Machka 

Tell us about your rides on this Halloween weekend. Where did you go? What did you see? Did you ride inside or out?
Or did you participate in another sport this weekend?


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Saturday -- 21.5 km up the cycleway on a nice and slightly breezy day.

kbarch

"Slightly breezy?"
A light breeze is less than 12 km/h, but I get the impression you could be referring to anything shy of a fresh gale.

Machka 

It was up around 35 km/h ... not too bad.


Hobart 24 hour history graph of temperature, wind and rainfall
(Between about 3 pm and 4 pm)

kbarch

Thought I'd intercept the usual group about four miles into a planned ride on a hill not far from home. When I got to the top of that hill, I checked the time and figured they had probably just gotten underway (if they'd even left yet) and wouldn't be by for a few minutes, so I made an off-course loop back to the bottom of the hill. Came back up. No sign of them. Headed back down, turned around and came back up. Still no sign of them. They should have arrived by that time, but I figured I'd ride in a holding pattern up and down that hill in case they got held up or were running especially late. Well, after four repeats, I started to think I'd underestimated the speed of their arrival and to suspect they'd sneaked past when I went off course the first time. After six repeats, I'd given up on intercepting them and wondered what I'd do for a ride today. Once more up and down and I figured, what the heck, why not just make it a nice round ten repeats? What with some lollygagging around at the top of the hill most times, and the little bits to the hill from home and back, it wound up taking two hours!

2600 feet in 24 miles, and a PR the last time up the hill.

A few things came to mind during those climbs:

- Snug boots are at least as helpful as stiff soles - they seemed to help a great deal across the top and bottom portions of the stroke, making a circular motion of the feet feel all the more natural and effective.

- Planning to intercept a group ride is not a good idea. One should arrive at the arranged meeting place on time instead: Promptness is the kindness of kings.

- There ought to be a quick, easy way to determine something like fastest vertical mile or quarter mile. People talk about cumulative elevation and top speed often enough - what about something that combines the two? So when I got home, I discovered, VAM.

I thought I might want a power meter, but this VAM stat is sufficiently interesting. Managed 1,112 on the last trip up that hill this morning (its right about 1 km), but with all the dawdling, only 371 for the ride as a whole. VeloViewer sez max on any segment of at least half a mile is 4,056. Max on any segment over a kilometer: 3963, with plenty of others above 3,000. But once we start looking at something over a mile, max is only 1401. Best VAM on an HC climb: 766, but best on a Category 1 only 611. Of course at this early stage in my cycling career, the samples for those are quite small - only three of each. Best Category 2: 808.

Jakedatc

Fri. Took a day off from clinical and rode from GFs house in CT. 32mi. 2300'. Went up a big hill called Castle Craig 7% for 1.3mi. Thought it was going to be more steady but it had a few steeper sections that surprised me. Windy cool day in arm and knee warmers

smarkinson

Friday: 90km to finish off the Strava monthly mileage challenge of 1250km. I had to do a lot of big rides this week to make the 1250km as I had missed 5 days at the start of the month due to sickness. It's been a bit wet too this week which hasn't helped. On Wednesday I did 100km in some pretty drizzly weather.

Saturday: Had a day off.

Sunday: 101km to get the Strava gran fondo challenge done for this month. I set off at 5am in the dark. Had a look at the Venus, Jupiter and Mars conjunction which was interesting, if you're up at that time of the morning check it out. It's nice riding in the dark in the early AM. Motorists (and there were only a handful) seem to give me a crap load more room than they do in daylight. Probably the novelty of seeing a cyclist in the dark freaks them out. I had planned out a nice route that would take advantage of a northerly tailwind which was supposed to pick up. But as usual, I got about 40km into the ride and thought I'd change the route. I'm not sure why I bother planning a route as I almost never end up following them.

Before setting off I had noticed that the seatpost strap on my saddle bag was just about to fall off. As I have an aero seat post and as manufacturers seem to use the least amount of stitching possible on the seatpost strap I've been going through quite a few saddlebags lately. Too late to change it but I have a velcro strap around the saddlebag (to compensate for the poor saddlerail straps on the bag) which I pulled as tight as I could. Looks like a visit to the bike shop tomorrow.

