2011 National Tour de Cure Ride Report

Well the ride in the tour yesterday sure was interesting. I got up at 5am, got all my gear together, and headed out to Reston Town Center to check in. After check in, I rolled out just before 6:15 in the morning, and grouped up with 3 other guys who I thought would be good riding partners. We ended up dropping one real early on, and the other 2 lasted a little bit longer, but I ended up dropping them shortly after we got to the end of the W&OD and started on the country roads. I then started riding with this couple at a pretty solid pace, and was having decent conversation, and then....things went downhill.

At the bottom of a pretty big hill was a right hand turn, that we completely blew right by. No advanced warning of a turn ahead (like other sections of the course), and at the bottom of a big hill when you're going 40mph+, let's just say it was real easy to miss the turn. We kept going straight thinking we were on track, then got to a 4-way intersection that we had already crossed at one point, kept going straight, and eventually saw to other riders coming back our way who told us to turn around (they did the same thing.) We headed back to the 4-way intersection, and decided to take a right to get back onto course. About 15 minutes later after I got my bearings, I realized that I had just started a good chunk of the southern loop all over again. I was really upset at this point because I was riding so well thus far, and it set me back about an hour, added roughly 16 miles to my ride and totally threw me off mentally. If you look at the map below, you can see a straight line heading northwest, where that line begins is where I missed the right turn.

I ended up riding by myself for quite a while, (barely saw the turn the second time by), and eventually caught another group that I stayed with till the rest stop in Lovettsville. At this point I was about 16 miles farther into the ride than everyone else, so I didn't want to stop for too long. I grabbed a bunch of orange slices, some small PB&J slices, refilled the water bottles and was on my way. After about 5 miles, I caught another couple in the Waterford area, and ended up riding with them all the way back to Reston. I was really glad I was able to hook up with them, since we were all riding at about the same pace, and had some good conversation. They were really nice people, and I really enjoyed riding with them for the final ~35 miles.

Despite the mishap and the additional mileage, I was still very happy with my time, all things considered. Up until this point, my longest ride ever was 75 miles, so being able to hold just over a 17 mph pace for over 6.5 hours, I thought was pretty good. Also of note, I climbed over 1 vertical mile of altitude during the day! Thanks to all who donated and supported! Now I just need to decide whether or not to sign up for the Shenandoah Mountain 100 bike race. Yea, 100 miles of mountain biking, that's twice as crazy! Also, many thanks to my mom who came out and supported and cheered me on. [She also took the photo below.] Here's a brief glance at the ride, but go ahead and click on 'view details' to open up the full ride summary. 

Here's a small breakdown of what went wrong [click to enlarge]

Crossing the finish line after 117 miles

Pre-Bike To Work Day

Bike To Work Day is this coming Friday, May 20th. I've helped do maintenance classes, and done graphic design work for the Coast Guard's involvement in Bike To Work Day in the past, but never actually participated myself. Not having a bike definitely made it hard to ride to work. Well this year is much much different. I added 2 new bikes to my personal fleet this past winter and am now contemplating adding another dedicated commuter bike as well [but more on that another time.] 

On Sunday in preparation for Bike To Work Day, I decided I had better figure out the route to get me all the way into my building. I've ridden past the bridges that cross over into DC before, but never actually taken them in. I knew my route wouldn't be incredibly long either, so I headed off on my ride, and without much issue made it in just fine. There was one or two funky turns, but now that I know which street crossings to take, I'm all set for this Friday, and will officially be commuting into work via pedal power [well almost.]

See the issue is that there is no good or real safe way for me to get to the trails from my house, so I have to drive a short distance, park, unload the bike, then start riding. It may not be 100% commuting, but it's a real solid start. I have to drive about 7 or 8 miles to the parking lot, then ride 17 miles into the city. I'll be riding my real nice road bike on Friday, but I don't want to do that for very long since the abuse of commuting daily will certainly start to add up quick, also it doesn't have any fenders or racks on it to help keep the road spray off in inclement weather, or carry additional items like work clothes or my lunch.  Because of that, I'll have to plan ahead a little bit and leave some stuff here at the office on Thursday so I don't have to carry it all on Friday, but that's where getting a dedicated commuter will help out. 

Below is my ride from Sunday, and the route from the parking lot to my building. I'll be saving roughly 40 miles a day of driving, and adding about 34 miles riding. My goal is to be able to do this long enough that the bike will eventually pay for itself over time [late fall and winter commuting should be fun], but it will no doubt also help me get in really good shape for another potential 100 mile race in the fall. I'm up for the challenge though, and will be sure to update everyone on how the actual bike to work day goes on Friday.

Easter Sunday 2011

After attending the "sunrise" service at my church at 8:15 this past Sunday, I headed down to the Lorton area to explore the Laurel Hill trails system. I've been hearing for the past year or so about these trails, but had never been or explored them myself. So I hopped on the mountain bike and set off to see what the terrain was like. 

