My longest ride (to date)
 

Well I went for my ride today after taking a week off (accidentally ). I have been slowly trieng to increase my distance to prepare for some long group rides I would like to do. Previously I went 17 miles after I had chickened out of a 12 mile group ride the night before. ( I had never ridden 12 miles and was worried). After I conquered the 17 miles I felt a very confident in my "skills" and two days later I decided I would ride from Independence to Corvallis approx 24 miles....... the hills killed me:( I only made it 14 miles. So this is where the week slipped in (unintentionally I swear). Today I decided to try for 20 miles. I was riding out on buena vista a very nice ride between Independence and Albany. My original intent was to ride 10 miles and then turn around and head home. That didn't happen. As I reached the 10 mile mark I had just finished ever increasing hills that ended right at 10 miles, and there was no way I was going to waste this beautiful straight stretch of down hill in front of me. (:D after all I had worked hard for it :D ) well to wrap up my story I found out 2 things, 1. 30 mph feels very fast on two skinny little wheels....especially with 464lbs on them. 2. I can ride 20 miles, I made it all the way to Albany :thumb: Oh, btw Hillpumper if you read this I need your Phone # we could have met :D

Congrats on the personal best. I have just started riding and so far have done 2 10 miler's. Thinking of trying to hit 15 tomorrow. Gotta see if my brother is up to it.

When I did the Tour de Cure 2 weeks ago, I was going down a hill and topped off at 33.9 mph...I started to lightly use the brakes because there was a turn at the bottom:eek:...plus I had never gone that fast before...


And like BillMoore said, congrats on the personal best. Im sure your next one will blow that one out of the water:D

well, just yesterday I did my first ride that was more than 10 miles. I rode 21.3 miles, went home, and then came back later to do another 10 miles as I felt I could have done more but the better half was calling for me to come home.

Anyhow, congrats! I know when I looked down at my odometer at it said 21.3 I was jumping for joy!

Way to go TC!!! You will be doing that 40 miles in no time. :thumb: I think I know which hill you are talking about, it's a good one. I am working nights this week, so meeting may not have worked out, but I need to try my new bike out soon, so we will get to do a ride together soon.

Nice job! I've kept a spreadsheet with all ride's time, average speed, distance, max speed & comments since I have gotten back into cycling. It is nice to look back in time and see progress that has been made! (If you like I could email you a blank copy of the spreadsheet, it automatically tallies mileage, time and average speed for the year.)

The higher speeds will become more comfortable with time. With me, at the beginning of the year, 30 mph scares me at the end of summer I'm not nervous 'till around 40. I'm sure those who live in hill country really fly!

Wait til you have to go into the left lane on a 55 mph road to pass a car. :p THAT is a rush.....especially when you realize you just passed a State Cop in an unmarked car....on your bicycle. :p

(I have a 4 lane that I need to occasionally ride that has a bike route on a wide shoulder and a long downhill, and it was blocked by a breakdown. I had to merge into the traffic lane and I was actually moving faster than the traffic because of the downhill, and being all tucked and aerodynamic down on my aerobars.)

Try doing that in a 40km/h zone, looking down at your computer and seeing 45km/h flashing back at you. Yeah, you would want to frame that ticket...:D

Congrats man!

I have passed a couple of cops on one of the routes we do and he is in speed trap mode. I keep wondering if he checks our speed just for fun *LOL*. Could you imagine taking the ticket to court. Yes your honor I was doing 45 in a 40 on a push bike *LOL*

Lets see 464 pounds and 20 miles.

We need a goofy Clydesdale metric to compare personal bests. I'm proposing the waddle-o-meter or Clydecalc. Pounds multiplied by miles.

464/20=9280 on the Clydecalc.

If a 145lb UCI Protour rider wanted to put up that kind of effort on the ClydeCalc, they'd have to ride 64 miles. So you're not exactly riding a Tour de France stage yet, but you're a third of the way there! The best thing is that it gets easier. That first level of basic fitness is the hardest. After you 'can ride' the bike, everything else just gets easier.

My personal best this season is 28 miles. I weigh a svelte 375lbs. My effort was good for 10500 on the Clydecalc. If you can go just three more miles (a 23 mile ride) you'll have me beat!

