Yesterday I rode 135.5 miles.  I’m not really sure why.  I didn’t start out to do that.  I was planning on doing a long ride, but not nearly 7 hours.

I think it is good to do pretty long rides every once in a while.  For a couple reasons.  One, to reset your biological clock.  For some reason, every time I ride all day, I feel pretty good the next day.  I have no idea why that is.  The 2nd reason is it is nice knowing, mentally, that you have it in you to do longer mileage.

I got a question on Strava about what my longest day has been.  It would have to be in a race, quite a while ago.  I’ve done a lot of 160 miles races, plus riding there and back, so the mileage is pretty big.  But, the time is shorter.  a 160 mile race a 26 mph, is only 6 hours.  So, 7 hours is long.

Yesterday I kind of did two rides.  I rode 82 mile, then came back to meet up with the group ride.  The problem was the group ride was just Catherine and Bill.  Bill decided to go ride on his own, so I ended up just pulling Catherine around for over 50 miles.  It was windy, so I’m sure she got a workout.  I had a 20.2 mph average after 6 hours, but it dropped to 19.7 by the end, after running Tucker some.

I’m not normally a big mileage guy.  But I seem to be doing more recently.  I think I’m just enjoying riding my bike more now.

I changed the differential fluid in the diesel van.   I hate the smell of the gear oil in that.  The synthetic additive more.   It is lucky that it doesn’t have to be done that often. I also changed the regular oil.  I only use synthetic.  It takes 15 quarts.  With the filter, it is over $100 worth of oil. Dang.

I have to take Trudi back to the airport today.   She is flying to Northern California to pack the van and then head south to San Diego for the start of the Tour of California.  That time flew.  She is sort of on the right time now, but California is two hours earlier, so she’ll be off, since she is getting up at 5 to 6 am now.

Okay, there are no races around here this weekend.  I’ll have to look at a schedule and try to figure out what I’m doing the next month.

I flatted twice in the first couple hours and had to go to Sunflower Bike Shop in Lawrence to restock.

I moved two turtles yesterday out of the road. This box turtle, then a green turtle later.

The gears in the differential were pretty black, but the gear oil was super clear. I’m not why that was.

Tucker is a big boy now. He still loves to point butterflies though.

I had a ton of flats recently.  Both racing and training.  That is the way it has always seemed to go my whole life.  I won’t flat for ages, the I’ll flat a bunch in a row.  It doesn’t make sense.

I think the tubes and tubular tires aren’t made as well as they used to be.  For sure the tubes. You can get a batch of bad tubes and flat continually until you realize they are shit.

I’m hoping tubular tires are different.  I pretty much only race on Vittoria sewups.  The reason for this is that I know them well and thus, predictable.  Especially in the rain.

But the last year I’ve had a few really bad Vittorias.  I got a bunch of cyclocross tires that all had bad valve stems. Not really bad valve stems, but where they attached to the tubes, was flawed. Then at Joe Martin, the same thing.  A brand new Vittoria flatted in the final corner of a long road race and the only thing the matter with it was that it was leaking air at the valve stem. That is unacceptable.

I’ve already written a post on floor pumps.  It is easy to get frustrated with floor pumps.  Just when you think you have a good one, it isn’t.  I good floor pump is a very important part of the happiness of cycling, in my opinion.

I need to get another hand pump.  A real frame pump.  Both Bill and my brother carry full size frame pumps and when I flat, and use them, I always think to myself that I need to get a nice frame pump.  I’m not even sure who makes them anymore.

I used to have some awesome Silca pumps, sometimes painted to match my frame, by Joe Bell.  I haven’t had a good Silca pump for a long time.  I had a pretty good Zefal frame pump, but it lacked the nostalgia of my Silcas.

Anyway, I hope I’ve gotten this streak of flats out of my system.  I’m going to be doing some MTB racing and such, and flatting with latex in your tires is a mess.  Way worse than changing a tube on the road.

This is a photo of Alan McCormick’s Schwinn Paramount. We had matching Silca pumps painted with the frames. I wonder how many of those are around anymore?

A SIlca frame pump with a steel campy head is about the best you can still do. Even thought the pumps are just plastic, they work great.

Tucker gets into pretty weird positions when he is sleeping.

The topic is club rides.  I think that most of us learned many of the skills we have on club rides. That is the majority of the time we initially spent on our bikes, pedalling in circles and, hopefully, absorbing all the information around us so we could be better cyclists.

I didn’t really have a club ride when I started.  Well, maybe that isn’t true.  There were 3 or 4 of us that would meet after 5pm and ride until dark.  I don’t even remember if we rode 2 x 2, the roads were so barren back then that we never had issues with automobiles.

But, we did mimic races.  Sometimes we’d go to the VA hospital and ride criterium laps.  But that isn’t where I got good cornering.  I “practiced” cornering at Washburn University, on the sidewalks, at night.  We had about a quarter of a mile loop that had about 6 corners.  We’d time each other lap after lap on the sidewalk loop.  I went over there all the time on my own and rode hot laps.  Thinking back upon it now, it seems silly, but honestly, that is where I learned to lean my bicycle over.  I never fell on the sidewalk ride.  My brother, Kris did once. But he didn’t get hurt and it didn’t slow us down at all.

Anyway, back to club rides.  I think good club rides are hard to find.  They aren’t like the club rides of old.  Modern club rides tend to get out of control pretty quickly.  A good club ride is one that is good for all levels of the sport.  And by all levels, the bottom level starts with someone that has ridden a bike enough to understand the basics of drafting and riding in a group.

A good club ride is organized.  There needs to be someone, an enforcer you might say, that keeps everyone in line.  Usually, this is the best rider, a pro or ex-pro, or good Cat 1 that can control the craziness that tends to occur, which makes the ride unravel quickly if it isn’t taken control of quickly.