Actually, the night before I had looked up a trail map and directions so I at least had a small inkling of what was in store, but looking at colored lines on a map is entirely different from seeing the trails while riding. Here's the website that I used to read about and find the trails: Trail Voice: Laurel Hill Trails Here's a quick overview of my ride, and you'll see that the gps tracking lines I made are [almost] identical to the trail map. [I did the blue loop twice, and used the Cross County Trail a couple times as well to connect the different areas.]

[Click 'View Details' to expand for more info]

After an hour and change, 11.5 mile ride, I headed over to my parents house to celebrate Easter. As with many families, we always do an Easter egg hunt, and it's now become my job to go out and hide all the eggs before the hunt. I try and get pretty creative and sneaky with the hiding of the eggs, making it difficult to find them all, I'm sure we've lost a couple over the years. But once I'm done hiding the eggs, everyone participating in the hunt gather just inside the front door ready to be let loose. My extremely competitive caring sister, Erika tends to end up with the most, but that's because she will bull rush ya to get an egg. As a spectator, it's almost like being at the colosseum.....okay not really, but you get what I'm trying to say. Either way it usually produces a couple really good photos. Below is a great shot of everyone charging out the front door at the start of the hunt.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Great Weekday Ride

Leaving work early to go and ride your bike is NEVER a bad idea. Last week I had stayed late at work a couple days, so I had some extra time to play with, but was waiting for a perfect day to take advantage of that time. Well, yesterday was that day. Lower 70's with nothing but sun a clear blue sky. I took off from work just after lunch and drove to my usual start spot to get in a nice afternoon bike ride. Things got interesting though once I got to the previous 25 mile turnaround spot. I was feeling a lot better than I was at that point on my previous [and first] 50 mile ride, so I decided to go an additional 5 miles so I could get in 60 miles. But then I thought to myself "heck, why not just go all the way to 35 miles, and then turnaround and see if I can do 70 miles?" So that's what I did.

I kept on heading west for as long as the W&OD trail would allow, and take it from there. Well I found the end of the trail at about 33 miles out. DANGIT! I ended up out in Purceville when I hit the end of the trail, so I just started riding on some random roads until I hit 35 miles and then made my turnaround. It's an interesting feeling being so far out there, and knowing that the only way back is to get yourself back. Almost like going into survival mode: it's up to you now to get yourself back. But it's fun and I like to challenge myself when I can. Knowing at that time that this would be my longest ride ever, I was a bit worried curious as to how I'd hold up on the return trip. Turns out I held up okay! My legs were certainly tired and my vision was incredibly blurry [that's from all the wind into the eyes, I need to get some bigger lenses for my glasses!] but overall I was feeling pretty good. I was also encouraged by the fact that I didn't bonk out or die, and when I looked at the stats from the ride, I was pleased to see that I averaged 1mph faster than my two previous long rides, and during my longest ride ever! Guess my legs are getting stronger or something. I also worked on sitting in a more aerodynamic position to help reduce some wind drag, and concentrated on proper pedal stroke as well. Both those things seemed to make a noticeable difference.

I was pretty encouraged after completing this ride in a pretty decent time, and while doing it solo [it's a lot easier to ride in a group because you can get behind people and take turns drafting. The pack as a whole moves a lot quicker than one person can by themself.] Hopefully I can continue my training and riding at a solid pace for another 1.5 months leading up the 100 mile Tour de Cure ride. I'm now more confident than ever that the ride in June will be a great experience and my worry level has dropped significantly. Again I repeat, leaving work early to go for a bike is NEVER a bad idea! On with the ride report and pictures!

Click 'view details' to expand for full summary.

Excited to leave work early and go ride, only to get immediately stuck in traffic!

And again. I hate the never-ending construction and D.C. traffic!

That's better! There were some horses in the background of this photo but as soon as I hopped off the bike, they spooked and went running off. Oh well, their loss! [Def click to expand this shot!]

Fitness Weekend

This weekend started out on Friday night with a 5k race held in Crystal City. It was the second of the 5 scheduled races that are part of the the Pacers 'Crystal Run 5k Fridays'. My friend Danielle works the races helping promote Muscle Milk, but decided to run this Friday as well. So myself and Danielle's roommate also signed up to run. It was pretty chilly Friday evening with temperatures only in the mid 40's and an on and off again rain. Fortunately after getting our bib numbers, we were able to wait inside the lobby of a business building until just before lining up for the race. Right after the gun went off, I immediately lost Danielle and Katy in the sea of black, white, and a red running attire, so I just ran the race by myself. All was good until about the 2.5 mile mark and the rain really started coming down again. By this time though, my body was well heated up from the running, so the rain actually felt pretty nice, at the finish we were all soaking wet from both sweat and the rain. It was quite the experience.


I finished in just under 25 minutes, not too shabby I guess considering I've never done anything like this before. Haven't decided yet either if I'll participate in any of the remaining 3 races. But here's a screen shot of my time, and a photo of me crossing the finish line....with a perplexed look on my face.

