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adventures / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
7
Feb 22

To a slightly less snowy week ahead

The roads improved over the weekend, but the snow will hang around for days, which is fine. Pleasant reminders and all of that. We’ll be lulled, this week, into a false sense of “warmth.” Tomorrow the mercury will flirt with 40 and the sun will be out. We will call it nice and believe ourselves lucky. And this is as close as I ever come to understanding Stockholm syndrome on a personal basis.

We took a nice little walk yesterday, and The Yankee traipsed through the woods. I’d chosen the wrong shoes for a side expedition, so I stayed on the path. Sometimes moving around does it, but sometimes staying where you ought to gives you an iconic photo.

Iconic photo.

After which I shoveled four inches of snow and ice off the megadeck. It seemed like a good thing to finally do. Why let all of that sit there and wait to melt and damage the wood?

Plus the experience let me see this. Somehow the snow and ice was sliding off one of the tables, but hit a chair and got stuck there.

And when I was shoveling over by the fire element (the grill – ed.) I scooped off a layer of snow and found this.

The camera phone doesn’t do it justice. I assure you, there’s a bit of definition to the nose area. Just to be on the safe side, I left that example of pareidolia alone, What if the deck is haunted by a woodland sprite or something?

Elsewhere, around the front of the house, I am imagining all of this snowmelt will mean good things for the soil’s moisture content come spring.

Time to check in on the kitties. Poseidon has a lot of fun watching the birds, who are eating us out of house and home at a bird feeder in that direction.

And Phoebe spent her Friday lazing in the afternoon sun.

It was nice to be at the house to see the kitties; that won’t happen much at all this week.

I rode through Paris this weekend. You can tell because there’s the Luxor Obelisk, 3,000 years old, direct from Egypt, and a fixture at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, since the 1830s.

Zwift says they changed out the statuary in their game as cutesy little Easter Eggs for riders. So you don’t see Frémiet’s gilded bronze equestrian sculpture of Joan of Arc in the Place des Pyramides in Paris. There’s a likeness of a a cyclist, instead.

That probably aggravates the French, but it’s tucked in a little turn and you barely see it as you’re tapping out of a little seven degree hill coming out of the Avenue du General-Lemonnier tunnel. But on the other end of the fabled Champs-Elysees there is the Arc de Triomphe. It makes sense that the detailed friezess are left open and blank. We shall not speak of replacing the four sculptures at the base of the arc: The Entry of Napoleon, The Departure of the Volunteers, The Conquest of Alexandria and The Battle of Austerlitz. Their digital replacement seems like an art crime to me.

We had the opportunity to visit it in 2015. The Arc is a beautiful thing to appreciate in person, if you can.

And here’s the Champs-Elysees route.

Seven quick loop gives you about 25 miles. Now it’s time to add miles.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
31
Jan 22

Now looking for a new challenge — and a Wikipedia page

Lovely, cold and fast weekend. They just go too fast, but they’re otherwise lovely. Nothing of great import was accomplished, as if by design. It was a weekend to sit in a chair and enjoy a nice blanket. So I did some of that.

But the skies were clear the whole time. This was approaching sunset last night.

We had dinner with a friend on Saturday. Our friend is a professor, an incredibly well regarded political anthropologist. She writes about food and labor and refugees. She has a Wikipedia page. She must not run her own Wikipedia page because, having just checked it, I noticed her being a wonderful host to two brilliant neighbors has not been added to the entry.

We’re the brilliant neighbors. She lives nearby. We run and ride by her house a fair amount. She is also a triathlete. Perhaps soon she’ll come dine at our house. So you have a week or so to create quality and credible Wikipedia entries about us.

(If you need a credible Wikipedia entry, I’ll try to return the favor.)

I wonder how many people I know as more than acquaintances that are on Wikipedia. Someone should write a script that cross references your social media networks, contact lists and text message recipients

I think this makes the fifth non-family we’ve dined with in a home in the last two years. I’ve been to three restaurants in that same amount of time. One of those was under professional duress, and the other two were outdoors. It’s no more or less weird than it has been over the last 21 months, oh, and here comes another variant.

