Geeky Bob

Recently one of the footswitches on my Line 6 M13 Stompbox Modeler went bad. I'm pretty good with a soldering iron, so I started poking around on the Line 6 website, but it didn't look like Line 6 sells that type of footswitch as a spare part. Before calling Line 6 about the problem, I thought that I would do an Internet search to see if anyone else had run into this issue and what they did to resolve it. As it turns out, a bunch of people had run into this exact problem; most people's feedback was incredulity that Line 6 had created such an incredibly rugged pedal like the M13 with such easy-to-destroy footswitches. (Unlike the individual Line 6 stompbox modelers like the DL4 and DM4 which you could probably run over with a tank and they'd still work.)

However, a bunch of guitarists had blogged about how they had modified their M13 by drilling out the original footswitches and replacing them with more durable, off-the-shelf footswitches. This increases the overall durability of the M13; but should a footswitch ever go bad again, it's much easier to replace the bad switch when you're using readily-available parts. One particular blog on Guitar Geek was extremely detailed - the blog's author had taken copious photos throughout the whole process. It looked like it would take an entire weekend to do the mod myself, and I was planning on using the Guitar Geek blog as a guide for modifying my own pedal when I noticed that the author had written in his notes that if he had it to do over again, he would hire Jack Vaughn (www.jhv3.com) to do the work for him.

I checked out the JHV3 website, and it looked like Jack charged a fair price for doing the M13 footswitch mod, and he did other mods as well. What's more, when I looked at the "Clients who use JHV3" section of his website, he had a long list of Christian artists whom I listen to as his clientele. I contacted Jack through email, and I discussed hiring him to do a couple of mods for me - the footswitch replacement and his audio upgrade. We settled on a price and he gave me his address  on the East Coast. Jack asked that I get it to him quickly because he works as a guitar tech for bands on tour, and he would be heading out near the end of September. With that in mind, I packed up my M13 and sent it to him in the mail near the end of August. Jack had mentioned that it takes him 3 to 4 weeks to complete the mods, so I wasn't worried when I hadn't heard anything from him in a couple weeks.

Jack contacted me a couple of days ago to ask for my telephone number; I sent that to him, and he called me a little later that day. He explained that my pedal was almost done, but he needed to report for Casting Crowns tour rehearsals that night. He said that he could mail my pedal to me from the road, which would probably save some postage since Casting Crowns was touring the West Coast and I live in Arizona. I said that was no problem, but he mentioned that Casting Crowns was going to be in Phoenix at Grand Canyon University (GCU) on Friday, September 19th; Jack said that if I wanted to do so, I could drop by GCU and pick up my pedal from him in person. I said that sounded like fun for me - and he said that it would be interesting for him, too, because he has never met any of the people who send him their pedals for modifications. (He also said that he might be able to get complimentary tickets to the show for my wife and me, but my wife had to work that day, so I had to politely decline the offer. This was too bad - I like Casting Crowns.)

With our plans in place, I took the day off from work on Friday, drove my wife to work, and then I made the two-hour drive to Phoenix to meet Jack. I sent him a text message when I arrived at the GCU arena, and he came out to meet me. We shook hands, and then he took me backstage to show me my modified M13. We discussed the updates for a few minutes, and Jack said that if I wanted to hang out while he set up the guitar gear for the bands, we could go out for a late lunch. Watching the stage set up sounded like a lot of fun, really - I like seeing how a show comes together from the technical side.

So Jack took off to set up the guitar gear for the show, while I tried my best to stay out of the way on the sidelines as I checked out everyone's gear from a distance. I didn't have a crew pass, so I needed to hang out near the guitar area; oh darn. (Note: Josh from Casting Crowns plays some nice guitars from Paul Reed Smith; even the sea foam green one looked good.) Before we headed off to lunch, Jack gave me a tour of the effects pedal boards that each of the guitarists was using; this is always a great deal of fun for me, because every guitarist has their favorite pedals - including me - so we like to see what everyone else is using. (Hence why the Guitar Geek website exists.) Another thing that I thought was particularly ingenious was the way that the guitar techs had recycled one of the drum crates as an isolation chamber for the guitar amplifiers, so the stage volume was significantly reduced, while the amplifiers were able to deliver some great tone at volumes for which they were designed.

Once Jack was done with the initial gear set up, we headed out to lunch. We found a nearby taco place, because I never need to be asked twice if I would like Mexican food. Jack bought lunch, which was a nice gesture that wasn't necessary. Over lunch we talked about various pedals, guitars, mods, families, etc., and how Jack got into work as a guitar tech and effects pedal builder/modder. He's extremely well-read from an electronics perspective, which lends itself greatly to his skills as a guitar tech.

