Category Archives: Bike

North Atlanta Winter Bike Sessions

With the end of the 2016 summer cycling season starting to wrap up, it is time to start planning for 2017. The number one question I recieve as a ride leader this time of year is both an obvious one, but also the one that presents an obvious problem, how to get in the work when light and cold weather become a challenge. In addition, Atlanta has a very good program available if you are willing to to drive an hour from the north side, and let me be right up front about this. I am not a certified cycle coach. Robert Wilhite is, so what he has to offer may be more coaching focused than what I am planning here, but the drive to his Winter Bike League is brutal and I personally love the group of people we have up here, so this is as much about enjoying the company of people that have built relationships during the season while building and maintaining fitness for 2017 so we can do it all again.

With that in mind, I wanted to layout what I am thinking, and let everyone make their own choices. A couple of notes before I get into the structure and schedule that I have in mind.

Fit

With the season wrapping up, and a plan to get better for the next season, this would be a good time to get in touch with your fitter and schedule a follow up, or schedule your first if you’ve never been professionally fit for your bike. Yes, it will be relatively speaking, expensive. However the cost here is less than many of the other solutinos we throw money at to be more comfortable, and faster on a bike. In many ways, everything else riders wish to accomplish on a bike start with the fit. Sadly, a good fit can introduce position changes that incur a short term slow down as muscles adapt to new body positions. We are blessed here on the north side with several good options.

Eddie O’dea @ Endurance House
Curtis Cannon @ Cannon Cyclery

Both of these gentlemen are well respected in the area.. I obviously have a preference, but these are two of the most respected in the area.

What makes this so important to do now is that most of us arr in the best shape we’ve been in this season. Our bodies are best suited to adapting now, and with the work of the winter, any short term losses will turn into net gains by the time spring rolls around.

Indoor Trainer

While not required, an indoor trainer will make staying fit, and increasing fitness through the winter. Part of the plan for these Winter Bike Sessions is to leverage one or two indoor virtual workout(s) a week. Any indoor trainer will do the trick, but to really maxmimize the experience and the benefits, a Smart Trainer does make the experience more enjoyable, particularly when paired with Zwift.

At the high end, the Wahoo Kickr and the Tacx Neo are probably the most approachable and readily available in the area. Personally, though I really like the Neo and the way it is built, when it comes right down to it, I don’t like training indoors enough to justify the cost. Instead, I use something in the middle of the road, and it remains my top choice/recommendation for a couple of reasons. The Tacx Bushido hits a great middle ground of smart functions and price. It also has the additional benefit of not needing a power plug making it portable. It is also a dual band unit that supports both Bluetooth and ANT+, so it can pair with a Garmin for logging, as well as to a computer, phone or tablet to control and record workouts.

The last thing to think about here, is that while the indoor workouts will be defined, and could be performed without anything but the trainer and stop watch, there is a nice mental shift that keeps things social when you add in the virtual training game that is Zwift. As a part of the Winter Bike Sessions, the plan is to hold a corresponding virtual group workouts on Zwift.

Session 1 – Baseline, Bike Skills and Climbing

Dates 10/31/2016-12/11/2016
Target Event Ridley Master’s Underwear Ride – TBD (12/11/2016 estimated)
Optional Event WBS 1st Annual New Years Eve 3 Gaps Ride (12/31/2016)

The first session it intended to focus on finding a base line for where we are, then to build from there work into some specific bike handling skills before really starting the prep for some climbing skills. Since this block will be the first after daylight savings time comes to an end, it will also be the one to challenger our collective time and daylight management skills.

Week 1

Monday – Ride – Speed Work: Intervals 4 ( Group Event on Zwift )
Tuesday – Run (Optional) – Tempo 2 Miles
Wednesday – Core (Optional) – Plyometrics 45 minutes + 500 yard swim
Thursday – Ride – Steady State: 1.25 hours with 2 up tempo spins
Friday – Run (Optional) – Speed Work: 3 miles with 3 short intervals
Saturday – Off
Sunday – Ride – Long Ride: 2.5 hour 70% effort

Week 2

Monday – Ride – Speed Work: Pyramid 3 ( Group Event on Zwift )
Tuesday – Run (Optional) – Hill Repeats x2
Wednesday – Core (Optional) – Pilates 30 minutes + 1500 yard swim
Thursday – Ride – Steady State: 1.5 hours with 3 up tempo spins
Friday – Run (Optional) – Speed Work: 3 miles with 1 long intervals
Saturday – Off
Sunday – Ride – Long Ride: 3 hour 70% effort

