What have I done?

As you may not know yet, I failed my August challenge. I only biked 71.88 of my 100 mile challenge. I started strong at the beginning of the month, and I tried to have a strong finnish. The middle two weeks though, I didn't get a chance to bike a lot. Somewhere at the end of the month, I was influenced by the spirit of the challenge and I signed up for Conquer the Coast and I signed up to do the Bike Tour on the San Antonio Rock'n'Roll Marathon.

     Out of the two, I'm dreading the Bike Tour a little more. It's only 22 miles, but you have to keep a minimum speed of 10 mph, and as far as I understand it, you are not allowed to stop for a break. Sounds pretty daunting. I know I can do 22 miles. I just don't know if I can do the miles without stopping. I guess I have two months to find out.

     On the other hand, I'm really excited about riding in Conquer the Coast.  Miss Adventure and I, both signed up to do this event, and we both signed up to do the 25 mile ride. One of the reasons I'm excited about this ride is that we get to ride all along Ocean Dr in Corpus Christi. From the northern tip of downtown to the entrance of the Naval Air Station. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would ever get a chance to ride the whole length of Ocean Dr. Not even when I first started cycling.

     Conquer the Coast also marks the very first organized cycling race that we've ever participated in. Last I read from their facebook page, last year they had nearly 1,500 participants. That's a lot of riders... but I'm still very excited for us to join them.

Be Safe and Be Green.

Fire!

Yeah, this is not going to play nice with my allergies...

My grandfather...

... once told me.  "It's not only important that you learn from your own mistakes, but that you also learn from the mistakes of others."  With that in mind, I started this blog strong, and then I went back to reading about cycling as much as I could.  Always thinking, "This would be a great thing to share on my blog."

So without much further ado. I present to you today's link full of information. It's from the guardian, a newspaper from the UK that happens to have a section on cycling news.  Today's link features some good, and healthy, tips on how to increase the distance you can ride your bike. Enjoy.

Be Safe and be Green.

Bicycle Gears

Last night I was perusing through my favorite blogs and websites when I came across this gem.

For a while now, I've tried to come up with a common sense and simple way to explain bicycle gears to new riders (not that I'm all that experienced myself). Bicycle gears is something that I learned the hard way through trial and error long ago. It's something my leg muscles and my hands have learned to coordinate without much conscious effort in my part. For that reason when I'm asked on what the proper way to use bicycle gears, I have a tendency to utter the word "um" over and over without saying much in between. jm2, at the Bicycles Stack Exchange, put into words what I have failed to explain many many times.

Don't overthink it. Since you've got a triple, you're probably right to be in your middle ring most of the time That's normal.

• In the middle ring you should have access to the whole cassette/freewheel in the back, though you might get a little extra noise as you approach the extreme gears in either direction.
• You'll use the big chainring when you're going downhill or your on flat ground and in a hurry. Stay out of the biggest couple of cogs in the back when you're in the big ring up front. This causes extra strain and extra wear on the drivetrain which can result in premature failure.
• Your little ring up front is your climbing ring. Use this for hills, or as your bail-out ring when you're totally out of energy. Just like big-big is a no-no, so is small-small, so stay out of the smallest cogs in the back when you're in the smallest ring in the front.

Regarding your hunch that you've got a lot of overlap between gears, you're absolutely right. Think of each ring as a gear range (climbing for small, normal use for middle, ass-hauling for big). If there were no overlap between the chainrings you would either A) have far fewer gears in the back or B) have a range of gears in the big and small rings which were far too small or far too big to be usable.Think about how big the jumps between gears would be if there was no overlap at all! Trust me, it's not what you want. Typically, you'll find yourself Shifting the front in one direction and immediately afterwards shifting the back in the opposite direction so that it feels like you've only skipped about a single gear in either direction. In time, you'll come to appreciate the overlap between gears in the different chainrings.

Finally, if you really want to see how much overlap you have, you can divide the front rings by each of the back rings to get a ratio for every gear combination. There are fancier ways of doing this, but for your purposes this is the easiest and most straightforward.
EDIT: Here's a pretty good article on Wikipedia about bicycle gearing if you'd like to get more in depth.

 I know it looks a little out of context this way, to get the full conversation please go the original post. And again, I couldn't have put it better into words myself.

Be Safe and Be Green.

August Challenge

When we got serious about cycling, we began measuring our ridden distance with cycling computers. Then, we found we could map our rides with our smart phones using the "My Tracks" app.  Just recently I got turned to the "Map My Ride" app.  When I signed up for the website and explored around a bit, I quickly found that you could give yourself challenges. This is also right around the same time that I was overwhelmed by the heat we are going through in South Texas. My first thought was to be conservative.  100 miles in the month of August sounds pretty good. Doesn't sound like a lot.

The next day I decided to go through the spreadsheet that "My Tracks" keeps of all the rides I've done (or at least the ones that I've remembered to take my phone on).  I don't think I've done 100 miles in one month. Ever. On the second hottest month of the year, I chose to give myself the farthest distance I've done in a month on a bicycle (I will be conservative, my subconscious said. It will be easy, my subconscious said. It will be fun, my subconscious said).

Yesterday evening, Miss Adventure and I kicked off the challenge by riding in our neighborhood for 6.61 miles.  That means I'm 6.61% through my challenge.

Only 93.39% to go.

Be Safe and Be Green.