It took a few months of contemplation as to whether or not I was actually going to shell out for another bike seat. I have a full season on my current seat which is a Profile Design Tri-Stryke. After looking around online I figured that I have put it through about 30-40% of it’s lifespan because it’s neoprene and foam. I do quite enjoy the deat and it gives me no trouble but I really do prefer to ride aero with that seat rather than sit up tall. With no aero-position riding planned for this summer (see this blog entry about changing handlebars) I figured that I’d save that seat for what it was meant for. I went for a Brooks B-17 which isn’t the easiest seat to get your hands on when you live in Edmonton but I did eventually get on the “notification list” for when the new stock arrived.

I’ve got extra rails mounted behind the seat so that I can attach bottle cages to it. That’ll allow me to carry a total of three water bottles including the one frame cage. I’ve been doing 2 bottles and a third bottle filled with tools for the past 2 seasons. I’ll have a bike bag for my handlebars this summer though so the tools can be moved and I can liberate that extra cage.

The other thing I’ve solved is a tent. The one I’ve got kicking around works great so long as it’s not raining. When you’re planning 64 consecutive tent nights you can’t really expect none of them to be wet. I found a huge 1 man tent on the MEC gear listing that should solve that problem (Columbia Frosty Ridge II). It fits the bill on a number of accounts.

• 8.5 feet long from tip to tail.
• Super ventilated for hot nights
• Vestibule for my shoes
• Enough room alongside myself to keep a bunch of junk.

I guess the photos are pretty self-explanatory. I couldn’t put any of the seventeen stakes (why make a tent that’s only 4.5 pounds yet has 17 stakes?) in the floor so I used duct-tape. It’s not quite filled out all the way when it’s not stretched out with pegs but It’s pretty close in the photos.

The weekend rolled by and I did swing through the bike shop to finally finish the conversion project that began back in November. My bike was set up for triathlon racing and wasn’t particularly conducive to the kind of riding I’m anticipating this summer. It started with a handlebars and brakes swap and is now almost complete with my aquisition of a larger cassette for the rear gears. I was looking for a set of gears that was more conducive to climbing hills and initially couldn’t find what I wanted but now have got some. My current racing cassette will be moving over to my new racing wheels which came sans-cassette. This cassette will likely stay on this bike indefinitely once it gets on there (I still need to get my hands on a cassette wrench to finish this project, and at this rate it should happen by mid may)

While at the bike shop I decided to finally get the bike computer I had decided upon but hadn’t yet bought. It’s got wireless capability for both speed and cadence which were the two basic things I wanted. It’s also got the potential to record heart-rate data but my cat-eye transmitter didn’t work the first time I tried it. I may have to try my ciclo-sport transmitter later and read the owners manual again, I’m pretty sure that both of them will theoretically work if I fiddle with them a bit. What is an engineering physics degree worth if I can’t do something like that right?

So I recorded an entire workout of cadence for the first time in my life which was fun, I averaged between 93 and 96 if I randomly looked down to see what I was at. The average for the whole ride was 88 which includes some horsing around we did on the rollers standing and such which drops you cadence way down. I maxed out at 115 without wiping out off the machine which is no small achievement in my mind. I’d like to see if I can actually do 140 on the road, I’ve heard people say it’s possible. I don’t know though. I know for a fact I can do 126 as I’ve measured that with timing myself on the fixie while on the velodrome

Between the end of classes and the beginning of exams there is a dangerous pause in the life of any student. There’s enough time to take a bit of a breather before diving headlong into the new semester, there is also enough time to get thoroughly distracted and forget that you’ve still got more than 50% of your GPA to earn in the next 10 days of tests.

It was during this dangerously relaxing stretch of December that I picked up Lance Armstrong’s first autobiography entitled It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life which tells the story of Lance Armstrong’s rise to triathlon superstar in the jr leagues and then competing on the national and international stage as a cyclist.

