Training - EVEN Hotel Recon Rides

A very short time ago I got a vague email about helping out with a non-competitive ride. It was a weekday ride, it was early in the morning, and they wanted it to last a maximum of about an hour. This seemed pretty straightforward except for missing a few details. I asked a few questions, the person that contacted me gave me a few answers, and it seemed really doable. After figuring out how to handle Junior (he'll be at half day day care that morning and I'll have to pick him up at noon the day of the ride) I committed to helping out.

For a fun ride the permitting process through USA Cycling is a bit more forgiving. No officials, no scoring, no road closures, so it's just a group ride. USAC offers insurance for group rides, basically letting a club or shop permit their evening or weekend rides. To encourage this they keep the hoops and hurdles to a minimum.

This helped a lot since I first heard the details of the ride just two weeks before it was to take place. If it was a race there'd be no way to permit it (2 weeks is the minimum time required to permit a race). For a fun ride, aka "a group ride", we just had to pay the somewhat substantial late fee and we'd be set.

Of course I needed a route as well. Fortunately for me I grew up in the area, and in fact I trained on roads literally a little bit up the road starting when I was 13 or 14 years old. Back then it was a big deal for me - I was riding in the next town! My friend Allan and I would ride to a hobby shop in Norwalk to check out plastic models of tanks and planes.

Later, when I started training for racing, I rode some of the same roads with a friend and teammate in high school, Kevin F. He and I last rode together just a couple years ago, exploring some roads near my  "new" hometown. Back in the mid-80s we trained together somewhat regularly. I remember turning left into a road and cutting him off - his frame ended up breaking in that crash.

Actually, now that I think if it, it was about then that we stopped training together.

Ironically I ended up buying a house just off that left-turn-road, my home for a good 16 years or so.

At any rate, 7 years after moving away, I needed to refresh my memories of the area, including those roads that I explored so many years ago. Naturally the roads would have evolved so I wanted to know the conditions of the various roads, widths, stuff like that. Many of them are smaller roads, more neighborhood roads, and some are busier roads.

I mapped out a route that might work on gmap-pedometer, eventually mapping it out on Strava.

I also did some research on exactly who was doing this fun ride. It ends up that it's a new concept hotel,  EVEN Hotel, a healthy lifestyle hotel. It's one of those ideas that you think, "Oh, that makes sense!" when you hear about it. Basically it's a hotel where you don't have to sacrifice your health oriented lifestyle just because you're traveling. For me, when we stay at a hotel, it means eating foods that we normally don't have at home - processed foods and the like. It means traveling with, sometimes, push up bars, so I can do push ups like I do at home. With EVEN Hotels it seems like they want to handle that part of it for you - they'll handle your non-business stuff, you just do whatever you're there to do, like work or visit family or whatever. I'll have more to report after I stay a night there and go through the whole experience myself.

I figured that this fun ride was at just one of many locations but to my surprise it ends up that the Norwalk location is kicking off the EVEN Hotel chain, being the first of the hotels.

Well now.

I've done two recon rides now, adjusting the route slightly, and I'm pleased with what it is, at least based on the area. My goal was to make for a safe ride that challenged, encouraged, and rewarded. The ride starts on a short, steep climb, has some rollers, lets you get some speed up, then hits you with another short, sharp climb. Finally you roll back on friendly terrain, a nice cool down. All the major turns are right turns, although there is one left on a not-quite-quiet road.

The front of the hotel.

The inside is really, really nice. No pictures yet.

I've only been in the lobby area so far but it was unlike any hotel I've been in - for me it was more like a spa than a hotel. One of the people behind the desk in the lobby told me that someone walked in the day before and asked if it was a spa, it's that nice and peaceful. I didn't take pictures on my brief visit but I will Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The kicker is that it's not a super pricey hotel.

At the end of the first recon ride I headed down a bit that's now off the route. There's no shoulder (as evident in the picture), there's a no-turn-on-red, and there's no shoulder or sidewalk for the few hundred yards of busy road back to the hotel.

However, on this first recon ride, there was a minivan in front of me with "Happy Birthday Trevor" on the back window. A boy was leaning out of the window, watching me do a track stand. He motioned to me.

That is not Trevor, the birthday boy, but Trevor is in there somewhere.

"How do you do that?"

I thought of the technical aspects of doing a track stand, the idea that steering allows a rider to stay upright, that you have to move back and forth minutely while steering minutely in order to stay upright.

"Practice", I replied.

He grinned.

I nodded to the back of the minivan.

"Are you Trevor?"

He looked puzzled for a moment.

"Oh, the letters are still back there? No, I'm not Trevor, he's back here."
"Tell him I said Happy Birthday."
The boy duly poked his head back into the minivan.

"He says thank you."