Two Zwift rides this weekend. I’ve spent all my time in the saddle, of late, on just one particular course of the game. I set an admittedly humble goal of averaging 20 mph over the Volcano course. It’s a comparatively easy route, it’s biggest feature is one of the milder climbs on Zwift. Gear and Grit says the volcano KOM climb is tied for seventh in classification, 10th in length, 13th in ascent, and 15th in average gradient. In other words, this climb suits my style.

I’ve been sneaking up on this silly goal the last few weeks, and made a few improvements on Saturday.

I cut six (or 16, depending on which app you like) improbable seconds off my PR on the volcano KOM segment. That’s the 2.3 mile climb itself, which I’ve been up a dozen or so times by now. (So you can say I know the road.) I did the math after the Saturday ride and calculated that I need to find 32 more seconds somewhere over the course of the whole route to get to that 20 mph goal.

Looking at all the data on all the different apps, knowing I’m working pretty hard and with the climb to contend with, I just couldn’t see many places I could find 32 more seconds.

I tried again Sunday afternoon, thinking I might be able to get a few more seconds out of a lull in my good Saturday ride. If I could push a bit harder in the two-to-four mile and four-to-six mile splits I could get some gains. Push there, recover somewhere, and then peel my legs off on the climb and the descent. This was my thinking as I got ready, putting on the workout kit and noticing my legs seemed a little heavy. “No way I do it today,” I said to my reflection.

Started the route in the rain, motivated by passing a big clutch of people early, I concientiously upped my tempo in those two early splits, while hoping I could keep a respectable rhythm on the climb and maybe strategize something out of the descent and then the last bit toward the end.

I somehow found four more seconds of improvement on the KOM, which I’d just re-set just yesterday. Even more surprising, I took 1:47 off my total best time for the route. I hit my humble 20 mph goal, and finished the course averaging 20.4. I also improved my equally humble 20-minute power average by three percent. Over the course of the month I’ve bettered that number by six percent.

So, in that sense, the 12 rides I had this month were productive. I should ride more.

A few years back the great Bill Strickland wrote a list of things he’s learned in a lifetime of riding bikes. I liked the list so much that I copied it into a Word file, deleted the ones I hadn’t discovered, reworked the rest into what seemed like my own chronological order of discovery and started filling in the spaces in between.

My list has just 20 items on it. Twenty items in 10 years feels fairly prolific for life lessons. One of them is “You can push harder than you think.”

I remembered that one again yesterday, after that ride.

It’s Monday, and time to check in on the kitties. Phoebe enjoyed part of her weekend and some afternoon sun on the landing.

I told you about the new mattress. Poseidon is still a big fan of the old one.

And here’s the rare shot of the two of them sitting nicely with one another.

Must have been cold that night.

Looks like it’ll be colder still this week.

cycling / IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Jan 22

Full speed once again

There’s a window near my office … not my office, mind you … that affords you this view.

That was this evening as I was on my way to the studio, which was after I’d recorded video for someone, which was surrounded by doing social media for others, and after I’d given a tour for someone, and that’s just how the week is going. Happy to do it; wondering when I can get my work in. Mostly worrying what important thing I’ve inadvertently neglected, or outright forgotten.

But, hey, when that’s your worry, life is pretty good, right? Give yourself some grace and all that.

He said, at the end of an 11-hour day.

Tomorrow will be 10-or-more hours long.

I decided it was time to start adding a bit of time back into the bike ride. The route I’ve been doing lately takes 45 minutes. If I could make it take 44 minutes I’d hit my goals there, which I’ve rambled on about here recently. Only I don’t know where to pull in those last few seconds. It’s a fun mental challenge: when to do what. I’m eyeballing it, shooting from the hip and playing it by ear. It sounds anatomical, but is in no way scientific.

So I found a flat route and added a 15 minute easy ride at the end of my bigger effort. Ahhh, London, where it feels like you’re going slow at 19.

On the end of that little course the Zwift designers added a little sprint segment. There’s a little green light on the ground telling you you’re entering a sprint, and there’s a banner in the distance. Just before that light a bunch of other rides sped right by me, and so I decided to chase them. And then I decided to catch them and pass them. My cool down ride ended with a 34 mph sprint.

Which wasn’t the point, but in the rare moments when you can feel like a sprinter, take the moment to feel like a sprinter.

(I am not a sprinter.)

