Another (metric) Century

Just dropped in to pick up the mail . . . 

Last Thursday we had a spring downpour and I stayed home in the evening to do a little yoga-therapy. It was nice to crack my windows open a bit to listen to the rain and smell the fresh air while going through a gentle routine. Friday the weather cleared up a bit and I did a ten-mile ride in the afternoon, and an easy thirty-mile ride on Saturday. Which all turned out to be just the right way to work up to another 62-miler on Sunday, when I rode a loop from the Silver Reef Casino on Slater Road, to the town of Blaine.

The most memorable feature of this route is that it truly felt like more downhill than uphill. It seemed much easier than the Chuckanut-Colony Road 62-miler I rode two or three weeks ago. (That is a pretty hilly ride.) Possibly I got lucky in preparing for the ride, or maybe the wind was at my back all the way around. There are also a lot of pretty views, and an interesting change of scene in the border town of Blaine.

From my apartment I rode Ferndale Road, to Slater Road, then on to the casino. There is a well-known bike route up a steep hill climb on Slater to Lake Terrell Road, but I turned off early to Elder Road. Partly I wanted to skip the steep climb, and partly out of curiosity, because Elder Road is marked as a tsunami evacuation route. It's a narrow two-lane road with little to no shoulder, but very fun to ride, straight with gentle waves tending downhill all the way to Douglas Road. I turned left there, rode up a short hill to Lake Terrell Road, which becomes Rainbow Road, and then Kickerville Road, which I followed north until it t-bones at Loomis Trail Road. I turned left there and continued north all the way to Blaine, where I toured around the harbor and marina and stopped for a snack break.

I believe this used to be the Canadian Consulate -
or the Customs House. Mail services are big business in Blaine.

Heading home I took the long, scenic route around Drayton Harbor, Semiahmoo Drive, and Birch Point Road in to Birch Bay Village. There is one shortish but steep climb up from Drayton Harbor to the Semiahmoo Parkway intersection, followed by a nice downhill stretch on Semiahmoo Drive.

From Birch Bay I followed the familiar route of the Coast Millenium trail, riding Aldergrove Road to Kickerville, Rainbow, Lake Terrell and back to Slater Road. There I tore down the steep hill I'd skipped climbing at the start, maxing out at 38mph and holding above 17mph as far as the Haxton Way stoplight at the intersection by the Silver Reef Casino, only stopping because the light changed to red. Then I rode Slater Road until it crossed the Nooksack River, where I turned left across the road to the river trail through Hovander Park, and on to home.

Nice spot for a coffee break

Mushroom Season

http://velonews.competitor.com/2014/05/news/opening-stages-across-ireland-produce-surprises_326703

I should be ashamed to call myself a Pacific Northwesterner. The weather has followed a pattern of a few sunny days followed by a few days of heavy rain, and I've been wimping out. I've been managing a few 25-30 mile rides each week, I've developed some funny tan lines on my arms and my face is a little less pallid. But it's been more maintenance-level training than progressive improvement.

Five Days of Rain

That's the forecast. I managed thirty miles on Saturday, while running errands and shopping, but my training plan called for a seventy-plus-mile ride. We probably won't have a sunny day - or a rainless day, at least - until later this week. So I'm falling far behind in trying to build up to the distances I'll need to be ready for a century ride at the end of June.

The weather has been perfect for envelope-stuffing, though, so I got some fund-raising letters out over the weekend. (My appeal is posted on the RED-BELL 100 page tab at right.) The purpose of this ride is to support World Bicycle Relief, an organization that provides bicycles to people in struggling communities in Africa.

I was a little suspicious about this project when I read that the ride is limited to 600 participants, yet the fund-raising minimum is only $150 (plus registration and event fees). It just didn't seem like this would raise enough money to cover event costs, never mind benefiting poor African communities. Then I read about some of last year's participants who raised $6000 or more, and realized that the problem is more with free-riders like me, not the event. A little further checking, and I found that although World Bicycle Relief gets some low marks for accountability and transparency, 77% of the money raised goes to the cause and not to administration or event costs.

