Sunday ride
Dagnabbit!
Either my memory failed or I didn’t carry a one when mentally calculating today’s distance. Adding a lap around the block would have put me over 30 miles on today’s ride. Instead, I can log only 29.15.
Still, it’s my longest—and fastest—single ride ever, even if it did include a 20 minute stop to munch granola bars, guzzle water and let the sweat dry. And another two 5 minute water and rest stops.
It was a beautiful day. When I started out around 11:30 it was 68° and when I got home around 2:00, it was 78°. Bright sun to start, hazy sun at the end, and only the occassional puff of breeze contributed to a nearly perfect day for cycling.
I worked mainly on cadence today. Three weeks ago, when I got the cyclometer, I found my typical cadence was in the low 60s. By all accounts, this was far too slow. Slow cadence is actually harder on the knees and muscles. Since then I’ve worked on raising it.
It’s taken some getting used to since at the start, anything over about 70 rpm cadence made me feel like my hips and knees were going to fly apart. But I’ve built up to around 80 rpm on my commutes. What I’ve found, though, is that in raising cadence, which makes things easier on the legs, I’ve also lost some leg strength.
Today I set a goal of 80–90 rpm for most of the ride. And I achieved it. To rebuild leg strength, I set another goal of accellerating up hills, and finally, to build endurance, I went for more distance.
On some hills today I started as low as 80 rpm and reached the top at over 90 rpm with additional speed. On the way home, I even sprinted away from the #1-Park Ave bus where East Ave inclines from Pitkin St at the Inner Loop to up Alexander St where the bus turns. Standing stop to 23.2 mph at 102 rpm. I beat the bus handily.
Distance-wise, I extended everything by nearly 50%. The overall distance and my distance between stops too. This second part wasn’t part of the plan, but when I got to my usual first rest and water stop at about five miles, I though, Nah, I’ll catch it on the back.
I continued over the canal and picked up the Greenway trail out to where it detours south of the airport, and turned around. I stopped at the usual spot, but almost five miles later and coming from the other direction.
The three trails meet there (the Riverway into downtown, the Greenway which runs south 89 miles along the river, and the Canalway which runs from Buffalo to Albany). As I guzzled my first bottle of water, a family stopped and spent a lot of time examining the trail map sign. I made conversation for a bit and we all went off on our own ways.
From the river, west on the Canalway, it’s up and down for a half mile or more. I coasted on the downs and hammered on the ups. I’ve usually done it the other way ‘round because it’s easier to coast uphiil than to pedal.
That really got the juices flowing and, cresting the incline after the Brooks Ave underpass, I thought, Fuck it, and kept right on hammering down the slight incline, through the curves and into the trees. If it were a road, not a paved bike trail, it’s the kind of thing you’d see in a sports car ad. And that’s how I rode it.
Next thing I knew, I’d run out of cogs! I’d blown through six upshifts without noticing! I was running in the middle chainring, so I could have upshifted to the big one, but I decided against it and just kept hammering in the middle one. After all, I was working on increasing cadence, right?
A mile further up, after crossing Chili Ave (say it like a local: chEYE-Lye) I settled back into moderate speed (yet maintaining high cadence) to recover a bit for the next uphill hammerfest.
Just before Buffalo Rd, there’s a bridge over the railroad mainline. Because the railroad itself is also elevated to cross the canal, the bike bridge is pretty high up. This bridge has given me all sorts of trouble in the past. The first time I encountered it, I was all the way down in the granny gear and still barely made it to the top.
I pounded that mutherfucker today. I started out slow at the bottom and was faster in both cadence and mph at the top. The only disappointment is that you have to stop to cross Buffalo Rd on the other side. All that work, plus the downhill on the other side, wasted in the brakes.
I briefly considered stopping at Lyell Ave, my usual turnaround, but I was feeling really good, so I just kept going. Lee Rd came and went, as did Long Pond Rd. Well, that’s a little more noticable because you have to detour out to the street to cross the canal on the road bridge there, then rejoin the trail on the other side.
And that’s where the pavement ends. It’s gravel from there. Nicely packed with stone dust, but gravel nonetheless. And plenty of goose shit. I’d have turned around, just to avoid having to clean it off the bike at home later, but they have a porta-john at Henpeck Park (at Elmgrove Rd, where I’d leave the trail lto go to my parents’), and I had to pee.
I sat at a picnic table in the shade afterwards and let the breeze, what breeze there was, dry my back while I ate, drank, rested and had a smoke.
Something in that combo was wrong because I was really slow for the first three miles heading home—like right around 10 mph and 60-65 cadence. I attribute it to digestion. (It couldn’t have been the Marlboro!)
Interestingly too, when I arrived at Henpeck, my right hip and knee were bothering me. Not the joints themselves, but the muscles that attach there. All I can figure is that with paying attention to everything else, I’d fallen into the old habit of pedaling primarily with my right. Since I felt slow anyway during this part, I concentrated on my left leg, saying in my head, Left, left, left, left.
By the time I reached Buffalo Rd, I felt all recharged and ready to hammer the bridge again. Going in this direction, the disappointment again is at the bottom on the other side where there’s a hairpin left quickly followed by a right sweeper strewn with gravel. The only way to enjoy gravity on that bridge is to work the uphill side because there’s no joy on the downhill side.
Waiting for the light to cross Chili Ave, a girl on a bike, trailing a dog on a leash, came up the sidewalk on the other side and turned on to the trail. Great, I thought. How am I going to get by them?
Much to the embarassment of dog and girl, when they went through the gates and posts that keep motor vehicles off the trail, the girl cycled on one side of a post, and the dog ran on the other. Ouch! It hurt me just to watch. Well, problem solved anyway.
The rest of the ride back was fairly uneventful. I continued working the uphills and keeping my cadence high throughout. I continued saying “Hello!” to everyone I saw. And I enjoyed riding without having to buck a headwind.
Exiting the trail at South Ave and Court St, some sort of group ride pulled to stop on Court. Maybe 20 of them, and they looked recreational. I don’t want to get stuck behind them, I thought. Hmmm… I haven’t done any sprints yet today…
The light changed and I broke into a sprint up Court St. I made the next light but had to stop for the next two. Left them way, way behind.
Sprints are best done in sets of three or more. I know from experience that if I don’t sprint from the light at Court and Chestnut, I’ll never make it through the green at Broad St. And it’s a very long red.
Second sprint left the guy in the Jeep ahead of me thinking I’d grabbed on to his bumper or something. Made the light on the green left arrow even, and swung left onto Broadway. Made the light at East Ave too, and turned left in front of the #1-Park which was waiting at the light.
I wrote above about my third sprint away from the bus after it caught me at a light a couple of blocks further on.
I even got some low-speed practice creeping up in traffic to make my left from East to Goodman.
And I should have made a cool-down lap around the block to break 30 miles…
