Tour de Cure ride report

Today was the day I’ve been waiting for.  Today I was signed up to ride 100 miles for the Indianapolis Tour de Cure.  My day started with me rising at 4:30am.  Registration started at 6am up in Indy, and I live an hour and fifteen minutes south.  Let me just say right now that this is waaaay too early for me.  I’m more of a wake up at noon kind of guy during the summer.  The drive up to the race track was rather uneventful and by the time I had gotten there it was light out.  I walked up and registered which is where I met Tom ‘Stormcrowe.’  He was the captain of the team for which I was riding.  I’ve talked to him a fair bit online over the past year and it was nice to finally meet him in person.  After registering, I went back to my car to get ready for the ride.  I put the wheels back on my bike, since I had to take the off to fit it in the car.  I put my road shoes on.  I also removed my outer layers of clothing so all I was left with were my bib shorts and the wonderful Team Stormcrowe jersey.  I was all set to go!

It was 6:50am.  The ride started at 7:30.  So I stood around with some other team members for a bit just killing time.  Then it finally came time to start up.  All of us, not just people riding the century, got on the track. There were quite a lot of people there. It was rather impressive. There were also some pretty nice bikes there too. It was obvious that some of the people there spent a significant portion of their time on a bicycle.

And then we were off!  It was obviously a bit slow to start with all the people on the track.  Everyone was very careful though, so it was nice.  After half a lap, many of the riders left the track to do the 50k or 75k road courses.  This left about 100 riders doing the 100 mile ride and families just tooling around left on the track.  It’s a 2.5 mile track, so we got nice and spread out.  Since we had just started, I was obviously feeling pretty fresh.  About 2 laps in, I had to pee like a racehorse, so I stopped at on the port-a-potties and then went quickly on my way once again.  After about 12 miles, I rode up next to this really nice guy who seemed very similar to myself.  His longest ride was nowhere near 100 miles, just like me.  He was also not a 150lb roadie, just like me.  We rode together until mile 20, at which point I forced myself to take a 5 minute break.  The plan was to take a break every 20 miles for 5 minutes.

When I stopped, I met up with Tom and found out that his shoulder was bothering him quite a bit from the crash he had had 3 weeks prior.  It’s too bad such things happen to good people, but there wasn’t much I could do about.  After my five minute rest, I jumped back on the track.

25 miles in, it happened.  I ‘hit the wall.’  All of a sudden I started feeling much worse and very tired very quickly.  My next planned stop was 40 miles, but I wasn’t going to make it that long.  I stopped again after 27.5 miles.  I downed a whole bunch of Accelerade and had half of a Clif Bar.  This stop was about 8 minutes long.  Once I got all of that in me, I was off again.  I could tell that this wasn’t going to end well, however.

To make a long story short, 15 laps and 4 stops later, I was at 65 miles.  I was hurting.  So I decided to call it quits.  It was 12:45pm.  The track closed at 2pm, so if I were to keep going, I would only get in about 80 miles.  To be honest, I’m quite disappointed in myself.  I really thought I would be able to complete this challenge, but it didn’t seem to work out for me today.  After uploading the data from my cycling computer onto my laptop, I think I may have found one of the reasons that I was having such difficulty.  I was not pacing myself as I should.  I don’t know much about other people’s heart rates, but for me, as long as I’m at about 175 bpm, I’m good to go.  Once I start pushing 180 I get tired somewhat quickly.  Anything 185-190 and I’m spent after about a minute.  At the 30 minute mark, my heart rate was averaging 179.  Then you can see a steady decline from there until I made my first stop at 1:10.  From there on, my average heart rate was about 165, which explains how I could still grind out the rest of the miles I did while feeling less than optimal.  Also, to compound the high heart rate issue, I wasn’t fueling myself as well as I could have.  I find it rather difficult to drink while riding, so I tend not to do it much.  It’s not that I can’t reach down and get a bottle, I just don’t like the general lack of complete control while I’m drinking.

So to sum up:  Total distance 65.59 miles.  Total time (on and off bike) 5:01.  Reason for ‘failure’: pushed myself too hard early on and also wasn’t fueling enough to recover properly.

Overall it wasn’t that bad of a day, just disappointing on my end.  I’m now left sunburned and a bit cranky.  Better luck next year.

TdC tomorrow!

My century is tomorrow!  Eek!  Wish me luck.

I’ve been bad

I have hardly ridden at all this past week.  This is especially bad since I should be training for my century a week from today.  I also don’t want to ride a whole not next week, especially as the week goes on, since I want to be perfectly rested for this event.  I’m thinking I’ll drive east tomorrow to where the terrain is a little flatter and try to do a metric century.  We’ll see if that ends up happening.