Clydecalc (miles multiplied by pounds) - Season's best efforts to date.

Clydecalc:

Mtnbke (375lbs & 28 miles) - 10500
Takingcontrol (464lbs & 20 miles) - 9280

Athenacalc (only list score - not weight):

no entries

Update the Clydcalc seasons best efforts list with your Clydecalc score people.

How 'bout we update the list with some Tour de France riders after stage 12, the longest of the Tour this year at 211.5k (131.4 miles). Can anyone get their Clydecalc score as high as a Tour rider (over 19,000)?

Well, my best unadjusted ride to date was 167 miles in 15 hours, at 257 pounds at that time.....

So, on the Clydecalc scale: 167*257= 42919?

A better metric might be to ratio the weight for a percentage, in this case and them multiply that decimal times the miles.

Clyde Weight:257
TdF Weight: 165

257/165*167=call it 1.56*167 miles=260.11 miles adjusted for effort as compared to a 165 pound climber....

Unfortunately you picked a scale that 99.999% of the worlds population does not use, and 99.999% of those do not understand. The American system of measure. You need a system that works whether you measure weight in pounds, weight in kg with distance in miles or kilometres.

OK, just for the record, Have you not been paying attention??? When has America done anything because it makes sense? We still mint the penny and print the 1$ bill for Christ sake. Spaceballs was not just a movie making fun of Star Wars, it was also an allegory of the U.S. (we being planet spaceball and everyone else druidia ) :D So while most of the world enjoys easy dec 10 conversions, we will hold to our SAE and expect everyone else to change :roflmao2: .......the previous post in no way reflects the views of this station or its affiliates. <--(another american treat.. to many lawyers)

In all fairness I think the UK has it on the US.

Still clinging to the pound instead of the Euro. Measuring weight in stone (making accurate comparisons impossible).

Now that's stubborn...

The goal of the scale wasn't really to compare mileage with a TdF rider. Rather to give a Clydesdale a motivating frame of reference for their rides. It reflects how much more difficult it is to ride at 400lbs, and also reflects how many more miles you'll have to ride as you slim down.

Using a proportional forumula minimizes the effort and the progress.

Its a goofy formula. Its not supposed to be 'perfect', just fun, and somewhat informative. Besides, everyone knows that '11' is louder than '10'.

I think your 42919 score will stand for some time...that is, unless I can get up to 114 miles without managing to lose a single pound. To that end, I think we should limit posting scores to only the distance of a metric century. Anything beyond that assumes a level of fitness that goes beyond the context of this community. Once you start doing 70+ mile rides you're far and away beyond the scope of the Clydesdale community.

Naw Canada's actually got you beat, after spending Billions of dollars to convert, they simply quit, so somethings got converted and some didn't. While you drive by the kilometre, your house is still built 16 inches on centre. We also still have the penny, but the $1 bill disappeared over a decade ago.... The governments argument there was that a $1 bill lasts 6 months, a $1 coin lasts 25 years, although it costs 10 times as much to make the coin, overall it's cheaper.

[QUOTE=mtnbke;9151395]Clydecalc (miles multiplied by pounds) - Season's best efforts to date.

Clydecalc:

Mtnbke (375lbs & 28 miles) - 10500
Takingcontrol (464lbs & 20 miles) - 9280

I rode my first metric century last Saturday. 96 degrees, made a wrong turn, corrected, and the last to get home (4 hrs, 49 min, 13.5 mph. I kept thinking I'm twice their size, I should get extra credit. Add to your Clydecalc list:
Rhinobiker (265 lbs & 65 miles) - 17225

[QUOTE=RhinoBiker;9208432]Let me weigh in, so to speak....

My Clydecalc scores include my 2007 century - 103 miles at 250 - 25750. My recent tour featured two 60 mile days at 327 pounds - me plus 40 pounds of year. That's a Clydecalc score of 19620 for two days. Daily average for the tour was 12644.

Chewybrian (215 lbs X 375 miles) = 80,625 standard clyde units

(I think a couple clyde randos can beat that, too--maybe Clifton?)