Training Log Archive: iansmith

Easy ride on the Don Mills Trail with Katie. My front derailleur committed hari kiri at about 80 minutes in; I stopped for fifteen minutes to diagnose and try to fix the problem. Curiously, the screw mounting the derailleur to the bike frame had stripped, so the derailleur was hanging free. I'm not sure how this happened, as I have always ignored this screw. I secured the derailleur to the frame with electrical tape and rode home locked in my 34 tooth front gear.

Update: while I thought the derailleur itself was damaged, my LBS Bikes at St. Clair thought it was fine, and replaced the screw. As they had replaced the entire derailleur in July, they nicely didn't charge me for this fix. I dropped off the bike on Wednesday, as the store was closed on Monday for Labour Day, and they had it fixed Thursday.

A pleasant, relaxed 100 km ride in the relatively unexplored NW quadrant from Toronto. There were more hills and more traffic than I expected on King Rd, making the second half a bit stressful.

Tempo workout, 4x10 minutes at Major Mackenzie and Warden. Each side of the designated rectangle is about 6 km with only one traffic light. For the first and fourth bout, I rode in the aerobars; on the second and third, I rode on the hoods. The route is slightly uphill (+40m) on the odd bouts. The result was a bit inconclusive, as the aerobars only showed an improvement on the uphill, which doesn't make much sense. I probably was overenthusiastic on the first bout, and progressively more tired - which is why I paired bouts 1 and 4. More data is clearly needed.

Uphill: Aero = 11:57, Hoods = 12:53
Downhill: Hoods = 9:49, Aero = 9:51

All my workouts this week have been focused on finding a good spot for various intervals. In transit (29 km), I found some attractive stretches of road on the NS-bound major roads between Finch and Hwy 7. Warden and Finch (e.g.) is about 18 km away, which makes it much more reasonable.

Also, two observations from my Simcoe ride on Sunday that I forgot to mention:
1) I could see so many stars. Once I passed Orillia and moved out of the tree cover, the night sky was brilliant.
2) My stomach was struggling halfway through the ride, and I was only eating my clif bars and the like because I was forcing them down. I need to find more variety. Sandwiches and goldfish are more pleasant for fueling - with some bars for convenience.

Easy ride with Katie to Tommy Thompson Park. Actual time was 2:21, but I somewhat arbitrarily decided 1:25 was more representative of the effort. We couldn't go that fast in Tommy Thompson, as there were numerous pedestrians, a speed limit, and speed bumps. I have been in this area before, but I am particularly excited about a Commissioners - Unwin loop, which is about 7 km with few stops. The road quality is mediocre at best in places, but I must return to try speedwork. Glorious soundtrack is glorious.

Easy ride around the neighborhood to check out some possible interval loops. The Castlefield-Caledonia-Tycos loop has some advantages - in particular about 2.4 km with basically no traffic lights excluding right turns, but Caledonia has a miserable road surface. Nearby Sheffield and Beechborough might be better.

For fun, I did a time trial on the loop in aerobars (split 4, 4:50) and riding on the hoods (split 6, 4:56). Clearly additional trials are necessary to draw conclusions. Of note is that I had to slow much more in the aerobars at the right turn onto Caledonia, as the light was red; on the hoods, I caught a green light. I didn't ride all out, but around threshold pace, as my legs are tired. Overall, today was a pleasant, relaxing ride.

And so August comes to a close, and with it, the largest training volume I have ever done: 60 hours and 1517 km, eclipsing November 2011, though much of the 38 hours logged was course setting. Ultracycling brings me great joy, and I have found myself equal to the goals I have set for myself. I feel magnificently powerful to traverse great distances powered solely by my legs. I haven't really done anything particularly extraordinary yet, but there is still time even in this god-awful year. What's interesting is that I didn't bike at all 13 days this month. If I had a baseline of 1 hour per day, there would be a surplus of 42 hours. My three longest rides account for about 30 of those surplus hours. Put another way, my three long rides account for 55% of the time and distance for the month.

The way forward is clear: I must get faster. I need more intervals, and more rides of the 90-120 minute variety with a focus on speed. I am pleased to have two 300+ km rides this month, but a 500 km day is definitely within my abilities. The autumn weather is less forgiving than summer, so I will likely curtail night riding soon.