The main reason that I haven’t been riding a whole lot recently is because I have added a new member to the family.  Everyone meet Carmen!

  I found her outside of my apartment in the pouring rain with no collar on, so I took her in last Sunday.  I’ve since taken her to the vet where I found out that she has intestinal parasites and a heart murmur.  She’s on medication for the parasites now, but there’s not much we can do about the murmur.  Other than her health issues, she’s really a great cat.  She’s really pretty and affectionate.  She also hasn’t destroyed the apartment which is a big plus.  I’m looking forward to many long years with her by my side.

First flat tire ever

So today is a beautiful day.  I decided that I was going to take the “long way” into my office to do research today.  That involves going in the complete opposite direction of my office and riding in a giant loop all the way around that turns the normal 2.5 miles into 12.5 miles.  I was quite excited.  I get all geared up, get my bibs on with shorts over it, a loose fitting jersey, put all of my other clothes in my camelbak backpack, and stepped out the door.  After locking my door, I look down, about to mount my bike and notice that my back tire is running just a bit low on air.  By just a bit low on air, I mean it was completely flat.  I brought everything back in and then changed into normal clothes, since I knew that my long route was not going to be happening today.  I had actually just read a large chunk of the Zinn book the night before so I knew exactly how to change my tire.  But I didn’t have a spare tube or a tire lever to get the tire off.  So I had to drive over to my LBS to get everything replaced.  The guy there was very nice, as usual, and showed me how to change my tire step-by-step just to make sure I knew how to do it.  He got everything back up and running for me so I drove back home to drop off my car and then I headed into my office via the short route.

Overall I was pretty disappointed about this whole ordeal because I was REALLY excited about taking the long way in.  However, I now have my first flat (after about 1000 miles of riding, mind you) under my belt and now I have extra tubes and tire levers so if this should happen again, I’ll be prepared.

Longest ride ever

So Saturday I set a new personal best for distance.  When all was done, I had ridden 41.24 miles.  I’m not sure but I think my previous longest distance was around 26 miles.  I’ll need to get this distance up quite a bit more if I can expect to actually finish the 100 mile route of the Tour de Cure.

This route took me around Monroe Lake.  The first half of the ride was awesome and I was feeling great.  I even wasn’t completely dead after the long steep ascent away from the lake.  Right after the top of the hill after the lake it was flat for quite a while and I was really cruising it was great.  25 miles in to the planned 40 I was feeling fresh and great.

Then the hills started.  I hadn’t looked at the profile of my ride for anything past the lake, since that’s what I was worried about.  So of course, right after a COMPLETELY flat section about about 2 miles I ran into a pretty much vertical wall.  And it seemed to go on forever.  I stopped twice on that hill, which isn’t like me.  Usually I’ll go a ways, stop and recover for a bit, then do the rest no matter how big the hill.  I just couldn’t do it.  I was completely drained after this.  And to top it all off, it seemed like the hills just kept coming.  I had been getting used to mostly flat terrain so I certainly wasn’t expecting what I was met with.  The next 10 or so miles were pretty much torture for me and I didn’t enjoy it at all.  Then I came upon a road that I was supposed to turn on to, but it didn’t have a sign, so I rode right by it.  Thankfully I know this area sort of well enough to continue one, but I was sort of lost.  I almost ended up getting on the highway, so I had to turn around on the on-ramp and come back down.  Then I got on another road that was also riddled with hills.  Then, of course, I ran out of water.  For some reason, I started really worrying about it too.  So for the next 5 or so miles all I could think about was finding a gas station, even though I really didnt have that much farther to go.

I must have stopped for a minute or two about half a dozen times after when I started feeling not so great.  My average speed dropped WAY down, from about 16-17 to ~10.  Let’s just say that when I got home I was quite relieved.

But there were a couple pluses to the day:
1) I rode farther than I ever had before
2) I rode longer than I ever had before (which goes hand-in-hand with #1)
3) I rode in my “kit” for the first time ever.  All I had on were a pair of skin-tight bibs, a way-too-tight(for me) jersey, my trek fingerless gloves, socks, and shoes with SPD cleats.  I normally don’t wear just the bibs; I usually have on shorts or something over it.  And I’ve NEVER worn such a jersey.  As with most people, I have some body image issues so I don’t like going out in public with such things on.  But Saturday I guess I just didn’t care.  At no point during the ride did I feel self-conscious or anything.  It felt like just any other ride in that regard.  That’s quite a victory for me.

