Cadence, Confidence, Consistancy

This is the trail that goes by Lunken Airport. We rode the length
of the trail during our ride today.

Hello Fellow Readers,

It’s been a while. How have you been? Well that’s just dandy. I’ve just been studying my butt off over here getting ready for final exams so please excuse my recent lack of posts.

Today was my first ride with Dr Jayne, my official advisor in the realm of road cycling. For those of you new to my blog, Dr Jayne is also the faculty advisor and coach for the UC Cycling Team. I received an email from him today at 11:30 about a possible noon ride which, due to the imminent three drops of rain that were expected to terrorize the city within the hour, was postponed to 6:00pm. It’s a good thing too because those three drops… ended up being 9.

I decided with all of the newfound time before the ride with Dr Jayne, I would set aside my manic studying for an hour (as thrilling as Material Balances is…) and attend to a few bike needs I had discussed with the Doctor at our last meeting. I packed up my tiny saddle bag, hiked up my padded bike shorts, strapped on my helmet (safety first!) and headed out the door. Only to return immediately for my forgotten cell phone and money… As my roommates probably know, this is a regular occurrence for me. I generally expect to leave the house twice on account of forgetting something.

As I was saying, I headed over to the Campus Cyclery, the local bike shop, to get pick up the goods. After some discussion with an employee about cost and possible future maintenance, I walked out with a new tube, glue-less patch kit, speedometer with cadence reading, and a brand new water bottle.

Being a person who is not very good at waiting, I immediately biked home and began setting up my new speed coach. After a couple adjustments, the use of every zip-tie in the package, and a thorough coating of chain grease on my hands and shins, the speedometer was up and running! I must say I’m a little bit proud of that one.

I met Dr Jayne at 6:00pm in his office for the ride. After a short chat about safety, we took the elevator down to the garage level and hopped on our bikes. On the ride out of the garage and onto Martin Luther King Dr, Dr Jayne ran through the signals he uses, a safe distance to maintain from the curb (1 arm’s length), and a quick run through of the beginning of our ride.

I’ll spare you all the gory details of the ride but here are some things we discussed as well as the route we took. It took us around 1.5 – 1.75hrs to complete this route.

The main focuses of this ride were cadence, drafting, and giving Dr Jayne an opportunity to examine the way that I ride so he can better tweak and assist my technique. In the past, I have had some knee problems while biking so per the Doctor’s orders, I have been working on increasing my cadence from 75rpm to around 95rpm. It is a big adjustment that I can honestly say I struggled with most of the ride. A higher cadence requires different use of your gears, different reasoning behind your decisions to shift, and more attentiveness to your pedal stroke. It is very cerebral in a way I was entirely unprepared for from a bike ride. Learning to draft is a whole other animal. It does take some level of mental understanding but for me, most of learning to draft is being confident in your awareness and reflexes. Knowing that if something were to happen, you are giving yourself enough distance to stop and you will react in time. Also, it also takes a steady path and the ability to ride consistently. This way, the cars and other riders on the road will be able to predict your moves, an important thing when drafting and riding closely to other cyclists.

For those who don’t cycle regularly, drafting is when you ride close to the rider in front of you, allowing them to break some of the wind and decrease the amount of work you have to do. It can lower the wattage you output by 30-60%. On longer rides, this is a completely invaluable skill needed to preserve energy so I was paying close attention to it today.

I am by nature a fairly cautious rider and it usually takes me a while to overcome any new scenarios. I found myself constantly having to pull forward and push my comfort boundaries in order to get into a position to draft. A good distance for drafting is usually no more than a wheel diameter behind the rider you are drafting off of. You also want to be about the length of your handle bars to one side. This gives you more time to react if the rider in front stops abruptly or falls.

On the return to campus, our ride took us up Gilbert Ave. For those in Cincy who know downtown a little, you understand. For everyone else, Gilbert is a steady 2mi climb of 300ft. Not the most giant climb for a seasoned cyclist but for a beginner, it’s quite the little beasty. Fortunately however, with the increased cadence and the use of my absolute lowest gear, I made it to the top successfully and with the approval of one Dr Jayne. In the words of the Doctor, I have the potential to be “quite a good climber” if I continue cycling consistently.

After we returned to campus, we went over a training plan. Starting this week, I will be riding 5-6 times a week with 4-5 of these rides being around 20mi and the last ride being a longer ride. The long rides will start at 30mi and increase by 5mi each week until the week before my century ride. By this point I should be at 75mi.

That’s all the news for today. Wordy and long as always but I guess you can say long-windedness and talking runs in my family… mine is just a little more confined to "paper" than to general conversation.

Safe and happy travels and remember, dreams are pointless unless you choose to make them reality.

“Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.” ~Napoleon Hill