End of July

Ken & I completed a 70-mile ride down on the cape on Saturday.  We've come to the conclusion that riding on the cape, although flat, is much harder than riding in a "normal" place:  the traffic on cape roads is generally awful, but the rail trail, while beautiful, is full of starts and stops with road crossings and random kids stopping directly in the middle of the trail - by the time you get up to "cruising speed" you have to stop again.  We spent a lot of energy getting up to a nice speed only to have to stop and then crank it up again.  We did find some nice roads that were fairly quiet and pleasant, but there weren't really enough of them for a 70-mile ride. It was a bit tedious - we ended up riding the rail trail from Brewster to Dennis, then across to Chatham where we got off the trail to ride a little loop around Chatham Light, then we took some roads back parallel to the rail trail, got back on it, and took the trail up to Orleans or so, got off the trail to ride around Rock Harbor & into Eastham, then back on the trail to the end in Wellfleet. Then we just took the trail back to Brewster. 

My total mileage for the month of July thus far is 418 miles; my total for the season to date is 805 miles.  I'll likely ride another 40-50 miles by the end of the work week, bringing my total up to 850 or so before the ride on Sunday (where I'll tack on another 100 miles or so). 

I've burned 32,978 calories so far this season. That's 183 double-tall whole milk lattes. I've climbed a combined total of 11,222 vertical feet and spent nearly 60 hours on the bike in total. 

Fundraising continues to go well. By my calculations, we're up to $3,801 raised for the Jimmy Fund, bringing our cumulative PMC total up to something like $14,000 over the years.  The average per person donation this year was $181.  Not too shabby. 

I'm very excited that we've reached our fundraising goal before the ride.  Thanks for all your help!

Training update

I joined a '300 mile per month' challenge that started on July 1. Yesterday I completed the challenge a full 12 days early.  I'm averaging 100 miles or so a week. I had been hoping to get 130 miles or so in this week, but unfortunately reality has gotten in the way, and it looks like I'll be stuck at 88 miles (unless I find some energy later on). Ken ended up having to work all night long last night, and we both got very little sleep (2 or 3 hours, intermittent). As its supposed to rain heavily at some point this afternoon, we're skipping todays ride. I've been feeling a bit fatigued, and it's not worth it to push too hard at this point.  We'll ride tomorrow morning instead, and get a good long ride in this next weekend - if we can do 70-75 miles we just might make it on August 3rd.  I'm going to try to convince Ken to either leave work early or go in late several times a week between now & the ride to get him some more miles in on his bike.  We'll see.  A little more time in the saddle right now might save him a lot of suffering later on. 

Fundraising Update

Well, we've made our goal. Thanks again to all of you who have helped us along way. Your generosity is commendable. We are still asking for donations, however, so if you've been planning to donate but haven't yet gotten around to it, it's not too late. In fact, our fundraising isn't actually due until October.  Even though we've reached our goal, we would still like to raise as much money as possible for the Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. 

To date, we've raised $3,663 for 2008s PMC ride.  We still have some donation requests to send out & I'm still working on getting all those "thank yous" in the mail.   The average donation is $193 (although I'll admit that average was brought up significantly by one large donation).  We've had donations from Hawaii, Washington State, California, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and a great many from Massachusetts (as one might expect since we live here). 

We've only received one request to ride in the memory of a loved one:  George Joji "Papa" Tanabe.  We'll also be riding in the memory of Uncle Richard Nagano as well as in the honor of my mother. We hope that our efforts to help fund a cure for cancer would have been (or, in the case of my mother, are) a source of pride for these loved ones.  We'll continue to keep them in our thoughts along the way. 

Ride Route

So I've mapped out the 1 day route that we are riding this year. The elevation profile is showing a measely 207 feet of climbing and a length of 45 miles.   According to our ride booklet, there is a breakfast buffet from 6 am until 7:15 am.  It's possible we will have 2 big challenges on the day of the ride: 1) getting to that buffet before the ride starts and 2) getting home after the ride. The ride itself should be pretty easy. Unless, of course, the weather rears it's potentially ugly head.

The PMC is not a race. However, I would be curious to see how quickly I could finish a 45-mile, more or less flat, fully supported ride. It is tempting. I think perhaps that of for some reason we are unable to ride to the start line (and thus have to drive), we'll at least know how quickly we can finish the ride.  It's tempting, that's for sure. Wrong, but tempting.