New bike is in

Well, my bike came in on Monday.   Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit under the weather since then, so I haven’t had a chance to ride it all over like I would have liked.  I’m hoping that I’ll have better luck this weekend.  I also need to start training harder for this Tour de Cure ride I’m doing.  I’ve never done close to 100 miles.  I think that my current max is somewhere around 25.  Of course, the Tour de Cure ride will be completely flat, so that will make things much easier.  I’d still like to get up to a metric century in this area before then.  I can ride for about 2 hours with no problem, I just don’t know if the same can be said about 5-6 hours in the saddle.  If I’m feeling up to it this weekend, I might take quite a long trip around and see if I can break the 30 mile barrier, if not more.  I’m sure that I can do 30 miles, but I’m not sure how much energy I’ll have left after that and how much more I’ll be able to do right now.  This should be quite the interesting experiment.

Hey look! I’m not dead!

So it’s been about 9 months since my last post.  Let’s just say that my first year of graduate school was quite busy and very stressful.  Pretty much once the semester started, I stopped going on my long rides.  The only time I rode my bike was in my daily commute.  I did that up until January.  I started commuting again in March.

About a month ago I traded in my trusty steed and got a brand spanking new Trek 1.2.  I don’t have any pictures of this bike, so I have nothing to show.  In fact, I will never have pictures of this bike because one short month after I got the 1.2, I decided that since I had some extra $$ floating around I would upgrade my components.  After talking to the wonderful guy at my LBS, I decided that what I really needed was a whole new bike, not just new components.  So I turned in my month-old 1.2 as a down payment for my new baby.  I will (hopefully today) be the proud owner of a Trek 2.3.  This is quite the beautiful bike, let me tell you.  I am VERY excited.  I’ve also been bikeless since Wedneday, and it’s now Monday.  I’m certainly Jonesing for some cycling.

One of the many reasons I decided to treat myself to such a beautiful bike is that I will be participating in this year’s Tour de Cure in Indianapolis.  It is a charity ride that helps raise money for diabetes research.  If your pockets are a bit heavy, you can give me money here.

So yeah, that’s been my life for the past year.  I’m still cycling, still vegan, still single, and still awesome.  Hopefully I’ll keep up with this thing better now that summer has rolled around.

Woah!

It’s been over two weeks since my last entry?  Oops!

Well, not a whole lot has been going on in the cycling world.  It’s been a wee bit warm here, so I haven’t been out.  I also took full advantage of my week of at the lab too.

In the weight loss world, as of this morning I was down to 233.  A little less than 30 pounds lighter than I was just 2 short months ago.  Woo!  My weight loss has also not stopped or even really slowed since my exercise has stopped too, so that’s encouraging for me at least.

Now onto the raw arena.  Unfortunately, 2 days ago I had to come off being raw.  It wasn’t quite my choice.  I completely ran out of money until my next paycheck.  That means that I can’t afford to buy food.  And all my fruits and veggies ran out.  So really the only option I have is to eat all the rice and pasta I have lying around the house.  Once I get paid again though I will jump right back on the raw wagon.  This one paycheck a month thing is killer though.

Well, that’s it for now.  Hopefully it won’t be as long until the next entry.

Awesome dinner

Today was a pretty productive day in the kitchen. The first thing I made today, other than my morning smoothie, was a nice big batch of tahini. That stuff is so expensive at the store and so cheap to make at home. Then I made a huge thing of almond butter. I needed it for a recipe later, and I’m sure I’ll use it in the future. This stuff is usually more expensive than the tahini is. Both of them are really simple to make. Add a whole bunch of either almonds or sesame seeds to a food processor. Flip that sucker on until you get a powder. Then add some oil until you reach your desired consistency. Then add enough salt to your liking and voila! So easy.

After all that was done, I made raw pad thai. OMG. This is the best meal I’ve had since I moved to Bloomington, I think. I won’t get into the recipe exactly, but basically you slice a lot of veggies thin and then put this pad thai sauce on them that has a ton of ingredients in it.

The first one shows all of the pad thai sauce ingredients pre-blend:

Then we have the sauce post-blend:

And finally we have everything all together:

It was so good. I hope you’re all jealous.

The final thing that I made today was a strawberry-banana “pudding.” I completely made this up, so I don’t know what to call it. I just blended 6 bananas, a package of strawberries, some water, some sugar, and a pinch of salt. It tastes more like yogurt, but it’s not dairy or have active cultures in it. That’s why I’m calling it a pudding. Either way, it tastes great. I made a ton too, so it should last a while.

That’s it in the raw kitchen today. Hopefully in the coming days I’ll whip something else up that is good.

Weight loss pictures

So I made a .gif file that blinks back and forth between my starting picture, and my picture a couple days ago. Please note that these pictures contain a shirtless Joe; enter at your own risk. Here’s the link.

I personally think that’s pretty drastic.