The book tells the story of his nosedive in health from full time pro athlete to full on bed-ridden cancer patient. The thing about it though is that his mind takes a bit of a lag to get hit by the reality of cancer after his body does. Following surgery Lance writes as any athlete would write or say:

“But I was starving. I was used to my three square meals a day, thanks to my mother. I thought of heaping hot plates of food, with gravy. I hadn’t eaten anything in hours and my last meal had been some kind of cereal. Cereal wasn’t a meal. I mean, come on. That was a snack.” — page 118

Within a couple months the focus had changed, it “wasn’t about the bike”, it wasn’t even about being healthy, it was about surviving the cancer. When the focus of life is so significantly reduced there are only a couple things that really matter. It’s amazing how universal they are, that’s what really struck me. Lance Armstrong was, and so far as I know, continues to live a life independent of any faith in Christ Jesus. His needs though are identical to mine, when I boil off the superfluous aspects of my existence and his existence, we’re pretty much the same person.

The story is not a great one to read but because I knew how it would turn out I never really debated whether or not I should keep on cruising through. And of course I wasn’t disappointed. Again there was a mental lag between some physical recuperation and the development of the toughest psychological cyclist on the pro-tour. When it started to happen though the story was grand and awfully inspiring.

“From then on, all we did was eat, sleep, and ride bikes. Spring had just begun moving up into the mountains, creating a constant fog and drizzle that seemed to muffle the the piney woods. We rode in the rain every day. The cold seared my lungs, and with every breath I blew out a stream of white frost, but I didn’t mind. It made me feel clean. We rode winding back roads, only some of which were paved and mapped. We cycled over gravel and hardpan and beds of pine needles and under hanging boughs.

At night, Chris made big pots of pasta and baked potatoes and we sat around the table wolfing down the food and having unprintable conversations. We told stories and laughed about old times and the start of our friendship, and my first years as a pro.

I called home each night, and Kristen could tell that I was starting to sound life my old self; I was having fun, joking, I didn’t seem depressed. When I would tell her about the cold and rainy weather or how far we had ridden, I would laugh `I’m feeling really good,’ I said, almost puzzled.” — pages 195-196

The opportunity Lance Armstrong had to rebuild himself from nothing to be exactly what he wanted isn’t an opportunity that very many people have physically in life. It’s also probably not something you’d ever really wish on yourself either, but it was essentially the reason he was able to construct a 165 pound climbing and time-trialling powerhouse.

When you start being able to add back into life, things in addition to that common basic threshold that Lance experienced as a cancer patient, there is going to be a sense of joy. When bits and pieces of what is typical get removed and then added back there’s a greater appreciation for them.

“I passed the rest of the trip in a state of near-reverence for those beautiful, peaceful, soulful mountains. The rides were demanding and quiet, and I rode with a pure love of the bike, until Boone began to feel like the Holy Land to me, a place I had come to on a pilgrimage.” — Page 198

Within the Faculty of Physical Education at the University of Alberta there is a group of people studying the effects of hard exercise on inflammation in the lungs (following exercise, not during it, but I’m not doing the study so don’t ask me). Participation in these kinds of studies is of course voluntary and you don’t get paid. You do however need to pass a VO2 test to qualify as “fit enough” to participate in the study. A VO2 test is supposed to be the best indicator of aerobic fitness, unfortunately it’s not easy to do, typical lab testing costs about $120 a pop. That’s not exactly student pocket change. So I signed up, not because I have buckets of time, but because who wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to save $120 that I wouldn’t have spent anyways.

VO2 max is a measure of the maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen during incremental exercise. (The derivation is V̇ – volume per time, O2 – oxygen, max – maximum). It is also called maximal oxygen consumption or maximal oxygen uptake. It is also known as aerobic capacity, which reflects the physical fitness of a person. – The Stolen Definition from Wikipedia

If you do a VO2 test on a bike you basically start riding at an easy wattage and the required power for you to generate is incremented slowly until you die. That’s just about it, oh and the fact that you’ve got this huge tube down your throat and some girl yelling at you with instructions.

