Category: cycling

Ride 2 Recovery 2014

Erin & me at the rest stop

Erin and I rode the Ride 2 Recovery Honor Ride this morning.  You can read all about it over on their website, but essentially, the ride is about supporting wounded veterans, which is appropriate on Memorial Day weekend.  It is also a good reminder that as we celebrate those who gave their lives in defense of our country, there are many who made it home, but not necessarily all in one piece and not all those wounds are visible.  Remember, in 2012 (I haven’t seen the statistics for 2013) more active duty members of the military died due to suicide than died in combat.  I still thank God daily that Shane made it back from his two tours with no visible scars.  It turned out to be a beautiful day to ride, temp 60.8-84.2°F during the ride itself, though it was only about 50°F as we were putting the bikes on the car.  Winds were light.  Because Erin was with me (and because, with the lousy weather the last couple of weeks, I’d ridden a grand total of once in the last 2 weeks), I decided to ride the 35 miler rather than the 70 miler.  If you click through the widget below, you’ll notice several very slow miles in there, mostly on the hills shortly after the rest stop.  I obviously had some issues with some of the hills (and the fact that my weight was actually the highest today that it has been in over a month due to eating out several times this week and no exercise to speak of), though overall, I did still average 15.3mph, 36.24mi in 2:22:28 (I spent the 45 minutes at the rest stop waiting for and then sitting with Erin).  I raised a little money for the cause and the website remains open, so perhaps I can reach or beat my goal, please consider helping out at http://www.active.com/donate/columbus2014/JClausing.

The year in riding

Just like last year I did a fair amount of riding this year.  I wasn’t as successful in losing weight by riding this year, but I did enjoy myself.  This year I rode a bit further than last year, but only had 2 rides of 50+ miles (and neither were over 53) and 5 organized rides again (same number as last year).  I mostly rode 2 days a week (usually Tue & Sat), next year, maybe I’ll try for 3 (add Thu).

  • BikeMS Central Ohio Challenge 50 miler – 52.74mi, 03:41:22, avg = 14.29mph, some rain and thunder in the middle of the course
  • Pedal with Pete 47 mile route – 47.47mi, 02:57:01, avg = 16.09mph, rain for the first hour of the ride, but beat last year’s time
  • Tour de Donut “Full Donut” – 30.71mi, 01:43:43, avg = 17.77mph, a race where 5 minutes gets deducted for every donut eaten, I finished 2nd in raw time in the recumbent division (4th in donut-adjusted time)
  • CHA Pedal for Pets – 45.00mi, 02:56:42, avg = 15.28mph, very chilly 45°F at the start
  • Ride for Reason Alzheimer’s ride – 47.93mi, 02:59:48, avg = 15.99mph, very poorly marked route
  • Total # of rides = 43
  • Total mileage = 1115.10 miles
  • Total time = 73:16:41
  • Avg. speed = 15.29mph
  • Avg. time of ride = 01:42:15
  • Avg. length of ride = 25.93mi
  • Rides over 20 miles = 28
  • Rides over 29.75 miles = 18
  • Rides over 01:30:00 = 24
  • Rides over 02:00:00 = 10
  • Rides over 03:00:00 = 3

    Ride for Reason 2013

    I rode my last organized ride of the season this morning.  It was called the Ride for Reason, a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s research (if you want to contribute to my effort, you can do so at http://act.alz.org/goto/jclausing).  It was chilly at the start, but nowhere near as cold as the CHA ride last month.  Temp 54-75°F, light wind from the ESE which meant headwind relatively early in the ride.  I have to say, the folks at the Trek store didn’t do a very good job marking the roads for this one.  If I hadn’t uploaded the route onto my GPS, I’m not sure I would have been able to find the route.  I think I can count all the arrows I actually saw on the rode on 1 hand (certainly on both).  They were purple and very difficult to see.  Having said that, it was a great day for a ride and a relatively nice route.  The distance was supposed to be 47 miles because the original ride 25 years ago was 4700 miles, I missed one turn (added less than 0.1) and ended up riding 47.93.  See the details here or below.