Week 3

Monday – Ride – Speed Work: Intervals 6 ( Group Event on Zwift )
Tuesday – Run (Optional) – Tempo 4 Miles
Wednesday – Core (Optional) – Plyometrics 45 minutes + 1000 yard swim
Thursday – Ride – Steady State: 2 hours with 4 up tempo spins
Friday – Run (Optional) – Speed Work: 4 miles with 3 long intervals
Saturday – Off
Sunday – Ride – Long Ride: 3.5 hour 70% effort

Week 4

Monday – Ride – Speed Work: Pyramid 7 ( Group Event on Zwift )
Tuesday – Run (Optional) – Hill Repeats x4
Wednesday – Core (Optional) – Pilates 30 minutes + 2000 yard swim
Thursday – Ride – Steady State: 2.5 hours with 5 up tempo spins
Friday – Run (Optional) – Speed Work: 3 miles with 2 long intervals
Saturday – Off
Sunday – Ride – Long Ride: 4 hour 70% effort

Week 5

Week 6 – Event Week – Lighter Load

Monday – Ride – Speed Work: Pyramid 5 ( Group Event on Zwift )
Tuesday – Run (Optional) – Recovery 3 Miles
Wednesday – Core (Optional) – Pilates 30 Minutes + 1500 yard swim
Thursday – Ride – Steady State – Steady 90 Recovery
Friday – Walk – 30 minute walk, leisure pace keeping loose
Saturday – Ride – 60 minute light spin
Sunday – Event Day – Enjoy, and trust in the training. No breaks over 5 minutes to keep from tightening up.

Don’t Be A Quitter

WP_20140901_001

Quitting. Vocally, and loudly quitting. Writing a (blog post)[http://surlybikes.com/blog/post/im_done] to be read by other cyclists about why you are quitting and all those bad car drivers and all the risks. Then actually getting off the bike, either riding on indoor trainers and racing on closed courses only, or selling it altogether. Either way, these people are quitters. They are becoming part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, all because of fear in the face of overwhelming statistics that show that they are choosing the wrong side of the road.

Don’t be a quitter.

Seriously folks, yes, cycling can be dangerous. Let us all be reminded about the other singular truth. Life is dangerous, and the only promise in life is that it ends. If maximizing the amount of time you get to spend in life then you have to understand the risks you take, and put them into perspective. So about that perspective? You want to hang up your bike, put away your messenger bag and take a car instead.

You know a car, which kills enough Americans under 65 per year to be a top 5 cause of death? Consider the things that we do to cure, and or avoid cancer or heart disease, and yet we blithely climb into a car. Seriously. 1 out 112 Americans will die in a car crash, and that number is going up, not down. Worse, these statistics fail to address the indirect damage they are doing to our lives, not just the health risks that run the gamut from obesity, depression, cancer, heart disease but also the environmental impacts and even the financial damage.

Yet, there are cyclists that have made the investment into themselves, to ride. To improve their quality of life through fitness, and getting out of the car who are now quitting and getting back into a car, because they feel threatened by those very cars.

Part of the problem, not the solution.

Keep in mind, that quitting is the easy way out. Blogging that you are quitting, is contributing to the culture of fear that has become part and parcel to riding a bicycle in the U.S. A culture where every bike fatality where a car is involved is shared and published on social media. A culture that reinforces the fear with every fatality, with every near miss, all in the name of being informed and sharing.

I am a cyclist, and I’m not going anywhere. That is the message we need to be sending. Per hour traveled, it remains safer than getting a car. The benefits of riding a bike so far outweigh the merits of driving a car, that even with the distracted drivers that are just as likely to smash into parked police car as they are to hit me on my bicycle it is a risk that makes logical, statistical sense.

Of course, I want cycling to be safer. No cyclist doesn’t, but quitting is not the answer. Getting involved, seriously involved in advocacy of ideas like Vision Zero and promoting safe, non-car infrastructure. Working with your governments and communities to push agendas that make our cities safer for everyone, including car drivers, is in every citizens best interests, even though people will fight against it. If you can’t do it for yourself do it for your kids, so that when they are your age, they don’t have to fight this battle.

But no, quitting is easy. If you can’t beat them join them, right?

Yeah, about that…

Don’t be a quitter.