Bragging Rights

If I felt my ride around the tulip fields was more tourism than training, I made up for it last weekend. On Friday I rode 42 miles from Ferndale through Bellingham, then along the Interurban trail, which runs along the hillside above Chuckanut Drive, then back home. The railroad grade is an easy ride among fresh spring greenery, and it's always interesting to see all the places where old trees blew down in winter storms, or rock slides let loose in the rainy season. Besides, after my evening yoga class was cancelled last week, I got out a "Yoga for Cyclists" dvd and practiced a bit on my own. I should definitely stay with that: between the yoga and skimming along the woodsy trail, I returned home feeling limber, refreshed and energetic.

Saturday was a rainy day spent indoors doing chores and housework. And planning a more challenging ride.

The Chuckanut-Colony Mountain Loop runs along Chuckanut Drive to the Colony Road turn-off a bit past the Zen Garden; Colony Road loops around, crosses under I-5 and comes out near the Alger Park & Ride, where you ride uphill and back over the freeway to Lake Samish Road, which becomes West Lake Samish Road, until you cross the little bridge, where it becomes North Lake Samish Road. I rode up the hill to the Shell station at the freeway overpass, where I turned left to Old Samish Road, and rode in to Fairhaven. This makes a hilly 30-mile loop, but since I started and finished in Ferndale I rode 62 miles.

It's a difficult, tiring ride because, even though there are lots of fun downhill stretches, they aren't really long enough to recover fully from the uphills and sections of short rollers. Actually, I padded the mileage a little by riding a mile around Ferndale at the end, to earn bragging rights by making my odometer roll over to 62 miles, a metric century.

The ride took a bit more than five hours, which is not so good, because I'm hoping to finish the Red-Bell Century in less than seven hours. But I believe that will be a flatter route. (I hope)

Tulip Tour Revisited

It's hard to go wrong taking photos at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

My favorites from this year:

Pretty, but not really a safe bike route

Unfortunately, the bike-riding aspect of the trip was disappointing. I was aiming to break fifty miles, but only rode 47, including ten miles each way just getting between Ferndale and the Bellingham Transit Center, where I caught the 80X bus to Mount Vernon. The weather was iffy on Friday, so I went on Saturday, when there was much more car traffic around the fields, and a long back-up on the Mount Vernon freeway exit. I should have got off the bus earlier, at the Chuckanut Transit Center, then biked to the tulip fields by way of Josh Wilson Road. Instead, we were stuck on the off-ramp for about a half-hour, and I didn't get started riding until after one o'clock. I ate a Clif bar before I hit the road, but no lunch, and besides I'd cooled down and stiffened up while sitting on the bus.

To get my legs charged up and get away from the car traffic, I took off on a smaller farm-road, and ended up on Summers Road, in these two photos. The Skagit River and many smaller branches, creeks and tributaries wind around the flat farm country, often with diked roadways running next to them. These roads are pretty and interesting to ride, although you never see much of the river because of the dikes. Unfortunately it can be very unsafe for cycling - narrow lanes, with little to no shoulder, blind curves, and speed limits as high as 50mph in places.

Several years ago I came within inches of being side-swiped by a big 4x4 truck pulling an empty trailer at 50mph. I was riding next to the high, sloping dike bank, with a barbed-wire fence about halfway up, and two inches of gravel to the right of the car lane. An on-coming car left no room for the truck to move left, which was just as well because that would have caused the trailer to swing to the right toward me. All I could do was look ahead along the white line and try to stay steady and not flinch as the truck blew past less than a foot from my sleeve. It wasn't the truck driver's fault, he just had nowhere to go to give me room. If I had known the road conditions, I wouldn't have taken that road, and now I stay off those winding river roads unless I'm riding on the open side, away from the dike bank.

The Festival also features kite-flying and balloon rides

I had to ride hard to catch the last bus back to Bellingham. I ate another Clif bar, but the two energy bars and a bottle of Powerade was all the nourishment I had all afternoon. I cooled down again on the bus ride back, which made the bike ride home to Ferndale kind of a drag, and I ended up feeling very stiff, sore and tired.

On Sunday I took a hilly 18 mile ride at an easy pace, and I rode 15 miles to and from school today, but still don't feel quite recovered. Another lesson in bad planning and poor dietary habits.