And with that they were off. I concluded the ride (this was the first recon ride) and decided I had to test two alternate ideas. Otherwise I was pleased with the route, with the whole progression of challenges and rewards and such.

During the second ride, with one of my two personally-vetted ride leaders, I tested the two alternate ride bits. One has to do with the last bit of the route (the Trevor bit), the other to do with a "straight with no stops" versus "three stops but less traffic". We're going with the "no stops" option, for what it's worth, and that second ride made all the difference in making those two decisions.

After the first recon ride I headed north a bit to Outdoor Sports Center, the sponsor of the Bethel Spring Series for the last few years. They've been a great help both financially as well as in spirit. The sponsorship helps, of course, basically keeping the race afloat, but the owners would show up at the race and one of the owners showed up pretty much every weekend we had a race. They set up a tent, they gave away gift cards to their store, they wrangled all the raffle prizes we gave away, and basically brought the race up a level. They didn't just write a check, they really participated in promoting the race.

I'm working on the 2015 Series now and so I figured it would be good to stop by the shop and give them an update on how it's going. More on that as it happens.

Outdoor Sports Center.

With that out of the way I headed back. There's still a lot to do before the ride and I want it to go smoothly.

If you're interested in doing the ride, in checking out the hotel, you can sign up here at BikeReg. You get a free t-shirt, some refreshments, and a view of a brand new hotel chain. If you're around in the afternoon/evening there's more stuff happening, some food served, and some health/fitness type folks giving presentations and such.

The ride itself is at 7 AM, Thursday, July 17th. The route is on the BikeReg page but it's about 10 miles long and it's such that even I can do the route without struggling too much (and I really don't climb well). We have four ride leaders at the moment and it's absolutely a no-drop ride. All riders have to wear an EVEN Hotel t-shirt during the ride, that's the price of admission.

I'll try to have one more update on Wednesday but realistically the next post on this will be about the ride on Thursday. If you can make it I'll see you out there!

Training - Tokeneke Classic Road Race Registration Recon

With the Tokeneke Classic Road Race (New England and State RR Championships) coming up I felt the need to do some reconnoitering, specifically of the registration area.

No, I won't be racing the TCRR, but I will be working registration.

For the other events I've worked I've always had a cell signal, but the TCRR is in an out-of-the-way area and I remember specifically that we didn't have a great signal up there when we were house hunting a few years ago.

Since we'll need to use the Internet to transfer some data I wanted to make sure that we'd have access to the Internet. I planned on driving up there while running other errands - we live 30 minutes drive away from the registration location  - but the errands kept popping up in the wrong direction. I didn't want to do a drive just to check the cell signal so I did the next best thing - I rode there.

Now, since 2012, I've studiously avoided riding any roads except for the Quarry Road Loop (I call it that after the name of one of the roads on the loop). I did do a Rails To Trails ride with a teammate, I did go dump truck hunting, but I'm pretty sure that literally every solo training ride I've done outside has been on the QRL. It's a flat, 15+ mile loop, all right turns except one where I don't have a stop (and the the other two roads do). Very simple, very straightforward, and very flat.

Berg Field, the TCRR's registration spot, sits at the top of the biggest hills in the area. A hint of that comes from the road leading directly to it - Mountain Road.

Now I have some history with Mountain Road. We looked at a house on Mountain Road, eventually dissuaded from it by the listing agent's ridiculous lies and threats. For example she claimed that in that particular town homeowners needed no permit to do substantial work to a house, like finish a basement (including electrical, heat, and plumbing for a bathroom). She also claimed that they'd already done an inspection and it came clean. We did our own and the inspection turned up bacteria in the water, some minor issues, and, luckily, no problem with radon. The agent claimed that the inspection belonged to the owners since they owned the house, and threatened to withhold our deposit if we didn't give it to them.

Which doesn't make sense if they already had an inspection done.

Anyway it was a miserable experience and I'm glad we walked away from the house.

The important bit, related to this post, is that when we planned on looking at a house I'd ride there on my bike first, to check things out. Riding gives you a feel for the area much more so than driving there. The day I rode to the Mountain Road house it happened to be absolutely pouring. I didn't even think about what "mountain" might imply in the name Mountain Road, but when I took the left and looked up the hill... It took everything I had to get up the hill, rear tire slipping if I stood, and I thought, wow, if we live here I'm going to have to climb this hill all the time.

I decided that on my TCRR recon ride I'd skip Mountain Road and go up a less steep road that intersects with Mountain Road at Berg Field.

I headed north and beared left toward Berg Field. I had a minor decision where I had to bear right or left at another intersection and I beared right, the way the group ride would go a few years ago.

I got a mile or two up the road when I realized that, oh, I'm riding to the base of Mountain Road. I should have beared left at that second intersection.

Oops.

No worries. I took in the sights, like this gun that I always forget about.