Above are some photos of the event, and the final one is the most important piece of the result. It shows a line plotting all of the measured points during the test and the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen over a short interval of time. What you see is that early in the test I am processing a low amount of oxygen somewhere around 0.5 L/min and as I increase the amount of oxygen I’m taking in (by cycling harder) the amount of C02 I’m getting rid of maintains the same ratio. That’s the case until I reach my aerobic threshold “wattage” or “effort” or “speed” and then the graph starts to kink. When that kink occurs I’m essentially firing on all pistons but not yet accumulating any oxygen debt or lactic acid in my muscles that I cannot get rid of. That measurement is worth a lot to an athlete if it is calibrated to a heart-rate. That’s why these fitness centers can charge $120 to get your VO2 max tested. Once you know what heart-rate you are at when you reach the threshold you can then measure your “arrival” at threshold without lugging around a computer and shoving a tube down your throat. Training at that threshold is the fastest way to gain aerobic fitness, basically it’s the recipe to get in the best shape in the most efficient way possible. For me the magic number is 170 beats per minute. Typically athletes can measure their maximum heart rate and then estimate this magic spot between 80% and 85% of their max heart rate or 75% to 80% of their reserve heart rate. These two estimates put my magic number in the domain of (163, 174) or (164, 172) correspondingly. Guess what? I follow the pattern, the number is 170.

So, did I qualify for the study? No I missed the mark by 2.8 ml/kg/min. “High calibre” athletes needed to meet the mark of 60 ml/kg/min and I scored only 57.2, not good enough. I still scored about 30% better than the average “non-athlete” (45 ml/kg/min), but it still feels a bit crushing. I have to say that my mass has got to be a disadvantage for something like this, if I were a dozen fewer kilograms like our buddy Lance Armstrong was things would be a different story. Since missing the mark I’ve done a bit of poking around to try and find a bit of solace in some non-standardization of the test. Indeed there is some floating around online, the test is said to be slightly biased towards the smaller athlete (which, at 196 cm I am not) by a fraction proportional to “the difference in masses to the one third power”. That means my inclination to loose weight and score better is right, but I think it also means that it is not really worth it.

Oh, and the other number that’s kinda cool is that I died at 520 watts. That’s pretty good power if I had to say so, and that’s following a 9 minute effort. I kinda doubt (as a matter of fact I know) I would be able to crack a mean grand in a track 1km sprint but the indication is that I’d be respectable, I can confidently say I’d be beyond 750. They say, but I don’t know exactly who “they” is, that to split 40 km per hour in a flat 40 km time trial (on a good bike with aero wheels), you need to stick around 300 watts on the pavement.

The bike ride to school this morning was a tad chillier than I’ve ever experience before. In fact I think it might have been colder than any other bike ride I’ve ever done by something like 12^o Celsius! The radio this morning was reporting a wind chill of 47^o below zero (minus thirty four or something without the wind). For all you Americans reading this, that’s 53^o below zero! Chances are there will be many days next summer riding at more than 150^o Fahrenheit warmer than that!

I’ll admit it’s not so much training as it is survival when you’re riding a bike around the city when it’s that cold… but, I made a commitment to myself to ride that bike to school every day of university this year and I don’t intend on quitting that plan just yet.

There are a collection of Sea to Sea cyclists maintaining BLOGS in addition to myself and Sunday afternoons always seem to be the time where I can survey the week’s posts by fellow riders. I ran across one today by Ryan Bruxvoort from Chicago. The Entry: Love God with your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Bike commented on the uneasiness that has been sensed by many if not all the riders regarding the expense of putting on a big bike trip and buying cycling gear etc with our money when that money could in theory be used for something else. Click on that above link to read his comments.

It got me to reflecting on the same situation… but instead of having my bike as the second most expensive possession (following a car) I’ve got two bikes as most expensive possessions #1 and #2. So am I twice as in trouble?

No, I don’t believe so, the fact that there is some uneasiness surrounding the idea is comforting. It means that there is a desire to align the life I live with my ideology. Last summer when my quiver of bikes was widened by one (ask me the story about that) I was considering what it meant for myself to put such a large fraction of my time and money into the sport. Where on the totem pole of values was cycling coming? I as aware of the fact but not drawing a ton of conclusions. Within a week a co-op student from out of town commented on how much he hated doing groceries on foot and the sore arms that result from carrying bags of groceries home from the store. I had a bike to lend out, and I caught the opportunity. If those thoughts hadn’t been milling around in my head it probably would have passed me by. My reaction could easily have been one of solidarity, complaining about the times I occasionally did groceries on foot and the dead-arms that always resulted from trying to buy way more food than I could carry. When you’ve got your mind in the right headspace there are opportunities that present themselves. It’s impossible to capitalize on them if you’re going about life with closed fists and your head down.