The ride from our house to the start at Babson College is 27 miles; on the way TO the ride, it's a nice 311 foot descent.  Of course, the reverse is true. What goes up must come down - or, in our case, we still have to get home, and it will be all up hill at the end of the day (well, more likely the middle of the day. Maybe we'll eat and a take a nap or something before we head home). 

In total, for our PMC day this year, we're looking at 99 miles and 516 feet of total elevation gain.  Not so bad. We can do that.

Training Totals

Well, we're back home now, and I have my handy little spreadsheet that shows my seasonal totals. I've ridden just a hair over 600 miles, burned 25,000 kcals, and spent 45 hours in the saddle. On average, it costs me 40 calories to ride a mile on my bike.

25,000 calories is like eating 581 pounds of lobster meat. Follow that link if you were looking for an excuse to indulge. Apparently, the average person has their fill of lobster after a quarter-pound of cooked meat - which means I've biked enough to consume 2,324 servings of lobster meat. Thats a whole lot of lobster, and doesn't really sound that appetizing.

We were in the local paper...

Last month we were noted in the local paper, along with the other 10 town residents who are participating in the PMC.

More recently, six town residents who are volunteering their time and skills to the PMC during the ride weekend were also noted.

I was pleased to see that our local paper recognizes both volunteers and riders - we riders can't do anything without the volunteers. Without the riders, there's no event to volunteer for.  I'm very happy that our town paper recognizes both groups equally. The volunteers don't get enough recognition (that I see, anyway - we get a lot of "thanks" for doing the ride from our supporters along with a donation). However, during the ride weekend, if you thank a volunteer (as a rider) for volunteering, they simply turn it around on you and thank you for riding.  But really, it's the volunteers that make the ride happen - they make it possible, they make it successful, they make it safe and they make it fun.  They also make it so that 100% of the money we riders raise goes straight to the Jimmy Fund. 

Training on the Cape

Well, I'm borrowing Ken's computer while we watch Le Tour on TV, so I don't have access to my cumulative totals for the season. But yesterday we did a long training ride on the Cape ("the Cod" as my niece used to say).  "Long" is a such a relative term - last year, the ride we did yesterday would have been considered "shorter" or maybe "medium length".  Funny the difference a year makes.

Yesterday's ride started in Brewster and ended up somewhere in N. Truro. We started in Brewster around noon or so - we had some errands to do in the morning, so we couldn't get an earlier start. Which is too bad, as we were riding around the cape during the hottest part of the day (although not bad) and during the heaviest traffic (Saturday is turn-over day on the cape - most weekly rentals run Saturday to Saturday).  

We took the rail trail east toward Orleans and Wellfleet, and we were very pleased to find that the rail trail was as wonderful as we remembered from last year.  We cruised along at 25 MPH with a heart rate in the 140s - below my target training zone. It was just wonderful. For miles. 

Ocean View Drive in Wellfleet (I think that is Wellfleet, although I'm not sure) was beautiful - the view was incredible, as usual. The roads on this part of the cape are beautiful and undulating. Quite fun.  We did have to get on Route 6 for a little while, and we were very saddened to have come across a cyclist headed westbound who had just been hit by a car. His mountain bike was under the front end of an SUV. He was conscious, and some people with first aid training was attending to him, while other passers-by directed traffic around him while waiting for emergency personnel to arrive.  One of the first-aid administrators had immobilized the cyclists head, and a second person had his hand on the cyclists chest and was speaking with him. The situation was under control and there was nothing we could do to help in any way, so we just passed slowly & carefully and got out of the way.  

Some of you may know that Ken & I took a wilderness first aid class together in March. For some crazy reason, I had always assumed that if the need for those skills came up, we'd be out hiking in the woods somewhere. It didn't even occur to me that as cyclists these skills might come in handy. Perhaps thats called denial. But once again, I'm really happy we took that step to educate ourselves. 

The rest of the ride was good, but windy. The wind really wore us down especially on Shore Drive in N. Truro just before the Provincetown line. This stretch of road is sandwiched between dunes & some cottages to the west and a giant pond to the east - in between each structure we past, the wind would buffet our bike and drive us sideways, so we'd correct, and then the wind would be gone as we entered into another wind shadow, and we'd end up not adjusting quickly enough and veering off to the side as if we had over corrected. It took a lot of attention to deal with this with no shoulder on a busy road. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was draining. Eventually, the bike computers read "30 miles" and we just turned around in order to stay within our planned mileage for the day.