A good club ride isn’t huge.  When you start approaching over, say, 20 riders, then that is about the max.  There are exceptions to this, but in general, the guy watching out for all the riders, can’t keep track of more than about 20.  There are good rides with lots of more riders, but those rides tend to be more free-for-alls.

Our rides in Topeka have always been pretty good.  We tend to watch out for each other.  They aren’t no drop rides, they are – Let’s do our best to get everyone to the finish together, with everyone still getting a really good workout.  Riders of lots of different abilities can train together effectively.   That is one of the coolest things about the sport, that I can be sitting on the front, riding into a 20 mph headwind at 20mph, and a much weaker rider, a new guy, can still be riding with me by drafting correctly.

We normally try to ram it up towards the end of the ride.  Usually the last 5 miles, maybe further out sometimes, it just depends.  Our evening rides used to be 35-40 miles.  Now they are tending to be closer to 45-50.  We seem to be riding a little faster now.

It is sort of funny, but we used to sprint all stop ahead and city limit signs.  We tend not to do that anymore.  I’m not sure why that is.  Maybe it is because of the diversity of the group and that the regrouping would take up too much time?   “In the olden days”, stop ahead sprints were full-on race sprints.  I could for sure use some more sprint practice.

The first thing I tell a new guy that asks me about how to improve riding is to find a good group to ride with.  It is so important.  It is what lays the foundation for a successful, safe, cycling lifestyle.

Tucker has lost most of his baby teeth, so he doesn’t rip me up so much playing. He did chew the steering wheel of the van yesterday, though.

I don’t understand what we used to do with gearing on a bicycle to compete.  I’m dating myself, which is fine, but when I first started racing, there were 5 cogs on the back and the smallest was a 13.  But the biggest was never more than a 21 or maybe a 23.  That is with a 42 tooth small chainring.

Yesterday, I was riding up a 18% grade by WImberley Texas.  I was messing with my Garmin at the bottom, so I lost all momentum, but even when I started riding “normal”, I was using a 28 in the back, and I ride a 39 in the front.

I climb alright, nothing stellar.  I wrote a post on climbing in general.  I’ve ridden a ton of steep climbs.  I rode the steepest street in the world down in New Zealand. And there is no way I could have climbed that street in a 42 x 23.

I’ve ridden the British Milk Race a couple times and there are very steep climbs in the race.  You come to a sign and it says 1 in 4 or 1 in 3.  That is 25% or 33%.  Steep.  And I’m positive that I never had more than a 25 on the back there.

Even with a 6 speed freewheel, you could have a 13 -15-17-19-21-23 and that was it.  And that is two teeth between each cogs.

I have ridden a bunch in Colorado the past few seasons and have done most of the cimbs that used to be included in the Coors Classic.  Independence Pass or Loveland Pass, etc. don’t seem that hard with a 39 x 25.

I’m thinking most of the hard climbing I did was hard because I was always overgeared.  Like I was doing isometric exercises while trying to pedal my bike.  For sure that was the case in the MIlk Race.  I don’t know how many hills I had to tack to make it up them.  I remember riding beside a photographer, carrying a bag full of equipment and he casually took my photo, just walked up the hill a few steps, turned around and took another picture of me.  I was thinking to myself that it would be faster, and easier, to just walk.

On the Levis Team, we had a Maillard Freewheel box.  We could build our own freewheels.  We had some aluminum cogs for special days, but I don’t ever remember riding a 26 or 28 in the back.  I’m not sure why.  I don’t even know if that freewheel kit had gears that big in it?

Anyway, gearing selection is key now.  When the Tour of Spain adding in these stupid crazy pitches at the end of stages, guys are riding compact gearing in the front.  That would have been unheard of just a decade ago.  I guess it is an advancement of the sport.   I know I just leave an 11-28 on my training wheel all the time now.  Never know when you’re going to hit a wall.

How silly does this look now?

The Maillard Freewheel Kit.

Street sign in New Zealand.

Tucker likes his nylon travel “box”. But he knows how to get out now.

Yesterday I drove to Dallas from Austin.  It is truly amazing how much construction they are doing on I-35 between those two cities.  They keep adding lanes, with no improvement of the traffic problems.  I guess the people are arriving faster than the infrastructure still.  Eventually people will cry uncle and not take part.

Tucker is 5 months old today.  The last week he has gotten pretty crazy. Like bird crazy, running crazy, anything crazy. He has gotten so much stronger in the last two weeks that he’s a handful when walking on a leash.  He obviously needs to learn some manners.

I’m thinking about racing the Thursday night training race at Fair Park tonight if it stays dry.  I did that race once last year and it was super.  I didn’t get to race last weekend, so it would be good.  Then I’m driving back to Kansas and maybe doing the Flyover Series Races up in Nebraska this weekend.  I have to decide that pretty quickly I’d think.

I’d brought my MTB with me and was sort of thinking about racing in Warda at a Texas MTB series race, but forgot my MTB shoes.  I would have seriously considered just staying here and racing, but for the sans shoes situation.

It has been storming here in Texas like crazy the past few nights.  Texas storms are like everything else here in, big.  All the storms that plow through Oklahoma seem to start down here and go Northeast.  They usually dump an enormous amount of rain.  Riding in Wimberley, I got tosee firsthand how much storm damage is caused by these deluges.  Wimberley was nearly completely swept away during a flood just last year.

Okay, I’m going to go for a ride and then decide about racing.

A low water bridge off of Flite Road, connecting to Fulton, outside of Wimberley, I had to ride over a couple days ago.

Tucker is a happy boy most of the time.