We had a great discussion over a bunch of topics, but eventually it was time for Jack to head back for Casting Crowns' sound check. I drove us back to the arena, and Jack said that I could watch a bit of the sound check before I headed back down to Tucson to pick up my wife from work. This sounded like fun, so I followed Jack into the arena, and I found a seat on the side of the arena that was close enough to the stage to watch a bit of the sound check while I stayed out of the way. My son plays in a band in the Seattle area, and he likes Casting Crowns as well, so I thought he'd like to see what another band looks like when rehearsing. With that in mind, I took a short video during the the sound check to send him. (Note: Jack is the tech who walks onstage about 15 seconds into the video.)

I watched the sound check for around ¾ of an hour, and it was amazing how tight Casting Crowns sounded; it was only the second night of their tour, but they were effortlessly nailing their songs perfectly. That being said, I needed to head back to Tucson to pick up my wife, so I dropped by where Jack was working, thanked him again for everything, and I hopped back on the Interstate headed south.

One last note - since this whole adventure was started because I needed to mod my M13, I should point out that Jack's mods were great. I would recommend him to anyone, and I'd hire him again. ;-)

This was my second day of riding with my new road bicycle, and I'm still getting used to the differences. With that in mind, I'm building up my confidence, but I'm not going as fast in some places as I used to ride on my old hybrid. However, even though I was taking it easy on the faster parts of my ride, I was able to pick up the pace on the slower parts of the ride due to the design of the new bicycle, which resulted in another day of personal bests.

I completed the full 17-mile ride from my house through the Saguaro National Park (SNP) and back in just over an hour, which is considerably better than my earlier rides. (I completed my first ride around the park this past April with a time of 1:26:49, and today's ride had a time of 1:03:11.) A goal that I have been working towards is completing the ride in under an hour, and as of today I am a little over 3 minutes away from accomplishing that goal.

It was supposed to rain in the evening, so I chose to ride during my lunch hour. Riding at that time has an added benefit of fewer cars on the road and less cyclists. That being said, I need to look into picking up a better mirror for the new bike. I'm using the end-of-handlebar mirror from my previous bike, and that doesn't look like it's going to work with the drop-style handlebars on my new bike. I simply can't see the cars behind me, and that's a bad thing.

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 1:20pm
  • Distance: 16.9 miles
  • Duration: 1:03:11
  • Calories Burned: 632 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 1,161 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 16.1 mph
  • Peak Speed: 30.2 mph
  • Average Cadence: 57.0 rpm
• Temperature:
  • Minimum: 77.0 F
  • Average: 78.4 F
  • Maximum: 82.4 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 153 bpm
  • Maximum: 174 bpm

It's amazing how much of a difference changing some of your gear can have.

If you read my blog from last Saturday, I mentioned that my feet were hurting during many of my long rides. I have known for some time that switching to cleats would be better than my existing configuration where I had been using toe clips for the past few years. Until recently all of my rides had been fairly short - 10 miles or less. But sometime this past Spring I decided to slowly increase my mileage, and by the end of Summer I was riding over 100 miles per week. As I did so, I occasionally made some upgrades to my existing bike, but I was still riding a hybrid - which isn't the best bike for hill climbing or long-distance road riding.

With that in mind, I worked it into our budget to replace my hybrid with a dedicated road bike, and I switched from toe clips to cleats. Today was my inaugural ride with my new road bike, and I chose to ride my usual 17-mile course from my house through the Saguaro National Park (SNP) and home again. I'm still building up my confidence on the bike, so it seemed as though I was riding slower than I would normally ride while I got used to the feel and controls of the new bike. But that being said, I still managed to complete the SNP loop 2¾ minutes faster than my previous personal best.

I attribute the increased speed around the SNP loop to two primary factors: my new road bike is 12 pounds lighter than my hybrid bike, and switching from toe clips to cleats. Both of these changes gave me increased climbing power, and as I get more comfortable on the new bike I would expect my hill climbing to improve a little more.

The only downside of my new bicycling setup is - I have been very spoiled with regard to road dampening. My hybrid has much larger tires, which absorb more of the bumps in the road that I encounter on my rides, and whenever the road grew too bumpy I would enable the shock absorbers on my front forks to absorb even more of the unnecessary abuse. With my road bike, I have none of those dampening features, so I feel every nook and cranny in the road; I'm just going to have to get used to that.