On subsequent rides I’ll start putting a few extra minutes here and there. Very progressive, hardly scientific.

Phoebe is the appropriate amount of impressed.

And since we are a day late on the weekly check in with the kitties, we can show you our progress with Poseidon and brushes. It is a work in progress.

Note the blur. He, too, is moving fast.

He also likes my toothbrush. He jumps up on the vanity, stands on his back feet and tries to grab it away from me. I recently replaced one that had an all plastic handle with a toothbrush that has a rubberized grip. He is less impressed by that. It’s the plastic, of course. He can’t get enough of the stuff, and we’re constantly on heightened alert to keep it from him. I like to imagine, though, that he’s taking a keen interest in hygiene beyond his regular self-grooming.

The daily duds: I sometimes put this here in the hopes of somehow avoid embarrassing scheme repeats — so far so good. But, today … Auburn is the top-ranked basketball team in the country and they’re playing tonight, so we’re flying the orange and blue.

You can’t see it, but on the bottom of the tie there’s the ol’ interlocking AU.

Basketball school.

cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
18
Jan 22

To the four-day week

The best part about a three-day weekend is that it also means a four day work week. Good thing, too. Given how things have started today, this week will feel like it will last eight days.

To sum up: At least Tuesday is done. Twenty-five percent of the work week behind me. Just 175 percent left to go.

Phoebe knows how I feel.

She had a nice opportunity for a suntan this weekend, and she enjoyed the early morning rays in the living room.

Poseidon, we might have mentioned, has recently discovered the joys of the space heater. And I mean this spoiled cat has really discovered space heaters.

To be fair, I put the blanket on the ground for him. Not so much that he’d have a blanket, but because he’s guaranteed to lay on it, and that might, hopefully, help him make the connection between the tall white thing and the hot air blowing out of it.

He is, as you might imagine, appreciative.

And a few quick scenes from indoor bike riding. Here’s that volcano I’ve been riding up and around and through.

I think I might have done all I can do on that course. I’d like to find another minute somewhere on the route. Two rides ago I took about 30 seconds off my bet time up the volcano. Which means that, on this last ride, I really had to push to get a few seconds off my next PR. But I did. And on this last ride I had my best time to, and up, the volcano. I worked so hard that I was 20 seconds off my pace for my best descent down the volcano. I was so tired I slowed down on the downhill part! But even if I can put those things together, I’d still be looking for 40 more seconds, somewhere. So, now, I’m making mind bets. If I could just somehow go a little harder for five extra seconds every mile …

And I’ll try that after I let my legs rest for a day or two. That always seems to serve me well.

There’s another mountain in the background of that same course. This digital mountain, as you can tell, causes digital weather.

cycling / IU / memories / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Jan 22

Read along as I talk myself into something in less than 100 words

Today I start feeling the impression that I’m beginning to wrap my arms around a new project at work. I’ve been working at it for a few days now, so that’s good timing. We’re also bringing two new studios online. And everything is up in the air with Covid.

And we haven’t even got the IUSTV folks back into their productions yet. They’ll start next week, 50-plus days in various studios and 80-or-more shows and a handful of podcasts and all of the live sports and … I probably shouldn’t be this tired in mid-January. I should definitely be this excited.

I also left the office mostly on time today, which was great, because I got to the house and hopped on the bicycle.

Here is my avatar riding underwater.

And look! I’ve never noticed this mountain in the background before. That’s not where we were headed today, but I have been thinking about going uphill, so that was a nice view.

Since I mentioned riding through the volcano in Watopia earlier this week, I figured I should do that again, and actually get a photo.

I set a new PR on the volcano climb, despite getting distracted, losing my rhythm and falling apart in the last 100 meters before the top of the climb.

At the end of each ride you get a little wattage report. They compare your best output over five seconds, one minute, five minutes and 20 minutes to your all time bests. In the five and 20 minute segments this was one of my better rides.

And now I want to start doing laps up the volcano. And returning to the bigger ascents on Zwift.

But first I need to upgrade my bike shoes. My dear sweet old, cheap, Bonties — pictured here when they were still almost new — are starting to hurt my feet.

More than six years and many thousands of miles. Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about that.

My feet do, though.

OK, this weekend: shoe shopping!