Category: Cycling

Yesterday, I finally succeeded riding up Toe Jam Hill in zone 2, breathing only through my nose. This short stretch of road from South Beach sports a 23% grade. Some caveats: I was still breathing pretty hard, had to tack back and forth a few times.

Aside from entertainment, my larger purpose is to establish that anyone can climb any hill on a bike with the proper attitude. Of course, that statement is not true, there are still plenty of hills I cannot climb.  Nevertheless, Toe Jam Hill establishes a steep upper bound.

Clearly cycling speaks a language of metaphor. Life challenges us with many hills to climb.  Even if we can’t make it up K2 or Everest, even if we can’t swim across the Atlantic Ocean or bring peace to the Middle East, I claim the biggest impediment to achieving most dreams is our attitude.

I stopped wearing a heart rate monitor while riding several years ago. In this post I’ll explain why, what I do instead, and an experiment I performed check one of my assumptions.

heart rate zones

Several different models specify a table of heart rates and the intensity of effort. Working at low intensity, a person has a lower heart rate, can go indefinitely, burns more fat, less glycogen and breathes easily. Working it peak intensity, the same individual has a heart rate near maximum, can go for only a short burst, burns 100% glycogen, and is nearly out of breath. A typical model describes five zones.

In the above table, 90% of max heart rate corresponds to a person’s lactate threshold, or the point at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in the bloodstream.  Below this threshold, a cyclist is working aerobically, limited only by the stored glycogen in the liver and muscles.  Above this threshold requires more energy than the body can supply for more than a brief period. Coaches commonly recommend using a heart rate monitor (HRM) to structure training: hard workouts in zone 4, intervals in zone 5, and recovery rides in zone 2.

Riding without a Heart rate monitor

I found many riders using an HRM, tend to be more focused on the numbers reported by by a gadget, less aware of how we feel, what is going on around us. Being a left brain obsessive, I was particularly prone to this habit.  Wanting to enjoy the ride more, I came up with the following substitute for HRM numbers.

1) The zone 2 threshold corresponds to how fast I can ride while breathing only through my nose.  Other writers have described this as the pace at which one can comfortably carry on a conversation.

2) The LT (zone 4) threshold corresponds to how fast I can ride up a long hill – a climb requiring more than 10 minutes, preferably much longer.  It takes some experience to find this limit.  Because it takes three minutes for a person’s heart rate to stabilize in response to energy demands, the climb must be long enough for the body to reach a steady state.

Most of the time I’m riding by myself I’m in zone 2. There’s no reason to push harder or even care about my heart rate zone.  If I do a hard climb, I’ll know when I push my heart rate to zone 4 or the LT.  If I’m out “playing” with friends, maybe I’ll do the same on a flat road.  No HRM required.

EXPERIMENTAl RESULTS

Yesterday, I dug up my heart rate strap and wore it during an hour of indoor cycling to check my supposition that the zone 2 threshold corresponds to max effort at which I could breath only through my nose.  Results supported this model.  My zone 2 threshold, calculated by the Kavonen method, is 127 bpm.  Before I was warmed up, I found I had to start breathing through my mouth at 125 bpm.  After I was warmed up, after riding at my LT (163 bpm) for an extended period, the easing off to recover, I could ride at 135 bpm and still breath through my nose.

conclusion

Unless one has a very specific need for a heart rate monitor, leave it at home, or better yet don’t purchase one.  Ride the bike.  Have fun.

Another easy ride this afternoon, this time because I still felt trashed after indoor cycling this morning.  Summer was supposed to have ended Labor Day.  I keep wondering when the rains will arrive.

Three consecutive days of hard rides had cooked my legs, so yesterday called for an easy ride.  On Bainbridge Island, any ride over a couple miles long is going to include hills, but I claim it’s possible to ride easily up just about any hill; it’s just a matter of how slow you need to ride.

To test my claim, I selected Baker Hill, one of the longer climbs on the island with a 10% grade.  My litmus test for easy means riding while breathing only through my nose, which corresponds roughly to riding in heart rate zone 2.  (I don’t wear a heart rate monitor.)

Strava reports that I climbed the west side of Baker Hill at an average speed of 3.2 miles per hour.  That’s excruciatingly slow on a bike, about the same speed one could walk up the hill, but I had little difficulty riding at that speed and breathing only through my nose.

I have long claimed the primary challenge climbing any hill is mental. With the proper attitude, setting reasonable expectations, anyone should be able to climb any hill.  The problem we often face is surrendering to expectations that we should be going faster, and when we try to do that we blow up and fail.  Of course this is not just about cycling.

Full disclosure, there’s another hill on the south end of the island named Toe Jam Hill.  It’s shorter than Baker Hill Road, but steeper, with a 23% grade at the start of the climb.  I’ve tried riding easy up Toe Jam twice,  and failed both times.  The first time I almost crashed, when my front wheel lifted off the road.

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, the last day of summer, brought beautiful weather for Seattle.  Blue skies over blue water, sailboats pushed by a gentle wind, runners and cyclists propelled by lungs and legs enjoyed an outdoor paradise yesterday.

