December Summary

500 km seems to be my magic number. 500 km per month is what I will probably have ridden on average throughout 2010, and almost exactly 500 km has been the monthly kilomentrage during the last couple of months. Here are the detailed stats for November: Even though winter has definitely arrived, Gunnar got more kilometers than in the previous months -- 204 km total. Wolfgang clocked in at 305, making a total of 509 km/month or 17 km/day. The annual odometer thus is at 5509 km and I'm pretty confident that I will get it up to 6000 at the end of the month.

Rennrad-News Winter Trophy

Riding in winter is hard. You have to find ways to keep all of your body parts fairly warm (and usually fail with at least one of them), it's dark, road conditions vary between "sucky" and "outright dangerous," and your poor bike has to suffer from the constant spray of highly corrosive salts. In order to encourage people to ride in the winter nonetheless (or do at least some other physical activity), the German road bike forum rennrad-news.de has an annual winter trophy. The idea is fairly simple: you log all your cycling and other physical exercise on their website and accumulate points for it. 1 point for 20 minutes of running, for 15 minutes of cycling, and two points for any other sports activity longer than 30 minutes. The trophy began on November 1 and will continue until March 27. I've joined a team with two guys who recruited me on radreise-forum.de (they seem to be much tougher than me...). You can track my progress at the top of this page.

October Summary

With a bit of delay, I present you the summary for the lovely fall month of October. The bad news: not too many long rides, mostly everyday riding. The good news: I'm still en route to fulfilling my 6000 km at the end of the year goal. Details:

453 km with Wolfgang, 46 km with Gunnar, totalling at 499 km for the month. October had 31 days, which means that's only 16.1 km/day, a pretty low value. Total kilometrage for the year is exactly 5000 km! (No, I did not plan this).

The goal for November basically is to stick with the 500 km/month goal. So far I'm doing good and tomorrow I'll go on a longer ride with a friend from the FLCC. Sometime this month, I'll get a pair of winter cycling shoes, hopefully allowing me to ride in the winter without the constant numbness of feet which has started to become a problem again.

September Summary

It's October and since this month I didn't forget to note my bike computer stats, I can present my September riding summary.

The overall kilometrage is 521 km, which is neither particularly high nor low. What is noteworthy is that this riding was almost all done on Wolfgang (494 km).  A large proportion is commuting and transportation, and there was our 135 km camping trip to Greenwood County Park. No Sunday Rides this month and no long rides with Gunnar. Average daily riding was 17.4 km and overall annual kilometers are up to 4501. I think I'll try to reach the 6000 km mark at the end of the year.

Terrible Hills! Mos Def!

Two posts ago, I mentioned the crazy "Terrible Hills involving the Letter B" ride, and indeed I was insane enough to actually try and do it. There are already several ride reports out there from other people in what was a great group of riders, and I will keep it short.

I hadn't done any long ride since the first week of July (traveling, moving, ...) and thus I was slow and suffered a lot. I fell behind the rest of the group quite early due to general slowness, having to buy new batteries for my GPS, and a wrong turn on Buffalo Road. Probably that was not the worst thing to happen because that at least allowed me to ride at my own pace. I did, however, catch up with the
rest of the group at the end of their lunch stop at Wegmans. Fortunately I spotted Sam's brightly colored FLCC jersey and reached the group just as it was getting ready to go again. Unfortunately, that meant that I didn't really have time to eat and drink more and in the long run that should prove to be disastrous. Anyway, I was fairly determined to make it the whole way, but the not terribly steep but long climb up Bostwick was draining. (Bostwick is my favorite downhill...) I knew that what was to come was my most feared climb: Blakeslee Hill. I had ridden up there a couple of months ago and barely made it -- and that was on a pretty short ride with fresh legs. Well, I completely bonked, taking two short stops on the climb and taking a long stop at the top of the hill. My body clearly had run out of fuel and I gobbled down two whole Clif Bars in record speed. It was obvious that the ride was just too much for me and I decided to ride back home. At the end of the day I had logged about 135 km and 2600 m of climbing. I didn't bring the camera, but fortunately Max Kraft took some nice pics.

On a side note, I decided to throw on my new shiny Brooks Swift for the ride. I was a little skeptical if it would be a good idea to attempt an extremely hard century ride on a new leather saddle. But it turned out to be quite okay. The saddle is comfortable, not too narrow, and it's already showing signs of breaking in.

July and August summary

As mentioned in my previous post, there are no separate summaries for July and August. In both months together I rode a meager 600 km, 338 on Wolfgang and 262 on Gunnar. If we'd assume that the riding was evenly distributed between the months (which it was not, because I did almost zero riding in July), that would bring both months down to the lowest average daily riding, even worse than the winter months. It's definitely time to crank it up a couple of notches before winter comes!

I'm back

After a long absence, due part to summer travel and part to no interwebs at home, I'm back with regular updates. Just some quick items:

• I forgot to write down the end-of-the-month kilometrage for July! Sigh. So no accurate July and August summaries. The inaccurate one: not a lot of riding, as I was traveling for 3/4 of the month.
• Gunnar has a new saddle. After not being able to make up my mind and being annoyed, sometimes by the high prices and idiotic design choices of Brooks, sometimes by the fact that I constantly had to switch and re-adjust saddles between Gunnar and Wolfgang, I finally ordered a Brooks Swift. It got here last week, is hard as a rock, very pretty and hopefully will see some riding this weekend (see below).

Holy smokes!

• This coming Saturday I will attempt the epic "Terrible Hills Involving the Letter 'B'" century. 165 km and about 3400 m of climbing. I'll do the ride with a couple of FLCCers and hope not to die. I'll keep you updated.

Odo Wolfgang 5152 km
Odo Gunnar 2429 km