Some kind of gun. I'm guessing anti-aircraft? I don't know US guns.

It's a busy road but in the mid-afternoon traffic seemed pretty light. Much quicker than I expected I got to the bottom of Mountain Road.

Approaching the turn to Mountain Road.

I'd be heading left, traversing the entire length of Mountain Road. The house we looked at sat at the top of the first steep bit. The fastest I've gone up to the house is about 7 minutes but I basically sprinted at the bottom of the hill.

This time I shifted down as I turned so I started at a more moderate pace.

The sight that greets you when you turn onto Mountain Road.

The first time I turned left on Mountain Road it had been pouring so I could barely see 50 yards away. My glasses made everything look much more fuzzy, water beading and dripping off of them. The spray from the rain hitting the road made the pavement look a bit white, and the cars zipping by would throw spray into the air. That day I made that left turn and looked forward. The road tilted up so I peered up just a bit.

Then up a bit more.

Then up a lot.

"This house better be good", I thought.

On my TCRR recon ride the hill seemed just as steep as I remembered, but the sunny conditions meant that I could stand if I wanted, that traction wouldn't be a problem.

I churned away in my bottom two gears, seeing 600w at some point early on. The numbers stabilized much lower than that, somewhere in the 300w range. Unsustainable for me. To give some idea of my pace I did the climb in a touch under 12 minutes. The Strava KOM, held by a local racer, is a few seconds over 6 minutes.

I trudged along to the other end of Mountain Road. It wasn't as bad as I remembered - either I'm more fit or, more likely, I was riding slow enough that I wasn't working too hard.

Berg Field, across the street.

I finally made it to Berg Field. I saw some stuff laying around - it looks like they'd broken down an amusement park or something. There's a wood pavilion in there and that's where we're going to have registration.

To get a few things done at once I took pictures of the pavilion area - dirt/gravel floor, very big posts, very high roof - and then uploaded one to Facebook. It uploaded almost immediately so that meant we had some kind of decent signal.

The pavilion. The posts are probably a foot wide - it's huge.

Once done I carefully got back to the road and headed back home. It would be mostly descending. I realized recently that I can't spin well right now - 120 rpm seems fast - so I worked on spinning a bit. I think last year's 55/44 chainring set up really killed my spin. I'm running a 53/39 now so back to normal.

I did one acceleration on a bit of a descent but eased because I wasn't pedaling smoothly. Later I caught up to a truck at a light just as the light turned green.

Following the truck.

I followed it for a bit but the bike wasn't feeling quite right so I backed off. I glanced down at the SRM after I sat up - I was only going about 30 mph, so I had sat up well under 40 mph. I felt disappointed as I normally go a bit faster behind trucks and such, and in fact on my own (on a minor descent) I'd hit almost 50 mph a few minutes prior.

As the truck rolled slowly away the front of the bike started acting a bit oddly. It steered slower and seemed to want to go in a straight line. I thought for a second that maybe the headset had seized somehow. Looking down, wiggling the bike side to side, I realized that my front tire was basically flat.

I looked up at the truck, almost out of sight. Good thing I sat up when I did, when I realized something wasn't quite right.

Up ahead I saw a perfect spot to change the tube. I didn't want to stop on the side of the very busy road, nor did I want to trample into bushes near the road because of the insane amount of poison ivy this summer.

Orange cone a few feet from the curb. Perfect.

Tactical thinking isn't just for races. I saw the construction bucket and realized that changing the flat just after the bucket, near the curb, would be perfect. The orange and white bucket would delineate a border between traffic and me. The space between the bucket and the curb would give me room to change the flat. I rode up to and around the bucket, then took out my "stuff I take with me in case of a mechanical".

Mid flat fix.

I checked the tube and found that it'd been punctured from the inside. Ends up the rim strip migrated a bit, exposing a few millimeters of a spoke hole. That was enough to cut the tube, leading to a relatively slow flat.

(Note: since I mount my tire with the label next to the valve I can line up the tube with the tire to check for damage. In this case the damage was on the inside of the tube.)

A better view of my "flat tire repair space".

Note the frame pump mounted between the front skewer and the handlebar.

Once I got everything back together I stood back to take a shot with the phone. The helmet cam captured it too. You can see how perfect that spot was, with the orange bucket, a curb with just grass next to it, and a wide shoulder.

I got back on the bike, it felt normal again, and I got home. Recon trip done, good signal strength up there, and a nice spot for registration.

(Bonus notes: First thing I should point out is that when I last raced on the TCRR course I almost got lapped on the 22+ mile loop - I stopped at the finish line a lap early and a minute or two later the winning break crossed the line. I'm that bad. Second, a much more interesting thing - I'll reveal that this story took place at the Tokeneke RR. Based on almost getting lapped it makes sense why I worked the wheel van instead of doing the previously-unnamed race.)