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 4:38pm
  • Distance: 17.0 miles
  • Duration: 1:06:19
  • Calories Burned: 571 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 1,161 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 15.4 mph
  • Peak Speed: 28.8 mph
  • Average Cadence: 58.0 rpm
• Temperature:
  • Minimum:69.5 F
  • Average: 68.0 F
  • Maximum: 75.2 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 144 bpm
  • Maximum: 171 bpm

Saturdays are one of my normal long rides, and in keeping with that tradition I rode 63.3 miles, or 101.9 kilometers. This was my second or third time riding more than 60 miles within the past year, although I was in better shape on this ride than my last. That being said, today's ride was a little slower than normal for me; my average mph and cadence were both less than normal, although I'm not sure why.

I had planned on riding a double pass around the Pistol Hill Road loop, which would give me somewhere over 50 miles, but here's the way that everything actually panned out: I completed my first pass around the loop, and I made my obligatory stop and the hydration station near the entrance to Saguaro National Park. (By this time I had ridden a little over 27 miles.) While I was refilling my water bottles, I was contemplating whether I should ride the 8-mile loop around the park after my second pass of the Pistol Hill Road loop, but I hate doing that because my legs are pretty tired after 45 or 50 miles and I don't like facing the big hill on the back side of the park when I'm in that condition. Then I had an epiphany: "Why don't I ride around the park now and then make my second pass around the Pistol Hill Road loop?" This seemed like a good idea, and I was in considerably better condition for the park loop, but the long 7-mile ride to the summit on Pistol Hill Road was a pain.

Riding around Saguaro National Park

The temperature was pretty nice for today's ride. I have done several rides in 100F+ temperatures, so it was nice to have a ride that stayed around the mid-80s. That being said, for some inexplicable reason the temperature spiked all the way to 98.6 while I was riding around Saguaro National Park, which made the loop a little miserable at times. However, the temperature dropped back down to 90 degrees by the time I left the park.

"Javelina Rocks" - Not the scene of the famous Star Trek
Gorn battle, but it would be a good substitute.

Something weird happened on my way around the Saguaro National Park loop - I inhaled a bug. That might seem kind of funny in hindsight, but believe me - it was no fun at the time. I was coughing violently for at least a mile, and at several random intervals my condition triggered my gag reflex and I thought that I was going to choke. The thought running through my mind at the time was, "Oh great - I'm in the middle of nowhere and there's no one to do the Heimlich Maneuver for me." Eventually I simply screamed at the top of my lungs for several seconds and that seemed to clear my airway, but that was a terrible experience which I hope not to repeat.

My feet have really been hurting on my long rides, right around the ball of each foot. I have long known that switching to cleats instead of using toe clips would help alleviate that problem, but today perfectly illustrated why. Sometime around the 20-mile point my feet began to hurt - as they normally do - but as I thought about where they were hurting exactly and how they were bending on the pedals it dawned on me that the toe clips were forcing my feet to bend in a way that was unnatural, so I flipped both pedals over and rode the next 40 miles with relatively little pain. (The toe clips will be gone soon.)

Panorama from the high point on Pistol Hill Road.

Today was also an eye-opener with regard to keeping my electrolytes in balance and my energy up. I carb-loaded before the ride on ¾ of a waffle, and I carried plenty of Gatorade & PowerAde as well as several packets of Gu for the ride. It is suggested that cyclists ingest a packet of Gu about every 45 minutes or so, although I usually don't that often. I had a packet around the 15-mile mark, and another around the 27-mile mark, but sometime around the 42-mile mark I realized that my body had already burned off everything that I had consumed that day and my strength was starting to fade. I quickly downed another packet of Gu, and within a mile or so I had recovered.

On a related note, I weighed myself right before I started the ride and immediately after I returned, and despite consuming ¾ of a gallon of water during today's ride, I lost three pounds by the time I was done. (Of course, I put on at least a pound or two after I got home and drank another quart of Gatorade.)

One final thought - I was wearing another new Microsoft cycling jersey today. I felt a little conspicuous while wearing this particular shirt, as though Microsoft was some sort of corporate sponsor for me. (That being said, Microsoft actually bought the bicycle that I was riding as part of their "Stay Fit" program, so I guess they kind of are a sponsor.)

