Riding into Spring

On first long spring ride, March 23, 2019. 

The winter commuting is over; let the spring begin. On a Saturday training ride, I started in Duvall and rode the Snoqualmie Valley Trail to Rattlesnake Lake and I continued up the Iron-Horse Trail for about 20 minutes until I encountered impassable snow.

It was fun trying to ride through the snow, slipping and sliding, and trying to keep the front wheel going straight. Soon enough my 27 1/2 rims and 32 mm tires just stopped working and I turned around and started to ride back. My goal was six hours in Zone 1, not Zone 2 and not Zone 0 - just Zone 1. So, I had to do a lap.

Throughout my ride I worked on efficient peddling and spent time reflecting on the woods that were waking up. I passed a flock of robins, near the edge of snow, perhaps 30 birds. I wondered: Perhaps the robins are heading higher and follow the edge of the melting snow and perhaps as the ground warms the worms emerge. If this story is more or less true, how do robins learn to follow the edge of the snow?

It was fun to make up stories and to move through the damp air. In the snow, my feet got wet and even with my shoe covers they got cold. Soon enough I would be back down in the valley and my feet would become warm again. Warm feet; cold, wet feet; warm feet - being alive on a bicycle.

The riding this winter was challenging because there was a lot of snow in Seattle and it took a long time for the snow to melt. It was that cold. Much of my riding over a period of about three weeks was in the garage.

In November and over the holidays in December, I was eating a few too many calories. I've been working on diet and trying to find my way to fewer calories and especially reducing my sugar intake. Slowly but surely my weight has come down. In another four or five pounds, I'll need to start focussing on eating enough nutrient-rich calories to maintain my desired weight at about 148 pounds (in the morning).

I've been working on core exercises, aiming for three sessions / week. Slowly but surely these exercises do their work, and seem to make my 56-year old body whole. I still don't much like them and they never seem to get easy. They are a struggle that I will try to keep at in the coming months. Along with near daily stretching, the core routine is my foundation for being healthy. Currently, I'm doing the following routine:

4 x (Bridge -> Front plank -> Bridge > Front plank -> Left plank -> Right plank ) @ 40 seconds for each move and 5 seconds to transition quickly between moves

Except for my weekly 20-minute high Zone 4 intervals, I've done one hard ride this year, a 300 KM Seattle Randonneurs ride. We rode from the U-District to Camano Island and back. Beautiful route and 8,000 feet of climbing. I was out there for 11 hours and 54 minutes. Basically, I stayed with a strong group for the first 75 miles. Then, after getting dropped, I spent the next 75 miles on my own, which was very pleasant, and lucky for me, a group came up to me with about 35 miles to go and I road with them to the finish. I wore my heart-rate monitor - the readout:

Zone 0      33 minutes
Zone 1      5 hours, 29 minutes
Zone 2      4 hours, 3 minutes
Zone 3      1 hour, 9 minutes
Zone 4      30 minutes
Zone 5      1 minute

Some good work there! That last 90 minutes was challenging, as I studied the wheel that was immediately in front me and tried to relax and stay controlled and smooth -- no heroics after 10 hours on the bicycle. I was grateful for the very skillful Randonneurs who pulled me along.

My riding goals are to do the GF Ellensburg and GF Winthrop (which I did not do last year because with family holidays and with the August and September smoke I just was not able to train). I would also like to do a couple of long Seattle Randonneurs rides, where I learn about very long days on the bicycle. Will aim to do a couple of those in July.

Now that it is spring, it's time to clean up the Super Course and put on some summer wheels and tires. No more snow for a while.