his career and had to deal with all sorts of racism and violence. He didn’t hang on to it, though, and explained why and how in his autobiography, which is a fine sports read.

So I’m on this group ride on Zwift, and I should point out this was in no way a race. Because I don’t race. Because I am not fast. But, somehow, despite that, I found myself off the front for about 25 minutes.

To not see anyone in front of you for that long is pretty wild. And then the really fast guys went by. It was a sight to behold.

But, for a while, my nose was in the wind and I was riding almost all alone. I celebrated with pizza.

Nah. I was going to enjoy that pizza anyway. The Yankee picked up Mellow Mushroom on an errand-trip to Indianapolis and so we are eating right tonight, and tomorrow! Mellow Mushroom really needs a store here. It’s a college town with woefully inferior pizza selections. Mellow would be a huge hit.

cycling / Friday / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off on Welcome to March
1
Mar 21

Welcome to March

It doesn’t feel like spring yet, but it’s gonna. Today, though, I’d just like to feel a bit … less. Or more. I’d like to hurt less and feel like more.

As I mentioned Friday, I had a big weekend of riding. And I’m happy to report that I toughed it out. I fueled terribly, but I survived. I think. This was my view all weekend:

It wasn’t the miles, it was the user error. And also the climbing. I could explain the fueling, but suffice it to say my caloric intake got all out of whack. And I became well aware of that reality on the way to the last climb yesterday. I told you about the Friday ride. Here you can see me in third place on the road on Saturday.

I was not in third place, but it sounds nice, doesn’t it? It wasn’t a race, to me anyway, it was just an excuse to make thousands of tiny circles with my feet, and also to get a cool aerotuck screengrab.

After Saturday’s ride featured 4,124 feet of elevation gained, Sunday was the big day of climbing. You can see even my avatar changed clothes for the bigger 33 mile, 5,617 feet gained effort.

It … hurt. Don’t let the sprint I eeked out at the mountaintop finish fool you. I was so spent I thought I was hallucinating the aurora on the iPad.

And I could barely walk when I got off the bike. (Time for new bike shoes!) After I hobbled upstairs and had a shower I started eating vegetables directly off the cookie sheet. Fueling was a problem because I wasn’t diligent about it because, at the end of the day, I’m riding a bicycle inside the house. It’s easier to be fussy about that, I realized this weekend, if you’re riding way out of town. But if the kitchen is just steps away, different story. And I’ve never really had the opportunity to climb 12,690 feet in one weekend, so I have no frame of reference for this.

It’s a big frame, and this was a great reference.

And I finished the Zwift Haute Route Challenge.

What does that mean? Absolutely nothing, but a sense of mild accomplishment. And it’s more base miles for the year.

We were looking at a giant snow mound at the local big box store.

This was the mound of our affection two weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day, after the first snow.

And here’s the same mound of our laments, a week later, as seen on February 21, after the even larger snow.

And here’s that same mound, this Saturday, on February 28th.

After a bit of weekend rain, and looking at the weather ahead this week … this thing might be gone by next Saturday. That’d be a signal almost-as-happy as returning robins and other springtime birds.

cycling / Friday / IU / television / video — Comments Off on I’m not psyched out; you’re psyched out!
25
Feb 21

I’m not psyched out; you’re psyched out!

It was a sports night last night, and the IUSTV crew brought us plenty of it on Sports Nite:

The Toss Up, which I referred to yesterday, is all about that bump, set and spike:

Volleyball is a terrific sport. It’s easy to follow, the flow of the game provides nice action, the players are accessible in camera shots and it’s a sport that has repackaged itself as a perfect capsule for TV programming. (Though I do think the TV productions should be re-constructed.) It should be hugely popular. I like to ask why it isn’t and how you get it there, and I asked the two beat writers in this program, one from the paper and one from the TV station, why they thought it was. They’ve both had classes with The Yankee, so they both answered correctly. It comes down, they said, to telling stories.

There are sixteen players on that team, and there are at least 16 great and compelling stories there, before you even look over the coaches biographies.

Most sports should feel this way. You just need the right people in the right places and right times to make it happen.

This weekend I am making it happen, if I can avoid psyching myself out. The backstory is that I got an email from Zwift about an upcoming series of rides. I mentioned it to a friend of ours and she said I should do the series.

And here’s the thing about things that are seven or eight weeks in the future: they all seem easy.

