For a variety of reasons, before yesterday, it had been over a month since the last time I'd ridden my bike at all. El Tour de Tucson is in less than a month away, and yesterday was the first of only three remaining long training rides. The weather wasn't promising, but I knew I had to go, or I might even have to withdraw from El Tour for lack of preparation. Travel reservations (including my parents') notwithstanding, that would have been extremely disappointing for a host of reasons, so I knew I had to ride yesterday.

I felt my five-week layoff pretty powerfully during the ride; my legs, my ass, and my back all felt it. I'm still feeling it today. The headwind on the way back didn't help, but most of it was my own fault for the lack of riding. But it's a good pain, the kind of pain that says, "What the hell were you waiting for?!" And I did make it up all the horrific hills that 9W South offers, it just hurt.

Since there was rain coming soon, the (fairly small) group only went up 9W as far as Piermont and then turned back. I even got a lift back into Manhattan with Kurt and Sandra instead of riding back over the Bridge to home because I was so wiped out, but that was fun as well. And the whole experience has renewed my determination to do a few weekday rides in the next two weeks as well as the last two weekend training rides, both of which promise to be quite long.

I will be ready for El Tour de Tucson on November 22. I may not improve on my time or performance from last year as I'd hoped, but I will bike 109 miles that day.

Second-round fundraising e-mails go out this week and next.

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...and some very good riding indeed.

I couldn't manage to drag myself out of bed at 6:30 yesterday morning to do the group training ride up 9W; I'd had a long week and desperately needed the sleep. That's one disadvantage of TNT's otherwise excellent training program; all the major rides are Saturday morning, and that's the day I most need just a few more hours. I'm sure yesterday's ride was beautiful, if probably a little bit on the cool side.

But I did make it out this morning, and did several loops of Central Park, for a total of 34.3 miles. More importantly, I pushed my hill-climbing past my comfort zone; instead of dropping down to my granny (the easiest crank) for Harlem Hill, instead even of relying on the largest gear in my middle crank, I forced myself to climb Harlem Hill in the second largest gear in my middle crank. Every time. It wasn't easy, but I made it up five times, which was pretty instructive. Even though I've got a little more padding around the middle than I did while training for El Tour de Tucson at this time last year, my legs are obviously still quite strong from all the hill climbing we did training for, and during, America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride around Lake Tahoe in June.

Of course, the endurance bicyclists among you know that leg strength isn't always the most important thing; I still need to ride often enough this fall, and long enough distances, for my ass to be ready. I think, but I'm not positive, that next weekend our trainig ride is a choice of the 50-mile or 75-mile routes of the Twin Lights Ride, which I found fairly hilly and challenging last year. Again, my only complaint is likely to be how absurdly early I have to get up to catch the ferry from downtown Manhattan to New Jersey... but I'm looking forward to the ride.

Fundraising: $6,413 so far, or 32.065% toward my goal of $20,000. I finally decided that the only way I was going to find enough "free time" to send out all the remaining e-mails was to take my laptop with me pretty much everywhere I go now, so I'm queueing up those e-mails during my commute on the bus and subway. Stay tuned, if you haven't gotten yours yet, you will this week!

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Today's Training Ride (Home to Staten Island Ferry Whitehall Terminal; Staten Island Ferry St. George Terminal once around Staten Island, with detours to the beach and such; Whitehall Terminal to Bowling Green subway stop; 86th St. subway stop to home):

61.7 miles

Total to Date:

992.1 miles

No paceline clinic today; instead, a fairly straightforward, mildly hilly (and somewhat windy) ride around Staten Island. Much of the terrain is downright beautiful, especially the beach on the south side of the island, but there's a fair amount of semi-urban decay as well. We stopped for lunch at a bagel/deli place, and a generally good time was had by all.

It wasn't until a bunch of us had just started to ride up from Whitehall at the southern tip of Manhattan, planning to ride up the West Side Bike Path to our respective latitudes (86th St. for me) and cross eastward, when my back tire started going flat again. *sigh* Rather than pump it back up and hope for the best, and risk having to waste a spare tube on a complete flat halfway up the Hudson River, I opted for the express subway, which was right there. I'll probably bring the bike back in tomorrow to have them take a really close look at that back tire; if there's a real problem, I might just replace the tires now instead of waiting for two weeks before El Tour de Tucson.