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 10:24am
  • Distance: 63.3 miles
  • Duration: 4:38:16
  • Calories Burned: 2,079 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 2,786 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 13.6 mph
  • Peak Speed: 29.5 mph
• Temperature:
  • Minimum: 80.6 F
  • Average: 88.4 F
  • Maximum: 98.6 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 143 bpm
  • Maximum: 167 bpm

Today was supposed to be a "Long Day," but it was a rather short long day; even though that's kind of an oxymoron. Let me explain: last night I rode 17 miles, which was not one of my normally-scheduled rides. I usually do short rides of 15-30 miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I do longer rides of 40 or more miles on Saturdays. With this schedule in place, I do not ride on the day before a long ride, so my legs feel refreshed by Saturday morning when I head out.

That being said, as I got on the road this morning I could feel residual fatigue from my ride the night before, so I could tell that I wasn't riding at my best. In addition, a major storm system was headed my way, and I could see it rapidly approaching on the horizon. With both of those factors in mind, I made up my mind fairly early in the ride to do a single pass around the Pistol Hill Loop Road and call it a day. That route is a little over a metric half-century, and that was fine by me.

If I had to title today's ride, however, the name I would give it is "The Day of the Tarantula." Seriously - I saw no less than 10 good-sized tarantulas along the road, and I had to swerve to miss several of them. (Cleaning tarantula guts off my bicycle would really suck.)

Apart from all of that, I am really learning to like my Garmin 510 that I am now using to track my rides. I've set up the screen to track my cadence, heart rate, current speed, total distance, etc., so at any moment I can get a pretty decent idea of how my ride is going. I have been trying to keep an average of 70rpm for my riding cadence, and I managed to hit that average for today's ride.

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 10:15am
  • Distance: 31.6 miles
  • Duration: 2:15:152
  • Calories Burned: 1,151 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 1,280 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 14.0 mph
  • Peak Speed: 28.1 mph
• Temperature:
  • Minimum: 80.6 F
  • Average: 88.6 F
  • Maximum: 93.2 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 151 bpm
  • Maximum: 177 bpm

I have to say right up-front that today was a terrible ride. The weather conditions were great, but I was plagued by myriad technical issues that caused me no shortage of grief. Darn, darn, darn.

Here's the situation - the day didn't start off well; I set my alarm for sometime between  8:00am and 8:30am, with the intention of getting on the road by 9:00am for a 55-mile ride. (Two circuits around the Pistol Hill Road loop.) But I was up till 4:00am the night before, so when I was rudely roused from slumber by my alarm, I turned it off and I drifted back to sleep. I woke up at 9:00am, and decided that I could probably make it on the road by 10:00am at the latest.

I made a quick breakfast of eggs & ham, and I started getting all of my gear ready for the ride: multiple bottles of water and Gatorade, several packages of Gu, pumping air into my bicycle tires, etc. By 10:00am it looked like I had everything together, but I ran into a problem as I was about to leave - I had just installed a seat-attached, dual-water-bottle mount on my bicycle, and it came off as I was storing my bottles for the ride.

This discovery was met with no shortage of exasperation, so I reattached the mount, only to be faced with the same situation - the mount came off with simple usage. So I completely disassembled the mount, verified that everything was put together correctly, inspected my saddle to make sure that I was connecting it in the best place, reattached the mount, and I re-bolted everything as tight as possible without stripping any of the bolts. Once completed, I picked my bicycle up by the mount and it held fast. This seemed good enough for me, so I double-checked to make sure that I had everything that I needed for the ride, and I finally got on the road sometime around 10:40am.

Unfortunately, the ordeal with the mount had taken up almost ¾ of an hour, so I was now running seriously behind the optimum time for riding. I knew from checking the weather the night before that I would now be somewhere in the middle of the open desert when the temperature was well over 100 degrees. Despite that knowledge, I soldiered on.

The first couple miles were uneventful for the most part, but I was on the wrong screen on my Garmin GPS so I couldn't monitor my heart rate or cadence, and I couldn't seem to change screens. Trying to resolve the issue had me pretty distracted, which is a bad thing when you're sharing the road with traffic. Eventually I realized that I had accidentally locked the controls, but once I had that problem resolved, I realized that my cadence sensor wasn't sending signals to my GPS. I couldn't fix that problem while in motion, so I pulled off the road and repositioned the cadence sensor on my bicycle. After several minutes I seemed to have that problem taken care of, and I resumed my ride.