The way back was, or course, beautiful. We stayed mostly to the west of route 6 in a hilly, wild-looking area in the south Truro/Wellfleet area. I can't wait to go back and explore these roads a little more. Simply wonderful biking.  

Overall, I burned 2604 kcals in just over 4.5 hours of cycling. Our average was pretty good in the beginning, but it dropped once we got up into the hills of Wellfleet and then into the wind of Truro. Ken's cramping got pretty bad for the last third of the ride, and it became a very quiet, very lonely ride. He wont talk to me when he's in difficulty, and it's just very lonely and quiet.  I think mostly the cramping was due to a combination of conditioning and not eating enough. We had planned to stop for a sandwich somewhere, but it never happened. We had brought some food, most of which I gave to Ken as he seems to need it more than I do.  Ken burned almost a thousand more kcals than I did - and I promise, we were on the same ride. When we were about 10 miles from the being done, Ken ran out of water, and we learned how to pass bottles back and forth. Just as we completed the last hand-off, a rabbit darted off the side of the bike path right in front of my wheel. I screamed, Ken swerved a bit, and the rabbit ran off unharmed. Which is good, if it had hit either one of us, it would have caused us to crash and likely land ON or next to a skunk we passed foraging on the opposite side of the bike path. What's worse than crashing? Crashing and landing on an unsuspecting skunk.  We'll be thankful for small miracles.

We made it home, split a quick sandwich, enjoyed the outdoor shower and then proceeding to cook up Frank & Larry - the two lobsters we picked up at the Orleans farmers market that morning. Lobsters, apparently, are pretty damn healthy. Per 100 grams of cooked, edible product, Lobster has 98 kcals, where as Chicken breast has 165, a whole egg has 149 and beef has 216.  Lobster has "21" of protein (my little handout does not say 21 what, but whatever); chicken has 31; egg has 12; and beef has 30.  Lobster is very lean with 0.6 for fat, as compared with chicken (3.6), egg (10) or beef (9.9); it's also low in cholesterol, with 72 as compared with chicken (85), egg (423) or beef (86).    We're not starving too bad today, so it must have been a fairly good meal.

Fundraising update: 7/9/08

We're at about 30% of our fundraising goal - we've raised $895 to date. Thanks so much to those of you who have already contributed! Our average per-person contribution is $81. At this rate, we'll need an additional 25 donors to make our fundraising goal. We officially have until fall to raise the total amount, so I am trying not to panic yet. I think we can do it.

I have to send more letters out here shortly, but on the off chance that anyone would like help support the PMC & the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute before I send them the letter, here is the link to our webpage.

We'll get there, sure enough. We'll just keep plugging away...

The 4th of July...

.. has come and gone. Hope everyone had a happy & safe holiday. Ken took last week off - a much needed break from constantly checking his blackberry. It was really nice to walk into a room and not crash into him because he was standing in the doorway reading email. It appeared to have been good for him as well :-)

We did some biking last week - a group ride Wednesday morning at 6 a.m., and we did a 35 mile ride on Thursday (they weren't kidding with air quality alert) and a 40 mile ride on Sunday.

Thursday's ride was hard. It wasn't long, there weren't any big hills, but the air was thick, there was an ozone alert, and it was hot (there was a breeze). We didn't get started until late morning, and it was just draining. We started in Acton, and wove our way through Concord & Carlisle. Almost got killed in Carlisle. I have named that ride on MapMyRide.com as "Carlisle drivers are awful". Please, people, when you pass good cyclists obeying traffic laws, share the road, will you? for the love of god... we have as much of a right to ride single file on the road as the other people who drive on the road. A legal right.

Anyway, after the Thursdays ride, we went out to Lunch at Savory Lane in West Acton. We could have easily eaten, oh, I dunno, the entire menu. But we didn't. We had nice normal sized sandwiches and a lemonade. And then just kind of stared at each other. We were zonked. We ended up just kind of be lazy around the house the rest of the day and going for an early dinner at Olive Garden and ate everything in sight. Felt good enough after that to stay up and watch the town fireworks from our back deck.

Friday we went to Wachusett Mtn. to watch part of the Longsjo Classic stage race- this stage on the 4th was around and then up Wachusett Mtn. I am very happy we went. It was kind of a miserable coll & dreary day, but it was really intense to see the men's elite racers come down mountain road in front of the ski area at some 70 MPH or so. That's what I heard their speed was, anyway - the main field when screaming by at some ridiculous speed & it was incredibly loud. I've decided that on some levels, bike racing is much easier to watch on TV than in person. I got literally dizzy watching all those bikes scream by. The Stage finish was at the top of the auto road up Wachusett - and it was really cool. The women's elite group was decided by a sprint right to the line - conveniently, exactly where I was standing.