I did the PROS ride with Bobs and Jeff, and two different groups of cyclists.  PROS stands for Perimeter Ride Of Seattle, an 80 mile loop around the City, put on by COGS, or Cyclists of Greater Seattle.  Three different groups ride together at different paces, making frequent stops to eat, drink and pee. We started with the medium paced group, which turned out to be too slow.  After Jeff turned right to cross the I-90 bridge and return home, Bobs and I caught the fast group at a lunch stop.  I joined them for the remainder of the ride, and he cut the ride short when the route went past his house.

The route around Seattle is hilly – longer hills with a moderate grade in the south, short steep climbs in the north.  Even though I consistently hit the top of climbs at the front of the fast group, a comparison of Strava fly-by’s shows my power output is lower.  My average power was 115 watts, compared to 130 – 170 watts for people riding the same pace.  Those numbers confirm what I already knew – I’m really not that strong, but my power to weight ratio makes me an effective climber.

After a while, I suspect this blog may contain many entries with this title.  Every Saturday morning, a group meets at Winslow Green on Bainbridge Island and rides to Port Gamble and back.  The size of the group varies from two to twenty, depending on season and weather, and they almost always ride the same route. North on 305, right on Toten, left on Port Gamble Road, left on 104 to Port Gamble. I don’t particularly care for parts of the route that ride along main highways, but I ride anyway because I like the people, they know how to ride in straight lines, and at times the group motivates me to ride faster than I otherwise would.  (Truth be told, most of the time when I ride alone, I ride like a slug.)

Going north on 305, the main highway on Bainbridge Island, the group always starts out much faster than I would ride.  Lately I’ve been hanging off the back, avoiding sitting on anyone’s wheel because it requires me to work a little harder, riding without the benefit of a draft.  Also, I’m not really thrilled about riding pace lines on main highways.

Today, like many days, I didn’t talk much while riding.  It’s important to me be part of the group, but often I don’t feel like talking much.  One thing I’ve noticed about people in general, and cyclists in particular, they’re really fond of talking about what’s going on in their lives.  That’s fine by me, because I’m actually interested, and it also makes it easy if I don’t need to say much more than asking questions and remarking about someone else’s stories.  It’s not that I’m reluctant to share, I’m just not inclined to do so unless I find someone is genuinely interested.  INFJ.

Because we always ride the same route, there are pre-determined places where we pick up the pace.  I look forward to the sections, because right now I’m in decent condition.  Today, no one seemed to want to play hard.  When it was my turn to take a pull on the pace line riding down Big Valley Road, I road off the front taking only Scott with me.  Everyone else took it easy.

Actually, it’s pretty common for cyclists in this area to back off this time of year.  People typically improve their conditioning to get ready for summer events like Ramrod, STP, and other centuries, then back off in September.  No one can maintain peak condition all year round.  Racers use the term periodization to describe how they’ll tune their conditioning for key races.  The same idea applies to recreational riders.

The Saturday group welcomes riders of different abilities.  It’s a no-drop ride, meaning the group always waits at pre-determined places for slower riders to catch up.  For the past couple months I’ve noticed how there really are no slow riders – everyone rides pretty much the same pace.  Slower riders are probably reluctant to start out with this group.  I know from experience, it’s not fun to ride with a group if I’m always dragging off the back with my tongue hanging out.

After we crossed Agate Passage and returned to the rock, I decided to leave the group, and take a longer route home.  Mostly I just wanted to stop and pee.  It also gave me the chance to climb a few more hills on the way to Battlepoint park and to stop and take a picture.  Maybe the moss covered barn is somehow symbolic of me.  Or maybe it’s just a barn.

On my easy ride today,  my front shifter would not shift onto my big ring. Crap! I puzzled over it for a few minutes, then turned around and headed for B.I. Cycle, our local bike shop. Tom, who owns the shop, put my bike on the stand and immediately saw that the barrel tension adjuster had spun loose. Twenty second fix, no charge.  That’s the island way of doing business.

Technical note – This tension adjuster has been coming loose for me continually.  I need to tighten it nearly every time I ride.  Usually I catch the problem when the chain starts scraping the shifter while in the big ring.

The store was not busy, so Tom and I started chatting.  He told me how my neighbor and fellow cyclist Tony was nearly killed when a dump truck towing a trailer nearly clipped him on Fletcher Bay road.  Tony was riding along the white line when the truck passed him.  It pulled in too soon, and the trailer nearly slammed into Tony.  He caught the whole incident in a video recording on his Cyclic Fly 6 camera.  It looks like this gadget would be a great investment.  I’ll buy one from Tom next time I’m in his shop, even though his price is quite a bit higher than Amazon.

Motorists often complain about cyclists riding too far out into the road, not understanding it’s purely defensive.  Riding too far to the right invites trucks and other large vehicles to pass closely, leaving the rider no escape route. I can recount several stories where cyclists have been hit, one killed, while riding on the right side of the white line.

I rode the Chilly Hilly route yesterday afternoon. Chilly Hilly is an event put on by Cascade Bicycle Club every year on the last Sunday in February.  Thousands of cyclists pour off the ferry and ride counter clockwise around Bainbridge Island. I remember doing my first Chilly Hilly on a rainy Sunday in 1982. Yesterday the sun was shining but a stiff breeze was bringing cooler weather as I rounded Point White.

After riding the High Pass Challenge a couple days ago, I feel like I’m in shape to ride the Levi Gran Fondo today. My ride every day program has worked as expected. Now my plan is simply to continue riding about 200 miles per week, perhaps getting a little stronger, before leaving for California.