When I hit the 5-mile mark, I head a weird sound on the back of my bike, and when I looked over my shoulder I realized that one of my water bottles was bouncing down the road behind me. I quickly pulled to a stop, and I discovered that my @#$% dual-bottle mount had come off - again. What's worse, I only saw one water bottle behind me, which meant that the other bottle had obviously fallen off some time earlier in my ride. This left me with two choices: write off the water bottle as a complete loss, or retrace my route with the hope of finding it along the road. My water bottles are pretty nice - and they're not cheap - so I decided to see if I could find it. (After all, it couldn't have fallen off that much earlier, right? Wrong.)

I begrudgingly started riding back in the opposite direction. In order to assist my search, I was intentionally riding in the wrong direction in the bicycle lane, for which I profusely apologized to every cyclist whom I encountered as I explained that I was searching for a water bottle that I had lost. Truth be told, I felt like I was looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack - I had no idea if the water bottle had rolled off the road into the bushes somewhere, or if it had been stuck by a car, or any one of a number of reasons why I might never see it. My search went on for several miles, until a cyclist travelling in the opposite direction remarked that he had seen my water bottle. Unfortunately we passed each other in such haste that I couldn't hear where he said he had seen it.

As I entered the city limits, I decided that it was best to change sides of the road to the correct side, and I would simply make a U-turn if I saw the water bottle. But I didn't, and I made it to within a few hundred yards of my neighborhood before I decided that I had gone too far. So I turned around and continued my search as I resumed my original course. A mile or so later I found my water bottle lying in the road, and I pulled to a stop as I kicked myself with incredulity for my failure to notice the bottle on my first pass. Nevertheless, I quickly got back on the road, but I had lost faith in the dual-bottle mount, so I was forced to store the two water bottles in the back pockets of my riding jersey.

By the time I reached the Saguaro National Park, I had been riding for over an hour, but I felt like I had made no progress at all since I had been at this same location some 45 minutes earlier. All of my starting and stopping and slow-paced searching had taken their toll: my legs felt terrible, my heart rate was hovering above 150bpm, and I was running low on water as I pulled into the hydration station near the park entrance. I took a short break as I refilled all of my water bottles, and I consumed a pack of Gu as I weighed my options. My original plan of riding 55 miles was totally shot, and the temperature was already over 100 degrees. I seriously thought about tossing in the towel and riding home, but that would have put my mileage for the day at only 18 miles, which was way lower than I wanted.

I decided that I would make a single lap around the Pistol Hill Road loop, which would give me somewhere over 40 miles. This was obviously lower than my original 55-mile goal, but it seemed an acceptable alternative to quitting. Once I had that plan in mind, I got back on my bike and followed the road as it led off into the desert. I could feel that I wasn't riding at my best level - all of my earlier misadventures had taken their toll - so I was riding with the philosophy that a successful ride for the day would be to simply complete the loop and arrive home in one piece instead of challenging my previous times like I would normally do.

When I passed the Rincon Valley Market somewhere around the 17-mile point, I was shocked to see that it was boarded up and appeared to have gone out of business. The market had always been something of a backup plan for emergency supplies. With it gone, there is no place for me to get water if I'm running low out in the desert, so I'll need to keep that in mind for future rides.

As I reached the 18.5-mile point, it felt like the strap for my heart rate monitor was pinching my chest. I thought that it would work itself out, but it seemed to grow more persistent, so I reached inside my cycling jersey to adjust the strap. To my confusion and surprise, my hand suddenly felt like it was being pinched as well, and that's when it dawned on me: I wasn't being pinched - I was being stung! With this shocking revelation in mind, I grabbed the front of my shirt and crushed as much of it as I could, and then I pulled off the road to inspect the situation. Sure enough, some sort of wasp or yellow jacket had managed to get inside my jersey, and I had smashed it when I crushed my shirt. With this problem rectified, I scraped the bug guts out of my shirt and I resumed my ride.

Unfortunately, the insect adventure happened just as I was starting up the long, 6-mile uphill climb to Pistol Hill Road. I had just destroyed all of my forward momentum, and anything that resembled a positive attitude. Now I was truly riding onward fueled by the singular desire to "Not Quit." (But I really wanted to quit - believe me.)

One of my personal goals is to never shift off my top-most chain ring, and I managed to keep to that goal as I slogged my way up the last mile to the highest point on Pistol Hill Road. But as with my refusal to quit, my so-called persistence was really just stubbornness on my part. My cadence was lower than I wanted, my heart rate was higher than I wanted, and I was rapidly going through my water and Gatorade as I tried my best to combat the soaring temperatures which surrounded me.

