timwat

I've never ridden with someone else, always gone solo. Well today, just got back from 25mi with a good friend of mine. He's a semi-retired racer, has been invited me to ride with him since I got back on my bike.

So today I took him up on it. It's over 100 deg. this afternoon, after the first 5 mi to meet him I can tell it's going to be a tough day. See, main reason I took riding up again is to try and regain some sort of breathing capacity after a bad pneumonia, long hospitalization and a nasty lung surgery two years ago. Well, in this heat and for whatever other reason, my legs are fine, but I can't catch breath to go over 16mph AVS (typically I can carry 18-19 AVS). Uh-oh.

I meet up with him, he knows my history and says he has a real easy ride planned. So we take off, and he's setting (for me) a pretty quick pace. He's casually talking to me the whole time, and the conversation is quickly getting one sided as I'm sucking hard just to keep up. I finally tell him we gotta take a break. After 5min in the shade we keep going, and at the half way mark of our 25 mi ride we stop and chat a little.

On the way back, I'm feeling good, keeping our conversation two-sided, carried over 20 AVS pretty much all the way. He starts telling me about the crits he's doing this weekend. Ends up (I never knew this) he's a former Cat 1 racer, used to be sponsored by Schwinn with his two brothers.

On the big climb home (there's one large uphill, a brutal climb for me), he stands up...and all I see is his rear wheel pulling away like a rabbit. I keep spinning the whole way up, and when I finally catch up to him I put it into the big chainring and push to 25mph to head home.

Getting the second wind felt great. My bud even commented that I did better coming in than going out.

For a struggling guy with respiratory challenges, this was a good day for me, a great way to do my initial ride with someone else. He invited me to keep going out, build a base with him and then he'd introduce me to some more difficult stuff when I'm ready.

I'm jazzed. Perhaps a small thing, but a big milestone for me.

burtonbiker

In my small time riding I've found other riders to really be important - learning stuff or pushing you on days you don't feel like it or just the comradere of doing a good ride. Sounds like you found a great riding buddy.

Dutchy

The first thing you will learn about riding with others is there is no such thing as an easy ride. There is always a strong rider who's idea of "easy" is different from everyone else’s. All our group rides turn into hammer fests, which unfortunately does tend to keep riders away.

Either way well done, and keep it up.

CHEERS.

Mark

As You Like It

I wonder if it is a "lung thing," but I'm asthmatic, and I need about a 5-mile warm-up ride before I engage in any group efforts, especially if I'm riding with the one fast group I like to hang out with. Most of the time, my asthma doesn't bother me much at all--if I can keep my allergies under control, the asthma stays at bay, too. However, I sometimes have a hard time dealing well with very heavy humidity, even if I haven't been wheezy in weeks. Overall, though, my asthma is much less of a problem for me when I am riding regularly and riding hard, and am generally in good cardiovascular condition. One of many reasons I'm planning to be a year-round commuter starting this fall. I've always been a March-through-November daily rider, but now that I am finding out more about cold-weather gear, I am thinking there's less of a reason I should be off my bike. We'll see what my persnickety lungs think of that idea.

CyberCycle

Do you ever notice that before a race, especially the Tour going on now, you see them on bikes before racing? You would think this would waste energy and tire them out but it is a warm up and they will actually get their heart rate really pumped because the first push of the day is always the toughest. And if you are sitting on a trainer when this happens and not in a race, all the better. : ) Consider your first part of the ride your warm up and the second part, you real effort.

Toefuzz

That's an interesting point CyberCycle... I've always thought I was just really out of shape (which I am) b/c the first 2 or 3 miles seems to be more difficult than miles 4 - 15 for me... Perhaps I just need to get my muscles and everything warmed up. Do other people experience this?

canisestinvia

what about air quality at that time of day? Should you be riding in such conditions? I know here in Houston it can get pretty nasty out when the temperature rises like that.

timwat

Here in Northern California, esp in the East Bay, we don't get really bad smog/pollution in the heat...no where near what SoCal gets. Should I be riding in such conditions? W/ lo humidity, I haven't had too much trouble before. I rode in way over 100 deg. conditions in Las Vegas, and didn't have any problems at all. I can't imagine what riding in Kansas City in summer would be like...don't you guys get close to 100% humidity?

But the question of warm up time is interesting. Does warm up take longer from day to day? Or do you guys find it's pretty much a standard, fixed constant once you get into some kind of shape?

BryE

The humidity here in central Illinois is brutal lately. I put some new tape on my handlebars last night. It took 20 minutes and in no way did I exert myself, but when I went back inside about 50% of my T-shirt was soaked through from sweat. This was around 7:30 in the evening, after the sun had sunk below the trees. In the middle of the day the temps have regularly been pushing 95 degrees, and the humidity remains close to 100%. I do my riding in the morning from around 6:00 - 7:00 exclusively; the last time I rode in the middle of the day I almost felt like I was drowning.

This summer has been especially bad, though. Last summer was cooler with much less humidity (though large patches of my lawn died from the 1.5-month long drought at the end of the summer ).

As You Like It

It's sticky and kind of gross, but you basically get used to it. It has to be pretty awful before I stop having fun. Last night was disgusting--I ended up stopping about 3/4 of the way home in a city park and bailing water over myself so I could make that last 4 miles. I think I re-filled my water bottle and poured it over myself about 6 times. Still, it wasn't bad enough that I considered it a lousy ride, and when I was coming back out of Brookside, with 10lb of catfood on my back, I got up a pretty good pace (yay, momentum, yay, finally learning to spin properly) and created my own personal breeze. It was when I started going north downtown (a long, subtle, sneaky uphill) that the weather and cargo started wearing upon me.

It really depends for me, on a lot of factors. If my allergies are kicking my butt, how much sleep I've been having, what stage of my monthly cycle I'm in (being a woman can be a total freakin' nuisance), tc. Some days I just plain can't seem to get going right, no matter what. It's like when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed...sometimes there's just no explaining it.

timwat

(bowing with respect)

Man, I gotta get me a bigger Camelbak.

webist

I got back on a bike about 3 years ago after a 30+ year absence. All of my knowledge of cycling was 30 years old and I, of course, had 30 years of additional wear and tear along with some nutritional misbehavior perched on the saddle. I'll lay aside the mechanical differences like cassettes and STI shifters, etc.

What I really failed to grasp until after considerable new and up to date experience was that at 50, I can't just hop on the machine and hammer away at max speed without really hurting. I've learned that my warm-up period lasts about 40 minutes on average. (I hope yours is shorter.)

I can still make myself hurt no matter how long I warm up and I frequently do. It's a satisfying discomfort though not pain from an injury.

I've also noticed that we are to ride with traffic and use the front break as our primary.