Rode across the new highway which is under construction. The bit I rode over it looks like all they need to do is put down the linemarkings. Most of the landscaping and road building seems to be done. Should have some new roads to ride on soon although there is a big tunnel for the new highway that cuts under a hill and I doubt they will let cyclists through. The magpie season is coming to a close so I only had one swoop me.

Machka 

Sunday 1 November -- Ranelagh Ramble 100K - Audax Australia event

We started the new randonneuring season today with the Ranelagh Ramble 100K.

We rode this route two weeks ago as a test ride, in a howling gale, and yet still finished within the time limit. So a) I hoped that the wind would not be anywhere near as bad, and b) I had a small degree of confidence that we could finish within the time limit again.

Today was warm ... for a change. We started the ride at 9 am and the temp was already 19C/66F.

Up the main highway, that's uphill, and then a series of left turns to get us onto the backroads. We had three patches of gravel (several km long each) on the route, and hit the first one early in the ride. All was good until the rather steep descent. I'm not a confident descender at the best of times, but especially not on gravel. That was a very, very slow descent! But we were back onto pavement at the bottom and didn't hit the next gravel section until just before the first control. That one was OK because there wasn't much in the way of descending.

A comment about the gravel sections ... while they can be a bit of a pain for us road cyclists, they do help to reduce the amount of traffic, and slow the traffic a bit.

The ride organiser met us at the first control with bananas, lamingtons, and water. Very nice. Then we were on our own for the next 70 km.

The lumpy route took us into the next town where we had a quick pitstop, and then up another main highway for about 10 km before turning off onto a quiet road running along the foreshore. That's quite a pretty road, and there we encountered our third patch of gravel.

Just before we reached the next control, the temperature hit its high for the day ... 28.4C. But we could see storm clouds gathering.

We stopped at the control, and each had a Coke Zero and ice cream bar while enjoying the few drops of rain those storm clouds tried to produce. And then we were off again for the last leg of the journey.

That leg starts with a fairly steady climb for about 5 km, and then a series of descents and smaller hills back into the start/finish location. After that 5 km climb, it is actually a reasonably quick run into town. And while the storm clouds lurked, they didn't develop into anything.

We rolled up to the cafe with 45 minutes to spare! It was a good ride ... one of my fastest in a long time.


Stats
Distance: 98.5 km
Rolling Time: 5 hours 16 min (18.7 km/h average)
Total Time: 5 hours 58 min (16.5 km/h average)
Climbing: 1174 metres (3851 feet)
Temp High: 28.4 C (83 F)
Wind: 15 km/h gusting to about 25 km/h, with a few little gusts up to about 40 km/h.

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The first two photos were taken on our recce two weeks ago ...

kbarch

Show us your rando bars!

Gravel? I can't imagine intentionally riding a route that included gravel on tires less than 2" wide.

Oh, and congrats on making such good time!

thin_concrete

My ride was nice, despite being a bit cloudy. It was in the mid-50s and I did 15 miles at an 11mph pace. No real elevation changes, but my computer doesn't track that anyway. It was the first time I did 15 miles and am thinking of going out again for a bit after lunch!

redtires

Headed down to Golden today and up 40 to Lookout Mountain. Pretty warm temps, but only because of the chinook winds coming off the mountains. A little windy to say the least! Had to pedal DOWN Lookout through some of the switchbacks!

Machka 

Thanks, and ...

If I were still in Manitoba, and it was suggested that the route would include gravel, I wouldn't have ridden it. Even on a mtn bike. The gravel roads in Manitoba are made of small boulders ... well, OK, each sharp and pointy rock is between the size of a golf ball and baseball, and the minute the road starts to pack down, they're out there again putting on another layer of rocks.

However, gravel here in Tasmania (and Victoria too, for that matter) is quite different. It is well crushed ... mostly pea sized, but in some places even finer than that, like course sand. But they also let the roads pack down so that you can usually find a track or two through it that is almost as hard and solid as the asphalt paving.

We rode most of this route a couple weeks ago, and it was well packed then ... we flew through the two gravel sections, on the part of the route we did, like we were on pavement. However, this time, the gravel sections looked and felt a little more dug up, so it was a bit more challenging finding a decent route through it.

Knowing that might be the case, I opted to go with my touring bicycle which has, I think, 32s with some tread.