I had been riding for 2¼ hours by the time I crested the summit on Pistol Hill Road, and I passed the 25-mile mark as I started my descent down the other side. Normally I would be pedaling as I descended, but I needed a break, so I consumed another pack of Gu as I coasted downhill for most of the next mile or so. This had the desired effect, and my spirits were slightly better as I turned north onto Camino Loma Alta for the 3-mile ride back to Old Spanish Trail.

The next several miles were mostly uneventful, although the 3 miles from the low point in Jeremy Wash to the Saguaro National Park were harder on me than usual; I think simple exhaustion from the day's misadventures were getting the better of me. I managed to keep to my personal goal of staying on my top-most chain ring, but it took some serious effort... or dedication... or stubbornness... or foolishness... it's one of those, I'm not quite sure which one.

By the time I reached Saguaro National Park, I was running low on water again, so I pulled into the hydration station near the park entrance to refill. As I topped off my water bottles and poured some cold water over my head, I struck up a conversation with another cyclist who was taking a quick break. He had already ridden 60 miles for the day, and he was about to head around the 8-mile park loop. He invited me along, but I had already endured more than enough riding for the day, so I politely declined, and then I hopped back on my bicycle to head home.

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 10:42am
  • Distance: 41.3 miles
  • Duration: 3:05:19
  • Calories Burned: 1,588 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 1,900 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 13.4 mph
  • Peak Speed: 27.8 mph
• Temperature:
  • Minimum: 78.8 F
  • Average: 102.1 F
  • Maximum: 107.6 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 145 bpm
  • Maximum: 168 bpm

I'm logging today as a "short ride" since I would normally ride 30 miles or less, but really what I did was two separate rides that were both around five miles in length. Here's the scoop: I started another class at a local college, which is near enough for me to ride to. So really I'm commuting, more-or-less, but since the college course is my new evening activity on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have to take what I can get.

I rode a total of 9.6 miles, which is about the length of a ride to and from the Saguaro National Park, which used to be my short ride until I grew ambitious and started increasing the length of my short rides by 10 or 20 miles. (To be fair, I rode 9.0 miles yesterday, so over the past two days I rode a grand total of 18.6 miles.)

The ride was mostly-uneventful; I was riding in blue jeans and a polo shirt instead of my normal cycling attire, which combined badly with the high humidity, so I was sweating pretty badly by the time I arrived at my class. (I'll have to remember that and leave home a little sooner in the future so I have some time to recover before class.)

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: n/a
  • Distance: 9.6 miles (total)
  • Duration: 38:38 (total)
  • Calories Burned: 547 kcal (total)
  • Altitude Gain: 458 feet (total)
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 14.9 mph
  • Peak Speed: 23.5 mph

Today's ride was an adventure in more ways than one.

First of all, my new cycling GPS arrived in the mail yesterday, and I was eager to try it out. The GPS that I bought is a Garmin Edge 510 Bike Computer, and I purchased the version that was bundled with Garmin's Heart Rate Monitor and GSC 10 Speed/Cadence Sensor.

All of this gear took a while to set up, so even though I had hoped to be on the road by 9am, I didn't actually get on the road until shortly after 11am. By way of explanation, the speed/cadence sensor needed to be installed on my bicycle, and to do so I needed to read the user guide and watch an online video in order to make sure that I was setting everything up correctly. (I also needed to pair the heart rate monitor with my GPS and install the GPS mount on my bicycle, but those tasks were fairly simple.)

Once I started out, I spent the first few miles adjusting small features on the GPS to display what I thought would be the most-relevant information for me during my ride. For example: current speed, total distance, ride time, cadence, heart rate, current time, etc. The GPS is pretty easy to use, so once I got the hang of things, I like having the additional information available to me. (My old cell phone GPS app was great, but it doesn't provide the same level of flexibility nor does it provide information like cadence.)

Another interesting adventure during today's ride was the altered course: many of my recent long rides have involved multiple trips to Colossal Caves, which I may have pointed out has a very bumpy last mile because the road is poorly maintained. I also mentioned in a recent blog that I have been considering turning off onto a short loop at Pistol Hill Road instead of riding all the way to Colossal Caves. I mentioned this plan to an old friend and avid local cycling enthusiast earlier this week. He was shocked when I told him that I had been riding all the way to Colossal Caves, because he knew how terrible that last mile was. He encouraged me to ride the Pistol Hill Road loop, although he mentioned that it has some hills to climb.