Another great thing I noticed at the race was that the women's elite (pro-level) racers came in all shapes & sizes. With men's racing, most of the guys are these skeleton looking super-lean guys - the kind you want to feed before the waste away completely. But the women were normal sized. They weren't super tall or super short or super skinny. Most of them were healthy normal weights - and there was a wide range. If I have a daughter, she's going to have to go watch these types of events just to help reinforce the accurate body image idea. It was really refreshing. Even as an adult, I found this really uplifting.

One bummer about the race: I found out afterward that since the women & men's groups shared the course, the race referees would STOP the women's race. Litteraly STOP them where they were - so that the men's race could pass. Not once, but several times. So anyone lagging behind could potentially catch up with the group. Or, they would be stopped before a big climb and have to climb it from a dead stop, with no momentum. Or someone in difficulty could get a chance to recover a bit. I'm not sure how that can be acceptable, and it really made me mad. Equality in sports my butt.

Anyway - back to our rides... Sunday's ride went much better. We had good legs, weren't sore afterward, and had plenty of energy after our ride. Amazing what a difference a little clean air and a little rest will make. We also had to build in some stretching for me, as my shoulder problem had progressed into a neck problem, and it was becoming a REAL problem (I've now started a new round of chiropractic treatment - I should be "done" around next February or so). It's really hard to manage this shoulder issue of mine without resorting to the muscle relaxants. But I didn't (on the off chance that I could be pregnant). During one of these stretching breaks, we saw a guy pass us on a Harley - with a pair of crutches strapped to the side. That's not something you see everyday.

In total, we road just over 100 miles last week. I'm up to a total of 510 miles on the season, and it should go up rapidly from here. I have a ride planned on Friday morning which will likely be about 25 miles, and then a 60-65 mile ride planned for Saturday (I also road 20 miles on Monday) - so this week should total about a 100 miles as well. That will probably be our average over the coming weeks, although I may increase it a little bit in a couple of weeks. Its a fine line between adequately training and over-training. I'm hoping we'll be in the "adequate" category.

Totals to date:

Hours in the saddle: almost 39 hours. Almost a whole "work week" (yea, right)
Calories burned: 22,005 kcals (equivalent to 60 peanut butter & jelly sandwiches)
Vertical feet climbed: 7,878 feet. (mapmyride has changed their mapping software, and it's not nearly as accurate, so I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep that tally going - any new routes will be off by several hundred feet, which is just annoying).


Nutrition continues to be tricky. I'm trying to closely monitor my caffeine intake - and most of the sport gels & supplements have caffeine in them - I can eat two flavors of Gu, one of which actually tastes ok. It's too hot at the moment to bake anything, so homemade protein bars are out. I'm trying to avoid lunch meat, which makes getting enough protein during the day tricky. I'm seriously considering fishsticks and chicken nuggets for lunch everyday. On Sunday we brought chunks of cooked (microwaved) potatoes with us - lightly salted w/ herbs. They were good (way more potassium than a banana, and much more earth friendly), but a little tricky to eat while breathing hard. I got potato on my shoe at one point. I imagine if I got potato in my drivetrain that could be bad.

June wrap-up

Well, June is over. We've had a nice string of thunderstorms nearly every afternoon. For the first time ever, I saw hail in New England. Luckily, I've gotten into the habit of riding in the morning. As a result, I've only had to cancel one ride due to weather conditions thus far.

Fundraising: We've raised $570, which means we're at 19% of our goal. Not too bad, but we still have a long way to go.

Training is going a bit slow. We'll be getting into the grind this month, and wont have time for doing much else besides riding. We're a bit behind on the long rides, but I think we'll be able to get them in. Let's hope for some good weather so we can get it done.

I've ridden 388 miles on the season thus far. I've climbed a total of 6,139 vertical feet and burned some 17,000 kcals. Our training rides have been short - in the 20-30 mile range, but we've been averaging several hundred feet of climbing each ride, and our average speed has been going up. In the past, this has translated into better endurance on the long flat rides, which is what we're more or less expecting for our PMC ride this year. Maybe some gentle rolling hills. I hope to get a long flat ride in later this week and see how the endurance is shaping up in order to test my theory. But it's worked in the past.

Thanks again to all of you who have donated to our 2008 PMC ride. We literally couldn't do it without you.