A friend from triathlon club was doing a purge of his pantry from bike gear he decided he no longer needed to hold on to. I would agree that his house was overflowing with bike stuff and because I can still turn around in my room and don’t yet have enough biking clothes to do the entire 64 days next summer without doing laundry, I aquired a bunch of new-used stuff. A stack of jerseys, cyclocross tyres, race tyres, some cold-weather tights, and some new wheels!

They’re Mavic Cosmic Elite wheels, aluminum alloy, medium profile with blade spokes. I intend on equipping the rear with a carbon fibre disk shell (wheelbuilder.com) and using them for racing and the occasional simulation training ride. I guess this summer isn’t going to give them a ton of use but I’ll be sure to break them out for “Tuffest Three” in October as I need to help our team defend the title.

It’s exciting when I’ve got the opportunity to talk about why I’m riding next summer with people who are far more serious cyclists than myself. There’s something about biking across an entire continent that captures the imagination of everyone. It’s atypical when the “imagination” turns to how cool it would be to put in 9 weeks of high volume bike training back to back, but in some sense it’s the same thing. It’s doing something big enough to cause some apprehension, doing it with a purpose, and being super excited about the opportunity. That’s what makes this whole bike ride into such a good place to begin a conversation. Where God allows that conversation to go is the exciting part.

My article for the Banner arrived in Church mailboxes across North America this week. Catching me a bit off guard, I was under the impression that this was coming on Feb 1. I had a bit of a fundraising blitz ready to go at the end of January and point people to read the banner the next week, a bit of a double whammy and get things into peoples heads two weeks in a row.

Obviously that plan was not to be when I wasn’t even in the country when the Banner arrived. Maybe I just need to be reminded that my skills aren’t going to raise $10000, I can’t do it alone with my best plans, best writing and best effort.

The article is fantastic and is 4 pages long in the banner, starting on this page and my article is on this page along with a sweet photo taken by Reuben Krabbe.

Google added a new feature to their maps software that I noticed for the first time today. It’s called “Terrain” and shows very roughly the topography of an area using a grayscale overlay on the green-brown-sand-snow kind of color schemes. I think it’s really quite something and even though the satellite view is really the more important one in most situations there are reasons in which this map style teaches you something that the satellite map cannot. Namely how the mountain ranges link together. Where the mountains “end” etc. I of course looked first at what kind of terrain we were going to be tackling on the bike ride next summer.

The first 4 or so days of the ride are going to be tough ones. Tougher than I realized. I remembered Washington State in two pieces from the time I visited. #1, the peninsula and the beach, and then the big desert along the river. I was a bit surprised as well as excited that we get some serious mountains right off the start. I also found out that the week between Boise and Salt Lake City doesn’t actually have any passes, it’s probably net uphill but there’s no King of the Mtns Jersey to be won there. I had the impression that it would be a tough week but the route actually skirts the bottom of the Mtn Range near Boise. The satellite map shows a big irrigation district but I figured it was in the midst of some serious hills. I shouldn’t say that it won’t be bad because you never know about wind, bad weather or crappy roads, but it’s not terribly hilly from what I can tell.

The Going to the Sun Loop in Glacier National Park was one of the things I decided to look at as I remembered the satellite imagery to be a bit ambiguous last time I looked. I’ve only seen one side of it and since I’ve heard good things about doing the loop in a day (136 miles) I wanted to see what the other side was like. It’s much more easily understood with the terrain option and quite obvious which side of the mountains you’re on.

The bike has returned from the shop. It’s awesome and I love it. I forgot how sweet it was to have gears indexed perfectly. I had them indexed to what I would consider “great” accuracy and shifting was “great” but since the return from the bike shop shifting is ridiculously nice. Oh, and the important stuff… The new handlebars are great, they’re a super-wide pair of drops, the widest in the cataloge and I really appreciate it. The ability to breathe fully may or may not be just in my head, I can see it from both angles, one I kinda expected it or two I have a minuscule improvement but am able to notice because I’m seeking the ability to notice it.

Cliff couldn’t find a 27 tooth cog that comes for a 9-speed. Basically because they don’t exist apparently. That means I need to decide in the spring what I’m going to do for gears. I may have to go for an extended length dérailleur and then put a mountain cassette on the rear. That would make it possible for me to go even past a 27 tooth, all the way to 31 or something crazy low (well I guess 35 is technically an option but an unnecessary one).