A Good Weekend

It didn't seem like so much, but over spring break I rode five of seven days, for a total of 146 miles. There was my 35 mile jaunt to Birch Bay, then on Saturday I rode the Samish Way hillclimb past Lake Padden Park, starting from Ferndale. I was glad to have low hill-climber gears, but the climb seemed easier than I remembered, and easier than I expected. I crossed over the freeway, but skipped the Lake Samish loop, turning right at the Shell gas station, to Old Lake Samish Way, to ride the very fun, fast, pretty roller-coaster through the woods downhill to Chuckanut Drive, making a hilly 40+ mile ride. Sunday I took an easy 20-mile round trip to my favorite brunch place, The Bagelry. I started off this week with a 25-mile errand-running ride, but today, Tuesday was rainy, and also the first day of spring quarter - back to school.

I did a little bit of spring cleaning over break, too. All the time I've been so poor, I've been skimping on expensive little things like light bulbs. I had been using only two of those new eco-green curly-bulbs in the fixture above the bathroom sink, but I splurged and replaced them with four 60-watt soft-whites. Now the bathroom is the brightest room in my apartment.

After my final exam I stopped in at Best Buy to celebrate, and bought a new vacuum cleaner. The one I chose only weighs fifteen pounds, but came in a box about three and a half feet high and 18-20 inches on the sides. It was too awkward to carry home on the bus, so I asked to have it delivered. Naturally, they couldn't just send me the one from the store, it had to be ordered from the distribution center. Naturally it was mis-routed to Illinois, where the container was delayed overnight before being shipped to Bellingham, so my vacuum cleaner could sit in the UPS distribution center here over the weekend. I wasn't home when UPS came on Monday, but they delivered this morning, eleven days after I visited the store.

It was worth the wait, though. My old vacuum, left over from my college days, has a quart-sized bag, very weak suction, and the only attachment left is the two-inch wide upholstery nozzle. I had been starting to notice some vague sinus-infection-type symptoms which I blame on not being able to vacuum properly for three years, but I think my cat and I will both be healthier and happier soon.

Spring Break - Week 8

Eight weeks into my training plan for the Red-Bell 100 century ride in June, and I haven't been logging the mileage I intended, but I'm making up for it this week and expect the weather will be more conducive over the next ten weeks. To avoid over-use injury, I'm trying to be conscientious about stretching and doing yoga, and I've been wrapping my left ankle at night to self-treat some tendon problems. I read something online about an inflatable boot to be worn at night to treat plantar fasciitis; it keeps the foot flexed to prevent shortening of the Achilles tendon. I didn't want to bother trying to find and purchase the boot, I'm just wrapping loosely with an ace bandage 3-4 nights a week, and it seems to help.

I suspect one thing that contributed to my tendon problems was riding improperly with clip-in pedals. Unfortunately, when I first tried using clip-ins, the advice I'd heard was to pull up on the pedal, and I think this is partly what hurt my ankle. Later I read that you should think of pedaling in circles, rather than up and down, and just try to keep pressure on the pedal half-way into the backstroke, rather than pulling up.

Riding with clips supposedly can create up to a 30% increase in power on the pedal stroke, but I had two other reasons for clipping: first, once I get them fine-tuned, the clips will hold my foot in position and keep my foot, ankle and knee in alignment, and second, they keep my foot from slipping off the pedal, which has been a problem with my new Giro shoes when it's wet or on fast downhills.

I'm using the Shimano pedals which are flat on one side and have a clip on the other, and for this week I've been riding with only one foot clipped in at a time so I'll always have one foot free in case I get stuck or forget I'm clipped in. It's very common - nothing to be embarrassed about - for riders to roll up to a stop, panic when they find their feet are stuck to the pedals, and fall over sideways in the street. Perfectly normal. One thing I learned is to try to fall over to the left, so you don't bend your rear derailleur. It happens.

Today I rode a 35-mile round trip to Birch Bay, for the first time since last summer, and discovered a few changes at the state park. Some sort of meeting room or conference building is almost complete near the main restrooms across from the beach. And an automated check-in system has been added at the entrance to the camping area, along with digital vending machines to purchase the Discover Pass, which is now required for vehicles using Washington state parks.

I'm not sure whether bicyclists who camp at state parks are required to have the pass, but at last year's price of $30 for the year, if I decide to take any camping trips this summer, I will be glad to throw in my share to support the parks system. Unless a vehicle license plate number is required.