Turtle on Wheels

The 4-week countdown to Bike MS 2008 started last Saturday and I’m now buckling down for the most intense part of my training yet. That means 15-mile+ bike rides on weekday mornings and 3-hour+ plus rides on Saturday and Sunday. Of course, it doesn’t help that I was a flat-out lazy bum during my Memorial Day weekend trip to Austin: outside of a short canoeing trip and shopping walks around downtown, my friends and I didn’t do much more than eat and sunbathe in the 95-degree heat.

When I returned Monday night, I knew that I had to immediately start burning off the Texas BBQ. But the balmy 45-degree breeze that greeted my face on Tuesday morning sent me fleeing back inside. Thankfully it warmed up over the course of the day, so I’m back in the saddle again.

Speaking of saddles, I need a new one: the rock-hard slab of plastic and metal I’m riding on now has been tolerable so far, but I fear that I might not be able to walk again after riding on it for 7+ hours. Moreover, a fellow Cycling Sis at the group ride a couple weeks ago took one look at my seat and said, “You need a new saddle.” So I’m trolling around for sales on cushy saddles, preferably ones with the air hole slot. In my Google research, I came across a illuminating article on GORP about how women have equally important health concerns as men do on the issue of bike seats possibly damaging the nether regions of the body, and they recommend several seats that I’ll take a look at.

After I make this (hopefully) final upgrade, it’s onward and upward with crossed fingers.

I came, I rode, I survived: I completed the 15-mile American Cancer Society Walk & Roll Chicago bike ride in about 1 hour and 40 minutes yesterday morning. There were a couple setbacks throughout the ride:

First, there was a horrible headwind off the lake: I biked from my place to Grant Park as a pre-ride warm up, and when that headwind hit my face, I knew that the first part of the ride was going to be tough.  Not only was it a whopping 47 degrees outside (thank God I decided to buy a pair of bike “knickers” pants on Saturday), but the sharp wind made it even colder and slowed people down to a crawl as we biked the first leg of the ride on the lakefront path. But we didn’t have to fight the wind for too long: We rode about 3 miles from Grant Park (which makes up the southeastern border of downtown Chicago) to Fullerton Avenue, and then we thankfully turned west to go into Lincoln Park.

But when we left the lakefront, a whole challenge presented itself: street riding. I had studied the route map beforehand and it included some of the busiest streets in Chicago. So I hoped that they would block off the street or even one lane, but nope: we were riding side-by-side with the cars. Granted, most of the streets had bike lanes and the cars slowed down with the stream of cyclists coming down the street. But all the same, it was a little nervewracking. But the major trip-up I had during the ride was due to the stoplights. On major streets like Lincoln, Randolph, and Clark, there often were stoplights at every other block. Some bikers darted across the intersection when there was a break in traffic, but not I: I wasn’t in a hurry and had no intention of getting hit in an avoidable situation. But stopping so frequently meant that a crash was almost inevitable at some point for me and my clipless pedals of one month.

I did well at first–I either slowly coasted to the intersection and willed the light to change before I had to stop completely, or I unclipped from my pedals as I approached the intersection. But then I decided that I’d be more efficient if I left my right foot clipped in, so that I could push off right away when the light changed. Ha, that worked well: About halfway through the ride, I was riding with a group of faster people (after the first 30 minutes or so, riders naturally spread out along the route and became loosely grouped together by pace) and we got to a stoplight at Wells and Grand, I think. I unclipped my left foot as I braked, but my bike started to tip the other way. My right foot was still clipped in, however, so I couldn’t catch myself or the bike . . . and down I went. But I fortunately didn’t drag anyone else down, because the guy next to me managed to scoot out of the way in time. Slightly scraped up and more than a little embarrassed, I waved off their concerned questions and got back on. I fell behind them and rode much slower for the rest of the ride.

I definitely could have done the 15 miles in a faster time, but overall, it went okay: the ride was well organized and wasn’t too crowded (although there were some other near crashes when people were blown sideways by the wind or lost control of their bikes), and I got some more street riding experience (I never thought I’d be riding through the Loop on Wabash and Clark streets). I feel more confident about riding in an event like the Bike MS–I imagine they’ll have a similar onslaught of endlessly cheery volunteers–and I did 45 miles total between Saturday and Sunday. But I’ll be on vacation next weekend, so I’ll have to fit my longer rides in the evenings this week. . . .

No, not that kind. . . . This week, I’ve started doing some bike rides in the afternoon. I initially preferred the mornings because the lake front path is usually less crowded and I’m a “morning person” who usually wakes up early without a problem. But I just couldn’t get up the energy this week to crawl out of bed at 5:30, perhaps because I haven’t had great sleep schedule: for some reason, my internal clock decided to switch to a 6-hour sleep time, so that I’ve been waking up exactly 6 hours after I go to bed. On Tuesday, I went to bed at 9:30pm . . . and woke up at 3:30am. On Wednesday I went to bed at 11 and woke up at 5. I’d toss and turn trying to go back to sleep, but when WBEZ blared from my clock radio, I suddenly couldn’t motivate myself to dress for a bike ride.