I had plans do get a mountain bike ride in at Fountainhead park on Saturday morning, but that was foiled by the rain that decided to fall on Friday night. I was still made it out to Fountainhead though to cheer on my friend Andy [whose blog is now linked over there on the right] who ran in the Bull Run 50 miler. It's a 50 mile trail running race, yea running! Andy ran 50 miles on some of our area's trails, almost a double marathon, insane. He finished in 8 hours and 49 minutes, and this was the longest he had ever ran in a race. A group of us gathered at Fountainhead to cheer him on at a checkpoint that was both at mile 28 and at 38, then his brother and I drove over to Hemlock park to see Andy cross the finish line. I have a hard time comprehending running a marathon, much less a double! Here's a picture of the group at Fountainhead, and some pictures I grabbed of Andy at the finish line.

Support Group

Pete, Greg, [a different] Andy, Kayla, myself, and [runner] Andy's kids, Luke, and Noah

Race director greeting Andy at the finish line

50 miles in 8 hours 49 minutes

Yesterday I was able to get in another long road bike ride in preparation for my 100 mile ride coming up in June. This week I rode 60 miles, up 10 from last week's 50 mile ride. At the end of last week's ride, I was really hurting, the last 5 miles were pretty hard. This week though, I felt great throughout the whole ride, and really started trucking it the last 5 miles and finished pretty strong, instead of limping it in dead tired. This was very encouraging for me, because it feels like my body in finally starting to get used to being in the saddle for extended amounts of time.

This week I rode from Vienna, along the W&OD and Curtis Trails into DC, then picked up the Mt Vernon trail, and rode all the way down to Mt Vernon, then turned around rode all the way back. On my return trip I stopped at Gravelly Point briefly and took the video below of a plane landing at Reagan National Airport. I had always heard of Gravelly Point but had never been there, so it was kinda cool to see it firsthand. Overall it was a pretty fun ride, with lots of change in scenery. Also, the route into DC is the same route that I'd take to ride into work, and now that I know how to do that, I'll probably start commuting to work via bike in another month or so once the weather is a tad more stable and the sunlight comes out a little earlier. Anyway, here's the workout summary from this week's ride, and a video from when I stopped at Gravelly Point. Enjoy!

Vienna - Mt. Vernon Ride

[click View Details to expand]

[Gravelly Point Plane Landing]

New Biking Gadget

I've mentioned in a number of posts over the past 3 months that I'm really making an effort to get my butt back into full on biking shape. Its been a number of years since I've ridden on a consistent basis, and after adding multiple bikes to my two-wheeled fleet, I am back in the saddle. 

One gadget I've had my eye on for a short while is the Garmin Edge 500 cycling computer. Now, this isn't your basic $25 computer that tell you time/speed/distance and that's it. No, this baby is for real. Similar to my Garmin watch I bought a few months back, this thing is packed to brim of features that I plan on using to the utmost of my cycling ability. Naturally it has gps navigation/tracking features, that will allow you to track your bike rides and workouts, but it will also spit out a whole slew of other data, a lot of which is still above my head, but some of the more common bits are: speed, distance, heart rate, calories, pre-planned workouts, courses, cadence, elevation, grade, power output, etc, etc.

Using the Garmin Connect website, and Garmin's desktop software, Garmin Training Center, you can dive really deep into planning your workouts and then analyzing the data afterwards. Like I said, a lot of this is still a touch over my head in terms of understanding the full capabilities and how to get the most out of all these features, but I'm learning more and more every day. After picking up the computer yesterday evening, I tinkered with it [as I naturally would with any new gadget] for about an hour before bed. One really cool feature is the computers ability to display 'courses' that you preprogram and send to the device via your computer. 

In just 65 days I'll be riding in this year's Tour de Cure for diabetes, and I'll be riding the 100 mile route. In my preparation for such a ride, I found this years actual 100 mile route listed online, which you can view for yourself here. When looking at the map that pops up, you'll see a tab called 'share' which will allow you to download various file versions of the map for sending to devices [such as, you guessed it, cycling computers.] I downloaded the .gpx file that has the entire route, and markers in it. Unfortunately, the Edge 500 doesn't recognize .gpx files [at least to my knowledge] so I did some brief research and found this nifty little site, that will convert that type of file to an array of different file types, included .crs files, which is the file type you need to import into the Garmin Training Center software, which will then allow you to send it to your device. Did you follow all of that? Good. 

At any rate, it worked flawlessly and I now have the 100 mile route for this year's Tour de Cure loaded onto the computer, which you can see in the pictures below. I won't ramble on too much longer, but needless to say, I'm very excited to finally have a true dedicated cycling computer that will undoubtedly make my riding and training more fun. If you're still curious or for some reason want to know more, I highly suggest heading over to the fitness related [and much much better] blog DC Rainmaker. That guy's blog and posts blow mine out of the water. If you have a training or fitness question, or perhaps are looking for some new fitness gadgets yourself, I guarantee you will find your answer over there. Since that's where I first read about the Edge 500, I felt it was necessary to give that blog a shout out. 

Alright, enough rambling. On with the pretty pretty pictures of my new toy. Enjoy!

Pretty tight little package for the amount of work this thing does.

Garmin makes it, in case you hadn't figured that out yet.

Self explanatory.

Got my bike's 'personal data' loaded up.

Courses loaded onto unit. [100 mile Tour de Cure]

Course map. [Notice similarity to this]

Course overview. [Preset at a 16mph pace]

Get out there and ride!