With that in mind, I followed my usual route towards Colossal Caves for the first 14 miles or so until I reached Pistol Hill Road, where I turned south and promptly began huffing my bicycle uphill. The great part about this route was - the road itself has obviously been recently-paved, so the riding conditions were great. The only negative feature was that the loop begins with a hill which I think parallels the difficulty level of the big hill in the Saguaro National Park. Nevertheless, it was a good ride, and I think that I will stick with this new route in the future. It adds a few miles to the course, which is actually a good thing, and the quality of the ride is so much better that it makes everything worth the extra miles.

I spent a lot of the ride paying attention to my cadence. I have been doing a lot of reading about cycling training, and many of the articles which I have read mention trying to keep your cadence at 80 rpm. I quickly realized that this cadence wasn't going to work for me, so I tried to keep my cadence at 70 rpm. This was difficult for predictable reasons, such as hill climbing. Just the same, I averaged 66 rpm for the duration of today's 4-hour ride, so I will simply try to improve from there.

I drank 3 or 4 liters of water and Gatorade during today's ride, but I still lost 2.5 pounds by the time I was finished. (I'm starting to see how the triathletes who compete in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii can lose 10 pounds during that race - for which they are disqualified.)

I was within a few miles of my house on the return trip when I realized that I had forgotten to put on sunscreen before today's ride. I had been in a hurry to get out the door, and as a result I could already see that my thighs were sunburned along the lower edges of my cycling shorts.

I needed to get home to help Kathleen take our puppy to obedience training at a local pet store, and we needed to leave sometime around 3:15pm to 3:30pm. With that in mind, I was calling it pretty close with a 4-hour ride which began at 11:12am. (I made it, though. I had just enough time to take a quick shower and run out the door.)

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 11:12am
  • Distance: 54.9 miles
  • Duration: 3:57:52
  • Calories Burned: 1,896 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 2,510 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 14.1 mph
  • Peak Speed: 27.7 mph
• Temperature:
  • Minimum: 80.6 F
  • Average: 92.3 F
  • Maximum: 100.4 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 144 bpm
  • Maximum: 169 bpm

Out of curiosity, I ran both my new Garmin GPS and the CycloMeter app on my Windows Phone to track today's ride, and there were some serious differences. In the end, I decided that the data from my Garmin was the most-trustworthy, so that's what I used to track and log today's ride. (For example, CycloMeter listed my calories burned at 3200 calories, whereas my Garmin showed 1,896 calories. That's a pretty significant difference.)

If you've been following my cycling blogs, you will have noticed that Thursdays are one of my "Short Ride" days, which usually consists of a 17-mile. But you may have noticed that in recent weeks I have slowly been increasing the length of all my rides by several miles, so today's "short ride" wound up being 27 miles: from my house to the Saguaro National Park, twice around the park loop, and then home again.

The weather was more cooperative today, so I was able to head out for my ride in the evening. I checked my sunrise/sunset app for my Windows Phone, which showed that sunset was at 7pm, so I knew that I had to get on the road by 5:15pm or I would be riding home in the dark, and I managed to get on the road at 5:11pm. Because of the waning monsoon season, the sky was predominantly overcast, and that dropped the overall temperature for the ride. There was a light rain falling as I started out, but I was pretty sure that the rain would clear up quickly based on the cloud formations in the area.

I did a couple of things differently for today's ride: first of all, I replaced the small bag that attaches to my bike frame (which I have been using to carry things like Gu packets and my ID) with a new pannier-style bag. This allowed me to carry a few more items, but it also allowed me to have decent control over my cell phone while keeping it safe from the elements. And the bag's construction still allowed me to reach around the back of my phone to switch my external battery pack on and off.

I also changed my playlist for today's ride: instead of NeedToBreathe, I downloaded Rush's Moving Pictures and Permanent Waves albums onto my phone. Some of the songs - like Spirit of Radio and Red Barchetta - are great riding songs. While a few others - like Natural Science - were kind of weird as riding music. (e.g. "How am I supposed to pedal in rhythm with a 7/8 time signature?")

The winds weren't bad today, so I seemed more on schedule than some of my recent windy rides. With that in mind, I was already on my way around the park loop by the time that my GPS announced that I had been riding for 20 minutes (with average speed around 15mph). My first pass around the park was rather uneventful, except that I kept bumping into the same set of car-bound tourists; first I passed them, then they passed me, etc. That wasn't so bad - the park is for tourists, after all. The only bad part about it was when I came speeding around a downhill corner to find that they had stopped their car in the middle of the one-lane road and had left their car doors open when they got out. This left me with only a few feet of clearance between the driver's-side door and the desert, so I had to brake hard to avoid colliding with their car or the surrounding foliage. (Grrr.)