I decided I’d make up for my morning slothfulness by riding after work, and it’s worked surprisingly well: For one thing, 65-degree evenings are a lot more pleasant than 45-degree mornings, and I’m kind of fed up with wearing multiple layers of clothing or just turning into an ice cube on my bike. Also, riding after a long day in the office is a great way to unwind. The lake front isn’t as crowded as I thought in the evenings (at least on the south side) and I can usually ride for a couple hours before it gets dark. I’ve been able to explore a little more of the south side, thanks to my newly gained courage to ride on the streets, so I rode down to 83rd Street through the South Shore neighborhood before turning around.

And where did I acquire this more streetwise mentality? It’s all thanks to the group bike ride I went on last weekend with a local women’s riding group called Cycling Sisters. Five of us met at the 63rd Street beach house last Saturday, and did a 15-mile(?) loop by riding up the lakefront to 31st Street, riding west on 31st street to Halsted, going south down Halsted to 47th, and then we kind of zigzagged southeast to Washington Park and the Hyde Park neighborhood. We rode on some of the busiest thoroughfares in Chicago (at least on the south side) and I found out that Chicago’s streets aren’t inevitable death traps, especially if there are bike lanes. I did have a couple mishaps with my clipless pedals, including an out-and-out crash on the blacktop while trying to stop for a red light. But I’m more fearless on the roads and it’s no more (okay, fewer) sidewalks for me!

Next up: The American Cancer Society’s Walk & Roll Chicago 15-mile bike ride on Sunday. The route is a loop that goes from Grant Park up to the Lincoln Park neighborhood and then back around, and I’ve been working my way up to Fullerton (2400 N) to familiarize myself with the route. But I’m not sure how hundreds of bikers are going to fit on that path because there is construction everywhere (a road worker stood in the middle of the bike path yesterday and made a bunch of us stop, just as if we were on a highway)–we will see. . . .

Oh yeah, this reminds me of a correction I need to make: I mistakenly stated in a previous post that I biked to 1500 North. Um, no, that didn’t happen. The Chicago Parks District messed up the street number markers on the path, and at what I believe is 100 North, they painted a bunch of numbers over each other so that it kind of looks like 1500. Figuring that out was kind of like when Buzz Lightyear realized he wasn’t a real spaceman: depressing at first, but I’m plowing ahead again with a renewed sense of how far I have to go. . . .

CHICAGO (AP) - The vital sporting goods sector received a huge boost from Bush’s economic stimulus plan this week, as people used their checks to buy much needed athletic gear for the warm weather season. Says Chicago cyclist Harriett Green, “I can’t believe how far that check went toward buying a bike computer and a jacket. It truly restored my faith in the American economy.”
In other news, the unemployment rate hovers near 6 percent, crude oil reached a new high of $121 a barrel, and home foreclosures are up 57 percent from the year before.

Whether it was the trauma of getting the clipless pedals in the first place or just plain fear, I spent the subsequent week and a half still riding with the flat side of my pedals. But last weekend, I actually put on my bike shoes and started riding clipless. After a day of just practicing clipping in and out of the pedals, I went back to doing my 10 mile rides and then started doing 15 miles today.

The first 15 mile ride was confusing more than anything: Rank amateur that I am, I’ve never biked much farther north than the South Loop. To complicate matters, construction work is being done around the Shedd Aquarium, so the lakefront path has been temporarily re-routed to go past the Field Museum. Now it turns out that there’s a hill in front of the Field that’s about as bad as the sharp drop-off by the Shedd. One moment I’m cruising along, and the next minute I’m flying down this deceptively steep hill at 40 miles an hour, alternately braking and shouting sorrys to the joggers I nearly run over. I careened through the Roosevelt underpass, which is where I usually turn to head for Target, and soon realized that I was in the city instead of on the lakefront path.

So I rode up the sidewalk on Columbus Drive instead and got plenty of unclipping practice as I had to stop at every intersection. But I finally got back on the path at Monroe and decided to ride a few more blocks north before turning around. Well, I was lulled into following the path around the harbor and before I knew it, I was standing in front of the smoky-glassed Lake Pointe Tower high rise where Oprah supposedly lives in the penthouse. I was so surprised to find out that I’d reached 1500 north that I braked without unclipping and promptly crashed. Harriett, meet concrete. Charmed.

With two new scrapes tattooing my increasingly black-and-blue legs (at this rate, I’ll have to soak my legs in cocoa butter to get them looking halfway normal again), I clambered back on Ollie and made it home just before the thunderstorm broke.

In any case, 15 miles will be the daily norm now, and I hope to get up to 60+ miles per week. Also, I’ve found a training event of sorts: I’ve signed up for the American Cancer Society’s Walk and Roll Chicago 15-mile bike ride. It’s a week and a half away, but I’m already doing 15 miles (almost) without stopping and I just need to increase my speed. So here goes nothing. . . .