Monthly Archives: July 2015

Running In Circles

I hate doing ‘laps’. Seriously, when it comes to running, this is the hardest running there is for me. I’d rather go climb a mountain than run laps. Last night, with the imminent threat of storms, a need to get some miles in, and a desire to stay closer to home, I ended up heading over to a great little facility not too far from the house. Sweet Apple Park in Roswell is a great little run. It is a 1.05 mile loop of crushed granite running loop. It has a little climb and descend, but it is a 1 mile box around a park and a school ( and passes close to some tasty restaurants, the smells make running even harder ). The goal for the day was 5-6 miles at an easy pace, keeping the heart rate down in zone 2-3. This is a bit of a challenge for me anyways, since I tend to run with a fairly high heart rate anyways. It is incredibly easy for me to push into zone 4 and even zone 5 with a moderate effort.

Putting it bluntly, I am not an ‘efficient’ runner yet. Almost 4 years in, and I am just beginning to figure out how to run efficiently. It will be a long time before I see fast miles at these heart rates, but that is part of the journey. It is part of why we do this. In order to get more efficient and to run better, sometimes we have to do things we do not want to do. Hills, Fartleks, Rest Days, and yes, Running in Circles.

So what about running in circles makes me a better runner? A lot of things, but last night it was working on two very distinct things. Efficiency and form at a lower effort level. The theory is that as efficiency and form become habit and muscle memory takes over, the same motions translate as the speeds and efforts ramp up. Combine that with a concerted effort to go with negative splits, I do feel that the work is valuable and shows an impact. Particularly in areas like how I feel afterwards.

It used to be that these 6+ mile weekday runs were a struggle the day after, but as I have worked on these types of runs, the hardest parts of the recovery have eased.

The observant reader may have noted that I had to go into Roswell to get the kind of facility I wanted to get this run in. The truth is, the City of Milton does not have this kinds of facility open yet, but they are working on one. I can not wait, since it will be about a mile from the house.

Thinking Outside the Box

In an interesting experiment, I tried something today. Rode the exact same route, the same bike, even the same kit to work. The experiment? I added something simple, a backpack. All of the sudden, instead of some feckless bike snob, I am a commuter, and the way I am treated on the road changes. People give a little more space. I suspect this speaks to some deeply rooted psyche issues in the American commuter, but it does raise an interesting question.

Does the appearance of a lycra clad cyclist imply a different usage that justifies a different behavior?

There is an interesting thought, and I wonder if it plays into the success of bike lanes and the success of the city bikes programs around the country. Bikes, and cyclists that don’t look like pure fitness usage do not create the conflict that the lycra wearing road cyclist do. Is this related to the idea that cyclists are law breakers, and hooligans? I don’t know, I am thinking out loud here, but if this is the case, is it something we need to talk more about?

OGRE Adventures – 70 miles in the foothills

Sunday, a couple of the OGRE’s set out to find an open road or two. The plan was simple. Go that north until the odometer said 35 miles, then turn around and come home. It wasn’t an overly complex plan, but it did overlook a detail. North from Atlanta also means up hill. At least uphill biased as the terrain climbs into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The net result? 70 miles, 4000 feet of climbing, 4 deer, 5 counties, a couple of dumb passes, a lot of water, and some interesting thoughts on how to sell bike safety.

We got an early start, and focused on roads that are heavily travelled by bicycles, as we worked out way north. As we moved from county to county, it was interesting to see the different levels of signage and support for the bicycles. Along the route, it was curious to see that none of the roads had true bike lanes and only one of the counties even bothered to have “Share the Road” signage. That said, we did see a lot of other cyclists out on the roads, and experienced a low number of poor car/bike interactions on the day, with only one meep meep of a horn and 2 instances of poor judgement passing.

As always, riding with the OGREs, there is a lot of chatting along the way. The topics range, but making the roads safer for runners and cyclists is a common thread.

Over the last few months, we have concluded that there is a deep need to build a grass roots effort to get this done. Our municipal governments simply aren’t focused on bikes and foot traffic right now. So it falls to us to get it done. So the next task, is to build something that enables us to ‘get it done’.

Shopping – ORR Cycling

We here at the OGRE HQ ( otherwise known as the Swamp ), have a strong bias towards shopping local, shopping small, and shopping made in USA. It is hard to do all of the above these days, but with care, you can usually hit 1 or 2 out of the 3. In addition, we like to add a 4th category, and that is shop with quality people.