Anyway, it was still a highly successful day, certainly more so than last Saturday. I feel good, and I'm looking forward to a few more rides this week.

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Today's (Partially Solo) Training Ride (Home to 59th St. A train stop; 168th St. A train stop to George Washington Bridge, across to Ft. Lee; north on 9W to Tallman Mountain State Park; up into Piermont, NY; back out of Piermont, NY and down 9W to George Washington Bride, across to 177th St.; 177th St. to Haven Ave. to 168th St. to Broadway to 158th St. to Riverside Dr. to 120th St. to Morningside Dr. to 110th St. to Central Park; one and a half outer loops of Central Park; E. 90th St. entrance to home):

57.4 miles

Total to Date:

901.5 miles

Although I got a lot of riding in today, the ride itself has to go down as the first (and hopefully only) complete disaster of my training for El Tour de Tucson.

We're supplied with cue sheets for every significant weekend ride; they include detailed directions on where we're going and how we're getting there, in case we get separated from the group. Thus far I largely haven't bothered, mostly because I'm very good at staying with the group. So I didn't bother today.

I got over to Hudson Terrace on the Ft. Lee side of the bridge early, and a solid group of a dozen riders gradually assembled. We had a mission moment (including Coach Matt giving me a shout-out for my fundraising, which has now topped $12,000!), then set off - and after five seconds, I had a flat back tire. I hadn't had a flat since my ride to Brooklyn two days before my knee injury in June, 2006, but I was prepared. Fellow rider Steven stayed back with me, Matt said something about meeting us at the park, and everyone else went ahead. Steven changed my tube while I examined the tire to make sure there weren't any little pieces of glass still in it or anything like that, because nothing's worse than replacing a flat with a spare tube and having that go flat, too.

We set off to catch up with the group after only six or seven minutes, probably a mile and a half behind them at that point. Neither of us had a cue sheet, but Steven claimed to know where they were going to be based on riding with them last week (when I was taking my break from training). I commented that I didn't want to push too hard to catch up with them, that I was content to do it with my best normal riding instead, and I also noted that I hadn't been on last week's ride.

And then with no warning, off he went, a far more experienced rider pulling away from me easily. I was confused, but figured I would eventually see him somewhere up ahead helping direct me, or I would run into the group somewhere I knew from our hill training. Matt had mentioned the park, after all - I thought he must mean the ranger station at Palisades State Park. But when I pulled off 9W and into the ranger station a while later, there was nobody there. I called Matt and left a message, but in the meantime waited, because I didn't want to assume anything and go in the wrong direction.

Matt called back, telling me to keep going up 9W and find them resting in Tallman Mountain State Park, near the ranger booth at the entrance. Easy enough, right? Well, what he didn't tell me (it's possible he didn't even know) is that there's more than one entrance to that park. I pushed hard to catch up with them, at one point even reaching my maximum speed so far this year, a harrowing 41.7 miles an hour (yes, it was on a downhill). When I passed a tiny parking lot that had a small sign for Tallman Mountain State Park, I screeched to a halt, went back, and rode in. No ranger booth at the entrance - I was confused, but kept going, as the pavement turned to dirt road, and went deep into the woods. Eventually I came to a three-way intersection, with not a soul in sight, and I called mentor Kathryn.

Kat said they were leaving the park, but would leave a cue sheet at the entrance booth of which Matt had spoken. I still had no idea what she was talking about, but figured one of the other paths had to lead there. Eventually I found it, and the woman there gave me one of two cue sheets that had been left; the other was for a couple that was trailing even further behind me, having arrived at Hudson Terrace late this morning.

As usual, the notations on the cue sheet left something to be desired; what was listed as a right turn actually required me to go straight as one street transformed into another, but I didn't discover that until I had already turned right and gone a fair way down that road. Yet another reason that staying with the group is still preferable to cue sheets, however helpful they're supposed to be. But I finally got onto the right route, through the quaint, beautiful town of Piermont, right on the Hudson River.

