Finally Outside

At the end of a cold, wet, awesome TNR

One of the many things I love about living in Michigan is having four very distinct seasons. Each season brings its own set of possibilities and adventures. On the flip side, one of things I dislike is when winter seems to drag on forever, as it has this year. These long cold winters mean even more days in the basement on the trainer. I will admit, time on the trainer allows me to do very specific workouts at a set power output for a set amount of time. I also really enjoy how I feel after an intense trainer ride and seeing those power numbers increase as winter stretches on in to what feels like eternity, but sometimes I just need to feel the air rushing through my helmet, the road beneath my wheels or trees a little too close to my bars to really remember why I enjoy riding so much.

My last race of 2017 was in late October after which I was able to get outside one more time for a ride on a remarkably warm day in early December, other than that I have been spinning circles to nowhere in my basement for well over four months.  That was until March 18^th when I joined a crew from the Capital City Cycling Club (www.tnrcycling.org) for a 50 mile ride just north of Lansing. The ride itself was fun and we kept up a good pace, possibly hurting a few guys who recently started their training for the year (many people are a bit smarter than me and actually take some time off) but it was great to get outside with some like minded crazies.

Two days later, the weekly ride dubbed TNR (Tuesday Night Ride) kicked off for the year. I do not remember exactly how many people showed up, but it was not enough to combat the brutal wind we encountered. My Garmin connect page says the wind was 19 mph almost straight out of the North, but I know that does not include the gusts which were much worse. For the first ¾ of the ride the wind was more of an annoyance than anything as we worked our way around the route. The final six miles however was when mother nature decided to show us who was boss. I spent the last three miles of the day as aero as I could and I still struggled to keep 16 mph. When I got back to my car I was cold, tired and my legs hurt, but I was grinning ear to ear. Sure, we were not going near as fast as usual, but we were working hard and moving forward; how else am I going to get faster.

The TNR route, note my amazing mouse drawn arrows showing those 6 miles of headwinds

Up next (after a few more trainer rides) was a ride I was invited to that was intended to be a training ride for the Yankee Springs TT, Barry Roubaix, and Lumberjack 100 (I am only racing one of these, but why would I turn down such a good ride). The goal was to do two laps of Yankee Springs followed by two laps of the 36 mile Barry Roubaix course, totaling 100 miles. As soon as we started on Yankee my rear brake locked up and there I stopped. I fooled around with it a bit and was able to get my wheel to move again so I rode the 30 seconds back to the car, got out my tool box and tried pushing the piston back in. After about 5-10 minutes of prying with a screwdriver I was able to get the piston to move so I put my wheel back on and off we went. The two laps of Yankee went well even though I felt like I was working a bit harder than I should have been, but I just chalked that up to having not been on a trail since Marji Gesick in September.

You know if was a good ride when your glasses are are dirty as your bike

After a stop to refuel and consider how to stay warm (it was 17 degrees when we started) we set out for Barry. We started by heading out backwards on the course to meet up with a group of riders from Spin (www.spinbicycleshop.com) which we did after a few miles. We then turn around and rode with the group for a while.

A number of uneventful gravel miles later and feeling much more tired than I should have, Brett said “your rear brake sure does sound like it is rubbing a lot”. After a few more minutes we stopped so I could take a look and to let a few other guys catch back up. Sure enough, when I spun my rear wheel it would make it a rotation or two and stop dead. We were about 50 miles into the day and I felt like I had ridden 100 and now I knew why. Of course at this point I did what any intelligent cyclist would do, I took the brake pads out of the rear caliper and set back off. There was riding to be done and I still had my front brake which is more than enough for gravel roads.  I can happily say riding was significantly easier from this point and my legs were much happier.

Mainly due to time constraints, it had taken us about as long to ride two laps of Yankee and one of BR as we had planned for the entire 100 miles (no, all the stops were not related to my bike) we decided to call it a day at about 70 miles. At the end of the day I was glad to have gone on the ride, and glad I was able to find out about the problem with my rear brake before I head down to race the Cohutta 100 next month. I dropped my bike off at Spin to have the brake fixed and have the front brake checked to make sure it does not do the same thing. I am excited to get it back and put in a few more trail miles before my first race on April 28.

Now for a quick update for anyone who read my last post. As of March 29th, I have ridden 2,445.37 miles and ran 71.33 miles for a YTD grand total of 2,516.70. With two more days left in the first quarter of the year I have surpassed the mileage needed to be ¼ of the way to my 10,000 mile goal. As a little extra incentive and/or motivation my wife had a custom stem cap made for me.(www.stemcaps.com). 

And now that my riding has gotten a bit more interesting and race season is almost upon us, I will be be a bit better about getting some regular posts up with some (hopefully) more entertaining content.

Today's conversation starter: What is your favorite aspect of getting outside to ride after a long winter? Use the comments section to let me know.