A Week of Cycling Ups and Downs

So this week saw a huge swinging of ups and downs as far as the Connor's Army cycling world was concerned.

Now to begin, I'm not really a technologically driven person as my wife (and pretty much anyone else) can attest to.  I use the computer and the internet but I'm not one of your more cyber-savvy types.  My phone is not "smart" - in fact it's probably somewhat mentally challenged - and is an older flip-type phone.  My wife constantly laments the fact that I can't seem to successfully program our VCR without messing something up and I can't tell you how many times I seem to have lost documents.

On the other hand, I have friends with whom I occasionally ride who extremely adept at all of the technological advances to be had with cycling training.  They log their rides on Strava, they have heart rate monitors, Power tap meters from CycleOps and can tell you which of their legs is putting out more watts depending on the readouts from the ride.  These guys are serious about their fitness.  And I have nothing against their technological superiority.  I envy them the time they have to train and the results they get.  I'm usually envying their techno savy as I watch them disappear in a cloud of spandex before me.

I on the other hand in my Luddite fashion do the best I can by just riding as much as I can and monitoring how I feel.  Now I'm not a complete throw back to the 19th century, my bike does have pneumatic tires;

(Here I am on an early morning training ride - the beard really keeps the face warm)

And I do try to take advantage of the wonderful gift my sister gave me, my Garmin Edge 605;

(Notice the bright colorway schematics)

Its does tend to cause no end of consternation amongs my Amish training partners, especially becuase of the brightly colored display which tends to go against the usually staid color combinations we prefer - and now you know why my bike is black!

Anyway, I tend to rely on two things when I train - how I feel and the readout from my trusty Garmin.  I've had to use the GPS feature more than once to save me when I was lost but the feature I really use the most right now is the training partner feature.  You see, on your workouts you can program it to have a virtual partner.  I use the simple workout tool and I set it for an average speed of 17 mph since I figure if I can maintain that during the cross country ride I'll be able to cover the distance I want to cover every day.  It looks something like this;

and much of my training consists of trying to beat this little guy.

Well this week was full of ups and downs.  Sometimes I got him and somtimes he got me.  That's pretty much the extent of my techno-training on the bike.  I try to better my time every day and try to be able to have a better average mph that I had last week.  The readings from this week, however, were just higgeldy-piggeldy which loosely translated means "was just a mess."  Its a great phrase.  So much so that its the title of a poem (nursery rhyme actually);

Higgledy Piggledy,

My black hen,
She lays eggs
For gentlemen;
Sometimes nine,
And sometimes ten,
Higgledy Piggledy,
My black hen! 
 
So too was the output of my speed erratic;  My average speeds went something like this;
Monday - Didn't ride so that would be an average of 0 mph.
Tuesday - 27.21 miles at an average of 17.58 mph.
Wednesday - 29.59 miles at an average of 18.24 mph.
Thursday - 27.17 miles at an average of 17.17 mph.
Friday - 27.34 miles at an average of 17.62 mph.
 
As you can see I was all over the map in my commuting this week.  I mean, really fluctuating between 17.17 mph and 18.24 mph?  That's a range of 1.07 mph that was lost!  That means if I stay at that lower level during the cross country ride, after 16.6666666667 days (at an average of 6 hours of riding a day) I will have lost an entire day of riding - 107 miles.  We can't have that, now can we?  I'll just have to train harder.

But in all seriousness.  My hope is just to be able to maintain somewhere in the range of 15 - 17 mph every day.  In that way I should be able to cover at least 90 to 102 miles a day as we travel.  Depending on the terrain, some days more and some days less.
Speaking of terrain, check this out;

Believe it or not, that's not the topography of one of the legs of our trip - its the weekly activity on our blog during the same week I was shamefully fluctuating in my commuter training.  Becuase of you dear reader, we have quietly surpassed the 17,000 all time views mark on Connor's Army.  That means someone out there is actually looking at this blog and some of that set might actually be reading it!  I thank each and every one of you becasue it means you're getting the message about our mission to help the kids of Sunrise Day Camp!

No, if you really want to see what the terrain will look like, you can check out the page that my brother-in-law Per did in which he took the google maps bike routes and gave the topographical profile for each leg of the trip.  You can check it out here! It was so nice of him to take all of that time to do it and this way I have a warning what to expect each day.  For instance, this is the profile for the leg between Hindman, KY and Rosedale, VA.  Notice how it looks very similar to the activity associated with this very blog!

And although it seems to go up and down and up and down (sort of like the teeter totter pictured at the top of this blog) or like this little guy here;



or even this bigger guy here;



Or what is billed by National Geographics "Mad Scientists" as the "World's Biggest Teeter Totter"

But ups and downs aside, not all of my days of pedaling are going to be that teeter tottery.  Take for instance this day which shows the highest point we'll reach all summer, just outside of Fort Garland, CO.  Don't let the 2812 meters fool you - it actually comes out to be 9,235 feet!!!!

And lastly in the ups and down's section.  We have been nothing but slow and steady ups on our facebook page!  Thanks to those of you who have been subscribing and "liking' our page we are up to 1,378 likes!!!!  We are so close to 1400 that I can tast it - or at least see the light at the end of the tunnel.  If we could gain 1500 likes and then each of those likes could donate $5 (yes, just a little more than the cost of a Venti cappucino at Starbucks) we would be able to raise $7,500 - more than enough for a child to attend Sunrise Day Camp.  I'll admit, its a dream but I think a good one.

And now for your musical dessert, and to continue the theme of "Up and Down" a musical offering from The S.I.G.I.T. (abbreviation of The Super Insurgent Group of Intemperance Talent) is an Indonesian rock band based in Bandung, Indonesia. Although the band doesn't like to be categorized, they've been described as a garage rock band and often compared to Wolfmother and The Datsuns, even dubbed as 'Indonesian Answer To Wolfmother' by some Australian media -  whatever that means.  And here ya go;