Along the way to what is, in truth, a fairly ambitious ride series, there were a bunch of workouts. I did one of each. They were fun. One of them was demanding. I’m not sure if they’ll be helpful this weekend, which started this evening.

This was the first of three stages. The whole adventure will wind up Sunday — and thus will be the pre-occupation of the entire weekend.

And, thus, the Haute Route begins, and before it’s done I’ll have tapped out 90-something miles and 12,000-plus feet of climbing. The mileage won’t be bad, but the climbs will be what add up.

Tonight I had 2,949 feet to climb in the smart trainer. This was the easiest stage in terms of the elevation gained. Tomorrow will probably be fine. The plan is just to survive and feel good about myself after Sunday’s ride.

Wish me luck.

cycling / photo / television / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Someone’s alarm went off at 5:30 — and then I was awake
18
Feb 21

Someone’s alarm went off at 5:30 — and then I was awake

I think this morning marked the fourth time we’ve shoveled the driveway in the last week or so. It’s a small driveway, thankfully, and this was a light snow. Probably it didn’t even need to be done, but it’s become rote. Get up, examine the pavement, and then eat something, maybe. While our little stretch of paved paradise took an hour and change on Tuesday after the biggest snow, it went quickly today.

Mostly I wanted to do a better job of digging out the nearby fire hydrant. One of my former students did a story on this at his station in Ohio this week and I was somewhat guilted into it. So slush slush and heave ho and, oh, look, the city guy that plows the walking path behind us but not the street in front of us came through and poured his best effort into the road.

Because what you want … nah, what I want … is for you to drive down an untreated road and then hit a snow bank you can’t see right in front of my yard and the electrical boxes and the gas line.

I don’t know anything about plowing roads, and I wonder who around here actually does.

So I got that off the road, just being neighborly and all. And then, since I had fully warmed up my core, I decided to go on a little bike ride.

This is the volcano route on Zwift’s fictional world. Some of the environments they offer are trying to be realistic. Some have a bit of a futuristic feel and this one is pure fantasy. My avatar is riding through a volcano there. You go in the volcano twice on the way up and twice again after you ride to the top of the active volcano.

I’m breathing a bit on the bike in the house, which does not smell of sulfur, could you imagine that in real life?

Anyway, I left my bike in one of the harder gears and just dragged myself all the way to the top of this little climb. It’s a good weekday sort of thing. It doesn’t take even a slow person like me forever, and you can still move around a bit when you’re done. I had an hour this morning, and this is what I did.

Zwift charts the King of the Mountain, which is the fastest person up the route. And the current leader is a name I recognize. Dylan Teuns is much faster than I am. He’s younger, stronger, a climber, more fit and also, and this part is incredibly important, an insanely talented professional cyclist. But today I got to the top of the climb in just under twice the amount of time it took him to do it. So I’m putting him on notice.

I can tell by the number of replies he’s not sent that I’m absolutely in his head.

Anyway, that was my second time up the volcano route, and I shaved a little over a minute off my previous time. So I guess there’s something to that snow shovel warm up.

This evening it was back to the studio. We shot the talk show first, new semester, new soccer season, new host.

And Jevan was on the desk to kick off the semester. Were there gifs? There were gifs.

Thursday nights run into Friday quickly into Fridays. Dinner, dishes, and, now, bedtime. We’ll be back in the studio again tomorrow morning. I’m tired already. Can’t imagine why.

cycling / Wednesday — Comments Off on Whirring sounds from the bike room
10
Feb 21

Whirring sounds from the bike room

I came home this evening and hoped on the bike. I’ve been doing an eight stage tour of the Zwift worlds to start the year and tonight was the conclusion, it was flat and fast. I rode around the storied Champs-Élysées a few times. Look, you can see the Eiffel Tower:

Here’s the course, the loop at the top is around the iconic Arc de Triomphe.

We visited there on a trip (remember those?) in 2015:

Here’s the view from the top:

(More of that trip to Paris, here and here.)

And that wrapped up my Tour de Zwift. But I needed some more miles, so I picked a route in London and saw the Clock Tower at the Palace of Westminster a few times.

Not quite as nice as the real thing, but it will do just fine for a cold and snow-covered evening.

(You can see more of my visit to London here.)

I was riding very fast, for me, which means average for most people. It was a fine mid-week workout. Now I have to go catch my breath.

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