Jakedatc

Sun: 25mi ride with GF. warmer than expected which was nice. tried again to beat the tie on a KOM hill but got the same time again lol it is short with little room for error so i'll have to try harder.

Carbonfiberboy 

First group ride of the fall/winter season, in the rain of course. This is the PNW after all. We started with 9 bikes, but due to various wimping, whining, and a broken spoke, finished with only 4. As we say, the eaten-out torsos of the rest will be found in the spring. We've been off the big bike for 6 weeks with the flu, asthma, and giardiasis, so we led at a moderate pace, finishing with only a 12.8 average. 33 miles and 1400' climbing. It rained the whole way and blew about 35 out of the south on our way back south, but was a hair over 50°, so no great hardship. Our bike performed flawlessly, though not the captain, having one unplanned excursion onto someone's lawn due to an unexpected call to turn and a wet manhole cover. We stayed upright though. We liked our new rain tires, NOS Rubino Pro-Tech III in 28mm.

bikecrate

Beautiful day on Saturday. Sunny, cool temps and just enough of a breeze to make it a bit of a workout. I was still on the hybrid but got in 35 miles around S. Tampa. Saturday afternoon I got to do some needed bike maintenance on the road bike, installed a new chain and adjusted the FD/RD. Sunday I went for a 40 mile ride on the ROAD bike. Finally after 10 miles into it I was able to stop worrying about the drive train and enjoy the ride. Sadly, the weather turned warm, muggy and windy. It feels more like September than November. Blah, at least I'm back on my road bike.

woodcraft

75 miles out & back to the lighthouse.

More cyclists than folks in cars (incarcerated?) out there.

Focused on steady pace & low riding position.


Better outcome than last time that I did this ride,

when tire problems led to hitch-hiking for an hour to get back to

a bus ride home.

floridamtb

HOMH (Help Our Military Heroes) 100K Ride in Boca Raton Florida. Raises money to buy vans for amputee vets. Great ride, great cause! GO NAVY!

The pic shows all vets lined up at start line with last years recipient of the van in the foreground

Rowan

Hey, my old former fundamentalist car ownership-free self wishes he had thought of that one! I don't recall the LCF extremists using it at all.

Rowan

Sorry to read about the ailments, especially the giardiasis, which I gather is a pretty nasty thing to have. Glad also you stayed upright on the tandem during the excursion. As a captain, there is nothing scarier than the thought of your stoker getting hurt... which I found out when we had a front-wheel blow-out not so long ago.

OldTryGuy

Saturday 10/31/15 was the 5 year anniversary of my first and only 200 mile day.

Left driveway at 12:45AM and returned 5:53:39 later with 100.4 miles. Feet touched the ground one time for 10 seconds to pick up an empty gel pack that I dropped. Actual moving average 17.1mph.

Left driveway again at 7:40AM after a shower, clothes change, supply refill and returned 7:14:04 later with 100.3 miles. Four stops with one LONG delay waiting for ambulance for a buddy who crashed into a parked van. Actual moving average 17.5mph.

Considering I am a 65yo geezer with more arthritis, anemic, have prostate cancer and almost zero testosterone, I am very happy with the results. Have 5 more years to prepare for another 200 miler providing I'm still on the sunny side of the grass.

bikecrate

It was disappointingly hot last night and windy too. The only thing that saved it was the sun going down earlier. However, I had a good strong 32 mile ride. This was the first time I've ridden in the dark proper in a long time. I was trying out my new Lumina 700 set. I really like it. I feel much more visible.

Carbonfiberboy 

I had 3 of those before I switched to deeper section rims. Using Kinlin XC279 rims now. Never had another problem. It wasn't rim weight that helped, it was the deep section.

bluedevil627

Didn't get a chance to ride this weekend, but got out yesterday for a good 20 mile ride to Werner Park. Very windy and kinda warm. Couple good spikes that woke me up a little. Gonna try and head out tomorrow morning as well. The LeMond has been a breeze ever since I made the commitment of getting serious and moving on from my crappy Schwinn. I was just happy that it made it through RAGBRAI as by the end of it, the front and rear brakes were essentially shot, FD and RD were proving to be extra cheap, and tape was all but gone.

Midwest Ullrich

Record temperature in November! Couldn't resist to take the bike out for an easy spin. Kensington metro park in Michigan.

Machka 

Looks like a gorgeous day for a ride!