North Atlanta Winter Bike Sessions Update

So, after seeing what kind of interest there was, I think I am going to go ahead with this.

I’ll be putting together a full page here with all of the details, but the short version is this. The plan is to do 3 sessions during the winter. Each of the 3 will focus on part of our riding, and build towards a specific event, with an additional optional event mixed in there.

I personally have a couple of races scheduled that will impact my ability to lead a couple of the events, so I will be looking for a couple of volunteers to fill my shoes on those days. It shouldn’t be too hard, as I am pretty sure a trained monkey can do what I do with equal aplomb.

The first session is being planned to start at the end of October and prepping for the Ridley Master’s Underwear Ride, though the date has not been officially announced, we are guessing 12/11 as the target date. There will be an optional 12/31 ride of the 3 Gaps as an optional ‘social’ ride. This session will focus on bike handling skills and some climbing.

The second session will be all about speed and power, with a target to do the Tundra Time Trial race in February. Following with building on the power and speed will be a third session that focusing on pushing the endurance up to be ready for an early season century at the Tony Serrano ride.

Full schedule to follow as well as details about prep and the how and when…

Bring Your Lights!

If you are riding in the North Metro tonight. Keep in mind, sunset is getting earlier, with the sun setting at 8:12PM tonight. Combine that with wet roads from this mornings rains and probably cloudy skies, make sure to charge and mount your lights for your ride tonight!
#ridemore #nobadweatherjustbadgear

Tip for Drivers

When you are behind a bicycle at a stop light, we really don’t need 20+ feet of gap behind us and when you do this you are actually creating a problem. The sensors in the road that detect a vehicle are supposed to be sensitive enough to detect a bicycle there. Most are not, so if you are sitting 20 feet back, the sensors can’t detect you, and if the sensor doesn’t pick up the bike, we will both be sitting there for a while. ( This is the most common reason you’ll see us move through Red lights, we don’t trigger them alone ).

“We’ve got … a cultural paradigm of ‘drive or die’ in this state.”

by Jim Ferner, founder and director of Complete Streets Coalition of Kalamazoo in reference to the crash involving 9 cyclists in Kalamazoo. It really sums up how most drivers feel about anyone that isn’t in a car using the roads.

Link

Two’s Company, Three’s A Crowd

We are so lucky to have some really smart people in the Atlanta area who have the knowledge and background to help us navigate the sometime murky questions of how Georgia bike law applies. One of those, is Bruce Hagen of Bike Law. Today, he published a really great follow up to a question asked by another local advocate. Some really great information in here that really needs to be read and understood, not only by cyclists, but also by enforcement and road planners to understand just how quirky this subject is.

Commuting By Bike

Riding the bike to work is always such an entertaining exercise. I enjoy the ride, and more often than not, I will ride the ‘main’ road. Today I did just that, and it was a good ride, a little muggy, but heh, it is Atlanta, in the spring on a day with thunderstorms in the forecast. Some days though, are just different. This morning was one of them, in that I have absolutely no idea where the north bound traffic went. Seriously, there was nothing. Not a single backed up light, the entire way in. It was simply blissful.

Of course, in Atlanta no ride is complete without someone yelling to get off the road. The funny thing? todays yeller was a young male in an early 2000’s Toyota, he was in the last car in a 5-6 vehicle line following an 18 wheel Pepsi delivery truck that I paused at a red light to give him a chance to get in front of me on the green light. Unfortunately, all of us were held up by a good 10-15 seconds by the gentleman in the green Chevy Sonic that just HAD to finish that text message before he could go. Anyways, the guy in the blue Toyota decided to tell me, the bike that he was passing, without issue as there was both space and no oncoming traffic, to “Get the hell off the road, roads are for cars!!!!”. Apparently, I am also gay because of the spandex. I should note, that I really don’t understand why this is supposed to be insulting, but hey, if it makes him feel better, whatever it takes man.

These are the moments that give me great entertainment.

Seriously, I’m getting yelled at, by a guy in a car, whose commute I impacted in absolutely no way. The guy in the Sonic created a far more immediate slow down and delay than I did, and yet I am the one that needs to get off the road?

As is my habit, I waved and gave him the Hang Loose sign. I do hope his day gets better. He certainly improved mine by starting the morning with a good chuckle..

The Ten Minute Threshold

Ten minutes of transit time. That is the length of time most of the people that I talk to are willing to travel via alternative means before they will ‘just drive’. When asking around to find out what that threshold is amongst the suburbanites I live around 10 minutes has been the most consistent answer. However, that answer is almost always accompanied by a qualifier; If there was a safe route.