    2013 Pedal for Pets

    I had registered to ride this one last year since this is for the shelter where Shane & Jen volunteered at the time, but something came up late and I wasn’t able to ride it.  This year, it was pretty darn cold at the start (especially considering that we reached 92°F earlier this week).  Temp at the start was 45°F and got up to 66°F by the end of the ride.  There was a light wind out of the SW.  45.0mi in 2:56:42 (15.28mph).

    http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1798136

    Tour de Donut 2013

    Rode the Tour De Donut Ohio on Saturday. It was perfect weather and a very nice course. This is why I love these organized rides (or, in this case, race), I was able to ride with/draft off some other riders (especially nice when I hit the headwind the last 5 miles). Temp 64-84F, wind from W. 30.71mi in 1:43:38 (17.8mph), my fastest ride of the season. I was 2nd in the recumbent division in raw time (1:54:47 including donut stops, 9:50 behind the winner in the division, scroll clear to bottom of this page) which put me in the top 90 overall out of over 1000, but only ate 3 donuts (5 riders in the division ate 12 or more which knocked an hour off their times), so didn’t finish in the top 3 (I was 4th, scroll down to bottom of this page) in donut-adjusted time in the division. 🙁

    http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1766618 

    Yup, I’m still alive

    As I commented last year, I don’t tend to post here much lately, but I am still alive.  As you can see from the sidebar, I’ve started riding again this year (about a month earlier than last year, though I have no plans at present for a century this year), but have not flown in far too long, I hope to rectify that this week.  I still do plan to start posting more stuff here, but have had some issues with motivation that I hope to explain shortly.

    The year in riding

    I know I’ve been really bad about posting here.  There are things I’ve wanted to write about, but I just haven’t been able  to make myself sit down and take the time to actually do it.  So, I figured I’d do a brief wrap up of my year in riding.  As you can see from the sidebar at left, I’ve done more riding this year than I have in a few years.  I had some motivation, Bill (my brother-in-law) started doing triathlons almost 2 years ago and we had talked about doing a half-marathon together in 2011, but due to knee problems, I was never able to really start training for that.  As a result, we revised our goal to doing a century in 2012 (my second, first since day 1 of TOSRV in 1997, his first).  We (I) decided we’d do the Hancock Horizontal Hundred since this is a very flat century that I’ve wanted to do for more than a decade.  I didn’t really get into the training routine until late May, and then in June I started having back problems (see my upcoming Christmas letter for more explanation) and had to switch from the road bike to the recumbent.  I never really rode more than twice a week (with 1 or 2 exceptions) and I had breaks at inopportune times (like the Alaska cruise two weeks before the century), but I still managed to ride 830mi in 2012 including 5 organized rides (plus one more that I registered for, but then couldn’t ride).  Below are some of the highlights & interesting numbers.

    • Tour de Cause “Challenger” course – 41.69mi, 03:16:30, avg = 12.74mph, rainy and lots of hills
    • Pedal with Pete – 47.61mi, 03:00:15, avg = 15.85mph
    • Lancaster County Covered Bridge Metric Century – 66.46mi, 04:43:12, avg = 14.08mph, very hilly
    • HHH – 100.85mi, 06:17:54, avg=16.01mph, really tough headwind section just after lunch, but fortunately found a group to ride with
    • Trek Breast Cancer Ride – 42.54mi, 03:00:04, avg = 14.17mph, I had hardly ridden in a month
    • Total # of rides = 28
    • Total mileage = 830.02mi
    • Total time = 56:03:44
    • Avg. speed = 14.81mph
    • Avg. length of ride =  29.64mi
    • Avg. time of ride = 02:00:08
    • Rides over 20mi = 20
    • Rides over 30mi = 11
    • Rides over 01:30:00 =  18
    • Rides over 02:00:00 = 8

    And another ride in the books

    Longest ride of the year, 15.13 miles in 1:04:21.  I was loving the “out” part of the ride, I made the turn averaging 16.4 mph, but the head wind on the way back “in” was brutal (final average speed was 14.1mph).  Ah, well.  I’m not posting the links to runs/rides that start from home though.