Shop Small: Yes — Shop Local: Sorta — Shop Made in USA: No

Today we are profiling a relatively new wheel vendor that fits the ‘Small’ category nicely. They are sorta local, though they do not currently have any retail options, they are based more or less locally in South Carolina. Made in USA, not so much. With the lack of carbon fiber foundries in the US though, it is hard to find on-shore manufacturing for carbon fiber, so while we would normally whine about the off shore fabrication, we understand the market realities here, so while not a full pass, they get a partial pass.

We didn’t start off searching for a smaller wheel vendor. Like many people, our first pass at carbon wheels was with a large brand that is well known. Those wheels are very good, but at those prices, you do not want to ride them every day. At the expo for IM Chattanooga 70.3 2015, we met Jason Williamson (and his lovely wife and new baby) of ORR Cycling. At the expo, we had a chance to chat for a while, and that is where Jason did a great job of articulating what he and his brother wanted to accomplish.

In short, the mission is to build and sell a quality carbon fiber wheel set that is race ready, at a price that can be used as an every day wheel.

I was not ready to pull the trigger to give them a shot at the time, but after the race and some challenges with my big name wheels, Jason’s pitch kept percolating in the brain. The more I thought about it, the more interested I became. It took about a month, but eventually I gave him a call, and purchased a set of his wheels to give them a try. That said, at the time, Jason did all the right things from a customer service perspective. With the death of customer service in most industries, that was a truly refreshing start.

The wheels arrived promptly, and in true bike nerd fashion, within an hour of arriving home that evening, cassette, tubes and tires were mounted, and the wheels found their way onto the bike.

On a side note, these are not the first deep profile/aero wheels to find their way onto this bike, but they are the first that did not require an hour of adjusting the rear brakes to make them work without an almost zero tolerance configuration. Unlike almost every major competitor, the width of the wheel at the brake track is almost identical to the 23mm width that is the standard for many ‘stock’ wheels, while most of the aero wheels are as wide as 26mm at the brake track. Not unexpected, but there was a tiny bit of adjustment required to get the shifting back to where I prefer.

A month later, the wheels have seen about 800 miles of wear and tear, in a wide mix of conditions, including a race on broad range of road surfaces (brand new asphalt, really crappy old asphalt, concrete, tar snake encrusted asphalt, and my personal favorite, WTF is this / who put this speed bump in the middle of my race way) these wheels have answered the call. Solid performance with a minimum of flex even when being pushed hard up an 11% grade. In reality, the ONLY negative on the wheel so far has been the one tube change on the side of the road, and this is not really a wheel problem per se. The tires are a VERY tight fit, and while most of time, I can change a tube quickly (under 6 minutes), it took closer to 10 minutes for me to make the change simply because I had to work harder to get the tire bead over the rim. This is not a bad thing really, but it is worth noting.

So here we are, a month later, and my verdict on ORR Cycling is simply this. Excellent customer service. Great people. Good product at a great price point. How good? well, the plan is to pick up another set with a shallower profile to use on the road bike as it’s every day wheels. Yes, folks, I like them that much. I have already recommended them to a couple of buyers, and will continue to do so.

A Trail Less Traveled

Some days, I find that the training routine needs a switch just to keep fresh and motivated. So it was that the daughter and I decided that instead of the workout on the schedule (a 6 mile run at easy pace) could be swapped out for something a little different. Instead of a run, it was a jog/hike across the Appalachian Trail for about 6 miles. I can honestly say, the terrain was tough, but the scenery was fabulous.

The Trouble with Bike Advocacy

Advocacy is hard. More often than not, we end up selling bicycling to other cyclists, rather than getting the word out to the people outside the community. It is always a question of how to you cross the gap to the people outside the community. Sometimes we do need to address the community too though.

Last week, I spent the week in Salt Lake City Utah. It was an interesting work week. The city itself has an amazing amount of bike infrastructure in downtown. Bike lanes everywhere, green lanes, signage, racks and facilities on the light rail and buses to enable bike transport. It was amazing to see, and yet… Fully half of the cyclists I saw in the city were riding on the sidewalk. Sitting at a red light next to one, I finally asked why. The response was ‘it is safer’.

This boggles the mind, and has been fairly well documented that it really isn’t safer to be on the sidewalk, but perception, even in the cycling community persists. If we haven’t reached them, how can we reach and teach drivers? Can we?

We Are O.G.R.E.

Old Guys/Gals Random Enterprises