And then my back tire went flat again. Or rather, was going flat - so I pumped it back up, tried to ride some more, and found it consistently going flat within a few minutes each time. Of course, I'd only had the one spare tube in my bag, and that's the one that was going flat. Frustrated, I called Kat again, told her I was turning back to Piermont to find a bike shop, and would likely just head home, because there was no hope at this point of my catching up with the group. As I walked back, I passed the aforementioned late couple going the other way; they offered a tube and an air cartridge, but I declined, because if there really was something still in my tire, I didn't want to waste them unnecessarily. Matt called me after learning what was up from Kat, and directed me to Piermont Bike Connection, where they replaced my tube, checked my tire thoroughly, and sent me on my way...

...at which point the strap on my left pedal fell off completely, the screws nowhere to be found. Fine, no big deal, straps aren't as good as clips/cleats anyway, maybe this is the excuse I've been needing for twelve years to switch, finally, to cleats. Even if that means having only a month to get used to them before the biggest single-day ride of my life. I had a snack, pondered how the day had gone so far, and set off back toward Ft. Lee.

With help from my granny gear, I made it up the huge hill that is the entrance ramp to 9W, which I'm sure the planned route avoided neatly; then I was making it pretty well up the only remaining enormous hill on 9W itself, when my derailleur failed this time to switch me down to the granny gear. I tried several times, but unfortunately that involved kicking up a gear on the back sprocket to try to ease the chain's way, and by the time I gave up, I'd expended too much energy climbing this hill in too high a gear. I got off my bike and walked it up the second half of the hill, feeling rather dejected. But once I was at the top, I knew the rest of the ride was relatively clear sailing - just the sun and humidity in my way.

...until something snagged my foot, made it impossible to pedal, and dragged me to my right, nearly plowing me into a wall near a side street. My shoelace, which I always keep tucked inside the shoe so as to avoid such problems, had come out and gotten snagged in the pedal's crank, and was wrapping itself around the crank as I pedaled. I was able to get off the bike slowly without any problems, and with my foot still on the pedal, crouched down to untangle the mess.

I continued on. Despite the absurd set of circumstances thus far, I decided that, since I hadn't done the entire planned ride, I should ride all the way home (if not more) instead of taking the subway. Arriving back on the Manhattan side of the George Washington Bridge, I completely guessed at what route would get me to Riverside Drive, but didn't do too badly. I found energy and positive spirit from passing hundreds of women going the other way on a breast cancer walk, and even decided to take a couple of trips around Central Park when I got there, though God knows why. The rest of my ride was without incident, and afterwards I treated myself to some General Tso's chicken, air conditioning, and "The West Wing" on DVD.

I don't think I'm even going to look at my bike tomorrow. Monday I'll bring it into the shop to ask about getting new clipless pedals and cleated shoes, have them look at my derailleur, buy a couple of new spare tubes, and think about my next ride.

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Today's Training Ride (Home to 110th St. & Lenox by way of the Loeb Boathouse; the "55 mile" [actually 59-mile] route of the New York City Century Bike Tour through Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and back through Manhattan to 110th St. & Lenox; 110th St. & Lenox to Home):

67.6 miles

Total to Date:

602.8 miles

The weather was much nicer than anticipated, and although the route was frustratingly full of "city biking" with traffic lights and, well, traffic, it was a great bike ride. Mentor Kathryn and her friend Fatima were great companions, and we had a very good time passing some, being passed by others, feeling absolutely no guilt about multiple Krispy Kreme donuts at rest stops (along with far more nutritious road fare, of course), and generally just getting our bike on.

At the second rest stop on Canarsie Pier, I ran into my old college friend Mark, who was doing the 55-mile route with his friend Nicole... that was a fun coincidence, and we enjoyed catching up briefly.

We had just stopped at Costco in Queens not far from the Triboro Bridge for a snack and a drink when a couple of other riders told us that the section in the Bronx - which only 75-mile and 100-mile riders were doing - was quite hilly. I was all prepared to do another twenty miles of biking, but after yesterday's hill climbing clinic, I wasn't really interested in those particular twenty miles. I "punted," following the 55-mile route on 111th Street and finishing strong, knowing that the ride home from there would still make today the longest single day of riding that I've done in twelve years.