Therein lies the issue. Safe routes remain scarce in the suburban build out, and so, the car has become the default mode of transportation.

Interestingly, the communities that have traditionally been the least likely to invest in non-car infrastructure, are the very same ones that are now seeing the light and becoming the first communities to invest deeply into establishing new infrastructure. Sadly, in many of these communities, the drivers are all wrong, but he results may well be the right ones.

Today, the drivers that are urging this infrastructure build out are purely commercial in origin. These new ‘walkable’ suburbs are being driven by small commercial centers and new suburban residential centers, with high dollar price tags. Small walkable hubs have started springing up in the affluent suburbs around the country. While these hubs are all about these expensive homes and high end retail which really isn’t the point of good, non-car infrastructure at the end of the day, these builds outs accomplish the long term goal encouraging walkable communities.

Curiously, the side effect of these little suburban enclaves is starting to show a side effect. The neighborhoods that are just a little further out from the community hubs are pressing for viable infrastructure as well, at least in our little suburban enclaves.

These are the very pressures that have to exist in order to garner the money and incentive for our communities to undermine the 50 years of car primacy, which is particularly egregious in the suburbs and the rural edge communities.

But let us step back and think about what 10 minutes means:

The average walking pace is about 18 minutes per mile, or just a tiny bit over 3 miles an hour.
The average pace of a casual bike ride is about 6 minutes per mile, or about 10 miles an hour.

So, if you extrapolate that from these little community hubs and draw a circle of just one half mile in radius from these hubs in order to see just how much of the residential areas are encompassed. When you expand that circle out to a 3 mile radius, and you start connecting these micro community hubs with real, viable non-car infrastructure.

city centers

Just look at this image. The green circles are the city hubs and walkable areas within that 10 minute threshold, while the yellow circles are the 10 minute ridable from those same community hubs. In this image, they are focused on the community retail hubs, but they could just as easily be dropped on high schools or existing recreational hubs. What is clear however, is that by focusing on infrastructure from any of these as focal points, the overlap quickly covers a vast area of the suburban sprawl. When you look at the area covered, what also becomes clear, that by following this approach of focus, the near term goal of providing safe, viable alternative transportation options of bicycle safe routes in between each hub ceases to be about corridors, because there are very few locations that require a transfer point, which is the problem with todays approaches.

So the question becomes, can we leverage the idea of the 10 minute transit time into a near to mid term solution to obtaining the funding, and construction of viable transit alternatives?

Fitness is not an accident

Way back when, before I cleaned up my own lifestyle and got back on the bike. Before I started running, before I stepped on the scale that fateful day and had my “whoa” moment, I often looked at some of the slim, fit bodies and blamed genetics. Like many people, I wanted to attribute my body type to genetics, and let my failures to manage the bad things that my body type exposed be lumped into that genetics thing. Like so very many people, I assumed that most of the “pretty people” were just blessed with great genetics. What I now understand is that yes, they may have been blessed with great genetics, but the level of work that it takes to maintain what we are born with is no accident.

In so many instances, our bad habits are formed at a very young age. Those early years set the stage for our life long struggles, as we build habits that are inhibitors to the work of living fit. Personally, I struggle with an addiction to caffeine in the carbonated, cold variety and a raging sweet tooth. I love chocolate, preferably in large quantities, served with an ice cold soda. These are bad enough, but some other lifestyle things only make it that much harder to keep fitness. I work a desk job where I sit for 8-10 hours a day. With kid schedules, I will often spend another 2 hours a day in a car. Factor in meals and sleep, finding time to get in a good workout is tough.

Over the last couple of years, it has become harder and harder to maintain the discipline required to get those workouts in, and my waistline shows it. That is the hidden part of the fitness equation. Getting fit is hard. Staying fit is harder, as the demands of life intrude upon the demands of training.

In the past, it was a little easier for me, as I used my commute to the office as part of my daily workout. For the last year, some schedule changes have changed that because I have had a passenger. I haven’t been able to ride the 4-5 days a week of the past. This has impacted my base fitness, as well as my ability to get in the volume of work I needed, to overcome some of the bad habits I hadn’t been able to kill off.

So now it is time of fix some diet issues that were masked by the volume of work being done, while also reworking some schedule to fix the issues.

We Are O.G.R.E.

Old Guys/Gals Random Enterprises