Data from my bike ride

[Bob M]

Today, I rode 40 miles. It took me 3 hours, 9 minutes. My average HR was
148 (about 82 percent of my max HR). As an experiment, I set the limits of
my HR monitor to be between 86 and 99 percent of my max HR (180). I was in
this range for 1 hour, 24 minutes. This is 44% of the time.

Anyway, I'm still obese as per BMI, so I'm hoping that more weight loss
will help me get up some of these hills!

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Bob M in CT remove 'x.' to reply

[Bob M]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:43:26 -0600, Pat > wrote:

[cut]
> Bob, I'm curious. You have a lot of hills. We don't. We have lots of
> wind!
> How do you tell the inclination of your hills?
> I rode a 68 mile 100K yesterday (why can't they just say it was 109 K and
> get it over with?). The wind was just terrible and caused several
> people to
> just give up and ride the sag wagon in.
>
> Pat in TX
>
>

Well, I think that riding in the wind is worse than riding in hills. On a
hill, you can see the top (generally -- some roads are pretty twisty), so
you know when you can hammer and when you have to cool it. With wind, if
you over-extend yourself, you might not be able to make it. You have no
idea whether the wind will continue, speed up, slow down, change
direction, etc. Plus, a strong headwind can make it darn near impossible
to go fast. I got caught in a "monsoon" in AZ one time, and it was all I
could do to ride about 5 miles per hour on totally flat ground. It was
brutal.

As for inclination, my 40 mile ride has probably 2,500-3,000 feet of
verticle climbing, as per my GPS's software (I've not taken the GPS with
me to confirm). I live on a hill, so I'm immediately riding up and down.
There's a series of short, intense hills, then it gets flat for a
distance, then it's rolling, then all downhill, then I turn around and go
back up a hill that's about 5 miles long. If I continue on, there's a
lot of climbing from there to and through another town. For 40 miles, I
generally turn around, so it's down hill quite a bit, then rolling hills,
then the last six miles is brutal -- there's 6 relatively short but steep
hills. Inclination is usually percent grade -- rise over run, so that
rising 100 feet in 1000 feet would be a 10% grade. Some of the hills are
long but not steep, some are very steep but short (luckily!), some are a
mixture. There's one where I'm at the easiest gear I have or maybe one up
from there (I ride a 30x25 or 30x23) and I have to stand. This is a very
steep hill, but it's not that long before it mellows out.

I think that riding hills when overweight is actually good, as it really
causes you to become adept at high output. My theory is that if I can
lose another 20-30 pounds before or during next year's riding season, I
might be able to keep up with C+ or B riders (I'm a solid C rider right
now, which is 12-14 mph; C+ is 15 mph, and B is 17-18 mph), particularly
in a group ride. Plus, I think it would be fun sometimes to ride in a
group, but every time I go on a 100k ride, I can keep up until the hills,
then I get dropped. When you get dropped going up, you can sometimes make
up the time (larger weight = faster going down with only slightly
increased air resistance), but a few hills in succession means that you
never see the people again. I'm in a confusing state right now, because C
rides are too short for me, but I'd be killed on the C+/B rides (generally
longer) due to the hills. So, my weight is really hurting me in terms of
going on group rides. The bad part about group rides is that you're
riding at someone else's pace, not your own.

It's just weird -- I'm technically "obese," but I don't feel obese.

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Bob M in CT
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