Ice Fishing and Unlabeled Streets

Today's Ride

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When I started this training, I knew that it was still winter and I would have to deal with some cold weather. I thought most of the snow was over and we were pretty much in the thawing stage just before Spring. The past couple days of near freezing weather sure proved me wrong, and today I actually rode by some people out on a lake ice fishing. I suppose it doesn't matter too much, the roads are clear and once I get moving it doesn't feel too cold. That being said, I am really looking forward to when I can bike outside without bundling up first.

One of the idiosyncrasies of New England is the fact that they don't bother labeling roads half the time. This is not just an honor exclusive to the obscure side street, you could be going on a major highway for miles without having any idea of the actual road name. While this is sometimes endearing, most of the time it's just downright annoying, today it was annoying. If you look at the map (which you can get to through the link at the top of this section, I'm working on embedding these maps directly in the page),you'll notice a strange loop where the route gets off of 125. This was not intentional, both the location where Boston Rd splits and the turn onto Willow Ave are completely unlabeled, and it was only through guesswork that I was able to get back on the correct path.

Training Plans

There are two biking best practices that I currently have not turned into habits, and doing so is my first goal when it comes to training for this century. These are applying equal force at all points during a pedal stroke, and pedaling at an extremely high cadence.

Continuous force is probably the more important of the two, and means that even while the pedal is coming back up the foot is exerting force. This is important because it uses the leg muscles more efficiently, and causes the rider to tire less quickly. There are essentially two ways to accomplish this requirement: toe clips and clipless pedals. Toe clips are essentially little harnesses attached to the pedals in which you place your feet, so that when your leg is coming up you have the ability to pull the pedal. Clipless pedals are named in a somewhat misleading way, as they involve special shoes and pedals which clip together.

As clipless pedals are significantly more expensive, I have toe clips attached to my bicycle. Unfortunately, simply having the ability to pedal more efficiently is significantly different from actually pedaling more efficiently. I'm still pushing down really hard and then letting the foot be lifted up by the force of the down stroke of the opposite foot. This is just habit, so I'm going to make it a point that throughout my training I will occasionally rest one leg limply on the pedal while the other foot does all the work. This is a variation on single foot pedaling I've devised to make such a method possible outdoors.

A higher cadence currently feels like a much loftier goal. Cadence is essentially RPMs in bike language, and it is recommended in most cycling literature that a cadence of around 90 should be maintained. I've tried to keep a higher cadence, but I guess I'm so out of shape that I just get myself out of breath really quickly. So I've broken the goal of a cadence of 90 into several subgoals, just like I would develop a large piece of software.

No Coasting

How am I ever to hope to keep a high cadence if half of every ride is spent coasting downhill? My goal for the next week is to just make it through an entire ride without ceasing to pedal.

Intervals

Once I've established a pace that I can actually maintain without a break for the entire ride, it's time to begin increasing my cadence in intervals. This is a tried and true method of training that many marathon runners use to improve their speed more quickly.