At one point fairly early in the ride, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, I unfortunately lost concentration for a moment and trashed a parked towncar's side-view mirror... with my forearm. I've got quite the swollen welt on my arm, but you should see the other guy. Anyway, I stopped to take note of what company it was from so I could let them know and offer to pay for the repair.

I feel great... I'm a little fried, and it's clear to me that I need to get my back as strong as possible if I'm going to keep increasing the length of my rides in the run-up to El Tour de Tucson. But my knee feels great, and other than having gotten up at five in the morning, I'm not exhausted. I can't wait until the Twin Lights Ride in New Jersey in two weeks, where I should have no problem doing the 75-mile route.

I hope everyone else has had a great weekend!

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First of all, I'm happy to report that one of the shout-outs I received over the last couple of weeks paid off with at least one $25 sponsorship... so thank you again to Brandon for shilling for me. I find it a little disappointing, though not entirely surprising, that the other two shout-outs garnered incredibly positive comments from their combined several thousand readers, but not a single donation. People will generally support the causes they already care about and/or sponsor people they already know, so while I'm grateful for the shout-outs, I wasn't exactly expecting miracles.

So as far as fundraising goes, I am currently at $6,586, or 60.4% of the way to my $10,900 goal. I am aware of at least one potentially significant donation that is still yet to come my way, and I also have yet to send out any kind of reminder/update e-mail, so I'm pretty pleased with 60.4% given that there's still ten weeks left until the ride.

One reason I haven't yet sent out reminders/updates, by the way, is that I'm working with a friend on something special to send along with them. (Don't get too excited; I still haven't figured out a way to attach a pecan pie to an e-mail.) So it'll probably be another few weeks at least, unless I decide ten weeks warrants two reminders/updates. We'll see.

Last but certainly not least is the training. My 103.6 miles over the three-day holiday weekend was the longest sustained riding I've done since 1995 (the Jones Beach ride in mid-July, at 65.5 miles is still the longest one-day ride I've done since 1995), so I'm pretty pleased with my progress. But there's still a long way to go, and my biggest challenge lately has been hills.

So this Saturday morning I'll be up early for a hill climbing clinic with Coach Matt on River Road. The last time I climbed the big hill on River Road, it was the day after donating platelets... this time, I hope, I'll have an easier time of it.

Then Sunday, if I decide I'm up for it, I'm going to join Mentor Kathryn to ride the 75-mile route of the New York City Century, which winds through large chunks of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (the 100-mile route also involves the Bronx). I'm posting about this in advance because I don't want to chicken out.

As usual, I'll report back on how it all went. Thanks as always for your moral and financial support!

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I started sending out my fundraising appeal e-mails last night. Don't worry; if you haven't gotten one yet, you surely will. :-) And if it's one of those e-mails that led you here to read this, welcome!

I won't be biking much this week. Partly that's because of the weather; right now they're predicting rain all the way through Saturday the 21st. That would be a shame, as Saturday's planned training ride is a good one, from the southern tip of Manhattan's West Side Bike Path up to the George Washington Bridge, then over it and a full loop of River Road before coming back over the bridge, returning to Harlem, and stopping for lunch at the Dinosaur BBQ (yum!).

But in the meantime, I also skipped last night's Central Park training ride. It's not because I was sore or tired; it's because at the moment, I'm a contract attorney, meaning 1) I actually get paid more if I work more, and 2) this gig will end in a couple of weeks, and there's no guarantee of another one immediately following it, so more hours right now is a very good thing. To make it to a 7pm training ride in Central Park, I would have had to leave for home at 5:30, and yesterday I had a few more hours in me.

I'm anxious to get back on my bike, but not at the expense of my livelihood. It was "only" going to be two loops around the park anyway, though Coach Matt was planning to do them as time trials so that he could get a sense of who the faster riders were for future longer training rides like this past Saturday's to Jones Beach. I promised him that next time I do loops of the park on my own, I will time myself... and be honest about the results. :-)

So with all that, and the Thursday morning training ride almost surely a rain-out, the earliest I'll be riding again is Saturday, and then only if the weather turns out better than expected. With that in mind, I've walked home from work the last two nights, a nice, brisk two miles. That has helped a great deal to loosen any lingering kinks from Saturday's ride, and made me feel a lot better about passing on last night's training ride.