I finished my first loop around the park and headed directly into my second loop without pause. For some reason I seem to ride stronger on the initial hills through the first miles of the park; perhaps my legs are a little more warmed-up by then. However, climbing the big hill around the 3.5-mile point is always worse the second time around. Even more demoralizing during my second loop was the guy who zipped by me as I was a few hundred yards from the top of the first hill on the ridge. (I was churning along at just above 5mph, and he was riding at about 7mph or 8mph. That may not seem like much, but on a bicycle that can seem like a lot.)

The sun was rapidly descending through the clouds and over the distant horizon as I made my way around the park. And as darkness fell, I became quite aware of how fast I was going and how much worse my view of the road ahead was getting. This added a bit of trepidation as I sped through the hills and washes that make up the last few miles of the loop, and I decelerated a little to compensate for the fading visibility.

As I finished my second loop around the park, I made sure that all of my bicycle lights were on, and I headed home as fast as was safely possible in the cool, dusky air of Tucson at twilight.

Ride Stats:

• Distance: 27.2 miles
• Start Time: 5:11pm
• Duration: 1:42:51
• Average Speed: 15.9 mph
• Peak Speed: 30.8 mph
• Altitude Gain: 1,597 feet
• Calories Burned: 1,584 kcal
• Starting Temp: 82 degrees
• Ending Temp: 78 degrees

Well, today was an interesting ride. Tuesdays are one of my short rides, and normally I do my usual 17-mile ride (home to the Saguaro National Park, around the park loop, and home again). But the weather was looking like it was going to be really bad, and all of the weather websites showed thunderstorms throughout the day. I looked at a lot of the radar images, and it appeared as though the storms were going to collide with the Catalina Mountains to the north of Tucson, and there was another system on the far side of the Rincon mountains to the east of Tucson.

However, Saguaro National Park is at the base of the Rincon mountains, which meant that a simple shift in the storm's direction would drop the storm on top of me when I was somewhere where I would rather not be in a thunderstorm. All of the storms seemed to be headed to the northeast, so I figured that as long as I stuck to the south, I should be okay. I therefore decided to head out to Colossal Caves, where there were a few opportunities to seek shelter if the need arose. That being said, the ride to Colossal Caves is 14 miles longer than my usual ride, which meant that I rode 31.2 miles instead of 17 miles.

It looked like the weather was getting worse as the day progressed, so I decided to ride earlier in the day instead of waiting for an evening ride like normal. With that in mind, I headed out shortly before noon, and I could see that the Catalina mountains and the northwest side of Tucson were getting slammed by serious thunderstorms. The trouble is, as I approached Saguaro National Park, I could see that South Tucson had a major rainstorm overhead, but I couldn't tell if it would be a problem later. Apart from that, the ride to the caves was uneventful, albeit a little slower than normal as I kept looking over my shoulder to see what the weather was doing.

As I was headed back, I could see that I was headed into a storm. While I accepted the fact that rain was a certainty, I saw several flashes of lightning that had me alarmed. (Rain = Acceptable; Lightning = Unacceptable.) I knew that the Rincon Market was at the 22-mile point, and I was somewhere around the 18-mile point as I suddenly found myself facing a serious headwind. (This elicited some serious yelling at nature on my part, all of which was utterly fruitless.) Knowing that I would shortly be drenched, I moved my cell phone and other important things into a small Ziploc bag that I had brought with me specifically for this possibility.

A light rain started to fall as I reached the market, and I pulled off the road briefly as I pulled out my cell phone to check the weather. The radar images looked like I would be skirting around the storm that I saw earlier, so I got back on the road headed home. Shortly after I hit the road, the rain started grew stronger. As I rode along, I kept reminding myself of each location where I could pull off the road if the weather became unbearable. By the time I was headed uphill from Jeremy wash, the rain was falling much harder, and the low areas around the wash were filling with water. My bike has no fenders, so I was throwing around a fair amount of mud as I rode.

When I reached Saguaro National Park, the rain had abated significantly, and it had ended within another half-mile or so, although that didn't help the mud situation. I made it home safely, though, and somewhat wiser about paying attention to large puddles that form on the roads.

Ride Stats:

• Distance: 31.2 miles
• Start Time: 11:43am
• Duration: 2:15:38
• Average Speed: 13.8 mph
• Peak Speed: 28.0 mph
• Altitude Gain: 1,334 feet
• Calories Burned: 1,721 kcal
• Starting Temp: 86 degrees
• Ending Temp: 77 degrees