Yesterday marked four months to go until El Tour de Tucson. This will all get pretty serious soon enough already. Stay tuned!

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Today's Non-Training Ride (Home to Sid's Bike Shop on W. 19th St.):

4.7 miles

Total to Date:

178.6 miles

Our team was having a "fix-a-flat" clinic at Sid's in Chelsea tonight, so I figured I'd ride down early and buy a bunch of the gear I'd need. I was planning to ride home, as well, but I ended up deciding to have them install a few things for me, so I'll pick the bike up tomorrow. 4.7 miles should have been a very brief ride, but it still took me close to 40 minutes because of Manhattan rush-hour traffic. The benefit of my having brought my bike was that Darius, the chief mechanic at Sid's, was able to use my bike as a demonstration model for everything from fixing a flat to lubricating the chain, so it was like getting a minor tune-up for free (well, "free" in addition to the couple hundred dollars worth of gear I needed and actually paid for).

Saturday's ride looks to be fantastic - it should be about 80° and sunny, and we're riding out to Jones Beach from our choice of Far Rockaway (which makes it a thirty-mile ride) or Prospect Park (which makes it fifty). I'm pretty sure I know which one I'll be doing, but I haven't made the final decision yet.

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...it's raining in Manhattan. There was actually no training ride scheduled for this evening anyway; coach Matt gave us a few days off for the holiday, so the next scheduled training ride is next Tuesday. But I definitely want to get some serious riding done this weekend apart from the team. Saturday I'll be at the Live Earth concert at Giants Stadium all day and evening, so I'll plan to ride on Sunday; if it's supposed to be very hot, I'll ride first thing in the morning and go for distance again instead of hill training.

I hope everyone had a great July 4 holiday!

I haven't been able to, and likely won't be able to, join the group on any of our officially scheduled training rides this week - largely because of the absurdity of trying to make it to Prospect Park at six or seven in the morning, which would require getting out of bed at 4:30 or 5:30. There's a Thursday evening ride in Central Park tomorrow, but I already had other plans to support a cause important to a friend of mine, plans I'm loathe to break.

So many of the early morning rides are in Brooklyn because most of our coaches and mentors apparently live in Brooklyn, plus there are constantly other things going on in Central Park that would get in our way. At least one other Manhattan rider, an Israeli gentleman named Ofer, got in touch with me through our coach to talk about scheduling our own independent Central Park rides on a regular basis, but I'll be away for the next two weeks, and then he'll be away for a week right after that.

I will still probably do my own ride in Central Park tomorrow, though; the weather looks to be perfect, partly cloudy in the high sixties. The group rides are never required, they're just suggested. The main two reasons I would be disappointed to miss them are 1) continuing to make friends with the other Tucson riders, and 2) that some of the rides have specialized lessons, such as bike safety or body core training, that I could certainly stand to get refreshers on, if not learn from scratch.

But the main purpose of the rides is to ride, and that, I plan to continue doing, by myself if necessary (coyotegoth, are you up for something midday tomorrow?). And after I return on June 3 from my vacation in France, I plan to join as many of the training rides as possible.

Meanwhile, I had a slight disappointment earlier this week. Originally, I had planned to do the Honolulu Century on September 30 rather than El Tour de Tucson on November 17, particularly because I've never been to Hawaii and this would have been a great excuse. Unfortunately, Team in Training dropped Honolulu as an event; I gather the expense of sending the riders out there and putting them up had become too high a percentage of the money they were asking riders to raise (I'm not sure why they couldn't just increase the minimum, but they don't consult me). When I first told my parents about my plan, and asked them if they might be able to join me in Honolulu to greet me at the finish line and spend a few days with me in Hawaii, they thought that was a great idea. But now that it's Tucson - and it's later in the fall - my parents have told me that they're likely still to be on a vacation that includes a long cruise, one which they booked months ago.

I'm sure I will have no trouble finding meaning in completing the Tour without having my parents there, but it would be especially nice to greet Mom at the end of the ride, just to say, "That was for you." But of course, whether she's in Arizona with me or in Rio with Dad, she knows.